SIO271: Listener Qs!

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 271, I'm Thomas, thank you for tuning in, so happy to have you here I do want to say before I get started we are having so much fun over on the twitch stream That's twitch.tv/SeriousPod. And if you haven't checked it out, please do because Lindsay has been coming on there. We've had a lot of good questions from the chat and we could always use more company. So make sure to check that out, twitch.tv/SeriousPod. If you go and subscribe there, then you'll always see where I'm going on. Or if you join the Facebook group, you know, the Serious Inquiries Facebook group. It's been so much fun. It's not just about playing games. Playing games is part of it, but it's also about the conversation and interaction and Lindsay telling stories of how her dad buried her TV, buried the family TV, not once, but I think like three times.

0:01:25 Thomas: It's been totally fun, especially, you know, in the year 2020, it's been a nice break, you know? To go interact and talk about different things. We've had a lot of really good questions there that, you now, are turning into other topics, you know that might be future show topics so hope you'll check it out one more time, twitch.tv/SeriousPod. Hope to see you next time. Alright, trying to keep on with my pledge to keep up with my email more, because you guys have so many good questions, and not just questions, I get nice emails from people. I will tell you this, nothing turns on my imposter syndrome more than reading my show email. Because for some reason I'll get people who are like, yeah, I'm a doctor, or I'm a professor somewhere, and I listen.

0:02:11 Thomas: I'm just like, what are you talking about? But anyway, putting that aside for a moment, I'll try to put that aside. I've got some great comments and stuff. All right, here's one, and it's catching up. Some of these are in response to the election stuff. And then also we've got some on the vegetarianism that's going to be a challenge for me not to talk about that all the time.

And already I hear you saying, but in fact, maybe I'll have to address this right away. So many people, oh, another annoying vegetarian slash vegan, whatever, plant-based person. Ah, that stereotype, telling everybody what to do kind of thing. This is, I see why this exists because it just, you know, kind of perpetuates itself. Don't worry, I'm not here to try to lecture you. It's funny, though, because specifically when it comes to my listeners, who are, I guarantee you, like my Facebook friends where I've been posting this, it's all through my podcast, it was all listeners for the most part, and I guarantee you that they do not feel the same way about politics and probably atheism, you know? All of a sudden, right when I post about maybe the way we treat animals in this country and factory farming is awful, maybe we should try to not do it. Then it's like, oh, yeah.

Look, it's one thing if you want to give up meat for your diet, but you can't tell anyone else. Right when you tell, I had so many people. Coincidentally, what do you know? They're all the meat eater people who are like, great for you. Good personal decision. But the minute you tell me what to whatever, then you're an awful whatever.

0:03:45 Thomas: You're being an asshole kind of thing. I guarantee you they do not apply that to politics. They do not apply that to atheism. I'm sure they're in fact, I found examples. They're like, those very people posting about Trump, posting about whatever, all of a sudden when it's I just would invite you to notice, you know, if you are a meat eater, you know, and again, I speak as someone who's given up meat for like three months. It's barely anything. I don't know, 80 days or something like that. I remember now. Like it's not it's I'm not coming from some position. Someone even said like, you know. You don't realize what meat eater perspective. And I'm just like, come on. I just did this yesterday. I've ate meat for 34 years. I think I understand the meat eaters perspective or something.

0:04:30 Thomas: But anyway, they're the same people who will post about atheism or about Trump or about what they're voting or whatever. But when it's an issue that they're, you know, I think a little defensive on, I've seen a lot of defensiveness, a lot of cognitive dissonance, in my opinion, then all of a sudden it's, well, your diet is between you and your diet. That's all it is. And again, it's just not how it works. But there is a concern, which is I don't think that it's, um, logically speaking and morally speaking, I think I should be talking about it all the time. Like, I honestly, I Think that would be the correct thing to do. Um, you're not going to win me over with any arguments of how it's between me and my diet. And I can't tell you what your diet, because from my perspective, it's a cruelty thing. So just picture if replace beating your dog with it.

0:05:18 Thomas: Well, you don't want to beat your dog. That's, that's up to you. You know, your, your dog-beating habits or your dog-beating habits. And you know, if I want to beat my dog. That's up to me. That doesn't work. No one thinks that works, but somehow it does work if it's participating in, you know, factory farming, which is far worse than just beating a dog. Like it's killing. I, I find myself resistant to having to go into these gory details all the time because it's unpleasant to me, but then I realized how many people are, you know, either ignorant or, in fairness, some people disagree about what the actual treatment conditions are for animals and factory farming. And that's, that's a conversation I'm happy to have, you know, and maybe, maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe they'll be wrong. Like we can, we can have that argument, but the thing that I'm not accepting, and maybe this is, I'll try to leave it here.

