Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 888: Republican Women Wake Up and Smell the Misogyny

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

https://archive.is/20251220213941/https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-critics-fear-incomplete-disclosure-epstein-files-will-loom-over-2025-12-20/ Epstein files: A number of documents, including Trump photo, reportedly removed from DOJ release site Congress leaves town until 2026 with no health care deal, forcing premium hikes Opinion | Republican Women Suddenly Realize They're Surrounded by Misogynists - The New York Times A Look Inside the Lonely World of Republican Lesbians Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue | Reuters-

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. According live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissanance. 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 at. Today is Monday, Cecil, and it is the 22nd of December. And I know the date easily because it is a day after my son's birthday. Oh, happy birthday, man. And I bring that up because he just turned to 19. And Cecil, you and I have been podcasting since that little bugger was like four or four.

months old. Wow. So 19. We have been podcasting for coming up on 19 years. Wow. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, because he was a newborn when we started. So it was brand new, tiny little dude. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. So we've been doing it. We're coming up on our 20 year anniversary of podcasting, buddy. We still haven't gotten any better. We haven't gotten any better. You would think after 20 years, we would get a little bit better. Maybe that's the golden. Like maybe it, maybe it's like, boom, and we'll like hit that ceiling. We'll be like, holy shit, we're good at this now. We're finally log 10,000 hours or whatever it is.

Would that be funny if that's the way it worked? It's like you're terrible 9,999 hours. And then like that 10,000th hour, it's like Malcolm Gladwell shows up to your house. Shakes your hand and you're good at it. He's got a wand and he just waves it over you. Like a giant like publishers clearing house wand, you know, like it's giant and oversized. Gives you a big check. Yeah.

Did you hear, this is just a stupid aside, but do you hear publishers clearinghouse? This is just kind of a funny thing. Publishers clearinghouse, if you win, one of the things that you could win was like money for life. So you got a certain amount of money every year for life. Well, they had a fund that was supposed to pay out the money for life fund. Oh, no. But then Publishers Clearing House, I guess, went bankrupt.

And they did not, like, insure that fund. Oh, no. So very often, like, you would have an insurance against that fund. Sure. So there's a whole bunch of people who won Publishers Clearing House and we're expecting to get a money units every month for the rest of their lives that just woke up one day and are like, go to work. You don't get a check anymore. Publishers Clearing House. Fuck you.

How does publishers clearinghouse look on a resume? I was like, at first, like there was like a, oh, so sad you don't get free money. But I was like, people are relying on that. They've made commitments on that. They have gaps like you. So they've gaps in their resume because of that. It'd be like if you won the lottery and then you made all these commitments and you got like checks for 10 years and then all of a sudden they're like, man, not anymore. You're like, well, I'm fucked.

Like, what am I supposed to do? I have, I think about it all the time. Like, I have no skills. If I lose my job, I'm just going to sit outside in the cold until exposure takes me. Oh, man. I feel the same way. I'm like, what do I do? What do I put on a resume?

I'm like podcasting? like what the fuck are you talking about? Castings. No, that's it. Get the fuck out of here. That's it. I go outside on a snowy day. I sit cross-legged and I just wait for the elements to claim me.

As a podcaster, they'd turn me away from an, as in like an Exxon cashier. Like, they would be like, no. Absolutely not. You don't have any skills. Like, you literally have skills. Like, you're taking skills from other people to do that. One of the things that always puzzled me about publisher's greenhouse is like, you were giving away a lot of money, like, where did you get the money?

Because, like, I don't understand. Like, were you just selling magazines that many magazines or whatever? That's what you were selling. Magazine subscriptions. Yeah, I listened to this whole, like, long form article about this. Like, it's crazy. Like, they made a ton of money, but then magazines kind of fell apart. Yeah, I mean, magazines really did fall apart.

So, like, nobody gets print magazines anymore, but people were still signing up to win the fucking prize. So, and, like, they just didn't have a reservoir or, They didn't insure the money and do some of the things you should do to ensure like a long-lasting annuity. When was the last time you saw a physical newspaper somewhere? Oh, I can tell you that answer. I rested my coffee on one the other day using an ATM at the grocery store.

They had them right. And it was the craziest thing. I was using the ATM at the grocery store. And I had a cup of coffee from the Starbucks that's in the grocery store. And they had a thing of newspapers. And I was like, well, these are still a thing. Look at that. Huh.

That's a good place for me to put my coffee while I get my cash. Some people call them newspapers. I call them coasters. Coasters. And now there's going to be people like, an ATM, what were you using cash for? Amazing. Oh, God. All right, Cecil.

So we've got some stories that were hand-selected for their durability. Their ever-grenosity, I think, is the term. I think that's a real term that I didn't just make up right now. Everybody's off this week. Everybody's off. Everybody's off this week. It should be a slow week. They already let the Congress go home so they're not going to be doing any voting stuff.

Or force them to go home. A kind of, you know, tomato, tomato. Hey, look, hold on a second now. Let's not impugn this very pristine Congress by saying, force them, Tom. Yeah. Yeah, actually, let's start with that story, which is, you know, they left town. They're done. And there was a very specific vote that was supposed to come up about the ACA, right?

about these subsidies. And they had forced the hand of Mike Johnson to try to vote on these subsidies, these Obamacare era subsidies, and then the COVID-era subsidies that we wanted to keep in place so that people could continue to get health insurance and not have to pay out-of-pocket soaring prices that were going to be basically hitting people at the beginning of the new year. A bunch of people were going to be caught with these big prices. We saw in our most recent episode that we released, there was people who were telling us, sending us messages and saying, yeah, my shift's gone up by $700, my stuff's gone up by $1,700. Other people talking about how they have to give up health insurance. We got private messages where people said, I literally

have to give up my health insurance because of this. So this is going to affect a wide range of people across the country that aren't insulated by large corporations that can absorb any of the problems that these things cause. And a lot of these people happen to be people who are in poverty or small business owners. You know, the people who we think maybe we shouldn't be attacking with, you know, shitty tax code and bad policy. These are people, you know, who we should maybe see if we could help in some way. That's not the case. They're going to go after these people essentially make them squeeze as much money as you can out of these people from these health insurance companies. So we at, there was a push to get them to vote on something because that was

something that they had promised when we just, when the government, when the Democrats said they were good fund the, fund the, the, the shutdown. They said, we're going to promise to vote on this thing. They did. And then there was a negative. And so they were like, oh, and then, and then some of these senators, some of these Congress, people started feeling these Republicans started feeling a, uh, a pressure to get an actual like floor vote on this. So they, uh, so they pressured Mike Johnson, essentially. They bypassed them. They said, we're going to bypass you. And So they signed it with a bunch of other people to force this floor vote. And then Mike Johnson was like, that's great.

