Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 785: A Joyous Vice President Pick

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

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 Glorial 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 and there is. No welcome mat.

Today is Thursday, August the 8th. And Cecil, our video has a bold new look. Bold look. Bold, new look. So go ahead, you have it. Under new management. If you haven't gone to YouTube and subscribed and checked out the videos,

the videos will look different a little now. They look good. You put a bunch of time and energy and effort into this. This looks good. Totally different look and it might not work. So there might not be video for this. I do have one complaint. Mine still has me on it and that's not good.

I felt the same way. I'm like, is that my actual skin color? I look ghoulish. Is there a point where you're like, can we go away from, as I'm getting older, I'm like 4k isn't my friend Yeah, man. I don't even want 1080p. I want like yeah, right Yeah, I want to be like a fucking icon for an offer like one of those ones you have to blow up and it's like

It's like 50. It's a hundred and fifty six picks. I'm gonna cross me. Yes. Yes. Yeah mine craft me I just want to be like like a block head with like a block beard and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And somehow I'd still have a block belly. Solid. Tom, did you see the, uh, the president met with a streamer this week? I read a story and I watched like a couple of like short, short clips of the streamer and Trump was like, yeah, my son Baron told me to be this. Or he's like, he blamed it on his son Barron or like gave Barron credit. I don't know if it's blame or credit or which,

but he's like, yeah, Barron says this guy's awesome. So I'm on the butt sniffer show. That's what he is. He smells seats of people who stand up. What a weirdo, man. I want to play this for you though, cause his chat called him a fascist. And so I want to play this for you though, because his chat called him a fascist. And so I want to play this for you.

This is him searching up the term fascist. And I am here to tell you, I was blown away that this passes for entertainment. So here we go. So here we go, here it is. This is Aiden Ross. Aiden Ross. Aiden Ross, who got famous sniffing ass.

Sniffing butts. Look at his house too, by the way. That was pretty fucking dope. Dude, I would sniff a lot of butts. I'd, man, let me tell you. Dude, I'd sniff the fucking seats on the CTA for that house. I'd sniff a dirty fire hydrant. Are you kidding me?

All right, here we go. Here's Aiden Ross. He's trying out, he has to type in what a fascist means. What does a fascist mean? Fascist. It means you are a far right authorization on, ultra, ultra ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, Oh my God, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra,

analyst, political ideology movement characterized by dictator leadership, centralized autocracity, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition. So I don't know what that means, bro. I swear to God. I don't know what the fascism is. I don't know what the fuck that is. Benito Masulli and Givianttta Genetile and Jason Stanley.

Like who the fuck are these people, bro? Never heard of my fucking life. What is an example of a fascist? Yo! Nazi party it says. All right, bro, see what I'm saying, chat? Like this is why I don't fuck with y'all, bro. Like dude, like this is what the fuck I don't,

bro, I don't fuck with y'all, bro. I do not fuck with you guys, bro. I do- That's what he said for like five straight minutes. He just says, I don't fuck with y', bro. I do not. That's what he said for like five straight minutes after. It just says I don't fuck with y'all. This is Tom. Look, the guy who wants to be the president.

The president of the United States. That guy. A butt sniffing man who can't pronounce. I thought when he said opposition, I thought he was going to say opossum. Yeah, no, I was 100%. Very close, very close. When I saw that this week, my mouth was fucking on the floor. I couldn't believe here's a guy who somehow has enough money to give Trump a Rolex. And I think he gave him a cyber truck or something, or he painted something on a cyber truck for

him. I, and this guy lives in a house that you look at and you think, my God, my God, this house. And I'm just like, this dude can't even fucking, he doesn't know what any of these words mean. None. He is a guy who can't even be defined as a fascist because he cannot define fascist. You know what? He's probably not because he's so stupid.

He wouldn't know how to be. He would be an accidental fascist. Yeah, that actually would be a cool romantic comedy. Now that I think about it, the accidental fascist. That's going to be my new ska band. When your people say they hate you, don't come crawling back to me. We missed this two weeks ago and it's important and we need to talk about it. So the New York times Trump declines to back away from you don't have to vote again line.

So I want to read what he said specifically because I will, it's, it's important. He says, uh, to a gathering of Christian conservatives, he said, quote, I love you. You got to get out and vote in four years. You don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good. You're not gonna have to vote. So obviously people seized on that as, holy shit, you authoritarian fascist,

which we do know the definition of, thankfully because a butt sniffing YouTuber just read it to us. This seems like he's saying, if you vote for me now, you don't have to vote because we're not doing elections anymore. I'll just be the guy in charge. Now there is an alternative explanation of it, which is, Hey, I'll have fixed so many problems that like, it won't even matter if you vote in the future.

Cause I'll have, I'll have wrapped everything up in a nice little bow for you, all of your world's pride. But that's not, that's a stretch. That charitable is a stretch, especially for a guy who said day one, I'll be a dictator. So he was pushed on this by I think Laura Ingraham from Fox who basically gave him an open door and said, would you like to step through this open door and gracefully exit your own words?

And he was just like, no. Nah, I'm good. I'm fine. I'll stick with it. It's warm in here. Yeah. I may take a nap. Yeah.

The other option, the third option I guess could be that Trump is saying that I will generationally fix these problems, meaning they're hidden behind a Supreme Court that no one can really access. Sure. So, you know what I mean? That's also a possibility. None of these are good things.

These are all horse show things. It's not like any of these things are good things. The other, there's a fourth possibility is that he doesn't care after he's done. After his first four years, he literally doesn't care. So for again, if you're a Republican, why would you vote for this guy? He's literally telling anyone after that is after him, any Republican after him, I don't care. I literally don't care if you vote for whoever is after I step down eventually So there's many different things that it could mean one of four things

None of them are good one of them is terrible If you're a Republican the other three are awful if you're a human So I think like Trump he gets away with saying this stuff and and they even point this out in the article And you've brought this up on multiple occasions that he's saying something vague and getting away with it and there's a million ways to interpret it and he's not going to bother to clarify his position. Which I think is why when Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to back off of it because he never backs off of anything. So that was very characteristic.

