1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,720
August 1971. The American dream is running a fever. The dollar just came untethered from gold.

2
00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:20,320
The Vietnam War is a wound that just won't close. And a guy named Ralph Nader is convincing housewives

3
00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:26,560
that their new Chevrolet might just be a death trap. For the men in the wood paneled boardrooms,

4
00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:33,680
it felt like the apocalypse. So one of them, a quiet, impeccably dressed lawyer for the tobacco

5
00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:41,200
industry, sat down and wrote a memo. It was a confidential battle plan, a call to arms for a

6
00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:49,440
class war. He didn't just want to win an argument. He wanted to rewrite the rules of America. And the

7
00:00:49,440 --> 00:00:56,000
terrifying thing is he did. This is the story of the Powell Memo, the secret blueprint.

8
00:00:56,400 --> 00:01:06,640
That built the world we're living in right now.

9
00:01:24,320 --> 00:01:31,200
And welcome back everyone to the podcast. This is the overlap. I am your co-host Joshua. And with

10
00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:37,920
me is your favorite co-host, William Wilde. Say hello. Hello, everybody. We hope that you are as

11
00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:42,800
excited as we are about this topic. You probably have actually never heard of this. In fact,

12
00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:49,360
unless you do a whole lot of deep digging into right wing historical archives, you probably never

13
00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:57,200
even heard of this guy. He actually was up for Supreme Court justice. His name is Louis F Powell

14
00:01:57,200 --> 00:02:04,400
Jr. But we are excited to talk to you. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. We are a podcast that

15
00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:10,560
talks about the intersection of politics and the intersection of economic and class issues. We talk

16
00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:17,200
about a lot of technology because both of us are technologists in some form or fashion, and we each

17
00:02:17,200 --> 00:02:24,800
have our specialty, mind being technology, and will being predominantly everything else. So we are,

18
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:29,040
we're happy to have you here today if it's your first time. If it is your first time,

19
00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:33,280
go ahead and give us a thumbs up, maybe a five star rating on whatever podcast format you're

20
00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:38,960
listening to today. We'd love to have you back. And please do remember to like and subscribe.

21
00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:43,600
Not my first time, Joshua, but I'll give you a thumbs up, two thumbs up even.

22
00:02:44,480 --> 00:02:47,440
Thanks for that. Thanks. Who's got two thumbs up for this guy?

23
00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:53,040
Yeah. By the way, fun fact that I actually just remembered, um, not really relevant to anything

24
00:02:53,040 --> 00:02:58,320
except Louis F Powell Jr. But I was actually, back in my days as a litigator, as an attorney,

25
00:02:59,040 --> 00:03:04,720
I was opposite his grandson in a lawsuit in Virginia. It was very exciting stuff.

26
00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:11,120
To me, it's always funny that these things happen in places that you don't associate with like,

27
00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:17,600
you know, progressive tendencies. Right. Like tobacco farms of-

28
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:23,360
Exactly. It's like, it's like the garbages places in the country. No, no offense. You know,

29
00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:28,880
Virginia's for lovers and everything. And I love Virginia, but like these were like old school,

30
00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:35,920
you know, still had ideas about the civil war and felt that they were, their families were hurt,

31
00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:41,600
but yeah. So there is a connection there, is what you're saying. There is a random unrelated one,

32
00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:47,440
but nevertheless, Hey, it's the, uh, it's the two degrees of the overlap instead of Kevin Bacon.

33
00:03:48,480 --> 00:03:52,320
Well, let's get started to talk about this, uh, piece of work.

34
00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:59,840
So first of all, let me just say this, uh, this specifically relates to a memo, uh, in 1971, we're

35
00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:05,200
going to, we're going to talk about a couple of things in 1971, um, that all kind of culminated

36
00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:12,240
around, um, you know, the end of America, no big deal. Um, and kind of a lot of the origins of

37
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:16,240
the things that we're literally seeing today, really 1971, there's just, there's just no way

38
00:04:16,240 --> 00:04:23,600
around it, but specifically this, this whole, uh, Powell memo. So we're going to talk a little bit

39
00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:29,120
about, about the man, the myth, the legend, Louis F. Powell Jr. Uh, we're going to talk about kind

40
00:04:29,120 --> 00:04:37,520
of what formed him, what shaped him as well as kind of the sociopolitical, uh, situation that was

41
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:44,560
surrounding the 1960s in the 1970s and through the lens of how it related to Powell. Um, and then

42
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:49,360
we're going, we're going to bring it back to the memo, exactly what it says. Now we're not going

43
00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:55,200
to be reading the memo for you today. It's 34 pages long. And I did read the, the memo, you can access

44
00:04:55,200 --> 00:05:01,600
it. It's in the federal archives. It's long, it's convoluted. A lot of it is really, uh, pompous

45
00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:07,760
and written from a very, like, uh, a very high horse, I guess I should say, um, it's sort of a

46
00:05:07,760 --> 00:05:14,640
confidential memo between friends. Yes. Uh, between him and all of the power players in the country,

47
00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:19,440
the U S chamber of commerce, a lot of the things that we're seeing now, we're going to tie them

48
00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:25,120
back. Oh, kind of where they came from, what the strategies were listed and some of the organizations

