SIO262: I'm Perfectly Calm

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 262, I'm Thomas Smith, and it is, well, right now, for me, election eve, as a tweet I saw said, there's a real night before Helm's Deep Energy, or whatever, Battle of Helms, what is it called, Helms?, whatever, that whole Helm Deep thing in Lord of the Rings, it's been too long since I read those books, I need to go back, those are fun, other things like that I want to do in the after times when we get rid of Trump, just lots of things. You ever think of things you're like, I don't want to do that, but I just don't feel like it now. Too much, too much going on. But maybe that's bad. Yeah. So anyway, what does one say? Really? Like what words do I have so many thoughts, you know, four years worth of crap just tumbling around in my brain.

0:01:21 Thomas: One thing I wanted to do was just for fun. I thought, you know, just in case, I'll go back and listen to what I said four years ago, roughly. And I wanted to see if there's any insights there or anything that maybe turned out to be wrong or turned out to be right. And it was interesting. Not, I, you know, not that interesting. But it was kind of interesting.

I certainly, I remember in July, well, I wouldn't remember exactly when, but I do remember doing an episode called President Trump uh over the summer, and it turned out to be in July, and I remember the point of that was that the the very words President Trump, the very phrase President Trump, was supposed to be offensive to the eyes, it was, the the episode was done as though, like, this is absurd, like the uttering the words President Trump is an absurdity, and it still is, it absolutely still is, these four years haven't, it's made it more absurd, but that was, that was came across as really quaint, you know, just like, ah, those were the days, back when that was like a warning.

And, uh, yeah, if anybody has been listening to me for this long, I predicted Trump would lose, I don't, you know, I don't pretend that I predicted otherwise, so that episode called President Trump wasn't in fact a prediction that he would win, but it was a warning. I went back and listened to it, I was very concerned with, uh, Bernie or bust people.

It seems back then I, in retrospect, you know, I don't, I don't know if that was the deal breaker, I don't know that the numbers, you know, support that we've gone through all this.

0:02:56 Thomas: There are a lot of reasons why 2016 happened and it, it, they're not entirely applicable to 2020. You know, it's sort of a new set of issues. And I'll get to that, but more than anything, what I noticed in listening to myself, which I don't normally do, I do edit opening arguments, but, you know, that's, I mainly think of that as me being a listener to Andrew, so I don't spend a whole lot of time listening to my self anymore, but no, it's not a big deal, except that when four years have passed, and you've completely, I don't know, forgotten what you were thinking at that time, you be, you have some rough idea of what was going through your brain four years ago, or at least I did, you know, I, I would have been able to roughly speaking, tell you what I was thinking, but it's really interesting to hear the day to day, like stuff that you learn and forget within a day or a week, you Know, all those kinds of things.

0:03:50 Thomas: And hearing this other me from four years ago, just rattle off all these things that were important to me at that time, or issues or things I want to talk about. It was really eerie. It's kind of weird. It's like a different person. And not that I disagree or anything. It's just, you know, it's a person that was in a world that was four years ago and now things are different. And it's just it was really weird. So it was kind of a trippy thing and I didn't end up getting much out of it, but I got a few things. First and foremost, it occurred to me that I just sounded so much more. I don't know what I just had more energy, I think, or maybe that's just me. I don't know. I'm not sure. Do I sound like I have less energy now? I feel like I HAVE less energy. And that's the thing, you know, these four years, I, I am most upset that we just don't get this time back.

0:04:38 Thomas: You know, that, that's one of the most upsetting things to me. And, uh, there's so many, so many thoughts swirling around, you know, but I, this was from the years of my life, age 30 to 34. And more importantly, this Was the years of my kids' lives, zero to three-ish, three and a half. So for Phoebe, it's almost coinciding with all of Phoebe's life, a little bit less because she was born into the Trump presidency and a year and a half or so of Arlo's life. And it's just, I'm sure it's probably worse for kids, maybe if you have kids who are a little older. One of the things you see is people saying, I can't wait to to be able to have the TV on with my kids and the president comes on, I don't have to like change the channel, be worried about what the president of the fucking United States is going to say.

0:05:31 Thomas: That's like not suitable for children. Isn't that, isn't that something, again, these are all things that are in the wake of 230,000 dead of COVID and all the stuff we've gone through, it, it all feels quaint. You know, they, they are kind of minor concern, like aesthetic concerns in the in the grand scheme of what's happened, you know, that's, it's not as though I've gone through anything as bad as, uh, immigrants, as people who are dying alone of COVID because of just criminal mismanagement, just absolute abject failure by the president and by this administration to protect people's lives, to protect, you know, especially our elderly, especially our vulnerable, to protect those lives.

