0074Ā Ā |Ā Ā June 3, 2019
Donald Trump: Change Agent
Cultural progress requires change, but that change isn’t always positive for its agents. For many years progressives ignored the cost of progress, but that bill came due in November, 2016. The 2016 election is a clear signal the world is changing, but what is it changing into?
C.T. WEBB: 00:19 | [music] Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, and welcome to The American Age podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of The American Age, and I’m speaking to you from sunny Southern California. |
S. FULLWOOD: 00:29 | Hi. I’m Steven G. Fullwood, and I am the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project. And I am coming to you from Harlem, and it’s a warm, sunny day as well. |
S. RODNEY: 00:38 | Hey. I’m Seph Rodney, and I’m speaking to you from the province of the South Bronx. I’m an editor at Hyperallergic. |
C.T. WEBB: 00:49 | Senior editor. |
S. RODNEY: 00:50 | Oh, yeah. Senior editor. |
S. FULLWOOD: 00:51 | Yes. |
S. RODNEY: 00:52 | That’s right. And I write about art and all its related issues, and you can find me on the web at sephrodney.com. |
C.T. WEBB: 01:02 | This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we like to call intellectual intimacy, which is giving each other the space and the time to figure out things out loud and together. So– |
S. RODNEY: 01:12 | Speaking of together, I really want to address this publicly. I think we need to get the damn clap right. We never clap all at once. What is that? |
C.T. WEBB: 01:23 | Okay. So there’s– |
S. FULLWOOD: 01:23 | Different spaces? |
C.T. WEBB: 01:25 | Yeah. There’s a delay– |
S. RODNEY: 01:26 | Is that what it is? |
C.T. WEBB: 01:27 | –in the video. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
S. RODNEY: 01:28 | It’s been driving me crazy ever since [laughter]. |
C.T. WEBB: 01:31 | So the clap, which is– the listeners, this is something that we do right before we begin recording. It’s to make the sound engineer’s job easier. So he just lines up– |
S. FULLWOOD: 01:40 | [crosstalk]. |
C.T. WEBB: 01:40 | –the claps. Yeah, yeah. So he just lines up the claps. |
S. RODNEY: 01:42 | Like they do for the movies, take one [crosstalk]. |
C.T. WEBB: 01:46 | Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s our clapper. Right? |
S. RODNEY: 01:48 | Right. Yeah. |
C.T. WEBB: 01:49 | So, I mean, we can work on our synchronized clapping if you want afterwards. I don’t know how– |
S. RODNEY: 01:55 | You know what? |
C.T. WEBB: 01:55 | I don’t know how much time you have on Memorial Day, but [laughter]. |
S. RODNEY: 01:58 | You know what it make me think of is that joke that Prince used to make– or had made at one point during a concert, where he said, “White people, clap on the one. One. Clap [laughter].” And it’s every time. |
C.T. WEBB: 02:14 | So you’re inferring I’m the weak link is really what you’re doing there. |
S. RODNEY: 02:17 | No, no [laughter]. But I’m saying this analogy, we’re all white people [laughter]. |
S. FULLWOOD: 02:23 | In this analogy, wow, wow [laughter]. Well, that’s just awesome. So we’ll get the clap right. We’ll get it right. |
S. RODNEY: 02:35 | Okay, please. |
S. FULLWOOD: 02:36 | Or close to right. |
C.T. WEBB: 02:37 | So we kind of roundtable the topics we’re going to use– or we’re going to take on, and there’s a few that are kicking around. But one that came out of our last discussion, just kind of a checking-in with the 2020 Democratic field, which I think we’re going to table for now because it’s a long political season. We will obviously come back to it as the election gets closer. But Steven brought up what I think is going to be a pretty productive conversation, which is– not couching it in a grin-and– grit-your-teeth, rather, is the phrase I was going for kind of way. But what positive things from our points of view, right– none of us here would be identified as conservative or populist, I don’t think, although maybe Steven probably, I would imagine, would argue with the things that get attached to populism because I know that he’s very much a man of the people [laughter]. No, you are, and I mean that as a compliment. |
S. FULLWOOD: 03:44 | I’m a community person. Yeah. I’m a community worker. |
C.T. WEBB: 03:48 | So what positive things came out of the 2016 election? Right? Just flat out, what positive things have emerged because of the election of Donald J. Trump? And so we’re going to just tackle this one, and we’re going to try and do it in an intellectually honest way. So, Steven, do you want to get us started or–? |
