SIO6: Too Much Identity Politics Or Not Enough?

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and this is episode number six, and I'm very excited to, I guess, sort of announce, but to talk about the new format that this show is taking. It's not all that different, really, it's just going to be a little bit more formalized. So Monday's show is going to be the interview. Interviews, anything I do, will take place on Monday.

And Thursday's show, which is today, of course, that's going to be more of a commentary news kind of politics, news opinion, that kind of thing. I'm going to cover anything in the news that I think I can have something intelligent to say about. I think, I want to make sure it's thought-provoking, it's interesting. I'm not just reading you headlines. Lines. I'm not going to do that. And I'm by no means going to cover everything really notable. Of course it goes without saying, but still, I only say that because as I went to compile this show, uh, everything in the world happened. Uh, there are just so many items that I want to talk about, but I can't squeeze it all in.

So I'll have to do a little bit of discriminating in terms of what I want to put in here, but that's what I'm going to to do. It helps me do a lot of things. It's helps me standardize the shows a little, you know what to expect more. It also, it's going to make me focus the interviews a little more and make sure that they're more like solid one parters.

You know, I'm already, I've already been, since I've been able to do this full time, I have already been able edit more strictly and keep things shorter and more concise and put more time into getting it to be a better product.

0:02:08 Thomas: So it's just more of the same of that. So all that being said, how about I stop talking about the new format and just go into some news items and opinion for you today.

0:02:26 Thomas: Oh, one more thing. I thought it might be fun to set up a little voicemail in case anyone wants to leave a message and leave a comment that I could play on the show. Thought it might fun. So if you want to, you can call 916-750-4SIO. Not the greatest number in the world, but hey, it's just in case you want it. 916 750 4746. Leave a message. I'll listen to all of them and if it's any good, I'll play it on the the show. If I can get enough interest, it could be something I could do on every Thursday episode, which I think would be a lot of fun. So feel free to do that and I will enjoy it very much. All right. Well, first thing fresh on the news was this Trump press conference. Well, what to say about this? The first, like, half hour seems to me was just a denial of the Golden Showers story.

0:03:17 Thomas: I'm sure you've heard this by now, but if not, I'm going to talk a little bit about it because some people asked me to at least address these intelligence reports, quote-unquote. Some sort of a document was leaked and BuzzFeed got a hold of it and released it and it claimed, among other things, that Russia was actively trying to find some, I don't know, blackmail material on Trump. The document alleges that Trump spent the night in the presidential suite of a hotel where the Kremlin has surveillance all over the hotel, and therefore they have footage of Trump having prostitutes urinate on the bed because he knew that the Obamas had stayed there previously. Very weird claims, very far out there.

0:04:02 Thomas: And here's what I want to say about this. Thank you for watching. First off, a lot of people have, there's been like people making fun of it, criticizing it, of course, and then there's some people chirping back that we shouldn't be shaming any sort of sexual proclivity or I guess even, I don't know, discussing it in any critical way, and I wanted to address that because it's interesting, there is like a very sex positive corner of the skeptic movement, which is great, I have no problem with that. But I think this is not necessarily the best battle just because like the weird thing about this news to me. First off, I think it's relevant to the Republican Party of, you know, family values and everything. If Trump is hiring three prostitutes to do this.

0:04:48 Thomas: And and secondly, I think it's very relevant if well, a if if it were true that the Russians had some video of this over Trump like that, that is definitely relevant to the American people. We would want to know that.

And secondly, the reason this is so offensive to me, to you, I don't know if that's the best word, but why I actually find it an offensive thing is not really because of what it is, but because of the fact that the whole reason he would have done it would be because he knew the Obamas stayed there previously.

Like, that's actually, to me, the more offensive thing, because it just shows such a contempt for people that I think are every bit deserving of respect, even if you disagree with the Obamas, like the idea that you would have that level of disgust and contempt for them. Them. That's honestly what I found the most newsworthy about it. Beyond that, I really don't care what what Trump is doing in the bedroom or with the company of, you know, four or five consenting businesswomen, I guess. But anyway, all that aside, um, I, for one, don't believe that this report is likely accurate.

I will say that Trump and the Trump team denying it for about a half hour at the beginning of this conference and talking about what a disaster and what a horrible story it was and what disgrace it was, I mean, there was a bit of, uh, "doth the orange lady protest too much." But, I don't know, I actually don't, the sources I trust are skeptical and I think with good reason. And there's actually someone I've been trying to get on the show.

His name is Matt Tate, and he has a Twitter account that I found through, actually it's kind of a weird second hand, third hand thing, through Garry Kasparov, who I started following, I actually knew Garry from back in high school chess club when I used to play chess, but beyond that, I haven't played for years and years, but I remember the name, and then all of a sudden he was on Sam Harris' show, and I was like, wow, this guy is really interesting to listen to. Has a lot of good things to say. And I started following him on Twitter and he actually retweeted this account. That's Pwn, all the things, P-W-N, allthethings. I would recommend it.

