Unclear and Present Danger - The Second Civil War

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the The Second Civil War, a 1997 satirical film directed by Joe Dante for HBO. Starring James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Peña, Denis Leary, Beau Bridges, Phil Hartman and James Coburn, The Second Civil War takes place in a future where rapid, unlimited immigration has produced a balkinized society of ethnic enclaves. California is essentially been re-absorbed into Mexico and Rhode Island is home to millions of Chinese migrants. When an international relief organization makes plans to bring Pakistani refugees into Idaho, the state’s governor, played by Beau Bridges, orders the its national guard to close the borders, sparking a stand-off with the federal government. As both sides escalate, Americans start to choose sides, with other western states joining Idaho in its pushback against Washington.Eventually, the war of words becomes an actual war, as shooting starts between the U.S. Army and the various national guards now allied with Idaho.As viewers, we see all of this unfold through the eyes of a news network, whose anchors and reporters are on the scene, covering developments as they occur.The tagline for The Second Civil War was “A Very Uncivil Comedy.”You can find The Second Civil War streaming for free on YouTube.Our next episode will be on The Saint, the 1997 thriller adapted from the television show of the same name, directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue.And don’t forget our Patreon, where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents! For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog — we’re almost two years deep at this point. Sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the 1979 thriller Hardcore.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.

You all know, you all know that I just ordered the borders of Idaho to be closed. When it's over, this president could be out building houses for the poor like Jimmy Carter. I've never even fixed a faucet. Thank God for arrogance, lust and greed, or it would all be doing them for commercials. Let's go, people. I smell a 20 share. Someone once said those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. Let's jump right over those left-wing liberal media elite types and bring your story right to the American people. Governor, aren't you afraid you've put something else in motion that you can't control?

There's some things in life you just have to do. It's coming. Whatever. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military dealers with the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on Popular Front, and I'm the author of the book, When the Clock Broke, Conmen, Conspiracists, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s, which is available wherever good books are sold. You may notice something a little different about this episode. We're recording in person, rare information. person episode. I'm right

here sitting directly across, not directly across, diagonally from John. And yeah, maybe a little different energy than sometimes. I don't know. It's insane. Don't worry. Don't get worried, audience. On this week's episode of Unclean Present Danger,

we watched the second Civil War, a satirical comedy film produced for HBO directed by Joe Dante starring Bo Bridges, Phil Hartman, RIP, James Earl Jones, RIP, Dennis Leary, Joanna Cassidy, Dan Hediah, Elizabeth Pena, RIP, James Coburn.

Is he still living? I don't know. I don't think so. No, he's not. He's dead in 2002, RIP. And Ron Perlman. In the Second Civil War, immigration has rapidly increased in the future United States, sending millions and millions of people to the country.

Los Angeles is essentially a colony of Mexico, Rhode Island, is populated by mostly Chinese Americans, and Alabama has a Sikh congressman. Politics in the country have been reduced mainly to a series of vulcanized ethnic enclaves and people appealing to ethnic prejudices and ethnic interest in order to win votes. When an atomic weapon is used in Pakistan by India, an international organization attempts to bring refugee orphans to Idaho. The governor of Idaho, Jim Farley, played by Bo Bridges, orders the Idaho National Guard to close the state's borders, citing public safety.

Despite claiming to be a nativist, however, Farley is in an affair with a Mexican-American news reporter Elizabeth Pena. Meanwhile, in New York, the NewsNet Network is covering all of this, hoping to get the best story. The president of the United States, Phil Hartman, is an ineffectual idiot and is blundering his way through his confrontation with the governor of Idaho. This blundering leads eventually to armed conflict between the U.S. Army and the combined forces of it seems like the Montana, Utah, and Idaho National Guards. The country begins fracturing over the question of whether or not the borders should be closed, whether or not the country should take in more

immigrants. And the movie ends with civil war in the United States commencing once again. This movie's very problematic. To say the least. To say the least, we'll talk much more about that. The tagline for the second American Civil War was sex, violence, anarchy. Some things in the United States will never change. I feel like I'll say that this movie is trying to be kind of a dark comedy, but I'm not really sure that works whatsoever. And instead, it's like a very muddled sort of movie, but, you know, whatever. You can watch the Second Civil War on YouTube. It's basically available to stream for free anywhere that things stream. I didn't bother checking to see if it was available to stream on. I think I paid for this. I think I also

which I don't, not happy about it. I rented a copy just because I wanted to watch it higher quality. Terrible choice. Don't do that. If you feel the need to watch this, just watch it on YouTube. Don't pay any money for this at all. Really don't. The Second Civil War was released on, was it, March 15th?

March 15th, 1997. So, John, what is happening on the New York Times front page? Well, there's a big picture of Bill Clinton in a hospital bed with Hillary, his wife, smiling beside him. And it says, Clinton has knee surgery. to repair 10 and after fall. This is A1 of the New York Times, which gives you some idea of what the mid-90s were like, is alert and says Helsinki visit is still on.

James Bennett is the author of this piece. I'm not going to read this because I think you get the point. And then the second article below it is months of therapy will accompany healing talking about the physical therapy routine that Clinton will have to undergo. So not a big news week, apparently. Here's an interesting little article here. Albania chiefs associates flee gunfire halts evacuation by U.S. The collapse of authority in Albania worsened today as close confidence of the present

fled the country and the government fail in his efforts to cease weapons from roving bands of thugs. The United States suspended efforts to evacuate Americans after gunmen fired at two helicopter gunships, waiting to pick up families who had gathered in a large field at the diplomatic competition. here. About 2,000 Americans are in Albania, according to the State Department. So not many people know about this, but there was a total social collapse in Albania because there was a series of Ponzi scams that involved almost the entire population. And when they were revealed, basically there was like a small-scale civil war revolution and the government collapsed and there were rebels with arms. And it was just a total disaster. It was eventually resolved. But yeah,

The country, you don't hear, like, if you Google, like, Albanian Civil War or Albanian Revolution, you'll come up with this kind of Ponzi scheme thing that happened at this time. This is totally news to me. Yeah. This is, I had no clue that this happened. Um, just a big Ponzi scheme collapsed, like a, like a Bernie Madoff thing. Yeah. And took down the government. Yeah. I mean, it was like part of their transition to a market economy. So I don't think. people really, I think people were offered like investments that were too good to be true and didn't necessarily have the knowledge that that was, you know, they should look out for that sort of thing. Yeah, but yeah, basically the country descended into anarchy after a series of pyramid schemes. It's not funny, but it's a little bit funny. It honestly feels like something that should be happening in the United States. That's what's sort of funny about it. It would make a

hell of a lot better movie than the one we watched. I'll tell you that much. I want to take real quick note of this headline research team takes big stride in the mapping of human genes. I don't really care all that much about the story. I'll just note that the author, Nicholas Wade, got in some trouble about 10 years ago for writing a like race science book. Yeah. Oh, science writer, yeah. Yeah. So that's not good. The Trump very recently says something about how immigrants were bringing bad genes into the country. They have like murder in their jeans. murdering their genes.

