Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 870: Medbed AI Slop

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Today's show is brought to you by Adam and Eve.com. Go to Adam and Eve.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 Gloria Hull Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is cognitive dissonance. Every episode we blasts 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 there is no government

there is no government today is day two day two of the shutdown they said that they might come back in to do some votes but then nobody was nobody was optimistic that they would actually

get the government back up and running yeah because the Democrats are not budging on their particular domain And the Republicans are not unified enough to, because even one Republican came over and voted against it. Rand Paul voted against it. So, I mean, so they're not even unified enough on their own to get the government back working on.

And they need a lot of people. They need 60 fucking people. And you got to work with the other side. That's why it's set up that way. Yeah, man. Well, at least for now. We'll see if they bust the filibuster. You know, that's the nuclear option that's always available.

procedurally is for them to break the filibuster rule. And if they break the filibuster rule, then that goes to a simple majority, they'll pass their they'll be able to reopen the government. And that's been the sort of like third rail nuclear option that nobody's wanted to touch for like a long

time. And there's reasonable conversations, I think, that have been had on both sides of the argument about maybe we shouldn't have this rule. Maybe we shouldn't have a 60 vote rule in order for us to get anything done in in government right now, you know, wherever.

Like, maybe that's just a bad rule. I don't really know if it's a bad rule or not. I don't know, man. I don't know if it's a bad rule or not. I don't know. I actually don't know if this shutdown is a good thing or not. I have such mixed feelings about this. Like, on the one hand,

I like to see some fucking backbone from the Democrats. Like, let's stand up. Like, here we are. There is a gutting of Medicaid. There is a elimination of the health care subsidies that's going to raise health care costs for, you know, something like 20 million people that get their

medical insurance through Obamacare or the ACA and so the Democrats are standing on that issue and saying until you fix that, we're not voting on this fucking bill. I support that. I get that. I am really afraid, though.

I'm really afraid that they're going to bust the filibuster and then you've got three and a half years of the most corrupt and the least safeguarded guardrailed government in American history. with no filibuster. That scares the shit on me. I'm also afraid of like the government basically just being like, great, thanks for shutting me down. We're just going to take this opportunity to fire everybody. And I mean, that's kind of what they've said they're going to do. And like, all of that

is set against the backdrop of maybe they'll just fucking do it anyway. Yeah. You know, like, so part of me is like, don't give them an excuse. And then the other part of me is like they don't, they clearly don't need an excuse. So I don't know what the right. thing to do is. I feel like I've been reading about this and I don't know how I feel about it. I don't know that there's a lot of people who know what the right thing to do is, right? But what I think is so exhausting is being the adults every single time. Yeah, man. Being the responsible person every single time, being the one who every time has to compromise. Every single time there is some sort of problem. Look at how they compromised with the Republicans to keep the government

open when Biden was in office. They compromised with them all the time. They had to because that's how the rules work. Every time they have to compromise, they won't do it. And then they use government websites to blame the Democrats

in a clear violation of the Hatch Act. You're not allowed to do this. Like that's 100% not allowed and they get away with it. They somehow get away. They just openly break laws all the time. and the responsible side

doesn't do that sort of thing. So, like, Biden never did that, right? Whenever there was a threat of the government closing down, he didn't take over every website and put his propaganda up on that website. He didn't do that. But this person, this Trump did.

Now what happens next time is, let's just presume that somehow, some way a Democrat gets in office or a left-leaning of any kind, right? It doesn't have to be a Democrat, whatever it is. They get in, will they do this? Because I don't think they would ever stoop that low. I don't think they would.

And should that? There's a whole, should we do this question rather than will we do this question? Yeah, and it's a legitimate question. And the thing is, like, Trump has come out and maybe it's just posturing, but I don't know. He's come out and pretty gleefully said, I can't believe they handed me this much power. Did you see the video he reposted to Truth Social? Jesus Christ, no. Okay, let's put it on the big one, the big screen.

I hate finding stuff out now. You know what I mean? Oh, I know. Like, finding stuff out is not good. I'm with you, Tom. Okay, so this is a minute along. We might get demonetized, although I don't know if we would or not, mainly because the way it's set up is it's a fake song, so it's a parody song.

I don't know it. I don't know if it's copyrighted. But you're going to hear a rendition of don't fear the Reaper. Now, this is Donald Trump. This is his truth social page. He shared this. This was not made by his team. It was made by.

Remember that Brendan Dilly guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll see the last screen will be Brendan Dilley's media media team. And Donald Trump has retweeted. Here we go. Now their time has come Here the power's gone Rustford is the Reaper

He builds a pen, the funds and the brain Here comes the Reaper Dems your babies Here comes the reaper, gonna tie your hands Here comes the reaper, won't be able to fly Here comes the reaper, baby, end your plans. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so just if you weren't watching this, I got to explain it for you. So what it was was an AI video of Russ Vaught, the guy who's the part of the... He's the office of management and budget. And he's also the guy who is the architect of Project 2025, yeah. So that person walking around in a Reaper costume throughout with a sickle and a bag of money at a certain point, cutting jobs and sending people to the unemployed.

line right so that's that's what he's doing throughout the whole thing trump is on cowbell it's not the cowbell it's actually just a bell that he's banging for real but he's banging it out of out of keys in like druid robes and he's in he's in reaper robes as well jd vans is in a suit on the drums for some reason and they and they show these constant scenes of russ walking in and cutting essentially cutting they show the dems as babies at a certain point because that's what the song said right dems are babies And then at the end, when you heard blah, blah, blah, it was just showing Democrats talking. Yeah.

