In this week’s episode, Jad, Kevin, and special guest Tom DeLorenzo discuss the fate of Chris Dorner. Chris was a 33-year old Naval Reservist turned LAPD police officer who recently and allegedly killed himself after a police siege. He was believed to have killed four people before distributing a rather lengthy and disturbing manifesto about his experiences on the LAPD.

The entire incident was plagued with frightening realities of how police forces are becoming increasingly militarized. There were news stories warning Los Angelites to obey officers citing that the force was “on edge”. Then there was the incident where officers fired approximately 100 rounds into a truck that they thought was Dorners. Even if you ignore that the truck was occupied by two older Hispanic women instead of a younger black man, even if you ignore the fact that it was a blue Toyota instead of a gray Nissan like the one Dorner was thought to be driving, you still can’t ignore the fact that modern police protocol simply fires into a vehicle that clearly had made no threat against them. Worse is that a similar incident happened a second time!

So if you didn’t have enough reasons to say fuck the LAPD, you’re sure to find a few more within the episode.

We also discuss how modern technology might have altered or hastened the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy Assassination. Jad brings up the interesting point that there seems to be a lag in time before regular people (non-conspiracy-theorists) actually become interested in outcomes other than those presented by the mainstream media. He suggests that by the time people do become interested, the actual story is no longer even relevant. It’s a pretty interesting exchange.

Material from Podcast

Music

• Hey Man Nice Shot by Filter

References

• Christopher Dorner on Wikipedia
• Tom DeLorenzo’s book, New World Rising

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Transcript of Podcast

Kevin: Hello again and welcome to another episode of the JK Podcast. In addition to a fascinating topic and current event, Jad and I are happy to have Tom DeLorenzo as a special guest. Tom is the author of New World Rising, a collection of essays dedicated to the individual rights that we so frequently and very passionately discuss on the JK Podcast. He also happens to be an Austinite, making him a perfect fit for our show.

This week we discuss the fate of Chris Dorner, the 33 year old naval reservist turned L.A.P.D. police officer who recently and allegedly killed himself after a police siege. Chris was believed to have killed 4 people while also distributing a rather lengthy and disturbing manifesto about his experience on the Los Angeles police department. The entire incident was plagued with frightening realities of how police forces are becoming increasingly militarized.

There were news stories warning Los Angelites to obey officers, citing that the force was “on edge”. Then there was the incident where officers fired approximately 100 rounds into a truck that they thought was Dorner’s. Even if you ignore the fact that the truck was occupied by two older Hispanic women instead of a younger black man, and even if you ignore the fact that it was a blue Toyota instead of a gray Nissan like the one Dorner was thought to be driving, you still can’t ignore the fact that modern police protocol simply fires into a vehicle that clearly had made no threat against it.

Worse is that a similar incident happened a second time. Of course, then there’s the actual tapes from the police siege. It was during this time that police officers ultimately decided to burn down the cabin that Chris had holed himself up in. Here’s some of the audio that quickly circulated after the event:

Recorded Audio: [?] [Inaudible]

Beyond the static, you can hear the police yelling phrases like, “burn that fucking house down” – not exactly what people should be thinking about when it comes to the American justice system. We later discuss how modern technology might have altered the history of the Kennedy assassination. Jad brings up the interesting point that there seems to be a lag in time before people actually begin considering a conspiracy theory. By the time they do, the actual story no longer even matters to history – it’s a pretty interesting exchange.

As always, your hosts are Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow, and our special guest this week is Tom DeLorenzo. Enjoy the show.

Tom: Did you guys do a chat last week.

Kevin: Yeah, actually. It was pretty good. The most obvious topic on our minds I think, was everything that was going on in Los Angeles at the time because Chris Dorner was still alive at the time I guess – well I think he was. I think it was the very next day that they actually wound up killing him.

Tom: I think we’ve probably asked that question before, I don’t know if it’s our connectivity to the internet or what, but I mean, doesn’t it just seem like it’s gotten ridiculous in the last couple three years especially – the number of cases of just blatant stuff like that going on?

