Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 654: The Nightmare Before Treason

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Left at the Valley and the Recovering from Religion Bingo! for RfR International     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. recording 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 at. This is episode 654 of of what cognitive distance of cognitive distance

i guess i'm just that's the uh the uh the victory beer has caught up to me guys i'm sorry it gave me like a moment of pause i apologize so you know when this comes out for wide release it will be the day before the end of all times. The day before the election. And you should join us 8 p.m. Central Time. Yes, indeed. Live streaming from YouTube, from Twitch, and from Facebook. We're going to be doing two hours of looking at the end of the world as election results come in.

8 to 10 Central Time. You got to show up because here's what's going to happen. Voters are going to decide, central time, you gotta show up. Because here's what's gonna happen. Voters are gonna decide, Cecil, whether anything matters anymore. That's really the truth. That's really it. Because in 2020,

the presidential election, it was kind of a referendum on whether or not things mattered, right? For sure. Sure. But then I think after January 6th and after the horrifying spate of events that have occurred and then the insane people that are up

for election right now, after... And the massive amount of political violence, which we'll get to. Which we'll talk about. Which, I don't know, this show releases on Monday. There might be more by the time this comes out. Might be more. So, like, we're at a place, and I really think this is the litmus test for the American future, and I'm not really kidding. The litmus test for America's future is if Herschel Walker,

the least qualified from an intellectual and moral standpoint human being to have ever run seriously for office, Herschel Walker versus Raphael Warnock. If Walker wins, genuinely pack your bags. Everybody just kill, just drown your kids. Just that's it because there's no future. There's no future. And there's a couple of races that we're going to be following that night.

And Herschel Walker is going to be one of those oh yeah because i'm scared of it because if that that's that's really one of those you know it's one of those bellwethers right you look at and you say you know what here is the political climate in this country now and it essentially i don't like you that's what it is because it't be, you're a better candidate. You're better for me if you're in office. You're going to do good things because you understand the system and will be able to work within the system to make my life better from, I am from your district and I will benefit because you are a smart, intelligent person who can work the system. It's not that at all. It's nothing, no.

What it is is I hate those people, and it will make them mad if you are elected because you're an incompetent. And I would rather back an incompetent to make someone else mad than get someone who might help me. Fucking for real. He's a troll candidate. He's a troll candidate. He's just a straight up troll. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them, man.

This one is the most important. This is a U. senate seat it is it is a u.s massively there's there's quite a few other candidates you know that you're going to look across the board and you're going to say okay well there's a bunch of house candidates and you're gonna be like why fucking how but this one is really super important and the fatter men of us is oh mywether. Oh my God. I know. That one is what the fuck? I mean, seriously, it's going to be what the fuck? Like, did you hear the Oz quote? We got to talk about it, right? Yeah, yeah.

Like, Oz is such a horrifying, repugnant human being with a long and documented storied history of lying and deception. He's a fucking liar. He was called in front of Congress to talk about his fucking green coffee bean bullshit and his fucking extracts and potions and tinctures and all the shit that he fucking sold to the American. This is a guy who Congress has already called up to say, you're selling us a bill of goods. And now he's like, I'd actually like to be at the other side of the table yeah i want to i you know what i didn't like the way that felt i

want to get you i want to be what the fuck and and you again if you're voting for him you're not voting for him because he's qualified or he's from your state and he has state pride or whatever right i can even like like i even think that's a stupid thing to do, but at least you could be in some way duped by that. You can't even be duped by that with this guy. Instead, what this guy is, is he's a liar and I'm okay with that as long as it makes them mad. That's literally what he is. He's not a qualified person.

No, not even a little bit qualified. And also just as an aside, can we cut out the Dr. Dick sucking bullshit? Like, we did this with Ben Carson. We're doing this with fucking Mehmet Oz. Like, just because somebody is a medical doctor, that literally has no bearing on their qualifications to do anything other than be a doctor. It does have bearing on their ability to be a doctor. I will say, in this case, he's also a good con man.

Right? So he does have that. That's his real job. on their ability to be a doctor. I will say, in this case, he's also a good con man, right? So he does have that. That's his real job. He doesn't have a, like, he's not a doctorate in con, but he certainly has benefited for decades being a con man when it comes to medicine. He's so good. If there was a, if there was con man university,

he'd at least have an honorary degree. Yeah, absolutely. He would be like, he'd be giving commencement speeches all day long because he's the fucking baller at it, right? Like for sure. But like I'm sick to death of the idea that celebrity alone, like it's Trump, it's Oz, it's Walker.

Walker, I listen to a thing about the daily. I don't really follow football. So I guess Herschel Walker was this like massive stars in the sky celebrity. He was an amazing running back. Yeah. And I didn't really, I knew he was a football player. I didn't know like he was a big deal. Yeah. I guess I just, cause it's just not my world. Sure. So, but I listened to the daily and they were kind of describing just what a household name Herschel Walker is. And I'm like, yeah, I get it. I do. I get it. But who fucking cares? It doesn't make you qualified. Who cares?

Celebrity doesn't do anything. Celebrity should kind of work against you a little bit. Honestly, celebrity should work against you and not for you. If we're talking about doing the real work of buckling down and doing legislative, like being like, well, okay, but you spent most of your time doing not that. You were doing burpees. Everybody else has been reading right right you're not reading yeah you're working on your 600 pound bench or whatever i'm telling you right now what is the most important fucking trait you can have in a legislator is fucking reading comprehension right because they hand you bills that are enormous and you've got to work your way through

it now granted you got aids but you've got to be able to get through it on your own yeah well you would think so but you got to at least be able to get through some of it you gotta at least get through the bullet points they're gonna hand you the bullets or they're gonna hand you parts you gotta get through some of it at least you gotta be partially literate herschel walker has been caught lying about essential and important things like identity-based things. Like when he held up the fake badge. The fake badge. And you're like, there's nothing in the Republican Party anymore that's disqualifying.

We talked about this idea before, but really there needs to be something, something that's disqualifying. If joking about sexual assault is not disqualifying, if lying about your law enforcement history and holding up a fake badge as a fake fucking credential, we've gotten to a point where there's no disqualifying activity because the point of Herschel Walker isn't Herschel Walker. Yeah. The point of Herschel Walker is to be the not him candidate.

Who's Herschel Walker? Well, he's not him. Yeah. He's not, he's not Warnock. That's the Republicans entire platform is not him. Yeah, man. Yeah. And that tells us, we'll know on Tuesday, a lot of this.

We'll know whether or not, you know, because if, if, if you vote your way into this mess that you're going to vote your way into. No, I don't know what to tell you. I don't your way into. No, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to do next. I don't know what to tell you. I feel like I'm going to be shrugging a lot that night. Yeah. I feel like that's what I'm going to do.

Because I'm not, at this point, I just can't get worked up over it anymore. I know. I'm just like, I understand the peril that we're in. But at a certain point, if we're not willing to drag ourselves out of it, I don't know what to do anymore. You know, it's. And getting worked up just gives me anxiety. So do I just like trade that in for anxiety?

Yeah, you know, you're not at all wrong. It's sort of like the war-weary soldier who barely looks up when the fucking shells are flying. Yeah, right. Because it's like, I've been here. One of them is going to hit me or one of them is not. What do you want me to do at this point? We've been here for two full election cycles at this point. At this point,

this is actually five election cycles. So it's 2016, 2018, 2020. No, this will be the fourth one, 2022. So 2022, man, this is it. And then next time around, I mean, and you said it earlier, and I totally agree, if they do take the House or the Senate, it's deadlock, 100% deadlock.

Yeah, nothing happens for two years. Period, deadlock for two years anyway. But if they take the House, they are going to impeach Joe Biden, mark my words. They will impeach Joe Biden. As a retaliatory impeachment, it may have no bearing whatsoever. It will not matter. No facts will matter. They'll call people up in front.

They'll make it a crazy dog and pony show, and I guarantee they fucking impeach him. That's going to happen. They've already said, members of Congress have already said that they will impeach Joe Biden. They'll just figure out what for later. They don't even have a clue as to what it's going to be.

It'll probably have something to do with a laptop. It'll probably have something to do with that dumb movie that they put out. I think they'll do it on the Southern border. They'll do it on that. They'll do it on anything they can and they will impeach him. I guarantee it. Now he may not get enough votes in Congress to, cause I don't know what happens in the Senate based on that. I don't know. Nothing will happen in the Senate. You know, cause they might still have the Senate, but it won't be enough cause you still need X amount of votes in order to get it. I think it's 60 some or whatever. So you got to get enough votes to really push it over and they won't have enough to do that.