But I can make it so there's no floor. And the floor is now lava. And everybody has to go home. And so that's what he did. He just fucking, he's like, he's like class dismissed. And everybody ran out through their papers in the air and ran out the door. And that's what happened. Schools out for summer.

Emma bird. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. If there was ever a more like a prescient example of how incredibly dysfunctional Congress is, I don't think that we could, there is not actually anything more prescient. If the only way for you to have a bipartisan bill is if that bill is introduced by the majority, then there is no such thing as real bipartisanship, right? So, and that seems to be the case.

There have been some things which have passed with a bipartisan. bipartisan support, but there are always things that are only introduced by the majority. So if the minority has no ability to introduce a bill and to garner bipartisan support and move that bill forward, then you have a complete breakdown of the entire system. There's no, this is not like reflective of the will of the American people. This isn't reflective of the will of Congress. This is reflective of the will of one guy. Yeah. One guy.

Who control people. Yeah, like Mike Johnson as the Speaker of the House controls the calendar. And he's basically like, yeah, look, I have to do what Donald Trump says because I'm a piece of shit fucking puppet for the administration. And we've seated all of our congressional authority and rights to the executive branch. We're fucking complete trash. There are no checks. There are no balances. I'm a spineless dipshit coward. Yep.

And every day I wake up, I'm more and more. we're fucking jellyfish like. So like he's just in a position who's like, all right, well, we'll just, we'll break America. That's what we'll do. Because that's what this is. This is breaking America. We're saying we actually don't want to have a functioning

legislative branch. Yeah. And I like your point here too, because if this was a popular position that most people in America held and most people in America would support their Congress people for voting very specifically with the majority opinion,

they would just say, you know, It's very popular in the United States right now to cut these subsidies. It's a very popular thing. Most of the people in the United States don't want these things. It will just bring it to a floor vote so we can all vote on it, how we know our constituents want to vote on it. And then we'll vote on it. It'll go away.

If it was a real, genuine popular policy, they would just vote on it. And then all the Democrats, and it would be bipartisan, like you suggest, it would cut across all these party lines because it's not about whether a party. brings it or a party destroys it or a party stifles it, it's about what the American people want. And Congress hasn't been doing that during any administration for, gosh, it's got to be, at this point, 20 years. It's been nothing like that. It's always been, if the other side is going to get a win out of this, we will stop it. We will stop them from doing it. And if there is, and if there is some sort of underlying will of the people,

it will only make it in there if one party that is in power is also the one who's bringing that bill. Because if not, then the will of the people is completely ignored over party politics. Yeah, it's zero-sum politics. That's what we have. We have a zero-sum game being played with the lives of everyday people. And there are so many issues like this.

You know, like common sense gun reform. is very, very popular. Yep. It never goes anywhere. When they go out on the street and they poll it, it pulls really, really well. Access to reproductive care pulls really, really well.

There's actually kind of a lot of stuff. All of the major pieces of the Affordable Care Act pull incredibly well. They actually always have. They poll incredibly well. When you go out and ask people what they want, it never has any connection

to what we get. Yeah. And no wonder we're angry and frustrated. We're angry and frustrated because we as the constituents go out and we elect these people and they are supposed to represent us. But they don't. They just represent this sort of like zero-sum political sort of one-upsmanship bullshit. That's to nobody's advantage. We're all eating shit when we play the game like this. And this is, you know, look at the result. Now there's going to be all these people, 23 million Americans, I think it is, that are going to buy their health insurance from the, ACA marketplace, and their premiums are going to skyrocket. You know, in many cases, they're going to go up, you know, 100%, 200%, a thousand percent. I've seen people right. Who can sustain that? Who the fuck can sustain that? And especially if you're getting coverage, not just for yourself, but coverage for your

family through the fucking ACA. It's, I mean, it's a crippling amount of money just for health. And it's not even for health care, just for insurance. helps offset some of the biggest costs for health care. Enjoy emergency rooms, man, because that's, I'll tell you what, like the result of this is going to force an enormous number of people off their insurance and the only way they're going to get access to care is if they show up to the emergency room because they can't be turned away.

So now when we all go to the emergency room because we fucking slammed our finger in the car door or whatever, like my daughter did a few weeks ago, we're going to wait even longer than we ever did before. Yeah, you're going to wait for a long time. And I, you know, when we, when you mentioned that, you know, there are these two sides. And it is, you know, like the Democrats do the same thing. I think like there is genuinely some issue with how our government has to run. You know, we talk about the filibuster.

You talk about whether or not you have enough votes. It's constantly this squeaker, no matter where you're at in the, you know, every time we've seen in the past, you know, like I say, 20 years, it's been a squeaker. It's been, there's a tiny amount of people who are in power. and that amount of people can really wane. I mean, we saw what in in Trump's first term, when they had all the houses, they had everything, right? And then they tried to take away the ACA completely.

I don't know if you remember this, but there was like a big vote to try to take it away. They had nothing to replace it with, but they were going to get rid of it because Obama brought it forward and they wanted it gone. They didn't know what they wanted, but they definitely didn't want it. And so they went out of their way to try to get rid of it. it. And McCain was one of the deciding factors. He had cancer at the time. He was dying. He literally

flew in so he could go thumbs down. Right. Yeah. Remember this. And walk away. And it pissed Trump off to no end. But it was it was it. It was a failed vote. Right. It was a failed. But you see the way this stuff works. It's like been a tiny, even when one side clearly has power, it's still not enough to get this will of the people, whether or not the will of the people, I don't think the will of the people. I don't think the will of the people. wanted to get rid of ACA, but I still feel like whether the will of the people is something, it's never really, it never really nudges itself up so that the will of the people gets met. And we're in this sort of shitty system that makes it so that there's a constant sort of regurgitation of low, like they'll talk a lot, but the only things we get a chance to talk about and actually

physically do in government are things that have relayed around budgetary issues. because anything else that's any kind of other issue never really gets brought up because it can't actually get brought up in these houses of Congress. It just can't get up. I mean, and if it makes any hay in the House, they may never bring it up at all in the Senate. They may just say, we're not even going to talk about it. And there's no way to get it there. So it's just this deadlock, an absolute deadlock of our system.

