SIO14: President Bannon

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 14, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. We've got a little free inquiry Thursday for you. Lots of stuff to talk about, lots of some voicemails and comments later, all kinds of stuff. So, let's get right to it.

0:00:53 Thomas: So, for the main topic today, what I really want to cover is Steve Bannon. We've heard so much about him, about him, maybe he's allegedly more president than Trump, so I wanted to learn more about who this guy is. I really don't know that much about them, I didn't, but I sent Haeley on the errand of doing some fantastic research all about Steve Bannon, who he is, researching, also his, his position within the Trump administration, what's going on there, some of the power dynamics. So all that ahead. First, just a couple of quick stories, news items. For one, yes, DeVos was confirmed. Boy, I had hoped that maybe, maybe, as a result of all the diligent work and calls and everything that people who listen to the show have emailed me saying they're doing, and Democrats everywhere have been doing the calls, the emails, all that to to representatives.

0:01:45 Thomas: Still, DeVos got in. It was a 50-50 vote. The first time I think ever, I've seen mixed things, but either the first time or like the second time, but probably the first time there's ever been a tie-breaking vote on someone's cabinet member. So that's pretty crazy. By the way, Jill Stein, for anyone who thought maybe she was the right candidate for the job of president, she tweeted, and this is real, I checked this to make sure she tweeted. Why would we have a tie on such an egregious nominee? Because Democrats serve corporate interests. Every single Democrat voted against DeVos. Literally every Democrat voted against DeVos and a couple Republicans did. And that's why we got a 50-50 tie. So this is nonsense. And this is the kind of incompetence that you could expect from Jill Stein as a candidate.

0:02:36 Thomas: And a reason that I never took these third party candidates seriously. It's not, it's not the case that they're actually secretly the best candidates, but just not enough people support them. They're just not that great. And this is evidence of Jill Stein being, I think what she's been doing is trying to hijack a bit of the Bernie magic and just parrot the same message of corporate interest stuff over and over and hope that that leads to a giant Bernie-sized swelling. I don't know, maybe the next election. But anyway, I just thought that was hilarious. Yeah, every Democrat voted against DeVos. So there you have it. And as I'm recording, this looks like Jeff Sessions also confirmed as Attorney General, so I think that's pretty much going to make it, those were probably the two most controversial, I'm guessing that my prediction is actually now correct, that every nominee will get in, every cabinet appointment will get in.

0:03:30 Thomas: There was one to a minor position that withdrew, but he wasn't on my radar, I think it's a pretty minor cabinet position, but, so technically if you want to say I was wrong because of of that. That's totally cool. I don't care. But but anyway, the ones I talked about, DeVos, Sessions, Matt, just everybody, Rick Perry, they're all going to get in because Republicans control the Senate. And the worst one, I mean, De Vos is so unqualified, so unqualified. And if she couldn't be denied, then then there's no chance for anybody. Oh, and not to mention Tillerson, who of course got Rubio's vote. I mentioned that already, but I heard something, another thing that made it even more hilarious that Rubio didn't have the guts to stand up to anybody, even though he expressed concerns and tweeted, oh, I'm not sure I want to support this guy. Rubio is not up for reelection until 2022.

0:04:27 Thomas: He's not up to reelection for six years, and yet he can't even... And so if there's any time that someone could, you know, have a backbone and stick to their guns, it would be right now. But nope, can't do it. No one will even remember this in 2022, I don't think. I suppose, the biggest of the minor stories I talk about, and they're not, they're not minor, they are just not going to be my focus today, before we get to Steve Bannon, is the Muslim ban. So, what I want to say about this is, first off, go way back, check out Opening Arguments if you haven't, but if you have, I'm guessing most listeners have listened to that show as well. Well, the Muslim ban is constitutional. I know that that sucks as a liberal to say. That's something, and when Andrew researched this, when Andrew Torrez, expert, legal expert Andrew Torrez over on Opening Arguments podcast, when he researched it, he said himself he was actually surprised.

0:05:16 Thomas: He thought just as a first impression and from what he knew, he thought it wouldn't be constitutional, but it turns out it is because Congress has given the president the right to do this.

And what's funny is, you'll hear this, we talk about this a little bit in next week's Opening Arguments, I'm not going to give it away, but it is relevant now because these hearings are being, you know, held right now, and there's a three judge panel evaluating whether or not they're going to throw out the stay on the ban, which, uh, I don't know that they will or won't, but I do know from listening to Andrew that it is constitutional because he has the power.

So there's, there's no reason to expect they won't throw it out and just be prepared is my message for that. So, and I think it's going to be even more unfortunate given Trump's threats to judges, his tweets, where he, to actually, let me read them, just in case you haven't heard them. Starts with, "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned. And then another one, what is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone even with bad intentions can come into the U.S.? This completely ignores the fact that it takes about 15 months to get through this process. Us. There's no emergency of people pouring into our country knowing that there's been a stay on this executive order. That's just nonsense.

If something takes 15 months and someone issues a temporary stay of a couple of weeks or whatever it is, that's not going to be a great threat to our country. Another one, because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country.

0:07:00 Thomas: A terrible decision. And then finally, maybe the final thing for, it could be a, this is not normal segment of this. It could be every week. This is not normal, everybody. This is not a normal politics. Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens, blame him and the court system. People pouring in bad exclamation point. Blame him. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. I mean, just disgusting. I can't believe he would threaten another branch of the government like that. I think liberals have been possibly getting a little too much joy over the fact that this order was stayed. Now, I don't know. I'm trusting Andrew's opinion on this. I've read the law myself, and it seems to make sense. But I mean, of course, Andrew's not infallible. I'm certainly not at all infallable on matters of the law, but I mean I trust his expert opinion and in all likelihood this ban will go back into effect. So all I'm saying is be ready for that and just be ready for that reaction.

