SPEAKER_00 0:00

Not only does the Riz Minister get it on, he's been getting it on this whole time. The resignation you feel when you realize that not only is he going to give taxpayer money to insurrectionists, he's going to host an award show in which he gives taxpayer money to insurrectionists. That is Autocratic Despair. This is Autocratic Despair, the podcast. I'm Nick Mortensen, a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Each week on the Autocratic Despair Podcast, I stare into the abyss with my friend, Dr. Craig Johnson, PhD in global fascism, lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 2025's most important book, How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism. Dr. Craig, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate your autocratic despair this week?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Well, historically, you know, for the last couple weeks I've been at a 3.5 or a 4. I'm all the way at a 5. 5 is really bad. I'm saving a 10 for like, I am currently being lined up to be shy. That's a 10 for me. So a five for me is because the president is stealing the money of every taxpayer in the United States in order to make a slush fund for the people that he got to stage his last coup. Which is also in clear violation of section four of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States, maybe the most important one since the Bill of Rights, up there with the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. 14th Amendment says the rights of all people in the United States are equal. It's like the most important thing that's happened since Reconstruction. But later on in the amendment, it says that the United States shall not spend any money at all on anybody who has committed treason against the United States. It was for the Civil War, right? It was for the Confederacy. But that's literally what we're doing is spending mind-boggling amounts of money to defend people who literally committed treason. They literally committed treason. Many of them were convicted of the crime. Treason. But here we are.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

It's just happening. For people that aren't familiar with this, earlier this week, Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice settled. He was suing the United States, the IRS, for $10 billion for having the audacity to uh release some of his older tax returns. Trump famously never allowed the United States to see his tax returns. And he was aggrieved by the fact that some of them got out. So suing the government for $10 billion. Also in charge of the department that decides to settle lawsuits that are brought. In all of his wisdom, he decided this week that he was willing to drop that $10 billion suit in exchange for a $1.776 billion trust fund that he will be using to compensate the people that were, as he puts it, wrongly attacked by our government for what they did on January 6th. $1.776 billion. $1776. Boy, he likes that number. That's what those people were screaming as they penetrated the Capitol Rotunda. He's gonna have an award show for these people, right? He's gonna have them up on stage for sure. Absolutely. He's gonna talk about what they did. He's gonna give different monetary awards based on what their acts were. Yeah. What they performed. I mean, he's a showman. Rubbing our faces in it in this profound, profound way. I can see why that's got you up a point and a half over the course of a week. It's upsetting.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

It's also literally how fascists come to power. A clear and direct violation of the Constitution. It's an open-shut case. I know that those are dime a dozen. This is another way to violate the Constitution. It's amazing. It's amazing. The levels of violation here are so profound that I think we've reached a new low. For sure. For the Trump administration, this is some of the clearest indication that he's given that he is going to be sticking by his fascist thugs. He is not abandoning them. He needs them for the midterm. Whoever succeeds him in power in the Republican Party, or whoever's shoulders he's looming over in the presidential election in 2028, unless he tries to run again, they're going to need these fascist thugs too. That's necessary for them at this point. They can't jettison them. The alternative, of course, is for the Republican Party to try to claim mass amnesia and that they were just like in some sort of fugue state for the last 20 years as they walked directly into this and participated in it actively. They might try to claim something like that. Realistically, they're probably just gonna have to sit with this and be stuck with this legacy for a generation, which means that they're gonna need those fascists and they're gonna need them not in jail for treason and pedophilia and assault and murder and sexual crimes, which basically all of them are also guilty of a bunch of other stuff. It's a nightmare cadre of people. They're fascists. What else can you expect?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

I'm taking a bit of comfort in knowing that these people are all extreme fuck-ups. Every single thing that they've done in their life leading up to January 6th and since January 6th has been stupid. There's nothing more hilarious than when an absolute fuck up gets an extra $30,000 in their bank account. It's gonna lead to so many fentanyl overdoses and cyber trucks on the road. So many skidoos and snowmobiles purchased.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

I have forgotten the word skidoo. I live in California. On the heels of this, Nick, where's your autocratic despair, bud? How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I'm at about a seven, which is where I was last week. It feels like it's rising, though. I live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This past weekend there was a series of concerts, two in fact, at Lambeau Field. There's very rarely a musical artist that can fill Lambeau Field. They do one concert a year there. It's Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Kenny Chesney one year. This year it was a country music artist named Luke Combs, who I'm barely familiar with. I know him from two things. One, I remember there was a bunch of ads for a Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast where he had Luke Combs when they were doing a bunch of four-wheeling. I was like, well, I don't want to watch that. And then Luke Combs also does a version of In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins that is the Monday night football theme. We've all been touched by Luke Combs at some point in our lives. I work out in the shadow of Lamborough Field, my health club's over there. I actually had to park pretty far away from the gym and walk. So I got to experience the tailgate scene in Green Bay, Wisconsin of a massive today's country music situation. I know that Gen Z doesn't drink, but they do drink sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

