The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Unlocked a Whole New Level of Bullshitting in Iowa

Episode Date: July 23, 2023

Bullshitting is an art, and according to hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie, Donald Trump proved he’s mastered it after they listened to a clip of him totally spewing nonsense in response to an Iowa voter’s question at an event early July. Andy shares a funny analogy and the two have strong reactions to the other wacky audio clips they listen to on this bonus episode. Then Colin Dickey, author of the upcoming book ‘Under the Eye of Power’, walks Andy through the political impact of the country’s earliest conspiracy theories and secret societies. Plus! He shares how Americans became so enthralled and scared of the Illuminati that it literally influenced a presidential election. Even George Washington was involved. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Colin Dickey, who talks about his new book Under the Eye of Power, how fear of secret societies shape American democracy. And he'll tell us all about that. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips?

Clip. Clips. All that hesitation just really doesn't make me feel like there's a lot of it. Because we know what's coming, Jesse. We know that you are going to make us feel bad. Well, we really need a vacation, it sounds like. All right. Well, the beatings must continue because morale is not up.

Oh, shit. Here we have the human skin tag, Steve Bannon, trying out his best preacher imitation as he floats his idea of, blame everything on the deep state to make Trump a rebel that you should all get behind. This is a crusade. This is a holy war against the deep state. Donald Trump is our instrument for retribution. Here, Glenn Yonkin and a vest.

I don't want to hear it. Kemp with his George acts. I don't want to hear it. Trump is our instrument for righteous ignition. You know what's amazing is that Donald Trump is not an instrument to, I don't know, bring more jobs to these people. Donald Trump is not an instrument to bring down, you know, healthcare costs.

Donald Trump is not an instrument to build infrastructure. He's not doing anything for these people. Also, love the fact that he like skirts over Brian Kemp in his Georgia accent. And I'm just like, you're a fucking bass is from the South, dummy. Well, I agree with him. I don't want to hear from a young kid in his vest. I mean, that's 100% the truth.

Yeah, at least we could all agree on that bipartisanship. Donald Trump is an instrument the way if you have a kid and, like, their first day practicing with a violin. Yes. And you just want to die? Yes. That's the kind of instrument that Donald Trump is. I was going more with a French horn of McDonald's farts, but that's my mind of the guy. God, Jesus.

The rhetoric is unbelievable right now. This guy is literally calling this a crusade. And if you know even a little bit of history, you know I think that the Crusades weren't the most peaceful of things. And it is just unreal to me what we're hearing now. And it's just everything is tied up in religious fervor and talking about Trump like he's a prophet of God, if not God himself. And talking about retribution. I mean, this is an old, this is an angry ass Old Testament God. and raining down plagues on people.

And this is where we are. It's so fucked up. But the question is like, who is coming after them? Is it an army of gas stoves? Is it the M&Ms? Is it Lego figures that have turned into actual action figures? Like, what's coming after them? It's the Barbie movie.

Oh, yeah, it is the Barbie movie. Is it young trans track stars? Like, who are they waging war again? The woke mob. It's the woke mob, Danielle. I think it's riot Gosling at a rob bar that's really Oh, right. Oh, yes, because Barbie's their next thing. Got it. Yeah. Too woke. Really is amazing that the most selfish human being on earth, you now blame that who's coming from is this amorphous thing that no one knows who it is, the deep state, like they can never name who the deep state is either, just like they can't name the woke. It used to be that like Hillary, this one person was their big thing,

But now it's this amorphous blob that they blame everything on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the woke mob. It's Antifa. But it's also the Biden crime family. Oh, I forgot about that. And they're all funded by Soros.

Hmm. Well. So there's that. At least that one's got a morph to it. And to them, it's a very bad Jewish stereotype. That was a cartoon in the 40s that I think they imagine. As one of my friends, Wajahat says all the time, they're afraid of their shadows because they're black.

