Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 635: The Sounds of the Gestating Fetus

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Show Notes  

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Hey everyone, just breaking in here really quickly. Before we get the show started, last week when we recorded the show, the news about the Supreme Court decision hadn't been solidified. We knew about the Supreme Court decision because of the leak, but it had not actually been solidified until I think the day after we recorded last week. So we don't really talk about it on this episode. That's number one. But number two, and more importantly, this upcoming Friday,

Friday the 1st of July, we are organizing with a bunch of other podcasts to create a fundraiser for abortion medication and for abortion access. It's going to be happening this upcoming Friday night, starting at 7 p.m. Central. We're looking to have on the scathing guys. We're looking to have on opening arguments. We're looking to have on knowledge fight. Hopefully, a couple of other guests. Come hang out with us on the live stream. You'll be able to find it through our social media, on our YouTube page, on our Twitch, on our Facebook. You'll be able to hang out, chat with other people who are really interested in this particular topic and be able to give money so we can raise a good sum of money to help people out,

especially with this ruling coming down. We really want to make sure that we get enough money out there so that people who need help can get help. So join us this upcoming week, July 1st at 7 p.m. Central on all the Cognitive Dissonance feeds, and you'll be able to find us and hang out and donate some cash. We hope to see you there. Now, the rest of the show. Live from Glory Hole 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 mat. This is episode 635. 635, man. 635, we're getting close, man. We are. We are. We are 31 weeks away. 31 weeks away. That's got to be like an atheist golden birthday. It really is. It's

like, yeah, it's like steak and blowjob day for us. It is. It is. It is. That's exactly. It's atheist steak and blowjob day. Atheist steak and Blowjob Day. When you hit your 666 episode. That's it. A dark angel gets his wits. It'll be exciting. We got some plans. We're thinking about some stuff. But yeah.

We are definitely going to celebrate. I mean, how do you not celebrate 666? And I don't know if this is the case, Cecil. But I think that we might be amongst our peers that are in the 600. Sure, yeah. Are we going to be the first ones hitting 666? So, a couple people will be ahead of us.

Motherfuckers. But like Gio will be ahead of us because he's already in the sevens. But he started recording as an infant. I know. He's like, wasn't he born in utero? Wasn't he born with a fucking

Hello, what do you have to say fucking xylophone and a microphone? I love it. Yeah. Of course, you know, the big, big, big podcasts have been around forever. Yes. But we did a sneaky thing for a while

where we were recording two episodes a week. Yeah, we did that for like... We did this for a while. Like six months or something? It was like a couple of years, I think. Wait, we did it for a while. How months or something yeah it was sneaky it was like a couple years I think wait we did it we did it for a while

how do I not remember recording twice a week for years it was twice a week for a while and then we were just like this is so hard I give up

so oh man I don't even remember doing that for years we've been doing this for so long it was a long time but we did it

we did it for a while and then we were just like that's just too much we can't do it and then now we just record all that in one day we did it. We did it for a while. And then we were just like, that's just too much. We can't do it. And then now we just record all that in one day. We do. It's true.

It's the same volume, actually. It's literally the same volume. It's essentially doing two shows a week. We just release. And we still release one on Thursday. It's the live stream. So we still technically do it. We just don't. We're constantly producing content. It's just that you and I are both the same way.

It's like, are you a jump in the pool guy? Are you like tiptoes in? Yeah. I'm a fucking jump. Like, is there a ball? Yeah.

Right. I'm ripping off band-aids left and right. I'm jumping in the fucking pool. Yes. I don't have time for that shit. Absolutely. I'm right with you. Who made that man a gunner?

I did, sir. He's my cousin. Who is he? He's an asshole, sir. Who made that man a gunner? I did, sir. He's my cousin. Who is he? He's an asshole, sir. I know that. What's his name? That is his name, sir.

Asshole. Major asshole. And his cousin? He's an asshole too, sir. Gunner's made first class Philip Asshole. How many assholes we got on this ship anyhow? Yo! I knew it.

I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes! So we want to talk about this article from I knew it. I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes. So we want to talk about this article from Slate. Prove to the world you've lost your son. How a Tulsa grandmother became a vicious Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist in her own words. So this is a long form Slate piece. It's a really interesting article.

And I guess there's a couple of It's a really interesting article. You know, and I guess there's a couple of different ways to read this article. So I was thinking about this article actually on the drive over here. So the first way to read the article is, man, this is a long article about a crazy person. Yeah. And that's a legitimate reading of this article, right? Because if you look at it in this sort of one person view, it is a long article about one crazy person. And like the world has always had

crazy people, but I think the part that I seize on when I think and mull this over that I think makes this different, the thing the part of it that changes for me is that this lady has been crazy since 1990.

She's been, yeah. She's been off her fucking nut doing conspiracy shit and calling people in the middle of the night and fucking doing her bullshit. Fighting school boards. Right. Yeah. And up until a certain point, all of that shit,

in the, in the words of this article, and it's good, moldered in her attic. Right. So at some point she's trying to get the attention of all the powers that be and they just hang up the phone on her.

I don't care. And she gets no traction and she doesn't matter. And all of her like bullshit, quote unquote, research, which I also want to talk about, just like it just amounts to nothing. It's sound and fury signifying nothing.

And then what changes is now she's able to connect with other people that she was not able to connect with before to build a sort of like network of fucking crazy people. And those assholes band together to create not just a single lady harassing people, but harassment campaigns and harassment teams and harassment like protocol and harassment best practices and harassment activism. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, what's different about it. Yeah. That's the part that struck me. You're right. She would have just been left alone 20 years ago. And they, like you say, the article pretty much says that 20 years ago,

she was a lady who went to her school board and basically was like, no, you shouldn't be teaching the kids this way. Right. And for her, for the lady, and they did, I think they did a good job of trying to explain sort of her motivations, both through her and through talking to her daughter. And the motivations are, you know what? I really feel like it's important for me to be a knowledgeable person. Yes. Is what she, that's what she wanted out of life. I want to be a knowledgeable person.

She says it. Yeah, exactly. Like there's this moment of self-realization. Yeah, where she kind of says that. And the thing is, is like, she just didn't know how to go about it. So what she did was she seized on things that were very easy, like easy answers to things that allow you to look knowledgeable, right? It's that conspiracy thing, right?

It allows me to look like I'm the one who's peeling. I'm the detective. I'm peeling back the onion layers. I'm Jack Nicholson in that movie about incest or whatever. He's like looking through the right bullshit card catalog in a, in a basement somewhere. And he finally figures out that, you know, so-and-so is the daughter and then also the wife or whatever. I don't even know the name of the movie. I can't even remember the name of the movie, but you know what I'm talking about.

I do. I know. Like it's like a mundane sort of thing with a big reveal and that's what conspiracies are, right? It's just sort of like bullshit. And then somebody gives you this big reveal. And the thing is, she has no idea how to go about it. And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this story too is because of the internet. And she sees on Anderson Cooper, she goes and watches Anderson Cooper at a house where she's at.

And Anderson Cooper talks about a guy who's some fucking jamoke who runs a website called like memoryhole.com or something. And what happens is, is she stops watching Anderson Cooper and goes to memory hole and immediately becomes a convert. Now, there's not saying that she wasn't someone who was already primed to believe the things there. I think that's certainly true. I think that that's the case. But she would have had no fucking idea and no outlet if Anderson Cooper hadn't given that a little signal boost.

