Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 701: Shiny Happy People Review

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

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 mat. And today, Cecil, we have a little bit of a special episode

we're doing something a little different a little different although we have done this in the past we're going to do yeah we have a breakdown a review a discussion shall we of the uh four part i think four part documentary series called shiny happy people um we've done this in the past with the rajanishis remember we did that uh during the pandemic i think that what the hell is the name of that documentary wild something wild wild wild country wild wild country um shiny happy people i i kind of saw this documentary cecil blowing up on social media people were talking about it and i'm not gonna lie to you dude i had zero or less percent interest in watching this documentary me too man i don't need another true crime documentary about a creep i just don't yeah right yeah but this story is so much bigger

than just josh duggar this is yeah just one creep, there's a lot of creeps. Yeah, this is a story of really what is a cult. And it's this cult of homeschooling. It's this cult of the quiverful movement. It's this really interesting, Cecil, decentralized kind of cult movement that I think is really worth talking about because it has so much political influence and political power and attachment to media. And this is a story that is so much bigger than just one creep and the way that the systems help to support and hide that creep. It's so much bigger than that. And I thought it was a terrific documentary, very well worth watching. Surprised the shit out of me that it was actually something I found myself rapidly paying attention to. Yeah, me too. You know, I had the same experience when people were talking about it. My first thought was,

when people were talking about it, my first thought was, I've never watched a second of a Duggar. Yeah, same. The only thing that the Duggar is to me is kind of a punchline to a joke about having too many kids, right? That's the only thing a Duggar is to me. I had no idea who they were.

I never watched a moment of their television show. I don't watch anything on that station at all. Because it's all just like, I fucking fucked or ate my couch. Right, yeah. Or I'm really big and you want to exploit me or I have a problem with like my mental health and so my house looks terrible and you want to exploit me

or I have a problem with addiction and you want to exploit me. I mean, it's literally just show after show after show that is exploiting the people that they're showing. So I never once ever really ever turn that TV to that. It's carnival sideshow television. It is absolutely

a sideshow. And this feels like a sideshow too, right? The Duggars feel like a sideshow. They feel like a family that shouldn't exist in modern day. Raising one or two children nowadays is immensely expensive and time-consuming and difficult, let alone raising 19. I guess when they started, they were at 14 or something like that. And then they just shit a bunch more out and got up to 19. But there was, there's a point there where they sort of introduced the Duggars

and I'm not really all that interested even watching the show, this Shiny Happy People show, but it kind of goes from the Duggars to talking about homeschooling, to talking about, well, how did they get involved in homeschooling? Well, it's this IBLP,

which is an organization that starts like reaching out to people to encourage them to homeschool. What's the IBLP? Well, an organization that starts reaching out to people to encourage them to homeschool. What's the IBLP? Well, it's kind of got this weird guy who's founding it, this Bill Gothard, and he hasn't really been married, and he's kind of a creep, and it's sort of reinforcing creep behavior in the people who follow his ministry. And then it finally gets to the point where, yeah, it's not only creep behavior that they're doing, but these people are really genuinely sexually assaulting or viewing child pornography

that's horrific. And then it also talks about, I think it sort of ends, I really hate how this ends because it ends almost on a cliffhanger talking about this Joshua Society or whatever it is. I forget exactly what it's called, but it's like

a group of people where they're talking about they want to take over America and they're like, okay, now that you know that we're going to go. And I'm exactly what it's called, but it's like a group of people where they're talking about they want to take over America and they're like, okay, now that you know that, we're going to go. And I'm like, wait, no, no, no, don't go. What is that?

What's happening with this Joshua? No, no, no, no, no. You know, so like, they definitely got me from season two. I've said two of them. Yeah, same. Well, you know, and what I thought was really,

there's a way bigger picture here because I'm right there with you, right? Like the Duggars for me were a verb, right? Like, Oh, I'm going to Duggar out some more kids, you know, or a punchline, right? Like it's just this absurd sideshow thing. But I think I I've totally come across or changed my mind on that because the Duggars, I think very astutely and shrewdly recognized that they could leverage the sideshow kind of like mentality of TLC and discovery and get the attention that they needed and then use that for these really aggressive ideological and political motivations. And they did it. These are not people that are not influential.

These are not like the guy who's rubbing his genitals on a balloon and everybody is like, watch the balloon guy, fuck a balloon. This is a guy who's like buddy-buddy with Mike Huckabee, who was a serious contender for the United States president. Like, these are actually significant and powerful people. They, you know, Madison Cawthorn, who thankfully is out of the Congress now, but, you know, he comes from that IBLP quiverful background. We are seeding Congress.

