SPEAKER_01 0:00

Even have the head guy in the UFC, Dana White, doing a Chevrolet commercial where he's like, America, tough shit. That's what we say to these motherfuckers. If you got a problem with that, fuck right off. Do something about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, that is kind of an American quality. We're not trying to play that up, Dana White. 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. Crang, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate your autocratic despair this week? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, related to the Prairie Land sentencing, which we'll get to eventually, I am at a six. This is bad news bears, folks. This is not positive. Well, what did we say? Oh, uh the sentencing happened today.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I didn't know that it happened already. Again, just fucked.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

The guy who shot at the officer got a hundred years. Let's talk about this right now. My last update was that they pushed it to today. I thought we just wouldn't have the sentencing.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I didn't know it was dead by this morning either. Some of them are later. But the terrifying ones happened today.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

He wasn't even looking at a hundred years. Yeah. Benson got a hundred years. Ben Song got a hundred years total for the totality of the charges. Because I think he was looking at ten to sixty for the shooting.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah, and so then this is on top of all of the like eighting and abetting crap. The guy who moved his wife Zines, he got 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Oh, that is a major injustice. One of the guys that was there had never even met these people before. Wasn't he? He was just on a message board with them. So he showed up. Had no previous engagement with these people, away from keyboard at all. Those are some heavy-handed sentences. My goodness. I'm trying to process this in real time. And the only thing I can think of that's positive is that the length of the sentences might help the story of the protesters uh get out to a mass audience. Most people don't know about Paryland, other than what you and I did here, there's scant little else. There's a blog that publishes Ben Song's prison poems. I don't think that guy had malice aforethought when he was shooting beforehand, but now that I know about his poems, maybe he did.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I've been reading some Oscar Wilde, and that's definitely some Oscar Wilde type thing to say. Well, I liked you until I read your work. I'm being a dick. No, no, no. This is really bad. We're joking because that's how you gotta cope with these kinds of things. You literally must. But you actually have to find some joy or comedy in your life and even about these terrible things, otherwise you just like won't be able to keep going and keep fighting.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

I feel for that guy. I really do. I know he's probably trying to get through the best way that he can, but doing poems in prison is some bitch ass stuff. Wait till you're sentenced. I'm making fun of him, but I barely read one of the poems. So I don't know if it's good poetry or not. Like I'm sure it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

These sentences mean that Trump's legal system believes that if you are dissenting against ICE in any way, any way that goes from armed rebellion, shooting at an officer, all the way down to being associated with people who had zines. The guy who moved the zines who got 30 years, these were his wife's materials. And after she got arrested, he moved them, allegedly to hide them. The implication here is that anybody who is even remotely associated with dissent against ICE is a terrorist and can be tried for terrorism charges and can be put away for the rest of their life. This is while people who literally engaged in armed rebellion against the state tried to overthrow a presidential election. This is while those people are free, while the Trump administration is trying to give them a billion dollars. Nick and I are fucking around, but it's like what else are you? What else can you do? I mean, the answer is organize and fight, but these censors have made it literally a lot scarier to do that. What about you, Nick?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I'm actually out of five. Up until this prairie land sentencing thing, which as we record this, has just happened in the last couple hours. We recorded this on June 23rd. I was kind of rotting high. Summertime, world comp. We got a new puppy at the house. Aw, lovely. It was a little soon. They were looking for a new dog after like four days, and it was so I haven't warmed up to that puppy yet. Team Gus. It's kids. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Four kid days is like a month.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

That's what's kind of upsetting to me. They just moved on. I'm like, you didn't care about Gus the way that I did. If you get to heaven and your dog sees you, you know, after the initial excitement, you think he's gonna be like, hey man, a week? Come on, man. A week. I fully indulged myself in the uh Trump is a fuck up last week. I don't know if I needed it. I needed it. It's great. I was so pissy at him for the UFC. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's disgusting. I was just like, fucking algae. Of course he's gonna fuck that up. I know that Trump just knows a guy. He's got a guy from Mar-a-Lago that'll do the job. Yeah, that guy's just a general contractor. Like, you don't get into Mar-a-Lago by being like the pool liner king of DC. No, no.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Have you seen a picture of the guy who got the contract?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

