Ep 1009 The Wall

Episode 1009 asks what happens when you're 20 miles into the political marathon and there's no cavalry coming over the hill to save the day. Driftglass and Blue Gal explore the difference between American "hero arrives just in time" storytelling and the harder truth found in movies like Spotlight and Lincoln—where victory comes from grinding, patient work, not a last-minute miracle. The episode confronts what it feels like to hit The Wall after decades of activism that moved the needle but not nearly far enough, while also finding real hope in how DSA ideas about time, freedom, and healthcare are quietly winning the battle of ideas. It's about exhaustion, endurance, and why you should never take political advice from your enemies.  

This week, thanks again to Hal Sparks who had Driftglass on Monday.  Bob Cesca and Nicole Sandler who put up with him for an hour each, back to back, on Wednesday.  

Hal Sparks https://www.youtube.com/live/QPVAxnKjtV4

Bob Cesca show https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-7-22-26/

Nicole Sandler show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2acNSp9cNVg

More links from the episode: 

https://patricemersault.substack.com/p/part-2-i-went-to-a-meeting-of-young 

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/dont-take-advice-from-your-enemies

https://campaign-trails.ghost.io/punching-left/

The Internet Kitty’s book, “Futura”  https://michaellaser.com/?books=futura 

Stay in Touch! 

Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com 

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_08 0:00

You can listen to the professional left wherever you get your podcasts on Netroots Radio or at our website, proleftpod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There is a PayPal button at our website, or you can mail us a letter andor contribution at P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

This is the podcast for the week of July 24th, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_08 0:25

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where next week can't possibly be the last week of July, can it? It's the professional left with Drift Glass and Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

I can't believe it. But yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_08 0:44

And yet, and yet there it is, staring us in the face in the calendar.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Summer is two-thirds over. Um let's start right at the top, Drift Glass. We're going to throw some audio at our audience. Yeah. And hey, audience out there, guess what all of these pieces of audio have in common? Are you guys ready? Okay. Here's the first one.

SPEAKER_08 1:16

And here's the second one.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

And here's the third one.

SPEAKER_08 1:37

Now we could do hundreds of these because you know we're always looking for new and exciting ways for YouTube to demonetize our podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

You're going to catch at least one of these.

SPEAKER_08 1:47

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I look forward to the email from the bot at YouTube saying, sorry, you don't get your $3 this month.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

So three dollars? I wish.

SPEAKER_08 1:57

I know. 30 cents this month. But but these three examples will do fine. They'll do just as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yes, they will. What you just heard in order was Ripley saving the colonial marines in the nick of time in Aliens, which is a movie of one narrow escape after another. Yeah. You know, we'll sell you the whole movie seat, but you'll only need the edge. Okay. It'll blow your mind. It'll blow your mind. Then, of course, Bruce Willis saving the earth. The entire earth in the nick of time in Armageddon. And finally, the Ghostbusters saving the world from all those ghosts in the nick of time.

SPEAKER_08 2:42

In the nick of time. And because you're all so terribly clever, you probably noticed the theme.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

By the way, fun fact the phrase nick of time is really old. It's it comes from 16th century England, where a nick was a groove or a notch cut into a wooden tally, uh uh kind of stick, to keep very precise measurement of something like scores or accounts or time. So doing something in the nick meant you were doing it in an exact critical moment.

SPEAKER_08 3:19

And for you literature freaks out there, we did a little more homework. We have uh three more examples. This is from Walter Scott's The Antiquary, 1816. He came in the nick of time to save us from a world of frost and snow.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

From Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1839, he had arrived just in the nick of time to save her from the hands of her tormentors.

SPEAKER_08 3:45

Just that sentence, you know, it's Charles Dickens.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

It's Charles Dickens.

SPEAKER_08 3:49

And from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, 1883, the doctor and the rest of them arrived in the nick of time to prevent a massacre. And just to round out the field, for us science fiction nerds, there's also The Mick of Time, which is a very popular science fiction short story by one of my favorites, Spider Robinson, which is originally published in Analog Magazine in May of 1986. It's one of the stories that takes place in a magical time-traveling bar, featured in his long-running Callahan's Cross Time Saloon book series. In this particular story, the regulars at Callahan's Bar get caught up in, wait for it, world-threatening interstellar telepathic shenanigans.

unknown 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 4:33

Bad stuff there. But you know what? They emerge unscathed. Regulars, uh, reader, regular readers of Analog magazine love the story and voted it into second place in Analog's 1987, Reader's Poll of the Novelet and Novella category.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

And as you all probably know without having to be told, the arrival of our hero at the last possible moment to save the day is one of history's oldest and most reliable plot devices. It is used absolutely everywhere.

SPEAKER_08 5:06

Can't miss. Absolutely can't miss.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

It is major theme that can't miss. It's part of every kind of story, from the War of the Worlds to Jurassic Park to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And hell, it's all over the Bible, folks. From Cecil B. DeMille parting the Red Sea.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

The Lord of hosts will do battle for us. Behold his mighty hand.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

To Jesus rising from the dead in the nick of time. That cracks me up. Um the Bible puts the Deus in Deus Ex Machina. That's the Bible's job, okay?

SPEAKER_08 5:48

It's right in the title. It's right in the title. And you know what? It's not just the Bible. We're not picking on the Bible. Nearly every major religious tradition contains stories in which divine or supernatural or karmic or cosmic interventions suddenly resolved a seemingly hopeless situation.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

But Driftglass, here's the thing: there is another literary tradition or genre that runs in the opposite direction. You can call them the anti-deus ex machina stories. Consider, for example, uh the film adaptation of All the President's Men from 1976. There is no dramatic showdown, no super weapon, just shoe leather reporting, phone call after phone call after phone call. And spoiler on this very old movie, the takedown of the villain of the story is just told on a teletype.

SPEAKER_08 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

That you read at the end.

SPEAKER_08 6:45

The most exciting and challenging shots were like boom shots of them going through library cards at the Library of Congress, which was amazing. It's a wonderful shot.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

It's a beautiful shot, yeah. Yeah. Then there's the movie Spotlight from 2015. And, you know, it's a story about reporters, and it follows exactly the same structure. There's no divine intervention, on the contrary, because it's about pedophile priests. Uh, there's no heroic speech, there's just years of reporters digging.

SPEAKER_08 7:16

Yeah. And just so we're not stuck on movies about reporters, this is also true of the movie Lincoln from 2012. The Civil War doesn't end because Lincoln gives a speech. We know that'd be great if it happened, but it never did. In fact, the war doesn't end until the final minutes of the film. And even then, it's largely presented in a kind of an epilogue form. The main body of the movie takes place in January of 1865 during the fight to pass the 13th Amendment in the House of Representatives. And at that point, the war was still ongoing, and it didn't end until after four bloody years and roughly a million and a half casualties. That's that's killed, wounded, missing, or captured. The South was completely destroyed, and its armies shattered and its cities burned. Instead, the movie Lincoln is about counting votes, just counting votes, cajoling people, threatening them, playing dirty tricks, bribery, just painfully scaring up one vote at a time. That's the drama. Even though we know how it ends.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

And the corruption. The corruption of, you know, you got to give my brother a job. Yeah. And then you can have my vote. Or both my brothers a job.

