Chapo Trap House - 352 - Rod Dreher's The Exorcist II (9/24/19)

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

There's a lot of stuff going on in the primaries that mostly reminds us of stuff that's happened before, and also Trump's probably done more crimes, but it's important to stay focused on what matters. And what matters is that Rod Dreher has finally updated us on his friend's wife's very serious, very real exorcism. Catch up on Rod Dreher's the Exorcist Pt. 1 here: https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-252-rod-drehers-the-exorcist-feat-brett-payne-and-bryan-quinby-10918

You know, who is the guest on the view this morning? Oh, Bob Iger. What? The CEO of Disney and the end boss of ABC. He has a new book. And would you guess what the questions were? They were like. Yes, they said like it's amazing that you came from the mail rooms. You're real. You're a self made man. What kind of dedication did it take for you to rise to the top? And then they're like, it seems like you had a little bit, but still very humble and very dedicated. It was, it was like Lisa Simpson reading the thing. Like your campaign has the momentum of a runaway freight train. How is the view going? How is the view? You know what?

It's been less traumatic than I thought for one simple reason. It's divided into three segments, three, five minute talk segments and then three, five minute commercial breaks. There's barely any show. It's mostly commercials. Yeah. And it's interesting. I've seen the view and your observation that they preview segments that never air. That's completely true. Like they, this is a TV show that they would watch in the Harrison Bergeron world where you forget everything after nine seconds. It's complete. Every, every segment is a broken play in football. It's just they are scrambling. It's like, Oh, no, we

weren't going to talk about democratic candidates, but I guess somebody found like a, a dear Abby clipping about giving your husband the silent treat. So we're going to talk about that. So when you started watching, when you started watching, they had just come back from a break and you observed at the beginning that Megan, she's not, you know, she's not all fiery and mad right now. Yeah. And I thought, Oh, well, you know, she's well rested, give it a little time. Now it's about three weeks in and she's, she's peppery. But the funny thing is, is what I've realized is that she doesn't get mad really because the other hosts are, you

know, being libs and rejecting her and her, you know, like her big first week, she was like, Oh, being virtue signal to faster first week. But the real thing she gets mad at is that she herself is astoundingly inarticulate. Yeah. And cannot actually make an argument or like a point. And so everyone else just kind of has to spend the time trying to like suss out what she means and she gave her and she gets frustrated. She gets mad at herself for not being able to speak English. Right. She can't communicate. I could empathize with that because that's like being in a k-hole. Yeah. No, she's like fucking. She's like

now basically Machica. She's Machica Bay like the lat like the thing where she stormed off because of Navarro, what she was yelling about was she was trying to relitigate the thing from the argument she had where she got owned by Pam Anderson and she was trying to make some point about whistleblowers, but she wasn't like there were no. There was never an object and an a subject in the sentence as she was saying. So nobody knew what she was actually trying to get at and like Abby Huntsman at some one point kind of like break it and like tried to translate for her. And then she just like yelled over everybody for

that her to make a point and her point was well, I was clumsy in how I said it. Well, I'm sorry, which is like picture. We're trying to figure out what you're talking to about on live television. It's on you to make sense, which is funny because professional communicator half of the other hosts are already are already making whatever stupid point she wanted to make. And I think that kind of trips are up when Abby Huntsman is already like, I think Julian Assange has put our intelligence agents in danger. It's like, Megan, you we're going to say something like that. So you just not. But she says it incoherently.

It's Felix. We got Felix back. Yeah, sorry. I was we're shooting out your doodoo ass. Yeah. No, it's okay. I was shooting out my doodoo ass and cleaning out my sinuses. Oh, God. That's what he calls it. You see the way that they straightly here. Okay. Yeah. People people want to know about people want to know about your why I'm recording remotely is see the way they can. Okay, God, they make me watch them for you. Yeah, I don't like it. Oh, God. Oh, God, they make me watch the two daughters be friends. Oh, God.

Oh, God, they're having not altered brown talk about healthy lunch choices. All right. So here we are, guys. It's a chopper. What's going on in the world? What do you want to really want to start today? I feel like the way I've mapped it out for today is like two examples of just sort of the short and long term cycle of eternal recurrence that we're living in. You want to go with the short or long one first? Hmm. Well, I certainly don't want to talk about the fact that we the US military barbecued about 70 Afghan civilians in the last week. That's a bummer. So let's go with the short term. Okay. Short term.

There's another totally in screw. Well, not really inscrutable, but like incredibly boring Trump scandal that everyone has to pretend to care about now involved involving involving Ukraine and our boy Hunter Biden. It's amazing how that stupid and fake country has the nexus for everything that has happened in this country in the last two and a half to three years. As best I can understand it. It's like basically while the Mueller investigation was going on or like the day he even like testified in front of Congress, Donald Trump was just getting on the phone to the president of Ukraine being like, we'll give you money if you investigate bad Joe Biden's awful son Hunter. And I mean, I don't know what came in that. All right. No, see,

there's two versions. Oh God, I always, I already feel like I'm getting leukemia injected directly into my spinal cord. Just thinking about trying to explain this because this is some more bullshit that liberals are going to fixate on and say this is what we all have to talk about. And it's further inscrutable crap that no one else will care about. And if you say I don't care or this is boring, you're actively helping Trump. So the deal is, is that when Biden was, and this is actually referenced in the New York Times article about Hunter, we we we read, yeah, is that Hunter was given a board job on a Ukrainian energy company. That sounds all above board 50 grand a year a month, 50 grand a month to be on the board of this company. Because what

is what what we've read about Hunter Tom, Hunter Thompson, Hunter, Hunter Biden, Windsor S Biden. He knows what does he know? He knows doing crack. He knows buying crack got crying shirtlessly. He knows telling people to fuck you because you don't understand him and you know what? I'll just go be an addict if that's what you think I am and also Ukrainian energy. Those are his those are his Bailey Wicks. Yeah. And so they hired him for this job and while Biden was the vice president. Well, yes. And and at some point, the Ukrainian like prosecutor was pressured by Biden on behalf of the Obama administration to be fired. They said, we're not going to give you a unless you fire this prosecutor. They claim because he was not doing

enough to halt corruption in the Ukraine. The Trump and those guys are claiming it was because he was getting too close to Biden and his corruption. And so what Trump was alleged by this whistleblower who he will not allow his report to be released, which is actually pretty fucked up and illegal, but whatever. According to the whistleblower, he was on the phone with the Ukrainian for the new recovery president, the one who became president of Ukraine after playing the president of Ukraine on a TV show. That's true. That's a true thing. And said, look, we got this military aid for you, like $250 million or something. We will hold it. We'll not give it to you until you investigate this, the idea that Biden pressured them to fire this

prosecutor. Right. And that's apparently like the big election meddling thing is he was trying to use his position as president to get the Ukrainians to stitch up Joe Biden on a false charge of trying to help his son. So that's the stupid boring crap that we have to care about. Now, here's what I mean about like this is an example of a shorter term recurrence because on the one level, like this is exactly like, like I take, I 100% believe that everything Trump did in Ukraine is totally corrupt. And it's just a straight up bribe to a foreign country to attack. It's pretty bad. It's some 10 pot autocrat shit. You know, I believe it's happened because it was a deal. Yeah, it's a deal. It's like very bad. Hunter Biden is very bad father doing very bad things

in Ukraine. You hadn't even imagined how bad they are. I've got this military aid for Ukraine. Well, why would I give it to you if you're not going to give me something in return? It's just a deal. I just basically think like anyone, any American or doing anything in Russia or Ukraine is bound to be shady on some point. But it's like, it's like the Hillary Clinton stuff all over again. It's like, okay, I'm sure what Trump was doing in Russia, you know, it was not above board. But the thing is, what they exposed about Hillary Clinton also kind of not above board. And like, here's the thing with the Hunter Biden stuff. It is super shady that he got that fucking yes. And what they're asking you to do is they're asking you to say, go into the election with Biden

ready to spend your time insisting to everybody who isn't a obsessive psycho paying attention to politics that it's not actually bad that his son got this incredibly lucrative job on the board of this company in in Ukraine and notoriously corrupt country because what real the real scandal is what Trump did about it. Oh, wow, that works so much so well the last time. These are just like competing gradations of the same general kind of corruption. Yes. And rot of our political system because we certainly don't know enough from experience that when people are confronted with this, they just say, oh, everybody's crooked. And then they just say that they cancel each other out, which is exactly what happened with Clinton and Trump.