I think that may be racist. A little bit. It's racially charged. This is interesting. Moscow's offered a NATO concession and a new concession to Russia. NATO said in its planned expansion, it would not put permanent ground troops in the former Warsaw Pact Nations. The alliance previously said it had no plans to place nuclear weapons there.

You know, I think anybody who's followed the war in Ukraine, has sort of been aware that there's a lot of litigating of what actually was promised to whom and how about the expansion of NATO in the 1990s. And I believe Russia, I mean, I know for a fact that Russia says that NATO basically betrayed its promises to Russia about the nature of NATO expansion and troops. I think there are absolutely ground troops in Poland now. I'm not quite sure. I think that the U.S. may have begun to let up on this promise in the middle 2000s and put NATO, not the U.S., I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. Although some people say it's the same thing. NATO began to put troops in Warsaw Pact Nations. I think that's it for the newspaper.

Yeah, I think that's it. There's not really anything that might be all that relevant to the movie. I guess the Moscow and the other stuff might be a little bit since the movie, movie's kind of precipitating incident is a nuclear exchange in the end, Pakistan, which for the longest time was sort of the... In the middle 90s, people were really scared about that. Right. It was kind of the... What were people thought a nuclear exchange was most likely to happen was between those two

nations. I swear I have a memory of doing maybe like 9th or 10th grade policy debate. You know, the resolution was about nuclear war and like India, Pakistan was like one of the things that people were talking about. So that's the precipitating for the movie. But it has really nothing to do with the rest of the film, which is like it happens and no one only talks about it. So let's start. John, have you ever heard of or previously seen this movie? I had never even heard of this. And I think for good reason, and I have obviously never seen it, it's terrible. It's really, I was shocked by how bad it was. I think it was like,

I mean, you said, you text, I've texted you, and I said, this movie is insanely racist. And then, you know, a few days later, you text me and you're like, wow, I think you're not kidding. It's a little bit like if you let somebody from, I think you said like Stormfront from a stormfront post, like write a, like a political satire. It feels like they're trying to do black comedy a la and satire a la say South Park, but are not nearly as mounted or funny. The result is really pathetic and like it's not and it's also like it's only funny if you have the view they're like it's like yeah America's just getting taken over by foreign people with funny accents.

Isn't that you know like isn't it ridiculous that the the governor of Rhode Island has a Chinese accent and he still wants to kick out Chinese refugees and also they show this terrible caricature of a Sikh as they. the Alabama congressman, and they show Congress, like, as this kind of petty fogging, arguing group of different ethnicities. It really is, and it's highly reminiscent not to, you know, bring my book up all the time. When I was watching, I was like, this is highly reminiscent of the worldview of paleo-conservatives who felt like America was getting taken over by ethnic groups and kind of interpreted the Democratic Party as its vast

patronage system for different ethnic groups to get what they wanted. So yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I think you said it would like be a Trump ad. Yeah, if you were to air, if you were to air this movie today, like just brand new, I think you would have to, it would be an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign because, I mean, my think, you know, when I was, as I was, as, as, as, as, as, from the jump where there's a whole sequence where the orphans are on a plane. And I guess the toilet stopped working and so the whole plane smells like shit. And it's like, it's like the Joe Dante, director of Gremlins, right? Joe Dante, a very talented director. I'm kind of very curious about politics these days. Now I'm still living. I would love to know. But did Joe

Dante like read the camp of the saints? And like, I don't know. It really kind of feels like it. And so for the listeners of the camp at the Saints, it's from the 70s. It's like the French Turner Diaries. Yeah. It's about the, it's about what Europe, white Europe being overwhelmed by hordes of brown migrants.

And it's very popular among the anti-immigration racist right and the neo-Nazi right, you know, going even farther out there. This movie like is one of the few movies we've watched where there's nothing. in this movie that would offend a neo-Nazi. No, not in the least.

Maybe not anti-Semitic enough, although because James Earl Jones is revealed to be married to a Jew. I missed that part. Yeah, the nation of Islam guy says to him, like, isn't your wife Jewish? And he's like, I forgot that she's anything. She's just my wife. Like, you know, yeah, that's the only thing. Yikes.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's the other thing in the movie, the kind of, ethnocracy of America in the movie includes black people who are now I guess represented entirely by the nation of Islam

which is like insane I'll say speaking for myself I didn't even know the nation of Islam was like real guys until I moved to D.C.

in after college like it's not like a thing down south but yeah so the the worldview of the movie so what the movie I guess is trying to do

is be kind of like a satire of like 90s ethnic politics. But by sort of trying to extend that to I guess its most absurd conclusion, it just ends up becoming a lurid right-wing fantasy played for laughs a bit. So you have, right, in the background conditions of the film are like literal hordes of brown immigrants coming into the country, right? Like there's even a scene where the border with Mexico represented by a fence, I guess, is cut. And like hordes of Mexicans are just like, flowing in. Offensive Latino stereotype too.

I mean, like, yeah, are flowing in across the border. We've already mentioned in the film, millions of Chinese refugees came to the United States, which I just got to say, the reason why there have been, you know, millions of, attempted border and trees on the southern border. It's literally just because it's a physical border. It's a physical place that people can, like, get to. But, like, just try to imagine the world in which so many Chinese emigrants come to the United States that Rhode Island becomes like majority Chinese, like millions

of people. Like, how is it even fees that this is like not a thing that would happen? No. It's a lurid fantasy. Yeah, they're like the Chinese are taking over Rhode Island. Which is just an insane sentence. People have like a way, I mean, look, America is a very diverse country, but people, I mean, and in New York especially, like there's many people of different backgrounds and origins. But people, I think also really like, you know, misinterpret just how many immigrants there actually are. Right. They wildly overstayed, wildly overstayed the diversity of the country, which the country is very diverse, but it's something like a third of the country, maybe like a maybe a little closer to. 63%

62% the country identifies as non-white which is like the kind of language you have to use because there are plenty of people who say Hispanic extraction

who don't consider themselves anything other than white. Yeah. But then if you ask if you ask people, it's like, well, what percentage of the country do you think is black?