He seems to be some sort of security expert. And he's an expert that I find so far to be pretty trustworthy just because I like the way his mind is working. I like the way he's logically taking people through stuff. And And he cites several problems with this document. So I wouldn't pay too much credence to it. I'm not an expert, but I kind of encourage you to check that out.

0:07:28 Thomas: He's got some good reasons in his feed. That's again, you can just search at PWN, all the things. I really want him on the show, but he hasn't responded to our emails. If you happen to know him, or if you want to tweet at him or something, feel free.

Here's one little example he said, oh, this is, here's this claim, this is a claim that Trump's campaign traded DNC leaks in exchange for dropping Ukraine as a campaign issue, and then this person Matt Tate points out, but the GOP convention happened after G2 appeared and DNC and Podesta hacked months before Trump was considered a serious GOP candidate, so some timeline things, and the fact that there's, there just happens to, the sources are not named, the cover names aren't even there, there, so there's no way to track, like, which sources are good and which aren't, there's a lot of stuff he describes, I for one tend, uh, to believe that, and just with the outlandish nature of it and the kind of, the document itself is kind of all over the place, so I, I personally don't put too much credence to it, but of course that's just my opinion.

All right, moving on from that document though, there's some interesting consequences of this. First off, Trump claimed that BuzzFeed and CNN are fake news and even said that Buzzfeed would suffer the consequences. I mean, I've talked about before, I talked about with Andrew Torrez over an opening arguments that the First Amendment is pretty solid. There's no reason to expect Trump can do a whole lot about, you know, freedom of the press. Press, but through his office. And you saw in if you watch the press release, another thing that happened was a CNN correspondent attempted to ask Trump a question and he would not allow it here. Maybe I can play a little clip of that for you.

0:09:09 Clip: Since you're attacking us, can you give us a question? Go ahead. No, Mr. President-Elect. Go ahead, go ahead. Mr.President-Eelect, since you are attacking our news organization, can you give a chance? No, not you. Your organization is terrible. You are attacking our news organizations. Your organization is terrible, let's go. Can you give us a chance to ask a question, sir? Go ahead Quiet, quiet. Mr. President-elect, can you state categorically, Mr President- She's asking a question. Don't be rude. President- Elect, can you give us a questions? Don't be rude. Thank you. Don't. Be. Rude. I'm not going to give you a question. I'm NOT going to. Give you a. Question. Can you stay categorically. You are fake news. Go ahead. Sir, can you stay. Categorically. That nobody. No. Mr. President-Elect, that's not appropriate.

0:09:43 Thomas: Little bit scary, uh, yeah, certainly one power that Trump has is access and he can just not give access to organizations that publish things that he doesn't like, and that's certainly against the spirit of freedom of press, even, even if it's not technically going against the Constitution or something like that. I think the other very troubling thing about this conference was his refusal, again, still, to release his tax returns. It's pretty clear that he's just never going to. He will never release his taxes returns, even though he said he would, and his excuse is that the American people don't care. Well, polling tells us that this is just a lie. 60% of Americans do want to see them, so, I mean, that's a majority. So just merely saying he's doing like this, almost this Obi-Wan Kenobi thing of like, "you don't need to see my tax returns."

0:10:33 Thomas: I can go about my business, which, by the way, won't be in a blind trust also, which, which is also another part of the conference. Back to the tax returns. Yeah, this is, of course, a terrible precedent, and we will just never know. He's proven that if he wins, he can do whatever he wants. He really is taking that mandate thing a little more seriously than maybe he should, just because he got a majority of the electoral votes and did not get a majority of the popular vote. But be just because he happened to get a majority of electoral votes, all of a sudden he thinks he can do whatever he wants, and I guess he's right, because there's nothing we can do. So it's true, he can do whatever he wants as regards his tax returns apparently, but shouldn't people at least take note? Shouldn't even the most die-hard Republicans take note that he directly is lying about this?

0:11:24 Thomas: He said he would do it after the audit, that was total BS, and I guess we can just, all we can, what can we do as non-Trump supporters but simply track and make noise about every time he directly lies to us, which is most the time, time. And I guess finally from this press conference, although obviously there's plenty to talk about, I'd say the last thing of note is he won't be turning his business interests over to a blind Blind trust, he'll turning them over to his sons. So that, again, once again skirting precedent, not really caring about what should be done, what the right thing is to do. He technically can get away with it, he had a little, so, lawyers sidekick on to kind of explain things and say, like, yeah, this is cool, this is fine, he can get away with this, and that's been, he's going to, so there you go.

