- 6/17/2025
Tonight on The Cameron Journal Newshour, we're talking about Trump's military parade and the No Kings protests that swept the nation. We're also talking about our current political climate and why violence will likely be on the menu for some time as we tussle with who the real tyrants are in our society. Then we turn our attention to Trump's shut down to FEMA and how Charlie Kirk changed the 2024 political climate by going after MLK. I finally cleaned out my Twitter bookmarks and it gets spicy.
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00:30:29And so, you know,
00:30:59he was,
00:31:29and I think,
00:31:59the story,
00:32:00you know,
00:32:01and you're, you know,
00:32:06happens when Marxists don't get their way? Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. And let's also not
00:32:12forget, Mike Lee is just an asshole, okay? You don't need to know about who he is, he's
00:32:17an asshole. Um, and people, you know, um, and obviously, you know, people have replied
00:32:26and, you know, and are, you know, really happy, you know, some are very, you know, kind of
00:32:32like, yeah, they're, you know, violent and sort of thing and kind of going along with
00:32:37this narrative. But the unfortunate reality is given his, you know, the narrative around
00:32:44him, his political proclivities, the videos that are coming out, all this type of thing,
00:32:48it's quite obvious where his political leanings really lay. Um, it would be unusual for another
00:32:54Democrat to target Democrat legislators. Um, and kind of on top of that end of things,
00:33:03um, he had a manifesto, he had other people, including abortion providers. Any, most Democrats
00:33:10are not going to go after abortion providers. Sorry, they're not. Um, it's quite obvious that
00:33:15he had a political grudge and he wanted to take it out, but here's the great thing. He
00:33:21didn't kill himself. There's going to be an investigation and a trial, and we're going
00:33:26to be able to hear from this guy in Living Technicolor to find out just what was going
00:33:30on in his brain. So, um, it will be, um, it'll be a quite interesting, uh, interesting, uh,
00:33:40thing. Um, and so it, the investigation will be interesting. Obviously, the story is going
00:33:47to continue to develop over time. I kind of had the whole, just kind of, tweet situation
00:33:52up here because there was just so much stuff that was going on and so many things that had
00:33:56gone back and forth. Um, and, uh, Melissa Hortman had been a former Speaker of the Minnesota
00:34:03House. This has now also caused them to have a majority problem because they only had a one
00:34:09seat Republican majority in the Minnesota State House. That's going to be a whole mess. Um,
00:34:14um, you know, sort of thing. So, oh, a video from the last poor woman who was shot for serving
00:34:21in government. Um, and her husband, the astronaut. Um, it's, you know, obviously they, they know
00:34:28more than anything how awful this moment is for the families and whatnot. So, and like I said,
00:34:34letters of support pouring in. And, um, yeah, it's, it's been quite, it's been quite a shit
00:34:41show. Um, and it says, oh, Belter's wife was found detained in Onamia, Minnesota this
00:34:50morning. I've been told a large amount of cash and passports were found with her. It's
00:34:53also believed Belter withdrew money from a bank after the shootings as the manhunt continues.
00:34:57So, he was trying to escape, but he did not escape. He was apprehended and that was a good
00:35:03thing. But remember, this Republican voting, Trump-supporting, anti-abortion evangelical
00:35:12is a Marxist. Screw you, Mike Lee, and your dumb narrative. Like, if you're going to perform
00:35:20in there, at least try to make it right. So, in the midst of a manhunt and murdered state
00:35:24legislators, we had on Saturday the U.S. Army celebration from, for 250 years of the U.S. Army.
00:35:33We were founded in 1775. We had that. This is a picture by J.D. Vance. The crowd was, well,
00:35:40everyone likes to talk about crowd sizes, because Trump likes to talk about crowd sizes. But the
00:35:44crowd was not impressive. People were also horrified at the lack of marching discipline
00:35:48among the troops. I should point out that although this ended up corresponding with President Trump's
00:35:56birthday, and he kind of made it all about him, this 250-year anniversary Army parade was actually
00:36:02planned last year. So, that was already in place. Trump co-opted it, because he never thinks of
00:36:07anything himself. He co-opted it to make it about himself, as he does, as he would. And obviously,
00:36:17there's been a lot of back and forth between people on the right saying, no one went to the
00:36:21No Kings protest, and people on the left saying, no one went to Trump's day. Well,
00:36:25it, it, it, honestly, the weather wasn't that good this weekend. No one was out. So, we see here
00:36:30a rather sparse crowd in J.D. Vance's lovely children, God bless them, um, here, and some military
00:36:36equipment and some ceremonial stuff happening. Then, also for, um, is this the other, no. Um, and then the
00:36:45No Kings protest, there was, um, pictures from around the country, um, it, I've seen reports
00:36:52of anywhere between 8 to 11 million people nationwide, but I, I wanted, I saved this particular
00:36:59tweet because this is, I think, really, really crystallizes the difference between, um, the
00:37:13differences of perspective and narrative around authoritarianism and tyranny and how much the
00:37:20pandemic really broke people in this country. Here we have, no Kings, but put your mask on.
