All language subtitles for While.The.Rest.Of.Us.Die.S01E05.1080p.WEB.h264-BAE.ENG

-2020 is the beginning
of the age of catastrophe.

♪♪

It's kind of the future
warning us

about what's
on the cards for us,

because the grim truth
that I think we're not facing

is that our civilization
is now beginning to collapse

in very real
in very serious ways.

-Most Americans are comforted
in the belief

that their government

and the country's best
and brightest

will step up to protect them.

-The entire idea of
American exceptionalism

and the illusion
of national security

is that we are strong
and we can take a blow

or that we'll protect Americans
from some sort of major attack

or some sort of cataclysm.

But the truth is that we are
very brittle right now.

-We're always looking ahead,

ahead to an America
that never leaves anyone behind.

-Just filming, just filming,
My God!

-But what if it turns out
that the greatest threat

in this age of catastrophe
is that this idea...

That Americans will pull
together in times of crisis...

Is dead, killed by decades
of treating American freedom

as the freedom
to get ahead at any cost.

-During normal times,
it's easy to think,

oh, the elite, the one percent,

they're actually concerned
about everybody's welfare.

But then in that moment
of crisis,

when elites treat it as
an opportunity for profiteering,

rent seeking, gouging
from the public purse,

that's the recipe
for a failed state.

-For over 70 years,
our leaders have told us

one thing
under the bright lights...

-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans

is the responsibility
of all public officials.

- I care we're trying...
- And it is my first duty

as president
to protect the American people.

-We have it so well
under control.

-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars

on secret plans
that serve one premise:

when the shit really hits
the fan, we're on our own.

-I have nothing!
Nothing!

-And while the government
leaves us to fend for ourselves,

the elite suck us dry
to fund their own escape.

♪♪

♪♪

Since the Cold War,

the threat of nuclear
annihilation was real,

but the story that we are
somehow all in this together

was closer to a cartoon.

-The best protection of all
is the special shelter

built according
to specifications

of your local
civil defense organization.

-Instead of protecting
the American public

by reducing the threat...

[ Explosion ]

the U.S. government sinks
billions of taxpayer dollars

into new and more sophisticated
weapons of mass destruction.

One of those was codenamed
Starfish Prime.

In 1962,
American military scientists

launched an experimental warhead

from a remote island
in the Pacific.

-On Johnston Island,
missile preparation for the July

launch of
the Starfish Prime shot

was one aspect of
an extensive team effort.

-The experiment was designed
to test the effects

of nuclear explosions
in outer space.

♪♪

-Equally important was the need
to know

the effects of high altitude
nuclear bursts

on military command
and control systems

which require
long range communications.

-The explosion caused a massive
electromagnetic pulse,

known as an EMP.

The pulse fried electronics

hundreds of miles
away in Hawaii.

It even blew out rows
of streetlights in Honolulu.

The Starfish Prime experiment

exposes a frightening
new possibility.

What if something as simple as
a basic infrastructure failure

could deal a fatal blow
to America?

It's a scenario
that has troubled

doomsday planners ever since...

because it's a lot easier
to imagine the lights going out

in a mushroom cloud
over New York City.

And when the basic things
we all take for granted

suddenly stop working,

in the end, that may be
just as destructive

to our way of life.

♪♪

♪♪

2020 has shown us
that the boundaries

between some distant
future apocalypse and reality

may be thinner than
we'd like to believe.

It has given us a preview
of what things look like

when our way of life
starts to break down.

-The fundamental basic
institutions

and structures of life

that we took for granted
have snapped apart like that.

-What if the coronavirus

is just a shot across the bow,

a warning
of what the future holds?

-I think most people are very
conflicted about this

in the sense that we long
for a return to normalcy.

But there's also a part of us
that says, you know,

normal isn't coming back...
This is it.

-We've already seen how fragile
our supply chains are,

thanks to the pandemic.

We've got a little preview of it
through things like

farmers having to harvest
their crops

or slaughter their livestock,

but not being able
to bring them to market.

And so they just destroyed it

because small elements
in the logistics broke down.

If there's a total breakdown,

that's going to be
a lot more frightening.

