DOD166: The Bad Guy Won, Kids

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's slouching toward the apocalypse. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:39 Eli: Hello.

0:00:39 Thomas: You know, you bring up a good point, Tom. I'm not going to even try to have good posture anymore. Why? Just one more fucking thing.

0:00:46 Eli: Let

0:00:44 Tom: Yeah, I chin up?

0:00:48 Eli: Posture go.

0:00:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:50 Tom: I stole that line, by the way. I stole that line from my high school civics teacher who published a newsletter called... His name was Mr. Miller. Name was because I was a kid he had the Miller newsletter and yeah, Mister, I think that was it, and I remember his the Millar Newsletter and the the sub sub headline underneath it was "Slouching Toward the Apocalypse," and it was like he published a monthly newsletter on his take on the world, um, and I still have them somewhere they were actually really cool. No, it was super hinged. It was awesome actually yeah he still haven't seen it in a while.

He gave them mostly to staff, like to other staff members. I saw one sitting on his desk and he and I had a pretty good relationship. And I asked him if I could have one. And he said, yeah, but I'm not giving them out to students generally. And so I have like six or eight copies of those still laying around. And every once in a while, I'll dig one up and be like, hey, he was right about that. They were really, really good. They inspired me too to write my my own newsletter, which I did right out of college that nobody read because it was a fucking newsletter. And that's fucking

0:01:02 Thomas: It It was Mr. Yeah, you just said it. Was it

0:01:19 Eli: Where?

0:01:19 Thomas: Unhinged, though? Because that was back in a time when people shouldn't have believed that. Oh, really? Okay. Wow, nice.

0:01:28 Eli: Hey,

0:02:02 Tom: Crazy.

0:02:03 Eli: The abandoned blogs of unappreciated geniuses, Tom.

0:02:08 Thomas: We come to you today with a special... no, speaking of nobody reading, um, current state of everything. We come today in a sort of an emergency episode. I don't know why, I don't know why we did a different schedule, but like we have other stuff we had recorded and in it, I can't, you, it's still good stuff. You'll still, you'll still hear it you'll hear it, and you'll hear me joking about how I predicted this, and this won't be funny, but for now, yeah, let's talk, talk about what

0:02:08 Tom: Now I write a blog. Nobody reads.

0:02:25 Eli: Perfectly nice episode, everybody. We made a perfectly nice comedy episode.

0:02:26 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:39 Eli: Hey,

0:02:39 Thomas: The auto ads, poor

0:02:39 Eli: Hey, hey. Hey, if you hate auto ads, you can give us money at patreon.com/dearolddads. Those a dollar, you get a parenting version at the end of the show.

0:02:49 Tom: The enthusiasm.

0:02:49 Eli: Tom, Tom doesn't come sometimes is the joke, but he's been there most of the time. He has a child who he needed to get health care for, and he took one day off ever once.

0:02:49 Thomas: Eli oh

0:02:50 Tom: Disgasm.

0:03:01 Eli: All right. You know where the Patreon is. Fucking Google

0:03:03 Thomas: My god, we've killed Eli. It's for the world has caused him to drop his facade

0:03:06 Tom: Oh,

0:03:06 Eli: It. Hey, pick up the Constitution and rip into it, everybody. All right, go on, Tom. Tom, you got some solutions for the folks at home? Let's fucking hear them. I'm psyched, Betty. I'm fucking psyched to hear it. I'm syced to hear it. I'm giving this episode the silent treatment in case anybody wants to know.

0:03:09 Thomas: Yeah there's

0:03:12 Tom: No, that's fucking. No. Fuck. I, you know, yeah. I did thought a lot about after the election. I really thought long and hard that it like a little. I don't know if you may have heard of it, but, you know, I did think about what and I know this will come as no surprise, but I thought about like, OK, what's what's my responsibility now? I an audience. I have a microphone. I feel like it's impossible to ask for the privilege of an audience without recognizing that that creates a responsibility. So And I've been thinking a lot about, OK. What is my responsibility here?

And I think my responsibility on this show, which is different than other shows that I've got, is to open up a dialogue where we talk about, like, how do we talk to our kids about bad news in the world. And it's different than how do We talk to Our kids about Bad news, like with, you know, grandma's sick or, you know, the cat died or whatever, right? Um, the world is is out there and it is happening and And kids become aware of it either directly or indirectly, depending on their ages.

Become aware of it from social media, from their friends, from other parents, from news sources, from changes in behavior on the playground. They become aware of the news of the world in ways that feel different to me than how I became aware of the news of the world when I was a kid, in that I mostly was shielded from it, right? Right. Because we lived in a different a different world where information wasn't so robustly and regularly delivered

0:03:35 Thomas: An election

0:04:59 Tom: Than it was in the 70s or 80s.

0:05:00 Eli: If your dad didn't grunt out what he was reading in the newspaper, our generation did not find out what was happening.

0:05:05 Tom: For real.

0:05:03 Thomas: Actually, yeah, have we ever talked about that time, what's your first, like, news memory? Was it like the, um, Harbor or was it, you know, know, was it, yeah

0:05:06 Tom: Yeah, it was 9-11.

0:05:16 Eli: Archduke Ferdinand being shot.

0:05:17 Tom: I was disappointed at how many people died of yellow fever in the Panama Canal dig. I really thought that was egregious.

0:05:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:05:23 Eli: Tom was in Jericho when the walls fell, and it was really, it was fucking hard for him.

0:05:28 Thomas: Mine was, I think, mine might have been, um, City, I believe was the first thing I remember, like, being on the news.

0:05:32 Tom: Oh, yeah, that that that was a big deal. Yeah,

0:05:35 Thomas: Dude, you're 10 years old, you, I'm sure you had something

0:05:39 Eli: You did the Oklahoma City bombing, Tom?

0:05:39 Tom: It's hard because no

0:05:39 Thomas: No, his dad did. No.

0:05:42 Eli: Yeah

0:05:44 Tom: Okay, no, I, I, you know, I was like, I will say that the reason I said 9-11, I was actually pretty political in college, in the sense that I had a sense of outrage, but my, my political knowledge was very narrow, like I had real big worries.

0:06:01 Thomas: I meant as a kid though. We're talking about, like, like, you know, as a small child.

0:06:03 Tom: Yeah I, as a kid, kid, no, I don't think I had any political awareness that was meaningful

0:06:05 Thomas: Yeah. No, no, sorry. I didn't ask. I just, you talked about tragedy. Yeah, big tragedy.

0:06:09 Tom: Or big, bad news about the world. I

0:06:11 Thomas: Yeah, was that you have a memory of like, oh, this is, there you go. Did did your any adults around you, you know, like how they explain it? How do they?

0:06:13 Tom: Mean, I remember, like, I'm old, I remember when the Challenger blew up. Yeah,

0:06:21 Eli: Tom's dad went like this.

0:06:21 Tom: Nobody explained shit. No.

0:06:22 Eli: He went, yes, that was probably how he entered

0:06:25 Tom: No, I wasn't even living with my dad. I was living with Mom when that happened, so she probably just was like, glug, glug, and killed a monkey. But, like, no,

0:06:30 Eli: Yeah

0:06:31 Thomas: Yeah, I was going to say the monkey was actually the one comforting. They're like, sorry, Tom.

0:06:35 Eli: Tom's mom was on the Challenger, but she survived, she rode rubble down to the ground and skated like the silver server off a piece of rocket, splattered in kindergarten teacher, and was just like, ah, my bottle broke. Tommy, come out.

0:06:52 Tom: Oh, her bottles were always plastic, Eli.

0:06:56 Eli: That is the silly part of that metaphor. Thank you, Tom. Let's keep it reined in.

0:06:58 Tom: That is, that is, that's the ridiculous

0:06:59 Thomas: Other than that you nailed it exactly. What

0:07:01 Eli: Other

0:07:00 Tom: Part. The rest of it was pretty on point.

