Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 571: Suez Child Trafficking

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

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It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 571. Cecil. Yeah. We have begun the countdown to return to studio, buddy. To return to studio.

I got the jab last week. I drove down to Quincy, Illinois, which is on the other side of the earth, I think. And got the Johnson & Johnson. Drove home that day. Got a little sick. I wasn't super bad, though. It turns out I got like a little bit of nausea the day of.

Next day, I got a bad headache and a little bit of nausea, but I took some acetaminophen and went away and I was fine. Good. Yeah, how was Sarah? She was good too. No problems really. Seen a little bit of nausea, a little bit of queasiness, but other than that, I went away.

I mean, it was so mild, so mild in comparison. I've heard some people had some really bad reactions. And so it's so mild in comparison. And I was just very happy to have it done. I also am happy to, in some ways, to have gone that far to get it because I have the means to do so. I have the means to take a day off of work. I have the means to travel that far to get it. And hopefully that left a dose of vaccine here in the city for somebody who doesn't have the means to travel that far, who can't take a whole day off of work to travel that far.

And also might not feel comfortable in that part of the state, right? Whereas I could travel to a fucking hillbilly Republican part of the state and not feel like I'm in danger or not feel like, because I'm not openly gay. I'm, you know,

I'm not gay at all. I'm not a cis guy. What I mean to say is I'm not, you know, I'm not somebody who would be a target in a place like that. And so I think it's, it's, you know, in some ways it was kind of, it's kind of incumbent upon me to travel that far to get it where other people can't because our state won't bring it to the places where it's needed most. And there's an access down there that's just going to go to waste. And so it's incumbent on pod me. And it was weird. Cause got some weird like vibey messages about, oh, why the fuck would you travel all the way down there? My wife did too. And it's like, because I have the privilege to be able to do it.

That's why. Sure. Yeah. And also it's like, well, because I want to, because I don't want to wait because every day that I wait is a day I could. Yeah. Today could be the unlucky day, right? Like you have no, there's nothing that differentiates this week from next week in terms of your unluckiness when it comes to getting sick. We keep talking about nationally speaking, there's conversation about this thing as, you know, oh, we're lifting mask mandates and returning back to normal. 68,000 new cases of COVID yesterday. The CDC came out and said,

if we don't get this shit under control, if people don't like put the mask mandate back on, we're talking about a fourth surge. I think the phrase the CDC used was impending doom. President Biden had a televised address at a press conference where he said, please, this is not political. Reinstate your mask mandates. Like, fucking, I would drive wherever it takes.

Yeah. Wherever the fuck it takes. Right. Because to your point, I think I have some amount of social responsibility to do that. But also, I just have a selfish, personal best interest. You know, I'm still, and we've talked before, like, I still have to go to work sometimes. Sure. Sure. You know, I'm still, we've talked before, like I, I still have to go to work sometimes, you know, like I'm not entirely segregated from the world and many, many people aren't. Yeah. My dad, I remember like telling my dad, Hey man, like this was weeks and

weeks ago. I was like, you could drive down to Decatur and get a shot. And I remember him saying like, Tom, I'm, I'm not up for driving that far anymore. You know, cause he's, he's an older guy. There's a person right there that, that needed a shot nearby. They needed one nearby. And so when I drove that far to get it, I feel like I'm hoping one person out here, there's plenty of places, guaranteed plenty of places for some, you know, that you can get it that are in a red area that if you don't, if you don't feel like it's a big deal, you can get there. Yeah. It might take a couple hours to get there, but you can get there and you can get there soon and you can get one probably tomorrow. So Cecil, have you been following at all? This is a story that just kind of started breaking yesterday. Have you been

following at all the Matt Gaetz sex scandal stuff? Yeah. I'll tell you, You know, it's always the loudest and squeakiest wheels on the other side that wind up fucking balls deep in a fucking teenager. You know what I mean? What the fuck, dude? Did you ever read or see the transcript or see the interview with him and Tucker Carlson where you tried to- I had to shut it off. It was so cringy.

Dude, it's seriously so embarrassing. It's so cringy. I put it on and I started watching it. And then I just got mad. I shut it off. It was so cringy. Dude, it's seriously so embarrassing. It's so cringy. I put it on and I started watching it. And then I just, oh God, I shut it off. I had the same feeling. And I didn't return to it. That kind of- I didn't return to it.

That kind of like embarrassment, humor. Like I can't watch movies like Meet the Fuckers or something about Mary. No, me either. I hide from them. I get so uncomfortable. I'm like, oh God. I'm like, I'm just-

Gotta hide your face. You can't watch it. I would rather watch like hostile on slow motion than to hide your face like you can't watch it like hostile on slow motion than that shit like i just can't absolutely watching that fucking gates where he's like hey you remember when i brought that girl around and we had dinner with your wife and tucker carlson's just like i don't know what you're talking about and then he's like i he's not denying the the there's so much troubling about the Matt Gaetz. So just to give you guys a quick outline of what's going on.

So Matt Gaetz is a freshman Republican House member from Florida, not California. A couple of antics that he's done. One is that he wore a gas mask to Congress right as COVID was kicking off and they were starting to close places down as a joke. And then he announced, I want to say the next day or the very next day that he had to go into quarantine. He's also one of

these guys that's constantly on all of these pundit, you know, Tucker Carlson, et cetera, all the other ones. He's on Newsmax and stuff. 87 minutes on average a month on Fox. Yeah, screaming his head off. And he's one of these guys who was stopped to steal.

He voted both times, even after, I think even after the insurrection, he still voted to uphold, to strike the election so he's a horrible fucking person and there's allegations that he has had he's got sex trafficking allegations because he's evidently had sexual relationships with a minor with a 17 year old girl so that's rape like that's just that's you can't do that and then and also like not when he's not when he was 18 either just so this is recently this is he's in his 40s yeah this is a guy 18 either. No, this is recently. He's in his 40s. Yeah, this is a guy who like, yeah, exactly.

This is a recent relationship. But when he's been confronted with these things, some of the things he said have been so incredibly incriminating and embarrassing. He's 38. He's not in his 40s. Sorry, I don't want to get the correction. He's 38. But still, twice that age. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, yeah.

Creepy. So he's got this and he's like, well, you know, I think people are trying to like misconstrue my kindnesses toward ex-girlfriends. And it's like, you're 38. You shouldn't have a 17-year-old ex-girlfriend, weirdo. Why do you have a 17? He's like, I never took her across state lines.

He's not even saying things like, I never had sex with a 17-year-old. Instead, he's defending it by saying like, I always used a condom. Wait, what? Oh, shit. When I was statutorily raping that woman, I was nice to her about it.

I paid her for her sex. What? And there is something to that age difference, right? There is something to that. That is weird. That 21-year age gap. That 21-year age gap, more than the person's lifetime, is a huge deal. What do you have in common with a 17-year-old when you're 38?

What in the world? What in the world? Your life doesn't look anything like their life. You both like Mario Kart? Yeah, right? No, no, no. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to do.

So he's got this like, he's got this sex game. This is a kid. This is like a senior in high school. That's what 17 is. It's a junior. It's a junior in high school. You're a senior in high school. You're a 38-year-old man.

You might not even have a learner's permit to drive you can't sign a contract you can't even go buy her own car yet she can't vote for you his defenses for this are so fucking weak but then it's so great because he is also, there was an anti-sex trafficking bill, which was passed unanimously save one vote. Matt Gaetz was the one dissenting vote against the sex trafficking bills. One of the 418 votes to one, Cecil. And he was the one vote. Which one was it? Which one was it? Is it recent? It was, well, he's only been for a little while. So I'd have to call up the WAPO article

to get the exact bill real quick. Hang on. Oh my God, allegedly paying her to travel with him. Holy shit. That's gross. Dude, this is a 17 year old girl. You can't have sex with 17 year old girls when you're 38. That is statutory rape for a reason.