You'll recall that at the start
of the pandemic,

there was a widespread
toilet paper shortage.

[ Indistinct ]

-It's only one per customer.

-So multiply that, you know,
minor inconvenience

and it probably cascades.

[ Siren wailing ]

-The government will tell you
that when there's a disaster,

you could be on your own
for the first 72 hours.

But if a cataclysmic disaster
really happens,

not everyone assumes
that the government...

Or anyone, for that matter...

Is really coming to help.

-Rich people in government,
they take care of themselves,

but for the middle class
and for lower-income folks,

you're absolutely on your own.

-In the foothills of
the Colorado Mountains

is a secluded camp
called Fortitude Ranch.

It's run by Drew Miller.

With a Ph.D.
in public policy from Harvard,

he's a respected figure
in what used to be

considered a fringe movement.

-We kind of had a phrase
decades ago

in the prep industry
called "72 hours to Animal,"

saying, you know, for the first
couple of days,

people will react okay,

but eventually when there's
no food,

no water,
and panic starts spreading,

people are going to get to their
basic instinct of survival,

and it's going to be lawless.

We don't believe that anymore...
We believe it's more like

72 seconds,
or 72 minutes to animal.

Chaos is going to break out
within the first hour or hours.

-A former Cold War
military intelligence officer,

Miller has inside knowledge
that most people don't.

-Government's
number one priority

is taking care of themselves.

Police number one priority,
continuity of government,

taking care
of the elected officials.

No one is going to be responding
to your call

for help in your little house,

saying, hey, there's a marauding
group coming through,

breaking into houses,
taking goods and stealing.

So if you're
a government official,

you'll be taken care of.

But the rest of us
are pretty much on our own.

-Go! Back up! Back up!

-We're prepared to
defend ourselves.

We don't just stockpile food,
we have guns and ammo too,

but a lot of
the population does not,

and they're going to be victims,
unfortunately, in that case.

The major weapons we recommend
for our members

are either an AR-15,
which is not an assault rifle.

It's a defensive rifle.

People say,
"Oh, you don't need this,

this is just for
the military"...

Well, in a collapse situation,

if you've got a marauder group
coming after you

and they got a lot of people,
got a lot of weapons,

you do need a lot of rounds.

♪♪

-In 2020, fear spread far
and wide beyond Fortitude Ranch.

As the U.S. economy ground
to a halt

and millions of Americans
were put out of work,

we witnessed how vulnerable
our way of life really is.

-I think people
are scared shitless

about two things...
They're related.

The first is the idea
that we have built

a technological society

whose comforts we are
reliant upon,

whose coordination we need to
sustain our current population,

that if you just turned off
all the machines tomorrow,

the kind of handmade version
of our society,

where all the crops were brought
in by hand and so on,

would provoke mass die-offs.

And the story we've been sold
is part of the other fear,

which is that our institutions
are no longer trustworthy,

that they have become not
truth-seeking exercises,

but rather auction houses
in which people

who are powerful and wealthy

can buy a version of the truth

that suits their parochial ends.

In a world in which the Sacklers
successfully convinced the FDA

that opioids weren't dangerous

and kick-started
an opioid epidemic

that killed 200,000 Americans...

More than died in Vietnam...

And where the Sacklers
themselves became richer

than the Rockefellers,
how do you trust an institution?

♪♪

-Something like an EMP attack
would wipe out

not just the infrastructure
that we have,

but we would see very,
very quickly the distance

between the importance

by which the government
seeks their own survival

and the survival
of the American people.

This idea of national security

would collapse
almost instantaneously.

♪♪

[ Indistinct chanting,
explosions ]

-But in the age of catastrophe,
it doesn't really take an EMP

to see what happens
when the lights go out...

and our basic institutions
start to fail us.

We all just lived through 2020.

-So what happens when somebody
now doesn't have a job,

doesn't have the basic
kind of access

to resources that we take
for granted in the rich world,

you turn on the tap,
water doesn't come out,

you go to the store
and there's not enough food,

you press the button
and there's no electricity.

What happens?

