Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 564: I'm Not a Cat

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Show Notes Bumpers          

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 glory hole studios and beyond, 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 episode 564 i think you know it's kind of hard to tell cecil because this is the second time we've talked about the impeachment of the same fucking guy you know yep there we are because that's that we're gonna spend a little bit of time

talking a little impeachment talks we need to do it sure sure i don't know because the motherfucking ex-president is in the midst of an impeachment trial historic we've never we have never impeached or attempted to the house has never impeached a president twice then we have never had a senate hearing on that impeachment for a motherfucking president who is not currently in power yeah that's some this is who fucking gets impeached twice who gets impeached twice who convinces an entire mob to raid the fucking Capitol Hill man holy shit so we got to talk about have you been watching the videos that the prosecution yeah for sure the nine minute

long video the first one they opened oh brother yeah it is compelling as fuck it is it I gotta say the Democrats all they have to do is say, here's what happened. Yeah. This is different than the first one, right?

The first impeachment hinged on this call with a Ukrainian president and whether or not there was undue influence in exchange for political favors.

And it was rather complicated. It was complicated and it was far away. It was far away. It was far away. It wasn't here. It didn't happen here. Right. But this fucking, they are doing a,

this is a fucking master class in storytelling. This really is. You watch these videos and the videos are, I mean, they're hard to watch. I watched them and I had fucking emotions. I don't like having emotions, Cecil. I'm a guy born in the seventies. I'm not supposed to even have emotions. I'm supposed to be stoic until the moment I die. I was supposed to like look in the face of my children and like feel nothing. I'm a man born in the late seventies. I watched this and I had, I had real

genuine upwellings of feeling and not proud and good feeling. I watched this, these videos, especially the first one. But again, I watched the one that came out yesterday. I watched it this morning, first thing. And it's and it's, we were within moments. Yeah. We were within a hair's breadth. We were within moments of having our lawmakers, our government, our, like, because if you kill the people that do it, there is no system past that, right? We were within moments of having the number two and number three and then other random lawmakers, not to mention their aides and other people who are just fucking showing up to work today, being ripped apart by vicious fucking mobs of insurrectionist assholes.

We were within moments of our democracy crumbling in front of us by violence, not by ideological difference, right? I mean, for most of my life, Cecil, for most of my life, I always was under the, I guess, silly and naive impression that what I had to fight was an ideology. Bad ideas versus good ideas. My guy representing me versus your guy representing you. But here we saw what happens when a literal strong man takes hold and uses the threat of physical violence. At the end of the day, it's fucking muscle and bone and skin against muscle and bone and skin. And an entire country could have succumbed in that moment to nothing more important than the stupidity of a rage-filled mob, high on adrenaline and fucking disinformation. And to lose sight of how fucking close we came would have been a motherfucking tragedy.

I got to say the Democrats on the prosecution side, it won't matter because it's not really a trial. They have done an amazing, amazing job of telling that story and showing just how close our democracy came to literally collapsing from the dumbest thing you can collapse from, which isn't bad ideas. It's fucking brute force, the brute force of the mob. Yeah, and it's spurred on by the narcissism of one guy. Right, yes.

So it's even dumber than that, right? It's even dumber than just the mob. It is, you're right, Cecil. It's dumber because it was literally for his vanity. They did it because he didn't want to feel bad about losing. And so he spurred on an entire mob of people to believe a lie, to believe something that was demonstrably not true, so that he could feel better about losing.

That's what it was all about. So, you know, the thing that really caught me was, and I had seen some of this before. So the thing that they were presenting about how close everybody was, was sort of on the Washington Post two weeks ago, where they had sort of figured out where everybody was. But some of the really, you know,

so where they figured out where somebody was, where the important people were along with the mob, and they had different colored somebody was, where, where the, the important people were along with the mob and they had different colored image, like icons on a map, on a 3d map that they kept showing. And so I had seen that a couple of weeks ago. It was very compelling when they showed it again, or something very similar in, in Congress. But I want to say like, like the stuff there was, there was a few points of this that I really was moved. And one of the parts was when Ted Lieu said at the end, I want to quote him, he said, you know, I'm not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years. I'm afraid he's going to run again and lose because he can do this

again. And that's the real problem, right? Is that if you do this, if you let this go, if you say this is fine, we're not going to punish this person for this. You're opening up an avenue where people in the future can consistently use disinformation to claim they want. It's now precedent. And that's terrifying. Yeah. they want. It's now precedent. And that's terrifying. Yeah. You know, Lisa Murkowski was interviewed. And at first I was heartened, but then I was mildly disheartened because she said, you know, she's a Republican from Alaska. And she said that she thought the evidence that the case made was damning. She said it was pretty damning. But then she said,

you know, when they were asking like, you know, well, to your point about in four years, I don't know how he could be elected again. He wasn't elected again this time. Yep, yep. And I like, I grabbed my fucking head in that fucking incredulous way that you do. It's like, he wasn't elected again this time. And we had, we nearly had a fucking actual civil war.

We averted disaster. Let's be clear. We averted disaster by only two things. This is one of the few times I'm going to sing the praises of police, but by some really incredibly brave actions by the police. There were some police officers in that Capitol building who did some genuinely heroic deeds. They did.

And then it was luck. It was pure fucking luck. It was pure fucking luck. Most of it was pure fucking luck. Most of it, right? There's a scene, if you watch the prosecution's defense, there's a scene where Nancy Pelosi's aides and all these people that work for her,

they scramble into this fucking conference room and they barricade themselves behind this door. And then seven minutes later, the mob fucking floods that corridor and this guy bashes the fucking door down. But thankfully, there's a door and a second door before you get to this like huddled group of I don't know how many people, but it's not five, man. It's a lot of fucking people huddled together under a conference table. And they just looked at that. And because they fucking didn't know shit all about the building and its architecture and its layout, that guy didn't break down the second door. But they could have. They were there.

They 100% fucking could have. And you but they could have they were 100 fucking could have and you think they would have snuggled with them they weren't there to cuddle they were there to kill people that was their yeah they're they're walking down the halls nancy yep man what do you think was gonna happen they'd have fucking torn her apart like animals, man. It's the Speaker of the House. Hang Mike Pence. That was their chant. Don't tell, I mean, don't tell you what they wanted to do.

They literally said it out loud. Right. And Trump, when he knew, and I think that, again, I think the prosecution- It's the timing. Made such a compelling argument. Yeah.