People will be like, well, it's 50%. They also think like a third of the population are Jews, which is very funny to me. But yeah. America, 50% blacks.

A third. They think of it's New York, basically. I guess because they see in Hollywood and, yeah, like, yeah, they're like, yeah, it's New York. It's like mostly Puerto Ricans and blacks and Jews. Yeah, and Mexicans, yeah. So, we got Chinese Rhode Island. We got Sikh, Alabama.

I did think of Bobby Jindal, unfortunately, when I watched that scene. But, like, Bobby Jindal, who is, who's South Asian, he didn't, like, wear traditional. no garb right he just was like he just a southern accent he just like yeah he's just a seven jacid nicky haley right she's also south asian um uh goes by nicky right uh so what else oh and then there's a scene where in los angeles the mayor is giving a press conference he's only speaking in spanish so that that kind of is the main signal right like it's things are so far gone that los angeles is it's practically just a part of mexico again the los angeles mayor is basically sort of like saying, you know, we're going to reclaim, reclaim the Southwest for

Latinos. Oh, is that horrible scene where they blow up the Alamo and, like, the guy is drunk and is like, I don't speak English. Like, yeah, it's so bad. And then, and then, like, gangbangers, black gangbangers open fire on everyone because they're like, we're not going to let the Mexicans take Los Angeles. Yeah. It's just absolutely insane.

And the film revolves basically. on two figures, well, three. There's James Earl Jones' character. He is a reporter for Newsnet, long-time reporter, a man of integrity, and he's kind of, he's like the voice of God for the film. And adds, I mean, God bless him. I hope the paycheck was good.

He adds a lot of gravitas to this film, entirely undeserved. Not the really bad thing, but just the film doesn't deserve James George's gravitas. We have Bo Burgess's character. Who he went on Emmy for this. That is absurd. Bo Bridges plays the governor of Idaho, who is a nativist.

It's funny, in this film, Bo Bridges looks like a combination of John Ritter and Ron DeSantis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the whole thing is- And he feels like Ron DeSantis. Actually, I was watching the movie, he acts like Ron DeSantis. He acts like Ron DeSantis. It's really weird. I was like, there isn't really a politician, I mean, they're a nativeist politicians in the 90s,

but, like, his specific affectation is DeSantis, like, right down the sort of, like, the kind of, like, being on shore and kind of mealy-mouthed when he push him to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Boberges' character, Governor of Idaho has shut down the border, which, by the way, state governors can't shut down the borders of the state. This movie has a very confused notion of what constitutes, like, legitimate action by states, but that's besides the point.

Right. He shuts down the border of the state, and he's like, we're not going to accept any of these refugees. G's and he seems to have a lot of public support and the president of the United States played by Phil Hartman who I think is actually very funny in this as sort of like a clueless idiot is bewildered by this and his you know his advisor you got to you got to take action you got to confront this guy and so this basically begins a spiral of escalation in which the president, like you have it until this time to accept the refugees or we're going to, you know, we're going to force them in.

There are troops on both sides. Other state governors begin sending National Guardsmen to Idaho, and it eventually erupts into violence between the two sides. Now, I want to emphasize again, this movie is supposed to be satirical. And yet, the only side that I think really gets the brunt of the satirization is kind of the pro-refugee side. There's a kind of like the humanitarian group is portrayed as like venal and obsessed with fame and donations and such. Yeah. And the movie seems to actually give like really quite a hearing to the anti-immigration, anti-refugee side. Going as far as I have one of the news anchor characters say, we just got to shut our borders

and bring the jobs back home in a way that's like not really challenged by the film. Yeah. And this is what I mean when I say the film was like it would be an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign. Like it is it is verbatim the kinds of rhetoric that Mark, you know, a J.D. Vance speech. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And like this, this, this fear of America falling into a race war was just something you would have read in the 1990s on the far right of the extreme right message boards, as you pointed out. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it is a. Paleocon or even farther right than that movie in a lot of ways. Rare to see it, you know, depicted and usually, well, I think Hollywood's liberalism is perhaps a little bit over-emphasized,

but it is rare to see such a perspective. And I think the why they got away with it is by using satire and by saying, well, this is, and then they could plausibly deny the content of the movie just by saying like, well, look, you know, it's just giving it to everybody. But it's really not. I guess it does give a final word to James Earl Jones is like the elder statesman news guy who's like a Walter Cronkite back to a more honest America, et cetera, et cetera. It sort of gives him the last word. But he's totally, he's not doing anything. He's just like, well, I guess things, this is the way things are going to go now. and like that's the way it is in America like he doesn't have any power he's just like I'm calm

and reflective as things you know fall apart and maybe like we'll come back to a day when there's more you know serious debate and discourse um but you know I think that uh yeah it's just it's just pretty surprising and pretty bad and tasteless and lurid um I think, you know, yeah, I think that that's how they got away with this is by saying, like, oh, it's satire. But, you know, it just seems to me, like, I don't know much about the critical response to this, but I'm wondering if it was not well received. Barry Levinson was one of the people who produced, was the executive producer. Right. Yeah, I couldn't find any, I mean, it was an HBO movie, right?

So it's sort of like, unless it was a massive splash, it probably just faded from the consciousness very quickly. Yeah. I'll say about the movie's luridness, I mean, there are scenes with, like, soldiers being executed. Yeah. And it's just sort of like, what is the tone of this film supposed to be? Right. It goes without saying that the movie isn't good. Ideological problems aside, the movie just doesn't work. It doesn't do what it's attempting to do. It's not funny. Like, the satire is particularly biting. Part of what's supposed to be happening here is the Bo Bridges character or the governor of Idaho isn't this affair with a Mexican-American journalist. supposed to this hypocrite. There's a scene that's a little bit funny where his advisor, his chief guy, is like,

oh, what do you want for breakfast? And Bober just is like the usual and his guy says the phone of fajitas then, which is like a little funny, but the level of satire, such a history that doesn't quite work. And it's really undercut by kind of these like genuinely harrowing scenes that are then themselves undercut by having like Dennis Leary cracking wise. as it's happening. It's a very weird and muddled movie, and I don't quite understand what was going on behind it.

