Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 802: Post Election - What Next?

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Avrion certo il langorino! Ovviamente non panino! No, no, no! Un boccone ricco di gusto! Si conosco il posto giusto! Siam d'accordo, su, su, via! Tutti alla piadineria! È tornata la solare! Con crudo e stracciatella!

Aggiungi salsa mango, aglio nero o peperone! Amerai ogni boccone! La piadineria... Today's show is brought to you by Adam and Eve dot com. Go to adamandeve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLY at checkout. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.

Today is Thursday, November the 7th. The 7th. You guys missed us. We were live. If you missed us, we were live on November 5th. November 5th, the election night. We weren't sure who was going to win, but we had some inklings. We had a, look, we had a night, we had a good time. We hung out with Heath Enright. He was a terrific guest. You know, obviously we're going to talk about the election. We're going to talk about, you know, a lot of things related to the election. But the live stream was a blast. The live stream was fun. You know, obviously we're gonna talk about the election. We're gonna talk about, you know, a lot of things related to the election, but the live stream was a blast.

The live stream was fun. You could check it out. It was really a good time. On YouTube, and if you're a patron, we posted it to Patreon, and I think we took the audio from that, and that's also available for patrons too. So you could just listen to the audio if you wanted.

Yeah. You could do the same thing if you're on YouTube, I guess, premium, because you can close your shit. Yeah, you can minimize. Minimize it. You could do the same thing if you're on YouTube, I guess premium, because you can close your shit. They can minimize. Minimize and run around. But if you're a patron, you don't have to do that. You can just listen to it on the thing. We did ask our patrons,

because we're doing a patron only AMA later on in the month. So we asked our patrons to post in a AMA thread. And some of them had some election stuff. So we figured we would start the show with a few election questions that people had and then sort of get into some of the election coverage afterwards. So Tom, this one.

Who won? This one's from Renegade Lens. I didn't look, is it good news? It's not good news. You're just telling me now? Yeah, it's rough. Cecil! It's rough, Tom.

We can wait until we hit record, before we hit record. Yeah, it's a rough, it's a little bit of a rough day Yeah, it's rougher now now that I know that I feel like this. I just turned the whole show on its head my god. I Had a skip in my step walking up your steps. All right, so renegade lens so not Harris Those what you're sad. I think she might have came in second I don't know as a close second though time. It's Shit. Oh, I don't feel like that's... She was a close second though, Tom. It's not as good, I don't think. It was a close second.

Okay, so Renegade Len says, what's the plan for the next 60 days to prepare for the next term? Personally, aside from still being in semi-disbelief, I'm starting to talk with friends here in DC on how we can help support and protect the LGBTQ plus community. Great idea. Help protect women's rights in places where that's available too. with friends here in DC how we can help support and protect the LGBTQ plus community. Great idea. Help protect women's rights in places where that's available too. That's also huge, huge deal because with a Trump presidency comes, you know, a possibility of more restrictions

in different places and maybe even a total ban. So it's important to at this point, try to get those as in the places that it isn't restricted, get those places open. Yeah. Impregnate as few people as possible. I feel like that's probably a good call. I think as a guy, that's what I'm going to do. I think after reading a lot of women's comments, I think that that's going to be a thing. I think that's going to be a thing. There's a lot of very angry women out there right now and they should be. They should be mad And they should be. They should be mad.

I stick to that. Like just impregnate. What can we do for our allies? Don't impregnate any of them. Just the number of people of our allies that we should impregnate is pretty much zero. It should be zero. It should be close to zero.

I'm just gonna wear three condoms a day. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna constantly be wearing condoms. You're not touching anybody. I'm not fucking anybody. But I'm just, this is out of, this is a solidarity condom. I get it. Yeah, no, it makes sense. These are solid.

I'm going to pee in them. You know, I don't care. Whatever, dude. I'm just not impregnating anyone. That condom was angry. It was pissed off. What I would say though, too, for the next 60 days, you know, for the next, you know, until Trump takes office,

I think like stockpile certain things that you think are gonna be more expensive. Yeah. Right? Because you think electronics, I'm hearing electronics. Right away, they're saying that the prices on electronics are gonna go up because of the tariffs and stuff. So if you are gonna buy electronics before the end of the year, probably a good idea.

If you were gonna maybe, like you suggested a couple shows ago, stockpile mephepristone or the Plan B pill. Yeah, over the next 60 days, what can you do to prepare? I don't know that you can do a whole lot to prepare, and that's because we don't know what's gonna happen. Like I'm goofing around, but like we don't know what's gonna happen.

You don't know what's gonna happen day one, you don't know what's gonna happen day 99 or two years into this thing. You have no idea. I think, you know, there's some reason to be worried for sure about inflation. There's some reason to be worried for sure. Definitely for sure about, you know, our friends in the migrant community. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. As far as like what you can do to help those folks, if you're in a position to give money for attorneys, for lawyers, that's probably the best thing you can do. Money at this point for those communities is huge. Yeah. Money is always, if you're able to, money is always the best thing. Yeah. Right? It's just like, if you're like, if you're going your stocking on Christmas and it's full of money, nobody's like,

I hated my Christmas present. It's like, I didn't want the socks. You know, one of the things I did want to talk about too is the anxiety of what's coming. You know, because I think like everybody at this point is just, I was, someone posted on our page today and it's so perfect. They're saying if you were ever wondering what it's like to wait for a hurricane to actually hit. This is what it feels like. It feels like this. And that's a great point, right? That's a great point,

because everybody right now feels this sort of wait. What's gonna happen? I wanna remind people, Trump is incompetent and he's a fucking liar. So those two things are playing in our favor. Trump had bungled everything. He's a narcissist. He's easy to distract. All those things are playing in our favor. Trump had bungled everything. He's a narcissist.

He's easy to distract. All those things are true. And so I think that that is a saving, that's a saving mechanism for the bad things that Trump can do. Trump's also, he's also somebody who I think is a gigantic fucking liar and will say things to inflame his audience that he never plans

to continue on with. I'm not saying that Trump never did anything bad that he said he was going to do because we have a whole list of bad things that Trump did that he said he was going to do, but he said he was going to do a whole lot more bad things that he never did. So what I don't want people to do is I don't want people to spend their time so worried about something that hasn't happened yet or that the building box aren't in place to happen. I think that you're going to waste your energy and you're going to be a ball of anger and anxiety if you do that. I think what we can

do is every time something bad starts to happen, we should call it out and say, there's a bad thing that starts to happen. Let's see if we can mitigate it or stop it in some way. But you can't spend your life waiting for this blade to drop if nothing ever happens. And you're just going to make yourself go crazy. Yeah. I think, you know, there's something to be said for the idea of worrying actively versus worrying passively. Worrying passively is something you probably don't have a whole lot of control over. I mean, there are tools you can use to try to prevent

yourself from doing it, right? But what I mean by active worrying is the sort of like, the sort of intentional rumination over fears for the future. That's different than the background radiation kind of worrying passively. I think to the best of all of our abilities, we need to treat this like alcoholics, right? It's like one day at a time.