We are, we are, these guys are, there was multiple people. Yeah. Their intention is to infiltrate and control American politics. So this isn't really like, and I, and it was all very intentional. And that fucking main Duggar, big Duggar, Bill Duggar, like Jim Bob, man. Can we talk about Jim Bob? Yeah.

The name Jim Bob. Can we just talk about the name Jim Bob? Yeah, man. The fuck is wrong with somebody? You're walking around with two first names like that. You can't pick one. You can't just be Jim. You gotta be fucking Jim.

Jim Bob's a joke name. That's a fucking joke name, man. That's a hillbilly fucking joke name. It is a backwards name. It is. It is 100% backwards. You're actually named Jim Bob. Holy shit. Have you ever met somebody named Jim Bob in person? I would laugh my fucking ass off.

The people in the first portion, you know, because you're getting introduced to the Duggars. You're getting introduced to them, and they're starting to, you know, file in on camera. And you can tell there's already, like, this family, like, when they started to do this work, they started to work for TLC and TLC started filming them. They were very intentional about wearing their religion on their sleeves throughout all the filming. very shrewd business deals with TLC to make sure that they could show time and time and time again that this is how our system is.

This is what we do. And they kept reinforcing something that they're going to come back to over and over and over again in this series, which is that God shelters the man, the man shelters the woman, and the woman shelters the man, the man shelters the woman, and the woman shelters the babies. And there's this very strict delineated lines of power

that are followed in these family structures that the man gets his marching orders from God and the woman sure as fuck gets her marching orders from the dude. And the kids, they better get in line because again, in the very first episode, they introduced that guy who kicks the shit out and the kids, they better get in line. Cause again, they, in the very first episode, they introduced that guy who kicks the shit out of his kids. We talked about in our book, you know, that guy who, who beats his kids to train up a child guy who shows people how to beat kids. And this woman who is like the lady, uh, what is their name? It's Jim Bob and what's her name?

Rose? Oh, Lady Duggar. Lady Duggar. Lady Duggar. Mrs. Jim Bob. Yeah, Mrs. Yeah. To be honest, that's a great way to call it. You know what I mean?

It's a perfect, because she's essentially, yeah, she's a hidden person. You know what I mean? Yes. And so she's Mrs. Jim Bob. She comes off as this really sweet lady, right? She's very mousy. She's very timid. She comes off as like, she seems like in the way she speaks about her children, that she loves her children, but she talks about genuinely hitting her kids for doing

the thing that we talked, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, when you set a kid in front of something, the blanket training, and then the kid tries to go get something. And then you, you hit them until they stop going at the thing that they want. And she is telling this story that she did it with all her kids, with all 700 million of her kids. She did it with every single one of them to beat the obedience into them at a very young age. And so you could tell from the opening of this entire thing that this is a family that is backwards religious, homeschooled, and also abusive. Yeah. And it's interesting because they interview other people who have come out of the IBLP cult nonsense. And when they watched 14, 15, 19 kids and counting and they see the kids, they don't see what the Jim Bob Duggars are trying to show the world.

They don't see because they see reality. They see what's behind the curtain. So what they don't see is sweet, happy, well-behaved kids. They see obedient, quiet, fearful children. And as soon as they say that, that's what you see. Because if you know kids, kids are supposed to be rambunctious, right? Kids are too full of energy.

Kids are supposed to be testing boundaries and learning how, but these kids don't do that because they have literally been beaten. And I'll tell you, seeing it for me in the videos was different, even though they were just like hitting like a doll, seeing it was different for me than reading about it. There was an impact for me that that made, that like kind of shocked me. And then there was this like weird sexual creepiness to it as well. Cause there's this one scene where like this Gothard guy is talking about how

to beat your kid. And he's like, so he's like, I need a volunteer. And somebody like sends their like eight year old kid or something, you know, dressed in his Sunday best up to the stage and he's front all these people. And like,

he's like, he like beats the, like simulates beating this kid, spanking this kid. He doesn't hit it. He just, he just moves his hand. But he's, he's, what he's trying to do is trying to show that you can encourage your child as you hit.

Right. And so it's this, it's this weird, weird scenario with any, like makes him like hug him. And then the kid like hugs me. No, no, no. Hug me like you mean it. You know, so there's this whole like abuse thing going on that is like i'm going to abuse you and then i'm going to make you thank me for the discipline thank me for the abuse there like this is like this classic manipulative tactic that is just it's being not just displayed

but venerated it's being taught it's being perpetrated. And like Mrs. Fucking Jim Bob, she feels not just complicit, but like, can we talk about her weird voice? She has a weird voice. She has this, you know, that like weird,

overly soft manufactured put upon voice. That is, you just know it's a false voice. When you meet somebody with that, and so I have a fake voice. Michelle, her name's Michelle. Michelle Duggar. She has that voice. She has that voice that is like manicured for consumption.