No. But they'll have enough to make it. And so like it'll and it'll probably it'll still get talked about. So yeah, we will all pretend that something happened when nothing happened. Yeah. Nothing. It's so far. This has been a completely scandal free president. Yeah. Nothing. So far, this has been a completely scandal-free president.

Pretty scandal-free. And when you think about what's, you know, the only people that are trying to take money out of your pocket right now, think about what the Republicans are doing to block the fucking student loan thing. Oh, yeah. You know, it's helping. They said 16 million Americans it's helping. 16 million Americans.

Not if the Republicans can help it. No, we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. That's 16 million people that should not be voting Republican. Yeah, I know, man. You know. But there will be people that both accept the student loan debt forgiveness and show up to vote Republican. It's like those same assholes who are like, you know, they vote against the infrastructure bill.

who are like, you know, they vote against the infrastructure bill and then they go right back to their district and everybody claps them on the back and shakes their hands and gobbles their fucking dick for giving a fucking bridge bill. I'm so happy that I got a job pouring the concrete for this new infrastructure. You know, it's like, that's good. I brought that to you, guy. You voted against it.

You all voted against it. Happens all the time. What do the Republicans bring to you? Like, seriously, think in your mind about the thing that a Republican gave you that wasn't a culture war bullshit victory. Yeah. Show me something. Yeah. Show me one thing.

Because it's not anything. What it is is it's tax cuts for not you. Yes. That's what it is. Right. Raising your taxes. Because the tax raise we got last year, that was Trump. I know, man.

That's it. Fucking, I don't know what you're voting for. Where is, like, they always talk about, like, fiscal, Republicans are more fiscally responsible, but they're not. They're not. The fucking, the debt goes up. Like, if you watch, like, the deficit, I should say. Every time.

The deficit under a Republican administration always goes up. It always goes up in recent history. And a deficit under administration always goes up. It always goes up in recent history. And a deficit under Democrats always goes down. Clinton had it at zero. It always goes down. The Republicans are the ones who are sending your kids to fucking war. The Republicans are the ones who are doing most of the stupid, mean-spirited, evil bullshit. That's it, man. Like the last scandal-free Republican president

was George H.W. Bush, and he got fucking voted out. Yeah. Yeah. And you know one of the things that, and then we'll move on, because there's a lot we still have to talk about, but I want to talk about this.

One of the things that the Republican, at least the sort of conservative side of America seems to talk about, they really shit on people with education. They always talk about. They really shit on people with education. They always talk about that. They shit on you with education. Yeah, I got education. Oh, you got your fancy learning degree.

Oh, we went to one of them ivory towers. They'll always say things like, what you need is common sense. What you need is common sense. And then they roll these people out. These people out that lie to them, that are genuinely stupid. And the party of common sense is picking those people.

Yeah, man. And you're like, you can't even call yourself, you were calling yourself the party of small government. We know that's not true. You call yourself the party of fiscal conservatism, that's not true. Call yourself the party of common sense, that's not true. Yeah, but here's my fucking hot take on that.

Common sense isn't real. Yeah, I know. That's nonsense. It's dumb. that's not true. Yeah, but here's my fucking hot take on that. Common sense isn't real. Yeah, I know. That's nonsense. It's dumb. It's not. Like, people talk about college. It's just common sense. There's no such thing as, like, what is it?

I know. What is it? But in a way, you can say someone who didn't get, you know, some sort of college degree can still be very smart. Absolutely. And that's true. Absolutely. But what I see is a bunch of people who are shitting on college degrees that are also

very stupid. Yes. And they're also easily duped time and time and time again by the most basic bullshit. Yes. Being a, and I want to be clear, like being a critical thinker is not, you don't have to get an education to do that. And plenty of people, by the way, go get an education and don't learn that part. Yeah.

It is not like, I'm not, I'm not drawing an exclusivity line, but what I'm saying is that like, there is an invented idea of common sense, which has no definition and nobody knows what it is, but everybody wants to suck its dick and it doesn't mean anything. And it's the same like nonsense idiotic fucking axiomatic bullshit as like well you're gonna have street smarts or book smarts and it's like none of that's real all of that is being weaponized against you to draw lines between you and an education sure yeah that's what it's there for but again like street smarts you're like okay well what does that mean okay well let's just say one of the traits would be being able to spot a huckster.

Yet you failed so fucking badly, man. That's why I think it's bullshit. I don't think it's real. It's not real. It's not real because the proponents and the purveyors of that idea, they don't want you to be smart at all. They don't want you to have any kind of sense, common or uncommon. They celebrate their ignorance. They do.

They celebrate it. What did Trump? Trump stood there, put his fucking arms out wide and said, I love the uneducated. Why? Yeah. Why? What is he saying with that remark? He's not saying I love the common man because he doesn't work for the common man.

He's a fucking generational billionaire who has never worked, period, meaningfully in his life. He's not for the common man. He says that because that is a way for him to say, look, people who have no sense common or on will vote for me. Yeah. And they'll dip shit. Dumb ass motherfuckers will show up and they will wear my fucking carpet bear. Yeah. And they'll, they'll, they'll drive around in their trucks with the flags and they'll, you know, rolling coal and everything. Because they think it triggers you. Yeah.

Because they want to, they want to, to them it doesn't matter that what he does because he didn't do anything for them. He did literally nothing. He did nothing. Literally nothing.

He drew on a fucking map, a weather map. He sold, yes, right. He drew on a weather map. He said the Obama hurricane. Yeah, he said like that. He said he wanted to buy Greenland. Right.

He did a bunch of stupid shit. Grabbed some guy by the shoulder and pulled himself forward at to buy Greenland. Right. He did a bunch of stupid shit. Grabbed some guy by the shoulder and pulled himself forward at the UN. He did a bunch of shit that's cringy and embarrassing. He weaponized mask wearing and the pandemic and did insane shit about well, maybe we could shine some light in our bodies

and shoot some Clorox up your ass. Sniff a line of fucking Lysol. He's a fucking dipshit. So he's like amongst his people. Yeah. Who's that guy on the other side of the glory hole? It's Farrell. So this story comes from the Daily Beast.

Right-wingers duped by fake Trump press release about Elon Musk takeover. So in this is dystopia news, Elon Musk, Elon Musk, one human being spent $44 billion on anything at all. But the thing that he spent $44 billion on was Twitter. Arguably the new digital town square. That's often what it's referred to as. It's now no longer a publicly traded company. It's owned by one guy.

He fired a bunch of the top executives, replaced them with his fucking sycophants. And now, and then fired a ton of their staff. Yeah. I mean like at this point, all the content moderation that they were using for a long time to curb election fraud stuff.

You remember when they started putting things up, this might not be rude. They, they canned a shit ton of those people who were content moderators. Um, and so, you know, right now you're dealing with a site that is essentially had the handcuffs

taken off where racial slurs are now stacking up on the site. People are being more and more belligerent on the site. He's out there trying to peddle it as like, give me $8 a month for your blue check mark. Yeah. What is that? Um, and some people did the math on this and they're like, yeah, man, that's not going to get, it's not going to net you a lot of money. I'm going to spend $96 a year. So my name can have a blue check mark. There's a couple extras that they get. They can sort their mentions a little easier so that they can find important people.

If they mention them, they can... So if I tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, let's say I tweet at her and I tag her in something, she'll probably never see it because we're not a blue checkmark account. So if somebody like, and I don't know who amongst us is checkmarked, I can't think of anybody off the top of my head.

In our space, no. Let's say somebody from QED was, or something like that. Let's say Marsh. Let's say Marsh was checkmarked. I don't think he is, but let's just say he was. If he tweeted at her, she might be able to see his

because it rises to the level of importance. Even though we might have more followers than someone who's blue checkmarked, it'll still get passed. At least that's how I understand it. I don't know, because I'm on the level of importance. Even though we might have more followers than someone who's blue checkmark, it'll still get passed. At least that's how I understand it. I don't know, because I'm on the outside looking in. But it feels like it's buying likes, though. It's just, you know, it's just like...

It's buying likes. It's sitting at the right table at lunch. It's just a weird, like, it's just a dumb thing to do. But Musk letting immediately, like, all this shit goes to hell with him, right? So immediately starts, the stuff starts falling apart immediately. But one thing that happens is this company or not a company,

this, so this, this, this, uh, PR release comes out, it's fake. And it seriously is the greatest thing because they took out all that content

moderation. So this is 100% false. Right. And it's Trump. It's supposed to be a Trump press release, which was like, thank you for letting me back on Twitter and a bunch of right wingers and left wingers. And it's Trump. It's supposed to be a Trump press release, which is like, thank you for letting me back on Twitter. And a bunch of right wingers and left wingers and MSNBC, MSNBC shared it basically saying it's going to happen.