And these tweets make it even worse because after he threatens a judge essentially saying like, hey everybody, you know who to go after if anything happens. Happens, once the ban is reinstated, then it just looks like his threats worked, which is horrible.

0:08:29 Thomas: I hope that people don't take it that way, but who knows? I mean, people will likely look at it as some amazing display of power. People who like Trump will look at his, oh, a big manly president now. He definitely knows how to get his way. He put pressure on the right people or some crap like When really, it was just the natural process of checks and balances, and it was a stay, it was examined, and then it was overturned is likely what it will look like. But anyway, the Muslim ban will likely happen. So all I'm saying is, fellow liberals, it's constitutional, unfortunately. That's why, as Andrew always says, elections have consequences. So that's what's going on. That's what likely going to happen. Be prepared for it. But the main thing I wanted to talk about today is who is this Steve Bannon character?

0:09:15 Thomas: I know we've heard bits and pieces. I've heard bits and piece is just in the media, but I've never I don't know his full story. So that's what I kind of set Haeley about to do research wise for this week. And I think we've uncovered quite a bit of interesting information here. So, that'll let us know who actually is Trump's right-hand man and allegedly someone, maybe the second most powerful person in the country currently, if you believe some people. So, basic biography stuff. Born He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in urban planning, a master's degree in national security studies from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He has an MBA with a degree with honors from Harvard Business School in 1985, actually.

0:10:02 Thomas: He was an officer of the United States Navy for seven years in the late 70s and early 80s. He's been married three times. That's the best thing about these conservatives. Between Trump and Bannon and others, dozens of wives and failed marriages and affairs and mistresses and all that kind of stuff. That's always the best things about the party of morals and the party family and all of that. Marriage ended in divorce and actually there's some interesting stuff here. He was charged, Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in early January. But his ex-wife, now you can think of this what you want, the charges were dropped and in a New New York Times article, she said she didn't go on with the charges because she was threatened by Bannon and his lawyer.

0:10:55 Thomas: And here's a quote. She said, Bannon told her that if I went to court, he and his attorney would make sure that I would be the one who was guilty. Mr. Bannon's lawyer, she said, threatened me, telling her that if Mr. Bannon went to jail, she would have no money and no way to support the children. Mr. Bannon, his lawyer, of course, denied pressuring her not to testify. So you can make of that what you will. And he was married a third time and divorced a third-time. So, there you go. He worked at Goldman Sachs. Again, I could play the quotes of Trump hammering Cruz and Clinton on Goldman Sach, but whatever. It doesn't matter. Does it still matter? No. Worked at Goldman Sacks as an investment banker, and he and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched Bannon & Co., which was kind of a boutique investment bank specializing in media.

0:11:44 Thomas: And this is kind of interesting. They, they made, he's been involved in several media deals. And actually I didn't know this at all has a bit of a history in, in like Hollywood and producing and TV and stuff. I didn't know that at all. You know, his net worth is estimated at $10 million, and I can't help but think, that's not very good, when you look at the things this guy has done, working for one, as I said, working at Goldman Sachs, starting another firm that invested, and has a stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld, I thought if you got someone coffee on the set of Seinfeld, you were a billionaire, but anyway, and this was in the early 90s, so he's gone, on to do much more stuff. For him to only be worth $10 million, honestly, like, I thought it would be more, frankly.

0:12:34 Thomas: He's produced 18 films including 1992 Sean Penn drama The Indian Runner, so I see I didn't know any of this produced films he became partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Quadenetz at the firm Inc a firm and television management company and in 2004 Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan entitled the fit in the face of evil and this is where they're in making and screening this film he He met Peter Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. So that's where that meeting took place. So I know you've likely heard that Bannon runs Breitbart, and that's kind of where you know him from. And Breitbart, of course, is alt-right and is pretty out there these days.

0:13:22 Thomas: You know, it wasn't always like that. I was kind of looking at some of the history of Breitbart, not to say that it used to be liberal by any stretch, but under its founder, Andrew Breitbart, it wasn't what you would think of it as today. It started off, Andrew Breitbart's whole goal was, and his quote was, I don't like bullies in the political sphere, and I'll fight the bullies. And Breitbart himself used to be a liberal. He, you know, converted to a conservative, and of course I'm sure I wouldn't agree with his politics, but he was at least in the realm of merely wanting to expose liberal politicians' scandals. That was a big focus, like they exposed the Anthony Weiner text scandal, I don't really have a problem with that.

0:14:07 Thomas: If there are Democrats who are doing anything illegal, I do not mind if there is a conservative website or anybody who wants to focus on trying to expose that, assuming it is all above conservative board and everything. Columnist and kind of political commentator. He used to work for Breitbart, but he actually says, I have a quote here that's interesting. As I said when I left Breitbart, Mr. Shapiro said, I am absolutely appalled by what Breitbart has become. I think Bannon has perverted Breitbart's legacy. So Breitbart, the website, started off as one thing, certainly conservative, but focused on, I guess, fighting power in some ways and fighting what Breitbart viewed himself, viewed as abuses of power on the left. And then it morphed under Bannon's control to something entirely different, to the point where even people who were a part of the original website are not exactly on board with it anymore.

