AS283: The Liberal Version of Trump

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, welcome to atheistically speaking. This is episode 283, and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Well, I think I mentioned I finished the Bible over on Thomas and the Bible last week, done, finished it, six years, I can't believe it, but one thing I forgot to mention, I should mention more often, but I'm really excited about, guys, we are only a week and a half away from Myth Information 3 in Milwaukee that I'm going to be at, I'm so excited for this. Thank you. I want to make sure to mention this, especially just in case anyone is still thinking of going, hasn't done it yet. Definitely grab tickets. It's October 21st, Milwaukee. Really cool debate between Price and Ehrman. And if you are like me and you're interested in the Jesus mythicism debate, because we've covered one side of it here so far, I'm working on having the other side on, by the way.

0:01:23 Thomas: I'm still trying to get somebody on the mythicist side to come I'm on. I've actually reached out to Dr. Price. I haven't heard back. I think he's probably busy, but we'll make that happen. At any rate, if you're interested in that debate, and I am, this is a great event for that. Bart Ehrman, I'm such a fan of his. It's really going to be amazing to be there in person and hear this debate. I hope you'll join me. Find a way to get there. And that's not even to say, to talk about my talk, which I'll be giving. It'll be be funny. It's about the Bible, which again, which I just finished and having read through it as an atheist, I promise it'll be funny and at the very least, you know, it'll be short. No, I'm just kidding.

0:02:06 Thomas: That should be tons of fun. I know Andrew, one Andrew Torrez, is going to be there. I'm very excited. I will finally be meeting Andrew in person, first time. We are also going to set aside some amount of time that we're at a bar or something where we can say, hey, if anyone's in the area or at the conference and wants to talk to us about Opening Arguments or maybe talk to me about my podcast, we will be around. That's going to all kinds of fun! Seriously, I am looking forward to it so much. So please make it if you can. Go to Mythicist Milwaukee. Just google myth information. That's a good way to find it. Very easy. I'll put a link in the show notes as well. Alright then, it is time for a Tom and Terry episode. Been a little while, there's a lot to talk about, so let's hit that music.

0:03:01 Thomas: Well, I've had this in the backlog for a while, actually, and it's, here's the reason why. I'm tired of talking about Trump every time, but at the same time, I can't not, I guess I'm falling into the same problem that the media is, I guess, except minus the part where I make a bunch of money off of talking about Trump and also the part where he's like getting free coverage from me and that's somehow benefiting him because that's not true. Oh, quick side note, um, podcasts that I've referenced a million times, but for new listeners who maybe don't know or something, Godawful Movies, Scathing Atheists, those guys, Eli, Noah, and Heath, people I love and whose shows I love. Anyway, they had something funny happen where Trump ads were coming through before their shows, and they decided they were going to go with it because why not?

0:03:53 Thomas: And then there was another show, I think Seth Andrews, The Thinking Atheist, he had the same thing happen and he said, I'm getting that crap off of my show, and I was thinking about it, I was thinking, I think I like how Eli and Noah and Heath did it, charge him the money for the ads, there's no way anyone's voting for him, it's, it's, there's, I mean, it's a useless ad, he, you're charging him for an ad that will never work, I would do it in a heartbeat if he said, hey, can I put some ads on your show, I'd be like, sure buddy, yeah, give me, just write me a check for sure. There's no check. I mean, maybe I have a couple Trump voters, but they're already voting Trump. There is nobody who is on the fence who is going to be convinced by an ad. So I thought that was funny. I thought about it for a minute and I thought, you know what?

0:04:39 Thomas: I like the way of going with it where you allow the ad. I think that's funnier. I like it better. But, yes, Trump, there have been a few issues that I've wanted to comment on, because, again, I like to pick the areas where I think I might maybe disagree with you, or maybe I'll clarify some thinking that you'll like, I don't know, I, those are the things I like. I could say all the obvious things a million times, and sometimes, with Trump, I do, because he's just that bad. He's so bad that I would not want to let how bad he is be lost in some sort of fake neutrality that, that someone might perceive me of having, because I know that happens with the media, that's happening a ton, people are treating this election and this candidate as though he's just like anyone else.

0:05:24 Thomas: Oh, there's one side and that's Trump and there's another side and it's Hillary and we're 50-50 and I don't want that to happen. So I do sometimes say obvious things about Trump, but I've got a few things that I think maybe go against the grain a bit. And I promise you, I don't pick these on purpose. Like, I think differently than people for any reason other than I have strong opinions about things and sometimes they're different than the majority of the people I'm seeing on my Facebook feed. But those are the ones I'm interested in. So it may seem that I just wanted to say I'm not contrarian for the sake of being contrarians. I promise you that. I really am not. I think if I were, I would be voting for Trump or something. But no, I just sometimes I have strong opinions about things and I don't like going along with things just because everybody else is.

