Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 789: The Controversy at Arlington National Cemetery

Episode Date: September 2, 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 Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, This is Cognitive Distance. 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 at.

Today is Thursday, August the 29th, when we are recording this. And Cecil, did you know, I just found this out today, maybe you already knew this, if you spend enough money buying stupid fucking Trump playing cards, you can get a copy or a piece, a cut up piece, of the suit that he wore.

That he got shot in. No, the one that he wore debating Biden. He calls it his victory suit. Oh, he didn't cut up the one he got shot in? No, it was probably soiled. Which to be fair, if somebody shot at me, I would 100% shit myself. If I didn't shit it then, I would just throw it in the toilet and shit on that toilet. Like I want to say like, all terrible things aside,

I don't want to pretend I'm some fucking macho man who if somebody shot bullets at my head, I'd be like, well, I wouldn't care. No, no. Tom Curry would shit and shit and never stop shitting. I would just shit now. Do you ever see those people with those like water jets on their feet and they jump and like, I would be shit now. You ever see those people with those like water jets on their feet and they jump?

Yes! That would be that guy. I would propel myself away from danger. Like that's my way to get away from it as I would just expel things from my body to shoot away like a jetpack. So if you want to buy I think like $1,200 worth of Trump NFTs. How? You can get a little piece of cloth that he says came from a suit. I think like $1,200 worth of Trump NFTs. How on? It's tough. You can get a little piece of cloth that he says came from a suit that he cut up. Certainly, by the way, it did not come from a suit he cut up.

You're getting nothing stapled to nothing. You're not even getting an actual card. You're not getting an actual card. I was going to say stapled to nothing, but you're getting a piece of cloth in the mail. How do you fucking... How do you not see that this is get out of debt, holy water, but for politics? Dude, it's fucking political relics. It's crazy. It's fucking relics, dude.

Crazy to me that people will see this guy and think he's the real deal. He is genuinely a grifter and he has never stopped grifting the entire time. You know that there's some fucking Yahoo dipshit yokel out there who bought $1,200 worth of AI generated NFT art of Trump looking like a fucking cowboy or NASCAR driver anxiously awaiting his fucking piece of the suit so he could jerk off with it. You 100% know that of all the people in this world, somebody out there is rubbing one out with a piece of fucking imported Italian fabric. Or they're gonna they're gonna use it to like rub on their wife's belly so they will get pregnant or something. Because it's magic, right? It's a relic.

So it like it'll keel their arthritis and their knees or whatever. Yeah, it's fucked up. It's fucked up. I just, it boggles my mind that this is the guy that people are like, no, he's a, and I saw, I saw, I don't know how true these are because they're just, you know, it's like an online comment, right?

So you have no idea, but people will cut and paste, you know, the comments that some of these people make that have sort of bought into Trump. And, you know, you see some of these comments, again, I have no idea if they're true or not, but they'll say something like, I invested my entire portfolio in social, and now it's, you know, down by so many dollars.

I've lost- Oh, 70%. I've lost most of my retirement income because of, you know, I invest, again, I don't know how true that is, right, I have no idea, but clearly they had sold stocks. It's not like they didn't do that. They sold a shit ton. I actually, it's like a hobby for me to check the shares,

the DJT shares. That thing is completely fucking tanked. The bottom fell out of it very, very fast and then it continues to decline. And coming up, when I checked the other day, it was like $28.79 a share from a high of like 70. And the thing is too that we're approaching a deadline. So there was a time period.

Oh, there's a 19 now. $19.84. Dude, do a six month graph on that stock. So you can see it's peak and drop. Let six month graph on that stock. So you can see it Let me put it on the big screen so people can see it So here's the thing we are about to hit a very important date with this stock and that is the date where Trump will Be allowed to liquidate his shares. Yeah, so it went up here Yeah, that was that was when it was launched and then it dropped down as low as 22

But then it kind of peaked a couple it looks like in July it peaked at like 40. That is like right around when he got shot. I wonder if that's the day that fucker got shot. The 13th he got shot. July 15th it peaked. I bet that's related. And then down, down, down. That's been a precipitous slide.

Really down. Yikes. It's fucking riding the yikes bike, bro. And so what's going to happen in just a few days is Trump will be allowed by law to sell his shares, which he only wants these shares so he can liquidate them and turn them into money. If he sells these shares, it will further collapse the price because it will flood the market in order for him to sell it

He'll have to flood the market with all of these shares that $19 Value will decline even further essentially bottoming it out It was a worthless stock when it was offered because it was a DJT the the Trump media holding companies behind it money They were lost was it a huge loss position with no way to make any money. Then it gets this huge influx of capital. That's like fucking Poytholdt on the stock market. Cog dis is in the black though, dude. We are actually more solvent than Trump digital media stock. We can pay a couple of people money each month. It's absolutely bonkers. And I know this isn't in the show notes, but I have to ask you,

did you see the story about RFK and the whale? I did. RFK was swallowed by a whale. We have to talk about this guys, because it's just so insane. So RFK dropped out of the race. So he dropped out of the race. He endorsed Trump despite so many times

saying terrible things about Trump and Trump saying terrible things about him. And then now he's become sort of the unofficial vice presidential sort of surrogate candidate. Yeah. Cause he hates JD Vance. Cause JD Vance is falling apart in front of everyone's eyes. JD Vance is a funny image I saw this week where JD Vance was giving a speech

and someone, someone put under, you know, in the captions, they put single person clapping. And that's an official, that's an official closed caption from C-SPAN. That's amazing! One person clap! Because it's a single person clapping. This morning I was listening to one of my early morning podcasts and one of the ones I listened to is Slate, the What Next podcast. And it's the today's whole show was JD Vance's anti-Riz about just how amazing is that is raw bad he is. Did you see the viral video going around

if he's in a donut shop? Yeah. Oh, it's so bad. It's so cringe. Everybody's seen it, but like if you have it, JD Vance is doing the man on the street thing and he's in this donut shop. And he's like trying to talk up the, talk to the workers to be just a regular Joe. And the first lady is like, yeah, I don't want to be on camera. And he's like, oh, she doesn't want to be on camera.

