Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 914: Gerrymander Wars

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Takeaways from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan: Trump's flex pays off and Democrats win special election I voted for Harris in 2024. She shouldn't run in 2028. | Opinion Louisiana governor plans to suspend May primary to redraw US House map, Washington Post reports | Reuters US to close watchdog office for federal immigration detention abuses | Reuters White House Insists Iran War Is Over, Even While Missiles Fly

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This episode of Cognitive Dissinance 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. Cording Live from Glory Hole 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 at. Today is Thursday, May the 7th. And Cecil, I was, and we'll talk about this story, but I am so happy, so happy. that the war in Iran is over and gas prices are back to normal.

Man, back to normal. I mean, just amazing how everything just shifts right back. It's just crazy. I, you know, because like, if that weren't the case, it would be absolutely insane to be living in a post-Trump world or a current Trump world where all of the financial and tax incentives that allowed for electric cars, for example, to be a viable option for many, many families.

Like, obviously, we got rid of all of those. We stripped away the federal tax credits. What about solar power? Is that something that we're doing anymore? Completely took away all of those tax credits as well. No, wind power. Are we doing that? Wind projects and massive solar projects.

They're not issuing any more new approvals for any of those. It's just because oil is so prevalent. And it's so easy to get. Right. Because oil is totally stable and chilling cool. Stable. Stable is a great way to put it. I like that.

And we don't need to worry about volatility with oil at all. Yeah. So we've really, energy is actually not that important of a second. You know what also in a stable is of shit. There's a bunch of, it's full of shit. The stables are full of shit. So, yeah. It's so funny to me because I had this moment, CISL, I want to share a personal thing.

I have, I've had a long-termish plan when I bought this house that, you know, when you think about like, okay, what are the improvements or upgrades or whatever that you want to do? I'm like, well, I know I've got to buy kids, cars as they go into college. I'm going to have to get a new car. I've got other stuff. So my plan had always been that I'm going to put solar panels and a pretty sizable array of solar panels on the house. And then a year later, just based on finances, a year later, I'm going to give my car to my stepdaughter. I'm going to buy myself an electric car. And then I'm going to begin the process of electrifying my home to match my solar panel grid, my local grid that I've created here at home. And then,

you know, this plan was, I sort of came up with this plan when there was like still all these tax incentives. So it looked one way on paper. Right. Yeah. It looked one way on paper. And then all of a sudden, everything shifted. And I wasn't able to take advantage of the tax credits.

And I had a moment of pause. And I thought, gosh, it's a lot more expensive than my original plan. Maybe this isn't the right plan. But I thought, nah, fuck it. It's still the right plan. I'm not second guessing it. I believe in it from a principles standpoint. But then I also ran the numbers.

And I'm like, long term, this still makes sense. And it just fucking cracks me up to watch all this like, to read these news stories of all these people being like, you know, America's beginning to return to the electric car. And it's like, oh, what are we now? Yeah, man. Oh, solar projects are booming across America. Oh, really? Oh, I wonder why.

Well, maybe because that was always the right thing to do. It is amazing to watch the back and forth that has. happens about, there's an article in the notes today about the war. White House insists Iran war is over even while missiles fly. So this is the new times that wrote this. But it's so amazing. And some of the stuff that's in here, some of the word, some of the wording that they choose, they keep on saying, well, they said this, but then this happened.

And then they said this, but this happened. And it's all just, they said the war was over. And then we attacked them. And then they said there was a ceasefire. And there wasn't actually a ceasefire era. And then they said their straight was open and the straight wasn't actually open. And they just, it's so funny to see this happen. And then to watch the fallout too because I, I don't, did you watch the or listen to Tucker Carlson on the interview with the New York Times did a thing called the interview?

Oh, I did actually. Weirdly enough, that's so funny. I never, ever, ever, ever listened to the interview. I just don't like it personally. Like, it's not my thing. I happened to be in the middle of a workout when it came on. And I didn't reach for my phone to turn it off. And that's the reason I listened to this one.

So you listen to talking to Carlson. I did. I listened to it just by accident. There's not a ton in there. One, I think it's really repulsive that the New York Times gives this man a platform to talk on. I genuinely think that's repulsive. He's a danger to society.

He's a bad person. He has been a liar. his entire career. He was called out as a liar in a defamation case or whatever in a case against the Fox News and he basically said, I literally just say shit

and I make it up as I go. I'm not, that's not exactly what he said, but it's pretty much what he said. It's pretty close. I make it up as I go. So he's a liar and he's lying very specifically

for lots of different reasons and many of those reasons are to convince the very, very soft-skulled people who watch him on TV and on the internet to believe really radical things. This is a man who put out a video entitled, The Great Replacement isn't really a theory, and it's not a debunk theory or something like that. So this is a guy who genuinely leans heavily into these conspiracy theories and dangerous conspiracy

theories, right? So this is a bad human being. He's not a good person. He's never been a good person. he's a admitted liar, and he's a person who has tried to use his clout and his voice to manipulate people for many, many years, and he has done so. And I think it's repulsive that the New York Times would fucking re-interview this fucking asshole. But I also think it's repulsive that they employ Ross do that or whatever, too.

So I think it's repulsive that they give people the platform of their opinion page to fucking basically deep-throat billioners. they do a lot of repulsive shit. So don't get me wrong. I mean, like, I'm not like apologizing for this group. So I, but I did listen to this episode. And just to see sort of what this person had to say. And he really didn't have a lot to say. But at one point, he says, he essentially, they say, you called the president the

Antichrist. And he called him the Antichrist, specifically because of his interventionist war that he started with Iran. He literally has been on the phone with the president a bunch of times leading up to it, say, please don't attack them. That would be terrible. But the president is being pushed by other people, possibly Netanyahu, possibly the evangelicals.