0:06:11 Thomas: So I don't go against things just for fun, but I don't go with things just because, if that makes sense. So here's the thing that I'm kind of going against the grain on, at least as regards most of my Facebook friends and most of the people who listen and all that kind of thing. The liberal, the atheist sphere that I am kind of in. Oh, one thing I meant to note, by the way, is that I had planned on doing a commentary this weekend, and then I realized with the debate today, Sunday, I realized if I do something and then something crazy happens, this episode is going to seem worthless, so I actually waited, I watched the debate, I'm recording this later than I ever have, it may even get to some of you a little bit later than you're used to if you normally stay up on Sunday night waiting for it or you're in a different time zone or something, but I have seen the debate.

0:06:58 Thomas: I'm going to get to that later, but I'm kind of starting with the things that have been on my mind before that. The first is this tax issue. So there was a sort of a bombshell in that someone leaked one of Trump's tax returns from like 1995, I think it was, and it showed almost a billion dollars in operating loss. Now here's the thing. Liberals have freaked out over this. Because someone has noted that this could allow him to not pay taxes, I think they picked an arbitrary number of years, it would all depend on what his income was in the future years, but anyway, someone said, oh, he could have not paid taxes for 20 years, and that's caused outrage, the idea that Trump is not paying income taxes, because of this operating loss, by the way, has caused some outrage, and people are reacting in that way.

0:07:48 Thomas: I don't really see it that way... We'll be right back. Let me say this first and foremost, he is being audited. If he's doing anything illegal, then of course that's a whole different issue. If he is doing anything legal in his taxes, that's wrong, shouldn't do it, should be punished, of course. However, let's assume for the sake of argument, just to talk about this, because we don't know that he's broken the law, we have no confirmation of that, and we can talk about taking a net operating loss and deducting it for years going forward, we can't talk about that because it's totally legal. What do you expect him to do? That's what I'm confused about. Honestly, I was confused about it in 12 with Romney. I didn't have this show back then, but it might've been something I'd mentioned. It was revealed that his tax rate, his effective tax rate on his income was something like 20, 25%.

0:08:38 Thomas: It was very low. And the reason is, of course, because he makes his income on on investments and investment income is taxed lower. What I don't get is why this is such a bombshell. Did you expect anything different? Like with Romney, did you expect to find out that he made $60,000 a year working in an office and paid 30%? Like, what did you expected? You know, I expected with Romney that. I expected he had a bunch of investment income, he's a rich dude, and he paid whatever was required by law. Everyone is going to do their best. This is what I don't get. It. We're all going to do our best to pay whatever the lowest amount we can is, right? I don't think I'm the only one who is going to be doing his best to deduct the things I can and to, within the law, pay the lowest amounts of taxes I can because that's what we all do.

0:09:32 Thomas: And specifically when when it comes to Trump, the thing that I don't get. Is that it's not like it's Donald Trump sitting there with a pen in 1995 filling out his little tax forms. He's not doing this. He pays people to do this. He has accountants. He has professional accountants that he... and every businessman is gonna have this. They're gonna have any businessman worth his salt, worth billions of dollars, arguably, maybe millions, but is going to have it, you know, accountants, CPAs that do their work for them, get them all the right deductions, tell them, hey, you need to take this loss here in this entity, and you can use that to offset this, blah, blah, bla, blah. That's how it works. That's how the system works. I really don't understand what the outrage is. I really do not.

0:10:17 Thomas: I think this was a missed opportunity, because if you, and Mark Cuban said it on Real Time, which again, I highly recommend Real Time with Bill Maher, I tell you, I did not used to like Bill Maher. I still am not a huge fan of him personally, like his comedic style is not like amazing to me or anything, but the show is great. It's one of the best places to find people who actually are having arguments about stuff. Now, this particular episode, it was one where he didn't happen to have any on the other side. This was Friday's episode, and if you're listening to this later, that will have been the 7th of October, 2016. Check it out. Mark Cuban was on it. And Mark Cuban said, he argued a bit, I guess he was maybe the most conservative person there, although he's not supporting Trump and I don't think he's, I'm not sure he's really conservative.

0:11:08 Thomas: But he argued with someone who was going off on Trump about not paying taxes and he said, hey, well, you need to have this net operating loss rule. And the reason is, if you're an entrepreneur, even if you don't have a net operating, even if, like me, like what if I started my podcast? Podcast now, what if, I again, podcast costs aren't as much as a business, a giant business like a casino or whatever, but let's let's pretend it is, I start podcasting for some reason, I need to spend $50,000 in the first year or something to buy a bunch of equipment, set a bunch of stuff up, I don't know, pay some people to run around in circles for forever, I'll find a way to spend the money, don't worry, if you give it to me, I'll spend it, and uh, I make only a few thousand dollars because nobody's pledging to my show, I've got a loss. I would be pretty pissed if in the next year I wasn't able to offset my income by that loss.

