Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 602: Texit

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

VULGARITY FOR CHARITY continues   Show Notes

Today's show is brought to you by PaintYourLife.com. All you have to do is text COGNITIVE to 64000 for 20% off your order. PaintYourLife.com. PaintYourLife.com. PaintYourLife.com. 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. Hey everyone, before Tom jumps in and does the intro, this week's schedule was very difficult for us. Tom had a family emergency. Haley was sick this week, so we couldn't record on a normal day.

Tom's going to talk about it here in a moment. But I wanted to mention something that we completely forgot to mention on this show because of, well, you know, a discombobulated schedule. Vulgarity for Charity is still in full swing here, folks. And we are slowly creeping up on the $100,000 match. Now, we definitely need a lot more people to donate for us to take advantage of this $100,000 match. And as it stands, we're going to be pulling names and doing some roasts this upcoming week and next week.

So we are actually going to be doing roasts while the Vulgarity for Charity is going on. So it's important if you want to try to get your name in in the drawing, we're going to be pulling names very early. So the earlier you get your name in, the better chance you have

of being one of the people whose roast we pick. So if you have a little bit of money, you can help somebody out on Modest Needs. Go to modestneeds.org. Donate. There's a big thing in the top, Vulgarity for Charity. Donate to anybody on Modest Needs. When you do, be sure to take your receipt and send it to Vulgarity for Charity. When you do, be sure to take your receipt and send it to vulgarity4charity. That's the word, not the number. So it's vulgarity4charity, it's all one word, at gmail.com.

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At $50 minimum, we'll get you a roast. We encourage people to donate more than that. But the sooner you get your donation in, the better chance you're going to have to get that roast. All right. So without further ado, here's the show. Recording live from Glorio Studios in Chicago 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 is episode 602 of Cognitive Dissonance. And I want to start this episode off a little bit with an apology to our live stream listeners. We put off the live stream like a week ago because we had technical problems. It was entirely Ian's fault. Like, I just want to be clear. Yeah, of course.

100%. The last time, 100% of the blame should fall. He's an overachiever. 110% of the blame is his. There's no way not to. And so if you were hoping for a live stream and then we got on a couple Thursdays back and it canceled. That is on Ian's shoulders completely. And you can email him about it at ian at dissonancepod.com. Let him know you're disfavored.

Absolutely. Tell him he's a failure as a person. Like not just as an employee, but like really make it personal. Right. But this last week, I know we put it on our Facebook page. We intended to do our live stream on Thursday. I had some issues come up with my family's health. We pushed it to Friday, hoping that things would resolve. We're not able to do it Friday. I know some people really look forward

to the live stream. So I wanted to apologize for that. And I'm not going to get too deeply personal, but I want to talk a little bit about the American healthcare system because I've been thinking about it a lot. So as listeners will know, my wife Haley has been sick. She's been sick all year. It's been a struggle for her to try to get care as we've navigated through this process. And so I've been thinking a lot. See, so I just, I think about this all the time now because we are in a place that has become untenable to maintain. And we are in this place despite being, and I want to be extremely clear and upfront about this, despite being absolutely awash in privilege, right? Like I wake up every morning and I swim like Scrooge McDuck in a vault full of coins of privilege.

And I know it. Right, right, sure. Like structurally, the system could not be more geared to and for people that are exactly like me. Like my name may as well be Tom Privilege, right? And I know it. Yeah. And so here we find ourselves, even though we are awash in privilege, in increasingly difficult circumstances. And I'm at a loss. So just briefly, like my wife's been sick. We've gone to dozens, and that's not an exaggeration, dozens of doctors in and out of the emergency room, a baker's dozen plus times in the past year. We've been to the Mayo Clinic.

We've been home from the Mayo Clinic. And I think about this process and I think about things we talk about on the show. We talk about a lot about socialized medicine, about single payer health care. And a couple of things occur to me, and I just want to talk them out and kind of get people's thoughts on this, get your thoughts on this, Cecil. But, you know, when things become difficult here, I can always pick up the phone. And it has not been successful, by the way. But I can always pick up the phone and I can get another appointment, right?

Because I don't know what else to do. I can pick up the phone. I can call somebody. I can send an email. And that appointment might take weeks to get. It might take, in some cases, months to get an appointment. But nobody says, you're done having appointments. Right. I, as long as I'm the motherfucker writing checks, I can keep bulldogging this problem.

And it has not been effective, but it's at least been something. And I always hold out the hope that the next appointment that I make, I'll get in front of the right guy or gal, and they will have an answer and a solution and a something for us to do to try to move our lives in the right direction. But I have the ability in this system exclusively because I am a Washington privilege to keep picking up the phone and making that next appointment. And I keep thinking about a couple of things.

I keep thinking about the vast majority of people who don't have all of those privileges that we have here in America. And you're in a small group. You're in a small, you work for a company that has amazing healthcare. You yourself have some disposable income to throw at this. I've got a work from home job that lets me take care of my family and my wife. There's a lot of pluses for you. You're in a very small

group of people in our country that can do this. Right. I'm in a tiny minority. And I think about that all the time. Like, what would I do if I was my dad growing up? My dad growing up, my dad didn't have a lot of money. Sometimes we didn't have healthcare. Sometimes he was working a couple of jobs. So he didn't have any time in between. He was a single parent raising kids. So I keep thinking like, what if one of us had gotten sick or God, what if my dad had gotten sick the way that my wife is sick now? And there's so many people that are in that position. And it's so evident how broken the system is. One of the drawbacks people bring up all the time when they talk about single-payer healthcare and they look at examples of single-payer healthcare outcomes in other areas. They talk about how difficult it is

to get appointments and to gain access to care in a timely fashion. And they point to Canada. And what a fucking joke that is. I'm going to tell you what happened to us just in the last few weeks. So my wife is sick. It's dire. Something has to happen tonight to get her okay. So you don't know what to do. So you go to the emergency room, go to the emergency room, Cecil. We were at the emergency room, I don't know, Thursday. I can't remember anymore. And we got there, we got put in a room fairly quickly. I don't want to exaggerate and I'm not saying this for effect. I believe we were there for something around seven hours, maybe eight hours. Holy shit. The total time spent with a doctor was less than two minutes. It was maybe 90 seconds. The doctor came in, blasted through a series of questions in rapid

fire because it's an emergency room and the emergency room was hopping, right? No, absolutely. So I get it. Like he's in boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But the answer is a little more complex than yes, no. But all of his questions are this. Yes, no, yes, no. Cause he's there to do, he's there to run a rubric, man. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He orders a handful of tests, order some blood, leaves the room. Nothing happens for, I mean, nothing happens. Not an IV, not another nurse popping and nothing for three and a half, four hours, something like that. Half a workday, you know, you just sit there and nothing happens. Then they come in, they don't say anything. They wheel you away. They do a test.

They run some blood. They throw an IV in there. And then another three or four hours goes by and the nurse comes in and says, okay, we're going to discharge you. And there is no follow-up at all. And there is no, and I stop and I'm like, wait a minute. I mean, she's not any better and we don't know what's wrong. And the doctor hasn't been back. And the nurse says, we've determined this isn't an emergency. You have to follow up with your specialist. Wow. And you're like, but, but I don't know how to get through tomorrow. And I say this to people, right? And that is the point of the conversation. I say to people, but there must be something I'm missing because the specialists are booked months in advance.

