AS208: Misogyny, PZ Myers, and Politics

Transcript

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

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 208, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, lots to say, lots to say. I think I might just get rid of the whole Tom and Terry thing, you know? It was kind of a joke. It actually was a joke, and then I named the, I think, an episode a week ago or something, Tomments. But I'm worried now, like, what if people don't know that I'm doing that, because it's absolutely absurd, not because, like, what if someone sees that and thinks like I'm actually into naming things after me. I might just do away with it, and the fact that I am now doing more commentary shows, it's less of a novelty. Maybe I'll just get rid of it, and maybe I can still keep the music, and just keep the music and keep the commentary, and just lose the part where it's, it's named after me for no reason.

0:01:27 Thomas: But I literally just thought of that right now. What I really want to tell you, and what I've been planning on telling you, I have an exciting, exciting announcement for future episodes. I got a really, really cool guest, well, two really cool guests, but one you've heard on this show before, one you never heard on this show, one that you probably had no idea you were going to hear on this one. I got Matt Dillahunty and Blake Giunta on together to, it wasn't an official debate, and and I'm not going to advertise it as such publicly because they didn't agree to a debate, and I just think that would be kind of weird and sneaky, and I don't want to do that. However, I will say, it pretty much was a debate. For all intents and purposes, they had a debate, and I'm just saying that so you have an idea of what to expect, and it was really cool.

0:02:16 Thomas: I cannot wait. And such a great discussion slash debate, whatever. It's just so much easier to call it debate when that's what it is, but whatever. Such a great Discussion by Two Guests makes me even more comfortable with the fact that I'm doing more of these commentary shows. So I can balance off, balance my commentary with some excellent guests and some truly excellent shows. I'm excited. Excited. That'll be next week sometime, probably Thursday and Monday, and I can do a good cliffhanger because I think the patrons are really appreciating being able to get the show early. So, I'm, I am so excited. It took a long time. I actually didn't, I don't even know if I, oh yeah, I might have mentioned that I was trying to get, I can't remember.

0:03:03 Thomas: Anyway, I have a terrible memory for stuff, but it took a lot of time. Matt, of course, is a very busy guy, and he was especially busy this season kind of holiday season. So we kept arriving on a date and then no good and then a date and no good. And then finally, just short notice said, oh, this works. And then it worked for Blake. So that's really cool. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Okay. Having said that, I'm going to do some commentary. So I'll play the music.

0:03:40 Thomas: I'm gonna have to change the lyrics to that song. Anyway, I... Lots to talk about. So, I got a lot of comments on the show with two abortion episode commenters, so comments on comments crime, and I want to talk about that. I do want to give the topic of abortion a bit of a break, because I've... I mean, we've just done a lot on it, and a lot lot of good stuff. I loved the episodes, all four of them, actually. But I want to give it a bit of a break. I think it's a bad idea to do just weeks and weeks and week on the same topic. And I've had offers for people like, oh, I want say some stuff. And, I appreciate it. No harm done if you tell me that.

0:04:25 Thomas: No big deal. Just don't get your feelings hurt if I say I'm wanting to stay away from that topic for a bit now, just to get, not so much stay away from the topic as just cover other things. Like I want to go to more stuff. That said, I, I'm just going to say some stuff briefly because, you know, when you guys, part of the reasons I do these commentary episodes, these newly renamed commentary episodes is I do want to react to what you guys have said. And a lot of what you have said lately is based on those episodes. So I'm going to says something briefly on those. And then I have some other topics I want talk about. So let's, I'll look at a comment first, just so I don't end up forgetting to do that and running out of time. I got a message from Andrew, and he had some excellent info as to the kind of legality behind autonomy, bodily autonomy, and all that stuff.

0:05:14 Thomas: I was speaking with very loose language on that, and I probably shouldn't have, but I interchangeably probably used Bill of Rights, Constitution, Declaration of Independence. I probably used all of those interchangeably and inaccurately, and apologies for that. I'm no legal expert, and the intent behind it was in general terms to speak about where our rights are grounded in this country, but he had a very nice bit of info that I wanted to share with you. I wanted to let you know that Supreme Court jurisprudence does indeed discuss autonomy as a constitutional right. It's just that the court uses the somewhat confusing term privacy to discuss those issues instead. The constitutional right to privacy slash autonomy stems from the penumbra of rights found in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment.

