SIO135: Alix Jules on Silverman, Starbucks and S'more

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 135, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and if I sound a little odd, that's for several reasons, well, first is I have a cult, second is I'm in Chicago in a hotel room, kind of on a vacation, also for Tom and Haley's wedding, Tom of Cognitive Dissonance fame and Haley of used to work for the show fame, two very good friends that I'm so happy for, so congratulations to them. And I'm really looking forward to their wedding coming up on Friday. However, just before I left, I recorded a fantastic episode with Alix Jules. So great to have him back on the show. He's got a lot to talk about. I've got a lot of talk about, so I won't spoil any of it.

0:01:17 Thomas: Let's just get right into it. My conversation, I think it's like the fourth time with the great Alix Jules.

0:01:31 Thomas: Alex Jones, how you d- No, sorry, wrong Skype call. I just opened up the wrong window. No, it is fellow Outrage Brigade member Alix Jules. I think you are. I don't know if you're officially part of the Outrage brigade, but I mean, you're definitely an honorary member for sure. I mean well, I'll talk- I'll speak to the board, but are you official?

0:01:52 Alix: Yes, I don't know that I've been called out directly. So, you know, I know that everyone that I'm around happens to be card-carrying members. I got stickers, I got all the paraphernalia.

0:01:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:08 Thomas: I do too. Too.

0:02:10 Alix: I know it, yeah, yeah. But, and I hear those.

0:02:13 Thomas: So what are you outraged about today, Mr. Outrage Brigade?

0:02:17 Alix: I'm outraged about a lot of things. I think the first one that I'm outraged about is the nonsense that is going on with the David Silverman scandal right now. And you know what? I know Dave. I can say that. I know David. Second sentence, I actually liked Dave. That's second sentence. Third, I believe, believe what I'm hearing about Dave. And I think that those three things can actually coexist. Is he guilty of what people are saying he's guilty of? Know, I think there's a little bit of time that's going to come out and show a lot of things.

I would hope that they become more exposed or somehow this remediates itself somehow to the that he assaulted, the people that were on the other side of that. I'm sorry it happened. I wish that organizations and people who knew reacted a lot quicker to To stop that. And that, I think, is going to be a little bit of a red mark for the majority of us to bear who are organizers and might even catch a whiff of this. What do we do? You know, we have these policies. How do we reinforce, how do we enforce these policies, these harassment policies, these behavior policies, the code of conducts for some of them, because it goes beyond that.

Because, you know, we've grown up enough in the movement or as a movement that we're paying people. So how do we handle stuff like that a very credible way that still allows us to function without putting people in jeopardy? And that's what it feels like happened. Because a lot of people were like, "Oh, no surprise." I'm like, really? No surprise? And we were totally OK with this. I

0:02:34 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:04:06 Thomas: Yeah, it's a weird one. I, know, I recently had him on my show to promote a con that was probably, I don't know, two months ago, three, something like that. Could have been more time flies when you got an infant. But I hadn't I honestly hadn't heard anything about him. I mean, there's... there's There's Whisper Network that sometimes, you know, you hear and there's if you don't know the right people, you know, it's not as though everybody's going around all the time warning everybody about everybody. But I actually hadn't heard any stories about him or anything until after, of course, I did that interview. And then someone said, hey, I've heard something. And it was like, OK, well, shoot, I guess, you Know, and they also said, like, there's going to be an article about him. And I was like like, Oh good. I'm glad they're doing an article.

0:04:52 Thomas: That's, that's the thing about, I have so much I want to say about this is, we should all be profusely thanking Buzzfeed for tackling these things because we there are so many legal issues. You can't just spout off publicly about somebody without any substantiation. They can, they can harass you and bully you legally, you know, so we, we need organizations like Buzzfeed, we need journalists to kind of take that bullet for us to kind of do the, do the reporting. They have a legal team handy, they know what they can and can't do, and then once they cover it for us and, like, get it out there, then we can all reference the article and we're not individually going to be bullied into silence like you can do before, before these things are made public. And I just, I, I'm just so bewildered and frustrated at all the people in the wake of the, the Krauss thing and this that are just, "Oh, Buzzfeed."

0:05:43 Thomas: Oh, I don't read Buzz. I'm nothing that comes from Buzzfeed is valid. And it's, I don't know where you're getting that. Buzzfeed news, they're, they're referencing real humans who have talked to them. It's, it's the website it's printed on. It doesn't unless you want to allege that they are manufacturing people and like fabricating tests, you know, like I don't I don't EVEN UNDERSTAND THE ARGUMENT. Go ahead.

0:06:05 Alix: Think that it doesn't matter where it comes from for some people. I mean, it could have been a New York Times expose because people have their own identities wrapped up into people like Dave. I mean, it's part of something that we do. We do it tribally, but within these various circles, you know, we do invest in the voices that we feel represent us. And David Silverman was literally the voice of atheism for years. I mean he was out there.

0:06:15 Thomas: Right. True. Yeah. Yeah. A big voice for sure.

0:06:38 Alix: He represented us right. Right. So I think that, uh, yeah, you'll have people that will absolutely attack that regardless. And I want to talk about the whisper networks that are out there. I mean, it's, think of it more as a, it'S not quite the underground railroad. Um, but it's not really this big, massive, big net. I've seen a couple of complaints. You know, I was a woman and I was around him and I was Around this person and how, why didn't I know? Why didn't know?