That's very good. All right. Well, moving on along to some other players and sycophants of Cheeto Jesus. Here we have Megan Kelly, a person who is more addicted to fame than Hunter Biden is addicted to taking pictures of himself doing wild behavior. And seeing where the wind is blowing, she has some sucking up to do to Mr. Trump, even after he talked about her menstrual cycle being her guiding motivations while she was a moderator at a debate. Let's listen. have a private audience with former President Donald Trump. When he came into the arena, we met just one-on-one.

And, you know, I mean, their team was standing nearby. But he and I got a one-on-one together for the first time in years. And it was, frankly, great to see him. You know, all that nonsense between us is under the bridge. And he could not have been more magnanimous. You know, it's just the thing about Trump is, he commands the room. He walks in, and it's not just because he's a former president now, because I knew him before that.

There's just something about him. It's like an aura that sort of takes over the room. There's only one person you can look at. I remember when he was doing Celebrity Apprentice, and Geraldo was on it, and John Rich was on it, and John Rich, I think it was, invited me to an event for Celebrity Apprentice, and you went there. And same thing. Trump walks in, like, the whole room turns with Donald Trump. Well, even more so now. He could not have been nicer or more generous

and had some interesting thoughts about the debates, whether he's going to attend. I wouldn't bet on it. I would not bet on him attending at least that first Fox News debate if I had to put money on it. You know, it's Trump so he could change his mind. But that was my feeling in having talked to him,

though he didn't commit one way or the other. She is unreal. You pretty much summed it up, Jesse, when you said she's addicted to fame. I have just never, I don't want to say never because we see it, we see it a lot now, but it is just unreal to watch how these people have morphed over the past six, seven years and just turn themselves into whatever they think is going to be good for ratings, is going to be good for their pocketbook and their paycheck.

It's just unreal. I mean, she is just, she's sold it. I mean, I don't know what to say, you know, there's no there. It's whatever she thinks is, I mean, she's on the, you know, she's on the woke train. Like, everything she says is woke this and woke that. And it's just, it's so gross. Yeah. I mean, it's water under the bridge, right?

Like, how these people will debase themselves for this man. He's magnanimous. Like, he is bigger than life. He sure as fuck is. But not in the way you think from Steve Ben. And we should be behind, you know, have his back. And I'm just like. it's sick, you know, but I always wondered, why would the people wear the same outfits and sneakers and drink the Kool-Aid?

How I know. And all of this for a guy who, if someone came up to him and said, you will be the president, or just said to him, you will get fresh fries at McDonald's if you shove up, if you cut this person's throat. He wouldn't even think twice, like there would not be a hesitation. You would barely finish the sentence before he would be knife in hand. And this is the guy that they all do this for. That's what's unbelievable. And I guarantee you he has no idea what magnanimus means. If she had said that in front of him, he'd be like magananimous, mega unanimous.

Oh, I like that. He wouldn't have been sure if he should be happy or insulted. All right. Well, speaking of him, so we just listened to two people bullshitting about who he is. Now he's going to bullshit his way through. a comment he recently got from a supporter on the podium. I have to say this one was like a, you can't say new low, new high.

It was just a new level of like, wow, this guy really believes he could bluster his way through anything. Well, you know we're working on that. And you know we had a plan to totally, it's such a ridiculous situation, isn't it? But we had a plan, and we would have instituted that plan. and it was already.

But we will get it better. If we win, that's going to be taken care of. That will be one of the easy things we do. This is when you're in school and the teacher assigned you a 500 word essay. And so you just, you spend like, you know, 300 words bullshitting because you have no idea. You know, that's when you say, the Iowa pipeline is a land of contrasts. In this essay, I will. You just start throwing words in, like solely to get the word count up.

And that's exactly what he's doing. He does not have a clue what she's talking about. Not at all. The energy of I remember a girl in my school, the teacher said, Stephanie wears Cuba on the map and she just said the word Cuba until the teacher gave up.