00:37:26No Kings, but lock us down. No Kings, but I'm firing you for not vaccinating. No Kings, but
00:37:31you can't go outside. No Kings, but we don't accept your exemption. No Kings, but you need 12,000
00:37:37through any boosters. No Kings, but we're shutting your business down. No Kings, but you can't worship
00:37:42the real King. No Kings, but your family members will die alone. No Kings, but I'm opening a hotline
00:37:47so you can tell on your neighbor. No Kings, but mandates galore. No Kings, but you're responsible
00:37:51for my health. No Kings, but social distances six feet apart. No Kings, but no family gatherings
00:37:56over 10. The hypocrisy is astounding. Who is actually the tyrant here?
00:38:00Of all of the things in their list, almost all of them, except one has to do with the pandemic
00:38:16lockdowns. And I, I think we very much underestimate how much the pandemic lockdowns really backfired
00:38:29politically. I don't think they really worked for the public health crisis we were having at the
00:38:34time, but the re and I've always, I've always said one of the phrases that stood out for me about the
00:38:39pandemic is for people who couldn't work because certain businesses were shut down. They never said,
00:38:45Oh, we got shut down because of the pandemic or because of the virus. The phrase they use is my job
00:38:51was made illegal. It always comes out in language. Always, always, always how people phrase things will tell
00:38:58you everything that you want to know about how they think about it. My job was made illegal.
00:39:07Now, if you think about the face of that statement and the emotions behind that, and then you read this,
00:39:16it, you start to understand where people are coming from to say, you know, we're from, from their
00:39:22perspective, they're trying to stop more of the pandemic restrictions from happening. From the left's
00:39:28perspective, this, this was not a problem and, and was essential to preventing the hospital systems from
00:39:36collapsing and was not authoritarian in the same way they view Trump as being authoritarian for the
00:39:43doge cuts for deploying. Um, troops in, in Los Angeles to restore order, all this sort of thing and kind of
00:39:52militarizing, um, the country. And I have a, I have a story from the New Yorker about that. Um, you know,
00:39:58all this sort of thing, it's, it's two very different worlds and two very different perspectives of,
00:40:05you know, people wanted the option to not participate in the pandemic health stuff. And they were called
00:40:14out, criticized, called terrible things online, called un-American, all this type of thing. And
00:40:20they've just said no more. And I said at the time, Americans are not used to government being that
00:40:25involved in their daily lives, unlike the Asians or the Europeans. We really don't deal with government
00:40:31that often. Like, we don't, we do not, we very rarely have interactions with government every day.
00:40:35Most of the rest of the world is not really like that. But we don't really interact with government
00:40:39every day. And so people were not, were really shocked by, what do you mean I can't go to work?
00:40:45What do you mean I can't make money? What do you mean I can't operate my business? What do you mean
00:40:47I'm going to lose everything because of a virus? Like, like, for most people, yeah, the virus is bad and
00:40:53people might get sick, but I need to make a buck. I need to pay my bills. So, and we literally was kind of
00:40:58like, no, no, you know, you, you really can't. Like, people get sick, it'll collapse the hospital
00:41:05system. But nobody, again, when your bills aren't being paid, no one cares about the hospital system.
00:41:09You know? Um, and especially when, you know, you get vaccine requirements, people are forced out of
00:41:15their jobs, forced into early retirement, all this type of thing. It doesn't, again, doesn't, you know,
00:41:21matter, sort of, you know. The narrative is always going to be, you know, I had to do this to keep my
00:41:27job. I didn't feel like I had a choice or an option, even though I didn't really want to, all
00:41:30this type of thing. And so, I, I wanted to kind of expose this narrative, this view of these things
00:41:39and why these things are the way they are, um, to kind of make the greater point of one man's oppressor
00:41:49is another man's law and order solution. Um, and also, I think a lot of the violence we're seeing
00:41:57right now, and I said in January, we're going into a time of, of the lead, and, and we're seeing sort
00:42:03of just low-level attacks and violence happening. Um, it's very, I, this is very emblematic of, I think,
00:42:09why people feel, why some people feel like they need to fight back and how contentious this all
00:42:16can be and, and will be. And that's where we turn to this lovely, um, column from the New Yorker
00:42:24from Saturday by Robin Wright. Um, and she talks about the, how, the, kind of the feeling in
00:42:32Washington. And it says here, America today is distinctly ununited. Activists from an array of
00:42:38causes have coalesced behind the No Kings movement, which rejects authoritarianism, billionaire first
00:42:43politics, and the militarization of our democracy. It is orchestrating almost 2,000 day of defiance
00:42:48rallies from coast to coast to coincide with Trump's parade. On Instagram, the group wrote,
00:42:53the wannabe dictator wants a party? Well then let's show him some love in every location that
00:42:58Trump is in, because in America we have no kings. The president has since thrown into deploy,
00:43:02quote, very heavy force, unquote, against demonstrators. They, quote, hate our country,
00:43:06unquote, he said this week. The organizers are preparing for millions of people to turn out,
00:43:10which may end up dwarfing the spectacle in Washington. Trump's regime has broken so many
00:43:15laws, threatened so many people, and ruined or damaged so many institutions, that it's no
00:43:19longer legitimate. David Blight, a historian at Yale and Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on civil war,
00:43:24told me this week, quote, as a society, we have to take back our government. Yes, this means a mass
00:43:28protest and a challenge to power that we have not seen since the 60s, unquote. He noted that the
00:43:33Declaration of Independence affirms the right, quote, to alter or to, or to abolish, unquote,
00:43:37government when it has abused its people excessively and forfeited its legitimacy.