Florida representative Matt Gates was literally the only person to vote against an anti-human trafficking bill. This is a story from December 29th of 17. One is the loneliest. This is from Orlando Sentinel. One is the loneliest number. And in this case, that loneliest number is representative Matt Gates. Oncember 19th gates cast the lone no vote on a widely bipartisan human trafficking bill that passed unanimously through the u.s senate in september before sailing through the house by a core by count of 418 to one wow so weird that that guy is oh my 17 year old ex-girlfriend uh uh anyway maybe don't be so fucking open and weird about it you fucking complete weirdo but he's defending

this too is saying this is all just part of a smear job i gotta read to you what he said about how about this extortion, this fucking fantasy he dreamed up. By the way, the picture of him on Wikipedia looks like somebody took and morphed Beavis and fucking Nixon and smashed them together. He looks like Beavis Nixon. That's what he looks like. He says, what is happening is an extortion of me and my family involving a former Department of Justice official. On March 16th, my father got a text message demanding a meeting wherein a person demanded $25 million in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away. Our family was so troubled by that, we went to the local FBI,

and the FBI and the Department of Justice were so concerned about this attempted extortion of a member of Congress that they asked my dad to wear a wire, which he did with the former Department of Justice official. Tonight, I am demanding that the Department of Justice and the FBI release the audio recordings that were made under their supervision and at their direction, which will prove my innocence and that will show that these allegations aren't true. They're merely intended to try to bleed my family out of money. This former Department of Justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of

four and a half million dollars as a down payment on the bribe. A down payment on a bribe? Okay, I will pay your bribe in four easy installments. You come up to the desk at Kmart. I want to put this bribe on layaway. Here's $67 in some pocket lint.

This is for you. If you didn't do anything, $25 million seems like a hell of a lot of money to pay to make unsubstantiated allegations go away. Like if somebody was like, Tom, you got to pay $5,000 or I'm going to accuse you of rape. I'd be like, yeah, I'm not giving you any money

because I didn't rape anybody. You can't, what are you talking? You're always going to pay $25 million to make unsubstantiated allegations go away. Well, the fact is, is if you fucking pay money to $25 million for unsubstantiated allegations to go away, they were unsubstantiated.

So essentially, they still have the same product. They could resell it to you again and again. And it goes supposedly unsubstantiated. And if you're stupid enough to buy them once, you're stupid enough to buy them infinitely.

I love, too, that he's like, I'm calling on the Department of Justice to come forward. The Department of Justice is who's investigating you for sex trafficking. That investigation, by the way, began in September under the Trump administration. So it's not like this is a Democrat hit job. This is something that began in September. Gates was on the stage with him a couple of times too. He's calling out to Gates. And at one point he turns to Gates. I remember it was so awesome. He did something where he messed his name up. Trump messes his name up. He called him Mike or something. Even Tucker Carlson on the interview said afterwards,

quote, that was one of the weirdest interviews I've ever conducted. And I don't know if he did or didn't do anything. I just hate this fucking guy. So watching him squirm is so delicious. It's so delicious. Maybe he didn't have sex with a- 17-year-old girl that he doesn't deny having a relationship with.

Who knows? Yeah. Who knows? You know, maybe what he's trying to do is, you know, when he's voting against that bill, is he's trying to stop Hillary Clinton from sending all those people on that ship. Oh, the evergreen.

All the sex traffic people. Yeah. All the sex traffic people onto that ship. That could be the possibility. This story is sex traffic people onto that shit that could be the possibility this story is the most fucking bonkers shit let's talk about that let's talk about the Suez Canal for a minute

cause it's like it's so funny that that like one ship kind of turns a little and notches the shore and it essentially fucking makes the entire system of shipping in the world go bonkers. I mean, literally go bonkers.

They were going back around the Cape of Good Hope and shit. There were ships going around the big way. They were like, fuck it, I can't wait. I gotta go. All these kids are gonna expire

in the cargo hold. Oh, God. There's a best if used by date on all these people. It was just nudging from the shore, and then they had to dig that fucking thing out and pull it out. But that whole thing just fucked everything up. You couldn't get your plastic shit from China for a whole week.

It took a whole week. I read that if this thing didn't get floated fairly quickly, we were going to run into another toilet paper shortage. Probably, yeah. There has to be a moment now where I hope somebody's like, alright, we're going to need a bigger canal.

I don't know how to make that happen, but we definitely can't let something the size of one boat sideways really? Really? I get it, But like, if it's that important, we got to have some and I don't know what the solution is, but you got

to have some backup plan. We can't have entire world global trade systems where you're like, well, my boat broke. So Earth stopped. What? It's like relying on Carl to turn on the sun every day. No, we're not going to do that.

Do you ever work at a, you overslept again. See, so have you ever worked at a place where you had one guy who was the only person that knew how to do some key fucking function? I'm currently that guy in a couple of things that I do at work. Yeah. I have people like that. And they like, I'm afraid of those people that work for me. Cause I'm like, yeah. What if they quit? What if they know it? And they'll just like, they'll just leverage that shit.

They're like, I turn the sun on in the morning. And you're like, yeah, I know you can, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. You can just not, you can call me an asshole and put donuts in my fucking key again or whatever. Like, I don't, whatever. You should never have a system that relies on one thing. On one dude.

Yeah. That's like, you just, okay, well, if that guy doesn't show up, if one of these ships goes wrong, ships go wrong all the time. I know. They're boots.

Let's break down all the time. I know. Their boots. Boots break down all the time. I saw a hilarious image, though, where it was shoved into the side, right? And it's kind of tilted over. And someone put out arrows and said, has anyone tried this? And then they just straightened it out. So funny.

Somebody photoshopped it where it was straight in there. Like, has anybody tried that? Because it doesn't look like it's that stuck. To us, when you look at it from the top view, you're like, that doesn't look that stuck. It looks like, I mean, I've been stuck worse than snow in Chicago. Put it in reverse.

It doesn't feel like it's that stuck. And then drive and reverse and then drive. Drive and reverse and drive and reverse. Don't figure it out. What the fuck? You get some guy pushing it. He's just pushing real hard in front of it, trying to get it out of there. We're going to get emails from people. It weighs 200,000 tons.

I know. I know. My favorite of the memes was where they had the thing from Austin Powers, where he's like in the hallway. Stuck in the hallway. Yeah, stuck in the hall. He's puzzling around. And they pasted over the image of the Ever Given or whatever it's called.

So good. It messed me up because it says Evergreen on the side, but it's Ever Given is the name of the boat. Right. And so I keep on thinking like, is that a mis... No, I guess that's the name of the boat. Why did it...

Cover that up. I don't know. This story is so good, I've got to read this whole thing boat. Why did it... Cover that up. I don't know. This story is so good, I've got to read this whole thing. To summarize this would do it an injustice. Absolutely. From right wing watch, ever given ship grounded in Suez Canal

has been freed. QAnon adherents still convinced it is Hillary Clinton's human trafficking vessel. Of course it is. Of course it is. Yeah. I love the way Cecil, and I will read this, I promise is yeah I love the way Cecil and I will read this

I promise but I love the way the Q people like they need something new and they don't care what it is you know what I mean

it's just like alright so we didn't well none of the Q stuff none of that was a thing but we don't want to abandon ship just yet

yeah did you see the fucking the pastor who said that it was god who got it out of there because of the fucking high tide because well i guess it was a high tide tide comes in tide comes out can't explain that it's true i guess it's true god's just looking down he's like it's like him shaking a vending machine. I got to make this Tide go up. Hey, go get that coat hanger. I need to pull this out of the drain.

I got to get my big coat hanger. I call it the Tides. It's just a giant hand comes down and goes flicksies. It just picks it up. Like, you know, when your hot wheel falls, it picks it up, sets it back down y'all trying to go through sideways oh man

that captain, have you ever also you ever had a job Cecil where you fuck up and you're like oh that's a big one and you get that flush of like panic you know, there had to be that moment where the captain's like mmm I blocked the Suez canal. I blocked the entire Suez canal. I got to tell a story. And I don't know if I told this story before. So I was working at this place

and we had these, uh, my buddies and I would do these like silly little pranks where we would blow up giraffes and put them out at the river walk and, you know, just do all kinds of like goofy shit. And we had these little cards called, it said RAI, random acts of idiocy. And we would put them on these little giraffes and hide them in the bushes at the river walk in Naperville. And people would see the giraffes and run over and grab them. And then there'd be a goofy card on there. Right. So it's like, we were just having fun, just kids. Right. But it wasn't even really a prank. It was just, you know, somebody got a free fucking dollar giraffe. I bought it at the dollar store, you know, like it wasn't even really a prank. And was just, you know, somebody got a free fucking dollar giraffe I bought at the dollar store, you know? Like it wasn't even really a prank.