0:06:03 Thomas: Some hardcore right-wingers argue that those decisions are wrong because the word privacy doesn't appear in the bill of rights, just like the exact phrase separation of church and state doesn't appear in the First Amendment. That's not how law works, obviously, but one way I found that helps explain that is the the Loving v. Virginia case that struck down bans on interracial marriage because marriage derives from this right to privacy slash autonomy. If their view of the Constitution were correct, then it would be perfectly legal for states to ban interracial marriage, which is someplace even most right-wingers don't want to go. So thank you so much for that message, Andrew. That's great info. That's the kind of stuff that, I mean, I'm just not, that's not the kind of stuff I tend to bring. That's not my area of expertise.

0:06:50 Thomas: So I appreciate the assist or rather more than the assist, the outright taking on of that challenge of actually talking in a reasonable, intelligent fashion about the legality of this stuff. So apologies for that. That's not an area of strength of mine. So I appreciate if anyone more legal minded or people who studied this, that aspect of it more want to give me comments like that. I really appreciate that. And I learned a lot from that comment. So that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, there's a ton of rights that are not spelled out, but that are in jurisprudence from, you know, cases and cases past, which can also be a bad thing. I think an example off the top of my head is the, in God we trust, getting that off the money.

0:07:40 Thomas: I mean, so many of the, the, and this is not really having to do with your comment, Andrew, I just, it reminded me that this can also have a bad side, that just the history of cases sort of stack up. And part of that ruling was, well, the history in God we trust is now so, you know, it's so part of our country that it doesn't really even have a religious grounding. It's just more of a motto. Like, it doesn't have any religious meaning. And that's sort of been the prevailing wisdom in the court. And it drives me nuts because it just, I mean, how could in God we trust not have any sort of religious connotation? It's not that, and it's so new too, you know, it's not, it would be one thing if it had been in the money from the very beginning of this country.

0:08:31 Thomas: But the fact that it was only added very recently, I mean, pretty recently, I think in some cases it was added on different stuff at different times. But I think on specifically like the dollar, what is it, the 50s or something? I mean it's pretty new. And so there's a bad side of that too. But the good side of it, as you illustrated, is a lot of our rights and the separation of church and state, stuff like that, that's not officially anywhere, but it is in the jurisprudence. Legal precedent and stuff like that. So the only other thing I want to say about the episodes you just heard recently with Lee and Jamie is, Tyler did reach out to me and he really wanted to engage with them on the topics, which I certainly respect.

0:09:21 Thomas: I think Tyler has shown an attitude of being willing to have a discussion and all that. Now, I had run this by Jamie and Lee before I recorded with them. And to be honest, they both seemed a little reluctant. I apologize for speaking for you. But I want to bring it up because I think that is a part of what's going on here. I mean, personally, and I understand I'm not making any judgments on anyone, but personally, I've been willing to speak to people who disagree with me and I'm willing to do it. I mean I find it really interesting. I could have Tyler on and just talk about abortion. We could do that for hours and hours and HOURS. I find it endlessly interesting. I understand not everyone's like me and not everyone likes to allow people who have these kinds of opinions a big stage.

0:10:13 Thomas: So that's an aspect of it. But I wanna put it to you guys, to the, to, the audience, what would your preference be? And I'm not gonna do it, again, we have Dillahunty coming up, we got Dillahunty, Blake Giunta, awesome episodes, in the future sometime. We also, I need to come back to Eli and Cogdiss, we're trying to arrange that, it's been long enough that I wanna record that as well, but sometime in the, in, the near future, near-ish future. If you guys have an opinion, would you please write in and let me know? Would you want, would be interested in Tyler coming back and talking to me? Would you be interested in Tyler coming back and talking to Jamie or Lee or, you know, what would you be interesting in there? What would be, or are you just done with it? Which is perfectly acceptable.

0:10:59 Thomas: I mean, if you want to write me and say, "Hey, we've heard it. We've heard the both sides on this issue. We're done." That's cool too. Or if you wanna just say, maybe Tyler comes on and just says his kind of rebuttals to what we said, because we did talk. The reason I do wanna do something is that I don't like talking a lot about what my perception of someone's opinions are and then not giving that person a chance to actually correct me if I was wrong or anything like that or respond. So I don't, I feel a little uncomfortable with that. But I think Tyler's great. He also understands that, you know, I'm not going to have him on the show every show and take just endless amounts of time. So he's been honestly fantastic in all this. Literally everything about Tyler, except his positions on certain things, I love.

0:11:51 Thomas: And sometimes the way he argues his positions on his Facebook page and stuff like that. But everything else, like we have a, I think we'd be friends if we knew each other in real life, because he understands this. I don't think he's trying to butt back into the show or anything. He just would love the chance to respond when people are talking about them for, you know, a couple hours. So let me, I'm just saying, let me know what you think, your opinion on what you would like with that. But I will also say that if, I think part of the criticism of how I went about the episode may be relying on the fact that you need to actually talk to someone and interact with them, and that can be difficult.