49
00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:31,200
that we're seeing affect our real world politics every day and how, how that has been actioned

50
00:05:31,840 --> 00:05:36,800
into what we are seeing today. Maybe in a, in a later time, we'll kind of talk about how to

51
00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:40,320
fight that. But I think we do that a little bit all the time anyway, right? I mean, we, we talk

52
00:05:40,320 --> 00:05:44,960
about how to fight these things, but I think it's important to kind of take a rewind and take a

53
00:05:44,960 --> 00:05:50,640
historical look at why these things happened and why they existed. And so when I was broaching this

54
00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:56,480
topic with will to do the podcast, he was receptive to it, but it's, it's just a very lesser known

55
00:05:56,480 --> 00:06:02,720
thing in the, in the world of understanding where we come from, why we're here now from where we

56
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:07,120
came from. And so, you know, a lot of times it's easy to go, yes, it all started with a Reagan,

57
00:06:07,120 --> 00:06:12,480
but really it started before that. And this is, this is one of those things that actually led to

58
00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:18,320
Reagan really was just like we've talked about Trump being before they were the symptom, right?

59
00:06:19,200 --> 00:06:23,120
We're, we're trying to rewind and figure out the cause because I think that only when you,

60
00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:29,040
you really truly understand history, can you sort of help from repeating it. What are your thoughts?

61
00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:35,920
I agree. I think it's, it's bizarre how important a pivotal a year in 1971 actually was.

62
00:06:36,560 --> 00:06:41,360
I don't think anybody really saw that coming, but it definitely makes a top 10 list of most

63
00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:45,840
influential years in the history of our country. Maybe even a top five, right? A lot, a lot of

64
00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:51,760
forces coming together, opposing forces and various things. I mean, no one will get into it,

65
00:06:51,760 --> 00:06:54,800
so I won't spoil anything, but there's some crazy things that happened that year.

66
00:06:55,920 --> 00:06:59,680
And this was one of the crazier ones. Absolutely. Well, would you like to,

67
00:06:59,680 --> 00:07:06,640
to kind of give us a little background? Sure. So we have Louis F Powell Jr., a future Supreme

68
00:07:06,640 --> 00:07:11,600
Court justice. In fact, he would be nominated two weeks, two months after sending this memo in.

69
00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:18,000
And Mr. Powell was very pleased with the free enterprise system, let's say put it that way.

70
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:23,760
He found a lot to love there and felt like it was under attack from all sorts of crazies,

71
00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:29,680
like socialists and communists and minorities and just people who didn't like big business and the

72
00:07:29,680 --> 00:07:38,320
way they ran, ran rough shot over its consumers. And so he took it upon himself to contact the,

73
00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:45,040
the powers that be in the form of the US chamber of commerce in order to express his concerns

74
00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:51,280
and recruit them to this plan that he had to save America from, from the lefties,

75
00:07:51,280 --> 00:07:56,720
the leftists and the revolutionaries. Yes.

76
00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:02,880
That's what the memo, that's where the memo is coming from. It's his sort of plan to save America

77
00:08:02,880 --> 00:08:08,720
and his, his playbook for how that was going to happen. So let's talk about, about a little

78
00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:15,200
bit earlier Louis F Powell Jr. Right. He was, he was, he didn't see himself as a, as a big idea

79
00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:23,040
man, ready to go and ready to burn a new path. He was really just a picture of exactly what the

80
00:08:23,040 --> 00:08:28,480
American establishment was going for. He was the epitome of the American dream, so to speak.

81
00:08:29,680 --> 00:08:36,880
Very much the corporate lawyer. Yes, he had his beautiful little pattern tie and, and, uh, was a,

82
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:41,840
kind of a dangerous display of emotion. So he was born in Virginia. So it's not coincidental that

83
00:08:41,840 --> 00:08:47,360
you might've ran into his grandson practicing law there, but he was an absolute academic powerhouse

84
00:08:48,160 --> 00:08:55,280
superstar. He was magna cum laude. He was in Phi Beta Kappa. He was the president of the student

85
00:08:55,280 --> 00:09:00,560
body at Washington and Lee university. He was first in his class at law school. Uh, and then he,

86
00:09:00,560 --> 00:09:06,160
then he got a master's from Harvard, you know, just for an extra helping of fun. And then after that,

87
00:09:06,160 --> 00:09:12,480
he became a partner at the Richmond law firm and was pretty classic corporate lawyer, exactly what

88
00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:19,520
you'd expect, you know, very polished, very, um, very quiet and on the outside, but, but also a

89
00:09:19,520 --> 00:09:25,440
storm brewing on the inside. He's the kind of person who sits on like the board of kind of

90
00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:30,800
everything, right? All the major companies and, and is kind of considered this pillar of American

91
00:09:30,800 --> 00:09:37,840
legal establishment of, as the law, right. But beneath that, right, was a, was a, I guess a mind

92
00:09:38,560 --> 00:09:46,000
kind of created in a very specific kind of conflict during world war II Powell wasn't,

93
00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:52,640
wasn't like the infantry, you know, he wasn't cleaning guns and eating MREs. He was an

94
00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:59,840
intelligence officer. So he worked on the top secret ultra project, which I'm sure eventually

95
00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:07,040
we're going to cover, but it was a, of MK Ultra fame. Yes. And, and so it was a unit really

96
00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:12,400
dedicated to interpreting the, uh, the German communications, not the drug MK ultra one.

