Title

Video URL

Length

Seconds

Transcript
Welcome to the Dangerous Ones. I'm your host, Jim Drastic of 11 Films. And as always, I'm joined by Tiffany Drastic, also of 11 Films, and executive director of Demcast USA, Nick Canudson. Joining us in studio for this very special conversation is an Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and director. He's helped create such iconic shows as 30-something and one of our favorites, My Soul-Called Life, which featured a young Claire Danes and Jared Leo. In 1996, he directed Dangerous Beauty, which became a kind of a cult film for women, and he produced the critically acclaimed film Traffic that went on to win four Academy Awards. In 2020, he teamed up with fellow writers Greg Herurwitz and Billy Ray, who was recently on this program, among others, to produce over 150 political ads to help the Democrats defeat Donald Trump. And as we all know, it worked. But Trump is back, and the America we love seems to be slipping away. So, we couldn't think of anybody better to have for this important conversation other than our friend Marshall Herskovitz. Welcome, Marshall. Hey guys, how are you? I am great. I'm so happy to be here and I'm so impressed by your studio. Thank you. Thank you. I wish I could take that camera and turn it around. Show what you've created here. Thank you. Most people when they walk in, they go, "Wow, it's a lot bigger than it looks like." You know, which is great. You're our third in studio guest and we're going to make you sign the wall before you leave. So, I'm already figuring out what I'm doing. Okay. In full disclosure, during 2020, 11 Films, Tiff and I worked with you uh and others on some of those videos. You guys wrote and produced them. We just helped turn some of the knobs. Uh and Demcast, uh Nick Newton at Damcast over there helped amplify those videos on social media. Real quick, let's start off. Why did you get involved in the 2020 effort to defeat Donald Trump? Oh, for heaven's sake. Why Why here's here's the thing. Donald Trump has been a roar shock test from the minute he appeared on the scene. Even back in the in the 1880s in the United States, feels like it. But certainly from 2015, some of us looked at that guy and said, "Oh my god, this is a con man. He's out of his mind. He wants to be a dictator." And other people said, "Oh, look, he's so refreshing. You know, he says what's on his mind." And it's inconceivable to me that there is this gulf of perception about this man, but look, I know Billy talks about how he basically couldn't get out of bed for 3 weeks after the election in 2016. We were all horrified. Yeah. And it's and we just said, "What can we do?" And a bunch of us went to Washington. Bunch of us writers, part of the writer's guild, went to Washington and said, "How can we help?" And I have to tell you, and this is 2017, Gregurwitz and I and a couple other people sat with all of the Democratic senators and talked to them for an hour and I turned to Greg at one point and I said, I whispered, "We are so fucked." I'm not surprised. Yeah. They didn't know anything. They knew nothing about messaging. And it all became clear to me that this wasn't about, oh, can we help you do a speech here and there? This was about creating an entire messaging apparatus for the Democratic party, which by the way, we were not able to do because they were not open to it. Yeah. And their donors were not open to it and they're still not open to it now. And it's a huge [ __ ] problem as now you know as you know there's a there's a 10 to one at least a 10 to1 advantage for the right over the left in ter of messaging. So we saw it even then. Yeah. So it was like do what you can. Yeah. So this is what we could do is we could make commercials and we could do messaging and Billy and Greg got very involved with lawmakers telling them you know talking points things like that. For me, it was mostly about the film making part of it. And you guys have way sold yourself short. You you guys are so brilliant. And that first video of yours I saw, you know, with Adam Schiff. Oh, yeah. Talking Oh. Midnight in Washington. It's like you got you were the go-to guys and we were so thrilled that you would work with us. It was a it was it was an exciting time. We were very very Oh man, we were so excited to work with you guys. Uh, and and the great news was it worked, right? And obviously we weren't alone. There was a lot of other other groups out there, but it worked. Real quick before we move on with the conversation, why didn't it work in 2024? Oh my god, this is a very very complicated. Sure. We can take the whole time talking about that. I think we had a lot of problems. I think I think we had a problem with Biden and a problem with Harris. Let's be honest, okay? And by the way, I like Terrace a lot, but it became clear. I have my own theory about this and I'm just going to say it. I might be wrong, okay? She's very smart. Okay, she knows her stuff. I believe she was just terminally afraid of taking chances and so therefore would not put herself in a situation where she could stumble, make a mistake, lose her way, that sort of thing, and then have it replayed a thousand times on right-wing media. But I think that killed her. I mean, sticking to the same script for six months was death, you know. Um, so and also she needed to separate herself from Biden. And you know, to her credit, she was, you know, she was loyal to him, but I think it was a mistake. I think when if you're really saying that democracy is at stake, it doesn't matter if you're loyal to Biden. Going back and if you reflect on your formative years, how did growing up in the shadow of World War II uh shape your understanding of the importance of standing up for what's right and making sacrifices? And considering that, do you feel that America has lost some of that daily challenge since 1945? Oh my god. Yeah. First of all, it's very weird to be the old person in the room. I was born in 1952. So I I wasn't around for World War II, but my entire world was entirely based on World War II. Everything Everything on television, everything people talked about the Holocaust, it was all about World War II. I was just thinking about this just today, Trump's attack on the legal system in America, his attack on these law firms. What are we seeing? We're seeing these law firms capitulate instead of banding together. And you and I, you guys and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago about the idea of community, right? And I was saying community is not just your neighborhood where you live. There's a larger sense of community where we can help each other and take care of each other. the fact that there's no sense of community among in the legal profession in America where in fact many of these firms were already trying to grab the clients of the ones Trump was going after instead of standing with