Yep. Well, we're exposed to so much more now. Yeah. And so I think your point is well taken. so much more now. Yeah. And so, I think your point is well taken.

If you're, if it's 1990 and you are a person who is primed to believe in bullshit, you still only can believe in the bullshit

that you encounter. Right. If it's 2022 and you're primed to believe in bullshit, there is a nearly limitless amount of ways

to encounter different kinds of bullshit because our amplification technology has gotten so much better. I think too, that you, you, you were talking and it made me write down a note that I think that there's a correlation, um, between a kind of, um, and I don't, I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, but a kind of intellectual insecurity that makes us more vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I think you're right. I think you're right. And it's, you know what it stems

from? You know, I grew up with this, this sort of either you're street smart or you're book smart. Yeah. Right. Like there's that whole idea, right? It's like either you're street smart or you're book smart. You can't be both. You gotta be like either you're wise in the ways of the world or you're noses in a book and you know the fucking how to diagram a molecule. Those are your two options. Either you know how to get a mortgage or you know how to diagram a molecule. Hey, you can balance your checkbook, but can you balance a tire? You know what I mean?

Exactly. So there's this idea of like that I grew up with. I know you were taught that. Sure, yeah, right. grew up with. And I know you were taught that. But I think at a very young age, you and I, we've known each other for many years. So we were young at one point together. We were young. We were young at one point together. Can we have a moment of silence for that?

At that young point though, I think both of us had that idea that that's just a fucking, it's bullshit. It's like, you can be smart and you can be wise and those things are not mutually exclusive. But I think for a lot of people, it's a way to write off one whole section of learning, one whole section of knowledge, one whole section of wisdom by just saying, and don't get me wrong, being someone who's learned is not easy. It takes practice. It's hard. It takes constant, you know, you're constantly continuing trying to learn, right? You're constantly, you know, it's just like when you work out.

You're constantly adding and refining that process. Yes, just like when you work out. Like if you stop working out, you're not going to be as strong. It's the same thing with, you know, learning and it's the same. So it's not an easy process. And so people sometimes just hand wave it away as, well, anybody can do that research. I have the internet.

Anybody can do that. I think that there's a... One of the things this lady said that speaks to what you're talking about that I think is interesting. She says she always wanted to be, if things have been different, she would have been a great first grade teacher.

Yeah. And I think that there is a unfortunate series of life circumstances for a lot of people where they want, they have a desire to be learned. They have a desire to like, to have some kind of connection to, you know, college or university or, you know, education at some level.

And they don't get that opportunity. They don't, for whatever reason, they don't have the resources, the time, et cetera, right? But that desire to know things, it doesn't go away. That curiosity doesn't go away. But sometimes it can get channeled in some really fucked up ways. And the idea and all these people and the fucking internet has made this word in my mind, like it's like a goddamn alarm bell when people say research. Research, just to your point, research about is like working out. Like you have to learn how to do it. You have to do it frequently.

It's a skill. You have got to have this skill. You don't know how to research just because you Google shit and then click on the links that interested you. That's not. That is not researching. It doesn't matter if you did that for 500 hours. You didn't research. Research is a process.

Right. You have to learn it. There are classes on how to research things for a very good reason. Sure. And there's a whole employment class of people, librarians, who do this literally for a living. That is exactly true. Yes. And that is not a bachelor's degree. No. To be a professional librarian. To be a professional librarian. That's an advanced degree. Yeah. So understand. You're not scanning books at the front desk. Exactly. Understand that that's not just like a throwaway, like that's a lot of work to be a librarian.

Yeah, it takes years. And like, if you are a research scientist, you spend your life working in research, not spending your life Googling and clicking on shit that interests you. Sure. That is not the same thing. Unfortunately, we've lost that thread. We've democratized the idea of the word research and the idea of everybody can learn anything about anything.

And it's not, I mean, I hate to say it, but in almost all cases, it's not true. I mean, I hate to say it, but in almost all cases, it's not true. Almost all things, if you are going to learn about them, require a significant amount of specialization of knowledge and expertise and training and mentorship. And we don't give people good opportunities. Shame on us. Right. Socially, right? We don't give people good opportunities to go to college.

We don't have a robust social safety net. Sure, sure? We don't give people good opportunities to go to college. We don't have a robust social safety net. We don't have the pieces. So you have these people who are curious and they're interested and they're a little insecure maybe about their intellect because they do have a desire to be something, but they didn't get a chance to be the something that they wanted to be, right? And I'm not saying that that's the only way to be something. I'm saying this is specific to this type of... So those folks are uniquely vulnerable. Yeah. Because if they latch on to conspiracy theory shit, then that's an opportunity for them

to have discovered the big idea. Absolutely. And it's wrong. So in this particular story too, Tom, the woman who is the subject of the story talks about the research that she did. And she talks about how she called all these places to ask about the buckets of blood and the bone matter

and all that stuff that Sandy hooked. How did you get it cleaned up? How did you do this? And she said she called a bunch of times and she did a bunch of research and she couldn't find any record of them doing it. And so the author of this article, who's the author of a book,

who's a journalist, she literally called the place. They gave her the number. She called another company. And that company said, yes, we cleaned it up. We do biohazard stuff. And she's like, yeah, but they're like a harbor cleaner. They do land, they do spill.

She's like, they do all kinds of things. You would have known if you'd have called them on the phone. Right. But you didn't. What you did was something else that's not following a lead. What you did was just basically reinforce what you already believed by stuff you found on the internet.

Yeah, man. I think of this as like the fucking Aaron Brockovich syndrome, right? It's that we sort of have this idea that the everyman is just as good as the trained man. Yes, yes. And journalists are trained to do research, right? That is another type of person who goes to school

to learn how to do research. So they know how to track down a lead. They know how to like push past and get the right answers and call the right people. And who do we get? How do you file a FOIA request? There's a process. And regular guys who have never been trained

were fumble fucking our way through everything. And then the shortcut is I'll just do what I thought was right anyway. I'll just believe what I thought I was going to believe. I'll just reinforce what I was going to find anyway. Because everything I clicked on was the things I was already agreeing with, man. And then you go to Memory Hole

and fucking Time Cube or whatever fucking dumbass website and it just reinforces exactly what you wanted to hear. Do you remember, and they probably still make them, but I haven't seen them in forever, but do you remember, I think they were called Chifton or Clifton.

They were manuals for your car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could buy, and you probably still can. Yeah. You could buy a book that outlined every piece of your car. It showed you how to take everything apart.

And I think those are great tools. Like I would never open one because it would be literally useless to me. I wouldn't know what to do with it either. But I think of this as, it's like if you bought one of these Chifton books or Clifton books or whatever the fuck they're called. And you said, well,

I have this book about a 1997 Ford Escort. So I am a mechanic. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I'm a mechanic. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to take this Bugatti apart. Exactly. Exactly.

So it's like, it's like, well, I got, you know what? I, I leave through one of these Clifton books. I one time at the library opened one.

You know what? I have replaced the alternator in my 97 Ford Escort. So I'm pretty much a certified auto mechanic. Yeah. Actually, you know, you can also attach HVAC onto that too. Cause I once pretty much a certified auto mechanic. Yeah. Actually, you know, you can also attach HVAC onto that too. Cause I once turned on the air conditioning. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know, I changed the furnace filter once in a while. So I'm, I pretty much have this down.