97
00:10:12,960 --> 00:10:18,560
Okay. Different ultra project. Yes, different ultra project. So his job was basically to sit in a

98
00:10:18,560 --> 00:10:23,840
room and analyze signals that were coming in from, from German soldiers, right. And figure out

99
00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:31,040
patterns and map out the enemy strategy, um, from what he could pick up. So that experiment, I mean,

100
00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:37,600
that experience that he had doing that was, was kind of pivotal in the memo that we kind of see

101
00:10:37,600 --> 00:10:44,720
later. So when he looked out at the, the goings on in the 1960s and seventies, we had, you know,

102
00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:50,560
student protestors and consumer advocates and, and, um, civil rights leaders, you know, he,

103
00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:59,040
he didn't see this like messy democratic society trying to figure out how to change. He saw a

104
00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:06,800
coordinated attack. He saw it as a specific vector. He saw enemy combatants sort of engaged in

105
00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:12,880
what he actually called guerrilla warfare. I think already we're starting to see a pattern

106
00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:18,480
in what we're dealing with now. So much like everything the hammer sees as a nail,

107
00:11:19,120 --> 00:11:25,600
everything the soldier sees is an enemy combatant, right? Exactly. The warrior for the free enterprise

108
00:11:25,600 --> 00:11:34,080
system. A hundred percent. Okay. So long even before then powell was, was deeply troubled by

109
00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:40,160
another person who, who sort of challenged the system that as we think of it and that person

110
00:11:40,160 --> 00:11:45,280
was the both the famed and the troublesome Martin Luther King jr. throughout the 1960s. And I mean,

111
00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:51,040
I'm sure if you're listening from our audience, you, you are familiar with the works of Dr. Keefe,

112
00:11:51,040 --> 00:11:56,320
but throughout the sixties when he served as the Powell served as the president of the American

113
00:11:56,320 --> 00:12:02,640
bar association, he delivered a series of like speeches and wrote articles, basically denouncing

114
00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:08,240
the core tactic of the civil rights movement, which was civil disobedience. And he called it heresy,

115
00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:14,080
specifically said it was fundamentally inconsistent with the rule of law.

116
00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:19,600
And he thought it was a threat to the foundations of our system of government.

117
00:12:20,800 --> 00:12:25,280
He was very, very upset, especially by King's letter from a Birmingham jail,

118
00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:32,720
because the idea that an individual had some sort of, and to quote Dr. King, a moral responsibility

119
00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:40,160
to disobey unjust laws. Powell felt like it was absurd, right? He, he mocked it, even called it a

120
00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:47,840
doctrine of anarchy that provided kind of no basis for an organized society. So for Powell,

121
00:12:48,880 --> 00:12:54,880
the constitution was not a vehicle for reform, like, like progressive see it. He thought of it

122
00:12:54,880 --> 00:13:00,800
as a sacred set of procedures. So once the, the Supreme court in Brown versus board of education,

123
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:09,040
sort of dismantled educational segregation, Powell believed that the law had done all it could for

124
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:15,920
black Americans. Absolutely hands down. He thought that that Brown versus board of education was the

125
00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:23,280
epitome of what the United States could do for black Americans. Anything else, anything else,

126
00:13:23,280 --> 00:13:30,640
economic justice for what King called compensatory justice to make up for centuries of slavery and

127
00:13:30,640 --> 00:13:38,720
Jim Crow were in his views. And to quote him, we're reckless extremists. So this kind of reveals the

128
00:13:38,720 --> 00:13:48,320
underlying river of his worldview, right? His primary allegiance was not to justice or quality,

129
00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:58,560
but it was to order and the preservation of our existing system. So. The system of itself was

130
00:13:58,560 --> 00:14:04,000
ultimately sound, right? The problem was that people were attacking it from the outside and

131
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:08,560
that's kind of the way he saw it. Sounds like his position was sort of that there's no such thing as

132
00:14:08,560 --> 00:14:15,760
an unjust law. If it's the law, it's his justice. It is inherently perfect. Right. Just fine when

133
00:14:15,760 --> 00:14:20,240
you're on the inside, but you find yourself on the wrong side of an unjust law. It's a little

134
00:14:20,240 --> 00:14:27,280
different. Exactly. So if you, if you even did so much as like appealing to a higher moral law,

135
00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:33,280
he was like, no, that's not possible because the law is the highest moral law. And Dr. King

136
00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:39,280
frequently cited the Bible, which most of his persuasion would say is a higher moral law,

137
00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:48,960
and that doesn't fly for Powell. Exactly. So now I want to, I want to kind of throw in here. He was

138
00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:56,720
working for big tobacco during, during all of this. Okay. So and granted, you know, we didn't know

139
00:14:56,720 --> 00:15:00,880
then, well, I don't know, it was the sixties, right? Like, I mean, ultimately we were starting to know

140
00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:07,520
then. I think some people knew. Yeah. At the time he was meeting in. Yeah. They knew. For sure. That,

141
00:15:07,520 --> 00:15:12,000
yeah. Well yeah, that's right. They had that big expose, right? Where they, they have like recordings

142
00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:16,800
and like notes where they, they were being told at this time that it was, it was directly linked to

143
00:15:16,800 --> 00:15:23,280
cancer. So yeah, along that vein, right? The, the world in his eyes was kind of being bombarded and

144
00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:29,680
under siege by this hardened strategic doctrine, right? Like in the trenches of the, the great

145
00:15:29,680 --> 00:15:36,480
corporate culture war. So you had this big tobacco versus kind of the American public situation,

146
00:15:36,480 --> 00:15:42,800
right? So 1964, Powell actually joined the director board of directors of Philip Morris.

