SIO273: Sam Harris is Wrong Again

Transcript

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

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 273. I'm Thomas. That's Lindsey. How you doing, Lindsey?

0:00:36 Lindsey: So good, so good. Yeah, slow week.

0:00:37 Thomas: Yeah? Just so excited that, you know, we're almost through the level 8 on Zelda over on twitch.tv slash SeriousPod. Is that what you're excited about?

0:00:45 Lindsey: I gotta tell you, that's been sort of the highlight of my weeks.

0:00:51 Lindsey: Kind of a low bar in the current environment, but still, you know, it's been a lot of fun.

0:00:52 Thomas: Huh. I'll take it. I'LL TAKE IT. Yeah, it's been fun over on the stream. Come hang out, ask questions, interact. It's been a great time on that Twitch stream. Out another Sam Harris episode. And, uh, I was kind of thinking about the, like just on a meta level of what we're doing here. Um, I it's weird on one hand, whenever I've done this stuff and I think Lindsay, maybe you feel the same way. Part of me is like, ah, I don't want to just respond to this asshole's podcast. Like it's feels weird.

0:01:09 Lindsey: Sorry.

0:01:26 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:01:26 Thomas: And but on the other hand, when we do something like that, we get all kinds of people telling us like, "Oh, I'm so glad you responded to this," because like it, and it's so, it's a weird position. Like, I don't want to become the like talking dead podcast of Sam or something. But like, at the same time, I'm thinking about it. And it's like, all right, we're not really, you and I are probably not reaching any Fox News One America Network people.

But like Sam Harris is somebody who is a massive influence, you know, the podcast that is, is many, many, many times larger than this one, and influences a lot of people, and the kinds of arguments that he uses are arguments that you see among our circles, you know, like skeptic atheist circles, and are influential, and like I think it really is, actually, you know, it's also the case that people who listen to Sam Harris are probably reachable. Like there may be people who listened to this and might, might, we might be able to change their minds, you know.

So it's so I think that's kind of what it comes down to for me, is it's it's, I think a lot of atheists, a lot of skeptics who used to be fans, or maybe are still fans of Sam Harris, hear him spout off and be wrong about all this stuff, and then feel like nobody, since he doesn't allow anyone to come on his show and rebut him ever, ever since Ezra Klein did so thoroughly that he couldn't handle it anymore. It feels like there's no voice on the other side, kind of. So then I think people need this outlet a little bit. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about it.

0:02:26 Lindsey: Yeah?

0:02:56 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, me too. And I think another piece of this for me is that I still feel like I'm mourning my sort of respect of him, and I think that a lot of people feel that way, that that used to be fans of his, uh, and then, you hear what this has turned into.

0:03:10 Thomas: Yeah, that was me. I'm not trying to pull the, like, you know, know, whatever. I've been there before you, but I have been, no, I'm just kidding. Like that was like me, like two, three years ago. Yeah. Like I, I was a huge fan. I used to say that, now I'm just like, "All right, it's more Sam Harris." But, you know, let's start off by giving him credit. So this is 230, episode 230 of his podcast, it's called "Insurrection of Lies." I And don't ever want to get too carried away one way or the other, echo echo chamber one way or the other. Like, I, in fairness, I really appreciate that at least Sam Harris has been solidly anti-Trump, and he does

0:03:10 Lindsey: No. But You Were Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

0:03:43 Lindsey: Absolutely.

0:03:43 Thomas: A decent job in the beginning of this podcast episode of, he, he does kind of put stuff into perspective, and he, he's not, he's not going through the like, "Oh, well Antifa did this, and so it's the same." Like, he, he does put it in that context, even though he does still try to do a little bit of the, like, Like, "Here's what Antifa did as well." But he, like, he, he, I at least grant him credit. He is not a James Lindsay, who is now like a weird Christian Q member, like James Lindsay is so far off the rails. He's not like Majid Nawaz. You know, I give Sam credit. And I think, you know,I want to be fair. I don't want tobe like so heavy handed in criticism that everybody on on any other side turns into like all the same evil bad guy. Like, he's, he's wrong about stuff.

0:04:29 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:04:29 Thomas: Sam's wrong about stuff, but he also gets some stuff right that a lot of people on that side have gotten way more wrong than he has. So credit where it's due.

0:04:38 Lindsey: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, because I, I think that, you know, so it's been, it's been a several year process for me, uh, sort of realizing that this is not a person that I can can reliably listen to and trust anymore. And I've been trying to really like crystallize and identify why I feel differently about Sam Harris than I did 10 years ago. And I've trying to inspect, like, is it just because I disagree with more of his positions now? Because, you know, I have gone further left from when I first started reading and listening to him.

And what I've realized, partially in the wake of this episode that we're gonna be talking about, is that I think it's something more fundamental about the way that he's making his arguments, I think that they've changed, um, I'd have to go back and listen to some older stuff to confirm that, but, uh, they're problematic in and of themselves in terms of how he's coming, coming to his positions and and generating criticisms about the problems that he sees on the left, so that, that's part, that's partly why I wanted to to record about this, um, this particular episode.

0:04:50 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That may be an interesting sub conversation because I'm realizing there's similarities with Sam Harris and like Bill Maher and like there reaches there reaches a point and there's a critical signaling here. Actually, maybe I'll just I know we wanted to kind of go through the episode. I guess maybe maybe now that we're on the topic, let me just make this point that I was going to make later on. It won't matter. That's out of order. But there are a lot of times where he says something like, oh, and now you see Joe Biden and other people just trying to score wokeness points, trying to square wokenness points.