He looks like a guy you could call the pool liner king of DC, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, he looks like he stepped off the stage of who framed Roger Rabbit. It's ridiculous. The man has two parts in his hair. Yeah, he does. You're right. He does have two parts in his hair. It's maddening. Double-breasted suit, chomping a huge stogie.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

It's ridiculous. Have you seen that picture of him from like 30 years ago where he's the same guy but in his late 30s?

SPEAKER_02 5:58

No.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

He was pulling that shit off for a couple of years, Dr. Craig. Okay, all right, okay, cool. Walking around like a fat cat. There's always gotta be a criminal that dresses in tails. I mean, in the 90s, I could see that working. Why should Roger Stone get to be the penguin when this guy has been into the penguin much longer? You're right. He's the penguin. And pulls it off in a much more convincing way. And never did anything to embarrass the penguin like Roger Stone has done.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

You're right. Roger Stone is the penguin. I never made that connection, but he definitely is.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

It's only because you've seen him in Tails and a Top Hat, and he looked so sinister in it that you were like, oh my God. That's true, yeah. He's like the gangster new penguin as opposed to the aristocratic penguin. I fully indulge. Good. I know that Trump didn't fuck that up. I know that he just knows a guy, wanted it done, and assumed that guy did it because he sure as fuck paid him a whole bunch of money to do it.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

He needed it to get it done until it would be finished in time for his birthday. Good. Sometimes you just do facade work and then backfill it after the grand opening. That's what I assumed was happening there. They made him go fast. Yeah. I don't know a ton about industrial coatings, but I do know more than most people. I have that nice flooring in my garage. Everybody calls that enamel, but it's actually a polyuria. As it happened, that's what they were doing. They just didn't let it cure. I'm sure it was about the deadline. Yeah. The guy has got fucking concentration camps going, Craig. And I spent last week like, ha ha ha. He says he's good at construction projects, but when it comes down to it, he fucked up the lining of the pool. I don't know how much fucking algae was in the reflecting pool beforehand. I know that fucking pond was built in 1922. So if there was any filtration system, it was broken a long time ago or retrofitted. And you know what? That's what happens in fucking bodies of water. It's Swampland. Who gives a shit about him fucking up? He didn't do the work. He knows a guy that knows a guy that could get a kickback and he asked him to get it done. And that guy got it done in time. He just didn't do it well. It wasn't gonna be cheap. It was just gonna be fast. Perfectly Trump. It's ticky tack bullshit. And I fully fucking indulged myself in it because it felt like a W and like we were stringing him together because he put that tarp outside of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts when he had to take his name down from it. And I was like, two in a row, guys. Take off your cap, put it inside out, get your rally caps on. He's about to die. We're fighting back. Here we go. For everybody making fun of him, fucking up a pawn. There's other shit that he's doing that's so fucking terrible, Crang. And we're like, yeah, he fucked up a pond. High fives, guys, high fives all around. That guy. He says he's good at construction. He's no good at construction. They're fucking people getting sent to prison for protesting with fireworks back to crank. And I got caught up in the swamp talk because I needed it. This is America's 250th anniversary. Obviously, you don't want to fuck up the optics of what the White House is.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

He did it anyway. Especially in the swamp. People call DC the swamp and they mean it metaphorically, like about government corruption. But as a reminder, Washington, DC is literally built on a swamp. It is an actual swamp.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

I resent the fact that he thought that all Americans would love UFC. I like boxing. Yeah. I like sports where you're competing against each other, but in the UFC, the guy can keep hitting you while you're down on your knee until the referee steps in. By then it's too late. Yeah, you can literally get hit when you're down. You can get hit four or five, six times while you're down. I find that level of violence profane. It feels like by having that fight, he was forcing our entire population to watch porn in a way. It disgusts me on a visceral level, in the same manner those faces of death movies did.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