For those of you unfamiliar with the state of Wisconsin, it's the alcohol capital of the United States. Wisconsin is.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

We hear that, but we can't conceive of it. We just think other people don't drink that much.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

As I age, I enjoy drinking less and less personally. I come from the Midwest where it's normal to be drinking a beer when you get home from work. Wisconsin's different. When I got admitted to graduate school, I was admitted to three schools. I got into UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and University Madison, Wisconsin, which is an amazing school, an incredible school, one of the best public schools in the country. I picked Berkeley because we had a union. And because Madison, Wisconsin is an incredible university, but more people outside of the academic world know about Berkeley. And so I figured that it would give me a little bit more prestige in the long run. Who knows? Point is that when I interviewed for Wisconsin, the Badgers, do people just say the Badgers? Is that what people say? Yeah, the Badgers. They just say the Badgers. The Badgers basketball team was in some like quarterfinal or something. And I was staying with a friend from college. I was staying in like some squat or whatever, you know, some group house because I was a little punk in college. So I had to shower in this terrible squad and put on my like nice clothes to go talk to professors and stuff. And they took us out for drinks afterwards, and people were mostly watching the game, which kind of put me off. And then I went back to this squat, fell asleep on the couch, woke up in the middle of the night because the team had won, because somebody had tossed a burning sofa into the street. I was like, I don't know. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

I know exactly what street you were staying on. See, I don't know. Mifflin. You were staying on Mifflin Street, East Mifflin. I believe you. I lived in Madison for a decade, right in the Capitol Square. So I know where all the couches get burnt on a regular basis. It's on Mifflin Street.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

It's probably true. You might have been there when the couch was being burned. This was almost exactly 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

I think I was gone from Madison by then. 2011 was my last year. Back in Green Bay now. It's a great place to raise your kids. It's a great place to strive for mediocrity. Um it's a fantastic town that just happens to have an NFL team. It's quintessential Americana. And yes, an exceptional number of taverns per person. Yeah. We're in the top ten. I think we're fourth or fifth, but the other cities are also in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, that's what happens when Germans are stuck in a wintry place.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

You have to do something when you're not working or sleeping. And hanging out at a tavern is what happens around it. I never got into drinking except for during COVID crisis. Yeah. For my entire adult life, I've never had any beer in my refrigerator. If I wanted to acquire some beer, I'd go get it. Yeah. Put it in a cooler, drink it. If you came to my house, there might be one beer in the refrigerator at any given time. It's not something I do on a daily basis, not something I even do on a weekly basis. And that makes me unique. I'm thought of as a teetotaler in this town, which means I'm open to drinking. I'm just not planning on doing it or know where my next drink is coming from. Yeah. That was what passes for a teetotaler in this town. It was the first nice day that we had this past weekend, and I had to walk around the tailgate scene of the Luke Combs concert. He did two. I took an opportunity to do it. See all these young people getting excited about music in a way that I can't possibly get excited about music. Yes. Well, vicarious joy is one of the most important things about middle age. I was kind of upset. There's a certain amount of tailgate scene there that had MAGA flags.

unknown 10:36

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

That's country music. That kind of comes with the territory. On Monday, I found out of the two concerts this weekend, there were only two arrests and 33 people put out of the stadium, which is shockingly low. That's very low. That's very impressive. Things are different, I guess. Maybe that's like a classier bit of country music. I'm not familiar with Luke Combs. So I took a look. He's a country music artist. He's 35. He's from Asheville, North Carolina. He has sold more albums than anyone in the history of country music at the ripe old age at 35. Surpassed Garth Brooks. He's the two-time Country Music Award Entertainer of the Year. He's a much bigger artist than I had previously thought. In fact, he was only supposed to do one concert in Green Bay, but it sold out so quickly that they added a second. It's not my kind of music. It's fine, but it's not for me. I came to look and to see if Luke Combs was a MAGA enthusiast country music star. Given that he'd sold that many records, I guess I assumed that as a country music star he would be. What's interesting is that Luke Combs has gone to great pains in order to not disabuse anyone of the notion that he is a MAGA enthusiast, but he's never admitted to being one, and all of his behavior strikes me that he isn't. But he describes his politics as heavily moderate. The quote is: I'm not liberal enough for liberals and I'm not conservative enough for conservatives. There was a photo of him in front of a Confederate flag a few years back. When it came out, he addressed it by apologizing and saying to the public that he's not a racist, which prompted a backlash from his right-wing audience. They tried to cancel him over. Not great. He acknowledged it by asking in a social media post, how hard is it to say that you're not a racist? He's done plenty of stuff that, if you were looking for, signaled that he was not a MAGA enthusiast. He was asked to play Trump's 2024 July concert. Instead, he played a PBS event called The Capital Fourth. It's happening at the same time. Famously a few years ago, he did a cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car from 1988. Tracy Chapman is a black gay artist and they performed the song together at the Grammy Awards. I was wrong about him. He's not MAGA. If he is, he's certainly not a loud and proud MAGA enthusiast. I don't think he's one at all. Tracy Chapman, the Confederate flag apology, the stating that he's moderate. I don't believe he's moderate. I don't know how you could be at this point in history unless you've been ignoring everything that happened. But I sort of admire that he hasn't become a full-on MAGA enthusiast. He stands to lose a lot of his audience if he comes out against it. Staying Schrdinger's fascist. At least he's not a full fascist. He probably does deserve some credit. I can't help but lament that he's not currently an out and proud fascist is an achievement in 2026 worthy of my respect. Since when did decline to endorse authoritarianism set the bar for respect? It's not courage, it's the floor, it's the minimum.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

