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President Trump’s mounting domestic challenges are the beginning of the end of his authoritarian power grab; Rep. Robert Garcia discusses his work on the House Oversight Committee and Trump’s sacking of Kristi Noem; Trump’s war of choice with Iran is going to be costly, deadly, and built on lies; this week’s edition of the Velshi Banned Book Club discusses Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Man In The High Castle.’
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Saturday, March 7th, and we begin this hour with the growing body of evidence that Donald
Trump's authoritarian experiment is on the decline.
Pulling is consistently shown that Americans' top concern is the economy and affordability.
And here's where Donald Trump's economy stands today.
The economy lost 92,000 jobs last month, and there were downward revisions again to previous
months, marking the fifth time in the last year that we've seen job losses due to revisions.
There have been so many downward revisions this year that it's raising fears of a recession.
Overall, the U.S. economy has been shedding jobs since the president launched his supercharged
tariffs last April, which also continues to cause prices to rise.
The stock market is down all around.
The Dow Jones industrial average, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, which closely tracks to most
Americans' retirement accounts, are each so far down that they've erased all gains made
since the beginning of the year.
And the war that Trump just launched against Iran has already estimated to cost taxpayers
more than $7 billion.
That's just the cost of the actual war, not the ancillary costs of a war.
But it's not just an expensive war.
It's a deeply unpopular war of choice.
Being waged by an historically underqualified defense secretary who talks about it in public
like a kid playing a video game and does not think that the deaths of American service
members should be front-page news.
It's a war that this administration appears unable to coherently explain to the American
people.
It's a war that's already killed about 1,700 civilians and soldiers, including six Americans.
It's a war that a majority of Americans do not want.
56% said they oppose it according to a new NPR-PBS news-marist poll conducted this week.
Meanwhile, the president's brutal and deadly deportation campaign has turned even those
who supported his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail to vote against some of
his policies.
It is in fact one of the main reasons why Trump's approval rating has plummeted since
he retook the presidency.
Americans have witnessed the horrors that his federal immigration agents have visited on
their neighbors, their immigrants and citizens alike, and on Thursday, he was forced finally,
finally to fire his homeland security secretary, Kristi Nome, the woman he tapped to lead
that crackdown.
It happened on the heels of her humiliating performance in a pair of congressional hearings
where she faced questions about the violent tactics that federal agents used during immigration
operations.
The repeated violations of citizens' constitutional rights, the $200 million that DHS spent
on an ad campaign that she starred in after awarding the no-bid production contract
to a brand-new firm that then hired a company with extensive ties to some of her own
college political allies.
Now, Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin has been chosen to replace Nome.
Maybe you know him, maybe you don't, but if you don't remember who he is, here he is
seen here suggesting that he might want to settle his differences with the teamsters
president, Sean O'Brien, with a fist fight.
You want to run your mouth?
We can be too consenting adults.
We can finish it here.
Okay, that's fine.
Perfect.
You want to do it now?
I'd love to do or I know.
We'll stain your butt up, then.
You stand your butt up.
Oh, hold on.
Oh, stop it.
Make a solution every follow.
Sit down.
I'll try.
I'll call it out.
Okay, you know, you're a United States Senator.
Sit back.
Okay.
You're a United States Senator.
Sit down.
That is Trump's new nominee for DHS secretary.
And there's new trouble for his attorney general.
Pam Bondy is facing what political calls an existential threat to her political future
as five Republicans joined with Democrats this week in a vote to force her to testify
in front of the oversight committee about the Epstein files.
This is the Trump administration right now.
If it all sounds like a deeply unpopular crisis, that's because it is.
When Donald Trump retook the presidency last year, he thought he could be a strong man,
but unlike what he thought, it turns out that running the United States of America purely
on the worst impulses of an amoral wannabe dictator with no regard for the rule of law,
the balance of power, common decency, and the good of the people is not actually sustainable.
And this week we saw evidence of that.
The beginning of Democrats and resistors walling off Donald Trump's power.
On Tuesday, a handful of states held the first primaries of the 2026 midterm cycle and
voters, especially in Texas, delivered a warning to the White House that has set Republicans
scrambling.
For the first time in more than 20 years, more Democrats participated in the Texas primaries
than Republicans.