I've got some thoughts on this. Like the the main storyline is quite boring. It's just it's like slightly more interesting than the usual thing. But like shitty sons and daughters of whoever have been given lucrative contracts forever. Joe Manchin's big daughter famously has some bullshit pharmaceutical job. Megan McCain's on the view everyone there is a universal jobs program for people like this. But the angle that I find interesting is like just the breathlessness. Brian Schatz, who's like the poster senator, sort of the senatorial equivalent of Ted Lu, because he has a more upper brow like, oh, I guess we're in hell world now, sort of like generalized media dipshit pussy style of posting. So he's endeared himself to a lot of like crooked

media type accolades. He had some big breathless post about how this is serious. This is zero hour for democracy. And what the fuck are you doing? And it like it sort of it it made me almost violate terms of service for multiple reasons. One of them being like, you're a fucking senator. What am I supposed to do? Should I reply to Trump? Like what am I supposed to do? What do you it's your job, you fucking cunt. But anyway, it also like it made me have a flashback of every time this has happened of every time a senator or someone infinitely higher up on the total poll than me has said, this is the biggest crisis ever. And then their next tweet is like, a controversial opinion, Reese's peanut butter cups are trash. And what is what is the effect?

What is the effect of constantly telling me that democracy is ending, that this is the most important election ever, just like the last one was just like the one before that one, that we need to hold this guy accountable now, not me, the senator, me, the congressman, me, whatever. My brain don't say it. You, you, the reader, you, the girl reading this, what is the effect of that? And then just life goes on. Because you have the same dreary depression you have from your your alienated shitty life going on as usual. This thing that Trump did that's supposedly unprecedented, which by the way, you know what some of my earliest political memories are there of random Arab guys who the fucking army detained and tortured who had nothing

to do with Al Qaeda suing the government because they were citizens who were tortured for years on end and then told, oh no, sorry, you can't even sue its national security. Because like if what Trump is doing these last four or five times are supposed to supposedly democracy ending, if those are the moves of a tin pot dictator, which they are, what was that last thing? What was that last thing? Because I swear to God, you're fucking posting pictures of the guy who did that, giving Werther's originals to Michelle Obama. So it all seems very fucking meaningless when you say that. But the effect it has on like the regular liberal who does buy into all that is just a continued psychosis, their reality phrase on the edges, but their lives are just

as dull and shitty as always. It creates this sort of vocal minority in this country of people who people who feel like their reality is falling apart, but their lives are pretty much the same, which further alienates them from normal people, even though that's a very disperse and undefinable term, who also feel insane and alienated because that's just their condition. Meanwhile, there will be four or five things like this Trump does that are supposedly beyond the pal more beyond the pal than the last thing he did beyond the pal, even though I said the exact same shit last time. And then within two weeks, it's moved on. You're trying to give him epic Pinocchios because he said he fucked the girl in the song centerfold. Nothing ever gets

better or it only gets worse, but it stays the same somehow. You'll just go more insane forever. Awesome. We love it. I mean, yeah, again, I don't know what more to say about the Ukraine story other than like I said, you're going to be cajoled into, you know, you're going to be beaten over the head into like, yeah, that this is the most important thing ever until it's not. But like, all the people who you're telling you, it's the worst, most horrible, you know, breach of our democratic norms and government of all time are still not going to impeach him. They're going to say stuff like they're not very strongly considering, you know, our options regarding his, you know, truthfulness, you know, blah, blah, blah, but they're not going to impeach

him. They're going to try to, they're going to try to elect Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren president. And that's going to be right. But the function of this is like, it's the thing that we used to make fun of like Bush supporters for in the mid 2000s. Oh, you like being afraid all the time. That's everybody now that just became, if I had to pick like a single, like the most underrated effect of Bush politics, it was that everyone adopted it, that you should just make your voters in constant fucking terror all the time. There's so much to be afraid of just in your life in the world, even as an American. But the things that make you precarious and you should be afraid of aren't the things that they want you to be afraid of. But I mean, like, we vetoed talking about it just

because it's so boring. And I feel like I personally feel like she gets a lot of play out of just like left liberals sort of talking about her. But that Barry Weiss book is just a perfect example of how widespread this is that just everyone is a potential enemy. If you're an American Jew, just any anyone is a Nazi, be they like women's March people are out to kill you. Everyone is out to destroy your perfect democracy. The things that don't actually affect your life are existential threats to you. You should be in pure fucking terror all the time. And we're the only ones who can fix this. We're all just different shades of the most diehard Bush supporters in 2004 now. And it's very depressing. Well, maybe this will cheer you up. Here's my second example

of the eternal recurrence that we're all living in. This one's a little bit more interesting to me. I think a little bit more meatier for our discussion. The Working Families Party endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and the subsequent fallout over it. So basically, what happened is the Working Families Party continued their long tradition of endorsing Joe Crowley over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and endorsing Andrew Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon and endorsed Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders. No, they endorsed Cynthia Nixon. They did endorse it. You were thinking of Zephyr Teachout. Zephyr Teachout. That's what I'm thinking of. Okay. So they endorsed Warren over Sanders. And immediately, there became a controversy about how was this vote done? And they immediately

clammed up and said that we're not going to be transparent at all about how this vote was conducted. And basically, what it comes down to is that they instituted for the first time a kind of super delegate system when it comes to their party's endorsement of a candidate, where it basically weighted the votes of about 56 of the party leadership of the Working Families Party, equally with their rank and file members. And that is basically how you ended up with a Warren endorsement over Sanders. And obviously, people are rightly a little bit annoyed at the rather craveness of this. But then after that, there's another fallout where basically there's an open letter done by a group of progressive activists in support of the Working Families

Party leadership that basically stated that they were being subjected to, quote, white terror on the left and the right as it comes to angry Sanders supporters in their mentions. None of these emails or tweets were ever, again, made public so people could see, you know, again, the type of harassment or supposed death threats that are going on here. But again, what I mean about eternal recurrence is that every single thing that happened in 2016 as regards Bernie Sanders and his supporters and the way we argue about politics in a public sphere is happening again right now, 100%. And like we've seen it all before and we're living it now again. Sanders missed a the candidates forum on LGBTQ issues this week because he was scheduled,

had a prior engagement to speak at a historically black university. And the executive editor of Out Magazine said that Sanders and Trump supporters are basically the same in that they hate, you know, gay people and black women in particular. Again, it's just like and then and then in that article, if you look at the that they actually do provide tweets about, you know, what is the supposed harassment that's the same as it is on the left and the right or among Sanders supporters and Trump supporters is basically people disagreeing with her take that, you know, Sanders is anti-LGBTQ or simply providing, you know, evidence of the fact that he has been, you know, at a time when, I'm sorry, Elizabeth Warren was a fucking was a Republican. Sanders was in favor of, you know,

gay rights and gay marriage. Obama was against gay marriage until 2009. He hasn't had to evolve 2012 2012. I remember because Biden outran the coverage on that and he kind of made them have to be in favor of it because he kind of just went fuck it were in favor of gay marriage and then they had to kick play catch up. He absolutely campaigned on the whole civil unions but not gay marriage thing. But the you know, it was actually Catherine who broke that story for Splinter about the this leaked open letter that was done again in support of the leadership of the working families party and their endorsement of Warren. But I mean, I guess like what we're seeing right now is like, look, I know like Warren is not exactly the same candidate as Hillary