0:07:01 Eli: Than that, I got it.

0:07:02 Tom: Yeah, it was, it wasn't, it was a pretty, yeah.

0:07:02 Thomas: Happened Yeah just Biographical, yeah.

0:07:02 Eli: That's exactly what happened, yeah.

0:07:04 Tom: I don't remember adults ever talking about Bad shit happening in the world. I don't remember anybody having conversations with me about current events as they sort of happened or helped explain or understand that. But I also do think that as a 46 year old guy growing up, you know, mostly as an 80s, early 90s kid, it was real easy to not know stuff. It's way harder to not no stuff.

0:07:07 Thomas: So TV didn't show you. The TV didn't just show me a bunch, because that was me. It was, I would be in the morning going, ready for school and, like, you, parents would have, like, some sort of news or Today Show or something on, and I would see it that way. That's

0:07:40 Tom: What's Well, no, because I think, you know, maybe my experience is not typical, is it often isn't, but I was a latchkey kid, so I woke up in the morning, my dad was already off to work, so I watched cartoons in the, so, and then when I came home, we watched, like, Wheel of Fortune or some shit during dinner, and then we watched, you, TV. My dad didn't watch the news with me, so I didn't wash the news of my dad. Yeah.

0:07:53 Thomas: Nice. That's That's good or is It, I don't know, let's talk about it. Geez.

0:08:03 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Think it was really easy in a way that it's not anymore to be disconnected. Um, will tell you like Aislinn is 13, she'll be 14 in January. Um. Was acutely aware of this election. She was also aware of the election in 2016 when she was six. Are just more connected, I think. And I think that we are a little bit more open than previous generations about having conversations about these big issue items in public spaces where kids can hear them. And, I think there's no getting around it. All of my kids are very, very aware, you, from 10 years old all the way up to 18 years old, and having voted in this election, they're all very, very aware. And a lot of the, the sort of stuff I'm seeing online that I thought we could speak to was like, fucking, what do I tell my kids? And I have some thoughts about this, I, that range pretty wildly depending on ages, but Thomas and Eli, you guys have smaller kids. What's your experience of their experience? Yeah.

0:08:25 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:09:10 Thomas: Yeah, and I have a genius kid who, uh, is already a worrier, you know, more than, more than, anyway, so Phoebe, um, from time to time we kind of mention it inevitably, like, oh, and we just say, oh, well, that's the bad guy and we're trying to have him not win, like, that's kind of how we'd present it. He's the, the bad guy and we're trying to stop him from winning.

0:09:15 Tom: Yeah.

0:09:29 Tom: And then when, when Trump won, like did she, right.

0:09:31 Thomas: And, So like it already was like, I already wasn't sure back in the day. Cause obviously, you know, when we, when Trump comes up a lot, you and there's also, um, you know, the other news about him being convicted and all that stuff. And so I, I haven't been entirely sure other than to say, yeah, he's, he is the bad guy. Like you just, you can't really explain. That's the thing that's hard is like, It's hard for them to understand why he's bad exactly.

And so I'm sure she's envisioning some sort of Disney villain or something like that. But we're just like, yeah, we're trying to, you know, mom and dad are trying to help stop and not take power. And then Election Day, she was she was aware of it. And she asked, like, hey, you said, you Trump was the bad guy. Right. Like And there's kids at school that are wanting him to win. It. And I was like, yeah, well, I don't They suck too. Fuck them.

No, I don't. I was just like, I, I yeah, some people are wrong and they want the bad guy to win. And they're probably just repeating what their parents said. And then election night, she, she can read. She's fucking seven. She doesn't second

0:10:29 Thomas: Grade. This poor child. I had no awareness of any of this. I was in second grade, she's seeing the TV and she would see, like, the States called for Trump early. And she's like, "What? What?" Unless she went into a of panic, she's like, "Mom, dad, the bad guy, he won, he won," and it was like, "Yeah, but that's the state that he was supposed to win, you know, so weird." And then we had to, like, the next day, I mean, fortunately, she, she is still a kid, so she is distracted by whatever thing is happening, you know, video game, whatever. So she was kind of distracted, but kind of leveled with her and we're like, "Yeah, um, not feeling well because the bad boy, he won." So I don't know what to say. I don't know. I set this up and he won. I can't pretend he didn't. And she really brought it up again. So we're kind of just going to wait and see a little. But yeah, it sucks.

0:10:18 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, right.

0:11:12 Tom: I'm sure. Did, did Max has, does Max have any understanding of what's going on at all Eli at this point?

0:11:16 Eli: Nah, you ain't no fucking shit. It rules.

0:11:17 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That envy. Do. I envy that. I think that there's like, you know, what I was thinking about this is like with, with younger And you hit on it, Thomas, is like younger kids are distractible. And for the most part, for most, not all, but for most young kids, their day to day life should not be too impacted right away. Right. There may be downstream effects where parts of their lives are impacted by the results of the choices made by the new administration. But I really feel like for little kids, there's no good that comes out of anything other than limiting your input into their little minds and hearts about this election. And I think we have a responsibility as people who have an emotional response to this, like a lot of things, to really carefully consider how those emotions get expressed in terms of your anxieties or fears around your kids during this time. Online, I know, like, from looking online like there's a, yeah, no, no, no, I don't mean it that way

0:11:20 Thomas: That's nice.

0:11:54 Thomas: This feels pretty targeted. This is

0:12:25 Tom: At all, but no, no, no, no, no, I don't, I, and I, and you can totally disagree with me on this that's fine, but like like

0:12:25 Thomas: Tom's intervention. No, no, no. I agree. I think that putting that too much on your little kids. I think the part that runs into tension is I can't, I'm, I'm not a liar. I can'T lie. And I, and I

0:12:42 Tom: Right

0:12:41 Eli: Now who's targeted? Okay. Okay. Rude. Tom, you one -eyed slattern. Alright, we did a circle. I did a cycle.

0:12:50 Thomas: And it, I think for me, it's a fine balance because Phoebe is too smart and and she really is. I'm NOT just saying like, she she knows if we're not telling her something and she knows she, she understands too much. We would have to do a total news embargo or election embargo while she was around, which is something that there's no way I could do. I have a heart attack of followed it that night. And I still had heart attacks. And maybe, maybe I should have just done that, but no, she, she hears stuff from school. Like she hears staff from the other kids.

Like we're not going to hide it from her, but I do completely agree, Tom, that there, there's no reason to try to overly stress her out about it. I know, did, I think we did did her best once he won because she was you pretty distraught at that news to try to frame it as like, yeah, well, we're just, we're going to be part of the people trying to help people, and we're going to do everything we can, you know, to frame it is like, it's not the end of the world, even though it is, but it's, yeah.

0:13:17 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:37 Thomas: No.

0:13:38 Tom: Good.

0:13:39 Thomas: That, see that nuclear weapon about to explode, it's going to be actually flowers come out when it explodes. It's gonna be, yep. It's Gonna be 100%.

0:13:44 Tom: Suntan. We all get a good suntam, yeah. Well,

0:13:47 Thomas: Great, because Because there is no reason to them over much on that kind of thing. But also don't want to create a disconnect. I don't wanna create any feeling from her that we're keeping something from her or that we're lying to her. Like, I'm really, really set on not doing that, because I think that just, once that starts to form that little bit of a barrier, like, oh, okay, my parents are people who aren't gonna be honest with me, aren't going to tell me the truth. I like that at all. I think that's really bad.

0:14:14 Tom: Now I'm curious, can lie by, like, you can obviously lie. By you can lie by omission to adults. I'm not sure you can lie by ommission to kids. I'm not sure that that's the same thing. I feel like with adults lying by oommission breaks a sort of social contract, and that's why it's lying.

0:14:17 Thomas: Lie by omission, of course. Yeah, yeah, oh.

