SIO202: The Russia Hoax Hoax

Transcript

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

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 202, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and, alright, I, uh, step one, I am doing this one by myself, I do plan on having Jamie back, we are coordinating and working together on future episodes, but, you know, I have so much backlog of emails and voicemails that I want to make sure to get to because I'm sad to get so much good response and then not use it because I was on that hiatus.

So I've got a lot to get to. And then of course, what, what inevitably happens is I get to, I go back to email. That's even, this is like from maybe April or something. So it's, it's old, right? And I, you know, I'm going through it. I read a few things. Well, that's good.

That's good, and I come across one and I get sucked into a vortex of just a certain issue and a certain person and a certain thing that has me kind of so, I don't know like, I have so much to say I'm going start with that and I'm gonna see how far I get I hope I have more that I can get to, but this is I think this is like an important topic so I'm gong to start here and we'll see where we get, alright, so

0:01:45 Thomas: An emailer by the name of Bob emailed, and this is, so we're gonna have to go back a bit, this is regarding something I must have said, I can't quite remember now, but it's something I must have said about Glenn Greenwald back when the Barr letter came out. If you don't know Glenn Greenwald, I assume you do, but he's, it's hard to even know how to describe him. He's very anti-media and anti-, I don't know, I guess, America in a lot of ways.

Think, think Noam Chomsky. He is a big fan of Noam Chomsky's, unless it's Republicans who are proving liberals wrong, then all of a sudden he's a big fan of government. It's weird, it's weird. I genuinely don't know how to account for a lot of it, but I'm going to, I'm gonna go through some stuff. So back when the Bar letter came out, before even the, you know, cause the Mueller report didn't come out for a while after that.

So before any of that, um, Greenwald and others did a victory lap on the fact that they had said there was nothing to this Russia conspiracy thing. MSNBC, he hates MSNBC. Glenn does. I'll read you some tweets. And he thinks that, you know, Rachel Maddow has raked in tons of money by peddling conspiracy theories about Russia and other people like that. He has nothing but vitriol for these people.

And I think the point I made at the beginning, that, that, I think, is what prompted this email was, do you mean to tell me that Glenn Greenwald, the most skeptical, again, think Noam Chomsky, who just doesn't trust any, like, hates all American governments ever because they're war criminals and all that, like, and, you know, he has some good points, that's the thing about trying to be a reasonable person in this day and age, everyone has some points for the most part, and it's about, it's hard to not do the thing that we all want to do, you, many people.

And I think Greenwald is guilty of this too, which is it's, it's all black or white. Like, this person's either totally full of shit, like, couldn't be more wrong, or they're 1000% right. I'm going to try not to do that. I think that Chomsky has a lot of great points. Um, but I also think he's a little further on the thinking everybody who ever tried to run the government is evil than I am. I think there, I think a lot is incompetence.

I, I there's some, you know, know, good intentions gone awry kind of thing. So anyway, that aside, so Glenn Greenwald, someone who's famously distrustful, mistrustful of, of government, and of even of Obama, of all that, like pro leaks and trying to get to the whole power to account, accepts a four page letter and then instantly goes on a victory lap about how, well, that problem solved. There's no Russia anything because a Republican hack wrote a four-page letter.

And I just thought that was was such glaring hypocrisy, that even if almost everything Greenwald thinks about the Mueller report and about the Russia conspiracy stuff, even if he were right about that, and I don't think he is, I think he plays kind of fast and loose with the language he uses, even if he were right, it is insanely hypocritical to take a four-page memo and declare victory when historically you've been the most government skeptical person on the planet.

So, so, like, that was what I commented. So, I got an email that I think looked into some of these issues. I want to read it. It's from someone named Bob. "Hi, Thomas. I will not excuse anything, and I don't have your experiences, I don't use Twitter, and saw some truly obnoxious takes on Reddit, so I know there are bad takes on this, but I want to write you because Glenn Greenwald and others don't represent my perspective." Okay.

"I consider myself" in the segment, you talked about radical far left, and side note, this is me. Uh, I, there's another reason I wanted to read this, is because I do have a lot of, you know, people who will situate themselves like as, "Hey Thomas, I'm way more left than you," and this is my thing, and I, I love you guys, I'm glad you listened to the show. Uh, and I hearing from somebody like that is great. And so another reason I wanted to read this email.

