In this episode of Freedom Tunes, Seamus Coughlin fills in for Tim Pool, who is missing in what is believed to be a Sasquatch-related accident and sighting. The boys discuss a variety of topics, including fake news, conspiracy theories, and much more.
00:00:16.000you ladies and gentlemen boys and girls I am Seamus Coughlin of
00:00:43.000freedom tunes subbing in for Tim Pool who is unavailable right now.
00:00:46.000He has gone missing in what is believed to be a Sasquatch-related accident and sighting.
00:00:51.000We'll have more information on that as updates come, but for now, we have several topics, all of which I forgot, so I'm gonna have to turn it over to Ian.
00:01:49.000Yeah, well, first of all, I would just like to apologize to everyone who had to see me two days ago and now has to see me again.
00:01:53.000We did an episode, and it was solid, but the internet kept lagging, and I was here for a couple days, so y'all invited me to do this again, and I really appreciate it.
00:02:37.000At that time, I was like a really hardcore libertarian and I've moved on a number of issues, especially as I've become like more intimately familiar Uh, with my faith as a Catholic and what the church teaches and even though I still believe in very limited government, I think there are some incompatibilities between like a really hard libertarian stance and Catholic teaching.
00:02:53.000So I've moved a bit, but I'm still very anti-government, still very conservative, and I still just love satirizing the left wing.
00:02:58.000I think it's almost too easy at this point, but hey, why not capitalize on that?
00:03:01.000But you won't ever criticize the right.
00:03:06.000I do make fun of conservative people, and they tend to be really cool with it, but to be fair, I think it's because they know I'm coming from a place of actually enjoying their work and wanting to rib on them as opposed to trying to, like, own them or something like that.
00:03:44.000No, I think there's a lot of truth in that.
00:03:45.000And it's funny because one thing I've noticed too, is even when I make fun of right-wing figures, I'm still filling this niche because oftentimes when left-wing people make fun of right-wing figures, they do a really bad job.
00:03:54.000One thing I definitely noticed that my work suffered from early on is I re-examined it.
00:03:58.000It was just a little too preachy and I didn't put enough emphasis on the comedy.
00:04:01.000I put more emphasis on trying to get a message across, but I firmly believe that if you're being true to yourself and just trying to make something entertaining, your worldview is going to come through either way.
00:04:09.000Yeah, make a good joke. Yeah, well and so but that's why like when the left makes fun of Ben Shapiro
00:04:14.000Like if you saw his appearance on I think our cartoon president is their jokes
00:04:18.000I'm like, I just hate trans people or something like that.
00:04:20.000It's like not funny. Yeah, exactly It's like I'm an absolutely disgusting bigot. Isn't that
00:04:24.000horrible bazinga? And then when they make fun of Donald Trump, it's just like
00:04:27.000And I have small hands That's all they do.
00:04:42.000The joke was made once, we laughed at it, I thought the tiny hands thing was funny, and then we all moved on.
00:04:47.000The funny thing about these jokes that you see from the right, if you ever go to the donald.win, which is the Donald Trump forum, They love the jokes about Trump.
00:04:55.000They post them and they laugh about it.
00:04:57.000There was one where it was like Donald Trump's face was bright orange.
00:05:00.000I remember they posted something that was like, don't we have the orangest president?
00:05:10.000So when he tweeted that video of himself on WWE with CNN's logo photoshopped over somebody's head beating him up, it was hysterical and in part because there's obviously a cheekiness about that and there's clearly a joke being made at Trump's expense because comedy comes from an incongruity.
00:05:25.000And it's insane to imagine Trump actually going out and beating somebody up as this big tough guy.
00:06:01.000And that's one of the most fantastic things that Trump has done, is he's sort of forced the media to make it perfectly clear to the American people that they are most concerned with themselves and that they're willing to go after anyone who they see as a threat to their power.
00:06:14.000He'll insult the media and they'll lose their minds and they'll make that a story.
00:06:17.000And the American people are like, who cares?
00:06:31.000But what I'm trying to say is the people who are politically left, that sense of humor are watching cartoons like you're making and, and, and it's funny.
00:06:41.000If the people who are, who have a sense of humor are leaving to go find jokes elsewhere, because the left isn't funny, then all that's left is this withered husk that gets offended at everything.
00:06:53.000Obviously, I cater more to a conservative audience, but I've gotten comments and messages from people saying like, hey, I'm more left-leaning or I'm probably what you would have considered a liberal maybe five or ten years ago.
00:07:03.000Still have the same views, but I really like your content, which is really flattering.
00:07:06.000It's really flattering because that's not my target audience, but it's good to know that I'm able to make those people Well, but why not?
00:07:11.000I mean, you've had videos where like Ben Shapiro reviews, Ben Shapiro reviews.
00:07:16.000So it was like Ben was watching one of your videos and then you made a fake Ben Shapiro watch.
00:07:19.000That's not, that's not attacking anyone's politics or anything like that.
00:07:41.000If you're going to tell me you can't pass the turkey to me, then you're not properly embodying the archetypal mythos of a family at Thanksgiving.
00:08:28.000In some ways it makes sense because I'm definitely more conservative.
00:08:31.000And like I said, your worldview does inadvertently come through in certain ways.
00:08:34.000I think what you choose to rib on somebody for is going to be informed by what you take issue with or what you find endearing, which is affected by your political beliefs.
00:08:42.000But I would also say that I do a number of educational cartoons with other organizations like the Foundation for Economic Education, and I also do some educational cartoons on the channel, though that's increasingly rare just because I've been having so much fun satirizing current events because it's an election year.
00:08:57.000But that stuff is all, it tends to be more conservative or libertarian, so people sort of smell that in the water, and they know my biases, and so I think maybe that turns them off just because of how partisan everything's become.
00:09:11.000Have you been drawing your whole life?
00:09:33.000And he would do this George Bush impression.
00:09:36.000And I'm sure mine isn't very good, but I would just start to imitate his.
00:09:39.000Like, my film air cans, we will do this and that.
00:09:41.000And then from there, it was always something I'd wanted to learn to do, but hearing him do an impression helped me to be able to do it.
00:09:47.000And then after that, I just started noticing that I, like many extroverts, will, to an extent, sponge off of people's personalities.
00:09:55.000Like, sometimes if you're consuming a lot of somebody's content, you'll adopt their speech patterns without really noticing it.
00:10:01.000And so, you know, I'd be listening to a lot of Ben Shapiro and then I would hear myself use a phrase that wasn't natural to me or that I didn't use that often.
00:10:07.000And I would say, oh, I'm saying that because I heard Ben Shapiro say it 30 times in a row.
00:10:11.000And then I add that to the category of Ben Shapiro impression.
00:10:19.000And it's hard for me to do videos making fun of people I don't like.
00:10:21.000I've done it in the past, but it's one thing to do a video making fun of a group that I take issue with.
00:10:28.000So when I make fun of the left, I just, as of recent, I've more or less depicted them as belligerent noisemakers, because that's more or less how I view them.
00:10:37.000But, as individuals, it's hard for me to take a left-wing person, who I genuinely don't like, and do a cartoon about them.
00:10:46.000Because halfway through it, it aggravates me.
00:10:49.000And it's hard for me to capture the part about them that might make an audience like a character.
00:10:52.000So even with Bernie Sanders, I entirely disagree with Bernie Sanders politics.
00:10:59.000Not a fan at all, but I do videos making fun of him and in part it's because there is this element of his personality that I actually enjoy.
00:11:06.000There's this part of him that I find endearing and so that's why it's fun to do an impression of him and make a cartoon riffing on him.
00:11:12.000Well, speaking of Bernie Sanders, we have a lot to talk about tonight.
00:11:17.000300 federal charges were announced by the DOJ.
00:11:19.000A Louisville police major, I guess, says that they're all basement-dwelling punks.
00:11:37.000Things are working and we're cleaning up and the studio is coming together and we got a lot to talk about so make sure you smash the like button, subscribe.
00:11:44.000We do the show live Monday through Friday at 8 p.m.
00:11:47.000and of course we're being joined by Seamus of Freedom Tunes.
00:11:51.000We're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff and I guess we're gonna start off with this story about the Louisville police major calling Black Lives Matter and Antifa supporters punks.
00:12:03.000Daily Mail reports, Louisville police major calls Black Lives Matter and Antifa supporters, punks, who will always be living in their parents' basement and washing our cars in message to division she commands.
00:12:21.000Well, that's kind of what they're saying, though, isn't it?
00:12:23.000Like, we don't have any future because the system is rigged against us.
00:12:28.000I mean, it sounds like they're saying rabble, rabble, rabble.
00:12:33.000I was talking to a friend earlier, and I asked her, I was like, do you know, because she was talking about Black Lives Matter and stuff, and I was like, do you know how many unarmed black men were shot and killed last year by the police?
00:12:43.000It's like, oh, I don't know, but you can Google it.
00:12:45.000I'm like, no, I know the number, because I have Googled it.
00:12:47.000I looked it up, and well, I don't know, but it's a lot.
00:12:51.000Okay, so you're... Yeah, so the Wall Street Journal's number was nine, but I'm using Black Lives Matter's number.
00:12:57.000I'm using the Washington Post's activist number, 13.
00:13:00.000That doesn't mean all innocent people potentially killed.
00:13:04.000It's unarmed black men who were shot, so it doesn't include women.
00:13:08.000It's 13, and there's 375 million estimated police interactions.
00:13:12.000It doesn't sound like hunting or anything like that.
00:13:15.000Yeah, and I think there was a breakdown done, maybe, it was either by Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles, I apologize for forgetting who it was, but they actually looked through the cases of unarmed black men being killed by the police, and in some of them, I remember one in particular, like an old woman was being attacked.
00:13:29.000So, unarmed is tricky because people can be armed and the shooting is unjustified, and someone can be unarmed and the shooting is justified.
00:13:48.000Now I'm seeing all the activists and everybody's rising up, and this is the police officer we're seeing who's calling them, you know, basement-dwelling punks who are gonna wash our cars, is Louisville, and that's where this is all going down.
