Ep 1006: Pump Up The Venom

Episode 1006 uses the beloved 1990 teen rebellion movie "Pump Up the Volume" to ask a deeper question: what happens when you take "Truth is a virus" and unrestricted free speech into the real world, where the fascists aren't outsiders trying to break in—they're already running the show? Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the death of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 through the rise of Hate Radio, Gingrich's language wars, Citizens United, and the collapse of every institution that was supposed to protect democracy from tyranny. The episode explains why lying became profitable, why corporate media's "Both Sides" obsession taught citizens that democracy was somebody else's job, and why an uninformed public is the only thing tyranny has ever needed. It's about how free speech got inverted, and why the FCC villain in a 1990 teen movie may have been onto something after all.

Links for this episode: 

The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.  Clips are available on YouTube.  

Music from the “Pump Up The Volume” soundtrack can be found at this YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjDvaXwceFJTg_uhw4cymaJGtBdJZT7OJ&si=RxUS9h7X1OeGsbY2 

Music clips from this episode: 

Was Not Was:  Dad, I’m In Jail   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZKkz4xefk 

Above the Law: Freedom of Speech  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q338zPrnwGw 

The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.  Clips are available on YouTube.  

Driftglass on other podcasts!   Nicole Sandler   https://nicolesandler.com/7-8-26/ 

Stay in Touch! 

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Website: proleftpod.com 

Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod 

or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod

Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Driftglass and I watched the Dune three trailer and I said, Are we gonna see that on the big screen, Driftglass? Driftglass said, We're gonna watch it on our phones, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_09 0:10

On our phones. Like God intended.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Like David Lynch said.

SPEAKER_09 0:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

I don't want to watch a movie on my fucking phone. And didn't he make a version of Dune? I think he did.

SPEAKER_09 0:22

He did.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

It wasn't that good. It wasn't Denis Villeneuve good.

SPEAKER_09 0:26

I recently listened to a Harlan Ellison review of Dune, and he was like, people said it was unfilmable, but he did it, and now it's out there, and I'm sure years from now, people look back and say, it's pretty good. Like, no, no, they no, you just got that one entirely wrong.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Oh, he said that about the David Lynch one?

SPEAKER_09 0:43

Yeah. Like the set designs are amazing, and they finally filmed it. And like, you know, I get it that you're a fan.

SPEAKER_06 0:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 0:51

And you want this thing to succeed. And there are certain people you will, you know, there was a uh a thing called Harlan Olsen's Watching, which he did videos, like 10-minute videos of shit. And there was always a book or or something at the end where you really got to get this book by my friend Dan Simon. Oh. And it's fine. It's it's a little bit of commerce, and I know he wanted it to be good, but it wasn't, and it never will be because it sucked.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Even with Sting in it, it still sucked.

SPEAKER_09 1:18

Yeah. No, Sting was the highlight of that movie, honey.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Topless Sting.

SPEAKER_09 1:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Who knew?

SPEAKER_09 1:23

And I, you know, he took a swing, but man, wrong directory for that project.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

It didn't work out so good.

SPEAKER_09 1:30

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Driftglass, would you like to do a podcast tonight?

SPEAKER_09 1:34

I would love to do a podcast tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Well, how do we start it?

SPEAKER_09 1:37

Anytime you're ready.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Okay, so let's do this thing. 321.

SPEAKER_09 1:41

You know what you can do? You can listen to the Professional Left Podcast wherever you get your podcast on Netroots Radio or at our website, ProLeftPod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There is, in fact, a PayPal button at our website, or you can mail us a letter and/or a contribution at Post Office Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

This is the podcast for the week of July 10th, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_09 2:06

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where we like movies, so sue us. It's the professional left with Drift Glass and Blue Gal. We do, you know. We do like movies.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

We do. We love movies. Uh today we begin by grossly oversimplifying various species of literature and cinema and see what happens when they're mixed and matched, and then see how time and tech can turn nonconformist rebellion into fascist conformity. So let's start out easy, Driftglass. Let's start with something like Hamlet.

SPEAKER_09 2:44

The easiest play to understand. Yeah, everyone did it in high school, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Yeah, that's true. You read it in high school and then you performed it or whatever.

SPEAKER_09 2:53

You read it in high school and then you understood it when you hit 30.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Isn't that the truth about a lot of things? Yeah. Hell yeah. But but the basic plot of Hamlet is boy meets ghost, boy tries to avenge ghost, everybody dies.

SPEAKER_09 3:08

Everybody dies.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

It's it's Russian, as you know. Hamlet. Hamlet and Shakespeare were both Russian. Oh, yeah. Anyway, in a story of secret identity, moral outrage, with our protagonist occasionally directly addressing the audience.

SPEAKER_09 3:26

Break that fourth wall. Break that fourth wall. Then there's Cyreneau de Bergerac, uh, in which a uh there's a hidden self in conflict with a public persona.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Uh then there's, of course, Catcher in the Rye, an adolescent narrator who can't stand phonies. And there's also swearing in that book, Dorf.

SPEAKER_09 3:45

There's there's a bunch of swearing in that, which is why it's on everybody's ban this book list. Uh Rebel Without a Cause, going to the movies, which is all about alienated youth, as you know.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

The tremendously great movie Network, uh, broadcasting as rebellion that sours into exploitation and commerce and is tremendously prescient.

SPEAKER_09 4:05

Oh, yeah. It's creepy how on target that movie is. And of course, the Breakfast Club, which, or as is true of all other John Hughes and most of the John Hughes movies, is all about suburban teen culture, a really close examination of suburban teen culture.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

All right, so we have a recipe for today. Take a large bowl and combine two cups of Hamlet, two cups of the catcher over the rye, catcher in the rye, excuse me, uh, a half cup each of Romeo and Juliet and the Breakfast Club, then add pinches of Cyrano de Bergerac, Network, and Rebel Without a Cause to Taste.

SPEAKER_09 4:44

And then you set your easy bake oven to punk and pirate radio culture and bacon until it's done. And you know what you get?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

I say that I am deluded, demented, deranged, pump up the volume. I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times.

SPEAKER_08 5:02

And I'm Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune. My first selection of a buried treasure is from this past year, a really strong drama about high school students called Pump Up the Volume, featuring a terrific performance by Christian Slater as a midnight pirate radio DJ who challenges and comforts the kids in his school with his midnight confessions about the agony of adolescents.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

This kid's ability to put his finger on the real fears and real concerns of his classmates. That's the writing. And that's why they were listening, because not because he was underground or because he was forbidden, but because he was telling the truth. That was very well written.

SPEAKER_09 5:36

Which, unlike many of our Gen X listeners, didn't really change my life. It didn't really write.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

It's one of my favorites, but I am three years younger than you are.

