Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 745: T Swift Conspiracies, Gen Z's Political Leanings

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

ALERT! No video this week! See us next week... still will broadcast audio only on twitch and youtube.   Show Notes

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. 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 Glirthhole 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. Today is Thursday, February the 1st, and we are not recording together. See, so we are not in studio today. No video. No video, guys. Sorry. We're not in the same place. I had a COVID exposure, so we're just in an abundance of caution. Tom is in a lab surrounded by monkeys in cages.

He's going to guise in suits with booties. It's a whole thing. We're five days out over here from an exposure, a secondary exposure, so just exposure. So, just been an abundance of caution because, you know, we're still aware of reality.

Yeah. And COVID sucks. And it's not like I'm not still vaxxed up, right? Like I got a vaccine recently, but I am not totally cool. And the thing is, is like, I haven't really changed a lot of my behaviors when it comes to COVID. Like I've been doing all the same stuff. I mean, we don't go out to eat like we used to, but we still on occasion, we'll get a bite out to eat or we'll travel to a store. We don't wear masks when we go in. I don't see anybody with masks on in stores anymore. Like I literally just don't. So, you know, just, we just, you know, we just go about our lives, but once in a while when someone you know gets it, you're like, oh yeah, no, that's still around. Definitely don't want to get exposed to that if you can avoid it. Yeah. We're a little more cautious over here. The numbers are really high. So we send, like we've asked the kids to

wear masks on the bus. Oh, nice. You know, the bus is a crowded space with no ventilation. Yeah, the bus is definitely, yeah. And I will say, I wear a mask when I go into a CVS or a Walgreens type store, because I'm like, yeah, this is where people go when they're sick. That's smart, yeah, smart.

Like there's some places I will make sure that I wear a mask. And there are other places where I'm, you know, like I grocery shop now that I work from home. I do my grocery shopping at like 8.45 in the morning on a Tuesday, which is awesome. Cause you can like, dude, you don't even have to wear pants. Like there's no one there.

You can push the cart around like a scooter. It's the best. There's fucking no one there. It's like, it is. It's like, it's like fucking like, what's that zombie movie with Woody Harrelson? It's fucking like you can do anything. Zombieland or whatever, yeah.

Yeah, the world is just like an empty oyster for you to like play. Yeah, yeah. It's, oh just like an empty oyster for you to like play. Yeah, yeah. It's, oh, speaking of empty oyster, one of my favorite holidays is coming up, Cecil. IKEA Bowl. IKEA Bowl. IKEA Bowl.

Yeah, the Super Bowl is next week and you'll be able to go to IKEA or do whatever. Someone else had a really great suggestion. They said, you know what you do is you book at the hottest restaurant you can. Yeah. The hottest restaurant you can. Yeah. The hottest restaurant in town. That's smart. And you just go to the best restaurant that you can't get into.

Right. There's probably a seat. Yep. Yeah. We've made it like a little tradition that like we go to Ikea once a year and we go on the Super Bowl. Because like you get good parking. There's no one in there. It's like, it's great.

The world is your oyster. So. I'm a loser. Yep. Still a loser. In love. All right, Cecil, let's talk about Lauren Boebert. Now she, I want to say she, she did not win handily.

Her last. Her last re-election attempt. But she did finish, Tom. She did finish. She did finish, but it wasn't a handy win. She didn't finish the job, that's for sure. She absolutely finished. So this story comes from the Hill. Boebert finishes fifth in a straw bowl of New District.

Hey, if you finish fifth, but you finish, you finish, you know, whatever. Who wants to be first? First isn't,

you know? Yeah, because you're not going twice. I mean, come on, who are we kidding? I'm 46 years old. Twice? Yeah,

not happening. Twice? Tom, you were telling me ahead of time that this story is a non-story. It is. So, but I think it's still worth, I think it's important in part because of its non-storyness. So I want to read parts of it.

Representative Lauren Boebert came in fifth place in a straw poll of voters in the district where the controversial congresswoman recently relocated and is struggling to win re-election in the House. Boebert, who was first elected to represent Colorado's third congressional district in 2020, announced last month that she would switch districts and instead run for re-election this year in the fourth district. The new district

for Boebert would likely give her a significantly better chance at re-election if she wins the Republican nomination. She currently represents a swing district, and Boebert had seemed likely before her switch to face off a second time against Democrat Adam Frisch, whom she defeated in 2022 by fewer than 600 votes. The fourth district, meanwhile, is solidly Republican, and only one Democratic House member has won a seat in the last 50 years. But the results of a straw poll Thursday, which followed the first debate among GOP candidates running for that district, indicates Boebert may have an uphill battle. Then they give the numbers, and the numbers, Cecil, are everything. They have one, two, three, four, five people, Boebert's at the bottom of the fifth.

But like the first person, Jerry Sonnenberg, has a whopping 22 votes. Yeah, because there's a straw poll taking on the people who were there. Right. There was like 120 people that, actually there's 120 votes taken. There was more people there, but the lady says that there was like

only a certain amount of people, a low percentage of people even took the straw poll, which was disheartening. So her handler is quoted, their last name is Sexton. And they said, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is focused on earning the support

of the fourth district voters. A straw poll of 10 candidates and their supporters that took place in the eighth district where ticket sales closed after she announced is of no concern and doesn't provide a realistic snapshot of the district. And he's right in some ways that it doesn't provide a realistic snapshot of her supporters. You know, this is one of those like, to me, this story is important in part

because of what it says about Lauren Boebert not getting a walkover even in a Republican district. Yes. Yes. But also from a media literacy standpoint, because they bury at the end of it too, the last sentence, the outlet reported, and the outlet they're referring to here is the organizers of the debate. The outlet reported that some candidates' campaigns bought a block of tickets,

but Klein said no one campaign packed the event with supporters. So like you have an audience here who is not reliable in terms of like, if one candidate or two or three candidates, if a whole bunch of their friends and family bought tickets to this debate, they're going to be very likely to vote in the straw poll, right? Because they're motivated and excited and they clearly support a candidate. They're probably less likely to be open-minded about the debate in terms of like having their minds swayed. They're not going as like a third party that's like totally unvarnished and

