SIO240: Listener Questions, Continued!

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 240, I'm Thomas, and that over there is Jamie, how you doing, Jamie? Mm, so much better than, you know, the last episode, now, probably about the same as the last one, we've got way more questions that still need answering from our fine, fine listeners, so we're doing round two of Q&A, I am excited, I sure, you know, it's not as though Jamie and I could ever stop talking if we, you You know, like we could probably go back and forth on stuff forever anyway. So we'll see if we get to more questions or if we just start arguing again. I don't know. Either way, I'm kind of fine with it.

0:00:36 Jamie: Thomas, how about you?

0:01:07 Jamie: Yeah, I, I am, you know, could talk pretty much all the time anyway, and now that there's a plague and I'm desperate for human contact, I think I can talk literally forever, so let's do it.

0:01:17 Thomas: Well, I know one question that is sure to get you going. Here's a question from one of our listeners. Can I get Jamie and Thomas on record saying that Buttigieg was the one that could have unified the party and got people excited and have no sexual assault charges? Well, I agree on the last part so far that we know of.

0:01:20 Jamie: Uh-oh.

0:01:38 Jamie: Yeah, so, I mean, I would be thrilled if the Democrats could have nominated a candidate without sexual harassment charges, that would have been great, But oh my God, no, this idea that Pete Buttigieg was going to somehow unify the Democratic Party when he had almost no support amongst Black people or the Hispanic population is just absolutely insane to me. And it's hard for me to understand how this question could have been even answered or asked seriously. Yeah,

0:02:13 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I don't understand what that could mean. What is you defying the party means short of getting more votes? Like, how how would you say the guy who got way fewer votes could have done better to get more votes, you know what I mean? It seems kind of backwards to me. I think there's only one sense. OK, there's an obvious sense in which the person who is going to unify the most of the party would be the person who gets the most votes. And so that's that's one one thing that seems like an accurate measure of who would unify the party as much. But I would say maybe the only other thing would be, is there someone who was people everybody's like second choice, like more more Democrats would have been OK with as a nominee? And I think that's probably probably Warren, but also probably Bernie.

0:03:00 Thomas: Bernie. I think that enough people liked Bernie that that, you know, like and the fact that Bernie had so many more votes than third place, whoever that ended up being. I think it's a boring answer in that I think if you're looking at, OK, who was the Democrat who was going to unite the party the most? Honestly, it's whoever got the most votes because that's who, you know, the only other way you could talk about is, is there somebody who for some reason people didn't vote for, but that would, that more people would be okay with. And I think that probably the case would be made for Elizabeth Warren. I think the polls showed that she had the most second choice support and a lot of people wanted her to be president if they could wave a magic wand. There was that kind of question.

0:03:46 Thomas: A lot of people said, oh, sure, I would make her president, but I can't support her because she's going to lose in the general, or maybe maybe because they didn't think she could, um, you know, win in just the primary. So that would be the only other way, but I cannot see all that aside. Those are like the only realistic ways I can see of analyzing this question. There's no analysis I can see that gets you to Pete Buttigieg.

I don't understand where you would get there. Like I get that, uh, the questioner likes Pete Buttigieg and I, you know, I, I do want to say this too.

And I said it at the time, nobody treated me personally with more respect in arguing than Buttigieg supporters in the primary like honestly like there's bad blood between it and I said a lot of bad things about Buttigieg and the supporters who emailed me were always very respectful and I do really like that and I the best thing I can say about Pete Buttigieg is that was a top-down effort like he he really did try uh there was a lot like campaign work done and like um campaign instruction to all his delegates and all that stuff was about taking the high road. And I do respect that. And I do respect the people who supported Buttigieg were very respectful to me personally in my, you know, in my limited experience there, but short of that, I don't, there's nothing else that I could say that, that would make Buttigieg anywhere near my top pick for somebody who would have united the party.

0:05:07 Jamie: So I'm actually going to say in my experience, I found Pete Buttigieg's supporters to be the most aggressive and the most hostile and the most disrespectful of any of the other candidates' supporters in my personal experience. And that does not include the listener who wrote in. I know who the listener is. He is exempt from that. He was exemplary in any of our exchanges.

But otherwise, people that were Buttigie's supporters were far worse to me and far more hostile and far more aggressive than the supporters of any other candidate, and this was not just the case between sort of casual Buttigieg supporters who identified him as his first choice, but people like officially affiliated with the campaign as well, and so my experience was very different than yours in that regard I do want to say though, to - no, I just, I just want to throw this out there because there's been a lot of talk about the role that misogyny has played in the 2020 election as well as the the 2016 election. And I really think it's important to point out that I cannot make any sense of Pete Buttigieg's candidacy absent misogyny. There is no compelling reason, I think, to support Pete Buttigieg over Elizabeth Warren. For example, if you are a progressive-minded candidate, there is not a single area where Pete Buttigieg is a superior candidate to Elizabeth Warren, other than the fact that he has a penis. And I just needed to get that

0:05:52 Thomas: Yeah, I guess so. Um, what was it? Oh, go ahead.