And that's what it was. So it's a, we have, we have taken presidential discourse to this level. This is also such a fucking open threat. Yeah. That's what I'm, that's why I'm like, I don't know what the right thing to do is. Because like, when you are, your point's exactly right. I'm just going to echo it a little differently. Like, when you are the only responsible.

party in the room. You are always playing at a handicap. You are always playing catch up. You are always playing behind the other guy. Like if you, if the other team is, is willing to cheat and burn things down and hurt other people and like they don't give a shit. Like that is a really hard thing to overcome. You are always playing with your fucking hands tied behind your back because the other party is willing to burn shit down around them. The other party doesn't care what damage they cause. So you're busy trying to accomplish what you need to accomplish and undo their damage at the same time, which spends all of your fucking resources in three or four different places at once,

and it makes you scattered. And it makes it impossible to have a cohesive message and makes it impossible for you to sort of have a unified front because you're constantly doing this damage control and constantly trying to run around and try to fix these problems. Strategically, being willing to fucking burn the house down does, it is how autocrats gain power. It's so liberating for that side because they don't care.

They don't care at all. But like, this has now become something different. I really, like, I really am at a place, Cecil. I read an article this morning from the Freedom from Religion Foundation where they were talking about, you know, like Trump is looking at labeling any liberal group or anybody who espouses anti-capitalism. Yeah. That's why I read it this morning.

His spouse is like anything It's like anti-capitalist or like anti-Christian Or anti-like as like a terrorist Yeah Ciesel, that's us. Yeah, that's us, dude. That's us. We're terrorists.

How do we live in a world where sitting in front of a microphone and espousing a political view which is a political view that largely is like in support of a major party candidate? This isn't even like some crazy fringe set of viewpoints, right? Like, we're progressive Democrats. That's what we are. We vote them. Yeah. So, like, we're progressives that vote them, right? We're trying to push the Democrats

further left. But, like, at the end of the day, like, we're just Democrat. And, like, we're at a place where I think if you are an influential voice, you, you could end up in a fucking jail. You could end up defunded, demonetized, debanked, fired from your job. Like, these are real consequences that we have three and a quarter more years, bro. There's a lot of time left still. A lot of time on the clock. A lot of time on the clock. When I, when I see Trump do this, it's pretty obvious to see, like, this is a person that has the emotional intelligence of a, like a toddler, right? Like a small child. Yeah. They were wronged. And now, I don't know if you've ever seen, I'm sure you've seen, God, you have kids. You have like four of them. So I'm sure you've

seen tantrums. I'm sure you have seen tantrums in your lifetime. I have them because of the kids. I've witnessed children throw tantrums. Sure, of course. I've thrown tantrums myself. But I know for sure that I've watched children throw tantrums. And when you watch Trump go in and reach into the guts of government and just gleefully pull out handfuls of bits and throw them behind him and sort of do it with a vigor that really is,

it's almost like, you know, like really those unstable people who when they break up with somebody and they're like burning pictures of them and just going crazy. Just, you know, like they're scratching their face off of photos and they're burning all the fucking, they're smelting down all the jewelry they were given or whatever. That's Trump, right? That's Trump.

That's an unhinged person who needs lots of therapy, right? You need lots of therapy. You need somebody to talk to you through this sort of, this ball of anger that's in your body. And he's doing it, and he's doing it in a way that is constantly reinforced by all the people who also feel aggrieved. So there's a feedback loop that happens while he's being malicious. There's a feedback loop of people who all get some juice out of this, who all get something out of it. And then the only people who are the adults, which is what I talked about earlier, they're all trying to figure out how to diffuse it.

How do I diffuse any of this? And there's no good answers. No. There's no good. And there's no one willing to hold Trump accountable for the things he does. Tell me that is an impeachable offense under any single person. Anybody, dude. Any president before.

Any single president before would be impeached for doing something like that. Any president before would be impeached for turning the entirety of all of the websites in the government into their personal message board. Yeah. They would be impeached for that. That is something. sitting those generals down this last week and giving them a partisan speech about you and basically saying your job depends on me.

You would be impeached for that. At this point, there's no limit to the number of impeachable offenses. No, like a few things. Like I feel like, and this is just playing like armchair psychologist, but like I feel like Trump is a guy who for his entire life has always, always been able to get over on the people that told him no, right? And then he had his first term, and a bunch of people told him no. And now he's out for it, dude.

Now he's out for it because he has never experienced rejection. He's never experienced successful pushback. That's just, it's entirely unacceptable. He's lived a life where that's just been entirely unacceptable. If, don't fear the Reaper video, if Joe Biden, if you did the same video, right, And instead of Trump and vote and J.D. Vance, it was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Hakeem Jeffries as the major players. And they had a similar parody. The evangelical right would be losing their minds over the satanic messaging.

