On this episode of Thick & Thin, we're joined by writer, comedian, podcaster, and all-around wokeness extraordinaire, Tatana Jenkins. We talk about how she got her start as a writer, how she became a hit on the internet, and why she thinks the woke movement is a cult like a religious cult. Also, we talk about her new book, "Woke: How To Be Woke in the 21st Century," which is out now, and how she feels about the current state of wokeness in the internet age. We also talk about what it means to be woke, and whether or not we should all be waking up to the fact that we're all woke. And, of course, we have a special guest on the pod, comedian and writer, Sarah Abdurrahman, AKA the Queen of the Woke. Sarah is a writer and podcaster who has written for the New York Times, Slate, and the New Republic, and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. She's also the author of the book, Woke: What's the Problem with Woke? which you should read if you haven't already done so. And if you don't already know her work, you're in for a chance to do so, you should definitely do so! Sarah also has her own podcast, Too Woke, which is on all of the social medias, and you should check it out! and subscribe to it out on Apple Podcasts, too! if you're a fan of the podcast, too woke, you'll get a free copy of Sarah's new book called, What's a Woke by Sarah's book, What's That Good Thing? and more importantly, she's also on Insta: it's a good one! and it's free to read it on your favourite podcasting platform? You can also subscribe on Podchaser and subscribe on iTunes, too watch Sarah's podcast on YouTube. and leave us a review and tell us what you think about it! What do you think of it's good, Sarah's work is good, what's good and what do you're thinking of it? if it's inspiring you think it's great, and what would you'd like to hear more like that's good enough? We'd love to hear what you're not good enough and what kind of thing is good?
00:00:55.000So the girl is a composite of four different women put together because I was worried about, you know, I don't want to get sued or anything like that.
00:01:11.000But also I love that she's deadpan because it means that she sort of, look, every time I post something, it's like there's this po-faced woman staring at you, daring you.
00:02:12.000Never ceases to amaze me how angry people get on Twitter, even with legitimate causes.
00:02:18.000But I watch that and I think, it's fun because I can satirize the left and the more liberal side of things through her, but then I can argue with the right-wing Trump supporters and stuff, and I can mock them as well.
00:02:30.000So you get to have a go at the extremes.
00:04:28.000And then when things are written down, you can see them over and over again.
00:04:31.000If you made a mistake and just said something in normal human conversation, which is how we're supposed to communicate and how we normally communicate.
00:04:47.000So there was a guy who was the editor of a cookery magazine in the UK. And a vegan freelance journalist emailed him saying, I'd love to do a thing about vegans.
00:04:56.000And he replied and made some joke about, yeah, you can do something about how we'll force feed them meat and we'll make them eat each other.
00:05:15.000Whereas, like, saying to someone, look, calling out a mistake or calling someone out for something they've done that you perceive to be bad, that's all well and good.
00:05:22.000But when you're using it to advertise how virtuous you are and how you're able to take someone down for the mistake that they made, That troubles me, because then it's no longer really about the issue.
00:05:34.000Well, I think what we're dealing with when you're talking about woke culture, and I love that you made this comparison to radical religion, because I think they're the same patterns.
00:05:45.000I think human beings have patterns that they follow, and you could say that you're not religious.
00:05:50.000But you follow these extremely rigid ideologies that don't allow for any variation whatsoever.
00:06:24.000Well, it happened with J.K. Rowling, didn't it?
00:06:26.000It happened with J.K. Rowling because she defended It was a British case.
00:06:30.000It was the woman who was fired from her job because she posted some tweets saying that she didn't believe that sex was a mutable characteristic.
00:06:37.000She said there are men and women and you can't change it.
00:06:39.000Now, that's her opinion and she's entitled to have it.
00:06:41.000But the judge in the UK ruled that no, that's not a legitimate opinion to hold and you can be fired for that.
00:06:53.000Even though she's like, she's so woke, because she keeps retrospectively deciding that her characters are gay and all sort of stuff like that.
00:08:41.000The female character, I don't care about that character, so let's have a silent most of the time.
00:08:45.000He's making a point about sort of restoring Sharon Tate to an iconic kind of status that she was denied by the Manson family.
00:08:51.000It's a very interesting artistic decision.
00:08:53.000And if you watch a film like that and you go away and all you can think is...
00:08:56.000Oh, the women didn't speak enough, there wasn't enough diversity, then you're not engaging with the artwork.
00:09:01.000The BBC did a review of Game of Thrones by series by series where they judged each episode as good or bad on the percentage points of how much female characters speak.
00:10:05.000But I've been thinking about this a lot because I think this gets to the heart of what is the problem with the woke culture and what the foundation of their belief system is.
00:10:14.000And it's to do with this idea of, when you hear it all the time, power structures in society, you know, that there's this kind of And that's why they think there needs to be more representation and things like that in these films because they think that influences culture and influences people and maintains and sustains power and everything like that.
00:10:51.000Because your stuff's probably going to suck.
00:10:53.000Because you're thinking about that more than you're thinking about the singular artistic vision that you might have.
00:10:59.000You're trying to put it through the filter of intersectionality and all these different variables that you have to take into consideration of how you're going to be criticized and what you're going to...
00:11:06.000Like, as soon as you compromise yourself...
00:11:22.000I mean, when I saw that last Star Wars film and you got the lesbian kiss, like a two-second of lesbian kiss, and I know what they're doing.
00:11:29.000And I don't care about that sort of stuff.
00:11:30.000You know, by all means, make a And they're rabid.
00:11:51.000They're rabid about their need for compliance.
00:11:56.000There's a crazy one that I... I'll send it to you, Jamie, because I was sending it to a bunch of people about them calling for Captain Marvel to step down.
00:12:19.000Because, I mean, is that how the comic book was originally?
00:12:22.000Was the original comic book a gay woman?
00:12:24.000Well, so, no, I'm not a comic book fan, but I know that this is something that's particularly affected comic books in terms of Thor and Iman.
00:12:31.000We need Brie Larson to step down from her role to prove she's an ally of social justice and ensure a gay woman of color plays the role.
00:12:40.000Let Monica, the original female, and all caps, BLACK Captain Marvel, instead of whitewashing characters for the benefit of the straight white men running Disney.
00:12:51.000First of all, Disney is run by a woman.
00:12:54.000This should be clarified, almost positive.
00:12:58.000The CEO of entertainment at Disney is a woman.
00:13:43.000She tries to ban male writers from press conference.
