There is never bad faith in colonialism- ask the Cherokee

Iraq was behind okc bombing...that was a thing they where pushing around the time of the wat

"Enlightened" multiple truths pomo liberal civility bs

Not only Irak didn't have WMD. The US knew it perfectly, because if they had those weapons, the US would've not attacked in the first place.

"...it didn't really work out that way." Gee, I guess the Soviet Union shouldn't have created the Taliban. Oh, wait.

"Our progress has been part of the living history of America," President Jimmy Carter declared in a 1979 speech. "America is a nation of progress, of moving forward," Senator Chuck Grassley stated in 2022 on the Senate floor. "The story of America is a story of progress and resilience, of always moving forward, of never, ever giving up. It's a story unique among all nations," President Joe Biden announced in his 2023 State of the Union.

For decades - even centuries - policymakers, and media on their behalf, have employed some variation on the same rhetorical theme: the United States is a nation of progress, especially so-called "racial progress." Though our Great Experiment has been imperfect, we're told, it's constantly improving, steadily and automatically forging ahead toward its ideal state. Yes, we've been home to the violent oppression of untold sums of people, but look how far we’ve come!

There have objectively been political gains for all groups historically and currently denied basic rights in the U.S. This is obvious. But the trajectory is far from linear, raising the question: How far have "we" really come? Are people, especially Black, Latino, and Native people, less likely to suffer through poverty than any time before now? Are police and prisons any less violent? To what extent have U.S. law and policymaking really evolved?

On this episode, we dissect the liberal assertion that social, particularly racial, progress in the U.S. is inevitable, that there's this comforting "arc" of history bending towards justice. We examine how this idea came to be, who gets to define the metrics of "progress," and why it's dangerous to advance the tidy Vaseline-lens narrative that societal improvement is part of some preordained future.

Our guest is Dr. Julian M. Rucker.

Episode 178: The Palliative Pop-History of American "Racial Progress" Narratives

Artists Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson join the show to talk about the state of the animation industry, AI art, and of course the famous Garfield cum comic

BUY THE BOOK https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Justice-Warriors/Matt-Bors/9781952090226

PAID PROTEST 04/06
https://dice.fm/event/w5drp-paid-protest-comedy-show-and-dsa-fundraiser-6th-apr-silo-comedy-community-events-new-york-city-tickets

MERCH
poddamnamerica.bigcartel.com

PATREON + DISCORD
patreon.com/poddamnamerica

JUSTICE WARRIORS w/ Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

Hey Gumshoes! So excited to announce a new Patreon reward: podcast commentary tracks. Soon we’ll be offering a behind-the-scenes look at how all your favorites got made, from the people who made them.

To start us off, Brace, Liz, and Yung Chomsky go back to 2019 to walk through the recording of our every first episode, The Ep-Files. Enjoy, and as always, like and subscribe! 

patreon.com/TrueAnonPod

ANNOUNCEMENT: Investigator Tier

In this public News Brief, we detail how uncritical acceptance by centrist––and even liberal––media that the US is seeing an unprecedented "labor shortage" is helping justify repealing child labor protections in roughly a dozen states.

Media's Credulous "Labor Shortage" Reporting Helps Lay Groundwork For Repealing Child Labor Laws

In this live streamed News Brief from 4/26/23, we discuss the recent firing of Tucker Carlson and the meta-discourse around whether or not "the left" should see any utility in petty, racist demagogues.

News Brief Live: Tucker Carlson's Transparent 'Contrarian Left' Co-Option Strategy

"I Was A Teenage Conspiracy Theorist," The Atlantic magazine playfully titled a 2020 essay. "Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise," reported The Associated Press in 2022. "Do You Know Someone Who Believes in Conspiracy Theories? We Want to Hear About It," wrote The New York Times last year.

Fears of "conspiracy theories" are a common trope in the U.S. media, a worry that's grown more acute with the rise of QAnon, anti-vaxx sentiment, anti-semitism and a host of other dangerous theories that unduly rot brains throughout the country. To a great extent, this understandable: Many ideas that meet the definition of "conspiracy theories" are, indeed, baseless and dangerous and can direct people's political energy and resources into wasteful, racist, and downright stupid rabbit holes.

But that fact shouldn't delegitimize or foreclose all skepticism of those in power, but too often the term "conspiracy theory" is used to do just that. Repeatedly, media lump together so-called conspiracy theories, regardless of their accuracy, rationale, and ideology: at once, UFO chasers, QAnon, and the Black Panther Party being subject to FBI disruption are somehow placed in the same category of paranoid kooks. At the same time, unproven, and often debunked ideas advanced by media that also meet the definition of "conspiracy theories" — such as Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11 or so-called Havana syndrome — are treated as unassailable, meriting ongoing investigation, limitless resources, and of course, utmost solemnity.

