1
00:00:00,500 --> 00:00:03,692
So I want to start this one somewhere we
don't usually start.

2
00:00:03,692 --> 00:00:10,046
I'm like tired. Not tired like I stayed up
too late or drank a little

3
00:00:10,046 --> 00:00:14,824
bit too much last night. Tired like I
opened three browser tabs this morning
trying

4
00:00:14,824 --> 00:00:18,232
to figure out like what we should cover
this week and I closed all of them

5
00:00:18,232 --> 00:00:22,785
and I sat there and I I didn't pick
anything because picking one of them felt
like

6
00:00:23,045 --> 00:00:27,218
agreeing to ignore the other nine million
things that could have been

7
00:00:27,218 --> 00:00:28,218
in that very same tab.

8
00:00:28,649 --> 00:00:30,070
And look, there were there were like
forty.

9
00:00:30,070 --> 00:00:34,173
And I know because we've been doing this
show for like a year and a half that

10
00:00:34,314 --> 00:00:36,716
the number is going up and not down.

11
00:00:36,716 --> 00:00:40,158
So let's just say what this episode is.

12
00:00:40,158 --> 00:00:43,631
This is not a news episode. There's no
docket number this week,

13
00:00:43,631 --> 00:00:47,815
there's no chart. This is the two of us
talking about the fact that

14
00:00:47,815 --> 00:00:52,959
we are exhausted. And that a lot of you
are also exhausted,

15
00:00:52,959 --> 00:00:56,872
and that the exhaustion is not like a side
effect of what's happening,

16
00:00:56,872 --> 00:00:57,983
it's kind of the point.

17
00:00:58,332 --> 00:01:01,093
of what's happening. So that's the thesis
today.

18
00:01:01,093 --> 00:01:03,053
If you take one thing out of the next,

19
00:01:03,053 --> 00:01:06,594
you know, episode minutes, take that one.

20
00:01:06,594 --> 00:01:10,955
The tiredness, the exhaustion is the
product.

21
00:01:10,955 --> 00:01:16,037
It's not evidence that you're weak or that
you don't care enough or that you've

22
00:01:16,037 --> 00:01:20,618
got some kind of moral stamina problem
that other people don't have.

23
00:01:20,618 --> 00:01:25,959
It's the intended output of a strategy
that has a name and an author

24
00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:27,540
and a documented.

25
00:01:28,871 --> 00:01:32,012
And I want to be careful here because I
know how this can sound.

26
00:01:32,012 --> 00:01:36,894
There's a version of this episode that's
just like two guys complaining into

27
00:01:36,894 --> 00:01:40,706
a microphone for 40 minutes, and then
everybody feels pissed off,

28
00:01:40,706 --> 00:01:43,997
and then you turn it off. And that's not
what this is gonna be.

29
00:01:43,997 --> 00:01:48,359
And that would actually be a small
contribution to the problem,

30
00:01:48,359 --> 00:01:52,660
is why we're not doing that. So here's
kind of the shape of it.

31
00:01:52,660 --> 00:01:56,322
For the first half, we're gonna be precise
about

32
00:01:56,664 --> 00:01:59,815
What's being done to us and how it works.

33
00:01:59,815 --> 00:02:05,646
Not because I think that being precise and
exact about it some sort of takes some

34
00:02:05,646 --> 00:02:09,257
of its power away. But the second half is
strategy,

35
00:02:09,257 --> 00:02:14,528
not vibes, not you got this. Actual
peer-reviewed research on

36
00:02:14,528 --> 00:02:19,729
why people in movements burn out and what
the ones who don't burn

37
00:02:19,729 --> 00:02:25,611
out do differently. And some of that
research is 40 years old and nobody talks
about

38
00:02:25,611 --> 00:02:26,611
it, which

39
00:02:26,222 --> 00:02:27,297
Annoys me personally.

40
00:02:27,797 --> 00:02:29,299
A noise may be an understatement.

41
00:02:30,217 --> 00:02:32,099
Yeah, it annoys me a lot. And we'll get
there.

42
00:02:32,099 --> 00:02:33,781
One more thing before we start,

43
00:02:33,781 --> 00:02:38,666
and I mean this. If you're listening to
this and you've already stopped following

44
00:02:38,666 --> 00:02:41,659
the news, if you've muted the words,

45
00:02:41,659 --> 00:02:46,434
if you've deleted the app, if you just
can't anymore,

46
00:02:46,434 --> 00:02:48,516
you're not the villain of this episode.

47
00:03:04,011 --> 00:03:06,102
So the phrase, flood the zone.

48
00:03:06,102 --> 00:03:09,123
Some people have heard of it. Most people
haven't.

49
00:03:09,123 --> 00:03:12,425
Steve Bannon talking to the author Michael
Lewis,

50
00:03:12,425 --> 00:03:14,346
believe he's the author of Moneyball,

51
00:03:14,346 --> 00:03:18,988
if not mistaken, or anyway, some of those
economic books,

52
00:03:18,988 --> 00:03:23,079
~ around twenty eighteen. ~ he's talking
to Steve Bannon,

53
00:03:23,079 --> 00:03:28,442
and Steve Bannon says, with the real the
real opposition to the agenda

54
00:03:28,442 --> 00:03:31,123
at the time he was working for for ~
Trump.

55
00:03:31,623 --> 00:03:33,007
The real opposition is the media,

56
00:03:33,007 --> 00:03:35,353
and the way to deal with the media is to
quote,

57
00:03:35,353 --> 00:03:37,349
flood the zone with shit.

58
00:03:37,849 --> 00:03:39,662
And that's like the whole doctrine.

59
00:03:39,662 --> 00:03:41,906
That's it. Just that's the sentence.

60
00:03:41,906 --> 00:03:44,921
Just that. Flood the zone with shit.

61
00:03:45,421 --> 00:03:46,870
I mean it's honest, I'll give him that.

62
00:03:46,870 --> 00:03:49,054
He's not being cagey, he's describing a
method.

63
00:03:49,554 --> 00:03:54,157
And so we're gonna break down what the
method actually assumes because this

64
00:03:54,157 --> 00:03:58,880
is the part that is kinda clever and
equally

65
00:03:58,974 --> 00:04:02,342
~ combustibly evil all at the same time.

66
00:04:02,342 --> 00:04:04,464
It doesn't assume you're stupid.

67
00:04:04,464 --> 00:04:07,654
It actually doesn't assume you believe the
shit.

68
00:04:08,352 --> 00:04:09,352
No.

69
00:04:09,168 --> 00:04:12,949
It it assumes that you have this finite
amount of attention.

70
00:04:12,949 --> 00:04:15,630
Like, that's it. That's the whole bet.

71
00:04:15,630 --> 00:04:20,711
The bet is that attention is somehow a
fixed resource.

72
00:04:20,711 --> 00:04:23,832
It doesn't scale. You can't buy more of
it.

73
00:04:23,832 --> 00:04:29,194
And if I just generate the shit faster
than you can process the shit,

74
00:04:29,194 --> 00:04:32,755
I win by default. Not by convincing you.

75
00:04:32,755 --> 00:04:35,796
Not by by winning the argument,

76
00:04:35,796 --> 00:04:37,016
but just by

77
00:04:37,516 --> 00:04:39,187
Exceeding you horizontally.

78
00:04:39,687 --> 00:04:43,150
like the debate kids who just keep talking
and talking and talking and talking.

79
00:04:43,150 --> 00:04:46,672
You never you can't even track what
they're saying much less get a word in.

80
00:04:46,672 --> 00:04:47,672
But

81
00:04:47,128 --> 00:04:48,481
Yeah, like a Jubilee post.

82
00:04:49,154 --> 00:04:52,476
yeah. But that's why the scholars who
write about this describe

83
00:04:52,476 --> 00:04:56,719
it as specifically anti-democratic rather
than just straight up dishonest.

84
00:04:56,719 --> 00:04:59,181
Because it's not targeting your beliefs.

85
00:04:59,181 --> 00:05:03,424
It's targeting your capacity to hold
anything steady long enough to act on it.

86
00:05:03,424 --> 00:05:06,847
And the ability to sustain public
attention on a thing.

87
00:05:07,507 --> 00:05:09,910
is sort of load bearing for the whole
democratic arrangement.

88
00:05:09,910 --> 00:05:14,185
Oversight requires attention.
Accountability requires attention.

89
00:05:14,685 --> 00:05:18,598
You can't actually hold somebody
accountable for something you've already
forgotten

90
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:21,248
because four other things just happened.

91
00:05:22,155 --> 00:05:24,032
Or forty or four hundred, right.

92
00:05:24,176 --> 00:05:27,997
Right. Or renaming Lake Ontario to Lake
America.

93
00:05:27,997 --> 00:05:32,649
So here's why I want to bring in an actual
study because I I just I don't want

94
00:05:32,649 --> 00:05:34,600
to be just the two guys with a theory.

95
00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:40,702
There is a longitudinal piece by Julia
Meetag and Gwendolyn Gurr published

96
00:05:40,702 --> 00:05:45,324
in twenty twenty three and they they
tracked people over time through

97
00:05:45,324 --> 00:05:47,895
a referendum campaign. Not anything
exciting,

98
00:05:47,895 --> 00:05:49,646
but it was just a referendum campaign,

99
00:05:49,646 --> 00:05:52,587
and they found a very specific causal
change.

100
00:05:53,072 --> 00:05:56,076
Not a correlation, a causation.

101
00:05:56,576 --> 00:05:57,576
Walk us through it.

102
00:05:57,787 --> 00:06:00,829
So information overload comes first.

103
00:06:00,829 --> 00:06:06,983
That's the feeling of there's too much of
this and it's updating faster than

104
00:06:06,983 --> 00:06:13,377
I can possibly process it. And that
overload reduces what they call news

105
00:06:13,717 --> 00:06:19,521
efficacy, which is basically your sense
that consuming this gish

106
00:06:19,521 --> 00:06:22,293
gab actually does anything for you.

107
00:06:22,793 --> 00:06:25,087
So it's not an issue of can I understand
it?

108
00:06:25,087 --> 00:06:29,555
It's an issue of does understanding it
help me or how do I apply what I
understood?

109
00:06:30,504 --> 00:06:36,878
Right. And then that drop in efficacy is
what predicts news

110
00:06:36,878 --> 00:06:40,341
avoidance. So the sequence is basically
just overload,

111
00:06:40,341 --> 00:06:46,864
then loss of efficacy, then withdrawal
entirely in that order.

112
00:06:47,364 --> 00:06:51,111
And that matters enormously because the
story people tell about news avoiders

113
00:06:51,111 --> 00:06:53,495
is that they're lazy or apathetic or
checked out.

114
00:06:53,995 --> 00:06:59,708
That's exactly what we're seeing at the
polls right now with who is voting

115
00:06:59,948 --> 00:07:02,630
why and how often and whatever.

116
00:07:02,630 --> 00:07:06,832
But the truth is they're not lazy or
apathetic or checked out.

117
00:07:06,832 --> 00:07:11,635
They're responding rationally to a system
that stopped paying out.