One day at a time. What happened today? I can't control tomorrow. Our ability to control is now gone, right? We don't have control any longer. That's part of what sucks. But I really think like as a piece of advice, I think when I wake up in the morning,

I'm going to contend with today today. When I wake up tomorrow, I will contend with tomorrow tomorrow. What I can't do is contend with tomorrow today. I can't do that. I've got to take this moment of crisis one day at a time. I have to. You don't fight a war three steps in advance, right?

You can't do it as a soldier, right? The people who are in charge of planning, they do that stuff. But if I'm on the ground, what I gotta deal with is today. What's in front of me? What's in front of me right now? So to the best of all of our abilities, you know, engage processes like therapeutic processes if necessary to try to reduce your passive worry and try to take your active worrying time down. Find things

that bring you joy. Yeah, like weed. Yeah. My new co-host, Noah Lujans. Welcome Noah. Appreciate you being on the show. Hold on, I gotta do a blog rip in between stories. We got another question from quartermaster Jacob. He asks how he basically, he says, I have a 15 year old son and a 13 year old daughter, given where the nation's going, you know, any advice on how to talk to him? And Tom, you said you had some advice.

Yeah. So just want to let everybody know we did record an episode of dear old dads That was specific to that exact issue. Yeah, and it releases I think tomorrow tomorrow Thomas can get it added It was an emergency record. So it's either gonna be a front this Friday where we're recording So it would have been if this is released on Monday So it would be the Friday if I were already available or it'll be available next Friday It would already be available. Or it'll be available next Friday. Right. But it'll be around.

It'll be around very, very soon. Okay. You know, his other question, can we go back to his other question? Cause it's something that I actually want to address. And it's how you guys doing? I keep seeing this. People have sent me some very, very kind messages.

And I actually want to take a second and talk about this. I'm fine. Yeah. Right? I, Tom, am second and talk about this. I'm fine, right? I, Tom, am always going to be fine. Please don't spend your time worrying about me. I am a middle-class, cis-het white male, right? My job is to be fine. The world is made for both of us.

I love the people who have reached out. I think it's super sweet. I think it's touching. It's touching. But like, I really want to take a moment here and say, I've been reflecting since the election, not just on the election, but on what my responsibility is as somebody who gets the privilege

of sitting in front of a microphone and having the privilege of an audience. And I believe strongly that if I sit in front of the microphone with the privilege of an audience. And I believe strongly that if I sit in front of the microphone with the privilege of an audience, that I have a responsibility. That with that audience comes responsibility. We called it out with Joe Rogan. Remember we said, you know,

if you're going to sit in front and you're going to talk to a hundred million people or whatever, you have a responsibility. So I've been thinking about this and I've been mulling over like, what's my responsibility in this moment? And I want to say like my responsibility first of all is to be doing fine. That's my responsibility because I am not on the list of groups that will be targeted. Yeah. Right. So my responsibility is to be here for you. And I want to make sure that people hear what I'm saying, is that Cog Dis has been here for 17 years. We'll be here tomorrow, we'll be here next month,

we'll be here next year. Our job is to be here for you as listeners. That is our job. It's very sweet of you to check in, but my job is to be here for you. My job is to have a place and to create a space and to come here to the studio every week and to make sure that I use my voice to represent yours

and that I use my microphone as a way to reach out to communities and say, you're not alone. That's important that I do that. How am I doing? I'm fine. The world will make sure that I'm fine. My job is to make sure to the best of my ability that you're not alone and that you're fine.

Yeah. You know, I echo that. I also think, you know, if you're gonna ask me how I'm doing, I will say I am so grateful that I had yesterday to build up some scar tissue because I was not in any mood yesterday. Yesterday morning, I woke up and I was not in any mood yesterday. Yesterday morning, I woke up and I was not in any mood whatsoever.

I was angry. I was frustrated. I was, I was in disbelief, not disbelief that she lost, but more disbelief that someone chose him. Right? I was in disbelief of that. But I'll tell you, I, that whole day of just building up scar tissue and just smulling with it and sitting with it

and sitting with my wife, I feel much better today than I did the day before. And I'm gonna feel better tomorrow than I felt today because I'm gonna keep on, you know, my wife asked me yesterday because I started to feel a little better pretty quickly. Right? And she said to me, she said, don't you ever get depressed?

My wife essentially slept all yesterday. I mean, like she was just, she doesn't get depressed very often, but when she does, she's absolutely wiped out by it. It just, it just, it just eats at her. And she was out the whole day. And she's like, don't you get depressed? And I said, I'm a, I'm a what's next guy.

I'm not a, I'm not a dwell guy. I don't dwell. If something happens, I'm a what's next guy. I got knocked down, what's next? I gotta get back up. You gotta keep fighting. You gotta keep going. You got your ass kicked this time, do better next time.

Learn what you did wrong. Learn your, learn from your mistakes and do better and do better and do better and do better. Get up, get up. You got to always get up. And I'm always a what's next guy. I grew up in a lot of bad situations in my life. I could list a litany of things that happened in my young life that were not good, but I

didn't, I never felt like I wanted to just stay with them and sit in that moment. I've always been like, okay, I need to keep moving and I need to keep going. And that's sort of been my mentality my whole life. And so what I woke up with today was like, okay, what's next? We lost what's next. I'm not gonna, I think like there's a lot of hand wringing

going on and a lot of finger pointing going on and I don't wanna dwell on that. Yeah, well, and I think, I think that that's our unique responsibility as people who are not part of the target. Absolutely. And that's, I have the privilege of being able to do that. So like that is, that is just to say like that is descriptive, not proscriptive.

That is a set as a truth about who you are and what your responsibilities are. I will, I want to tell a quick story because I had a moment of, I had a moment of kind of catharsis around this personal moment. So I didn't mention this on the show in any of our recordings because, well very intentionally, because I didn't, it wasn't important. What we were doing leading up to the election I felt was important. Exhorting our audience and the people

that we can reach out to and trying to do everything we could to convince them to do what we thought was the right thing, which was to show up and to vote a certain way, to vote for Harris, right? And to raise money and to, you know, do the things that we were doing. So, but, and I never mentioned this, but this election for me,

personally, is kind of like, this is a huge, I reap a lot of rewards personally. And let me tell you why. The Biden administration, even in the very last state of the union address, singled out, out loud in his speech, my industry as an industry that they were seeking to eliminate.

