Chapo Trap House - 518 - Gangs of Los Angeles feat. Cerise Castle (4/26/21)

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Grab your tickets to our live appearance at the FRQNCY1 streaming festival this June 5th here: https://frqncy.live/frqncy1 The first part of this show we have an interview with journalist Cerise Castle covering a fairly harrowing story she’s been reporting on the proliferation and criminal activities of white supremacist cop gangs in the LA County Sheriff’s department. Then we turn to the lighter side with some riffs on boats, ghosts, and Andrew Sullivan’s high-T journey. Follow Cerise: @cerisecastle Check out Cerise’s series on LA Sheriff’s gangs in the Knock LA: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ And, the article on Bill Gates and vaccines Felix mentions: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines

Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's show. It's me and Matt with you right now. And today with our guest, we'll be discussing the city of Los Angeles and crime. How a city has been plagued by a lawless culture of gang violence, intimidation, and murder for over 50 years. The Bloods, the Crips, drug cartels. No, the gangs we're talking about on today's show are all comprised of members of the LA County Sheriff's Department. So Reese Castle, welcome to the show. So you were the author of a 15-part series that's currently on Knock LA, documenting basically a 50-year history of violence as it pertains to a series of gangs that operate within the LA County Sheriff's Department that are comprised of LA Sheriff's County

deputies. The conclusion suggested by this investigative series is that the most vicious and dangerous gangs in Los Angeles have badges and operate not just as a gang in a metaphorical sense, but literally by California criminal code, is a gang in every sense of the word. Yeah, 100%. In your pieces, it's sort of a headline, you list the section of the California Penal Code that pertains to how to determine whether an organization is a criminal gang. And according to the Penal Code, it has to have three or more people that one have a common name or identifying sign or symbol has as one of its primary activities the commission of one of a long list of California criminal offenses

and three whose members have engaged in a quote pattern of criminal gang activity, either alone or together. How does that fit the gangs that you're investigating in this series? Yeah, well, I opened a series with the definition of the California Penal Code really intentionally because these deputy gangs really aren't any different than criminal street gangs. The only difference is that they are able to operate with a badge and impunity. I think it is unfortunate and irresponsible that our judicial system has not categorized these deputy gangs as such. If you look in local media, the sparse coverage that has been on these deputy gangs, there's a lot of hesitation to use the word gang in this case. I was very intentional

with using that word because these are gangs and we need to call them what they are. Yeah, I feel like usually if it's covered at all, it's within the context of dirty cops or rogue police officers or cops who are criminals or doing bad things. These are gangs in every sense of the word and including tattoos to mark acts of violence committed, hand signals, gang names and connections to the prison system as well. Yeah, they're operating throughout all of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department from deputies all the way up to senior management. An interesting thing about the way the department is set up is that deputies, once they complete their time in the academy, they are placed

in the jails and that's where they have their first assignment for a year, possibly one to three years. One of the biggest deputy gangs that I have uncovered and done some reporting on is the 3000 boys and the 2000 boys and they operate within the jails. As people are fresh faced coming out of their training, they're being told how to do their jobs by these guys that have been working in gangs and gang groups for years and they're told that this is the way that you should do police work and this is the way you're able to move up the ranks and have a solid career. I mean, it's a massive and stunning volume of information that you've investigated and

compiled in this series, but I mean, before we get into it, sort of a basic question. What is the difference between the LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department? So yeah, that's a really good question. Most people don't really know the difference. The difference between the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is really jurisdictional. The Los Angeles Police Department patrols and has a jurisdiction within the city of Los Angeles. While the Sheriff's Department, they patrol unincorporated Los Angeles County as well as a number of smaller cities that contract law enforcement services with the Sheriff's Department. That's places like Whittier, Compton, West Hollywood, Universal

City. So there's something about the way the Sheriff's Department is organized or the remit of their authority that lends itself to the massive proliferation of these cliques and gangs operating under their aegis. Well, I think that if you're looking back historically at the Sheriff's Department, they have sort of prided themselves on being a sort of lawless, rough and tumble, rough and tough group of, I don't even want to say government employees, for a long time. Up until the early 1960s, the Sheriff's Department was actually a posse. So the Sheriff, who

was mostly appointed by his preceding Sheriff, would hand out badges and qualifications to friends, movie stars, celebrities, and that's who was in the Sheriff's Department. And when something went wrong, he put out a call and you'd have this ragtag group of the Sheriff's personal friends responding and fighting crime. They didn't have uniforms until the 1950s. They didn't have an academy until the 1950s. It was really just, okay, we're going to base our employees on moral character and whether the Sheriff thinks that this is a good person, someone who's trustworthy enough to enforce the law as we see fit. So they've always sort of identified as these cowboys.

Well, one of the gangs you'd write about is literally calls themselves the Cowboys. Yeah. It's just kind of based on personal connection and this kind of peer group of friends and confidants, but also this ideal of oneself as sort of a frontier justice. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I follow a lot of Sheriff's social media pages that are run by deputies and the attitude expressed in all of these places is that we are the most hard charging badass of Los Angeles law enforcement and they are happy and they're proud of that fact.

I want to get into the quite long history of this gang culture within the Sheriff's Department, but just overall, how did you first learn about this phenomenon of gangs in the Sheriff's Department in LA and how did you begin investigating this story? Well I grew up in Los Angeles County and growing up here as a person of color, you hear a lot about deputy gangs. It's common knowledge in many neighborhoods that these deputies target. It wasn't news to many of the communities that I covered and to me myself, this wasn't really news, but it was something that has been historically under covered and ignored by most media and I think that that is a product of most Los Angeles media frankly doesn't

think it's worth investing in poor black and brown communities and that's where a lot of this injustice is taking place unfortunately. So I was always really interested in this topic starting from childhood. I was around 12 years old when my brother told me about the Vikings and told me to watch myself in interactions with Sheriff's deputies. If they were white and had a shaved head, they were probably a Viking and it wouldn't end up well for me if I was in the presence of one of them. Throughout my life I tried to find any sort of newspaper coverage or God forbid even a graduate student thesis looking at these deputy gangs, but there was nothing. Like I said, from the time I was a kid all

the way up until last summer I took these trips to the library looking for information and there was nothing to be found. During the summer last year while covering the George Floyd protests I was actually hit with a less than lethal ammunition. Less than lethal weapons that the police use now. I was hit with one and the injuries resulting from that placed me on bed rest for about six months. So I wasn't able to go to work, I wasn't able to do my job out in the field like I was used to. So instead I decided that I would take the time to find out everything I could about deputy gangs in Los Angeles County and write the first ever historic outline of what they do, who they are, and who they've harmed.

Well your story begins in the late 1960s and the first documented gang, Sheriff's Deputy's gang, it begins during something called the Chicano Moratorium and deals with a journalist and critic of law enforcement, a man named Ruben Salazar. Could you describe first of all what the Chicano Moratorium was and the circumstances that led to Ruben Salazar being killed or murdered by a police officer or sorry a Sheriff's Deputy? Yeah, so Ruben Salazar had been very outspoken and critical against law enforcement in Los Angeles County for a number of years. He actually, the night before his death, he told a number of friends that he suspected he was being watched by law enforcement and that he thought that harm

may come to him. So the next day he went to the Chicano Moratorium which was a protest of about 25,000 mostly Latinx people in East Los Angeles at a park that has since been renamed for Ruben Salazar. And the day started out peacefully but as the Sheriff's Department rolled in, there's a long running joke with the Sheriff's Department. The orders given that day by the captain were to keep a low profile but that's not what happened. They went in by the hundreds and they attacked people and brutalized them that had been peacefully gathered and one deputy actually shot a tear gas canister into a bar where Ruben Salazar was sitting. That tear gas canister hit him in the head and he was killed. His body was

left in that bar for a number of hours. His team didn't know where he was and I believe it was like a day later they actually told his boss what had happened. The resulting investigation into that was one of the longest and most expensive in the county's history and the Salazar family ended up settling with the county for I believe it was $700,000 because of his death. Well, I mean this is a story that you return to again and again in terms of just how much money L.A. County spends to settle in civil cases brought by the relatives or victims themselves of these gangs. I think it's something like $100 million that they...