So we booked an appointment with a specialist in August and that appointment is sometime mid-February. We booked an appointment for a treatment that she needs. As soon as we found out she needed it in the middle of October, the soonest that's going to happen is December. And that's if we go outside the system that we were trying to stay within. And if we stay in that system, it's January. So things are three, four, five months out. And you're like, how do I get through the next eight hours?

It's not the emergency room. The emergency room tells you to follow up with a specialist. The specialists are months out. Yeah. And then people say with a straight face, well, you don't want single payer healthcare because it'd take you months to get care. And I just keep thinking, where do you go? Yeah. Who are your guys that like I somehow have never heard of to help?

It's funny because they talk about it as if you could just walk into any place. Right. And if you have a big enough checkbook, you can get in to any place. One that presumes that you have so much money and so much privilege that you could just do all that. Right. You could take off the time for work. You could make sure that all your kids are taken care of, make sure everything else is in order, able to fly and travel to a place with enough money in your hand to walk in in a moment, which is a lie. It's just a big lie that they keep saying over and over and over again. Yeah. So for the privilege of being able to keep making ineffective appointments,

we still here in the States, we still get massive wait times, massive wait times. And I've asked so many people, Michael, who is supposed to help do this work? And I'll tell them, Cecil, because I believe in this. In my heart, I believe in this as a core principle of being a good thinker is to not overstep the bounds of your expertise, right? I believe in that. And I think that that is what in general yields the best outcomes. And so I will tell people up front,

I'm like, I don't feel qualified to manage this because I am unqualified to manage this. So like, what do we do? And they refer you back to your primary care physician a lot. But the primary care physician is there to give you a fucking, they don't, they'll tell you,

well, you got to go see this specialist. Okay, well, they don't refer you to a specialist by name. They refer you to a specialist by category. With the amount we pay, we should each have a personal health concierge. Right. We really, really should, man.

Yeah. We really, really should. Like you should. And it's funny because I've looked into that. Like, is there somebody, and I look in and in i'm like the question i ask is like can you get an appointment faster than i can get an appointment yeah the answer is no yeah there's no wedding planner for for medicine right there's nobody who can get you fucking tickets at the last minute to the fucking opera right nobody's scalping appointments to the doctor. Because like, I would buy them, dude.

I'd go on fucking StubHub and I would do it, dude. There's no credit card. I'd steal credit cards and swipe them if I had to. Like, and it's fucking insane. It's insane.

Like, I'm so torn right now because on the one hand, I would be, I would be bereft and beside myself if I thought I couldn't pick up the phone and make another appointment. Because I just want to. Because I just need to take some action, right?

What you're doing is essentially getting off the expressway and trying to find a way on the back roads to get there quicker. Even though it's not going to be faster, it at least makes you feel like you're doing something. That's exactly right. Right. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.

Was blind, but now I see. Within minutes, the entire political team was in panic going, oh my goodness, he's singing on stage. We're doomed. The political career is over. But somehow I survived. So let's talk about this story

from Boing Boing. Ted Cruz lays out the scenario for Texas to secede from the United States and appoint Joe Rogan president. It's so sad. Cecil. Who's going to power

Joe Rogan's podcast if they leave, Tom? How will they get the power? How is that going to work? Yeah, they better have fucking paper ballots for their elections because if the fucking grid goes down, he's got UFC guys running on treadmills trying to power his podcast as they run around.

Oh, God. Well, you know, the thing is that at least if Joe Rogan was president, fear would not be a factor in getting through, you know? He's just eating a big bowl of grubs. Does this gross you out? Yeah. You know what liberals don't do? They don't eat spiders.

We eat spiders. Spiders and ivermectin. I don't get like, I know there's a lot of people. It's so funny because I was at a restaurant one time in Chicago and Sarah and I overheard the table next to us talking about these two young kids and they're clearly in college and they're with... It sounded like they were with one of their parents. So it was like a pair of friends eating dinner at a nice place in Chicago with one of their sets of parents and they're talking. And one of the kids is trying to explain

how insightful and brilliant Joe Rogan is to the parents and how amazing he is and how he's such a great deep thinker. And he gives an amazing interview. And I'm thinking, no, I don't think we've ever listened to the same jokes. It's like he's a podcasting caveman. Dude, he is an absolute caveman.

But, you know, I actually was thinking about the Joe Rogan phenomenon because I've heard the same thing, man, like so many people. He's the most, like a hundred million people listen to that motherfucker.

He is by far, it used to be Mark Maron in the day and now it's him by far. By far. By far. He's the most popular. And he only does on one network. So he's only on Spotify too, from what I hear. That's right. So he's, yeah, he's only on one

network. So. But I was thinking about the Rogan phenomenon. And then I thought about, and I think I kind of understand it though, Cecil, genuinely understand it. And I'm like, empathetic to why it's so popular now. And I was thinking about our college experience. You and I met in college because we were part of this sort of informal philosophy club. Right. And there were a lot of things about that club that were maybe silly and childish. And there were also things about that club that were wonderful, like genuinely like wonderful and impactful and in many significant ways through relationships and otherwise changed my life.

Like my life is a different life, I think, than if I had never engaged in that. Mine too, for sure, absolutely. I still interact with people in that group all the time. And you in person, but other people too. Yeah, same. But I think about that desire to ask good questions, to have deep and meaningful conversations.

Now, I'm not saying Joe Rogan is having, is good at asking good questions or is good at having deep and meaningful conversations. But then I look back and I'm like, you know what? Neither was I when I was 20. You know, neither was I when I was 19. But what I had was no outlet, no other way to engage the world in way. So I would have these fucking shower

thoughts and I would have nowhere to turn with them. I would have these moments of wondering, I would read the news and not understand how to analyze it. I would read a book and stumble across some theme or concept or relationship. And I would not have a way to contextualize that, nobody to bounce it off of. And then I met this group of people and all of a sudden, here's all these other people and they're wondering about stuff too. They're curious too. Yeah. And sometimes they're good at that wondering and sometimes they're bad at that wondering. But I felt invigorated, absolutely like thrilled, like to the point of humming inside with the idea that here were some people that were also really curious. Yeah.

And I think Joe Rogan represents, in many ways, our lack of a real good capacity and outlet for that desire to be curious. Sure, sure. He's so good about just being curious. Yeah. I really think he is so like i kind of feel like props to you for being curious but my god man couldn't it have been someone else well and then and then is there is a lot of who you platform you have a giant, giant network, a network that even politicians now, Ted Cruz, has to tip his hat to, right? You're on a network now, like, because before, Tom, it would have been Rush Limbaugh that he would have tipped his hat to, or somebody else, some other major conservative, he would have tipped his hat to. He would have said,

well, of course, and we have this person, and they would be the secretary. We would make Rush Limbaugh the secretary of state because Rush Limbaugh understands the conservative mind. There would be that hat tip to somebody who has sort of got the leash on millions of people that he's pulling along.