0:06:17 Thomas: Just a criminal fucking failure. Of course, I haven't gone through anything like that yet. I could lose a parent to COVID. It's entirely possible, but not yet. I haven't lost anybody close to me. Thank God. I don't believe in God, but thank something. Thank fate. Where was I? But yeah, that feeling, listening back that, you know, while I certainly was concerned and just insulted by how horrible Trump was, and back in, this was so in July, that was like right after, I believe I recorded that right after the Republican convention. So he was the nominee. And it's amazing how complimentary I was of some Republicans who were disowning him at that time. And I do think that was a very hard thing to do. I stand by that. It's not easy to, in this, especially in this partisan polarized environment to, um, to really go out on a limb like that.

0:07:09 Thomas: Turns out it didn't work. Didn't matter. Wasn't enough, but, you know, I was, I was pretty happy people did, and and in my mind he was going to lose, so it was like, you know, that was awesome what they did, these people made a stand. I even temporarily praised, uh, I said it was actually kind of funny, I said it was the only good thing about Ted Cruz, there was exactly one good thing about Ted Cruz, and it was that one time that he said, you know, like, ah, vote your conscience, don't vote for Trump, or I think even a little before that he was anti-Trump, and then he went back on it, you know, and there was those photos, photos of him phone banking for Trump. And so the joke I made at the time was that there was exactly one good thing about Ted Cruz. And then now there's back to zero good things about Ted Cruz. But now I feel so different, you know, I feel beaten down, as I'm, I know a lot of us do.

0:07:56 Thomas: Doesn't it feel like that? And then I go through this process in my mind where I'm like, aren't I overreacting all the time? You know? And it's funny because I said the same thing election night, so if anybody was listening back then, I was almost gonna play it, but I don't know, it's a little too, a little to emotional, I don't feel like playing it. But I did a quick 12 minutes, like, after I came home from a election party. Can you imagine such a thing? And not just because of COVID. I was actually thinking about that. I wouldn't even pretend COVID didn't exist. I would not go to an election party now. I could not.

0:08:33 Thomas: Back in 2016, it was like, party, let's go watch Hillary. Now, I do not want to go be at a party. This is like I am trying to find out if America is still going. It's not a celebratory thing, you know. And even so back then, I was very sad. I was particularly sad at that time because of how much, you know, some women in my life and me, frankly, were excited by finally having a female president, you know, and what a big symbolic deal that would be. And it would have been amazing. And so that was foremost on my mind. I know, I was pretty emotional about it that night. And, but even in that night, I went back and listened to it. And I, I Was saying like, well, I hope I may, I Hope I'm overreacting, you know, is what I said.

0:09:22 Thomas: I hope, I that me kind of crying right now is going to be like, kind of funny, you know? Like, it'll just be like a, can you believe the big deal that I was making about this thing? But yeah. And that, what listening back, I think, oh shit, no, I had no idea. It was actually worse. It was worse. I mean, I never would have known that a pandemic was coming, you know, and I'm very curious about the mirror universe where COVID didn't happen. I wonder if Biden would win in that universe. Well, let's see. Was it late enough? I'm trying to think. Would that have changed the primary? Probably not. It seems like the primary was pretty settled at that point, which is interesting to think back on.

0:10:12 Thomas: But I wonder, if not for COVID, how we'd feel. I can't imagine that Biden would have the kind of comfortable lead that he has now as I make this recording that I hope won't one day be reviewed by me from four years in the future after Trump's second term. But, but I'll tell you, this is one thing I was gonna say, I don't have a plan for that, you know, I just don't, I really don't, you would think that after 2016 I'd be able to say, like, well, better ready yourself, better ready herself, just in case, because that happened now. A, I just don't think we're in 2016. I have, as much as I had a lot of confidence that Hillary would win in '16, I almost have more confidence, or the same level of confidence, that Biden will win, but it's more informed confidence.

0:11:02 Thomas: I mean, we all know this. The polling is different. It's better. It is accounting for errors of not pulling swing states enough. And yeah, it could still be wrong. But as Nate Silver has pointed out, even if the polls were as wrong as as they were in '16, Biden would just win by less. He would still win. So, you know, that feels that there's... there's always a part of me, and I'm sure of all of you, that feels like Trump is going to win, or some sort of dread that he's going to win. And it's not that part of us, that part of me is not susceptible to anything. There's no facts. I don't even know that that part of me will be convinced until January, until it's just over.