And it was a total lie. And what I love is like it couldn't be a better metaphor for him taking over. And then it immediately being, you know, I mean, it's like absolutely perfect. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. You could write the story more like, well, yep, that is literally the only thing that could have happened was exactly this. Yeah. Exactly this. It's the least surprising thing in the world, but also it should be immediately surprising. Trump has spent money and is trying to make money on a competitor product. He's not going to go back to Twitter. It would be weird if he did.

Why would he go back to Twitter? Well, what would that say? Did he get investors for Truth Social? For Truth? I don't know how he funded Truth. I know that Truth was in some financial distress, but I actually did just read something the other day that it's amassing followers I don't know how he funded Truth. I know that Truth was in some financial distress, but I actually did just read something the other day that it's amassing followers at an alarming clip.

So if you're Trump and you've launched Truth, and then you go back to Twitter, you'll just explode your own company. Now, granted, he's obviously got no problem going bankrupt. Like, the man goes bankrupt at the drop of a fucking hat. Of all the people in the world that make bad business decisions, other than Elon Musk, it's Trump. It's Trump, yeah.

He goes bankrupt like he gets a fucking discount on it. Sure, yeah. Like, it's like a fucking hobby for this motherfucker to go bankrupt. It's like a handy after a massage for him. But Elon Musk, this is a kind of a disgusting thing for him. He's a horrible person. First off, Elon Musk is the worst. He's the worst.

He's the worst. Elon fanboys, don't write me. Do not fucking write me. Also, hold on. Let's talk about the fanboys for a second. What the fuck is wrong with you? How disturbing is it? Can we think of a name?

So I know Muskratz works, right? Muskratz. Muskratz. Muskratz works. Yeah. But I was thinking like we could have like a shirt the muskox's no i'm thinking like i'm thinking like an alligator call them elongators so elongators oh that's good but they're a gator and they look good derpy like we make like a derpy alligator i like it elongators the elongators elongators and that's what we call, I don't know. I figured something. We got to call them something.

Muskrats is good though. Muskrats is good. Muskrats is good. So anyway, these people are the worst. They are the fucking, you're on a billionaire's ball sack and he's not fucking particularly clever. He's not a super innovator that you think he is. He's not fucking Tony Stark, motherfuckers. He's none of the things that you think he is. He's not fucking Tony Stark, motherfuckers. He's none of the things that you think he is.

He thinks he's Tony Stark. But when you read the stuff he posts on Twitter, he looks like a little kid. He's so fucking hyper-cringe, this guy. I don't know how anybody idolizes him. He's gotten lucky and probably used some business sense to make his money,

but genuinely a shitty person. Like, genuinely a shitty person, like genuinely a shitty person, and then takes over this town square, which we know is a force for disinformation in the world. It is. And then pulls out all the stops for it to continue to be a worse spreader, something that spreads more often misinformation. something that spreads more often misinformation. Yeah, man, Elon Musk sold the world on the idea of the benevolent billionaire

who is going to altruistically swoop in with his fucking brilliant ideas and fucking Tony Stark all of us into a new utopia. That's what he fucking sold. None of it was ever true. It was not true from day one. It is not true now. There's nothing about this guy

who gives a, that gives a shit about you. It's evident. Ignore everything he says. Just look at what this motherfucker does. Yes. Look at his actions. If you want to see who someone is, ignore their words and see how they live their life. What does he do? Elon Musk is not a good person. He's not a good guy he does not have your best interest at heart it is impossible to look at the last several years and say that Twitter was not a

tremendous force for evil and disinformation and violence and the spread of violence and the wearing away of democracy the idea that you can't see that and that you'd be like well I'm a free speech absolutist. Fuck you.

Free speech absolutism is another way to say bad fucking person. All this needs to do is accelerate as quickly as possible the people who are on social media and create these social media platforms need to be responsible for the things that happen on them. Yes! If this is the

thing that doesn't shoot us into the apocalypse, but somehow saves us and makes us realize that social media is a danger to us, then maybe it's a good thing, right? Maybe inadvertently it's a good thing. But, you know, we're watching right now. Meta's losing

money. Yeah, they're worth half of what they were worth. This fucking shitty fucking company is going to be falling apart at the seams. At the seams. If he continues with it. He'll resell it, man. But he might resell it. I don't know. But in any case, you know, it's not good.

And we're going to talk about a story right now about Paul Pelosi. Yes. Oh, my God. Elon Musk tweeted one of these baseless claims about it. Yeah, man. Elon Musk. So Paul Pelosi on, I think, Tuesday of this week, Monday or Tuesday of this week,

a person who was fueled by a disinformation ecosystem that he was awash in. He got tuned up in QAnon. Yes. Yeah. So he's a fucking nut job queued up with all this fucking disinformation conspiracy theorist bullshit he took at least one hammer zip ties ropes whole bunch of shit went to fucking pelosi's house two o'clock in the morning

breaks the fucking back door back window lets himself in has a struggle like paul pelosi nancy's nancy's not there mancy's in washington dc paul pelosi calls 9-1-1 the police show up there's actually really kind of like the police show up and as the police show up they're like hey what's going on here and that moment of distraction is actually when the guy hits paul pelosi in the head with a hammer fractures his skull he has that brain rendering him He has to have brain surgery. Rendering him unconscious. He has to have brain surgery. The next day, he has to go in and have brain surgery to fix this. So it's a big fucking deal. It's a big fucking deal.

Had he caught, now the police have since interviewed him and he's said what his intentions were. Had he caught Nancy, his intention was to tie her up and ask her questions. And if he thought she was lying, he was going to break her kneecaps to send a message that when she was wheeled into Congress, that people would see that he had disfigured and damaged her. And that is the price you pay for quote-unquote lying. This is a man completely weaponized, literally turned into a weapon by disinformation. That's the world.

So those are the stakes. Yeah. Like those are not imaginary Tom's being hyperbolic stakes. Those are the stakes to this stuff. To your previous point, and we will talk about like, if we get to a point,

I know people will write us. So just jumping on it, like if you hold social media companies accountable for the shit people say on there, people say, well, then they'll go out of business. Then they should go out of business. They should go out of business. If that means that they can't exist anymore, then they can't exist anymore. Look.

Fucking fine. If you are the facilitator that handshakes terrorists and puts them in a room. Right. How are you not responsible for that? Thank you. Right. How are you not responsible for that? Thank you, man. How are you not responsible for that? Well, all I did was create the room and drive them. And I called an Uber and I put the catering down.

And it's not the same as just like, there was just a room there that you own the property and they walked in. This is you facilitating them getting together through algorithms, right? They get to see each other. Yeah, that's exactly the point, man. They get to see each other,

not because they happened to wander past one another. They weren't in the same room by accident. They got to see each other because you remembered, oh, you know Nancy? He knows Nancy. Uh-huh. And then you put them together, and you said, you guys should talk at the party.

Here's two glasses of champagne. I have other guests to attend to. And then the Facebook ran off while you planned your attacks on the Capitol, while you planned your attacks on a building or a person or kidnapping a governor or whatever. And if you can't be the person, if you can't be – if you're not fucking the one who gets called out for that, for those algorithms leading those people to that stuff and then leading them to each other, then I don't know what, I mean, literally, I don't know what the fuck we're doing. There's nothing, it is not worth the price that we're paying to allow these terrorist algorithmic matchmakers. That's what they are. That's your point. That's what they are. They're matchmakers. The algorithms are terrorist matchmakers. And what we're paying is, we're not paying anything.

Other people are paying for our data from them. I cannot tell you how often it is now that when I, in earnest, look for something on the internet, every single ad I ever see is one of those ads. And every single piece of junk mail I get for the next couple weeks is that garbage. It's everywhere. It's everywhere.

It's that garbage. My wife and I were looking for something on the internet recently, and her family, because she still sometimes gets mail there, got mail of an advertisement for what we were looking at online. Because they sell that data to everybody. Yeah, they're indiscriminate. They sell it to anybody. Yep.

It doesn't matter. They're like, oh, you're looking for a car, that particular car. Well, every single dealership in the area is going to know you want that car. You'll start calling them. You'll start getting text messages. We looked for a specific car tonight on the internet before we started because we're talking about Tesla. We looked for a specific car. I wonder if I'm going to get advertisements for that particular brand of car.