I was really impressed with her social aptitude and all, but this is not so much. Do they still use those little blue books for essays? Probably not. They obviously, no one knows how to use a pen. No. Oh, God, you just gave me nightmare flashbacks. Thanks for that. Seriously.

But it would just be Donald Trump, just writing the word bullshit over and over and over and over again and handing it in. But my favorite thing is that these pipelines, you know, weren't even a thing that they had to deal with during his administration. And so, yeah, we had a plan for it then. Yeah, okay, buddy. Yeah, we had a plan for it, but then, you know, something happened, but it's the first thing we'll get to. fucking dummy. All right. So as we know, we have a reoccurring segment on this program where we talk about Louisiana

Senator John Kennedy trying to out Louis Gomer, Louis Gomer, and, well, you go, boy, you've done it again. You go, boy. Well, let me say for the record, I'm a big subway fan. That footlong Titan turkey, I think they call it, will make you very regular. Oh. You're back to that again. Number, uh, not, not. Even the fox and friendsos were like, Jesus Christ, dude.

What the hell? Oh, my God. Well, I guess I think what he's saying is that's how he manages to spew so much bullshit. I was going to. Oh. I was just, yes, bravo, Andy. Subway. Yeah.

Eat not that fresh. This is. their rebrand after having to distance themselves from Jared Fogel. Someway, we help you spewold shit. Oh, God. Oh, my. What a weird dude. Just, I mean, shit for brains, you know?

Just, that's where we are. No more Kennedys. No more Kennedy's. I like that. I feel like Jesse, you hate us. You know what I'm saying? Is that what it is? This is right.

You wonder why there's a pause before we say how excited we are for clips. And then you give us Steve Bannon, Megan Kelly, Trump, and Louisiana's John Kennedy. In my defense, all I'm saying is it gets the clicks. I have a bad date here. All right. Putting profit before people. Yep. Yeah.

That's that's been. Jesse Cannon way. The United States was born in paranoia. This is the opening sentence of Colin Dickey's new book, Under the Eye. of power, how fear of secret societies shapes American democracy, and he spends the rest of the book showing just how that works. Dickie is no stranger to the more esoteric sides of America. He's also the author of Ghostland and American History in Haunted Places, and the Unidentified, mythical monsters, alien encounters, and our obsession with the unexplained. And he joins me now. Colin, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me on. So in the intro to Under the Eye of Power, you kind of set yourself up in opposition to Richard Hofstadter's famous, 1964 Harper's essay, The Paranoid style in American Politics, in which he posited that while

conspiratorial thinking is absolutely a part of our democracy, it mainly exists along the edges of that democracy. In contrast, your book argues that paranoia is at its very heart. Yeah. I mean, I think that essay, that Hofsitter essay that you mentioned, which has become really kind of, you know, received common wisdom for a lot of people in the, in the, how long, 60, 70 years since. You know, it's really this idea, yeah, that America is mostly a kind of sane rational democracy and that while there are these kind of fringe people, they really don't interrupt mainstream society. And as long as there is a kind of stable and rational center to the country that we can beat these back, which is what Hofstadter believed was

happening with the rise of the John Humberg Society and the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964. And I think, you know, once I started to actually do the research and look into these conspiracy theories around, you know, various secret societies, be they, you know, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, or, you know, in Hofstetter's time, the idea that the communists were putting fluoride in the water. It turns out that these are a kind of regular and recurring almost like road element of sort of American political democracy and American culture. And I kind of wanted to reframe how we thought about these things, less as exceptions to the rule

and more a part of how American democracy conceives of itself because I think we need to do a much more active and proactive job of meeting these things head on. So along those lines, you write about the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthyism of the 1950s and how we think of them is linked, obviously shown most famously in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. But you think there are dangers in doing this. Yeah, exactly. I mean, right, because those are the things that I think we're taught. That's the kind of sort of stories of these kind of moral panics that we grow up with.

