Centered From Reality

In this Halloween episode, Alex breaks down the five scariest political events happening right now. In this episode, his five are - 

1. The Rise of a French Trump

In this episode, Alex discusses the upcoming Virginia Gubernatorial election that will take place on November 2nd. Virginia is a strange state in which a governor cannot be in office for two consecutive terms. This election is between the Former Democratic Governor, Terry McAuliffe, and the Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin. Alex breaks down: 

• How this election may be a test run for both Republican and Democratic strategies going into the 2022 midterms. Should Republicans distance themselves from Trumpism but run on his policies and culture war issues? Should Democrats focus on Trump or on policy? Currently, Youngkin has said that Biden is the legitimate president and has criticized the January 6th riots, yet he has focused on Critical Race Theory, attacks on school boards, and mask mandates.

• According to early polls (CNBC/Suffolk University), at least 667,012 Virginians have submitted early ballots and they are currently in favor of McAuliffe. However, Trump’s conspiracies around voting by mail may lead to many Republicans on the day of the election. Suffolk University, as of Monday, has each candidate receiving an identical 45% in support. 

• Virginia sued the US Postal Service a few days ago over potential delays of election material, including ballots. These issues have been in three counties that went to Biden in the 2020 election. Alex worries that the USPS Board of Governors, which is run by Trump’s pick, Louis DeJoy, has gutted the post office and this has led to these delays. This may not impact the election on Tuesday, but these voting by mail issues need to be addressed.

• Both sides in this election have voiced worries of voter fraud or at least, irregularities. Alex worries that voicing concerns over “fraud” may be a new playbook that could corrupt both sides. 

In this episode, Alex focuses on intensifying concerns inside of the GOP over Trump’s control of the party, as well as the global far-right movement, and his thoughts on how the US must work towards unity again. He discusses - 

• Iowa’s 88 year old senator, Chuck Grassley, accepted Trump’s endorsement for reelection at a rally in Des Moines over the weekend. Grassley had been a “Sometimes Trumper” who diverged from the president over the “big lie,” January 6th, and Trump’s rhetoric. This highlights that Trump’s control over the party has only intensified and even creatures of the senate like Grassley have accepted this truth. 

• Last weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz joined a virtual rally in Madrid held by the far-right party, VOX. He spoke  of the “shared values” between him and VOX leader Santiago Abascal. Even for Ted Cruz, this is a troubling shift in values and rhetoric. VOX is a populist party with a nostalgia for the fascism of the Franco dictatorship. They also have an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-feminist agenda. Alex highlights how it feels like right-wing parties from around the world aren’t treating each other like foreign entities but instead as a shared global movement. The only connection seems to be Steve Bannon’s presence and a shared distaste for modernity and liberal society. He mentions Tucker Carlson’s trip to Hungary, Victor Obran’s erosion of democratic institutions, and more. 

• Alex ends by discussing how the country needs to focus on unity before massive policies. The need leaders that aren’t focused on “big D” or “big R” politics, it needs to focus on the “small d” democracy politics first. He mentions how the country is seeing two extremes that could borderline on having authoritarian tendencies. He discusses how the aspirational patriotism of the progressive left and the nostalgic patriotism on the far-right must be tamed down. He draws parallels between this time and the onset of the Spanish Civil War. 

In this episode, Alex takes a day off from discussing American issues and focuses on international events. He finds three events that somewhat relate to one another and can help describe larger trends around the globe. He discusses: 

• There are reports of growing issues at the CIA. A recent New York Times article by Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman discusses how “Counterintelligence officials said in a top-secret cable to all stations and bases around the world that too many of the people it recruits from other countries to spy for the U.S. are being lost.” The report looked at dozens of cases where informants had either been compromised or killed over the last few years. Alex discusses how the CIA is struggling to keep up with the digital era, seems to put the mission over security, and needs to reform its intelligence gathering methods. 

• China was again caught performing beach landing drills off the coast of Taiwan in another symbolic gesture to Taiwan and the world. In the last week, China has also flown more than 50 warplanes over Taiwan’s aerial defenses. This led to Taiwan stating it will defend its land and the US calling out China for challenging the region’s stability. Alex worries that this escalation is at its worst in years and he hopes that the US/China aren’t close to an open conflict. It seems like relations between the two have deteriorated since the pandemic and both sides are waiting for the other to blink. Does Xi Jinping want Taiwan as part of his legacy? Was Hong Kong a practice? 