0:14:34 Tom: I'm not sure that we have the same social contract and responsibility for kids, kids to, I think we have a different responsibility, actually, to withhold certain truths from them, which is part of what my suggestion here is. So I actually am curious what your thoughts are, like, can you lie by omission to a kid, to a little kid? I'm not sure. I think you can. I don't think you can, actually.

0:14:33 Thomas: Okay. I see what you're saying, yeah, sure.

0:14:56 Tom: Personally, yeah.

0:14:55 Thomas: I think Only thing I'm saying is, to the extent that Phoebe figures it out, so like I don't want to create it's not some like moral Pinocchio I can't tell a lie it's that I one I have a hard time hiding my feelings and so obviously that's going to be tricky I can'T I just mean like literally I canT really just completely pretend everything's great like I'm just not capable of doing that because it's not great and I'm just not, but I'll do my best. I'll try to, I have fun with them. I try to distract both myself and them, but when it comes to lying by omission, I don't mean it in some moral sense. I mean it and some, if she can figure it out, then I failed, you know, and then all I'm worried about is her getting a feeling that I'm keeping something from her, that we're not being straight with her. And I think we've done just enough. We haven't gone into big details about the coming fascism and how, you knows, some of our friends might be marched out of the the country and their homes invaded and stolen.

0:15:00 Tom: Sure. Sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:15:47 Thomas: Not a joke at all. Like it might actually happen. I'm in California. Like there's a lot of, there's lot of people who may be forcibly ejected from the country. Miller's already on it. So And that's, that's tough. We'll see, like, if we get to that level of horrendous, like, yeah, I'm going to, I will have to have a conversation. If, if it comes out that one of her friends has been deported from the country. Yeah. I'm not going to pretend, Oh, she's on a farm or whatever, you know, like we're

0:15:50 Tom: Right. Right. Right.

0:16:12 Eli: She's running and playing with the other immigrant kins.

0:16:13 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:15 Thomas: You Know what I'm going to actually hypothetical. Let's say, and this is horrible, let's see if one of her friend's gets literally fucking deported. What I think I would tell her, yeah, the bad guy, he did that. And the people who voted for him, they wanted that to happen. Like, how would I not say that? What am I gonna do, pretend, "Hey, kid, your friends, you know, that wanted this, they actually are fine, they didn't want it, it's okay"? Like, I'm not gonna, I don't, like, in that situation, I don't know how I would keep that from her.

0:16:30 Tom: Yeah.

0:16:41 Tom: I, I don't know that you can. I, I agree with that. I think if, like, there's a level, obviously, there's no way to keep it from anybody, right? There's, like, there are impacts on the world where if they look around, like, "Hey, you know, my life is materially different." Why you, I'm like, I absolutely, but I, I do think

0:16:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:58 Eli: Why is the price of eggs so low? I'm just drowning in eggs over here. Lead me.

0:17:10 Tom: But, and, and I do sympathize with, like, it's hard. It's, know, I'm lucky because I don't have littler kids. So on the day after the election, I took the day off at work. I always take the day of the election, the day off, off. I learned that the the hard way in 2016.

0:17:23 Thomas: Because He doesn't earn his rest everybody, yeah. Yeah.

0:17:26 Tom: Man, I'll tell you real quick, 2016, I did not take the day after the election off of work. And I had a super important lunch meeting, just important lunch meeting with my boss and somebody that I was trying to recruit that was a big deal recruit for me. And so it was like me and my boss, and it's this big thing, right? Like we're making real pitch and try to bring this person in to my operation. And it was a culmination of, you know, months worth of work. And It was so fucking hard to have that lunch on November fucking sixth or whatever, 2016, like to sit in this restaurant and to, to make this like, like really lifestyle sales pitch. That's part of high level recruiting that you're doing, you know?

Holy shit, was that hard. And to eat lunch, just, just to put food in your mouth and chew it was difficult. So this year I was lucky because, like, I didn't have to hide as much. Like, I was like in the morning getting Donovan and Aislinn ready for, uh, school, and I was just quieter than normal. Normally I kind of, like, tease them and, like, you know, we have, like, a little bit more rapport in the, and I was just quieter, and Donovan could feel it. Like, Aisling just put her headphones, phones, I didn't give a shit, but Donovan could feel it, and he kept, like, trying to make jokes with me, and at one point I said, be like, "Hey man, I'm sorry, like, I appreciate you trying to lightening up the mood. I'm

0:17:29 Thomas: Oh God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah

0:18:49 Tom: Just, I'm kind of struggling with, like, the humor this morning." He's like, "No, I get it." And I'm like, "But I really appreciate it, thank you, you know?" And then I, I tried to, like, lighten up, but I wasn't really, I did have to address with him, like, there's, like, "I'm trying to laugh, but, like, I can't find funny at the moment, you know?" So I was lucky that at, you know, six o'clock in the morning, I had older kids, I didn't have to, like, front that hard.

0:18:49 Thomas: Yeah. That's good. Yeah I Tom that's great. I'm glad because because my family I'm sure you could guess that was never allowed. There was it was never aloud that jokes weren't okay. It was never loud no matter what. It doesn't matter if my fucking arm fell off, then it's like, jokes, jokes are okay, you have to take jokes about it, that's how it is. And I do, I have always been somebody who, again, I do wear my heart on my sleeve somewhat, and do not at all mind, and I love a good gallows humor joke occasionally when it's appropriate, but I don't respect, and I hate the, is something that people do where they're like, "No, you have to make jokes, and you have to be doing my humor now, and I'm not okay until you start laughing," even though I know you're miserable, but I have to, to make you laugh at these, whatever these fucking jokes are to, this situation. You know, I do, I really respect that approach and I, I'm curious how, uh, Donovan took it. It sounds like, well, which is, Hey,

0:19:19 Tom: Right. Oh, he

0:20:00 Thomas: Hey buddy, I don't know. I do really appreciate it, but not feeling it right now. You know? That's good.

0:20:01 Tom: Took it great because yeah, and I didn't tell him, "Don't joke with me" either. I just wanted to explain well, I felt, I, like, what I felt, and I've done this a few times, like, just been kind of struggling emotionally myself, like, with something, you know, and it's like, and somebody will try to make a joke with me, and I know that that's in good faith, and I, I know they're trying to cheer me up, and I know they're trying to, like, like, just make the situation feel lighter, and most of the time that works, and I'm amenable to it. Like, I am definitely a gallows humor guy for the most part, but, like, there's been a handful of times where I've had to be, like, "I really get it. I'm really sorry that I'm not good company. I'm trying to be better company, you know, I'll say it. You know, I'm just I'm trying To be better company but like right now I'm having a hard time finding the funny here. I'm just really like this not funny in the moment, you

0:20:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -Hmm. Yeah. And

0:20:47 Tom: Know, I think when you do that too too, that that works.

0:20:49 Thomas: Thinkthat's preparing them so well, I am glad to hear you say that because, like, that's a relationship thing that I had to learn. I had to learn, you know, I had to learn, like, oh, actually, normal humans, they might not want me to just make a joke out of everything, no matter how upset they are about it. Like, that's great, you know, like, it's good to be able to both have that sense of humor, of course, like, sometimes it really helps, but also know when to switch it off and know and to respect, like, oh, they're not feeling it. And so that sounds like a positive interaction. I'm dying to ask something, I have to know, because you teased it kind of before we started recording, you, the kids didn't vote, you said a bunch of friends didn't vot, can you talk about that

0:20:54 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, this fucking makes me so mad. So Donovan is 18. He voted like we took him with us to the polls. Well, I don't know.

0:21:27 Thomas: Who do you vote for?

