AS196: Tommentary on Tump, Eli Bosnick Followup

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 196. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, well, we've had an eventful past couple episodes, haven't we? It's been really interesting, really cool. Just, I'm really glad this happened. I want to talk a bit about it. Let's just go straight into the Tom and Terry music, which is now Tom and Teri Tuesday that takes place on a Monday that's released Sunday, except now Thursday. So I added that to the title for anyone who is interested. So it's a great, it's good. It's catchy. Tomatary Tuesday takes place on a Monday. It's released Sunday normally, except now Thursday. Easy, easy title. All right, I'm not going to start with the Eli stuff because we've already had plenty of that lately. I'm definitely going to talk about it, but I want to start with something different first. I want to talk about something that honestly, I shouldn't even be talking about. Doesn't even matter. This is a straightforward issue. You. I think everyone is going to agree with me, and you know I normally avoid such topics. Why am I going to talk about it? Then you ask.

I imagine you're asking right now. Well, because it's rare that I feel so... I mean, it is an emotional reaction. I'm having a very emotional reaction to this, but I think it's one of those good emotional reactions. I am just so in disbelief about this appalling issue, and that's the Zadroga Act that you may have seen Jon Stewart lobbying about on recent...

0:02:11 Thomas: He came back to The Daily Show for a brief appearance, and this is something that's been a cause of his for a long time. This is the most simple thing. This is giving money to those who essentially just killed themselves for the sake... they they essentially gave their lives for others. These are American citizens who rushed into the towers to save people. And as a consequence of all the horrible cancer dust that came from 9-11, they're now just dying. I mean, one just died the other week. I saw a woman who died of lung cancer, really sad, incredibly depressing. And it's so odd. I don't have too many examples, I don't think. I'm sure there's some, but where there's an attack or whatever, and there's people who die in the first wave, and it's sort of easy to say, oh, yeah, he was killed in the building.

0:03:02 Thomas: That's how he went. What about when you're given cancer by the attack and you die 10 years later? I mean, I suppose Nagasaki Hiroshima could be, that's an obvious example I should have thought of. But from the American perspective, I don't think we have that many things besides, I Gulf War syndrome or something where it's like, it's a lot harder and it's, it's a lot harder to process. It's so weird to think like that woman who just died a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months back now, she is a casualty of 9-11. Like she, it's as though it was just a time bomb. You know, it's like a part of 9-11 attacks happened to be a time bomb.

I mean, maybe the terrorists couldn't have foreseen it, but still, I mean you don't foresee every, every single way someone's going to die in battle. It essentially was a time bomb, and she died, you know, 15 years later, or 14 years later or whatever it is. It's just, it's so weird to think about. But anyway, this bill, this Zadroga Act, I can't even believe it. For anyone who doesn't know, it was supposed to be passed in 2010 was when I think it first came up, or it first came up for renewal.

0:04:14 Thomas: Renewal, and no one can believe, no one has a good explanation for why it wasn't just renewed permanently. In my mind, this is as simple as it gets. You have the definition of heroes, and this is clear-cut. This is not the kind of hero where like, oh, I don't know, an Iraq war veteran where you might disagree with what's happening, and so it's weird to look at him as As a hero, maybe he killed some innocent people. No, this is as clear-cut a case of a hero as we're ever going to get. Even if, and I'll just take the entire range of beliefs, even if you believe that we deserve 9-11, even if somehow you believe it, you're not going to be able to get away with it. These are still people who had nothing to do with it, who ran in, did their jobs at incredible cost to themselves, selflessly just ran in and did what they could to help.

0:05:08 Thomas: There is no, there's no clearer definition of a hero in my mind. That is like the most, we're never going to get a better example than that. It's selfless, it's, it's, you know, there's no shades of gray on, it's like, well, maybe they should have, like, not gone. No, they went and did the right thing, and as a result of that, they have horrible health problems, mostly cancers, that are just killing them, and they, they're going to have obscene medical bills. Could there be anything, anything more straightforward than in our bazillion dollar budget, in our trillions of dollars of debt that we take on constantly, that we set aside a tiny amount to just go ahead and pay all their medical costs for the rest of their lives. This is not a gigantic group of people, by the way. It's not that many. I mean, in terms of our budget, it's nothing.

