Audio from a collapsing state.

Hey everybody. This is a joint meeting between the Weekender Edition of the Muckrake

podcast and audio from a collapsing state over at my substack dispatches from a

collapsing state. This is one of those things where two different friend groups

get to meet each other. They realize, hey, we have a lot in common. We should hang

out more. So that's what we're doing.

And I wanted to do this joint episode to catch everybody up on what is going on with the situation,

with the Iran War and the so-called ceasefire that is already falling apart. And I wanted to get everybody up to

speed on a variety of things, including what happened, what is happening, and the larger

circumstances. I've had a weird day. I am recording this from, how don't put this? A suspect hotel room? Not the best hotel room that I have ever stayed in. Maybe a mistake of a hotel room. I'm heading out to the West Coast to carry out some organizing work, and I've driven through

large swanths of the American continent over the past couple of days. I was actually at Mount

Rushmore earlier today, and the badlands. And actually, strangely strangely enough I just drove by little

big horn of course where the the famous battle took place was really

discouraged to go by something of such historic magnitude and also human tragedy and to find it, you know,

really tourist-eed-up, you know, to go by a place with really hallowed ground and to find people

selling trinkets and setting up toy teepees.

It was really upsetting and also just strange to drive across.

I mean, I don't know how you feel about it, but the United States of America is a beautiful, beautiful country. Once you get outside of the sprawl and the corporate monopolies.

And if you look at it with the right set of eyes, you wonder exactly what it would look like if we hadn't befouled it.

You know, if it had been left to the devices of the indigenous people who cared for it and weren't interested in exploiting it.

But that idea of exploiting natural resources and hoarding them is going to be something that we're going to speak on today.

But yeah, it's a very strange time.

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