00:43:41Quote, that Declaration of Independence sits there, a living thing, breathing it,
00:43:45expecting us to read it, and in the spirit of our founding act, on it, Blight said.
00:43:49Last weekend, I drove down the parade route along Constitution Avenue. Long flatbed trucks
00:43:53were offloading pallets and metal plates to help protect the streets from dozens of M1 Abrams
00:43:57battle tanks, which weigh up to 70 tons. They will slowly grind their way from the Lincoln Memorial
00:44:03to the Washington Memorial alongside missiles, rocket launchers, howitzer cannons, and Bradley
00:44:07and striker fighting vehicles. 6,700 troops will also participate. The Pentagon has estimated
00:44:12the cost for the 90-minute procession at somewhere between $25 and $42 million. That's at least
00:44:18$3 million per block. The event will take place against the backdrop of Doge's firing of hundreds
00:44:23of thousands of federal workers and civil servants, including at the Pentagon, and the slashing of
00:44:27social services from Medicaid to school lunches for low-income children. There's a raw ache and sense
00:44:32of unease in Washington. Eighteen miles of fencing has been put up on the National Mall
00:44:35and beyond. 175 magnetometers were installed to screen parade attendees. Tickets had been
00:44:40booked in advance. Passenger flights are due to be suspended for several hours at Washington's
00:44:45Ronald Reagan National Airport to accommodate military flyers and paratroopers dropping from
00:44:49the skies. Trump's birthday parade might make the city feel more like it is experiencing
00:44:52a coup d'etat than it is honoring soldiers who have well served the nation. All of this feels
00:44:56somewhat hypocritical. In the past, Trump disparaged more than 1,800 military personnel who died
00:45:01in the Battle of Ballou would, which stopped the German advance in France during the First
00:45:04World War as, quote, suckers. He balked it missing the nearby cemetery where they were buried
00:45:09reportedly because the rain would mess up his hair. John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff
00:45:12during his first term, said the president did not want to be pictured with the amputees
00:45:16because it didn't, quote, look good, unquote. In 2023, Kelly told CNN that Trump, quote,
00:45:20has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America's all about, unquote.
00:45:25Even Republicans seemed dubious at the parade. In a survey by Politico, only seven of the
00:45:2950 GOP lawmakers who responded said they would attend. Among those skipping it,
00:45:33Senator Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso, and House Majority Leader
00:45:37Steve Scalise. Senator Roger Walker of Mississippi, chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
00:45:42told Politico that he, quote, would have recommended against the parade, unquote, after he heard the
00:45:46cost. In a televised address on Tuesday, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California,
00:45:52warned that Trump's decision to circumvent state authorities to deploy the military to L.A.
00:45:55was a brazen use of power that had inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people,
00:46:00our officers, and even our National Guard at risk. California, quote, may be first, he went on,
00:46:04but it clearly will not end here. Democracy, he added, is next. Washington certainly felt that way
00:46:09this week.
00:46:10I mean, at some point, what do you do with all of this? You know, I mean, it's, it's certainly,
00:46:23things have certainly taken a turn. And I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get
00:46:33any better. And I think it's, it's a quite frightening, frightening time that we're entering
00:46:39into. Um, narratively, it reminds me of the last season of House of Cards. Um, it feels a lot like
00:46:48that. If you didn't go watch the last season of House of Cards, go watch a couple episodes, really.
00:46:54Um, it, it, it will be surprisingly familiar to what's happening now. And it was filmed several
00:47:01years ago. Um, ah, I don't feel so dry today. Um, I'm just having all kinds of issues. Um, it,
00:47:09it's very telling, very, very interesting. Um, I think we're going to have more, I mean,
00:47:13obviously we've got troops on the ground in L.A., we've got parades in Washington, we've got
00:47:17state groups being shot in Minnesota. It's chaos. That's the political moment we're in.
00:47:24We're in chaos right now. Um, I don't know how this is going to play out, but it's, it's going to be,
00:47:31uh, as my aunt would say, it sure will be interesting though. Um, but I think it's also
00:47:37going to be very dangerous. So stay safe, everyone. Um, let's turn to the next bit of story.
