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This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons.You fucking rock.Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended.The explicit tag is there for a reason.
Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way.
We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad.It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.
Today is Thursday, October the 17th, and Cecil, we are moments, really genuinely moments away from Election Day.
Yeah.It's like, it's fucking here, man.And we'll be live on Election Day in the evening.Come check us out.We'll be doing election coverage that night on YouTube and on Twitch.
We'll be looking at all the sites, 538, the New York Times, et cetera, et cetera, talking.And it appears that we will have a guest that evening, one Heath Enright will also be joining us that evening.Heath Enright of Skeptocrat fame.
Of the Skeptocrat.By the way.Citation needed. Will this be our third general election live stream?I think it's the third general.Yeah, it's the third general.
I know we've done midterms.We've been doing podcasting, my friend, for such a long time that we are on our third general election, election night live stream.Hopefully this will not be another, it's going to be a nail-biting terror.Heartbreaker?
There's almost no way this is not a night of sheer terror.I've already taken the day off of work.
I just hope that at the end of the whole thing, at the end of the evening, we can say definitively there's a winner.That's what I hope.That would be...
fucking amazing.I think that there is a less than 10% chance we know who the winner is on election day.Yeah.
Yeah.And I legitimately cautious.
They're going to be extra cautious.They have to be.I took the next day off of work because I know I won't be able to concentrate.You won't focus.You won't be able to focus.It's a pointless day.
I've taken, I've taken election day and the day after off of work for my day job because there's no way that I'm going to be functional.Yeah.I remember when Trump got elected,
I had to go to work the next day and I had meetings, like important meetings, like meetings with my boss and shit.I walked into a lunch meeting and like my boss was there and he's like, you do not look happy.
And I'm like, I am here to work and be done.So yeah, it's something.So viewers of the show, not listeners, but viewers will notice that we are recording not together. in the Gloryhole Studios.We got COVID in the family.
I am fine, but out of an abundance of caution, Cecil and I have decided to record from afar.So, it's ununited.Ununited.
Yeah.And we didn't do a live stream this week.I know people may be expecting some live stream audio.We didn't do a live stream because this is so hard to do live stream.
It's actually hard to record shows like this in some ways, too, because we're so used to sitting across from each other.So, it's even harder to do a live stream like this.So, I can't believe we did this for a year plus.
We did it for years and years and years.
It's different when there's no video component.I feel like it's a lot easier to edit and it's different when there's no video component.When it's just audio, it's actually a lot easier to make it sound a lot more natural.
But when it's video too, it's actually very difficult.So it makes it a lot harder.
I just mean, like, I can't believe that during the pandemic, we did video, we did our show because we had gotten so used to working together and being together in the same space and having a studio.
And yeah, it just it blows my mind that like, well, we just created this new. Normal, but it never felt right.I still remember the day.
I still remember the day we came back together in the studio after we were both vaccinated for the first time.And it was like, I missed you, man.
It was a long time to not see each other in person.Luckily, we were close enough where we saw each other, not just on the calls here, but then talked on the phones and things like that too.But yeah, man, that is a long time.It was over a year.
You took the Greyhound?Three days and three nights, just like Jesus Christ did in the desert with Moses, Adam and Eve, hallelujah.
All right, so speaking of crazy, our first story today comes from friendly atheist blog.Mega church pastor tells congregation to vote like Jesus by supporting Trump.Ah, yes, the famed democratic voting tendencies of one Jesus of Nazareth.
What?What?Do you think that if he raises his hand to vote, they would be like, sorry, there's a hanging Chad.
There's a hanging Chad there.
We're not allowed to count that vote.There's a Supreme Court justice looking like, is it fully punched through?Is it punched through enough for it to count in Florida?He really nailed that ballot.You know what, just leave it hanging.
No, absolutely not.Every time they talk about Trump, They seem to compare him to a king.They do this with the Cyrus thing and they're doing it here.And they always say the same thing, which is essentially, look, he's not perfect.He's not perfect.
Don't look, I'm just saying he's the shitty, awful, terrible person.He's the worst, but he's also kind of all we got.Like, look, it feels like you're talking to people at the fucking abuse shelter.Like people seriously,
trying to be like, well, he's not an asshole all the time.He's not a racist all the time.He's like, you know, once in a while, he's sweet.You know, it really feels like a big excuse to make a bunch of big excuses.
And it feels like we've been fucking, we're like fucking abuse victims.Yeah.
Well, like maybe we should have a candidate that we don't have to caveat everything with like, all right, I know he's the worst.Oh God.Look, I mean,
Yeah, he let my dog go and, you know, like he fucking fed the kids bleach sandwiches and just, you know, like fucking sunlight and bleach sandwiches. All right, so I wanna actually read to you some of what this megachurch pastor said.
By the way, what he said when he was clearly violating the Johnson Amendment.
Yeah, I mean, like the underlying piece of this is here's a guy who's essentially using his tax-exempt status to tell people who to vote for.
Yeah, this is expressly forbidden through IRS code, right?So like they are only able to be a tax-exempt church charity, whatever, because they're not doing exactly what he's doing here.So here's what he says.Jesus is not on the ballot, guys.
Get over it.And he's talking about how the candidate Trump is not perfect, that there is no Jesus who would be perfect.Then he compares Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to
Ahab and Jezebel, and I love this quote too because like when he's talking about it, it sounds so insane.He's like, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, they're Ahab and they're Jezebel.