118
00:07:11,635 --> 00:07:15,437
If you pull the lever a hundred times and
nothing comes out,

119
00:07:15,437 --> 00:07:18,859
not pulling the lever is not apathy.

120
00:07:18,859 --> 00:07:21,900
It's avoiding the definition of ex
insanity.

121
00:07:21,900 --> 00:07:22,900
It's it's learning

122
00:07:23,423 --> 00:07:26,098
The system where every time you pull the
lever,

123
00:07:26,098 --> 00:07:27,341
nothing happens.

124
00:07:27,841 --> 00:07:30,293
I'd say this might be closer to the
experiments where they shock you

125
00:07:30,293 --> 00:07:34,016
for pulling the lever. But that's where
the psychology term comes in,

126
00:07:34,016 --> 00:07:37,348
which we're going to use carefully here
because it gets thrown around loosely.

127
00:07:37,348 --> 00:07:40,911
The term is learned helplessness.

128
00:07:40,911 --> 00:07:45,324
The original work is about what happens
when a subject is exposed repeatedly

129
00:07:45,324 --> 00:07:47,116
to a stressor they cannot control.

130
00:07:47,116 --> 00:07:51,319
And the finding is that eventually they
stop attempting to change the situation,

131
00:07:51,319 --> 00:07:53,361
even when the situation changes and they
could.

132
00:07:53,861 --> 00:07:58,419
Even when they could, and that's the ugly
part of all of this.

133
00:07:59,348 --> 00:08:01,949
Right. The learning outlasts the
conditions that taught it.

134
00:08:02,449 --> 00:08:06,831
So basically if you wanted to design a
system that produced a population that

135
00:08:06,831 --> 00:08:09,552
had entirely given up and checked out,

136
00:08:09,552 --> 00:08:13,073
but then felt like it was their own
decision,

137
00:08:13,073 --> 00:08:17,565
you would build exactly this. You wouldn't
censor anything.

138
00:08:17,565 --> 00:08:21,857
Censorship is expensive and it creates
martyrs and it's pretty obvious.

139
00:08:21,857 --> 00:08:24,698
You'd just publish everything constantly,

140
00:08:24,698 --> 00:08:28,970
forever, and let people exhaust themselves
sorting through it.

141
00:08:29,470 --> 00:08:30,801
Feeling like I'm in a cage right now.

142
00:08:30,801 --> 00:08:34,224
~ the exhaustion feels like a personal
failing because of that rather than

143
00:08:34,224 --> 00:08:37,276
a policy outcome. Right? Nobody forced
them to turn off and drop out.

144
00:08:37,276 --> 00:08:38,918
They did it on their own.

145
00:08:38,365 --> 00:08:39,365
Which is

146
00:08:39,236 --> 00:08:41,356
exactly which is why it's so easy to spot.

147
00:08:41,356 --> 00:08:45,559
Like that's how you know it's working
exactly as they designed it to.

148
00:08:45,559 --> 00:08:51,972
When the harm gets experienced as a
character flaw by the person it's
happening to.

149
00:08:52,472 --> 00:08:54,255
I wanna add the piece from my side of
this,

150
00:08:54,255 --> 00:08:55,757
which is the institutional piece,

151
00:08:55,757 --> 00:08:58,993
because there's a second thing the flood
of information on the flooding

152
00:08:58,993 --> 00:09:01,647
of the zone does that gets less attention.

153
00:09:01,647 --> 00:09:04,202
It's not just wearing out individuals,

154
00:09:04,202 --> 00:09:06,486
it's overwhelming the whole machinery of
the system.

155
00:09:06,986 --> 00:09:07,986
Say more, King.

156
00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:11,102
Every institution that's supposed to check
power runs on a queue,

157
00:09:11,102 --> 00:09:14,925
right? Courts have dockets, newsrooms have
staff,

158
00:09:14,925 --> 00:09:17,527
congressional committees have hearing
calendars,

159
00:09:17,527 --> 00:09:21,890
inspectors general, when they are allowed
to carry out their inspections,

160
00:09:21,890 --> 00:09:27,195
~ have caseloads. Every one of those is a
system with a throughput limit,

161
00:09:27,195 --> 00:09:28,696
and none of those limits are secret.

162
00:09:28,696 --> 00:09:31,958
If you generate at four times the rate the
queue can clear,

163
00:09:31,958 --> 00:09:33,299
you don't have to beat the queue,

164
00:09:33,299 --> 00:09:34,299
you just have to fill it.

165
00:09:34,670 --> 00:09:39,592
And then all of those things passed
because nobody got to them.

166
00:09:40,543 --> 00:09:43,581
There just wasn't time. Not because they
were argued for successfully,

167
00:09:43,581 --> 00:09:45,497
but there just wasn't a lane open.

168
00:09:45,997 --> 00:09:48,798
Right. So look, I wanna do the thing we
always do,

169
00:09:48,798 --> 00:09:53,463
which is actually check whether the story
we're telling survives contact with

170
00:09:53,463 --> 00:09:56,726
numbers, because we've been saying it's
working,

171
00:09:56,726 --> 00:10:01,370
and I I wanna be honest about the fact
that it's not working evenly.

172
00:10:01,870 --> 00:10:02,870
Sounds good.

173
00:10:02,988 --> 00:10:06,310
So the courts by the middle of May twenty
twenty five,

174
00:10:06,310 --> 00:10:11,694
there have been thirty-nine injunctions
issued against this administration.

175
00:10:11,694 --> 00:10:14,877
They've blocked massive federal layoffs,

176
00:10:14,877 --> 00:10:17,318
they've blocked funding freezes,

177
00:10:17,318 --> 00:10:22,132
deportations, but ultimately it comes down
to thirty nine things,

178
00:10:22,132 --> 00:10:24,033
and that's just May. We're in September,

179
00:10:24,033 --> 00:10:26,305
right? May of twenty twenty five.

180
00:10:26,305 --> 00:10:28,967
So now we're in September of twenty twenty
six.

181
00:10:29,467 --> 00:10:32,219
Right, that's that's a lot of losing for
something that's supposed

182
00:10:32,219 --> 00:10:33,504
to be steamrolling everybody.

183
00:10:34,296 --> 00:10:36,007
No, it is. And and more recently,

184
00:10:36,007 --> 00:10:38,818
the the Congressional Research Service
looked

185
00:10:38,818 --> 00:10:42,020
at thirty-four predecision injunctions.

186
00:10:42,020 --> 00:10:45,522
And as of June twenty seventh of this
year,

187
00:10:45,522 --> 00:10:49,304
forty one point two percent of them were
still in effect.

188
00:10:49,304 --> 00:10:54,867
So like a meaningful chunk of the early
agenda

189
00:10:54,867 --> 00:11:01,441
is still right now legally blocked and
mostly in the immigration space.

190
00:11:01,941 --> 00:11:02,941
And the biggest one.

191
00:11:03,325 --> 00:11:05,716
Yeah, i i it is the biggest one.

192
00:11:05,716 --> 00:11:07,957
Basically it's Trump versus Barbara.

193
00:11:07,957 --> 00:11:10,568
June thirtieth, twenty twenty six,

194
00:11:10,568 --> 00:11:13,039
just a couple of months ago, the Supreme
Court struck down

195
00:11:13,379 --> 00:11:16,180
the birthright citizenship executive
order,

196
00:11:16,180 --> 00:11:18,021
six to three. Like it wasn't close.

197
00:11:18,021 --> 00:11:20,922
You know, it wasn't our nail biters that
we're usually having,

198
00:11:20,922 --> 00:11:22,743
like what overturned Roe versus Wade.

199
00:11:22,743 --> 00:11:25,254
So that's not a like a technicality,

200
00:11:25,254 --> 00:11:28,445
right? It's not a delay. That's like a
that's like a ha a loss,

201
00:11:28,445 --> 00:11:31,256
right? A landslide, as he said about the
election.

202
00:11:32,224 --> 00:11:35,618
And keep in mind six to three is this is
going the other way,

203
00:11:35,618 --> 00:11:38,020
right? Six to three is the ideological
breakdown,

204
00:11:38,020 --> 00:11:41,304
but the other way. There's supposed to be
six conservatives

205
00:11:41,304 --> 00:11:43,146
or roughly roughly conservatives,

206
00:11:43,146 --> 00:11:44,797
you know, right of the other three,

207
00:11:44,797 --> 00:11:46,910
and then three liberals left on the court.

208
00:11:47,663 --> 00:11:53,417
Right. And it went opposite. So sit with
that for a second because your entire

209
00:11:53,418 --> 00:11:56,520
information diet is the flood.

210
00:11:56,520 --> 00:12:02,144
And you've probably experienced that as
like a a headline for like ninety minutes

211
00:12:02,144 --> 00:12:03,144
and then it was gone.

212
00:12:03,585 --> 00:12:04,612
Now for the other column.

213
00:12:05,112 --> 00:12:08,374
Yeah, I'm going to because I I'm not
interested in doing sort

214
00:12:08,374 --> 00:12:09,925
of this like cheerleading episode.

215
00:12:09,925 --> 00:12:16,010
The the Fourth Circuit lifted the block on
the anti DEI orders.

216
00:12:16,010 --> 00:12:20,653
So key provisions of those are live and
enforceable.

217
00:12:20,653 --> 00:12:27,378
But the Supreme Court led the
administration ~ to keep denying accurate

218
00:12:27,378 --> 00:12:31,971
gender markers on passports for trans and
non binary Americans.

219
00:12:32,952 --> 00:12:37,309
And the mail voting order has been a
genuine shit show.

220
00:12:37,309 --> 00:12:42,678
It was lifted partly in August and then
blocked again just a couple of days ago,

221
00:12:42,678 --> 00:12:44,201
but it's still moving.

222
00:12:44,701 --> 00:12:46,509
So the honest summary is a split.

223
00:12:47,009 --> 00:12:52,354
Right. Which is not as easy of a headline
to really swallow,

224
00:12:52,354 --> 00:12:54,937
right? Because some of it's dead,

225
00:12:54,937 --> 00:12:58,020
some of it is currently law,

226
00:12:58,020 --> 00:13:01,473
and a lot of it is just still kind of
ethereal,

227
00:13:01,473 --> 00:13:02,724
like we haven't figured it out yet.

228
00:13:02,724 --> 00:13:03,724
We don't know.

229
00:13:03,765 --> 00:13:07,549
And I wanna name why I think that split is
actually the most important fact

230
00:13:07,610 --> 00:13:10,483
in this episode. It's not the one people
expect.

231
00:13:11,310 --> 00:13:12,310
Go for it.

232
00:13:12,180 --> 00:13:14,882
So both of the emotionally available
positions are wrong.

233
00:13:14,882 --> 00:13:16,843
Position one is they're unstoppable,

234
00:13:16,843 --> 00:13:20,106
it's over, nothing works. That's factually
false.

235
00:13:20,106 --> 00:13:24,249
Thirty-nine injunctions, a six to three
loss at the Supreme Court.

236
00:13:24,249 --> 00:13:27,161
The courts are standing up to the
administration to some degree,

237
00:13:27,161 --> 00:13:28,232
and those things worked.