SPEAKER_08 8:26

Well, yeah. And it was it was a combination of corruption and appeals to conscience.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 8:30

And raw political, uh, I will switch parties. Remember the scene where I'll switch parties, you know, to your party. So no, you won't. You're gonna stay a Democrat. So this bill can be bipartisan.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

Bipartisan, yes.

SPEAKER_08 8:42

Yes, it's it's such a good politics movie, but there's no heroic ending. There's no there's no triumphant last-minute gallop in from the cavalry.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Okay, Bible Bitch is gonna go back to the Bible briefly because the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament has no triumphant climax. Just to everything, there is a season. Life is repetitive, history runs in cycles, the good follows the bad, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_08 9:11

Yeah. And in Buddhism, there's no savior coming to redeem us. Enlightenment only comes through long practice. And before enlightenment, what do we say? Chop wood and carry water. And after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

And send postcards to voters.

SPEAKER_08 9:25

And send postcards to voters. Don't forget to do that. And right now, a lot of people, including us, are feeling exhausted and stranded between these two narratives about our culture and the world. Now, you think about the traditional differences, for example, between the American worldview, broadly speaking, and the European worldview. Historically, Americans have tended to believe that every crisis contains the seeds of a solution. If you just look close enough, Europeans have lived through enough history to know that sometimes the crisis wins. America was founded by people who believe the future could be invented. Europe was built by people who've watched the future collapse many, many times.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Yeah. Their culture is just older.

SPEAKER_08 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

And in a way, it brings you just a sense of calm about certain things as well. Yeah. When confronted with a disaster, Americans will try to invent something or organize something or elect somebody who has a vision of a di of a better future. So many people, deep down in their psyches, think there will be a magic bullet that will solve the climate crisis.

SPEAKER_05 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

We'll invent ourselves out of it. What if we don't? And you know, we have we have this go west mentality where if we screw up, we can always start over. There's always a new frontier. Our history, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are about redemption and reinvention. The New Deal, the Moonlanding, the underdog comeback, and the amazing company that we've started or someone else has started in someone's garage. Every white person's ancestors arrived here legally, started a business, got successful on their own, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and and you know, created America. Right?

SPEAKER_05 11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 11:29

It's been drill into us thousands of times, millions of times over our lifetimes. Europeans, on the other hand, have memories, which are sometimes literal family memories, of the Thirty Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, two world wars, fascism, communism, genocide, and watching their cities being reduced to rubble. Now, many Europeans are less inclined to assume that history will always bend towards happy endings. Their historical experience often teaches that civilization is not a permanent condition, that democracies can fail and prosperity can disappear. The barbarians are sometimes already here. They're already inside the gates, which is one reason European literature often has a different flavor than American literature.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

That's why America gives you Star Wars, Independence Day, Rocky, and Apollo 13.

SPEAKER_08 12:19

Yeah. Which are which are all fine. There's nothing wrong with them. But Europeans will give you Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, All Quiet on the Western Front, and the Third Man.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Now, these attitudes are not as stark as black and white. We do have our Eugene O'Neill's, Arthur Miller's, and Arthur Miller, don't get me started. And and David Mammoths. Again, don't get me started. But directionally, most of us were raised on stories of heroes and the belief in a better tomorrow.

SPEAKER_08 12:50

And if we now look at our democracy as a marathon, right about now, many of us are hitting the 20-mile mark.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Yep. I know I am. I'm I see Trump on my phone and I just flip, you know, swipe right. I'm done.

SPEAKER_08 13:04

Yeah, it's the equivalent of the wall. You know, when your body just runs out of carbs to burn. There's no more fuel to burn. Now, neither of us are runners, but we have it on very good authority that this is the point in a very long race when your legs suddenly feel like lead. As if you've gone from running to wading through wet concrete. You slow your pace down very much, very a whole bunch. Your fatigue is now out of proportion with the effort you're putting in. You have difficulty concentrating. Your body is just screaming for you to stop and sit down for goodness sakes. This is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

And Drift Glass, how do you take a break from all that? How do you find energy? Right. I'm worn out.

unknown 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

You know, after working an eight-hour day and then coming home. Watching news is not what I want to do. And I do try to stay informed. I really do try to read articles that come across my phone and stay on top of everything.

SPEAKER_08 13:59

Well, it's an effort. It's an effort. It is a conscious effort. And I do understand, believe me, I do understand, because I am like doing this all day long.

SPEAKER_05 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 14:09

I'm sort of doing what you used to do at Crooks and Liars, uh, just all day long, up to my chin in this stuff, researching it, writing about it, making sure that you know, that we have what we need at our fingertips to do our podcast and going on with other people. And by the way, thanks again to Hal Sparks for having me on this week. I was on back to back with Nicole Sandler and Bob Seska this week. And you and I podcast on Tuesday and it's Thursday night, and we're doing this tonight.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

So this is your fifth podcast this week.

SPEAKER_08 14:37

I know. I know.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

And it's and I, you know, I don't know how you do it. Um, I I do know a little bit of how you do it. There, there's there's points at which you do go on autopilot.

SPEAKER_08 14:49

Yeah, of course I do.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

I believe it's that's a shortcut in your brain to I have to talk for a minute about this, and I know what I want to want to say. And I see that. I see, I know you, you know, we've been married 15 years next month.

SPEAKER_08 15:03

Well, and there's also there's also a a literary structure to how to tell a story. Yes, you know, the the the run-up, and you realize I have X amount of time. I need to, I need to I think I told Bob uh I need to bullshit around for a minute and a half while I get well the the other half of my brain comes up with the right answer. Yeah, and then I have an answer that's that's I could blurt it out, but I much prefer my thoughts to be structured and clear when they come out of my mouth and they go on the record.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

But I just want to make sure our our listeners understand that we're human beings who who, while we do a podcast twice a week and we're knee deep in it, and we have colleagues all over the country. My colleagues at Crooks and Liars are still part of my life. You know, I'm talking to them often during the week, uh, emailing and so forth. And and all of us are feeling this. The people who are who you trust to be there for you, and you need to do a break in the middle of the summer. We are also reaching that 20 mile mark in a in a 26.1 mile marathon that we're going through. Um, ironically, it is 2026 and it's a midterm election year as well. Yeah. Um, anyway, I I I just wanted to say that and I I am so impressed with you. Uh, I think what Bob Seska said about you is true. You're a beast when it comes to appearing on these shows and adding a context that wouldn't be there otherwise. So I I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_08 16:32

And our cheat code, both you and our cheat code for all of this, is having done it for so goddamn long.

SPEAKER_05 16:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 16:39

Um, we do have these, and we've we've said this many times, we have these very deep archives. We have 21-year-old, 22-year-old archives of what we wrote and what we thought and what we were feeling, and what our analysis told us two decades ago, more than two decades ago. And so when it comes to understanding what's happening now, when you're dealing with people who are just showing up to the party or you know, and who don't understand or not through no fault of their own.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

No, no, no. If you're 24 who are just showing up to the party, congratulations.