0:06:04 Thomas: The thing I'm not accepting is the idea that it's somehow out of bounds for me even to be talking about it. Now, to finish what I was saying a second ago, it is true that if you are somebody who harps on one thing all the time and maybe you do it too much, regardless of how moral or whatever it might be, you might turn people off. And so from a strategy point of view or from me just wanting to continue to be entertaining to people and that kind of thing, then yeah, I mean, you know, strategically, interpersonally, I suppose you could say also, I, I actually do try to moderate what I'm saying about a bunch of stuff. Just think how much I'd be talking about not liking The Mandalorian every single day of my life if I didn't care about that. This is a very, this is me moderating myself intensely. But, but any, but I don't accept the argument that it's between me and my diet and, you know, it's a personal choice that has no effect on anybody.

0:06:55 Thomas: That's just not true. And I think it's easy to see through that argument. And I think it's no coincidence that it's only the meat eaters who jump on the thread. Hey, that's great. You do you. Oh yeah. Just the minute you tell anybody else to do it. Yeah. Okay. But I see how it perpetuates itself where, you Like, for example, one of my threads where I just said, I just stated my opinion. I said, yes, I think a plant-based diet is more moral than a meat-eating diet. That's my opinion, that's my opinion, and I said that. And people react as though I've done something unfair to them. Like, how dare I tell, they react like, you're telling me what to do, and it's like, no, actually, you are telling me what to do. If you're coming to my status where I have given an opinion and you're telling me it's not okay for me to say my opinion, then you're the one actually being the asshole, in my opinion.

0:07:48 Thomas: So, it's stuff like that. Again, I'll try to lay off because I know a lot of people don't react well, but I have learned that, you know, I'm going to have to get into the details because people just don't see it quite the same way as I do. And again, you You know, some people have Some people have reasons they're disagreeing about, you know, my opinion on the treatment of animals and factory farming. And that's a conversation we can have. That's cool. I'd have no problem with that. That's an actual conversation. I don't go and tell anybody that they can't be talking about a thing because it's, you know, like that's the part that gets tiresome. So I have it anyway. I have a few emails about that. But the emails I got are mostly positive. So that's nice. All right, now to get on to politics stuff and maybe touch on plant-based stuff later.

0:08:35 Thomas: So So here's an email. It says, "Thomas, I'm a longtime listener of SIO, no way, and I'm a progressive myself. In the latest episode, and again, this is from a month and a half ago, but in the latest episodes, you commented that people tend to support progressive policies in a vacuum, but that the right paints progressives as supporting crazy things, and somehow it seems to stick. I think a big reason that the right is able to successfully tar progressives as crazy and threatening is because of the way many progressives conduct themselves online and in other public forums. I'm not talking about politicians or leadership generally. Progressive leaders like AOC tend to be really good at not saying things that will turn off large groups of voters or make them look crazy. I am talking about the rank and file."

0:09:20 Thomas: "When ordinary progressives say things like it's not possible to be racist against white people, or kill all men, or drinking your white male tears, etc., those things are major turnoffs for lots of people, particularly those who aren't already progressives themselves, but might be open to progressive policy ideas. I think those people remember bad experiences they have with progressives online, and then when the right says a progressive politician is crazy, they are receptive to that argument, even if the politician themselves hasn't said or done anything wrong. Now, let's see, there's some more here. Similarly, I I think Antifa and related groups that get into street fights with right-wingers are doing more harm than good. As satisfying as it is to see them beat up some racists, it also comes across to center right folks as lawless and dangerous."

0:10:09 Thomas: "If you listen to the way these types of voters talk, they are terrified of Antifa, and that's a major boogeyman the right can rely on to suggest that progressives are coming to get them. And beating up racists in the street doesn't get rid of them. They are still out there being racist, and they will probably show up to future racist protests. All it does is grant a small amount of emotional release that comes at a comparatively high cost. Okay, last paragraph. I guess I might as well read it. Of course, there's no way to control what other people do online or what Antifa does, but I do think an awareness of how progressives contribute to these right-wing stereotypes could help individuals avoid playing into them and encourage others to do the same. I'm sure you get lots of emails, etc., etc. OK, thanks for making podcast."

0:10:55 Thomas: Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, this is a tough one. Look, I'm going to I'm going to set aside the Antifa stuff for a moment and see if I get to it, because that's another whole topic. But let's just talk about the, you know, how progressives are acting. This is just not a fair way to look at it. The problem is that there will always be it's called nut picking. It's like nit picking, but not picking.

There will always be some example of a bad progressive or a bad lefty or a bad Democrat whatever there will always be that to scapegoat or whatever to to put up as like the representation of what the whole party is and if you notice they already do have to grasp at straws they already do Fox News already does have to focus on college students you know why that is because that's you know like it's not that easy to find mainstream Democrats saying ridiculous things or socialist you know because like most mainstream Democrats Democrats are mainstream Democrats, you know, but they have to go to the colleges and find a freshman or a sophomore or something who makes a statement that's probably going too far or doesn't make sense. Because guess what? Not everybody, when half the country, roughly speaking, is left and half the country's right, you know, that leaves a lot of possible idiots to be on either side, you know, and you can among a cause that's like a perfect cause, totally just all the arguments are right.