147
00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:50,720
So this was not like some quiet, you know, like, oh, he's on the board of so and so. No, no, no, it

148
00:15:50,720 --> 00:15:57,520
was, it was enormous in 1964. That year, the U S surgeon general released the big report

149
00:15:58,400 --> 00:16:05,120
that definitely linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer and to death. Clearly a leftist extremist,

150
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:12,080
U S general. Exactly. Uh, as they mostly were, and most still are apparently, uh, minus 30%.

151
00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:19,440
So for the next seven years, right? Like 64 to 71 and until his appointment to the supreme court,

152
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:26,960
Powell was a key player in that tobacco industries, uh, counteroffensive against the narrative that

153
00:16:27,520 --> 00:16:33,920
it causes cancer as a director and member of that executive committee. He was directly responsible

154
00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:44,320
for the campaign to ultimately lie and hide the truth and a manufacturer doubt to fighting

155
00:16:44,320 --> 00:16:52,960
regulations to curb the effects of it. Purportedly we have sources. Be clear, sorry, peaceful civil

156
00:16:52,960 --> 00:17:00,240
disobedience, not okay. Lying in, in reports and correspondence with the federal government. Fine.

157
00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:06,880
That's what we're saying. All right. Okay. Just check it. Exactly. So he actually like personally

158
00:17:06,880 --> 00:17:12,480
reviewed and signed off on the annual reports from Philip Morris actually, uh, containing

159
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:18,800
statements that were found to be knowingly false. One of them he was cited as, as agreeing to was

160
00:17:18,800 --> 00:17:24,880
there is no biological proof that smoking is causally related to human disease or that

161
00:17:25,520 --> 00:17:32,640
scientific information indicting smoking is quote of dubious validity. Right. Even more revealing

162
00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:39,520
Powell, as a lawyer advising the tobacco Institute began actually testing the legal arguments

163
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:46,480
that would kind of become central to the conservative movement. So in a case,

164
00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:51,680
he actually argued that because the science linking smoking to cancer was controversial,

165
00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:58,960
a controversy that he literally created with his own company that the first amendments free

166
00:17:58,960 --> 00:18:04,800
speech protections required news organizations to give tobacco companies equal time to counter

167
00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:09,920
anti-smoking. It isn't the playbook. If you don't like what the other side says,

168
00:18:09,920 --> 00:18:12,560
make something up this opposite and claim that they're on equal footing.

169
00:18:13,360 --> 00:18:20,560
Yes. So this is kind of the beginning of using the language of free speech and balance

170
00:18:21,680 --> 00:18:26,800
as a shield for corporate propaganda. He is the, the, the literal lawyer who,

171
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:33,280
who created it as, as we're seeing it play out today. So the memo, the 34 page diatribe,

172
00:18:33,280 --> 00:18:39,040
let's be honest, it's not a memo. It's a diatribe was not some like abstract political

173
00:18:39,040 --> 00:18:45,040
philosophy that he cooked up from his little ivory tower. Right. It was, it was a field manual

174
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:53,280
that he, he created from doing it. And he valid was validating it in real time as he was preparing

175
00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:59,520
this, this sort of doctrine. Right. And the strategies that it would lay out for the entire

176
00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:06,240
business community from funding friendly scholars to create a counter narrative, from aggressively

177
00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:14,240
using courts, from demanding that balance in the media and organizing a United political front.

178
00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:19,920
Those were all tactics kind of pioneered, but perfected by the tobacco industry.

179
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:25,600
When it was trying to fight for survival, kind of like we're seeing happen with, I don't know,

180
00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:30,800
healthcare kind of like we're seeing with, I don't know, every other major corporation,

181
00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:38,720
the United States who has a monopoly on our general welfare. Yeah. Powell kind of had seen firsthand

182
00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:46,240
how if you were powerful and you had enough money and you were organized enough that you could

183
00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:54,720
essentially block any reference or block at least contest and create doubt about any scientific

184
00:19:54,720 --> 00:20:02,400
consensus, any public opinion, any, any government regulation, then he said, how do we scale this up?

185
00:20:02,960 --> 00:20:09,680
How do we go from this just applies to tobacco to how do we apply this to the entire American free

186
00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:19,120
enterprise system from this existential threat? Right. Now keep in mind in his head, Martin Luther

187
00:20:19,120 --> 00:20:27,520
King Jr. with his doctrine of anarchy and Ralph Nader with his attacks on corporate power were

188
00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:35,200
just two of the same kind of two-headed monster that were threatening the established order of

189
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:41,360
the way Powell saw the United States. Right. Those terrible threats of seat belts,

190
00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:46,960
mandatory seat belt laws and integrated schools, the twin destructive powers that ruined America.