Sure. It's overly soft. It feels false. And I know that's just me reading it, but like, I don't care. It feels like a false affectation. She is, these are, these people are not trustworthy. And I think like all the IBLP people that they interview are like, yeah, this is all a front for television to like push this worldview, which was this like real fucking niche, shitty, isolated worldview.

And like TLC and Discovery gave them, Cecil, a platform. They made them like heroes of Americana to some people. Like they made them sideshows to the rest of us. TLC wins on both fronts, right? Sure.

Like TLC is just like, thanks for the cash. I put it in all my pockets. Yeah, exactly. It's not like it gives one half of it back because you didn't like it or whatever. The people who hate watched it still watched it. It's not like that didn't give them ad revenue as well. And let's talk about, before we get into the IBLP, I do want to talk a little bit about sort of what the Duggar episode, the first episode sort of has in store.

And it's, it, there is a contrast in that episode. I guess they have a cousin who is a lot more free, right? So all the Duggars, they are all no shit. I can't kiss someone until marriage. That's how, that's how they're raised. They're raised so that they never touch any other human being, maybe on their hand, in passing until they are married. Dude, they literally did side hugs. At one point, they like, remember we used to make fun that the side hug was like a fake thing? And they literally like, oh yeah, we teach them how to do the side hugs.

It's those side hugs back. Holy shit. The side hug is, yeah, You don't think it's real until you hear somebody say it out loud. But they teach their children never to touch each other, you know, another person who they would be dating.

And later on, when I said each other, I do mean that because, you know, there's allegations that Josh molested his sisters. You know, that comes out much later. But in the beginning, you're hearing about this very strict, and they're also homeschooling their children

so their children are not introduced to other people. And just like the Christian article we read a couple of weeks ago, children are essentially auctioned off. Someone comes by and asks the dad if they can marry. And then there's no, you don't get a lot of refusal there. It's just, yep, okay, you can afford the dowry or whatever. And here's the kid.

And then you get to marry the daughter. And so they come from this very similar structure. The homeschooling, again, also very similar. The homeschooling is again, also very similar. The homeschooling is hilarious. In this particular episode, this first episode, they start showing them going to places like the Creation Museum. And they're doing things to sort of show how dim the education is, how lax the education is. And it's embarrassing, the things things they're learning because they're going to like the Evolution Museum,

like the Anti-Evolution Museum, et cetera. And so you get a chance to really see them, but the counter is this cousin who is living a normal life. And she loves her uncle and she loves her cousins,

but she does not prescribe to the things that they do. And so she's out, you know, she has a boyfriend at a young age and, and she, she has her sort of testimony in this, her interviews in this really shed light on how repressed that family is, even if it wasn't shown to the camera, because they made a very explicit deal that their religion wouldn't be cut. They said, you will not cut our religion out of this. And so they kept on sort of showing how holy this family is, but not how repressed it was. And it was great to hear this girl talk about how repressed, everything about that whole movement is constructed specifically around isolation. right so yeah this is this this whole family structure the educational structure um the everything is built in a way that specifically isolates everybody and isolates them cecil from

this intensely early age one of the things that like really really struck me was like i'm just gonna call her mrs jim bob. Like, like, that's what they want. They want to be like people through their husbands anyway. So like fucking Mrs. Jim Bob at one point says something, you know, that along the lines of, well, you know, when a kid comes out, there's obviously too many for me to fucking parent. So when I shit out a kid, I parent them until they're weaned. And then they are basically handed off to buddies. And then the buddies, and she says, and then they are handed off after they're weaned to their buddy. And so the whole system is like, okay, well, now I'm like a 9-year-old, 10-year-old, 11, 12, whatever-year-old kid, and now I have a baby to take care of.

I have a full-time human being that needs to be taken care of. That's isolationism. That creates a special kind of isolation. They're educationally isolated. They're isolated from the workforce. They're isolated by having this tremendous set of family responsibilities. They're isolated by virtue of the structure. I was thinking about this too.

One thing that cults seem to very frequently do is they reorganize the way family is defined, right? I was thinking about the relationship to IBLP and the FLDS, the Mormon cults. And the Mormon cults, the FLDS Mormon cults the the flds mormon cults they reorganize family around this polygamy stuff right and they they create this you know oh the elders will decide who marries who and it's going to be one man with multiple wives and we'll exile that'll create too many men that don't have families we'll exile those guys they'll go away because the numbers don't work and then you know we'll and they reorganize family and by reorganizing family and IBLP does the same thing, right? Like, oh, you're going to have 86 million kids and then the kids are going to have to raise other kids. And then you're going

to have to go and ask for someone's hand in marriage or whatever, ask to court them. And that basically leads to marriage. And she doesn't really get a choice, but to be happy and say yes. And so they reorganize family as a way to make sure that the top-down structure is built into, doesn't stop at the church door. It's right there in your home. There's no separation between home and church. Every part of your life, every organizational feature of your life is built around this cult. Yeah. And that gives such tremendous power to these fucking cult leaders.

