(upbeat music) - Okay, that was a clean one. Okay, hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender edition of the Great Podcast. (upbeat music) - How you doing Nick Allison? - I'm doing pretty well, JJ Sexton. - I appreciate that, let's not make this a habit. - Okay, that's too much of a mouthful. - It's too much of a mouthful. Again, not that I don't like the melodic tones of my name bouncing around on a podcast, but how you doing, pal? - You know, I'm doing okay. I think there might be a little bit of a, the anxiety might be a little bit lower today perhaps, like some things maybe aren't bothering me as much as they would normally do politically and then lifewise. So yeah, maybe there's something going on. Summer, summer's here, the time is right. - I love summertime. Summertime's a great season, although it's hot. It's real, real hot. I know that's not news, but it's hot. - It is hot and I like hot though. - I like hot too, I do well and hot. Maybe for the Weekender we should introduce an anxiety meter. - Yeah. - For people who might not know this, but back in the day for the Chicago Cubs, they have this shortstop named Sean Dunston, who didn't hit that well, and they had a Seano meter in the stands. They would show where his batting average was, usually not on the right side of the ledger. Maybe we need an anxiety meter. - Well, this is the Weekender. I have a Sean Dunson story I could add to this. Should I do it now? - Make it brief, but I want to hear this Sean Dunston. - All right, here's the briefest version. So which is the first score? - There's literally five people listening to this. - Okay, we'll get through it. We used to go to a spring break, spring break, spring training in Mesa, Arizona for the Cubs. I grew up right down the street from Ridley Field. And so we'd go to Arizona for a few of those years. And I remember, you know, Jay Baller, who's another one, I think Baller maybe his name was, was a pitcher and he was pitching in the, to Sean Dunston, in the batting cage thing. Back, you know, they don't have machines throwing the ball. They have pitchers sometimes. So I think I even call on like, like striking out Jay. Like I was kind of all excited, 'cause I knew who Jay wasn't. I wanted to get into some encouragement, but then Sean Dunston turns and glared at me. 'Cause he's like, what the hell are you doing? And I'm like, oh, hit a homer, Sean. So I will never forget that as a lapsed Cubs fan and someone who's had to endure quite a bit of cubbery. - Sean Dunston owns so much real estate in my mind, not just because of the Seano meter, but also just like the wild way that he played shortstop. So it's, when I'm passing from this mortal coil, I will think a lot about people like Sean Dunston in a way that probably is unexpected. - Yeah, well, the Duke had thrown from deep short and had a cannon. - Had an absolute cannon. By the way, there's no way for me to artfully segue from that. Hey, everybody, next week, actually a week from the day that we're recording this, we're recording this on Thursday, June 20th, next Thursday, June 27th. We are supposed to have a presidential debate between Joseph, Robinette Biden, and Donald John Trump. I have my doubts about whether or not this thing is going to take place. Nick thinks it will. I'm about 50/50 coin flipping it. Here's the thing, everybody. If there is a presidential debate next week, Thursday, the 27th of June, we will be covering it immediately live after that debate. We will be taping the weekender. That means patrons can come and hang out with us, see our immediate reaction. I promise you'll be better than what's on the news. All you gotta do is go to patreon.com/monkrakepodcast. Nick, this is basically the early, early kickoff of Maine presidential campaign season. That's what we're looking at now. That means that we're going to be doing our job in the way that only this podcast can do. I think that I would put our coverage of the presidential campaigns against anybody else, including our prognostication and analysis. Before we get into the week that is supposed to kick this thing off, if Donald Trump comes through, I wanted to take a chance to sort of take the temperature, the anxiety meters we've been talking about. We got this email from a listener named Hayden. Of course, we did a mailbag last week. This came in a little bit late, but I wanted to go ahead and start this episode off with it. And I think this is a good prompt for everything that we have to talk about today. Hayden says, I miss the mailbag when I do wonder what you all think of something I'm seeing a lot online and amongst progressive/leftist friends. Many people are saying they're not going to vote Democrat again because of the genocide and Biden support of Israel. They also talk about how material conditions have not got better for the average person, despite a lot of bragging by the Biden campaign. What do you think when people are saying things like, we have to let this country and democracy fall to pieces in order to rebuild it? Because I don't disagree with the problems they're voicing, but also the process of everything going to hell and needing to be rebuilt sounds like a death sentence for many of us. I feel like we really may get more years of Trump and maybe there's no coming back from that. So Nick, I certainly have thoughts about this. I wanna hear yours. Let's talk a little bit about Hayden's question, 'cause I think it's really important, particularly where we are in this process and also how we're feeling about this campaign as we're heading into the main thrust of the season. - I mean, sure, you can ask Susan Sarandon what she thinks about this 'cause that's why she was basically one, like almost support Trump because she felt like we needed to have this complete wipe out of the system and rebuild it. But the length of time it would take to do that means so much suffering in the meantime. And not only that's fair to anybody, much less people who might not live much longer than they could take 25 years to see some sort of rebuilding of the country, which is why, in my mind, the tearing down thing just isn't realistic. And it's time to, in that progressive way, begin to enact legislation and policies that will move us closer and closer to what would be better versions of all different systems that we have in place. That seems to be the most pragmatic way to do it. What do you think? - Well, so that type of philosophy in a lot of circles is called accelerationism. The idea is that we have a situation that is really, really bad. There aren't a lot of solutions that are in place, particularly with the way that our system and the status quo looks. As a result, some people do believe the best thing possible would to get someone like a Donald Trump and