And I think it's very important and valid to teach both of those. But I think part of the problem is they're taught as exceptions. They're taught as kind of two moments in American history when things got out of hand. And they're used as kind of cautionary tales of, you know, when people get a little exuberant or irrational or get into a tizzy, these are the kind of dangerous things that can result. But they've only really happened twice and we don't really need to worry too much about them because as long as we're sort of vigilant, we won't see these things again and again. And again, I think, you know, in fact, what happens is these things happen pretty regularly. I mean, I grew up in the 1980s, you know, child of the 80s and a, you know, a metalhead. So I'm very comfortable and I, you know, very much remember the satanic panic of the 1980, which, you know, we, you know, us, us listening to like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest just thought was kind of a weird joke.

But, you know, resulted in a lot of people being sentenced to jail and entirely fabricated in fictitious charges, many going to prison for for years and decades before they were exonerated. And almost as soon as the satanic panic was over in the 90s. it was more or less forgotten. You know, so, and these, again, these sort of like panics happen over and over again. And then as soon as like they sort of burn themselves out, they're brushed from the record so that each time the next one happens, it seems brand new. It seems like we haven't faced anything like this since, you know, McCarthy or whatever. When in fact, we've had to deal with it dozens of times since then, we just keep forgetting about it. Yeah, it really is amazing as you go through the book and just list, you know, and talk about basically panic after panic.

So let's talk about what's maybe the Urr's secret society. in American history, the Freemasons. We've got over 200 years of Masonic conspiracies. There's the symbology of the Dollar Bill, the architecture in Washington, D.C., we've got Dan Brown books, we've got Nick Cage movies, all the classics. How did this get started? And why has it been so enduring? Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, the Freemasons are really sort of a bedrock kind of element of American culture. And what was fascinating to me when I actually started doing the research is that, you know, the founders in the 18th century, you know, when Freemasonry really took whole, in the United States, were very public and open about it.

You know, they would have these lavish parades. Everybody knew about the Freemasons. There was no element of secrecy whatsoever or very little beyond, you know, these kind of esoteric rights, but those seemed sort of minimal. Because what people like Ben Franklin and George Washington, when they were sort of envisioning this country, what they wanted was a form of kind of aristocracy, but one that wasn't based on lineage and hereditary descent like, you know, England had. the Freemasons kind of offered a way for the American like founders to distinguish themselves from,

you know, the middle class or whatever and sort of create this aristocracy that was based on sort of privilege and social status rather than, you know, inherited ancestry. And, you know, that's why there's all this Freemasonry stuff in the sort of founding of the country. That's why that, you know, the I of Providence ends up on the dollar bill. There's kind of all the stuff. And that doesn't really change until the 1820s when by that point, Freemasonryman, have spread so large. And it is, it's now much more, you know, middle class and, and sort of working class people who are trying to use that same mechanism to, to move up the ranks, that it sort of becomes a kind of weird, you know, the weird and esoterrorical rights become more and more

important. They become kind of like these like goth fraternity hazing rituals. And it culminates finally in 1826 in upstate New York when a disgruntled Freemason threatens to publish the rights publicly and is abducted by a bunch of Freemasons and he's never found, you know, sort of presumably murdered by the Freemasons, which triggers finally a backlash in the American public where finally they start to ask like, you know, who are these people? Why are they meeting in secret? What is this going to do to American democracy that we have so many of these people that seem to be in levers of power and also sort of beholden to these secret rights rather than public democracy? And that brings us to the Illuminati, Hell Eris, which is also these days conflated with the Freemasons, but in fact,

has completely different origins. Yeah, right. So yeah. So the actual literal Illuminati was a group that existed for barely 10 years in Bavaria, Germany in the 1770s. And it was sort of vaguely modeled on the Freemasons, but it was kind of going to be its own little group. And the authorities got wind of it, and they arrested them and squashed them. And that was the end of the Illuminati historically. But they took on this sort of strange afterlife in the wake of the French Revolution because people were looking at the chaos and the violence and the bloodshed of the French Revolution, trying to understand what had happened. And starting with a Scottish Freemason and a Jesuit

