SIO184: Progressives Ruining Things

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 184, I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I have some miscellany I want to talk about, as well as a few voicemails that I think will pair nicely, like a good wine, uh, with the, with a miscellany, uh... I wanna talk about lowering the voting age, I wanna talk about some more white fragility stuff, this time, vis-a-vis, maybe maybe we should elect a non-white or maybe non-male president.

And some other stuff, I've got, I got some good topics. I just, you know, I have found that I want to talk about culture war stuff lately because I just feel like that's where maybe I can do some good, or that's why I feel like I have the most insight lately, I just, I just, like, there's a logical, non-overreaction way to look at stuff. Stuff when it comes to these issues that I feel like I'm just trying to model maybe for other white men. I think there's a real tendency to overreact to certain things, and I think I try to bring some perspective to it. So that's kind of been what I've been interested in lately. Hopefully it's been interesting to you, but I think we've got some good issues to talk about today.

Let me do a couple things myself, and then I'll bring in some voicemail that introduces and talks about some other issues I wanted to discuss. First off, if you ever want to make the easiest argument ever, like, if ever you want to do Twitter on easy mode, and I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but this was honestly how I felt. I realized when I saw that there was a bill potentially to reduce the voting age to 16 and that was introduced, sponsored by Ayanna Pressley, who was one of the women in that iconic photo the other week. That was, that was just such a cool photo.

Which also had, of course, AOC and Rashida Tlaib, really, really cool picture, check that out if you haven't seen it, just, just Google it, but anyway, she introduced a bill, or, or co-sponsored a bill possibly to lower the voting age to 16, and I just decide, it just kind of occurred to me as I was thinking through that, that I have a knock-down argument and I could play Twitter on easy mode, it's sort of like inject the Game Genie into the Twitter console, and uh, get all the cheat codes, because as I predicted when I tweeted that, I got a bunch of people arguing, but, oh, 16 year olds don't know, they don't have a the proper worldview, and I thought, okay, so what about the people who think the Twin Towers were holograms and uh, Sandy Hook was faked, like,

0:03:14 Thomas: Should they be able to vote? Sounds like they don't have the proper worldview, and, and stuff like that, y'all, they don't have enough, uh, experience, they don't have, blah, blah, blah, blah, and every single argument, it's so easy to just be like, alright, so, what about these people who don't have that, and I, I, still think, you know, I'm partially being sarcastic, but only a little bit, you know, because, what, what we see is, it would be nice, if we could somehow keep people who, who think that Sandy Hook was a hoax from being able to vote. That would be nice, but of course what we've seen in practice is any sort of test you might try to use to restrict voting has just been made into, it's been used to prevent black people from voting and to try to disenfranchise people.

0:04:01 Thomas: So in general, that's not really a good way to go. I mean, it would be nice if there was some totally neutral way to ensure people who weren't absolutely batshit about their theories and all that were voting, but I just don't think that there's a way to do that that preserves everybody's freedom and liberty and ability to hold possibly opinions that the rest of the nation doesn't hold, and sometimes those will be very good opinions throughout history. The bill, I believe, already failed, so this is not, I don't think it's happening now, but I think it is gaining popularity, it is also happening on a state level, in certain places, and Presley was quoted in an article for Teen Vogue, that's a good place to put an article like this, about lowering the age to 16, and I just want to go over the arguments, because I think they are pretty good, I mean, people who are 16, if they work, they pay taxes.

0:04:58 Thomas: And, you know, I seem to remember there being some sort of big deal in our nation's founding about taxation without representation. And I think that should also apply, by the way, to Puerto Rico and D.C. So, yeah, they pay taxes, they pay into the system, and decisions that we make affect them.

This is, as we saw in the last shooting, in the shooting in Florida, when all those brilliant high school-aged children were so vocal and did incredible activism, because they are the ones who are affected by policy. We'll see.

So, I think those are pretty good arguments, and I, just for fun, I also tried to see what the conservatives were saying, and as you'd predict, it's, it not, it is not just like, we think this is not a great idea for the following ideas, here's, here is something from the conservative review website, don't lower the voting age, raise it, so it's like, they can't just do that, they want, they They can't just argue against what's happening. They also want to go even further backward in time and have people be able to not vote until they're like 25 or something. Hey, maybe they should only own property and be white men as well.

It's so interesting to read this article because it's, of course, 100% from the right and from the conservative worldview, which believes that school is like a liberal conspiracy, they think that a bunch of libtard teachers are making everybody's kids liberal. It's just so funny. This was an argument in favor that this article is quoting, quote, my son follows the news closely, he watches John Oliver every week, he's angry that his parents and grandparents' generations have left him with a rapidly warming and unlivable world.

0:06:43 Thomas: He's joined in demonstrations against gun violence at his school. He was involved in student-led efforts to change the name of Columbus Day and to promote trans rights. He thinks that President Donald Trump is, as he puts it, "a racist, sexist homophobe," end quote. And then the article says, "many of the standard leftist mind-rotting hits," it's just funny, all very reasonable things quoted, and then, yeah, mind rock, the teachers are rotting this guy's, this kid's brain, that's why they can't vote. I have to point this part out because conservatives are so bad at what they say is their thing they care about, which is like, you know, constitutional law and balls and strikes and freedom of speech. Because here's a quote here. The left has told them what to think, and the majority will vote as leftists. And by the way, if they are so interested in allowing 16 year olds to vote, how is it that 16 year old's can't wear hats or t-shirts to school in support of Donald Trump, president of the United States?

0:07:36 Thomas: It's like, no, they actually can. Um, there may have been some individual cases where people weren't allowed to wear certain stuff, but if you check, if you go back, if, you know, your, your constitutional law, uh, first off it's that, uh, left-wing organization, ACLU that is actually in favor of trying to protect kids and their right to wear political stuff at school. And also one of the biggest reasons people are not, our kids are not allowed to wear stuff is some case law going going back to when Republicans didn't want kids to wear shirts that were against the Vietnam War. So that's kind of a little bit of the history there. I know I talked more about it on Opening Arguments, but you actually are allowed to wear political stuff at public school.