You still have people who represent that cause terribly and say dumb things. And so what Fox News will always be able to do is grab that example, put it on their stupid channel, and then they can make people think that that's the mainstream. I'm just not convinced by this. Like there is nothing you already acknowledge it at the end. There's no way to control what what other people do online, et cetera, et cetera.

0:12:38 Thomas: I don't even think an awareness of how, you know, this is from your sentence, an awareness of how progressives contribute to these right wing stereotypes. I just, that's just not, there's no point in going down that road. There's no way we're going to make every college freshman not get too lefty or something like it does. That's absurd because look at on the other side, you know, when talking about Antifa, you Know, there was a video that emerged a week ago that I shared somewhere that was, you know, one of these right-wing groups literally busting down the door, someplace in Oregon, I think, of an official government building to try to stop the steal. They broke into it. And you know what happened? Nothing. There's not cops beating them up. There's no people, you now, tasing them or shooting them.

0:13:26 Thomas: They just somehow get away with it. I think that somehow is that some of those who, who crosses, or the same, the joint forces, or whichever way it goes, you know, that's why they get away with it, because the police tend to be pretty right wing and they, you know, they, what, you know, what they, they're kind of hands off when it's Ammon Bundy or when it's a white militia busting down a government door and breaking in, hands off, no big deal. And wouldn't you know it, that also doesn't seem to contribute to a stereotyping of all right-wing people that, you know, like we don't talk about it the other way, but somehow if there's a black protester who says something or breaks anything, then the whole Democratic Party, what I'm saying is it's an unreasonable standard and we're not going to meet it.

0:14:15 Thomas: The right doesn't meet that standard. The left isn't going to meet that standard, no side will ever meet that standard. No side will be free of anyone who does things that don't look great on their side. It's just not how it works. Don't know how to break through to Fox News people. That's a tough thing. I feel like I've been hoping for 10 years at least, and I know a lot of people have been talking about this for a lot longer, that the generational shift will someday, the demographics are destiny. Someday, the old Fox News audience will die off and young people aren't as bad. Maybe that'll happen someday. I've stopped waiting for it. And I'm just assuming that they're recruiting enough Fox News brain young people that they'll kind of continue on the tradition there.

0:15:03 Thomas: So that's my response to that. I don't have time to get into the Antifa stuff and I'm not that great on that topic, but I went through a bit of where you are are now, emailer, back a while back, when I think I argued with somebody about it, I don't know, I probably argued with Eli or whoever, Dan Errol or something, but I've been convinced by a lot of people who, like you, who write into the show that Antifa is doing a lot more than you think, and they're doing a whole more good than you think, um, and the problem is, again, everything, anyone in black bloc attire gets, it's labeled as Antifa, leftist, whatever. And that's just not the case. A lot of the riots, a lot of their looting is started by bad actors from the right.

0:15:50 Thomas: You see videos of them actually starting it. And I think what we have to do is, instead of trying to perfect the behavior of a huge anonymous group of people, that's not going to happen, we have to try to make the argument for why this shouldn't be how you judge politics. I know it's hard. Look, if there was any easy solution to this, it wouldn't be an eternal problem. But I think where we're going to make, where we're to have success politically, is specific candidates advocating for policy and trying to dodge, and just not, not dodge, I guess, but just sidestepping this whole, like, "Oh, yeah, but you're a puppet of Antifa." It's like, what are you going to say to that? You know, it's, it's already so stupid that Joe Biden is a puppet for Antifa and the radical. I mean, how stupid is that?

0:16:36 Thomas: Do you think there's something any individual could have done to prevent that? It would happen regardless. You know, it reminds me of back when, again, to cite something from four or five years ago, when Black Lives Matter was gaining more attention and I had a listener share with me, a previous supporter who I don't know if he's still out there, anyway, I don't think he listens to the show, he's kind of a conservative a little bit, but he was a supporter of Atheistically Speaking. And he sent me this video. Here's Black Lives Mater. Here's what they are, and it was the, "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now." And like, I did one second of Googling and was like, well, that's not Black Lives Matter, so that's a different thing, some other group, and that doesn't matter, it never matters, there's all. So what I'm saying is even if we all acted perfectly, you can find some other thing that's not even the thing, you know, like Fox News will find some other group and say it's the leftist.

0:17:30 Thomas: It's just I'm not concerned with trying to waste my time with preventing nutpicking. You can't. It's impossible. Maybe if we're a country of like 100 people, then maybe that would be something you can do. We're a country of, you know, well, we're shrinking rather rapidly with how the right has mishandled COVID and killed so many of us. But apart from that, you Know, we are a country with 300 whatever million people. It is too big to expect any of this. But thank you so much for the email. I do appreciate it. I hope you're still listening. Thanks. Alright, here's another email related to that, from Dalton. Good afternoon, listening to the most recent show left me wanting to challenge a position you seem to take. I felt you proposed a false dichotomy of either you're a fascist or a progressive.