0:11:47 Thomas: Like, there's just a skeptic, uh, not skeptical. There's a, just a, a really pessimistic, wounded little me up there. That's just like, I don't care what any fact says. I don't care what any poll says. I'm worried. Now, I recognize that that is still an irrational thing though. And anyone who's out there as they have been for the past year or whatever saying like, Oh no, don't believe the polls. It's like, no, that's not the message. I've said this before. The message of 2016 wasn't don't believed the polls. It was, let's make some adjustments to our polling because it was wrong in key states. Overall, nationwide, it was correct. But now we've learned that we don't even look at the nationwide total. There's no point.

0:12:32 Thomas: It doesn't matter. Biden leads by double digits, according to some polls, by 10 points. Can you imagine? 10 point lead nationally, and it doesn't matter. That's how stupid our fucking system is. But anyway, I started to say this, as I've started to say many things, and just my, too many, too many thoughts, I know a lot of you are feeling this way too, I'm anxious, I'm not sleeping well, I feel tired but also anxious, you know, and I was just thinking, like, uh, I don't have a plan for if Trump wins, there's no, yeah, I was thinking it's like, if, if, you know, if, if one of my kids was gonna die or something, I don't have a plan for that, there's not a part of my brain that's sitting here thinking, I'd better, you know, what am I gonna going do?

0:13:17 Thomas: How about I plan out the actions if my family dies in a car accident or something? I'm not planning for that. I don't have enough interest in that world to plan for it. If I'm forced into one of these worlds someday, I guess I'll respond. But I do not have enough interest in this hypothetical to spend any energy thinking about it. I do have a plan if Trump wins. Wins, I don't know what I'm going to do if Trump wins. I don't. And further, I don't what I'm going to if Trump cheats and wins, which is probably the only way he could win. You know, we've been, I've been keeping an eye on that Harris County lawsuit as I'm, I actually don't know how much we covered it on opening arguments.

0:14:03 Thomas: I could be crazy, but I actually think we really did, because it hasn't gotten up to the Supreme Court yet. But in case you are not aware, I'm sure you are in case you are not aware. Here's what happened. Harris County, the Harris County clerk, because of, you know, the fucking pandemic, they made arrangements for drive through voting. We must have. I think we mentioned it on our way, but we didn't do like a deep dive, but it could be because it's such an open and shut case. There's not much to say that happens on opening arguments where it's like, Hey, what about this? Obviously open and chat thing. Want to do a a breakdown? It's like, what's the breakdown? There's no breakdown. Either the law happens or some evil fascists decide no law.

0:14:50 Thomas: What analysis do you give to that? Wow. Really interesting how they decided no, no rights. We don't get voting. There's nothing, there's no like legal nuances here. The county clerk, they did a drive-through voting because of fucking course you would. It's pandemic. That's a great idea. Drive-thru voting is great. 127,000 voters use this drive-thrus voting in Harris County. Now, this county is apparently very blue. And so, Republicans said, we need to strike this down. Can you imagine? These people have already voted. They already did it. It's not like, oh, this is a plan to maybe a proposed plan to do some drive-through. These people already delivered their ballots, drive-Thru, they already did it, so they voted.

0:15:38 Thomas: Imagine if that was you. Maybe I know somebody. I don't know. Maybe a listener in Harris County or something. 127,000 people. That's not terrible odds. Could be one of you. So you've already voted. And then some fascists who only want power at all costs and do not care about getting rid of your right to vote say, no, we need to throw that out. We need to go to court and argue that you You have to throw those ballots out, not just that, like, stop it going forward or, you know, whatever. No, throw them out. What, it's Monday right now? This is still in court. What how in the world? And so fortunately, I was going to do a bit different episode, you know, depending on the news.

0:16:24 Thomas: We still don't know for the final thing because of, you know, all the appeals process. So fortunately, this has been dismissed by a Republican, by even a Republican judge, I think, in Texas. It's been dismissed by, it's been struck down by the Texas Supreme Court. But of course, they are now appealing it to the Fifth Circuit. And once they lose there, if they do, I actually don't know. I have no idea. How do you know? How do you predict?