0:08:24 Thomas: This is, mind you, this is public school, private school might be different, of course. But at public school, you're allowed to wear stuff as long as it's not going to disrupt the classroom. Now, who knows, maybe there's some sort of play in the joints there. Maybe there is some bias, even maybe teachers think a Trump hat disrupts the classroom. That's a tough issue. I think Trump and Trump makes this incredibly difficult. But if the tradeoff is 16 and up get to vote, but they also get to wear whatever political stuff they want in the classroom, sure, I'll take that. I have no problem with that tradeoff. And from my memory, I mean, I was in high school during the 2000 election. Everybody, all kinds of people wore Bush stuff. They wore Gore stuff. That wasn't a problem. You can do that. You just can't wear something that's going to be offensive or disruptive in class.

0:09:13 Thomas: And I know it's very tough when the president is Donald Trump, because just supporting him is an endorsement of offensive stuff to a degree that's a little bit further than has ever been in previously with previous Republicans. So it's difficult. But, you know, I will, I will, as they say, I will defend the to the death. Some, not really, because I don't care that much about it, but I'll defend gently on Twitter in here. I'll, I'll vociferously defend a kid's right to wear like a Trump shirt or something, because, I mean, they have the right to express their political beliefs. I mean, that, all that's doing is just telling me that they are, are sexist and, and okay with racism and all that cool stuff. You know, that just tells me that they've been brainwashed by their parents to do that, but whatever.

0:10:02 Thomas: Anyway, the point is, uh, I don't think the arguments against this are pretty good. One other argument this article brings up is, you know, oh, they, when they work, they often don't even pay taxes because they don't make enough, which is a weird argument for, for me, because, a, they don't, they might not pay some taxes because of again policy that affects people that are situated like they are, so that might not always be true, and who knows, like, maybe, or just this hypothetical, but maybe people of that age would be like, oh, maybe I should pay more taxes or something, you know, and that would be something they could only do through having representation, uh, you know, to, they could make their voice heard through their vote to to go one way or the other on that, the other thing is, yeah, they might not pay certain taxes because they don't make enough, but you always pay some of the taxes.

0:10:51 Thomas: You always pay like the, what the Medicare ones and the, uh, the, the unemployment tax, like there's certain taxes you always pay. So that's kind of a weird, it's just seems like a weak argument to me. A couple really interesting takes on Twitter that I wanted to reference that I think are good to think about. First is Chantelle Beaudouin, been on the show before, a friend of mine. She tweeted, yeah, some contacts provide interesting arguments for allowing children to vote. Demographics are important too. For example, in Uganda, where I currently am, around 48% of the population is under 15 years old.

Voting age right now is 18. Almost half the population doesn't have direct representation in Uganda, that is interesting, wow, 48% of the population is under 15 years old, that, that's, it's always interesting to get some global perspective, especially as an ugly American, um, because often our politics doesn't have that, uh, global perspective. Uh, that's really interesting. And then another one, probably my favorite tweet on this was, uh somebody who just tweeted, I think the voting age should be whatever the youngest age someone was tried as an adult at, which really puts it into perspective.

I mean, I love all this talk of, oh, they're not old enough. They don't know any, they can't vote. They can't have a say in the thing. And then, you know, uh, some, some black kid is accused of a crime. Oh, try him as an adult at 14 kind of thing. And, uh. You know, that person was holding a fake gun.

0:12:23 Thomas: Oh they, well, they look like a grownup. So, I mean can you blame them for the cops just shooting them within five seconds? I love that selective, you know, adult versus kid kind of thing. I mean, if you're a white man who's constantly screwing up, you're always given the benefit of the doubt of being, oh, he's young. Well, he's 32, but I mean he's young still, young kid, you know, still working stuff out versus if you are a black kid, it seems as though that all of a sudden that same leeway is not given to you. So I think that's an interesting look there because being tried as an adult would, I think, imply that you were able to make decisions as an adult. And then why not be able to vote?

0:13:11 Thomas: I don't understand. You know, furthermore, I think the drinking age should be reduced to 18. It's hard. It's one of those libertarian things, one of the few, few, and want to emphasize very few libertarian views I might have, have. Because I think as a public safety thing, increasing the drinking age to 21 is probably really good. And that's a compelling argument, especially when you talk about drunk driving and all that stuff. But from like, we should have the freedom to do what we want with our own bodies kind of thing, 18 really seems like a minimum to me. That's a tough one, though. I don't know. Tell me what you think about that. But if I just round out this topic, if I were able to wave that magic wand that we all wish we always had, I would make voting mandatory after 18 and optional from 16 to 18.

0:14:05 Thomas: I think that's a, I mean, there's going to be plenty of 16, 17 year olds who don't care and we're like, I don't know, whatever, who cares? But there might be some who are like Andrew Torrez's son and are winning debate camp, you know, over Harvard debate marathons, so I wanted that kid to be able to vote, I think he's probably got some good thoughts, and but I also, you know, I care far more about making voting mandatory for everybody, and it's so funny because a lot of liberals don't agree with me on that, which, you know, it's respectful disagreement, but sometimes it's like, no, that would be the end of liberty as we know it, you know, you can't make people do that, it's, it works fine in Australia, it works, it can be done totally fine, but it also would take changing our constitution, which I don't think is happening anytime soon.

0:14:53 Thomas: So that is very much a pie in the sky type wish. But that would be a good compromise in a Thomas Smith country that gets to where I get to decide these things, which is never happening.

Alright, another little grab-bag topic that I keep meaning to get to and I just haven't, someone sent me this article and wanted to know what I thought about it a while back, and it's called, it's from the Washington Post, and its called, Don't Blame Me Too For Ruining The Most Iconic Kiss In History, The Photo Was Never Romantic.

And it's about that poster that every girl had in my college dorm building, which was the, you know, soldier kissing the, the, what is it, the nurse or something? Something.

Apparently, she was a dental assistant, now that I look at it, but she's, you know, kind of some sort of medical attire she's wearing, and it's like celebrating the war's end, and, it's looked like, you, know, it has been this iconic thing that people have celebrated for so long, the end of the war, and I think we all kind of assumed for a while that these people were together, you now, like, oh, yeah, they're celebrating, or at least I kind of assume that, I always thought it was like a romantic thing, and um, you know, people have pointed out there's a, there's a statue of the World War II sailor kissing the woman, uh, that was spray painted with a red hashtag Me Too, and I, the reason I want to talk about this for a few reasons, so there is such a big theme of our discourse on Twitter, and and just so many issues that come up, you know, I could reference like probably two or three examples off the top of my my head, is one side of people desperately clinging to anything that was like historically understood as okay,

0:16:39 Thomas: Or it was a tradition or was like a cultural icon who later you find out had a bad past, or maybe they're, you know, Michael Jackson, who as that documentary came out and provided even more evidence to the public that Michael Jackson was guilty of some really disgusting behavior with kids, there's always the other side. And it was Eric Weinstein, brother of Brett Weinstein, who I often am criticizing, but he's the IDW dork, he kind of coined that term, Intellectual Dark Web, and he was the one who tweeted in the wake of The Simpsons had decided to remove the episode featuring Michael Jackson from, I guess, just the syndication lineup or whatever, just remove it from circulation, and James L.