0:15:11 Thomas: So I thought that was fascinating. And, of course, Andrew Breitbart, as I've kind of alluded to, he died of just a sudden, very sudden heart attack or heart condition of some kind in 2012, and he was pretty young, so that was, I remember that, actually, that was kind of shocking at the time, and after that, that's when, of course, Bannon took over, and And it morphed to the point where just last year, Bannon called it a platform, the platform for the alt-right.

So that's what it turned into. And here's a quote from Bannon himself. He's about the alt right and Breitbart. We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly anti the permanent political class. And if you're wondering what that might have looked like, on MediaMatters.org, I found an article of Breitbart's worst headlines, and this was as of August 17th, so I don't know if it, I'm sure it's only gotten worse, but Bill Kristol, Republican spoiler, renegade Jew. And here's another one, World Health Organizer Report, Tranny's 49 times higher higher HIV rate. Here's another one. Big trans hate machine targets pitching great Curt Schilling. And, uh, Ooh, here's a good one. There's no, there's no hiring bias against women in tech. They just suck at interviews. Uh, Oh, this one's particularly egregious. Gabby Giffords, the gun control movements, human shield and birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. Interesting. Also, physician, mainstream media is strangely silent about Hillary Clinton's health.

0:16:50 Thomas: There's all that nonsense, of course. Roger Stone, Huma Abedin, most likely a Saudi spy with deep, inarguable connections to global terrorist entity. How Donald Trump made it cool to be gay again. That's some sort of Milo article. So those are some examples of just how, well, I'll let them speak for themselves. Those are examples of Breitbart's worst headlines, according to Media Matters. And I didn't even go through a tiny fraction of them. Those were just the top examples. So, how do we get to this Trump connection then? Well, during Trump's run, Bannon was very outspoken in his support of Trump, and he essentially pushed Breitbart, the website, to just be a Trump mouthpiece, and their pro-Trump position got him favor with Trump.

0:17:39 Thomas: So, in November 13, 2016, Bannon was appointed Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to President-elect Donald Trump. And that was, of course, before, on the campaign, he was appointed chief executive of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. So now he's the chief strategist of the president. That's a new position, by the way, created by the Trump administration. So he created it specifically for him. So I've been digging around trying to find just what is this guy's belief system, like what is, what does he believe, and? There are some sources people are pointing to. It's, it's not as clear as you might think. You know, I'll be honest, I had gotten the impression from the coverage that there would be some very, very obvious smoking gun.

0:18:28 Thomas: Now, you can just him running Breitbart, and the headlines is a smoking gun, and of course that's certainly evidence of what he believes. But the best I can find for, from what I'm looking at here, is he gave a speech, speech to a group within the Vatican at a certain point. And he also had a sort of podcast radio show through Breitbart for a little while. And I guess the best description that I'm seeing is that he really does think the world is kind of at war. He thinks there is a giant war either happening already or impending between essentially Muslims and the rest of the world. And not only that, also another aspect of it is between China and the West. So, for example, here's a question he asked somebody.

0:19:14 Thomas: We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years, aren't we? And another talking to his Breitbart colleague, Thomas Williams, he made reference to expansionist Islam and expansionist China, and he also believes the Judeo-Christian West is on the retreat. So So that seems to be his overall view, that the West has been retreating and allowing China and expansionist Islam to sort of take over the world. And look, this is not to say that there couldn't be legitimate concerns about both those things. There could be certainly legitimate concerns concerns about China, legitimate concerns about Islam, and I don't know, certain belligerent powers in the world, certainly.

0:20:01 Thomas: But there's a difference between an expert and someone, I don't know, like a national security expert or somebody who's working in intelligence or has all the facts, and someone who runs Breitbart, someone who runs an alarmist kind of media outlet online. And that's, I think that's the overall danger of this down with institutions mentality that Trump has taken on, which he certainly has. That's, that's been the, look at DeVos, or DeVoss, where I still don't, I've heard it pronounced both ways. I can't decide. Look at her, look at, you know, Rick Perry running the Department of Energy, someone who just wanted to destroy the Department of Energy. Someone who has no business being there.

0:20:46 Thomas: And this attitude that there are no such things as experts, and you really just need someone with some old-fashioned horse sense to get in there and run everything. I think this is the real downside to that. When you look at the Muslim ban. Look, even though I said that the Muslim ban was legal, was constitutional, first off, I don't think Trump even knew that. And I don't think the Trump team knew that, and that doesn't really make it any better. That it turns out it's okay legally, I think, but I don't think they knew that, and furthermore, no matter what you think about this immigration ban, the way it was executed was awful. No one was told, communication was terrible, it wasn't reviewed, no one knew what it meant, like, were people who currently had green cards okay, were they not?

0:21:36 Thomas: That information was added on later because whoops, they forgot to do that, and that's the danger of having a team of incompetent people who don't know anything. It just, new people, you know, who have no experience in government, no experience at anything. And so when you look at, okay, so now getting to the meat of the story, which is Bannon being on the National Security Council, let's talk, talk about what that is. It was created in 1947, and it's going to reflect sort of a different time. By the way, this was alluded to in Recent Hardcore History that I'm currently working my way through, massive six and a half hour episode. But it was in response to the growing threat of the USSR. And sort of the point is to coordinate all branches of the military and everything else.