0:11:58 Thomas: And they don't allow you usually to do it all in the first year. I think, well, there's different rules, but I believe you carry it forward over an extended amount of time. Sometimes it caps. You can only obviously do as much as your income was. So if my income was $10,000 the next year, I still have a loss going forward because I had a huge loss on on this business, this enterprise as a whole. Has not made any money yet. The, the point of this tax, and it's not even a loophole, the point of the way we do taxes this way is you don't want an arbitrary calendar date determining your taxes. The fact that I started, let's say I start this podcast business, I lose a ton of money and then all of a sudden the calendar changes to the next year and from then forward I'm making a tiny amount of money, it's wrong for me to have to start paying taxes as though I've been making money the whole time.

0:12:51 Thomas: I don't have that money. Now, this gets a little weird when you're talking about Trump and these people, these huge businesses. I get that they're not going to be strapped for cash, most likely, and I'm not saying that's true, but the rule does need to be there for the little people. Now, here's where I think we should be criticizing Trump for, and I've seen a couple people do this, but this is what my thinking is. Who on earth loses a billion dollars on casinos in 1995?

What kind of a terrible businessman do you have to be to have that huge of a loss? Sure, I think it's legal for him to carry forward that loss forever. I hope we get his taxes and we find out he's never made any money. That would be hilarious. Yeah, he wouldn't be paying taxes.

But he also wouldn't have ever made any money somehow, and I'm sure eventually he started making money, otherwise he wouldn't, well, who knows, we'll see what ends up being true, but that would be hilarious, We could make fun of him for being the terrible businessman that he is, he's no business genius here to fix up the country with his good, you know, old-fashioned business acumen about cutting expenses and increasing profits, like that's some sort of genius thing that people in government couldn't figure out. Thank you for watching. Now, he's a horrible businessman. He lost money at a time when everyone else was making money, and not just a little bit, a billion dollars. That's a lot.

That what we should be making fun of him for, and of course, another thing we can make fun of for is when he says this line about how he brilliantly used the tax code to do whatever, let's call bullshit on that. Your accountant did something. You probably don't even know what he did. You probably, I bet you a billion dollars right now.

0:14:31 Thomas: I'll make up that loss for you if you win this bet, Mr. Trump. If you could explain to me everything that happened on that tax return, because I guarantee you couldn't without—even with it in your hand, I bet you couldn't tell me what really was happening there and how you were able to carry that forward. But I think he is right, uh, I mean, again, even when he's kind of right, he does it in the stupidest possible way, which is to say, oh, I'm brilliant, I brilliantly use it, I know the tax code better than anyone, no, you've got a team of people, or one, probably one CPA firm, who's just doing that for you, you don't know anything. Uh, but anyway, I, I think, he DOES have the right point on that, though. I think it's an easy counter-argument of, yeah, that's the law. Law and his counter of, oh, Hillary should have changed the tax code in all her 30 years in government.

0:15:21 Thomas: It's not a terrible comeback, to be honest with you. It really isn't. And it's pretty easy for him to say, I want to, this should be changed, but it's not. And given that, I think that everyone is going to relate to the fact that we all want to pay as little as we can to the IRS. I mean, that within the law, that's what we're all going to related to. So same thing with Romney. Me. I didn't get it. I mean, if you, here's what I think about that though. Because think about, okay, think about you, picture, I know everybody is, it's an easy liberal point of, ah, capital gains tax, let's get that shit to 80%. Okay, I get it, and I do, I do think there's a way to make this work, but let me first talk about, again, the little guy. When I started making a tiny amount of money years ago for the little company I was working on, I finally started saving money.

0:16:11 Thomas: And I finally had enough where I was like, I'm gonna put a little bit in the stock market, you know? Know, and it was just, you know, a few thousand dollars or whatever. And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world. No, I thought to myself, when I make, if I make any money on this, which I did for a little while, actually just guessed right and made a little bit of money on the stock market. And then it went the other way and I lost back to zero. And I said, okay, there's no point in doing this. I don't know anything. But anyway, when I made this little bit money on a stock market, a thousand dollars, I thought, what if I had to pay like 80% taxes on this? Why would I ever, ever want to take the risk of investing in someone's company? And it could be a good company. It could be that they need my money. I know, again, in reality, this is all giant companies that don't often need this help and whatever.

0:17:00 Thomas: But still, the rule is there because it wouldn't work otherwise. You need people to be wanting to put their money into stocks in order to feed the market, in order to get cash going to these companies. That's what feeds our economy. I mean, it really does work that way. Now, I know there's a ton to complain about, but at its core, you do want people investing money in companies, being entrepreneurial, and making a little money on that. And what I thought, what I was so annoyed about back then, I still would be, is if I go through the hassle of saving, if I am somehow able to make enough money to get by plus save a little bit, and I invest it, andI make a few thousand dollars, why would I want the government, how does the government earn 80% of that? This is money I've already earned.

0:17:45 Thomas: I've already paid taxes on this money and I've invested what remained and then earned a tiny bit on that. Why would I have to pay more taxes, like a higher tax rate? For that reason, I will never want some astronomical capital gains tax and I'm actually kind of happy with the smaller tax rate on it. However, here's how I think we could fix this. It is true that rich people just get by paying very, very low taxes because all their income is investment. It seems to me it wouldn't be that difficult to engineer a solution where if it's your primary income, like if it is your first, let's say it is first, I don't know, X amount of income is an investment income, you pay a higher tax rate. But if it isn't your primary income you don't.

