Red Scare - The Last Bitch

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

The ladies discuss the disabled lesbian bar masking debacle, the hot new trend of adults cutting off their parents, and Nikole Hannah Jones's schooling mea culpa to her daughter.

Um, sorry, it's okay. That's all right. How's it going, Anna? That's all right. Yeah. How about that storm we had? What storm? A bunch of bullshit.

I know. Nor'easter. What is the nor Easter? Type of, I feel like, like a wind. Whatever. Hurricane. Okay. It's something to do with the wind.

Yeah, and the rain. What storm ain't? I mean, it was vaguely like, cold and unpleasant. It was rainy. It was raining. It was. But yeah, not. People texting me who don't live in New York, like, hey, how are you holding up? What? That's no one checked on me. Whatever.

What are you talking about? Bitch, I should have, like, I should have wrung favors in concession. out of them. Go fund me. Help me get through this storm. We've got a decent docket. What did you do during the storm? What you always do, which is like sit indoors and play chess? Like I just sat indoors and doom scrolled on Twitter.

Well, I went to Pennsylvania for a wedding on Sunday. And it was raining, but no big deal. Yeah. And on Saturday, what did I? Hmm. Yeah, I guess I played some day trading and played chess. Cool. But I really want to.

Sounds about right. I want to get out of finance, but. It's too late for that. It's too late. Shall we discuss? Oh, yeah, we have a pretty plentful docket. Some drama in Westmast. Oh, yeah, we can start.

with that. That's the oldest one, but it made quite the splash. Yeah, it went like mega viral, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I guess it didn't. And might save this damn bar, actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because they're finally getting some hype and notoriety. Do they have a go-fund me? I mean, I guess everyone's mad at them. Everyone's mad at them, but they, in like a Nathan for you-esque twist. Yeah. Now people want to go to the shitty long COVID-lozbizab bar. Like as a bit, yeah. Wait, can you explain to me how that weird mud shark hijabi comes into play in all of this? She doesn't even live there. Okay.

She just, so basically, for those who don't know, there was an article in the Boston Globe, another revived failing institution because tons of people smash that subscribe button to read about a lesbian bar in West Mass called Last Ditch. that had still had a masking mandate, not just for face coverings for K-9-5 or better, like medical grade, like, respirator-ass masks. And they decided on Saturdays to make the masks optional. Okay.

Because the owner was losing tons of money, the owners, I should say. And they posted about it on Instagram and we're like, hey, divas. Like, you know, all the immunocomple. Divas stay home on Saturday because it can be mask optional. And this caused a big schism in the queer community, a huge backlash. And the hijabi serene and necrosis just left a comment on Instagram that said, I don't even live in your town, but I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans.

just to scrape extra revenue from ablists. Sorry, disabled people aren't making you enough money or whatever. You are functionally following the business plan of Target. Hope your business crashes and burns. Yeah, go ahead. And then I guess she's sort of, yeah, this like cameo retard who shows up kind of online. So she's like emerged as like the star of the show because she's such a great poster. And it's unclear whether it's a bit.

poster. Not a bit legitimately. And she's like married to some black guy with dreads and wears a hijab but isn't Muslim. No. And she there was She's a secular hijabby and they have a baby that they mask. Yeah. Yeah.

This is a post of hers from about a year ago. She said it's not lost to me that I have received a huge amount of hate from the so-called leftist accounts since changing my profile picture to include a hijab inspired secular accessories. And yeah, she's a communist pagan, they, them, pansexual, agender, autistic, odd, ADHD, which means has autism and ADHD.

L-C-M-E, which means long COVID. And then M-E also stands for some like munchausen-ass jargon disease. Ethnically Irish, married to DOS, descendant of slaves. Jill Stein voter from Louisiana organizer. polymath is her bio. And this is this picture of her in the wheelchair was also circulating. Oh, that's her. I thought that was

AI. No, no, that's her. Oh, I thought that was like a sick and twisted right wing parody. No, no, that's, this is all the same person. And her sign says long COVID equals AIDS. She just like me for real. Actually,

AIDS is long HIV technically. Yes, true. long age well okay before we proceed any further i just have two questions number one like how do you go to the bar like how do you patronize a bar in a mask i understand you can physically show up in a mask but the whole point of going to a bar is that you're there to drink alcoholic beverages and yeah so you have to like awkwardly shift the mask or do they not drink I mean, I can see why the bar is suffering. Yeah.

From its strict masking policy. Like, that's their main activity, though, is selling drinks to people. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not like, like, that does seem like a safe space. And then my other question is like, I guess you take the mask off briefly to drink, but you don't breathe. Well, doesn't that release COVID spores into the environment? Yeah. As long as you're not.

exhaling while unmasked. You have to take quick strategic sips. And then my other question is like... But if you're amino compromise, you shouldn't be drinking anyway. Not good for you. Just true. But purely hypothetical question,

not like judging anyone. How is there such a high concentration of disabled people in Western Mass? Well, I mean, rhetorical, rhetorical question. But I mean, that's West Mass.

Yeah. And in a way, it's kind of like a, it was kind of a feel-good story. It was sort of like a nice throwback. Yes. To like the, the wreckerism. Yeah. I guess of when like... Woke one. Woke one. Yeah. Well, okay. So I think part of the reason that the story went so viral is because it was like stranger than fiction. Like you can't make this shit up. Yeah. Like none of our cool, hip, alt-lit indie author friends could write a book like this. It's simply not possible, which is like what makes it so amazing. It does really feel like a parody of like a paranoid right-wing fantasy of like what the woke or libit tarts are like. Yeah. It's like libs of TikTok or like some AI generated meme. Well, there's so many good details.

Yeah. Like one of the owners absconding to go to clown college. Yeah. Two of the owners, yeah, abandoning the one girl who says it wasn't even her passion project and she was just there to support like Ash and Sage because they're always named Sage. But I'm saying like if you were like a writer and you tried to pitch a book like this and, you know, succeeded in publishing it, you would be laughed out of the room as like a tryhard and an edge lord. Yeah, but no.

But no, it's true. Well, it's funny also because I finally started reading Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, which has been like on my shelf for years. And I've always meant to read it about like the Great White Defendant. And I never did. And finally, here we are. And there's an amazing self-authored foreword in it where he talks about the death of the novel. And like by death of the novel, he explains he and everybody else means the death of the realist novel.

like you're like madame bovary or you're Anna Karenina and he um you know talks about like the history of like like like America churning out realist authors like starting with like upton sinclair and sinclair louis and they they had like the big three um john steinbeck ernest having a William falcner and it was like a giant movement and then it was like over before it um even began and part of the reason that he gives is because like the intelligentsia was always historically skeptical of, if not outright, hostile to the realist novel because they felt that it was pandering to like the common mores and tastes of the mere middle classes. Right.

Like he talks about how like Dickens in his own lifetime was like considered an author of the uneducated unwashed masses. Right. Which like true, but. I mean, because he's like a maudlin moralist. Yeah. But then he talks about like the opposite tendency in America specifically, which is that American culture itself is so absurd and surreal that like no fiction writer could ever hope to match, like, let alone exceed its supply of like retarded stories and events. And he gives this example of like this televangelist Jim Baker who had a trist with a church secretary in a motel in a place called West Babylon, New York.

Incredible. Yeah. And he was like, did they really? have to call the town about did it really have to be called Babylon like and then how it was condemned by two competing televangelists who were then revealed as hypocrites when it came to like fidelity of course of course classic yeah um and he he ends with like uh what novelist could dare dream up such crazy stuff and then ask you to suspend disbelief so i was basically like thinking me reading this book would dovetail with the nicole hannah jones story but it dovetails with like the

COVID lesbian bar story because it just seems so like well what came after the realist novel like he talks about like the absurdist or the psychological novel well I was thinking about that because like honor levy for example is like an internet novelist but that's like a subset of absurd written a novel yeah but like my first book is like an absurdist internet book right well stories yeah but it's like it has that and then like somebody like jordan castra I think is like trying to combine like the realest novel with like the psychological novel and the absurdist novel and it's also an internet novel but people are like playing around with genres what about fuck boy what about

auto fiction yeah like auto fiction is kind of like a hyper real it is yeah yeah that's well said where it's just like overly concerned and myopic yeah with like a person's own like inner monologue or inner narrative yeah it's like A realist novelist, I guess. Tau Lin. Oh, Tau Lynn. I said Tom Lind. I was like, who the fuck?

I was like, Michael Lind. He's a non-fiction writer. But yeah, there's just like, it feels like there's part of the reason there's no room for, like, fiction writing is because, like, the culture itself is, like, it basically feels like a zany, absurdist, surreal work of art. Well, I've never read infinite jest, but I always see people invoking that as like, like, at the time it was, um, like absurd and dystopian, but has actually had like immense, like, predictive power. It like reads like a documentary or whatever now. Yeah, I bet. I've always like, um, been kind of like, irrationally against, uh, DFW. but I bet I'd really like it.

Have you read anything by him? I've read his short stories and his essays, which I think are great. I mean, yeah, I'm a big D.F. Defender, but I'm just not going to crack that thing open. Maybe one day. I'll probably read Bonfire the Vanity. Well, they're both really long. And then I'm planning on reading glamorama, which is also long.

So I would just do those three. Glamorama goes back. Yeah, of course, yeah. But I guess. The margins are really. They probably are, yeah. Take a look. I mean, David Foster Wallace and Brad Easton Ellis were like the two like wonderkins of their time and they were like kind of rivals, right?

Yeah. Brett does not like D.FW. Yeah. Well, he's come around him now. Has he? Piously and charitably because he did. No. A little bit.

He's like dragged him in recent years. Well, this is, it's like the ongoing beef between Morris. and David Bowie were like Morrissey's just damning with faint praise um no

Alice is gay yeah I mean he's something mm-hmm this is from the Boston Globe article

um last stitch oh okay so last stitch opened last year and had a masking mandate and it was

the bar the burns whatever that burns brightest burns out whatever then

it's the ray body blade runner quote death of the podcast last stitch which opened last year as a bar for quote

dykes transseals gender freaks workers and their friends is struggling um over time put traffic

to the bar slowed more and more visitors so they didn't have the cover fee, the bar let them anyway. The bar, the owners sold behind on bills and couldn't pay themselves or the people who work there. Then that's how they came up with the idea to bend one of their rules. And they have a community meeting. Only one of its original founders is involved. Two step back from the daily operation months before, Matt Millian says, citing various pressures and health issues. One had enrolled in clown school. So there's like 10 people at this meeting, a bunch of people on Zoom. One of last

his most vocal critics, the head of another queer COVID-conscious collective in West Massachusetts, a performer and artist who goes by Swan War. So... You don't say. Has been posting complaints about Last Stitch for days. Now noir joins the meeting on Zoom. He and other critics begin to flood the Zoom chat with irate messages. There's like a mediator there.