And we just had these things. And one day I'm working at this fucking packing place where we're basically just putting electric shit into boxes and then we would ship it out and then electricians would get it on site. And so I was a packer there. So they would bring this, the pickers would bring the shit to you

and then you would just work at the station to pack shit, tape it up and put it and slide it down a conveyor. That was your job. Literally the most boring job. I only had it for like four days. So there I am. My buddy, my buddy is working there too.

And he's also got these cards or whatever. And he's got the tiniest little piece, Tom. It's this, it's the size of a quarter. And he's got to ship it because it's the only thing on this order. And so I say to him, he says, I should put this in. It's his last day, second to last day. And he says, I should put this in a giant box. And I said, fuck yeah, you should put that in a giant box. Hell yeah. And so he starts putting up a giant box. He's like, Hey, go get me one of those

cards. And so he ran out and he grabbed one of the cards and he put them in there. And the next day I come into work and I don't even get to go to my station. I immediately get called to the boss's office. I don't even get to go to my station. I immediately, I was like, ready to see you. Sure, no problem. I come in. And actually, as I was pulling in, this guy was leaving.

At the same time, he's pulling out. And I knew it was his last day. And I said, hey man, where are you going? He's like, I got fired. See ya. And he like drives off. And I was like, oh fuck. So I walk in. As soon? He's like, I got fired. See ya. And he drives off. And I was like, oh, fuck. So I walk in.

As soon as I walk in, the boss needs to see ya. Okay, sure. I walk up. Yeah, what's up? Yeah, we found out that you put a card and it went to an electrician. And I'm like, and I'm a kid, right?

It's a shitty thing to do. As an adult, I realize you're fucking the business up. These are supposed to be trusted people. They sent a giant fucking box to a fucking warehouse where some guy has to dig through mounds of paper like a fucking Three Stooges movie.

You know you fucked up. But as a kid, you don't realize it. You don't give a shit either. I didn't give a shit either because I didn't care about the job. There's no stakes. They said, yeah, Chris did this thing. I said, yeah, I know. There's no stakes, right? Yeah. So they said, yeah, Chris did this thing. And I said, yeah, I know.

And they said, oh, you knew about it? I said, yeah, he was doing it while I was standing there. Oh, okay. Did you know that he had put a card in there? I said, yeah, I knew about that too. And because I knew about it and I didn't tell somebody, they fired me. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Just to contrast that.

Yeah. If you were like a cop doing crowd control while someone else killed a man on the street. No, it's not that bad. It's questionable. Tom, it's way worse.

It's a tiny electrical piece in a big box. Let's be honest here. I don't want to blow things out of proportion, but that's a thing that happens. I got fired for knowing something one time. I mean, good and good. I don't want to blow things out of proportion, but that's a thing that happens. But it was so funny. I got fired for knowing something one time. I mean, I was an accomplice.

I've always gotten fired for not knowing stuff. If they would have asked me, though, if I was part of it and I got the card, I would have said, yeah, I got the card. I wouldn't have lied to him. I'm not going to lie to him. Fuck that. Your job isn't worth it.

You're paying me practically minimum wage to sit in a place and stuff boxes all day. Fuck you. You know, and the funny thing is, is this guy's probably going to get raked over more over the calls than that Derek Chauvin guy. You know what I mean? And I don't want to lie, but we should never,

again, we shouldn't have systems where one guy who gets mad at his job can break the global economy either. I don't think this guy did it on purpose, but now you know you can. Now everybody who drives these ships knows you can fuck shit at one guy. There are some times where you look at the system, right?

And you realize, man, that's fragile. Holy shit. Yeah, man. This thing is like, it is like a fucking fabergé egg teetering on a fucking needle point all the time every moment of our society is held together with luck and duct tape all right so this story is just bonkers given, the 200,000 ton cargo ship stretching 1,300 feet that blocked all passage

through the Suez Canal after being grounded in the waterway nearly a week ago has finally been freed. Helped by the rising tide, the enormous ship was freed, which does rise. It does raise all ships.

It's a rising tide. Jesus. Jesus came in. He took the wheel, too. That helped. Moses comes in, and they're like, no, no, you're putting it, you're making it go down.

You're making it worse. You're making it worse, Moses. Get God in here so he can rise it up again. Yar, Jesus take the wheel. You have to, because I have this hook hand, Jesse, and I can't quite grab it. He's got,

he's got like his hand stuck on the till of one of those old-fashioned pirate wheels. And it's stuck in there. He's just moving back and forth. Oh, geez.

The enormous ship was- His parrot's name is Judas. The enormous ship was freed on Monday after a team of tugboats wrenched its bow from the sandy bank where it had been lodged since last Tuesday. After being, right?

That's some serious tugging. I need a whole team of tugboats on this thing. And if you want to get help with your tugboat, you can head over to adamandeve.com. adamandeve.com and our Gloria checkout. After being dislodged, the ship made its way to the Great Bitter Lake. Of course it did. I'm not bitter about this at all.

Where he was unceremoniously fired out of a cannon for a technical examination to determine if it's safe for the ship to continue toward its original destination of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. While the ever-given incident led to an unprecedented backlog of ships on the canal, close to 400 ships, according to some reports, along with $3 billion to $9.5 billion worth of goods, and cost Egypt alone more than $95 million in revenue, the incident has also caused a stir within the far-right QAnon movement,

as adherents claimed that the ship... Yep. Yep. Hold on. Yeah. Before we get into that, I just want to find out how much it costs to go through there. So you said $97 million?

$9.5 billion. Oh, $95 million in revenue. $95 million divided by 400 ships. Right. Yeah, it's $237,000 to go through that. Jesus Christ. We need to get a canal, Tom. We need to get a canal. We got to get a canal.

I want a patron only canal. And if you're interested in canal, you can head over to Adam and Eve.com. You want to get it in your patron only canal. If you don't want to get stuck in your canal. They start squirting Adam and Eve oil on it to squeeze it through. Some guy's like on the front of the fucking ship

with a thing of butter. Just like a kid getting his fucking head stuck between the bars of the stairs or whatever. Alright, so let's get we've been playing with it for a long time, Tom. We've, the stairs or whatever. Oh, yeah. All right. All right. So let's get,

we've been playing with it for a long time, Tom. Yeah, we're done tugging. Let's finally get into the meat of this article. Adherents claim that the ship was being used by former Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton to traffic children. The baseless claims... It's a cargo ship. It's a cargo ship. The baseless claims stem from the fact that the Taiwanese shipping company that operates the ship is called Evergreen, which was Clinton's Secret Service name as first lady during the Bill Clinton presidency. You have to, if you are shipping kids, you have to use your Secret Service code name. There's no other name you can use.

You have to use it. You have to register with the shipping company use your Secret Service code name. There's no other name you can use. You have to use it. You have to register with the shipping company with your Secret Service code name. The thing is, once you get a cool nickname, it's hard to get them to stick. And this one, I mean, it sticks. It's evergreen, actually. It never goes bad. It never goes out of style. It never goes out of style.

What if her name was deciduous, though? Just like, eh. The baseless conspiracy theory spread on gab and telegram when she fell it would have made sense they spread on gab and telegram the garbage social media platforms that are preferred for q anon adherence after movement influencers were largely purged from mainstream social media networks following the jan January 6th Capital Insurrection. Could you imagine the cesspool that is a 100,000-person QAnon follower garbage? Oh. Oh.

No. All right. So here's a post on the QAnon Telegram channel. Amazing. Quote, Suez Canal blocked by huge container ship named Evergreen. Evergreen shipping is most likely a cover for human and sex trafficking. HRC equals Hillary Rodham Clinton. Evergreen equals Hillary's Secret Service name.

Evergreen call sign H3RC. Okay, there you go. So evidently, Cecil, there was a 1,300-foot, 200,000-ton ship full of human beings that nobody is looking for. How many people can you fit on there? Jesus Christ. It's like an action park full of people on there. It's unbelievable how many people are on there. And you know, look, here's the thing. If you're human trafficking those people, you don't care how many are in a thing. So you're basically shoving them in each cargo container like a fucking Japanese subway.

