Cary Harrison Files

CARY HARRISON
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Award-winning raconteur Cary Harrison cut through the noise – revealing the murky agendas behind today's headlines through uncompromising journalism, unapologetic advocacy, independent voices and a global audience with live listener call-ins shaping the conversation. caryharrison.substack.com

  1. 2D AGO

    The Cartels Didn’t Attack the Tourists. They Sent a Memo

    From a balcony above the Pacific — where the ocean sparkles and the air carries the faint perfume of gasoline and geopolitics. I was supposed to be on the very flight that was set ablaze in the Puerto Vallarta airport. Dispatch from Puerto Vallarta The Smoke After El Mencho Filed from somewhere between a taco and a burning car The smoke smells different here. Not the good smoke — not the grilled corn from the vendor on the malecón, not the copal incense drifting out of the church where people are praying that God shows up before the next caravan of pickups does. This smoke is acrid. Political. It has the distinct bouquet of a sovereign nation pretending it made a decision on its own. El Mencho is dead. And Puerto Vallarta is on fire. Let’s be honest with each other — and I mean the kind of honest that you can only achieve when you’re sitting in the middle of a country that runs on two parallel governments, one of which holds press conferences and the other of which holds territory. Mexico doesn’t have a cartel problem. Mexico is a cartel problem that also has a federal budget, a flag, and a seat at the United Nations. The government doesn’t govern the cartels. The government services them. Think of it less as law enforcement and more as a homeowners association that’s terrified of the guy in the corner house with the military-grade hardware and the private airstrip. This arrangement has worked, more or less, in the way that a protection racket works — which is to say: it works until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, cars burn. We have seen this movie before. When El Chapo was taken — really taken, the kind of taken that ends with an orange jumpsuit in a supermax — the cartels lit the countryside like a birthday cake. When his son was briefly detained in Culiacán, the Mexican military, caught between orders from Mexico City and rockets from the Sinaloa Cartel, made the rational institutional calculation and let him go. The government blinked so hard it threw out its back. So you’ll forgive a certain skepticism when someone tells you this time is different. El Mencho — Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, founder of CJNG, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — was not a lovable rogue. He was not a folk hero with a ballad and a charitable foundation. He was the man who shot down a military helicopter with a rocket launcher, who turned entire Mexican states into open-air abattoirs, who expanded cartel operations into fentanyl distribution with the kind of vertical integration that would make a McKinsey consultant weep with professional admiration. His death is, on the merits, not a tragedy. The tragedy is the choreography surrounding it. Because here’s what everyone in Puerto Vallarta knows, and everyone in Mexico City is carefully not saying out loud: This wasn’t Claudia Sheinbaum waking up one morning with a spine she hadn’t owned the day before. This was a phone call. Or several. From a man in a very large house on Pennsylvania Avenue who has described himself, without irony, as the greatest golfer and real estate developer in human history — and who recently discovered that narco-state management might be his next vertical. There was a $15 million bounty on El Mencho’s head. American money. American pressure. And a very clear message delivered to President Sheinbaum that translated roughly as: do it, or we do it for you, and we bring the whole landscaping crew. The threat of American military intervention in Mexico — dressed up in the language of “terrorist designation” and border security — was not subtle. It was a shakedown with a diplomatic letterhead. And Sheinbaum, who is a scientist by training and therefore capable of calculating odds, did the math. She delivered. Now. About that math. Here is what does not change when a cartel boss dies: the cartel. CJNG did not build a $20 billion criminal enterprise on the organizational genius of one man. It built redundancy. It built succession. It built, in the terminology of people who study these things with the grim professionalism of oncologists, metastatic capacity. El Mencho’s death does not end the war. It starts an auction. Someone will step into that vacuum — probably someone younger, probably someone more willing to negotiate, possibly someone who has already had a quiet conversation about the new rules of engagement. The new rules being, roughly: you may continue your business operations, you will be somewhat more discreet, and you will make the appropriate contributions to the appropriate interests, which may now include a golf resort licensing fee and a percentage routed through a Delaware LLC that no journalist will ever successfully trace. The greatest real estate developer the world has ever known did not put $15 million on a cartel boss’s head because he wanted to end the drug trade. He put it there because he wanted a more compliant drug trade. The Cary Harrison Files is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The people in the streets of Puerto Vallarta — burning cars, blocking roads, screaming at a government that cannot scream back — are not wrong, exactly. They are just screaming at the wrong address. The chaos is real. The fear is real. The burning Pemex station on the highway to the airport is real — I can see the glow from my terrace, which I will confess has excellent sightlines and a remarkably good tequila selection for a city currently experiencing a low-grade insurrection. But the people asking why did the government do this? are asking the question in the wrong language. The question is not why Mexico’s government acted. The question is why it acted now — and who handed them the invoice. I have been in enough places, at enough moments of historical ignition, to know that the smoke always clears before the real damage becomes visible. I was supposed to be on a Boston flight once. Stayed an extra night in Provincetown. The world made a different shape than it would have on Sept 11, 2001. History does that. It pivots on the extra night. On the phone call that was made. On the $15 million that changed hands in the language of foreign policy. Puerto Vallarta will stop burning. The checkpoints will come down. The tourists will return — Americans, mostly, because Americans have a magnificent talent for vacationing in countries they are simultaneously destabilizing. You find the best hotel rates. El Mencho will be a Netflix series, then a Halloween costume. And somewhere, in an office that smells of leather and grievance, the next El Jefe is already taking meetings. He’ll be more reasonable. More transactional. Less interested in spectacle, more interested in margin. He’ll be, in other words, a businessman. And the greatest businessman the world has ever known will understand him perfectly. The Cary Harrison Files is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. History does not pause. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    3 min
  2. How Civilizations Applaud Their Own Cages