A sign of how enthusiastic and motivated the Democratic base is to vote for a change in leadership.
In total, more than 2.3 million Democrats cast a vote in the state's closely watched
Senate race compared to 2.2 million who turned out for the Republican Senate primary.
Democrats are energized.
Republicans in Congress are turning against Donald Trump's cabinet, putting up roadblocks
against his unfattered power.
His economy and his war and his brutal immigration crackdown are deeply unpopular.
Roadblocks will become walls if Democrats take control of Congress in November, which we
now have every reason to believe will happen if American voters claim their agency and
take back their country.
Joining me now is the Congressman Robert Garcia.
He's the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and government reform.
Congressman Garcia, good to see you.
I don't know how you have time to come on here and talk to me.
You're awful busy.
You could probably fill out the next six years with potential oversight hearings and do
various people in this government.
I mean, that's absolutely correct.
I mean, the corruption just goes on and on.
And I've said it before, this is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.
I'm glad that Chrissy Nome is gone.
Pam Bondy should absolutely be next.
And the level of corruption, whether it's on the Epstein files, which on the Trump family
enriching themselves every single day, whether it's the catastrophic changes that are happening
right now within our health system, the attacks on vaccines.
This is a corrupt administration.
I think what you're seeing across the country is people are beginning to stand up against
it, including the Republicans in Congress.
Yeah.
And by the way, the Epstein files were sort of the one of the first examples of that, right?
Where Republicans got together with Democrats.
I have to wonder when we talk about this war in Iran, I have to wonder sometimes whether
this is the Epstein war, right?
This is a war that is created to have us not talk about it.
Just as the intersection of Donald Trump and the Epstein files started to emerge, all
of a sudden we got a war we have to talk about.
Look, there has been consistent distractions.
There has been consistent initiatives that Trump has launched every time the Epstein
files case and investigation moves forward.
So look, I'm not going to speak to the war.
It's obviously a war that I oppose and Trump's motivations there, which we're still trying
to figure out exactly what they are.
What I will say is that this investigation around the Epstein case is the single largest
bipartisan initiative.
People support this and it's not just people on the ground, it's people in Congress.
The fact that we had a United Democratic Committee and we were able to pull five Republicans
to get us to actually bring the Attorney General in front of our committee with huge progress.
All these subpoenas that we're getting as a committee, it's because Democrats are forcing
these votes.
So there is strength right now.
There is support and Republicans are feeling their base is pushing back on Trump and saying
that they want justice for the survivors and they don't want corruption.
Talk to me about Pam Bondy, because the last time Pam Bondy testified before Congress,
she was asked about Epstein files and she talked about the Dow and all sorts of things.
She was really, she was performing for Donald Trump.
How is this set of hearings going to be different?
Well, there's two things that are different.
The first is that for the Attorney General's last hearing, she got asked a variety of different
topics, obviously a variety of subjects.
There's corruption in every part of the Department of Justice.
This upcoming deposition which will have Pam Bondy is solely specific to the Epstein files.
It's also one that was driven by Democrats but had Republican support.
Look, I don't agree a lot with Nancy Mace, but she's the one that actually made this possible.
We teamed up with her and other Republicans to actually get the Attorney General in front
of us.
She'll know going into this, this is Epstein specific and the question remains, why are
half of the documents, half, 50% of the documents still missing from the Epstein file release?
You can imagine what is in that 50% of documents that the DOJ has withheld from the public and
the Congress.
We have serious questions about documents and make out allegations against the President
that redact co-conspirators, we need answers from the Attorney General and from the White
House.
Let's talk about seven of those documents, including the DOJ saying that the FBI memos
in the Epstein files that included these uncorroborated accusations, again, Donald Trump, were part
of a batch of documents that were in their words incorrectly coded as duplicative.
I mean, there were eight documents, right?
Four of them were the actual, so-called FBI reports of an interview and then four of them
were the notes taken of that.
So there were eight documents having to do with this uncorroborated allegation against
Donald Trump.
Seven of which were missing.
Right.
I mean, look, I think first I personally went to the DOJ and saw these documents and I
saw the index that basically listed all the documents that needed to be within that piece
of the files and it's just so convenient that it was these documents about the President
that were somehow gone or missing or removed.