Well, history tells us,

when people grow
suddenly poorer,

what happens is massive waves
of authoritarianism and fascism.

History tells us that
in absolutely unsparing terms.

So that's the story of Weimar
Germany becoming Nazi Germany.

It's the story
of Stalinist Russia.

It's the story
of the Islamic world.

It's also the story
of America today.

[ Explosion ]

-What if the doomsday scenario
that politicians planned for

since the Cold War turned out
to be a lot less obvious

than a nuclear bomb or EMP?

What if it's our economy and
the collapse has already begun?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-It's the first wave
of a deadly pandemic:

most of America
is under lockdown,

the country's economy grinds
to an almost complete halt.

It's the worst economic drop off
in modern history.

Borders are closed,

lines at food pantries
stretch for miles,

in cities across America.

-You're all set,
have a wonderful apocalypse.

-It feels like this is what
the beginning of doomsday

and the apocalypse
might feel like.

♪♪

-This is a government soup
kitchen giving free meals

to these men who were once
skilled workers in a factory.

-America has seen
an economic collapse before.

During the Great Depression,

the nation was brought to
its knees.

-These people had come to depend
on government relief.

And where did this happen?

Right here in these
United States.

-But during the Cold War,
government planners

imagined something even
more catastrophic...

Nuclear war.

Their plans involved
almost nothing to ensure

the survival
of ordinary Americans,

but they were concerned
with what to do

with those who somehow survived.

And in order
to put them back to work,

they would need a way
to pay them.

♪♪

Hidden under
the Virginia mountains

is one of the least known
chapters of the Cold War.

There, the Federal Reserve
constructed its own

mountain bunker,
known as Mount Pony.

-Walking down there
is a series of hallways

about as long
as a football field.

And they're cold,
they're made of concrete,

they're lit
with fluorescent lights,

and lining the hallways
on both sides

are these big, steel,
reinforced doors.

-On one floor of
the Federal Reserve bunker,

a massive steel blast door

leading to
a 22,500 square foot vault.

-That's where they stored
the billions of dollars

of U.S. currency.

-It was one of the largest
vaults in the world.

It contained row after row of
nine-foot-high stacks of cash.

700 million pieces of currency,

much of it in the form
of $2 bills.

-This coincided in the 1970s
with the period

when the U.S. reintroduced
the $2 bill

and Americans
rejected it widely, so the Fed,

rather than pulp the money,
set it up in its own bunkers,

assuming that after
a nuclear attack,

Americans would be less choosey

about which currency
they were using.

♪♪

-The plan was to
stockpile enough cash

to replenish the supply east of
the Mississippi for two years...

Long enough for the Bureau
of Engraving and Printing

to rebuild its précis.

Smaller bunkers
hidden in abandoned mines

and other military bases

were scattered
around the country.

But the government didn't stop
with a plan

on how to pay citizens to work.

They also wanted a plan
to take that money back.

And so the engineers of the
apocalypse turned to the IRS.

-The joke is that there are only
two constants in life:

death and taxes.

And so even in a nuclear attack

that held true.

And if one didn't get you,

the IRS wanted to make sure
that the other did.

-The IRS
and the Treasury Department

gave a lot of thought to
figuring out

how they could assess and raise
taxes after a nuclear holocaust,

debating what happens to

mortgages on homes
that have been vaporized,

or wondering how to assess
the value of properties

post attack.

-Part of what makes these plans
so strange

is realizing just how unworkable

they would have been under
almost any actual emergency.

-While those impractical
government plans

are sitting
on a shelf somewhere...

When a real economic emergency
actually arises,

the government is left
scrambling to find a way out.

It's 2007, and America's
wealthiest

financial institutions
have been getting rich

by pushing loans and mortgages

to people who can't afford them.

Across America, roughly three
million homes are foreclosed on,

turning parts of cities
into ghost towns.

♪♪

-The housing downturn
and the surrounding uncertainty

are significantly impacting
our financial institutions

and capital markets.

-But the subprime
mortgage crisis

doesn't just hurt homeowners.

The greed
and irresponsible behavior

of financial institutions

has a ripple effect
on the global economy

leading to the Great Recession
in 2008.