0:05:41 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

0:06:13 Thomas: Oh, they're just trying to make a woke argument, trying to scare woke them. And it's so infuriating because what if I were to sit here and talk about Sam Harris and every time he said something that's like centrist or, you know, utilizing the same language that some people on the right use. What if I just, "Oh, Sam Harris trying to score his MAGA points over here with this point he's making." And then you get, "Sam Harris try to score MAGA point by making this argument here." And like, obviously, Harris would take issue with that. And I think it just, it shows the lens that he's looking through. And it fundamentally ruins his ability to meaningfully engage with the left. Because anybody who says something along the lines of like supporting Black Lives Matter or, you know, making like acknowledging the very real role that white supremacy played in the storming of the Capitol by white supremacists.

0:07:06 Lindsey: Yeah, yes.

0:07:07 Thomas: It's, it seems a little, like it seems completely reasonable to make that point. Anytime they're doing that, he is. It's not just that he disagrees. It's that he frames all of this stuff as, "They don't even believe it either. They're trying to score points." And I think that's such a critical way to look at it. And once somebody gets to that point where they aren't even, they can't even like argue with the other side as though the other side really believes what they're saying, once And then once that other side is, you, like someone who's like, "Yeah, I do think white supremacy played a role in the white supremacist story in the Capitol and being led in by the police and all that stuff," it's no longer like, "Oh, we just disagree." It's like, "I can't even listen to this because it's insulting" and pointless.

0:07:34 Lindsey: Yeah yeah.

0:07:48 Lindsey: Yeah well and it's and it not it's not our position that he's attacking. He's attacking some version of things that's like this funhouse distortion. I, I, do you remember the days when on the, when it was still the Waking Up podcast, uh, there were, he was, was constantly talking about Rappaport's rules and how it was really important to not distort the positions, to be able to reiterate the other side's positions in a way that they would agree with and say like, yep, you put it better than I could have put it myself. That's central to his image. That central to what he's selling in his work. And I feel like he's completely abandoned that because he seems the way that he represents these leftist positions that he criticizes, they in no way resemble the actual positions. He seems completely uncurious, you know, about even understanding what, what genuinely is being said on the other side. And that's, that's what's lost me.

0:07:54 Thomas: Like, Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah right. Yeah.

0:08:47 Thomas: Well, with that said, I think you were going to take us through the episode. I have notes as well. Why don't we get started?

0:08:53 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay, okay. The main points that Sam, Sam Harris is making here is that he sees two, this is a quote, two truly terrible, unforced errors being made at the moment. And he's talking about regarding the events of the Capitol on January 6th. He's seeing two unforced errors being made at the moment on social media and in the media generally. And he thinks they're causing a lot of harm. And he says that one's coming from the right and the other is happening on the left. And E thinks that they're equally terrible and dangerous.

0:09:21 Thomas: Wow. I'm so glad he's there in the middle to tell that to us. It's the only rational position, must be the one in the middle that identifies one bad thing the right does and one bad thing the left does. Perfect.

0:09:25 Lindsey: Me too, me too. Exactly. Yeah, I was very relieved too. I was genuinely curious to hear what the left one was going to be. I wasn't sure where he was going with that. But okay, so he says that, you know, people on both sides are becoming single issue thinkers. And he says that you don't have to be a genius to keep both of these grotesque objects. And by grotesques objects, he means that Trump is the worst. And also that leftist social justice hysteria is terrible. So he says you don't have be a genius to keep both of those things in view. I just cannot believe what I'm seeing on social media right now. Everybody's an idiot. Um, okay, so, so here are the actual things that he's criticizing, the two reactions that he finds most troubling. So from, from the right and right of center, he says that many people are minimizing the gravity of what happened to the Capitol by comparing it to the violence that attended the Black Lives Matter Matter protests in the summer. And he says that's dangerous, right, that they're downplaying this and focusing on the hypocrisy of the left.

Because one, it's not true that people on the left didn't condemn the violence, he just says they didn't do it enough. And two, he says, that January 6, was not a protest that got out of hand, like the Black Lives Matter, well, like his view on the Black Lives Matter protests. No, it wasn't that, it was an insurrection that was, you know, condoned by the sitting president of the U.S. So

0:09:33 Thomas: Yeah okay right

0:10:50 Lindsey: Far so good, absolutely yeah

0:10:49 Thomas: And yeah, give them, give them some amount of credit for this, and this is why you, you know, you have a PhD and I don't. My note just says "both sides bullshit," that's how, that's what I wrote down for this part of the show. I saves time. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, when you're transcribing stuff, it's just those common shortcut, shortcut words. Like, so it's like when they, you know, the court stenographer, they have the like, the button that says like, and, and, you know, they probably have like a button for the common word "both sides bullshit." I think just covers most of that and

0:11:05 Lindsey: I think that's fair, court yeah yeah, these are not hard points to make that he's making about, about the right

0:11:27 Thomas: I at least give him credit that he is not making the category error that a lot of people on, in the, writer making, that these are two very different things, but he also still makes an error. You know, like he gets kind of close, but like the, okay. So maybe we should talk about that fundamental argument. Like the, you know, the whataboutism of there was violence because the Black Lives Matter. There's so many levels of it. Like, I think, where do we start? On one end, zooming all the way out, there is no comparison. Even if you like matched up the statistics and and somehow the violence equally was, was exact, like just pretend for a second.