0:17:28 Thomas: Brooks said, I'm against book burning of any kind, but this is our book and we're allowed to take out a chapter. Interesting quote. And of course, this is just a step too far for so many people like Eric Weinstein. He says, spoiler alert, our entire society is built on work done by people who live lives that make us now squirm. You're tearing your own skin in hopes of ridding yourself of melanoma. Stop trying to purify yourself. We're permanently impure, infected. This will never work. Deal with it.

0:17:59 Thomas: It's going to take a while. So I didn't mean to do this. Actually, I just realized I stumbled into this particular thing. I was going to talk about the, uh, the me too statue, but it's, it's I think it's entirely analogous, uh, and where it's disanalogous it's because Eric Weinstein is, is even more off. Uh, because this is just so dumb on so many levels. A lot of people point out like, Hey, that's actually is how you get rid of melanoma. You, you have to have to some of your own skin removed and it actually works.

0:18:29 Thomas: Uh, but this idea, it's one of those like people accidentally confessing that they're horrible people. Now, I'm not saying that Eric Weinstein is this, but he accidentally made it sound like there used to be a time where everybody was cool with pedophilia and now there's not. Yeah. And now like, oh, well, by yesterday's standards, Michael Jackson, yeah, of course he slept with kids. That's what you do. That's fine. That's just another time, you know, and now we're trying to judge him by today's standard. No, of all the things to say that about, I mean, you might say that about like Thomas Jefferson or something. I'd still argue with you that we should still look at Jefferson in a different way than we tend to, but at least that would make sense.

0:19:19 Thomas: At least it would be like, look, the standards of the time were the standards of the times, and these people can still be judged as great relative, relative to the people that they were around. And, you know, I agree with that for the most part. And I think we can, we can have a nuanced view that kind of does all that, that preserves the good characteristics of people from a, from a bygone era who maybe were guilty of plenty of bigotries and stuff that were just the norm of the time. We can have that discussion. We have a nuanced discussion about it. I think it's interesting. But to present Michael Jackson, Texan who had sex with kids, with children, as somebody who, to represent him as, our entire society is built on work done, work done by people who lived lives that make us now squirm.

0:20:09 Thomas: No, there was never a time when you, if you did a public poll that I don't think there's ever been a time in American history, in the, in our entire history, if you could do the public polling on this, where you ask the question, hey, is it cool to have sex with seven-year-olds? How in favor of that are you? It'd be pretty much 0.0 unless you found a couple of pedophiles who were willing to go on record about it. That's never been societally accepted. And the Michael Jackson thing is interesting because you could almost argue, if I were to try to steel man this, you could argue, well, it's not that the behavior was acceptable and now it's at the threshold for believing believing victims has changed. And I hope that's true. I hope it has changed, but I also, the facts of the Michael Jackson case are just, they're not quite that easy because back in 93, I mean, it's probably true that we all should have realized or known.

0:21:07 Thomas: I was too young. I blame all you older people. I Was only seven at the time, so I didn't know what the heck was happening. But anyway, back then the problem was that a lot of the alleged victims were defending Michael Michael Jackson and saying nothing ever happened. He did that Oprah interview where he talked about like, oh, I just like hanging out with him because I didn't get a childhood. And because the victims were silent or they defended Michael Jackson, it made it actually a lot more difficult to get a proper picture of it. You add in the race factor, it looked like maybe our people just trying to take down a black icon. It made it a little more difficult. Whereas in this documentary, you finally get those kids who are now adults being like, no, no this is what happened and here's the reason furthermore why we defended Michael Jackson back in the day.

0:21:55 Thomas: I still think a lot of people did suspect and were pretty certain that Michael Jackson had been inappropriate back then, but at least there was some more plausible deniability in the fact that some of the victims themselves were even saying like, nah, nothing happened. So that makes it kind of of difficult. And now we, you know, we can, to some extent, let bygones be bygons for people who didn't believe it at the time, if they had good reasons, you Know, maybe they thought it was a racist attack or maybe they believed the victims who said, no, nothing happened kind of thing back in 93 and around that time. But now it's changed. Like we have more evidence. The victims are saying, no dude, this is why I didn't talk then.

0:22:41 Thomas: Here's what actually happened. It's It's very, um, I find it very compelling. I find a very believable. I find, I don't think they have any reason to lie now. They're not getting paid for it. It's a horrible thing to go through. You know, I, the, the usual lines are still happening. The usual lines of argument, which is, oh, they just want notoriety. They just want the attention. And it's like, I don't, do you really, do you think that's good for them? I think there was a reason they were so quiet about it for so long. That's pretty damaging to them. But anyway, so that's a whole lot different than whatever the F Eric Weinstein is talking about. And I love it, too, because it's one episode of a show that has 30 seasons of episodes.

0:23:27 Thomas: Granted, not all of them are good, and I wouldn't really be caught dead watching any Simpsons in the past 20 years or so. But still, like if you want to watch this episode, you can go watch it. Like you can go find it, you can, have if you have the DVD, they're not coming to your door and like blotting out that part of the DVD, you know, like it's just so not a big deal, one episode from a bajillion that they have, they're going to take out of rotation on TV because now they realize like this guy was a kid rapist, like we don't want to play our episode like a picture. If you did some, some work, listener, like you, you did a, I don't know, you did a web series and one of the episodes you had done, you now realize the person you did it with is an actual pedophile.

0:24:15 Thomas: You don't think you should have the right to be like, I don't really want that to be up anymore. Like, sorry, I didn't know or didn't, you know, have enough information at the time. Uh, I'm going to go ahead and take that out of circulation. And then Eric Weinstein's like, whoa, look, our entire society is built on the work of good pedophiles, like Michael Jackson, how dare you try to take down one Simpsons episode? I mean, it's just such a joke. And so back to what I was talking about, which is this, uh, me too, uh related to the iconic kiss poster that every girl had in, in my college dorm building. That's a similar thing where people are like, how can you, how dare you take this away from us? We all, this is a thing we know from history. We like it and nothing you ever you libtards ever do can take away something like that.