0:18:16 Thomas: Hmm, I already disagree with that, but okay. "You claimed on the show that reaching out to the working class is a poor idea and joked about getting the message to the dinner table, etc. In a blue state like where you live, that may be true, but it's a big country. I'm a lefty in a red state, I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The working class here feels that the Republican Party reaches out to them.

We don't see any support for working class people, but more importantly, we don't anyone try from the Democrats. Hillary didn't stop here, Biden didn't, Trump did. Though he babbled on about how he can drink water, he was still here. The people who voted for him don't think of him as a fascist, they see him as trying to hold democracy together. The message of vote for us because we're not them is bad, it was bad for Hillary, and even though Biden won, Trump got more votes than in 2016. Who's voting for him? Working-class people, in all caps. Yes, the Democrats need to stop pandering to centrists and come down here with the rest of us. The country is working-class people looking for someone to unite behind, and the other guy sucks is not much of a slogan. The other people are bad, dumb, evil, etc. does nothing for me, I'm not sure, might be a typo.

I voted for Biden, but it was a lesser of two evils. I would have voted for last week's sandwich before Trump, but the Dems can't count on that. We need something to rally behind and not just something to hate less. Love the show and we'll keep listening, but this time I think you're way off." Okay, I disagree on a number of counts. First off, let me clarify what I was saying.

0:19:50 Thomas: I mean, the frustration you heard in that episode about, you know, we need to appeal to working class and the family dinner table, blah, blah. Is that there was so much more at stake. Here's the contradiction. And I, again, maybe I could be wrong about this, but it was so abundantly clear. In 2020 that we needed to vote the maniac out of office, that if those facts wouldn't get someone to vote, then my statement was something like to the effect of if that fact alone, the 300,000 dead or whatever it was at the time, and everything else about Trump wouldn't motivate, those facts don't get somebody to vote.

0:20:35 Thomas: I don't know how we can sit here and say, ah, we just need to talk about a program slightly differently to the working class, and that will do it. My complaint is that I think it's pretty well baked in which sides get their information from where, for the most part, and then it's a matter of turnout. I think you are just wrong. When you say who's voting for him, capital, working class people, you are just wrong. I will note, No, that's actually not true. Working class people vote for Biden overwhelmingly. It's hard to define that, but I'm just looking at by income. For people under $50,000 of income, Biden wins 55% to 44%. For between $50 and $100,000 OF income, Biden wins 57% to 42%.

0:21:23 Thomas: And then Trump wins at $100K or more, 54% to 43%. People who are quote-unquote working class vote for Biden. There's a big problem. And I don't know your situation, Dalton, but one thing, and I've fallen into this in the past, I think we need to be wary of it. People say working class when they mean white working class. And it's a huge bias in the media, especially among the right, among everybody. I think it's something that we we can't help but do when, you know, if, if you're in this country and you're a white person like I am, I think you've been raised with a, with an unconscious bias that when someone says working class, who do you picture? Like you picture a white guy working in a coal mine or a plumber or a, you Know, that's your stereotype of it.

0:22:11 Thomas: But actually the working class is not white. The white working class voted for Trump, again, uh, not like 100% to zero or something, but you know, in the 60s. That's a lot of why Trump has had success is motivating white people to vote for him a lot in the past. Again, he made some gains among the Hispanic population in 2020. But that was the story of his success in 2016 certainly was no college education, white voters was a huge part of his demographic. So you're incorrect that working class people are the ones electing Trump. If you look at on the whole, the total numbers for the country, I'm not saying that, you know, in Oklahoma, it's not, you know, that might be a different story. I'm not talking about Oklahoma, but I'm talking about if you look at the numbers for the whole election, people who make less money vote for Biden over Trump.

0:23:01 Thomas: By a pretty healthy margin, too. So, to address a couple other things, the The reason that Hillary and Biden wouldn't stop in Oklahoma is because there's no point to stopping in Oklahoma. This is, you know, largely because the Electoral College is crap and you're not going to. There are certain places because of the Electoral College that you can put your time. And Trump might have gone there because he loves having a rally at a place where people love him. That's why he does it. I mean, that's why he did his rallies. He he loves that energy. He loves that attention. Is a 65-35, or not even that, I'm looking at 2020, 65-32, Trump to Joe Biden, 65 to 32, that is not close. It's not close, so there is absolutely zero reason for Biden to go there.

0:23:50 Thomas: I know you hate that, but guess what? It also means that Biden doesn't come to California. Biden doesn't, you know, this is the shitty Electoral College system. That's not Biden's fault, it's not even Trump's fault, it's our stupid system. It makes it so that there are swing states that matter, and those are the states where, you you know, presidential candidates only have a certain amount of time, and that is better spent in other states. Now you might say, well, what is that, a self-fulfilling thing? Like, if Biden never comes to Oklahoma, then we don't, okay, Oklahoma, you might be right, and that's true in some states, um, that if you write them off, then maybe you are writing off an opportunity. Oklahoma, Oklahoma has seven electoral votes. It's not going to, you know, it's not anywhere high on the list of where you're going to try to like swing a state that's close. And furthermore, it's so red that it's not even doable. So that would be why no one came to Oklahoma.

