It’s So Hard for Trump to Say Goodbye | Beating Back COVID

Highlights from:
The Benjamin Dixon Show on YouTube:
“You Up? It’s So Hard for Trump to Say Goodbye | Beating Back COVID”
The Benjamin Dixon Show Podcast, Episode 984

Part 1: Fox Says No Fraud, Fox Says Fraud

I want to jump into this first clip of some fact-checking that took place on Fox News, much to our surprise:

Fox News Clip: Rigged election? Well, your own government, election officials across the country and voting experts say it’s not true. Baseless claims that are inflammatory, designed to undermine your faith in American democracy. Here’s the chairman of the federal agency, the U S Election Assistance Commission, Ben Hovland.

“The reality is, this was the most secure election we’ve ever had, and it was one of the most well-run elections we’ve ever had. And this is about facts. This is about truth. This is about respecting our democracy, uh, respecting our elections, uh, and focusing on what has really occurred. The American people made their voice heard. And when we spread conspiracy theories, when we don’t back that up with facts, it has an impact.”

That was Fox News, ladies and gentlemen, and non-gender conforming individuals. That was Fox news basically saying, listen, if we don’t have competence in the truth, what do we have competence in?

Republicans regularly play the game of pushing the envelope, of how far they can go, playing this realpolitik, playing this “hardball”, hard nose, dog-eat-dog politics, where they’re willing to betray every underlying truth. They’re willing to betray every underlying principle. Republicans have pushed the envelope with it, and they’re willing to betray their own beliefs in order just to have a cheap political win. And how far will they go with that? Well, that’s being tested right now. Would they continue going all the way to the point where they’ll destroy this country? Donald Trump will.

I don’t put it past Donald Trump. Donald Trump is still, to this day, talking about how he won the election. I do not put it past Donald Trump whatsoever — whether or not he’s willing to burn this country to the ground for the sake of his ego, he will. The question has always been, how far will Republicans go with them? And Republicans are showing right now, they’re going pretty damn far, but the question has to be for conservatives: At what point do you step back from the brink and take into consideration that the sky is really blue? The grass is really green. That day is day, and night is night, and two plus two equals four — despite the party telling us it is five. At some point, Fox News had to even tell them, “Folks, the jig is up.”

We know part of the conservative strategy over the last 40 years has been to employ a scorched earth approach, where they will break every norm, break every institution, ignore every hypocrisy. They don’t care about any of that. That’s part of their toolkit. And we know that’s what Republicans have been doing up until this point. The question is, are you going to continue doing that? If that means the destruction of this country, more precisely, are you going to play this “hardball” type politics at a time where your decision to be quiet on Donald Trump - your unwillingness to firmly say he’s got to go - is contributing to the destabilization of this country? The question is, how far are Republicans going to go? Because we know Donald Trump will go all the way.

And then there’s Fox News playing both sides. On their news program, they’ll run a report that says there’s been no election fraud. We’ve looked, we’ve taken an objective scientific look at this, and there has been no fraud. And then you get the other side of Fox, like Fox and Friends, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, there’s a software called Dominion software that somebody who’s on the board of directors is loosely affiliated with this campaign in this way and this needs to be looked into for fraud.’ So you got the other side of Fox News that is giving Republicans what they want. That is, giving them hope that Donald Trump could still win this thing. Donald Trump is sitting back, egging it on, because you know, he would 100% take advantage of it.

The only real question is, how far are Republicans going to let this go?

Part 2: They Never Meant a More Perfect Union For Everybody

When they wrote the constitution, they never really intended that somebody else would be able to use this exact document to get rights. It was in the realm of possibility, but they didn’t really think, for real, that this document was going to have to give rights to those Negroes, to those women, to those non-gender conforming individuals. They wrote this lofty document and said, “We’re going to create a more perfect union,” never honestly thinking that that meant that white conservative men who have political and economic power in this country are going to have to be on the same playing field as everybody else. That was a little bit more than what they bargained for.

Democracy was good in theory but not in practice because in practice, that meant that the very powerful were going to have to, on occasion, take a sidestep on behalf of the people. And because they just got tired of doing the sidestep, or even the potential of it ever happening in the first place — ’cause they’d been fighting this like hell. They have been fighting to not have to actually do something good by the people since the founding of this country. We barely got something in the New Deal. It was a hiccup. And they lost their goddamn minds and ran as far right as they could to the economic paradigm of neo-liberalism. That’s because they never had the intention of dealing with us in good faith in the first place. When they signed the constitution, they believed they were signing a document that made it possible for them to maintain power in perpetuity, with the disguise of egalitarianism — with the disguise of democracy.

This is not just rhetoric. They literally created the electoral college for that exact purpose. The three-fifths compromise for that exact purpose. To protect the powerful at the time, which were slave-owning white men. And here we are dealing with the same BS well after all of them have been dead in the ground. We’re still trying to triangulate in 2020 based on the rules that they built to protect slave owners because they never really intended for this to be a more perfect union for everybody. They meant for it to be a more perfect union for slave-owning white men, land-owning white men. And so now we are actually at the stage in American history where we put all the pretense to the side and say, “Yes, absolutely. We’re creating a world that is more inclusive and that distributes power — both economic power and political power — beyond the halls of white conservative men, beyond the pocketbooks of white, conservative men, landowners and aristocracy.”