I mean, I think it's clearly intentional and we shouldn't buy anything that DOJ tells
us they've been lying this entire time.
But also, I think it's important for folks to know that even within that group of documents,
which make these, of course, allegations from someone that was interviewed four times
by the FBI, four separate times on these allegations, all the documents aren't still there.
There are still some actual pages that are missing.
They appear to be some of the notes between some of the agents back and forth and so there
still isn't disclosure.
On this one pretty serious allegation that's made, the DOJ continues to hold back information
and documents and there are, with me understand, thousands and thousands and likely tens of
thousands of pages of additional files that the DOJ has not given to the public in Congress.
You know, when people can sometimes take these things for granted that the hearings happen
and depositions happen, if you lie under oath in Congress, that's a serious matter.
Supreme Court has said that Donald Trump can get away with a lot of stuff.
That doesn't extend to Pam Bondy.
That's right. And I think you look, I think you just,
earlier in your show, you talked about Secretary Nome and what happened in large part,
she's not here because of her horrific performance in front of Congress.
And because Congress is able to ask tough questions, demand answers, they're under oath,
and the same goes for the Attorney General.
And people need to understand, and I've been very clear,
that as Democrats, as we move forward and try to win this majority, which we're doing trying
working on right now this November, when we win, we've got to have a forward look in agenda,
but also accountability. And that means ensuring that all of these cabinet secretaries and others
that cause real harm that hurt people, that defy the Constitution, that sent American citizens
to detention centers and shot and kill people in our own streets. These people also need to be
held accountable. We can't just move on from this accountability and justice will be very important.
All right. So for my viewer who would like to play a role in this accountability.
By the way, they have, they have in primaries, they have in elections, they have in local protest,
they have in town hall meetings, they have in no Kings marches. But if they want to support the
momentum that Congress seems to be building in accountability, which is not a partisan matter at all,
what can they do right now? What can they do this week? What can they do to support those in
Congress, Republicans and Democrats who would like to hold members of this administration accountable
for corruption and illegality? Look, when Democrats have that majority, we will have immediate subpoena
power, the ability to call cabinet secretaries in, the ability to slash Donald Trump's budget
in ways that we just don't aren't able to right now. And so continuing to support
winning that majority, the vote that happened this last week, staying engaged, not, I know that
is a difficult moment. We oftentimes want to disengage from politics. We've got to lean in and
continue to talk about Trump's damage in any space that we're in, whether that's at the supermarket,
at the barber shop, at the family table, all of that momentum, those conversations that we're
having in the pushback is actually putting pressure on that mega base, which is why we're getting
these wins right now. I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene before she resigned, saying that her
office was inundated by phone calls about cuts to the Affordable Care Act, the effect on rural
Americans, the Epstein stuff, the, the doge cuts. Does that help if people call their members of
Congress and, and complain? It does. We track, like anyone else, every member of Congress
tracks calls. And what is happening right now is you're getting more and more Republican
members of Congress getting calls, for example, about the Epstein files, about corruption.
The Epstein files as an example, it's the most bipartisan issue in America. I mean, Republicans
at, I think in the 70th percentile supported to full release, it's Donald Trump's worst issue,
and they're getting hammered by their own base because they don't understand why we're protecting
pedophiles and billionaires who harmed and raped women and children. And so we've got to be
very clear at this moment, if this is about justice, this is not partisan, we want to get corruption
out of government. I think that is a message it's got to resonate across the country for us.
Obviously, the, the main story here is, is the survivors. The sort of a secondary story is this,
the sense that the rich and the powerful are not subject to, to fairness. But, but really the
story that is building here is this horrible process, this prolonged release of these files that,
that the Department of Justice knew they had to release and the re-traumatizing, the, the causing
of new anxiety amongst these survivors. One of those survivors, Marina LaCerta told MS now,
quote, every time files are released, it's like survivors are just left holding on, waiting.
It feels almost deliberate. Why can't we just have one comprehensive release of all the files,
so we don't have to go through this piecemeal? Haven't they put us through enough?
So the hell of a good question. She's absolutely right. And I talk to survivors all the time.