SPEAKER_09 5:44

Yeah. And there is a difference. I was probably born just a little too early. It is a solid movie, no doubt about that, but it's built largely out of stock characters and well-worn teen angst tropes because that's how these movies go. You know, they have to have a bunch of things, and this movie has all the things. There's the misunderstood protagonist, the clueless, shouty dad who comes through in the end because really he's a good guy. The peacemaking mom, who just wants her son to know he can talk to her about anything. And both of them are coded as like former hippies who've gone suburban.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Yeah, yeah. They're yuppie, they're proto-yuppies. Yeah, exactly. Basically, yeah. And don't forget, Driplass, that our misunderstood protagonist has a manic pixie dream girl.

SPEAKER_09 6:30

He does.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

In fact, I think she is the quintessential manic pixie dream girl.

SPEAKER_09 6:36

She she is absolutely she is drawn from the adolescent imagination of a whole bunch of young men.

SPEAKER_06 6:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 6:42

And then there's the fuck you rebel with with a heart of gold. He's really a good guy, who ends up with his social opposite, very much like the end of the Breakfast Club.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You said that when we were watching this movie, I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_09 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

You know, the punk ro winds up with the prom queen all the time. Yeah. In movies.

SPEAKER_09 7:01

Because they were they had a lot more in common than their surface would suggest.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Sure. Um, the principal of the school in this movie is basically Nurch, Nurse Ratchet. Uh, and hopefully we don't have to explain who Nurse Ratchet is. If we did, this is gonna take uh a lot longer than the time allotted for this podcast. The staff and the teachers who travel in her wake range from the mindless enforcer, the ambivalent youth pastorish guy who thinks teens just need to rap. I'm a guidance counselor and teens just need to rap. Uh there then there is the cool teacher who gets it and who listens to our protagonist and wants to draw him out. Our protagonist, Mark Hunter. And and Mark Hunter, by the day, by the way, is by day just another shy, nerdy teen with writing talent in writing class, but he doesn't want to show it.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

And he usually he's just hiding out in stairwells eating his lunch alone.

SPEAKER_09 8:04

But by night, he is Batman, he is the knight. And by night, he dons a nom de guerre, uh happy hairy hard-on, and broadcasts his pirate radio show using a voice modulator to hide his secret identity.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

I was reading one review of this where they talked about the parents give him all of this radio equipment so that he can talk to his friends back home. Back in New York. That part of the movie is a real stretch.

SPEAKER_09 8:30

Yeah, well, that's you know, they're they're not poor.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

No, they're well off.

SPEAKER_09 8:35

They're well off, and that's kind of important part of this story.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

And to continue the alliteration of Happy Harry Hard on among the teens at Hubert Humphrey High School, Happy Harry Hard on is a huge hit. Yeah, and graffiti and banners with his mottos from the show, so be it, and the truth is a virus, start showing up all over campus, much to the chagrin of Principal Ratchet, who wants him stopped.

SPEAKER_09 9:06

Yeah, we're gonna call her Principal Ratchet through the entire thing because that's who she is.

SPEAKER_06 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 9:11

I I feel for him because where where have I not gone to and seen dumpster fire, you know, spray painted across a building?

unknown 9:20

Right.

SPEAKER_09 9:21

So I relate. On that level, I do relate.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Nurse Ratchet also wears a tremendous amount of hairspray.

SPEAKER_09 9:27

Yes, and she she talks very quiet and evenly. You can tell from the very first time she's on screen. Oh, she's the she's a villain. Yeah, she's absolutely the villain because she has to be. This is a teen movie, she has to be the villain. Of course, Principal Ratchet also has a dark secret of her own. And if anyone ever found out, it could be her wah, wah, wah, undoing. So she'll better be quiet. Don't talk about it. Just don't talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

So the situation, of course, escalates and then escalates further. The cops are called in, but the cops are useless. Finally, the FCC is summoned as the boss level villain of this movie. Like in the last 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_09 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Uh, they show up with vans and helicopters and fancy triangulation equipment, so that even though Harry and Manic Pixie Dream Girl take his show literally on the road, eventually the forces of oppression catch up with our hero.

SPEAKER_09 10:25

We should probably have said spoilers ahead, but it's too late now. So spoilers behind, we're we're spoiling a little bit of this.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

We're spoiling the entire thing because it's a movie from 1990. If you haven't seen it, uh our show notes show you where you can watch it.

SPEAKER_09 10:39

Yeah, if you haven't seen it, you know, come on. It's it was it was made in a different century. Uh, but not before, he's not captured before he gives his fans one last heartfelt speech. One from the heart. Win one for the gipper, that kind of speech. This time it's his own voice since his modulator thingy was broke during the FCC car chase. And of course, Principal Ratchet's dark secret is exposed, and she's probably gonna go to jail.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

She might be gonna go to jail.

SPEAKER_09 11:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Uh and this is the first time that I watched this movie this past weekend when I realized that the reason that she's in so much trouble is the money.

SPEAKER_06 11:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

She spends school money, she expels students and keeps the funds from the state. And that's the problem, not her mistreatment of students, which is horrific in this movie.

SPEAKER_06 11:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

The the mental and psychological torture that she puts students through should be her undoing. But it's it's the money.

unknown 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

Um and even though Harry and Manic Pixie are hauled away in a police van to a fate unknown, his spirit lives on in the many new teen pirate radio voices we hear being broadcast as the credits roll. Yeah. And and they seem to be taking it very well in stride that they know this is their last hurrah. The two young people.

SPEAKER_06 12:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

This is it. We're gonna go for broke and do it. And we know the FCC is gonna grab us.

SPEAKER_09 12:12

Drop the hammer. But we also, I mean, in the back of your mind, yeah, but you know, he has wealthy parents and he has wealthy parents, they're both white.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

It's gonna be okay. You know, and there's a lot of privilege there in what they're doing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_09 12:24

And the thing about the all these, all these voices over the credit. Hi, this is Susie Uncoffin and so on, all these other pirate radio stations that pop up. We've seen this in the real world, except it's called podcasting and TikTok.

SPEAKER_06 12:37

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 12:38

You know, and and based on my very rough back of the envelope calculation, there are currently about five million podcasts in the world. And you know what? Around 85 to 90 percent of them are dormant or dead.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Now do blogs, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_09 12:50

Yeah, now do blogs. There is no blogs. Blogging's dead. Blog's been dead for 20 years, bluegill. And and TikTok, TikTok, I just did a quick lookup. There are like a billion or a billion and a half users worldwide for this stuff, depending on how you're counted. And the the creator economy, people who create stuff for that and sometimes monetize it, is around 200 million active creators all across the platform, which is amazing to me. But you know, that's that's what happened to the pirate radio idea. And you know what happened to TikTok and podcasting? The whole bunch of it turned into right-wing slop or influencers monetizing off of their you know, hair care products.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

Yeah. So because that's the really this movie's a really good time capsule to show your kids, uh, your older kids, about what life was like before cell phones and YouTube.