You're just pushing. You got guys with boards pushing them as many as you can get. What do you care? You're human trafficking them anyway. It doesn't matter. Actually, I kind of hope that it's just like the story you just told. We have like this huge container and you open it up with just one person inside of it.

There's only like a funny card like wacky, wacky. You're like, you order like a fucking SD card from Amazon. You get a fucking package the size of a Buick that shows up. How stupid, how stupid do you have to be to think that, first off, just because two things have coincidentally the same name, why do you connect two things? You don't connect everything that has the name Evergreen. You're only connecting the things that you want

to connect that has the name Evergreen. Well, you know, it's funny though, because I just looked up the world's largest Evergreen forest and all that comes up is Pizzagate. It's so weird. It's just, it's just, yeah, when you you google it it does not what is what's in the basement of the largest evergreen forest that's what i'm curious what's in the basement there it's just hot dog now i'm checking to see if hillary clinton actually had evergreen it was okay it was it was eagle evergreen and energy energy were the three energy was chelsea so eagle was bill okay evergreen was hillary and then george bush george w bush had tumblr initially and then he chose trailblazer and then laura bush was tempopo. Then Laura Bush was Tempo. I have no idea.

Laura Bush was Tempo. Barbara Bush was Turquoise. And then Jenna Bush was Twinkie. What about Obama? I got it. Obama was Renegade. Oh, I like it. Renegade and Michelle Obama was Renaissance.

Really good. Malala and Sasha were Radiance and Rosebud. And then- Those are nice. Marion Shields Robinson. I don't know who that is. good malala and sasha were radiance and rosebud and then those are nice marion marion shields robinson i don't know who that is they all sound like crossfit box names yeah and then crossfit renegade and then it's for for fucking for fucking twats in here for trump it's mogul muse for melania mountainaineer for junior. Yeah. Mountaineer for junior. She's inspiring the arts.

Yeah. Ivanka was Marvel. Eric Trump was Marksman. And Jared was mechanic. Mechanic. Mechanic. That's like, that's like calling a fat guy tiny.

Are you kidding me? That guy's been near anything? Mechanical. They're just like, he's dead inside. He's a mechanic. He's mechanical. Oh, Jesus. God, these fucking Q things q things oh my god it's so crazy tom but the crazy thing is is that it's not

you know we'll talk about it we'll laugh about it but there are people man who really think that here like hillary clinton is is fucking trafficking kids and there's another story on here this this actor dallas actor, Luke Coffey trusted QAnon in Capitol riot. And it's basically this, I, this whole article about this. He's a, he's a, a small bit actor who went to fucking the Capitol and participated in the riot. And here's what he wrote on social media. Coffey about, quote, this beauty that's about to happen in the world, this Jesus consciousness. Mass executions were ahead

as God's revenge to punish deep state government officials and celebrities, he said, once describing himself as one of God's undercover agents. Mass executions were ahead as God's revenge. This is a guy who thinks there's so many traffic

kids in the world and so many hurt kids that is being done by these higher up people that they deserve to die. Yeah. I mean, the weird confluence that QAnon created this like unique situation, I think Cecil, where there just became this template and the template was relatively free form. And it allowed people to just fill in the blank for whatever their cause du jour was, like whatever it was that they worried about. QAnon gave them the opportunity to fret and worry and fill in the blanks so if your thing was human trafficking or or child sex trafficking or you know deep state political actors or the reinstatement of jesus is the figurehead for all government it's all different what. What QAnon did though,

like was it just provided this kind of weird rhetorical template for people to use? Yeah, it's a big network. Yeah. And it's fucking, but because when you read the stuff that he wrote, it's, I mean, it's mind numbingly babbly,

mind numbingly babbly. A holy purge is happening and it's only from Jesus. It's not from Donald J. Trump, but other people, that's what this guy said, right? And he's a QAnon adherent, but other people that were QAnon people, they were super like invested in Trump and other people were super invested in Trump

as a tool of the second wave of the renaissance of Jesus or the child sex trafficking piece or whatever. Right. To punish those people. It's all mushy. It's all, there's not even like a single ideology to any of it. It's this like recurring themes.

What's crazy though, is that there normally is like a rule book, right? There normally is a rule book that you follow really, really, and you adhere to, and that you fight other people because they don't follow. And this doesn't have that. This has a choose your own adventure for literally every single adventurer. Anybody wants to do it, they can choose it, but then they're all still so as close knit as all the other people who follow the same rule book. They're just as close-knit in some ways.

In other ways, they're not, but they are still just as close-knit in some ways. And it's weird. It's super weird because I think what, I think the thread or the glue, Cecil, that holds all these things together is the idea of conspiracy itself. I think the very concept. It's like a meta-conspiracy.

Like the idea that there is a they. And they don't even have to agree on the they. The QAnon adherents haven't agreed on like any overarching narrative, really. There's nothing. There are some thematic similarities from one to the other, but they're really just similarities. You know, there's no canon here. There's no dogma here. It's really just this idea

that there's a they and we're all against it and it's like well who are they it depends on who you ask well what is it also very contextual but they is what we are against because they're doing it and as long as you can get on board that

kumbay fucking ah turn camera roll sound 102 take 1 it. And as long as you can get on board with that, kumbay fucking ah. Turn camera. Roll sound. 102, take one. With overlap. Action, please. Action, Ian. Oh, sex toys.

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Most. On Wells Hi, I'm Stephen Seagal And welcome to Stephen Seagal's America I'm Stephen Seagal Today on the show we're going to take a good hard look At voting and why it's so cool to vote What do you think of America? Oh, well I love it

If America was a sandwich, I'd eat it I'm sure it'd be quite delicious. What kind of sandwich? I'm sorry? What kind of sandwich is America? Monte Cristo. You're okay. So this story is from Rolling Stone, also literally everywhere.

Everything you need to know about Georgia's new voting law. So if you have not been following this, I think that your TV is broken. And so is your every device you own. Yeah. But Georgia recently passed what is being called a voter suppression bill. It's also being called Jim Crow 2.0. voter suppression bill. It's also being called Jim Crow 2.0. And it is a series of measures which are very squarely aimed to prevent another Raphael Warnock from ever getting elected again in the state of Georgia. That's really what this is about. This is about

the suppression of the minority vote and the ensconcement permanently into power of the majority white population. That's exactly it. And the law puts into place barriers to entry and ways to limit votes from minority groups, specifically taking away vote by mail privileges, as well as taking away community organizing groups' power to go out and get people registered. It's hamstringing those groups. It's taking away the power of getting ballots to people, not just from the government. It's doing a lot of things that just don't help,

that really show you that all they care about is voter suppression, right? All the other side cares about is that if they cared about every vote, they would try to make sure that everybody gets, I mean, we would just say every 18 year olds registered. We could do that. We could literally do that. There's nothing stopping every state in the nation. In fact, there's nothing, I don't know if that there's anything stopping a, a federal bill that just says every single person who turns 18 is automatically registered the end. That's how it works. That's how it works in many other countries.

And in other countries, they specifically have compulsory voting where you have to vote. You can't just not vote. You have to go out and vote. And so we're not even instituting that. And so we're not even instituting that, but allowing and helping people get to the polls as well as helping, there's a ban of giving people food and water while they're waiting in line.

You can't go out and give people things while they stand there. It's just a mishmash and it was run through as quickly as possible because it's, and Stacey Abrams says it was run through because it's shameful. That's why they did it so quick because it is shameful and they realize it.

There is nothing more undemocratic than seeking to reduce the total number of participants in a democracy. So don't let anybody try to reframe this argument. There is no reframing of this one. There can be no reframing of this one. If you really believe that democracy is the form of government which is best suited to give people power to govern themselves, if you really believe in that idea, then you have to believe that you're soliciting that information from your citizenry, right? What is very, very evident, I mean, they're doing everything, including coming out and saying it, is the Republicans don't believe that if they ask the people who they want to be in charge, they don't believe the people will choose them. They'll choose that person. They know it.