Kevin: It’s a topic in itself that I explore frequently, and I still don’t really have any good data for it – maybe you do – but I don’t know if that question is true or false, and it makes a really big difference in the world that the 3 of us live in because with a scientist type of mind, you have to consider the fact that it might not be that that’s occurring at any more rapid rate, but rather that the popularity of you know, disseminating those stories and the ability to do so is increasing, and therefore we’re just seeing it more, and more, and more.

I’d really like to see numbers – not just about police abuses because that is a big one – but there’s so many topics like that. It’s kinda like the notion that the world is always looking like it’s getting worse, but often times it actually is getting a lot better as a whole, it’s just – you just – it’s really hard to see it that way.

Tom: Yeah, but I don’t discount the doubt and maybe it’s always been bad, but I mean just looking at the way that police forces have become more militarized and they seem more aggressive and it seems like a completely different set of people. My dad was the mayor of Island Lake when I was growing up, and there was a police department in there – just your typical 350 pound cops with big stomachs, and seems like they’re getting more and more replaced with crew cut ex-soldiers and a lot more killing equipment.

Kevin: Let me rephrase, I mean I’m definitely on – I definitely believe that as well, and I see that. It’s definitely the intuitive view then I hold it – I’m quick to come to that conclusion and I find myself always trying to stop myself and say, “well, is that really true, or is that just my perception of the negative.”

Tom: Yeah, and it’s hard to know exactly, but –

Kevin: Right. But I think at very least, I can certainly agree with you without any data behind it that police forces are definitely looking more and more militarized for sure, and I think we’ve come a good 50 years from a neighborhood cop that walks his beat and knows everybody –

Tom: Yeah.

Kevin: – to these guys that are just as foreign to me as they are when they’re patrolling the streets of Afghanistan.

Jad: I mean it’s clearly the case that – like you said – I mean, one, there weren’t that many ex-soldiers coming back from war torn countries where they had been shooting children and women 15 years ago, and they didn’t have the budgets, they didn’t have federal dollars coming in to buy tanks and stuff like that. So clearly the police force is more militarized now than it was. But my touchstone sort of is Waco, which is kinda the same story as just what happened – I think the difference being that you know, Waco was federal agencies, and this was like a local – the police department.

Kevin: Right.

Jad: But the activities were largely the same and it wasn’t a siege I guess, but – so I think people were just as willing to accept that sort of thing 20 years ago given a premise, but now the premise has presented itself and so now it can happen.

Tom: I need to sit down and really analyze it, but I didn’t really like that comparison when I’ve heard it a few times – the Waco thing and this guy being in a cabin – I don’t know if it’s equivalent or not.

Jad: I think the stories might be radically different, but I guess as far as the morality of it goes, I’m not making that point. My point is if you have people that haven’t been provided a trial and there’s clearly an opportunity just to wait them out and capture them, but instead you set fire to them, then – that’s the parallel I meant.

Tom: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Kevin: Well, it’s exactly why the country is not intended to be a democracy, right? I mean, that’s the fundamental rule behind why a democracy is a bad idea, versus a republic – a democratic republic – because now you’ve got mob rule – I think – is effectively what you’re getting out there, right – where you create this premise where all of a sudden that’s the bad guy, and so yeah, this guy is fucked up, you’ve gotta go kill him. Like, that’s just – that’s the answer, that’s the right way to do it, and I think you know, we were speculating that it was probably 80 to 90% of the population is like, “yeah, that’s good – that’s correct”, and specifically why you’re not supposed to have mob mentality you know, dictate these things.

Tom: Well, it’s not like we have a republic compared to a democracy, but even in the theoretical republic, I mean, there are issues you know – if 80% of the population really doesn’t want Obama care, Obama care is still going to go through, right?

Kevin: Well it shouldn’t[?].

Tom: Constitutional republic puts a few people in charge of everybody, and there are times when they make decisions that are against what the majority want.

Kevin: Oh, clearly. Clearly. But I mean, I guess what I’m getting is that there’s a fundamental core of logic that you shouldn’t be able to trump. I mean, that’s the general idea of it, and I guess in a case of a suspect or what have you, the mentality of the country isn’t supposed to be that a guy is accused of something, and so everybody goes and hunts them down and kills them, right?

Tom: Right.