0:18:31 Thomas: I mean I am sure there is a way we can figure that out. I am not an expert policy crafter or something like that. But I bet we could. We could say the first whatever amount of your investment income or of your income at all is taxed at this super high rate.

Or if it's your only source of income or something like that, I'm sure we could figure it out, we could make it work or you don't pay, maybe you pay low taxes on the first 200,000 of investment income but for the super rich who are making a ton more than that every year on investment income, we jack that tax rate really high and that's how we make more, I mean, that would seem perfectly fair to me.

So I was never really that pissed off by Mitt Romney paying the amount that the law said he should in taxes and I'm very I was kind of surprised that everybody was so Mad about it. I really am not. I mean it's one thing if you want to say man this law we should change this, but people were actually mad at Mitt Romney for that. I don't understand it, I really don't.

0:19:39 Thomas: I love that little, that's a good little bump in between thoughts here. Maybe I'll use it again. Maybe it'll be every single bump in-between all my thoughts for Tom and Terry. Here's the next issue. And this one is a little more gray. Admittedly, this is not like a, oh, everyone's wrong and I'm right, which I mean, nothing's that, but anyway, the PTSD comments, I'm going to play it. I think that's important to actually play it now. Now, I heard what I heard when I saw this blow up on Facebook was, Trump insults veterans with PTSD, calls them weak, says they ought to be shot. I mean, just, I, it was quite exaggerated, but I'm, how exaggerated? Let's see. I'll go ahead and actually play the clip. Very short.

0:20:23 Clip: When you talk about the mental health problems when people, come back, from war, and combat and they, see things, that, maybe, a lot of the folks, in this room, have seen, many times, over, and you're strong, and, you can handle it, but a lot, of people, can't handle it and, they see, horror stories, they, See, events, that you couldn't see in a movie, nobody would believe it, we are losing, so many great people, that can be taken care of, if they have proper care, you know, when, you hear the, 22 suicides a day. It's a big part of your question, but when you hear the 22 suicides a day, that should never be. That should never be. So we're going to be addressing that very strongly, and the whole mental health issue is going to be a very important issue when I take over.

0:21:05 Thomas: I would argue that the entire outrage is over one word, one word. If you change one word in that and read, and if I just read it to you, and again, it's Trump, it sounds stupid, everything he says sounds stupid. But if I change one word, I think the entire thing goes away. And I know that words can be important.

I'm not saying saying they're not, but I think we're holding someone to an incredibly high degree when we say that just because he said one word that was wrong, that he's saying all these things. Now, let me read it without the word that I am going to take out.

Oh, and keep in mind, just in case you didn't realize this, uh, he was talking to retired, the retired American Warriors pack, uh so this is, this is veterans, he's talking to veterans who are here, so when he says, you guys can handle it and you guys saw it a million times, I mean that's just by virtue of the fact that they're here, they're with him, they, they survived to tell the story, so I mean he's right, but anyway, let me, let me read this. When people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of of you folks in this room have seen many times over, and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it.

They see horror stories, they see events that you couldn't see in a movie, nobody would believe it. You know, when you hear the 22 suicides a day, it's a big part of your question, but when you hear the 22 suicides a day, that should never be, that should never be, so we're going to be addressing that very strongly.

And the whole mental health issue is going to be a very important issue when I take over, this actually was past the clip, the clip ended for for some reason. And the VA is going to be fixed in so many ways, but that's going to be one of the ways we're going to help. And that's, in many respects, going to be the number one thing we have to do because I think that's really been left behind.

0:22:53 Thomas: So in there is a billion hours of Trumpism, which is him, again, all his answers are the kid that was asked a question on the spot in class and has no idea what the book report was about. It's like, hey, what was Moby Dick about? Give me a book report answer. Give me, or give me an answer, a summary, like tell me what the themes were and everything. And he remembers like two words. This is every Trump answer is this. He knows there was a like a whale involved and there was a ship, and that's it. And so he's like, well, you know, when you have situations like people in ships and you have, and you hear people talk about it, they say, hey, I've been in a ship. I've seen big whales before.

0:23:38 Thomas: And you have a guy who kills the whale, uh, that's a big issue for me. That's a huge issue is people killing whales in ships because you talk to a lot of these peoples in these ships and they tell me every day, hey, we're killing whales on these ships, you know, and people don't know this. And when I come into power, there's, oh wait, that doesn't really work for the example.

Uh, and so the point of this book was don't kill whales in ships, you know, because they're, they're big whales and sometimes, you You know, well, sometimes you have to kill a whale, but other times you don't have to. And that's the key. I'm going to show judgment when I'm a leader. Oh shit, I'm slipping into trouble again.