And he looks to her, he's like, hey, I'm JD Vance. I'm running to be vice president. And she's like, okay. And then he tries to make conversation. He's like, so how long have you worked here? And they're like six months. Great. Great. And how long have you worked here? Just ask like three people the same. It's the most awkward attempt. It really feels Ted Cruz for human president. It's a hundred percent Ted Cruz for human human president. I'm going to see if I can find something Tom cuz there's a really funny

Let me play me play. Oh god I'm enjoying a leisurely stroll in the park as a human does and I thought I would interact with some other humans that I Come across here comes one now. Hello. I'm JD Vance. I'm running for vice president. Hi. It's nice to meet you So how long have you been walking for? Today or in general? Okay, good. Oh, wait. I think this is going pretty good so far. Oh, I spot a motherly figure with a smaller human being. Hi, I'm JD Vance.

How old are you, little girl? I'm eight. Eight? Oh, wow. I was eight once. How about you, Mom? Were you ever eight? Was I ever eight? Okay, good. Mom, can we go home?

Yes, honey. Run to the car. Oh, would you look at that. Another human being with a smaller creature attached to a leash. Hi, I'm JD Vance. What's that? He's a... are you asking what kind of breed he is? For how long? For how old he is or how long I've had him?

How long have you been walking? I'm sorry, I'm... are you asking how our walk? Okay, good. I love to mingle with the people. Here comes another one now. Hi, I'm JD V Vance how did you install those little wheels under your feet you mean my roller blades okay good so how long have you been walking walking walking where okay good my vessel is starting to crave food I think the next person that I encounter I'm gonna ask them where a donut shop is

I'm JD Vance, vice president running. Nearest donut shop location, please. That'll be a Beanie's on seventh street. JD Vance rerouting. Thanks. Okay, good. All right. Have a good day.

So yeah, that's a JD Vance. So RFK, RFK dropped out. Trump is like, he's kind of like doing the tour. I think he's kind of giving up on JD Vance. I think he's like throwing a lot of eggs in the RFK basket, but RFK is fucking insane. RFK, there's a story out just like yesterday from an old town and country magazine article where RFK's daughter tells the story of the time that RFK saw a dead whale on the beach in Massachusetts. Like you do.

Grabbed a chainsaw. That's interesting. Chainsaw the head off of a dead whale. Not an everyday carry. Not an everyday carry. Not an everyday carry. So many questions. I mean, like, you know, some people like to have an everyday carry knife, a pocket knife, everyday carry. Not an everyday carry. Not an everyday carry. So many questions. I mean like, you know, some people like to have an everyday carry knife, pocket knife,

everyday carry. Yeah. Call it everyday carry. Chainsaw doesn't fit that bill. That's an aggressive everyday carry. It really is. It really is. You open a lot of boxes.

Can you imagine a belt clip you have to have? Your jeans are sagging down all big. You feel like such an asshole when you forget that you have it in your pocket and you go through the metal detector. Oh, you're like pulling out your chainsaw TSA. And you're like, can I just have this? Can you just slide it around? I'm like, yes.

No, no, dude, it's cool. I'm not like a terrorist with a chainsaw. I'm a good guy with a chainsaw. I use this for whale head chopping off things. What did he, did he, did he mount it or? Dude, he took the whale head. He's hanging in one of those singing basses. His daughter tells the story.

Then he then, he's on the beach. You just gotta, I just need everybody to picture what must have happened. Sure. He's on the beach, presumably without a chainsaw. Then there is a dead whale whereupon he says absolutely Yeah, I must hence to my chainsaw. I feel like he probably called for it right like bring me a chainsaw I must have done like some fucking hairy book. Ah, yo chainsaw and it comes flying through the air to

Wap into his hand. It's like the it's like the scene from Evil Dead when it like And it connects to his fist. And then he starts cutting. Yes! So like, they don't explain he's not near home, right? I just, I need to get this picture out. I'm gonna stop you there and I'm gonna say there is no way to explain this. I know!

Like that's why he's five hours from his home. Five hours, guys. You need Yeah big cooler. Yeah, right so Somehow I'm gonna get a tarp and a bunch of ice like I don't know You got the biggest fucking Yeti cooler anyone ever saw he's got a Yeti cooler with a fucking Yeti in it with a fucking Yeti in it at this point. Like I wouldn't be. He has to take the Yeti out to put the whale head in. So he sees the whale and he's like, I must with the chainsaw.

And somehow, five hours from home, he gets a chainsaw. Now that means he either went to the store and bought one. So he stood in line with a chainsaw and a perfectly normal look on his face. And two stroke whale. Right, and went to the gas station. Like there's a whole, or he went to his car where he has his carrion chainsaw. Yeah, where he got his chainsaw.

There's no real third option. Then he saws the head off a whale. Now see, Saliva, I had to look this up. What are the two whales that live off the coast of Massachusetts? Can you guess? I'm going to say two common ones, humpback and sperm. Okay, humpback whale and the right whale. Okay, the right whale.