I would have been shocked if he was like, oh, you know what I misspoke, what I really meant was, and then clarified. It's better for him to never clarify. It's better for him to say, ah, what I meant is what I said. What I said is the thing I meant in any way. And then just, you know, Bibble fuck his way through things. What like guys like this don't seem to understand is that the strength of a democracy isn't its immutability But it's its ability to be responsive to a changing constituency So we don't want a political world I don't think where once I vote for one answer I get that forever

What I want is a democracy strong enough to change. Yeah, that's what I want That is the strength of democracy. And it's the big weakness of authoritarianism. When you look at authoritarian states like North Korea, for example, nobody is going to say, North Korea, well known for their responsiveness to change. Right? It's a horror show.

And the same is true of all authoritarian states. That's the big strength of democracy. So to like strip that away is to strip away the thing that makes a democracy great. Sure, yeah, absolutely. You're the sucker, you're the loser. President Trump. All right, so we got a story and then a retraction

or not a retraction so much as a flip-flop. Is it a flip-flop Cecil? I don't know, it's a change. I think somebody just finally asked him to put on his big boy pants. And he did. So from CNN, this was dated, let's see, Saturday, August 3rd.

So just about four or five days ago, Trump says he'll debate Harris on Fox News or not at all after weeks of back and forth over ABC News event. Now I thought, I really did, I predicted that Trump would refuse to debate Harris, that he would declare her an illegitimate candidate and refuse to debate her. So that was my, I'm wrong.

Well, I guess I'll be wrong once they're standing on the same stage. And when I saw this, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. That tracks. Like he'll say, like, I'm not gonna do it on our agreed upon time. Now I'll change it, we'll continue to move goal posts. We'll make it an impotent.

So I thought, okay, wow, I might've actually been accidentally right about something. That's interesting. This to me tracks with his, I think, fear of Harris. Sure. You know, which I think is real and I think is warranted. And I think it tracks with I think is warranted. I think it tracks with his complete disdain for women and women of color.

So I was like, yeah, this tracks. But just today, he did agree to engage in their September meeting on ABC just as they were going to do before. So now he is going to show up and he is going to debate. Yeah, he had a press conference today that was, I mean, if I was on the other side, I would say it was a disaster. It looked pretty bad to me.

He was constantly asking reporters to repeat themselves. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. He's blaming the room. I can't hear you, I can't hear you. Bad look, right? Especially when you've needled the other guy for being old for so long and you get up there and you're like, who did? What now?

Who did? That's a terrible look for you. Back in my day, we wore an onion on our belt, you know? Yeah, man, when your fucking old man raises his fist at Cloud, you better watch out. And he's very in this, he's in this position now where he's the old one and he pointed out for a long time that old is bad and now he's got to sit in there. But they also at this press conference asked him

and he said he would, but this also misses the point because he pushed back on this, then contacted Fox News to try to get him out, and then he posted that on True Social, and a bunch of people on his own social media network were calling him a coward. There was a hashtag, Trump's a coward on True Social. Damn.

That's rough, dude. I think what really happened is that that's what goaded him into doing this, is that he very much wanted to manipulate and try to stay away from it, but I think that he's just backed into a corner by his own true social network right now. Yeah, you know, one thing that I've found

to get to your point, back to your point about the aging thing that is really interesting about this moment that we're in now, is that for such a long time, I think it would have been like, really just gauche to like attack a candidate openly based on their age. It just wouldn't be done, right?

Just wouldn't be considered like polite or civil. And it wouldn't be considered that because it is not, right? It is not polite nor civil. And it's not how sort of like serious people should want to sell their credentials to the American people or how serious people should want to sell their credentials to the American people or how serious people should want to say, Hey, this is not a good policy position that the other side holds. Where Trump finds himself, I think in a particularly weak position now is that he can't retreat

into civility. So the Harris campaign is running a very different campaign. The Harris walls campaign is a very different campaign. The Harris Walls campaign is a very different campaign. He's made age fair game. He cannot retreat into civility. He name calls. He does all that stuff. So he can't, he can't say, whoa, that's a low blow. Whoa, we're doing that. Why you can't call me weird. Oh, you can't make fun of me. All of that stuff. He opened that door. He walked through that door first. He held that door open. He continues to use those same tactics. Now that they're being, I think, effectively reversed on him by somebody who seems to have

a lot more appetite for poking fun, for trolling, for fucking with them. I think it's freaking him out. The sense I get is that he's fucking unraveling over there. I really do. This news conference, like I want to read parts of this article because this news conference, I didn't watch it Cecil, but I read this article. It sounds like a all over the map. He was meandering. He was blathering from, I mean, it's two hours long.

They asked him about the vote and he started talking about something completely different. And again, watch the difference, the difference between when Biden took questions for a full hour and was on point with deep foreign policy discussion, you know, messed up two names and the press wouldn't let it go. Oh, he messed up two names. He press wouldn't let it go. Yeah. Oh, he messed up two names. He called, he called the leader of Ukraine, Putin. Yeah. And you're like, and he's like, okay, he always messed up names. And then they, he said vice president Trump instead of vice president Harris.

He messed up names again, again, messed up names. I, I, I don't know if you remember, but when we were talking a while back, when Trump was messing up names, you and I were both like, eh, you messed up names. I messed up names. You messed up names. He called Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley or Nancy Pelosi or whatever or vice versa. And we're just like, yay, whatever. Who cares?

We said that on the show a while back. We played another clip later on where people were claiming that he has dimension now. And they're talking about it. And we talked about it in that context, but genuinely, you go back to that tape, both of us were hand waving away, Trump not calling people correct names. He's done it a million times, right?