And some liberal men are a part of that aristocracy, come on, let’s be real. Let’s cut to the core of this thing. If you cut to the core of it, it’s not just white conservative Christian men. There is a power structure with people who flirt with all of those intersections, right? Maybe you go to the golf club together because you’re both fans of golf. Maybe, maybe you ended up at a church in a Bible study ’cause you’re both God-fearing men. All those different places where you could intersect present opportunities for everyone to benefit from this power structure if you allow yourself to benefit from it, both economically and politically. The question has always been, at what point does your benefit come to the detriment of the people? Especially if you’re out here running your mouth, talking about you want to do something on behalf of the people. But here you are, you’ve made you made a deal with the same devil. You made a deal with the same capitalistic devil. And the only real question is, at what point do you, Mr. Activist, Ms. Activist, Non-gender conforming individual activist, at what point do you cross that threshold? In the sense that you’re taking from this system so much that it becomes detrimental to the very people that you built your entire career on. See how this type of thinking works its way through our entire society?

Our entire society can be unraveled with that type of thinking. The type of thinking that says I will continue to go further and further because whatever you are suggesting is a threat to me. If what you’re asking is too expensive for the person on the other side of the table, they are going to lie, cheat steal, or find some kind of way to get out of what you’re asking. If what is required for a more perfect union - if they actually understood that by writing those words in our founding documents meant that it was going to extend power, both economic and political power to people that those original aristocrats would never even want to be in the same room with. The truth of the matter is, had they known that would they have signed? Would they have signed those documents?

Here’s the reality we’re dealing with today. People who look at the expansion of rights that are inside of the constitution — the natural evolving expansion of rights — people are turned off by that. They do not want to see the constitution be applicable to anybody more than who benefits and controls the power structure. That’s what originalism is. Originalism is a rejection of the evolving nature of the constitution. They don’t want to admit that it’s a naturally evolving document, because they have been able to clog up all of the channels for its development, for its growth and for its amendment process. And just in case you get any fancy idea about trying to add an amendment to the constitution, guess what? Republicans have spent the last 40 years ensuring that they own all of the state-level legislatures. So, when the time comes to get, three-fourths of the state legislatures necessary for a constitutional amendment to be ratified, Republicans have made sure that there will never be another constitutional amendment ratified through the process of the states because they made sure that they cornered off that market. They made sure that they were prepared for that.

So, they are standing in the way of anyone realizing the actual freedoms that the constitution promised. You see y’all messed up. They shouldn’t have signed those documents. They shouldn’t have said it if they didn’t really mean it. You know when you said it, you honestly meant all men are created equal, and if you’re an originalist, you’re going to look at that “all men were created equal,” and some part of you is always going to yearn for the time when “all men were created equal” literally meant all men, and only men, because black men certainly aren’t men, and women aren’t men. It’s white, land-owning men. There are people who claim to be originalists and hide underneath the banner of originalism, just so that they can get us back to the day — they can’t admit it publicly, but yes, they believe that this country was developed for white Christian men and only white Christian men. And those are the people who are vying for power right now. What I’m saying is not conspiratorial. What I’m saying is not hidden knowledge. What I’m saying is something that you probably knew in the back of your mind.

The people were trying to run the country right now are people who honestly believe that when this country was founded, it was founded in a moment of divinity interacting with humanity, the apotheosis of George Washington, they just think of it as just this divine moment, communion of the Holy Spirit, interacting with mankind to give birth to a country. And how dare we change any of that to expand these rights to include trans women. They look at us like, “Are you out of your blessed mind?” Instead of looking at the constitution as a logical argument, as a living dialectic that looks at itself based on the people, examines itself based on the people, improves itself based on the people, and continues to have a self-improvement model over time — instead of actually using the mechanisms of the constitution to develop a more perfect union, they use all means at their disposal to prevent the self-improvement algorithm at the center of the constitution.

They don’t want this country to improve, because if it improves, that takes power from them and distributes it between everybody else. In their minds, an egalitarian society means oppression, because they have to give up some of their power for us to have power. And they just can’t.

Part 3 : Pandemic Premonition

Anybody in their reasonable, rational mind who was just peeking in on America from, I don’t know, from Mars, would say, “It sure would be good if they didn’t kill themselves off with a pandemic that we beat a couple of years ago by putting on masks.”

