Deep Dive
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And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, a new podcast presented by Betches News. Where we keep you responsibly informed without depleting your faith in humanity. A big task. V, you're back. You're back from South by Southwest. You're back from Texas. Tell us how it was. What were you up to? Anything good? You know, I was just
Austin, Texas is very green and delightful and the people were wonderful. And I found one restaurant that I had a good meal at and then I ate at that restaurant every single day because it was called Seconds.
So you definitely went back for seconds. Yes, I literally only went to this restaurant because I am nothing if not loyal. But it was wonderful. South by Southwest, the thing I was doing was part of something called Politics House. We got a lot of people excited. I got a tattoo while I was there that says vote. So new tattoo. They said flash tattoo and I thought they meant like, you know, like a temp. Like one that'll come off? No, this don't come off. And then sooner be known to me.
I was inked. Right. Flash meaning they do it quickly, not like it'll come off quickly. Yeah. But I was like, obviously not going to mortify myself and be like, oh, I didn't think it was a real tattoo. So I just got a tattoo.
at the party. Oh my gosh. Did anyone else have a mishap? If that happened to me, I would be getting my first tattoo. There was a line. There was an hour's long line because I went first and then I obviously influenced people into getting a tattoo. So you could get Vote, which is the one that I got that I'll post on my story so you guys can see it. I actually think it came out really cute. Or you could get one that was like lips and a tongue that said, eat the rich. I was like, look, I can't
I agree. You are the rich one day. Well, I can't. I was like, that's a lot for me. And then there was one that said strike with a banner, which I also loved. There were some great ones, but I felt like vote was like I could I could carry that forever. It's bipartisan. It's nonpartisan. Did you how flash was the splash tattoo? Like how long did it take?
Um, it only took maybe like 10, 15 minutes. It was very, very quick. Uh, the guy did a great job. His name is Tucker Gunner and he is based out there in Austin. Shout out to Tucker. And, uh, yeah, but I like, it was one of those things where like, you just soon to be known to me, I had a tattoo and then I was like, okay, well I have a lot of tattoos, so this isn't that crazy. Where'd you get it?
It's right on my arm. It's like right here on my arm. Like your voting arm. Because I freaked out, right? So I panicked when they were like, well, where do you want to get it? And I got it on my, yes, on my woman's right arm for women's rights. Rights. Yeah. Vote right here. It's like a little ballot box with a little hand putting a vote sticker in. I love that. It was great. I love that. The thing I was worried about though is I wanted to go swimming and I couldn't because I had a tattoo. So that was the only bad part. Everything else was good.
That sounds amazing. So if you're in Austin or you live in Austin, check out Seconds, check out Tucker for a flash chat. And unfortunately, we do not yet have the audio from V's South by Southwest panel, but we are still working on it. And this week, we have something else very exciting for you. On Thursday, we're going to be bringing back a friend of Betcha's News and my now co-author, Emily Amick, aka Emily in your phone. You might know her on Instagram and TikTok.
She's going to come on the show to talk about everything that's been going on with Kate Middleton and specifically how the frenzy around her whereabouts are really emblematic of a bigger conversation and a more unsettling trend in information sharing, that there is significantly more distrust in traditional messengers. And she wrote an amazing piece about the conspiratization of mass communications. So we're going to talk about that. V, how are you feeling about this Kate thing?
I feel so excited to be included because this feels like peak Betches girly pop content. And I'm very excited. I've never been a royal follower, really. The last time I was into the royals, my mom kept me home from school to watch Princess Diana's wedding. Oh, wow. No, funeral. Princess Diana's funeral. Funeral, yeah.
And that was incredible. You're definitely not alive during her wedding. No, no, no, no. You were not in school. No, she kept me home from school to watch the funeral because, you know, six hours ahead. But I'm fascinated by this. And I've got some of my own favorite conspiracy theories about her. So we'll talk about those on the episode later this week.
save them. I definitely don't want to spoil anything that will be in all of our feeds on Thursday. And if you can't wait until then, you can still check out Emily's piece on sub stack. Um, I considered a trailer. I think her sub stack is Emily and your phone. It'll be in her Insta bio, but you can check out a preview there. And I'm really excited to have that conversation very soon. Um, yeah,
Yeah, we are doing well in the guests realm. We are. Yeah, we have we have a lot of seriously very exciting guests coming up the next few weeks, which is really such a treat because we didn't know if we were going to do guests.
