Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 493: The Family

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

We watched The Family.   Thoughts?

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. 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 live from GlorHole Studios in Chicago this is Cognitive Distance 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 mat. This is episode 492. Uh, sorry, it was delayed a little bit. This is episode 493. Thanks. And this is a special Thursday release. We are going to be reviewing Family Guy. Now, this has been around for a long time. There's a talking dog and a baby. Talking baby. The baby wants to kill his mother, and we're not 100% sure why. So let's talk about the family I'm doing. I'm basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through and just talk about individual things that happen on the screen. So as I go, I'm just going to go through and read off sort of what I thought was the highlight of the moment.

And we're going to go through the synopsis of it first so we're going to talk about the synopsis tom and i will stop here and there but not really get in depth until we finish the synopsis then tom and i are going to talk about sort of what the major over overarching themes are of this piece i i do this because i don't want to lose track because this documentary is a shotgun there's just a million things coming at. And if I don't talk about each one of them, we're going to miss them. And so, and I'll be perfectly frank, there's not, when we get to the end

and it's not going to be a big surprise, there's not a huge like, these things are all connected to this one thread thing. So I'm going to be reading stuff off that you can be like, well, that didn't, okay. I didn't, so that was on the screen for a minute, but the whole thing is based off a book by this guy, Jeff Charlotte. Now, Jeff Charlotte is the screen for a minute. The whole thing is based off a book by this guy, Jeff Charlotte.

Now, Jeff Charlotte is the author of two books. They're both about the family. And in this movie, he's dramatized by Budget Peter Parker. I mean, there's no other way to put it in there. I didn't even think about that. He is Budget Peter Parker. And he, in this, he talked about Jeff's origin story as sort of his mom gets cancer, and then a bunch of people visit his mom, and they all have different faiths.

And so he gets intrigued by different faiths. And so he becomes a writer and journals a lot about religion. And he winds up talking to this guy who comes back to New York and his parents want, the parents of this guy are like, Hey, he's in a cult. You should check this guy out. Talk to him a little bit. Cause we're worried about him. He's in DC and he's in a cult. And this guy, um, this guy, he's, he's, here's what he says. This is a quote. He's in this group. It's like a fraternity kind of it's called the family and quote just a bunch of guys living together and quote that sounds a little

gay i don't want to say it sounds like super gay but so much like so i think unintentionally so much of the language this is like just a bunch of dudes wrestling and playing basketball living in the same house yeah and ignoring their girlfriends it's like it's so unintentionally homosexual i know right it's crazy you you fall in the whole time i'm watching it i'm just like there's gonna be a bunch of lines i'm gonna call out or i'm gonna be like that sounds a little gay so much of it but i i quoted it out because i wanted to make sure so he tells him about this this group of guys we're just a bunch of guys who like to wash stuff together with our shirts on and we do this at the car wash they're all playing basketball

and wrestling with each other and how can we all be skins? But he decides to go. Cause this guy's like, you should show up and hang out with us real quick. Like if you're the mom and you're like, can you help my son get out of the cult? And your buddy's like, I'll just join the fucking cult.

You're like, you're the worst friend ever. Like Cecil, do this for me, buddy. Me too. Okay okay if i ever fall into a cult pinky swear can you not just join the cult like because i'd be like can you imagine how disheartening it'd be like be like i'm kind of thinking about leaving this cult cecil you're

like jesus christ leader leader did we both join the same cult on accident? Are you? Am I? What? We show up on Tuesday night, and we're both like, you wear the bib, too? All red? I'm wearing all red. Oh, my God. You have to leave. I'm the funny one here. You still will be.

It's fine. So he gets into this car with the dudes and he drives down and they go to this place called the Cedars. Now the Georgian mansion is called the Cedars. And I think the guys live in a coach house called Ivanwald. I'm not sure, but they seem to, they seem to basically interchange these names throughout the Cedars and ivan wald he keeps referring it

to his ivan wald but there was never like a picture with like ivan wald they never did that so you don't really know but he gets out of the car and um and they're basically he gets out of the car and they give him a hug or whatever and one of the guys guys says, I told them that I was bringing a new guy, and you know what they said? And then Bunchy Peter Parker's like, I don't know. He said, bring it on. Again, unintentionally gay, like accidentally gay again. Yeah.

So that scene is really funny because it's like, the other guys weren't really sure what was going on, but I said I was bringing another guy, and you're like, oh, was he going to have to do something to convince these guys? And then he's just like, so they were just like, cool. And you're like, this movie is full of these, like, deeply anticlimactic moments where it's like,

and then everybody was like, can we do it? I don't know if we can do it. They can we do it? I don't know if we can do it. And then he was like, and he hit the free throw. And you're like, who cares? Oh, my God. And then there's like, and he hit the free throw. And you're like, who cares? Oh, my God. And then there's a dun, dun, dun afterwards.

I also want to point out, too, that it's only ultra wealthy people and ultra poor people that live in a house that has a name. So it's like the Cedars or Robert Talenholm. Robert, what is it? Robert something Holmes. What are they called in Chicago? Robert Cabrini.. Robert, what is it? Robert something Holmes. What are they called in Chicago? Robert Cabrini. Cabrini Green, right? Another one.

Cabrini Greens or Ivan Wald. Those are your two options. I'm fairly convinced that if you're rich, it has the in front of it. Oh, right. And if you're poor, it has two names. And usually the second one is Heights. Robert Taylor Holmes. That's the one I'm thinking of.

Yeah. If it's named after a person, you don't want to live there. If it sounds unintentionally bucolic, you don't want to live there. And if it has the word heights in it, in a lowland area, you don't want to live there. So they cut to a bunch of these dudes sitting there with their shirt off and like lifting weights. And like some guy, some guy, dude, this is the part where I was like, I would fucking,

I would stab my own eyes out. If I had to be here, guys like singing a song, it's like Jesus loves. It's like a folksy Jesus song. And I'm just like, no, Dave Matthews,

Jesus, none of that, none of that. I had the same moment where I was like, I can understand a world where you go to church because someone made you yeah the rest of it but i can't understand a world where you're like you know where i want to live yeah church jesus time i would just i can't hard no hard no it'll be fun what if we listen to that guy sing a song also like like they they make it seem like there's no outside anything they don't

listen to music they don't read papers. They don't watch movies. They just read the Bible and like fucking play pickup games of basketball and then pray afterwards. It is the most privileged existence ever. I know. Yeah. So then they start talking about

like what it's about, right? So now we get into the portion where they're like, okay, so we've set the scene. It's a weird boys cult that's basically a fraternity. I mean, it's basically a fraternity after college. Without the education? Or drinking. Right. Or fun. And so they're

reading Bible study and they're talking about Jesus and it's all deepities. It's all just like, wow, you can't get away from Jesus, can you guys? It's like the worst, most deepity garbage you've ever heard. Did you know he's the reason for the season? And so they start

talking about how Jesus is what they're talking about. Like, Jesus is the most important thing. And he gives the half-Jew the Bible with his part cut out. So the bunch of Peter Parker's half Jewish, and they make a mention of it. Right. And he comes down with a Bible that just says Jesus on it.

It's the four Gospels and Acts. And he hands it to the Jewish guy, and he's like, this is all you need, man. This is all you need, buddy, is right here, and gives him the Jesus portion of the Bible. They say the word Jesus. Oh, my gosh. In this three hours and 45 minutes. They'll say it like six times in the same sentence. I'm not even exaggerating.