00:13:57.000But the... Justify doesn't mean... I think a lot of people don't understand this, too.
00:15:44.000If we do, we only validate what they did.
00:15:46.000Don't make them important, because they are not.
00:15:49.000They will be the ones washing our cars, cashing us out at the Walmart, or living in their parents' basement playing COD for their entire life.
00:17:55.000It's one thing if they said something ridiculous and over-the-top and inflammatory that was intended to be inflammatory and was said to the public, but I hate when a private statement becomes a story like this, when it becomes national news.
00:18:07.000If this is so inflammatory, then why isn't the story about how unbelievably irresponsible it was for whoever leaked this to leak it?
00:18:40.000He said that he saw a bunch of white antifunny yelled at him like, where are the black people at?
00:18:46.000I don't care what her race is, these Antifa people are mostly white people going around doing this.
00:18:52.000It's funny, yeah, I didn't get to catch the podcast you did with Maj, but you guys accidentally put my Twitter handle in there, so I was getting a bunch of tweets for him as the show was going, and they were like, at Seamus, like they tagged some college professor, like, at Seamus Coghlan says you're scared to debate him.
00:19:05.000I was like, what have I gotten myself into?
00:19:07.000You should have just accepted it, like, I accept your debate.
00:19:11.000I have no idea what we're arguing about.
00:19:12.000I'll just argue with anybody for any reason.
00:20:07.000So this is a Metro Councilman who is now dragging her over this.
00:20:10.000So this, this is what the media does because they want to take something salacious and do whatever they can to make the police look bad.
00:20:17.000So if you, could you imagine like having a private conversation with somebody at work and being like, man, Jerry down in accounting, what a dick.
00:20:24.000And then someone hears you and they run and they tell somebody.
00:22:42.000Yeah, I kind of get where you're coming from.
00:22:43.000If she wanted them to go out and do violence against these protesters or rioters, really, what she would be saying is, They're gonna take over this country, and then they're gonna be in charge of you, and you're gonna be washing their car.
00:22:56.000That's the kind of rhetoric you would expect from a person who wants you to become angry with the other side.
00:23:01.000But she's basically boiling them down to a non-threat.
00:23:05.000I see it like, if this was D&D, and she was using her charisma, instead of choosing persuasion, she chose intimidation.
00:23:12.000They're both charisma abilities, and they both get the job done.
00:23:23.000Well, and this is also one of those things, too, where if somebody hurts somebody that you love or care about, who you're supposed to be protecting, one of the first places you go is, that person's a loser.
00:25:07.000I think most people just aren't familiar with how many arrests are made, but when I heard this entire nation is on fire right now, there are riots in so many major cities, and for there to only be 300 charges at this point.
00:25:30.000Attorney's Offices, more than 40 USAOs have filed federal charges alleging crimes ranging from attempted murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, arson, burglary of a federally licensed firearms dealer.
00:25:56.000So in Philadelphia, during like the peak of the riots, some dudes tried breaking into a, I think it was in Philadelphia, it was in Pennsylvania, a gun shop in like South Philly.
00:26:05.000And as soon as they broke in, the gun owner was sitting right there, and he was armed, and he went click-bang, and one of those dudes died.
00:26:14.000The crazy thing is, I think it was the ATF, they knew about this.
00:26:18.000So I had talked to a gun shop owner about what was going on, asking if they had heard this, and they said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the day before that happened, The ATF called around, said, we have intel that some of these groups are planning on looting gun shops.
00:26:35.000And so what I was told is this guy said he just stayed overnight in his shop.
00:27:03.000That's literally just suicide at that point.
00:27:06.000I wonder, there was a viral video during this where like, I think it was in Atlanta, they crashed a truck into the front of a gun store, and then you see people just run in and start grabbing guns like crazy.
00:27:17.000All of the people who would try to claim that it was too harsh to shoot somebody for breaking and entering into a gun store would probably say that we need to be keeping the guns out of the hands of criminals for thorough background checks.
00:27:44.000Can you imagine if some right-wing group had done the same thing, or protests associated with the right-wing resulted in that kind of activity?
00:27:52.000I think this media bias, where it's like, right is always bad, comes from the fact that in New York, it was liberal elites who were reading the paper, and that was their bread and butter, and that's the narrative they've maintained.
00:28:06.000But now that we've democratized information way more with the internet, Now the New York Times is still chasing after that demographic that doesn't really make sense for them anymore.
00:28:14.000And so they start chasing it harder and harder, desperate.
00:28:18.000So if you get a right-wing group breaking into a gun shop and stealing guns, it'll be the front page of every newspaper.
00:28:25.000Well, when the right-wing dudes went to the steps of the Michigan State Building, and they just stood there smiling, holding like Gadsden flags, they were like, right-wing terrorists!
00:29:43.000First of all, not only did that all turn out to be complete nonsense, and they just tried to ruin this kid's life for a story, but the fact that that would have been national news or was national news when they thought it was true is ridiculous.
00:29:56.000Whereas you have people burning buildings down, and there are 40 charges you mentioned.
00:30:01.000Some of them are attempted murder, and that's not even being discussed.
00:30:05.000Like, that's not even discussed by the media.
00:30:23.000Listen, what you've got to understand about these media companies is that the person who owns them is not dictating what people can talk about.
00:30:33.000What they're doing is they're hiring people who already talk about it.
00:30:37.000You were just describing something, and I had this image in my head that I think would be a really excellent skit, where it's like, the New York Times, like, 1980-something, and it's a bunch of, like, you know, monocle-wearing dudes in suits, all, like, very proud, and with that North Atlantic dialect, oh, dare I say, you know?
00:30:52.000This story about the Republicans is quite interesting.
00:30:55.000And then it's like, as time goes on, it's like a post-apocalyptic scene where we're in today, it's 2020.
00:31:01.000There's like Trump everywhere in every newspaper.
00:31:04.000And you see this old, decrepit, haunted-looking New York Times building because they're like collapsing.
00:31:38.000I think they more or less have just revealed how horrible they already were.
00:31:42.000I mean, if you look back in history, the media in this country has always, in the mainstream media in this country, in the modern media, has always been really left-leaning.
00:31:48.000I'm sure you know about Walter Durante, who basically... No, no, no.
00:31:51.000Oh yeah, so Walter Durante was a reporter for the New York Times who wrote on Russian affairs, and he did everything the Russian government wanted him to do, or the Soviet government wanted him to do, with respect to covering up the Holodomor, which is when they starve.
00:32:06.000Millions of people to death in the Ukraine.
00:32:09.000And well, when whistleblowers tried to bring the story into the American consciousness and tell the rest of the West what was happening in Soviet Russia, he said that they were liars and discredited them.
00:32:36.000Okay, I figured you just had the right political opinions.
00:32:38.000So, yes, what happens is you submit the award, and you submit the award fee for, you know, and then if you have the right politics, it's everything.
00:32:48.000They're like, oh, we're gonna give the award to this group for this reason, and you have to submit, and not every single award is this way, but many of them it's like, did you pay your award fee?
00:34:27.000It was like, we have an expert panel of individuals who chose their own staff to be featured in our magazine to promote their work that this guy owns and makes money off of.
00:34:51.000No, of course they won't, but he hasn't started a new war.
00:34:53.000He's the first president in 40 years to not start another war.
00:34:56.000Now granted, that's kind of a low bar, but he still exceeded it.
00:35:01.000He's not only got no new wars, he's got three historic peace agreements just now in the past month, and he's withdrawing troops from the Middle East.
00:35:10.000I'm just sitting here, I'm sitting back like, oh.
00:35:13.000Dude, they're playing the Israeli national anthem in the United Arab Emirates.
00:38:12.000When you go to the Anti-Defamation League, and you look at their heat map, it says their right-wing extremism, it's like three different kinds.
00:38:21.000If you're anti-government, they call you right-wing.
00:38:24.000So I'm like, so Antifa is right-wing now?
00:38:26.000Because they're totally, they're the biggest anti-government faction right now.
00:38:28.000It's a big circle, and if you go far left, you come up on the far right.
00:38:34.000There's up and down, side... No, the point is, far left means something.
00:38:39.000Black Lives Matter activists tend to be Bernie Sanders supporters, democratic socialists, or communists, and they all agree on the social justice stuff, the cultural and the economic of the far left.
00:38:50.000When you say far-right, what are you talking about?
00:39:46.000And this is something that's actually really important to me.
00:39:48.000I mean, when you look at the French Revolution and its fallout, I think it's pretty obvious that the left were the bad guys there, and that's sort of the foundation for the modern left.
00:39:55.000And whenever I hear other people, particularly Catholics, say things like, well, you can be a Catholic and left-wing, I think that's true for certain issues, but you have to remember, like, the intellectual foundations of the left were completely predicated on fighting the Catholic Church and its interests in Catholic people.
00:40:07.000So that's just one thing out there for the Catholics.
00:40:13.000You know, actually, I had a thought about this.
00:40:15.000Because when I was talking with, I think it was Drew Holden, and Drew's Catholic, right?
00:40:21.000Yeah, I'm not, but I recognize, I think a lot of secular liberals in this country, from like 10 years ago, they would say things like, I don't need the Bible to be moral, and if you need religion not to rape someone, like, whoa, something must be wrong with you, and it's like, but you were raised by these people.
00:40:39.000So you might not believe any of this stuff, that's okay, but you realize your morals were rooted in growing up and being told what was right, what was wrong, and you have Judeo-Christian moral values.
00:40:51.000You probably celebrated, like, I'm talking about, like, the boomers.
00:40:54.000Like, you know, who, like, when I was in, like, in the 90s, in the 2000s, who were very, you know, secular and mocked, you know, the atheists and all that stuff, the atheist movement.
00:41:03.000They had the same moral foundations, just not the theism.
00:41:45.000But, because most Americans have, I guess, gotten complacent and accepting, they're letting a small faction of fringe individuals lie to them, push insane policies, and just seize power.
00:42:01.000Oftentimes people will say that public schools are used to propagandize children, and I couldn't agree with that anymore.
00:42:06.000But the reality is, if you want to instill your tyrannical philosophy in the state or in the minds of the average person, you don't really have to do all that much work indoctrinating them into your ideology.