There is no comparison to the violence that happens when an armed insurrection led by the president and aided by members of the Capitol Police and also representatives and more than one senator, monitor, there's no comparison between that and violence that happened during a protest, which, by the way, now to zoom in a little bit more, um, so much of this violence was perpetrated by police, in fact, all of it almost. Um, there were we saw this, I mean, we were, we were there, we were, we were all, you know, pod, we all had podcasts at the time, I remember it, you know, like the, they They finally

0:11:27 Lindsey: Um. Yeah yeah yep yes yeah yeah yeah

0:12:46 Thomas: Wrote the headlines correctly where they said police erupt in violence. And there were comparisons of like, hey, check this out. A totally peaceful demonstration that was completely fine. And then the police decide to start being violent. And yeah, obviously it all goes to shit. And also, of course, there's also looting and business damage. But like there is no way of knowing who that is. Here's the thing about the overarching white supremacy of this Capitol insurrection is the sheer amount, I saw one tweet that really just did it, like they can't even hear this, summed it up well, they won't even wear masks when it would have protected their identity while they're committing crimes. Like, that's the level of right wing privilege we're dealing with. They didn't even think that they needed to hide their identity. They

0:12:48 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:13:00 Lindsey: Descend on it. Yeah.

0:13:10 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:13:40 Thomas: Were out there posting what they're like. They're almost Instagramming what they'RE doing, confessing to all their crimes. So like in that case, we are very sure we know exactly who the people are and who did what. We know who the insurrectionists were. They're being doxxed right now and rightfully fired from jobs, hopefully. We know that. When it comes to Antifa, quote unquote, or the, or summarizing all of something as the George Floyd protest, what you have are mass gatherings of people who are fed up and, and that entails a certain amount of troublemakers or people who don't even give a shit about the cause, who are just there to wreak havoc and, you know, break down windows and steal stuff.

That you don't get to say that that is at the feet of Black Lives Matter. I've said this before. If the standard is that you have to do a protest, by the way, a protest of killing, choking to death, a public execution of a black man or whatever. And if the standard is you have to do a protest against police violence and nothing can go wrong, like no person who is dressed in clothing that looks maybe like they're part of your team will do anything wrong.

0:13:54 Lindsey: Yep. I

0:14:51 Thomas: Like if that's the standard you have to meet, nobody could meet that standard and the world, it's like, it's not possible, it's not a fair way to judge it, it's not a fair comparison. I made all these points probably better back when it happened in whatever June or whatever it was. So if you need to reference that

0:15:07 Lindsey: Think it's worth repeating. Yeah, and I've got, I pulled up and I'll give you the links to all these, but I pulled up just like, just like a bunch of different examples of like really good reporting about what was happening on the ground during, during these protests that got hugely publicized. And it's just, it's just obvious that the narrative that Harris has bought into here is not, not correct, right? I've never heard him talk about the general pattern in terms of the response to the Black Lives Matter protests of police consistently escalating things, consistently being the instigators in just a massive pattern across the country, right. I know there's a lot of examples like this, but did you happen to see the footage of the one in Richmond? There's like a couple hundred people around the monument and somebody happened to have a drone taking video.

0:15:08 Thomas: Yeah

0:15:54 Lindsey: And so they got like this really panned out footage of the protesters being there before the police arrived. And then they have footage of like this fleet and they're being very, you know, obviously they're being peaceful. They're just, they got signs, they're chanting, they're standing around the monument. That's all they're doing, right? A fleet of cop cars just comes rolling up to the, to the monument. All these police get out and they approach the protesters and start throwing tear gas. It's obvious that they're instigating it and there's so many examples of this, it's obviously a pattern and I, I don't, I can't even tell if he's aware of that. It doesn't sound like it from the way that he summarizes what happened this summer. I don't know.

0:16:36 Thomas: And uh, he even says, he even says at one point, if we're there, he says, imagine if any black people had been killed during, by police during those, right? Didn't he say something like that he was like imagine

0:16:49 Lindsey: He He did, that's a little bit later, yes.

0:16:51 Thomas: Yeah yeah And you're like, what are you talking about? The police killed all kinds of people. Like people were killed during those protests. And by the way, not just one, but like, like multiple reporters lost eyes during those, like literally they lost, they're permanently blinded because they got hit by police bullshits that they were shooting at people rather than shooting at the ground, which is what they're supposed to do, you know, rubber bullets and all that stuff. I mean, what are you talking about? Police did nothing but maim and injure all kinds of innocent people, journalists. And you're going to tell me like, to my memory, I don't remember a single, black person being killed by these protests. Can you imagine if they were, it's like, you just have a really bad memory? I don't understand.

0:17:06 Lindsey: Yep. Right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I Well, I, I actually looked up that claim because I was was curious about it, and I I, what I found was a bunch of articles saying like, yes, like there was a bunch people that died, but it's very, it was difficult to figure out like whether it was specifically like officer involved shootings of protesters or officer involved killings of protesters. So I think that that's why he's saying like, to my knowledge there were none. Um, but yeah, obviously a lot of people died, obviously police used excessive force, and that that's really the point here. Yes.

0:17:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:07 Thomas: And the interesting thing is, uh, you might be wondering like, uh, you know, if we're making comparisons, uh, as of now, from what I know, one Capitol police officer died, right. And others are very, you know., injured, um, suffered injuries, but there's, I think there's only one who died. All right. Beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Not to be confused with the one that was nearly beaten to death with flags, which, you know, I tweeted that something that conflated those two. Good correction. The officer nearly beaten death with flags I think has survived, but the one beaten to death with fire extinguishers didn't survive.

Very critical correction. I want to get stuff right, but still, that doesn't really change the overall point. I think I said they beat beat someone to death with flags. Okay. Sorry. They beat someone nearly to death with flag. And I said, imagine if black lives matter protesters did this, there was only, I researched this as well. No police were killed in black lives matter protests. Only one officer was killed during that time. And they tried to make it a lot of people try to blame black lives matter, but it was one of those Boogaloo idiots. Like

0:18:19 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:19:14 Thomas: It was, they were killed by a right-wing terrorist. And this goes with the theme of consistently downplaying the threat of of right-wing white supremacist terrorism in this country. That is the main huge blind spot from Sam Harris. And weirdly, at the end of the episode, he kind of almost grants like, oh, yeah, maybe I've been wrong about that. But it's still the whole framing is wrong.