You're right. There's this like weird thing where I'm relieved that he's not a Nazi, but I don't feel like I should be happy about it. I sort of am.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

At least for a musical artist that sells at that level, it's not a good business decision yet. I'm taking some heart in that. Yeah. There's not exactly anybody in the music business that has sort of come out against Trump other than Springsteen. Good for him. Proudly anti-fascist. He was doing the modern-day Woody Guthrie thing. Great for Bruce. I've never gotten into Springsteen for the same reason. I never watched a Pixar movie before I had kids. I figured there's a point in my life where all I'm gonna do is listen to Bruce Springsteen. It's coming. I don't know when. Yeah, the boss comes for us all. I know it's coming because I heard the song Night Moves by Bob Seeger the other day, and it really moved me. I got a little choked up. Oh, those days are gone. I think Seeger is sort of the Midwestern version of Springsteen. Yeah, maybe. It's gotta be hard to be a MAG enthusiast from New Jersey right now. You gotta pick one. And a lot of them are not picking Springsteen. Thank God that Bon Jovi is staying completely out of it. At least you got somebody if you live in New Jersey. The bar of what qualifies for courage has been lowered so far. But not being a MAG enthusiast is now commendable. The middle point between fascism and anti-fascism shouldn't be I'm staying out of it. Not gonna go with it. That's too hot a potato for my taste. Yes, the moderate position is not I don't feel anything one way or the other. The moderate position on fascism right now is like I'm not gonna think about it because it hurts my brain to think about it. Because I know that I'm anti-fascist, but I do like all this fascism that's happening. That's basically their position, yeah. It's a weird aspect to me. I was wrong about Luke Combs. I assumed he was a MAG enthusiast. He plays at it just enough to let everybody know that he isn't woke. It's just hard to believe that not being an out and proud fascist qualifies as integrity, but for Luke Combs it does. He stands to lose a lot of money by coming out against it. He stands to be rewarded if he decides to become a full-on mag enthusiast. So it's what looks like courage. I guess that's one of the things that you have to accept at this point in American history. It bums me out. There's a small update on the Prairie Land situation. If you're new to the show, every episode or read the names of nine Americans who are currently awaiting sentencing on federal terrorism charge. Yeah. Here's what happened. On July 4th, 2025, a group of protesters showed up outside an ice detention center called Prairie Land in Alvarado, Texas. It's about 30 miles south of Fort Worth. Prairie Land is a concentration camp. The protesters brought fireworks because it was the 4th of July, and the purpose of the demonstration was a noise protest. They wanted the people locked inside to hear them and know they hadn't been forgotten. The protest went sideways when one of the defendants, a former Marine named Ben Song, allegedly fired a weapon and wounded a police officer. This should have been the story of one person charged with one crime. Instead, the federal government charged all nine of them, not just with attempted murder, but with conspiracy to use explosives for bringing customer grade fireworks to a Fourth of July protest, and also charged them with providing material support for terrorism. The government's theory was that these nine people were operatives of a North Texas Antifa cell. Antifa, short for antifascist, has no members, no headquarters, no leadership, and no legal existence as an organization. The Trump administration has designated it as a domestic terrorist organization. But there's no statutory framework that allows the federal government to do that, because the First Amendment prohibits the designation of domestic political movements as terrorist groups. The Trump administration did it anyway. Seven of the Prairie Land Nine were acquitted of attempted murder. The jury did not believe they conspired with Song or could have foreseen the shooting. But the same jury convicted all nine on the terrorism and explosive charges. They have not yet been sentenced. Sentencing is scheduled for June 18th, about a month from now. Some of them face up to 60 years in federal prison. The Attorney General of the United States at the time, Pam Bondi, said after the verdict, this will not be the last. We believe her. This case has set and will continue to set alarming new precedents for how dissent against the Trump administration is treated in the United States. We read their names every week because someone should. We want to make sure the Prairie Land Nine are not forgotten.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah, the fact that the United States government has almost $2 billion to defend people who, many of whom have already been convicted of treason. They have already been convicted of treason and they got pardoned by Trump. We got two billion dollars to help them, and now we are going to put somebody in jail for 20 years because they picked up a box of literature and moved it. If you ever needed any indication about how the government works or like how the law works or who it protects, it's transparent. It's so obvious, it's almost boring to talk about. There almost isn't even something to say.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

