Latest news with #Goldwater
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Texans Gain the Right To Try Individualized Medical Treatments
If you're so sick that you have nothing to lose and you're looking the Grim Reaper in the face, why shouldn't you be able to try experimental and officially unapproved treatments? While libertarians recognize individuals' right to take their own risks, even those of a more nanny-ish disposition have a hard time coming up with answers to that question. That's why the Right to Try movement has taken off across the country, marking its latest victory in Texas. "In a major win for rare disease patients, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Goldwater's Right to Try for Individualized Treatments Act," Brian Norman of the Goldwater Institute, which champions right-to-try legislation, wrote last week. "Championed by Senator Paul Bettencourt and Representative Ken King, SB 984 expands Goldwater's original Right to Try law to potentially lifesaving treatments that are designed specifically for individual patients." Right-to-try laws have been passed in at least 41 states, largely based on model legislation crafted by the Goldwater Institute that allows those with terminal illnesses access to experimental treatments. Colorado was the first to adopt right-to-try, though Texas wasn't far behind, passing such a law in 2015. Counterpart federal legislation passed in 2018. At the time, President Donald Trump, then in his first term, commented, "With the Right to Try law I'm signing today, patients with life-threatening illnesses will finally have access to experimental treatments that could improve or even cure their conditions." In 2023, the Lone Star State expanded right-to-try to patients with chronic ailments. That law specified that "it is the intent of the legislature to allow patients with a severe chronic disease to use potentially life-altering investigational drugs, biological products, and devices." By that time, some states, including Arizona, had already passed laws expanding right-to-try to include individualized treatments that hadn't been contemplated in the original legislation—or even by most physicians, not long in the past. "Rapid medical innovations have made it possible to take an individual's genetic information and create a treatment for that individual person," notes the Goldwater-sponsored Right to Try website. "More patients, especially those with rare and ultra-rare illnesses, will pursue these treatments when they have exhausted other options. Unfortunately, the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]'s current regulatory scheme is not designed to handle these kinds of individual treatments, and that will keep life-saving medication out of the hands of patients unless reforms are adopted." Just days ago, Cincinnati's WKRC marked National Cancer Survivor's Month by highlighting patients who benefited from radiation and chemotherapy treatments that were tailored to their bodies. "Precision medicine is finding mutations or proteins in an individual's body that suggests that certain drugs can be used to treat that patient not only most effectively but with the least side effects," Michael Gieske, director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, told WKRC. In Texas, legislation to clear the way for patients to try such treatments before they've been formally approved came in the form of SB 984, which "establishes a pathway by which patients with rare or ultra-rare diseases may seek, under their doctor's care, personalized treatments developed in federally approved facilities." The bill's sponsor in the Texas Senate, Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R–Houston), boasted, "Texas is again leading the nation in fighting for the most vulnerable patients, whose only hope lies in cutting-edge, individualized treatments not traditional clinical trials, and for me, the coolest thing you can do as a legislator is pass a bill that saves lives." None of these laws can guarantee that an experimental treatment will actually improve a terminal or chronic patient's condition, of course. But there's no good reason for blocking access to promising or even long-shot treatments when patients have run out of other options. Through the various incarnations of proposed legislation, the Right to Try movement has sought to expand patients' choices and reduce bureaucratic barriers to treatment. But it's not perfect. Right-to-try laws create exceptions to red tape that stands between patients and potentially life-saving treatments, but they don't fully empower people to make their own decisions, nor do they eliminate the bureaucratic hurdles that slow the approval of medicines and medical devices. "Drug lag costs lives because people suffer and die from disease that might be treatable, if only there were more investment in finding a cure," argued Jessica Flanigan, an associate professor at the University of Richmond, in her 2017 book, Pharmaceutical Freedom: Why Patients Have a Right to Self-Medicate. "Requirements that raise the cost of development make it less likely