Which is great, because he's a right winger, not you know now. Yeah, exactly. These are fucking huge whales. Well, this is, these are both about the same size, they're 30 to 40 foot whales. That's a big whale. The head is, now I'm not a whale scientist, big.

Okay. I'll trust you. It has to be. I'll just trust you. Has to be a big head. Yeah, they're a tiny little, they're a tom head. They're a tom-sized head on a 40 foot body. This is not a beluga, right?

This isn't something that like does tricks at your local aquarium. It can't be. There's only two whales that are near the coast of Massachusetts. I had to look this up. So then somehow he has to get the whale head, not just severed blood flying, blubber flying everywhere. Not as much blood anymore.

OK. Schmutz and goop flying. Almost certainly schmutz. Then he has to pick this fucking thing up. He's jacked. I can see it. He's fucking jacked. No, man. He's jacked. I can see it. He's fucking jacked. I don't know, man. A whole whale head?

I don't, I'm trying to understand. Maybe it's a baby whale. I, that's the only, he straps it with bungee cords to the roof of the family minivan. All right. Then it stinks so bad that the entire family has to secure plastic bags around their heads. And then they drive five hours. Yes. Go on Cecil, you have questions? I just was curious how they were replenishing the air in a plastic bag.

Do you really think the RFK family has to worry too much about that? Admittedly, if anybody was going to, if anyone's brain was going to survive. How do you starve out the worms? That's how he got the worm? Yes. That's how he, he huffed his own breath until he got the worm out. So he's driving five hours. He's still killing his, killing his brain worm with hypoxia with a fucking garbage bag

over his head in a mini van. The whole time the whale's mouth is open. You know, like when you, when you got a fan blown and it's like shaking your cheeks, it's like, yeah. You ever like roll down one window in your car and they're like, see, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes a wubby sound. Yeah. The daughter describes it as just an unbelievable stench of whale juices flowing down the side of their minivan and presumably

streaming behind them to splatter on other cars as they drive for five hours home with a whale head. And then what happened though? We don't know. No, come on. No, absolutely not. I need to know what happened to the whale head. Nobody knows. Evidently.

Somebody knows. R.F.K. Jr. knows. Deep state knows. We've got satellites that can read a wristwatch on a man in China. We can't find a whale head. It's illegal in like three different ways to do this, right? So you can't fuck with endangered animals. You can't fuck with specifically whales. Did he put like a dead bear in its mouth?

I know! This is a real thing. This is a real honest to God story you could read in the New York Times, guys. This man is now the better alternative. Trump has named him the quote unofficial co-chair of his transition team. I don't even know what that means.

How are you an unofficial, you're not even the unofficial chair. You are the unofficial co-chair with Tulsi Gabbard. I think what they're expecting is, is that he's really good at cutting things heads off. And he's really good at mounting them. So they're expecting when they win, they'll be cutting off a lot of heads. And they will have a chainsaw wielding maniac.

I want to just mention one last thing before we jump into stories about RFK. He tried to get out the ballot in multiple places, but he can't because he did it too late. So in the places where he was gonna try to help Trump because he was gonna pull himself off the ballot, he's still on. He can't get off the ballot. You're too late, sorry. Has he tried petitioning at Four Seasons Total Landscaping?

My thought would be just stand outside the ballot box and saw your name off. There's just a, there's a chainsaw slot where you just slide it in and it goes, and it cuts his name off. That's exactly what I was hoping. Oh God. A little meeting that turned into a peek-a-boo session with billets all set up by someone who's been playing me like a violin at the annual saps convention. This story comes from CNN hidden camera video shows project 2025 co-author discussing his secret work preparing for second trump term.

They got him with one of those sort of project veritas like things where they're doing a hidden camera thing pretending to be billionaires or billionaire cousins or something, ready to give money to project 2025. And he sort of says, don't worry. I know they're trying to push themselves away from project 2025 right now. The Republicans are, but we are all systems go. Yeah. And that's, and that's, I think the most important part, the takeaway here is that while Trump

is trying very hard to distance himself from Trump, 20 from project 2025, because he's he knows it's an enormous political liability. All of the operatives in the background are like, totes don't worry about that. And I get it right because project 2025 is a playbook. It is a plan. And it is also an entire series of people who are willing to execute the plan. Once the playbook has been developed

and an appetite for executing the plan has been mustered, you don't have to do it. There's no second step. That's it. You've done all the work. Now all you have to do is wait for the Trump term to take place. And it's super simple, right? Like if I'm these guys, I'd be like, yeah,

what's there to worry about? We already did all the intellectual heavy lifting. We created the entire plan. We have people ready to execute the plan. If Trump doesn't get elected, we all just walk away. If he does get elected, who's going to stop us? We just now do the plan. The end.

Like I would disavow it too. Why not disavow it? There's no negatives in it. The other thing that people seem to keep on saying, oh, well he's distancing himself, he's distancing himself. On the other show I do lawful assembly, we covered, Craig read the Department of Homeland Security,

the DHS one. Oh my. So, cause Department of Homeland Security, the DHS one. Oh my. So, because Department of Homeland Security handles, they also handle all the border control stuff. And Craig knows a lot, he's an immigration lawyer. So he knows a lot about what happens down there and what's going on and what's good and what's bad. And the first line he has in this podcast is essentially,