And then we had Taylor, the wrens, our little icebreaker and you guys loved it. So we were like, okay, let's get the whole group chat out here. Let's get folks out here and do more mini soaps. You know, the requests have been, have been rolling in. We have some really exciting people. We don't want to spoil that either, but if there are people who you want us to speak to, or even if there's just a topic you want us to shed light on, our DMS are open to nice constructive commentary, please under the desk news or Sammy. So let us know what you love us.
what you want to hear about and we'll keep talking. We're always open to suggestions. All right. So it is now time to get into the temp check. And I think we have a really good one. Speaking of like friends of the pod, Sammy, have you heard the term moral narcissism? So I can't say that I had heard it before, you know, we had kind of touched on it behind the scenes, but I think it's definitely a great conversation worthy of us having right here.
So this is something that I saw on Future Friend of the Pod, Erica Lebon's page. She's a popular Instagrammer who just really has some really great hot takes sometimes. And this is coming in the wake of Elise Myers being bullied off TikTok and the in-progress attempt to cancel Jeff Jackson over his vote on the TikTok ban.
So the Jeff Jackson thing, I swear every interview I've done this week has asked me what I think about the band and then what I think about Jeff Jackson. I think he needs to win AG in North Carolina. And while he made a fatal mistake as a creator in betraying the audience, he is a phenomenal legislator and lawyer. And I don't think he should be canceled. But this is where this internet moral narcissism comes in. So let me just tell you what it is.
How does moral narcissism show up in social and political discourse? Moral narcissism is best identified by causing harm in the name of virtue. In the realm of social justice advocacy, virtue is often attached to social or political causes.
Moral narcissism adopts a cause, usually many causes, and weaponizes those causes to abuse, shame, ostracize, dox, cancel, and punish those who defy the ideology. Is this kind of like sounding a little familiar? Oh, never heard anyone do this before. This is like all what social media is about right now.
The difference between altruism and moral narcissism is that altruism does not cause harm for harm, nor does it use labels to crush dissent. Altruism is people and cure centered and focuses on engaging and enlightening. Well, on the other hand, moral narcissism causes harm under the guise of curing harm.
because the primary motivation is not to cure harm, but to project inner feelings of guilt and shame onto others while using a weapon, the cause, to sanitize their actions as virtuous. So we see this a ton in all the political rhetoric. It comes from the right and from the left. But this moral narcissism not only allows people to kind of
under the radar with their bullying, but the harmful actions are praised as virtuous. This selecting somebody and canceling them or ruining them over one thing they did or something they maybe didn't even do is not beneficiary to
It causes more harm for harm's sake. And in some ways, it does feel a little bit like the way folks who are often marginalized have built a way to ostracize others or get to be the bully sometimes. Yeah. It's not cute.
Yeah. So most of that's from Elika Laban's post that she just did on it. And so honestly, like when you had shared this with me, you actually sent me down a TikTok rabbit hole into not people talking about this, but via examples of this. And one creator who I saw in this
This is just sort of a one comment that they made within a video, which is saying when she was saying that like activist spaces are trauma filled spaces that people want to become activists and help other people because they don't want others to endure the hurt that they have. And I can deeply, deeply relate to that feeling and why it has always made me interested and pulled and compelled to sort of these, these conversations. And yeah,
That is something that I think doesn't like get acknowledged enough that even the people making these morally narcissistic statements or drawing those morally narcissistic lines, they're not necessarily acknowledging it, that this is,
so much more about individual human psychology than it actually is about like any political or moral issue. But what I've observed about this is that the broader effect is that it flattens people entirely. Like it flattens individuals and entire groups into monoliths. And ultimately what it does is it creates so much more bias and preconceived notions about other people and about their qualities and that they're bad or
And I don't know how else you define that other than as like baseless prejudicial hate, which is completely at odds with the vision of liberation. And I just, when you actually meet people, someone you disagree with fundamentally, and you engage with them as just a human and you don't flatten them to their view or their demographic group, you gain so much more in terms of not just like
you know, a mutual whole sense of respect, but like you can bring someone over to your point of view. And I think that sometimes that's like never really considered. And instead there's this focus on like, you're with my opinion or you're against my opinion, which like totally defies concepts of intersectionality and the idea that lived experiences can affect people. And also if you don't believe that people can be changed, right.
or that their minds can be changed, how do you ever have progress? What system are you trying to work under? Because you're not really going to persuade people to just tear the whole thing down. You might try, but sure, more likely you can get people onto your side about things. And change can happen. It's just no one really talks about the good things that happen.
And an example of this that I could give is, I mean, I support the Starbucks workers' right to organize. And there is some folks who have called for a boycott of Starbucks because they say that there are some parts of the movement who think that a boycott could potentially influence the higher-ups to allow them to organize.