that they will succeed. Premarket testing conditions also cost lives because patients with conditions that could be treated or cured by unapproved drugs suffer and die while they are waiting for approval." Flanigan recommends a fully libertarian approach that would remove the restraints from people's freedom to try medications and medical treatments based on their own judgment and the advice of whatever sources and experts they choose to consult. It's a morally good and consistent take that would eliminate the barriers to medicines and medical devices while also lowering the costs of developing new ones. People would be expected to shoulder the burdens of any risks they take. But liberating though Flanigan's approach would be, it's far more difficult to get through legislatures than are a series of incremental right-to-try laws that erode bureaucratic hurdles a little at a time. Montana took the next step last month when Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill allowing for centers where patients can receive experimental treatments that have completed phase 1 clinical trials but not yet been approved. Everybody is eligible, subject to recommendations from physicians and the requirements of informed consent. To escape federal regulation, experimental meds administered in the centers will have to be produced in Montana—but the state has an active pharmaceutical sector. Texas took an important step last week toward expanding the right to try experimental medical treatments to a broader sector of the population. But the Right to Try movement isn't nearly done. The post Texans Gain the Right To Try Individualized Medical Treatments appeared first on
New York Post
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
Meathead feds target California movers over nonexistent age discrimination: ‘Weaponization of government'
Which would you be more likely to hire: a moving company whose ads feature energetic, youthful workers or one that highlights its less sprightly, aged employees? That's a no-brainer — even a meathead could answer such a simple advertising question. Yet the federal government has spent about a decade investigating California-based, family-owned Meathead Movers for age discrimination, citing its marketing materials — demanding $15 million in penalties and suing when the company wouldn't cough up the cash. And the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has done this without pointing to a single discrimination complaint. Advertisement Meathead, California's biggest independent moving company, and its CEO, Aaron Steed, are finally fighting back — after a think tank heard about the crazy case. 'The EEOC is not only targeting a successful American company on what appears to be pretextual grounds, but now it's refusing to tell the public why it did that. And we think the public has a right to know,' Jon Riches, the Goldwater Institute's vice president for litigation, tells The Post. Goldwater sent the agency a Freedom of Information Act Request in March, seeking basic facts such as the number of age-discrimination complaints against Meathead Movers and number of EEOC investigations into alleged age discrimination at any moving company since January 2016. The feds refused to 'fess up. Advertisement So this week Goldwater appealed, Riches tells The Post exclusively — and the EEOC has 30 days to respond before the Arizona think tank will sue. 'We bring legal actions to challenge government overreach and unconstitutional action,' explains Riches, an ex-Navy JAG who joined Goldwater in 2012. 'We've had cases of many, many, many other government agencies, and I've never seen anything this unprecedented in my experience.' Most EEOC lawsuits are the result of discrimination complaints. The agency has filed just eight in the last decade based on what it calls 'directed investigations' — those 'without a charge of discrimination filed by an individual.' Meathead Movers' case is one of them. 'We are hopeful that the EEOC stops this ridiculous prosecution of Aaron and his company, but we also want to know why it started and why the government made the decisions it was making,' Riches says. Advertisement Can the feds really fine a firm simply for its marketing — when it's not fraudulent? 'No, I don't think so. And I think that also raises First Amendment concerns. Obviously Meathead Movers has a right to communicate truthful information about lawful activities, including in its marketing materials' — and 'it markets individuals that are capable of performing the job,' Riches says. But, he adds, 'The EEOC doesn't really seem to be too concerned with the First Amendment.' It 'sent Aaron a very staggering gag-order letter. Aaron has not been shy about talking about the facts of the case and what the government's doing to him on social media, and the agency sent him a letter, basically telling him to stop doing that.' Aaron Steed won't stop. 'I'm aware of my constitutional rights, and I'm fighting for my company's existence and the 300-plus families that depend on us,' he tells The Post — noting EEOC 'sent the gag order after Goldwater sent a FOIA request.' Advertisement EEOC started investigating Meathead around 2015 and finally contacted Steed in 2017. He insists the company doesn't discriminate. 