They'll say it like six times in a sentence. They'll be like, the Jesus of the Jesus, Jesus, stop my Jesus. Oh, yeah. And you're like, what the fuck is happening? Have you ever thought about whether Jesus would like if Jesus was there and Jesus had a Jesus stroke and the Jesus drove a Jesus car and Jesus went up a Jesus tree? And you're like, what? All you need is Jesus to have a Jesus had a Jesus stroke and then Jesus drove a Jesus car and Jesus went up a Jesus tree and you're like, what?

All you need is Jesus to have a Jesus. What the fuck? It's like Smurf. It's like they replaced Jesus with Smurf. So every like object have a Jesus. Yeah. Or adverb. I don't remember how they did it.

It was an adjective or adverb. I don't remember how they did it. But they also too like kind of aggressively like do a lot of like let's pray like they kind of like really aggressively like and kind of gaily or like i'm gonna pray it's almost like somebody is like the way it the way it is it's it's depicted is almost like it's like how your creepy boss compliments your dress. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, let's pray. Look, I'll pray.

Don't have to like whisper right in my ear and like lick my earlobe while we're doing it. Please stop. That's weird. That's your cubicle. So this is where they reveal one of the major tenets in the movie, which is Jesus has a, these people have a rings of power

theory about Jesus. Rubes can't handle the truth. The truth is that Jesus didn't preach equally to everyone. Jesus loves the elite people. That's the main idea that these people believe, which is heavily rooted in predestination, which we will get to later. But that's specifically one of the major themes of this movie. And also another major theme is that left and right are both represented at the Cedars, that they're talking about how there was a Democratic guy last week and there's a Republican this week. I tend to think that it's far more conservative than it is Democrat, but Democrats are still represented in this movie and there will be Democrats talking about this family thing throughout. movie and there will be democrats talking about this family thing throughout then they cut to talk to some busy body lady in the neighborhood who just happened to show up to one of their bible studies and then doesn't get invited back and that's part of this documentary for no reason for no reason she's like she's like well i'm on the board and i just decide i need to know

everything's going on in every house and so i I stopped by and I'm like, I'd have fucking kicked you out. I would. Yeah. I would have said, go away. Right. Why would I care? I'm a nosy. Yeah, that's exactly it.

It's like, go to fucking Starbucks, Karen. Nobody cares. So weird. It was super weird. She was total mom. She was total mom. This movie is full of like oh something's gonna happen about this and it's like no but we needed to fill five episodes for nothing happened at that i mean

i and i will challenge anybody go back and watch that part nothing happens when that woman that woman is useless to the rest of the movie could have should have totally wound up on the editing floor there was no revelation whatsoever from that woman she just reinforced that they like jesus well i don't need reinforcement. They told me that out loud. They're real into that. Yeah. That's fucking obvious.

They have a book just called Jesus. Then they do this weird arm wrestle standing up haze of this Peter Parker. Have you ever seen an arm wrestle? I've never seen anything like this. It's like Tai Chi push hands or something. I don't even know what's happening, but they're like holding each other, and they're trying to shove each other or pull each other down. Budgie Peter Parker takes a dump, and then they all jump on top of him and start beating the shit out of him. And I want to mention here that the reason why they say this, and they give the example, or they give the reason, it's a spiritual message.

Jesus is normally depicted as nice. But if Jesus was alive today, he'd be a Navy SEAL. So I guess they beat the shit out of him with spiritual fucking training or something. I don't know. That whole section where they're like, he'd be a Navy SEAL and he'd play football? Yeah.

And you're just like, why would he have these jobs? Also, I don't know that he could catch very well with those hands. But I want to quote two times from this this particular portion of the of the documentary where they're crushing on top of them here's two quotes crushing christ into me and the other one is all our bodies became one if those two aren't code words for bad touching while you're on that thing i don't know what is you know at the

bottom of that fucking pile he's like okay whose erection is that who is crushing christ into me right now you want that okay you're unbuttoning my fly that's just why do i have a button fly it's not 1997 buttoning i got my 501 because it's the past um can we just talk for a second those are the worst genes ever created button flies are the stupidest things ever who the fuck wants to do that just it i have no idea maybe if you're a chick that's fine i don't know but if you're a dude like i walk to a up to a urinal and i unzip reach in do the little spinny through the maze to get those snake out right and then piss so i don't have to unbutton and unbuckle and do all that work. Why on earth would I be like, yeah, I just want to unbutton two buttons? Are you that afraid you're going to zip it in there? I don't know. We've had zippers technology for a long

time. I was wondering, like, are you trying to sell pants to the Amish? What is going on here? It's a button fly. Like, what do we need? Like, button, you know, buttons are a pain in the ass. What if we had six of them? I only churned my butter and button plugs. All right, so for now in the documentary, for no reason, we're introduced to unnamed Silver Fox. We have no idea who this guy is. They never mention his name.

They don't show a little placard underneath. It's just a dramatized adult figure. Thank you. I wondered who he was. You know, he's an authority. He's not, he's not the guy who they reveal later.

Right. He's just an authority figure and his whole thing is, he's like the daddy of the gay house. Yeah, he's like the, he's like the camp dad

and he's like, he says to them, you're, you're here to learn how to rule the world and then they get into this King David stuff where they're talking about

how, you know, David fucks some guy's wife and then murders his husband. And it's all awesome because he's totally chosen. And he, he gives an example, the silver Fox gives an example to the crowd there and says, what would happen if one of you raped a bunch of people? And then the one guy's like, well, you'd be mad at me. He's like, nope, Jesus chose you. I wouldn't be mad at you. And this is one of those revelations that pops up in here of their morality, right? And this is sort of like what he's showing. But again, this is secondhand knowledge from a guy who said that that's what they said. I don't know that that's what, I mean, to be honest though, later on when we see these people do immoral things, they do back them. They don't throw these people away when they do immoral shit. So I tend to believe that this is true.

And it's creepy. It is super duper creepy, but it's entirely theologically consistent. Oh, 100%. You're just saying it out loud. Yeah. Then he says, some people are more chosen than others. We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his. I think he means white people. Absolutely. I think he means white people so hard. There was a token black guy in this group that they tried to depict, but you start talking about all these people at the Cedars, and they start showing all these Republican senators that are in C Street and all that, and you never see. I didn't see a black guy.

They talk about prayer breakfast being their kind of thing. They're like, that's their thing, is prayer breakfast. We have these ambassador breakfasts, and we talk about how we have them all over the country and then they also host the national prayer breakfast and i i did think during this like because they talk about breakfast is a big deal like it's their fucking meal of choice over there yeah and i was like this is the reason why i can't be a world power like breakfast i'm like just give me a cup of coffee by 11 yeah like i don't want to have a – get up early and have breakfast and be like, fucking halls of power are empty as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not attending. We got eggs at 7.30 in the morning. Like, you fucking keep them. I'm the exact opposite. I love breakfast. I get up early every morning and I normally eat it at my desk, but I do love breakfast. Breakfast is a great meal to have at lunch. Like, I am willing to have breakfast at lunch.

That's fair. Then they introduce what I think is a big revelation here, and a big thing for me because I didn't know who he was, Doug Coe. Now, I never heard of him. He's clearly a power player in Washington. He's the first brother of the family, and they really liked that he was secret

and he had a lot of secrecy, and the biggest takeaway of this entire series in my opinion is doug co yeah because it's kind of a story about him it's not a fucking revelation but it does open up um a guy that i can point a finger to in the future that's really all it does um the family is trying to take Jesus out of organized religion. They go into a big thing here about, and they start playing Doug Coe talking about Jesus making a covenant.