00:13:46.000Brie Larson made a speech about how she felt that there were too many male critics assessing her work and she wanted to actually implement some kind of strategy to prevent that from happening.
00:14:03.000Because if you're really woke, you'll step down and show that you're an ally for social justice and give up those millions of dollars to some other person.
00:14:09.000But by the way, tell the studio that you're going to do that.
00:14:14.000They're not going to fucking just decide, oh, you want us to cast a black gay woman?
00:14:22.000And does it matter which black gay woman?
00:14:25.000Does it have to be someone who can act, maybe?
00:14:26.000They have to be the gayest, blackest woman you can find, because if you have a half-black and kinda gay, pansexual woman, that's a part of the patriarchy.
00:14:41.000You know, because he's 50% white, he's 50% problematic.
00:14:44.000You can never have that kind of purity.
00:14:46.000The example I was giving with Camille Piley, because she's an academic, who was asked to step down by her own students, and they said, to the faculty, you need to replace her with a queer woman of colour.
00:16:18.000They think that any knowledge that you think you have is based on your background and the power structures and all that sort of stuff, right?
00:16:27.000And it really foxes them, though, when they end up talking to a queer woman of colour, say, who agrees with me, and then it fucks up their entire position.
00:18:37.000And he goes, you're sitting there, eating your food, you cooked yourself, and there's starving kids on TV, and you get all bummed out, and you're like, hey, why don't you feed them?
00:20:05.000About, you know, Terry Crews, who's a fucking super athlete, you know, and some guy grabbed his dick and he metooed this guy for grabbing his dick.
00:20:13.000Some drunken agent or whatever it was, you know, in a joke way.
00:20:27.000Do you think in any world that Terry Crews, who is a fucking tank of a man, was actually scared of this guy?
00:20:35.000Like, this is, come on, this is not a victim in the sense of, like, a helpless person.
00:20:39.000I get the fact that this guy was an agent, maybe had some power over his career, but the way Joey said, it was a positive, it was talking about all the positive attributes of Terry Crews.
00:20:55.000They didn't want to deal with the bullshit.
00:20:56.000So I wondered about that, because when I was watching the comedy at the store the other day here, and I just thought, it feels different here.
00:21:44.000And she said to me, you know, you don't understand because I have to go up to comics every night after they're set and explain to them why they shouldn't tell these jokes.
00:22:59.000They're pushing that words are violence, and that you can be violent with words.
00:23:03.000So that's interesting, because I... I think you're probably right in a lot of cases.
00:23:07.000You know, when they say, like, if they see a certain image or something, it makes them feel like they've been physically attacked or they hear a certain phrase or whatever.
00:23:14.000And they support each other in this nonsense.
00:23:16.000But then I see some of them bawling their eyes out, crying and shaking.
00:23:21.000And I think that's an authentic emotion, right?
00:23:25.000Maybe it's disingenuous in some cases, but maybe some people have actually, and this would scare me more, that some people have actually convinced themselves that it is a kind of form of violence.
00:24:14.000When someone gets into a position of power over someone, whether it's a CEO of a company, before the Me Too movement that's out of control and is trying to fuck all of his employees and treats people like shit and sexually harasses everybody, goddammit, that seems like an archetype.
00:24:34.000Well, I think you get that with the woke thing, and that the structure of wokeness is just a scaffolding for this sort of antiquated, not antiquated, excuse me, this ancient system of behavior,
00:24:52.000this religious system, and it slides right into that.
00:25:08.000He wrote a book recently called Dominion.
00:25:10.000He makes this case that with the absence of Christianity, in comes wokeness, that one sort of just follows from the other in a kind of – because they have The similar need to proselytize, to convert.
00:25:22.000The similar intolerance of anyone who might not perceive the world in the way that you do.
00:25:55.000But they seem to occupy all these major roles in television, in the arts, in media, in journalism, in the law, you know, and therefore they have disproportionate clout.
00:26:09.000And then you convert children to think that way.
00:26:12.000You get an impressionable 17-year-old who's a freshman in college and they find this and it resonates with them.
00:26:20.000And also they can develop social clout by adhering to this religion the same way a radical, you know, fill in the blank with whatever Christian, whatever...
00:26:30.000sect of religion you'd like to compare it to.
00:26:56.000They say quite explicitly, you know, we are activists as well as scholars, which means they're pushing a political agenda, which, of course, it didn't used to be that.
00:27:03.000The academia used to be about objectivity and presenting different ideas and getting to the truth, but they already know the truth.
00:27:09.000And they're going to ensure that you wouldn't even get on the course if you didn't sort of basically subscribe.
00:27:16.000Again, it's the same sort of pattern that you see in dictators.
00:27:18.000They're a dictator in terms of intellectual pursuits.
00:27:23.000They're dictating to these children how you must think and behave.
00:27:28.000And because of their position of power, because of their education, their grasp of the English language, the fact that they speak so eloquently and passionately about this, they're incredibly convincing and charismatic, a lot of them, and it's effective.
00:27:42.000And that's why so many people come from that, and so overwhelmingly left-leaning.
00:30:51.000So they just sort of repeated it and got a headline out of it.
00:30:54.000I mean, I get why that advertises her commitment to inclusivity and diversity.
00:31:01.000But 99% of people are thinking, I don't care about that.
00:31:03.000Why don't you talk about the fact that I can't afford anything?
00:31:05.000And that's why, if you are truly left-leaning, and if you truly care about getting a left-leaning government in power, You need to make it back class again.
00:31:15.000Because this is one of the reasons why, like, to Tanya, I wanted her to be posh and rich.
00:32:19.000The reason why so many working class people voted for Brexit and indeed voted against Labour in the last election is because no one's looking out for their interests anymore.
00:32:28.000They're worried about other things like, like you say, mansplaining, mansplaining, like toxic masculinity.
00:32:54.000No, but I don't want to have to check the contents of someone's underwear every time I have a discussion with them.
00:32:59.000I don't want to make those judgments on that basis.
00:33:01.000Well, you need to understand and check yourself because the contents of someone's underwear does not mean that that's the gender in which they identify with.
00:36:17.000Is it a need to feel that you are the one pursuing the truth?
00:36:19.000It's certainly – there's instincts that we all have to be a part of a group and to be accepted as a part of a group, and one of the ways that you show that you're a part of that group is by rigidly adhering to the doctrine.
00:36:33.000Well, here's one way that we might legitimately tackle this.
