SIO62: Trans and in the Military with Sarah

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. This is episode 62 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Okay, first things first. I'm still sick and coughing a lot. I'm very sorry if that affects the sound quality or anything. Doing my best to edit around it and speak around it. Hopefully you won't even notice, but boy, this is frustrating. It's been a week. When is this thing going away? Anyway, that is the least of our worries today.

I was all set to do some commentary and some voicemails, but this Trump... Tweet about trans people not being allowed to serve in the military happened and I just wanted to do something. So fortunately, I know somebody who is both trans and in the military and she was willing only under condition of anonymity to come speak about it. So her voice and her name have been altered, that's come to think of it, that's not a bad metric for how bad your policies are, is maybe the number of people who have to like alter their voice and name in order to even talk about them. But at any rate, she's doing so and I want to thank her again for doing that.

So, not her real name, Sarah, is here to talk about her experience and what she knows about this policy, what it was, and what it maybe will be. And I also have to say that this is very early on. She's reacting in real time, so it's a shorter segment. After that, we'll still have time to talk a little bit more about her. We'll talk about a couple other things, but I, up first, being trans and in the military, here we go, joining

0:02:11 Thomas: Me right now. Thank you for coming on such short notice, kind of a very quick change of plans, and that's why incidentally I like doing this episode on Wednesday so I can respond to news. This is some not so happy news. We're going going to go with Sarah, not your real name. I hate when we have to do that, but we have to do that. How are you doing today, quote, unquote, Sarah?

0:02:32 Sarah: Getting by, getting by.

0:02:34 Thomas: No kidding. Yeah, it's not every day a tweet can possibly end your employment situation. I know that's something, as a very privileged person, I never have to worry about that. Unless, I suppose, if I go on like a racist tweet rant, then maybe my own tweets could ruin my employment. But in all seriousness, that may be your situation. Sarah is active military and is trans. So you can imagine what we're talking about here. I understand that you can go into the timeline of this because I'm a bit confused looking into this because Obama's policy wasn't even set to take place yet. So I'm curious what's going on there. Give us the lowdown and where we are, how we got to this, this point.

0:03:20 Sarah: Okay, so under Obama, Obama asked Secretary of Defense at the time, Ashton Carter, to enable a policy that allowed transgender people to serve openly. Secondly, in February of 2015, he said he was putting together a committee to into this, and he was putting a halt on firing anyone who had come out as transgender at that time. There were a couple people around that time or slightly before who had came out already, which was the impetus for this, But at that point, you couldn't get fired until they did their research. In June of 2016, June 30th, 2016, your

0:04:00 Thomas: Hmm. So then, sorry, do you know of people? So prior to that, it sounds like if you came out as trans in the military, then you were essentially fired or at least open to be fired.

0:04:14 Sarah: Job was you were open to being fired, but not everyone was. You can look into some early people such as Logan Ireland. And there were even one or two people before him. But I'm forgetting names right now. But after that over a year-long study, on June 30th, Ashton Carter announced that transgender people would serve openly. However, the policies didn't come into effect until October 1st on how that would happen. But that only affected people who were already serving.

0:04:17 Thomas: Okay. Okay.

0:04:29 Thomas: That's okay.

0:04:49 Thomas: Hmm,

0:04:49 Sarah: So if you were already surfing and you came out as transgender, you'd be able to serve openly They weren't going to allow people to join the military who were transgender until July of 2017. That got pushed back by Mateus, and there's a lot of speculation that – by Mattis, yeah, General Mattis. And there's a lot of speculation that that came from above him.

0:04:50 Thomas: By

0:05:19 Sarah: Official policy was they were going to do some more fact-finding before they allowed transgender people to join the military. But if you were already serving, you're still allowed to serve.

0:05:11 Thomas: Mattis. Mattis, okay. Okay, so tell us as much as you can about about your story. I know you don't want to risk anything. And I totally understand that. And by the way, thank you so much for even coming on and risking any part of your livelihood. It really means a lot. But tell us as much as you can about your history. How did you come out as trans in the military? Were you already out?

0:05:51 Sarah: I came out after the policy changed.

0:05:54 Thomas: Oh, wow. How long have you, roughly speaking, how long have have you been in the military?

0:05:58 Sarah: I've been in over 15 years. Um, Then I've been fighting to get the medical care I need. It's uh, a difficult battle, difficult to get all the paperwork, time to get all the medical carer you need, um, and everyone's is at different points in that, but but most people aren't too far along. And uh, the tweets today, we don't know what's going on with those. What I will say is tweets are not policy. However, an executive order or else a policy change from Mattis would end my career. And I sent you a link on Facebook of the statement by McCain, and he said it fairly well.

0:05:59 Thomas: Oh, okay. Wow.

0:06:50 Sarah: He said, "The president tweeted this morning regarding transgender Americans in the military is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter. The statement was unclear. The Department of Defense has already decided to allow currently serving transgender gender individuals to stay in the military, and many are serving honorably today. Any American who meets current medical and readiness standards should be allowed to continue serving." That's more opinion than statement of policy, but I still think it's apt. And then, "There's no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, deploy to leave the military regardless of their gender identity," and it continues on. He's head of the Senate Armed Service Committee, but an executive order would be all it would take to just say, no transgender people can serve.