Clinton like their politics are different. They are running a different campaign technically. However, she's being cast in exactly the same role and I'm sorry, the people who by and large support her in the media or now her biggest boosters are the same people, the exact same people who did this to Bernie Sanders in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. I just think we're seeing the exact same narrative play out in front of our eyes all over again. Oh, yeah. And I mean, I don't know why mess with the fucking winner, you know, in their minds that helped Hillary win. Why wouldn't you do it again? And like you're going to have to sort of like, well, what do you do about it? Like you can argue your point, you can, you know, make a case or like, well, yeah, exactly. Like

you have to realize that if you if you argue a point, if you disagree with anyone, you're going to be accused of doing harassment or worse or literal white terror against, you know, yeah, like a minority populations. So I mean, what do you do? Do you just only talk about Bernie Sanders or do you like not engage at all with the actual political debate and contest that's going on? I don't know. But like the one thing I do know is that you can't pretend like this isn't happening or that there's not a real. Now, here's what you do. So all the people who try to make hay about Bernie Sanders supporters being misogynistic and doing harassment and all that crap. If you use Twitter search function and go back on their timeline to like 2013, every single one of them

has tweets from 2013 that are like, I'm sick of all these fucking Asians at Taco John's. Just search their name and Asian and use a search parameter before 2013, before 2014. So just find those tweets and report them as racism and hopefully get them banned. This is all I'm sure for most people very horrifying. You're getting flashbacks. You're getting sweats. You got the giant from Twin Peaks saying it's happening again. I understand that and it is horrifying and it's very disheartening and you see this and you're like, what? Why do I am I trapped in this hell that can never change? Why am I in a Nietzschean eternal occurrence? But there's hope and this is really what I've been trying to tell myself over

the past few months to sort of a chain of Zen detachment from all of this. And this is the simple fact that this time around, the entire Bernie campaign and the Bernie theory of change, not just to win the primary, but to win the general and then to actually do anything when you're in power is predicated on the notion of activating people who don't usually vote, who are not politically engaged. By definition, people who don't go on Twitter and don't watch MSNBC for four hours a day until their brain has the consistency of KY jelly. And that we can't know that for sure. That's a thing that might not work. It's a thing that you're not even going to see reflected in polls because polls are weighted against people who don't vote that much

by definition. And you could argue very reasonably that they shouldn't do that because you're trying to predict something. You want to go by who's most likely to show up. But the fact is that the people who vote in presidential primaries on the Democratic side are a fraction of a fraction of the population of people who actually vote in general in this country. They are attached to the Democratic Party. In some way, might it be some sort of like they're either part of the apparatus. They're adjacent to the apparatus. They have some sort of emotional or personal attachment to one of a aparachic or a politician. Or they just watch TV. They watch MSNBC with a little Democrat pennant and they root for the Democrats. Any of that means they're invested

in the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party is deeply invested as in the media in not having Bernie win. They don't want him to win because he's the only one who's actually a threat to anything. And so they're going to do this shit. They're going to do shit like this on Twitter. They're absolutely going to do shit like this on on TV. I mean, there was one bad poll out of Iowa and MSNBC was having a roundtable about whether Bernie should drop out. That's going to happen. But the thing is, is that if if the people who are going to vote and determine this thing are that set number of people who vote in Democratic primaries, he's not going to win because between Warren's appeal to like technocracy that urban liberals love and Biden's appeal to elect elect ability,

which people who are like lower down on the economic totem pole and more traumatized by the idea of Republican governance because it affects them more directly are also persuaded by one of them is going to win. He's not going to win unless his message is able to engage people who are outside of this process and those people are paying attention to any of this stuff. It's also the only way he's going to be able to make a governing majority or press forward to change anything when he's in office and overcome the obstacles put there by things like the Constitution. So keep that in mind. I mean, do what you're going to do post what you're going to post, but just know it's out of the hands of anyone who you can think of directly who is a politically engaged

citizen. Two things on that. Like I overwhelmingly agree with you about that. Like there is a sort of a bliss in surrender that it's all just kind of madness. However, I do think like as far as the media goes for people who are a little bit older and still look to things outside of like the internet for their sort of space of consensual reality. I think the things the media do and how they cover Bernie Sanders, which is largely either negatively or just not covering him or just pretending like he's not the number two. That's the number one strategy, right? More than attacking him, just pretending he's not there. Just pretending he's not there and making it seem like it's a two person race between Biden and Warren, even though Sanders is by most accounts strongly

in the number two position. Just pretending that he's not there. I think for a lot of people who do really like Bernie, and then like I said, look to the media for their space of kind of consensual reality, I think it's not just immoralizing, but I just think it gives them the impression that he has no chance. So like, why bother? But like to your second point, I think this is more important. It's not out of your hands. It's not out of your hands. But like, just understand that all of this, it's going to be even harder and dirtier than it was in 2016. But if you're on the internet, if it's on Twitter, or if it's a media conversation, or it's like the shit we talk about the show in the show, like yeah, it is out of your hands.

However, donating money to Sanders is not out of your hands. Volunteering your time, no matter what state you live in. Talking to people who aren't politically engaged, because that's how it's going to happen. It's going to go around these structures. That's how you're going to engage the people who are not already kind of brainwashed, frankly, by the political parameters created by the parties and by the media. What I mean is like, yeah, like no matter what state you live in, or if you live in a state that's close by to a very important state, be it, you know, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, et cetera, you can find, you can volunteer, you can find a group, you can find people who are volunteering and working

with the campaign. And then it's not out of your hands. And like that, I think is the only real antidote to being driven insane by this drivel and by like the onslaught on your sense of, your common sense and rationality that you see take place every day is to, yeah, give up on that and like take an active measure to actually take it in your hands and do something that does matter. And so that that way you don't feel the sense of complete hopelessness and alienation that the rest of this is intended to inculcate in you. But just understand that like it's not going to be easy. It's going to be even harder than it was in 2016. But at the same time, I think for a lot of reasons, it's harder, but I think he still has maybe even a better chance than he did in 2016

for his number of reasons. Yes. I mean, going on to like Warren in general, and like I said, like regardless of, you know, there are real political differences between her and Hillary Clinton, but like it really does seem like she's hoovering up all the people that were embarrassed to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and just don't want to vote for Bernie because that's like a bridge that that's a hurdle that they can't clear. Yeah. Just sort of like embarrassed, upper middle class, white liberal professionals. Why don't they want to vote for Bernie Sanders? Because they're not socialists. I mean, they disagree with his politics. They still blame him for Donald Trump being president. They think he's just an old white man or like they,

I mean, why do you think? But they had an, I mean, it's your, you, your category. You, you're bringing this up. It's your category of people who did not support Hillary last time around. No, they did vote for it. They voted for it last time around. But they feel they're like embarrassed about it in retrospect and they're looking to cover their ass in a way or they realize their error, but like they're not willing to go all the way. But what's their, so what, what are they uneasy? What were they uneasy about, about Hillary? Was it that she only that she was only in only in hindsight? Yeah, exactly. But otherwise they were, you know, they were on board. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Exactly. That's what I mean. You know, and it's like,

here's the thing, like in the, you know, left of center progressive part of the media, the line that you hear over and over again is that there's no difference politically between Sanders and Warren and like that they want the same things, their policies are the same, like they're, they're just, they're both equally good. So why not just support Warren? Warren is the, you know, unstated part of that equation there. But my response to that is, if Sanders and Warren represent the same politics, the same policies and the same political vision for this country, what in Europe, like what in your opinion would account for the vast difference in the way they're covered by the media? Because you have to ask, like, okay,

I was thinking about this last week, has Elizabeth Warren outside of the breakfast club had a bad media hit at all? I mean, you can talk about the 23 and me, like the DNA test stuff, but that was an entirely an unforced error on her part. Yeah. And it was covered by the media because they had to, but like overwhelmingly outside, again, outside of the breakfast club in Charlemagne the God who kind of embarrassed her, Elizabeth Warren has not had a single negative media hit. And if you look at the way she's covered in the New York Times, it's like, Elizabeth Warren lessons in leadership. It's never like, oh, you know, outside of the outside of conservative media, which, you know, tends to write her in the same column as Bernie is,

you know, all the candidates are all going too far left, you know, the concern trolling type pieces from the Brett Stevens types. You guys noticed that when she was first kind of stuck at like 5%. There was all this talk about how God darn that Elizabeth Warren, she's got so many great plans. Why isn't she doing better? And now she's doing better. But then Bernie dropped all of the fire stuff, like in a month, he's dropping revolutionary fucking concepts in labor and criminal justice reform, healthcare, housing. And all of a sudden, nobody cares about plans. Where'd the plans go? Nobody? I don't hear anybody even talk about Hillary or about Hillary, about Warren in terms of plans anymore. It's like that was there to like keep her viable.