I know roughly where it is, how this works. It's in the basement area. So quickly, Tom, I want to talk a little bit about how awful this woman is. Because she's terrible. Because she's pretty terrible. I want to talk, I want to read a little piece of this. So she's,

she, one, they sort of call her out for having a Pinterest board with like weird children like Angela from The Office. Uh, yeah. She has like a weird shrine

on her Pinterest board. Yeah, she has like a weird thing where like the kids are, like have really blue eyes and they like look like shrine on her Pinterest. Yeah. She has like a weird thing where like the kids are like, have really blue eyes and they like look like it's, it's crazy. It's like a virtual precious moment shelf. Exactly. So it's fucking weird.

There's already some weirdness, but then she says, I guess she says that she starts talking about the people that lost kids in Sandy Hook saying, you know, they, they, they look too old to have kids at age.

Where's their, you know, where's their jewel, this type of jewelry, where's their torn clothes? They're too old to have these kids, but then they come on and they're like a little too stoic.

And she's like, why aren't they more upset? And so like, there's no good back and forth here. She just, they have to be perfect. And if they're not perfect, then they're lying to her.

And that's one of those things that the author sort of tries to call out. But there's a part of this that just is so repulsive. Evidently, one of the young ladies who died was a young lady named Grace. She was seven years old. A child that liked to paint. And the mother told Sienna and the Anderson Cooper that Grace had drawn a peace sign and a message, Grace loves mommy,

in the fogged bathroom mirror after her shower, leaving traces her mother found after her death. I think that's very sweet. It is very sweet. And it's very heartbreaking.

How much would that hurt? And it hurts. Oh my God. It's amazing. But it's one of those moments that like, it makes it so that like people who are maybe on the fence of the gun debate like that might be the thing that catches

them like holy shit what the fuck your kid left a fucking piece of unbelievable yeah yeah that would reach into your like if you are a parent or like you just have anyone in your life that you've ever loved yeah that would reach into the part of you that's like oh my god like those little messages that we send each other. Yeah. And those could all just go away like that forever. Like that's the value of this kind of empathetic journalism. And so that's what they're doing. But then she comes out and she says,

and evidently after her white casket was there, the two children, the other two children, Chris and Grace's brother, so evidently I don't know exactly who, and Grace's brother, Jack, used markers to fill its stark emptiness with colorful drawings of things Grace loved. And then this is the line. Wyatt mocked this reminiscence in a sing-song tone. Oh, Grace, she loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Sandy Hook. And we're so glad she's in heaven with her teacher and her classmates. And we feel so good about that. She had a white coffin and we busted out the Sharpies and drew a skillet and a sailboat. Nobody cried, she barked.

So that's, so not seeing someone break down on film, an edited version, like they're not showing, it's not a fucking, it's not, it's not Princess Di, right? So they're not showing the entire fucking funeral. They're showing like a tiny little clip. And if somebody didn't break down in that clip, they're lying. And then you're going to mock them for, you know,

trying to remember their child, the last moment that the child is, you moment that the child's body is still around. Like, it's a horror. It's an absolute horror, and she's a terrible person. And I think one of the major problems with these conspiracy-thinking-type events and type people is that when we don't humanize each other, we dehumanize each other, right?

So, and her decision that she is making, and it is a decision that she's making to believe that this is all an untrue false flag narrative that she's being sold this to, that is dehumanizing. It's pulling her out of an empathetic state of mind. And that is necessarily dehumanizing people who are engulfed in tragedy. And if we are unable to like connect with people who are engulfed in tragedy, we are dehumanizing all of us. And there's no point in making change. There's no point in having society if we aren't humanizing. We should always be working to humanize each other. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a, this whole article though, you know,

there's this part where I think that she really shows this woman being an awful person. And, you know, there's a part of me that's like, that just wonders,

do they just revel in the meanness of it? Because there's people out there in the world. We know there's people out there in the world. The atheist community is filled with some of these people, right? Sargon is in the world. We know there's people out there in the world. The atheist community is filled with some of these people, right? Sargon is a great

example. Dude just loves being a dick. They revel in being mean. They want to be mean to people. They want to hurt people. They want to see people break. That's their value add, right? I wonder if the conspiracy crowd has those people too and she just happens to be one of them. Why not?

It would not, I don Like it, it would not, I don't think it would not be out of character from other descriptions of her interpersonal interactions. Right. She talks about how like, Oh, I should have been a first grade teacher. My whole life has been about a kid, about kids.

I love kids. I have this shrine to kids. But then when they talk to her kids, they're like, you basically ignored us all the time. Yeah. You like, weren't a loving doting. Like you didn't provide a stable home kids, they're like, you basically ignored us all the time. Yeah. You like, weren't a loving,

doting, like you didn't provide a stable home. You weren't like, you just ignored us all the time. It's a fucking show. So it would not be,

I think, out of character for her to just be like, yeah, like whatever. I just fucking being cruel. All the rest, all the rest of this stuff

is the trappings that I need to put in front of my cruelty. Yeah, right, right. It's the salad dressing. Right, exactly. It's a fun, happy, easy, feel-good business. It's a very easy job for any guy out there to do. Everyone has to drive, just feel good, feel

comfortable, feel wonderful with those beautiful feet at the pedals, and let's make a difference. Let's show our love with our feet, and let's be proud proud and let's bring love to our brothers with our feet. I love this article. And the last line of this article is fucking perfection. It comes from the New York Times. Walking on hot coals, a company event goes wrong. More than two dozen employees of a Swiss company were injured while walking in bare feet over hot coals, an ancient religious tradition that has become popular on corporate retreats. I have been on corporate retreats. Have you been on corporate retreats?

No, I work in higher ed, so we do do retreats, but they're not, they are the antithesis of corporate retreats, Tom. Brother, I am so glad that we play golf. Not because I happen to have any great love for golf, but because I am so glad we're not doing Trust Falls

and fucking ropes courses with our fucking managers and walking over coals. We're all going to go to a group Tony Robbins thing together. Yes, yes. One time I went to an event that had a,

like a motivational speaker and he was so bad. He was so bad that he, like that, not only have we never gotten another motivational speaker. And he was so bad. He was so bad that he, like, not only have we never gotten another motivational speaker, but he has become a, like, constant joke. He is a refrain that I will bring up occasionally in meetings. I'll be like, well, at least it's not the steaks in the refrigerator guy. And everyone will laugh because that means something, you know,

to everybody else because this guy was so, I'm so fucking glad. If they, if I'm ever to think. Did he give it up afterwards? Was it so bad that he gave it up? That he gave up speaking? I know we, we as a company have, in our area at least, have never hired another motivational speaker after that guy. We were just like, that is a waste of time every time. You know, the best motivational speaker for any businesses is them sitting you down and offering you to pay you more money. Yes. That's super motivating. That's the best motivation that you could possibly imagine.

I don't need a dude to come in and be like, you really got to love your job. Be like, you really got to pay me more. Right. That's literally it. That will make me motivated to do anything. Sold. Anything.

Sold. Every two weeks I'm motivated. If you need to be there like, hey, guess what we're going to do? Right. You know, I don't care about a fucking beanbag in the break room. I don't care about foosball or whatever.

I don't care. Just pay me. Fuck you, pay me. Oh, we got a cotton candy machine. Just give me the money for the cotton candy machine. Yeah, exactly. Split it up between everybody, even if it's three dollars. Yeah, I'd rather don't care.