00:47:48Um, kind of getting out of all of that for a moment. Um, actually I'm not going to do that
00:47:54right now. Um, let's talk about FEMA. Um, because if I don't mention this now, we're not going to get
00:47:58to it, but it's very important. So the federal emergency management agency is going to be
00:48:05wound down after hurricane season. Um, disaster funds will be distributed directly from the White
00:48:10House. Trump says states will get less federal aid for disasters. Homeland Security Secretary
00:48:15Homan supports FEMA downsizing and FEMA has an annual budget of 10 of, I'm sorry, 30 billion
00:48:21dollars. Um, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday last week, he planned to start phasing out the
00:48:27federal emergency management agency after the hurricane season and that states would receive
00:48:31less federal aid to respond to natural disasters. Trump also said he planned to distribute disaster
00:48:35release funds directly from the president's office. We're going to do it much differently.
00:48:38Trump said in a briefing at the White House in response to a question about when he planned
00:48:41to eliminate FEMA and what his message was to governors regarding states here bearing more
00:48:45disaster relief costs. We're going to give out less money. He said, we're going to give it out
00:48:49directly. It'll be from the president's office. We'll have somebody here. Could be Homeland Security.
00:48:53In an apparent reference to his plans to wind down the disaster relief agency, Trump added,
00:48:57I'd say after the hurricane season, we'll start phasing it out. The U.S. hurricane season
00:49:01officially began on June 1st and last through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
00:49:05Administration forecast last month that this year's season would be above normal with as many
00:49:08as 10 hurricanes. Trump's comments were among the most direct to date indicating his intention
00:49:13to significantly downsize if not outright eliminate FEMA, which has an annual budget of around $30
00:49:17billion and employed more than 20,000 people, including reserves prior to layoffs earlier this
00:49:22year. Distributing funds directly from the White House would also mark a departure from current
00:49:26protocols under which FEMA oversees the dissemination of financial aid to the states following the
00:49:30president's declaration of a disaster. Also at the briefing, Homeland Security Secretary
00:49:33Kristi Noem said that FEMA, quote, fundamentally needs to go away as it exists. Unquote. And
00:49:39that governors were being encouraged to work together to respond to disasters. Quote, we're
00:49:43building communication and mutual aid agreements among states so they can stand on their own
00:49:46two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding,
00:49:50Noem said. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
00:49:53Um, fun! Uh, yeah, that's, um, also will allow Trump to use federal funds basically as a bargaining
00:50:04ship with governors and states. Um, but, uh, which, that's one thing. I think the other kind
00:50:13of sad reality is, um, uh, people are gonna suffer a lot. Like, don't move to Florida, you know?
00:50:22I mean, it's, you know, who's, you know, who's gonna be distributing FEMA trailers? There will
00:50:27be no more trailers. Um, who's gonna give money out to people who, you know, need money in a pinch
00:50:32to get through? There will be none. Like, it's, if you're gonna leave it to the states entirely,
00:50:39that's gonna leave a lot of gaps. That's gonna create a lot of problems, huge funding gaps
00:50:47that states cannot begin to always afford to do. Um, yeah. It's, it's gonna be most, it, it, the,
00:50:57honestly, this is all, gonna be all fun and games until you have the first hurricane without FEMA
00:51:02to come in and, and help clean up and manage and all this type of thing, and people are gonna find
00:51:07out. And unfortunately, this is such a small story, no one will really care until the first hurricane
00:51:12comes through, and then, and, and the, and the thing is, and here's the clever thing about it,
00:51:17is we're talking about this now. The wind down isn't gonna happen till next winter, which means
00:51:25people won't really notice FEMA's gone till next summer when the first hurricane hits, and that trailer
00:51:35ain't showing up. Yeah. Then the, then it will be interesting to see what the outcry is, and,
00:51:44and all this sort of thing, and then Trump gets to be the big man to be like, hey, you need five
00:51:48billion dollars for disaster relief? Well, you know, if you're my friend, you know, maybe I'll let you
00:51:54have some money. But it's not automatic anymore. You basically have to curry favor with the, um,
00:52:02uh, the president, um, in order to get access to emergency management money. Um, which, I mean,
00:52:11at this point, if you're a blue state governor, you're screwed. In simple terms. Like, I mean,
00:52:19Florida will be fine, because we're on to say, I mean, but Trump's not a huge fan of DeSantis either,
00:52:23so maybe Florida's screwed. Here's, this is the problem when you entrust the funding in the hands
00:52:29of one person. You can't rely on it. You know, how much of a friend are you to Trump? Maybe you'll
00:52:36get some money, maybe you won't. You know, maybe he wants your support on something, but you need
00:52:42that money, you know, sort of thing. And so it, it, it creates the swirl all around him. And here's
00:52:49the funny part. No one will care about this story, which is why I'm talking about it. If a Democrat had
00:52:56done this, can you imagine what red states would be saying? I'll tell you what the narrative would
00:53:02be. Joe Biden wants you to, to die. I mean, even just with the real, with what happened with the
00:53:08hurricane in Western North Carolina, um, last fall. Oh, Biden's abandoning. Kamala Harris isn't
00:53:17here. They've given up. They're not helping you because you live in a red state. That's already the
00:53:21narrative. If Joe Biden said, oh yeah, we're getting rid of FEMA. Now you can just call the White
00:53:25House switchboard and maybe we'll hand out, hand out a check or anything. I guarantee you the
00:53:30narrative would be Joe Biden's Democrats are telling you to go die. The next time a hurricane
00:53:34comes, the next time a disaster comes, Democrats are telling you to go die. That's the, what the
00:53:39narrative would be. It would be straight to go die, you know, sort of thing. So it's, um, yeah,
00:53:48it's, it's a quite, it's not a good thing. It's a quite unfortunate situation. And the reality
00:53:55is there's just going to be fewer resources available, especially given, you know, a lot
00:53:59of these people are very specialized. There's big agencies, facilities, there's, you know,
00:54:04commanding control centers, equipment, all this type of thing. And all that is going to
00:54:08be gone. You know, who, who knows where all that will go, how it will be deployed, who will
00:54:15be in charge of that. It's almost like we should have an agency for it. Maybe we'll call it
00:54:19the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You know. Moving right along. Um, this is
00:54:27interesting. So, Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA plans to discredit Martin Luther
00:54:32King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act. I had forgotten that this was in my bookmarks. And this is from
00:54:40a long time ago. And it was a story from Wired that I found today, and I realized I hadn't
00:54:47really ever talked about it. But it was, um, it was an interesting, um, okay, it's paywalled.