0:07:37 Thomas: Yeah. How did it feel to finally two years ago, roughly speaking, whatever it was to feel like you could finally come out having been at this place for, you know, in this place of employment for 15 years or so, how did it feel to finaly think I can be honest about myself to anyone I'm working with?

0:08:01 Sarah: Oh, it was, I was elated at the time. I'm obviously less so now, but I was alated at the time, then, like, I had come out to my command, to my co-workers. I got a lot of support. Court. I've got some pushback, as everyone does. But I was well on the way to getting the care I needed. I, I've, I'd been fighting with the, the policy to get all that done properly. And then this comes out. So you like the initial elation had well been worn off because I've been fighting so long now just to get the care. I need, and now might not even be able to get my full retirement.

0:08:07 Thomas: Yeah. Gosh, I don't even know how to process how horrible that is and honestly how betrayed you must feel about this entire thing.

0:08:56 Sarah: I'll just say we're not supposed to make statements against the Commander-in-Chief, so I'll leave that up to you.

0:09:03 Thomas: Yeah, well, I'm happy to. I mean, it really is. It just occurred to me this morning. I think I already mentioned it, but just the privilege of being able to sit here and see the president acting like just a fucking moron in public on Twitter and just to be able to laugh at it is a privilege, privilege to be able for me to just say, "Wow, boy, what a dummy, huh?" Or for anyone else, "Oh, maybe he shouldn't tweet so much." But what we're forgetting and what people don't realize is that there are real people whose lives are affected by the things he says. And it's the idea that after feeling like you finally could come out in the military, you finally could come out to your co-workers, to your superiors, to anybody, and be honest and take that incredibly risky and scary, you know, plunge into being open.

0:09:59 Thomas: And then a short time later to have a dumbass tweet what he did that could potentially put your entire well-being, your entire livelihood into jeopardy. It's so infuriating. I don't even know how to deal with it. I mean, first off, I will say, despite what the president and others have said, thank you for your service. Thank you goes out to anybody serving in the military, but also anybody who's doing so, especially trans, gay, people who previously weren't allowed to or had to do so closeted. The idea that they still serve their country despite those barriers is incredible to me.

0:10:46 Thomas: And I really, a heartfelt thank you goes out to anybody who is willing to do that. And I can't, I just can't believe it. I really can't.

0:10:55 Sarah: Well, thank you, and the opinions expressed on this podcast may not actually be attributed to Sarah or any military person in general.

0:11:02 Thomas: That's fine. I have no, I have No Connection to the military. I don't, it's just, I don't know what to say. Like it, if it goes back to maybe what it was before, do you think that it'll be under somebody's discretion whether or not you keep your job? Like, is it going to be a question of, yeah.

0:11:19 Sarah: Now, I think it'll be a medical separation because I have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in my medical record. That is the most likely. It may not affect. It really depends on how the statement is worded. As John McCain stated in his statement, the statement was unclear. And until we have official word, we're all standing by to hear officially what the policy is going to be moving forward.

0:11:48 Thomas: This sets things back so much, too, because imagine the next time this happens, the next time there's a, I don't know, the last time there is a Democrat in office and something like this happens where it's like, hey, you can be open. You can be out. You know, how many people are going to like, well, you know, I kind of remember what happened last time.

0:12:06 Sarah: Yes.

0:12:07 Thomas: Gosh, unbelievable.

0:12:08 Sarah: And there was a lot of speculation when Trump won the presidency that this could come down. And I actually remember asking someone, it's like, I'm not sure I'll have a job in a year. And, well, the timeline's about right.

0:12:25 Thomas: You referenced the research that would need to be done in order to see whether it was okay if you were in the military. And I'm pretty sure, and you can correct me on this, but I'm pretty sure they did that research. And basically they said, yeah, this is fine. There's nothing, there's no big deal.

0:12:43 Sarah: They put together research on the amount of money it would take for the military to treat transgender people, and it was considered negligible by the committee that they put together at the time. A lot of statements about it saving billions have come out since then.

0:12:52 Thomas: Yeah. Oh

0:13:05 Sarah: I believe it was something around $10 million, but I'm having trouble finding the –

0:13:08 Thomas: My God. I have it right here. 2.4 million to 8.4 million annually representing a 0.04 to 0.13% increase in healthcare. 0.4 to 0.13%. Percent if if they treated if they treated every any trans person's gender transition so nothing essentially

0:13:20 Sarah: There we go. Yes. That's what they put forward. And billion statement has no backing by any committee that I've seen or any research that I'm seeing. It's just another incident of hyperbole that is threatening this whole process. Us.

0:13:31 Thomas: Yeah How Do you feel when people, because I actually, one of the most popular threads I'm seeing right now that, you know, someone, I'm a huge fan of Dave Rubin, tweeted out, was someone talking about being holed up somewhere in Iraq, you know, the only nine guys going nuts. That's because they're stuck there. And the feeling essentially was you'd better be in peak mental condition, otherwise you're not going to make it. How do you feel when you see statements like that? What do you, what would you, how would you respond to that?