That's the thing. The problems that I have dealing with this is like, I don't like NASCAR and I don't like dirt bikes, and I don't like UFC. Like, I don't like any of that stuff. But it is culture and it's American culture, and like fine, you know, whatever. I enjoy a county fair as much as the next guy. I will eat bad funnel cake and I'll get sick and I'll go on the tilt of whirl. Like, sure, yeah, that's American culture. There's a time and a place for it. Maybe it belongs in the 250th anniversary of the US. So does all sorts of other stuff that's notably absent. It's like Trump trying to make the nation's capital into the Boise, Idaho County Fair. And like, like that, that that and that alone is what America is, as opposed to America is also Motown and Gershwin and culture that is made by people who aren't just like white redneck people. But that's that's the only kind that he wants to celebrate. And like that's part of our culture, and it's a valuable, reasonable part of our culture. Like it's part of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

I know that it's an American character that we fucking like this. Even have the head guy in the UFC, Dana White, doing a Chevrolet commercial where he's like, America, tough shit. That's what we say to these motherfuckers. If you got a problem with that, fuck right off. Do something about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, that is kind of an American quality. We're not trying to play that up, Dana Wyatt.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

What if we had a better one? Could we be better? That's part of it, is like, okay, yeah, maybe that is a quality of America, but we could be better. Like we could be better.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

What if we were better? The fact that the pool like got fucked up in a couple days is like, that's you know, okay, all right. Whoops. He's an 80-year-old man that is playing with his block. Sometimes he fucking spills some juice on them and doesn't say nothing to nobody. He's realized that this algae, if he plays it right, can take up all of the news that would be about how fucking terrible things are. He's getting so much mileage out of it. He loves bad press. So last week there's a bunch of algae growing on this pool, and then somebody gets the bright idea, let's buy a lot of hydrogen peroxide. We'll dump that shit in there. I'll take care of the algae. I watched people dumping that shit in by the gallon in those bleach bottles. And I was like, do none of you know that you're supposed to fucking pop a pen in the top of that? You're not gonna use that bottle to house the pure hydrogen peroxide for something else in the future? You're not gonna rinse that thing out and uh use it for juice or you can't use this again, no. Maybe as a sharps container if you're a really cheap diabetic. Yeah, yeah. But like, you're not gonna use that. You're dumping a lot of these, okay? You got 10 or 12 of these things to go. Don't you know that you can just jam a pen in and pop a hole in the top of the container so it doesn't go glug-glug-glug-glug-glug, it just pours out at a steadier? I must have seen like a half dozen pictures of people dumping shit like that into the pool. Fucking government employees, man. These people were probably contractors. Have you never dumped before? Don't you know what it's like to dump things in water? We're all adults here, Dr. Craig. If somebody says dump something in water and it's taken a while because of the glugs, does it not occur to you to be like, oh man, I wish I had something sharp right now. I could just jam it in here and then there'd be some air? I was focusing on that instead of the terrible stuff. There's so many worse things that are happening. Yeah, yeah. They're just getting overlooked.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

But that's the thing, and it's like it and then it's like, I know that's what he wants, but it also was like, sometimes you need to relax. It sucks.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

There's a thing on the show that I wish we didn't have to do, but we do it. Our show tends to move in a certain direction. We keep track of the cases, the ones where the government takes people who showed up to a protest and turns them into terrorists on paper. We do it most weeks with Prairie Land. This past week there was a new one to add to that, Minnesota. June 16th, last Tuesday. The U.S. attorney for Minnesota, a man named Daniel Rosen, stands up at a press conference, announces the indictment of 15 people. They're each charged with the same crime, conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. One of them gets a couple extra charges piled on. Assault on a federal officer, destruction of government property, interstate threats, interstate stalking. The people that were indicted last week, 15 of them are mostly members of this group called Direct Action Minnesota. Rather interesting acronym, D-A-M-N. So during this press conference, Dave Rosen kept referring to Democratic Action Minnesota as a dam. Made it seem a little frivolous. Leave it to the government to keep things light. They have framed these uh 15 people as members of Antifa. Antifa, as we've said before, is not a group. Not charging dues. There's no season-ending awards banquet. It's not a group. Uh could you tell us broadly what Antifa is, correct?