Well, at the same time, these folks are working a job that is reliant on tips and it's reliant on customer flow to have the power to be able to organize to get this next level thing. There's a creator that I really like who had a Starbucks cup in his video and said,
You could watch it start. And he had the Starbucks cup that he was drinking out of while he was doing his live. And people were starting to drag him. You were starting to watch the beginning of him being canceled.
Well, a lot of it are folks who aren't this man's followers and they don't realize that this man lives in his van. And so he came on to be like, hey, guys, I live in my van. It was freezing cold outside. And the only place that I could use the restroom and sit for a minute with the money I had was to buy a three dollar coffee, which is, yes, I agree, expensive and nonunion. But it gave me the opportunity to use the restroom and sit inside and wait out the snowstorm.
Because I live in my van. Like, you know what I mean? It's quite, what's crazy though is that he has to like justify it. He was in shock. He was like, I can't believe you're turning on me. Please don't turn on me. Like, I have literally nothing.
I'm not against the movement. I'm living in my van. So that's the example of moral narcissism we're talking about, where people have an ideology and then they want it to be so perfectly, purely followed. But in many ways, in action, that kind of stuff can't happen.
Also, it's like, do you want to be right or do you want to change something? Right. Because like you could make statements all day from a soapbox, but if, but there are actual ways to change things and, you know, but here's the thing. I don't want to say, oh, the people who are saying boycott Starbucks aren't having a good, that's not necessarily a bad suggestion if you want to put pressure on management. Like that's a good suggestion. It's the, it's the attack thing.
It's the dragging the guy who lives in his van for getting a Starbucks because of necessity. That's what the line totally. But here's the thing. Even if it wasn't out of necessity, it's like, why don't you tell people why you think that, you know, you know, collective movement, collective action from consumers and workers is explained to them. What are you trying to achieve? If you're just like yelling at someone that they're,
I don't know what they, who knows what, I don't even, I don't know what they were saying, but like, if you're just yelling at someone who literally is like no idea that they did anything wrong or feels like, what does that achieve? All that makes is that person feel like really bad about themselves and probably does not make them like your movement or whatever you're arguing for. Even if a real conversation about that or like even just a real DM that explains, by the way,
We're doing this. It's important for creators to be conscious of this. And like, he could have just been like, yeah, sure. I'll move my cup.
But the thing is, in that circumstance, here's the other thing. I won't ever do a food boycott. I know a lot of folks are boycotting different food brands because ideologically they don't align for X, Y, Z reason. I worked in food security for 10 years in Baltimore. I will never boycott a food brand because for some people, they already feel bad enough that they do feed their family on McDonald's or a Pizza Hut or whatever the case may be.
And then we have this idea of a food boycott, which means that you have choice, right? The people who can boycott these big companies have choice, right?
And a lot of folks don't have choice. So they are going to buy Kellogg's cereal because it's on sale, even if there's a boycott. They are going to do the Pizza Hut $7 deal thing, right? Because that feeds three of their children for $7. And sometimes we need to give some grace within the levels of what we're doing boycott-wise and realize what is actually helping or hurting the people and what's
And what is something that makes me feel good to yell at other people on the internet at as my action? If your action is just to yell at other people on the internet, because you know, something moral high groundy that they didn't know or that they can't participate in, that's not actually helping the people who are at the center of the ideology that are harmed. Totally. And it just doesn't like, we can talk about the optics of it, how I don't think it like reflects well and is effective, but to your point, it,
It's not management that's going to lose out when you try to run a non, an ineffective boycott. It's the employees right now. Unfortunately, the way the power is structured is that a lot of attempts to sort of flip that power structure on its head. It's too ingrained at this point. Like it's our, our system is too entrenched. And that's why, like, I mean, bigger picture, when you notice something, you're,
is going in a particular direction. You want to stop it sooner. This is part of money being in politics. Like this is why we're, this is a money in politics problem. I think in a lot of ways. And I don't know when we talk about our main news story, which I think we'll get to in a second, you'll see the, the long, the very longterm events, the longterm results of mass corruption on a, on a country.
Yeah. And it is strikes and boycotts can work. But I think, you know, look to your elders and the organizing movements. I look to them, even myself, to say what's going to be most effective here. Is a boycott actually going to get us where we need to go? Or does that actually hurt our cause? Is the strike the right thing to do? Or does that hurt our cause? Like when John Deere was on strike and it was like, don't buy a brand new John Deere tractor right now. Hold out for three months while we finish our negotiations. It's like, yeah.