SPEAKER_09 13:38

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 13:39

It's right there, right at the edge before you know digitalization arrived in the world. Yeah. He's got he's got a a cordless phone, and and the schools have phones with cords. Yeah. No, no, it is it's right at the edge. It's 1990, it's right there at the edge.

SPEAKER_09 13:59

And so well, and and this movie, Pump Up the Volume, belongs to a genre of film that we're pretty sure you're all familiar with, which is where the hero or the heroes die or they're captured, but their actions inspire others, and their revolution is carried on in their name. And this could be the greatest story ever told. You know, Jesus is the model for all of these stories in Western Civ. Uh the Ten Commandments or Gandhi, Braveheart, V for Vendetta. Boy, is this very much V for Vendetta. Uh, Rogue One and the Alamo, and so on and so on and so on.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Glory. Glory is another one. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_09 14:33

Glory, yeah. It doesn't matter if it's historical fiction or science fiction or a biopic. This is a time-tested audience-pleasing formula that allows the hero to lose, sort of allows the director to have it both ways. The hero gets to lose, but the cause for which they sacrifice nobly will survive and continue.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

We should watch the Ten Commandments on our phones, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_09 14:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

I'm just kidding. Uh, this time around, though, pump up the volume. Since the action is set in the lush terrarium of teen high school life, where the villains are absolutely two-dimensional, invisible mush mustache twirling martinets, their hell bent on stamping out freedom. And the hero's late-night Jeremiah's about fighting the power are the last best hope of the oppressed teens of Hubert Humphrey High. Uh, it all sort of works. It really does. Yeah. You you suspend disbelief about the radio equipment. Yeah. And it and it sort of works. And in that pocket universe, truth can be a virus. And free speech absolutism can be the magic bullet.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I think we all want people, but it's too much of faith. And it's too far to reach one of my free life, that's no floppy to me.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

So make no allowance, making an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or written the freedom of speech or the press.

SPEAKER_09 16:01

So, all that said, before we go on to deconstruct and dirty up Gen X's own Spartacus, I realize it's unfair to ask a 1990 teen angst film with its noble heroes and its stock villains and its inspirational ending to bear the weight of all the folly and bullshit and failure that came after it. Also, for the record, this movie has a dynamite soundtrack, which still absolutely holds up.

unknown 16:30

I'm dad.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

Happy birthday.

SPEAKER_09 16:34

However, what happens when we take the core ideas that drive the plot, that the truth is a virus and unrestricted free speech is an unalloyed good, and transplant them from the latch key les miserables of pump up the volume into the big, messy, compromised real world of these here United States?

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Into a real United States where the fascists weren't on the inside running the show. They were on the outside trying their hardest to take over the show.

SPEAKER_09 17:05

And that's the thing, because that's the experiment we've been running in this country for the past 40 years. And the results are not do you hear the people sing? Well, three years before Pump Up the Volume showed up in theaters, three Republicans, there was one Republican president and two Republican federal judges, conspired to make one of the GOP's fondest longtime dreams come true. They killed the fairness doctrine, which was a policy that required broadcast license holders to present controversial issues. There's one of your favorite words, Blue Gallon.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Controversial.

SPEAKER_09 18:20

Controversial issues of public importance, and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected different viewpoints. The FCC abolished the mandate under the Reagan administration after concluding that the doctrine disservices the public interest, which is bullshit, and violated free speech rights. Oh no, it violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

Free speech. Who doesn't love free speech?

SPEAKER_09 18:45

We I love free speech. Free speech is awesome. And now, while you're distracted, I'm gonna save us some effort by borrowing stuff from a very, very long post I wrote a decade ago. I'm not gonna read the whole thing. We're gonna go back and forth, but this is from a decade ago because it's right on point.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

And I'm not gonna ask questions like, what do you think about the thing you wrote a decade ago, Driftglass? Like they do on Meet the Press. That's not happening here.

SPEAKER_09 19:11

Well, I'll give you some behind-the-scenes blogging uh hints for you kids out there. Every now and then I do a really, really long post with lots and lots of references and links and pictures and videos because I know I'm gonna be doing this for a long time. And I have sort of a reference library. If I want to know about all the sins David Brooks has committed, I have a couple of posts that do 20 of them. And this is one of those things the post actually is called In the Beginning, which is a brief history of the devolution of the Republican Party from 1954 until you know 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Yeah, both of us love having archives too.

SPEAKER_09 19:48

It's handy. So pardon me while I read my own words and forced Blue Gal to read my words from a decade ago. Uh, for the record, the two federal judges who helped Reagan kill the Fairness Doctrine were future Supreme Court incubus Anthony Scalia, now dead, and disgraced Nixon henchman Robert Bork, also now dead. After helping to hold down the fairness doctrine while Regan Reagan smothered it, both men went on to enjoy long and fruitful careers as winged icons and ruiners of American democracy.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Also in 1987, immediately after the fall of the fairness doctrine, came the rise of conservative hate radio. Quote, Daniel Henniger wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial, Ronald Reagan tore down this wall, the fairness doctrine, in 1987, and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination. Unquote.

SPEAKER_09 20:45

So we were always communists, Blue Gal. We were always commies who hated America. And then in 1990, as Pomp Up the Volume was put being put in theaters, immediately after the rise of conservative hate, radio began normalizing a Republican vocabulary of lies and slander and casual racism and hate mongering via the millions of AM radios and rush rooms across the country. An up-and-coming young pervert named Newton Leroy Gingrich. Excuse me. I have trouble saying his name because he's an awful lot. Because it's it's a cursed word.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

It is.

SPEAKER_09 21:23

He began teaching a cohort of ambitious sociopaths inside the Republican Party to relentlessly parrot exactly the same hate speech coming from Limbaugh and his imitators outside the party.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Venerable, sclerotic institutions like the New York fucking Times looked with alarm, as the kids say, quote, the politics of slash and burn. And I know we've quoted this before. Yeah, but uh this is published September 20th, 1990, the same year that Pump Up the Volume came out.

SPEAKER_09 21:56

And if you know any Never Trump friends who Keep insisting all this began in 2016. Maybe just read them this little part here.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I mean, this we didn't write this. This isn't written by a bunch of liberal hippies.