Well, again, it's hard to get the word out just completely out there and warn everyone without, I mean, because there are some legal implications there as well, you know, rumors and talking about people in the shadows and warning other organizers, "Hey, don't do that," that's a little bit different than exactly being bullied or what, will what we saw initially with, you know, what just about any accuser, "I didn't do it and you're, you're defaming me," or "It's liable." Um, various, various podcasters use the same tactic as well. I'm going to sue you if you don't stop saying this. And not everyone can, not everyone Can afford,

0:06:38 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:07:46 Alix: Uh, right,

0:07:44 Thomas: They can't usually back that up, but but sometimes they can. I mean, I know for a fact that Krauss bullied several people into silence, like it's even Even if he doesn't have the law on his side, you know, you can do a lot with a lawsuit. You can you can doing a lot of the threat of a lawsuit, and some people just don't have the resources to fight it.

0:07:53 Alix: Right.

0:08:07 Thomas: Yeah, so another thing I just tweeted, and I think this is where, you know, if we're talking about atheists and we're talking about the movement, this is something that I absolutely want to try to drill into people. You realize, atheists, that the Catholic priests also denied any wrongdoing, because the way people are talking right now in the atheist movement, and you can find it. It's everywhere. I mean, there's still so many Krauss supporters. There's still so many Silverman supporters. They're they're applying arguments that absolutely would have applied to all the pedophile priests. I mean the same arguments absolutely would apply. It is not like there was video evidence. It isn't like there, you know, you had testimony and if you you have enough of it, you know, like maybe, okay, maybe one anonymous person that's in this day and age, probably not enough because you might have a troll or you might have somebody trying to make a point or doing something like that.

0:08:59 Thomas: But when you get a number of people who are willing to speak to an organization like BuzzFeed and use their real name and all that, and you get some vetting of their story, it's vastly more likely, vastly more unlikely that someone is an abuser than that multiple different entities decided to make something up for laughs. And that's just how it is. I mean, I, these, I, I'm so surprised. I really wonder if you changed out the names and the whatever of some of the cases of, of abusive priests going down and you just put out the facts and said it was about like Lawrence Krauss or something, I'm positive you would get a ton of atheists defending it.

0:09:39 Alix: Right. But, okay. So one of the things that I do see as well is, um, people are, you know, they're also echoing what they've, they've been hearing, out there in terms of PC culture and feminism and things that, that go too far. And some of the defenses that I saw with Krauss and, and many others is he's a good man. He's being defamed. This is liable. Everything that is being thrown out there just To say that, hey, he, he's, he's morally, he is wonderful. Look at everything that he's done. So morally he has character. It was like, wait a minute, his work, his word, his, his words, his voice, his character. Yeah.

0:09:52 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:10:20 Thomas: Yeah, not only that, the fact that you've got in the situation of Krauss, it's not as though everyone accusing him was a creationist or something, and you're like, okay, maybe there's some tangible plot, you know, like that I guess makes sense to take him down. The people accusing him were fans, were people, like people who looked up to him, were atheists, were People who were just horrified by what he did, you now.

And the same, I think pretty much the same goes with Silverman, although I don't know as many of the details of who the people are. With Krauss, I happen to be more acquainted with it, but it's not as though this is some plot and that just blows my mind that people could be so, I don't know what the word is, unskeptical, hyper skeptical, just misapplying reason and rationality in that way. Well, I think we've solved that. So that answers the question. I always, from time to time, I put up a thread what I'm going to have a guest on and try to get questions.

This is of course in my, uh, in my member group. And one person had said, you know, uh when I asked like, oh, what should we talk about? Someone said, uh whatever Alex wants to talk about. And I was like, you know, that, that's a, that a great point. Whatever you want to talk about and it sounds like the bee in your bonnet lately was, was the Silverman stuff and I, I, can relate because it's definitely been on my mind a lot. Lot. Anything, I mean, what else is on your mind lately?

0:11:10 Alix: Kids.

0:11:41 Alix: Are always on my mind, and I know you're a dad, um, so. Uh, we can talk about raising atheist children if you want to do that. Yeah.

0:11:45 Thomas: Oh, that'd be interesting. I think it's definitely going to depend on where you are, huh? Because, well, I say that, you know, but actually my brother has had a lot of challenges with people being, you now, a little too religious in how they're talking to his kids at a place that's not supposed to do that, even here in California. So I guess it's kind of everywhere.

0:12:14 Alix: I don't think you can avoid that. Of course, I'm in Texas where it's, I mean, it's on the walls, it's everywhere, it's in the schools still, um. And, and we've always been parents that have attacked the idea that, you know, atheism is, this is this bad thing where it's, it's so taboo that I don't let to, I, this was controversial when I said it before.

0:12:21 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:12:35 Alix: Um, but I let my kids call themselves atheist, you know, from, from the get go, you know? I'm not going to Tell them that they can't call themselves atheists when they're, when their friends are calling themselves Christians or, you know, Lutheran, Catholic, et cetera. It doesn't matter. I see nothing wrong with a child calling themselves an atheist. Now, now, I think that it bothers a lot of people because we tend to go through this big thought process of rationally and using reason to get to where we eventually deduce or infer atheism. Oh, I'm an atheist. Boom. I thought it through and that's how I got there. But that's actually not true. A lot of it isn't driven through the philosophical pieces and it's emotionally driven, etc. Cetera. So what am I telling my child that, you know, if, if they can't connect with this idea that is human is, or, uh, that is a God or a deity, it's like you're, you're broken or you haven't grown up enough to feel or think your way through it.