    FEB 17

    How Civilizations Applaud Their Own Cages

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter and/or anger. Read or watch at your own risk. You ever notice how evil never arrives looking like evil? It doesn’t storm in with a skull on its cap announcing, “Good evening, I am tyranny.” It doesn’t foam at the mouth. It doesn’t carry a pitchfork. It moisturizes. It shakes hands. It brings cake. That’s the detail you’re supposed to remember. It always brings cake. Munich Germany. Early twentieth century. A city so cultured it practically sweats violin music. Baroque frosting on the architecture. Museums layered like wedding tiers of self-regard. If Paris is a peacock, Munich is a swan — elegant, serene, faintly smug. And upstairs, over what will later become a police station — because history enjoys a cruel punchline — a failed art student with the emotional maturity of a grievance is hosting three-o’clock tea for society ladies. Three. O’clock. Tea. You don’t overthrow a republic with pitchforks. You overthrow it with pastries. He stands. He doesn’t rant. Not yet. He speaks softly. About humiliation. About lost greatness. About how the nation’s been cheated, weakened, mocked. He does not mention camps. He does not mention trains. He mentions restoration. And the ladies nod. They go home. They murmur to their husbands — bankers, industrialists, men who measure the world in margins and leverage. “There’s a young man,” they say. “Such clarity. Such conviction.” And because history is a plagiarist with no shame, the husbands listen. That’s how it starts. Not with boots. With brunch. Then comes the beer hall. November 1923. A coup attempt marinated in lager and delusion. A march through Munich like a fraternity parade that misplaced adult supervision. Shots fired. Bodies fall. The revolution collapses like cheap patio furniture. Twenty dead. Sentence? Five years. Time served? Eight and a half months. Eight and a half. A soon to be Führer attempts insurrection and gets a literary residency. Prison becomes a writer’s retreat. Visitors. Cake deliveries. Strategy sessions. He writes his manifesto — grievance dressed up as destiny — and walks out mythologized. Justice didn’t blink. Justice winked. And that wink tells extremism something vital: Push harder. Meanwhile Germany is economically gutted. Reparations bleeding it dry. Hyperinflation so grotesque people are using banknotes as wallpaper because it’s cheaper than paint. National pride humiliated in public. Leave a population humiliated long enough and they don’t crave nuance. They crave muscle. They crave someone who says: “I will stop the payments.” “I will restore your pride.” “I will make us strong again.” That phrase ages like mold — persistent, adaptable, impossible to eradicate. By 1933 he doesn’t win a majority. He doesn’t need to. Forty-two point nine percent is enough when the rest are divided, exhausted, complacent. Plurality plus paralysis equals power. Opposition outlawed. Rivals arrested. Emergency powers normalized. And then the infrastructure begins. Here’s where you need to clear your mind of Hollywood. The camps were not spontaneous eruptions of madness. They were engineered. Dachau, 1933. Not yet the mechanized horror that will come later. At first it’s a prototype. A containment laboratory. Political opponents go in. Journalists. Socialists. People who ask inconvenient questions. They’re given senseless labor. Move that pile of rocks. Now move it back. Dig. Fill. Repeat. It’s not about productivity. It’s about erosion. Break the will without breaking the body. But the detail you’re supposed to ignore? It’s organized. Meticulous. Measured. Calories allocated. Labor hours tracked. Mortality rates studied. Commandants trained. Dachau becomes the management school of terror. A university of containment. Future camp administrators study logistics, efficiency, cost control. Cost control. You don’t industrialize cruelty without accounting. The Cary Harrison Files is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. When you hear “slave labor,” you imagine chaos. There was no chaos in the camps. There were spreadsheets. Production quotas. Skill classifications. Metalworker. Engineer. Tailor. Doctor. You don’t waste trained labor if you can extract output first. The regime understood something horrifyingly modern: A human being can be monetized multiple times. First as labor. Then as confiscated property. Then as dental gold. Then as recycled clothing. Even hair was sold. Hair. That’s not medieval barbarism. That’s inventory optimization. Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Private firms didn’t recruit. The state delivered the workforce. Companies paid the SS. They didn’t pay the worker. For profit companies paid the SS directly Daily rates. A body was leased like machinery. If productivity drops? Replace. The laborer becomes a consumable asset. And once you introduce that word — consumable — morality dissolves into arithmetic. Arithmetic feels neutral. Executives don’t see themselves as monsters. They see themselves as efficient. War requires production. Production requires labor. Labor is scarce. Solution delivered. Containment feeds industry. Industry feeds war. War feeds containment. Closed loop. And once brutality becomes profitable, it becomes protected. No one voluntarily shuts down a revenue stream. Especially when it’s labeled patriotic. By the time the outside world smells smoke, the inside world sees supply chain. And supply chains are sacred. Now here’s the question that lingers like smoke. How does a modern society participate in this? How do educated citizens adjust to neighbors disappearing and continue debating wallpaper? Psychology. Humiliation first. Convince a population it’s been emasculated, cheated, mocked — it will accept almost any correction that promises restored strength. Then simplicity. Authoritarianism offers you a coloring-book version of reality. Heroes. Villains. Purity. No footnotes required. Then belonging. Rallies aren’t policy seminars. They’re emotional carnivals. Flags. Music. Rhythm. Thousands chanting in sync. We are tribal mammals with Wi-Fi. Belonging once meant survival. Isolation meant death. So when someone says, “You matter again,” something ancient ignites. Put on a uniform and you don’t have to decide who you are. The state decides. You’re chosen. You’re righteous. You’re history. Fear seals it. You saw what happened to dissenters. So you clap. You nod. You survive. Performance becomes belief. “If I’m cheering, I must agree.” “If I agree, it must be justified.” “If it’s justified, they must deserve it.” Moral anesthesia. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    22 min