0:19:17 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. A little late to the party. Yeah.

0:19:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Like I said earlier, like the standard is nothing can go wrong. Otherwise, it's the fault of Black Lives Matter. And, you know, every every single politician on the left, especially if they're not white, it's their fault for all this. Police are killed by right wing terrorists and Black Lives Matter still gets the blame for it in a lot of circles. It's it's so it's impossible. It's impossible standard. You see how everything is working against them.

0:19:47 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:20:07 Lindsey: Absolutely. So I don't think there was much more to say about that, that first point where he's talking about, you, the things that the right got wrong, are, he says it's an absolute emergency, you know, to not acknowledge that and how disgraceful it was. It's delusional. But he has to get that point in at the end that, like, but yeah, the Black Lives Matter riots, he calls them, were also a disgrace. And it's insane to hear calls to defund the police as social order was unraveling across our country this summer.

0:20:31 Thomas: Yeah, this is I mean, he's done this before, too, like defund The police, I still strongly believe in it. There's all the, the minute that came about, there's all the Sam Harris is telling us how that messaging is bad and we shouldn't have all this kind of stuff. Very, very interested in tone policing, how the, you people are being killed by police message. And I get it. Uh, but defunding the police is still a good idea. And that means that we would take funding away from paying them to have like military grade weapons to shoot us with for no reason, take that away and Give it to, it doesn't mean take that way and do nothing. It means redirect some Of the gigantic amount of funding that we put into militarizing our police for no reason and put that into programs that would deal better with these things and other types of responses. Even police themselves, if you take it out of this partisan lens or whatever, will agree that they shouldn't be having to do all these things.

0:20:35 Lindsey: Yep. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. So I'm genuinely curious, is from the way that he's talked about defund the police, and he's, he's talked about it in multiple places across multiple episodes, it genuinely doesn't sound to me like he understands what defund the police means. Do you think he understands that? I

0:21:41 Thomas: Probably not. I don't think so. And the other thing that's interesting about the beating up of the left all the time on this is like, even Biden doesn't really, I mean, Biden is doing, I think, probably a politically, beneficial thing, which he's saying, we want, we need to give more funding. And he's kind of turning it around and saying, you know. Because I guess the defund the police thing doesn't poll very well. By the way, probably one of the reasons it doesn't pull very well is people actively misusing it and trying to make it pull badly. That's what happens.

0:21:44 Lindsey: Either. Yeah.

0:22:14 Lindsey: That's That's No, that I think that you're exactly right. Um, and it's, it's again like this is the central thing, I think it bothers me, right? It would not take much effort on his part to actually find out what defund the police means. And He doesn't seem motivated to do it, and I don't respect that. Um,

0:22:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Let me know where he gets the part where when he gets to the part where he's complaining about his his own listeners, center lord listeners for a while.

0:22:36 Lindsey: Uh, No, Actually, we're right there.

0:22:39 Thomas: OK, good. That was my next note.

0:22:40 Lindsey: We're right there. That's my next bullet point. Yeah.

0:22:41 Thomas: I was wondering if I just quit or not. Like I was like, you know, wake me up. And I think the only reason I bring it up, it it's 10 minutes that you don't need to listen to. But I do bring it up. I want to talk about something. I think it says a lot about maybe the kinds of people who are listening to Sam Harris. Apparently, Sam Harris keeps keeps hearing from people who are like, geez, you need to use your own meditation app because you're really agitated about the politics stuff. And when they say that, they're not talking from our perspective. They're talking from like, stop beating up on Trump and talking about, because what people do, what privileged people do who, don't care, and or like that they pay way less in taxes because the Trump administration blew a gigantic hole in our budget and passed a ridiculous tax cut that we shouldn't have done. They rather than actually defend anything, this type of person likes to say, why are you being so political? Just stop politics. Tired of it. And I think it says

0:22:41 Lindsey: So No, Hmm. Yes.

0:23:06 Lindsey: Nope. Yeah.

0:23:37 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:23:37 Thomas: A lot about the kind of people who maybe would still be in Sam Harris's corner. I also want to bring up, I kind of had an interaction, and I only bring it up because I think it, again, says something about the broader forces at work here. I recently, someone who I am still a fan of and I think is get stuff way more right than Sam Harris is Sean Carroll. And he also actually does just avoid politics a little bit more, and not avoid politics as a way to like, know, advocate for the status quo, which is, that's what's really happening. If I were to put that into better words, there's a, there's a group of people who want to avoid politics and political discussions and anything because they want things to keep going on the way they are, but they don't want to say that. So they want to say like, you need to stop talking politics.

0:24:23 Thomas: Uh, and what they want to happen is the status quo continues. Um. Anyway, um, Sean Carroll tweeted out a thing that was like, Like, literally you the headline was two dozen people are protesting Powell's books because because they might sell Ngo's Antifa bullshit right wing fascist propaganda book. And he's like, so he tweets out, Sean Carroll tweets out. He's like don't protest the bookstore. You know, don't do this kind of thing. It. And I just, I hadn't, I tried to reply and I don't think he saw it or didn't care one way or the other. And, and I think it says a lot about what's going on because for one, it's like, okay, you have an account of 276,000 people. That's how many people follow Sean Carroll. And you want to take that account and blow up a criticism of two dozen people in Portland and, and say, say, don't do this as a way.

0:25:17 Thomas: And like, I think that we need to look more critically at what we're doing, like, because what has happened and a lot of what has led to the last four years, I think the strongest political force, sorry to broaden this out a bit right here, but like the strongest critical force behind Trumpism and all that stuff, the thing it has in common is a hatred of the left. If you listen to interviews, I know that sounds obvious, but it's negative partisanship and things that contribute to negative partisanship are, you know, like falsely taking centrist positions, which make would, an equivalence, make a false equivalence between two sides that are not equal. That's a big problem.