0:12:37 Thomas: That can be a different story than simply having opinions to yourself. It's much more challenging. There's someone across from you who you're trying to challenge and you're saying things that they are going to take a certain way. There is a lot of pressure to it. There is pressure in coming up with what you're seeing on the fly and reacting to what they're saying. So, I'm not trying to make excuses or anything. I'm just letting you guys know that that may be a part of. Just factor that in a little bit when it comes to these criticisms of, oh, how you handled this debate or whatever. That's all I'm saying. Keep it in mind. And if it ever comes to you where you get to try it, keep in mind that you'll want the same considerations if you ever have to debate someone live on air. So that's all say about that.

0:13:23 Thomas: And then I think we can move on from the debate issue for the time being and move on to other stuff that I want to talk about. First thing is kind of a big thing, actually, so I posted this on the Facebook page, facebook.com/atheistically speaking for anyone who hasn't liked it. I don't post too often, so don't worry about spam, uh, so, but anyway, I posted this, I saw an article, I had, I have kind of mixed feelings, but not in the way, just hear me out, okay, so Emma Watson, uh, posted a quote from Alan Rickman, cause Alan Rickman obviously died. Rest in peace. And I was very sad. I haven't even talked about Alan Rickman and David Bowie and there's all kinds of things going on. I certainly am very sad about both, but I don't really know what I can add.

0:14:09 Thomas: And there's not much to say on this show. The only thing I can say is that I... I'm honestly even more annoyed with PZ Myers, than I, okay, separate topic, sorry, I meant to talk about this, and now I have to, because I've started thinking about it, you may recall, when Robin Williams died, a year and a half-ish ago, I think it was, I only know because I looked it up, and I would have no idea, otherwise, it could have been 10, 20 years ago, that PZ Meyers, in his infinite wisdom, decided that you were a complete asshole if you mourned him, and that everyone was paying too much attention to him, because there was a bigger issue going on, There was, I think the issue of that day was a police shooting. I can't remember which one because honestly, there are way too many. And I agree, it's a horrible issue.

0:14:56 Thomas: But the normal thing, the normal response that you have to this every single time is, look, we can pay attention to multiple things at the time, at one time. And it's one thing if PZ wanted to say, well, I, I thank you for your help. I thank that, you know, Robin Williams is in the news too much when these other things are going on. But of course, being PZ, he wasn't allowed to, he couldn't do that. That would have been far too nice. He had to be a complete asshole and post a picture of a woman who was making completely racist comments and then say, oh, look at her. I bet she likes Robin Williams. I bet you love Nanu. Like just needlessly cruel stuff, especially to people who both cared about racial justice and people who care about Robin Williams, which is I'm sure is a large group of people. Needlessly, needlessly callous.

0:15:42 Thomas: And I recorded back then. I did some commentary on it, I think. It really, really rubbed me the wrong way. And here's the thing. Like so many times I say on the show, I'm not throwing out the PZ with the bathwater. There are lots of things I agree with PZ on. However, I really, Really dislike the way he, you know, runs his blog and the way how big of an asshole he is to really, for lack of a better word. I mean, he gets to decide. Now, here's why I say this. Because David Bowie died. And of course, there's all kinds of crap still going on. There's police shootings still going on. There's the no charges for Tamir Rice. There's all kinds of stuff still going on, but because PZ, I guess, liked David Bowie, he did a post.

0:16:29 Thomas: He was supposed to be immortal. David Bowie has died. I should probably just jump dump a few dozen songs here to represent his range, but I'll restrain myself. I'll have to watch some of his movies this week to Labyrinth, maybe The Man Who Fell to Earth or The Hunger or Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. The guy was good at everything. So very clearly he cares about David Bowie, so now it's okay.

Now it's okay that we all have an outpouring for David Bowies because we've gotten PZ's permission. This is the kind of stuff, I mean, this is why you don't post that stuff that he did when Robin Williams died, because the shoe will be on the other foot, and there will be someone you care about, and you will want to make a little tribute to him, and, you will, want, there, him or her, and will want there to be media coverage of this person's death, and,, you don't want to hear someone telling you how much of an asshole you are for mourning someone, so, I, I really, really, I mean, I think what I dislike about PZ Myers, even though I agree with him on a lot of social justice issues, I agree, uh, when it comes to, like, a lot of harassment of women online, I mean, the, the lot of the work he's done, on that and being an advocate.

I agree with all that, but you don't have to be the kind of asshole that PZ is. You really don't. And the idea, I think what I dislike most about it is that he makes the rules. I've never seen the guy apologize for something.