And then he says, you know, then there's Trump and Trump is some other, you know, Knesset or whatever.And you're just like, Jesus, none of this, just none of this. Then he says, like, God frequently uses a flawed leader for good purposes.
A flawed leader used to do good things is better than suffering under wicked leaders.And you're like, all right, man, but like, you could pick a guy who wasn't this bad.Right?
When you, when you, when the candidate that you are so excited about, you have to be like, all right, look, It's just genuinely horrible.I can't stomach looking at his stupid fucking face.
You can't stomach looking at his... His voice makes my skin crawl.
I know he's been adjudicated a rapist, and I know that he's got 34 criminal felonies, and I know that he's had multiple failed relationships and divorces, which our church is weird and fucking judgy and puritanical about.And I know that he...
paid up porn star hush money when he was cheating on his wife who had just given birth to his, you know, youngest son.And I know, you know, like you have to make so many excuses.There's a lot of you know's.A lot of you know's.
Yeah, yeah.How badly do you want your taxes lowered or whatever you think you're going to get? which, by the way, you're not gonna get.
Yeah, you're gonna have to pay more money in tariffs, and Trump has no idea where tariffs come from, even.
These stupid motherfuckers, I don't know what they think.All I hear with this is like, yeah, all right, fine, all right, fine.And then I'm waiting for the thing that they are gonna get.
I'm waiting for them to articulate the thing they're gonna get that makes all this bullshit worthwhile, right?If you're like Tom, you have to eat a sandwich that's got turds in it.I'd be like, that's not likely.
And you're like, but you get a warehouse full of cash.I'd be like, give me the sandwich a hundred percent.But if you come up to me, you're like, Tom, you got to eat this sandwich with turds in it.I'm like, great.What do I get?
And you're like, it has turds in it. And I'm like, but what do I get?And you're like, it's just got a lot of shit in there.What do they think they're gonna get?
He's already been president, when he was president for four years, he passed one of the largest tax reform bills in modern history.It was the largest tax reform bill since Ronald Reagan. It gave none of that money to the middle class.
All of that went right to the top.Big tax breaks for corporations and the ultra wealthy.It increased our national debt tremendously.It was a terrible tax deal for America.None of you guys saw it.What is the thing they think we're going to get?
They seem to remember, oh, but gas was like a dollar. So I guess it was like a dollar at the height of the pandemic because nobody was driving anywhere because we were all dying in the streets of diseases.
What do they think they're gonna get, man?Well, I also think too that there's this idea that we somehow have to settle, right?You have to settle for this person. I'm sorry, you can't have anybody that we 100% agree with.
You've got to have somebody who you settle for.And you're like, I understand that.And I do get that because you only select, you only get two candidates, et cetera.But do you have to settle so much that you have to apologize for your candidate?
Because I realize I'm settling for Kamala Harris.There's some things that she's going to do that I don't agree with.
I know for sure there's going to be things that she does that I'm not going to agree with, that I'm going to think are bad things that she did, but I don't have to convince myself to vote for her.I'm just like, no, I'm not, I'm not settling.
Like that's like this, she's a very qualified candidate who's going to do a great job and she's likable and She seems like she understands the scope of the work.So all of those things are positives.I don't have to talk.
I don't have to look myself in the mirror while I'm shaving.Be like, you've got to vote for this person.Even if you fucking hate it.Even if you hate every site, you've got to do it.I don't have to do I'm just like, yeah, no, she seems pretty cool.
That's okay.Yeah.There's going to be things I'm going to, I'm going to disagree with that.Maybe even vociferously disagree with her on, but at the same time, I don't have to talk myself into doing it.
The reason why you have to talk yourself into it is because the things that you disagree with Trump on are all moral things, but you are still cool with voting because one or two of those moral things are going to hit.
He's going to hit the ball into the cup for a couple of things for you.And those things are the wedge issues that bring you to vote.
Well, like, I'm not going to go vote for Harris and then come home and hug my fucking knees in the shower, right?I don't have to do that.It's fine.I do think that at some point, it's like, all right, well, I mean, doesn't character matter at all?
Yeah.At all?I mean, are there not, and are there really legitimately no character defects which are honestly disqualifying?And the thing is, like, that answer, even if you say no from a personal level,
On a just purely personal level, there are no personal moral character defects, which are inherently disqualifying for office.How about the destruction of our government?
How about like the genuinely the teardown of democracy that the right has overseen?
Ever since 2015 when he came onto the scene and we know that because all of these fucking right-wing players That have been lifelong right-wing players people that would disagree with me and with you on every substantive policy issue are lining up behind Harris because they understand the existential threat to our actual democracy it like
I was thinking about this earlier today.There's no reason to think that we have a self-corrective system.There's no reason to think that.
There's no reason to think that we have a system that if it falls and slides into authoritarianism, will necessarily correct itself.It might, it fucking might not.It doesn't always, man.And it might not in my lifetime.
And it might not in your kids' lifetimes, right? It is entirely possible that we lose our form of government, that we lose our democracy, that we slide into authoritarianism.That, by the way, an economic collapse will inevitably follow that.
Our credit rating across the world will collapse.The dollar will cease to be the trading currency.It will cause international, global chaos if that happens.And there's no guarantee we get it back.
Everybody seems to operate on this assumption, which is not true, that there's some self-corrective mechanism.But if you break the mechanisms, if you damage the mechanisms, and the mechanisms are things like the free press, Voting.
