Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Zohran, and giving a damn about both your "fellow man" and democracy. Then, we walk you through the latest catalogue of horrors: Hegseth's lame TED talk in front of the generals, the menacing yet comically inept dimestore Gestapo that is ICE, the shutdown, and more!
- You know, before we started recording Sam, we were talking about the kind of just, as always in the Trump era it seems, like the combination of malice and incompetence, almost humorous incompetence. I'm sure many listeners saw the clip from Chicago of the delivery guy on a bike who says fuck Trump, and these like overweight, ice guys, waddle after him trying to get him and he gets away. - That video is pure comedy. - Even as they're hurting people, they're injuring people. - Yeah. - The footage we're seeing day after day now, of these lunatics, these menacing, shoving women to the ground, right? Enduring photojournalists. Reporters, like, you know, guys who are arrested, spend three days in a jail cell and then are released, you know, because they actually were scissors and didn't do anything wrong. It's like this is, it's really fucked because you see that clip from Chicago and you laugh, but these are the same people putting that guy, that innocent man in a jail cell for three nights. These are the same people arresting and trying to deport people for exercising their free speech. It's just, I don't wanna be misunderstood when I say this. This is not quite totalitarian nightmare stuff yet. - But I mean, it's a matter of degree, not category. - Yes, and we have to remember just a few episodes ago, we were talking about the funding for ICE, right? So they're dumping tens of billions of dollars more into the ICE system, right? The people arresting people in cities, you know, snatching people off sidewalks. The prison system, you know, we're building more capacity to hold more people. And so there's gonna be more people making more arrests and more cells to put them in. This is what Trump really, really wants to fund. And so we are probably at the beginning in some ways of the ramping up of these efforts. - It is a test because, you know, I see this stuff and I see masked agents of the state pulling people off the streets, wrestling them to the ground, injuring bystanders, trying to chase them down the street for insulting them. And I just think like, this is disgusting. I am often kind of conceptually wary of this kind of language, but it is what I spontaneously feel
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Matt and Sam indulge in some rank punditry: on Zohran's campaign, Hegseth's pathetic speech to the generals, and ICE authoritarianism on the march.