0:06:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:34 Jamie: Off my chest. And

0:06:34 Thomas: Yeah, he wasn't even a current mayor. He was an ex-mayor of a tiny hamlet. He got fewer votes than we have listeners.

0:06:42 Jamie: I will say this, and I will stay this as the show's resident Bernie bro. I think Elizabeth Warren absolutely would have been a candidate that would have done more to unify the Democratic Party than Pete Buttigieg. And, I think it's a real indictment on the part of people who pushed, I'm sorry, I'm tongue-tied, who pushed Pete Buttigieg rather than rally behind Elizabeth Warren. Very earlier in the campaign, I had said that I was supporting Elizabeth Warren, I donated to her campaign, because I thought Elizabeth Warren had a platform that could have appealed to the progressive wing, the left wing of the party that had amassed behind Bernie Sanders in 2016, and that more centrist sort of establishment Democratic wing of the party that does things the more sort of traditional storied way than by mobilizing mass movements and trying to do politics that way.

0:07:34 Jamie: I think Elizabeth Warren really could have done that, and I think the Democratic Party did themselves a real disservice by putting out as many candidates as they did, and Pete Buttigieg stands out to me first and foremost as those candidates that should have just been told, you know what? It's not your turn. Sit down.

0:07:53 Thomas: Yeah, how about win even a statewide election first? You know, maybe win like a state senate. No, that's not a state. I guess that would be for a district in the state senate when it would become a representative or, you know, something governor, anything treasurer.

0:08:09 Jamie: Anything?

0:08:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's hard because, like, I think that what happened, and you talk about misogyny, I think people will balk at that as they always do. Oh, no, it wasn't that. It was that I find him inspiring. And it's like, okay, why do you think people were finding him more inspiring than, say, some of the women in the race, despite the fact that he was all rhetoric and had no real experience beyond being, again, a mayor of a tiny town and losing the only time he went for statewide election, or was it twice? I can't remember. One or two times.

0:08:11 Jamie: Literally anything.

0:08:39 Jamie: Right. The best description I've heard of Pete Buttigieg is that he sounds like a neural net trained on episodes of The West Wing, and that's just it. He's very pretty. He's very good at rhetorical flourishes, although I do wish he would learn a few others than the ones that he's stuck on. But that's it. He is largely just,

0:08:46 Thomas: That's pretty good. I like that one.

0:09:02 Thomas: Yeah, I will say this. I would. It's hard because he's so unqualified that this is a tough call. But I think I, you know, even before the Tara Reid allegation, I think I'd still rather have had him than Biden. I mean, I'll say that it's close because it's so frustrating. Like it's it's such an insult to the qualified women in the race that somebody who's just so un qualified would would win. In, but I still think I slightly would have preferred a Buttigieg to a Biden. And now after the accusation, of course, like if you're allowed to swap out Biden for anybody, I'd pretty much take anybody who isn't potentially a sexual assault person. I don't know.

0:09:46 Jamie: Yeah, I mean, I would vote for a ham sandwich over Joe Biden. So the bar there isn't very high.

0:09:50 Thomas: Well, he is a ham sandwich, so yeah.

0:09:53 Jamie: But yeah, I will take Buttigieg over Joe Biden. Joe Biden was my absolute last choice in this this election, absolute dead last choice. And so yes, I'd prefer Pete Buttigieg to Joe Biden. But that's it. It's

0:09:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, let's let's we'll come back to politics. This is sort of politics, but also slightly more like a personal kind of thing. A couple of times here in another podcast, Thomas has talked semi-seriously about leaving the U.S. if Trump gets a second term, if it comes to that, where would you go? I, this is, I only want to talk about it cause I, it's something I go through every time. And I think maybe we've even mentioned it, Jamie. I can't remember, but like, I always think that I'm like, I hate this country for so many reasons, especially right now. I hate gun culture. I hate basically all of the right wing culture, like that whole everything. Uh, and, and I, I can't stand it. I, there's so many things that make me absolutely loathe this country, especially the arrogance of this country and constantly being a piece of shit, but thinking we're way better than everybody else at all times.

0:10:57 Thomas: Uh, absolutely hate it. And I think like, I just want to leave. And then I remember like, but I'm in California, like California is a pretty cool place. You know, it has its faults. Of course, uh, that wasn't a pun. I wasn't trying to, I just realized that I wasn't trying to make a joke there. I don't make those kinds of puns. Uh, but it, it, but Like every time I think about that, I realized like, well, we're doing some awesome stuff. Like we, you know, it's a good place to be relatively. If California were a country, you know, it would be a pretty great country in the world.