0:21:30 Tom: You can't get it. No, we we

0:21:30 Eli: Who was gonna give him the later bedtime? That was his question. Squint and... It's

0:21:34 Tom: Well, you know, we talked about I gave him a sample ballot ahead of time and like we, you you know, and didn't occur to us until the day of. And I was like, Hey dude, like, do you guys talk about this stuff with your friends? Like, are your friends vote? None of his fucking friends, none of his friends were voting. AndI was so mad. Haley and I were both like, what the fuck, what is happening?

0:21:39 Thomas: Poor Eli he hates this so much. Yeah.

0:22:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:01 Tom: And like, I did kind of like go on a rampage about, you know, like the the youth seeding power, like the you know, being the largest demographic cohort and therefore the most politically powerful group in America that continuously seeds their power to the elderly for no reason other than their fucking laziness. So I did go on a fucking rant about that for sure because I'm still me, but I was like, dude, they can register, right? They, I'll drive them, they can like have them come to the house, like we can take them to the polls and they register at the poll. You don't have to be pre-registered. You just show up in Illinois, your polling place and fucking vote. Yeah, you can register day of.

0:22:09 Thomas: Mm. Hmm. Yeah. Wow. Really? Because Okay. I'm not gonna get Do an SIO, I promise, but one thing that I found really confusing was Illinois's turnout was incredibly low and I, is there some reason for that, like, do something happen in your state, like, because, yeah

0:22:46 Tom: I don't know, I did, Thomas.

0:22:48 Eli: Cold.

0:22:48 Tom: I don't know.

0:22:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:50 Eli: It's cold morning I

0:22:50 Thomas: And to to hear I only ask because you're saying they have the same day.

0:22:52 Tom: Even cold it was a nice day No.

0:22:53 Thomas: Register. Oh, maybe that's it. They're like, it's a nice day, we're doing anything but

0:22:56 Eli: I heard it was brusque that

0:22:57 Tom: It was, it was not cold, it, it was a little rainy. That was it.

0:23:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:00 Eli: Was So there, you can't expect me to vote when it's rainy, Tom. This is the problem with your constant purity test, Tom.

0:23:01 Thomas: You can't Uh. Ah.

0:23:08 Eli: I can't vote when it is raining. I don't have an umbrella, Tom. You want me to go to the store and buy a $750 umbrella just so I can vote? We

0:23:08 Tom: I mean,

0:23:09 Thomas: Oh. Man Uh. Because of inflation. Because If Biden's America costs that that much.

0:23:29 Tom: Honestly, like having to buy an umbrella to vote is a poll tax. I'm going, we have to recognize it.

0:23:33 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:23:34 Eli: Have to. And a literacy, because you gotta read the aisles

0:23:37 Thomas: God.

0:23:34 Tom: That's right. Oh yeah. It's it's obviously ridiculous barriers to,

0:23:39 Eli: Gotta look under, you for umbrella

0:23:41 Tom: Yeah, I

0:23:41 Thomas: We talking about doing this and I was like, Oh, also how do we explain? It was like the, how do We explain to our kids thing, which is always again, a good topic. But I, one way I took it was, Hey, how Do we explain how stupid everyone is? How do we Explain how things. I'm so sorry to be on my hobby horse, but everyone talking about the missing 15 million votes. Can't do the simple math of, Hey, look at California, see the big number that's California. See this number that has a weird symbol. That's a percentage. And it's 54% done counting. Yeah.

0:24:11 Tom: Know.

0:24:11 Thomas: If you divide by, you know, it's like, if you multiply by ,you know, a hundred and divide by that, you'll get the amount that it's gonna be. And that will make up fucking 9 million votes. Idiots like our side, our side is doing that. Nobody knows anything. Nobody learned anything in school. Nobody. It's like Like, how do we deal with how fucking stupid everybody is? I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I can't. It's just how do we deal that? How do know I know we all have smart kids. Like, how do you deal with like, hey, yeah, I don't think I want to say it explicitly. I don't want my kid to have that attitude. But sometimes I'm gonna be like, yeah, Phoebe, you know how you do the homework and like try and work? Yeah, no, whole society didn't do that.

0:24:24 Tom: Yeah. Not done counting. Yeah, no, I, it's yeah.

0:24:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:24:50 Thomas: Like, we don't.

0:24:50 Eli: You got a kid in your class who eats paste. Yeah. He's the president now. Um, also the Senate,

0:24:58 Tom: Yeah,

0:24:54 Thomas: Yeah, it's Arlo. Yeah, it's our low, except without the charm and the math skills. Yeah.

0:25:01 Eli: Right.

0:25:01 Tom: Yeah. I will say for the older kids, like we do have that conversation pretty explicitly. Like what I tell them is like, look, people in America are not above average because that's how average works. The average is low. Like the average is bad, right? The average is not good.

0:25:07 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:25:20 Eli: Yeah, you're not gonna meet the average kids. You're meeting the median. And the median is significantly below

0:25:26 Tom: I Was like, most of the people that you will interact with in your life because of the way that your lives are structured. And I explained to them what I mean by that Because of the way that we've been able to structure your lives, like not going to be surrounded by most people. You're going to surrounded by an increasing. And I've explained to him, like, as you get older, actually, your exposure to the average narrows and narrows, and arrows and arrows, because You'll go to college. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, like we get older, if know like, I'm I just be honest, like, I mean, I'm in a suburb that is a to upper middle class suburb. So I'm already not in the average. Most people are not able to live where I live. And I'm just very fortunate that I work 700 jobs to do that. And then, you kids will go to college and most people will not go to college. So we're we're

0:25:33 Eli: Staying out late, not going to college. Exactly.

0:25:47 Thomas: Really interesting.

0:26:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:11 Tom: Slicing the pie thinner again, you know, and then they'll get a job within a field, right? So And they'll meet more people in a field. Yeah.

0:26:12 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. That's where you lost me because Then here's what happened to me is I went to college and you meet, uh, meet truly exceptional people, uh, you know, I did. I met exceptional people. I met the professors.

0:26:20 Eli: And

0:26:24 Tom: Same. Man. Yeah. Right.

0:26:27 Thomas: I love, like, much almost all every professor I had that wasn't in the business school. And some of them that were in the business school, actually exceptional people, smart people thinking through stuff, critiquing what you're doing and making points that you're like, "Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's a great point." Really thought what out intellectually rigorous stuff. And then you, you have to leave college and it's like, "Oh, not, that's not people." People aren't that for the most part, you'll have them.

You'll have other people and occasionally in your work or whatever. And it depends on what field you're in. Of course, maybe this is different for you, but like, at, at the state you would know the difference, like, oh, that's the good student right there and they kick ass, you know? Like they just are good at all, like they've learned all the everything, uh, like with the, the fucking everything in, in the, the budgets and all the processes and the forms and the whatever and the, and the reporting, just everything. They'll just have done their homework and you're like, oh yeah, that reminds me of college. And that's one out of what, what, a hundred? You know, like it's, it's how do we deal with that? And I

0:27:24 Thomas: Think that.

0:27:23 Eli: Then there's another guy just shutting off Tom's bank account again. Uh-oh, sell is red on the Excel spreadsheet, so I'm just gonna go ahead and put a stop on Donovan's debit card. I got this, guys. Hey, you know, if you go to Buffalo Wild Wings and throw up at the table, they usually don't make you pay your check because they'll think you got food poisoning. I know I say it every week, and I gotta find a new BW Dubs every couple of months because they catch on the third or fourth time you go there.

0:27:29 Tom: But Like, Like, you

0:27:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:40 Tom: Know, their lives and like, I don't want to suggest to the audience that the only way to be smart, I want to make sure I'm clear on this is to go to college. That's not what I'm saying.

0:27:58 Thomas: A hundred percent.

0:28:00 Tom: But what I am saying is that we continue throughout the course of our lives to narrow the scope of the people that we're exposed to. And so no matter how we live our lives, we will live our lives in ways that narrow rather than broaden our exposure to people into speaking, into certain, like, class structures, for example, educational structures, workplace structures, etc. So we narrow, and I explain this to the kids, like, you will not have exposure to most people. Most people you won't meet. You won't met a broad representative sample.