them and saying you know what you're not going to destroy the legal system in America is the thing that we've lost. Yeah. Okay. And you can multiply that by 10,000 when you look across the culture right now. So, you know, the the culprit here is this word that people either don't know or don't know what it means, neoliberalism. That's really at the base of this. Okay. Now, really quick, yeah, I'm going to I'm going to be honest with the audience. I wasn't entirely sure of what that word meant. I understand. I wanted to make sure because I didn't want to come off wrong. And it's and it's a bit of a deceptive word because you hear the word liberalism. I I feel like I'm a liberal. So, I looked it up. It's not that. So tell us what is that? Okay. Neoliberalism is based on on the earliest concepts of liberalism from the 1600s and the 1700s that included the idea of capitalism or also free enterprise. Freedom to have your own property, freedom to buy and sell and trade as you wish. Okay? And that was a key part of liberalism back in those days. That's not how we think of liberalism today. But the people who created this concept of neoliberalism felt that America had gotten away from this concept of truly free enterprise in the 40s,50s and 60s when we had uh an economy that was very determined by the government and they said no no no no no we need freedom. We need real free markets. freedom to profit, you know, and uh Milton Freriedman famously who was, you know, this famous economist said it out loud. He said, "The only responsibility of a corporation to society is to make a profit for its shareholders." And from that came basically all the ills we have today. Because by the way, neol neoliberalism started to take over during the 70s because economy fell apart in the 70s. Then Ronald Reagan instituted it as sort of the dogma, the religious dogma of the American economy. And even in the 80s, we were saying this is the greatest transfer of wealth in human history from the middle class to the rich. That was back in the 80s. That's nothing compared to what's happened to Yeah. Right. But what's happened with neoliberalism now that it's 45 years into it is you've had two generations grow up and it's not just about making a profit. It's about what it's done to the idea of community or communal goals in America. It's exploded it. It's basically said that the purpose of our culture is to look out for yourself, to do what you want, to pay no consequences for it, um, and to have no empathy for the people who can't compete. Yeah. Right. And it's essentially corrupted the country. It's corrupted the government because now we have lobbyists who write our laws, you know, so that, you know, it's funny. Bernie's out there and God bless him. He's out there and he's getting those people and he's talking about the oligarchs. All right, but the oligarchs are just the end result of 45 years of it's almost as if you overlaid a color over America, you know, purple, green, blue, whatever it is, okay, that just affected how we saw everything. And what you saw was, you know, people's affiliations start to break down. Um, you know, church is starting to break down. Um, um, you know, people just living in a world where basically you're supposed to only care about yourself. And the corrosive effect has been unbelievable. And by the way, the reason we have Fox News, which started the whole idea of polarizing media, okay, is part of neoliberalism because Murdoch said, "Oh, I can make a profit making people mad." Yeah. And no one ever said, "Is that a good idea to make a profit making people mad?" No. And now you have basically all corporate media is trying to make people mad as the country falls apart and they're going, "Oh, yeah, but look at our profits." Social media, too. Yeah. I I And social media, too. Yeah. And social And then came social media. Yeah. And now all the kids, they just want to be influencers instead of like astronauts and teachers and like things that can like, you know. So, I've gone a long way. So, so neoliberalism is the villain here. Okay. But what I want to describe is the world before neoliberalism. And look, I don't want to sugarcoat capitalism. All right? Capitalism is a doggy dog thing. That's what it was always meant to be. All right? But there are different gradations of it. And it is true that the period between 1946 and 1970 is often called the golden age of American capitalism. And during that period, and let's remember, women were stuck in the home. Black people were still segregated against. You know, you couldn't be gay. I'm not saying America was a great place then. Sure. I am talking only about the economy. The American economy created the greatest middle class in the history of the world. And middle class meant something different then than it means today. Middle class in 1965 meant that on one income, you could buy a house in your 20s, own two cars, go on vacation, pay for your kids' education, pay for your medical care, and retire with dignity. That's what middle class meant in 1965. Yeah. That's what upper middle class, if you're lucky, means today, right? So, we have lost that. And we have lost that because of neoliberalism. But when you lived in that period, there was another thing happening that had to do with World War II that it wasn't me who figured this out. Somebody I'm trying to remember who it was who said this that in the 1950s, every CEO of every corporation was either a veteran of the war or had helped the war effort and they had internalized the ethic that you put your country first, what the country needs. And it's very interesting because there's a famous quote from the head of GM, Charles Wilson, in 1953 that's misqued. The quote people think they heard was Wilson saying, "What's good for GM is good for the country." And it sort of became emblematic. Yeah, of course. Right. Of of of the arrogance of corporations. But that's not what he said. What he said was what's good for the country is good for GM. Ah, he was part of that generation that said, "Yes, we want to make a profit. Of course, we want to make a profit. Yes, we want to compete. But our main goal is making sure that America succeeds." And the point is that now corporations don't give a [ __ ] if America even survives, let alone succeeds. Look at happened in 2007. All these corporations, all these banks just drove us right off a cliff. Yeah. You know, it's like we don't care. We're making a profit. Yeah. So that's to get back to something that most people alive today never experience is a very difficult thing. You have to it's a it would be a feat of storytelling of promulgating storytelling across millions of people over and over again to say this is the America we could have. It's not socialist. It's not communist. Those are that's the [ __ ] thing they're throwing you. It's utterly capitalist, you know, but it's allowing for the