uninfluenced. Sure, sure. So it's like, but this gets reported by the Hill and gets this big blocky headline that says Boebert finishes fifth in a straw poll. And you're like, yeah, man, like, she finished fifth in a district she's not running in where a bunch of people

like filled the seats with like other candidates where there was 120 people. It's like, it's just like, okay, by the time I winnow down all the stuff

that would make this meaningful. It's a useless, it's a useless stat at the end of all that. But it's a story, man. They wrote a 500 word story on it. You know what I mean? I will say though,

the video of her trying it, because somebody says, somebody asked their question, what's the definition of carpetbagger? Wait a minute. Is that on this story? I didn't see this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, now I want to see it. I'll play the audio for you, Tom. Oh, you've got to. I'm going to play the audio for you and Tom. I'll play the audio for you and for the audience because it's the video here is amazing. So let me get it for you here. Just a really simple question. And that is, could you like give the definition of carpetbagger to me? Yeah, one minute. Is this a Mary Poppins question? So yes, I have moved into the fourth district. My boys and I needed a fresh start.

That's been very public of what the home life looked like. And I'm sorry to bring that up. I've tried to put it into a very pretty package and bring my ex-husband lots of honor. But since there is nothing private about my personal life, it is out there. And my boys need some freedom from what has been going on. And this move is the right move for me and for them. I don't know what that meant. What did she say to Mary Poppins? What is that, Tom? Well, in Mary Poppins, she pulls, she's got a bag that she pulls like a whole bunch of stuff out of the bag in the beginning of marriage. She was

like a cantaloupe out of it. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. So I think she's like trying to make a joke. It's just such a Oh, I see. It was a joke. Fantastically bad joke. Got it. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you for that. The best jokes are the ones that like three different people have to explain. I'm glad you could take your time to dissect and explain that joke to me

because I totally went over my head. So thank you. Because she's a fucking terrible, terrible joke teller. Also, she's a giant liar. Because you don't have to live in the district that you run in.

So she could have moved and kept running in the district that she was previously representing. It's a dodge. It's a bullshit answer. Yeah, she's dodging. And from the Lambda Moo team, Dudley Dawson. Booger.

Booger. Booger. Booger. This story is fucking amazing. It's from the New Republic. Conservatives go next level crazy with Taylor Swift Super Bowl conspiracies. So the Kansas City Chiefs are going to play in the Super Bowl. I'm sure you guys know this.

I know about this from no illusions, actually talking about it the last time we did a Citation Need record. And Taylor Swift is dating a player on the Kansas City Chiefs. So if you're not following that, now you've got it, right? It's all you need to know. The far right is convinced that the Super Bowl will be rigged

so that the Kansas City Chiefs win, so that Taylor Swift, this is amazing, so that Taylor Swift can get more attention so that she can push forward a leftist agenda. They said that she's going to, one person suggested that she might even during the halftime show mention that she's voting for Biden and urge people to vote for Biden. And I think, Tom, lean into it. I say lean into it. I say don't avoid it. Lean into it. Because what's the harm of leaning into it, right? If you lean into it, it's a great joke.

Number one, it's a great joke. Two, it's getting the word out for people to vote. And then three, it basically makes a million head explode all across the country. Can you imagine? I also think too, like Travis Kelsey, the guy she's dating, if he gets the MVP, should take the MVP trophy, put on a Pfizer shirt, meal, and then drink a Bud Light. I think he should do all those things in a row.

And then while he's on his knee drinking a Bud Light, he should burp out an endorsement for Joe Biden. That's what I feel. Like fucking Ogre on Revenge of the Nerds. He should talk burp out an endorsement for Joe Biden. That's what I feel like fucking ogre on revenge of the nerds he should talk burp out an endorsement for Joe Biden that's what needs to happen I want to read out what Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted on Monday he says he wonders who's going to win the Super Bowl next month I wonder if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this

fall just some wild speculation over here. Let's see how it ages over the next eight months. I do want to say, these guys are so fucking butthurt about Taylor Swift. It is delicious to drink. I love this so much. I love it. Because what they can't wrap their fucking tiny heads around is that this is a billionaire woman who is young, successful and beautiful and has all the ability, by the way, to hold any press conference anytime she wants.

I know she doesn't need the soup. She's bigger than the Super Bowl. This is the thing they don't get. Taylor Swift is by far bigger than the Super Bowl. She's bigger than the Super Bowl. This is the thing they don't get. Taylor Swift is by far bigger than the Super Bowl. When she announced her Eras Tour, her big concert that took place in 2023, when she announced it, the announcement of the ticket sales was so big, it broke the ticketing systems. You couldn't get tickets. When she announced that her concerts were going to play in movie theaters, not even simulcast, but just a recording. You could not get tickets across the entire country.

This is a woman who's been invited to play because she's so financially impactful when she puts on a show that she has been lobbied by foreign dignitaries to please come to their country and play shows in their country. The idea that the Super Bowl lends her credibility. I know. And not the other way around. I know, man. It's fucking laughable.

It's backwards. And all the other games, too. They keep on. There's this concept of the like they're showing her and they're like look at her trying to get the publicity i'm like no they're milking her publicity yes they're using her publicity every single time they show her celebrating for a touch like a like travis kelsey's touchdown they are getting viewership for their product because they were like as soon as she announced she was dating him and went to one of his games,

his Jersey like outsold everybody else because people who didn't care about football, who never watched a football game in their life suddenly became Travis Kelsey fans. Like genuinely you got it. They look at this so backwards. They even in this article, they talk about how she is being backed by George Soros.

And you're like, she's also a billionaire. Do you not understand that she has enough money? Someone said that Travis, and I think this is a troll account. So I actually think there's a troll account out there that people think is real. I am not convinced this is a real person, or at least he's not genuinely real. Because he said something like, Travis Kelsey got a $70,000 bonus check for winning or for getting into the Super Bowl. Now everybody knows why Taylor Swift's been hanging out with him or something like that. I'm like, come on.