Well, and they don't want to be on record. Yeah, that's the key. That's the key. want to be on record. Yeah. Because if they're on record voting against something like this, then it looks bad. It looks like what it actually is. But instead, they all get together behind closed doors and they agree to break the system.

That's what they're doing when they do this stuff. They all get together in a fucking secret star chamber. That's what it is. And they agree to basically say no without having to go on record as having said no. How the hell did you get out? Why? Why do they lie to us? Tell me. They're going to be looking for you. Tell me what's going on.

What's going on is if anybody sees us together, both of us are going to be dead. So, would you just take your hands off me? Let me... This story is from Reuters. Republican critics fear incomplete disclosure of Epstein files will loom over midterms. So Cecil, some Epstein files were recently released. And then some Epstein files were released and then super quickly unreleased. They got take seats, back seized, dude. Then there's like, what were the ones that got taken back?

Like, which ones were those? Oh, there's pictures with Trump in them, for example. Crazy. And now they're saying, like, they had nothing to do with Trump. It had to do with protecting survivors. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Got to protect all the survivors.

One of those survivors is Trump, I guess. Well, he's not going to survive politically if his pictures out there, guys. Obviously, we have to protect them there. This is a survival opportunity. This is the same administration, don't forget, that when they released the first tranche of documents, very obviously, intentionally did not redact a bunch of survivor information, right? Yeah, for sure. And there was a huge outcry from that survivor population because they were getting fucking bothered on the street by reporters because their names were leaked in all of these documents. Now these documents come out, and there's like, there's like a hundred pages where everything on the people.

page is just fucking sharpied over, like it's a fucking hurricane in the Atlantic or whatever. What the fuck is going on? Well, and then the other thing that's happening too is not only are they redacting all of these things, but they have, I don't know if you remember, but when this all came out, they were saying that they were going to be the most transparent administration in history, right? And so they brought a bunch of fucking absolute absolute. asshole influencers to the White House.

Mike Sernovich was one of them, right? And then a couple other people. And they handed them big giant binders that said like the Epstein documents. Right? Do you remember this? I remember this. And then they marched them out so they could all pose Instagram like with their, their giant binders that said like Epstein files.

And they were all super excited. And then people asked them what was in there like, oh, it was basically all the same released information that's already been out there. So they didn't give them anything. Right. But they made it seem like they were giving away all this information. And then every time they've released information, it's been either information that's already been there. And in fact, during the time that you're talking about, they've already, they re-released some of that information.

They just unredacted some of these victims' names. Like some of that stuff was literally already in the ecosystem where someone could have found it. But then they went back and did the due diligence to redact or unredact some of these victims' names. This doesn't hurt women enough. What else can we do about that, Jim? Horrible situation, man. There's some women and young girls that haven't been further victimized by our horrifying system that seems to only protect male predators.

What can we do to fix that problem? Unreal. And it's not going to get any easier for anybody to discern what's in these things or any of this stuff. Because I think that this sort of obfuscation is really the point, because I'm starting to see fake pictures come out that are based on this. They released, I don't know if you saw the, did you see the Michael Jackson one with Bill Clinton? So they released one.

It was Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Diana Ross, and then three faces that were blacked out. Like they had a black box over the face, right? Well, they did that. And it turns out those were Michael Jackson and Diana Ross's kids. And it was a promo photo for someone. That's nothing. It was nothing.

And it was already open. And out in the in the in the world, right? Everyone knew what photo that was. An existing photo. They literally redacted the faces to make it look incriminating. Right. It's Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and kids with their face blocked out. We're protecting, in a sense saying we're protecting the victims of this crime.

Yeah. But they would like literally very specifically created a system that could then implicate people. So now there's a bunch of confusion around this stuff. Is a lot of people are starting to think. If you're in any of these photos, you're automatically guilty of being someone who was in collusion with Jeffrey Epstein when it came to his pedophile stuff that he was doing. So they're immediately thinking that it's guilt by association no matter what. If you're in these things, no matter who you are, you are now. So that's what you're seeing online is this big push for that.

And then you're also seeing fake photos come up in old photos that are being passed off as. And so it's just a mess. They created a gigantic mess with this by, and I wonder if it's by design just to create confusion. Yeah, man, I feel like it is, right? Because it is just true that omission is a very powerful editing tool. Yeah. And the selective omission through redaction, the selective sort of dribbling out of this information, it really lets, if you were, if you were, let's say, a party that has for the last,

I don't know, eight to 12 years, been courting conspiracy theorists. What you would want to do is to give them not all of the information, but a template that they could use to plug in their pet theories. And the best way to do that is to give them just enough information to allow a framework. And then that framework lets them sort of like fucking tie the yarn and connect it to whichever pushpin they want to fucking connect it to. and that's what they're doing here. That's what's being done.

But I do think this is going to burn them. I really think this is going to burn the right really, really bad. Because, again, the conspiracy theorists work. They're just going to decide whatever they want, man. They're going to pick whatever they want. And I do think this article is right in saying that the Republicans in courting the conspiracy theorist nut jobs are playing with fire here. They're absolutely playing with fire.

And these guys can't be controlled. You're right. they messed up when they decided to try to use this as a tool. There's just no way to use this because, like, you know, they think it's fire, but really what it is is an all-direction flame thrower. Yes, yes. It's not that you're just like, have a match and can decide where that fire lights. It's that this is so toxic that when you pull the trigger, everything lights on fire.

Yep. And, you know, I saw a ton of people were like, oh, man, look at Bill Clinton's in all these photos. and they very specifically released Bill Clinton photos. I mean, obviously, of course, they would. Why wouldn't they? So they released all these Bill Clinton photos, and Bill Clinton has a bunch of these black photos in there. And I didn't see anybody online.