Okay, going back to it. "I think some of" quote unquote "us being the radical far left get a perverse and wrongheaded pleasure from bashing liberals and centrists, the same way Ben Shapiro style alt-righters logic dunking on AOC do. It can be cathartic, but often loses perspective and veers into bashing for the sake of bashing. I oppose this and I don't support it when it is done on the basis of uninformed spite.

I think the underlying criticism is valid, even if the Mueller report were peak yodel and proved to be and prove Trump had exchanged money bags with Putin, photos included, it would not change the underlying fact that too many people voted for him. I remember Eli, I think it was, saying that one of the worst parts of the election was knowing that so many of your neighbors were willing to vote for Trump.

None of that is solved by anything in a peak yodel report that doesn't fault the DNC, but it does let us, quote unquote, quote, get cheap shots in at liberals when what we perceive as naive belief in the system leads to disappointment. Basically, my own sentiment is there are no magic words in law and politics. Power will protect power.

A big part of the backlash was two years of pent up emotion about the perception we have of the Democratic Party doing anything to not look at themselves when explaining why Hillary lost. In that way, the whole Russia thing is an awful good way to completely avoid self-criticism and blame the entire loss on Russian trolls and change nothing.

The last reason I see is the hypocrisy of making a whole election cycle about Russian meddling in our elections after literally 50 years of American interference in other countries, not limited to elections, but whatever fuckery the CIA has been up to and still is. While I appreciate the need for defense against foreign interference and having electoral integrity, the fact that it has led to absolutely no critique of U.S. foreign policy is astounding, is the epitome of 'when I do it, it's just; when you do it, it's criminal' style hypocrisy. Sorry for the wall of text, but many of my points are things that I've been wanting to say for some time, especially the part of the Greenwald crowd not representing everyone of quote unquote 'us,' even if I probably agree with him on more points than you do." So yeah, that's the end of email.

So, and another reason I brought this up is I recently responded to a Greenwald tweet that was essentially just like, hey, everyone is subscribing to the New York Times, still a brave act of resistance, and oh yeah, remember the Mueller report.

And you know, I just noted, like, "Oh, these are talking points for, uh, for for Tucker Carlson Tonight," because that's what he does, he goes on Tucker Carlson, he bashes liberals, he feeds the right wing, uh, and he contributes to basically white nationalism when you go on Tucker Carlson.

I don't care that Glenn Greenwald thinks he's this, he's the only real left, and he's the guy who's, he actually is, he's so far left that he needs to put Democrats in their place, and even if you buy some of that, which I can even go with him on some of this, I'm going to do my best in looking at some of these arguments, and I mean this, there are things that Glenn Greenwald says that are right. It's true.

Like, there's a lot, and I've said this to myself, I can't stand CNN. There's a lot of CNN and MSNBC, I don't watch either of them, I don't watch cable news, which is maybe one reason I don't have a lot of these same impressions and feelings as he does. But like, there's a lot about the cable news money making, you know, machine that turns our pain essentially in this country and anguish into their profit because we can't stop watching them because they're talking about Russia conspiracies.

I accept that. Well, it's not my critique to accept, I guess, but it's, I agree with that, actually, I agree I lot of that, I probably wouldn't go as far, but I agree With with that as a premise, and I think it's a pushback that we can and should give to these networks.

0:09:54 Thomas: But when you are going, that said, when you are going night after night on the Tucker Carlson white supremacy hour, which is just full of racist garbage and is doing real harm to the country, and, and you, not just like watch that, but like go on and contribute to their narrative by having a laugh with Tucker Carlson about how dumb the left is, you, you are giving weight, you're giving energy, you were giving support and momentum to a, Tucker Carlson is a white nationalist, like it really, I, it's, it, and the response I always get from, uh, not, not only you see it in Greenwald's tweets, but, like, his defenders, oh, MSNBC banned him.

So, yeah, naturally, the thing you have to do when a network bans you is go on a white nationalist show. That's what you have to do. Sorry. No other choices. That is it. Can't do anything else. You can't try to maybe be more diplomatic with other networks to get your criticism in a way that maybe they will accept it.

You cannot work tactically to try to have your voice heard by either CNN or MSNBC, or by the way, can't maybe just stick to your own channels, maybe a podcast, maybe a YouTube. Nope. You have to go on the white power hour with Tucker Carlson and you have, you just have to, no other choice. You've been banned from the other network. So that's the only option. That's, that's absurd. It's it's, and frankly, it's evil. Like it's harmful and it's not okay.