0:12:43 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:13:42 Alix: Like, no, no. You can feel your way through that. And there's nothing wrong with that. So that's, that's something that I'm, I'm always wrestling with now it's getting better. I think, um, when I became a secular activist and I was dealing with the kids and, and, uh, you know, camp quest in various forms. Um, when, when I was doing with my 13 and 14 year old at the time, which was almost 10 years ago now, uh, it was, it Was problematic. I mean, we, we really had to deal with, you Know, How much of this do you expose to your friends if you want to keep your friends? But now I'm looking at my nine, well, she's 12 now, goodness, my 12-year-old who has zero issues, zero issues talking about her atheism or her non-belief.

0:14:29 Alix: And it just continues to really parrot what we're seeing in the various surveys. The youth are becoming less religious.

0:14:39 Thomas: Yeah absolutely. I had Christy Winters on to talk about some of the numbers with that. So much there that I wanted to jump on to. I think that's, there's this question too of, you know, a common response has been, okay atheists, you don't like indoctrination. You know, one thing we talk about is people people indoctrinating their kids into a religion or into a cult or into whatever.

And so sometimes there's a counter of like, well, aren't you doing the same thing when you raise your kid as an atheist or, you know, to varying degrees, if you raise them anti-religion and that kind of thing. And I think what's interesting is I think there can be that. I mean, if You raise your kids to be just hardcore, like anti-theist, then I think that is some level of indoctrination, but when it comes to just them being an atheist, as much as I want my kid to get along mostly, you know, like I just don't think it's, I don't want my kids to be, you know, having to constantly be battling and picking fights and being ostracized because they're anti-religion or something. So I would, I'm probably not going to emphasize the atheism too much, but I'm thinking if If you talk about in terms of not indoctrinating people, well, there's all kinds of things that are great that we instill in our children.

It's more like, what are you indoctrinating? You know, it's like if you're indoctrinaiding anti-vax or anti-science or anti, you know, that kind of thing. Well, that's bad. But if you are indoctinating them with things like, you should obey the law and science is pretty good at working things out on different topics.

0:16:15 Thomas: I think that's, it's not so much the indoctrination, is that what it would be? The indoctrinating, indoctrine. It's not so much that, you know, we're teaching our kids things. It's what we're teaching them. And when it comes to religion, what's funny, what I think is funny about it is if you just left them on the default position, if you said, well, I'm not even going to teach them anything about religion, that is essentially making them atheists. So it's like you can't there's no neutral view that that isn't atheism objectively, in my opinion.

0:16:43 Alix: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now, you mentioned indoctrination or teaching the law as a form, which is a great segue to a really interesting news piece that's come out, because evidently I can't sit in a coffee shop and Wait for friends anymore. More well.

0:16:59 Thomas: Hmm. Ah, yeah. Wow. That's that. That was pretty mind blowing. Yeah, I would love your thoughts on that. You know, it's that's something that absolutely I and I think virtually any white person can't imagine having happened to them. I certainly can't.

0:17:31 Alix: Yeah, I, I, I can, because, um, things like, you know, anti-loitering were were put into place for not just the the vagrants and people who were homeless, but it was kind of put in in place during Jim Crow to move or arrest people like me. Because, hey, do you have any money in your pocket? No, I have no job, so I'm here sitting or here standing with a friend. If you have no money in your pocket, then you're just loitering. But what I saw in this video, quite honestly, my immediate reaction was like, "Oh, look, it's a lunch counter again, again."

0:18:10 Thomas: Interesting.

0:18:11 Alix: So here we are sitting at a lunch encounter and being asked to leave for no other reason. It's a These two men show up to a Starbucks. They have a seat. They're waiting for a friend. They haven't ordered anything yet. And that makes people uncomfortable. Right. And and the manager winds up calling, calling the cops. And of course, the immediate reaction that I have there is, well, what exactly were you expecting the police to do when they showed up? And then these men wind up going to jail. They weren't charged with anything. But they they did that.

I remember. But they did go to jail. I think they spent a day or a night in jail. And it's caused a lot of outrage. And I think the majority of the black community is like, yeah, well, you know, that's it's America. America. But I think that there is enough. Now, what was great about it is there was a woman who, and I do recommend this, if you're going to be an ally, be more of an accomplice, pick up your phone and start recording, because we would not have known any of this.

And you almost need to be white to take advantage of your privilege to do this, because I know had I done that, then I probably would have joined those men behind bars, or it would have, as the situation would have escalated quite quickly. Why are you recording this? It's like, well, cause you're obviously doing something that, that, you know, although the police have said, um, it isn't illegal and follows policy, it follows the law, then change the law changed the policy, et cetera. Uh, although it's legal, morally, how can you defend this? And I don't think you can.

0:18:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:02 Thomas: You know, I'm curious, where do you put most of the blame? I mean, when you talk about, okay, let's talk about Starbucks for one, because it seems like people are blaming Starbucks as a corporation for this. And honestly, I don't see it because I feel like this is just a symptom of America, not like any one corporation. But yeah, Yeah, I could I could be wrong. I'm curious what you think. So Starbucks, the the particular people in that Starbucks or the police, where do you kind of see the culpability in different levels there?

0:20:32 Alix: Start with the person that decided that they were going to pick up the phone and call the police because you have two people that are sitting there being Black. That's where I think it starts. Now, is there something something that Starbucks can do moving forward. Sure, maybe a little bit of diversity training, maybe talking about it. I know that this is going to get a lot of coverage. It continues to get coverage. The CEO issued an apology. I think it was just a couple of days ago. He said that he would like to meet the people that were arrested and be able to offer a face-to-face apology. I think that's great. But being able to teach the people that are out there, like, you don't do this. Now, is Starbucks directly culpable for this? I think it's really hard to say that because, you know, you're hiring from the pools that are up there. There.