And then Hitler also made a covenant. Mafia made a covenant. And the one thing that these things don't have, and I'm going to quote here, Tom, absolutely two phrases that mean nothing. The total Jesus of a brotherhood in Christ, end quote, and Jesus plus nothing. They love Jesus plus nothing. That's like in their like manual of like how to conquer the world or whatever for Jeebus.

Like the Doug Coe guy, he really loves quoting Hitler. Yeah. He really loves like, here's some evil people. Do you know what they got right? Yep. And I'm watching it. I'm thinking like, maybe you could have picked people that weren't evil that also got the same things right. And I also want to say like what he says about those things is that the more you make your organization invisible, the more you have.

But he keeps quoting things that are completely visible and everybody knows about. Right. So he's like, you know what? The more invisible you are, the more power you have. But the Nazi party and you're just like everybody knows who the Nazi party was, dude. And he also says during that same that same stretch, he says something like, you know, they, you had to surrender everything to the party. I had to surrender family to the party, certain friendships to the party,

et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, that's like not unusual for there. You could have picked something that wasn't evil. Why would you purposely pick? I don't know either. Shock value.

I think it's the shock value. And you know, I don't, I don't know why they clearly that guy's been preaching probably for a long time. They found those clips, but that's him saying it. It's him standing there saying, talking about how he, you know, those are, those are things that you kind of want to emulate. At what point are you like, we've got to persuade people of this. Who should we compare ourselves to? Yeah. I don't know. The most reviled group in all of history. Talks about Stalin too,

throughout. It's weird. We're going to come back to this because I do want to talk about the secret nature of the organization. They do a little quick thing with a sister house where they sort of introduce that there was a sister house and they talk about male headship, which is not what you think. And they also have this conversation with this girl and it's really kind of promise-keeper-y and just gross, where the girl's like, I just want to make sure that the man is loved.

That's all. Just love the man. And you're just like, so you don't have any ambition other than being a baby incubator. Nope, don't have any other ambitions. Cool. That's great. But that was really the only thing there. And again, not a big surprise if you know some of these evangelicals.

What I thought was funny is that the embedded message there is that the women's job is to make men happy, and they are a sideline not to be considered. And then the movie treats them like a sideline not to be considered. And you're like, you're committing the same. Okay, you missed the point. considered and you're like you're committing the same okay yeah you missed you missed the point so finally uh the dude who gets him in his girls raped he leaves and they basically cut him out and they do it and the way they describe why they cut him out is like so stupid where you're just like he doesn't want to be here hanging out with us bros he wants to be taking care of his stupid raped girlfriend and you're just like what in the world is happening do you don't want to hang out

with those people he's seriously his his girlfriend gets raped and they almost come out and say bros before hoes yeah they all like and it's her fault and then they're like well what was she doing yeah to get raped and he's like look i'm leaving you're awful yeah i gotta go on the way out by the way here's a stack of confidential papers that I had that say confidential stamped on top of them, which I truly don't believe happened. No, no, yes. So that's where I stand at the end of the first episode.

I want to ask you an honest, personal question, Cecil. Do you have paperwork that you keep in a safe or otherwise locked up because it's not for public view, like your social security documents. Sure, absolutely, yeah. Did you go out and buy a confidential stamp to stamp your things with? I didn't.

Or do you just safeguard your paperwork? Yeah, especially on an organization that's not an organization, you see all this confidential stuff. I know that's something I should pay attention to now that you wrote pay attention to me on it. So fast forward to the second part of this movie or the part

two. These are going to start getting faster because to be honest, the first one or two are the ones where everything happens. The rest of these, there's not a lot that happens. Bunchy Peter Parker's got to leave the beginning of the first one and they never really explain why he has a conversation with Silver Fox, but there's no reason why he got to leave at the beginning of the first one, and they never really explain why. He has a conversation with Silver Fox,

but there's no reason why he has to leave. He's just like, so you're a writer, huh? You know, we love each other around here. And the guy's like, yep. And then they just nod, and then they just show him packing up and leaving. And I don't know what happened. Was he forced out?

Did he leave of his own volition? Does anybody care? Then they do a montage of like 25 presidents all thanking Doug Coe. It's like a huge montage. And they call him the of the 25 most powerful evangelicals in Time magazine. They call him the stealth persuader. So Time magazine knew who he was. Right.

They talk about him. So it's not like he's some big mystery secret, but he certainly isn't someone who's in the limelight. And so that's something that they're trying to get across here. I will say, like, if you've ever seen the movie Mothman Prophecies, there's like a really good like. in the limelight and so that's uh something that they're trying trying to get across here i will say like if you've ever seen the movie mothman prophecies there's like a really good like they like show doug co in the background of all these oh yeah absolutely and you're like oh my god he's in the bathroom the whole time the mothman is in every picture of these tragedy on the bridge

so stupid so they're talking to two main people here in this particular episode. And this episode's going to be about Mark Sanford and John Ensign. And it's going to talk about C Street. And so John Ensign is a senator from Nevada, and his best friend is his top aide.

And his best friend is being interviewed in here, and he's talking about how he just, you know, he met John golfing and he became his top aid and they were both promise keepers and we're going to find out later that they're terrible at keeping promises, but that's, they were both promise keepers.

At least Ed's sign is. Yeah, Ed's totally as bad. Again, there's more talk about it being a bipartisan group. Talk of Doug Coe helping people across the aisle and they keep on talking about it as a bipartisan study group we're introduced to a total fucking hillbilly tennessee zach wamp who totally sounds like

his voice sounds like fucking two possums fucking a banjo i was i could not he's like a jug band of a human being you know i'm talking about right that guy oh my god fucking i couldn't hear every time he talked every time he talked I wanted to slap my wife. I was just so. So anyway, they're talking about the metaphor, the sheep and the wolf. You get the wolf alongside you. You don't worry about the sheep. They're talking about the Wolf King.

This is a whole chapter later on, but they introduced the Wolf King here. Then they talk about C Street. Now, C Street is basically a bribe house. That's basically what it is. It's where people can go and live in community, quote unquote, but it's for politicians to pay $600 a month, and a religious organization pays that,

pays most of their subsidy. They're paying room and board $600 a month, and they showed there's no way you could possibly do this anywhere else. Yeah. They show like in DC, a bed alone is 1975. Unbelievable amount of money. A bed alone.

And they're like, I get fucking food and my own room and a great big, nice house for 600 bucks. So they also talk about Steve Largent at one point. And I know you don't know who Steve Largent is, but people in the audience might know who he is. He was a national football player. I did. And they talk about him, but they never mentioned that he was a congressman. And I didn't know he was a congressman. So I'm like, Steve Largent's living

there? Why the fuck is Steve Largent living there? He played for the Seahawks years ago. I find out later, I go to Wikipedia and I find out that he's a Republican from his state. He wins several terms as a Republican. Anyway, Steve Largen is one of these people who lives at C Street. The next part of this is Enzin basically goes all David and Bathsheba and fucking fucks his aide's wife. Right. He basically – and then they have this weird family meeting with two families meeting, which sounded super weird by the way.