All right. Yeah, we can hold on that, but I can't hold on affordable food sometimes. Like there's certain things that don't make sense. Right. And look what the UAW did. You look at they had the most successful one of the I think possibly what some people would say is the most successful renegotiating of their contract. And the way that they organized the strike was not just everyone's going on strike because that screws the that screws the people who are striking ultimately. Right.
What they did was they created a very targeted approach to which factories specifically they decided to shut down. They looked at specifically what the margins on which cars being produced at which factories would be most effective to strike on at each given time in the negotiation. And then they like statically
staggered it so that it would, in moments of the negotiation, they would be putting pressure on management in new ways. So it's not like everyone just stopped going to work in one day. It's that there was an approach to it. And sometimes if you're not an expert on that, or if, you know, it is better to take advice from expert organizers and just thinking about like,
the way that the words that you use are, are contributing or not contributing to the conversation. And I know we talk about tech talk a lot, but like a lot of this stuff is not necessarily on tech talk exclusively, but like a lot of it comes from troll and bot, uh, strategies that are trying to sow division based on these side strategies.
skirmishes about Starbucks unionizing and DEI. Like, I truly believe that the entire DEI argument is really heavily bolstered by trolls and bots potentially deployed by other countries. So just, I don't know. I try not to make myself a propaganda pawn to the best of my ability.
And I appreciate that about you. Yeah. Aleka Labonte's a fantastic creator. Follow her everywhere. Maybe we'll get her on the show. And man, if we could get Sean Fain on the show, I would like not be able to speak. I know you're not supposed to idolize people, but I would-
Okay, when I met Dolly Parton, I just burst out in tears. And I feel like meeting Sean Fain, I would just like burst out in tears because you're just so grateful for like the things that you've seen them accomplish for the regular guy, you know? I truly admire Dolly Parton. And I mean, I'm Sean Fain. I actually, I don't know if you know this about me, but I majored in labor unions basically in college. So...
I don't know. Maybe I'll, maybe we once had actually one of my old professors on this podcast back when it was the best just up like years ago. Maybe there's a, maybe there's an opening. I find unions incredibly interesting and just, I love labor relations. All right. DMS. If you want, if you want labor relations content, I want, I want it. So I vote yes. All right. Let me, let me get us into our main news.
Are you ready? Ready. All right. So typically we talk about the American fever dreams and America does play a role in this, but we are going to talk about Haiti. Are you up on what's been going on with Haiti?
I am a little bit up, but I'm not incredibly up on every detail. But from what I understand, this is way longer than just like the past week. Yeah, we're going to forego centuries of history. And we're just going to talk about what's happened really in the last year to get us just what we need to know about what's going on right now. Because it's very fascinating. Sex, lies, and videotape all over this story. Very interesting, spooky stuff. So.
So we know what happened here on January 6th, but since then, there have been lots of more successful January 6th's all around the globe. Brazil had an insurrection moment before the Trump of Brazil went into hiding in Florida.
And Guatemala was doing a little bit of a coup a couple months ago. And Haiti's government of, quote, elites has been overthrown by, quote, gangs. Now, when we talk about this, I'm going to use the words elites and gangs. But remember, we are of the people. And oftentimes the people are called gangs when they rise up against a totalitarian government. So yeah. But these are the terms being used in traditional media outlets that are reporting on it. We're not actually on the ground in Haiti. So
We're relying on the accuracy of other news outlets.
So when I say elite government, we're talking about the established government of Haiti that was before the coup. And when I say gangs, we're talking about guys like Jimmy Barbecue, okay, who used to be a cop and who is now like a vigilante gang leader. But all right, here's where we begin. On July 7th, 2021, at 1am, Jovenel Moise, the 43rd president of Haiti, was assassinated at his residence in Port-au-Prince. You guys probably remember maybe hearing a little bit about
A group of 28 foreign mercenaries, mostly Colombians, were alleged to be responsible for the killing. Moise was not popular. He was trying to stay in office past his term limit, familiar. And there was already a lot of political unrest in Haiti under his leadership. So it was not really a surprise that he was killed, but it was suspicious that he was killed.
that he was killed by Colombians because Colombia has been very supportive of Haiti, especially after disasters like the earthquakes and all that kind of stuff. So none of the- Very suspicious. Very suspicious. None of the president's many, he had like a dozen or so security guards were injured. So he's assassinated. None of them are injured, sus. But Moise's wife, Martine, was shot a bunch of times and taken by helicopters to the United States where she was treated at a hospital in Miami.
I was like, man, evac to Miami from Haiti. Like, that is interesting. But they said that they couldn't trust having her go to the Haitian hospital because they thought that they weren't sure what was going on. They thought maybe they would kill his wife. Sure.