And everybody feels the same way, right? Everybody. And here's the litmus test I always use for this. If you won the lottery, would you keep your job? Yeah. Almost nobody says yes. And it's like, that's because you do this for the money. I do it literally because you get paid.

Because if I take the money piece, if we stopped giving you checks every two weeks, you still coming in? I know. No? I know there are some people out there that do, like they found, they are- They have a calling.

They're the unicorn and they found that one thing. Yes, they have a vocation or whatever. That's just like, this is their thing. But I'll tell you what, even working in a place that really does push sort of, you know, a higher ed mission, I would say that if you were to, I would say 99% of the people there wouldn't come back if they went along. No. And the thing is, like, I actually like my job. I like my job. I've never said that before. I like my job.

But 100%, like, if I win the lottery tomorrow, I would not have a job because it's like— I wouldn't even let them call me. Look. I would hire a private investigator to make them, like, kidnap each one and make them forget me. I would waterboard each one person and make them never, I would get like Jesse the body

Ventura to like waterboard everybody who knew me at work so that they would be like, do you know who he is? No, I have no idea who Cecil is. They forget me. I would hold up a picture of myself and then feed people roofies and slap them until they forget who I am. Just forget me now. So here you go.

Wow. No, we're done. That's it. Like, absolutely. Like, but these fucking like corporate retreats where they make you walk on coals to show you they're like more powerful in your fear and the state of mind is only a state of mind or whatever that kind of nonsense is. And I love that they go every once in a while, this happens. This is like something that happens where every once in a while

they don't rake the coals right or they're a little too hot or they didn't use the right kind of wood or people walk too quickly or a coal stuck in between your biscuit toes and you fucking get burned

super bad. Burned really bad, yeah. You're like fucking, you're like Michael Scott putting his foot on a foreman grill. Like seriously, these people are,

and it's so funny because, you know, there's one, there's like that peer pressure. You're around everybody else. Even if you think it's fucking bunk, you can be like, man, I'm not going to do that. It's stupid. One, you can, if you're trained properly, do this in, you could do,

like what they were talking in this article, the guy did it for like, he did it for like a football field and a half or something because you're, it just doesn't transfer heat properly if you know what you're doing. If you walk the right way. You got to walk without rhythm and it won't attract the wind. But seriously, you just got to figure it out.

Walk this way. But if you figure it out, great. But they normally give these training sessions in a short amount of time. So this guy who did the world record running over calls, he's been doing it for decades. People who do it for a couple hours or learn about it for a couple hours and then do it, it's just so stupid. It's just so patently stupid as a motivational thing. It has no point. I mean, there's so many better team building things that you can do. Man, have you ever felt,

have you ever seen something that was like really scary and you weren't sure you wanted to do it and then peer pressure made you do it? Sure. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. So I was thinking about like what you were saying. And it's like, I know that if there was a corporate retreat

and all of the other like executive types were there and there was a walk over Kohl's thing, I would just raise my hand and tell you, I would walk over those. I would, I 100%, I would, I would raise my hand and be the first guy that did it. Right. Because I am every day in direct competition with my peers. And that's, that's, I am aware of that. And so I need this job. I want this job. And I am in direct competition. I would be like, yeah, a hundred percent. fucking do it. Because there's something on the line. It's unfair for a company to create that kind of pressure. Right. Because it's not that they're facing their fears necessarily of working over hot coals. A skill, by the way, which transfers as badly as the heat

from the coals. Absolutely valueless thing to know how to do. Unless, like, what are you, like, going to, like, have, like, a backdraft moment in your life and you're barefoot and you're like, I'm so glad Tony Robbins was there. I was able to save mittens. You're right. What the fuck?

Like, when do you need this? You could have the same exact experience, though, if you were just like, hey, everybody, here's a journal. Go sit in a corner and write something really meaningful and then I'll pair you up and now you're going to talk about it or something. You know what I mean?

Like you could have a similar experience. I don't even know what I'm doing and I just thought of probably a more meaningful experience than circle jerking around a bunch of coals. It's not useful. And so like, like actually, and it is pseudoscience-y, right?

Like that's the problem is that's why we're even talking about it because it's got that layer, that veneer of pseudoscience. One, that it's hard to do and that you, like,

it's just, it's not hard. Once you learn how to do it, it's really easy to do. In fact, like I said, the guy was, the guy like fucking probably

could have took a nap on it for crying out loud. It's like laying on a bed of nails. Yeah. But fact, like I said, the guy was, the guy like fucking probably could have took a nap on it for crying out loud. It's like laying on a bed of nails. Yeah. But then the fucking fact is, is that it doesn't do anything. It doesn't do the things you need it to do.

And now in this particular one, these people like, there's dozens of people got hurt. Yeah, man. And they got like second and third degree burns. And then the organizers

take absolutely no responsibility, of course, because liability. And guys, I got to read this last line. The last line is fucking everything to me. The organizers of the event in Zurich, Tomi Widmer, said in an interview with the Swiss news outlet Blick that he had warned participants to not stroll, run, or hop across the fire, but to walk across it in steady, quick, military step-like clip. Mr. Widmer said he felt sorry for anyone who got hurt, but denied he had responsibility for the accident.

Quote, it could have been a great event, he said. Yeah, but it wasn't because two dozen people burnt their feet. What were you wearing on your feet? It could have been a great event. It's clearly your fault. That's amazing. Yeah, the Challenger could have been a great space ride. But it wasn't.

Might have been really fun for a few seconds. Right? Critics are calling it a less violent Passion of the Christ. I never knew how much Jesus used the N-word. Jesus uncrossed. No more Mr. Nice Jesus. This story comes from the New York Times. It's a bit of a massive, massive letdown.

Unsurprising, though, unsurprising. The Supreme Court strikes down a New York law limiting guns in public. So New York had a law that said, hey, if you want a handgun, you got to get a license. And you have, if you want to do anything with your gun other than keep it in your house for self-defense, so you want to take it somewhere, you've got to have a valid reason to take it somewhere. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you remember when I said, you know, it used to be that you used to have to have a valid reason. And it turns out that I just knew, I must've known

that in a few States, that's still a thing. And New York was one of them. It's one of eight. Oh, it's one of eight. One of eight States, I think. So that seems reasonable, right? So if you're a, um, I need a gun for self-defense despite all the statistics and evidence kind of guy, and you want to have a gun in your house for self-defense, you can still have one. That's totally fine. But if you want to go a travelings with it, you got to have a reason. And valid reasons would be like hunting. That's a valid reason to take your gun out. Target practice is a valid reason to take your gun out. One of the guys that brought the suit even got the okay to take his gun to and from work but what new york said was like look just speculating wildly that this might come in handy if is not a valid fucking reason

yeah to take your to to be armed on the street just wandering about as a fucking aimless untrained unregulated unlicensed armed citizen right and the Supreme Court was like, nah, six to three. Yeah. And it's, again, down these party lines where the far right has infiltrated that court. And now it's 100%, you know, every single thing that comes up that we knew was going to be a problem, you knew it. They literally, the Supreme Court literally wasn't even taking up Second Amendment cases until they got the six to three super majority in the goddamn courts. And what they have now is, and it's not even 5-4, right? It's not even that split where one guy might lean over.

No, it's 6-3. This is dunking. And this is one of those things too where you're just like, look, man, they're just saying you need a reason for it. And they're like, well, I shouldn't have to, you need a reason for a gun at all.