238
00:13:28,732 --> 00:13:29,732
But

239
00:13:29,601 --> 00:13:31,694
Position two is that the system held,

240
00:13:31,694 --> 00:13:33,606
the guardrails worked, everybody relaxed.

241
00:13:33,606 --> 00:13:38,593
Also factually false. The DEI provisions
are enforcing right now.

242
00:13:38,593 --> 00:13:41,877
Real people lost real passport access
access.

243
00:13:42,873 --> 00:13:48,321
So both of these these comfortable stories
that we've been told,

244
00:13:48,321 --> 00:13:54,020
one that the position held and one that
the available positions

245
00:13:54,020 --> 00:13:56,153
are wrong are both lies.

246
00:13:56,653 --> 00:13:58,155
Right, and people want a clear cut answer,

247
00:13:58,155 --> 00:13:59,577
right? But both of the clear cut,

248
00:13:59,577 --> 00:14:03,502
comfortable stories are lies, and they're
comfortable for the same reason,

249
00:14:03,502 --> 00:14:05,274
which is that they let you stop paying
attention,

250
00:14:05,274 --> 00:14:07,127
right? One says it's hopeless,

251
00:14:07,127 --> 00:14:09,089
don't even bother, don't turn on the TV.

252
00:14:09,089 --> 00:14:11,372
The other says it's handled, so why
bother?

253
00:14:11,372 --> 00:14:13,755
Go watch something else. Different route,

254
00:14:13,755 --> 00:14:14,797
same destination.

255
00:14:15,297 --> 00:14:19,859
Yeah, and that that kind of lands directly
on the thing you said about tabs.

256
00:14:19,859 --> 00:14:25,663
The reason it's hard is that the actual
state of affairs is that some of

257
00:14:25,663 --> 00:14:28,884
it is is stoppable and some of it isn't.

258
00:14:28,884 --> 00:14:31,686
And you have to figure that out for
yourself.

259
00:14:31,686 --> 00:14:35,988
And figuring that part out, that that
cognitive load,

260
00:14:35,988 --> 00:14:41,111
is expensive, both calorically as well as
intelligently.

261
00:14:41,111 --> 00:14:43,132
Right? That is the work.

262
00:14:43,632 --> 00:14:46,851
And they're betting that you either won't
or can't do it.

263
00:14:47,351 --> 00:14:51,113
Right, which brings me to the thing I said
last week and and I'll put

264
00:14:51,113 --> 00:14:57,005
it on record here. A very large share of
what actually gets announced

265
00:14:57,645 --> 00:15:02,447
is not expected to survive. It's not
drafted to survive.

266
00:15:02,447 --> 00:15:04,338
It's just drafted to be loud.

267
00:15:04,838 --> 00:15:05,838
And how do we tell?

268
00:15:06,151 --> 00:15:10,432
I mean I go back and forth. ~ th there are
there are tells,

269
00:15:10,432 --> 00:15:14,553
right? Like I mean, you can kind of see
through it a little bit,

270
00:15:14,553 --> 00:15:16,954
but it's mostly opaque. But they're
boring.

271
00:15:16,954 --> 00:15:19,084
Which is exactly why they work.

272
00:15:19,084 --> 00:15:24,436
A thing a thing that's meant to actually
happen has like full text written

273
00:15:24,436 --> 00:15:29,077
by attorneys and it's ironclad and it was
already decided in Project 2025.

274
00:15:29,077 --> 00:15:33,878
Not some like concept announced from a
podium that they have ~

275
00:15:34,028 --> 00:15:37,960
Hastings of a thought process of a plan
that's gonna take place in two weeks.

276
00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:42,333
And it it has a named agency that actually
puts it into effect and

277
00:15:42,333 --> 00:15:45,985
it has an effective date and there's money
and a budget attached

278
00:15:45,985 --> 00:15:50,908
and an appropriation or an existing line
item that they can tap into.

279
00:15:50,908 --> 00:15:53,429
It already has people hired to do it.

280
00:15:53,429 --> 00:15:56,991
And it usually moves very quietly,

281
00:15:56,991 --> 00:16:01,144
often on a Friday and a lot of the times
with no press coverage at all.

282
00:16:01,644 --> 00:16:05,538
And I'm guessing rubber stamped in a
committee if if at all sent to a
committee.

283
00:16:05,538 --> 00:16:07,440
But the things meant to be noise,

284
00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:08,861
what do we what do we think about those?

285
00:16:09,793 --> 00:16:12,604
Yeah, they're they're just kind of
announced rather than filed,

286
00:16:12,604 --> 00:16:17,105
right? No no implementation mechanism
legally weak in ways that

287
00:16:17,105 --> 00:16:20,286
are obvious to actual attorneys who
drafted it.

288
00:16:20,286 --> 00:16:26,368
It gets a lot of press. But there's not a
lot of paperwork or,

289
00:16:26,368 --> 00:16:31,969
you know, adjudication put into figuring
out what the law actually says.

290
00:16:31,969 --> 00:16:37,431
It's just kind of a a weak argument that
is loud.

291
00:16:37,431 --> 00:16:38,431
It's

292
00:16:38,689 --> 00:16:41,932
Gross. It's supposed to make you go,

293
00:16:41,932 --> 00:16:44,724
there's no way they can do that and get
angry.

294
00:16:44,724 --> 00:16:49,488
But the biggest tell of all is that that's
usually the thing that they carry,

295
00:16:49,488 --> 00:16:53,271
right? That's the thing you see actually
see in the headlines because

296
00:16:54,012 --> 00:16:59,376
if passed would be awful. Because it's
something that's actually moving,

297
00:16:59,376 --> 00:17:02,499
that doesn't need to be announced twice,

298
00:17:02,499 --> 00:17:06,182
that's happening in the left hand versus
the right hand.

299
00:17:06,682 --> 00:17:11,308
Right. So I mean it's it's not even it's
not propaganda.

300
00:17:11,308 --> 00:17:12,940
It's more like what is it they call that?

301
00:17:12,940 --> 00:17:15,863
I don't know, there's all these words for
these things where like is it rage bait?

302
00:17:15,863 --> 00:17:16,863
Is that a thing?

303
00:17:17,100 --> 00:17:20,262
Yeah, I mean Trump Trump is been doing
this for quite a while.

304
00:17:20,262 --> 00:17:24,315
Is is he puts the loud thing out there in
front so you pay attention to that

305
00:17:24,315 --> 00:17:26,347
so you don't pay attention to what's
happening behind the curtain.

306
00:17:27,246 --> 00:17:29,674
Right. ~ thank you, Donald Copperfield.

307
00:17:29,674 --> 00:17:34,459
~ so we can we at least follow the
staffing and the money.

308
00:17:34,959 --> 00:17:38,560
I mean sure, but not the volume.

309
00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:43,462
A quiet thing that hires and the
appropriation part of it that

310
00:17:43,462 --> 00:17:45,683
the Congress is actually backing him up
with,

311
00:17:45,683 --> 00:17:51,255
that's real. A loud thing with a podium
and no personnel is kind of theater,

312
00:17:51,255 --> 00:17:55,917
it's designed for that. And we've actually
done this on this show before,

313
00:17:55,917 --> 00:17:59,208
right? The controlling the checkbook
episode was a was a docket number

314
00:17:59,208 --> 00:18:01,959
and four hundred and twelve pages that
nobody was reading.

315
00:18:02,773 --> 00:18:07,734
That was the real one. It was silent and
nobody had heard of it and it

316
00:18:07,734 --> 00:18:12,607
was just kind of passing underneath the
radar because it was a full build

317
00:18:12,607 --> 00:18:16,689
and it was so big that nobody had even
bothered to take it apart because it's
also

318
00:18:16,689 --> 00:18:21,021
not gonna get CNN headlines or MS Now or
Fox News or or whatever.

319
00:18:21,521 --> 00:18:23,374
And you may be circle circling back to
this,

320
00:18:23,374 --> 00:18:26,999
but ~ I mean that sometimes they can be
mixed in,

321
00:18:26,999 --> 00:18:28,782
right? Like the big bullshit bill.

322
00:18:28,782 --> 00:18:30,404
~ that was like

323
00:18:29,806 --> 00:18:30,806
Right.

324
00:18:30,485 --> 00:18:32,247
some loud stuff and some quiet stuff,

325
00:18:32,247 --> 00:18:33,469
right? That actually mattered.

326
00:18:33,469 --> 00:18:34,731
~

327
00:18:34,083 --> 00:18:35,083
Yeah, like the Save

328
00:18:34,954 --> 00:18:40,869
Act. the I mean the the Senate just passed
or was bragging about ~ the fact that

329
00:18:40,869 --> 00:18:45,002
a hundred and twenty nine Democrats didn't
vote for this this thing that denounced

330
00:18:45,543 --> 00:18:49,125
what was it, d denounced socialism,

331
00:18:49,125 --> 00:18:52,668
right? Specifically denounced socialism
and look at all these things.

332
00:18:52,668 --> 00:18:56,912
But it was earmarked with this very
particular clause inside that would have
passed

333
00:18:56,972 --> 00:19:01,836
the SAVE Act, which means that anybody
who's ever changed their name or been
married

334
00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:05,982
Has to bring like live birth certificates
and legal documents just to vote.

335
00:19:05,982 --> 00:19:11,544
It's super gross, but they're doing it out
there on purpose.

336
00:19:11,544 --> 00:19:13,565
And they know that it's gross.

337
00:19:13,565 --> 00:19:17,456
So instead of carrying the fact that
they're trying to pass the Save

338
00:19:17,456 --> 00:19:19,067
Act underneath our noses, they're like,

339
00:19:19,067 --> 00:19:22,088
~ look, Democrats won't denounce
socialism.

340
00:19:22,088 --> 00:19:23,958
They're all communists. I'm like,

341
00:19:23,958 --> 00:19:25,969
well, those those aren't even the same
thing.

342
00:19:26,717 --> 00:19:29,309
And don't listen to those pink o commies
because they're gonna tell

343
00:19:29,309 --> 00:19:31,521
you what to think. We would never do that.

344
00:19:31,521 --> 00:19:35,524
Right? As we tell you what to think.

345
00:19:34,256 --> 00:19:36,485
Exactly. Literally.

346
00:19:35,524 --> 00:19:36,524
~

347
00:19:37,046 --> 00:19:38,987
okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take this
next part,

348
00:19:38,987 --> 00:19:42,222
take a lead on this next part because I
think for reasons that'll become clear

349
00:19:42,222 --> 00:19:46,494
as along the way, I'm actually qualified
to talk about this a little bit.

350
00:19:46,751 --> 00:19:47,751
That's why you're here.

351
00:19:49,897 --> 00:19:51,158
Not for not just for my good looks.

352
00:19:51,506 --> 00:19:52,988
Among other things. Yeah,

353
00:19:52,988 --> 00:19:56,362
actually our our good looks actually
translate rather well over this podcast.

354
00:19:56,814 --> 00:19:58,695
Right. ~ there's

355
00:19:58,695 --> 00:20:00,185
there's a body of research on this,

356
00:20:00,185 --> 00:20:03,846
not on burnout generally, but on activist
burnout specifically.