No, no, it really is that every answer he gives is student who knows like three words from the book report that he meant to write but didn't and the teacher is asking him for like a summary of the entire book. It totally is that and So ignore all that and just look at what he said. I took out the word strong. Now I know it's important, it's important that he said you're strong and you can handle it and that's wrong, he shouldn't be saying that because of course, PTSD is not about strength and mental health is not about strength. And I, this is why this is gray for me. I get it, I totally get it.

It's fine to correct his language in that case, because while I'm sort of against language policing in general, this is a clear case where I think it is pretty important. It is important not to imply that people who suffer from PTSD and people who suffer from mental health issues in general are not being strong enough. That's very important to say. That is a clear-cut case of we need to change our language and how we talk about it, because it's just not true.

0:25:22 Thomas: There are things that go on in your brain, has nothing to do with strength. There are people who were unbelievably brave and dealt with things that you or I could never imagine, and then whose brains, because for whatever reason, you know, brains are complex, something happened and they got PTSD, and now Trump is, you you know, someone might say they're not strong for that reason. It's not true. So I get it, I totally get that.

But here's what I want to point out, the entire, the entirety of his comments talk about the fact that he wants to make this an issue, and again this is bullshit Trump talk, I get it, but we do need to deal with it on its own terms.

If he says, look, 22 suicides a day, that's a big deal, and he, and he even said, what, he used the word strong and he shouldn't, but if you ignore it, he said you can handle it but a lot of people can't handle it, and he's right, that that's what happens, some people were able to handle something. Thing and And some people weren't. And handle is perhaps not the best word, strength certainly isn't, but this is one word. I would argue if you take out strong from that sentence and from that paragraph, it completely changes what he's saying and makes it pretty much not a big deal. So I guess I wanna say, I wanna argue in favor of charity in this one instance, in this ONE instance of Trump, because there's so much else to criticize, there's SO MUCH ELSE.

I think he slipped up, he said strong. Or, maybe he is wrong and he thinks that you have to be, like, strength is the key to not getting PTSD. By all means, let's say that. But the part where we're talking as though he called warriors who suffer from PTSD, these wounded people, he called them weak and all this stuff.

0:27:11 Thomas: People made a huge deal out of this, more so than I think should have been done. If he gave this speech and he was talking about cutting veterans' benefits or something, by all means. But when the rest of his speech... Has to do with, admittedly, in his idiotic Trumpism way, saying he's going to make this an issue, saying we need to fix these 22 suicides a day, saying that mental health is going to be an important issue for him when he takes over, I mean, come on, I, by all means, correct his use of strong, and there was a tweet that I liked the best, it was by Paul Rykoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, tweeted, so he's somebody that I think knows a lot about PTSD.

0:27:58 Thomas: He says, "Every national leader has a responsibility to use accurate and appropriate language when talking about mental health and suicide." Especially, perfect, perfectly acceptable, correct the language, let them know that strength isn't a good word to use, but, but come on. I mean, there's so much to criticize about Trump. There is so much. This was such an issue. I think it was made out to be a larger issue than it should have been. And I think charity was not used. There was no charity given here in this interpretation of what he said. You know, the reason this is important, I think, is that we really have been, and I really accuse Trump voters of not living in reality and of distorting reality, and I think Fox News does this to a huge degree.

0:28:45 Thomas: I think other news networks do it, and that's a huge problem, and I just think something like applying charity and looking at the actual words that were said, rather than blowing things out of proportion based on what we feel was said, I think that's important. And this is gray, I get it, he shouldn't use that word, by all means, correct him. But let's not go overboard. Let's, let's continue to have the upper hand is all I'm saying. Let's continue to take the high road and be more fact-based. And I say we by that, I mean anyone who's generally liberal, maybe Democrat, whatever. If you want to talk a bunch of shit on conservatives voting for Trump, and believe me, I do, I think we should make sure to maintain our upper hand and our high ground there and really deal with the facts as they stand.

0:29:38 Thomas: Finally, I want to try to talk a bit about the equivocation going on. Now, okay, I said I was going to talk about the debate. What is there to talk about? I'm glad I watched it. It was a shit show. It is highly fascinating to see. I just, I can't believe something like that happened in our politics. It's, oh man, someone who knows he said, he's been caught saying awful things and doing everything he can to deflect and to point it toward different things, and to even mention Bill Clinton's affairs in this, as though Hillary is somehow, you know, responsible for that, it's, it's a mess, it was interesting to watch for me, I actually enjoyed watching it, is uncomfortable as it was, because it was just such a shit show, but there's not, I, what can I analyze, I, but I do want to to talk about this equivocation going on.

0:30:32 Thomas: Someone who's been on the show, Tyler Vela, Christian apologist, somebody I disagree with on pretty much every single possible thing, but still appreciate talking to him when I can, posted that, essentially that, you know, Bill Clinton guilty of the same things, but liberals only freak out when it's conservatives and vice versa. The very first thing to point out is that no, this is not the same thing. This is, this was Trump talking about sexually assaulting women. You can argue that Bill Clinton was accused of doing something like that, that's okay, I mean, if that turned out to be true, it would be horrible, absolutely, I don't know if that was true, I also wasn't a voter back then, so I can tell you, it would certainly change my opinion of someone if they ever said or did the things that Trump is saying or doing, like that, there's no the two quoque or whatever.