Yeah. Losing their minds. Oh, they're coming out right. Don't fear the Reaper. It's just clearly satanic. Where are they at now? Yeah. They're all everybody is, everybody is lying or they're in fear of this fucking guy.

because mechanistically, he's broken down the pieces of government that can hold him accountable. I think that we are beyond, it used to be in term number one, it was like, well, who is going to do the work of holding him accountable? I think the problem now is that mechanistically, we've removed the mechanisms themselves that allow that to happen. So even if somebody wanted to hold him accountable, there's no longer a mechanism to do it. The Supreme Court has made sure of that. I don't think that, like, he can be reined in. Most of the systems that we have, I think we discovered, are mostly informal systems. They rely on everybody having this sort of, like, gentle persons agreement with one another,

that, like, we want to live in something that we call a democracy. But if you strip that away and you say, well, we're actually living, we're willing to do something different, then there's really, there's no underpinning to it. And I think he's exposed the central weak. of the United States government that at its core it relied on civility and if you remove civility

as it's like foundational underpinning if you just take that out there's nothing else I don't actually think that there's anybody in a position to hold him accountable or anybody in the administration for that matter

maybe I'm wrong but I hope his cholesterol holds him accountable my God can his cholesterol just hold him accountable? Can his cholesterol just hold him accountable? for the rest of us. But while we're on the subject

of weird AI videos that he's been posting, there's two stories because he's not stopping. Like, he's posting weird AI videos throughout. And it's not just this because he posted a video of Hakeem Jeffreys in a

sombrero. Yeah. So he's posting these racist videos to show Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero basically saying they want to give the Democrats want to give health insurance to undocumented people. That's basically what they're saying. And so he's putting him in a sombrero

and he's having him, you know, play like a mariachi band or whatever behind Schumer. And he's posting these AI videos that are to his, and a bunch of people who are calling him out on it. Right. What the fuck's happening? And they asked J.D. Vance about it. And J.D. Vance just laughed. He thought it's funny. He's like, that's funny. That's hilarious.

That's super funny. I think that that's funny. J.D. Vance, like, when they say, like, when he gets called out and they say, like, hey, this is, like, this is clearly racist. He says, I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, you do, man. But, like, being, what's happened now is that the right has just completely dismissed the idea of racism as something we should avoid. Yes.

Right. It used to be that if, like, you were called out as, as a racist, that was something you had to contend with. And now what they've done is they've shifted that Overton window so far that the idea of racism itself is no longer something that's worth contending with. We don't, we don't even deal with that. That's not, it's been, that idea of not being racist isn't actually a value we hold. Yeah. So it's not anything you can use against this. Yeah.

It's not anything. I don't care. Yeah, I'd be like, if you were like, Tom, you're not a smurf. I'd be like, yeah. What? Yep. Well, okay. So, Tom, I want to play this other video for everybody.

this other video was posted to choose social now he deleted it I have to go to Twitter to watch it it is all AI so this is a hundred percent

AI even Trump himself is AI and then Trump himself tweeted out an EAI video of himself talking at his desk

that isn't real do you think he knows the difference between real and fake at this point I can't be sure I can't be sure but this

and and you're going to to listen to it if you're just listening to the show, but understand that it's literally just AI. The person who's announcing this from Fox News is AI. The person, Trump himself is AI. And all the imagery you see in the middle when

they're talking about these things called med beds, which if you're not familiar, this is a conspiracy theory amongst crazy people who think that the elite have this fucking magic technology that they fucking load you into like a cartridge. And you're in a weird bed that can then

sustain your life and it just fix all problems. So listen to this. This is what was posted on the president's true social page and then taken down. Breaking now, President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new healthcare system, the launch of America's first medbed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen. Every American will soon receive their own medbed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.

This is the beginning of a new era in American health care. In this first phase, only a limited number of med bed cards will be released. Registration details will be announced very soon. I have so many questions. Like, legitimately. Why would you post that? Like, the question is a really good question. what the fuck would you be thinking?

You know this isn't... You're Trump. You know this isn't real. You know there's no med beds and medbed cards. You know you weren't just saying that. What's the game? I don't understand anymore, man. Do you understand?

I don't. I literally don't. I saw this the other day and I thought, you're making promises as the president in the United States that are universal health care-like promises. Well, yes. Right? I mean, like, take away all the craziness of it being this weird AI video that he didn't even make, that he then reposts to everybody, and it's about a conspiracy theory. So take all that away. Let's shove that under our rug. We'll sweep it under there. We'll stop the fuck on it for a few minutes just to forget that that happened.

But your message is a universal health care message, a position that your party vehemently disagrees with. What on earth are you thinking? Cecil, I have the most dark thought. Okay. Is this like a step towards some kind of euthanasia card? Like, I feel that's wrong. That's crazy. That's sci-fi dystopian shit.

I don't mean it. But Seesol! But Seesol! You've read this book. I have. I have. This is a sci-fi book. It's a trope.

It's a trope. Right. It's a trope. Absolutely. Oh, like we get everybody to think they got a met card. Children of Men quietest stuff. Thank you, yes. Everybody thinks they got a fucking medbed car to get free health.

Then all the sick people go to this place. And then instead of getting a medbed, they're all like... Soilent green. Crematoriumed or whatever. They're all Soilent Green now. Like, well, yeah, I just... Soilent Green is made from med bets. Yeah.