And we were hand waving it away. But look at what happens with Trump. Trump gets up there and he rambles, and he's incoherent, and he's leaning his head out. I can't hear, he's got his big, giant, fucking old timey horn he's incoherent and he's leaning his head out. I can't hear. He's got his big giant fucking old timey horn. He's leaning out to the audience. Look man, just like you said, you can't go back.

You're the one who tuned your own people up to this. Yep. Now they're embarrassed because of you, because you've made yourself look like the virile young guy and you're not anymore. You were four years younger than or five years younger than Biden. because you've made yourself look like the virile young guy, and you're not anymore. You were four years younger than, or five years younger than Biden. Biden decided to step away.

It was the worst possible thing that could possibly happen to you. This week he's tweeting that he's, maybe Biden will come back. Oh God, that's- Maybe he'll come back, who knows? Dude, that tweet, he truth or tweeted or whatever the fuck he does, this insane conspiracy theory.

Like a fan fiction. Like Biden fan fiction, man. I think he jerked off to it all weekend. Seriously, I'm not kidding when he says, he says something like, maybe Biden will come back and show them what, like he's actually the boss or something like that. Like he's gonna like Phantom of the Opera, the DNC. That is like the impression. Admittedly, if you hear that. Duh duh duh duh.

Duh duh duh duh. And then Biden's standing there and he's got half a face. Oh, and then he fucking wires down, like fucking like jet-li kicks. Okay, that's it. And flies all the way down. Somebody get me a ticket to the DNC. Get Harris out of there.

I want him back in, I'm tacking back in. No, like, yeah, like, what are you talking about? This guy, and the thing is, is he's made all of these things, like you say, fair game, rambling, incoherent. He's made, that was literally his bread and butter attack against Biden. Now you can't go back,

and now it's rambling and incoherent, and everybody's pointing it out. And he says just things that are just like, and again, factual adherence has never been his thing, right? But like he says some crazy stuff in here. Like I want to read just a handful of things here. He insisted when he takes questions about abortion, he suggested abortion will not be a major issue in the campaign and the outcome in November.

He insisted the matter has become less of an issue since the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to abortion services and returned control of the matter to states. But the issue is widely seen as a general election liability and Trump named states such as Ohio and Kansas that have since voted to protect abortion rights. Trump also said he expected Florida will quote, will go in a little more liberal way than people thought. Quote, when it votes to repeal an abortion ban later this year, but he's not responding to questions asking how he would vote.

So that doesn't make sense. Like what he's talking about when he says Florida will go in a little more liberal way than people thought when it votes to repeal an abortion ban. It's not a little more liberal way than people thought when it votes to repeal an abortion ban. It's not a little more liberal way. It's a binary fucking question raised on referendum, right? It's like, this is a, you can't go a little more liberal or it's a fucking yes or no question.

He knows he's gonna lose that question because everywhere that abortion arrives on the ballot in front of the constituents of any any state that we've run it in so far anytime it's on a referendum people overwhelmingly support the right to health care they overwhelmingly support the right to these services he argues that Republicans and Democrats and everybody are pleased with the 2022 ruling over turning Roe versus Wade. That's insane. That's not true.

That's insane. You just tell by looking at ballots. I mean. An untrue thing. And then he also says that they've capitalized that somehow everybody likes it, but the Democrats have capitalized on it, which doesn't make sense. Those two positions are obviously mutually exclusive. He makes insane claims again about January 6th. He refers to the rioter that got shot and is like,

oh yeah, terrible thing, terrible thing that happened. Then he tries to compare the January 6th riots and the police response to the police response to the George Floyd protests. And he seems to suggest that the people were treated better, the January 6th response, or the people were treated better that were protesting after the George Floyd incidents.

Then January 6th, it's like, dude, they were getting beaten in the streets. They were getting pepper sprayed. Kidnapped in fucking black cars. You sent helicopters to disperse. Yes full crowds Get the fuck. What are you fucking talking about? I got it here. It's crazy He also was asked about the peaceful transition of power and he's like there was a peaceful transition of power It's like there was an insurrection man

thousands and thousands and thousands of people Stormed the fucking castle, bro. It's 40 minutes or it's two hours of him just gaslighting. He's crazy. He constantly just says his own thing when it doesn't match reality and it sucks because there needs to be more people who stop him when he's talking and say, you're wrong. That's not what happened. That person, you know, that person did this or this and that, you're wrong. That's not what happened. That person, you know, that person did this or

this and that, but nobody does. Everybody just lets him talk. And he doesn't ever, he never has to deal with a single fact. He never, he's like protected from them. Well, when he gets, I mean, he's got a technique for facts, right? And we've seen it, we saw it when he spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists, right? When facts, he's like, oh, it's a nasty question. You're a nasty person. He's done that for years. He will attack the journalist at a personal level or call their organization fake, but he doesn't address the truth.

He never does. Are you listening to me? When the drama teacher had a heart attack and principal Langstein gave media responsibility for directing this production, Oliver, I told him I'd rather saw my own nads off with a kite string. I am a coach for Pete's Dragon, alright? What the hell do I know about musical theater except for that I hate it? But I'm out here giving 164% in social juke.

The story's from Business Insider. Tim Walz's background feels like it was crafted in a lab for Democrats at this moment. How fucking likable is Tim Walz? Do you know what? I was talking to a bunch of people this week and he is such a hard person for the right to attack. He's a family man, he's an ex-vet, he's a gun owner, he's a hunter, he's a coach, he's a, all these things.