I'd never seen him say he's wrong about anything. He makes the rule. He was apparently right about Robin Williams. You're not allowed to mourn him. But now that it's David Bowie, no sense of irony there, there. No sense of contradictory attitudes. I mean, I don't think anyone else has brought this up. Maybe no one else cares. Maybe I'm missing something.

0:18:05 Thomas: Feel free to tell me. But this really, it really rubs me the wrong way. And maybe the reason I haven't heard anyone talk about it is people have already decided on PZ Myers one way or the other. But it's frustrating because he would be a good advocate and I don't mind disagreeing. I really don't. Like, I agree on a lot. I agree on a lot of things that he says. I wouldn't mind except that he has to do it in the most like threatening kind of way. Just sort of anyone who disagrees with PZ is not human. You know, it's that kind of thing. It's not just that he disagrees with you on something. It is that you are a horrible person for whatever view you happen to hold. I just don't have patience for that.

0:18:50 Thomas: Sorry, I had to bring that up. Okay, back to the original thing. And oddly, something that PZ Myers would agree with me on, just to put my money where my mouth is. I saw an article about how Emma Watson posted a quote from From Alan Rickman that said, "There's nothing wrong with a man being a feminist, I think it is to our mutual advantage," Alan Rickmann.

And she posted this, and, of course, because it's the internet, and because she's a woman, well, arguably, people, people like to argue this happens to everybody, it happens more to women. Uh, she got an enormous backlash, and it's not just a backlash, it, this is the issue for me, and this is why I'm sort of, somewhat of two minds on this, but not really, I'm not in the way you'd expect because I think it is a tiny bit self-serving to, when someone, when your friend dies, post a quote that sort of supports your kind of, you know, your goal in life, she's, she's a feminist spokesperson, spokeswoman, I don't know, whatever, uh, and, and it's, if it were anything, if it were any issue in the world, it's a little interesting to post him saying a quote that supports your main issue right when he died a little bit.

Again, just, just a tiny bit. However, that's not, this is not the, the stuff you get on the internet. Of course you get horrible stuff like, uh, let's see, where is it? "You're a truly repugnant human being." You are, you know, just awful, awful stuff like this.

0:20:24 Thomas: Uh, you are a repugnant human being for using his death to push your agenda. Go fuck yourself. Using Alan Rickman's death to further agenda. Why not not surprised, fucking classless bitch using some, like just stuff like that. So that's the misogyny part. The part where, the part where you're like, oh man, maybe the timing was a little weird here. If you want to say that, you're not being a misogynist. You, maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're right. You know, maybe, who knows? Maybe someone will think you're Wrong or think you That's fine. But the minute you launch into this repugnant human being, and sort of, honestly, even though I think PZ would agree with me on this, that the harassment of Emma Watson is ridiculous here and it's really troubling. And it's not just a select few, you know, it's a lot of people.

0:21:09 Thomas: It seems to be okay online to just harass women and do horrible things, including a very classy thing online where a bunch of men post pictures of, you having ejaculated on her picture, so that's classy, that's really, that's really nice, I mean, it's, it doesn't do any real harm to her, doesn't physically hurt her, I suppose, except it's probably the most despicable thing I could think of doing that doesn't actually hurt someone, I mean, really, the, the idea that that's okay with so many people, it's too many people.

That, that the point, there are too many who write this off, and I'll read a comment, I'll read a comment I got when I posted this. Misogyny, LOL, no, people just don't want to hear about how she's the feminist president all the time, anyway, when someone I care about dies, I'm not going to be like, well, he was pro-gun control, so, yeah, okay, I, look, you, you might have had me there, so if someone just said, look if someone was pro gun control, they die, and, or, sorry, if you are pro- gun control and someone you know dies and you post a picture of them saying I'm pro- gun control. Yeah, I honestly think that's a tad bit self-serving. A little bit. But it's the rest of it that's the problem. Daniel Radcliffe wrote something truly touching and heartfelt about this man, and Emma pushed her usual narrative.

Do I think that it deserved as much backlash as it got? No. But to call it misogyny? Fuck off. You literally can't say anything on the internet without people insulting you. I could post a picture of my cat and some random prick would still find a way to call me a cunt. No, that's just not really true. First off, I post pictures of my cats all the time. I never get any insults.