'So we welcomed and embraced the EEOC, answered all their questions,' he says. 'We fully cooperated with the investigation, and then we were just shocked when we got a bill for $15 million shortly after — and with the full weight of the federal government to collect it.' How did it arrive at that figure? 'Even though there was not a single complaint against my company that initiated this, their logic was that there's at least 500 class members' — all hypothetical, as Steed notes. EEOC decided lost wages would total $15,000 per person, 'which is a record for age discrimination. No settlement has ever been reached for that amount. And then they multiplied it times two.' Why times two? 'Fees and penalties. And we quickly explained to them, 'Hey, we can't afford that,'' Steed replies. 'It has felt like this has never been about age discrimination. It's been about them trying to run over my company, trying to put us out of business,' he adds. 'It feels personal, and it doesn't make sense.' The 45-year-old started the company as a high-school junior in 1997. 'I wrestled in high school and in college, and this was a perfect job for me to support myself and my friends and my brother while going to school playing sports,' he recalls. 'Once I turned 21, 22, I saved up enough money to buy a truck. And now we have hundreds of employees and 80 trucks.' Steed says he has employees over 40 — even over 60. Still, he notes, 'The reality of our job is that a lot of younger people tend to gravitate towards it. The job description is to move heavy things all day, up and down stairs, and then at Meathead Movers, you're expected to jog.' That's right: After you've put furniture or boxes in the truck, you hustle back for more. 'That's part of what makes us different than typical moving companies,' Steed explains. 'It kept the momentum going, kept us focused as an athlete. It kept us in our flow state. It always really impressed the customers. It made move day more of an athletic event, and since all moving companies charge one hourly rate, we save our clients time and money, and this is what we've done since the get-go.' Advertisement It's a win-win situation: 'My employees love getting paid to work out, and the customers get a great value.' 'We pay $18 to $20 an hour, and you've got to be able to pass a drug test and a criminal-background check to work for us and have a great attitude,' he says. 'We have a reputation for doing really good quality work with people you can trust in your home, and we give back to the community. We're most known for offering unlimited free services to women fleeing abusive relationships, in partnership with eight different domestic-violence shelters across central and southern California.' Steed reflects, 'This has been my life's work.' He hopes to pass the company onto his and his wife's 3½-year-old son one day — if it survives. 'I've already spent well over a million and a half dollars defending myself for a crime I haven't committed, and it is just absolutely destroying us,' he says. 'I can't afford to keep litigating against the federal government. It's incredibly expensive, it's crazy, very time consuming and very stressful.' Advertisement He doesn't know why the feds targeted him. 'Last week, a friend of mine said, 'Hey, did you run over someone's cat over there at the EEOC?'' he says. 'It feels deeply personal, and I really don't understand it.' Goldwater, which is working pro bono, is flummoxed too. Perhaps a former competitor is involved. What it does know: 'The case raises serious questions about the weaponization of government.' 'This would be a really different sort of case if it was based on actual complaints of people who are actually harmed. But for a government agency to concoct these very thin allegations against a successful American company should trouble all your readers,' Riches says. 'Why would the federal government target a company whose job is moving because it hires people who can perform that job, regardless of their age? If it can do that to Meathead, it could do that to anybody. This is a bigger issue than just the EEOC and just Meathead Movers.' Steed spoke to The Post from LAX, where he was awaiting a flight to Washington, DC — where he'll meet Thursday with EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas. Was that a tough meeting to get? Steed laughs. Advertisement 'Yeah,' he finally responds. 'We've been wanting to meet with them for a while, and I'm grateful that the chair has taken time out of her busy schedule to meet with us.' Lucas did not respond to The Post's request for comment. Spokesman Victor Chen said, 'We cannot comment on ongoing litigation, but we can point you to our public statement at the time the suit was filed.' He also sent the 2023 lawsuit filed in federal court. It complains 'Meathead Movers' founders and executive management . . . describe 'young and energetic-student athletes' as part of their founding vision.'