The power of the fourth estate and the free press, voting, disenfranchising people, destroying our faith in the actual system by which we choose governance.
If we break these things down, if we damage the people at the very ground level who pull the levers and certify the votes and do the actual nitty gritty day-to-day elbows in work, that create democracy, that allow democracy to actually occur.
If we break that, there's literally no reason to think that we get it back.We could break it and then it's broken.And then that's it.Now it's broken. and we don't get to play again.
So all these guys that want to like fucking roll the constitution into a fucking phallus and stick it down their fucking throat and swallow, like there's not going to be anything left of that thing.It won't matter.That's parchment.That's nothing.
Those are ideas.If we don't follow through on them, we can break the whole fucking thing, man. What the fuck are you talking about?I don't know.Here's a story that's exactly what we were talking about.
Huffington Post, Trump called Harris retarded, railed against the Jews supporting her.I don't know, man.What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to say?He's using a fucking slur.He's using the r-slur.My kids don't use that word.
They understand that that is a disgusting slur of a word.And then like antisemitism.What's left?
But I think that this is one of those things that you hear, it's reported that he said this to a group, right?So he's in a small group.These are high paying people that he's talking to.So you hear that that's where it was said.
He's saying this to a small group.What do you think this person says in private, right?You can tell how people act and what they believe and what they value by what they say.So you can find out about people this way.
If he's willing to say, first off, he's been saying more and more increasingly terrible shit while he's on the campaign trail.He's been saying more and more demeaning things about Kamala Harris, been saying more and more demeaning things about
He's been saying more and more demeaning things and dangerous things about what he calls the radical left.So this is a man who has been saying the quiet part out loud out in the open.Well, what does he say in private?
What is he saying in private to these people? And these are things that he believes.These are the things that he believes, man.You can't pull this away.
You can't, like the previous story, be like, oh, you know, sometimes you just have to deal with somebody who's really violent and really wants to see a bunch of people, you know, taken off the streets and dealt with by the military.
Sometimes that's just something you have to deal with.
We are painting ourselves into a terrible corner if we elect this person who has clearly, at this point, he has no one around him that is an adult that is grabbing him by his ear and saying, you need to fucking stop talking like that.
You need to stop.There's nobody around him anymore.There's no adults in the room.Not one.No, man.No one is there to wrangle him.His his fucking his PR person is the most toxic, shitty person.You've got every single statement I see from that person.
I think what a horrible, shitty person they are.So who is this PR person? It's Stephen Chung, his name is.I don't know who he is personally, but everything I've read, I thought, what a disgusting person you are.
So genuinely, he doesn't have anybody around him who's even wrangling him at this point.And how important is that?
That's incredibly important.What people I think also seem to be forgetting is that from, you know, from 2016 forward, right, Trump had a lot of people who were holding him back. They're all gone, man.They're all gone.
And the point, the actual written down and everything point of Project 2025 is to make sure they're gone and stay gone.To make sure that the wheels of his tyranny are as greased as humanly possible.There is no more General Mark Milley's.
You know, like those guys, all those guys, the cabinet, 40 of 44 people that worked closely with the Trump administration from his last presidency have come out and said, Don't let it happen again. You cannot let that happen again.
40 out of 44 have come out and been like, that was terrifying.When you get off the fucking ride and you're like, I would never go back on that ride, never.I know I helped build and design the ride.
I know I fucking went outside and spun the fucking sign outside and said, come ride my ride.It says Tom's Ride out front.I got on it.I dressed like the Statue of Liberty for some reason, I don't even know why.
But now that I've ridden it, I am saying out loud and everything, oh my God, that's the most dangerous thing we've ever built.
That's what these guys have said.Listen to them.Get this thing to Action Park right now.Get it to Action, just pack it up and move it to Action Park because that's where it belongs.
I feel like we have to listen to the people who were there.They were there.They were right there.You can't call them rhinos.You can't dismiss them.We're doing it anyway, but you cannot have any intellectual honesty and dismiss people like Bill Barr.
That guy, I fucking hate that guy.That guy sucks ass.That guy is terrible.That guy is like, don't let it happen again.
And from the next story too, this is Donald Trump's rallies should remind voters what he really represents.This is also, again, a window into his soul, listening to his words.
Last month in Wisconsin, quote, they will walk into your kitchen, Mr. Trump said of undocumented immigrants.They'll cut your throat.Later, he called the same people animals.
on Thursday at Detroit Economic Club, he returned to the matter of immigrants, quote, we allowed them to come in and raid and rape our country, end quote.
Returning to the theme of illegal immigration, he again called immigrants murderers, asserting that it's in their genes. He continued, quote, we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now, end quote.
Look, man, I realize there's a lot of people out there, ton of people out there who watch something like this and they're Trump supporters or they're quasi Trump supporters or they're one of those fucking rare unicorns that pretends they're undecided, whatever.
And they always seem to comment the same thing.They're like, oh, you got Trump derangement syndrome.Motherfucker.
Here's the thing, this is a guy who's calling undocumented immigrants, he's saying they're fucking raiding our land, they're cutting people's throats, they're rapists, they have bad genes, they deserve to be thrown out of the country.
This is a man who's literally saying hate speech out loud.So I should be as fucking, I should be attacking him every second that I can because he is a horrible, terrible person and he's asking for the most important job in our country.
I am, dude, how is it that the bad genes comment is allowed?I feel like none of this in any saner times would be allowed to continue.But when you suggest that an entire group of people have bad genes, that is the essence of racism.It is.