0:24:37 Thomas: Sorry about that. Donald Trump shouldn't have even wasted any time there, but he likes to go where people love him. So that's probably why he did that. And I'm sorry to, you know, I hope this comes across that, you know, I do appreciate the question. I appreciate where you're coming from. And I do, we do need to find a way to win a messaging battle. But I also think it's funny, Dalton, that you, in the same email that you said, it's not enough to just be better than Trump, you also acknowledge that you voted for Biden because he was better than Trump, like you also acknowledged that you did vote for him because it was lesser of two evils, and I just think that's kind of funny to me. Like, yeah, that's, I mean, I disagree. I voted for Biden, not just because he wasn't Trump. I mean a large part of why I was motivated by this election is how bad the other guy is.

0:25:25 Thomas: I mean, that can't help, but to be part of the equation. Part of it, is part of running for president, is I am going to do a better job than this person who I'm running against. And so I don't know why you would do an election and try to ignore the other person. That doesn't make sense to me. Now, having said that, I agree with you that if your only message is how bad the other person is, then that might dampen some enthusiasm. And you also want to run on a proactive thingy. And Joe Biden got a history smashing, record smashing number of votes. So it would be weird to sit here and say that he did everything wrong and whatever. But yeah, I think in 2024, you know, certainly it's going to differ.

0:26:12 Thomas: I don't think he's in danger of running the same campaign in 2024 because it won't be against Trump. I'm pretty certain about that. There's so much going on in the New York investigations that is going to put Trump in a bad position legally. I know, famous last words, but I just think there's so little chance that Trump is going to be the Republican candidate in 2024. But I don't know. This could be one of those things that I look back on in the future. I'm like, oh, man, those were the days when I used to think that. But no, I'm pretty solid on that. And even if Trump were the nominee in 2024, Biden will then have been president, assuming nothing happens, for four years, and he'll have to run on his record what he wants to do. You know, he's not going to run just like, look at how bad the other person is.

0:27:00 Thomas: Well, I always do this, I've spent so much time on the first two questions. Well, thank you, Dalton. I do really appreciate you listening and I appreciate your perspective. I do think there's some things there that I disagree with you on, though. And furthermore, for the record, sorry, I'm trying to move on, but Democrats do have better policy for the working class. Democrats want a higher minimum wage, they want, you know, health care. Nothing would help the working class more than health care! I mean, come on, that's part of my frustration with this. Democrats have have the vastly superior policies and they try to message on it, they talk about it, and it doesn't work for various reasons. And some of that can range from maybe they're doing a bad job of messaging. Sure, we can try to critique specific candidates and make, you know, make those arguments. But also it has to do with the fact that some people are locked into Fox News and other horrible media sources, and they don't ever hear the message from the Democrats.

0:27:53 Thomas: Democrats. There's a large portion of the voting population to whom it literally would not make any difference what any Democrat said. It wouldn't make a difference. I think that's a large percentage. And maybe we disagree on that. Like maybe, you know, and I'm of course, I could be wrong as I could be wrong about anything. Maybe the disagreement would be like, well, actually, there is a bigger percentage of the population that would see the message from from whoever, Biden or Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or whatever, and would actually be affected by that. I just think it's vanishingly small because people get locked into their media ecosystems and then they don't see it. They don't See the message. They just see it through a filter of what their media sources are trying to show them. And I think that when you're looking at trying to swing right wing voters, that's largely true.

0:28:42 Thomas: Now, maybe there might be a difference in in voters who don't turn out, like low turnout, kind of low enthusiasm, maybe they aren't dialed into Fox News, maybe they're reachable, you could be right there. And, you know, I just think my argument there would be, for one, that's not happening in Oklahoma, it's just not. So if you're just talking about Oklahoma, that's, sorry, it's the Electoral College has screwed you, you're never seeing a Democrat in the near future, a Democratic presidential candidate going to Oklahoma, beyond, you know, just to stop by and say hi real quick, that's, that there's not going to be meaningful full time spent there. It's not, seven electoral votes that are locked in for the other side, why would you waste any time there? Okay, okay, true to my word, I'm going to try to move on for now. Okay, John says, do you think this election could be an example of the effectiveness of gerrymandering?

0:29:29 Thomas: Even with a 50-50 D to R vote, Republicans would have greater than 50% of the representatives. The 2018 blue wave was enough to overcome gerrymandering, but not in 2020. Yeah, no, certainly. I think that's a part of it. Gerrymandering for the, but that's specifically the House. My, the bulk of my frustration was with the Senate. And I mean, it is a little shocking that we lost ground in the House. But I mean after I did the breakdown, tried to look at the numbers, it makes sense that the turnout would be down for Democrats or sorry, no, that turnout would have been down for Republicans in a midterm when they control the presidency. That seems to be how it goes. And so, yeah, you know, from 2018 to 2020, it actually in retrospect makes sense that we lost a little bit in the House.