There's lots of reasons why this war might start. And he calls him the Antichrist on his program and they say to him, you called him the Antichrist. And he looks at the camera and he says, I never uttered those words in my life or something like that. Right. And then they play the clip of him saying, he's the fucking Antichrist. Yeah.

It's like he's such a fucking liar. He doesn't even know what he said. But even people like that, you're seeing this fracture of people on the right. They don't know how to react to this because there is a large contingent of people. J.D. Vance was one of them who was touting this non-interventionist wars. Literally, Tulsi Gabbard's entire career is based on non-interventionist war stuff, right? like she doesn't want to see American soldiers die, right? Like that's like her whole career was based on that.

She's part of that administration. There's so many people who were part of that administration that really were against what the neocons use as interventionist wars. And to see this play out like this, it's amazing to see. And that there's, in my opinion, I feel like there should be a civil war in the White House because you have a vice president and a bunch of other people on that side that are saying, don't get into this war. And then you got Marco Rubio, who's like,

fucking worm tongue in fucking Donald Trump's here. So it's just insane to watch. And then to watch them all try to compartmentalize this and figure it out. Because there's people who are still like, no, everything's fine. I don't know what you're talking about. It has become wildly cliche to make all, to make comparisons about what is happening today with like classic dystopian literature like 1984. It's just wildly cliche.

But there is no more obvious and clear example of literal double speak than the administration about what is going on in Iran. I'm going to read some from this article because it's fucking wild. And we've become somewhat inured to this kind of stuff at some point. But like I just, it bears pointing out because we're both at war with Oceana and we are not at war with Oceana. No. We are like, so let me read some of this because it is just so fucking wild. And I'm sorry I have to use my phone because I didn't log in in my New York Times app on my computer this morning. All right.

The operation, so here is, here is Marco Rubio. The operation Epic Fury is concluded. Now that is an extremely definitive sentence. Sure. Right? It is concluded. We achieved the objective of that operation. Whoa.

Okay. All right. So let's keep. going. The effort to reopen the straight, Mr. Rubio said, is entirely a defensive and humanitarian operation that would result in direct military exchanges with the Iranians only if U.S. ships came under fire. Mr. Trump announced that he was pausing even that effort, which was only one day old, and it succeeded in getting a few ships freed for a short period of time, citing what he said was great progress toward an agreement with Iran. So it's concluded, but we don't have an agreement. There's still a blockade

which is an act of war. He kept the American blockade in place part of a strategy of pressure. Still, Mr. Trump's suspension of the effort to guide ships out of the straits seemed to contradict the administration's stated position

that it was intolerable for Iran to block an international waterway and that only the United States had the ability to reopen it. The insistence from the White House that the war was over was the latest rhetorical leap in an effort to put a war

that has created the greatest political crisis of Mr. Trump's presidency in the rear view. Despite Mr. Rubio's declaration the objectives of the war have been accomplished, they clearly have not. In the 38 days of intensive combat operations, the United States hit by the Pentagon's count 13,000 targets, but destroying targets was not the only point. Mr. Trump himself described the objectives on February the 28th, when he told the country in a video that he had five major goals. The first was to ensure that Iran could

never have a nuclear weapon. But then he went on to add, the United States had to destroy Iran's ballistic missiles and their launchers, sink its navy, and its support of terror. terrorist groups like Hezbo and Hamas and create the conditions for the Iranian people to topple their government. The Iranian Navy is clearly gone, but that is only one check off the checkbox. So far, Iran's nuclear stockpile has not been touched. There is no agreement, as of yet, to ship any of it out of the country or dilute it. Intelligence estimates differ, but the U.S. assessment suggests that more than half, more than half of Iran's missiles and launchers survived. It is too early to tell about support of proxy groups.

Mr. Trump abandoned talks of changing the country's leadership, suggesting at one point that he never called for it. At other moments, he's maintained that regime change has already happened, citing the emergence of a new Supreme Leader. Already happened. To Iranian experts and the American intelligence agencies, that is really just a change of personnel. There's, like, it's crazy.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. It would have been amazing. Yeah. If he would have said, I have a five-point plan. And it's and it's Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, Dodge. That would have been amazing, dude.

It's so crazy. Okay, let me ask you a question, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They ended the operation. It's over. Sure it is. We ended the operation. Yeah.

We're starting a new operation. Starting now. Right. Is this the same thing that they were doing when they wanted to skirt the rules around appointments to... Oh, 100%. To do...

Yeah, so that's what I thought, right? Like, when I first saw this, my first thought is, the reason why you're doing this isn't because the thing is over. No. You just renamed it. You're like, it's like you're tricking yourself into lower calories by just renaming your ice cream cone in the middle of this. Like, you're still eating the whole cone.

Like, you're still eating the whole thing, but now you're making it into two meals. and three meals and four meals and five meals. Dude, I had a banana split, so it's actually healthy. And I split it between breakfast and lunch. It's a whole thing. Yeah, I actually had to twice. It's because they want to skirt the rules.

Like you said last week, when you said these people, while they often are very stupid, there are a few very smart ones who know how to look at a rulebook and say, well, we can easily. get around this 60-day thing of notifying Congress that were involved in a conflict by just making a new conflict. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are rhetorically, and it's all recent history, because it's only been happening for two months, right? So rhetorically, they are, they've called this a war, then they've called it not a war, then they called it a mini war, then sometimes it's still a war. It's occasionally been an excursion. It's sometimes an operation or a conflict, right? Yeah. So, like,

The problem is that, like, if they had something that they could call a war and Americans were behind it, Americans at times of war that they support will rally greatly behind it. So I honestly think they focus group the diet. I think they do like a focus grouping informally of the terminology. And they're doing that to see what kind of support they can drum up in order to create pressure on Congress. Because Congress, to your point before, Congress has not authorized any of this. and they're coming up to the deadline where they're like out of time before Congress is going to have to do something about it.