Because Trump knew. He knew that Pence had been evacuated. He knew that Pence had been evacuated. He knew that Pence had been moved to a secure location that rioters had broken into the fucking Capitol building. And even after that, he is tweeting shit out, knowing that his tweets are essentially battle plans and permission to the fucking rioters, knowing that. Because when he fucking says shit and he tweets shit,

people react to it in real fucking time from their motherfucking phones. And when that happened, even after the vice president had been fucking evacuated, he's still tweeting shit out about how Mike Pence is a coward. What he didn't do is the most, one of the most important things about this Cecil is what he didn't do. What he didn't do is realize, holy fuck, these people that fucking fall on every fucking word of mine. They have taken this building. And this is an opportunity for me to say, fuck, oh, no, guys, this is not what I meant. Peaceably, leave the building. Fucking democracy cannot stand this kind of attack.

He didn't say anything like that. He didn't say anything like that in real time. In real time, he either exacerbated the situation, incited more violence, or was tacitly permissive after people were removed from the building. At no point did he try to quell any of this violence, even when the violence kicked off. So even if you cannot make, even if you can't wrap your fucking dumb ass head around the idea that he spent 77 days

creating this violence from the point of November 3rd to January 6th, even if you for some reason can't figure that fucking part out, he didn't do shit. He had a responsibility as the fucking commander in chief and as the president, as the leader of the country,

he didn't do shit to fix it either. Yeah. He purposely made it worse. The video after is enough, right? The video that got deleted, the one that they took down where he's saying, you're all very beautiful people. I love you. You're, you're very good. Go home now. They, they take things away from us and

it's horrible what they do to us. It's terrible what they do to us. They steal it from us and they make us feel so terrible and so angry, but we got to go home, but they stole it from us, but we got to go home. And that was literally what, I mean, watch that video, watch what he has to say. He's inciting them with that video. You can't look at that in any other way. He doesn't, he literally cannot say out loud, just go home. He has to say, he has to couch it in the language of they stole it from us, right? There's a mixed message there. There was not one single message. And so if you're sending out mixed messages, that's on you. That's not on the crowd.

No. For which one? You gave them two choices. Leadership has to be clear. Yeah. Leadership has to be clear. And when there's a crisis, he failed to act in that crisis.

Every time there was a crisis. Just, I mean, you couldn't be more right, Cecil. Every fucking crisis for four years that came by, time there was a crisis just just every i mean you couldn't be more right cecil every fucking crisis for four years that came by he either created or failed to act he's the fucking impotent in chief is who he is he fat fucker never got his dick hard once in four fucking years what did he do about the fucking pandemic he didn't do shit all about the pandemic he left in front of us and said this this will go away by magic. Shine some light on it.

Are you fucking kidding me? And when the fucking actual, honest to God, genuine insurrection, the first in American history since the Civil War, a fucking insurrection occurred and our Capitol was overrun by a mob of fucking bizarro sycophants to the fucking lame duck president. He didn't take control of the situation and he could have. Yeah. Because all those fuckers wore his hat. Yep. They wore his hat. Yep.

They could, all he had to do was, he was a tweet away from solving that problem. Go home. This isn't what I wanted. They were standing outside screaming, fight for Trump. I mean, that's enough right there to say, like, why are they there? They told you why they were there, man. They literally said it out loud. What were they there to do? They told you what they were there to do. They were there to hang Mike Pence. They were there to, to find Nancy Pelosiosi they were rifling through documents open documents on a desk thinking they were gonna find some weird secret fucking uh message inside a fucking

desk this one guy it's the best people are literally so stupid he walks inside he and he's got his phone out and he's rifling through the papers in one of those lecterns where they have, you know, it looks like an elementary school desk that just doesn't have a chair on it. It's just, you know, you can flip the top open and put things inside of it. And there's a bunch of papers in there and he's flipping through a legal pad and a binder and he says out loud, there has to be something in here we can nail the bastards with. He thinks he's going to find secret documents inside of there that we just, oh, you know what I did today?

Uh, you know, other congressmen, I brought my secret documents with me and I accidentally left them inside an unlocked desk. Do you have your secret binder of forbidden plans? I brought mine. Do you have your secret decoder ring so I can read it? The worst part about this is that these people are so stupid. They thought that was real. And that's why they were so easy to manipulate. That's literally the reason why they were so easy to manipulate. This is a group of people, like, I just want to be very, very clear.

We did not flirt with the loss of our sacred institutions and democracy. We didn't flirt with it. We fucking tongued that shit. We were heavy petting apocalypse. That's what we were fucking doing. And it is just a God's honest truth, Cecil, that for most of American history, these fucking dumb fucking cretin mouth-breathing motherfuckers, they weren't able to gather like this. They were not motivated like this.

We are in a new place, a dangerous place. And let me be very clear, because I think it's fucking important. This place is not going away. We have given the dumbest motherfuckers you can possibly imagine some of the most powerful tools and weapons that your mind can dream up. Because it used to be that these dumbass motherfuckers that can't fucking spell their own name, that aren't educated, that can't understand the fucking news. Well, you know what? They weren't reading the news. Yeah.

They weren't in this. That's not what they were doing. That wasn't their life. But the world has changed and they are easily taken in and they are easily manipulated and they aren't that fucking smart and they don't have the fucking tools to address the difficult and complex issues that present to us. And so here they are. And what we have figured out, and if anybody is paying attention, what anybody who seeks to gain control will see from this is this is a group I can manipulate. There is a massive number of people, tens of dozens of millions of people in this country that is manipulatable, that is not sophisticated, that has not got the tools necessary to do the good, smart, thinky work. When you've got 74 or 75 million people who maybe think QAnon is probably a little right, you're only a minute away from mobilizing that. That's it. We had the dumbest fucking guy ever that did it. We didn't have a sophisticated, smart, compelling guy

who did this work. We are in a terrifying place. And if you make this, if you make it so that this guy gets off free, scot-free, which they will, they're never going to get enough people to convict him. And I do have a question to ask you about that in a second. But even if you do let him get off scot-free, someone more sophisticated and smarter never going to get enough people to convince, convict him. And I do want to, I do have a question to ask you about that in a second, but even if you do let him get off scot-free,

someone more sophisticated and smarter is going to come in. So this is, the vote on this, sadly, is going to be whether or not we get to keep the country. That's the vote. This is, Cecil, I think it's that. I also think this is genuinely, this is a vote that, that demonstrates whether or not we as a nation believe that reality matters. We are deciding, we are going to decide in a handful of days whether what's true is true. Not whether what's true is good or bad, not whether what's true is something we should fix or not fix. Those questions are fucking 10 years behind us. Throw them away. What we are deciding right now is whether or not what's true happened.