And then they said, okay, we're going to stop. We stopped. But then they don't. And then they asked to like keep hounding all these people in power. It reminded me a lot of, it's almost feels mafia, mafia ask where they're like, he's not stopping. I got to go talk to these other guys in the family. And then they sit down with them and he writes down a FedEx letter and he sends it home.

And this guy gets on a plane and he goes home and he's in a fucking hotel fucking his wife right now. It's just like on the FedEx letter. He's fucking her. It's so funny. It's like this guy is sleeping with this other guy's wife. The guy's like, could you stop doing that? And he's like, yeah. And then he says, yeah.

Then he does it. What about if I write a letter? He's like, yeah. no. And then he says, yeah, then he does it. What about if I write a letter? He's like, yeah, great story. Got your letter. Still going to fuck your wife. No,

totally fucking the guy ends and wrote the letter to, to this guy's wife. So yeah, so yeah, right. Cause it's not explained very well. I had to watch it twice to understand it. Ensign sits down,

writes a full letter that says, I can't see you anymore. That X is it to the woman and then fucks her that night. What about one last time? So they do. Punctuation at the end of this. You got to sign for this letter.

He delivers it like short shorts. You're like, I've got a delivery. I don't know why he would sound like that. Evidently, though, like hugging and prayer circles are no fucking contest next to Bathseba Schnatch. You know what I mean? Like no matter what you do.

But anyway, so he's still digging in. Now, they cut away from this for a second to introduce Governor Mark Sanford. Now, this is something, again, I want to roll back to. He refused to take government funds for the stimulus um and he quote poverty as a result of the god-ordained economic system now this isn't sanford saying that but that's someone describing sanford and um it's basically you're poor because god wants you to be poor we'll talk about that when we talk about predestination later now sanford disappears at one point and he and he just disappears and they're talking about him being a man of the forest and they play this fucking hilarious bear oh my shouting into the wilderness

part of it it's really great yeah it was amazing but he shows up a couple days later and basically says he had he had an affair with a chick in venezuela or argentina or something argentina it was like i was in the app i remember when this happened, he was like, I disappeared to the Appalachian trail. Yeah. Nah, I'm in Argentina. It goes all the way to Argentina. Then they talk a little bit about how he has his press conference and he

basically spills the beans about C street. He says C street out loud. I've been praying with these guys at C street. Then everybody starts digging into C street. What's C street. What's this? They find that it's like the charities are funneling money into this and basically subsidizing the housing of political people in Washington, Congress people, powerful people. And then they go – they cut back to Banjo Possum and he says this and this is –

Banjo Possum is the best nickname. This guy says this and they repeat this over and over again. We'll come back to this. God uses imperfect vessels to do perfect work. He says it over and over. It's said a hundred times in this special, and we'll get into it later. Enzin uses public funds during his private affairs

and gets investigated, somehow still has a job after that, pays a guy off, the guy whose wife he fucked, he loses his family, he pays him off with a lobbying job, and that guy goes to jail not answered. I know, that guy. This guy gets cucked so hard. Oh my God, so bad.

Nobody's ever been cucked as hard as this guy gets cucked. So bad. And he's being interviewed, and he's just like, I just really wish he wasn't always fucking with my wife. So anyways, you could just lay off for a minute. You get out of my wife. No, I don't want to drink it afterwards. But anyway, they go on about this David story.

They keep talking about David's story. And Sanford, at one point, when they ask him if he's going to step down, he talks about David again. Because this rolls back to the first episode when they talked about David. God likes people who impregnate other guys. They had murdered wives or something. I don't know. It's a weird story. And then they talk a lot about Jesus at the end of this episode, and they introduce some preachers to a woman and a man. And I think this is to sort of say, we don't want to just make it look like it's a completely anti-religious movie. There's plenty of people who are religious who also disagree with this group having such a say in the government.

And they wanted to present that side. And so that's the end of episode two. Now it gets a little faster. Episode three, they cut in on the prayer breakfast. And this is where they're trying to show that there's foreign powers at these prayer breakfasts. They cut to Maria Butina. They cut to another guy, Maryschenko or whatever his name is.

I'll find his name later when I work my way through here, but there's another Russian they keep on talking about. They talk about the founder of this family is a guy from Norway. His name's Abraham Veridi. And they talk about him a little,

but again, it's one of these things where you're just like, who cares? There's like one important thing he does, but for the rest of it, it's just eh. He came up a lot and I'm just like, okay, so what? Yeah, yeah. And there is no revelation. There's only one as far as I could tell.

They talk about Eisenhower being the first president to ever do this. He supposedly was against it and then said no because he wanted to fight the Cold War against the Russians, the godless communists. Then they sort of shift focus to talk about how Russia came out of communism and into Christianity. They show a Billy Graham revival or whatever he does over there. And they're talking about how Russians are starting to become more and more and more Christian. And they cut back to Coe again, sort of coming into power after this, Veridi takes office. And he says, and this again,

I think is very important. And I think the core of what he says and the core of what he does, the most powerful ministry isn't to large crowds, it's ministering to people in power. And I think that's core. He doesn't want to be a guy in the limelight. He wants to just be the guy behind the scenes ministering to people in power. I think that's absolutely key. And I don't think that's, that's not a true statement. I think it's, I think it's a useful thing to understand. Um, now the new guy, they introduced Doug Coe's son-in-law who speaks Russian. And again, it's just kind of a guy that you're just like, okay. And he doesn't really do anything. He's sort of investigated by the FBI at one point, but they never really describe. He just talks to people from Russia.

Here he is talking to Russians. You're like, wow, about what? Yeah. Okay. God? Yeah. I don't know, but. It's really a shrugger.

It really is. A lot of this is they talk about a rush russian sort of introducing prayer and prayer breakfasts in in in russia and how they just like fist fought at the first time it's so great they're throwing water and cups at each other and it's really good that's the best case scenario for breakfast in russia exactly it's either that or you're gonna wind up with a dead hooker somehow this is where they introduced to another huge part of this, and this is, you know, pin in this for later, traditional family values. This, I think, is, you know, what they're talking about

when they talk about them meddling across overseas. It's traditional family values, which means anti-gay. And so this is where they talk about them being all over. Torshin is the guy's name. Torshin and Butina are the two people that were involved as Russian agents. Butina gets eventually, she eventually gets charged with being a unregistered Russian agent. And they do show her using the prayer breakfast, at the prayer breakfast, using this as a way to wedge herself in to talk to these people. Yeah, absolutely. They say,

one guy keeps saying, and they say it like four times, if you were an influencer outside of the United States, you know, and you were a foreign leader, you would target this breakfast. That would, that's because it seems like no rules lobbying. And so that's sort of what, and it makes sense. I mean, it totally makes sense. So I get that. Yeah. It seems like a time and a place where people congregate and like, it's a great opportunity to network. Yeah. It seems like a time and a place where people congregate and like, it's a great opportunity to network. Yeah. They shift, um, talking about evangelicals and, uh, the population of Russia, uh, sort of the evangelicals in our country and the population of, of those evangelicals hating Russia to loving Russia. evangelicals hating Russia to loving Russia. And they blame it sort of on how Doug Coe sent these, these missionaries over there.