00:36:37.000I'm going to say something very optimistic now.
00:36:40.000If more people on the left can turn against wokeness, I think this will really help.
00:36:45.000I think once they realize that it is undermining all the things they stand for, right?
00:37:02.000It actually does all the things that the social justice movement claims that they they don't want to do and that they want to fight and if more people on the left sort of turn and the other thing here's the other thing They all think we live in this world full of Nazis and fascists and these evil crypto fascists around every corner,
00:37:33.000It's almost like you're acting as their PR. Yeah, you're almost making it more acceptable to be a Nazi, because you're calling everyone a Nazi, and you're also crying wolf.
00:37:41.000So because you're crying wolf, when someone sees an act, like Charlottesville was a big wake-up call for a lot of people, because they're like, holy fuck, those are real Nazis.
00:38:20.000I mean, it's insane, but she criticizes other feminists for being preposterous, and when she does that, people decide that she has not toed the line.
00:38:28.000She's not rigidly adhering to the ideology.
00:38:32.000She's not woke enough, so they attack her.
00:38:33.000She's what you would think of as maybe a centrist feminist?
00:38:37.000If you think that that's fascism, then you don't know what fascism is.
00:38:39.000And also, that's really offensive to people who have had to live through fascistic regimes to say that Christina Hoff Summers is a fucking fascist.
00:38:45.000It is, but I don't think they care what the previous definition of fascism is.
00:38:53.000I think we've got to stand by that definition.
00:38:55.000We've got to root it in the actual definition.
00:38:58.000If you want to say that Jordan Peterson is a fascist, as some people do, even though there isn't someone who is more on record, whose opposition to tyranny is more on record.
00:39:08.00040 years of this stuff and it's all online, should you wish to check it out.
00:39:12.000But that involves a degree of research and actually knowing what you're talking about.
00:39:16.000He gets pointed out as one of the more problematic guests that I have on when people point to the fact that I'm some sort of an alt-right gateway.
00:40:46.000But now it's that thing of you see someone be called a Nazi or a racist even or a homophobe and you think that probably isn't right.
00:40:58.000And that means if you do actually ever have to use those words like those awful people in Charlottesville where you should reserve that word so that we can identify those people in our midst because they do exist.
00:41:08.000They are dangerous but there's not many of them.
00:41:10.000But if the word has become so, it doesn't mean that anymore.
00:41:14.000It's this thing called concept creep, you know, where the idea of the word just spreads and spreads so that anyone with the slightest point of political disagreement can suddenly be branded as neo-fascist.
00:41:23.000That's what the McCarthyism era was all about.
00:42:19.000I mean, I see that as, for a start, there's massive internal contradictions within that.
00:42:24.000Like, we're seeing this at the moment with sort of lesbians versus trans people and gay rights versus trans rights, women's rights versus, you know, that's not a coherent, it's not like those people are all the same.
00:47:44.000But it'd be one thing if, I mean, I don't support violence anyway, but it'd be one thing if Antifa were going after actual fascists.
00:47:50.000But when they're just pepper spraying someone with a MAGA hat, or, you know, or going after Andy Ngo, you know, so a gay Vietnamese person.
00:48:11.000If you set yourself as this kind of moral arbiter, and you're doing everything in virtue, but you're hitting someone with a bite clock rather than engaging them in conversation, then how do you even talk to that?
00:48:20.000How do you even address that, you know?
00:48:25.000What they're willing to do is they're willing to attack people that they disagree with.
00:48:30.000They're willing to shut down discussion.
00:48:32.000They're willing to, like, if someone wants to come and speak, And that person happens to be right wing.
00:48:38.000They feel completely 100% justified in shutting down the speech, hitting fire alarms, telling people they don't feel safe, attacking people that are trying to come into the venue, screaming at old people.
00:48:51.000I mean, we've seen all this stuff that happens with Antifa.
00:48:54.000This is a serious problem that I think is going to get worse here very quickly, right?
00:48:57.000Because up until now, I've always thought you guys are in a really great position.
00:49:01.000You've got your First Amendment, you know?
00:49:03.000So people will always be able to say whatever they want in this country, you know?
00:49:06.000But you're seeing the cracks in that ideal very, very clearly.
00:49:09.000And some people are calling for hate speech laws so that the First Amendment doesn't apply to what they call hate speech.
00:49:15.000And that would be the – rather than just – I mean, yeah, you've got people – Setting off fire alarms, literally stopping people from speaking that way.
00:49:21.000But I think there are people who are moving towards legislating against certain forms of speech.
00:49:26.000Well, it's very important that this be taught and that people understand that the answer to bad speech is good speech.
00:49:36.000That's always been the answer, to get two people that have opposing ideas and have them talk and have one person who has the better ideas, who's more articulate and understands it and understands the consequences of these evil ideas and lays it out so that everybody watching can go,
00:50:16.000You should be celebrating the idea that these people are going to get a platform and be debated and be repudiated.
00:50:23.000But they're worried that that person's going to indoctrinate someone and they think that they're absolutely right and that person's absolutely wrong.
00:50:29.000And this is the argument for deplatforming people from Twitter and YouTube and all these different social media platforms.
00:51:49.000What's the best way to deal with those people?
00:51:50.000Is it to say we're going to no-platform all the people who are going to indoctrinate them so they never get to hear that?
00:51:56.000But we live in a world with the internet where people can go on their various chat rooms and there they can go into those areas and they can hear those ideas unchallenged.
00:52:27.000So they want to de-platform people off of social media so that those people who have these problematic ideas can't drag someone over to Stormfront or whatever radical website or...
00:52:40.000But we know from the history of censorship that it never works.
00:53:05.000So in the UK, there was a far right party called the British National Party, which does technically still exist, but no, there's like 10 people in it.
00:53:12.000And the leader of that party, there was a moment where they were winning millions of votes, right?
00:53:17.000Because there were a lot of people who were disenfranchised, particularly in working class areas, and they were desperate for some kind of...
00:53:21.000And the head of that party, Nick Griffin, went on to our main political discussion program called Question Time, BBC One, Prime Time, and he was humiliated.
00:53:30.000And as soon as that happened, the BNP were over within a matter of months.
00:53:35.000It exposed to those normal people, the ludicrous and absurd nature of his viewpoint.
00:53:41.000And that, I think, is a really heartening idea, that actually, if you hear more from these people, they are self-discrediting, right?