0:28:27 Thomas: Until you go to the DMV or the post office, which you will never go to or jury

0:28:30 Tom: Well, you kno, jury

0:28:31 Eli: Or jury duty. That's when you meet them. Jury duty is when you mean them.

0:28:32 Thomas: Oh God or

0:28:32 Tom: Duty! Duty dude yeah, but that's that's a representative sampling.

0:28:35 Thomas: Jury duty, when the kid who eats paste will decide the life or death of another human being. Yeah. Guilty.

0:28:40 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Sir, can you stop eating paste for a second? We'd like to know whether or not this guy should go to jail for a private being.

0:28:44 Thomas: We haven't started. We have. Kill him. It's not

0:28:51 Eli: Kill him. It's so fucking funny.

0:28:46 Tom: You you know what's great yeah What's crazy I Hayley

0:28:55 Eli: I don't want to let kill him just go by the wayside.

0:29:02 Tom: And I were talking about this yesterday, like, when, when you get divorced in Illinois, you have to go to court. Um, can't just, like, file the paperwork. That's not true in every state, so So you actually on your, on final day, like, you forget all the, but you have to actually be present at court, stand in front of a judge who says, "Hey, did you read this shit? Do you understand what it means?" You say, "Yes." And they say, "Great. You're divorced." It takes 25 seconds, but your family court to do it, and, and you, you don't get, like, a, like a fucking reservation, right? Like, it's not like the fucking, they don't give you like a little, like a restaurant beeper. You just show up, you know?

0:29:27 Thomas: Ah, yes. Two two for uh, family court. Yes, okay, right over

0:29:31 Tom: Yeah.

0:29:31 Thomas: Here.

0:29:32 Tom: Right over here. Would you, would you like some bread to start family? So, so like you just show them and then you wait. And then you get called either in the morning or not in the morning. Right. So I got called sometime in the, like the late morning, early afternoon and the rest of the time I sat in family court and I thought family court is pretty representative. Like of all types and stripes end up in this place for some reason, right? If there's nothing like necessarily divisive and, and, and cutting that pie and

0:29:35 Thomas: Candelabra, yes, having the resources to get divorced is actually a privilege. You might be you might be hitting a higher slice than you think of there. Yeah.

0:30:04 Tom: That is true, but that's terrifying. Like You cannot, I, when I sat in there and I'm like looking at this like cross-section of America that, like, to my prior point, I'm not typically exposed to because I live a bubble life, and we all live a bubble life. You cannot not live, it might be this bubble or that bubble, it might be the, you, we're all living in bubbles, and I was sitting in this and I am like, oh, this is different, this is not how I thought the world Was, and

0:30:09 Thomas: It is. Yeah Eli,

0:30:33 Eli: Yeah. You're just like, "Hey, I think the best thing I could do with my life is kill four of the people in this room."

0:30:40 Thomas: You're saying your monologue again. You're saying you're in your monologuing. You gotta stop. Yeah.

0:30:42 Eli: Oh. No. Was I talking out loud? Oh, I'm sorry, everybody.

0:30:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:44 Tom: So I think, I think kids have to start to understand as they get older that they're going to be living in a bubble, um, that we need to really be really conscious of knowing that that is true. And I don't know what we do with that, except for that, like, I feel like if we don't, it, we end up getting real hurt and real surprised a lot. You feel like, like, like, it's important to know true things about our experience as people, and that's one of those things that as our kids get older, they, they do need to understand. That's something that, like, I have spoken to at least Donovan and Finn about, you know, in different conversations. So

0:30:51 Thomas: So are you just silent treatment in terms of, uh, like, uh, not not just this podcast episode, I mean like, you know, in terms of Max, I mean, are you just, is it just he doesn't know doesn't not even

0:31:28 Eli: For the rest of our lives. Oh, yeah, we're just not fucking so here's the, the truth is, like, I don't have anything useful to say. If he, if he was able to ask questions about it, I might try to come up with something, but I don't have anything useful to say to help him through. He's not aware that there was an election. He's none of that is anywhere close. So I would only be bringing negativity and fear into his life to describe it, right? I'd be like, "Hey, you enjoying

0:31:33 Thomas: Yeah isn't it great because Arlo just played his video games. He didn't care. I mean, he actually, he was aware, like, he actually, he hears it and he's, he comprehends it, but he doesn't care.

0:31:57 Eli: Yeah."

0:32:00 Tom: Think

0:32:05 Eli: No, he's aware, like, he'll say, "I could say the sentences to them." Uh, yeah, but no, he's got a new set of bells and he likes to play "Hot Cross Buns" on them, and that's where he's, and, and I would have to be like, "Hey, stop playing your bells for a second. You know Hitler? You don't? Okay, let me explain." You know, now you know, always in a repeating cycle forever and ever. Ignore the team tears streaming down daddy's face.

0:32:27 Thomas: But sometimes the price of eggs gets a

0:32:30 Eli: Yeah. Sometimes the price of eggs in Weimar Germany is expensive, so that's why so

0:32:30 Thomas: Little too high and so they have to kill a bunch of people about it. Oh

0:32:38 Eli: You know, you know, the Mr. Frank across the street, so nice, right? He probably, probably voted for Trump. And the only way to change his mind is to murder him in a firebombing. That's how you do it. You firebombed them, right? It's not called the mind changing of Dresden. All right, let's go read fucking Gerald the Giraffe again. You want to take a break from this civics lesson to read Gerald the draft? Yeah, no, we, we are not talking about it. And when he's old enough to want to talk about it, I will do deal with it then. I can't even talk Talk about it to adults.

0:33:13 Eli: I can't even talk to adults, I've had shit to do this week, and everyone I talk to, I'm like, hey, I was just calling to follow up on that thing, and they're like, how you holding up, and I'm like, I, I am not good at the normal small talk, let alone this new, this new version, right? Know how April Fool's and Christmas and Halloween, there's new small talk that you gotta fucking

0:33:00 Thomas: Boy we'll be dead yeah yeah, that's fair. Yeah yeah yeah uh fuck

0:33:34 Eli: Deal with, right, it's Christmas and someone's like, "Merry Merry Christmas," and you got to be like, "Shit, fuck, there's new small talk. I didn't get the message. Merry Christmas to you," because that's what you said, which means you probably do Christmas. And I, so Christmas, yeah, Merry Christmas. That was what it was like, but with being sad yesterday. But for everything, I a Starbucks, and I saw my favorite barista, whose name I know, because she fucking rules. And I was like, "What's up, LaCoya, how are you?" And she was like, "I mean, not great." And I was like, "God damn it, LaCoya, give me a fucking break. Jesus, I gotta hold the space for

0:33:35 Thomas: Yeah I

0:34:11 Tom: Oh

0:34:11 Eli: You too, LaCoyah. Do you want a hug? How can I comfort you in this difficult time, LaCoyah?"

0:34:13 Tom: My god

0:34:24 Thomas: I don't mind that. I, I hate the, like, people who you can tell don't either don't care or they, like, kind of feign to care a little. Oh yeah, sucks, right? Anyway, so, um, you know, and you're like, God, what a life you lead where you could just be like, mass deportations, oh, bummer, anyway, what are we doing today, you know?

0:34:25 Tom: Well

0:34:43 Thomas: It's just like, fuck, I want to be you.

0:34:39 Eli: Yeah. Oh my God, the Facebook posts that were, cause I'm, again, I'm from upstate New York and so I'm still Facebook friends with a lot of garbage humans, just bad, bad animals that walk on their hind legs, and the amount of times I saw that meme, that's the beers clanking together, that's like, "Here's to the people who don't end a friendship over politics," and a perfect sign for me. They might as well just put up a meme that says, "Eli, hit the X button on my profile." That's, that's where I was. Yeah.