0:31:27 Thomas: It only works when the things are equal. But also, It only works when you have some documented reaction that wasn't right, you know, so if you had me voting for Bill happily even though he did and said the exact things that Trump did, he'd be on to something, but I wasn't old enough, sorry, and I don't know that I would have and I don't think the things that he did are as bad. There's consent as a key factor here. Sure, it's bad. It's not great. Also, there's a gray area of when you're in a position of power what consent is. I get that. Still, less bad than grabbing people by... I'm not going to repeat it on this show.

0:32:12 Thomas: I'm sorry. I just am not going to do it. You've seen it.You've heard it. It's so stupid. But, you know, I was thinking about something, and I gotta be honest, I'm not happy with the results of my thinking. I am not happy. Now, here's the thing. I think, I think there is, there are some things to think about here. Picture nominee Ted Cruz. Picture, and this may be true, there were some allegations of certain things, but I don't actually think they ended up being substantiated. Picture Ted Cruz, no history of any sort of sexual improprieties. Let's pretend that Ted Cruz is just Ted Cruz and his annoying face and his terrible views. Now, let's pretend we have a Democratic candidate who, it turns out, it's revealed that he said these same things that Trump has said.

0:33:02 Thomas: They're awful things. They're, he can do whatever he wants because he's a, I don't know, a politician that, so, the equivalent. He can grope women. He can assault them in some ways. Let's picture he said that. What would it, I mean, would we say, therefore, we can support Ted Cruz? I'll be honest, if I'm being honest with myself, which is the way I want to be, and to be honest with you guys, if I felt like a hypothetical democratic candidate, who's a horrible, you know, sexual, uh, kind of, questionably, hasn't done anything illegal, I'll say, like hasn't, but has talked as though he does, I think that's important, someone actually does something illegal, obviously, they can't be a candidate, we gotta get them out of there, but it's just uncovered that he talks that way, he's misogynistic, toxic, talks in that way.

0:33:52 Thomas: But let's say he supports abortion rights. He supports Planned Parenthood. It's hard to think of, but let's just say, hypothetically, he supports gay rights. He's just got the perfect liberal Democrat agenda that that people listening and myself probably included would would want, he's got the key things, gay rights, he's gonna, pretty, and and Ted Cruz wants to take that away, Ted Cruz wants to takeaway gay rights, he wants to takeaways abortion rights, he wants to shut down Planned Parenthood, would we, what would we do, what would you do, I mean, I guess ideally you would say, okay, let's just get another candidate in there that can do the same thing. But as you will learn, if you've listened to Opening Arguments that just came out today, bonus episode, they're stuck with Trump.

0:34:42 Thomas: Republicans are stuck with Trump. They literally cannot win the election by getting rid of him. It's possible they could get rid of them, but they wouldn't. I don't want to give it away. Listen to the episode. They're pretty much stuck with him. And so what would we do? We're stuck with this candidate.

I'd vote for, I don't, I mean, what's the alternative, do we let, do we let President Cruz happen, do we let President Cruz appoint a hundred terrible justices, and do, I mean, as uncomfortable as it makes me, I think I would support him. Now, here's where... I know I've given Tim... Tyler a lot of credit. I've given people who are equivocating in this election a lot of credit, now here's where I dial it back a little bit, the difference is, in the primary, you should not have supported this candidate in the primary. I mean, I just would like to think, and I do think this, I believe this to be true, that it's not a 50-50 thing where Republicans and Democrats are equally bad and they do equal bad things all the time. I think this crap would come out in the the primary. This stuff could have come out on Donald Trump in the primary easily.

These tapes were not hard to get, all this stuff on the Howard Stern and all these, this was all, it's available, this could have come out. I mean, sure, I guess it's possible, but I really think the Democrats, we would have figured it out in the primary better. And I can already hear the cries of, oh, Hillary's a crook, she's just as bad, she is a murderer, she says, whatever, email, Benghazi.

0:36:16 Thomas: Yeah, I've looked into all that, I'm not convinced. I really, I had a far too negative view of Hillary initially, one could certainly argue that I've warmed to her because she's the only option, certainly. Certainly. I have warmed to her a bit for that reason. But also look at her demeanor in this latest debate. She was so composed. She dealt with an unprecedented amount of attack and misogyny and interrupting and just nonsense from the other candidate. And she just dealt with it. She maintained composure. She did a great job. She Did a really good job. I think she's going to to be a good president. But I do have to admit, and it doesn't make me happy to do so, that given, again, short of illegal activity, short of actual sexual assault or anything, but let's just say it's tapes where the Democratic candidate was talking really horribly about women.