The thing about Joe Rogan is he's got this gigantic platform bigger than, I think, bigger than Rush Limbaugh in his heyday's got this gigantic platform bigger than I think bigger than Rush Limbaugh in his heyday I think it's bigger than CNN it's bigger than it's bigger than large networks that pay that literally get gigantic advertisers I mean it's not as big as the Super Bowl right but it's big it's fucking big and it's big every week it's big and yet he says crazy shit about COVID like if you you're young, you don't, you shouldn't get a fucking vaccine. And the thing is, is like, I only hear the crazy shit he says

that makes it in the news. Cause I don't listen to his show. So I don't know what he says otherwise, but the crazy shit that he says that gets that, that makes it to the news is appalling, right? You have that giant audience and then you wax philosophical about COVID vaccinations or ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. You're fucking making a huge mistake because so many people look up to you man and you've got to measure

what you say and then you've also got to platform people that are not fucking horrible. Alex Jones, he's had Alex Jones on his show and it's not to be like, what the fuck is wrong with you, you weirdo? It's not that. It's let's talk and let's fucking smoke a blunt together. Yeah, man. Well, like he has that desire to be curious, but he has no, like he has no filters that no gatekeeping, no intellectual, like outlier, everything is equal, man. And that's

like the problem of this bullshit idea of democratizing all ideas as if some were, as if some ideas were not better, better understood. And some ideas are garbage ideas and they don't deserve to be platformed. They don't deserve to be, you don't deserve to spend four hours talking to Alex Jones and his fucking Newtown false flag conspiracy, colloidal silver. The guy's a fucking liar and a grifter. And he will sit across from these motherfuckers for three hours and he will treat them with the same respect as when he has like fucking Neil deGrasse Tyson on. And the problem is that that puts Neil deGrasse Tyson on the And the problem is that that puts Neil deGrasse Tyson on the same level.

If you're an audience member, there is no difference now, right? Joe Rogan gave Neil deGrasse Tyson three hours. He gave Alex Jones three hours. They are now, these are both ideas equally worthy of consideration. Sure. And now we're at a place where Ted fucking Cruz

is like, maybe Joe Rogan on. not even me, not even Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz doesn't even, he's a career politician. He's like, you know what? I wouldn't win. Even in Texas, I couldn't win president. I couldn't carry the great state of Texas. It's hilarious because Ted Cruz is, he's such a noodle. He's like a fucking bag of wet noodles in a garbage bag.

Like that's what he is. Whatever way that you could bend this guy and, like, manipulate this, he is such, he has, like, like, he, there are invertebrates that look at him and say, you have no spot. He's pathetic. Like, he's genuine. I cannot understand. Jellyfish get a bigger boner

than Ted Cruz. I cannot understand, Tom, how, how, like, the side that wants to be the manly men, right? The side of toxic masculinity looks at Ted Cruz and thinks, that's my guy. Thank you. Because he's the weakest person I've ever seen in my life. And if that's your measure of strength, then I don't understand how you, like, I don't understand how you even measure these things. Dude, and he's weak by every standard. You're exactly right.

Like, if you measure Ted Cruz up against the toxic masculinity, traditional ideals of stoic manliness, he doesn't fit that bill at all. No. He's not that guy. He's not that guy. And if you measure Ted Cruz up against more enlightened

ideals of, you know, what it, what it is to be strong, he doesn't fit any of those goals. He's none of that. He's got nothing. He's got nothing. He's a backstabbing weasel. Right. That's what he is. And he's, and he allows people to walk on people that he loves. He's a disgusting person. There's some, there's disgusting person. There's some funny stats in this article I want to read to you about if Texas were to succeed. Yeah, no, it's hilarious.

It's a very funny article. So he says, let me read the actual quote from Ted Cruz. He said, when asked this week about what he thinks about the Texas

secessionist independence movement called Texit, Ted Cruz says it might be appropriate if certain things happen and that Joe wrote Texit. Why would you model something after Brexit? That's going badly.

Texit is amazing though. So good. That's going so badly. I know. I know, man. I can't get people to drive their trucks for crying out loud. He says, look, if the Democrats end the filibuster, if they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections and massively expand voter fraud, it may become hopeless.

He says, if that happens, we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil. I love this. While 11,000 of NASA's 17,000 employees are based in Texas, NASA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. based in Texas. NASA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. If Texas were somehow able to seize NASA, how many tax-hating citizens of Texas would be in favor of funding its $23 billion annual budget? It's not a private industry, dummy. Don't you know that? You're a senator, for Christ's sakes. Isn't the right generally opposed to paying for anything, period? But particularly NASA. How many times have you heard, like, they don't respect science as a, like, as an a priori ideal.

Science and the arts. That shit gets thrown out. That's the first thing they're red pen. Right. So, yeah, we'll take NASA. And then you'll cut it. And then all those scientists who are only in Texas, by the way, because they have to be. It's not like 11,000 scientists fall flocked to fucking Texas because that's like where science is done best.

It's just that's where the only jobs are for their field. If you're a fucking rocket scientist, it's not like you're like, you know what? Maybe I will stay in Pennsylvania. You relocate there's nine jobs that's it i want to i want to just say like if ted cruz wants to go anywhere he can just go oh i know he's already done it during their blackout he went to cancun so he can just go what sign are you waiting for gozer the traveler he will come in one of the pre-chosen forms during the rectification of the valdrani the traveler came as a large and moving torb Holy shit.

This story has blown up. This is atrocious. Did you watch this clip? This is from Mediaite. Paul Gozer. Isn't Gozer the name of the fucking bad guy? He's the Gozerian. Thank you.

He's the Gozerian. Thank you. He's either the key master or the gatekeeper. I'm not sure. Or maybe he's the guy behind the gate. I don't remember. But it's one of the three, right? There's three things.

Is there a video of him walking like a giant black dog with glowing eyes just like this i'll tell you he looks a lot more like a lot more like the guy who's the key master from that movie yeah right he looks a lot more like rick moran than anything else you just open his refrigerator there's a demon inside and he's one of these guys where if he came at you you could just hold out your hand and he would swing his arms like a little kid like right like that's why like this particular thing that he did which was basically someone had taken his face and a couple other senators faces and representative faces and put them sort of superimpose them over this anime series on Netflix called Attack on Titan.

And Attack on Titan is a show that's like an anime series where these giant, they look like giant babies are like walking around and into cities. They're these giant, like Godzilla-sized smashing shit. And then the defense force is a bunch of people with katanas because that's the tom that's how you fight giant babies is with katanas of course you don't use like a gun or a fucking whatever no you just use these guys who can jump in the air real high and slash with katanas but in any case one of these giant babies had a superimposed face of uh alexandria ocasio-Cortez.

And it shows Paul Gosar jumping in the air and stabbing her in the back. And now I want to preface this by saying, please don't send me any corrections on how I just described Attack on Titan because I will not read them. Okay, I will not. I refuse to read them.

If Attack on Titan is your thing, great, enjoy it. But I just did my very best to summarize it for people who've never seen it. Cecil, we are at a place where two things are happening simultaneously, both of which are absurd in ways that you could not have possibly predicted. First of all, serious people that wear suits. Yep. They wake up and put on suits and go to work. They are now engaged in a kind of discourse

that posits them as fantasy cartoon superheroes. That's their solution. Their solution, guys, their great message to America is what if I were a fantasy cartoon superhero? You're a guy wearing a suit. You're supposed to fucking do legislative, serious intellectual business.

That's what you're supposed to be doing. You are not supposed to be like Photoshopping yourself into Care Bears because you want your tummy to glow. And that's how you think you're going to solve the fucking world's problems. Yeah. Are you fucking kidding me? There's a hundred things you could be, there's a 10,000 things you could be doing that are better with your time than retweeting this.