And, you know, the thing is is that he represents, I think, a lot of the things they don't wanna see but they can't attack him openly on. And, you know, the worst attack I saw this week against him was someone was trying to call him Tampon Tim because he had put in all the locker rooms, so, because it could be a trans man. And so he decided to put him in all locker rooms

and he got a bunch of shit for it. And they were trying to call him tampon Tim. And I think the only way you could attack somebody for doing something like that is if you hate women or you want them to be shamed by their period. That's the only way you talk about it. Because I was talking to Sarah about this and I said, how amazing would it have been for you as a young person

to have such support from the older people in your life? And it wasn't a hush-hush conversation. It wasn't a quiet conversation. It was, if you need tampons, they're here. And if you wanna talk about what your body's going through, we're here to talk. Instead, you get this weird talk from your mom that's just, just don't talk about it anywhere else. Don't just don't say anything about it.

And so, you know, there's, and there's a, I guarantee there's an entire generation that were traumatized by their own period that they had nobody to talk to about it. Yeah, well, like, we should be providing in public spaces like schools, we should be providing all hygiene products that are necessary for people, right? Regardless of the people. Like, it's insane that, like, you go into the bathroom, we don't have to bring our own toilet paper. I don't have to bring my own towels when I wash my hands. Why do I have to bring my own fucking tampons? Well, it's because we shame women. It's because we see the biological needs of women as being something shameful for them to be responsible for and

not for us as a society to all collectively be responsible for. It's like feminine hygiene products have historically not been a part of social welfare benefits as well. Like you can't use like your snap card, for example, to buy like tampons or pads or other period massages. Like there's, it's terrible. Like it's fucking terrible. Like we should be providing these things because they are a necessary part of basic human hygiene. Just same way as toilet paper is right.

There's literally no meaningful distinction except for men use toilet paper. So we want to make sure we cover our ass literally and women aren't important people. Women don't matter. And we want to shame their bodies. The other criticism I saw against walls, which is not going to stick and it's nonsense. And it's such a fucking reach was JD Vance, who was a former Marine. Yeah, I saw this too. and it's such a fucking reach, was JD Vance, who was a former Marine.

Yeah, I saw this too. He was like, oh yeah, you left right before you got deployed to Iraq. You like basically quit the 24 years of National Guard service that you did, right before your unit got deployed to Iraq, because you didn't want to go to Iraq. That's fucking rich, first of all, coming from JD Vance,

whose job in the military was to be a communications officer. So it's not like when he was deployed, he was out doing combat roles. He didn't do fucking combat. He's trying to paint a distinction as if he's like, big combat hard ass when he's like, writing fucking memos, right? Like, get the fuck out of here.

But like, also it's just factually, like you can look at the timeline. It's not a true thing. Waltz decided well in advance of his unit being mobilized that he wanted to run for Congress. There's talks that he had with people on the record that they said, yeah, we talked. He said he was going to run for Congress. Then he left the military and like a year later, his unit gets called up.

A year later, man. It's not like he was like prescient and he knew his unit was going to get called up a year from now. And he's like, you know, I know I gave 24 years of my life in service, but I don't want to go to Iraq as national guard. Sure. Like get the fuck out of here with that silly ass nonsense. It's such a weak criticism.

It's so weak. They've got nothing. Well, and I think this is, this is Swift Boat part two. So what this is, is if you're too young to remember, John Kerry was a part of the Swift boats, which were boats that went up a river in Vietnam. And he got a Purple Heart because he was injured while in Vietnam. And they tried to discredit his Purple Heart.

They tried to discredit his service. They had a whole group of Swift Boat people come out and say that he didn't do anything in the war, et cetera, et cetera, even though Bush literally dodged the draft, but they used it as a weapon to try to point paint Kerry as a person who did not serve up to the level that they thought that an American should or whatever.

And so that's what that's the narrative that they played out with this swift boat stuff. This was the 2004 election. And I remember this swift boat stuff with that. I mean, I don't know that it was the thing that sunk Kerry, but it was something that contributed to him not winning. And I wanna just say though, I think one, I think the climate about soldiers has changed drastically since then.

I think so too. I feel like back then, you're three years out of 9-11. That's a big deal, I think back then, there was a different mindset, I think, for people back then. It's totally different now. And so I think it's a shitty attack, but I don't think it has as much punch as it once did. And I also think that you're absolutely right in all those points. If you just check the timeline, if you just bothered to check the timeline, you're just wrong. You're just wrong about it. And it's rich as fuck also coming from the side

where like Donnie Bonespurs, had a fucking six Vietnam deferments. Like get the fuck out of here. I don't think the left fetishizes military service the same way. I think this is nothing to anyone. Anyone that was potentially gonna vote for the Harris Walls ticket is gonna look at that

and be like, that's nothing. And it'll just water off the duck's back. Continue on. I gotta say though, the jolt of energy to the party after Walls, there was, you know, don't get me wrong. I think we've been on an upward tick this entire time since this has started. Once Biden stepped down, now you have Kamala step up,

Kamala Harris steps up. She is now the vice president who's gonna be the presidential candidate. The party gets immediately energized. There's hundreds of millions of dollars raised. She's given speeches and people are going nuts. It's crazy. Yep.

Everybody's wondering who the VP pick's gonna be. Who's the VP pick gonna be? And Walls was the third name on that list for a long time. It was Shapiro Kelly who were really duking it out and Walls was the third one. But a bunch of people kinda said, hey, this guy's pretty great. This guy's pretty great.

This guy's pretty great. And they decided not to go with, I think Shapiro is a great speaker, but he's got a lot of baggage. He's also a voucher guy. And so like, there's a couple of things, he's anti-Palestine, I think, or something like that, or he's falling in an area that, again,

can be really dangerous. So bad call. Kelly's not super dynamic speaker, great history, but not a super dynamic speaker. I think walls, bridges, both those gaps. And the joy, the amount of joy I've seen from people just being happy that this really wholesome guy is now possibly gonna be the vice president

is been palpable. The amount of joy has just been insane to witness if you're somebody on the left. And I wanted the one person that I think a lot of people are forgetting in all this is Joe Biden. And all of this is possible because Joe isn't making a stink about it. Joe is letting the spotlight fall away from him onto these two people and he's not fighting it. He's not angry about it.