Now, this is a question for you, John. Like, you write about the far right and the ideas, but like did this sort of, like, how much mainstream purchase and this sort of like really intensely anti-immigration politics have? I can think of, right, the California proposition. Good question. Quite a bit.

Yeah, go ahead. Quite a bit. So, like, basically, yeah, you have California. So, you know, an interesting thing is, like, you have people on the, like, Klan side of the right talking about putting the National Guard at the borders. And then you have Senator Barbara Boxer, you know, in the early 90s approaching the same thing. Yeah, in California, you had a big surge of anti-immigrant feeling, you know, a lot of this comes because of NAFTA and because of the feeling of precarity of U.S. jobs and de-industrialization.

But there was, you know, a lot of demagoguing on immigration. You know, Reagan's track record on immigration is interesting. He did an amnesty, and the 80s had an enormous amount of immigration. A lot of people on the right were not pleased with Reagan's laxity on this issue and made immigration into one of their central gripes. that was a big part of Papi Canaan's campaigns. It was a big part of David Duke's attempted campaigns, and it was a big complaint among conservative writers.

I mean, you have Peter Brimelow, who's now, you know, sort of siloed into, well, it's not correct to say silo because, as we can see, these views have a lot of mainstream political purchase these days and have basically taken over one of the main parties. But Peter Brimlow writes a major piece in 1992 on the cover of the National Review, which is basically saying, let's rethink immigration policy, keep America white is the subtext. It's not, it's barely a subtext. Let's move back to 1920-style immigration.

and yeah, that was a big thing. And, you know, immigration, although I think immigration, some of it was slightly less polarized. I think it was more common for a populist who was maybe not a far right populist to maybe have immigration as a complaint because you knew that there were some votes that could be picked up. among disaffected workers. You know, I think the, I mean, part of it is the extreme way immigration is talked about by the right now, which has natively polarized a lot of people. You know, at one time, you'd have someone like Bernie Sanders say, well, open borders, that's Coke brothers shit. And, you know, and this is portrayed, you know, whether or not there's good evidence or not for it as part of a, as an appeal on behalf of American workers, right? Then I think the immigration debate really becomes so racial, I mean, I mean, in the minds of many people it was.

And that was always a subtext that became text, you know, especially with this far right version of it, that, you know, that. you know, it negatively polarized a lot of people who may have been more tolerant of a left populist who was more skeptical about immigration. I think that that would come across as totally toxic now. You know, for better or worse, I think that that, you know, I don't think you would, Bernie would give that kind of answer today. But it's just the debate. And the debate gets more and more extreme because what was once, you know, this was a film and, you know, comes out of some discourse around it. But now it's just putting this extremely brutal and, um, and, uh, a direct way by the Trump

campaign. However, you know, they are create, they are shaping the political terrain because Democrats are not hitting back and saying we need to have they're saying we're tough we're tough on immigration too right shaping the in the the terrain um still i mean the one of the consequences of the rise of trump in the meg movement and the kind of extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric is it has not just pulled democrats to the right but it's kind of pulled the public to the right and obviously these things are in relationship with each other right like democrats not pushing back has contributed to the public moving to the right on the issue.

But it's tough, right? Like even in the best of circumstances, making the case for more liberal immigration loss is very difficult because it seems intuitive to people that the more people come in, the fewer jobs there are to go around. This notion of the economy not being zero-sum is really hard to sell, especially post-2009. for basically most of the decade, the economy was pretty zero-sum. Yeah.

And so, yeah, in any case, the public has moved to the right. Democrats have moved to the right on this. And this remains, you know, this remains Trump's strongest issue. If he, if he loses in November, it'll be despite his positions on immigration. Even though, I mean, this is the thing that is sort of hard to, for me to, figure, to get my head around, which is that by any, by any kind of rational analysis, you know, mass deportation of billions of people would crash the economy. It just like straightforwardly would. You don't really need like a fancy degree to kind of see how that

would work out. Right. And it would be devastating to American workers. Yeah. But yet people don't, people don't understand the policy in terms of what would this do. They understand very moralistic terms. How ought the country be? Should the country be a place where people can just come in? No. Should the country be more selfish on behalf of its people? Yes. And Trump sort of gets that and gets also that that does appeal to, right? Like that appeals to working people as much as anything else does, both for reasons of, you know, what is derived as economic anxiety, but I think that's kind of a real thing. But also for reasons of just like status, right? Like if you are a relatively recent immigrant, you may be intensely anti-immigrant

because you want to demonstrate that you're different than the others. You want to assimilate. And in a lot of ways, it seems like what Trump is offering with the ever more extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric is basically a chance to assimilate. Now, to the extent that this might be, might not work out, I do think that the Springfield stuff is like, that's like, that's where the danger lies, right? Because those are legal immigrants who own businesses and go to church and like do the things that people do when they assimilate. And so them becoming a target, I think does complicate the message. On the other hand, this is the other thing.

They're black. And that also, that allows, you know, some other groups. immigrant to say, well, you know, we're not them. We're not black. Yeah, we don't like those guys. So, but yeah, the attraction of anti-immigrant politics, right? It's like, it's, it's there. And you can kind of see the calculation that, like, a liberal Democrat might make, right? sort of like better to be harsher on the border than risk the sort of reactionary insanity that comes with more unrestricted immigration. The moral case for that maybe is not too strong, but you can see the political case.

And I think that goes a long way towards explaining how Democrats have gotten to the point where they're like basically the chief advocates for a border bill that is the brainchild of like a conservative Oklahoma lawmaker. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with all of that. I think also like, I mean, this movie sort of points to it and it's like in a very offensive way, but it does show like the Chinese American governor of Rhode Island who still speaks in a Chinese accent just to really hammer that home to you, wanting to cut off his area. It does try to point out, like, some of the hypocrisies of immigration because the governor

is like, well, he has a Mexican-American girlfriend or lover. He's having an affair with, and he doesn't have a problem there. And then it shows recent immigrants could also want to get immigrants. It tries to show some of the American hypocrisy about immigration, where people always make exceptions for their friends or family or recent immigrants want to play the role of shutting the door very quickly. But that's not the primary driver of the film. The primary driver of the film is like, yeah, if they keep on bringing foreign people to into this country, it's going to fall apart. It's going to cause real. And yeah, again, it's just like when we, when we, I mean, when we first talked about doing this movie, it just was in the height of the, of the Haitian panic. And it just