191
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:53,440
Finally, someone tells it tells it as it is. No, we're not that kind of brocast.

192
00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:58,560
Hopefully the tongue firmly planted in cheek right now is coming through.

193
00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:04,160
Exactly. Hopefully. You know, audio is the perfect methodology behind that actually

194
00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:09,920
is trying to, if you want to get that tongue in cheek, audio is definitely the perfect medium

195
00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:15,040
for that. I don't have a face for video, so that's why our podcast is mostly audio.

196
00:21:15,520 --> 00:21:26,400
All right. So that takes us to 1971. Will, do you want to give us kind of some background on

197
00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:34,880
the point at which we came to this explosive 1971 year? Let's do it. This is right on the heels of

198
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:41,200
the free love era. You know, at this point we've got, we're hopelessly mired in Vietnam

199
00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:48,080
and dealing with all of the issues related to that. You know, this is why you can sort of start to see

200
00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:53,520
why Powell reaches the level of hysteria that's actually in the memo. If you go back and read it,

201
00:21:53,520 --> 00:22:00,160
you'll you'll you can feel it. It's palpable in his words. He's panicking. He's angry. He's angry,

202
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:06,400
he's afraid, he's lots of things. But, you know, it wasn't just any year, right? This is like a

203
00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:11,040
turning point in history. The things that are going on along with this, yeah, for most people,

204
00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:15,200
this is where history really changed for a lot of people. And as I'm researching this, I'm realizing

205
00:22:15,200 --> 00:22:21,520
it's not just in America. You know, we kind of, our focus is on America, but I mean, the Bangladesh

206
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:28,720
was in war with Pakistan. Idi Amin was coming into power. I mean, just there was some crazy stuff

207
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:34,560
going on all for one year. I mean, it really packed it in. 1971 was a banner year for some things,

208
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:38,880
and a detrimental year for many things. But I mean, he saw this as a turning point, right?

209
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:43,920
This is why he felt the need to get the word out to his friends and allies. And, you know,

210
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:49,360
historians have now begun to recognize although I noticed there's a dearth of actual writing on the

211
00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:55,120
year of 1971. Like I expected there to be a book just titled 1971, and I'm surprised there isn't.

212
00:22:55,120 --> 00:23:00,320
I think. Right? I know it's, and it makes me feel kind of, you know, it makes me feel a little

213
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:05,120
conspiracy theorist that like I'm drawing this thread. But these are just dates. Like, you know

214
00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:10,320
what I mean? Like if you're reading about like the worst parts in American history, and you keep

215
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:15,600
coming across 1971, that's not a conspiracy theory. It's just the year that all these things happen.

216
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:22,240
Exactly. Exactly. So I mean, I just, and I had to go back. Speaking of sounding conspiracy

217
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,360
theorist, I really went back and checked the sources on this and I was like, all right,

218
00:23:25,360 --> 00:23:30,480
let's make sure this is legit. The AI is not hallucinating or finding all those things. I'm

219
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:34,720
like checking every source I can because I mean, it's unbelievable what happened that year.

220
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:44,880
Yes. We went through the 30 year mortgage. Yeah. In order to prop up the free American economy from

221
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:50,240
unaffordable housing. Like, I mean, that's the year that started too. We'll get to that at a

222
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:55,280
different time. But it's just anytime we start talking about 1971, I start thinking about all

223
00:23:55,280 --> 00:23:59,760
the connected things. But go ahead. Right. I thought about just going down a list of things

224
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:03,360
that we must be talking about. Like just bring up, we're talking about 1971 and we must be talking

225
00:24:03,360 --> 00:24:08,640
about, there's like 50 things that any other year might have made headlines. But they all happen in

226
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:13,520
the same year. Yeah. It just doesn't even make the radar in this year because of the craziness that

227
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:17,600
was going on. But if you've ever noticed, I think there's actually a website out there and I should

228
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:21,360
have gone back and validated this. Maybe we could drop in the show notes if we do. But there's a

229
00:24:21,360 --> 00:24:27,600
website actually, I think about 1971. It's like just focused on how everything changes in 1971.

230
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:32,640
It's just a bunch of charts, just a bunch of economic charts. And you can see the impact of

231
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:40,160
all the various things that happened. It's WTF happened in. There it is. Yeah.

232
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:45,600
And just a collection of visuals to see all the things that went crazy in 1971.

233
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:51,200
Everything exploded. It's almost unbelievable. I mean, it really does test rigidity that you've

234
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,680
got to get in there and look all this stuff up. But it's all legit. So I mean, we have economic

235
00:24:55,680 --> 00:25:02,400
inequality hitting on never before seen levels. Now compare that to 2025 and maybe they're not

236
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:08,080
so crazy. Mild. Right. But for that world, that world there was a staggering economic inequality,

237
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:14,720
wage stagnation, which I'll often accompany that and is both a symptom and a cause of inequality.

