The Texan Podcast - The Politics of DOGE, MAGA, and Brutalism: SMSS Ep. 13

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

On this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron and Rob explore the most recent email from Elon that shook the federal government, the "deeply online" origins of MAGA 2.0, President Trump's favorite and least favorite forms of architecture, and more. Listen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

He does not like these big blocky concrete buildings. He thinks they're ugly dystopian or authoritarian or something like that. But whereas he thinks brutalism represents a kind of spiritual dinginess, you know, faceless bureaucracy, the ministry of fear. Hello and welcome back to Send Me Some Stuff, episode number 13. Is it really number 13? It's number 13. I've been doing this for a year now. It's a lot of episodes, a lot of stories we've covered. We've covered everything from foreign policy, Texas policy, culture issues, technology. It's been fun, but we got some really interesting

stories to talk about today. We got Elon Musk and the email he sent out to all the different federal agencies. We got some Democratic party-focused stories to talk about. There's a story that's been circulating over the past week regarding not just only Colony Ridge, but a new city that has kind of popped up in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has said some things about it. And another interesting story you might get to today is regarding architecture. Absolutely, everybody's favorite topic. And definitely one that's a very surprisingly

a politically charged topic, I think, for most modes of art I don't think it's really something people think of but there's a strong political character to it there as with anything absolutely and and then also you brought up this interesting story in the office from Vox about the online origins of MAGA 2.0 something we talk about a lot in the office. Quite a bit, it's a big deal. And yeah, MAGA 2.0, I've seen this term be used,

and it'll be interesting to dive a little bit into that. Hopefully we can get that in at the end here. But first, we just want to say this episode is sponsored by the Texas Beer Alliance. We are grateful for their support. To learn more about what they do, click the ad in the description or visit BeerAlliance.com. I'm going we think with that, Cameron, I think we're ready to get into it.

Yep, let's do it. Let's start off with this Washington Post story. You brought this up in the office. It's about these emails that got sent out from Elon Musk and the Doge Committee Elon Musk and the Doge committee regarding what essentially these federal employees do. Doge of course being the Department of Government Efficiency named for a famous meme dog from about 10 years ago. Things are crazy as the day we're recording this by the way I'm sorry to interrupt your serious political conversation but today 10 years ago was the controversy over the dress gold and white versus blue and black. Do you that? I do. 10 years ago to the date. And what color did you see?

I believe I saw first blue and black. I know it is blue and black, but that image is golden white. So we'll have to let the people in the comments decide. No, it's true. But memes becoming reality, and reality is maybe a little bit more complicated than maybe slogans make it out to be. So. Well, why don't you walk us through a little bit

what this Washington Post article says about this email that was sent out, because it was essentially an email that asked federal employees to list what they did that week, list five things, right? Right. And there was some pushback, pushback from the employees,

but then also a couple days after the email was sent, we saw a number of these federal agencies, the heads of them say to the employees in the agency don't reply to it. So what does the article say here? So this article from the Washington Post called Trump Administration tells agencies they can ignore Musk order on email reply by Emily Davies, Hannah Natanson, Jeff Stein and Lisa Ryan.

This article basically talks about how this email that Musk's Doge sent out to, I believe it was every federal employee, saying, tell us what you've done in the last 48 hours or you fire, right? And now apparently there was a little bit of pumping the brakes on that with, as you said, some department heads coming out and saying,

actually, you do not need to reply to this. This is, you are not going to be fired for failing to reply to this. And the Trump administration, I believe the Office of Personnel Management sent out a memo saying that it is the agency's leadership decision as to what actions are taken. Also, Musk himself commented on this on Saturday saying that this email would be going out and then I believe he later kind of walked that back a little bit. I want to find his exact quote that he said. He said, absurd that a five-minute email generates this level of concern.

Something is deeply wrong. So maybe this is kind of the Trump administration doing its perhaps classic classic strategy of come in hard and fast and then maybe walk it back a little right so so shock and awe and then you know when you've got your I don't want to say opponent necessarily but whoever you're negotiating with when you put them on their back foot Then you can reach out a hand and pull them back in on terms that are more favorable to you So well, that's something that this makes me think of because I think we've seen Trump himself try and do this all the time

51st state so we'll see what happens. Well, we saw a number of federal agencies such as the FBI said not to comply, the Department of Defense stating that if responses were required, they would be coordinated through their office channels, HHS, which is under RFK Jr., initially told employees to comply but later reversed course and instructed them to pause all responses until further notice was given. Also, federal employee unions advise workers not to respond to this directive. So, some pushback coming from not just the employees, but from these new secretaries of these agencies who are all individuals who were selected by Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

So you would think there would be a symbiosis between someone like Musk who is now a very close advisor to Trump and the secretaries of these agencies. So I don't know if there was just a breakdown in communication. Yeah. Well, it's funny because anybody who's worked for an organization where people you know you think are in line with each other It's entirely possible to step on each other's toes right of course that never happens at the Texan, but it's it happens Right and I wonder if maybe this is some idea must came up with saying hey, this will be fun Let's send out a little surprise, right? Maybe he didn't even really intend to fire everybody when he said

that, you know, that when when he made that a clear threat, right, it might have just been an attempt to gain compliance. But it definitely received pushback from federal workers from a lot of, as you said, the federal workers unions. There are a lot of more left of center people, I think, in media who are very critical of it, who believe that, you know, Musk had that famous image now of him where he's posing with a chainsaw at, I believe, was it?