SPEAKER_08 17:07

Yeah, and I have gotten, I think we mentioned uh on Tuesday, I've gotten yelled at on back when I was on Twitter by people who didn't understand why Joe Biden couldn't just tell Tommy Duberville to shut up and do what he's told. Just because he's in the Senate and the president doesn't run the Senate unless you're Donald Trump and everyone in your party runs the Senate, and they're a bunch of slaves. Yeah, they're a bunch of toadies.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

Which is not democracy. Yes.

SPEAKER_08 17:29

That is not how this system works. And I understand that. But it's also like I get it when you're in your 20s or you just showed up to the party and you're you're like, you have a list of things you want that you should have, it demands a list of demands that you think this country should be doing, and I agree with 90% of them, and you're incredibly frustrated that it's not being done. You want to punch somebody. And you want to punch the people who are wearing suits and have been in charge for a while, you know, because they're the natural targets. And why don't you people just fix shit? Because, you know, because we we have this part this two-party system, and one of the parties wants to wreck this country. That's most of the reason.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

And the other, a lot of the other party has a problem with gerontocracy.

SPEAKER_08 18:09

Yes. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

And the Democratic Party has a problem with that.

SPEAKER_08 18:13

The Republicans do, the media does. A lot of it is right across the board. And we're speaking as people who are middle-aged or senior citizens saying that.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

So we're we get the senior discount at the movie theater, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_08 18:26

Now, on the other hand, um, this context is also useful when you're talking to people who were have been in politics for a long time and who were Republicans most of their lives and want to pretend that this all started in 2016 and make their bread and butter and and fulfill their MS Now employment contracts by pretending that all this began in 2016 and they had nothing to do with any of it.

SPEAKER_05 18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 18:48

That's when that's when context is terribly important because these aren't newbies who are just showing up and not don't understand how things work. These are people who are trying actively to bury the past because that's where they're all the guilty uh the bodies are buried.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Their contribution to what's happening right now is exposed, right? Anyway, based on our own unscientific research, uh, that is exactly where a whole lot of us are politically right now, is in this slog. And and we're we're looking at the finish line and saying we hope we make it. And those of us who've been in this fight since long before Trump showed up, we're just a little tired.

SPEAKER_08 19:26

Yeah, because we know there is no cavalry coming over the hill. Uh, there's no one coming in the nick of time to save us in the final thrilling moments of this chapter in American in America's story. Uh, that collectively, all of our decades, our decades and decades of marching and protesting and letter writing. You you were speechwriting? Did you use speechwriting for when you were in your younger years, Blue Gal? Is that correct? You wanted to be a good one.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

That's what I wanted to be when I grew up, graduated high school, the political speechwriter.

SPEAKER_08 19:54

You were you're a Kennedy girl, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah, I was a Ted Kennedy uh for Senate and then and making phone calls for him in the Senate when he ran for re-election in '82, I believe it was. And then yeah, in Kennedy 80 in high school. Yeah, that I was really making phone calls in Erie, Pennsylvania for Kennedy 80 when I was in high school.

SPEAKER_08 20:15

So, you know, we've been doing this for a minute. And all those decades and decades, like I said, marching and protesting, letter writing, postcards writing, blogging and podcasting and phone banking, and kicking in five bucks when and where we can, that has all moved the needle, but not by very much. Not nearly enough to give Democrats the kind of sustainable majorities that we would need to really tackle our biggest problems in a serious way.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

That the complaint corporate media hasn't gotten any better in the last 30 years. Instead, those who were supposed to be our First Amendment watchmen at the gates of our democracy have only gotten worse, Barry Weiss. So much worse, so much worse paramount.

SPEAKER_08 21:00

Yeah. And this is and the the the greatest disappointment to us, probably of all, is that we've basically given up on trying to persuade anyone on the right to do the right thing ever again. Um, because this is despite the fact that we've piled up the evidence of Republican cruelty and corruption and contempt for democracy. We've created a pile high enough to blot out the sun. And it hasn't persuaded the overwhelming majority of Republican voters. In fact, they've only dug in their heels further.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

The flip-floppy centrists and independents, independents, remain firmly committed to fence straddling at any cost.

SPEAKER_08 21:38

Yeah, and those tens of millions of apathetic, disengaged citizens who want nothing to do with politics, despite the fact that it has become a life and death matter for us all, remain as aggressively apathetic and disengaged as ever. So as our faith in Gandalf showing up at Helm's Deep at first light on the fifth day evaporated. The demoralizing realization began to creep in that this is going to go right on being an exhausting slog against an army of bigots and imbeciles funded by billionaires for the rest of our lives. You know, and we can feel it in our bodies and we can feel it in our minds. We are hitting the wall, the wall of exhaustion. And we're right in the middle of it right now.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, and it's like an actual marathon. We are running towards something, not away from something. But unlike an actual marathon, our race has no finish line. It just goes on and on. And sometimes, like right about now, it's hard to see where we're headed. The road ahead of us is pretty dark. All around us, it's dark, and it seems to just keep getting steeper.

SPEAKER_08 22:44

Yeah, and we don't know what's up ahead, but we keep going, and this is probably the answer to your question about how do we get through this. We keep going because somewhere up that road is the world our children and grandchildren are going to have to live in. And what we do here and now will profoundly shape the future which they will inherit. And it would be an act of generational treason to stop now and surrender the future to the bad people.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah. And I don't want to get too depressing either, because it's at times like this that great art is made. There's at times like this that great literature is written. We are living in a golden age of television. We are living in a golden age of fashion. I know that's crazy to say, but the art artistry of what people are doing with clothing. And not just, I'm not talking about the Met Gala here. I'm talking about what average people are doing for with self-expression. We are living in a golden age of that. And so there are things to celebrate. And I and you know, life is always better when I'm reading a good novel. Well, and there is great writing being done around the world right now, and more ways to find out about international authors that we're that we've never would have discovered or had access to even 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_08 24:04

I'd like to add to that the um the fact that there are quietly, because it doesn't make headlines, millions of Christians out there.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 24:13

Um, people that who are our friends. I mean, we don't know millions of them, but we know dozens of them, who are all sick and tired and furious and and boiling mad and activists who are acting on their faith to get rid of the tyrant and the monsters who who elected him. And they just don't make headlines. They're out there, they're working their asses off. Um, it it shows up in what they do in their community and who and who they're trying to help, and the way we get together to talk about strategies for overcoming tyranny, uh acting through faith.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

I don't think we've mentioned that on the show, on our show yet. We you mentioned it on Hal. I did. But the sign that our church put out in the front of our church, yeah, which which was spearheaded by a retired pastor who was able to do it, frankly, without you know, risking any any blowback, blowback or income, you know, not not risking his position because he's retired. But it said, uh hate divides, love unites, and then it has the name of our church. And that's the sign. And people in our physical denomination church in Springfield, Illinois, walked out on our church for a sign that says hate divides, love unites, because that was somehow anti-Trump. Which if you want to talk about you know, showing off your ass to the universe. Right.

unknown 25:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

What? You're talking about love? How dare you criticize the president like that?