This represents a quantum leap in America about how they're going to treat dissent. Let me read off the names of the people awaiting sentencing, having been convicted of aiding in abetting terrorism. Autumn Hill, Zachary Ebbett, Savannah Batten, Megan Morris, Marisela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Inez Soto, and Benjamin Song. The one update is that the state trials for the other defendants have been moving at a creeping pace. This week, the Johnson County DA's office that is prosecuting the Prairie Land protesters at the state level in Texas told defense attorneys that it has and has had over 20 terabytes of evidence in discovery, but has yet to turn any of it over. The state trials are coming up on June 20th. It'll be most likely delayed, pending sentencing in the federal case. This isn't good that they're not turning over evidence to the defense. Probably a violation of speedy trial rights. It's going to be hard to mount any new defense based on the information that's contained in there, if if there is new information in there. At 20 terabytes, it seems likely there's new information in there. Because of this delay, the state trials are most likely going to be petitioned to be delayed by the defense because they weren't given enough time with the discovery information. We'll see if that's the case. If the federal trial is any indication, hamstringing the defense by withholding information that should have been made available on discovery isn't something that works out to your disadvantage. If there's a next president of the United States, one of the things that he probably has to do is agree to release these political prisoners. God, that would be nice. I hope so. We will continue to update you on the Prairie Land Nine. We'll at least say their names every week. They must not be forgotten. It's time for Tal Rico Talk, your weekly segment where Dr. Craig and I decide that the only solution to the problem that America is having is James Tal Rico. That's right, America has a Talarico-shaped hole. This is a difficult time in American history. There's a lot to be upset about. There's a lot to be depressed about. Dr. Craig and I are particularly afflicted with a certain amount of anxiety, autocratic despair, if you will, about what's happening here. If you suffer with the same affliction, join the party. We're here to help you survive it. With that in mind, Dr. Craig and I have decided that we are going to put all of our hopes and dreams into a future where James Tal Rico is the president of the United States. There's long odds against that. James Tal Rico is currently running for Senate in Texas. James Tal Rico has a good chance of winning based on the fact that the other candidate is most likely going to be a terrible monster and an advantage in fundraising. It looks like there's a good possibility that Tal Rico is going to win. And if he does that, if he's able to deliver a statewide seat to the Democrats, he is going to put himself in position to be running for president in 2028. It's just too rich of a prize to have the 32 electoral votes from Texas. We have decided to put all of our hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow into James Tal Rico. He's an avatar, essentially. He's a fantasy. We just want to live in a world where one man can fix all the problems. Man can usher in an era where we decide and rededicate ourselves to the morals this country was founded upon. Democracy, comedy, a common purpose. This week in Tal Rico Talk, the tally actor clued the country in that he's not the only one whacking his tally. Tal Rico went on the Jamie Kern Lima podcast and revealed that he has a girlfriend and has had one for four years now. Thank you very much. Oh, good. He said about her, she's my rock, she's my best friend. I don't know if I could have gotten through the last six months of this crazy race if she hadn't been by my side. That's good. His campaign said that Tal Rico and his girlfriend met when she was the chief of staff in his Texas House office and they've been together for four years. She left the position when they began having feelings for one another so they could pursue a relationship. That's a good thing for Tal Rico. It makes him infinitely more relatable. For the fellas, we can all rest assured that the tallywhackers out there pulling ass. It's Texas, can't hurt them. For the ladies, if you want to know if James Tallerico has ever yearned for forbidden romance with somebody, here you go. James Tallarico has yearned. He has yearned with the best of them. He's a rootin', tootin', yearning son of a gun. To sum it up, not only does the Riz minister get it on, he's been getting it on this whole time. And it's pretty impressive that he didn't talk to people about this. Incredible OPSEC on this girlfriend. Big Sigma Energy. The discretion, the by the bookedness of waiting until she wasn't an underling before starting out. They made it clear she left the office. And then they got together. Just like Kelly from HR emphasized in her PowerPoint. A score one for Kelly from HR.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