I don't think that's happening. That's not my conspiracy theory. It's okay to have a conspiracy theory now because they're endorsed by the government, Tom. So you could have whatever conspiracy theory you would like to have. Because it's perfectly fine. It's all the same. Because there's... That's not an impeachable offense anymore.

Okay, let's lift the rug up and pull these stuff out. I shoved underneath earlier. It's an AI video of himself talking about himself crazy, which is genuinely insane. Tell me right now, if Biden posted this, wouldn't they all be saying he needs to come out? This is it. He's a crazy person. He's a 25th Amendment or whatever. He's genuinely senile, right?

Yeah. I see, so I can't come up with a reason why. he would post this and then take it down, right? Like, because it suggests that when he posts it or posted it, maybe he thought it was real. But like, how would you think it was real? That was you. That was you. That was you.

That would be like me tricking me into doing it. Yes. How do I trick myself? Hey, do we have magic beds that I talked about in a press conference on five? No, what? The only explanation is that his memory is now memento-like, where he doesn't remember what he did. And so he's leaving, he's constantly tattooing his body and leaving video messages for himself later on

to know what he did yesterday. And so he thought he recorded it because he can't remember. He can't put new memories together. That's the only explanation, right? This wouldn't be crazy if it was, this would be, if this was a fantasy movie, it would be hard to believe.

Yeah, that's the thing. If it would be a hard to believe fantasy movie right now. You'd be like, this movie's headed in a stupid direction. Come on. This is getting done. Come on. Stop straining my credo. Genuinely, I don't know when all this turned,

I think probably when Hillary didn't get elected, but genuinely, the pandemic was one of those moments too where you're like, hold on, are we really doing this? Yeah, man. Are we really doing this? Are we really like, I don't need no stupid mask. I'll breathe in your face. Like, I do you remember that?

Where you're just looking around and you're thinking, come on, are we really like that? It's insanity. We live in genuine insanity. This is my weekly plea. I would like out of the insimulation. Yes. Please put me in a med bat, please.

And then beam me out. Scottie. Cecil, if the medbed is just like, like if it is just like a suicide booth, I'll still go in it right now. Tom's like pushing other people out of the way. Let me in first. Give me in.

Let me in first. Tom is cannonballing into that thing. Jesus, what? Tom's get a belly flop like it's the pool. He's going to jump inside of that thing. When it comes to AI, Cecil, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't.

Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't. Yeah. Just say it. Yeah. Oh, it's my birthday. And you know what that means. It's your birthday, too, because when it's my birthday, then I pass on the glorious savings to you.

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It's full of money and blood Straight out of A-pack And he's in the tall cotton But he ain't forgotten Starve away And my governor Bies Israeli bonds With the taxes

And the poor Down in Arkansas She says, Lucky me, I'm a hook of me Starve away stories from New York Times. Democrats pull away from APEC reflecting a broader shift to quiet retreat by Democrats from the preeminent pro-Israel lobbying group

is the latest evidence of a realignment underway in Congress on Israel. Fucking good. Thank goodness, man. What does Israel have to do in order for people to pull away? What is crazy to me is how much influence Israel, the nation of Israel, has over the things that we do in the state. country. So much. We've seen it for years and years and years. After October 7th, we saw that there was some real issues, some real problems over there. We also saw how they were handling it.

We talked about it. I want to say two or three months afterwards, the horror that was happening in Gaza, the way in which that they were attacking, bombing, they're now systematically starving people. They're collecting people. And I mean, you're seeing it's just a genuine, disgusting display of hurting people to hurt them. That is literally what you're doing. Many different organizations across the world have called it a genocide. We called it that over a year ago at least. Other people have been jumping on, calling it this.

You're starting to see that term become normalized with what is happening in God. You're starting to see more and more people, more and more and more organizations, more and more and more different types of groups of people are starting to call it that. And you're seeing that many people across the globe, different countries across across the globe, different countries across, the globe are thinking, this is a genuine horror it needs to stop. Yeah. And having, you know, it's too late now for last election, right? It's too late now for these people to walk away last election. But I will say this.

I'm happy that they are not continuing on the path and being stoned, like completely stony on this and saying, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. We're only going to support Israel. Yeah. I'm happy that they're starting to change their tune on this. what I would urge people to do and urge people not to actually urge people not to do when it comes to this

is if somebody is changing their mind about Gaza right now someone is starting to see what's happening there and they're starting to change their mind about Gaza please don't shame them that they should have done it sooner yeah that shit is fucking garbage some people just didn't get there before you did right that's okay

when you do that that is you trying to say you're more virtuous and you were more virtuous earlier. Don't do that to them. Welcome them in and say, yeah, it's a bad place. What's happening over there is bad. Let's try to fix it.

Let's try to stop it. Let's do our best. Let's work together. But there's a group of people out there that very much want to attack everybody else who's now coming over and seeing how bad it is. Yeah.

Well, and I would add one to that. I would say if you are the kind of person who you saw early what was going on and you were frustrated and angry that everybody else didn't see what you saw, saw. And now you see that people are starting to, you know, come to your side of the argument. This is a nice opportunity to reflect, I think, and ask people directly. So what changed your mind? Yeah, right? Because that will help you understand how to communicate your values differently

for the future. What we do instead is we vilify people who didn't change their mind fast enough, right? Because they had an effect or they caused or whatever it is, right? Whatever it is. whatever the reasoning is. That is like, that's not useful. We have to do it. When it comes to especially stuff like this, we have to think about our ideals and our ideals, but we have to think about like,

what are we going to do with those to have the maximum impact we need to have? And like, there's been people who are going to be so mad and they're going to say, but I've been screaming since day one. Good. Yes, absolutely. Some people have, and that's awesome.

