Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 178: Our Own Little Racist Theocracy

Episode Date: September 22, 2014

 

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Hey guys, so I've called in a couple times just to say something funny or whatever, but you know, all joking aside, if I can put me in a goose ball for two seconds, I just want you guys to know that what you guys do, even though I know it's some kind of a

side of levity and all that, it is actually appreciated, and I really appreciate what you're doing, and thank you very much. You, and I sincerely mean that's when I say this slogan, you fucking rock.

Hey, Tom and Cecil, this is Brad in Louisiana. I was thinking about what you said about how the guy wanted to ban secularism, call it a religion, and then ban it from schools, like you could ban all religion from schools. And I think they should do that, because if you create it as religion and then ban secularism, what you get is more secularism. Thank you. Glory to God. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended.

The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. This is episode 178 of Cognitive Dissonance. And we have nobody on the show again.

And we're not even recording together. This is just like fucking total fail from the outset, Cecil. And I'm totally sober. The thing is, it's like really pretty much no matter what happens, guest-wise or where we record, it's really always bad. Yeah, but here's the thing, Cecil. Usually if we have a guest, that means you have somebody competent to lean on. Right, right. Yeah.

And no, man, it's just me and you. Yeah. We've got to fucking haul this thing out ourselves. I'm going to take a nap for a little while. incompetent to lean right right yeah and um no man it's just it's just me and you yeah we got to fucking haul this thing out ourselves i'm gonna take a nap for a little while tell me when we get there nobody would notice when we get to grandma's okay i'm turning this car around so fuck it man we may as well just fucking launch into the first story comes from the raw story which has a snazzy new look, by the way. It does. I noticed that today, too. Yeah. Look at that. The W in Raw and the S in story are like

mating or something up there, and then yeah, no pictures of scary clowns. Shit's getting real. The W's really giving it to the S. It's really giving it to the S. That's some deep probing going on right there. I hope the W is wearing protection.

That's all I'm saying. This isn't abstinence only. You know what's funny, too, is it has a picture, like a mine. It's got the fucking ad banner up top. Yeah. And it says, these foods kill your brain. And then it's got a picture of a rotten tooth. And I'm thinking, you don't know what brains look like.

What is that all about like the shocking video reveals nasa doctor's secret for improving brain health and what big pharma doesn't want you to shut up does it really say that yeah dude i'm reading that i kind of want to click shut the fuck it's just gonna ruin my computer mine is mine is a fucking furniture like mine is 70 off 70% off curated decor. So, like, I have a totally different one. Now, hold on a second. If ads are targeted toward a specific demographic based on, like, what your computer knows about you, your computer knows that you are a sophisticated individual living in a beautiful loft condo in the city and is trying to sell you curated decor. Or that my wife uses the computer on occasion.

in the city and is trying to sell you curated decor. Or that my wife uses the computer on occasion. My computer is like, this idiot doesn't know the difference between a brain and a tooth. And it is, although I will tell you that on the right-hand side it says, meet Muslim singles. Does it really? It does. It's pretty great. See, mine on the right-hand side, for me, mine has a video game. God damn it!

Mine thinks I'm fucking lonely with weird teeth. It's not that far off. Although I will say I would meet this single. All right. So the actual story, now that we've talked about the font and the ads, Bible-pushing Christians open the door for satanic activity books in Florida schools. So this is pretty great. So in Orange County, Florida, there was a decision that allowed public schools to disseminate

religious literature. So they were giving away Christian-oriented religious material in the schools. And so it was like, hey, the Satanists were like, look, if you can give away the Christian stuff, we can give away our awesome Satan activity books. And so they're giving away the Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities, which I think is pretty awesome. I wonder what kind of activities are in there. I wonder if summoning demons or something like that is actually in there, because that would be pretty awesome. I don't know, but it's got a great picture of like, there's like a happy boy

with like blonde hair and he's got a shirt with like a fucking goat head on it. And he's smiling and he's holding hands, you know, with a girl with like a fucking pentagram on her chest. They're like, yeah, we're fucking Satanists. You know, the Satanists have, I really have come around to the Satanists. At first I just thought they were

an annoying group of pretentious dickbags. But now I think that they're an annoying group of pretentious dickbags. But now I think that they're an annoying group of pretentious dickbags who are fucking with people that make bad laws and so I'm pro this annoying group of pretentious dickbags. They're your enemy's enemy. I know exactly how you feel.

I think that's great actually. And you know the Christians only have themselves to blame for this nonsense. Yeah absolutely because what they put into place is a way in which to insert religion into schools when it should be secular. And they're willing to compete in the marketplace of ideas with these children saying, look, we'd much prefer to be able to, you know, throw, paddle our material at them. you know, throw, peddle our material at them. And clearly what they're allowing is these children to get multiple people to multiple organizations to peddle their material at them.

And now the children get to make a choice on what they want to believe. And one of the things that they say in here, the Satanists are quoted here at the bottom and say, even as we prefer public policies respecting secularism, we feel that opportunities such as this to establish an equal voice of contrasting religious opinions in the public square tend to favor marginalized, lesser known and alternative religions. I am quite certain that all of the children in these Florida schools are already

aware of the Christian religion and its Bible. And this might be their first exposure these children have to the actual practice of Satanism. We think many students will be very curious to see what it has to offer. And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. I mean, clearly, clearly there are going to be some parents who are going to fucking flip their shit when their kid comes home with a Satanist book, though. Oh, man, absolutely. And they're counting on it. Right. I mean, let's be really clear. Like, the Satanists, of course, are doing this all tongue in cheek. So it's not that they necessarily want to proselytize within the schools. They're basically saying, look, proselytizing within a school is a bad idea. But what's smart about the whole program that they're undergoing here

is that they're basically going to make the Christians who fought so hard to get their bibbles handed out in the schools, now these same guys are going to have to fight themselves to get this shit pulled back. So they're making them do all the work. Yep. And they're making them spend all of the money and all of the resources. all of the money and all of the resources. It's a brilliant campaign of subverting their own ass-baggery right back at them. I love it. Because all it is is a resource dump.

That's all this is. Like, the Christians are going to fucking chase their tails. You know, because, of course, like you said, like, their goal is to establish a state religion and to teach kids in school and to, cause it's, it's, they don't even want freedom of religion. They want freedom for their religion. That's all that they want. You know, like they're not, they would, they would fight just as hard if somebody wanted to hand out Korans. I guarantee if somebody wanted to hand out fucking Korans, they would be fucking incensed. You show me how many Korans get handed out in fucking Mobile, Alabama. Oh, I know.

Yeah. They're just opening the floodgates now. So I think this is, I think it's going to be great when one of these kids comes home to their, you know, deacon father with their Satanist book in their fucking book bag. What are you learning in that Satanist public school? Actual Satanism, as it turns out. Like real honest to goodness Satanism. We it turns out. Like real, honest-to-goodness Satanism. We have to do something about the 11 million,

and some of them are valedictorians. Well, my answer to that is, and by the way, their parents brought them in. It wasn't their fault. It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They weren't all brought in by their parents. For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that they weigh 130 pounds, and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. So this next story comes from the Patheos blog site.