This matters. Yeah, I mean, this matters a lot, certainly for his electability. Unfortunately, because of the homophobia in the United States, his not having a partner had already led to rumors that he was gay. The purpose of those rumors is based on the premise that there would be something wrong if he were. Unfortunately, in the state of Texas, it would be significantly less likely for him to win a statewide office if he were gay, and certainly if he were pretending to not be gay, than if he were straight. I hope for his sake and for hers that he's not lying. I hope he's being happy about what he wants.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Online sleuths have found that there was a former chief of staff for Tal Rico that left around four years ago. They found her on LinkedIn. Gina Hinojosa. You might remember that name. She was the Texas gubernatorial candidate that accompanied Tal Rico at the Breakfast Taco Joint last week with Barack Obama.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

It doesn't look quite like that's the same Gina Hinehosa. There's a good chance that there just happened to be people with the same name. Nothing has been confirmed about that just yet. It's just conjecture on Reddit. People are doing their open source sleuthing.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

That would be pretty fascinating if they were a power couple in that particular way.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

It would indeed, it opens up a new batch of problems for Tal Rico, though. I mean, four years. You gotta lock that down. Yeah, what you know what's coming. There's definitely gonna be an engagement arc in the James Tal Rico story. There's just too much money to be raised.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Maybe they'll maybe they'll propose on election night. Yeah. Talking about an arc, this is definitely an arc. This is a storyline. I regret to inform you that what we're talking about right now is fan fiction. That is what we're engaged in. That's absolutely what this is. Nothing against fan fiction. I just, you know, didn't want to drop it on you. I'm aware that what we're doing isn't great.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

I'm chalking this up to the circumstances being so horrible that you and I have to engage in a fantasy about there being a politician that can come in and save us. Yeah, if the world were better, we wouldn't have to do this crap. It's just a little bit of relief from the autocratic despair that we feel on a near constant basis. Let us have this, people. Let us have this. We're aware that it's weird. I'm well aware. We're aware that it's unlikely that he could ever live up to this. We're aware that we're setting him up to fail. It's just something that we have to do right now to get through. If you're anything like us, we invite you to join us. This is gonna be a fun ride. We're going to be continuing to talk about James Tal Rico on a weekly basis throughout this podcast for as long as it takes. There's no right or wrong way to survive this era. You're gonna need every coping mechanism you've got, the healthy ones, the unhealthy ones. Our love and appreciation for James Tal Rico is an exercise in self-delusion, which isn't a healthy coping mechanism at all. We see it more as a forceful rejection of cynicism. We need to rationalize it because we feel a little embarrassed about it. What's important here is that we're making the exercise of holding a little space for the future where the president is also a superhero. We've been watching MAG enthusiasts do it for 10 years and can't help but get a little jealous.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

As a person who struggles with the very idea of hope or the possibility that somebody could actually save us and that it might feel good to believe that they could. It's something I struggle with, but it is helpful to imagine and pretend, even if just for a little bit, knowing that I'll be disappointed. It still helps, still helps people.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

It really does. Each week when I have to write the segment about it, I get a little bit excited, looking for the latest info on James Tal Rico. You and I both think it's gonna go one way.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

And it might. Every bit of information that I get that's positive, that like seems like it might break that way, I just have this gold feeling. I'm so early on this, I'm seeing something that everybody should see. And I'm just one of the first people there, and it makes me feel great about myself. James Tal Rico on a weekly basis makes me feel great about myself.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

My dream 2028 ticket for the Democrats would be Ocasio-Cortez for president, Talarico for vice president. I would stop whatever I was doing and spend my whole time trying to get that to work. Easy peasy. 100% slam dunk for Craig's, maybe not for the nation. I don't know. I think that this country is sexist and racist enough that it might not vote for Ocasio-Cortes, which is a horrible tragedy because she is obviously a generational political talent. And Taler Rico might be too.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

In the fall, you know. If we've learned anything in the last decade, it's that America hates women. Yes. That's what we've learned. They say it out loud. Yeah. They say it subtly. It's not out on the table yet, the hatred that we have for women. We haven't quite banned all morning after pills and Plan B pills. We haven't quite made enough of them have rape babies. But that's where it's heading. Yeah. Absolutely is. That's what they want explicitly. Yeah. I can't see a future where AOC is the presidential candidate. I wouldn't see if they nominated her in 2020 as a serious attempt at getting rid of American authoritarianism. I would see it as aiding and abetting the entrenchment of American authoritarianism.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