Yeah, that we know of. The interesting thing about the money is that I'm really only able to track settlements. Those are clearly defined. The big question that remains is attorney's fees. Taxpayers are responsible for attorney's fees on both sides when the case is settled and cases are settled, I want to say 99% of the time. So when you read about, oh okay this man got $10 million, that's just a settlement. That's not taking into account how much his attorney's fees cost, which can be another million dollars themselves because these cases take years and years and years because the county hires these highly litigious firms that draw out the process of the case and bill hundreds of thousands of hours. So again,

that's attorney's fees on both sides that can potentially total in the millions and those aren't paid the same way that settlements are. It's a little bit harder to track that stuff so whereas settlements are sort of plainly listed, oh okay we're going to write this check for this amount of money to this person for this, attorney's fees aren't run that way. They're paid out of different funds and it's much harder to track a payment to a law firm. It doesn't always say, oh here's the check for working on this case for the past seven years, it's much harder to calculate that. So we really don't know how expensive this is but we know it's at least at least $100 million.

And a great deal of the information that you compile and report on in this series is cold from sworn depositions in these lawsuits filed against the county, right? Yes. So I want to go back, you mentioned during the Chicano moratorium, this anti-war protest, the police were told by their superiors to quote, keep a low profile. Later, can you explain how that phrase like keep a low profile became kind of a sort of a sick joke and motto for these gangs themselves or at least one in particular? Of course, yeah. So low profile, as I mentioned, that was sort of the instruction given to

deputies that day which they did not heed. That phrase came back in a logo that was banned by Sheriff Jim McDonnell but brought back by current sheriff Alex Villanueva. It's called the Fort Apache logo. It shows a boot and a riot helmet, an older model riot helmet. And around it, it says low profile and I don't recall the words in Spanish, but what it translates to is a swift kick in the ass. And you can see this Fort Apache insignia generally around the East Los Angeles station where the Chicano moratorium took place in East LA. It was mostly deputies from that station that responded. They actually had, I'm not quite sure how to call it, but the logo was placed in tile in their floor of the station for many, many

years. Just yesterday, I was actually covering an event at the East Los Angeles Sheriff's station and several deputies were wearing hats with the Fort Apache logo printed on them. The sergeant that came out to speak to the organizers for the event, you know, he was very, very anxious to express to me that he, quote, felt alliance to the black and brown, but he was wearing a pin with the Fort Apache logo on it, which, you know, makes a mockery of, you know, brutalizing the people of East Los Angeles. And, you know, Fort Apache, of course, also refers to the famous John Ford Western with John Wayne and Henry Fonda, which like once again underscores this idea of the frontier

and like, you know, that you're an outpost, you're the U.S. cavalry besieged by these, you know, the natives, these savages who you have to sort of like, you know, temper through violence and, you know, bring law and order or civilization to. Yeah, 100%. I mean, speaking of like that idea of like the frontier and like the frontier of returning home, and specifically as it relates to the Chicano moratorium, which was a protest against the Vietnam War, there's a quote in your piece from a man who was a Marine in Vietnam who ended up investigating or looking into like some of these, like he was looking into it

like a certain, these deputy gangs in a case and that you have a quote from him here where he says, in Vietnam, we served in a place where we didn't belong. We really didn't care what happened to the people who live there. When it was over, we were going home. We were taught that the lives of the Vietnamese didn't carry the same weight as ours and that of our fellow soldiers. Similarly, Linwood deputies are paid to drive in to fight in a war in a community they have no vested interest in.

They spend their days and nights in Linwood abusing and maliciously disrupting the lives of those who look, act and live differently than they do. Linwood deputies now know, as we knew in Vietnam, that their superiors approve of their actions and that there are no consequences for their act. Because you talk about like this idea of like the connection between like imperial violence and like carried out by the US military in Vietnam in foreign countries, but also this idea that like the maintenance of empire requires this kind of a return of a frontier to the America itself that is directed at its own citizens.

Yeah. I think you really summed it up nicely there. I mean, there's a huge parallel. When you look at how the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hired for a long time, they were actually going to Midwestern states and recruiting nice white boys from Iowa to come and beat up on the brown folks in East Los Angeles and the black folks in South LA. Even to this day, a number of deputies don't live in the neighborhoods that they patrol. They live out in mostly what I've found is the Antelope Valley area very far away from

these stations where they're brutalizing people. And yeah, I mean, I think David Lin really summed it up in that quote, they don't have a vested interest. Because of their training, like I was speaking to earlier, they don't really see the people that they're sworn to serve and protect as humans. They see them as potential criminals that need to be taken off the streets and incarcerated. I believe it was one deputy who actually framed a man for a murder who said when this man was exonerated, he said he didn't mind that he had the man had been exonerated because

the man was a criminal and he would catch him again and put him away later. I mean, I think you've probably heard before about people who live in these neighborhoods that are heavily policed feel like the police are an occupying army in a lot of ways. But the corollary to that is that the police and the sheriff's deputies themselves view their own role as, they agree with that. They're like, yes, we are an occupying army and we are in war with you. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I think that's how they would, well, I don't know if they

would put it in those words, but I don't think the sentiment is too far off. You mentioned a little bit earlier this issue of like pins and baseball hats and a lot of this in your piece is sort of like tracking down through like, you know, Etsy or eBay or like various sources. I don't know how you found them, these sort of these esoteric trinkets that are shared among like these clicks to sort of denote the in-group loyalty and like gang affiliation and like the posters, coffee mugs, pins, like, how did you go about like sussing these things out because I mean, it's sort of like, like all of this, it's an open secret in that these

people are, you know, flouting it and wearing it, you know, all the time advertising, but they're not really supposed to be advertising the fact that they're in a criminal gang. Yeah. I think that, you know, the fact that they're able to, you know, sell bumper stickers for the Lennox Grim Reapers on like, you know, Etsy. I don't understand. The Grim Reapers. What could be wrong with that?

The wholesome law enforcement, they're the guys who kill you. What? Yeah. I just think that, you know, it just really speaks to how white supremacy works, right? These are people that target poor black and brown people and, you know, the people that have been blowing on the whistle for this stuff for the past 50 years have been black and brown people. But unfortunately, the way that our society is set up, you know, when those people speak

out and call attention to things, no one listens and no one really gives a fuck. There's a reason that I was the first person to write something like this, you know? There's a reason, it's the same reason that these people are able to sell stuff so openly online. No one really cares what happens to the people that they brutalize. That's the simple fact of it. I mean, speaking about the tattoo culture, which is, again, like something that is very much associated with street gangs and the popular imagination, you have a quote from

someone claiming of the Cowboys gang that the Cowboy tattoo simply signifies that, quote, no person has less rights than any other person and that you treat the public equally and without bias. Yeah. That's a pretty funny explanation for the Cowboy gang tattoos. Many of these tattoos, I think you have one example of the caveman click, who they would have tattoos of a little sort of caveman. Alley Oop-esque figure.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But with each fly buzzing around the head of the caveman stood for a violent interaction with a citizen. Yeah. And interestingly enough, one of the tattooed cavemen that we know of is our current under-sheriff. His name is Timothy Murakami. Our current sheriff, Alex Veinaueva, at a meeting in 2019, said of his time working at the East Los Angeles Station, we were all cavemen.

And I mean, it gets worse than that. I mean, there are, in these gangs, initiation rights that basically require one to murder someone in the line of duty or at least do some level of violence to an innocent person to be basically trusted and initiated into this inner culture within the larger one. Yeah. So you have to prove that you're willing to break the law, to protect your fellow officers, to protect the gang that you're willing to do what it takes. That's everything from forging paperwork to beating up somebody, beating up a civilian,

beating up another deputy that isn't going along with the program, as they call it, or even murdering a civilian. There are several cases that are currently ongoing in the courts right now where it's alleged that the deputy is responsible for the death of the individual, had done so in order to earn a tattoo in a gang. You mentioned the targets of these gangs and their brutality and intimidation, they're not directed entirely at the civilian population, it's also directed at whistleblowers or rats within the department themselves who don't want to go along with this or try to blow

the whistle. So what was the one example you have of some guy who was mailed a gun in a package that was rigged to the fire when it was opened, like a letter bomb? Yeah. They got that shit from the ACME catalog. Probably. Yeah. There are a lot of stories like that where people that aren't going along with what the

gang wants are retaliated against in these incredibly violent ways. The gun in the box is one. There was a story of one deputy who blew the whistle who had a drive-by done on his house where his children were sleeping. I've spoken to other deputies that felt that they were just pushed out of their jobs, that they had fraudulent cases into their conduct open because they had gone to their superiors or gone to the union and said, hey, there's some bad stuff going on here. And instead of action being taken, cases were opened up against them for reporting that

stuff and they eventually had to leave the department. Yeah. It seems like you've got, the vibe you get from some of this is that not only do they have this ability, these gangs to discipline people who might speak up against them, but they've either suborned or totally intimidated everybody above them too. Yeah. I think that the gangs in 2021 have thoroughly infiltrated every part of the department all the way from the top.