The only maybe acceptable, um, Tucker Carlson appearance is if you go on and literally just like dismantle his white supremacy the entire time. And if you do that, it won't see the light of day. It won't get aired because people have tried, but like, that's the only acceptable thing to do. Or, you know, if you like wear a shirt that, that sneak some, somehow sneak it into his audience that, uh, he's terrible. That's it. I mean, it is just unacceptable.

It's like going on the Steve King hour, you know, or the, any other of these white supremacists, like you have the choice to not do that. You don't, there's nothing that says you, you, Glenn Greenwald, have to be on TV. I'm pretty sure you're set where you are, you know. So that's a major problem I have with him. And it, so, but here's why I wanted to bring this up. I wanted to talk about, this is something that's been bothering me for a while.

And I know that, you know, by now the Mueller report is sort of old news. And certainly, you know, this Barr letter is kind of old new news a little bit, but like, I think we're still beating ourselves up in a lot of ways. Now, first thing I want to say, and this is, again, I'm doing my best. I want to be fair to arguments that are good. Glenn Greenwald has a lot of examples.

If you go back through his feed and stuff, he's got a lot of examples of people going too far on Russia conspiracy stuff. And that's fine. That good, good criticism. And I will say this. Here's a frustrating thing. So with that criticism accepted and there are specific things, and I personally, I don't watch Maddow or any of these shows, so it's hard. So for me, I didn't really feel like I have a lot of responsibility in that.

And if you listen to Opening Arguments, I have consistently said from the beginning that I don't think that Trump is like a Russian stooge, and this long predates this, that I don't think that he's a puppet, that I just don't think Trump even operates in that way. It was never logical to think Trump would operate as a puppet for anyone else. He's a narcissist. Narcissists don't do that. They're not going to be like, oh, what can I do for Mr. Putin?

No, but it was and is reasonable to worry about the moneyed interest that Trump had in Russia. It's absolutely reasonable. It's the kind of thing that Glenn Greenwald would do with anyone else if Glenn Greenwald got the story that like, oh, Barack Obama actually got a ton of money in the pharmaceutical. Of course, he would say, wow, that's a conflict.

And yet, even though we know so much about the Trump Russia, like the building, the hotel, you know, like Trump Russia Hotel Project, all that stuff. Somehow that is is not cause for alarm for Glenn Greenwald. It's absurd to be worried about it. It is insane. Like, how do you not see that as a genuine issue? And also, here's another thing that I find to be a contradiction.

You know, as I was going back through this feed, because I was trying to find the Glenn, because I remember there was like a specific Glenn Greenwald tweet about the Bar memo that really set me off. Funny thing is the guy tweets so much. I like can't find it. I look back on the date range, but he, you know, there's a ton of stuff here to go through.

And so part of what I saw was I came across this thing where he was talking about how he doesn't get to go on MSNBC anymore. And he mentioned the fact, Glenn Greenwald mentioned the fact that like, oh, I always knew that Obama was never going to punish any of the, you know, like Wall Street people who were responsible for the 2008-9 crash. And I want to think about the logic of that for a second. So on one hand, you've got, and that's a complicated issue.

It's something that I've meant to do a deep dive on. I've looked into a little bit, but haven't. From my understanding, I don't really think that there was anybody like Obama or whether it's Eric Holder, who's like this, you know, shady dealings and trying to let people off. The problem is, like, we also don't have a lot of good laws for prosecuting like individuals who are part of a corporations, you know, corporations that were making like our law is not set up to punish those people.

And that is not good. I'm not excusing. I think if there are ways to change the law to make it such that those people get punished, we should absolutely do that. And maybe you could argue that somewhere in there, there might have been the prosecutorial discretion to try to prosecute some of these banks and stuff that did the shady stuff.

But from the research I've done into it, and I'm open to having my mind changed if everybody has any good links on this, they just couldn't find... Because it's the same problem we always run into when we talk about this stuff on Opening Arguments. You always have to have intent. You have to know that they're trying to do something, and then you got to prove that they knew it, and then all this.

And then the law might not be there anyway, because it's not like our laws are really written to protect us from the banks all that much. So the idea that it was this great scandal that Obama didn't personally like wrestle the people who were responsible and put them in jail. There's two levels of hypocrisy to this about Glenn Greenwald that bother me.