00:42:17.000All you really have to do is ensure that they are raised without any real virtues.
00:42:23.000And what will happen is as they become adults, they will have been habituated towards taking the path of least resistance in their personal social lives.
00:42:31.000And any time they're in a situation where speaking out might become uncomfortable or make the situation uncomfortable or unpleasant, they're not going to do it because again, they've habituated themselves towards doing what is least difficult.
00:42:42.000And so when you do have the people you have indoctrinated into your system achieving cultural ascendancy, they won't stand up against that.
00:42:49.000I wonder if, you know, they call it white supremacy.
00:42:52.000But I wonder if that's just... First of all, I think they say it's white supremacy and whiteness as... I mean, first I said white supremacy.
00:42:59.000Now they say whiteness, which is kind of creepy.
00:43:01.000But it's very obvious they were trying to change the definition of word.
00:43:04.000Finding something that people would find morally repugnant, and then claiming anything they didn't like was that word.
00:43:10.000And they play with definitions all the time.
00:43:13.000I wonder if what they're really going after is just the moral foundations of Christianity.
00:43:21.000The French Revolution and the terms right and left basically come from a war for or against Catholicism and traditionally Catholic values.
00:43:28.000And the United States has never been a Catholic nation, but it's been Christian, and there are certain principles that, you know, Protestants and Catholics share, and I think those are the ones that are generally under attack by the far left at this point in time.
00:43:44.000You mentioned earlier about people saying that they don't need religion in order to be moral, and this is something I heard time and time again, but then oftentimes these same people will turn around and say the only case against abortion is a religious one.
00:43:55.000Okay, I was thinking about the French Revolution.
00:45:05.000Some high-profile Democrat saying, like, when will Donald Trump... Oh, no, no.
00:45:08.000It was like a news outlet saying, yes, there have been riots, but Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the right-wing militias that have been starting the fights.
00:45:56.000That's the only thing that explains it.
00:45:57.000If I saw them, and now you're saying it, what it really is, is they're in a toilet spinning around in circles.
00:46:02.000The rest of us are not in that toilet.
00:46:03.000They've created this perception, and then from it, they burst from the toilet, covered in human waste, going, ah, smashing windows and screaming, the end is nigh!
00:46:11.000It's that game of telephone, you know?
00:46:13.000You ever play telephone where you whisper something in someone's ear, then they whisper it, they whisper it, and then you see how accurate it is when it gets back to you around the circle.
00:46:19.000But I wonder if the people in control of the news organizations are actually seeding bad info to create... No.
00:47:37.000Then these leftists who believe all of the media, and that's a big divider in the culture war, they believe all this stuff, run around screaming, the militias are coming, smashing windows and burning everything down.
00:47:48.000And then the media goes, ooh, did we incite that?
00:48:17.000At first it was, well, rioting is the language of the unheard.
00:48:21.000And then as soon as public perception and opinion, as soon as public opinion towards Black Lives Matter turned, they started saying, oh, it's actually right-wing agitators.
00:48:30.000So that's why I'm a little skeptical of the idea that it just got out of control.
00:48:33.000It just, it seems like a direct shift based on what they now knew public opinion was.
00:48:38.000I think the media is blindly chasing after whatever works, and the Democrats just trust the media.
00:48:46.000So, like, mail-in voting is a good example.
00:48:48.000There was a story in Axios today saying that Democrats are pivoting away from it now.
00:49:07.000How is it that the day the story drops about, like, you know, primary ballots being discarded, here I am saying, wow, look, primary ballots got discarded.
00:49:25.000And he tweeted, like some cringe leftist tweeted something about, you know, Trump is gonna stage a coup and he's refusing to give up power.
00:49:34.000And then this guy I know tweeted, where's the lie?
00:49:36.000And my response was, I'm like, dude, challenging, you know, filing a lawsuit about contested ballots is not staging a coup.
00:49:51.000And then a bunch of, and then his response was, what ballots?
00:49:54.000So you mean to tell me it's been like three months since the stories broke about the mail-in votes disappearing or not being delivered, and you didn't know about it?
00:50:04.000You're this late to the party, and now the Democrats finally catch up.
00:50:07.000So with Black Lives Matter, before George Floyd died, support for Black Lives Matter was at 17 or 18% net support.
00:50:16.000Meaning, you know, that's like, there's more support than opposition.
00:50:41.000And they still say that stuff, and regular Americans are like, Why did the guy on TV say it was peaceful when I literally just got sent a video of a dude burning down a pawn shop or shooting a guy in the chest?
00:51:04.00093% of serial murders, or, 93% of the time, serial killers are peaceful too!
00:51:08.000Well, and also, yeah, I mean, 7% of protests becoming violent is a massive number when you're dealing with a country as large as the United States, and every major city across it has protests within it.
00:51:21.0007% is not a small number, and that's why, it's funny because I saw left-wingers saying that only, you know, 93% of them are peaceful, and then, I'm not sure where that metric came from, so, I'm not going to say it's wrong to be skeptical of it, but a lot of right-wingers are saying, no, this is fake news from the left.
00:51:34.000It's like, dude, even if that's not fake news, that's really high.
00:51:40.000I mean, it's the fake news about it is how they're trying to, they're changing the argument.
00:51:46.000My argument is, wow, these violent protests are horrifying.
00:51:50.000It's too bad they're not like the peaceful protesters.
00:51:52.000When the peaceful protesters went on the bridge and laid down on their stomachs and put their hands behind their back and got a bunch of press attention, I said, that's awesome.
00:51:59.000I said, I disagree, but you know, hey man, peaceful protests, this country's all about it.
00:52:03.000Then another group went around smashing windows and like beating people and I said, whoa, that's terrible.
00:52:42.000Do I need to do a bunch of pure impersonations?
00:52:43.000Okay folks, so he lost his train of thought because he's an absolute idiot.
00:52:45.000He was thinking about something related to what old Tim Pool just said over there and then it slipped his mind as soon as he started talking about it and then he trailed off and it was really embarrassing.
00:52:51.000So can we please just not draw attention to it folks, okay?
00:52:53.000It reminds me of, like, the family guy joke of the vaudeville piano players.
00:52:57.000And as soon as they script, quick, play me out!
00:53:21.000Dude, there was somebody who claimed someone at a Tea Party protest said the N-word and they were never able to offer proof, and that just maligned the entire movement for the entire country.
00:53:29.000But listen, it's because conservatives keep playing.
00:53:34.000If you were playing Monopoly, and then the person you're playing against kept cheating, you wouldn't keep playing.
00:53:42.000You'd be like, okay, I'm not gonna play this game.
00:53:44.000Yet for some reason, conservatives, and even to an extent moderates, the ones who are getting more politically active, are sitting here as the media will say something like, Oh, you know, this group of people did a bad thing, and then all these conservatives go, oh, that's not fair!
00:54:04.000Yeah, the Republicans are like, please, please, don't view me as a racist, don't view me as a sexist, whatever it is you're labeling me as.
00:54:08.000Instead of just saying this is ridiculous, I'm not even acknowledging it.
00:54:11.000Instead of the Republican Party saying, you know, don't give interviews to like a certain organization
00:54:17.000Like just straight up. I don't do interviews. I don't blame you. I won't do it. I get an email
00:54:23.000I'm like gutter gone. Don't care. These people are not look it is not the job of a journalist to tell you the truth
00:54:30.000It is the it are Or the modern journalist.
00:54:33.000It's the job of a modern journalist to generate traffic for the website that the marketing, the sales team can pitch then to a brand and say, look how many clicks we got.
00:54:42.000So let me tell you, what do you think happens then?
00:54:45.000If, I don't know, people are out throwing cans of Goya beans at a riot, Goya's gonna be like, we don't wanna be associated with this.
00:55:03.000When some companies know they're about to get a whistleblower, and they know where it's coming from, so a journalist could be like, hi, you know, we're calling the Tim Pool show.
00:55:13.000We've got a whistleblower who's gonna say these things about you.
00:55:16.000Then the big company, when they hear this, they go, oh, you know, it's so unfortunate you're gonna do this story.
00:55:22.000We were about to do a big ad buy with you.
00:55:45.000It's circuitous, but yes, because then the ad team goes, hey everybody, just a heads up, we're doing a big ad with cookie company, so it's a conflict of interest, any of the reporting we do, just so you know.
00:55:54.000Now, most of the editorial teams are independent for a lot of these companies, so it doesn't work that way, but a lot of the new companies don't have that same level of independence and will absolutely be like, yo, shut that story down, man, they're giving us money.
00:56:06.000Dude, a lot of new media has no oversight at all.
00:56:10.000It's like one guy running a website, and he links to another article that he read, which links to a third article, which links back to his article.
00:56:22.000So I had NBC smear me claiming that I was pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, which is completely bunk.
00:56:29.000It was based off of a live stream from several years ago when a Fox Business article came out claiming Seth Rich had information on his computer.
00:56:49.000What I was saying was, even though this story came out claiming that he had the information, I still don't believe it.
00:56:55.000What did they do several years later, and well after the article got retracted?
00:56:59.000NBC News puts in their article that I pushed it, and they link to some random conspiracy blog.
00:57:05.000Then Variety and a bunch of other outlets clone that article without fact-checking, and then NBC removed it, and they created a big circle of self-citation.
00:57:39.000And if you're not talking about Trump, you're talking about someone who isn't the most prominent person in the world, it'll probably get overlooked for a short amount of time.
00:57:47.000But then a journalist will be like, I need to find information on Freedom Tunes.
00:57:51.000And they'll look it up on Wikipedia and say it's a left-wing cartoon.
00:57:54.000Then they'll write a story based on some glance.
00:57:57.000They glance on Wikipedia and saying, Freedom Tunes, comma, a left-wing cartoon.
00:58:01.000Then someone on Wikipedia says, hey, there's no citation for this.
00:58:18.000Yeah, it's basically the same concept.
00:58:19.000I got accused of that because some anarchists on Reddit posted something like, make sure you bring your guns or something, to a Portland, you know, to a protest with Proud Boys.