He called her up on the phone and said, you know, I love you so much. I hope you do it. And she like, she's like, oh, thank you, Joe. You know, like there's a beautiful conversation that somebody got on tape. These, he could be super shitty about it and he could be thwarting it in some ways. Joe Biden stepping down and now stepping back and letting them bask in the limelight, in my opinion, that's the underrated story about how great a person Joe Biden is.

Yeah, let's talk about that because I couldn't possibly agree more. This is what it really means to be a civil servant. This is what civil servitude is. Civil servitude is the mindset, the action, the integrity, the life given in service to your country, to the constituents that you serve, to doing the right thing for the country even when it doesn't benefit you, even when you're the one who's shuffled out of power, giving up the most important job in the world

because you're no longer the right person to do it. That is a level of just real personal and professional and civil integrity that I think everybody is seeing. And then you combine that with this Harris Walls ticket, which feels joyful again. It feels like it's built on something like that we can rally behind that doesn't feel weird, that doesn't feel anti something else,

that doesn't feel like a reaction, but instead it's like, these are what real actual people who've given their lives and service to something greater than themselves, look like, speak like, think like, do like. actual people who've given their lives in service to something greater than themselves, look like, speak like, think like, do like. It is the opposite of the cynicism that we have been bathed in for like, since 2015.

We have been in this amalgam of just raw cynicism for 10 years and it has been caustic. It is hurt to be in this space and it is so freeing to have an option that feels not cynical, not just like winning at any cost, gotta beat the other guy. All that matters, because this was me 20 days ago, 10 days ago, whatever it was, whatever it takes to beat the other guy. That's all that matters about this election. Let's at least not descend further into chaos. That's a really cynical view of the world and of politics. When you look at the Harris Walls ticket, it feels possible to say, gosh, we could have candidates that want to work to build a better America, not just to avoid a dragon being in control of our gold again. Yeah.

I really felt like I should have been more excited for Harris being the first woman vice president, but really at that point, we were in triage. You're in the middle of the pandemic. There's no vaccine yet. You're just in this, like, mire of bad news for like fucking, God, it was like 18 straight months of bad news. And you just, everything sucks.

And so the only thing you wanna do is just, can I just make it a tiny bit better? I just wanna make the tiniest bit better. Now, I feel totally different. I feel excited and energized by Harris. I feel excited and energized by Harris. I feel excited and energized by Walls. I think they're both really excited to do this work, to take this work on.

I think that they are running an inclusive campaign and I'm just over the moon. I think it's wonderful. I watched, I've never watched a political rally before. I've watched speeches and clips and snippets, but I never watched a political rally before. I've watched speeches and clips and snippets, but I never watched a rally before. I watched the rally yesterday or the day before in Detroit, and I got chills a few times, like no bullshit, I had chills.

I was excited. I watched the president, the United Auto Workers give what felt to me was like a genuinely stirring speech, like a rousing speech. And then I watched Walls get up and it's like, yeah, this is just a good person. I think he's done real good in Minnesota. You look at his list of accomplishments in Minnesota.

And it's baller. And it's like this guy is unimpeachably just a decent person. And then Harris gets up to speak and she's strong as hell and smart as hell. And I feel like this isn't just about what's not Trump. This gets to be about more than that. Yeah. With Biden, it felt like, well, it's not Trump. I voted for Biden in the primary because I thought he had the best chance of not,

of beating Trump. I voted for Biden in the primary because I thought he had the best chance of not, of beating Trump. It felt like a very like, uh, cynical position for me to take. Like who is, who do I think we can probably get the most people behind? This is a numbers game. You know, I was very trying to be very practical. This doesn't feel like it's not practical and it feels hopeful and it feels joyful. And I think they've seized on that. Like joy and freedom as their moniker feels right. It doesn't feel like just like lip service. Yeah, it doesn't feel like that. And then you see these crowds and these crowds are huge.

Enormous, enormous crowds, full of people, excited to be there. And it's not just a bunch of white haired people. It's not church at 10 in the morning on Sunday. It is a bunch of young people showing up, dancing, singing, enjoying this moment. It feels so reminiscent of when Obama ran. It does, man. So reminiscent.

I mean, like 2008, I remember the, we were coming out of that just awful eight years of Bush and everybody hated it. He was the worst. He was a stupid person. He was terrible in office. We were coming out of that just awful eight years of Bush and everybody hated it. He was the worst. He was a stupid person. He was terrible in office. Probably still argue that he's probably our worst president we've ever had in the history

of our country. But the turnaround when Obama started running that I remember I was, I just moved downtown when he got elected. I was downtown for maybe four months. And the night he got elected, you could hear the crowds in Grant Park from where I lived. It was amazing. I mean, it was just amazing.

So it's a totally different feel. And, you know, in that rally, if anybody watched that rally, there was something that was really beautiful in that rally. And it happened with Harris. It happened when Governor Whitmer was speaking. It happened when Walls was speaking. It was hot in that space.