238
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:20,400
Productivity was dropping. Sorry, productivity was going up. Wages were stagnant. So they kind of

239
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:25,200
diverged, which had never been done before. I mean, usually before when people produced more,

240
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:29,520
they got paid more. That seems pretty straightforward, but that doesn't happen

241
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:34,880
when you think. Yeah. You think. Right. It's the year that's been called the beginning of

242
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:40,640
the end, which is pretty ominous and not far off as far as I can tell. We're just waiting on the

243
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:45,520
end, right? Like any day now. But again, getting back to these things that would have made headlines

244
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:50,720
or I mean, they did make headlines, I guess, but the Manson family was, was sentenced at this time.

245
00:25:51,360 --> 00:25:55,280
Yeah. So you have other things sort of grabbing the attention and grabbing the news headlines.

246
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,360
You have the hundreds of thousands of people marching on Washington to protest the Vietnam

247
00:25:59,360 --> 00:26:04,560
War. The soundtrack of the year wasn't happy. This is not the sixties anymore. This is not,

248
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:12,560
you know, the sitcom sixties that we see portrayed. This is the, what's going on? You know,

249
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:17,600
Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was like the critique of police brutality and war. That's the music

250
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:25,200
everybody's playing, right? I mean, we took a hard left turn from the 1960s. And of course, intellectuals

251
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:32,160
were all, all are, you know, a Twitter with revolutionary ideas. You had John Rawls publishing

252
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:38,640
a theory of justice, which is like, it's still the textbook and political ethics and political

253
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:44,240
philosophy. And then feminist texts like Sisterhood is Powerful were challenging these ideas that have

254
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:48,960
been long part of the social structure of the United States. And now it's just, everything's up for grabs.

255
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,800
So you can sort of start to see why Powell was panicking at this point.

256
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:58,640
Well, and I think, I think it's important to note too, that up until then, right, every time there

257
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:05,360
was some sort of major, major issue, major, you know, it was, it was a war and anytime there was a

258
00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:11,360
world or world war one, world war two, the country would just rally and they would, they would put

259
00:27:11,360 --> 00:27:17,040
aside all differences and they would work together toward a common cause and they would have a purpose

260
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:23,680
right. That was driving them to be cohesive. And Vietnam was not that, I mean, I'm not saying

261
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:28,160
Vietnam was manufactured. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying it was a real war, but our

262
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:35,440
involvement in it was definitely not cohesive, especially with the draft, you know, we didn't

263
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:40,240
really even mention that part in there, but, but with the draft going on, like it was enormous

264
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:45,200
and it was the first time that we had a major conflict that the United States didn't buck up

265
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:51,280
and band together and figure out how to, to, to hurt a common enemy because half of the country

266
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:56,560
was like, these people aren't our enemy. Why are we doing this? We're going to war on behalf of

267
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:02,400
somebody else's country. Good thing they had the war on drugs waiting in the wings to unite everybody

268
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:07,840
against some common enemy, right? Finally, something that there wasn't anything racist or

269
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:16,320
classist about the war on drugs while they were importing it from Mexico. Yeah. So, yes. I mean,

270
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:22,000
the world's falling around collapsing around Powell's years and, you know, that's just one

271
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:27,840
part of the picture. But the economy, I mean, there's just, I mean, you can't overstate the

272
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:33,280
importance of the fact that we dropped off the gold standard this year, right. And this year, 1971,

273
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:39,440
and that's the day many of us have said the day the dollar died, right? On the day the dollar

274
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:46,320
officially became a fiat currency and a floating valuation. And that's again, while these economic

275
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:51,680
charts show things change in 1971, although I did find this keeping track, that's another one to

276
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:57,440
put on the bullet list. Yeah, we removed ourselves from the gold standard. Thanks, Nixon, which,

277
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:01,600
and this is, I didn't validate this. So I'm a little, I can't even believe I've never heard

278
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:07,360
this in history class, but did you read it in your research that apparently France sent a battleship

279
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:12,560
to pick up the gold that they were entitled to take in exchange for dollars? Like they showed up

280
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:17,600
to get their gold in a battleship in New York City is my understanding. Yes, actually. So, so Ms.

281
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:23,840
Sherer when I went to high school down in Lafayette, Louisiana, Ms. Sherer did teach us about this. It

282
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:29,920
was not in the history book, but she told us about it. So yes, I do remember this. That's being a very

283
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:35,920
French state. It was a big point of pride for her, I think. Yeah. So I mean, keep in mind, these are

284
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:41,200
our revolutionary allies, right, that helped us become a country, showed up with a battleship in

285
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:47,680
our harbors to come pick up the gold that they were entitled to according to our treaties, because

286
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:55,120
the US was spending money writing checks its gold reserves couldn't cash, so to speak. So yeah. So

287
00:29:55,120 --> 00:30:01,280
I mean, that's happening here. This ended an agreement that followed the world wars,

288
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:06,480
that was stabilizing the economies of the world as everything, and everybody's recovering from World

289
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:14,240
War II, which just decimated so many economies. And now you have the iron curtain coming into play

290
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:19,680
and people that are near that saying, "Hey, look, we don't trust the US dollar anymore. We want our

291
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:23,920
gold." And they were coming to collect and there wasn't going to be enough, there was a run on US

292
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:30,000
gold and there just wasn't enough to back up the notes. So they saw the only alternative as

293
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,880
leaving the gold standard and basically quitting on that alliance, that treaty. Yeah, creating a

294
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:41,440
fiat currency. Creating a fiat currency, so there you go. And for those who aren't familiar with

295
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:46,000
how all this, what we're talking about here, imagine that the dollar is a casino chip,

296
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,560
right? So you know, it's just one of those chips you get at the casinos where you can change it

297
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:58,080
in for money. In theory, you could cash in the chip for a little bit of gold, mostly held in Fort Knox.