C-Pak. With C-Pak, yeah. And he's posing with a chainsaw, and he has the words over his head say, the Dogefather. And I think that whereas conservatives who are interested in cutting the federal bureaucracy see that as a celebration. A lot of more left of center people see it merely as some crazy guy again just running

around with a chainsaw. Right. So to them this seems very inefficient. It seems very troublesome. Right. They believe that there's going to there's been a big worry over data like the data of federal employees of American citizens that it could fall into the hands of people who shouldn't have it Criticism over some of these young people that mask that Musk has brought in these like young guys in their 20s The Doge Boys, is that what they're called? Yeah. Well, I think what's interesting is this is sort of the first public pushback on a lot of what Musk is doing.

You mentioned what's been going on with Doge and a lot of the cuts that are being made based upon those recommendations. And that's something I've seen as well, a number of reports of, you know, whether it was a Jesse Waters clip, actually, that I saw where he was talking about one of his friends who is a veteran, but was on a probationary in the probationary period of his hiring time with and because Doge cut a lot of the probationary employees he got caught up in that and so there's a lot of slashing going on without a lot of precision you know they're not using a surgical tool here they're more using the chainsaw yeah right the difference between I guess it's like killing ants with a magnifying glass with the sun

versus just trying to step on as many as you can. And the approach that Musk and Doge seem to be taking is to essentially remove, for lack of a better word, as many positions as possible, as quickly as possible. Which was promised and was mentioned a lot through the campaign. You know, I think about someone like Vivek, who was initially part of this Doge effort,

but has since left and is now running for governor of Ohio. But he was proposing a plan of just choosing like an odd number of social security numbers and just eliminating those, like doing mass firing that way. And that's the kind of thing that sounds really good on a campaign trail, but it's probably not a good policy, right? Well, I'll mention this about the emails.

Ted Cruz, he put out a tweet saying, a fair question, Elon Musk. Here's mine. And he listed a number of things that he had accomplished this week. So we can see there's people that are aligned with what's going on. But we're also seeing some pushback from both federal agencies and federal employees.

Yeah, well, something this article also notes from Doug Holtz Eakin, I hope I'm pronouncing that right president of the American action forum Which is a center, right? Think tank said that the problem here is you know, a lot of these cabinet heads they want to run their own agencies, right? They don't want the Doge. Is it Doge or the Doge? Because I don't know. I just call it Doge, singular. Doge, all right. Well, they don't want Doge essentially coming in

and tell them how they're allowed to run their agency, right? Because obviously a lot of the people that Trump's assembled to lead these departments and agencies is a relatively ideologically diverse group of people, right? I mean, I think Trump himself versus RFK, Musk, a lot of these people have their own thoughts about things. They're more united by the way that they resist,

I think, a kind of, they're only united really by their opposition to, I think, like the institutional conventional wisdom, right? They're all firebrands, but they're kind of firebrands in their own way. Well, I think this might be a good lead into our next story because we really saw Trump ascend to his second term in office here based upon coalition building. Something that wasn't totally utilized by Republicans in past election cycles. And it

could probably be the future of political campaigning just because it seems like the left-right distinction is sort of fading away. Because many of the individuals who were selected to be these secretaries of these agencies by Donald Trump, former Democrats, Donald Trump himself included in that. So it's interesting that what they are building this coalition on the right based on is really a anti-establishment mentality versus previous election cycles really rooted in a set of principles on individual issues. So let's go to this Hill story that you highlighted here about its Democrat donors turn off the flow of money. I haven't had a chance to

actually go through this one. Oh absolutely., that's what you got me for. Yeah. So this article from the Hill, angry democratic donors turn off the flow of money by Amy Parnes and Hannah Trudeau. So these two journalists spoke to some democratic donors who were telling them, you know, here's what we think about the state of the party right now, about the value of our donations. And so here's one of the quotes they said, I'll be blunt here.

The democratic party is effing terrible. They didn't say effing plain and simple. One democratic donor said, in fact, it doesn't get much worse. So there's a lot of frustration among a lot of democratic donors who say, why am I donating money to this organization when it seems that they're being mismanaged, right? You obviously had President Joe Biden, who was committed to running for president again in 2024 until that debate in

the summer with Trump, where, you know, as one of my friends put it, we were watching at a party, said he walked onto the stage as the president of the United States, and he walked off the stage, no longer really the president of the United States. It was an interesting debate to watch but it really showed the degree that Biden's speaking ability had declined, you know, the way he was stuttering, the way that he was kind of looking around almost as if he didn't know where he was. And so suddenly a lot of Democratic, I think a lot of Democratic donors and officials were frustrated because they thought that the, when the White House, you know, came out and said that Biden was sharp as a tack and he's doing just fine, they, they, you know, gave them the benefit of the doubt. And now it was revealed Biden was actually doing a lot worse. And then, you know, they're in a rush to find

somebody Biden comes out and endorses Harris all of a sudden, which of course, there's some people who wonder if that was a calculated move on Biden's part to preserve his legacy by pushing his vice president instead of allowing them to have a primary. But it was all kind of, you know, for a period of about one month, we thought, oh, you know, Trump getting shot, how much bigger can the news get? Well, and you had all this other stuff come out and and it really seemed like a campaign that was held together with you know duct tape and rubber bands that tried really hard to knock Trump out of the running and it just couldn't succeed and Trump ended up winning the popular vote which he lost