They've come out and said that this is a, quote, naked power grab. They're talking about H.R. 1 in this case. But there's a reason that these voter suppression bills are being floated, not just in Georgia, but in other heavy battleground states. Florida, Texas, Arizona. They all have their own versions of these similar voter suppression laws, which are making their way through their legislatures right now, because they're afraid of a Georgia situation. They're afraid that if they just ask all the people, which they never did before, what they did is they asked the right people, the white people. That's who they asked. They call it line warming, where they give food and drink to people waiting in line. And for you and

I see, so like, well, I don't want to speak for you. I know you're in the city and things have been different. Here in the suburbs, I don't wait in a line to vote. I've never waited in a line to vote my entire life. So I go to vote. I walk in, I walk out. It's never taken me more than 10 minutes, maybe 15 to vote from car door to car door. It's a non-issue. I've never been in a line that I would think I would need to use the bathroom, drink something, or eat something. I've never been in a line that long. I've only been in lines that have been an hour, hour and 10 minutes, something like that. Certainly a completely manageable sized line. In many districts, Republicans have worked very, very hard to reduce the number

of polling places, specifically in areas where minorities are most likely to vote or most likely to need to vote. That increases the amount of lines. They're creating additional burdens on voting in places where they know they're less likely to have voters, right? So they make it easy for a guy like me, a fucking white guy in the suburbs to vote. They make it so easy. If you're a minority in an urban community, they make it harder and harder. Then they remove things like water. Then they, you know, they make it more inconvenient, more inconvenient. One of the most egregious things this bill does is it eliminates early voting on Sundays. And the big deal there in Georgia is there's a Souls to the Polls movement. The Souls to the Polls movement is a 10-year-long movement by black churches to take people to the polls after services.

And they now made it illegal, under the auspices, by the way, of respecting the Sabbath, even though the churches are the ones involved in taking their parishioners, their congregants. They know that they're doing it on the Sabbath. There's a bunch of white people who are like, no, you know what? We're closing down the polls on Sunday. Why? Because we know that black people are going to vote on Sunday

because that's when the churches fill up their church vans and drive people to vote. That's specifically why they do that. We need to change the federal voting day to a week. It needs to be a week or it needs to be a holiday.

Those are the two things that you need to do. You need to make it a week or a holiday. You needs to be a week or it needs to be a holiday. Those are the two things that you need to do. You need to make it a week or a holiday. You got to figure it out, but set it up so it's a whole fucking week. And then these people can't fuck with it anymore as much as they can. We put voting into a timeframe. It's like a 12 hour timeframe. The polls are open, what, eight to eight, something like that, seven to eight. They're not open. It's not that they're open 24 hours on the second Tuesday of the fucking November. They're open for a 12-hour span. And guess what? What if you work at fucking, you know, a 12-hour shift?

You're fucked if you can't get early voting or you can't get mail-in voting. You know, making mail-in voting is the one thing I think that showed that this is, it makes the process more democratic. It makes it so that there's an opportunity for people who never had an opportunity to vote or were going to have super inconvenience to vote to get a chance to vote. It changed. And look at how it changed everything this last time. Look how many votes got cast during a pandemic. Look how many votes got cast. a pandemic. Look how many votes got cast. They don't want democracy. The thing is like they don't want a democracy. They don't want

that. That's what we did. You know, they don't want a democracy because look at the way that they redistrict. Look at the way they suppress the vote. Look at the voter ID laws that they put in a place which are basically poll taxes. There is no meaningful difference between that and a poll tax. Look at the way that they ban third-party groups from sending absentee ballot applications to voters. Look at the way this law in Georgia means that they have unlimited challenges to a voter's registration. They are purging voter rolls. They purged, when Stacey Abrams was up for election, that same year, Brian Kemp was the Secretary of State. He purged 500,000 voters from the voting rolls.

Five and a half a million people purged from the voting rolls. That's straight up fucking cheating. You want to talk about like, you know, the right has been screaming unsubstantiatedly for the past fucking 12 months to anybody that would listen and lots of people who shouldn't have about voter fraud. You want to talk about manipulating the vote. This manipulates the vote. Well, what they didn't like, and this is, that's why they were screaming voter fraud is because all the people that were all across the country took advantage of what happened during the pandemic to make it so that people who probably, who would have had a more difficult time to vote could have a better

opportunity to vote. And they use the pandemic as a way to open the door for them. And what that meant was if you worked a 12 hour shift, like I was talking about that poor guy or poor gal, who's got to work a 12 hour shift the day of voting. Well, you don't have to worry because you got your mail-in ballot because they sent mail-in ballots to a bunch of people and they got a chance to voice their opinion this time. That's the voter fraud. Don't let all that other bullshit confuse you. We said it here right as it was happening. That was the voter fraud because every single time a congressperson or a senator stood up to wave their fist in the air and scream about voter fraud, this is what they brought up. They brought this up every single time because they didn't want this to happen.

They didn't want the regular person to get a vote. And every single one of these states that's Republican run, they're going to wind up doing this. And I don't know what we can do to fix this. Well, H.R. 1, we got to pass H.R. 1. The only thing you do to fix this is, like, to your point, man, you push through federal legislation that overrides this bullshit state garbage. That's what you do. You make it easier at the federal level to force the vote. And I think you challenge these kind of bullshit tactics at the Supreme Court. And you hope, hope, hope that there is some shred, some vestigial fucking modicum of honesty because there's no way to look at these tactics

and say that these are anything other than an attempt to suppress the vote. They are an attempt to turn a democratic system into a hegemony of white power. That is all that they are. Now, there is no God. Amen. I said, praise nothing. Praise nothing. Thank you, sister. You know, people ask me, they say, preacher Jim. I say, huh?

Why do bad things happen to good people? Wow, wow. And you know what I say? I say, bad things don't just happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Huh? Good people happen to bad people. Good people happen to bad things. And nothing awesome happens to people, you see.

That's why crap floats in gold sink. So, Ian, the Catholic Church is horrible. Still, again, more news. This is from Yahoo. The Catholic Church silently lobbied against a suicide prevention hotline in the U.S. because it included LGBT resources. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stood against the creation of the national suicide hotline. The group opposed the hotline in 2019 because it provided resources to LGBTQ plus people. Who the fuck is like, you know, we really really need more suicide i don't care who it is

like i don't i literally do not care who it is if they want to call a suicide hotline i even if they're the worst even if they're a catholic priest they should be allowed to call the suicide hotline man who are you that you're like, yeah, man, despondent people really should have nowhere to go. And also fucking the Catholics of all the people in the world that have a hate on for suicide. It's the Catholics. That's true. The Catholics of all the people, you know, in some ways, the Catholics who think that you ought, like, that's an auto hell. That's an auto, you just skip, go, go straight to hell for the Catholics.

You don't even go to purgatory, huh? You just go straight to hell. It's a, it's a, it's a really bad sin. Uh, and it's the worst. I think it's genuinely the worst sin. I think it is the greatest sin. Really? Suicide's the ultimate party foul if you're- I think it really is.

I think you can't, you're not allowed to do it. But in any case, suicide is one of these things. It's like an upper decker. But now you're basically saying that LGBTQ, that's worse. That's what you're saying. That's exactly what they're saying. You're saying that gay people are worse than suicide. That's what you're saying in the Catholic church.

That's a bigger sin to you, being gay. How horrible are you, first off, that you think somebody who's going through depression and is considering suicide as a sinner, that's awful in its, in its, on its face, right? Your idea that you would hate the person after they struggled with,

you know, their life and then they chose suicide. And then you would have some weird judgy thing you would do afterwards, like calling that a sin. First off, that's despicable. But then to be like weighing out these sins and saying, nah, we don't want to save those people because we don't like them. What a horrible, shitty organization.

To your point, actually, like, it's not just that they don't care if those people die. They don't care if those people suffer. Yeah. Because in their minds, they're going to die and then they're going to if those people die. They don't care if those people suffer. Yeah. Because in their minds, they're going to die and then they're going to suffer terribly for all of eternity. And they're just like,

yeah, I'm okay with that because I don't like what you're doing with your penis. Cool. Like what the fuck? They said, this is a quote, the bill is well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided.

The Equality Act discriminates against people of faith, threatens unborn life, and undermines the common good. Fuck you. How about that? How about you literally have no purpose? You literally have no fucking purpose in modern life. Yeah. The Catholic Church, you are horrible.

Yeah. Just like at this point, it's an unsupportable institution. It's not like some cutesy fucking ritualistic thing that you can say, well, you know, I mean, I like the incense and the songs. I'm sorry. They're making it harder for people to call the suicide hotline.

On purpose. They're not even like, yeah, I'm just not going to give to that cause. They're actively working against a suicide hotline. Yeah. That's all, oh, fuck. Yeah, man, it's horrible. Fuck.