Second Amendment. And I really wonder, you know, they're talking right now about maybe putting something in that's bipartisan in the Senate. Yeah.

Right? That is a few, the tiniest fucking checks on guns. like the tiniest checks you need. Like it's, there's a, there's a, they can open juvenile records now where I guess they couldn't before. Yeah. So they do a background check. Your juvenile records would be flagged. If you're somebody who's like murdering puppies as a juvenile, that shit might show up now. And that might stop you from getting a gun. Who opposes that? I don't understand it. Who opposes that? But clearly it wasn't a

thing. And then there's like one or two of the things There's a strengthening of red flag laws and I think those are really important tools. But really when you think about it, it's not like a big sweeping reform. No, this is not once in a generation type legislation. It's little stuff. But there's enough

people there that are getting enough calls from the people in their district that even Republicans are on fucking board for this. They're like, yeah, no, even the Republicans are on board. So they're like, okay, we're going to do something. I wonder if that's even going to make it past this. You think the Supreme Court will strike it down?

They'll just be like, I wonder if the moment it gets past, somebody's going to take it immediately in. They'll be like, no, no. Because the Supreme Court runs the show now. Yeah, man. I've wondered that about red flag laws. I wonder if the Supreme Court won't say, hey, you have, because the language they always use is that we can't take away the rights of law-abiding citizens.

And the right to have a gun and fucking carry it around next to your dick as much as you want is your Second Amendment right. And until you break the law, at which case, you know, like, because, of course, you know, in America, once a felon, fuck you forever. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, but I don't know that I necessarily disagree with that with relation to guns. Yeah. But it's still, you know, but a law abiding citizen should not have. Well, a red flag law says like, well, we're worried and we have reason to be worried. And so we are going to take a gun away from a law-abiding citizen.

We're doing a crazy thing. We're waiting for people to break the law before we say, well, don't break the law again. And the problem with guns is if you break the law with a gun, someone probably died. if you break the law with a gun, someone probably died. So I would rather have somebody not be able to have their dirty, hairy fantasy bullshit lived out than to have like,

oh, well, next time you can't murder someone. You can't murder someone twice. That's bullshit. What's crazy too is like, these people, you know, some of this stuff won't stop you know some of these people who have already committed some of these heinous crimes right these laws that they're

putting in place because they're getting these calls might not stop some of the stuff that wouldn't stop some of the stuff that happened before right and in some ways ted cruz is right when he's like their laws won't stop this stuff and it's like and i turn back all the time to be like then do something that will man yeah man get something going that't stop this stuff. And it's like, and I turn back all the time to be like, then do something that will, man. Yeah, man. Get something going that'll stop this. Get something going that will stop it. Because we're the only country that does this.

We're the only country in the civilized world where, shit, we're probably the only country in the world where you could just be, you could just send your kid to school and them and 20 of their classmates can die in the same day without a- And then nobody does anything. Nobody does a damn thing. and nobody does it nobody does it nobody does anything yeah nobody does cnn to anderson cooper comes by to catch your tears in his fucking camera lens for a few hours but that's the only thing that's

it that's it yeah i i read an article like there was there were proposals to raise the age to own certain types of guns from 18 to 21 not Not even to own, to buy, right? And there's a distinction there because you can, I can give like a long gun. Crazily enough, you can give a long gun to a young person. Your handguns are more restricted. And that's not crazily, but I just think it's insane that you give a gun to like a 12-year-old, right? But you can in most states.

So, but, and I, some of the opposition to this that I read from, of course, Republican lawmakers was something like, and I'm paraphrasing, but only by a little bit, 18-year-olds are the most in danger and the most 18, 19, and under 21 are the most likely to need a gun for self-defense. And it's like, well, okay, but even if I, and I don't know if that's true, but if I were to suppose that that were true, I would then have to ask the next question, which is, well, why is that so? And it's because 18, 19, 20, 21 year old people are fucking reckless. And they're the ones who probably get into the altercations that cause that stuff. And if you've got a gun, you feel more fucking invincible. Fucking A, man. And now all of a sudden, it's like you're fucking flexing

because you feel like you've got, you know, a little something, something because you're fucking strapped. Like, it's bullshit. Like, they don't take it. They're so gung-ho about protecting this fucking fantasy

that they don't bother to ask questions. And I think they know the answers to them. Right. It's posturing. This is all posturing. Exactly. Boring. Boring.

Hello? Oh, okay. Sorry, guys. I have to go meet someone. That's not a phone. It's a banana. It's for you. Hello?

Mr. President. Oh, this is fucking great. And there's video. Is there a clip? There is a clip. Oh, Tom. There is a clip. So this is from Salon. And there's video. Is there a clip? There is a clip. Oh, Tom. There is a clip. So this is from Salon.

And again, I don't like Salon. I just grabbed him because there's a clip here that's worthwhile. I can see your screen. Ron Johnson busted after saying he's on the phone to avoid January 6th questions. Okay, here we go, Tom. Here we go. It's so great. How much did you know about what your chief of staff was doing with

the alternate slates of abductors no you're not i can see your phone i can see your screen does your chief of staff still work for you, Senator? Can you explain what happened there? No connection. That's so awesome. He's like, I guess I'm just going to have to do this. I guess that's how it works now. That's so amazing. What a fucking coward.

What a fucking coward. These are reasonable questions. These are not gotcha questions. The questions they're asking are essentially, he got given a bunch of fake, I guess, ballots or whatever, or something like that, like a fake elector, a list of fake electors. And he like supposedly sight unseen gave it to someone else. I think it was Pence or something. He gave it to someone else. So it was given to him to give to someone else. I think his chief of staff was getting in touch with Pence's chief of

staff. And he didn't ask any questions right so that's the that's what this is coming down to is that this guy this senator yeah and ron johnson we've we've talked about this fucker before yeah this guy is like he fucked up and now he wants to just avoid all the questions gotta fucking hide from yep and that's and this is so it's so perfect because like you and i've been talking for a couple of years now about how nobody pushes anymore. And especially when it was Trump, when Trump was in office, we were just like, God, nobody's pushing. There's so many times you just be like, no, I'm going to push. And if you don't, then I just never come back. And that's okay. Yep. Now they're starting to push. Yeah, they are. And I love it. It's so good. I love it.

I love that he called him out. Hey man, I can see you're not on your phone. Yeah. Like I can see your screen, I can see your screen. I can see your screen. Who are you crapping, old man? Like, we can see when you're on a goddamn phone call. Your phone lights up. I don't know how technology works. These guys are such bullshit cowards.

It's amazing. He's such a boomer. He has no idea how it works. He'll be fooled when I hold this. Oh, so amazing. Rectangle to my ear. He just had a brick. And he was It would be hilarious if he just had a brick and he was just talking, you know,

like he just had like a brick or like- Picks up his shoe, like gets smart. He's got a chicken leg up to his head or whatever. It doesn't matter. He grabs his secretary and holds her up to his face. He doesn't care what it is. As long as they can get out of this call. You can get to see him on the secretary.

Oh, it's fucking amazing. Hi, I'm Derek Baum.. Ah, it's fucking amazing. Hi, I'm Derek Baum. Say goodbye to daily stains and dirty surfaces with new kitchen gun. This sink is filthy, but just three shots

from kitchen gun and it sparkles like new. There, all clean again. New kitchen gun, now with laser sight and night vision for after dark cleaning.