in 2016. Yeah well moving forward with the DNC, how this article highlights how many people are upset with how the Democrat Party is being run and these donors are upset. Something that was interesting that came out back in February when the DNC was selecting their new chair of the party, at one point, the individual who eventually was selected as

the the NC chair, Ken Martin, he was asked during the forum in February about taking money from billionaires and issues with that and i want to bring up the exact quote because it's it's actually pretty funny when he he said here um he said quote there are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with democrats who share our values and we will take their money but we're not taking money from those bad billionaires it feels like a bit of a rhetorical shift from like the way that the it feels like the online vanguard of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been talking you know it feels like a bit more of uh couching their statements with a bit more pragmatism. Well in if you look back at the 2024 campaign and uh financial breakdowns on who was contributing

between uh the two candidates being Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I have an article here from Forbes, headline, Kamala Harris has more billionaires prominently backing her than Trump. So it's an interesting point to note. Yeah. And what we've seen with voting patterns over the past, you know, really it's evolved over the past couple decades where those who hold degrees, graduate degrees, those who are making over $100,000, these

more affluent individuals hold more liberal leaning views and they have been voting Democrat. And so it seems as though the DNC, the party itself needs to grapple with this fact that what was once rooted in working class values and protecting rights of those individuals and arguing for higher pay raises and promoting union membership. Well the money that's being funneled to the DNC and to the Democratic Party is not coming. Well it is still coming in these small dollar donations from those types of individuals, but there's been a movement to the left by these more affluent individuals.

And it kind of is a contrast to the types of values you would normally associate with the Democratic Party, whereas now Republicans have seemed to take it taken up the mantle of the working class party. No, it's true. It's an interesting thing how before the Republican Party, really, before really, like, I guess you could say the conservative revolution, you know, took over the Republican Party from the 1960s, kind of onward, right, the the fall of the eastern establishment, these more moderate, liberal Republicans, this was the stereotype of the GOP back in, say, I don't know, the 1920s,

right? The Republicans were the party of the kind of upper middle, the middle class and upper middle class moralists and the Democrats were the party of ordinary average working farming people. And I think that we're in a period where that has kind of flipped and turned on its head a bit. And now the Republicans are kind of carrying the flag of the ordinary person, whereas the Democrats, I think, have the stereotype of the you know

the managerial class the professional class some have called it the over class right those professional managerial upper middle class people with fancy titles and multiple degrees. Well this brings to mind something that I've mentioned before in newsletters, when I've written about the issues between the two parties and how they're projecting their message to the electorate, is there's this term called luxury beliefs and this is popularized by the social commentator Rob Henderson where these luxury beliefs are ideas that give status to the wealthy while actually harming the poor. So like when

you're seeing individuals from these affluent areas or people at universities or these billionaires that are advocating on with their philanthropic causes, Well, what they're advocating for is just projecting, essentially a moral projection, rather than actually helping the people that they're purporting to try and help. So like, for example, when we saw the Abolish the Police, or Defund the Police, rather, or defund the police rather movement a couple years ago, that is a moral projection by individuals in those types of affluent communities where they live in a gated community. They don't live around crime.

But if their wishes were to actually come true, which in some cities it did, it actually is gonna be harmful to the actually lower class, poor individuals that live in those communities. And are more likely to be the victim of crime. Exactly.

And so, um, I think the democratic party is sort of grappling with the shifting alliances that are occurring, especially as we saw with this past election, um, Latino men significantly shifted to Trump, Latino women as well, young voters in a larger proportion as compared to previous elections voted for Trump. So it's not only the message but So it's not only the message, but the message concerning specific economic policy issues that the Democrats have to deal with, but a lot of their social policies as well. I think that's a good point about were kind of convinced by the Obama coalition that the country would only ever become more progressive as like non-white racial minorities

became a bigger and bigger percentage of the population, right? The thought process is just, well, because these people currently lean Democratic, once they're the majority, then the whole country will lean Democratic. But that's not necessarily true because these things change right people do in fact vote differently depending on if they think they might get something else out of it so what you had now was I believe the majority of Gen Z men voted for Trump I believe it was somewhere around like 55% something like that and wasn't it also the majority of Latino men in all ages, I believe voted for Trump. It's interesting to see how those demographics, I think a lot of people had convinced themselves that demographics was destiny, right? I think this is a term that you see a lot of people I think you saw people on the left use it in an optimistic way, saw some people on the right use it in a pessimistic way. But I think the the real truth

that this election has shown us is that those things are not set in stone in any capacity, right? In fact, they can change quite rapidly if the political situation changes. So the Democratic Party certainly has some soul searching to do if they're going to, you know, bring together a big enough coalition in 2028 to defeat whatever ends up happening. You know, we don't know how this Trump administration is going to go, right? The Republicans could be running, it could be as easy of a run as I suppose as HW Bush had against Dukakis, you know, coming up on Reagan's coattails, or it could be a genuinely tougher fight if the administration doesn't go so

well, right. So what remains to be seen there, and especially after the midterms. And that's something this article mentions as well, the midterms are going to be a big point where they said a lot of these a lot of these donors are probably going to start coming back into the fold around them to make donations. And you know, of course, historical precedent would say there's a pretty good chance that the Republicans will lose the House if not the Senate during the midterms, you know, of course, historical precedent would say there's a pretty good chance that the Republicans will lose the House, if not the Senate, during the midterms.