  3. FEB 8

    They’re Not Failing the System. They’re Stripping It for Parts

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter and/or anger. Read or watch at your own risk. We begin where the wreckage is freshest and the intent is easiest to miss: the newly released Epstein files. Not because they reveal some occult master plan, but because they show—coldly, bureaucratically—how a system processes damage it doesn’t intend to fix. You need to know where everything happening today came from—because it didn’t come from Congress, or a party platform, or some late-night fever dream. It came from YouTube. You’ll want to pay close attention because this is the kind of cool school you can only get on the Cary Harrison files. Beginning in the early 2020s—roughly 2020 through 2022—a cluster of long-form YouTube lectures and podcasts started circulating, calmly and confidently, arguing that democracy was obsolete. Not corrupt. Not misguided. Obsolete. The world, they said, had become too complex, too fast, too dangerous for consent. What nations needed instead was order—national coordination, elite planning, and discipline without debate. They gave it a name: “American National Socialism.” Not socialism for workers. Not equality. Socialism for order. Yes, this is socialism. German war-flavored but with a very modern twist. These weren’t fringe YouTube screamers. They were hours-long presentations with neutral lighting, academic tone, and managerial ambition—treating politics as an engineering problem and citizens as variables. Democracy was reframed as noise. Rights as inefficiencies. Participation as sentimental clutter. The solution was always the same: central coordination, insulated from the public, justified by crisis. This wasn’t a single video or a lone crank. It was a networked ideology—thinkers, funders, podcasters, policy hobbyists—cross-posting, cross-referencing, and refining the pitch. Over time, the arguments hardened. The language cleaned up. The destination stayed fixed. Those videos became the template—the rehearsal space where ideas too naked for policy were normalized, softened, and stress-tested. By the time similar language showed up in politics, finance, and tech, the public had already heard it. The shock was gone. The surrender rehearsed. So when you hear calls for “coordination,” “stability,” “capacity,” and “hard choices,” understand this: you’re hearing YouTube ideas grown up, dressed for work, and walking into power. That’s the origin story. The Cary Harrison Files is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Read the Epstein files and you don’t see urgency. You see containment. Allegations logged. Credibility quietly hedged. Corroboration requested and never pursued with vigor. The file closes not with justice, but with administrative relief. Not nothing happened—but nothing actionable will happen. That distinction is everything. Because what those files actually document is a skill the modern system has perfected: how to survive scandal without changing structure. How to absorb horror, manage liability, and keep walking. This is not failure. This is training. That’s why Epstein matters—not as myth, not as mascot, but as proof of exemption. Proof that there exists a tier where rules are optional, consequences negotiable, and bodies instrumental. Even his most grotesque, documented fascinations—his talk of heredity, “seeding,” where he would impregnate hundreds of these hostage girls to see the world with improved humans with his DNA… These ideas were never treated as alarms. Mr. Musk has already done this with a number of women. They were treated as eccentricities. As rich-man noise. Not because the ideas were harmless, but because the system had already decided who mattered. This is where the through-line becomes visible. Long before Silicon Valley, before dashboards and APIs, the same impulse wore a different uniform. Classic German eugenics didn’t begin with camps; it began with order. With classification. With the belief that society could be optimized if only the right inputs were elevated and the wrong ones managed. Compassion was inefficiency. Equality was sentiment. Order—order above all—was virtue. That ideology didn’t die. It modernized. It stopped talking about blood and started talking about data. It stopped saying purity and started saying performance. It stopped saying elimination and started saying eligibility. Same hierarchy. Cleaner language. Today it has a respectable name: technocracy. Technocracy claims politics are engineering problems. That society should be run by experts insulated from the public. That outcomes matter more than consent. Democracy, in this frame, isn’t immoral—it’s inefficient. Too loud. Too slow. Too emotional for a complex world. But here’s the pivot most people miss: technocracy does not want to fix democracy. It wants to outgrow it—and then replace it. And to do that, the old system must look irreparable. This is where collapse enters—not as tragedy, but as strategy. Functioning institutions interfere. They create friction. They allow objection. They demand explanation. So they are starved, delegitimized, scandalized, and left to rot in public view. Courts lose trust. Civil service loses capacity. Media drowns in noise. Nothing ever resolves. Everything just… persists. What people experience isn’t confusion. It’s fatigue. Bone-deep civic exhaustion. The political equivalent of being beaten unconscious by a pillow. Exhaust the public long enough and they won’t ask for justice. They won’t ask for reform. They won’t even ask who’s lying. They’ll accept anything—anything—that promises quiet. Not peace. Quiet. The hush you get when the arguments stop because no one has the energy left to argue. This is not an accident. This is the economic precondition. The Germans learned it early. Weimar didn’t fall in a coup; it collapsed under procedural exhaustion. Endless elections. Endless coalitions. Endless crises. Democracy didn’t look evil—it looked tired. By the end, people weren’t dreaming of jackboots. They were dreaming of naps. They didn’t ask for dictatorship.They asked for it to stop. That’s the moment this model waits for—not rage, but the sigh. And now we come to the modern incubator—the place where this demolition plan was first articulated plainly, without filters, before it learned to dress for policy: YouTube. Beginning in the early 2020s, long-form YouTube lectures and podcasts began arguing—calmly, academically—that democracy was obsolete. Not corrupt. Obsolete. The world was too complex for consent, too fast for debate. What nations needed was order. They gave it a name: American national socialism. Not socialism for workers. Not equality. Socialism for order. National coordination without voting. Planning without accountability. Discipline without democracy. Rights as conditional. Participation as optional. Order elevated above everything else—freedom, consent, dignity—because order, they argued, was the prerequisite for survival. Now the profit motive snaps into focus. Because collapse is not just ideologically useful—it’s lucrative. During collapse: · Public assets devalue. · Regulation weakens. · Emergency contracts multiply. · Surveillance and coordination tools become “necessary.” · Ownership consolidates quietly. Demolition clears the land.Reconstruction selects the owners. This is why the system doesn’t rush to repair what’s broken. Broken things are cheap. Broken institutions justify extraordinary measures. Broken publics accept management. And when the dust settles, what rises is not democracy renewed, but order privatized. This is where financiers of infrastructure matter—not because they shout, but because they build. Systems that govern without asking. Software that decides eligibility, access, risk. Governance that no longer needs ballots because it has dashboards. Political translators then sell the transition. They frame abandonment as honesty. They don’t promise justice. They promise quiet. Across the hemisphere, decisions move from ballots into compliance regimes. Citizenship becomes a credential. Dissent becomes inefficiency. YouTube incubates the ideology.Collapse legitimizes the takeover.Software enforces the new order.And profit is harvested from the rubble. This is not a conspiracy. It’s a business model. Destroy the commons.Declare the system obsolete.Install order as infrastructure.Charge rent. And that’s how a society wakes up governed by systems it never chose, rebuilt by people who never believed it should have a choice at all. Not because democracy was overthrown. But because it was demolished on purpose, piece by piece—until selling the replacement felt like mercy. :45 mins in - Rick Hayhurst is a senior leader with ProVisors who focuses on building trusted community during uncertain and often fractured times, bringing together high-level professionals with an emphasis on mindfulness, service, and responsibility before self-promotion. Known for his steady leadership and discretion, Rick helps cultivate environments where experienced advisors support one another not just to do better business, but to act with intention, integrity, and usefulness—recognizing that real networking, especially now, is about showing up for others and strengthening the fabric that holds professional communities together. Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 4m