One, if you take that principle, that is Obama is going or Eric Holder or somebody is going to find a way to punish people because we really want them to and not because they actually violated the law in an obvious way that would make an easy case for prosecution. That would be something that if it were the other way, Greenwald would go nuts on. Oh, how would you, how are you exercising this extra presidential power that you, this is authoritarian, blah, blah.

The other thing is, I would like to point out the interesting assumptions there that it's, it's as obvious and it's clear as day to Glenn Greenwald that even though there was no Mueller report saying this, and even though none of these bankers were prosecuted, he knows, Glenn Greenwald knows there are bankers who committed crimes and should have been prosecuted for them. And even though there's no report on this, there's no, there was no special investigation.

There's no way he would know that other than he just knows, like maybe, maybe read something or whatever. There was no official special investigation into it. And yet, so that, but keep that on one mind. And yet when the government, when Bill Barr and Mueller, two Republicans investigate a Republican president and people around them, and, uh, then issue a lot of indictments, by the way, but don't issue specifically any indictments on Russian conspiracy, then all of a sudden, the government's word is gospel.

The Republicans investigating themselves, their word is gospel. No one did anything wrong. It's totally fine. Do you notice the contradiction there? It seems like a little bit of motivated reasoning. And so here's what I want to say about the Russia thing. And this is why I think this is still relevant.

And it's not just, this isn't just, I'm going to morph away from an attack on Glenn Greenwald, but it's just so hard when you start reading his feed and you're just like, like, oh, this guy is so obnoxious. It's so hard because he has some good points in there. I want to emphasize there are things I agree with him on. And there are totally good criticisms of some of the conspiracy mongering that happened.

And that's a tough pill to swallow because, you know, people on the left like me would love to believe that the whole left is great and smart and the whole right is dumb. That's just not how it is. Like, there's plenty of people who got way too carried away with Russia conspiracy. Plenty, funny. I strongly believe, I will defend my record, I do not believe that was me.

But I will say this, it wasn't insanity to look at the evidence, all of which is really not disputed. Like, there aren't a whole lot of things that in the media, I'm talking like New York Times, I am not talking MSNBC, you know, musings, but like New York Times, Washington Post, all all the major investigatory journalism that happened before the Mueller report, there were not too many facts that were like gotten wrong.

You know, there wasn't a whole lot that was like, they just made that up. I think there was something where people thought that there was a meeting that took place that maybe didn't. But the point is this, the emails where Donald Trump Jr. said, if it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the fall or whatever it was. That's real. That's true. The Trump Tower meeting is real. That's not in dispute.

So to say it was like some sort of insanity for the left to connect these dots, to say we've got, we know that one of the, I'm forgetting now, but, you know, one of people who's under arrest right now gave the polling data to the Russians, like that they had gave their campaign data.

And then just because it turns out that technically wasn't illegal, like you're allowed to share that data, for it to say that this is gaslighting to me for Greenwald and others to say you were crazy, you were tinfoil hat wearers to take a look at to see these dots, to see Trump being really friendly to Putin too, like that's another thing, insanely friendly to Putin, doing things that benefit Russia in certain obvious ways, and when the Republican Party was never that, the Republican Party was always the tough on Russia, Cold War, whatever, to see what all those dots and connect them.

It wasn't insanity. And I don't even know for sure how much of it was wrong. Now, here's what I will say. And I'll say it again. It was never true. I never thought it was true that Trump was some stooge of Putin's. But it could certainly have been true. And it may well still be true that Donald was acting more in Putin's interest than in the US's interest in various ways. That's absolutely true.

And it doesn't, just because the meddling in the election turns out that the Russian meddling and the election was probably just Russia and not the Trump campaign helping them, is that really what we're saying? We're using that to say the Russia gate conspiracy thing was all a hoax, like there was nothing there. And then, so so that's the counter.

And the email, and the reason I brought that up is the email says this, and also Glenn Greenwald makes this point a lot too, where they say it's hypocrisy to make the whole election cycle. FYI, we haven't done that. No one did that. 2018, the midterms were because of healthcare, because of different issues. Nobody was running on Russia. That's just not true. Like, sure, people might mention it from time to time. Candidates might mention, it just might, like they might mention a lot of issues.