0:12:14 Thomas: I want to transition a little bit now, a lot of you, I noted on Facebook, I know a lot of you listen to Sam Harris' Waking Up podcast, I for one don't miss it, and had an episode with Majid Nawaz, someone who I like quite a bit, I think Majid is right, right on, on a lot of stuff. And it was very interesting. But they talked a bit about Trump and they talked to bit about the election. And there's, finally, want to do a bit of a what happened, of a what went wrong? I have talked here and there about it. It was a really preliminary, I did the episode with Andrew and Eli that answered a lot questions and talked a lot about just the immediate aftermath, but I want to talk a lot about what I think is some really hazy thinking.

0:13:02 Thomas: I think there's some unclear, uncritical thinking going on, and I'll tell you why. So let me play just a little clip to start us off.

0:13:10 Clip: You know, I would say that in the aftermath of Trump, probably the last thing the left needs by way of regrouping is to fall deeper into any form of identity politics. And insofar as Ellison is likely to engineer that, which he certainly seems to my eye to be, that strikes me as the wrong way to go. I mean, what we need is a new center. I think the left is more or less destroyed post-Trump, and what we needs is a center which is sane and liberal in the true sense and committed to the principles of free speech and

0:13:45 Thomas: I just do not understand this way of thinking. I I think it really is a motivated reasoning. I think that so many people, I've called it out before, and I'm going to do my best to not fall into that trap myself, I think so many are taking what they don't like about the left and deciding that is what is wrong with the left, and the reason the election was lost, and therefore what needs to change. I would like to point out that he just said the left is destroyed. He just said the left is destroyed because of this Trump winning the election in an election where Trump lost the popular vote where millions more Americans voted for the left than for Trump and he's saying the left is destroyed By the latest results I'm seeing, Clinton, Hillary Clinton got 2.1% more of the popular vote.

0:14:38 Thomas: That is a lot. 48.2% to 46.1%. percent. She won the popular vote by something approaching 3 million. It looks like 2.9, 2.8, 8, 8 or something like that. I mean, as of right now, I guess votes will be tallied forever. I know they never stop. I think all the elections are still tallying. No, I don't know. I'm sure it won't be much more than that. But so, approaching 3,000,000 votes. Votes. Now, I don't want to go on a little sidebar about the Electoral College. I've said before, and I know, I don t want to be the kind of person who merely blames the system that favored the opponent post hoc. I I will say that I see some validity to the Electoral College, but I wish it was a little bit closer to the popular vote.

0:15:29 Thomas: But otherwise, I mean, there's no point in having it if it can't at some point differ from the popular vote. Otherwise, there is literally no point having it. However, probably at this point, I would support the notion of just merely going by popular vote. Of course, that's something thing that's going to be very partisan when Democrats are the ones who lose out because of that. Certainly you could accuse me of bias. And I don't know what to say other than I think it's a stupid solution to think, hmm, I guess a bunch of people from California need to move to these swing states that all of a sudden have a ton of power just because the only reason that Hillary lost and that Trump won was because in like three states, you know, a total of a hundred thousand people kind of determined the entire thing.

0:16:18 Thomas: And as a Californian, I am entitled to feel almost the most screwed because I guess, okay, I guess it's the third worst ratio of electors to population. So it looks like Texas is the worst. It takes about almost 750,000 people to make up one electoral vote. And in Florida, it's about a little under 700,000. California, it is a little bit about 775-ish. I'm looking at a graph, so I'm just rounding the numbers. But if you live in Wyoming, it only takes under 200,000 people, about 190,000 people to make up an electoral vote. So, quite simply, Wyoming citizens have four times the voting power of Californian citizens.

0:17:06 Thomas: Four times. I mean, is that a good system? I don't know.

0:17:13 Thomas: But back to Majid and Sam Harris saying that the Democratic Party is destroyed, literally destroyed, as a result of this. Well, again, if 200,000 people simply lived in a different meaningless boundary, then all of a sudden Hillary is the winner. So first off, as I've pointed out, but I need to reiterate this, in a very close election where the swing votes in those swing states where just a tiny percentage swings it either way, it's incredibly easy to engage in some very uncritical thinking and some flawed reasoning and just point to whatever you think is a bad thing about liberals and say that's what lost the election.

0:17:59 Thomas: Well, sure, maybe if there weren't so many liberals who are banning people from colleges, maybe that will have motivated 100,000 people to vote in the swing states or something like that. That. It's something that's maybe even technically true. Now, we can't know, but it may even be technically true, but that could also be any number of other factors, any countless number of Clinton's strategy of, I don't know where she decided to campaign stop and what exactly she decided to say, the call me letter, how Trump did. And there's another another whole aspect of it, which is ignoring Trump. There are many factors that all could have made up this tiny little percentage that swung it either way. And then we'd be talking like the Republican Party was doomed for the rest of time.

