Episode 81: How the Hell Did We Get Here

In this episode, Tlakatekatl critically examines the current political climate in the United States, particularly the increased targeting and detention of immigrants from Central and South America by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Tlakatekatl argues that ICE’s claims of targeting only criminals are false and that the agency is engaging in what amounts to kidnapping. 

Tlakatekatl also connects the rise of authoritarianism and anti-immigrant sentiment to the mainstream media’s failure to hold power accountable. He concludes by exploring psychological and sociological theories, such as the Authoritarian Personality and Social Dominance Theory, to understand the rise of authoritarian figures that can contribute to the appeal of fascism.

This December, I'll be joining Skeptoid Adventures as your guide for The Mysteries of the Maya, where we'll travel through the Yucatán exploring remarkable archaeological sites, uncovering the real history behind the Maya civilization, and separating fact from fiction along the way. 

To reserve your spot, all you need is a fully refundable $500 deposit. Your deposit is refundable through August 1, so you can reserve your place with confidence. After Au

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I think we've learned a good lesson. I've always heard that honesty is the best honesty. Now I'm catching on the why that's some why that's some why that's Yelly Belly, good people.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

This is Lakate Cat, and I'll be your host for this week's episode, episode 81. How the hell did we get here? That's what we're calling this. Those of you who've followed us since the beginning or for a good while now know that we started this show to counter the pseudo-history and the pseudo-archaeology that permeates the stories around the Mesoamerican past and the present, especially as it relates to indigenous peoples and cultures. And so I just want to assure our listeners that this show is still committed to that mission, but we also do more than that. Our goal has always been about empowering indigenous Chicano-Mehicano people as well. One of the ways that we reach out to our relatives across our native homeland and beyond is through this medium, through this mechanism that we call the podcast. We like to share stories and our knowledge, which we hope will be useful in some way. And so the project of illuminating our gente, our people, our relatives, is one and the same whether we're talking about pseudo history, pseudo-archaeology, or about current events, which that's what today's episode is about. And so that includes addressing issues that affect us directly. Right now, the main issue that is affecting our communities at large is the targeting and roundup of our relatives under the false pretense that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE is making the US quote unquote safe by targeting and detaining undocumented immigrants who have criminal records. So that's the claim, right? That's the claim that's made by the administration, the claim made by the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Christy Noam, the current secretary of that agency. You know, if you've tuned in to regular TV, cable TV, or just simply scrolling through whatever social media you prefer, you will probably have seen the reality TV style ad that Christy Gnome is putting out there with her ugly mugs splattered all over it and where she demonizes and stereotypes people, especially the brown-skinned immigrant community, as nothing but hardened criminals, right? That's the picture that they're they're trying to paint. And it's always been that, right? They've always tried to paint uh brown-skinned people, whether recent immigrants or not, including, you know, the people from Central South America and beyond as criminals. Um, so it's noticeable, right? It's very noticeable that while you have other races and ethnicities around the country that have been detained and deported, they're not as prominent in the ad that is dehumanizing our gente. Uh, and so it's also not surprising, I should point out, that despite the prevalence of there being white European undocumented immigrants, meaning people who are from different parts of the world, they could be from Canada, they could be from Russia, they could be from Australia, you name it, that are undocumented immigrants in the US. Those people are not being targeted by the ICE raids. So the ICE terrorists are primarily attacking non-anglophile, non-Anglo indigenous descendants from Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America, right? They have targeted at the beginning, they were kind of mistakenly arresting Navajo people, uh Danay, I think maybe even some some Hopi, I'm not entirely sure, because they were mistaking them for being brown people from south of the border, right? Not because they were necessarily indigenous. Although, if you're paying attention, uh there are still people out there who are making a big point uh on the social webs to declare that they wish, right, that all the indigenous people, that all the Indians had been exterminated. If you know what I'm talking about, I'm not gonna say any more of this because I don't want to bring too much attention to that ghoul who is saying those things. But you know, it's um it's part of the same. So again, if you're paying