It's horrible. It's horrible. And it's funny, too, because the past couple of months, there have been a lot of organizations that are Catholic that have been separating themselves from the Catholic Church in some ways, specifically talking about this latest thing recently when they were talking about how they can't bless unions between gay people. I don't know if you remember seeing this recently.

This was something that came up a couple of weeks ago. And they're talking about how they can't do it. First off, I just want to get off on a short tangent and just tell everybody, I hate the idea that we still use the religious idea of marriage as something. What I would say is reject marriage as a governmental institution wholeheartedly. There's no such thing as marriage anymore. Nobody has any governmental marriage. All we have is

unions, period. And then the fucking religious people can go fucking jerk off in their own fucking corner and do their marriage if it's more important to them, whatever they want to do. But when we try to adopt this religious institution into government, then they get to say that they shouldn't fucking have in other people's lives. Because that's where the fucking debate falls apart. They're talking about marriage as if it's some sort of high thing and it's religious in context. And so you've got to take into account religion. No, we don't. So just call it something else and then tell them to go fuck themselves.

No such thing as that anymore. I don't care. You have your religion. You have your marriage, whatever. Everybody gets a certified union from the government and go fuck yourself. You want to go do extra? Go do extra. Nobody cares.

And it doesn't mean anything. It's like getting an extra star on something. It is a time when I think the language does matter, right? It matters. So like the joining of people began as a religious institution that then was later adopted, I think, by civil institutions. But we're past that point now. We're well past that point. If people want to combine their lives, I think they, yeah, a civil,

a civil union, if it offers all the same protections. And everybody gets one. Heterosexual, gay, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Two consenting adults can get a union in the government, period.

The end. Hell, make it fucking a, make it a fucking commune. 60 fucking consenting adults. I don't care. You have to work that out with your insurance company. But other than that,

you figure that shit out. Yeah. You said you'd cover my family. So I married everybody. About 30 million people. Actually, I've married about 30 million people. Just let me know what my premium is going to be.

I'm going to be on the family plan. It says four plus. So I'm definitely plus. Yeah. I just, I feel like we, we go to them too often to say oh you know we've got to get you on board fuck them you don't need to get them on board fuck off you don't want to fucking marry people in your fuck who cares nobody cares it's not a legal thing anymore anyway the end who cares i think for for every time these fucking institutions refuse to do the right thing,

they are proving time and again that they are not going to attract new adherents, right? Young people are not flocking to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, their numbers have been dwindling precipitously now for a generation. This is an institution that will collapse in 40 years. It'll collapse in our lifetime probably. If I had to do it all over again, there's no way I would do that again. I did it in the Catholic church

because at the time my wife wasn't Catholic anymore, but she was at the time and we did it in the Catholic church, but I would never do that again. It's such a silly thing. I would 100% go see a judge because I don't care what, there's no religious thing. I don't give a shit. Right. I don't care. I don't need a person to tell me they approve of this or say some pretty words. I'll say pretty words to my wife if I want to, or my partner, if I want to, you don't need

to be there for it. It's cool. Yeah. I will say like having, we just got married three years ago or so. Finding a secular officiant was a little bit of a pain in the ass. I bet. It was a little bit of a pain in the ass. I bet. There's not as many as there probably will be in the next five, 10 years.

Yeah. You should get on that train early, Tom. You should become a secular officiant. I would be a good secular officiant. You'd be a damn good secular officiant. You should do it. I would fucking crush that. You should become a secular officiant. I would be a good secular officiant. I would be a damn good secular officiant. You should do it. I would fucking crush that. You should do it. I should marry some motherfuckers. You should marry some people. Be like,

bitches, you married now. Boom. You got like a catchphrase or something, you know? You think of some catchphrase at the end. I don't know what it could be, but it could be something, you know, like, welcome to the glory hole or whatever. I don't know what it could be, but it could be something, you know, like welcome to the glory hole or whatever. I don't know. I'm going to marry. I'm going to get like one of those like upstairs medical college officiant degrees or whatever. Like you can,

you give a good register online. You give a good speech, like a standing up speech. You give a good speech. I guarantee you would crush officiant. You would crush it. Maybe I'm, maybe I'll do it. Maybe I'll offer my officiating skills and we should make it. Maybe I'll do it. You should do it. Maybe I'll offer my officiating skills. And we should make it a patron level to be married by Tom. We gotta make it a big patron level, but we could do it.

For real? For real. I will officiate your fucking wedding if you're a patron at a high enough level. I will officiate. I will fucking do it I'm not even kidding I'll

you should do it though you would be excellent I'd be terrible I'm not very good at like giving presentations and stuff I'm a little I've done a lot of public speaking

you're good you're a good public speaker you would crush it someone's gonna send you how to do it somebody is gonna send you somebody that listens to the show

is gonna send a how to do it you will never find time to do, but I'm saying. It would be fun if it was like local. It would be a pain in the ass. Yeah, if it was far away, it'd suck. But if it was local, anything in Illinois would be fun. You know, you'd just be like, cool.

It would be fun. It would be fun to officiate. And then you'd be part of the wedding. You'd be part of it. You would go to the wedding and hang out. Open bar. Weddings are fun. You know what I mean? I love dancing at weddings. You get to go out and dance and hang out. Open bar. Weddings are fun. You know what I mean?

I love dancing at weddings. You get to go out and dance and be goofy and have fun and, you know, request free bird or whatever. And good times. Everybody. There is no God that made my mom. There is no God that made my dad. It was this firm and ache colliding that made me the child they had.

This story comes from the Tennessean. Can you be fine? This story comes from pop-up ads. Jesus. That's what it comes from. Well, that's why there's a problem is Jesus, Tom. God. That's pretty much.

All right. That's actually pretty much all the problems that we cover on this show are from Jesus. Yeah, right. You know what? See, so I only have two free articles of the Tennessean left. I hope I don't use them all up this lifetime. I'm going to use them. Well, I better subscribe to the Tennessean.

Hillbilly finds rock. Who gives a shit? Tennessean, can you be fired over your... My dog has tics. Tennessean, can I use this old car antenna as a fishing pole? quarantine as a fishing pole? Tennessean, can I get help to whitewash this fence? Okay, we want to call

him Jim. No. No. No. No. Take it out. No. No. Cancel the Tennessean. We cannot use stars in the Tennessean. Can you be fired over your sex life? Dave Ramsey thinks so. I found this article gazelle intense, by the way, to read.

By the way, I think I even loaned you the book a long time ago. You did a long time ago. Years ago. We didn't know who Dave Ramsey was. We had no idea who he was. God, fucking 15 a long time ago. You did a long time. We didn't know who Dave Ramsey was. We had no idea who it was. Fucking 15, 20 years ago. And I was looking for financial advice as a young man, just married. I didn't know what to do, how to do it or who to call. There's no ghostbusters for financial advice. This was so long ago. This was like, this was 20, 20 plus years, 20 years ago, at least. Yeah. I sent him

a message. I, I, I remember, I don't remember who turned me on to him, but I, I was, I got the book and I listened. I wasn't, it wasn't an audio book. It was a, it was a, it was a reader, a flippy book. And I read it and I thought there's some interesting ideas in here. And his, and his, and his ideas are real simple. His ideas, I mean, you don't ever have to follow Dave Ramsey because all his ideas are essentially the same. His ideas are cut out extraneous expenses, make sure you pay off all of your debt as quickly as possible, and you do that by paying as much as you can,

all of your extra income to the smallest debt you have. Once that debt is done, then do that again to the next highest debt. And he calls it the snowball. And you basically just save all your money that you can, pay off all the debt, the smallest debt, then the next smallest debt, then the next smallest debt, then the next smallest debt. And then you essentially pay off like at the end, your student loans in your house.

And then you start saving at a certain point. There's a certain point where he says you need to start putting money into the bank for an emergency fund and other things. And then you start saving for other stuff. And he's basically, I mean, he really is kind of live as frugally as you can until you're 100% debt-free.

And then you can start saving money and spending a little bit, but basically live as frugally as possible. That was, I mean, I'm not misrepresenting his work. I think that's what he says. No, no, no, no. That's essentially what he says. That is it.