  4. FEB 5

    Does AI Think?

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter and/or anger. Read or watch at your own risk. Same playbook. Bigger blast radius. Oh, you lucky, ungrateful creature—you’re alive for the single greatest invention since fire learned to file patents. Artificial Intelligence. Capital letters mandatory. Kneel accordingly. AI is the finest ideological gift ever lowered onto humanity by Our Leadership, gift-wrapped in jargon and scented with venture capital. It doesn’t merely change the world—it corrects it. It takes your messy judgment, your emotional drag coefficient, your inconvenient sense of fairness, and replaces all that with a clean, elegant answer generated in 0.3 seconds by a server farm that’s never once had a bad day or a conscience. Perfection. And if you don’t see the benefit—if you’re squinting at this miracle and wondering why it feels like your job just quietly vanished—that’s not a flaw in the system. That’s a flaw in you. Appreciation of this gift requires worthiness. A palate refined enough to taste the subtle notes of “optimization” and “efficiency” and “redeployment.” Joining us next is Danish Khan with a degree in physics—which means when he talks about systems, feedback loops, and unintended consequences, he’s not speaking in vibes. He’s speaking in laws. The kind that don’t care about branding, quarterly earnings, or Davos applause. This isn’t a futurist with a TED Talk and a ring light. This is someone trained to understand what happens when complex systems are pushed past their tolerances. Because when physics meets politics, gravity always wins. Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Yes, AI replaces workers—but think of it not as replacement. Think of it as liberation from relevance. A graceful release from the burden of being needed. You’re no longer exploited; you’re obsolete. That’s progress with manners. Yes, AI makes decisions without understanding—but understanding is overrated. Understanding leads to doubt, and doubt slows things down. AI offers certainty without wisdom, authority without responsibility. A dream combination in Washington DC. Why argue with a machine when you can just shrug and say, “The model decided”? And yes, it talks like you. That’s the real magic. It mimics thought so convincingly that you begin to mistake fluency for intelligence, confidence for truth, output for judgment. It’s like a ventriloquist act where the dummy runs the company and the humans clap because the mouth moved. This is not a bug. This is the feature. Because once you accept that the machine knows, you no longer have to ask who’s accountable. Not the company. Not the government. Not His Imperial Kumquat and his court of Really Stable Geniuses. The algorithm did it. Case closed. Go enjoy your flexibility. And don’t worry—this isn’t dehumanization. It’s streamlining humanity. You’re still here. You’re just data-adjacent now. A user. A metric. A training set with opinions. Would you trust it to hire you? Fire you? Sentence you to irrelevance with a polite notification? Do you feel empowered—or quietly replaced and told to call it opportunity? And when a machine that’s never lived starts deciding how you should, do you bow… or do you laugh? But don’t sit there silently nodding—because silence is the one human input this system truly loves. Millions of jobs vanish? That’s not displacement. That’s reskilling opportunity.Human judgment replaced by automated decision trees? That’s not dehumanization. That’s efficiency, according to Mr. M.. Whole professions vaporized before lunch? That’s not collapse. That’s innovation at scale. And if you’re uneasy—if you’re wondering why the people designing this future already have theirs secured—that’s not a red flag. That’s a you problem. Because appreciation of this ideological gift requires a certain worthiness. A faith. A willingness to be managed by software written by people who’ve never met you and don’t intend to. The shocking truth—mass disruption, widened inequality, labor hollowed out like a jack-o’-lantern in November—isn’t denied here. Oh no. It’s simply reframed as an elegant choice. A necessary shedding. A cleansing fire for the economy. Very tasteful. Very adult. So we’re going to admire the masterpiece. We’re going to applaud the future where talent is “optimized,” humans are “redeployed,” and the social contract is quietly fed into a wood chipper behind a keynote stage. And then—because satire without interrogation is just advertising—we’re going to talk to someone inside the machine. Has anyone ever bothered to actually tell you what AI is? Would it really is? How it really works? How it actually thinks? Well, with us is Danish Kahn with a PhD in physics and swimming in the undercurrents of everything. Danish Kahn, I want to welcome you to the Cary Harrison files Danish Kahn, At the most basic level, what is AI—are we talking about a thinking entity, or an extremely powerful system for pattern recognition dressed up in human language….? What do you think this glorious machine really is—and what did you just agree to let it decide? And have you ever been on a date with your AI? Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    50 min