I'm sure you will. I might get it because they sell your data like crazy. And then they also handshake terrorists to put them together. And they also tune up people to go visit people in their house. And the people who own those social media networks sometimes tweet false things about it basically the narrative about this paul pelosi thing was two big main narratives one is that trump even said i think he's trying to break his way out the glass was on the outside so he broke his not even sure he's like being held captive or something by paul pelosi or that some people were claiming that paul pelosi and he were both in their underwear

which is a misstatement by a fox they were And that they were gay lovers. And that they were gay. Well, they intimated, a lot of people intimated that they were gay lovers based on a false report that was called out initially by a Fox affiliate. And they did retract it, but it doesn't matter because now everybody thinks it's because you're seeing tons of memes about underwear hammer time. Right. You're seeing tons of memes about that. From Donald Trump Jr. You're seeing tons of memes about it because From Donald Trump Jr. You're seeing tons of memes about it

because it makes it so it sells quicker and it sells a narrative that's not even remotely true. A man who is literally one of the most, he's married to one of the most important people in the country. He had someone climb into his house and hit him in the face with a hammer

and he had to have brain surgery. Yep. That's all you need to know. That's it. The sides don't matter because what happened with Scalise, right? When that guy got shot a couple of years ago, I don't remember anybody on our side being like, oh, well, you know, maybe he was Scalise's gay lover.

We don't know. We don't know what happened. Nobody said that. A bunch of people were like, wow, that sucks. Don't do that. Don't do that. That sucks. We shouldn't be attacking people.

You know what? There wasn't a fucking a pundit on the Democrat side that was like Charlie Kirk, which is like, somebody should get him out of jail and ask him questions. Right. Somebody should bail that. Some patriot should bail that person out of jail. That's what Charlie Kirk said about this crazy person. About this guy? Is that for real? Who hit Paul

Pelosi in the hammer. That's insane. Charlie Kirk said hopefully some patriot gets him out of jail, bails him out of jail. He's not going to get bailed out of jail. He's not going to get bailed. He's not going to get bailed. He's not going to get bailed out of jail. These people don't understand how the bail works. That's why we're going to fucking lose in Illinois. But in any case,

they're not going to, they're not going to bail him out of jail. But even if they did, like this guy is advocating bailing somebody who assaulted Paul Pelosi out of jail to ask, and he's calling that person a patriot. A patriot. Yeah.

As if to like, what does that imply? That implies that the civic duty of an American person. Midterm hero. I apologize. It wasn't patriot. Midterm hero. Midterm hero.

Midterm hero. Oh, I guess he did say, no, pardon me. Some amazing patriot. I apologize. Oh my God. I apologize. Let me just read it. Charlie Kirk, the conservative radio and YouTube host,

expressed hope on Monday that some, quote, amazing patriot, end quote, would post bail for Mr. DePape, who's the person who smacked Paul Pelosi in the head, and become, quote, a midterm hero, end quote. Quote, bail him out and then go ask him some questions, end quote, he added, that liberals were trying to politicize the attack, by the way. They were trying to politicize. It's political. he added that afterwards the thing is like when scalisa is shot the only political the the only politicization that i remember is like hey maybe we ought to do something about these guns because it turns out they're being used to shoot you yeah like that is legitimate

right that's legit but it wasn't this like wild conspiracy theorist disinformation campaign where we are. We are now at a place where we are, where we're glorifying, we're accepting, we're excusing, we're demanding this level of violence. That is what this disinformation is. And to the previous point, the social media companies, Elon Musk owning one, Elon Musk, one person owning a $44 billion something that he just bought because on a fucking whim he wanted it, right? That's a world we don't need to live in either, by the way. Like, that shit. There shouldn't be billionaires.

There shouldn't be billionaires, and there should never be heroic billionaires. If your heroes are billionaires, you're doing hero wrong. There shouldn't be billionaires, period. There shouldn't be. It gets to $999 million, and the rest of it just goes in the kitty. That's it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There shouldn't be billionaires right there should get to 999 million and the rest of it just goes in the kitty that's it i'm sorry i'm sorry there's no billionaires but those shouldn't exist right there with anywhere on the world right there with you but these and the more money you get the more of you i get to eat right so what happens is you get you go up to 101 i get an inch you get it i get an inch and i get to pick where i get to

pick where oh so i might i may take a ball handle, but I might also take the scrote. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? It depends on where I think I want to eat you. That's my inch. I'll take an eye. It's about the right size. This whole part, they just have like a head. But like, to your point, like it's all this shit, it's being weaponized. It's being demanded by the kind of rhetoric that we have. And that rhetoric is being algorithmically favorited and put in front of people at a higher rate than everything else. And we know this because these companies have come out and said in their own research that they have – that they absolutely take the most incendiary material and they weigh it heavier than everything else. Absolutely.

They've said it. It's not a place for your fucking puppy photos. Your puppy photos are the accident of social media. Your fucking, your, your child's pictures are the collateral damage of social media. The point of it, the weapon, the point of it is the weaponization. Yeah. The point of it has always been the point of it is the pithy political meme. Yeah.

That's the point of it. The point of it is, is. And an 82 year old man got hit with a hammer because of it. The point of it is the pithy political meme yeah that's the point of it the point of it is is and an 83 year old man got hit with a hammer because of it the point of it is yeah and we're finding out what the point of it is based on elon musk takeover oh god This story comes from Vice GOP candidate said elites drink blood, sell baby body parts after abortion. Let me read that first two words again. Yeah, sure. GOP candidate. It's a candidate.

Yeah. A candidate. Yeah. Again, there's nothing disqualifying on the right. Yeah. It is impossible to have a disqualifying view. Yeah. A candidate. Yeah. Again, there's nothing disqualifying on the right. Yeah. It is impossible to have a disqualifying view. Yeah. You can't have one. So this is Christina Karamo, the Trump backed GOP candidate for Michigan's secretary of state. She expressed support in 2020 for the conspiracy theory that elites drink the blood of children and sell body parts after abortions. Yeah. She

also talks to in here, she says, if you go to the satanic temple website, they have an entire five minute video explaining why abortion is a religious ritual. They literally say it's a sacrifice. It's a religious ritual, uh, for them to have an abortion. It's sick. Uh, and so she's basically saying that the reason why, and then she she goes on to say there's a ton of money from freshly harvested organs or whatever. But look, I don't know if that's true. I don't know if they have a video on their website talking about this.

No idea. But I know that they have in the past gone out of their way to do this. But they're doing it to show the absurdity of the point. That's why they're doing it. They're not doing it to show you that it's a real thing there's also a guy that thinks birds aren't real too like i mean these people exist out there to show you the absurdity of what is you are believing in right he's making it out the bird

ain't real guys making fun of flat earthers these these satan sanus people are making fun of religious people when they say absurd shit. Yes, look, there is a difference. We're getting to a point where there almost isn't, but there is still a difference between satire and trolling and reality. They are three different things, right? The Satanic Temple is not trolling. The Satanic Temple is engaged in satire.

It is satirical. is not trolling. The Satanic Temple is engaged in satire. It is satirical. It is a hyperbolic exaggeration of an existing social trope in order to highlight the absurdity of the original reality. That is

what satire typically does. It's a broad explanation. That is not the same thing as trolling. Trolling is entirely different because trolling is valueless. Trolling is not an because trolling is valueless, right? Trolling is not an attempt to explain or shine a light on things. Trolling is an attempt to elicit an emotional response for no other reason than the emotional response is the goal of the trolling activity. You want somebody to be mad.

It's not to elucidate and articulate a point. and articulate a point. So these, but we're at a place now, I think culturally and intellectually, where I don't think that we understand the difference between reality and trolling, between reality and satire, and between trolling and satire. And we have lost that thread completely.

So it actually makes, I do wonder sometimes, has the onion become dangerous? Yeah. Has the satanic temple in a world this stupid in a world that might elect on tuesday herschel walker right should we be fucking around with birds aren't real that's satire yeah like the problem is like there are now people out there i guarantee that they're like oh yeah birds aren't real they buy it man that don't know the difference between truth and fiction. There's a Reddit called Ate the Onion. And Reddit, Ate the Onion,

is clips of people on Facebook posting Onion articles and then thinking they're a real thing. Yeah. Right? And so there are people out there that see an Onion article and they think it's real. They think it's a genuine thing. And can't be moved from that

position even when it's pointed out. And when they are, when it's brought up to them, when somebody does say, hey, that's not real. We're like, yeah, but it, but it feels true. Or, you know, it could be true or, you know, stuff like this is going on or something like, maybe not, this isn't exactly true, but it might be, you know, so, so there is, you're right there, there is a, there's a fine line between those things before, but now it's so blurred. I don't, people fall on the wrong side of these all the time. And I think satire might be dangerous nowadays because I think, I think the problem is, is that, you know, I see, I see it when it happens in memes too, all the time, like how quickly and easily memes get shared, right? Satire has the same thing because it's quick and punchy. And so it gets shared very quickly and easily memes get shared, right? Satire has the same thing because it's quick and punchy

and so it gets shared very quickly and easily and the idea might get shared very quickly and easily and then the original intent can get lost. I see this happen with memes all the time where somebody will share a meme and they never check to see if it's real or not, right? They just share it because to them it feels true, right? This thing felt true to me.