0:34:46 Thomas: Oh God

0:35:20 Tom: Actually, an interesting point too, maybe to talk to your kids about is, like, know, I mean, I think, again, this is like maybe for older kids, but most of the, the effects of the, like, election anxiety, I don't say the effects of the election but the election anxiety, which is a space where now won't be felt by the younger kids. But as our kids get older, I wonder if there's a value to talking about values with the kids, being like, "All right, you know, like, if people tell you who they are, believe them, and and make decisions about who you want in your life based on their values." I had those conversations too with the kids, like, in very strict terms. I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think you can date or be friends with somebody who's a Trump supporter. I think that that's something that you should not do, and you can't honestly do and

0:36:06 Thomas: Boy I, are you guys not think second guessing that again now, like, I'm I'm to the point where it's like, are we again, are we in Germany and are we saying, yeah, you know what, we're gonna do, we're not gonna talk to those Nazis, or is it like, oh okay, there's more of them than us, so I think what, but we, that's not working. We need to try to do something else. I don't know. That's my first thought is like, whatever we did for eight years, didn't work. Didn't take. So maybe I got to do something different. I Don't know, but that's how my kids responsibility, but

0:36:11 Tom: Why yeah yeah I dunno I mean I mean, I feel like, don't date a Nazi, like don't fuck Nazis is pretty good. You know, and Like, like, you know, I do feel like my policy personally of holding no quarter for bigots is not widely, in my view, is proscriptive and is not wildly enough held. And I think that we create spaces for people to come to our Thanksgivings and to be hired by us, for example. Like, I'm a person in a position to hire people. And, it you is not illegal to discriminate. Discriminate, it's illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, and handicap. It is not

0:36:42 Thomas: Well that, okay. Dating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That' that's fair. Yeah yeah.

0:36:44 Eli: Yeah it's You knew That list too fast off The, the top of your head, Tom.

0:37:21 Thomas: Yeah you did.

0:37:22 Eli: Can I give you that note? It

0:37:23 Tom: I been hiring people for a long time. It is non- illegal

0:37:24 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, yeah,

0:37:26 Eli: Just you said it too fast. It feels like a memorized sentence. Can I gave you that. No, throw a couple of uhs and ums in there, big guy.

0:37:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:30 Tom: It it it is, it is you know Uh, No.

0:37:34 Eli: You know what I'm saying. Oh, and what's that other one? It feels

0:37:34 Tom: Yeah. And then Uh, marital

0:37:35 Thomas: Oh, and I think, yeah... Race might be...

0:37:38 Tom: Status you know what I think there's one of them.

0:37:39 Eli: You're holding a checklist while you're looking at candidates, and that's why you've gotten so familiar in

0:37:45 Tom: Well, I, you know, okay, but so it is not, I mean, you've got, if you hire a lot of people, you've gotta be very careful, but you know, those

0:37:50 Thomas: Yeah. Well, this is state -specific advice, just so anybody doesn't start firing people. California, federal, but you have to check state.

0:37:55 Tom: Are federally protected, there might be more

0:37:57 Thomas: California has... Yeah, California has a political one, so...

0:37:57 Tom: Stringent state ones. Yeah, right.

0:38:02 Eli: New Jersey, you get to go bada bing, and if they don't reply, bada boom, at will firing. It's true. I know

0:38:06 Tom: You know.

0:38:10 Thomas: That's good law. I like that.

0:38:12 Tom: Like, nobody knows why they did or didn't get a job either, you you know what I

0:38:15 Thomas: Yeah. Could have been my Trump hat.

0:38:17 Eli: Hey, Tom, I'm gonna give you feedback. I know why I haven't gotten all the jobs. Was it crying in the interview? Was it that I brought my own meatball sub? Yeah, man, it was that you brought your own meat ball sub. You

0:38:22 Thomas: OK, no, no normal person.

0:38:30 Tom: I'm Just saying, like, I think we make it too easy, and I know this is, like, not for the kids, but, like, I do think we made it too easy for people to be comfortable you

0:38:35 Thomas: Yeah, well, it might be For the kids. I think this is an interesting thing because already I talked about my little Pheebs has friends who were allegedly, unquote, rooting for Trump, for whatever that means for them. And, like, yeah, I would be insane. And I hope that no one's like this. It would be insane for me to tell my seven-year-old, don't play with that person because their parents convinced them. That would be insane

0:38:58 Tom: For a little kid, that's a bonkers position to hold for kids. Get older though, if they understand what it is that they're saying, then I think that you do have to say, like, look, I, I really think it makes sense to, I, I've talked to the kids, like, you know, like, the, the company that we keep does reflect on you. That's a true fact. So be careful of the company you keep. Keep company that makes you a better version of yourself. Keep company that reflects values that you hold. Be careful not to keep company with people just because you have a shared history, but because you have something about one another that you value, and that is the company that you should keep in your life, because those people will reflect upon you.

And that's something that, like, I do believe in, you know, and I think that, like, as kids get older, they really should take stock of and reflect on, um, other thing that, like, I, I'm going to talk to the kids about is, like, one of the things that we should take away from this experience is the idea that you cannot abdicate responsibility, that there are certain responsibilities that we have that, and Donovan's friends are a great example, they had a responsibility and cannot morally abdicate those responsibilities because choices are still made. And, like, at least for me and mine, I want them to understand that, like, they cannot exist in an ethical space that abdicates responsibility. That's not how it works.

0:38:58 Thomas: Yeah, but

0:40:32 Tom: That's not how responsibility works.

0:40:32 Thomas: They won't understand that You gotta say, Okay, with great riz comes some skibbity, and

0:40:37 Eli: Must skibbity the vote, kids are

0:40:39 Thomas: No.

0:40:41 Tom: I, I don't know. I mean, like, I, what do you think about that idea for kids? I mean, is that, that like, too much for a teenage kid to, to ingest.

0:40:47 Thomas: I want him to find out why his fucking friends didn't vote. I don't get it. Why didn't they vote?

0:40:51 Tom: They just don't give a shit,

0:40:52 Thomas: Fuck.

0:40:52 Tom: Dude. Like people just don'T fucking care. That's why. Cause fucking people decided not to care about history, you yeah,

0:40:53 Thomas: God. Damn. It, we have lost, not Lost, but the youth aren't saving us, and, um, demographics aren't saving us when it comes to Democrats. So, hey, we're going to have to do a lot of work, everyone. Awesome. Let's fucking figure that out.

0:41:09 Tom: Yeah.

0:41:11 Eli: It's important to understand that, like, they agree with us, right? Like, I, I thank liberals, and I don't want to go too far down this road, right, think liberals, uh, labor under the delusion that people agree with us, that everyone in Their hearts, right. Especially given the right education and understanding, loves trans kids and wants, wants them to be free and happy, and believes in immigration because they understand that's how you build beautiful countries and worlds, and that all you need to do is introduce people to those ideas and clear the financial, psychological, and medical blocks that get in the way, and that everybody makes good choices in those situations. And the truth is, that's just not the case.

That's just not the place that people are that the vast, vast majority of people for whatever reason, and here's the thing, it doesn't fucking matter. Okay? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter why they did it. Right? They did it, it makes them bad. It's the thing they do, right? They're bad.

And so I think when we labor under the delusion that, like, we can change minds and win hearts, right, waste a tremendous amount of our energy. You know, Thomas, you were talking before, and, again, I'm gonna try and shut up because this is not

0:41:25 Thomas: Yeah, I think that's true.

0:42:34 Thomas: No,

0:42:34 Eli: It's not happy uh to talk, and it's, it's also maybe not useful. It might be something that I look back on later and I'm sad that I said out loud into a microphone. Um, I'm two generations removed from an 11-year-old who got on a boat in Poland and came to America because the pogroms were coming to a town near him, right? That's what Max Kirschbaum did, right? Didn't figure out how to fucking change the minds of his fellow Poles, right? He didn't worry, like, how can I reach the Cossacks, right?