My day job, I work in title insurance. And in the state of the union, Biden addressed title insurance as something that he wanted to eliminate as a broad category of product in order to make housing more affordable. And then they began through Fannie and Freddie, a program, a pilot program, to eliminate the need for title insurance for certain loan types.

And they were going to use that as a pilot, see how it went, and then expand that concept and essentially eliminate my entire industry. The job that I've had, the only job I've had, the only work I've known for 25 years that supports my whole family. So I was scared about that. That has been a fear that has lived in the background of my mind that you know, if Harris wins and continues that, the CFPB, which will now likely be gutted because Trump said he would gut it and he's always been a disfavorable opinion of the CFPB, but this is the thing that feeds my fancy,

only business I know. And I still was like the right thing to do for the world is to vote for Harris. It's bad for me. Like I very likely was going to lose my job and I don't know how to do anything else and I don't have any skills. And I was a little afraid of that, you know?

And you really don't have any skills. I really don't. You genuinely don't. I don't, I've done this for 25 years, I don't know anything else. I'm not competent. He's not competent, guys He's not kidding. No, I don't know anything I don't know it doesn't do anything So like this is not a relief for me

Yeah But it does take a certain pressure off me on a personal level and I did have and I want to mention this Because of that there was a moment where I was like God I worked so hard Against my own personal best interests Because it was the right thing to do and it didn't work and I got real upset about that yesterday because I felt like Man, I've worked so hard. Yeah against my own like to like the end economic bad Emanuel Kant would stand up and be like,

Tom, you did a moral thing. I tried. You did a moral thing because even in your own self-interest, you could not point to that as just you being self-interested and pointing to the right thing. No. Immanuel Kant would beat you to death with the grounding of the metaphysicals of morals.

But like, then I recognized that that feeling of like, anger at the electorate was self-indulgent. That it doesn't do what I need it to do, which is to be useful. What I feel this like compelling urge and need to do is to find a way to be of value and to be of use and to use what I do have, which is this microphone and this audience and this voice and these connections and these people to do what I can do to be of service, to borrow that term, because I really like it, to be of service to these people in these communities that have so much less than I have and who are in such,

and so I had that moment where I was like, God, you guys can't even save yourselves, you know? I had this like fucking angry moment about it. And then I was like, no, like, what does that do? What does that accomplish? This is like our, my feeling personally is like everything now needs to be aimed at accomplishing something. It needs to do something.

I need to, you know, we've always wanted to pick charities that put spoons in mouths and shots in arms because I want tangible things. And I feel like that's what I need to focus on going forward personally. So when you ask, how am I doing? Like my job is to do okay. That's my only job. I have another message too. This is for the audience that are looking for some way, because what you're right now, what you're hearing is two privileged guys telling you how they're getting through. Right. But I want to talk about how maybe our audience can cope. And one of the things that happened yesterday

was I went out in the morning and I took the signs out of the yard. So I went out and I gathered the signs and I brought them in the house. And I threw out in the morning and I took the signs out of the yard. So I went out and I gathered the signs and I brought them in the house. And I threw them in the garage and I came in and I sat down with my wife and we were sitting there talking and you know, we were sharing some, you know,

just sharing each other's company, sharing some tears. She was, you know, very upset with the way election turned out. And there was a, I told her, I said, I gotta go do a little bit of work. I do have a little bit of work to do today. I kind of put a lot of stuff off yesterday to not do work, but I had to do some work yesterday.

So I ran up to my office to go do some work. And she had taken the whole day off knowing that either she was gonna be a wreck emotionally, she knew she was gonna be a wreck emotionally either way. Right. Right. So she was like, I'm gonna take the next day off. So she was off yesterday. So I come up to do some work and I get a ring

on the doorbell. And so I go downstairs and I'm like, who the fuck is ringing my doorbell at like 10 o'clock in the morning? And I open the door and there's a woman there. And she says, hi, I'm your neighbor down the street. And she says, hi, I'm your neighbor down the street. I just wanted to say, I've been driving by your house

and I feel so encouraged that you had Harris signs in the lawn and I never, I always felt so alone in this neighborhood. Because there's a lot of people here, Trump signs, right? And so she's like, I always felt so alone in this neighborhood. Cause there's a lot of people here who are Trump signs, right? Right. And so she's like, I always felt so alone in this neighborhood and it always really just made me feel so much better that there was someone else here that shared the same values that I share.

And so I was stress baking yesterday and I brought you some cookies. So sweet. I just wanted to introduce myself. And she had tears in her eyes and my wife was crying. And it was just like such a beautiful moment, right? And it made me realize like one of the things that we give up, like the right has this lockdown.

They have a community built around church. They have a community all the time built around church. There is nothing better than to find some community out there and be someone's shoulder to hug right now or body to hug that they can feel comfort because you're there and you feel comfort that they're there. A real human connection.

I'm not shitting on online community. I'm not shitting on it at all, right? But I am gonna say there is something very good, not saying better or worse, but very good and tangible about human community, interpersonal community. And I think there are a lot of these things out there that you can join, these humanist groups that meet on Sunday, these Sunday services and stuff like that.

And I encourage anybody who has one of these, post it on our fan page and get more people to come. You know, maybe you're in Milwaukee, right? And there's no way that somebody from Chicago can make it up there every week, but they might make it up once a month, you know what I mean? And then they can get a chance to meet you and know you.

We cover a lot of ground on our show, and maybe there's not enough people in the one area to really sort of do something, but you may be able to reach out to some of these very local groups and really get a sense of that community, get to know your neighbors, get to know those types of things.

I don't think we get out of this by isolating ourselves. No, we do not, yeah. I think we get out of this by finding more people of like minds and attracting more people into our groups that we can then help them understand the world better. I think that's how we get out of this. Isolating ourselves, being mad, being upset. Don't get me wrong, I'm fucking furious right now. But just dwelling on that anger and never being in a human community

is it's just not going to be, it's not going to be great for being in a human community is, it's just not going to be, it's not going to be great for you. And I don't think it's going to be great for us as a people if we do that. Yeah. Let me, let me add to that. Cause I think that that's exactly, that's exactly kind of where my head's at too, is we have to create connection, like real meaningful, deep personal connection. I also think like, if you're asking like, what can I do?

We need to find places to show up with our time and our bodies and volunteer. There are gonna be so many places where our social safety net is in peril. So like what we're gonna have to do, I'm reminded, like the note that I have written down for this, this that I wanna talk to you about the audience is, do you remember during the pandemic

where we had to create these small bubbles of, I forgot we called them something during the pandemic. I can't remember what we called them, but we had these little bubbles where we took care of each other. We said, all right, you know, like, if you're out of toilet paper, I'll bring you some. I'm vaxxed and you're vaxxed,

and I know your habits and my habits, and so we can see each other. And we created these really like micro community spaces of support. That same idea can really get us a long way. If we can create small micro communities if necessary, reach out to the people you can, bring them cookies,

you know, go to the soup kitchen, whatever you have it in yourself to do. We've got to find like space in our lives bring them cookies, go to the soup kitchen, whatever you have it in yourself to do. We've gotta find space in our lives to be connected and to have kindness and to show kindness and to show real support, tangible support. Let's go out and volunteer in a space, in a place that makes your heart feel good,

in a place where you can like connect with somebody over your values. And that will form a bond. Yeah. You suddenly now have people that you know that do that same thing. I met people a couple years ago that I really connected with like politically.