sounded uncannily like the politics that they were that they were playing on um you know and like okay the the other thing about the anti-immigration policies is you know honest people could probably disagree about immigration but the way that the policy right except for this mass deportation shit is ethnic cleansing genocide type garbage but you know the way the politics are practiced by people like vans and trump you know actually risks violence like they're impugning entire racial groups um and and and and basically libeling groups of people and you know like they could they could they could uh uh provoke a pogrom you know like it's that that's what's so disturbing about it's not like they're not being like well you know i i really think uh we need a new

said a quote? Like, they're like, they're like, these people are coming here and they're spreading diseases. It's really, it's really horrible. And I think like, I don't know. We've kind of grown to, it's not that we've grown to accept it. I think a lot of people were very upset by that and said stuff about it. But I am a little shot. And this was sort of like when Trump comes along. I was like, oh, this stuff, this kind of politics is going to become just de rigour. It is, I think what I miss, mistook. and I think is a huge mistake that anybody's apt to make

when a new form of politics or not a new form of politics when a certain extreme type of rhetoric kind of enters the political sphere at a high level at a mainstream level is that you expect it to kind of catch fire and it's not clear

how much this mobilizes people and gets people going on their behalf or how much it really kind of frightens people and turns them off. Yeah. Like I think under situation, you know, it still is a matter of democratic contestation. Like in a totalitarian system or a system in which there's kind of a breakdown of public

opinion entirely, such racist, building up such racist animus is not demagoguing for votes. It's a system of political scapegoating and targeting where you focus public ire against selected groups, right? That's a little bit different of a kind of politics. I think this edges far closer to that kind of policy. than we should have, but they still are subject to the limitations of what this can do politically, right? Like, I just don't know how much it can help them. That's the thing.

I mean, this is, it's clear that there is real public support for this kind of anti-immigrant politics, kind of Indian immigrant politics embodied by the Beau Bridges character in a way that wasn't the case in the mid-90s, right? Like, and this may have been a quite an issue of no one meeting demand, right? Like conservative politicians making considered choice to not do this. There's maybe a whole separate conversation to have about how the center of the Republican Party beginning its migration to Texas in a weird way in the early part of this maybe mitigated this a bit since you have a guy like George W. Bush who. by this, this is 97. By this point, Bush is clearly like in the national contenders for the presidency category. He's governor. And he's clearly, I mean, people are looking to him as a guy who might be the next Republican president. And Bush's entire thing as a Texas Republican was

deepening the party's ties to Mexican-American communities in the state. And, you know, four years later, five years later, when he's actually president, As he tries to build out a political majority to win re-election, his entire thing is trying to build a kind of like multiracial, he held the ownership society, but multiracial, you know, petite bourgeois Republican Party that you attract, you have your white suburbanites, your traditional Republicans, but you also have, you know, black homeowners, you have like upperly mobile Latino immigrants, you have upperly mobile Asian American immigrants. his cabinet, right, where flikes this kind of literature rice, Colin Powell, Albert Gonzalez, I can never remember Elaine Chao. Right. I mean, this is, this is very much whose father is a shipping manning, right? It's sort of like, this is the vision for conservatism that Bush has. And so like the Republic, like there's a, there's a faction in the Republican Party that is actively not cultivating this stuff. So maybe, maybe if a Trump,

If or J.D. Vance had popped up in the 90s and done this, they might have found more traction. Who knows? But even in the present, like, this has been enough to certainly keep the ticket competitive. Well, it was. I mean, in a way, Buchanan was that. And I think his limitations convinced a lot of Republicans, perhaps that's not our central winning. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. But looking at this election, it's like there is a cost to this, right? So right now, Colin Harris is doing better with college-educated voters and college-educated whites in particular, better than any previous Democrat. Clinton won them plus five points, Biden plus nine points, and Harris right now is on track to win them by 18 points. And that feels like a reaction, right? That feels like you are getting Trump, Republicans, are getting maybe a higher share of

working-class voters and specifically working-class men across racial groups. But at the same time, hemorrhaging women and hamaging college-educated voters in particular. And the big question is, like, what matters most? can you win a national election given the rules of the American system? Losing college educated voters by a landslide while winning working class voters or blue collar voters, as you'd say, better terminology there, while winning blue collar voters or winning critical numbers of them in critical states because it's sort of like, well, who's going to turn on the vote? People, college degrees are almost always likely to turn on the vote. people who don't have college degrees less likely like it's hard to say uh but yeah it's like it's not it's not clear it's simultaneously true that liberal immigration views are unpopular although i mean this is

this is the confusing public opinion because voters both want a closed border but they don't like the idea of like wanton cruelty against immigrants yeah this is the thing and so to the extent that Trump is really selling wanton cruelty, not just we got to get things under control, but more sort of like we're going to make these people suffer. That isn't particularly popular. Right. But voters do seem to want harsher immigration policy and like liberal immigration views in that regard just are not particularly popular. No. It's like no liberal immigration views. No one wants them. No one wants wanton cruelty. People think that long-term immigrant should be allowed to stay in the country and be legalized.

People think their kids, kids that were brought in should be legalized. And that's sort of like the shape of public opinion. Yeah. And it's like, what's the most salient? Right. And Trump is trying to make the, you know, draconian border policy thing salient, but also the core of his coalition is wanting cruelty towards these people. Right, right, right.

Which is why I really think that if he wins, I mean, God willing, he doesn't. But if he does win, but if he does win, and I think they will pursue some sort of like mass deportation operation. I think it's very silly and foolish to think they're not going to try to pursue something, which for the most part can be pursued. I mean, at least a more bare-boned version of it can be pursued just through existing authority of the executive house with where it's immigration enforcement. And it's not like the courts are going to like, you know, intervene here.

So we can't expect something. And I do think that when that happens, voters will be appalled by it. They'll be like, wait a sec. I thought you were just going to close down the border. I didn't think this is going to be like rounding up people and putting them in camps. Right. I think this is obviously like, I mean, I don't know. There's that stupid old thing about taking seriously but not literally stuff.

I think that people don't. And this has been my frustration talking to what undecided voters I do encounter in my life is, I don't think they take seriously that Trump is surrounded by people who are genuine extremists on these issues. Yeah. They're just like oh, you know, he talks a lot of shit, but he's going to probably do something kind of rational because he seems

like he's a negotiator and a deal-making kind of guy. So they'll come to some kind of he'll broker some kind of new agreement. And he presents that side of himself sometimes. But in Trump's ear are truly bonkers people. Like he's because that's who's attracted

to him and what his world is. is now. The other thing, not interrupt, I'll just say this, I've also encountered this as well, and it's frustrating to me because it's like, well, he was president before for four years and this didn't happen. So, like, what makes you think it's going to happen now? Right. This is the thing that actually, I cannot figure out.