I mean, our current sheriff, he said publicly that he has ties to at least one of these deputy gangs. And I think that his actions have given the rest of the groups a go-ahead that they have approval from Alex. In my story, I wrote about one gang in particular who refers to Vianueva as their friend. So I'm not sure if it's really, they've intimidated the top so much is that people within their ranks from previous generations have risen to the top and now they're dictating this culture from the top down.

You mentioned when you talked about growing up in LA and being warned about the Vikings, the Linwood Vikings. If you see a sheriff's deputy with a bald head, there's a good chance that they're in this Viking clique. Is it an exaggeration to describe the Vikings as like a neo-Nazi gang? A federal judge would disagree with that. They were found to be a neo-Nazi gang in a federal finding. And many people that I've talked to that either were involved in the Vikings or new people

that were involved in the Vikings have said, yes, there was definitely a culture of white supremacy. I mean, it's... And I think you'll see that in all the gangs, really. Even though the gangs have sort of expanded now to include Latinx deputies, there's still very much a culture of white supremacy within them. You don't have to be white to be an agent of white supremacy. But the Vikings in particular, I mean, it's just one part of just it's really horrifying

to think about. But you mentioned like in Linwood, how did the residents of Linwood begin to fight back or resist what, you know, everyone who lives in these neighborhoods knew to be an open secret about the way these gangs treat the people that they're supposed to be protecting or policing. Well, for a long time, they couldn't do anything because the culture back then with suing law enforcement was a lot different. It was much harder in the 80s to go after law enforcement departments because lawyers

just wouldn't take the cases. Whereas now, you know, the struggle is sort of getting these officers criminally charged, but civil cases are much easier to pursue. It was very much hard fought in those days to even have someone take a civil suit for a wrongful death. So for many, many years, there really was no course of action. And it was really a group of very progressive left leaning lawyers that formed a group called the police misconduct referral service that came together and said, okay, they actually

were contacted by David Lynn, that Marine we were speaking about earlier. He knew about what was going on in Linwood. And together they decided, all right, like, let's go after the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and get these people some justice. We mentioned earlier the connection to these gangs and the prison system. And like, again, a lot of the power of what we think of is like traditional street gangs. And like I said, in the popular imagination, like their criminal network and power is very much tied to like the control they have in prison, like in their connections to people

who are, you know, locked up. And this is very much the same with, I think like, was it the wayside whites or whiteies? You mentioned that deputies start out in working in the prison system. So like the connections they form there and the criminal law that they enforce within the prison system as, you know, custodians of it, because you explain how that works. Yeah. So, I mean, mostly they use their role as custodians for the county jails. The county jails here in Los Angeles are operated by the Sheriff's Department.

And they just use that to really abuse people like horribly. I mean, it's possible for like anyone that's interested can go online to the Sheriff's Department website. And there are years and years of reports of abuses tied to deputies working in the county jails. And these aren't gang members. These are just deputies. Like, I don't know if they're gang members, but these are documented abuses.

There are thousands of them. And really what's happening, what I know to have happened with alleged gang members, that's really a small fraction of what's happened. We know that police can be brutal out on the streets. And you know, I've written about, you know, at least 40 cases where that's happened. And the thing about the jails is that there's really no one there to witness that. So what's happening inside there, I believe, to be much more rampant than what we can see out here on the streets.

What we see out here on the streets, I think, is sort of a more toned-down version of what happens to people in the jails. So as part of Knock LA publishing this, you guys, they've also created a searchable database of like every all information related to these deputy gangs. Like, how does that work? And like, how can that be used as a resource for people like sort of cracking open the door on, like I said, this culture of absolute depravity and lawlessness? Yeah.

So the database that we built, it lists all of the names and gang affiliations of deputies that I've identified in the course of my reporting. It also lists any cases that they are involved with. So if they killed someone, if they beat somebody up, we've listed that. And we've also got, I believe, they're working on getting their positions, the last known places that they were employed, where they were assigned, that sort of thing, and how recently we know that they've been working. And the hope with that is that people can be more aware of who exactly is patrolling

their streets. And hopefully, they can be safer. Hopefully, you know, they can avoid these people, I hope. I hope that, you know, maybe they'll, the past couple of deaths we've seen at the hands of the Sheriff's Department in the past month have been families that called asking for help because their family member was experiencing a mental health crisis. I hope that, you know, getting this information out, you know, the fact that several deputies that are listed as gang member affiliates on that list actually killed people in mental

health crisis calls. So I hope that by sharing this information, people can be more aware and maybe seek assistance in other places because the Sheriff's Department, they're not assisting. They're killing people. And they got, because they've got a quota to fill, if they want to get their sweet tattoos. I mean, like, so there's, I think, like, about 18 that we know of where you were able to confirm about 18, like, currently active gangs and cliques within the LA County Sheriff's

Department. So this was uncovered. Like, a lot of you, this was sort of cracked open through filing, what is sort of the California state version of the Freedom of Information Act? Yeah, I did it. It's an act called the California Public Records Act. I like it a little bit more than FOIA because we have a tighter deadline with CIPRA. So the information, sometimes it comes faster, but sometimes, you know, law enforcement agencies

like to play games. Yeah. I can imagine. I guess, like, here's a question, like, since this series has come out, and like I said, you are compiling and creating like a sort of historical thread that, you know, comprises like all the available information that is able to be reported on the proliferation of these gangs and their conduct over the last 50 years. This is something that you said that, like, if you live in these neighborhoods in LA,

it's been an open secret for, like, as long as you can remember. Is any of, like, the local Los Angeles or California or national news media at any level picked up this story at all? Well, CBS had some reporting on the banditos earlier this year. That's really all that I'm aware of. If we're looking at government agencies themselves, you know, all local government in Los Angeles has been aware of this problem since at least the early 90s. The California state legislature also had testimony regarding this issue in the late

90s, as did the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which is a federal agency, and no action, no significant action has been taken in the past 50 years. Like LA local media, are they just mostly like they do not want to touch this at all? My impression as someone who's worked extensively in LA local media is sort of what I said earlier. I mean, this is a story that's about poor people. It's a story about poor black and brown folk, people that have been ignored and passed over since the inception of LA media. This is a story that I've certainly shopped around to other shops, and no one wanted to

do it. No one wanted to fund it. You know, and like I said, I think that is just more vestiges of white supremacy. And I'm grateful to NOC for giving me the platforms to publish this, to help me fund, you know, $3,000 worth of public records. It's not cheap to do this work, and I'm hopeful that, you know, since everyone got caught with their pants down on this as far as covering it, there's a little bit more pressure to actually do the work.

Again, like in considering all the information that you compile here and the really just chilling level of brutality and violence that we're talking about here, I mean, to what extent do you think some people are looking the other way, not because they don't know any better, but because they do know and they know too much about like the risk that they might be taking in, you know, looking too deeply into this story or knocking on too many doors or making, you know, one too many phone calls about these gags? If anyone in power is feeling that way, they should give up their power. I mean, I know like as a journalist, you never want to be become part of the story yourself.

But I mean, did I read that you're now wearing a bulletproof vest when you leave the house? I won't say how often I'm wearing the vest just for my own safety. But yeah, I don't go to, well, I'll tell you that I'm not reporting in the field anymore without wearing some kind of protection. I've hired bodyguards to accompany me when I go out and work, which, I mean, sucks as a journalist. I don't like having a, you know, a minder, if you will, but you know, I've had credible threats on, I've had repeated credible threats on my life and I'm not planning to die at

the hands of one of these people. I guess just, you know, in closing, I mean, like I said, it's a really stunning piece of work that you've done here. And it's one that is, you know, terrifying and like it's probably like, it's a kind of terror that many people have been living with as a daily reality for like a long time. So like to open this door, it's really, yeah, terrifying to consider what the overall implications of something like this, like I said, that this culture proliferating to the extent that it has and how everyone seems to just like look the other way when it comes to it.

Like, I mean, we're obviously in a moment now in this country where police violence is a major issue and becoming one more and more, but like, how do you, how do you view like this culture of gangs within police departments as part of like, what are the implications for like the entire country at a moment in which like police violence is very much at the forefront of a lot of people's minds and in the news? Well, already I've learned that there are deputy gangs operating in other departments in California, and I know of at least one national group of officers, it's a motorcycle club.

I'm not sure if they've engaged in criminal activity, but you know, that that exists. So I don't I don't think this is an isolated issue. I think that versions of this are playing out across the country. And I think that I think there's a lot of work to be done. I think that, you know, the same reasons that I mentioned earlier that this issue has been ignored are present in other places as well. And I hope that, you know, by by writing this and by publishing it, it inspires people to, you know, turn over some rocks in their own backyard.