Fox News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Reagan and Trump are more alike than you think
Ronald Reagan would have appreciated Donald Trump's moxie. Stylistically, they are different but all men are different in this regard. Ideologically however, there are many similarities. Reagan spoke out often against the political establishment. Reagan was himself anti-status quo. He was of the conservative/populist Goldwater wing of the GOP. Don't forget, he ran against the establishment candidate, incumbent President Gerald Ford in 1976, almost beating him for the presidential nomination. He ran again in 1980 against the establishment candidates Amb. George H.W. Bush and former Texas Gov. John Connolly, defeated them, and in so doing remade the GOP. The president is embracing some Democratic policies in his second term's push for a 'golden age' for America. For men like Reagan and Trump, it's always been the same: Outsiders versus insiders. British versus the Colonists. Jefferson versus Adams. Goldwater versus Rockefeller. The conservative movement versus the GOP establishment. Delta House versus Omega House. The Jedi versus the Evil Empire. Bill Clinton once said, "Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans want to fall in line." Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats love power and all its abuses and fall in line behind anyone with perceived power; Republicans fall in love with ideas centered on the individual. Republicans cherished Reagan and now Trump, because both these men have acted on their conservative ideas. One stark example, Reagan wanted to destroy the Soviet Union which he called an "Evil Empire." He wanted to consign it to the "ash heap" of history. Meanwhile the political establishment supported "Détente" which was co-existence, even as the Soviets were gobbling up the rest of the world, Reagan was challenging this way of thinking. The Berlin Wall fell as a result of Reagan's conservative actions. He wanted to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy seeing them as fraudulent and wasteful. Just as Trump is now doing. The entrenched establishment supported them even as they were worthless, counter-productive and costly. Reagan supported gay rights long before it was fashionable or accepted by the political establishment because it was about the individual. Later, as president, Reagan was never comfortable in the trappings of Washington, often leaving for the weekend to go the Camp David or for longer trips to his ranch in Santa Barbara. When he left Washington in January 1989, he only returned once to accept the Medal of Freedom award from President George W. Bush 43. Reagan was wildly popular with blue-collar voters, just as Trump now is. And yes, both men had and have a tremendous sense of humor. Joe Biden? He is the butt of jokes. The Republican Party has changed its positions on many issues over the years, whereas the Democratic Party has remained more or less constant as the pro-government party, since 1932. The GOP used to be the balanced budget, Green eyeshade party before Ronald Reagan introduced tax cuts as a canon of the party, to liberate the individual. The party has switched back and forth on trade and other matters over the years. But in 1980, Reagan brought a cluster of issues to the party which it still embraces and Trump pursues today. Tax cuts, federalism, strong national defense, pro-life, all centered on the importance of the individual. Reagan often said, "Our party must be the party of the individual." All these issues Donald Trump has heartily embraced. The only issue with separates them may be trade, but Reagan also used tariffs to save Harley-Davidson from cheap Japanese imports, thus saving a cherished company. Everything Reagan did must be judged in the shadow of the Cold War. He supported NAFTA and the Caribbean Basin Initiative as they strengthened the trading, cultural and political ties between these Western Hemisphere countries. And, for Reagan, they were a restatement of the Monroe Doctrine. There is a small group of rabble-rouser Republicans who oppose Trump just as Reagan had his cranks and critics. Just as all revolutionaries do.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sports Betting Is a Plague
When do practical policy effects trump cherished principles? The mess that has come with gambling liberalization should force the thoughtful kind of libertarian to consider that question. Set aside, for the moment, the recent ideological devolution of the Republican Party into national socialism: Traditionally, most of the Americans who called themselves 'libertarians' were in effect conservatives ('Republicans who like weed and porn,' as a Marxist friend of mine used to put it), while American conservatism was thoroughly libertarian, and not only as an economic matter but also in a way deeply rooted in the live-and-let-live sensibility of figures such as Barry Goldwater, with his suspicion of Moral Majority types. ('Mark my word,' Goldwater famously said, 'if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem.') Libertarians and conservatives both prioritize freedom; libertarians and conservatives both admit the unwelcome reality of trade-offs; libertarians tend to lean a little more into freedom, and conservatives tend to dwell more on the unpleasanter facts of life. Here is a sobering write-up of a study published in December by scholars at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management: At the outset, the researchers observed a sharp increase in sports betting in the states where it was legalized. 'The figure goes from zero in most states to sizable amounts, and it continues to increase for several months as people learn about it,' [Kellogg professor Scott] Baker says. 