fact that our framers talked from the very beginning about the public good, about the communal projects we do together. This was never about every man for himself. We believe in the freedom of the individual in the matrix of society working together to create a better world. Yeah. Yeah. My god. and and you know it's you were talking about community if I may really quick is is you know here on this uh program. We have people call in and leave messages and and because we want people to let us know how they're being impacted by these current policies of the of the Trump administration. The point to that is is the reason why we do that is because we're hoping that people who voted for Trump and voted for these policies will hear their neighbor, right, their community, right? and go, geez, I don't I don't want to hurt my neighbor. That's not really what I want. I didn't vote for that. I didn't vote for that. That's right. And and you know, and Marshall, I mean, obviously, we're going to ask you this before you leave because I don't I don't want you to leave poor way, but you know, what do we do to fight back? But anyways, so we're hoping people hear these stories of their neighbors and that sense of community because you're right. Yeah. Uh it's it's it's um it's not the same. Um can you describe what it meant? Uh well, you did. I mean, what's it meant to be middle class at the time? Yeah. Which now they're trying to sell you that those are radical ideas. If you want to buy a house in your 20s, if you want to be able to afford your kids' college, and that's they're not even aware that th that was just how it was. That's right. That's right. And now we have to get back to that. And you know, why can't you buy a house in your 20s? There are a lot of reasons. One reason is, you know, uh, the big firms like Black Rockck have bought up, I don't know what percentage goes to make a profit on them, but that's not the only reason. The other reason is we don't build enough houses and that's partly on the Democrats because we make it really hard to build things as Ezra Klein talks about, you know. Yeah. You know, and we're sitting here in a in a in a city right now, Portland, Oregon, who's who's generally been ran by Democrats uh and led by Democrats over the last however many years. We f they finally over this last election got a a Republican mayor. Um so, but there's a lot of challenges here, too. It's not like Democratic liberal worked here perfectly either. You know what I mean? And so uh you know um but the question is now is is how difficult of a challenge will it be to overcome neoliberalism? It's a really difficult challenge. Let me try to lay out some of the problems we face. First of all, virtually all media in America except you guys. We'll take it. Is corporate media. Yeah. Yeah. And all corporate media has a direct stake in keeping neoliberalism alive. Right? When you're watching CNN, when you're watching Fox, when you're watching MSNBC, those are all giant corporations that want to make sure that the government is not going to do what it actually did in 1965, which is break up companies that got too big, made sure companies compete, you know, regulated the the larger aspects of how companies competed with each other. I mean, let's talk about regulation for a second because there really should be two different words. Regulation should mean two different things. There are way too many regulations in terms of how you build a building or how you start a little company. Okay? Those regulations are stupid and and Democrats bear a lot of the responsibility for why we have that kind of bureaucratic nonsense. Okay. But then there's a larger kind of top-down regulation. Yeah. which neoliberalism got rid of that said to the big companies you can't do this, you can't do this and you must do that. And you know the the whole idea of mergers and acquisitions and all the things that started in the 80s or you know stock buybacks those were illegal in the 19 you know it's like the the government wasn't afraid of telling corporations no you're not going to do that. Yeah. And neoliberalism just swept all of that aside so that they were free to do whatever they wanted. And so now you have, you know, three cell phone companies and you have, you know, you you have these giant corporations that dominate your life. And you know, one of the most hated companies in America are, you know, it was your your um not your cell phone provider, your cable provider. you know, like, you know, they didn't care about customer service cuz they didn't have to care about, you know, and what's happened is that the real idea of real competition in many of of our industries has just gone aside because when you have two or three companies, it's not real competition anymore, right? You know, of course, they're competing for a little bit of the margins here and there. Territory. It's territory. Yeah. Territory, but it's not real competition. Yeah. and um the government insisted on that back then. So, you know, it's a very it you're you're going to have to first open people's minds to what how things could be and then say this is how we get there and then deal with the fact that the right with its 10 times messaging superiority is going to cast what you're doing as some kind of horrible communist revolutionary thing that's going to get rid of the American dream and all that stuff. We're actually the whole idea is the American dream is dead right now for 8/10en of America. Yeah. They have no chance to ever get to fulfill their dreams because all the money's been taken by the people at the top and all the opportunities and all the slots at the schools and it's like it's such a rigged system now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And because they were allowed to. They're not evil people. It's just if you take away all the rules, people are going to do that, right? Yeah. That's that's how hard it's going to be. It's a lot of storytelling at first. Yeah. Yeah. Um and that's kind of what Billy Ray was talking about, too. And one of the things is is we have to be careful because you know in 2020 although we were shouting a lot when we were not in the videos necessarily but you would see in 2020 a lot of videos that were like you know really really brutal like you know shouting at Republicans mag is stupid all this you know but the videos that you guys were making was like careful let's you do that they're going to tune out you know what I mean that's right um so as we move forward now and we're talking about defeating neoliber liberalism. Yeah. Uh and the messaging here in 25 and beyond. Yeah. How do we talk to these folks? Yes. Who uh are on that side over there on MAGA and and listen, I understand people just bought into a system or bought into a thing. How do we talk to them? How do how do how do we say it without without talking down to them? All right. My