Does reality matter? That is a decision that's in front of us. And if we go the wrong way, and let me be clear, I think we will. I think we will too. If we go the wrong way, we are teaching the next fucking guy that there is a massive number of people in this country who don't have the tools

and who are manipulatable and can fall prey to the machinations of someone smarter and more sophisticated because you didn't have someone real smart and sophisticated to start with. Nope. You just had someone ruthless. What if you had someone smart

and ruthless, guys? Because there are smart, ruthless people out there. Yeah. So, Tom, there's two options to go about this, and I know that they can do this. There were suggestions of a secret ballot. And the suggestion of the secret ballot

takes the weight off of the Republicans because if they vote in a secret ballot, no one knows whether or not they were the one who said he should go. And there's, I guess, two frames of mind. The first frame of mind is if you let them have a secret ballot, you could get rid of Trump.

But if you have an open ballot and you get to see who voted yay and nay, you could sync these people with Trump. You know what I mean? Like if you didn't vote along with it, you could sync with him. I genuinely think that the precedent is more important than syncing the senators that side with him. I would push for a secret ballot myself. Where do with him, I would push for a secret ballot myself. Where do you stand? I would push for a secret ballot. What matters right now is that a condemnation of the rejection of reality is made. That has to happen. So I did read something

interesting that the way that the impeachment article in the constitution is written is that it has got to be two thirds of present senators. So you could actually have 50, you could have, Trump could, if 20 senators, if 20 Republicans simply didn't show up, they would have to not abstain. They would have to not show up to the vote. If they did not show up to the vote, you could have 54 senators and then you could have a full impeachment. That could happen. we're at a place where what happened happened, and we even have to have a conversation. This shouldn't be a conversation. This shouldn't be like my party versus your party.

The GOP, I think, is in an existential crisis right now. And if I were the GOP's leadership, I would recognize that this 74 million are held together by the loosest of possible threads, that they do not coalesce around a meaningful fucking ideology. They coalesced around one fucking lunatic. That lunatic does not live in your house forever. And if you abandon him now, you can save the GOP. The GOP can go back to being a loosely connected brotherhood of bad ideas, right? But it can't even be that if they side with Trump. It doesn't get to be that if they side with Trump.

I heard a phrase, and I'm going to paraphrase. I don't remember exactly what it was. I heard a phrase on a podcast I was listening to. It was either The Daily or maybe What's Next, but they were talking about the allure of cowardice. on such an obvious issue. They are taken in. They are lured in. They are swayed and seduced by cowardice. And if you look at that, you have to think like,

that's somebody that cannot be respected. That's somebody that cannot be reelected. That's somebody who should not represent me. Do I want craven fools who are motivated entirely by their self-interest to represent me? Well, no, not unless I'm a craven, self-interested fool. And that's not how I see myself. It may be who I am, but it's not how I see myself. That phrase stuck with me. It really did. And this is also going to be a vote on whether or not we are governed by the seduction of cowardice. Yeah. Yeah. Facebook profits off of human attention and the best ways to hold humans attention are also the worst things about us.

Tribalism, fear, hate, minion memes. This story comes from CNN. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been banned from Instagram. This story is interesting. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has for years been repeating bullshit anti-vax claims. He's been like this weird, weird anti-vax guy. And he's a U.S. senator. He's a former U.S. attorney general. He was a former presidential

candidate he has been speaking out against vaccines actually for quite a long time quite a long time instagram banned that fucking guy good but facebook very weirdly which owns instagram yeah they're the same company didn't ban the same guy the same guy on facebook has 300 000 followers yeah so the same company like look it'd be like it's so weird to me it's like looking out your fucking dining room window and being like that's unacceptable and looking out at the same scene from your living room window and being like, okay, with me, that'll be fine. What the fuck? What are you even talking about? Facebook has pledged like in the coronavirus thing.

They have said like we are going to crack down on vaccine disinformation. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets kicked the fuck off Instagram, but still lives in your house. That'd be like if like a burglar broke into my house and I was like, all right, you can steal the silver, but you cannot steal my wallet. Yeah. My wallet is off limit. I have principles, sir. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. I don't get it. I think that there's some weird shit that they're doing. And one of the things that it said in this article, they said, Facebook has struggled for years

to crack down on vaccine misinformation and announced another effort to do so this week. But yet, no matter what, if I fucking post a video, if we post our show and it has a fucking, any kind of copywritten music, or we post a clip where you know we posted that clip that one time where that kid was doing the have you ever had a dream where you um

where you did and we posted that clip once and we got flagged we got that portion got flagged and we had to take it out like they have fucking algorithms that can find that shit. Very specific things. Within seconds. They absolutely can find and all of the different terms and terminology. You know, this last week, someone made a comment on our fans of Facebook page about a cracker tray. And they took the thing off because it was, they thought it was hate speech. Oh, from now on, I'm calling all food made by white people cracker trays. Cracker

trays, yeah. Don't bring in this cracker tray. But, you know, the thing is, it's like they clearly have things set up, right? They clearly have things set up. So why do they, why do they have to go through all of this? The reason why is they want to sell your data, man. That's why. Get the fuck out of here to sell your data, man. That's why.

There's no other reason. There's no other reason. They're trying to delay the inevitable so that they could sell more data. That's why. They want me to buy handmade Japanese teacups or whatever fucking weird shit they're selling.

And even worse, they want to sell that data to other people. That's what they want to do. It's worse than just putting an ad in your feed. They want to sell that data to somebody else. I know. I make a joke as if that's the worst. It's so, so, so much. And we've talked about that a lot. And it's something I'm passionate about. It's so much bigger and so much worse than that. They don't give a fuck. And to your point, they could crack down on all of it.

And you're, I'll tell you what, Cecil, show a fucking nipple in the background of a picture. Yeah. Facebook finds that fucking nippy nip and fucking flags that shit and burns your account to the ground

and they show up to your house and step on your computer. Exactly. They will fuck you for a fucking dog on the way out. They're just like, they just leave. They have programmed in a hatred for fucking background nipples.

Yep. But they can't figure out how to program it. Well, golly gosh, it is a tough one to figure out what to do about vaccine disinformation during a pandemic. Oh, get the fuck out of here. Well, and that's the problem is that before vaccine shit was lower stakes.

We talked about it last week with Noah. That shit was lower stakes when people were getting the measles. Yes, the measles are horrible. Yes, I had the measles. It sucked. Yes, getting the measles can kill you in certain instances. It can make you blind,

but it's not as bad as, you know, 3% of those people die or something. You know but it's not as bad as, you know, 3% of those people die or something. You know, it's not that bad. And so when you're looking at a global pandemic and people getting sick and people maybe having lifelong effects from this pandemic, we don't know. There's all these different things that are coming to light. And it's also dangerous enough to kill people in a lot of people here. We're not just talking about a small amount of people. Almost a half a million people in the United States have died from it.