There is nothing actually more racist that you can say.It's eugenics.You're saying it is built into the very DNA of who they are, that they are inferior that they are bad, that they are violent.That's the sentence.That's what we're saying.
It's not like, he's not saying like, oh, you know, sometimes people come from difficult backgrounds and that leads to poverty, which leads to cycles of violence and crime.No, we're saying it's built into them as people.
That's what he's saying when he said they have bad genes.They are inherently flawed and less than people.That kind of language, we wouldn't have let this fly, man.No.
Prior to 2015, this would have been the kind of unbelievably disqualifying language that we would have said, holy shit, stop the press.Every story would have been only about this.Only about this.
Every question.Then they would have taken fucking Marco Rubio out of the drawer or whatever and replaced him with Trump.They would have been like, no man, we're going to take fucking whatever.
Whatever Republican we can find is going to replace him on the ballot. And that's the thing, right?
Because the thing that isn't happening now, that would have happened in saner times, is that people, no matter what party you were on, no matter how desperately you wanted to fight about this wedge issue, or that tax policy, or this international diplomacy problem, whatever it was, even if you were on the right, at some point, there was a bridge too far.
There was always a bridge too far, even for your guy. Where we're at right now is there's no bridge too far.There's literally nothing, there's nothing that he can say that the Republicans will say, all right. That's enough.That's disqualifying.
And he proved that on January 6th.Yeah, yeah, absolutely.And on January 6th, the Republicans for seven seconds actually grew a pair of balls and they stood up and they denounced him.
And they denounced him because they thought, that's the end of this guy.That'll be it.Because all sane intelligence about the world, every history that we ever had said, there's no way he politically recovers from this. But he did.He did.
And now every single one of every one of those motherfuckers that has not quit or been fired has backed him again.Because the lesson that they have learned is that we can't turn on him.He's allowed to do and say whatever he wants.
Nothing can be disqualifying.And the Republicans will never chastise their own guy.
No, sweetie, you were the queen, bitch diva.
All right, so this story comes from the Washington Post, but also, I don't know, fucking everywhere.Trump sways and bops to 39 minutes of music at bizarre town hall.
He did like 20 or 30 minutes of question and answer at a town hall, a very like staged town hall where everybody was giving him softballs.And then there was a couple of like medical emergencies in the crowd.
And then for the balance of the time, for 40 minutes, he just played his fucking Spotify playlist or whatever, Cecil.
He stood in front of everybody with Kristi Noem, and they were doing the YMCA together.They were standing up there clapping.They were swaying to the music when certain songs would come on.And there was just a bunch of people who stayed in the crowd.
And you know, this is such an interesting thing that happened because I guarantee, first off, I guarantee if Biden were to do this, this would be played as, oh my gosh, this person is having a breakdown, right?
And I feel like what happens with Trump is, I think we're all a little guilty of this.I think we all try to, Sane wash him in some way as a pattern recognition feature as a human.Right.
We see something that he did that is so different from anything any other candidates ever done in the history.And we immediately have to try to figure out why he did it.Right.Yeah.
There's never a moment in anything that Kamala Harris has done thus far that I have to explain to someone, right?She's gone to places, she's had conversations, she's debated people, she's had good and bad answers on things, whatever.
I shouldn't have to sit down with you and say, you know what, I just got to explain this to you.
Here's the thing, a couple of people had medical emergencies, and so now I've got to try to explain why they decided to stop doing this and why he stood in front of the crowd. I can't explain why they did it.
I think I can maybe try to get there, but this isn't a unique thing.He's done crazy shit before and we just all like have to try to explain it away as if, oh, we got to explain away all this nutty, crazy shit that he's done.This in particular
The explanations that I've been reading are that there was a heat emergency, a couple of heat emergencies in the crowd.So people had, they got overheated and they got, they fainted, they passed out.
And he saw, he saw very specifically Tim Walz stop the crowd. When he saw Tim Wells stop the crowd and get a lot of kudos for that, he now, that's his thing.He'll stop and be like, no, no, no, we gotta stop.He makes a big deal out of it.
He makes a big sort of shouting deal about it.Which he never used to do before.
I remember when he'd be like, get that fucking baby out of here.
Yeah, exactly.Or beat those people up on the way out.But now he's all about it now because he saw that somebody else do this thing and he thinks, I can use that to my advantage if it happens again.Because that's how he thinks. So he sees this happen.
He stops the show.Happens again.He stops the show.Now, what should happen in this situation is somebody stops and says, look, show's over, guys.It's too hot in here.We're just going to end the show.Sorry, everybody, but it's just too hot.
We're going to play a couple songs.You can show yourself out.But nobody said that. What they did was they said, he started to answer a question, then he said, hey, come on, let's just listen to music.Nobody left the hot venue.
And they, in fact, they, in fact, created more warmth by moving around.So no one is, no one's buying the, we stopped because people were falling over.Nobody's buying because that's not what you did.
the famed cooling effects of dancing were not all of a sudden in effect.
That's not what happened.It's really hot sitting here asking questions.Let's cool down by some vigorous dancing.
What the fuck?That's not a thing.
What happened was, and I think, you know, again, I've got to explain sort of what's happening here because it's so fucking crazy, is that the person who we're asking to be president of the United States didn't tell the crowd that the thing was over.
It was over in his mind.It was over.The thing is over.But he said, let's just listen to music.And so he did.And then there's a part of the article where he looked over and he's like, are they still here?Why are they still here?