0:25:54 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:25:54 Thomas: And doing things like, like this, like highlighting what two dozen people, by the way, they're just sitting there holding signs. It's two dozen people. The headline says two dozen people holding signs is that so, so important that we need to blast that on your quarter of a million follower account. And then a bunch of people say, God, look at this crazy left. Look at this crazy left, you know, like we need to be way more cognizant of what they're doing. And what I think is interesting, the reason I bring it up is a whole bunch of his followers replied to me and we're like, no, it's even more important to criticize your side when it's wrong. And I think that's such a fundamental mistake and it, and it shows what's going on in a lot of these sort of centrist circles, you know, people who think the best position is going to be in the middle. Sam Harris falls into this a lot. He did in the beginning.

0:26:04 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:26:45 Thomas: The right's doing a dumb thing. The left's doing it. The right's can't do. If we did this, the example that always gets brought up is climate change. I mean, it's it's perfect. It's a perfect example. If if we if we treat things like this, things that are very clearly a ninety nine point five percent to point five percent question or something, for example, just not any sort of political question where it's like, yes, OK, you can find in a big world two dozen people who you think might be doing a dumb thing, sort of. But when you put them on equal footing, that is what is contributing to the problem that we're in, I think.

0:27:13 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:19 Thomas: And sorry for the rant, but it, just tying that all together, we need to be more careful in what we're doing. It is actually not the case that you need to be more critical of your side on a, on a like publicly facing quarter of a million follower account, that that's the opposite of true. You don't need to, do you don't needs to go nut picking on your own side to try to like look like you're neutral, or look, that's just not how it works and it's contributing to what we're seeing here, the hatred of the left that is far disproportionate to anything that anyone deserves, even though you can find little bad examples here and there. It's completely disproportionate and it's ruining our politics.

0:27:58 Lindsey: And it's just because I think that there's um, there's a version of like, it's important to police your own that I agree with, but it's being misused in in the circumstances that you're talking about. I mean, like you and Andrew do that on OA, right? Like you're, you're very careful if a position comes up that's on the left that is unjustified or dishonest or is misrepresenting something, like those are things that you guys call out, and I think that that's really important. Um, but that's, it feels like that sort of soundbite of "it's important to police your own" is like being misused to, as you're saying, to justify like a centrist or middle-of-the-road position on issues, and that's a different issue.

0:28:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it appeals to some of these people who think that's like a smart thing to do. Like they think they feel like it's super fair and like, I don't know, it's it's really skeptical practical and like scientific to be like, oh yeah, no, it's very important to call it. No, it's important to called things out in proportion though. And like you say, maybe with a, it depends on what the audience is. And once you've made very clear what's going on, but like we need to get back a sense of proportionality of what's on, you that's a big thing that social media has ruined and it's difficult. But we need put some effort on that. Anyway, back to Sam Harris. Sorry about that.

0:28:46 Lindsey: And Balanced. Yes.

0:29:07 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, okay, so, so brief interlude to complain about the right-wingers in his audience, which he just doesn't understand, doesn't understanding why his audience is full of right-lingers.

0:29:21 Thomas: Well, in fairness, he's complaining about the people who who are saying he shouldn't talk politics. We're saying they're right-wingers, you know, and I think they kind of are, but yeah.

0:29:26 Lindsey: Yeah. Well, he's Implying that they are, right? He's saying that he's responding to claims about Trump and about like these problems. So clearly those criticisms are coming from right-wingers. I don't think that's a stretch. And by the way, like thought, so he said something years ago in an episode about being surprised that he was hearing from all these like right-wing evangelicals who were like surprised that he was an atheist.

0:29:49 Thomas: Oh, I, yeah, I brought that up on my show. I'll, I I'll remember that very clearly.

0:29:51 Lindsey: Yeah. And it seemed to me at the time, I was like, shouldn't, shouldn't he be taking that as a cue to sort of inspect something but no, because he addressed it specifically. He, he, he talked about a lot that it was, it was a fallacy to, uh, to say that somebody's position is wrong because, you know, unsavory characters hold the same position, right? And it just, it seems like it's missing the point to me. It's the point is that you can't, it's not that you can't disagree with an unsavory person, it's that, like, if that's who you're attracting, maybe there's something that you ought to expect, um,

0:30:00 Thomas: Nope.

0:30:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:28 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe it could be that you Just had Ben Shapiro on a live show. That's, that's what it was. It was after he did work with Ben Shapuro. It, you have a, you hyper conservative religious fundamentalist kind of person who, and all the audience is like that, that same kind of person, after you work with them then you're confused, why do I have all these Christians, this is weird, people are confused, I'm an atheist, I don't know where that's coming from, the amount of self-awareness there is staggering, I mean that's Where that's coming from. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, it was right around that time where every single guest that he's having on comes from a Christian nationalist worldview. Weird that you're getting people who are confused by your atheism.

0:30:30 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:11 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. So this is, this is when he, he finally gets to the second most disturbing thing about the reaction to this, to this moment, about the Capital. And this is from the left, and he, he says, "Many people on the left are interpreting the utter failure of law enforcement to protect the Capitol this week as a symptom of white supremacy. They're racializing this travesty," and everyone is doing this. Here's what Joe Biden tweeted, quote, "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday, that they wouldn't have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true and it's unacceptable." And then this is where he makes that point about everybody's trying to stick this woke landing, understanding, and he says that this is problematic because it's, well, he says that it's wrong, right?

0:31:50 Thomas: Yeah. It's hard to even say. I

0:31:57 Lindsey: It's, yes,

0:31:57 Thomas: Wrote down this quote. He said, it's wrong in almost every way. It would be wrong even if it were right. It is not the right point to make. A lot there.