This is from Warren Throckmorton's blog, a college psychology professor's observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues. I'm sorry, observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues. I'm sorry, Throckmorton did not exactly roll off the tongue. Ken Ham headlines the Institute on the Constitution conference. So Ken Ham has recently accepted, remember when he accepted that dinosaur donation? Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah.

Relatively recently. Well, now he's going to headline an event, which is basically from the League of the South, which is a bunch of nutjobs who want to create like an all-white Christian South. They want to secede. A homeland. I just want to point out. I just want to say a homeland for whites of European heritage. That's been done before. Holy shit, dude.

You guys have, like, you just want to tell them, like, you know that didn't work the first time. Oh, my gosh. You wanted to do the same thing but own black people last time. That's the only difference. We called that the Civil War. You lost. That's kind of an unpopular opinion. This group, they want to secede. And it says, I want to read part of this. This is from their teachings and basically talking about who can be allowed as a citizen.

Loving thy neighbor means protecting their God-given rights as Exodus 12, 49 commands. That means preserving the structure of civil government from all who would pervert the civil government into agency of legalized plunder, whereby the God-given rights of no one should be safe and secure. This means, as we have seen in the commands of the scripture, that we restrict citizenship to those who are committed to the covenant of the disciples of Jesus Christ, are willing to submit themselves to serve in the roles of responsibility and choosing leaders and who preserve God's ordained order.

So basically they're saying, and also they want to extend that to jurors. So they want to say like, unless you're fucking Christian, you can't be in the military, which is what we talked about last week. But then you can't be a juror like they want to make sure that like they really are shoving Christianity down your throats. And it's like, I mean, at that point, I'm kind of happy that they go away if that's what we want their laws to be. Right. Well, they want to create what they want to do is create a fucking racist theocracy. Right. I mean, that's, that's really the goal. And it's, you know, you look at that and it's like,

it's no, it's no great surprise that Ken Ham would, would headline such an event. It's, you know, these, these people, they're a bunch of fucking lunatics who don't understand that a theocracy is a fucking bad idea. That it, that it actually reduces their rights, that a theocracy is a legal situation where nobody wins. Even if your group is the group

that happens to be in power, you're constantly at odds with all of the minority groups, which, you know, you have to find ways to control and to maintain control over. Theocracy is a terrible form of government. And, you know, it's not like you could have one thing and call it a Christian theocracy. We've talked about this. But there's no such thing as like one Christianity. You know, there's just like look what's happening in Iraq. You know, the Shia and the Sunni are, you know, constantly at odds with one another.

And, you know, differing times in differing parts of the world, one will, you know, have supremacy of arms over the other and strike out at the former. But you can't have a Christian theocracy. Would it be Catholic? Would it be Baptist? Would it be Southern Baptist? Would it be Reformed? Would it be Anglican, would it be Catholic? Would it be Baptist? Would it be Southern Baptist? Would it be Reformed? Would it be Anglican, Presbyterian? I mean, there is no such thing.

There are hundreds of different sects of Christianity out there. So how would you even establish a theocracy based on Christianity and then say, okay, guys, wouldn't you love to be at that fucking meeting? Like, okay, guys, now that we've got a fucking Christian theocracy, let's agree on one Christianity. Yeah. I'd rather order a fucking pizza for 100 teenagers. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

The story comes from MSN. The title of the story is, I am a 14-year-old Yazidi girl given as a gift to an ISIS commander. Here's how I escaped. So sad. It's just fucking sad. The Yazidi, if anybody didn't follow, the Yazidi is a minority religious group that lives in the mountains in Iraq. And of course, you know, these fucking lunatics and ISIS are traveling all over just being a bunch of

militant, unbelievably violent ass bags. They surrounded the mountain that these folks live on and they, you know, raped and pillaged and tortured and killed and murdered and did their usual ISIS nonsense. Um, until, I mean, really until fucking airstrikes kind of sent them packing a little bit. Um, but, uh, unsurprisingly they were, you know, taking young girls as young as 13, 14 and giving them away as gifts. Like they're just treating people as fucking cattle. Yeah. This girl wound up being basically it reads, you know, when you read it, I've seen a few movies on Nazi Germany. Right. I've seen a few movies on that and I've heard reports on that. I've read a few, I'm reading, I read a book called, uh, the, uh, rise and fall of the third Reich. So I know

a little bit about Nazi Germany and it reminded me very much of Nazi Germany when they came in and stripped the children away, put the men in one, the young men in one area, they took all the old women and men and put them in the other area. And then they took all the young girls and put them somewhere else. And they basically shot the guys because they didn't need the guys. They're like, whatever, we're going to can't use these guys. Then they took and, uh, and they put all the women, the old women and the old men, and they basically took them and said, give us all your money. And they fucking took all their money. And then they took all the young girls and then they just fucking rode away with them and they took one of the young girls a couple of them actually and gave them to two of their like leaders as a gift like just fucking like you know

like you would give a watch to someone right right you know and i mean doesn't that i mean isn't that just absolutely demonstrative of the value of women as currency within this culture? Yeah. You know, this religious culture? Because make no mistake, I mean, this is definitively the ISIS group. They may have some economic and military motives, but they are also definitively a religious organization. They're calling themselves the Islamic State. They set up a caliphate. You know, their system of laws is expressly Sharia, and they're murdering everybody

who does not belong not only to Islam, but to their specific sect of Islam. So there is absolutely no fucking argument to be made with any rational mind that this is not a religiously led, religiously motivated group of people. They may have other motivations as well as their religious faith, but their faith is absolutely pivotal in their movement and their motivation. I mean, all you have to do is just look at why these people were targeted. They were targeted because they worship, they they're like zoastrian or whatever they're like they are they worship a different ancient religion they're just of a different they are you know they live in the same general area as them and you know all they wanted to do was just find somebody to victimize that's all they wanted to do it wasn't about it's not about

like cleansing that area from people who are like political dissidents. It's taking people's stuff, selling people into slavery and shooting people who could possibly oppose them. That's not a you know, that's a that's an awful regime as it is. But then you throw into it the people that they're targeting are of a different religion. You can't hide behind that and be like, oh, well, you know, that's just a cultural thing. You know, that just that's a sociopolitical thing that we can't really talk about. Bullshit. This is I mean, it's it's in the fucking it's in the writing. And one of the things that that struck me about this is how they got away. So they basically are given to this guy. This guy tries to rape this 14 year old girl many times. She won't let him. So he beats the piss out of her basically every day,

feeds her one meal a day, locks her in a room. This is all according to her. Um, although I don't know that we have any reason not to believe her, you know what I mean? I mean, she seems like, you know,

this, after seeing the things that they've done, it's hard, it's hard to be like, Oh, well, you know, maybe she,

I don't think she's making this up. Right. Right. It's consistent with other news. Exactly. So like, so then she, she,

the guy finally leaves on business one dude leaves goes to uh prayer leaves the house them on them alone so they basically break the locks open with the knives run out of the house call somebody they know and then they get transported out back up to baghdad and they get up to Baghdad through checkpoints. And the reason why they're able to travel up through all these checkpoints is because they're in the niqab. They're hidden. They're essentially riding around with masks on. I know,

man. We can take the mask off because their religion won't allow it. It's the best place ever to like hide out. You know what I mean? You just, as long as you had a good fake id and you had a good story man you could just hide out over there and and travel your own religion is making it harder for you to find the people you don't like

it's so funny because you know my my thought when when i read that was it's like it's like a monster walking around in plain sight on Halloween. You know what he's like? No one can tell because everyone's dressed like... Everyone's wearing a fucking ghoul mask today. It's like a guy who actually does have a bolt in his head. Right, exactly. Like Frankenstein just walked around like... No, really, I really need some help.