SPEAKER_08 25:48

Let's call it uh praying the quiet part out loud, shall we? Because that's what they're doing. But but people who people the activists, the, the, the bishops who write letters and write instructions to their and how to cope with this and take very firm stands on these things. It's not for everyone. We love our atheist listeners. We know that this is just white noise to you. We get that. But you're our allies and you're our friends, and we're all in the same fight together. And this is to let you know that there are people out there who are acting on their faith who never get a headline, and there's lots of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

And they're bad as hell. They're mad as hell right now.

SPEAKER_08 26:24

And the lunatic shit that you know our local Catholic bishop Pop Rocky does.

SPEAKER_05 26:29

Oh, God, he's such an asshole.

SPEAKER_08 26:31

That'll make the paper. That will show up in the paper. Yes, it will.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

And if anyone from Springfield is listening to this, I, Francis Langham of Springfield, Illinois, am on the record of calling Father Pop Rocky an asshole.

SPEAKER_08 26:51

Yeah. Put a prayer on it, honey.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

I'll put a prayer on it. Amen. All right.

SPEAKER_08 26:57

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

So when the distance between here and there seems insurmountable, the finish line seems so far away, and actually there's not a finish line. Uh, for inspiration, we look back down the road to see how far we've already come. The world we have and are fighting to keep is thanks to the legacy of Mary Church Terrell and Ella Baker and Bob Moses and Shirley Chisholm, and how many tens of thousands who sacrificed more than we will ever know to get us this far. Do you want to be the one who tells the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer or Marsha P. Johnson or Martin Luther King that it was all for nothing, that we let it all slip away because the struggle was too hard, it was taking too long. I always remember Joe Biden saying, You think this is bad, I survived 1968. It would be a betrayal of all that those people fought for and in many cases died for to give up now and let the darkness win. So we won't do it.

SPEAKER_08 28:02

So we won't do it. That's how we catch our breath and keep going. There's also a lot of comfort in knowing that we're not alone, that there are tens of millions of allies who we will never meet and who we may fight with from time to time, but who are nonetheless running right alongside us towards what we hope is a better future. That our ideas are winning the day, that the bad guys' policies are so weak and so toxic and so transparently stupid that they've had to spend decades and billions of dollars to raise up an army of elected grifters and perverts and fanatics and dupes and morons to get them passed because nobody else would ever do such a thing. They're so terrified of us winning and of the accountability that would come along with Democrats winning in the House or the Senate or both that they are willing to shred the Constitution to stop us. And so far, they've tried to smuggle their poisonous Save Act into law by attaching pieces of it to major defense policy bills, a budget reconciliation statement framework, a bill restricting congressional stock trading, and a State Department spending package. That's how desperate they are to keep people from voting because they know the people will vote them out.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yep. And we'd like to shout out to all of our Democratic Socialists of America listeners. You guys are the future of the Democratic Party, in my opinion. Because having had to endure abuse and mockery for decades, the specific policies and principles and values that the DSA has been advocating all along are now becoming increasingly popular with the general public.

SPEAKER_08 29:44

This is from an essay over at Open Letters by Merceau, where the author went to a local DSA meeting to hear what they were all about. And what he found was that much of their program boiled down to time, which I found interesting. Quote, the platform calls for a 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay. I'd expected healthcare or labor unions to dominate the discussion. Instead, Rachel, the spokeswoman, kept returning to time itself, more time with family, more time for friendships and education, hobbies, community, or simply to rest. The argument wasn't merely economic. If the purpose of an economy is to improve human life, increasing productivity should eventually buy something more valuable than higher profits. It should buy time. Once I noticed that idea, I started to see it everywhere. Paid family leave, vacation, sick leave, universal child care, shorter working hours. These weren't presented as workplace benefits, they were presented as freedom. The speaker returned repeatedly to the same distinction. The goal of socialism, she argued, isn't simply to help people survive, it's to create the conditions under which people can actually live. That same logic shaped the discussion of health care. Universal coverage wasn't presented primarily as a way to improve medical outcomes. It was presented as a form of freedom. As long as workers fear losing health insurance by changing jobs, organizing a union, starting a business, or leaving an abusive employer, they are never entirely free to make those choices, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Which leads to this very timely and personally relevant to me story from NPR yesterday. Quote, why do some people stay in terrible, horrible, no good, very bad jobs? A new report finds that nearly a quarter of workers who get health insurance through their jobs report staying in unwanted jobs for health insurance, a figure that's risen dramatically in the last five years. And Driftglass, I think it may have risen direct dramatically in the past one year. It certainly did in this house. The survey from West Health Gallup Center, excuse me, on healthcare in America finds that approximately 23 million adults are in what the report authors call job lock. Job lock. In 2021, 16% of those surveyed were in job lock. Anybody having to stay in a job just to keep their health insurance, knowing that they want to leave, is crazy, says Ellen Mace, a research director for the center. That is a concerning figure, even if it's 10%. But when we're seeing it rise to one in four employees, that's pretty serious.

SPEAKER_08 32:32

Unquote. And I'm sure Blue Gal, you will remember that one of the pillars of the argument for the ACA was portability.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Well, and and in this article, it was it was interesting. You and I talked about this when an article came out yesterday. There was a libertarian uh who said, and you know, as you said, the the uh their analysis is often right and the prescription for solute solving it is always wrong. Um, but the libertarian pointed out that the demise of the ACA is terrible for entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_08 33:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Yeah. And that is actually damaging our economy because people not starting small businesses and not trying to inject money into the economy that way is hurting all of us.

SPEAKER_08 33:20

It is. Absolutely, it is.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

And if the the And of course, then they said he would he just wants high deductible plans. You know, he just went off a you know, tort reform, whatever. You know, it's like okay.

SPEAKER_08 33:29

Then he retreated to Galtz Gulch and fast. Exactly, whatever. But yeah. One of the one of the pillars of the ACA was it's portable. You can leave your employer, you can go start a business, you can do all these things. And yeah, the Republicans.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

If you're not sure if the business fails, you can still buy health insurance next month for yourself and afford it, yes.

SPEAKER_08 33:48

And and afford it. And you and and that is what the Republicans have taken away from millions of Americans, including us.

SPEAKER_05 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 33:56

And and and it's on them. So yeah, it's pretty serious, which is why the logic of the DSA arguments has never been stronger. And the elements of their programs are becoming increasingly popular, which is surprise, how successful revolutions work. First, you win the battle for ideas, and those ideas are definitely winning the day.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

They are. I do want to say one thing, real briefly, about Medicare for All, uh, which is the moral answer to the healthcare crisis. Yeah. But and there's no doubt about that. Um, having worked for a medical center and answering phones for a medical center since January in order to have health insurance, I can tell you that the system that we have in place for delivering health care to people in this country. In this country, in the United States of America, is in no way prepared for Medicare for all. We do not have enough doctors and nurses and providers in the United States to take care of everybody who's sick. The system is set up to turn away people, literally set up to turn away people. I hate to say that, but I think I have seven doctors that I answer phones for, and then six nurse practitioners. Um nurse practitioners can't take new patients because they're not doctors. That that they're just you don't do that. But of the seven doctors that I and it used to be eight, eight doctors, one of them retired, and that was a disaster because we absorbed all of those patients into the other doctors, which meant that those doctors couldn't take new patients from outside of that practice that retired. We now have one doctor out of seven who is still taking new patients since January. It's insane.