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Antifa is a political tendency. It literally just means anti-fascist, anti-fascism. It's a political tendency that dates back to fascism's first appearance in the world, the 1910s, 20s, and 30s. It's a coalition of a bunch of other political organizations. Back then it was a lot of communists, a lot of anarchists. Today, it could be broadly used to describe anybody who doesn't like fascism. So that's your voter who doesn't like fascism, but also maybe something like the ACLU. And then according to the government, it could also be used to describe this giant boogeyman thing. It's a label like terrorism would use during the war on terror, during the Bush years. It's a label that can be used to encompass anything and everything.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

So 15 people, conspiracy to impede federal officers. And you're thinking, all right, what did they do? Who got hurt? And here's what Dan Rosen, U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, Trump nominee, relatively new to the job, started last October. U.S. attorney's a pretty plum job with the DOJ. Rosen's been working his way up to it over the last 20 years by specializing in eminent domain cases for people. Never been a prosecutor before. Pretty good with the civil law, especially if it's eminent domain law. Good for him. That's a pretty plum job. Much of his job so far has been in dealing with ICE-related cases in Minnesota. On January 7, 2026, Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minnesota woman, was fatally shot by an ICE agent during a federal immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Dan Rosen sent an email instructing the prosecutors in his office to say nothing to law enforcement or the media about Good's killing. Because of the sensitive nature, only his designees within the office could speak to investigators at all. Dan Rosen's office didn't immediately launch an investigation when federal officers murdered Alex Predy in broad daylight in front of many witnesses, holding camera phones to document the violence that was being committed against Alex Predy. He's not looking to pick that one up. It's kind of a hot potato. But after immense public and media pressure, Dan Rosen finally came around on investigating the killing. He succumbed to the woke mob of leftists that saw a man being murdered in the streets by federal officers and thought, surely those federal officers didn't just murder a man in broad daylight in front of me. There's got to be more to this story. Dan Rosen was hoping that would blow over. He waited a while to open up an investigation into the Alex Party desk. The only reason he did so is because the state and the local police had opened up cases against those officers. Dan Rosen stepped in, said, uh, thank you very much. This is a federal matter now, I'll take it from here. Is there any particular historical analog for the federal government to do this kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Ooh. You mean to try to brush something like this under the rug? I mean, definitely. The federal government has been engaged in the criminalization of dissent for a long time. That's something that dates back to the very beginnings of the federal government of the United States. You know, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress under President John Adams, the second president. In the modern time, things like what happened during the 1960s, during the 1970s, deaths of protesters and people who were involved in the civil rights campaigns, police crackdowns on early pride celebrations, stonewall riots, that stuff is pretty standard. What's different about what's happening now, and something that is quite new for the United States, is that historically the United States hasn't had a federal police entity. The FBI is too specialized, they're not beat cops. ATF, similarly, they're not beat cops. These are like specialized investigative agents. ATF is alcohol tobacco firearms, for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym. ICE is different. ICE is on the ground mass policing run by the federal government. Its budget is bigger, its personnel is much more numerous. They show up and they're like an occupying army. The federal government treats them differently. It treats them in the same way that a city treats a cop. If a cop shoots an unarmed person on the streets of any given city in the United States, that cop is probably going to get protected. The city is going to try to brush it under the rug. They're going to suggest that the person that they killed, maybe they were an'do will, maybe they deserved it, maybe they did something wrong, maybe they talked back, maybe they secretly had a gun, you know, whatever. All that stuff is going to be thrown at the wall to see what sticks. They'll try to get that in the news. What we're seeing for ICE is that, but at the federal level.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Early on in Dan Rosen's press conference, a reporter asked him whether any of the federal agents were actually injured or not. Rosen was pretty coy about it. This is his direct quote whether or not they actually, at the end of the day, cause bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime. Hmm. Okay. Is it more of a vibe sign? The Minneapolis protesters were total dickheads to the federal officers committing heavy-handed and oftentimes violent immigration raids this past winter. To me, pretty impressive. It's the dead of winter. These people in Minneapolis are out there braving the elements every day and night, literally blowing the whistle on what was happening down there. Minnesotans are pretty badass. They weren't just whistling at the officers. They organized rides for the detainees that were frequently pushed out of the detention center in the middle of the night in cold weather.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