Find me a candidate who ran on Russia, please. Like if I'm, I'm all ears. If you like, but okay. So back to, back to the email, the idea that there's a hypocrisy here because the U.S. has interfered with other countries all the time in their elections. So therefore, okay. Here's what I want to say about that. I don't know why I am to be be held account for things the CIA has done and therefore can't be critical of of Russia

0:22:23 Thomas: Tampering with our elections to benefit specifically Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Are you really saying that? Because, and by the way, a lot of this BS that, that, you know, America has done, and there's a ton, most of that is under Republicans. Republicans that's like Reagan stuff, that's like Bush senior stuff, that George W. Bush stuff, and then you're saying because they did that, and you know, we can look at Clinton too, he's not the greatest, like, I'll grant that, and we can, uh, look at the Obama criticisms, I don't know too much, I can't, let me know, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe under Obama there was any like election hacking and disinformation campaigns, you know, like, feel free, give me that evidence. But that's another thing that gets blurred here. If we try to do something to promote democracy somewhere, and I hate this because I have to keep giving these caveats. I don't defend a ton of, yes, there are countless examples of the CIA and the military, all this stuff, of our government being crappy.

But if we are talking about maybe what happened under Obama, or maybe what might be a more mainstream Democratic view on what we could do if we want to try to influence countries more toward democracy and less toward, uh, dictatorships, by, I don't know, trying to put some, uh, like pamphlets out, or trying to put some better information or whatever, especially in non-violent ways, that's, that's a way to try to do that. That doesn't involve military, that doesn't, whatever.

But if we're just trying to help information out there, we're trying to give resources to people who want to start revolution against some of these awful dictators and that kind of thing, that to me, and maybe there's some overstepping, there's some bad stuff that's done, I granted, that to me is is a world different than Russia, like creating fake stuff and like making us completely mistrust what truth even is in our country. I don't, like, show me where a Democrat did that.

And if you do, that's awesome, I won't support it. So my point is, I feel like I, as a voter, I, as a 33 year old Democrat who was a pretty big fan of, am a pretty big fan, Obama, but, you know, not as though that means I endorsed every single thing he did, the idea that I'm not allowed to say that Russia meddling in our election to help Trump is not okay, that's not fair. I get to say that.

Now, you-know-who probably can't say that is like Dick Cheney or something, you know, like, if somebody was involved in this, or was it like voted for this policy, or supports it, is like, hey, no fair when you do it, yeah, sure. I, but I, I'm not, that, why, why in the world would I be held to this stuff to, uh, to account for stuff that governments, have mostly Republican presidents, by the way, did, why would that be my fault?

And, and, and make it so that I can't say that that's something that shouldn't have been done. And by the way, if there was any Trump collusion in that, which there could have been, it's still not a hundred percent sure that there wasn't.

And this is another reason why it's so maddening to see Greenwald et al., people who are historically incredibly mistrustful of governments and what they say, to take a Republican, not even by the way, just Mueller, to take the Republican hack memo about what the Mueller report said as the gospel truth and that that there's no wrongdoing here.

When we know that the Mueller report also says and outlines how much obstruction there was and how much uncooperative witnesses and the fact that we didn't ever get to nail down Trump on these. We didn't get to, unlike Clinton, he didn't have to actually testify or whatever or give deposition. So like to say all that and to say, despite all that obstruction that we know happened, we can conclusively say that there wasn't any sort of help or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

I don't know that we can say that for sure. And imagine if I use that against Glenn Greenwald regarding Wall Street in 2008. Hey, Glenn, no one was charged. No one was indicted for being, you know, for corruption or whatever you want to say, for financial crime. For 2008, 2009, that crash, no one was indicted. So we know that nobody did anything wrong. What? We know for sure no one was indicted. Mueller didn't do it. No special counsel did it. So no one did anything wrong.

What do you mean? What do we mean? You might still have suspicions that somebody did something wrong. Nope. Sorry. Unacceptable. And the last thing I want to say on this, hopefully, and again, it's so, this just really, people like Greenwald do frustrate me, I have to admit it. It's people who always double down, he always doubles down. Do you notice that?

Always doubles down, never, ever admits the slightest wrong, and I don't think you could fairly say that about like me or Andrew on Opening Arguments, we literally do segments that are like Thomas was wrong, Andrew was wrong. I just don't think like, that's what drives me so nuts about Greenwald. It's, it's, I don't think it's a reliable way to have access to true information. I don't think he's a reliable source because he's also very smart and informed guy.