0:18:46 Thomas: So I'm going to say right now that neither party is doomed, and I don't think either party will ever be doomed. I just don't that's how it works. I think that if it swings the other way in 2020, which I sincerely hope it does, I think it will, because we're motivated. It's very hard to win three elections in a row, but I think liberals should be more motivated. It'll be very easy to say, well that's good, we rejected that, it's over. But as we've seen, after eight years of a pretty great president, and the worst candidate in history and Trump coming up like the literally the least qualified most horrific candidate in History winning You can't count anyone out. You really can't So I want to categorize some statements and some logical propositions into a few different things.

0:19:35 Thomas: There's what went wrong. There is a question of what went wrong. How did this happen, and you can answer it a million ways, like, as I've already I've already given one, you can find your pet issue and just say that's what went wrong because, I maybe you're right, and maybe if someone had done your pet issue better, whatever that happens to be, if liberals, quote-unquote, as a group had somehow been better on your issue that you like, then maybe more people would have gone to the polls in these swing states, impossible to verify. So, I mean, it's an option. You can just go with that. A lot of people are. But another way of thinking about it, which I think is perfectly valid but might lead to some interesting conclusions, is: what would have been the easiest way to have won?

0:20:20 Thomas: If we had something like, just hypothetically, 10 units of effort, you know, and we had a time machine and we could go back to just before the election and say, Say, OK, if we put these 10 effort units to a particular thing, what component here, what variable would be easiest to accomplish? And here's the funny thing. For me, for me, my instinct has always been people needed to get to the damn polls. People needed to go vote. Liberals, registered liberals, needed to vote.

And the reason I have always said that is because I do believe that most liberals, like a very high percentage of them, if you asked them, they would have said, yeah, Trump is a disaster, but maybe they wouldn't have been excited about Hillary, that's fine, maybe they weren't, obviously they didn't go vote, so they weren' t like terribly excited, but I feel like if I've got a finite amount of effort units here, I feel I could have sat down with them, I could've said, look, sure Hillary is not the greatest, go ahead and lay Lay on me your questions about her email server or whatever, and I'll point you to opening arguments or whatever you want to do to complain about her. But Trump is awful. You need to realize how truly awful Trump is as a candidate.

The things he's said and done, the things he is promising to say and do, they're horrible. We need to avoid this state of affairs. And I feel like that would have been an efficient use of this hypothetical energy that we could have done. But in thinking about this, what I also find interesting is that Sam Harris said we need to get away from identity politics. That's what we have to do in light of this.

0:21:56 Thomas: Liberals need to get away form that, that's why they lost. Well, here's what occurs to me. Trump won because of identity politics, Trump won, because of white people. This has pretty much been regarded by both sides as sort of like the, you know, Trump motivated, uh, somewhere from outward racism to maybe a little bit of inward racism to not, not even that, just, just the plight of the white working class, whatever it is, it is identity politics. Donald Trump is certainly doing identity politics, I would be curious if anyone disagrees with me on that. He was successful. Trump won, need I remind you. I have to remind myself of this. Actually, partway, again, through this research, I just stopped and I said, wait, wait wait, no, no... Donald Trump is president. Every time I do an episode about this stuff, I do, at a certain point, have a Twilight Zone moment of like, nah, this is not, this not right.

0:22:49 Thomas: Someone has prepared a lot of fake stuff on the internet to convince me. But anyway, that aside, Trump won. Trump Trump won, and he used identity politics. So is it true that in order to win, or what went wrong, is we need to stop doing things like, you know, being so politically correct? And, and I had to, you know what I had to do, I had a look up "identity politics." It's been thrown around so much as a term at a certain point I was like, what, what, what do people even mean when they're saying this? Here's the dictionary definition: "A tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc. to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics."

0:23:35 Thomas: I, for one, sort of disagree with the "traditional broad based party politics" thing. I think that could be sort of biased in the sense that history has been very white. White So it's easy to say, well, traditionally people didn't factor in race. Well, yeah, okay, if we're talking, what are we talking about, British politics, are we telling about traditionally how American politics have been going all the way back when black people couldn't vote, yeah, of course, back then it was pretty easy to just say, well, I'm white, I don't care, you're white, we disagree, it's great, but, uh, so I think that's a bit of a skewed way of looking at it, for one, but secondly, um, I think it's actually true that identity politics is actually what could have won for Hillary. Think about why Obama won. Now, I do think Obama is a better candidate.

0:24:22 Thomas: I really, I think Obama has his flaws. I think I want to, in the coming months, I Do want to do some episodes on his presidency because I think there are really, really great components of it. And I think There were certainly some failures of his presidency, particularly in foreign in policy in Syria, things like that. But I love Obama. I really have come to admire him as a person and as a candidate. He was a fantastic candidate, but he also benefited a lot from identity politics. He got out the black vote. He Got out the Latino vote. He got Out the vote of people who thought, you know, this candidate is great for me because of whatever the reason.