I haven't seen anybody online be like, well, man, oh, well, I guess, you know, all this. Everybody's like, yeah, just fucking arrest him then. If he's guilty of something, nobody cares that Bill Clinton gets a... I don't care. And someone I saw was a great comment, which was like, yeah, man, I guess I'll have to throw away all my Bill Clinton flag. and Bill Clinton shirts and Bill Clinton hats

and Bill Clinton NFTs and Bill Clinton you know like all that shit you're like yeah absolutely nobody did that right nobody is it nobody if Hillary Clinton was in there nobody was like oh my God we gotta protect her like I don't give a fuck man

shoot her into space if she's guilty I don't fucking care no one cares man you guys built a cult of personality and you think that's how everybody treats everybody else nobody treats like anybody like that over here. Nobody. I don't fucking care about any of them.

And you shouldn't either. What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm looking for a thing right now. Let me see if I can find it, Tom. I swear to you that I saw a image. And the image was of Trump with a young girl that I saw being posted all over the internet this weekend. And I can't verify whether it was real or not. So let me look real quick if I can... There's a bunch of people who are sharing this photo everywhere. And they're saying they forgot to remove this one from the documents. And I'm seeing it posted. And then I'm seeing it removed. And I'm seeing it in different places. And what you're seeing is something that may or may not be true, right? Because I haven't seen a single news organization.

talk about this photo. What I've seen is a bunch of people in different Twitter threads and Reddit threads and sharing threads all post this photo which could be AI.

It could be him and his daughter or somewhere and they just blacked out her face. It could be any number of things. It might not have been in the files at all, right?

But what you're seeing is a flooding of these things that are, you know, sometimes they're on your side, sometimes they're on somebody else's side. And you've always got to stop and be like, is this a real thing that I'm looking at?

Because it's important. It's so important to know whether the thing, especially when it's related to this, is a real thing. And we're going to see problems with sourcing of a lot of this stuff because of the way in which they're leaking these things out, not leaking, but releasing these things. And so you're going to see a lot of problems with how this stuff is consumed by the public because it's, if they leave the door open to something is hidden, anyone can fill that up with something else. And that's the real danger with not just being 100% transparent with what was in those documents.

If you don't do that, other people, sometimes foreign bad actors, might make a decision to fill those holes with things that cause division and cause things to be like, like cause strife in America because it's good for them to do that. Yeah, we've talked about this before. This is a great opportunity to remind listeners to remind everybody that you need to have and you need to establish for yourself a real method for knowing true things. Because we are going to be inundated from all different sides with images and pictures

and memes and videos and all the rest of it. And if you don't have a method that you have established that you think is reliable to know the difference between truth and not truth, truth and disinformation, misinformation, misinformation, propaganda, outright lies, trolling, all that stuff. You have to have a method. You've got to have a reliable way to know the difference. You know, Cecil's point is like, I haven't seen any journalists pick this up. Journalists have a method. That's why they don't pick up the bullshit, right? That's why they pick up bullshit way less often than your uncle Steve does. Right? Your uncle Steve has no method. He didn't go to school. He doesn't know the difference. He doesn't know how to do this. This shit gets posted. The danger of all of this, I think, is that when we are exposed to things, we believe what we see. And the more you see stuff, the more this lives in the background sort of radiation of your mind because you've seen it. You've seen it. You've seen it. Maybe you've even dismissed it every time you've seen it. But it still starts to take us. up that truth space in the back of your mind. You've got to have a method. Like, we on this show, we have been talking for a long time. Like truth and evidence have to be values, values that you hold. If truth and evidence aren't values that you hold, then we're all just trolls. There's no difference, right? There's no difference between a conspiracy theorist and what I like to think of as like our side of things, the skeptical side of things, is that evidence,

and truth are value. That's part of my value system. That's not just like a thing I sometimes like to do. It's part of my value system. So you've got to let like the way that you interact with information reflect your value system as a skeptic. If you don't, you're going to see that picture, just like everybody else is going to see that picture. You shouldn't even come across that picture. Like when you want information about what's in the Epstein files, you have a responsibility to go source that information out there. credible journalism. I really believe that. I really believe that. Yeah.

Don't go to your favorite Reddit to look through what's in there. No. And the problem is that your favorite Reddit will have these things in it. What you should do is immediately the moment you see it is not share it. You should go and look at it and say, oh, well, let me go make sure that that exists somewhere. Let me make sure that somebody else went through these documents and they're going to post it somewhere.

or I will go through the meticulous, difficult, arduous task of going through those documents to see if I can source that photo somewhere. Because if I can't do it and they didn't bother to do it, do I think that it's some sort of cover up or is it not there? Does it not exist? Because that's a real thing that can happen to you, right? It may not exist. It may not be a real thing. I have no idea. Right.

That photo that I showed you is real or not right now. I don't know if it is or not. I'm leaning toward not because if it was a real photo, that's something I think that a lot of people would be showing if it were to be the implication that they're suggesting, right? Which is a young girl who isn't his daughter, who that's not a famous photo, and then that black box was pasted over their face and they're in a jet. That's a big deal in this context. And if you don't see it on a major news network, which that would be a big juicy hit for a lot of the things that they could publish on their website, then you've got to think, maybe I'm being played by someone who's creating video or creating images, which is real fucking easy to do now, man, and convincing looking images, right?

Images that look convincing to other people that if you don't spend a lot of time looking at it, which I am going to tell you right now, I didn't fucking look at that thing with a magnifying glass. It's very dithered. It looks like kind of blurry. I didn't bother to look at any of the other stuff. the markers that may make it me know whether it's AI. But when you search for that image, all you see is argument threads about whether it's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and like what, there's something about that, right?

The fact that there's an argument where people are saying it is or it is not, both sides are wrong. You don't know. That's the only, there should be no actual argument. The fact that people are arguing means that people are dug in and they are deciding what is evidence without any ability. to say with certainty what counts as evidence. And so there's an argument that's taking place online.

And like, let's be also, let's be really very real. A lot of that argument is being fed by disinformation actors and foreign trolls and foreign nationals. We know that that's the case. We know it for sure. When you go online, I was thinking about this this morning. I was chit-chatting very, very early this morning with somebody that I have kind of come to the realization that I don't think, based on what we know about how online spaces work now

in 2025, I don't think that you can be in any algorithmic space and maintain your sense of reality, period. I don't believe in digital literacy anymore. When Twitter popped up and they said, hey, we're going to show where all these people are from. And this enormous number of people were discovered to be foreign actors. When you've got like Mark Zuckerberg saying he wants to flood meta places with bots, AI bots that are indistinguishable from human beings back and forth, these are spaces that are designed to trick you. They are not designed.