belief is that you don't try to talk to them. My belief is that I would call it a third of the country, maybe it's between 30 and 40% of the country, is just firmly so in that belief and in an information sphere that doesn't allow them to see what else could be true that they're not going to change until they start to see people around them changing. The good news is the majority of people in America are independents. You know, it's basically 27% Democrat and 207% Republican, a little more or less give or take. And 40% are independent. And a lot of people don't even call themselves independent. They're just not particularly involved. You know what I mean? Yeah. And those are the people, I think, who in some way embodied basic American values. And I think what we do is we appeal to basic American values. And by that I mean that basic American values is what I call common sense and common decency. Mhm. You know that you believe in the rule of law. You believe that we should have secure borders. We believe that people should have rights. We believe that there should be due process. You know what I mean? Yeah. We believe that Congress is supposed to work together and that it's corrupt now when it is so, you know, polarized. Yeah. Okay. That there are there are these basic American beliefs that any Democrat you talk to is going to agree with them and most Americans are going to agree with that. Yeah. Only the the most out there MAGA people are not going to agree with that. Well, if you look at polling, uh if we look at polling, you can see that most Americans agree on most things. Absolutely. On most things, they do agree. Yeah. But, you know, we had when Billy Ray was on, he's talking about the, you know, they they they label us we want to open the borders. We want trans people to run your lives and these types of things. And and I'm all for trans rights, too. But that's what they they frame the Democrats as. and and um and that's it's it's more complicated than that. You know, what do Democrats how do Democrats message in in a world where we already know that people agree with each other? Why aren't they what why aren't they looking this way? Why aren't they looking at Democrats going that is the party? Well, probably because they screwed up quite a bit. I mean, I think look, the Democrats have big problems, okay? And it's not going to be a simple way out of it. You know, I think the Democrats kind of split into two groups in the last 15 years. And you know, it's it's hard to talk about this with other Democrats because people are so scared of, first of all, they're so scared of having people get mad at them, but they're so scared of being on the wrong side of an issue. Sure. That sort of thing. But I think that the knock on the Democrats that we are elitist, that we are the, you know, that we are out of touch and that we, you know, basically are a party of people who went to college is basically true in in great part. And that we're not talking to what people's real concerns are or how they actually experience the world. We're talking to people who are sort of who kind of more in their heads. Do you know what I mean? And by the way, and by the way, also have a lot more money to do the things that they want to do. And we need to be talking to people who don't have the money and who need the opportunities. Yeah. Um, so it means that I think there's eventually has to be a kind of sorting in the Democratic party about which hills are we going to die on, you know, and what's really important and what's not. You can't fight back if you're outnumbered 10 to one. Because the Republican strategy for 25 years has been if I can find one crazy [ __ ] Democrat, I can say that's all Democrat and it works. And by the way, what is libs of Tik Tok, okay? It's important to go on libs of Tik Tok and watch because what you see are crazy [ __ ] Democrats saying stupid crazy things. Yeah. And then millions of people on the right go, "Oh my god, these people are trying to destroy the country." Yeah. You know, and Democrats are afraid to say, "No, no, no. That's a crazy [ __ ] Democrat." You know, that's exactly right. And but the problem is there will always be one. There's always going to be somebody out there saying some horrible thing. There's always going to be some oped that's idiotic that the right is going to lift up and say that, "See, that's Democrats. That's what they want to do." And unless you can win the messaging war and unless you know it's like Carville said back in 1992 when he started to have the you know the the fast response team unless you can immediately come back with an overwhelming response and say no you're completely wrong this is this and this and do it five times a day for every single lie you're going to be killed. And by the way, you have Elon Musk tweeting a hundred times a day, you know, to his 200 million followers. It's like and tweaking the machine that you're posting on so people aren't going to see you anyways. We're being killed. So the point is, yes, we have to clean up our own act. We have to. But it's never going to just be enough to clean up our own act because because we also believe in freedom and we think it's fine if some person wants to say some idiotic thing, let them say that. But that doesn't have to represent who we are. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But the the question you're asking is how do we fight back? Yeah. This is this is, you know, it's the unsolvable Rubik's cube. I feel like, you know, well, but I think it's solvable. Okay. I just think, you know, I I let me let me step back for a second because I think that a lot of the difference in how people have perceived what's been going on with Trump is their own frame of reference in their own lives and how they look at history. Okay? And I think if you're my age or if you grew up having any connection to the Holocaust, you had these signals go off in your head like, "Oh, this is bad. This is bad. This is bad. Oh, this is familiar." You know, and I think that we have to understand that too many people right now still think this is going to be okay. M they still think we're living in a democracy and they don't they're not putting the pieces together. You know, I believed since Helsinki, I think that was 2017. There was no question in my mind that Trump was owned by Putin. There was no other explanation for what happened. Oh my god. Yeah. You know, but the point is when you said it then, you were disqualifying yourself because no one believed you. Okay. I think at this point it's very hard to explain what Trump is doing in any way other than he's owned by Putin. Yeah. You know, I mean there may be some other explanation, but there's got to be some element of it that he owes something to this guy. Okay. So, what does that mean in terms of the history of America that we've come to this place where the president of the United States may be beholdened to this dictator? It's insane. Yeah. So we are in a very very bad place and what I believe must happen one we must have what they call a popular uprising that has a particular meaning. First of all it is peaceful. This is not a revolt. It's not January 6. It's what you've seen in Tel Aviv, in Belgrade. You actually saw it in Moscow 30 years ago. You've seen it around that we saw in the Arab Spring. What you need, and they've actually done research on this, you need three and a half% of the country's population to go out into the streets peacefully day after day after day filling the streets. In America, that would be 12 to 15 million people. Wow. That's the number. Wow. Okay. More or less, I don't know. But you're talking, think about how hard it would be. I mean, what was the women's march? That was like 3 million, 2 million, something like that. And it was one day. One day. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you would you're talking another Occupy situation. Yeah. And OC, you know, Occupy from Occupy Wall Street around. Yes. But how many numbers really did you have? Well, in the Yeah. Right. It would be on steroids. Yeah. This would have to be much more organized than that one, but but also has to be across the country. But that's what works. Yeah. It's worked in every one of those situations. When you have in America, if you had 12 to 15 million people in the streets, you can't disperse those people. You can't arrest those people. Yes, you could start killing them, but that would work against the government. Um that would that would force change on the administration. The other thing we're going to get to, and I have no doubt we're going to get there, is a general strike, which is essentially the same thing, where people say, "You know what? America is stopping right now. I'm not going to work. My store is not open. My restaurant's not open. You know, I'm not paying my taxes, not paying the taxes." Yeah. Yeah. Yes. All of it. You know, and we're a long way from that now because people would have to be way more motivated than they are now. But these are the things we have to start preparing for now because nothing else is going to work. The Democrats are done. You know, I I mean, bless the people who are at least saying the right things, but they have no power to stop it. And also, they are not organized. And, you know, here we are. The election is, you know, 16 months away, whatever it is. There's no Democratic message right now. There's no platform. There's nothing that they say they're going to do. You know, it's just we hate Trump. That's not going to do it. Okay. Yeah. So, this is not going to be solved politically. I think, you know, we'll see what happens with the courts. You know, I have a little bit of faith that the Supreme Court will do something, but I don't have any faith that Trump will listen to it. And at that point, then we're in real trouble if he doesn't. Right. So, I think that's there are certain trigger moments for me. I think if Trump um does not obey a Supreme Court order, that's the moment when 15 million people have to go out on the street. I completely agree with you. Yes. That's that's when and you might get them. Okay. Um I think I don't know what's going to happen with Canada and Greenland and all. I don't know what he's doing to be honest with you. I understand I think what he's doing with Greenland. I don't understand what Canada I I think Canada's still a bluff. We are not going to become an imperialist nation. We're just not. That's not going to happen. You know, I'll put my body in front of that. We have not been an imperialist. The last imperialist thing we did was in 1896 when we took over Hawaii. Yeah. You know, we had if you look at all the things we could have, we could have taken over Cuba. We could have taken over the Philippines. You know, there are a million places. It's like one of the great things about America, and believe me, there are a lot of bad things about America and our history and manifest destiny and all that, but but one of the amazing things about America is that every state in this union desperately wanted to be a state, right? They they overwhelmingly voted, please, please, can we let us in? You know, that's that's what we promised. That's what the that's what America is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be the hope of the world, not the scourge of the world, right? You know, we're not Rome. It's like, what is he doing? You know, this just is just And I think again, this is a messaging thing that I think people have to hear this over and over again, right? It's like it's not enough to say this is not who we are. You have to tell the story of what we've always been. how it's like why did we never have to have a wall around West Berlin but the Russians had to have a wall around East Berlin because people wanted to come to the west right you know that's like he's just about to throw all that [ __ ] away you know so you have to keep telling that story yeah yeah um well I don't want to hog I keep like just I could talk like for hours straight on uh please interrupt anytime you guys um but but the the the And I brought this up to to Billy Ray, the third monster in the room. Yes. Again, is the internet. Yes. And and I was explaining to Billy Ray that, you know, I can make a a video about Trump. Yeah. And get more clicks and more shares and and all of this stuff than if I if Tiff and I made a video about uh healthcare. Right. Right. Yeah. That's right. So, I'm not saying that's right. and and Tiff and I have generally not fallen down that rabbit hole, but that's just how the internet works. That's just how the internet works. And Jesus Christ, it that is almost and yeah, you know, that's the I was thinking about it on the drive here. It's like we live Americans and I you know, even our own children live in this bubble of our daughter, let me let me just say this if I may. Our daughter went to South America and did some mission work, right? And and what were the countries she went to? I forgot. uh uh Ecuador, Honduras, Honduras. And and it [ __ ] opened her eyes instantaneously to how different the world was and how the bubble we have here in America. She's like, "Oh my god, America's [ __ ] awesome." Yeah. And that but also more importantly that other people in the world don't really have that. Yeah, she saw that on the news. Yeah, she saw that on the internet. But until you live that experience. But and and I think the great point is like people who lived through the war or who were born just after the war um lived it every day, breathed it every day. Yes. We don't really have that anymore. Yeah. So how do we wake with this younger generation? I'm curious. Yeah. You know, how do we how do we wake them up a little bit to um folks? It's it's because we always hear on the news really quick. We