For those of you who have not been in a Midwestern winter and like that northern part of the Midwest, being pushed out into the street at night in winter, that's deadly. That's trying to kill someone. Literally, you could die.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And people do. Yeah, they were just getting pushed out of the gate into the elements. Minnesota's got after it mutual aid-wise. Tow truck operators banded together to return the vehicles left behind when ice was pulling up to cars and snatched people right there in the middle of the road sometimes. That's wild. Trim carpenters were working 40 hours a week at their jobs and then getting together to repair front doors that were kicked in by DHS agents looking for a specific immigrant. That happened quite a bit. That's wild. Doula's and midwives in Minneapolis were actually making a big difference for the pregnant immigrants who did not want to go to the hospital to deliver their baby for fear of being put into detention. Oh my God, wow. Those guys were badass. But now 15 of them are facing federal charges for organizing resistance to the masked goons snatching their neighbors up, which is uh bullshit. Remember Dan Rosen's response to the question about whether federal agents were actually injured or not at the press conference? He said that's not the issue here. The issue is that these people wouldn't let the ice guys do it as much as they wanted. They weren't physically restraining them, but they weren't making it easy. And that's what they're charged with, just about. These people in Minnesota who wouldn't let mass thugs commit literal democracy fouls without blowing the whistle at them like a referee. Yeah. They just wanted, they just wanted us to take it. They were impeding. Bunch of Antifa mean boys and girls. Hardcore anarchists like Uncle Len and Aunt Shirley. Giving ICE agents a real hard time. Probably giving them the business too. A couple of bronze cheers, some very harsh thumb downing. Is that grammatically correct, Dr. Craig? I think so. I feel like I should do pluralitive thumbs downings because they could have been giving a thumbs down with both hands. Yeah. But you know, it's weather. I don't think double thumb downs are that common when there's frigid temperatures. That's true. You don't want to expose your thumb for sure. Surely mass thugs with weapons snatching their neighbors merits a double thumbs down. But you know, it was the winter, so one hand had to hold a mitten. Because you have to take your mittens off for the thumb downing to count. Otherwise, it wouldn't look yeah, yeah, yeah. How would you know? How can anyone know if you're wearing mittens? You could just put your mittens on backwards. So you're showing a thumbs down, but you got your hands full. Yeah. Just flopping around accidentally. Yeah. It doesn't count unless you take off your mitten for a thumbs down. And that's what Minnesotans were doing in mass. Just out there being badasses, setting a fine example for the country of how to deal with this. It's an excellent example. Frost in their beards, that they are growing so it's easier for them to brave the elements. Well, I grew a bigger beard when I lived in Chicago in the winter. It's nuts. These are righteous people, man. They knew they weren't just gonna go out and protest one day. It's a shining example of Midwestern woke, which might be the wokest woke of them all. Yeah, maybe. California college woke is still the gold standard for woke. The wokest dude in the country is probably on campus somewhere at UC Berkeley, right, Dr.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Craig? Maybe. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Berkeley's pretty career oriented these days. If you told me there was a wokest man in the world and said, guess where he lives? I would say on the campus of UC Berkeley, more than likely as a student.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Berkeley campus is possible. Amherst, Massachusetts, possible. It's gonna be a college town for sure, like a small one.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

But Midwestern woke is still a pretty great woke. People out there were walking it like they were talking, taking action in unfavorable circumstances, wearing duck boots, acting so righteous that they're catching federal charges. Pretty righteous when you get federal charges for it.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Unfortunately, that's the thing. You know you're doing something, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