00:54:54It was an, it's an interesting thing because, and to some degree, we've kind of started seeing
00:54:59the manifestation of, of this particularly in, um, in some certain online spaces about people
00:55:11really wanting to repeal the Civil Rights Act, um, disenfranchise black people. You might have
00:55:21heard the term black fatigue going around, um, or it's evil cousin Democrat fatigue. Um,
00:55:30and this, it kind of comes out of all of this idea that what's really gone wrong with the country
00:55:38is the Negroes got too uppity. And he says, Kirk argues that the Civil Rights Act, which bars
00:55:44discrimination on the basis of race, ushered in a permanent DEI-type bureaucracy. Kirk's comments
00:55:50at AmericaFest were merely a preview of his attacks on King. He recently said that he plans
00:55:56to release content to discredit MLK on January 15th, King's birthday, which is a U.S. federal
00:56:03holiday honoring King. We're going to be hitting him next week, Kirk said on his podcast this
00:56:08week. Yeah, on the day of the Iowa caucus, it's MLK Day, we're going to do the thing you're
00:56:12not supposed to do. We're going to tell the truth about MLK Jr. You better tune in next
00:56:15week. Blake's already been preparing. It's going to be great. Um, and, uh, and, and it's
00:56:23kind of funny because I remember, now that I'm sitting here talking about it, I remember at
00:56:28the time when all of that come out, people were making a big deal about the fact that
00:56:33MLK basically was a pimp, which is true. Um, and that he had, you know, different sort of
00:56:37biographical issues and why, you know, why was he picked as this, you know, great leader?
00:56:42Why was he so venerated? Some people have called him, you know, a second founder of the
00:56:47Republic. Um, and the only reason I bring this up is that this was from a year ago, and it's
00:56:56kind of funny how sometimes we don't always look back, and then sometimes by the accident
00:57:02of me not cleaning out my Twitter bookmarks, we end up with a quick lens to the past, and
00:57:09we can now see with clarity a lot of the discussions that have manifested themselves in the intervening
00:57:20in a year and a half since this happened. The anti-woke, anti-DEI, black fatigue, you know,
00:57:29repeal the, the sort of loud voices of people complaining about race relations in this country,
00:57:43country, and how fractious things got, and how sort of, um, you know, diversity and DEI
00:57:50and everything has kind of just sort of fallen apart. This, I won't say this was the start
00:57:55of it, because it, this, all that predates it, but this certainly has had an effect, I think.