S. FULLWOOD: 04:09 | I would like to get us started, and I would like to suggest something that we all do, to go back to the night that Trump was elected, how you felt. And so I remember I was tired. I was sleepy. So I was kind of in and out of a daze and watching the news and then waking– I mean, going to sleep and waking up. And then, finally, it looked as if he was just screaming ahead of Hillary Clinton. And I was like, “I don’t understand what’s going on here. What states haven’t reported yet?” And I got two calls, one from a good friend of mine who lives in Houston, and she was like, “What the fuck is happening?” The second call I got from a friend in Seattle, and she and I just laughed like, “Okay. Here we go. Let’s find out how this is going to work out.” And so she says, “I got myself a bottle of wine, and we’ll sit here and watch these returns come in and laugh,” she said, “because, well, whatever we get, we got to work with.” And so I appreciated her. I set that up just because I remember thinking, “Wow. What’s going to happen next? Well, we got to stay aware. We have to do our work as a populace, individual, collectively, to hold our politicians accountable.” |
C.T. WEBB: 05:22 | Seph, what about you? |
S. RODNEY: 05:24 | I have a few things actually I want to say. I started getting a list together as Steven was talking, realizing, of course, I should have just had the damn list together before. But I think I need a conversation to kind of get things going for me. There are a couple of things that occur– |
S. FULLWOOD: 05:41 | Were you going to answer Steven’s question about how you felt the night of the election? |
S. RODNEY: 05:46 | Oh, sorry. Thank you for getting me back on track. I [crosstalk]– |
S. FULLWOOD: 05:49 | Yeah. I just thought he was going to ignore me. I was like, “Whoa, what’s up, Seph [laughter] [crosstalk]?” |
S. RODNEY: 05:53 | No. I was just off in my own little green pasture. Thank you. How I felt? So there’s a scene in– what’s the name of the film about the drag sort of houses in late ’80s New York? Paris is Burning. Paris is Burning. There’s a scene in Paris is Burning where one of the house mothers, I think, talks about getting thrown out of the house as a teenager because he or she had come out to his or her parents. And I’ll just call her her, and she said, “I was just devastated.” And that’s how I felt. I really, definitely felt devastated, and I still feel this way, actually, that people, particularly the ones who support him, don’t realize how precarious the balance of life on this planet really is. And they’ve made, in some cases, I think– I don’t think this is true for everyone at all who supports him, but in some cases, people made a kind of frivolous and irresponsible choice. I mean, some people made the choice on principle, but I think a lot of people just made it frivolously. |
S. RODNEY: 07:16 | And it felt to me like we’ve tipped the world over because there’s certain mechanisms in place, right, that determine kind of large collective action, like the Paris Accords, right, like the way that we approach climate change and seek to mitigate its worst effects. Those things go south, and I don’t know that they will come back. Right? I don’t know that we will recover. I don’t know that we will recover. I don’t know that the Middle East will– well, I shouldn’t call it the Middle East– West Asia will recover from what’s happening in terms of geopolitically how we’re maneuvering in that region, right, how we are buttressing Saudi Arabia, how we’re desperately trying to– not we, but my government is trying to choke off Iran. Right? They’re actually trying to reduce them to poverty. So those things I don’t know that they’re going to come back. I felt devastated. I still feel devastated. I still feel like the world is just [ticked?] over into a position where things are even more precarious than they were. That’s how I feel. |
C.T. WEBB: 08:34 | I can recall very vividly how I felt. And I felt impotent, psychologically and physically – I mean that quite literally – for days afterwards. I was like, “Oh, this is what it feels to be cockblocked by culture.” Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 08:57 | Phew. |
S. RODNEY: 08:59 | Totally understand that. |
C.T. WEBB: 09:00 | I had all of these shiny ideas about what the United States meant to me and meant in world history, warts and all. And it didn’t mean those things, at least, that night. Right? I mean, a lot of the work for starting this podcast, for example, and The American Age was an immunal [sic] response to that election and to not respond– it actually is making me tear up right now. I was leveled that night. And I think if I– it’s not too difficult for me to revisit that wound because I don’t want to be wrong about what I think about human capacities and the future. I really don’t. And that night was a challenge to me. And not to hold Hillary Clinton up as– I forget which political scientist or philosopher said this about branding the other side as evil in your political debates. The most significant danger of that is that the implication is that you are good. Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 10:24 | Right. Absolutely. |