This actually hurts a lot. Oh, great costume, Al. No, really, I'm in a lot of pain right now. You cannot understand how much this hurts. I am desperate for aid. Somebody's on fire. They run by like, man, that guy has a great costume. Look at that guy.

That's commitment to his costume. That's amazing. No, I really got stabbed by a two-handed sword. I need you to pull it out. Call 911, please. That blood looks so real. That is because it is coming from my heart. I need...

I need aid. Oh, man. Let's also point out from this story before we walk away from it that the 14-year-old girl was given to a cleric. Yeah, well. Again. I mean, like, everyone's a cleric. I didn't know what I was saying because everybody's a cleric. They're all clerics.

I mean, you can't fucking swing a dead cat over their head hitting a cleric. It's actually, it's funny because they actually have a similar Oprah program so it's just like, and you're a cleric? And you're a cleric? The whole crowd is like, ah! Because they all get to be clerics. That's awesome. Underneath everybody's seat is a

14-year-old girl. And you get a teenager? And you get a teenager? And the teenager's like, and what do we get? Raped? Oh. Oh, no. I want to read the last two paragraphs, though, because, I mean, we got to end on a sad note.

It says after she gets free, she finally gets back to her family. And her family, and she says, but there is more bad news to come. That's when I learned the Islamic State had shot my brother at the oasis where they had originally got captured. My sister-in-law, a very beautiful woman, is still captive somewhere in Mosul. Now I am trying

to come to terms with what happened. I can never again set foot in our little village, even if it's freed from the Islamic State because the memory of my brother who died would haunt me too much. I still have nightmares and What an awful fucking thing. I want to leave this country altogether. This country has no place for me anymore. I want to go to a place where I might be able to start over, if that is even possible. What an awful fucking thing. Because it's like, you know, the nightmare's over. Not really.

Yeah, no, you escaped, but... You know, you're fucking, you got PTSD now. Oh, and your brother's dead. Oh, and your fucking sister-in-law, she's probably got, she's at some other fucking Abu Hassan's house right now. Right. Yeah. She's been bought and sold and traded like fucking human baseball card. Allah, Akbar, Akbar, Allah, Akbar, Allahu, Akbar, just little Allah. Thank you, Chicago.

So speaking of ISIS, this story comes from ABC News. Islamic State Group issues new curriculum in Iraq. And the new curriculum, interestingly, is going to have a heavy focus on evolution, physics, the sciences, hard math. No, none of that's fucking true. Actually. What you're going to do is you're going to get a book given out to you by a guy in a head mask, a face mask. He's basically got a scarf wrapped around his face. And he's held it on gingerly to an M16, too.

So at the same time, I'll tell you what, their book return policy over there is very strict. It's very strict. No amnesty at that library. You think you've got a tough college kids at Barnes & Noble? Fuck you. Try reselling this one. Yeah, you know, although I will say the library is easy because you just

have to have... you don't have to have the Dewey Decimal System. That's confusing. You don't even have to alphabetize it's just one book it all starts with q yeah and it's it's the only book you're like i'm looking for something on like thermodynamics and they're like kill the heretic Yeah, so I really enjoyed the last Koran you gave me. Is there a second in the series, or is there anything else by that author? So, yeah, it is. Isn't that a crazy picture? The photo is like, he's got like, I've got guns and books, guns and books.

Who wants guns and books? I'll take whatever it is that doesn't get me shot. Whatever that book is, that's the one I'm reading. They're taking out a bunch of stuff. And what was the list? Where's that list? Read that list off that you found earlier, that stuff that they're not going to allow. Yeah, so there will be no art, no music, no history, no literature, no mentions of Christianity.

No history. No history. mentions of Christianity. No history. No history. Get a history. No history. I like the no history and no literature and no art and no music. And then it does say that also patriotic songs have been declared blasphemous. And they are tearing out certain pictures from the textbooks. And I have to say, like, you thought the fucking Texas school book system was contentious.

You know, you thought those debates got fucking real. Like, they're sitting around like they're like, well, what should we have in the history book? No history books. Oh, no history books. They don't even want to control the narrative. They didn't want to talk about it. They're just like, no, no, no. There is no narrative.

We have destroyed the narrative. All that stuff. And it, you know, the patriotic songs thing too, like they don't want anybody to like the state because they're going to reform it all. But I wonder if they'd eventually reinstate history and just be like, yeah, we're just going to read the Koran. Like every book, I mean, every kid over

there is singing a sigh of relief because every book's basically the Koran. So you could just be like, well, I're just going to read the Koran. Like every book, I mean, every kid over there is singing a sigh of relief because every book's basically the Koran. So you could just be like, well, I only need one book now to go to school. Your backpack's not heavy. You know, you don't have that problem of like, you know, every year they have those reports like kids' backpacks are too heavy. Well, not fucking anymore. You have literally one book and that's it.

Like, oh, do you have a Kindle version? You don't need it. Here's your fucking. We don't do technology or batteries or electricity. You know, we hear there's, there's always this, this, uh, sort of side complaint, like, well, you know, it's not fair. It's, it's unreasonable to judge a, a culture or a, a, a specific set of practices because, you know, these, these folks have not had the same opportunities and so on and so forth. And I agree to some extent that you have to take the context that a people grew up in into account. But let's look at what world are they building and who's doing the building. So who's doing the building?

The Islamic State is doing the building. Again, I'll say it again. A caliphate based on Sharia law. They are doing the building of a world. And the world that they're building. The building blocks, we have to remember, are AK-47s. Right. Everything is a gun.

It's either bullets, explosives, or a gun. Yeah. So how are they going to thrive in a modern world with an educational system that's based on a fucking 1,400-year-old book? How are they supposed to thrive? Where are their engineers going to come from? Where are their doctors? Their, you know, where is their technology infrastructure? Who's going to build it?

Who's going to do the work of a modern state in a modern world? This is not just like a bad idea because the religious zealots are in charge, but this is a bad idea because it's going to be so much more difficult for successive generations to progress in any meaningful way. And you'd be hard-pressed to tell me

that these fuckers don't know that. They're building this very intentionally. Sure. I mean, you know, we talked about it with other different types of cults, and I don't think that this is anything really different. I think it's a cult. It's just a big fucking cult, right?

Right. With forced participation. Yeah, exactly. With forced participation. But you basically have them removing any type of knowledge. You know? They want to isolate their group, keep them ignorant so that they keep following them

so that they don't know any better. They don't know any different. You want to take history away from them so they don't know if there was any better times in the past. Right, because there certainly were. That's the thing too. It's like there certainly fucking were. And literature as well.

Literature presents a diversity of worldviews and a diversity of opinions. Literature is dangerous. And a way to dream, right? A way to dream about something else. Oh, well, that's can't do that. Sorry. In 10 or 15 years, you know, when people are looking at Iraq and they're saying, you know, this country used to thrive economically.