00:58:00In, in one way in particular, giving people permission to be openly hateful and bigoted,
00:58:06and that's a very powerful thing. There's a lot of people that will get shut up through
00:58:10social pressure. They still believe the same will stuff, but it's now not polite to say
00:58:13so in polite company. One of the things Trump did with racism is he made it acceptable to
00:58:18be racist again. Charlie Kirk is now going, is now taking that one step further, and he's
00:58:22also going after, you know, sort of the sacred icons, the people, you know, the gods in the
00:58:29temple, if you will, um, against that as well. And when you consider that this is where
00:58:36we were going into the 2024 cycle, it's no surprise how it ended, or how absolutely out
00:58:44of control the narrative got in the course of the year. And it's only gone on since there,
00:58:53um, and it, this whole idea that there is, you know, the, the civil rights movement and
00:59:00everything about that is this sort of, you know, sacred thing that has the research for how
00:59:05amazing it was, and I wonder if it wasn't how much it changed the society. There's a
00:59:08lot of people on the right who are really questioning that, you know, um, that are really, you know,
00:59:14being like, well, maybe segregation wasn't so bad, you know, maybe we could solve half
00:59:19a society's problems if we just, you know, get rid of the black people sort of thing. Um,
00:59:24and get back to, you know, a, you know, high trust, undiverse society that, you know, makes
00:59:30it better if you're white sort of thing. And I think it's interesting how in a, in a very
00:59:40short period of time, we've literally gone from, okay, let's elect Barack Obama to, well,
00:59:47we just need to go back to 1865. Like, you know, I mean, it's, it, for some, somehow it
00:59:52just didn't take us that long to get there, amazingly enough. And the more people that come
00:59:57out and talk like this, not that they shouldn't, they have free speech, but the more the narrative
01:00:03is out there, I'm amazed by the number of people who are sort of quietly, reservedly,
01:00:09without drawing attention to themselves, are coming along and being like, yeah, man, I agree
01:00:15with you too. I think that's interesting. I think that's telling about where we are as
01:00:25a people. I think it's quite sad too. But, um, speaking, speaking of this very problem,
01:00:34I put these two stories together for a reason. Speaking of where we are on this, um, this
01:00:38little graphic has been floating around Twitter. Um, and it comes from a study in, uh, I don't,
01:00:50do we know where it's from? Oh, Horizon Europe. It was funded by Horizon Europe. I guess we don't
01:00:54know where it's from. Um, uh, but this, this graphic has been floating around from these
01:01:00three people who said, attitude networks as in a group reality is using network modeling
01:01:04to research attitude identity relationships in polarized political contexts. And the abstract
01:01:10is they were basically studying what kind of binds people together and how close are their
01:01:16beliefs versus how far apart they are. And so what they did is they took in an absurd
01:01:24amount of data and they find that according to the present findings, Democrats more than
01:01:30Republicans tightly center their belief system around a set of positions at the extremes of
01:01:34these political particular items, implying that people who deviate from these positions
01:01:38are likely to be considered as out group members. Extreme extremity should thereby be understood
01:01:42as a function of both the formulation of the item and the response. It is possible that
01:01:46holding extreme and thus unnegotiable attitudes on important social political issues has become
01:01:51increasing identity defining for Democrats, not the least in response to Donald Trump's
01:01:55controversial presidency. And basically what the graphic shows is that on the left, there
01:02:02is a very tight ideological core of everyone together believing many similar things. And if you
01:02:11don't sort of believe all of these things, you are put farther and farther out. Whereas
01:02:16on the right, you have a little bit of a tight core in this area, but the numbers of things that still
01:02:24coalesce around that tight core is much wider than that coalesces around the left-wing core. Which
01:02:32basically, the thing I love about this is it kind of proves my point that I've had for many,
01:02:38many years and one of the reasons why Donald Trump make America great again work so well.
01:02:46Make America great again can be anything anyone wants it to be. It's one of those phrases that you
01:02:51can take it in on yourself and it is whatever you want it to be. It can mean to you whatever you want
01:02:56it to mean. And we see here that, you know, this diversity of opinions and attitudes and thoughts and all
01:03:08this type of thing really, you know, it's this very broad, big, tense sort of thing. Whereas
01:03:14on the left, we would never probably come up with a phrase like that because there are certain core
01:03:21things you have to sign on to if you're going to be a Democrat and last in the party any length of
01:03:26time. You know, you've got to support LGBTQ people. You, you know, you don't have to be into, you
01:03:32know, diversity, not be a racist, you know, all this sort of thing. There's kind of these fundamental
01:03:35things that really define the Democratic Party over the right, which is a lot more open to different
01:03:44people who might, you know, be a little bit more liberal out here, be very conservative over here,
01:03:50might have a Democratic opinion or two up here. You know, there's a lot more openness. And, and let's face
01:03:56it, the reality is if you're trying to argue to a diverse electorate who probably lives somewhere in the
01:04:02middle, like this is where most of the country's at, is like in this area, you know, they're not die, these are
01:04:09diehards, these are diehards. Most of the country's living in this area. Look at, look, I mean,
01:04:14just, just by size of the image. If most of the country lives in this space, the number of ways
01:04:22you can align with the Republican agenda over the Democrat agenda is just huge. And unfortunately,
01:04:31I think if the Democrats want to really widen and broaden their brace and appeal, they're going to
01:04:37have to get farther away from this core. But I don't think they're going to do that. There's just too
01:04:42many base assumptions of the political left in this country that you kind of have to sign on to.
01:04:48The other thing the Republicans have the advantage of is there's very little required to be over here.