SPEAKER_08 35:51

And this is not just that building.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

This is not just this is nationwide. The the facility I work for has 100 nurse jobs posted. And I know of programs where in throughout this country where hospitals are trying to train nurses by giving them money, by giving employees who work there who aren't nurses, you know, who are simply. I mean, there are people who are saying asking custodians to become phlebotomous, yeah, and and promising, oh, you sweep the floor here. How about we put you through school and keep paying you?

SPEAKER_08 36:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

And you become and you learn to draw blood.

SPEAKER_08 36:35

This this is the situation that existed in the 90s. We did talk about this on Tuesday for work for the workforce.

SPEAKER_05 36:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 36:42

A case where you have such an acute labor shortage that employers are willing to meet you more than halfway. We'll provide the facility for the training, we'll open our lunchroom, we'll let them come in for lunch, we'll invite you in, we'll do ESL classes on site. They're willing to make all kinds of accommodations because they can see that their business, their businesses are directly. They're gonna fail because they don't have enough people to fill the fill the position.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

To answer the phone. And I and AI is not gonna replace people in health. I know that's what is be is the fear is right now, and there are articles all over the place about AI making mistakes in healthcare and and so forth and so on. It's people. People want to see a doctor or see a practitioner, and that human touch is as important on the phone as it is in the uh examination room. You know, people want to be cared for when they're feeling bad. The other problem we have is and you know, there's an awful lot of people who get Social Security or non-Medicare who voted for Trump, and Trump is kicking out of the country the kind of people who will work in a nursing home, who will work in a facility that will take care of you when you're 90 and have had a stroke. And I said on Blue Sky, you know, there's a whole lot of magas that are gonna die in bed, having not been fed that day in a shitty diaper, thirsty. Because no one, because the people that are supposed to be there to feed them, to clean them, and to keep them in dignity are short-staffed.

SPEAKER_09 38:17

Are they kicked out of the?

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Donald Trump kicked all the people out of the country who could have done that, who would have done that work in order to grab a rung of the American dream. And and we can turn on, you know, it's not flip a switch. I this is I I get I get upset, and you and you I know you do too, with some young, not all, but some younger voters who say we need to solve this with Medicare for all.

SPEAKER_08 38:42

And like you said, like you said, that's the morally right answer.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

That's the morally right answer, and that provides coverage for people. That does not provide a doctor for people. Exactly. That does not provide a facility for people. The president is going to have to create hospitals at uh military outlets, military facilities. He's gonna have to engage the military, and this is this is makes those of us who are, you know, separation of military and civilian life, right? And like you don't want to militarize everything. That's that's what fascists do. But it's gonna take, if we're gonna do it that quickly, it is going to turn on, it is gonna create a crisis immediately. We're going to have people wanting cancer screenings and GLP one drugs immediately.

SPEAKER_08 39:34

Well, and and you might remember, I'm sure, the the all the pop-up clinics that showed up every now and then, the pop-up dental clinics, and and you just come and you take care of the pop-up screening stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Lying around the parking lot four times because they hadn't seen a dentist in six years.

SPEAKER_08 39:51

And multiply that by a hundred. And that's the that's the labor crunch that's coming because you know what else is happening? A lot of older doctors are retiring.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 40:00

You know, like in like and my my area of expertise is manufacturing, but same as your manufacturing. Yeah, you know, that a lot of older owners were retiring. That's why all those little factories are going out of business because there was no secession plan.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Nobody was no secession planning in hospitals either.

SPEAKER_08 40:13

At all. At all.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

At all. And I have a whole lot of senior citizens on the phone to me. How how dare that doctor retire? And you know what? Are you retired? Yes, you are.

SPEAKER_05 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

You just called me to say how dare my doctor retire. And you've been retired for 17 years. Yeah. Right? Um, so and and I know I've I've made the analogy of boomers flooding the hospitals at birth. Right. And you know, babies in the hallways, and you know, 1946, how many, how many millions of babies were born? And now they're flooding the hospitals again. And they want to see their doctor today. By the way, you in my facility, you can't see a doctor today.

SPEAKER_09 40:51

Well, and and in the old time.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Let me just finish here. If you call up, call me up today and need an appointment today, odds are our first available is three or four weeks from now.

SPEAKER_08 41:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

For an MD, definitely.

SPEAKER_08 41:06

And and the the the old-timey radio that I do enjoy, um, and not all of it, but I do like listening to it during the day. From time to time, you find these commercials from World War II and shortly thereafter, where it was, we need teachers real bad. We'll pay you to go to school. We need nurses so desperately. You should consider becoming a nurse. It's the patriotic thing to do, and it's a good living. But there was a crash program to train engineers, to train teachers, to train doctors and medics. This country was on a war footing and a post-war footing where they were willing to spend the money to put those people through school to serve a growing population.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

And this was the intersection because there was a shortage of women in the workforce. Yes. Because they were all nursing babies. Yeah. So you had this cohort of, you know, the pool of people you could draw from to become teachers and nurses shrank dramatically because they were home with preschoolers.

SPEAKER_08 42:10

Well, and I I gotta ask you, Blue, who could possibly argue against this? Is there is there some other part of the spectrum, political spectrum, where um people are looking at this stuff and looking askance at this stuff?

SPEAKER_02 42:23

As a matter of fact, Drift Glass, I think there are this genre of bad advice for Democrats political fiction being pumped out by the corporate media is is in a boom right now, Drift Glass.

SPEAKER_08 42:33

It's boom times for for people, bad faith people telling Democrats what they should do.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

It's the I love your analysis of the your analogy of the Russian oligarchs coming in and telling everybody we run the place.

SPEAKER_05 42:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

And it it's like, oh, we're gonna tell the Democrats what they're doing wrong. And who was it on the on Blue Sky who said there is no equivalent of this on the left? Oh, yeah. Let's let's go in and tell Republicans.

SPEAKER_08 42:58

Many, many people. I I I jotted a quote from one of them down here, but a joke quote. But there are, I mean, God bless the people on social media sometimes who are picking up on this. Like, where the hell are the Democrats telling Republicans? Oh, we're well, there's us, but we're not allowed anywhere near the op-ed page of the Atlantic or the op-ed page of the New York Times, who who are flooding the zone with all these establishment garbage. For example, I have jotted down here. There is David Brooks' brand concern trolling. Surprise, surprise, uh, since he now writes this claptrap for the Atlantic. Uh quote, to encourage my Democratic friends.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

First of all.

SPEAKER_08 43:41

That's when you put your hands on your wallet and go, What?

SPEAKER_01 43:44

What? To encourage my Democratic friends.