0:32:05 Lindsey: Right, so it's a, it's two different criticisms. One, it is wrong. It's not about, it not right to racialize it, and two, even if it was racial, it was not the right emphasis. We'd be emphasizing the wrong things, if it were about race.

0:32:19 Thomas: But if it, there's a lot of like possibilities in that answer. He comes out real strong, guns a blazing that Joe Biden is just making a woke point, sticking a woke landing. And then he says, like, even if it were right, don't say it. It's like, what? Okay. But what if you grant that it's right, then is it really sticking a wake landing? Like, like, how could that all be true? It's so weird.

0:32:40 Lindsey: Yeah, it, I said, there's, I agree, there's a lot of

0:32:45 Thomas: So yeah, it comes through how much of his whole worldview is motivated by just an anti-wokeness. Like that's the main motivating factor in everything.

0:32:45 Lindsey: Contradictions here. I Think he would claim that, right. Like he said that explicitly, that that was much of what the the McWarder interview was about, they were just complaining about wokeness as a concept, as a stance, yeah, and that's problematic. So I, I want you to tell me if you think this is uncharitable, because I, I was really thinking about this point in the episode and trying to sort of distill what I think Sam Harris is hearing when he hears people make this point.

So I think that when Sam reads this tweet by, by Joe Biden, I think what he hears is that Biden is saying that one, the only variable distinguishing the response to Black Lives Matter and what happened on January 6th is the literal skin color of the people in the crowds, based on some of evidence that he brings up later.

And two, I think he hears Joe Biden saying that because all police hold explicitly racist views, and in the moment desire to inflict harm on Black people, that they literally say to themselves at Black Lives Matter protests, "I will murder these Black people that I hate, but I will protect the white people whom I love."

0:33:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:55 Lindsey: Does that seem fair in terms of what he thinks people mean when they say that race is a central part of what's going on here in these comparisons?

0:34:03 Thomas: I guess so. I, I, yeah, your guess is as good as mine. I don't, I it's hard to even make sense of his idea that like, I get, cause it, one thing, if he would had just said it's wrong. But the part where he says like, it's wrong, even if it were right, is where I genuinely, you know, Rappaport is failing me. I don't know what he means by that. Why would that be the wrong point to make if it weren't right?

0:34:26 Lindsey: I think that it's because he thinks the emphasis needs to be where I think the emphasis actually is on the left, which is that there is a huge threat of right-wing extremism in the country, and it's obviously coming to a head right now, it's, it's boiling over in violence, and I think that he thinks that that's where the emphasis ought to be, and, and but

0:34:50 Thomas: But I don't know if that's true, because he already recorded a podcast a while back saying how we're all delusional for thinking that white supremacy is a threat in this country. Like, honest to God, that's almost word for word what he said. Like that's how it says it was something like that's how delusional things have gotten. Like, you know, do you really think white supremacy is, is an, as a threat or there's a white supremacist and then why that kind of thing he, so he downplays that. Like I, I, okay.

0:35:15 Lindsey: I think he separates those things, I

0:35:18 Thomas: What do you mean?

0:35:19 Lindsey: I think that I, so, you know, I said right-wing extremism, right, I and to you, that that implies white supremacy for reasonable reasons, uh, but to Sam Harris, I don't, I don't think that that is activated to the same degree when he hears right-wing extremism

0:35:24 Thomas: Oh, okay, oh, that's okay. That's useful. Uh, you might be you right about that. So, is where, totally combines well with our other yelling at Sam Harris piece, because biggest flaw in Sam Harris's reasoning along these lines is he is fundamentally unable to see beyond little individual actions and zooming in on individual officers and interactions, because there's whole evidence that, you know, it's actually not an issue. White supremacy had nothing to do with the disproportionate response. His whole evidence is, did you see that video where the black cop was like not being violent toward the protesters? Like, am I wrong? Rappaport me this, Lindsay. Why don't you take us through what he's saying in that argument? What do you think he's actually saying?

0:35:38 Lindsey: Yeah Yes Yeah It with Mean I can quote it, it won't take that long, uh There's a few things I'm cutting, but it's not substantive, um, just, you know, for time. So he, he says, first, consider the events of January 6th through the eyes of the black cops. Some of the most shocking footage of how unprepared and unequipped the cops were, was one of this lone black police officer forced up the stairs by the mob, endlessly retreating. There's one especially aggressive white guy who keeps chasing him. And then he says, what is being claimed here? And he means by the left, who is making this racial. What is being blamed here? Are you telling me that this black cop didn't shoot white boy in the face because of his own internalized white supremacy? This double standard was operative, there he would have shot a black rioter and not a white one, and I think that that's important to quote

0:36:25 Thomas: Do it.

0:37:06 Thomas: Yeah,

0:37:06 Lindsey: Because that's why I think that that caricature, um, in terms of how he thinks about race and what people, people mean by racist, it's encapsulated there explicitly, right, that's not what anybody means

0:37:12 Thomas: Right. Yep. Yeah, it's laughable. I mean, it's so simplistic. I mean he really comes at it from a 1990s like HR view of what racism – know, like boomer HR – like it's – all it is for him is individuals and individual interactions. And so his argument, it's the converse of his last argument, really, or I guess it's the same thing where it's like, do you really think that there's no example of a black officer doing what was done to George Floyd to a white person? If you

0:37:20 Lindsey: Yes that's a good way to put it yeah Exactly

0:37:52 Thomas: Think that that example doesn't exist, then like it's disproven your whole worldview. And no, like, so let's talk about this. This is going to be very difficult to not just yell more at Sam Harris. Um, here's why that's bullshit. The reason why it is very appropriate to look at this insurrection and the, the, the pathetic response to it in a racial lens is if it had been Black Lives Matter, there wouldn't have been police cooperating with them. We've already seen that, at least like two officers, and, and many more, two officers have been arrested I believe, and many more being, being investigated for working with them, that's the racial lens.