00:58:30.000And so I tweeted, they're talking about bringing guns.
00:58:33.000And then a bunch of conservatives picked it up, and then it started a game of telephone, and then it became, Antifa announces they're getting armed for, you know, Armed Antifa announces it.
00:58:58.000Because Facebook was like the beginning of this algorithmic content drive.
00:59:02.000So, what happened was you had, in the early days of Facebook, somebody makes a news website, and they would call it like, you know, Freedom Tunes News.
00:59:12.000Oh my goodness, I'm so on the spot here.
00:59:14.000And so, I'm just, it's a safe reference, your brand.
00:59:18.000So, let's say you have two channels, Timcast and Freedom Tunes News.
00:59:22.000And Freedom Tunes News is an opinionated, hard, you know... Just horrible.
00:59:39.000The point is, in the early days of Facebook, and it's even true to this day in a lot of ways on many platforms, people don't interact with boring, straight news.
00:59:48.000And they choose the more bombastic content.
00:59:50.000I mean, this is true for me, too, because I do opinion, you know, I fact-check, but I like to think that my opinions are, to a certain degree, informed, but of course I could be wrong in their opinions.
01:00:03.000And so people are more interested in seeing what someone has to say.
01:00:06.000Now, there's a couple things to consider here.
01:00:08.000We don't need straight facts, like straight fact news, because we know for the most part the moment something happens.
01:00:14.000Donald Trump gives a speech and he says, you know, I'm going to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
01:01:24.000So the more you stuff into the article, the more reach you get.
01:01:29.000So in my opinion, this resulted in the rise of a psychotic fringe mainstream left, because they keep running in circles, chasing each other with more and more extreme narratives.
01:01:41.000And the moderates and the right, like even old school liberals, aren't in this game.
01:01:47.000They're doing more research on their own, and they're not trusting the mainstream media.
01:01:52.000The left blindly trusts these brands without question.
01:02:59.000If you write an article about the Boston bombing, it's going to result in security.
01:03:03.000It's going to result in people having an overreaction to terrorism, and they're going to demand the state secure them and keep them safe.
01:03:10.000If you write about police brutality, meaning the threat comes from the state, you're going to get waves of people demanding the dismantling of the state.
01:03:19.000So because you have conservatives, and even to a certain degree moderates, who hold all moral foundations, loyalty, purity, authority being the three, according to Jonathan Haidt's research, that the left doesn't have, they're the ones saying, Well, wait a minute.
01:03:33.000I'm not just going to throw the police department out, you know?
01:03:47.000The liberals, according to Jonathan Haidt's research, have care and fairness as their moral foundations.
01:03:52.000And the right has all six, which is care, fairness, authority, purity, loyalty, and liberty.
01:03:59.000That means if you come to me and say, all cops are bad, you're gonna trigger loyalty, respect for authority, and right then, it's gonna make it so the conservatives go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:04:18.000Therefore, when they see police brutality, they go, oh, rebel, rebel, rebel, and they say, burn it all down, destroy it, and that's literally what's happening.
01:04:25.000So what I think we see is, You have conservatives who have a strong basis in all moral foundations.
01:04:32.000And again, this is not—I'm not—it's Jonathan Haidt's research.
01:04:37.000It's called—was it called The Coddling of the American Mind?
01:04:38.000Yeah, definitely gotta read this stuff.
01:04:40.000And if I'm getting it wrong, then Jonathan can absolutely correct me, and you guys can come at me.
01:04:45.000My general understanding is—or at least I should say my interpretation would be— If we see a story as so I have a decent balance.
01:04:54.000I'm like left left liberal in the moral foundations even leaning a bit conservative because of like authority and purity and I have a big Liberty Foundation because you can actually take the test where they map you out.
01:05:07.000So so if you come to me with this extremist article that says something like The Boston bombing, terror around every corner, my liberty foundation is going to start flaring, red alert, red alert, red alert, and I'm going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I respect liberty.
01:05:23.000I have a strong liberty moral foundation.
01:05:25.000So I'm not going to give up my freedoms just because we saw this, you know, this article.
01:05:30.000My authority will also be like, yeah, but, yeah, but.
01:05:34.000So you end up with this, like, moderate approach.
01:06:05.000They have like very little of anything, but liberty is straight to the roof.
01:06:08.000So it's like some of these, there's like the question, the test for the moral foundations has some really gross stuff that I'm not even gonna say.
01:06:16.000And libertarians are like, don't care.
01:06:18.000You can do what you want so long as you're not hurting somebody else's consensual.
01:06:23.000Like, yeah, when I was writing, but that's, well, no, to be fair to, I mean, obviously I haven't taken a look at that test.
01:06:30.000I know that like, I'm not as libertarian as I used to be, but a lot of libertarians probably would say like, I disapprove of this thing, but I don't want the government to be involved.
01:06:38.000But I guess I'm not sure to the extent to which you're speaking and you didn't want to say them.
01:06:42.000I assume it's stuff that would get us demonetized.
01:07:04.000People who are just libertarian don't have strong foundations.
01:07:07.000And I'm not trying to drag other libertarians because you can be libertarian and still have strong foundations.
01:07:11.000It's a generality that libertarians basically say, hey man, if you want to do your thing in private in your own home, then why am I going to stop you from doing it as long as you're not hurting anybody else?
01:07:21.000OK, so I think when I was writing these articles and other people writing these articles about the Boston bombing and other violent things that would happen, I think it was inciting the left.
01:07:29.000And I didn't know what the left was at the time.
01:08:06.000So it started with Facebook created, or I should say Facebook created a magnifying lens or like a cannon to propel critical race theory because it fit the algorithm so perfectly to say like the intersection of all of these different ridiculous ideas.
01:09:20.000So they were less angry towards their opponents at this time?
01:09:23.000Not necessarily, but Twitter has given them a vehicle to just be angry all the time.
01:09:28.000Well, that's the funny thing about Twitter, right?
01:09:29.000Like, on a good day on Twitter or a day on Twitter where you're successful,
01:09:34.000it's usually because you have said something that's really upset somebody else,
01:09:37.000and on a bad day, it's something has been said that upsets you,
01:09:40.000so it's kind of a play stupid games, win stupid prizes type thing.
01:09:43.000But you know a lot of the tweets that I'll put up like my reaction to crazy news like there's a story and it said something like Pennsylvania is is saying that if the signature doesn't match on a mail-in vote the vote can't be disqualified So I quote tweet that and put lol.
01:10:09.000I've never seen it, but I'm familiar with it.
01:10:10.000So I'm reminded of the scene where Tony Shalhoub, he's in engineering, and the aliens are all around him, and they're like in an emergency, and they're about to die, and they ask him, and he's just laughing.
01:11:07.000I mean, I can't speak to anything particularly about the Young Turks, but you just said something really interesting sort of about stress levels and how you react to a high stakes situation.
01:11:15.000And I find that in our culture we have yet to find this happy medium, or at least most people have.
01:11:20.000Where you have legitimate moral concerns and you're trying to make the world a better place, but you're not so caught up in whether you as an individual will be perfectly successful at that.
01:11:29.000It seems as if people are just completely nihilistic and everything's funny and they don't care about anything and they're just going to do whatever they want to have a good time and why get caught up in any of the morality of it because it's just going to stress me out.
01:11:38.000And then there are other people who do have legitimate moral concerns, but then they go over the top thinking that they're the person who needs to solve every single problem and they lose their minds when they're not successful.
01:11:47.000And I find that the best way to go about it, and this is something I struggle with as well because I don't know that I've got that perfect balance yet, but it's to follow your moral code, to do as best as you possibly can, but to recognize that God has a plan and if you're not successful, things will be as they should.
01:12:01.000I think I know where my bias in this regard comes from.
01:12:04.000Like, why am I talking about the Young Turks and not, say, like, Turning Point or, like, some other conservative group?
01:14:53.000I actually don't know if it's true because I don't know how far I've gotten in life.
01:14:57.000I love my life, but I do think that the old adage that people don't know, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care is 100% true.
01:15:39.000I think that could be part of it, but at the same time, maybe it's just a quirk of the fact that we live in this system where the left doesn't seem to pay a price for being far left.
01:15:49.000But they don't care what you think of their political views, and we seem to.
01:15:53.000And that has to stop if we're ever going to win.
01:15:55.000What happens when you're loyal to someone who is not loyal to you?
01:16:31.000They say it's colonization and it's white supremacy, and they accuse the Founding Fathers of these atrocities, and they ignore all of the really great things that have been done.
01:16:39.000So, we're going to jump to this next story.
01:16:41.000And I hate to do this, because it's just...
01:16:44.000If you hate to do it, you don't have to.
01:16:59.000So there's been an ongoing thing with the Rogan podcast, which to Joe is probably more of a mosquito on his arm that he swats away and ignores.
01:17:08.000But it has been relevant to those who are active in cultural politics and the digital space.
01:17:15.000So particularly, you know, a space that, like, I'm in.
01:17:19.000I hate to constantly be bringing up Joe because they're the ones bringing him up.
01:17:36.000And now when the culture war comes for him to, you know, repeatedly in these stories, I think it is particularly relevant because it's going to trickle down on everybody else.
01:17:45.000What is going on with these podcasts and what we need to pay attention to.
01:17:49.000So as much as I want to be like, we get it.
01:17:52.000Spotify employees repeatedly are pushing these stories to try and come after Joe.
01:17:55.000This one to me was like another example of the danger of the minority threatening to destroy things that are extremely popular and potentially even having an impact.
01:18:09.000So, uh, I don't know if, if, you know, to what extent you've heard this.
01:18:11.000I think you knew about the scene that a bunch of episodes didn't make it.
01:18:27.000I guess I'll give Joe the benefit of the doubt, but on top of that too, Carl Benjamin, Sargon is so much less controversial than any of the other names you threw out there.
01:18:36.000And I'm not saying those podcasts should have been banned either, but it's just, it's funny.
01:18:42.000When I was on Rogan's show with the Twitter people and they were talking about why they banned him and started reading some of the things he said, Carl actually messaged me and he was like, he started, he was laughing and he was like, you're probably saying like, Oh, Carl, what have you done?