SPEAKER_08 43:47

I would remind them of this fact, which is obviously not a fact. The Democratic Party became great not while pushing against the right. Not while fighting fascism. Hell no. It became great while pushing against. Against the left. Democrats can argue against Republicans in their sleep, and we do because of people like you, David Brooks. They have a comfortable set of moves they can go to. Trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the rich. Yes, it's not it's because it's all true. But mainstream Democrats have to think hard when arguing against the left. They have to toughen up. They have to clearly define what they believe and what they do not believe. They have to rally grassroots supports. You mean like like Bernie Sanders? Um, willing to fight alongside them against healthcare and affordable. They have to come up with some new agenda. Yeah, come up with some new agenda to compete with the get everything for free agenda the left is now offering. Oh, except of course unquote. It's not get everything for free, it's tax the billionaires to pay for the shit that we should have had.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Billionaires send me on billionaire cruises where I have fun.

SPEAKER_08 44:56

Yeah. Anyway, that's David Brooks.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

All right. Then there is the damning with faint praise variety from Jonathan Shay, who guess where he writes, Driftglass? He writes for the Atlantic.

SPEAKER_08 45:07

Also, also to the Atlantic.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

And he has advice for Democrats, too. Although the Democratic Socialists of America's platform is indeed chock full of maniacal proposals. On this particular idea, abolishing the Senate, the maniacs have a point.

SPEAKER_08 45:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

You see what's all snuck in there?

SPEAKER_08 45:28

Yeah, your your wife is a whore, Jonathan Shake, but she's a very nice whore who takes care of puppies on the weekend.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

The Senate is a vestigial deformity upon the Constitution, whose elimination, unlikely though it might be, would rank among the great democratic advances in American history. Unquote. Now, Chate is apparently the Atlantic's in-house pedant on the subject. His column from July 15th is entitled, You Don't Need to Vote for Socialists to Get Universal Health Care. And from July 1st, there's nothing democratic about these socialists.

SPEAKER_08 46:08

He's got what we call a bugaboo.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

He's got a bugaboo. He does.

SPEAKER_08 46:11

Then we jump from damning with faint praise to just straight up damning from an ass clown neocon named James Kirchek, who was described on Blue Sky in a mile-long takedown thread of his article as quote, making his bones as Marty Perez's personal anti-Arab war on terror scribe, then moving on to humiliating himself with the nobody wants to date me because I'm a gay Republican shtick during Obama. And we know this will shock you, but he too writes for, you guessed it, The Atlantic. This is his headline from July 21st. Quote, the DSA is a parasite. The left-wing faction is hijacking the Democratic Party, unquote. Now, the original headline, which was the DSA is only using the Democratic Party, you know, to get to us, was apparently not incendiary enough. So the the Atlantic swapped it for the DSA is a parasite, which is straight up fascist framing.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Yeah. Uh look, I'm not going to agree with the method or necessarily the uh entire agenda of the DSA. I'm not sure I know everything about it.

SPEAKER_09 47:22

No.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

What I see is a bunch of excited, young progressives having fun with a positive message that reflects their values.

SPEAKER_09 47:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

And I am along for the ride on that because I'm 62. Exactly. Exactly. And I'm not the center of it. And people who want to be the center of decision making, it's it's time to start listening to some Cat Stevens music about the young people taking over.

SPEAKER_08 47:58

Well, and and this uh you know the the the article I quoted, the open letters from Merceau article I quote from said it at internally the the debate they're having is is the Democratic Party the proper vehicle for for doing this? Can it be fixed, can it be repaired, or is the Democratic Party doing exactly what it's designed to do and is it is hopelessly broken, needs to be scrapped completely?

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Now that is good questions, but but that but then we're talking about two different things, and this is where it's important to define your terms the Democratic Party as an institution that raises money for Democratic candidates, that has a headquarters in Washington, D.C., that uh, you know, it has spokespeople like Hakeem Jeffries, you know, for good or bad, uh, you know, that's represented by the Nancy Pelosi wing of the of the House Democrats, etc. Institutional Democrats who have power in Washington. They can all is that the Democratic Party? No. Or is it uh, you know, a bunch of old women stuffing envelopes and putting stamps on postcards to voters? Is that the Democratic Party?

SPEAKER_08 49:07

Is it no the Democratic Party, well, yes, and the Democratic Party, that the the the most reliable constituents, the most loyal constituents of the Democratic Party are black people, specifically African American women. I mean, that's the most dedicated and the most focused and the most active group, and and I'm willing to follow their lead wherever they want to go.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Yeah. Well, and and that's another question about the DSA and their and their leadership because we know progressive movements have excluded women, have excluded black women. The women's movement started when the peace movement wound up being a bunch of guys wanting the girls to make coffee.

SPEAKER_08 49:48

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

And so, you know, enough of that.

SPEAKER_08 49:52

And and you know what? Not every struggle is a class struggle.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

No, you know I understand that, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 49:57

But I do understand that there's a lot of sense at this moment in history in talking about organizing around workers.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 50:06

Because that's something that all of the people you want to reach have in common. They they all have a similar struggle, they all feel similarly pinched, they all have to be a chance.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

And particularly when you're dealing with time, that is of particular value to women.

SPEAKER_09 50:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

Who have families and obligations and so forth. Anyway, uh, then there is this drift glass from the ever-reliable New York fucking times from June 26th. Centrist Democrats rebuke parties left wing.

SPEAKER_08 50:36

Oh no. We've been rebuked. Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

We are capitalists, not socialist. Following high-profile primary victories by Democratic socialists, some moderate Democrats are advocating a different course, highlighting tensions in the party. Oh no.

unknown 50:53

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 50:54

Also, Biden is old.

SPEAKER_08 50:56

He's old. And Kamala Harris has a funny laugh.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

There's this also, I mean, why not? Fox News. Let's listen to Fox News for a minute.

SPEAKER_08 51:06

They always have good advice for us, Blue Gate.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

No, yeah, advice for Democrats from Fox News. July 5th, quote, Josh Shapiro warns Democrats face battle over what we believe in after socialists upset primary victories, unquote.

SPEAKER_08 51:23

Now, if you prefer to get your establishment handwriting in audio form, this very week you could have gone over to the PodSave Lads to find out about the Democratic Civil War. And then you could have gone over to their code and joined podcast twins and fellow MSNBC or MS Now employees at the Bulwark to listen to Joe fucking Scarborough masturbating himself blind over the memory of Ronald Reagan. These are Did Joe Scarborough do an entire episode of I didn't I didn't listen to the last minute, but he was prominently featured in the notes and he and he wanted to talk. And I just I'd like, I'm out. What? I'm out. I'm fucking because they're all MS Now employees.

SPEAKER_04 52:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 52:10

The Pod Save lads have their own show on the weekend now.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 52:13

And there is no hour that goes by during prime time when someone from the bullet work isn't on there with their friend Nicole Wallace or vice versa. It's all one thing now, it's all one entity now. And Joe Scarborough occupies three or four hours of that thing.

SPEAKER_05 52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 52:28

And so he's gonna get on there and say what he has to say about Reagan and how it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Ronald Reagan? How great Ronald Reagan was. Because we need we need to start the rebranding folks back to the Gipper.

SPEAKER_08 52:39

And and seeing as how David Brooks has been my beat personally for over 21 years now, I had planned on doing my bit for King and Country by writing a vivisection.

SPEAKER_07 52:50

No Kings.