Oh, yeah, that was a great moment where the presence of the mediator who's a licensed. therapist is deemed wildly unsafe and she's criticized for being white by um swan noir and centering the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff yeah like tom wolf couldn't have written this he actually he I mean he literally wrote essays about this exact subject matter like radical sheik and ma-mowing and the flack hatchers is all about like race grifters trying to take advantage of like well-meaning liberals but this is so much better it's like on another level and I feel like even the Boston Globe, which is probably a pretty libtarded publication. Because it's Boston.

It's like Glove, bo, homo, yeah. Even they can't resist taking a faint tone of like sarcasm and Chaudenfroid. I mean, of course. Yeah. It's just, it is. It's beyond parody. Noir goes on to say this is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior. They talk for three and a half hours.

Noir has more to say, but someone suggests they come to the next meeting. he refuses. There's a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this. So for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free is incredibly disingenuous and racist. I'm not doing that. Then I think unfortunately this meeting has failed you replies a facilitator and I'm sorry. Then noir goes on Instagram keeps posting about white they them tears, blah, blah, blah.

This person just harassing them and then asking them to pay them to keep harassing that. This person, yeah, basically refuses to attend any in-person meetings, but then spends their days posting furious Instagram stories attacking the bar and the owners. Yeah. Which is crazy. And he's a man. Well, maybe he, him. It's unclear who.

There's someone else in the article who goes by it. It's pronoun. Yeah. I think that's one of the owners. I don't know if that's the one that went to clown school. but I'm assuming because they were the drug performer. Right. And they also say that they left due to quote various pressures and health issues.

Like the two, not just one of them, the two other owners. One went to clown school, the other, I'm assuming had health issues or maybe all three. Yeah. A noir who lives about 50 minutes south of Greenfield estimates that he has visited the bar seven or eight times. but he won't return there unless there's new leadership. You can't repair a house that's on fire, he says. Well, the other thing is that this girl, Jackie Matalian, who's like the last woman standing,

and like to her credit, like it's a low bar, but she seems pretty like calm and reasonable and like committed to like broaching the divide and keeping the community intact. Well, the transgender bartender also kind of seems somewhere mixing. She's like reasonable. She like at one point says like this isn't how like hospitality works. Yeah.

Like you don't want to go to a bar to get like scolded. Yeah. But she seems like a regular old fashioned like butch lesbian or she's not even bush. She's like soft butch. She's trans. No, the other one, the girl. And she has like an art host shag and is covered in stick and pokes, but also looks relatively normal. Yeah.

How do these people live? Like, I don't know. I don't know how they exist. I don't know how they like pay their bills or go through life. Are they all heavily subsidized by like their parents and or the state? I assume a lot of them must come from like affluent backgrounds. You would assume. Right?

Because they have a lot of free time. Yeah. but maybe they're all on disability. Maybe they're getting generous disability checks. This is my favorite part of the whole article. The reporter goes to visit the bar on one of the mask optional nights. There's basically no one there. Just after midnight, one patron is left at the bar of Aguilur who works at the Mexican restaurant next door.

She wonders a lot about holding a Lady Gaga theme night. But Mixie, the bartender, says, Gaga is canceled. Gaga is Zionist. They can't have a lot. anything. No. They can't do anything right over there. Well, yeah. And, um, battalion's takeaway from this whole debacle is, um, that the conflict isn't going to end, like come to an end anytime soon, but that's the price you pay to have community. Inclusivity and intersectionality. But you guys don't want community. You just want to torture

each other. Yeah. Maybe it can become a BDSM themed bar. Yeah, but they don't, they can't even do that it's like um ideological bdsm because they're so like ideologically molested that they the rape they should call the bar the raved yeah last bitch i guess ditch kind of sounds like dyke i get it yeah um but yeah these are the the sort of people that i picture like cutting off their parents because they have such a low like threshold for any sort of stress or anxiety One night. And they're so, like, resentful about any discomfort that they may experience, but they, like, simply can't take accountability or put it into perspective and have to, like, torment and terrorize

everyone else and, like, blame society. A funny thing is, like, I was perusing, like, random Reddit comments on various subs and threads, like, not even ours, but just, like, random. And people were pointing out how queer leftist spaces seem to, attract a disproportionate amount of bad actors. And also how queer leftists tend to view even small grassroots organizations like this one, as if they're giant corporations with unlimited resources. And mind you, these were like queer leftist people themselves who were like timidly and

cautiously saying this and like on some like subreddit somewhere. Well, it's also like, of course it's lesbian, like gay guys aren't doing this. Mm-hmm. There's a reason. Well, they're having anal. sex. They're like too busy having anal sex. Exactly. They're having fun. And that's why AIDS didn't really affect the lesbian community. Because they're masked up. They're COVID cautious. Yeah. Well, you know, as Sarah Shulman pointed out, lesbians nursed gay men to their deaths because there was no one

else there to hold their hands. Mary Ann Williamson. And then they, she was there. And then the gay men like cruelly forgot about them and discarded them as soon as like AIDS became a mangyal disease, which is probably true. But lesbians do love like grievance and complaint. Yeah. Bless their hearts. I want to like and believe in lesbians because I want to picture like a bunch of hot chicks making out and being like sensual and having fun with each other.

Yeah. Away from like the prying eyes of men. Yeah. I want safe spaces. Yeah. That seems like you'd be like. workers. Hot and fun and cool.

And then also the other thing is that they opened their bar to the poor and unhoused. Yeah. So they had like a nook, like almost like a religious area. For bombs. You know, kind of like you have a station in your home with icons where you pray. But it was like a free goodies area for homeless people that had like Narcan and like a phantom. patches and whatever like tote bags

yeah suicidal empathy they call it yeah and then there is there is another really funny moment where when the reporter visited them on that last night so Mattelian and this volunteer

Melody Young were standing around and Young revealed that her own sister is like one of the online detractors yeah it's close knit it would be so funny of like my sister was like going on the sub or like a lull cow and being like Dodger needs to drop an like holding her three-year-old son while her husband like was hanging

around like watching TV or like fixing something in the kitchen I mean one wonders like how people have so much grievance for people that they don't have relationships with or no? What? Like how haters like have the, um, like how, yeah, exactly. The energy. Yeah, I don't know. Like, it seems personal. Like, sometimes I read something like, do you know me? Like, no, I know. Dad. Yeah, it does make you wonder how they like sustain. I mean,

no one believes me when I say this, but like I'm so used to people being mean to us or me specifically because I'm the one who sees people being mean to me and you're the one that sees people being mean to you. But it's not so much that it like personally offends me or insults me or hurts my feelings. It freaks me out because it's like, why are you wasting your precious time, like lashing out at some like random person who you've decided that you don't like on the internet who you realistically don't know? Yeah. Like you don't know my life or my personality. Or same for you. And it's just such a colossal misguided waste of time.

And it's so like, you know, you're dishonoring yourself and hurting yourself doing that. I mean, yeah, I know. And well, I think in the case of this lesbian bar also, it's just like much closer proximity because it's like a small, tight-knit community. And I think there was like 400 comments on the original Instagram post. But yeah, also, K-Divas primarily. like probably people who don't even live in that town don't go to that bar. Yeah.

Like are just like truffles whining. But I'm trying to like. To be upset about. Yeah. I'm trying to like develop like a theory of mind for the psychology. And I guess they're like aggrieved and resentful that these other people seem to be enjoying themselves and having fun. Mm-hmm.

But they're not really. Like they're barely making ends meet and they're, they're offering their bar as like a way station or clearinghouse for like the home. which I'm sure there's not that many homeless over there. And they don't even really have sex. Yeah, they don't have sex. They're wearing masks at the bar. Their lives can't be that good. But probably better than the they, them, hijabi.

Yeah. Well, this really worries me because people spend so much time online now that they have less and less opportunity to be like reality tested. So the discourse becomes even more like obsessive and strident. Well, once again, you know, I think COVID really just did a number on people. And for, you know, this specific kind of person, like, peak pandemic was probably when they felt the most, like, seen. You know, like that was, like, kind of the best when, like, when people were getting mad at people, were, like, going to parties and stuff. This is my happy place.

They, like, didn't want that to be, to end. Yeah. Ever. Yeah. it's 2026. I know. Where do you even get a K-95 in 20206? I know. I mean, probably at the Home Depot, they must have one over there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Lowe's. They probably have like big shopping centers with home improvement stores. Yeah. I've said this before, but at my analyst's office, I always see, that's where I see like the highest concentration of masked people, which is kind of curious.

Because it's not like, I mean, oh, yeah, obviously a lot of like mentally ill people. be masking, but I feel like mentally ill people aren't really doing like a traditional psychoanalysis either. You don't think so? Meaning they're like resistant or reverse to it because they have some kind of defense mechanism against it? I just think it wouldn't be very, um, because like a traditionally, like if you're lying on the couch, the analyst isn't really like affirming you the way that they do and like, you know, traditional therapy. I think they would just be drawn to more like,

like a new age, self-help type stuff. Where a therapist tells you to cut your parents off and that your mom's a narcissist and stuff. Well, that's probably true, but going to therapy period across the board probably also selects for more obsessive, compulsive, or anxious personalities. Yeah. So there's that. But maybe they would do better with some cognitive behavioral. This is so mean and awful

But I remember At the height of COVID This guy getting on the train In a mask And he had like cotton candy pink hair And a cane And he started yelling at everybody in the car To put on their masks

Because he had cancer And was afraid of getting COVID And I was like well If you're getting treated for cancer Why are you taking the train? I mean I guess I mean, it's clearly something else is going on. Yeah.