He got on a boat, and he ate straw because his mother and father couldn't afford tickets that included a meal for the week-long long trip, and he came to America, and he learned to trade, and he struggled, and he strived, and, and I know when you talk about, like, get the fuck out, um, point out your privilege, and obviously for me to sit here behind a microphone, which is my job, you know, making a living doing that, like, me to say get the fucking out is very, um, disingenious, right, especially if someone's in danger already in a vulnerable position. But Grandpa Kirschbaum did not benefit from that privilege, right? He was 11, at the bottom of a ship, right, told which men to avoid, and then he stepped out onto the streets of New York City and just sort of walked around until he managed to find his way, right? He is the, the most difficult life story I've, I have in the family, right? Getting the fuck out, and the answer is, like, what should we have done if we were in 1938 Germany? Should have gotten the

0:42:34 Thomas: You haven't talked at all. It's fine.

0:44:02 Thomas: Get

0:44:02 Eli: Fuck out because you know what happened to the people who didn't get the fuck out, who tried to stay and change people's mind and, you know, make things work. They fucking died. They died in the gas chambers and the people who killed them, the people Who killed them. They're fine. They had grandkids. They lived full lives.

0:44:03 Thomas: The fuck out. Yes, for sure.

0:44:04 Tom: Right. Yep. Yeah.

0:44:18 Thomas: Yes. So just have to say I'm not saying, hey trans people, go convince a Trump supporter. I'm talking about me. I am a privileged person.

0:44:22 Eli: You exactly. Yeah. No, of course. Exactly. That's why I want to be. Yeah, I want To be clear. Yeah. Um, not I'm, not saying, I don't know what I'm saying

0:44:26 Thomas: Yes. No. No. I appreciate it. I think I think, that that's that's a worthwhile message. If you are are someone who is vulnerable if you are a trans person if you are an immigrant living in a trump area like I don't know yeah I don'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU IF YOU COULD YOU PROBABLY GOTTA GET OUT I DON'T KNOW I'M MEANS I'M NOT PUTTING ANY EXPECTATIONS ON THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO BE THE VERY FIRST VICTIMS OF WHATEVER THIS IS YEAH

0:44:30 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:52 Tom: Right?

0:44:53 Eli: No, no, I, I don't think anybody is, um, I, I, the reason I bring this up, and again, my mind is so unclear right now, so forgive me if it's just sort of like bitchy rambling, uh, it's why I wanted to sort of give the stage to Tom, is that I think a lot of how we think about how we operate in society needs to change, which is that I think... And again, this is why I am suspicious that I will regret saying these things in a recorded format.

Right now, the way I feel is that people should focus on them and their families and their loved ones and safe and being safe, and they should not try to save this country. I don't think it is savable. I think that Nobody was ever going to change the minds of Nazi Germany. Right. Happened is they firebombed Dresden. Right, they lost a big war and lots and lots Lots and lots of people died. And then there was a very public surrender.

And there was the punishment that comes after war. Right. I don't know who's going to deliver that justice to America if anybody is going to delivery justice to America. What I can tell you is it's not coming. I don'T think it's coming from within. Right? We have seen between 2020 and 2024 is about 2 ,500 counties get more conservative and just over 200 counties get more liberal, right?

Whatever's happening not happening from within, right look, everyone's dealing with their own cognitive dissonances right now oh no, it's because she didn't do this it's Because he didn't do that. It doesn't matter. None of that matters right? What matters is the people who voted the people who didn't vote don't matter at all because they don't care They're not participating. That would be like if I took a patron poll of what I should say on this podcast. Right? You're not on the show.

If you didn't vote, you're not part of the process. Maybe you'll suffer those consequences. And I'm sorry for you, because I like to think I'm an empathetic person. But like, I can't possibly concern myself with would make you participate in this system. It exists as it is.

And, right, I can concern myself with what motivates a Trump voter, you know. I spent the last 24 hours doing, genuinely, I've spent it just trying to read what Trump supporters think, really think. I'm just trying to figure out what they think, and you know what? Everything I've read has told me in no uncertain terms they're just stupid. They're

0:47:22 Tom: Yeah.

0:47:23 Eli: Just stupid. Well, we talked to this Trump supporter and they're right. They're wrong about this, or we talked to this person and they are incorrect about that, this person believes this thing that you know for a fact to be untrue. I can't do anything with that.

0:47:22 Thomas: THE ACTUAL MAGA YEAH YEAH YEP YEP AND THEN

0:47:23 Tom: Yeah,

0:47:35 Eli: I can't. I

0:47:35 Thomas: THE MEDIA FEELS NO no responsibility to actually fix that. They're just like, hey, we'll go ahead and just entertain that and tell you that they believe an untrue thing. And we'll report that just fairly that they believe in untrue things.

0:47:36 Tom: Yeah I

0:47:45 Eli: About, and this is again why I sort of, I was a little hesitant to make this episode, is I think about all the fucking content with a capital C that this election provided, right? Everybody's setting up their cameras and their ring lights to cry into TikTok and us recording a podcast, you sitting at t -shirt companies being like, what about Rise of the Resistance, Huh? With the pussy hat on the t -shirt. I bet those will sell really well. Like I was lying in bed. Like so many people listen to this podcast on election night, trying not to check my phone.

And what occurred to me is every time I gave up and I rolled over and I checked my phone and read more bad news, I kept thinking, well, that's another click for The New York Times, right? Right. That's another ad view that fed right into their algorithm. Right. Someone somewhere, probably not the reporters. Right. Probably not the editors, but somewhere, someone at The New York Times is like, oh, guys, great night for traffic. Oh, man. Ad click was up one hundred and fifty seven percent.

Guys, wow. What a good one. And I just I don't know. I I DON'T think I can participate in the system anymore. I don't think I can participate. I think, and I was saying this to Tom before we get on air, and then I promise I will shut up. I think what I can do is I can tell jokes, right? I'm good at that. And I think I kan tell people they're not alone.

I think when I tell jokes about the things that happen or the movies that I watch, I can signal to people who feel alone that they're no longer alone. They're not not alone, but I think that's all I got. I think That's all. I got and I don' t know how long I have it for, that's All I got for now.

0:47:55 Thomas: Yeah. No, I didn't see that at all. Yeah, maybe I just avoided it.

0:49:28 Thomas: Think it's more than that, too, because the empathy and the worldview behind your jokes is something that affects people. It really does. I think that might be what you do. I would just just let that lie. But I, I do think weirdly you put me in a position to be, I don't know if optimistic is the word, but you put us in a situation where you put yourself in a, in a position to, in, in be less cynical than, than you, which is a, that's a weird, um, the thing that I think is important that I've actually come around a little bit the other way. Now I'm not saying anyone has a responsibility or has to do anything. Don't get me wrong. I'm talking about for me personally, people, a, there' s a good news, bad news to people being fucking stupid and The MAGA people, they're irretrievable. They're garbage. They are basket deplorables. We know this. The people who voted to swing this election, for one, it's not as much as you think. It's really not.

It is just how our stupid system works. Two, most of them don't actually know what's coming. They don't. That's comforting. It sucks. I can't believe they're just like, yeah, well, let's try this, the whole Hitler thing. Let's see. That is the the reality of how stupid humans are and how, and be a little bit compassionate, how little bandwidth we have to think about it. A lot of people do not have the bandwidth. Housing is unaffordable. Nobody, has to have a job.

Two people have to have jobs. You have kids, you both have to Have a job and be a parent, which is more of a job than it was in the 80s. Like don't have the Bandwidth. I'll let them off the hook a little Bit. They don't know what they voted for. A Lot of them, a Lot of Them want it. They do know a Lot Of Them don't know.