0:37:14 Thomas: Boy, if there's no chance to, if we're stuck with that candidate and that candidate is pro-LGBT and pro-abortion rights and all that stuff. I mean, what do you do? I'm not going to give up on this. I would say, well, I guess we've got to put a terrible person in the White House. And so I think that's important to think about in all fairness. Now, if they were also completely unqualified to be president and had no real even tangible views on any of these issues, now that's a separate thing because Trump doesn't actually have views. He has no positions. He has know anything. He says whatever at any time to anyone. That's nothing. He is absolutely nothing and so, therefore, the hypothetical would break down because this Democratic candidate would have to have a history of consistent positions advocating for women's rights, advocating for gay rights, all this stuff.

0:38:06 Thomas: He would have to have a consistent history of that. He would have to have a history of policy. You know, a track record of great experience, all this stuff in order to even consider this, because at the, at the end of the day, to use that cliche, you still, I think you would require somebody competent to be in there, even if they are, have their, some, some horrible quality that they were, they were caught with on tape. Overall, it's a disturbing thing to think about. If you had someone who had your views, the things that were very important to you but a terrible history, and I think that Democrats can, from time to time, be victim to that, but the key is, they also have to have experience and a policy background and all the stuff that Trump just doesn't have, and And I can't think of any examples of anything even close to Trump on the liberal side.

0:38:57 Thomas: Feel free if you have some. And I think this asymmetry, it is an asymmetry between the parties in my mind, it's not like a 100% asymmetry, but it is in asymmetry, and I think it's because the things that liberals value are better than the things conservatives value. To a certain degree, not always, not in every case, not 100% again, but to a certain degree, the overall principles of science, and, you know, valuing science to a better degree, a slightly better degree. Not always, but slightly to a better degree, valuing information, valuating multiple news sources, I think that's something that's documented that liberals do better than conservatives. Those things just make it so we wouldn't have a real left version of Trump.

0:39:43 Thomas: I just don't think we would. And I certainly would not support that person in the primary for sure. Sure, I can imagine once you were stuck with them, could be a different story, but I have to imagine that the party would do better than Republicans because they don't rely on conspiracy, crazy nut jobs for their news, I think.

0:40:20 Thomas: My remaining minutes here, I need to talk about a comment I got. So on the last episode featuring Tracey Moody talking about that story of harassment, overwhelmingly positive response. Thank you guys. I do appreciate that. Here's the negative comment I've got. I'm going to read it. I've gotta be honest, this is a tough one for me. I will read it to you. I was a bit disappointed about this episode. While Tracey's story was interesting and showed a real creep, you mixed this idiot in with other forms of online harassment. This guy spammed her but was not sexual in any way. I think Tracey herself pointed out that the marriage requests are by Middle Eastern men. They're probably looking for a ticket to the USA who can blame them. Neither sexual messages, posts about her appearance, or dick pics were really discussed. I also feel that you and Tracey have grossly overestimated the likelihood of this random guy doing anything illegal.

0:41:16 Thomas: I assume this fear is triggered by bad reporting making this seem commonplace. The dangerous stalker of a real celebrity is already rare. These cases are most often ex-boyfriends or girlfriends. Instead of feeding this fear frenzy, it would have been helpful to support Tracey while keeping the facts straight. This was not a dangerous situation. Therefore, I think you did a bad job of highlighting what women experience online. I'd love to hear a discussion of online catcalling dick pics and all the ways of attention that women might not like. If I may suggest a reason why this happened, as with the episode regarding Andrew and David, well, parenthesis, you were in the right, in parenthesis. You're normally extraordinary, extraordinary, critical, and skeptical thinking abilities seem to be weakened when your friends are affected.

0:42:09 Thomas: That's not a bad trait to have, but if you drag it to the podcast, please take extra care. Love your podcast. Sorry, I had to write about one bad episode and see if great ones. Okay. Well, I appreciate you giving criticism, and I will say I do appreciate the like care you took in writing this. There's no name, it just says listener, but I do actually, I do appreciate that, not that I, you know, I mean, I'll, I'll read comments, I, I will, I'm gonna read it anyway, but I do think that I appreciate the care you put into being tactful with it for the most part. I mean, I think you're totally wrong, so let's talk about why for a second. I can tell you, and I know my own brain, and you have to take my word on it, and I'm sorry, I can tell you that if any stranger, completely strange girl that I did not know messaged me about this story that Tracey told me, I would have the exact same reaction.

0:43:06 Thomas: Has nothing to do with us being friends. You could make the argument that I'm sensitive. If you wanted to, you could say I'm I'm too sensitive to any harassment of women online. You can make that argument. I can back up my position with how hard it is for women to be online most of the time. You could make that agreement. But I guarantee you I would react the same way if it was listener X, even a non-listener X, Jane Doe emailed in with, look at all these messages this guy sent me. I would say, wow, that is horrifying. I frankly find your comment, um, harmful, to be honest with you. I've, when you say this was not a dangerous situation, you don't know shit about the situation.