And I think just a disregard of their privacy, the release of photos, the photos and
in documents have not been redacted with their names, not just re-traumatizes them, it actually
puts them in their families in danger. But Donald Trump and Pambondi don't seem to care. And one
thing you just, you said this, I think is really important. Look, what this is about, this moment
we're in, this is about the people at the very top that can get away with anything. Not only do
they get huge tax breaks for themselves and their friends and large corporations, they can get away
with hurting and terrorizing women and children, they can get away with almost anything in this country
because Donald Trump protects them. And so as we move forward, these elections in this debate in
this country has to be about those at the very top who are getting these massive breaks who are
taking our money, taking our wealth, who are hurting our kids, and everyone else in this country
who just wants a fair shot. And I think that's what this election coming in November is going to be
all about. Thomas, good to see you as always. Thank you for being with us. California
Congressman Robert Garcia. He's the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
All right, coming up, Donald Trump gathered leaders from 12 Latin American countries at his golf
club this morning. And he hinted at which country could be next on his list for a quote, friendly take-off.
Today in Daryl Florida at the president's golf club, leaders from 12 Latin American
countries gathered for what the White House is calling the shield of the America's summit.
The president spoke mostly about preventing cartel violence in the western hemisphere,
but he also previewed what could be his next foreign adventure toppling the regime in Cuba.
As we achieve a historic transformation event as well, we're also looking forward to the great
change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of the line. They're very much at the end
of the line. They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad
regime that's been bad for a long time. Four of you said, actually, could you do us a favor? Take
care of Cuba. I'll take care of it. Okay.
The White House foreign policy brain trust was all there with Secretary of State Marco Rubio
delivering his speech entirely in Spanish, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth following the president
with these remarks. We share a hemisphere and geography. We share cultures, western Christian
civilization. We share these things together. We have to have the courage to defend it.
Notably, the newly minted special envoy of the shield of America's did not take the podium
with the president at the summit. In case you don't know who that is, that is the newly ousted
or the ousted DHS Secretary Christie Nome. She's been named to the envoy to the
shield of America. She was there, by the way. We'll be right back.
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After the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, then President George W. Bush
achieved 87% public approval. According to NBC News, Wall Street Journal polling from the time.
That number would slip as the war ground on over the years, but Bush had broad support from Congress
and the American public in the beginning, because Americans backed military retaliation for the 9-11
terrorist attacks on American soil. President Donald Trump has no such support for his war of
choice in the Middle East today. There's no shot heard around the world he can point to for striking
at Iran now. He's got no timeline to end this conflict, and his Secretary of Defense
sneers at the suggestion of even having one. 56% of Americans in a new NPR PBS Marist poll say they
oppose the latest US military action against Iran. 54% told CNN pollsters they fear Iran will become
more of a threat now to the US as a result of this latest action. Among the many questions for
the White House is why now and why just as negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear
program appeared to be bearing fruit? Well, the official line from the White House appears to be
essentially call it a hunch. This decision to launch this op-your operation was based on
accumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America,
and the president's feeling based on fact that Iran does pose an imminent indirect threat to the
United States of America. The president's feeling based on fact administration officials say they
do not believe that Iranians were negotiating in good faith. Trump now says any deal is off the
table. He's called for quote Iran's unconditional surrender and the scope of the war is widening.
Every day Iran is on the receiving end of a barrage of US and Israeli strikes and is retaliating
by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and US military bases across the Persian Gulf.
Although the decreasing number of launches suggests that Iran's munitions supply might be dwindling,
however, America's arsenal may be diminishing too. It needs more interceptor missiles which are
used to shoot down Iran's rockets and drones. The Guardian reported last year that the Pentagon
only had 25 percent of the interceptors it needed for its stockpile and that was before this war
began. A Pentagon spokesman denied that report telling the Washington Post that the military has
quote everything it needs. Trump has also said that defense contractors have agreed to quadruple
their production of weapons. Either way the US military typically fires two or three interceptors
per target, which suggests that Iran is burning its drones at half the rate that America is using
up its defenses, which could ultimately turn this into a war of attrition. Iran's threats to close
the strait of Hormuz, which is a crucial corridor for shipping one-fifth of the world's oil,
is spiking global fuel prices, the barrel of oil shooting up to $91. That's a 36 percent increase
in a single week. That's already having an effect on the price of gas. The US Navy says it will
escort ships through the narrow strait, which is only 21 miles at its narrowest point,
but Qatar's energy minister predicted that Friday that the energy exporters in the Gulf would be
forced to shut down production if the war worsens. No one at the White House seems to have
anticipated that either. An energy executive told Politico that the administration is, quote,
looking under every rock for ideas on improving energy prices, especially gasoline prices.