I mean, I guess the answer is obvious, but I mean, like just the implications for our society that like the most dangerous criminals imaginable or have badges. I mean, like just what that represents, because if you're like, you know, like, you know, the type of oh, you're like the crime that people are afraid of, like, you know, street crime or drug dealers or gangs in their neighborhood, like even if they're worse, they're not backed up by the full weight of like a state authority. And that the fact that like these people are self consciously copying the code's behavior and like violence of criminals with a badge, like an undercover of that authority is just,

like I said, it's it's it's sickening to think about. I mean, I don't know. I kind of don't know what to say. Yeah, it's it's it's horrible. And I hope that by putting it all out there where people can't look away from it, it, you know, pressures some people to be accountable because that hasn't happened for 50 years. Well, Siris Castle, we're going to leave it there. I want to thank you for all the work you've done on this extraordinary story.

And this 15 part series is at knock LA. We will have the link in the show description, Siris. Thank you for joining us. And please stay safe. Thank you. Okay, we are back. I want to thank Siris Castle again for joining us on but now in the second half of the show, we've got Felix with a solo Felix.

Hey, how's it going? How's it going? All right, beautiful 451 morning near sunset right now, Monday, it's April 26 can't go wrong with that day. Almost in May. Hell yeah. You got a few days, you got a few days left, you still got April business to do. Don't worry, you got five days, more like four by the time you're hearing this episode.

Don't worry. You didn't do all your April chores. If you didn't, you know, clean your apple bucket or re-oil your butter churn or unlist in the US military, whatever you were supposed to do, you got four days and you have tonight sleep and maybe you'll come up with a solution to those problems tonight while you're sleeping. Well, you know, if you listen to the first half of the show, we, you know, discussed one of the more like, you know, terrifying and sobering news stories that we've come across lately, but let's, let's try to switch gears here and talk about something a little

bit more lighthearted. And by that, I mean, news reports that immigrant children were given care packages that featured Kamala Harris's picture book. Did you guys hear about this? Yeah, this was, I mean, the last thing like this that I remember was when you remember when Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod with his speeches on it. That was really, God, I'd forgotten about that. That's like more defensible because it's like, well, fuck her.

But yeah, with this, it's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that? I mean, you know, and like the White House is saying that like, you know, like, oh, we don't know how the Kamala Harris kids books end up in these care packages. We weren't administering them. We didn't demand that kids be, you know, indoctrinated into Kamala Harris thought while they wait in our, you know, detainment facilities. But look, I don't know what's, what's, what's, what's the problem?

The kids, they get a nice book and, you know, the billing, it'll only be out of their canteen. They'll never even notice. So I was reading about this story today and I had no idea that Kamala Harris wrote a children's book and I'm looking at it on Amazon right now and it looks like she used the same artist that did the Krasenstein brothers children's book like about Donald Plump and Robert Mueller remember that one? Oh yeah. They've got like some guys from the Philippines on Fiverr.

Yeah. That's what this shit looks like. Looks like trash. But I was even better. The title of the book is superheroes are everywhere. It's true. Well, you would deny that? Wow.

It says here from Vice President Kamala Harris comes a picture book with an empowering message. Superheroes are all around us. And if we try, we can all be superheroes too. Send out a microwave until you develop magical powers. It says before Kamala Harris was elected to the vice presidency, she was a little girl who loved superheroes. I'd like some investigative reporting to look into, you know, did she even buy comic books when she was a kid?

This seems like cap to me. I think we might have a fake gamer girl on our hands. Yeah. Well, yeah. Kamala's timeline is always like fucked up. She's always trying to take the cool thing from whenever she was young. But it spans across several generations. She's like a millennial exer boomer.

And it's like, depending on who's talking to her, when she was in college, she was listening to Tupac, who I think was dead by her sophomore year. Or hadn't come out yet, I forget. Yeah. She was like, yeah. She was always listening to Lil Nas X. Yeah. Now it's like, oh, I was reading Scott Pilgrim when I was a kid in 2003.

I'm 23 years old. I was reading from the jacket copy here. It says, and when she looked around, she was amazed to find them everywhere. In her family, among her friends, even down the street, there were superheroes wherever she looked, and those superheroes showed her that all you need to do to be a superhero is to be the best that you can be. In this empowering and joyful picture book that speaks directly to kids, Kamala Harris takes readers through her life and shows them the power to make the world a better place

is inside all of us. Basically with fun and engaging art, as well as a guide to being a superhero at the end, this book is sure to have kids taking up the superhero mantle, cape and mask optional. So you're vice president of the United States, encouraging children to engage in vigilantism. Not cool in my opinion. Yeah. Well, could they give them like Hunter's book instead? I feel like that could make everyone happy.

Truly inspiring. Yeah. Yeah. They should give like, the kids should be able to pick books. Like obviously we need these places. Obviously we need to just like keep having these forever. Yeah. You know, this thing that's-

Not an option. It's only existed since like 2009. We obviously need to have it forever. But we can give them a choice of the Hunter book, Joe's book, which is like, you know, my life of being a senator and my sweetie, sweetie, good, good guys. Or the Don Jr. book, where he like proposes the sun contest. I think I would love Joe Biden to write a children's book. He'd probably be really good at it.

It would be like, he would accidentally like write a Cormac McCarthy book, because it would be like anecdotes from his childhood in 1912. It's like- There's a guy that lived on my block, Mac. His name was the judge, big fella. No hair. Yeah. They saw like, there's like a bunch of sordid tales where like a drifter rents out a room

in the Biden house and he's just never seen again. And his dad's wearing different overalls in the morning, in the afternoon than he was that morning. And it's like a very tree of life thing where you're going in and out of fragments of memories. See the kid, his blonde leg hair is in the pool. So yeah, just another phenomenon of children's books being written by politicians. I mean- I mean, it really does tell you what they think of you.

Like, they used to pander to you by pretending to have written a full book, 300 pages, even maybe a cable of contents in there, you got some fucking citations, hey, what's this? These are- Oh, footnotes even? Now it's like, here's 10 pages of a machine-learned drawing of a duck saying that you should recycle. And that is how they communicate to their ostensible, their ostensible audience of voters. Felix, and I know you saw this, did you see the story today that was like, had me raise

an eyebrow because it was like, US Coast Guard gets into like, you know, high tension situation with the Iranian Navy off the coast of like some country in the Persian Gulf is like, the US Coast Guard? Okay, so- What the fuck? Why are they doing- I'm just coming out of an argument about this, and I saw people that were like, actually that unit of the Coast Guard was created because they have a special boat that uses patrols

for larger naval vessels, and it's like, that doesn't make it any less fucking stupid. So like the specific unit of the Coast Guard was created in 2002, like, presumably pretty far in advance, or not pretty far, but like in advance of like the Iraq War and assisting like existing operations, which also shouldn't have existed at the time. But it's like, I know that like respect for the military and everything pulls highly, but I feel like if most Americans, you've told them, oh, we have to create a special Coast Guard unit because we're so, we have so many fucking assets that are just digging around in the Persian Gulf that we need patrol boats for them.

I don't think they'd be in favor of that, it doesn't make a lot of sense. The headline for the Wall Street Journal is, ships from Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed two U.S. Coast Guard vessels earlier this month in the Persian Gulf. It's just that in the Persian Gulf thing, and like the Coast Guard is just, god damn, the whole world is America, or at least that's the way we see it. Yeah. It's in the title, the Coast Guard, they're supposed to be guarding our coasts.

Yeah, any coasts. They're American coasts, that's the rule. I mean, like the U.S. Empire is awful and just awful murderous machine, but it's hard not to see every story that really comes from the Persian Gulf as anything but a bouquet of laughs. You remember like two years ago, it was like every week it seemed like a fucking $20 billion ship was getting lost in the Persian Gulf? It sounded in the open sea and then just crash into each other.

Yeah, and it would always be like, it would be like the possible Iranian harassment of these boats, and then it'd be like very quietly a week later. No, actually, we just, we fucked up, sorry, but next time this happens, it will be Iran's fault. USS Nimitz, Suez Canal, speedrun, go. So you said, Felix, this is a part of the Coast Guard that is like the elite of the elite of the Coast Guard. Yeah.

They're called the Gulf Guard. Yeah. You remember the Coast Guard movie that Ashton Gutscher was in? And Kevin Costner, yeah, it was about the rescue divers. Yeah, this is what they would be in in real life. Okay, so movie pitch here. It's an elite unit within the U.S. Coast Guard, like the special operators of the known as the Gulf Guard.