Has the Fifth Circuit been filled with Trump supporters? I don't know. I'm not Andrew. I haven't done that research, but like, let's say they lose their, let's say they win there. If they win there, we're, I mean, we're done here, right? I mean, if they get to throw away 127,000 votes with no recourse for those people who've already cast the ballots, those voters are thinking, what do I do?

Do I go, now the county clerk has said, hey, you're, you voted already, do not try to vote again, you voted, ready, it counts, but they, it is in their power, it is is Republicans' power, because they are so partisan, and because they possibly, if they have the votes in a court, in either the Fifth Circuit or if it goes to the Supreme Court, they can just decide, no, 127,000 votes do not count, for no reason. And I've been pondering that power. And I don't know what to, I can't think about it. I can't even, can you? What do you do? Oh, well, we'll go protest. I'm sure we will. And then what happens? A court says, yeah, nothing. They already said it's over. They don't count it.

0:18:08 Thomas: I don't have a plan for this. I don't have a course of action. I mean, I probably should. I'm not saying it's good that I don't. But what would we do? Let's say this happens. Let's see. For some reason, this, or something like this, I'll use this as an example. Example, maybe there will be some other thing just like this in Florida, Pennsylvania, some other key state, but let's use this as an example, let's say this election comes down to Texas for some reason, some bizarre universe, I don't know that that's possible, but again, this is a hypothetical, you can change the facts how you want to make it work, let's say it came down to Texas and let's say it came down to fewer than, I don't know, 60, 60,000 votes is not that many, um, I guess for a state like Texas, that's a slim margin. But we saw swing states in '16 that came down to fewer votes than that.

0:18:55 Thomas: Texas is bigger, so who knows? But anyway, let's say it came down like 60,000 votes. And let's say this decision went through and 127 Democrats, well, sorry, 127,000 people in a heavily Democratic area is what I should say, had their votes, just they don't count. Why? Because we have power. That's why. Why? Because we're Republicans and we want power. That's why. We control everything. And let's say that happened and as a result Trump wins the election. What are you doing? What are we doing? I, I don't know. I honestly don't. No, I can't help but think, you know, like no matter what we do, it wouldn't matter. And I don't want to think that. I want to think that like there would be so much outrage that Somehow something would matter. And and I don't know how that happens. They control the fucking Supreme Court.

0:19:52 Thomas: That's, you know, like, in Bush v. Gore, I've heard a few deep dives on that. We did one back in the day. It feels like it's been forever. But in Bush v. Gore, I actually hadn't known about the Brooks Brothers riot, really. I'd heard that referred to, but I hadn't really known the ins and outs of it. But, like a bunch of white people, including, I believe, Roger Cohen, if I'm remembering ring right, just went and harangued a government building until they stopped the recount. Before the, the court, I think it even told them to stop, the they just stopped because enough white people yelled at them. And it's Florida, and also, you know, I think they controlled the governorship and the, and all that, and and then the Supreme Court just handed a rubber stamp, Bush v. Gore, that just said, yeah, whatever.

0:20:39 Thomas: Whatever it means, whatever it takes for Bush to win, we decide that is basically what the decision says. And then we just had to live with that.

0:20:48 Thomas: And, you know, like part of that process was Al Gore being magnanimous and valuing, I guess, the institutions of our country more than politics or personal gain and saying like, OK, we'll take we'll accept the court. I don't know what he could have done. Otherwise, you know what, once the Supreme court says a thing in these cases, what, what do you do after that? There's no Supreme Supreme court. There is only a coup, I guess. I dunno. And you know what makes me feel even worse, if that's possible, is even if I feel somewhat confident, I would say the logical part of me, the not-the-little-scared person who just has, you know, just waiting for somehow the evil thing to happen, the logical part of me feels pretty confident that Biden's going to win.

0:21:42 Thomas: But what sucks the absolute most is that if we don't also win the Senate, it almost doesn't matter. Like, yes, things will be made less bad. Things There's obviously a lot Biden can do without the Senate to at least make things marginally less bad, but given this horrendous Supreme Court configuration, I imagine every executive order could be struck down, like, just for no reason, and I've said all this before, we're not passing anything, obviously, there'll be zero legislation, there will be zero nominees to the court, to the federal courts, to all the courts that, you know, we need to try to unfuck. And the official unfuck the courts drive that I want to do, that's like almost as bad.