always hear on the news like, "Oh, an America's an idea." And stuff like that. And it's true. Yeah. And it's it's very fragile. It's like I don't know. I I don't know. Hell, I don't know how much younger generation is getting that, but nowadays I don't know how much even a Gen X is getting that. Yeah. I listen, this is a very scary thing, but we've seen it in history many times. Look, let's just say a fact which is from 1945 till now, the sort of existential reality of daily life in America has not been threatened. That's an amazing thing. We had the Vietnam War, 50,000 people killed. Okay. But that did not affect daily life in America, right? You know, we had the the the you know, fear of nuclear annihilation, cold war, but that was distant. That was that did not affect daily life in America. The idea of the privations brought by war or a depression in daily life in America. We've had three, four generations grow up, you know, not knowing that. Yeah. So, there's no way to prepare people for that. Yeah. Um there are analoges in history where people who grew up I mean by the way the first world war was one of those things where the people who went into first world war had no idea what was coming and what life was going to be like because they never faced anything like it. Sure. Okay. So you know the thing is things are going to get bad. They're going to get bad now. We have to accept that things are going to get bad. They're going to get bad if Trump keeps doing what he's doing. It's like, you know, it's going to affect Medicaid. You know, it's going to affect Medicare. You know, it's going to affect Social Security, you know, it's going to affect veterans. You know, I mean, I could spend an hour talking about all the things where people's lives are going to be very badly affected. Okay? And it's going to get very bad if we fight. Um, and so there's I can't it's like you come back to somehow people have to find the wherewithal and the strength and the courage in themselves to make it through the very bad periods in life. I mean when we had the depression people were not prepared for that and they just had to deal. I mean one the things we can do right now are we can increase the sense of community in the country the sense of the bonds that hold us together and you know there's been research on this that people have so fewer connections with the world than they used to they don't have the clubs and the you know after school things and all the different things that brought people together. Yeah. And even in family life and religion and churches and synagogues and that sort of thing. I think we have to work on that because people don't get by on their own. They get by in this matrix of connection with other people. But I think we have to start preparing people for the fact that this 80year period of peace, peace meaning of daily life peace, yeah, is over. And it's going to get bad. We don't know how bad, but I think our message has to be start thinking about what that means to you and your family and what you're going to do and how you're going to survive and how you're going to stand up for what's right and not capitulate like these law firms are doing and like these entertainment and news people are doing. Capitulation is not going to bring you safety. The only thing that's going to bring you safety is fighting through to the end. I mean, this goes back. It's, you know, it's like amazing, you know, the what are the great epics, what, you know, what's Lord of the Rings, you know, right? What what are all these great stories, you know, the hero's journey? Every one of these stories is about people, if you look at Lord of the Rings, here are these little creatures, the hobbits, ever had a bad thing happen in their lives, right? And all of a sudden, they have to deal with, you know, the worst, the the worst. Okay? And the answer is somehow you find the strength to do it. Yeah. And through courage and Yeah. And in every one of these stories, the most important moment in the story is the moment when you believe you cannot win. Yeah. It's done. It's over. Give up hope. And they don't give up hope. Right. And by the way, going back to World War II, the war planners up to the beginning of 1943 had no possible understanding of how they could win the war. This was what was known to Roosevelt and, you know, within the administration, we don't know how we're going to win this war. We we we there's just no path. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and yet they said we have no choice. We keep on, you know, and then they found the way. Yeah. So the darkness is an inevitable part of this that we have to face and we have to help people face it. Yeah. Yeah. I like your generation grew up in the shadow of World War II where economically things were booming, great things were happening. Now you have millennials who came up in the shadow of 9/11. Yeah. colored their whole everything about their lives is colored with 911, right? And then you had the alphas, the Jenzi come up after them. And now you have the sorry, the alphas coming up after my camera. I'm so sorry. You have all these generations coming up who don't have the hope that you guys had. There was no New Deal. There was no infrastructure. There was no infrastructure. There's still no housing. There's still no And now they're what they do have access to is getting less and less and less. And like Billy said, the party in 2024 led messaging with arrogance instead of humility. Yes. So, how do we, these generations now who think we're all arrogant pricks sitting over here, how do we teach them the only way to get through the hard times that are absolutely coming? Yeah. Is to hold on to each other? How do we convince them that we're not lying and we're not just trying to get their vote? That this is really coming down to how their lives and their children, if they can even afford to have them, are going to thrive. If I had the answer to that, I'd be running for office. Let me add but I let me add on to what she said too really quick just to add on to that. I would have thought during COVID, right? Our children went through CO and that was pretty dramatic even for me. You know what I mean? Especially for Especially for me. Yeah, I would have thought during co that would have I I don't know. I just thought it would have woke and it did to some extent cuz we got Trump out. But then the few years after he's back in, right? And you just go, "Wow." I thought that was our reset of community. I thought that was going to unite the country. That was but what that showed was that was that was the first understanding that the power of right-wing messaging was so much greater and they were able to turn CO around. And if you talk to people today, they just believe lies about COVID. It's just amazing. They just believe lies. They believe that the vaccine killed more people than the