0:25:01 Thomas: That's iconic. You're not allowed to do stuff like, like it's, that's the constant cultural battle we seem to be in. And it's one that I'm always on pretty much always on the side of like, no, it's not really that big of a cost to look at these things in a new light, you know? And sometimes it's hard. You know, I've talked about Louis CK. I still, personally, I want to be able to someday when I, when I feel I'm ready, uh, to be be able to watch some Louis CK stuff that I really treasured and really found compelling, especially his show, Louis. I've talked about it. Go back to that episode. I forget which one it was, but you know, there are episodes of that show that I, I really, really, really enjoyed and found compelling and had an emotional response to. And there's part of me that's like, you know I will probably always have that.

0:25:50 Thomas: Now I don't, apart from mentioning it, I'm not going to try to make anyone else have that experience. I'm not going to argue that anyone else should like, no, you should watch Louie and don't take away any of his employment opportunities because I want, no, like to each their own. And if you don't ever want to see that guy again, I don't blame you. Um, this is a very personal thing, but nobody's coming for my Louie computer file or whatever the heck, you know, wherever I might be able to watch those videos. Like I can watch them on my own time if I ever want To again, we'll see. Uh, and kind of the same goes for that Simpsons episode. And I think it's even maybe a little bit different for this kiss poster, this World War II kiss poster. Because I think this comes from not properly, from decades of not properly weighting the experience of particularly women in cases like this.

0:26:45 Thomas: It's an obvious understatement of the century. But I think a lot of particularly, particularly conservative men uh are like, well, what is this big deal, you know, it's an iconic thing, okay, what's, it was, who cares, and I, I imagine, uh, and I, and I want to link this article, which for a really good perspective, eventually, you know, they tracked down who it was, and she, her name, uh, was Greta Zimmer Friedman, and the guy was George Mendonsa, and she's quoted as saying, like, I didn't see him approaching, and before I knew it, I was in this vice grip, I felt he was very strong, he was just holding me tight, it wasn't really a romantic event, she once told the Library of Congress, it It wasn't my choice to be kissed.

0:27:31 Thomas: The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed me. End quote. And yeah, and you really look at the picture and it's something I've never really noticed because I've Never looked that closely at it. Look at look at his arm the way he's like he first off. It's like, he's giving her mouth to mouth. I mean, this is a sloppy, you know, clumsy, sucking out her life force kind of thing.

And the way his arm is just like his left arm specifically just has her in this vice grip. And so can you imagine maybe perhaps the gentleman out there or anybody who disagrees with my opinion on this? Can you imagine what it's like for specifically her? So the victim, but also other women to find out maybe that this was essentially a sexual assault and that it's been glorified and celebrated, you know, and for all this time and to see the attitude be specifically for men. Men. I think, I think what goes into this is a feeling of, men is a subtle and possibly unbeknownst to them bit of misogyny, which says, well, women are around as objects for me to celebrate with when I feel happy about a war ending. You know, like this, is doesn't matter that you didn't want to. Who cares? The war's ending. I get, to I'm going to do a celebration thing.

And I just have, have to think, like, if this had been a guy finding out World War II ended, and so he hits another dude in the back with a baseball bat for no reason, I feel like, A, it wouldn't be a poster, um, and B, if it somehow was, I think, very rightfully, the guy would be like, what, why you celebrate, the guy assaulted me, like, I, he hit me with a bit, why, is why are you all putting this in your dorm rooms?

Like, I don't, I don't understand, he beat me with bat, I didn't want this, this wasn' t, I didn't ask for that, oh, just because he's happy because it's because of a war, that excuses an assault?

0:29:29 Thomas: That's, that's okay because the war ended? Where's the line? I mean, you shoot a guy, well, the war ended, I'm celebrating, uh, you know, I'm, I'm exaggerating a little bit, like, that is the nature of it, it is an assault, and no, no amount of, like, a war ending makes an assault okay, and I don't understand the cost that people think there is to this, that's the part that I, I don't, on a personal level, I'm talking about me personally, I don't have that same feeling of like, well, if they take away, first, they came for this poster and it ruined my life, like I never got to, what, have this poster anywhere, like, I don't care.

Maybe that's just my personality. And maybe there are people, if you're more like old-fashioned and you're like, no, people thought this was great and hung it on their walls, so we have to always think it's great and you can't take that away from anyone. One. But like when the victim, the person in the photo, the woman in the photo says like, I didn't want that. That was an assault. She didn't say that was an insult, but that's what her words mean. When you say like, yeah, I didn't want to be kissed. And a guy had me in a, in a vice grip.

Then yeah, that's an assault Let me just read you the last couple sentences of this great article in the Washington Post by Monica Hesse, could be Hess, I'm not sure how she pronounces it, but the last few paragraphs there: Hours after Mendonsa's death, I watched reactions spread online, many of which amounted to, today, this iconic photo might be considered an assault. Some folks meant it indignantly, see how crazy the world has become. Others also meant it indignantly, but the opposite way, how dare we honor this bad man. I'd like to think of it more as a statement of fact: today this iconic photo might be considered an assault.

0:31:11 Thomas: It doesn't mean that Mendonsa was a monster. It doesn't mean humans were bad in 1945. It just means that stories don't always behave as we'd like. Our fantasies can be punctured by the reality of other people's feelings. Friedman said she and Mendonsa kept an occasional contact and exchanged holiday cards. When a Life photographer invited the pair to reunite in Times Square in 1980, she went, but she didn't want to reenact the kiss. A kiss based on one person's joy and another person's non-consenting shock isn't really a perfect kiss, and it never was. I think that's end quote there, and I think that's saying it better than I could, so maybe I'll leave the topic there.

0:31:53 Voicemail: Hello, Thomas, this is, I was thinking about something this morning after the Liam Neeson confession about, you know, that came out in early February. You know, you tweeted about, you know, an analogy, Liam Neeson admits, you know, that he was wrong, and revenge fantasy, but you know he doesn't address his racism.