So I shared it. It was a political meme or something like that. And it, it said something and it was made by somebody, but it necessarily is either, it might be tweaking a stat that's wrong, or it might be completely wrong. Might not, might not have any basis. In fact, it could be a, you know, a twist on the truth or it could be no truth in it whatsoever, but it'll still get shared. And then it'll get shared tens of thousands of times.

All those different people will, will share it alone. And that, that's just a re that's just a reality we live in now because before, in order for us to share things before in the before times, I had to tell you, Tom, I saw this story today and they, there's a, they're sacrificing babies at the, uh, the abortion clinic and they're sacrificing to Satan. And then you gotta be like,

well, that sounds fucking stupid. Right. And then it stops. Where'd you read that? And then it stopped. Right. But if I send it,

if I post it on my wall and 200 people read it and 199 of them think it's fucking, I'm a stupid idiot, but one of them shares it. Yep. Now it suddenly went to another 190 people. Yep. And 199 of them think it's fucking, I'm a stupid idiot, but one of them shares it. Yep. Now it suddenly went to another 190 people. Then it went to 290, 500, 500 million people. It eventually makes its way up because enough people see it. It finds enough weak links that it makes itself a chain. Yep. And you know, it plays, we've talked about this before, but it's really important. It plays on the psychology that, I mean, there's that adage, right? Seeing is believing.

Oh yeah. And I think there's a truth there that the more we see something, the more inclined we are to believe it. Right. So we absorb an enormous amount of information intrinsically and just implicitly without a sort of like directed intellectual interrogative process. So if you see something from the Sacramento Bee or from the Onion or from whatever, and you've never heard of the Onion before, and you've not heard of Sacramento Bee before, and maybe you don't give it a second thought, it's still information you absorbed. What's that? Is it Babylon Bee?

I thought Sacramento Bee was the right-wing Onion. I thought Babylon Bee was the right-wing Onion. Is it Babylon Bee? We'll see. People will correct us. Someone will I thought Babylon Bee was the right-wing onion. Is it Babylon Bee? We'll see. People will correct us. Someone will tell us. Someone will tell us. Whatever the bee is.

Whatever that bee is. It's not Samantha Bee. We're talking about the one that is satirical for the conservatives. Right. That's the one. Exactly. Yeah. So whichever one that is, the bee.

Yeah. Someone's going to tell us what it is anyway. I figured I'd had it all in the past, Tom. But the problem is that when we see that information, whether or not we intend to absorb it, we see it and we absorb it anyway. It moves into a space that the next time we see it, it feels more familiar,

even if we don't remember the story well enough to say, Cecil, I read this crazy thing about babies being sacrificed. It moves into a space where, God, I saw that twice. I saw that three times. Saw it four times. Saw it four times.

And you don't think it. You don't even think it. But the fifth time you see it, it now feels like truth. That's how our minds work. That's why I think satire has become something we can't fuck with. Because we're about to elect Herschel Walker.

Sure, sure. There are consequences to that. I was thinking the other day, I don't know if you remember this, but I was talking just a few minutes ago about how hard it was to sort of share disinformation before. I don't know if you remember.

Do you remember the Procter and Gamble scare? Do you remember this? Refresh my memory and I think I do. I remember when I was a little kid, my mom got a printed fucking Xerox. Like this is old times, right? Yeah, right. She's got a Xerox.

It was on the mimeograph. And it might have even been a stapled, several pages Xerox together, which would have been a great website in the past, but it was pre-website. And it was talking about how the Procter & Gamble symbol was a satanic symbol. I know what you're talking about.

And they were a satanic company and all their profits went to evil and blah, blah, blah and so some asshole in the past had a problem with procter and gamble right and then made up a big fucking story and then they they printed out a bunch and they gave it to a ton of people who believed it my mom for a little while was like i don't know this is real she didn't know right she got up and and it and in some ways it has the trappings of it kind of being true. It feels like maybe it might be, it's not a newspaper, but it feels like newsy back then. There's something genuinely true about reading that we absorb information.

I think, I don't know if this is true, but they're just spitballing. But like we absorb all of our academic information in school by reading. And then we come across this information through the same process. And I think reading is, yeah, I read it. I read once. I remember my mom, and my mom wasn't, she never felt like somebody who was super gullible, but she kind of believed it for a little while.

Well, I think we stopped buying one of their bleaches or something. You know, like we stopped buying the two or three things that we were buying that were Procter & Gamble because she thought it was a devil-worshipping organization. She didn't know any better. And back then, I mean, you're talking about very, very hardcore Christian country back then. And this is the part that I'm going to call myself out on as exemplifying the problem is in my mind, Cecil, I also seem to remember that as a result of that, Procter & Gamble may have changed their

logo. Possibly, yeah. But here's why this is really important, because it's a great example of I think that, and I don't know why I think it. Whenever that happens, it means that I've absorbed a bunch of information, and I can't source it in my own timeline. So I should immediately say, I'm not sure that's true. Yeah. I don't know if that's true. Right. But that's a harder thing to do because somehow in my head, I remember the story you're telling. And in my head, I'm like, yeah, didn't Procter and Gamble have to change their, their logo as a result from like, what was like a, a, a sort of weird looking face to, or something like that. Or it might have been a constellation i don't remember

i don't know to like a png or something yeah yeah so i seem to remember that but again i should be distrustful of my own i didn't bother to even look it up because it just occurred to me just now but i mean i you know it's fascinating time it's a fascinating time because and all that shit's refueled by religion i want to talk about this too. This story in specific. Exactly. There's a part of this where she says last week she said she would not apologize for being a Christian and that her controversial opinions on

LGBTQ issues are not pertinent to her campaign. She's super anti-gay and she says, I will not apologize and these aren't pertinent to my campaign but they're pertinent to your Christianity. They're pertinent to your faith and but they're pertinent to your Christianity, right? They're pertinent to your faith.

And your faith is pertinent to your campaign. So it's connected. But you're not willing to say, well, my faith fuels me in every single decision. Yet you're still able to like point to your faith to be like, you know, this is protected in some way. That is a fucking cake and eat it too, man. That's somebody who wants to say, I am a faith-driven person. Vote for me because I'm a faith-driven person.

But if that doesn't appeal to you, then it doesn't matter. Yeah. And you're just like, yeah, look, you're either a faith-driven person, in which case you can't be trusted because there are parts of your decision-making process which rest outside of a logic and reason process. That's just true. If you're a faith-driven person, not just somebody of faith, but a faith-driven person, you cannot be trusted. You should not have a position of authority. You are not a good critical thinker. You can't be. It's irreconcilable to be a faith-driven person and to be a critical thinker. You can't have it both ways. It's literally

impossible. Sure, I agree. If you're involved in the lifestyle, it's bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is not all. This story made the rounds everywhere, went viral. You probably saw this from deadstate.org. Women and county board members, I was never sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I was at church twice. Now this whole video is here. It's going to be in the show notes. If you want, you can watch it. It's over three minutes. So we're not going to watch it here. And it really is just her just teeing off on this, on this group, right? She's just teeing off on this. It's like a county

board. She's just teeing off on them the whole time. And she, she says that she says that, and she points at the people who like, I guess we're part of her church, right? That we're part of this assault and like call them up. Called them out. And then called them out. This is, this is, this sort of thing needs to happen more often. Absolutely. Because what happens is, is they, they, churches love to project. And

inside of those churches, horrible shit can happen because the power dynamic in those churches allows it to happen. And that does not have the same type of, it doesn't have the same type of it doesn't have the same type of thing in anything else that they're pointing to ever because they always want to point to like consensual relationship stuff i know that you're just like whatever in this case they're talking about a drag show right right which may may or may not include uh little kids

being read to because i know that that's something that's happening but that's like like i i love how they say that they like want to point that to like the grooming but you're like that's a hyper it's a hype it's it's they're vigilant at those things oh yeah you're in the middle of a public library right you know it's not the back quarters of some priest's room right right right where this sort of thing happens all the time right it's not the boy with the youth minister you're not a boy scouts out on a camping trip with somebody it's. Right. It's not the Boy Scouts. With the youth minister. You're not a Boy Scouts out on a camping trip with somebody. It's not that. You're in the middle of a public library in a wide open public space.