It's at one point, you know, I mean, obviously after the first Gulf War, it hasn't because of a lot of. But at some point they're going to say, you know, it's not the, you don't get to blame it on the West anymore. This is the world you're building. Like this is your world you're building and you're building a world that says, fuck you to education. And anytime you build a world that does not respect the education of its youth, you're shitting on your future. the education of its youth, you're shitting on your future. So we're going to take a short break, give you some information on how to contact us and how to donate to the show. We'll be right back to finish out the program.

Want to contact the guys? Go to DissonancePod.com to get links to their Google+, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. If you want to contact them directly, send an email to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Do you want to support the show? Go to patreon.com. That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com forward slash dissonance pod pod or click the link on the podcast homepage and you can donate to the production of cognitive dissonance on a per episode basis if you can't spare any money take a second to give us a five-star review on itunes or stitcher or spread the word about the show we want to send a big heartfelt glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock.

So this story comes from slate.com when abuse is not abuse. Um, and, uh, so there's a much hullabaloo, uh, in the news about Adrian Peterson. I guess he's a football player who beat the hell out of his kid. Um, I did, I did read a little bit about that. He beat his fucking four-year-old kid. Yeah, it was-old kid pretty badly. Yeah, it was pretty awful. There was some, like, he beat him. What's crazy is, like, when they describe how he beat him, it was something like, beat him about the legs and the ass and the scrotum. And I'm thinking, what the what?

A four-year-old. And he beat him with a switch, which is like, you know, my dad actually used to get, he used to talk about having to go cut a switch. That's what his folks would do. And they'd go and cut a tree branch down. And the trick, he said, was always to cut a tree branch that would break, you know, an old dead piece of tree branch. He said because if you got a young green piece, they could just keep whacking you with it. It was like a whip, you know, burned.

So anyway, it sparked a lot of conversation. Adrian Peterson, you know, obviously it sparked a lot of conversation. Adrian Peterson, you know, obviously it sparked a lot of conversation. I did hear incidentally on NPR this morning that he's not going to be suspended from any games. He missed one game last week, I know, because he's on my fantasy team.

Sounds awful. But he missed one game last week, and he's going to be playing this week. They're not suspending him yet, because the court case has to go through, even though, I mean, there's clear images of it. But the reason why he's probably going to get away with it, Tom, is because Texas. And I mean, really, there's so many things that you could say

that end with because Texas. I know, man. It's almost like you could end the story there yeah you just be like because texas yeah um but one of the reasons why we want to talk about this not because adrian peterson is on my fantasy team uh but because uh the very fact is is that is that a lot of the people that are against removing child abuse laws uh and specifically corporal punishment laws outlaw specifically corporal punishment laws, outlawing corporal punishment for children,

they are religious. And this is weird. One of the things I had never heard is that Sweden outlawed corporal punishment in 1977 and since 40 countries have followed suit. I think that's, you know, as a kid who grew up getting walloped on, that feels really weird to me, um, that they would

outlaw completely that there would be no, uh, no corporal punishment for children. Um, but I, I mean, I, I don't know anything about raising children. I'm not a parent and I don't really know anything about it, but I will say this. I don't hit my cats. You know what I mean? Like I have, I have cats and when they do something wrong, I don't hit them cats you know what i mean like i have i have cats and when they do something wrong i don't hit them i don't i yell at them maybe i'll tell them to get away or whatever you know like just to try to scare them away from me so they don't come near me you know if they do something crazy but i never hit them so and if i'm not going to hit my cat i could probably guarantee that if i were to have a child, I would probably not hit my child either. Right. You know, the thing, the thing is that the opposition to stricter child abuse laws has

a biblical basis. Sure. And that's so problematic. You know, it's that fucking line in there, you know, about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. And it gets pointed to by fucking politicians who should fucking know better. And because those laws, because child abuse laws aren't tightened down and because we allow a certain amount of latitude, now we've got a gray

area. And I think Cecil, I think that's the, that's the issue, right? That's what like Sweden has pinpointed. They said, look, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm guessing here, but I don't think I'm that far off. I think that it's very difficult to give some latitude without giving like real hard specifics, you know? So if you say that, yeah, you can hit your kid, but it's with an open hand and it's only with this amount of four, how are you supposed to measure that? How are you supposed to police that? You know, you can hit a kid awful fucking hard and not leave a mark. Sure. You know, it just strikes me that that may be the most sensible way to protect children is to just take that off the table is because the fucking Bible thumpers are so enamored of that line in the goddamn book that says that, you know, we have to be able to beat our kids. We have to be able to spank them, swat them, smack them, hit them with fucking, I mean,

we've talked about stories where people following that line have beat their children to death because that line in that fucking book. And that's where that opposition to this comes from. You know, and this is another example too of really rich people getting off with stuff that other people probably can't. Right. You know,

if, if, if Joe Schmo beat his kid with a switch and they found out and they prosecuted him, there's a chance maybe even in Texas, he might still get that charge. He might still get thrown in jail. But this is not, you know, this is, they just have so much fucking money and so much, they're

just such heavy hitters that nothing's going to happen. I mean, he's had paid to pay $15,000 bail. That's a nothing for him. He walked right out of there, walked in and walked right out. He probably could have just sent a check. He probably could have just sent a check. You know, the conservatives are so aggressive about their support for corporal punishment that Senate Republicans blocked America's ratification of the U. the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, designed to stop child trafficking, prostitution and pornography and the use of children in military conflicts. And that's because conservatives believe that it would outlaw spanking.

to swat their kids than to stand up in front of the world and say, you know what? We need to put a stop to child trafficking, prostitution, pornography and child soldiers. It's more important than I be able to fucking smack my kids around.

And it doesn't even talk about that really, which is funny in the UN thing. It doesn't even talk about that. And it says the only two people that haven't ratified the treaty are the United States and Somalia. That is fucking unreal. That is absolutely unreal that that would be the case. And, you know, Cecil, you're right.

This guy's going to throw money at it. The article says he's got plenty of room for optimism because he's not going to do anything that would shock the conscience of a Texas jury. The idea that you would beat a child on the scrotum with a stick, if that does

not shock the conscience of a jury, it shocks me. I would be fucking, I would be appalled if somebody did that to an animal. I don't even want to go there. I don't want to go there. I want to talk about an animal. What if you did out I did that to Finn? I don't even want to go there. I don't want to go there. I want to talk about an animal. What if you did it to your dog?

I would be upset. I would be like, what the fuck is wrong with you, dude? Did you just beat your dog with a stick on his balls? Like, I mean, I couldn't even imagine someone doing that to an animal. Animal. Hello, Napa. Hello, Napa. Hello, Napa. So this story comes from 570news.com, which is evidently a radio station. Associated Press, more than 5,000 dead in Central African Republic before UN peacekeeping mission comes. 5,000 dead in Central African Republic before UN peacekeeping

mission comes. So in the Central African Republic, there is a conflict going on, Cecil, between the Christians and the Muslims. And it is not going well for anyone. Jesus. Yeah, there's like fucking people fucking thrown in giant fucking pits

of bodies. Yeah. This story is a tough one to read through, man. It's like the violence is so extreme. It's fucking machete hacking and... Oh, I know. I mean, it's just... It's rough, man. It's really

rough. And what I want to point out is that this shit doesn't get any attention from the press. And I think it's because it's in Africa. I mean, not a lot of attention. I mean, clearly we're reading an article from the AAP, right? So it's getting some attention.