authoritarian to power in order to crystallize the problem. I think there's some problems with that idea. First and foremost being that there are so many vulnerable people in this country who are going to be absolutely crushed. If Donald Trump becomes president, if Project 2025 comes into fruition, if the neoliberal authoritarian agenda like goes into full force. On top of that, you better be careful what you wish for because if you plunge into an authoritarian dystopia, it's really hard to get out of them, particularly as the trajectory of Americans sort of political philosophy moves further and further right. What I say is this. I have a lot of people of color that I am fond of. I have a lot of women and young women that I am fond of. I have a lot of gay and trans people that I am fond of. I have a lot of immigrants that I am fond of. I do not think it is a good idea to play games with their well-being, particularly in red states that are gaining a lot of, we'll talk in a second about what's going on in Louisiana. They have just become laboratories of authoritarianism. I do not want to give power to these people. I understand the mindset. Like a lot of them are rebelling against the liberal or sort of moderate idea that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party will save us. I've been a loud critic of that idea. I believe that we have a duopoly that is largely run by a neoliberal consensus that needs to be broken. I personally would rather organize against a Joe Biden second term. I would rather be in an, like the idea that just because the Democrat is in power, people are going to suddenly say everything's okay. We've seen a lot of people do that, but the dissatisfaction with Biden, the dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, what I'm seeing is a lot of people are starting to understand that the Democratic Party, like every other politician, every other party, is not a savior, right? That something has to change and things are going to start moving. Where I'm at is I think that Donald Trump, and again, he is a symptom of a larger problem, him being in power again, creates such a noxious poisonous environment that again, I am planning on voting for Joe Biden. I'm going to take a long, I just got a new shower head. Let me tell you Nick, the pressure on that thing is very, very strong. I'm going to camp out underneath of it. I'm going to wake up the next day and I'm going to get back to the hard work, the hard necessary work. That's how I look at it. How do you feel about the election right now where we are before this debate? - Well, I have a counterpoint to what you said, and I think to what I said, because I've often thought about, when Martin Luther King was marching for civil rights in the '60s, there was this notion of, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you gotta take your time, these things don't happen overnight, we gotta slowly get there. And in my mind, why would people of color have to wait? Why would we have to get up 10 years of people still being oppressed for all the time to finally get civil rights to moving, right? So there is this notion that there are certain aspects of our society that need to be changed right away. And I guess the question that is, it's not necessarily tearing it down to then get to where we need to go. So that's the interesting balance on that one. So I was just sort of thinking on those terms, because I don't want it to come off where I'm a guy who's always saying, whoa, whoa, we got everything's gotta go slowly and everyone's gotta get enough people on board and that kind of thing. So that's the big difference there. But again, if we're talking strictly about the way the government functions, that's another, I guess that's the separates, the difference there, which is why you gotta figure out a way to not, like when the Republicans wanna get rid of Obamacare, they have nothing to replace it. So now you're gonna have people dying until somehow someone wakes up one morning and goes, oh shit, we don't have any way to help people. So that kind of just addresses that. You did have a question for me though, about the election. Yeah, how do you feel about the state of play right now, where we are in this campaign? - That's another interesting question. And I think everyone's sort of bringing their hands. I think, you know, I would be lying to you if I told you that Trump doesn't seem to be favored right now. That seems like he's got some version of wind behind his sails. But I also sort of feel like we tend to forget that it's a vociferous and loud minority that seems bigger than it is. And certainly we're not gonna get the true numbers about, you know, rally size and all that stuff from them anyway. So I'm choosing to sort of just be pragmatic and remember that, you know, with women's rights being on the ballot as much as anything else, there's gonna be a big turning out of people like we saw in 2020. So that's what I'm focusing on. That's what I'm trying to keep myself convinced of. - The polls lately in the fallout of Trump's conviction have moved things around a little bit. If I had to put a number on it and, you know, listen, take this with a grain of salt, I would say it's a coin flip election right now, which says more about the health of this country than it does anything else. But if I had to put an actual number on it, I would say Biden 53, Donald Trump 47. That's where I would say things are right now. But again, I mean, listen, we lived through 2016. We saw like how weird of a campaign season it is. We have a president who is older, who definitely makes missteps. I mean, listen, Nick, we're not even gonna cover it on today's show, but Benjamin Netanyahu basically was like, "Thanks for all the weapons and the money. "Now I'm gonna stab you between the ribs." I mean, like things are weird and they get weird all the time. Things are changing so quickly. I don't know where this thing is going. If there is a debate that gets held next week, I certainly and a lot of other analysts are going to be watching it, trying to get a sense of what this race is going to look like outside of the madness that has already played out. But yeah, I definitely, I don't feel good about this election. I'll just play that. - And the polling really doesn't matter because we're talking about the 30,000 people in three states, or 50,000 people who decide this thing. - We don't know. - You've been listening to the free part of this episode. If you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation, head over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content, including Discord server and live shows. We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try. We know you'll love it and come back for more. (dramatic music) (dramatic music)