Looking under every rock. Here's an idea. No one's asking me, but here's an idea. Don't start a
surprise war without a clear objective near a key oil conduit. Either way the ultimate goal of
this war continues to remain unclear. In the first video announcing the strikes exactly a week ago,
Donald Trump told the Iranian people to rise up against their government. On Monday,
after the strikes began, Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth dismissed the idea of nation building.
He did say, however, this was not a regime change war, but the regime did change. Those are his
words. But it didn't really. Iran's supreme leader was assassinated, but the people who ran
Iran are still running it. Notably, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, which permeates
every level of the state, of politics, and of the economy. Nonetheless, Trump told one reporter,
quote, it's going to work like Venezuela did and praise that country's socialist vice president,
Nicolas Maduro's right hand woman, Delsey Rodriguez, who's been in charge since the U.S. captured
Maduro in January. That's not really regime change. If a complete toppling of the Islamic
Republic is in fact the White House's goal, the U.S. may not be able to rely on air strikes alone.
In Iran, there's no armed opposition to the government on the ground. And as far as we know,
there's little notion of the country's armed forces turning on the regime.
Joining me now is Nancy Yusuf. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic. Nancy, great to see you. Thank
you for being with us. You recently reported a story titled The Glaring Oversight in the U.S.
War Plan. Now, that could stand for a lot of things, but you had something very specific in mind
when you wrote that. What's the glaring oversight that you're talking about? Well, you referenced it.
It's the inability to defect against drone attacks by the Iranians because our intercepts
cost millions and millions of dollars. They're drones cost thousands of dollars. But we have an
ally in partner that have confronted the very same drones. These are called Shahid drones.
That's a new crane because Iran shipped those drones to Russia. And so what we didn't see in
the lineup to this is really reaching out to the Ukrainians and saying, what can we learn
about how to combat this threat? It's perhaps the most formidable threat that the Iranians
possess because right now the United States is very aggressively going after its ballistic missile
capability. But those drones are resources and weapons that the Iranians can continue to produce
and can continue to pose a threat not only to U.S. troops in the region but to allies and partners.
And so how do you combat that with, as you noted, a limited supply, a very expensive interceptors?
So we wanted to point out that there was a partner who could have guided the United States on how
to come up with cheaper alternatives because the Ukrainians have had to do that throughout the war.
And part because the United States has started to provide fewer and fewer weapons to Ukraine
over the last year. I saw an Iranian-made Shahid drone when I was in Ukraine. They're relatively small.
As you say, they're relatively inexpensive. And what Russia was doing is you toss a lot of them.
Sometimes it'd be 20, 40, 70 drones and it becomes very hard for the interceptors to decide which one
they're targeting. You can't send 70 interceptors up whether it's a FAD or a Patriot or a JDAM.
These are American-made and they're super, super expensive to do. And you just can't,
the mechanism doesn't work the same way. So the drones can in fact, in some cases,
sort of overcome the missile defenses.
That's right. Because when a missile goes up, let's use Patriot. It's looking for a target.
If you have a sort of swarm of them coming near the Patriot, it gets confused, basically.
It doesn't know where to target. So even if it hits some targets, others might get through. And so
how do you defend against that? And again, this is a price differential. A Patriot missile could cost
or a FAD missile can cost in the millions. As Shahid drone costs 30,000. Some of the alternatives
that the Ukrainians have come up with are in the similar price point range. What the United States
did develop was an offensive drone capability, which you might have heard about this week called
the Lucas, but that doesn't help against that defensive threat that the Iranians are clearly using.
While we've seen a drop in ballistic missile capabilities from them over the last week,
it's been less of a drop on drones. And so it's clear that they're going to be leaning on these
to sort of create pressure points and execute their plan, which is to make this work costly,
both politically and economically, to the United States and its golf partners.