0:32:23 Voicemail: One of the things I started to think about was that you know being white, like I am a white person, being white means that I'm a part of a group of people that has ignored racism, has allowed racism, unchecked and lynching. And yet when you try to criticize, you know, the things that go on with white people, people get very upset. You know, not all white people, for example, or or I'm not one of those white people, you know, or this is racist to suggest that all white people are like this. However, white people people did perpetuate crimes against an entire group of people. You know, white people are responsible for Native American genocide, for genocide against, you know, other groups of people across the globe. I mean, how do you address this? Some people can listen and take it in and not have this white fragility, you know, stop the conversation. And one thing I was thinking is that, I mean, it doesn't bother me.

0:33:31 Voicemail: I mean I recognize that I'm part of a group of people that have done awful things, and that means that I have to deal with that and answer for it. But maybe there's a way to, you know, the other people who are very fragile can do it. And I wonder, I just wonder about that. And I wonder what you might think and what you may say. Because I don't quite have the answer. It's sort of on the tip of my brain, but anyway, thank you for, you know, your thoughtful conversations, your ideas, and you know of course, thanks again. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

0:34:10 Thomas: Hey, thanks, Susan, so much, yeah, uh, this is, I think you're cutting to the heart of white fragility, and if there were an easy answer, then it wouldn't be a problem, you know, I hate to give you that answer, uh... I think about it from time to time, though, you know, I vacillate on it, I don't know that my role has been to try to put it in a way that makes white people more comfortable, um, it's, cause it's frustrating, you know, and if it's frustrating to me, imagine how frustrating it is for, you know, actual black people to have to deal with white fragility. It must be infuriating. And sometimes I think like, oh, maybe as a privileged white dude, maybe that could be something I could try to do. Maybe I don't know, make some YouTube content or something that that honestly that coddles white people into maybe better racial political views.

0:35:03 Thomas: Not because they deserve it, I want to be very clear on that, not because I think they deserve it, or not because I think it's like my responsibility or or people of color's responsibility to like be more diplomatic and and coddle them and their feelings and make sure, like, I don't think that's it. It's just that for no other reason than to try to make some change. You know, like, if the if the only way to make change is to try to, like, speak a very easy, timid message that that that eases white people into more progressive views on race, then maybe that would be a good thing to do, do, but I haven't done it because it's frustrating. You don't want to.

0:35:50 Thomas: You want to look at injustice, you want to look at the story of our history and be like, why can't more white people recognize systemic inequality and the fact that at the very least they ought to be open-minded and listen, at the very least, even if you don't agree with everything on a progressive agenda or something, at the very least to listen in good faith, just due to the overwhelming privilege you have had as a white person throughout history, relatively speaking. Now, maybe not, maybe you personally don't, but you know, it was, it's always been better to be, statistically speaking, if you're talking about economics and talking about your odds, you know.

0:36:35 Thomas: If we're treating this as a game of Monopoly, you, you know, you would want to start as the white character in the game of Monopoly if you're trying to beat the game. Like, that's the, I think somebody made that, like, you know, uh, the video game where having white privileges, it's like on easy mode, you know, they did that. Little It was kind of funny. Uh, yeah, that's always been true. It's it's less true, you know, it's like, it's obviously it was way more true 200 years ago, like it wasn't even close, uh, and it's gotten less true, so that's good, we made some progress, but uh, there's still a lot of progress to go. And the ratio of wealth, I know I say it all the time, but wealth inequality is staggering. The ratio of household wealth by race is absolutely staggering, and I think it deserves to be addressed.

0:37:23 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know specifically what to say. I guess I could try to speak to why my mind changed, but it's hard. You know, it's a long, slow process and it mainly had to do with not listening to Fox News anymore, you know, and not, I guess it's, Fox News is really good at breeding hostility against minorities and, and liberals. You know? It's really good. It's good at that. It's very effective. It's just got this sneering look that, that they have the whole time when it, whenever they talk about certain people. And it's effective. If you if you just pump that into your veins all day, it's very, very effective. So I don't know. I mean, getting people off Fox News would be nice. But also, you know, maybe there's... there's people there's probably people already doing this somewhere.

0:38:11 Thomas: You know, let me know if you have any links to people who you think are talking about race in a way that's accessible to to white people who maybe aren't too, I don't know, politically minded or racially justice minded.

Did, um, but anyway, I did want to tie in, while we're talking about white fragility, uh, another thing I tweeted, and it just is, I think some of you are going to hate this, I'll be honest, some of you won't like this because I tweeted something I think even my, uh, you know, like even my followers probably disagree with to a certain extent, because, because I tweeted, it's amazing how sensitive white people are, literally every single president, except one in our 240-year history, has been a white man, literally every single one, but if you say, hey, maybe somebody else should get a shot, white dudes are like, what, I thought we're all equal, race doesn't matter, whoa, judging people by the color of their skin, and then I got just an absolute avalanche of some white responses.

Um, because look, I, you might not agree with me on this. Um, because it's, it's way more comfortable to just be like, oh, well just no colorblind only policy should matter. But just, I mean, think about it again. If you were, let's say you're, um, a Latina woman in 240 years of, you've never had a president who was your demographic at all, like at all. You know, and like, don't you think that maybe, you know, maybe we should change it up a little bit.

0:39:50 Thomas: And here's where I think, the, I think some troubling mindsets appear. Because then a bunch of white people get on my Twitter and tweet as though I'm an idiot and I'm going to do something really stupid. And I can't help but wonder if they apply this to people of color, if they're doing it to me as well here.

Because I get a million responses that are, well, that doesn't solve it, the race doesn't matter, that does not solve it, that's not going to solve, that's not the whole thing. And also, this logic, you're going to get President Ben Carson or President Sheriff Clark. Like, do you really think that that's what I mean? Do you really think that I mean, and that any Democrat would possibly mean, if they share my mindset here, that we want President Ben Carson because he's black and that's good? Good. Do you really think that? You know, if I were to distill the responses into a bit of satire, a bit a satire which I do, a bit sarcasm which I on occasion on Twitter. I haven't typed this one up yet, but it would go something like this. No, race doesn't matter at all. It's not about race. It's about policy. Now, here are the following white men who have the right policy. Like that's That's essentially what a lot of this boils down to.

It's ways that I think are subconscious. I think almost nobody, probably nobody on my thread, would ever acknowledge that they are doing this. But just as how, miraculously, Hillary was just not right for some reason, can't put my finger on why, something, she's just corrupt or something, or she's not, I don't know, she'S not honest or something.