You know, voters are fickle. People want change, no matter really what it is. The grass is greener, they hop the fence, suddenly the grass is greener on the other side, hop the fence. You know, that's just how it goes. But it's definitely going to be interesting to see where the Democratic Party goes from here, because, I mean, to think, think again I didn't believe Trump was gonna win the popular vote we talked about that on send me some stuff and I think most people are pretty shocked to see that and I think that that's a really big sign I think for the Democrats that you know they do not have the country on lock and key essentially you can't just hope that as the years goes on as

the years go on people as the years go on, people are only going to become more and more democratic. I think that that kind of Obama era optimism has kind of, what's the right word here? It's kind of, I wouldn't say lost its place, but maybe it's past its prime. Well, it's something we've discussed just between each other is the Democrats don't really have like an inspirational character that they can put out there

to try and galvanize, not just donors, but the base and try and bring new people or rather former Democratic voters back into the party. You know, I wrote about Bill Clinton and his campaign in a newsletter probably a month and a half ago. And they just don't have a young, fresh face right now. It's interesting. There's a number of Democratic governors around the country who

people are pointing to. You know, I've seen conversations online of someone like Stephen A. Smith even, who is a sports commentator, potentially. You know, it worked for the Republicans to bring in a guy like Trump who had no political experience and received a lot of pushback from the party at first. And then he ended up as he is now the more or less undisputed leader of the GOP. So, you know, maybe maybe it is just an unprecedented time for experimentation. That might be that might be the move. Yeah. So it'll be it'll be interesting to see no matter what happens.

So before we get into the next stories, I think we have another ad break. The Beer Alliance of Texas is proud to support its members who help deliver an annual economic impact of $35 billion and provide over 200,000 jobs to hardworking Texans. From local tax revenue to direct economic investment to charitable contributions, their members are heavily invested in the success of our communities and our state. The Beer Alliance is dedicated to ensuring the safe distribution of alcohol throughout Texas.

For more information, visit BeerAlliance.com. Do you want insights on the policies that impact your wallet? For more information, visit BeerAlliance.com. down economic news that impacts your income, job, and future in a way that you can understand. I also invite top voices in politics, policy, and economics to discuss solutions that unleash America's potential. As a former Trump White House chief economist and now policy entrepreneur at more than 20 influential organizations, I find my calling in driving forward policies that let people prosper. Get insights that can help you get ahead by subscribing to my Well, let's get into this next story. This is actually from the Texas Tribune. The headline reads, Feds target quote criminals and illegal immigrants unquote in Houston area development avid says.

This is a article by Alejandro Sereno and sub headline here, the colony rich development has long been under scrutiny from conservative lawmakers, think tanks and influencers who cast it as a hotbed for undocumented immigrants and cartel crime. So, catch me up here on what's going on with this new development with Colony Ridge, because this has been an ongoing saga.

I remember Brad, he went down to Colony Ridge. He did go down to Colony Ridge. What was that, over a year and a half ago? Yeah, I was gonna say, if you're getting deja vu from this issue, you should be, because this was an issue last session. In fact, if I recall correctly, one of our, you know, countless special sessions in 2023

actually had addressing Colony Ridge on its special session call from the governor. Basically the the really long middle and short of it is that Colony Ridge is a development outside of Houston it is also known as Tehranus Houston and it has been accused of using advertising practices that market to illegal aliens. They you know they use a lot of Spanish language marketing, which doesn't necessarily imply illegal aliens, obviously, but there are also claims that, for example,

if I recall correctly, they don't run as strong of credit checks. There are some, how would you say, there have been accused of unethical lending practices, are some, how would you say, there have been accused of unethical lending practices. If I recall, one of them was that Colony Ridge, this has been accused by people who've lived there, that Colony Ridge has a lending practice wherein they are themselves, they are the creditor

that loans you the money to take the house and that they will You know revoke people's that you know They'll foreclose on people and take the money back and they've been actually the US government and did it is actually start investigating them over alleged Improper lending practices, but that is an issue that I think was picked up a little bit more by the left The issue that was picked up a little bit more by the right was the accusation that it was knowingly welcoming illegal aliens to live in their property.

And there were all these claims about cartel activity, there were all these claims about crime. And again, Brad investigated, he actually went down there. He has a great article titled Trailers, McMansions and Grassland. Colony Ridge cartel activity just like anywhere else in Harris County says local deputy from October 2023. It's a great article. Brad took a bunch of fantastic pictures of colony ridge. But he spoke with the local deputy who told him, there is crime here,

but it's actually not really all that different from the rest of the county. Really at the end of the day, it's about the same, right? Well, I think what's interesting about the Colony Ridge situation with everything you just laid out, which was great, catching people up on what's going on, is it's sort of an encapsulation of the illegal immigration conversation over the past couple of years, where I think with Colony Ridge, people need, when I say people, I mean, like the royal we here,

need a singular identifier for an issue, right? You can't just say illegal immigration, but you need individual instances that really highlight why someone is bringing up something as an issue. Like Colony Ridge, could it have more or less illegal immigrant activity or cartel activity as compared to other border cities or border developments in South Texas. Yeah. From Brad's piece, the deputy he talked to says,

it doesn't, but being able to identify there is an area where stuff is going on, it allows for us to use it as a springboard for enacting policy. And we saw, you know, tragic incidents where illegal immigrants are committing crime in the example of Jocelyn Nungery or Laken Reilly, where if you had just said illegal immigrants