0:22:25 Thomas: Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and the CIA and all that. So to get everybody on the same page, it's a committee that contains experts. It contains people who are overseeing these different branches and are all communicating in one place to inform the president and inform his decisions. So, what does that look like? Well, the chair is the president, the statutory attendees are the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, and the secretary of energy. Now, that made me facepalm right there because I realized, well, already we're going to have Rick Perry in this council. So, already the National Security Council not looking good just for that reason. But, that's a very, in the past, if you appoint someone who, you know, is maybe like a Nobel laureate, that kind of thing, somebody with a brain, then that would be an important component. And then there was, up until Trump, he just removed these, there was a military advisor and an intelligence advisor. The military advisor would be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Intelligence advisor would be the director of national intelligence. These two positions were removed from the Principles Committee. Now there's an op-ed by Michael Mullen who, and I recommend this, I'll put it in the show notes, in the New York Times, he worked under Bush and he writes about why this is so unprecedented and why this move is not good.

0:23:56 Thomas: Meetings are NOT supposed to be political. They're not a chance for someone like Steve Bannon to spout off on their nonsense about being at war with all of Islam or being at War with China, whatever that is. That's not what these meetings are for. Now of course Trump could leave a meeting like that, discuss stuff with Bannon or whatever. I mean, he's naturally going to do that, even though obviously that's not great from my perspective, but whatever, that's normal. Not normal is making Bannon a principal, and there's a reason why, because Bannon's appointment to White House advisor was not confirmed by the Senate. It didn't have to go through a confirmation process. So, all the other members of the National Security Council are people who had to be confirmed through the Senate and they are therefore accountable for the advice and the decisions and the votes.

0:24:51 Thomas: Bannon is not that, he was just appointed and then by executive order was made a principal voting member of this National Security Committee and they've tried to make comparisons to Karl Rove or David Axelrod. Karl Rove was not allowed. Bush barred him from these meetings. So just once, once more, this is not normal. Give him perspective. Bush, George W. Bush in my memory, second best president that I can remember right now, currently just, maybe I'm a little skewed right now. But let's see. There's, there's, uh, there's Trump and there's Obama and there's Bush that are recent I'm going to go with Bush as second best there. He barred Karl Rove.

0:25:36 Thomas: David Axelrod, who was kind of Obama's political advisor, he attended meetings, but he didn't vote or wasn't really engaged in the discussion. And by the way, keep in mind, this is coming from someone who was appointed under Bush. This is not some liberal. This is somebody that was in the Bush administration. And he is saying that, sure, Axelrod was there, and it might be a different story if Bannon were merely there, but he's a member of the principals committee. That is absolutely unheard of. So what is supposed to be sort of a non-partisan discussion of national security, it's hard to believe it will be that with Bannon as a principal. A couple expert quotes that Haeley dug up, The last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where they're talking about national security, said Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff, Defense Secretary, and CIA Director in two Democratic administrations.

0:26:30 Thomas: I've never seen that happen, and it shouldn't happen. It's not like he has broad experience in foreign policy and national security issues. He doesn't. His primary role is to control or guide the president's conscience based on his campaign promises. That's not what the National Security Council is supposed to be about. Josh Bolton, that is Josh Bolten, President George W. Bush's last chief of staff, said a president's decision made with those advisers involves life and death for the people in uniform and should not be tainted by political decisions. And then Susan Rice, Obama's last national security adviser, called the arrangement "stone cold crazy." So there you go. There are some experts weighing in on it. You know, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman wrote an article called "Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles," and it made quite an impression.

0:27:23 Thomas: It was quite newsworthy. They were very comfortable and confident in their sources. I heard an interview with Maggie Habermann where Trump was really mad, apparently, about being described as in a bathrobe in the White House, even though that's not really that big of a deal. But but anyway, she's very comfortable with her sources. And according to that article, Trump was mad that he was not fully briefed on the details of the executive order he signed, which gave Steve Bannon a seat on the National Security Council. So that's a bad sign when you're signing executive orders and you can't be bothered to fully understand what they are. That makes me nervous, I have to say. And that's in The New York Times. That's according to their sources. They're unnamed aides within the White House.

0:28:08 Thomas: But trust that however you want. I mean, it seems plausible to me. Keep in mind though that New York Times, the failing New York Times is fake news, so I guess keep that in mind. Oh, also as Trump tweeted, all negative polls are fake news. Literally tweeted all negative polls, any negative poll, doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter when it comes out, it's all fake news so. So that's Steve Bannon. That's certainly eye-opening. Pretty much my conclusion is is the popular conception of how powerful he is and how unprecedented this all is, that is all pretty much right on. It's not a case of liberals being too sensitive about something Trump is doing.

0:28:55 Thomas: This is unprecedented, and he's somebody to be very worried about. The fact that Trump is not reading executive orders he's signing is also something to be very worried about. So cheers, you have, it not the cheeriest of subjects or podcasts, but that's Steve Bannon, a little bit about Steve Bannon and the little bit the power dynamics currently going on within the Trump administration. Let's get to some voicemails. Else.

0:29:22 Thomas: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 9-1-6-7-5-0-4-7-4-6. Let's check out this week's messages.

0:29:42 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas. It's JC Morrison from Toronto, Canada. I'm a big fan, but lately I seem to be disagreeing with you a lot. I'm listening to episode 106 right now, and you're saying you never hear on the far right side people sort of saying, Oh, maybe we should have been nicer, blah, blah. Maybe our side lost because we were treating people and all that stuff. First of all, I don't think that matters as a way of determining if that's a good strategy or not. But I think you're completely dead wrong on that. That Richard Spencer's entire method is to be a nice racist. He will explicitly say the old ways don't work.

0:30:20 Voicemail: That's why he does not call himself a Nazi. He says he doesn't think Hitler's ideas were a good way of achieving his goals and they didn't work Anyways, just wanted to point that out. Going back to the episode now. Have yourself a good day. Hey.