But I don't, I don't agree. I think it's because they came out strong and hard against gays. That's why I think. And so maybe those two things are interconnected, but certainly it wasn't because I think anything Doug Coe orchestrated, but they seem to make it, they seem to try,

they imply that, that link. Most of this is done by implication absolutely not by not by direct evidential links they talk this is another important part here um they talk about the origins of the prayer breakfast and the origins of of the sort of family as being um anti-labor and anti-labor in seattle and subverting sort of the labor movement there which which this Veridi was part of, which is again, the only revelation I cared about him being anti-labor

and them squashing unions out in Seattle. Um, something I definitely will look into now in the future. I didn't know it sounded like, and it sounded like a horrible situation where they had like national guard and shit like that. And I know there's been a couple of clashes in our past in the United States past where unions have been like actually attacked by the national guard um and this might this sounds like one of them butina they talk about butina again using her back channels to her back channels to be back channeling and you know get a hold of some some of these guys um and then they they sort of energy at the end of this they introduce two options for this either these people are super naive and they get manipulated because they're super naive and they're just happy, or they're just happy that people are talking about Jesus and they don't care.

Those are the two options on why they're getting manipulated. I don't know where I sit on that, but that's the implication that they put in. And again, this documentary just doesn't it it never gives you everything it just gives you a set of implications yeah and so you're just like well all right i i don't know either turns out yeah none of us know i don't know either and i'm not sure that watching this helped me not know differently that's a great way to put it yeah so now they introduce Robert Anderholt and another guy by the name of Representative Silesander. Now, both of these guys spend a lot of their time visiting with other leaders. Anderholt visits the Romania and talks to them about how to do the hate the gays bill. They

talk about the biggest portion of this is hate the gays in Romania and how they tried to make that a law. It failed. But they definitely show Robert Anderholtz talking to those people and also talking on screen to people in the Romanian – on the news media about how he thinks that it's great that they're choosing family values and we can't do that in the United States. They also talk about Uganda and they show a guy getting beat to death on screen with a, with a log, which was great to see. Um, so they beat a guy to death and they also have like a image of like, we talked about this, the top 100 gays in Uganda.

So they could just like target, target those people. Um, and they also talk to the fellowship also denies this on camera, like 15 times that they were part of this. They also deny like 15 times, but in, in a lot of ways,

the actions speak louder than words because they denied it, but they didn't kick the Ugandans out of the fellowship at all or whatever, you know, like they're still ministering to them. They're not like, oh, well, you did a bad thing. We're not going to do anything with you. And they're not ministering a different message. Yeah, right. They're not like, hey, you misunderstood about the gays. Yeah. No, you understood exactly what we needed to understand. They show the president of Uganda. And by the way, this guy looks like he was dipped in vaseline here this guy he's the slickest guy i've ever seen crazy he looks like he looks

like he would he's like a wet bar of soap squeeze him right out of your hand if a human could be a salamander it's unbelievable like he's excreting something they they make this clip out to be a big gotcha moment where he says he doesn't like gays but you're like yeah well they instituted it in the law when they said you can kill them yeah thank you so i don't think it's it's not a big gotcha moment is when they're like do you not like gays and he's like no i hate them they're disgusting and he's like yeah everybody knew that they made a law about it like i don't know what the revelation they wanted to show was. I don't either.

Just show the law. Like it's, it's easy. Show the guy getting beat, show the law of the end. You don't have to fucking go into, it doesn't have to be 30 minutes of like, and here's why it's bad. Like we know why it's bad. Well, and like, I guess like I would have been more interested, I guess, if, if there was some direct correlation between the family and their influence,

and maybe he wasn't anti-gay, and now he is, and because he was ministered in this way. But they don't give you anything from here to there. None of that. They never lead you down that path. Yep. So they introduce Libya and Gaddafi, and that Congressman Salinger goes and visits him. That guy talks a little bit about wedge issues, which I knew about already. I knew Gingrich used wedge issues to divide this country back in the day, and it has never recovered from those.

And then this guy sort of shits on him a little bit. I don't know if you remember, but that Salinger guy, he's sort of shitting on wedge issues. But it also sounds a lot like sour grapes because he never got reelected and then they're visiting with dictators and um talking about god and this to me felt super naive that they're like sitting there talking about god to these people especially when they're talking to the fucking guy from libya and you're just like either a that never happened or b he was just jerking you off to get what he wanted. Get the fuck out of here. You can't be that stupid.

Yeah, they have this, like, the guy says something stupid about that. He says something like, you know, it doesn't matter what your religion you are. We can all agree on Jesus. And you're like, well, wait, what? I don't think that's the case. What? Do you remember that? I do.

It's crazy. Just what? Do you remember that? I do. I do. Crazy. Um, the,

uh, this, this was the biggest takeaway from the fourth part. Um, they make negotiation without our consent. You can't be an off duty Congressman. You, when you go talk to another nation as,

and you're a Congressman, you're a Congressman a hundred percent of the time. So when you go there, you're going there sort of with the power of the United% of the time. So when you go there, you're going there sort of with the power of the United States government behind you. So they keep talking about, oh, I'm just a regular guy, and I get in with kings. And it's like, yeah, you get in with kings because you're a congressman. That's why you get in with kings.

You don't get in with kings just because people like Inhofe. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. Those guys don't – if they lose their seat, they lose their seat at the table. Yeah. Right? It's not like somebody's going to be like, oh, well, swing over.

You don't have any power to control anything and, like, grant me any favors. Swing over to my country and let's hang out. Yeah. Get the fuck out of here. It's not happening anymore. They're using you, you toolbox. Absolutely. Last piece.

They start out with this fucking crazy group of people in Oregon, this crazy men's group that just likes to shout at each other and look intense and say the dumbest shit I've ever heard a human being say where you're just like, that doesn't mean anything. out loud now don't get me wrong a couple of times this guy says something really fucking poignant this guy who's the main guy out there he says something really fucking poignant and then he fucking basically just falls apart in the last few seconds and you're just like well i don't i don't care what you said before this i quit yeah well it's it's this weird men's group where the guy who is in charge of it like ostensibly in charge of the most intense character i guess i should say i don't know if he's... He's the one that they are leaning on to make it look like he's the leader. Right. So, like,

that guy also is just, like, one of those, like, radical honesty kind of guys. Like, a lot of times I say mean things to break people down, because you gotta get... You gotta say, like, Jesus, break me down! Yeah, you gotta beg. Ruin me! You gotta, like... I gotta be whipped and beaten till I'm on my knees.

Ruin me, Jesus. Stretch me out, Jesus. Don't use any lube, Jesus. Let me gape at you, oh Lord. That should be a shirt we have. God. But at one point, I want to quote him, he says, gaping for Jesus. One point I want to quote him. He says, gaping for Jesus.

One point I want to quote him. Shame keeps us locked in our circumstances. I don't know what that means. Shame keeps us locked in our circumstances. I mean, I vaguely understand it, but at the same time, like, eh. The way he delivers it, it's like he said, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. It's like one of those moments where there's so much gravity. You're just like, eh.

Yeah. I'll allow it. His whole thing of like, he's aggressive, very, very aggressive. Everybody there is aggressive. Yeah. At one point, this guy, he's required to participate, the documentary aggressive. Yeah. Like at one point, like this guy, you know, he's required to participate. The documentary guy. Yeah.

And he's challenged by somebody that's like, why are there only white people? And like the guy gives a really honest answer. I think he's like, you know, I think that there's systemic problems. Systemic and then personal issues. Like I think, and he's like, no, tell me why. And he's like, well, I'm trying like really hard to answer the question. And then the guy's like, the guy says, he says, yeah. And you know, we also are, you know, a male dominated industry.