It gives an incredible amount of power to these ideologies because everywhere they go, whether they're indoors or outdoors, whether they're at home or at the church or at the fucking grocery store, everything they're doing now has a central hub that it revolves around. So they don't get an opportunity to sort of like have moments of reconsideration. Yeah. I mean, even, you know, it gets into the later episodes, but they even have computer programs installed in some of their computers to monitor what they're watching on the computer.

And that sends to somebody else as a reporter, somebody who it reports to, it reports to another person, what websites they even visited. And that's just terrifying to think, you know, you don't trust yourself enough and that you're going to send something off to somebody else to sort of check up on you. And that's, and that's a feature of this religion. You know,

one of the things, one of the reasons why the women dress in the ways that they do is because they don't trust the men and they come out and say, they don't trust the men. That is a thing that that is a feature of this particular religion, uh, that the women have to be modestly dressed because a man can't be trusted around you if you are immodestly dressed. And they even go one step further to say that, you know, basically imply that if you are touched, it is your fault.

It is your fault you were touched because you were immodestly dressed or you looked at him wrong or you did something. It literally creates a get out of jail free card for every single sexual abuser in this particular religion to constantly abuse someone and then get away with it because it's not technically their fault because they shouldn't have been trusted anyway. That's a new, that's a, that's blame. It's a hundred percent blaming

the victim. It's disgusting and it's grotesque. And this whole thing is reinforced because they're separated from everybody. Like you said, they're a cult. They're separated. They're doing this because they don't get any, they don't get to hear any of this outside stuff from anybody else that might, you know, put a wedge in there or object to that

or give them an idea that this might be something that could cause, that is a bad thing for them. Instead, they're indoctrinated into it day in, day out, and they never have an external voice that comes in. They were even saying that even though this family, this Duggar family was on television, they didn't own a television. They had to wait for phone calls

if there was a tornado coming because they didn't have a television. They had to wait for phone calls if there was a tornado coming because they didn't have a phone. That was insane. Yeah, they didn't have a television, not a phone. They had a phone, but not a television. Yeah, not a television. You know, in the literature that they were showing, just to reinforce your point, C.

So in the literature that they were showing and how these kids were educated, and educated, I'm putting in fucking scare quotes here, right? We talked about the homeschooling education, the quality of the education is generally speaking beyond subpar. It is fantastically poor. But one of the phrases that they use when they're talking about, and I actually hate the term modesty because there's nothing wrong with being modest and there is something objectively wrong with teaching your kids that showing your neck or whatever is what they call an eye trap. They call them eye traps. here, Cecil, just to think about what that means is like, if I show, you know, too much skin or, or what not to show skin, and that is some kind of an eye trap that takes a hundred percent of

the responsibility for, and, and puts it on the person just being in the world. Like it, like none of the, it's falling into a trap is never your fault. Right. Right. Like that's, and that's intent. That language is really fucking intentional. Very true.

Very true. Falling into a trap is always something someone did to you. Someone set that trap. You are being tricked. You are being deceived. You are being trapped. You are being, you know,

that is something that happens to you. Yeah. being trapped. You are being, you know, that is something that happens to you. Yeah. And they're using language that puts a hundred percent of all of the responsibility for any bad sexual experience and abuse and, and all the rest of it on women exclusively on women. There's a line that like just fucking grabbed me and I'll have to paraphrase this to some degree but like when this gothard guy who there are all these allegations of his sexual misconduct they kick him out of the iblp and then the iblp just goes the fuck on they're like now he kicked that fucking guy out but didn't really matter we kept all his teachings who gives a shit but like when there's all these like allegations of his sexual misconduct one of the things that one of the IBLP former members says is like,

he didn't have to groom us. We've been groomed our whole lives. The way that we grew up was grooming. Our boundaries had already been tested time and time and time again. So that tree was ripe. And none of that's unintentional, right like these guys literally wrote a book on how to turn women into uh subservient quiet groomed yeah groomed like it's it's so disgusting like it's so i don't even know what the next thing to say is it's just it was just so absolutely appalling this this systematic way that they did this. There's nothing like, this is worse than the Catholic church. Yeah. It really is because the Catholic church isn't like writing a manual to teach you how to

be groomed for sexual abuse. Yeah. That's literally what they're doing with their homeschooling curriculum. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. They even have homework assignments to find the eye traps in clothing. This is the homework assignment for little girls to look at outfits and then circle the places