01:18:54.000Yeah, no, okay, fair enough. I'm not familiar with his Twitter, but it's crazy to me that they would they would
01:18:59.000Refuse to allow him to upload streams. He did with any of those people, but especially I don't know
01:19:04.000I was just saw Sargon to be a lot less controversial story was but maybe I don't follow him closely enough did Spotify
01:19:10.000Nuke those episodes or did was there a clerical error? I I thought I read that Joe said that it was an error, that they didn't get uploaded properly.
01:19:18.000So why would that pattern seem to exist?
01:19:54.000And I can't imagine he would do anything but that.
01:19:57.000I don't know Joe Rogan as a person, I've never spoken to him, but based on who he is on the podcast, it would shock me if there wasn't something in the contract to ensure that he had full creative freedom.
01:20:07.000Let me read this, so we'll see what this is all about, and then we'll talk about it.
01:20:11.000So, Digital Music News reports a contingent of activist Spotify staffers are now considering a walkout or full-blown strike if their demands for direct editorial oversight of the Joe Rogan Experience podcasts aren't met.
01:20:22.000Last week, we first reported that Spotify employees were demanding direct editorial oversight over the recently acquired Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
01:20:29.000That would include the ability to directly edit or remove sections of upcoming interviews, or block the uploading of episodes deemed problematic.
01:20:36.000The employees also demanded the ability to add trigger warnings, corrections, and references to fact-check articles on topics discussed by Rogan in the course of his multi-hour discussions.
01:20:45.000Some of the group's demands have already been met by Spotify management, though a refusal to allow further changes is stirring talk of a high-profile walkout or strike, according to preliminary plans shared with Digital Music News.
01:20:57.000The strike would principally involve New York-based Spotify employees and would be accompanied by protests outside Spotify's Manhattan headquarters.
01:21:04.000Other aspects would involve media appearances and coordination with other activist organizations.
01:21:09.000For Spotify, the decision to offer some concessions may have only emboldened demands for wide-scale editorial oversight.
01:21:16.000During the transition of Rogan's podcast episodes onto the Spotify platform, multiple past episodes were omitted.
01:21:22.000Those included interviews with Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Alex Jones.
01:21:26.000Additionally, Rogan issued a rare public apology and correction over his claim that left-wing anarchists had set fires in Oregon, a point that was made during a recent interview with Douglas Murray.
01:21:36.000The apology is now believed to be the result of pressure from Spotify staffers.
01:21:40.000But those measures apparently don't go far enough.
01:21:42.000Rogan's claim during the Murray podcast is still part of the podcast recording, despite demands that the offending section will be removed or directly corrected within the audio itself.
01:21:51.000It now appears that Spotify is unwilling to directly edit or otherwise alter any existing episodes, with content alteration considered a bright line that shouldn't be crossed.
01:22:01.000That episode on Facebook right now is flagged as fake news.
01:22:13.000So from that one thing Joe said, I wouldn't mind if he put a little cut in there and added like, Hey guys, by the way, what I'm about to say is really ignorant.
01:22:48.000Like I've uploaded videos and then noticed that there was a little error with it and then taken it down, redone it, or just cut that part out and then re-uploaded it.
01:22:56.000Because sometimes I feel that there's a responsibility to do that.
01:22:58.000You might need to edit it while it's online without having to take it down.
01:23:32.000Digital Music News says, if a walkout strike moves forward, it could be risky for the staffers involved.
01:23:38.000Other corporations have certainly witnessed walkouts and even full-blown strikes by activist employees for a range of grievances.
01:23:44.000Those protests have often been met with changes.
01:23:48.000Though the employment landscape has changed dramatically in 2020, Spotify employees reportedly enjoy comfortable salaries in the $120,000 to $130,000 annual range, with considerable perks and benefits.
01:23:59.000These are plum jobs in extremely uncertain economic times, making a strike a risky move.
01:24:05.000It also appears that Spotify management, including CEO Daniel Ek, Has a limited tolerance for the mutiny on deck.
01:24:12.000Accordingly, Digital Music News has learned that Spotify clearly shared its decision on the Schreier episode and has declined continued demands to edit or remove other episodes.
01:24:44.000And it goes against the mainstream orthodoxy, and that's why they're freaking out.
01:24:48.000They say the reason X pushback is somewhat obvious, Joe Rogan's entire identity revolves around unfiltered discussion and opinion, and audiences could abandon the podcast if it becomes censored or controlled.
01:24:59.000Earlier this year, Spotify lured Rogan into an exclusive relationship with an estimated $100 million deal.
01:25:05.000So, if you're an employee who makes $100K, and you go and say, I'm gonna strike unless we get to make these changes, what do you think that guy's gonna say?
01:25:13.000Hmm, should I lose one employee or a $100 million contract?
01:25:22.000What if the employees now claim being in a work environment where they hear sexist, racist, and transphobic content is a violation of their civil rights under the Civil Rights Act?
01:25:34.000They say it's discrimination for me to have to work on content that says these things.
01:25:39.000That's been the big advantage, that's been the big manipulation the left has used, arguing that their political cause is actually protected.
01:25:46.000So what the New York Times did, is they started tweeting out all of, it was Tom Cotton, right?
01:25:52.000Tom Cotton, the Send in the Troops article?
01:26:09.000I think it's a reference to that they are white supremacists who don't view them as human beings, just like animate corpses walking around.
01:26:16.000A black body is a... So then why are you saying it though?
01:26:52.000I don't want to derail off of what's going on with the New York Times.
01:26:55.000They used the idea that the New York Times was discriminating against black people as a way to force the company to take down the op-ed and ultimately the editor resigned.
01:27:05.000They are using civil rights law and they are claiming, well, if there is content that I have to listen to because I work at this company, that is discriminatory against me and my beliefs and who I am.
01:27:16.000And now the Supreme Court has ruled that you can't discriminate against someone on the basis of their gender identity.
01:27:25.000Yeah, we were actually discussing that, and you made a really good point about the fact that we don't actually have to change legislation as long as the language changes.
01:27:33.000Well, so the Supreme Court ruled that if you can't discriminate on the basis of sex, gender identity and orientation are rooted in your biological sex, therefore they are protected as well.
01:27:44.000So now here's what might happen. Or, I don't want to say might.
01:27:47.000The Spotify employees, just like the New York Times employees,
01:27:51.000they're doing the same thing. So maybe, we'll see.
01:27:55.000I would say if you're looking for a job, apply at Spotify right now.
01:28:02.000It drives me crazy though, because this is something that happens in the creative world so often, and I have not worked anywhere near the mainstream creative world, but I have a number of friends who have.
01:28:09.000And whenever you work on a property that's been acquired, there's always this tension between the people who have acquired the property and the people who originally created it.
01:28:17.000Because no one can ever buy something and then just let the creator do it the way that they were originally doing it.
01:28:22.000No one can ever see that something is successful and say, this guy knows what he's doing.
01:28:26.000I'm going to let him run the show because he was doing it fine before I came along.
01:28:29.000It would be smart for me to just let him continue and take a little piece of this so I can enrich myself.
01:28:35.000It's so prideful and ridiculous and they screw themselves because they end up making less money in the long run when they ruin it.
01:28:42.000Yes, a lot of times, but it's about fitting that into, so they have a jigsaw puzzle, and they take this piece, and they start carving it to fit the mold, and they remove the good things about it.
01:28:52.000I've done that before, when I was a stupid kid.
01:29:00.000So, some of the things I've asked, you know, in relation to what's going on with the Rogan Podcast is, Uh, the first thing I'll point out is the inherent political danger of Joe Rogan's apology, in that Media Matters for America attacks Joe saying he's putting out dangerous misinformation because Joe insinuated leftists were starting fires.
01:29:19.000Joe says something, the left is doing X.
01:29:22.000The left responds by saying you're a liar.
01:29:23.000Joe responds by saying, sorry, that wasn't true.
01:30:14.000I don't understand why it is that Joe would apologize for this, but then not apologize for anything else he's ever said that's been incorrect.
01:30:21.000So this comes back to playing their game.
01:30:23.000We are choosing to play by their rules.
01:30:25.000And I really hope that Joe does not decide to go through with this and end Kowtow or anything like that.
01:30:31.000I hope that he sticks to his guns and stays strong because he is just, he's a very nice guy.
01:30:48.000I know, I feel like I'm kind of beating a dead horse.
01:30:50.000I've talked about it so many times, but it's in, you know, just in the context of they're continually putting pressure on him to try and get him to make concessions.
01:30:56.000Yes, but I think that is a separate issue, because this, the whole idea of editing or removing his podcast is just completely insane, and I hope that he doesn't count out to that.
01:31:12.000They're saying, I think it was James Lindsay who tweeted, if they think they're going to get away with this, they don't know who Joe Rogan is.
01:31:19.000And it's like, perhaps if you trust that he did a good job with his legal contract, his case contract, in terms of the licensing deal with Spotify, for sure.
01:31:26.000But if it's just a licensing deal, then it's Spotify under any obligation to actually post any of his podcasts.
01:31:35.000It's pretty... I would be surprised, based on the contracts I've dealt with, if there was a provision saying, if I make the content, you must publish it.
01:31:45.000No, every licensing deal... They just bought them and silenced them?
01:32:07.000And so I'd imagine with an exclusive contract, it, to me, I, I, you know, look, he's the biggest podcast in the world.
01:32:13.000I'm sure they went through all these contracts with a fine tooth comb and, and like, they're probably some of the craziest contracts in the world, but the deals that I've negotiated where I've demanded guarantees have just collapsed.
01:32:22.000When I say, no, no, no, I want to guarantee that you're actually going to be working on this.
01:32:25.000And they say, well, we can't guarantee that because... Have a nice day.
01:32:38.000You give me a cell phone and I'll sit in the middle of the woods and just blab along for a million years.
01:32:42.000I can live in a hut or go down by the river and just go fishing and mind my own business.
01:32:46.000But there are a lot of people Fall into these traps.
01:32:49.000I've had a bunch of contracts offered to me over the past couple of years that have been laughable.