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:32 Thomas: Where

0:21:32 Alix: And yes, this is a symptom of America.

0:21:32 Thomas: Did this take place? Do you remember? I actually don't remember where it took place. Do you know?

0:21:36 Alix: It was in Philly. It

0:21:37 Thomas: Philly.

0:21:37 Alix: Was in Philadelphia.

0:21:37 Thomas: OK, OK. Gotcha. Sorry to interrupt.

0:21:39 Alix: No, no, no. But mean, Philadelphia, I mean, Mississippi, it almost doesn't matter where because we see, even in places like New York City, which is a ultra liberal bastion, how long was stop and frisk really the the backbone of the NYPD. I mean, and that was obviously racially, racially motivated. We know it was. And even the Supreme Court had their say in terms of that practice. But yeah, I think America needs to own that. That's first. I think Starbucks is kind of sort of doing that. I love of the, a lot of people have said, you know, just go back and support local or buy black.

0:22:30 Alix: And I was like, well, that'd be really easy to say or easy to do if there were all of these black coffee shops. They just aren't. So I tell people, you want to try and buy local if you can. That's not always, it's not always an easy or feasible thing to do, but if you support businesses in your local communities do that because that that doesn't make the problem go away, but it takes you out of certain situations. Yeah.

0:22:59 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting. You know, I want to take a second to white explain to my fellow white people on this. Um, I can certainly relate to, it's certainly, uh, 10 years ago, maybe, maybe. Uh, gosh, I guess I've gotten older. So maybe 12 years ago or something like that. I can relate to when this comes out, the, you know, the video or whatever, or just a claim maybe back then. Cause you didn't have as much a cell phone video, but this, this happens or somebody claims this happened. And as a white person, my first thought would be, especially back then would be there's no way that happened. There's no way. I mean, what are you talking about? The two black people were arrested for nothing, for literally just sitting in a Starbucks? There's not way that there must have been something. They must have they must have done something, you know, like that.

0:23:44 Thomas: That would have been my thought process. And one thing that I think that I would encourage my fellow privileged white people to recognize is just how incontrovertible this particular case is. If you're someone who's skeptical about that, this is a good entry point of like, no, this does just happen. Like there's literally nothing they're doing. There's no, no possible justification for it. And it does just happened. And when you start to, you know, when we start to recognize that maybe it can snowball into seeing like other things that your, your privilege might've blinded you to. So I thought that was interesting about this particular case.

0:24:23 Alix: It also, um, is a great example of, you know, taking a stab at race versus class, because we all, we tend to get a lot of that as well, like racism doesn't exist. It's It's Really A symptom. Yeah.

0:24:32 Thomas: Yeah. These were real estate agents, right? Right? There is, there's no, this wasn't, yeah, they weren't homeless or something. Like there's no, yeah.

0:24:36 Alix: Right. Right. Right. So, um, yeah, we, we see that, we, like I said, we see that in the way that the police, and let's talk about the police, because, you know, they showed up and they did what they did. I don't understand why they did that. I mean, if there was a scene that was being caused, it'd be one thing to ask them to leave the establishment, which which is different. Right. Please leave. There's, you Know, just go ahead and leave.There's many a time that That I've been in a situation where, you know, when I was younger, it was like, well, why don't you just leave? It was like. OK, you Know what? I shouldn't have to, but I will.

That's different than being arrested and taken in and and dealing with the humiliation of handcuffs, et cetera. And then you had a police, the police chief who happens to be black in this instance, who came by and I think in the statements was we didn't do anything wrong. Wrong. Again, you're according to policy. No, you followed your policy. There's something wrong with your policy if your policy just enforces that particular law. Can we talk about those laws? Can we talk exactly what it is that you believe that you're protecting and what you're doing to those people? There's no practical reason for them to have done it. And the defense I thought was I I thought it was morally reprehensible, but that's a value judgment,

0:24:50 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:25:28 Thomas: Well,

0:26:07 Alix: Right?

0:26:07 Thomas: That's interesting. So I'm, I'm curious if you know more about this than I do, because when I saw that, I was wondering if whoever called had reported something that obligates them to act in that way, you know, like, is that a possibility? Is that anything you looked into?

0:26:24 Alix: No, from what I've seen, there's nothing that obligated the – well, Starbucks, no. There's nothing there obligated them to call, right.

0:26:34 Thomas: Oh, of course. Oh, no. But I mean, like once the police are called, like if, if the asshole who called him in had said like, Hey, there's two black guys and they got a weapon or, you know, had said something like that, like is, is that's what I was wondering if that's a possibility for why that guy said no. Okay.

0:26:48 Alix: No, it was just – no, no, I mean it's just within their power so that they could do it. It's within their Power so they can do it,

0:26:55 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I don't know if you caught this, but certainly what's been boiling over in, in my fine town here of Sacramento is is of course the the shooting of Stephon Clark, and uh, I'm not sure if people caught it, but the the guy who called 9-1-1 had given an interview and was like, "God, I wish I, I just wish I hadn't called 911," and and that's a case where he called 9-1-1 because someone had broken his car windows, and it's like, you know, I, I don't, it's not, we're not, I don't think it's the same thing as the Starbucks where someone called 9-1-1 because black people, you know, like I think it's a little, little different when you're like, ah, shit, someone's broken into my car.