01:04:54There's a lot required to be over on the left. Like on the right, you can just be a guy who doesn't
01:04:59really pay attention to politics or the news. Maybe you watch my show. Maybe you listen to a couple
01:05:04podcasts or you listen to a non-political podcast that mentions politics every four years around a
01:05:08presidential election. And, and, and there's, there's plenty of opportunity for you to glom on
01:05:15to some beliefs on this side. Not over here. Look at how little there is. You're all in. You're all
01:05:21in or you're out. Whereas here, you can be a casual. You can live in this space. It's a completely
01:05:28different political economy. And so obviously we're not getting into the, all the things people have said
01:05:35about this graphics as it's popped around, but it's a very interesting thing, um, to, to, to look at
01:05:43and to kind of have America's political ideology mapped physically. Um, this is a great huge revenge
01:05:53for Republicans moving forward. I mean, to some degree, the disadvantage of the, of the way Democrats
01:05:59are is this is a known quantity. People have a list of things that they think Democrats believe in or
01:06:05whatever have you. Um, and, uh, and, and they're, you know, they're either, they're either in or
01:06:14they're out with it kind of already. Whereas over here, it's dynamic. There's movement. There's room to
01:06:20grow. There's room to have a, you know, a different opinion on some certain issues or not, or all of a
01:06:26something you don't have to be a diehard to find a spot in this much greater ecosystem. And I think
01:06:33that, um, that's a big problem for Democrats moving forward. It just is like you can't win a
01:06:43majority election in a country as big and diverse as ours by solely catering to this group here
01:06:48and not even have that much around it. Like it's just, it's very narrow. It's a narrow set of
01:06:56beliefs. And this is election losing. It just is. This has got to get opened up. And I will say as
01:07:02someone who's a triple minority, I realize I'm the person getting thrown overboard when I say open
01:07:06this up. But I also want to see people that I at least somewhat agree with in power in this country.
01:07:13Um, and I think a lot of, you know, these people living in the middle could be brought back over
01:07:17if things were a little bit more open. And if you allowed, you know, the phenomena of conservative
01:07:26Democrats again, which all have been driven out of the party. Um, so on a difference of all this side,
01:07:31it's very kind of interesting, interesting sort of, sort of, sort of thing. Um, last couple stories.
01:07:37Um, this will cancel a thread about our whole society going Nazi. We're just not going to read.
01:07:44Um, oh, this one was interesting. Um, it's funny. American attitudes towards free trade have rapidly
01:07:52polarized. No, they haven't. And I'll tell you why. Every major free trade deal in this country has been
01:08:00signed by a Democrat. Democrats have always been for free trade. It was Republicans who got on the free
01:08:05trade train because their corporate donors wanted free trade. There's been, there's no political
01:08:11realignment or anything like that. Like Democrats have always been in favor of free trade. Now, when
01:08:18it comes to free speech, there's a bit of a different, um, a different divide in terms of
01:08:24Democrats are much more likely to be open to internet censorship than Republicans are on a lot of
01:08:30different issues according to this YouGov, um, to this YouGov poll. Like, the internet promotes
01:08:35people finding common ground. The internet makes it easier to be able to share their views without
01:08:39consequences. You know, all this type of thing. You know, the internet makes it easier to be able
01:08:42to share their views with a large number of people. You know, and then this one's kind of the big
01:08:46telling one. The internet should be a free speech zone where speech should be uncensored.
01:08:50Republicans, 72%. Democrats, 34%. Um, that, I mean, the free speech thing is a bit of a realignment,
01:08:57but the free trade thing definitely isn't. And I, again, found in my bookmarks that I thought it
01:09:06was worth mentioning. Um, and I only saved this to say, no, Democrats have always been the party of
01:09:11free trade. Always. Three, there are, Bill Clinton signed three major pieces of free trade deals during
01:09:15his presidency. No, Obama was going to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and people in the party
01:09:22activated, lobbied, and got him to pull out of it. But he was fully on board. Absolutely fully on
01:09:29board. Um, one of the mistakes the Democrat party has made is not acknowledging the failures of free
01:09:34trade. And they have ceded that issue to the Republican party and to Trump, and that's the
01:09:39reason why we're having a trade war right now. Um, when it comes to the free speech end of things,
01:09:45um, I'm a radical free speech person, but I'm in the minority. Most people are not that way.
01:09:49Most people, you know, want, um, you know, want some, you know, a lot of people want some sort of
01:09:56censorship. I always say, bring it on. My comment section is open. People spend a lot of time calling
01:10:02me fat and ugly and all this type of thing. Some people leave actual good comments, and I reply to
01:10:07those. Most of the time, it's just telling me to find a doctor and lose weight. That's what my comment
01:10:11section is. But I never restrict the comments. I don't delete comments either. I leave them there,
01:10:16because I appreciate the engagement score for the algorithm. Um, and then finally, oh,
01:10:22the video from Peter Thiel. Okay. So, I wanted to watch this video because, as we know, Peter Thiel
01:10:28got J.D. Vance into power. He's been a big part of the sort of shadowy figures in the Republican
01:10:36party. Um, and there's now this sort of anti-science thing. And this is a great way to finish, because
01:10:43it kind of tells us where we're going. So, let's watch. The late 19th, early 20th century,
01:10:49there was a movement called Cosmism in the sort of, around the time of the Soviet Revolution, 1920s
01:10:55Soviet Union. And it, it, um, it claimed that for the revolution to succeed, um, you had to physically
01:11:02resurrect all the dead people using science. And it was workers of the world unite. And to sort of get
01:11:08with the times, their slogan was dead of the world unite. And then, of course, they didn't make much
01:11:13progress on this. And then at some point by the time you get to Stalin and the show trials, and
01:11:17the deaths seemed to be going up, not down. But, uh, but there was a moment when they thought it
01:11:21might even be possible. There was, there was a, there was an incredible ambition and incredible energy
01:11:26to, to modern science. It was perhaps downstream from Christianity. You know, if, uh, if the promise
01:11:33of Christianity is a physical resurrection, then, um, science had to, um, could offer that
01:11:39to. It was a possibility. Maybe it was a rival to Christianity. You know, you don't, you don't
01:11:44need Christianity if we can do it through science. Um, and then, um, and then there is, there is
01:11:49a strange way that the project in many dimensions feels very exhausted, even though of course people
01:11:55still genuflect to science. They believe in science with a capital S. But the, the ambition
01:12:00has been, um, really beaten out. Uh, if you, if you look at the individual scientists,
01:12:06uh, it, it, it, it sort of, it's, it's, it's, it's much less of the sort of heroic, uh, you
01:12:12know, bold figure breaks with dogmas and things for him or herself. And, uh, it's, it's much
01:12:19more, you know, in late modernity, you're, I don't know.