I'm imagining Jared Butler as the head of a Gulf Guard ship who is like, you know, is in the Persian Gulf, who has to like, you know, one boat against like, one big boat against like, you know, 300 smaller IRGC speedboats. And it's just, it's a boat, it's a boat action movie with Jared Butler as a grizzled veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. That sounds great. Yeah. He, he fucks an M.E.K. stripper and again, full penetration in real time.

100%. Yeah. And no, it's like, I'm saying maybe he's retired from the Gulf Guard, but he has to come back for one last mission because like his, his close friend at the Coast Guard Academy was on that boat that like around boarded and like made them all sit on the ground drinking apple juice or whatever. And he's just like, these bastards will pay. Yeah.

Yeah. There, um, he should have, we should, this should just be den of thieves, like just Pablo Shriver should play an IRGC Coast Guard guy and they should, there should be like a constant like cat and mouse game, like that is a cool movie. It would only cost, um, $3 billion to make because we are going to be blowing up real U.S. Navy ships. We are going to sink an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf will be the climax of this movie.

We have a really cool idea for like a throwaway scene that you, we're probably just going to cut out of the movie for time, but it's going to be on the DVD of an FAA teen carrier crashing directly into a 60 floor skyscraper. That's, uh, because he's getting a blow job, the guy was flying the FAA teen and we plan on using a real pilot who does have terminal cancer or otherwise wants to kill himself for this scene. We haven't figured out how we're going to get his dick sucked, probably CGI, but, uh, this scene alone is $1 billion of the movie.

Wait a minute. If it's a CGI blow job, I'm walking. I'm sorry. Okay. That's worse than squibs. See if there's someone who can give him blow job, who's also has terminal cancer and can die for this. We will not be using squibs for the come shop.

Yeah. Matt wants only real ropes. Yeah, if you can make a guy who is flying an FAA teen, uh, if you can do it quick enough that he comes, uh, and you're dying, like we won't feel bad about it. Like you want to contribute to a piece of art that will last forever. Contact us. If you're a cameraman who also has terminal cancer, please let us know. And if you're a key grip, actually they don't have a union.

I don't think so. It's like we can just kill one. Yeah. No big deal. If you're a key grip, just regular contact us. Well, just, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll give the camera to one of Scott Roone's assistants and just strap him to the nose of a Harrier jet and be like, yeah, you know, just go do your thing.

Go do your thing or asshole and just give me, give me goddamn latte before you do. No, not after, before. So yeah, uh, Gulf Guard, Gulf War, yeah, no, no, no, yeah, Gulf Guard, the elite of the Coast Guard, Sergeant Jared Butler, um, I'll be working on the screenplay and pitching that shortly. Um, here's another thing I was thinking about today. Uh, did you guys see the news that generously the United States is now going to make available 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the world?

And it's just like, world where we got, we got you covered. We've got 60 million of you covered. How generous and the worst we're giving them the worst one, AstraZeneca, the shit one. I mean, like the thing about this is like, I mean, like really the broader issue here and the thing that's going on right now is that like the Biden administration has, like I think I believe India requested help with, you know, vaccinating the, the billion people that live in that country. Um, but like this is in the context of like the Biden administration refusing to strip

patent protections from like Pfizer and Moderna for the creation of these vaccines, right? Cause it's just like, yeah, I mean, like the idea is like, look, yeah, oh, like, you know, look, it takes a long time. There's like seven billion people on the planet. We got to, you know, got to keep producing these vaccines or whatever. But like the formula, the recipe to create these vaccines exists and is being basically firewalled through the US copyright law, which is like, I mean, to ponder the insane greed and cruelty of making a profit off the development of these vaccines is pretty staggering.

But also it's like suicidal because this is a global pandemic, right? And if we don't vaccinate enough people, the virus is just going to continue to spread and mutate and we're going to deal with it forever, which actually may be the point as far as these like Pfizer and Moderna goes as companies because it's like, if this just keeps mutating, they can keep charging people money to get like the next vaccine. That's what I was thinking. I mean, at first there's this really good article about how Bill Gates personally fought for a lot of of the copyright shit with just like not freeing the patents for the vaccines

that, yeah, we can put in the episode description if I can find it. But I was thinking like, okay, well, this seems counterproductive, right? You'd want to get rid of this as soon as possible to get rid of global commerce. And then like obviously, yeah, Pfizer and Moderna charging more money, blah, blah, blah. That's definitely probably a part of it. But I also think that there's probably a non insignificant part of the US government and people like Bill Gates who might as well be the government who are like, well, in some just insane like imperial way of thinking are going, well, this is a way that we can

get sort of a headstart on the rest of the world. Yeah. And you're considering everything a great game and that we're constantly in competition with forces like China or like, yeah, just brick countries in general or something. This is something you'd probably do that you think would give you a competitive edge if you saw the world that way, which Gates absolutely does. Look, guys, if if this stuff got opened up and if these these patents were were waived, then this MRNA technology could be used by other countries to heal their people and that

would undermine our competitive advantage. Just cannot cannot be allowed to happen. Sorry. And I mean, I think I think Bill Gates recently was was asked on like a television interview whether he would, you know, support removing copyright protection for these vaccine formulas. Right. And he said no. But his his justification for why it's not a good idea is he was like he was like countries

like India don't have the manufacturing capacity to like have a vaccine factory that is like up to like the regulation that, you know, is demanded of the scientific and industrial process of producing large numbers of these vaccines, which is like, I don't think that's true. And also if that was the case, like Bill Gates could pay out of pocket to build vaccine factories that are up to code in every country on the planet, like no, no problem. Bill Gates is one of the most evil people alive. And I really there's a lot of stuff that made me mad about early COVID and early vaccine

coverage. But I would say the thing that probably collectively annoyed me the most was how it had to become like a liberal mission to defend the reputation of Bill Gates. I mean, like, yeah, a lot of that Q and on shit about him is goofy, but like, I don't care. If somebody in Nebraska thinks that he worship Satan, I don't care. He might as well, who fucking cares? Like this guy is about as evil as you and on depiction it.

Yeah, I'm fairly certain that this whole play with India, it's all the way to leverage as many foreskins as possible out of India, like this all ends with just like DC tens full of foreskins going directly to Washington to his fucking headquarters for him to do whatever the hell it is he's doing with them. Yeah. Just like if this guy's a pure philanthropist, why is he so invested in maintaining the patent law for this? I mean, it's it's perverse enough that you can't sing happy birthday in a movie without

paying someone. But like the ways in which like like patent and intellectual property are used to, you know, safeguard the profits of the companies that created these vaccines, which is like, oh, like good for you. Like, yeah, you created these vaccines in a year. Like how marvelous as a pharmaceutical company. I guess your brand could never be better at this moment. But like you're already making a killing literally by charging $700 for like a vial of insulin

or whatever. Like, is this not enough for you? Like, I mean, just the idea of like this vaccine that everyone on the planet needs, if we're going to like, I don't know, have a continue to have a civilization as a species. But I mean, like I said, like compare that to the guy who created the polio vaccine who like specifically declined any copyright on it, and he was just like, I didn't I didn't create this to make money off of it. This is just so like this is for the knowledge that like I utilize to create this vaccine

is like the birthright of every human being on the planet. Bill Gates, officially a shittier guy than someone from like 80 years ago. Keep in mind, 80 years ago, if you had a kid, you and you just like didn't like the color of their eyes, you would just sell him to a farmer. Like you just like you would have nine kids and be like, well, six of these are I'm not really going to like, and I can just leave them on the side of a road. My mind's made up. I've given this long and careful thought, and it has to be medical experiments for the

lot of you. You would have nine kids because before the polio vaccine, at least one of them was going to die or be crippled for life from polio. Yeah, but it came from a harsher time and even that guy is a better person than eternal demon Bill Gates. I mean, I've so thanks to a CBD that I've been purchasing at a gas station and the Dark Souls games have a new theory of humanity. It's basically the Jews and several other people are descended from gods, but that Anglo-Saxons

are descended from the fruit of pygmy and they have this thing called the Dark Soul. Bill Gates, Anglo-Saxon, definitely has the Dark Soul. How does this fit into the Shinto Israel thing? You should treat nature well, but not Anglo-Saxons because they're actually demons. No, they can be fine. The Dark Soul isn't... You can use it for some stuff, but you also shouldn't let them have their own place. If you let the Anglo-Saxons have their own country or city, it's going to be bad.