I asked him what he thought of this chapter. And he said, I disagree with pretty much every word that's written in here. So they very much are going to be changing massively these structures that control immigration in our country. And even if they try to distance themselves from it, the one thing we have to remember is that their policies and the things that they're touting already fit within project 2025. So

they keep on saying over and over, oh yeah, we're distancing, we're distancing. But then when you read the actual document, you say, well, if you're distancing, why do you have signs at your rally that say mass deportation now? And then on page five of the department of homeland security, they're talking about how they're going to do mass deportation now, and then on page five of the Department of Homeland Security, they're talking about how they're going to do mass deportations and how they're going to fund that. So, you know, you can say it all day, but your actions are going to speak louder than your denials. Project 2025, for those who have been paying attention, contains no surprises. Literally no surprises. It is a surprise-free document. What it really is, is a platform

that the right has been espousing openly, loudly, vociferously at every level of government for years. That's all it is. What feels different is they put it all in one place and said, here's how we'll do it. And that feels different. And I think importantly different because organization is a key element to succeeding with these things. Right. So I don't want to pretend project 25 isn't different,

but ideologically, this is exactly what we should expect because this is exactly what everyone's been saying. If you've just been listening that they wanted to do, there's not one thing in Project 2025 where you're like, that's out of left field. Yeah. Dude, fucking A. Strong men also cry. Strong men also cry.

This story is from USA Today. Gus Walls broke the internet with his tearful love for his dad. Then the bullying began. So if you didn't watch it at the DNC, when Tim Walz got up and gave his very stirring and heartfelt and funny and endearing speech, his son Gus was so overwhelmed with love and pride

for his dad, that he had a very tearful and genuine and moving response to seeing someone he loves elevated and into such a position. And you could just see the pride and the love flowing out of him. And it moved him as a human being to tears. And it was wonderful. It really was.

It was fucking beautiful. It was a beautiful thing to see. And the right completely lost their mind and have tried really hard, I think, to paint this kind of love and expression of emotion and expression of pride as dysfunctional and unmanly and weird and all of the rest of it. And it's not just mean,

but it fucking so misses the moment that we are in. It so misses it. Yeah, and a lot of people point out, rightfully so, that Gus Walz is neurodivergent. So he's not, they were attacking him. And what's really interesting about this moment is the moment people found out he was neurodivergent, a bunch of these people deleted their tweets.

They realized that this wasn't capital that they could cash in on, right? So Ann Coulter, undead vampire on Twitter, had said something like, you wanna talk about weird or something like that. And she had a picture of Gus Walls and she got fucking eviscerated for it

and immediately took it down. Another guy who runs a talk show somewhere, one of these, I don't know where, somewhere, put something about called him a blubbering bitch boy. And then guy had to take his shit down and then backtracked and said, I'm sorry, I didn't realize he was neurodivergent, which is really interesting to me because the guy who they're touting for

made fun of handicapped people before in the past. Absolutely. So it's not like I'm really surprised that they backed down. To be honest, I'm very surprised that they backed down, but it's so distasteful even the grossest of the far right wing ideologues had to back down off of this. A couple of things I think are really interesting about that, I think that them finding out

he was neurodivergent at the same time that they saw how badly received their cruelty was, gave them cover to back off, right? Because they got to say, I didn't realize he was neurodivergent. Oh, it's an out, I see what you're saying. It's an out, I think they used it as an out. But the rest of that sentence is,

I didn't realize he was neurodivergent. If he wasn't, then my cruelty to this 17-year-old child would have been okay. That stands. Right. It stands. If any other child, I'd have been perfectly in my right to make fun of them. Right.

I can make fun of a neuro-typical 17 year old boy overcome with love and gratitude and pride for his father. That is an appropriate thing for me to make fun of, but he's neurodivergent, so I guess I shouldn't have done it. That's an insane message. And like we've talked on this show about like the pervasiveness of toxic masculinity on the right. And if we want to present any antidote to that, we have to allow men to feel positive, loving, joyful feelings and express those feelings openly and publicly without fear of ridicule.

Absolutely. Right? We have to move away from this idea that men are allowed to show anger and these sort of vitriolic and stoic, but we can't show, my God, I'm so overwhelmed. You know, like when Gus Walz is, tears are streaming down his cheeks and you could tell just how proud he was. And he stands up and he points and he shakes his finger

and he's, that's my dad. And there's a moment where I was watching that. And as a dad, I was like, God, I hope someday my kids are ever that proud of me. Ever, if I could ever do anything that would make my kids feel even a hundredth as proud. And I probably can't, right? Because almost none of us get to do anything so big

in our lives. But to inspire in somebody that you love and that loves you that kind of positive emotion, and then to express it, to vilify that is a horror. It's a horror. They track in that toxic masculinity though, so for them in their spaces, someone showing emotion like this is a negative.

It's genuinely a negative for them. And the worst part about this entire thing is, young men Gus Walz's, are flocking to these people who are these influencers in this toxic culture. And they're flocking to those people and looking to them as the way to, for how they should act, right? They're looking to these people who sort of,

they deal in this toxic culture all the time. And that's what their currency is to their audience. And so the sad thing is, is that the people his age, a lot of people his age, a lot of young males his age, if they're in washing that stuff, agreed with the first tweet. Absolutely. Agreed with it.

Thought that was true. Like he was showing emotion and that's bad. The messaging is so bad and it's also so contradictory. Because the messaging, if you go to these men's rights type spaces, these men, male advocate or men advocate spaces, one of the things that you see written with frequency is that they wish that they were able to express emotions other than anger, other than,

but they're like, oh, but society won't let us do it, but society won't let us do it. But like, patriarchy hurts all of us. So when it happens, if we make fun of it, then we reinforce that we are the same part of society saying no, that is saying no right back to us and creating this loop. That's the cycle.