And now that she's got her own momentum and that's no longer a thing you can criticize compared to Bernie. I think that's still part of her appeal. That's still central to it is the plans thing. I just had a straight thought. Are you on Twitter? Yeah. Can you go to the Twitter search? Oh, it's total straight thought. Total shot in the dark. Can you search? Maybe it's better on YouTube. You search Warren and then the N word. Can you search Warren plans rap? Oh God. Maybe you should go on YouTube. Maybe you should go on YouTube for this. Is there a rap? Oh God. No. Really? I mean, maybe our fucking God. Thank fucking God. Maybe I'm sure our eagle-eared listeners will turn something up. But like on first glance. Well, there you go. That's an

indication that she's not the front runner. She hasn't made it yet. So I wouldn't be overly concerned about it. I like can't bring myself to post about any of this because it's the most insane shit I've ever seen. Like this is no one care that she pretended like until she was like 70. Was like, yeah, I'm Cherokee. I mean, I mean, do you care? How can you? How can you? I mean, like, I don't care. Do you care? I don't care. I think it's funny. I think it shows like. Yeah. I think it's funny. And I think more I don't care as in like, oh, she needs to fucking have dinner with WOC or something. I don't know. But I mean, does anyone care what they just talk about how racist Bernie is? Yeah, literally just three years straight and just

until she was 65. And like one of the Johns was like, beep boop spit in my hand so I could determine your haplo group. And she found out that she was like, like, like less cherry, like less Native American than anyone. Like, does no one care that she just did this forever? Like that's hilarious. Like it just it makes it makes you too insane. But I am sympathetic to like the people on my timeline who I like you a lot of the time who are like engaging in arguments with Warren surrogates. I mean, like I'm sympathetic to it because like I want to do it too. I want to yell at those people too. But it just drives me too insane. It just like puts me in too bad of a mental space. No, there's no end game to it. You know, yeah, no, there's zero. And there's no

you recognize that has no impact on reality whatsoever. All it does is make you it all it does is make me like feel bad and hopeless. So I try not to engage with it. But it is like, yeah, if you do that all day, I fucking get it. I fucking get it because just like the only time I really engage with this is whenever we talk about it on the show. And that's when I'm like, she was a fucking Republican until she could get Medicare. Like, there's no one giving this shit. They don't give a shit, because they don't think anyone will check on it. And if you do bring it up, it'll be like, Oh, so people can't grow? Like, fine. I think she has like, you know, in my ideal world, my ideal compromise world where like Bernie is president, she has a bright

future in the Senate, you know, fucking regulating financial body. Keep in mind, well, as well, you know, keep in mind that substantial part of the Democratic coalition now is suburbanites who have left the Republican Party since the Bush administration. Yeah, no, they got exactly what they fucking wanted with that. Well, you know, if we're, if we're catering to upper class, you know, white suburbanites who are essentially conservative in their outlook, if they are going to be the ones who determine the winner of the primaries, then yeah, Bernie Sanders can't possibly win. I mean, yeah. Again, I don't think that's I mean, I'm saying, I'm saying, if then, yes, but it just don't tails with the mad Senate. Yeah, yeah, you know, and like what I'm saying is like,

you know, it's like none of this is going to be a cakewalk. Like there's like, you can take nothing for granted in that like the everything is stacked against Bernie Sanders, other than the overwhelming popularity of his actual belief. The other thing is like, you know, like, like Felix, I've I've also been ignoring what people say online. But you've muted I've all muted me as well. Yeah, I've muted everyone. You know, I log on and it's just it's just promoted tweet and Donald Trump. And those are the only stuff that I want to interact with anymore. And but but what I've noticed, which you know, I get through osmosis, the the media coverage and the conversations about the primaries is, you know, everyone's sounding the alarm about Bernie Sanders right now

out of the eight last national polls, polls conducted within the past two weeks. Our last eight Biden led all eight of them. Warren led Bernie Sanders in four of those. Bernie Sanders led Elizabeth Warren in four of those. This race has been consistent. It's been they've been in these positions for the for several months now. So I kind of think there it needs to be another explanation for the Bernie panic narrative and the Warren ascendance narrative than that. The way I view it as I think it this serves a function to be the off ramp for squishes, basically, for Bernie supporters who are not actually socialist or really even actually critical of capitalism, who are not really opposed to private profit. Yeah, absolutely. And

that's like there was this thing, the socialist movement after after Bernie won because our choices were just this absolutely decrepit neoliberalism embodied by Hillary Clinton and Bernie and a lot of people went with Bernie just because of how untenable the Clinton consist Clinton consensus was. But now and but now that the choice doesn't exist anymore. Now there's this perfect person who can embody the best of technocratic liberalism and identity politics and also a challenge to the way things are done that does not fundamentally undermine a political and economic structure that they at the end of the day are we're always down with. And that's why I'm saying that the that if Bernie's going to win it's not going to be because he's won over

some chunk of the political engaged American public or the political media because they're just not their class interests will be hostile to him no matter what. I mean, the way I feel about this is like I go back to like when I we're talking about the Corbyn stuff in the UK. And again, like the just mind numbing inanity and just unreality of the fact that like everyone now everyone has just agreed that like he's an anti-Semite and like that's the thing you have to deal with. And what I said to our British listeners and supporters is like, look, you can either support Corbyn and be called an anti-Semite and just like deal with that, forget about it, write it off and keep going like you would otherwise. Or you can knuckle under it.

But like, you know, either way, like just toughen up if you if you're in it for the long haul. And what I'll say about, you know, with Sanders this time around is like, you can be positive and only talk about the things you like about Sanders. You can engage critically with, you know, his political rivals or opponents or critics in the media. But guess what? Like you're going to be treated the same way. And guess what? If you're not a white guy, you're going to be in still support Sanders, you're going to be treated even worse. So it's like, you're just going to have to deal with it. I mean, I just find it very suspicious the motivations of all of these people who will prevaricate in order to smear someone

running to be the first Jewish president of the United States. I think that's a milestone that we should all hope for and we should all support. There you go. But here's the other thing, though. And I guess like if you're looking to engage on this issue, like I I can't like if you supported Sanders in 2016 or consider yourself left of liberal and like progressive or even just liberal in any way, how could you in a very much still ongoing primary possibly choose Warren over Sanders? Look, I've already made my piece of the prospect of like voting for her in the general and that's something for everyone else, no matter who the candidate is, is going to have to a decision that they have to come to on yourself based on your own moral calculus. But as long as Sanders

is still in the race, why not go with the person who has unqualified support for Medicare for all, which you cannot say of Elizabeth Warren. And I'll even give credit to that Vox guy Dylan Matthews for being honest and just outright saying, I don't believe Warren supports Medicare for all and that's good because it's like a pie. It's you know, it won't happen. It's an unrealistic health care plan that we shouldn't expend political capital on. It's because Warren decently aligns with their class interests and for them, things like Medicare for all are about as meaningful as what the MAGA Challenge rappers were talking about, whatever. And I've listened to the raps and I'm trying to suss out, okay, this is a young person, what their exact affinity