SPEAKER_09 22:08

This is the history of the Republican Party that the Republicans, who now are never Trumpers, do not want to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

Yep. Yep. And this is this is the edit op-ed from the New York fucking Times. Sick, traitors, bizarre, self-serving, shallow, corrupt, pathetic, shame. The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted using the word traitors in response to inquiries from the press.

SPEAKER_09 22:38

Yeah, but they got over it, didn't they?

SPEAKER_03 22:39

They sure fucking did.

SPEAKER_09 22:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

But the others were allowed to stand. They appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates. The group is Gopak, the GOP Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet Language, a key mechanism of control comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work. Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse.

SPEAKER_09 23:27

Well, isn't it really both sides, Bill Gale?

SPEAKER_03 23:30

The Gopak glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence, the Republican whip in the House, and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed. Yeah, that's a bunch of bullshit. This is a disturbing document. Unquote.

SPEAKER_09 23:57

And however, these, as everyone knows, as you all know, these sclerotic institutions took no substantive action whatsoever to actually stop the rise of Gingrich any more than they stopped the rise of Trump because of their deeply inbred insularity and childlike faith that between wise American voters and some completely other group of sober men of the establishment, someone, someone else would surely step in and put an end to such toxic and radical flapdoodle. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later, those other heroes, not us, those other heroes, would get around to it. And this is from the same 1990 article, quote, the nakedness of Gopak offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear. It's adorable. There are limits on the left, but on the right, it's not.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

I was just thinking those words, those sick, traitors, bizarre, self-serving, shallow, etc. Those are the bread and butter now of Laura Ingram's show. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:03

No, this is.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

And you don't say n-word, and you don't say bitches, and you don't use all the word hate words that Rush Limbaugh used. All you have to say now is Democrats.

SPEAKER_09 25:12

Well, or low IQ. Nasty, nasty low IQ. That's that's what that's what they mean. That's that that's the N-word.

unknown 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:20

And everyone knows it. And and the reason Trump got elected is he talked like this.

SPEAKER_06 25:25

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:25

Yingrich taught him, Limbaugh taught him this was their mother tongue, and and Trump just came in and said just.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Absorbed it off of Fox and repeated it. Yep.

SPEAKER_09 25:34

Back to the article, the bald appeal of invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself. Shallow, sensationalist, and yes, shameful.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Oh, they I I can feel the finger wag drift the hat.

SPEAKER_09 25:51

So much. You could feel it was like a breeze coming in from the east, blue gal. All the fingers wagging at the New York Times.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Four years later, neither the wise American voters, huh? What? Or the sober men of the establishment had shown up to save the day. And that's very sad.

SPEAKER_09 26:09

Yeah. And that's when Republicans swept to power in the Senate and the House in 1994.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Sure, those crazy liberals had been jumping up and down screaming that the party of Lincoln was dying. And the last remnants of Eisenhower Rockefeller Republicans were being displaced by billionaire-backed ghouls and madmen. But geez, Driftglass, liberals. Ugh. Who listens to liberals anyway?

SPEAKER_09 26:33

Yeah. When uh when Rick Wilson says it in 2025, it's genius blue gap.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 26:39

When we say it in 1990s and the 2000s, it's heresy and shut up and sit down because you're at your own.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

I'm trying real hard here to do the uh Tim Miller eye roll. Yeah. Well, liberals.

SPEAKER_09 26:50

Liberals, God, what you gotta do? So instead of heroes showing up to save the day, Limbaugh's brand of self-pitying white grievance peddling, misogyny, gay bashing, and rancid bigotry became the hottest thing on AM radio, being carried on hundreds of stations across the country and spawning dozens and dozens of wretched little imitators, while Limbaugh's shitty books shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, ushering in a whole new era in ways for unscrupulous, conservative rage hustlers to get rich telling morons the lies they desperately wish to believe.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

Yep. It was during this period when a number of unpleasant realities became painfully clear. First, it turns out that Pump Up the Volume was wrong. The truth is not a virus. Not at all. You know what are viruses, Driftglass? Batshit conspiracy theories are viruses. Also, racism and homophobia and xenophobia and misogyny, but not truth. The truth actually requires love and care and protection. Because with truth, there's always the risk of hearing something that the mob might not want to hear.

SPEAKER_09 28:03

Exactly. The mob pays Fox and Hate Radio to tell them the lies they want to hear. Very much like centrists and moderates pay papers like the New York Times to tell them the lies they want to hear. It's both sides, Bluegale. But the truth in this mixture is incredibly dangerous because it carries with it the risk of confronting you with something so tectonic that could upend your whole world and shatter your identity. Which is why, as the saying goes, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is lacing up its boots.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Especially when telling lies under the guise of news, under the banner of free speech, goes corporate. When billions are poured into creating a media ecosystem built on lies, which now has its own newspapers, magazines, institutes, projects, radio and television networks, colleges and churches, which is now powerful enough that it grows its own judges and candidates like milk fed veal and moves millions of voters this way and that, depending on which set of lies they need to tell today. And when they get caught, they are willing to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars to make that getting caught go away. And they have it. And they have it.

SPEAKER_09 29:20

And they have it. They have their fortunes are nearly unlimited. And when Blue Gals radio and television, she's not talking about, again, programs or people. These are whole networks that they own that are that are in American families all over the country, multiple networks, multiple overlapping radio networks. They have, it's it's breathtaking when you step back and look at the scope of it, but it actually gets worse because while the founders loudly disagreed about a number of critical issues, specifically slavery and the power of the federal government, they all agreed that certain basic prerequisites were necessary for their experiment in democratic self-government to survive.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

Yep. The founders agreed that you need an informed and educated citizenry, virtue and civic character, participation by the people, and yes, the founders had some weird ideas about who counted as people, uh, but they also believed in institutional protection against concentrated power.

SPEAKER_09 30:20

You know, specifically like generational wealth that created billionaires that could buy elections.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 30:26

So if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. That's Thomas Jefferson.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

And here's another quote from a founder Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. And that was James Madison.

SPEAKER_09 30:50

And we got another by James Madison. This is the money quote. If you walk away with any quote today, walk away with this one. Quote: A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

SPEAKER_03 31:05

I'm walking away from this podcast with happy birthday, Dad. I'm in jail.

SPEAKER_09 31:09

But Yeah. I'm walking away from this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

That is a money quote.

SPEAKER_09 31:14

I'm walking away from this podcast with Happy Birthday, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you. It's not today. No. It's a week from today. But and next week we're going to do one show on Thursday, on my birthday. We're going to do a show. And Tuesday we'll be off because Drift Glass is going to take me out to dinner.

SPEAKER_09 31:34

Whichever uh Olive Garden you want, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

All the Olive Gardens.

SPEAKER_09 31:38

All the Olive Gardens you want.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Because that's a fancy place.