attention to what's going on, uh, you know that that claim that they're making about only targeting criminals is an outright lie, and uh it's a perfect example of the type of primal gaslighting that is coming from the criminals in power. But this isn't new, it was also happening during the Obama era. But the only difference, and you know, we've called him the uh what other people have called him, this is not our term, we didn't coin this. He's been known even during his tenure in office as the deporter-in-chief, that's not a a big secret. I know that a lot of people on the left uh like to sort of overlook that and minimize that, but it's true. The difference is that at least during his tenure, people were given a semblance of due process back then, right? I mean, one of the biggest uh successes for immigration in the last 20-something years was the so-called Dream Act, which is a testament to the fact that at least people were being given some kind of humane treatment, being treated as a pure human, as someone that you recognize as being human, not being dehumanized, not being criminalized, but someone who is a human being and deserves to be protected. And that's not the case, right, currently with this administration. You know, contrary to what they're saying, we've seen the footage of high school kids, college students being kidnapped in public on the street in broad daylight, ever since the DC Con man took office. You know, we've been seeing these things, and they started kind of slow as a trickle, but they have been escalating. So, yeah, you know, this is what's going on. And you heard correctly, ice is now in the business of kidnapping not only children, minors, but toddlers. I don't know if you've seen this. There was a video of ice goons kidnapping a toddler who was so little that they had to bring in a child seat to traffic them to the state prison or to send them to the concentration camp. I'm not even sure whatever happened to that poor child who was taken from their parents. And I'm not sure if their parents were also taken, but the video that I saw was of this child being put in a seat in the back of one of the ice vehicles to be taken away. This is the ghoulish behavior of the most contemptible that is happening right now. Families are being terrorized and torn apart, including US citizens who languish in cells for days or even up to weeks until proof is provided that they are in fact who they say they are, that they are citizens, that they were born in this country. But of course, if you are a brown person, if you are not lily white with blue eyes or green eyes, if you don't have uh bleached blonde hair and fair skin, you know, you are guilty until proven innocent. You are an illegal until you can prove that you are not an illegal. That's what it's come down to under this racist, ghoulish, terroristic, fascistic administration. All of this is going on while I stuggs are running around brutalizing and arresting people without arrest warrants and deporting them as hostages without due process, as if these were people who are enemies of the state simply for being in this country without papers, for wanting a better life for themselves, for going to work, for going to school. It's gotten so bad that even people who voted for the DC Con man are now having voters' remorse and proclaiming that, quote, this is not what I voted for, end quote. Right? I'm sure you've heard of this, or a variation of that. This is not what I voted for. Well, guess what? Newsflash? Yes, in fact, this is exactly what you voted for. The signs were all there before the election. Heck, what part of the January 6th mega insurrection that was egged on by the DC con man himself was not clear enough for you? What do you mean that this is not what you voted for? What about the felonies? The botched COVID response where millions of people died, not just in this country but around the world? The economic crash during his disastrous first term. None of that registered as a clear warning sign? None of that at all? None of that figured into your disdain for the libs or for voting for a woman and let alone a black woman. Oh dear god, we're gonna elect our first black woman. All of that, you decided that it was irrelevant. Let's be real. Call a spade a spade, let's call it what it is. The difference now is that the incompetence and the corruption is directly affecting you, the MAGA voter, who is now remorseful. And I'm glad you finally snapped out of your cultic trance. And I hope you did, really, and I truly empathize with you. But self-centered, egotistical people who only find their morals when the terror inflicted on others now becomes personal cannot be trusted to do the right thing. And while I welcome you to the resistance, take a back seat on this one. Okay, you need to listen and take cues from others who have been resisting since day one. You do not get to call the shots on this one. To those of you keeping up, none of this is news. But it's still shocking, appalling, and infuriating. I'm recording this commentary on the Monday after the 4th of July 2025. The latest MAGA legislation was signed into law by the DC Con Man on the same day that a devastating storm caused severe flash flooding in central Texas, leading to a death toll that as of this recording is approximating. It's I'm not sure if it's at 100 yet, but it's close enough. At last check, it was 91 people who were reported