where a guy might look at them and be lustful. And therefore they'll know in the future, they've been warned. You've essentially been warned, right? This is your warning. If you wear this stuff, it's on you. And there's also another really important part later on where they're talking about how in their literature, they say, if you do not scream out, then you basically took this

on yourself. So if you're in the process of getting raped in this religion, you know, and you're of this religion, if you don't call out, then you essentially did something to want this or you want it. And therefore the person who's doing it has no real responsibility. And it's grotesque. I mean, it's genuine. This is not just, and this isn't someone inferring something. This is literally written down in their bylaws or whatever. So this is not like someone looking at something and making a decision and saying, oh, that's what that means.

No, it's literally written right in the things that they hand out to all these young girls. So they are exactly what you said, Tom. They are grooming them. I want to quote from Deuteronomy 22, 24. So you know exactly the verse that they seize upon in order to put a hundred percent of the onus of responsibility on women when they are raped or sexually abused. It's from, I looked it up just a second. It's from Deuteronomy

22 to 23 to 24. I don't know how Bibibling works, so I fucking might have that a little off, but like whatever. What was it? Corinthians? One Corinthians or whatever? Timothy 2 or whatever. Yeah, it was really great. Yeah.

Yeah, two Corinthians or whatever. The line from this fucking awful book of monstrous bullshit is, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city

and you shall stone them to death. The girl, because she did not cry out and the man, because he has violated his neighbor's wife. And so they put the onus. Yeah. And they literally, they take that shit. It's just what they always do.

Like, they take literally the pieces that they want to be literal. Yeah. So, like, if you do not scream while you are being attacked or raped or sexually abused or traumatized in some way, if you don't scream, well, that's it's just as much on you. Same punishment, fucking stone you too. Like it's right there in the fucking awful goddamn book. And they selectively read that shit and piece the pieces they want together in order to create situations for women that are untenable and dangerous. Yes, absolutely. And let's talk about the IBLP.

This is the homeschooling sort of empire, I guess. It starts out with this guy, his name's Bill Gothard. And Bill Gothard is a man who really talks about homeschooling as a way to train a Christian nation. They need to do a couple of things to make this a Christian nation. And the battle plans are train the kids, all your kids, indoctrinate them into this religion, have a shit ton of them, teach them to have a shit ton of kids, and then basically just overpopulate your way into having a Christian nation. Those kids will eventually take positions of power, which we find out later on is this Joshua Project

or whatever that they have going on. But really, genuinely, it's all about shitting out a bunch of kids, making sure those kids are indoctrinated, making sure those kids make you a bunch of grandkids and they are indoctrinated as well. And this Bill Gothard hits America. And this is something I never put together.

I never put one and one together. And they do in this documentary, they sort of explicitly say it, but it happens all around the time that schools become integrated, right? So it starts, the homeschooling push doesn't start because they're teaching this horror, not just because they're teaching this horrible stuff in schools or whatever. It starts also because of who you're learning next to, who's sitting next to you while you're learning it? And that's something that had never occurred to me until this pointed it out. The timing is way too suspicious for it not to be during that time that the homeschool movement takes off, right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, man. And that's, I never put those pieces, those historical elements together. I didn't know enough about that, that history to put those pieces, those historical elements together. I didn't know enough about that, that history to put those pieces together. But once you put those pieces together, you see the deeply fucking racist roots. There are these incredibly racist roots. And, you know, as soon as you see that, then at least for me, you start to see these mega churches and these, these, these pictures and the B roll and And you see just the staggering whiteness. Yes, absolutely.

The staggering blinding mayonnaise whiteness of the whole fucking situation. And it's like, holy shit. This is, this is a new way to sort of reinforce racial segregation. For sure. And to reinforce like the, the, the dividing up of, uh, this country by race and by sure. And to reinforce the dividing up of

this country by race. I did not put that together at all. I did not think about the way that evangelical homeschooling interacted with the politics of racial school desegregation. But it absolutely is a direct

and immediate response to it. An absolute response. And, you know, think about raising your kid in a homeschool environment, you know, how culty that is, right? You're cutting them off from all outside information,

but you're also cutting them off from all other kinds of relationships. You know, they grow up thinking that the people around them are their peers and that's only their family. And so, You know, they grow up thinking that the people around them are their peers and that's only their family. And so, you know, or their church, which they once in a while get out to and how integrated is their church? You know, it's very different from putting your kid in a school where they could have a black friend or a, you know, a Hispanic friend or an Asian friend, et cetera, et cetera. Right. You know, even a girl friend, if they're a boy,

you know, very different than just they're in this house learning and they're sequestered away from society. And there's a reason, we talked about it already, there's a reason why they do that. And this again is enforced through this IBLP. And this IBLP is just a group of people who all believe in this homeschooling ideal.