So she's in Miami. This is all tragic. This is a nightmare. And as she's recovering in the United States, this dude, Claude Joseph, who was he was in Moises cabinet, if you will. It's not called the cabinet, but basically. So this guy, Claude Joseph, seizes power in Haiti because Haiti did not have a clear line of succession. So when the president was assassinated, there's not like a vice president who immediately takes over. They're supposed to, like, have another election. But this guy, Joseph, is like, no, it's me.
I'm the problem. It's me. So the people do not like this guy either. And in short order, they have a new new prime minister put in this guy, Ariel Henry. People don't like Ariel Henry either. This is all the elite government people still. But we'll talk more about Ariel later. Are you still wondering, Sammy, what is the deal with the Colombian assassins?
Yeah, I can't believe that we never I never followed up on that from a while ago. So we have because we have like this guy gets killed. We're like three presidents and prime ministers and suddenly and like no word from Colombia. Like, girl, and we're having our own coup. Yeah. Yeah, we're having our own coup.
So the Colombians that assassinated the president just like assassinated him and apparently just stood around and got arrested. So they all get arrested and are interviewed and they're like, hey, what's going on? Like, did the president of Colombia send you? Should we expect more unrest? Are you invading our country? And these poor folks are like, no, we're extremely poor Colombians who were just offered money to kill the president. Yes.
We're offered money to kill the president of Haiti. We have no beef. We weren't sent by our government. We're not like an organized gang or whatever. We just like all were told to show up here and kill the president of Haiti. Do they do this by trade and that's why they were chosen or? I don't. So.
I was like, who hired these guys, right? Like the people in Haiti and Claude Joseph and Ariel Henry are like swear Girl Scouts honor. It wasn't us. So who hired them? It turns out some guy in Florida. Yeah.
Was that when she was brought to Miami? Yes. So this guy in Florida, a 63-year-old guy named Christian Emmanuel Sanon, is a Haitian-American pastor. And he apparently got this idea in his head that he would assassinate the president of Haiti and then he would take power and become the president of Haiti. And so he hired these Colombians through a private Venezuelan security firm, which is based in Florida. Wow.
We have a TikTok ban for national security reasons, but we have a Venezuelan mercenary firm in Florida. You could just like rent a bunch of Colombians to go kill people. I'm sure they don't advertise themselves as that in the phone book. What do people have? Google results? Like, yeah, I'm sure they're just like, oh, we're a cybersecurity front. Yeah. So he's in Florida. He's in Miami doing this, like getting all this together. And then now they're saying –
This story, it just kept getting weirder and weirder and weirder. So now they're saying that maybe this Haitian American pastor with the Venezuelan hookup in Florida was coordinating with the president's widow, Martine. But they shot her. They shot her, but a bunch of times...
Like in a, ooh, I got shot, but it wasn't fatal. A flash wound. Yes. They think that she was coordinating with him to make it seem like she was in danger, but in fact, she was the mastermind. And they think this so much that in fact, just a month ago on February 19th, Martine Moyes, the widow, and Claude Joseph, the dude who seized power after the assassination, have both been accused of
of conspiring in the assassination and were formally charged alongside that pastor from Miami with murder. Wow. And are they in jail? They are in jail right now. The thing is, though, we're talking about a corrupt government, right? And there's still corruption now. There's so many issues. So is that really what happened or is somebody making this up? Dysfunction, a go-go in Haiti, getting more intense. Yeah.
And now the corruption is all getting brought to light because the Haitian people and people around the world are seeing these arrests. They're seeing that they're tied to this Florida pastor. And so they decide that the new prime minister, Ariel Henry, also has to go because he's been a part of this elite government crew. And so the people don't trust him. He initially tries to hold on to power and beat down the dissonance. Going so far as to ask the U.N. to send in military troops to help him. That's where he went wrong.
The people don't like this. The people, they're like, no, you all are crazy. So last week he steps down after a threat from a prominent gang leader and a former cop, Jimmy Barbecue. I love that.
He wanted to think of him Jimmy Buffett. Why is he called Barbecue? Because he's in these streets roasting them, Sammy. I'm like, I don't know whose side I'm on in this, but like Jimmy Barbecue sounds like the best of the bunch so far. Sounds like he's on The Sopranos. He does. So he's a prominent, quote, gang leader, and he's a former cop. And he has actually been able to
start uprisings in Haiti and hold territory in the past. So he's got a lot of power. And he apparently told the prime minister, you need to step down or, and he said there will be a genocide, which is terrible.