And then Hillary Clinton, who is faced with an opponent who is going to be far, far, far worse for minority voters than Mitt Romney would have been, or McCain would have been, all of a sudden she's not able to motivate those people. Why is that? I can't help but think that's maybe identity politics, maybe there wasn't enough identity politics going on, and Trump was able to very easily drum up white support and drum up the support of the wealthy and the support, the uneducated people, the uneducated white voter voted overwhelmingly for Trump, so I think it's weird to say that a lesson in this election is we need to move away from identity politics. I don't know. Do you want to win, or do you want to just do what's right?

0:25:53 Thomas: See, my thing is, and my conclusion from all of this and how I've started thinking about it is, you know what, here's what I want. It's two separate things. There are two separate things happening, and we need start to be able to separate these things. What do I want to represent? What values do I believe in? Now, I, Thomas Smith, host of Serious Inquiries Only, I'm just speaking for myself. You can speak for yourself. Obviously, you decide what's important to you. Free speech is important to me, you know, all the things that Sam Harris has hit on, and a lot of things that the anti-regressive left crowd, a lot things they've hit on, I do agree with a lot. I just think a lot has been sloppy reporting and sloppy news. But I do agree. I believe in free speech. I want to advocate for free speech, for not banning people from speaking places or throwing a hissy fit rather than just listening to certain ideas.

0:26:43 Thomas: That doesn't extend to Milo Yiannopoulos. I think that we should definitely de-platform him. But anyway, within reason, if you're not just a troll who's going to mock mock transgender people. I believe in freedom of speech. I want to instill those things. I think I agree with Sam and Majid on a ton, but that's a separate thing from who do we want in power? I want the Democratic Party in power over the Republican Party. It is as simple as that. Even if it were like a 60-40 thing, which maybe it is for some of you, Maybe it maybe who knows if I have Republicans listening. I never know. But let's say you're somebody who's more in the center, but you see how bad Trump is and you disagree with the Christian right.

0:27:30 Thomas: You know, like, remember that through all of this, generic Republican candidate should always, if I had my way, is going to lose to generic Democrat candidate because of the agenda. Agenda. So those are separate things we can suss out. And we can say, how do we win? How do we win the election? Who do I want to win? Well, sure, if there's a flawed candidate for the Democrats, that sucks. And I know that doesn't inspire some people. But in my mind, I'm thinking, well, no matter what, even if we're not talking Trump-Clinton, even if we're just talking generic Democrat, generic Republican, and looking at how bad the Republican platform can be for women, can be for poor people, can by for diplomacy, can for any number of issues, I'm still going to get motivated and go vote for the candidate, in my opinion, who is going to do more good in the world, and that is the Democratic candidate.

0:28:29 Thomas: The point is, even if you are somebody who, I think like me to a large extent, somebody who does believe in freedom of speech and doesn't believe in censorship, for one, Trump is way more pro-censorship and way more against freedom of the speech, so it is absurd to not have voted for Hillary because you're mad at the regressive left, that is just absurd. And again, I'll define the regressive left as defined by, I don't know, Majid and Sam Harris as people who want to silence dissent, you know, want to silence criticism of Islam. Something that I, you know, I don't want to do that. I don't want people like Majid to be silenced. I don't believe in the SPLC's inclusion of Majid and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their list. I think that's a dumb move.

0:29:14 Thomas: I did a whole episode of it. Check it out. It's in the feed. But that is an absurd reason to not have voted for Hillary Clinton. It is an absurd reason. Do you think Trump is going to improve those circumstances? Do you think staying home and allowing Trump to have won is going make that better? Here's something that occurred to me listening to that podcast, that episode with Majid and Sam. There's there is a false assumption. I think there's an assumption behind a lot of this reasoning that I see a lot people falling into, I think, that this if the, if liberals, it always comes across, by the way, it's a little weird to me, it's little suspicious that it always come across as, well, I'm a liberal, but I, I think we need to get back to true liberalism, which is, you know, however that person happens happens to think things are, should Should be. That's true liberalism.

0:30:00 Thomas: But there's some assumption that if liberals go about everything perfectly, and we have the right spokesperson and we deliver our message, and maybe there's the regressive left, the far left, maybe they cool it a little bit and don't disinvite speakers, that somehow that'll make it like a hundred to nothing. You know, like every election. Okay, we fix those issues, it's going to be a hundred to nothing. I know that's an exaggeration, but sometimes I wonder when I hear some of these claims, is that what they think? Because I'm starting to worry, when, and Majid even mentioned this, we don't just need to look at the U.S. Look at these other countries. France is going far right. He mentioned, Majid himself mentioned, there was a, I don't know.

0:30:48 Thomas: Nazi-supported party, Nazi-founded party, I think he said, that almost won in Austria.