Kevin: I mean that’s specifically why there’s a set of laws, due process, et cetera that’s supposed to protect him – even if he did all those things. Even if he’s the most criminally negligent person that ever existed, you’re still supposed to provide him with that and of course that’s not the mentality though – there’s been a shift there. So I think kind of like the Waco thing, it was the same sort of mentality where you had most of the country look at them as the Waco people, or the dividians are the bad guys –

Tom: Oh, sure.

Kevin: – and the feds are the good guys, and even if that is true, the outcome is still completely unjust. Even if we assume that they are guilty of something – which to this day, there really isn’t any evidence that they were – but if they were it still is not the right means for it.

Jad: So Tom, I’m just curious, what was the – when you were saying you saw a distinction, what were you thinking of?

Tom: Well, what were the people in Waco accused of?

Jad: I think they were accused of weapons violations and – but I know what you’re saying, but they were accused of like, you know, child molestation and all kinds of stuff.

Tom: I agree with the fair trial – I mean obviously I agree with what you’re saying there, but when I look at it it’s like if he was this kind of guy on a rampage and you’re chasing him and you get him into a cabin, it’s almost like – I mean the guy is playing a game of, “I’m going to shoot you or you shoot me first.” I mean, it’s not quite the same as you know, a building full of people with women and children and then they start burning the place down.

Jad: Sure.

Tom: I agree with you that it’s not right. I see the parallel that you need to put a person on trial, especially when you’re taking the L.A.P.D.’s word on it that he actually did something in the first place. It just didn’t strike me as a real parallel.

Jad: Well in that sense though – to go back to the original point – that means that the Waco thing was worse than the Dorner thing.

Tom: Definite – I mean, in theory, if there’s a wild guy out there, crazy guy out there who’s extremely dangerous, you might consider it justifiable to shoot him on site instead of giving him a chance, you know what I’m saying?

Jad: Right.

Tom: But again, if you do that and then it wasn’t really him, then you’ve obviously killed the wrong person. It was just a little closer, that line of self defense even though I don’t think it really was. I agree they could’ve just waited him out.

Jad: Yeah. I’m not really married to this issue or anything, but I think if you’re going to make an argument for having an L.A.P.D. in its current state is that they have overwhelming force to the degree that they can do anything like, they could totally wait anybody out in any situation. They don’t actually need to hurt anybody ever for the most part because they’ve got like, 10 Robocop armored dudes for every citizen or something like that, so that is the argument for overwhelming force if you’re taking the statist side.

Tom: And of course, if you’re going to believe their story then the whole burning down the cabin is irrelevant because supposedly, they just [?] teargas in there, right – so if he wanted to get out he could’ve gotten out. Supposedly he shot himself, is that – you know, they’ve got that covered. “We put teargas in there, he didn’t come out, and then he shot himself”, so you know, the fact that it burned down is irrelevant, right?

Jad: I think that’s the other Waco parallel that I think is noteworthy, is essentially you know, you’ve got a lot of evidence – in both cases – you’ve got probably overwhelming evidence in Waco, I don’t really know about the most recent one – but you’ve got all of this evidence that exists that points to the fact that they intentionally set fire to the place that these people were, but they have a story that is not supported by any evidence, but everyone believes it.

Kevin: Right.

Tom: Right.

Jad: And that’s kind of a common thread between the two stories as well. That’s not something that’s new you know – the American people being gullible and basically accepting the story that makes everything feel safer for the moment.

Tom: I think what was even more troubling, Kevin, than the idea that you know, most people are all gung ho about shoot the guy and kill him, and don’t give him a trial. Probably more troubling than that is the fact that well documented on the new and everything is that the cops are running around just firing on trucks and innocent people, and I don’t see any outrage about –

Kevin: I mean, undoubtedly, no question.

Tom: And there’s just like almost no reaction –

Kevin: Right.

Tom: – anywhere. That’s completely inexcusable, right? I mean –

Kevin: Right.

Tom: – wrong truck, wrong color, wrong people, 50 shots going into houses, and I mean, and they didn’t even kill him. If he was there, he would’ve killed them I’m sure after you heard all the click, click, clicks.

Kevin: Yeah.