01:32:54.000There's like a really big podcasting network that sent me a contract that basically said, in very sneaky terms, I would give them 100% ownership of all of my platform and content and everything.
01:33:04.000And then they make you feel like you're wrong for questioning it.
01:33:46.000But these pitfalls exist, and they're all over the place, and I have seen some really, really clever ones.
01:33:53.000They could do things in a contract where they say something like, this following provision only applies to a C-grade manager, you know, of a company, and will not pertain specifically to high-ranking officials X, Y, and Z, and then say, content produced by these people will be property of this company.
01:34:08.000Then you go seven pages down, and it'll say, for all intents and purposes, a C-level manager could include this, that, and this.
01:34:31.000Yeah, I mean, it's so evil, but it's hilarious because the entire purpose of a contract is so you can have some clear agreement on paper that both parties have consented to, but obviously once lawyers get involved, everyone's just trying to screw the other person over.
01:34:41.000Not all the time, but they make it much easier for you to do that if you have all the tricky legal language at your disposal.
01:35:40.000And I'll tell you this, I often advise people there's no such thing as no in business, only terms.
01:35:46.000So if someone comes to you and they give you bad terms, you don't say no, you say improve the terms.
01:35:51.000At a certain point, however, I'm sick and tired of them constantly flinging garbage at me, assuming I'm too stupid to realize how to run a business.
01:35:59.000These people think they can get away with it.
01:36:00.000Look at what Kanye West was tweeting about.
01:36:02.000I don't know if you saw this stuff, where he talks about the labels ripping people off.
01:36:06.000Especially with young people, they probably assume like, you know, a lot of these contracts in the past few years, I'm like, in my late 20s, I'm in my early 30s, and they're like, we're gonna take everything you own.
01:36:14.000I'm like, you think I'm a moron, don't you?
01:36:16.000You think you can come up to someone who's like, you know, late 20s, early 30s, and they're not smart enough.
01:36:59.000What would you really say if, like, you've got a call right now from McDonald's and said, why don't you be a cashier?
01:37:03.000I'd say, God bless you, but I have other things that I'm invested in right now that I find more rewarding than that position would probably be for me at this point in time.
01:37:11.000So, to be fair, for you, that's probably, you have your own business, you've got a successful channel.
01:37:16.000What I tell people when they're trying to get started in life and they're trying to find jobs, the correct answer is most people say no.
01:37:22.000Like, most people I know of college degrees, they're like, I would not know.
01:38:13.000I have no idea what that situation is.
01:38:14.000I love Joe, man, and his work is so important, I think.
01:38:18.000So, it's worrying, then, when you see stories like this, and here's why I'm like, I was begrudgingly saying, like, I don't really want to talk about it, because it feels very tabloidy.
01:38:57.000Vice had something called a non-traditional workplace agreement that you had to sign when you got hired there.
01:39:02.000This was an agreement that said, you recognize that, you know, I had to sign it.
01:39:06.000In this workplace, you will encounter content like this, like that, whatever, and you acknowledge you will not, you know, take issue.
01:39:12.000As a media company, we do these things.
01:39:14.000And Vice was basically forced to remove that because leftist activists started claiming it was used to allow the men at the company to sexually assault women, which is ridiculous.
01:39:25.000So when all of these stories of, like, assault started coming out from the higher-ranking Vice people, Then all of a sudden we started hearing these stories.
01:39:32.000Did you know they have a non-traditional workplace agreement that says these things?
01:39:35.000And it got leaked online and everybody read it.
01:39:37.000Vice had people sign that to prevent them from saying, I walked into the workplace and saw, you know, a porn video playing.
01:39:44.000It's like, well, you work for a magazine and this is a part of the job.
01:39:48.000You're like, these are the kind of content you engage with.
01:39:50.000Sometimes you're going to hear, like when Vice goes to the Middle East and you hear someone yelling like racial and ethnic slurs about their rival tribe or country.
01:40:00.000People would get triggered or angry by it.
01:40:02.000Or what about when Vice went and interviewed Klansmen?
01:40:04.000And they started saying a whole bunch of racist things.
01:40:07.000So people are gonna say, the fact that they make me have to edit this when it was derogatory about me, I believe is a violation of my right to discrimination.
01:40:18.000So I don't know exactly what would happen in that capacity, but that is why you end up with non-traditional workplace agreements.
01:40:25.000Yeah, we had something similar at Mines.
01:40:27.000I mean, I think I had to actually write that in to my own job, because I was like an admin at Mines, and I would see the boost console coming through, and it was just terrifying.
01:41:14.000So, look, I'm not saying I know for sure that will happen, but I throw it back to things like the non-traditional workplace agreement advice and how the New York Times employees accused New York Times of being racist for allowing an article about riots that are predominantly white.
01:41:43.000That's what their claim, and then it worked.
01:41:45.000The editor from the opinion page had to resign.
01:41:47.000They actually pulled the article and the guy resigned.
01:41:48.000I don't know if they pulled it, but they put a whole bunch of, like, apologies and explanations, and we're trying to desperately be like, oh, please don't cancel your subscription.
01:42:00.000If I had a company at the New York Times, and I was losing subscribers, my bottom line was faltering, I'd sit back, put my feet up, light a cigar, and be like, we're going down with the ship, boys!
01:42:14.000I'd be like, ladies and gentlemen, crack the cigar, I'd be like, The ship is going down, I'm going down with it.
01:42:20.000I have golden parachutes prepared, severance packages for all of you if you'd like to go, or you can hang out and we can watch and see what happens.
01:42:25.000And then the guys who don't have golden parachutes just stand there and play the violin as the ship sinks.
01:42:30.000I would rather watch the ship sink than get taken over by cultists.
01:42:35.000I'm the kind of guy, if I'm on my ship, I got my 17th century frigate or galleon or whatever, and I'm transporting my important cargo, and pirates come, I'm going to be like, scuttle the ship and burn it to the ground before I give it to these people.
01:42:55.000We're burning it to the ground before we let you have it.
01:42:57.000The New York Times doesn't do that, though.
01:42:59.000Yeah, I guess the question is, how much is the New York Times being... I mean, obviously there's some coercion there because they published the article of their own free will and then took it down, but they're... I mean, they've always been to the left.
01:43:09.000It's not as if these are right-wingers coming in and forcing them to say things that would contradict their previously held biases.
01:43:15.000That's like the joke I was making where in like 2030 you see the New York Times covered in vines and you go in and there's journalists all haggard like zombies.
01:43:23.000Because their desperation to latch on to being left, they can never give it up.
01:43:56.000And moderates and conservatives are in a very similar space they've been for the past 20, 30 years.
01:44:01.000Yeah, I mean, I think the right-wing has changed to some extent, but the worst thing you could commit yourself to is being left-wing because that's always going to change.
01:44:06.000I think unfortunately, presently, the right-wing has more or less become this very loose association with people who have vaguely similar views about the economy, and then socially, the views are all over the board.
01:44:18.000So we don't have a very strong right-wing or conservative movement currently, but I think we need to develop something much more robust, and as I said earlier, rooted in Catholicism.
01:44:27.000In 2006, the right wing was pro-war, go kill, kill, kill, get the oil, get the oil, Halliburton.
01:44:34.000The right has changed so much and it's really depressing.
01:44:38.000And it's funny though, because what the right was in like 2006, 2007, around that time during the Bush era, And these Black Lives Matter are neoliberals.
01:45:32.000What does classical liberal mean either because often it's like sometimes classically liberal is made to refer specifically to or is used to refer specifically to Enlightenment values, but I think more recently people who would have been considered liberal ten years ago But now are considered moderate call themselves classically liberal.
01:45:47.000They don't know what this okay good I'm on the same page as you but I've noticed many people use the phrase that way and I'm yeah I'm curious what your thoughts are on that because because And also what the proper label is for those people if you're talking about people who are liberal ten years ago You're talking about social liberals Yeah, like Sock Dems maybe?
01:47:10.000They believe in a market economy, they just want it to be really strongly regulated and they want for there to be a very robust welfare state.
01:48:18.000I'll do the Ben Shapiro impression if everyone's gonna lose their minds about it because last time I was looking at the chats after I was done with the show and everyone was asking for Ben Shapiro the entire time and I realized that I hadn't done it thoroughly and part of that was because I was very tired that day.
01:48:26.000I had taken several plane rides in order to get here because I was on the other side of the continent and now I'm here and I'm talking and I have to do this Ben Shapiro impression and don't get me wrong, I'm happy to do it, I'm happy to be here, okay gang, but I'm not just like, you can't just put a quarter on my back and expect a Ben Shapiro impression so hopefully that super chat was for more than a quarter.
01:48:44.000I've noticed that, like, you and Ruben will get a lot of hit pieces and videos made about you, but that just shows that what you're doing is working.
01:49:07.000I think it depends on who it comes from.
01:49:08.000If a friend comes to me and says, hey, this video seemed wrong for this reason, I'll listen.
01:49:11.000But if it's some YouTuber and their whole goal is to get views dunking on you, then it's like, you do your thing.
01:49:17.000I'm fine with you being able to do that, but you're probably not going to have advice for me that'll be that great at appealing to my audience or speaking the truth.
01:49:25.000It's the tone that helps you learn a lot of times.
01:49:27.000I wake up, I read the news, I complain about my feelings on the internet.
01:49:31.000If you think, like, the people who are dunking on me assume I'm, like, some prominent, high-profile public figure, you can view me that way.
01:49:40.000I know I get a lot of views and everything.
01:49:42.000But listen, man, I still wake up, sit down, read the news, and then complain about my feelings.
01:50:11.000Man, I can't believe it because you know I was reading the story the other day and I just talk about my feelings, right?
01:50:15.000So, when people start making hit pieces about me, I'm like, I didn't care about you a year ago, I didn't care about you two years ago, I'm not gonna care about you today, and I'll never even know you existed a year from now.
01:50:27.000Because all I'm doing is telling you my feelings and the things I read, and I'm trying to make sure I have the correct understanding of these things, and then when I'm done, I go and play video games, or I'll go skate, I'll play some music, and then we'll hang out and have more conversations.
