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WPKN's coverage of election issues with leading experts.
Hi. This is Brendan Toler, director of operations and new initiatives at WPKN, and welcome to our election podcast series, our future on the line 2024. Sarah Kendzier is the best selling author of The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, and They Knew. Kensier's next book, The Last American Road Trip, will come out in 2025. From 2018 until 2013, Kensier was the cohost of Gas Lit Nation, a weekly podcast covering corruption in the United States and the rise of authoritarianism around the world.
Brendan Toller:Sarah Kensier's free newsletter on Substack features essential essays, weaving politics, nature, and pop culture. Kensier is well known for her coverage of the Trump administration and its aftermath and for writing about authoritarianism, kleptocracy, transnational organized crime, racism and xenophobia, media, voting rights, technology, the environment, and corruption among other topics. From 2016 to 2020, Kensier was a regular columnist for The Globe and Mail. And from 2012 to 2024, she was a columnist for Al Jazeera English. In addition to working as a journalist, Kenzieres a researcher and scholar with a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in Saint Louis and a master's in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University.
Brendan Toller:Most of her scholarly work focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self expression, and trust. Here's our conversation. Welcome, Sarah. I'm already gonna just quote one of your latest newsletters on Substack. You say people ask how I'm doing.
Brendan Toller:I laugh at the chasm of the question. How is anyone doing? Climate catastrophes, genocide, the election from hell. Your thoughts.
Sarah Kendzior:I'm trying to remember if I wrote that before, like, which hurricane I wrote that before and with another one bearing down. Yes. Yeah. You know, this is a very difficult time, and there's this you know, and I could have listed a dozen other catastrophes along with those that I did. And there's a surreal aspect to it and that we're expected to just go on with our lives and our jobs and raising our families in these sort of mundane tasks while, you know, these catastrophic things are happening around us.
Sarah Kendzior:And I think that, you know, the fact that it's fallen so heavily upon the shoulders of ordinary people shows the length of not just institutional failure, but how we've been conditioned to kind of accept that institutional failure as our failures. You know, I hear this for people all the time. You know, what more can I be doing? Or can I, you know, vote this out? Or, like, basically, why is no one fixing anything?
Sarah Kendzior:Why is nobody, handling these things? And they then start to internalize it and think it's their fault. So I guess if I have to start something, I wanna tell people it's not your fault. It's not your fault that, you know, climate change has occurred. It's not your fault that, the government has failed you on multiple fronts.
Sarah Kendzior:It's not your fault that there's endemic corruption. It's their fault.
Brendan Toller:That's right. You know, to read your substack to me is to enter a new reality. You have the media binary of right versus left which has gone on for years, but you see things at a deeper level. If you don't mind, I'm gonna just read some of your passages and then have you respond because they're just so they're just they're just so to the point. So here's one.
Brendan Toller:Right wing pundits claim that the DOJ does not have evidence of Trump's guilt. Instead of admitting the truth, the DOJ has evidence on Trump on has had evidence on Trump's crimes for half a century, but they don't want to use it for they are in a mutually beneficial corrupt relationship. Over decades, intelligence agencies, organized crime, and corporate corruption merged, solidifying their anti American agenda in the 21st century. 2016 was not a rupture, but an acceleration of the plans of a dark transnational alliance and the institutions that protect it. Trump protected by the FBI and the DOJ for half a century is the deep state deep state he pretends to fight.
Brendan Toller:And Biden, who entered congress in 1973, the same year the DOJ started investigating Trump, is a career silent witness. Contrary to popular belief, bipartisanship is alive and well. You need a both sides approach if you're not only going to kill us, but make us root for our own demise. In short, the Trump administration was a crime syndicate masquerading as a government, and the Biden admin is a government masking the crime syndicate.
Sarah Kendzior:Yep. That's unfortunately still the case and, you know, sometimes they get a lot of flack for paragraphs like that because what people don't seem to understand is that when you are criticizing, the sort of abuser enabler dynamic that we see in our political system and you're criticizing both parties, it doesn't mean that you're saying they're identical. In fact, by their nature, they need to not be identical or even similar at points if they're able to work toward a broader, more corrupt goal and, you know, to, to achieve that. And so, you know, the kind of throwaway line that I hear, especially from Democrats is, like, you know, how dare you say they're the same? You know, Trump is so much worse.
Sarah Kendzior:And I'm like, look, I wrote 2 bestsellers about the crimes of Donald Trump, about his decades of mafia ties, about all the, you know, horrific things he did before he got to office and then in office. Like, you don't need to tell me. You don't need to convince me. But there's a reason he was able to even get to that point, and that has to do with institutions that in many cases don't have a particular partisan affiliation. You know, one of the most frightening aspects is that they don't even have a particular national affiliation.
Sarah Kendzior:I think there are, individuals and groups that are not working in the interests of the United States or really of any particular country. They're non state actors, tied to organized crime. You know, there are people that have multiple passports, offshore accounts, digital currency, all these things that cross state borders and kind of challenge our idea of what autocracy or kleptocracy really is. It never was covered well in the media but I feel like there is kind of a fighting chance to get at it during the Trump years because his, you know, just bombastic nature, attracted a lot of interest in the backstory of what happened. That has gone away along with the media itself, which is severely gutted.