It's because you didn't tell them it's over.You said, let's listen to music.And they did because you aren't a good communicator and we shouldn't hire you for this job.Well, and it's also because they'll do whatever.
There's also a really strong and important element that they were never there to hear substantive answers to real questions.The audience was, I mean, until they all got confused and just started wandering out after a while.
They were just as happy when he said, let's all just stop and listen to music.They fucking whooped and cheered because it's not about substance.Because it's not about like, here's a serious man with serious answers.
They're like, yeah, I'm fucking here to see my rock star.I'm here to see the cult of personality bullshit that I've signed up for because I'm a fucking racist, xenophobic, misogynist idiot. And that's what I want.
I want to stand here and watch fucking grandpa screams a lot, stand on stage and to mutter about like, you know, people not being on his fucking lawn for four hours.
And then when that gets too hot, he'll just play YMCA at me until I eventually get bored and wander off like a fucking. puppy or something.The thing with Trump is there's been this excess of erratic batshit nuttery that has become so overwhelming
that there's kind of no way left for us, nothing left for us intellectually to do with this sort of dearth of information that we get.
It's like being constantly thrown into a fucking museum of modern art, blindfolded, spun around in the dark, and then have to look at every exhibit with a fucking strobe light.
You're just trying to interpret flashes of shit and trying to make meaning out of chaos. It's strategic.
I really do wonder if the erratic batshit nuttery total lack of seriousness element of it isn't... I don't want to 4D chess this shit, but is it actually strategic or is it just like, hey, this is what humans do when we get fucking overwhelmed with idiocy.
We just start trying to make sense out of the senseless.
There's another part that occurred to me today. Do you remember the lady who, while McCain was talking, was talking about, and people might not remember this, but John McCain was at a town hall.
John McCain handed the mic over to a woman and she said, I don't trust Obama, he's a Muslim.And then she started talking about how bad a person he was.He's a Muslim, he's a bad person, I don't trust him.
And John McCain snatched that fucking mic away from that lady.And he said, he's a good man, he's a Christian.
Now, I understand that a lot of people dislike what he said there in that sense, like, you know, using that shorthand, Christian means you're a good person.I get that.
But I also recognize that what John McCain did was try to diffuse the situation and not have somebody come up and try to make some really baseless claims about his political opponent.
I wonder if the only people going to his rallies now are those people.People he doesn't want to talk to, he doesn't have any desire to talk to, and they come up and they ask questions like, hey, you remember when you were in that movie?
That was cool.I wonder if that's the type of questions he's having to field.And he also just doesn't like those people.
I'm sure he doesn't like most of the people that are going to vote for him, but I think he very much doesn't like those people the most.
Yeah, I want to tell you a quick story.Last week, I went out for a bike ride.And when I ride my bike, I always ride solo.I don't have like a group that I ride with.It's just me.And I'm riding along. And I pass a group of four guys.
And then, you know, a little while later, like a mile or so later, I come up to a stop sign or a stoplight rather, a traffic crossing.And these four guys that I had passed a little ways back, they come up behind me.
Because, you know, we all kind of catch up at the same, you know, stoplights or whatever.You can catch the same rat. And then we start riding, and these guys start talking, and they're avid cyclists, and so we start getting into this conversation.
I did the whole rest of my ride with these four gentlemen.And they were all of them very nice people, except at one point, I'm riding side by side with this guy, and he is a hardcore Trump guy.And Cecil, I live a charmed life.
In my work life, nobody talks about politics.In my family, I don't have any extended family. So like, I don't have Trumpers in my life.So I'm riding my bike and I'm, you know, just kind of making conversation.
We're talking about cycling and all that kind of bullshit.
And then this guy starts going off and he hits, I wish I'd had a recorder for you, Cecil, because in the space of five minutes, he says at one point, he says, you know, immigration, DEI, close the border.
He just started saying the talking points, huh?Like, I don't like genuinely kind of surreal moment where I'm like, you didn't even say anything about immigration.You just said immigration, seal the borders, DEI.
And I was just like, what the fuck is happening?Are you just- Did you cast a spell on me?What is happening?It was insane, Cecil, it was insane.
I won't get too far afield, but at one point, you know, he's talking to me, he's like, well, tariffs or whatever. And I was like, well, and I couldn't bite my tongue.Cause I was like, I shouldn't engage.I shouldn't engage.
I should just ride my bike and talk to these other guys that are nicer.And I was like, tariffs are just a tax.Like that's just an inflationary tax.Like that didn't work.It's nonsense.Like don't go down that road.
And then he like went off like, oh, that's what the ivory tower egghead economists would have you believe or whatever.And I was like, all right, hold on. I'm like, how do you know true things?And I started trying to go down this road with him.
I'm like, how do you know true things?And he goes, my experience.And I was like, so your experience is a perfectly universal experience.So you can just, whatever you see is perfectly universal of the entire American experience.He said, yes.
And I was like, cool.And I rode a little faster.And I caught up to the next guy.
And I was like, what am I supposed to do?I'm tagging out.
Yeah, I'm tagging out.You literally just yelled slogans in my direction.I just met this guy, man.It had not been seven minutes.We had gone very little distance.We probably were riding for eight or 10 minutes at this point together.
And I'm hearing somebody that's being like, DEI, immigration, seal the border, and I'm just like. You just say the words, like these are the spells, like your point is right.These are the magic spells, the incantations he's learned.