Like, she wears shoes that are $70,000. She earns more than that in interest in an hour. Yeah. that are $70,000. She earns more than that in interest in an hour. Yeah. But I think that the best part about this entire thing

is how many people have to be on board for this conspiracy to work. You have to take all the... First off, his team had to make it to the Super Bowl, right? So like,

out of all the teams, his team has to make it. Yeah, so don't you have to like manipulate all six... How many teams are so don't you have to, like, manipulate all six teams? How many teams are there? You would have to at least manipulate all the games you probably were going to lose, right? You would have to somehow manipulate those games.

And they play 18 games. So, like, that's 18 other teams with, you know, I don't know, 40-man rosters, 55-man rosters, and then not including all the people who support that team, right? So it's not just the people on the team, but they have trainers and coaches and staff. And you got to, like, some of those people have to know that you're fucking throwing the game, right? Plus, like, don't you have to convince them all to throw the game?

Every player in every game has to throw the game but did the Chiefs win every single game did they have an undefeated record they lost the bunch they lost several games they had to win they've been in a single elimination tournament in the playoffs but after but before the playoffs they've lost some games sure so like you have to manipulate them

but then like sometimes you also like throw some losses in there to make it believable and then you have to like make these this entire manipulation appear to everybody, at least up until this moment. It's not like there's like been scuttlebutt like, oh, these games seem really rigged. The Chiefs are walking through everybody. What's going on? Like all these calls are always going in the favor of the Chiefs. All you've done it so convincingly that all of these games appear to be

perfectly real. Right. What? Well, yeah. And the other thing too is like, isn't, isn't Biden like a doddering fool? Like, don't you believe that too? Like how is he so powerful that he can manipulate all these people into giving him two seconds of airtime, one late. And even still, couldn't he just manipulate that one lady instead of this whole thing? Like, I don't understand. I don't understand this at all. I genuinely, I don't understand your conspiracy, man. I don't get it.

Also, Cecil, it's just occurred to me too. What the fuck incentive do you offer football players who are already rich? Yeah. Right? Like, the one thing they want is that trophy or whatever. That's right. So like, I've got to like, like, what are you gonna do? Be like, all right, chiefs,

we're going to teach you guys to win. No, you got to incentivize the other guys to lose because the chiefs already show up. They want to win, right? The other guys, the problem is that the other guys also showed up wanting to win. So you have to teach people, they have to teach rich people to lose in front of a crowd of people

and to feel the pang of loss. And then you're going to give them what? Money? They're already all millionaires. They're already rich. Yeah, no, they're going to get fucking dragged on social media for six fucking months because they sucked in that game, right? You'd be like, oh, I want you to like fumble a pass or whatever.

I'd be like, I don't, I've lived a whole life being the best guy on the field, right? If you got to the NFL, you've had every day of your life, you've been the best player in your high school. You've been the best player in college. You know what I mean? Like you've lived an entire life where you were always the best guy out there. And now this is the only place where you're with peers. And then you're doing this super like public thing.

And somehow George Soros, like some like 88 year old fucking guys. He'd be like, I'll give you a million dollars. If you fumble a pass, I'd be like, eat my dick. What do I need?

A million dollars. I'll make that. I'll make that in four games. Right. Fuck your face. What do I care? Like, I mean, how much does a football player make in a year? Like a regular average football player.

It depends on the football player. They can make as little, I think, as like $500,000 a year if they're like a very, very low level person who doesn't play very often. But I was going to say, like, those guys don't start, right? Like, they're not starters. No, we're talking about like starters in the game. And those are the people you'd have to influence. They make millions of dollars a year. Yeah. So what are you offering that guy

that he wants? Right? Like I literally can't even imagine how any, and then you're doing all this because like, you don't think Taylor Swift can hold a press conference. The other thing too, that is not included into this is it's not just winning and losing. It's winning and losing makes you a saleable product to Nike. It makes you a saleable product to Gatorade. You're basically like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to throw this for the million dollars, but not for, I'm going to like, I could have won and gotten like a $20 million powering commercial, but instead I'm going to throw this away. So Taylor Swift can like, what the fuck is happening in your head? Taylor,

I love too, that like they've accused Taylor Swift of like the right has, they've accused Taylor Swift of, you know, being like, you know, manipulative around politics. Oh yeah. Because she's like, hey, people should vote. She didn't even say, she took flack from the right for encouraging people to vote. She did not even endorse a candidate at the time. She was just being like- They don't want people to vote.

And how telling is that? That the right has become so anti-democracy that it is a leftist position to encourage the citizenry to vote. Yeah. The idea of that, just say that out loud. Like here we are in a democracy and the guys on the right are saying it is a leftist position to get the American citizens to vote. How fucking, how far have we come? That wasn't the case when we were kids, dude.

No. That really wasn't. I don't were kids dude no that really wasn't i don't think so i don't remember it but that doesn't feel that doesn't feel like something that the right would have at least been willing to say out loud i guess maybe it was always the case yeah but maybe it wasn't something that the right would allow to be said out loud now we're in a place where we're like wait a minute we openly want to do we are openly saying that an informed citizenry exercising their civil right to vote is against our principles and against our best interests as Republicans. And that's the underlying statement, I think, about this whole thing is keep people out of the booth. And the more she reminds people, they're like hush girl don't you tell

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So Cecil, this story comes from Pink News. More Gen Z Americans identify as LGBTQ than as Republican. And again, this is an article I want to point out what's not in this article as well. So activists have hailed a demographic tsunami heading for American politics after a survey revealed that Gen Z are more LGBTQ plus and less Republican than any previous generation. So there's a poll from Axios from the 23rd of January, and those between the ages of 12 and 27, that's Gen Z, are less likely to be religious than other people. They polled 6,000 young people across 50 states. likely to be religious than other people. They polled 6,000 young people across 50 states.