0:05:57 Thomas: It's very little of a cost. I just can't believe it. And again, I'm not going to dwell on it too much because it's so so straightforward. It's such an obvious issue. I just really wanted to talk about it. It just something that, it just makes me sick and it makes me just lament our system and the, you know, a-holes that are in Congress. It essentially sounds like it's pretty much Mitch McConnell is one of the biggest, you now, villains in this. The first time around, Republicans were, well, is it going to cost too much? I don't, it's going to cost what it's gonna cost. Cost. That's how, I mean, this is one of those rare bills. I don't feel this way about most things in government, but in this one occurrence, it's going to cost what it's gonna cost. Let's just pay it, whatever it is.

0:06:43 Thomas: Take all the taxes you want from me for this kind of thing. It is so clear. It's such an easy issue. And it really isn't that much money, again, in the grand scheme of things. And the idea that these Republicans, it is mostly Republicans who are holding it up, up. They say, Paul Ryan said, well, we definitely plan to get it in, you know, because it needs to go in by the end of the year. It's actually pretty urgent now because there's not a lot of time left and there's a bunch of other bills that they're trying to pass. And it's getting down to the wire. They tried to pass it in a transportation bill, but Republicans didn't want that, which, I mean, their logic was, well, it shouldn't be in this bill, it's not really relevant. Yeah, okay, but we have to get in somewhere. So let's just get it, it. I mean, and the first time it came up for renewal.

0:07:29 Thomas: It was only in three days before Christmas. It is a down-to-the-wire, last-minute thing. And they didn't fund it as much as they should have, and they only renewed it for five years. Why? Why would you not just do just as much? Blank check. This is so easy. Couldn't be easier. Anyway, I just wanted to talk about that. And I do admire Jon Stewart for being such a vocal proponent of it.

And in the little segment you saw, you might have seen on The Daily show, one of the people they harassed about it did end up signing the bill, or sponsoring the bill, rather. And the bill has a million sponsors. People don't really know why it's been so hard to get it through. But yeah, anyway, I just wanted to talk about it. Really, if you want to be depressed, I wanted to depress you guys about our system and about Congress and Republicans, because it's mostly Republicans who have a problem with it, of course. All right, next quick issue that I'm mainly filibustering for the Eli stuff just because we covered it so much. But rest assured, I'm going to get to it. Next filibuster item. I have a prediction. I've never done this before, but I'm actually going to make a prediction about something. And if it comes true, then I need to be worshipped as a prophet. If it doesn't come true, I'm going to find some way to insist that it is yet to come true.

I learned some tricks from reading the Bible. If a prophecy doesn't come true, you can... there's two options. You can say it did come true in a different way than people thought, so you come up with some weird way like, well, actually, you know, this kingdom when that kingdom was destroyed, that was what I actually meant.

0:09:18 Thomas: I didn't mean the whole world, I just meant, you know, this... so come up with some different way, so that'll be one option. Or you just say, well, it hasn't happened yet.

0:09:30 Thomas: It definitely will happen. Here's my prediction. Trump, of course, has just made, okay, the Onion captured it perfectly. The Onion said, the Indian said, this is the last straw, said man who nervously has said this seven times about Trump before. It's so perfect. This has to be the last straw, says man, totally nervous, just shaking, like worried that this actually isn't going to to be the thing that does Trump in. Nothing seems to do Trump in, he can say whatever he want, he has learned, he's a genius, he is an evil genius. He has realized that in this day and age, and with his particular constituents, he doesn't need to say the truth, like he just doesn't, and he doesn't need to acknowledge when he's wrong.

0:10:17 Thomas: It's amazing, and this isn't just partisan partisan speak from me, like this is easily objectively demonstrated. He'll say something like the New Jersey Muslims worship, or worship, celebrated 9-11 in New Jersey at the time. He can just say something like that. Everyone and their mother comes out and says like, I don't think that happened. No one has any proof of it. There's no news footage we can find of it, he claims there's some sort of news story about it, nothing didn't exist. Even the Republicans are like, yeah, I I don't think that happened. And he just is like, nah, it happened. He says, no, it did. And it works. Like, it just doesn't matter. The people who listen to Trump, the kind of people who vote for Trump, they don't care.

0:11:04 Thomas: Like it doesn't, the truth has no impact. It just matters what you say and if it goes along with your preconceived notions already to an extreme degree. I mean, that happens with a lot of politicians. I think that happens on the left to a certain extent, but at least people on the left, usually when they're caught in that bold of a lie, they have to eventually back down. But Trump, he will never back down, not ever. And now, you've all obviously seen, he just recommended that we close off all Muslims from entering the country. We just stop letting any Muslims in because of what's happened. And this is where I just have to say, if C.J. Werleman and others were really right, I would think every atheist would support this.