But it's certainly, I mean, you know, I'm just going to go to CNN real quick. I'm just going to look and see what's on their front page. I mean, what the hell? Why does it take a look? Cardiac arrest said to follow biopsy. There's something about a doctor taking a selfie um joan rivers's face her giant fucking cat looking stretched face is on the

front um so feds new york stone store owner funded isis i'm looking here for... I'm just going to do a search. Let me just do a control F Africa. A, F, R. No, sorry. There's no Africa on the front page at all. Yeah, everything I look up, even when I look up news in Africa, you know, I get the Pistorius verdict. I get Ebola.

I get the Pistorius verdict and I get Ebola. Where's this happening? What's the state that this is happening in? Central African Republic. Nope. So it's not, I mean, the front page of CNN, not there. I'm sure you could find it. I'm sure you could dig for it.

But nobody cares that 5,000 people are dying in this thing and being shoved into mass graves after they've been macheted to death. That's a rough way to go. That really is. I mean, of the ways to go, I want to make sure I avoid being a cutlet. I just want to avoid it. I'm more of a fillet man myself. Look, I'm more of a shank guy. Cut me off down there, give me a peg leg, and then we'll call it a day.

But once you start hacking up the old other vital bits, I'm not really interested. Actually, you know, I'd like to just be brains. Just hit me in the head. Let's call it a night. I don't want to survive that thing. You know, let's just go right on the top. You know, it's so crazy because, like,

the UN is not even recording civilian deaths. It's not. They're not even, they're not. They threw their fucking hands up in the air like, fuck it. Who cares? It's like, eh, it's a lot. not even they're not so it's like hands up in there like fuck it it's a lot i don't know it's the who gives a shit you know it says right in here it says the un is not recording civilian death on its own unlike in iraq and iraq and afghanistan um why why not like there's a religious war going on between the Christians and the Muslims that keep killing each other. And then fucking, you know, then there's reprisals and then there's, you know, these mass murders and these village raids and burning of houses and people, you know, running into the bush and hiding for their lives in fear, quaking for days, hoping not to get found and macheted or shot.

for days hoping not to get found and macheted or shot, you know, as their wives and their children are murdered around them and their husbands are murdered around them. 5,000 people dead. And, like, I found the fucking article by accident. You, like, accidentally stumble onto the article. Like, wait a minute. They're doing what? It really was like that. I was like, this isn't, what's going on?

I actually, you know what I did? When I found the article, I fucking checked the date like three times to make sure. I was like, I'm not getting bamboozled again. Nope. Not going to happen. It's fucking madness down there, man. Am I making this stuff up?

I mean, that's what the time's going into. And so if this is not what your time is going into, ladies, you need to re-evaluate the time that you're putting into your household. That's your main job. So the story comes from Right Wing Watch. Barb Wire content editor and columnist Gina Miller.

She was the guest on Mission America, and she and the illustrious Linda Harvey. So they had some, Linda Harvey and Gina Miller had some things to say, Cecil. They did. They wanted to talk about them slutty women's. So let's play what they had to say when they're talking about them sluts. Feminism has a foundation.

In fact, it's not just feminism. It's the entire platform of the left has this hatred for males, especially white males, as you know. And so we have seen this for many, many decades. I watch old movies and I listen to old time radio shows. Even back in the 50s, it was beginning. You can see portraying the father of the family is dumb and stupid while the wife and the kids are smart. This stuff has been going on for a long time and the feminists are capitalizing on it. And now there is just this palpable hatred for men. And, of course, as you point out, and as I do in my column, it's always wrong.

Actual rape is a terrible thing, and no one is saying that these men are not accountable. But I, at the same time, hold women responsible for when they put themselves, present themselves in slutty attire at a drunken frat party and then expect these frat boys to behave like gentlemen. It's nonsense. Okay, that's enough of that. That's really, there's more, but I'm done. I mean, that's enough of that.

I guess Malcolm in the Middle, I didn't realize Malcolm in the Middle was anti-men. I didn't realize that. It was three boys and a man, and one woman star of the show, but it's anti-men because the man is kind of a doofus and the boys are smarter. Right, yeah. Well, I mean, you should have fucking picked up on that.

I don't know how I didn't pick up on the war on white men. Yeah. It's a huge war that nobody knows about because it's not true. Yeah, I guess it's been being waged against me for quite some time. Man, you've just been repelling those attackers. It's so easy. Like, they fucking, they try to scale the wall of my girth

and they're like... All you have to do is laugh once and they're like, Earthquake! The problem is they can't get past the oil spills, you know, as they try to climb up giant pizza grease that they try to slip. They slip right on it. You know, one of the things that she says here,

and I want to talk about this. She talks about, she says, actual rape is a terrible thing. And then she says, but at the same time, I hold women responsible when they put themselves, present themselves in slutty attire at a drunken frat party and expect those frat boys to behave like gentlemen. The difference between telling

someone that they did something that was not of good judgment and holding them responsible is a very different thing, right? You can, I think that you could, you could tell someone, you know, you'd be like, oh man, that was, you know, that wasn't the smartest thing to do, you know, to go to a, you know, a frat party and look like slutty and not watch your drink or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like you could maybe say that, although it's a shitty thing to say to someone but to say you're responsible for what another person decided to hurt you and you're responsible for that that's an awful backward stupid fucking thing to say because it's never the person's want to be attacked it's never my want to get my car stolen regardless of if i own a ferrari or a geo metro you. It's never my want to get my car stolen, regardless of if I own a Ferrari or a

Geo Metro. You know, it's never my want to have that to happen to me. I want to keep my property. I want to keep my person safe. If I happen to be a little lax on my judgment based on what could happen to me, that's my own get out. Now, maybe I don't deserve any blame for that because it's not me controlling what someone else does. What she's doing in one sentence, she's not only when she says there's a war on men, well, you just waged it, lady. You said that men can't control themselves,

that men are too stupid and too primitive and too idiotic around women that if a woman is in slutty attire that they are so out of control that they will just fucking dry hump whatever walks in the room so you're waging the war on me she's like she's like on the front line of this false war you know like you know and what good would it do like to a woman who has been the victim of a sexual assault? Like, what good would it do to be like, well, you know, you were wearing a tight skirt. Be like, great.

Thanks. That was fucking helpful. Right. Like, how does that how does that fucking assist somebody? No, it doesn't at all. Provide them like any kind of comfort or solace. Like, are they supposed to like, do you like, all that is is just a way to shame somebody. And that's totally and grossly unnecessary.

And you're right. It treats, you know, the problem with that kind of a mindset is it treats both genders as if they have no agency, right? It treats men like they are subject to some base primal urge to just rampantly have sex with anything that they can find regardless of consent, which is not true. It ignores the real facts of rape, which is that, you know, most women know their attacker. Most women are not raped by, it's not stranger rape, you know. That is a much, of all the rapes that occur, stranger rape is the least common of the rapes that occur. But that's like the one that they seem to fall back on every time is this, you know, scenario, which is actually the minority of sexual assaults that occur against women.