SPEAKER_08 52:51

No Kings of Queens and Country. How's that? Um vivisecting his ludicrous alternate history that Brooks was pedaling in the Atlantic. But you know what? Kevin Cruz beat me to it.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

Dang it. I hate it when that happens.

SPEAKER_08 53:07

And then he in turn cited Jamal Bowie of the New York Times in his post. This is from Campaign Trails, excuse me, July 6th. Quote: As the New York Times columnist James Jamel Bowie noted in a post on Blue Sky, Brooks predictably has the political history completely backwards. This is the complete opposite of true, which is, you know, his brand. He noted, the most fruitful eras of the modern Democratic Party coincided with periods where the walls separating political radicals from the mainstream were way less solid. And that's exactly right. As Bowie suggested in a follow-up, the New Deal era, the high watermark for Democrats when it comes to both popularity at the polls and achievements in office, was one in which communist, socialists, and other assorted radicals had considerable influence. Some of the New Deal's biggest achievements were directly modeled on programs that had been pushed and promoted and even proven in practice by socialists, farm laborites, and progressive political figures in the decades before the New Deal. And during the Depression itself, radicals helped set the stage for major programs like Social Security by pushing the political conversation left in significant ways and bringing in, note this part, bringing in new constituencies that demanded action. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

Jeet here in the nation on June 26th notes that, quote, some centrists would rather have Trump triumph than forge an alliance with the left in 2026.

SPEAKER_06 54:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

Establishment Democrats are not responding to these defeats by DSA candidates with anything resembling grace or equanimity. How about just survival?

SPEAKER_09 54:58

Yeah. Nope.

unknown 54:59

Nope.

SPEAKER_09 55:00

Nope. Nope.

SPEAKER_02 55:01

In fact, they are freaking out, sometimes even openly threatening to tear the party apart rather than work in a big tent that includes a robust wing of democratic socialists. In effect, no one under 30 is allowed in our party. Under 50.

SPEAKER_08 55:18

Yeah, you must be this old to ride this ride.

SPEAKER_02 55:20

Yeah, James Carville. In effect, these establishment Democrats are threatening to hold a party hostage, saying that if the left isn't stopped, these are Democrats.

SPEAKER_08 55:32

I know. These are Democrats who told these same people you gotta work within the party, or we won't listen to you. Now they're working within the party.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

And we need your energy.

SPEAKER_08 55:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

Fuck you.

SPEAKER_08 55:41

No, that that's vampire talk.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

Saying that if the left isn't stopped, they prefer either to sit out the election or to expel the left.

SPEAKER_08 55:52

Good luck.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

With what penis?

SPEAKER_08 55:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

Unquote. I'm I I added that last part. Seriously, expel the left from the Democratic Party. Who the fuck are you talking to?

SPEAKER_08 56:05

Yeah, yeah. Fuck off. Honestly, I have the same um attitude about these people that I have about our never Trumpers telling us how to run the fucking party. It's like, yeah, who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are you? You're the people who lost your own goddamn party. You're the people who were blind. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Your whole history proves you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

Who are you to give advice? I suspect your motives. Yeah. I think you like your tax cuts is the problem.

SPEAKER_08 56:33

Well, yeah. And who are you to give advice to anyone but for the fact that you have friends in the legacy media who will give you a monstrous spotlight and megaphone to shout your opinions?

SPEAKER_03 56:45

Yeah, yeah. Politicon. They're gonna be on politic at Politicon 2027.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

All right. On Blue Sky, Ryan Cooper made this killer offer to the Atlantic. And he put a prayer on it.

SPEAKER_05 57:00

He did. He sure did.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

Quote, I will read the next reactionary pretends to give honest advice to Democrats. Take if you let me write a piece where I, as a Democratic Socialist of America member, pretend to give honest advice to Republicans.

SPEAKER_08 57:20

Hell yeah. I think all of us would take that offer.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

I think we all would. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 57:25

Yeah. However, the case. I got a lot of advice for Republicans. They have never listened to me. I I there are local Republicans here who many years ago, um, I I I explained to them what was wrong with their party. And I I proposed them a question, which was, what if you're wrong?

SPEAKER_05 57:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 57:45

What if it's not both sides? What's your fallback position if in fact you're wrong? And there was never an answer they could give me that made any coherent sense because it couldn't, it didn't occur to them that they might be the problem. That's how deep, you know, sunk into this they were. But honestly, the clearest and most succinct summary of why listening to establishment hacks and Republican concern trolls is a very bad idea comes from the How Things Work blog in a post entitled, Don't Take Advice from Your Enemies. Period, full stop. Yeah. So in addition to the poison chalice being offered by David Brooks, the author of this blog post, Hamilton Nolan, cites similar glib nonsense coming from all the usual suspects. Brett Stevens, George Will, Kimberly Strassel, and if you can believe it, Carl fucking Rove.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

The average age of these four people 117.

SPEAKER_08 58:38

And you know, and and their souls are ancient and dark and rotten. Um, quote, writing about politics is fine. Writing about what your politic political enemies are doing is fine. What is stupid, farcical, at best a trap, and at worst a sign of a devastating collapse in American logic is to purport to give political advice to your political enemies. It is one thing for a Republican pundit to write, I dislike socialism. It is another, more ridiculous thing for a Republican pundit to write, Democrats must reject socialism for their own good. It's a very long article and I highly recommend it. Imagine me pretending to strike a pose, the pose of analytical observer, whose guidance should be considered valid because it is purely strategic in nature. Why the fuck would I do that? And why would they ever believe me? And if I ever have a useful idea to empower Republicans, why would I ever share it? I might as well write a burglar's guide to breaking into my home while I'm out of town this weekend. The very act of writing such a piece would reveal me to be either an undercover cop or a moron. This is exactly what you're getting when you read a piece by David Brooks or Brett Stevens or any Wall Street journalist columnist about what the Democrats should do, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 59:57

It's a very special kind of masturbation, is what it is.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:00

It really is. Well, it it really does get back to what you were saying. I I wrote this a long time ago about the Russian aristocrats.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:07

Who who got thrown out of their own country and showed up on our shores, or in this case the shores of Britain and Europe, etc., and just demanded people serve them as if they were still czarist royalty.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:17

Because, you know, where's where's where's that? And they were in they were in rags. They had nothing. But they insisted that everyone, that everyone was a servant and their needs needed to be met first. And they couldn't understand a world where that wasn't true, which is exactly what these people are going through.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:32

Yep. I think that's a great note on which to stop. Don't take advice from your enemies.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:37

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

And why are your enemies advi advising you anyway? What what do they have to offer? It's crazy.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:43

Why would you trust these people?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

Yep. It's time for a news roundup, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:47

Just a brief one. Hit me, blue gal.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

From Politico. Politico? Politico? July 22nd. Quote: The Trump administration ignored warnings from career staff at the Commerce Department. Oh no. Oh no.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:00