And those people help tip the scales. Yes. What I want you to hear is exactly that. It's like your voice, sometimes voices have to aggregate and accumulate and happen over time in order to convince other people. I wish it weren't that way. I do. But it is. And we should just recognize that that's part of it. And we should ask those people, what is it that help? What was the thing you saw or heard or read that helped you understand how to move you from here to there? Because that'll help to craft messages for the future. like we have to be practical about our impact and our ability to make further impacts

and get things done. You know, I thought it was very encouraging this week when, I think it was this week, when Australia and Canada and Britain all signed and said like, we are formally recognizing a Palestinian state. Yeah. That is, that was this week.

That's a big fucking deal. That's a real big fucking deal. Like, should, are there people who are like, well, why to fucking take you so long? Yeah. Is that a legitimate criticism? Absolutely. Is it useful in this political moment? I don't think so. Yeah. We saw this week that there was the problem with the Greta Toonberg was out there on the flotilla. They got captured. Then they get blasted on social media. They're trying to shame those people and trying to make it seem like they weren't out there to help anybody.

It's just awful. Like there's some genuinely bad people in Israel right now that are doing really, really horrible shit and hurting a lot of people. Right-wing government of Israel is a fucking nightmare. Hurting a lot of people. And the more people that know about it, the better off we are. So keep, you know, the people who were early on, great. You were early adopters. You're the type of people who can help continue to spread this message. Now you have more help.

Yeah. Look at your hair. Look at that blouse. And the way that skirt hangs. And those socks. You don't seem to be exactly the type to make this guy behave like a human being. Let's start all over again. Oh, brother.

Oh, brother is right. Look at that hair, that skin, that mouth. And now look at that blouse. And now look at the skirt. And the socks. Thanks a lot for helping us prove a point. helping is prove a point. It's from New York Times.

Trump administration asks colleges to sign compact to get funding preferences. Demand sent to nine top schools included pledging to freeze tuition for five years and to commit to strict definitions of gender. Huh. Where's that? Where's that? Yeah. Where's that, bud? Where's that?

Because this certainly feels like you're creating a system in which you are forcing people to teach others only. things that you approve, which to me sounds like a state-funded or state-sponsored education, a sort of, you know, like a re-education camp, if you will. That's what it sounds like to me. I don't know what it sounds like to other people. I mean, that sounds like that to me. That's fucking what it is, man. There has always been a divorcing between government and these private academic institutions, right? And when I say private, I recognize that many of them are state funded, and that many of them also receive private and state institutions receive lots of federal funding as well. But they've been allowed to, they're not, they're not fully

owned by the federal government, operated by the federal government. We fund them as public institutions because we recognize the social value that they provide. But they operate independently and academically independently. And we've understood for a long time up until now that academic independence is necessary in a democracy, right? Like, you cannot have, you cannot have liberty if you do not have freedom. You cannot, a freedom of thought and privacy and the ability to express yourself. Like, like, you have, they all work together. Yeah.

The ability to, like, say that we have a functioning democracy, but the government tells everybody what they're allowed to teach and what they're not. This is, like, like, I remember reading a book, Cecil, years and years ago. ago, there's a book I read called Reading Lolita in Tehran. And it really was about the moment, like the cultural and political moment in Tehran where it used to be that like women would go to university and they would take English classes and they would wear, you know, pants and skirts and regular clothes. And they would read literature like Lolita and, you know, and then like over a relatively short period of time, the entire cultural and political landscape shifted.

And those schools came under the thumb of an autocratic regime. and I think about that fucking book all the time right now all the time and at what point are we getting there are we there? Are we just on fucking phase one? I don't know that we're not man

the winning of and the changing of liberal institutions because a lot of these colleges they're liberal institutions I'm like let's be honest they're liberal institutions but they're liberal institutions

not because they're indoctrination into liberal ideas. They're liberal institutions because reality itself skews liberal. Reality itself skews left. So if you're going to a place that talks a lot about the truth, much of what you're going to have to learn would be considered lefty nonsense to a great deal, good deal of the population of the United States. Sure. So they had this plan for a long time. They wanted to try to disrupt these institutions as much as possible. Project 2024 lays it out. They want to try to disrupt these institutions. They want to attack these institutions. They want to de-legitimize these institutions. And then they want to supplant all the information that these

people get with the information that they provide. Because if they can do that, they will create more people like them. Yep. Yeah. And they will carbon copy their ideas onto a larger swath of the populace. Now, they wouldn't do that if it was just regular old reality out there. Right. They have to warp reality in some way to do it. And so what they're going to do is they're going to warp reality by getting people who you pay a lot of money to to lie to you. Yeah. And like, start combining these efforts together, right? So what I mean by that is there is a strong, I mean, undeniably, there's a strong effort. J.D. Vance has said it out loud, so it's in conspiratorial. Like, there is a strong effort to buy the U.S. government to push women out of the workforce and out of the educational sector,

right? So J.D. Vance has said, like, we fucking stay home, have a baby. What are you going to school for. Charlie Kirk, beloved of the right, said that the only reason women are going to college is to meet, is to meet like somebody to marry, right? So let's push women out. Then let's vilify education. So less people go to college at all. Then we'll take over the colleges themselves. So the few people that go are men and that they're indoctrinated into a right-wing worldview. And what's left? Yeah. What is left? We have at that point literally left. Yeah. Right. We have at that point created a society run entirely by men, educating mostly men, educating mostly only men into a right-wing worldview, and pushing. Only white men, probably, too. Mostly white men. Yep. And pushing everybody else onto the fringes. Yeah. This is not like, this is just, it's right there. Yeah. It's right there. It's happening. This is, this is what you do when you want to carbon copy your own ideas as the state ideas, the state-sponsored ideas.