Yeah. A lot of Texas talk in the last couple of weeks here. A lot of Texas talk. So I grabbed this story because the Texas Republican Convention, and this story I think does a real nice job

of laying out that the Texas Republican Convention comes together and they put out a platform. Yeah. And it's a bunch of stuff that they all agree is important to be

a Texas Republican, not stuff necessarily they think agree is important to be a Texas Republican, not stuff necessarily they think is actually going to be able to happen. But it does give you a strong sense of their ideological position. It gives you an insight into who they are. Right. So I want to read, there's some bullet points in here and I want to read some

bullet points. This is, I mean, genuinely and I don't want to, like, this is as dystopian a world as I can imagine living in. Yeah. This would be, this is something that someone couldn't imagine. Right. I was genuinely floored. We've been doing politics now

for 15 years. This is from their platform. Requiring Texas students to learn about the humanity of the pre-born child including teaching that life begins at fertilization and requiring students to listen to live ultrasounds of gestating fetuses in school do they do like whale song kids are falling asleep like a white noise machine

get the fuck out of here listen to the sounds of the gestating fetus that sounds like a new age album right or a really dark metal album it's got that parrot for a lyricist or whatever uh uh amending the tex Texas Constitution to remove the legislature's power to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime. So they would change the Constitution so they can't even pass laws that mean you can't have guns. We can't even, you don't even have the power to think about this. You can't even, it's like that old sign that says, don't even think of parking here. Yes. It's basically, if you thought about it, we're going to kill you.

We will kill you. Kill you. We will kill you. Fuck you. And we'll know. We will kill you and we can do it because we're strapped at all times. We will know if you thought about it. Just by the way you're looking at my gun, I think I'm allowed to kill you.

We will know if you thought about it because you'll be the only one thinking in Texas. to kill you. We will know if you thought about it because you'll be the only one thinking in Texas. Treating homosexuality as an abnormal lifestyle choice, language that was not included in the 2018 or 2020 party platforms. So going back to this, we talked about last week.

Deeming gender identity disorder a genuine and extremely rare mental health condition requiring official documents to adhere to biological gender and allowing civil penalties and monetary compensation to detransitioners who have received gender affirming surgery, which the platform calls a form of medical malpractice. Fucking yikes. Just straight up. Holy yikes.

Changing the U.S. Constitution. Let's just go back. Yeah. Constitution. Let's just go back. Yeah. If you told me, if you read that and you said,

pick two, one year, 1943, Germany. Right. Yeah. Or 2022, Texas.

I might not get that right. Yeah, man. I might not get that right. This shit is as egregious. Yeah. It's, it's, it's not just. Yeah. This shit is as egregious. Yeah. It's, it's, it's not just,

yeah, the last two, the last two treating homosexuality as an abnormal lifestyle choice. It's like, we've, I thought that ship was sailing. I literally want to otherize all the people here that are LGBT. I want to otherize all of them.

It's, and it's such a, like at this point, this shit's, this ship sailed 20 years ago. Yeah. 20. And like, they're, they're literally trying to like, with these last two, they're fucking going back in time. Yeah.

It's a fucking time machine. This next one. Changing the U.S. Constitution to cement the number of Supreme Court justices is nine, and then repeal the 16th Amendment of 1913, which created the federal income tax. What? of 1913, which created the federal income tax. What? Ensuring the freedom to travel by opposing Biden's clean energy plan and California-style anti-driver policies, including efforts to turn traffic lanes over for use by pedestrians,

cyclists, and mass transit. They're basically like, look, more pollution. We need more cars. Actually, I want my car to drive a car. I want to be like five cars down. I want a car under a car under a car. No, that would be mass transit. And I want them all to roll coal.

That's what I want. Holy shit. Everybody's going to just drive a John Deere tractor, just spilling oil out the back of it. America's so fucked because we have such a shitty public transit system already. I know. And like, it's such an uphill battle for us to try to, because we spread out so far here in the States, like, like we live in Chicago land area. It takes me over an hour to get to Chicago from where I'm at. Oh yeah. You know,

it takes me over an hour and And driving, it's way longer because it's, you know, the traffic. But if I take a train in, it's about, it's a little over an hour to get downtown, right? A little bit, just a touch over an hour. So that's like, but that's how far out we are from Chicago.

Like, we're a good distance out from Chicago. And there's just, it's just literally, you know, miles and miles and miles of roadway and a few main arteries of public transportation. I have a train near me, luckily. Right. But there's a couple of suburbs, and I know you still live in Plainfield.

There's nothing out there. Literally nothing. You have to drive 40 minutes to one place. Somewhere else. To take a train if you wanted to do that. So like, it's just, we just made just such a shitty system. Even around Chicago, we made a shitty system.

And imagine, imagine in Texas. Yeah. Houston a shitty system. Even around Chicago, we made a shitty system. And imagine in Texas. Houston has shitty everything. What could their mass transit be like? I mean, the air smells like shit. Declaring all businesses and jobs as essential and a fundamental right. A response to COVID-19 mandates by Texas cities that required customers to wear masks and limited business hours.

And abolishing the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, and guaranteeing the right to use alternatives to cash, including cryptocurrencies. Good for them. You know, look,

here's the thing. You're definitely going to lose a lot of power if you go to cryptocurrency mining. Holy shit. I wouldn't trust that grid if I was a crypto miner. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me right now?

They put all those fucking crypto miners in there. Like it gets 70 degrees in Texas and everyone will just die. They will be out of power overnight. I saw something this week, though, that said, and this was like a Business Insider article,

where they said, like another one of their things was they were planning on repealing the civil rights law that allowed, like, black people to vote. Holy fucking shit.

What? I can't even find it now. What? Yeah, man, like. So this story is from NPR. Not every plank of the platform came with a long explanation. For example, the section on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the Justice Department calls the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by Congress,

merely states that the Texas GOP supports equal suffrage for all United States citizens of voting age. The platform then calls for the 1965 law and its updated forms to be repealed and not reauthorized. The Voting Rights Act has returned as a key point of contention in the past decade as parties argue over election fairness, particularly in areas with histories of discriminating against or suppressing voters of color. So that means that I can just suppress you if I want, right? If I take those rights away, now I can just be like, yeah, you don't get a fucking voting station.

You got to come over here. No, we get to make these decisions. You're not being discriminated against. Everybody, I don't see color. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? And that's the problem. In the following neighborhoods,

the voting hours are restricted to 6 a.m. to 7.45 a.m. To seven and a half minutes at 2 p.m. or whatever. Yeah. And otherwise you got to drive someplace. It's ridiculous. You can make it so hard. You can just put up so many administrative

and bureaucratic and functional practical barriers to voting to essentially turn an entire demographic into a disenfranchised demographic. And if you don't have those protections in place and you've abolished them, like that say, you're not allowed to do this. Right. Then,

then there's, then there's no protection. And they're just, they're just fucked because again, because it's one of those things like, well, we fixed it. We fixed it.

No, you didn't fix it. Look at fucking all across the country where, you know, you or I might have two or three minute wait times. There's 72, you know, three hour wait times in other parts of the city. It's like, we fixed it.

Okay, well then just keep it then. Like, what's the harm then? If it's not doing anything, what does it matter? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They want to fucking- Get the fuck out of here. So I also want to,

there was talk about secession too. And there's been a lot of talk about that too, which is, you know, like, look, man, the thing is, is like, I get, and I understand, Texas is on the verge of turning blue. Yeah. And I think they're really afraid.