I don't know if I can claim that you're wrong about that. I have always been of the opinion, and I will go on record all day, every day, that the first female president of the United States will be a Republican. I think that that's what will happen. That's awful. I am not pleased about this prediction, but it is the conclusion that I think we have to come to based on, as you said, the last at least 10 years of US politics, given that it was only 10 years ago that one of the two main political parties nominated a woman to the presidency. She won the popular vote, but that's not the ballgame. That's not how the game is played.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

If you want to see what's going to happen with Ocasio-Cortez if she runs for president, you can see that in miniature in Wisconsin right now. There's currently a governor's race. Primaries are in a couple weeks. The current governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, is not running for another term. Republicans are going to run. Sean Duffy's replacement congressman is a guy named Tom Tiffany. Bog standard Republican, is an idiot, has many idiotic qualities, was a damn tender for 28 years. On the Democrat side, there are a bunch of candidates, some of them better than others, but there's one that's captured the imagination of a lot of people. Her name is Francesca Hahn, city councilwoman from Milwaukee. Young Democrat socialist. Online game that she has is incredible. The likelihood that she'll win the primary, it's short. She's going to have enough of a chunk of the Democratic vote that whoever does win it is going to need to appeal to her voters. Her voters are going to threaten the state home if they can't have Francesca Hong. That's what I think will happen with Ocasio-Cortez. If she's even making noises that she might become a presidential nominee, people will get behind her so much so that anybody that does anything wrong or underhanded to her in the primary, they won't vote for if they happen to win. They'll just take their vote and go home with it. I can see that. That's what I'm starting to look at. Either you send Francesca Hong against Tom Tiffany, or we're just not going to vote at all for whoever you want us to vote for. The Democrats have to bridge that gap with whoever ends up winning that. Because it's not likely to be Francesca Hong. She doesn't have the money and as much as she has the enthusiasm, it's just unlikely that she'll win. I just think that America hates women. Those of us that don't do not outnumber those of us that do.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

I think that unfortunately you're right about that. I want to be clear to anybody listening here that these are like nightmare things to acknowledge. It's terrible. It's horrible. It's something to push against, it's something to fight against, it's something that we are fighting against to the extent that it can be fought. But it's true. Yeah, the misogyny of the United States can't be ignored. It's on a different level than the misogyny of many other Western societies.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

There's no point in ignoring it anymore. This isn't a couple things that broke the wrong way, or Hillary Clinton was unlikable. It had nothing to do with her gender. As much as we'd like to deny it, there's just no point. America's got a slice. Let's aim to the left of the fair way and hope it goes down the middle. We've got a new segment this week on the Autocratic Despair Podcast entitled Dr. Craig is Fun at Parties. This is a game that we play where I take a term or a thought that has nothing to do with authoritarianism, autocracy, fascism, and I feed it to Craig. Craig, through his remarkable talent. When you're a global fascism researcher with a PhD, everything looks like fascism to you. And as it happens, Craig's been right more than he's been wrong for the last 10 years. I'm going to issue the challenge by using the term circus peanuts. If you don't know what circus peanuts are, they're little orange candies.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Candy in the most generous possible sense.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

It's candy, but it's also a lesson in diminishing returns. Mm-hmm. In that the first circus peanut, excellent. The second one, pretty good. The third and the fourth one is when you begin to regret eating circus peanuts. By the fifth one, the self-loathing begins. What have you done to yourself?

SPEAKER_01 33:18

They universally come in bags of five million. You definitely don't want that many, but that's what they come in. Scrap of candy. Yeah, for sure. For sure. How are you going to relate circus peanuts? Oh, easy peasy. Circus peanuts circuses, and from there we get to the song Entrance of the Gladiators, the clown intro song. That song. That song is a fascist march. The end. Oh my god. Done. It wasn't originally composed as a fascist march. It was composed in the late 19th century by a Czech composer living under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but then it was taken up by fascists in Austria and Germany in the 1920s and 30s, before it became associated with the circus. So that one, you know, right quick. Dr. Craig, I thought that that was gonna stomp you. I really truly didn't.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

You're gonna have to up the game, sorry. Oh I couldn't think of anything more innocuous than a circus peanut.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Well, I mean, if you want if you want another one, we got circus, bread and circuses. The bread and circuses are the things that uh it it it's a term from Roman legal, like legal systems. Basically, the idea is that when you have a populace that needs to be placated, you give them bread and circuses, as in food and entertainment for free. Bread and circuses were free. And the idea was that when people were upset about the direction that the empire was going, or people were maybe rumbling in rebellion, that you would ramp up the bread and circuses and placate people. You know, you get them drunk, you get them fed, you get them entertained with blood sports and things like that. Of course, the fascists are very all about bread and circuses. They give free shit to people that they like. For example, $1.776 billion to fascist people, and they put on MMA fights in the fucking Rose Garden. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