It would be good if we didn’t get half a million people dead from COVID-19 because that means there are about 230,000 people who are alive right now who will not be alive by the time you figure out that it’s okay to wear a mask. Asking you to wear a mask is oppressive. That shows you the extent to which you have been a privileged set of children in this country. You selfish, narcissistic, megalomaniac little pricks. It is unbelievable to me that you would be more than happy to see half-a-million to a million people die because you didn’t want to put on a goddamn mask. You selfish-ass, probably-racist, good-for-nothing scum buckets of the deplorable universe. Put on a mask. Be kind to your neighbor. Put on a mask and save some lives, because it could be someone close to you. But we can’t do that, because the highest form of oppression is not whatever miseries you pull down on the marginalized communities. Your measure of oppression is how many inconveniences it causes you.

I think I owe you all an apology. I think I do. I don’t really mean what I’m getting ready to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I feel like I owe you an apology because about three years ago, I was writing about what could come that could push us over the edge to cause us to self destruct. I felt like there were forces underneath this country that had us poised for self-destruction. I wrote about it in my journal three years ago. I felt like there was a break in the logic center of this country and that no matter what, we were going to somehow get on a road to destruction that we were unable to stop because of how we function.

I kept thinking, what kind of disaster could come because of our politics, because of our media, because of the nature of clickbait, because of the nature of these algorithms that drive you to the next click, that created and help foster Q-Anon. It didn’t matter what it was. The way our society is structured and the incentives that are at the core of our society put us on a collision course with disaster. I sat around wondering what kind of disaster it could be, what kind of plague it could be. I daydreamed about it a lot. I thought it would need to be something that kills you fast enough to make you afraid of it because our country has demonstrated that it’s more than happy to ignore long-term killers like climate change. So, it had to be something that would kill us quicker, but it couldn’t be something that killed us too quickly, because if it killed us too quickly, then everybody will be terrified, and we would all go hide in our house. It had to be something that killed you soon enough for people to worry about it, but not too soon to shut everybody down automatically.

So how do you destroy America with America’s ways? You find something that kills you not to quick, but quick enough. Then it has to be something that we could politicize, because if we politicize it, then we paralyze our ability to respond. It had to be something that was rooted in ignorance because we love ignorance in America. We’re at a stage in American history where we will give platform and voice to ignorance of any type simply because we want to act as though we have a fair and balanced conversation. And because of that, you will put a no-named nobody with no experience or expertise telling us that climate change is a hoax on the same platform as a NASA scientist who’s telling us that climate change is real.

So, it had to be something to kill us quickly, but not too quickly, something that we could politicize very easily, something that was wrapped in stupidity. But it would also be something that could capitalize on the algorithms that drive our clickbait and engagement which drive our profit center and our entire profit motive. So, if it was something clickable, something that would trigger these algorithms, then people would be rewarded for spreading ignorance. With all those elements, it would take advantage of our worst qualities, our greed, our ignorance, our politicization along with our technology and push us over the edge of our self-destruction.

That greed algorithm, that selfishness, and that individualism — all of it are at the core of this country. And that’s what drove us right into 250,000 people dying from COVID-19 in less than nine months. And we’re getting ready to go and season two, the second nine months, the second wave. We’re getting ready to go down these same destructive paths because COVID-19 killed us quick enough for us to be afraid, but not quick enough for us to shut down. COVID-19 was easily politicized. And COVID-19 had an unbelievable intersection with the ignorance of this society and the algorithm. People are really looking for the mark of the beast in their surgical mask! They don’t want to put on a mask because they think it's the mark of the beast.

So, anyway, I think I owe you guys an apology, ’cause I actually wrote this script. I wrote the script, but I didn’t know what it was. I had all the components to exactly what we’re living out right now. If you can look at the fault lies at the core of this country, it’s just a stress test. I was ahead of the curve. Maybe I just looked at America’s flaws and said, these are really good places where we can exploit America. We can exploit America very easily based on the appeal to ignorance. I don’t know what it is about human nature, but there’s something about ignorance that sells in every culture. We are all drawn to some level of ignorance. And because of that, one of the pathogens that we were not prepared for with COVID-19 was the pathogen of ignorance or the pathogen of hyper-partisanship. The kind of hyper-partisanship where Republicans are willing to die to own the libs. That’s literally where the Republican party is right now. The fact that these clowns were willing to go to these orgies of different pandemics, right? They’ve got the regular flu in there now, and they’ve got that regular flu intersecting with swine flu. It’s Woodstock of viruses. And they’re going to own the libs.

I think saying that you’re willing to die to own the libs is quite literally the furthest extreme that you can get. And we are actively fighting against that party, not just that individual, that party. That’s what you have to understand. You’re dealing with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, people who have been infected with the ignorance virus. They have been affected by the hyper-partisan virus. They have been infected with the bad faith virus to the point where they’re willing to die to own the libs. I think we’re very foolish. If we don’t really understand the depth of their commitment, Marjorie Taylor green is willing to die to prove that you’re not a good-faith actor. You are in fact, a tool. The tool of a cabal of blood-drinking, pedophilic Satan-worshiping billionaires and technocrats who switch out the organs of young babies and put it in their blood so that they can live eternally. Not only does she believe that, but she’s willing to die to prove it. When you think about it, in the perspective of how committed they are to their stupidity, you should govern yourself accordingly.

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