01:50:41.000If people want to watch, this is what I've always told people, The reason I started kind of doing what I did when I traveled around the world was because I wanted to travel.
01:50:49.000And I said, maybe people would like to watch and see what I film when I travel.
01:50:53.000And I wanted to go to places in conflict and crisis.
01:50:56.000Now I want to talk about how I feel about news and make sure I'm getting the details right, my opinions are informed, and I guess people want to watch that too.
01:51:02.000So they can rag on me all day and night.
01:51:30.000Tom Bowersock says, wasn't a fan of Maj yesterday.
01:51:33.000That said, this chat is to respect the fact that you had him on and had an interesting conversation.
01:51:37.000And I hope everybody who checked out that episode who weren't fans can respect that, at least tried to make sure I was reading their comments as well, you know?
01:51:47.000So the people who were upset, we ended up going 45 minutes extra because I want to make sure if you think he's getting things wrong, we're not going to shy away from this.
01:52:21.000He's just talking about how the guy who photographed Bigfoot.
01:52:24.000Dude, I feel like I'm going to get this wrong, but there's something like the guy who photographed Bigfoot, his whole thing was to try to find a picture of Bigfoot and then he went out there and coincidentally he did.
01:52:30.000It was like a guy in a suit, but please don't quote me on that.
01:52:34.000I hope I'm not spreading fake news about fake Bigfoot sightings.
01:52:40.000Gentleman says, are you still making that card game with Seamus?
01:52:44.000If so, is there a Kickstarter we can donate to?
01:52:46.000In fact, it is also with Ian, who is the game master, and because we both play Magic the Gathering, and Adam as well, most of you guys know Adam Kregler, is contributing to the game mechanics, and Seamus is the art fella.
01:52:59.000As the artist, yeah, I've been doing art for that, and it's a lot of fun.
01:53:01.000I've never really played any of those, like, card games with any kind of, like, magic themes or any of that, and part of that was just, like, not going towards that, I think, as a Christian.
01:53:09.000But I really love the idea of this really fun card game which we've developed and which you guys have had, like, incredible ideas for, and then me just being able to get these... Make jokes.
01:53:17.000These jokes that I can make about whatever political figures we're discussing, because I think it's going to be an extremely fun card game that's going to basically appeal to anyone who pays any attention to politics.
01:53:26.000And so I'm so pumped It's basically a tabletop.
01:53:30.000The idea is you can pop up in the box, and you can play with all your friends, and the goal is to get your opponent banned from the internet.
01:53:43.000And it's really funny because when you guys reached out to me about this, I had no idea how public it is, so I was trying to keep it on the DL.
01:53:49.000And people are like, oh, Tim Poole mentioned you're working on a card game.
01:54:31.000I feel like the Democrats have tried to use the destruction of the small business owner and the family, like the family and innocent people, to gain political power and I am enraged by this.
01:54:41.000When I watched that guy, I forgot what his name was, but he had his sports bar burned to the ground.
01:54:52.000And the Democrats were supporting all of this.
01:54:55.000Obviously, they've been careful about how they have, but they have.
01:54:58.000And so I thought, We are watching innocent people bawling their eyes out on TV, having their lives ripped from them and destroyed by violent mobs, and all I asked was you say, stop this.
01:55:12.000You wouldn't call out Antifa, you wouldn't call out Black Lives Matter.
01:55:15.000The Democrats need to understand, we as regular Americans who want to live our lives, whether you're liberal or conservative, want to open a small business and be with your family, we will not tolerate You bailing these people out and supporting this destruction.
01:55:29.000And on top of that, I said earlier in the year, one of the things Trump could do to get me to vote for him, there's a couple things, is partying nonviolent drug offenders and doing like an executive order to essentially legalize marijuana and or pulling our troops out of the Middle East.
01:55:45.000Trump is doing that and he's doing peace agreements, so I'm satisfied.
01:55:53.000Yeah, mine is the Trans-Pacific Partnership and how the Democratic Obama and Biden wanted to get us into this trade deal with Malaysia and all these countries in East Asia that would have basically allowed them to sue our population if they felt like we were discriminating against their oil companies and things.
01:56:10.000So if they wanted to sell us You know, Korean oil or Malaysian oil, and we said, no, we don't want it.
01:56:15.000They would say, well, you're discriminating, so we're going to sue the American government.
01:56:19.000And Trump, like a week after he got into office or something, he just nixed the whole deal.
01:56:40.000Oh yeah, so I think my biggest issue right now is probably also the riots because it is, it can no longer be the national deficit.
01:56:48.000I really hate that about the Trump administration because I was very concerned about the national deficit because if you, like me, ever want to have children, you need to think about what we're leaving to our kids.
01:57:22.000I'm going to show it to you after the show.
01:57:23.000They said the Democrats need to moderate their position on abortion because they're leaving behind 30% of their own supporters and 44% of independent voters because they've become too extreme.
01:58:26.000official position of the democratic party is even more radically pro-choice
01:58:30.000than that of the market so i'll call it the local approach is just pro abortion
01:58:33.000yeah exactly i would argue that i get any position in support of it is but
01:58:37.000the democrats are also getting up to the point of literally being pro and fana
01:58:40.000In some states, they're against the Born Alive Act.
01:58:42.000I mean, if an abortion fails and the child is delivered, they believe that it's acceptable to kill that child and that there's no protections that that child should have extended to them by the government.
01:58:51.000Tulsi Gabbard said there's got to be some restrictions.
01:58:55.000And it's a very, very complicated and difficult argument.
01:59:05.000But there are serious challenges in the government's authority, what they can do and how they can control things and what their rights are.
01:59:10.000And it really just comes down to one of these ethical arguments where there's a moral disagreement.
01:59:17.000And I ultimately am very much not a fan of abortion, but I recognize the difficulties in trying to be a nation with individual freedoms and restricting the power of the government in certain capacities.
01:59:31.000That being said, is a big challenge for me, for sure.
01:59:34.000So when I'm confronted with these arguments, I'm sitting here racking my brain, trying to find this balance, and then the left comes out and starts screaming, you know, what did Lena Dunham say?
01:59:51.000We're trying to have a discussion about something that we think is like, like the position of the Democrats used to be begrudgingly.
01:59:58.000We don't want to be for this, but we recognize the importance of it in certain circumstances.
02:00:03.000Yeah, safe, legal, and rare was the buzz phrase, but that they don't really care about rare.
02:00:08.000And they don't even really care about safe at all.
02:00:10.000Anytime anyone tries to impose any restrictions on Planned Parenthood or the way they're able to operate, they cry bloody murder about how this is restricting abortion access.
02:00:18.000So safe doesn't matter to them at all.
02:00:45.000I was talking to a friend of mine who is a progressive left-leaning voter who said they were scared to speak up about how they're pro-life.
02:00:54.000And I was like, then how are you voting for a Democrat?
02:01:03.000Well, I mean, I'll pray for them, and I hope that they can be encouraged to know that speaking out for life is the most noble thing you can do, and I'll leave it at that.
02:01:12.000I'm gonna try and read through some of these quickly because... Can we stop the recording and keep the stream going?
02:01:18.000The stream will keep going no matter what.
02:02:40.000That the challenge is due to population density.
02:02:44.000And the increased danger from large groups that are rioting that we didn't have in the past.
02:02:49.000And now we're entering a really difficult period where we say we don't want cops to look like a military force, but we also have 300 people running around smashing and starting fires and shooting cops.
02:02:58.000And not only is it larger population, but easier for them to coordinate.
02:03:12.000So now it's like, It's not a question of what they should look like or should be doing, it's a question of where is this going to lead as society grows bigger.
02:04:20.000If you're going to embody the archetypal me of those of the hero by metaphorically dying, you have to go to the Underworld and rescue your father.
02:04:29.000You have to go to the Underworld, you have to rescue your father, and then you have to put together your own archetype and make sure that your room is perfectly clean so that you're capable of doing it.
02:04:34.000There were like five words in there that didn't make sense, but you know what?
02:04:36.000I'm happy because it was just as fast as it needed to be.
02:05:37.000They say that if we ever really had free college, the number of people signing up for the military would decrease exponentially because that's the motivation for quite a few people.
02:05:46.000I actually don't know the metric for that to be honest.
02:05:50.000Do you think they should get a fast track?
02:06:28.000There's an interesting- We were talking about something about this a while ago, because one of these, like- I had a moment where there was this thing called, uh, Prop 8 The Musical.
02:06:41.000And so this was before the Supreme Court ruling and all that.
02:06:43.000And there's a line where Jack Black says, remember your nation is built on separation of church and state, which it's actually, I'm pretty sure it's not.
02:06:51.000It was like it was way later after the formation of the U.S.
02:06:55.000But the interesting thing about it was, I was like, wouldn't that actually mean that marriage as an Abrahamic institution couldn't face, under the First Amendment, couldn't be altered or ordered?
02:07:06.000Well, and on top of that, I reject the view that this is a specifically religious issue.
02:07:12.000It's not just Catholic teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.
02:07:15.000This was held by virtually all Christian denominations until probably 30 years ago and is held by many other religions and many people who aren't even religious.
02:07:23.000The point is, oftentimes when someone says a religion is being forced on them, what they're saying is that people want the state to encourage people to live by natural law.
02:07:30.000I'm not out there saying that it should be illegal to eat meat on Friday.
02:07:33.000I'm not forcing my Catholic faith onto people.
02:07:35.000I'm saying that we need to define laws in accordance with reality and it is the reality that marriage is between a man and woman.
02:08:08.000But it became a policy institution for American citizens.
02:08:13.000And so now I have friends who are, I have a very good friend of mine who is a lesbian.
02:08:18.000She makes more money than her significant other.
02:08:22.000If they get married, they share the tax benefits.
02:08:24.000Right now, as individuals, they're not reaping the full, you know, benefits of a married couple.
02:08:29.000And if they want to live together and have a life together, and I think as a very, you know, by more power to them, I'm, you know, happy that she's happy.
02:08:37.000I think she should have the same equality under the tax law.