You can... a Jew and an Anglo-Saxon can create a really cool type of person. And yeah, no. We Jews have this thing called the Entertainment Soul that's very important to us, but mainly I just wanted to talk like Bill Gates has the Dark Soul though, obviously. He's probably the king of the pygmy. Queen Elizabeth is just an illusion. It's really Bill Gates. He's the global leader of the Anglo-Satanic Dark Soul, Caliphate.

Thank you, Lyndon LaRouche. Can we synthesize LaRouche's thought and Dark Soul's lore? Could you sort of quarterback this project in the coming months? Yeah, I'll circle back to this one. We clearly need a new religion. That's been clear for a while. And I think it should probably, a big portion of it, whatever, if it's coming out now, will have to be inspired by video games.

I mean, that just seems to make sense. And Shinto is like, there's a lot of it I don't fully get because I don't speak Japanese or read it or understand any of it. But also, the parts of it I can pick up are like, you should be nice to trees. You should thank the wind or something. And it's like, yeah. I think Shinto is true because if your entire thing was like, be nice to trees and shit and rivers are good, and you were going to get invaded by Mongols, and the Mongols got

fucking owned by a tsunami, that's something nature would do for you if you were nice to nature. So it's like, that's cut and dry, pretty true. That's the true religion. That's one of them. Yeah. Let's look out for that new religion dropping, Q4 2021. It would be called True Religion.

Yes, we're still in the name from the Jeans brand. That's only because this is the only religion that is true. And you get a free pair of jeans when you sign up. I got to say, that makes me think, just circling back to copyright law. People like the bitch about a lot of stuff that China does, but one thing they do in China that I love is when they just take an American copyright and they're like, no, fuck you. What are you going to do?

Sue us? Like how they had a fake Apple store. It had Apple products and shit, but it just wasn't an Apple. You were the Nathan Fielder thing as a nation. That's awesome. It's so fucking sick. I love that. If there are any CCP party members out there right now, could you please do a version of

the happy birthday song that smashes the copyright on that? Yeah. I'm sick of those fucking Hill sisters just sitting on top of all of that filthy liquor. Yeah. Doing that's awesome because it's like, okay, before they like really industrialized and became an economic power. When you do that before, it's like, okay, well, yeah, what are you going to do? Fucking come over here and Sue us like, no, when you do it after, it's like, oh, yeah,

what? Yeah. I hope the RIAA sues us. Yeah. It would be a shame if anything happened to any of your manufactured goods that we make. Like you can't do anything to them. It's awesome. China should create their own version of Twitch where you can just play whatever music

you want. Yeah. Oh man, that would be cool. Just watch movies with your friends. Watch the movie instead of having to make people watch it at home. Oh, yeah. The only thing is there will be no depiction of ghosts or time travel. That's the shit that they will not let you fucking put on screen for some reason.

Ghost or childish time travels are overdone. It's a stale plot device at this point. My problem with ghosts is like, is there, okay, there seems to be about like a hundred ghosts in the world. How many people have fucking died? It's true. You think there are a hundred ghosts? How did you come up with the number of there are a hundred ghosts in the world?

Quora. My problem with ghosts, there are way too, there are too few of them. Can we get some of the ghosts here? A hundred. That might be under a ballparking it. But we, I think everyone can agree that there sure as shit is it as many ghosts as there are dead people. Yeah.

It's like it's or anywhere close. This might be a shinto thing though, because, okay, maybe I got this from a movie that I don't remember, but I did see something that was like someone had to like avenge their, this actually might have been a game. And this was definitely over 15 years ago, so my bad if I'm not remembering it right. But it was like someone has to avenge their family, because if they don't like they'll be ghosts, like they can't go to the afterlife yet. And it's like, I mean, I'll accept that as an explanation.

So you're saying is like most people, if a family member is killed in some way, will follow up with vengeance to ensure that their soul enters the afterlife and is not haunting the place to where they died? Yeah. I mean, again, I would have to remember what movie or game or show or like pamphlet or maybe even thing I invented and forgot about from, you know, like 2002, this is. But that, I don't know, it's like there definitely aren't a million ghosts, right? We can safely say that.

No, I'd say that. Yeah. There's not a million ghosts. Yeah. I think guys are low-balling this number here. I think there could be potentially, there could be billions of ghosts, but many of like, I think most of them could just be well-behaved and they're not interested in haunting people. They're just interested in looking at women who are nude in the shower.

If you can't interact with the ghosts and it's like, that's, we're not, we're talking about real identified ghosts here. How many actually encountered ghosts are there? It's yeah, I'd say less than a million. Easily. Yeah. No, it's just the science doesn't hold up. Is there any like authority we could ask on this?

Like someone who knows a lot about it? Ghosts, the ghost hunters probably. Yeah. The guys who like, walk around like houses with night vision goggles. Yeah. Like those fake devices. What was that? They're walking around like an abandoned sanitarium that's been like just turned over

to nature at night and they're just like, guys, there's a seriously spooky vibe here. There's something weird going on here and it's like, yeah, no shit. Dude. Whoa. Hey. That, I mean, that door, that door, there's a handle right in my back to this, okay. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Cool. Cool. That door just opened like, I'm assuming there's some type of knob or something? I'm not even sure. I'm wondering what's behind it. But it sounded like something turned the door and opened it. Wow, this place is crazy.

You're in a condemned hospital at three in the morning. What do you, what the fuck, they're like, did you hear that? Like, what I like about ghost hunters is like most ghosts are actually just problems with plumbing. It's just pipes. Yeah. Basically. Or like a deer.

Those guys never found ghosts. Yeah. Like if there was anywhere near the number of ghosts as there are dead people, they would have seen them by now and not just had these shaky cam, uh, fucking videos that don't show you anything. I mean, yeah, I know I'm not the first person to make this point, but like, doesn't the fact that like literally every American have like a video recording to their advice in their pocket at all hours of the day kind of like put the lie to the existence of ghosts,

aliens and cryptids. Like, wouldn't there have been some viral footage of Sasquatch or a ghost by now? Yeah. I would say yes about the ghosts, but not about Sasquatch because Sasquatch is, they are off the grid by definition. Yeah. They're out there in the deep woods that you might only have like a very low level likelihood of ever having a human encounter Sasquatch in the first place.

And then it is more likely that they would make eye contact and have like a spiritual moment that would prevent them from even considering taking out their phone. Yeah. Okay. I think I've actually come to something. Um, I've noticed that like of the people I've known in my life who've claimed to have ghost experiences, all of them were really fucking stupid. No way.

Surprise me. But I don't think this means ghosts aren't real. I think that maybe there's like a mental threshold you have to get below in order to stay ego. Hmm. It's like the opposite of like sort of, uh, like the level of knowledge, like in Lovecraft you need like a level of knowledge to like ascertain great ones and like cosmic influence. I think there's probably an opposite thing where it's like certain things will only

reveal themselves to like the dumbest people. Yeah. What was that? Like you said, like your friend who claimed that there was a skeleton outside their window giving them the finger. Yeah. Yeah. That one was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. That's... Man. Yeah. Yeah. Why would he be doing that? Because, yeah, it was just like, because he's badass.

Yeah. Yeah. He's scary. He's cool. All right. Um, what say we dip into a, a brief reading series that goes out the set? Let's do it. This is, I've, um, I've gone into the archives here and this is, this is what this reading

series comes courtesy of one Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan, ladies and gentlemen, who has certainly, uh, been, been, uh, you know, throwing things up, uh, as usual, the way he, you know, he, look, look, he just like he, he just, he's just asking questions about, um, eugenics and skull science and like, you know, in a civilized liberal society, you should be able to bring up these topics without being shouted down. Um, all kidding aside though, like I would like Andrew Sullivan to be deported from America, probably more than any other naturalized citizen.

Like I would like to send him back, like by any, any, like just send him back to England. He does not deserve to be in this country. Um, this is an energy Sullivan article from April 2nd, 2000. This is 20 years ago and I forgot that it existed, but this is, this is some, there's some pretty, pretty top tier Sullivan here. This is in the New York Times magazine. It is a really long piece. I'm only going to read parts of it, but it is called the he hormone.

And this is about Andrew Sullivan's experiences with injecting himself with synthetic testosterone so he could feel sort of virile again. Um, and you know, and obviously like, you know, masculinity and gender has been like, you know, a big hobby horse of Andrew Sullivan as of lately. I mean, probably the only thing he likes asking questions about, uh, probably second only to race science is, you know, uh, trans issues. And okay, so like, so here is Andrew Sullivan, the he hormone, uh, begins, he says, it has a slightly golden hue suspended in an oily substance and injected in a needle about half

as thick as a telephone wire. I mean, this is the, this is the H hormone. He's just shooting heroin. That's it makes you feel great. You cook it in a spoon before finding a vein. He goes, I have never been able to jab it suddenly into my hip muscle as the doctor told me to. Instead, after swabbing a small patch of my rump down with rubbing alcohol, I pushed the needle in slowly until all three inches of it are submerged.