So instead they're just going to be like, well, there isn't anything happening. And meanwhile, there's clearly things happening. Yeah, man. Like, I feel crazy. How can we have, if you have a son or daughter in the Navy right now on board a ship near the Strait of Hormuz? And they're just like, well, then there's nothing going on right now. You'd have to be like, well, then why isn't it? my kid home.

That, like, you can't square that circle. Yeah, man. You can't make rhetoric changed like geopolitics, but they're giving a shot, man. They're giving a shot. Dan and Amy for you. What? Ma'am, Jonah shot himself in the foot.

Oh, my God. What did he do this time? No, he literally shot himself in the foot. We're in the ER. Turn on CNN, ma'am, it's on right now. Turn on the thick, thick. These are the woods where I used to hunt with my stepfather. And he taught me the proper.

Oh. Jesus. Oh, my God. All right, so let's talk a little bit about what's going on with the voting stuff. AP, takeaways from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Trump's flex pays off and Democrats win special elections. So the reference there is that in Indiana, Trump basically was pissed off that Indiana resisted his calls for redistricting.

Yeah, yeah. And all of the lawmakers that were up for reelection, he and his compatriots shit a ton of money against them in the primaries. And it worked. And I think it's good news. I think so too. The amount of money that they spent

on essentially inconsequential races to divide their own party is huge. Because this is a primary. You're spending, they spent millions of dollars, injected millions of dollars into these races that are essentially a Republican versus a Republican. Someone who

decided not to do what Trump said and someone who would do what Trump said. So, yeah, and you had to spend that much money to convince the groups of people around there to vote certain people out. Now, I will say, if you look at the numbers behind this, how badly some of those people were beaten, they were beaten real fucking bad.

I mean, like 20 some points across the board. One was like 50, I think, by 50 points they lost. It was kind of It's stomping, dude. It was insane. But two of them, one of them, one of the people who defied Trump won, and another person, it's too close to call, I think, still or at least was when the story came out.

I'm not sure if it has been called since. But you're right. I think it's good news in that sense. And I also think it's good news, too, when you look at the numbers of people who were voting in the Democratic primaries versus the Republican primaries, it's not looking great. They had to spend a lot of money for turnout. and they still wound up without a massive turnout of Republicans in this nomination phase. Now, that might change when it comes to voting in November,

but things are not looking great for them. They lost a special election. And this has been sort of a trend that we've seen all across politics across the country. If anybody can fumble this, though, Tom, it's the Democrats. Oh, yeah. We've got plenty of opportunity to fuck. up what should be an easy layup. Like, if we trip on our own dick, I would not be surprised whatsoever.

I think this is very good news because I think Trump's success has been this unlikely coalition of previously less than motivated and less than committed voters. That is where he has won. That's where he's expanded the circle outside the right-wing hardliners, right? And now you don't have him at the top of the ticket. So I don't think a lot of those people are going to show up. But then you're also going to have a bunch of the people that he alienated with this schism when they're waking up and they're like, well, my gas is $5 a gallon.

And I am just not waking up excited to vote for the guy who fucked me in the ass and lied to me about this or lied to me about that. My gas is expensive. My groceries didn't go down. So why am I going to get up on a Tuesday and go do this when I generally am not that motivated of a voter anyway? So I really think that like doubling down on Trump when Trump's approval rating is like 37% right now is not great for the Republican Party. And not because I don't think that hardliners are going to vote Trump. Of course they're going to vote Trump or vote Trump surrogates. Of course they will.

But I just think this will suppress turnout. It'll suppress excitement. And then the other side has so much more energy right now because they're pissed off. So there's a lot of energy on the last. left to just fucking say no, then try to put the brakes on this machine. And there's a lot less energy, I think, on the right to say like, all right, no top of the ticket, no Trump to vote for. And honestly, there's never going to be a Trump to vote for again.

Yeah. So. You're right? I mean, yeah, fingers fucking crossed, bro. I don't believe in crossed fingers, but I am crossing them. I've been crossing shit I shouldn't even tell you about. I'm so hoping for good news, man. They've been feeding this beast for so long.

And the beast is Trump's narcissism. That's what the beast is. And that's what they've been feeding for so long. No one will... He's the kid in that Twilight Zone who wishes shit out into a cornfield. Everybody's afraid to do anything about it. And once in a while, like Liz Cheney

is the guy in that Twilight Zone who's like, somebody just hit him while he's paying attention to me. Just somebody hit him in the fucking head. Like that's what Liz Cheney was and everybody was just like, uh, uh, and they froze. And then Trump wanked to, her out into the cornfield.

That's basically what had. And look at what happened of the other guy. Who was the other guy? The fucking Jack guy. That guy was like wears suits that were like three sizes too small. The guy up in Rockford Illinois.

The guy was up in Rockford who moved to Texas. I don't know his name. He was a representative. I forget his name. He was only like a two term of arms or something. Yeah. He was like big big large huge or whatever. But he used to wear his,

he used to very much cross his arm in front of his body with his suit on. So it looked like he had like this. This dude doesn't fit at all. I don't know. Which way is the beach? You know, like that guy. But anyway, that dude is, that dude was also winked out into the cornfield.

And then there's a bunch of people who, as their time lengths out, they stop supporting him because they don't have to feed the beast anymore. They don't have to feed this thing anymore. I don't have to. But it's, it's, they're going to reach a strange point because at a certain point, feeding that beast is going to cost you the future. because that beast can't run again. At least it shouldn't be able to run again.