And so that's a bad combination when you're, when you you're a, you're not, you, you just unable to admit being wrong ever about anything. And B you're actually really smart and knowledgeable and you know, don't have a lot of experience. That can be a potent combination, in my opinion. That means you can always find some way rhetorically to justify what you're saying forever.

And I don't think those people are often the most reliable sources of information because they're never going to tell you if they get something wrong. They're going to double down and they're going to creatively find a way to defend it. And that's what I think. If I'm wrong about this, I will admit I'm wrong about whatever. Anything anybody gives me a good link proves me wrong. I do fully intend to do that in the future for anything because I think that is important.

Not doubling down forever is a good, important quality. Okay, but sorry, back to the final thing I wanted to say, and it is, this is another reason I did this, uh, very long segment that isn't, it's already like a full episode, um, I am just endlessly, I don't know, confused, befuddled, frustrated by how much Democrats are willing to bend themselves around the axle, trying to not make an issue out of electing the most, like, criminal president ever, since Nixon probably, probably, or maybe even like counting Nixon. Why do we keep doing this?

Well, it's weird. I don't know who started it. Like, I honestly don't know. It's impossible to say if it's like something that kind of we took from the right, like we internalized a criticism from Fox News where they're like, wow, they're just running on this Russia conspiracy and they're not helping the American people. But you always hear it in this way. Look, the American people don't care about Trump, Russia, they want to know that they have food on the table and the health care.

And it's sure. I think that the reason it's taking off so much for Democrats is that I believe in aggregate, on average, Democrats are the kind of people who like those kind of counterintuitive,

0:30:10 Thomas: More principled stances where it's like, look, we need to make sure we're still helping the workers, that we're still giving everybody healthcare. And like, I do agree that we need to do that, but we don't need to do the part where we're constantly beating ourselves up for something we're not doing, you know, cause we're not like none of the candidates make that big of a deal about Trump, Russia. And honestly, I think they should be making more of it. We should be running on it more.

Like it's cause there's no, the problem is there's just no shortage of things. And I do get the message that Trump-Russia, and this is what I want to talk about in the email, where people keep saying, oh, you're trusting the system. Oh, this is a way, the Mueller report and all that stuff, that was a way to still trust the system, and it was an excuse for why Trump won.

Now that, okay, if there are people who think that Russia was responsible for Trump winning, then I absolutely vehemently just don't think that's true. I think it's quite clear the Electoral College is responsible for Trump winning. So when you say in your email, kind of, that like part of your criticism is people want to still believe in the system, I don't really know what that means. What do people keep saying when they say you agree with the system? And it always comes from these far lefties.

Does it mean that I'm supposed to say we need a revolution and to overthrow the government? I genuinely don't know because I don't trust the system. I just want to do what can be done to make things better for people. And if that means if enough of us vote, we can actually do it. So if you're saying that's me trusting the system, I don't really, like, I don't know how to respond to that.

If any work within a system means I trust it, that's just a straw man. Like, I don't think there's anything better. Here's what I always think about this, you know, sort of revolutionary thinking.

0:32:07 Thomas: If you cannot get enough people to vote for the things you want, but you think you can get enough people for like an armed overthrow of the government, how does that math work out? Voting is a lot easier and way less commitment than taking up arms and changing a system.

And an emailer, I want to make clear, I don't know that you're saying this, this is just me responding to like that general, like, um, criticism of like, no, we need a revolution, stop trusting the system, there just isn't an alternative, that's not going to happen, and because of that reason, if you, if you think you can somehow get the numbers to do an overthrow of our government or something and like rewrite the constitution, I guess, how could you have that level of support but not enough support to just vote Elizabeth Warren with 60 super progressive senators in, you know, or something.

I, it's, that math has never made any sense to me. It really hasn't. Um, and I think I, but I think what, what bothers me about people saying I trust the system or whatever that thing is, is I don't like, I absolutely effing lootly do not trust the system. We just have to deal with what the situation on the ground is.

And if you gave me some path of action that's going to make things better for people that has any chance of happening, I would take it. Like, do you think, how do you, how are we changing the system right now? How's that happening? Okay, tell me, tell me how, and and we can do that.

What we can't do is try to overcome the horrible system that's in place that I don't agree with, which is that these stupid red states with nobody in them and a few cows get as much of a say in the Senate and disproportionate, say, in the Electoral College, that's a horrible system. I hate the system. But we have to overcome it or something, mean, I don't know. So anyway, but also this idea that like we're all running on the Russia thing.