Literally anything. And I know that there's going to be people who say, well, it's not his account. He didn't make the thing. Someone made it and sent it to him. And so it's just some rando who's running his account, asked if he liked anime and then posted it. So it's not, but again, it's like, there's so much better things that we could be

expressing with information and this giant infrastructure for information we've created called Twitter. Instead, what we're doing is we're having not all fights. Right. Yeah. Right, man. Like, and we're doing all that. And we're also threatening other serious people. Like we are, we are, you're in a room. Imagine this in any other work context. Like, these are people who just go to work. If Cecil, if I came to work and I was doodling on a piece of paper, right? If I just had a piece of paper out and I was a good artist, which I am not, I'm a stick figures at best guy, by the way way if i was doodling like a picture of my boss with fucking x's over his eyes and a knife in his head and i was like i'm gonna kill my boy might get fired for that tom if you what do you even

elite allude to the fact that you're gonna do some sort of violence at school, you're expelled. Right. Expulsion. Like if you allude to it, if you even just say anything. Dude, finger guns can get you suspended. You can get fucking thrown out of school for months. They could throw you out for the rest of the year. They could just be like, you know what? You're just too dangerous to be here. Because you would not be able to do this at your work. Trust me, man.

If you did this with your boss and you jumping up in the air and stabbing your boss and it got passed around, it got auto emailed to everybody at your work, you would be fired. I don't care where you work. You would be fired. Yeah, man, there is an absolute collapse of discourse, like polite, reasonable, collegial discourse. It is a complete and total collapse. And in this case, as far as I can tell, and I'm willing to be corrected, it is exclusively from the right, man. The collapse and the descent into sort of normalizing violence and threats. Because somebody from his team was like, oh, everybody just needs to settle down. Everybody just calm down. And you're like, I don't know, man.

Like sometimes people walk up to like women, for example, that are lawmakers and shoot them in the fucking face. In the fucking head. Like that's a thing that happens. So maybe we don't calm down about whipping people up into a frenzy. In the 2000s it happened. It's not like it was. This is an ancient history, folks. Right.

This happened while we were podcasting. And it's not like, it's not like you can't whip people into a frenzy a la January 6th, right? And Tom, Tom, the fucking, the fucking thing is called attack of immigrants. I know. It's made, it's based on the fact that people are coming here to attack us and to take us out of our jobs

and kick us out of our homes and destroy, like these creatures and this thing are literally destroying these cities that they're coming into. They're blowing

and destroying the cities and then they're saying that Ocasio-Cortez is their champion. Yeah. So they're putting a crosshairs on her. They're putting a crosshairs on all the cities. And then they're saying that Ocasio-Cortez is their champion. So they're putting a crosshairs on her. They're putting a crosshairs on all the immigrants.

They're saying violence is fine. Like none of this stuff is a good thing for a senator to tweet out, man. I know. It's a Republican. He's a representative. I mean, he's not a senator. I'm sorry.

I don't want to, but anyway. But it used to be that people with opposing ideas about how we should govern, they weren't enemies. You were not a traitor because you had a conversation or because you thought something was a good idea that somebody across the aisle had. Now it's to the point where we are actually allegorically in our narratives, in our stories, we are calling these people villains. They aren't villains.

They shouldn't be villains. They should be people with differing ideas on the future of America and policy. But we've descended into this utter madness where now anybody who isn't like team A or team B, but honestly, man, it really does mostly, this vilification system really does mostly come from the right to the left. It really does. If you did this as a Democrat,

you would be censured by your own party, right? There was, you know, like look at the people who have left the Democrat party or who have been kicked out of the Democrat party. When something like this happens, there's some sort of moral breaker there where people jump up and say, fuck you, get the fuck out of here.

Get the fuck out of here. Take a hike. This happens not just in politics, happens all the time. I will say the addition to this story, we have not, we missed our recording day. We would not have mentioned this if this was the case. He, the House Democrats moved to censure this guy over the anime.

It's an article from 18 hours ago. So they are moving to try to censure Gosar. I wonder if any of his party will support that, though. They'll just have to take away his key or whatever they do. I don't know what they have to do. Make him the gatekeeper. I don't know. If someone on my team at work was like, or whatever they do. I don't know what they have to do. Make him the gatekeeper. I don't know.

If someone on my team at work, you know, was like, you know what? I think it would be like really cool to look at the other team with differing ideas and to cast them as villains who must be destroyed

in as racist a way as possible. I'd be like, what are you? What? You don't, what? You're so fired. You're so fired. Holy shit. And now it's like, oh are you, what? You're, you don't, what? You're so fired. I can't.

You're so fired. Yeah. Holy shit. And now it's like, oh, everybody just needs to cut. It's just a joke. It's just a joke. I want to, I want to say though, I love Alexandria Acasio- Oh my God.

Tweet on this. It's so good. She basically, she, she lays out in this, in this Twitter thread, she lays out essentially all the different times that she has had sort of, you know, somebody who's, you know, attacked her or yelled at her, or, you know, there's been some sort of threatening to her. And she basically says, nothing ever happens anyway.

Nobody ever does anything. So whatever, I'm just going to go back to work. And then she says this, this dude is just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway. White supremacy is for extremely fragile people and sad men like him, whose self-concept relies on the myth that he was born superior

because deep down he knows he couldn't open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself. That is, and you know, like, here's the thing, right? Like none of that, none of that is racist. None of that is violent. It's literally just saying you're a weak human being. Like you're weak. You're feebly weak. You're a physically weak person. You don't intimidate me. Just a perfect way to essentially say to him, you're worthless. You're a worthless person. It's outstanding. Yeah. It's outstanding. But also we shouldn't be here. We just shouldn't. This is all just such a distraction. These people are supposed to be working to fix our problems.

Their day, all of their day, every hour of their day, because that's literally what we pay them to do, should be like, what's best for America? What's best for America? How do we fix these problems? What do we do to make people's lives better? That's their only job. Never forget that that's their only job. That's the job of a political party. That's it. Political party's job is not to constantly maintain its own hegemony. That is the only thing anybody seems worried about anymore, as if the most important thing for them to do is to maintain their power and control.

That's bonkers. for them to do is to maintain their power and control that's bonkers their job is to wake up in the morning and go to work and make america a safer more prosperous place for everybody here to live that's literally their only job so that they have to engage in this back and forth is insane but if you're gonna engage in it you fucking bring that weak shit to AOC she will stomp your ass they fucking set it for her like it's volleyball they like set it in the air and she just spikes it every time

like they can't they literally cannot contend with her so they have to go they have to resort to trying to do what they can based on someone else's work to try to make it seem like they're fighting her

but they're not they're losing every time. They're losing so bad. She's so much smarter than this guy and she just tells him like how weak he is and it's perfect.

It's the perfect, again, it feeds exactly into his toxic masculinity, right? It feeds perfectly into that. Are you ready

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Freedom Phone. This article is from the Washington Post. This was an upsetting, fucked up article. White supremacists. Really crazy. It is, man. White supremacists find a new platform to spread hate. A federal courtroom in Charlottesville so this story let's pause let's pause real quick before we before we continue with this story have you been paying attention to the rittenhouse trial speaking of white supremacists yeah let's

talk about white well carl written uh kyle rittenhouse because a couple months ago kyle rittenhouse was in a shirt that said free as fuck on it and he was flashing the white, the new white power sign, that okay sign flashed at the, at the camera with Proud Boys. So like this guy was associating with, with, with a white supremacist group in the United States, flashing the white power sign unironically and he's in court. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that we're talking about white supremacy when Kyle Rittenhouse is on the stand. No, absolutely not. Did you catch his panic attack that he had?