to Trump is like, what are they getting out of this? And it's it's nothing material whatsoever. It's nothing that they could ever possibly hope to explain. It's just a miasma of signifiers that they've adopted because the mass media environment has more or less driven them insane. I think that goes for the mirror image of that is on the democratic side of everyone who logs on every day and is immersed in the news, which as Felix points out, correctly, is not healthy or useful. You can't do anything about the news. All it does is increase your anxiety because you're not more to any greater movement or thing or community, anything greater than yourself and your personal consumer choices. So to them, supporting a presidential candidate is

just another consumer choice, another signifier that will help them piece together a personality and maybe some affinity with another supporter of that candidate. And again, to just underscore what I said earlier, there is a way out of it. The way out of it is not to just stop consuming the news or even going on Twitter, but again, understanding that it's what you're not going to stop posting. I mean, it's like it's like a drug. It's like, you know, manage your drug habits like we do everything else. But the point is like, you know, is to take action and as part of a political group or an organization larger than yourself, joining the Sanders campaign, volunteering your time, even just just sending money, whatever, but just understand that you

will be called no matter like you're going to have to toughen up because no matter what you're going to be called a racist, a misogynist, you're going to be slandered as everything that is vile about Donald Trump and the people who support it. But you know, I don't worry about it that much because I'm sure you saw the video outside. I want to say this was New Hampshire. I don't know. It was some cattle call. It was either New Hampshire or Iowa recently. And when the candidates show up to these events, they bring their teams, you know, all wearing the candidates T-shirt holding signs. And then they have a chant leader. Oh, yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like in Iowa, by the way. That was that was Iowa. Okay. Yeah. That was at the steak fry. Yeah.

That was a steak. Yes. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, they have like a cheerleader for the candidate and they're all singing their version of the MAGA challenge. But for me, Buttigieg. And I don't even know what they rhyme Buttigieg with, but get in head. Yeah. And of course, like famously Bernie does not do that. He has his volunteers go out in canvas that area instead of, you know, performing for the media. But anyway, I bring that because I'm sure you saw the most recent video of that, right? Yeah. I see, you know, a person there who's probably working for the campaign, but might be a volunteer, might, might just be a supporter. And I think, okay, I'm not worried about what that individual believes. And I don't have,

I can't really devote any time to convincing that person of one thing or another, or even just just bothering myself with trying to understand what's happening in their brain, because that's a waste of time. I think Matt, you had exactly right. The clip that I'm thinking of with Klobuchar and her supporters, she was doing the David Byrne life during wartime and stopped making sense. No, no, no, not that one. The one where she's running one where he's like on the, on the incline. Can we just hear a little clip of a life during war time? Yeah. That would be dope. Yeah, that'd be dope. That's a banger. Um, I just want to say, Amy Klobuchar, you could tell that her MyGuard genetics had interacted with

Turkic conquerors, giving her a natural sense of rhythm. Let's go, baby! Again, I would just underscore it's not totally out of your hands and, again, don't allow yourself to be intimidated or be like, you know, let someone convince you out of your own moral sense because Bernie Sanders, both in 2016 and even more so now, represents about a once every 100 year opportunity that's not going to come around again. It's in your hands, like, to do as much as you possibly can. And once again, it's five months out from the very first votes in the primaries. If you're looking for the exits, you know, here it is. That's door number two. You can pick it right now if you want, but that's your decision.

Well, we're talking about eternal recurrence. I had just one thought of the future eternal recurrence, linking together these two stories. And, you know, to Virgil and Felix, you know, your point about Elizabeth Warren's, you know, Native American kerfuffle, I've been seeing more and more people like bringing that back up and also this Biden corruption thing. I can just see in a few months how people critiquing Biden for being intimately linked with this corruption scandal, or Elizabeth Warren having her bad hits from her past drug up, the absolutely foolish Native American thing, or, you know, I saw the other day an old story about how Elizabeth Warren profited off of flipping for closed homes during the scandal. I didn't look into that enough or during the collapse. I don't know.

I didn't look into that enough to see if it's real or not. I can imagine the future past of how people bringing up these hits against them as things down the rhetorical line of, hey, wonder if we didn't nominate somebody who wasn't just surrounded by economic and political scandals, being used against Bernie supporters as being like, well, now you're just being Trump. Well, you're echoing all the same criticisms that the MAGA shitheads lob at these people to the point of being like, well, yes, you're eventually going to have to run against Trump. These things will be brought up. They are legitimate weaknesses. And, you know, the maintainers of these candidates, you know,

Presence is saying like, yes, but to bring them up now in support of another candidate in support of Bernie Sanders is playing right into the hands of the conservative people who attack them later. And I don't know where to go with that other than to wonder what you guys think about that. And just know that that will certainly... Well, with the Biden thing, I know I've seen a number of people say, you know, how dare you even suggest that there's anything to this Biden story? Nobody should be looking into any of this. Instead, we should be focused on Trump and his impeachable offense.

And certainly a sitting president using the powers of that office in order to materially benefit his reelection prospects in a quid pro quo. Like, yes, that is impeachable. That's something you should remove him from office. Go ahead, add it to the list. It's number, you know, 4,071. But the second part of that, that, oh, OK, well, because Trump did this thing, he said this thing, then we can't talk about Hunter Biden. We can't talk about the endemic corruption at the highest levels that the, you know, children of the wealthy and well connected, no matter what party they're a member of,

they always get paid off in some fashion to say that you can't investigate that, that that's now, you know, oh, we cleared that. It's fine just because you said it. It's obviously not, that's not a winning strategy. And we, of course, we lived through this once before when the media refused to look into things like the Clinton Foundation, be critical of the practices, the investing at the donors of the Clintons in the 2016 election, because, you know, oh, that plays into Trump's hands and Trump is, you know, he is a unique threat to democracy.

That didn't kill the story. And that just pushed the story to right wing media, which obviously has fewer scruples and less confidence and means that the story will mutate and be manifested as a mixture of things that are true or not true, but are nevertheless lurid and convincing to your average person. That happened before and people are demanding now that it happens again, because they think that's smart and that's good strategy. And just having recent history as your guide shows that, no,

that is a very, very bad idea to let Biden off the hook just because the president, yes, should be impeached, should be behind bars. All this shit is going to come up as soon as it's a general election. And it also becomes central to Donald Trump's relativistic argument, his pointing fingers at the opposition saying, oh, well, you know, the Democrats accuse me of being corrupt, but, you know, what about Joe's son hanging out in Ukraine? And that creates enough ambiguity to the average person where they're like,

oh, well, I guess they're both crooks. And what's so good about that, and you're 100% right that the overwhelming consensus seems to be that it's gauche or bad form to talk about any of these things, or that basically everyone needs to, with a wink and a nod, just kind of get on board and not know what these things are. I understand it, but people are explicitly saying, oh, and by the way, there's absolutely nothing to the Joe Biden story. It's like, how do you know? Well, it's what all those people say about Sanders and why they're terrified that if he gets the nomination,

it will be a disaster in the general because they're like, oh, could you imagine Donald Trump telling everyone that he's a socialist who wants everyone to have free health care? It's like, I'd rather have, if I'm just even a partisan Democrat, I'd rather have that fucking debate in the general than Elizabeth Warren having to try to explain again why she said she was a Cherokee. Oh, absolutely. It would be a redux of the Republican messaging against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which just makes her more popular and shows her positions to be sensible and as well would enable us to have a general election that is about a substantive point,

which is whether neoliberalism is working or whether we need to drastically change course, drastically realign our economy. Like I said, this is a once-in-a-hundred-year opportunity and it's not coming around again anytime soon. So keep that in mind. I mean, I'll probably come around in a few more cycles, but, you know, I mean, things are just going to be worse by then, so, you know. Who knows? Anyway, that was some vegetables. Let's have some fun, guys. Let's have some damn fun.