And this Bill Gothard, hilariously, never married, never has kids, but really preaches the get married, have kids type of thing. Yeah. And he's doing it because you find out later on that there's allegations that he's diddling a bunch of kids. And that's why he never did it,

you know, like never went into, never had a family or whatever, because he could get away with visiting each one of these sort of super centers they have. And these centers are essentially just forced work camps for kids. I mean, they take these kids and they send them off to these places

for like a camp for a certain amount of time because they're homeschooled, right? So it doesn't matter when they go. They could go literally any time because they don't have a curriculum they need to keep up with. So if you want to send your kid off to some random, it's not like I say summer camp, but you know what I mean? Like a camp at a certain time of the year, they'll just go for weeks and they work 16 hour days. They don't get to sleep very much and they're working hard jobs, doing construction, cleaning, all kinds of stuff for this institute.

And then they also have prayer. And then they're also expected to just kind of love it or else they get put in a room with just a Bible and no bed. I mean, it sounds horrifying. Yeah. And that's, and when Josh Duggar, and really the focus here is not on Duggar, but like when fucking creepy fuck Josh Duggar, when the first allegation that he like was like

sexually assaulting his own sisters, when that, when that finally, and that hits the fan, like, what do they do they're like oh we're gonna take care of it in-house you know we're gonna involve the police and i'm gonna tell you and they send them off to go build houses and do work stuff yeah like as if that that's just that's fucking c-org man that's scientology c-org shit yep that's got like me like knocking together a couple of two by fours is that's not therapy. That's nothing. We've seen how many examples of the way that like religious institutions, like they use work as a form of child abuse and punishment in place of real therapy.

There are so many of these troubled youth camps where investigations find out these troubled youth camps have nothing to do with helping troubled youth at all. They don't have trained counselors. They don't have any rehabilitation experts. They don't have any psychologists. They're just like, yeah, we fucking make the kids like fucking dig ditches.

Right. That's what we do. These kids like fucking dig ditches. Right. That's what we do. These kids do slave labor for us. Yep. And then that's, and then Jesus made them fucking feel better. We barely, you know,

they eat too little. They sleep too little. We beat the shit out of them. We make them work real hard all day. And then we sell the fruits of their labor, you know, for like whatever we want to sell for.

It's, and then as soon as like, and that's terrible enough, right? Cause that's this whole separate aside thing. But this fucking Duggar, this Josh Duggar guy, he's off. And then TLC is like, Hey, well, we want to do another season or whatever. And Jim Bob's like, Oh, I'll just get that guy back from fucking. I fucked my sister work camp. Yep. Because like now it's awkward for me. For not to have, not to be here. None of this work camp. Yep. Because like now it's awkward for me.

For not to have, not to be here. None of this was real. Yep. And none of these consequences were real. God, it's so fucking frustrating the way that they behave. It's so appalling.

Yeah. And they, and these, this family, you know, make no mistake, the Duggars find their way into politics and they run. Jim Bob actually serves for a little while.

Josh himself finds his way into politics through, I think, a lobbying organization out in D.C. And, you know, later on in the whole thing, you know, we might as well talk about Josh now. Later on in the whole thing, we find out that Josh is, you know, not only did he, did he, uh, sexually assault his sisters when he was younger.

And that was swept under the rug very neatly by Josh or by Jim Bob, who gets a police officer to take a statement. And then the police officer asks, but you're really, really sorry. Right. And then that's the, the entire extent of it that happens.

And then later on, you find out that he not only was on Ashley Madison because the leak, they found out about the leak. That's something I remember happening was there was that Ashley Madison leak of the website. Ashley Madison was a hookup website for married people to have flings. And he was on this Ashley Madison website. And then you find out later on that the FBI tracks him to having child pornography. And I don't, I'm not going to get into it, but it's the most disgusting kind of child pornography you can have period. It's the most disgusting, grotesque child pornography you could have. He's a degenerate

if that is on his computer, right? He's a fucking grotesque human being. And it clearly was. It clearly was. He got time for it. You know what I mean? He served 12 years for it or he's serving 12 years for it. Just an absolute horrific. And the thing is,

I want to point this out because I think this is important. You put together a society where God gives his will to the man and the man gives his will to the woman and the woman trains up that child and training up that child. You want that child to have authority and you want to exert your power over that child. What is the most forceful way you can exhibit power? It's through rape and through sexual assault, right? I know. And so you're, you're literally making an entire doctrine over assaulting children because

you want to come to that pinnacle of power over that child. I don't think I'm reading too much into this, Tom. No, Cecil, you're not reading. There's nothing else you can read out of this, right? There's literally like, it's not that you're not reading too much, like,, you're not reading. There's nothing else you can read out of this, right? There's literally like, it's not that you're not reading too much, like, or you're reading too much. I don't think there is another reading of this. Right. I don't think there is.