They had one dude that was like a little gung-ho. His name is Kyle Wagner. He's actually arrested back in February. Wagner posted some genuinely ugly stuff, telling people to get their guns, calling federal agents Nazis, the whole thing. That's real. He did that. Probably a bad call. Yeah, not a great idea. It's over the line, but come on, man. 8chan exists. Tame by comparison to what's on 8-Chan. That's a really good rhetoric about a lot of political situations. 8chan exists. The stuff that they were actually being accused of, the 15 defendants in Minneapolis, besides Kyle Wagner, the 14 of them. Here's how the tactics that the government listed that impeded federal officers. Keeping a database of federal vehicles that's uh writing down the license plates of the vans that are grabbing your neighbors. You think they went Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel? Ooh, that's a good question. Probably sheets. Probably sheets. I bet somebody probably put a whole front end on it. Probably, yeah. You could spend that out in like a couple hours. I would be fascinating to discover what the prevailing database for that sort of info is. SQLite. It's got to be open source. It's got to be accessible through an API. I'm getting out of track. Another one of the charges was that somebody was training people to use shields. That's gotta be an art form, but yeah. How much do you hate the dude that's given you shield training? I don't know about you, but I want the person who's training me on lesser-known techniques and shieldery to come off like a real military hard ass.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah, that's true. A former colleague from Berkeley who was in the Green Berets uh in Afghanistan, I went to a protest with him. Remember when um in like 2017 there were all those baked Alaska and like a bunch of then alt-right protesters showed up at Berkeley campus basically to try to start fights and stuff? From Milo UNAPOLIS. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Around Unapolis and also before and after. There were all these right-wing protesters showing up, some people from the department we were going over to be part of the protests against fascists showing up on campus trying to out undocumented immigrants so that they would be deported. That was what their goal was when they showed up. And this friend of mine, he wasn't even coming with us. We passed him on the street and he was like, Where are you guys going? And we were like, Oh, we're going to this protest. It was like something happened to him. It's like, I'm on a mission now. He started like looking over his shoulder, hurting us, being between us and things. I was the only other cis man in the group. And so it felt like he was delegating to me to be the other guy. I'm gonna be in the front and you'll be in the back, or something like that. He was wild. That's so great that he was able to be sexist against women that were trans. That was one of my thoughts was I understand why you're doing this, and also it sucks.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

How protest at Berkeley is that to be like, why are you giving me this job instead of one of these trans women? Is it because I'm a man?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

I'm definitely not the second strongest or tallest person here. Like, I am a I am a relatively short guy. Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

It was just so weird. It was just strange. That had to be a very reaffirming sexism for some of the people that were recent transitions, I bet.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I think most of these people, most of these people did not enjoy this experience. They were like, we know how to handle ourselves at a protest, dude.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

You don't need a guy like that, except that you kind of do.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

That is what I have been thinking. That was overkill for that time. I don't, I, I don't know if it is now. Shit is getting bad out there. And that's not me telling you not to protest and not to descend because you absolutely have to. It's getting scarier.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Wisconsin sucks ass, Dr. Craig. We suck ass. Minnesota is Target, Wisconsin is Walmart, Minnesota is Costco, Wisconsin is Sams wholesale, Minnesota is iPhone, Wisconsin is Samsung Android device from a couple years ago that's got a broken screen and has had one for a good long time. But but he can still use it, so big fucking deal. That's what Wisconsin is. That's the essence of the state of Wisconsin. The only thing that we have over Minnesota is a professional football team that's good. But if the world was just and right, Minnesota would have the Packers, Minneapolis would have the Packers because they deserve them. Because it's really fucking nice. It's just nicer in every conceivable way. Just a little nicer. We've got all the same stuff that they do, lakes, camping, whatever, but they just got like better. Like it's just better. It's just a little better.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