0:11:49 Thomas: We'd be like, okay, you know, Trump is finally, you know, he's got his finger on the pulse of what needs to happen. He's speaking rationally about the problem, except not a single atheist that I've seen. You guys can correct me if you have any examples. I don't know anyone who's supporting Trump. I'm sure there's some random person somewhere. There's some atheist Republican somewhere.

I don't know any prominent atheist or even semi-prominent like me who is supporting this guy and what he's proposing to do about Islamic terrorism. We just don't think like that. I mean, as much as you want to say atheists are all Islamophobic, we're not that Islamophobic. At least we can agree on that. No one I know wants to bar any entry into the country under any circumstances for them. It's just not, it's not the right solution. But the prediction I want to make, or I'm going to make rather, it's pretty easy to just make it. The prediction I'm making is that Trump will be running as a third party, as an independent or whatever, as a third-party candidate. And as a result, the Democratic nominee, who's pretty much Hillary, is going to win in a landslide.

Now, because of this, I actually wish that Bernie would get the nomination because personally, personally, I kind of want Bernie Sanders to win. And I think that he would have maybe a hard time in the general election. But if Trump is running third party, it'll be easy. It'll just hand a victory over to whoever the Democratic candidate is. And the reason I'm making this prediction, it's not terribly hard to make, but Trump will not back down.

0:13:27 Thomas: He's just tweeted that 68% of his supporters would vote for him as a third party candidate. And he's starting to say stuff that, well, he's already had the Republican base or the Republican Party as a whole so alienated. I mean, they hate him. They really don't want him to win. It's just the segment that directly supports Trump that wants him to win. Nobody else wants him to win. They're going to find out, they're finally speaking up. They finally said, all right, this is too much. This guy is too crazy. The Republicans are backing off of his statement. They are not supporting him him in his statement of not allowing Muslims to enter the country. They're saying that's a ridiculous idea. I think even Dick Cheney said, someone pointed out, if Dick Cheney is telling you your solution is too, like, too tyrannical, then you've got problems.

0:14:18 Thomas: And I think they're going to shut him out of the nomination. I don't think he could possibly get the nomination, and I also think he cannot possibly not run for president. He's got it too much in his blood now. He's going to run as an independent or something, or some other third party. He's just going to do it. There's no doubt in my mind. I mean, I don't know how they could get him not to. It's not like Republicans have some big leverage on him. He's not an elected official. He's not... I mean maybe if someone offered to appoint him to something, maybe that would be the one way, but I don't... Do you think he's interested in being appointed to some, you know, position? Maybe even if it was like secretary of state or something huge. Do you think he's interested in that? I'm not sure he is. I think he is so interested in himself that it's president or bust and I think it will run third party.

0:15:07 Thomas: So, that's my prediction. You heard it here first. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of other people are saying that. But if it doesn't happen, I'll come up with some reason why I was still right. So there you go.

0:15:35 Thomas: All right, time to get to the meat and the the potatoes of this episode. I promised I'd do some commentary about this. Let me reset it. I wanted to hand you those two other commentary topics just in case anyone is too fully satiated on this whole SJW Eli topic. But now I'm going to talk for those who aren't too full of it. For those who have not quite had enough of this topic, I'm gonna give a quick recap. So, Eli had started talking about being unhappy with the secular community's reaction to the shouting girl, the screaming girl of Yale, and had been talking online about how he was unhappy about their reaction.

0:16:20 Thomas: Further, he tried to challenge certain people to talk about it, to at least have a dialogue about it. Certain people that he didn't want to call out, but I'm going to call it out. One of them was Boghossian. I'm sorry, Eli, if you're listening and I know you didn't want to talk about it. I'm going to reference him because I'm a third party. I witnessed publicly that you called for him to discuss it with you and he had no interest. I'm personally amazed that he didn't have any interest in doing it. I would have thought this was Boghossian's whole thing, that he would talk about this. Now, because Eli ended up having so many facts wrong, I guess maybe I'm glad. I don't know if that would have, I don't know, been harmful to Eli's ultimate cause to represent his ideas in a bad way.

0:17:11 Thomas: I think maybe now that he's been... Well, okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back with the backtracking. No one wanted to talk about it. I decided to message Eli or post on Facebook, I can't remember what, and I said, I would love to talk to you about that. That is exactly what I'd want to do. This is an issue, trigger warnings and safe spaces, this is an issue I could totally be convinced either way on. I don't have a strong feeling. I have certain, I know I've made certain statements about I don't like things being censored. I don't, you know, I'm in favor of free speech generally, but I could also be persuaded that, to Eli's side of the issue, certainly, if I heard the right arguments. So, he agreed to come on. Unbeknownst to me, he also agreed to go on cognitive dissonance in the same exact weekend, and it ended up being both our shows.