This is the biggest government possible. Yeah. I know like Russ Vote is trying to shrink the size of the government, and people think that that means that they're shrinking influence. They're not. They're shrinking the amount of people doing work for the government. That's not the same thing as the amount of influence the government has in our lives. They're shrinking the amount of people who would stop something like this.

Yes. They're taking those people out. That's exactly. They're getting rid of all the governors. And I use that in the engine sense, right? All the stops. They're pulling them all out. They're saying, no, if I get rid of all these things

that prevent us from doing shit, then I can do whatever I want. Yeah. Godspeed. Root? Attention. You saw. Dude, this from CNN.

Heg-Seth pushes to remake the military in his preferred image. This speech was something else. It really was something else. Something fucking else. The Hegseth portion of the speech was a weird, mansplaining lecture by a guy who, like, mostly was a paper pusher in the military for the National Guard, standing in front of a bunch of, like, admirals and generals, people who, like, fought in actual war, which Hegseth did not, did not, and telling them they need to be tougher. Yeah. And stop being a fat ass.

Yeah. And, like, we're going to kick the women out and we're going to kick the trans. people out, we're going to kick the diversity out, and like, we're going to get back to the 1990s. A time, 1990, a funny time when, like, one of the most virulent and vicious sexual harassment and bullying scandals hit the news. Yeah. Unbelievable. And then Trump got involved. Yeah. Well, and Trump gave a speech, too, again, a very partisan speech, something that they, they talk about a lot of people have said, look, these are generals who are supposed to be outside of

politics. They're supposed to be apolitical in a lot of ways. They're supposed to be able to react to whoever gives them orders. They're not supposed to be the type of person who's like, I'm only going to do it if Trump tells me. I wouldn't do it if Biden told me. They shouldn't do that. Yeah. And so to have them come in and for you to give a big speech to them is genuinely something that we should all be alarmed about. Trump, of course, during that speech, says something like, we're going to test you out. We should test you out on the streets of our country. You should send you out. You should be testing yourself.

Our cities as training grounds. Use our cities as training grounds. What does that tell you about that? What does that tell you about his possible plans? Because this guy can't, he can't keep anything inside of his own head. So what does that tell you about his own plans? But then I think what's also something that's happening outside of this too. I think they're just trying to, you know, I said earlier, they're just trying to make people mad.

Yeah. You know, they're trying to make, trying to pull things apart and make stuff mad and throw a tantrum and whatever. I think that they are very actively try to make people upset as often as they can. And they did this this last week when they reversed the decision on the medals of honor

at Wounded Knee. I don't know if you saw this, but they had a Wounded Knee was a massacre. And they gave medals of honor to people who massacred people, Native Americans, and they gave medals of honor

to those people. A bunch of people said they shouldn't have medals of honor, et cetera, et cetera. And then they did a review of it and he said, I'm giving them all back. And it's done now.

and there's not going to be anything. It's done. We're completely finished talking about it. So they're doing things very specifically to tune people up to make them upset. And they do this stuff so that, like you said earlier, there's so many different things to pay attention to. There's so many things to be angry about. And they love this.

They love to do this sort of thing. They relish in the fact that CNN created this article and that we're talking about them giving this speech. Because for them, that is a win. That is an absolute win that they went there. and they made asses of themselves. Absolute asses. They don't care at all.

They don't matter. They spelled their name right in the news report, and it's important for them to get their name on everything all the time, and to have you constantly chasing your tail trying to figure out which way you could possibly try to deflect any of the damage that they're doing. Yeah, I think that's exactly that. I also felt like, and again, this is me being very conspiratorial today, but I was really worried about creating such a target-rich environment.

Oh, I know. It was terrible. It was really crazy. I don't know why you would do that. What the fuck would, like... Yeah, we have, you have chain of command in the military, so it's not like the end of the world of something like that happens, but it's a real bad thing.

It's like extremely bad. It's a real bad thing. Like you're putting, you're putting like all of the generals and admirals and the commander in chief and his successor all in one space. So something that could have been an email. Right. It's not anything. Something that could have been, like, literally nothing was said here

except for like a bunch of shit. that's already been set. Yeah. They just rehashed it. Yeah. There was nothing net new. Because they've already started to institute all the other like pushup bullshit or whatever.

They already talked about that. He's already shown his hand when it comes to whether or not they like things that have to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Right. So you know that's out the window too. You also know that President Trump can't go a second without getting some sort of fawning applause about him. So you know that about him.