There's women who, you know, women are starting to come in more and more in documentary now, but there's not a lot of women. And he's like, I didn't ask about women. Yeah. It's like, yeah, that's cause you don't care about him. You asshole. It's so like, they're just a group that gets together to be mean to each other. I think I'll tell you what, that's a shitty group of people.

Like when I saw them, I was like, I was like, I like i don't you know you've known people like that i do i do and those are people i don't fucking associate with anymore if you want to be a radical honesty dude around me be fucking nice fuck you i'm a fucking i i try to be nice to people you should be fucking nice to me too because i keep a lot of shit into you know what i mean go fuck yourself you know that bullshit where you're just like, you're like, oh, I'm just going to tell you some shit so I can tell you some shit so I can hurt your feelings. Go fuck yourself.

How about go fuck yourself? It's like, I see you for who you are and I call you out. Oh, okay. Yeah, great. All right. You know what? If you want to change me for the better, like if you actually care enough about somebody

to help them change for the better, you're never going to be like, you know how I'll get you to change by hurting you deeply and tell me that has ever told had anybody think twice about what someone else said about you it just makes you reactionary and defensive they even say that in this thing it's like yeah people normally don't react to it yeah because you're an asshole right like yeah because you fucking said shit that's awful yep cool you're a poo that helps anyway so it's just weird and they cut back and forth to them and there isn't there is one more moment later that

he says something out loud that i'm like oh that's cool but then he kind of fucking cucks it out at the end and you're just like uh um they do go back to the prayer breakfast and they show trump talking about the prayer breakfast and trump talking there, talking about how Arnold needs, we need to pray for Arnold because my old TV show doesn't have the ratings it used to have. I remember when that happened. It was amazing.

And the thing is, is like, this guy goes out of his way. And I think this is another important part of this. And this is the Wolf King part where it doesn't matter that Trump doesn't know the scripture. It doesn't matter that Trump gets it all wrong. He's doing all the things he needs to do

to make sure that they're getting all the things they want. And that's all that matters. And I will say, that is the part of it, if anything is worth watching, it's this last episode, I think, because he calls out and says, this is a merger. It's a business merger. It's a business merger, yeah. And that made sense to me. I was like, okay, it's a business merger between the I was like, okay, it's a business merger between the ideology and the agenda of the religious and somebody who can get that done. Yeah. There's a woman here who says the best thing in the entire five episodes.

She's one of the preacher women, so she's talking about the hypocrisy on the right, and she calls it rhetorical self-impresslement. And I was like, that's an amazing... Self-impresslement is amazing. That is amazing. But that's true. And what she's saying is that morals should matter. Morality should matter. Being a moral person should matter.

Being an outward-facing moral person should matter. And Trump is not exhibiting any of these qualities. And somehow he's still the darling of this Christian right group. And somehow he's still the darling of this Christian right group. And it's maddening to her,

but it makes complete sense when you hear it in the sense of it's a business merger. They do the parable of the Wolf King at this point. They talk about Trump's cabinet being crazy fundamentalist, which I think everybody knew. They also talk about Trump

getting rid of the Johnson Amendment. Again, these aren't big things, but I don't know that I would know this if I didn't do this show. Yeah, that's true. I can't be sure, but I think our audience knows it. So maybe we're not the target audience.

And I have to say that that might be what they're doing here. They talk about the parable of the Wolf King. They don't want Trump to get religion and get sweet and mild. They want him to be a wolf. And this is exactly what they got with him. There's a montage at this point of everyone in the family saying that it's not a conspiracy. And they do a whole bunch of, you know, thou doth protest too much sort of moment here in the movie. They flash back to Oregon and that dude who's like the radical honesty guy

is shitting all over the prayer breakfast, saying it is what I thought it was. It's a bunch of rich dudes that are just awful. And he says, and that's the part where I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, he's coming out and saying, no, these guys, they don't know shit. They just want to justify their own power. All those guys out there,

they just want to justify their own power. They just want to be white. And I was like, oh, I'm kind of on board with this dude. And then he says, but I have to love him because Jesus loves him and he would want me to love what he loves. And I was just like, well, that's me, bro.

That whole thing where he's like, yeah, I'm going to see it. I'm going to call it out the same way he sees and calls out what he thinks of as the hypocrisy of the men in the men's group he's like i was like okay i like on an individual level i think that's awful on a systemic or institutional level i think that there's some value to that so like when he was training that eye upon that group i was kind of right there with you and then when

he backs the fuck away from it because and then you're like oh all right all right. Well, you know, whoever's in power is supposed to be. Yep. Yep. Because that's how we all think. And you're like, okay, well. Great. So Doug Coe dies. They hum Amazing Grace.

It was so funny. He starts humming Amazing Grace. And I'm like, when's he going to start singing? Yeah, no kidding, right? He just sings. Why is he just? When I was a kid in church, I would go to church with my dad, and before I really knew how to read, I would hum with everybody.

It's like, oh, I've got to do something. So I'd stand there, I'd open the book, and I'd stand there and be like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. And I would hum my way through, and then I'd watch this guy, and I'm like, well, is he a paid hummer? He's a paid hummer. He's giving everybody a hummer. is he a paid Hummer? Is a paid Hummer? He's giving everybody a Hummer. Is he really?

That's what's happening right now? Yeah. When I wrote down Hummer on Craigslist, 20 bucks. I wasn't looking for this. This isn't how I normally make my... Doug's daughter gives a eulogy. This is my favorite quote from the entire thing.

Quote, we are all going to be brothers and sisters for eternity. And Jesus is going to be our brother and our husband. And God is going to be our father. So I can't wait. End quote. We had to rewind it. So we're watching it.

And we're both like looking at our tablets. We're kind of like, you're at the point at this point, you're almost done. And where everybody's just like, I was just like, oh, I can't watch this anymore. And they're here. And Jesus is going to be our husband everybody's just like, I was just like, oh, I can't watch this anymore. And they're here. And Jesus is going to be our husband and our brother. And I'm just like, wait, what? I know.

Wait, what now? What did you say now? Anyway. That sounds weird. They cut back to the Oregon nutters and the guy's like, you need to talk to the right dude. And that's going to take a little knee work. And again, it sounded a little gay. I just want to say, sounded a little gay.

Then this is a wrap up part where they talk about democracy as a form of rebelliousness, which again is an important, I think, tenet to take away from this. The goal is to work towards Ivanwald on a massive scale, but that's all bullshit because they can't hug their prayers out. They can't hug it out and fix everything because they don't. They show it over and hug their prayers out. They can't hug it out and fix everything cause they don't, they show it over and over and over again. They can't hug it out. Um, and so that's sort of where they end the entire series. They do a little montage finish up where they sort of finish where they began

with the guy breathing in after he just got the shit kicked out of him by all the Ivan wall kids. And that's sort of where we end up. And this guy keeps saying over and over how he tried to like end the books with happy endings. But, you know. Yeah, but nobody would give him a rich round. Nobody, yeah.

So did you like the documentary series? I didn't, I didn't. I have to say I didn't. And I think the reasons why I didn't like it were it was a shotgun approach of just a ton of, it felt like a trivial pursuit game where you're just like, you're going to tell me a bunch of trivia

and you're never going to really put it all together into one cohesive message. It was just a big bunch of trivia. I learned about a bunch of stuff, a couple of things that I didn't know. And also a couple of things came into focus, but to be honest, it's not one of those things that I was like, wow, there's a revelation here, man. I felt the same way. I felt like just as a documentary series, it's not very good because it's very jumbled. It's very haphazard in a way that it's narratively structured. Yeah, it's

edited poorly. Yeah, so it's just a fucking total train wrecking mess. Yeah. The part of it that I thought really grabbed hold of me and made some sense is there is an idea, and it dates back to the 1600s and dates back to the Calvinists.