Sarah Kendzior:So we're not seeing a lot of investigative work. There are a lot of folks who I think just don't know truly what's going on even though it has in fact been reported but it's so hard to find that knowledge now with broken search engines, you know, algorithms that suppress things, media industries that fired so many of their workers. It's a tough time for the truth.
Brendan Toller:Another passage. Biden is a placeholder president whose tenure allows liberals to accept accept atrocities they would have protested under Trump, including the elimination of a functional public health system, cop cities, vicious border policies, and genocide in Gaza. These policies have been branded as Biden or Trump instead of as right or wrong. They are all wrong.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. I mean, and that was one of the when when Harris came in, when Biden dropped out, I had a sort of brief fleeting, I didn't even quite let myself fully feel it, moment of maybe there will be change. Maybe this dynamic will finally end. Maybe she will move away from the pie the policies of the Biden administration, which I do think were meant to make liberals and Democrats and so forth, accept things that they never ever would have accepted under Trump. And they certainly would have spoken out against, 5 or 10 years ago.
Sarah Kendzior:And they did this slowly. You know, it's this little drip, drip, drip effect of, you know, gradually normalizing mass death. Like I remember when the number of COVID deaths, you know, surpassed the number of people who died on 9/11, people were horrified and then suddenly we're at a1000000 and they just stopped counting. And then the same thing, with Gaza, you know, when there are the, when the initial deaths passed like a 1000 people, people were horrified and then you get to 40,000 and of course they've killed the people who count the deaths and they've kind of stopped counting. And I think, you know, getting people used to mass death is a prelude for getting them to accept mass murder, not just, you know, in Gaza or of Palestinians but anywhere in the world including in the United States.
Sarah Kendzior:And I think this is a really frightening thing. I think at heart, people are scared. I think they're traumatized. And I think a lot of what seems like heartlessness isn't always, it's a kind of defensive reaction, against a really, vicious system that doesn't seem to respect, you know, the sacredness of human life. And this cuts both ways.
Sarah Kendzior:I think on the MAGA side, you see a lot of people, recognizing the viciousness and the violence of the Trump administration and of Trump and thinking, well, if they're gonna be that way, like, I'm not gonna be the target. I'm gonna be the person with the gun. I'm gonna be the person, who aims. You know, they I'm gonna be Kyle Rittenhouse and be celebrated and and the hero of it. And then I think on the democratic side, they used to reject that kind of, stance and philosophy.
Sarah Kendzior:And for a while, they they kinda took the opposite approach of, you know, we're gonna dig deep. We're gonna look into the roots of American history. We're gonna examine systemic racism, violence, how things got this way, and then we're gonna try to turn it around. They are now also emulating, you know, what we want is access to power. And what we do with that power once we have it is irrelevant.
Sarah Kendzior:All that matters is that we win. You know, people keep asking, like, what are your policies? Like, what are you going to do to fix these problems? And they're like, oh my god. You know, how dare you?
Sarah Kendzior:How dare you ask about policy? We just need to win first and then we'll figure out the policy. And I'm like, well, you know, I kinda wanna know what I'm voting for. And they're like, what? Are you gonna vote for Trump?
Sarah Kendzior:And I'm like, well, no. Obviously not. But, you know, I still want to know so that I can prepare myself and my family for whatever horrific plot you have in mind because the Biden administration had its own horrific policies, and I had to fight to protect my family from them, you know, from getting sick, from getting fired, from increasing, you know, regulations on speech. You know, I lost my own rights in Missouri under a Republican legislature that's extremely impressive and that, you know, national federal democratic run, party, you know, did absolutely nothing, to help us living in states like this. So I always see wanting to know someone's policy platform as a means of self protection.
Sarah Kendzior:Like, how am I gonna navigate the new horrors that you throw my way? Like, I think I deserve to know that as an American citizen, and it shouldn't be seen as offensive.
Brendan Toller:Absolutely. Moving to tech. I wanna read this rather long passage, but it's just so well put and so well written. I don't buy a lot of stuff because I don't have a lot of money. I don't use a lot of technology because I don't like it.
Brendan Toller:I don't like it because the people who control it are bad. They ruined every good innovation of my life. They encouraged us to destroy the analog world, and after we did, they replaced it with bullshit and lies. Google wants a wellspring of information sorted by chronologically by chronology and preserved in caches is an unusable cesspool Photos taken by real people of real places have been replaced with AI fakes niche online hobby forums were sold to corporations and became Unusable due to spam and bots the early excitement of reconnecting with old friends on Facebook was replaced by the relentless push of Automations you reach out for connection, but the algorithm ties your hands you follow friends, but are instead shown influencers Where did everyone go and who are these made up strangers in their place on YouTube and TikTok people transform their lives into infomercials often to make cash in the gig economy that pot politicians deny exists on Twitter people become indistinguishable from the bots and paid operatives of political groups mobs spout vicious mantras in service of a cause or candidate that onlookers are told merits the cruelty inflicted on the last real human beings.