I'm going to call 911. But isn't that like, what kind of a horrible thing that must be to be like, gosh, all I did was call what should just be the authorities who should be able to just deal with something in a rational manner, you know, in a utopia that does not exist on earth here. But instead, merely for for calling the police about some broken windows, now he's got the weight of someone's life that he essentially was a causal factor in taking away. It's just so sad.

0:27:37 Alix: Right, yeah. Yeah, it's it's hard to not call it murder. And I would have a hard time with it.

0:28:15 Thomas: That one, yeah, I agree. I

0:28:16 Alix: Yeah, that one. I mean, and it wasn't just, you know, show up and shoot. It was it was 20 shots. I think six, six or seven of them actually hit him in the back.

0:28:17 Thomas: Agree in the back. Yeah.

0:28:26 Alix: And, you You know, that that's you know, I would have a problem with with sleeping at night knowing that I had anything to do with that. So I kind of understand that. And this is something that that I tell people that are moving into neighborhoods that weren't historically theirs. You see things that you may not understand. And because of your privilege or because of you get a little nervous, you're American, white and you move into a place in Brooklyn. And all of a sudden, because of gentrification, you have these mixing of cultures that may not understand each other. And we are a very diverse country. I mean, we have our issues, but as bad as it is, it could be a whole lot worse if we had a lot more guns available to everyone. And we didn't have certain laws that stopped us. But we take a look at places that are more more homogenous and minor differences cause war.

0:28:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:29:27 Alix: I mean, we should be on fire with some of the differences that we have in this country, but we're very pluralistic and as intolerant as we are to minorities. Sometimes we're just tolerant enough. And I say that, you know, while, you my jaws locking as I say this, because It is very different here when you're, when you're living it. But when I tell people, you have to give a little bit of leeway and learn the culture. Not every slap fight, for instance, or slap boxing that happens on the corner, that doesn't mean they could just be goofing around. That doesn't means you pick up the phone and next thing you know, one or two of them are either in jail or dead. You've got to learn the culture there.

0:29:45 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:30:16 Thomas: I'm just realizing, you know, and this is, again, another product of privilege, of course, but I'm realizing what kind of a profound impact this must have had over the years and years and years and decades of black communities just not even wanting to deal with police. I mean, if you want to report something and then there's some risk they're going to just come shoot you because you have a phone or an object or nothing.

0:30:39 Thomas: Can you imagine the cumulative effect? And of course, I guess I'm asking my listeners. Can you imagine the accumulative effect of decades of not being able to even trust in any way or utilize a resource that white people can just utilize, which is, "Oh, something's wrong, I'm calling 911."

0:30:55 Alix: Was a, an, a recent SNL skit, uh, with Black Jeopardy, and it had, it had to, Childhood Black Panther there, and and uh, and they were talking, he actually talked about it's like, you know, you see something happening and you know, you call the police, and

0:31:05 Thomas: Yeah, I saw that. Right. The, the thrust of the, of the comedic premise is he's of course coming from Wakanda, which has this utopian society where he he's yes, he's black. The character is black, but he doesn't have these same like common, you know, cultural experience that black Americans have. And so he's very naive in all his answers. It's hilarious.

0:31:16 Alix: And the answer was, right, right. Right. But one of, and this is, this is great difference, because his perception was, "Wow, these are the ministers of law and order, you know, they'll help, they will help anyone. And, you know, you bring them to justice, you help rehabilitate them, et cetera, et cetera. And I laughed, I laughed a little too hard because I'm thinking, and, you know, it's like, this is, this is why we have problems with snitches, because, you know, one, there's this, there is a tribalistic piece of it.

But we also have the experience of you call them and yeah, they will over, overreact, and someone may wind up dead for a misdemeanor, anywhere else in this country, it's a misdominer. But all of a sudden, you know, they're sprinkling, you know, what was that Dave Chappelle skit, where he's sprinkling crack sprinkling crack on him, and exactly, sprinkled crack on Johnson, and, uh, but, but this is something that we, it's kind of hard if you grow up in a Black neighborhood to not have these, um, Richard Pryor also made the same joke, I think it was in, you know, it was the early 70s, where he was talking about the chokehold that they, they use just on, you know, they just happen to use it on, on black people. It's what killed Eric Garner.

0:32:20 Thomas: Yeah. Sprinkle some crack on him. I've seen this before. Black man breaks into a home and puts up pictures of his family everywhere.

0:32:54 Thomas: Right.

0:32:54 Alix: And that was deemed, you Know, that wasn't legal, but it was used and nobody got, nobody went to jail for that.

0:32:55 Thomas: Right, right. Oh, God. It's it was I remember the talk about at the time being this isn't something you do, like even even among police. They're like, this isn't what you do. And yet still, that wasn't enough for there to be charges, I don't believe.

0:33:15 Alix: No, but I don't think that yet charges almost don't matter either at this point, because it's so difficult to, to get a police officer.

0:33:26 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, but we got to start somewhere. I mean, if you can't charge ah, like, right, I mean, I, I get I get it, but like, we should be wanting charges. We'll start with, let's, let's go from now to where you're getting charges and not getting convictions, and then let's move on to then getting convictions eventually, is all I'm saying. Like, that would be progress, wouldn't it? Yeah.

0:33:26 Alix: Um, Um, uh, look, well, yeah, but what I have seen is that, um, that prosecutors, DAs would rather bankrupt their, their cities, their towns, just payouts in civil suits rather than, I mean, seriously, you know, a million dollars there, half a million dollars there. $20 million here, here you go. So then to actually, you know, shake the public interest and and the public trust by saying, oh, we had a bad cop, because, you know, obviously, statistically, you got to have at least one once in a while. Right. No, no, no. Can't have that.