We were talking about politics a lot. Well, I was throwing pottery, right? I met these people at like an art thing. So even hobbies can help do this, right? Even hobbies of them on themselves will introduce you to other people. And sometimes hobbies put you in the room with somebody else who might not agree with you. Right. And then you can have those conversations, those, those testing conversations to see if you can maybe hash some of these things out. You know, understanding why someone voted for Trump and disregarded some of the things out. You know, understanding why someone voted for Trump

and disregarded some of the things that were said about him might help us understand, you know, as a group, might help us understand why these things are happening. So I think those are all, all that stuff is so important. I think it's right now more than ever, not only helping others, but also it's helping yourself by helping others. Yeah, yeah, it feels good to do good.

It really does. Like, if you want to be treated with kindness, go find spaces to treat others with kindness. You'll find like-minded people there. Well, the world is over. And while we're getting fucked, we might as well get extra fucked. By going to, but in a good way, going to adamandeve.com and using code glory. Because when you do, you get 50% off, no, that's great. 50% off almost anyone I have. Not for 50% of this country, but you know, 50% off.

No, they can get it too, but also like they can't. And then Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff. You get one free gift, two free gifts, even three free gifts. I mean imagine, I mean imagine filling out some form and getting free stuff. It's almost like something you want, something you voted for, if I'm not too heavy-handed with the analogy. That's because when you go to Adam and Eve and use code glory, they even give you six free spicy movies.

Because we're going to need those in the upcoming apocalypse as we bury ourselves underground because of nuclear warming. Isn't that great? But hey, free shipping, right? So go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY and help save democracy. Or just help yourself with more. Glory. It's not that I condone fascismism or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion

are not good. A person should not believe in an ism. He should believe in himself. So let's talk about this story from the New York Times. 10 takeaways from the night Trump marched back to the White House. So there's these 10 takeaways. I'm just going to run through them and then we'll kind of bounce around through them. So, the first, America's democracy is likely to be put under tremendous strain. Two, the country and its foreign allies are in for major whiplash.

Three, Trump remains the nation's most durable political force. Four, Kamala Harris could not outrun Joe Biden. Five, America will keep waiting for a female president. Six, Trump's federal criminal trials are imperiled. That's generous phrasing. Periled. Seven, Trump will have a Republican Senate

and possibly, definitely, a GOP house. My chance to be a billionaire is imperiled, Tom. Yeah, right. Yeah, mine too, Cecil. Mine is always imperiled. Imperiled? Imperiled. Imperiled? Imperiled.

I love that the New York Times is like, what's a good word for fucked? It's, imperiled feels like such a weird hedge for that word. It's like somebody had to bust out their fucking thesaurus. Get the fuck out of here, imperiled. You know, Jim, I really like your story, but you wrote, unfuckingfucking-likely,

and we are The New York Times. So when Trump draws and quarters Jack Smith, will his trial be just Imperial or in jeopardy at that point? So what you're saying is there's still a chance? There's still a chance. He had the fucking ghost of Jack Smith fucking trying him in court. Can you imagine, like, he's visited by three ghosts and one of ghost of Jack Smith fucking trying him in court. Can you imagine like visited by three ghosts era of good feelings is over for Democrats

Hey, hope you had a good time. Hope you had a good time glad it was short Hey guys, you had less than a hundred days of something other than existential Christ God Cecil, I want to be a Republican You know, I got not because I like it. Yeah, I do too, because I want to keep subscribing to New York Times. There's two more. Jesus Christ. All right. Nine, the entire country moved to the right. Yeah, that's how. Moved to the right.

Yeah. And ten, rural America. Clap your hands. Rural America. G grew even redder. Oh, it's gonna lead Santa's I'm just picturing the the rosy cheeks of the American farm worker tweaked very freshly by Donald Trump Don't worry. I'm gonna I'm gonna raise the price of grain You're essentially fucked Don't worry, I'm going to raise the price of grain on these tariffs. You're essentially fucked. Remember when I had to bail you out because of my faulty trade war with China.

Nobody else does. That's why you voted for me. I seriously saw today that farmers immediately were like, please don't do it again. Why did you show up for them? Why did you show up for them? Oh, it's been so bad. So Tom, go ahead. What do you think of the,

I mean, obviously I think I agree with all these. I think I would use stronger language than the New York Times. This is some pussy ass language, right? It feels like some very, very weak language, if you will. But I think like, you know, I agree with that we're in for a lot. I don't know what we're in for. And I said it early in the show. I don't know what we're in for. And I said it early in the show.

I don't know what we're in for. Trump's a notorious liar, a notorious braggart. He says shit that he doesn't do, and he does shit that he never said. And he's, so he's an unpredictable chaos agent, and we know that about him. So I don't know what he's gonna do. I do know, I do know that they already sort of have in place

that they wanna do deportations. But again, I don't know how that's gonna roll out. And if it's gonna be an incompetent fucking Keystone cops, bullshit. Or if they're actually gonna get their shit together and do something really damaging. I don't know. But it's something to keep on the radar.

Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a mess. And here's what I think we should do. I thought about this. Here's what I think we should do. I think that America forgot, like the farmer's example you gave, it's a great example, right? The farmer's like, hey, don't do that again. What we need to do is hit everybody with a two by four again. So their memory comes back. Because clearly what happened, and we've all seen it, like you get hit in the head, you get the amnesia. It's like those movies. So we just need to get a sort of like...

The one with Goldie Hawn. She falls off a boat or whatever. We need a medical grade two by four. We need a medical grade two by four and you need three adopted kids. That's what we need. I, we were talking earlier. Yeah. You and I were talking earlier about, you know, this is 10 things that are going to

happen under Trump elect Trump's been elected. What did the Democrats do now? Like what's our next move? Right? Like what do we do now? And, and you and I were talking earlier. Our brief era of good feelings is over. I know it's completely our times. That's a hundred over. I know, according to the New York Times, that's 100% over. Can I do that again?