Brendan Toller:There is no safe place to talk to a friend. Privacy has been obliterated. Anyone can go viral and virality, true to its early Internet coinage, it is a disease. You go viral in pieces devoid of context like a chalk outline at a crime scene. Your crime was existing.
Brendan Toller:Humanity has been stripped from the virtual world deliberately and maliciously The goal is to make humans less human less imaginative and more callous more desperate and less kind less demanding of authority But ruthlessly demanding of ordinary people who hold neither leverage nor power Memes and mantras replace contemplation and compassion, rendering humans indistinguishable from bots.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. It's, it's it's quite something for me to hear it aloud. It's a grim it's a grim situation. And a lot of times when I talk about the Internet, I feel like, you know, my boomer parents talking about Woodstock, like the way I talk about GeoCities or something like that. Like, I look back with a fondness that maybe isn't completely, merited because obviously there were problems in the early Internet, but I was a teenager, you know, when the Internet first became widely available and it was just mind blowing, you know, and it was in its primitive form where you, you know, to post something you had to know HTML and and and whatnot.
Sarah Kendzior:And, you know, most Americans weren't even using it. But the ability to connect, to share knowledge, the curiosity of people, the eccentricity of people, the weirdness of people, which of course is now a considered a a sin and a crime, you know, and is a a phrase that the democrats bring out to, lambast people with. But it was, you know, this kind of glorious strange space and it remained that way, I think until about, I don't know, like 2010, 2011, around the time I think on Facebook when they started, people used to just enter in their hobbies manually, enter in things they were interested in or their biographies. And suddenly everything turned into categories that you click on, you know, little boxes that you check to define yourself, which I think makes everybody, less human and less themselves. It makes you choose.
Sarah Kendzior:And once I saw that happening, I assumed the motive was to sell the data to corporations, in order to make money. I think it was a much darker motive than that. And you see that with people like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or all of these Silicon Valley, engineers who are, you know, engineering society. They're trying to change the fundamental makeup of human nature, and they're trying to eliminate it, and they're trying to bury archives of a freer, more independent time and a freer, more independent, population that inhabited it and, you know, shared their thoughts, in a more carefree way. It's sad to me to see what's happening to the internet, the works that have been lost, and other articles on on my substack, I mentioned all of the sites that have been deleted over the last just few months, you know, vast archives of information.
Sarah Kendzior:Some of it, you know, important journalism, some of it stuff like MTV, you know, and all of these, music articles and reviews and interviews with singers and stars and whatnot. I think that's important. It's our cultural history. And I think they're trying to destroy, on some level, the cohesiveness of being an American because we live in a time where not a lot is binding us together. You know, we used to watch TV at the same time, you know, each week and talk about it the next day.
Sarah Kendzior:We used to not have politics as our main sort of political affair that everybody is engaged in. That's kind of the only thing left because, you know, first it was the music industry, then movies, TV was kind of the last to go in terms of, this feeling of a shared pop, monoculture. And now I think they're they're kind of trying to bury the evidence, and they're also trying to prohibit people from forming meaningful communal ties, whether based on shared interests, but more importantly, political organization, activism. You know, I live in St. Louis.
Sarah Kendzior:I covered the Ferguson, uprising. I saw how powerful, the Internet was for allowing, you know, the world to see what's happening here. Although a lot of the times it was, distorted or exploited. Before that, I studied former Soviet Central Asia and how dissidents there were using the Internet, to combat their authoritarian governments. So it's a very powerful and once beautiful tool.
Sarah Kendzior:And it's really sad to see it be eroded in this way. And the kind of feeling of powerlessness that it stokes, you know, like, I feel powerless on Twitter. The fact that the search part doesn't work anymore and I can't find my own past, my own memories, my own interactions. I can't look them up anymore. And someone took that from me and, you know, they take that from all of us and there's very little we could really do about it except try to curate and try to archive our things ourselves.
Sarah Kendzior:But, that's that's quite a a monumental task.
Brendan Toller:And yet when you bring this up to friends, there's, like, still that shiny objectness of tech. You know, it's you you talk about it in this way, and you're either old or you're ungrateful.
Sarah Kendzior:Right. Yeah. Well, you know, there's that old line that if you're not paying for it, you're the product. And I think that that's certainly, you know, folks were wise to that a long time ago, but now it's more nefarious. I mean, I think we are we are on there.
Sarah Kendzior:We have no choice to be on there. Our careers often rely on it. I know mine certainly does, but we are being, I think, preyed upon for political purposes by really, you know, vicious actors, the kind of authoritarian regimes that I studied, 15 years ago, you know, have they're the imprint for what has happened to the west. Everyone thought it would be the other way around that, you know, once all of these oppressive, governments, in, you know, and the people under them have the internet, they'll be able to expose the crimes of the government, then it will be a naturally, democratizing force. And the opposite has happened.
Sarah Kendzior:We've become more repressive because we're living in a panopticon, in a surveillance society. And, actually, I think the culprit is is smartphones, much more than just, like, the Internet. I think the Internet is fine. I think the sense that you can walk around and, like, say you're having a bad day and you start crying in a store. Like, someone can just video you and put you on there and then make a TikTok and make fun of you.