0:41:33 Thomas: I don't know what it is, but it's something about her. Uh, and then magically a lot of that stuff will start to apply to, uh, to Elizabeth Warren. You'll see. But anyway, that similarly, isn't it weird? Does, no, it's not about race. It's not, we need the right ideas. We need the right ideas. Now, is it going to be Joe Biden or is it gonna be Bernie Sanders? One or the other, you know, isn't it weird, isn't it weird that the people who you tend to think have the right ideas somehow are white men still, isn't that kind of, I don't know, maybe something going on there. We we have so many good candidates, you know, like there's, this is what, where I think a bit of the possibly unacknowledged bias comes in is this idea that the minute you say, like, why don't we just err toward not a white man, just because, you know, the last 240 years have all been that except literally one, like, maybe we'll just give somebody else a shot.

And what I mean by that is there are, are about a billion people who could do this job pretty well, you know, especially, especially better than the alternative, better than Donald Trump, and who will have good policy and all that kind of thing.

Uh, why don't we, since there's a lot, there's more than enough who can do a good job, why don't we just kind of lean toward not a white man, you know, for once, what, why would you think that it could possibly be right, that the only candidates who will have the right policies would be white men? That can't possibly be correct.

0:42:57 Thomas: But then what what you see is it effectively becomes what these people believe once they start arguing about candidates. Isn't that weird? I've got a shout-out to a follower here, Brian J. Hipquark DDSKFC, that's a nice funny name, and they said, Thomas, how dare you say we should vote based on race and gender while ignoring all other factors? I assume that's what you meant, because otherwise these replies don't make any sense, so true, and why, how quick are people to assume that? I think there's a bit of white fragility going on, and, and maybe even a bit of like paternalism, like the idea that like, no, we better save us from this. I mean, the moment we go down this route, it's not going to be done right.

0:43:43 Thomas: You know, I need to, a bunch of people assuming that I'm an idiot or something. And what I mean is just vote for whoever's black and don't care about anything else. When clearly the obvious thing that I mean is that there are plenty of good candidates and we can very easily choose one that is not a white man and still have good policy outcomes. Like it's pretty simple. You know, what it reminds me of, and this is a bias that I think, I'm gonna try, I gonna ask you, folks, if you disagree, to try to keep an eye on, it reminds me of, I believe, it was in Soraya... Soraya Chemaly's book, Rage Becomes Her, or it could have been Rebecca Traister's book. I, I read a few, you know, like, feminist rage books at the same time.

0:44:28 Thomas: I can't remember which was, it was one of them, and it talked about the fact that there was a school, I don't think it was like Harvard or something, something like that, that only accepted men forever, and eventually it, was it Was a good school, so it was a major school, you know, only accepted men, and then eventually, that you know, the court, somebody said, like, hey, you can't just only accept men, you also have to accept women.

And everybody at the time, when they, uh, so, so instead of, say, there's, yeah, just for example, there's 300 slots or something, and uh, now all of a sudden they have to, uh, reserve 150 of them for women, everybody was saying, well, what are we going to do with 150 men who got cheated out of the position, they didn't, they don't get their position anymore, we got to to find, we have to find accommodations for them, you know, and and looking at it from the perspective of whatever you're losing is a cost to you that wasn't there before, and what I mean by that is, what about all the women who, for all the way through history, weren't getting any spots, and now are getting half the spots?

It's never looked at like that. It's it's, uh, we got it, we've got to find a way to accommodate these men who no longer, they've the spots they deserve, they've been taken away. And I think that a similar thing maybe is operating in the background here when, as a white person, you think, well, if we sort of tiebreaker toward people of color, then that's taking away that a white person could be president.

0:46:08 Thomas: That's not fair. Taking away. Meanwhile, again, every single president forever except one was a white man. And every single president president forever has been a man. So, you know, I just think there's some soul searching to do along those lines. Maybe you won't agree with me, but I am not for Biden for a number of reasons. We'll talk about it more, I'm sure, if he enters the race and all that. I'd be a little bit more okay with Bernie. Reminder, I voted for him in the primary just before you accused me of being like radical anti-Bernie person. I just think there are people who are younger, more in touch, more representative of what the Democratic Party and what our country is, uh, demographically, who have similar if not maybe sometimes better ideas.

0:46:59 Thomas: Uh, who we could make president. And so I like Bernie as a person, but I don't need him to be the president. You only get one president, folks, you only got one. So So, like, not making someone a president doesn't mean you've just condemned them to be like the worst person ever, you know what I mean? It's literally just not giving them the, like, number one job of ever. It doesn't mean you hate them, you know, it doesn't mean like you're against them, you want them to go away and die. Yeah, I guess it could if you're talking about Trump, but, but if you were talking about, like, Democrats who are competing for it, it's, there's only one, there is only one, and it's a very big job. So, not saying I don't want someone to be president doesn't mean I hate them. I've said the same thing about Beto O'Rourke.

0:47:44 Thomas: I don't want him to be present. I don't think he should be president. And people have had a similar reaction. Whoa, what you hate Beto? What you hate? No, I don't hate him. I love Beto. I wish he would have won. I really wish he wouldn't have beaten Ted Cruz. And I, I wish I want him run as a senator of Texas. I think he's very good at that, but I don't, not wanting somebody to be the number number one top job in the country is not the saying you hate them. You know, that's a very high bar. That means you hate everybody except one person.

0:48:16 Voicemail: Hi, Tom, this is Andrew. So, after the whole Jussie Smollett incident, I saw somebody joking on Twitter saying, so, now are all the white people who call 911 just because they see a black folk in their neighborhood gonna face sanction? But anyway, that aside, after listening to your discussion of it and the reactions surrounding it, it kind of reminded me that we still kind of seem to have a serious honor culture that really values retribution, like, Like, whenever somebody does anything bad, it's just like, oh, we've got to make them pay for what they've done. But then I'm thinking, maybe we don't need to do that? Because, you know, aside from the public safety case of isolating people with clear violent tendencies from the rest of society, like, what does it really serve to punish somebody other than just making them suffer and satisfying some vague sense of vengeance? Anyway, it is something to consider. Thanks for all that you do.