It's not, oh, there was a black officer and he individually thought, I like white people, so I'm not going to shoot that, that has nothing to do with it. It's systemic. It's the fact that, like, they're working with him. Now they're investigating whether or not the some members of Congress gave them tours ahead of time. Like we're going to get to the bottom of this. And, and at one point he tries to frame this as, uh, the security failure may have been because Muriel Bowser is so woke that she didn't want the police

0:38:00 Lindsey: Yeah Yeah Yep it's Systemic, yeah oh

0:39:01 Thomas: To look. Oh, my God. So we will get. Look, there may be some tiny sliver of truth to like, because, you know, the I don't even know. I guess we have to wait for the investigation and everything to really clear it up. But let it suffice to say that he tries to make the same point, but then say also it's the wokeness fault. And also because it's D.C., the critical ingredient is not Muriel Bowser per se, like it's the fact that the fed, and another place where white supremacy comes into play, because the federal response is what really would have mattered. I mean, obviously there, there, there were huge shortcomings in the Capitol police and they need to look into that as well. And by the way, some amount of that is because of some of those who, uh, who joined forces are the same that that burn bear crosses. I mean, that, that's honestly, that's what this comes down to. And that's the difference. When there's Black Lives Matter protesting, there isn't like a faction, a substantial faction of police forces who are aiding and abetting them.

0:39:01 Lindsey: My god I hated that, yes Yes

0:40:01 Thomas: By the way, all with the purpose of what? Like police reform? Again, to go back to the category error. It's a whole different thing when the purpose was, which we can never forget, the purpose Was overturning a democratic election. This wasn't let's try to, to protest so that people will stop killing black people, which is what Floyd protests were about and more broad systemic inequality as well. There is no comparison here. That's where the white supremacy comes in. They worked with them. They let them in. Come on.

0:40:14 Lindsey: Yes Um, yeah, and, and he also, he distinguishes, he doesn't seem to think that the unpreparedness has anything to do with the criticism that's being lodged here. It has, has everything to do with it, right? I mean, like we saw that over and over and over, over, over the summer, is that police were hideously over prepared to address these peaceful protests, and the fact that it didn't happen here is relevant. It's way more central to be, to what's being, to the point that's being made in tweets like Biden's, than his caricature of whatever that is about the the black cop and the and the white protester that's

0:40:39 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, oh, also a white woman was shot and killed. So that's the other individual.

0:41:07 Lindsey: That's right, don't forget about that. So no racism. Yeah, 100%, right? And it's not just that it's true that this is about a systemic problem. It's that that is the point that's being made on the left, that it is a systemic issue. It... He's not addressing the left when he makes claims like this or when he makes arguments like this. And that's what is frustrating to me. He has done this over and over and over and it's negligent, I think, um,

0:41:09 Thomas: Yeah mm-hmm. Yeah Yeah.

0:41:37 Thomas: Calm down. I don't want you to eat it over here.

0:41:38 Lindsey: Yeah. Sorry, I'm getting too emotional, um.

0:41:43 Thomas: No, it's cool. I just I'll be your anger translator a little bit.

0:41:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, you covered much of what I wanted to say here, just that it is systemic, that people are saying explicitly that it's systemic. If he was reading past the headlines, if he is listening to anybody other than his own bubble on Twitter, he would know that that's the, the point that's being made. The lack of curiosity that is demonstrated by his amazing ignorance on what is being said on the left is inexcusable, given that he has, again, made hours-long episodes criticizing the left. If you're going to do that, you need to know what we're saying.

0:41:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:19 Lindsey: And he doesn't. Or he's provided no evidence that he does, so he either doesn't know or he's lying. I don't think he's lying, I think he just doesn't know. That doesn't excuse it.

0:42:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:29 Thomas: I think he has a very clear policy of exactly who he's going to have on a show to talk to. And back, back five years ago or whatever it was, somewhat more interesting to listen to his podcast because he, he would have people on that he disagreed on. Now he, it's a, we, so part of this show is that we also listen to the John McWhorter episode, and we'll get to that maybe a later date or not at all, I don't know, and it's, it's the same garbage where like, wouldn't you know, it, there's exactly a list of like four Black people that he'll have on his show, and it's exactly the most conservative Fox, Fox News you anti-woke people, who have exactly that point of view. Those are the people who he is willing to talk to. And that's where he's getting his information. And it's tough because it's like, get it. I mean, you know, it's hard to say like, okay, does that mean I should have like a QAnon person on my show? Like, I gets it. Once you

0:42:41 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that, it is, yeah No.

0:43:22 Lindsey: Yes.

0:43:22 Thomas: Label certain people as beyond talking, then it's, you know, like, I don't know what to say about that. I guess the key is that the problem with the symmetry there is that you've very much labeled the wrong people as beyond talking to. That's the key.

0:43:37 Lindsey: Charles?

0:43:37 Thomas: He has labeled, he's dangerously mislabeled who he thinks is beyond talking to. By the way, somebody like, Charles? Murray, Murray. Not beyond the pale. In fact, he'll proactively have him on to defend him. That's fine. But somebody who dares to express a quote unquote wokeness point, anything that's someone that's that beyond reasoning with, in his opinion. And, you not the problem is like the criticism isn't every single podcast should have people from both sides or something because Because, like, that isn't really true. It's just he has made a really, really bad judgment in who he has decided is his side. And that's critical. And I think it's ruined him, in my view, like for my purposes.

0:43:46 Lindsey: Nope. Yeah.

0:44:03 Lindsey: No. Yeah.