♪♪

By the end of 2009,

more than 15 million Americans
are unemployed.

Facing bankruptcy,

the financial giants
that caused the crisis

are considered too big to fail.

-Wall Street bet that
the government would rescue them

if they got into trouble.

It appears that bet may be
the one that pays off.

-Without them, the economy faces
a meltdown.

And so the government steals a
page from its nuclear playbook,

the elite get saved, only this
time it's not in bunkers

under mountains of concrete,

it's under mountains of cash.

-And you can sit there and say,
well, if they hadn't done that,

the whole financial system
would have melted down.

But the fundamental problem
was that they extended

all of the support
to the financial institutions,

but didn't actually extend
the same level of support

to ordinary people.

-While foreclosed homeowners
are living in their cars,

45 billion taxpayer dollars
get funneled to JPMorgan,

Goldman Sachs,
and Morgan Stanley...

Institutions that paid out
$18 billion

in bonuses to bankers
and executives.

Of a $475 billion bailout
authorized by Congress,

only 6% goes to help
underwater homeowners.

Most of the rest goes to banks
and financial institutions.

In the two years
after the recession,

the net wealth
of most Americans shrinks,

while the richest actually
increase their wealth

by almost 30%.

-And that created not just
a deep

and lasting sense
of economic pain

for millions of ordinary people,

but it also creates this lasting
sense of anger and unfairness

and a feeling that basically
the elites are going to

get protected
if something bad happens,

but ordinary people aren't.

-In 2007 and '08, the unmasking
was quite shocking.

What happened in the years
just after that,

where the bailouts
were quite controversial,

it appeared as the polluters
got paid,

the people under water
in mortgages

did not get restructuring.

The Tea Party was spawned
on the right in America.

Occupy on the left.

- When do we want it?
- Now!

[ Indistinct shouts,
whistle blowing ]

-And when inequality
was exacerbated by the bailouts,

the disintegration
of credibility and faith

spread like wildfire.

-The Great Recession
was only the beginning.

While the economy
gradually recovers,

inequality in America worsens

and a new class of elite
becomes even more powerful.

♪♪

[ Cheering and applause ]

♪♪

-In March 2020, Elon Musk
laid off nearly 300 janitors

and shuttle drivers
due to COVID-19...

sending his lowest earners home
without pay.

As these struggling workers
join soup lines

and food pantries
around the block,

Tesla's stock price quickly
rebounded the following month,

and Musk's net worth
soon more than tripled

to over $90 billion.

-Is this really worth it,
Mr. Musk?

-This is an uncomfortable truth
about America today.

It's not just that when
the world is facing collapse,

those at the top
get the chance to survive.

Today, they rise
to even greater heights

by getting even richer
and more powerful.

♪♪

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

Nine years earlier,

the streets of New York City
erupt in protest.

-All day, all week,
occupy Wall Street!

All day, all week...

-Since the Great Recession,

inequality
has only gotten worse.

The wealth of elites
has soared to new heights

while ordinary Americans
continue to suffer.

Poverty in America
takes on new meaning.

-Why should anybody
in a rich country

have to choose between their
life savings and their life?

Have to choose between
their home and basic medicine?

Have to choose between keeping
the water and heating on

or educating their kids?

-Why can't I have a home,
why I can't afford my rent?

-These choices don't make sense

and they're the choices
that everyday Americans make.

These aren't the choices of like
a small kind of underclass.

Right? These are the choices
that the people formerly known

as the American middle class
have to make.

So America is really
a place of extremes.

You know, you have
trillion-dollar companies now.

In a historic...
Apple and Amazon,

the world's first
trillion-dollar companies.

You have 50%
of all new jobs in America

working a low-income
service jobs,

it's a polite economist's way
of saying

people are becoming
servants again.

History is repeating itself.

People are falling
into peasantry and servitude.

-Over the last four decades,

the wealth of
the richest Americans

has continued to climb,

but since the 1980s,

the average working-age American
has seen almost zero growth.

Today, the top 1% in America

earned more than 80 times
the bottom 50%.

-If I say that inequality
in America

is reaching third world levels,

they don't believe me.