And I was thinking about why do I feel so much differently, Cecil. Like when you and I were doing this show during the Arab Spring, I was as excited as you were about the democratization effect of social media. Sure. And I think that the difference is that back when the Arab Spring happened, what you saw on social media was what you chose to see. You selected it. So your news feeds, so to speak, your wall, whatever it was, I don't remember what

it was called at the time, it was a million years ago. But it was your friends. That's all that appeared. You could get to the bottom of it. You could scroll to the bottom of your social media and see all the things. Oh, that's the last post of all of my friends. Right. That's it for today.

Right. None of that is the case anymore. Now a system decides that you will see an infinite amount of stuff. Just stuff. And nobody's vetting to make sure that those people that you're talking to are, one, actually real human beings. Two, people that are actually here in the states where they say that they are, being the person that they say they are.

we know, we'll cover a story in this episode, we know that there is a concentrated, funded foreign propaganda machine that is designed to do exactly what I'm talking about. I just don't think that you can be in any algorithmic space and say what I see is a true thing. There's just really kind of no reason for you to believe that. So when people are online and they're arguing back and forth, think about what that means. That means that they are seeing something with no evidence about what. whether it's real or no evidence about whether it's not real. But they're digging in and they're having a conversation and they're saying, here's what I

believe to be true. It's an article of faith at that point. Yeah. It has no connection to reality. I think when I think about the algorithm, sometimes I think about it as if it's sort of this insidious, genius creation of somebody who's sitting there and they're planning it out and they think, I'm going to know exactly how to tweak you and twist your button. and meek you, and it's not that at all.

It's brute force, right? So here's a perfect example. The other day I was on my Facebook feed, I think, and I was scrolling, and my Facebook feed has slowly not become anything I know, right? It's nobody I know. It's all ads for things that are like people's pages or, you know, it's an actual ad for a product that they're selling, but it's rare that I'll run into somebody who I know.

It's like most of the time, it's not. There's actually a separate button on Facebook. now called friends, where you have to click that button in order to get your friends to be in there. Because if not, you're just getting what they give you. And your feed is essentially shit they're trying to sell you because they sold that spot to somebody else. Right. So that's what you're getting. Well, the feed showed me a magic trick. Somebody was doing a magic. I'm guessing. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I'm thinking it was something like a magic trick, right? And somebody had like an envelope, like one of those inner office envelopes and they're messing with it and

they're showing people stuff. And the feet. And the feed didn't know that it was magic tricks I liked to stop to watch. The feed thought it was inner office envelopes that I like. So it created a bunch of stuff about inner office envelopes because it's a brute force method. It doesn't know that I like magic over inner office envelopes to it. It's the exact same thing. It has two topics and it gave me one of them. And it just happened to be the wrong one. It chose the wrong one because it thought, oh, well, this stupid human like this. And it's like, that stupid human doesn't care about

in our office politics or envelopes or anything like that. What I cared about was that the guy made a glass disappear. Now, if it had done more glass disappearing shit or tried to sell me something from a magic store or whatever, I might have stopped on that. That's a totally different thing. So it doesn't, it's not geniusly devised. It's just like brute forcing a password or something, right?

It's just constantly throw. showing stuff at you, and then whatever I stopped on is what it's going to give me next time. That's all. That's all it's doing. Yeah. It's a volume game. Yeah, that's it. It's a volume game.

I was also thinking about this this morning, too, is that I think one of the things that used to exist and does not anymore and much to our detriment is it used to be that one of the ways that we gathered information is by using the same source as your neighbor. So what I mean by that is I would read the newspaper. you would read the newspaper. I would watch the news. You would watch the news. Now when you and I talk,

even if we fundamentally disagree, we are starting with the same foundational informational sources, right? I also watch the 10 o'clock news. I have a different take than you, but we agree at least that reality is shaped roughly like this. Now, information is all bespoke.

So when I go online and I look for information, When I Google something and get search results, everything that I get looks exactly differently than everything that you get. And so my version of reality has been shaped in a way that is not connected and communal with your version of reality. We are not working from the same platform. So when we disagree, we are disagreeing, I think a lot of times in genuine good faith

because our version of reality didn't start from the same. same space. Very different from the start. It's like we lived in a world before where we were all looking through a window. Now we're all looking through a kaleidoscope. And it's never the same twice. And so if you Google something and I Google something, the fact that we get different results, and that's how we come to know what's true. Oh, let me find out if that's true. I'll Google it. Right. That's what's in our vernacular. But then the fact that we get different results should tell us that what we're doing is we're each creating our own version of reality. So when we're arguing about this shit, I think a lot of times it's really truly in good faith.

I do. I think it's in good faith, but we don't share the same reality anymore. And that can't be good. There's no way to make that be a good thing. Well, and the other thing you've got to guard against, and I know we're belaboring this entire article to death, talking about peripheral things. But it's important to talk about. I think the other thing you've got to guard yourself against is confirmation bias.

Because we're all so susceptible to confirmation bias. And the internet and social media and algorithms, they are literal confirmation bias machines. They make you find your bias and then they suck you in by it. I mean, there's been times on the show that we've been corrected by people and they've sent us false things, not just one person either. Multiple people will mention a story on the show. and someone will send us multiple messages.

We'll get them on Patreon, on other places where they'll list, oh, you guys were wrong about this, or oh, they figured out that this was about this, and it'll be multiple messages, and they're all based on false information that was sent to all those same people through confirmation bias,

and they all believed it because they wanted to believe. Because it was, it reinforced the opinion they came in trying to fit, right? So there was an opinion that they had that this thing isn't true or this thing is true or, you know, this particular set of events happened the way that they did. And then they're like, oh, well, that fits my worldview. I don't have to look anymore. I don't have to, I don't have to search.

I don't have to do anything. And we're all susceptible. I'm susceptible to it. I have to catch myself all the time being like, oh, well, I believe, you know, that happens to be an article about a study that I believe. So I just believe it. And that's just, and you can't do that. you have to give something. Sometimes you have to give to the other side to be like, is this a true thing?

Or am I just wanting to believe that this is a true thing? And I'm sucked in by this. Yeah, I've told this story before because it makes me laugh. But like, I just to just to laugh at myself about how susceptible I am to that sort of thing too. Every single time I've bought a car, I keep reading reviews of that car. Yeah. After I buy it. After you bought it. Why? I already bought the car. Yeah. I already have it. I'm in it to win it. I'm driving that fucking thing. It's because I'm trying to remind myself that I made a good choice, right? We do that shit constantly. It feels good to do it.