0:30:39 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, this is Good Detective speaking. How you doing? Hey, I just got finished listening to the last couple of episodes, and I just wanted to comment on talking about words in general. And one of the things that I think is that English language and language in general, I think, is just too small. We are just so bound up with religious nonsense in our language and our little sayings that are just so religious in background that secular things, and now that we're speaking about gender differences and all that kind of stuff, is that the English language and language in general is just too small to actually talk about and elucidate what's going on and what is actually happening that we are more aware of now.

0:31:30 Voicemail: I just thought I'd let you know about that and thanks for everything and keep doing what you do. Speak to you later. Bye.

0:31:45 Thomas: Alright, thank you for those voicemails, a little shorter than in previous weeks, actually, because I had one person who sent me an email, really great email, who said she also sent a voicemail, or left a voicemail, but I, it wasn't there, it was nowhere to be found, so what I'm gonna do is instead of that, I'm going to read the email. But first, let me talk about those first couple voicemails.

So, Jason, the message was a little skippy in the beginning, I think you said Jason Morrison, but sorry if I couldn't make that out. Yeah, so interesting point there. Let me go back. I don't know that I exactly was understood, or that maybe I said something I didn't mean to, because it seemed like you had me down as saying something like far-right people aren't nice, and therefore left people on the left don't have to be nice. I think what I was responding to, and what I have in mind when I think about that statement, is there are people who were commenting on the election as though the, the reason the left lost was because they were not nice enough to the right.

And all I was trying to point out is that that goes both ways, like there's no, so there's not, it's not especially true that the left is not nice, and because look at all the people on the right who were calling Obama a monkey and shouting about all this stuff, that we, you know, had the, I just saw the signs of the protests with the, the, you know, hanging him in effigy and all this. I mean, there's plenty of examples on the far right of people just being outraged at Obama and not being nice about it in any way, shape, or form.

0:33:17 Thomas: And my only point was that that kind of offsets. I mean, for the most part, unless you want to make a case, or anybody wants to make a case, that the far right is nicer than the far left, to me, it can virtually the same. I would be a little bit biased toward the far left, because I think that what they do is try to police words a little more. And the far right is, is more violent and has more racist tendencies and stuff that's more threatening. But at worst, I would put it at a tie. And so that, my only reason I brought that up, and sorry if I misspoke or if I'm misremembering what you're picking up on. But what I was responding to is in the wake of the lost election, people saying that the reason the Democrats lost is because the left is too mean to the right.

0:34:06 Thomas: I'd also, I think you're right when you said it's not a good justification to say the right did it. That doesn't mean it's okay. So I agree with that bit of logic. I think it's just misapplied. And then as for Richard Spencer, I guess I didn't know that his thing is being the nice Nazi, especially when I see he's been very trollish recently. So, I don't know if that's a philosophy he's changed. For example, he tweeted out like happy birthday Trayvon Martin or something. Just really, just detestable stuff. Really awful stuff. So I don't know if he's still doing that, if that's just something he said and is not really living up to. I don't know. But I'd also point out that, like, do you think that works? Do you think that moderate liberals are going to be more convinced because Richard Spencer is like a nice Nazi?

0:34:55 Thomas: And that's exactly why I don't think it matters. I think either Like, for example, when I was on the right, because I was raised as a conservative, when I was on the right I would get really mad at the people on the left who were very, it seemed to me as arrogant, know-it-all, looking down on people on the right. And now that I'm on the left, I'm just annoyed with the people.

I think you're just, either way, you're kind of annoyed with the other side, for the most part. And their tone, I don't know how much it affects whether or not you're convinced. Because those people with the nicer tones exist on either side. Like there's more, I guess, polite people on the left and polite people on the right.

But sometimes, to be honest with you, as someone who is pretty openly on the Left on most things, when I see a really politely toned person on the Right who wants to discriminate against gay people and who wants to, you know, who says all these things that I really, really detest but in a more civilized manner, it makes me more mad. Like I'm, I'm less apt to changing my mind. Like it's, it scares me more that they're putting such a nice face on what I think is really detestable points of view. So I, I mean, my argument there is it just, it cancels out. That really is my argument.

I don't think unless, unless you want to make a case, I am not saying you are caller Jason, but if, unless someone wants to make the case that the left is just so much worse than the the right on this, that it significantly swayed people into voting for Trump. I just don't buy it. So that was the point of that comment. As I remember it, apologies if I'm getting anything wrong there, but thank you for the message. And then it's always nice to hear from Detective Matthew Maxson. Thanks for the call. Yeah, basically making the point that language is limited.

0:36:41 Thomas: And it's funny because in English we have such a... there's so many words in English. So I don't think English is like specifically limited more so than any other language. But yeah, language being limited in general, interesting thing. And actually, Matthew, I will point you to the email that I'm about to read where someone who must have some background in linguistics, Although she didn't say that specifically, but she seems to know a whole lot about it that it's interesting. There's more. Lots of people picked up on that comment I made and there's more to say about it. So how about I go to that? So, listener Laura sent a great email, lots of info and well-expressed, pointing out how naive I was in the last episode, and just what I meant is sort of an aside comment, not a serious, not anything I put any time or Haeley research into.