0:30:14 Thomas: Again, I still hoped that we would get a massive win. I'm always hoping for a massive winner, especially when the other side is a homicidal fascist who's killing people of COVID and not doing anything. So yeah, but so that was part of the disappointment. But yeah, I think gerrymandering is a factor. And not only that, it's going to be worse because we didn't win the statewide races that we needed to in order to control the line drawing for 2020 going forward. So that sucks. Um, but that doesn't, that only affects the House. It doesn't affect the Senate. Um, so, you know, the biggest disappointments were like Susan Collins in Maine. I still, I just don't understand it. I don't know what happened there. Uh, I guess South Carolina, you know, a couple, and some other states where the Senate elections were bad and gerrymandering doesn't affect that, so who knows. Um, yeah, but anyway, point taken, that's somewhat of the problem with the House for sure. Alright, can I skip one I had about Bernie?

0:31:12 Thomas: Someone said they changed their mind that Bernie might not have been able to win. Alright, skip that. Jonathan has one here talking about, again, the same episode. Got a lot of response on that one, so thank you for that. They say, okay, skipping a little bit, I'm glad you did that investigation because obviously it's an important and hot issue and most of the commenters are basically supporting their own preconception. So this is about actually trying to look at the data and see whether or not Medicare for All or progressives won or lost. Remember that episode, 264. Let's see. Of course, AOC will think she's the savior of the party. And of course, Spanberger will think we need more people like her. So good for someone to look at the real data. Somewhat objectively, I basically share your biases. I also largely agree with your conclusion, though I will argue for the proposition that that campaigning on Medicare for All is key to Democratic wins.

0:32:05 Thomas: Before I get into that, I'll address two things. I have a quantitative background and have done some casual reviews of election results. I have an idea of of how you looked at the partisan leanings of districts. You took the House results as indicators of where voters stand, but the quality and effort of House candidates varies enormously. It also, it isn't so much the quality of the candidates, but whether or not they have any support and make an effort. An extreme example will illustrate it. New York 10 went from 70% Dem in 2012 to 80% in 2014, which should be a bad year for Dems, to 78% in 2016 to 82% in 2018, 70% this year. Guessing, as noted, New York is really slow in vote counting. These weren't swings in the candidates' popularity so much as whether the Republicans made any effort.

0:32:55 Thomas: Yeah, I agree with that. I think I said that as well. To figure out what the electorate was like in the district, it is better, and this is in bold here, it's better to look at the vote for president and/or governor or senator where the races are generally fairly well contested. Then looking at the congressional result vis-a-vis that will tell you something about quality of the candidate and whether the issues focused on had an influence. Yeah, I could not agree more, emailer, and boy, do I wish we could do that, but we can't. We may be able to now. Probably not even now. So here's the thing, and I wouldn't have known this. The exact thing, it's funny you say this, this is exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to look at the district results and see how they voted for president and compare to president.

0:33:42 Thomas: I absolutely wanted to do that. But because of the way elections work, it doesn't really, it is difficult to get that data. It's possible that they will do it after the fact. But when you think about it, so the vote for president is on a statewide level. The House candidates are a district level and districts, as we before mentioned, gerrymandering and all that districts are drawn really weirdly. Weirdly. So they go through, you know, cities and counties and all this weird stuff. And that makes it very impossible because elections are held by county. So, like, I could I actually tried to do that. You know, I made a lot of effort to get this data. And again, it may become available later, but it wasn't when I did this episode for most, you know, for any any meaningful amount of places that I could find, because the again, the districts are drawn all weirdly.

0:34:33 Thomas: So in order to get, you can get election results by county pretty well, but trying to divide that and figure out where a district, you know, dividing that county vote into a district. It's impossible. Like it's, it's something that I imagine maybe government employees do eventually, you know, like, I remember the government agencies of state governments that will put that out. You know, they may eventually put that data out, but it wasn't available. I would have loved to have that data. Absolutely. You say I'd be happy to help you delve into that more if you'd like. Yeah, if you if you have a way to get that data or, you know, again, I don't I took a stab at this to find it, but I'm not a data scientist. So maybe I missed something. I'm decent with data, but there's just no way to getting it. Get away. This So yeah, once that's available, I think that will help, like if it becomes, and again, it may or may not become available for all states.

0:35:26 Thomas: I think California does it, I'm pretty sure, they put together like a cross-tab thingy that, you know, collect, because again, picture what you'd have to do to do that. You'd have divide it into districts, and apparently, elections, I guess, and, again, could be different in every state, because that's how our system works. Districts, but they're not, the elections are done by county. They're not really done by district. It's a weird thing. I don't know. So that's the reason, but I absolutely agree with you that that would have been the better way to go. And I wanted to do that. It was, but what you can do is I guess you can compare the, the only thing I could do is compare the performance of the senators to the president, because that's, you know, both of those are statewide or whatever, and you get those numbers. So yeah, I totally agree with You.