disease. They believe that the vaccines never prevented transmission of the disease. You know, all these things that are lies. Yeah. And so, yes, that was again that was this incredibly cynical sort of attack on the public good, you know. Yeah. Um for money. It's just amazing. It was also rooted in kind of what you were talking about earlier, the the evolution of the perspective of Americans to, you know, fueled by the neo neoliberal philosophy of it's about me, right? Like I don't want to wear a [ __ ] mask because I don't give a [ __ ] about you. Right. Yeah. And and so I think like you were talking about the the millennials and the and the uh the Gen Z and the Gen Alpha folks, but like we're all we've all been slow boiling frogs, you know, in in this pot for the last 45 years. And we have we haven't we, you know, I'm 44 years old, you know, literally. I was born in 1980, you know, the when Reagan was elected. And and so my whole my whole life has been the slow descent into neoliberal philosophy and the just the this a movement away from this idea that it's okay to give up a little bit of what I could have so that my neighbor can have a better shot at getting what he could have or she could have. Right. Yeah. Right. And and and so I think like I agree with you 100% that unfortunately the way out of this is pain. Yeah. Like there is going there is going to have like America is going to have to feel some very serious largely economic pain. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to have to look around at each other and be like Yeah. is this like is this the best way to do this? Like has ever is has anybody ever done this different cuz this is not working for anybody right now. This feels like [ __ ] you know, and and and and sort of circle back, right, to the sort of FDR, LBJ. That's right. You know, New Deal sort of philosophy of like, no, there are that's what you can do for your There's a reason that we had Medicare and Medicaid. There's a reason that we that we developed Social Security. Yeah. Um it's because we need to help each other. We need to talk about how to deal with the fact that the that right-wing messaging, it's not just that it's right-wing or conservative. It's that it pushes this narrative of this [ __ ] you narrative, this completely nealistic narrative. How we combat that, you know, and it's it's incredibly difficult because first of all, we just need the resources and we don't have them. uh we need to build them and we probably need to build them independently of the billionaires and the corporations and and all of that stuff. Um but then we need a vision that makes sense to people that's emotional for them that is an alternative to this thing that you're describing. Um and you know it's funny you you brought up social media. I have this feeling that social media is to the first amendment as machine guns are to the second amendment. That it's possible Jeez, it's possible that liberal democracy cannot possibly withstand the overwhelming firepower of social media. It's possible. Now, I've always been a free speech absolutist, but I look now and I go, when when you say the only answer to bad speech is more speech, that's assuming that your more speech can be heard by anyone, right? You know, or can even be in the public square, right? Um, and also, I think speaking of the public square, there's another important thing to understand about about free speech, okay? Free speech had to do with a free press. Okay? The public square has never had free speech. You cannot go into a restaurant and start screaming obscenities or they'll kick you out. Okay? If you're a communist or a Nazi, no newspaper in America is gonna publish your op-ed. The the public square in America has always been curated. And we just accepted that. We didn't even think about it. Yeah. Okay. Now, the public square in America is social media and it's completely unccurated. By the way, it's curated in certain ways that we take for granted that you can't have porn, for instance, and we go, "Oh, well, that's fine." Well, why is that fine and the other's not fine? You know, in other words, I think, and this is really dangerous because the right has weaponized this. Okay. I think we're going to have to deal with the fact that social media is so incredibly destructive. I mean, we're already beginning to deal with it about kids and thank God, but we're not there yet. But at least it's moving in that direction because we understand we have to protect our children. But I think this notion that we simply cannot withstand the tidal wave of falsity. I don't care who it's coming from right now. It's coming from the right, but it comes from the left, too. Let's face it. Okay. Sure. just the a title wave of falsehoods is just too destructive to society, you know, and I I don't know the answer to it. I mean, I know, for instance, in my industry back in the early 1930s, the government was threatening to censor films, even though that was patently unconstitutional, but Hollywood was so afraid of it that they set up their own self-censorship, right, process, right, which still exists today, you know, and and by the way, that's what social media did at first, but just not well enough. I mean, you know, it's fine. It's fine if Facebook sort of, you know, had its moderators, but they also had addiction experts, you know, telling them how to create their algorithm so that they would get people more and more deeply embedded in it. I mean, so I think I personally think we need to have a a a national conversation about regulation of social media separate from freedom of the press. Yeah. And I don't know how to do it. And maybe there is no way to do it, but I think you have to acknowledge that it's killing us. And one uh one thing I wanted to ask uh as well is and this is a big can of worms, but where does religion fall in all of this? Yeah. Where I mean, I'm I'm just kind of going to ask it that way. Yeah. Because yeah, now you've got these, you know, you know, the the the the far-right Christians and then where does religion fall into all of this? Because what was religion like back in 19 50s and 60s and what is it like now? It's a little different. It's very different. Look, everything was more mainstream in the 1950s because everyone agreed that that that's what they wanted to have happen. I mean, you had McCarthy come up and McCarthy scared the [ __ ] out of everybody and then he was done in during the army hearings, you know, by basically by by Welch saying, you know, have you no shame, sir. Finally, have you no shame, it was kind of over for him. It was, you know, went on a couple more months, but basically it was done. That could never happen today. Do you know what I mean? But the point is we were a centrist nation at that time. And that's what serves America is to be centrist. And now all the incentives all the incentives for social media