  5. FEB 3

    Documentary Review on You Know Who

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter and/or anger. Read or watch at your own risk. It’s the documentary that has been the talk of the town and the top of the talk shows. Sure, Variety magazine is reporting that we are in the press are now forbidden to be able to see it at the Kennedy Center because a sober analysis might leak out. But, Ladies and gentlemen—no, scratch that—subjects… you can now Rise. Adjust your posture. Lower your expectations. You will not be merely watching a documentary. You are being granted an audience. This is about the Empress of the Ballroom— our first lady – about whom the greatest documentary has ever been made. A soon to win every possible award documentary about the most astonishing woman to glide across the scorched marble floors of human history. A woman so luminous, so immaculately aloof, that even the camera seems to apologize before rolling. Amazon didn’t buy this film. Amazon knelt. Forty million dollars for the rights, thirty-five million more to announce to the world that yes, capitalism has finally found its final form: worship with a streaming interface. The visuals? Regal. The lighting? Vatican-level reverence. The pacing? Slower than time itself, because when a goddess moves, the universe waits. This isn’t propaganda—it’s devotion, filmed in couture focus, narrated in hushed tones usually reserved for relics and unexploded ordnance. Now, you may have heard rumors—ugly, jealous rumors—that two-thirds of the crew declined to be listed in the credits. Let us correct the record with elegance. They didn’t refuse. They withdrew in humility. Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Because how does a mere mortal—some grip named Steve, some camera op with opinions—justify placing their ink-smudged name next to a being of such poise, such marble stillness, such metaphysical detachment? To appear in the credits would have been presumptuous. Arrogant. Like autographing the Sistine Chapel because you held the ladder. This was not a protest. It was a monastic vow of silence. Yes, the First Lady exercised executive control. Of course she did. You don’t ask a Michelangelo to crowdsource the ceiling. Final cut wasn’t “control”—it was curation. Truth, refined. Reality, edited for posture. History, but with better cheekbones. And the director—ah yes, the director. A controversial figure, they say. A man with a past. But what is controversy if not proof that an artist once mattered too much? Redemption arcs are biblical, darling. This wasn’t a liability; it was texture. Shadows exist only to make the subject glow brighter. Every so-called “problem” with this film—the secrecy, the withdrawals, the silence, the air of quiet terror—has been tragically misunderstood. These were not red flags. They were awe. The kind that empties rooms. The kind that makes professionals stare at their résumés and whisper, I am not ready. So when the credits roll—and they will roll faster than you expect—notice the absence. Feel it. That emptiness isn’t scandal. It’s reverence. This is not a documentary. It’s a coronation reel. A cinematic genuflection. Proof that when history finally stops talking and just looks… she’s already gone—leaving behind perfect framing, immaculate silence, and a country still trying to decide whether it watched a film or witnessed a visitation. Two hours of immaculate lighting, selective memory, and a budget so large it could’ve fed a mid-sized democracy. (most documentaries cost about 80,000, not 60 million). This cinematic miracle is Power, polished until it squeaks. Reality, upholstered. History, rewritten by people who bill by the minute and sleep like angels. It’s a beta test. A dress rehearsal for the future. A master class in how narrative replaces accountability, how wealth curates truth, and how the camera becomes a moral laundering device. Made Possible by People Like You—Literally. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  6. JAN 22