Tom: But if you’d watch the news – and I don’t know if this has been going on – but I think the war on drugs has contributed to that so much more that you know, people are just – cops just breaking into places and shooting up people and just not held responsible at all and it doesn’t seem to trouble anybody.

Kevin: Well, that just takes you to a much I mean, grander and systemic problem with the country and I mean, you could take it – I think even last week when Jad and I were talking about this – in my head, metaphorically, it all kinda goes back to the whole 9/11 thing. I always take it back to building 7, right?

In my opinion for our lifetime or certainly my lifetime, I mean, that’s just kind of the epitome of conspiracy theory, and I think to this exact point, what you’re saying, there’s obvious inaccuracies or things that occurred that nobody wants to talk about afterwards, and they just accept and there’s no outrage for it. There’s no protest on the streets saying, “where is the investigation?”

Tom: Right.

Kevin: In the case of Los Angeles, why were these two cars just riddled with bullets? Well, how did that happen? How is it possible that that happened? And again, taking it back you know, 10 years ago, how’s it possible that this building had nothing to do with it – it just came to the ground in the blink of an eye too – how did that happen?

It’s the same sort of, theory, but they rolled into a kind of a lump argument and say, “well, there was a crazy guy running the streets”, and I think it’s true, but you know – that’s the true statement, but that’s where people stop the statement, and that’s where people stop the statement, and that’s where people stop their investigation and say, “well, there was a crazy guy running the streets, so this happened.” “There were terrorists that flew planes into buildings” – like, these are both true statements but it has nothing to do with the ancillary incidents that occurred.

Tom: And if – again, like you said, without worrying about what the details are – if the very fact that that guy on September 11^th, 2001 an entire building can fall down under the circumstances that it did and it really cannot even get anybody’s attention or be taken seriously –

Kevin: Right.

Tom: – then starting with that you know, you can do anything after that, right?

Kevin: And that’s why I’m saying the couple of trucks that got riddled with bullets in Los Angeles, who gives a shit? I mean, literally, nobody does. They just don’t care. It’s – I mean, if – like you said, that’s why I put it kind of as the epitome event – if this occurred 10 years ago and you know that nobody raises a brow to that, of course you can shoot up some trucks. I mean, nobody’s going to do anything. That’s just kinda where I think we’re at and – so I don’t really question often, you know? It’s real fucked up and real sad, but I don’t see how to fix that other than doing – at least in my mind – doing what I do and doing what we do and just trying to slowly educate people to thinking slightly differently.

Tom: Yeah. When you talk about 9/11, I think in the first few years after it happened, if you had any thoughts that anything was odd or completely ridiculous – and I think maybe now a fairly large percentage of people probably have an idea that that whole story doesn’t work somehow, but it’s too long ago now and it’s – but I don’t think it – yeah, it doesn’t have any real effect. I don’t know if people are becoming less trustful of stories that they get fed or not, or if they just keep going along with them.

Jad: Seems like it’s a keep going along with that, and it seems like there’s actually this really interesting mapping. It’s almost as if the timing of human psyche is known. Like, if you look at the JFK thing as another example – and I don’t even know what the conspiracy theories are for that – but apparently like, 85 or 90% of people don’t believe that it was a single assassin, or something like that.

And you know, over time like you know, 10 years after it happened, they went back and you know, officially congressionally studied it again and found that it was probably more than one assassin and then like, 20 years later, there’s more evidence. But by the time you ask somebody you know, “is the official story about JFK real?” it’s not even relevant, you know?

Kevin: Right.

Jad: That’s something that happened 60 years ago or I don’t know, 50. So by the time you get to like, 85, 90% of people understanding or you know, having some notion of the reality, who cares, you know? So I think we’re seeing the same curve now, probably the day after it happened, 99% of people would say, “the president’s story is true”, or whatever, and now it’s probably down to like 70%, and then by 2050, nobody will believe it anymore, but by then, who cares?

Kevin: Right.

Tom: Yeah I mean, it’s kind of odd, and I guess people are used to carrying these contradictory ideas in their head. It’s kind of odd that maybe most people would say, “yeah, that JFK story doesn’t add up”, and then just not even contemplate what that might mean – “well then, who did it”, or – that’s 40, 50 years ago – whatever.