And in some respect,
they're right.

But there are people
who have to beg,

who will never pay off
their debts successfully.

So there is not maybe perhaps
yet the level

of absolute deprivation that
there is in the third world,

but the level of inequality
has produced real degradation

in America,
real relative poverty.

-We're here to say
enough is enough.

In New York City,
we have been protesting

over three months now, and we're
just getting started.

-Since the start
of the coronavirus pandemic,

a record 40 million Americans
have filed for unemployment.

In July, an estimated
30 million reported

not having enough to eat...

That's one in every 10
households.

Yet that same month, JPMorgan,
the same financial institution

that helped cause
the 2008 recession

and received billions
of taxpayer dollars in bailouts,

posts one of
its best quarters ever.

During the first weeks
of the pandemic,

as the unemployment rate
in America nears 15%,

the billionaires' wealth
actually increases.

-The American economy has been
completely divorced

from the fates of the people.

This is a sad fact

that we can see
when unemployment numbers go up

but stocks rise.

And the truth is
that this notion that somehow

or another the economy
is somehow or another simpatico

with the fates of the people
is a complete fiction.

-As people do poorly,
the banks can still do well

because more is being borrowed,

more is being spent.

The government printed
a trillion,

two trillion,
three trillion dollars.

The more they print,

the better the balance sheet
is for the lender.

And that's... that's the thing
that matters.

So you can end up with everybody
poor and out of work,

two-thirds, three-quarters
of the people out of work,

but the ones who've got
that S&P 500 index fund,

that's still going up.

♪♪

-Of course, we're seeing
one industry

after another being bailed out,

but it is made more
and more clear by the day

that the fate
of American people themselves

is not being taken
in consideration

and is certainly not given
the weight of taking care

of businesses and corporations.

-During a pandemic

and the worst unemployment
crisis in modern history,

needy Americans scrape by
on modest government handouts.

-You don't have a job,
you don't get health care.

You don't have health care,
you die.

Barely anybody makes enough
to pay off their debts

or afford a decent standard
of living.

You have to care about yourself
the most and you barely have

any money left over
to care about anybody else.

-These problems aren't invisible
to the people

who have the power
to do something about them.

Think about this:

Amazon has 876,000 employees.

If Jeff Bezos gave each employee
a $100,000 bonus,

he would still be richer
than he was

at the start of the pandemic.

-If we taxed 60%
of the windfall gains

these billionaires made from
March 18th until August 3rd,

we could raise over
$420 billion.

That's enough revenue to pay all
of the out of pocket health care

expenses for every man,
woman and child in this country

over the next 12 months.

So that's the choice
that we have to make.

-Bernie Sanders gives voice

to a popular movement
of young Americans,

an existential threat
to the wealthiest people

in the country.

-It is morally obscene
for billionaires

to use a global pandemic

as an opportunity
to make outrageous profits

and to very substantially
increase their wealth.

-What happens with elites is,

when they're left
to their own devices,

they get greedier and greedier
and they get paranoid.

They develop a fear
of the slippery slope

that any infringement
on their prerogative

will lead to more
and more and more,

and pretty soon the... their
heads will be in the guillotine.

-It's 2017, just after
Trump's inauguration,

media theorist Douglas Rushkoff
shows up at an exclusive resort

to deliver a talk
about the digital future

to a group of
wealthy tech executives.

-I was in the green room
waiting to go on

when five men came in
to the green room

and sat around this little table
they had there,

and I found out that there was
no talk for me to go do...

That these guys were the talk.

And they didn't want to hear
the whole thing I had prepared,

they just started peppering me
with these questions...

Like, "Bitcoin or Ethereum?"

Which one should they bet on?

Or augmented reality
or virtual reality,

which did I think would win?

And then the third question,
the one that made me realize

that this was more
than I signed up for,

they said,
Alaska or New Zealand,

meaning where should they
situate their bunkers

for the event?

♪♪

-For years, New Zealand has been

an apocalypse escape destination
for America's elite.

Notable home buyers include
the tech tycoon Peter Thiel,

an outspoken supporter
of Donald Trump.