Like, not for this to become like a Trump session. Yeah. I cannot figure this part out. The election is coming up. Because he was president before. Yeah. It's not like, it's not like this is all hypothetical. He was president and he wasn't a deal maker.

He was notably not a dealmaker. No. He didn't get a lot of done. stuff. I mean, I think he tried to do it sometimes with deals with the Democrats. There's a little short period, you know, the famous photo with him and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the White House. He tried, but that didn't really work. Probably because they just also sensed he was kind of politically weak. He did not have that much support for them. And they were like, why should we help you? You bring, you do nothing for us. But like, yeah, I think it's very, very people under, like,

People highly underrate, like, because of the shambolic nature of Trump's endeavors. Like, yeah, but even a shambolic attempt to do mass deportations would be horrible. In fact, I mean, I don't know, probably not worse. But, you know, it could cause real human suffering, real economic upheaval in the country. And just it's going to be a fucking mess. Like, he, he, everything he touches is a mess. I also don't understand. One thing I just think, and it's, I think this is only an issue for, for college

educated voters for, I mean, I guess for obvious reasons, but I find it too, too bad. It's like, the whole issue of like the peaceful transfer of power or democracy, apparently there's not that big of a constituency for that. So this is another one of the unknowns about the election because there's good evidence to say that 2022 went the way it did because there were a lot of voters who were like genuinely disturbed when like Kerry Lake or like Blake Masters would be like yeah Trump didn't lose and voters are like I don't want to hear I don't like that yeah um I'd be interested to see you know for if I could see a um what I'm gonna call it like be in a focus group during the vice

presidential debate which was last week from when we were recording me this when J.D. Vance just refused to say whether or not he thought Trump won the election. Like, I'd be curious to see how voters responded to that because it's like all that stuff is never on top of mind. It's not like, it's not like a high, it's not like high priority for voters. No. But then when they're reminded about it, they're like, I don't like, they're like, I don't like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I mean, it's weird. It's sort of like it feels like

the question of can you can you beat trump will come down to like what can you make people remember about him if if what if the if the final image that voters have in their heads in November is freewheeling dealmaker then he wins yeah if the final image people have in their heads is decrepit what would be with dictator he'll lose and i think that's really kind of like yeah i think that's i think that's up to the democrats in order to yeah yeah that stick. Yeah. I don't know.

What do you? I mean, we can't do. We can't just break that into political commentary, I guess. I mean, we can. All right. What do you, how are you feeling, Jamel? I am, I don't know. My perspective this entire time, basically from the time Biden dropped out was that no one is

going to be able to predict anything about this election and that are the tools we have to make projection to just not going to work this time because we're kind of like in a series of overlapping and precedence situations and I think the stability is a bit of a mirage now in what direction I have no idea but like I'm not sure I'm not certain that there's anything we're really know my colleague at the time was Nate Cohn had a really interesting piece about basically one of the key choices that pollsters are making and basically it's whether they're asking whether they're waiting their polls according to previous voting behavior. So typically they don't do that because voters are actually notoriously bad at recalling how they voted.

Yeah. I'm pulling numbers out of my head right now, but like if in 2014 you would have asked voters. So Obama won 5248 about. No, no, Romney got like a little over 47%. That's right. So Obama won like 51-47 or so. If you were to ask voters in 2014, who did you vote for? You would have gotten a result that's like, oh, well, Obama won 55, 45, right?

Like some insane number. And that's because when people recall who they voted for, they always recall voting for the winner. But as it turns out, as Cohen points out, if you wait polls according to kind of previous vote intention or previous vote choice, you get an electorate that is trumpier and so to kind of adjust for the potential trump effect there are some pollsters who are choosing this method which they otherwise wouldn't choose just to create a trumpier electorate to model and there's some cultures who are not doing that and so the divide is you have this weird divide in the polls where you have some pollsters showing a neck-and-neck national race but

Harris doing quite well in northern Midwestern states which is what you'd get if you didn't wait that way if you're kind of just assuming this is going to be like a replay of 2020 or this is going to be 2022 rather

but if you do wait you get a national race that is more in Harris's favor but the swing states are closer that feels more correct the thing is

No one knows. Yeah, I guess, I guess, and exactly, and I'm going completely off feelings. I would say, my concern, my concern is there is a lot of free-floating discontent that's not that, that since it's sort of from the perspective of Democrats and liberals, irrational, is not being taken seriously enough. Because, you know, you know, they say, well, I don't like the way. the economy is. And a liberal goes, wow, the economy is actually doing quite well. And you're like, yeah, but that's not really what people mean. Their perceptions of things and the way they express them and the way that college educated liberals do are different. And I'm concerned that like, and this happened. And this happened when the inflation issue started. Right. So, and like a lot of people

were like, oh, a lot of people are having problems with, with inflation or not liking inflation. and inflation's a problem. And it was demagogues by Republicans, for sure. But lots of, like, liberal egghead types, you know, like me and people I know, and I didn't, I don't think I got involved with this discourse, but were just like, oh, inflation's not real. And then it became a serious political issue, one that the Democrats took seriously and it took measures to it. But there's sometimes, there's sometimes like a lag effect where a problem arises on the horizon and, I think both parties do this. I don't know if it's, or in both political tendencies in this country do this. And I don't think it's limited to liberals and Democrats. But they don't quite metabolize it

as a problem yet. They're like, well, we prefer just to say that that's not a problem and have an explanation why it's not a problem. And that's sort of part of psyching yourself up going into a campaign. You know, you're not like, well, can't start to panic now. So I'm going to tell a story about why that's not actually an issue. But I'm just worried that the electorate is so, I mean, first of all, I think there are people out there who are struggling still and don't perceive this economy to be that great. I think the employment numbers are excellent. And there's no real arguing with that. I think, you know, the country's fairly prosperous. And this is not a bad record. But as a, it's very hard to run as an economic populist or any kind of populist as an

incumbent because what's your argument? It's like, well, we're going to stick it to the people in charge. Well, you've been in charge. Yeah. Yeah. And usually incumbents are given a lot of advantages, right? But in this case, I don't know if being an incumbent is such a great thing. I think, you know, like, Vance during his vice presidential debate, okay, let's not overrate the importance of vice presidential debates. But it was interesting that he continually attacked the incumbency of Kamala Harris, and they think there's a weakness there. So I'm a little worried that a lot of people just don't particularly like the Biden administration and are like, yeah, you know what?