21% of Gen Z Americans said they were Republican, compared with 32% of baby boomers. Gen Z adults, far less likely to identify as white Christians compared with baby boomers. Baby boomers are 54% likely to identify as white Christians. Gen Z, 27%. So we're talking about big, big numbers from like my dad, who is a baby boomer to Gen Z, which is my kids. Huge, huge, huge difference. It's a huge shift. The other thing too, is that Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ 28%. is that Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ 28%. Right. And one of the things I wanted to talk about was because for years, those numbers hovered at around,

I think they were like 10 to 15% for years and years and years and years. Right. And I really find this article encouraging in the fact that I think that our society has progressed enough so that more people feel comfortable coming out. And I think as time goes on, that number will normalize to a different number that we weren't

seeing before. When there was more people that were hiding who they were, I think there was more people who didn't want to come out or didn't want to be known as LGBTQ+. And I think now we're starting to see, I think we're going to see that number come up. And I don't think it's because of any other factor other than we were oppressive before. Yeah, I think that there's certainly a huge factor there, right? Like when you and I grew up,

like you went to high school in the 90s, right? Yeah. I went to high school in the 90s. right? Yeah. I went to high school in the 90s. There was one openly gay kid in my high school. Yeah, I knew like three maybe total. There was one kid named Corey who was openly gay in my high school, and he did not have a good time of it. I went to a high school that had 900 and change kids in my graduating class. That's a big high school.

Yeah, it's a big, big high school. So you got to figure like the graduating class is about 900. There's probably 3,500 students total in that high school. I don't want to pretend I knew all of them. Big school, I didn't know all of them. But like there weren't a lot of kids that were openly out, man.

Yeah, there just weren't. And it was still a common slur. It's funny if you look back at like the sitcoms that were reflective of the culture at the time, the biggest sitcom at the time was Friends. I rewatched Friends. I didn't watch it when it was of its time. And when Haley got sick, she's like, I want to watch some comfort food. So we watched Friends. And there are so many jokes in that show, which was of that time,

so many jokes in that show, which was of that time, of our time, Cecil, growing up, which rely on the idea of being gay, specifically male gay, as being bad in order for the punchline to work. Sure. That's a punching down joke. Yeah. Yeah. And that doesn't work at all now. Like those jokes don't even make sense anymore. They're seen as culturally taboo, but they're also just like, they don't play as funny anymore, right? Because we've moved on from there. We've moved so far on from there. Really encouraging. Really, really encouraging. What is interesting that is not in here is they indicate how many of Gen Z identify as Republican, right? And it's only 21%. They indicate how many in Gen Z identify as Republican, right? And it's only 21%. They indicate how many in Gen Z identify as LGBTQ because they like to make that contrast.

They don't anywhere in here say how many Gen Z people identify as Democrats. They have the Republican number, but they don't have the Democrat number. And I'm curious what that is, because I do think that the gens, and they actually hit the nail on the head in the article, I think, when they're talking about gender, is they say clearly Gen Z does not like to be labeled. 36%. 36%. It's in here? Did I just miss it? No, it's in the other article. So there's another article we're going to talk about too in conjunction. And Tom, the answer to your question is in Gen Z Might Be MAGA Movement's Undoing. This is an opinion piece from the Washington Post.

They didn't list that number in the Pink News article, but they did list it in this particular Washington Post article. And they say 36% of Gen Z adults identify as Democrat. Their teenage counterparts are more likely to be independent, 51% than older generations. Yeah. And that independent thing, I think, is kind of what I thought was interesting because from that line from the Pink News thing said, and I think this is interesting because it speaks, I think, to gender and politics. Clearly, Gen Z does not like to be labeled. Yeah, and they're not necessarily wanting to hang their hat with a particular political party these days.

So they're referring there to like, they don't, you know, the idea of being labeled as being a Republican, less interesting. As a Democrat, less interesting. More of them are independent. More of them are seeking their own identity as far as sexual and gender identity. This is a much less staunchly reliable category of people. This is a group of people that is like, sell it to me. Prove it to me.

Earn it. Show it to me. Interesting. I guess that's a really interesting way to think about it, that they are less, they're less committal in some ways and less easier to read, right? I think like,

I think we've seen polls since 2016. I think people have been, we've seen polls come out and they haven't been very, they haven't done good forecasts, right? We've seen it and we think, well, that forecast was really off or, you know, it did come up with the same result, but man, you were, you said there was like a 14 point lead and it was, it turned out to be a two point lead. How did that? And I think we're seeing, I think more of those people grow up and more of those people get involved in these polling systems and they're throwing things off

in a way because I think they are so noncommittal. I think that's a really interesting observation there. I think the other thing that this Washington Post article says is that fewer and fewer of them are identifying as Republican. But then there's another article, and this one will be included in the show notes as well, and it's called A War Within Gen Z. And this is a Business Insider article, and it shows that their polling shows that more young women are becoming leftist and more young men are starting to become conservative. They're turning more conservative. And they even list some of the movements where they say young men, over a majority of young men, think feminism is bad. Yeah, man.

Majority of young men think feminism is bad. Yeah, man. I think there's a right-wing crisis taking place among young men right now that is terrifying. When you look at the big influencers for young men, they are right-wing influencers, man. It's Joe Rogan. It's More Plates, More Dates. It's Andrew Tate. It's all this fucking toxic. Yeah, man. There's it's Joe Rogan. It's more plates, more dates. It's Andrew Tate. It's all this fucking toxic hero. Yeah, man. Ben Shapiro. How is the, how is that guy a hero for young men? You know, there is a, like all of the young male influencers are right wing influencers,

not all maybe, but like the big names. I mean, really the big names that are, that are huge out there. The manosphere is for young men, man. It's not for guys my age. It's not for guys 10 years younger than me. It's for like my kids. And anecdotally, which means nothing, but I'll share it anyway. Anecdotally, my 17 year old boys, like they tell me all the time, how much the people in their high school fucking love Andrew Tate, man. He's a big deal. He's such a big deal that teachers in high schools have to take classes on how to counter that kind of messaging.