298
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,280
Although there's some questions about that. We're not even going to conspiracy theories on that.

299
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:05,920
Don't worry. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. But on August 15th, basically Nixon announced that

300
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:11,680
the casino was keeping the gold. Those chips were no longer good for gold, but we still use the chips

301
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:15,680
as currency. So you still have to play with our chips. You just can't ever turn them in for anything

302
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:20,240
of equal value, anything tangible. Outside of this system, right? Right, outside of this system.

303
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:26,400
So suddenly nobody has any way of knowing what a dollar is worth. And that's kind of a problem when

304
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:33,440
you're trying to get dollars or give dollars for tangible goods. And as a worldwide currency, right?

305
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:40,240
Like at this point, we were the worldwide currency because our economy was backed by gold.

306
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:46,080
Right. But unfortunately, we were fighting a very expensive war, this time without the allies that

307
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:51,760
we fought in the previous wars with. And so we were spending very quickly and spending more than we had

308
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:58,560
available. And then combine that with a high unemployment and stubborn inflation coming in.

309
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:04,560
The inflation numbers up until recently were some of the highest historically. And you get a sense of

310
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:11,040
fear and a sense of America being in decline that we had not seen up to this point. This is starting

311
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:16,880
to sound very familiar, right? Yes. Now one thing I want to point out here, if it's okay, Will, I'll

312
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:25,440
kind of take it from here. Any time there is a division, right, in a nation,

313
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:36,960
for some reason, leadership always creates a straw man, creates an enemy, creates

314
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:46,960
a new focus of our ire rather than necessarily the system. Powell was no different in this scenario,

315
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:53,600
right? But we inherently throughout time, I mean, and not just the United States, right, Stalin,

316
00:32:53,600 --> 00:33:00,400
Hitler, I mean, all of the big ones that we spout about all the time, they all created an enemy

317
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:06,800
rather than looking at the system and going, you know, maybe these small decisions are adding up to

318
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:18,400
something bad. But the economic chaos that was happening here was only a piece of the panic,

319
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:26,960
right? It wasn't just that. The real problem for people like Powell came from a new breed of what

320
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:33,440
he called attacker, right, that couldn't just be dismissed as, oh, they're a communist, or they're

321
00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:40,640
an anarchist who just wants to blow everything up or light cities on fire. These were highly effective,

322
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:47,440
very media smart crusaders who were kind of winning the court of public opinion. And also,

323
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:53,040
they were winning in the halls of Congress, right? They started to sort of lobby about these things

324
00:33:53,040 --> 00:34:00,960
on behalf of the people. There was the kind of consumer as commando Ralph Nader. He wrote a book

325
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:09,760
in 1965 called unsafe at any speed that had kind of taken down a peg GM that launched this national

326
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:16,640
movement. And then by 1971, only six years later, he was kind of a rock star. If you haven't heard of

327
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:21,680
Ralph Nader, it's a really interesting story. We might even do a little thing on him. I really

328
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:26,720
enjoy the story of Ralph Nader. And honestly, I think in a lot of ways, what we need is a Ralph

329
00:34:26,720 --> 00:34:34,800
Nader type of person today to sort of like, at least get enough rallying behind to make even some

330
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:40,480
small amount of change. But he had founded an advocacy advocacy group called the public citizen.

331
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:48,000
And he had he called the group the Nader's Raiders, which I think is hilarious. And I really enjoy it.

332
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:54,160
I actually think it's kind of cute. But these were were really intelligent, sort of idealistic

333
00:34:54,160 --> 00:35:01,760
lawyers and students that were churning out report after report after scientific study,

334
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:08,000
after study exposing kind of all of this horrible stuff that corporations were doing

335
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:13,680
on everything from from food safety to water pollution to air quality. And they were getting

336
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:22,960
results. Right. So Nader's work was kind of the the pinpoint of the passage of legislations like

337
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:31,840
the OSHA Act. Right. Of 1970. Now, keep in mind, this is only like one year before this Powell memo.

338
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:38,320
So OSHA created this giant new federal agency to regulate workplace safety.

339
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:46,880
In that in Powell's memo, though, he singled out Nader specifically, calling him the most perhaps

340
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:55,840
the single most effective antagonist of American business. A man who wanted to smash utterly

341
00:35:55,840 --> 00:36:00,480
corporate power. Kind of hard to disagree with that right now. Because there's for Nader.

342
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:07,280
Exactly. You know, it is high praise for Nader because when someone who is your opposite comes

343
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:12,480
out and says you're really doing well at the thing you set out to do, that's not a bad that's not a

344
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:21,280
bad day. Right. And then literally, the the earth itself got pissed off enough that it struck back

345
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:29,600
to before 1970s. The the the environment in the US was in a lot of places kind of a horror show.