I'm sure it went well.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

When it granted the United Arab Emirates sweeping access to advanced American semiconductors and other technology, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security announced on July 10th that it was loosening restrictions on sensitive tech experts to the UAE, a key ally in the war in the Middle East, whose leaders pledged last year to invest more than $1 trillion in the U.S. over the coming decade. According to one of the people familiar and two former officials, the announcement surprised staff inside the agency, which is tasked with securing American tech from adversaries and criminals. It also ran directly against recommendations staffers submitted to senior Trump administration officials at the department last year, unquote. You know why this is the experts' drift glance? These people gave us money. Yeah, or people who were like, no, but he gave us he gave Jared money.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:02

I got money, so give them whatever they want. Right. This is from, and this next article is the consequences of a little bit of this kind of diplomacy. From Business Insider July 22nd, quote, it was only a few weeks ago that markets considered the worst-case scenario for oil to be off the table. The U.S. and Iran had reached a preliminary peace agreement. Oil prices, the key flashpoint of the Iran war, were falling rapidly. All seemed to be going well. That's no longer the case, energy forecasters say, with crude prices surging again as fighting in the Middle East resumes and confidence has broken down over the resolution between the U.S. and Iran. Now energy markets are looking at the same dire outcome they saw earlier this year, a supply shortage that could send prices spiraling higher, weighing on businesses and the economy. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

From CNN, July 22nd, quote, Arizona Republicans nominated three 2020 election deniers for statewide offices that would be responsible for overseeing and certifying the 2028 presidential election. Trump-backed Representative Andy Biggs, who voted against certifying Biden's victory, won the nomination for governor. I want, I really want to be a fly on the wall at this convention, too, because it's it's just all about what Trump wants at this point. Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:24

That's all it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:25

Alexander Colladin, who filed lawsuits challenging the 2020 and 2022 results, and was disciplined by the state bar, won the nomination for Secretary of State. And Warren Peterson, who launched a taxpayer-funded review that ultimately confirmed Biden won Maricopa County.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:51

Oopsie.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

And I gotta say, that was the tilting point for a lot of Arizonians.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

My taxpayer dollars spent how much? And you didn't find fraud, and you found Biden won.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:04

Well, and don't forget, on Tuesday, we talked about the Cyber Ninjas. Yes, and how they they sopped up all that Republican campaign money and left them with nothing to run on in the next election. Except an embarrassment that they had spent all that money and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:17

And they lost, and I hope they lose again big time. Uh so uh he the guy who confirmed Biden won Maricopa County with taxpayer dollars uh won the nomination for attorney general of Arizona. A guy who'd already been disciplined by the state bar. Uh the current Democratic governor Katie Hobbs warned that if Biggs wins, Arizona would become the first swing state with an election denier in charge heading into 2028.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:46

Very shameful.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

God bless Arizona. Vote Democrat.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:50

We're moving on to Bloomberg from July 22nd. Quote, House Republicans passed a $1.15 trillion defense policy bill and advanced a separate $95 billion budget plan to pay for Trump's unauthorized war in Iran. The Senate, however, is unlikely to pass either measure in its current form. The defense bill would attach Trump's Save America Act, including a new proof of citizenship requirement for federal voting, and renames the Pentagon the Department of War. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

From the Associated Press, July 22nd, quote, Trump threatened to bomb and destroy one bridge or power plant. That's a war crime for every ship Iran attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, including infrastructure in or near Tehran. Iran's foreign minister responded that its doctrine is an eye for an eye, warning that any strike on Iranian infrastructure would bring a powerful and decisive response, while Iranian Iran's military, excuse me, said it would target oil, gas, electricity, and other economic infrastructure across the region and prevent even a single drop of oil from being exported. Iran's parliament speaker said. The strait will not return to its pre-war status, adding in a region where we cannot sell oil, no one will sell oil. Unquote.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:10

Somebody has seen Dune.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:12

You know, the power to destroy a thing is absolute control over it. And that's what Trump gave them.

unknown 1:06:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:19

Absolute control over this vital international resource. Uh from the Washington Post, July 21st, quote, the U.S. has reported 2,295 measles cases so far in 2026, the most in 35 years, and already more than all of last year, with five months remaining in this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:39

Only there was a vaccine against measles.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

From Politico July 22nd, quote, 37% of self-identified MAGA voters say the Iran war is worth its economic costs. That's down 13 points since May.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:58

That means Fox News isn't doing their job, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:01

Well, you know, they're not lying hard enough, Blue Gal. Yeah, yeah. Finally. And finally, what can we say about this July 21st story from USA Today? Quote, state health officials have confirmed 30 new explosive diarrhea cases in Texas within a week as concern continues to grow. The Texas Department of State Health Services told USA Today that there are 98 lab-confirmed domestically acquired cases of cyclosporasis in the state.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

Sporiasis, I think.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:28

Cyclosporiasis. Thank you, bluegill. In the state as of July 20th. Thousands have been sickened by this parasite across the country. Unquote. What can we say about this except our stock in our longtime fake sponsor? Technically, it's a salad, has gone up faster than the price of a barrel of oil. Ingredients you do not want to know, but we do guarantee you this none of them will make you poop nonstop for a week.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:52

100% lettuce-free salad is our goal.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:55

Yeah. Yeah. Because technically, it's a salad.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

Technically, it's a salad. Each week we post to our Patreon page and website at internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. This week's internet kitty is Bucket. In this picture, Bucket is sitting on the lap of a man typing because Bucket is an author and editor, and Bucket's Human helps Bucket by typing all the great words. Bucket is willing to use the human as a collaborator. And even allow the human to put his name on the book.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:28

Oh, that's real sweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

Isn't that nice? That's very nice of him. Bucket's latest book, which actually looks pretty cool, is called Futura. And the name on the uh front front of the book is Michael Laser, uh, who is the author. Uh technically, it's an author.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

But you know, we know Bucket had everything to do with this book. Uh this Futura book is a young adult dystopian fiction about a future fascist America. Huh? Very writerly of you, uh, Bucket. Uh, there is a link to the humans book page in our show notes. Futura is the name of the book, and of course, Bucket, the author and editor, let's just face it, eats freshly poured cat food. Our fake sponsor, whether you serve Pet Store Perfection or Dollar Store Dreck, your cat will sit on your lap, correct both your typos and your grammar, and demand that the food they eat is only freshly poured. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

That's the flavor they adore. One small scoop and heart's a sore. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:42

And you can visit Bucket. Don't even start talking about character development. Bucket has no time for amateurs. This is not Gotham Writers Workshop, okay? But you can visit Bucket at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash proleftpod, or our website, prolefpod.com. And you can send your internet kitty, dog, 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.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:24

And don't forget we have a gourmet coffee guideline. If you can afford an espresso-based beverage for yourself, hot or cold, buy one for us at patreon.com forward slash proleft pot. This is not a charity. This is our job that we do every week with your help and support. You can also help us by continuing to grow by sharing our show on social media. That works really well. If you love this podcast, introduce it to a friend. They may love it too. And thank you so much for helping us spread the word.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:51

Hey Drift Class, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_08 1:10:54

Well, Blue Gal, by an amazing coincidence, the Internet Kiddies are working on their own future dystopian novel. The working title is Apocalypse, The Day the Treats Ran Out. And it is in fact part of the Left Behind series.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:32

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