0:34:04 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, the, the in-group mentality of police officers is, is, seems like some of the strongest there is, you know, like they just do not want to ever acknowledge that any of them did anything wrong. It's really frustrating. I, you Know, I've I've spoken to good ones. Don't you know and they may still be listening. I get it. I'm not saying 100% but like it's very strong, you You know, one thing I have to bring up because it's been so central to our conversations before, and it was something that I'm so, I'm just glad that I've learned better, you know, like I really am glad I have because in the wake of the shooting, protests erupted here, still going on, you know, and the response I saw from so many people that just is so frustrating once you start noticing it is like, I'm watching the local news, you're you know, I'm watching the Sacramento local news. They're covering the protests where the protesters, very smartly. And it's so funny, because I had tickets to go with a friend of mine to the Kings game that night, the night of these protests.

I don't think it was the shooting, I think it was a day or two after the shooting, I had tickets to this game, and my wife was stuck, she couldn't get home because of the protests. And I was like, okay, well, I want to wait till she gets home.

And then as I was waiting, like we're kind of delayed and delayed, I'm seeing on the news that like the protesters have surrounded the Kings game, you know, the Sacramento Kings game, that the NBA team, and they almost shut it down, like they got to where very few people were even in the arena, and all the coverage,

0:34:38 Alix: Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:36:02 Thomas: All the news anchors the entire time. They kept using the words inconveniencing people and, you know, like, well, okay, you know what, they kept trying not to get political about it, but they're like, all right, well you know I'm not saying anything about them, you know, the protesters, but it hurts your message when you're inconvenienicing people. And so I just, I guess I'll put the question to you, Alex, should protests be entirely entirely convenient and done in a quiet location where no one sees it? Is that the answer?

0:36:09 Alix: Yeah, that

0:36:39 Thomas: Because that's the implication. Like, I just wish they would protest in a dark closet somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no, you know, like, yes, it's a protest. It has to do something. It has to disrupt something or no one cares.

0:36:40 Alix: Is right.

0:36:54 Alix: Right. What we have with great example right now is it almost doesn't matter what the protest is. Someone's always going to have a problem with it. I mean, Colin Kaepernick right now, you know, they they called off his tryout because he refused to stop kneeling.

0:37:05 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, you couldn't get less disruptive, like you really couldn't. I

0:37:16 Alix: Right. Right. I means, he might. Yeah, just just kneeling, that was it. Just kneeling. Didn't say anything. Just right. So I think that that kind of echoes, you know, I think a lot of America just wants people who have, who are aggrieved, whether they're indigenous, Native American, African-American, Black. I think the the general sentiment is just, just be quiet. We don't want to hear this problem. I mean, we didn't like it when you were sitting at the counters and now coffee shops, and we don't like it that you kneel and force us to confront it during our favorite pastime. You politicize something that was kind of always political, by the way, but you politicize something that I don't want to think about. And I think that that really has charged up a lot of the actual racial resentment that exists in white America.

0:37:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:14 Thomas: It's incredible. I mean, I just don't know, I don't know how else to put it other than what it seems like people want is, yes, uh, police murdered somebody, but I don't, I don, I want to watch my game, like I don. And it's like, how do we get people to recognize that there's so much more at stake than your game maybe being minorly inconvenienced?

0:38:34 Alix: Then it has to be something that is going to inconvenience them, or it's got to be. It's kind of like the governor of Kentucky made a comment, I guess it was Friday, in regards to teachers. There was this walkout, and he made these really incredible statements about, you know, oh, how insensitive the teachers were because now these kids are left at home. And I'm sure one of them is being abused or introduced to drugs. And I'm like, wow, that what what a leap. What what an incredible leap. Right. And he's he's since retracted it. But understand that the reason and they're I think they're very I think think they're close to a settlement. But it took that level of inconvenience, teachers walking out, not actually having anywhere to stick their kids, assuming that it wasn't just about learning versus babysitting.

0:39:16 Thomas: Yeah. Wow.

0:39:45 Alix: So you have these parents who now have to figure out what to do with these kids for whatever the amount of days are. And the incumbents are going to show up somewhere and and complain and say, hey, this is a massive inconvenience to me. You need to fix it. Even if I need to start spending a little bit more money in taxes to pay these teachers, fix this now. And that, of course, translates to votes and campaign promises or campaign finances that start to disappear, et cetera. So you need that level of inconvenience for people to accept certain things. So it's not about being less inconvenient to get people to act and to move. It's got to become incredibly inconvenient.

0:40:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:30 Thomas: Yeah. There's a threshold of inconvenience that you need to reach to make. And what's frustrating about that teacher one is is it mean, it's it's a success story of sorts, but it also was like such a marginal success that I was a little sad about it. Like they got such a small raise, you know, it was and there's been a couple of there's Oklahoma as well. Right. But I think you're talking about the first one was Kentucky, I believe.

0:40:55 Alix: Yeah. Kentucky was the, I think it's the most recent one. Oklahoma was a little bit before that. Arizona had one as well.

0:41:03 Thomas: And oh, I have it. I have I have the opposite of my memory. But either way, the point is, these were some of the last states in terms of rankings of how they pay their teachers. And and they did this incredible protest and walked out. And that's I mean, that's that talk about disruption. And they got a very meager raise out of it. And I just you know, that that kind of depressed me. I was like, well, you got all this leverage, you know, I wonder if they folded too quickly. But that's another aspect of this is how do you keep up the energy?