and for corporate media are to be more extreme. And until we deal with those incentives, I don't know how we're going to I mean that gets into the whole issue of regulation again, you know, but but religion it's it's a really great great question, right? Yeah, because you know Americans obviously the numbers show that people are less and less affiliated with religion. I'm not sure I could explain to you why that is. I think they feel that religion is not helping them in their lives clearly in some way. Um I think there's a real problem on the far right about religion because I think and I think this is growing bigger every day. In other words, there's this argument that there are moral absolutes that only religion and only the Christian religion can deliver versus the left which is believes in moral relativism. Okay, I think this is a false dichotomy and I think again the right is winning with it because they have so many people saying this. You know, I I don't think I I you know, I don't think you need religion to have a very strong sense of morality. Yeah. Because I think first of all, it's mostly innate. It's, you know, most most morality we follow is absolutely, you know, universal around the world. I mean, you'll find some cultures that don't do it, but 95% of cultures have basically the same morality. Um, you know, it's innate in because we're social creatures. Yeah. And and you know, they see it even in apes. Do you know what I mean? There's a certain amount of altruism and and you know, right and wrong, that sort of thing. So, I don't think I personally think there's nothing you can do to make religion more important to people unless the religions themselves find a way to just be more um relevant to their lives. Well, and by the way, I'm not sitting there trying to say that we need more or less of it. I'm just saying but now it's it seems to be guiding some extremism in both ways instead of holding people together in community. Right. That's what we need is whatever holds people together in community. If it's not religion, let it be something else. Yeah. But we need people and this is something we can work on is whatever the ties that bind that we can create or enhance in people whether in Portland, in Los Angeles, around the country that's so deeply important because that's what's being eroded and religion is just part of that problem. It's amazing how fast an hour goes by, but I could literally talk for the next 3 hours. 47 questions. I know. Unfortunately, the cameras won't last that long. Give us some parting words. Uh uh and and I and first of all, we already know we want you. Please come back uh anytime. My god, multiple times. But give us some parting words on to our audience. What can they do uh over the next two and four years? What can they do in their personal lives uh to help this situation that we're all in? Oh man, this is so, you know, this is the question that no one knows how to answer, but this is what I feel. What I feel is everybody's angry for good reason. Keep being angry, but hold the anger and direct the anger in a way that is useful because just exploding at people or being cruel to people or or you know being arrogant or just saying I hate MAGA that solves nothing. Okay. I think what people have to do is prepare. They have to take their anger and realize that anger is strength. Anger is fuel to fight for what you believe. And prepare for the fact that it's going to be a fight. Yeah. It's going to be dark. And in some way, I have this feeling that everybody knows it. I have this feeling everybody has known. And maybe it's because of 911, you know, whatever. There is this sense that this can't last. And by the way, whether it's climate change or whether you believe in the rapture, whatever it is, there is a sense that we're in this I don't know how you pronounce epocal epical moment, right? I don't know what the right pronunciation is that some huge change is taking place and it's not going to be easy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just being honest about that and saying prepare, prepare with the people you love, prepare in your community, prepare with your own strengths, make yourself strong, you know, um um learn what you need to learn and, you know, go toward the people who you think will fight effectively for the things you want and reject the people, and I'm talking about Democrats in Washington. reject the people who are not going to stand up or who are still believing that we're in business as usual because they are they're gone. They're zombies. They're the walking dead. We don't know it that they're dead, but they're gone, you know. And I think this sense of preparing for the inevitable should not be a hopeless feeling, but should be a hopeful feeling. But it's scary. It's scary and it's dark, but it's powerful. And I think that's the main thing is be in touch with the power in yourself and how you're going to how you're going to put that power out into the world with other people. It'll never be alone. It has to be in connection with other people. And I think you don't know the answer the first day, but after a couple weeks or a couple months, you're going to start to be connected to other people who feel the same way. And certain things are going to come from it. Look, I went through this. I'm sitting here with you guys, you know, I went through three weeks after the election like Billy just this time, just like in a state of utter utter depression, you know, and I said to myself, I can't be this way. I have to if I have to dedicate the rest of my life to fighting this. This is what I'm going to do. Yeah. Because I believe in this country, you know, and I am so energized by that. And we were already connected, but now we have this new connection. And now I'm meeting new people. And my experience can be everybody's experience, you know, and I think this is what we have to do to get ready to fight for the things we love. Wow. Well, thank you, Marshall, for joining us today. Thank you, Marshall. Thank you, guys. What an incredible conversation. Tell us what you thought. Dial 503212-4600. Call the people's hotline. Tell us what you think. You can also email us at shoutthedanger ones.com. If you'd like to support this show, go to teal andorreport.com and become a paid subscriber. Marshall, thank you so much and we can't wait for you to come back. Thank you. Me, too. Please. Yeah. Have a great rest of your day.

Posting Date

Views

Comments

Likes

Channel The Dangerous Ones Adam KinzingerAnonymousBlue Alpine Freeze DryersBrittany PageCaolan RobertsonDemocracy DocketDemocracy Now!Fast Politics w/ Molly Jong-FastGlenn KirschnerJames TalaricoJason Jay SmartJesse DollemoreKeith EdwardsParkrose PermaculturePaul WarburgPod Save AmericaSouth BoomTaylor LorenzThe BulwarkThe Dangerous OnesThe Freeze Dried BusinessThe Lincoln ProjectThe People's MajorityTommy Campbell