Yeah, that we can't break out of. And it's fucking no good. We're in this place too, where these same people in these same spaces are saying there's a crisis among men of suicide. You'll hear them talk on the men's right spaces saying there is a crisis among men of suicide. And you're like the antidote, well I don't want to say the, a helping hand with that problem is certainly the ability to express

emotion without fear of being ridiculed. But like we're afraid of being ridiculed by ourselves, by other men, by people in this same space. And I get it, right? Like it's hard to break out of your own enculturation. The way that we are socialized, the way that we are brought up informs so much about our comfort level with emotions and emotionality.

It certainly has for me. There's no, like, even when I know things, it doesn't mean that I'm comfortable doing differently. You're absolutely right, yeah. So like, I get that, but I also know that like, even if I am at 46, probably not going to develop a different level of personal comfort with certain kinds

of public expressions of emotion. What I'm not going to do is vilify the people who are. I want to celebrate the people who are for being better than me, right? For being more open and more free and more able to express than I feel like I can be. So this is from some unearthed audio. JD Vance says, teachers who do not have biological children disorient and really disturb him. Quote, she should have some of her own children. Before you play the audio, I also, it really jumps out at me how gendered this is,

just to start off. It assumes that teachers are women, right off the bat. That's just right there. Like there's just like built in, automatically built in gender assumptions that are not good, right? And like it is not making the claim that male teachers also need to have kids.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I wanna play this now. This is a bad audio, but we're gonna do our best to play it for you here. And I think our conservative idea is that parents and families should determine what children learn, what values they are brought up with. You know, so many of the leaders of the left,

and I hate to be so personal about this, but there are people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. And that really disorients me and it really disturbs me. Randy Weinkarten, who's the head of the most powerful teachers union in the country, she doesn't have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone. So, you know, I think like,

as a person who doesn't have children, I recognize that there are some things that I just don't have a say in. I get that, right? I don't have a say in like how, I wouldn't, I don't know that I could give personal advice on how to raise a child to someone else. Because I don't have any, I don't have any experience in it. I on how to raise a child to someone else. Cause I don't have any,

I don't have any experience in it. I didn't bother to take a look at it. But that doesn't mean that like someone couldn't study how to raise children and then tell other people how to raise children. You can be like a therapist and not suffer from some sort of mental problems. You can be a someone who helps other people,

you know, rehab their body and not be broken yourself. There's all these things that we presume humans can do for other people without actually experiencing the things that they're experiencing. There's plenty of ways to learn about how to raise children right and how to teach children right and how to be around children and make sure that they become positive members of society

without actually having children. That's a totally possible thing to do. And the idea that you would have to buy into that by being a parent is, what it is is it's gatekeeping people around you because what you should also recognize and what the rest of the audience should recognize is that I think there are probably a lot more liberal non-parents out there. And I think when you're in a conservative group, most of those people are encouraged

and in some ways forced to have children. So there's more people in those groups that are parents. And so he is very specifically signaling to a group of people by saying, I don't think that those people who are not having children, who probably are more than likely than not liberal, should be involved in this process. That's right. And the example that he cites is a bullshit liar's example, right? So at the end of that audio clip,

he cites an example of a woman who's in a position of authority within the school system. I forgot what her title was. Doesn't really matter. And he says, you know, and that lady doesn't even have any kids. So like what business does she have? But I don't think her ideas would be better received

by him as ideas if she had kids, right? He opposes her ideas because he opposes them ideologically. What he's doing is creating a straw man and a caricature to spin that windmill at, to chase that down because it helps him not address the actual ideas. It's an ad-commitant attack. Yeah, yeah.

So it's all avoidance. It's all avoidance. The other thing is like he's conflating the idea of education with parenting. They're two different tasks. They don't co-relate. They really truly don't. I went to school to be an educator. That's a science. They do an enormous amount of social science

and experimental science to figure out how to convey information to people, all kinds of different people across all kinds of different subject matter, as efficiently as possible to make it stick. You know, there are theories, there are tests. This is a science. Educational theory is a series of social sciences. That can be learned the same way paleontology can be learned. The same way any science can be learned. Anybody can go learn it.

You go to fucking school and you read books and you practice in the classroom and you do clinicals and you go to classes and they tell you stuff and you learn how to perform these tasks of education. It has nothing to do with parenting. Parenting is a relational job. It is not an educational position. It has different goals, different outcomes. It's entirely different thing to do, but they intentionally conflate them and they conflate them because it gives them a good sound bite and it lets people feel like they are an underdog as parents in a fight against an institution of power, the school. It's all very transparent if you just see the structures at play. Yeah. And really it's otherizing anyone who doesn't have children because it's easier to dismiss them. And like I say, they're more often than not almost certainly going to be somebody who

isn't politically ideologically aligned with you. So it's easier to reject those people and say they don't have anything to say because they've created an ad hominem attack against them to basically discount everything they've ever said. You know, you've got a good friend I'm thinking about right now that if I'm not mistaken is a math teacher. Yeah, Jamie's a math teacher and a science teacher.

And by all accounts, I know him through you, he's an incredibly smart guy who's very, very passionate about his work. And I'm absolutely certain that he is an excellent educator. I'm certain of it. He does not have kids. His ability to perform that job is in no way, first his passion for that job is not influenced

by him not having kids. His actions at work are exemplary. He's a very bright guy. Like all of these things are true without him having to have a different relationship to kids. You can have just this one kind of relationship to this cohort of people. It's fucking stupid.

And it is intended to otherize people like Jamie. And it's intended to otherize people that don't have kids like yourself because those people aren't his target audience. They're not his contingent audience. But he's failing. What he's failing to realize is that lots of people don't have kids.