That is a real thing. Like when you talk about these algorithms being like evil and they're tweaking their mustache, like, I think that the one thing that they've come to understand is that people do the thing that they like. Yep. And all you got to do is just be like, oh, what does he like? Oh, he likes fucking inner office envelopes. All right. I'll get it wrong a few times, but I'll get it right once in a while. Once in a while you'll get it right. And you'll show a guy doing a routering of a wood and I'll stop.

And you'll watch it. And then you'll choose routers next time, not wood or whatever. Right. Or, you know, some other thing or the cap the guy was wearing. You'll choose something else and you'll catch me. You'll get me. Yep. Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over, an analyst and a therapist, the world's first an alrupist. Yes, and you're almost arrested. for those business cards? Yes, no, it did not look good on paper. The stories in New York Times, Republican women suddenly realize

they're surrounded by misogynists. Cecil. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there is some, this article is actually really well written, right? It's really well written, and I think it does a good job of trying to give grace to people

who, in my opinion, may not deserve it. Right? You may not deserve some of this grace because I think you bought into this stuff very specifically because you wanted to advance you and not advance people in general, right? You wanted to advance what you could do and be powerful for yourself and not empower others. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for those types of people. And I think this article tries to have sympathy in some ways for those types of people. But really genuinely, this is one of those articles that you just read and you think, no, fucking shit, man.

You've been swimming in this the whole time. You know, the difference is, is you guys hate all the same people. They just hate one extra gender than you do. That's all there is to it. I felt really, really the same way.

You know, like Marjorie Taylor Green is out there now sort of like pounding the pavement and yelling through her bullhorn that she's sorry that she contributed to this politics of you know, extremism. And, you know, you know, Mike Johnson doesn't take women in the party seriously. And it's like, did you not know who fucking Mike Johnson was? Everybody who knows who Mike Johnson was knew he cannot, by worldview, by world view,

he cannot take women seriously. You cannot have a party that for however many years has denigrated women at every institutional and systemic and like vocabulary level that they have been doing this. at and then and be like, well, I felt like a really surprise that he didn't want to hear me out. I thought that was about other women. I thought, because what they're really saying is, I thought he was going to keep those liberal women in their place. And now he's keeping me in my place.

Well, guess what? You're just like a liberal. To him, there's no distinction. If you're a misogynist, you're a misogynist. Yeah. Full stop. You get a dick between your legs? No, he doesn't think your shit.

Yeah. They do not think your shit. You are a mouthpiece for this party in order for them to gain credibility. You're a fucking token. That's what all of those ladies in the Republican side are. It's fucking tokenism. And I'll go a step further. There's a reason, and it's not fucking subtle, why Fox News and the Trump administration

picks the women that it does to be very upfront and in charge and like the face of everything, right? they share a certain like generally conventionally attractive model that they use for everything and they do it on purpose because they're just picking tokens. They are not picking the best person for the job. They are picking a certain sort of tokenism to appeal generally to the male gaze. Yeah. That's what it's for. It's for you.

None of it was ever for you. None of it was to advance your rights. And now that they're seeing it and they're like, but wait, me too. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Where were you during me too? Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, we both, and I know you think this, so I'm just going to say it.

I think like the problem is that the patriarchy poisons everything, right? And what it did was it poisoned their views as well. The people who are to blame here aren't necessarily these women. in general, it's the patriarchy itself that you should be blaming for these things. Because what it does is it tries to sustain itself through underpowering other people and holding things over other people. That's what it does. That's literally it's an organism that just tries to sustain itself by sucking the life force out of those other things. And so if that's what it's going to do, it's going to manipulate the other people around it to try to make it

So it continues to exist. And so they have been manipulated by men. That's what happened here, right? The men are also to blame because they literally are the ones who created this whole thing. They wanted to keep the status quo of this thing. So they are absolutely to blame in this whole, in this whole scenario. I think that the problem is, is that what I think they saw was a path through to, avoid the patriarchy.

But what you're doing is you're protecting, like I said at the beginning, you're protecting only yourself. And you're only protecting yourself for a limited time that you agree with all the things the patriarchy says. The moment you stop doing that is the moment they say, hey, get this fucking uppity

bitch out of here. Get her out of here. I don't need to hear from her, and she doesn't hold any power in the party. And then they start talking to all these people and they're like, yeah, man, they don't take us seriously. And you're like, of course they didn't. Because you were on the same wavelength as don't take women seriously. So why on earth?

Would you think that would be a good idea? You literally came in and said, I have no credibility. Don't listen to me. I don't have any credibility. Well, why did you expect a different result? You did it because you thought there was a path to power. And it's because this shitty, terrible system has been created

that disenfranchises 51% of the population. And you were the ones who were championing in. I can't feel sorry for you. I can't. Help empower women in general. I think that's a great thing. Help empower yourself. Go fuck yourself. Yeah, man. Well, let's talk about this other article because this one is fucking baffling. This, this lesbian, Republican article that you put in here, Cecil. I read this and I was like, what in the actual fuck am I reading? This is from unclosited media.com. A look inside the lonely world of Republican lesbians. While the vast majority of queer women identify as Democrats. These New York City lesbians are proud Republicans. Then the article says,

here's why. I read this article literally twice. I don't understand why. I didn't get a why either. Didn't get a why either. Never got a why out of this article. I got a lot of people saying, no one takes me seriously. And I have very different views. And I'd love to sit down and and argue my views with other people, but they don't listen to me. And I, and I want to stop everybody who keeps saying the same old tired thing. Oh, we used to be able to talk about. everything. It's like, yeah, you used to not devalue entire sections of the human population. I know, man. Okay? So, yeah, or we did it and everybody agreed it. And it was bad. It was bad when we did it. So we stopped doing that. And then now you want to be like, but I want to have a conversation about

I want to say to you, fuck you. You know, I want to have your conversation. There's no conversation for you to be like, yeah, I don't think trans people should exist. Well, go fuck yourself. I don't care what you think then. Why should I sit down with you? And be like, well, they really just, fuck you. Fuck you. There's no starting point, man. We're starting at a chess game and you don't even have pieces. You have fucking chicken breasts and you're slapping the board.