And they're blaming those people as being groomers. Yet the moment they're behind closed doors, they're diddling away. Yeah, man. Like it's so true. Every church, every church, no exceptions. true every church every church there's no exceptions every major religious organization has a institutional bias toward uh the sexual abuse of children absolutely every single one all of them they've all been caught they've all been caught institutionally accepting of the like i can't think of any major exception i can't think of any and and then most of them have been

involved in covering it up right well that's why i say like institutional yeah like that's what makes it if it's like one guy who does it it's like okay well that sucks and like but they don't they don't raise their own red flags they're not the ones on the horn with the cops they're not the ones saying like you know joe overhears a creep and he's fucking kicked out and we're calling the cops and we're apologizing to the family and we're making restitution and we're doing, they're never do any of the things that everybody that you've ever met that's decent and has any moral character would do. Right. They don't do any of that. They're all institutional failures to protect children. And then they like

stand there, like they're at the vanguard of some, you know, attack on the well-being of kids. And you're like, you motherfuckers have been fucking children for centuries and getting away with it. You're doing it now and getting away with it. You're standing in the way of legislation that would protect kids from you. You're standing in the way of and lobbying against and spending millions of dollars to make sure that, like, oh, we'll let these things time out and we'll statute of limitations and all this shit. Like you always, we gotta, we gotta protect the sanctity of the confessional and all this stuff that's nonsense.

That's all self-protective. And then they like pretend that there's some like moral vanguard because Yeah, yeah. Because somebody like wearing a wig wants to read to my fucking kid. Somebody wants to read to my kid. I literally don't care who it is. I know. I don't want to read to him. It's boring.

Those books suck. Fuck those kids. No, here's the thing though. And I think you touched on it. When you talk about, you know, the institutional problems, it's the same thing with the police, right? When you say all cops are bastards,

you're not saying like every single police officer is definitively a shitty person. You're saying that every single police officer that is still in the, in the system is, is willing to lie for a shitty person. They're willing to cover up what a shitty person does. They're not willing to take a stand when a shitty person does something shitty. And that's why when you say all cops are bastards is because they, they allow this to occur all the time and there's no institutional pressure to stop it. It's the same thing here. When you talk about like all priests are bastards because you know what they, you know, it's not, maybe you never touched anybody, but you are working in a system that hides those predators. You're working in a system that shuffle those predators around.

All priests are bastards too. 100%. That's exactly the right way to think it. If you're giving money to those organizations, I don't know, man. You're paying people settlements. You're paying people settlements.

Stop and think about where that cash is going. I'm not calling you a bastard, but you're fucking bastard adjacent. Yeah, fucking A. Absolutely critical that we have a man who is commander in chief, who sits in the Oval Office, who has a personal relationship with the God of the Bible. Not the God of the Book of Mormon, not the God of the Koran, but the God of the Old and New Testament.

Story comes from LGBTQ Nation. Mike Pence says the Constitution doesn't guarantee Americans freedom from religion. This is part of a larger overall right-wing narrative that has really, and the Supreme Court has been instrumental in this, that has really pushed and pushed and pushed on the idea that the separation of church and state is a fiction and that guys, by 2024, 2025, if we're not careful,

we'll be no longer. Yeah. No, it's very true. It's very true. And they've already locked down for the next generation the fucking Supreme Court. Yeah. They locked it down.

That's it. It's it down. That's it. It's locked down. The next generation of people will come up under a Supreme Court. Unless we get supremely locked. Unless, yeah, supremely. I like that. But seriously,

if it's going to be for at least a decade and a half, at least a decade and a half, you won't have any changes in that court. And they will be making hard, right. Christian right decisions for this country based on all different kinds of things that are going to be coming to them. So they're going to be making hard, conservative, very conservative, uh, viewpoints, very anti, uh, you know, we're talking socially conservative in a really, really dangerous way. And then, you know, anti talking socially conservative in a really really dangerous way and then you know anti-women anti-lgbt they'll be making all those decisions anti-contraception i would imagine soon

we'll probably be a nation that won't allow contraception too so we're we're in a we're in some real problems there but this is mike pence talking about this stuff and basically saying you know he's he's lauding the fact that they do have, and he even admits it, like a far-right court. Yep. I want people to recognize. Now, we watched the entirety of these fucking January 6th things, and there was some comments, and I didn't see it from a lot of people in our chat,

but there were some comments from people here and there that were lauding the stance that Mike Pence took because Mike Pence stood up and didn't fucking do what this crazy Eastman said. He didn't wipe his ass with the Constitution. He didn't follow some fucking comic book villain down the villain road. He literally like the one thing he did was not he was he was presented an opportunity to break the law and commit treason. And he didn't do.

And he was like, you know what? I'm actually not going to. I'm not going to do. Not today. treason. And he didn't do it. And he was like, you know what? I'm actually not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. Not today, treason. Not today. Even the people in that fucking January 6th that were standing up there and everybody's fucking sucking them off.

Yep. All these, everybody, every politician for a couple of weeks. What bravery. He's fucking hiding in the fucking trash compactor room. Right. Like fucking Han and fucking Chewie and Leia on the Death Star.

He's out there hiding. And everybody's lauding him for the fucking American hero that he is. He's always wanted to dig his fucking religious claws in this nation. And Donald Trump let him take it. Donald Trump was essentially the wife holding the handmaid while fucking Pence fucked him. Yes, and it's exactly true. That's what he was. That's what Donald Trump was.

He's the enabler that allowed Pence to fuck us over forever. Yep. Through the Federalist Society picks. Exactly. Fucked us over forever. You're not, there's literally not, everything about that is perfectly right society picks exactly us over forever you're not you're there's literally not everything about that is perfectly right fucked us over like pence is not a good man no pence is a fucking nightmare he was a nightmare before i was in look he was a nightmare on january

5th yeah he was a nightmare on january 7th was a nightmare before treason right like if the one good look i also haven't committed treason yeah where's my law right no kidding right how come there's not a fucking ticker tape parade that tom didn't commit fucking treason that's the bare minimum man like how is that not the bare minimum like how much treason did you allow today well zero treason actually what'd you have to do just not do it it's not like he had to like saw his it wasn't like saw right he wasn't in a room it's like here's your choice you have to either commit treason alex jones is that you or pluck out both your eyes and fill the cavities with live bees yeah nobody was doing that right

nobody was just like if i just if i just go to work today, everything's cool. That's it. That's it. Roger Stone comes in on a tricycle with that big fucking mask on. You want to play a game? No, not with you, Roger. You're too delicate. What, do you want to play flag football?

I would play football with Roger Stone. I would play tackle football with Roger oh my god i would play football i play tackle football i would literally tackle football just put me on any imagine like you like you would hit him and his osteoporosis bones they would explode in his body into fucking powder you could stir him into your fucking protein drink after you're done there would be no you would just like you would pluck his finger off and just squeeze the bone powder out you'd be like oh he's just he's all full of collagen he's got a lot of collagen in there it's good there would be no greater joy than hearing the sounds he makes when you body check him i it would be a delight hearing roger stone in struggle and distress would be a lot of fun dude have you seen those old videos where that lady's like stomping grapes and she falls off the platform?

And there's that sound of her trying to catch her breath. Yes. Because she clearly knocked the wind out of herself. And when that happens to you, there's a panic sound that just leaves you. When was the last time you had your breath knocked out? Do you remember? High school. Oh.

High school. Man, I haven't had the breath knocked out of me until like, I remember the first't know the last time i had it i remember the first time it happened i was on the monkey bars i was like a fifth grade and we used to do this stupid thing where we would jump onto the the larger supporting beam like not the little bars that you go across and then you would swing your body until you were like horizontal and on the back swing you'd let go and then you'd fly backwards like and you're fairly high up and you fly backwards and you would land in the mulch yeah and because you're 11 or 12 years old your body's like we fell from 10 feet up and nothing happened and it was fun and like if that happened to me now both of my knees would share or no well here's what i did because i'm me right so i was like oh i want to

turn and so i jump and i swing and i swing and was like oh i want to turn and so i jump and i swing and i swing and i swing but i swing too hard and so when i swing too hard my my front half my stomach and chest they hit the bars i lose my grip and i basically back flop straight down and i land on my back in the mulch like perfectly horizontal nice you essentially back flopped right yeah back flopped and i lost like like i my breath, and I thought I was dying. I thought I had died. I thought you broke all of it. I was like, I'll never be okay again.