Turns out there was more than he thought too on his side. They caught a lot of hell from this and they keep unearthing more and more attacks on women because women are the main attack for this is women. And they keep unearthing more and more attacks on women, because women are the main attack for this is women. Like you said, before we started, the main attack for this is women need to have kids. The real underlying statement here is women shouldn't be in the workforce, they should be having children.

That's the real underlying thing. But now we've taken a couple steps away from it and we can still throw those arrows at it down the hill a little bit, but we're not right in front of that argument anymore. Now we're a little, it's a little more nuanced and a little farther away, but it's still the same argument essentially.

It's the same argument. But he is recognizing, I think now, he made a calculated bet. He made a calculated choice to decide to go after this group of people because it was an easy attack on someone who he wants to try to discredit, Kamala Harris. So it's an easy attack on her. And if it works, it's great,

but it doesn't look like it's working because I think he miscalculated how many child-free people there are on the Republican side too. I think he just genuinely miscalculated how many child-free people there are on the Republican side too. I think he just genuinely miscalculated that. I think so too. And he is also, his commentary really reveals that he is obsessed specifically with biological children and women having biological children. He discounts all other family types.

And he also completely ignores the fact that some people may want to have kids and still do not have kids. Yeah. And he disenfranchises all of those people. So he ends up disenfranchising step-parents, adopted parents, and people who want to have kids, but for whatever reason can't have kids. And this is not a fight for the base.

The base is secure. What he's doing, which is so stupid, can't have kids. And this is not a fight for the base. The base is secure. What he's doing, which is so stupid, is he's fighting for the middle with an argument that cuts the pie. You don't try to fight for the middle by cutting the pie, you stupid asshole. You're trespassing on my property.

You didn't win shit in my yard. Wait, wait, wait. All of you. Daddy, chill. What the hell is even that? It's from NPR. Trump campaign staff had altercation with official at Arlington National Cemetery. Oof.

This is becoming a big sort of controversy, bigger than I thought when we first put in the notes. Wasn't as big. There's story after story about this now. Now they have a photo of him standing over a grave, giving a thumbs up. Did you see this? No. God, that's crass. Let me put it on over a grave, giving a thumbs up. Did you see this? No, God, that's crap. Let me put it on.

I'll put up the thumbs up photo. Let me find it real quick. Oh, God. So here's a picture of him. This is from the Daily Beast. Here's a picture of him standing with a bunch of people. He's literally standing over a grave. Oh, God.

And he's got his thumbs up. There's like a couple people with their thumbs up Just like hey, how you doing and a bunch of people are really taking this as they should which is gross and Opportunistic, you know, I want to say first off like I don't I Don't want to come off as an asshole, but I I recognize that the United States I don't want to come off as an asshole, but I recognize that the United States deifies soldiers in a way that is gross in a huge way, right? Trump's side very much buys into the reverence of the dead soldier. So for him to use this place as a prop, he's not the president.

So he goes over and he sets this wreath on the anniversary Where people died because of a deal that he made and then Biden had to follow through on and pull soldiers out It was a botched operation from the beginning people died for sure and so He wants to go back and set this wreath down and make a big stink out of it to show how bad Biden did. He doesn't give a fuck about that guy. He doesn't give a shit about this stuff. He doesn't care.

You can tell, cause he has his thumb up, standing over his grave. With a smile. He made a fucking TikTok over it, man. He doesn't give a fuck about these people. I don't care. Like to be honest, I'm not, it's not like I He doesn't give a fuck about these people. I don't care. Like to be honest, I'm not, it's not like I care that he gives a fuck, but he pretends to give a fuck. How can you be so gullible as to not see through what a ghoul he is to use your son's death as a way to

manipulate a political campaign? Yeah, dude. It is. Everything about this is so fucking foul, right? Because he can't even what he cannot do because he is such a piece of shit liar is he cannot hide his grift, even in a moment where the only thing that would really be required for him is a false solemnity, right? All he needs to do is project a sort of false solemnity, bring a fake gravitas to his situation. He can't do it. He can't do it because the intent here was never to pay his respects.

His intent was never to be respectful. He chose a politically charged moment. He chose a politically charged grave site to go to, specific grave site, specific politically charged anniversary. He showed up with an entourage of people. They were clearly like, there are rules at Arlington National Cemetery

that you cannot use that cemetery for photos or political purposes. And they pushed people out of the way. They tried to stop them. I wanna read what had happened here. It says in a statement, Stephen Chung, the Trump campaign spokesman strongly rejected the notion that there was a physical altercation saying,

we are prepared to release the footage if such defamatory claims are made. Now they've been made and they still haven't released the footage, just so you know, this is a couple days after the fact. They're never gonna release any footage. Quote, the fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason, an unnamed individual,

clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony." Don't send me a message saying, I called him President Trump, I'm quoting. In any case, Trump goes to this place. There's clearly an altercation. There was a report filed.

There's been back and forth in the media all day about what exactly happened. There was clearly shoving that happened. I just want you to forget all that stuff, right? Let's just pretend that it was just, maybe it was even a misunderstanding. Let's pretend it's a misunderstanding. Do you want your next president of the United States to have a media guy who says, clearly, and suffering from a mental health episode, someone decide, do you want somebody

who is gonna say that instead of something that is even remotely understanding, he chooses to belittle someone who's just doing their job? Just tell me that that's who you want to be president. Because that's crazy, man. They can't even write a civil fucking PR message. Yeah, they don't even try. Because like the thing is that I think they've gotten used to a certain amount of successes

with this bellicose bullshit language that they use. And this like this like tactic of constant belligerence has like secured him the presidency once. And I think he's convinced that will secure him the presidency a second time. I think he's also convinced falsely this time, I believe falsely this time that he can still shoot anyone he wants on Fifth Avenue, not lose a single vote. And get away with it. Yeah. The world's different now. The contest is different now. His stock is lower than it has been in the past.