00:53:49.000But if you ban them, you're almost giving them a kind of glamour, a kind of martyrdom status that they don't deserve.
00:53:55.000And that, I think, attracts a lot of people to their worldview.
00:54:01.000There's definitely something to be said for that.
00:54:08.000But I'm also not in favor of these people being able to espouse hate speech everywhere they go and to be able to indoctrinate people as well.
00:54:16.000It's like, I don't know what the actual...
00:54:48.000So there's a website, the government's website on hate crime has a paragraph on non-crime hate incidents, okay?
00:54:55.000And what they specifically say is if you've heard something, if someone said something and it's offensive to you and you believe that that person said something because you were one of the protected characteristics because of race, gender, sexuality, disability, whatever, then you report that to the police and it gets logged in the hate crime statistics as a hate crime.
00:56:43.000And we have people in our country who have been...
00:56:45.000Do you know how many people are arrested in the UK? I'll just ask, how many people do you think are arrested every year in the UK for offensive comments they posted online?
00:59:27.000Not only that, Cybercrime Intelligence Unit investigated all of his tweets, emails, his entire background to find any remote connection to a fascist group or a far-right group.
00:59:39.000So basically, in the UK, we now have someone who has been prosecuted because the judge believes that he knows what's secretly going on, what his secret intention is.
00:59:48.000And the actual phrasing of the law under which he was prosecuted is that it is deemed grossly offensive, which is a very subjective idea, something that is grossly offensive.
00:59:57.000Well, particularly when the fact that you have 3,000 different views, or 3 million different views, and no complaints?
01:00:09.000And I know the guy, because I defended him at the time, and then of course people said that I'm a Nazi apologist, which is utterly, utterly ludicrous.
01:00:45.000He said, I had to get a background check for my job, and it turns out the report is a 300-plus page PDF of every single tweet I've ever liked.
01:01:21.000Merry Christmas to the toddler I saw running across Trader Joe's with a giant bottle of peppermint vodka and mom running after him like, no, [...
01:01:43.000He's making a joke about a toddler that he saw running across Trader Joe's with a giant bottle of peppermint vodka that it had taken from its mom and the mom was like, no, no, no, give me that, give me that, give me that.
01:01:55.000So they flagged it because there was alcohol in it.
01:02:00.000There's nothing offensive about that whatsoever.
01:02:03.000I actually don't understand why that would be an issue.
01:02:05.000Because they want you to be scared as fuck.
01:02:07.000They want to be able to control your thinking and they don't want you to ever do anything that could come back to hurt the company in any way and mess with their bottom line.
01:03:54.000You can scour that motherfucker forever and try to find some bigotry there.
01:03:58.000The gentleman's name, if you want to read this, folks, you want to read along with his internet name is K-M-L-E-F-R-A-N-C. K-M-L-E-F-R-A-N-C. K-M-L-E-F-R-A-N-C on Twitter.
01:04:33.000And more often than not, sorry, I didn't mean to be patronising, but it's just that whenever I hear the word being used, it's always by bigots who can't tolerate your opinion.
01:04:40.000It's like, you're a bigot, you don't agree with everything I say and therefore you're a bigot.
01:04:44.000You just undermine your whole fucking point.
01:05:54.000I mean, if that guy, the big dick energy guy, that gets you flagged, you're a bad person because you thought that that guy who knew he was going to win a million dollars so he called his dad.
01:06:28.000You know, these sinners and their homosexuality getting together and laying with men and you could see the boner just developing in their pants.
01:06:39.000And then they always get caught with a rent boy doing crystal meth or something like that.
01:06:42.000Yeah, and people who just have just a...
01:06:44.000Even if you're adhering to this woke ideology and you're part of the cult, if you just have a few fucked up sketchy things in your past, You know that they could get you.
01:06:54.000And so you just stay on the offensive.
01:07:15.000I know guys who are creepers who identify as male feminists so that they could get women to think that they're woke and they're a part of the good squad and good guys.
01:07:24.000It's just, it's a transparent ploy by sneaky men to try to fuck.
01:08:09.000No, I would never get rid of it because I think it's empowering for some people that have grown up in suppressive environments and to be able to establish yourself as someone who's resisting something that you fought against.
01:08:20.000Like if you grew up in a horrible environment, like maybe your dad beat your mom and you were told you're a piece of shit because you're a woman and then you finally get in with this group that tells you, no, as a feminist, you're empowered.
01:08:32.000You're a powerful woman and I don't want to get rid of any labels.
01:08:37.000But I would be on board with that, totally, if I thought that modern-day feminism was anything to do with empowerment.
01:10:39.000Well, cops always say that when someone's an arsonist, they're almost always at the scene of the crime.
01:10:43.000They always show up to watch their handiwork.
01:10:44.000Well, I'm going to think about this more then.
01:10:46.000Because, I mean, you're sort of putting into my mind now this idea that there's a lot of the woke people are doing it in order to cover their own tracks.
01:10:52.000Like a self-preservation kind of thing, you know?
01:13:31.000So, the journalist had done this really interesting investigative journalism stuff, like Rosaminda Irwin, her name was, and she'd read loads of my political articles, because I write these articles for Spike magazine, and she'd read an advanced copy of the book, and she'd seen that some of the quotations match up.
01:13:45.000And then she emailed me saying, I think you're Titania McGrath, can you confirm or deny this?
01:13:49.000And I fudged it, you know, I emailed back.
01:13:51.000I didn't lie, but I sort of fudged it.
01:13:53.000She phoned friends of mine to ask whether it was me, and I hadn't told anyone.
01:14:38.000Yeah, I know, but I didn't, I still didn't want to, because now, you know what the big difference is now?
01:14:42.000Is that everyone who hates her, and by the way, like, the social justice activists, their venom for this character is off the fucking scale.
01:15:33.000And one of them from 2012 said, call me romantic, but I love it when I see gay couples that are so comfortable that they can kiss in public.
01:16:50.000That if you leave, it's so terrifying that someone could kill you.
01:16:53.000But that is the same kind of religious thinking, religious crazed ideology, adherence to the dogma, no matter what, that would allow someone to think that I could be homophobic by saying that I think it's great when gay guys are so comfortable they kiss in public.
01:17:11.000It's because they know you are in your mind.
01:17:13.000They do this incredible mind reading thing.
01:18:34.000I think that's why there are all these weird alliances going on now.
01:18:38.000I mean, I did this event recently with Peter Boghossian, who I know you've spoken to, and James Lindsay.