Did you see this? I didn't see it, but I read all about it. Okay, so I watched it. And when I first watched it, I was like, is this kid having a moment up there? I don't know. Is he sort of recognizing like this could be bad for him, whatever. But then I watched it again after someone had pointed something out. There's a clear moment where Kyle Rittenhouse looks like really obviously out the corner of his eye

at both the jury. And then he stops and does a little more panting and then looks at the judge out of the corner of his eye as if it was like one of those moments. And look, I have no idea what's going on in Kyle Rittenhouse's head. I have no idea, right? I can't putittenhouse's head. I have no idea, right? Like I can't put myself in his head.

I don't know what he's thinking. But those two moments where he very obviously looks to the left at the people in the jury and then looks to the right at the judge while he's having in the middle of this panic attack, part of me wonders how sincere something like that could be if you have enough sense to be like, is this working? Am I pulling a fast one on these people over here? What's going on? I don't know. A couple of things to add to that is the judge.

Oh, yeah. The judge. The judge for this case is like very obviously a biased judge. His phone has gone off more than once playing partisan ringtones. Like the guy has a Trump campaign ringtone. And his phone has gone off twice in court because he's a fucking idiot and he's the judge. He hasn't silenced his phone. And it plays a ringtone which is like a Trump campaign ringtone.

ringtone, which is like a Trump campaign ringtone. The defense said we can't zoom in on video that was taken because pinching to zoom means that Apple has manipulated the video. And the judge was like, yes, I think that's true. Wow. Did you hear about that? He thinks that pinch to zoom. I saw it. Yeah, it's unbelievable. That's fucking completely bonkers. It's completely bonkers. What about the part where he said that you can't refer to people in the trial, the people that were shot as victims? Right.

Did you hear about this? I did. He said that was one of the first rulings is they are not victims because that automatically colors the analysis there of who these people were. But you can call them rioters. Yeah, you can call them something that colors it in a way that clearly skews the narrative

one way, but you can't call it the other way. I got to say, I agree with not being able to call them victims if the trial is supposed to be impartially determining whether or not they were in fact victims. Ultimately, that's what the trial is in part determining. So I get being careful not to use language that prejudices in one direction, but that should go the other direction.

Right, that's the thing. It should swing in both directions, but it just doesn't. It just doesn't. And I have been following this, and I will admit, like, I don't know the law well enough to know how much pre-circumstance context legally determines whether or not an action in a moment was considered self-defense or not. Because that is the legal question that's at hand. I think the moral question is clear. So for me, the moral question about whether or not Kyle Rittenhouse

is guilty of killing those people, right? He's a murderer. I think that moral question is very clear. I really do. Like you said, motherfucker woke up in the morning, got a gun that he's not even supposed to have, drove to a place that he's not fucking involved in to put himself in the center of a situation

with a weapon of violence in order to be a factor of intimidation, right? Yeah. That was his best case scenario was to be an intimidating force through the presence of a loaded weapon. It's not like he brought the gun just as a symbol. It wasn't unloaded.

Right. He brought that gun in a functional way. Right. And I would be not sympathetic, but I guess there would be a different calculus in my mind if he genuinely thought the gun was unloaded and he brought it as a symbol, right? And then it went off once and then somebody got shot. I'd be like, okay, that's fucked up. There's 10 ways that's fucked up and I don't want to excuse any of them. And I don't want to excuse like, I don't want to discount any of those circumstances, but I do from what I'm reading, I do wonder like the legal question seems fairly limited in scope to those very moments, like right before he pulled the trigger about whether or not.

And so it's, I think he's going to get off. I don't think he's going to go to jail. I think he's going to get off too. And I think, I think people should not be surprised if he gets off. I feel like this is one of those, it's one of those moments where it's like that unsatisfying kid got off from affluenza. I know he's not affluent, but you know what I mean? Like it's like that unsatisfying kid got off from affluenza. I know he's not affluent, but you know what I mean? Like it's that unsatisfying feeling. So let's talk about this story though. We shifted away from this white supremacists that are basically using the fucking, the federal court to fucking dox people and then send their white supremacists fucking allies after them. Yeah. I mean, this is fucked up because we have a system

and this is part of the system that's good because we have a system that allows for public transparency into court proceedings that combine that with the amplification of the internet. And you now have white supremacists who are acting as their own attorneys.

They're being sued and they're standing in front of the plaintiff in this lawsuit. And they're saying, all right, so you said you were afraid of us. Tell me all the other people that are on your side. Tell me their names. And then it's like, do I have to tell them names? Like, I'm afraid that that'll put them in harm's way. And the judge is like, this is your case. You brought this case. You have to provide relevant information to the case. I also don't think that that's a wrong answer. And then what happens is he gives out these names and within seconds, these fucking white supremacists who are not even being dog whistled to, but who are being directly called to in this court proceeding, they are doxing these people. They are finding them where

they live. They're named by name. And we are putting more people of color in danger and empowering through the court transparency process. We are empowering white supremacists to continue their like fucking harassment campaign of people of color. It's fucked. And I read this like, I have no idea what the solution is, man.

Yeah, I don't either, man. I'm not a law talking guy, but I just wanted to bring people's attention to it because you see it and you think, holy shit, this is a problem. This is a real problem that demands a solution because if not, then the status quo always wins. If not, the people that are privileged and in power will

always win against anyone else, period, the end. Yeah, man. At first I was like, you know, there are protections in place for people that are the victims of certain crimes, specifically like children, some sexual assault where their information is withheld. And I thought like in cases of like hate crimes, I wonder if similar, I don't know, like similar legal obfuscations shouldn't be in place to prevent this exact kind of thing when it's related to a hate crime. But then this is a civil suit, man. And civil suits are different. Yeah, it's just different. And it's like, one of the, we've talked about this on the show, one of the best tools that we have to take down these assholes, whether they be, you know, one news network or whether they be the Ku Klux Klan

or the Proud Boys, right, is financial. Richard Spencer, in this article, Richard Spencer talks about how the financial, the lawsuits have been financially devastating to him. Yeah. And we have no answer for how to manage these people outside the civil suit system. But then a regular person puts themselves in the crosshairs. Right. And then also all the people he associates with and he was with that day. And that can really, it can really cause people to not do this.

Right. And then, you know, so now you're taking away the one avenue we had to punish them. Again, I'm not a doctor. I'm a fucking moron. I'm not a respected source of information, even for me. Sister, it comes from CBS, Minnesota. Packers Aaron Rodgers says he's taking Joe Rogan's advice on treating COVID is using ivermectin. And he also says he didn't lie when he said he was immunized against COVID.

Yeah, he said he was immunized because he was like wished on or they fucking spritzed him with sugar water or whatever. That's not what the word immunized means. No. Also, like if you were immunized, why do you have COVID? Yeah. Right? Right. I was immunized. And do you have COVID? Yeah. Right? Right. I was immunized.

And taking Joe Rogan's advice, we talked about Joe Rogan earlier in the show, but you know, like the problem is, is that Aaron Rodgers, quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, is now in the hot seat. He's saying he's the target of the woke mob. I know, I know. Because they're coming after him.