SPEAKER_09 31:42

It's a fancy place, right now.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Springfield, that's a fancy place.

SPEAKER_09 31:45

It doesn't even have a drive-up window, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Oh, oh. Look, our shield against an ignorant, arrogant, fear-crazed mob sweeping a tyrant into power was supposed to be an educated, informed, and civic-minded public who would never let such a thing happen. Such a threat would be smothered in its crib by the people through their free and fair press and acting through their elected representatives. That was the ideal.

SPEAKER_09 32:21

That's the check and the balance. But once the free press became the corporate media, who were far more beholden to shareholders and the bottom line than to pu the public and hard truths, we began to lose our early warning system against tyranny. The day corporate media chose to make fake balance and both sides, opinionating, which we've talked about a thousand times in this podcast, when they chose to make those things its highest virtue, regardless of the civic consequences. That was the day we started losing.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

We as a nation started losing. Yeah, we as a nation started losing.

SPEAKER_09 32:56

That that was a terrible and dark day. And we can we can point almost to the moment it happened. We can certainly point to the people that let it happen. And it was not in 2016, boys and girls. It was 30, 40 years before that. And that was the day the lie that there's not a dimes worth of the difference between the parties began seeping into the blood and bones of the general public.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

On the day that the Republican Party became nothing more than the political wing of conservative propaganda factories like Fox News and hate radio, and began seeing democracy as an obstacle to overcome instead of being something sacred to be defended. That day, the right began drawing their plans against us.

SPEAKER_09 33:39

Yeah. Openly. Project 2025. And still the corporate media did nothing. They said nothing, they raised no alarm at every critical step along the way. The institutions that were supposed to guard us against tyranny either looked the other way or pretended nothing was really happening or concocted some false equivalents, bullshit to reassure the readers and their listeners and viewers that there was really nothing to worry about.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

This is all just politics, Drift Las, they said. Normal politics. And so step by step, every institution that was supposed to protect democracy from illiberalism slowly softened and weakened. Then one day the actual tyrant showed up to deliver the coup de grace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 34:23

And it took a little time, it took decades of diligent work, and it took some pressure, and it took some bribery, and it took some flattery, but eventually one institution after another bent the knee and gave Trump and his minions what they wanted.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

And what he and his regime wanted in the end was not to abolish free speech in America, it was to invert it. The institutions that were supposed to inform us honestly about the world now lie to us in the name of free speech. We are sold, packaged, and delivered to billionaire crackpots and monsters who use those institutions to tell us ever more elaborate fairy tales about the world they wish existed.

SPEAKER_09 35:06

And the tyrants now drape themselves in the winding cloth of the civil rights they've killed and pretend to be the defenders of liberty and the champions of the people.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

And there are almost no institutions left at that level willing to point at them and say no. These people are not our friends. These are the walking-talking embodiments of the dangers the founders warned us about.

SPEAKER_09 35:31

Yeah, they're right there. And behind them stand the politicians who enable them. And behind those politicians stands the mob, the fearful, ignorant, grievance-drunk mob that every demagogue in history has relied on.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

The only cure for these problems in a democracy is an informed and educated public. And right now is an it is an open question whether the critical mass of the public has decided it no longer wants to be informed because it's too much work, it's too exhausting, they don't want to hear about it, or they're trapped in a loop where they're only hearing what they want to hear. And that they consider that doing their own research.

SPEAKER_09 36:15

Right. And in some cases, what they hear are Democrats are communists and must be fought to the end. And others hear, you know, there's it's both sides, Bluegal. You know, it's it's everybody. It's it's the politics.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Some people say Donald Trump has a body double. And anytime you see Trump doing something wrong, it's the body double doing it.

SPEAKER_09 36:32

Yeah, well, those are the crazies at the edge of the fringe.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

But I mean, but they can find that on their phones. Sure. It's not just them. That's not sprouting out of their brain.

SPEAKER_09 36:42

No, no. But those aren't people who are giving up on democracy because it's too exhausting. No, those are the people who are like, we must destroy the communists because they're out to kill us all. The people who just checked out have bought into the lie that both sides do it. Yep. And therefore, there's no point in paying attention because everybody's corrupt and they're all bad. It's all someone else's problem. It's someone else will save democracy. Someone else will watch the store. And they've been given the perfect civic responsibility exit ramp by the very people who should have been defending democratic institutions.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yep. For decades they've been told, and we've all been told, both sides do it. Both sides are equally bad. Both sides are equally to blame. Nothing ever changes. And if neither side is any better than the other, why bother paying attention? Why bother participating? Why bother defending democracy at all? That's boring.

SPEAKER_09 37:34

So here's the here's the weird thing. It turns out the asshole from the FCC in Pump Up the Volume was actually sort of right. Not 100%, but he was sort of right. In a society with enough disinterested, disengaged, grievance-driven citizens, unrestricted, unfettered free speech plus concentrated wealth, plus corporate incentives, plus propaganda networks can be very dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

Especially in a society where money is valued more than freedom, where lies are hugely profitable and chasing them down and debunking them is not.

SPEAKER_09 38:11

The minute there's money to be made selling comforting falsehoods to people who desperately want to believe them, the entire equation changes. It's not a lot different than spiritualism. You know, that you have people desperate to talk to their dead relatives, especially after a catastrophe like the Civil War. And they're willing to pay people to tell them that Uncle Steve is still here and he still loves you and he still wants, and people are willing to pay for that level of comfort. It's it's deep in our soul, deep what it means to be human.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

And the minute media corporations are given permission to say whatever they want, buyer beware. If it's the public's responsibility not to be fooled, the game is over.

SPEAKER_09 38:52

Yeah. If you have to check to make sure what you're being told by media you trust, it's not a lie, then why have them in the first place? They're useless. So the FCC guy was kind of right. In the movie, that conflict exists within the terrarium of Hubert H. Humphrey High School, where it serves as a useful foil and makes for a very good plot.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

But out here in the real world, once you establish the principle that anyone can say anything they want about anyone they want with no responsibility for the consequences, then all the incentives flow in one direction. Benghazi.

SPEAKER_09 39:30

Yeah, exactly. Cylindra.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Yep, Cylindra. You're moving everything toward lies, toward outrage, and toward manipulation.

SPEAKER_09 39:40

And once lying becomes profitable, that's where the money goes. And that's where the audience goes. And that's where power goes. And once you've built an audience by feeding people lies, paranoia, resentment, and racism, the frauds and the fanatics and the demagogues and the petty foggers arrive right behind. They point out the groups on which they painted targets and tell the crowd, yep, it's all true. It's all true. Immigrants are your enemies. Trans kids are your enemies. Teachers are your enemies. Journalists are your enemies. The Democrats are your enemies.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

And that's how tyranny happens. Not all at once.