are committing crimes, it's too broad of a subject to talk about. But when you are able to identify an instance where you can point to and say, this is a on-the-ground experience, a tragedy that is happening, we then see policy enacted the Lincoln-Riley Act. No, it's true. The Justice for Jocelyn Act, for example, in the Texas legislature. It's political rhetoric that gets too abstract, right? It's hard for people to feel attached to it. That's why a very bad man, Joseph Stalin, said one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. Correct. So I think it'll be interesting, though, to keep an eye on this. Because like I just mentioned, identifying one area like this,

and maybe they do find cartel activity, illegal immigrant activity concentrated here, it could springboard into further investigations into other areas that have had similar Reported activity. No, it's true because this is all due to the you know, Trump being inaugurated He's now in office and borders are Tom Homan Was interested in running more investigations and enforcement operations into Colony Ridge under the suspicion that they were housing lots of illegal aliens. So depending on what they find, it could be used as political rhetoric to justify further investigations into other settlements. For example, maybe they don't

find what they're looking for, maybe they do, we don't have the results of the actual investigation yet. But it's interesting to see something like this from what felt like years ago, suddenly coming roaring back. It's an interesting way that politics can bring back things you thought were issues in the past and nope, they're right back at the forefront. So this actually might lead into the next story here

about you actually linked a Texas scorecard piece in our docket here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it? Yes. So this article from Texas scorecard by Brandon Walton's titled Abbott says Sharia cities are not allowed in Texas. So what's that about? There is a project being held in Plano by the East Plano Islamic Center, which is also known as EPIC, to construct a planned community with apartments and houses and schools and a mosque. And essentially, you know, it's it has been accused by critics of trying to create a sort of immigrant Islamic Enclave that will refuse to assimilate into American culture Whereas supporters have come out said it's not trying to not assimilate. It's just trying to make a place where Muslims can sort of live among other Muslims and you know be close to a mosque be close to a center of worship

And have things like that right it's It's more of just a development, right? And this became, if you've been on Twitter in Texas politics over the past week, you probably heard about this. And you saw a lot of very strong reactions. Well, I've seen arguments, people brought up that this could potentially be unconstitutional. Have you seen that? No, tell me more about that. Well, just if the city is not allowing people

who don't adhere to the faith that is going to be enacted in this area, it's discriminatory. So I think they're gonna see some potential investigations into something like this. potential investigations into something like this. But was there a comment about this being a reported no-go zone? So no-go zone is a term that's used in European cities to describe these alleged areas where Muslim refugees

have essentially become very hostile to police. This is a term that refers to areas where the police are technically not supposed to go, right? That's why it's called a no-go zone. Police and citizens. Police and citizens, that's true. And so this is something that, of course, a lot of European conservatives argue is very real.

You know, the police just don't go into these areas, the claim being that the Muslim refugees are violent, they are essentially trying to create ethnic enclaves. Whereas the more people on the left are arguing these are not ethnic enclaves, they're more of a myth, or to the extent that there are places where the police don't patrol as much, it's really no different from any other kind of ghetto or slum where law enforcement presence is minimal. But this would be, this wouldn't be really similar to that in the sense because this is this would be a place this is a development right where people are buying property and everything. Whereas the no-go zones in Europe are mostly populated by immigrants. Right immigrants, refugees, people who don't have a lot of money

right who are accused of, you know, bringing crime and kind of, you know, taking over the area. This would be, yeah, it wouldn't be, I think that there are some political rhetoricians using the term no-go zone, but it's not really, I think, I don't really think that the metaphor or the parallel works quite right there. You know, the European context of it is not the same as maybe how it's being used in this American context. But I think in the same sense, it brings up the conversation concerning assimilation. No, it's true. In that we see in these European no-go zones, these are immigrants and asylum seekers that are really living outside the norms of these European countries that they're in,

whether it be Germany or Sweden. Those are the two that I've looked into before. And they're essentially living within their own community that is inside the greater community separate of whether it be German culture or Swedish culture. And they're living by their own customs and there's activities going on there that are potentially allegedly against the law or really not socially acceptable. And it's paralleled here potentially with a city, this new development that is being reported on here in Texas is when we're talking about assimilation, people who are citizens of the United States,

people who have immigrated to the United States to become Americans, people who are on green cards, people who are on visas, the question for you, I'd say, is how does assimilation in this context within the American context play into the concerns people have expressed about this development? Do you think it's valid concerns that we should encourage assimilations, not maybe allow these separate communities to be built that are still holding on to cultural attitudes

that aren't necessarily quote unquote American or should assimilation encapsulate many different cultural identities within it especially in the what we're talking about in an American context, kind of being a melting pot of different cultures. Well, yeah, because there are these two broad theories of assimilation, I think, at least the two broadest that I'm aware of, which are called the melting pot and the mixing bowl, right? The salad bowl, the salad bowl, right. And the idea of the melting pot is that new cultures come into the United States, they lose the qualities that made them part of the culture what they are, but those qualities are distributed to the rest of the country, right? So everything gets combined in with everything else. Whereas the salad bowl idea of assimilation is that there's all these different communities that maintain their own identity, but that they are close to each

other and that they tolerate each other and that they can borrow ideas from one another without, you know, too much tension between them. And obviously, the history of, you know, immigration assimilation to the US is nowhere near as ideal as either of those would have people believe, you know, the 19th century in many ways was a lot more of a salad bowl world than we live in today, right? The 19th century in many ways was a lot more of a salad bowl world than we live in today, right? For example, there were large parts of the Midwest and Texas that spoke German as a first language, because a lot of these German immigrants who moved to these areas settled in, you know, outside of major cities, built German language towns, had German language newspapers. Some of them the language of government was in German and it was only World War One and rising anti-German sentiment that led to people saying we need to walk this back. People need to be learning English. We can't have

you know an enclave like we can't have a German enclave in the middle of Texas right. Which of course I mean we kind of already we kind of still do but of course now it's just more a lot more touristy and a lot less they're going to be spies for the Kaiser right. And then through through from World