357
00:20:03,846 --> 00:20:07,878
And the person who's done the most careful
work on it is a a man by the name

358
00:20:07,878 --> 00:20:13,539
of Paul Gorski. And the core study
interviewed twenty-two social justice

359
00:20:13,539 --> 00:20:17,231
and human rights activists across a range
of different movements.

360
00:20:17,231 --> 00:20:21,072
And what he found when he sorted out the
causes was four categories.

361
00:20:21,661 --> 00:20:24,519
Ooh, I like these. They're like ~
infographics.

362
00:20:24,519 --> 00:20:25,642
Four categories. Go.

363
00:20:25,104 --> 00:20:26,104
Yeah.

364
00:20:26,205 --> 00:20:29,306
Yeah, some fun new words to learn and
throw out at the dinner parties.

365
00:20:29,306 --> 00:20:32,647
emotional and dispositional causes,

366
00:20:32,647 --> 00:20:34,628
which is the stuff you bring in with you.

367
00:20:34,628 --> 00:20:38,130
Structural causes, which is the scale of
the problem itself,

368
00:20:38,130 --> 00:20:42,702
backlash causes, which is what gets done
to you for participating,

369
00:20:42,702 --> 00:20:43,702
and then there's a fourth one.

370
00:20:44,202 --> 00:20:45,202
Do I even want to know?

371
00:20:45,446 --> 00:20:47,237
It's kind of sad. It's it's in movement,

372
00:20:47,237 --> 00:20:48,378
which is causes

373
00:20:48,023 --> 00:20:49,023
Mm.

374
00:20:48,378 --> 00:20:50,039
that come from inside the thing you join.

375
00:20:50,039 --> 00:20:53,241
So again, these are the four categories of
things that can cause you

376
00:20:53,261 --> 00:20:55,783
as an activist or cause activists
specifically to burn out.

377
00:20:55,783 --> 00:20:58,155
So the emotional and dispositional stuff,

378
00:20:58,155 --> 00:21:00,366
this is what you're bringing, this is what
matters to you when you start

379
00:21:00,366 --> 00:21:02,848
as an activist. Structural causes.

380
00:21:01,888 --> 00:21:02,888
Well, I

381
00:21:03,365 --> 00:21:06,941
I'm sure I can guess the the most
important one 'cause you left it for last.

382
00:21:07,441 --> 00:21:11,153
Sure, it's the fourth one. and it's not
close,

383
00:21:11,153 --> 00:21:13,714
even in terms of how much the interview
material it accounts for.

384
00:21:13,714 --> 00:21:16,055
So people described infighting,

385
00:21:16,055 --> 00:21:18,416
backbiting, struggles over power,

386
00:21:18,416 --> 00:21:22,948
and they described movements reproducing
internally the exact things that they

387
00:21:22,948 --> 00:21:27,360
existed to fight, like sexism inside
anti-racist and anti ~

388
00:21:27,740 --> 00:21:31,302
or you know organizations seeking ~ gender
equality,

389
00:21:31,302 --> 00:21:33,923
racism inside progressive organizations.

390
00:21:34,423 --> 00:21:37,291
Yeah, that's ~ that's the dark side of a
lot of this stuff.

391
00:21:38,207 --> 00:21:41,301
Yeah, it's definitely bleak and it's
consistent.

392
00:21:41,301 --> 00:21:44,075
And then there's the finding that I think
about the most,

393
00:21:44,075 --> 00:21:46,409
which is Gorsky named the culture of
martyrdom.

394
00:21:47,356 --> 00:21:48,978
Mm. That sounds interesting. Tell me more.

395
00:21:49,478 --> 00:21:52,962
It's an implicit expectation inside
movement culture,

396
00:21:52,962 --> 00:21:56,297
which is an amazing thing that there's a
movement culture,

397
00:21:56,297 --> 00:21:58,019
but that if you haven't been burned out,

398
00:21:58,019 --> 00:22:01,704
you weren't really committed. So this is
like the for ~ for those

399
00:22:01,704 --> 00:22:06,219
not steeped in this literature or this
this ~ part of culture,

400
00:22:06,219 --> 00:22:08,212
it's like the the CEOs.

401
00:22:07,082 --> 00:22:08,334
This is the no true Scotsman

402
00:22:08,334 --> 00:22:12,790
argument that a lot of the leftist
organizations like to like to easily call
upon,

403
00:22:12,790 --> 00:22:13,790
right?

404
00:22:13,534 --> 00:22:17,676
Right, or I'm thinking like something for
more of like of our time is

405
00:22:17,676 --> 00:22:20,287
the CEOs who brag about getting up earlier
and earlier,

406
00:22:20,287 --> 00:22:22,958
right? Like there's the four AM crowd and
the three AM crowd,

407
00:22:22,958 --> 00:22:24,739
and then if you're not if you didn't stay
up all night,

408
00:22:24,739 --> 00:22:27,600
you weren't really working. It's it's that
kind of thing,

409
00:22:26,322 --> 00:22:28,550
Okay. Sure.

410
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:28,800
right? So you feel guilty,

411
00:22:28,800 --> 00:22:32,382
they make you feel guilty for wanting to
rest and wanting to restore yourself.

412
00:22:32,382 --> 00:22:34,643
And then, you know

413
00:22:33,937 --> 00:22:35,484
Because you're not you're not in the
grind.

414
00:22:36,224 --> 00:22:39,985
Right, exactly. So if you if you raise an
issue about being exhausted,

415
00:22:39,985 --> 00:22:41,726
then you're marked as not serious.

416
00:22:42,226 --> 00:22:46,400
Well, I I mean so essentially what you're
saying is that basically

417
00:22:46,521 --> 00:22:49,904
the movement kind of generates its own
attrition.

418
00:22:50,404 --> 00:22:52,625
Right. It's it's ~ eating their young,

419
00:22:52,625 --> 00:22:54,166
right, in a sense, or eating their own,

420
00:22:54,166 --> 00:22:57,407
~ in the the race to get the problem
solved.

421
00:22:57,407 --> 00:23:01,188
And I wanna be really clear about the
implication here because it is
uncomfortable.

422
00:23:01,188 --> 00:23:05,320
If exhaustion is the opponent's strategy
and your own side treats exhaustion

423
00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:09,392
as a badge of honor, then your culture is
doing their work for them for free.

424
00:23:09,892 --> 00:23:13,355
Yeah, and I think I think that's kind of
the the point of all of this

425
00:23:13,355 --> 00:23:15,907
is that we have th when they win,

426
00:23:15,907 --> 00:23:21,541
it's both by design, but also your own
independent badge of honor that makes

427
00:23:21,541 --> 00:23:23,743
it feel like you've done more than you
really have.

428
00:23:24,243 --> 00:23:28,076
Right. And there's a related finding I
want to talk about from Christina Masleck,

429
00:23:28,076 --> 00:23:32,880
a scientist who's essentially the person
who built the modern research on burnout,

430
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:38,885
working with Gomez. and their observation
about activists specifically

431
00:23:38,885 --> 00:23:42,949
is that activism cultivates awareness of
enormous problems that

432
00:23:42,949 --> 00:23:45,050
the surrounding society will not
acknowledge.

433
00:23:45,050 --> 00:23:48,663
And that gap between what you can see and
what everyone else around

434
00:23:48,663 --> 00:23:52,947
you is willing to see produces a very
particular kind of pressure and isolation.

435
00:23:53,447 --> 00:24:00,399
Which then just feeds back directly in a
loop to ignite or reignite the burnout.

436
00:24:01,129 --> 00:24:05,013
Exactly, which in this case is driven by
just sort of an ongoing despair,

437
00:24:05,013 --> 00:24:09,237
right? an isolation, just a l a sense of
deep loneliness,

438
00:24:09,237 --> 00:24:13,241
lasting loneliness. Plus a culture that
says you're not allowed to mention that
it's

439
00:24:13,241 --> 00:24:16,574
breaking you, right? So you just gotta
grin and bear it while you're dealing with

440
00:24:16,574 --> 00:24:17,574
all of this.

441
00:24:17,864 --> 00:24:22,808
Can I can I say kind of what this what
this seems to be the most obvious part of
it?

442
00:24:23,553 --> 00:24:24,553
Please, by all means.

443
00:24:25,032 --> 00:24:27,828
And look, you know more about this than
than the research does,

444
00:24:27,828 --> 00:24:32,360
at least personally. ~ I just I I I think
it matters for this one.

445
00:24:33,301 --> 00:24:35,842
Yeah, and I I I hate to pull this card,

446
00:24:35,842 --> 00:24:38,274
so to speak, or I don't wanna make this
about me,

447
00:24:38,274 --> 00:24:42,696
but for the benefit of those who may be
going through this and feeling that
they're

448
00:24:42,696 --> 00:24:46,038
struggling alone. So if you haven't been
with the podcast for very long,

449
00:24:46,038 --> 00:24:50,230
or if you've wondered where I am in a
about eighty percent of the last

450
00:24:50,330 --> 00:24:55,613
few months episodes, I have been diagnosed
with young onset Parkinson's.

451
00:24:55,613 --> 00:24:58,174
And there's a whole lot to that.

452
00:24:58,174 --> 00:24:59,465
I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail,

453
00:24:59,465 --> 00:25:01,356
but essentially took my career

454
00:25:01,724 --> 00:25:05,996
option from me practicing the law is just
not an option for me anymore which i've

455
00:25:05,996 --> 00:25:10,768
talked about a little bit ~ but it also
takes away a good chunk of every

456
00:25:10,768 --> 00:25:14,210
day which i haven't talked about the
everyday stuff but you know there's

457
00:25:14,210 --> 00:25:18,011
a a persistent sort of constant pain ~

458
00:25:18,132 --> 00:25:24,555
and ~ just things that interfere with your
ability to do basic things like

459
00:25:24,895 --> 00:25:27,136
sit in a chair for an hour and talk

460
00:25:28,018 --> 00:25:31,091
~ some days and many days I just can't do
that.

461
00:25:31,091 --> 00:25:36,716
And ~ so the thing you learn when your
body is making the decision for

462
00:25:36,716 --> 00:25:39,838
you is that pacing is not a moral failure,

463
00:25:39,838 --> 00:25:43,702
right? Like it's not me. This is not me
saying I need a break,

464
00:25:43,702 --> 00:25:46,924
I need some time off, I I need ~ you know,

465
00:25:46,924 --> 00:25:51,728
whatever mental health days. This is me
saying I can't get out of bed or

466
00:25:51,729 --> 00:25:55,722
I can't sit up straight for more than five
minutes without being in agony.

467
00:25:56,381 --> 00:25:57,381
Mm-hmm.

468
00:25:56,880 --> 00:26:00,873
And ~ you know, you come from a a country
that's that prides itself

469
00:26:00,873 --> 00:26:03,566
on its Puritan work ethic. And you think,

470
00:26:03,566 --> 00:26:05,748
wow, you know, I'm just if I'm not working
hard,

471
00:26:05,748 --> 00:26:08,820
then I'm not contributing to my society,

472
00:26:08,820 --> 00:26:10,552
I'm not taking care of my family,

473
00:26:10,552 --> 00:26:12,380
providing the way I'm supposed to.