0:22:32 Thomas: And also we'll have the added twist of the knife that there will be a lot of people who are maybe not quite as informed, people who maybe got out and voted because they really wanted to get rid of Trump and thought maybe they got engaged and were like, yeah, let's make things better. They will think Biden won, but nothing changed. So therefore it must have been Biden's fault. It must've been Democrats' fault. Those Democrats never do anything that they say.

And it will have actually been because we did not deliver the Senate to Democrats. And I am really, really, really worried about that. There's a, you know, that's why there's exactly one path. As I've said, there's exactly one thing that we can do, which is when the presidency, win the Senate, pack the courts, unfuck the courts, start making things better, that's it. It's such a narrow path now. It really is. There's just there's no other way But yeah, I wonder how we'd be doing in a non-COVID world, you know, I know polls showed Biden as somebody who could beat Trump, I think that's why he was elected our Nominee. I think that is mainly why it happened. I think Trump is such a catastrophe that people got really, really, really scared.

And they said, who, what's the most likely person, and it gets really meta, you know, because the most likely person to beat Trump would be the person that we're going to vote for to beat Trump, who then we decide is the person most likely to, to beat Trump, because we said we would in a poll.

And so therefore, you know, it gets it's really circular, but I guess at the same time, it is about these independent voters or whatever, some swing voters and who the fuck knows what they want.

0:24:20 Thomas: And honestly, I'm to the point where I think what they want is an old white man. And, and part of me is kind of glad that at least we have that going for us right now. As much as I wish we lived in a better country, I think maybe we don't live in a better country. I think maybe we live in country where it's going to be very hard for a not old white man to win the presidency now. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Obama won, but I just think things were different back then. I think that really was part of such a big topic, but we have really divided ourselves since then. And I wonder, I wonder if Obama would win. Maybe.

0:25:05 Thomas: But then you throw in this. I know I've said this before. I'm sure that everybody hates me for it. Literally everybody would be pissed off by this comment, I think. But I think Bernie Sanders might have been right when he told Elizabeth Warren a woman couldn't beat Trump or may not be able to beat Trump. I think he was probably right.

0:25:24 Thomas: I'm not happy about it. I think it's a fact.

0:25:27 Thomas: Imagine how much, as scared as you and I are right now, Now, how much more scared would you be if a woman were running against Trump right now? I don't know. Am I wrong? I would love to be wrong. Here's what I do know. Hillary was 10 times a better candidate than Biden. Easily. I mean, just way more competent, way better in all the debates. Great grasp of policy. Exactly the kind of technocrat we need to get us out of this COVID mess. You know, like she's way better than Biden, no question. And lost. And Biden might be on the verge of a giant victory. Now, obviously, things have changed in four years. I mean, there's certainly a component of that. But honestly, I think sexism was enough, as were a lot of things.

0:26:16 Thomas: I means, because in a close election, anything that makes the difference of one point or whatever is going to be a contributing factor. And it's hard to say what the contributing factor is. But I think Sexism was enough. Sexism wasn't one of the the contributing factors that did swing 2016 because the margins were so close. And I think people just have a bias that the negative news stuck to Hillary in a way that it just doesn't to Biden. There are plenty, plenty of negative stories. You know, people will do this while Hillary was unlikable. Hillary is unlikability. And her, you know, her negatives were as low as Trump. Yeah, you're right. I wonder why that is. Why was Hillary Clinton Clinton, as unlike as Donald Trump, why was her approval rating or whatever, disapproval, the net thingy, why wasn't it same as Donald Trump?

0:27:08 Thomas: Could it be that people are very unforgiving of women in a way that they aren't of men, necessarily? Because you cannot tell me that Hillary had more negative things about her than Joe Biden. You cannot tell that. It's just not true. There are so many negative things about Joe Biden, there are so negative stories to be written, and that have been written, by the way, reasons I would never have voted for him in the primary. Mary. Inappropriate touching, you know, the plagiarism stuff. Imagine, imagine if a female candidate had had the history that Joe Biden did of like trying to run for president, getting busted for speech plagiarism, you know, getting no votes and then what later on be winning it.

0:27:55 Thomas: No way that would not happen. I think we live in a shitty country that has a bunch of biases that we can't overcome, partially also because of the electoral college and that kind of thing. And therefore I, you know, at least we have that going for us. Doesn't that suck? How did, I don't know how to, what, how to think of this. I don't think it's a good thing. Like, do I just not say it? Should I not say that? What do you think? What was the proper way to deal with this information? Cause I don't think I'm wrong. I would love to be wrong. Someone please convince me I'm right. That's That a woman could be Trump, that would that we wouldn't be fucking fearing for our lives right now. You know, if, if Trump was able to be running against a female candidate right now, I don't know. Maybe it would be fine. I guess maybe because of COVID things getting so bad, maybe.