0:49:10 Thomas: Hey, thank you so much for the call. I'm always thinking about this, but what sucks is that I feel like wider society, and actually I kind of mean wider and whiter society, tends to only bring this up when Manafort gets 40-whatever months, you know, like is it, and so it's a frustrating thing because I think that all punishments should probably be less, but But then that only gets brought up in certain circles. Now I'm not saying, you're not doing this, because you're talking about Jussie Smollett, a different thing. I'm just branching off from what you're saying. It only gets bought up like in the Twitter sphere and among some certain conservatives or something when it's, you know, when it Paul Manafort and he gets a tiny sentence, comparatively speaking, then all of a sudden it's like, well, you know, we shouldn't be punishing people anyway.

0:49:58 Thomas: I mean, it's a non-violent offense, you know, and there's a certain unfairness there, there, that gets really frustrating because we should be having the conversation constantly regarding all kinds of lesser drug offenses and other things. But we only seem to have it when it's, you know, going one way. But as regards Jussie Smollett, yeah, I would, if I, you know, again, I'll go back into the "if I could wave a magic wand" thing. If I were in charge of what his punishment would be, you know, it's got to be something like, it's obviously that he did a very disgusting, harmful, harmful thing. And it's awful. I will say that there's sometimes where, again, if it was Thomas Court and I get to decide everything, in this case, I'd be like, I think you're already going to be punished by society.

0:50:45 Thomas: I honestly wouldn't even bother in his case, in Jussie Smollett's case. He's absolutely just toast.

0:50:56 Thomas: All of society hates him for this. You know, like I think he's that's going to be punishment enough. I mean, I wouldn't really care if he did much time beyond that. So I agree with you there. But, you know, there's other crimes, like Manafort, clearly is not repentant, doesn't care, thinks he shouldn't get any punishment, that kind of thing, where it's like, well, screw you, buddy. Like, you should do even more time. You know, like why is rich white people feel like they don't do anything wrong and they they can be corrupt and just do nothing but crime, crime, prime, crime all the time, and then they want leniency. You know, "oh, my my family," you know, it's like, what, come on.

0:51:37 Thomas: So it's a hard balance, you know, because, you're, I I agree with your general, uh, point that you're making, I totally agree, which is I do still believe that we need to look at punishment in terms of, um, containment, you know, because I don't really believe in free will in a way that that would, you know, in a radical free will, where I, I think pretty much, no matter even if I was like compatibilist in my free will beliefs, I still believe what determines whether you're not you're a criminal or not is pretty much much your genetics or your upbringing, neither of which you have control over, you know, your genetics, your upbringing, your, uh, whether or not you just, your, your brain is formed wrong where you don't have compassion for whatever it might be, you know, or your socio-economic situation, whether or not you're raised really badly or not at all, you know, whether your parents were, stuff you don't have control over is the point, it's all stuff you don't have control over. And so I think an awful lot of crime ought to be punished a bit less.

0:52:37 Thomas: I still think you need containment on certain things you need. And it might make sense to have a small level of punitive measures, just a small label, you know, definitely less than now for people to feel properly served by the justice system. Like if you're a victim, I think there can be a small amount that is, okay, we need to make sure this person has some sort of punishment because they've wronged you. I don't think we're ever going to live in a nation of Spocks who are like, yes, I don't care that my loved one was killed. I just want them, you know, like we're always going to want a certain amount of punishment. I just hope it would be a lot less, you now, than it is. And I also wish data would be consulted on this.

0:53:23 Thomas: I want to know the data on, like, what, what works, you know, the entire, the entire thing could, should be premised on what works. What actually makes people change. Let's look at other countries, how they do it. You know, all that stuff, which I think some people look at sometimes, you know, I know when I worked in CDCR, uh, you know, California Department of Corrections, there are people who are trying to work on programs to reduce recidivism, but there's always a battle of funding, and there's always a battle of old-fashioned people who want like biblical punishment crap, you know, it's hard, it's a hard. So I don't want to say that nobody's doing it, but largely, you know, as a society, we aren't doing that. And just a quick tie-in, today's news, that douchebag of the ages, Jacob Wohl, faked a death threat against himself.

0:54:13 Thomas: I certainly hope Tucker Carlson, even though he's got his own problems right now, I hope he dedicates as much time, you know, Jussie Smollett was like a week of wall-to-wall Fox News coverage, like, just non-stop, at least, probably more, so I hope the Jacob Wohl stuff, I I hope that gets coverage over there on Fox, right? Should get the same amount of, oh, what's with these white people who are faking death threats from diversity counselors or consultants? I'm not even joking. That's what he did. Diversity consultant threatened me. Threatened me with death. Yeah, sure. I'm sure there's a ton of just diversity consultants everywhere. They're taking out your children. They're shooting them. As if that's an actual problem. So I hope they dedicate as much time to that, by the way.

0:55:00 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, this is Hausdorff. I was just listening to your episode on Stephon Clark, and in particular, I found it really interesting at the end, when you were talking about how we change the system, and how it's like this big intractable problem that seems like it's so obvious that, you know, in that case, cops shouldn't be able to ambush you in your backyard, insist that you raise your hands, and shoot you if you don't do it immediately, right?, and that seems obvious, and yet, there's many people who disagree with that, as you you were saying. And it's just this really, really hard conversation to have. And it's hard to convince anybody of that fact. It reminds me so much of several other things that I've been interested in lately. You know, one, I used to write an atheist blog. And the whole atheism thing is, it's exactly like that, right?

0:55:51 Voicemail: It's obvious all of the logical arguments are on your side. And yet it's impossible to convince people of that. And if you argue with them, like beating beating your head against a brick wall. Trump, right? Trump is obviously guilty of a billion crimes, and yet there are, he has defenders who say he's not, and he's done it right in front of us, and if you're going to try to argue with them, it feels like you're beating yourhead against abrickwall. And there's, you know, several other things like this, you know anti-vaxxers, comedy shoeshine, you guys were talking about flat earthers, right, it's something that's so obvious to show them that they're wrong, And yet it's impossible to convince them. And I mean, I guess we need to learn more about human psychology to be able to do this. But it's really depressing.