C.T. WEBB: 10:25 | So I don’t want to– I took your question seriously. I’m not vilifying Trump. I’m really not. I’m not vilifying those that supported him. But, to me, the election was a very, very, very clear signal, all the warning lights on, the flight board had lit up. And the country and, if I can be sort of Anglo-American-centric for a second, the world is in trouble. And I do think the United States is a barometer of that, at least, in this point in history. It’s certainly not always going to be, but it is right now. And I think the plane’s in trouble is how I felt that night. |
S. FULLWOOD: 11:13 | That’s really powerful though. I really sympathize and can relate to the idea that human potential– you don’t want to be wrong about that. And I don’t want to be wrong about it. I take a slightly different take with the Trump administration and the things that he’s done and his administration and the Senate and other Republicans and conservatives and alt-right people – it was something you said before, and I’m sure I will get it wrong, or I hope that I don’t get it wrong – is that they have a perspective that they think is right. And I have to find ways in my mind to kind of grapple with the nuances of what that looks like. I want to jump very briefly to say that the reason why I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk is that I am very clear that good can come out of everything. It can come out of the worst situations. And after being bombarded with so much media, both mainstream, independent media, blogs, people online, that it’s not enough to say somebody’s evil or something’s wrong. It’s like, well, why is it wrong? And what could be done to rectify it, clean it up, change it? How can we get in there and wrestle with the things that I think– at least, the US? |
S. FULLWOOD: 12:32 | For me, because I’m not a sociologist, but my brain goes– if I turned off the TV and I just was talking with people that I knew in my circle, who are largely people who are progressive, thoughtful, engaged people, and then the folks that I work with, there is a malaise, and there is a, “Fuck!” and there is a depression about where we are right now based on the policies that have been enacted, based on people’s responses about their co-workers or their families. I think one of the most interesting things that this particular administration has brought out and made really clear for me is that people agree with Trump that you didn’t even know agreed with– that you wouldn’t think would agree with Trump, and not because of their inaction, because they don’t understand trans people. They worry about jobs, so, “What are the immigrants coming to get?” And mind you, none of these people– I mean, some of these people who are progressive, I’m like, “Don’t you know better than this? Haven’t you done any research? Where’s your heart with this?” So it’s revealed to me and even in myself– it’s required me to do more research because I can’t allow myself to be caught in the briar of that hopelessness. |
C.T. WEBB: 13:56 | Well, I’m interested what Seph’s list is. One of the things just to try and put a point on what you just said, one of the Yellow Jacket organizers in Paris said in response to Emmanuel Macron’s policy is that, “Macron is worried about the end of the world, and we’re worried about getting to the end of the month.” Now, whether that is– I mean, there’s probably a discussion to be had about the truth of the precariousness of that feeling for many people because, a lot of times, I do think we have to acknowledge that prejudice and bias and narrow-mindedness is often couched in terms that are acceptable to the larger culture. So it’s not about blacks; it’s about the economy. It’s not about immigrants; it’s about jobs. Right? So, I mean, we know that– |
S. RODNEY: 14:59 | It’s not about killing black men indiscriminately; it’s about the rule of law. |
S. FULLWOOD: 15:06 | It’s law and order– |
C.T. WEBB: 15:07 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we know– |
S. FULLWOOD: 15:08 | –and so we can talk about these things. Right. |
C.T. WEBB: 15:09 | That’s right. So we know that this is a rhetorical move that gets used historically. It gets used today. So I feel like we can’t lose sight of that. But there are people in this country who are really hurting economically and culturally – so I would say that’s sort of psychically, right, psychologically – and who are not on the progressive rhetorical train, right, so meaning that their line of sort of assuagement is not the progressive line. Right? It doesn’t mean that they’re anti-trans. It doesn’t mean that they’re anti-gay. It doesn’t mean that they’re anti-immigrant. They may in fact be, but I do feel like that coalition of people that voted for him are complicated. Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 16:07 | No. Definitely, they’re nuanced. |