I don't, I don't. There's, there is no charitable reading of this. This is, yeah, there's no charitable reading of this. There's no, there's no even slightly nicer way to put this. This is all extraordinarily intentional. That's the other thing that just grabs hold of me and shakes me and won't let me go watching this is all of this is being done with intent, with real thought and consideration and structure and power and manipulation and coordination and intent. None of this is like, hey, we did our best and mistakes were made. None of this is like, hey, we did our best and there's some bad apples here. There is a structure that is being created and reinforced, which is at its core rotten.

Yes. It is rotten. And all of it branches out to be more and more and more rotten. And they are absolutely as bad as you can imagine. And then they are trying to, like I said before, influence our political leaders. Yep. They are trying to be our political leaders.

That's what this Joshua generation thing is. It's like, let's take this idea where we have raised people from the fucking moment of their birth in this horrifying, mean-spirited, cruel, sexually abusive, misogynist culture. And let's turn those people into our legislators. Sure, yeah. What the fuck, man? That is scary to me. That is.

That is genuinely scary to me. Like the FLDS nuts are just FLDS nuts. And the people that are in that sort of like camp, I feel bad for every single one of those people born into that nightmare, but they are not trying to run political races. Exactly. They are not like on TV on this deeply irresponsible, sympathetic program. Yes. Which shows like fuck TLC. You know, I really feel like you watch this thing and I like TLC has to know some of this. Yeah. TLC has to know there's no way that the producers of that program can't see the rot. It's so self-evident and they just want to sell their sideshow, man. And I look at this and I'm

like, fuck TLC forever, man. Fuck discovery forever. Fuck that shit. That is disgusting. They're willing to promote these miserable louts. They are willing to promote this ideology in order to like sell more commercials or whatever. Yeah. Holy shit. It's so, the whole thing, Cecil, is beyond gross. And you're like, and again, like you said, like the sexual content on that guy's hard drive, like when they described it, like it's, it's mind numbing.

It's grotesque. It is mind numbing. I'm not kidding when I say it is the most grotesque child porn you can be caught with. It is the most grotesque. It is the worst one. It is grotesque and disgusting. And the fact that it was caught on his computer. And then it's not that it's just like one file either.

There was files of children as well. So he had images of children and video. This video was just beyond the pale. And I'm right there with you when it comes to this TLC thing. There is this sanitation that they're providing to this religion to make it seem like it might be a little quirky, but it certainly is quite sweet. And these people are very sweet and they take care of their children and they, you know, yeah, they sure do have a lot of them, but man, they still do stick together, this family, don't they? Yeah, man. Don't they just, they just tackle every problem together because that's what families do. And

they love each other. And look at how little sister and little brother are just, you know, they got their arm around each other and they're singing their little Christian hymns together and they get together and they have real moments with other people as they, as they have their religious ceremonies in their houses or around their bonfires around in their farms outside. And they get these kids working at a young age to teach them the industrialistness of where, you know what I mean? Like, I mean, this isn't fucking hard to write and they fucking write it for you. So you believe this bullshit that this family is normal, that this family is even close to normal. They're not normal at all. They're creating little monsters and then they're at the end there and they're creating little victims they're doing

both at the same time and it's grotesque and this and tlc is is a hundred percent culpable yeah man the tlc is laundering this message yeah absolutely that's a great way to put it it's a great way to put it absolutely it's a great way to put it you know i was introduced in this in this uh to the people who hate watch the Duggars because they grew up in it. I didn't realize that was a whole group of people who on YouTube just have like their whole community of like hate watching. I thought that was great. I thought it was great too. It really provided insight.

And all the people that they talked to in this, these are all people who left the cult. They do talk to some people in this that are still involved, but most of the people that were the object of this documentary do not speak to the camera. So you never get a chance to hear from this Bill Gothard. You never get a chance to hear from Jim Bob. The only thing that they can pull from them is stuff that they've said already on TLC. So you can't, there's not a lot of film of that. There's no film of them talking afterwards. But, but so, you know, you know, it's, it's, it definitely has the appearance of it being one-sided, but at the same time, you're like, all you got to do is show