Like, treat yourself. I'll pay for, I'll pay for your Uber. Yeah, stay home. I know. I mean, it's shocking. What's actually low-key shocking is that these people even do socialize. Well, because they have, like,

the normal, ordinary needs for, like. But, like, I don't even really go to bars on socialization. On the weekend. Because there's too, you know. Yeah. Like, because I'm not. and they have like a normal healthy need for like attention

and recognition from others but they're like too warped to demand it on its own terms by just like showing up and being friendly and showing your face and showing your face so they invent these like elaborate rituals to extract it through unclean means so they get like head to toe tattoos and like dye their hair weird colors

and wear a mask and like get a cane or walker wheelchair must be nice yeah that could be next for me honestly

I need maybe I'll get some kind of illness long hib honestly I haven't been the same since my

hip infection oh god it's setting in Yeah. Great timing. We all know I have all DHD. And I guess this is like a trite and boomer point to make, but I don't know when, like at what point the tide shifted, but at some point, young people started taking like pride in being disabled versus being healthy.

Yeah. It's always been like a niche kind of subculture. The Munchausen community. Uh-huh. I watched this documentary over the summer called The Pain of Others about women who think they have this disease called Margellins. Oh, yeah, Johnny Mitchell, yeah. Yeah, Joni Mitchell is a Margellan suffer.

Margella. It's a really good documentary because it's all this woman, Penny Lane, made it, and it's awesome because it's all just, like, found footage, like, YouTube videos of, like, women talking about their, like, disease and how. they think they have these like fibers got out of their skin and they're all so psycho. Yeah. And then it's like you just watch their like mental illness progress over the course of it. And they're all like Margellan's advocates.

And then Joni Mitchell did it was a huge info hazard for it because then it made other people think that they had it. Yeah. And these tend to be like lonely reclusive older women. Some of them. Yeah. One's like kind of like really kind of like hauntingly like. beautiful. And she really goes like Julianne more like safe mode and I get towards the end has like tin foil over her house and is like drinking her pee for its like nutritional benefits inside.

It's awesome. Highly recommend. My mom be like don't don't buy the kids paw patrol clothing and you're like why not assuming she has like some issue with like the taste level. Yeah. Or the educational level. And it's like well because the shirt decals are made of like rubber or vine. or something. They'll come off in the machine. I mean, I mean, she's not wrong,

but you kind of can't keep kids away from that kind of crap. No. They really want it. Yeah. What's Lenny going to be for Halloween? Does he know yet? I don't know. I think I might try to recycle

Lester's Sonic costume. Or do, like, a ghost buster. Oh, yeah. I'm going to make him a disabled lesbian from Western Mass. I hope, yeah, I hope the bar recovers.

I'm wishing them the best. I know. I'm kind of rooting for Jackie Matalian, who I can't tell if she's like Armenian or not. Could be with that last name. Yeah. But maybe not. Irish? Yeah, hard to say.

They have Armenians in Massachusetts, as you know. But she tells the group during their like Zoom, struggle session that her credit score is trashed and that for six months she's been living in her truck because she was pouring money into the bar and working four different jobs. And she's responsible for paying off the $50,000 loan. The three original owners took out to launch the business. The reporter says the online critics are unmoved. You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings, noir posts in the chat. This is incredibly racist. and deflecting behavior.

I love that he likes to pair a racist with like another bullshit buzzword disingenuous or deflecting that like means nothing. And is like her complaints are neither disingenuous nor deflecting. They're actually pretty direct. I mean it is nice like yeah

that we can all kind of take some like communal joy in watching these people in fight. Yeah. And that they don't have like such. that their like stronghold on the culture is obviously like diminished yeah diminishing because it's like I mean this would have been a very different article even like four years ago you know yeah it would have been like you go girl racist bar a racist eugenicist bar

like being called like when yeah like it's not like people use people's worst nightmare used to be someone that's some mentally old drag queen would call them racist. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, people were like walking on eggshells. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Rest and power.

But essentially, it's just like, there's this, it's not quite an irony because there's anything ironic about it. It actually makes total, like, perfect sense. But, like, the less queer and disabled you are, the more responsibility you take on and the more you're blamed for anything that goes wrong, i.e., like, the more adult you are, the more mature you are. The more you suffer. The more you suffer.

Yeah. Except, yeah. Because all of society is like organized around like, uh, woman children now. And I guess this. Taylor Lorenz. Yeah. And like this, this bar story is really just like a,

a parable about what happens when you like remove all men who aren't gay or trans from the picture. And you let like women spin their wheels on an island. it's true because they ugly quick yeah because they they're also like um neurotic yeah and like so like and overthinking ruminating not even like deferential to like consensus or like in like a real like democratic way they can't just all kind of be like okay like who thinks this is retarded it's like the loudest and most neurotic people kind of like have the most like dark triad will to power and end up like having the most control over the group.

Yeah, the cry bullies and everybody is like in their thrall. I mean, now that we've both done debates on stage, we can conclusively say that like there can be no debate between women. They just get confused and start agreeing. Agreeing, yeah. Unless they're dark triad and then they start like, uh, like falling into murderous rages and doing character assassination and tormenting, um, the weaker ones, like the alpha ones. I'd welcome that, honestly.

The debates I took part in last weekend were not, yeah, they were not debates proper. They were some interesting conversations. I'm very grateful to the Institute of Art and Ideas. And I had a great time. It was a lot of fun. But there was just a lack of like common grant. Like it seemed like no one really knew kind of like what exactly was being like talked about or debated.

Classic British bullshit. Yeah. They love musing and philosophizing. That's all good. It's in line with their national character. Yeah. It was very like Anglo and bookish and kind of like respectable. I was kind of like, what am I doing?

I thought I was here to show my coin. Show your pussy. Now I'm confused. Yeah. When do I sing and dance? Fuck what was I going to say While speaking of personal responsibility Should we segue to the

Adult children cutting off their parents Yeah I guess we can do NHJ last because that's kind of like The hefty, meaty one Yeah Wall Street Journal published a piece Why are so many adults Cutting off their parents

Many experts believe that estrangements between adult children and their parents are becoming an epidemic in the U.S., just like divorce in the 1970s. Much like then, the movement is driven by a convergence of large societal trends, this time the rise of social media algorithms, changing therapeutic approaches, and a broadening definition of trauma. And they call it a cultural tipping point. Is it really a new thing or an epidemic? Well, yeah. I have a similar, I have a related question, which isn't all of these kind of like, um, alarmist trend pieces. I feel like they all kind of lay out theses that basically conflict.

Like I feel like, yeah, I know what they're taught. I know what they're talking about. I've seen it. I like, we all do. It's like porn. It's obviously like a thing. It's, um, the article begins with some woman who goes to like a, a meet up, a support group for estranged parents.

And there's like something like 200 people there. Well, that's why your kids cut you off. Because you're a raging narcissist who goes to support groups. Well, that's what they're there. That's what their therapist told them. But yeah, to me it seems like the bigger and more pressing concern, which is like at odds with this so-called epidemic, is that people are not like moving out of their parents' house and actually like can't disconnect. from them at all.

Like that seems more prevalent, even though this is also like clearly like a trend. Yeah, they actually kind of gesture toward that at some point, where they say that most estrangements appear to be initiated by young adults. They point to a mental health crisis among adolescents and young adults and a diminished skill for tough conversations. Thank you texting and a focus on identity over family. one of the main factors driving the trend if it exists is that zoomers are perhaps the most

dependent and surveil generation in history and they attribute this to like helicopter parents and cell phones and the internet so this is like their way of rebelling and asserting their independence they're also like a uniquely unskilled and precarious group because there's no opportunities for them to accrue skills or outrun precarious. dependent on their parents? I mean. And like are people going no contact when they like live in their parents home?

Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. This what's was salient to me about it which I do think is like alarming is not necessarily that more people are estranging themselves from their families deliberately

but that it is becoming like destigmatized. Yeah. They mention this. Yeah. They say that certain. actions and choices that were historically considered taboo or not, are now becoming acceptable and are even being celebrated like via social contagion. That's exactly true.

My question is like hasn't this situation existed more or less like in a stable proportion throughout history like over the years? Like it seems like people back in the day were also estranged from their parents and kids but just didn't talk about it because it was like untoward and unseemly. and shameful. Well, yeah. Well, back then you'd be like, I don't, I went no contact my parents. People would be like, whoa.

Like, I'm so sorry. Like, is there something like wrong with your family, wrong with you? Like, you know, like it was more. Yeah. And now people are like, now that it's destigmatized, people talk about it freely and get like congratulated for it. Yeah, which incentivizes like further discourse. So I do believe that it is like happening more.

Stupid choices. Yeah, because there's like some maybe minor snowball effect. And there's literally people called estrangement counselors who like coach you through. I mean, this was like also something that was like frowned upon in one of the defining characteristic of like cult activity. Right. You know. Like if someone tells you to stop talking to your family.

Yeah. That's like a red flag. Well, that means that yeah, there's some kind of like scammer or guru. But now there's like an industry of people and I guess like TikTokers. Yeah, they were talking about how like the family estrangement has basically spawned like entire like subsidiary self-help economies. Like yeah, the therapist that help like people on both sides of the exchange navigate the breakup, um, influencers from both sides of the spectrum, books, podcasts, support groups. Yeah, proponents hold that estrangement is being destigmatized, not necessarily happening more. often and that it can be needed and healing for adult children to cut off parents they deem harmful.

Critics say the trend encourages self-centeredness and self-delusioned and ruined families. Yeah. And another interesting side note is that this is apparently a burgeoning genre on TikTok with 82% of the posts being made by women, of course. Yeah. So again, this is, this sounds like another example of like women left to their own devices spinning their wheels. The other thing that I was spinning my wheels about on Twitter earlier is that it's like a classic case of one of those social trends that exist in like permissive progressive societies where like the members of the society have to feel like they're making a conscious choice or it's a matter of conscious will when something has already been like settled for them and is outside of their control

And the fact of the matter is like less and less people than ever are like getting married and having children. So there's no opportunity to create new family lines. And if you don't give your parents grandchildren, if you don't make them grandparents, you're effectively cutting them off anyway. So like you don't have to go so far as to like make an explicit gesture of it. I understand like these two things are not like. Well, no, I think like I think they are related because if you. you often people who have children don't have the luxury of cutting off their parents because they like need them to supplement like childcare and like maintain like a cohesive like family

unit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's less like selfish in general because they have children who they don't want to cut them off so they can't. They lack the empathy. And yeah. And also like having children is like a two-way street of of smoothing over and healing relations

between parents and children and their adult children because like the grandparents can rise to the occasion and sort of wrong old rights, old mistakes that they made when they were parenting you and then the children can begin to see their parents not as like horrible tyrants or selfish narcissists but as people who were like merely mortal in trying their best and making mistakes as they went.