dead, including almost 30 young girls, minors, girls as as young as six and seven years old who were away at a summer camp called Mystic, uh, Camp Mystic in the heart of the Texas Hill country. Plus, there are still dozens upon dozens of missing people who are still unaccounted for. People are already pointing fingers at this and that and the other. Sure. There were many levels of failure in this natural disaster that turned into a horror show. And there is evidence, of course, linking the failure to the lack of alerts to evacuate people in time due to the massive federal budget cuts that the weather agencies have undergone under this abysmal administration that we have. The affront to basic decency was in clear view on Friday the 4th. Because as all these young girls and these people who were struggling to survive in the pre-dawn hours, trying to make it try to survive the flood, the Texas state authorities did nothing. Later that same day, on July the 4th, the storm came through early in the pre-dawn hours of July the 4th. As the waters were receding and the news was trickling out, people were beginning to find out what was going on. As all this is happening, you have the DC con man, obviously in Washington, signing his big ugly bill without a single mention, as far as I know, maybe I'm mistaken, but without a single mention or word of empathy for the aggrieved families who lost their loved ones in the floods, right? So congratulating himself with uh surrounded by his um sycophants and um you know receiving all the accolades for being the buffoon that he is and for decimating not only the economy for the next decade or so, but basically making this country worse. You know, forget about making America great again. I mean, please give me a break. So, among the many horrors that this latest MAGA legislation contains, and this is the reason why we're talking about this today, okay. Like I said, you know, this is not our usual routine on the show. Those of you who listen to the show on a regular basis know that this is not we don't usually spend an entire episode droning on about current events uh such as this, but this is the reason why it's important, uh, and not only that we say something so that people understand that that we we know what's going on and we want to be there for our hinta to meet that moment, right? There is a provision in this bill that was just signed that will drastically increase the budget of ICE by 265 percent. Yes, you heard that correctly again 265 percent more than what it is now, and it's going to the the budget for this this ice uh um increase uh is going to be approximately around 45 billion dollars with a B billion dollars, and according to some estimates, this is more than most militaries around the world spend on their budget, and this is going to make ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the United States. Okay, so I'll say that again: this latest legislation that was just signed on July 4th of 2025, is going to give ICE a 45 billion dollar boost, an enormous amount of money, making it the single largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the United States. And if you know anything about history, especially military history, you will know that the US has always outspent anybody else, uh, any of its contemporaries. It outspent Russia, it uh and it's outspending China, and this is going to continue um in the foreseeable future with under ICE now, apparently. So, ICE was established in the aftermath of 9-11 under the Department of Homeland Security, and it subsumed several other existing agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service or Lamiga as we used to call it back in the day. In ICE's early days, they targeted people of Arab descent and anyone who was of the Muslim faith, and and anyone who had ever voiced any criticism of the American Empire, especially if you were Muslim or Arab, were prone to be rounded up and interrogated, detained, and you know, some people were detained in places like Abu Ghraib for being suspected of having participated, even if they never actually did anything, just for having some kind of slim connection to someone who did or might have done a thing, spent decades of their life in those concentration camps, those prisons in Abu Ghraib and other places that we probably don't even know about, and maybe we'll never know, maybe 50 years down the road that might become public. Needless to say, the agency has always been bad. ICE has always been a bad player, but under this far-right extremist MAGA version of itself, it's turning into a secret military police and criminal organization. As we speak, they have invaded the city of LA as a military occupying force. Before they were going into LA as these sort of paramilitary vigilante types, you know, dressed in civilian clothing and covering their faces, and now they're actually going in as if they were an army, dressed in fatigues, in tanks, and you know, with uh the army armor, the the helmet. It looks like they're being issued M16s. When I was in the army, we we had M16s, which is basically the military version of the AR-15. And so I'm not sure, but it kind of reminded me of that. It reminded me of being out in the field and going on on a training exercise because um it looked like these people were definitely you know geared up to the hilt. So now that MEGA is becoming a military organization, you know, no one is