He's also bet that America
was not the place to be

if things collapsed,

so he arranged for a New Zealand
passport just in case.

Other American elites
were getting similar ideas.

-The rest of my hour with them

was them asking me all these,
like, really specific questions

about how to water test
their plans for the apocalypse,

for the electromagnetic pulse,

for the economic downturn,

or the disease or war
that would necessitate them

leaving their Silicon Valley
ranches and retreating

to these fortified bunkers
in the middle of nowhere.

-The government's secret plans
to save itself

now have competition from
the secret plans

of the 1%.

From converted Cold War bunkers
and missile silos

to specially outfitted yachts,

a doomsday industry caters
to the mega rich.

Luxury bunkers
with indoor pools,

artificial sunlight,
and supplies

to stay sealed off
from the world for years.

From the Cold War till now,

the most powerful people end up
being the ones most afraid.

And today, even as the actions
of a few at the top

have helped pushed poverty rates

near their highest levels
in half a century,

it's the rich
who fear losing control.

Elite anxiety is on the rise.

♪♪

-The billionaires,
they understand

that they're playing
a dangerous game,

that they are running out
of room

to externalize the damage of
the way their companies operate.

Eventually there's going to be,
you know, the social unrest

that leads to your undoing,

which is why these same people

are looking
at creating bomb shelters,

going to Australia
or New Zealand.

-What I would say is this was
sort of an acceleration

of the notion of what we had
called gated communities,

where you try to insulate
yourself from the social discord

that's outside.

But here it was
an evacuation plan.

-For the billionaires
in the green room with Rushkoff,

the biggest concern
is protecting themselves

from the unruly masses.

-The question we ended up
spending the majority of time on

was how do I maintain control
of my security force

after my money is worthless?

So these guys had already
secured Navy SEALs

and security forces to come

and guard
their facilities for them.

But if the U.S. economy
goes belly up,

if the government's gone,
if dollars are worthless,

then why are those guys
going to stay and protect them?

Once they start talking
in those terms,

it's really easy to puncture
a hole in their plan.

So you've got 20 Navy SEALs
hired to protect

you and your family
from the marauding mobs

of people
with Jeeps and bazookas...

Let's say that they've got great
weapons and great strategies.

Why are they defending you?

You know, why are they
letting you be in charge?

Why won't they want
their commander

to be the one in charge?

Any monarch or ruler who is
depending on their military

to maintain their power

ends up in...
In a military coup! Right?

They end up taken over
by their junta.

That's not...
It doesn't work that way.

So what can we do?
And there's like,

so one of them said,
oh, I was thinking, you know,

we could do shock collars,

you know, get them
to wear shock collars

so I could, you know, zap them
if they're going to go off

and they understand that that's
the price of...

I mean, shock collars?
Really?

You really think short collars
are going to work?

They're going to wait till
you're as sleep in order to grab

the little control button...
It's just not going to work.

-Rushkoff offers
a simple solution

overlooked by the billionaires

despite all their
elaborate planning.

-They were like saying,
"So what do we do?

What do we do?"
And I said, well,

if these guys are already
working for you,

like, pay for their kid's
bat mitzvahs now.

The idea was,
if you're nice enough

to your security people now,

then they're going to be
more reluctant to kill you

because they'll think
before they pull the trigger,

"Aw, he paid for my daughter's
bat mitzvah," right?

-The arrogance of
the American rich is staggering.

It's so interesting
when one gets to deal with them

and you realize how ridiculous
their ideas are.

And they really think that they
can play gilded survivalists

when the society that they're
ripping off collapses...

And they can't.

♪♪

-Behind the thinking of
the Cold War's doomsday planners

is a strange mentality.

It's okay to destroy the planet
and kill nearly everyone on it,

because if you're one of
the elite, you get to survive.

-These crazy Cold War bunkers,
like fantasy landscapes,

they're kind of like monuments
to elite delusion and paranoia

because they won't work,
but they embody

this self-justification...
"Yeah, sure, we can invest

billions of dollars,
trillions of dollars

in atomic weapons
and even use them,

and civilization will survive."

That's deranged thinking.