474
00:26:12,380 --> 00:26:16,256
And when that instinct becomes associated
with something like that,

475
00:26:16,256 --> 00:26:20,270
when you're feeling guilty for having a
degenerative disease that

476
00:26:20,270 --> 00:26:22,622
is affecting you and it's it's an
objective,

477
00:26:22,622 --> 00:26:24,023
real thing, it's not in your head.

478
00:26:24,023 --> 00:26:25,144
~

479
00:26:25,686 --> 00:26:28,339
That instinct is wrong. And so for me,

480
00:26:28,339 --> 00:26:31,003
I've had to learn the lesson over and over
and over again.

481
00:26:31,003 --> 00:26:34,457
~ because my body is teaching it to me
every morning when I wake up in

482
00:26:34,457 --> 00:26:35,457
the middle of the night.

483
00:26:35,638 --> 00:26:39,426
So can you kind of lay out what the lesson
actually is?

484
00:26:39,926 --> 00:26:43,958
So the the lesson here, one lesson here is
that the goal isn't the most

485
00:26:43,958 --> 00:26:48,141
you can do today. The goal is the most you
can do across the whole span.

486
00:26:48,141 --> 00:26:51,304
~ you know, you've all heard the saying,

487
00:26:51,304 --> 00:26:54,576
you you overestimate what you can do in a
year when you underestimate what

488
00:26:54,576 --> 00:26:58,769
you can do in ten years. ~ that's that's
kind of the difference we're talking about

489
00:26:58,769 --> 00:27:02,302
here is just like keep in mind the big
picture because there are gonna

490
00:27:02,302 --> 00:27:04,113
be days where you just can't do it.

491
00:27:04,113 --> 00:27:06,495
And it's not an option, it's not
something,

492
00:27:06,495 --> 00:27:08,256
you know, pretending is not the answer.

493
00:27:08,756 --> 00:27:11,347
So when the research says culture of
martyrdom,

494
00:27:11,347 --> 00:27:13,127
I don't experience that as an abstraction.

495
00:27:13,127 --> 00:27:15,858
It's the thing that would have taken
everything from me faster if

496
00:27:15,858 --> 00:27:17,208
I'd been allowed to keep obeying it,

497
00:27:17,208 --> 00:27:22,020
right? If I just said, I know that my you
know toe is like curled in like

498
00:27:22,020 --> 00:27:25,020
a pretzel right now and it's agony to take
a step,

499
00:27:25,020 --> 00:27:27,198
but I should keep doing it because it's
the you know,

500
00:27:27,198 --> 00:27:31,272
it's the only way to do what matters and
and to be a contributing member of
society,

501
00:27:31,272 --> 00:27:36,584
~ then that would have you know caused my
pr disease to progress even faster.

502
00:27:37,388 --> 00:27:38,569
Yeah. And that's hard.

503
00:27:39,069 --> 00:27:42,782
Yeah, it it is. And ~ but we need to
understand that rest is not

504
00:27:42,782 --> 00:27:48,487
a withdrawal from the mission ~ or the
fight when the attrition is the fight,

505
00:27:48,487 --> 00:27:52,660
right? Like again, don't do the other
side's work for them.

506
00:27:52,660 --> 00:27:56,964
Don't put yourself in an early grave
trying to solve the problem that

507
00:27:56,964 --> 00:28:01,817
no one else can see. And that's not I'm
not saying that as like a ~ you know,

508
00:28:01,817 --> 00:28:07,722
a placebo pill to just say take this
little saying and and rest easy.

509
00:28:08,414 --> 00:28:11,165
It's actually a strategic claim and and
I'm happy to defend it.

510
00:28:11,665 --> 00:28:15,618
Yeah, I mean that's kind of the it
sometimes it can feel like a platitude,

511
00:28:15,618 --> 00:28:17,490
right? But I mean I I understand what
you're saying,

512
00:28:17,490 --> 00:28:21,114
like and I I I hear from your experience,

513
00:28:21,114 --> 00:28:24,537
personally. ~ Well,

514
00:28:24,537 --> 00:28:29,171
so I guess the next part is kind of what
I've been waiting for,

515
00:28:29,171 --> 00:28:32,504
and that's the the forty year old research
that annoys me.

516
00:28:33,004 --> 00:28:36,265
Is it the research that annoys you or the
people ignoring the research that annoys

517
00:28:36,265 --> 00:28:39,647
you? Yeah,

518
00:28:36,811 --> 00:28:38,682
~ you know, it depends on the day.

519
00:28:38,682 --> 00:28:39,983
~ depends

520
00:28:39,647 --> 00:28:40,647
right.

521
00:28:39,983 --> 00:28:43,346
on on my on how many spoons I've I woke up
with this morning.

522
00:28:43,346 --> 00:28:47,458
So yeah. ~ Yes,

523
00:28:43,904 --> 00:28:47,952
Fair enough. So Karl Vik. Tell us about
Carl Vik.

524
00:28:47,979 --> 00:28:50,811
Karl Vik is an American psychologist from
1984.

525
00:28:50,811 --> 00:28:56,745
~ he had a paper called Small Wins
Redefining the Scale of Social Problems.

526
00:28:56,745 --> 00:29:01,788
And that's the the sentence I want you to
kind of hear and how well

527
00:29:01,788 --> 00:29:04,670
it describes what we've spent twenty
minutes talking about,

528
00:29:04,670 --> 00:29:05,670
right? He wrote

529
00:29:05,961 --> 00:29:09,471
That the massive scale on which social
problems

530
00:29:09,552 --> 00:29:14,085
are conceived often precludes innovative
action.

531
00:29:14,585 --> 00:29:18,217
precludes, not just discourages and and
that's important because I think

532
00:29:18,217 --> 00:29:21,019
for you and I this hits right close to
home because depending on the day,

533
00:29:21,019 --> 00:29:23,181
one of us you're likely to hear one of us
telling the other one,

534
00:29:23,181 --> 00:29:24,492
Yeah, but what do we do about it?

535
00:29:24,492 --> 00:29:25,682
Like there's just nothing that can be
done.

536
00:29:25,682 --> 00:29:26,682
It's too big a problem.

537
00:29:27,298 --> 00:29:33,501
Right. But it it does he says precludes
means makes it impossible.

538
00:29:33,501 --> 00:29:37,883
But then he also then goes on to give them
a mechanism.

539
00:29:37,883 --> 00:29:41,114
And now I want you to remember this is
like nineteen eighty four,

540
00:29:41,114 --> 00:29:44,305
okay? This is the year I was born.

541
00:29:43,759 --> 00:29:45,001
Not Orwell's nineteen eighty four,

542
00:29:44,305 --> 00:29:46,338
You were you were two, right. Well

543
00:29:45,001 --> 00:29:46,242
but actually nineteen eighty four.

544
00:29:46,338 --> 00:29:48,567
I mean, you know, is there any difference
anymore?

545
00:29:48,567 --> 00:29:54,910
But he basically says it's because bounded
rationality is exceeded.

546
00:29:55,820 --> 00:30:00,216
And dysfunctional levels of arousal are
induced.

547
00:30:00,716 --> 00:30:02,017
Clear, right, Crystal?

548
00:30:02,114 --> 00:30:04,673
Sure, sure. Crystal mud.

549
00:30:05,020 --> 00:30:10,424
Right. Bounded rationality exceeded means
that the problem is basically bigger than

550
00:30:10,424 --> 00:30:14,168
the amount of thinking that a single human
can bring to it,

551
00:30:14,168 --> 00:30:17,310
right? So you can't reason your way to the
next step.

552
00:30:17,310 --> 00:30:23,956
And then dysfunctional arousal is a very ~
three dollar college

553
00:30:24,236 --> 00:30:27,419
explanation of saying that you get so

554
00:30:28,149 --> 00:30:31,442
triggered so activated that you
essentially become useless.

555
00:30:31,442 --> 00:30:36,215
Just frozen and spinning you know,

556
00:30:36,215 --> 00:30:39,839
you've got you've got forty tabs open in
your browser and y you have

557
00:30:39,839 --> 00:30:41,490
to close them all because you're just
done.

558
00:30:41,990 --> 00:30:45,434
Sounds like hell on earth. ~ but it also
sounds like the Flood

559
00:30:45,434 --> 00:30:48,858
the Zone effect thirty four years before
Bannon named the the tactic.

560
00:30:49,433 --> 00:30:51,845
Yeah, I mean he described I wish it was
thirty-four.

561
00:30:51,845 --> 00:30:54,607
It's like

562
00:30:53,542 --> 00:30:54,542
'Cause well.

563
00:30:54,687 --> 00:30:56,529
it's it's getting to be a little bit more,

564
00:30:56,529 --> 00:30:59,851
but he he described that effect before
Bannon named it.

565
00:30:59,851 --> 00:31:04,365
And and the reason why that matters is
that he wasn't writing about propaganda

566
00:31:04,365 --> 00:31:09,139
at the time. He was writing about why well
intentioned people like you

567
00:31:09,139 --> 00:31:15,964
or me or anybody listening here who care a
shit ton about real problems consistently

568
00:31:15,964 --> 00:31:18,256
fail to do anything about them.

569
00:31:18,756 --> 00:31:23,993
Which means the flood has not ever been a
new invention.

570
00:31:23,993 --> 00:31:27,488
It's a deliberate manufacture,

571
00:31:27,488 --> 00:31:33,366
it's a deliberate product of a failure
state we already knew that people had.

572
00:31:33,866 --> 00:31:35,952
I'm gonna step out of my lane here for a
second,

573
00:31:35,952 --> 00:31:37,848
but it sounds like an exploit.

574
00:31:37,848 --> 00:31:38,922
Is that the right word for that?

575
00:31:39,422 --> 00:31:43,895
yes. I mean in a way, right? In a lot of
ways,

576
00:31:43,895 --> 00:31:48,908
in fact, they this is this has been the
Republican tactic for for a good number

577
00:31:48,908 --> 00:31:53,230
of years now. Essentially find the
loophole and then exploit it.

578
00:31:53,230 --> 00:31:55,522
I mean so exploit is I think is a perfect
word for that,

579
00:31:55,522 --> 00:32:01,255
right? They basically found a
vulnerability in the the machinery,

580
00:32:01,255 --> 00:32:06,288
and then they just scaled up and
industrialized that specific workaround.

581
00:32:07,198 --> 00:32:08,959
And and Vike, in the same paper,

582
00:32:08,959 --> 00:32:10,230
he actually gives the counter.

583
00:32:10,230 --> 00:32:14,612
He calls it a small win. And he's specific
about the definition.

584
00:32:14,612 --> 00:32:17,614
A small win, he he says, is it's a
concrete,

585
00:32:17,614 --> 00:32:22,197
complete outcome of moderate importance.

586
00:32:22,197 --> 00:32:25,238
So not only was it concrete, it was
complete,

587
00:32:25,238 --> 00:32:26,599
but it was moderate.

588
00:32:27,099 --> 00:32:28,585
And each of those words matters,

589
00:32:28,585 --> 00:32:29,585
right?

590
00:32:29,782 --> 00:32:33,273
Yes, and each of those words in their own
fashion is kind of like

591
00:32:33,273 --> 00:32:35,634
a cornerstone of of of the wall.