Switch it up now. I have been waiting for this story to drop for probably a year now. We all have. And it's finally here and boy, oh boy, does it deliver. An eagle-eyed listener sent us this right hot off the presses. You know, I usually pay pretty close attention to him, but I'm glad someone scoped this out. I'm talking, of course, about Rod Dreher. We're back to one of our absolute reading series favorites, and Rod does not disappoint.

I almost feel like, you know, we've done it so many times, but I feel like there should be a special sting for Rod Dreher's. Like, oh my God, is that Rod Dreher's music I hear? Yeah, it should be like Rap Airhorn and then like Regatone Airhorn and then like Gregorian Chance. I was thinking Gregorian Chance is good. The dramatic squirrel music also could be good because he is a very dramatic squirrel. I'm thinking like the organ music from Dracula, like, you know, like, you know, yeah. I think that's Kevin Williams. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Well, we'll play around with it. But yeah, like drop that. Drop that Rod Dreher beat. Okay. Damn, son. Where'd you find this? All right.

Listeners of the show, remember. It was back in our Pittsburgh live show. We did what I think, like what I would consider actually, I think maybe my favorite reading series we've ever done on the show. Yeah, same for sure. I mean, like this one had everything and it like took up pretty much the entire second half of our live show in Pittsburgh. You can go back and listen to that now. We should help you to give you some background for this story. But you might remember that in that episode, Rod Dreher wrote a lengthy article about a young couple from New York City that he has close friends with,

who is dealing with, you know, a problem that many, many marriages face. Infidelity? No. Demonic possession. He was, he had a long- I mean, who hasn't? Our slash relationship advice. My wife has Pizzuzu with it.

And this is all about how a young wife had become possessed by like probably eight different demons that would manifest, you know, in very, you know, he would make strange sounds at night that sounded like buzzing coming from the bathroom. DTMFA. And forever, I just kept saying, Rod, when are we going to get the follow-up? Let us know how the exorcism went. Just I need to know more about the exorcist couple. Folks, he done it. In the pages of the American conservative, I bring you Rod Dreher's Devils of Manhattan.

I guess he's like a Ken Russell fan or something. But this is the follow-up to the, I think, the most legendary reading series of all time, Rod Dreher's The Exorcist. Fireballs and fucking flames. So he begins, you might remember this post of mine from about a year ago. Pause, go back, listen to the second half of our Pittsburgh live show. I guess just like, I'll give you a few quick hits just to remind you of what that was like. Nathan told me the story of how things came to this point. I won't give you too many details out of an abundance of caution.

It turns out that his wife had an eating disorder as a teenager and tried to kill herself twice back then. Now, in the middle of her life, depression returned, but with certain strange characteristics that seemed off. She began to despise religious things in an inexplicable way. She began to hate the structures of her awful, trad-cath life. She started listening to anti-flag. When she went to a healing mass, there was a manifestation that indicated that something dark and alien was at work with her. Oh, you know, those classic manifestations. That thing we all know. He told me that eight different spirits manifested themselves through his wife.

Eight different Pilates teachers had manifested themselves in his wife. Going on, he told me other detailed stories including accounts of bizarre, poltergeist things happening in their apartment and his wife being unable to stand the presence of blessed objects. Again, readers, if you knew these people, Nathan and his wife, you would be even more shocked by all of this than you know. Okay, again, we did that story and I was just like, I need to know more about Nathan and Elizabeth. It was honestly fucked up. He left us hanging hard. Okay. Because wasn't that last year?

It was last year. Come on, man. Again, spoiler alert, would it surprise you to know that there's absolutely no resolution to this follow-up whatsoever? Fucking Dreyer! But he does give you an update on it because it's worth its weight in gold. So here we go. The Devils of Manhattan. Nathan and his wife, I'll call her Emma, live in New York City.

When I was in the city this week, I went to see them. I wrote what follows with Nathan's permission. Emma has completed the formal Catholic process to have a ritual exorcism. This is distinct from the deliverance prayers that the exorcist had been saying over her to limited effect. That didn't work. Damn. Time to get a bit more deliberate. Part of that process was a psychiatric evaluation by a psychiatrist to rule out mental illness or any other natural cause for this behavior.

Hi, everybody. She's suffering from bonus interruptions. Mr. Dreyer, it appears that your wife's friend is suffering from several types of demons. She passed that. I want to emphasize, and this is Rod's bold face here, she has been formally examined by a psychiatrist. Okay. Never mind. Let's go, baby.

She has certified that there is no known medical or natural cause for the things that she is suffering and that manifest themselves through her. They are still waiting on the Cardinals approval. This is the worst psychiatrist because it never diagnoses anyone just writes, boy, that's weird. Fuck vibes. Okay, so the psychiatrist has ruled out any other explanation for why this woman is like, I don't know, demonically unhappy in this awful marriage. She goes, they are still waiting on the Cardinals approval. In the Catholic Church, no formal ritual exorcism can happen without express permission of the local bishop. Goddamn.

Which in this case is the Cardinal. New York City Catholic Church, can you maybe like, I don't know, put a move on this shit? This woman is being haunted by eight different fucking demons. You know what? This kind of red tape and piracy, this is what Bernie Sanders wants to bring to the healthcare system. Jesus, I try to sign up for a fucking exorcism and the websites down. This was a year ago that we read this. So presumably this guy has been living in an apartment with a woman who is possessed by a demon.

Eight demons. Eight different demons, they're like, shit is moving in their living room without anyone touching it. I don't know. I think like, I would not. Sir, I am on my lunch break. Like go to like, go to a country or a place where like there's Catholics and maybe less rigorous like overseas approval from the, from the C maybe. Okay. Catholic diocese of the Cayman Islands.

Yeah, something like that. Okay. I paid a call on Nathan and Emma at their apartment. Emma was even more beautiful than I remembered her in person, but she looked pale and tired. Well, we know Rob's type. We sat and began to talk. Nathan began our talk with a prayer. Her face betrayed signs of an internal struggle.

Yeah, I fucking bet it did. Having hit you over fucking dinner, dude. Suddenly. Okay. Sorry, I got it. Nathan began our talk with a prayer. Her face betrayed signs of an internal struggle. Suddenly, her head swung back into the left.

Her face creased and a deep voice said through her, fucking bitch. She was instantly back to herself and said weekly, that's not me. First of all, okay, we established this in the Pittsburgh reading series. Go back and listen to that. This wife is 100% having it on and this is like her only source of joy and entertainment is winding up her awful crab cat husband and his idiot friends by just like, honey, we're having Rod over for dinner. Rod sits down and he's like, fuck you, motherfucking bitch.

I'm so sorry. I don't know where that came from. Rod sucks cocks and hell. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That wasn't me. It was Pazuzu. It's okay, honey.

It's okay. Rod's a remedial writer who benefits from the conservative welfare circuit. Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. It's the demon again. Rod's next sentence, she didn't really have to say that. It so clearly wasn't her. Sure. I mean, again, all of this demon shit, all of her strange behavior, 100% cover for her

various affairs and just any means of escape from this boring drudgery of being married to an absolute boring prick and having to go to mass like every fucking day. So it goes, it's so clearly wasn't her. If you didn't know her, you would think that she was suffering from Tourette's. But again, she has been examined in detail by a psychiatrist. I mean, do psychiatrists make those kinds of diagnosis? Yeah, of all the thousands of possible mental disorders who have none of them. Checked all the boxes.

But again, she's 100% sane. She doesn't have Tourette's. Later, when Nathan brought out a relic that someone had given them. Why you just got relics? What? What's the relic? Later, when he doesn't even explain. I need to know.

We're talking about some old mother, dead motherfuckers like finger bone. I need to know. Later, when Nathan brought out a relic that someone had given them. She reacted instantly like a normal person would have someone had presented a poisonous viper. Why do you have the severed dick of Saint Jerome? That's a normal reaction. She did not in fact react how a normal person would when they're presented with a relic. The relic that they just got through friends.

Hey man, I love you so much. Here's Christ for skin. This is the real one. The deep voice demanded that Nathan get that thing away from it. Fuck you, you bitch-ass relic. The relic is fucking trash. I don't own any relics. Is that normal?