That's bread and circuses. You nailed it two different ways. I thought this was gonna be difficult for you, Craig. I thought you were gonna have to traverse six or seven different movies to try to find one with Kevin Bacon in it to relate it back. I think that that was two degrees.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

We can figure it out based on that next time. I also regret to inform you that since we last spoke, I went to a houseworming party. All my friends know what I do, and so I spent most of the party talking about fascism. They just are like, hey, what's up with this thing that Trump is doing? And I'm like, okay, do you really want me to do this? Is this what you actually want to talk about at this party? I'm always down to clown. Do people gather round?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Are you like a party celebrity like Tina breaking out her tarot cards? Except you only turn up the tower card. Is that what's going on at those parties, Craig?

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Oh no, you got me. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, yeah. I I ended up, as I often do, I was standing in front of a group of people who were all seated on couches, and I was just talking about Nazi crap. About 10 minutes in, I'm like, oh shit, wait, hold on. This is a party. I'm not in the lecture hall. I shouldn't be doing this. The more serious that you get about it, ah, I gotta get another drink.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

And you still get invited to parties, huh? Oh, no, my friends love me. In Green Bay, if you were to do that, you would never be invited to a party. Even if they agreed with you, they'd be like, he just bummed everybody out.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

I'm always ready to bum people out anytime. You gotta have that downer in the friend group, right? The PhD's coming in very handy. Absolutely. If you don't have somebody making you sad, what's the party even for?

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Did you see that rededicate 250 stuff that was happening this weekend? Oh, yeah. What do you make of that?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

It's revisionist history. That's the first thing about it. It's simply a lie. The United States was not founded as a Christian nation, very transparently. We know that from the writings of the people who wrote all of these foundational documents. Some of them were pastors, that's true. The vast majority of the people participating were weird 18th-century secularists. The United States was founded by a coalition of classic liberal northerners and conservative slaveholding Southerners. That is what the United States was for a long, long, long time. The classic liberal Northerners, they were one of the big driving forces behind the country, and one of the other big intellectual drivers was the United States' own philosopher king, for better or worse, Thomas Jefferson, a classically liberal, conservative Southern slaveholder, and a big secularist. Thomas Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible in which Christ is never referred to as the Son of God. Really? Yes. Does that have like a name, or is it just It's just Jefferson's Bible translation? He just did it. These guys are like weird secularists. Not quite as intense as the French Revolution, but along the lines of that, and religious diversity was a big part of the United States from the beginning. This was a time when religious diversity meant like including Catholics as well as Protestants. The point is that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, including the words God or talking about the laws of nature and of nature's God. There's the reason they talk about nature is because they focus on nature and the natural world and God the clockmaker, you know, like that kind of thing. This whole pretending that the United States has always been fundamentalist and has had that perverted and changed sometime in the 20th century, that's usually what these people say, is that like sometime between the 40s and the 60s that these ideas emerged and eliminated the conservative Christian nature of the United States, it's precisely the opposite. It's between the 30s and the 70s that conservative Protestant evangelicalism emerges as a political force in the United States. Prior to that, those people were around. They weren't politically motivated and engaged based on their religiosity.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

You hear the term Christian nationalism banded about all the time. I talk about it, we talk about it. We've never really defined it. Yeah. I'm sure there's at least one or two listeners out there that feel the same way. They use the term a lot. They have an idea what it is, they have a understanding of what it is, but they've never looked it up. What is Christian nationalism?

SPEAKER_01 39:33

To understand that, you know, you gotta talk about what nationalism is. Nationalism is an ideology that says it is not only true, but it is also good that the peoples of the world are separated out into different nations, and those are usually defined by religious, ethnic, or racial boundaries. When people talk about US nationalism, they're almost always talking about some sort of white supremacist nationalism. There is sometimes versions that are pluralistic nationalism, you know, so like that the United States is this melting pot country, and so it's black people and white people and East Asian people, etc. They're all in the United States. Remember, of course, who that does leave out. For example, indigenous people are often left out of this. People who have really, really, really different politics, like communists, those are left out of this. Nationalism is an ideology that comes from the 19th century. It postdates the appearance of the United States. Christian nationalism is a specific variant of nationalism, which says that the real in-group, the we of the United States is Christians. Sometimes including conservative Jews, but not all the time. Only Jewish people who are in favor of the United States' vocal and violent support for the state of Israel in whatever it happens to choose to do. Those people get to be included. Anybody who is a critic of that, even if they are Jewish, they're excluded. Christian nationalism is a way to talk about the United States without saying racial things, without saying we don't want women to be in politics, but meaning those things. Because the Christianity that they're talking about is not Jesus meek and mild. They're not talking about, like, you know, the Sermon on the Mount. They're not talking about do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They're not talking about it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. They're not talking about that stuff. They mean fire and brimstone for our enemies and belonging only for those who believe in a particular type of extremely conservative, extremely socially conservative Christianity that really comes to the forefront in the United States in the late 19th century. They're trying to redefine what it means to be inside, the in-group in the United States, and redefine it along fundamentalist Christian lines. That's what Christian nationalism is.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