Is it imperiled? Can my good feelings just be imperiled? Is this just a refractory period for me? My good feelings? I'm 46, I could have good feelings again in a half an hour. I feel like I could have another one in four years. I want to say though, like, what are we going to do? And I think like what we like what we can't do,

and I think this is so important. I've seen a lot of very angry posts, and I said it before, I'm angry too, man. But what I can't do is say, I'm mad at you because we didn't win, and so if you didn't help by voting for Harris, I don't want anything to do with you ever. I can't do that because the voting block we have right now is

Too small to win an election. We know that's true. Yeah, it's lost. You just lost an election It's too small to win the election so don't Don't neglect the possibility of people who sat home this time I know there's gonna be some, right, who sat home and didn't vote, don't neglect those people, find out what we can do to help bring them in, right?

There's, of the number of people who were registered, again, it's under 50% who voted, right? So there's a lot of people who are registered to vote who are not voting in this election. So we need to make sure that we motivate and galvanize a larger group of people. And I don't think that Trump is more wildly popular than he was before. I think what happened was his message was easier. The Democrats had to play the good parent and the responsible person.

And Trump can literally promise the world because he's just gonna lie about it. So they have to date, they can't come on, they can't come on message in the same way. They have to apologize for the current administration, even though their hands are sort of tied in a lot of ways and people don't understand how government works. So we're in this weird position.

The Democrats are in this crazy position that they, almost a non-winnable position where they had to dance a weird line that they were not gonna be able to do and win over a bunch of people. But we can't section ourselves off and say fuck those people forever. This has gotta be a time of some kind of coalition building because if you can't build it,

you're never gonna win again. It's never gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I also think to add to that. I think Democrats need to do a better job crafting simpler messages. They're damn right. You know, I think that we have we have the hubris of Believing that because we are objectively right about a lot of important scientifically true things, that that's enough. That being right is enough to convince people. But convincing people is an art. Motivating people is an art. These are things that we have

to learn to do a much, much, much better job at. What I think that I saw Trump do and did really, really well was he heard the grievances of people, turned them into his grievances, and just said very simply, I'll fix it. He never said how. He didn't say, he doesn't have any plans. He has concepts of a plan. None of that bothers people.

What people want is to have somebody say, I'll fix that. You actually don't have to provide a much more detailed message. There's a lot of hand wringing with Harris about, oh my God, we don't know about our message. We don't know enough details. What's a real plan? What's a real plan?

That's the, that's kind of nothing. Like what Democrats need to do is to have a short simple straightforward Non-nuanced message. That's what the electorate is responding to they need to have a message that says I hear you I Agree with you. I'll fix that tariffs is a perfect example of that Everybody who knows anything about tariffs knows that it's a tax on the American people. Absolutely.

What tariffs could do, could do, if you tariff, like let's say you're tariffing steel, right? What tariffs could do is create American innovation because the other product is higher priced. But nobody's going to start a brand new thing because China's product is higher priced. But nobody's gonna start a brand new thing because China's product is easier to get, it's cheaper, and there's no way you would be able to pay the workers and do all that work and do all that exercise to finally build up that industry to compete with China. So what happens is the path of least resistance,

which literally is capitalism, which is no one's gonna do that and you're to pay more. That's what's going to happen. It's in theory, it's supposed to create brand new industry here. In theory, it's supposed to do that. It never does. What it does is it passes that dollar onto the consumer. Everybody knows that's what it does. It's the tariffs don't normally work like how they supposed to work. Just like trickle like trickle down economics doesn't work like it's supposed to work Right. It's not a fucking yeah, you're not getting anything from the billionaire class, but a facial Okay, you're getting nothing. So essentially

What they're able to do is say tariffs and then even if and I saw some time I saw so many videos leading up to the election where somebody turns the microphone and goes, you realize you pay for tariffs. And they're like, what? Yeah. I do what? I do what? I saw 30 videos like that.

Yeah. All 30 videos, because they don't know. But here's the thing. If you know what you're doing is going to work, you just say, I'm going to do this. Yeah. That's it. The messaging needs to be wildly simple. Like the tariff, like the tariffs thing, it's like,

of course that's not going to work. Let's say you did the steel thing. It's not like I could be like, hey, you know what? Now there's a market for US Steel. I'll just real quick whoop me up a quick steel plant. These things take years. It's goofy. It's not a thing that can work in an industry that's established. And like, honestly, the immigration thing is the same thing, right? It's like, if we, how the fuck are you supposed to identify everybody, find everybody that doesn't want to be found? Like, these are people intentionally trying not to be found.

There's not a registry of undocumented migrants and what their addresses are. There are a bunch of people who are here on asylum that they could send away. Sure, they could send those folks away. And then like, if we send away migrant workers, the costs of everything goes up. Those people do an immense amount of work at a really suppressed wage. All of a sudden, we have a 4.2% unemployment rate.

Who's gonna do this work? So we know these things don't work. We know that they can't work. The problem is that getting into the weeds is not working. We know it because it didn't work. That's how we know it's not working. It didn't work. The democratic message needs to be, I hear you, I'm mad too, I'll fix it. And we have to decide what our things are that we wanna fix. And the messaging has to be on point. And it has to be on point, it has to be tight, tight, tight.

Yeah, I don't disagree. And I think those are the things that you gotta work on and you work on them now. I think too, the other thing we have to do is have grievance about things that change. A lot of times we call out, we'll be like, well, how'd that shit work out for you? Lepidate your face, whatever. And then that's the end of it.

But no, from now until then, if anything goes up in price, you've got to start screaming about them. Look at what they did with those stickers that Joe Biden did that stuff. Look at what they did. They, they created a movement of people with stickers, it on fucking the gases, the gas pumps. These are people who are acting as, you know, essentially as information agents for everybody who shows up at that gas pump. They put a billboard up.

So we need to start, what we need to start doing is being like, okay, every single time he does something that's really horrible that is changing how the economy works or subjugating large groups of people, we gotta call it out and then just call it out constantly and like do something like the stickers each time. There's gotta be some kind of movement behind it each time because a lot of times we'll call it out and then be like, but he's doing a bad thing tomorrow, so we're not gonna do anything about it,

we're not gonna dwell on it. No dwelling it, keeping in the news the whole time. The other thing that I think would be really helpful is that when groups become marginalized, at that moment, there needs to be a, even if there's no voting around, we need to say like, you know, like, at the moment that women become further oppressed, there needs to be a large scale,

concentrated reach out to women specifically to register them to vote, to help them understand what they can do to organize around the specific way that they have been oppressed and marginalized. We need to do that for every group because we know the group sees intending to single out, right? And like, you know, the Latino community is a community that broke in this election for Trump. And we know that the majority of those deportations are going to take place out of that Latino community. When they are hurting is the time that we need to support them first and help mobilize

them second. We can't wait until 2022 to say, hey, remember back in 2021 when? Yeah, good point. Right? That's not the right time. Keep the pressure on all the time. Keep the pressure on. Help build community leaders and fund community leaders within these groups.