I mean, doesn't that usually mean like a part of the physical body of a saint? Yeah, part of the saint, yeah. So he's talking about like a personal effect. I guess. Like a piece of the true cross. Yeah. A nail from the cross. He's got one of those.

Yeah. God, I went to K Jewelers and I got my wife a piece of the Spear of Destiny and she fucking flipped out and assumed I was cheating. Thoughts? There was more. I have never seen anything like this in person. The sense of malice and destruction was intense. They intend to destroy Emma and to take down as many people as they can. She told me that these evil spirits are constantly telling her to kill herself.

Nathan told me later that one of the demons that uses that particular language when Emma is about to share practical wisdom that she has gained from this awful experience. Indeed, that's what Emma subsequently did. Despite all the scary stuff, I came away from this meeting profoundly inspired and more inspired than unsettled. Let me emphasize. Okay, again, Rod believes all of this. Literally, how could you experience something like that and walk away? Actually, it left me inspired. Yeah.

I'm quite hopeful about this woman who ate demons or shredding apart on a daily basis. Well, the holy mother church is like, well, we got a few more forms you got to follow. Yeah. So he goes, let me emphasize. Why? Because I don't know that I have ever seen such strong faith. Both Nathan and Emma are so thoroughly committed to Jesus Christ. They know how this evil came into their lives.

It started with Emma's- It was off of toilets. It started with Emma's grandfather, who was a high level freemason, and passed through the family line. Yes, yes, yes. Emma's grandfather was a freemason, which is why she's being riven by demonic forces now. What? This is normal. He's inspired by this shit.

He's inspired by this shit. All right. Does this also include the Shriners? Do you know how many demons there are? Does this also include the Shriners? Like, if your grandpa was driving around in a little car with the Fez, does that mean you have at least one demon inside of you, driving a tiny little car around in your head? You're like, grandpa, grandpa, make the cars horn honk. A much too vulgar display of power.

Okay, so he goes, when Nathan and Emma were at Emma's father's deathbed last year and called a priest in to do the last rites, the voices began coming out of him and the growls and the same curses. He probably just was pissed off that his granddaughter's asshole husband was getting some weirdo priest in there to put a pinky bone on his forehead as he was trying to get the DMT hit and then just exit. So he goes here, what their grandfather brought onto their family has been handed down through two generations and destroyed the family in a number of ways. Nathan and Emma know that she will be liberated eventually. This is their conviction, but that for some mysterious reason, God is allowing her to suffer a while longer. That wacky prayer. Here are the lessons for me and for you readers, and I've gotten Nathan's permission to post. So I'm just going to briefly, there's a lot going here.

I'm just going to briefly hit these important lessons about demonic possession. Number one, we are all engaged in spiritual warfare. It's not just a metaphor. It's happening all around us. Okay, number two, one of the basic markers of it is unforgiveness. Emma said that's how these entities take root in a person's soul. You know, unforgiveness of her awful marriage and terrible husband and his idiot friends who are slowly driving her to, you know, madness and desperation. I'm sorry, I'm going to keep watching that movie.

It's Eastwood's Best. Three, they're evens got nothing to do with it. Three, there is no substitute for prayers. These entities absolutely hate it. I mean, not that bad. We've had a priest praying over her ass for a year. She's still possessed. She's still possessed.

It's clearly not that big a deal to them. Number four, embrace total humility. Be willing to suffer anything for the sake of Christ. I would say Nathan should embrace that instinct and just like, yeah, suffer in the terms of letting his wife leave this marriage and family. That would be a humble thing for him to do, not continuing this idiotic charade. And finally, five, along those lines, Emma said, keep your eyes locked on the cross. She explained that these demons will do their best to play on your weaknesses. They will tempt you to self-pity or failing that.

They will exploit your own weaknesses, sending thoughts of depression, anxiety, rage, self-hatred and anger towards your husband's friends. No, that's editorializing at the end. Okay, finally, goes on here. As I was leaving their place, I thought about the profound truth of that cliche, be kind for everyone you know is fighting a great battle. If you saw this couple walking down the street, you would barely notice them, except to say, maybe, what a nice-looking pair. Yet, there's a war for her soul going on inside Emma, and Nathan is fighting this battle, too, in their home and in their marriage. As I told you, it was incredibly impressive to see the faith present in this suffering couple. Emma told me, believe me when I say that this is a blessing for us all, for this to come out.

For so many years, I've been fighting depression, and I thought that's all it was. When these things, the demons, she means, came to the surface, it had been a horrible thing to deal with, but at least, finally, I could know what I was up against and get help. The overwhelming impression I had was not one of fright, but of hope, of hard-won hope. I came away both extremely sobered about the times and the nature of life, but also inspired to get my own spiritual life in order, following their advice. It is not possible to stand on the sidelines from a position of neutrality, they say. We are all in this fight, whether we know it or not, it is better to know it.

When this ordeal is finally over, god, what, another 10 years from now, this shit, I believe Nathan and Emma are going to write a book about it. Oh my god, I need it, I need it now. There's nothing that really helps your credibility, like writing a book about it, or a supernatural encounter. Let's talk to the Warrens. If this woman had any credibility at all, they would have called into Art Bell when he was still alive. That is the only credible thing you do if you have a supernatural encounter, is coast to coast, I am. When I wrote to Nathan to share this part of the post and asked permission to publish it,

he responded in part. I would also add that god has supplied all the graces needed. If you had told me two years ago that I would have been in this current situation, I would have run in the other direction. I have complete, yeah, dear Catholic Church Forum, I never thought it would happen to me, but my wife has a demon, several of them actually. He goes, I have complete confidence that as long as I remain close to the sacraments and free of mortal sin, God will supply all of the grace and assistance needed.

I just thought it was like a locker room conversation for your wife's demonic possession. We know what we came here to do, we got to go out there, play hard. Now, reader, believe this or not, it doesn't hurt my feelings if you don't believe it. I'm telling you, though, if you had sat there with me and saw and heard the things I saw and heard, you would find it hard to see the world in the same way. There are some of you who need to read this and who need the hope in Nathan and Emma's story. Rod, if you would like to convince people of the necessity of this kind of spiritual warfare, or that maybe anyone who's skeptical about this,

you realize that basically everyone has a video camera in their pocket now, and that any time you could visit Nathan or Emma and just maybe interview Emma and see if you can get a little dirty language out of her, a little dirty talk. Yeah, a little spark. And then I think I would like to judge for myself how authentic these demonic encounters are. I mean, it's the watchword of all paranormal skeptics, pics, or it did not happen. So there you go. And what I love about this story is I've been dying for a follow because I need to know how shit worked out with this exorcism.

They haven't even had it! They hasn't even been a fucking exorcism! What the fuck is going on? What does it tell you about how seriously the Catholic Church, which you supposedly have placed all your faith and belief in, they don't even take this shit seriously. If they did, they would have been sort of this shit out. There's eight demons in a house on the Upper West Side. We're just going to let them hang around for a year.

Well, you expect them to just rubber stamp every exorcism? I mean, yes, I understand them. She can go through every other thing, just through every hurdle. Exactly, she can go through the process. It should have been approved by them. There's procedures. I got to say, this is a strong argument for Protestantism because if you feel like you're possessed there, you just go to like an abandoned foot locker

and like a guy in track pants hits you in the head with a Bible for your cure. You don't have to wait around and fill out a bunch of forms. No, people, you can have relatives just lay hands on you with sock and tongues and shit. My favorite part of that article is you go into the comments section and there's a lot of people arguing about the nature of demons. And some people say, like, no, no, no, it's very rare that demons possess people and said their whole MO is coming to earth and tempting you to sin. Maybe sometimes they want to come here just to hang out in the here and now,

but otherwise, you know, they're just all about tempting you. And I'm just reading that and I'm thinking, a bunch of vassals. Is that all you do? Like, why? I mean, they're demons. There's other things you could do. They're pricks. You could do other things. I mean, if you lived in hell, I mean, presumably it sucks by definition.