And it was unreal.These are the people though that I think are still at these rallies where he's dancing.These are the people, these are those people, the hardcore people that are still there.If you watch this, and this is up, right?
So you can watch this whole thing.You can watch this whole thing transpire.You can watch every bit of it.And I wanna just say, just think about it like this. Imagine you're sitting in a room and you're trying to hire a CEO of a company, right?
You're on a board.Let's say you're on the board of this company and you're trying to vet the next CEO of this company.And someone comes in and starts answering questions.And let's say there's an interruption of some kind.And then he's back again.
You have to ask him more questions.And then there's another interruption even.And then after that second interruption, they just pull their iPhone out and say, let's listen to my Spotify playlist and stuff. does that person get the job, right?
Because you're asking questions, like important, real important questions.The other person came in and was completely qualified and competent.Maybe you didn't agree with some of the things that they said, but they at least answered all the questions.
They didn't pull their phone out and start swaying to the music during a job interview.That's what you did.That is crazy.Ask yourself if you could fucking on that board, vote for that person to become the CEO.
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This story comes from CBS News.This is fucked up.Vatican sent Italian children born out of wedlock to America as orphans.New book uncovers program.So this is a similar story to what we've seen the Vatican do in other parts of the world.
We've seen similar stories where the Catholic Church in Ireland and other parts of the world, they shame unwed mothers They offer some meager support services for these women.
Then when they give birth, they steal their babies and arrange for adoptions in other countries and like literally kidnap the children from these at-risk women who just need help.And that's it.
They do that with the help of the church, and then they do that in complicity with families that have been brainwashed by this fucking religious bullshit into silence and compliance.
Yeah.We were talking a couple weeks ago about how saying someone is a Christian is shorthand for morality, right?That's a shorthand for good morality.
We're saying that, you know, if you're a Christian, when people say, that person's a Christian, we automatically presume that person is good.They're a good person. Think about this structure in which they're getting their moral codes from, right?
This is a group of people that are getting their moral ideals from on high.This, you know, Pope and all the previous teachings of all the other Popes and
thought leaders in the Catholic tradition, they all have these moral ideas that they've passed down through the years, you know, the Aquinas' and the Augustans and all these, like I say, popes, et cetera, and the encyclicals that you could read, et cetera, et cetera.
These are all moral positions that they've passed down that they expect people to do, and yet you see this group acting so immorally all the time, doing things like shuffling priests around after they've committed a horrible sexual assault on children.
You see them... taking babies away from mothers, expectant mothers, who clearly, if you watch this 60 Minutes thing, they interview a couple people, and one woman, she said, yeah, I didn't have a lot.
She was actually the daughter who was saying, yeah, my mom didn't have a lot, but she definitely wanted to keep the child.She definitely wanted to have me, and they gave me away, and they lied to her and said she was dead.
They said that the child died.
So they lie to these people, they steal babies, they hide this sort of thing, they're doing clandestine shit behind, and we're supposed to still use that same shorthand when the organization that's handing down this morality is so immoral.
Yeah, like, more specifically, I will say, if at this point in your life you are still able to say, I am a Catholic, after everything that has come out, the sheer volume of child trafficking that the Catholic Church has been involved in.
I mean, how many dead children did they find of First Peoples up in Canada?In Canada. I mean, I don't even know the number of dead bodies that they found.It's not five or six.No.Ireland.The same exact thing in Ireland.
The child trafficking now that's being exposed in Italy.The child sex abuse scandal that is literally global.Yeah, global.Global.Yeah, you're not wrong.
predator network, how anybody can support the Catholic Church as anything other than, and I don't even like say like as a moral, like it is just a genuinely evil organization.It's not, it's not possibly good.It is a genuinely evil organization.
You can't just do a few evil things, right?And be like, yeah, well, I just do a little bit of evil here, or maybe the evil we did was back 30 or 40 years ago, but we're not doing as much evil now.They have to get caught every time.
They get caught every single, they know all this shit that they've been up to.They get caught.They're not fixing their own problems.They fix their problems when other people bring them to light.
Every single time there are no exceptions that I don't get how anybody still supports this organization.I genuinely don't
And then one of the things that is the most upsetting is you hear the Pope, after something like this, what does he say?I'm sorry?Like, who fucking cares, dude?
Are these people gonna get any compensation for you stealing their children and displacing their children for decades?Are they gonna get anything from this?You know, you changed the life of all these children and parents.
Every single one of their life trajectory changed, sometimes very drastically, right?Changed in huge ways.
And some of these people had to go searching and find their birth child over here because they were essentially shipped over to other countries.
These are people who lived through their life thinking because they were told by a nun or something that their child had died.
Can you imagine what kind of trauma you would go through and then have somebody come up and say, hey, by the way, I happened to be your kid.The people who you think are the most moral in the world lie to you.
And the best the Pope can do is say, I'm sorry.Fuck you, dude.You should be walking with your giant hat in hand.You know what I mean?Your weird fucking crazy water buffalo hat in hand.
Yeah, and that actually dovetails, Cecil, with a story that I read this week that the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the Catholic Church, is paying $880 million.$880 million to settle child sexual abuse lawsuits. 880 million dollars.
The total that they're spending to settle those lawsuits just in LA County's archdiocese is 1.5 billion dollars.The church has it.The church has the money, man.They need to fucking have a fire sale tomorrow.