Because I've worried about that in Sacramento, you know, now that I'm seeing it kind of firsthand a bit on the ground here, it's like, how are we going to keep up this energy? Because the energy was, it seemed to me, pretty amazing for at least a week or so. But in this day and age, how do we keep that up? You know, there comes a staleness of the news, especially with, you know, Trump and all this crap. Like, how do you keep up that energy and go about your

0:41:10 Alix: Yeah, right.

0:42:02 Thomas: Daily life?

0:42:03 Alix: I think that there needs to be several short-term goals. I think I stopped looking for long-term change from these movements after Occupy. And Occupy is a great example because, I mean, they were occupying Wall Street, literally right there, and was inconvenient and what have you. And there were a few things that they were able to push through. But without the organization, without these really solid goals up front saying, "This is what we need, this is when we want it, buy, or it gets worse." Same thing with things like the Montgomery bus boycott. They were willing to let that thing go bankrupt. There was not going to be another black person on that until certain things changed. So you either have to be able to have a big financial impact where it cannot be sustained, or immediate pain where it's so inconvenient, people are picking up the phone and they're doing something.

0:42:16 Thomas: Hmm.

0:43:04 Alix: Now, things like Black Lives Matter and other criminal justice reform movements, you've got to know what you want, and it's got to be very, very local. Because things like Trump, it's not going to be this big national reformation anymore. That stopped in 1997, and we're talking about the DOJ being able to help with some of that. And then again, when we lost the legislative body that cared about it, the DOJ doesn't care about police shooting anymore. I mean, they've said that those are local matters. So they're not going to be investigating these anymore. So talk about repercussions and ramifications for not voting, voting third party or whatever.

0:43:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:43:55 Alix: This is this is a big one. The funding is a big one, of course, but we're not even going to investigate any of these anymore. Those are local matters. That's a big issue because that's how we were able to get various consent degrees placed out there where, you know, LAPD lost the ability to manage itself back in, I think it was in the 90s. I mean, that's how bad it was. And then being able to force the police departments to actually act and look at change. Well, if you've got the federal system and federal government pushing and they're part of the leverage and then you've Got community that's saying, hey, unless this happens, you're going to get, you know, even more buses shut down. We're going to shut down some highways, et cetera.

0:44:41 Alix: As long as you can do that safely for the protesters, as in there isn't something like legislation that says, sure, you can drive through protesters and screw them. As long as that isn't there, you can continue to shut down traffic and and just get the change that you need. Because, again, you know, outside of inciting a riot, you have a lot in that scale.

0:45:10 Thomas: You know, actually, this is a great transition because I want to ask about the Stoneman Douglas, you know, that, that pro, are you encouraged by what we saw there? There because what, what I saw is, at first, what made me sad about it was, this is something that the nation really took note of, these, these student protesters, they were all over, they were doing such a good job, they're getting so much notice, and then you start to think, you know, why isn't Black Lives Matter given this same level of respect and attention, you know, and yeah I, some people, people couldn't help but wonder, is it because they're largely white and from an affluent, you know, school and that kind of thing? But then what you started to see was the students themselves platforming other activists, like maybe from Chicago or from places where gun violence is hitting communities of color. Is that something that you were encouraged by?

0:46:07 Alix: Yeah. Actually, as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, well, there goes the influence.

0:46:14 Thomas: There goes the neighborhood.

0:46:16 Alix: I was like, seriously, you had it down. You're talking about gun violence and that's great. And then you bring us into it. It's like now everyone's going to be targeting you even more because that's what this nation is. No, I liked seeing that there was some attention that was being being paid to it because I'm a humanist at heart. And if we're able to stop one useless or senseless murder, you know, black, white, it doesn't matter to me. Now I, I am very interested in black lives and certain rates that occur in the black communities and being able to, you know, keep guns away from, uh, from people in general, but I can't, you know, it's one of those, it's kind of hard if you are, and this is part of the black conversation as well.

0:47:05 Alix: It's like, okay, the government's been, has always wanted to keep guns out of black hands. And, and yet, you know, in some neighborhoods, that means that they're defenseless and not just, you know, it's not black on black crime. No, I'm talking about if you are a black person in a small black community, whether it's Oklahoma or, or or Mississippi, and you are right up against a, a white community where, um, they have some very outdated views, how are you going to protect yourself? I mean, that's, that, that that's one of the problems.

0:47:11 Thomas: Right.

0:47:40 Thomas: I don't know. I mean, that's a tough. That's a really tough one. You know, I've had people pose that to me. I had someone arguing with me on Twitter about like, well, you're straight, so you don't know what it's like to be gay and need to defend yourself. And I get it. And I'm not, you know, I want to take everyone's guns away. Way though. I want to take all the guns away.

0:47:50 Alix: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm I see. Yeah that's yes.

0:48:00 Thomas: And also The other thing I have to say is statistically, I even said this too, if you are in a vulnerable state where you are in some group like that, or you're in some small community like that you're talking about, by all means. But if you're just living in what's basically the majority of the world, I believe the statistics say you are more likely to either be harmed by your own gun or for someone in your family or for a toddler or for you to lose it. Statistically, that gun is more likely to do harm to the world than to do good for you. It's just vastly.

0:48:00 Alix: Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah yeah yeah correct. And the majority of the gun owners in America happen, you know, It's mostly white. I mean, that's – yeah.