It's just a little nicer. Yeah. This is how I feel coming from Illinois. This is how I feel about Indiana. It's like, look, I know that we're like exactly the same state, in exactly the same shape, in exactly the same place, and we do exactly the same things, and we have all the same stuff, but like we're just better. It's a better place.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Where did you come from in Illinois, Dr. Craig? I'm from southern Illinois. So you're not from Illinois, you're from Arkansas Light. I'm from Kentucky. Okay. Okay.

unknown 29:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

That's what I that's what I know about Illinois, is that there's the northern third of it.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

And then there is the actual antebellum south. Yes. I'm from the Kentucky part of Illinois. There's actually hills that far south. It's wild. Coming from Illinois, I have no compunctions at all with any state that is to the north of Illinois. No problems. None at all. My problems were always with with East and West. Hate Indiana and also Missouri. I can see that. Gotta hate Missouri. Missouri's terrible. Missouri's terrible. Missouri is terrible. Did you know that in Missouri there are like there are like no building codes?

SPEAKER_01 29:56

I've heard Sarah Kenzior lives in Missouri and she pretty much every book she sort of brings up some aspect of Missouri where uh it's really like a nice link to the story that she's telling. But it's always like, we're 10 years ahead of you, and it really sucks badly here. There are militias in the streets, like you don't know what's coming. And yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

No, Missouri has a has a a widely disproportionate number of cults for its population in the United States. And that's because in Missouri, you can just build a barn and fill it with beds, and it's legal. Like there aren't like fire codes that you're violating or something like that. You just do it. Uh, and nobody will stop you. Even if an inspector shows up, they'll be like, it's okay. Like Missouri does not care. Um, Illinois, however, uh has has the beautiful stuff about um the legacy of being a state run by a city, Chicago, that is internationally synonymous with machine politics and corruption. People just know this about the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago. I meet people in South America and I talk about this, and they're like, Yeah, you know, it's like this corrupt place, right? Like Al Capone and stuff. And I'm like, Al Capone is dead. The machine stuff, that's still real. Like, that's very true. My my my favorite bit about this was once there was a guy running for state office in Illinois. He had a felony conviction for some white-collar crime. He was running for like the state senate. This was the 90s, and at the time, that was illegal almost everywhere. People with felony convictions were not allowed to vote or hold office. There was a news piece about this guy saying only in Illinois, and that is literally the case, can this man run for office? I love that sentence so much because it's like you could say the phrase only in Illinois, and people would assume that you mean it as a goof. Only in Illinois could somebody so corrupt run for office, but they had to specify, like, no, we mean that in a literal sense. This is only legal in the state of Illinois. It's wonderful. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

The corruption is so built in that it becomes its own type of politics, legitimate on every level. And when anybody says reform, they just they're just like, no, no, reform. You'll have to kill us.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Uh yes. Yeah, I mean it sounds it sounds crazy. Like, like, you know, I think that before the democratic machine dies in Illinois, like the Democratic Party would have to die. What would that even mean? How would the city work? We had like a father-son philosopher king pair of mares in living memory. Like, what? No, how could it be any other way? As somebody who pays attention to politics and history, there's just something comforting on a horrible level. That things like this still exist and still happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's pretend. Um like uh like enduringly perfect the like an enduring perfect encapsulation of this would be um former governor Rod Blagoevich. Remember this guy?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Yeah, oh yeah, do I?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Former contestant on celebrity dance TV shows. I don't think he's done Mast Singer yet, but he he he did one of the celebrity dance TV shows. He did one of the apprentices, too. Oh yeah, he did one of the apprentices.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

I think he did Apprentice All-Star as an addition. So he's like, I think Trump actually gave him a pardon.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

I think he did because of his um his Illinois blatant corruption. It's just so wonderful. Obama gets elected president, and so as governor, he gets to appoint a senator to replace him, knowing that the FBI is investigating him for corruption, and knowing that his phone is bugged, he gets on a landline phone and says, I have this thing, the appointment. It's fucking golden and not gonna give it away for nothing. That's beautiful, just wonderful. If you wrote that in a HBO succession style dramedy about this, people would be like, that's a little too much. How is the actor supposed to do that with a straight face? How are they supposed to do that seriously? That's cringe, man. That's ridiculous. It's haplessness on a profound level. Yes. The man said it out loud into a phone that he knew was being bugged by the feds.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