As it stands, American Christian nationalism is wrapped up with evangelical Christianity, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. You can say that most, if not all, evangelical Christians are Christian nationalists.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

I would say that that's true. What Christian nationalism is as a political coalition is an alliance between evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. And to a lesser extent, some conservative Jewish people who are sort of like along for the ride as allies in this coalition, they can't exactly be inside it. If you turn on the evangelical channel, the evangelical cable channel, 90% of the programming is evangelical Christian stuff. And then there's that one really mean nun lady. She's on there.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Is she still on there?

SPEAKER_01 42:50

She's dead, but they still do reruns of her. I think she's been dead for a while, but she's still on. Okay, okay. So it's about 5-10% her, maybe some like super conservative Catholic priest or something. Maybe somebody reading, replaying a John Paul II sermon or whatever, like that kind of thing. And then about 5% is a very conservative Jewish man. Generally not Hasidic, quite conservative. Hasidic Jewish people are like, they're separatists themselves, but they have their own nationalist project, essentially, that doesn't quite fit into this. So yeah, it's evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. That's Christian nationalism in the US. In other countries, it's different, because there aren't as many evangelical Protestants, for example. Or maybe there aren't enough Catholics. In the US, this is the thing that makes us pretty unique is that we have a lot of Protestants, but an extremely large minority of Catholics. It's an unusual mix. Only one other Western country has this particular mix right now Germany. They're a little further along on this project than we are. They've always been. And a lot of the people who have moved this project in the United States are ethnic Germans or people who were recent arrived. From Germany in the 19th century.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

Trevor Burrus, this show, in a lot of respects, is about Christian nationalism's effect on the United States. The Tal Rico talk segment was something that we adopted because it would be a fun jumping-off point to discuss Christian nationalism. It's a theme that we'll be coming back again and again to. I thought it would be good for us to sit and define it. There's a chance that people don't know. Yeah. I didn't really understand evangelical Christianity as being the Baptists and this I thought it was like a specific kind of religion. I didn't realize it was an amalgation of uh several.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yeah, it's a big umbrella term. Charismatic Christianity, evangelical Christianity, these are all things that emerged in the late 19th century during uh what was at the time called the the second great revival. Have you ever like seen like a movie or seen in real life, you know, like a big tent revival? Like they set up in the county square, and there's like a giant tent, and there's a guy wearing a too nice suit stomping and clapping, and he's got a big stage. That's where this stuff originally comes from.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

You ever watch The Righteous Gemstones?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

I've seen the first season. Haven't seen the rest. That's who we're talking about, right? I stopped watching the show when, for those of you who haven't seen it, it's a sort of fake drama biopic of a televangelist family of the gemstones. And there's a lot of things about it that are really, really brilliant. It's got that sort of like mumble core people talking over each other kind of thing. It's by that same guy who did Eastbound and Down and like vice principals. Danny McBride. Yeah, Danny McBride. I stopped watching the show when at one point a character is believed by his family to be bisexual, and the characters, mom and dad, who are professional evangelical Christians, say, like, don't worry, we support you. And I was sort of like, wait, why would those people say that? Why would they be okay with that?

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Well, because it's their son.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

They would disown this boy for being queer if they thought this about him. Their brother ends up slowly but surely coming out of the closet over the course of the series. Oh, yeah, that was the other thing, is that like the brother is clearly closeted.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

First couple seasons, like, he doesn't even know it. It just switches on, and they're like, oh, this guy was my buddy, but I was secretly attracted to him the whole time, and he was me. It's actually pretty sweet how they do that. I'm rewatching it right now. It's a brilliant piece of comedy. There's way too much frontal nudity for my taste. It's every episode at a certain point.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

It does contain one of my favorite performances from Walton Goggins. Baby Billy. He nails that so well. Oh my god. It's just this perfect grandma's favorite old evangelical from the fucking 70s. It's perfect. Yeah. If anybody else grew up with uh like aging heelbilly grandma, you gotta watch the show. It'll just it'll put you right back into grandma's house surrounded by a bunch of disturbing porcelain dolls, lace and satin doilies and shit. Like, oh man.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Stare into the abyss with friends, the Autocratic Despair Podcast with Nick Mortenson and Dr. Craig Johnson. And don't forget Dr. Craig's other podcast, 15 minutes of fashion, available wherever you get your podcast.