So there's no world in which Iran was posing an existential threat to the United States,
even though Donald Trump seemed to imply that during his state of the union or said what it
would soon do that. Israel's got a different view of this thing. Netanyahu has built his entire
political career on Iran posing an existential threat to Israel. Your colleague, Thomas Wright
published in The Atlantic in which he said earlier this week, Trump told The New York Times
that what he accomplished in Venezuela would be the perfect scenario for Iran. Israel is seeking a
far more sweeping transformation. The country's aim is not merely to remove Iran's supreme leader,
but to dismantle the regime entirely. This is a key point because Venezuela, whether you like it or
not, you like Maduro, or you like the government there, it didn't turn out to be regime change
at all. And taking out the Ayatollah is also not regime change.
I wonder if you didn't dodge me. I'll kind of go through. I think the four outcomes we could see in
Iran are where we are this as of today. As you know, one aim was that the regime collapses,
that you start to see defections amongst the armed forces and some sort of consolidation within
a civilian force. We haven't seen those defections, and because of the repression that the Iranians
lived under, it's very hard for those elements to rise up. The other option is that the regime
survives. That while the people we have known are not there anymore, that they put in enough
replacements essentially that they're able to survive these strikes and slowly rebuild.
We've seen that the Iranian regime has clearly been battered. Even that message we saw earlier
today from the president suggests that it was hastily put together, but that they're still intact.
The infrastructure of the government appears to be intact. The third option would be a fractured
state where you start to see parts of the country controlled by one group and other parts controlled
by others. We saw signs of this potential as we heard talks about US and Israel working with
the Kurds to have them move into parts of the country. Then the other one is total chaos,
where it's just internal fighting. There's no clear control. Infrastructure falls apart.
The people of Iran are under jeopardy. I think what you're seeing this week is that while the
military strikes have been successful, they have not made a clear link to the goal that the
administration said that it wanted, which was a successful transition. Rather, we've seen
the regime appear to be intact, fears of fractures and fears of chaos.
Iran is 92, 93 million people. It's a fully industrialized country. They're manufacturing
country. They've got 650,000 active troops, probably 350,000 in reserve. They're battle hardened.
What is the likelihood of US troops on the ground? Pete Hegseth has not ruled that out.
So we keep hearing this on the prospect of troops on the ground. What we haven't heard or seen
signs of are large formations, thousands of troops akin to what you saw in Iraq. Is there a
possibility that you see special forces doing specific missions like the one that led to Maduro's
capture? I think that's still on the table. I think that's what they're hinting. And we've seen
reports that those are part of the conversation. The question becomes what can they achieve? Because
in Venezuela, it was clear that they had started to put a pathway towards some sort of transition.
The president is saying that there has to be unconditional surrender, which means that there
isn't space for some elements of the regime to survive. So what can special forces do? How many
people can it go into to remove? And what is it leaving its place? I think that's what kind of
creates a confusion of how you would utilize them in an award that the United States is defined
as aiming to lead to the fall of the regime. We didn't say that in Venezuela. In Venezuela, the US
said it was looking to remove the Maduro regime. And that's the challenge in terms of how you employ
even a small number of military forces. Nancy, thanks as always for your great analysis.
Nancy Yusuf is a staff writer with the Atlantic. All right, coming up, another meeting in the
Valshi band book club. What if fascism had won in the 1930s? This alternate reality is explored
in the science fiction classic The Man in the High Castle by the late Philip K. Dick. I'll dig
into it with the highly acclaimed author Jonathan Leatham. Thanks.
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commitment. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand decisions a day.
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Anyway, you bank.
At the center of today's Aussie Band Book Club features an eerily plausible alternate reality.
A world is similar to our own as it is different. Philip K. Dick's award-winning 64-year-old
science fiction classic The Man in the High Castle. It explores the sort of what-if question that
plagues the imagination of anyone who's ever thought critically about our history, our history books
are involved in war, our past, and what it all might mean for our present. The man in the
High Castle asks what would have happened if in 1933, present Franklin Delano Roosevelt was
successfully assassinated at a rally in Florida. Philip K. Dick's answer is an equally likely
and catastrophic domino effect, a shift in political control. The new deal is effectively
reversed. The US never fully recovers from the Great Depression and turns inward more isolationist
and never joins the Allied forces in World War II. The Axis powers win. Fascism wins. Evil triumphs.