So, you know, it's, and then to blame women for like, yeah, you fucking dressed in a tantalizing fashion. Like, boy, what a slippery slope that would be. Like, what's tantalizing to one person or not another person? Are women, you know, in Islamic countries who were first to cover up head to toe, are they not raped? Of course they are. You know, it has nothing to do with what somebody is wearing as to whether or not somebody is sexually assaulted. is wearing as to whether or not somebody is sexually assaulted. Like the fact that somebody happens to be wearing something provocative does not increase the likelihood of their being assaulted.

It's just, it's not, it's not a fucking factor. And that you would go on and on the record and just be like, well, you know, men are actually the ones who are the victims here. Yeah. Like it's, it's a fucking, it's a war on dudes. It's a fucking, it's the easiest war are the victims here. Yeah. It's a fucking, it's a war on dudes. It's the easiest war I've ever fought. Yeah. Because everywhere I go, I assume my own personal safety.

Don't you assume your own personal safety in 99% of all encounters in your life? And not just that. I assume my own personal safety of my own person. And I also have the biggest safety net underneath me. I have a huge safety net underneath me. I have a huge safety net underneath me. I have a, you know, it's, it's, it's a lie. It's a joke. It's, it's a way in which to say, I mean, she basically says that everything they say, everything this other side says is a lie. It's like, I mean, come on. Not everything they say is a lie out of everything you disagree with,

but that doesn't necessarily make it a lie. One of the things that I, I, I was just thinking about, and this is, I don't know how interesting this is, but well, I used to live rurally, right? I used to live in a rural area of like, that's outside of Chicago by about 70 miles, right? Um, so it's not in the Chicago city proper. It's not in the Chicagoland area. You have to get, you have to travel through some farm fields in order to get to it. And out there, there's just tons of farm fields. I know people who leave their keys in their car. They leave their car running when they go into the jewel. They, uh, they leave their doors open. They, you know, basically the entire town, if you were a criminal, you could just walk up and just steal something or whatever.

I mean, you could really just take whatever the hell you wanted. And if you were to ask those people, you were to say to them, you'd be like, hey, man, you just got your car stolen. You left your keys in there. You're going to do that again? They'd be like, well, I don't want to live in a world where I can't do that, is what they would probably respond with. I know that's what they respond because I've had this conversation with many people out there. And the same thing applies here, right? A woman should be able to wear whatever she wants because you don't want her to live in a world where immediately you think,

oh, I've got to somehow guard myself. I don't want to live in a world where women think that they can't wear whatever they want whenever they want and somehow not feel safe. want and somehow not feel safe. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, you know, it's like, it's that question we've asked on the show, like, does this build the society we want to live in? Like where we, where we victim blame? Is that, is that the best way? Is that the most conducive way to build a society that we want to live in, that we want our wives and our daughters and to walk around in? Like, or would we rather build a better society than that and is there a better way and there is a better way it's by fucking not victim blaming and it's like it's crazy that these women are the ones doing it you want answers i

think i'm entitled you want answers i want the truth you can't handle the truth so this story comes from the daily mail jailed televangelist and and accused rapist Jim Baker is back in business, Cecil. This guy, this is the guy who was married to Tammy Faye Baker. Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah, oh, God. Because she had that, like, famous scene where she was crying and weeping and, like, her whole head was running. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Like a fucking dissolving Play-Doh. Her face, good Lord, she looks like a fucking horror show. He's back in business hawking survival kits? So weird. I don't know what's happening here. And the amount of money you have to pay for these things is outrageous. And did you see what you get for it? Yeah, nothing.

You get like nothing. You get a bag of nothings. Well, you get seven years of food for three thousand dollars but it's all the same thing it's it's beans it's like a black bean burger mix for three thousand dollars what i thought and i read through it a couple times to see if i can find it um and i couldn't find whether or not he's talking about, he's not talking about the end times. I don't know if he is or not. It doesn't say, cause I haven't watched any of his broadcast. So I don't know whether or not he's talking about the end times here. He said, he's talking about

disaster striking. So when disaster strikes, this is when you need this stuff. And he's got, you know, he's got basically these little survival kits that are you know exorbitantly expensive you know fucking 13 packs of ponchos so you get a canteen 13 packs of ponchos thermal blankets a glow stick and whistles for 500 bucks it's basically a bunch of shit you can buy at the dollar store jesus yeah exactly and then they just package it and then they sell it to people. A bunch of freeze-dried foods. You could become like a 90 servings of food a month and they're all like freeze-dried

for 50 bucks a month. And he's basically just trying to sell you these weird kits, like an EMP bag. So in case there's like a fucking EMP bomb goes off, you'll have the opportunity to get what's in this little bag you put maybe what if you put your cell phone in there yeah but then all the cell towers got

emped well yeah i mean like and then the other thing too is like if you put in specifically if you put in like because they're saying like any kind of solar flares or emp attack i don't even know that that would work because it says there's a copper mesh and i'm wondering what would copper somehow block a solar flare i don't even know that it would work but inside of says there's a copper mesh and I'm wondering what, would copper somehow block a solar flare? I don't even know that it would work, but inside of it there's like an iPad and like a little external hard drive or something. Yeah, I mean you wouldn't be able to

charge the iPad though. You get one charge and it wouldn't connect to the internet because the servers would all be down. So you better just look at all your downloaded porn. Right, it's basically just like a fapper at that point. You may as well just go with the fucking old school magazines. Right.

You know? My survival kit would look a lot different. My survival kit would basically just be like a flashlight, a bag of lube, one shotgun shell. You know what I mean? I'm not looking to make it past day three. Yeah, exactly what it would be.

It would be like, yeah, a revolver in there and a couple of bullets, and that's really it. Yeah, I love the idea that he's back, you know, because what it really proves is that if you can make some money for these people, it has nothing to do with whether you're a good person, right? Because this is like a guy who, if he was in any other career, would have been fired and would not be able to get another job, like in the same field.

But now he's back somehow. He's like, well, whatever, I'm fucking back. Let's sell some fucking fear kits for the fearful. So he's selling fear kits for the fearful, and it's like, great. Is he making money? Sure. Welcome in, brother. We forgive your sins the fearful and it's like, great. Is he making money? Sure. Welcome in brother. We forgive your sins.

Look at that. Glory, glory. Hallelujah. It's raining money. I mean, sin or fucking forgiveness or whatever. Yeah. Well, I'm always shocked. I'm always shocked at the priests that do something, you know, like,

like let's say Peter Popoff, right? There's a guy right there selling debt, get out of debt free holy water or whatever. But before he was doing, using Jesus as a way to get people to give him money and lie to them.

And he's found out. People find him out. I mean, they're like fucking, yeah, you did this shit. And then, you know, 10 years later, he's back and doing similar shit and you're just like wait didn't you not pay attention didn't you even fucking google search this guy

before you bought tickets to him i i don't understand how these priests who have these meltdowns and i remember his meltdown and he's like that was a great picture of him like crying here as he's being dragged away very funny picture of him because you look at all these people that you know they're basically just bilking the public so i'm happy when these people suffer i don't care i'm a bad person but i don't care you're not a bad person they're fucking liars man and then you know he's banging his secretary uh you know him and somebody else i guess we're banging the secretary from what I was reading. This is just a guy who's clearly, he's been in federal prison. He's done some awful shit.

Fraud. I mean, he had fraud. And he owes tons of money. But instead, they're basically like routing this money through a church. They're routing it. You know, they're basically legally getting away with stealing because there's no way that they can prove that he has the money. You know, it's like, oh, well, it's fucking belongs to somebody else, whatever. And then he's just selling all this crazy shit that people don't need.