592
00:32:35,634 --> 00:32:37,615
It's the it's the load bearing structure,

593
00:32:37,615 --> 00:32:39,976
it's the steel beam that runs up the brick
wall.

594
00:32:39,976 --> 00:32:45,709
Concrete he he ~ goes on to mention that
it's it's a real thing in the real world,

595
00:32:45,709 --> 00:32:47,720
right? It's not like a raised awareness,

596
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,951
it's not something we're just noticing
from from the periphery.

597
00:32:50,951 --> 00:32:52,482
And then he says

598
00:32:51,779 --> 00:32:52,779
Not vibes.

599
00:32:52,482 --> 00:32:54,622
that right. He says it's complete,

600
00:32:54,622 --> 00:32:55,823
meaning it's done.

601
00:32:56,135 --> 00:32:58,370
Right? It's not like phase one of nine,

602
00:32:58,370 --> 00:33:02,910
it's it's the whole thing. And then
moderate means that you have deliberately,

603
00:33:02,910 --> 00:33:06,499
on purpose, just not tried to solve the
whole thing.

604
00:33:06,999 --> 00:33:08,668
Which for some people sounds like giving
up.

605
00:33:09,168 --> 00:33:11,099
I think for most people it sounds like
giving up,

606
00:33:11,099 --> 00:33:13,589
right? Bec and it feels like giving up.

607
00:33:13,589 --> 00:33:16,310
But it the truth is it's kind of the
opposite.

608
00:33:16,310 --> 00:33:20,712
And and Vik lists why. And this is the
part that you know,

609
00:33:20,712 --> 00:33:25,392
if you need to to make a cat poster about
it or or find your your platitude

610
00:33:25,392 --> 00:33:31,075
to live on, is that these properties are
exactly what you need

611
00:33:31,075 --> 00:33:34,046
in the specific situation we are in right
now.

612
00:33:34,546 --> 00:33:37,702
Think the right image for this
motivational poster is the dumpster fire,

613
00:33:37,702 --> 00:33:39,245
right? The the dumpster fire meme.

614
00:33:39,245 --> 00:33:43,073
But nice.

615
00:33:39,871 --> 00:33:41,712
I like I like cat with machine gun,

616
00:33:41,712 --> 00:33:43,893
kitten with machine gun. Yeah,

617
00:33:43,073 --> 00:33:46,160
I I I hear ya. Yeah.

618
00:33:43,893 --> 00:33:45,055
I think I think it's a better one.

619
00:33:45,055 --> 00:33:46,396
So

620
00:33:48,297 --> 00:33:52,600
one, small wins preserve your gains,

621
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:54,942
right? I mean they're they're they're
losing,

622
00:33:54,942 --> 00:33:56,673
you know, if you lose the war,

623
00:33:56,673 --> 00:33:59,305
that's a sad thing, but if you if you're
winning battles,

624
00:33:59,305 --> 00:34:01,797
you have to kind of close it, right?

625
00:34:01,797 --> 00:34:04,709
You say, I won, and then it's done,

626
00:34:04,709 --> 00:34:06,160
and it's behind you.

627
00:34:06,660 --> 00:34:07,912
Okay, what's number two?

628
00:34:08,412 --> 00:34:10,954
Basically you can't unravel them,

629
00:34:10,954 --> 00:34:14,597
right? So two, because they're finished,

630
00:34:14,597 --> 00:34:18,280
right? There's no half finished structure
that collapses once you stop pushing

631
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:19,631
on it. This isn't like, you know,

632
00:34:19,631 --> 00:34:22,284
I'm trying to keep the monster from
getting through the door.

633
00:34:22,284 --> 00:34:27,108
This is I can push the monster back long
enough to close the door,

634
00:34:27,108 --> 00:34:29,069
lock it, and then then we're just at the
next door.

635
00:34:29,069 --> 00:34:32,092
We don't have to worry about losing
ground.

636
00:34:32,092 --> 00:34:35,034
We just keep pushing forward. Right?

637
00:34:35,034 --> 00:34:36,175
So there you

638
00:34:36,777 --> 00:34:38,689
Basically when you stop pushing on it,

639
00:34:38,689 --> 00:34:44,366
it you still have the the the the small
wind to fall back in and

640
00:34:44,366 --> 00:34:47,069
and relax before you push on to the next
the next door.

641
00:34:47,997 --> 00:34:50,044
Right, 'cause it's done when you stop with
each one.

642
00:34:50,044 --> 00:34:52,191
So ~ what's three?

643
00:34:52,691 --> 00:34:56,413
So basically each one requires less
coordination to execute.

644
00:34:56,413 --> 00:34:57,824
It's this it's the ladder theory,

645
00:34:57,824 --> 00:35:02,646
right? If you tried to jump up ten feet in
one go,

646
00:35:02,646 --> 00:35:06,749
every time you jumped up, you would have
to fall back down to the first rung

647
00:35:07,069 --> 00:35:09,370
or the floor the floor. But with a ladder,

648
00:35:09,370 --> 00:35:14,393
you create individual steps. And each step
is its own win and feels small.

649
00:35:14,393 --> 00:35:18,415
But the next thing you do is you turn
around and you realize you're

650
00:35:18,415 --> 00:35:20,676
at the next floor because now you've

651
00:35:20,839 --> 00:35:22,270
Climbed each one of these things.

652
00:35:22,270 --> 00:35:27,856
So basically, once you understand what
it's like to take a small first step,

653
00:35:27,856 --> 00:35:29,417
the second step is the exact same.

654
00:35:29,417 --> 00:35:30,708
It's just from a higher distance,

655
00:35:30,708 --> 00:35:37,355
right? So each of these, you don't need a
a coalition of forty organizations.

656
00:35:37,355 --> 00:35:39,236
You might just need four people to get to
step two.

657
00:35:40,157 --> 00:35:43,343
Okay, and ~ number four is kind of the one
that gave me pause.

658
00:35:43,343 --> 00:35:44,605
Tell us about that one.

659
00:35:44,957 --> 00:35:47,269
Yeah, so four four is kind of the one.

660
00:35:47,269 --> 00:35:53,776
Small wins are are relatively unaffected
by inter interruptions like changes

661
00:35:53,996 --> 00:35:56,659
in political administrations, for example.

662
00:35:57,159 --> 00:35:58,914
So that one's a little hard for me to wrap
my head around.

663
00:35:58,914 --> 00:35:59,914
Can you say more?

664
00:36:00,069 --> 00:36:04,602
So relatively unaffected by changes in
political administration.

665
00:36:04,602 --> 00:36:08,365
A guy wrote that in nineteen eighty-four
in a psychology journal,

666
00:36:08,365 --> 00:36:11,687
and it's kind of the single most relevant
sentence to this episode,

667
00:36:11,687 --> 00:36:15,740
because the flood is designed to make
everything contingent on

668
00:36:15,740 --> 00:36:19,893
one enormous binary that's that's years
away.

669
00:36:19,893 --> 00:36:23,205
And that basically you personally cannot
move to.

670
00:36:23,705 --> 00:36:25,368
Which is the change of an administration.

671
00:36:25,368 --> 00:36:28,674
But the but the small win is not
contingent on that.

672
00:36:28,674 --> 00:36:29,674
So you're saying.

673
00:36:29,091 --> 00:36:30,091
A small

674
00:36:29,644 --> 00:36:31,773
yeah, a small win doesn't care who won,

675
00:36:31,773 --> 00:36:33,261
right? Like it's completed, it's done.

676
00:36:33,761 --> 00:36:35,126
Hm. And the fifth?

677
00:36:35,948 --> 00:36:38,190
Yeah, th basically the subparts,

678
00:36:38,190 --> 00:36:42,354
each individual step can be reassembled
into different configurations,

679
00:36:42,354 --> 00:36:46,768
meaning it's a bunch of finished small
things that become the

680
00:36:46,768 --> 00:36:49,180
raw materials for something bigger later,

681
00:36:49,180 --> 00:36:52,923
in a shape that you really might not have
or could not have designed

682
00:36:52,923 --> 00:36:55,025
in the beginning and then just executed.

683
00:36:55,025 --> 00:36:59,679
But then you use each of those individual
winds to piece together into

684
00:36:59,679 --> 00:37:01,341
a bigger picture of what you accomplished.

685
00:37:01,841 --> 00:37:05,026
So let's talk about how this fixes the
psychological problems we were talking
about

686
00:37:05,026 --> 00:37:06,619
because it's not just tactical.

687
00:37:07,119 --> 00:37:08,119
Sure.

688
00:37:08,571 --> 00:37:09,571
So if we go back to

689
00:37:09,402 --> 00:37:11,453
the MedTech and and Gur chain,

690
00:37:11,453 --> 00:37:14,565
right? Overload, then loss of efficiency,

691
00:37:14,565 --> 00:37:18,177
then withdrawal, right? The point of
failure is efficacy.

692
00:37:18,177 --> 00:37:20,409
It's the middle link. That's where people
are lost.

693
00:37:21,209 --> 00:37:27,354
Right, and a completed small win is just a
direct injection of efficacy that can't

694
00:37:27,354 --> 00:37:28,354
be undone.

695
00:37:28,405 --> 00:37:29,616
And it's the only thing that is,

696
00:37:29,616 --> 00:37:32,698
right? Like you can't talk somebody out of
learned helplessness.

697
00:37:32,698 --> 00:37:35,360
You can't argue a person into believing
that their actions matter,

698
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,702
especially when they have evidence of the
contrary.

699
00:37:37,702 --> 00:37:42,055
The only thing that reliably restores it
is an action that visibly produces

700
00:37:42,055 --> 00:37:46,048
a result. Progress, right? Which means
finishing something small isn't

701
00:37:46,048 --> 00:37:50,211
a consolation prize ~ at all. It's it's
the whole mechanism,

702
00:37:50,211 --> 00:37:51,211
right?

703
00:37:51,029 --> 00:37:55,468
Right, it is the mechanism. It's basically
how you kind of stick to

704
00:37:55,468 --> 00:37:59,325
the game because ultimately it's just a
small step that we've taken together.

705
00:37:59,825 --> 00:38:03,179
So there's one more piece of research that
I want to handle carefully because it's

706
00:38:03,179 --> 00:38:06,683
the most quoted and most abused in this
entire space.

707
00:38:07,183 --> 00:38:09,401
Yeah, is it that three and a half percent
thing?

708
00:38:10,374 --> 00:38:12,475
The 3.5% thing, you called it.

709
00:38:12,475 --> 00:38:16,200
So ~ Erica Chenowith and Maria Stefan,

710
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:22,666
they built a data set of 323 major
campaigns from 1900

711
00:38:22,666 --> 00:38:26,390
to 2006 and compared violent and
nonviolent ones.

712
00:38:26,390 --> 00:38:30,394
Nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53% of the
time,

713
00:38:30,394 --> 00:38:32,476
violent ones 26%.

714
00:38:33,487 --> 00:38:35,096
That's just over double.