0:22:58 Thomas: But no, I mean, you can look at the studies. You can look where women have assumed men's names and they receive far less harassment for the same exact opinion. It just happens more to women. That's the misogyny part. The part where you maybe disagree with how she's going about it, That's not misogyny, I don't think. I mean, it might be if you're like super anti-feminists in anything they do. Could be. I don't know. But it's not necessarily. But the idea that it's okay or that me even saying anything about it, I need to fuck off because everyone gets insulted on the internet. It's just not true. And here's the other thing, I looked at her timeline, and the first thing she posted was a little tribute. She She said, I'm very sad to hear about Allen today, I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor, I really, I'll really miss our conversations, RIP Allen, we love you.

0:23:51 Thomas: So that's her first post that I see, that I can see here. And then she posted the quote about him supporting feminism. Can you argue it's still, like, self-serving? You can, that's fine. I think, I mean, I think it's fine, I, this is, this is very heartbreaking, and in no way is self-serving, it's just saying, you know, those facts, I'm really sad, with those sentiments, you post that first, and then later you post a thing about how his quote supports your thing, whatever, it's something he said, it's something he was apparently proud to have said, it wasn't taking him out of context or something, and, like, quote mining him, it's something he apparently was proud to have said, something he stood by.

0:24:39 Thomas: I don't think it's that bad. And I think misogyny and sort of a really anti-feminist bent takes that and really exaggerates it and then does horrible things like this cum tribute, which is an awesome thing to have learned about. I confess I didn't know about that until I read this article. So I didn't know just how disgusting people can get. And it's not, look, it's not disgusting in like a, oh, you're shocking me way. Nothing shocks me. Nothing shocks me, I'll be honest with you. And I don't even look at shocking stuff. I'm not even the kind of weirdo who looks at weird stuff on the internet all the time. No judgment. Not a little bit of judgment. But I'm not even someone who's seen a lot of weird stuff on the Internet because I don't seek it out personally.

0:25:26 Thomas: I don't seek out gross, or I've never watched a beheading. I've never will. An ISIS video. I'm never going to do it. I stay away from that stuff. But you still can't shock me. I still know it exists. And I'm still not, I'm not saying, oh, my word, these people do. I am saying, I am, what's so deplorable about it is just how much energy it is. That's really it. It's how much energy you're putting in to trying to bring, bring a woman down. Really? I mean, like, how much time do you have for that? How much effort, and how much are you willing to be disgusting in order to put a woman down on the Internet who you don't know? That's, that's the thing. I really think PZ Myers is an asshole.

0:26:12 Thomas: I'm never going to do this, as an image no one needed. I'm never going to resort to anything like this. I'm never going to insult the man in that way other than to call him an asshole because, because I think he is an asshole for most of the time, but I'm not going to say he's a despicable, repugnant human being, go fuck off and die. Not going to do that. He might actually. Oddly enough, he says stuff like that. I'm just not going to do it. But just the amount of energy people have to bring a random, well, not random, but a woman down on the internet who they don't know personally, that's misogyny. And the fact that the minute you try to call it misogyny, you get even further backlash of misogyny leveled at you or just further backlash against you saying it's misogynoid and told to fuck off more.

0:27:00 Thomas: This has actually been one of the dirtier, more explicit shows I've had. So I don't, I'm not normally, I do have an explicit tag just in case, because I don't want to censor myself, but this has turned out to be, yeah, children be warned. I hope, sorry, if you were listening to this with your kids, I really hope you weren't. So, that's kind of depressing, and that's all I had to say about it. Now, the only thing is, the, the worry I have with posting this was, well, are we just taking a few people, is it just a small percentage of people, and taking their horrible Twitter comments and blowing them up, and saying, oh, this is, this, this is indicative of everybody, but, you don't have to go very, you, you have to try very hard to disprove that or sort of quell that concern, all you have have to do is post something about this, and then you'll get a ton of nutjobs, or not even nutjoobs, that's the thing.

0:27:54 Thomas: They're not nutjobs. They are actually totally normal people for the most part, coming on and telling you how much of an asshole you are for even daring to say that there's misogyny on the internet. So, it's quite clear that this is something that's pretty prevalent online, and it doesn't take long to find it. So I was really saddened by this. Look, criticize the a decision if you want. Say, hey, this might've been a little tasteless. No one's going to write an article about that. No, one's gonna say, oh, did you see what someone said to Emma Watson? They said this might have been a Little Tasteless, but they will, they will take it more seriously, by the way. If someone, if someone sees your comment and your comment is, ah, really, Emma, that might've Been a little bit in bad taste. They're going to take that far more seriously than where you go off the deep end and start calling her Hitler and or whatever.