'Only a year or two after it's been introduced do we see a bit of a plateau, and this is at a pretty high level in terms of money spent and people involved.' By the end of their sample period, the researchers saw that nearly 8 percent of households were involved in gambling. These bettors spent, on average, $1,100 per year on online bets. While the amount of money people put into legal sports gambling rose, their net investments fell by nearly 14 percent. For every $1 a household spent on betting, it put $2 fewer into investment accounts. As bad as that sounds, the report in toto is considerably worse. For example, the researchers also found that sports gambling correlated with greater participation in other forms of gambling, especially lotteries, and that this trend is more pronounced 'among households that frequently overdraw their bank accounts,' i.e., poor people and those living on the financial edge. There is an open question of real relevance to policymakers in this: whether sports gambling is a cause of other reckless economic behavior or is a symptom of more general economic recklessness, especially among those already under economic stress. Economic pressure moves some people in the direction of conservation (cutting spending, saving more, etc.) but moves others in the opposite direction as their anxiety and sense of hopelessness work together to make high-risk activities seem more attractive: Gambling is fundamentally a form of entertainment based on wishful thinking about the likelihood of a big payoff—the economic version of George Orwell's man who 'may take to drink because he feels himself a failure but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.' The cause/symptom distinction is relevant, but the answer, whatever it is, is not dispositive: Even if increased gambling is only a secondary effect, it remains the case that, other things being equal, people in financial distress probably would be better off if opportunities to increase their distress were less readily available. A few regular readers will be thinking: 'Wait—this from the guy who supports legalizing heroin?' The thing about the prohibitionist argument is, it isn't always completely wrong. Alcohol consumption really did go down in the early years of Prohibition—it was a bad policy, but it did not fail on every front. And the benefits to be had from libertarian reform often turn out to be more modest in practice than what had been hoped for. For example: The presence of legal prostitution in some parts of Nevada has done little or nothing to alleviate the problems associated with street-level prostitution in Las Vegas and elsewhere and may have made it worse in some ways, with poorly informed visitors to Sin City believing that prostitution is legal there, which it isn't. Experiments with de facto legalization of some 'hard' drugs, and the more general liberalization of marijuana laws, has not eliminated the black market for drugs and thus defunded the cartels, while drug use generally has increased where drugs are legal. And now gambling legalization has led to more gambling and arguably to more destructive and addictive forms of gambling via app. You can make a good libertarian case that some of these intractable problems above point to reforms that were insufficiently libertarian: There is not very much legal prostitution in Nevada, and what there is remains relatively difficult to access and much more expensive than illegal prostitution—a couple of high-priced brothels an hour's drive from the Strip were never going to eliminate prostitution on the street of Las Vegas or in casino bars; black markets in marijuana and other drugs endure because prohibition of marijuana and other drugs endures, and this has effects even on legal production as marijuana cultivated for use in the liberal states is diverted to the black market in the prohibition states. ('What's the matter with Kansas?' indeed.) But if your best argument amounts to, 'The ideal hypothetical version of my policy is preferable to the non-ideal real-world version of your policy,' then you haven't made a very good case for your policy. And clear-eyed libertarian critics might have a few important things to say about legal gambling, too: that lotteries are state monopolies and that the casino industry is a series of regional state-organized cartels, that neither really is an example of free enterprise in action, and that, as with drinking alcohol, only a minority of gamblers develop problem habits. It is difficult to make a cost-benefit analysis here, because the benefits are almost entirely a matter of taste: Walking through an Atlantic City casino, I myself do not see anything that seems worth preserving—but, then, we have free markets, and more general liberty, precisely because different people have different values, interests, and priorities. (Given the advertising footprint of the sports-betting industry, you can bet that bro media would push back hard against any attempt at limitation.) Still, my thoughts linger on that money being diverted from retirement savings to be pissed away on sports gambling. The Kellogg authors offer the possibility that this is only partly a problem with sports gambling per se and that the pathology is made much worse, as so many things are in our time, by its having migrated to the lonely world of the smartphone, where you can make a spur-of-the-moment bet on a sleepless night at 3 a.m., perhaps after a few drinks. They suggest that the situation might be improved by restricting sports gambling to on-premises wagers in gambling parlors. But if you ever have visited any of those ghastly little mini-casinos that have popped up in converted convenience stores and gas stations around the country – or most of the big gambling palaces, for that matter – then you may come to assume that location constraints are unlikely to produce substantial results. Gambling is an ugly business, morally and aesthetically, almost everywhere it exists. Even the world's most famous baccarat enthusiast knows that. But you know what I'm still thinking about: $2 in vanished retirement savings for every $1 gambled. That's not the kind of return a reformer would hope for.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