Like it would up there, uh, in terms of, and especially because I think I, if California were a country, it would be untethered and allowed to do even more liberal stuff, you know, like stuff that it can't really do because it, you know, because of the federal government and all this stuff. So I don't know. So that's kind of how I feel about it.

I would love to move somewhere that likes to provide health care to its people and likes to not allow its people to have instant death murder machines in their hands at any time they want it. Those are two major things. Some place that values education more, you know,

0:11:15 Jamie: Dad joke.

0:12:03 Thomas: Like there are way better countries to live in, but uprooting and moving to a different country is a tough thing. What do you think on all that?

0:12:12 Jamie: Yeah, so mostly the same. While I'm not in California, I am in New Jersey. We tend to do things well here. Things are not as bad in New Jersey as they are, say, in Alabama. We don't have the same sort of gun culture that takes place in other states. We're relatively progressive, at least as it relates to most of the other United States, but I'm just so fed up watching what feels like empire in decline that I, if I could, I would leave. If if I could guarantee that I could get my family into someplace like Canada or Germany or New Zealand, I would be out of here in a cocaine heartbeat because I'm just so fed, fed up watching this slow demise that is totally avoidable, but for a lack of will to do so.

0:13:04 Thomas: Yeah, it's infuriating. The Electoral College is, I think, a source of a lot of our woes. But beyond that, the Senate, you know, the fact that fucking South Dakota gets the same senators as California. It's just, it's not a good system. And it's only going to get worse because these piece of shit states suck. And so people will move to better states. And then it'll be even further disproportionate in terms of who controls our entire country. Uh, and the fact that judges are appointed for life, you can't really undo it. Uh, the, the Trump has absolutely completely ruined the federal judiciary and I am so terrified that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not gonna make it, because she doesn't just have to make it in November, she has to make it to January, whatever, like, and I, I'm so worried, like

0:13:23 Jamie: Right. What do you mean? I thought presidents weren't allowed to appoint Supreme Court justices in the last year of their term. I'm sure Mitch McConnell will be completely consistent in upholding that logic should anything happen.

0:13:57 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As bad as things. Things are, it's, it, it would be so much worse if we lost RBG and got a 35 year old fundamentalist, like we would be lost for probably 50 years. You know, we, we'd have three super young fundamentalists and two, you know, batshit older conservatives. But still, people, I can't remember how old Clarence Thomas is. He's got to be hopefully retiring somewhat soon, but like he doesn't seem to be unhealthy or anything. And then what is it, Alito? I don't know if that guy's God, they're so awful.

0:14:42 Jamie: Speaking of men whose sexual assault allegations don't keep them from some of the highest offices in the land. Thanks for that, Joe Biden, by the the way. Awesome. A

0:14:47 Thomas: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, let's, uh, you know, here's an interesting one. Now let's see, where should we go? We've, we've got some, some different ones. Oh, let us talk about the philosophy question. Uh, that was philosophy ask related question. Where and how do you draw the line between tone policing and legitimate criticism of inflammatory or otherwise bad behavior online? What do you think about that?

0:15:17 Jamie: Few thoughts about this. But first, I want to recommend what I thought was a really excellent paper for anybody who might be interested. The title of the paper is "The Aptness of Anger." And it's by Amia Srinivasan, who is a philosophy professor at Oxford. And she talks about the way that anger can sometimes be used against victims of injustice as an additional reason to ignore the very reasons that they have for that anger. And I think that's something that's at play here, and I think this is just something that is broadly true about our electoral discourse. I think so much of the 2020 election and the 2016 election fundamentally comes down to whose anger gets to be counted as legitimate.

0:16:05 Jamie: And one of the ways that these tone policing functions, I think, is a way of saying that some types of anger are not appropriate. And I think perhaps the best illustration of that is the disparity between the way some of these lockdown protests are covered and the way that Black Lives Matter protests were covered, for example. And so, exactly,

0:16:23 Thomas: God. Another reason I want to leave this country. Okay, it's, I can't take the hypocrisy. Yeah.

0:16:30 Jamie: Right? And so it's this idea about whose anger is legitimate, what sort of injustices are legitimate grievances, and which are just people being uppity, right, and getting out of their appropriate place. And so I think that's something that you have to keep in mind when trying to tone police or address bad behavior online. To a certain extent, I think this actually helps explain the Bernie bro narrative. I think the Bernie bro in many instances is a way of saying that the anger that poor people feel about the economic hardships of their circumstances is not legitimate. And so they are able to be sort of dismissed as Bernie bros and sort of caricature their anger rather than have to take seriously the legitimacy of their grievances. And so I think that's something to keep in mind when we're talking about bad behavior online.