Yeah. Because you can't breathe. It's the scariest, weirdest feeling. Very scary. So when I was a kid, see, I grew up on the wrong side of town. So we used to play on the railroad tracks when I was a kid. Okay. And by us, on the railroad tracks when i was a kid okay and by us by

the railroad tracks there was sometimes some tracks that were on and like inoperable they'd use them once in a while sure and they would park train cars there like like uh you know box cars and coal cars and stuff oil cars we used to play guns on them all the time oh we climbed to 16 17 feet in the air and you're running as fast. You can't jump in car to car. Oh, I bet that was a hoot though. It was a fucking blast. I thought that was great. It was amazing. Well, I was also walking from where I grew up

to another city on these train tracks and I'm walking down the train tracks and there's a bunch of these, like they were coal cars, right? Yeah. But they were empty. So I was walking and I decided to get up on the train cars. Well, I get to these coal cars that are in the middle

and I don't want to climb all the way down and then walk over and climb up so I just decide what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk over and it's essentially a balance beam maybe about four inches wide and I'm just going to balance beam walk across the thing well as I'm walking I slip and I fucking hit my chest as I fell I fucking brick on the beam and then I fell on my back when I hit the ground and I was just laying there chest as I fell. On the beam? On the beam, and then I fell on my back when I hit the ground.

And I was just laying there. There's a sound that escapes you that you can't help. Because you have no brush. You're just like, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. It's just, you know. How much money would you pay to make Roger

Stone make that sound? I'd love to have roger stone follow me on an obstacle course holy shit that would be there's so many money-making ideas we're having right now how much roger stone in american gladiators the pugil sticks that's what i was just thinking but you got to do it on on the kind of floor that they did at that twitch twitch con where the person somebody broke her back somebody got hurt well that's what you got to do you got to be like except for with roger stone will do with broken glass yes whoever falls in falls in broken alligator pit and i'll tell you what roger's not gonna be me i'll be fine i will be fine you're fucking you got 40 years on the homeboy yeah no there's there's some people though like like him especially because he's been he's been an egregious fuck for so long and he's been and he's been i mean

he was one of those guys that that helped turn it to bush yep back in the day he's a horrible person what was it the khaki riot what do they call that uh the brooks brothers right yep the khaki riot i like that whatever it is brooks right the khaki, I mean, he's one of those assholes. So he's been stirring the pot for a long time. He's a shit bird. But I want to go back to Pence. Pence is a shit bird.

Pence is a total shit bird. He's a fucking jag off, disgusting piece of garbage. And he's always been a fucking grotesque piece of trash. And even though in the face of everything, when he could have done

everything wrong, he did a single thing right, he deserves none of your respect not a not a bit of it not redeems nothing not a bit of it that redeems nothing yeah because you were in power and you didn't do a treason i don't owe you anything i owe you nothing nothing like the expectation is you don't do a treason right that's the expectation you i don't even think it's that brave it's yeah it's not it's not that brave to not commit treason not brave what you did like what you did was make your friend mad at you right i wouldn't make my friend mad at me if i saved a country cecil cecil we've been friends for 25 years if i was like rob a bank and we're not friends you'd be like then we can't be friends friends anymore also i no longer trust you and

your moral compass you may actually be like no but i really need you to rob that wait look rob a bank man what the you look at me like i was a fucking insane person i would only think you're serious if you were dressed like roger stone You f***ing stupid ugly person. You smell like horse fields, dumb b***h. What? Ian, stop. What? Why are you doing this?

I'm practicing for Vulgarity for Charity. Basically, I have to face off against someone else, and whoever outswears the other puts money in charity jar. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this, what the fuck are you talking about? How long have you worked for them and still don't know how Vulgarity for Charity works?

Okay, Brainiac, how does it work? Simple, to participate in Vulgarity for Charity 2022, donate $50 or more to modestneeds.org. Send a copy of the receipt as proof, email it to vulgarityforcharity at gmail.com. Tell us who or what you want roasted, include some details to work with, and a photo if they aren't a famous or well-known person. Give us your name as you want it to be read out. You may request a specific host, a hundred random roasts, and the top hundred highest dollar value roasts will be read on air

on Scathing Atheist and Cognitive in the coming weeks. The earlier you send in the roast, the better chance it has of being selected. Deadline midnight ET, which is Eastern, on November 24th, 2022. See? Easy. So wait, where do I send my training video montage

of me doing push-ups and swearing? You're so fucking stupid. I think your brain quite quit. Oh yeah? At least I can get verified on Twitter now. Yeah, cause you're a brain mush dumb bitch loser. Hey, I didn't even pay for that. That one was on the house.

Everyone please support ModestNeeds.org and we will say mean things to you and your loved ones or hated ones. Whoever. Thank you. Do you want to see the montage video? Yes, of course. We're still going to post it. Okay, here it goes. So we'd like to thank our patrons. Of course, we'd like to thank our patrons.

Of course, we'd like to thank all our patrons. Let's thank our newest patrons, Michael, George, Godless Trucker, and his trusty dog, Loki, Insane Atheist, and the people who up their pledges, Neon Relics, Mario, and Dave. Thank you guys so much for your generous donations. You guys pay two salaries with the money that you donate. You guys make it so we can have internet

that works. You keep the glory hole alive. You keep it all alive and you buy us dinner every Thursday. So if you want to buy us dinner, if you enjoy the show and you think, you know, I'd really love to buy the guys a dinner or a drink, we do spend the money that we get on this on dinner every single week. Every Thursday.

Every Thursday, Tom and I have a meal together and you guys buy that meal for us. So if you want to help buy us a meal, go become a patron on a per episode basis. Your money not only goes to that, but it also goes to paying salaries, paying our bills, paying our overhead, making sure that this show happens, making sure that this show

is easy for Tom and I to do so we keep doing it. So if you're a fan of the show and you haven't become a patron, we ask you to go over and become a patron on a per-episode basis. Patreon.com slash DissonancePod

or DissonancePod.com and you can become a patron on a per-episode basis if you go to our Patreon link there. We also want to say if you're spending money, go to ModestNeeds.org. Modest Needs, guys.

Great organization. And it's such a good organization that every single year, we have a donation fundraiser for them and it's called Vulgarity for Charity. And we do it with the scathing guys, the guys from Puzzle and the Thunderstorm, Heath, Noah, and Eli.

And we roast people. So if you want to roast, you go to modestneeds.org, you donate 50 or more dollars, and then you take if you want to roast, you go to modestneeds.org, you donate 50 or more dollars, and then you take whoever you want roasted, you take your receipt, and you put that in one email, and you send it to us at vulgarityforcharity at gmail.com.

And that's the word, not the number. So it's vulgarityforcharity, all one word, at gmail.com. Send all that information to us, and we will put you in a drawing. If you're one of the top donors, the top 100 donors are going to get their roast. That's just automatic. But the 100 people, we're going to choose 100 from the rest of those donors.

And that 100 from the rest gets randomly selected. People who donate early, there is going to be an early run on this. Pretty soon, we're going to do it in the middle of this drive. So early is great. Yeah, there's less balls spinning around in the ball basket. And so we're going to be pulling some early. So early is good. We're also on our live stream on the 17th.

We're going to be matching donations. So if you decide you want to donate that night, you can come watch us on live stream, donate that night, send in your stuff to us that night. We'll tell you how to do it. And then we will be matching donations too. So we're going to be trying to raise as much money as we can. There's a $100,000 match on the table. And we've got to

at least reach that. So we're moving as quick as we can, but please go donate to modestneeds.org. It's a wonderful organization. They help a lot of people out. They're great, guys. They're really worth your time and your money. Also, we want to talk about another fundraiser that is going on right now.

So our friends at the Left of the Valley podcast and Recovering From Religion are going to have a podcast bingo fundraiser. And it is going to be happening on Saturday, November 12th from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Central. Recovering from Religion is going to try to meet their international expansion goals by playing podcast bingo. They're going to have Kevin at Left of the Valley

and a bunch of other podcast hosts. They're going to have a bunch of prizes. Tom and a bunch of other podcast hosts they're going to have a bunch of prizes Tom and I are going to be donating to that as well we're going to be matching $500 on that so if you donate and you can help them reach that goal we're going to pay $500 as a match and also we donated

some of our books to this cause so go listen to this show we're going to put links on this week's show notes go check it out, it's the 12th of November and you can go check to this show. We're going to put links on this week's show notes. Go check it out. It's the 12th of November, and you can go check out this podcast bingo that's going to be happening, Benefiting Recovering from Religion.