0:36:12 Thomas: Wish I could have done that. Just wanted to read this question to show you I did put a lot of work into trying to find that number, especially, you know, again, this was a month and a half ago when I did this, but it's not something that's immediately available. All right, on to a few of the meat-eating topic now. This one's lots of fun. Alex says, I wanted to respond to your piece about eating less meat. I agree in general, but one of the things I found is that having fewer meals containing meat can be difficult, even when replacing meat with things like Beyond Meat or Impossible Meat. This is where what I believe is one of most important discussions we can have comes in, how to eat less meat? You gave several good ways, cut out meat some days a week, substitute your meat, etc., but I have two more suggestions of how to do it. First, mix meat and meat replacements.

0:36:58 Thomas: Need a pound of ground beef? Well, most of those ground beef replacements come in 12-ounce packs, so get a bunch of ground beef and package it into four-ounce containers, and then when you need a pound of beef for meatloaf, use one of those four-ounce containers and one of the 12-ounce packs of meat substitute. Secondly, use some meat stock when you're cooking the non-meat if it's close enough for you. I use the corn, Q-U-O-R-N. I don't actually know that brand, I don't think. Corn meatless nuggets and cook them in chicken stock as a substitute for chicken breasts. In most things, I'd use chicken breasts then. I do this because of exactly that difference between the meat and meat substitutes you were talking about. They're very close, but for me, there's bit of an uncanny valley in them being so close. I don't think it's a flavor thing.

0:37:43 Thomas: If anything, impossible meat tastes more like bison than beef. Which is even better, but rather something else lacking, or it could just be that I know I'm not eating meat. Regardless of what it is, this helps tremendously. I recently made a dish from my homeland, a sort of a curried meatloaf, but three quarters of it was impossible meat, and one fourth was bison. It was delicious, and though my wife and I are going to get three meals out of it each, that's still less meat than we'd have had with one meal of it. Yeah, so I love that. Thank you you so much for that email, Alex. Yeah, good tip. Again, this is why I'm not, again, I'm not sitting here demanding everyone cut meat. I'm saying if you have the ability, I think you should do it. I think that can argue about, I am not a fundamentalist. I am not here to tell you you are a murderer and all that stuff.

0:38:30 Thomas: I don't, I haven't said any of that. I do think that cutting meat is more moral than not cutting meat. That's an opinion I have. People take that, take a lot of offense from merely saying that, but I should have a right to say that. I say my opinion about what's more moral. And anyway, this is a great tip. One of the appeals I want to make, one of the reasons I even recorded that episode was to tell you, if you're somebody who's turned off by the absolutism of having to stop all meat eating or even animal product eating, you don't have to. You can either, like I said, you can either cut meat for certain days of the week or Or do what this listener does and just kind of mix in meat substitute with meat. And then, you know, maybe you've cut your meat in half or you've even cut it to a fourth or something, depending on the math.

0:39:21 Thomas: And maybe you won't even give up that much of the flavor. That's super cool. I love the idea. And I hope that helps somebody. You everyone is in the position to do this. And I granted that a million times in the episode. And still believe it. Not everyone is In a position. Position to where it's easy for them to do this. But if you are, if it would be easy for you to do this, but you're just not doing it, then, you that's that's something I was doing. So, again, this is coming from someone who just switched. You know, that's the position I was in. It was it was probably easy for me to cut meat, at least most of it quite easily. And I wasn't doing it. So that was what I thought was perhaps a moral failing. It Was something I wasn't doing than it could be doing. So that's how I feel about it. And thank you for the excellent tip, Alex. Alright, one more from Colette. Oh, this is a Patreon comment.

0:40:07 Thomas: Thank you so much for this episode. Oh, this is the meat-eating one. I've been going through the same thing as you. Not went veggie yet, but plan is to start after Christmas dinner. Oh, I hope you have then, Colette! Your "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is going to be my 2021 mantra. Yeah. How, well, awesome. Good for you, Colette. I'm so glad. Yeah, that's how I feel. I hope that helps. And again, Colete's doing it.

You know, you can just cut your meat a little bit. You Sprinkle in a little bit of impossible meat and there you go, you've you've made a difference, a small difference, but again, it's it's something that something that's an easy choice, you know, that you can do if if you have the means to do it, is what I'm saying, but anyway, congratulations, Colette, and thank you for for writing that.

Alright, switching gears, this is, I got a few questions in email form from somebody who writes a ton of questions, I really appreciate this person, this listener, for both this show and Philosophers in Space, they write a ton of great questions and I really appreciate them.

0:41:05 Thomas: So this is Changing Gears. This question is, how do you feel about raising kids gender neutral? Like if Phoebe turned out to be trans, would you feel bad for treating her as a girl? So that's an interesting one. Here's my opinion. And I want to note that, you know, I know I have a ton of trans listeners and friends and curious for your opinion on this. Maybe it could be a show topic in the future. It's my personal opinion that I don't think we need to go that far. I also don't think it's a bad thing if you want to, like if you are somebody who wants to try to, you know, raise your kids in a mostly gender neutral fashion, that's fine. I mean, it's, it hard because, you Know, other kids, I'm sure we'll have a hard time with it. Know, it'S, itS something that you realize how, how much human brains, especially children, human, human children, need to like cut everything into into categories, it's amazing.