0:17:19 Jamie: That's not to say all bad behavior online is excusable or that we should be empathizing with all of it. But I do think we have to pay attention to when what we're asking people to do is articulate their grievances very calmly. Because when you've been actually victimized, when you have been oppressed, it is extremely difficult to articulate that calmly and in a way that isn't going to be offensive to the person harming you. And to expect people to do so is to expect them to do the impossible, and you thereby remove the very means that they have of addressing their oppression. And I think that's, that's worrying, which is, again, as I said, not to excuse some of the bad behavior online that is just bad, uh,

0:18:03 Thomas: It's a tough one, uh, I mean, we've talked about this before. I, I kind of totally disagree with your analysis on the Bernie bro thing. I think it has nothing to do with, with income. You know, like all the people that I have interacted with who would fit into that margin, none of them are like poor people. Who, like, just demographically, the people online who are harassing people on any, in any camp, regardless of who they support, like those tend to be privileged people because they have the time to be online following politics as a hobby, more or less. I just don't really think. And you didn't have the same effect with someone like Elizabeth Warren, who also wanted to do a bunch of really progressive stuff and help, you know, poor people. And also, demographically, some of the worse off people supported Joe Biden.

0:18:49 Thomas: So I just don't really think that, I just disagree with that analysis. But I certainly think the racial component is right on. But I don't know if we should debate that more or if you want to respond, but okay.

0:19:02 Jamie: Well, well, so I'm currently working on a paper about this, and so it may be something that's worth saving for a later time. But yeah, no, I absolutely disagree with your assessment there. On Twitter, I'm not able to see what socioeconomic bracket people fall into when they're tweeting. So I can't say with any certainty that people who are advocating for Bernie Sanders on Twitter fall into any particular tax bracket over the other. But when you look at the majority of who his supporters were, they were disproportionately teachers, or they worked for Amazon. These are working class people. And this movement was in large part sort of dismissed as being constituted by Bernie bros, despite the fact that it was overwhelmingly minorities.

0:19:52 Jamie: Bernie had a higher percentage of women supporters. And so this was a way, I think, of sort of dismissing these legitimate claims that healthcare should not be tied to employment, that people should not have to be burdened with lifelong debt for the crime of going to school. And I think that's sort of separate, though, from what's being asked here. And, I think these are sort of coming apart. So, I don't want go too far down a rabbit hole. I do think, absolutely, though, that the Bernie Bro narrative, and so the paper that I'm working on is basically that Bernie Bro is a propagandistic rhetorical device meant to undermine empathy for poor people. And I think that is true. Yeah.

0:20:32 Thomas: Okay, we could, let's see, should we keep going down that trail? Or maybe we will leave it for when you finish the paper. Let's see. What else is a good question to talk about? This might be interesting. There's a question on Patreon here. Do you believe trying to browbeat and guilt people into voting for Biden is actually effective? The Puzzle and the Thunderstorm guys, and to a lesser degree, you and Andrew have been doing this a lot lately. And whether it's justified or not, do you think that it's actually likely to convince anyone to change their mind if they're committed to voting third party? I mean, have you ever been convinced of something you believe is wrong because you were yelled at and shamed. I, uh, I get a little frustrated with this one. I think this happens whenever somebody like oftentimes when there's a disagreement online, this, the, the gets switched to this tactic.

0:21:23 Thomas: Like when, when you're arguing with someone and they, you know, don't agree, but they don't have a good response, they switch into like, "Well, do you think yelling at me is helping?" And it's like, okay, I'm, first off, I don't not yelling at you. And, uh, secondly, I, I, you know, I, I don't know, like this, this would, would apply all the time. I guess the point I'm trying to make is this is an argument that gets selectively brought out usually when someone doesn't want to be convinced of something. This either applies all the time or never. Like, do you think that people are browbeating people about Biden more than anyone was browbeeting anyone about any candidate? I just don't know that we have that data. I mean, maybe yes, maybe no. When it comes to me, I guess I can just speak for myself.

0:22:06 Thomas: I don't know. It's often hard. We probably at different times have different people in mind who we're thinking of when we're making arguments, maybe. I sometimes don't know that anyone is convinced of anything. I mean, I don't know that anyone changes their mind on virtually anything. It's really weird.

0:22:31 Thomas: I is ever geared in the best ways toward changing people's minds. I think that, you know, if anything, I would do it on more of an individual basis. Like if I were just in a conversation with somebody, I would certainly take a different tact knowing more about them. But like when we're speaking, or I'll just speak for me, I guess, when I'm on a podcast talking to an audience of whom I don't really know who everybody is, you, you know, and I can't really tailor one message to a specific type of person because there's all kinds of different people. And furthermore, I don't even know how much people are listening to stuff that they don't already agree with. Like, I, I do not know. Like there's definitely some level of disagreement on this topic, but it's just, I don't know that we're really doing these shows, like these, with a mind to only speak in the way that's going to convince the a marginal voter. You know, I don't know.