safe from them, not even citizens. It's not hard to imagine that this Gestapo force could be unleashed on anyone who dares to speak out, not only against the American Empire, but especially speak out against the administration, or if you arouse the ire of the dear leader now, I guess ice can come out and snatch you in the middle of the night. I mean, that's what it's looking like, right? So, anyone who can who goes out and demonstrate against the regime as a protester, as just out there, you know, doing your civic duty and voicing your opinion and and exercising your first amendment, it's not hard to imagine that this Gestapo force could be unleashed on anyone who dares to speak out, on those who demonstrate against the regime in the streets, or on anyone who fails to comply with any unlawful and or immoral order that is given to them. So I hate being an alarmist, but this is really getting out of control. In any case, Tales from Atlantis, you know, we were never meant to be explicitly about politics, as I stated earlier, but our very existence has been politicized in this anti-brown, anti-indigenous climate. My walking down the street has always had its perils in racist America, but it's now at a very heightened state. The same is true for other marginalized groups like women, black African Americans, and the two-spirit LGBTQ community as well. I had a conversation with an acquaintance recently, uh, let's call them Machete for their sake, um, and they described an instance of being gaslit for talking about these interrelated issues and the impact they're having on them personally. For Machete's transgression of vocally decrying the horror that we are seeing, they were dismissed as just being quote unquote political. You're just being political. I'm sure some of you might have heard this before when you've tried to talk about these things. Machete's poignant response struck a chord with me, and I would like to share it here. And this is what they uh replied when they were told that they were just being political. This is what they said. Quote, what you call me simply being political and overreacting is literally my life. It is my very existence. I'm being targeted for who I am. I have no choice but to speak out because it's a matter of survival, and that is exactly how I see it. So right on, machete, right on, you keep on surviving, you keep on speaking out. And we here at TFA feel the same way. We're gonna continue to speak out whenever we deem that it's necessary. I witnessed a similar interaction by a person who dared to publicly share their own concerns about these very issues, and it was similar to Machete's experience, but it was it wasn't happening to me, it was happening to someone else, and I was there to reassure them that that it was okay. But you know, they were also dismissed as being too dramatic, right? And so these kinds of retorts may seem like harmless criticisms, but they contribute to the growing sense of hopelessness and despair, and that's something that we must counter at every turn. So the way we do this, the way to counter that negativity is to remember that your feelings matter and that you are not alone. So, one of the things that I tell people who have asked me, how what do we do? What's I mean, it's hard for me to say, right? Because it's on a case-by-case basis, but on the broad level, what I suggest to people is from my experience, connect with other concerned people who think like you in your community and build a framework of solidarity and collaboration that can serve as a safety net whenever uh you know you're in need or in times of need in general. So you should be doing that anyway, whether or not this is a good time or a bad time, but especially when we're experiencing this these times of political uncertainty, that um yeah, it's it's always good to have a friend, and not just a friend, but a group of friends that you can rely upon uh and lean on, and vice versa, they need someone too, so that this is a collaborative effect, right? So while the show will continue to push back against nonsense and misinformation, we will also strive to advance the mission that was left to us by our indigenous ancestors, and that is surviving, resisting, and fighting the settler colonial state. Today's episode is along those lines. I want to share some of my knowledge and thoughts on our present situation by specifically looking at how the hell we got here. So here we go, strap in, folks. This was inspired by the much repeated question that I've been seeing lately and hearing lately: how did we get here? So you might have heard a variant of this, but basically, it's what led us to the moment that we're in right now, right? Of course, the question is multifaceted, and giving a good accounting involves weaving together the various social, cultural, economic, religious, and political threads that uh contributed to where we are in our current moment. Um, but we can start by looking at the role of the mainstream media, yes, that maligned MSM, the mainstream media, which, I mean, in this case I have to say, had a lot to do with the DC Con man assuming the presidency in the first place. I don't know if any of you remember, but the day he came down the escalators back in 2015, it's so hard to even fathom that it's been 10 long years since we've had to suffer this. But in any case, in that press conference that he delivered announcing his candidacy, he