0:17:59 Thomas: They both were two-parters. They were a little bit similar. I had someone tell me they didn't mind they were similar. Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate that comment. It made me feel better. I get paranoid. I didn't know that was happening. I want to try to give you guys unique content and not be giving you the same episodes as other shows, so sorry about that. It was totally unforeseeable by me. I just didn't know about it until too late, until after it was already cut and ready to publish, and I wouldn't have been able to replace it. And it still was such a good discussion, I thought, that I didn't want to replace it. So here's what happened. Eli did the Cogtis thing. They published theirs first because their release date just happened to be a little earlier, and they got a horrible reaction.

0:18:46 Thomas: Well, that's a bad one. There was a lot of controversy to Eli's episode in which he talked about a lot lot of the same things you talked about here. And so they were getting a lot of kickback. They were getting people like, well, you got the facts wrong here. They were also getting a lot of supporters of Eli, by the way. They just have a lot listeners, so they got a lot of range. But they asked me, and it's unclear to me if they even knew I had had Eli on my show. I don't think they did. They asked me, hey, do you want to just come talk about this? Because they thought I'd be like a neutral third party to come, maybe provide a different, maybe not neutral, maybe provide a different viewpoint on the whole safe spaces trigger warning thing. So I definitely said yes, because I'll go on their show anytime.

0:19:31 Thomas: I love talking to those guys. They're an absolute riot to talk to, and they're really fun. And so I did. I decided after hearing Eli's, well, after the episode with Eli, after recording, if you'll remember, when he said the stuff about the Katrina party at Yale, I was incredibly skeptical. I, but at the same time, when you're in a live conversation with someone, I mean, I don't think, I'm not going to Google everything they say. I said, if that's true, then I would, I would take a much different viewpoint on this whole thing. That's what I said. I said if, if true, I said I, I don't, I have a hard time accepting that. That seems really extreme that we wouldn't have heard more about this and that it would happen in this day and age. On account, I mean, they just, and that they wouldn't allow black people in.

0:20:18 Thomas: I mean all that just seemed too outrageous to me, but I said, you know, if that's true, you never know. I mean, there are stupid people in the country, even in Ivy League schools. So I said if that is true, that totally changes things. Well, after that recording with Eli, which you just heard part two on Monday, I decided I really needed to research this because I just wasn't, I wasn't ready for that set of facts. See, I had gone into the discussion, I think I mentioned this on Monday's episode, I had gone into the discussion with a certain idea of the facts. I had done a little bit of research. I also remembered them from the time. And I also was just planning on talking maybe philosophically about trigger warnings and safe spaces. And then Eli hit me with a whole set of facts that I just never heard of.

0:21:07 Thomas: And that's very difficult to respond to when, when someone's operating clearly with just a different version of what happened. Now, I think I was a little bit vindicated because when I did all the research, it turned out I really did not see the facts the same way still as Eli did. So I think he got some stuff wrong. He admitted he got some stuff wrong. Eli's been nothing but gracious in this show, in both shows, and in our dealings on Facebook and our private messages. Eli's just a great guy. I love Eli. Eli. I also have to say I do resent a little bit the listeners of mine who were sending any sort of character assassination comments to him. I mean, I understand you're passionate about these issues and you think he was just lying to try to, I don't know, take away everyone's free speech.

0:21:57 Thomas: I just don't think that's the case. I think he genuinely had a different view of things. I think Eli has a tendency to exaggerate for comedic effect, so that kicked in and it made misrepresentations even worse than they would otherwise be. And I do think that's a problem, so it is something I plan on engaging Eli with, and I've said on Cogdiss, I think that is an issue. It's not good to exaggerate the facts to be whatever you want them to be, of course, I mean, obviously. But we just don't need to resort to personal attacks and sending vicious messages about their character, about someone's character when they're, I mean, when they are clearly trying to engage and when this person has agreed to come back on and has listened to the Cognizant episodes where we corrected a lot of stuff we saw as factual errors.

0:22:51 Thomas: He's listened to all that. He's willing to talk about it. It's just uncalled for to have these personal attacks on him. So I hope not too many of my listeners did that. And it's okay if you disagree with him. That's not what I'm saying. I mean, you can totally, you're obviously free to have whatever you want, but I just would strongly recommend that we not get carried away with personal attacks on this guy, especially, I just heard that some of my listeners did that. I felt pretty bad, but you're going to do what you're going to do, I guess. But I think that was a vast minority of the reaction. I reacted when I heard Eli the first time on my show, when I hadn't heard that set of facts, I reacted as, okay, maybe he's onto something. I'm going to have to research this. He very much wants people to be good to each other.