So it's not a tiny little amount of people. And so the fact is, is that the, before it was low stakes, now it's higher stakes and they have to act, but they still aren't acting. Yeah. At one point they're talking about, this guy's talking about vaccines and he says, you know, like you said, he was a lifelong Democrat. He said, they say in the article, he said he's anti-vaccines views though, by saying that he's, he is actually in favor of safe vaccines, noting that his children have been vaccinated. That's

like saying you're fucking in favor of legal votes, right? I want all the legal votes to be counted. It's the same lie. I'm in favor of safe vaccines. Well, what does that imply, asshole? What the fuck are you saying? Are you saying there's some that are unsafe? Which ones are those? And that's the problem. Yeah, it's like calling a black guy articulate. That's fucking racist, right?

Because embedded in that language is the assumption that other black people aren't articulate. Embedded in the fucking language of safe vaccines is the fucking bullshit assumption that other vaccines aren't safe. What are we looking for a fucking vaccine that went through, I don't know, the largest phase three clinical trial in vaccine history? That's the COVID vaccine. Yep. We have it.

Yep. Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca Oxford. We have it. This is the only, what makes me crazy about that season, there's no other way out. Yep. What is the other way out of this what makes me crazy about that season, there's no other way out. Yep.

What is the other way out of this? There's no other way out. There's no other way out. Yeah. The other way out of it is that grandma dies. That's the other way out. Grandma just keeps dying ad infinitum. Yep.

And just forever, I live in my fucking basement and I ride a stationary bicycle until I die. That is the only way out of this. I'm essentially, I'm essentially that guy from the moon, the movie moon or whatever. I just fucking run on a treadmill constantly and I never see anybody else and I call people on Zoom. That's my life. God, I fucking hate these people and I hate fucking social media companies for pretending that this is complicated. Guys,

for pretending that this is complicated. Guys, don't buy that. It's not complicated. Facebook, let me be fucking clear. Facebook could fix this tonight. It's 7.52 p.m. They could bang this fucking thing out before the end of the fucking day. Because they can find your nipples.

They can find your nipples. No, goddammit, not today. Honey, did my pillow guy broke into the house again? They can find your nipples. Yeah. They can find your nipples. No. God damn it. Not today. Honey, did my pillow get broken to the house again? Looks like you're not sleeping well. Yeah, Mike. I'm not sleeping well. Maybe because someone's been smoking crack in a weird void in my house again.

I'm here to help you get the best sleep of your lives. Mike, please. I'll buy a pillow. Whatever. Just please get out of my bathroom. Honey, will you give me the credit card so I can probably know the fucking crack pillow from Mike? I love this shit. This is from Yahoo News. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell releases

absurd conspiracy infomercial. I love that they uploaded it to YouTube and they misspelled the title. The video called Absolute Truth, which apparently mistakenly was uploaded to YouTube as Absolute Truth. Absolute Truth.

It's like you're arguing at the end of the night at 2 a.m. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no. Let me tell you. Yeah. First of all, it's a great pillow. That just goes without saying. This is the absolute truth, you know?

It's just I'd do a lot of things if I had some money. This fucking guy, I also love, there's a video clip where he's on Newsmax. Oh, yeah. And they have him

on Newsmax, guys. It's so good. Newsmax. Of all places, right? It's so good. This dumb motherfucker, he's on Newsmax. And he's like,

well, we had you on to talk about your suspension from Twitter. And he's like, Dominion voting machines. And the guy asked him, the guy from Newsmax. And he's like, well, we had you on to talk about your suspension from Twitter. And he's like, Dominion voting machines. And the guy from Newsmax, when they're getting sued for like a gurgillion. He has to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have not verified that.

This is not credible information. Yeah, he reads a statement. He grabs a piece of paper off his desk. And then he starts reading the lawyer's statement. And at one point, the fucking fucking what's the guy's name is it what's the what's the my pillow guy's name lindell mike lindell he stayed he's still going and they've turned his mic down and the guy's reading the statement he finished his statement and then he just looks at the camera and he just gets up and leaves he just leaves his own interview it's's the best. It's so good. It's so good. It's so great.

Oh, it's so fucking amazing. You know what? It cemented in me when I saw that he made his own infomercial. I realized that this guy is QAnon Ross Perot. That's what he is. He is. He's a dumb motherfucker who somehow has so much money. So much money.

So much. And he's making infomercials to try to convince you of something. And it's literally QAnon Ross Perot. That's what this guy is. He's a, but I will say, man, like the Dominion lawyers, when they get a hold of this thing and they finally get him in trial, what if it was just going to on top, you know where the prosecution sits or whatever?

They're going to, they're going to take, they're going to pull out of my pillow and then they're going to just have hard eye contact while they dry hump it on the fucking table. They're just going to hard eye contact him the whole time.

And then they're like, our case rests. Thank you very much. Seriously, this is going to be the legal equivalent of jumping from the top rope. Like they're just going to... Boom.

It would be awesome if they treat the pillow like a wrestler and they're doing suplexes like with the pillow. And then they drop an elbow on it in front of them. And then like they do the leg drop, tag the woman in who's behind the desk and she comes out and she does it. He throws him off the ropes and it's actually about- The judge pulls his shirt off

and he's fucking ripped his shit and he starts laying some beats down. He starts hitting the gallery. He's like, oh yeah. Oh man. Man. I love that. I don't know if we talked about it,

but Dominion, I think Dominion or Smart Tech or one of those guys is suing Fox for $2.7 billion with a B dollars. Oh, it's so much money. It's so much money. And Fox was just like, we would like you to throw out that lawsuit because it scares us.

They fired one of their guys. Super bad. Yeah, they fired Lou Dobbs. They fired Dobbs. Lou Dobbs had one of the longest running, like most popular shows. They fucking canceled that shit with no, just like.

And look at Tay. Yeah. They're fired. Yeah. They were like, they were like, they treated him like Facebook found a nipple. That's how quickly they fired him.

It was immediate. Can you, like you're Lou Dobbs. You're like, you're doing the same thing everybody else is doing. You're like, if you're Lou Dobbs, I don you're Lou Dobbs. You're like, you're doing the same thing everybody else is doing. You're like, if you're Lou Dobbs, I don't like Lou Dobbs. I don't feel sorry for Lou Dobbs. Lou Dobbs was, he was, he was reaching though, especially with, you know, giving people airtime with the Q, with not with QAnon, but definitely with the, the voting machine stuff.

And that's going to sink them. Yeah. But like, so was that maria whatever the fuck her long name is like i can't remember yeah there were a handful of other fox hosts that were doing the same thing and you have to think like like i just have to think that this guy gets off a set and people are like great show tonight lou great show tonight lou and then he shows up for work and they're like you you're fired, Lou. Then you're just like, what the fuck? Like yesterday, it was great show, Lou.

