Ep 46: Red Carpets & Hot Mics
Hey TFRers,
ICYMI, we awarded ourselves nicknames and they're killer.
So last week, Seena & Travis, AKA FP Zaddy & T-Ceps, brought the heat talking about the Alaska summit, which if you haven't heard went fabulously well, for Putin anyway. For Trump, it was more....
Our master negotiator in chief continues to live in fantasy land where he and Putin share inside jokes and laugh at all the well-meaning EU cucks, but the reality is pretty ominous for us all. In the words of one listener:
We also talked about the post-summit foreign leader version of the amazing race that ended at the White House with JD telling everyone to behave, Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza City–despite Hamas accepting a peace proposal, an escalation of violence in Eastern Congo, and JD's surprisingly sane parenting tips.
It was a full show. Give it a listen if you haven't already or send it to a friend. If you need help figuring out how to describe it, take a tip from @DelightingalePlays:
Seena's Corner: “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white.”
That’s a tweet from Justine Sacco in 2013. She was about to board a flight, and thought of a funny bit to share to her followers for the lulz. When she landed in her birthplace, South Africa, after an 11 hour flight #HasJustineLandedYet was trending on Twitter - worldwide. She lost her comms job at IAC, and few probably know what she’s doing now. But you know what? I’m never going to forget her or that tweet.
Her cancellation isn’t what’s important here. It’s the memory of it.
I could go through countless rounds of hypnosis with a side of waterboarding and still remember that tweet. And if I happen to forget, she’s a few taps of the keyboard away. There is a memory for every post, clip, snippet, and tweet - indexes upon indexes - Wayback Machines for days. We have AI that’s read every post ever, multiple times!
It wasn’t always like this. People - states especially - used to be able to control the historical narratives that became engrained in the pre-digital minds of the masses.
In 1932 and 1933, in Soviet Ukraine, millions were killed in Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by Stalin and his government. The Ukrainians had resisted Soviet rule and Stalin viewed their cultural strength as a threat to the USSR. So he did what any self-respecting dictator would do - he brutally crushed any political descent, economically punished them, and then installed an internal passport system not letting farmers leave their villages - locking them into an area with little to no food.
Communist brigades, called “activists” by the Soviets searched these villages and took what little food was left. The final death toll from the famine is estimated between 3.9 to 7 million people - why the disparity? Because Soviet registries didn’t bother counting. In fact while it was happening the Soviet government and the Communist Party denied the famine was even occurring and blocked any outside relief (flotilla?) efforts.
“In addition to Soviet denial at the time of the Holodomor, foreign journalists stationed in the USSR largely ignored it, while most governments, whose countries were going through the Great Depression, knew about it but did nothing. Journalist Walter Duranty of The New York Times, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his articles about the USSR, wrote: "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from disease due to malnutrition… conditions are bad. But there is no famine." Recently, Duranty was discredited for his cover-up of the Famine in Ukraine.” Ibid.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s and the fall of the Soviet Union where we saw actual open and public discussion of the Holodomor. And still today, Russia denies that the famine was deliberate. The “war is rough” defense seems to be a common one I keep hearing.
Now we look to today, in Gaza. A conquest of the Strip is imminent and Netanyahu and the Israeli government are expressly saying they need to control the digital narrative, and that this war needs to be “shortened” (video). And of course, there’s no starvation - that kid’s got the palsy!
Here’s the thing - it’s not the 30s, we don’t need to wait 50 years for the truth to come out. We’re seeing it all the time, and we’re never going to not see it. Israel will try to mold the perception and narrative, but I still remember a tweet from 12 years ago… you think we’re all going to forget about this?
Meanwhile in Ohio: What Travis is Reading ––
On the domestic front, The Trump Administration is blatantly asking red states like Texas and others to move forward with an unusual (but not unprecedented) mid-decade redistricting of their congressional districts to ensure that the 2026 midterms will not result in huge losses for the GOP in the U.S. House, as is the typical scenario for the party in control of the White House. However, there's only one state that's legally required to redistrict its congressional districts this year and that's Ohio –– yes, due to a quirk in its latest redistricting laws, the state's current congressional maps approved in 2021 can only last for 4 years since they were passed without bipartisan support, which means the Republicans who control the redistricting process in The Buckeye State could be even MORE brazen without any way for Democrats to stop them... So if you want to see how brutal the upcoming mid-decade redistricting battle is going to be, keep your eyes on Ohio!
What's Coming...
On this week's show the Good Liars join us to help us make sense of all things MAGA. 🙃
As always...
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