So it gives you like a fertile ground for like mutual understanding basically. And also like there are like to counter that there are like I've heard of instances of like people cutting their elderly like boomer parents off specifically because of like some like threat or danger that it poses to their young children. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like you know, barring the. I'm so haunted by this video I saw on Twitter. This kid, Elias the kid is his name. He was like a piano virtuoso who went on like the Ellen DeGeneres show and like America's Got Talent and stuff.

He was like a boy wonder, like played piano like crazy. And now he's like, he looks like Walter Piers. He looks all like strong out. He looks like a. but he was kind of like an autistic boy with like a long ponytail who would like play bach at like Carnegie Hall and stuff like boy wonder he posted these videos on Twitter of his like him auditioning for Juilliard his mom like making these like Juilliard audition tapes with him and screaming at him off camera and she sounds like a demon out of hell like the way like she's clearly

like cluster B and she's like like I'm not I can't even like sit like she's like shut up and boy it's like it's like it's so truly frightening and he's like chubby and he looks so scared he's like crying and he's like mom please no mom please and she's like play the piano you know it's like and it's like giving me like it gave me like nightmares yeah it's like one of those horrible things I've ever seen and so when I think about like parental a stranger and I'm like okay like in like the extremes well yeah that well that's the thing um that like obviously there are like good reasons and causes to like cut off your parents if they're like

addicts or abusive if they're if they pose like a current threat or danger to you or your children of course but those are by far extremely marginal fringe cases if you've made it to adulthood yeah they probably weren't that bad I suspect a lot of people being like, well, my parents were like drunk or abusive or something are conflating categories. Because it's like my parents were drunk and abusive. But like they haven't been since I've been an adult because they're like, my dad's dad. My mom's like an enfeebled old woman who's like sweet and harmless. Even like yeah, my dad was like a bit of a rage case. Yeah. Everything that kind of works out. Yeah. You have to like let go. I know.

And you have to, yeah, I mean, it's like you like go through it, much like Nicole Hannah Jones's daughter. And part of like young adulthood is like negotiating your pain and resentment at your family, obviously. Well, this is from the article. Most people agree that adult children are sometimes justified in creating boundaries or breaking ties with their parents, especially if they were physically or emotionally abusive. But now psychologists say young adults' definition of harmful parental behavior is changing among some 1,000 strange parents surveyed earlier this month, 82% identified the increased use of labels such as toxic, abusive, or unsafe as contributing to the family cutoff. Young adults consider ordinary conflict to be much worse than it once was. Previous generation sometimes ignored abuse.

Younger adults now have a much broader definition than their elders of psychological harm. Many now view repeated criticism, strong disagreements, and other painful relationship conflicts as abusive. I mean, get two things. Like young people view any challenge to your like politics or identity as a form of abuse.

Yeah. Another Sarah Shulman shout out, conflict is not abuse. Yeah. On the flip side, Libthard boomer parents are insane and unbearable. My parents, by the way, were crazy. Nobody would last a day with my parents. They were nuts.

But as I've gotten older, I've developed such like an appreciation and love for them. Because they like didn't turn everything into like, a weird political gauntlet. Well, with the Liptar boomer parents also, it's like, as, and I assume this is the case with many of these, like, family estrangements. Yeah. It wasn't that they were even, like, abusive.

It's that they, like, coddled these kids. Yes, with passive aggression and indirection. But even, like, creating the kinds of personalities. Yeah. That would cut off their parents. Yeah, exactly. On the grounds of them being toxic is, like, it does, like, sure, everyone has to take accountability for themselves at some point, but just like demographically,

it's like they do bear some responsibility. And it's not because they are like toxic or abusive, but it's because they like failed their children in some fun. Yeah, exactly. It's like actually understand why like a familial bond is valuable. So yeah, in a way they, you can understand why that happened and why they created the children they did and why they deserve it kind of. But my point is that like your duty to your parents is also.

your duty to yourself to become like a stronger, more resilient, more disciplined person who can regulate their emotions and manage others. Because that's literally what adulthood is. And if you come out the other end relatively unscathed, you can, you know, stand tall and be proud of yourself. And, you know, I'm not saying your life will be perfect, but things will fall in line more. Well, it's like forgiveness too in general. Yeah. It's like, yeah, yeah. It's good to have a forgiving disposition, not to like, bend the need to others, but because it's to your benefit also not to like live with seething.

Yeah, it's Christian doctrine. Yeah. It is just like a very Christian outlook that more people should probably adopt and practice even if they're like secular. I went, well, when I was like 25, I was, went no contact with them. Not like, not explicitly, but we were. They called me on the phone when I was on acid and told me that I was a loser. True. True. And they were right. They were right.

And that gave, you know. And it's all good now. Yeah. But I was like, I came to visit. Maybe I wasn't even 25. I might have been like 23. I came to New York. I was like living in.

in San Francisco still, I think. Yeah. No, I think I was 25. I was visiting New York. And I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with Paris. And we did acid. And I was like tweeting about how I was on acid. And my mom obviously was like looking at my Twitter and started FaceTiming me.

Because she was concerned. Because I was tweeting about that. And then your dad was probably pissed. Yeah. Because he was like, why are you worrying mom? Well, I couldn't even like, you know, my phone. was like cracked too and I was like looking at myself on like because you know when someone face you like see yourself and I was like mom calling I was like panicking so gay so I was truly a loser

and then like a couple hours later I like called her back and was like pretending like everything was fine and they were both on the phone and they were like we don't what are you doing with your life like you failed us we had this like huge horrible blowout so then we just didn't I didn't like cut them off explicitly, but we just didn't speak probably for like, I want to say like six months, Loki. Who, um, offered the olive branch? I don't remember. Things just kind of work themselves out.

But I, my family, I think also because I'm an only child, there's something with like three people in a dynamic that's very, and being Russian. I think it's mostly being Russian. Yeah. But we do. we were very conflict prone. Uh-huh. And it's like a little incestuous, I get it.

Like you're, I mean, I don't think it's even being an only, like, being just in an immigrant family, you like live on your own personal island. But we're able, yeah, like, when Riley first met my parents, like, his, like, wasp-ass family, like, doesn't scream at each other. And we'd be, like, having dinner. And then the three of us would just start, like, screaming in Russian about, like, Ukraine or, You know, and then it kind of like, grass is always greener. Yeah, no, I prefer it.

And then we like, you know, and then things kind of like mellow out. We say like, I love you. It's okay. It's like, that does seem like healthier to me to have just like a like a threshold for conflict and to be able to yell at each other because you love each other. Yeah, it's like that viral video that was going around a few weeks or a few months ago of those Russian Jewish classical composers and musicians like arguing over Brahms or something. Yeah.

And they were really going out. it, but clearly, like, warmly and affectionately. Yeah, I, I only realize this after, like, having successive boyfriends with, like, nice, cordial, libtard parents. And they would always say to me, like, man, must be nice. I'm so jealous. Like, your mom, like, doesn't annoyingly, like, dick ride you every hour of every day. Yeah. And I'm, meanwhile, I'm like, oh, I'm so sad and alone. My mom is funny because she like doesn't really like check up on me unless I talk to her and then she's like a good listener and a voice of reason. But she mostly communicates with me by like sending me DMs and reels on Twitter and Instagram because the Apple don't fall far from the tree.

And she's like online. Yeah. She's like a fucking dyed in the wool poster. Yeah. And a great one. Yeah. She's an amazing poster. like that um western mass mudshar kajabi probably like the same caliber of posting but more like racist and right wing but you start to really appreciate that like yeah in like russian families there wasn't this like cold icy distant cordiality well also i'll say you know say what you will about the jews yeah but they're not cutting their fucking parents off hell no ever and they do they have this like sometimes it gets a little shrill, sometimes it gets a little neurotic, but like they have like close family bonds.

They have to. Well, yeah, this is one way that, because Jews are always like, you're just jealous of us and the goyam are like, what? No, we're not. You're so full of yourselves. But actually, I am like low key kind of jealous of like Jewish nepotism and family dynamics. Yeah, no, it's a beautiful thing actually. Because they are so wonderful and warm, even though they're. kind of like up each other's always been so drawn kind of phylo-semit famously is because I really

kind of enjoyed that as someone who's like from like kind of a strange yeah my distant family at least yeah we weren't having the like Shabbat brawls yeah they're like baking coogh out of that whatever yeah me too but really the I it's occurring to me now that the estranged family epidemic I think is that therapy is a huge info hazard for goys

because they actually can't because Jews love therapy but don't estrange themselves from their families but when you introduce this kind of like therapeutic paradigm therapeutic model therapeutic language to goys they like can't handle it.

Yeah, they like short circuit and malfunction. Yeah. That's what Cutta, he said. He was like, it's actually really sick and twisted that Marx and Freud imposed communism and psychoanalysis on people who couldn't handle it. They're built up. And to assimilate and be accepted. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think, well, didn't Young talk about this? Jung? Yeah. He and Freud had some like spats about. whether it was appropriate to treat the goy cattle with the Jewish science. Interesting. Or was it Jung? Because he was like of a different school,

or maybe it was like one of his associates. There was some like psycho analysis community shakeup where they had a skimms famously. I don't know how explicit the JQ was. but probably but yeah it was like Jung just had a very

different temperament and he was like superstitious and a little more woo-woo and more Aryan and into tarot and he didn't think everything was about sex

and he was dead wrong for that and he was wrong and there was a letter actually let me find it that Jung wrote to Sabina Spielerin

who as portrayed by Kieran in that film. Because she did, I think, did have a, was Jung's lover. And he wrote her a letter when she was pregnant. And he said, I cannot stand it when you still enthuse

about your old love and past ideals and reckon with a confederate in the form of the great tiny unknown, the child. As you know, I myself have overcome every trace of I love avarianism and hope to presume that if it is a boy, it shall develop into a sturdy Zionist. So, yeah, Freud definitely clocked it. That Jung was different.