Sarah Kendzior:And then, like, the worst day of your life could go viral, you know, and this happens to people every single day over and over. There's not really boundaries. There's not a lot of empathy. And I think the gig economy, the fact that so many folks are thinking, you know, I cannot get a good 9 to 5 job with benefits anymore. Maybe I'll make it big on YouTube and make it big on TikTok.
Sarah Kendzior:I need to provide content constantly. They start seeing other human beings as content. And that's a really sad thing because I think folks are very lonely. That's one of the reasons they're watching all these TikToks and stuff in the first place is they wanna see how other people are living. But we've become kind of voyeurs in each other's lives instead of friends.
Sarah Kendzior:And that's, you know, that that's a sad development.
Brendan Toller:You get to the core in such an economical way in in your writing. I I sort of feel like you're the Iggy Pop of pop pop political writing right now. And I just I wonder what I wonder what your process is like. You're you're very crafted and to the point.
Sarah Kendzior:Well, I do a lot of rewriting, a lot of editing. You know, I like Elmer Leonard said, I try to take the boring parts out. But a lot of times, I mean, especially with the substack, it's weird because, you know, I'm the only person running any of it. Like, I I don't have an editor. I don't have anyone telling me what to do, and I love that, but it means that I'm I have all the responsibility and I have to be very careful, and in choosing topics, I can do anything and there's something freeing and liberating in that, but also something kind of overwhelming.
Sarah Kendzior:Like, my god, I could I can write about absolutely anything, like, what should I choose? And it's a little bit exhausting because I would like each article to stand up over time. You know, I don't like writing things that just respond to the news cycle. I don't like writing things that won't make sense, you know, a few months from now. I have a book of essays, The View from FlyOver Country, and those essays came out between 2012 and 2014, and people still read them now.
Sarah Kendzior:They still hold up now, which is unfortunate because they're about terrible things happening in America and around the world. It would be nice if that was out of date. But, you know, I I try to get that kind of quality, you know, and I'm very influenced by by songwriting and by music, as well as literature. And I there's a kind of dryness to a lot of political writing, either just, you know, just the facts kind of attitude or the sense of not wanting to show emotion, not wanting to be stylistically creative or strange. I think for fear of, I don't know, maybe being made fun of or for those who are more careerist, like, this might be a strike against me as they try to climb the ladder.
Sarah Kendzior:But the nice thing about, you know, having your own publication, your own business is you don't need to pay attention to any of that. So I try to take advantage and, you know, be as as free as I can be, but also try to keep the the quality high. Every now and again, I I reread something and I, like, goddamn it. You know, I wanna go back and change one word, but I I don't know quite the ethics of that because technically I could, but it seems kinda kinda sneaky. So I figured I should let my, you know, my my bad choices stand for what they are too.
Brendan Toller:Bit of a deep question here. What is the difference between hope, faith, and despair?
Sarah Kendzior:Oh, wow. You know, a lot of people always ask me about hope. They've been asking me this since basically Trump started running for office, and I started saying, yeah, he's he's going to win and, you know, if you wanna call it winning. And he's going to rule like an autocrat, or a kleptocrat. And then I'd always get this like, but is there any hope?
Sarah Kendzior:And I'm just like, hope about what? And I I just don't think of things that way. I don't think about things in terms of hope or hopelessness. You know, I think about them in terms of what I can do morally as a human being, you know, about how I treat people, about compassion, sometimes about pragmatism in terms of, you know, can I actually have any impact in this situation? I think what I feel is some things more like faith, you know, I guess just because the word hope gets abused so much by, you know, hopium peddlers, you know, people who are selling false promises all the time that things will magically get better.
Sarah Kendzior:Like, I can't stand people like that because it encourages this passivity and this kind of, refusal to take on, you know, corrupt and criminal entities. Faith is something different. I think faith is just, perseverance in the face of hardship, and we're all facing that right now. And so I think just, you know, continuing to go on to try to find the good things in life, which are often, you know, at least for me, like, very simple things like, you know, nature and my children and my dog and art and writing, you know, things that the same things people loved, you know, 100 of years ago are often the things that I love. Just spare.
Sarah Kendzior:I don't know, I see a lot of policing of people's emotions and I don't like that. I think if someone feels despair, they should be able to express despair without it being, something that, you know, you get lectured about. Like, how dare you say that you feel this? It's going to, you know, hurt Biden. It'll hurt Harris or whatever it is that they're complaining about.
Sarah Kendzior:People have a right in a very tough time to feel however they want and express it however they want. I think it's, it's just a lack of empathy to criticize somebody for that. At the same time, you know, if you're feeling it yourself, I think just what's important is to try to take care of yourself and to not feel bad about that. Like, you know, it's okay to take take days off. It's okay to go do something you enjoy.
Sarah Kendzior:If you're in a career like journalism or law or government or, I don't know, the government doesn't seem to be doing much, but if you're in a career, like, I don't know, climate change scientist or, like, despair is part of the profession. Like, despair is gonna come with the news cycle. Like, despair is going to be inevitable. I think it's important to try to, not deny that it's there and that it's real, but to also do something to just kind of, keep your reverence of what is good in life alive and, like, remind yourself that there are still these good things, and that we should strive to to protect them and appreciate them while they're there.