They're at this point. I don't know if you saw the video this week of them asking judicial appointees whether or not Trump should be able to run in 2024 and they wouldn't answer the question. Excuse me? What? They wouldn't answer. They would, they hemmed and hawed and didn't answer the question. There's no hem and ha here.

There's 2028. There's nothing. Cecil, there's no hem and ha here. Yeah, man. But the problem is if they say he can't. And it might have been if he lost the 2020 election. I'm not sure if it's he can run again or if he lost the 2020 election. I may be misremembering the headline I read.

So I apologize for my non-clarity here. But they asked the judicial appointees an absolute layup question, which is so easy to answer because it has a real factual answer to it. Yeah, man. And they didn't answer. question in the world. Yeah. Because they're afraid of him still.

Yeah. But I think as time goes on, there's going to, you have to stop being afraid of him because there's nothing he can eventually, he's going to have to, he's going to wane in power. Eventually, you become a lame duck. He's not yet. But he will eventually become a lame duck. He's limping. Yeah.

He's clearly limping. He's got cancels. So like, you know, like they, but in any case, there's a, they had fed this beast for way too long. And I think they're stuck now. I think this is a real, I see a lot of bad. Obviously, everybody sees a lot of bad in America. And America is, there's a lot of negative, horrible things that are happening to lots, large swaths of people across the country. But there's a, there's a hopefulness in me that they were too short-sighted and they were, and they're too stupid to pull off really big, horrible shit that that is long-lasting. Yeah. I think that there's a

hopefulness in me that they just, they're just too bungling to figure this all out. And that I think while we do have to eat a lot of shit to lean up into these next couple of years, I am hopeful that they just, there's, that no matter how they try, they're not going to be able to fix the system. That's my hope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with all of that. And I think that, like, one of the things that the Republican Party has been betting on now for, I mean, honestly, it's been such a long time. it's over a decade of Trump being like the deciding element in American politics. Yeah, but yeah.

So we're looking at a really long time. 12 years it will have been when he steps down. It'll be 12 years that his, at his opinion is the most important thing. And let me tell you what the Republican Party put all of their chips on when they spun that fucking wheel and has not happened. They put all of their chips that there would be a natural successor to Trump that would be able to continue. and hold this same coalition of weirdos.

And nobody else is even close to holding the same coalition of weirdos. Like the weirdo base, which is MAGA, like, maga is this, when you look at like demographically, like who MAGA is, it's fucking weird and unlikely. And it is like seen and it's being studied like aggressive, like by political scientists. I've read articles. It's like there's never been a more unlikely and strange set of bedfellow. in American politics in recent history. I don't think Marco Rubio is going to,

like that's not going to drive those guys. J.D. Vance is not going to do it. There's no successor. So you've got all your eggs in one fucking basket, all your chips on fucking red 39 or fucking whatever. I don't play that game. But you know what I'm saying. It's probably not even it goes up to 39.

I don't wonder if one's odd and one's even. Yeah, I should have said five. And maybe it's reds are even and blacks are odd. Yeah. I'm going to be like, right, right, a roulette player. It's all red 30. I actually invented the game of Rurak. Might not even go up that high.

It might only be like 32 or something. What a great point. What a great point though. And I think one of the answers you can lean into here, Tom, is that Trump doesn't want to share. Right. Trump won't share. And in order for there to be a true successor to Trump's power, Trump would have to share this limelight with someone else for the last three years or, two years of his presidency.

Right? So in order for it to, there would have to be just like when they light the torch and they do that relay race at the, at the Olympics, there has to be a moment where two people are holding the torch. Trump won't let anybody else hold the torch. He's

not going to hand that off to anybody. So what he's going to do is hog it until there's nothing left. Yep. And he'll smother the flame. So he's not going to share. Yeah, he'll smother the flame. I hadn't even thought about that, but I think that that's the truest thing, man, because there is a tension, which anyone who's paying any attention has always seen between what Trump wants for Trump and what the Republican

Party wants from Trump, right? Yes. Yeah, no, good point. Trump has never given a shit about the Republican Party or its principles or its goals or its long-term success, right? He wants to fucking put his name on a sneaker that's on a coin that's on a mountain that shoved up your ass and that you bought with a meme. That's all he wants, right?

Like, he just, all he wants is self-aggrandizement. So at some point, the Republican Party is like, well, we've been trying to use you. And he's like, well, I've been trying to use you. And they are actually not aligned on principles and goals. And so the likelihood that they're going to have a long-term success out of this feels really low. And I think you're going to get a whole bunch of those people from that unlikely coalition that never existed before and isn't really aligned on anything in terms of principle other than, we like Trump because he says weird shit about hot water heaters or whatever.

He's like on a tear about now. He's mean to people we don't like. That's why they like him. He's mad at the Browns. He's mad at the Browns. He's mad at the Browns. And some of the Browns are like, well, we're mad at us too. You know, I don't understand that.

But yeah. So yeah. But I think that there's definitely going to be something that has to happen there as we work our way forward. Now, can Trump and this particular group of people make it really difficult for anybody else to, in the Democratic Party, to gain power, absolutely they can. And they're trying to do a bunch of that fuckery, and we're going to talk about it today. But I think, like, my hope is, is that there's just, they're going to keep trying to do the gerrymandering and the redistricting

and the maybe canceling of things. I just don't think that they are going to be able to pull it off. At least, it's my hope that they won't be able to pull it off. Yeah. And that they're going to be stuck with a Congress that is going to be very hostile toward Trump. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N.com.

For too long, my country, the wealthiest nation in a continent which is not wealthy, failed to carry out its full responsibilities to its sister republics. We have now accepted that responsibility. In the same way, those who possess wealth and power in poor nations must accept their own responsibilities. They must lead the fight. for those basic reforms, which alone can preserve the fabric of their societies. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

And this story comes from Reuters. Louisiana governor plans to suspend May primary to redraw U.S. House map. Yeah, here's that fuckery. Yep. This is exactly what you were just talking about. C.S. So this is hot on the heels of the Supreme Court, basically saying there's no more voting rights act. So tear it out.