I was great show, Lou, like last week. Here's your severance package. It's a lifetime supply of my pillow. There you go. What did you get? You can hug this and cry into it. Scream into this, Lou. Scream into this. It's better than sleeping on that fucking piece

of shit pillow i'm not a cat i'm not a cat i'm not a cat i can i can see that the republicans are breaking away to form a new party? I'd like to talk about that, yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah. So this story comes from The Daily Beast. Over 100 anti-Trump ex-Republicans

held a Zoom call to plot new breakaway parties, says report. Cecil, before we start this, how many of them were cats at the time the Zoom call was held? Tom, they probably, if they were cats, they said they weren't cats though. And I think that's the most important part.

You've got to announce that you're not a cat. I think that's the key. Best thing I've seen in years. Oh, it's so good. In years. It's so good. If you guys haven't seen it somehow. He sounds so sad.

We're working on it, Judge, but I'm ready to go forward. I'm here live. I'm not a cat. I'm not a cat. I want a I'm not a cat shirt. I want a I'm not a cat shirt with that cat face. I so want that. With his eyes looking all worried. It's a cat shirt. I want to. I'm not a cat shirt with that cat face. Oh, I so want that. I want that.

With his eyes looking all worried. It's a cat with his worried look. I love it so much. And the eyes looking around was my favorite part because you know he's moving his head and the eyes are so good. You guys have to see it. If you haven't seen it,

I'm sure everybody's seen it. It's been all over, but it's on our Twitter feed. It's just a lawyer who just does it. He's got a Snapchat filter on or a Zoom filter on and he can't shut it off. It's a little kitten and it's the most adorable thing. Check out this week's stream.

I'm sure we're going to watch it six or seven times on that too. So a hundred Republicans all had their fucking kids sign them into Zoom or whatever. But it was very interesting because they basically were like, look, the party is fucking broken and we need to start a new party. The as yet unnamed party

would reportedly run on a platform of principled conservatism, what they used to call republicanism. Yeah. And would field its own candidates in some races and endorse center-right republicans or democrats and other. Evan McGuffin, former chief policy director

for the House Republican Conference, said he co-hosted the Zoom call after he and other former GOP officials decided they could no longer tolerate Trump's continued grip on the party. How can a man with such tiny hands have this kind of grip strength? You would think.

Maybe he's got one of those claw grabbers that he reaches out like he picked garbage up. Hopefully, if they convict him, he has one of those eventually in Georgia. He could just have one of those he's walking around with. I want to say, there's a part of me, when I see this, I think of that, and I know you haven't seen it, but there's

a new Godzilla movie. And you remember that movie with... Do you remember that movie with... I don't know the Japanese actor's name, but he you remember that movie with, do you remember that movie with, I don't know the Japanese actor's name, but he's in that movie with Tom Cruise where Tom Cruise is a samurai. Last Samurai. Yeah. You know, the Japanese guy,

the main Japanese guy in that. He's a famous actor. He's in Inception. He's the Japanese guy. A bunch of other things. He's in the Godzilla movie. He's the only Japanese actor in Hollywood. Yes.

He's really homeless. Yeah. I mean, he's one of the few, like he's, but he's definitely one that you recognize. And I don't know his name, but he's in that, he's in that Godzilla movie.

And there's a point where the, the two monsters are going at each other. And he looks at the camera after the guy's coming up to me. And he's like, let them fight. And that's how I feel. This is how I feel when they're, you know,

like the Republicans are going at it. But, but I want to temper this by saying they are only probably going to primary in certain places. And it's not like they're going to split off. They're still going to vote Republican. They're just going to try to get different Republicans on that aren't QAnon Republicans, et cetera, hopefully. And I, you know, it's not like I can expect these people to vote for a Democrat. I know they said that out loud, but I don't believe it. Right. What I believe is, is that they're going to try to primary people in other areas to try to get rid of, you know, the Marjorie Taylor greens and things like that, and try to put on different people on those tickets that will be better. I, you know, might be better people too. I don't know,

but I think that they're going to try to do more of that. Yeah. I, I'm at a place in 2021 where like, I just want our opponents to improve. Like I I'm okay. Hey, if, if the opponent like thinks that true things are true, even if you're a horrible per I'll take the neocons, man. I'll take the weird, like, Cheney Bush Republicans. I am so sad. I can't believe I'm saying this. I miss the days of the Cheney Bush. Let's start a war for no reason because it made my dad sad.

Republicans, like, let's talk about whether we should enhanced interrogate, torture people. Republicans. I will say that Bush, well, while Trump tried to start a war on a lie, Bush actually did start a war on a lie. He did. I will contend that up until January 6th, I would have contended that George W. Bush was still the most dangerous, misguided,

and worst president that America had ever elected. Even including Trump. And I do feel differently after January 6th. I think that our near miss... There's no way you can go back now. I mean, even with, you could argue the 400,000 dead is

enough to say he fucked that up so bad that it just, you know, it's just a blunder of leadership. But at the same time, you know, when you go, when you look at it from a farther out view and you say, no, that, that almost flipping the entire, I mean, I don't even know what would have happened if someone would have died or if somebody would have, you know, if they would have gotten ahold of several of those people and held them hostage. I don't, I like, the thing is, is, is I remember, I remember hearing a bunch of people saying,

I don't know what I would do if Trump won. And before the election, there was a bunch of people saying, I don't know what I would do if Trump won. And before the election, there was a bunch of people saying it. And they're saying, I just literally can't think of where I'll be or how I'll be able to even handle that or what the world will even look like if Trump wins. I don't, I feel the same way of if they would have turned left instead of right

at that one door, what would have happened? I don't even know. Like, I literally don't even, what would have happened? I don't even know. Like, I literally don't even know what would have happened differently and how that would have changed us so fundamentally. Yeah, there's a timeline I'm just barely not living in

where that happened. Right, right. Absolutely, yeah. A terrifying time. Yeah, yeah. When I become king then, the lady of the lake, her arm clad in the purest

shimmering samite, held a loft excalibur from the bosom of the lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I'm your king. Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Be quiet. So holy fuck, this story's from the Raw story, and I've read this a couple of places. These QAnon followers believe Trump

is still secretly president and has been carrying out public executions at the White House. Not only do they believe that, they think that's a good thing. Yes. Yeah. They think that's secret. How can you have secret public executions, Cecil? Tom, I don't know, man. Secret public?