Brendan Toller:So the terrifying scenario, just pure amnesia to the mainstream, Harris may win the election, but that does not mean she will get to be president.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. I wrote, at this point, several articles on this. I also wrote about this about Biden and Trump back in, 2020, and people called me crazy. They said, of course, Trump's not gonna attempt to stage a coup. Of course, he's not going to attack the capital or not leave office.
Sarah Kendzior:I'm like, why? He has said this. Like, he's explicitly said it and planned it, and his advisers like Roger Stone have promised a, you know, bloodbath unless Trump is reinstalled. And so I think that we, of course, should take seriously the fact that not only did he try it openly, you know, in in 2020 and 2021, in all these different ways that were taped, whether a phone call in Georgia or the, attempted, you know, storming of the capital we saw on TV or or his many confessions of this crime, which include recently conceding that he knew the whole time he had lost, and was trying to steal the election back. It's sedition.
Sarah Kendzior:And the reason that people, who vote for Trump think he's innocent or don't take it seriously is because the DOJ has refused to prosecute sedition. And we are, to my knowledge, the only country in the history of the world that has done this. Even in Nazi Germany, you had Hitler in prison, you know, between the time of his push and his presidency. There was some kind of punishment, when there was a coup stage recently in Brazil. You know, they they rounded people up before they were able to carry it out.
Sarah Kendzior:Like, that's normal. That is what normal countries do. We're the only one in the history of the world, to my knowledge, where the seditionists stayed in office, where they were able to make new laws to protect themselves. And the head seditionist, the, you know, the, person around whom the coup was plotted to protect is allowed to run for president again, like mafia Grover Cleveland. And the fact that everyone is just treating this election like it's normal, like we didn't just have this unprecedented historic event 4 years ago, shows me that the system has completely failed.
Sarah Kendzior:Like I cannot take this election seriously as an election at all. I take it seriously when it comes to like the lower ballot races and stuff, you know, the senate races, local races, etcetera. This, whatever this is, is something where I think the winner has already been selected and they're going through the motions. And I could tell by about March or April of 2021 that Biden had no intention of holding anybody accountable except for the lowest level, you know, Trump actors who are really of no significance. Like, I'm not up at night worrying about, like, the QAnon Shaman or something like that.
Sarah Kendzior:But, you know, it was obvious early because no one reacts this way. Like, no normal functional country reacts this way to what happened. And so I'm like, yeah, this is, this is, you know, a ringer. Like, this is already patched in. This is some bigger plot.
Sarah Kendzior:And I I know it sounds conspiratorial, and I don't care. You know, I read a whole book about how it's okay to be conspiratorial when there's actual conspiracies. I think the point of the Biden administration was to turn liberals, into a sort of, you know, democratic version of MAGA. People who will accept absolutely horrific acts, accept corruption, accept a lack of accountability, and stop demanding that things change. Because beforehand, you had the George Floyd protest.
Sarah Kendzior:You had climate change protests. You had protests about all of these things, and a lot of citizens demanding that their government actually serve them. People in power did not like that. So they needed to temper it by saying, okay. You know, you've now won the election, and your guys are in, and here's what they want from you.
Sarah Kendzior:And they just want obedience. They want you to shut up, and they want you to stop making demands and if you're making demands, you're a bad person and, you know, obviously behind the scenes everything is being worked out and they're not gonna do something crazy like, you know, not punish Trump and let him run for president again. You know, they lied and lied and lied and they kind of brainwashed people And that's what we are in now. And so I think, I mean, honestly, I kinda get the feeling they do want Harris to win because I think that the goal, and this is true of both the Trump, camp and the Harris camp, is war with Iran. I think that that is what they are all, aiming for.
Sarah Kendzior:And so I think that with Harris, if you're going to go for war with Iran, you're going to get a more bureaucratic kind of war with less, massive random acts of theft that you would get from Trump. I think, you know, Trump doesn't give a shit about this, but any particular way, but is very interested in whatever kind of money he can gain from the situation. So they may prefer her. I'm not sure. I think the alliances with the Cheney family and, you know, the backing of all of the, Bush administration officials, having lea Leon Panetta speak at the Democratic National Convention, having Harris talk about, you know, how proud she is to create the world's most lethal military.
Sarah Kendzior:Not the best, not the smartest, not the bravest, just lethal, just a killing machine. Those are all signs that we are headed to war against her will. I don't think anyone wants that. You know, I don't think Trump voters or Harris voters want a war with Iran, but I think that a lot of powerful people in DC and in other countries do. And so that's kind of their aim, and whoever they think will fulfill the same, is, I think, who will become the president.
Brendan Toller:I want to move towards, Israel and APAC. You write APAC should have to register as a foreign agent and should be banned from funding elections. I also think the US should end military aid to Israel immediately and should refuse to participate in Israel's regional wars in any way beyond providing humanitarian aid. That this is now considered a radical view instead of a common sense humane view disturbs me. I think it disturbs a lot of people.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. Absolutely. And one of the most mind blowing things to me is watching how differently Russia was treated because rightfully, people condemned Putin. They condemned Russia invading Ukraine. They condemned the Russian military killing innocent Ukrainian civilians.