And Louisiana's like, awesome. We're just going to completely disenfranchise the enormous black population that lives in Louisiana as much as humanly possible. So fuck you. They're going to dilute it with red voters. Just like we said, the reason why they want to do this is because they want to take a small amount of red voters and dilute as many blue voters as they can. And that's been the redistricting plan for every single partisan redistricting. happened in the history of the United States. It doesn't matter who's in charge of it.

Nope. If you're on the Democrat side, you don't look at it and say, like Obama said or whatever, it wasn't Obama. It was Harold Washington, I think, said, we're going to be fairer than fair. If people don't know who Harold Washington was, Harold Washington was, I think, the first black mayor of the city of Chicago. I'm pretty sure that I'm right there. Yeah, I do believe that.

And people didn't want him in office. and the mayor position in Chicago for ever was this ethnic group, be it, you know, the Irish or the Italians or the, you know, the English or whoever it is, this ethnic group, it was never black people, by the way. It was always a different type of white person, by the way, leading up to that. But in any case, they would come in and they would say, it's our time. It's my time. I'm going to do, we're going to work for our people.

And our people are the Irish people or our people are the Italians. And we're going to make sure that those people are, they get all the benefits and everybody else just gets the scraps. And when he came in, he said, we're going to be fairer than fair is what he said. We're going to be more fair because we're going to be scrutinized. Just like how Obama was scrutinized when he was in office. He was under a hyper microscope the entire time because everybody wanted to find something wrong with the black guy who happened to be president at that time. So Obama often did things that was detrimental to his own party to try to appear as if he were more fair than the average person. Nobody who's redistricting things like that. There's not a person out there who's redistricting

a group that is that is either, that's in control, that is either blue or red, is going to look at it and be like, let's try to just make sure we have the perfect number of equal votes across this. Nobody's doing it. until there's a nonpartisan group that oversees this and says that's fair, we won't have that. That will never happen in the United States. And what we had before was you can't do that to ethnic groups. You can't look at this wide swath of ethnic groups because we've had segregation in our fucking in our country forever.

And it never really changed. We said it's not a thing we do anymore, but it's still a thing we do, by the way. And it's still a thing that's there, the high. segregated urban areas and regular area, like rural areas all across the country. But the problem is, is that what they allowed them to do is to cut into these groups and cut the pieces of these groups out and then the pull in large groups of rural people to dilute urban votes. That's what they've been doing. That's what red states do all the time. And they said, you can't do that to black people. You can't do that to ethnic groups.

and then they just went back on the Supreme Court and said, yeah, you can. Sure you can. You know, I think, too, that with the current Supreme Court, based on how they handled this last decision, I think we're at a really interesting and I think entirely novel place in history, where I think that even if Congress got together and passed a law, a national law, saying that, you know, an anti-jerrymandering act of 2029, I think that the Supreme Court would strike it down. not because it's unconstitutional, which is supposed to be their only mandate, right?

But that's not how they behaved with this last Voting Rights Act thing. They didn't say this is unconstitutional. They basically said it's unnecessary. And I think that they would, even if Congress got together to pass an anti-Gerrymandering Act and establish nonpartisan boards

for districting purposes to try to avoid this, I actually think the Supreme Court would come back and say, we're striking that down. It's not necessary. It is antithetical. to the goals of the Supreme Court's right wing control.

And I think they would strike it down. We have completely dismantled the way that our government is supposed to work. If you took civics class, you took a fucking fiction class. That's a fiction lesson now. It's actually so bad. I don't remember what the decision was, Cecil, but there was a decision not that long ago where they had to basically say, okay, when you take the board. bar answer the questions as if this most recent decision had not happened.

Because I had the bar is no longer thing. Yeah, I had dinner with Craig Muson, who I used to do a podcast with a podcast called Lawful Assembly. Yeah. For a year with him. And I had dinner with him recently. And he said, I've been trying to teach asylum law throughout all this. And he said that it is almost impossible to teach asylum law to law students because the

law changes so rapidly and the the administration literally ignores some of the rules and laws that have been in place for a long time. And so he's having a very frustrating time trying to teach the the thing he knows a whole lot about. I mean, this is a guy who literally started a nonprofit that works with, you know, to get pro bono lawyers for people who can't afford it to get asylum in this country. He started the biggest nonprofit in the country to do that. And he even doesn't know and can't make a judgment about how things are working in our current system because they're so in such disarray from how they used to be. So here's my question for you, because I know where I'm at with it. And I'm curious where you're at with it. I think like from a matter of principle and a

matter of the protection of democracy, I, of course, abhorred gerrymandering. I think there is no reasonable argument that gerrymandering is anything other than anti-democratic. I, however, fully recognize that it has now become a weapon of politics that we cannot allow only one side to use. So while I hate it, I am also fully supportive of efforts now. to draw those as aggressively as possible in areas where Democrats control those states. Where are you with that? I think I'm in the same place,

begrudgingly allowing this sort of thing, but what really needs to happen in our country is there needs to be several things passed into law that would change the face of politics in our country. There needs to be ranked choice voting across the board. I think that changes everything. There needs to be term limits put on Supreme Court justices. I think that is something that absolutely has to happen.