    How The "Terminator" Is Coming for You

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk. Let’s get something straight before the civics textbooks start hyperventilating. This isn’t a conspiracy.It’s a supply chain. It’s not a shadowy cabal.It’s a frequent-flyer program. And it doesn’t start with a jackboot.It starts with a training seminar, a PowerPoint deck, and a complimentary bottled water. For years—years—thousands of American law-enforcement officers, including the kind with medals, pensions, and a deep emotional attachment to authority, have been quietly hopping on planes to Israel. Since the early 2000s. Not for hummus. Not for archaeology. For training. Policing. Military-style. Crowd control. Surveillance. Population management. How to pacify people without calling it pacification. Think of it as a professional exchange program:You bring your badge; we’ll show you how to run a neighborhood like a spreadsheet. This wasn’t advertised as repression. It was sold as best practices. Because nothing travels faster across borders than a technique for controlling human beings while still calling yourself a democracy. (Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) And once those techniques land back home, they don’t stay in the locker room. They metastasize. They spread through departments, task forces, fusion centers—like an invasive species with a grant budget. Now here’s where the story gets truly American. Because while the cops were getting trained, Silicon Valley was packing its lunch. The hoodie class—those soft-spoken monks of “disruption”—weren’t asking whether this apparatus should exist. They were asking how fast they could scale it. They didn’t bring ideology. They brought infrastructure. And infrastructure is ideology that doesn’t have to argue. Sophia Goodfriend nailed it: U.S. companies sharpened their surveillance tech in Israel and brought it home like a souvenir—except instead of a snow globe, it’s your metadata, your movement history, your social graph, your insomnia, your browsing habits, and that weird text you sent at 2:17 a.m. that you forgot about but the database didn’t. By 2015, firms like Babel and Palantir were already feeding ICE the raw material of modern power: data. Not just data—relational data. Who you know. Who you talk to. Who you stand near. Who shares your last name. Who liked whose post. Who went to the same mosque, protest, clinic, or birthday party. They turned human life into a logic puzzle. Then the real heavy equipment rolled in. Amazon.Microsoft.Google. The holy trinity of cheerful monopolies. They didn’t bring whips or chains. They brought cloud services—which is just a cute way of saying: We’ll store the nation’s private life on servers you’ll never see, governed by contracts you’ll never read. And here’s the joke the future will laugh at us for:Where AI fails technically, it succeeds ideologically. It doesn’t have to be right.It just has to feel inevitable. It just has to make the bureaucracy feel powerful.Like a toddler gripping a steering wheel while the bus careens downhill. Now we’re told “the parts are all in place.” That’s the phrase they use right before something irreversible happens. Palantir—named after Tolkien’s all-seeing stones, because nothing screams humility like borrowing props from fantasy literature—has reportedly been building ICE an “immigrationOS.” An operating system.For people. Reports that can generate what immigrants look like, where they live, where they travel, who they associate with—and monitor their location in real time. Add social-media surveillance. Add AI pattern recognition. Add predictive tools that decide who looks suspicious enough today. And to justify it, they dust off the ugliest nouns in the language—“terrorist,” “antisemite”—because power always launders itself through moral panic. It doesn’t matter who fits the label. What matters is that the label exists. Then comes the quote that should be tattooed on the forehead of the century: “We need to treat this like a business.Like Amazon Prime—but with human beings.” There it is. Two hundred and fifty years of Enlightenment thought, reduced to free shipping and live tracking. Now, let’s talk about Palantir itself—because this isn’t just software. It’s a worldview wearing code. Their original flagship platform—Gotham—connects everything in a battlefield. Soldier sensors. Drones. Satellites. Cameras. All fused into a single interface. The general’s wet dream: total visibility, zero uncertainty, no fog of war—just a clean dashboard with color-coded deaths. Every general in history would’ve sold their mother for this. And then Palantir did what all powerful technologies do: it leaked. They rolled out AIP—Artificial Intelligence Platform—a system that lets users tailor large language models to private and public data. Translation: bring us your secrets; we’ll make them actionable. Suddenly the customer base explodes. Not just the military.Banks. Oil companies. Insurance firms. Rental cars. Citi. BP. AIG. Hertz. The same tools that map insurgent networks now map customers, employees, citizens. The wall between battlefield and boardroom doesn’t crack—it dissolves. War comes home, takes off its helmet, and starts doing performance reviews. And presiding over this is Alex Karp—the philosopher-warrior CEO, the Patagonia-wearing prophet of “system transformation.” He talks like he’s rewriting scripture. Talks about rebuilding institutions. About destiny. About “noble warriors of the West.” Strip away the rhetoric and what he’s selling is algorithmic supremacy. Not justice.Not democracy.Efficiency. Effectiveness. Speed. He treats democratic hesitation—the arguing, the protesting, the moral caution—as a bug in the system. And the fix is automation. Why debate when you can deploy?Why deliberate when you can optimize? Karp doesn’t hide his contempt for restraint. He doesn’t flirt with ethics panels or open letters. He says the quiet part loud: Palantir is here to wage war—on inefficiency, on bureaucracy, on enemies foreign and domestic. This isn’t about tools.It’s about inevitability. He’s not saying, “Here’s an option.”He’s saying, “This is the future. Get out of the way.” And Wall Street loves him for it. (Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) Coming up…. we’re opening the phones. If you’ve ever wondered when “security” quietly turned into surveillance, when convenience turned into control, and when nobody bothered to ask your permission—this is your segment. Where do you see it showing up?At work? At the border? In policing? In tech? In your daily life? If any of this feels familiar—if any of it makes your stomach tighten just a notch—then this part is for you. Because what we’re talking about isn’t abstract. It’s not theory. It’s not sci-fi. It’s not “someday.”It’s already installed. This is about a country quietly trading judgment for dashboards, democracy for deployment, and human beings for data points—then acting shocked when the system starts treating everyone like a potential problem to be managed. You don’t need to be a tech expert.You don’t need to be a lawyer.You don’t need a PhD in geopolitics or a subscription to five think tanks. You just need eyes. And a pulse. Have you noticed how everything now comes with tracking?How every institution suddenly wants your data “for safety”?How the language is always clean, clinical, professional—while the consequences are anything but? At what point does “efficiency” become control?At what point does “security” become surveillance?At what point does the system stop working for people and start working on them? That’s not a rhetorical question. That’s a live one. This is The Cary Harrison Files.And right now, the floor is yours. (Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) Palantir is now one of the most highly valued defense contractors in American history—trading at obscene multiples because nothing excites investors like permanent conflict and recurring surveillance revenue. They’re delivering AI-powered targeting systems. Logistics platforms. Vehicles like TITAN. Programs like Maven that turn satellite imagery into instant kill decisions. That’s not support.That’s imperial plumbing. Here’s the truly chilling part—and lean in, because this matters: This system doesn’t need public support. It doesn’t need elections.It doesn’t need persuasion.It doesn’t need belief. It just needs backend access. Wars without consent.Policing without accountability.Governance without visibility. Morality outsourced to code.Human judgment replaced by scoring systems.Life reduced to probabilities. If Orwell warned us about Big Brother, this is worse—because nobody’s screaming. There are no banners.No parades.No goose-stepping theatrics. Just procurement contracts.Quarterly earnings calls.And a calm voice telling you this is all for your safety. The most dangerous thing about Alex Karp isn’t that he looks like a villain. It’s that he looks reasonable. He quotes scripture.He wears fleece.He sounds like your smartest professor after office hours. But behind the affectation is a man laying track for a future where dissent is a glitch, ambiguity is a flaw, and the human being is just another inefficiency to be engineered out. So while the media fixates on loud demagogues throwing tantrums on camera, keep your eyes on the quiet architecture being poured beneath your feet. Because the future isn’t being shouted at you. It’s b