01:18:41.000And we were giving these talks at this event in London, and we were sitting there at lunch, and there was, like, the head of the Atheist Society sitting next to this evangelical Christian pastor from America, and there were people of no faith and all faith and left and right, and it's like, but we all believe in liberty.
01:18:55.000Like, ultimately, we all care about freedom and individual freedom, and that's the new fault line.
01:19:01.000It's people who believe in liberty for the individual or people who want more authority to control you, and that's the real conflict.
01:19:07.000Well, if the right really wanted to bring more people over, Yeah.
01:19:34.000If they just started a few things like that, good lord, the amount of people that would jump off that fucking ship, that sinking ship of liberal ideas, because it's infested with rats.
01:19:46.000It's infested with rats that are chewing a hole in the very hull of the ship.
01:19:51.000That happened in the UK. It was the conservative government that pushed through gay marriage.
01:19:55.000Because actually that's quite a conservative idea.
01:20:01.000Well, maybe that's what they need to do.
01:20:03.000But I think definitely if you support the left, you need to try and dissuade the Democrats and the Labor Party from going woke because they alienate all of their major...
01:20:12.000They do, and they don't even realize they're doing it.
01:20:13.000But the problem is in this country, there's no room for a third party.
01:20:16.000People don't appreciate it or believe in it.
01:20:18.000No, you don't have that option, do you?
01:20:21.000Like Gary Johnson ran last year and some people voted for him.
01:20:24.000But what's really happened in this country previously, historically, is that when someone charismatic came along that's an independent, they really just take votes away from the Democrats.
01:21:07.000And he got on TV and bought an entire half hour of primetime television to show people how they're getting fucked by the Federal Reserve and taxes.
01:21:16.000And he was explaining, take a look over there.
01:23:27.000There's certain aspects of people that it's hard to tell, but some people just don't seem genuine.
01:23:36.000And political people in particular, like when people are running for political office, that's when that shit really stands out.
01:23:43.000Because over and over and over again, you see them doing these speeches, and over and over and over again, you see them talking about things.
01:23:50.000And some people can sense it and some people can't.
01:25:54.000And I think Trump's being very smart whenever he sort of brings people like Ilhan Omar into the limelight of focuses on AOC and focuses on them because it means that you start thinking Democrat is woke.
01:26:15.000I want to see a proper left-wing party that cares about class issues, that cares about money, that cares about the poverty line, social mobility, whether you're microaggressions or whatever.
01:26:26.000Compassion for people that are trying to get by in this life.
01:27:09.000Where people call him some sort of a piece of shit and an enabler and a Horrible things they say to him for just talking about science and statistics and showing the trends that we live in.
01:27:19.000Probably one of the greatest times to be alive ever.
01:27:22.000But that's also why people are finding things to complain about.
01:27:31.000I think the way that people speak at the moment is that The UK and the US at the moment are the most bigoted, racist, homophobic societies they've ever been.
01:27:39.000They're the most tolerant they've ever been.
01:27:41.000And what's weird about that is the statistics bear it out.
01:27:44.000So all of the studies show that the UK, Great Britain, is the most tolerant major European country.
01:27:51.000Even the EU's own research into this shows that tolerance towards immigration, for instance, in the UK has become so much more improved since the Brexit vote.
01:28:01.000And for some reason, as things get better and better and better, and society gets more progressive and more tolerant, claims of bigotry and racism get more and more escalated.
01:28:10.000And that is, I think, something we could challenge.
01:28:14.000Firstly, let's get the left to be left again and fuck all the woke nonsense.
01:28:38.000A proper oppression is what dictators do, is what tyrants do.
01:28:42.000It's what they do in North Korea, where you fuck up, they'll arrest your whole family and put your whole family in prison.
01:28:47.000And ironically, leaning towards wokeness actually starts to create oppression, like you see that guy who got his fucking Twitter check for liking funny memes.
01:28:56.000So how is it the case that those sort of tactics – I'm not saying that that's an authoritarian company, but those tactics are straight from the authoritarian paper.
01:29:05.000So how is it that they can't see the hypocrisy of that, that they can't see that this is where this is leading?
01:29:12.000I think they probably had no idea it was going to be that extreme when they first implemented it, and they just wanted to keep problematic people out of their office.
01:29:20.000If you're a person who is, like, say if you're hiring someone and you find out A few weeks after they're on the job that they have some really horrific posts on Twitter.
01:30:04.000So they found out who he is, and then they let his boss know, and they sent copies of all the shit that he had written on Reddit, and he got fired for it.
01:30:13.000But these sorts of initiatives that are set up, you can't trust them to make those important distinctions between something that is very serious and something that could obviously end up with all sorts of issues.
01:30:23.000Yeah, but if you're an employer, the last thing you want is one of those guys slipping through your radar where you don't know that this guy's working for you.
01:30:52.000I only realized this properly when I did meet that Count Dankula guy because he showed me the Discord server, you know, the chat room they all go into.
01:30:58.000And I was like, oh, I can't deal with this stuff.
01:31:01.000Like, some of the stuff that was in there, I was like, I can't.
01:31:03.000But what I could clearly see is it's like big kids.
01:31:13.000So the Kekistan flag, which is a satire of identity politics, a nation of identitarians, you know, and then they modeled it on the Nazi flag to take the piss, right?
01:31:23.000But, of course, if you don't know that world and you're not from that world and you see that flag, you think, oh, my God, that's a Nazi flag.
01:31:29.000And so if you don't know, if you don't immerse yourself in that world, like I'm from an outsider's perspective, it took someone to show me for me to sort of get it.
01:31:38.000Jordan had to explain the whole thing to me.
01:31:40.000And, you know, and Jordan has taken so much heat because he posed for a photograph with these guys that had him hold up the flag of Kekistan.
01:31:49.000And he thought it was funny because he thinks that these sort of These memes.
01:31:57.000He's interested in the fact that people interpret them so severely.
01:32:11.000The counter-argument to that is, well, couldn't genuine fascists use this as cover?
01:32:16.000That's the counter-argument that people use.
01:32:19.000One thing that Dankler told me is that what happens is they'll spot these actual neo-Nazis coming into the server and they'll deal with them.
01:32:33.000That humour and Well, that's a great way, also, if you wanted to break up a group, you infiltrate and act like a Nazi with that Kekistan flag, and then all of a sudden, everyone's a Nazi who's associated with that frog.
01:32:46.000I mean, that's a classic government move.