Let's do it. Let's roll the dice again with this. Yeah. I think that's totally legit. Yeah. And I sort of, I mean, this is, again, this is why I think I feel things are so inconclusive because you're, you basically have two. A lot of Americans really fucking hate Donald Trump.

This is just. I think it's important, this is like a, this is like a fact. Like it's striking that since Biden left, the race, Harris has taken a national lead and never let it go in terms of just like national numbers don't, they don't, they don't big, just, they don't count for points. But it's striking that if Trump wins, no one thinks he'll win with the majority of the vote. Yeah. Yeah.

It's putting a lot of, again, once again, puts a lot of stress on this. the system right yeah so it's this question of like does does discontent with the biden administration touch harris as well and does it overwhelm they want them they want it they want to they want to do that yeah yeah yeah i don't know i don't know either that's really the race in a nutshell That's the rest in the nutshell. And it's hard to say. I got to say, I do think, I see where people are coming from and they feel like the vibes have been bad recently. And I do think that's just mostly a product of September having been a quite quiet month for the Harris campaign.

Yeah. I do think that if you look at the Harris campaign as being, it's beginning in late July, they're, you know, and you break it up into thirds. So September was like the second third of the campaign. So if this were a year-long campaign, September would have been the equivalent of the summer for a Harris campaign. I think that if October goes through and it's like, you know, quiet over there,

then I think people have totally good reason to be like, okay, what the hell is going on? Yeah, what are they doing? But she's going to be on Howard Stern tomorrow. Yeah, they've done some, and they're going to, she's doing 60 minutes. 60 minutes tonight, right? Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, there's, there's, signs of life there, but I think it has kind of seem, you're like, well, what's your message right now? Like, what is your, what's your line of attack? And it seems like they're kind of, maybe they're just deciding, you know, what, what their final route is going to be. And this, I mean, this is the thing because, and this is like a well, you know, developed phenomenon, well, observed phenomenon, political science, campaign effects degrade very quickly. One of the most striking findings I've ever seen is that Mitt Romney's 47% thing, which if, if, if for,

listeners our age will totally remember that that was just like a that was a huge scandal right it was sort of like oh he clearly lost at that point but if you actually if you in doing panel interviews of voters it was like by a week afterwards it wasn't really in the mind's eye for anyone yeah like if you were a junkie you remembered if you were partisan you were aware of it right but if you were just a joe smoe uh jane smoe yeah it's not not something you're really thinking thinking about and that for years later in 2016 what what killed clinton was like the late deciders like all the late breaking campaign stuff in the last week that's what ended up um uh dooming clinton yeah and so if if the harris campaign is sort of like calibrating their strategy according to

win voters tune in and they're targeting undecided voters then it kind of does make sense to save your media blitz like all that stuff for the last 30 days like spend the last 30 days basically sort of being an ubiquitous presence right yeah yeah I see what you mean yeah yeah but we'll see yeah I don't know I feel like my my take whenever people do ask me this I recently did a talk last week and then I was asked this is that like on the main I think I'd rather be the Harris campaign just because like your head even if it's like slightly yeah and I do think that if if everything thing about the situation of reversed, right? Like if Trump had Harris's lead nationally and Trump had Harris's numbers in swing states and Trump had Harris's fundraising, no one would be like,

well, Harris is still in this. Yeah. I think, you know, we're in what they call in poker a flip, which is not really a flip. Like sometimes you get, you get like a big pair like Queens versus Ace King and it's like 52, 53% for the pair versus an unpaired hand, but it feels like a 50-50 flip. You'd rather have queens. Yeah. But you are not, you're still nervous. Right. Like that's how I feel about it. I'm like, well, I'd rather have the pair. I'd rather have a made hand. Like the Harris campaign has a made hand, but a vulnerable one. Right. Yeah. I think that that's this kind of situation we're in. And I think I'm of the opinion that when November 5th comes, I remember 3rd, 5th, whenever the day is.

I should know because I'm going to vote in my day. Of all people, maybe in the country. Jamel, did you vote? I forgot. Yeah. No, my family would drone strike me if I forgot to vote this year. I'm of the view. I think the conventional wisdom is that this is going to be great.

like we're not going to know the victor until maybe days later. I actually think we're going to know pretty early. Yeah. I have this just feeling that however it goes, it's going to break pretty decisively in one direction or another. Interesting. And so we'll either know that Trump won or that Harris one. I think you're right.

And honestly, this is, I would prefer to know immediately. Just get it over with. I think, but you know how I knew Trump was going to win in 2016? I knew very early or I had a very bad feeling early because I saw, like, Kentucky was the state that came back first, and I saw, like, 70-30 at some counties,

and I was like, not good. Yeah, like, that's crazy. I was like, he's blowing it out. And I was like, that's, so I think if early we see, like, insane returns or on the contrary, like some kind of kind of weak return for in a, like, a deep red state or deep blue state, then I think you can kind of be like, yeah. Like, if Virginia will come in pretty quickly, for example.

Yeah. And if, like, if, if, uh, if Harris is winning Virginia like 11 or 12 points, I'm actually feeling pretty confident. Yeah, you're like, it's over. It's not over, but it's sort of like, it's pretty good. Yeah. If Harris is like barely eking out in Virginia, then I'm like, oh, yeah, she lost. And we should all prepare ourselves. I think a lot of people saw that in the 2016 with Hillary, too.

It's like once the struggle in Virginia appeared, it was like, eh. Yeah. Yeah. I'm feeling good. But we'll see. Yeah. I'll say my other indicator is. the Seltzer poll of Iowa, which has always conducted like a big, the last one comes

like a week before the election. And it's not because I was competitive, but like there was a, there was a, she and Seltzer did a poll last week, two weeks ago. And it was like 47, 44. It was like 4944 Trump in Iowa. Oh really? Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. And I was like, that's really weird. Either it's a bad, either that's like a bad poll. Right. Or it's a bad sign for Trump. Or it's a bad sign for Trump. I think, I think the other thing. is like, I forget what, look, I'm not good with polling data and stuff like that. But that one poll showed that in voters, like in a part of the electorate that often doesn't just end up showing up, like Trump is doing great. Yeah. But they don't always show up. Yeah. I mean,

and this is the thing. I mean, this is where I go back and forth. Maybe Trump does have a unique ability to get non-voters out to the polls, in which case, like, you know, he's in great shape. But But I have to say, as a guy on the left, as a liberal, he's been following elections for 20 years now. I'm following elections, quickly for 20 years now. The Trump theory of the electorate feels a lot like Democrats being like, oh, we'll win with the youth vote. That's what it feels like. Yeah, it's kind of like, well, that's like the cavalry will come and maybe they won't. Right.