Of his own people, I guess. I don't know. This is what's so confusing because we're getting everything like piecemeal. So Henry steps down thinking that's going to quell the riots, but it doesn't. So now in Haiti, there is like a civil war. It is the people versus the elite government versus Jimmy Barbecue.
And in the vacuum of a lack of government, of any order in process, these gangs and militias that pop up and are jockeying for power are really kind of getting that power. So what's interesting right now is since the start of the month, various groups have been attacking with unprecedented coordination the last remnants of the Haitian state. They've taken over the airport, the police stations, government buildings, even the jail. They let people out of jail to be in the gang. And it's not a great situation. So.
So I guess my question is, and okay, let me also add like part of this is due to the fact that there was...
Just severe economic strife for decades now. Yes. And especially after the 2010 earthquake. There are two earthquakes in the past like 10 years or 15 years. Really bad ones. And none of it ever got like rebuilt effectively. No. And they got tons of money. And they see that money going to this elite government and all this fancy stuff. This is what's so...
I feel like this must have been what Russia was like after the wall fell. But you had Putin, you had someone who could come in and take power. So that's what's really dangerous about this is that like, can barbecue be Putin? Like, is that what I'm hearing? What is the plan? Well, yeah.
Jimmy Barbecue said, there is, Jimmy Barbecue said, quote, either Haiti becomes a paradise or a hell for all of us. It's out of the question for a small group of rich people living in big hotels to decide the fate of people living in working class neighborhoods. That's where I'm like, Jimmy, that makes sense to me. But there is actually a, there is a third group fighting for power that we didn't even get to yet. This is the vigilante movement known as Buakale. Okay.
Which is an anti-gang movement. So the Biwakale are against Jimmy Barbecue and his crew, against the elite government, against the gangs. And they are forming defense committees with shared fortifications, surveillance systems, checkpoints. And they even have like their own cop patrols for their neighborhoods. I think they're going to win.
Okay, well, if you're rooting for the vigilante groups. I'm not rooting. I'm just saying I think they will win. Facts. Okay. Because they have a structure. They have like a plan. They have a structure. They have also lynched hundreds of people that they suspect have gained leadership without trials. And they have lynched hundreds of people for like common crimes. Why? You know.
Is that just to intimidate people? Is he Putin-ing? Are they Putin-ing? I don't know what they're doing. It's very bad. And the thing is, like with a lot of issues, we are right in the middle of it right now. So there isn't this clear path to peace. Like hindsight is so 20-20. At some point, we'll be able to look back and see exactly who was telling the truth and what was going on with stuff. Yeah.
Some good news in this is 47 Americans landed in Miami yesterday on the first of what will likely be several rescue flights getting US citizens out of Haiti. I know Canada and some other countries are doing the same. So we don't exactly know what's going to happen next, but that at least should catch you up with the conversationals of what's been going on. I don't know, maybe the
Clintons will come through. The Hillary and Bill went there to Haiti on their honeymoon in 1975 and have promised since 1975 that they would help develop Haiti for tourism. So I don't know. Maybe Hillary's got to put on like her pantsuit bathing suit and go down there and maybe she's the strong man. No, don't do that. Yeah. I mean, the Clintons are famously doing nothing. So they could do that. They went on their honeymoon. Interesting. Yeah.
I just feel like it only really makes sense to me that the vigilante groups would come out of this with power because they actually have like an organization and, you know,
they can sort of retake the infrastructure. Apparently like 15,000 people have been evacuated from Port-au-Prince. And it's just, it's so terrible. It is. And I hope to folks listening who say sometimes, you know, like we have this ideological thing where some folks are like, oh, let's just burn it all down and start over. Let's return all of the power to the people and kill all the elites.
That's what this is exactly what it looks like. It is harder once you've destroyed the entirety of the infrastructure and systems in place at all to rebuild new ones because you get into the situation jockeying for power. And I mean, of the three groups there, you have the former government and structure, you have the vigilante group and you have this gang group led by the former police. That sounds very familiar to me.
What could happen here if folks continue this idea that burning it down is easier than fixing the holes? Right. I mean, I understand why people are tempted to just burn it down because you just want to say, fuck it. It's so unfair. It doesn't make any sense. Nothing gets done. But this is what it looks like when you burn it all – when it gets burned down. Like there's no –
If you imagine that you're going to be the one who you guys are just going to reset everything. It doesn't work that way. And I don't know. It's a tough balance. I mean, I don't think our institutions are quite as problematic as they were in Haiti, but it's not really comparable.
given the colonial past also. Well, and speaking of colonialism, now because everything is so broken down and there's no structure, you are at risk of colonialism again, right? Because somebody can come in and they could say, all right, well, we'll fix it all up for you. And people who have very little resources may be more willing to give over that power. Well, that's what Ariel Henry wanted to bring the UN in. So, I mean, it's... Look, it's terrible. There's sometimes in life, there's only bad options.