0:56:38 Voicemail: How do you convince people of these things that are so obvious? And they're so obviously wrong. And yet, it's just impossible to change someone's mind. I think you had mentioned that you just find this very depressing, and I've been finding myself quite depressed a lot lately in regards to politics and Trump, and it just, everything seems to feel this exact same way. I'm trying to think of a positive spin to put on this, and the only thing I can really think of is, you know, the one experience I had of changing my mind on a very big issue is atheism. I grew up in a very, very religious household, and yet eventually I became an atheist, and and I would love to tell you how that happened. But in all honesty, I don't even know. You know, the real answer is there were a very, very large number of interactions and arguments and, you know, discussions that I had over a long period of time, and eventually I changed my mind.

0:57:28 Voicemail: And I don't know what the key thing was. I don't think it really was a key thing. It was, you now, a lot of little things. But the people that argued with me along the way were probably, felt like they were beating their heads against the wall, and we can't stop. Anyway, as always, love the show, man.

0:57:44 Thomas: Hey, I want to play this. I'm running out of time, so I could devote more time to it. But thanks, Hausdorff. I always love your calls. I appreciate them. And yeah, I too feel depressed often about this, you know. The more I learn about people changing their minds, the more depressed I am. It's tough. I think I do the same thing you do, too, where I think back, like, how did I change my mind on something? And I've talked about it on the show before. You know, for me, it was actually the, believe it or not, it It was the four horsemen of atheism who started me as a liberal. You know, they started turning me into a liberal because back then they were all liberal and they, and they were obviously so, you know, like it wasn't even, there were no bones about it. They're like, yeah, obviously we're not going to, what are we going to be Republicans?

0:58:31 Thomas: Crazy, you know, and, uh, that had a major impact on me and I, that's, that all I guess we can try to do is be good examples, you know, be, be intelligent, be smart, be reasonable, and also proudly be Democrats or liberal or whatever, you know, progressive, whatever level you're talking about, um, be good samples. You know, we can do our best to keep making good arguments, but yeah, it's hard. I, you, you whenever you try to argue with somebody about something like this, whether it be Trump support or whether it'd be nine 11 truth or something more intractable, it's it really makes you pessimistic, but but on the same token, it's really weird that it just so happens to always be 50 50, you know, like if no one changes their mind, which it feels like no one does, and we're all just polarized, we're looking at things through our polarized lens, and it's impossible, it's weird that it's like always somehow 50 50 Democrat Republican.

0:59:30 Thomas: Doesn't that seem impossible? How does that work? There must be some explanation for that. Let me know if you have any thoughts. So there must be Some play in the joints there. There must be some equilibrium that happens. I don't know. It's, it just seems like all those things can't be true. Like the premise that basically no one changes their mind. And, but also we're always pretty much 50, 50 on everything for like, it's just seems, it seems unrealistic to expect, But I also think it, it used to be different, you know, like it used to be that a lot of issues were less tied into identity, uh, than they are now, you know, and, uh... That's an interesting thing to look at. So, back in the day, I think there were fewer issues that were like, no, this is my identity is this issue.

1:00:15 Thomas: And, and when identities, uh… When issues aren't your identity, you're way more apt to change your mind on them, you know, when it's a fact that you don't really, yeah, your identity identity doesn't hinge one way or the other on whether or not it's true. You're far more open to changing your mind. Um, but I don't know. I don'T know if there's a good way to change that because I think these issues are identity driven. Like, uh, abortion rights are going to be a part of, uh certainly my identity because they affect, uh everybody. They affect the women in my life, you know? Like that, that, I'm always going to feel like that's tied with my identity. I'm not not changing my mind on that. And it feels that way for everybody. So how do we fix it? I don't know, but we're out of time. I could give you the easy couple word answer to it, but I'm all out of time.

1:01:04 Thomas: So I'm going to have to leave it there. But no, good food for thought and depressing food for thought. But we'll see. Maybe there will be some social science breakthrough that tells us the best way to change people's minds. I don't know. I know there's some social science on that. And I've, I've referenced some of it before. Um, but, uh, let me know if you got any links or talks or anything on along those lines or leave a voicemail or something, if you've got thoughts, cause I always want to hear them. All right. That's the show. Thank you so much to my callers. Um. I thank you for listening. Thank you most of all to my supporters at patreon.com/seriouspod and also seriouspod.com/support. You guys are the most important, you make the show happen, please consider pledging to the show. Now, I want to say this, I've got a bit of a programming note here.

1:01:55 Thomas: I am staring down the barrel, it's a very happy barrel, but I'm staring down the barrel of kid number two in about a month, if everything goes according to plan, and And I'm realizing now that as the show has evolved, as things have evolved, I'm I'm wondering if I'm not going to be able to keep up the promise of one episode a week. And therefore, if you're a website supporter, listen up. I am worried about that because website support is on a monthly basis. And furthermore, it's still based on two episode a weak rates, which I told people to edit down if they didn't want to. And a lot of people did edit those pledges down, but, but the, the rates are, if I end up not being able to deliver an episode a week, I feel horrible.

1:02:44 Thomas: If people are pledging for a full, you know, month's worth, all those episodes, and I'm not delivering. So as much as it's annoying, uh, and I's so sorry to do this to you. If you are a website donor, you might want to consider changing back to Patreon. No, it's, I know it's the worst, but I think it's the only way that's fair to you.

Now, I'm not going to make you, if you still want to pledge at a month level in the wake of certain uncertainty about episodes and amounts and stuff, I'm not going make you stop. I think you're incredibly generous, and I beg you to reconsider. But if you, ifyou won't, then fine. But if you're somebody who, you know, doesn't want to be pledging for a full month of episodes, if I'm going to come up short in a month, maybe, maybe consider, and I do not blame you at all, I want to emphasize, I, I absolutely do, that's totally fine, uh, I think you should only ever pledge what you're comfortable with and what you feel you, uh, you're getting good value from, and what you feel the show deserves, um, that's only ever what you should pledge, and, uh, maybe the best way to do that is Patreon now, because I don't have the ability to do that on my website, I can't really do a per, um, a per episode amount, it doesn't, doesn't really, I don't have the infrastructure to manage that.

So super sorry, but if you want to change from the website, just shoot me an email. I will absolutely cancel it and everything and get you squared away, because on patreon.com/seriouspod, it'll always just charge you for whenever I make an episode, it won't charge you any other time.

1:04:19 Thomas: So, um, sorry again, I know it's been a back and forth with a patron on the website. I can't apologize enough for that. Um, But that's the state of things now. And thank you so much. In any case, however you're supporting, thank you for watching. Thank you so many for making this show happen. I appreciate you so very much. And I love you. And I will see you next time I see you.