It's part of their continuing education in many schools on how to counter that kind of messaging because young boys are being fed this really toxic anti-feminist, anti-reality, in-cell-based messaging. And that's, make no mistake, that's what that messaging is. I think when you see someone talk about feminism like these young men are talking about feminism

and they're saying, you know, feminism essentially is taking from me. That's what they see it as. They see it as something that's taking from them. What you have is a privileged group that is suddenly seeing someone else receive a status that is going from unprivileged to normal, right? It's underprivileged to normal, or at least trying to correct for that error, right? They see that as an attack on themselves. It has nothing to,

often it'll have nothing to do with them. It doesn't include them. They're not even involved in the equation, but they see it as a way to make themselves think that there's something is being taken from me. And when you're privileged, that always feels like an attack when someone else starts to get equality. It always feels like an attack. And they just don't recognize that their gender

has a privilege. Absolutely. And I want to read directly from this article. Richard Reeves, the founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men, has meticulously documented the challenges facing young men in America. They are struggling more in school, are less likely than women to go to and graduate from college, have fewer close friends than previous generations, and are four times as likely to commit suicide than women. Reeves argues that this state of affairs requires that we hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at once. Men at the highest rungs of the economic ladder are still advantaged by a system that perpetuates gender inequality, while men on the lower rungs of society face unique challenges because they are men. And I do think that one of the challenges that they face is the identity of

what it means to be male is right now in flux. And it used to be that being male meant a whole bunch of really definable and definably good for male things. of being male are being seen as rightfully patriarchal and create inequality and are not, you know, de facto good things. And I think a lot of young men feel like they're entering into a world where they don't understand what their value proposition is. And they don't understand what's expected of them as men. And they think a lot of young men are entering the world not knowing what expressions of masculinity are going to be socially valued versus socially unvalued. And that moment of cultural shift takes time, and it creates tension, and it creates tension and it creates like nervousness and it creates opportunity for these right-wing grifters who rush into that vacuum and they fill it with fear and toxicity. And these, these guys just rush into that space because this is also an age where people are

trying to find themselves. So it's this horrible confluence of forces that I think is really poised to create a generation of uniquely toxic men that I am really worried about. It's easy to manipulate the disaffected. And I think when you see a group of people who buy into that, they buy into their own,

and then they start buying into their own victimhood, and then they start getting that preached back to them, you're getting a, you know, what it does is it feeds itself, right? So once they start to buy into it, then they start buying into this drivel that, you know, Andrew Tate's going to read off to him, or Ben Shapiro's going to read off to him about how the world hates you and how it's so tough for you, et cetera, et cetera. It's going to be a perpetual cycle

where they just keep bringing themselves down. And we're in a position now where those numbers about feminism, those numbers about whether or not these males, the suicide numbers, those are terrible numbers. That's an awful situation for young men to be coming into their adulthood and being so disaffected and so easily led.

There needs to be somebody who is a good force for masculinity. Masculinity is not a negative, right? It's not a bad thing. It just so happens that, you know, toxic masculinity is a terrible thing. And reinforcing, you know, patriarchy is a bad thing. But there's a place for masculinity. There's absolutely a place for masculinity.

And I think the problem is that there's not a good outlet out there that's showing people this is good masculinity. Yeah. And, you know, I want to say, like, it's something I've thought about a lot and I've thought about it with respect to, to, to my boys personally is that, you know, I think that we are, and I think very rightfully, so please don't mistake me. I think very rightfully, we've come to a place where we are doing a better job at telling boys what they are not supposed to do and supposed to say. We have not coalesced socially around what they should do and say and be. And I think if you just strip things away from people

without offering them good role models and offering them good opportunities and good growth modes that they can like see themselves in, see a way for them to express masculinity in ways that are healthy. If we just say no all the time, and we should be saying no to all the things we're saying no to, so please don't misunderstand me, but we are not replacing it with powerful yes role models, then the yes role models are going to be the Andrew Tates. Because these kids want,

like we want to model ourselves after somebody. Like, the world needs heroes, right? Like, heroes play an important narrative and cultural and formative element in sort of how we see ourselves. And you know what I mean by heroes. I'm not saying, like, Captain America. I'm saying, like, there are many different types of heroes in the broad Joseph Campbell-esque sense, right? So like, I think that as far as masculine and ideals are concerned, we've done a lot of really important work to say no to a lot of the toxic masculinity stuff, but we've not really coalesced around the yeses.

And that creates this real deep sense of sort of social unease for boys and men. Now for guys like you and I, like you and I are like long established in our sense of self and our sense of family, our place in the world and in the workplace amongst our peers, we're fine. Like I'm always going to be fine. I'm a 46-year-old cishet white guy. Like the world's built literally for me. But it's a crisis for these Gen Z kids. And it is. And the problem is

always, who's going to pay the biggest price if we raise a generation of toxic males? It's women. Because who will be victimized by a generation of toxic males? It's not men. And who's got an amazing Pied Piper routine to snatch them

up? It's the MAGA crowd. Yeah, man. Yep. Yep. This is a real social moment that we need to figure out how to rise to meet. And I am curious and a little nervous to see if we rise to meet this social moment. Because right now, you know, the folks that are rising to meet that social moment are, that with the most influence, are largely really awful, scarily awful people. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I wish I could just build a wall between them so they could live together without even knowing that. This story comes from the New Republic as well.

Mike Johnson finally admits why he's killing the border deal. Republicans have a shot to address the so-called border crisis they keep railing about, and they are throwing it all away. So we can read Mike Johnson's words here to you guys. So he says, The former president has made it clear that he doesn't want you guys to move forward on this. And judging by his comments, this is CNN. And judging by his comments, he clearly wants to campaign on this issue.