All right, should we go to our down ballot era? Let's go down for a lift.
Now, we are going to do a full update on the TikTok situation today, but we are in our down ballot era and we want to shout out some of the Democratic candidates who are currently running for reelection in the House who supported TikTok by voting against the ban last week. And our friend Brian at Oath pulled these for us. Oath.vote for you to find out who you want to vote for. He pulled these for me. He was like, do you like these candidates? I'm like, these are perfect. So first up.
If you're looking to contribute to Democratic candidates who are actively rerunning for office, you've got Johanna Hayes at the U.S. House in Connecticut's District 5, Val Hoyle from Oregon's District 4, Sarah Jacobs from California's 51st, Stephen Horsford from Nevada's 4th District, Morgan McGarvey
in Kentucky's 3rd, and Richard Neal, Massachusetts 1st District. These are the TikTok stans of the house.
We love that. We love that. I will say I'm a big fan of Sarah Jacobs. She is just, you know, for more color. She's very outspoken on reproductive rights. Last year, she actually was the person who introduced legislation. It was called the My Body, My Data Act. And that was it aimed to regulate data around like health information in response to anxiety around period tracking apps. I'm sure you remember that. It hasn't been passed, but.
you know, she's in the house, difficult environment famously. I just have to say, I love a legislator with an angle. I love a legislator that helps an issue break through in a way that's actually helpful at raising awareness. It's something that is personally very relevant, like so relevant as to how you track your period. And just like someone who takes another angle on something rather than like abortion, good abortion, bad, like we know how many times can you go in that circle? But
I happen to really like her. That really stuck out to me. And yeah, love Sarah Jacobs. Love those candidates.
And if you are in your down ballot era, be sure to check out our in my down ballot era mug and our shirt on shop at just dot com. It is there if you go to the new section. And yeah, we are in our down ballot era. Hardcore. We are. And I got to tell you to all my people who are picky about your T-shirts, we picked a really high quality T-shirt. It'll wash well. It's white. It has a pocket on the left side. The print is small and it's
It's the Comfort Colors t-shirt, which is like the best. High quality. The best shirt. Super comfortable, super joyful. And then, of course, your mug for your political tea. I'm going to get myself one of your political tea. I got one. I got one. I love a pocket t-shirt. When they were designing it, I was like, I need a pocket for my hopes and dreams. I agree. You've got to write something cute on the pocket. Yeah. And I love the font. It's beautiful.
It's very Barbie. It's cute. It's very Barbie. All right. Shall we go to our next segment? Our next segment, Mayor I Can't. I can't, Sammy, with the hypothetical court cases. Okay. Tell me.
Okay, so there are folks making it all the way to the Supreme Court or to some high court with their BS case of no consequence. So I thought it was illegal for judges to take hypothetical cases, but apparently I am wrong. I looked into this. I thought you had to like actually to sue somebody or to bring a case forward, be able to prove that it was like negatively impacting you in a consequential way.
I don't get it. How does that make sense? We're making rulings on hypotheticals now, which is crazy to me. But there is this federal judicial practice known as hypothetical jurisdiction, whereby a court renders a binding judgment in a case without first verifying that it has the power to do so. By the mid-1990s, every federal court of appeals had adopted the practice despite the fact that it violates fundamental tenets of judicial power and in some case even violates the Constitution itself.
In 1998, the Supreme Court thought about ending the practice, but decided not to. Decided not to. They thought about hypothetically what it would be like if they ended the practice, but they decided not to. Rhetorically, we say we're going to kick the can down the road again. So anyway, this term, see, the more you know about scary stuff, the less scary it is.
This thing where they take hypothetical cases is called hypothetical jurisdiction. And an example of that is 303 Creative, that case that was at the Supreme Court where a graphic designer was just told that she never has to design a wedding website for a gay couple, even though she was never asked to. Oh, that's one of these. OK, that's one of these. I didn't realize that was like codified as allowed.
I just thought it happened. No, it was shocking because it was the most like obvious hypothetical jurisdiction thing going on. And another one is Matthew Kazmarek, that bastard down in Texas, the Trump appointee to the federal court overruled Title 10 protections that allow teenagers to access birth control without getting parental consent.