01:32:49.000I think it's incumbent on people to try and understand the culture that they're criticizing.
01:32:56.000My friend Stephen Knight, he's an interviewer, and he went and interviewed a bunch of people on a march with the Kekistan flag and was asking them about their views and whether they're racist.
01:33:05.000And when he spoke to them, it was quite clear that they're part of this internet culture and they think it's funny and they think it's trolling and all of that sort of stuff.
01:33:12.000And once you realise that, if you have a generous interpretation of that, then you understand that this isn't this horrible right.
01:33:39.000They can't wait to find it under every stone in every corner.
01:33:42.000Well, that's how they justify their actions, right?
01:33:44.000So it just goes back to that thing, gives them purpose, gives them something to do.
01:33:48.000Well, it's also like we were talking about with woke people, that you can't be woke enough, because once they've found all the other people that aren't following the doctrine, then they turn on each other.
01:34:00.000No one's gone through my tweets yet and no one as far as I'm aware I'm fucking putting this out there now, but no one's done that to me yet And so and I'm like, what did I say now?
01:34:11.000I mean, I've been on Twitter since 2007 I've said so much stupid shit and I used to use it differently too I used to use Twitter like I would post things that I thought people would react to a silly way and I would just retweet things and not even say anything and Let's see how these people freak out about this.
01:34:30.000You should get someone to go back over you.
01:34:56.000That's how I inhabit the role, because I have to think of her as something other.
01:35:00.000Do you think that when you do that, when you inhabit her, do you think that you understand and appreciate the way these people think?
01:35:08.000And do you think that it's attractive in some way?
01:35:11.000Yeah, I know about it because I used to study this stuff.
01:35:14.000So I used to teach and I did a thesis which was about post-structuralism and post-modernism and a lot about Foucault and all the origins of this stuff.
01:35:27.000So I'm familiar with it and I'm familiar with the language and I'm familiar with the ideas.
01:35:31.000And of course, all of my friends have always been on the left.
01:36:34.000They are sincere, but I like it with all religions.
01:36:37.000I've watched it with multiple different religions, with Islam and Christianity and Mormonism.
01:36:42.000I've watched a lot of videos where people really, really, really believe.
01:36:46.000And then the other people really believe too, and there's something attractive about that.
01:36:50.000And I think it's – but I've watched it to try to understand it.
01:36:53.000Because my parents, my stepdad and my mom were basically atheists.
01:36:58.000I was raised by atheists, and before that I was Catholic.
01:37:02.000So I was Catholic until I was first grade, and then from then on, when my mom married my stepdad, there was no religion in the household.
01:37:11.000So I've always been kind of fascinated by people that have this intense belief in something, particularly something that's really not logical.
01:37:19.000Like if you laid the tenets out, like, wait a minute, he came back to life?
01:37:25.000That's the nature of – I mean, I come from a Catholic family as well, you know, and I think my mother was a postulant nun, so it's a very – Whoa!
01:37:39.000But yeah, I mean, the belief that you have – The faith that you have is irrational by its own definition, but that's not a threat if you have that genuine...
01:37:48.000Part of the joy of faith, I think, is that you are believing it in spite of rational thought.
01:38:15.000And they like this sort of simple, really in-the-box kind of thinking from you, because if I know that you think like that, I can kind of predict how you're going to at least behave most of the time.
01:38:27.000And don't we all have a – it's much more fun, isn't it, to read Someone who agrees with you than someone who's challenging you.
01:38:33.000Because challenging takes its effort, right?
01:38:49.000Say someone says, like, I think the movie Dunkirk should have had more people of color, which was a common criticism at the time.
01:39:08.000Yeah, they have this predetermined pattern of behavior.
01:39:15.000Yeah, which is why ideology scares me full stop, which is why I don't mind saying conservatives are right about some things, left-wingers are right about other things, and having the discussion and accepting that I'm probably wrong about an awful lot of stuff as well.
01:39:28.000Like that to me is better than saying I know all the answers as like a Marxist would or a woke person would or a Catholic would or whatever.
01:39:37.000What we need to do is create an ideology of open-mindedness.
01:39:40.000But that wouldn't be an ideology, right?
01:40:10.000If you want to say that you know for sure that you go to heaven and you ride around the clouds and St. Peter's there with a book and there's a harp and God's there, yes, the burden of proof is on you.
01:41:20.000I'm like, listen, just take a small dose of mushrooms and I guarantee you'll have a very different perspective on reality itself.
01:41:27.000He'll have visions and he might be sort of lured into the religious side.
01:41:30.000Well, I don't think it'll lure you into religion unless you live in thousands of years ago before science, but it would give you the idea that there is perhaps something available, there's levels of consciousness, there's things available to regular human beings that take in these molecules.
01:43:46.000It's acknowledging that it's an ideology, but then you're faced with the criticism that you're setting up a new ideology to combat that ideology.
01:45:06.000But if we had a society where people were socialized well, you know, because I think being an autonomous adult absolutely depends on being socialized effectively as a child.
01:45:14.000Yeah, but, you know, there's some people...
01:45:16.000Have you ever been to a comedy hypnotism show?
01:45:34.000And he would get people on stage like, who wants to be hypnotized?
01:45:38.000And he did a show that was weekly at Stitch's Comedy Club in Boston.
01:45:43.000Comics, like myself, would all go to watch because it was guaranteed hilarious.
01:45:47.000So we would go to the comedy club and we would sit in the back and watch Frank Santos bring, he would bring like 10 people on stage and he would hypnotize them in front of everybody.
01:45:55.000And some people he couldn't hypnotize.
01:45:57.000And I don't mean hypnotized like sit you down, because I've been hypnotized before, where they sit you down.
01:46:02.000Like my friend Vinnie Shorman, who's a hypnotist, who works with fighters, or like a mental coach, and he basically gets you into a calm state and starts introducing ideas to you.
01:47:36.000Look, some people are tall, some people are short, some people's brains don't work well.
01:47:40.000All right, but I think this is something where we don't agree, is it?
01:47:44.000Because I think ultimately what you do, even if you do identify that, even if you say in society there are these people who are suggestible and just stupid, let's call it what it is, stupid people.
01:47:51.000Yes, dull-minded, low IQ. They still have every right to live in our society and be treated well and all the rest of it.
01:47:57.000And I don't think we should just change all our laws and traditions and the way we do things because some people are going to react like idiots and some people are going to...