me the evidence. Right. And the evidence I'm seeing is, I don't know how you talk your way out of that, Jim Bob. You could tell me there's not a lot of talking your way out of this evidence, Jim Bob. It's a really, a very, a very well put together series. And it goes by, like you said, so fast, just one at, I was, I was blown away by how much I was involved in this. You know, and then one last thing, same thing, man. One last thing I wanted to bring up too about Jim Bob. And I thought this was just like, again, emblematic of the kinds of abuse is like Jim Bob was not sharing any of the spoils of his TLC profits, right? So this is a guy who sold his children, right? Sold his children's stories, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Made them basically work. They're describing like how much work it is to do the show. You know, so we got to walk into a room four times. The whole thing of reality TV not being scripted is bullshit. It's not purely scripted, but it is highly orchestrated and like he wasn't setting aside

money for anyone he was like having people just blank hey sign these documents around the kitchen counter and they're just like hey that's the patriarch we sign it that's and then he's your dad he was just taking their money man and he was just taking their money he is not a good steward and safeguarder, even of his own family, man. Because he doesn't have to be. Because he was raised in a world that teaches him that he is the only one important. Sure, sure. And the whole Joshua generation thing too, you can see they talked about Madison Cawthorn in that, but what's interesting, I think, about the Madison Cawthorn story is that he did have that sort of meteoric rise, but the moment he

started having a tiny bit of power, he completely abused it and was an absolute shit. And then he wasn't reelected because he's a shit bag. But don't expect that that's not going to keep happening with these groups. This guy who they interview is part of this Joshua Generation. And by the way, this Joshua Generation stuff, they're doing like crazy militia bootcamp type stuff. They're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Weird paramilitary shit.

They're learning how to go debate both feminists and they're learning how to debate against atheists. They're learning how to debate against anybody who's a liberal so that they can do all this debate club stuff so that they can send the next Madison Cawthorn up to, and they get these really powerful clerking jobs too. Make no mistake, there's a path to power in Washington, and all you have to do is follow the clerking roles. You can see, I mean, look at the fucking people who are in the Supreme Court. What did they do to start out, right? Who did they clerk for, right?

Who did these federal judges clerk for? Yeah, who does number two work for? But you can see who would follow follow that power and you follow that they're good. You know, it's, I don't know if you remember, but years and years and years and years ago, Tom, you and I read a book about how like the Masons is this crazy cult. I don't know if you remember this book. But really, genuinely, you know, all it did, you know, yeah, I talked about all the dumb stuff, but nepotism is a real thing. Right. And it's like, it's like, that is one of those things that gets shown in, you know,

in that Mason's book to say, to say something to the effect of if they, if they know you're part of this group, they will be preferential to you. The same thing exists here. They get these positions because they know people, right? They've gone through these training programs and now they're getting these powerful positions because of it. And it's a step up process and they've done a good job. They explained it in this and we talk about it. You know, this has been a talking point of ours for a year or so. They get the small jobs too. They're getting state reps jobs. They're getting city council jobs. They're even getting on school boards.

These people who, you know, in fact, one of the people I wound up looking at here in my own local race for school board, I watched and read about everybody. One of them was homeschooled. And I'm like, absolutely not. Like absolutely not. But they're getting on school boards

to try to get their message in public school. Yeah. Yeah. There is no mistaking the power and the reach of this. It is a much bigger organization than I had ever thought about. You know, we had a woman on years ago that was, I think her blog. Yeah. And her, her blog, I think was like still quivering. Yeah. No longer quivering. No longer quivering. Okay. Is that what it was? No longer. Thank you. I misremember everything, but I do

remember the conversation and I remember thinking, gosh, that's, this is like weird niche, but it's not man. This is way bigger. What I learned from this documentary that really stuck with me too is the scope and the breadth of this. It is a big deal. This is a big deal thing. I recommend everybody watch this.

It's on Netflix? Is it on Netflix or Prime? No, it's on Amazon Prime. If you have Amazon Prime, it's there. If you don't have Amazon Prime, I think you'd have to pay for it. You have to rent it or on Amazon Prime. So if you have Amazon Prime, it's there. If you don't have Amazon Prime, I think you'd have to pay for it. You have to rent it or something like that if you don't have the Prime itself. But if you have Amazon Prime, you get it.

And it's four episodes long. Totally worthwhile. I mean, you're right. Absolutely. Totally worthwhile. Opens your eyes to the back end of the homeschooling stuff, which we have sort of started to get into, but we didn't realize how deep it went.

And I think this is a real, I'm feeling this is one of those things that you're going to see the reverberations of this for a long time, because they did reach a lot of people and you're going to see the reverberations. If Madison Cawthorn got in, he's probably one of their opening salvos.

So expect more and more and more of these people to start populating. Thankfully, someone finally shed a light on it. So now you can pay attention to it because before it was happening all in behind the scenes. All right, well, that's going to wrap it up for this week. Thank you for joining us. We're going to catch you guys next week,

but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-al, alternative, acupunctuating Pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy Healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead Pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment

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