C.T. WEBB: 16:08 | Some [laughter], not all. Right? Some of them are not complicated [crosstalk]. |
S. FULLWOOD: 16:16 | So I was going to ask you very briefly that– so these people that you speak of, this example, can you be anti-something based on your indifference to it or your inability to think about it straight or just not think about it at all? Because I think what’s happening with the abortion debate is interesting because we see obviously more women, and now I’m starting to hear more men talk about it as an issue that affects them. What I’m trying to figure out– either you’re for something or you’re against something. Right? I’m trying to break that up and make it a lot more thoughtful. But can you be anti-something through– |
S. RODNEY: 16:58 | Neglect. Benign neglect. |
S. FULLWOOD: 16:59 | –yeah, neglect, benign neglect or fiat? Do you know what I mean? |
C.T. WEBB: 17:05 | I do. So I think that there are core– I think there are motivating core issues for people. Right? And so very few people care about– unless you have a really comprehensive sort of philosophical worldview, which most people do not, you tend to be motivated, animated by just a handful of issues. Right? The low-hanging fruit, just as far as examples go, would be something like abortion is an animating principle, which many people have credited the 2016 election win to, right, because this idea of stacking the court and this possibility of getting Roe v. Wade overturned. So these other sort of satellite concerns – decorum, continuing racial equality, this kind of stuff – are sort of satellite, peripheral issues to this core issue which, for them, is something like abortion. Now, there are other ones like that. I mean, a lot of people would consider themselves– I may not consider them that, but they would consider themselves [principled?] conservatives because they believe in a conservative Supreme Court, for example, for different reasons than abortion. They tell themselves, “Well, I’m going to grit my teeth, and I’m going my nose, and I’m going to vote for Trump, and I’m going support Trump,” and what not. Now, to be clear, I would attack aggressively each of those positions, culturally and philosophically. I think they’re bankrupt. But I do think that that’s the space that many voters move from, and that sort of a coalition of general agreement is often not an animating, motivating principle. |
S. RODNEY: 19:02 | But let me step in here and try to– |
C.T. WEBB: 19:04 | Please, please. |
S. RODNEY: 19:05 | –steer us back towards the question that initiated the conversation, which is, in what ways has Trump’s election actually produced some sort of salve to that, what I would describe as a major wound? |
C.T. WEBB: 19:22 | Yeah. Thank you. |
S. RODNEY: 19:23 | So what are the good– so what are the good things that have come out this, essentially? One of them is that– and this is the first on my list just because it’s the first that occurred to me is the economic council that he had disbanding in the wake of his racist remarks. So he had a Strategy and Policy Forum, the Manufacturing Council, which hosted many of the top corporate leaders in America according to The Washington Post. And I forget which one first resigned, but I think it was a black man who was head of Merck. Yes. The Merck chief executive, Kenneth Frazier, was one of the first to resign in the wake of the Charlottesville comments. I think what has happened– and Travis and I have talked about this separately. I’m not sure that you were there for that conversation, Steven. But basically we said that, given the extent to which Trump’s administration is virulently racist– it has virulently racist policies, I mean, putting kids in cages – there’s just no justification for that – allowing them to die while in US custody, the way he’s talked about Puerto Rico. There’s a raft of things like calling [crosstalk]– |
S. FULLWOOD: 20:31 | Shithole countries and– |
S. RODNEY: 20:32 | Yeah. Calling NFL players who protest sons of bitches. Right? So what it has done is it’s forced business to actually begin to show some moral courage because they recognize– and this is why I wanted to– this is how I wanted to tie it into what we were talking about. That kind of collective action that we’re talking about actually gets spurred, in some cases, by really egregious behavior. So even corporate guys who really– I mean, corporate agents, I should say, who really just care about the bottom line– I mean, they are primarily motivated by the profit motive. Even they recognize that now, given where we are in history, you cannot break bread with a government agent who essentially says that racism is okay. So it’s forced business to actually begin to reorient itself or orient itself towards some kind of moral code. So that’s a good thing that’s come out of this debacle. |