0:41:59 Thomas: They do it so naturally. It's so tough to, you know, I'm always, you're always kind of battling your kids with that. So I don't know, maybe it'll, you know, maybe it would work. I don't have any problem with someone who wants to do this. Like if they if they want to make an effort to raise their kid gender neutral. It's my opinion that I don't think we need to do this.

I think it's, my opinion, in and again, this could be subject to change if I see more evidence or whatever, but from where I stand right now, I do make a conscious effort to try to not emphasize gender with my kids.

Kids, I try to not, you know, pigeonhole them or put, they say you have to have this toy because whatever, I think that is that's not good behavior, I think if you are, you know, restricting your child's choices based on their gender that they've been assigned and they don't even, you don't even necessarily know how that fits with them yet, um, yeah, I think, I think it's a good thing, I don't think that's good thing, I think, you know, we let our kids and we encourage our kids to play with all kinds of stuff.

0:42:53 Thomas: Arlo's really into Frozen and wants to wear some Frozen attire sometimes. And that's fine. I have no problem with that. I want to encourage them to have fun. You do notice as a parent, and I'm sure a lot of you are this way, you do notice that there are so many ways that gender creeps into stuff or gender expectations, I guess, creeps into stuff, it you sucks because you know, Phoebe and Arlo, they watch a lot of Disney stuff and a lot of those shows are great, but also it's often like, well, the girl is a princess and the boys are this and a ba-da-ba and like it's become true that Phoebe loves princesses now and has a, you know, she she tends to identify with princesses and it's hard because I have wanted to, I've wanted to not push that, but then once they are kind of interested in something, then you really can't talk your kids out of anything.

0:43:43 Thomas: Once she's interested in princesses and that's the thing she wants, she wants a princess dress and she wants to princess this thing. Like now there, you almost can't put the cat back in the bag or whatever. It's because then it's really shitty to have to be like fighting your kid on something they are interested in. And that doesn't feel right either to be like, no, you can't be a princess. You know, that that that feels just as restrictive the other way. So it is a really tough thing. And also you realize how little control you have over it. You know. Like even if we wanted to try to to either through the toys we give Phoebe or the shows she watches, if we want to try To restrict all gender expectations, she's still going to be in the outside world around other kids at daycare, at school, at whatever it's going to be, and all those expectations are there.

0:44:33 Thomas: It's going to leak in somewhere, and that sucks, but my goal is to do my best, and our goal as parents is to do our best to make it, like, if one of our kids turned out to be trans, our goal would be that that made almost no difference. Like, they would be able to say, you know, I feel this is my gender identity. Identity, we would be loving and accepting, we would give them whatever opportunities they want, whatever changes they needed, and our goal is to raise them in a way that they would know that they could do that, you. That they would know that's something they would be safe to say, all that, and that they wouldn't have felt that they were treated as one gender by us. That's our goal, and humans are fallible, we make mistakes, especially parents, especially in 2020.

0:45:25 Thomas: It's not as though we're always constantly living up to our goals, but those are our goals. Our goals would be to raise our kids in such a way that they will feel like they have whatever freedoms to express themselves and their gender however they feel they need to. And we try not to hammer, you know, too many like gender-coded toys and colors and stuff. But you will know, again, if you have kids, I think you'll notice that it's hard to prevent that. And then once it seeps in, you feel like you're doing something wrong when you don't want to let them pursue a certain gender-coated thing. It starts to feel like, wait, but I don't want to restrict what you're doing. That doesn't feel right. Like if you made, you know, if you make your daughter not play with princess stuff and I make my son not play with, I don't know, trucks or hammers or trains, like that feels a little restrictive the other way.

0:46:14 Thomas: It doesn't really feel fair to them. So it's a tough balancing act, but that's how I feel about it. And I'm, as always, interested in thoughts, other thoughts, especially if you are not cisgender. What are your thoughts and experiences? Maybe what are your experiences from your parents maybe that could lend Help tell me what to do and what not to do. I would be totally open to that. I'm always open to Listening to the experiences of other people, especially people who are different than I am. I think you learn a ton by doing that, and that's why I love doing this show, and that's what I love hearing from you, and doing episodes like this. So with that said, I think that's all the time I have. So thank you so much. Happy New Year. I know, happy New Year, this guy.

0:46:57 Thomas: That's not an appropriate thing to say. Yeah. Hope the year is better. Year be better. I don't know. It's not bad year. That's what I'll say. Uh, and, uh, again, a reminder, check out that Twitch stream. It is a ton of fun, so much interaction. And if you like NES games, I've been playing some Zelda, got my cartridge fixed. I did it, did it myself, took several tries. Didn't go well the first few times, but, uh. It's been a tonne fun. So twitch.tv/seriouspod over there. And with that said, have a fun New Year's Eve. Can I say that? Have a, have an okay New Year's Eve, everybody. See you soon.

0:47:43 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.