0:30:58 Thomas: And this idea that if liberals just do things correctly, if we actually start being liberal, everything will sort itself out, I don't know that that's true. I think we live in an age where it's highly possible, and indeed is the reality, that people can just be misinformed. People can can just be wrong on a large scale. So as much as I'm all in favor of being introspective, that's always been my thing personally, I always want to look at what I can do. And I totally agree with the desire to look at what our party can do better. I really do. But I also wonder if sometimes we're putting too much faith in the idea that we can get stuff just right and we can reach all those Trump voters.

0:31:44 Thomas: The same reason I thought that the idiocy behind, well, we just be nice to Trump voters. Then, you know, we're not being nice enough to these white people. You know, that's the problem. We're calling him racist. That's not the problem? You can't nice a Trump supporter into supporting Hillary. That wasn't going to happen. There's a ton of misinformation. There's huge culture difference. And I don't know how best to bridge that divide. I'll tell you what, this doubt in institutions and this inability in Monday's episode, as you heard, the inability of students to spot fake news, or sorry, to spot advertisements, and to differentiate that from news, that troubles me a lot, and that tells me, again, that's another reason why I don't think it's just a question of, oh, get the liberal message just right.

0:32:33 Thomas: And you know what's another thing that's proof of this? It never goes the other way. Never once do I hear these people, Sam Harris, other people, I don't even mean to isolate him, I promise you I'm a huge Sam Harris fan, I just disagree on this one thing and some other things, but anyway, I never hear it the otherway I never see the KKK, I never seen these extreme people on the right, these people doing horrible things, shouting racial slurs, these things that were done at Trump supporter rallies rallies, I never see anyone say, well, that just lost, that lost Trump the election. Well, that's, that is handing Hillary the election, no one ever said that, no one in our liberal circles, I don't know if there's some right-wing equivalent, but it's always the other way around, it's always, well this thing that I happen to disagree with liberals on, this is handing the election to the conservatives, it doesn't go the other way around.

0:33:24 Thomas: The far right, and this is, this is actually a premise that I, I'm going to be honest with you, and I believe it to be true, that the far right is much worse than the far left. There isn't, oh, there's two sides to everything, far, far left is just as bad. I disagree. That's a separate show. I think we should argue about that sometime. If anyone disagrees, hey, leave me a voicemail. How about that? You know, huh? You know? Call, leave a comment, or you can leave a voicemail at 916-750-4746 or 4SIO. You know, let me know if you disagree. Let me know. But I think I take it as easily grantable and a given that far racist bigots on the right are worse than people who are kind of annoying on the left.

0:34:11 Thomas: The left is annoying. The far left is annoyed. I'll grant you that. There's tons of examples of the far left being annoying, policing words, doing all that. I get that. We always talk about how that far left fringe of word policing and tone policing and all that, how that is losing the election for the Democrats. But we never talk about the other way around. We never say, well, look at those racists on the far right. They lost the election for conservatives.

It's just not the right way to reason about it. You know, relevant to this, I want to talk a little bit about this Meryl Streep speech. You know, I'll be honest, I wasn't blown away by it. I thought it was, I don't know, fine. I guess there's still a part of me that does hold a certain amount of resentment for celebrities telling me what to do.

I don't know why, like, and especially at these awards things where it's all about, you know, she had a bit about celebrities needing to stay grounded and all this stuff and it's just like, alright, I, I dunno, there's a certain part of that's never gonna really be that excited about that.

0:35:10 Thomas: Someone did point out the irony of all the Republicans, Republicans, being so pissed about a celebrity telling them what to do when they elected a celebrity president. That, of course, is incredibly true. Hypocritical of them, of course. I don't know, I'm a little torn on this whole thing, because I just hate illogical arguments, even if they're made on my side, and she starts off with like, well, we're the most vilified people, we are Hollywood, we the foreigners, and we're the press, which is, you know, who's gathered at the Golden Globes, and that's a catchy line, I get it, and then she says, well who are we, but we're just a bunch of people from other places, and at first I was like, oh yeah, that's kind of true, and And then she goes into, she launches into talking about the birthplaces of all these individual people that at one point the camera gets ahead of her and shows the next person she's going to say, which of course throws off the spontaneity a little bit for me, kind of ruins the emotion of it.

0:36:05 Thomas: But anyway. At one point she says Natalie Portman's from Jerusalem and somebody else is from somewhere else, and she says, where are their birth certificates? I don't know, I, what, what does that mean? What, what is that have anything to do with anything? No one is saying that people can't be born from a different place. They're just saying you can't run for president. And also, you just said they're from other places, so no one, I just can't stand the illogical things like that. And I don't think they, I think it could be something that would be frustrated, very frustrating and is not going to reach people who disagree when you, I don't know, when you use kind of illogical sentences like that. Personally, that's my preference, but who knows? Maybe it will reach someone that wasn't going to be reachable. I have my doubts. But then she goes on to really focus on the journalists that Trump mocked, the disabled journalists that trump mocked.