And the problem, the main problem with Aaron Rogers is there's a lot of adoring fans of football. You know, whether or not you like the sports balls or whatever you're going to say in the comments or whatever where you're going to be like, oh, it's

dumb to like sports or whatever. I'm dismissive of the things you like. Right. Yeah. Whatever it is, I don't care. But understand whether or not you like sports, there are plenty of people who adore the people who play sports. And I think for the wrong reasons, right? I mean, these people are just, they're athletes. They're not there to tell us anything, I think, about public health. They're not there to tell us anything about their morals or any of that stuff. These aren't people who are spending a lot of time thinking

about those things. They're training to do a specific task with their bodies. But the difficulty is that people see this person, they adore him already because he's the leader of the team that they very much like in the little nationalistic section of America that worships this team. And now, he is also a human being who uses his body for a living. So therefore, he has a step up on every

other person out there who has a body because he cares about his body exponentially more than someone else who does a thinking who does, you know, like a thinking job. He's doing a working with his body job. So they give him the benefit of the doubt as if he were to somebody who has done a great deal of research to try to figure out whether or not this vaccine is something that he should put in his body. And he, he, he is someone

who has reflected on the long-term effects, essentially, is what people will see. And he gets sort of this de facto leg up on even a doctor. Yeah. And that's dangerous. Man, I hadn't even thought about that. But yeah, I think you're completely right.

People look at somebody whose body is in excellent condition as an expert on the condition of the body. And that's fucked up. That's fucked up. Because I'll tell you what, man, people whose body is in that kind of condition, it's not because he did it all himself. He relied on the expertise of many dozens of other trained professionals.

You think Aaron Rodgers comes up with his own training protocols? He doesn't just hit Planet Fitness in the morning. Right. Exactly, man. And he never did, right? He never did. He's always been under the advice and the direction of coaches and physical therapists and doctors and sports medicine experts.

And as he moves up in his career, the access to that kind of knowledge becomes deeper and deeper and more broad. And yet somehow he's the expert, even though like the fact of his bodily condition was never really exclusively up to him in terms of the decisions that went into creating that body.

That's a fucking crazy thing to think about, man. What the fuck? Why do we look to these people for that? Like we should be looking at the people that made him. Like we should be looking at the guys that built the Superman suit, man. Yeah. You're absolutely right. I think, you know, the problem is that it's just the easy way to think about it is that he's the guy who's basically controlling how well his body, how good his body works and how proficient his body is at these tasks. And he's talking about Joe Rogan as if

he's an authority on something. Like Joe Rogan is a fucking joke when it comes to these types of, he doesn't know anything. And he literally admits it on his show. I know. At least there's been, I've seen several quotes where he says, I'm a dumbass and I don't know anything. And you're like, okay, well then why are you talking about Joe Rogan as if he's got something to say about this? And it's insane to me that these people will,

that they won't enthusiastically embrace this vaccine as a way to fill the crowds in the places where, I mean, the amount of pay you get is based not just on the television revenue and the team revenue of the sales of your jersey or whatever, but it's also based on how they fill those houses. Those tickets aren't cheap. They play, at least they used to play eight games at home. I don't know if that's changed, but they used to be eight home games. And that's a lot of money that comes in. These are 70,000 person stadiums, man.

And these tickets aren't cheap. No, I know. These tickets aren't, like, you can't just be a guy and be like, I'll buy a $5 ticket to the game. That doesn't exist, man. There's no such thing. It's hundreds of dollars to go to these games. So the amount of money that they rake in

from these things is immense. They lost a shit ton of money last year because of COVID. Now there's a thing that can allow a ton of people to all sit in the same place and allow you to physically be in contact with a bunch of other people and you reject it? Like that's how you make your money, man. I, wow.

You know, in a like, in a world that made sense, Cecil, like when we wanted 70,000 people to get together in one place, public health officials and that organization would realize that their interests are in alignment with one another.

And there would be a vaccination tent at every turnstile that would give people an opportunity. Hey man, you get a free fucking beer or a hot dog or whatever if you get a vaccine today. Show me your vaccination card or whatever. Or like if you get one as you walk in the door, you know? There would be every time that we had an opportunity to get in front of tens of thousands of people, we would use that opportunity in every conceivable direction, not just the CDC, but like private companies, like you said, whose very survival and interest relies

on this work. But like instead, we've weirdly done the opposite. Like imagine if every sporting event that took place and baseball, basketball, hockey, football, all of those, because they're all tens of thousands of people, multiple times a day or a week across the country. Imagine if every one of them was engaged in a concentrated effort to vaccinate the fans. If they were flying Goodyear blimps about vaccination up overhead, you know, if they were like offering vaccination on site for all of those people with incentives based on the game that they're watching. Like if their heroes came out in unified vocal support, we'd be so much better off. Now, let's begin with an album by a group that is pretty notorious, the group called Kiss.

Now, number one, you would see that certain parts of the men's uniforms all accentuate the genitals of a male. I just have to be very explicit here. This story comes from The Guardian. This is the most fucking bonkers shit, buddy. This story comes from The Guardian. This is the most fucking bonkers shit, buddy. It's from The Guardian. Astroworld disaster fuels wave of satanic conspiracy theories on TikTok. So I guess trigger warning here. We're going to talk about the events at Astroworld. They were extremely tragic. Eight people died. They were crushed in a swelling or a mob of people. It's just a horrible, horrible circumstance. Happened in Houston. They didn't have as many medical staff as they needed. They weren't able to get to those places. It seems like, although I did see them trying to stop the concert

and pointing to places, I did see that happening. So I don't know exactly to what level the the performers are culpable in this um but certainly the venue is called the venue is very much the crush in these concerts on tom i know you've been yeah at concerts um especially in the pit area and i know i was when i was a kid i know i wouldn't do that now i get the fuck out of that's i need my back i use that to stand upright things but but the fact is is like when i a kid, I didn't give a shit about my body. So I'd run in there, throw elbows, land on my ass. But I remember when I was a kid, I remember like when you first got into a pit, like I remember there was sort of like a coach, someone on the side would always be

like, pick your friend up. Like you always got to pick people up. If somebody falls, you got to pick them up. And at certain points, I guess some people fell and they just got trampled. They were wearing backpacks, couldn't get up, and then they fell over. And then there's also just being crushed up against the gates, where sometimes that happens, where the gates will pop and then people will have to push up against the second barrier, which is less, I guess, less bendy and whatever. And then they get crushed in there. And so the concert crush is a fucking dangerous thing that then you should really be paying attention to and they didn't

hear in this case and they're a lot eight people eight people i think it was nine didn't one die after the fact oh you're probably right yeah you're probably right i think eight was the initial extra died i don't know if it was seven the day of or eight the day but like this isn't a lot of people yeah it's and it's a horrifying tragedy. I'm thinking, man, like I remember going to like, like a Primus concert back in the day and like working my way with some friends to the very front of the stage.

A very few times I ever actually made it to the very front, which is never worth it and is always a worst experience. It's always the worst. Always the worst. But we made it all the way to the front. And I remember like holding onto this like metal railing that was in front of where I was. And my buddy's girlfriend was between my two hands or my arms. And I was just trying without, with all of my strength, I was trying just to prevent her from getting mashed. Squashed. Just

mashed against the barrier. And I remember being like, we got to get out of here. Like, this is not, like I've, and that wasn't even, nobody even got hurt. But I remember this like panicky sense of like, fuck man,

like there are times I can't take a deep breath, you know, because the crowd is just pushing you into that like metal unforgiving barrier. These are dangerous situations or at least they can be. But man, they're interpreted

by the fucking Q-nuts now because everything is insane. Let me read some of these, let me read some of these tweets or comments. Go ahead. This ain't a festival,

it's a sacrifice. The music industry is demonic and collects souls. 34,000 likes. 34,000 likes that people got crushed to death and that was actually a demonic, satanic sacrifice.