And I think there needs to be campaign finance reform in real ways that makes it so corporations can't insert their money anymore. In fact, one of the things I saw recently is that Wyoming, I think it was, or one of these states, Idaho maybe, it's one of those ones that's up there. You know, it's like up there, a state. that one basically, and this is a red state, this is not a blue state, basically said we do not want corporate money in our politics anymore. So in order for, if you are a corporation, any corporation, whether you're a corporation here or a corporation anywhere else, we basically are the ones who, we get to decide that you can't donate money to political parties anymore. I love it. So they're not letting corporations donate anymore. That's they want, it's on a, it's on a bill that is set to

to be, it's like a referendum for the people to look at, right? I'm not, I'm probably not describing it as precisely as the person who I saw the video of, but essentially what they're doing is they're trying to make it so that corporations cannot donate to people's political parties anymore. So they would have to raise that money in other ways. And, and that would hopefully allow it so that you could skirt Citizens United and make it so Citizens United doesn't allow these large groups, of donors to donate in, they wouldn't be able to do that. And that is also statewide,

so you could do it in multiple states across the country, and those states wouldn't allow that sort of thing to happen. So there's ways to skirt around this stuff. You can get around the electoral college in another way. We talked about it before, like how you can get around the electoral college by making it so that a certain number, if a certain number of states all agree

that they're just going to take the popular vote period, they're not going to look at their state vote, then you could just essentially get rid of the electoral college, too. The electoral college would be a useless thing. It would exist, but it wouldn't matter. It just wouldn't matter because no matter if you won Illinois or not, Illinois would just make a decision to go with the popular vote of the country. You could win Illinois and still they wouldn't cast their votes for Illinois.

They would cast them for the person who won the popular vote. So you could get around. You could skirt around this stuff. But if you did a few things, you could change the face of popular. politics in this country in massive ways. The problem is that I think everybody sort of relies on that one person up top, the president. Everybody thinks that that's the thing they have. They have to get the presidency. But the presidency really just has the, they have a thing that can stop everything. They don't have a thing that really creates a lot. They have a thing that can stop stuff.

And they, everybody thinks that this is the one, the most important position. But I think, man, if you could get like a lot of states to get behind that rank choice voting, get a couple of these past, you could easily change the face of politics in this country to a totally different, it would be completely different. It would be 180 degrees different from where it is now. Yeah, like, I couldn't agree more with all of that. And like what I've said before, the thing that makes me the craziest is that most of these problems are like a series of very common sense solutions that everybody supports.

Almost everybody on the street supports most of this stuff. Sure. This is what we want, but we are held hostage by a system that will not fix itself because it doesn't advantage the people who are running the system. Yeah, man. It's like, you know, you go out on the street and you start talking to people about, you know, how they feel about, like, you know, insurance companies and, you know, Medicaid and Medicare and, you know, the key tenants from the Affordable Care Act. And there's broad support. There's broad support for common sense gun control. There's broad support for reproductive rights access.

There's broad support for this stuff. That's not where the polarization always is. Like there's plenty of polarization on the ground. I'm not pretending there's not. Sure. But the deepest pieces of polarization, the biggest roadblocks, are the assholes in charge who are mostly working to protect their personal best interests at the expense of us.

because these are a really common sense. Nobody with any sense is like, you know what? Like, I actually do think that corporations should be able to shit infinite amounts of money into politics. That is the best way to get the most representative system that works for the people. Nobody thinks that. The only people to think that are like Peter Thiel. Yeah. The story is from Reuters.

U.S. to close watchdog office for federal immigration detention abuses, which there have been many. Lots and lots, man. So many. Yeah. You know, you don't find what you don't look for. And now we're just not going to look for it. Well, isn't that what they're doing with the Maha stuff too? They'll stop collecting numbers on certain things because they're like, oh, it's not a big deal or whatever. That's what they did with COVID.

They were like, hey, man, we're just not going to count those deaths anymore. We're not going to pay attention to that stuff anymore. We're not going to count the cases. And they were just like, yeah, we just made it so we don't care about it anymore. And then it doesn't exist. Yeah, man, that's how you, that's, look, I, when I get a bill in my house, I have two choices, right? And I can look at that bill and I can, oh, man, I got to pay that bill. Or I can just throw the bill away and forget about it.

And that's how you make more money. I'm an idiot. That is like, we, you got to, you got to think about, like, why are they doing? The auspices that they're using to do this, what they're saying basically is, hey, you know, you guys didn't put this in your funding bill. that's not true. There is not explicit direction for this watchdog group and the funding bill, but they have money that they could allocate to this watchdog group from the funding bill, from the DHS funding bill.

Instead, they're choosing not to fund it. It's a choice. It's a direct choice. They're mad that they didn't get all the money that they wanted. And now they're going to be like, all right, cool. You didn't give me everything I want. Now I'm going to create a system that allows me to abuse and hurt people that you care about. They're constantly holding us hostage with this shit. Because we care. And that is such a

power position when you actually care. The more you care about anybody, the more vulnerable you are. Sure. You know, it's just a true fact. And if you don't give a fuck about hurting other people, that's a weird power play position. It's a terrible way to wake up and be a human being. But there's an undeniable power to it. If you treat Sophie's choice like an ice cream, Yeah, it's a big difference. Yeah. It's totally different thing. It's an ice cream flavor.

It's a totally different thing that choosing between your two kids, you know what I mean? Like a big difference. So, yeah, it's, but, but this is a, this is a group of people who in some ways have figured out a way to weaponize. What's the opposite of empathy, Tom? Is that like cruelty? Is it cruelty? I guess indifference would be what I would think more than that. So it would be like they're weaponizing the indifference.

And in some ways, maybe I would lean to a cruelty of people on their side. I mean, this is a group of people who, when they all got together at their political rally, they had a sign that said mass deportation now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a group of people who they don't care about how that happens. They don't care about the structure in which we go out and make sure people belong. in this country through proper means, they don't care about that.