• The humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has only gotten worse since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has waged close to an all-out war against the region. There has been an escalation of violence between the government and the Tigrayan people after an election dispute in 2020. Since, there have been reports of mass violence, rape, and starvation mainly to the Tigrayan people. The Tigrayan people need aid, but the Ethiopian government and Eritrea soldiers are stopping aid and making the situation worse. Many fear this could lead to close to a million deaths and even some world organizations are calling this a genocide. 

Nihilism is a philosophy that looks to reject aspects of human existence such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. In this episode, Alex argues that nihilism is a major factor that is driving extreme and divisive politics in the United States and around the world. He gives a case for why nihilism (or apathy) towards democracy and our institutions has led to angry populism and violent rhetoric. 

In this discussion, he feels that nihilism has become a preexisting condition as to why many Americans believe democracy is no longer working. He uses a range of examples as to why society has become so nihilistic, these include 

• An Atlantic article from 2016 that reads “there is no meaning (in politics) other than political theater behind it. The consequences of this political nihilism will be catastrophic and will reverberate down through the decades of the 21st century. If you doubt this, think of climate change and the global economy…” 

• Leaks like the Pandora papers, which “reveal hidden wealth, tax avoidance and, in some cases, money laundering by some of the world's rich and powerful.” The papers also show that South Dakota is a new tax haven where “hundreds of billions of dollars sequestered in South Dakota trusts generate no taxes and are effectively off-limits to anybody who might have a legitimate claim on them.” 

• The Commissioner of the IRS wants banks to report annual cash flows for ordinary account holders who have over $600 dollars in their accounts. The justification is to find people that are dodging taxes, but some skeptics think taxing everyone a small amount could bring in more revenue than expending resources and time to get the wealthy to pay more in taxes. 

• The “race to the bottom” in welfare program quality between states in the US. Because different states have different welfare programs with different costs and different levels of quality, other states don’t want to be over-generous if other states are stingy, so they all are just stingy. This leads to a lowering of welfare coverage for those that may need it the most.

• Nihilism has culminated in the rise of political grifters who don’t care about ethics or the truth. Trump may be the ultimate grifter who has come out of American distrust in the system. The problem with what Trump did was that he mixed his own nihilism about democracy at a time when the American people’s nihilism towards the system was growing as well. This was a perfect cocktail of systematic disdain that lead to Trump’s unique form of populism. 

In this episode, Alex sits down with Cole Costello to discuss socialism, the future of capitalism, and what people get wrong about Karl Marx. Cole is a friend and currently in the graduate program for history at Cal State Los Angeles, focusing on early twentieth-century American urban/race/labor history. Cole falls somewhere on the left, with some Marxist tendencies and a sense of loss and confusion in modern politics. In this episode, some topics they discuss/debate are - 

• Does the US system still work? 

• What Marxism actually means and would it work in a country like the US? 

• Is the US heading towards a Civil War or conflict? 

• What does history tell us about socialism? And why did the Soviet Union fail? 

• Is Capitalism the best system? 

• Should there be billionaires? 

In this second episode of the podcast, Alex covers a plethora of issues. He discusses - 

• In the eleventh hour, the government finally did their job and passed a plan to keep the government funded until December. Unfortunately, Congress still has work to do. Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, has said that the US will reach its debt ceiling by October. Can congress agree on something to work? Also, Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill is not only being held up by Republicans, but also my moderates like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. How did Sinema, a rockstar of the left, become a bulwark against passing legislation? 

• Germany held their federal elections, with the highest position possible being the German Chancellor. This was a role that Angela Merkel held since 2005. She announced earlier this year that she wouldn’t seek another term. Instead what happened was the centre-left Social Democrats narrowly took first place in Germany’s federal election. The SDP only narrowly won with %25.7 of the vote, with the CDU only a percentage point behind. How will the SDP form a coalition that barely represented a majority of the electorate? 

• “Why Are People Nostalgic for Early-Pandemic Life?” By Morgan Ome and Christian Paz is a fascinating article from The Atlantic. It goes over a growing trend amongst young Americans who feel nostalgia for the early days of the pandemic. Alex shares his own “pandemic nostalgia” and tries to understand why this could be happening. Did COVID pull off the veil of ignorance and now people are seeing unwanted realities of the world? Maybe even nostalgia is a coping mechanism.