"Save democracy" sounds like "save the status quo": How everything became a conspiracy theory
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways A wave of authoritarian populism has flooded many parts of the world. It has common attributes while simultaneously being specific to a given country's political culture, society and vulnerabilities. In the United States, the great flooding wave of authoritarian populism manifests in the form of Trumpism, MAGA and the larger neofascist anti-democracy movement. Its origins include but are not limited to (much earned) rage at the elites and the ruling class, extreme wealth and income inequality. There is also sclerotic social mobility, a society that is undergoing rapid demographic and other changes, globalization and the neoliberal gangster capitalist order, a sense that the American Dream for most is dying if not dead, future shock and the rise of social media, AI, and other digital culture(s), technofeudalism, loneliness and social atomization, a decline in happiness, a larger crisis of personal meaning and aggrieved entitlement. And of course, the central role played by conspiracism and conspiracy theories in the Age of Trump and the country's democracy crisis cannot be minimized. The feeling that there are sinister forces who are manipulating the country's politics and society in secret and that the everyday American has little to no defense against them except to embrace demagogues who promise 'I alone can fit it!' is both a cause and effect of America's democracy crisis and rising authoritarianism (and increasingly naked fascism). The forces that summoned up the Age of Trump are not new; they have much deeper, decades- and centuries-old origins in some of the worst aspects of American political life, society, and national character. As historian Richard Hofstadter warned in his seminal 1964 essay 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics': American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon…. This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. In an effort to better understand the relationship between conspiracy culture and America's democracy crisis, why such beliefs are so compelling (and radicalizing) to so many people, and how the rise of Trumpism and MAGA can be tracked back to the Oklahoma City Bombing 30 years ago and the conspiracist culture of the 1990s (and before) I recently spoke with Phil Tinline. The author of "The Death of Consensus," which was chosen as The Times (London)'s Politics Book of the Year, Tinline spent 20 years working for the BBC, where he made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. Tinline's new book is "Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today." How are you feeling right now in this time of global democracy crisis and authoritarian populism, specifically the rise of Trumpism? How are you making sense of this? Trying to keep up with the new Trump administration and the implications of its actions is disorientating and exhausting. I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years researching the history of the fear that democracy is about to die, mainly in the UK but also in the U.S. Historically, we have worried about this many times without our nightmares coming to life. This led me to be very wary of people airily predicting that democracy was finished, and made me alive to the way that, paradoxically, such nightmares can actually damage democracy. But since Trump's speech at the airport in Waco, Texas, two years ago, and especially since January this year, I've been forced to the conclusion — as many others have — that constitutional democracy in America really is now under severe threat. I hope that, as has happened before, this crisis will force politicians to break free from old taboos and find more effective ways to restore ordinary Americans' trust that democracy can make their lives better — and then to actually deliver on that. [Last] month [was] the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember watching the news on that horrible afternoon when the Oklahoma City bombing took place. It was beautiful outside, and the 'breaking news' alert flashed. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. 9/11 evoked similar feelings. The reporters and commentators immediately concluded it was a foreign attack. I told one of my friends, 'No way. This is American-made. These are domestic terrorists." I grew up listening to late-night AM Talk Radio and shows such as Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM, reading 'zines and the alternative and underground media, and chasing down other such sources of information. In some key ways, the Oklahoma City bombing and the right-wing conspiracy culture that birthed it connect directly to the Age of Trump. I remember that day too. I also remember reading a long article about the Branch Davidians and Waco two years earlier — at the time, it was one of the creepiest things I'd ever read. It was striking that the Oklahoma City bombing happened on the second anniversary, which was April 19 and the anniversary of the start of the American Revolution with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Because of your knowledge of conspiracist texts, you immediately thought that it was a homegrown attack. That was also the first thought of both an FBI profiler and Milton William Cooper, the author/compiler of the conspiracy theory compendium, "Behold a Pale Horse." Or rather, Cooper thought that it was a "false flag" attack staged on the anniversary of Waco to smear the militia movement. I'm struck by how the conspiracy theories which contended that the federal government played some sort of role in the Oklahoma City attack — which of course killed some of its own employees — do not seem to have stuck as hard as the equivalent theories about the assassination of JFK. Looking back, it's not difficult to see some of the roots of today's politics