Right. What they care about is the optics of the cruelty of them deporting them. Because to them, that's important. And to the people supporting them, that's an important thing to see. We know that they think like this because Jeff Sessions even said so.

He said, we are literally separating families to try to dissuade people from coming here. The cruelty is the point. Yeah. That is literally the most important thing for us to do because we think it's a deterrent for other people. So that's why your sweet cousin or whatever who you don't talk to who lives out in the sticks and then you meet up with them and they're crazy MAGA, that's why they think that is because they are under this impression that if you damage this group of people, they will leave because they've been told that that group of people is here to take their vote away. group of people here is take their job away, and that group of people is dangerous. So they think all those things, and they're just trying to, like, save themselves or whatever,

because they're extremely influenced by the fact that a group of people that are a different shade and color than them are part of their country now. And they're super easily influenced by that, and they haven't had a good time. It's not like the poor people, the poor white rural Americans have had an all- time for the last 30 years. They've had a real shit time. And so if you can weaponize that group and lie to them and say, look, look at all these brown people.

They're the ones who are doing it. Even though you've been picking their pocket for 30 years, you can convince them of anything. And that's what they did, man. They weaponize the cruelty against all those people because they were easily duped because they've literally, we took away all their education, man. We took it all away from them. We haven't taught him anything.

So this group of people, look, and don't get me wrong, like, I think cruel people are bad. It's not like I don't think these people are good, right? I don't think leaning into your cruelty because you're afraid is a good thing. I think that's a cowardly thing to do, but I just want to explain it. I'm just trying to explain it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't stick up for those people, and I don't think that they've been, while they have been duped, I think you should be smarter than that.

But I recognize, too, that, like, they have been duped. And I think we need to recognize that as a group. Yeah, yeah. I totally feel that. Just because you've been duped doesn't mean that you are not culpable, right? Like you still maintain all of the culpability for your cruelty. I guess like I have two points, maybe a question to throw in there. But like the first point is like when you get rid of a watchdog group and the Trump administration has been basically like destroying all of the watchdogs and ethics committees and there's breaking all that stuff, right?

As much as they possibly can. many examples of it. That was part of Project 2025. Yeah. No oversight, right? No oversight boards. That was literally their plan. And like, you know, just to say it out loud, transparency is only a problem for people who are trying to hide shit.

Sure. Right? Like, people are only worried about like, you know, like, I'm not worried if like Haley wants to look at my phone because there's nothing for her to find on my phone, right? Yeah. People are worried about that because there's something on there. They don't want someone else to see. Yeah, man. Right?

We're not saying like, hey, I don't want watchdogs in my detention centers because I'm running them so humanely. Things are going so well. Right. You know, like, I'll tell you a quick, like a personal story. Like when I first got the job that I have now, I took control of this job. I was only like a handful of months into the job. A manager that worked for me that was the only person that understood how his process worked for him. worked for his whole department of maybe 35 or 40 people. He died suddenly. And nobody knew how he did

his job. And so all of a sudden, everything started to break down and it started to have these enormous ripple effects throughout the company. And so then these senior managers started coming into my house and trying to help fix the problem. And I was brand new to the company and I was very upset and insecure about it because things weren't going well and they were looking at it. Right? Like, I didn't cause the problem. They helped me fix it. I was new to the company. It was all fine. But, like, nonetheless, you're not worried when the boss shows up when your work is on time. You know what I mean? But we're worried about, you know, going into the detention centers because we're beating the shit out of people or we're not feeding them or we're denying them due process and access to attorneys and all this stuff. And I have to wonder, like, what's the goal of this? Like, what does the administration want? And I did wonder to myself, does this help their recruiting effort? So if I am a horrible person and I am trying to recruit hordes of other horrible people, the more oversight on those people, the more stress they have to be trained well, to do a good job, to act in accordance with ethical standards.

But if I can recruit you and say, hey, good news, I know you like playing call of duty. You can basically play call of duty in real life with immigrants. And nobody's ever going to give you a hard time about it. that's an easier sell for shitty people. And guess who they're hiring? So I actually think this aids in their recruitment efforts. Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting point.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact same fucking thing over and over again. Oh, shit to change. That is crazy. The first time somebody told me that, I don't know, I thought they were bullshit and they saw, boom,

I shot him. The thing is, he was right. And then I started seeing it everywhere I looked. Everywhere I looked, all these fucking pricks. Everywhere I looked, doing the exact same fucking thing over and over and over and over and over again,

thinking, this time, it's going to be different. No, no, no, no, no, please. This time it's going to be different. This story is from USA Today. I voted for Harris in 2024. She shouldn't run in 28. Instead of standing up for the people who voted for her,

former Vice President Kamala Harris, has been absent from a conversation that Democrats should be easily winning. I think that's, to me, that's a, I don't know that I agree with that particular line of attack. Like, she doesn't have any power to do anything. Thank you. to say like she can't really do much at this point.

But I will say like I also do agree that she shouldn't run again. A hundred percent. I think like I think one of the problems with with somebody who runs and then they lose is that person is then branded a loser. Right. So like no matter what you do, you can't get around the loser status. I didn't. I did. There was a ton of people who were trying to make it seem like she couldn't finish a sentence.

She had no way to speak. wasn't eloquent. She would stumble all over her words. She was either drunk or on some sort of substances all the time. They tried to spread a lot of really bad rumors about her. They said she was promiscuous and slept her way to the top. They, you know, there was, think about all the rumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about all the stuff that was sort of sad about her. I mean, even now, if you go on any comment boards that are, you know, have any sort of right-leaning or right-leaning people are posting, they will call her a whore. They'll say, like, like, like Cameltoe, the whore or whatever.

I mean, like, they're really awful about her still. I 100% full-throated gave her my, you know, like endorsement, whatever that's worth. It's worth nothing, it turns out. In any case, I did, right? Because I knew the difference. I knew the difference between these two. And also, I did think she was a competent person.