Yeah. Honestly, it's financial advice for people without money. Yeah, really. It's debt-based. It's how to pay off debt. Yeah. And it does not work by the numbers.

I think though it does tie into a lot of the psychology that people have around debt and owing money. Yeah. So like people will level very real and rational and mathematically true criticisms of Dave Ramsey that I think are very valid in that paying off all your debt when money is cheap is not necessarily a good idea. Paying off high interest debt should be a bigger priority, actually, than lower interest debt. He doesn't

make those differentiations. So I just want to be clear, but he does tie into a psychology that is very appealing for people, myself included, when I read that book, when I had no money, when what I had was debt. Yeah, that's what I had too. And not assets. I didn't have anything. I barely had anything. But now Dave Ramsey, his business and his whole appeal is this really, he's tied in with all these evangelical churches. And I didn't realize that when I first started. And then I started reading about the God stuff and we dropped it after that.

Like we read it through and we're like, ah, that's enough. Like I don't, I never got a second book. I'll tell you that. So his company, Ramsey Solutions, is firing people. It's firing people, specifically in this case, a pregnant lady, because he found out she had premarital sex. Found that out because she got preggers. And so they've come out and said, yeah, well, we've got some principles that our company works for. And one of them is you got to live a righteous life. And we don't define what righteous is. There's 14 core values, including righteous living.

They don't define deeply at all what righteous living means. But what it clearly means is if you're a woman and you have premarital sex, you're fired. And I say if you're a woman because one of the things this article notes is, how are you going to know if I did it? I'm a dude. But women get pregnant yeah men don't get pregnant which means the proof is in the fucking pudding if you're a woman yeah and for men it's this is not just like this is so it's it's so uh sex shamey yeah and it's also so crazily misogynist and it's so controlling about women's bodies and women's sexuality. Exactly, yeah.

Holy shit. And I think it's bullshit because he's not a church man. He's a for-profit business. And there's a difference. He's leaning on this other ruling where there was a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock who was working with teens

who were trying not to get pregnant, I guess. It was some sort of afterschool program or something. And she was hired by this company to do that. And she got pregnant out of wedlock with I think her longtime partner. They just weren't married and they fired her. And they said they fell back on essentially the core values of the company,

which was we don't want to use that. We don't want to have somebody who's basically saying, don't do as I say, not as I do, because this person is not married and has a kid. And so that has been held up, I don't know, in a court.

And so he's sort of leaning on that and saying, well, you know, I'm allowed to use these core principles too. But the thing is, is like you said, Tom, it's clearly 100% against women. I mean, because there's a fucking, there's a trail of breadcrumbs you can follow when a woman gets pregnant and not when a dude gets someone pregnant. So, I mean, there's something, there's a trail of something you can follow, but you gotta be real quick about it. It's a snail trail.

It's a snail trail. You gotta be quick. But the thing is like fucking this guy is pretending to be, yeah, you're right. He's not a church. And he's, and also too, I think that's bullshit too.

It's, you know, you get to, you get to decide what happens in people's personal lives. It's so weird. It's such a weird thing. It is. It's weird. What I think Ramsey is trying to do, Cecil, he's trying to have it both ways, right? relationships with Christian evangelical organizations by structuring his company to have on paper the same kind of hateful misogynist values that the evangelicals have,

right? But he's trying to do that in a way that also allows him to exist as a for-profit company. And now that he's caught, right? He's in a little bit of a rock and a hard place and fucking good. Because the example from 1980 that he's citing as his ability to do this is from an Omaha Boys and Girls Club. And that's a nonprofit organization. Right, which is different. And it's very different than what a for-profit company has a lot less of those same kinds of protections than non-profits and churches do. And so this is just, it's fucking weird and it's creepy and it's super fucking big brothery and it's misogynist as fuck. But I also think it very clearly exposes

the obvious duplicity of Ramsey's solutions, which is Yeah, right, right. Which is like, I want to give you all the veneer of churchiness, of religiosity, but in the background, motherfucker, I'm a fucking company. I'm here to make a profit. Yep, yep. So I want to thank our patrons.

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pod or dissonancepod.com. A patron link at the bottom. You can become a patron on a per episode basis. Got some messages this week. We got a lot of messages about guns and gun control. Specifically, an interesting one from Alan, who said that he's a psychology professor

and a licensed psychologist, and he wanted to tell us a couple things about suicide and guns. He said, there's always a common thread of if people will want to find a way to die, they'll find a way. He said, depression isn't just a sad mood. It's also problems with energy, motivation, and concentration, which means that depressed people aren't creative, energetic, or problem solvers. Maybe it's possible to find a way, but they won't necessarily find it. If you put a barrier between them and a method of suicide,

a lot of them will give up the attempt. In the UK, an over-the-counter drug was being used in suicides. They didn't ban it. They put it in a blister pack so you had to pop out each pill at a time and the number of suicides went down.

Just that tiny bit can change things. He said that for every 10 people who attempt suicide, only one will ever die by suicide in their whole life. He said, and he's basically saying the problem is that guns are so easy and they're so uncreative and so easy to kill yourself and you almost always can kill yourself with a gun and that makes it really, really dangerous. Half of all suicide deaths are from firearms. If you're going

with the bad guy with a gun to a good guy with a gun argument, remember that the shooter and the victim are the same person in more than 60% of the time. The shooter and the victim are the same person. That is insane. Guns are just so, they're the most efficient thing we've created to kill.

It doesn't matter if it's killing yourself or killing somebody else, they're just really fucking efficient machines for killing. Yeah. I want to talk about the GED. A couple of people sent us messages about GEDs being, it doesn't mean you're bad at school. I was using that as shorthand, as bad at school,

but I recognize that there's plenty of reasons to get a GED. I want to also tell people that I don't actually have an eighth grade diploma. I know in the United States, we give out middle school diplomas to people who graduate from middle school. I don't have one of those. I didn't finish my eighth grade year of middle school. And I was actually out a whole year after that of school

because I was like seriously bullied in school and the school system wasn't doing anything and the teachers were awful. I had teachers telling me like, are those the best clothes you can wear to school and things like that? Like I was just really, really bad. So I was pulled out of school

and I don't actually have one of those. So when I talk to people and I say, I never wanna talk down to people that didn't finish school. I'm not talking down to those people. So I wanna make sure that that's very, very clear. I'm not talking down. I'm saying that you might not have finished school and that's okay. But when you're talking

about a representative for the United States government at the federal level, you need to have a greater degree of understanding of how the world works because 330 million people are resting on your vote, on possibly on your vote. You can change the course of 330 million people are resting on your vote, on possibly on your vote. You can change the course of 330 million people. And I think you need to have a depth of knowledge to be able to do that. And I stand by that. There's a bunch of people who sent us messages

about guns from the left-wing perspective, Tom, saying that people that are marginalized are empowered in some ways by going out and getting firearms and keeping firearms. And we shouldn't try to limit those firearms because that limits them as well. Yeah, I hear that.

And I understand the position that you come from with that. But I have to respectfully disagree with that. I have never heard about, read of, encountered a situation where some marginalized group was being harassed or tyrannized by the government or the police and everything turned out better because they had a gun. It's just not happened that I'm aware of. No matter how many of you are, there's more cops.

there's like if we are looking at what's good for the entirety of society i don't think that removing guns from the hands of private citizens even though i agree it does disempower some people who are legitimately being tyrannized but i don't think the guns are helping those people i've never heard of a single instance and and certainly not many instances where people are like, man, you know, the police don't pick on me anymore because I've got guns. I have never heard that the police don't pick on people in my community because we're armed. I don't think that's real. So anecdotally, I've seen a couple of videos and their contrast videos put out by those sovereign citizens where they have a white guy who walks down the street with his fucking AK-47 on his back and the cop will come up to him and talk to him. What's going on? Why you got a gun? You know, can I see your permits or can I see your license or whatever?

When a black guy does that, they immediately get out of their car with their guns drawn and they make him get on the ground. So, you know, that's not, you're not getting some sort of benefit. That's, I mean, that person could die in that situation, like literally die in that situation, just showing that they have the right to walk down the street with a gun. What protects you is your whiteness. That's what protects you in America. The gun was never protective. It's your whiteness and racism. Got a message from Sean and Sean said, yes, it's pronounced Sean. It's spelled S-I-O-N, but it is pronounced Sean.