But the music industry collects pennies when you send in the one penny for the 12 albums. They do that too. They do that as well. So, you know, the souls, pennies, whatever it takes. They do that too. They do that as well. So, you know, the souls, pennies,

whatever it takes. They're talking about Astroworld as a demonic event with Astroworld, demonic Astroworld Illuminati and Astroworld upside down cross trending across Twitter. What the fuck?

What? Like, all I thought, Cecil, was, man, none of you motherfuckers, all of you are brand new. You're all babies. You're babies, babies, babies. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, we had bands that were openly, like...

Satanic. Satanic. Like, they used satanic imagery. I don't know if they were actually, but they were openly using... Yeah, I don't know if they were either. You're were openly using satanic imagery as part of their like aesthetic. They weren't satanic, man. They weren't killing people.

Like Satan did not come to rule the world because Black Sabbath once played somewhere or because Slayer or Ozzy or like Gwar or Marilyn Manson or this isn't new. There's nothing new here. You didn't find something. The fuck, you children. I will say this too, though, like watching those videos of the people. And again, you know, don't seek these out if you don't want to see dead people because you will see dead. You'll see a dead human being in these videos if you go seek it out but you know like

watching these people they're being carried out and they're still performing on stage the guy's doing this auto-tune thing where he's like yeah and I could see someone seeing those two images together and being like

wow that's fucked up. But then they're going to the next level to be like, that's fucked up and it's also on purpose. Right. That's fucked up and it's something that someone decided to do, not something that happened just as a coincidence. Yeah. And that's the issue.

Yeah, man. And I don't blame the performer, honestly, really at all. If you've been on a stage, it's difficult to see into the crowd. You're busy doing your work. It's not your job to manage the crowd at anything other than a macro level. So seeing a person here, a person there, people get hurt. They fall down. Medics need to get called. That's part of these big shows. It doesn't mean that somebody's died. I wouldn't know that. You have no idea. And people stop the show all the time to point to the crowd and see like, hey, I see somebody out there needs a medic. Go help them. And as I recall, I'm pretty sure I saw him do that. There was a selective edit where they cut

that out and they only played him singing and made it seem as if he didn't do that. But there's a, there's a, I saw him stop and say, Hey, that guy needs a medic. There needs to be a medic over here. So I don't like, I, and I'm not, I'm not here to fight for or against the person who was at the venue, but the venue is the place that is where the, where all the stuff lies. But when we're talking about these conspiracy theories, they catch on to anything, man. It's so crazy that the tiniest things or the things that you would think that would not be the target of their conspiracy automatically get roped in. I'm always surprised. It's week after week. I'm surprised that they went after this particular thing.

Yeah. You know, I, it just, but again, it's one of those things that flips their switch and they've got to talk. They're like, no,

this is satanic. It's almost like, it's almost like that woman in the water boy. Who's like foosball is the devil. And then everything else is the devil too. It's like, yes, genuinely.

It feels like she's on Tik TOK and she's like, that's the devil. No, this is the devil. No, this is exactly it's it's no matter what it is, it's the devil. And it's so weird to me that that has such a great amount of power when the world is leaning towards less and less and less people being religious. I mean, nuns, N-O-N-E-S, is the largest growing segment of belief in the United States and in the world. Nuns is the one that's taking off the people who don't have a belief, who don't have a religious structure, but this satanic stuff still has such a pull over everyone and it gets so many people on board. Yeah, man. And this article talks a lot about how digital natives, young people, are not immune from,

and I think that there was some extraordinarily misplaced optimism that the science and the research has not at all borne out. That digital natives, because they were born into a world where they always had access, unlike you and I. You and I came of age in a world that we did not have digital access. So we came of age, Cecil and I both, in a world before the internet was ubiquitous in the way that it is now, before the internet was something you carried in your pocket and consulted 14 times a day. The idea, I think, was initially that digital natives will have a greater ability to engage digital content in skeptical ways.

And the evidence has not shown that. The evidence, in fact, has shown exactly the opposite. Digital natives are, in general, less able to parse out truth from fiction. We are more prone to conspiratorial thinking. We are more prone to accepting beliefs based on memes and fucking bullet point headline bullshit rather than like associate. And some of this stuff from this article, one thing that it's like, I just, I keep glomming onto it. One of the claims is that Travis Scott and Drake were born 66 months and six days apart, 666, right?

Is that numerology game stuff? But also like, that's just inaccurate. And all it would take would be literally, it's the most accessible kind of information. So in other words, that information requires no analysis and is easily and casually available. It requires a date to a date, like a year to day calendar or a year to day calculator.

And it requires two pieces of information off the internet. Something that you could easily fact check on your own without any kind of degree. In under a minute. It would take under one minute to check this. And that kind of bullshit, though, trends. Yes. Even though it is the most checkable information, right? And so information that is more complex than what is essentially the simplest possible information that requires a

little bit more analysis that maybe, you know, requires you to even challenge a preconceived idea or belief, how much less likely are we to do that work? We are infinitely less likely to do that work if stuff like two plus two equals five trends. I would argue you're incapable of doing that work. It's not that you won't do that work. It's that you're incapable of it. If you can't even do the simplest amount, because there've been so many times that a meme has come across my feed

that I've said, is that true? Is that a true thing? And then I'll look it up to whether or not it is. But there's this feeling that if somebody said it or somebody did it, then it's true. that if somebody said it or somebody did it, then it's true. And there's so many times that I catch myself and be like,

well, yeah, but that's, we're presuming that that person is telling the truth or you're presuming that this meme is the truth. We've got to, you've got to start from zero every single time.

You can't, there's, you can't just, you can't shortcut this. You can't shortcut it and just presume that the source is right or whatever. You've got to start from zero all the time and nobody's willing to do that work or they're incapable of it. I want your big book deep inside of me. So we, we read there this week for Cognizant Book Club, which we're slowly closing in on the end of this book. We are, we read chapter 15, Newton's Sleep.

And this chapter really does talk a lot about, I mean, I feel like it's talking a lot about non-overlapping magisteria. It's talking about how you can be a believer. And also he points out how you could be a believer and still clearly believe in all of these other scientific things. And there are many types of belief systems out there that would believe in and do believe in these scientific discoveries that have happened, like the Big Bang and other evolution, like the Catholic Church

believes in both of those things. And then he says that there's a conversation that happens with the Dalai Lama, where he approaches the Dalai Lama and says, what if something major got discovered and it went against the beliefs of Buddhism? What would happen? And the Dalai Lama said, well, then we would change the beliefs of Buddhism if some major scientific discovery happened.

And he said, even if it's as close a tenet as reincarnation, the Dalai Lama looks at him, kind of winks and says, you'd have to have some pretty big information to fight against reincarnation or whatever to show reincarnation was false.

But in any case, he's saying that people who believe shouldn't feel repulsed by science. I think that's the main idea of this whole chapter. Yeah, and I know that there are always critics of the idea of non-overlapping magisteria. And I will say that in terms of like a thought experiment about whether or not this is a good and sort of like intellectually justifiable way to view the world. I agree with those critics, right?