0:37:28 Thomas: But anyway, regarding these gendered pronouns, very interesting stuff. Laura, I'll read the first paragraph here, and then I'm going to pause for comment. Pretend this is a voicemail, because I was, Laura said she left a voicemale, but it just didn't show up for me, so I don't know what's going on there. "I agree with you and the caller about the fact that it might be unrealistic to try to purposefully remove, remove gendered pronouns from English, but I thought your analysis of why was linguistically naive, and the only real reason that it is, that linguistic evolution is largely difficult to control. You seem to posit that doing away with gendered pronoun is impossible because of a psychological need of most people to convey gendered information about people. However, numerous examples of modern and archaic languages do not have this feature, which I think fairly, fairly definitively disproves that idea."

0:38:17 Thomas: Just to be clear, this isn't really a philosophical disagreement, but I think this information will be of interest to you in forming fact-based views of gendered language. Okay, so, yes, I admit I made a very naive, not thought-through comment related to that voicemail. I just said I thought we wouldn't change our gendered language because we're too interested in that information.

0:38:38 Thomas: And the only thing I'll say, Laura, is that I don't actually think, as much as it is very relevant information, and I absolutely wanted to mention it, lots of people tweeted this at me too, so great information. Other languages, of course, not every language has gendered pronouns like we do. Some languages have totally gender neutral pronouns, very relevant information. I would say the only thing I would says that I don't think that proves that a language and a people and a culture who have gendered pronouns would necessarily be able to get rid of them. Because once the sort of architecture of your mind, as something that I remember Noam Chomsky said, something that most language is non-verbal, and like the biggest breakthrough, I guess, for human beings is language, not because of speaking to each other, but because of how it forms our thoughts in our minds and how it organizes our thoughts and just makes us so much more powerful as thinkers.

0:39:36 Thomas: So I would argue that it doesn't necessarily disprove my theory, though I'm not in any way claiming that my theory was well thought out. It was just a guess, a blind guess. But I don't know that it disproves it to say that there are examples of non-gendered languages, because maybe once you have that architecture in your mind, I'll take myself as a native English speaker, once I have that infrastructure in my mind, I don't know how possible it would be to completely revert to all non-gendered pronouns all the time. It's going to be a difficult sell. And it's not impossible by any means, I don't think any of this is impossible. I just think it's going to be a difficult sell to get all of the English speakers, much less even all the English speakers in just this country, but to get us all to not think using that architecture in our minds.

0:40:26 Thomas: But you're totally right that this was a naive guess at the answer. So let's go on in the email, because there's some great information here, and I think you all should hear it. "There are many languages that lack gendered pronouns at all, as well as any grammatical gender. Some languages lack anything truly analogous to pronouns at all, and some contain only genderless pronouns. For example, in Finnish and Hungarian, there's one pronoun for he, she, essentially the use of the singular English they. This has, as far as we know, always been the case in all of the ancestors and relatives of these languages." I'll pause here to say that this is a great reason why we should not give that much of a crap that people want to use "they" as a pronoun, because every single gendered pronoun, and every pronoun, every word, is just a created thing.

0:41:19 Thomas: This wasn't handed to us by God. We created these words slowly. They evolved, of course. No one person created them, but they are all ultimately man-made, woman-made, man or woman-made, there we go, gendered language right there. And therefore, we shouldn't be too fearful of using something like "they" as a singular pronoun. It just, it really, especially with the good it might do of not alienating people who are either gender neutral, or they, they identify, or you're not sure where they identify, or they want you to refer to them as "they," we shouldn't fret that much about it when ultimately we can see these other examples of languages where they have the equivalent of "they" as their only pronoun, and they seem to be doing fine.

0:42:07 Thomas: So going back to the email. Additionally, the use and function of gendered pronouns has made extremely distinct shifts between its ancestors in modern English. To my knowledge, though I'm not quite sure enough to make this as a definite statement. Okay, so this is a guess here. No language contains personal gender which does not have at least a history of grammatical gender. That is to say, languages which refer to animate actors with genders have a history of referring to inanimate objects with genders. But grammatica gender goes beyond calling table he and plant she. Grammatical gender in some languages and in Old English overrides personal gender. So this is confusing, but I'm going to read it because I found it really fascinating. For example, the ancestor of woman is a masculine noun and the ancestor of wife is a neuter noun.

0:42:56 Thomas: This means in old English, if you were to translate the gendered pronoun use, you would say, Mary is a woman. He likes to eat pie. Interesting. Mary is my wife. It likes to Eat Pie. This is somewhat true in modern Dutch, though is mostly out of formal use and still in use in modern German. In Dutch, you Would have 50 years ago said, and in German, and you still say Mary is a girl, it likes to eat pie because both carry neuter words for girl. Dutch is tending more toward applying, always applying personal gender these days over applying grammatical gender, probably under influence from English, but referring to someone as a girl and then it is still technically grammatically correct. Interesting. I don't think many linguists doubt that grammatural gender has an influence on and is influenced by the psychology and sociology of gender roles, but conflating referring to personal gender as natural is an after-the-fact bias resulting from one's native language nearly always seeming natural.

0:43:55 Thomas: Great point. So, that's totally something that I fell victim to in my little guess of an answer there. Yeah, my language will always seem natural to me, of course. Native speakers of genderless languages who learn English in adulthood often misgender people due to the unnaturalness of the distinction, and native speakers of languages with only male-female grammatical gender often tend to refer to inanimate objects in English as he and she when learning. Anyway, thanks for making the podcast, and I enjoyed your take on this particular issue.