It's hell. It's not great for anybody, even if you're a demon. And like hanging out in a nice apartment. There's cool neighborhoods everywhere. Like, hanging out in a nice apartment in the Upper West Side, like trolling some dipshit trad cat all day. Well, so they do have fun. That sounds fun. So they do have it.

So going to hell is not so bad because you could go troll this lady. Well, no, that's the demons. You have to be a demon to do that. Humans don't get to be demons. Yeah, you don't have that power. Those are fallen angels. Yeah. Okay, let's get that straight.

I'm just looking at one of the comments here. Maybe the demons are real, but lying. I don't rule out generational phenomenon in or out, nor do I rule out real possession where the demons give a mixture of true and false information. I mean, anyone who's seen the exorcist knows that the demon is a liar. What did the demons get out of doing this? Just entertainment.

A soul. They got a soul. What do they do with the soul? Put it in hell. Rack it up. And then what? It's like, no, it's like Virgil. It's like, it's like...

It's a quota system. Oh, it's a quota. This is Glen Gary, Glen Ross. Yes. Yes. These are the Glen Gary leads. You want to go and get this many souls by the end of the month or you're fired. I know you've got a job.

Well, that just sucks. No, it's like entertainment for them to like, you know, if you've seen the exorcist, it's like to corrupt something as pure as, you know, a teenage girl or a board housewife on the Upper West Side. Like that's fun to them. They all want to get down on it, but I like that the mixture of true and false information. The true information here is that Rod is a bitch ass motherfucker. That's 100% true.

Yeah. No lie detected on that demon truth bomb. Oh my God. Rod in the comments says, my father and grandfather were masons as were many of the Protestant white men in my hometown. There was a black lodge too. Interesting. None of them should have been part of that organization.

In my view, I think it is spiritually dangerous, but two things. European Freemasonry and American Freemasonry are rather different. USA. USA. USA. Nathan and Emma do not claim that every person who enters Freemasonry will therefore become demon possessed. Did you say that because not everyone who smokes crack becomes a crack addict proves

that the story that you've been told about a crack addict whose addiction destroyed his family is untrue and crack is therefore harmless? Yeah, it's harmless. I mean, you do crack once in a while, you're fine. Yeah. Don't do it every day. Yeah. Don't do Freemasonry every day and then you won't pass on a generational demonic possession

to your family. Well, see, that's why you need ritual because otherwise you would just smoke crack every day. But you have to limit that to a certain period once a fortnight or something, and that that's something you look forward to, kind of like a festival, a saint's day. A saint free ride across. I know we have a laugh at Rod and his friends predicament, but I got to say I admire them because they are living a fun, fulfilling life.

Oh, God, can you imagine? The contrast is between them and, say, the people who worship the news and are really obsessed with the whole Ukraine thing and about when peaching Trump and they're just making themselves anxious and lunatics thinking that, oh, OK, well, we got it. You're right, Senator Schatz. We got to do something about it. I'm going to add Katie Turr and demand she get the truth. And I mean, that is exactly as apple-trobay as whatever the fuck Rod is.

No. It's a male friend. Yeah. You give your life a movie, but you have to choose whether that movie is the post or the actress. Yeah, exactly. The actress is a way better movie. I mean, just think about that.

You're watching TV. You're watching. You're watching MTV or you're watching MSNBC. You're tweeting just the absolutely sterile, meaningless spectacle. If you thought there was a demon in your house and every day was a war with the demons so that didn't kill you or your family members, that is a level of drama and just excitement. And you genuinely believe that there's an etheric plane that you're going to be rewarded for this battle.

And they have cooler relics. They have a fucking nail from the true cross that they're using to ward off the demon. And if you're a Lib, you have a fucking $200 Pod Save America sweatshirt, one of the Johns jizz dogs. You got one of those fucking safety pins from the safety pin box. Boring. Not as good. No, you're exactly right.

Do you want to make yourself insane with fright from things you see on MSNBC? Or do you want to watch like a dinner plate push itself off the table on its own in a totally empty room? Yeah. That is fucking cool. I would love there to be a demon in my life. So they live. They live a demon into my life right now.

I'm saying it. I've tried. I take astrology seriously. I mean, I tried to open that door as wide as it would fucking go, but I got nothing. I don't know. Should we like get a Ouija board or something? Because I would love to have a demon in there. All right.

There are demons. If you guys really want my mom knows Mammon, contact him, but they're only calling in family favorites like that. It's kind of gross. Honestly, I think there are demons here in this apartment right now. I think it's us. It's you. I mean, it's you.

You are a demon. We're the demons. You're a literal demon. That's why you failed at inviting. All right. Okay. Are you demon or are you baby? He's a demon baby.

Real thing. All right. This is just like this is like when you're like in this is like when you're like third grade and you're like, I'm Dark Vader and also Superman. No, you have to be one. No, he's a demon baby. I'm Azazel. I call Azazel.

I call Azazel. Okay. I'm going to go I'm going to go ultra pretentious in old school. Mephistopheles. Oh, come on. Temp. Oh, the cat demon. Very cool.

No, not the not from cats. The guy who tempted Faust, that guy's cool. I will be Lestat. He's not a demon. He's a vampire. No, both. Both say. Oh, God.

I'm going to be the most classic demon character ever, Dante from Devil May Cry. Chris, do you have a demon that you want to be? I'll go with Gremory. Oh, you should be a Dante from Clarke. Graham C. Can we stop talking about these fucking theorists for one day? There you go. The I mean, sort of similar to the actual sequel to the Exorcist kind of shit, but I'm hoping.

Yeah, pretty dog shit. I'm hoping for Nate and Emma part three Legion, which is one of the best horrors. Yes. All. Yes. Time directed by William Peter Blatty. Exorcist three. Fantastic.

Incredible movie following on Exorcist to one of the shittiest films ever made. Yes. No. If the pattern holds the next update, we might not get it for a year. It's going to be amazing. You know what? You know, it would be kind of sick. What are the what are the guys in fucking hell or is they're called?

Cinnabites. Yeah. If Ron, Ron becomes one of the only humans to defeat a Cinnabite. Cinnabites are not demons. They're beyond good and evil. They're simply in a realm of pleasure and experience. Yeah. That's only in the first film.

In the sequels. They become more and more associated with the traditional Christian hell. If you if you're out there, if you're a listener in New York City and you happen to know this cop, you know, please get in touch with us with any information, but you know, don't interfere with what's happening. Of course, then you're putting your soul in hazard. Should we just become paranormal investigators in New York City? Let's do it.

I think we'd be good at. Who are you going to call? Yeah. The Chapa Busters. There's got to be a, there's got to be a haunted thing in Brooklyn, right? Let's go. Oh, there's a lot of haunted things in Brooklyn. Let's go.

Let's go find one. Let's go find it. Oh, oh, oh, is it going to be a haunted latte machine? Oh, is it going to be a ghost? Is it a fucking selfie stick? Is it you're going to go to Starbucks and they're listening to fucking ghost Justin Bieber? Give me a coffee flavor coffee.

Anyway, if you have had any demonic experiences, I'd like to hit us up because I'm sick of living in this horrible material hell. I'd like to imagine that there's a transcendent realm somewhere. Also, if you have a line on a real relic, I think that that would be a valuable. Yeah. We will buy you. Oh, wow. Yeah.

That's a business expense. Yes. If we could get like the crown of thorns or like a plank from the Ark. Yeah. Yeah. Anything. You got the Spear of Longinus. Yeah.

The Spear of Longinus is something to put before us to destroy our enemies with. Also, if you have like, if you have an ancient immortal relic, like the lunch ticket that's all Linzky lied about, if you had the shoe that fell off of Hillary Clinton's foot on September 11th, 2016, we would carry it on a stick in front of our army. All right, hell boys and girls. That does it for this week. We'll see you again soon. Bye bye.

Bye bye. And then. Good night.