Have you spoken to him about the Senate proposal? And are you simply trying to kill this to help him on the campaign? And Johnson says, no, Manu, that's absurd. He retorted before ranting about the federal government's job to protect its citizens. He says, we only have a tiny, as you know, a razor thin, actually a one vote majority right now in the House. Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we're trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure this issue is addressed. I've talked to former President Trump about this issue at length, and he understands that. He understands that we have a responsibility to do here. The president, president trump wants to secure the border president trump is the one

that talked about border security before anyone else did he ran on as you remember building the wall why because he saw this catastrophe coming he's supposed to say trump wants to get the credit for fixing this problem so if we fix it before he up, he won't be able to campaign on it. It'll take the wind out of his sails. Well, here's what's really happening. The Republicans look across the world, across our country, and they see that the one thing

that they were able to do for the past couple years, abortion, is a loser. Right. Right? Banning abortion's a loser. Can't campaign on it. They've seen that every time they try to campaign on it, create attack ads on it, do whatever they can, they've seen that it lost in all these places. And they know for sure that

the Democrats will be campaigning on it. So they need something to show people. So they've started creating a crisis, quote unquote crisis, recently to try to point out whether or not the border is secure, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm using air quotes here. But one of the things that they're trying to do is they're trying to make sure that people are talking about it. They're pushing the Overton window. Whenever they get an opportunity on this,egals, they're using charged language. They're shipping people across the country to create manufactured chaos. They're doing all this stuff very specifically because they want to make it seem like there is a huge crisis. And when they do that, they are creating their own chaos that they then feed into.

Well, then it gets picked up and the Overton window shifts. And suddenly you get all these Democrats that are like, well, we're on board for, you know, some massive immigration stuff, adopting things that are crazy. One of these guys, this Lankford guy who is who there is in this other story that we're going to talk about. He's from Oklahoma and Senator Lankford, he had a hand in these bipartisan talks, right? Because he and another Senator wrote a bill,

Tom Cotton, they wrote a bill, it's a proposed bill that was going to strip asylum down to nothing. Right. And so these guys are basically trying to create a immigration crisis. Then they're trying to convince the country that what they need to do is, is have draconian policies. And now the Democrats are even agreeing to some of these draconian policies and the Republicans are

agreeing to them and they still won't put them in place because they know if they do it too soon, then Joe Biden gets the credit. And we're stuck in this weird position where everybody's like, oh yeah, you know, we don't want the other side to get credit. We want to make sure that we get credit. It's like, aren't you forgetting who you work for? Like, don't you work for us? First off, I think that all this stuff is draconian and shitty, but you know, like the problem is, is that a majority of Americans have been convinced of this. Yeah, like this is such a clear cut, cannot possibly spin it any other way example of the straight up fact that the Republicans have no interest in governance. Yes.

They have no interest whatsoever in governance. This is a perfect example. They don't care about these ideas. They don't even care. And be very clear. They don't care about these ideas. They don't even care. And be very clear, they don't care about the border. They just know the border is a thing they can use

as a talking point to elect more Republicans. That's the only reason they care about it. That's the only reason they drum up the specter of the illegal alien, right? Like words they use

that are bad words, right? Like I'm using their words on purpose. Please don't email me that that's not, I know that we're not supposed to say it that way. Their language intentionally is built to upset, to inflame, to work people up against this like rush of these like MS-13 thugs. They're going to come in and like steal your jobs

and rape your babies, right? That's the kind of shit. Study drugs, fentanyl. Right. Yeah. If they can't keep that narrative, they can't keep the fear. They want the fear. This has nothing to do with governance.

This was never about governance. Because now the Democrats are saying, and I think it feels to me, Cecil, almost like a bluff call. Like the Democrats are saying like, great, let's sit down and put a bill together. We know you won't allow it to pass because you won't allow anything substantive to pass under our watch. We know this. Well, what happened before was Biden was going to change some of the executive orders, some of the stuff that Trump put in. Now, there's a lot of stuff that Trump put in for the border that, you know, that Biden hasn't removed. Right. Biden hasn't taken out.

There was initially some push to remove some of these executive orders and make new executive orders. And then Biden started getting all kinds of press because the senators and the congresspeople started saying, hey, you can't be you can't legislate through executive orders. You can't legislate through executive orders. And then this comes up. And so he's like, well, fine, let's sit down and do it. And they say, well, you should just do it through executive order. And like, and the other, the other piece that has to be considered here is all of this is taking place with a hostage in the background and the hostage is Ukraine. So what the right has said is that they will not even consider passing a funding bill to continue to oppose Putin's imperialism in Ukraine if they don't secure the border. And that was a great tough guy position that they were going to be able to campaign on, right? Is look at what we do.

America first. We're not going to send our money to Ukraine to fight their war until we fight our war down South. So the Democrats said, fine, fine, let's compromise. We'll do your border thing down South because we understand that like without protecting Europe, that Putin's going to run roughshod over Ukraine, that Ukraine will fall without American financial and military intervention. There is 100% certainty. Ukraine cannot keep this up on its own. So there's a hostage here. The Republicans are holding the lives of Ukrainians hostage, and they are really holding the fate of NATO and Europe hostage.

Yeah, yeah. That's what they're doing. Absolutely. So, like, there's a fucking sword over our head the whole time that this is being negotiated on the southern border. So then the Democrats say, okay, fine, let's come to the table. We'll meet most of your demands, actually. Republicans are like, nah, we're just bluffing. We don't actually want to pass any laws. We never wanted to pass any laws. What we want to do is not

govern. We just want to grandstand and watch the fucking shit blow up and play our fucking fiddle while the world burns. Well, and the other people that are injured in this are all the people who are shipped all over the country to different places all over the country that don't have services in those places. They don't have any services up here set up and then they never coordinate with us. So then they just drop a bunch of people off in five degree temperature

without telling anybody at a time. And suddenly there's a whole bus full of people that just came out of nowhere that now you have to scramble to try to help. And it's not that I don't think people around here want to help. I know for sure there are many, many organizations up here that want to help. They just want to coordinate it better. And the people down there literally want the chaos. They don't want to help people. They don't want to move people from the border to up here and to help them get settled. They want to move people up here so that we can say,

whoa, what are you sending all your people? We don't want them up here. That's not true. And it's not happening. But that's what they want. So they have to do it in a way that causes the most disruption. So they'll drive them into a big place

in the middle of the city and they'll just drop them off. And they'll be like, well, what are we going to do? These people are in flip-flops and they're in fucking windbreakers and it's five degrees out. And these inhuman fucks are just like, yeah, what are we going to do? These people are in flip-flops and they're in fucking windbreakers and it's five degrees out. And these inhuman fucks are just like, yeah, no, just throw them out there.