SPEAKER_09 40:17

Not with jack boots and banners on day one.

SPEAKER_03 40:21

It happens because lying becomes profitable.

SPEAKER_09 40:25

And in an environment where lying becomes profitable, it happens because institutions that are supposed to protect us from that become cowardly.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

It happens because too many people decide citizenship is somebody else's job.

SPEAKER_09 40:38

And that is what is happening in the United States right now.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Now, there are still people out there trying to hold back the tide. Millions of us. There are even judges out there helping us do it. Tens of millions of us. But damn, when the rot has been allowed to take root so deeply and for so long, the odds of getting rid of it get shorter and shorter.

SPEAKER_09 41:00

Now, we got this question from a Patreon listener named Charles about public financing of campaigns, which also just so happens to help take us where we were already headed. So we're going to take on Charles' question right now. And here's his question: Quote, hello, I'm an old crotchety veteran, hardcore Democrat. And as a high school student, it occurred to me that public financing of elections would solve all of our problems, maybe. But it seems to be the only issue Republicans and Democrats are totally in agreement that they hate the idea of public financing. Public financing would make the citizens the special interest group, which uh was the intent originally anyway. Would love to hear your comments on all of this at some time. And why why not right now, Charles? Thanks and unquote.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

Well, thank you for the question, Charles. And the answer is at least for presidential elections, we already have a form of public financing. And you can still see one of the vestiges of it when you fill out your federal taxes every year in that little box that says something like presidential election campaign. Check here if you or your spouse, if filing jointly, want $3 to go to this fund. And there is a box on your tax return.

SPEAKER_09 42:12

Yes, there is. And yes, the United States really had and technically still has a genuine, if limited, system of public financing for presidential campaigns, which began, no surprise, in the aftermath of Watergate. It was created by amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, FECA, in the 1970s and began operating 50 years ago. Exactly 50 years ago in the bicentennial year of 1976. And it worked like this.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

Right. If a candidate could demonstrate broad national support, they would qualify to receive federal matching funds. So how does a candidate show that they had broad national support? Well, the FEC has a formula. At a minimum, the candidate would have to raise more than $5,000 in contributions of $250 or less in each of at least 20 states, which meant they had to re-raise at least $100,000. And it had to come from real documented contributions from small donors spread across the country.

SPEAKER_09 43:20

So once a candidate qualified, the federal government would match the first $250 of each eligible contribution. If a donor gave you $100,000, the government would match it. If a donor gave you $250, the government matched it. If a donor gave you $250, the government matched it. However, if the donor gave you $500, the government only matches the first $250. So it goes up to $250. The original post Watergate reformers believed public financing would reduce the influence of wealthy donors and make candidates more dependent on, just like Charles wanted to know, ordinary citizens, which sounds just like what we need right now. So the idea was to reward candidates who could attract lots of ordinary citizens. Supporters rather than a handful of wealthy patrons in a nonpartisan way, which proved relatively easy for serious candidates and really difficult for vanity campaigns.

SPEAKER_03 44:10

And presidential candidates actually used this system to pay for their campaigns. Carter did, so did Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Clinton in 92, McCain in 2000, Bush in 2000. For roughly three decades, it worked reasonably well. Presidential campaigns were still expensive, but candidates operated within spending ceilings and accepted public money. As I told you on the phone today, Driftglass, uh, there were some campaign managers who, in the case of New Hampshire, blew through those spending limits and paid the fines later because if you lost in New Hampshire back then, overdone.

SPEAKER_09 44:51

Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of that kind of hedging and screwing around at the edges and practical matters got in the way. But by and large, it was a public financing of presidential primaries and campaigns. However, in 2004, both George Bush and John Kerry opted out of the public financing system. And so, contrary to popular myth, it wasn't Obama who killed campaign finance reform. It was Bush and Kerry in 2004. And then in 2008, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opted out of the public financing system for the primaries. And Obama, who won, opted out for the general election because frankly, he could raise a whole lot more money that way.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

And he was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars a week.

SPEAKER_09 45:35

Yeah. It was ludicrous for him to say no, no. I mean, I wish he would have, but he just like, no, I need this money to beat these guys, and I have access. If I just turn down the public money, I can get 10 times more, 20 times more from private donors.

SPEAKER_03 45:52

Well, and he was getting a tremendous amount of money from small donors, too. Yeah. They've really he they really were the first campaign to master a lot of technology to help them to fund raise money. Um, this was a system designed for an era when television advertising was much cheaper and was largely confined to three major networks, when campaigns were shorter and billionaires couldn't spend unlimited sums independently.

SPEAKER_09 46:20

Yeah. And that era is now over. So just for fun, we looked up what's going on with that public finance fund now. And according to the Treasury FEC Monthly Report, as of February 28th, 2026, the fund shows an ending balance for the public financing of presidential elections of $23,676,733.80, which is a mere fraction of the north of $100 million that incumbent Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn and his associated PACs spent losing his primary election in Texas.

SPEAKER_03 47:00

That's just one race, one Senate race, one Senate primary race. And in the general election, the sky's the limit. In 2024, if you wanted a shot at winning in any large state, it costs you somewhere between 45 and 150 million dollars. That's why James Tallerico, who's raised $30 million, is still on your YouTube raising money.

SPEAKER_09 47:26

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Because he's needs it. According to Open Secrets, the 2024 presidential election was the second most expensive since at least 1998. In total, $5.5 billion was spent on the race by presidential candidates, political parties, and independent interest groups trying to influence federal elections.

SPEAKER_09 47:50

And the event that ripped the floodgates completely off took place in the year of our Lord 2010. That was when five partisan Republican Supreme Court justices conspired to drive the final nails into the coffin of the shambling zombie hypocrisy that free speech had become. The case was United, Citizens United versus the FEC. And the outcome was that money was now speech, and corporations would henceforth enjoy the same free speech rights as actual human beings.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

And once the High Court said that basically you can lie all you want and spend however much you wish to shout your lies into every corner of the country as loud as you please, how can anyone be surprised that sooner or later the mob of Republican bigots and imbeciles would nominate and elect the biggest, lyingest, racist troll they could find? Because the words coming out of his pie hole matched word for word, the voices continually broadcast into their heads. He's saying what I'm thinking, Drift.