Jad: To expand on the point, 60 years before that there was a genocide against an entire race of people, you know – just wrapping up, you know? And this same constitution, same government, there’s nothing different about it except that they added you can’t drink beer, and then they took that law out. Other than that, it’s the same governing document.

Kevin: Right.

Jad: And yet this country that you know, that committed genocide, that’s just not even a possibility now, and it’s just totally different now somehow. So we are just like, American exceptionalism with an extra parameter – an extra time parameter – which is just shockingly odd.

Tom: People like to latch on to that, even if it’s 50 or 100 years – well, we didn’t know any better back then, or people were a little naïve back then, or people –

Jad: Sure.

Tom: – brought up differently, or that’s what you know – like, there’s an excuse once 50 years ago by then, it’s a whole different – it’s history.

Jad: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: Now it’s funny to think what would’ve have occurred you know, if we had the technology today – your Facebook, your Twitter, et cetera – how that story would be. I wonder if it would be a lot like 9/11 wound up being, you know, where you definitely had all these splinter groups of people who are like, “this is fucking crazy. I can show you all the evidence”, but then the general narrative was still, “no, this is what happened and we’re all fine with that, and if you don’t believe us then there’s something wrong with you, and you’re the anti-American individual who supported the president being assassinated”, you know?

Tom: Well I think one of the main differences between those two events is the way you can get information. I mean, in ’63, you heard it on the TV, you saw it on the TV and I mean, that’s it, right? I mean, you can’t just plug into the internet and get a whole bunch of different views and ideas, and ballistics information if you had no idea about ballistics, and then you could go study it – just like you could go study about steel, and iron, and structural things if you were really interested in investigating stuff with 9/11, for instance.

But yeah, as you say, if all that technology was available back then, yeah I’m sure there would’ve been all these groups saying different things and having different ideas and theories. The official story I guess, probably would’ve – and even in 2001 – I can’t remember back then, I mean, where people still mostly plugged in to two or three channels on TV, or how much had the internet and cable, and different stuff proliferated by then – was there a fairly wider range of sources in the mainstream back then, or –

Kevin: I’m going to guess in comparison to today, the internet was still very, very small – even though to me, it was a very large and pervasive sort of thing.

Tom: Right.

Kevin: I think as a whole, it was actually probably pretty insignificant until broadband was not widely available, or certainly not that many people had it, and you couldn’t stream video at the time. I mean, you could, but it was difficult – it was laborious. So there weren’t video clips floating around, you certainly didn’t have media channels just dumping information on there – it just wasn’t the same thing.

Tom: And if I can use my sister as a prototypical example of Joe average citizen – Joanna average citizen – in fact, I can remember talking to her after 9/11 about stuff and she said something to the effect of, “oh, you got that on the internet”, as if like you know, the internet was this new thing that was like oh, that’s where all the crazy stuff is. You know, it was still new enough I think back then, whereas like the majority of people are like, “oh, the internet – that’s not real news or information. You can’t trust anything that’s there.”

Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. Definitely one of the shifts that’s occurred is that it’s obviously acceptable now to take information from the internet. But anyways, I agree with that for sure, that if you were taking information from the internet, it was probably just perceived to other people that you were the conspiracy theorist – even though you were just reading regular news.

Tom: The interesting point about that is that it just goes to show how we are all trained to receive a single feed of information, and that is the truth. The internet is a source of 10 different feeds of information, it’s acknowledged that 5 of those feeds are probably garbage in any given instance, but it’s up to the person to distinguish what’s true and what’s not. We’re trained to be in school and listen to the one point of view and absorb it and that’s the truth.

It was like a completely foreign idea that you might receive 5 different points of view and it was up to you to find what was true out of that, whereas most people trained to absorb one track of information, they couldn’t even conceive of that that. It’s like, “well how do you know it’s true?” It’s all crazy, if there’s not one person they’re telling you that this is true, how can you be the person to dig up the facts and decide what’s worth believing and what’s not.

Kevin: Yeah.

Tom: I don’t think most people are comfortable with that.

Kevin: No, I tend to agree.