And they aren't people who intentionally tried to bring this about if they knew what was going to happen. If they had a crystal ball and they saw the realities of mass deportation, not, I'm saying this, this is like a hundred zero. That's, I don't know, 10% of them would be like, "Oh, that's not what I wanted." And I think we can take some comfort in the fact that that means they're at least not irretrievably evil, as a lot of them are.

I think also to, been I couldn't help it. I've been going down the Nazi deep dive because so it's like we started looking into the 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden for Where There's Woke. And it was just so fascinating to look into all that stuff. And so I kept looking at all this stuff. There were several elections that could have prevented Hitler. Like there were specific

0:49:35 Eli: Sure. Yeah.

0:49:49 Eli: I know. God, it's the darkest of times. Of

0:49:50 Tom: Am

0:51:42 Eli: Course.

0:51:42 Thomas: Specific elections where he he made a really bold move. One thing that I didn't understand is, again, how lucky that idiot got. You know, he was an idiot. Like he got really lucky in a lot of ways. And that's very, that mirrors what's happening today. There's a lot of luck involved. In to fix something, I don't know if it'll be beyond repair. It might be beyond repair. But things can be fixed by changing minds in theory. That can happen. Will it need to be? Because to your point, Eli, things get so bad that another country drops a bomb, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe it is that, but like, if we can keep a system for two years, then maybe we can send that message in two years. And I don't, we don't have the option of leaving, a lot of people just don't have the option of leaving. And I, I appreciate the, I just want to balance that take, which is not even, I want, it's insulting to call it a take, I want to balanced that feeling, that very real feeling you're having and expressing. I glad you express it with the

0:51:42 Eli: Yeah, yeah,

0:52:42 Tom: Too. Too.

0:52:42 Thomas: Idea that there's, there isn't really another choice though. There isn't really, but to stay and figure it out. Yeah.

0:52:50 Eli: I hope so. I mean, look, I want to be wrong. I really do. But I I've just I've just been wrong so many times, you know, And to be fair, I don't think it's going to take another country dropping a bomb on us. Right. I think it's gonna be like civil rights, right? I mean, the thing that you gotta remember about civil rights is, like, those people are still walking around, right?

0:52:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:10 Eli: They're still like, they're like 60 or 70 some are 80, but like, most of them are like in their 50s, 60s, right? And they're just like voting and living their lives, and then, yeah, when they were like 18, they poured a milkshake on some black guy's head, I don't know, right? Like, we don't have cultural repercussions, right? We just set a new standard for what decency is, and the agreement that we make as a culture is like, hey, we're not going to hold you responsible for what what you did.

0:53:11 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Yeah.

0:53:37 Thomas: You couldn't have known. Yeah.

0:53:38 Eli: Right. You couldn't have possibly known that black people are humans. And, and it just happens over and over again. So I don't know. I don't know what, what I do know is that the internet has, and it's weird because we, we do have to take responsibility because we have shows, right? So like, this is a weird thing for me to say, cause it's not true of me, me, but if you're listening to this and you don't have an audience, the internet thing of like, you gotta take it to the streets and fit, like, I don't know, maybe think, maybe just take care of yourself, know, maybe just like make sure you're safe and your loved ones are safe, and if you care about people who are vulnerable, maybe do the things that, uh, can vote on to make them safe.

Give them money, give them space, give them time, help them do the thing you want. But like, anything institutional, institutional, I'm not. And again, maybe, maybe I'll look back on this in a couple of years and it'll just be cringe city, and maybe it will, and maybe a bunch of people will be like, oh yeah, you're a big jerk face, and that's fine, that happens every three times I talk, um, like it's just, uh, I'm not doing anything institutional until I see a sign that institutions are anything but gambling on the stupidity of people I'll never meet. I

0:53:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:12 Thomas: I think that's Yeah.

0:54:52 Tom: I'm listening to you guys and I'm sort

0:54:54 Eli: Appreciate that Tom, it would suck if you were. I'm watching Big Bang Theory right now.

0:54:55 Tom: Of, I, you know, don't insult me like that. You can insult me a lot of ways, Eli Bosnick.

0:55:03 Eli: That's True. I'm so sorry. Tom, I take

0:55:05 Tom: You got to, that's a low blow.

0:55:05 Eli: That back. I'm hurting. I'm hurt on this painful

0:55:07 Tom: That's a low blow, Eli Basnick, but I'm kind of laughing at myself because I'm recognizing that, like, I'm very intentionally doing what I sort of suggested for little kids to the audience, which is like, I'm holding my own emotions and trying to offer something different than, than how I feel about something. And I'm still going to do that, by the way. I am not in a place where I

0:55:02 Thomas: Yeah. Come on. That's that's worse than voting for Trump. Yeah. Who's

0:55:07 Eli: Day. Yeah. Sheldon, you can't

0:55:34 Tom: Feel like where I where I want to offer that publicly. I do, though, want to echo one thing that you said that I've been thinking about a lot over the last few days, which is we locus of control and influence in our lives, and it starts at home with our families, and then it extends out a ring further to our friends that really, really listen, right? And then as we sort of build those rings outward, our influence narrows and is reduced and reduced and reduced and produced and reduced, right? And I feeling very much like right now my time is best spent thinking about who I have the most influence with with, and making sure that they are taken care of first.

0:55:34 Eli: Tell how I feel. It's perfect. Yeah.

0:56:22 Tom: Um, that starts with my family. That starts with My friends that I, that I feel really I'm close with and that, that listen and that I listened to in turn. And, and really my interest and my energy really needs to be directed into those inner circles first, um, it will be more effective there and it'll hurt less to do it because it will be more effective in that space. And I think that's kind of a little bit of an echo to what you said.

There is a, there is a sense of, of not retreat, but sort of like, OK, here are the people literally in my neighborhood that I need to really think about and care for and take care of and make sure my arms are around. And these are the burdens I, I can shoulder, um, I will. And, and then there's kind of like the rest of it.

I, I will say like, I can't be morally or emotionally responsible for people for whom I don't have as much influence and as much, they're not in my locus of control. They're not in my locusts of influence and my, my sphere. So that sense, I think of like wanting to say like like, all right, we got to kind of, we got to make sure that the people who are closest in our hearts and in our lives are most taken care of first. Think that that comes from a really understandable place because I'm feeling very similar to that.

0:56:22 Eli: All right.

0:57:46 Thomas: Got a zany story for after the, yeah.

0:57:58 Eli: Gents, before we go. So a is sitting in a doctor's office when a priest walks up the window, says to her, "Hi, I'm, I'm here for an appointment." She goes, "Oh yeah, the doctor will see you in a second." Then a minister walks in. He says, "Hi, I'm a doctor. I'm going to be here for another appointment." She says, "Yes, the, the doctor. We'll be here in a second." And then a rabbit walks in and says, "Hi, I'm here for an appointment," and she says, "Oh yeah, it says here that we just, just need a little information from you, Mr. Rabbit. We need your blood type." And he looks at the priest, looks at the minister, and he says, "Well, it looks like I'm a typo." I

0:58:36 Tom: That's terrible. That's actually great. That's horrible. I love that.

0:58:43 Tom: Kids story. Hey, a bunch of kids I know didn't fucking vote. There's my kids story we

0:58:46 Eli: Yeah. And now we hunt them down.

0:58:49 Thomas: Dear Old Dads, that's

0:58:51 Eli: Yeah.

0:58:55 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

0:59:36 Eli: Just drowning in eggs over here.

0:59:38 Tom: Most people are not able to live where I live. And I'm just very fortunate that I work 700 jobs to do that.

0:59:43 Thomas: Haven't started, we have kill him, it's with great riz comes some skibbity, and

0:59:45 Eli: New jersey you get to go bada bing and if they don't reply bada boom at will firing it's