715
00:38:35,596 --> 00:38:40,242
Right, roughly double. If then that
finding is robust and it's genuinely
important

716
00:38:40,403 --> 00:38:45,239
because here's the the headline version is
the no nonviolent cam movement they

717
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,382
got there was no non nonviolent movement,

718
00:38:47,382 --> 00:38:50,175
sorry, they got three point five percent
of the population to participate

719
00:38:50,676 --> 00:38:53,410
in its peak and then failed to achieve its
goals.

720
00:38:53,910 --> 00:38:58,719
And that number is now I mean it's it's
used within within progressive movements.

721
00:38:59,436 --> 00:39:02,380
Right, it's in every group chat and
Chinnawith herself has spent years trying

722
00:39:02,380 --> 00:39:05,755
to put reins on this because she published
cautionary updates.

723
00:39:05,755 --> 00:39:08,108
She wrote a whole book to add the
qualifications.

724
00:39:08,972 --> 00:39:12,744
So what are w what was she trying to kind
of say after the fact?

725
00:39:13,244 --> 00:39:16,466
She's saying, first of all, the number is
descriptive,

726
00:39:16,466 --> 00:39:18,836
not prescriptive, right? It's not telling
you what to do,

727
00:39:18,836 --> 00:39:20,039
it's telling you what they found.

728
00:39:20,039 --> 00:39:22,011
'Cause it's a historical sample,

729
00:39:22,011 --> 00:39:23,452
it's not a formula and

730
00:39:22,500 --> 00:39:23,523
So it's sort of

731
00:39:23,865 --> 00:39:25,792
like hindsight rather than foresight.

732
00:39:26,734 --> 00:39:28,646
Exactly. And she's saying, look,

733
00:39:28,646 --> 00:39:32,829
nobody can see the future. So it's not a
cheat code.

734
00:39:32,829 --> 00:39:36,363
Second, she says that she's trying to hit
the threshold that trying

735
00:39:36,363 --> 00:39:39,525
to hit the threshold without building a
broad constituency underneath

736
00:39:39,525 --> 00:39:41,377
it doesn't guarantee anything.

737
00:39:41,377 --> 00:39:45,160
And third, and this is the one that
actually changes what you do on a Tuesday,

738
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:49,063
she says the other factors are probably
just as important as the head count.

739
00:39:49,063 --> 00:39:52,196
Momentum, organization, strategic
leadership,

740
00:39:52,196 --> 00:39:53,196
and sustainability.

741
00:39:53,807 --> 00:39:56,056
So s sustainability is in her list.

742
00:39:56,733 --> 00:39:59,748
Right, and it's equally as important as
headcount.

743
00:39:59,748 --> 00:40:03,723
sustainability is in her own list of what
determines whether a movement wins,

744
00:40:03,723 --> 00:40:06,949
which ties this section straight back to
what we were saying about martyrdom.

745
00:40:06,949 --> 00:40:09,743
Not burning out is not adjacent to the
strategy,

746
00:40:09,743 --> 00:40:10,775
it's in the strategy.

747
00:40:11,275 --> 00:40:15,784
So I guess what what is that number
actually measuring then if it's not like

748
00:40:15,845 --> 00:40:16,845
we need to hit this?

749
00:40:17,278 --> 00:40:19,240
So this is the part that reframed it for
me.

750
00:40:19,240 --> 00:40:22,603
The 3.5% isn't the cause of the win,

751
00:40:22,603 --> 00:40:26,006
it's a symptom of a condition that was
already true.

752
00:40:26,006 --> 00:40:29,169
If 3.5% of a country is in the street,

753
00:40:29,169 --> 00:40:32,502
that indicates far deeper support
underneath and it creates

754
00:40:32,502 --> 00:40:37,286
a sense of inevitability. And what that
does mechanically is produce defections
from

755
00:40:37,286 --> 00:40:40,029
the pillars that hold the thing up
business,

756
00:40:40,029 --> 00:40:43,272
political, cultural, media, security
services.

757
00:40:44,098 --> 00:40:47,434
Those pillars are kind of s the support
system behind the mechanism.

758
00:40:48,158 --> 00:40:51,080
Right. And the the the part of the iceberg
that's beneath the surface,

759
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:55,363
but when you see the the smaller the the
ten percent above the water,

760
00:40:55,363 --> 00:40:57,704
you see enough of those and you start
thinking,

761
00:40:57,704 --> 00:40:59,816
wow, there's no way I'm making it through
here and you turn back.

762
00:40:59,816 --> 00:41:02,818
So that's what I think what she's kind of
saying is that the three

763
00:41:02,818 --> 00:41:03,899
and a half percent showing up,

764
00:41:03,899 --> 00:41:05,119
that's the tip of the iceberg,

765
00:41:05,119 --> 00:41:06,290
that once you become aware of it,

766
00:41:06,290 --> 00:41:08,191
you realize there's something actually
going on here.

767
00:41:08,191 --> 00:41:09,792
So the

768
00:41:09,454 --> 00:41:10,454
Right.

769
00:41:09,792 --> 00:41:11,974
the crowd is the signal that the pillars
are about to move.

770
00:41:12,474 --> 00:41:16,940
So that kind of changes what your job is
in the in the grander scheme.

771
00:41:17,916 --> 00:41:21,078
Exactly. Changes it enormously because if
you thought your job was to

772
00:41:21,078 --> 00:41:23,309
be number body number three point five
percent,

773
00:41:23,309 --> 00:41:25,580
right? To to get over that that threshold,

774
00:41:25,580 --> 00:41:27,881
that's a job you do once a year.

775
00:41:27,881 --> 00:41:30,323
And it doesn't feel like it does anything.

776
00:41:30,323 --> 00:41:34,714
Because if your job is to make defection
thinkable for one person inside

777
00:41:34,714 --> 00:41:37,056
of an institution, that's a job you can do
on a Wednesday.

778
00:41:37,056 --> 00:41:39,327
And there are a lot more of those jobs
than there are marches.

779
00:41:40,141 --> 00:41:42,540
Well, in effect that's kind of a small
win,

780
00:41:42,540 --> 00:41:44,287
right? Like it's a small step up the
ladder.

781
00:41:45,105 --> 00:41:47,081
Exactly right. Concrete, complete,

782
00:41:47,081 --> 00:41:48,081
and moderate.

783
00:41:48,153 --> 00:41:51,358
Okay, so let's see if we can we can land
this plane.

784
00:41:51,358 --> 00:41:57,951
the standard move here is kind of a list
of action items that everybody nods

785
00:41:57,951 --> 00:41:59,735
at and nobody actually does.

786
00:42:00,235 --> 00:42:01,480
And we have a rule about that.

787
00:42:01,992 --> 00:42:04,293
Right, so nobody's calling their senator
on this show.

788
00:42:04,293 --> 00:42:09,386
~ I checked. ~ nobody mentions the overlap
on any of the FOIA requests

789
00:42:09,386 --> 00:42:11,537
I placed to any senator that I could find.

790
00:42:11,537 --> 00:42:14,958
So here's what I've actually got,

791
00:42:14,958 --> 00:42:18,620
and and none of these actually comes out
to something we just cited.

792
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:20,120
Go for it.

793
00:42:20,254 --> 00:42:25,908
So one, pick a lane and let the rest go on
purpose.

794
00:42:25,908 --> 00:42:31,002
Not out of like laziness as a decision you
make once out loud,

795
00:42:31,002 --> 00:42:32,894
ideally with a witness present.

796
00:42:32,894 --> 00:42:38,198
Because the flood only works if you accept
the framing that everything

797
00:42:38,238 --> 00:42:41,460
is equally urgent and equally yours.

798
00:42:41,460 --> 00:42:46,504
It's not equally yours. You are the
marginal difference on most of it.

799
00:42:46,504 --> 00:42:49,447
And pretending that you're not is how you
end up being.

800
00:42:49,809 --> 00:42:51,481
The marginal difference on none of

801
00:42:51,981 --> 00:42:52,981
It was number two.

802
00:42:53,570 --> 00:42:57,741
Yeah, so triage by staffing and
appropriation,

803
00:42:57,741 --> 00:43:01,332
not by volume. We did kind of like the
tells earlier,

804
00:43:01,332 --> 00:43:03,341
what makes it look like, you know,

805
00:43:03,341 --> 00:43:05,193
i it's trying to flood the zone.

806
00:43:05,193 --> 00:43:09,754
And a a quiet thing with money and hires
behind it is real.

807
00:43:09,754 --> 00:43:14,276
We already said that. A loud thing with a
podium and nobody behind it

808
00:43:14,276 --> 00:43:18,977
is kind of theater. So if you only have
bandwidth for one thing a week,

809
00:43:18,977 --> 00:43:21,228
spend it on something with

810
00:43:21,558 --> 00:43:23,992
a docket number and not something with a
hashtag,

811
00:43:23,992 --> 00:43:27,467
right? Like don't don't repost somebody
else's post.

812
00:43:27,467 --> 00:43:29,510
Like choose to do a thing. Use,

813
00:43:29,510 --> 00:43:34,237
you know, fivecalls dot org or something
and and just do that this week.

814
00:43:34,237 --> 00:43:37,802
That is enough because it's a small win.

815
00:43:38,302 --> 00:43:41,504
And number three is mine, because it goes
back to the martyrdom issue.

816
00:43:41,504 --> 00:43:43,866
Schedule the rest before you need it,

817
00:43:43,866 --> 00:43:46,388
and don't frame it as a reward for having
earned it.

818
00:43:46,388 --> 00:43:52,212
That framing is exactly the thing that
Kors Korski's participants describe being

819
00:43:52,212 --> 00:43:56,295
socialized into, and it's the one that
pushed people out of movements entirely.

820
00:43:56,295 --> 00:43:59,478
Rest that you have to earn is rest you
will never take.

821
00:43:59,978 --> 00:44:02,609
And I'll do four. Do it with other people.

822
00:44:02,609 --> 00:44:05,180
~ I mean, in a lot of things, right?

823
00:44:05,180 --> 00:44:07,691
But ~ I'll be specific about why,

824
00:44:07,691 --> 00:44:10,762
because i it's not it's not a warm
sentiment,

825
00:44:10,762 --> 00:44:15,594
right? Isolation shows up as a documented
cause in this research.

826
00:44:15,594 --> 00:44:20,806
So Maslak and Gomez, ~ on the gap between
what you see and what

827
00:44:20,806 --> 00:44:23,016
the people around you actually
acknowledge,

828
00:44:23,016 --> 00:44:27,958
being the only person in your life who is
tracking a thing is not just lonely.

829
00:44:27,958 --> 00:44:29,519
It is a known

830
00:44:30,271 --> 00:44:32,855
Fire starter of burnout, right?

831
00:44:32,855 --> 00:44:35,691
So fixing that is not optional wellness,

832
00:44:35,691 --> 00:44:39,237
it's maintenance on the movement that
you're building.

833
00:44:39,737 --> 00:44:41,139
And take us out with number five.

834
00:44:41,742 --> 00:44:44,704
Yeah, so five is just finish something.

835
00:44:44,704 --> 00:44:47,615
Like actually finish it. Something small,

836
00:44:47,615 --> 00:44:50,497
something concrete, complete this month,

837
00:44:50,497 --> 00:44:52,808
this week, this day, whatever that is.