This stuff is starting to stick. What's interesting is we're starting to see things stick. They never stuck before. This is a gross thing for him to do. It's on the scale of gross things he's done. It doesn't rank in the top 100. It's not even close. But what's different about it, what's different and importantly different is it's starting

to stick. And I don't care what sticks. Was it just that he got dredged so often in the fucking egg wash that it's finally the crackers are sticking here? I mean, like, what is happening? Why now? I mean, we talked early, just earlier this episode, about how a neurodivergent kid was picked on and then people said he was neurodivergent and immediately all that stuff was retracted, right? Whether or not they did it like you said, because they saw an easy way out, they knew that that was a bad call. Trump, from the fucking stage, while he was running for president, did one of the moves with your arm to show like someone has bad control over their own motor functions.

And he made that motion to mock another person who's disabled. And nobody fucking cared, man. I know, man. I know. And they showed it over and over and over again and nobody cared There was it now Why now I don't know but I feel and I don't feel like I'm wrong here I feel like it's starting to stick. I feel like don't think you're wrong either, but I want to know why Tom

I got the whole man. I figured it out, though. Here's it in. Very quick. Okay. Have you ever used a Teflon pan? Ah, that's perfect. Over time. A perfect analogy, I love it. You buy the Teflon pan, the first day you buy it,

nothing sticks to it. Nothing sticks to it. Nothing. Yeah. You could throw fucking, you could throw just gobs of mozzarella cheese in the pan. Yes, cold. And it will, and then light it on fire

and it'll just fucking bubble and flip. When you first get a Teflon nonstick pan, literally nothing sticks to it. I don't know why, because they're made out of magic and evil chemicals that poison your blood. Sounds great. But seven months after you use that pan, that pan, soap sticks to it when you try to clean it.

It becomes stickier than every other pan you've ever had in your whole life. I don't know why that is. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's fucking weird, PFAS chemicals or some shit, I don't know, it's the magic has worn off. Whatever that evil fucking spell was,

the fucking poisoned apple has been digested by at this point. It's starting to stick. This is Christianity. This story comes from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. FFRF to NC School. Could you make this harder, guys, for me to read the fucking headline for?

All right, FFRF to North Carolina School, remove Christian cross from mascot logo. And guys, I just, Cecil, I'll let you take it away, but it's the Spartans. And the T is made into a cross. And the Spartans have nothing to do with Christianity at all. Why did you pick a different mascot? What I want to point out too is that Sparta essentially disappeared and was adopted by a Greek federation around 200 BC.

So this is what essentially is happening now, Tom. Yeah. Is when you cook a lobster and then you make a morenay sauce. Yeah. And then you stuff the lobster back in there. But you've added a little crab. That's essentially what you're doing to these four Spartans when you've turned the Spartans into Christians.

I love it. Why wouldn't they pick the Knights? I don't know, man. It's got a T. I know. You could turn it into a fucking cross to promote your stupid fucking fake religion It would work the Knights Templar a whole Christian thing. Yeah, you do it, but it's a

It's not even like they have an animal. This is gonna make me crazy It's not even that they have an animal Cecil the owls and they somehow did I know how that would work But you know what I mean like a fucking an animal that fucking dead, the owls and they somehow did. I don't know how that would work, but you know what I mean? Like a fucking, an animal with a fucking, the elephants. The elephants. You know, that doesn't really make a lot of sense, but okay, it's at least agnostic to it.

This isn't even agnostic to it. It's not, I also recognize too, this is 100% to get the goat of people in the area. That's, it's made, this is made to get this school some publicity on this sort of thing. They do this sort of thing so that it gets picked up. They also do this sort of thing too, because I think they recognize, and rightly so, that climbing the ladder all the way up to the Supreme Court might not get you anything in the end.

It might not get the FFRF something to show for it. They may have to suck it up after it's all over and be like, I guess you can put Christian logos on the walls in these places because the road to the Supreme Court now is not as, it's certainly not as easy as a slam dunk as it used to be for religious, for basically Christian liberty was Liberty was, you know,

it wasn't something that was favored in the past. And now it really seems like it probably would be if they were to bring this in front of them. Do you think, just thinking out loud, but like, shit like this, I'm thinking of like the Sculpt's Monkey Trial, right? Like, or even Rosa Parks. There are many times in history where somebody is chosen

to be representative of a larger cause in order to move things up the sort of social or legal food chain. And I do wonder sometimes with the 6-3 horror court that we have. Yeah, right. If stuff like this isn't being done as bait for our side to take it up,

so they can move stuff up the chain. Yeah. I bet you that their plan is to try to do more and more increasing stuff. And we talked about this in the past, that until something happens to this school in the future, where the school has to take it down, it's gonna stay up there.

So until the school actually takes it down, there's a court case that has to be heard. And that court case afterwards will be appealed. So they probably still won't take it down, even if they're ordered to. And it goes to another court case and it's still up that entire time. And then again, another court case

and then maybe it gets heard a third time. So it's still up that entire time. It could be up for years before they're forced to take it down. So maybe they're just like, well, we'll just get six or seven years out of it. Even if they tell us to take it down, they can't tell us to take it down tomorrow. Yeah, they're not we'll just get six or seven years out of it. Even if they tell us to take it down, they can't tell us to take it down tomorrow. Yeah. So you get six or seven years of essentially

Christian Spartans. And I bet a lot of these guys are like, yeah, let's move it up to the Supreme Court. They're on our side. We'll just win. We'll just win. And then the new law of the land will be everybody gets to put religious symbols up in schools. Like we'll just, everybody will be test cases. Neil Gorsuch kicking some of this is the supreme court. Kick somebody and they fly backwards. Fall into a well. They fall back into a well. There's a cross there for some reason. They land on the cross and are skewered.