Sarah Kendzior:And they, of course, if Putin was pumping, you know, tons of money into our electoral system, as he did, you know, through proxies with Trump, people condemned that and it prompted federal investigations. These investigations, of course, were never, you know, there's never the accountability that there there should have been, but at least they were there and people recognized it was wrong. When Israel, with Netanyahu, who is as bad as Putin, does the same thing, they applaud Israel. They proudly take this dirty money, and it is both sides of the aisle. It is absolutely uniform.
Sarah Kendzior:There's almost nothing that, people in congress agree on unanimously and in this kind of rigid way. It is only support for Israel that is absolutely unmerited because, you know, Israel is doing things that hurt the interests of the United States, and Israel's also carrying out a genocide and has been so for a year. You know, and that doesn't mean that, you know, Hamas is good or Hezbollah is good or that Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself, but it's not defending itself. Like when you're killing children, you know, who make up, nearly half of the victims of, you know, of people killed, in Gaza and also in the West Bank where Hamas, you know, did not have power, does not have power, you know, you are not doing anything in self defense. It wasn't a 3 year old, you know, who attacked, Israelis, and took them hostage, you know, but this has just been one of the most unbelievably vicious, bloodthirsty, and overt war crimes I've ever seen in my life.
Sarah Kendzior:You know, the photos that the IDF posts themselves are amongst, among the most incriminating evidence. So it's not speculative. We know what they're doing. Netanyahu and his extremist government, you know, they now have a hard, hard right wing government that in Israel used to be banned. You know, the Kahanist party, formed by Maher Khane, back in the seventies, They were banned in the United States and they were also banned in Israel, as terrorists because they would encourage act of terrorism and acts of terrorism were routinely carried out by the JBL, and other branches of this.
Sarah Kendzior:Biden took them off of the terrorist watch list in 2022, and now they're in the Israeli parliament with Netanyahu, who is a known criminal, you know, who is under multiple criminal trials. And so this is obviously not someone we should be partnered with in any way. You know, I'm I'm completely against giving aid to Israel and if, you know, they're going to give aid, it needs to be conditioned and that condition needs to be, you don't commit genocide and you also don't bribe and threaten our politicians. You know, I'm in Cori Bush's district. I watched what happened.
Sarah Kendzior:I would get these flyers every day from all of these packs with names like progressives from Missouri Incorporated. I'd be like, what the hell is that? And I would look it up and trace the money back, and it was all going to Republican far right wing Zionists. It eventually traced back to a group called Yashat. And, you know, and they they figured that out back in 2022.
Sarah Kendzior:In 2024, they did it to her again, only they it's the most expensive race for this district in the history of it. And it's all APAC money, given to her opponent, Wesley Bell. And then now he's won. And I feel like I don't have a representative anymore once once Cori Bush leaves. You know, I have criticisms of Cori Bush like I do have anybody, but I feel like she was at least representing St.
Sarah Kendzior:Louis, trying to represent St. Louis in our region, trying to represent the United States. I think Wesley Bell will represent his donors, who only have one interest and that is serving Israel and Israel's interests. So in that sense, St. Louis is an unrepresented city, entirely.
Sarah Kendzior:And that's a very scary thing. You know, that's a loss of sovereignty. And, I shouldn't have to live with that. I also, of course, have to live with the fact that I'm a journalist at a time that they're trying to legally outlaw criticism of Israel and my representative is completely beholden to Israel. So I'm a likely target of this kind of action, even though, you know, I'm not saying things that are untrue.
Sarah Kendzior:I'm not saying things that I don't think in a normal circumstances would be inflammatory. They weren't inflammatory when I said them about Russia, doing the same thing, but for some reason they're inflammatory When I say them about, Israel and a lot of the stuff I write is, you know, fairly benign. You know, I just read an article about, Palestinian embroidery, about the tradition of tatris as a kind of folk art that preserves, cultural heritage. That's considered too controversial by their standards because they've banned Tatris and other folk art groups in St. Louis, Palestinian art.
Sarah Kendzior:That's how far this censorship is going. So I look at dark times ahead and I do worry about my own ability to work as an independent writer, in this capacity if if they decide to, you know, create new laws prohibiting any discussion of Israel or anything related to Israel in any way because it's a very far reaching, kind of law.
Brendan Toller:Back to your core, what was your political awakening?
Sarah Kendzior:Oh, gosh. I don't know. I'm not sure I was ever asleep. Know, I wrote in one of my articles, like I ruined, a sleepover party by blabbing on about Ron Contra. I was like 8 or 9, you know, when I did that, like I was very annoying.
Sarah Kendzior:My mom subscribed to a lot of magazines. She subscribed to spy. So that was like a big thing because spy, of course, is covering Trump. And that's how I learned, you know, that and pop culture is how I learned about all of Trump's mafia activity and learned about Iran contra and, you know, a lot of names that kind of pop up in the news now. I'm like, my god.