What Jewish pussy does to? I will not give Jung your regards in Munich. You know that. But you, I wish all the best in a surplus of tenderness, humor and understanding so that there will be more than enough to pass on to the young little life. We are Jews and will remain so. the others will always only exploit us and never understand or appreciate what we do with my warmest greetings for it. I think just Jews because they're like word cells versus shape rotators just have like an infinite appetite for mind games. And like negotiations.

Yeah. And this in their culture is not viewed as like an affront or an imposition. it's viewed as an expression of like affection and warmth, regard, esteem. Yeah. I mean, tot kovolubi. I was my Belarusian laser hair attack errol. I told me recently. And I was like, what, I could never heard that.

Yeah. I was like, what is what? Yeah, that sounds to be. But it's true. Yeah. Yeah, if you love someone, you kind of like, and there's not even like a word for like, it doesn't even translate well. it means like, yeah, it's like prod or needle or like bother someone because you love them.

Yep. But I think that's true. But you know, well, you know that's true because like men always like physically tease and needle women they love and women always physically tease and needle children they love. That's like how you show affection. Like you catch a child and give them a no year or whatever and they love that. But now not anymore. No. Now that's cause for going no contact. Yeah, some chick on Twitter was talking about how she loves like smelling her baby's stinky feet and going like, ew, and they love it.

And I do that with Lenny too. But like, libt hard moms will always pipe up and be like, don't do that. You're going to give your kid a complex. It's like, no, they'll be fine. But it would be funny if Lenny cut me off in the future for doing the stinky feet game with them. She used to tell me I was stinky. This turned him gay. actually strangely enough two ladies who have been making a lot of sense today are Kathy Young on the Cornell rave case which we will not be getting into but I was surprised that she wasn't like a demented feminist she's a Russian Jew who's like notoriously annoying and retarded on Twitter we're sort of like online enemies but she's been making a lot of sense and Catherine Dee who I've never seen eye to eye with had a really good take about the cutting off your kids or parents think she's She said no contact is a necessary last resort for people whose parents are, say, addicts are extremely abusive. It has been deployed as a trendy thing because we have a surplus of therapists who aren't equipped to handle people's real issues, loneliness, lack of purpose. Most therapists are trained to advise people through e.g. abuse.

I would guess a non-trivial number of people seek therapy for more existential problems. Why am I here? Insofar as we're talking about completely ordinary people in situations, it doesn't matter if your parents are boring, annoying, or even unpleasant. Social cohesion means keeping them around. It is the role of your friends to help snap you out of annoying behaviors. Family should love each other unconditionally. And unconditional love means putting up with quite a bit short of, again, abuse.

I mean, so true. Which is true. Because yeah, I saw that one woman being like, actually you don't have to, your parents, like, people's parents are starting to realize that they don't get to have relationships if they're not, like, pleasant. Oh, Caitlin Johnstone. that stupid bitch. Yeah, she also hates me for some reason because I like clap back at her ones.

But like pleasant? That's the bar now for having a family is having to be a pleasant person. Like then you know what? Guess what? Ain't nobody having a family. If that's with the criteria. Because ain't nobody who has a family is that pleasant. Come on.

No. It's just like what are you talking about. That's not what a relationship is. No. And also just framing it. Especially your family. Well, framing it in terms of like an obligation to be pleasant to. your kids, which was really weird because she's got to be in her 40s or 50s.

Yeah, I was surprised, actually. And it's like, why are you coming at this from the grievance perspective of a child versus a parent? Because she's childless, obviously, and like, live married to some guy. But the obligation framing is weird because, like, you shouldn't feel obligated to be kind to your children. You should just be kind to your children because it comes naturally and that's what you want to do, unless they are in need of discipline.

Well, also kind. Yeah, well, like, it's also is kind to discipline your children. I would say, like kindness is not, uh,

or like a lack of conflict is not a prerequisite for kindness. Uh-huh. It's actually kind, like love, being loving and being kind are sort of different things. Or like the way that she is using kindness, I feel like is a very like, um,

hollow use of the word. Yeah, what does she mean like being pleasant and polite? Being like, you stupid bitch? Like actually like being kind means like telling them when they're fucking up, calling them the loser. Yeah, calling them face-timing them and telling them they're a loser.

Dasha, honestly, you taught me that because I, my most libthearted quality is that I'm a classic passive millennial when it comes to like disciplining my kid. And I'm so scared to like alienate or break him in any way. Yeah. And it took me a while to put my foot down and be like, you have to do chores. You can't be a brat.

Enough is enough. That is kind. You know, by pulling out my exercise band and looming over him while he slept. Because Peter told me the voice in my head. It's just Peter. No, but like it actually like, he, children need a firm hand. they thrive under discipline. Definitely, yeah.

Because I think I did the opposite thing. You shouldn't make, yeah, don't watch the video, honestly. It's so scary. No, I can't. I can't. I've said before that kids aren't even good at piano anymore. Yeah.

But I'm like, if this is what it takes, I'm like, I don't want it. I don't want it. It's not worth it. Yeah. It's so heartbreaking. Mm-hmm. But that, yeah, that's like a super extreme fringe game. God, if I had a chubby son with a really long pony tail who could play piano,

I would never yell at him like that. I know. I would hug him and kiss him. You'd be like so honored and overjoyed. He probably wouldn't be that good at piano because I'd be too. Nice to him. Sure, but is it really worth it? No, no.

It's not. This one I learned. Which is the question that Nicole Hannah Jones is now asking. Very good. Of herself. Yeah. And did she reach a conclusion? I guess unclear because their daughter is kind of fine.

Master's house, Master Seals. I'm going to appear real quick and I can discuss. All right. NHJ. Nicole Hannah-J. So she's like a 2020-era race grifter who founded the 16th, 19 project, which is like a propaganda initiative that attempts to like, I guess, reframe the narrative around slavery.

What? By backdating the founding of America. To win the slaves to up prior? To 1619, not 1776. Yeah. What happened in 1619, the first slaves alighted upon the shores of American soil. I see. Yeah.

And she wrote this like a highly viral essay for the New York Times in fighting for every black child. Did I betray my own? It's actually a three-part package deal because she originally wrote an essay in 2016 when her daughter was entering kindergarten. And then this is like a post-mortem. And then they had the mother-daughter struggle session for NPR. Yeah. Yeah. And the article is about who she sends her daughter to a low.

income mostly black public school, like figuring that the presence of the child of New York Times intelligence will set an example and lift everyone up from the quote stark educational apartheid of New York City schools. And then she ends up like learning the hard way that that's not the case when her daughter confronts her. This was actually a concept that was introduced me when I was at Berkeley Community College by like a sociology professor who obviously every, like, I mean, Berkeley Community College, you can imagine. We were reading, like, anarchist zines. And, like, it was, like, real, like, retard hours over there.

But I had the sociology professor who actually really liked, but she, I remember her telling the class that it was unethical to send your children to, like, charter and or private schools. Because schools receive funding per pupil. Right. So you are actually, like, depriving your community. Uh-huh. by not sending your kid to like a school that they're zoned for and like prioritizing their education.

Yeah. I remember even that I was like 18 but being like that seems crazy. Yeah. It's like spacious. Like you should just put your kid in the best school you can. Yeah. Which. Yeah.

I also didn't realize and you can speak more to this obviously, but that you can kind of just go to sort of like whatever school. Yeah. Whatever public school in New York. Like she kind of like went out of her way because they probably live in a nice. neighborhood. They live in bed style. I'm sure they have a nice brownstone, but as you know, that's like not such a nice neighborhood, though. It's radically gentrified. So I live there around 2015, 2016, actually, and it was pretty bleak. I live there with Adam when I first went here. It was like block by block. It really varied. Yeah, yeah. But I would think like whatever school she sent her to

for middle school that was like across this room, like the project. Like she had to kind of go out of her way to even send her there. I think she mentions that it was a few miles away. Let me just look up what school. I don't even know that. Back in the day, I just went to like, I was, I did go to a charter school for high school. That was really far away. But prior to that, I went to public school and it was just like, you know, you just got a letter or whatever that was like, this is the school you have to go to.

Mm-hmm. if you go to public school. Yeah. Well, typically, yeah, in like the burbs or whatever. Right. Yeah. Let's see. Whatever.

The school name is not important. She says, we had connections and time and status that should not matter, but that we all know do. And more than that, we believed strongly that if families like ours went to schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to do the same. So basically, she thought that she could write checks and move the needles. And so a decade earlier when her daughter was a kindergartner, she had written this first more glowing piece about her decision. And it had like struck a court and brought a lot of speaking gigs and book deals.

Well, that's okay. A question I really have is the article is premised on her daughter, like her picking up her daughter from school. And her daughter says confronts her and says, did you know that you sent me to a bad school on purpose? because she looked up, her and her friends, like, looked up where their school ranked. But if, like, she says, and she's kind of like, ostensibly stunned by this, and she says, glancing between her and the road, I told her everything that I had said a hundred times

on stages and interviews and discussion since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain or dismantle educational inequality. Like, isn't it basically a matter of public record that her mom sent? her to the school on purpose. Yes. There was a photo shoot even. Yeah. She was on the cover of a magazine. Like as a symbol of how she was going to go to a bad school on purpose. So like she obviously knew that.

Yeah. And maybe now she's trying to like recapture some of that faded glory with this mea culpa or whatever. But from that 2016 article, here's a statistic. The New York City public school system is 41% Latino, 27% black, 16% Asian. it's only 15% white and those children are clustered in 11% of the schools that are all top performing, obviously. Three quarters of all students in New York City are low income. This is like a very interesting fraught student population. Some people were saying basically that this woman sacrificed her daughter's well-being at the altar of ideology, like in service of this like social experiment. Other people were saying that she's like a race grifter and sucks, but that you,

have to acknowledge that unlike other similar types, she wasn't a total hypocrite and we have to at least give her some credit for living by her principles. I think both of those takes are wrong because first of all, she didn't exactly like sacrifice her daughter. She sacrificed her psychologically, but not academically at the end of the day, even though her daughter did have like a shittier education because she's probably going to be fine and she's probably in fact going to go to her college of choice and she's probably going to follow

in her mother's footsteps and in fact as many of people pointed out Nicole Hannah-Jones effectively wrote her college admissions essay for her all she has to do is like invert the formula which even if she hadn't like her daughter still probably go to a good school because she's still

yes she can't absolve her of the privileges that she no and the other like maybe not so nice thing to point out um is that her daughter is clearly a middling intellect i mean which uh you know i'm not being judgy or a bitch it's mostly genetic uh she's a great kid the way that she comes across she's like clearly very involved very curious she's not passive. She's not a slouch. Like, I would be happy to have a daughter like that, provided she was white. No, her daughter's great. She's like really a nice kid. And you have to like give Nicole and Faraghi some credit for raising a really wonderful kid.