The man in the High Castle begins over a decade after the end of World War II. The United States
is split between the Nazi-ruled American Reich in the East and the Japanese-occupied Pacific
States of America to the West. There is enslavement, corruption, and censorship. The war is distant
enough so that life, culture, and society have settled into the unstable and violent rhythm of
fascism, but the war still exists and in the present as a defining specter. The stories told to
us through a number of intertwined narratives, primarily following three characters, the owner of a
pre-war Americanic antique shop, a skilled metal worker who hides the fact that he's Jewish,
and a devout Buddhist who is a high-ranking Japanese trade official. The growth of these
characters is driven by the existence of a band book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.
The book, which is a story within a story, is an alternative history where the Allied powers
did win World War II. Crucially, though, the Grasshopper Lies Heavy doesn't tell the story of
our real world off the page. It's actually a mirror realm, yet a third potential outcome of World
War II. It's important to understand that the man in the high castle is not something you read for
cheap thrills. The novel is, of course, interesting because of its conceit, its world-building,
its science-fiction aspects. But it's a classic because of dixability to capture psychological
depth. His pulpy meets intellectual writing style, his humor, and how heavily researched the novel is.
Jonathan Leatham, author and editor of a compilation of Dick's most famous work, says, quote,
the man in the high castle is also a work of extraordinarily passionate and scrupulous scholarship.
This is not the daydream of someone who's just wondered what if the Nazis won the war.
All of the minor Nazi characters are thoroughly researched. Dick has written this almost
scholarly, alternate reality. Now, devotees of the late Philip K. Dick are happy to describe his
novels, including the man in the high castle as weird. And it's a compliment. Dick thrives in the
metaphysical and the psychological. Aside from the man in the high castle, Dick wrote many books that
served as source material for many culturally defining movies like The Blade Runner, Total Recall,
and Majority Report. The breadth of Dick's work, including Man in the High Castle,
explores what it means to be human and the increasingly relevant question of what defines our reality.
The man in the high castle, though, asks something more. It asks what humanity, morality,
and creativity look like in the face of evil. Here, Dick explores the complicity of living
a normal life under fascism. He forces the reader to evaluate whether living a good life,
one where change for the greater good is not the objective is morally acceptable. He asks the reader
to consider what they would do when the evils of fascism become present once again. And to read
this novel today is to recognize that that day isn't coming. It's already here.
Joining me now to discuss the man in the high castle by the late Philip K. Dick is Jonathan
Leatham. He's an essayist, a short story writer, and the author of numerous novels, including
The Fortress of Solitude. Leatham added a compilation of Dick's most famous works called Philip K. Dick
Four Novels of the 1960s. Jonathan, welcome. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me.
Tell me about that. I was trying to give a setup that explains if people haven't read it. I know
from my social media, a lot of our viewers have read and are very familiar with Philip K. Dick's work.
But it's a complicated story to tell. It's a complicated story to tell because one hand,
it's a very plausible and lucid alternate history. And at the same time, it launches a kind of
metaphysical conundrum, as you say, where there's a book within the book that people are reading,
which points to other possibilities. And this means that their reality is kind of slipping away
or typical for Philip K. Dick, slipping away as they try to grasp it. And I think the magic of
this book is that it somehow does both things so well. He was obsessed with the history of
20th century fascism, the portrait of the German kind of technocratic management of a colonized
US is extraordinarily detailed and gripping. And at the same time, he's asking you to experience
a kind of vertigo where you see the US turn inside out. And I think it doubles on itself.
It invites the opposite. It allows you to think, well, what if I'm reading the present wrong?
What if in some weird way we did lose to fascism at a metaphysical level? Now, you know,
this goes, you have to think of Dick writing at this moment, which is the post-war consensus,
the height of technocratic optimism, and triumphalism had in theory been defeated.