SPEAKER_09 48:54

Yeah, he is how he's astonishing. It's like he's reading my mind. No, he's just reading Fox News. And as the second Trump administration began, enough elite institutions decided accommodation was safer than confrontation. And it was then that the norm of resistance itself began to erode to the point where, left unchecked, by this time next year, the Bill of Rights might just be a memory. And in its place, we'd find a laundry list of MAGA grievances, demands, and enemies brought to you by universities like Columbia and Brown, and law firms like Kirkland and Ellis, and media corporations like Paramount Global and the Washington Post, all in the service to deeply corrupt and utterly fascist Republican Party. And I don't know if you want to, Blue Gal, but you want to spend a minute sort of spitballing the idea of how would you make a public finance system work?

SPEAKER_06 49:47

Hmm.

SPEAKER_09 49:48

Because you'd have to extend FCC control over what broadcasters do to private companies.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 49:55

You'd have to extend them to cable news because that's where way more people.

SPEAKER_03 49:59

That's really it.

SPEAKER_09 50:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

And I think I think Trump's right in one respect of what the words coming out of his mouth were correct. He didn't believe them. He talked about you need to change the libel laws. It is not okay to blatantly lie about a public figure when you know what you're saying is not true and broadcast that.

SPEAKER_09 50:18

Well, when you say it's not okay, it's legal to do it.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

No, I'm saying it should be, it should be illegal. Public figures should be able to sue when a news channel lies about you. And I understand that the reason that this case, you know, it was Hustler Magazine and Larry Flint and so forth winning a case um where you know it was satire, right? What Larry Flint and Hustler were doing was clearly satire, and no reasonable person would think that you know anyone fucked their mother in an outhouse, right? I believe Jerry Falwell is Jerry Falwell fucked his mother in an outhouse. You know, no one would believe that that was genuinely true.

SPEAKER_09 51:05

Well, now we have Jerry Falwell Jr. I'm not sure that you know that didn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

So oh, yeah, could have could have been. Um any at any event, that is so different from some bitch on Fox News saying that you know, Zoran Mom Downey and oh, I think no, actually, I think it was Tal Rico. He's a demon in human flesh on a news pro on a news program. Yeah, yeah. And Fox's argument is well, reasonable people know that's not true. It's like you have 50% of the electorate and 38% solidly behind you all the time, believing in their heart of hearts that what they are hearing is news.

SPEAKER_09 51:51

Right. But that's their fault. That's their fault.

SPEAKER_03 51:53

Well, it's it's see, to me, that's elder abuse and brainwashing.

SPEAKER_09 51:57

But of course it is. I'm just saying that's the argument. The argument is look, any reasonable person knows this is just bullshit, which is the the argument Fox News made in court.

SPEAKER_03 52:07

They make that in court every time.

SPEAKER_09 52:08

Yeah, but nobody thinks this is news, everyone knows better. And uh what you'd have to do, I mean I I agree instead of.

SPEAKER_03 52:14

But then they get attacked the other way, and that's well, it's news, it's freedom of the press. Yeah. You know, yeah, it's this it's they win, they win either way depending on the argument.

unknown 52:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 52:23

If if you wanted to you know put in place a public financing system with teeth, you'd have to mandate that candidates must use it.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_09 52:32

Because if there's a way around it, if you want to.

SPEAKER_03 52:35

And then campaign uh managers and campaign directors of finance and so forth who break these rules go to jail. Go to jail. And not get fined, not get slapped in the wrist. They do prison time.

SPEAKER_09 52:49

And that's that is a free speech issue.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

And that's it, then that's a free speech issue. Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_09 52:54

And so you you run up against a problem where you you would like to force candidates to take public money to not be beholden to special interest groups of any kind, and and then you would have to shorten the campaign season. You can't start the you know, the presidential election two years before the election.

SPEAKER_03 53:12

No, exactly.

SPEAKER_09 53:13

It has to be six weeks.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

It's six weeks. Exactly. It's six weeks, and then the then the political industrial complex would they they clap to hang themselves in their bathrooms. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 53:26

And you would have to you'd have to make it against the law um to uh six weeks thereabouts. Yeah, you'd have to you'd have to make it uh mandatory for them to use the system that you give them. And you have to tell television and other media that your ad costs for political ads are gonna be. Because now you all uh have to operate in the public interest. That's how it was before. Yeah, you're operating in the public interest, and and therefore it's not strictly commerce, it it is something that we're doing for the good of the public interest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

And the thing that's really to me gotta go are you know, secret $850,000 donations to a primary campaign two weeks before an election. Political action committees have got to go. Now, maybe that's something you think about is political action committees that actually pass that test of public financing, where they receive a million donations of under $250 are permitted to participate in the political process because they are funded by people, you know, just like lobbying organizations who actually have, I don't know, 150,000 people signed up for their mailing list. That's actually a broad-based coalition of people.

SPEAKER_09 54:48

And then you'd have to you have to stack the courts to get to the point where you have enough enough justices on there who would overturn Citizens United.

SPEAKER_06 54:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 54:57

Because you've got to you've got to stop believing it's gotta stop English and being money is speech and corporations are people. You've got to get rid of those up front.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

Well, and that is something that unites a lot of people with us on the from the right. The boots on the ground, Republicans who who you know just vote, they don't do anything but you know, listen to Russian Bond vote. They hate Citizens United too.

SPEAKER_04 55:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

They think it means George Soros can buy our elections.

SPEAKER_09 55:27

Yeah, I know. They hate it for dumb, dumb reasons because they're not.

SPEAKER_03 55:32

Yeah, but they do hate it. They do hate it. So uh yeah. Um, I have three words for you, or maybe four words, driftglass, uh-huh, that are gonna really sour your stomach.

SPEAKER_09 55:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

Because we're doing a news roundup. Um here are the four words, Driftglass. The Graham Platiner podcast.

SPEAKER_09 55:51

Oh, uh you know it's coming. Well, I how about this? Special glass guest tonight on the five, Graham Platinum. Yeah, yeah, Graham Platiner, um, Fox News regular.

SPEAKER_03 56:03

Nine year nine months from now, it could totally happen.

SPEAKER_09 56:06

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

No, all it needs is just that little patina of forgetfulness of oh, who is that guy again? Oh, yeah, I yeah, I sort of remember.

SPEAKER_09 56:14

It it's even the liberal Graham Platiner.

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Yeah, yeah, believes agrees with yeah, right, yeah, gut felled. Yeah, it's laughing with gutfeld.

SPEAKER_09 56:24

We got Fetterman and we got Platiner coming up next.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 56:29

But again, you're just feeding the same idiots more lives, and this isn't building new audiences, this is giving them justifications for believing what they already believe, which is not news.

SPEAKER_03 56:40

Well, and this is bringing us back to pump up the volume, which is pump up the volume 2026. Is is that you know, pirate radio, or does that wind up being uh Nick Fuentes?

SPEAKER_09 56:54

Yeah, no, that's that's the point. That's the point you know you know it's because the fascists are now running the system.