Yeah. When you begin to really hang it on, like the Trump campaign saying, you know, we're not, the suburbs are done. There's no, you can't eat more votes out of there. We're going to focus our attention on getting, you know, low propensity voters out. And it's like, you know, I'm not going to say that it's not going to work. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. But it does.

It's a strategy. It does feel a lot like the kind of things that cost Democrats elections. Yeah. kind of BS we convince ourselves of. Yeah. Demographics have changed in our favor. So, yeah. We'll see.

Which, again, it's why I think it's going to be decisive. Because if they're right, if the Trump campaign's right, we'll see that immediately. We'll see that immediately. Yeah. And if they aren't, we'll see that immediately too. Yeah. I think that sounds about right. Yeah, I would just like it to be over.

I would just like to, if I could just like fast forward to the day after. Sure. I think we're all. That would be ideal. Yeah, we got to wrap up. I do want to say, yeah, don't watch this movie. Don't watch this movie. Yeah, don't watch this movie.

I'm so curious. I mean, I want Trump to lose for all of the reasons you would, the listeners will expect. But actually the one reason I really wouldn't lose is just my sheer curiosity at what's going to happen to the Republican Party. Like, what's going to happen when this guy is off the scene? and I go back and forth between will they finally try to like knife the Trump's or is he just going to like hang on and refuse to relinquish like control of the party until he drops dead or is yeah I think he has a chance of holding on to the party even in defeat which would be really something but I just think he has that much of a constituency among the base

All right. Yep. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show. You can reach out to us on social media if you want to.

You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from, from Beth, titled The Devil's Own. own, a reply to our previous episode on the Alan J. Pacula film starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. Here's Beth. There's an idea about the immigrant experience that's been floating around my brain since the podcast. It's the relationship between American descendants and the old country, specifically Americans like the O'Meara family. They struck me as being more Irish than the Irish, with them serving corned beef and cabbage

for dinner and having an Irish combo and dancers performing at the Young Daughters Confirmation party but otherwise they have little connection with contemporary ireland they took frankie into their home without asking any questions about why he showed up had tom been oblivious to the news which of fundraising for the IRA around new york tom's understanding of the troubles that was it's kind of a mess of course neither frankie nor the movie did much to explain it my husband's second my husband is second generation irish and grew up in boston he remembers going to a bar with his father when he was very young my husband was parked in a corner while a man went around collecting money from the patrons this was in the 1950s, so it could have been for the IRA or Irish relief of some kind.

Thank you for your thought-for-working podcast. I look forward to them every week on Patreon and otherwise. Thank you, Beth. I will say that, it's the way that Irish is portrayed in that film does remind me of kind of like how immigrant connection to the old country is represented for a lot of different, I think, groups. Yeah. Like you think about, one of my favorite scenes in the Sopranos is when they go to Italy.

Yeah, yeah, it's so good. Right. It's so good. And who is it? It's looking at the squitting pasta with, like, disgust on his face. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's Polly. Yeah, he wants to me, he wants spaghetti with tomato sauce or. And one of the Italian waiters is like he wants, they want, you know, he wants spaghetti

with tomato sauce as like a child. Yeah. And I thought, I thought that was so, it's funny, but it's just so revealing about the relationship, right? Sort of like. And the other guy goes like, these Americans are bigger pieces or like tasteless pieces of shit than the Germans. Yeah.

So, I don't know, that, that seems, it seems like typical to me. I'm sure there hasn't been a ton of media made about, like, you know, Chinese American, um, second, third generation Chinese American immigrants, but I imagine that there's a similar dynamic. And another related dynamic, right, is like the extent to which, you know, second, third, fourth generation immigrants may not have a kind of connection to the experience of, you know, people in their, in their, in their parents or grandparents's home country, but they kind of develop a kind of like conservative understanding of what it means to be

authentically the thing. For sure. That may seem, you know, disconnected from how things are actually happening on the ground. And that's the thing I do think is, I mean, this is, this is what Beth is identifying in the portrayal of Irish-Americanness. The movie. But that's the thing I think I think that is is pretty common. For sure.

Thank you for the email, Beth. Yeah. All right. So episodes come out every other week. It's been, things have been a little dicey recently. I've been traveling a lot. It's that time of year with the election and everything. So it's a little more difficult for us to stay on schedule.

But this will be out as soon as possible, Patreon episode on, Death Wish will be out very soon, if it's not already out, but it's been listening to this. And we'll get back on track. But our next episode is going to be on 1997s, The Saint. Oh, I like that movie. Yeah. I think this movie is bad, but I also like it. Oh, okay.

I haven't watched it a long time. I don't think it's good. But it stars Doc Kilmer, Elizabeth Shoe, Raid Srabesia and a bunch of other people. So that should be fun. The Saints, quick plot synopsis. Simon Templar, the saint, is a thief for hire, whose latest job to steal the secret process for Cold Fusion puts him in on to the traitor

bent on toppling the Russian government, as well as the woman who holds its secret. This is very clearly a kind of reaction response to Mission Impossible, revival of a TV show. Next episode is on the saint. On the Patreon, patreon.com slash unclearpod. We are, we have Deathlish. We're going to do hardcore and finish up this series on kind of 70s revenge thrillers. I was actually browsing movies recently and I think a film that could be fun to do.

On the Patreon next is the Birder Madoff Complex. Oh, Bader Madoff Complex? Yeah. That movie rocks. So I think we should watch that after that after after hardcore. Okay. I think it'll be good. Uh, and you can subscribe to the Patreon whenever, $5 a month, two episodes, two episodes a month.

It's a good deal. It's a good time. Um, we highly recommend it. And for those of you, you do subscribe to the Patreon. Thank you. We appreciate it. For John Gans, I'm Jamal Bowie. This has been another episode of unclear and present danger.

And we will see you next time. I don't know.