0:14:23 Sarah: Of the matter is anyone put in that situation frequently is not in peak mental condition, especially after they've been there for a bit. That's why PTSD is such a problem. But even outside of that, care plan, this treatment is always, we're in the military first and were transgender after that. So if you're going on deployment, your care gets put off until the deployment's over so that you can make sure that your care will not affect your job and your mission. So readiness has already been taken into account when this policy was put in place.

0:14:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:04 Thomas: Here's something I was thinking, but I, you know, I don't know. I don't have the experience to back it up. So I want, I want to know what you think about this. If it is the case that this encourages, in fact, makes it mandatory that any person who feels trans, you know, who is, who feels like they're experiencing gender dysphoria, if it's the case that these individuals will have to be closeted now, we'll have to, we can't say anything, otherwise, you know, their, their job is on the line, wouldn't that make them less able to serve in that, but like, like, if there's anything, you

0:15:38 Sarah: It would make your mental health worse off, firstly. Secondly, it would make you more of of a blackmail risk by enemy forces because they have something they can hold over your head. So when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was overturned, one of the statements was people who were under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, if they were told by, say, a Russian agent that, hey, I will out you as gay to your service members if you don't give me these secrets, that would be something that could be held over them that was fixed by the policy change. This is a step backwards.

0:15:42 Thomas: Would think, yeah, right, absolutely. I don't understand how you could think this would be good. It's not, it's weird that conservatives seem to think that gay people or trans people will just go away, like, if this happens, I guess. You know, like they just, well, okay, well they'll all quit or they'll leave. It's like, no, they're going to continue to get by the only way they can, which is to try to fly under the radar, right?

0:16:45 Sarah: That's pretty much very accurate. It's the same percentage of people will join the military who identify or will eventually figure out that they're transgender. The problem is when they figure that out, they have to decide, do I want to stay in the military and have to hide myself or get out? And be myself. It

0:17:07 Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. Can I ask, when did you discover, I guess, about yourself that you were in the wrong gender?

0:17:15 Sarah: Was early 2015, so it was actually pretty apt because I didn't know about the policy at the time, but I read about Ashton Carter making it difficult to fire people who were transgender while they were doing the research, and that helped me to not have to worry about my job at that point.

0:17:37 Thomas: Wow. So you only just recently kind of realized you were trans? It's only been a couple of years. Oh, okay. Can I ask, like, what was your experience like before that? Did you feel something was wrong? You just couldn't put your finger on it? Or what was it like? Or did you just, had you never considered It? Hmm.

0:17:43 Sarah: Correct.

0:17:53 Sarah: I grew up in a conservative household, old. And then I got married. And in each of those instances, I put off trying to explore this because it wasn't allowed by family, wasn't approved of by the ex-wife. And I decided I wanted to be married more than try and figure this part of myself out.

0:18:13 Thomas: Right. But it must have come as a, a really big relief when you figured it out, right? That must have been, yeah.

0:18:21 Sarah: Oh, it was a huge relief. And it was a huge relief of anxiety and mental health issues.

0:18:23 Thomas: Yeah. Unbelievable.

0:18:29 Sarah: And now I have to worry about financial and job issues. Issues.

0:18:36 Thomas: I, I really don't know what to say. Is, is there, is there anything else we, uh, we should cover on this? Is there anything else you want to make sure is said? Yeah.

0:18:45 Sarah: While these are my opinions and they're not representative of the military's official statements, there will be official media statements made eventually, such as the one made by John McCain. There will be ones made by other public affairs groups. And we'd all just just have to wait and see because tweets do not make policy.

0:19:09 Thomas: But I, I mean, it's not nothing. Like, it's, it's not.

0:19:12 Sarah: No, like I said, it would literally take him writing one of his executive orders to fire me. So it's not like he couldn't do it with the swipe of a pen.

0:19:19 Thomas: Right. Right, which which is no cost. I mean, that just takes. Yeah, it takes 10 minutes. Yeah, we know he doesn't put a whole lot of thought into his executive order. So we know it's not going to take him that much work.

0:19:34 Sarah: And is to get eyes off of other things going on in the administration right now, because if he can turn the eyes of the media towards this, then there might be eyes off of the investigation into Russia. There might be eyes off other parts of the health care bill.

0:19:52 Thomas: Right. Well, two things on that. One, Mueller is he's not one to be distracted. I'm not too worried about that. He's after looking into that guy and everything everybody says about him. He's a top notch, and I am not worried about him being distracted away from this by some tweets. So that will continue to go on. And I think we, just because something horrible is being done in an effort to distract, possibly, it doesn't mean that it isn't a horrible thing and we don't, it doesn't deserve attention. I mean, it deserves attention.