He should not have even had this case on his docket because the guy suing, claiming that his religious rights were violated by Title 10, is a Christian dad of three daughters that he is raising on, quote, abstinence only. And none of those girls. He thinks he is. Yeah, right. And none of those girls even asked for birth control in the first place. So he just made this case up out of nowhere. Also, this is very not hashtag girl dad of him.
Well, okay. Matthew Kaczmarek, he's very interesting as a judge. I mean, you don't usually get into specific. He's the, first of all,
As we know, he's the one who decided the Mipha-Pristone case at the appeals level. What's interesting about him is that he's widely regarded as being like the most extreme judge possibly in the country. And what they did with that case to get rid of Mipha-Pristone is... So usually when a case goes to a particular circuit or a particular court to be appealed...
you there's like a lottery for which judge will hear the case. So it's supposed to be fair. Like you might get a judge who is more conservative. You might get one that's more liberal. Cause Merrick is the only judge in his jurisdiction. So there is no lottery, any case that's there, he hears it. So they purposely brought the Miffa Pristone case in his court jurisdiction so that he would, they knew he would be the one to rule on it. So like, this is, he, he is like,
you know, he's going to be a star if there's a dictatorship. So just keep your eye on Matthew Kazmaric because he was someone who was essentially planted where he is so that he could make the rulings that he does. Yep. And the Supreme Court did say you're not going to be allowed to judge shop anymore, but I promise you, like, the way that they wrote that is so incredibly vague that we are still going to see judge shopping. It's harder to judge shop if you only, if you have more than one
judge on the can hear a case and he's the only one that can hear it. So I don't know. I have a better story for us right now. Oh, do tell for our next segment. We are coming in hot. And I actually have something that I'm kind of happy about today. Um, that's come out of our very own government. If you can believe it. Um, president Biden yesterday signs an executive order that will provide $200 million in funding for
Sounds like a lot. It's only not even half of Donald Trump's civil fraud judgment, but okay. It will provide $200 million in funding for women's health research. This executive order included 20 directives to various federal agencies to research things like preventative and diagnostic care, how treatment of certain illnesses affects women,
women differently than men because most clinical trials have been run more so on men. And then also to close gaps in research into conditions that exclusively affect women. So like usually reproductive, relevant,
This is something I thought a lot about over the past few years because I was actually diagnosed with PCOS a few years ago. And it was a game-changing diagnosis for me. And it's not like I even have such a severe case. But it really put into context a lot of my symptoms that don't even seem like they'd be related to PCOS. But right now...
We're at an age where a lot of people we know are trying to have children. And I know so many people who have ended up discovering like unknown health conditions in the course of the phase of trying to have children, but they would have never discovered it if they didn't have access to health care. And in a lot of cases, these are like really bad.
problematic things that can lead to other problems, including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, other mental health conditions, trouble conceiving. It's usually why people find them. And then other reproductive risks. Long term, you were looking at like cancer risks and just so many things. So I mean, this is something I've been thinking about for about a year now. I would love to find a way to lobby for legislation that would provide free annual screenings
for women starting in adolescence and basically screen for these very common problems that you can treat and catch things early and you can like ultimately change people's lives and their health trajectory. If you caught PCOS at 15 versus 35, you're in a different, you're just living a different life. So I am thrilled that the administration is focusing on women's health and we have six months to get these results
These screen this screening idea on their desk. Robinette, if you're listening, we're doing it. We want to do it. We're doing it. I mean, it's not even that rare, right? There are gender specific screenings for young men. The joke of the turn in cough and check for prostate cancer. They're doing that for them, you know, at a very young age. They should certainly be doing equal checks for women and girls. I agree.
It's tough. I mean, it's also like a pipeline question of like who are who's making these decisions? You know, who was able to be a doctor 50 years ago? So it's you know, that takes a long time to really like equal out. Well, we're finally using actual menstrual blood to test the efficacy of menstrual products. So I feel like we're on a good trajectory here. We're going to make it.
Wow. I know. They just started doing that last year. Last year? Yes, it shocked me. What were they using? They were using water before. They were using colored water, but it doesn't have the same viscosity or anything. It's completely different. Have any of them ever had a period? Obviously not. Obviously not. Were they using red water? Yeah, I guess. They were like, it's the same thing, right? Gross. That's crazy. Have they seen blood in their
No. Speaking of not seeing things in our lives, we've got an episode coming up this week. Don't forget, we're going to talk all about where is Kate Middleton that will drop on Thursday. As always, thank you guys so much for spending your hour with us. We love you. Get in the DMs. Tell us what guests you want. Tell us what topics you want. And hopefully we'll see you very soon. Until next time, I'm Fida Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dreaming.
American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Morales-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Betches.