They're freaking out, man. They're afraid. Because we saw last time, that was not, that was a close election. It was a nail biter, man. It was a close election. It could have went for Biden. It didn't, but it could have, right? It could have, you know,

it wasn't like it was for years. Texas has been a red state for years with a lot of population, right? And that's the thing is there's plenty of red states, but they don't wield the same kind of electoral power that a place like Texas does, right? Texas is the ripest plum, man. And it absolutely is. And I think they're afraid. I think they're genuinely afraid that we're at this position right now where it could be in the next 10 years that they vote for president and it turns blue.

It's possible. Fucking California was red, man. Back in the day, California was red. Yeah, I mean, and big parts of the South were blue. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a constantly shifting map. It's a constantly shifting map. I agree with you. If you look

at the, if you look at the county breakdown within Texas, your major metropolitan centers of which Texas has several, they're blue as fuck. They're solidly blue. Yeah. So, and that's where all the people live. That's where the people live, man. Yeah, man. It's just like, it's just like us. We have in, we have Chicago, Chicagoland area to a certain point,

and then it starts getting more Republican. You know, there's, there's little bits from other places, but you know, Champaign, Peoria, anywhere people live, anywhere people are, anywhere there's a density, you'll get this group of people who will vote blue. And so we're in a position now in our state where we're solidly blue. Absolutely. We're solidly blue. It's unquestioningly blue.

It's unquestioningly blue. But other places in recent years around us have sort of flipped red-blue. You know, red-blue, red-blue, depending on the candidate. So who knows what happens in the next 10 years? It could be that enough people leave Chicago for redder areas of the country because they're working from home, and suddenly Arkansas is blue.

Yeah, or North Carolina. I think North Carolina might be the next one that flips over. There's a lot of relocated transplants from metropolitan areas and in North Carolina, it's booming. Georgia too is one of those that right now is very much possibly. And you know, here's the other thing too. A blue Texas means all this bullshit that Texas is playing with the abortion thing

and all that stuff's gone. Out the window. Blue Texas means not just a blue Texas for the electoral college. A blue Texas means a blue governor, a blue Senate, a blue, you know, down there.

And suddenly that changes things. I can see a Texas. I can see a vision of a Texas that's very much like a vision of Illinois, where it's a solidly blue state that occasionally has Republican governors. Yeah, occasionally we'll have a Republican governor too.

Yep, absolutely. I can see that. I can absolutely see that happening. And that might happen. But I'll tell you what, you get it blue enough where they can't pull that shit and it's possible. It's possible.

You know what I mean? So I just, I feel for all the people, like you said, huge metropolitan areas. I feel for all those people down there that have to deal with these chuckle fucks. I do too, man. That fucking run their state like they're fucking a bunch of idiots. It's got to be so distressing

to live. Okay. If you're just a regular guy in Austin or in Dallas or in San Antonio, those are solidly blue. You're likely blue. Like just you likely are blue. It's a solid. You've got to look around and be like, fucking the fucking pig farmers are in charge. Yeah. The people, the people who want to have the Trumpers are in charge. The MAGA hats are in charge. They're the ones and they decide what's happening. And this platform is disgusting. It's their platform is grotesque. Now they can't get it all done, but look at some of the stuff they've already done. Yeah, I know. And look at how horrible and dystopian that is. It's one thing to look at this and be like, all right,

well, that's your fucking evil Saddam Hussein-esque wish list, right? But we're living in a world now where the Supreme Court just said, hey, guess what? No more abortion. Yeah. You know, or not to say that.

What they said is leave it up to the states. So, you know, it means like Texas, no more abortion. Yeah. You know, we're living in it up to the states. So, you know, it means like- Yeah, so Texas, no more abortion. No abortion. Yeah. You know, we're living in a world where the Supreme Court said, oh, you know, we will take up those gun laws

and we will strike them all down. And you know what we're going to do is we're going to just let anybody have a gun. In fact, we're going to sign the bills with guns. Everybody gets guns. We're going to use ceremonial guns to sign the bills. I'm going to shoot like Annie Oakley, my fucking name. We decide everything with 21 gun scores.

That's it. We don't, we actually go rock, paper, scissors, AR-15. And, and AR-15 wins every time. AR-15 wins every time.

I never throw anything but AR-15. AR-15. Is this AR-15? I don't know what that is. You're probably, I don't know, I'm probably throwing a gang sign.

Right. There's some affiliation now and we're going to get jumped outside. That's fine. I don't mind. No, but, but like it is, it is a horror. It's gotta be a horror.

And it's, and I, and this extends to anybody who is, you know, a left-leaning person in a right-leaning area. How, you know, I mean, I, I lived, I lived in rural Illinois for a couple of years, about four years. And it's, I, I genuinely, I didn't put a Darwin fish on my fucking car because I was afraid it was going to get keyed. I thought, you know what? They will keep my car. Somebody will keep my car. They'll see that. And they'll be offended enough to keep my car, even though I'm surrounded by Jesus fish. Right. Yep. And they never once in my life thought I'm going to

keep someone's Jesus fish. Right. But I know for sure if I did that there, someone would react. Or I'd get into a fight at the grocery store. Right. Something. And so I was just like, I just won't do it. I'm just going to protect it. You got to live undercover. Yeah.

And so there's so many people, people who listen to the show, who left to live undercover. They're atheists or they're leftists or whatever. We get emails all the time. And the only people that speak any sense are the people in their earbuds. Yeah. The rest of the people that they run into, they're like, fuck, I can't have a conversation with anybody because they're just like her dirt Trump, but like

and then they fucking drink and then they die in 10 years. Go home. This is motion to wars, isn't it, boy? Natives! Little natives! Natives! A custom!

A domo! Except that Thomas takes the... All right, see, so I put this story in Hail Caesar, sir. Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off. Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir. All right, see, so I put this story in kind of as a placeholder. So in the New York Times, Uvalde School District puts police chief on leave after mass shooting. So I grabbed this story because if you're following the Uvalde massacre at all, one of the things that you cannot escape is the ever shifting narrative from the police. The original story was, oh, well, you know, the, the gunman showed up and he started shooting right away at the police. Well, no, that didn't happen. And then, you know, oh, well, we got in because some teacher propped the door open. Well, that, that wasn't true. And then, oh, you know, we were outside and we didn't have a key and we couldn't get in the door. Well, that's not true.

It turns out either. The door locks were fucking broken. There't have a key and we couldn't get in the door. Well, that's not true, it turns out, either. The door locks were fucking broken. There was actually a requisition from the teacher to have the locks fixed on that door. They keep lying. And the thing that I am struck by, Cecil, is these cops are willing to lie when they know that the eyes of the world cannot possibly be trained more heavily upon them. Yeah. That should be the time where you're like, all right, definitely going to not pull any shenanigans.

They're fucking, they're lying with like hard eye contact. Yes. And then doing the wrong thing while they're lying about it. It's like, it's amazing. They are balls deep in your, in your fucking, in your wife's sister or something. And like, what honey,

as you're fucking thrusting. I'm not doing anything. What? Yeah, it's amazing. But I got to say this, the one thing that I've seen,

at least from the sort of, you know, the things that get picked up from the average Joe who's been disillusioned by this is heartening. Because they're starting to understand that the police aren't there to protect you. Yes. The police aren't there to save you.