specifically targeted Mexican people. Okay, I don't know if anyone remembers this because it's been so long ago. And it made a little bit of a splash, but it was like eh, whatever. And I can assure you that he did mean what he said, when he said those who come here from Mexico, and those who come here from Mexico with that word Mexico, right? A lot of people don't understand. If you're not Mexican American, if you're not ethnic Mexican in the United States, if you didn't grow up in the barrio and grew up around other ethnic Mexicans who share that experience, you don't know what this means, especially in Texas and other parts of the Southwest. But I know I'm from my experience in Texas that this was this was true. When people were saying Mexican, it's it's it's not saying you're from Mexico. That's not what it means. It means you are of a race, a specific ethnicity, you are a Mexican. So when the con man said Mexico, he meant legal or otherwise, you know, because that is the history of this racist country. I mean, I'm a historian, and so I can tell you this with a sense of accuracy, and I can assure you that since the days before the US-Mexico War of 1846-1848, gringo scouts and other immigrants who were from the United States and were traveling into what was then Mexico's far northern frontier, today's US Southwest, people were going all the way to California. These Anglos, who and mostly men, were going to these places and they were writing, they were they had their travel logs, they were writing back homes, and and they would publish things when they went back east. And you could tell just from their writings that they coveted the land, and but it was more than just coveting the land, they despised the people that lived there, and this included both indigenous and Mexican. They described the land as being bereft of any good stewardship because it was held and common and it was full of quote-unquote Indians and quote-unquote Mexican half-breeds. That's what they used to call our people. Our ancestors were obstacles to their quote-unquote progress. I mean their quote, empire for liberty, end quote, as Thomas Jefferson himself put it once. So ever since those days, a Mexican is a Mexican is an Indian. Mexicans became the eternal foreigner on their native land. You could be seventh-generation Mexican on anywhere of these United States. If you're brown enough in the eyes of races and xenophobes, you're an eternal foreigner. No matter how many protestations you may declare and how American you you can uh attest to being, if you look Mexican, guess what? You're a Mexican. So I'm old enough to remember here in Texas that the term Mexican was synonymous with saying hired hand, a laborer. It was one step above being called simply a slave. And that was only because it was, you know, not legal to call or to hold people in bondage, but if they could, they would have enslaved Mexicans in this country. So it's no wonder why entire generations of our gente, our raza de bronce, hate their roots and will fight you for calling them a quote unquote mezquin with two S's. You know, I've heard that mezquin here in Texas. That's that was that used to be very common, and it was it was meant to be an insult. So when Don De Khan called out the quote-unquote murderous, rapist Mexicans, he was no fool. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was blowing that anti-Mexican dog whistle loud and clear for his fellow racist Americans to hear. The United States has a quote-unquote Indian problem. There are still prominent figures in the megasphere who publicly declare their disdain against Native Americans. It's so funny. I'm recording this episode and things just keep popping up in my feed. A few hours ago, Curly shared a post on the Discord where a certain someone is calling for the extermination or wishing for uh all the Indians to have been exterminated in the so-called Indian wars. Why? Because there's a certain indigenous person, a certain Native American woman out there who is calling the spade a spade, kind of like what I'm doing now. And so, as I was saying earlier, for the mere utterance of anything that goes against the American Empire, for being critical of the American Empire, you must be now exterminated. Or the wish of your entire ethnic group to be exterminated is uttered as if it was something so commonplace to say in our modern era. But it is, unfortunately, it is. But as Leonard Pelletier once said, the Indian wars are not over. Aho brother, I hear you. We all hear you loud and clear. We're all grateful that you are out. The United States, along with having an Indian problem, also has a quote Mexican problem. Because of course, not only are we Native American, or more precisely, we are Mesoamerican natives, but our existence reminds Anglo-White America that we descend from those pueblos originarios, those First Nations people, and that they, the white Anglo, the non-Indigenous people, are the eternal immigrants on Indian land. Not us. They are. So they hate that. That's why they hate us. The day that Don the Khan announced his candidacy to run for president by attacking Mexicans, that should have been the end of his political career. But the media paid lip service to the insult and never really held him to account. The con man was slapped on the wrist because he was just insulting Mexicans, so who cares, right? Hahaha, big chuckle. Why'd you do it, sir? Oh, please