Then I squeezed the liquid in carefully as the muscle often spasms to absorb it. My skin sticks a little to the syringe as I pull it out. And then an odd mix of oil and blackish blood usually trickles down my hip. So first paragraph, we're getting a fairly vivid description of Andrew Sullivan's rump and the black blood that oozes out of him, uh, when he sticks a telephone wire sized needle into his ass to feel like a man again. Okay. Um, should his blood be black?

Yeah, that seems like something we should look into. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, guys. So short blog today. It turns out I'm a demon. Yeah, I just, uh, I went to the doctor because I was having a headache. It turns out I'm growing horns because I am a devil.

Yeah. Evil chaos demon. And so I have to go to CVS, but here's some, here's some links I thought were interesting today and a cat video, of course. Yeah. I went to the dermatologist because I thought that I had a rash and it turns out those are scales, scales this whole time, not actually human skin. Hey guys, been going through a lot with my therapist.

I thought I was born in 1968. Turns out I'm an eternal demon. I've always been alive. My bad. I just keep forgetting after all. It's like, Oh right. Yeah. Oh right.

Yeah. That time I burned down Baghdad with my fire breath. You guys, uh, I am so used to it now that the novelty has worn off, but every now and again, the weirdness returns. The chemical I'm putting in myself is synthetic testosterone, a substance that has become such a metaphor for manhood that it is impossible to forget it has a physical reality. 20 years ago as it surged through my pubescent body, it deepened my voice, grew hair on my face and chest, strengthened my limbs, made me a man.

So what I wonder is it doing to me now? He then goes on to just describe what testosterone is and how it make forms the basis of like sexual dimorphism or whatever. Uh, he, you know, he says, uh, he took it because, you know, uh, he's HIV positive and someone, a side effect associated with being HIV positive is having your testosterone levels fall to a very low level. And he saw a doctor and he was like, Oh, hey, uh, there's not enough tea in my bloodstream. So he goes, at that point, I weighed around 165 pounds.

I now weigh 185 pounds. My collar size went from a 15 to a 17 and a half in a few months. My chest went from a 40 to a 44. I mean, yeah, this is just like his grinder profile that he's just sitting here. I'm even, even more uncut than I was before. My foreskin is green. I bet the end of Andrew Sullivan's cock is just like, it's like a wind. Like the foreskin is like so fleshy.

Like you can, you can just like, if he doesn't take a shower for like two days, there's just an entire like triangle of Bree and there if he, you know, he says, he says, uh, he says he can squat more than 400 pounds. Felix, do you believe him? Do you believe him? Um, a, uh, no, like B, I think like he could be one of those guys who like uses a leg press and is like, Oh, that's the same as squatting. So you go, I mean, he's like, he's sort of stocky, he's kind of a stocky guy.

He's a stocky dude and testosterone replacement therapy is pretty strong. It's medically necessary in the way gambling is to make a man feel cool and he can afford like coaching. So like maybe he could, I mean, how old is Andrew Sullivan? Uh, we'll see. This is written in 2000 guys, just like middle age, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I would guess he's in his like 50s or 60s by now. I'm not sure.

Okay. So he was probably like 30 when he wrote this, right? Like like at most like 35, right? Like safe, safe guess. He's 57. Okay. I think at the time of him writing this, yeah, absolutely, that could be possible. He goes on to say, depression, once a regular feature of my life is now a distant memory.

I feel better, I feel better able to recover from life's curve balls, more persistent, more alive. These are the long-term effects. They are almost as striking as the short-term ones. He goes, you know, he goes on to list the benefits of like this, you know, super, super semen formula. He goes here, because the testosterone is injected every two weeks and it quickly leaves the bud stream, I can actually feel its power on almost a daily basis.

Within hours and at most a day, I feel a deep surge of energy. It is less edgy than a double espresso, but just as powerful. My attention span shortens. In the two or three days after my shot, I find it harder to concentrate on writing and feel the need to exercise more. My wit is quicker, my mind faster, but my judgment is more impulsive. It is not unlike the rush I get before talking in front of a large audience or going on a first date or getting on an airplane, but it diffuses in me a less abrupt and more consistent

way. In a word, I feel braced for what it scarcely seems to matter. I like when he says like, my wit is quicker and my mind is faster and I feel a rush like I get before talking in front of a large audience, going on a first date, or getting on an airplane, like which one of these things doesn't belong, like does he feel nervous before getting on an airplane, or does he feel infused with a surge of like nervous excitement and energy? Well, those, okay, so those things he listed, those are all the same event to him.

He's getting on the airplane, he's going to fuck a guy in the bathroom, and then he's going to get out and take the plane hostage, which involves public speaking. And he does that every time he gets on an airplane, and it's a lot of work and it takes him a very long time to get where he needs to be going. He goes here, he continues, he says, then there is the anger. I have always tended to bury or redirect my rage. I once thought this as an inescapable part of my personality. It turns out I was wrong.

Late last year, mere hours after a tee shot, my dog ran off the leash to forage for a chicken bone left in my local park. The more I chased her, the more she ran. By the time I retrieved her, the bone had been consumed and I gave her a sharp tap on her rear end, whether any black viscous ooze came out after that tap on the dog's rump is unreported. But he goes here, I gave her a sharp tap on her rear end. Don't smack your dog, yelled a burly guy a few yards away.

What I found myself yelling back at him is not printable in this magazine. He's probably a racial slur. I mean, it was probably. I've later realized that the testosterone was causing me to have hallucinations, the Tom of Finland drawing that had come to life. Don't smack your dog, yelled a burly biker, sailor or policeman. Yeah. He goes, but he says, I've never used that language in public before.

In private is another question, let alone bellow it at the top of my voice. He shouted back and within seconds, I was actually close to hitting him. He backed down and slunk off. That guy's lucky. One punch from Andrew Sullivan. Oh, homie. Oh, my God. If you ever yell at me walking my dog, oh, my God.

What happened if you saw Andrew Sullivan in a level five yard and he just pulled up his shirt? If you just pulled up his shirt and showed his his T muscles, that's why he's like, that's why he's like, experienced like no health consequences because of studio because I strutted home, chest puffed up, contrite Beagle dragged sheepishly behind me. It wasn't until a half an hour later that I realized I had been a complete jerk and had nearly gotten into the first public brawl of my life. I vowed to inject my testosterone at night in the future under the light of a full moon.

This is like, yeah, this isn't testosterone. This is him being aware that he's a demon. This is he's consuming one of the Dark Souls. Yeah, no, this is he's consuming a Dark Soul and the Paladin ashes and he's going to use it to level up. His chest stats, a racial slur numbers, intelligence, faith, it goes here. That was an extreme example, but other milder ones come to mind losing my temper in a petty argument, innumerable traffic confrontations and even slightly too prickly column or email

flame out. I love that he's attributing all of this to the synthetic testosterone, but like it may just be that you're an asshole, Andrew, it may just be that like people don't like you and you're kind of a cunt in public and private. Well, that is what people like the actual more scientific consensus around steroids and testosterone. All steroids mostly do a lot of times augment your testosterone production, but more testosterone just makes you more of who you are.

Yeah, it's like alcohol. Alcohol consensus actually is like Roydrage is not really a thing. If you have Roydrage, you're probably already a pretty angry person. Yeah, like drinking. Drinking only allows you to be like it unleashes your cool potential that's inside of a man. What you do when you're drunk is only a reflection of how cool you are to begin with before you started hitting the bottle. Yeah, and when you smoke weed and you get those paranoid thoughts that are like, all

my friends hate me, that's the truth. All of your friends hate you, God hates you. Anything positive in your life is the result of an elaborate prank or people feeling sorry for you. You suck. You actually do have the smallest dick or the widest pussy in the world. I don't know. I don't know.

It's bad for women. One day I'll see one and I'll know. Every time I think they're going to be on the front, nope, they're on the bottom. By the time I make that mistake, girl's already left. It's like you've never located one of these before. No, I've never been given a second try. He continues, no doubt my previous awareness of the mythology of testosterone had subtly primed me for these feelings of irritation and impatience.

But when I place them in the larger context of my new testosterone associated energy and of what we know about what testosterone tends to do to people, then it seems plausible enough to ascribe some of this increased edginess and self-confidence to that bi-weekly encounter with a syringe full of manhood. I mean, he goes on to talk about scientific experiments where they gave female rats testosterone and they grew penises that then started fucking the other rats. The opposite happened to men that the male rats that they gave testosterone blockers are estrogen too or something.