It was very hot. I saw this, yeah. And each one of them noticed out in the crowd. They noticed when people would have an issue and they would stop their speech. They would interrupt their time, their speech, their moment of getting the crowd and they would say, hey, we need a medic. And they would pause their speech until they saw somebody was taken care of. And it was not just the right thing to do for that person who needed help, but it feels so fucking symbolic of the desire on the left to say say we're all here together to take care of each other

Yeah, and how different is that than a fucking Trump rally with Trump rallies? Remember the Trump rallies where he's like beat the shit out of that guy and I'll pay the legal bills Well because somebody could be trying to subvert this whole operation by sending in fanatics and cultists This story comes from the Raw story. Very big deal, Georgia OK's rules that could allow local officials to subvert elections, Cecil. Yeah, they're like codifying a way for local county officials to basically throw mud

in the gears of democracy. Yeah, we're seeing it across the country, but Georgia is one of these places where different small counties, and a lot of times these are like counties that they could have an impact, a big impact, and so they're allowing the people to not certify the election, to slow it down,

to have these issues, and again, the slower it is, remember, all they have to do is slow it down because the slower it is, the more oxygen you give to Trump to talk about how it's rigged, right? The slower it is because look at how he wants elections to work. He was talking today in that fucking rambling speech he gave where he said, look at France. They went to one day elections where they don't allow people to vote any other time than one day. I don't even believe him, but he said that. And then he said, you know, the election actually starts in September because of early voting. He said we should only vote one day because what he wants is low turnout. Anybody who says this is banking on you, not exercising your freedom to vote.

That's what they're doing. They're banking on you, not voting. They want to make sure that they can limit that as much as possible. Because if everybody voted, they would never win. Ever, ever. If we had, I mean, who is always in the way of compulsory voting or a national holiday for voting or mandatory vote by mail? The more people in the electorate, if you actually ask the American people, what do you want? Who is always in the way of, let's get rid of the Electoral College? It's always Republicans. Ranked choice voting. It's always Republicans. It's Republicans all the way down.

It's fucking turtles, like fucking Mitch McConnell turtles all the way down with his fucking blackened hand and shit. The point is for them to erode our faith in our own institutions. And if you combine the erosion of our faith in our own institutions of governance, power and democracy, if you combine that with, I don't know, a statement saying, if you you elect me we won't have to vote anymore.

Yeah. I mean how do you not connect these dots to say the point is to not have these institutions? He's already talking about it being rigged. So expect another problem. The good thing is is that the people who are in power now are not him. Yes, that's a huge difference. He can't not him. So he can't manipulate it. So they can send people out to these places. The federal government can send people out and say, look, we need to get this show on the road. You got to figure it out.

And they can make sure that these votes are counted and certified. But trust me, the more that these small rural areas where Trumpers are in charge, the more they delay, the more doubt they cast on this, and they're gonna keep doing it over and over. And the only, I just wanna say this for the audience, which does not need to be said,

but I'll say it until November, the only cure for this is a landslide. Yeah. That's how you win. It's a landslide. It's an overwhelming night of overwhelming tick blue, tick blue, tick blue, tick blue, tick blue, tick blue, tick blue. That's the way. That's the answer. I would recommend, and you may disagree with me on this one, Cecil, but I would recommend

if you can and it's possible for this election, vote in person rather than mail in because those votes take longer. It depending on your state. If your state counts them first, then vote by mail. Yeah, vote by mail if your state counts them first. But if you're in a state where it creates that delay, show up in person, show up at the ballot box.

If you're able. If you can. I'm not trying to shame anybody. I wanna be clear about that. If you're able, get your vote in. That idea that Republicans vote first, it helps to sort of like enhance the narrative. It's that red mirage that happened before. It got us. When we were covering the election last time, we didn't hear much about that red mirage before it actually happened. And we were both very

worried the night up because we kept on wondering, well, this is gonna be a real problem. And I think it was Heath who came on and said, no, you're gonna see these start to flip. And he was absolutely right. He was absolutely right. But during the time, both of us were a little worried because a couple of these states would need to go to Biden in order to,

and they were solidly right at the time. Pennsylvania, over a,000 votes. And they were saying, we're not gonna call it yet. We're not gonna call it yet. We're not gonna call it yet. So it does add to the drama. And again, I don't think that it's a bad thing if you can, and it's easy to do, go vote.

If it's any strain on you whatsoever, I would vote by mail or however you are planning. However you need to vote. Early vote, whatever it is. And I think early votes are counted first anyway. So if you early vote, then just early vote. Yeah, absolutely. Then just early vote.

Absolutely. But if you vote by mail and it happens to be a state where it's not counted first, you may want to consider if it's not a bother to go do it. Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand,. They're just wankers.

We on the other hand are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by. This is a story from the New York Times how disinformation fed a far-right riot after a deadly stabbing in England. So there was a stabbing that took place in England. I think three kids were murdered in the stabbing. And a whole bunch of right-wing disinformation jockeys, including Andrew Tate and who else? Who was the other big one that was a part of this?

I don't know their names. It was another name, but I don't know who he is. The usual suspects, right? The usual right-wing suspects. They immediately come on and they start to fan the flames that this was Muslims that this was immigrant Muslim guy Yeah, and and a Syrian I think is who they were blaming on a Syrian

First of all, like it's not even been released who the person is What they did say was that it was a resident and native citizen of England that committed. So it was not some migrant or immigrant. Wasn't an asylum seeker like they said. So they just fucking make that shit up. They didn't have advanced information that other people had.

They didn't have any, you know, Tanger Tate has no secret back door channel to fucking information. Nicky does, that guy we talked about earlier smelling it. So, you know. Right. But these guys, they post this shit, they post this shit. It creates this like,

accelerative process of disinformation. It fans the flames of hate and division and anger and racism and xenophobia. And it turned into a riot. It turned into an IRL fucking riot. Straight up riot. I saw this stuff last week and I reached out to Marsh because it's this city.

Oh yeah. And I said, hey, how are you? Are you okay? And he said, I was actually at the counter protest yesterday. Fuck yeah, good for him. So Marsh was out there with all the other people and he said, I left before they burned the library down. Oh my God.