0:36:56 Thomas: And that at least I do agree with focusing on. It's of course horrible, it's horrific. And after I saw this in the news, I saw posted, oh, it's a myth that Trump mocked a disabled reporter. That's just, when will liberals stop it, you know? And I'll be honest, I've seen the video. It seems compelling to me, but I hadn't really done like a deep look at it. I had just seen the videos, seen the picture, thought, yeah, that seems like he's making fun of that guy.

But I questioned, I thought maybe I'm getting something wrong, sometimes liberals are totally wrong on stuff, maybe there's some perfectly reasonable explanation for this, looked it up and watched a little bit more of the video than I had seen, and I thought, nope, he's definitely mocking a person's disability, like just 100%, like there is no doubt in my mind, and and I was ready to say like, you know, maybe we messed this one up, sort of like, other things that people criticize that even though you don't need to, because there's so much to criticize on Trump, I'm happy to say if liberals are getting something wrong, I have no problem with that. That.

But I watched the 40 seconds, I looked up several different sources, and yeah, it looks like he's very clearly mocking the guy's disability. It would be an uncanny coincidence. It would a hell of a coincidence. He claimed, I think part of his explanation for why this was fake is that, oh I didn't know him, I didn' know he had a disability.

Well, the guy says, yeah, he covered Donald for years and years and they were on a first name basis and he certainly knew about the Kowalewski, the journalist, his disability,

0:38:36 Thomas: So that's nonsense, and I just wanted to check that, so in my opinion, you can argument with me if you want, but watch the full clip, look it up, in my opinion there's no way that wasn't what was on Trump's mind. He looks like somebody who who sort of started to do it out of a habit because, you know, he's a horrible, awful person inside, and then like sort of abandoned it a little bit, it, but he very, very clearly mocked his appearance based on the gestures that he did. But this is just one of about a billion things that should have permanently ended Trump's chances, and it didn't. So I don't know what else to say other than I looked that up, opened to the idea that it was some liberal myth, and it shouldn't really be a surprise in this case because I'm sure a lot of you already knew this, it's not a liberal myth.

0:39:23 Thomas: In my view, there's no way he wasn't making fun of his disability. Anyway back to what I was talking about a moment ago, this is why I wanted to briefly talk about this Meryl Streep thing. Meghan McCain, a conservative commentator, daughter of John McCain, tweeted, This Meryle Streep speech is why Trump won, and if people in Hollywood don't start recognizing why and how, you will help him get re-elected. And again, no, this isn't why he won. If this is why he won, then why isn't Alex Jones why Hillary won? Why isn't Bill O'Reilly why Hillary won?Why isn't any example on the right of someone I don't like an example of why Hillary won?

0:40:09 Thomas: It's a stupid way of reasoning. It's just not the truth. So in kind of a conclusion to all this, I guess I want to say there's a difference between saying what went wrong and trying to find things you could do that are reasonable things, and then there are unreasonable things, and it's highly possible, and it, it's something I didn't realize until the other day, it's possible that a side, like say liberals for the most part, or even me, I'll just use me personally, because we all, we all think we're right on every issue, or at least we have the right politics, right?

Well, it's possible that compassion, things that I like, like compassion, caring, not mocking disabled people, not being anti-women's health, recognizing women's right to abortion, A sane immigration policy, all these, these things, all these things that I think are right, it's possible that those could be 100% right, and yet you could just never convince some people of it. It's actually possible that racism, xenophobia, certain tendencies are so strong that it may just be incredibly difficult to ever rid a society of them and to ever guarantee that they're not playing a part in our politics. And I don't know what the answer to that is besides education.

I would, I would say education, especially when you look at the polls and you look the fact that uneducated people voted for Trump. What should that show you when, when postgraduate people, when the, when the smartest, when the most educated, I won't say smartest, I shouldn't say smart, when the most educated people

0:41:49 Thomas: Overwhelmingly thank for a certain candidate, shouldn't that tell you something? One final item for today, that it's not exactly related to what I was just talking about, it but it's a bit of Trump news and just another little item of him being awful, and that's something in the New York Times that Haley came across, I think it's very interesting. Trump is denying ambassadors, foreign ambassadors, you know, our people in other countries, extensions on their living situation, and this is something, you know, I guess you or I wouldn't necessarily know about unless we came across an article in the New York Times. But it makes sense, since the new president takes office in the middle of the year, that ambassadors who have their families in these foreign countries would usually get a grace period in order to figure out what their children are doing school-wise.

0:42:44 Thomas: They don't want to move middle of school year. Figuring out moving in the middle of that can be tough. And decades of precedent dictates that you give people just a bit of a grace period. And maybe you wait a little bit until you appoint the ambassador that you want so that these people can figure their lives out. Well, Trump is saying that he's issued just a blanket edict without any exceptions that any politically appointed ambassadors have to to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day. So just immediately, just short notice. This is not the norm. This is non-precedent. This is something he's doing that's out of the ordinary. This is really creating havoc for certain people's lives.