0:23:29 Jamie: So one thing that I'll say is I think questions like that sneak in another question that never goes addressed. It may be the case that shaming people for their choices is not effective, but that presupposes that the moral obligation lies on the person trying to change another's mind and not on that person to change their mind in light of compelling evidence. Evidence And that seems to never get brought up. And so it might be the case that shaming people into voting for Biden is not an effective strategy, but that doesn't necessarily say something morally relevant about the person doing the shaming any more than it does about the person who isn't changing their mind in light of the evidence. And I think this is sort of similar to the effective injustice that we were just talking about.

There are good reasons to be upset that Joe Biden might lose to Donald Trump. It is a legitimate reason for anger that we may have another four years of Donald Trump as president. And so when people are angry, when people are afraid, that has a tendency to sort of override the prefrontal cortex and the expectation that people articulate calmly and rationally while there's a psychopath in the White House in an attempt to convince you that,

0:23:54 Thomas: Right. Good point.

0:24:53 Jamie: Hey, maybe we shouldn't have a psychopath in the White House is quite a tall order. And because someone is not able to do that doesn't provide a reason against their reasons for being upset. It is a bad thing to have a psychopath in the white house. We should not have a psycho path in the lighthouse. Yeah,

0:25:16 Thomas: First time I've heard that argument. No, that was an excellent answer, Jamie. I really appreciate that. That's a great way of putting that. I want to add one more thing to my answer, which was not as good as yours, but just to try to make it a little better. I was just thinking it through as you're as you were saying that. And I don'T know. I mean, at times, I'm sure and I would never put myself up as any sort of paragon of any arguing of anything. I just get passionate about stuff and I, I make arguments and, and, you know, I, I would never put myself up as any sort of model of any good way of making arguments. I don't fucking know. I have no idea. But one thing I will say is off, I think more often, uh, most often when I get really heated and passionate, I'm talking about the horrible, horrible consequences of the Trump presidency.

0:26:03 Thomas: And I personally think that a lot of times people don't adequately or properly put into perspective, and this is my opinion, how much harm Trump has done. I just don't think they do. And I don't even really blame them because of the human mind cannot contain all of the ways in which Trump has fucked people over and cost lives and ruined the world. Like, I just think it's so difficult to even keep it all in mind. It really is. It's the, it's the old, and people have been saying this about Trump from the the beginning. It's the same way he's gotten away with every controversy. There's too much. He just does another controversy. And, you know, and he really did this intentionally back in the campaign. You know, he if there was some controversy, he would say another ludicrous thing and another ludicrous thing to where we don't know how to focus on it all.

0:26:51 Thomas: And the same thing goes. Unfortunately, that was a precursor to how he is as a president, which I think is less less about message and more about the fact that he's just a truly awful person who has let the worst gargoyles of our right-wing fundamentalist government take control. And they're just doing bad thing after bad thing, after bad things. And it is very difficult to keep that all in your head at once. And I think if anybody out there is at all under the impression that four more years of Trump is somehow a less bad outcome than four years of Biden, I think they are so so unbelievably woefully wrong. I just really, they could not be more wrong. Despite the fact that I think, you know, there's a couple points in favor of saying like, well, Biden isn't progressive enough.

0:27:39 Thomas: So, you know, maybe it would be better to have like a more progressive four years from now. I will grant you a couple of points on that scale, even though it's completely uncertain as we talked about last episode, but there there's so much, I mean, there are so many ways. We talked about the fact that, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of lives are lost because of the slow and awful nonsense response to this pandemic. That's just that's but one measure. I mean, the idea that just to take a small thing that always resonates with me, the idea that women in countries where it's basically just like, OK, for a husband to just murder or beat a wife like that, that's basically OK. That used to be a perfectly legitimate reason to request asylum in the United States.

0:28:24 Thomas: And that that was because of Democrats, and that was taken away by this administration. So now, if a woman thinks she is going to be murdered by her husband and wants to seek asylum in our country to escape murder, she can no longer do so. And that's just one tiny thing. I don't know how many people that is in the world, but it's it's more than zero, it's a lot more than 0. And it's just one little way. There's so many little ways like that, that that this administration is costing lives in the worst ways for no good reason. And it's, it's just disgusting.

0:28:58 Jamie: So I think all of that is correct. I think I think the piece of nuance, not even that it's missing, but that sometimes gets overlooked, I'll say, is I found that people who articulate these sorts of arguments, for the most part, tend to be people who are already sort of precarious in life and have already experienced hardships on the parts of, because of the way things function when they're normal and their lives are still bad. Or for example, I, I have a friend who is Iranian, and the the sanctions under Obama contributed to his father dying because they were not able to access the medication that they need. And so there's this sense in which lives are still dying, lives are being lost, under Democratic presidents. We're still

0:29:49 Thomas: Sorry, sanctions under Obama. I mean, Obama was the one who eventually, you know, came up with a deal and

0:29:50 Jamie: Um, Yeah, he did, um, but the, or the United States sanctions against Iran, I'm sorry, um, that Obama eventually, um, lifted but not in time to save my friend's father, um, I'm sorry. And so I think one of the things that gets that goes missing, um, is that when people, particularly those who are advocating for Joe Biden, say things like, well, just make America normal again, they are sort of saying, they're sort of overlooking the extent to which normal is still really fucking fucking bad for a lot of people. And the people for whom what was normal was still really bad are understandably angry about that. That if we return to what was normally under Obama, we're still returning to a world where people are dying for no reason other than lack of health care. People are dying because they don't make enough money to live. I don't have the statistic right in front of me.