0:23:37 Thomas: He's coming from a place of wanting more kindness in the world, more understanding. I'm always going to be a sucker for that. I understand that. That's what I want too. Too. But now that I've said that, I think I do need to... I've covered a lot of this on Cogdiss, but I don't think I got to all of it. I'm not going to go through... I'm going to do an abbreviated version because, again, we're a little saturated on this. But here's what I covered on Cogdiss for anyone who's not a Cogdiss listener, because I'm sure there are people who don't listen to the show. So, the letter... well, okay, there's so much. Eli had said that the letter that Erika Christianakis sent was really trollish, and he portrayed it as something like, oh, also he represented it as the original letter as being from a student group, when in fact it was from a leadership group.

0:24:28 Thomas: Cogdiss pointed this out. It is also something I found in my research, but they did a good job of saying, you know, these were deans, these Were, you know, professors. This was not a student email. The original email that went out saying, hey, think think about what you're wearing for Halloween. That was not a student email. So when Eli portrayed Erika Christianakis, I think is how you would pronounce it, when he portrayed the letter back as like invading on a student-to-student communication, and then, you know, that, so that's inaccurate. That's just not true. And something else I didn't say was, I know Eli said, He always said, if I'm wrong on these facts, I'm sorry, etc., and all that. But I just do want to emphasize, we do need to roll back some of the things he said, because yes, he acknowledged that he could be wrong, but he also made serious allegations.

0:25:21 Thomas: He made allegations against the secular community not reporting his version of the facts. I mean, he made a fuss about that. He said, we didn't see this anywhere. The secular community was reacting, you know, not bringing these things up at all. And it's like, well, yeah, but you ended up being wrong on the set of facts. So we also just need to acknowledge and roll back those, I guess, accusations. You know, we need to revisit those. And I understand he said he could be wrong. I'm just acknowledging he was wrong on these, I think. We'll see if he wants to acknowledge that when he comes on. And I think his critique of the secular community was too harsh there. I also want to say, it's my view that in general, even though I do think the secular community has been wrong on some aspects of this. I don't see this as a problem in the secular community.

0:26:09 Thomas: I still think if you took a sample size, maybe I already said this, sorry if I did, but if you just took a random sampling of non-religious Americans, or sorry, of religious Americans, because we're talking about the secular community. So we're saying, is this community worse? Is it more racist? Is het more xenophobic? Is et less tolerant of people? If we took a sampling. I assume, and I mean, I have good reason to think this based on interacting with the secular community and everything, but I don't have actual poll numbers, so this is my guess. People can disagree. I am pretty sure that the secular community would do much better on issues of sexism, racism, maybe even inclusion and just general social justice questions. We would do much better than a random sampling of religious Americans.

0:26:58 Thomas: And that's important because I think, let me know if you disagree, but I just think if you, I mean, if you incorporate a random sample of religious Africans, around half of that is going to be the South, you know, like around half of it is going be like super conservative, you know, maybe not half will be the south, but half will be people who are probably pretty conservative. The other half will, be you know liberal, because roughly I think it'll break down that way. But they still are religious. So, I mean, they still might have some views, some sexist views based on their religion. Whereas I think that the secular community is not perfect. And I don't mean to say that. I think we do have issues and there are going to be bad examples of sexism, but I don't think it's worse.

0:27:45 Thomas: Like, I don't think it's a problem that the secular community has. I think it's a problem that everybody has. These are problems that the entire, we'll just talk about the US for now, the entire US has these problems. The entire US has a sexism problem, racism problem, etc. We don't, I don't think the secular community has it any worse. I really don't. So I think we should dial that back, especially considering half the secular committee is like super pro-social justice, and the other half is probably not like anti-social injustice. They're probably just maybe a little, you know, They don't want to go that far on it, and then there's going to be a certain percentage that is very anti-social justice, and in my opinion, I think they go a little too far. But anyway, that's something that I think is important to say. I think we're a little two down on ourselves on that.

0:28:34 Thomas: Another aspect that I should point out that I mentioned on Cogdiss is the letter from Erika Christianakis is so not trollish. If you go read the entire letter, it is incredibly long, thought out, reasonable. I mean, you can disagree with the ultimate conclusion or the questions that are being asked. That's fine. I might even, I disagree with like one or two lines of it, but it's not trollish. Eli really did exaggerate too much on this. And I think his sense of humor got the best of him because he made it really funny, but it really misrepresented it. She wrote a letter. She wrote a long, thought-out letter, a nuanced letter, saying, maybe we just let the students handle this.