Yeah. That's another thing we can do. We need to find the community leaders in these groups that have been marginalized and we need to support and fund those community leaders One of the things that they say in this is that America turned to the right America moved to the right and I don't know That that's true. We'll see I think we're gonna see a lot of numbers as time goes on but while more people voted for Trump one of the things I saw is that a lot of people were just upset about the

Economy, they were mad. They needed the inflation was one of the biggest reasons saw is that a lot of people were just upset about the economy. They were mad. They needed inflation was one of the biggest reasons why people voted for Trump, right? That was the one thing that people said that they were doing. I think, and I heard somebody say it this weekend, I think it's such an insightful thing that what we're seeing in the American electorate is a constant flicking of the switch, a turning it on and turning it off again, hoping for a different result. We saw the flip from Obama to Trump and nothing changed. And then they said,

okay fine, and I mean nothing in the sense like the difference between what happens with people getting paychecks. The rich continue to get rich. People continue to grind their gears. They're not able to afford a house. They're not able to afford to get out of an apartment. Rent costs go up. Cost of living goes up. Their wages don't go up.

And they're stuck grinding their gears for years, getting nowhere, right? That's right. Crushing loans for student loans. You know, they're not able to secure a mortgage. All those things are bad for them, right? So then they see and they're not able to secure a mortgage. All those things are bad for them. Right? So then they see and they're like, well, fuck that. This is currently not working. Now flipping the switch to Trump might not change it anything, but they don't have any other. We don't give them another switch. There's no other switch in front of them. So the only thing they can

do is flip this one. It's the one that they can vote with. So they say, well, I'll try to flip the switch. And they do. And then they flip it to Trump. Well, what happened? Nothing. Same old wealth inequality, same wealth disparaging, same rich people getting richer constantly. So they flipped the switch again to Biden.

Same thing happens because these things are slow, incremental change. And a lot of times Biden's hands were tied for a lot of stuff that he wanted to do. He actually had plans to take the burden off a lot of people with student loan debt, right? They've got blocked doing that because the Republicans, what the Republicans want is they want this sort of thing. They want the outcome that they're getting.

They're getting what they want every time. So then they flip the switch again to Trump. The economy is what's doing it. They're just trying to flip the switch again. So what you got to do is have real solutions to hit the ground running as soon as you're elected. And I don't think Trump has those, right? So I think in a lot of ways you're safe. Trump is going to flip that switch. They flipped the switch for Trump. And now I don't think Trump's going to make it any better. I think he's going to make

it significantly worse. And so whether the storm and there's a possibility that you could fix it and then really fix it once you're in office. But that's the thing is that we, and I agree with you completely. We need to really fix it. We need to build functional government. What I think America is fucking sick of, and I agree, is this constant dysfunctional government, a Senate that can't pass anything to filibuster, a fucking house that can't even elect a speaker,

a president who has an agenda that never goes anywhere. I was worried, I remember the day, I was so worried when I realized that Biden, Biden was going to do the right thing, which was to be a responsible steward of the economy at a time when inflation internationally, not nationally, internationally was skyrocketing as a result of the pandemic and the supply chain problems

and all this shit that we all know about. And I was like, fuck, the worst thing to do is to be a responsible steward in a time of crisis. Damn right, you're damn right. Because no one's responsible steward in a time of crisis. Damn right. Damn right. Because no one's going to love you for it. Nobody's going to love you. You're not the fun parent. You're the disciplinarian. That's right. You're not the one who lets them sleep in and stay home from school.

That's exactly right. You're the one who makes them go to school. And you're the bad guy. You're the one that they don't want to hang out with because they're mad at you. Yup. Yup. Yup. And that's the American fucking public is pissed off at their stepdad right now. That's it, because stepdad's like,

you gotta clean your room and do your homework. Exactly right. When you end up as an adult having security college admission and a good job and you're in your own apartment and it's nice and clean and you're like, my stepdad sucks. And you're like, you're only here because I taught you the lessons on to clean your fucking room and go to school.

Like, I knew it. I knew when he was like, look, the only way to fix this is for interest rates to go up and it's a slow process and we don't want to shock the economy. We got to do this soft landing and if you do things too quick, it runs the risk of breaking what we just worked to build.

And so it's going to take time. And the thing is like, we got inflation down to two point fucking seven or eight or 9%, whatever it is right now. I forgot. It's two point something right now, but the problem is like just a little while ago, it was nine point something. And we remember and feel that because inflation

doesn't go back down. If this is a rate of change, it's an upward rate of change. People also don't understand that because inflation doesn't go back down. This is a rate of change. It's an upward rate of change. People also don't understand that when inflation goes down, it doesn't mean you ever get your old prices back. That would be deflation. You never get your old prices back. That's not a thing.

What we're trying to do is change the rate of growth. Being a responsible steward sucks. It's a lousy position. It's a fucking no-win position. Trump doesn't have to do that. What he'll do is he'll try, because he doesn't understand how economics, like the economy works at all,

he's gonna do a bunch of crazy wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tax policy. It's gonna be insane, insane. He's not gonna do half the shit he's talked about. He's got the ghost around Paul. Right. Just, woo, woo, woo. Is Paul even dead? I don't even know.

Oh, no. You know what? In my heart, yes. In my heart. Always. Yeah. See, so always. Well, so it's going to be a fucking mess.

Yeah. It's going to be a fucking mess. It is. It's going to be a mess. Well, hopefully we'll ride that mess in the future. Here we go, buddy. We'll ride that mess in the future. Here we go, buddy. We'll ride that mess in the future. Climate change, a problem so huge,

how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Chiaunovet, climate reporter for the Toronto Star. I meet a lot of smart people doing really inspiring things in this space all the time. Small things that add up to big climate benefits. Small things, big climate to big climate benefits. Small things, big climate, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. The climate solutions podcast is brought to you by SmartFlow

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The best there is! Because I watched this movie called liar liar and the message was don't lie. This story is from the hill. Half of Gen Z voters say they've lied about their votes. According to a survey among the Gen Z voters in the survey, 48% said they had previously lied to those with whom they are close about which candidates received their votes. More than double the 23% of registered voters across all age groups that said they had previously lied to those with whom they are close about which candidates received their votes more than double the 23% of registered voters across all age groups that said they had previously done the same. The intense polarization this election cycle might result in some staying quiet or lying on the topic of their political beliefs when around friends and family. What do you think? Well, I, it's interesting because I took Donovan to vote. Did he lie to you?

I don't know, of course. If he lied to me, I didn't catch him. It's a private ballot. I don't think so. Donovan, I feel like I know Donovan's heart. I feel like I know his values. So I would be shocked. What I did find out, and I'm still blown away by this.

I asked him, I was like, hey, like, you're in college. Are any of your friends voting today? None of them. He's the only person he knows that's voted. Wow. He's the only person in his entire circle of friends. I was so excited to vote when I was 18. Cecil, same thing!