priest in France, they started alleging that the Illuminati had somehow survived and they were behind this whole thing. And the Illuminati, from that point on, becomes this kind of plausible explanation to, you know, mechanism for explaining anything that seems, you know, unexpected or crazy or unexpectedly violent or dramatic. You can always say, you know, oh, the Illuminati are secretly behind it. And, you know, the fact that they're so invisible just means they're that much more powerful. And so the Illuminati sort of makes its way across the Atlantic to the United States. And, you know, George Washington is writing letters to people saying, yes, of course. Of course the Illuminae is behind the French Revolution.

Everybody knows that. And it becomes such a kind of testament of faith that it influences the 1800 election between Adams and Jefferson. So our first real kind of contested presidential election after Washington's two terms is already being heavily influenced and perhaps sort of decided by the sort of widespread use of conspiracy theories to tar the other side. And I didn't even realize, but in the book, you sort of draw a correlation between Adams passing the Alien and Sedition Act and this fear of the Illuminati. Right, exactly, because the Alien and Sedition Act is, you know, how do we ensure that foreign saboteurs don't corrupt America, poison our new democracy,

And so the Alien Sedition Act comes at the same time that there is this increasing panic and terror around, you know, this mysterious group known as the Illuminati who have already destroyed France and now maybe infiltrated in the United States too. Yeah, it's unreal. And look, I could literally talk to you about the Masons and the Illuminati for hours, but my producer and your publicist probably wouldn't be happy about that. So let's jump to the post-Civil War period. In the intro to the book, you write, every time a traditionally marginalized segment of America has attempted to fight for, equity, conspiracy theories have been used to suppress or curtail that fight. With that in mind, tell us about both the Molly McGuire's and the Haymarket trials. Yeah. So again, I, you know, I didn't set out to write about, you know, socialists or anarchists or communists per se, but I did find that once I

decided that the subject to the book was going to be any real or imagined group of people working in secret to, you know, commit violence or distort American democracy. I ended up sort of having to kind of confront a lot of sort of unlikely subjects. And as you mentioned, you know, both the Molly McGuire and the Haymarket incident in Chicago in 1886 are sort of structurally very identical to this idea that there's this group of people who are sort of invisible, but everywhere. And, you know, and so, you know, what happens basically with the Molly McGuire's is a coal mining strike in rural Pennsylvania. In order to break the strike, there's a Pinkerton agent who is sent to influence them.

and he is sort of used to kind of gather up information, not just about the union that is striking, but this sort of, again, kind of real, but also kind of exaggerated group of Irish saboteurs and terrorists known as the Molly Maguire. And this specter of this Irish terrorist group, which is sort of, you know, is there, is not there, is sort of, you know, it's very difficult to objectively kind of describe how much they were actually responsible for. But it gets used to basically justify a really violent strike breaking and the sort of trumped up execution of a lot of people, many of whom had nothing to do with any of the violence, but were sort of used as scapegoats and executed by the state basically working on behalf of the coal mining companies and the railroads. Then that becomes the

template for a lot of anti-socialist, anti-anarchist, anti-union movements. And most famously with the Haymarket incident where cops are attempting to break up a rally by some workers and a bomb was thrown at the cops. To this day, nobody knows who threw the bomb, whether or not it was a Pinkerton adrop or an actual saboteur, nobody knows. And the trial, they didn't even really bother to find out. Instead, they once again rounded up the kind of main figures in the labor movement and tried them on conspiracy, executed five people, and destroyed in many ways, you know, or took a great amount of the wind out of the sales of the labor movement and pushed off a lot of the gains that we wouldn't get until the 20th century.