They're not. The police are there to protect capital. That is what they're there for. They're there to protect capital. They're there to gain revenue for their department. It's not just for the state. It's for their department. It's for their department. It's not just for the state. It's for their department. It's for their department.

It's for their department so that they can have a job and continue having a job. And then they create these incentive programs in the government with these war on drugs incentive programs where then they create these drug busts that are nothing so that they can get more money. More money, more funding, more seizure. And then basically cement their place in the community by saying, you need us, look at all this stuff we have, you need us. But in any case, it's suddenly, it's starting to spark in some people out there

who might've been on that blue lives sort of thing. And they're seeing like, holy shit, like the police, sometimes when you call them, they don't do what you ask them to do. And you just say, yeah, just be a person of color for 10 minutes and you'll know that that's the case. 100%, man. You'll know that's the case. People of color have been telling us all this for decades and decades and decades, generations. And people haven't listened.

And now they're starting to see that there's some serious problems. And one of the things that I noticed too about this is that they are very reticent to let out those body cams. Yeah, they're not doing it. The body camera footage, they're not. They're very reticent. I don't know if they'll get it.

There might be some sort of thing back and forth. If that stuff comes altered or edited or removed, someone should go to jail. But if they get it, I would imagine, I'm guessing, there's got to be something on there that they're trying to keep. And I wonder if they might've killed a kid.

Oh, shit. Yeah, you know what I mean? It might've been, like you're in a situation where you don't know what's happening. Somebody runs in. It might've been that something like, or you just get a chance to hear them talking and saying really shitty stuff. I'm wondering if their

cowardice will not be on display in a way that they cannot hide from. Yeah. You know, like the police protect all of those things that you were saying. Those are their primary functions. And then the other thing that they protect is their own power. Yeah. They protect their lives, their power, their position. They protect that more jealously than they protect is their own power. They protect their lives, their power, their position. They protect that more jealously than they protect anything else. Absolutely true. It's why contempt of cop is a thing, right? Because when you are contemptuous of a cop, their power, their hierarchical power is being threatened in that moment. And that is an inexcusable crime for law enforcement. And that's why that fucking veteran got his hand broken with a baton for standing and asking a question politely.

Because anything that challenges that hegemony. That's why that old guy got shoved down and is bled from his ears. Yeah. So like they're lying to us in a time when just patently we should imagine this is the one time that they would not be able to lie. And anybody with half a fucking brain would know,

all right, the eyes of the world are going to be on us. We got to be clean. Everything's got to be up and up, above board. But if they're willing to lie when there's this much scrutiny, imagine how much lying takes place when it's somebody that has no resources, no cameras, no media, nothing. They're lying all the time.

They're lying every day. They were willing to murder Laquan McDonald, shoot him in the back as many times as possible. And every single police officer on the scene wrote a report that said essentially that he was coming at him and he deserved to get shot. And then you watch that tape

and you're like, he's walking away. He's walking away. He's walking away and he got shot in the back. They all got together and collaborated their story to write the report. And the only reason it came out is because somebody found that body camera footage.

Yep. And that lie would have been, there wouldn't have even been any issues whatsoever. Think about, I mean, shit, George Floyd. Without that tape, what would that have been? It would have been a guy who died resisting arrest. It would have been a guy died resisting arrest. And I don't care if you had a couple of people there that saw it. No, that makes no difference. That's not enough. It's that tape. It's the tape of it. So we're seeing now, and look, I don't know what's on those tapes and I'm not going to

pretend to know what's on those tapes. I don't know what's on those tapes and I'm not going to pretend to know what's on those tapes. I don't know what's on the tapes, but I will say this. The people who wanted to see those things deserve to see them. A hundred percent. Our tax dollars paid for all that stuff and it paid for it for a reason.

It paid for accountability. And so if you are not willing to be accountable, you should be removed and they removed this guy. Yep. Good, good, good. You're not willing to be accountable? Go should be removed. And they removed this guy. Yep. Good. Good. Good. You're not willing to be accountable? Go.

Go do something else. Go be a security consultant. Right. Go do something where the lives, where you do not hold anyone's life in your hands. Because they failed at every fucking level. They failed for almost two hours. They failed for an hour and 17 minutes to protect people

that they could have and should have protected. Absolutely. And like, they owe us answers to this. Yes. Yes. But like all the time, every day, this is happening somewhere. Yeah. Every day, every day, somebody gets pulled over on the side of the road and they get the shit kicked out of them. And then the cop lets them go and they're afraid to like call and complain. Yeah. Every day, somebody gets thrown in jail for nothing. Every day, people get beaten. They get killed. This is happening every single day of the year.

Yeah. So we'd like to thank our patrons. Of course, we'd like to thank all our patrons. We'd like to thank our newest patrons, Brad, Alyssa, Jim, Christopher, and the people up there pledges, Dimitri, Victoria, and Daniel. Thank you so much for your generous donations.

We truly do appreciate it. It was a long night tonight, Tom. It was. We wound up doing about two hours, two and a half hours of live stream tonight. Again, if you're missing these live streams, people seem to really enjoy them. We're watching most of, if not all of,

the testimony, and then we're talking a little bit while it's on. Not much. We're making jokes once in a while, because you can't... I can't not do that. But then we also just hang out. So check it out if you get a chance. While you're there, go take a look at it.

Subscribe, like on YouTube, all that stuff. It's helping the show grow. So if you find a piece of a clip or something you want to share, share it. You know what I mean? That's great. That's great for us. Helps get the show out there. It helps people understand what we're doing and it helps people follow us. So please

continue to do that. Go to YouTube, watch those things. Yeah, help algorithm us, guys. Yeah, yeah. And you know, just go there and comment and it just helps push the thing up and get more people to watch it. Uh, I wanted to mention this too, a couple weeks ago, uh, our last week on the stream, we covered judge Ludig's testimony. Judge Ludig spoke very haltingly. I wound up cutting another video on our YouTube. I wound up cutting his testimony. I edited out all his pauses. And so it sounds more normal. It sounds to it much more normal if you listen to it.

Much more normal. And I listened to the edited version that you did and I understood it. And I was like, okay, that's actually great testimony. Honestly, it was great testimony when it's spoken at a pace that people hear. And that's the thing is, you know, look, I understand that people were trying to, we're trying to say like, he said it because of this, or he did it because of this. Nobody really knows. If you believe him, what he said was, I was trying very carefully to match my language because I knew it was going to be a very momentous occasion.

And so I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he said. It was very momentous, and I wanted to make sure my words had the gravity of that situation. That's what he said. If you believe him, you believe him. Other people have other theories on why he did it. Nobody knows why he did it except for him, right? That's the only reason. I, you know, it was, I will say this as a guy who struggles with sometimes, you know, with that sort of thing, it was, it was painful for me to watch. It was painful. I couldn't follow him. He was taking too long to get there. My mind would wander in between words.

Oh, yeah. Literal people would wander. Watch the video. You will see a person starts on one side and winds up on the other before he even comes close to finishing a sentence. So it takes him forever to speak. I cut all of the pauses.

Give it a listen. It's on our YouTube page. Check it out. Okay, so that is going to wrap it up for this week. We wound up skipping email this week. It's a late night again. We're running into these late nights when we do these long streams.

It's a very lot of work, but it's worth doing. It's worth it. All right, 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,

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