There is an idea of predestination within some sect of the Protestant churches, right? And predestination says, basically, that there is a group of people that God has already ordained are the chosen. Yeah. And they're going to heaven. That's done and done. A checkbox is next to their name. Their actions on earth and your actions on earth and all of our actions on earth in no way interact with our predestiny. So there's nothing you can do to be good enough to go to heaven in this worldview. I can't, acts of kindness, acts of salvation, belief,

none of that is going to affect. If I'm not on the big fucking list, I don't get to go to heaven. So we should all, but then the message underneath that is like, but if you were chosen, this is how you would behave and how you would show the world you were one of the chosen, right? So people within that belief structure are trying to behave as if they were

chosen and trying to show the world that they are the chosen and trying to foster the idea and front up that they're chosen. It's doing it backwards. It's saying you have the merit to graduate from, you have the merit to graduate from Harvard, but we're just going to presume you have the degree even without doing any of the coursework. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And the fundamental, well, of course it's absurd, but like one of the things that stems, it comes from the idea of predestination is that there are some people who are created good, and they are a minority, by the way, in this religious worldview. It's a tiny minority of people. It's not like most of you. It's a very small amount of you. Like, those are the good people. Those are the chosen. Everybody else is shit. And what this does is it builds a de facto caste system within the power structure. So if you have power,

you have power because you're chosen. And if you are powerless, you are powerless because you are not the chosen. That is a fucking caste system. That's all that that is. And it's a way to justify the wealth disparity, the power disparity that stems from gender inequality, it stems from racial inequality, it stems from wealth inequality. It's basically a way to say, look, if you're rich, you deserve it. And if you're not, you deserve it. And if you're powerful, you deserve it. And if you're not, you deserve that too. And so we, those who have, we should have. And those who should not have, don't. It's hard not to, when you're in a position of power, though, think you don't deserve it. Right?

Right. And so all these guys are reinforcing their own ideas about how they deserve to be in power and how Jesus has chosen them. And they could literally do anything they want because David fucking killed Bathsheba's husband. I don't know what that person's name has been fucked Bathsheba and got her pregnant. And that's cool with God because God already chose him. So it doesn't matter what he does after that.

God's already chosen him. Right. And what that really, what it really means for this organization though, is that retraining and refamousing someone is hard, right? That's what it seems like to me. When these guys fucking fuck up,

when Sanford fucks up, when Ensign fucks up, getting a guy back up to that position again is a hard fucking lot of work. There's a reason why, you know, you don't want to do that when you hire someone. You don't want to be like, you don't want to like get rid of the guy

two weeks afterwards if he fucks up. You want to try to work with him, or not two weeks, but let. If he fucks up, you want to try to work with him or not two weeks, but let's say a couple of years because you want to try to work with him or her, because if you do, then you don't have to fucking retrain somebody to do the job, to do your work. You don't have to get somebody who's going to be your buddy. A hundred percent of the time, these people, the reason why they work with them, they say it's because of David, but I'll be perfectly honest. It's very pragmatic too, right? It's like super pragmatic to work with these people, not abandon these people. I think the whole worldview is really pragmatic for the people who are in power.

Like it's a way to say like, yeah, of course I've got this. I'm supposed to have it. If you want to also have what I have, you just need to behave as if you were chosen, which means never question the other people that are chosen. So it's the lack of rebelliousness, right? It's a way to keep people happy with their lot in life. And the only way to move up is to say, look, I'll move up, but never at the expense of you. Never ever will I move up and you move down. What do you think about this idea that it's this secret organization?

They keep talking about it being a secret organization. It's a secret organization. And they keep on trying to do this Illuminati bullshit where they keep on saying it's pulling all these strings. And they keep showing strings. That's a theme and a motif in this where they keep showing strings as if someone is a puppet master doing this. I feel like it's kind of a chicken egg

sort of thing going on. This guy is saying, yeah, we need to be secretive. But at the same time, he has a bunch of powerful elites that listen to him. You know what I mean? So like there's a chicken egg thing going on. Is it there's a bunch of thing going on is it is it there's a bunch of powerful elites listening to you because it's secretive or are there a bunch of

you know is it secretive and there's a bunch you know what i mean like there's this weird chicken egg thing that's happening throughout where they keep on trying to say well yeah it was his idea all along it was his plan all along to make this super secretive one it's not super secretive that's number one yeah like we're watching a movie about it right now. Yeah. It's not like nobody cornered me. We've cornered him on the show. Yeah.

Nobody cornered me and took my copy away. Right? I watched the whole thing. Right. And people have been commenting on Doug Coe for years. We talked, he showed that Time Magazine thing. So anybody in the know knew who he was. I didn't know who Doug Coe was back then,

but I certainly, you know, as time goes on, I would learn about who he was. Right. He was somebody who did not want to be out in the know knew who he was. I didn't know who Doug Coe was back then, but I certainly as time goes on, I would learn about who he was. He was somebody who did not want to be out in the open, but I feel like it's because he makes it seem like he's able to draw these powerful people in somehow, but I think when you draw in a few powerful

people and they start working together, that builds itself. I was unimpressed by the secrecy thing because the secrecy thing, secrecy in and of itself is not problematic. And I think secrecy. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point.

Why do I care that somebody's private? You know, like, like private, like if you've got, if you've got a bunch of people who are getting together to have a private religious moment, like that is genuinely none of my fucking business.

Yeah. And I think it's okay for people in power and for people in the public light to have moments in their lives that are none of our fucking business. Sure. And I'm not sold on the idea that like, just because there is secrecy, that there is nefariousness that underlies the secrecy absolutely there are many reasons to be secretive that are not nefarious

some people just naturally like their privacy like i know i have people i have dear and wonderful people in my life that i'm very close to like my fucking step. I don't know where she lives. Yeah, sure. I have no idea where she lives. I'm not allowed. I'll never go to her house. I've never been to her house. I don't know where her address is.

That is somebody in my life that's been in my life for four decades. She's just a very, very private person. Sure. I don't think there's anything nefarious there. I think there's a desire for privacy. I think when you take people who are political enemies and they want to get together

and have a religious or spiritual moment and they want to be able to cross that boundary, they're probably going to need to do that quietly. Yeah. I'm unimpressed by this. I was unimpressed too. I will say this, I don't mind any of these guys getting together and doing what they got to do outside of the walls.

If they want to have their private Bible study, these congressmen want to have their private Bible study. Hell, if these kids get together, you know, and they never really, they kind of imply that these kids get groomed into congressmen, but they never make that. You know what I mean? Because why would you have that group if those kids didn't, you know't grow up eventually and join the ranks of that group? And they interviewed one of those kids. He wasn't. They didn't say congressman. They just said guy who used to hang out at Ivanwald.