Oh, no, I remember what I want to say. I want to say this. I never looked to the Mueller report as an excuse for why Democrats lost. Lost. I think I know why Democrats lost comfortably. I don't know. I feel like we all kind of do. A, the Electoral College, because we won. In any way that matters, Democrats won by three million votes. We just did. I mean, that's how it is.

Oh, well, if the system was different, then the Republicans would have campaigned differently, and I'm sure they would have still won the popular vote. No, they would not have. I do not see any evidence for for that. Like all of a sudden you just, that's, wouldn't it be the same as us saying like, okay, well we won the popular vote. If it was the Electoral College that mattered, we would have campaigned differently and then we would've won it. What? No, we lost it. Anyway.

Um, so we won A and B, the horrible Electoral College prevented us from actually winning. But I just think it is the case. My view is that there are, like you said, the quote was that, and that might've been me, or it might've been Eli, that there are too many people in our country who are horrible people and who think, or at least at the very least, I won't say that, but at the very least have horrible political views. There are too many people like that.

And I don't, I don't do this beating up of Democrats thing because they aren't able to convince the right. Like the, you know, like the right isn't able to convince the left, the left isn't able to convince the right. We're kind of in this weird, it's weird that it's so even. I don't know. That must be some higher scientific principle behind that. Like it must divide out to be roughly even somehow.

But like, I think, you know, if we were running an election in 1850, then I could look it up and figure all that out. And the abolitionist candidate lost, which probably happened in uh, in one of those years. Why is that the fault of the people who believed in the abolition of slavery? Like, oh, they, they need to look inward and do what? Like be pro-slavery? No, it's just sometimes the people in the country aren't that great and don't have that good of views.

And we can all try to look for ways to convince people better. Sure. We can all do that. But like, I, I don't, aren't we already all doing that? Like, what are we, what are we doing that's so wrong? You know, I don't know. I guess I'm not as hard on, and you know, it's funny, this is something that I think Jamie and I might disagree on in certain respects, so that might make an interesting conversation later. I hope we do have it.

But I'm just less hard on maybe Democrats as a whole for losing elections. I think it's hard. I think that, for one thing, the kinds of people who support Democrats are the kinds of people who usually are more marginalized anyway, and so it's harder to vote.

You know, if you are the party of the poor, which I would hope that Democrats should be when they're at their best, and this is speaking very generally, you know, it's, there's, anyway, I won't bog myself down with caveats, but like in general, if you want to be the party of unions of, you know, of laborers, of people, who are not as well off, that means by definition, you're going to to be the party of people who have less power.

Like if you want to be the party for the disenfranchised and you want help people who, it's in the name, like who literally are disenfranchised, that means it's harder. You know, like, so I just think it's always going to, we're always going to be at a certain disadvantage, um, given that old white people have nothing but time to go vote. And so they vote disproportionately. They affect our elections so much more than any other group.

Uh, and that's, uh, that's tough, you know, like we can beat ourselves up about it, but it's also just systemic. Alright, I'm going to attempt to get to some other questions because I can't believe I took that whole time on one. Damien asks, curious what you think, oh, this was related to the voting age argument when I said that voting age should be lower to 16. Curious what you thing about 16 year olds being treated as adults in the court system.

It seems like most of the same arguments you make for them being allowed to vote would also work for why they should be treated as adults in court and maybe even allowed to join the military too. I mean, there are thousands of underage kids from the U.S. that enlisted in World War II. I have a 16-year-old, and he and his friends are pretty split on the voting issue, but none want to join the military. Thanks for your show. Okay.

Uh, interesting, and I chose this one because it made me think something, I, here's the thing about these hypotheticals, what do you think it should mean to be treated as an adult, or tried as an adults, because I, there's gonna be our problem, you know, I can't endorse the current justice system in almost any way, so, for me to say idealistically, 16 year olds should be able to vote because, you, you know, like they're going to be affected by stuff longer.

Side note, I heard, I think it was on the Ezra Klein Show, I can't remember, but I heard someone talk about an interesting proposal. Again, this will never happen, but just for fun, of what we should do to change voting. And one of them was your vote should be weighted by your age because you have to, and there's a very good logical reason, not to do with like smartness or anything or level of information, but you have to live with the consequences longer.