They should sell literally every single thing.There's no amount of money that could possibly be
gifted or given in recompense to somebody who was, you know, viciously sexually assaulted as a child or who had their child literally kidnapped from them by the church and sold into some kind of child trafficking bullshit overseas.
Like how much money is that worth?If you said to me, Tom, I'll give you a million dollars. If I can kidnap your child and send them over, I'd be like, fuck you, a billion dollars, fuck you.There's no amount of money, you can't ever make it right.
You can never be made right.10 billion dollars, okay, now we're talking.
10 billion, now we're talking.Which kid?They can't make it right.
They cannot make it right, so I'm not sure why there's still assets. That's the thing I don't understand.How are there still assets?Why are we not in a place where it's like, sell the whole thing.You can't be a fucking charity anymore.That's done.
And sell off the whole thing.Sell it all.You can't be here.Every piece of real estate, every golden fucking throne or whatever you weirdos sit on, it's all gotta get liquidated.
Fire sale for the whole lot of it.Pitch in and we'll get a glory hole church. We'll just have like a big Glory Hole Church, have the podcast live every week at Glory Hole Church.
We need to buy desanctified real estate.Oh my gosh, do we ever.
The best people make a cheese out of raw milk that is aged in a cave for four or five months.
This story is from The Poke.Russell Brand is selling a magical amulet to protect you from Wi-Fi.And of all the mockery, this response really hits the target.Wasn't Russell Brand famously kind of one of us for a minute, Cecil.
For a while he was.He was one of those guys who I think started, he was in a couple movies and then he got a little bit of a start doing sort of a talk show type thing, podcast type thing.
He's a somewhat handsome guy back then and it just turned into him being a guy who a bunch of people listen to and he was It seemed at the time leaning towards being a skeptic.And I say that in a way to be like, that's what I remember.
I have no idea because I never listened to anything Russell Brand did, but there was a part of me that thought so.And especially now seeing the comments, most of these comments are all about Because I know that he recently converted to Christianity.
He was recently baptized very publicly.He's been involved with a ton of these guys that are on the right.
And he's now hanging out with the likes of Jordan Peterson, who's religious, and Ben Shapiro, and those types of people, intellectual dark web people too, who all seem to be cool with religion.
So I think he had to shed all that stuff in order to try to get involved on this.And this is a genuine grift.It's him talking about how he goes to airports.You can watch the video.I'll click.I'll link it in the show notes.But it's him going.
He's like, when I go to airports, I got to wear this, you know, Wi-Fi catcher fucking dream catcher thing. And it's like a nothing.It's like some kind of crazy technology.And I looked it up and it's like almost $300 for this necklace.
And this necklace is essentially trash.It's nothing, but they're selling this necklace and lying to you and saying it can collect all the wifi signals they showed
the picture of someone's head with a phone up to it, and then a phone up to it if they were wearing one of these necklaces.And in one, there's a bunch of red kind of showing where the Wi-Fi signal is penetrating the brain.
In the other one, it's very green.I'm thinking in the second one, they have a lobotomy.So that's why there's no activity in the second one.But yeah, it's craziness, dude.It's genuine crazy.But this is the grift.He's rolling the grift.This is, yeah.
Dude, I love the people who are like, oh, I don't use a cell phone because I don't want the cell phone signals.It's like the cell phone signal is still there, you stupid asshole.The cell phone does not create the signal.It picks up the signal.
The radio waves are always there, man.You literally, there's nothing you can do about any of it. Like if your friend gets a signal on his phone, even if it, that's because there's fucking, it doesn't just turn on.
It doesn't appear when it wasn't there before.That's not how any of this works.We're surrounded constantly by all kinds of background radiations of different types and they're all fucking harmless.Like it also doesn't matter if you don't have wifi.
Literally, think about your house.If I look, if I turn on any Wi-Fi enabled device in my house right now and I search for networks. It finds like 14 networks, man.I know, there's a million of them around.
Just in my fucking residential neighborhood.And also like your fucking fridge probably has one, it's shitting out.
Look, we are constantly surrounded by radio waves and broadcast signals.It's so funny, probably the most dangerous radiation that we receive every day is fucking UV radiation from the goddamn sun.It's the sun.He should sell sunscreen.
screen, not magical Wi-Fi elements or amulets or whatever.You should have an amulet that you squeeze and get some SPF 50 that comes out, and then you just put that on you.That would be way more useful.That would actually be something.Yeah.
You still couldn't take it into an airport though, because they'd be like, sorry, you can't have lotion on your plate.That's too many ounces.
You gotta put your necklace in a bag or whatever. Yeah, man.
Can you imagine you're flying around in a jumbo jet and think about all of the signals that the jumbo jet receives and sends and that are beaming around in order for it to stay aloft and in communication with fucking air traffic control.
And you're just like, well, I got a magic amulet that protects me from the wifi.You don't deserve to be in a modern technology. You deserve to live in a cave, underground, eating fucking bugs with no eyes, you stupid ass motherfucker.
I don't believe he believes this.
He doesn't believe it at all.He wants $300.He doesn't believe this at all.He is 100% selling a trash piece of nothing to people who think that copper bracelets do stuff.
Yes.Dude, do you remember years and years and years and years and years ago, because we're old and we've been doing this forever.Do you remember the guys who were selling the fucking bomb detectors in Iraq?
Yeah, the two little sticks.
They're a fucking dowsing rod.
And they would come up, they're like looking for fucking actual, honest to God, IEDs.They're looking for bombs, guys.And there were bombs and cars.It was like this was a real thing that was happening.