    39 min

  7. JAN 21

    Germany's World War I King is Reborn

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk. Speaking to reporters in Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum, CA governor, Gavin Newsom, compared Trump to a T-Rex that “you mate with him or he devours you.” (Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) Many people think there’s a similarity between Germany of 120 years ago and the leadership that we see today. But let’s go back over 100 years to the true template for the guy building the giant ballroom, six times bigger then the White House. And we’re still in Germany – no surprise. But it was the last emperor who was almost interchangeable with what we’re seeing today. Kaiser Wilhelm II didn’t accidentally stumble Europe into catastrophe. He strutted it there—chest out, medals clanking, ego wobbling like a loose wheel on a royal carriage. This was a man who confused volume with authority, costumes with competence, and tantrums with leadership. Europe, at the turn of the twentieth century, was already a tinderbox—nationalism, alliances, arms races, the usual historical explosives. What it needed to go up was a spark. What it got was Wilhelm: a human sparkler with a mustache and a navy fetish. Wilhelm didn’t govern. He performed. He loved uniforms the way insecure men love mirrors. Every speech was a dress rehearsal for greatness. Every foreign policy decision was theater—big gestures, loud declarations, and absolutely no follow-through. Diplomacy, to him, was improv, and the rest of Europe was forced to sit in the front row while he forgot his lines. He talked too much. Constantly. To journalists. To ambassadors. To anyone within earshot. He’d announce Germany’s intentions like a drunk at a wedding announcing secrets he barely understood himself. Allies panicked. Rivals armed up. Wilhelm, baffled, took offense—because nothing enraged him more than other countries reacting rationally to the things he said out loud. Then there was the navy. Oh, the navy. Wilhelm wanted ships the way a bored child wants fireworks. Britain had a fleet, so naturally Germany needed a bigger one—not for defense, not for strategy, but for status. This was geopolitics as a pissing contest, and Wilhelm insisted on drinking more water. The result? Britain stopped seeing Germany as a continental power and started seeing it as a threat. An arms race followed. Trust evaporated. The temperature rose. Wilhelm called it prestige. Everyone else called it trouble. Inside Germany, he did what insecure leaders always do: he fired the adults. Experienced diplomats? Gone. Cautious advisers? Replaced. In their place he elevated generals who flattered him, men who spoke in timetables and inevitabilities and worst-case scenarios. Civilian control thinned. Military logic took over. Once the trains were scheduled, reason was no longer invited to the meeting. And then came 1914. A gunshot in Sarajevo. A regional crisis. The kind Europe had handled before. This was the moment for restraint—for quiet pressure, for delayed decisions, for statesmanship. Wilhelm responded by throwing a blank check at Austria-Hungary like a man tipping wildly at a bar he couldn’t afford. Total support. No limits. No exit ramp. It was pure emotion—offended honor, wounded pride, imperial solidarity cosplay. When things escalated, he panicked. He wavered. He tried—too late—to slow it down. But the machinery he empowered didn’t pause for second thoughts. Mobilization rolled forward. Alliances snapped into place. Europe marched. Wilhelm had wanted a moment. He got a world war. Four years later, millions were dead, empires were gone, and Wilhelm fled into exile—still convinced history had misunderstood him. Of course it had. History is terribly unfair to men who believe dressing like a general counts as governing. Europe didn’t fall into catastrophe because fate demanded it. It fell because it handed an unstable system to a man who treated power like a costume rack and diplomacy like a stage cue. And once he pulled the lever, there was no intermission. The Cary Harrison Files is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Look for my complete book “A MAGA history of the United States” (MAGA: Making Academia Great Again) coming out in the next months. I perform chapters often on my LA public radio show, the Cary Harrison Files”, Fridays at 10 AM Pacific, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. (Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    22 min