Let's look at some of these things he's selling. Because I particularly like the Extreme Survival bottle. Yeah. It's just a bottle. That's 50 bucks. It's $50. That's 50 bucks, bro. It's like a fucking water bottle. It's like a Nalgene a bottle. That's 50 bucks. It's $50. It's 50 bucks, bro. It's a fucking water bottle.

It's like a Nalgene water bottle. Well, I think it probably might clean the water or whatever, but it's like one of those fucking, I don't know, fucking those straws, those... Like a life straw. Like a life straw or something. Yeah, maybe it has a life straw in it. It doesn't say.

You know, I'll tell you what. I wouldn't fucking put my life on the line with any of this shit. No, and how about the fucking enema kit? Like, where does that come in? You know, it's disaster is struck, but you don't want to pass up your enema. I mean, hey, you gotta have a good time.

The end of the world is coming, but it doesn't mean we have to have a fucking dirty ass. I wonder if he is hawking the coming but it doesn't mean we have to have a fucking dirty ass yeah i let's i wonder i wonder if he's if he is hawking the uh the the apocalypse based on christian scripture though i wonder if he's sort of pushing that and being like well you're gonna have to survive what do you if he is and i don't know if he is but if he is doing that and that's his angle he's basically saying

to his parishioners none of you are going going up. You're going to have to fucking wait that shit out down here. So here's some fucking MREs to get you through. Yeah, no rapture for you. It's not going to happen. I love looking at his 20 years of food. So it's like bulk staples. Coconuts. That's not a bulk staple, though.

It's just like a separate line item in the budget there. Fruit, because, you know, fruit keeps. That's not a bulk staple, though. It's just like a separate line item in the budget there. Fruit, because, you know, fruit keeps. Monthly, what does it say? Monthly something, I don't know. Vegetables, some fucking meals. And then one of them, this is my favorite one. Desserts.

Desserts. Because in the apocalypse, like, everything is gone to hell. There's no grocery stores. It's fucking raining locusts with fucking angry helmets. Oh, my gosh. And you're like, oh, God, the world is totally gone to hell. There's no grocery stores. It's fucking raining locusts with fucking angry helmets. And you're like, oh god, the world has totally gone to shit. I could totally go for an ice cream sandwich, though. I'll tell you what. I gotta go to this site really quick. Hold on a second. Oh, don't go. You're gonna get like

all the fucking computer diseases, man. I have a vast I'm okay. So, two extreme survival bottles. You could buy one for $50, but two for $57. Oh, well, shit. The second one's only seven bones? Yeah. What's the survival bottle do? What does it say?

So it's BPA free. Good. It's an alternative to bottled water. In recent years, bottled water has come in increased scrutiny because of plastic bottles leaching. Millions of barrels of oil each year are used to produce and transport bottled water. So basically they want you to fill it up.

It's got a filter in it. The advanced filter is made of the same media as the standard filter in the addition of the EPA-approved ionundated resin, which has been proven effective in the removal of bacteria and virus to six logs. I don't know what that means. It removes 90% of fluoride. So there you go. Well, good. So in the apocalypse, you'll have cavities. Yeah, how it works.

And then filter capacity, you could change your filters. Now, the proceeds from this donation will go towards the completion of Lori's house. And Lori's house is a refuge that will give women faced with abortion the support they need to be able to choose life for their unborn babies. Lori's house will also bring restoration

to those who have suffered abortions so that they may become women of destiny God created them to be. The Bible says that the pure and undefiled religion is to help orphans and widows in their distress. And we know one way to touch their heart. We know this is the one way to touch their heart uh and you know we know the we know this is the one way to touch their heart of father god to touch the heart of father i don't even know how

that's fucking written that's a really weirdly written thing so that's that's what the water bottles i mean look you're not just getting water bottles but you're giving to someone uh someone's house who suffered abortions. How is a woman faced with an abortion? It's not like a woman's like, oh, what's going on, guys? We brought you here Surprise! For a surprise

abortion. We're having an abortion intervention. We've noticed, we can't help but notice, your pregnancy has affected me negatively in the following ways. You've gotten fat. So we want to thank our patrons. We want to thank Sam, Luke, Jeremy, and Drew.

Thank you all very much for your generous donations. Your donations go a long way to making sure the podcast happens, so thanks all so much. And thank you to all our other patrons. We're very excited to be using some of those funds to be putting on the fan appreciation picnic, the FAP that's coming up very soon.

So if you want to get tickets for that, just remember that you have to go to our website, dissonancepod.com. Either on episode 178, 177, or 176, there should be a link on all three of those episodes, actually, and you should be able to follow it. Go to the Eventbrite and reserve a space so Tom and I can make sure we get enough food for everyone.

And we're looking forward to seeing and meeting you all on October 4th. I have to say, Cecil, I do love a good fab. And I imagine I'm not the only one. Yeah, I'm sure lots of people are going to enjoy this. It looks like the current guest list is right around 50 at this point. So that's 50 people worth of food or approximately one lunch for me. Or half a tom. Right.

It's basically a midday snack. But the thing is, it's half a tom, but it's a Tom. Right. It's basically a midday snack. But the thing is, it's half a Tom, but it's a quarter Cecil. All right. So we got a couple of messages, and we wanted to make sure we talked to some people who sent us some email. We got a bunch of messages about the reporting and confidentiality based uh the story that we did last time we talked about it for a little bit um and most of the stuff that they that they that people had sent really talked about uh how it it's protecting people from certain things but there's there's you know obviously they won't open up if they won't have an opportunity to do that. If they, if people don't like say that there's going to be a

confidentiality agreement between the counselor. Um, but I think we're both still standing where we stand before where any violent crime seems like it's stupid. Cause I really don't care if somebody who commits a violent crime needs to find, needs to get help. Like that doesn't bother me. I'm like, whatever, you're a violent criminal. You know, it seems to me that you can draw a reasonable line in the sand. You know, you can say, you know, whatever you say here will be kept confidential unless you disclose to me evidence or specific details of either a future violent crime or a past violent crime that you've committed. I think most people are not guilty of violent crime. So most people will still be able to avail themselves of mental health services without any fear of disclosure.

Yeah. The people who would not be able to avail themselves of mental health services without fear of disclosure would be people who are violent criminals of their, and it's not me judging them, it'd be of their own thinking, right? They would have to be the one who's like, oh fuck. As a person who has perpetrated a violent crime, I feel uncomfortable going to this mental health professional. Because I can't mention it. Right.

You know, I kind of like, you know, if somebody's like, oh man, I feel, I can't feel bad that somebody doesn't have access to mental health resources if they are walking the streets free. And they have a guilty conscience. And they, yeah, they feel fucking bad for, you know, beating up their grandma. I just don't feel like, man, maybe you should be in jail and then we'll give you mental health resources, but you also face justice. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. So it was interesting to get those messages, though, and we thank everybody who sent them. We also got several anecdotes from people who had been homeschooled or haven't been homeschooled, and they ranged. They went from somebody posted on our Patreon site and said that that wasn't the case, that they were recently at a place where a bunch of people were being recognized because they were excelling in homeschool. We never said that they wouldn't. We never said that that's not possible.