01:12:22And, uh, I mean, that's, it's an interesting, you know, idea that somehow science is exhausted
01:12:34or broken and that, you know, we need to, you know, move on to, to, to something, late
01:12:42night, shush, to move on to something else. But this is interesting. I kind of emphasize
01:12:46enough that the reason Trump has gone balls out to destroy science and the medicine is
01:12:50the living antichrist, Peter Thiel, seen here in his regulation and haircut. He says
01:12:54science is exhausted and proposes something more Christian, like Russian cosmism. And
01:12:59someone down here says, uh, he's an atheist who's constructed a way to be pro-theocracy.
01:13:04He was recruited by Opus J at Stanford. There's a reason he got where he is. But his belief system
01:13:10is far darker. He literally sees himself as the techno-antichrist with a big splash of esoteric
01:13:14Nazism. I would like, I, I have not really dug into him. The person I would like to see
01:13:23him talk, to see talk about is Kara Swisher. I need to go watch some videos about that, but
01:13:29I thought this was, this whole idea of the sort of Russian cosmism, the sort of, you know,
01:13:35science replacing Christianity in the sort of pseudo-scientific religious sort of thing
01:13:40is very interesting. And I think it's something, and the title is interesting, um, you know,
01:13:47I think it's interesting to, to something to be, to look at and keep an eye, um, keep an
01:13:54eye on. Because given, I mean, although we've kind of moved on from, uh, the, you know, the
01:14:01pulling of science funding and going after institutions, those stories have kind of de-emphasized
01:14:06themselves. If this is the philosophy that we're going towards, and the philosophy that
01:14:11we're working with, we should be very, very worried. Because anybody that gets in the way
01:14:19of his plans, if you get in the way, if you don't conform or fit in, it's not going to end
01:14:30well for you. You know, sort of thing. People like to throw around eugenics a lot, um, I
01:14:37think it's maybe a bit premature for that, but this whole, um, you know, this, this whole,
01:14:43this whole idea that, you know, we need to move past science and medicine and into a sort
01:14:49of different belief system, you know, that's sort of theocratic. It also gets into the rise
01:14:56of Christian nationalism in the Republican Party. There are multiple podcast episodes
01:15:00on that, so please go watch them. Um, this is where we're headed. I'll say it. This is
01:15:06where we're headed, and we need to be very concerned. Why am I not following this person?
01:15:09Um, we need to be very concerned about this. So, that's a fright, a frightening way to end
01:15:16the evening. Um, thank you all so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Like I said,
01:15:22to end on a little bit of a fright. Um, and I, we'll, we'll keep an eye on Mr. Teal and
01:15:27this whole Russian cosmism story thing. I will probably end up digging further into that
01:15:31as time goes on, but we have fun here. So, um, my name is Cameron Cowan. This is the Cameron
01:15:37Journal News Hour. Make sure to follow me on social media at CameronJowell.com. Go sign up
01:15:41for Cameron Journal Plus. It's a lot of fun. Um, also, we're building up the Discord, building
01:15:48community. I talked a lot about community in Saturday's newsletter, which is right on
01:15:53CameronJowell.com. You can go read it. Um, try before you buy, if you will. Um, thinking
01:15:58a lot about community. We're trying to build a really great community here. So, I will
01:16:01see you next Monday. Thank you so much for watching. Today's interview, um, is very fiction
01:16:05focused, but if you love fantasy, um, go listen to J.V. Hilliard talk about his best-selling
01:16:09Santa Fears. He's the Warminster Saga. Um, J.V. Hilliard's a great fantasy author. He's
01:16:14really great. He's been building his own community of fantasy authors. He's actually helping
01:16:17us promote our next fantasy anthology from Soup called Fantastic Worlds, um, which is
01:16:22going into production right now, which is really great. Um, that's the end of you this
01:16:25week. Um, otherwise, I will see you next Monday right here at 7 p.m. Eastern on the Cameron
01:16:30Journal News Hour. Have a great night, everyone. Bye-bye.
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