0:28:44 Thomas: But I just don't Know because our dumb system comes down to some people in some Rust Belt states or something. And a lot of those people don't have the best best views on women. The polling backed me up, you know, for some reason, Elizabeth Warren was like barely polling better than Trump in a, in those head-to-heads, and Biden was polling amazingly against Trump, and again, I think that's why we went with him. I think, that's, why a lot of people chose him. They got scared. And, damn it, they might have been right. They might have right. As much as I hated that choice, I fought against Biden in the primary, who knows? They could have been and right. I don't know, part of me still thinks Elizabeth Warren was exactly right when she said we can't be scared, we can vote scared, we gotta really, you know, aspire to do something better, and I, I felt that way, I don't know, I'm so scared, what if we lose, folks, what are we gonna do?

0:29:41 Thomas: You know, so back to when I was saying, like, trying to constantly check myself and think, like, am I too negative? I, because you, you know, those people, I'm sure we all have friends or family who's like, yeah, not not hugely political, don't really pay attention to it, and you just think like, God, why, why is that not me? But I just think it would be so unethical. Like, if you find out there's a bunch of horrible shit, it's one thing to be ignorant, I guess, and then you can argue that if somebody maintains a willful ignorance that they're definitely not being very moral. But like, once, once you're aware of the kinds of shit that's going down and the kinds of wrongs that are happening, I don't know how you reset that. How do you go back to, I'm going to go back to when I was just like, yeah, who's the president?

0:30:29 Thomas: Doesn't matter. Who cares? And that's also something that obviously only privileged people are able to do. But let's be real. I mean, there are a lot of people like that. Like it's a big country. It's a far and away a very well-off country, relatively speaking, relative to a lot of parts of the world.

And even when you're not well off, you're not always able to exactly say like, okay, am I doing badly because of the president's tax policy, or, you know, like, so there are a lot of people who I think it's not just very front and center in their minds and they don't really think about it. And part of me wishes, and the other thing I think is like, look, the Reagan years were really bad, bad, lots of damage was done then. Is this different?

Is this, is this worse? Is it weirdly better? Can't be better, right? I mean, again, COVID trumped everything. COVID just, once it's, it's amazing to me that there's still even an election, you know, like you just wish there was some deity or something that's like, sorry, uh, once you killed 200,000 people through your ineptitude, I mean, mean that's the limit, I don't know why we even let you kill the first 200,000, that doesn't seem like a good thing for a deity to allow, but we have a pretty hard and fast limit at that 200,000 and we're just taking you out, we're done, you don't get to even run for president, that should be how things worked in a just universe, although not really because you should never even get to 200 thousand. But anyway, you know, like, but even putting that aside, I wonder if Trump is really in real terms, COVID aside, because again, COVID ruins everything.

0:32:23 Thomas: In real terms, is Trump worse than Reagan? Reagan was really bad. Did a lot of horrible things. I don't know. Is he? I mean, it's certainly more insulting and there is a real cost to that. You know, there's a real cost to the leader of your country being openly racist and sexist and a bunch of people gaslighting you about it. That's a huge psychic cost that'll, as so many of us have had to bear, and and that makes it worse. You know, or is it just the new, you know, uh, news environment, the 24-hour news plus social media thing, where we're just so dialed into everything going on at all times that even if, if, say, maybe not Trump, but let's say later on we get another Republican who's like, you know, not as bad as Reagan, for example, will it feel worse?

0:33:19 Thomas: Will it just feel so bad because we're all tuned in all the time? And then I think, well, is that better? Maybe that's how it should feel. You know, a lot of this stuff happened in the dark. A lot of injustice has happened. I'd argue the bulk of injustice happens when no one's watching, or not enough people, or you can't keep people trained in on what's as much as we all want to watch John Oliver. There's not enough John Olivers and Opening Arguments in the world to cover everything. And furthermore, even if you can cover everything, you can't keep it in your mind. I've said this before. You just can't keep it all in your mind at once. But like, maybe we all should have felt worse. I say we, I was too young.

