America This Week, March 22, 2024: "Swimming in the Deep State is Kind of Awesome"
2024-03-22 00:20:30
Welcome to America This Week, with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, the national news wrap-up so true, we recommend you stow all sharp objects before reading. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week?utm_medium=podcast">www.racket.news</a>
All right, welcome to America This Week. I'm Matt Taibbi.
And I'm Walter Kern.
Walter, good to see you again. Yeah, we saw each other actually in the flesh.
In, in the Bay City a few, a few days ago. Where are you now?
For the third time in history, we met in person. I'm back in Montana, after having been in Silicon Valley, and then San Francisco. I didn't realize until I did this show every week, how much I travel, but I guess I do.
And I had a good time.
You're always on the road. It's like perpetually.
I know. I thought I was a homebody. And now it's been revealed that I'm not. San Francisco is interesting because I, and by happenstance, you both stayed right on Fisherman's Wharf. Perhaps the jolliest part of San Francisco these days, which is indeed having some sort of social problems and crime problems, and so on.
I didn't have, I didn't have one person chase me with an aluminum bat this time.
Really? I had two people. not chase me with an aluminum bat, but really get in my face, frankly.
Really?
Yeah. Yeah. One of them was, I went out early in the morning from our hotel and some young woman just started abusing me, basically out of nowhere, because I wasn't able to give her cash at that point. Wow. Yeah.
But, but I always enjoy San Francisco. The rumors of its demise, I think, are slightly exaggerated, but maybe not too much.
Well, no, it's certainly, I don't think it's as bad as it was last year. Maybe I got the wrong impression, but the whole time I was doing the Twitter files, it was a weird little subtext to the, to the project, because just traveling back and forth from the hotel to the Twitter office, I was like, what's going on? Is this like a Mad Max movie or something like that? I thought maybe I should stop and do this story instead. I don't know.
I wasn't sure what to do, but, but yeah, no, it seems better now.
Right, right. Well, we were on the non-decayed side of the city, and I was able to go to North Beach, which is my pilgrimage site in San Francisco, because it has City Lights bookstore and the remnants of the Beat literary movement. And it seems to have passed away almost entirely now, though. A few years ago, you could still feel it, but not so much.
The Beat movement?
Yeah, yeah, you could a little.
But anyway, yeah, I'm. now, I'm back in Montana, and it's snowing hard. And so...
Right. Well, that's good.
Here we go.
So this was a big week in a lot of areas. There were some significant developments, with issues that we spend a lot of time talking about. There was a Supreme Court case that didn't go so great, I don't think, listening to it. Although, who knows? You never know, judges are going to rule.
We'll talk a little bit about that. But I think, Walter, we should do the mystery science theater thing a little bit with maybe one of the more extraordinary video editorials that I've seen. You brought this to my attention. It is a New York Times editorial that came out a little bit serendipitously after the seeming victory in the Supreme Court over the challenge to the censorship regime. And the title of it is, it turns out that Deep State is actually kind of awesome.
Now, we'll get to that. But I want to first back up and talk about the term Deep State, because there are a lot of misconceptions about this word, as if it were invented out of thin air by Donald Trump himself. I wanted to share a little bit about some memories of how we used to use this term not that long ago. So here is 2014.. And this is Bill Moyers, one of the archpriests of liberal America, interviewing Mike Lofgren.
in an episode entitled, The Deep State is Hiding in Plain Sight.
This week on Moyers & Company, long-time insider Mike Lofgren, on what he calls the big story of.
our times, the Deep State. It is, I would say, the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It's how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion of our civil liberties, and perpetual war. Funding is provided by Ann Gumowitz.
I'm sorry, but is that not hilarious? That's a Saturday Night Live touch, if there ever was one. Right, right. So, okay, that's how liberal America used to talk about the Deep State. Oddly enough, we used to think of it as the progenitor of perpetual war and repression and all sorts of other things.
And now it's kind of awesome, as the New York Times is telling us. And we should only make maybe a few stops in this video, but let's just play a little bit of this editorial. There's almost no text to this, so there's no way to get the essence of it without actually watching the video. We'll speed through it. We're not going to do the whole six minutes, but let's just start.
I will totally obliterate the Deep State. I will fire. Donald Trump is.
obsessed with the Deep State. The Deep State. Deep State. The Deep State is destroying our nation. Either the Deep State destroys America or we destroy the Deep State.