But the suicide rate, for example, decreases with every $1 increase in the minimum wage, for example. And so when we talk about going back to normal and comparing it against Trump, we have to be really careful that we aren't setting as somehow morally neutral all of the death and destruction that is baked into what was normal.

0:29:58 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Right. Uh,

0:31:14 Jamie: Because what was a normal wasn't good enough. And I think that's sort of what goes missing in some of these arguments. I don't think people who are saying, you know, Joe Biden is just a lesser evil are insensible to the horror of the Trump administration. I think they're just aware that what's been passing as for normal in American politics for decades is still dreadful. I

0:31:43 Thomas: Well put. I think I, I would never be one to make the argument that we should vote for Joe Biden to quote-unquote go back to normal. I think that's a bad argument. I think for the the reasons that you highlight. Absolutely. I think that that particular argument for me is nothing but privilege. Like that that argument, like let's go back to normal, says things were fine, but then under Trump, they were bad. But I want them to go back to being fine. And that's it. And I totally agree with you that that that doesn't cut it. I remembered why I started this rant when I didn't finish it. It was about it was about browbeating people. The reason I started saying all this was just to tie up that loose end was when I talk about that, when I talk about like the lives lost under Trump and blah, blah, and I get heated about that. If somebody out there is interpreting that as browbeating them, I think that says more about them than me.

0:32:34 Thomas: Like if I'm talking about the stakes or, then my argument, if I'm talking about the stakes of the election, if I'm, I'm telling you, the, the horror and the death and destruction that's happening under this administration, and they're taking that that is me browbeating them for voting for Biden. I like, okay, I'm not really targeting them per se. I think that then maybe they're slightly aware of the fact that they know the right choices to not allow that to happen, but they take that as, you know what I mean? Like I, so that was where, why I started that rant. Um, yes, I, I thinkthat, uh, one thing that also bugs me about this though, So when you talk about the status quo and what things were, I think that we are way too often trying, making a choice between what we think our idealized version of one administration would be versus the worst possible version of another administration.

0:33:29 Thomas: So a lot of people, in my opinion, are trying to evaluate this as a President Bernie who somehow gets Congress to do exactly what he wants or a President Biden who essentially does nothing. And I just don't think that's fair. And if that's how you're thinking about it, I would encourage you to perhaps think about it a little differently, to perhaps Think about it as it could have been a president Bernie, which I would have absolutely supported my second choice after Warren. I love Bernie. I think he would have done a lot of good things. But Bernie with a Senate in which Joe Manchin is a pivotal, pivotal vote, you know, like keeping in mind that the president doesn't make everything happen, that the reason things are really bad, in my opinion, is because of the system we have set up that these red states get way too much representation in the Senate.

0:34:17 Thomas: And it's very difficult to get them to do certain things. And Obamacare was gutted because of Republicans and because they have way too much power, more than they should. And the fact that if we get a Biden with a blue Senate, for example, with Democratic control of government, that would probably be... I know people people hate this, that would result in more progressive outcomes than a Bernie presidency with not control of the Senate. And I just would encourage people to try to think of it maybe that way a little bit. Not that that means we should have supported Biden over Bernie. We should not have. I don't mean to say that. But I think they put on, people often put on the rose-tinted glasses of what their candidate would have done, and the worst, like shit-colored glasses, of what the other candidate would do. And I just would encourage people to try to be a little more pragmatic about it.

0:35:14 Jamie: Mean, I think think that's true. Um, I, I think, or enough of that is true that there's nothing meaningful for me to disagree with. I think it's it's also true, obviously, right, if Bernie had been elected, we had a blue Senate, he'd been more progressive than Joe Biden, um, with the, with the Democratic Senate. And then there's arguments about, you know, who's got enthusiasm and who's going to have larger coattails for down ballot races, which, as I said in the previous episode, relies on a lot of unknowns that we just don't have. And a lot of it is just sort of speculation and sort of people treating politics the way that most people treat sports.

This sort of endless debate of all of these sort of hypotheticals when the reality is like, we just, we really don't know. And we can agree that this is a hostage situation. We can agree that this is absolutely amoral that we're in this position. But at the end of the day, we can only choose from among the options we have. And the options we have right now are Joe Biden or Trump, or option B, annoy the hell out of the Democratic Party until there absolutely is

0:35:27 Thomas: Oh yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah.