0:34:05 Thomas: Maybe you all who are older should all have felt worst during the Reagan years. Maybe you always should have fell horrible. You know, is that how it should be? That certainly feels like it's how it's going to be from now until forever.

0:34:18 Thomas: Unless something fundamentally structurally changes. It feels like we will all be tuned into the evils of the next Republican administration administration, just so much more than we would have been before the internet and cable news and all that. I will say this, though, I don't think I can do another four years of this, as much as I do think we should be, you know, outraged a lot by this, but it, but I, I will tell you this, I know I said I didn't have a plan for if Trump wins, I do not really, except for me personally, like how I am going to deal, just get through my life, I think I will have to be better about managing to feel the outrage when I need to, and I guess try to like ignore it when I don't.

0:35:07 Thomas: But how do you do that? How do you decide that? And furthermore, if you're somebody who's a podcaster like me who works on, you know, several weekly news shows and analysis shows, it's hard. I don't know how to do that. So who knows? Maybe I will. I said I had a plan. I guess I don't. Maybe I will just be miserable for another four years. You know what's getting really exhausting, though?

It is getting really hard and tiresome to have to be fighting against fascists on the right who want to take away the right to abortion, take away right to gay marriage, be able to discriminate against gay and trans people and just everything, to be be fighting against those fascists on the right and then to also have to be fighting against a bunch of cynicism about a bunch of people saying, nah, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, my vote doesn't make a difference, they will just steal the election, even if we get Biden in there, he won't, he won't be able to change anything, doesn't matter, it's just getting really tiring, I get, look, me, of all people, I get cynicism, but there's also gotta be a certain amount of realism, and the realism is this, this is what we can do, I've already laid out, we have one path, it's fine to be worried that, you know, worried that's not going to work out, but I'm just, it's just getting tiring, and I know that you, you know, and I get it because I agree that Joe Biden isn't left enough for me and I agree there's a lot of work left to do, you know, but like it's just getting so, maybe that's maybe that's why Democrats lose so much, you

0:36:50 Thomas: Know, there's that, there's so, you have to fight such an uphill battle, you got to fight the actual fascists and then you also got got to fight with a bunch of people who either think that this, the left is the same for stupid reasons, or that like the right is so bad we can't win anyway, and so there's this despair, it's fighting fascism on the right, despair on the left, I guess, and I, and keeping in mind, like, I'm not saying you're an idiot to be despairing, I'm not saying you're an idiot to be worried, I'm, you know, like I get it. A lot of people have voted in the past, tried to make change through the system, but we've come short for many different reasons. Maybe there was a candidate you voted for that, you know.

0:37:36 Thomas: Betrayed you or maybe which might for me, I think it's more likely that we just haven't all done it enough. You know, people could fight and fight and fight and do everything they can to try to make change within the system. And maybe even like their preferred Senate candidate wins or something. And they have all these promises. You know, they say, we're going to do this. They say, We're going to do that. But if we not enough people do that, the rubber meets the road at controlling all three branches of government. Now, that's where the rubber with that's the age we live in. There isn't compromise anymore. There isn'T anything you can do. We have to control, I guess I should say, both chambers of Congress and the presidency.

0:38:24 Thomas: Arguably, we also need to control the Supreme Court, but there's a lot we can do short of that. I don't think they're going to strike every law down or anything. And furthermore, if we control both houses, both chambers of Congress, rather, and the presidency, then we can doing some reform on the courts and all that. So we have to do that. But if we fall short, as we have in the past, as we've have in the past, we fell short starting in 2010, you know, we lost the House and so therefore things ground to a halt. And then in 2012, I believe, so 2012, we lost more, we still barely controlled the Senate, but then we were, you know, accountable to all these very middling, middle-of-the-road senators that would would stop. And then also in 2014, we lost the Senate.

0:39:18 Thomas: As you all know, we just had Obama and didn't control anything else. And Obama gets blamed. Some stuff he deserves blame for, sure, nobody's perfect. But Democrats will get blamed when they can't fix everything, but also they don't have the fucking power to do it because we haven't given them the power. It frustrates me to no end. I'm just so tired of having to fight all that, you know, fascism on the right and people with all their, they're just so smart because they're so cynical about Democrats' motives all the time, they're so much smarter than you because they know that Democrats are just as bad or something, and I know it's probably not good to just, yeah, maybe I gotta get out of social media, I don't know how prevalent that is, in the, in the just if I were to walk around in the world, but I don't know, I meet those people in the the world too.