Like outside of the... Come on. No, she is like the way that you hear, when you hear her like talk and like opine, she clearly because unlike her mother, she's not. yet corrupted by ideology yet. She can see things very clearly. And she has like... Except that she was already knew her whole life that she was going to these schools on

purpose. So her mom could make like a statement and take to like speaking tourism. But I think like realistically she probably wouldn't have fared that much better academically if she had gone to like a selective white school. well then she in the article she lets her daughter choose which high school she wants to go to and she elects to go to a hyperplane school then she changes her mind because someone calls her ghetto

and she doesn't like being a minority actually in the school and Nicole Hannah-Jones puts her foot down and says you made this decision you have to stay convenient yes of course because I don't want to do the legwork of putting you in another school be funny if her daughter turned out to be like a Brittany event type white supremacist or like a groi pet to rebel against her mom she like lost the braids um well and the second thing is like you can't exactly be said to have principles if your priors that determine those principles are inaccurate well i don't know i think so i mean they have to be inaccurate and

intact. I mean, it's, it doesn't mean they're good principles, but I, yeah, sure, you know, whether or not your principle doesn't like depend on your priors being sound. Like, you can hold, you know. Sure. Like, I, you know, I value, like, free speech. Yeah. That's like a principle that I, like, adhere to and value. And you, that's, like, debatable, if that is. You know, you, that's, like, debatable, if that actually like valuable. I'll have that debate. Sure, because you're saying that, you're saying that like as a matter of your own moral vanity,

you want to be entitled to say whatever you want to say without sacrificing certain. I want others to as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel the same way as you. But people can make the case that free, you know, that free speech isn't actually like some, a value that should be held, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever.

Right, but at least you're aware of the counter argument. Like the priors are debatable. I think Nicole Hannah-Jones would call any counter-argument or evidence to the contrary systemic racism. Sure. And like she, you know, her principles are really just like moral vanity that flies in the face of all available evidence and data. And she can't really reevaluate her priors because like A, I really sincerely think she lacks the intellectual capacity to do so. And B, this would require putting an end to her race script because it would be like exposed as resting on a bed of lies. This story spawned a really truly baffling and uncharacteristic Helen Andrews tweet where she says Nicole Hannah-Hanna-Jones is guilty of an analytical versus moral failure.

Based on that the point that your point that you made that your principles don't have to come from sound priors. But, like, I think they're one in the same because, like, no one who's a serious person in 2026 seriously believes that, like, systemic racism exists and that New York City schools are underfunded or under-resourced. And that's something she would ostensibly know as, like, an education inequality expert or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

So she, because I saw, well, you said and I saw other people. saying that the school, the middle school that her daughter actually went to is like vastly better funded. It might be one of the better funded schools in New York City if not the entire nation. It's crazy. Why? How is, do you know how that is? I do know. I did some research.

I did some research. But yeah, the more, the biggest moral failure is that anybody takes this woman seriously as a public intellectual. So the big thing here is like this myth of underfunding, which is a, you know, classic progressive talking point that if only our schools had more funding and more resources underprivileged low income minority students could pull ahead um the ideas that like the new york city school system is hopelessly underfunded the more low income and underprivilege you get them not true they're actually much better funded than normal or even good schools in the city how and studies

also have historically shown that throwing money at the problem doesn't actually seem to solve it makes it worse. New York, well, okay, so New York uses something called Fair Student Funding, which is a weighted needs-based budgeting program that has preferential allocations for students of color, ESL students, disabled students, homeless students, students with disciplinary issues and so on. So you get more money the worse your school in? By using like a checklist, you tick the boxes. So it's like incentivized to actually have this.

would be bad. So her daughter's school is almost certainly better funded than any majority white or Asian school in New York. And so she does this slight of hand. She says, in New York City, a combination of housing, segregation, and academic sorting called school choice that begins as early as pre-K means that most black students, even middle class ones, are forced to attend racially segregated schools with high rates of poverty. And nationally, schools in predominantly non-white districts receive $23 billion less in annual funding than their heavily white counterparts, according to 2019 analysis by Ed Build. But that's not true?

And anything we measure, these schools have less, even though the economically struggling student bodies they serve need more. I looked into that, the national statistic, that may be true across the board, but I think in like coastal elite cities, it does not apply. Certainly it's not true in New York City. The literal opposite applies. Like the worst your school is the better funded it is. But there was also this thing that in Mississippi, I don't know if you know about this, the Mississippi miracle.

So Mississippi is the poorest and blackest state in the nation. And they managed to dramatically raise the grades and test scores of their poor black students by focusing on basic phonics and math, which requires basically no funding. You can do it with zero money. So they were 49th in the nation in 2013. and now they're the first adjusted for demographics, so like among their peers. And they're the ninth for fourth grade literacy unadjusted, so across the board in the entire United States.

Wow. So that works, teaching kids the basis. Yeah. And it turns out like, I think like at the elementary school level, the bell curve applies, but kids are very malleable and they don't know anything.

So you can actually like teach them a lot and they can catch up a lot. You can teach them all. You can just fail them tremendously. Yeah. Like, and set them back. Because they're all very, um,

vulnerable. And there's that point. And malleable. Yeah. Yeah. But this whole myth of underfunding basically is a, is a make work program for people who can't and don't want to be fired and need to continue perpetuating the slide.

Because their livelihood depends on it. Well, the teacher unions are also incredibly powerful in New York. Which. She doesn't mention at all. There's not one mention of teachers unions. Though she complains a lot. Yes.

The standard of education, the teachers, not specifically, but like basically. Yeah. And it does like beg the question, like, why these teachers don't get fired? Yeah, because it's because they can't. Yeah, because the teachers unions are like ubiquitous and powerful and they make it impossible to discipline or fire anybody. Mm-hmm. So her daughter was coming home. moment here is being like my teacher's been absent for days or weeks.

We don't even have a substitute teacher. They just send us, she's like in second grade. They're like, they send us to the first grade or kindergarten classroom to sit around like with our dicks in our hands and work on our own. And so, yeah, her school was getting 52,000 per pupil annually. 52. Yeah, 52K per pupil annually. What?

Of course, it's not like they just disperse that money into like, individual educational accounts for the families of underprivileged students. They like obviously like shuffle that money around and wildly misappropriate it. For like basically for administrative costs, bureaucratic bloat, pensions, like it's really corrupt and terrible. So my thing is like if she really was a person who lived by her principles, as everyone claims, she wouldn't do the sleight of hand and selectively omit these very crucial details. Because you can talk about like the national picture

versus the city picture. Well, yeah, which is more relevant to what she's talking about and her experience. Yeah. But it's probably the only relevant thing. Like the national doesn't really matter. Right. It's like her.

We live in New York. Yeah. She lives in a very, particular and specific city with very particular and specific conditions. Here's another slight of hand that got me going. So at one point she says, I knew the consequences of this educational neglect would follow these poor black students throughout their lives as the failures here would be passed on to the next grade and the next. And then our society would blame their academic limitations on the dysfunctional culture and poor choices of their marginalized families, because

blaming poor families is more convenient than calling for the dismantling of segregation. But like the family and cultural environment is to blame. And also notice how she says like poor, not black, even though she is mainly concerned with race over poverty. Because you know who else is poor in New York City? The Chinese. And those people have test scores that rival the best private, let alone public schools in the city because they don't fuck around the test

scores. And that led me to do some number crunching of my own and ask chat GPT or whatever, what the comparable per pupil funding figures were for the public schools that I was considering in my district, which I won't docks because you don't need to know their names, but they are overwhelmingly low income majority Chinese. So the income level is probably about on par with the black schools and Beds die or whatever. And one of them got 32,000 per pupil, which is like 20,000 less than Nicole Hannah-Jones-Doters. It's a lot.

And then by far the top performing one, which is not only one of the top schools in this area, but probably in Manhattan period was 15,000. And I guess, well, the idea with the funding is that the white, like, privileged schools don't need as much funding because it can be like supplemented. Right. Yeah. By the parents, I guess. Yeah, and their parents are making more money.

They have better resources. That is just doesn't seem. very, I mean, it's not. Yeah, it's crazy. And, well, I mean, also, like, I'm a product of the New Jersey public school system. I went to a low-income school and I went to high-income school in two different townships. Both of them were very diverse with, like, large black populations. And in both of them, black girls were throwing yoo-hoo at each other's heads in the cafeteria.

It's like just, it's fact. I, the only time I didn't, because even the charter school I went to is still like a public school. But in New Jersey, when we live in Atlantic City. Atlantic City. Okay. So my parents were like, God bless them. They were like, they put me in Catholic school. Smart.

Because they were like, we, she can't go to a public school in Atlantic City. They're going to rip her. apart. But even the Catholic school I went to is predominantly black. That's crazy. This is like my childhood memory. But like literally I feel like I was like the only white. I was like I was definitely a minority if not like the only white girl.

Is that the one you were doing hip hop dancing? Or is that separate? No, no, no. My mom signed me up for hip hop dance class. This was in Las Vegas. But I got the chicken pox. couldn't go anymore. Oh, right.

And you experienced a wave of relief. Yeah, I was like, this is a quote from her first piece, which is actually more informative because it's less coping and covering, you know? She's like really writing from the chest. In 2014, the Brookings Institute found that black children are particularly vulnerable to downward mobility.

Nearly seven out of ten black children born into middle income families don't maintain that income level as adults. And we also know that like black children who grow up in like wealthy affluent families tend to commit more crimes and do less good in school than comparable peers of like white or Asian background. But isn't that? This is like an underlying problem with the community that needs to be addressed through like better more robust leadership.