0:20:28 Thomas: No, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just, people offer that, oh, this is a distraction, don't worry, it's like, yeah, okay, you can, you know, you can stab a guy just to distract from something else, but it's, like, you still stabbed a guy, you know, like we can't, it's, yeah, congratulations, you've distracted us by being horrible, so it's worthwhile to, to pay due attention to it, and hopefully it is just words, I really do hope for the sake of you and every trans person out there in the military that I hope it is is just words. I hope someone talks them out of it. I hope it is just a feeble attempt to distract from something. But by the way, that I mean tomorrow when healthcare vote happens or whatever it is, I mean we'll be right back on healthcare. It's not as though this is going to work even as a distraction.

0:20:27 Sarah: Oh, no, this is a horrible thing.

0:21:15 Thomas: It doesn't accomplish anything, but I really hope it is not serious, you know, right for your sake. I really do.

0:21:23 Sarah: You and I both.

0:21:24 Thomas: Yeah, man. Well, if there's if there there's nothing else to cover today. I know this, thanks so much for coming on to give a very quick reaction. I don't know, the dust has not settled on this at all. It just happened hours ago, mere hours ago. So, thanks for being around, being available, and putting yourself out there to give us perspective of somebody who's actually experiencing this. It really helps to hear a voice and to hear fake name, to put a fake name and fake voice to a very real problem. Them all.

0:21:56 Sarah: Well, thank you.

0:22:06 Thomas: Right, couple miscellaneous things to talk about here. First off, again, I'm just, I, I, I don't even know how to process this. What's going on with the trans people in the Army thing? I I tweeted, and I think I mentioned it during the interview, the idea that you're so bigoted you cannot allow a certain class of people to put their lives on the line for you, and I, there's some quibbling about, about, like, oh, oh, the military's my, military industrial complex, oh, it's not actually about that, okay, fine. But the people on the right who are the ones supporting this policy, they believe in that bullshit view of, in that fairy tale view of what the military is, where it's people putting their lives on the line for your freedom. They believe that.

0:22:52 Thomas: And simultaneously, they also believe trans people can't do that, believe trans people are not good enough, they're not mentally equipped enough to put their lives on the line for a free event. It's insulting, it's ridiculous. Anyone who wants to put their life on the line, anyone who wants to serve, in my opinion, as long as they're fit, in whatever standard objective metric we've been using for, for that, assuming it is that. Yeah, they're fine in my book.

The other thing we need to talk about is this distraction narrative. This is usually the fourth dimensional chess, kind of Scott Adams, Trump is actually a secret genius kind of thing. It may be true that Trump is trying to distract from either Russia or maybe the healthcare vote today, but it's also true that he's doing so by saying something awful that we very much need to condemn. So I don't, there are a lot of people out there, and I don't know if this is you, uh, you know, it's one thing to say, yeah, this might be a distraction tactic, it's another to say no, stop talking about X and talk about Y because it's a distraction. What's bothering me so much about our discourse in this is the people who want to police what you can and can't care about, uh, it's really, really frustrating. Make your case.

You know, like, I'm going to make my case for why we should care about trans rights, why we shouldn't care about whatever it is. And I, maybe some things are more pressing, more urgent, more lives at stake. It may be true that if we ever need to pick X or Y thing, we only have a certain amount of time, we need to pick a thing, it may be true that some days we can prioritize that. But for the most part, that's just not how it works.

0:24:34 Thomas: Like, we can all focus on more than one thing. We can all tweet about, especially when all this this comes down to like tweeting, like really, really what are you and I doing, but tweeting, posting, podcasting about it. And wouldn't you know it, I can do that about multiple things at once in a given day. So here find it highly frustrating when people try to say, stop talking about this because of this other thing. We can do it all at once. It's not hard. Now, if you want to argue that the media would be less focused on the healthcare vote, that's fine, but all we can do to that is keep calling our senators and keep doing what what we're already doing on that. We should all be doing that anyway. Maybe I'll find that website and put it in the show notes again, that one that tells you all the different ways you can contact your representatives about this.

0:25:21 Thomas: But we don't have, I mean, we're doing what we can, but we don't have that much power over what's going on in the Senate right now. Unfortunately, I wish we did, but they're voting right this second. By all means, don't let me for a second be understood to mean don't do everything you can. Do everything you can to get this health care vote not to go through. I think that is vitally important.

But while we're doing that, because that takes all of 10 minutes of your time on a given day to make those calls and do that, while we are doing that we can also care about something deeply hurtful and something bigoted and just insanely stupid that the president is tweeting is going to be his policy. The medical costs of treating every single trans person in the the army or the military, rather, sorry, but I don't know much about it, I use probably use the wrong terms all the time, but in the military, is what was the rate, I say 3.8 to 8.8 million, something like that. I've seen figures that the, the coverage for Viagra is in the 80 million dollar range. We're, I'm seeing on businessinsider.com, Viagra, 41 million,

0:26:28 Thomas: Cialis, 22 million. Who knows if there's some other off brands, you know, might account for a couple million here and there, who knows, covering both those things, which vastly outnumber the, uh, the whole of transgender services or whatever cost, I mean, so that's a stupid argument, it's a nothing argument. And background, I strongly believe that you will be, if you were, were just concerned about the mental health of your soldiers or whatever, I guess, again, I guess that's specifically an Army term, I don't know, of your members of the military, of your service people, if that's all you were concerned with, having closeted people suffering from gender dysphoria is worse than having people who are out, people who are getting treatment, people who are able to present the gender they want.