-I'm going to lay
the facts before you...

The rough with the smooth.

Some of these security facts
are reassuring;

others are not.

They are sternly demanding.

-The threat of
global annihilation

was at its peak
during the Cold War.

So was the belief that you could
really survive an apocalypse.

-These elites,

with this... this kind of
bunker mentality,

which is inherited
from the Cold War,

it's kind of like gentrified
from the... the middle class

-50s version of it,
which was equally insane...

The family of four will dive
into a basement in the backyard.

Right?

-The goal is adequate
fallout shelter space

for every man, woman and child.

-Probably many viewers
cracked open

their parents or grandparents
bunkers at some point and found,

"Oh, lo and behold,
this is like, you know,

flooded with three feet
of stagnant water.

And, you know these cans of
beans are all corroded,"

you know, proving that this...
This fantasy

of living through an atomic war

was just that, a fantasy.

[ Indistinct shouting,
cheering ]

[ Weapons firing ]

♪♪

[ Respirator hissing ]

♪♪

♪♪

-When you're up in God knows
where, you know,

in the... in the space station

where Jeff Bezos
or Elon Musk live,

you don't have to worry anymore
about the regular people.

Or if you do, that's why you're
building your space station...

To get away
from the civilization

that you needed
to rape and pillage

in order to amass
that level of wealth.

-Coronavirus has widened

the already
enormous wealth gap in America.

Radical inequality
often leads to revolution.

And as far as the 1%
are concerned,

the guillotines are coming.

-We love to ignore the history
and we love to pretend

that we've progressed, you know,
beyond the old challenges

and that we're now hitting
new material.

We're not hitting new material.

This is just class war
all over again.

-During normal times,
the story we get from elites

is that anyone can become rich
if you just work hard enough,

and anyone who's poor,
it's basically their fault.

Well, when suddenly everybody
is suffering economically,

that stuff goes out the window.

It's ideologically
destabilizing,

and I think there's
a possibility

that people will start
seeing through all these myths

and start seeing the situation
for what it is,

which is a struggle
between classes,

between the vast majority
of people

who work for a living
and sell their labor

and are dependent on
a functional labor market;

and this tiny, really,
really powerful,

really, really rich elite.

-As the pandemic
death toll surges...

new waves of poverty
spread around the world.

The planet records its hottest
month on record,

and California burns.

Elon Musk announces
plans to colonize Mars.

-What they were
really looking at was,

How do I earn enough money
to insulate myself

from the reality I'm creating
by earning money in this way?

You can't...
You can't go it alone.

The only possible solution
is to make the world a place

that you don't need
to retreat from.

It's such an easier,
high probability strategy

for success
than the course that they're on.

But... but they can't stop.

They still think
about technology

as a way to insulate themselves
from the real world.

They want to insulate themselves
from us because they know

what they have to do to us
to maintain the privilege

that they're... that they're
trying to live in...

That... that privileged bubble.

♪♪

The most powerful people
in the world,

you know, they see themselves
as utterly incapable

of actually creating a future

in which everything's
going to be okay.

[ Reporters shouting
over each other ]

♪♪

♪♪

They're going to bet
all their money

on how do they as individuals

somehow survive that disaster?

♪♪

♪♪

They're destroying
the whole thing,

they're destroying
the whole thing

because they can't see a way out

because of that paucity
of imagination,

because they don't want
to acknowledge

the larger operating system
on which they're functioning,

and they're slowly
waking up to it.

But rather than sort of come
out of their mental bunkers

and look at, wow,
how could I operate

in a less destructive,
extractive way?

Instead, they're just thinking,
what's my safety plan?

What's my escape hatch?

How much food do I need
to stick in my basement

in order to survive the thing?

♪♪

-People who believe
the disinformation,

misinformation, we've seen will
do some pretty extreme things.

If you actually believe

the theories that are espoused
by QAnon as reality,

they would probably warrant
some pretty dramatic responses.

-Our president walked out there!

Went in front of the church!

And held a Holy Bible!

In front of
that American church!

-Conspiracy theories
can exist and thrive

because the world
is full of actual conspiracies.

♪♪