I bet you it was a very big surprise that he took federal charges and went to jail for Blicovish. It was. Of course I did it that way.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

This is how it's always been done. He might have been like thinking that he was gonna run for president in 2016. We missed out on that. Ram Emanuel is running. That guy sucks too. Ram Emanuel's terrible, terrible, terrible.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Uh anything else new? No. New house, it's pretty cool. Did you fucking watch Messi yesterday? Yeah. I wanted to wait till the knockout round after goal number five. No, I want Argentina to win, and I want to see how many this guy can score in one World Cup. He's the best there's ever been. It's my opinion. It's fucking insane. Dude, it's like ridiculous. The first goal that he scored last week in the game that I was watching, the broadcasters started talking about how he was 39 and he hoped to do some good things to show everybody that there's still some gas left in the tank, and then he like immediately scored. I think he still got it.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

He's still he still got it. And then he did it again and again. It's wild. And he's been doing this since he was 12. It's just it's just bonkers. People in Argentina still love Maradona, and like Maradona was a very good player, but I think that Messi is the best that there's ever been. That's my professional opinion as an Argentine historian.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

You know how he's the best in the world at soccer? Maybe ever? How much better is he at his thing than other people are at the thing that they're great at?

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Ooh, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Like, is he Jordan? Is what you're saying. I'm not even saying Jordan. I'm saying that somewhere there's a best needle pointer. She's the one that publishes the newsletter and puts out patterns, and people get mad at her because the patterns are very complex. But she doesn't care because she can do it, no problem, and she doesn't understand why you bitches her words, not mine, Dr. Craig. She can get a little cranky in the afternoons if she hasn't had anything to eat. It's too hard.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

I think that this is a rich vein because the question is, you know, like I'm imagining NASA sends out a letter and it's like the earth is about to be destroyed, and we're sending the 1,000 most talented humans up into space. Messi's probably going up there or whatever. Some astrophysicists and stuff. What about the person who makes the best clam bake, like in the world? The person who is the best at making a croissant.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

What's the delta between Lino Messi and the second best soccer player in the world compared to the delta between the best croissant maker in the world and the second best croissant maker in the world? That's a tough one. If I had been more of a fan of soccer throughout the years and followed him on Arsenal or some red and blue team in the Premier League?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Uh no, he was in Barcelona.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Every now and then I'll be able to access major league soccer on my Apple TV. Yeah. I'll stop if you know Miami's in. I'm like, it's his messy plan. He doesn't look that good on Miami. No, you're right. He looks pretty good. Not five goals in two games in the World Cup good.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

No, he wasn't doing that great in Miami. I mean, I think he was just like chilling. Chill retirement experience. Argentines love Miami. Rich Argentines love Miami. Do you think he's just holding himself back for the World Cup? That's possible. He's also been playing with this team forever. They're coming off of the high of winning. I think they want to get at least down to like the top eight or something like that. I think it's probably gonna be France or Spain. That's not what my heart tells me. That's not what lives and sings in my heart. I want somebody else. What I actually want is for the first non-European or South American team to win. I would settle for Colombia. Colombia would be great. I would like Colombia to win. They've never won and they've been doing great. They did great last World Cup. They are doing well in um Konembol, which is the South American national team tournament. Colombia would be great. Senegal would be amazing. Morocco would be spectacular. Morocco, so I don't know about you, but like the World Cup, it brings out the extremely occasional sports fan in me. I'm not really a sports fan.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

It's not like a sport that I hate and disrespect, like NASCAR or hockey. Yeah. I hate baseball, but I respect it. Stare into the abyss with friends, the Autocratic Despair Podcast with Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson. And don't forget Dr. Craig's other podcast, 15 minutes of fashion, available wherever you get your podcast.