And he said, I'm really worried today because they're making their way to where asylum seekers are and they're saying they're gonna burn the hotel down. And they did light the hotel on fire later that day. So they, and they've been coordinating and basically all over these little spaces in, in England, but then very specifically, this is the city where it happens. They're, they're out

there doing this marching and it, and I asked Marsh about it again, you know, I don't know, cause I'm not over there. And I said, is this, is this a backlash from your last election? And he said, I think it very much is a backlash from these elections because they got put in their place and now they're frustrated. And so they're really just looking for a reason to kick off to go burn some shit down and show how bad it is over here now,

because look, the liberals are in charge or whoever. I guess it's not liberals, it's labor. So I got labor's in charge, so look at what happens. And so I think they were looking for a reason to do some, to sow some chaos. And this happened to fit the bill. And very specifically, this is xenophobia and hate towards people who are not native born Brits.

I mean, this is all this is. And this is something that we deal with here all the time. This is literally what our elections are about, this asylum seeker stuff. They're trying, these far right people are trying to manipulate this so that when somebody comes to your country, because they are persecuted at home

by, for like their religion or because of who they are, maybe they're LGBT. Maybe they're a woman trying to flee some really misogynistic land. Maybe they, you know, they're on the wrong side of the police down there or at least I say down there, but you know what I mean? Like police somewhere where they could maybe be killed.

None of that shit is gonna matter to them anymore because they're making it about how that a person, it's not even an asylum seeker killed these kids. And now they're saying, we don't want any immigrants anymore. And they're upset that immigrants are even in their city. I saw a one video this week of an intersection where these far right hoods took over and they're blocking cars.

And they're like, is that guy white? And they're like, they were asking him if he's white. And one of the comments was if this guy doesn't know what white or black looks like, it's like, what is happening in your life right now? But seriously, these guys were just stopping cars and I didn't see him pull anybody out, but I imagine if you were happened to be the, the slightly wrong skin tone, they would pull you out of the car and kick the shit out of you. You could be a native born in the UK and just be a different color than they expect and

they'd beat the shit out of you. That's fucking wild, man. This, because like none of this is based in like, first of all, they're like, their hate was never based in truth because hate is never based in truth. Right. So set that off to the side, but then none of the things that they're mad about fucking happened.

Like, yeah, three kids got murdered, but not by the guy or the type of person or the demographic of person that you wanna be mad. They just want to be mad. They just want the hate. And the thing is that like all of this was created and fueled and fanned by influencer culture. Influencer culture is absolutely poisonous to truth.

You're absolutely right. Yeah, like we should not be thought of as influencers, right, if you are like, we are not hopefully all that fucking influential, but like everything we say, it's just my fucking opinion. You should fact check everything I'm telling you. You should never be like, well, Tom said it, so now I know it's true.

I know it. I am moved to know something is true. Like you can agree with me, but you should check my fucking sources. You should look at the show notes. You should click on that shit. You should read a book we wrote about how to do a good job doing that stuff

and then do a better job doing it. Influencer culture is a fucking cancer because people are looking at this and being like, that's my boy. When he tells me something, it's true. When fucking Andrew Tate says something, it rings as true with me. And the fact that it feels true is good enough for it to be true. Sure. Sure. That's cancer. That is fucking cancer. We have to do better than that. We don't do better than that. This is just step one. Well, I think the reason why this is happening is because many of these people are getting their information off of Twitter and Twitter is doing it. It's saying that it's like

noting it or whatever, community notes. But again, that stuff's below it. People aren't paying attention to it. They don't believe it because they don't believe the community. So they see it and you get a bunch of these people who are either, in some ways they could be like the Reddit sleuths who find the wrong people for a crime.

So in some ways it could be people who, I don't wanna call them good intentioned, intentioned. I'll just say they're intentioned. And they want to try to find the person who did it. So they're, you know, got a bunch of string on a wall and they're Charlie from, Always Sunny. And they got a bunch of shit all over it.

So they could be that, but it could also just be people who are maliciously lying to you because they want to get an agenda across so that you'll agree with their agenda and you'll take the streets and do the things that they want to see you do. Yeah. Here's the thing. Don't, and I mean this like don't have heroes you don't know in person. Don't do that. Like don't have heroes you don't know in person. Don't do that, like don't have heroes.

Don't buy into the idea that somebody you've never met and shared a fucking meal with loves you and has your best intentions. Yeah, man, yeah. You can't, you can't believe that anymore. We have to be protective over ourselves and over truth in a way that is deeper than it's ever been before. And that might be a really sad thing. It might like suck to be like,

yeah, but I really like this content creator. I really move by what they do. Yeah, fine. But they can't be your fucking hero. They can't be somebody that you say like, that's my guy. Whatever they say is true. I believe them like because they are credible, full stop. You don't know them. You don't know me. Check my fucking sources, man. Yeah, check Tom's sources. Absolutely.

Yeah, check our fucking sources, man. For sure. I could never die. So nature needed to find a balance. A version of me that could die. A shadow self. A doppelganger. This story also from the New York Times. What do conspiracy theorists do when proved wrong? Double down or move on? An outlandish idea that President Biden was dead or nearly dead

was quickly refuted. Few of the accounts that had spread it online recanted. I saw a clip from Joe Rogan talking about it. About how he was dead? Well, they showed like two different people and they were trying to say it was a body double. They're like, oh, that's not the same person. That look, he's clearly taller than the other person, et cetera, et cetera.

It's awful. I mean, and then you got him, you got Charlie Kirk, you got all these people. And what it does is it's this confirmation bias stuff. So they wanna upset the apple cart on the other side so that they look like they're in disarray. So whatever they can do is Joe Biden dead? Is he dead?

Oh, we can make it look like there's a deep state if we say he's dead. And so then they do. And again, it's this confirmation bias. It's trying to manipulate a narrative and very specifically, again, it's spread on Twitter. It's spread on these podcasts. It's spread on these influencer places where there's just a person telling you it's spread on Twitter, it's spread on these podcasts, it's spread on these influencer places where there's just a person telling you it's true and then when they go talk to them afterwards,

they're like, oh no, I didn't really think that. Or, you know, I just, I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. I have another podcast to do. Right, yeah. Because they don't have any responsibility to the truth. They don't.

