Conspirituality

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For the moment, a sigh of relief ripples across America, perhaps even across the world. Seats that have not gone Democrat in decades did so across the country on Tuesday. Voters appear to have finally rejected MAGA. But from our perspective, a cult leader can only lie, cheat, and do the opposite of what he promised his followers he'd do, for so long. His now betrayed populist appeals to affordability and avoiding endless foreign wars appear to have been the final straws. Not January 6, not election tampering, not pulling out of global climate agreements, not the Ukraine-aid fiasco, not his criminal indictments, not even the actions of proto-fascist ICE thugs—the price of gas.

Well, we'll take it. For now.

We debrief and decompress from a night when the polling data over-delivered instead of delivering a gut-punch. Derek looks at the MAHA implications, Matthew notices a trend toward progressive populists reclaiming of patriotic symbolism, and Julian covers what and who to keep an eye on as the highly-organized anti-democracy election-conspiracists begin their assault on these results.

Show Notes

RFK Jr. and MAHA Suffer Brutal Election Night Wipeout

Stage Set for Election Denial Chaos

Key Election-Denial Activists

8 Things You Should Know About Trump’s Effort To Take Over Midterm Elections
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Julian interviews journalist Anand Giridharadas about his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. The book centers on the tragic death of Jordan Neely, a deeply traumatized, mentally ill, and unhoused former Michael Jackson impersonator who was put in a five-minute choke hold on a New York subway car by Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was acquitted on all counts.

Giridharadas spent three years investigating the stories beneath the high profile criminal trial. He takes readers on an immersive narrative journey that explores race, mental illness, homelessness, addiction, and the networks of support and care struggling within a failing system of social services.

Show Notes

Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City
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Matthew tracks the concept of "islamo-gauchisme," the French accusation that leftists are useful idiots for jihad. Pierre-André Taguieff's 2002 book on "new Judeophobia" is ground zero, and a forensic Twitter analysis has shown that far-right accounts pushed the term for years, until it was taken up by Macroniste ministers in 2020. The academic consensus is that it is a political slogan with no empirical reality.

But like any (potential) conspiracy theory, it also emerges from a constellation of partial truths: solidarity between leftists and the French immigrant working class, the contested influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on civil society, Mélenchon's pivot from friendship with the late Charlie Hebdo editor to an anti-Islamophobia position, and the LFI refusing to condemn October 7 as an act of terrorism.
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Election denialism didn’t go away after the Capitol Insurrection. If anything, the revolving door between the Trump administration, the far-right conspiracy-mongering media ecosystem, and those directly involved in (and even convicted and imprisoned for) undermining democracy has only gotten more elaborate and determined.

As the elections loom, Julian talks to the VP of Media Matters for America, Julie Millican, about her organization’s excellent reporting on how figures like Steve Bannon, Jerome Corsi, and Cleta Mitchell (the attorney involved in the infamous Brad Raffsenberger phone call) are sowing distrust and calling for confiscation of ballots and voting machines.

They also discuss the armed ICE presence at polling sites and Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 election and sentenced to nine years in prison. After President Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Colorado, the Governor commuted her sentence, freeing her to now reportedly meet personally with the President and work on “preserving election integrity.”
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In 2021, the first secular embryo adoption organization received federal funding after decades of pro-life Christian organizations had hogged the kitty with their particular views on who is fit enough to raise a family.

Then in 2026, a change in language and some apparently shady bookkeeping on the part of an agency under RFK Jr's HHS resulted in two ultra-religious organizations receiving nearly all funding. Derek is joined by Maya Grobel, who cofounded that secular organization, Empower with Moxi, to discuss the consequences of this funding direction.

Show Notes

Empower with Moxi
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