And in fact, what you write that was so interesting to me was that the whole point of the trial, he said it was sort of important for the trial to not be about individuals, actual potentially guilty individuals, but it was important for the trial to be about this sort of amorphous them that were trying to change American life. Yeah, exactly. And yeah. So the attorney general during the opening arguments, he says, you know, it is inconsequential whether or not the man who threw the bomb is in the courtroom today. And, you know, one of the things is after the haymarket explosion, there was such a panic. And, you know, anarchists and socialists were being rounded up by the day. You know, labor newspapers were being, you know, raided.

People were being arrested on the flimsy of charges. And I think that it's important to note that if they had found the actual savaguer, they could have tried him. And honestly, if they wanted to just pin it on somebody, they would have gotten away with it. That level of, you know, hysteria and paranoia that had like, you know, worked its way through Chicago. they would have taken anybody. And so the fact that they really could have put up anybody on trial for the actual bombing and instead chose very explicitly to try the heads of the labor movement and say that they were sort of conspirators who were themselves more responsible for the explosion than whoever might have actually through the bomb speaks, I think, to a great deal to what they were trying to accomplish with those trials. Yeah, absolutely. That was just fascinating to me. Okay, jumping again this time to the early 20th century. Let's talk briefly about the newly reborn. in Ku Klux Klan, you write of a form letter used by the second clan's founder, William Joseph Simmons, that read, real men whose oaths are inviolate, listing as attributes of such men,

Christianity, white supremacy, protection of our pure American womanhood, states rights, and the promotion of pure Americanism. And all I kept thinking was, man, that sounds really familiar. Yeah. I mean, again, when I was doing the research and sort of like, you know, tracing these things, the parallels were depressingly common. And yeah, so the second clan, the clan that arises in the 1920s, which grows sort of basically out of Griffith's birth of a nation as a response to a different set of social movements than the first clan, which was a much more explicitly terrorist organization in the post-Civil War era.

The second clan operates, you know, as you mentioned, that sort of that kind of open posting, that open call for members as a kind of almost like a multi-level marketing scheme. You know, its whole thing is about just growing membership. That's why there's this wide cast of villains that they're after they're, they're not just sort of anti-black. They're anti-Jew. They're anti-Catholic. They're anti-immigrant.

Their justification, as you see in there, is this idea of protecting the sort of, you know, vulnerable American woman who is at, you know, always perpetually under siege by these, you know, foreign monsters who are, you know, going to do sort of, you know, harm to her. And that becomes the rhetorical rallying cry that fuels a lot of. these, you know, not just the clan in the 20s, but also the anti-Catholic movements of the 19th century in the 1830s, and it extends pretty much through to the modern age until about the 1970s when, with the rise of feminism, women are sort of reconceived as less being this kind of passive, vulnerable objects to be protected. And so the paranoia just shifts to children. And that's,

you know, the satanic panic and sort of the current fear about quote unquote rumors is sort of the same textbook, just with a slightly different object at its heart. Yeah. Okay. And then we get to the 1950s, which gives us mind control and the commies. And it turns out sometimes the conspiracies are true, MK Ultra and et cetera. Yeah, right. And again, you know, when I sort of set out to look for, you know, stories about real and imagined groups working behind the scenes in a coordinated fashion to violate laws or distort democracy, eventually you have to face the facts that the two organizations that

best fit that profile are the CIA and the FBI. And, you know, the work that the CIA did with MK Ultra and the work the FBI did, particularly during the 60s in civil rights era, to infiltrate and try and undermine civil rights movements and the student left, I think, creates a new kind of awareness of how these kind of conspiracy theories work and a new level of paranoia. Prior to the 50s and 60s, most of these conspiracy theories are set up around the idea that the government itself is under attack. by these foreign agents, you know, the Illuminati or the French or whomever. What happens in the post-war area is Americans start to believe that it is the government itself who is perpetrating these conspiracies and the government itself is rotten and problematic and we need to protect ourselves against our own government. But it also kind of, at least coming into modern day, it feels like it kind of becomes a synthesis of those two things where, yes, it's the government, but it's the government

being run or being controlled by the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jews, the Catholic, you know, insert whatever you want there. Yeah, exactly. And right. And one of the things that's really happened in the past 20 or 30 years is this increasing synthesis of these disparate conspiracy theories kind of coming together. So like one of the things about kind of conspiratorial belief is that, you know, among these community of believers, there is no cultural capital and being skeptical.