They're just real human beings seeking asylum. They fled their own fucking country a fucking thousand miles across a desert to try to get to us. And then we're like, yeah, no, what we'll do is we'll put you in the coldest place we have with nothing whatsoever. We're just going to drop you. Like that's the most inhumane, shitty thing. And we do it. We've been doing it for the past year. It's been happening for a year, man. And the thing is like the chaos and the cruelty are always the point.

It's always the point. That's literally the point. And like, like they, they are dropping these people off in the middle of the night and they are. And like, here's the thing. That's not by accident. We all have GPS. The buses have GPS.

I know what time I'm going to arrive at my destination within a handful of minutes, right? They set off and they make these trips, to your point, so that they drive people off and they create the maximum amount of human suffering and the maximum amount of systemic chaos. Because the only things the Republicans have at this point to offer is the chaos. That's all they can run on. They can run on chaos and misery. And that's it. Because they didn't show up at three in the morning because that's just what time the

bus showed up, man. I don't care if I'm planning a trip from here to Nevada, I can plan that trip and be like, yeah, I need to show up Thursday at one in the afternoon. I can be there Thursday at one in the afternoon, man. It's the easiest thing in the world with GPS to get that within. I'll even allow for some unexpected traffic to get with that within an hour or two, but they're showing up at three in the fucking morning. That's intentional. That is an intentional moment of chaos and fear and confusion. And I also want to point out that the states and the cities that have had these migrants and these asylum seekers brought to them, they have by and large risen to the challenge. Yes. they have risen to the chaos. They have salved over the misery

as best as anybody could be expected with no warning, no call ahead, no anything. Just, here's a bus full of human beings. Get the fuck out. Part of me says, like, what needs to happen next, because just a fucking bus driver on that bus, is the migrants need to just refuse to leave the bus. There needs to be a concentrated effort that if the migrants are put on these buses to just stay, just sit in on the buses. I just refuse. That way the bus companies eat shit and won't take these contracts. Yeah. And, you know, these people, there is plenty of funds out there.

These people make, there's enough money that goes into border security, border walls, border this, border that. There's all this money that gets fed into those systems, right? But what we don't have is systems to get people into our country. We don't have a systems that, that allow for immigration to flourish. We're a country of immigrants, man. We're a country with a declining population. These are things that we need to think about right now. We need to think about getting more immigrants into this country. We need to refresh the stores of people. There's fewer people that are having kids. There's more people that are going to be dying off soon. We need to make sure that we have enough people in this country that can help run the jobs that we have. It's just, everybody thinks that what happens is when an immigrant comes, he takes something from me. He's taking my American pie. It's getting, he's going to have that. That's his now. And you're like, no, there's enough for everybody. There's enough room and enough space and enough work for everybody. What we need to do is make sure that we refill these positions. Because I'll tell you what, 15 years, if you have

a draconian immigration policy, you're going to be Japan. You're going to be Japan without anybody who can take care of anybody who's elderly. You're going to have a declining population, no refresh, and you're going to have to suddenly open up the floodgates of people because you haven't done it yet. But you could have a whole new generation of Americans taking those jobs. Yeah. And that's exactly right. The thing is, if you open up the floodgates at the last minute, you've opened up the floodgates in an uncontrolled and chaotic fashion, which is bad for the migrant and it's bad for America, right? Because it doesn't give people opportunities to come in in a controlled way and to get settled and to have access to resources. And so like it will,

it'll take a longer time to solve the same problem that we could be proactively preparing for right now. I know what you're going to say. If you kill the mother, the fetus dies too, but the fetus is going to be aborted anyway. So why not let it go down with the ship? This story comes from WKMS. Kentucky GOP bill would require child support for fetuses. I actually have mixed feelings about this. This is an interesting, interesting, and it's hard to know whether this personhood bill feels genuine or not. You know, like,

are we trying to, I know they're saying it's a GOP bill. So that to me makes me feel like they genuinely feel like this. Yeah. I think that, okay, so here's, here's what this is strategically.

And here's where my, my, my feelings feel a little complicated and what I think the real answer is, but like strategically, what this is, is an attempt to declare fetuses as people. There's a fetal personhood movement that is taking place on the right that I think is largely disingenuous, but is part of the larger anti-abortion movement. And requiring that fathers pay child support to a fetus is an implicit recognition that the fetus is a person and that that child support supports a person. we don't have good social services in place for the necessary care and additional expenses incurred by women during pregnancy.

And if we are not going to put those social systems in place, and I think all of our history suggests that we will not, like, I mean, child support is a form of enforced social safety net for children. And I think it's like not entirely unnecessary, right? Like being pregnant is expensive. Sure. Healthcare is expensive. These things are real.