Hope the above information is helpful. Absolutely was helpful, and thank you for that, Laura. Another little thing I'll add, someone did tweet, I can't find it now, but something to the effect of, "My native language has no gendered pronouns, and there's still plenty of discrimination based on gender," so I think that is the best answer I'd say to the voicemail of last week, which said we should get rid of gendered pronouns in order to get rid bias and discrimination, seems like that's good evidence, if other languages which is don't have gender pronouns, but still have plenty of bias and discrimination that maybe isn't the best way to fight things like this, which takeaway for me from Laura's brilliant email here, that was a very useful email, is how unconcerned we should be if a handful of people would like to be referred to as they.

Not a big deal. Language evolves. I'm never going to accept irregardless as a word, I never will, because if something is an inherent double negative, it doesn't matter how much people use it, they're just wrong. So that that I will take to my grave. However, something like they I don't believe is like that.

0:45:36 Thomas: They, they is a singular pronoun. It's not, it's not an inherent double negative. It's not, it's just a rule that we used to kind of have that it doesn't matter that much. And also you can look at the motivation behind it. Irregardless, that's a mistake. It's combining irrespective and regardless. We already have a word, regardless works fine. You don't need the irregardeless. I will never accept it. I don't care how many people get it wrong, it's wrong. But something like singular they, that is being done for a purpose. It is being for a good purpose, to accommodate people who want to be called that because that's what they feel comfortable with and it's just not a big deal. There's not a whole lot of cost there, but anyway Still on the topic of gendered pronouns, I've got an email from Alan from Maine that perfectly illustrates everything I think is wrong with the Jordan B.

0:46:22 Thomas: Peterson side, so I'm going to read it and refute it because I think it's, frankly, terrible. Dear Thomas, I love OA and SIO and have been listening for a few months. Well, thank you for that. I apologize for saying your opinion is terrible, but that's my opinion and I'm going to say what I'm gonna say, and you can still disagree if you want, but here it goes. I understand your outrage that Sam Harris failed to challenge some assumptions about Canadian law. Isn't it true that the effects of the law will have to be determined through the courts in the future? Are we not a bit premature in saying that none of what Sam's guest predicted might be true in front of a particular judge? Just look at the burden shift you're doing and the gymnastics you're going there already, Alan. You're saying that it's okay for Jordan B.

0:47:08 Thomas: Peterson to go spout a ton of nonsense or a ton of predictions about the law like that's fine and it's okay for Sam Harris to multiply endorse them three times and say, "I endorse this message," essentially, but it's not okay for me to criticize it because maybe it will be true because of some judge. Like, that, that makes no sense. You don't, you don't pass laws and then say, like, well, we don't know what the effect of this law will be. We're, we're just passing it, and then we'll see what the effect is later. That's not how it works. I mean, if you want me to, I can hook you up with Andrew Torrez on this, but people and legislatures and lawmakers, they pass laws because they want it to do a certain thing. This law is pretty straightforward.

0:47:53 Thomas: All right, I'll continue. In any case, it seems that you were taking the position that trans people should have legal protection from certain people refusing to use the correct pronoun. This is just plain wrong. Okay, here we go. All right, challenge accepted. Apparently, my opinion that trans people should have legal protection from landlords and employers refusing to use the correct pronoun, that is just plain wrong, apparently. So, Alan, let's see, how is this plain wrong? Number one, he says, or she, I don't know, Alan says, like punching a Nazi, it does nothing. We as a society cannot make laws that stop us us from hurting one another's feelings. Let's say we mandate a particular word usage. What about tone, facial expression, body language, word modifiers, so-called woman comes to mind.

0:48:41 Thomas: Can we create a law that accounts for all these things? No. Okay. Well, I'll take your bullet point one. Here's the, over, actually this applies to all your bullet points and it's something I kind of already said, but Alan, I really want you to hear this, Alan. I really do. And specifically, if you want to email me again, respond to this. You're acting like the whole purpose of this law is merely to make Jordan Peterson call someone a different pronoun.

That is not at all the purpose of this law. This law merely amends the Canadian human rights legislation that already protects race, religion, creed, age, like a bunch of different things. They're already protected, they're already there. It just adds gender identity and gender expression to that, so when you say, "Oh, we can't make laws that stop us from hurting one another's feelings," what you are neglecting, what you need to answer, is the fact that this law makes it so that people can't discriminate against trans people. So do you also think that we should be able to discriminate against trans people?

If a trans woman wants a job and an employer says, "I am firing you," or not giving you the job, or "I'm not giving you a raise," whatever, because you are trans, do you not want them to have any protection for that? Because that's what this law does. Without these laws, same with the Civil Rights Act in the US, it's sort of the equivalent of that. It's not exactly the same, but it's very similar. If you don't have this law, if you don't have this language,

0:50:13 Thomas: Then there, that protection doesn't exist. Then you're allowed to discriminate in housing, you're allowed to discriminate in jobs, you're allowed to all this stuff. But you're, you're ignoring all of that good, which I think you would have to agree to. I mean, it would be amazing if you, do you think that employers should be able to not give black people jobs if they don't like them? Is that something you think that we should be okay? I mean, it's the same to me, it's exactly the same. You shouldn't be able to discriminate and not give a job to someone based on these protected classes, and gender identity, being trans, is up there with it. So you at least have to address that, you at least have to own that if you disagree with this law, you also disagree with that, which is the bigger protection, that's actually the bigger part of it. The language thing here, this, that's, that's, that's secondary. So let me go to number two here. We need all people to be able express their truth. It is helpful to know who these people are so we can engage in dialogue.