0:28:43 Thomas: Cause then you're just writing it off. You're just like, oh, this is a guy who hates this person. And she would take it less seriously too. She's not going to take that crap seriously. She is going to be sort of haunted by it. She will be horrified by the things that people can say to her, but she is not going to take the criticism seriously. If someone says really insulting things toward me, I can pretend it doesn't affect me, but it affects me. If millions of people do do that. It'll affect me a lot, to be honest with you. I'm just speaking for myself. It's not easy to ignore. I think you can write it all. She's a public person. She is a whatever. She is a celebrity. She hears it all the time. She writes it off. I don't know. I mean, I'm not crying for celebrities or anything, really, but I don't think that's an excuse to be horrible to people online.

0:29:31 Thomas: I'll tell you this. I could get 400 million compliments on my show and one insult and all I'll think about is the insult. So, just to let you know the kind of power you have over me, it's the truth. And it's sad, but I think that's how I work anyway. I mean, it's because I'm kind of a negative person. But I think that's how humans work. We're not ready to take on this mass, you know, awful stuff being thrown at us, or I say us, celebrities, you know. I don't think it's as easy as people write off, but that's just my personal opinion, not being a celebrity of any kind, of course. So that's what I wanted to say on that. I guess I'll bring that issue to a close for now. But it was just really sad and just awful.

0:30:17 Thomas: I mean, do we need that? Do we really need that it's whatever. All right, moving on. So, here's the thing, actually, the biggest issue I wanted to talk about today was politics, I actually wanted to talk politics for once, I normally avoid it, I've said a thing or two here and there, but I'm already at a half hour, so, ah, I'll start it, we'll see, I don't want to do too long of a show, especially when it's just me, I get a little sensitive about that, but, I, I will say a few things. Thanks.

First, I think I'll just say where I'm coming from, I, I've avoided, talking politics a, a little bit, a LITTLE bit, I ha-, I do it on occasion, because I, usually think it doesn't relate to atheism, necessarily, but I mean, I kind of realized that, this This show often talks about stuff that doesn't relate to atheism, and I also am forming more opinions on politics because the election is happening and all that, and, I don't mind sharing them, but I acknowledge that this, I mean, atheists come of all stripes, I have Republican atheist listeners, I know I do, I, I doubt they're Trump supporters, but who knows, they may even be Trump supporters.

And I wanna let you know that I acknowledge that. I do speak as though we're all liberal here, oftentimes. I think that's the assumption of most atheism podcasts, because most atheists are quite liberal, at least socially so. I don't, you know, but not all. I understand not all, but when the bulk of your audience is one thing, you tend to talk to that group, because just numbers. I mean, it's an unfortunate reality, But I want to say some things about politics. First off, I come from a place of being, I think, fiscally conservative and

0:31:59 Thomas: Having a real sympathy for wanting to reduce the role of government, for wanting to reduce the government budget and reduce taxes for everyone.

0:32:12 Thomas: Maybe not the top people, but reduce taxes for most people, not just in and of itself, but because I think there's so much government waste. And all that is to say I support Bernie Sanders for president. And I realize now how funny that is. But I do. I actually want Bernie Sanders to be president. And so now I think I'm just going to briefly tell you why. I, apologies if you don't find this interesting. I sincerely apologize for that. You can skip. I'm not going to talk about anything else this show. The rest of it is going to be talking about politics. If you don'T want to hear it, feel free to just skip the rest of the show. So I'll make it easy for you guys. But just briefly, I think, I say, as people already listening to this know how long, however long this episode ended up, and I don't, so you actually have more knowledge.

0:32:58 Thomas: Ooh, wrap your mind about that. Wrap your mind around that, rather. You guys have more knowledge as to how long I talked about this than I do. How crazy is that? It's weird. No, it's not that weird. Okay, I support Bernie Sanders. And here's the thing. I will never support a Republican. I won't say never. I will Never support any of the current Republican candidates because of their view on Planned Parenthood, first and foremost. I think there may be like two of the candidates who aren't insane when it comes to Planned Parenthhood. I don't remember, and I don'T think they're the main contenders. The majority, if not, I think all of the biggest, like three, four, five Republican contenders are horrible when it comes to Planned Parenthood.

0:33:45 Thomas: They want to get rid of it. I will just never will support that. So to all my Republican listeners, however many I may have, note that like I, if there there was a Republican candidate who just said, I'm small, pro small government, pro reducing some of the waste around, you know, around Washington and all that. I want to actually reduce spending. I don't want to spend gajillions on the military. And I don'T, it might be Rand Paul, but he has other kinds of issues that I donT entirely love. And not only that, he's just nowhere near the top of the party. He's just not going to win. If it were Rand Paul it would at least be interesting. Like, if the question was, do we elect Rand Paul or Hillary or Bernie?