apologize. Those poor Mexicans. So he learned that he could attack anyone and the media would just stick a camera in his face and amplify his hate. The quote-unquote fake news gave him a megaphone, and the racists became more outspoken when the black guy was in office, and they grew even more emboldened after he left office. Once the Don, the con the con man came in, they felt like they could just do whatever, and we saw that, right? I don't need to rehash what happened during the con man's first administration. We were there, we witnessed it. How's that old refrain? First, they came for the Mexicans and no one gave a damn. So while the entire story of our time is yet to be adequately told, that's a job for future historians. We can at least begin answering the question of how the hell did we get here? By looking at the failure of the fourth estate, the press or the media, whose basic job is supposed to be to hold power accountable to the public. That's right. The intention of the media originally was to hold power to account, and the media has lost its way. The media failed us because they are part of that power structure now. They are part of the structure that they're supposed to question, right? But now that they're part of that power, you know, power never wants to lose power. That's why they acquiesce, because if they resist to power, then they're gonna lose power. But if they acquiesce to power, they're gonna gain power. And you know what? Power always, always wants more power, and that is the road to authoritarianism. So, this term authoritarianism, this is where I'm gonna end for today's episode. What is it? How does one recognize it when it's happening? Some psychological and sociological theories explore the connection between a longing for a strong authoritarian figure and tendencies towards violence and the appeal of fascism. So the following are some of those relevant concepts, and these are based on three um sources that I looked up and I divided them into three categories. And so this is category one, the psychoanalytic theories category. And it has two points. Point one. The authoritarian personality. This theory developed by Theodore Adorno and colleagues suggests that individuals with authoritarian personalities tend to be submissive to authority figures while simultaneously being hostile towards those they perceive as weaker. This personality type is characterized by a rigid thinking, conformity, and a strong belief in traditional values. So this is one way to recognize someone who is prone to authoritarian syndrome. Point 2. The Oedipul Complex In Freudian psychoanalysis, the Oedipul complex describes a child's unconscious desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex. Some theorists suggest that unresolved Oedible conflicts can manifest in a longing for a powerful dominant father figure. So again, point one is describing the male person leaning towards authoritarianism, and I guess point two would describe someone of the female gender desiring a father figure. Category two and political theories. This theory proposes that societies are naturally hierarchical and some individuals possess a greater desire for group dominance. Individuals with high social dominance orientation may be more likely to support authoritarian leaders and policies that reinforce social hierarchies. This theory suggests that individuals who feel deprived of resources or status compared to others may be more susceptible to feelings of anger and frustration, which can be channeled into support for authoritarian leaders who promise to restore order and punish perceived enemies. Sounds very familiar. Category 3: Connection to Fascism. Fascism with its emphasis on strong leadership, national unity, and suppression of dissent often appeals to individuals who desire a powerful authoritarian figure to restore order and provide a sense of security. The longing for a stern father figure can be seen as a psychological manifestation of this desire for strong, unquestioned leadership. Okay. The sources for these, if you want to take a closer look at these theories and these ideas, come from The Authoritarian Personality by T.W. Adorno and and others, or et al. as we like to say in academic writing, Social Dominance and Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. That's the second source by J. Sedanius and F. Preto, 1999. The first one's from 1950, so like I said, these things have been studied uh all the way back to the 50s. And of course, uh the last one, The Denial of Personal Discrimination. The first two were books. This last one is an article by F. Crosby from 1976, and it's in the Journal of Social Issues, volume 32, issue one, or number one, pages 31 through 45. And so that's all I have for this episode. Um, but it's only the beginning when it comes to these public service announcements, and uh there's more to come, and as uh as you know things continue to hopefully get better, we'll we'll make those announcements too. But as if they continue to on this pace that we're headed in, we're going to continue to call them out and continue to offer um you know some guidance uh to the best of our abilities uh as we see them, as from our own personal experience. You can take them or or leave them. Um, but you know, we're just gonna share them and uh if you care to listen, uh we'll continue to to put them out there for you. Alright, stay safe everyone. Until next time.