It had been reduced to what Colonel Clink on television. It was laughable, it was comic evil,
and we had completely triumphed. And yet there were voices, I mean, if you think of Stanley Kubrick
presenting Dr. Strangelove or the great Tom Larissong, Werner von Braun, reminding us that we'd
made a partnership with Nazi science, with Nazi corporatism. And that in some sense, there was a
deep level at which by absorbing the militaristic and authoritarian, centralized world-dominating
perspective of fascism, we had, if not surrendered to it, we'd partnered with it,
and that it was lurking under the skin of American reality. This is something more than
just pointing to the Japanese internment camps or the fact that we'd had fascist rallies
at Madison Square Garden. It's saying, in some way, even the victory over Germany and Japan
meant that we'd incorporated aspects of this nightmare's possibility into our own forms of
social control. One of the things about this particular work, Man in the High Castle, but really
all of Philip K. Dick's works that you comment on is it's super textured, it's super detailed,
it's not, it's not as you said, the casual musings of what if the Nazis had won. He really creates
a world. Well, and part of that texture is the specificity of the the imperial command of the
of the new Nazi leadership of the East Coast of the United States. What he does is so scrupulously
paint a picture of a fascism that isn't just one giant soar on like evil entities in total,
you know, unification with itself. In fact, it's made up of a scattering of different kinds of
craven opportunistic. You use the word complicity when you describe the book and I think this is
very much a book about complicity. It's people who are just getting along, it's people who are just
making a buck. It's idealistic racist to really believe in purification. It's, you know, Christian
apocalyptic fantasists and that model of different elements amalgamating into a fascism is
something I should think we would look at and see ourselves in the mirror right now. You know,
10 years ago, I think we're all students now of European fascism and it's relevance to us. 10
years ago, I wasn't as interested. I knew as much as anybody knew about it. Is it your argument that
this book is strangely more relevant in this moment or do you maintain this book has been relevant
since the day came out? I don't think it's ever failed to be relevant and it was a very brave
and almost bizarre gesture when it was written. I think if it were, you know, it's very typical
for Philip Padek to be decades out ahead subjects. He had advertisements that got up and walked
around and followed you down the street and tugged on your sleeve, you know, back when Madison
Avenue was brand new. He had what he called news clowns, which was the sober texture of Walter
Cronkite devolving into provocation and cynicism and sneering irony on the evening news.
And in this book, he's saying American fascism is somehow encoded in the victory, the post-war
consensus, the ascent of corporatism, the ascent of Madison Avenue, the kind of consensus that
was built at that time contains a grain of unresolved fascist yearning.
What a remarkable take that you got on a remarkable book. I remember when I read it,
not understanding how relevant it might be. It sort of feels more relevant to me. Jonathan,
great to have you here. I hope you'll come back and we'll talk about some of your books that you've
written. My pleasure. Jonathan Leatham is the author of The Fortress of Solitude and the editor
of Philip K. Dick four novels of the 1960s and it's a it's a anthology. All right, thank you
to the newest member of our Valshi book club and we'll be right back.
I got breaking news from Dubai where MSNOW reporter Josh Ineger has news for us. Josh, what are you
seeing? Well, Ali, just in the last maybe hour or so, we started getting alerts on our devices
about pending and impending missile striker that they were fighting off and now we know that in a
building close to the Marina district, so maybe about 10 miles away from where I am right now,
there has been an incident involving either a drone or a missile or potentially debris from
one that was shot down by the United Arab Emirates' missile defense. We know that the upper
floors of an 88-story residential high rise have damaged potentially a fire. There's also
damage on a car down below and again, we're not sure if this is debris or an active strike, but either
way it is an Iranian offensive act against the city of Dubai here in the United Arab Emirates. We're
going to keep following this. Find out more about casualties. It's very difficult to get information
confirmed in situations like this in this city, so we're working to find out what we can and we'll
have more on it at the top of the hour as it continues to develop, but definitely a very busy
night here. It is Saturday night. It is about 10 o'clock at night. Things are still moving a lot.
You should see all those brake lights in the background. It is still busy with people just out
and about. It seems normal in this part of Dubai, but definitely an active situation going about
maybe 10 miles away from where I am and when we have more, of course, we'll bring it to you
at the top of the hour, Ali. Josh, thank you. Josh Eininger reporting from Dubai. And that does
it for me. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand decisions a day.
That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you. With the right guidance and
customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move,
upgrading your space or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's
ahead because we are big enough to support you, yet small enough to know you. Atlantic Union Bank,
anyway, you bank.
Velshi