0:29:20 Thomas: Maybe this isn't something that the leadership group, this, you know, Multicultural Affairs Committee of, you knows, professors and deans and all that from the school, maybe this isn's something we need to dictate to them. Now, ultimately, I disagree. I think the first email's fine. I think her email's fine. And I think the group email, if they wanted to say, we disagree with this, I think that's fine too. What I disagree with is where they start calling for her job and they start saying she needs to resign. She's a horrible person. They start harassing her about it. I think that's where things go too far. I'm in favor of all this free speech. That's fine. If you want to send out a little courtesy note saying, hey, don't dress up as certain things, that's okay. Okay, my worry that I mentioned is that it's starting to go a little too far.

0:30:06 Thomas: There are some examples that I thought, really, you can't even just be a, you know, a historical character if you might be misrepresenting history. And like, is that, do Halloween costumes really have that profound an effect on people? Like, is it really that big of a deal? I mean, I thought it was just you wear something, you try to make it funny. Obviously, I, you now, try to try, do your best to not cause offense to a specific group of people. But sometimes people dress as like, you know, like they said Cecil dressed as dead Cecil the lion. I know the lion community can't really speak for themselves, but that's an offensive thing. I mean, people cared about the lion, they cared about it dying, and he dressed as dead Cecil the lion? Is it a big deal? Like, is there that much riding on it?

0:30:53 Thomas: And so from that perspective, I can kind of understand Erika's email, and I can understand saying, look, this is just, if you think something's offensive, talk to them about it, or just don't bother looking at it. I mean, there's going to be stuff all the time in the world that we have to avoid, or we avoid if we want to. I mean, there are shows, there are conservative radio shows where they just, they're nothing but racist. I mean, you're going to not listen to them.

I think that's what you're going to do, or you're gonna listen and try to engage and change their minds. There's no, the answer isn't to ban them from radio or to try to, yeah, I don't know, I just think that's the part of her email I agree with, but I also think it's nuanced, and I'm, I'm totally okay if the, if the community of students at Yale wants to write a group email to her saying, hey, we, we support this, we support that, the administration was telling people not to dress in blackface and all that, we support that, I'm cool with that letter too, how about end it there, how about say, let's have a dialogue about this, we just wanted to send you this open letter saying, we think you're wrong on this issue, let us talk about it, why does it have to jump to, you need to lose your job, you got to quit, you're ruining our frigging lives at Yale, I mean, I am sorry, I'll try not to exaggerate, they did say, you know, you are not making Yale a home for us, you are in charge of being the master, headmaster, or no, not headmaster, what do they call it?

I don't know what they call the master of the dormitory or whatever. And you're just not, you're not, this email is clearly showing a complete disregard for your students. It's like, I just, that's a little too far. How about you just talk about this one issue and go from there? I mean, does it, do we really always have to call for someone's job?

0:32:38 Thomas: I think that's ultimately where I disagree. The major thing I think we, we have a problem on is, I'm sure I'll talk to Eli about this, but safe spaces, because Eli talked about a very specific definition of safe spaces. He talked about the origin. All that I agree with. That's all fine. Anyone can have a safe space to do whatever, when it comes to, you know, a safe place to gather and talk without people. But I don't believe on inflicting safe spaces on anyone who doesn't want it, or using safe spaces in the way that I saw this last weekend. So I talked about this on Cogdiss when it was still breaking news, and I think everything was pretty much right. Like, I was worried, oh, some of the facts will change. I don't think any of the effects changed. I think it's only gotten worse.

0:33:25 Thomas: So at Goldsmiths University, if you haven't heard about this yet, I'll go ahead and I'll go through it. Apologies for anyone who's already heard this. Maryam Namazie was invited by the Atheist, Secular, etc. group of Goldsmiths University, the student group, invited to give a talk. It's a tiny talk in a small classroom. You know, it could have been maybe a 30-seater. It wasn't even a big classroom. It was a smaller one based on the video. And this is, it's not mandatory, you know? It's the speaker they invited. It's not mandatory that other people attend, the Muslim student group of Goldsmiths completely ruined the presentation. They really did. You can go check out the video. They were disrespectful. They harassed her.