0:40:08 Thomas: I think a lot of them are non-voters, you know, I don't know. But anyway, it's just getting exhausting. I don't love Biden, but I just want to get the kids out of the fucking camps. I just wanna maybe reunite them with their parents. I just wanna stop hundreds of thousands of more people from dying alone, unable to talk to their families of COVID.

0:40:33 Thomas: So just cool it, you know, I get it, Democrats aren't perfect, I get it, believe me, believe me, I get it, but we're past that point, we are, too we're passed the primary, I said it for four fucking years, I said the time to make, to have that argument is in the primary, and guess what, Biden won that argument, he won the votes, and he probably won the vote because he's an old white guy, honestly, it's probably why he was somebody that everybody viewed as safe, and god damn it, they might have been right, which I hate to say, they might've been right.

What if we went with somebody else and lost to Trump? I don't know. It could have happened. Trump is a lot better, um, when he gets to argue against a female candidate, he's, he's not as good when he tries to do all this stuff because people's biases are such that they will believe his bullshit more against a woman than they will against Biden because we are still a shitty, flawed country. Know, I think Biden has a lot of good plans. You know, seriously, as much as he wasn't my candidate, I've seen some good stuff from him. And if we deliver him the power he needs, if we delivered the party the power it needs to do this stuff, then change can happen. But we have to give them the power or you can't even blame them. You cannot.

0:41:56 Thomas: If you know if you don't give them power to make change, you cannot blame it. You might be able to blame them if you give them the power to make change and they don't make change. Sure. Let's have that conversation. We can talk about where they fall short. But if we do not give them The Power to Make Change, we can't say there's, we never give them the chance. And then we'll still be mad at all. It's their fault.

They didn't run well enough to win all the vote. Now, okay. Anything to absolve you of responsibility, I guess. Oh, non-Biden voter, whoever you are. So anyway, that's how I feel, why don't you join us for our livestream, tomorrow, tomorrow night, I think it's the only thing that will make me feel better, livestreaming with Andrew, he's, he, again, I said it on OA, he was, he is a source of positivity during an election, and that didn't work out in 2016, but maybe it'll work out, in 2020, and it'll be fun to talk to you folks, we're gonna be broadcasting live, tomorrow on YouTube, And we'll, all the links will be places, I'll tweet it out, we'll do all that, at five o'clock Pacific time. Um, I hopefully we'll get through this together and with some booze. I'm sure, for me, this is a cheat. I've been doing a good job. I'd been turning my life around, believe it or not. The moderating, I've dieting, I've losing weight and drinking less. I've doing all those things because it got to be too much. Um.

But I think tomorrow is a cheat day, as I said on Opening Arguments, probably going to be a cheat day. All right, right well, thanks so much for listening, hope you got something out of this, hope you can relate to me, I am frazzled, I am ready to turn the fucking page and to not feel like this anymore and to change the tone of the show and to be more positive and to work on other things, to interview more different people, you know, but

0:43:51 Thomas: Like I don't think it is an inappropriate response to one of the darkest periods in our fucking history to maybe be a little depressed and to maybe think about the presidency too much and to follow politics too much. I don't really think that's terribly irrational. It might not be the best thing for me to do for my mental health or for the quality of the show. I don't know. I can' tell you that. But I don't think it's that irrational because holy shit, this was a dark, terrible four years and a lot of really horrible stuff happened. And a lot of people are not around anymore because of it. A lot of people, as I saw a really good tweet by the LOL GOP account that I didn't know was so deep, but they tweeted the other day, they said, I don't know if this next election is the most important election of our lives, but I will tell you that there are many people who, I'm paraphrasing and probably adding words to it.

0:44:45 Thomas: But the tweet was, you know, there are a lot of people who, for whom 2016 was the last election of their lives. And so, and it was the most important and we did the wrong thing, and it could have led to that being the last election of their lives. All right. Well, anyway, I could just keep going on forever in this horrible state, but I won't. Join us tomorrow on YouTube. It'll be nice. It will be, I think it'll help. I hope. And here's hoping we fix all this. If you haven't voted, vote. I'm sure you have. Most people who are going to vote have probably voted early already, ready. But if you aren't one of those people, make sure you fucking vote. Do it. Make sure other people vote. Take precautions. Wear a mask. Do everything you can. But get out there, please. All right. Thank you for listening. I'll see you shortly, hopefully with a better attitude.

0:45:44 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, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If 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.