in the 1990s, and it's a worthwhile exercise, but the roots go much deeper than that. How does your expertise in politics and conspiracy theories inform your understanding of America's current democracy crisis and the Age of Trump and MAGA? I try not to get too stuck on party labels. I try to focus on the broad ideological traditions and the abiding fears that shape them. With that in mind, I think it's sometimes useful to read U.S. politics as not simply left versus right, or Democrats vs. Republicans, so much as a three-way split between alienated elements on the left and the right who dislike each other, but also have a shared antipathy to the center. I'd argue that political conspiracy theories are generally stories about power. People invest in them as a way to process and explain why they feel disempowered or defeated, especially when that defeat is a shock. I think this helps make sense of why left-wing conspiracy theories about the state in the 1960s and 1970s have something in common with right-wing conspiracy theories about the state in the 1990s and ever since. However, I wouldn't want to overdo this. There are huge differences as well between the fears of the left and right, and it's demonstrably clear that right-wing extremists have killed far more of their fellow citizens. It's also striking that the phenomenon of conspiracy theory beliefs being triggered by shocking defeats is not something from which the political center is immune, as we were reminded after both Trump's first election and Brexit in the UK. I have copies of many of the 'classic' conspiracy theory texts. Your new book examines one of those classics from the 1960s, "Report from Iron Mountain." What compelled you to write a book on the origins and cultural and political impact of that conspiracy theory? Why now? "Report from Iron Mountain" is a 1967 anti-war satire that claimed to be a leaked top-secret Pentagon-commissioned report — the subject of my new book, "Ghosts of Iron Mountain." The Report warned that if permanent global peace broke out, it would wreck the U.S. economy, and that the social effects of war would have to be replaced with eugenics, slavery, fake UFO scares, polluting the environment and 'blood games.' When this was published, many people thought it was real. The satirists eventually confessed, but the hoax fitted so convincingly with how many people felt American power really worked that they refused to believe it wasn't real. Ever since the 1990s, "Iron Mountain" has been embraced by some on the far-right and in the militia movement as 'proof' of the evil of what we now call the 'deep state;' videos from the 1990s insisting that the Iron Mountain report was real still circulate online today. And as I argue in my new book, this case reveals how falling for stories that confirm your prior beliefs doesn't just make you look like a fool. It can do serious political damage too. The Iron Mountain story revealed a shared left-right anger at the way the powerful treat ordinary Americans because it made sense of their feelings of disempowerment. The story of "Report from Iron Mountain" and its strange afterlife caught my imagination for two reasons. First, because we know for certain that it is fiction. I have a copy of the contract, which refers to it as the '"EACE HOAX BOOK." And second, because it slipped from being a 1960s left-wing satirical hoax to being the basis of 1990s right-wing conspiracy theories. This was an enticing way to explore three things at once, all through telling what I hope is a compelling story. There were similarities and differences between left- and right-wing fears of centralized power. Then the slippery borderland between fact and fiction, and the perils of ignoring just how slippery it is. Finally, it also brought back my memories of the way that the 1990s were absolutely haunted by the 1960s, as the boomers took power, the end of the Cold War left some Americans politically disoriented, and the memory of Vietnam still refused to fade. And the fact that some people still believe it's real, even now, just clinched it. What makes for a "good" i.e. enduring and believable conspiracy theory? Enduring and believable conspiracies are the ones that play on our fears, the stories we tell ourselves, and how far we are willing to go to accept what 'feels as if' versus what actually 'is.' As I write in "Ghosts of Iron Mountain," 'the tale of 'Report from Iron Mountain' offers a warning about the consequences that await if you don't keep an eye on the line between your deep story about how power works, and what the facts support.' And conspiratorial thinking that's appropriated "the Report" drew on what was already a longstanding nightmare on the American Right: the fear of one-world government, and how it might take over the US. Their fears were incredibly detailed and specific, and they power a deep undercurrent of paranoia that has resurfaced today. "Report from Iron Mountain" is an example of a co-opting of a satire as 'evidence' of government evil, which offers unusually clear evidence of just how powerful narrative can be. Of how it facilitates the triumph of what 'feels real' over what we know to be factually true. And of how hard it can be to overcome this — even long before the advent of social media. It's an inarguable case of a clear, proven hoax being taken as truth, meaning it allows us to trace the exact logical leaps its promoters made and offers a template for how conspiracy theorists think about the power of federal government. And that's why it's remained such an important and telling example of American conspiratorial thinking today. What is the difference between conspiracy theories and conspiracism? Too often, the news media and other political commentators and public voices (and the general public) talk about conspiracies when what they really mean is conspiracism. The distinction matters. How does this relate to the Age of Trump and authoritarian populism? It is vital not to use "conspiracies" as a synonym for "conspiracy theories," or for "conspiracism." Real conspiracies often occur, but they tend to be structurally quite different from what the theories claim. As the scholar of folklore Timothy Tangherlini and his colleagues at UCLA showed in a research paper in 2020, actual conspiracies tend to involve strong bonds between a relatively few players, whereas conspiracy theories tend to be much more loose and sweeping. This makes real conspiracies hard to investigate, which means they often emerge gradually through painstaking reporting, whereas conspiracy theories are often constructed very swiftly in reaction to a shocking event. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Conspiracism is the way of thinking that underpins belief in conspiracy theories, centered on the belief that there is a malignant, all-powerful, invisible force controlling crucial aspects of our lives. Trump has long drawn on this to play on Americans' sense of disempowerment and direct it against the supposedly tyrannical 'deep state.' Trump won by claiming to be the populist champion of the rage that many ordinary Americans feel against the uncaring, distant elites who have humiliated them for years. This feeds into the fear of dark forces at the core of the state that have spread since the 1960s. The great ironic twist is that having drawn on conspiracist narratives about the centralization and misuse of power, he is now moving aggressively to centralize and misuse power himself. Contrary to what those outside of that community, the normal politics types, would like to believe, people who have a serious belief in conspiracy theories/conspiracism are not necessarily dumb or stupid. Moreover, there is social psychology and other research that shows that they tend to be of above-average intelligence and have some college training because internalizing and making sense of conspiracy theories is cognitively demanding. Mockery is not an effective way of intervening against conspiracy theories/conspiracism and those who are seriously committed to them. I agree that conspiracy theorists may well be highly intelligent, committed and hard-working — though that's clearly not always so. I also agree that mockery is unlikely to help coax a person out of this kind of belief, though it's legitimate, and I do think it can be useful in putting people off early on.I think that the reason that mockery is often ineffective is that it reinforces the conspiracist's sense of exclusion, disempowerment and humiliation, particularly if that is then countered with warmth and affirmation from fellow believers. I suspect it's more effective to focus on the underlying structural logic of conspiracy theory, summarized by one of the leading experts on conspiracism, Michael Barkun, as 'everything is connected,' 'nothing is accidental,' and 'nothing is as it seems.' Most people would accept that in their own lives, accidents and coincidences happen, and some things really are just as they seem. That strikes me as a more useful place to start, though I have never had to try to rescue someone from a rabbit hole. Did you see the recent film The Order? Justin Kurzel's film (which is based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt's 1989 book "The Silent Brotherhood") is critically important given where America is right now. The film did not do well commercially. In my opinion, it told too much uncomfortable truth in an era when most people are trying to avoid the horrible reality. Denial will not save them. The screening I went to was basically empty. I saw "The Order" three times, and only in one screening were there more than 10 people in it. I went to see the film by myself during its opening week in London, on a freezing night between Christmas and New Year. The cinema I saw it in was almost empty too. I thought The Order was a solid piece of work, and I was glad that it didn't flinch from having the characters articulate their horrible racist ideology that drove them to kill. My main doubt was whether the film did enough to dramatize the broader sense of economic disempowerment that it implied was part of their motivation, because the more we understand what drives people toward the violent extremes of the right, the more likely we are to be able to divert them. The Order is based on the murder in 1984 of the radio personality Alan Berg. Watching Kurzel's film sent me back to Oliver Stone's 1988 movie "Talk Radio," which was also inspired, in part, by that story. Much as I'm critical of Stone's later movie JFK, he deserves a lot of credit being so swift to tackle the story of Berg's murder and the vicious ideology that drove the killers. Stone's "Talk Radio" was warning about The Turner Diaries seven years before it helped to inspire Timothy McVeigh to murder 168 people with his truck bomb in Oklahoma City. Where do we go from here? Towards the end of last year, I went to a presentation of the results of some polling conducted in the wake of the presidential election. It pointed to a troubling finding: when disaffected voters heard Democratic politicians ask for their votes to 'save democracy,' what many of those voters heard was 'please vote for me to save my job, and the status quo.' This chimed with my experience talking to people in the week before the election, which I spent travelling westward through Pennsylvania. What I think this points to is conspiracy theories are one of the warning lights on the dashboard of democracy. They express how people feel about power. More people who care about democracy should have seen those lights flashing red and acted accordingly much earlier. But now here we are. The only way that I can see America recovering from this situation is for democratically elected politicians to show that they can and do make ordinary people's lives better. The problem is that, meanwhile, conspiracy theories are a very useful way for other politicians to stoke distrust and division in pursuit of power.