Yeah. You know that he wants. wants to send troops to the United States on our streets. We know that about it. There's nothing that they laid out here that wasn't already said in different places. 100%. Yeah. This is all, I don't know if this matters or doesn't matter.

It's one of those things that like, maybe this is a big deal. And maybe we'll look back at this as a seminal moment. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know either. Because there's so much happening, like you said, all the time. So tired of seminal moments. I'm fucking exhausted.

I want no seminal moments. That's what I want. I don't want any of your seminal fluid. That's what I was talking about earlier and forgot that I had read for the show. Freedom from a Religion Foundation, Trump administration brands critics of Christian nationalism as security threats. Yeah, I mean, straight up, this is executive order that he writes that is the, it's titled, countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence, and it explicitly singles out anti-Christianity and hostility

toward those that hold traditional American values on family, religion, and morality. And that's supposedly the drivers of terrorism. You know, and the memo authorizes government-wide investigations into nonprofits, activists, their donors, and funders. Yeah. And that's why I think, you know, and again, I don't want to like just make this about me and you, But it's important that we talk about that a little bit because one, like we are a voice.

We've been doing this for 20 years almost. Almost 20 years have been podcasting. And we're able to podcast because up until recently we've had a First Amendment right to do it. And so whether or not anybody listened or not, that was a different story. That's a different story. But I was never worried that we were going to get shut down, right?

And I think we're in a place now where I look and I think will something like the daily get shut down? And by shut, there's a lot of ways to shut things down. You know, pressure can be applied to the places that fund us. Yes. Or that host our show. Or that collect the money, like the ads, the people who collect the money to, you know, for our Patreon, all that stuff. The people who handle our bank.

You talked about debanking earlier. Our bank account could get canceled. This is real. And like if that happens to us, boo for us. Yeah, it sucks for us. Sucks for us. Sucks for our listeners too. But there's a lot of people out there that they can listen to other people.

But like, if it happens to us, it will, by the time it hits us, it will have hit a thousand other people. Yeah, there's people out there that are doing way more than us. And, you know, I hate to say this, but if I were the Trump administration, I would do this with a big broad brush. And that's what scares me is that I could, I, and I'm not even to say it out loud, I can easily figure out a way to knock a lot, like a lot of small grassroots activists voices off the, off the airwaves, off the TikTok. Just, you bang it out in a week. You could bang this shit out in a week. This is frightening shit. Yeah.

This is expressly, expressly in violation of our First Amendment rights. With Twitter being how it is now and with possibly TikTok turning the way of Twitter now, because TikTok was just bought by a billionaire and a right-leaning billionaire at that. So you have people who are going to maybe change. the algorithm of TikTok so it'll lead you to more and more right-wing spaces. Your social media is no longer

free of speech. Now it's curtailed to give you what they want you to see. We've seen them tune the AI, GROC AI multiple times. Oh yeah. You know, so there's all of this there's all this stuff that's sort of

stacking the deck as it stands right now. Once they kill all those voices, the only voices you're going to have are things that are outside the United States. Because if they kill all the voices inside the states, what do I do? Right? I could maybe leave. But then, and then I'm just a voice outside the United States.

Will you be able to get my signal in here? Right. Who knows, right? We know that they can do a lot of things. I mean, they cut porn off for entire states. Right. Right. They can do it with other things too.

iTunes would 100% capitulate. Oh, a thousand percent. And said, we want you to go through and we're going to tell our, our guys are to tell you what RSS feeds not to load up, they will 100% do it. You know that they will do it. You know that that will happen. So they could easily just get Tim Apple on the phone. Right. And Tim Apple will... That is his real actual name. That is his actual name is Tim Apple. It is not Tim Cook. He had changed it to Tim Apple. It's Tim Apple. It's so funny. Because they, they literally, somebody literally called him Tim Apple one time. That's the best. That's the best. It's so

It's so funny that it put that like a guy who's so powerful in his place to be like, you will dance for me, you will dance for me. And the thing is, it's like, we are a corporatist country, they will do what they, whatever gets told to them. We saw that already. They have no backbone. None. As soon as, as

as soon as Trump came into office, they immediately bent over. We saw, YouTube just gave them millions of dollars. Yeah, like 12 or 18 million dollars. Millions of dollars. Yeah. Because they popped them off after January 6th. Like, we are, we are watching the death throws of our nation.

That's what's happening right now. This is all a question of when, not if. Yeah, if we can survive is the only if. Now, is there anything else you or your mother haven't told me that I should know? Yes, detective, there is. Both my son and I think you're an asshole. ABC News, RFK launches FDA review of abortion pill. So Miffipipristone was this week, yesterday, I think,

It was approved by the FDA, I think, yesterday as a generic pill. At the exact same time, weirdly, that RFK, who knows nothing about anything, has decided that they are going to open up an investigation, completely scientifically plausible, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And investigation into the safety and usefulness and legality of using Miffipipristone. This is not surprising. No. Right? Because you knew RFK traded every single value he ever.

had so that he could place everything into his anti-vax stance, right? So he traded away every single other value he had in the past. He was, I mean, this guy was a Democrat for Christ's sake. So the choice of women, very important to him. At least he said so, right? The plight of people who were sick and injured, et cetera, et cetera, environmental causes, all of those things. Now he has traded all those in so he can do what he wants.

wants with vaccines because he was very anti-vaccine. Right. And so now he's trading in all of his, every bit of his morality, every bit of things that he held dear. Yep. He will trade in so that he can do one thing that he very much cares about and cares about a lot more than women having a choice. Yeah, man.