War One you know to the end of World War Two right in the 1950s you have the rise of a much more national identity for the United States right radio suddenly knits the whole country together very quickly television knits the whole country very quickly. Television knits the whole country very quickly. Well I think that's an incredibly important point you're making is that with these innovations in our communication technologies not only has led to greater assimilation in the United States but the American identity became more global as communication proliferated via radio locally in different countries, but also via television. And then now where we're sitting with over, how long has the internet been around? 50 years?

50 years? 40 years? The World Wide Web was launched in, I believe, 1991 or 1992. So we're looking at somewhere. Oh, I meant like early internet. Oh, the early, early internet. Yeah, I think the, what was it, the ARPANET was like 70s? I'm pretty sure.

But now, over the past decade or two with social media, it seems as though where once the communication technologies were utilized to create greater assimilation, now are allowing people to share these cultural identifiers across the globe, but online they are creating new organizational groups based upon maybe not nation identifiers but personal identifiers. Right the internet has allowed people to organize on a basis of a kind of post geographical way for lack of a better word where it's suddenly every little random group can meet up with every other member of every other little random group because they can all you know

Make a Facebook group together. They can make a you know an online community Well, and the reason I bring that up is because with a community like this popping up as it is in, Texas It'd be interesting to understand or to get some information. How did the individuals who are now planning to live there or plan to move there, how did they first become aware of something like this? Were these all Texans that decided, okay, we're going to get together and move to this one area? Were they spread out across the United States? Were they spread out across the United States where they spread out across the world you know we don't know anything about the individual makeup of

the individuals who are planning to create this community and the project is still you know it basically is relatively just came out right I mean this this project to build it in Josephine Texas but the the biggest thing for political wise is Abbott came out and said Sharia law is not allowed in Texas nor our Sharia cities nor our no-go zones Which is where you got that term from right the governor himself used that he says bottom line the project as proposed is not allowed in Texas so you know it I'm not as familiar with the you know

Model essentially of governance the city might have been planning to adopt for itself. You know, I think it's a little unclear at the moment, but we're going to have more details coming out as time goes on, I imagine, from this project, because I can only imagine that this is going to remain an object of political rhetoric. I don't think it's going away. I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. And just like the Colony Ridge story, we're talking about how it's sort away. I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Well, and just like the colony rich story we're talking about, how it's sort of an encapsulation of a growing conversation, this one being the question of assimilation.

So I think we should move to this other story from the- Leads us into a great conversation about culture. Yeah, the New York Times posted a story about the politics of brutalism. You're excited to read through this one. Very excited. I saw the movie, The Brutalist, and it got me reading about brutalist architecture and there's a very interesting history behind it.

But yeah, this article, The Politics of Brutalism by Anna Koday, very interesting article talking about how Donald Trump does not like brutalism. He does not like these big blocky concrete buildings. He thinks they're ugly. I believe he called them, I think he said that they were dystopian or authoritarian or something like that. But Trump actually signed an executive order, I believe it was in his first term, to mandate that federal buildings should be constructed according to the classical style, right? Like Greco-Roman architecture, columns,

you know, the Supreme Court building, the Capitol, neoclassical architecture like that, because he thinks that that architecture represents something of, you know, grandeur and hope and optimism, right? Whereas he thinks brutalism represents a kind of Spiritual dinginess well, I'll read I'll read here from Justin Schubow He's actually the National Civic Arts Society president and he was quoted in this article The brutalist buildings very association with government is sinister to people in mr Trump's orbit like Justin Schubow who served on the commission of fine arts during Mr. Trump's first term, quoting here, brutalism represents faceless bureaucracy. It represents a kind of federal power in the worst possible way. And so he called the

FBI building the Ministry of Fear. Right. Big oneeds to be torn down and replaced. I think there is an incredible opportunity to build a new classical FBI building at that site. Mr. Chabot casts the otherness of brutalism in a negative light, saying that the buildings, quote, look extremely foreign and like something from the Soviet Union. It's an interesting thing to say something like that, because this article gets into the concept of the foreignness of brutalism a little further down the line but I think it's interesting to see here the way that they also talk about the history of brutalism right after World War two there were a lot of people who needed

houses who didn't have them right a lot of European cities had been decimated by conflict so one of the ways for example, especially in the United Kingdom that they resolved to solve this problem was by building these you know large blocky relatively Undecorated brutalist buildings, right now the term brutalism sounds very brutal, right? But it actually comes from the French word I believe it is brute. I'm probably I'm gonna know that's not how they say it in the French accent But the point is the word for it comes from the French word for raw So when you think brutalist think of like raw architecture, right? It's like these buildings that are stripped down of Decoration and it's just plain concrete structures, right? It's very modern architecture

