A Backup Plan For Political Apocalypse
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Childhood should be fun. Don't let bed wetting spoil that. Dry nights give maximum protection. |
| 0:10.5 | So kids can go to bed worry free. Have a dry night sleep. And wake up awesome. |
| 0:24.5 | Days start with dry nights. Search dry nights for a free sample. I'm not watching. I haven't I'm not seeing it. Look at say hoax. The whole impeachment thing is a hoax. We look forward to getting onto the Senate. |
| 0:40.5 | What is central here is do we want a dictator? No matter how popular he may be, no matter how good or bad the results of his policies may be, no president is supposed to be a dictator in the United States. |
| 0:52.5 | Certainly there are daily admissions of guilt by Giuliani guilt that implicates the president as well, but I would put a higher priority on people like Vainey and Bolton and others. |
| 1:06.5 | Hello and welcome to Trumpcast. I'm Virginia Heffernin. So you know how you're supposed to make an emergency plan with a go bag and Z-packs and soilant drinks and maybe a shotgun for making meals of possum you kill yourself. |
| 1:19.5 | You're supposed to do all that should the environmental or nuclear apocalypse come. Okay, I wanted to do something similar in the event of a political apocalypse. Chances are Trump will slide through the Senate without being censored much less removed. |
| 1:33.5 | And then if passed as president, he'll keep on cheating. And if he cheats enough and our vigilance about cheating falters, even huge anti-Trump turnout may not be enough to make up for voter suppression, Jerry mandering, the profound discrimination enacted by the election. |
| 1:48.5 | And then enacted by the electoral college and the brain damage inflicted on American voters by disinformation and gruesome media distortions committed in the name of both sides. So he wins. |
| 2:01.5 | He gets another four years. Influenza turns out to be bronchitis turns out to be lung cancer. |
| 2:08.5 | But why am I trying for metaphors? It's alarming enough just to consider the actual literal possibility Trump gets reelected. |
| 2:16.5 | Jerry Nadler says we'd be facing dictatorship and certainly America would be downgraded to dust on the liberal democracy meter. |
| 2:26.5 | Just because the apocalypse or terrorist attack probably won't happen doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare. And this re-election thing seems far more likely than either of those possibilities. |
| 2:37.5 | So here's my plan for now. I think I'll reorient Trumpcast to talk about Trump and Trumpism's specific material effects on the poor, the workers and the disenfranchised and what especially can be done to improve their lives and well-being. |
| 2:52.5 | And I hope in this horrible event of a Trump re-election you will still continue to tune in. If Trump's not re-elected of course will all have a big finale together. |
| 3:03.5 | But to the end of helping in material ways if Trump gets re-elected I also want to go back to school for a degree in social work and I just want to say that here. |
| 3:11.5 | I want to do that with the intention of working in New York City and as best as possible identifying with my city and not with the American federal government. |
| 3:20.5 | Of course I'll fight like hell for candidates in Congress and down the tickets, but I need to face the possibility that a re-election will represent a true paradigm shift in America and my life will have to shift with it. |
| 3:32.5 | It somehow feels better to me to think that way. I mean I don't have reserves of soil interests cement summer home, but I do like thinking that as individuals and communities we could all survive and find ways to be productive and of service no matter what happens within the space of that small radius in the district of Columbia. |
| 3:51.5 | Okay now back to admitting the election is still 11 months away and Trump is facing impeachment and indictments whenever he doesn't have the GOP human shield and there are still ways re-election could be averted. |
| 4:03.5 | We have miles to go before we sleep. |
| 4:07.5 | Today I'm walking some of those miles with Eric Columbus, a lawyer and former Senate Judiciary Council who served in the DOJ and DHS under Obama. |
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