Sarah Kendzior:That's what I would read, you know, when I was, like, 8 or 9. Of course, I didn't fully understand what I was reading, but, you know, there's some good journalism back in the eighties nineties. Like, I loved TV Guide. You know? I mean, I wanted to just read about what TV shows were on and my horror scope and whatever, but, you know, I also read the political articles of TV Guide.
Sarah Kendzior:And so even as a little kid, I was aware of what was going on, and I had a strong sense of right and wrong. And if I felt like someone was doing something wrong, if they were hurting people, like, what party they were in or how fancy they were, how famous they were, like, it meant absolutely nothing to me, and it still does. And, you know, I published an article recently where I, you know, somebody asked, you know, have I always been like this? I don't know what the men exactly This annoying or whatnot, but my answer is yes. You know, and I proved it.
Sarah Kendzior:I had diary entries from when I was a kid, and, I'm exactly the same. So I don't know. I sometimes think it would be nice to not know as much as I do about the worst things happening in the world. But I think the way for that to happen is for things to get better. And then I'll know a lot about nice things.
Sarah Kendzior:And then all those people are like, Sarah, you know, why are your articles so grim and depressing? We'll be able to say something else. They'll be like, why are you writing about happy stuff only? I'm like, because it's all good. You know?
Sarah Kendzior:And then it'll be true. That's what I want instead of, you know, lying and covering everything up, which is I think what people want me to do.
Brendan Toller:You're a music person. I'm wondering what music is guiding you and healing you and keeping you okay in these times.
Sarah Kendzior:Oh, gosh. I mean, I, like, I really run the spectrum, but lately I've been listening to a lot of, like, kind of more obscure, old seventies outlaw country, especially the singer, Sami Smith, female country singer. A lot of her music is hard to find. Like, I have to get it on vinyl. But she covered a lot of songs, a lot of classics.
Sarah Kendzior:She has this beautiful voice, there's something about it that reminds me of Roy Orbison, where you just, you feel the pain of it no matter what she's singing. She kinda reentered the news cycle briefly because, she was close to Kris Kristofferson and he died. But I've been listening to just tons and tons of her and also, Bobby Gentry, you know, sort of a similar figure. I love singers who just vanish because they're just like, you know, I don't know if I can swear. They're like, f it.
Sarah Kendzior:You know, I I I'm sick of all of this. I'm sick of you screaming me over. Sick of you not letting me do what I want. And I see this a lot with female singers, and I can very much relate. There's a lot of times I just wanna check out of this scene too.
Sarah Kendzior:And with Bobbie Gentry, you know, she wrote, do you know her?
Brendan Toller:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. So, you know, Ode to Billie Joe. Yeah. Like, I I feel like we're in this Ode to Billie Joe society. I feel like, you know, COVID and all of these crises that are constant climate change, that are constantly going on around us, are very much in that vein, where all these terrible things are happening and everyone is just acting like it's normal.
Sarah Kendzior:And that's the point of that song is that people cover up pain with politeness and they don't have empathy and they don't even notice when, you know, other people are are deeply, hurt and, wounded. And so, you know, I think she's a great singer and a great songwriter, and I've been driving my family nuts. You know, my my son has a birthday present As a joke, got me a picture of a t shirt with the, you know, you know, Choctaw Ridge on it. And, anyway, but, yeah, like, that time had a lot of really interesting lyricism and a lot of really, really dark murder ballad kind of country songs. You know, even the Everly Brothers had a really disturbing, you know, murder ballad song.
Sarah Kendzior:And, I've been kinda, like, exploring that, like, you know, which kind of benign fun, you know, 50, sixties group had some kind of awful violent song about, you know, killing someone and throwing them in a river. It turns out a lot. So, you know, that's an interesting thing to kind of, retrace in American history when people have a kind of nostalgic view of that time.
Brendan Toller:Well and the Everly Brothers were really trying to reinvent themselves in the seventies with their Warner, brothers contract and they were they were trying everything. They were like there's an interview, like, I tried everything. Acid, I tried cocaine, I tried you know, And it's it's sort of like this old paradigm that's trying to stay current. And and one of my favorite albums is, this album called Show by them, and they do these crazy medleys. And it's it's like this punk rock version of the Everly Brothers.
Brendan Toller:They're playing everything at this speed that's just so crazy. And it's, I I can see why we would listen to music like that in these times because we're looking at America as this broken thing trying to reinvent itself, but it's just it's really flailing.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. Yeah. And then I have to check that out because I've gotten more intrigued by them. And, you know, Chris, my introduction to them was, like, Axl Rose dating Aaron Everly. But, you know, nonetheless, it's like a one long, one long story.
Brendan Toller:Definitely the live album show from 1970 and definitely the Warner Brothers, 2 disc collection. I think it's called Walk Right Back. It's it's unbelievable.
Sarah Kendzior:Okay.
Brendan Toller:Your relationship with nature and road trips, we'd obviously be remiss if we didn't mention that you have a new book coming out in 2025, The Last American Road Trip.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. That's a book that's a little bit of a departure, from, you know, my previous books which tended to be, you know, more on state crimes and on America's political history. This, of course, still has that. You know, we go to some standards about, you know, my family and I going on road trips from about 2016 onward, not for the purpose of writing this book. This is just the way I live my life.