01:48:29.000It could be an angry word that a relative said.
01:48:31.000It could be a news item that they saw.
01:48:33.000We still have to live in the world as it exists and not try and absolutely coddle everyone and try and prevent any possibility of transgression.
01:48:40.000I 100% agree with you, and I'm on your side.
01:48:42.000But I'm saying even if you do your best, there's going to be a certain amount of people that are just not going – the education is not going to sink in.
01:48:51.000The evaluation of things on an objective level is never going to work.
01:48:55.000That's because you're dealing with human beings and that's why when the social justice movement think that they can attain this utopia, they think they can wipe out prejudice.
01:49:04.000I think that what you can do is you can try and limit it as much as possible and confront it where it exists.
01:49:09.000But it is delusional to think that you're going to get rid of malevolence and human fallibility.
01:49:14.000And oftentimes they suffer from their own prejudice.
01:49:17.000Did you see the thing with Don Lemon on CNN with those two guys where they started mocking Trump supporters and pretending they're stupid and using a Southern accent?
01:49:27.000And I'm like, you guys, you're being prejudiced.
01:49:29.000That's going to be a deplorable moment.
01:50:12.000I think it's because of Brexit because it's disproportionately older people voted for Brexit.
01:50:15.000So they're like, oh, I don't care about old people.
01:50:17.000In fact, you even have like the left-leaning papers, like the Guardian and the Independent sort of talking like, well, they're all going to die off soon and then we can have another vote.
01:52:30.000Comedians crying free speech isn't good enough.
01:52:32.000Hate crime laws should apply to all of us.
01:52:34.000Now, the thing about this article, if you take the fourth letter of every sentence, it spells out, Titania McGrath wrote this, you gullible hacks.
01:55:12.000I know guys who are journalists, and women as well, who will tell you that if their articles do not get a certain amount of engagement, They're in trouble.
01:55:31.000Look what Facebook's algorithm does, right?
01:55:34.000One of the things that Facebook's algorithm does is it sort of, in some way, encourages people to be upset about things because it shows you a lot of things that you engage with and a lot of times people tend to engage with things that they're upset by.
01:55:48.000So whether it's abortion or Second Amendment or whatever the subject is, if you have an engagement with that and you respond a lot, that's what they're going to show you over and over and over again.
01:55:58.000And it's really more of a symptom of what human beings are attracted to.
01:56:03.000A lot of times we're attracted to things that upset us.
01:56:05.000But that's going to spiral further and further out of control.
01:56:25.000But I want, if journalists and commentators had high standards and were just being honest, first and foremost, and they had integrity and they weren't just after clicks, then half of this stuff would go away, I feel.
01:57:21.000And a lot of them had banners saying, not my president.
01:57:24.000So they're protesting against democracy then in that case.
01:57:27.000Same thing in the UK when we just had our general election, there was a big march with loads of people with Banner saying, not my Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, not my...
01:57:34.000Well, he is your Prime Minister because we had a democratic mandate and that's how this works, right?
01:57:44.000They're showing that they're all together in their anger about this and that in the future they're going to be a combined force and they're going to make sure that this doesn't happen again.
01:57:54.000I think there's a better way to do it without generating so much resentment.
01:57:57.000I think there's a more sophisticated approach, which is to say that democracy is sustained on the principle of the loser's consent.
01:58:04.000Any democracy is going to have a substantial proportion of the population who did not vote for the leader of that.
01:59:58.000But they're also saying that he can't move to Canada because if you're a royal from England, you're not supposed to have a primary residence in Canada.
02:00:07.000Is that because it's part of the Commonwealth or something?
02:01:40.000And also, by the way, if you're left-wing and you're supporting the EU, which is this neoliberal trading bloc that is really pro-corporate, ruthlessly so, then I don't know how you can even call yourself left-wing, to be honest.
02:01:51.000So what is the anger in the streets in England?
02:03:08.000I think it's very different to the Trump election.
02:03:11.000But I see the one thing that I think is comparable is that the premise, right, if you've got all these sort of woke activists who say that they believe that we live in this fascist country, and that they believe a fascist would vote for Trump, and then when Trump wins, they use that as evidence for the premise that they set up.
02:03:31.000And it's like, yeah, but your premise wasn't right.
02:03:34.000And that's how we need to break that sort of cycle of doubling down on the same bullshit and guaranteeing Trump another term by doing so, by the way.
02:05:10.000And a lot of people get saddled down with horrible medical debt if they do get injured.
02:05:13.000Well, I think that I've got an American friend who had a very serious illness in England, and the NHS were brilliant.
02:05:22.000And it was like, these people, you know, this is amazing.
02:05:24.000You know, I didn't have to pay for anything.
02:05:25.000You know, I think there's something really beautiful about that.
02:05:28.000I love our NHS. And I know people criticize it and say, obviously, there's going to be mistakes with such a big institution like that.
02:05:34.000And there's going to be bureaucrats and all the rest of it.
02:05:36.000But it's a really wonderful thing that anyone...
02:05:42.000We're conditioned to think that anything that involves anything socialist or anything free, anything that's paid for by the government, where someone can't make the ultimate amount of profit, it de-incentivizes them from being very good.
02:05:56.000When we think about a doctor, we want a doctor that is pushing really hard to be the best doctor so he can get a Ferrari and a big house, because that guy's going to kick ass.
02:06:55.000But like if Anthony Joshua, say if Anthony Joshua needs shoulder surgery, you know he's not going to NHS. If you're rich, you'll go to private.
02:09:18.000But also, don't you think, like, if there's a cash incentive for doctors and medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, there's something really dangerous about that.
02:09:24.000And that's why you've got people who, you know, whenever an insurance claim comes in, you've got these lawyers who are hired to try and undermine the claim and to find some pre-existing condition from years ago and leave you to die.
02:09:34.000Because the incentive is all about money, not about humanity.
02:10:45.000Okay, I'm willing to concede that point.
02:10:48.000And then maybe they are good people if they do it in a national healthcare system, but they're not...
02:10:55.000If they are compromised and it becomes an issue of making money, then they might compromise.
02:11:02.000So I think I've worked out a common thread in our discussion, which is that I tend to think that most people are generally good, and I don't think you do.
02:11:56.000They're not in the UK. They're annoying.
02:11:58.000They're annoying here too, but they're just drunk.
02:12:01.000Because you can't live any other way, can you?