Hell, I don't even know what the numbers are because I tried to do some real research on it this week to see what the numbers actually were for homeschooled kids who get into college. And the problem is that it's homeschool kids, a lot of homeschool kids will wind up going to college or going to high school a little bit in order to get a transcript

so they make it easier for college entrance just because it's just easier to handle. We actually got an email from someone this week and they said basically the same thing. They said, well, I've been trying to get into college, but there's not even, like to try to fill out an online form that says homeschool is very difficult because there's no such thing. They said, well, I've been trying to get into college, but there's not even like to try to fill out an online form that says homeschool is very difficult because there's no such thing.

And they're like, so they're having difficult times based on that. They don't have transcripts. So clearly there is some negatives to getting homeschooled, but they're clearly the person posted some positives. I'm not saying one way is better than the other. All I was saying was it's a hard job. and to just be able to pass that out to anybody who wants to do it without any kind of checks or balances, I would imagine that you're not going to get 100% success rate across the board. Well, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it was very difficult for you to research. And that's because there's nobody checking. You know, when I send my son to school, there are people that are checking on his progress.

They check on his progress. They report on his progress. He tests. Now, it's an imperfect system. In fact, in some cases, it's a deeply imperfect system. But a system is always going to give you more data than no system at all. And the problem with homeschooling is that it's no system at all. You may be doing a phenomenal job. You may be a person who can bring a tremendous amount of

intellect and resources to bear to the education of your children. However, you may on the other side of the scope, be just letting your kids play fucking video games and ride their bikes all day. Sure. And one of the, one of the things too, is there's, there's going to be selection bias too, right? So one of the things that you could probably try to find is how many homeschooled kids took a standardized test when they left to try to get into college, right? Like ACT or SAT. Sure. And then you could measure those things based on that. But you're only self-selecting the people that went on to college, right? Exactly. You're self-selecting those numbers. The same thing goes with kids that are at an awards ceremony.

You know what I mean? Like the kids that are at awards ceremony, they're self-selected as kids that excelled. There are people that are doing a great job and there's people that are doing a bad job. And like Tom said, the problem is the regulation on it. I just don't I I personally have have a lot of anecd myself, personally in my own past, as well as with, you know, my family's past and things that I recognize that homeschooling is not a thing that I would put a lot of trust in. I haven't seen a lot of success from homeschoolers based on my particular anecdotes. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be successful.

It just means that I've only witnessed ones that were unsuccessful. We got an interesting message about the Los Angeles area. This is from Eric, and he sends us a link to the Atlantic, and it talks about how there's a wealthy L.A. school district that their their vaccination rates are as low as South Sudan's. And it's a lot of Hollywood parents are basically saying no to vaccines and their kids are getting whooping cough because of it. Yeah. It's particularly of interest that these high risk outbreaks take place within upper middle class communities, you know. And so here you've got some of the, you know, worldwide, when you look at a worldwide perspective, some of the wealthiest people in the world. And they have vaccination rates comparable to some of the poorest people in the world. And it strikes me as no lack of irony there. That, like, in South Sudan, I would imagine that these fucking vaccines would be very much welcome.

That not getting whooping cough would be fucking very much welcome. much welcome. But, you know, we're purposely behaving and creating a third world country within enclaves of, you know, upper middle class America. And it's pushing things like measles and mumps and whooping cough back into the public sphere. And what a fucking shame that is. Yeah. And it's and it And it's all on bad data. It's all on false science. And it really is. You know, when you talk about privilege, it's a disease of the privileged. You know what I mean? Absolutely.

It's the disease of the privileged. That is, you know, it's no accident that the United States has tons of problems with obesity because of, you know, privilege, right? We have the ability to eat and eat and eat as much as we want, as many calories as we want to pound down in a day. You could just go out and just fucking choke down as much food as you possibly can, like a fucking bird eating a frog, you know? But, you know, and there's problems. There's clear problems with that. The same thing here. It's, it's a, it's a level of privilege that allows you to, you know, you're not just focused on all the vital things. You're able to fucking let your mind wander and go to like, well, do these doctors really know what they're talking about? And then fucking do your university of Google research. And then suddenly, you know, tons of kids, tons of kids are getting this whooping cough

and they're going to have other problems too because clearly they're not getting other vaccines. So what happens when the measles outbreaks? What happens when other things, you know, pop in there? That's just an awful, awful thing. And I'll say as an aside, I just finished a very interesting book on vaccination and the history of vaccination and the anti-vax movement.

It's called The Panic Virus. So if anybody's interested, check it out. I thought it was a great read. I enjoyed it very much. It had some very stirring and compelling anecdotes of people who chose not to vaccinate and then other people who were the unfortunate victims of not having sufficient herd immunity. And then it had just a tremendous amount of data about, you know, kind of the story, how the anti-vax movement started, where that came from, how it's not data driven, how it's not data supported. It was an excellent read. It's called The Panic Virus. I would recommend it highly. It's called The Panic Virus. I would recommend it highly.

We got a message from Travis, and Travis's image is Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater. So you've already won my heart, Travis. It says, he says, I recently listened to the What the Fuck podcast with Jay Baker. We just talked about Jim and Tammy Faye earlier. And he said he gives a very interesting account of how Pat Robertson got the 700 Club program worth a listen. I've never listened to What the Fuck with Mark Marin, so I will give this one a listen. It's episode 530. I've got to get on it, though, because Mark

shuts down his older episodes, so I've got to make sure I listen to it soon. But thank you for the tip. Finally, we got a message, and this is an image, from Nicole. Nicole says, I was introduced to your podcast and a few others a few months ago by my dad, a big fan of yours. I volunteer at a museum archives building, and I'm usually surrounded by some pretty

devout old ladies who often ask me faith-related questions. A few years of dodging them from one religious grandmother, I can deflect them quite quickly and politely and get back to work. She says, I usually listen to your podcast while working on college assignments. The other day, while in Tim Hortons with one earpiece in, I had to bite my tongue to keep quiet while you two went on about when Tom was a quasi Methodist. At the same time, I could hear Miley Cyrus's wrecking ball. And she says, why is that still a thing over the PA? And I grabbed a piece of paper and doodled the combination of the two.

And I give you the result. Quasi Tom, the hunchback and his wrecking ball. And it's just a wonderful little doodle picture. It's pretty great. Tom swinging on a wrecking ball. And I'm telling you what, that is really just a great portrait of you. I think you look better here than you do on your driver's license. I think you look better here than you do on your driver's license. I look a lot better here than I do on my driver's license.

This actually, the Quasimodo version of myself is not only unduly flattering, but I am struck in wonder and awe at the load-bearing nature of the rope supporting that belt. No, that's not a rope. That's steel cable. That's steel. Unless it's fucking carbon nanotubes, it's not holding me up. Look, man, the Golden Gate Bridge is held up with some steel cables, too. So I think you could, you know, the weight limits, it's testing the tensile strength,

but it's certainly not breaking it. It sways gently when I rock on that thing. We can't see this rope connected to anything, so it could be snapped above you. It's actually just God holding it, actually. It's the only way. Can God create something so heavy even he can't lift it? I'm testing that theory every day. They are testing that myth right now.

So that wraps it up for another episode. We will be back next week, and we will leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative,

acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Mata nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conc or of the local dairy council. Outro Music