Sarah Kendzior:You know, I live in Missouri, it's easier to drive. I like to visit national parks, state parks, historical sites, you know, anywhere interesting. Like I'll go anywhere and I'm open to anything. And I had, you know, 2 children, back in 2016. They were 9 and 5, you know, so they were good ages for this sort of adventure.
Sarah Kendzior:And then I wrote about our time visiting, I think there's 38 or 40 states mentioned in the book, you know, driving all over the country in all these different directions as things change, you know, during the Trump era, sort of during COVID, I mean, we were mostly housebound, but then after COVID and then how that changed everything. And, you know, recently with, things like we can drive into Illinois and suddenly my daughter and I have full bodily autonomy by law again, you know, there's all of these things that happen. And so, yeah, you know, the, the road trips are meant to be an escape of vacation just like for anyone else. But, of course, you know, I have this interest in the darker side of American history. So among the destinations along with, you know, Yellowstone and Route 66, you get, you know, the the MENA, Arkansas Airport, where the Iran Contra drug smelling took place.
Sarah Kendzior:My I took my kids there, for fun, and and a lot of other things. I I think it's I don't know if it's my best book. I don't wanna I feel like I might pin it up too much. I'm, like, nervous about what people are gonna think about it. But it's more like the substack, I think, in terms of content.
Sarah Kendzior:You know, it's more personal. It's, you know, more of a travelogue. It's not as kind of you know, you feel like you're getting hit on the head with a, you know, a hammer or something, which is, like, when people are hiding in plain sight or they knew all these horrible revelations. Some of it's a little too much for people, and I understand that. This is, like, the the lighter one.
Sarah Kendzior:Like, when I was writing it, I was thinking of Ray Bradbury and how he wrote something Wicked This Way Comes, then he wrote dandelion wine, you know, kind of as a flip side, as like a a lighter side of the same place, but full of nostalgia and and sentimentality and kind of like a raw emotion. And that's what I was sort of, thinking of as I wrote this. It's like, this is the dandelion dandelion wine version of, you know, my other books, which are all something wicked this becomes.
Brendan Toller:A recent passage of yours, I loathe savior syndrome. This idea that some power broker is going to rescue us, but I love the world and will fight for it. What is America at its best and what's worth fighting for?
Sarah Kendzior:I mean, I think, you know, our our lands and our natural beauty is definitely worth fighting for, you know, and I've seen so much of it, and I feel very lucky to have seen so much of it because, you know, these days, you never know what will crumble. Like, in the last American road trip, I talk about driving around during a time of climate change and visiting kind of places that are in obvious peril, places like Glacier National Park, for example. But I also describe us driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains and never in my wildest dreams would I think the park that would close down, you know, which it is now would be that or the place that would be, you know, imperiled in the worst way after I wrote this book would be Asheville and and the surrounding area, you know, of Western North Carolina. And so we're in this very fragile state. And I think, you know, our natural sites are worth preserving our historic sites, but also, you know, people, I think people do want to come together and help each other.
Sarah Kendzior:I think they're actively discouraged from being kind and generous and good. I think a lot of times people feel vulnerable and they feel like that's almost a sucker's bet, but there's a good communal spirit that exists. And, you know, I, unfortunately, think they have seen in the last, you know, few years, it doesn't always come out in times of tragedy. You would hope it would. You would hope people would band together, but instead, you know, COVID is a good example of this.
Sarah Kendzior:People were at each other's throats, but I generally think we're a good country with a terrible, terrible government and many institutions that are not really worth, preserving. But I think there's, you know, a freeness and a a humor to us and just a diversity of population. Like, I love how we feel. You know, it feels like we're like a 100 little countries all in one. And I think that that's something to preserve.
Sarah Kendzior:I don't like the way, the Internet and AI and this kind of like monoculture of of digitization has made things seem more the same, you know, different places that I visit. You know, I just, I see a loss of a lot of, like, independent businesses and things like that, especially since 2008, especially since the financial collapse. And I hope that we're able to preserve our individuality, our independence, you know, all of those things. You know, I think that we're a tragic country. I think we're a lot we're a very evil country in terms of the actions, of our government and sometimes of our people.
Sarah Kendzior:But I think we're, you know, in many ways, like, a a wonderful country to to actually live in in terms of the people and and the beauty and all the interesting weird fun things to see.
Brendan Toller:And last question, what can we do?
Sarah Kendzior:About what?
Brendan Toller:Exactly.
Sarah Kendzior:Yeah. I mean, it's like a it's it's it's your version of the hope question because you already asked the hope question. True. It's usually the last one I get. I mean, I think the most important thing for people to do now is know their own moral compass because I think people are being told to accept things and back things that they normally would not do.
Sarah Kendzior:And they're trying to rationalize that decision to themselves. And so I think, you know, take a hard look at what you believe is right and wrong and pay attention to that inner voice inside you more to any more than to any voice you're hearing outside, whether it proclaims itself to be an expert or not. Like, you know what's right, you know what's wrong, you know when people are innocent, you know that is bad and people don't deserve it. Like, have retain that compassion and retain that strength. And if people try to beat it out of you, don't let them.
Brendan Toller:Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Kendzior:You're welcome.