02:08:40.000And that means she needs the same legal protections.
02:08:44.000Yeah, so what you said earlier, though, I find interesting, this idea that it was like a religious issue, but then it became a public policy issue.
02:08:49.000I guess I just reject the idea that it was... I mean, it's become a religious issue in the sense that the Catholic Church is pretty much the only remaining institution in the world that is upholding the traditional definition of marriage, but I don't agree that it's specifically religious.
02:09:01.000I mean, you have people getting married in non-religious contexts all the time, and that was never viewed as anything but between a man and a woman until very recently.
02:09:07.000Right, well that's because it's rooted in a religious context.
02:09:16.000Yeah, I mean, look, if a woman is going to become pregnant if she has sex with you, then she's probably going to want certain commitments, and the community's going to want to ensure that you're going to stick around with her before you have kids.
02:09:26.000So those are probably the anthropological foundations of marriage.
02:09:30.000So the way I view it is, if we're going to grant law benefits, legal benefits, we have to grant identical benefits to all people.
02:09:39.000Now, there's certain challenges in where you draw the line, and people have different morals on this, because there's been a bunch of arguments about where that leads to, but if we have equality under the law, and we have equality in the Constitution, then we can't tell people, you know, you can't have the same rights as somebody else.
02:11:05.000You literally have an independent life.
02:11:07.000It requires support for a certain amount of time.
02:11:11.000That doesn't take away what it is, because it's a very simple argument.
02:11:14.000If someone's on life support, it doesn't take away what they are.
02:11:16.000If someone requires a kidney transplant, it doesn't take away what they are.
02:11:18.000And so we have to make sure that there's this clear point.
02:11:22.000A lot of the arguments from the left and the Democrats on abortion has been determining a nebulous line where they finally agree that this is life.
02:11:29.000It's like, no, the life was created when the cells began splitting.
02:11:33.000Just because it's not big enough for you, I don't agree with that.
02:11:36.000So, when it comes to abortion, I've had long conversations about this, I've had long ethical meditations on it, I suppose, and I just can't get myself past the line where the government has the right to mandate one person provide part of their body to another person.
02:11:51.000So, I don't view abortion as murder, though I do view it as the act that will kill the life.
02:12:01.000So why is it not murder, but an act that will kill a life?
02:12:02.000I guess, where do you draw the distinction?
02:12:04.000So, the way I see it is, if I'm giving my blood to someone else, and I say, I don't want to give you my blood anymore, it is my individual autonomy not to be forcefully, by the government, told I have to give you my blood to keep you alive.
02:12:18.000But what if you put the person in the situation where they required your blood?
02:12:22.000So the issue there is, now we have to determine whether or not you did.
02:12:31.000And do we... So it really just comes down to who... I had a great conversation with Glenn Beck about this, and it's like, man, I hear ya, you know?
02:12:39.000It's just like, I keep, in my mind, hitting the wall where I'm like, the government says, you must give your blood.
02:12:47.000Well, I don't believe that it's an equivalency because in one situation you're talking about the government forcing you to give blood to somebody, presumably, possibly a stranger, whereas this is a situation of a mother-child relationship, which is fundamentally different.
02:13:14.000I think, like, if you're arguing that that's a grounds for abortion, I'm like, I don't agree.
02:13:20.000First of all, I think the health of the mother and child is absolutely a circumstance.
02:13:25.000And ultimately, regardless of the argument, I just can't hit, I hit that wall where the government says we have to provide our bodies to someone else for any capacity, for any reason.
02:15:13.000But I will say this, I think there's got to be restrictions on when you can get an abortion, like Tulsi Gabbard said.
02:15:20.000And in reference to the question about convicts being greater than fetuses, the issue with convicts, I'm against death penalty, The reason is I believe if you've subdued someone to the point where they're no longer a threat, snuffing out their life is destruction of a miracle.
02:15:34.000Individuals are infinitely unique and choosing to kill something that is, you know, Yeah, it's destruction.
02:16:23.000So, when you look at the difference between humans and animals, you have this balance in nature, to a certain extent, where there's like...
02:16:33.000A lion runs fast to try and catch a gazelle.
02:17:20.000I just started hearing this, and I haven't fact-checked it, but I always thought that it was like the sperm raced for the egg and then one got there, but apparently there's like a... I have heard that.
02:17:28.000It's like a magnetic thing or something?
02:17:51.000No, I mean, I guess I just fundamentally disagree that that's analogous to abortion.
02:17:55.000I don't think a mother-child relationship is the same as being attached to a complete stranger.
02:17:59.000But even so, I think I would try to stay there and not let this other stranger die.
02:18:03.000Not that I even think that question merits an answer because I don't really see it as an equivalence.
02:18:07.000So, does the state or does the state not require a parent whose children are born to take care of their children if they are capable of doing so?
02:18:16.000Does the state require that the mother provide parts of her body to that child?
02:18:21.000No, after they're born it's a little bit different.
02:18:23.000So this really does create the ethical challenge.
02:18:28.000And that's why I think we as a country have tried to find compromises where we disagree, but we want to live together and we want to have these conversations.
02:18:42.000I'm sure there's probably a bunch of leftists who are screaming about what you're saying.
02:18:45.000I'm sure there's conservatives screaming about what I'm saying.
02:18:48.000And so finding that point where we're both equally unhappy.
02:18:57.000I'm kind of pro-choice by nature, but one thing that could push people towards the pro-life side is if you gave babies social security numbers at conception.
02:19:05.000I think psychologically people would have a much harder time killing it if they thought of it as like a citizen.
02:19:13.000I guess that's kind of sad though if it was the case that a social security number would be doing more to uphold the dignity of a human life than the fact that we know that this is a unique individual.
02:19:48.000And we'll probably never see it eye-to-eye.
02:19:50.000But the problem I see is, If something is attached to me, and we're making an assumption about whether it was chosen or not, I'm certainly not a fan of individuals who do it willy-nilly as conception.
02:20:02.000Somebody who was forced into it, or I... Outside of that, because it's a really difficult ethical position, they're giving their body to someone to sustain their life.
02:20:13.000Removing them is saying, you're on your own.
02:20:17.000So, it's an issue to me and I've not taken it lightly.
02:20:22.000I've thought about these questions and I just can't get to the point where you have a person saying, I don't want my body to, like it's my body.
02:20:30.000It's like the only thing I have that I, you know, is me and I can control.
02:20:34.000And there are a lot of people who often feel they have no control and this is the one thing that's theirs.
02:20:39.000And they're being told, yeah, well, for whatever reason you're providing your body now to another entity.
02:20:44.000I'm just like, I can't view a government right to do that.
02:20:49.000But I'm willing to compromise and set limits, even hard limits.
02:20:56.000When I was growing up, All of the conversations I had, this is what's crazy about it, was what I'm saying right now was considered to be like the hardcore pro-choice.
02:21:07.000And I would have arguments with, because I went to Catholic school and that's when I was older, I still had parents and friends, and we would argue about it and they would be like, oh, you're wrong.
02:21:14.000Now what I'm saying is supposed to be the center or even a right-wing position.
02:21:20.000So, look man, I don't have good answers, I don't.
02:21:23.000All I know is like, it's like, Moral and ethical conundrum.
02:21:29.000Yeah, I mean, you're right that at this intersection, you and I probably are going to have to agree to disagree, but I would just say as my last words, I believe life has to be protected at all points in time from conception until natural death.
02:21:39.000And hopefully we'll see eye to eye on it someday.
02:21:42.000And yeah, hopefully we'll see eye to eye on it someday.
02:21:44.000I think late term abortions are insane when it looks like a human and it's got a beating heart and it's like seven months later.
02:21:53.000When I was talking to my friend about this, Uh, she said that she was very pro-life, but she thought there could be exceptions for, like, Down syndrome and other things.
02:22:03.000I was like, you can't tell me that, look, have you seen the video where the man with Down syndrome who lived, he's like giving a speech about how his life matters?
02:22:12.000I don't like that idea that you're going to be like, well, this is an undesirable baby, so this one doesn't, no, no, no, no, no, no, uh-uh.
02:22:18.000What about a baby that would be born as a vegetable?
02:22:45.000I don't think it would be okay for that woman to kill that child because of their disability.
02:22:49.000I believe that human life is precious and valuable simply because it exists.
02:22:53.000It doesn't have to exhibit the same signs of sentience that you and I do.
02:22:56.000Every single human person is crafted by God and you don't even have to believe in God to recognize that human life is beautiful and sacred, though that is of course where I come from.
02:23:06.000And my final point here is that there are no exceptions to the human life which needs to be respected.
02:23:13.000My view on life being a miracle is probably very similar to how you described it with God, but mine comes from writings of... Who wrote Watchmen?
02:23:33.000When he's explaining how all of these infinitely insane things can finally converge to create this one unique individual that can't be recreated in any way.
02:23:45.000If I could just throw one thing out there, actually, I maybe want to issue a minor correction to what I said.
02:23:50.000My point about not necessarily needing to be religious to see abortion as wrong or to see that human life as sacred is coming from a place of Maybe recognizing that I don't see abortion as any more of a religious issue than any other religious issue is, but then again I am sympathetic to the view that when you lose faith in God and you no longer believe in God, you will eventually stop seeing human life as sacred at some point down the line.
02:24:11.000I think there are a lot of people that have fallen down that.
02:24:13.000I don't know if I necessarily agree, though.
02:24:15.000Maybe not you as an individual, but I think once a society loses it, it just gets in that direction.
02:24:18.000I've gone down the whole life is sacred path, like Jainism.
02:24:21.000It's extreme, like not stepping on grass because you don't want to destroy it.
02:24:29.000And I think a lot of times the extreme religious thing, don't kill a baby ever, in the womb is also... I just disagree that that's religious necessarily.
02:26:37.000No, obviously that's a discussion which it can be really difficult to have in a way where you don't say something that you later realize you could have put in a better way.
02:26:47.000This is one of the few issues where there's no fence.
02:26:49.000It is a sharp spire where you fall on one side or the other and it's really difficult to try and find that position where it's like, Oh, man.