And so if you are somebody who, you know, believes that the Jews are running the media and you meet someone who believes that actually the media is run by lizard aliens from the planet Anukai, neither of you really benefits from, you know, telling the other one they're full of BS. So what you do instead is you say, oh, maybe these two things are one and the same. Maybe, you know, the Jews are working for the lizard people. And so, so all of these things start to like blur and blend into one sort of grand synthesized conspiracy theory and it involves the government, but it also involves the deep state and it also involves all these anti-Semitic tropes. It also involves these sort of outlandish alien beliefs.

They all just get fed into this blender and everything becomes kind of, you know, one and the same in this homogenized mass of paranoia. Yeah, it really is amazing. And I'm getting low on time, which annoys me because I wanted to talk about David Ike and the lizard people stuff, because that is just so bizarre to me. But instead, what I'll ask you as sort of an exit question is something you write toward the end of the book when you're talking about QAnon is you basically say it's very, it's very important to understand that this is not some unique and abnormal thing,

unlike anything in America's history, and it didn't spring from nothing. And to me, that just perfectly bookended your point in the intro about how we can't act like the Salem trials and McCarthyism were outliers, right? Right, exactly, right. I think that for a lot of people, you know, who had inherited this Hofstetter belief that as long as there was a stable centristism, we didn't have to worry about these fringe actors, you know, the last 10 years became, you know, came as a total shock because, you know, all of a sudden, you know, a lot more people than we assumed were willing to believe in really far-fetched conspiracy theories,

you know, whether they're about QAnon or, you know, the election being stolen from Trump by the deep state or the great replacement theory, which has been responsible for multiple mass killings right now. And so I think we really have to reframe how we think about conspiratorial thinking because we can't keep being surprised when these things. happen, especially when they happen over and over and over again, and they sort of vanish from consciousness as soon as they're done. It's such an important point, and it's sort of, I feel kind of bad now because my whole thing has been saying, I'm a huge lover of conspiracy theories in the sense that I am fascinated by them, not that I believe them. One of the things that I've been saying a lot now is QAnon and all this stuff has taken all the fun out of conspiracy theories.

They used to be just harmless fun, and, you know, I could talk about harp and chemtrails and all this stuff. And honestly, what reading this book has shown me is these things were never fun. And in fact, they were even the most bizarre ones where you're like, well, surely only like 1% of the people believe that. It turns out that's not the case. And all these things also just sort of, as you point out over and over in the book, each one of these primes the pump for the next one. And so ultimately, they're all incredibly dangerous. I mean, you know what? Believe in Bigfoot in the Loch Ness Monster. I mean, you know, like that's fine. Believe in goats. Ghosts, Bigfoot, Locknest, Monster, those are like, in terms of actual, you know, threat to our, you know, civilization and democracy, those are the ones that I think are pretty chill, pretty cool.

You don't have to worry too much about that. Yeah, it's, yeah, I think I started this project because in the 90s, I used to listen to Coast to Coast A.m. Of course. I used to love, you know, and then sort of asking myself, when did coast to coast A.m. go from being just a fun, cool conversation about aliens and Bigfoot to the government is coming for your gun. kind of thing. So like, you know, I was really trying to understand when things stopped being fun. And as you say, like what I found out is actually they really haven't been fun for a long time. Yeah. The book is under the eye of power, how fear of secret society shapes American democracy. It's out now. It's a, it's a fabulous book. And Colin Dickey, thank you so much for being here to talk about it.

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