0:27:16 Thomas: It's just, it's just the facts, there's no, there's no but background assumptions that are at all related to reality under which this makes sense. It just doesn't make sense. And anyway, I, I'm sure you all already know this and agree with this, but it's important to say so because this is what's happening to our country. I want to say one other thing. I got a lot of tone policing on one of my tweets.

I think it represents a view that a lot of people hold, which is stop being outraged. Someone accused me of, oh, you're just doing the outrage thing. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about that. Let's talk. This is important. It's an important principle. Let's talk about this. We lost in 2016 because we were not outraged enough. My view, and I think the data backs this, turnout, we didn't get enough turnout, we had the people there, we didn't get enough turn out, we got some people in those key swing states, Democrats stayed home.

There's also a lot of, by the way, there's evidence of, there's a ton of targeting of Russian misinformation, this is true, this is all documented, in swing states saying that Hillary's health was failing, Hillary, just spreading all these conspiracy theories, uh, so there's that also, but so, and by and large, the, the truth is there were too many people who didn't understand the gravity of how bad Trump is and who overstated how much both candidates are the same. Oh, both Kansas, Hillary's just as bad. That is what did it. Hillary's negatives should not have been anywhere near the negatives of Trump.

0:28:50 Thomas: People were just wrong about that. We need to be motivated going forward. We can forget 2016, or we can argue about it forever. Either way, as long as you're voting in 2018 and 2020, that's what I care. And by the way, special elections, just all the time. But specifically in 2018, 2020, it's so critical because gerrymandering is one of the biggest problems, in Andrew Torrez's opinion. It's the biggest problem in our politics. And 2020 is going to be a key year for that.

Governorships are going to be key going forward so that doesn't, so we can maybe undo some of that damage, because that's where that policy gets set. State assemblies, state congress, all that kind of stuff. So these elections are huge, we need to be motivated. I think that being outraged, by the way, properly outraged, properly outraaged, that's the most frustrating thing about this argument.

Are you saying that these tweets aren't outrageous, are we saying, because that's never, I'm not sure, I can't read their mind, I don't know if this is their way to try to argue that, but they're just couching it in terms of me being too outraged, because of what the content of the tweet isn't that bad, or I just should use not capital letters on Twitter, because what does that amount to, that's nothing. But let's say it's the second thing, is that you agree that these tweets are terrible, but it's my responsibility and it's liberals' responsibility to not tweet that they're outraged at things that are morally outrageous. I don't know what that accomplishes. I really don't. Guys, this is not normal. What is happening in our country is not normal. Trump is not normal.

0:30:31 Thomas: We can't just sit here and normalize it. Acting like everything's fine normalizes it. Acting like what just happened today with his Twitter, announcing a new policy, by the way, via Twitter and a new policy that we've already covered is incredibly insulting and threatening to trans people. That is not normal. It's not okay. Yes, I'm outraged. I'm outraged every day about Trump. I will never not be outraged about it. And you know what? It's true that it puts some things in perspective that maybe other Republican candidates weren't that outrageous. You know, who knows? Maybe there's just a, we're not able to calibrate our outrage properly, but whatever the case may be, Trump is outrageous. He's objectively outrageous.

0:31:17 Thomas: The lying he's doing is objectively more to a degree of 10, whatever, a factor of 10 more than the next politician. I mean, he's just the worst that we've ever seen. So yes, I am outraged about it. I'm sorry if you don't like that tone. It just comes down to you, once again, tone policing. You saying, well, I would prefer that you express your feelings differently because it makes me feel better. Well, don't follow me then. Whatever. If you like a different demeanor, if you like even in the face of outrageous stuff happening in our country, if you would prefer to hear someone say, well it's important we remain calm and recognize that trans people are people and should serve in the military.

0:32:02 Thomas: Cool. That makes no difference to me. What I care about is whether or not you're opposing this nonsense and whether or not you are voting in 2018. That's what I care about. So if you want to be that voice, if you're someone who, you know, you like being a calmer voice, start a podcast, be a personality on the media, whatever. Do the work you want. Maybe you think I'm falling short, maybe you think I'm not reaching certain people because I'm, I'm just too outraged when I tweet something in caps. If you think that's the case, fine, be the change you want to see in the world. I'm not, by the way, what you won't get from me are tweets complaining that you're not putting enough caps in, uh, in your tweets, like I'm not going to tone police you the other way, you do what you want, but these things are objectively outrageous. I don't see a problem with expressing a proper, reasonable outrage.