I don't know, man. What the? Can somebody just explain to these fucking people what those two words mean when they're next to each other? Secret public executions. And the worst part about this is that this is no longer trolling, right? This is purposeful misinformation created because these are photoshopped pictures that they're putting out. These aren't just, oh, they're taking a picture of the scaffolding there and they're saying that they're hanging people there. No, they're

photoshopping in images from other countries where there were people that were hung and they're photoshopping them in to the scaffolding that exists as if there were public executions there and someone snapped a photograph of it. They are literally digitally manipulating these photos. We have to get to a point where that becomes something that you can then be, I mean, I don't know. I don't know where you go. I mean, I don't want to say something like prosecuted for,

but there has to be something that happens to you for creating purposefully misleading photos that are making people, you know, that are turning people into revolutionaries. Yeah, I'm right there, man, because we are, and I know we've talked about this before, this is a real worry of mine that we are a handful of photoshops and deep fakes away from being sold a bill of goods that pushes us to the brink of war, to a war that pushes us to react in ways we can never take back. We have to create, the need for digital literacy is not a request. It is a requirement that is existential. We will not survive. We will not survive as a nation or as a world if we can't figure this out. It needs to be illegal

in some way, I think, to manipulate images at all and post them as news. Think about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, right? One of the precipitating events that pushed us into the Vietnam War was the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Well, what if that never happened, but we had video of it anyway? We're an inch away from that. We are an inch away from videos of things that never happened. And that kind of shit is what pushes us into war. We got into a war with Iraq because there were photos, right? There were aerial surveillance photos

that were suggestive of weapons of mass destruction, man. We look at shit with our eyes and we believe it. And because we have a stupid fucking idea still that seeing is believing. It's not anymore. It's 2021. Seeing should be doubting, but it won't be because we're not built that way as people, as humans, we're not built that way. And one of the things I think that is, that is, uh, you know, important to understand and for our audience to understand is that while you or I I or someone in the audience who does have some sort of digital literacy will see this and say, this isn't real. Or they'll do a reverse image search and they'll say,

oh, well, this is clearly the top of this thing is clearly this and the bottom of this is this. They'll do a couple of things that require a touch of digital literacy and immediately find the answer. And so they'll be fine, but there are people out there that won't do that work. And they will be convinced of this. And they will act on this. Because here's the thing, if you really thought they were executing people at the fucking,

they think he's still president, which is hilarious. they think he's still president, which is hilarious. They think he's still president. Secret president. And he's the secret president and he's executing the deep state. That's what they're saying. But if you thought

that someone was murdering somebody, how far would you go? I mean, look at Pizzagate, guys. They thought they were murdering people. That's how far they went. So, you know, this isn't a, look at how far they went when they thought they stole the election. Look at how far they go. So, you know, this isn't a, this, look at how far they went when

they thought they stole the election. Look at how far they go when they get lied to. Look at how far people will go. I mean, fucking Manson, Charlie Manson convinced people to kill other people by words, folks. He never killed anybody. Okay. Charlie Manson didn't wield that. He just told people to kill somebody and they did. That's how this works. We've got to be afraid of that in some way. And there's got to be some way to, I don't know what the answer is. I'm not smart enough and I'm not pretending I'm smart enough, but there has to be something there that prevents this sort of thing or that calls attention to this sort of thing. Like I said earlier, when we talk about Facebook, they can immediately tell when there's a nipple

in the background. They know when we get that kid who can't finish a sentence on in our video and audio, they know when that happens, there has to be some way for, uh, some flagging process that allows us to say, this is a fake thing. And for them to put something on it right away, you know what I mean? So people know immediately, uh, cause it's getting to the point where people are falling for the, like the most absurd shit. But again, it sounds crazy, but you sit back and think, no, some people believe this. Yeah. Some not.

Remember when we first started covering QAnon, it was so outlandish. Yeah. That we were laughing about it because it was this bizarro, David Icke, reptilesque world. We fucking elected that person as a Congress. Yeah. Like into our Congress as a Congress person. That's- Not just one.

Yeah, multiple, multiple. There is no such thing as too absurd to be real anymore. Yeah. So we have to be really, really careful because too absurd to be real isn't true. That's not, that's not something you can rest on. We live in a world, we live in a country where most people believe that there is an omnipotent being. Most people believe that somebody came back from the dead. Most people believe that there was a talking donkey. Most

people believe that, you know, I mean, these are all biblical myths, right? Yeah. Yeah. Most people believe nonsense. Most people believe nonsense already. They are primed to believe nonsense already and they are raised and they are taught nonsense from a very young age. And that nonsense is all different. There's all different types of nonsense, but religious nonsense is just as much nonsense as QAnon. It's not any different. It's the same type of dumb shit. It's somebody lying to you to profit off of it. Is it okay if we do accent sugar? Troy, Georgia, the country, not the state. That's right. Capital city, Tbilisi, and former member of the Soviet Union. And we kindly request y'all mind your P's and Q's. So this story comes from Slate.com. It sure looks like Trump will face criminal charges for election fraud.

This refers specifically to the call that Trump made to the Secretary of State in Georgia, which we covered a few weeks ago. Yeah, and something he should have been impeached for. Yes. Something he should have been impeached for. It's something that in any rational world would be a scandal that nobody should abide. something that in any rational world would be a scandal that nobody should abide yeah but instead it was a side note to the bigger more unbelievably troubling problems which immediately came afterward yeah but now they're looking at at seeing you know yeah this guy looks like he broke

some laws and that's just a fucking dude and dudes can go to jail like anybody else. This, so much of what happens in the coming years is really going to test whether or not justice is a truth in our system. It really is going to test whether or not leadership of a high enough value shields you from consequence. And I am holding my breath to see what happens. I am not hopeful, I'm cynical, but it's necessary that this happens. It's absolutely fucking necessary. An election, I just want to read from the articles, I think this was interesting. An election law expert, Rick Hasen, noted at the time that there is no question

that Trump was asking Raffensperger to manufacture enough votes to overturn the Georgia election on the basis of paranoid delusions. That's the truth we just escaped from. Yep, and I think one of the things that's going to save us is that in the federal government

and with these big, wide federal races, you'll see all these people still sort of clinging to this Trump ship as it's going down. And they're still clinging to it and they're still praising him and they're still on board and they're still trying to protect him. Because they know, I don't think, I don't think they like him. I think they know that if they were, like you said earlier, there's a tiny thread that is holding all these people together as Republican voters. If they don't hold on,

that thread's going to pull all those people apart. And then the next election, there's going to be a bunch of disaffected voters because you didn't stick up for Trump. And now what do we do? You know, those types of things. They've got to try to cater to those people. And so we're in a situation now

where those people are in the federal government. They feel like they need to cater to him. I think some of these state governments, especially the state governments that aren't Republican, looking at you, New York, where they're trying to go after Trump for fraud and different things that he did there, illegal things he did there. Those are the places where I think you're going

to run into a lot less. They don't have the heat on them. They can be impartial. They can view this case and say, yeah, man, this is how the case is. He's just a normal dude. Georgia, I'm not so sure about because I think that a lot of these people are going to be afraid of losing their job or getting voted out of office if they go after Trump. But some of these people on the phone call might already realize that they're fucked because they already had a phone call with Trump where they denied him. They denied him three times or whatever. So Trump, they've already had that phone call. So they might already think, well, fuck it. My time in here is limited anyway.