And many Republicans are.
widening his paranoia. These unelected bureaucrats are ruining this country. From a cabal of security agents to the sick political class that hates our country. If elected, Trump's bound to gut the.
federal government. Reinstate the Schedule F executive order and, quote, fire rogue bureaucrats.
But who are.
. Wait, I want to go back just for a second here, because this is a key point.
They're going to gloss over. While they're giving a little voiceover, note. number two, overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, right? That's what he's actually saying. And but watch what they go ahead and argue.
These bureaucrats and what makes them so dangerous.
We needed answers, so we took a trip across America. In 100 yards, take the exit. In search.
of the people behind this threatening entity. Okay,
first of all, Walter, on an A to F scale, how do you grade that filmic invention of, oh my God, it's so funny that we're the Deep State? uh, lead in to this whole thing?
F minus.
What can I say? I mean, there's more, but sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, okay, let's keep going for a second. Yeah. Okay. Here we go.
First stop, Huntsville, Alabama. Sure looks like some nefarious government activity happens around.
here.
You have reached your destination. Actually, it does. Meet Scott Bellamy. I am a mission.
manager in the Planetary Munitions Program office. He drives a Nissan Titan 4x4.. He's loved Star Trek since he was a kid. Of course I have a favorite kid. It's either Captain Kirk or Mr.
Spock. And he may have quite literally saved the planet from annihilation. Potentially. You see,
Scott managed a mission called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. And back in 2022,.
his team used your tax dollars to pull off something kind of incredible. You have an.
asteroid and you have a spacecraft and you fly the spacecraft into the asteroid and try to change the trajectory of that asteroid. It's like playing pool in space. Everybody was holding their breath. You know, this is the moment of truth. Did we hit it?
We got it? And we have impact.
They knocked an asteroid off its course, proving something that had previously only been done in.
movies. Saving the world from an Armageddon scenario. Potentially.
Let's just pause for a moment. So far, the Deep State is basically Armageddon, the movie.
Except it crossed with Office Space, the movie.
Because who knew in that scene of high-fiving NASA people that, you know, our greatest planetary saviors look like they belong, you know, in Office Space. It's in a tech. Right, right. By the way, when they first showed the mirrored glass of that building in Huntsville, Alabama, and said, does this look like the sinister place? I was like, yeah.
I know, with the little music. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, yeah, that's kind of. And then I thought back to Operation Paperclip, which filled Huntsville, Alabama with former Nazi rocket scientists.
And I thought, you know, we were going to get something else. But instead, we got a, you know, a roly-poly Star Trek fan who once did an experiment with an asteroid for which we should all thank him, I guess, because someday that might save us. They really oversold his role in planetary salvation. No, look, I dig it. I mean, look,
shooting asteroids that might be coming at Earth, I'm all for it. You want to spend some of my tax dollars on that? That is cool. I'm fine with that. Yeah, exactly.
Not all of them, but I mean, you know, I would say I'm happy to chip in, you know. But so far, the facetiousness of this New.
York Times produced thing rivals anything that we ever joke about. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they've really well, they've really caught on to the new tone here. Let's see more, Matt.
Yes, let's, let's keep going. Here we go. So here's the next entrant in the Deep State sweepstakes.
This is Radhika Fox. I am the Assistant Administrator for Water at the Environmental.
Protection Agency. She loves Pilates, making salads, and watching the Taylor Swift Eras Tour on TV with her family. I think we're all pretty 1989.. Oh, and she led an operation to make our drinking water lead free in 10 years. That's the dream.
Worried and angry about lead.
contamination. Residents of Newark, New Jersey, are demanding bottled water and answers. Lead.
is a neurotoxin that can cause irreversible brain damage. Folks are drinking out of these.
right now. Every single American child will soon be able to turn on that faucet, and their moms and dads know that water they're drinking is clean. When President Biden announced. Sorry, I just.
have to interrupt. Was it mandatory for them to have the shot of Joe Biden in there? I mean, or do you see that as a little bit gratuitous? Do you think the actual makers of this video would have liked to have done it without the Biden shot?
Well, since the intention of this video is to scramble your brain while inserting certain memes and catchphrases, I can't pick apart what's going on. very well. It wasn't mandatory. At this point, they could insert almost any image. That's true.