So if you're 85 years old, what is it you could vote for? You know, what's your outlook on how long policies need to work for you versus if you're 18, you have to live with these consequences forever. So it's an interesting side note. But no, I think that our whole criminal justice system isn't really right. We punish people too much for everything.

And it's shown that that doesn't really help, uh, it doesn't, we don't have less crime because of it, from the studies I've seen, we just lock people up and lock people up, so I don't think it's, when you say it seems like the same arguments I make for for being allowed to vote would work for why they should be treated as an adult, I'm not entirely sure that's true, my arguments were that these things affect them, that they, you know, like there's a lot of policies that directly affect them and it's going to affect them for longer.

And like some of the counter arguments, some of the arguments I made were more counter arguments where if someone says, well, 16 year olds don't have enough information to vote, my counter is, well, do you test to ensure that, you know, adult voters have enough information? The answer is no. And okay, well, they're not, they haven't learned, they're smart enough, they hadn't learned enough to vote. Well, do we test to make sure that adult voters have learned?

No. Like it's so, for me, it's kind of just an interesting argument in that way that it's like it's so easy to defend in some ways, but, um, so that's not the same, I think the argument for them being treated as adults, um, if you were to really, if I were to try to puzzle out why our system does and doesn't do that, um, it mostly has to do with them being black or not, so that's step one, um, because we have a racist system, but, um, it would be to do with, like just talking theoretically, why you would treat kids differently than adults, it would be to do with, you know, they haven't fully developed, there's more opportunity for them to change, for them to rehabilitate, you can't hold them as accountable for bad things they do.

0:41:44 Thomas: And that to me, I don't think that is quite the same as the argument I'm making for them to be able to vote. So logically, I just kind of disagree a little bit. But I would say if I don't know that there should be a whole lot of difference hypothetically between how we treat kids and adults in the criminal justice system.

I mean, there's a little bit, especially if it's like a super young age, you know, if like if somehow a nine year old, like, you know, shoot somebody accidentally or does something where you're charging them, I think it's usually understood that like, okay, they don't know what they're doing. And that's fine. I like that. The part where we're more forgiving of young people is fine.

I think we should take the entire thing down several notches so that there's not such a gulf between trying people as an adult and trying people as a whatever, a 16 year old kid. There shouldn't be as big a difference because we shouldn't lock people away for just decades and decades for stuff. So that's what I think. I don't know. I don't think there's any value.

0:42:51 Thomas: I adult because, well, for one, isn't the science that like your prefrontal cortex isn't fully fully engaged until you're like 21 or something, around more around that age? So if anything, we should extend that up a bit, you know, impulse control is not quite at full throttle.

Actually, I just live fact-checked myself here, it looks like it's even mid-twenties, so if anything, that should, we should be more lenient toward people all the way into their mid-20s for scientific reasons, but I just think we should more leniant to everybody, or at least certain, certain stuff is way too penalized, and this is speaking in vast generalities, because I'm, you know, this is, I'd have to do a full deep dive to get into some of this, to any, any one of these, these things, but in general, we punish people way too much, so I don't care about, you You know, I think it's hard to answer your hypothetical because I don't think there should be such a difference between trying people as adults and as children as there is.

All right, you know what, I just realized it's been so long since I've given my fine, fine patrons a reason to be a patron, something that I'm hoping to do more now, especially with Jamie's help, maybe going forward, but I, so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna answer a few questions for patrons only here in a little bonus extendo episode, please go to patreon.com/seriouspod and support the show.

0:44:16 Thomas: Why aren't Republicans just happy with Mike Pence? Why don't they just give up and realize that he would be just as good? I'm to talk about those in a special patron-only part of the show. To everyone else, thank you so much for listening. I still have a lot of catching up to you. I'm gonna try to get to more voicemails. Maybe I'll do an extra episode or something because there's so much. And it's hard because it's great stuff.

Like it's, you know, that's why I don't want to just like leave it behind. I mean, I admittedly have to leave a lot of it behind, but I don't want to leave all of it behind because there's some really good questions there. I also am going to, by the way, I'm going to flag some questions maybe that, that even if they're not directed to Jamie or anything that, that she might have a good input on.

I mean I'm sure that's most of them, but not the ones where it's like dependent on something I said in a show. So I'm trying to, more general questions so So that maybe we could do a Q&A together sometime soon. So that'll be really fun. But with that said, go over to Patreon if you aren't already. Hear this extra segment. Otherwise, I will see you next time.