You don't have anything. Like, shut the fuck up. I know, man. But they want to have these conversations. Like, oh, I just want to see if my ideas can meet up with your ideas. You know, you don't have an idea. You have a hate speech. Thank you, man.

Like, I don't understand. I want to read from the article. because, like, let me just read this. Let me just read this from the article. This is like, this is so indicative of how I cannot wrap my fucking head around this. Unafraid of losing LGBTQ rights. A common thread shared by those attending the event was clear. In a time when LGBT rights are under attack, these lesbians are not afraid of losing their rights.

I'm not concerned. If Overfell is overturned, nothing is forever. Then this next sentence blew me away. If we have to challenge this case again, we'll do it. We will continue fighting. Lady, fighting against who? You. You're the Republican.

You're a Republican. Hey, look, as a Republican, if I have to punch myself in the face until I win, what the fuck are you? You're the enemy. In this scenario, you're the enemy. And you're like, I'm not afraid about losing my rights at the Supreme Court level. At the, you should, there's no more level. that's the level. Here's why I think this is a problem with this article.

They're at an event where these people aren't gay married, right? So they're at an event where it's a dating event, right? So they're talking to all these people who don't have any of these protections already. So do they care whether or not they go away? And that's the real problem is when you're having this conversation with people who are at a dating event and not a bunch of old married gay people, they're going to get a very different, I think, take on this. And that's the real issue. It's like, none of these people have

an opinion on this because they haven't been gay married and they haven't been, you know, in a situation where their like longstanding partner is sick or dying and they don't have any rights in that situation. Right. They don't know what they don't know what they're missing because they never

had it. So we're in this stupid place where people are asking them these questions, you're like, well, what the fuck do you know about it? You are fucking gay married? You're going to have a fucking You're in a speed dating event for lesbians right now. Right. And they're all to a one of them that they're interviewing.

They're angry. They're mad. They're like, hey, you know, nobody, when I say to other people in the gay community that I'm a Republican, they are repulsed by that because it says that, you know, they're saying things like, well, this doesn't match my values and they won't give me a shot. There's nothing to give a shot to. I don't understand that at all. Like, yeah, you don't, I would, as just a person in the world, if,

If I were dating, there is no fucking way I would date a person who was a Republican. Zero percent chance. Zero percent chance. Because it is a stand-in for a set of values. You cannot be a Republican. And then I am going to share values in a way that I find you attractive as a human being. We are going to disagree fundamentally on like the rights of people and the dignity of other human beings. And these people are like, yeah, but they won't even like,

they won't even have a conversation with me. And it's like, well, because they already know fundamentally that you are willing to hurt other people to get what you want. Absolutely. And I am unwilling to spend time with human beings who think that way. So why would I want to spend my fucking time and money and energy and whatever on you? That's crazy. There's no real.

And just like you suggest, these people are stuck in a bygone, era where when they would say they were Republican, they're like, yeah, but I could have like a liberal neighbor and we could have a conversation. And you're like, yeah, that's before you guys were like, yeah, we don't, we don't think that people that are Hispanic have the same rights as white people. Right. And you're like, well, then that's, I don't have anything in common with you. Like, you and I, we're not like going to sit down and fucking trade hot dish recipes. Like, fuck you. I know. I don't want to have a conversation with you because you're fundamentally a bad person. You're fundamentally a person who I don't want to have a conversation with. I don't

want to talk to. I don't want to see around. I won't invite to my house for the poker game. I won't have you over when we're doing a barbecue because I don't want to see you because I don't want to hear your ideas. I don't want to be around you. And if you go to a dating thing and you walk in and the first thing you say isn't I'm a Republican, it's I don't think Hispanic people who don't speak English who happen to be in this country should have rights. If you said that, out loud, what do you think the response should be? Right? If you say, start, stop

saying Republican and start saying what you believe in. What did, or what the Republican party believes in. I think what we should do is make women suffer through very difficult times in their life by taking away all of the reproduction services that we had in this entire

country. All the reproductive services that they had for ending birth, we should take that away and make women suffer. If you say that, I let him. I'm like, I don't like you. Right. Why would I like you? Why would you be my friend? I don't like you, man.

That's exactly it. So many Republican positions are morally disqualifying. Yeah. So I'm just like, yeah, are you? You have, and the thing is, like, I will say this too. If the Democratic Party took a stance that I felt was morally disqualifying, I would disqualifying. them. I would have to be independent, right? I would be like, yeah, I just like, but so far,

thankfully, that hasn't happened. Like, I've not agreed with everything, but so far I've not felt like anything was morally disqualifying. But the Republican Party has many such issues. Many, many, many, many such issues. And I feel just baffled. And these women in their, in this article, I'm glad you didn't get, I'm glad you were confused too, because I read through this article, I'm like, oh, I must have skimmed it somehow and missed it. No, there's nothing in there. And I was like, no. They just, they just, they. cannot articulate a position other than I wish people would give me more of a chance when I wear my brown shirt. Yeah, I'm just complaining because I happen to agree with people who want to take my rights away and you won't give me a chance.

And you're like, no, because the person who you're dating or want to date is also going to lose their rights. So how can you expect them to just welcome you with open arms? Those people are going to be marginalized by an authoritarian shitty regime that wants to pull all their rights away. Why would they be happy with that? Why would they welcome you if you're the fucking person who's also, like, helped vote those people in? Nobody wants to fuck a Nazi. Boo, who said the Nazi. The Cold War's over.

Well, finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Hey, comrades, hey? Austin, we won. Oh, groovy, smashing. Yay, capitalism. Stories from Reuters. Meta tolerates rampant. add fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue. So this is actually, there's a part of this I just

want to read directly from because I think it's, it really sets the stage for the whole thing. So meta staffers discovered that there's an enormous amount of fraud originating from China, billions and billions of dollars. And the meta staffers were like, hey, quote, we need to make significant investment to reduce, to reduce growing harm. And then they did. And then they did. They created an anti-fraud team that went beyond previous efforts to monitor scams and other banned activity from China. Using a variety of stepped-up enforcement tools, it slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China. But then, then, Meta-Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg weighed in. As a result of integrity strategy pivot and follow-up from Mark, a late 20-24 document notes,

The China ads enforcement team was asked to pause its work. Rogers was unable to learn the specifics of the CEO's involvement or what the so-called integrity strategy pivot entailed. Integrity? But after Zuckerberg's input, the documents show meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team. It also lifted its freeze that it introduced on granting new Chinese ad agencies access to its platform. And its document also shows that meta shelved yet other anti-scam measures that internal tests had indicated, would be effective. They basically were like, hey, without all these scams, we're losing billions of dollars. It would be better if our customers also lost billions of dollars and we didn't.