You know modern architecture. Modern architecture, modern art in general, is all that stripping things down to their bare bones and getting at the real essence of something, right? Getting at the real core of it, as opposed to what they viewed as this pre-modern, fancy-schmancy 19th century art that was all about, or 18th century stuff, which is all that decoration and gilding and a surface layer that was impressive,

but they thought it internally, it didn't have a lot going on, right? Well, and it's interesting with the Soviet Union really being the driver of this brutalist architecture and how it kind of represents this stripping away the individual. The bourgeois decadence. Exactly, of the individual and really promoting a sort of collective unity

based upon how the architecture is just cut and print, not a lot of personality. But if I actually follow this YouTuber that does a lot of personality. But if I actually follow this YouTuber that does a lot of travel vlogs in Russia to visit these brutalist architecture buildings that remain, and he does this because on many of these buildings there are these old mosaics that are... The Soviet mosaics? Yeah, that are still up on these brutalist architecture style buildings. So it's interesting the balance

that well, the mosaics obviously are propaganda. But but you're telling me political architecture is propaganda. It's interesting how they in in the former Soviet Union, they would build these monstrosities of buildings in this brutalist style, but then put a piece of art on the side. And like I said, obviously propagandistic in nature, but still there is a beauty in that style of the mosaic trying to essentially slap a sticker to on on these buildings that are otherwise not pleasing to the eye. This picture of Stalin hugging a baby or something. Yeah or yeah like people with like baskets of wheat and things like that.

I think it's very cruel the citizens of the Soviet Union to show them like a happy person with like A basket full of food seems a little gauche But you know, it's interesting with Russia, right? Because Russia has all of these as you put them these kind of concrete monstrosities and it has what I believe to be the world's Most beautiful building the st. Basil's Cathedral the famous red and white church with the onion domes and it's so colorful and it's I think it's like the most beautiful building in the world, but no, yeah, the socialist realist, which is what they call socialist realism,

what they call their style of art and architecture, right? It's all about kind of modernity and reality and the truth of things and the core of things, right? As opposed to this, you know, weird experimental artistic kind of bourgeois stuff that they associated with the United States but this is also something interesting I want to get at when this article talks about how they believe some of the opposition to brutalist architecture might be based

in the idea that it's too foreign right there's something kind of very continental European or Soviet about it you know as opposed to Greece and Rome which are apparently what parts of the United States You know, this is the the American American heavenly draws on something that it recognizes as foreign which is classical architecture which is not from this country one you could say because When the founders were styling the Constitution they were inspired by Greek philosophy in some sense, and enlightenment philosophy.

Roman law. Yeah, so those philosophical ideas leak into the architectural innovations that were occurring at the time, which inspired early America to style their buildings in such a way. Something actually really interesting, I took an architecture class in college,

and so I'm gonna gush for like five seconds about this. But something interesting is that Neo-Roman stuff was very popular in the founders generation, right? It was all about Rome. But in the 1810s and 1820s, there was a big shift towards Greece, right? Cause Rome and Greece are different things. And there was a big shift towards this

for multiple different reasons. The country was undergoing a more kind of democratizing politics represented by figures like Andrew Jackson. You had the Greek Revolution in the 1820s of Greece itself fighting for freedom from the Ottoman Empire, which led to a resurgence across Western Europe and the US for Greek stuff. You had the rise of a like more Greek style architecture in houses. I mean, you can see this when you walk down the street, if you're in the US for Greek stuff. You had the rise of a like more Greek style architecture in houses. I mean, you can see this when you walk down the street. If you're in the eastern half of the US, you can find these Greek style houses, you know, with all their columns out front and their little porticoes and whatnot. But there was this whole shift. And as you

said, it represents something very founding era, right? Which is what I think Trump likes about it. Trump believes that the brutalist architecture of the late 20th century, in his mind, I think it represents a kind of decline, right? That's also something this article mentions, is that a lot of this stuff came about in the 1960s, right? I believe one of the people in the article referred to it kind of, oh yeah, they refer to it as the architecture style of the one of the people in the article referred to it kind of oh yeah they refer to it as the architecture style of the great society Lyndon Baines

Johnson's proposal for a stronger welfare state you know for more public housing and you know you can call it cheap and bad-looking if you want but it was a style that was supposed to be more democratic more accessible it's how we build lots of houses for lots of people. And, you know, from the conservative perspective in the U.S., you basically believe the Great Society didn't work, right? So it's not something you should be aspiring to. And in fact, a lot of these buildings now, especially, they're old now

and they're falling apart. They mention here the FBI headquarters is getting to be kind of an old building and concrete doesn't last forever, right? You know, a lot of the the Parthenon and the Pantheon have been there for a long time, but the FBI building will probably not last as, you know, another 2,000 years, right? This concrete building will probably be crumbling. In fact, they mentioned some of these buildings, you know, they even have to put nets out because concrete is starting to crumble down. Yeah, and I want to talk more about this story, but we only have a few minutes

left and I want to get to this story that you put on the docket. So tell us what's going on with this Fox story about the MAGA 2.0 online movement. Indeed. This article from Vox by Andrew Prokop titled the deeply online about the MAGA 2.0 online movement. Indeed, this article from Vox by Andrew Prokop titled, The Deeply Online Origins of MAGA 2.0. I saw it, had to go for it. And the basic conceit of this article is that the new Trump administration,

the second administration, is driven by an extremely online core of conservatives who their community sort of gestated on the internet, right? It's not from the older conservative factions, which came into being before the internet took over everything, right? This is the idea that this is a conservative community that is homegrown online,

and now it is having this influence on the real world. They cite, for example, a famous right wing blogger named Curtis Yarvin, who is a guy who's been very critical of the idea of political democracy itself. There was an article in Wired, I believe almost now a decade ago, titled Geeks for Monarchy, which talked about this guy and his arguments in favor of the virtues of one man Lord. The New York Times just recently did a profile on him. Absolutely. And this guy was like very marginal for a long time. Like only something like Wired ran an article talking about this guy. And even then people were like, what is this? Now he's friends with JD Vance.