0:34:30 Thomas: It would be like, oh, okay, let me think about this. I could see merits to Rand Paul. I might vote for him out of that group. I don't know. I'm not sure. I will never know because just no one's ever going to care enough. Rand Paul doesn't. He somehow has made it through some of these debates, but now he dropped off the latest one. He just doesn't have the support. But it's not that. It's either Trump, Cruz, Rubio, or who, I forget the next one, maybe Bush, and then the guy who killed a person on the bridge. It's them versus Hillary and Bernie. And it's just in that contest, no matter how much I may want to be more even, more independent, more a little bit fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, no matter how much I may have those leanings, and I'm speaking now to my Republican listeners, the Republicans will lose that contest for my vote every single time.

0:35:26 Thomas: It's not even close. I would vote for anyone on the liberal side over any of those Republican candidates. So just to make that clear. Now that we've solved that, now that there's no chance I'm voting for a Republican and feel free to, oh, by the way, give me all the comments you want on why you disagree. I'm happy to hear it. I actually, I don't mind at all. I'd prefer you source them. I don't really want to just read just nonsense. If someone wants to spout some nonsense at me, I'm probably not going to read it. But if you have some sources like, oh, actually, here's this guy's voting record on that or something, I am always willing to read. I am always willing learn more. But now that for the time being, I have eliminated one side of the aisle, the choice becomes who between Bernie and Hillary. Now, in the beginning of this election, interaction I was like, oh, this Bernie guy is kind of interesting.

0:36:14 Thomas: I like him, but I kind of want him to win. And then I thought I saw Hillary in a couple of debates and I thought, you know what? Hillary has done an OK job. She's she's good in these debates. She's got a lot of experience. I thought I'm OK with Hillary as much as I like the fairy tale of Bernie for reasons I'll explain later. I'm cool with Hillary. She's probably going to win, I'd better make peace with it. This was my thinking. I'm just sharing my personal journey in this. And then once Bernie started creeping up, creeping up and now to the point where it looks like he might be able to beat Hillary, it looks like it might beat Hillary. Now we see Hillary's true colors. She's launching insults and sort of attacks. I won't say insults, but she's launching attacks back on Bernie.

0:37:01 Thomas: Someone told her, look, you're actually maybe going to lose to this old guy. You need to do something or something. That's my guess. And now I can't stand Hillary because she's attacking him in a way that like a 12-year-old would. It's just absolutely ridiculous. In the debate, she attacked Bernie for voting for something that Bill Clinton tried to sneak through, like one of Bill Clinton's aides who now works for her, tried to seek through in the omnibus spending bill so that literally Bernie would have had to vote to shut down the government rather than vote for this thing. And it's something that Bill Clinton was pretty much responsible for. And now she's accusing him of voting, you know, for this thing for that reason. And it's just stuff like that that's like, really?

0:37:46 Thomas: I mean, so the reason I'm supporting Bernie is, look, it may be that a lot of his policies are unrealistic. I mean, it may very well be. There may not be enough money. There may be whatever, whatever. There's the very real argument that maybe he'll get nothing done because he's too far to the left and Congress will be Republicans or whatever. That all may be true. I will grant you all of that. But I am going to vote for Bernie if I get the chance, because it may be the first time we elect a decent person to be president, to be honest, because there are certain things. He is pledged, and I understand you can do this when you're the underdog, but we'll see how he behaves going forward, but he has pledged an issues-driven campaign, and he's done nothing but completely follow through on that promise.

0:38:36 Thomas: He is the first person, Bernie is the first politician I have ever taken at their word for anything. I truly, sincerely have major politicians, and this may answer some of the reasons why I had a different view on Obama's crying, not to open up that can of worms again, because my prior assumptions Every politician is just saying what will get them reelected or what will serve their, that doesn't really apply to Obama, but what will serve their interests. I don't take any politician at their word, ever. I think, what are they trying to accomplish? And that's me. I mean, that's where I'm coming from. Because I, you know, I've known a lesser politician or two. I've seen insight into how they operate. And I I don't have any reason to assume it doesn't apply at higher levels, and And they're just incredibly self-serving, dishonest people.

0:39:28 Thomas: Now, I understand there's a spectrum, I, I don't understand, but that's my base, that's, my baseline. That's where I start with, and then, evidence to the contrary will lead me to a different path. And, with Bernie, it, he's the first politician I've ever seen that I, he really walks the walk. I mean, something, his net worth, a man of 70, whatever years of age, 76, I think, he is old. His His net worth is $700,000.