Yeah, man. Because like the amount of money that they're getting off of this, off these scams, is too good to pass up, right? This is, this is the, you know, essentially what they're doing is allowing like lower level criminals to do stuff and they're essentially collecting the protection money from it. That's what they're doing. They're allowing lower level criminals to go out and do crimes and then they're saying, as long as you pay me protection money, I won't take you.

You still have free reign. And there's nothing that the people in the other countries are going to be able to do that. One, most of the time get that money back or two, do anything to you to harm you. You're free to do any kind of the, cyber crimes that you want to do, which are essentially just scams to other people, you can scam. And this isn't scamming like, you know, people forget, this is just a dude.

This will just be a Facebook user who goes on to Facebook. He could be your fucking neighbor or your cousin or your brother-in-law or whatever. They'll go on Facebook. They'll get tricked by these very specific scams. We talked about one of them, the pig-butchering scam, right? There's all these other scams that get publicized and sent around. Facebook all the time, and then they'll use Facebook's messaging apps to contact you and find everything out about you, and then they'll contact you, and then they'll trick you into giving them large amounts of money, often through your own greed, but that doesn't necessarily mean you deserve it, right? Often that's how they convince you, but I mean, let's be real honest,

most people have a tiny bit of greed in their body, and they're like, man, I'd really like to get ahead, especially people who don't have a lot. And so there's like a way in which for them to squeeze money out of you, and then that money gets, gets fucking squawzing out of you. And then what happens is nothing. Nothing happens. Your bank can't help you. Facebook sure as fuck won't help you. And Facebook won't take these people off unless their fucking hand is tied behind their back

and they're screaming uncle. So it never happens. Once in a great while, they'll do something sort of token-wise. But look at how much money they're collecting from this. And that tells you how crooked an organization this is. Yeah. This is not the first or fifth or tenth time. that the same version of the same story with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg has appeared,

where internally people are like, hey, we can make this a safer place. And Zuckerberg and his team have said, no. Yep, hard pass. We are not making this a safer place. We will make this a more dangerous place for women, for young girls, for people spending their money, for everybody possible, as long as I personally profit. it is a horrifying space where we are really at risk, like we are really truly at risk in these spaces,

and they know how to make it better. And when they make it better and they make less money, they pull it back. This is exactly the same as driving around and being like, well, we could fix all those gas tanks because they blow up. But we would lose money if we fixed all those exploding gas tanks. There's no moral difference here. There is no moral difference. And again, this isn't the first time or the fifth time or the 10th time. It happens over and over and over.

It's happened on Instagram. It's happened on Facebook. It's happened on fucking WhatsApp. It happens every place that there is control from that same organization. It's just an evil organization. We've done this to where we all seem to think that this is the one place in the world where people are allowed to have a business that generates this. this much income and they have no responsibility for the thing that they're doing, right?

This is, I mean, it isn't exclusive because we allow tons of businesses that make a shit ton of money, have free reign, right? We talk about, I mean, talk about oil and gas industry, right? Right. That's an industry that has been face-fucking our environment for the past, you know, however, and then once in a while, they'll fund some asshole who thinks carbon dioxide is the greatest thing in the world, and he'll tell a bunch of people, and that'll help flip all the people on the other side to believe that climate change is a real thing, and they'll just continue to create as

much oil and gas as they can to bilk and get as much money. And there's never any repercussions for people like that. And the same thing here. This is a billion-dollar industry, a trillion-dollar industry, I would probably imagine the social media is probably a trillion-dollar industry. And this is a, or a large billions, right, hundreds of billions of dollars. this is an industry where these people get away with all this stuff and they create content

they don't create the content they just house all this content and then whenever anybody says man that shit is really dangerous they're like yeah okay sure is and then that's literally the only that's the only thing they'll say

and then they just keep doing the same thing and no one's like we need to take safeguards against this danger nobody does anything like I really feel like you know like A while back, Trump was threatening that rule. Whatever that rule is, that internet rule, it's like basically, it's just content.

It's not yours. Section 231, I think it is. Yeah, 231, yeah. I was like, man, that might change exactly how everybody deals with anything. Because if that's the case, if you get rid of that, then suddenly there's this whole, you know, you're responsible for the thing that you put out there and the company that puts you out there has to vet you. So would it be harder to get your YouTube's video out there?

Probably. Probably be a lot harder to get your YouTube video. out there. But would you have 700, you know, anti-disinformation videos out there talking about vaccine disinformation? You wouldn't have those because the company would then be on the hook for all those things and they would have to silence those people and say, no, we can't have that information because it's bad, terrible information that can hurt people. Yep. Yeah. This is this is an organization that is clearly shown that its primary interest is in making money. It doesn't care if it's from foreign adversaries.

Sure. That's fine, right? Mark Zuckerberg stepped in and said, hey, we're losing money from foreign adversaries. Why did you cut our revenue from a foreign adversary in half? We need more money from these people that want, that do not have our national best interests, our social best interests, our cultural best interests at heart. These are people that, like, we are in the middle of a propaganda war with, and Zuckerberg is choosing a side right now. And the side he's choosing isn't yours. It's not your fucking side, man.

As long as it makes him fucking money, he does not give a shit. And I want to remind people, he's doing this even though he does not need that money. Think about what that means about him too. Yeah, he's like the fourth richest guy in the world or something. Right. So think about that for a second, too. This is a guy who will sell you down the river and it doesn't even mean anything to him. Doesn't even matter.

He could do whatever he wants to then. He's already so rich. There's nothing. There's no goods and services he can't buy. There's nothing he can't do in the entire world. There's no thing that is available for sale to do, experience to have anything that he already can't have. And he'll still hurt you just to make the numbers tick higher.

It matters not a whit. He doesn't even get anything out of it except for to fucking hurt you. All right, everybody, happy news. Merry Christmas. We're going to be back after the new year. But happy new year, everybody. And we'll be back, like I say, next year with a new show. And we hope everybody's next year is better than this year by a lot.

And 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. Pseo-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, witchers, witchers, witchers, witches. witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your signs. Thrust 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 Dissinance Pod.

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