0:43:57 Thomas: I'll be honest, like, you don't know. I mean, I have, apologies, to get a little angry about that, but you don't know that that was not a dangerous situation. I saw the messages. She talked about them to a certain extent. They were immediate, instant infatuation. They were obsession, and they were nonstop. Sure, odds are nothing's going to happen. I agree with you there. You can make that claim. If you wanted me to keep telling her, hey, odds wise, you're going to be fine. I could do that. But here's the thing about being a woman online from talking to women who have to deal with this. I can't tell you personally, but this is the issue is they don't know. They don't know what's the dangerous situation or not. They don't have your magic crystal ball that is telling you this was a totally fine situation.

0:44:46 Thomas: It would be nice if they did, but they don't. Sure, it's something that doesn't happen that often. I'm not sure how you're calculating those stats. If you calculate how many women die of stalkers, that's a very small number. Now, if you were to refine that a bit, because that wouldn't be appropriate, that wouldn't tell you anything in this case, because Tracey's already got a stalker. So if you said, okay, how many of the women who have severe, you know, harassing nonstop messages from someone who is, I shouldn't have said stalker, he wasn't physically stalking her that we know of, but who is sending her all these messages, someone who seems a bit crazed and is nonstop not listening to her pleas for him to stop, what percentage of those people have an issue, you have something perhaps creepy or violent happened to them, or it doesn't even have to be like murder. Keep in mind. I mean, if this guy even showed up anywhere near Tracey, that would be horrifying.

0:45:49 Thomas: That would be terrorizing. If he showed up or tried to find where she works or tried to do whatever, you know, these things are not, maybe they don't show up in your stats and they're not murder, but already, I think hopefully I'm making the point that it's, you can't, if you're a woman receiving this kind of online harassment, it's, you can't just say like, ah, no big deal. I'm sure it's fine. The other thing that's weird is we did actually talk about dick pics and all that stuff, we talked about that for a bit, and the Tracey is not quite as sensitive to those things, I think, as other women can be. I'm making no judgment on that whatsoever, by the way, but just as an observation, she doesn't seem to be too bothered by that. So there wasn't that much to talk about, but we did talk about it.

0:46:35 Thomas: I'm not sure what you're looking for there. Dismissing Middle Eastern men looking for a ticket to the USA, that's not what's happening there. You think that's what's happened? I think that's their culturally accepted way to express these things. That's their way that they express these same misogynistic feelings. Do you really think they're looking for a legitimate shot to marry and come to the USA? If that were true, they would actually try to talk to somebody and form a relationship with Tracey and then be like, hey, can we get married after that? I mean, that's idiotic. It's just a different version of the very four-word dick pic, you know? It's a slightly different, more, I don't know, a different cultural version of that, I think.

0:47:22 Thomas: But again, what is the point of you saying that you're all you're doing is providing an explanation for what's happening. Not the point of this podcast that we did was not to say we don't have an explanation for why these men are bothering Tracey. It doesn't matter what the explanation is. It doesn't matter. The point is, this is what it's like to be Tracey online. I wanted to give a picture of that because I think a lot of men then don't, don't get it. You know, how tiresome would that be to receive the same stupid messages all the time about your appearance or about, you know, it's just, that's why I wanted to get across. I frankly, this was a crap comment, man.

0:48:07 Thomas: I'll be honest with you. I, I, uh, I'll be curious to know what you think. I mean, I'm, I're, I've, I don't know. I don't know. I'm really glad you liked the show otherwise. And I, again, I do appreciate you being very very polite and tactful with how you delivered this. But to just say this was not a dangerous situation, you don't know what it was. All right, but thanks for listening. Thanks for commenting. I do mean that. I appreciate it. Sorry, I really dislike your logic in your comment, but I hope you keep listening. Okay, that's it for today's show. Thanks for listening as always. I've got a great show coming up for you on Thursday about vaccines. I was inspired by Godawful Movies, the podcast, reviewing the movie Vaxxed. I realized I've never had anyone to talk about vaccines.

0:48:56 Thomas: And there's so much going on there with the, so much we can learn science-wise with the anti-vax movement and what's gone on and the truth behind some of that stuff. And I tried to also put some legitimate questions to see if there was any gray area between, you know, daylight between legitimate concerns and conspiracy theory and all that kind of thing. So really cool stuff coming up for you. That'll be a two-parter. And of course, patrons at patreon.com slash atheist, we'll get the second part right away. So look forward to that Thursday. Thank you for listening so much. Ooh, and I need to thank a patron that I apparently missed in my thank yous. So sorry for that. But I definitely want to thank patron David Jacquemotte for pledging. I think that's how I said to pronounce what I hope.

0:49:43 Thomas: Thank you so much. Sorry. I missed it. If I ever miss you, let me know. I try to make sure not to, but I must've messed up the dates and thought I thanked everybody on that day or so I don't know, but, uh, let me know if I ever don't. I fully intend to thank every patron when they pledge to the show. So thanks for that. And I'll see you on Thursday.