838
00:44:52,808 --> 00:44:57,541
Get one ordinance changed. Find one thing
that you really care about

839
00:44:57,541 --> 00:45:00,812
and just push it as far as you can with
reason,

840
00:45:00,812 --> 00:45:04,585
with other people. File one FOIA request,

841
00:45:04,585 --> 00:45:07,356
right? And read what actually gets back to
you.

842
00:45:07,356 --> 00:45:10,538
And then write something out to your
community that explains.

843
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:13,913
Why this is messed up and it and we need
to fix it.

844
00:45:13,913 --> 00:45:16,366
Get a thing fixed at your kids' school,

845
00:45:16,366 --> 00:45:21,021
right? Show up to one county commission
meeting where twelve people are

846
00:45:21,021 --> 00:45:25,386
in the room and your presence is a
measurable percentage of everyone there.

847
00:45:25,886 --> 00:45:27,863
And that last one is not a constellation
prize,

848
00:45:27,863 --> 00:45:29,759
which is the point of the whole Vike
section.

849
00:45:30,119 --> 00:45:34,654
Right. Efficacy is the link in the chain
where people are lost.

850
00:45:34,654 --> 00:45:41,401
And the only thing that restores that
efficacy is a completed action with a
real,

851
00:45:41,401 --> 00:45:46,386
tangible result. And you cannot get there
by like reading another article

852
00:45:46,386 --> 00:45:50,430
or reading another news c p cast or
listening to another podcast.

853
00:45:50,430 --> 00:45:52,963
Reading more is what broke this whole
thing.

854
00:45:53,463 --> 00:45:56,865
And that that brings me to one that I
wanna add that's not on your list.

855
00:45:57,162 --> 00:45:58,162
Sure, go ahead.

856
00:45:58,159 --> 00:46:00,145
Write down what you think is going to
happen.

857
00:46:00,145 --> 00:46:03,234
Make a prediction. Actually write it down
with the date.

858
00:46:03,234 --> 00:46:04,699
And then go back and look.

859
00:46:05,199 --> 00:46:06,316
Well, okay, so what's the point in that?

860
00:46:06,816 --> 00:46:10,517
Two reasons. One, it's the only defense
against the flood's memory problem.

861
00:46:10,517 --> 00:46:14,099
Right. So if everything that you think
about or everything everything you're told

862
00:46:14,099 --> 00:46:18,181
is a a flaming mess right now is being
replaced every 90 minutes,

863
00:46:18,181 --> 00:46:21,402
you lose the ability to notice that
something that you were told

864
00:46:21,402 --> 00:46:23,283
was inevitable didn't happen, right?

865
00:46:23,283 --> 00:46:26,014
Remember all the the disasters that never
occurred.

866
00:46:26,014 --> 00:46:30,246
~ and two, it's how you find out you were
sometimes right,

867
00:46:30,246 --> 00:46:33,177
which you were. You will be. ~ you know,

868
00:46:33,177 --> 00:46:35,838
you're making educated guesses or
forecasts here.

869
00:46:36,618 --> 00:46:38,480
So when you're right, it's worth noticing
that you're right.

870
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,154
And you've been right about things and the
and the pace of things

871
00:46:41,154 --> 00:46:42,836
has just stolen your ability to notice.

872
00:46:42,836 --> 00:46:47,852
Right. You can't even log those wins
because you're so busy on the next thing
before

873
00:46:47,852 --> 00:46:49,705
you even have time to reflect on what you
did.

874
00:46:49,705 --> 00:46:52,188
And that theft is part of why you're
tired.

875
00:46:52,945 --> 00:46:55,879
Yeah, it's kinda like it's kinda like the
dory like goldfish thing,

876
00:46:55,879 --> 00:47:00,934
right? The goldfish memory where it just
keeps being refreshed every time that

877
00:47:00,934 --> 00:47:03,038
the the water moves by, right?

878
00:47:03,038 --> 00:47:07,003
I think I think that that that's a a good
example of of what we mean

879
00:47:07,244 --> 00:47:08,365
in order to write it down. Sort

880
00:47:08,010 --> 00:47:09,010
Right.

881
00:47:08,365 --> 00:47:11,249
of like journaling, right? It's so you
it's so you can count your wins.

882
00:47:11,749 --> 00:47:15,678
Right. The goldfish of course comes from
the same science with the the frog

883
00:47:15,678 --> 00:47:18,053
in the boiling pot, but but it it makes
the point.

884
00:47:18,053 --> 00:47:21,440
And so for that reason I think we should
take our own advice on this,

885
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:22,703
~ this one by the way.

886
00:47:23,490 --> 00:47:26,330
Yeah, I think we should we should and and
I think we're going to.

887
00:47:26,330 --> 00:47:29,151
we've talked about this and we'll get to
that in just a second.

888
00:47:29,151 --> 00:47:33,282
So here here's where where I've landed,

889
00:47:33,282 --> 00:47:36,473
and I'm and I'm not gonna tie a bow on it
because there isn't a bow to

890
00:47:36,473 --> 00:47:39,354
be had for this, but they are winning some
of it.

891
00:47:39,354 --> 00:47:42,635
Not all of it. The birthright order is
dead,

892
00:47:42,635 --> 00:47:46,436
six to three, the DI provisions are live
and they're enforcing them.

893
00:47:46,436 --> 00:47:49,056
Both of those are true this month,

894
00:47:49,056 --> 00:47:51,777
and and I can't change that. Right?

895
00:47:51,777 --> 00:47:52,777
So

896
00:47:52,617 --> 00:47:56,588
Half of that alone is just selling you
permission to stop paying attention,

897
00:47:56,588 --> 00:47:59,067
and that's the same thing in different
rap.

898
00:47:59,567 --> 00:48:02,511
And the exhaustion is real, and it is
manufactured,

899
00:48:02,511 --> 00:48:06,716
and those are not intention. It can be a
genuine feeling in your body

900
00:48:06,756 --> 00:48:09,900
and an intended output of someone's
strategy at the same time.

901
00:48:09,900 --> 00:48:12,363
Most of the worst things are both.

902
00:48:12,875 --> 00:48:16,176
Yeah, I I don't want to steal the former
press secretary's words,

903
00:48:16,176 --> 00:48:19,478
but d she she often liked to say both can
be true,

904
00:48:19,478 --> 00:48:24,610
right? ~ so I I think the thing that I
want to leave people with is

905
00:48:24,610 --> 00:48:27,451
the reframe on tiredness, right?

906
00:48:27,451 --> 00:48:32,503
If if attrition getting you to leave so
that you can be replaced by somebody else

907
00:48:32,503 --> 00:48:39,100
is the mechanism, then your continued
existence in this fight in eighteen
months,

908
00:48:39,100 --> 00:48:41,697
in in three years, is itself

909
00:48:42,293 --> 00:48:47,997
The resource, right? You lasting is not
the precondition for the work.

910
00:48:47,997 --> 00:48:53,570
It is the work. There's no version of you
where burnout in March the

911
00:48:53,570 --> 00:48:56,801
and and and where basically you're just
done,

912
00:48:56,801 --> 00:48:59,603
right? And that was the strategically
correct call.

913
00:49:00,103 --> 00:49:03,025
Right, like an early flame out is not is
never optimal.

914
00:49:03,025 --> 00:49:06,767
~ and the thing I want to leave people
with is a little bit smaller,

915
00:49:06,767 --> 00:49:09,409
but you you're allowed to not know about
something.

916
00:49:09,409 --> 00:49:11,300
You're allowed to have missed it.

917
00:49:11,300 --> 00:49:13,977
You know, when the when the group brings
up like the did you hear about this,

918
00:49:13,977 --> 00:49:16,733
did you hear about that? It's okay if you
didn't hear about that.

919
00:49:16,733 --> 00:49:19,175
You're not the answer to every problem.

920
00:49:19,175 --> 00:49:21,276
And there are a number of things happening
right now,

921
00:49:21,276 --> 00:49:24,478
and the number of things happening right
now exceeds what a human being,

922
00:49:24,478 --> 00:49:26,129
a single human being, can hold in their
head.

923
00:49:26,995 --> 00:49:29,833
And the fact that you cannot hold all of
it is not a referendum on whether you're

924
00:49:29,833 --> 00:49:33,212
a good person. It's just arithmetic and
biology.

925
00:49:33,212 --> 00:49:35,399
And somebody did the arithmetic on
purpose.

926
00:49:35,899 --> 00:49:39,836
So essentially we're saying just like pick
a thing and then finish it.

927
00:49:39,836 --> 00:49:44,195
And then tell somebody that you finished
it and take a nap.

928
00:49:44,695 --> 00:49:46,402
And come back next week if if you can.

929
00:49:47,247 --> 00:49:48,538
Right, and and come back next week.

930
00:49:48,538 --> 00:49:51,981
But before you go, we're gonna do the
thing Will said on the record so

931
00:49:51,981 --> 00:49:54,482
we can be held to it. Here's ours.

932
00:49:54,482 --> 00:49:59,637
By the end of this year, we think at least
one more piece of what's currently being

933
00:49:59,637 --> 00:50:02,848
described as inevitable will be dead in
court,

934
00:50:02,848 --> 00:50:05,351
the way birthright was. We don't know
which one.

935
00:50:05,351 --> 00:50:10,485
We think the the male voter order is the
likeliest candidate given where

936
00:50:10,485 --> 00:50:15,679
it was a couple days ago. So we're gonna
come back and we're gonna check on that.

937
00:50:16,011 --> 00:50:18,527
Out loud and tell you if we were wrong.

938
00:50:19,027 --> 00:50:20,027
Which we might be.

939
00:50:20,628 --> 00:50:22,431
Yeah, we we very well might be,

940
00:50:22,431 --> 00:50:24,024
but that's kind of the point, right?

941
00:50:24,024 --> 00:50:27,701
We're the overlap. Everything we cited is
in the show notes and it's

942
00:50:27,701 --> 00:50:29,956
all real and you can go and read it for
yourself.

943
00:50:29,956 --> 00:50:33,382
And and please do because you should not
take our word for this either.

944
00:50:33,882 --> 00:50:37,850
And take care of yourselves. That's not a
sign off this week.

945
00:50:37,850 --> 00:50:38,936
That's homework.

946
00:50:39,408 --> 00:50:42,219
Yes. Make sure to do all of the liking
things.

947
00:50:42,219 --> 00:50:44,699
Give us five stars on your podcast app of
choice,

948
00:50:44,699 --> 00:50:46,540
Apple Spotify. Leave us a review.

949
00:50:46,540 --> 00:50:50,541
Send us an email at admin at
fof.foundation.

950
00:50:50,541 --> 00:50:52,501
Leave us a message on Blue Sky.

951
00:50:52,501 --> 00:50:55,382
Tag us in something you think we should
cover.

952
00:50:55,382 --> 00:50:58,203
Check out the website at FOF dot
foundation.

953
00:50:58,203 --> 00:51:00,134
Thank you so much for being here.

954
00:51:00,134 --> 00:51:01,204
We hope to see you next week.

955
00:51:01,704 --> 00:51:02,704
I

956
00:51:02,537 --> 00:51:03,537
Bye.