But isn't that also basically true of not? everyone like isn't that isn't everyone kind of now like doing less good as they're not as well sorry yeah yeah as their parents yes this is true but I think like that statistic probably held more longly and strongly for yeah yeah yeah like even if you factor that in yeah like how many white kids born to middle class families are like achieving at yeah everybody is like sort of downwardly mobile and also just like the public education nationwide is in crisis and the education is lower quality for everyone. Yeah. Especially after COVID probably. Yeah. Like that goes without saying in that piece she also reports to like black kids thrive across many life metrics, not just

academic ones if they go to integrated schools. So they like get better jobs. They go to college and where they live longer. So she didn't want that for again. But the but the subtext it turns out, I mean this is really sad and sounds racist, but like going to school with black kids is bad for both black kids and white kids. That's the subtext. And she's trying to figure out like valiantly if blindly had to fix this problem. Because it's like very bad at like the granular family level. Well, is there not also just an issue with like delinquency? Yeah, yeah. there she talks about how just um how the parental and student absenteeism was also mirrored by educator absenteeism but yeah crazy you know how it is also in these like um maybe i show him a teacher

i know what a fucking word i know i know we could use some supplemental income can you imagine if we became like teachers at like p.s whatever 137 across from like like The Farragut houses and bedstoy. No one could fire us. God, I'd be such a bad. Little black kids call you a snow roach. It's like the eastbound and down scene of Stevie in the supermarket with his Mexican children. I call you dick liquor.

Yeah, there's like a scene where she visits her daughter's school at lunchtime and the kids are like lunchtime. like lunchless and unattended. They throw in you at each other's head. She has to like physically pry two boys apart at some point. And then she's like, oh, well. This is like first, this is one of her rise in first grade. Yeah. She's like, you know, kids of all races in all backgrounds are rambunctious at lunch.

Uh-huh. And she attributes this to like the failure of the adults to supervise. I mean, which is true. Like she is right that kids respond to the level. of expectations that are set for them by their authority figures, parents and teachers. And there's no one there. Yeah. As you said, you know, it's kind to discipline your children.

If a just man strikes you, that is kindness. That's in the Bible. Yeah. So we've got to start wailing on these kids. Yeah, I mean, not, no. No, we need to, like, extract, like, actually bad kids need to get kicked out of school, put into juvenile delinquency. programs, yeah, vocational schools.

That was happening. When I was in public school in New Jersey, the bad kids got pulled out of school and put in Botek. That's like, or juvie. Like you had two options. I'm talking about, I'm talking juvie. Yeah.

What happened to juvie? Do we don't have that anymore? She should send her kid to juvie. She really wants to prove a point. Her like, quiet, well-spoken, a white passing daughter. Yeah, and then the other thing is like, yeah, the parental involvement, like, you know, it took her until her daughter was in fourth grade for her to, like, check her homework and discover that she was, like, performing well below grade level on basic math, reading and grammar. That's crazy.

And then, but a lot of these parents, like the ghetto inner city ones, are like literally just doing drugs and committing crimes, like bringing their boyfriend around. boyfriend is eating the fruit snacks and cereal they're moving around a lot I mean white trash do this too obviously not as strictly black there's a but yeah phenomenon this does seem to be like class based but yeah it's like very bad they don't go to pta meetings or like participate on the board so in fourth grade they're told at the parent teacher conference that naja is performing below grade level in all subjects and um when they try to to get some answers and see some graded assignments and tests are Stonewold. And then one day she came home and said that she jumped three grade levels, which seemed

highly improbable. And it turns out most likely that no evaluations had actually been performed. And she'd just been flagged as underperforming because she was black. And so they assumed low income. And then that's when Nicole Hannah-Jones gets the folder of math homework and realizes none of it has been graded and all of her answers are wrong. I mean, that's crazy. So there's some combination of her daughter legitimately performing below grade level

because she's not learning the material and them just not even checking or evaluating. But wasn't the idea always, like she justifies at some point with sending her kid to like a bad school is that they can tutor her and like, yeah, like protect her in some ways from the bad education.

And then she does. end up getting a tutor to like because when she starts going to the high performing school she struggles. Yeah, because well initially she seems upset because she feels like she's like the only black girl and she's subject to casual racism. People are calling her ghetto. But that quickly is overtaken by the fact that she like cannot even master the material. Yeah. And feels like she's been held back.

But she comes out on top. And then yeah, her grades eventually catch up because they get her tutor. So they do this extremely. So they basically get her. a good quality selective education, asked backwardsly at an extreme delay in a way that probably costs a lot more time and money and energy. And it's just like retarded.

Could have just gone to the good school. You know, the way that you set an example for your community and uplift them is by abandoning them. Mm-hmm. Leave your day one's in the dust. Yeah. And then they see your again. example and want to emulate it.

I mean, she's just an extreme, like, her husband's black. He's blacker than her. Yeah, and he was opposed to this whole scheme from the jump because he went to integrated schools on army bases. Yeah. But as Steve Saylor points out, those schools probably have a much stronger, like, code of honor and sense of order than your average inner city black school. Because they're run by the U.S.

military. And the children there are like dads are in the military. Yeah, they're army or moms. Yeah, true. Well, and then she goes over the history of American school integration, black parents suing school systems with the help of the NWACP marching their kids

into schoolhouses through angry white mobs. We've all seen those images. She says, so like the generations of black parents who came before us for Raji and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage. But like those black parents were doing what they thought was best for their children first and then for the community second. Like they were using collective lobbying power to advance their children's interests. Not vice versa.

Here's another crazy quote. Under the city's so-called school choice system, most of the high. performing public middle and high schools used what are called academic screens, a combination of grades, interviews, portfolios, and standardized tests that determine admission. Okay, so like standard evaluative metrics. To allow access to public schools that most public school children can't get into, the systemic sorting of worthy and unworthy children, like why the weird moral judgment, is justified by saying that our brightest students deserve and demand more.

more rigor. While many of the city's Asian students have benefited from these screens, in reality, the screens are part of a tawdry bargain to keep a dwindling number of white and wealthier parents from exiting the public school system. Well, that's just like crazy, because it's, she has this idea that like all black supremacists have that's like fundamentally paranoid and delusional that, like, white and Asian parents like things like letter grades and standardized testing and other like normal evaluative metrics. As a bid, like as a ploy to segregate their kids from black and brown students. And not as like a normal sorting mechanism to separate the top, middle, and bottom performers in their own cohort ranks.

Yeah. Honestly, I hated even like reading this article because I hate like institution. Yeah, being reminded of school. Yeah, exactly. I was like, oh, my God, oh, fuck, right? Like, you got to take these tests. You got to fill out the scantron sheets and stuff. Like, school is just such a, like, prison.

Yeah, it's horrible. It's a chore and a bore. The bureaucracy and everything. It's just, oh. I know that the one thing they don't tell you when you have kids and you're, like, a narcissistic bohemian layabout like me is that you're going to have to go to school all over again. vicariously through your kids. Just when you think you've escaped school,

never have to think about it again, never have to use like basic arithmetic, nothing, algebra, whatever. I know. This guy Daniel Friedman pointed out that she perceives all politics as being about groups that practiced internal solidarity lobbying

for collective benefits over other groups. And like in reality, white and Asian, parents understand that their children are in competition with other white and Asian children for a limited number of spots and precious resources. Yeah. They understand that like everybody's in competition with each other and it's not some like

sick and twisted racial gambit. And like given that's the case, you want your child to come out on top because they're your child. Well, this is from their NPR conversation that she had with her daughter. Nicole says, what do we then do? Do we just say, well, there's nothing I can do? Or do you try in some way to make some intervention? It's like, why should my child be the one that's rescued?

You should escape what we can sign so many other kids just like you two. I just will never feel right, right about that. Why should my child be the one that's rescued? I know. That's such a bizarre inversion of like. Like being on a sinking ship. Like we're on a sinking ship. Yeah.

Like the NYC public school system. Like a literal ship and you're like, why? You're just going to be like, well, that kid can't get on the boat. So my daughter has to die. And then her daughter says, why? It makes no sense. You're talking about, oh, I'm just going to give you the worst just because it's not fair that you.

I didn't ask to be born. All you're supposed to do is just put me in a good school. Like, oh, well, I didn't want to put you in a great school and have you have advantages over other kids. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what you want me to have? Is that not a normal thing you want me to have? And of course, she's, yeah, she's, it's crazy. I know.

It's actually insane. This, like, collectivist. Yeah, it's not like she's like a Marxist. No. She's like a regular old capitalist like the rest of us. Like, where it is? What is what is this like? And what instinct?

Why is she, why is she so hell bent on to betray your family? Yeah, why is she so hell about on this narrative of systemic racism? Well, I guess my psychoanalysis, she's obviously half white. Her mother,

her mother is white and her dad is black. And I think potentially her dad left the family. And her mother raised her. Yeah? And she obviously like Looks like Faith Evans or something Like she looks like kind of like She's light skin

Yeah like She looks black enough But she behaves like a neurotic liberal white woman Yeah Like her concerns And preening are all very like Lib tarded And like suicidal

all. Yeah. And it's... In terms of her, like, Lydia... I mean, yeah, obviously it was like

to her extreme benefit to perpetuate this whole narrative and, like, pimp her daughter out. I know. For her own moral vanity. Yeah. And her career.

Yeah. Um, and she says... There's, it's like not feeding your kid because there's... Kids in Gaza that are starving. Yeah. It's in,

like, where do you draw... Like, where does it end? Yeah, I mean, like literally deranged, like, tanky leftists have said this to me on Twitter in so many words, like, how dare you prefer your child when there are kids in Gaza starving? It's like, what? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe her, perhaps her daughter will go no contact and write a tell all.

They actually, you know, the funny thing is like watching their rapport, they, yeah, they seem like cute and affectionate. Well, in the black community, it's usually the fathers who go no contact. Yeah, that's true. To protect themselves from toxic dynamics. It'd be so funny to be like a sociologist or a social worker, like millennial tattooed and write a book about parental. Yeah, paternal absenteeism in the black community and how it's like self-help.