346
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:36,080
And we're not just talking like Flint water crisis. Right. The the Cuyahoga River in Ohio

347
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:42,560
was so polluted with industrial waste that it literally caught on fire. It's a river.

348
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:48,640
The river like that's supposed to be water, body of water, water catch on fire smog in

349
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:54,000
cities like Pittsburgh was so thick that streetlights who were on daylight sensors

350
00:36:54,000 --> 00:37:01,200
would turn on during the day to stop accident that that's how thick the smoke and smog was in

351
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:07,840
cities like Pittsburgh. Right. So this really visible, very out there crisis led to the first

352
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:14,800
Earth Day in April 1970. It was a gigantic demonstration nationwide. And it really sort of

353
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:23,040
steeled the modern environmental movement and the political result was very positive.

354
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:30,000
The public pressure was so intense that in December of that same year 1970, Richard Nixon,

355
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:37,120
a Republican president with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress created the EPA. In that

356
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:45,040
creation, very large federal bureaucracy was born. Not necessarily a bad thing in this scenario.

357
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:51,840
These were regulations with broad authority that can regulate pollution from factories from every

358
00:37:51,840 --> 00:38:00,640
power plant and every car, every automobile in the country. So this is all very, very pivotal

359
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:11,200
context for the Powell memo, the sort of the true shock for business CEOs, the C suite wasn't really

360
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:18,640
just that the economic instability of the market or the protesters in the streets. Like it was the

361
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:27,520
realization that political establishments, including the people who were on their Republican side,

362
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:34,560
were beginning to side with the people who opposed what these companies were doing. Right. So

363
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:42,880
all of a sudden, people had been gung ho straight forward on capitalism all the way until the point

364
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:47,360
where we go, Oh, wait a minute. It's starting to literally affect the air that I breathe. It's

365
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:51,440
starting to literally affect the water that I'm drinking. We maybe have to do something about

366
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:56,800
this. And there was enough pushback that something started to get done. And one thing we haven't

367
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:02,800
mentioned yet, but it is a significant political shift as well. Is that this 1971 was also the year

368
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:10,080
the 26th amendment was ratified, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, which nobody knew.

369
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:15,760
Yeah, that's, that's a big deal. Right. It's a big deal. No matter who, which side you're on,

370
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:21,600
right? At least one side, if not all politicians are going to be unpopular with the youth, right?

371
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:25,040
These are the people being drafted. They're being told, you're going to go fight this war,

372
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:28,240
like it or not, over in a country you've never heard of and couldn't find them a map.

373
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,160
You're going to go fight this war for us. But by the way, you don't have any say in our government

374
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:38,640
if you're 18 to 20. So, I mean, giving them that vote, that although it was widely supported, it was

375
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:44,000
sort of a necessity. Like, you know, you could imagine things getting really violent if they had

376
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:49,600
not done that. So, I mean, these moves were not made willingly, no matter what the, you know,

377
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:53,440
rhetoric was around them. They didn't know, they didn't know what was going to happen when they

378
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:59,520
opened up, you know, the additional, the lower age group, you know, for voting. It's a big, big shift.

379
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:06,320
Yes. And it was a sign to the, this, the C-suite in the, in the corporations of the 70s,

380
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:12,640
that this consensus that they had been operating on, and, and it was a very, very powerful consensus,

381
00:40:12,720 --> 00:40:19,840
couldn't just be contained through the normal lobbying process and paying lobbyists and paying

382
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:24,880
off senators or partisan politics, right? Saying, oh, it's a Republican thing, or it's a, it's a

383
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:33,760
Democrat thing. They were basically, like, came to the, the belief that they had to launch an entire

384
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:43,360
counter revolution to change the entire intellectual and political climate of the country. Right.

385
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:50,640
We thank you so much for listening thus far. We have come to the conclusion of the first half of

386
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:56,720
this episode. We have basically covered all of the history, all of the sociopolitical environment

387
00:40:56,720 --> 00:41:05,440
that led up to the actual Powell memo. Tune back in next week while we tackle the actual memo itself,

388
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:12,480
and how it plays out, uh, to today. Thanks so much for listening to the overlap. Please make sure to

389
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:19,200
check out our socials, the overlap podcast on blue sky, on Macedon, check out our website, HTTPS colon

390
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:24,240
slash slash F O F dot foundation. Thanks so much. And we'll see you next week.

391
00:41:24,240 --> 00:41:26,180
and we'll see you next week.

392
00:41:26,240 --> 00:41:29,840
(upbeat bluegrass music)

393
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:33,340
(upbeat bluegrass music)

394
00:41:33,340 --> 00:41:36,840
(upbeat bluegrass music)

395
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,340
(upbeat bluegrass music)

396
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,100
(upbeat bluegrass music)

397
00:41:44,100 --> 00:41:47,600
(upbeat bluegrass music)

398
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:51,100
(upbeat bluegrass music)

399
00:41:51,100 --> 00:41:54,600
(upbeat bluegrass music)

400
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,100
(upbeat bluegrass music)

401
00:41:56,460 --> 00:41:59,040
(upbeat music)

402
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:04,020
[ Silence ]