And like, I don't know that I feel entirely like it's unreasonable for someone to help. I think the person that should help, I think the system should help. I think the state should help. I don't believe in fetal personhood. I think that the state doing this is a clear attempt to create that personhood. But I feel like, fuck, man. but I feel like fuck man like it actually made me think differently about the social

effect and cost of pregnancy as something that like we should agree to bear together and this feels too like a bill that someone might bring if they're trying to prove a point about

how fetuses aren't people right this feels like the opposite could also be true if they're trying to prove a point about how fetuses aren't people, right? This feels like the opposite could also be true in another state where people were fighting against abortion, especially abortion that does, you know, anti-abortion or abortion that like only requires

like a first couple weeks or something and then you can't have an abortion afterwards. It feels like a bill that someone there might bring up to be like, fine, if women have to struggle with this, then men have to struggle with it too. And that would then maybe change the minds of the voters and the people in the state to not have these draconian abortion policies, hoping that they won't do the second thing. They'll realize the error of the first thing. And in this case, it feels like

they're just like, no, we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to do this thing. And you're like, but, but you're, wait, you're on the right. You're on the different side. It really confused the shit out of me. But, but it goes back to your point, which is they're trying to prove in through the laws that, you know, a fucking, a tiny dot of blood in an egg is now a person. Right. Yeah. And it's, it is confusing because like we don't typically, the way the system works is we typically make sure that the women pay all of the prices, right? They pay, they eat all the shit. Sure. So we don't, we don't have systems in place, largely speaking, to spread out the shit that gets eaten. So when women become pregnant

right now in all 50 states, the cost of that pregnancy is borne exclusively by the woman, right? So unless there is a man involved who agrees to bear some of those costs, but we are not required by law to help bear any of those costs until the baby is born. And only then does child support and responsibility financially kick in. I think that's kind of fucked up. Like, I do understand that like that is not reasonable. There's a part of me that's like, yeah, that's not, well, I don't think that's reasonable. Like if we're going to have, but then I also, like this is confusing to me. I feel super confused about this because like I also know this is a backdoor into fetal personhood.

If you feel like you're going to give them the inch, they're going to take that mile, right? So like if you stand on their side and say, yeah, no, I'm totally down with guys taking responsibility for this. But if I say that out loud, then you're like, fetal personhood. You're like, wait, I didn't say that. Right.

And again, the real answer, and I want to make it clear so we don't get a million emails. The real answer is that we should have better state-sponsored social safety nets that help pregnant women so that we don't put this burden on an individual, but instead we spread this burden out across our society. The problem is we're not going to do that part. We've already demonstrated 50 states. We're just not doing that piece. And then there's also like this complication. I want to read this because like this made my fucking eyes cross. Under the measure, if paternity cannot be established in utero, testing could be done after birth and the father would owe retroactive child support.

And I thought like, fuck, that's both fair and insanely unfair. That's right. Because it's like, it's like if you can't establish paternity and there's a reasonable, and I think that's complicated too, right? But there's a reasonable question about the paternity of the pregnancy, then yeah, I wouldn't want to just be like, yeah, I'm going to start writing checks. to just be like, yeah, I'm going to start writing checks because like, I do know that the system, once you start writing checks is like, you started paying, you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. Like, like, like the system, at least in Illinois is set up. I can, I can speak for Illinois. The system in Illinois is set up that like, if you're on that birth certificate and

you start doing any caretaking and you're on the birth certificate, it's not like you can find out a year later that that kid isn't yours and be like, not my kid, actually. I want out. That's not how that works. Once you're in, you're in. That's it. If you find out that your son isn't your son.

What happens if you go on Maury? What if you go on Maury? Right. That's the thing, dude. It's like once you're on that birth certificate and you start paying for shit, if you find out later, that's not your son. Yeah. Maury said I wasn't the father. I did a dance on stage. I know,

but you're putting that there. You're putting that kid through college, man. Like you're in for a penny. So like, wow. Also like, I can't imagine like having to pay retroactive child support for nine months could be a massive bill. Could be. You could just be like, all right, you know, you owe me $30,000. I mean, you could be like, you could really get hammered on something. So like, I have like a lot,

but I'm also like, yeah, but like, why should a pregnant woman have to eat all the shit? And I think you're absolutely right that this just needs to be a state thing. Like you need to find the funding so that this sort of thing, you know, that there is these, that these gaps that are covered,

they're covered by the state. You know, do we expect that we're going to take care of this kid for the rest of its life? No, but you know what? We're going to help the mother while she's pregnant. You know, like all these other countries

all over the world. I know they already do this. They seem to have these ability to encourage their population to have children and to help them through the process. They get more maternity leave. They get like long time off too, like a ridiculous time off. They have places where those people can bring their kids. They have way better daycare systems, cheaper daycare systems. They have, you know, they give parents boxes of shit before they have the kid, like all these care packages and stuff before they have the kid. Like other countries have figured out a way to do this in a way so that people are encouraged to have children and it doesn't feel like you're getting some sort of like worst social safety nets of Europe.

So England has like, like compared to like Germany and other places across Europe, the social safety net in England sucks rocks. And maternity leave in England is a year. Yeah. It's a fucking year. Like it's 12 weeks. In the United States.

Unpaid. And it's unpaid. All of it, every single day of it in America is unpaid. I mean, unless your company pays it, but your company probably won't. But that's not a legal protection. So like some companies, like my company has six weeks of paid leave and we only got that benefit last year.

And it was such a big deal to give six fucking paltry weeks of paid leave that like we had a whole fucking thing about it like they were like we were and everybody was understandably excited because last year or the year before last rather and for all the subsequent prior years and in most other companies not a day of paid leave yeah most and like in England, it's a year, a fucking year, man. Like, so we just don't give a shit here. Like we just don't give a shit. So part of me looks at this and it's like, well, fucking somebody should give a shit. Somebody should write checks, man. Somebody should write

checks. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We'll be out with a long-form article breakdown this upcoming Thursday. Tom is going to read several articles from The Atlantic. They had a special issue, What Happens If Trump Wins the Next Election? And several people wrote articles about past performance and future performance. And Tom's going to read about four of those. I think it's four articles that we're going to wind up posting for our patrons in one audio snippet.

So our patrons will get that. And then on Thursday, we will have the discussion. So you could check out The Atlantic's latest issue. It's a long issue, like I say, about 12 stories, I think. And then you can read that and then you'll be ready or you can become a patron and you can get those downloaded.

You can download that Tom reading some of these to you and we'll be talking about them on Thursday. So be sure to tune in then and catch us next Monday. But we're going to leave it like we always do today with the Skeptic's Creed.

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