0:36:17 Thomas: Yeah,

0:36:17 Jamie: No more time left for them to change the nominee. It doesn't have to be Joe Biden. We are not locked into this yet.

0:36:17 Thomas: Yeah. There, I will say that there, nobody can get Joe Biden to drop out, but Joe Biden, the way our system works, we would have to somehow get like, it would haveと be a huge team of people who then wouldn't be be able to remove Joe Biden. They would just have to be able to pressure him enough to get him to remove himself. That is the only way to do it. It is a tall, tall order, but I agree with you that we should still try to do that. Um, but, but it's, it's so, I think the reason people are so scared about that and God, I, I can't help but empathize. I bet people, even people like, I don't know, AOC or other, other leaders, uh, within the democratic party, uh, or, or, you know, whoever it might be. Some people just seem fine with with Joe Biden or whatever, but like if there are people who otherwise are not fine with these accusations and wish they could have another candidate, they have to make the impossible calculation of saying, well, this 99.9% probably won't work out.

0:36:26 Jamie: Yeah,

0:37:24 Thomas: Like this won't result in the removal of Joe Biden and it will perhaps weaken him for the general. So how do you make that choice? It's a hard, that's a really hard choice. But I do agree with you that, you know, as, as I I guess, as just as non-party leaders is just run of the mill voters, you know, like we should do what we can to try to make that happen. I just such it's such a horrible situation.

0:37:49 Jamie: So, of all the arguments, I'm least sympathetic to the one that criticism of Joe Biden at this point is going to harm him in the general, because

0:37:59 Thomas: I don't think that's exactly what I said. But yeah, it's not criticism. It's it's if people really tried to have like an insurrection against their own candidate, that's something that you don't see every day. You know, that would be a pretty massive step.

0:37:59 Jamie: No, it'd be true. I think in a normal election where we weren't going up against a psychopath, Donald Trump is going to behave in such a morally egregious way as we move into the the heat of the general election that it just doesn't make any sense to me to think that suggesting Joe Biden not be the candidate does more harm than keeping Joe Biden as the candidate. I really am genuinely afraid of the way that Trump is going to make a show out of Joe Biden and his weaknesses.

And I can't even imagine how Joe Biden or his surrogates are going to be able to go after Trump in the way that needs to be done that isn't going to render Joe Biden vulnerable to similar criticism. And we can set aside whether or not some of that criticism is fair or legitimate. And those can be reasonable objections, but that's not going to address whether or Not, it's going to Be effective. And given our current media environment, I am really genuinely concerned that we are walking into our own demise with Joe Biden as the candidate. I really am terrified that Donald Trump is just going to have his way with Joe Biden. Yeah,

0:38:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:37 Thomas: Well, let's try to go out on a lighter note. So here's a question. Have you taken up any new hobbies since the quarantine started? Again, I want to highlight that this is under the assumption. Yeah, there are a lot of people out there who are essential workers who are still having to work and put themselves in danger. That's a lot of people. And this is, you know, I'm in a position of tremendous privilege to be able to work from home. So I know this doesn't apply to nearly any, it might be half of people, I don't even know, or less than half. But so that that aside, I just want to make sure that's, that's very plainly stated that this, not everybody is as lucky as, you know, you or I might be, um, uh, hobbies, anything, anything you've gotten. I mean, it's, it'S hard enough to just get by. What about you, Jamie? Have you been able to do anything new, different?

0:40:24 Jamie: I mean, the only hobby I've picked up is learning how to do everything while crying.

0:40:34 Jamie: That's it. I have two kids at home trying to do remote learning. All of my courses were put online. I am daily inundated by emails from my students, my kids' teachers, their guidance counselors, on top of all of the other stuff I'm supposed to be doing. And no, there has been absolutely no time to take up any hobbies other than crying. Yeah,

0:41:00 Thomas: Yeah, I, um. Gosh, that's so hard. I, I feel as though there's no possible time to do anything, and I can barely keep up. But at the same time as that, we've been under quarantine in my house for so long that over time I have been able to do some things, you know, like I've been able to, uh, you know, even though it feels like I'm doing nothing, I've been able to clean up the backyard a bit. Oh my God.

Our backyard was just a jungle, just massive growth of nonsense. Like, cause we just don't, neither of us have time to do any like pruning, weeding, gardening. Uh, and it's a small yard as it is, but like this ivy thing bullshit has like taken over the entire thing. And, uh, some Other overgrown trees and all that, and just like over time, in the last whatever, month and a half, it's been two months, of doing just a little bit here and there and still feeling like it was bullshit the whole time, like, "Oh, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough, not doing enough," and then all of a sudden it's actually looks pretty good now. And I don't know, maybe, maybe that could be encouraging.