I might as well do what I can to go after him a little. You know, maybe that might work. You know, one of the things too, that's so different about, if he were brought up on criminal charges, he would actually be tried. And I know we talk about the impeachment, the second one, too, as if it were a trial. But I just want to point out really clearly, it's not a trial. No, it's not. It's not a trial, right?

Because in a trial, a trial is decided in America by an impartial jury of your peers. It is not decided by an incredibly partial jury of your co-conspirators. That's what we have now. We have a hundred fucking people, all of whom have skin in the game. It's not like if I'm on a jury and I find Cecil guilty of a crime, but Cecil's powerful, I lose my job. You go to jail and I go home and I go back to work. The problem with the impeachment is it's not like that. It's not a criminal or civil offense. It's really just got some personal repercussions for the person being impeached. And the people who decide it are not an impartial jury

and they're not required to act as an impartial Right? But if he goes to fucking an actual jury, Cecil, where they decide, and I can't imagine anything more fucking delicious because this motherfucker has skated past responsibility his whole life. His whole fucking life,

nobody has held this son of a bitch to account for the countless shitty fucking things that he has done. You know, when he denied black people housing, nothing fucking happened to him. You know, when he's sexually assaulting women, nothing fucking happens to him. You know, when he breaks the law time and time and time again, nothing happens to him. He steals from a charity. Right.

Nothing happens to him. Nothing steals from a charity. Right. Nothing happens to him. Nothing ever happens to this motherfucker. So much so that it's a joke among his supporters that he is the Teflon Don. Right? Don, suggesting that he is a mafia boss. Teflon, nothing sticks to

him. That's what they call him. His own supporters have called him the Teflon Don. Nothing can what they call him. His own supporters have called him the Teflon Don. Nothing can stick to this guy. He can do whatever he wants. He's impervious to harm. I cannot wait for this fucker to become pervious. Yeah. Right. That perv. Impervious. He already is pervious. Pays $132,000 for that too. That's expensive pervious. you know i i'm right there with you i want to see i want to see your percussions happen you know for all the bad things that he's done and i want to see us you know it's just that there was never anything in place from any point on in history to stop people from doing this sort of thing we we we've we've

talked about it before but it was just sort of this handshake agreement that you wouldn't be an asshole in office. And, you know, for instance, he didn't show up to this to speak for himself, right? They requested his presence and he refused. He said no, you know? And it's one of those things that what's going to happen when they request his presence in one of these trials and they call him to the stand?

Is he going to say no? Because I don't think you could say no in a, in a state trial. They'll arrest him. Yeah. They'll have to, they'll actually arrest him because it'll be real. It won't be some political gamesmanship bullshit.

You know, what we found out is like, Congress doesn't seem to have any real power. Yeah. There's no teeth. There's no fucking teeth to it because the only people, the people who have the teeth have to choose to use those teeth. Yeah. And if half of them are, it'd be like, it'd be like if Cecil was in charge of whether or not

I got punched in the face today and Cecil was like, well, no, Tom's my friend. Nobody punches him in the face. And I'd be like, I never got punched. When your buddies are in charge of your wellbeing, you're shielded by God. I hope he fucking, oh, I hope this fucking guy is tied up. If not, even if nothing happens, Cecil, it would be fucking delicious for this asshole to be tied up, constantly defending himself in criminal and civil suits, blowing his fucking money. Just money, money, money, money, money. Well, he supposedly has.

I mean, I know he got a bunch because of this, the thing that he just pulled, but, you know, they're also saying he's really deep in debt too, so. I hope he's, I hope he spends all of his fucking money doing this silly fucking shit. I hope it's just, I hope it's the entirety of the back end of his career

where he should just be basking in the fucking post-presidential afterglow. I hope it's a fucking nightmare for him. This guy whose ass I eat lives around the corner. I'm going to see if I could use his bathroom. Oh, you'll eat ass, but you won't take a vaccine? Michael, for the last time, I don't know what's in that thing. I know what's in Twinkie Tim 81's ass.

What? Me. And my roommate. And my neighbors. And their roommates. And something that Tim calls mystery. I get it. So this story is fucking bonkers.

It comes from the Jerusalem Post. Iran cleric. People who are vaccinated for COVID have become homosexuals. So I guess we are making Cecil about on average 1.8 million homosexuals a day in the States. Wow. We're going to reach herd immunity. Like we're going to reach like 70, 80% homosexuality. Wow. I read that and I thought, okay, it will solve a lot of our climate problems. I will say we're not going to have to worry about

an overpopulation issue. A lot of our climate problems, there's worse problems to have. Yeah. And as a dude, you know, I get to, I get a, I get another dude as a partner. I don't have a bunch of shitty kids around me. I get to spend two dudes salary. I think this is good. I think it's good. You know what I mean? Like you're, you're gonna get a little benefit. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I, isn't it great though, that we're in a situation where Iran was one of those places where this really, COVID really kicked off pretty quickly in Iran. If you remember, it was one of those places that it sort of ticked off really fast. And, you know, it's also one of those countries where there can be actual capital punishment for homosexuality.

Yep. So it's, it's, it's, it's not a vacant threat. Yeah. It's a country. It's a country that where homophobia is weaponized. And so by saying that you're basically saying, you know, if they're saying that out loud, it's right. It's, it's not a threat.

It's, it's to them, it's, it's a way bigger threat. We, we think of it as silly, but to them, it's a, that's kind of a threat. Yeah. He's saying, what he said is don't go near those who've had the COVID vaccine. They have become homosexuals. This same guy last year, he had a video of himself burning Harrison's manual of Medicine and saying that, quote, Islamic medicine had made such books irrelevant. This is like part of that whole grand religious tradition that, and I think religion is really in this space in the 21st century where they are looking at the, they are hearing the death knell, right? The death rattle of their own relevance could not be louder in their fucking ears.

And so they ratchet it up, right? They have to make the stakes really high to scare people. Because if the stakes are really high, that will scare some people. Some people are going to follow that bullshit Pascal's wager. That's sort of like, eh, why not? You know, if the stakes are I go to hell otherwise, may as well believe. And there's like all kinds of problems with that.