And the military, not the United States military, but a different military, bought and trained people how to use fucking dowsing rods.
And there was a company that got in trouble for selling high-tech dowsing rods to idiots in high levels of government.Well, high-tech sounding, they had beep-bop boops on them.
They had like a battery on one of them and that was it.It wasn't connected to anything, it just had a battery slot. It's like the fucking orgone generators, which is just like a circuit board stuck in a bar of soap or whatever.
God, I feel like I got in the wrong business.Hey, hey, Russell, is there any openings in your sales department?
All right, that was a great show.Let's take a break and go to our sponsor.This show is brought to you by Magic Amulet.
Magic Amulet, protecting you from your- I feel like it'd be better if they had a Magic 8-Ball Amulet, where you could just shake it and ask, should I board this plane?
Dude, it always says outlook not so good right now.Outlook not good.I don't know.I shouldn't board this plane then.I should definitely take the next one.Yeah, man, this fucking guy has...
I, this is something you can see coming from a mile away and a ton of people called this.They also called this for that guy who did the, he was on a Thomas Smith show a few times and they argued with him.And I can't remember the guy's name.
He was like quasi part of the atheist group and he hung out with the Bogosian guy for a little while and they did a Soko Hulk's paper.And I can't remember the guy's name, but he was one of these fellows.James Lindsay?
James Lindsay, he's the guy with the fucking... Is he the guy with the swords and the hatchets and stuff?
Yeah, the sword kata guy.He does all the dumb ass kata shit.
That dude was, uh, he was... At a certain point, he got a job working for people who were part of a religious organization, and everybody called it well in advance.They're like, he's going to change.He's going to change who he is.
He's not going to be talking about the same sort of stuff he was talking about before.And you could see it coming from a mile away, and he did.He just changed who he was.Because that's where the money was.
And he was like, I don't have any real morals.I don't have anything I really think or think about or care about.Right. about is getting paid.And that's what Russell Brand, he didn't care about.
I'll tell you what, man, he didn't care when he was talking about anything else before.Like he didn't care about the other stuff either.
What he did was he, he now is working on a grift and that's what he, what he cares about is the product from the grift.
Yeah, this is like one of those lessons where it's like, be careful about the people who are telling you you back to yourself.Yeah, man, yeah.When somebody speaks your name back to you, that's somebody you probably should not trust.
That's somebody to be a little nervous about.We should disagree about things.Yeah, man.You should never have a hero that you're like, that guy seems to have all my same thoughts.That's because he's selling it to you, man.Yeah, you're 100% right.
He's selling you back to your dumb self. Don't let that shit happen.Well, and there's been so many times you and I have gotten emails from people who have said, I want you to say exactly this, or I'm never listening to your show again.
And then we just don't respond to them.I just never respond to those people.I'm like, yeah, man, like, listen to my show.Don't listen to my show.Those are things that you can choose to do.
But I'm not going to spend my time trying to make sure that I'm 100% an echo chamber for you. That's not my job.
I'm going to tell you what I think, and I'm going to mean it, and I'm going to be sincere, and I'm going to be sincere because the money's not great.I'm going to tell you that right away.
So I'm going to be sincere about it, and I'm going to tell you what I really think, and I'm going to tell you my real moral positions, and then you're either going to agree or disagree, and if you disagree and that hurts your feelings enough to leave, then that's okay too.
That's all right. You've gotta go somewhere else.If you can't live in a place where you don't surround yourself with your own thoughts and the way in which you think has to be reinforced all the time, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm not gonna do that for you.I'm not that for you.I'm not gonna be a person who's gonna, like you say, repeat you back to you.I won't do that.
I'm gonna tell you what I genuinely feel and genuinely think, and then at the end, if you agree with me and you like what I have to say and you like the research that I did, great, give me a buck. every show if you can, that'd be awesome.
But if not, I don't care.I don't care that you came here and demanded an ultimatum from me and said, you need to say these words or I won't listen anymore because I'll tell you what, don't hold your breath.
Yep.Yeah.I'm never saying things that I don't believe in.Look, you and I have been friends for this.We're coming up on 30 years. Yeah.You and I have almost 30 years at this point of very close friendship.And we still disagree about stuff.Yes.
We should disagree.We should challenge each other.
You know, we should have points where we're like, yeah, I don't think we're both going to get to the same place on this same continuum together and be in that space, even though we essentially grew up in our intellectual lives with one another.
Yeah, together.Yeah.Right?Yeah.We're going to still have points of disagreement. That's a good thing.That continues to grow and to challenge us.These guys like Russell Brand, like they are selling you the brand.That's it.That's all they cared about.
That's all they've ever cared about.And they're just gonna, their message will match the wallet every single fucking time.
All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week's show.You can catch, if you're a patron, you can catch this week's upcoming Thursday show is going to be, I think it's this week or it's next week.
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Credulity is not a virtue.It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno-Babylon bullshit.
Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo-quasi-alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment.
Leo Pisces, Cancer Cures, Detox, Reflex, Foot Massage, Death in Towers, Tarot Cards, Psychic Healing, Crystal Balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, Aliens, Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues, Temples, Dragons, Giant Worms, Atlantis, Dolphins, Truthers, Birthers, Witches, Wizards, Nuts, Shaman Healers, Evangelists, Conspiracy, Doublespeak, Stigmata, Nonsense.
Expose your sides. thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive.Doubt even this.
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