S. FULLWOOD: 21:47 | I agree with that completely. |
C.T. WEBB: 21:49 | Yeah. One, thank you for bringing us back to the topic [laughter]. And it’s a great example because it’s a pretty artful way to shift where I was– I was sinking into a darker place in the conversation. Right. I mean, what this did– and you’re right. You and I had that conversation. What that did was it allowed us to run kind of a cultural barometer up and to say, “Okay. Wait a minute. Things have moved.” Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 22:21 | Yeah. The needle has definitely moved. |
C.T. WEBB: 22:21 | Things have moved in the culture. When you have corporate executives, whose fiduciary responsibility is absolutely the bottom line, right, profit, period, right, when these people are saying that an action that clearly marginalizes and denigrates a segment of the population is too far– that’s the conservative cultural position. That is the absolute sort of letterman’s jacket conservative position, and that has moved. That’s moved. And to get that kind of check, you’re absolute right, Seph, is heartening. Something has moved in the culture when these are the people that are standing up for principles that align with you. Steven, it looks like you were going to say something. |
S. FULLWOOD: 23:13 | Oh, no. Thank you for that. But I was just thinking and sort of bathing in, again, that no matter how terrible it gets, there’s always something good, and there’s always something to kind of look at and be inspired by. And I think women running for office and winning– Jordan Davis, the young man who was shot and murdered, his mother ran for Congress and won. There are these moments that I think we’re starting to see. The Me Too movement was definitely emboldened or at least– not emboldened, but just more fueled by Trump and folks like Trump, and that there are a lot of Cabinet members who did not get through the Cabinet, a few that were abusive to their wives or that kind of thing. So I think that I agree. I think that it’s starting to put a little energy into the spine for some people to speak out and say, “This is incorrect. This is wrong. What are we acting as if this is normal?” So I’m happy to see that there is some very conscientious women and men and even trans folk running for office– |
S. RODNEY: 24:20 | And I want to– |
S. FULLWOOD: 24:20 | –to get things changed, you know? |
S. RODNEY: 24:22 | Yeah. And I want to add on to that, Steven, that not only is it women who are running and succeeding in gaining public office, but the kinds of women are really important, right, because you have– |
C.T. WEBB: 24:38 | Yeah. These aren’t Sarah Palins or something. |
S. RODNEY: 24:40 | Right. Right. You have Rashida Tlaib, I think is her name. |
S. FULLWOOD: 24:43 | Tlaib. Tlaib. |
S. RODNEY: 24:44 | Right. And Ilhan Omar. |
S. FULLWOOD: 24:49 | Ilhan Omar. |
S. RODNEY: 24:50 | Right. And they’re both Muslim. And you have a woman who is an avowed Democratic Socialist in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You have people who are Native American, finally. Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids were elected to Congress. So this is remarkable. |
S. FULLWOOD: 25:12 | Yes. It is. It is. And it’s hopeful because when you see that demonstration of courage and bravery– but also the kind of onslaught of the negativity that they’ve been saddled with and the false reporting and the– I mean, Jeanine Pirro, the former judge who’s on Fox, I love the way they do her on Saturday Night Live because she’s always sort of yelling. But she’s quite dangerous. I mean, she’s quite calculating and, “Is this the way we want to run the US? Why is she there? Is she really American or not?” Those loudmouths are starting– I think they’ve always been– we’ve always been like, “Oh, loudmouth or whatever.” But people are now taking them to task, even sometimes Fox, who knows that their dollars depend on advertisers. They know that, so they’re trying to do more, reach out to the other side, so to speak, because they understand the bottom line. So they can’t have too many loose cannons on their network, not the way they do– go ahead. |
S. RODNEY: 26:17 | But I also wonder– and this is a bit far afield of the topic, but it’s relating. I wonder what the statute of limitations is for Fox News because it’s essentially a generational phenomenon. Right? You only have Fox News because you have a class– |