But it really, religion is in a place where they aren't relevant. Where you can pick up your stupid fucking book and I can pick up Harrison's Manual of Medicine and I can say, you know what? One of these is going to make me better when I'm sick. And it's not your stupid book about flying donkeys. That's nonsense and you're fucking full of shit. And everybody who reads this knows in the 21st century that you can't land a fucking space shuttle.

You can't dock a space shuttle with the International Space Station. You can't build fucking rechargeable cars. You can't solve any of our problems with your nonsense. Your book is absurd. They have to make the stakes so high that it scares the shit out of people. Yeah. Well, and that's how they've been controlling people forever

is by making it seem like they are blasphemers. Make it seem like the person who you want to attack is somebody who is blaspheming or who's going against God. And if you can do that, you can then turn an entire population, and we saw it happen here in this country. They turned an entire population, the evangelicals it happen here in this country, they turned an entire population, the evangelicals did,

against whoever went against Trump. Basically, whoever went against Trump, they turned him into an anointed leader, somebody who probably wasn't religious at all, but they saw it in their, it was in their best interest, and that's what they did. And that's what religion has been doing forever.

They've been using it to control women. they've been using it to control women they've been using it to control uh control uh politics and that's what they do here you could just see it plain as day all you got to do is open your eyes so we want to thank our patrons of course we want to thank all our patrons we want to thank our newest patrons mike blake help i took legal advice from a podcast and the collared Fox. Thank you so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate all the support, all the things that we put together and having a podcast assistant to help get the podcast to you. We would not be able to do any of that without your funds. So we want to thank you so much for your generous donations. We got a couple of emails we want to cover.

First, I want to mention that I was on the Kids on Drug podcast. There'll be a link on this week's show notes. I had an opportunity to talk to Mike for a little while. The other co-hosts couldn't make it, but it was just Mike and I. And we talked a lot about politics and we talked about drugs and some of the drugs that I've done in the past,

drugs I had wanted to do and drugs I've never done. So it was a lot of fun. So you can check it out. A lot of the drug talk is later on in the show. We talked, it was funny because when you listen to it, both of us are just so stunned because we recorded it almost right after the fucking insurrection.

So it was really close. It was like that Sunday. So we're just, both of us just, what the fuck just happened? So trying to have a conversation around that was very difficult, but we made it work. So check it out. It'll be on this week's show notes.

We got a message from Jennifer. She said, oh my gosh. She said, the question on why religion demonizes vaccines. My mom honestly believes that there will be a microchip in the vaccine and that it will be the mark of the beast. And she believed in Q,

you know, they've been talking about this mark of the beast thing and I've been calling it for a long time. The microchip thing and the mark of the beast, you know, they, they, they pick new things as time goes on.

Back in the day, it was a debit card was the mark of the beast. And then it moves from other things. Yeah. From there to other stuff. And, you know, they they've they've always tried to pin it on different people and they're pinning it now on the vaccine and so that's just going to keep morphing oh my god it's like carol camping where you you you pick the end of the world but you missed but now i can just pick a new day because that's how it works yep got a message from uh this is from

jonathan and he sent an image of a Caillou image that we're going to post on this week's show notes. We know so much Tom hates Caillou. Fucking Caillou. Fucking hate that guy. We also got a message from Seiki. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but they said that it's even worse

than what we mentioned last week about Anderson Cooper. It's because Anderson Cooper just had a son in April, 2020. So it's basically someone saying, I thought you ate babies when you still literally have a baby. Holy shit. That is really something that really is. Yeah. Like, cause you're not like when you just have a brand new baby, you're not even jaded yet. Yeah, man. you just have a brand new baby. You're not even jaded yet. Yeah. Tom, we got a message from Travis from Patreon. So Travis says he wanted to ask a question that is primarily related to atheism. Religion ultimately seems to explain or soothe in a sense, the fear of death, or at least offers an explanation about what happens with With atheism, we don't have that. I am atheist and I frequently think about what happens after death, but I have

no way to know and it causes me a lot of distress. If I was a religious, I wouldn't have to worry about it because it's all explained away. Do you guys ever get into an existential shitstorm thinking about stuff like that or is it just me? Can I go first? Go ahead. So yes and no, Travis. So the problem that I fall into personally is that I cannot imagine the experience of not being. And so for me, a lot of the existential dread comes from my inability to imagine the experience of me no longer experiencing, right? And so the only thing that I can do is create some kind of bullshit simulacrum of that wherein I am both existent and non-existent, both aware and unaware. I am both existent and non-existent, both aware and unaware.

And when I think in those terms, I find myself all kinds of fucking stirred up. Yeah. And here's how I fix it, Travis. I don't think about it. And it's not avoidance. It is simply an acquiescence to the reality that when it happens, there will not be an I to think about it. Yeah. And unlike most things in my life not be an eye to think about it. And unlike most

things in my life, where if I don't think about it, those chickens will come home to roost. The chickens never come home to roost. They can't. The chickens all disappear. The moment I die, all the chickens are gone. And so it is one of the very few quandaries that I firmly believe can do you no good to wrestle with. And so what I do is I simply choose not to wrestle with it at all. I remember when I was young, this was when I was in my 20s,

I had some very high existential dread about dying, about not existing. And I had some very, very difficult times. And a friend of ours once said to me, because I had said, I just don't know that I'm ready to die. And they said, well, that's the one thing you don't ever have to be ready for.

You don't ever have to be ready to die. And it's kind of exactly what you're saying. They just didn't articulate it as well as you just did, but it's essentially the same thing. I remember I had a lot of those when I was younger, a lot more when I was younger. I noticed that the older I get, the easier it is to come to terms with my own mortality. I don't feel like I missed everything

like I would have if I would have died when I was 20. I would have missed a lot of interesting things that happened in my life. And I don't feel like that anymore. I feel a lot better with the idea of not being, but I will say this. I disagree on the counterpoint, which is that religious people have it easier because I will tell you, I would have crazy anxiety about living forever. I would have absolute crazy anxiety about what that felt like and how long I would live and what I watched the world explode. And, you know, what I watched the heat death of the universe that scared the shit out of me when I was, uh, when I was religious, I was very terrified of living forever. So I actually, I find a lot more comfort in an end than I do a, something that goes on forever.

Uh, that is, that was terrifying to me. So I'm in a different mindset. But yeah, when I was younger, I had those bouts of existential dread a lot. And I have them a lot more infrequently now because I think like you do, Tom, it's okay to put off because there's nothing to put off. And then at the same time,

I don't feel like I had no life. I didn't live. I felt like I did live up till now. I want to live more, but you know, it's like, you know. Yeah. I don't like to imagine that there is a world that will exist that I'm not in.

Yeah. And so what I do is, because I don't like that so much, I realize I just don't think about it. I don't have to imagine. Yeah, you just skip it. Because I'll never have to deal with it. Yeah.

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