For a man that old, who's probably saved for a very long time, that's not actually very much. I mean, that that's like a house. If you buy a house at $30,000 and pay it off in 30 years, and it's a house, and especially with how prices have gone up historically, he could have bought a house a million years ago, paid it off, and done nothing else, and his net worth could be $700.000. dollars. So that's, I know that may sound like a lot to anyone, you know, like me, who's still hanging on to his 20s here. It sounds like a Lotta Money. It's really not for someone that old. And now I'm looking here. This is kind of weird. Marco Rubio says his net worth is $100,000. That is insane. That is really weird. Okay.

So he's the only one who has less of a net worth than Bernie Sanders, but everyone else is millions, millions, Hillary, her net worth is something like $45 million, according to this source I'm seeing on politifact.com, $45 million. Now, of course, she would say she's been very blessed, so that solves that issue. All you have to say is, we've been blessed, you know, and Bernie, I guess, not as blessed.

0:41:05 Thomas: He hasn't, unfortunately, hasn't been blessed as much. So that's the annoying, pandering answer that everyone has to give. But the reason I bring this up is, I mean, I just, I believe Bernie Sanders. I believe that he believes what he's saying. And that never happens to me, ever. I never believe anything anyone's saying, I never Believe anything any politician is saying, but I believe That he cares about that. And I truly think this could be the first chance we have, and anytime I can remember, to elect someone who might just be a good guy. Why? Like he was, he was marching with Martin Luther King. He didn't even mention the fact that he marched with Martin Luthor King on Martin Luther king day in a debate. I didn't hear him mention it. Maybe it, maybe it slipped past me, but I watched the whole thing.

0:41:50 Thomas: Didn't hear a mention it once on Martin Luther King day in, in a date. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. He didn't mention the debate. He didn't mention the fact that he marched alongside Martin Luther King back in the, back in the day. And Hillary was a Republican at that time. It's amazing. I think he's, he's got so much integrity. I love it. He doesn't have billionaires giving him money. Now, here's the part where the annoying attacks come in. In addition to the one I mentioned, Hillary accusing him of voting for repealing Dodd-Frank, was it? I don't know. It was something that it was really just... I'll put up the source in the show notes, actually. It wasn't really Bill's fault. In addition to that, she also tweeted the other day. She tweeted, really, Bernie? Not tagging him, I'm just tweeting at him, I guess.

0:42:35 Thomas: Really, Bernie? Is this the establishment you're talking about? Because obviously echoing or responding to the fact that Bernie thinks she's part of the establishment. She tweeted the fact that Planned Parenthood and some other organization endorsed her, and so she's saying, really, is this the establishment? And it's just the kind of, like, 12-year-old, you know, type arguments that I can't stand. I cannot stand that kind of argument. Obviously, Bernie is pro-planned parenthood. He's pro-planned parenthood, but he also thinks that you are part of the establishment. It's not that hard to grasp these things. I don't know if this, if she thinks this is her only option, is to launch attacks like these, but they're, they're idiotic. And I don't see the same thing out of Bernie. Feel free to show me examples if I'm missing them.

0:43:21 Thomas: Uh, but that's okay. This is too much time on this, I think, but I have to say that's who I'm supporting. And for that reason, and I just think even if his ideas are impractical, I almost don't mind because that means we'll just have a good person as president and he won't get anything done. Like if that's the worst case scenario, I don't mind too, too much. What's he going to ruin? I don't think he's going to hurt anything. If you guys have concerns, let me know, but I really hope he wins. I just want to have someone of integrity who I can trust what he's saying. He's one of the most trusted politicians there is. I'd be curious if people disagree with me on that. All right, that's enough out of me. Thanks for a great week. Look forward to this awesome Matt Dillahunty episodes next week.

0:44:09 Thomas: That is going to be so cool. Cool. And if you'd like to go and support the show, go to patreon.com/atheist. You can always get that early content. There'll be, oh, there's going to be some bonus content for you this weekend. Me and Jake talking about depression, actually, that sort of thing. So all kinds of perks if you go over to patreon.com/atheist in there and support this show. Thank you so much who have done so. I need to thank the people right now. All right, new patrons. Raechael, Matthew Kennedy, and just XXXXX. Someone used their name. Hey, fine with me. No problem. Thank you so much. Although that looks like that's a returning patron. Either way, no big deal. Thank you, so much, for returning. And then, of course, I need to thank my top, top, TOP patrons. Kaile Riser.

0:44:55 Thomas: Can't tell which. It's both names. Names. Zimu Zinu Jr., Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, J. Alden Walt, Bangs, Naughty Bits, Christian J., Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, Matt Garrett, and Samantha. Thank you guys for supporting the show. Enjoy that early access next week to the Matt Dillahunty episodes in full. That'll be great. And bonus content this weekend, like I said. Okay, so have a great weekend. I will see you guys on Monday with another episode. Adios.