On this episode, we detail the double standards applied to conspiracy theories inside and outside of the realm of U.S. corporate media. We’ll examine the development of the concept of conspiracy theories and the media's selective invocations of the term to discredit real grievances directed at American power and the U.S. government, and moreover, how power-friendly conspiracies — namely those focused on Enemy States like the Havana Syndrome narrative — are permitted to fester and grow without pushback because their red yarn dot connecting implicates the right lists of Acceptable Bad Guys.

Our guest is Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic.

Episode 180: Havana Syndrome and the Power of Mainstream, Acceptable Conspiracy Theories

"Charting a different course in the Vietnam War to fewer deaths and a better end," muses a book review in the Washington Post. "The Vietnam War was begun in good faith, by decent people," a Ken Burns PBS documentary tells us. "The Iraq War Reconsidered," reads a headline from The Atlantic.

Often, especially when an anniversary of a U.S. invasion or withdrawal rolls around, we're told that the devastation wrought by the US war machine was complicated, flawed, but ultimately necessary if not beneficial. Sure, the United States has killed millions, destabilized power structures, wrecked communities and economies, lied about the reasons for doing it all, and drawn the ire of people throughout the world. But, in hindsight, many in U.S. media insists, a horrible act of war from a world superpower wasn't an unequivocal, deliberate, and needless crime against humanity, but somewhere between a misunderstood righteous cause and a bumbling, good faith mistake motivated by humanitarian concerns.

An ideological system of reassurance therefore emerges. Once wars are broadly viewed as either wrong or a "failure" in the popular imagination — as in the case of Vietnam and Iraq — a cottage industry of punditry and pseudo-history emerges in the subsequent years designed to soothe the egos of elites and muddy the waters of both memory and reality for casual media consumers.

Put another way: we all see a dead body on the floor, no one can doubt this. No one can reasonably argue the destruction of Vietnam and Iraq didn't happen. So, this cottage industry springs into action, on behalf of those that caused the death, working to get the guilty party a charge of third degree manslaughter rather than murder. It was an accident, they were mistaken, they had bad intelligence, they were driven by concerns for freedom and human rights.

After all, those who destroyed Vietnam remained in power well into the 2000s. And those who destroyed Iraq currently run our major publications, universities, nonprofits, and think tanks. They still even run the country itself. So the incentive to make sure they all plead guilty to third degree manslaughter rather than first degree murder is tremendous, otherwise, we’re just a country led by war criminals — and this simply cannot be. We need absolution. We must remain, when all is said and done, innocent.

On this week's episode, we’ll explore the war revisionism industry, breaking down five ways in which media seek to sanitize and justify even the most notoriously unpopular and horrific U.S.-led and backed wars — namely Vietnam and Iraq — as unpleasant, imperfect, mistaken, but ultimately incidental byproducts of a noble and righteous empire that, above all, meant well.

Our guest is The Intercept's Jon Schwarz.

Episode 181: US Media's 5 Most Popular Revisionist Tropes About the Iraq and Vietnam Wars

Blake Masters (NOT THAT ONE, Blake is the creator of Showtime’s Brotherhood, and writer for Rubicon, Law & Order: LA, and Falling Water among many other shows) joins us to discuss the ongoing WGA writers’ strike. Will and Blake touch on the transforming landscape of Television, fair compensation in the age of streaming, standing creative professionals’ ground against AI, and how entertainment unions fit into the larger world of American organized labor. And also, how all TV writing eventually leads back to Columbo.

Chapo Trap House

BONUS: What’s at Stake in the WGA Writers’ Strike

This week on the Trillbillies we're disrupting the criminal justice system

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 290: The Penultimate Court

The rest is just waiting.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 291: Rodeo Is Life

On this Live Show Beg-a-Thon, recorded on May 17, we discuss the pop culture phenomenon and appeal of pseudoarchaeology in its many forms, from fraudulent alternative history books like Erich von Däniken's 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, to television series like "Ancient Aliens" and "Ancient Apocalypse."

Alongside guest Dr. David S. Anderson, we discuss how phony "what if?" theories often go beyond the goofy, guilty pleasure premises of extraterrestrial visitors and lost civilizations to promote Eurocentric, racist pap and a mindless distrust of "the scientific establishment" in the stupidest and least productive way possible.

Live Show Beg-A-Thon: The Very Real Social Brain Rot of Ancient Aliens and Ancient Apocalypse

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 181: US Media's 5 Most Popular Revisionist Tropes About the Iraq and Vietnam Wars

Citations Needed Podcast

Recent comments

Dorian sapiens

Alberto García

Joshua Marx

JJ Florence

Related tracks