SPEAKER_06 57:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 57:01

That to get to get to run the system, they had to play the the free speech, you're being unfair to me. I need to be able to say whatever I want.

SPEAKER_03 57:11

And what my school wants me to do is read Hamlet, and we all know that's just a bunch of hippie talk. Yeah. What I want to do is march with the Proud Boys, and that's true freedom. And and young men in America in 2026 seem to be not, you know, and I know it's not all, and I I hope it's mostly not we're just seeing, I think it was what was it, the the Patriot Front or whatever it was that took public transportation to their march.

SPEAKER_09 57:41

Yeah. Well, and that the them surrounding that young black woman.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

I in the oh, that is the photo of the year.

SPEAKER_09 57:48

That is the photo of the year. Absolutely the photo of the year. That that deserves an oil painting. Hang in the Smithsonian. This is our era. This is this is what America was like.

SPEAKER_03 57:59

And she's surrounded by Patriot Front masked masked assholes. Assholes. And and someone saying, Yeah, there were 400 of them marching. That's all of them. Well, we can hope that's all of them. Yeah.

unknown 58:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:11

But they certainly got a lot of media attention for what they did.

SPEAKER_09 58:14

Well, and I again I I'm not one for some guy on Twitter says.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

I'm not iron. I'm that's ironic because here we are talking about them. I realize that.

SPEAKER_09 58:22

But I did I did hear uh on I don't say, like I said, I don't say some guy on Twitter, some guy on Blue Sky, because it's some rando. But I did hear, you know, wouldn't it be great if they paid as much attention to Republican corruption and to all this other shit that they paid to um Kamala Harris's W-2 at McDonald's in 1980, whatever it was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:44

But that's because the microphone belongs to Fox.

SPEAKER_09 58:47

Well, no, we're talking about the Times at Washington.

SPEAKER_03 58:50

Yeah, and the New York fucking times.

SPEAKER_09 58:52

They're obsessed with it. And and you have to, if you if you want to put in a system that will not guarantee good candidates, but will guarantee that billionaires can't rig the system, then you're gonna have to get rid of Fox News.

SPEAKER_06 59:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 59:07

Oh yeah. Get rid of, not regulate, not moderate, not well, you know, there's some good people over there. You have to get rid of it. You have to get rid of hate radio. You have to clamp down. And you run straight into uh free speech issues when you do that. And I don't care because there's some speech in this country that is actively destructive to our democracy, yeah, and it's being run for profit by people who know they're lying.

SPEAKER_03 59:32

Who know they're lying, who know they're destroying democracy.

SPEAKER_09 59:34

And I know the real problem are the idiots who watch it.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_09 59:37

But the pr and the problem with this country is there's too many fucking idiots in this country.

SPEAKER_03 59:40

We need to Well, the right wing wants to spend so much time and energy protecting children from drag queen story time.

SPEAKER_09 59:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:48

They don't want to protect seniors from Fox.

SPEAKER_09 59:51

Well, they don't they don't want to because that's their audience.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 59:55

I mean, the the point being that they are they have a captive audience who are the problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:01

It's not some other group of people, it's not some other condition. It's the people on Fox and the people who believe there's a difference between Fox and MSNBC.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:09

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:09

Um, they're collectively the problem. And to get at that, you have to start destroying some of their institutions. And to do that, you can do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:16

Believing that they're being invaded constantly, whether it's Mexicans or drag queens or trans kids. It's don't care. Don't care.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:23

It's just so what? It's it's next week it'll be something else. And a week after that'll be something else. And after that'll be something else. It's the institution that must be destroyed. And and you know, boycotting boycotting the advertisers is never going to work.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

Well, and we I've discovered that that you know, I was thinking about that the other day. What can you go can you go after Fox through their advertisers anymore? No, you can't. Because the same, the same kind of elder abuse that comes from Fox is coming from their advertisers. Yeah, this is all it's all by gold. You know, it's all as seen on TV merchandise now.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:59

Patriot supplies, gotta get those patriot supplies.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

Patriot supplies, get your patriot supplies, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:03

Well, uh, we have no news round up, but apparently we're at war with Iran again.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:07

It's like we're we're on again with Iran, so and they're they're both uh reasonable, uh good people that we are trying to negotiate with, according to the vice president, and scum. They're all scum according to the president.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:20

They're all crazy scum, we have to bomb them all back and then sees, etc.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

And what is it about the Islamic Japanese something?

SPEAKER_09 1:01:27

Yeah, the Islamic Republic of Japan or something. No, he's a he's a again, he is simply the tip of the sword. Yeah, yeah, and the and the the the blade of the sword are the Republicans in Congress, and the muscle behind the sword are the idiots who watch Fox and listen to hate radio.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Yeah, and the whole machine needs to be and phone in death threats to anyone who crosses the deer leader, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:51

Anyway, each week we do some stuff that we always do. You want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

Yeah, we post to our Patreon page and website and internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. But this week's internet kitty isn't a kitty, it's a couple of awesome pupparoos, Sophie and Helen. Sophie is the honey lamb on the left, and Helen is the adorbs on the right. And you have it on the unimpeachable authority of their human that they are both the sweetest girls. And of course, Sophie and Helen eat freshly poured dog food, our fake sponsor. Whether you serve Pet Store Perfection or Dollar Store Dreck, your cats, dogs, or emus will lounge on the kitchen floor looking like royalty and demand that the food they eat is only freshly poured.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:37

Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. That's the flavor they adore. Small scoop and hearts of sore. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:53

And you can visit Sophie and Helen at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash prolef pod or our website prolefpod.com. They are sweet dogs. And you can send your internet kitty dog, emu, whatever you have, or other pet to us at our email address, prolefpodcast at gmail.com, where you can also write to both of us. Feel free to write us. We love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or U.S. Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air, unless you say otherwise. A reminder we will have no show next Tuesday, the 14th, because Driftglass is taking his wife out for birthday dinner.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:42

I'm squiring her about town.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:44

Thursday, which is my actual birthday, uh we will be recording a show. And I love getting birthday cards. So if you want to send one, you can send one care of the P.O. box at the top of the show and in our show notes.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:57

100%. And don't forget, we got this gourmet coffee guideline. If you can afford to buy an espresso-based beverage for yourself, buy one for us at patreon.com forward slash prolef pod. This is obviously not charity. This is this is our job. This is how we do our business. So every week we do this for you, and we appreciate your help and support in doing it. You can also help us to continue to grow by sharing our show on social media. If you love this podcast, introduce it to a friend. They might just hit it off. And thank you for doing that.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

Hey Driftless, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_09 1:04:31

Well, Blue Gal, the Internet Kitties today.