Like a kapow, like in the old Batman show or something.
Wham! Kapow! Take that lead in the water.
I just thought, you know, there are probably a couple of video editors sitting there, and one of them was saying, man, do we really need, I mean, like, this is going a little far, you know?
What I love is that the voiceover is a sarcastic, you know, satirical version of a.
usual Times video. You know what I mean? They're doing a mockumentary style voiceover here because they're so dripping with sarcasm and contempt for anybody who would.
question the deep state. This is their sarcastic investigation into the deep state.
Never mind that they've switched out what everyone thinks of as the deep state with.
these people. Oh, I know. Yeah. I want to get to that. Exactly.
Exactly. Okay, let's just keep.
going for a little bit here. It's the nationwide plan to remove lead water pipes. Radhika's team made it happen. Yep, that's right. Water utilities would be legally required to replace all remaining.
lead pipes. 9 million in 10 years or less. It's an expensive bet. 50 billion dollars. But those benefits are truly priceless, because it's the well-being of this nation that's at stake.
You want to replace your own water pipes? You got the skills to launch an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft? No. That's why your tax dollars pay experts like Radhika and Scott. Important work like this is happening all over America, from helping 2 million victims of the opioid crisis.
to engineering major breakthroughs in new.
. Does this remind you of the narrator in Star Trek Troopers, you know? Oh, Starship Troopers? Yeah. Starship Troopers.
I mean, do you want to know more?
They're fighting the bugs across America. I'm doing my part.
We should find that actually. Hang on a second. Let's keep going.
and helping make hearing aids affordable for 30 million people. Yep, the deep state is hard at work, making America great. Just because we don't know about it doesn't make it suspicious. You have arrived. Our final stop, Chicago, Illinois.
Meet Nancy Alcantara. I am the acting director of enforcement for the Wage and Hour Division for the Midwest Regional Office for the U.S. Department of Labor. I had to take a breath, yes.
She still eats Lucky Charms for breakfast, trains for marathons, and loves Latin dancing.
You name it, I did it. And she uses your tax dollars to get kids out of working in dangerous.
slaughterhouses. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-olds working on the kill, floor, cleaning body parts, right, animal carcasses. They're working with machinery such as skull.
splitters, bone splitters. Nancy and her colleagues raided slaughterhouses in several states and found more than a hundred children working illegally. Last year, their employer, Packers Sanitation, was fined $1.5 million, one of the largest child labor cases in American history.
Kids would die. Kids would get limbs amputated. I don't even want to imagine what would happen.
if no one did this job. These guys work for you, but Trump wants them working for him.
Trump wants to fire at least thousands of these people that he calls pejoratively the deep state. Schedule F would allow Trump to fire up to 50,000 of them and replace them with like-minded people.
Sometimes it's really hard to read the newspaper where, you know, you feel like we as public.
servants are being attacked. Now, this doesn't mean that Americans can't have different ideas about how big the federal government should be. After all, there's no shortage of examples of real government overreach and overspend. But Trump's teaching us to expect the worst from people in government, when the truth is, they're actually some of our best.
Okay, do you have any quick comments? I mean, I want to start with, can you change your own lead pipes? Can you shoot an asteroid out of the sky? No, fuck you. You don't know anything.
We're the experts. You try it, you know?
There's part of me that wants to take this point-by-point seriously and suggest that, for example, the meat processing industry, let's say, as exemplified by Tyson Foods, has been guaranteed by our federal government all sorts of monopolistic privileges,
which allow it to do just the things that they're trying to prevent it from doing, chop off kids' hands and so on. But rather than get into the actual meat of this video, which- Which would take forever.
Let me suggest that-.
First of all, while the impression's still fresh, let's indeed do a little Starship Troopers and see how it compares.
Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future. I'm doing my part.
I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part, too.
They're doing their part. Are you?
Stopping asteroids.
Join the whole infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.
There it is.
The boats send another meteor our way. But this time, we're ready. Planetary defenses are better than ever.
Planeta, source of the bug meteor attacks, orbits a twin star system whose brutal gravitational forces produce an unlimited supply of bug meteorites in the form of this asteroid belt. To ensure the safety of our solar system, Planeta must be eliminated.
Thank you, Chief State.
We'll break now and take you live to Planeta, where the invasion has begun. Hang on. Let's just use that one more second.
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