0:32:53 Thomas: There are things that are outrageous, and they are happening every day. All right. On to, I suppose, other odds and ends I wanted to talk about today. What happened with the health care vote was absurd. Speaking of focusing on two things at once, let's do it. Here we go. So what happened the other day, Tuesday as it was, was a motion to proceed. And that is a motion to proceed on the bill as it is passed, In held the House. So there's a little parliamentary BS going on there. But this needed, of course, as you've heard by now, needed 50 votes plus the vice president. It's all it needed to go forward, this motion to proceed. Seat. Wasn't passing anything. It was just a motion to proceed. And heroically, what does one do with John McCain?

0:33:41 Thomas: I mean, war hero. You cannot deny his bravery, his service, his war hero credentials. It really is phenomenal. When you look back at the video of him being recovered and all that, it's tear jerking. I don't even know what to say about it. It's something that I can't imagine having gone through its incredible service to your country. It really is. But at the same time, what do you do when that person heroically after, by the way, not only being a war hero, now being a cancer patient, now being someone diagnosed with a brain tumor. So even more heroics going on. Heroically, he flies all the way into Washington at the last minute to vote to potentially take healthcare away from 20 to maybe, depending on the version of the bill, 50 million Americans.

0:34:34 Thomas: What does one do with that? How do you not just say, F you, man. What are you doing? You just went and received top-notch healthcare so that you could fly over in a plane to heroically come at the last minute to maybe take away any chance of healthcare from a lot, lot of people. I mean, I don't get it. I'm tired of this maverick label. He is not a maverick. He is someone who had to go through, to be able to toe the party line on this healthcare care vote, like he was not only not a maverick, he heroically was not a maverick, a great personal cost to his well-being and health, uh, that great personal challenge, and they had to come back and, uh, vote exactly along party lines on a horrible, horrible thing. So another, anyway, the motion to proceed happens and now they get 20 hours of debate.

0:35:23 Thomas: And that's not like in a row, because that would have already passed. It's 20 Senate work hours, which is three years. No, I do not know. It is a few days or whatever. So now they have tried to pass a few things. They started with repeal and replace. And this was along with the Cruz Amendment. The CBO has not scored this one, but it is working on it. And there's other versions that are like it that they've scored. That's where it's anywhere from 20 to 26 to 50 million people being uninsured, because these amendments are terrible. This plan is terrible. There is no way to fix the health, there's no way to fix Obamacare without putting billions and billions of money into it, without having some sort of individual mandate and having some sort of taxes on the wealthy, or I guess anybody, having some sort of taxes to make up for the cost.

0:36:17 Thomas: It's simply, you cannot do all the things that Trump promised. It is coming home to roost. I have already covered it extensively, but this is why the Republicans, Republicans cannot do it. They will either pass a flaming pile of shit that no one will like, that will lose millions of people health care, or they'll be stuck with Obamacare, because there is no way to do what they have promised. Thing to keep in mind is that budget, budget reconciliation process, so we've talked about that, that's why they only needed the 50 votes, because they're doing under that. However, many aspects of this proposed legislation violates that. You can't do just anything with budget reconciliation. There are certain things they're saying are irrelevant to the budget. Some examples, one, another of them, is the amendment by conservatives to cut off federal funds for Planned Parenthood.

0:37:05 Thomas: That apparently does not work under the budget reconciliation process. Is to prohibit use of federal subsidies to buy insurance that includes coverage for abortions. I think rightfully so. That's not a budget reconciliation process. That should need 60 votes. Another Another one was the penalizing people to go without health insurance by requiring them to wait six months before their coverage could begin. You know, that's just not really a budget thing. So they're not allowed to do a lot of the things they're trying to do in budget reconciliation. And if they need 60 votes, it's just not happening. I mean, it is just not happening. Keep in mind, though, they can always go nuclear on the legislative veto.

0:37:50 Thomas: So that is something they could do. I haven't heard any talk of that lately, and I'm glad, because I don't want that to go away, because I do not want health care to be taken away from 20 million people, but that is something they could do. We will see if it comes to So that. And that first one only got 43 votes that failed. The next one was a a partial repeal that got 45 votes. So a little closer, but still crucially short. And then finally, right now they're working on a skinny repeal. So it's, I don't know, there's rebranding every which way. This would just repeal a couple of unpopular things, like the individual mandate, and if you just, again, if you JUST repeal the individual mandate, which you have is a system that needs more money, that all of a sudden needs way more money.

0:38:36 Thomas: So the complaints about premiums being too high, premiums would skyrocket in that case, because the healthy people, that's where you get like your credit from, because they don't cost a lot. And and they pay into it. So that's kind of a net gain, but you take them out of it. And then all of a sudden you've just got a lot of people who cost a lot and you have to raise the prices on them.

So that would make the alleged problems with Obamacare, that actually are are problems, Premiums are too high. They are rising too high, that would make those problems worse. All the while, Trump is tweeting, he had a tweet the other day that was, you know, let's get going on this so we can bring health care to all, health care for all.