It's like the shaking hand, the black and white hand, shaking hands even. It's like a band. to make your family. I'm pulling up the Wikipedia. Okay, her father's African American, her mother's Czech. Interesting. Oh, she's Catholic. Wow.

Oh, yeah. Why not a Catholic school? I know. Unclear. But yeah, doesn't say if her dad was in the picture. I bet he was. Well, in the first article from 2016, she talks about growing up working class and on the wrong side of the tracks in Iowa and getting bused to a nicer, whiter school. And her mom and dad seemed to have made that decision together.

Yeah. I bet he was a little bit. So he was a, I've just seen it thrown around that her dad was not in the picture. So I don't know what's what. And her nervousness and over-identification with this subject seems to suggest some kind of family trauma. But it seems like her and her daughter have a good rapport, a good relationship. Well, that's the thing, too. It's like Nicole Hannah-Jones.

I think it's an inside job. Maybe that they're colluding together. Well, good for them then. No, Nicole Hannah-Jones, as far as, like, Floyd-era-Scriptors are concerned, doesn't seem like that detestable or deplorable of a person. She seems like a pretty normal average. She's got her B woman. Yeah.

Which is the like school inequality thing. Yeah. Her rapport with her nice middle class family seems pretty wholesome and normal. Healthy. Yeah. It seems like they like and love each other. It seems like her daughter is like. Dresshold for conflict.

Yeah. Like her daughter doesn't seem to like hate her or resent her. No. She's just like kind of taking the piss a little. and giving her a hard time because she deserves it. Yeah. Which is, you know, good. She says instead of fortifying our determination to fight for integration,

we have instead chosen to succumb to collective apathy. The black eighth-grade essay voice really jumped out here. Sound like me on Twitter. In the face of a system so devastatingly unequal that it puts at odds trying to be a good person with trying to be a good parent. but like in promoting integration she's not really like

promoting diversity and inclusion and she's not even necessarily promoting she's promoting segregation she's saying my daughter is black so she's got to go to this predominantly black school even though she could go to a different one but she doesn't even she doesn't really care if the white and Asian kids suffer

and she doesn't necessarily even care if she doesn't necessarily even want to uplift the black kids so much because again you can do that by sending them to like a nice integrated school it feels like she wants the black kids to step in and take the resources and funding of the

white and Asian kids aren't they already doing that? Yeah but that's like her idea of uplift and in and according to that logic if you just parachuted or dropped a bunch of black kids into like an existing majority white Asian school and they took over the the conditions that led that school to success could be seamlessly replicated with the black kids like that's her whole race grift and that's like not true but she would make the case right that it's like because of the structural

racism yeah still yeah she's still hell bent on supporting this narrative but like We all know if like the balance, the demographic balance tips, things won't be so great. Like if the wealth of whites and Asians was like expropriated to blacks in the form of reparations. Well, the Chinese don't even have the wealth. Yeah. They don't. Some of them do. Right.

Yeah. The society would crumble because like black people as a community, not on the individual level, cannot take care of themselves and don't have intact leadership. leadership and have like endemic problems in the community. But that's the Oroboros of the structural racism still. But their health as a community and their sustenance depends on the wealth of white and Asian people. What because of? As it stands.

Because well, all of it is held together by the educational attainment and tax dollars of white and Asian people. That's like how the system works. Like it's already like her dad. I asked a chat. Um, per his 2007 obituary, his wife is listed among his survivors indicated. Okay.

So they were together. That's nice. That's good to know. Yeah, yeah. But they were. He was a blue collar army bat. Yeah. And then in the 70s, he worked in like meatpacking.

Uh-huh. And like, yeah. He was legitimately blue collar and her mother was a social. worker and then a probation officer. Yeah, yeah. The mom was like a parole officer and the dad was a bus driver. Yeah. They met because he was in jail.

No. That would be romantic. Yeah, it would be. But I still, yeah, she definitely has like a complex. Yeah, about this one thing, which I guess I don't blame her because that's her way to get her foot in the door. Yeah. Because, yeah, I guess she's not intelligent or original enough to have a beat that's not race scripting.

Well, I think I saw T-chats making this point. That because she is so accustomed to kind of like coasting. Yeah. And no one, like, basically no one has ever, like, graded her homework. Mm-hmm. It didn't, like, occur to her. Yeah. That her daughter didn't know what, like, algebra even was.

I know, yeah. Because she's so used to, like, the credent. that she's become accustomed to by virtue of her like politics as opposed to her like merit. Yeah. So she almost like expects the same. Yeah. For her daughters. And it doesn't occur to her until it's a little too late to check her homework.

It's crazy. Well, yeah. I mean, I think all all race and class stuff aside, she like suffers from the classic bind of the progressive parent who is like too busy. chasing their own like dreams and ambitions and career to like check up on what's going on at home and at school but is on the whole like not a terrible or abusive parent merely like a benignly neglectful one and you and fine in the end you know um I'm looking at the cheat hat tea chat oh yeah he's been pretty good on this one he's he's been really fired up um the clip of her talking about

how a New York Times reporter in a high poverty school fucking changes the school. I can go to that school and say there's a problem when it gets fixed immediately. And he said, arrogance and obliviousness verging on hubris. What a tragic overestimation of her own expertise, importance and moral goodness,

compounded by a totally unjustified confidence in her chosen profession's power to influence events and circumstances in the real world. So true. Well, yeah, that's what her principles are. Yeah. Not toxic narcissists. Yeah, it's like a delusional belief in herself.

Yeah. Which has served her well. It has served her. Black girl magic. That's what it takes. Yeah. But to meddle and to tamper in like educational. I mean, she's like just like hopelessly like out of her league in facing down the

problems of like New York City public schools. Well, she can't even. even like articulate what the problems are. She like willfully is blind slash neglectful of like real data. Yeah. And doesn't even address like the issue of like, well, teachers unions and like discipline broadly. This like fair funding provision.

I don't even think that, yeah, I guess she's willfully blind, but I don't even think that. that's like an honest mistake, you know, an analytical versus moral error. It's like actually kind of dishonest, which pains me to say because I actually just like my instinct, my sense with her is that she's not exactly like an evil and villainous scammer. I don't even really know about her. I only know about her because she's been like a punching bag on right wing Twitter since like the Floyd era with the 1619 project.

grow. So when, yeah, when she starts to find out, like, I guess this is like when her daughter's in fourth grade, she says, my husband and I were frustrated and worried but remained committed. By then, all but one of the white children and nearly all the middle class children who had started pre-K with not, with Nodja had left PS 307. We felt we could not, we felt we could not abandon the school and our convictions at the moment we experienced the dysfunction we knew to find so many of the segregated schools serving poor black children. We had to stay and fight for the students who did not have options.

And so we started to become with Thorne in the principal's side. But our experience at PS 307 says later exposed the fallacy that caring families are more important than competent teachers. The fallacy. How convenient. Here we were. This upper, this upper middle class educated highly involved family. Not that involved with a house brimming with books. Not just principal and her teachers knew that I worked for the New York Times or

reporting on school inequality, which your daughter also knew. And Faraji served on the PTA and the school leadership team. And yet with all the power and resources at our disposal, we left Nodja's elementary school at the end of fifth grade feeling wholly defeated by a system of inequality that may begin outside the school walls but is magnified within them. It's so funny how they left convinced more than ever that the problem was a system of inequality that began outside of the school walls but was magnified within them and not and not the fact that they were like delusionally ambitious and like overshot what they were capable of doing

yeah but she's she's making it right by going on NPR but with her daughter well she's stacking chips yeah good for her daughter is not in one of anything. They're both like a miracle success story. Do you think that's what is motivating her to even pen this article? What? Making more money. I mean,

she's amazing because I think she's like a, she's like retained with a six figure salary at the New York Times. And she, she's like a cicada. She's like a race baiting cicada who like shows up every seven to 10 years with a long read about how she fucked up her daughter's life. And then they're like, here, here's a bonus. Even like two years ago, right, there was that tweet circulating where she was like reminiscing.

Uh-huh. About the pre-K article and being like, I know that I made the right choice. Mm-hmm. Oh, right. Only two years ago. I know. Well, yeah. And now she's in a total one.

That's why I find this whole like, oh, she's living by her principles take to be a little bit. She's just a charitable. Yeah. Well, she's like like many people. her her ideology happens to dovetail with her interests like her ideals and her interests

are in sync but isn't that basically always true I mean not necessarily but not in your case how so well you got in trouble for freedom of speech yeah that's true well that's why it's yeah like literally no well no well I had a whole

conversation with my former agent back when we had like Alex Jones on and he was like don't do this you know you're gonna like hurt your career and stuff and I was like well I have these principles and he was like he was like your principles have consequences and I was like he's right yeah sure but that's why they're principles yeah that's like the whole point of having principles that they have consequences and you don't like yeah because they come into conflict with your personal interests and personal comforts yeah and in her case there's like zero conflict well With her daughter.

Yeah. And now it's like a personal conflict. Yeah. But they are ideally, you know, your principles are tested. Mm-hmm. By reality. Yeah. And if you are truly committed to them, you hold them regardless.

Mm-hmm. That's the idea. They're not principles of you. You were like, oh, well, now if I'm going to be in trouble. She's going to find a way to hold these principles. I know. Regardless. Don't worry.

Yeah. I guess she's part Slavic, which is hilarious. Central European. I don't consider the Czechs to be Slavs. Partly. But they are kind of there. She's Slovak. She's Ruthenian.

She's part of another ethnic. She's a whorealian. That's even more upright. That could be a good griff for her to get into. Lean into the Ruthenia. Slavic Prothia. Anyway. Yeah.

I think we've covered. We did it. Yeah. This is probably going to be like the most involved in-depth discussion of this Nicole Hannah-Jones article by any podcasters because nobody cares about it. No, people are talking about it. Yeah, but they're like firing off, like one-off takes. I mean, maybe Rufo and Lomas.

On social media, yeah. Do you feel more like the Rufa or the Lomas of Red Scare? I don't know. That's a good question. I have like a bad theory of mind for their different styles and personalities. I know I haven't listened enough. It's hard to say. well which one's the bigger gay faggot because i guess i'll take that one they're kind of neck and neck

honestly it's hard to say anyway yeah Nicole Hannah jones come on the pot honestly come on the pot we could we could chop it up yeah that would actually be kind of fun all right she would never no see you and have