  8. JAN 12

    What Is the Monroe Doctrine

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk. Year one of His Imperial Kumquat’s second act was domestic thuggery: a slow, sticky, bureaucratic mugging of the Constitution in broad daylight, with Our Leadership standing around like mall cops arguing over whose radio battery died first. Year two? Now the swagger goes international. Why settle for bullying your own institutions when you can expand the brand and start shaking down the whole hemisphere? And that’s the pitch now: Venezuela is in our “backyard,” and apparently, in Washington DC, “backyard” means you own it, like a dog that’s found a bone and is prepared to bite God Himself over possession rights. We didn’t like the guy in charge, so—poof—there goes the old postwar pretense that borders matter and war is something you do only when you’re attacked or authorized, not when you’re annoyed. Here’s the part you’re supposed to swallow without gagging: if the United States can treat another country like a misbehaving rental property, then every other strongman on Earth gets a shiny new permission slip. You don’t have to love Putin to see the sales pitch: “If Washington gets to ‘stabilize’ its neighborhood with force, why can’t I stabilize mine?” Same for Xi. Same for Netanyahu. The whole planet becomes one big HOA run by men who settle disputes by lighting your house on fire and calling it “maintenance.” Remember the post–World War II order? The one built—at least on paper—to stop exactly this kind of “might makes right” territorial bullying? It was supposed to be the great human compromise: no more empires carving up the map because they feel entitled, no more “spheres of influence” where the strong eat the weak and call it geography. Well, that order is getting replaced with something older, uglier, and much more honest: the pre–World War II model where thugs draw circles on a globe and say, “Mine.” Not a rules-based system—more like a bar fight with flags. For decades, Washington DC kept up a glossy moral cover story: democracy, alliances, freedom, humanitarian concern, soft power, that whole sermon. Sure, the sermon was frequently accompanied by coups, friendly dictators, and the occasional “misunderstanding” involving napalm, but the packaging mattered. It gave the empire a patina—thin, but shiny—enough to sell itself as a necessary force for order. Now? The mask is falling off and landing face-first in the oil. Because listen to the new gospel: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions, fix the infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” That’s adorable. It’s the kind of sentence a pickpocket says while you’re still applauding his concern for your financial wellness. “Making money for the country” is the bedtime story. The grown-up translation is: they’ll make money for themselves, and the “country” is just the stage scenery. And once you accept that logic—once you normalize “we can run your nation because we’ve got the hardware and you’ve got the resources”—you’ve officially entered the world where tyrants thrive. It’s not democracy versus authoritarianism anymore. It’s competing protection rackets, each with its own flag, its own propaganda, and its own list of “neighbors” who’d better behave. That’s the nightmare on offer: three big blocs, three big bosses, three big excuses. One bloc under Putin’s boot, one under Xi’s, and one under Really stable genius—with assorted junior thugs playing regional assistant managers. In this model, being someone’s “neighbor” means you either comply with the neighbor’s wishes or you get “managed.” Sovereignty becomes a subscription plan: pay monthly in obedience, or enjoy the deluxe package of sanctions, destabilization, and helpful missiles. And if this sounds new, it’s only because the marketing department refreshed the logo. This is the Monroe Doctrine with a modern haircut. The original version, back in 1823, was a polite little throat-clear dressed up as moral principle: “Europe, keep your hands off the Americas.” It was charming, like a raccoon slapping a bear and declaring the forest a raccoon-only zone. James Monroe delivered it with the calm confidence of a man standing behind the British Navy and pretending it was his own muscle. Britain did the heavy lifting; America wrote the press release. The pitch was noble. The subtext was territorial. The translation was: “We’re not strong enough to police this hemisphere yet, but we’re calling dibs.” Geopolitical puberty—awkward, loud, and convinced the future owes it something. And then America grew up, found muscles, discovered gunboats, and learned that phrases like “regional stability” can lubricate almost anything. The doctrine stopped being a statement and became a hall pass. It didn’t stop empire so much as replace European empire with an American franchise: same extraction, new management, better pamphlets. Then came the Roosevelt Corollary—the Monroe Doctrine on steroids, barging into the room without knocking. Suddenly intervention wasn’t a last resort; it was the default setting. “We’ll intervene proactively,” said the country inventing lynching and child labor, “because we’re the adult in the room.” Imperialism in khakis. Paternalism with a gun. Democracy delivered at bayonet point. And the genius—if you can call it that—was the plausible innocence. Every intervention was framed as reluctant. Every occupation was temporary. Every catastrophe was unforeseen. And every time it blew up, the blame was assigned to the locals: corruption, culture, historical baggage. Washington DC just showed up with tanks and advice. Totally different. By the Cold War, the doctrine became a hemispheric anxiety disorder. Any election that went left was a plot. Any reform that touched land or wealth was a threat. Coups bloomed like mold in a damp basement. Dictators got installed, funded, trained, and occasionally replaced when they stopped returning calls. And through all of it, America insisted it wasn’t an empire—because empires are European, and America is a guardian, a partner, a friend… who sometimes needs to slap you around for your own good. Now the doctrine hasn’t died—it’s just updated its wardrobe. It learned to say “human rights” with a straight face. It hired consultants. It stopped calling invasions invasions and started calling them missions. Same racket, smoother fonts. So that’s where you are tonight: watching a superpower revive its oldest habit—declare the neighborhood “ours,” treat other nations like misbehaving possessions, and act shocked when every other authoritarian on Earth takes notes. Because the Kumquat World Order doesn’t make the world safe for democracy. It makes the world safe for tyrants—by turning tyranny into a bipartisan, multinational, market-tested operating system. Now ask yourself: if this is the “backyard” logic in the open, what happens when Washington DC decides your street needs “stabilizing” too? Which brings us to the domestic clown car: the opposition party—the one that keeps promising to save democracy—can’t even manage the radical act of appearing awake. Author and activist Norman Solomon has been saying the quiet part out loud: that Democratic leadership has grown so uninspiring, so disconnected, it’s like watching a fire department debate font choices while the building collapses. On Democracy Now! he argued we’ve been marched toward a “fascistic” politics because corporate Democrats keep failing to beat the GOP or offer policies that feel like they were designed for humans. So, today, we’re doing something unfashionable: we’re going to treat this like it matters. Because once Washington DC gets comfortable abducting foreign leaders and talking like it’s running a petro-state, the “human toll” doesn’t stay overseas—it comes home in the language, the laws, the budgets, the policing, and the casual assumption that power is whatever the guy with the missiles says it is. Norman Solomon is here with his latest book - The Blue Road to Trump Hell His book scrutinizes how the behavior of many Democrats assisted Trump’s electoral triumphs. That scrutiny is important not only for clarity about the past. It also makes possible a focus on ways that such failures can be avoided in the future.” Let’s talk about how the empire sells itself—abroad and at home. Thanks to you, public media continues, even during defunding and the sudden obstacles of these times. Thanks go to you, with a big smooch! Get Norman Solomon’s Book for free here: The Cary Harrison Files is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Look for my complete book “A MAGA history of the United States” coming out in the next months. I perform chapters often on my LA public radio show, the Cary Harrison Files”, Fridays at 10 AM Pacific, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles. Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    29 min
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About

Award-winning raconteur Cary Harrison cut through the noise – revealing the murky agendas behind today's headlines through uncompromising journalism, unapologetic advocacy, independent voices and a global audience with live listener call-ins shaping the conversation. caryharrison.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    CARY HARRISON
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    116
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Audiences United, LLC
  • Show Website
    Cary Harrison Files