I was talking to Hailey about this. Like, I've never missed it. It felt like this great, like, privilege and responsibility. I was so excited to do it. I couldn't privilege and responsibility. I was so excited to do it. I couldn't wait to vote. I was so excited to vote. When you voted, I'm curious, did you ever have the little tool

that punched a little hole, that punched a little chat? I've always only had Scantrons. I had one time, the little, so there was this little metal Pokedey poker, and you put your ballot into this thing, and then you, Pertunkety, Pertunkety, Pertunkety. metal, Pokedey poker. And you put your, you put your ballot into this thing. Yeah, it's an old timey, it's an old timey computer type thing.

And then you, purtunkety, purtunkety, purtunkety. Yeah, like a punch card. Yeah. And Haley went into one of the old school ones in New York where you walked in and you flipped a switch and it shut the curtains behind you and everything. Now you just walk up to a table

that has like a little like cardboardy divider. I did do an electronic one one time. I've never done that. Yeah. It was an electronic touch screen. So I did do that one time and it was in Chicago. So it changed all my votes to Democrat. Yeah. I went in, I voted dominion. Automatically did it. I just voted dominion.

Actually, I didn't do anything. I just walked in and the men in black guys flashed a thing in my eyes and then I left. It was so interesting when I voted for Hugo Chavez. I didn't know he was going to be on the ballot. He was actually in eyes since I left. It was so interesting when I voted for Hugo Chavez. I didn't know he was gonna be on the ballot. He was actually in the booth with me. He made sure I voted for him. It's so weird he's in every booth. I don't know how he does that.

It's fucking amazing. What do you think about Gen Z Lion though? What do you think about that? I mean, I think- I think there genuinely is something to this if that actually happened. Yeah, I mean, I think that it is something to this if that actually happened. Yeah, I mean, I think that it speaks to the amount of pressure that exists inside of a family

for a head of household to dictate how people vote. Sure. You know, women talked about this. There was like a real, and it didn't materialize, but there was a, oh, there's gonna be a hidden vote. You know, women are gonna show up and their husbands are gonna to pressure them to vote one way or they're going to vote another way.

And that's how Harris is going to win or whatever. You know, I don't think that that obviously didn't happen, but I do think that there's like a lot of pressure. I don't remember growing up, my dad pressuring me to vote one way or another, but things feel so different now. They say close to, so it doesn't necessarily mean family. That's true. So it could be friends too, that they're hanging out with.

I wonder too, if there are some things that are socially acceptable in your groups that you just disagree with, but you don't feel enough power to talk about. And I think that's a bad place for us to be in. It is. I think we need to have conversations and disagreements with those people

and then try to convince each other. Because if you're just going through life to be like, yeah, I'm hanging out with these people, but I don't agree with anything they say, then you just found a group of people just to sit next to. Yeah. There's no connection, right? Because you clearly are not sharing values.

You're not sharing values, right? So I think like people being afraid to say who they voted for is a bad thing. I think like, you know, I really do feel like that and I know that I might get some shit from that. People might say like, fuck that. Like fucking, you should feel like an ass, like you should fucking say you're an asshole if you're a Trump voter and stuff in there. And there's a part of me that doesn't disagree, right? I live across the street from a guy I want to call an asshole every you're a Trump voter and stuff in there and there's a part of me that doesn't disagree, right? I live across the street from a guy I want to call an asshole every time I see him, but I think at the same time I think you know We're not gonna get anywhere

You're never gonna get anywhere if especially with the voter turnout that we just had you'll never get anywhere If we can't convince people who did and if all you do is meet those people with hostility They'll never you'll never convince them of anything. Yeah, I think we've got two important, two important and non-competing things to do. And that is to really find and help people understand what our values are and why we hold them. Yeah.

Right? I think on the left, I think our values are based around, hey, let me care about you. Like that's it, let me care about you. Let me put my money where your mouth is. Let me help feed you. Let me help take care of you. That's the values of the left.

I think if we can help people understand that that is not like what they've been sold that it is and understand the impetus from which that's drawn, the caring kindness based values from which that's drawn. And to say, look, we agree on some basic principles that we want our families to live good lives. We might have to strip ourselves really far back into the basics to find common ground,

but I do agree we have to try to do that to some degree because the numbers don't lie. We are not going to win if we don't do that. But the other thing we have to do is convince people to show up. We've got to have messaging that isn't just, that guy sucks. If the messaging is, that guy sucks, that's just clearly not enough. I think there was messaging, but I think it was too complicated I think it basically boiled down to that guy sucks in there was some stuff I didn't understand yeah, and I think that that's that that's the difficult part I also think too that there's a lot of shared values I think we've been we've been in a lot of ways lied to

When we think about this hard line between Democrats and Republicans. And I want to point people to around the map in the United States, this last time around, hi, gosh, it was six or seven, I want to say eight different ballot measures for abortion. All but I think one of them failed, or were like to like, to either enshrine abortion

or to make it so that it's not available, they all got enshrined, except for the one in Florida, which had a big hill decline. It's 60%. 60%. And still that over 50. Big hill decline, right? But on all the other places, bunch of people came out. In all those places too,

the Republican won. Yeah. Right? The Republican got more votes. There's shared values across that line. We've been sort of talking for a couple of years that abortion stuff on tickets means Democrats win. That might not be true, right? There's a shared value there. Well, now I have one thing, what else do I have in common? What other things do I have in common? How can I be curious about that other person to see what their hardships are?

How do I make their hardships something that we wanna address moving forward? Because if we can't do that, then you never fucking win again. And you can't coalition build and you can't reach across the line. I'm not talking about fucking talking about reaching out to Dick Cheney's fucking daughter.

I'm not talking about trying to reach the crazy fucking MAGA person who literally lives inside Donald Trump's anus, right? I'm not talking about those people. Those people are unreachable, but I'm talking about the everyday person who went out and voted for the inflation for Trump and then voted to save abortion. Yeah, that person might be reachable. That person might be reachable and you got to try to do it because if you don't, you're never going to win again. And I think I

agree with you and I go back to your analogy before because I really liked it. You if you don't, you're never going to win again. And I think I agree with you. And I go back to your analogy before, because I really liked it. You know, there's so many people that showed up and they just wanted to turn it off and on again. Yep. They're just like, turn it off and on again. It doesn't work for me. And they don't understand the rest of it. The magas, those, those hard maga people, I'm right there with you. Those are trash. Like you're not going to convince those people. Those people are gone. That's not who we're talking about. There is a center. There is a center right in America. There is a center in America. Those, and there's a, there's a huge number of just disaffected that aren't getting up and doing the work of being engaged

in civil discourse and politics. We have to find messaging that appeals to those people. We have a responsibility to do that. If we don't do that, we'll lose and lose and lose and lose and lose. I wanna talk about, really quickly talk about the people who I've seen, there's been a lot of push back and back and forth about a bunch of people sort of doing the sort of victory lap that Harris lost

and they were people who were not supporting doing the sort of victory lap that Harris lost, and they were people who were not supporting because of Gaza, right? So there was a group of people, I've seen these sort of things online pop up in different places, specifically on Reddit, and then in other places too, I've seen a couple of people, commenters here and there on different posts on Facebook, et cetera.