So we got a message from Aaron, and Aaron sent in a Trump picture and a Mike Lindell picture. They're all the same picture. They're all the same picture. Check it out. It's on this week's show notes. We got a bunch of messages from people

who went to QEDCon this last weekend. Tom and I were not able to go this year. We were not. But we definitely had a lot of nostalgia looking at the photos. Big love for QED. Great organization. Great event. Great event. I mean, really, genuinely, it could be the best conference we've been to. We've been to some really good ones. I mean, SkepticCon Australia was amazing. Wonderful conference.

A couple of them in the United States were really good. The First Reason Con I remember was really great. But the QED, the time we went there, that's something I'll remember for a long time. Really enjoyed it. Very much enjoyed hanging out there. And the people there were wonderful

and just non-stop stuff to do. It was great. So if you didn't go this year, go check out all the photos and put it on your calendar for next year. It's worth going to and it's worth paying attention to when it's coming up. And you could not have better organizers.

For sure. You really couldn't. They're just wonderful people. You can trust them. It's a great organization. For everybody that went, we're sorry we missed you. We know it's a wonderful organization.

We're glad everybody had such a great time. Yeah yeah and next time um we're hoping we can do something we're not sure when but you know we're going to try to do some sort of meetup eventually this upcoming year when you know there's a covid slowdown so we're looking at things to do the tough part is when covid slowdowns hit you don't have enough time to plan anything yeah you've got it's like it's slow right now the The windows, you've got to, what we got to do is just plan to watch the wave and be like, all right, we think it's going to be low now. Four months after this. Yeah, exactly.

We want to say thank you to John who just sent in a payment of $200 to Glory Hole Studios. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, John. It was very generous. We got a message from Insane Atheist and they say, okay okay who copied who because two major talking points this week

on this week's podcast were the two main points of this week's episode of last week tonight with John Oliver so I will say right now John Oliver is a huge fan of our show and I'll tell you that's true because we record on Thursdays and John releases

on Sundays. We were ahead of John. John is a patron of the show and did all that after he got the podcast delivered to him. We actually hand deliver the podcast to John Oliver. We give him a USB drive.

We just drive it over to John Oliver's house. Tight. I will say, a bunch of people sending these messages. We got one from Brandon. Brandon sent one from Canada. We got some from all over the States, different newspapers. There's a lot of people all over the country

that are getting these. In different countries, they're getting these. This is a different phenomenon, something new that's happening, but it's not local. It's not. I'm glad we covered it on the show. Tom and I were a little worried last week

because we were like, we don't know if it's something that's happening all over, but we know it's happening here and we think it's not local. It's not. I'm glad we covered it on the show. Tom and I were a little worried last week because we were like, we don't know if it's something that's happening all over, but we know what's happening here. And we think it's important enough where people should understand the concepts behind why this is wrong. But what's the best part was, is that people are getting these all over the country.

And so it was relevant to everybody. So we saw a ton of people sending messages about this. Tom, we got a message from Ryan. Ryan's talking about the difference between anonymity and confidential sources. Yeah, so Ryan says, Tom, your anonymity is trash comment. It's now going to be taken as you openly admitting that confidential sources are trash. It should be ignored and discounted by the opposition. So I want to address this.

There is a big difference between confidential sources and anonymous articles, right? So if Bob Woodward publishes an article and he references in that article a confidential source, the article is still written by Bob Woodward. He is still responsible. I'm just using a journalist, everybody will remember.

He's still responsible and he will still be held to task to that article. When you look at an article where the article was written by fucking nobody, look askance at it. Every time, look askance at it. There is a difference between a confidential source that then feeds to a reporter

and that reporter is willing to put their name on that. If the reporter is willing to put their... So you've got three layers of protection, right? So you've got the confidential source who feeds it to a journalist who puts their name on something, and then that journalist gets published in a reputable newspaper.

So you have the newspaper. So let's say you're reading the Washington Post or the Times. The Washington Post or the Times says, okay, here's a published, here's an article written by Bob Woodward. It has a confidential source. I trust that Bob Woodward and the New York Times and the Washington Post have both vetted that.

The editors that are involved. They've done their due diligence. There's a due diligence process. That's vastly different than here is an anonymous article. Anonymous articles are garbage. Yeah, that's trash. Throw them away every time. That's trash.

And I recognize that those are, I think if people, Ryan, I think if people who understand this know there's a difference between that. I don't think there's any danger with Tom saying that and someone mistaking for what he said. I don't think so. I don't think there's any danger for that.

We got a message from Adam who said he just, you know, he's a longtime fan and he just wanted to reach out and we helped him become more critical. Hey, Adam, thanks for that. We got a message from Adam who said he just, you know, he's a longtime fan and he just wanted to reach out. Um, and we helped him become more critical. Hey, Adam, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it, man. Tom, we messed up last time, um, between right to work and at will employment. Yeah. So I made this mistake. So this is, this is mostly on me. So there is a difference. I conflated and confused and was just plain wrong about the idea between right to work and an at-will employment state.

I was describing in my rant and rave at-will employment. Illinois is an at-will state. That means you can get fired for nothing. That is not the same as right to work. I was wrong. That's a correction, and I'm appreciative of the correction. What is right to work? So right to work is the right to not have to join the union yeah that's the right to show up

to work and to choose whether or not you are going to be unionized or not unionized i mix that up yeah you completed the two things at will yeah so that's on me and i apologize for that but and i am grateful by the way for the correction and. Thank you. And that's the correction. And that's the thing is like, you know, I know that Andy couches his speech in here and says, I know you guys aren't journalists, but it's important to correct your mistakes. We always do. Oh, yeah. 100%, man.

We always do. 100%. We mess up. We always try to correct our mistakes. And we always, the pushback on that is stupid, in my opinion. Pushback on that is dumb. Thank you for correcting us. Yeah, I'm okay with being wrong.

Anytime we're wrong about something, and I want to caveat that with, don't send me a pedant thing where you're like, you were wrong about what time it was when something happened. You know what I mean? Stuff like that is not useful. Stuff like this where you're mixing up a definition

between two different terms, very different terms, that's important. That's important. Send that every time. Yeah. We got a voicemail, and this voicemail is from Richard. And Richard says, I had a very weird conversation with Ted Cruz recently,

and I managed to get some very bad audio of him. So this is Ted Cruz. Hello, I'm Ted Cruz, and I love the show Cognitive Dissonance, and I want Cecil to rub my belly and call me my lovely Texas pig. I might call your wife that. Hey, Ted, if you're in the same bed,

I might rub your belly while we're at it. I would. While I'm... What would that even feel like? Rubbing a porpoise. I couldn't tell. You're right. It'd be smooth.

It would be very, very smooth. It would be weirdly smooth, like a wet tire. Yeah. Like, you ever pet stingrays? Yes. I feel like he'd feel like a stingray. Yes.

Like, really smooth. Really smooth. A little slimy, but not actually slimy. And, like, his teeth are like cartilage. They're just like cartilage. So, like, when he bites you, you're like, they're not really that hard. It's not really sharp. It's not sharp or hard.

It's just kind of meh. Yeah. All right. So, next Tuesday, you're getting this Monday. They're not really that hard. It's not really sharp. It's not sharp or hard. It's just kind of meh. Yeah. All right. So next Tuesday, you're getting this Monday, or if you're a patron, you're getting it earlier.

This upcoming Tuesday, election night, we will be doing a two-hour election special covering the election. So the election starts on Tuesday morning. Most polls will be ending around the time that we're going to be starting. Six, seven. Six, seven.

We're going to start at eight. We're going to start at 8. We're going to start at 8 Central. That's 9 Eastern. Some things will already have been decided. We're going to go over what's been decided. We're going to talk about contentious races. We're going to be your MSNBC or your CNN or your Fox News. We're going to be looking at graphs and all that stuff.

We'll be doing your coverage. We'll be doing graphs and charts. So you'll come over and hang out with us. We'll talk about important races, things that you should watch out for things that probably won't be decided in the two hours that we're going to be doing stuff, but we will tell you what to look for for the next day when the results finally do come in.

So, um, so next Tuesday, come hang out with us. Um, Tuesday night, two hours. It's worth just doing.

And, and this is better than any election coverage you're going to get. All the rest of those people are jokers. You need to come hang out with us. Come hang out with us. You want to anyway. And on the 17th of November, on a Thursday, our live stream, we're going to be donating all the proceeds

that come in that time, that time frame, that under the hour, it's going to be under an hour, but we're going to be doing it, a live stream that night. And any donations to Modest Needs that get forwarded to us during that time, we will match donations. We will. So that you could really hurt us if you come in and donate and bring the pain guys.

It'll be good stuff. All right. So, uh, that's, that's going to be happening for the next two live streams next Tuesday. And then the following Thursday, uh,

we are going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics. Creed credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues. Temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers,

birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this.

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