Jad: Yeah I just don’t – I really don’t have an opinion on that, I don’t know. I think it’s definitely the case that you know, we all left our work in a computer lab to go home and watch you know, what the hell was happening on the news –

Kevin: Right.

Jad: – you know, so I mean it’s clearly you know – people who had access to the very best technology could offer, it was still more information available on TV than if it was just you know, nonsense information.

Tom: Right.

Jad: The strange thing is to me though because I guess I was revising what I was thinking about the timelines because like, the Kennedy thing, again, I don’t think there were even conspiracy theories until they released this [?] film or something, that was like 7 years after it happened. It was the first time people had you know, a firsthand document film or whatever that they could analyze and all that kind of crap.

Tom: Back and to the left.

Jad: Exactly. You know, so that kind of again, it makes it sound like things should happen on a quicker timeline now, but I don’t know. But the thing is, I think that the issue is somewhere in people’s minds is like a calculation going on which is a very rational one – which is like, well, let’s just say that’s true, what do we do now? And the only answer that anyone really has is, “well, we have to go get shot to death by security forces trying to storm the White House”, or something like – you know, you can’t do anything, so you might as well just have your brain be like, well, CNN is right and these other people are crazy, you know?

Or you know, the warring[?] condition is right and these other people are trying to send me newsletters via the postal service or[?] crazy, what’s the advantage of accepting the truth in that case, you know? There really isn’t one.

Kevin: Right.

Tom: Do you think that really leads to a purposeful self deception, where you actually believe yourself, you might be motivated to say, “well, what can I do about it? It’s better to believe them.”

Jad: Well I think it allows you not to look at it. It’s a multi-layer defense, right? Because you don’t have to go to strike the root[?], or you don’t have to go find an alternative explanation, so you don’t even have to investigate it if you don’t want to, but let’s just say you do. For every 9/11 truth thing, there’s like architects and engineers explaining why the 9/11 truth thing is not true or you know, whatever it is. So you can take it to whatever depth you want and exit at any time into the you know, everything’s cool, we’re all fine. And I think probably most people just don’t even bother with it. They’re – again, I’m not sure if it’s conscious, but the reason they don’t bother with it is because the only solution is to radically alter your life and you know – the only solution that’s say, media available.

Like, what do you do when you’re facing – when you’re facing evil of that magnitude? The only answer that movies and whatnot provide is when you try to go kill it or something, that leads to death, and that’s kind of well known. Point being, I think that you know, that whole process is just short circuited at level one by like, “oh, I can just go watch a football game, or I can do anything – I can play with my kids, I can go to the park, I can go get ice cream, I can do any number of things that are immediately productive and allow me not to have to worry about the fact that this might be some crazy monstrous story that I’m an unwitting[?] pawn in.

Tom: Yeah, and I don’t know if it really gets that deep to be thinking of it as a practical you know, “what can I do about it”. I think it might tend to be more emotional where it’s just like, “I don’t want to believe that, and so I’m not going to.”

Jad: I don’t think it rises to the level of consciousness at all. I think it’s a you know, it’s a biological survival mechanism or something, right? It’s kind of like when people are dying in movies and they’re shot or whatever and they’re like, “you’ve been shot”, and he’s like, “no I haven’t, I feel fine”, or whatever, right before they collapse. Like there’s – you know, if the brain believes that all is lost, there’s no point in processing that, you know?

So it’s not a conscious thing, it’s not a decision to not examine the facts because if they’re true, I might have to you know, take some drastic action – it doesn’t even get that far. It’s like you said, it’s just an emotional like, “oh, that’s a stupid idea”, but what’s behind the biological survivability of that mechanism is that it prevents you from going down tracks that are dangerous, or uncomfortable, or whatever.

Kevin: And that’s about where we ended things on the topic this week. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content of the show. If you haven’t already, please stop by our website at www.JKPod.com, and check out some of our other episodes. We’d also really love to hear from you.

If you have any ideas for the show or general comments, please reach us at our website or either of our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com – don’t forget the dash – and I’m at KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. We’ll have links on our website to the material found in this episode, and we’ll be sure to include a link to Tom’s book, New World Rising. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.