0:51:10 Thomas: All speech based on our perceptions are valid to us as individuals. Attempting to suppress that speech doesn't lessen people's thinking it. It just causes them to think it quietly until an orange monster speaks the way they think and vote for them. If you see smoke in a crowded theater, you should yell fire, but be prepared to face a lot of pissed off people when you are wrong. No moving of the goalposts. Those last two sentences are very confusing to me, but I'll address that. That I'm somewhat sensitive to this point. Number two, I think it is true that a lot of people, we thought maybe we're like, OK, racism has gotten a lot better. A lot of People were just getting quieter about it. And then when Trump arose, then they were like, oh, no, I like this guy.

0:51:56 Thomas: This guy's great. And that is exactly why I would never support a bill that just makes this illegal for anyone. If there was a bill that said no person anywhere should be allowed to misgender a trans person, otherwise they'll face fines and jail time and all that, I would say no, that is too far. That is too far, but that's not what this is. This is merely people in positions, this is landlords and employers and certain other federal government people, that kind of thing. That's all this is. So those people, who are in a position of power, who are giving public accommodation, like a place of business where, you know, that's kind of the public square where these protections are needed there so that people aren't embarrassingly humiliated in front of a bunch of people, in front of a business, in front of class and for whatever it is.

0:52:51 Thomas: So they aren't denied jobs and housing and all that kind of stuff. That's what this is for. Everything else I would say, if you want to write a blog where you say, oh, trans people are mentally ill. Here's why I think that's true. You can write that blog. I will never personally advocate for outlawing that. If you want to, if you have a theory of gender and you think that it's really just male and female and that's all there is. You can write your stupid blog all day long. I'm, I'm not going to ever say we should get rid of that or outlaw it because that's where freedom of speech is very important, but this is not that. Finally, Alan says, we liberals need to stop believing that it is our responsibility to protect the feelings of trans people. In 2017, if you are trans, like it or not, you are a social warrior.

0:53:38 Thomas: When someone hurts a trans person's feelings, they don't need arbitration, they need confrontation. They need to explain to the offender what they're experiencing when they refuse to use the correct pronoun. Okay, so you've now put it on trans people, you've put it now on the victim of whatever you're talking about. Their feelings have been hurt, they've been purposefully misgendered in their job, or if their landlord does it, you're putting it on the trans person. They have to confront them in order to express their existence. Do you know how exhausting and difficult and emotionally impossible that's going to be for every trans person to have to do every day, all day long? They already do pretty much have to do that. All this bill does is say you don't have to do that at your job with your, your employer, and you don't have to do it in a number of other very limited situations.

0:54:25 Thomas: That's all this says. Otherwise, you know what? I agree with you. I agree with you. If someone does it on the street, you're just two people. And someone says, oh, I don't believe in trans people. Yeah, they can't be arrested. I actually agree with that. We shouldn't arrest them. You can either confront him if you want to or not, or just realize they're not a part of your life. And hopefully someday they'll change their minds, honestly. But, but yeah, this is not that. So So Alan, if you do want to write back, if you want to ever engage with this again, I need you to recognize the amount of good that this does and not focus on this corner case that is pretty much nonsense. Jordan B. Peterson can just use they and he'll be fine. He'll be absolutely fine. Or he can just not use pronouns. He can just us the name. If Thomas, if I come in and I tell Jordan B Peterson, hi, my name's Thomas.

0:55:14 Thomas: I am neither gender. I would like you to refer to me as they. He can say, uh, okay. And then just say Thomas every time he could just never use my gendered pronoun or mine, you know, they pronoun he'll be fine. It's not that hard. So you're, you're stacking that up. You're, you're fearing for everything. Jordan Peterson would have to do the, just the anguish that he would have to go through in order to just say they, or to not use my pronoun, which is not hard. Stack that against, should you be able to fire a trans person just for being trans? Realize that's what you're doing. Please realize that's what you're doing and please address it in your next comment. Thank you Alright, it's that time of the week when I've got to thank my new patrons. Thank you Garry Myers, Rich. Thank you Thomas Asunto, Angela Adcock, Kris Van Pelt, thank you Scarla, and GW Rodriguez.

0:56:06 Thomas: Those fine folks pledged over at patreon.com/seriouspod. Thank you guys so much for doing that. It means a ton. The support is very vitally important because this is my only way of living now. So if you, if you appreciate the show, if you've ever thought of pledging, please consider it. patreon.com/seriouspod. I know next week I have a bonus interview for you. My guest for next week sat down and recorded an additional 25, 30 minutes, and that will be available only to patrons. So stuff like that, I want to try to start doing more. And actually, you know what would be really fun? Maybe I should do a monthly patron meetup. That was something I did for Thomas and the Bible. I did a live kind of call-in sort of Google Hangout, and it was so fun.

0:56:58 Thomas: So if that's something people might be interested in, let me know. Maybe I'll do a patron hangout for just as another thing to do as a bonus, because it's really fun to be a chance to interact and just kind of hang out and talk casually. All right. I also need to thank my all-time greats. And those, of course, are the fine folks who have pledged $5 and up on patreon.com slash seriouspod. They are Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, David at theramblingblog.com, Zabby, Matthew Staton, David, John Bodley, Esq, Ian Ryan, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse, Sakashite Fukasumi, Michael, Michael Schaefer, Sammy, and Hunter Ash.

0:57:49 Thomas: Thank you guys so, so much for your support. It is the reason the show exists. Alright, that's it for me this week. Tune in next week for more Serious Inquiries Only, and of course, check out Opening Arguments, and as well, Comedy Shoeshine if you'd like a laugh. Check out my comedy podcast I do with my brother, Comedy Shoeshine. That's it for me. See you guys next week.