And there's a lot of those people, most of those people that I see and read, they almost all say they voted for Harris, but they do sort of point to this group of people who supposedly didn't vote this time because Harris was sort of following too closely in Biden's foreign policy decisions. So she didn't want to separate herself too much from Biden

because separating herself from this administration would have been maybe even worse for her politically. So it's just, she was in a really unenviable position of having to hitch herself to this administration and she never really addressed those concerns well enough for those people. I want to say first, if any of those people are listening and you didn't vote for Harris,

I hope that you went and voted for other people. And I'll say this because if Gaza was really the thing that was upsetting you, and you didn't vote for the other people who have no control over that whatsoever, like your dog catcher or your, you know, county board or your, maybe even your governor, probably even your governor doesn't have any real control over stuff like that or your, your state representatives.

Then you fucked up. Then what you did was you wanted to have a tantrum. You didn't do a protest vote. You'd had a tantrum. That's a tantrum. You didn't do a protest vote. You'd had a tantrum. That's a different thing. And I don't think that people who are planning on trying to win people over should try to reach out to you next time if you just decided not to vote because of that. Because if you did do that, then they can't count on you in the future because what you want is somebody who 100% follows exactly what you want is somebody who 100%

follows exactly what you want. You're like, give me a unicorn and we're like, we're out of unicorns. You're like, well, fuck it. Well, then you're not a reliable voter. There's way more reliable voters out there that I can target that I know will show up. And so you're self selecting out of the picture if you made that decision. So I hope if you are a listener and you didn't vote because of Gaza, I hope you voted down ticket listener and you didn't vote because of Gaza, I hope you voted down ticket. Because if you didn't, I don't think you really did a protest vote.

Yeah, no, and I wanna address, like when people were exit polled, the people that voted did not identify Gaza as a major factor. I don't think that Gaza was a major factor in this election. I'm not saying it wasn't anything, but I don't think that Gaza was a major factor in this election. I'm not saying it wasn't anything, but I don't think that, because I don't think, I think when we see the numbers, the numbers of turnout this year will be very close to the numbers in turnout from 2020.

I think when it's, when it all comes back in, I strongly suspect that those numbers won't be much different. They'll be smaller. I don't think they'll be like hugely smaller. I don't think they would be margin of victory smaller. Like I don't. If you protested and you just didn't show up, like that doesn't make any sense. We've talked about that a million times. They don't, like, it just, that does not make any sense.

You didn't accomplish what I think you thought you were going to accomplish. Because like what Cecil and I are now talking about make any sense. You didn't accomplish what I think you thought you were going to accomplish. Because like what Cecil and I are now talking about is finding ways for the Democratic Party to win. And finding ways to win means building coalitions. And that means working with the center and that means working with the center right and finding ways to draw those people into our messages. That's like, you do not have to abandon your progressive ideals in order to do this work.

In fact, you shouldn't and Cecil and I have not and we are not talking about abandoning your progressive ideals. Yeah, no, I agree. I wanna convince people of my progressive ideals. And I want to accomplish progressive policy goals. That cannot be done when you lose elections. Yeah. You regress.

Right. You regress. When you lose elections, that does not draw the party, the Democratic Party, further left. That pulls the party further right because they look and say, what do we need to do to reach those people in the center? That is what happens every time. The history is clear on this. So like that protest vote, it didn't accomplish I think what you maybe hoped for to accomplish.

I don't think that that got us what you were hoping for. I don't think that saved a God's in life. I don't think that it did. I think we have, we as people who have progressive ideals, we only get the results of those ideals when we have the power to enact them. And we only get that power to enact them when we win elections.

We have to win those elections. People aren't voting. They're not showing up to vote. If they show up to vote, they have the power. Yeah. They gotta show up. And I think too, I think you're absolutely right. I think there's, there is a group of people in this country that keep on screaming and saying, you know, we got an, we got a dumb fucking email this week about like, you guys did the same thing and like we're the Democratic party. It's so funny. We get a message from someone who's like, try the same thing in 2016 and try it in 2024.

You see where it got you. And they, they, they couldn't. Here's the thing. We get so many emails where this person cannot even write a sentence and they'll just send this screed of nothing to you. And it takes me 10 minutes to try to decipher even what they're saying. And what they're mad about is that we're not reaching farther left to pull more people in. And I'm like, well, you people self-select out.

Right. Like, if you're self-selecting out, you're not a reliable voter. Yeah. Why should I target you? If all you're going to do is throw a tantrum, then I can't count on you next time. I'm going to go for somebody who reliably votes and try to flip them first. Then I'm going to go to try to target somebody who's never voted before, because they might be easier to convince than you.

And you're the last person I'm gonna come to, because you're the hardest to convince. So all those people are ahead of you in line. You're self-selecting yourself out. If you stayed in, you could at least talk to more people about all the things you wanna implement. And you could constantly harp on people that people about all the things you want to implement and you could constantly Harp on people that we need to implement those things and they would be easier to implement because the person in power is closer to

Your ideals. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. You cannot be a force in American politics by not engaging the political system Yeah, that's nothing that's not sensical You like you are not an important force in the political system when you do not engage and participate in that system. The system ignores you. You can say that's wrong. You can say they shouldn't. You can say you're leaving all these votes on the table.

Even if all that's true, the reality is that the parties will continue to do this. We know it because historically it's what they continue to do. Yeah. You want, if you want change, you've got to win first. You've got to win first. As soon as you lose, as soon as you lose, you're not making any change. The person who sent us that email would not have sent us that email that mad if Harris had won.

They're mad that Trump won. But the alternative was Harris, who they presumably didn't want us to vote for. That makes no sense. Really? You're mad. There were only two choices. You're mad the one over here won. I get it.

Say I'm big mad too. You're mad. But I selected the other guy. I told you to select the other guy. If the other guy had won, I wouldn't have gotten a shit email about it. So I'm baffled. What the fuck is that nonsense?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna be doing a long form episode this Thursday. And then we shifted our schedule because we wanted it We were going to do a funny show and it was supposed to release today when we're recording on a Thursday But we we recorded the live stream earlier in the week and we had to move our production schedule around so we are just shifting

Everything back so the live stream week the normal week that we would release a live stream. They'll be a funny show We're gonna do a funny show that yeah, so alright, so that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna leave you, like we always do, with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble,

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