I don't think that there's like a real value in creating two buckets and saying some questions live in this bucket and other questions live in this bucket. You can't touch this. Yeah. I agree with that. But I also am in many ways a pragmatist first. And I feel like from a practical perspective, if we could just take the first step, and if the first step was, can an idea be understood using the tools of science? If so, then that idea should live in this bucket over here. And if it's like reincarnation, and it doesn't upset me if you put it in this bucket.

There's a hundred reasons why it is actually a scientific claim because it posits. I understand all that. I don't need that email. But I think that there are practical reasons to say, man, if we got like 90% of this right, 90% of the time, we'd be a lot better off and we would have a lot less steep of a hill to climb. There's some hills you just don't need to die on. Right. There's just

some hills that you don't need to die on that you can just be like, yeah, great. And that's how I feel about a lot of religion is I don't need to die on this hill. I fought on that hill when I was coming out of religion. I fought like crazy on that hill. I was like, no man, fuck that. No, no, no, no. And I had those conversations for years. But then I realized that if somebody gets comfort

out of something and they're not trying to change other people's views in that way, and they're not trying to change other people's views in that way, and they're not trying to legislate based on these views, then I'm just like, man, you're not trying to change anybody's life and you plant your ass in a church twice a year and you're a good person. What is it that I should be fighting you on?

Because I have much more in common with a liberal Christian than I ever would with a conservative atheist. A hundred percent, much more in common with a liberal Christian than I ever would with a conservative atheist. 100% way more in common with a liberal Christian. And I know there's some atheists out there that that's distasteful for. And we lost those people as listeners. Years ago, we lost those people as listeners. Because to them, the most important thing in the world is whether or not there's a God or not. But that's the easiest question in the world to ask yourself and answer. It's the easiest question.

And I don't need to go on and fight somebody down in the mud about this question. If I can just pass it up and we can get to the important meat about what it means to be a person, what it means to be a moral person, and not imposing your weird religious views on somebody, if we can get past all that other stuff,

I don't care what you believe. Yeah, I thought about this chapter and I thought about a couple of things that I believe in, which seem like they are in conflict, but they're not and I want to reconcile them. So I do believe in truth as a intellectual and moral value.

I believe in truth and coming to truth and trying to know and believe only true things as a moral and ideological value. But I also believe in truth as an order of operations problem. And what I mean by that is that there are so many things to try to evaluate truth on. And the order that we approach those things matters.

We need to approach truth as an order of operations problem. We need to get the big questions right first. And the big questions are questions that have to do with ensuring that people live good lives with value and dignity and opportunity. And the truths that we should approach first should solve those problems first. Right. Sure. And then we move on to what I think of as the

luxury problems. The luxury problems are the problems that many of us have, that I will say that I had when I was a young person seeking to understand the world. I had luxury problems because I had time and privilege on my side. And so I was able to spend my time and my energy evaluating questions which did not have to do first and foremost with people's rights and their dignity and their opportunities. We got to approach truth as a value, both moral and intellectual, but also as an order of operations problem. And I think you can do and acknowledge

all of those things and they are not in contradiction with one another. And I think this chapter speaks to that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I feel like, again, Carl is doing a very good job of trying to, and he's been very careful, I think throughout this whole book,

of trying to make sure that nobody is turned off and that he's not preaching to the choir and that you could hand this book to your religious uncle and they can maybe read it and get something out of it. And even if that doesn't like convert them into some sort of agnostic or something, it still might have some sort of positive effect and make them change the way that they think

and make them approach the world in a more scientific way and make them more interested in finding the truth. And I think that that's what Carl's trying to do in this whole book throughout. And he's never been, he's never been the guy who's preaching to the choir or being offensive or being, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, it's definitely a model of a book to, to, to read and to have on your shelf that you can easily hand to somebody else to try to convince them of this way in which to approach the world. You know, I could have a hundred copies

of Religion Poisons Everything on my shelf and I can agree with almost every single thing in there and I wouldn't hand it to anyone who didn't already agree with it. Yeah, yeah. But I would definitely hand this book off to someone who is not a critical thinker and to somebody who doesn't always believe in science as a way to say the tough part would

be getting them through those first seven chapters on aliens which again is really really tight you've got i think for those chapters you've got to really sort of realize that this is that all bullshit is connected and it's easy to use these things as a way to debunk other parts of the pseudoscientific world. But if you're not involved in it, it's tough to do that. And I think that those seven chapters are really difficult, but man, I'd almost just tear those seven chapters out of the book and hand them the book and be like, here you go, we'll start here. I literally told my barber that. Start with Dragon in My Garage and work your way through.

I mean, there's been so much great stuff so far. I literally told my barber to do exactly that. I told him, read this book, but ignore the first seven chapters. Start with this chapter. And he is. Yeah. Good, good. Yeah, I know.

It's an excellent book. And people should buy it. Find it on Amazon. You can find it on Barnes & Noble. And you can find it on Audible. They read on Audible and Tom's reading it for patrons too. So if you're a patron, you can get each chapter each week.

He reads it and we publish it on like Monday or Tuesday. Tom reads it aloud and then we publish it. So check it out. Definitely pick up a copy of this book though because it's so worthwhile. So we're going to be reading chapter 16 next week

and we hope you join us for that. So we're not going to do email this week. We decided, since Tom and I are not in recording in the same space, we normally take about a half an hour to go through our email together. We talk about the things that we saw. And so we're not going to be covering email this week. We will be covering your questions and your comments next week. And we'll also be covering the patrons. We did not get a chance to do that

because again, the recording schedule this week was a little off. So next week on Wednesday, we're going to try to do a live stream. Hopefully things have changed and Tom is able to join us for a live stream. We're not going to cancel. Everything's going to be good. Everybody's got their good hopes and good vibes pointed to make sure that that happens. So we're hoping that we can do a live stream.

We'll be on Wednesday this week, not on Thursday. We're recording one day early this week, our recording. And so we're going to be recording our live stream 9 p.m. Central. So check the social medias beforehand. We will let you know whether or not it's happening on the social medias, Twitter and Facebook, best place to look. And while you're there, like and whatever, follow or whatever it is, you know, you can always do that. And while you're thinking about it too, while I'm talking to just go to our website, click on our YouTube page and subscribe there, you know, subscribe there or subscribe on Twitch so that you get a notification on when we come on, because

then you don't even have to check those things. You can just be hanging out, doing something, watching the game or whatever, or watching TV. And then you'll get a notification that says, hey, Cognitive Distance just went live. And then you can come hang out with us while we're live. So it's a great way to follow us is to just go to those places where we brought you. And the live streams are a lot of fun. They've got a different vibe, a different energy. Ian joins us for the live streams.

And so he tends to be a part of those programs. They're a hoot. I enjoy doing them. They're great. Yeah, they're a blast. They're a blast. They're fun.

We talk to chat. We'll normally, sometimes we'll drink something. Ian gets involved. We always blame Ian for everything. It's a lot of fun. So come hang out with us. It's only because it's his fault. Always his fault. So that's going to wrap it up for this involved. We always blame Ian for everything. It's a lot of fun. So come hang out with us. It's only because it's his fault.

Always his fault. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble Pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized Stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing Water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch

Late night info-docutainment Leo, Pisces, cancer cures Detox, reflex, foot massage Death in towers, tarot cards Psychic healing, crystal balls Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens Church churches, mosques, and synagogues. Temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your signs. of nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any

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