C.T. WEBB: 26:35 | It’s very popular in a certain demographic. Yeah. |
S. RODNEY: 26:38 | Right. Well, a class of white people aged around 55– |
S. FULLWOOD: 26:41 | And black. |
S. RODNEY: 26:43 | Yeah. Growing, I suppose, but aged generally 55 and– skew Christian, skew evangelical, la, la, la. These people resent, right– I mean, Fox News is powered by resentment. These people resent the way the world– that shift that we were talking about, that shift that cause CEOs to abandon– |
S. FULLWOOD: 27:09 | Get up and walk away. Yeah. |
S. RODNEY: 27:10 | Right. Yeah, to abandon Trump. These people resent that shift. So I’m wondering if there’s a point at which Fox is just going to kind of run out of resentment, like these people are going to die off and– |
C.T. WEBB: 27:23 | Well, I mean, maybe one of the things that– to take a cue from you and think about it in terms of the topic as far as what’s positive, I mean, in many ways, Trump’s election has really revealed– I mean, Fox cannot hide anymore behind its sort of dissimulations about being fair and balanced. Now, they’ve definitely doubled down on their opinion newsroom division, what they claim is their division between the opinion section of their channel and their newsroom section of the channel. And because of that, their news coverage has become, I would say, better. Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 28:04 | Yes. Absolutely. |
S. RODNEY: 28:05 | It has been better. Yeah. |
C.T. WEBB: 28:05 | I mean, you actually have people that have taken this administration to task and are not simply soft-peddling or glossing over the obvious criticisms of some of the decisions they’ve made. So I would say that Fox News, the news section, has become actually more balanced in its assessments, while the opinion section has been revealed to be what it has always been, which is a shill for a kind of white– |
S. RODNEY: 28:36 | KKK. |
C.T. WEBB: 28:37 | –yeah, white Christian metaphysics. I mean, and I would put it at that core because it’s really about people not understanding what to do with their whiteness anymore. Right? And I mean whiteness in sort of writ large, right, not simply just WASPy, but like, “How do we orient ourselves in the universe now?” Right? |
S. RODNEY: 29:00 | Right. Right. Exactly. |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:01 | And to a world that’s coming. Right? That world is coming. |
C.T. WEBB: 29:04 | Yeah, yeah. Yes. |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:04 | That world is actually here. And so– |
C.T. WEBB: 29:06 | Yeah. It’s here. Yeah, that’s right. It’s here and that’s the issue. Right? |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:09 | And that’s really– |
C.T. WEBB: 29:09 | I mean, it is here. Yeah. |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:10 | But your one point– |
S. RODNEY: 29:11 | No. Go ahead, Steven, please. |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:12 | I was just thinking about Fox News and how I love it that they’re feuding [laughter], that Fox News is feuding with its shows, with Hannity and with Pirro, Shep– what’s his name? |
S. RODNEY: 29:25 | Shepard Smith, is it? |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:26 | Shepard Smith– |
C.T. WEBB: 29:27 | Shepard Smith. |
S. FULLWOOD: 29:27 | –and Chris Wallace. They are bringing these people on and talking with– not the talking heads, but conservatives or people from the White House, and they are giving them the business. And I’m like, “A house divided [laughter].” It should be interesting to see what happens in the next couple years. |
S. RODNEY: 29:44 | So one of the things that’s on my list, and I think we should save this for the next podcast. The Fox News phenomenon folds into this, which is the increased scrutiny of the media in general. And I want to talk about specific examples I’ve noticed just in the past few days that have come up into my feed on Twitter and other things that I’ve noticed, I suppose, on my Facebook. The ways in which we have shifted our expectations of coverage and the ways that people are covered I think are exemplary of something that’s really been brought to the surface by the Trump administration. |
S. FULLWOOD: 30:24 | I agree. Yeah. That’s a good talk. That’d be a good discussion. |
C.T. WEBB: 30:27 | Yeah. Great. Okay. So encase those Twitter examples in amber for next week so we have something to start from [laughter]. Yeah. It’s a good topic. So okay, Seph, Steven, Happy Memorial Day, and– |
S. FULLWOOD: 30:42 | Happy Memorial Day. |
C.T. WEBB: 30:42 | –thanks very much for the conversation. |
S. RODNEY: 30:44 | Indeed, God bless. [music] |
References
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