This is a group of unelected, non-scientifically credentialed, politically motivated people, making decisions about what medicines are available to the public. It's almost like a deep state. What? It's almost like a deep state. I mean, we talked about it before. Like Project 2025, which now Trump is openly like saying like... I mean, if Russ is walking around as the Reaper in his fucking AI videos,

I think we all agree Project 2025 was totally the thing. And he said it as much. He just like today, I think he came out and said as much. So like when we talked about it, like Project 2025, was a blueprint to establish a deep state. That's ultimately what it was. It's like, let's figure out how to get career right-wing ideologues in every position of bureaucratic authority from the bottom up. Well, that's what we're doing.

That's what we did. That's what we did. And here we go. Here's what we're going to see. This is how you make, this is how you don't pass new laws, but you restrict more freedom. Exactly right. Without even having to go the route of Congress. Yeah, exactly right.

And they're going to go through and pluck all of your rights away through executive order, through using these systems of government that aren't elected. They're going to go through and pluck all of your rights away as they work their way through this particular term. And it could be that we eventually just get all of the rights plucked away, period, and there's never another term. I want to ask you a question. I just an unrelated topic. Okay. When you get sick and you don't finish a medicine, do you throw it away or do you keep it for a little? for like Justin Casey's.

I, so every, every time I fly, I ask for, I ask for flight medication. Yeah. And so the doctor will normally prescribe way more than I need. Right. And so then I will save it. Right. For the next flight.

But like painkillers or things like that. I don't normally get a lot of stuff like that. But yeah, I guess I keep them. So I also have a tendency to stockpile. I guess I keep them, yeah. Things like that, you know, I don't know why I do it. I just have a sense that, like, yeah, maybe this is, I'm not going to throw away. Like, when I have my neck surgery, I got a bunch of, like, pain pills for after the neck surgery.

And I didn't take most of them. I just put them in a basket. And I'm like, yeah, I put them my safe, actually. But, like, I don't know why. I'm just saying, maybe have some just in case these plans. Yeah, definitely when it comes to some of these drugs like Miff Preston. You know, maybe have some of those. Maybe have a Justin Casey's plan.

Maybe just have one of those. That's not fraud. That is, I would call that a false advertising. For New York Times, Trump wades into bailout politics and offering a lifeline to Argentina. Huh. $20 billion to Argentina. What kind of government does Argentina have, Tom? Can you help me figure out what that is?

Well, don't they have a duly elected Democratic Republic? No. No, no, they have an autocratic regime. And is it, let's talk about the, okay. Right way. Autocratic. What was the economy? Is it like an anarcho-capitalist system? Think that it might actually.

So like crazy libertarian stuff going on down there. Wow. Crazy. What? 20 billion. Nobody can figure out like what's in it for us. You read this article and it's like, the fuck is in this for us.

What is in this for us? What's so interesting is how much money they cut out of all the things that USAID was doing, that people were like, What's in it for us? And when you pull back the layer, you're like, oh, there was a lot in there. You know, maybe you're not creating homegrown terrorists if you show them Sesame Street, right? Maybe you're not doing, maybe you're investing into certain communities that won't then turn to crime and then use that crime against the United States or something. There's all these little things that they do.

Maybe they could, you know, use this money to change the crops they grow in a certain area of the world. instead of growing drugs, they'll grow this instead, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Some of it didn't work, some of it did, whatever. But they tried, right? They tried, there was some sort of, there was some sort of like master plan. This, you're like, huh, what do we do that for? Is it because they're buddies? Is it because this guy likes Trump and he can, Trump can just wave his hand and do this

whenever he wants? Where's all the Doge people right now? Thank you. Where are you at Doge people who were screaming that we're giving away too much money? Some of these things were in the millions of dollars that Doge was cutting. This is $20 billion. That's quite a bit of money. It's $20 billion to Argentina.

Argentina right now is like a major exporter to China of soybeans. China stopped after the tariffs were implemented. China was like, cool, we're not buying any more agricultural products. The chief agricultural import was soybeans. Our soybean farmers are about to harvest, and there's basically no market for those soybeans, and not no market, but like the market for soybeans has collapsed. Like it has fallen apart, right? Argentina's the major secondary supplier to China's soybeans.

That it was working against our interest. Yeah, it's 100% working against your interest. So we're not only going to bail out Argentina for fucking shrug emoji reasons, right? Other than just like the Argentinian strong man happens to be buddy with our strong man, right? but also because Argentina is selling soybeans to China, now we have to bail out our own farmers. We're getting fucked twice. Yeah.

We've fucked ourselves and then we're double-fucking ourselves back around. I don't even know, like it's fucking inception-level fucking. When the top stops spinning, then I'm done getting fucked, I guess. Can you make a giant double-edged dildo out of soybeans? Because if you can, we need to make a gigantic one. out of soybeans and then fuck ourselves All right, well, that's going to wrap it up for this week.

We'll be back on Thursday with Funny Show, but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientician. Double bubble toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night infotucatainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms,

Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. trust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Preds, all under the handle at DissinencePod.

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