Like, if you do put in a tiny amount of time, um, not that you have to, but if you want to, if you try to, there's something you're trying to get done, like even if it's a little bit of time, you know, here and there, every other day, every once a week, whatever it is, like over time, it does make a difference. And now my backyard looks kind of way better, and still not perfect, but massively better. And the kids can kind of play a little bit out there.

0:42:33 Thomas: So, you know, it might be encouraging to somebody. Small increments over time do add up. Yeah, I've been been trying to practice music as much as I can, and I've been doing that pretty well. So but it's funny because in the moment and every day, it feels like I'm failing all the time, you know, but like, I don't know, it it it does add up if you're able to do little bits of things, I guess is what I would say. All

0:42:59 Jamie: I mean, that's how I felt about grading this semester. I would just try to like plow through like an hour or two of day. And so, so this way I was getting it done. I actually ended up calculating on average like how much grading would take, because I got a number of emails from students saying that there should be no deadlines on anything and everything should be open-ended to better accommodate the students. And so I had, you know, calculated out how many courses I had, how many students, how many assignments. And so what I had said is, you know, even if I only gave 10 assignments each semester, and each one only took five minutes of grading for all of my students, at the end of the semester I would end up with an 87-hour grading obligation that would literally take more time than there is between when the semester ends and grades are due. So I actually can't do that for you.

0:43:45 Jamie: But yes, getting through it slowly makes it a lot more manageable than when it's all just sort of sitting in front of you. And then it's just like a mountain of impossibility because it's too much to comprehend.

0:43:57 Thomas: Right. And then last question, how much will your life change after this is over? I mean, what are you looking forward to not having to Do everything?

0:44:06 Jamie: Sending the boys to sleepaway camp. Yeah, so I'm hoping my my productivity returns, I was asked to write two different books right before this apocalypse sort of took place. And the creative parts of my brain are just really not working. I opened up my computer to write and the only thought I have is, well, I'm stupid and nobody should ask me to write anything for them ever. And so I'm really looking forward to being able to write again once there's no longer this oppressive weight of just terror. Oh,

0:44:07 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, yeah, yeah.

0:44:36 Thomas: Yeah, I I want to be healthier, I want to have like, I just can't, it's too hard right now, you know, like, what am I gonna do, go on a fucking diet while we're all locked together, you know, I just, I want, I want To get A little Healthier Yeah, So that'll be nice, I will no longer have excuses for making bad life choices. Um, I, uh, yeah, I need to, I need to get back out on the hockey rink and you get exercise. Uh, there's a lot I need to do personally. Um, but mainly, you know, I want this to end so that people aren't dying and that we're, you know, everybody's healthy. But uh, it's certainly for my personal life, it'll be, it'll be nice to be able to, you know, like similar to you.

I mean, it really is tough having kids around all the time. I just think it it it it really does take a toll on your mental wellbeing. I think as much as, again, as much as I find the positive in it, and I do love my kids, it's just constant. You know, it is like, just if you are trying to take a test or something and someone just has nonstop noise machine going in your brain, it will take a tall on you mentally.

0:44:50 Jamie: No, I ate tacos for breakfast.

0:45:45 Thomas: And it is not just noise. It is noise that you have to care about, you know, like it is stuck because you do, of course, you care about brought your kids. So it's rough. So, so being able to, to have some amount of time away from that will be nice. Just

0:45:59 Jamie: Yeah, I think what's, you know, it's so hard because one of the hardest things about this is the isolation, and yet the first thing I'm going to do when this is over is just be absolutely Completely Alone I Just, I want actual alone time where It's quiet, I sit on the couch at the end of the day and I put on my noise canceling headphones after the kids are asleep, and I could just feel the body, or feel the tension sort of seep out of my body, because as you said, you're constantly vigilant when you, you have kids, even if you aren't currently directly engaging with that. You have to always be cognizant of where they are, what they're doing. And it's terrifying when they're making a bunch of noise, but then also when they are quiet,

0:46:08 Thomas: Go, go by yourself. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:46:42 Jamie: You have to worry what they've gotten into as well. And so your brain, right, right.

0:46:44 Thomas: Yeah or did they just spontaneously die? That's my first thought. Well, my kids are dead. They're no longer making noise, so I got to go do that.

0:46:51 Jamie: And your brain is just constantly, constantly consistently going. I think the thing that's been most shocking to me is how I'm able to be so thoroughly exhausted on days I feel like I've accomplished absolutely nothing.

0:47:04 Thomas: Yep. So that'll be nice to not have that anymore, I think. But, uh, all All right. Well, that was that was a lot of fun. Thanks, Jamie, for taking the time, which I know is very, very precious and tough to tough to come by for all of us right now. But thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks again for those great, great questions. And I think we have some good, you know, interviews, deep dives planned ahead, especially inspired by some of your great questions, so thanks for that. And, you now, we'll hopefully be back soon.

0:47:42 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.