0:48:40 Thomas: Yeah, true. If all the gun owners were black people worried about white supremacy, it would be a totally different story. But it turns out there are a bunch of white people probably worried about out like black people somewhere, AKA

0:48:54 Alix: Exactly. Well, no, that is very much true, and the NRA has helped keep that trope.

0:48:59 Thomas: Fox news viewers. But yeah.

0:49:01 Alix: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both Fox News and the NRA have had this campaign for years where it is about generating more fear about minorities because it generates – they're a gun lobby. I mean, that's exactly what they are. They're a gun lobby. So, of course, they want sales to go up and through the roof. And that's essentially what's happened, Yeah, with Trump it's slowed down because what was it, Smith and Wesson actually filed for bankruptcy.

0:49:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:31 Thomas: That's so mind blowing. And I was going to say the exact same thing. Sorry I butted in, which was they almost had it better when a black man was president. There was all kinds of fear. They could just drive so much fear, so much much fear mongering. And I think the, the gun sales data backs that up for sure. I mean, it's funny how the NRA perversely, they should almost be rooting for like a Democrat to get an office.

0:49:50 Alix: Yeah, right. Right. Because you've got Trump and Trump's got the army. And so if, you know, if there's any fears that white people have, you know, Trump's I mean, he's already sending he's already ordering the National Guard to a border right to protect the wall that ain't there. So, you know, exactly.

0:50:13 Thomas: Right. Yeah. To protect the nothing from the nothing that's nothing. Um, yeah. Uh, well, you know, shoot, I'm actually plum out of time. Um gosh, the time always flies with when I'm talking to Alex Jones, I's just going to own it. I'm just going to call you. I just, yeah, Yeah. No, Alex Jones. One time I called you Alex Johnson.

0:50:29 Alix: Just own it. Oh, wait, wait.

0:50:33 Thomas: Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh,

0:50:33 Alix: You know, he is. So you know Alex Jones is now decrying Donald Trump now, now, as a traitor, it's wow. OK, yeah, that's

0:50:41 Thomas: Right. Well, you know, actually, I think that's a similar dynamic to what we were just talking about where Alex Jones, he, he his brand and that kind of paranoid bullshit. You can't be in support of the president. Like it's just not how that person works. You know what I mean? Like I think it's similar. You need that paranoia of like, oh, the the government fucking is going to get us, you know, like it just, that, that I feel like that was kind of bound to happen in a way.

0:50:44 Alix: Yeah.

0:51:10 Alix: Yeah, it was. Yeah, he first started with with the rant about how the deep state has has broken Trump. And then he continues to talk about how he's, you know, Syria and his actions in Syria. He's just completely turned his back on everyone. Yeah, yeah.

0:51:19 Thomas: Yeah. That's a weird, that's a word. Weird thing. That sounds, it's a topic for probably not my show, but I, I think there's a weird parallel between, cause the alt-right is very anti-Syria intervention in a bizarre way. And I think There's a lot of factors and one of them might literally be like Russian fake news. Like, I really think that could be a common, like now I'm the lizard people person, but like, I do actually think that's part of it. There's this bizarre marriage between Russian disinformation and the fact that Russia supports Assad. You know, like there's, there's a weird thing going on there. Cause it makes no sense.

0:52:01 Alix: Yeah, okay.

0:52:02 Thomas: The far right should be the ones normally are the ones that are like, yeah, bomb the hell out of it, whatever. What do I give a shit? You know? Like that's, that's normally the far right, but in this case they're not. And it's incredibly weird. But anyway, that, that is a weird branch off, but that's okay, it's a fun as always. Alex, thank you so much. Um, you got anything you want to tell people about? I mean, I know you, you already made a, a fantastic appearance at the Bruce City benefit, that, uh, thanks to everyone who was able to come out to that. Um, I've, you know, it sounded like you weren't doing any more appearances this year, but is there anything I don't know about? Is there anything you want a plug? Oh,

0:52:36 Alix: Not, oh, not yet. I probably by the next time we talk, y'all have something to plug, but No. I'll, yeah, yeah, I've kind of, I need to spend a little bit of time with the family, definitely.

0:52:41 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. No, no.

0:52:46 Alix: Spend Some time with family, and I've got some writing to catch up on, so, uh, yeah, I'm limited the amount of talks that I'm going to be giving this year.

0:52:46 Thomas: No kidding. Well, let you you've you've kept us enthused now because you've said not an announcement now, but this is sort of an announcement about a maybe a later announcement. So that's I'm happy. I've still got the energy. Well Alix Jules, thanks so much for coming on, especially when you don't have anything you're trying to plug. You're just great to come on and have a good conversation. And I really appreciate your time every time you give it to us. So thank you so much.

0:52:53 Alix: Sure. Yeah, Always A pleasure, always a pleasure, thanks for having me.

0:53:41 Thomas: Alright, thanks so much for listening, thanks again to Alix Jules for coming on, it's always fun to talk to him. And I do want to mention that I did record a bonus episode, I think it was really great, over an hour I think, that is for patrons only, and that is either on patreon.com slash seriouspod or seriouspod.com support. Either way, I hope you listened and enjoyed, if you have any problems accessing the bonus feed, be sure to contact me. But it was about atheism and the alt-right. I'm still forming my thoughts on that, on those articles, and I may see if it's worth speaking to either of the authors, but I do know that they are going to be on Ina's show, Polite Conversations. So maybe we'll just check that out first, because I know I have a lot of listener overlap with her.

0:54:26 Thomas: But either way, I hope you enjoyed the bonus episode, and there'll be two per month at a minimum, just for patrons only. All right, that said, thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next week.