He either has no idea, and I genuinely am not sure what the answer to this is, he either no idea what's going on, strong candidate though, that's a strong possibility, or he's just doing, we're literally in 1984, we're literally in some sort of Orwell territory, where you don't, it doesn't matter what bill you pass, you just say that it covers everybody. It's, it's unbelievable, and I don't know which of those things is true, and which of these things is worse, I really don't. One, my other thing I found out yesterday that is mind blowing, is that unrelated to all this, and indeed not that important, but Bret Weinstein is suing Evergreen for $3.8 million, because it always was about the payday. That's always what this has been about. It's been about personal little grudges. It's been about exaggerating something that's not really a big deal, and then profiting off of it.

0:40:11 Thomas: That's what this has been about, in my opinion. And I think Andrew may break down this lawsuit over on OA. We'll see what it's about. But I think it's knowledge you should take into account. This favorite part is on this campus reform.org website which of course is just feeding into this nonsense that there's a huge campus problem. Even on their own website in the reporting of this, they reference an email that was made public in this lawsuit, and I love it. I just want to read it as a little follow-up. As Lucia reports in her profile, some classes left, but most shaped alternate activities on campus. There was no forced exodus. Bret, you reported a mob-controlled campus and offered no corrective to Carlson's Theatrics. What is most disconcerting to witness is that your letter to Rashida is clearly displayed putting our colleague out front in a precarious position.

0:41:03 Thomas: Rashida has for years worked with great dedication and for and with students, she deserves much better than this disrespectful, dismissive, and mocking presentation, but I don't know what you were thinking, by describing yourself, as to Tucker Carlson, as deeply progressive person. You provided him ammunition for the claim that the crazies are even going after progressives. Now, that's interesting right there, because this is another professor, writing somewhere on the campus, who saw what was happening and is questioning Bret's description of himself as a deeply progressive person. I am curious about that myself, with what we've seen and what we see, the fact that he's willing to just jump over to Fox News and other conservative outlets with this, I wouldn't be surprised if he was maybe exaggerating that his politics a little bit to feed more into this victim relative.

0:41:54 Thomas: Back to the email. By connecting with Fox and Carlson, by situating your students at Governor Inslee's office to report on the campus climate, I believe you've escalated the hazards facing Evergreen. I am not enraptured with Evergreen, it is flawed, and since its inception as an alternative educational place, it has had to struggle to own up to its issues, but it is a learning place worthy of a mooting solid critique. By going to Fox, you've dragged the campus into to the zone of the alt-right peep shows. You've offered up red meat to right-wingers in the Northwest who've long wanted to close or impair the campus. So that's the end of the week. Now, I just thought that was fascinating. A bit of data to add to it. So, to end the show, I was going over the voicemails, and honestly, there's only one or maybe two that I really, I don't know, that I was really feeling inspired by this particular day.

0:42:44 Thomas: Maybe it's the bad news of the day, the fact that the news cycle's moved on, stuff has gotten a little stale. So I will say, call that number in the show notes. Leave a fresh voicemail. Let's kind of hit the reset button on those. But I did get a very, very well thought out email the other week. It's actually been a while, but it's a topic that's still very relevant. And I want to read it because it's too good to pass up, of is from Oscar. I might be the same Oscar who's left a voicemail, I'm not sure. "Hey, Thomas, love the show. As much as I enjoy your subversion of the trope, uh, I'm sorry, does my poorly formed right-wing opinion trigger you, liberal snowflake?" As much as he's saying, as much as you enjoy that, it's very funny, but I don't think it's appropriate to describe their response as being triggered unironically, because the original trope is based in a bastardization of the language of neurodivergent people, in particular people with PTSD and autism.

0:43:41 Thomas: Sorry, I am having trouble with the sentences here. Used to describe their legitimate mental health patterns, concerns, and needs. As such, the trope undermines the important and healthy coping mechanism and their ability to discuss their condition. For instance, triggering is exactly the right way for someone with PTSD to describe their response to certain stimuli, be it the mention of rape, excessively loud and sudden noises, or even close-up footage. People eating.

However, the co-opting of Trigger by the Pepe Frog assholes means that many neurodivergent people no longer feel comfortable using this language, and so both the ability to clearly communicate to the neurotypical people in their life what support they need, for example, I'm very sorry but that song triggers my PTSD and if I hear it I may have a flashback or panic attack, could you please not play it around me, end quote. And also their ability to talk about it to other neurodivergent people to help build a supportive community. For example, don't be embarrassed to let me know anything which triggers you or, hey, I find XYZ really triggering. What's the best way to mitigate that? I think buying into the adoption of a legitimate mental health response to describe the flailings of assholes helps their pernicious attempts to belittle, legitimate, and neglect those suffering due to mental health problems.

So, although I admire the subversive spirit in which it was intended, I think you need to be very clear in using it in that manner exclusively. Ironically, I'd be really interested in your your thoughts on the matter, though. All the best. Thank you so much, Oscar. What a difficult topic to think about.

0:45:22 Thomas: I think this is a great question because it's tough. I don't see this as a straightforward answer. I think your email says it well, very well considered. I think, so one thing I did just to look into this was I checked Google Trends for the term triggered. "Triggered," and so I mean, that's information we can kind of use. Before this recent usage you're talking about, which essentially means being outraged on the internet because of something someone said, I mean, it's more or less what I take it to mean now, that usage, there's a huge spike in 2016, and the spike is many times over what it was before that. And I'm not sure how much stock we can and put in this, but I think that that meaning has sort of overtaken the other meaning already, a little bit.