0:34:10 Thomas: They stood up. They made as much of a fuss as they could. Short of physically stopping her from speaking, they made it miserable. And the annoying thing is, the Feminist Society of Goldsmiths later supported this. So they put on Facebook a statement, or sorry, on their blog or something, supporting the Muslim Student Society of, I think it's ISOC or something, Islamic Society of Goldsmiths, supporting them under the safe space rules of the Goldsmith Student Union. So the Student Union has a safe space policy that they say applies to everything. So that applies to all the groups, that applies the whole university. It's not just, oh, this one room is a safe space for people, you know, LGBT who want to go hang out and not be criticized or something.

0:35:02 Thomas: That's not what this is. This is a safe space policy that far overreaches what it should. And this is what I have a problem with. Let me know if anyone disagrees with this. And I think some people might. It's weird. I don't know. I'm not sure. We need to clarify. Now, it's fine if Eli just wants to say, oh, I don'T support that safe space, but I do support the safe space version that I was saying. That's fine. But he, he sort of also criticized people for using it incorrectly. And he criticized Maajid Nawaz for calling the crying girl a safe space or bully. And, and Eli said, there's no such thing as a safe place or bully, and he doesn't know what the word safe space means and all that. And it's like, that's what I disagree with Eli on because I think he's using it how people are using it.

0:35:48 Thomas: I mean, we can't just, you know, we need to talk about how people are actually using these words, and they're using the safe space policy and abusing the idea behind it. And I think it is a safe space or bully thing to do. So this is a group, the Atheist and Secular Group of Goldsmiths, they're not even allowed to invite a candidate they want to, to speak. Just a tiny, this is not a commencement speech. This is not mandatory attendance for Goldsmith's University. This is in a tiny classroom. They can't even invite someone to come speak to their group because the Muslim Society, the Islamic Society of Goldsmiths, views this guest as Islamophobic. Let me read the statement that the Feminist Society made.

0:36:34 Thomas: Goldsmith's Feminists Society stands in solidarity with Goldsmith Islamic Society. We support them in condemning the actions of the Atheist, Secularist, and Humanist Society and agree that hosting a known Islamophobe. So now that's a thing you can be labeled. You can be labeled a known Islamophobe. This is where I have some sympathy for the other side of this argument from Eli, the other side from Eli. Because you could just be labeled, this is blacklisting all over again, really. I mean, especially because Maryam Namazie is a victim of an Islamic society, is someone who grew up under that horrible, oppressive you know, religion, and is merely speaking out against it. But no, she's a known Islamophobe. That's crazy.

0:37:20 Thomas: Known Islamophobes at our university creates a climate of hatred. Well, we wouldn't want that. We wouldn't want a climate of hate because inviting one speaker to a tiny classroom, of course, creates an entire climate. You could tell the whole climate that day at Goldsmiths was just all hatred. We showed our support on our Facebook page by sharing ISOC's post with a message of solidarity. Our Facebook page is designed as a space for us to communicate with our members. That's a really cool phrase right there. Really necessary sentence. It was designed as space for... That's another part of this whole debate that really just probably bothers me and some other people. All the unnecessary verbiage we have to add on this. The Facebook page isn't a space.

0:38:06 Thomas: Not only that, it was designed as a... You mean you have a Facebook page. I think that's what you mean. I think what you're trying to say is we have a Facebook page, and their safety is our first priority under the policy set out by our student union. We reserve the right to remove comments and posts that violate these terms and contribute to the marginalization of students. So it's the safe space policy set up by the student union, which I also referenced on the uncognitive dissonance. And it's just gone too far. I mean, it applies to every aspect of the school. It can apply to anything, really. The student union can just decide the safe space policy applies to everything. And this is where I have a problem with it. So if you want to disagree with me on this, that's fine.

0:38:52 Thomas: Let me know your reasons. I'm happy to hear any argument. I am happy to encourage dialogue on this because I am nothing but pro-dialogue. I m totally cool with that. And here's the further irony, and this is actually sad. This is actually getting to be incredibly sad. The LGBT Society of Goldsmiths came out with a statement supporting the ISOC, the Islamic Society of goldsmiths. And then it came to light that some of the members of the Islamic Society, including I think it might be the president of the Islamic society, is a horrible, horrible, horrible bigot, is a horrible anti-LGBT bigot. Their Twitter had all kinds of disgusting stuff about LGBT.

0:39:37 Thomas: So we're to the point, we're so turned around on this, or certain people are so turned around on this, that an LGBT group is supporting, come on, is this really true? This is, now I'm kind of, I'm even more sympathizing with people who are worried this, this whole thing's going to hell in a handbasket. Because we're there to the point, we're so paranoid that when an atheist group invites an atheist to come speak to them in a tiny little classroom that no one else needed to go to, no one needed to do that. No one needed go to this. The Islamic Society did not need to go. The feminists did not. They should go. They should hear her out. Anyone should go to something interesting like that, especially something they disagree with. But they don't have to. They don't need to. And the Islamic Society ruins the talk, is horribly disruptive, horrendously disruptive.