I thought she couldn't handle herself in office. There was only two choices on the ballot. the one choice that I decided to go with was the far, far, far lesser of two evils. So I decided to go with her instead. But I think once you're there, there's already all that ammunition that they threw at you before. And you've lost. And I think that that is too big a hill to climb for somebody. And to throw into that, she wrote a book that sort of talks about that process.

and the back and forth and hidden machinations behind stuff. And you do not want to have a bunch of people reading and pulling quotes out of your book in the middle of their debates when you're talking to them in the Democratic primary. Yeah, man, I just very much want to echo everything you just said. I actually really like Kamala Harris. And I think she would have done an excellent job. I think if she were to get the job in 2028, she would do an excellent job. I think she would do a good job, yeah.

I think she'd be a great president. I think if she becomes the Democratic nominee, I 100% will aggressively support her because I think she would do a great job. I would not vote for her in a primary because I worry that her electability is low. And like, I can like somebody as much as I want, but if I don't honestly believe that they are electable, it doesn't matter how much I like them. I'm trying to accomplish two things, not one thing when I vote. I'm trying to first put somebody from the primary into the general that can win. If I don't do that part first, then it doesn't matter what their ideals are. Then the next thing I'm doing is I'm making sure that that person's ideals match mine as closely as possible and they are deeply electable.

But both of those things are equally important. Like there's been people that I'm like, yeah, I agree more with this person than that one, but I just don't believe in their electability. and I will not vote for somebody that I don't believe is electable. And I don't think Kamala Harris is electable. America's fucking weird about black people. America's fucking weird about women and America's fucking weird about people

who didn't win even one time. Those are three massive strikes against her that I don't think she can overcome. I just don't. Yeah. I think she's going to be, it's going to be a hill she can't climb.

I think she shouldn't run. I think it should be that she just sort of figures out where she wants to be either politically or not for the rest of her life, but just stay out of that major, you know, and I think, too, like, I would be happy to see a woman run in the, and I would be happy if a woman became president.

I think America is deeply, deeply misogynist, and I think that there is a growing misogyny in their country that would make that a very hard hill to climb, but I would be happy and would love to see a woman president. I think that would be an amazing thing for our country. I think it could change a lot of things. But I think, like, I think there is a deep massaging in our country that is going to, that would force that to be a really tough sell.

I also am seeing now, and it's starting to ramp up because it's an election year, I am starting to see both sides are the same and a ton of astroturfing from the other side that is basically saying, like, they keep on posting very similar things, which are, you know, this group of people isn't out for you. They're not going to help you. The Democrats haven't done anything. The Democrats won't do anything. The Democrats want this to happen. I'm seeing all of this stuff start to come out. Now, none of that stuff happened last year, right? You didn't see much of that stuff at all last year. But now I'm seeing it not only get out, sort of ejected into the conversation. I'm also seeing it sort of be popular in that conversation in the sense that it's getting upvoted.

on Reddit in some of these sort of more leftist groups. I'm seeing in the more leftist groups that I belong to this group of people that will constantly come out and say, you know, these people didn't help you. They're the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin. And it's one right after the other. And I think that a lot of these groups get injected with the other side to try to inflate the numbers of those posts and to leave comments in those threads to try to make it seem like this is the popular opinion among like-minded

people just like you that these are two sides of the same coin instead of recognizing the real true dangers of what's happening now, they think that the Democrats are basically the same thing as the Republicans and they're trying to make sure that people are, they're basically

going to not, they're not going to participate. They're going to make them disaffected. And they're going to make them uninterested in participating in their, you know, in voting in when it comes to November. I wonder how much of that is fucking like like Chinese and Russian bots and trolls and stuff. Sure. Or just, I mean, how it could be even just, it could be people in the United States who are on

the other side. Yeah. Who want to make sure that they insert that. Because if you can create that kind of doubt, right? Why wouldn't you? Yeah, it's strategically. It's value. Strategically, it makes sense.

I mean, it's, it's, it's shitty. and it's awful, but strategically, it makes perfect sense. I just want to, like, I've said it before, but like, I just want to say again, like, even if you believe, and it's okay, like, I don't even want to argue the point, but let's say, let's say I grant you the point that neither side will help you. You still have a choice between a side that will not help and a side that will actively hurt. Yeah. You know, so like, if I have a house and my house is on fire and I really need help and nobody comes to

help, and I have a choice, well, I can call two. phone numbers and neither of these guys are going to show up and put my house on my house is going to stay on fire. They do not bring a fire truck. But the other guys are going to drop kick my fucking dog and punch my kids in the face. My house is still on fire. Sure, man. But like, I'm not calling the phone number where they show up and kick my dog and punch my kids. Right, right, right. Like, I just, it's like, it honestly is that simple if you believe that neither side will help you. So like, let's say you, believe that. And maybe that's true. I don't know. I don't really believe that. But like, let's say you do. You have to at least concede that the other side hurts you. Yeah. I can't believe that anybody doesn't

see that. I think, I think, too, that there's a, there's a level of comfort where people still aren't being hurt directly. And so they don't care as much. They see that and they say, oh, well, or it's never changed for them, right? They are hurting, but their hurt hasn't increased. So to them, it doesn't matter whether or not because like if you're you know you're you're you're not earning a lot of money you're you know paycheck to paycheck working a couple jobs you feel exhausted and nobody's helping you get out of that you feel like it doesn't your your vote doesn't matter even though at the same time there is plenty of suffering that's happening that isn't you right yeah but it just sort of shows that you know like like you really only have that selfish ideal right all right that's

going to wrap it up for our show this week we'll be back on on Thursday with a 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 infoducatement. 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,

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