0:46:13 Thomas: And I agree with you that that's not necessarily a good thing. I think that's a bad thing. But I also hear all the time from people that language does evolve and we're not allowed to just say, well, this is what this meant at one time, so now it's what it means forever. I mean, the word triggered has now taken on another meaning. And And I think words can have multiple meanings, and we can do our best to say, well, no, if you are triggered in a real PTSD sense, that is wholly different from when I'm saying, look at these triggered bear flakes. I think we can doing so without saying that, like, that therefore delegitimizes the actual medical term.

0:46:58 Thomas: I think, that's my feeling on it. That I'm open to disagreement on this for sure, but also I think it's using it, as you say, it is still using it ironically, though. It's using in the way they were using it. It's pointing out that the behavior they're railing against is something they're doing, and that really is the point. So I don't know a good way to do that without using the language. I mean, if I want to point out, okay, these broflakes are... Okay, for example, take some broflaks. You've got a selection of bro flakes here. Delicious, tasty bro flakes breakfast cereal. No, you've got a selection of alt-right men who are overreacting to something and they're doing the very thing that they say other people do. They're becoming triggered by mere words on the internet.

0:47:46 Thomas: Which is really what's happening. They make fun of people for being triggered, but they are just triggered by different things. Which is, that's the important point to make. When I point that out, if I use, "Oh, you're overreacting to this," it doesn't, I don't think it has the salience, I don't think it has the same intensity and the same directness of saying, "Look at the hypocritical behavior that's going on here," because you're not using the same term. I think you actually do need to use the same terms to make that point. But I donno, I mean, I'm open to what other people think about this. I certainly, if I ever use the word triggered, I absolutely mean no disrespect to anyone who who has PTSD and has actual triggers. I fully, uh, take on and I...

0:48:31 Thomas: Fully echo that that is a real thing that is something I'm not trying to belittle in any way, uh, I'm using the word differently, I'm using the way that it has been hijacked, but in a way that's, it looks to me, uh, based on the Google Trends, might be more prevalent couple, Then the original usage. So, that's my feeling on that. I'm going to continue to use it, but I agree that it would be good to point out that I mean that ironically. I mean it in order to call out the very people who are minimizing that word. It's to point it out. Nothing ever works on the internet, but the attempt is to make them look in the mirror and realize they are doing the very thing they condemned, just like when Milo went nuts over Linda Sarsour speaking.

0:49:17 Thomas: He protested Linda Sarsour speaking at a commencement thing, which just goes to show how interested in First Amendment he really was. So, that's my thoughts on that, but excellent question. It certainly gives me pause. I hope I'm doing the right thing there, and I don't know. There's no guarantee that that I am, but that's my thoughts. So, so feel free to call in, let me know your thoughts on that and call in on other stuff. So next week we can have some fresh new voicemails. Thank you for listening. I need to thank my patrons over at patreon.com/seriouspod, new patrons this week David Kakhadze, Nick Moodie, and Brandon Brown Thank you guys so much for pledging making the show happen vitally important.

0:50:03 Thomas: I've also got to thank my all-time greats, and they are Matt Garrett, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger, cases one in 30 minutes or he pizzas free, Metcalf,, Matthew Maxson of odd atheist friends, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, John Bodley, Ian Ryan, Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Loves Jenny, Robin, The Zika Baby That Lived, Marcel, the T and the B Nostalgist. Sorry, Marcel. Democratic Socialists of America at DSAUSA.org and the NETSEC Heathen. Excellent. There you go. Abseon, Beth Deitch, Sarah McPike, Sammy, Clayton Hart, Chas Wallas writes drunk, thinks sober. Luke Boucher, A New Lefty Blog - www.sinistermarginalia.net. Jess Blake, Christopher Hammock, Dang Griffith, Ian...

0:50:51 Thomas: Rosano, Jonathan Moye, Michael Ropps, Michael Schaefer, host of soon to be acclaimed podcast Reasonable Risk, thanks Michael, there you go. Hunter Ash, uh, top patron for quite some time. Thank you guys so much, really, you make the show happen, it would not happen without you, I mean it. If you want to be one of those people that makes this show continue, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. I've got a really interesting conversation coming up next week. There's always good stuff coming up on this show, let's face it. You know, one thought I had today too was we need to get Trump the hell out of office so I can do other things. Really? I mean, I don't want to be always covering the world ending in the US, but we live in unprecedented times, as I've said. And it's just the most pressing thing.

0:51:39 Thomas: It really is. What's going on is the most depressing thing. But if we get Trump, I'll make you guys a deal. People are tired of it. Let's get them out of office. And then I could do other stuff. I could talk about philosophy. I can talk about science. I'm still trying to do those things. But you know, it's hard. So that's my deal. Let's get them out and then I can move on. That'll be great. Well, I'll be happy. I'll be happy. That'd be great! All right. Thank you for listening and see you guys next week.