02:12:02.000You can't live any other way but to trust humanity and to trust other people and to trust that people are essentially good and that's why I think ultimately these things will be subverted and end, you know, like the woke movement.
02:12:13.000I think we have a problem in America as well with education being so fucking insanely expensive and Insurance for doctors being so insanely expensive that you get these doctors in this position where they're really over the barrel.
02:13:38.000So, more than most people make a year, you have to spend on your education while you're not making any money.
02:13:46.000So, 65k a year, just think that's stacking up.
02:13:50.0001, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I suppose what they're saying is that's an investment for the future because if you do this, you'll get the great job.
02:13:57.000Maybe, but you're almost $400,000 in the hole.
02:14:02.000By the time you graduate in, you're not making any money.
02:14:05.000It's nowhere near like that in the UK. It's horrible.
02:14:07.000And we have a really good student loan system where the interest is minimal and you don't have to pay it back until you're earning a certain amount and all that.
02:14:14.000When I went to university, I was the last year to get a full grant.
02:14:32.000I would just like it if people didn't have to start their life Once they're out of education, already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
02:16:26.000God damn it, there's some rough schools in this country, and they don't get paid much, and the teachers don't give a shit.
02:16:32.000And there's some good ones, you know, there's definitely some good ones, and there's definitely some people, even in some bad neighborhoods, that get some good educations, but that's few and far between.
02:16:40.000And this is the point, is that if you are from one of those backgrounds, the odds are stacked against you.
02:17:28.000I find it astonishing that people won't acknowledge that some people are more advantaged in certain ways.
02:17:32.000This is why I think when it comes to social advantageous or the way in which people are prioritized or privileged over other people, it's mostly about money.
02:17:42.000Ultimately, when we talk about privilege all the time, we hear things about white privilege and heterosexual privilege and stuff like that.
02:17:46.000Actually, ultimately, it's about cash.
02:18:09.000And everyone around them is on pills, and no one has any money, and there's just crime and just poverty that you can't...
02:18:16.000I mean, I have a friend who's from there.
02:18:17.000He's like, man, you've never seen poverty like this.
02:18:20.000So couldn't they just come up with a different phrase than white privilege?
02:18:22.000Because I get the point they're trying to make, which is that if you have two people from exactly the same backgrounds, the person of color is going to face more prejudice.
02:18:40.000And for the white people that do have this advantage that they don't experience prejudice, the only reason why that exists is because of racism.
02:19:12.000And I just think, how is that a helpful thing to say?
02:19:15.000Like, even if you could break it down philosophically and sort of prove your point, and just think in terms of how you come across when you say that.
02:19:49.000I have described it in those terms and I have done today, but is that really an effective way to challenge it?
02:19:56.000Isn't that just going to get people's backs up?
02:19:59.000Everything you say about it will get people's backs up, but I think at least it'll make people understand that there are some fundamental patterns in human behavior that have existed from the beginning of time.
02:20:08.000People like structure and they like knowing where the rules are because life in itself is too open-ended.
02:20:16.000There's too much existential angst, there's too many confusing questions that can't be answered.
02:20:22.000There's so much going on in life itself that if you have a very rigid ideology, whether it is about a holy creator or whether it's about the fundamental aspects of society that are That are unfair and need to be rallied against,
02:20:39.000whether it's woke ideology or whether it's, you know, fill in the blank, whatever other ideology.
02:20:45.000I just wish I could talk to them more, but they refuse to talk to me.
02:21:17.000There's a lot of people that just want to keep their job.
02:21:19.000Well, maybe then, when I was talking about the tipping point and when does it end, maybe it's when more people are willing to be honest about their skepticism about the whole thing.
02:22:10.000It's like it's never crossed their mind that they could be wrong.
02:22:14.000That it's just not in their realm of existence that they would even possibly think for a second, maybe I've got this a bit wrong.
02:22:21.000And that to me is a horrible, I don't know how you challenge that even, you know?
02:22:26.000But you can't, just like you can't challenge someone who's a believer in the Westboro Baptist Church, but really does want to walk around with those God-hates-fags bumper stickers.
02:22:37.000But they find their way out, don't they, eventually?
02:23:06.000They are hatefully consistent, you know, but they don't twist – they are literally interpreting the Bible as it's – like, in a really scary way.
02:23:15.000And the fact that it justifies some pretty horrific actions.
02:23:18.000I mean, can you imagine if your soldier – If your son was a soldier, and your son got shot down, and you're at the funeral, and these guys are standing in front of the building where you're having a service, and they're saying the reason why your son died is because there's a bunch of people out there that are in love with other men,
02:23:35.000and they're having sex with men, and so this is the reason why, and they're going to hold up these giant placards.
02:24:49.000You know, I mean, that's an issue as well.
02:24:51.000I mean, every generation that comes along thinks that they have the answers that their parents didn't have.
02:24:56.000I see signs, though, that the younger generation, so Generation Z, or Z, you'd say, are reacting against the millennial generation, and that's probably where the hope lies, isn't it?
02:25:53.000A lot of people develop bills and they see that there's a lot of people that don't want to work hard and they make excuses for things when the reality is it's their own behavior that's been holding them back.
02:26:03.000And there's so many realities that are uncomfortable that we have to address as we get older in life and we realize how many people have fallen into these Classical pitfalls that maybe our parents had told us about, but we thought we knew better.
02:26:14.000When you talk about liberal, you mean left-wing here.
02:26:43.000So if you take the trans issue, right, which I know is something that just by talking about is a bit of a risky thing.
02:26:51.000Although I think the fact that we're not having discussions and debates about that is part of the problem.
02:26:55.000But if you take the liberal position on that, what you say is anyone has the right to identify however they want, call themselves whatever they want, have surgery on their own body, do whatever they want to do.
02:27:04.000But then other people have the right to choose the language that they use in terms of addressing them.
02:27:09.000Everyone has their own individual rights.
02:28:58.000I think 98% of all the arguments that go on on Twitter would disappear overnight if people just actually faithfully represented what their opponents were saying.
02:29:05.000Well, if they saw each other in person and faithfully represented, that's a big part.
02:29:10.000Although the Cathy Newman thing shows that even that doesn't necessarily help.
02:30:30.000Not just people on Twitter, but people in the mainstream media and politicians are failing on these basic principles of critical thinking and argumentation.
02:30:39.000So if we can just restore it back in the educational system so people understand, once you throw the insult, you've lost it.
02:30:45.000I couldn't agree more, but again, this is not in compliance with woke ideology.