They don't have any respect for it, they don't have any responsibility to the truth. They don't. They don't have any respect for it. They don't have any responsibility to it. And these are all digital Reichstag fires. Yeah. You're right. You're not wrong, yeah. That's what these are. These are intentionally being set over and over and over again

in order to consolidate a certain kind of power. This is, none of this is just guys asking questions. That shit is so fucking fake, it's ridiculous. Yeah, for sure. You wanna so fucking fake it's ridiculous. You wanna believe fucking fake news, here's some fake news, that guy's just asking questions. That's fucking fake news. What these guys are,

I mean you literally cannot possibly believe that in good faith anymore. You believe Charlie Kirk is just asking questions, get the actual fuck out of here. You think Joe Rogan, $300 million Spotify deal, Joe Rogan, you think that guy is really at this point just asking good faith questions? He's just your bald everyman. He has clearly got a fucking agenda at this point that we have to recognize as being true.

These guys haven't. There's nothing honest about any of this stuff. These are digital Reichstag fires. They are intentionally set in order to go to the public. That is what these things are here to do. And this is, make no mistake, I don't think that any of these people care about their politics.

I think what they care about is the bottom line that they're able to make money off of this. They're able to monetize this particular thing. And so if they can make a controversy on the right to get people to download their show because they're saying things that people want to hear to fill their confirmation bias, they're going to do it. They're going to say it over and over and over again. I, that doesn't mean they're less malicious, right?

It doesn't mean that it's, it's not as bad. I'm not, I'm not trying to make a fucking an excuse for them, but I am saying that I don't even think they believe it. These people aren't being honest. They're not being honest with you. Joe Rogan's not being honest with you. There's no way Joe believes half the shit he says on that show. He says it so that you share it. That's why he says it. That's why Alex Jones said all Yeah, right. That's why Alex Jones said all that crazy shit. That's why Charlie Kirk is interviewing people who talk about fucking like chupacabra and Haiti or whatever.

Because what he wants is fucking eyeballs on him and earbuds in and listening to him. That's what he wants. And he'll stop at nothing to get that. Yeah, you know, that is very fucking true. Like these guys are not informing us. They are selling a product. And the difference is information is the most dangerous product you can sell.

Information is much more dangerous than guns and bombs because it leads to bigger guns and bigger bombs in more hands. These guys are not informing us. They do not have an obligation, ethical or professional, to act journalistically. But they have now, unfortunately, they have the reach of journalism. They have this gravitas of journalism. Bigger than journalism. Bigger. Way bigger. There's way more people, I guarantee it. If you added up all the different news podcasts and we're talking

like actual journalistic newsroom type podcast, right? And you added up all their listeners. I do not think they would reach a Joe Rogan. I don't think they would. I think that they would falter and fall well before a Joe Rogan. I think you're a thousand percent right. There's, there are none of the governor's checks and balances, breaks, none of that stuff on these guys, none of it. And so they're out there acting in ways that people feel like they're being informed. You're not being informed, man. You're being sold something so that you can share it.

Like you are both the product and the messenger now. It's a new space where you're only valuable. It's like a fucking multi-level marketing. Like you're downstream is all the people you share it to. That's your fucking downline. And Joe Rogan gets paid every time you share something into your fucking downline. It's a fucking, it's a different kind

of information pyramid scheme. That's what this is. ["Pyramid"] All right, so that's gonna wrap it up for this is. All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to share our TikToks when you see them. I'm sorry. We do actually want you to share our TikToks because we also get paid.

We don't get paid. No, we don't get paid on TikTok. We actually don't get paid on TikTok. No, we've never gotten a dime from TikTok. We don't even know how to monetize TikTok. We barely make, we make like, we make like two pennies off YouTube, but we really would like to see some of the video stuff start taking off. So if you like the show, I ask you to go on YouTube, even if you listen to the show on

your podcast and you have a minute, go to YouTube and hit that thumb up, go to YouTube, leave a comment. All those things, go to YouTube and leave a view. All those things make it so that this podcast gets into more people's feeds. That's the real key is if we want to grow the show to get more people to maybe pull them away from those bad actors and maybe listen to somebody who doesn't take themselves so seriously and tell you that they're telling you the truth, you would help us out by sharing that stuff. So share it on, you know, sharing it on the

social media networks like TikTok and other places, but also just going to interact with it on YouTube is a big deal for us. It makes it so that when somebody clicks on YouTube and they say, what's the next video, there's a chance it could be us because you up thumbed it or wrote a comment in. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We have a plan for next week to do a live stream. So we'll see. Fingers crossed. We'll do a live stream and we'll have some fun. We're also in talks with the scathing guys to talk about doing a live stream, a different live stream. That's a fundraiser. We're going to talk to them in a couple of days. So we'll have more information on that soon. But if you had a little extra money and we're planning to donate it to the Democratic Party for this upcoming election, let us know, because we're trying to collect matches at this point. And if we can get enough matches,

then we can sort of ask you to set your money aside and then donate it afterwards if we meet that match so that we can help encourage other people to donate so that essentially their money's doubled. So if you are a person who is enough, has enough money where you think you might be able to make it worth their while, let us know, send us a message, dissonance.podcast.gmail.com. We're collecting those for the next week or two and we'll be in, we'll be, we'll have a lot more information once the guys get back from Salt Lake City. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week.

We're gonna leave you like we always do with the skeptic screen. 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 Balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, Aliens, Churches, Mosques and Synagogues, Temples, Dragons, Giant Worms, Atlantis, Dolphins, Truthers, Birthers, Witches, Wizards, Nuts, Shaman Healers, Evangelists, Conspiracy, Double Speak, Stigmata nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content.

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