They actually land perfectly on the cross. And they're stuck on it. And when I dropped the towel, there had been significant shrinkage. The story is from Joe My God's blog, Moms for Liberty Lose Florida School Board. Really bad too, like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. to tell that had been significant shrinkage. The story's from Joe My God's blog, Moms for Liberty Lose Florida School Board. Really bad too, like a lot of them. Fucking smoke. Like a lot of them. And they were, and the thing is, is they have Ron DeSantis' face in here.

And he very specifically went around plugging these Moms for Liberty and standing up for them and campaigning for a lot of these people. And Ron DeSantis' face did not help them at all. Conservative howdy duty did not win them any votes. Does Ron DeSantis' face help anything? I don't even know if it helps Mrs. DeSantis, right? Like there's never been a face that has been more, I mean, you know, like, you know, like how they say, think about baseball. Maybe think about Ron DeSantis would be a more accurate and easier. I'll go with baseball.

Baseball. I'll hold on. Ron DeSantis. I got to get lunch. You're like, I'm done. At that point, it's retreating. It's like, no, I'm done. Really done for the rest of the day. Don't call me tomorrow. Ron shrinkage DeSantis. No thank you. Yeah, I am happy that, well, I mean, I think really genuinely, and we talked about this on other shows, where he really walked out thinking that if he could wave this anti-woke flag all across the country, he could win a bunch of votes for it. That there was a lot of traction to be had

and a lot of ground to be gained waving an anti-woke flag. And what he found on the national stage was that it was distasteful and nobody cared. People don't buy into this hype that you've created in your small little wang of a state. They don't give a shit. They don't care what Florida's doing. Florida's not indicative of the rest of the nation

and people across the country aren't experiencing the things that you're saying you're experiencing. So they just don't care. And so most of the people who were watching him did not vote for him in the primaries because they just didn't see the dangers of woke that he tried to bring up in every single question he was asked in the primaries.

So now we get to him still winning down there and still has a bunch of sway down there. Him injecting this into all these school board races. And this is where this is the battleground for, right? Like of, you know, maybe not on the national stage, there's no battle, but in his state, in the schools, this is the place. This is where, you know, they put their swords and this is where they're going to fight this

battle. And even there, everybody's like, nah, man and this is where they're going to fight this battle. And even there, everybody's like, nah, man, I think we've had enough of this. Yeah. Well, like I think he confused and I think a lot of people did the Nutter migration of 2020. So just an absolute shit ton of complete lunatics migrated down to Florida in 2020 and 2021. And I think they also confused the parade of vociferous online trolls with the reality of how people on the ground feel.

And that's an easy thing for, I think, a lot of politicians to do. There's a conversation too that I was listening to today on one of the news programs about JD Vance and how JD Vance has likely confused the language of the online space with what people want to hear in real life. They're two very different people,

two very different audiences and two different ways to communicate with those audiences. I think Ron DeSantis and his nonsense plays well with your rucking racist uncle on Facebook, but this shit doesn't fly. Now it doesn't. It doesn't fly nationally. And now it's not even flying all that well at local fucking election boards. In the place where it should. In the place where if, if these people really did care about this sort of thing as a negative, it should. But what we're seeing is,

is I think that people just don't believe this stuff anymore. I think what, I'm brought back to a story we covered where they very specifically, a group of, one of these school boards, the Moms for Liberty came and tried to tell them to get the 93 books off and I watched this 2020 thing on it and very specifically, they sat down and said, okay, Moms for Liberty, you say these 93 books are bad,

we're gonna sit and we're gonna read them all. And they had reading groups and they had adults, a bunch of them sit down, a group of them read the book and then talked about whether or not that book was something that should be on the shelves in their school. They had a real conversation about books that Moms for Liberty brought to them

and they pulled two off the shelves. Two out of like- And the other 91. And the other 91 are still there because they thought none of these are as bad as you say they are. And so I just think a lot of people aren't just swallowing it anymore. They're seeing this pushback where people are actually looking and asking for evidence and there isn't any. Yeah. Well, and I think we don't want, with the exception of, like I said, a handful of complete nutters and vociferous online trolls, we don't

want to live in a world of book bans. We don't want to live there. We don't want this world that they're trying to build a world that the people are saying, we don't want it. Look at the, ever since the overturn of Roe with the Dobbs decision, look at the way people have come out in force at the ballot box to say, we don't want this. You were wrong. Your read on America is wrong. And that I think is a great point and a great corollary because you saw the far right religious

people pushing this agenda on the American people. And when they finally achieved it, when they finally caught the car, it's bit him in the ass every, every single time. I think this, this is the same thing, right? The far right religious people in the country don't want you to know gay people exist, so they wanna take every mention of gay out of your kid's library. And adults are like, what the fuck are you doing? Stop, go lay down.

If you don't want them in your fucking house, or you don't want your kid to read them, make sure your kid doesn't read them, but leave my fucking kid alone. That's gonna wrap it up for this week. This upcoming week, we're going to have a project 2025 long form article. This article is about one of the people, one of the architects of project 2025, one of the big voices in it. So you're going to want to check that out this upcoming Thursday. And we're going to you like we always do with Skeptics Creed.

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