There's a lot of boring bullshit that just simply, I was just like David Attenborough style stuff about the male zebra bird can sing, but when you give female birds testosterone, they can sing too. It goes on and on. I mainly like this article for just him telling you about testosterone like you've never heard of it before or sexual difference or something, but also it's just like I said, the classic move of just being like, once I got my Superman injections, I found myself yelling at strangers in the park and being an asshole to everyone who worked around me, just attributing his

own insane ridiculous behavior to and then putting it in this gloss of just like the masculine essence that I was infused with has made me stronger, whittier and hornier. Is he still on it? I would assume so. Yeah, you kind of have to do it forever or else like your dick doesn't work if you stop. Wait a minute, did they tell people that before they started? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good.

All right, good, just so you know, you ever stop taking that, say goodbye to your dick. Yeah, like you testosterone is so good that it's like you're like, hi, man, I guess I'll keep having these shots forever. I mean, every, that's the thing. Every rich guy does it. Jeff Bezos definitely on the R&B. Oh, Bezos for sure. Yeah.

Bill Gates, Bill Gates not on TV. He is on the exact same stack as J.K. Simmons and they are melding into being the same person. Yeah. Bill Gates not like probably not, Bill Gates is probably like, he just grinds him up in his bucket bullet every morning. Yeah, but like most actors, like Tom Cruise has amazing genetics, right, to look like that and he's like 83 years old. I guess.

But also like that's a lot of, yeah, that's a lot of chemical help. Yeah. Yeah. So he goes on here, when you hear comments like these, it's no big surprise that strutting peacocks with their extravagant tails and bright colors are supercharged with testosterone and that mousy little male sparrows aren't. It turned my life around, another man said. I felt stronger, not just in a physical sense.

It was a deep sense of being strong, almost spiritually strong. So basically like the strongest men on the planet are like 15-year-old boys. You know, they're the most spiritually pure, witty and pure beings of the male gender. And testosterone's antidepressant power is only marginally understood. It doesn't act in a precise way other antidepressants do and it probably helps alleviate gloominess primarily by propelling people into greater activity and restlessness, giving them less time to think and reflect. This may be one reason women tend to suffer from more depression than men.

Okay, so I finally figured out what he's doing in this article is that he's just doing gender science because like he got bored of doing race science all the time. He's just like taking these like discrete scientific studies about the effects of testosterone on animals or whatever and applying this gloss to human interaction in society in a way that, oh, wouldn't you know it, conveniently cast him as smarter and better than everyone else around. So like this is Andrew Science attempting to like measure penises instead of skulls. He's applying the calipers to a different body part, essentially.

Did his dick get bigger? This is a question that, I mean, the fact that he said it, he didn't say anything about it makes me think it didn't. Oh no, there is something about this in the book of Piana. Rich Piana talked about this in a video. steroids and pee don't make your dick bigger, but they make it appear bigger because your balls get smaller. Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's straight from the word of God himself. This is the last paragraph I'm going to read here. He just says, unlike Popeye's spinach, however, testosterone is also, in humans at least, a relatively subtle agent. It is not some kind of on-off switch by which men are constantly turned on and women off. For one thing, we all start out with a different baseline level.

Some women have remarkably high genetic T levels. Some men, remarkably low. Although the male-female differential is so great that no single woman's T level can exceed any single man's unless she or he has some kind of significant hormonal imbalance. For another, this is where the social and political ramifications get complicated. Testosterone is highly susceptible to environment. T levels can rise and fall depending on external circumstances, short-term and long-term. Testosterone is usually elevated in response to confrontational situations, a street fight,

a marital spat, a presidential debate. Yeah. Yeah. That's high. That's high T. That is fucking high. Model Trump is the highest key man in the world. Or in highly-charged sexual environments like a strip bar or pornographic website, it can

also be raised permanently in continuously combative environments like war, although it can also be suddenly lowered by stress. So just a little, a few tips here in case you're, you know, if your T levels are feeling a little bit depleted, just go to war. But not a stressful war. If you're in a stressful war. Yeah. Yeah.

A chill, like a sort of vibe wave war. Yeah. He goes on to talk about Mark McGuire and baseball, like I can't stress how long this article is. Let me just, this is the last paragraph, he goes, for my part, I'll keep injecting the big T apart from how great it makes me feel, I consider it no insult to anyone else's gender to celebrate the uniqueness of one's own. Diversity need not mean the equalization of difference.

In fact, true diversity requires the acceptance of difference. A world without the unruly, vulnerable, pioneering force of testosterone would be fairer and calmer, but far grayer and a duller place. It is certainly somewhere I would never want to live. A world full of women. Yeah, we get it, Andrew. Yeah, the planet of pussy. He's like a, he's like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, where he's like, oh,

I'm enough at last. And then like his T vile shatters and he's like, no, no, it's not fair. Dick just dissolves and drizzles on his pant leg. His balls are huge, like his balls go out both his pant legs. A nuclear bomb kills every woman on the planet and he emerges from the bank vault and he's like, ah, paradise. And then his T viles just, yeah, he drops them on the ground. That's not fair at all.

It was time now. Uh, it goes, okay. Perhaps the fact that I write this two days after the injection of another 200 milligrams of testosterone into my bloodstream makes me more likely to settle for this colorful trade-off than others. But it seems to be no disrespect to womanhood to say that I am perfectly happy to be a man, to feel things no woman will ever feel to the degree that I feel them, to experience the world in a way no woman ever has, and to do so without apology or shame.

To boldly experience what no woman ever has before or ever will. No woman has ever gotten on an airplane. They're afraid of them. Women think women, uh, like don't have the, again, love crafting insight to see what an airplane is, and that's why Wonder Woman's plane isn't visible. Yeah. They literally can't, their minds can't comprehend it, so it's just nothing. Yeah.

I think, uh, they're like pre-Columbian, uh, Indian, seeing the, uh, the ships, a little bit, the guys moving. Yeah, they can. That's my favorite bullshit thing. That is such a, that is such a stupid person, in fact, to, I fucking love it. Yeah. That is one of the, yeah, that's a great, a great, like, tell that you're just talking to an absolute moron.

Yeah, it's a great barometer for what it, like, how much of a nitwit the person you're talking to is, if they, if they bring up, uh, facts that they learned in the, what the bleep do we know, metaphysical documentary series. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it's like, finally though, like, my last thing, I love that he says it like, you know, perhaps it is just, uh, how the, the Milligrant, the, the testosterone coursing through my bloodstream, that makes me more likely to settle for this colorful trade-off

than others. Like this is something that's on offer, it's just like, I, I hope I never have to make that decision, Andrew, to live in a world without testosterone or not. But thanks for, thanks for chiming in, that, um, you're perfectly happy being a man and that you don't feel the need to just, you know, apologize for it. And in fact, I'll suck you in the goddamn jaw because my tea is so powerful right now. I feel like fucking Popeye. That's, it was cool when, like, blogs were, like, whatever the fuck this is, they really

switched it up. Like, it used to just be, like, bullshit, like, total bullshit like this. Now it's like a different type of bullshit where it's like WandaVision, uh, why WandaVision like makes me hate my stepson for something. I think about all those polyglot blogs that were like, uh, you know, I tried to make my son play Wind Waker and it made me realize what a fucking piece of shit he was because he couldn't appreciate it. A world without tea.

No! Come back, tea! Tea, come back! I can't, I'm sounding like a squeaky voice team because I had all my tea removed. I can't do push-ups anymore. I can't get in fights with people in the park. But yeah, I mean, you know, I just think it's like, it's easy to, like, see in this article both the lineage of his prodigious work studying race science to, like, his current position

of investigating trans issues or, like, his, the sort of, the gloss, the sheen on reality that, like, he sees the world through. The scientific one. Yeah, exactly. Biology, baby. Yeah. Science. And, like, I can't, I can't, I can't really describe to you how much of this article

is based on him, on describing, like, wacky scientific experiments where they, like, you know, bimbo-fied a fucking peak of a bimbo-fied a rat or something. So there we go, uh, Andrew Sullivan, hi, tea. Get out of my country. Take your fucking tea, back to England. Hi, tea, bye, tea. All right, guys, uh, let's, let's end it there, uh, till next time. Till next time.

Bye. Bye. So, thank you for coming. If I had to took a man off, I'd rather be compared to being pulled into the cellar Where your mind is at, we're playing into each other I'd rather love to be, this is all I got time