Yeah, I wasn't aware that any of them made their way up the ranks. And I'm just like, okay. Maybe they might – fraternities and clubs help you meet people to get networked into and get jobs and things like that. So I wouldn't be surprised at that. Like the people who went to this thing and did their time at Ivanwald and scrubbed toilets and did all that shit, probably got some fucking sweet internships and some sweet hookups with other people. And like, you know, maybe in some, uh, intern type thing for political or our business reasons,

I guarantee that that sort of led them to something. But that's how all groups work. That's how LinkedIn works, for crying out loud. I would be more impressed if it was like, you know, 30% of last year's freshman Congress people actually, you know, did a stint at Ivanwald. You know, I'd be like, holy shit, that's a powerful organization that I didn't know about that influences the thinking of the young people to become power brokers. If that was the case, I would be like, holy shit, we've got something here.

That's a reason to be worried. I didn't get any sense that what you never get a sense from from this is like, if this, then that. You get a sense that these people fucking so love Jesus. That's what you get. They love Jesus plus nothing.

Whatever that means. I don't. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. Jesus plus the other parts of the book that are hard to read. You're right. You're right. Because the Gospels are the easy parts to read.

You're right. When Doug Coe is talking about how he's ministering to small groups of people and people in power, again, I think that that's a good revelation. But it's not anything like – and it's not something I've really thought of before. I was like, oh, I've heard a lot of these priests and preachers that we cover talk about how they go to the White House and talk. But I always thought that they got invited because they were famous. And here's an example of a guy who's – he might be famous to a group of people, but he's certainly not famous to the public at large. And he's getting invited and he's shaking hands and he's doing all this stuff. And he really did like, you know, one of the things I will say that is a little weird about

this is that he's, he's shown all over talking to people and it's different party lines and he's sitting down and it looks like he's having like earnest conversations with all these people. And that is a little weird. But at the same time, you're like, yeah, well, he just was into his shit. You know what I mean? Like he just was into that. Yeah. Again, I would be more concerned if there was some sense from the movie.

And it might be the case, right? But I didn't get it from the movie, from the series. If there was some sense that he had this set of political values and that he was meeting with people in order to wield some kind of religious authority or backing of the evangelicals in order to further his political agenda, right? But you never get any piece of that. It seems like what he obsessively talks about is just jesus yeah like obsessively crazily boringly circularly he talks about jesus and everybody that talks to him is like he just wouldn't fucking shut up about jesus if he was like hey look we really need you to get you know a little further putting that bill through to get the fucking gays killed in uganda i would i would

say like we should stand up and pay attention to this. But if he's sitting down and being like, so the Jesus of my Jesus Jesused up my Jesus. Jesus? I'm like, yeah, that's not much different than the rest of the fucking jibbity-jab, Chopra-esque bullshit that happens in most of these places. I don't know, too, like, how much he is pushing their agenda so much as those congressmen

were pushing their own agenda. Yeah. Right? Because they never really make it clear that they're out there in Uganda and in Romania pushing the agenda of the family. They try to make a connection

because they're part of the family and they feel called to talk to leaders of the world because of Jesus and yada, yada, yada. But several of these people are like, no, man, I didn't like what they did. I know you're denying what they said about gays in Uganda

because it's fucking abhorrent if you agree with it. But at the same time, it's like, one of these guys is like, yeah, I'm a liberal. And you're just like, I can't imagine he's like, yeah, no, you should kill gay people. Right, and again, if the movie wants to posit that it is the case, they need to do a better job getting me from point A to point C. You can't just show point C and imply everything in between.

It doesn't really, from the movie, from the evidence presented in the movie, I'm just unshaken. The Wolf King stuff feels like a big piece of this. That's one of those things that I really liked about this movie was talking about the Wolf King, how the Wolf King was, you know, how Trump reacts to these people. And I think that that's an important part of this movie that, you know, put some things together that I might not have known ahead of time. There's a couple of things that I got from this movie, you know, that this group is very predestination, and that's one of those things come back to sometimes and be like, oh, no, these fuckers, they think some fucking crazy shit that fucking if you're rich, you deserve to be rich. If you're poor, you deserve to be poor, period.

And those are that's some problematic thinking for sure. And it definitely shows why they would be anti-labor. Right. Which, you know, is one of those things in the movie that I was like, oh, fucking anti-labor, dude. OK, well, that makes sense. And it 100% makes sense that somebody who is like, yeah, I'm destiny filled, thinks that labor organizing is a horror. Doug Coe is a huge takeaway from this. I think Doug Coe is a huge takeaway because I, like I said, I didn't know him, but all in all, it's really not a cohesive documentary. And if you follow

evangelicals even a little bit, you know that none of this stuff is a surprise. I never really found out what their main ideas were, like what the main ideas of the family are, except for Jesus plus nothing. And in a roundabout way, they didn't care. They were talking about the gays, anti-gay bills in other countries. So in a roundabout way, that was coming up. And I know that they're anti-abortion, right?

So that came up too a couple times. The Wolf King thing helped me understand the evangelical support of Trump. You know, like, yeah, just whatever. We need a wolf. And I'm just like, all right, cool. I get that. Like in a way that it makes sense in a way that I didn't really understand it before because it doesn't jive with any of the rest of their moral structure.

And they're just like, yeah, we don't actually care about... We don't actually care about the things that a lot of us say out loud we care about. What we care about is Jesus. This guy's going to push forward our shit. We'll ride the wolf if we need to ride the wolf to get what we want. There's a pragmatism to that argument that's very difficult to be like, yeah, I don't believe that.

Like, I believe it. Yeah. I believe that. Yeah. Yeah. So, Tom, we used to do units back in the day. Remember the units? We did.

The unit ratings. Yeah. If you're going to rate the family, the series on Netflix, what would you rate it? One through five? One through five. Oh, yeah, one through five. One through five. 2.1 units.

2.1. I'd go two on this. Two is solid. Solid. I think it's a two. That doesn't mean it's unwatchable. Right. But there are a lot of this that you could probably fast forward through.

I will say that. I think that a lot of the Russian stuff that they try to do, that they try to put in there feels tenuous. There's a lot of stuff in this where you watch it, and you're like, after you're done, you're like, yeah, that felt tenuous. Like, all that felt tenuous. It didn't feel like, never felt, it never felt like it was concrete at all. There's a lot of so what moments.

Yeah, really, genuinely, especially fucking like in the beginning. I mean, they, you know, if you can't even make one episode without a so what moment, I think you're fucking up. And that first episode had the Karen in it, who's like from the PTA or fucking homeowners association, super mad. And you're just like, yeah, nobody cares about you lady.

They, they spent and they spend like five minutes following her with a camera, like walking behind her. And I'm just like, nobody like, cause again, you're expecting some big revelation. And that's all this thing is,

is expecting one big revelation that never happens. That's all this entire series is. If you wanted to find out about Doug Coe, you might be able to watch this series, but my suggestion is just read his Wikipedia page and do a little bit of research. You might even want to just like, like download that guy's book

and listen to the family there because that seems like it might even be narratively better than what we watched. Yeah, I can't imagine that it's less cohesive. Yeah. Because it really, it really is just a mess of a documentary. Yeah. That's really a big problem with it. Like it's just cohesive. Yeah. Because it really is just a mess of a documentary. Yeah.

That's really a big problem with it. Like, it's just messy and sloppy and overlong and disconnected. It's a messy piece. Yeah. If you guys want us to watch anything else, let us know. You can send a message to us

at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com and let us know if there's something else you'd like us to break down. We had, I don't want to say we had fun, but we had a time

breaking this movie down for you uh we hope you enjoyed it um we will be back next monday with a full-length episode but we are going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics 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

deadpan, 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, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody.

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