So we mispronounced their name last time. I want to say I pronounced it Sion because I'd never seen it like that before. Sean it is. We got a message from Bruce and he says, Q is Zuckerberg. He has access to all the metrics and he says, Q is Zuckerberg. He has access to all the metrics

and he profits from the controversy. You know, maybe. I don't know. Oh boy. Maybe. It's not the craziest thing.

Got a message from Tucker and Tucker says that the idea of posting an anti-vax meme and then having it shared is actually, would actually work. He says it's a common scam

on Facebook. So I guess it would work. Although I, you know, the thing is, is like once they share it, I don't know that other people are going to go back and read it. I don't know what kind of power it would have once it's gone. It's the initial push and the initial, initial view that people, you want to get people to share, not the other thing. The problem with that kind of communication is it's instantaneous and forgotten. And it's forgotten immediately. Yeah. Tom, Mark has a personal anecdote from his father

that he wanted to share about guns. Yeah, I thought this was really telling. He said, my father was a cop for his entire career. I was raised with guns in the home as a normal thing. But whenever he heard

a bump in the night, he'd grab a baseball bat instead of a gun. I asked him about this once and I'll always remember what he said. He said, I don't want to accidentally

shoot you or your sister. Every cop I know has worked gun suicides, accidental shootings in the house, and domestic abuse murders committed with guns. I have never in my career worked a case of somebody successfully defending their home with a gun, and I've never met another cop who's worked that type of a case either. They are incredibly rare. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you'll hear about them because they get publicity. You know, you'll hear about them because they get played on the news and then they get shared by every single person out there who wants to tell you that they happened. Yeah, I mean, and how often we're talking about like, just the ease of access is part of what creates violence

when it comes to suicide. But, you know, the ease of access is also part of what escalates violence in domestic abuse situations as well. Yep. We want to correct ourselves. Last week, we said the Colorado shooter didn't wait a long time to get a gun. It looks like he waited six days. Josh sent in that correction. Okay. Sorry. We definitely didn't get that accurate. That's right. We got a bunch of messages, Tom. Matt specifically sent a message in and a couple other people sent in messages that said how incredibly

easy it is to learn how to shoot a gun. Incredibly easy. Stupid easy. Again, like the gun people talk about it with this reverence like this crazy amount of training is required. I mean, the first time I picked up a gun, I started shooting accurately.

The first time Cecil, I was with you the first time we picked up a gun, I started shooting accurately. The first time Cecil, I was with you the first time you went shooting, we went shooting together. Yeah. You were accurate day one. A lot of people, that's a really common story because they're not complicated on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember when we went, the first time I ever shot trap, I was hitting moving targets at that many feet away because I understood the moving targets at, you know, that many feet away. Cause I understood the physics of it and you explained it well. Yep. First time I was out there without, without a gun that fit me without a, with a pump shotgun that I, you know, had terrible sites. I was able

to shoot birds out of the clay pigeons out of the sky without much training, without shooting maybe 10, 15 times ahead of time. And then I hit my first one. And then after that, I was like, oh, out shooting maybe 10, 15 times ahead of time. And then I hit my first one. And then after that, I was like, oh, now I know it works. And I was shooting with regularity out of the sky. Yep. Because it doesn't take that much dexterity either. No, it's not complex at all. Shooting is silly. Unless you're talking like Olympic level, sniper level stuff, like, but that's not necessary to kill people. Yeah. Especially in America where you have virtually unlimited ammunition. You're like, well, ammunition is so ubiquitous, so inexpensive. Magazine capacities are so high. We're fucking playing Doom these days. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there was that, there's been a couple of times when I've been shooting shotgun where I had

a hard time hitting targets and they've always been very fast moving targets in a place that I'm not used to. Right. Humans can't move that fast. They literally cannot move as fast as if- We're talking about like- Unless you're in a car. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. You're talking about the difference, Cecil, between moving a target that's going to be 50 yards down range in two and a half seconds. That's the size of half a dinner plate versus me. Yeah. 50 yards. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I can't run 50. I'd run 25 yards, put my fucking hands on my knees and

puke. Yeah. It's just the idea, the idea that somehow like, like shooting guns is difficult or that it requires like, you got to put your hands on your belt and be like, I could shoot guns real. Who cares? Yeah. It's fun. It's okay to have fun with it. I have fun with it. I'm not making fun of it or whatever. I have fun when I shoot trap. I would actually like to learn how to do those fast shooty things that they do where the pistol guys go out and they do the shoot a thing,

a bunch of things like targets across. I think that would be a lot of fun to learn how to do that. But I don't think that I would ever in my life protect me for anything. I don't ever think, you know, I don't ever think I would somehow be protected or more protected because of it. No. Well, see, so you have your concealed carry. Do you carry? Never. I don't ever carry. Never. Me either. Yeah. I don't ever carry. It's never in the car. It's never around me. It's in a fucking safe at home unloaded. The least safe I've ever felt was the couple of times I did carry right after getting my license.

Yeah. And I felt incredibly unsafe. Just quit. Yeah. Tom, we got a message from Matt about male violence, which I thought was very interesting. He said, I went to the worst school in my state. I live in the worst suburb in my state. I've never once been in a violent confrontation, not one punch ever. Even when confronted with someone who wants to punch on, I've been, I've point blank refused to. No one ever called me a coward for it. Usually the aggressor came out of it friendly because I

used my brain and deescalated their macho rage. It's a misperceived slight that usually never had happened in the first place. It's not a kill or be killed world if you're willing to not put your ego first. That's an interesting take. When we were talking, I know we got criticized for not bringing solutions. Well, here's a solution. How do we train people to set their ego aside a little bit? How do we train people not to revere an honor culture that does not allow you to lose face, right? How do we build into our next generation enough humility to say, yeah, I made a mistake and have other people say, you know what? We all make them. That's cool. And not hold each other accountable to standards, which make it impossible for people to back down in these sorts of situations that often then escalate into violence.

There are solutions. There really are solutions to the problem of violence. And that's the problem, right? We force male children that that's okay, that that's a rite of passage for male children. At least it was in, I'm not speaking for all male children, but it certainly was for the people that I grew up with. It was a rite of passage. I think it was more so when we grew up

than it is now. I think kids now in general fight less, bully less. I think that's actually evidence that things are getting better, that there are social things that we can do, which reduce the amount of violence in the world. I just don't accept the idea that we can't mitigate the problem. I think if your only answer is this sort of zero sum, all or nothing bullshit, then yeah. Yeah. But that's never how truth works. That's never how policy works. That's not even interesting. Yeah. I think if you're talking about ameliorating the effects of socially sort of supported violence and the way that it influences male culture, then yeah, absolutely. There are things we can do to mitigate that violence.

So this week we tried to cover the little Nas X thing, but we just got a message that our video got taken down. So I don't know where you're going to watch it. Maybe Twitch might have it. I don't know. Maybe they didn't block it. You could go check Twitch out. Maybe they didn't block it. You could go check Twitch out. Maybe they didn't block it.

We didn't even play the video music. We just played the video itself so we can talk about it, but we got taken down already. We're going to try to cut it out of the YouTube. You can hear our commentary about it if you become a patron, though, because you can hear that audio.

And I'll ask Ian to post the video in its full length to, I don't know, somewhere where we can. Somewhere where it will live. Somewhere where we can, because we can do it on Patreon.

You know what I mean? At least on Patreon, we can do it. So, but anyway, you can check out our streams. That's the reason to watch them live, folks. You know,

get out there and watch them live. They might get taken down. They might get taken down right afterwards. Who knows? Come join us. Thursday's nine o' right afterwards. Who knows? Come join us. Thursday's nine o'clock central.

It's a lot of fun. We're having fun. And, uh, and there's a lot of people there and we, uh, we have a lot of fun. So come check it out.

Uh, nine o'clock central on all those places. Uh, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're 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 dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo Pisces. Cancer cures. Detox. Reflex. Foot massage. Death in towers. Tarot cards.

Psychic healing. Crystal balls. Bigfoot. Yeti. Aliens. Churches. Mosques and synagogues. Temples.

Dragons. Giant worms. Atlantis. Dolphins. Truthers. Birthers. Witches. Wizards.

Vaccine nuts. Shaman healers. Evangelists. Conspiracy. Doubleak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody.

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