0:40:26 Thomas: And, and the Islamic society includes absolute bigots when it comes to at least one or two that I saw. Maybe not all, I don't want to, maybe some of them are totally fine, but one or 2 were clearly bigots. When it comes to LGBT issues and the LGBT society is supporting them. I, it's, that is totally backward. That's completely bonkers. If that's where we are, I understand why people are a little worried, but I also don't wanna throw out the baby with the bathwater. I understand trigger warnings, safe spaces can have some good uses. I think on trigger warnings I'd say Eli made a great case. I'd stay I'm pretty much right with him. I, I, I think some of them are a little too extreme and some of them I find ridiculous, but that's me. If it helps somebody, it's, I think the point that Eli made, that's a good point is it's not a big cost.

0:41:14 Thomas: You know, it doesn't really cost me much to sit through a brief two second trigger warning. And I understand wanting to be charitable with that and wanting to help people if we can. So I like that. I like that point of view. And then I like Eli on that side is coming from a point of view is, look, it doesn't cost us anything. We're trying to help people. It gives people a heads up. I mean, that I respect. At least it comes from a place of kindness. And, I don't like some people on the other side who seem like they're always coming from, coming from place of anger and hatred on this. And you know, know, it doesn't mean, again, doesn't mean they're right, someone else is wrong. It just means I do respect that part of it, at least. So those are some of my thoughts on it. Sorry to rehash some stuff. That's where we're at.

0:41:59 Thomas: I've got a very... Next week. Okay, we'll just go right into next week's preview. Next week, I had a debate on abortion with Tyler Vela. It was interesting. It went badly, actually. It ended up going a little south. And so, I think that makes it even more interesting. Because I have... It took me me a while thinking about it to figure out what went wrong. But that's going to be something I think you'll be interested to hear. And then we'll see. Sometime after that, I think we may do a show with Eli and Cogdiss and cover new aspects of this, if people want. I mean, people did seem to respond to it. So send me a message if you're just tired of this and you don't want to hear it. If you don't want to hear me and Cogdiss and Eli on this show to hash it out and to talk about all our disagreements, if you don't want to, send me an email.

0:42:49 Thomas: If I get like 500 of those emails, I won't do it. But if I only get like two or three, then I'm just going to do it, and those two or three people are just out of luck. But that's fine. I mean, that's the kind of thing where I really don't know. I could talk to these guys forever about it, so it's always interesting to me. Me. But if it turns out that half my audience, you know, if all of my audience is just like, oh, we don't want to hear it, you can email me and I won't do it. Seriously, if I get hundreds and hundreds of emails, I wouldn't do it. I would just say, not worth it. We'll move on. So let me know on that. But next week should be very interesting. That is a very fascinating debate that happened. I want to thank a slew of new patrons who went to patreon.com/atheist to grab that Eli special early.

0:43:39 Thomas: I'm going to do the same thing. Maybe the next two-parter I'll release early on Patreon because it seems like people really like that. So slew of new patrons, thank you so much for your support. It means a lot. It mean I can continue to bring you this content that I think that we're all getting a lot from, I hope. Trevyn Pless, Richard Still, I'm not sure if I already thanked these people. I'll do it again, if I did or I didn't. Henry, Frosted Ambassador. I don't know. That's a weird name. Jess O'Donnell. Dave. David Eumanns. Moe Cowbell. That is a great name. And Kaile Riser, it looks like. So, thank you so much for your pledges. I really, really appreciate it. Patreon.com/atheist is where you can go for that and get early bonus content there.

0:44:24 Thomas: So I got to thank my top patrons. That's Kaile Riser, Zimu Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Christian Jaeh, Peter Skelton, Brian Gerfort, Dale, Matt Garrett, and Samantha. Thank you, my top patreons, so much. Really from the bottom of my heart. Let's keep this thing going. Let's keep this good content coming. This has been fun. This has really been a fun couple, last couple weeks. I did an interview on a radio show, Minnesota Atheist Radio Show. You can find a link to that on my Twitter or my Facebook. It was fun. I want to thank Travis for doing that. It started a little awkwardly, as you could see, maybe, if you go listen. But it was a great time if you want to check that out. All right, I think that's it for me. I'll see you guys next week with a thrilling debate on abortion.