Friends, acquaintances. Well, I think the media makes a bit of a leap in the- Sure, everybody rubs shoulders, right? Well, how much is a relationship as people meet each other a couple times? No, it's true, it's true. Even if they just meet once, does that mean they have a relationship?

Exactly, everybody rubs shoulders when you're in that high of a position, right? but it's an interesting thing to see this they they describe this online community that is essentially defined by their opposition to woke right however you happen to define that there is this is the idea here is this opposition to this belief that are not opposition to the belief but the belief that they must oppose progressive institutional control over American society. Well I think this sort of, I'm sorry go ahead. This brings us back to what we talked about at the top of our conversation today. Is the left-right

orientation that we're used to I think is sort of fading away and what now has occurred is its establishment versus anti-establishment where this MAGA 2.0 online movement, whatever you want to call it, is much more aware of the pitfalls of some of these more socially progressive policies, but also the managerialism that has occurred within our government bureaucracies. And I think that has been talked about ad nauseum. I've talked about it in newsletters before. And I think the average person, and I say average person, not as a put down or anything. I think the average person just trying to be a productive member of society has started to feel the effects of this growing federal government and they're asking themselves as

well how are we in so much national debt when my life hasn't improved? There's been so many federal programs enacted, yet it doesn't seem like anything is touching me in any sort of way. And I think, again, this couples with the efforts of DOGE and especially was highlighted with the US aid, essentially investigation that was put out by Elon Musk and his team over the past few weeks where millions and hundreds of thousands of dollars were sent to these individual NGOs overseas to promote socially progressive causes. And in some ways, they were coordinating

with other federal agencies such as the CIA. And really, I bring this up because I'm trying to provide the foundation for why this MAGA 2.0 has come about is they have seen the social progressivism come out of our federal government. They've seen the increased managerialism that has occurred in the growing bureaucratic nature of these different departments and they are saying to themselves, I don't like either of those things. And they might not be socially conservative, but maybe they're, they're not progressive. We know that much, but they're not progressives.

And referred to, I think this group has been called like South Park conservatives, the kind of people who are just, they're socially, they might be socially liberal, but in the sense that they really don't like anyone being told what to do, they don't want to be scolded by anybody. Well, this is even a further nuance perspective that needs to be taken when discussing this new online movement is because there are people who float in these online circles that are just observers who are just taking in the information and agreeing with it and saying I feel the same way. But then there's the intellectual foundations

that are driving these ideas as well. You mentioned Curtis Yarvin, but there's a number of different online publications that help assist with trying to provide information to people or philosophical justifications for the reasons why people feel the way they do. not socially conservative or not traditionally conservative or a traditional Republican, but they are essentially, I don't like the status quo. Exactly. They don't like what the Democrat party, they don't like really what maybe traditional Republicans are putting out. They don't like the social progressivism. And so they're trying to search and grab for a justification for why they feel a certain way. And so they're trying to search and grab for a justification for why they feel a certain way and they're finding it online in a bunch of different places.

No, it's true. I mean, with all this stuff, the the debates over American culture over assimilation over you know, what is should we honor these federal agencies and these workers or should we fire them all and, you know, save is should we honor these federal agencies and these workers or should we fire them all and, you know, save money? All these debates really, it seems like politics nowadays is very much about the soul of the nation, right? Because with Trump, I think he introduced a very significant change to the way that Americans think about politics and think about their country in relation to other countries, Right. We've definitely seen from Trump that the idea of a rules based

international order where the United States selflessly, you know, well, again, these ideas have percolated and built up since the eighties and nineties, and they just weren't able to grab a strong footing with a large enough contingency to be able to be enacted in policy. But the ideas have been there. Oh yeah. You had the protests in Seattle in the nineties protesting against where if it was at the world trade organization or NAFTA, it was one of the two.

I wasn't conscious yet, so I don't quite remember, but, um, but I'm even talking about, yeah, I'm even talking about nothing new yeah I'm even talking about people who are writing for modern age or people who are writing for the Americans conservative people writing for IM 1776 or what conservative movement in the US gets its really start in the late 50s and early 60s when it really starts organizing intellectually but it really isn't until the 1980s that you have the first president in Ronald Reagan, who's really taking those ideas forward as a president.

So you know, ideas have their time, but it's a little bit later than you might think it is. So it's interesting to see that. Absolutely. Anything else you want to mention on the topics we've covered today? We could keep going I think for another two, three, four could keep going, I think, for another two, three, four hours, but can I ask, can I do the conclusion this time?

Go ahead. Alrighty. Well, thank you very much for listening to our discussion. We really enjoy getting to take a deep dive into these topics, and we hope you've enjoyed listening. If you have any interesting stories that you think we should cover, feel free to send us some stuff at editor at the Texan dot news with that

Cameron I think I think have you finished your diet dr. Pepper Wow alrighty so am I well with that well cheers and we'll see you next time you didn't choose Alright, I wonder if Mazlin's gonna cut that one and make that the intro.