0:43:29 Thomas: I mean, I know there's one ambassador who said, you know, my wife's got cancer. We're in the middle of treatment here. We're the middle figuring this out. Having to move like this is just unprecedented without any sort of grace period. And another thing the article points out that I just thought was so funny, funny in a horrible way, by the way, of course, that's worth pointing out, is Melania is staying in New York to avoid moving the 10-year-old son, Barron, to a new school mid-year. So that's what, she's not going to move to the, she cannot be, they can't be bothered to move from one cushy, amazing place to live to another mid- year. But these people have to just get the hell out immediately, no matter what, no matter what the situation of their families, with no exceptions. So I thought that was just another amazing bit of awfulness for the Trump administration, and we can just look forward to four years of that, assuming all goes perfectly.

0:44:40 Thomas: All right, well, that's it for this Thursday commentary, the Thursday Inquiry. Maybe that's what I'll call it. I don't know. I'd like to, one thing I need to do actually is, it turns out if you're a patron over on patreon.com/seriouspod, as one Ian Rosano is, and you're a patron of a certain level or higher, and you want me to read something on the show, that is a right that you have.

Ian has exercised said right, and he wanted, if you wanted me to read a bit of an email, this, this email is sort of a reading recommendation to authors that Ian wants to make sure to get the word out on, which I think is kind of cool, that's a cool thing to email about.

First is Karl Popper, a lot of people know that name, and Ian says that Popper has really affected his thinking as of late, and he recommends the book, if you want to kind of get his ideas in a nutshell, you can read the book called Popper by Brian McGee, or is it M-A-G-E-E. And there's some others he lists but of course you can find those I'm sure with a Google search but that's interesting I want to check out that book called Popper and the other one is David Deutsch and he has written The Fabric of Reality and the Beginning of Infinity and also of course David Deutsch is someone who's unlike Popper is still alive so that's somebody I'm going to I just literally as we speak Ian I just messaged Haley that we need to get David David Deutsch, on the guest list to try to pursue him because I believe I've heard him on Sam Harris, actually.

I think he's been on to talk about AI and stuff like that. That's somebody I remember being I was very interested in. So I will pursue him and I will check out his books. Talk. Also check him out on TED Talks.

0:46:23 Thomas: So thank you, Ian, for that email. And if anyone, any $5 and above patrons ever want to invoke their privilege to have something read on the air, I certainly will do so. So Ian, I think, is very laudable in recommending two very great authors and philosophers and thinkers for people to read. So thank you, Ian, and I appreciate that email.

And speaking of patrons, I want to thank my new patrons over at patreon.com/seriouspod Go over and pledge as little as a dollar a show and you can get access to bonus content and all that jazz. Thank you Christina Rochen, Lochlan Jones, Chris Stoff Lynch, and Sara McLean for being this week's new patron. Thank you guys so much. And I also need to thank my all-time greats.

And they are, of course, Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Blackhawks, Aerosign Sharks, Adrian Borschoff, Robert Shepis, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, David at TheRamblingBlog.com, Zabby, Ian Rosano, the aforementioned, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse, Sakashite Fukasumi, Michael, Sammy, Thank you guys so very kindly for being the top patrons that make the show happen. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate interacting with you over on patreon.com. So that's it. I want to once again remind you to, if you want, leave a voicemail. It would be kind of cool to have the first voicemail on the air next Thursday. I would really appreciate that. Maybe you can say something. Maybe you have some criticism.

Maybe you Have some thoughts on this election. I I always have more to say about it, by the way, and I think it's important for going forward. That's why I'm still talking about it. It's still important to account for what we can do to try to win in the future.

0:48:08 Thomas: And for me, it's all about voter turnout. It is all about motivating people who I already know. The people are already out there. There's plenty of people who already agree with the majority of the Democratic Party or even just a plurality of the the Democratic Party ideals. And those are the people I think we can reach by just motivating to go out and vote. That's so easy. All they have to do is go do it because turnout, in my opinion, was the main issue. Anyway, if you disagree, let me know. And as always, comments on SeriousPod.com or on Patreon. And you can follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod, just at Serius Pod, of course. The Facebook still isn't renamed. I think Facebook is just going to ignore me forever and perpetuity across the universe.

0:48:55 Thomas: So I may just make a new stupid page and have no likes and have to lose all the years of likes and support I've gotten. But that's how horrible Facebook is. With all that being said, thank you for another great episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the new format. And I've got a great interview. It's actually a bit of a debate coming on Monday, between Justin Schieber and Randal Rauser. Very interesting stuff. So look forward to that on Monday. I'll see you then.