0:44:25 Thomas: I mean, you can't even listen to him talk because everything is coming from that echo chamber. And there are people who feel that way about me. But the problem is not that, like there can be no echo chambers and we all have to, like go outside. The problem is who you have decided to label as worthy like good information, that kind of thing. And we can just argue about who that is. And he has done a bad job at that. That's my view.

0:44:49 Lindsey: It's I think it's worse than that. I think, I, he doesn't have to have, you people on his show. He doesn't have to give a platform to anybody he doesn't want to. But if he's going to do an entire episode that is devoted to criticizing a specific position from specific people, he should know what they say. And the problem is that he doesn'T know what THEY say. That's the danger of the echo chamber that he's in right now, is that HE has no idea what the positions are on the other side. And I think that that's actually contributing to his views getting worse.

0:44:59 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

0:45:21 Lindsey: That he's, he's getting all of his information about the left secondhand. Yeah.

0:45:25 Thomas: I'm realizing now that I mixed up the examples. So this was where he talked about the fact where he said, you know, how many black people were shot and killed in a Black Lives Matter protest? To my knowledge, none. So sorry about that. There's two different times where he talked about the Black Lives Matter protest. This was the time where he talking about that. Now I'm seeing all my notes of like, are you nuts? Like, all the police violence. I mean, is the key difference. We've already hit on it, but like it's so breathtakingly stupid and ignorant to talk about how there's no difference, you, between the response to white white insurrectionists trying to overthrow a democracy essentially eventually, um, and and and how peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters were dealt with. I mean, again,

0:45:36 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. It

0:46:07 Thomas: Multiple journalists lost their fucking vision because they were shot by police. I mean, this is, this is a joke. I mean, again, it's systemic. The fact, like, we, we need to do an investigation, we will, we will, you know, like because, um, because the left actually has some political power now due to controlling the Senate and the House, we will get investigations as to what went wrong. We will, we will, at least I'm not saying that we will get all the punishment that we might want. I mean, I, think, I that members of Congress deserve to be expelled and they won't likely be. So I'm not saying we

0:46:07 Lindsey: Seems

0:46:38 Thomas: Will Get. Yeah, I'm, not saying we'll get all justice that we deserve, but I do think because we control these committees now that we actually get a lot of the answers. I think we'll get a lot of the information. We can see the extent of it. And, you know, who knows? I'll be open to reading those reports and maybe somehow there's something else responsible for, you know, I'm guessing there are multiple factors for the lackluster, you know, police response. But it's it's inarguable that part of it is because these people are not viewed as threats. They are viewed as community,

0:46:39 Lindsey: That way as threats. Yeah, yeah.

0:47:11 Thomas: You You know, like when the police who we've seen in Portland and other places are literally texting with the Proud Boys and warning them like, OK, stay away from don't do this. Otherwise, we'll have to pick you up because these warrants or whatever, like they cooperate with them. That's not a thing that happens with Black Lives Matter. That's systemic. And keep in mind, it's not just a symmetrical thing. You have to look at the actual values, too. Like it would already be bad enough if it was just like, oh, the police are working with the right and not the left. It's not just that it's that these are insurrectionists trying to overthrow democracy. And the other side is people who want black people to be killed less by cops.

0:47:12 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. Yes.

0:47:53 Lindsey: No.

0:47:53 Thomas: Sorry, it's so infuriating.

0:47:57 Lindsey: I'm glad you said it, I don't have to now. Can,

0:48:00 Thomas: Yeah. Keep your credibility intact. Now, what else do we need to talk about from this episode?

0:48:02 Lindsey: Yeah. Um. I guess, one other thing I wanted to say about that, that last piece where he's like, you know, the white woman was shot at the, at the Capitol, how many, any Black Lives Matter, you know, none, if one were, blah, blah, blah. I think another point to make about this is that, you know, keep in mind that he opened up the episode by saying that comparing the behavior of the Black Lives Matter protesters to the behavior of this mob is inappropriate, right? So what is, what is he even, what point does he even think he's making by saying this? If, right?

We were holding race constant, I would expect there to be a different police reaction to a peaceful protest, protest, and then to an insurrection at the US Capitol. And additionally, if we had two matched protests, peaceful protests that we could compare, like one that's Black Lives Matter and one that Trump supporters, and we also had two match violent insurrections, one that Black Lives Matter and when that's Trump, I would expect there to be differences there. So his, the reason I bring that up, right, is that like he the point that he's making with the woman being shot and killed versus like who was killed, but it's not an appropriate comparison.

0:48:25 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:49:04 Lindsey: They were largely peaceful protests and this was an insurrection.

0:49:07 Thomas: Yeah. I think where the error he's making is, once again, on the individual level, he thinks, and you're totally right, that he just does not know what the other side's views are, he thinks that our view is because of racism, that means what's happening is individual police officers, and like you said a minute ago, go out there saying, I want to hurt Black people so I'm going to kill Black people. And so therefore, since, since that's our view, because when a white mob of insurrectionists tries to overthrow the top of the government, know, like kill people, you know, in, in the fucking Congress, because a couple of them get injured during that, therefore that disproves our notion that all police violence was 100% due to racism. That's, that's the only answer. And that's fucking stupid that that's his view of what, of what our view is. That that's the only answer. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. What are you saying?

0:49:07 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Nobody's but Yeah. But it doesn't, it does make sense out of why he thinks that he's surrounded by idiots all the time. Like, if, if that was really our view, he'd be totally justified in saying everything he's saying. Nobody is making these arguments. It's, it's, uh, it's infuriating, it's really, this, this is the thing that I'm grieving. I don't, I really, I'll have to go back and see, but I really don't think this is the kind of thing he was doing 10 plus years ago.

0:50:14 Thomas: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

0:50:31 Lindsey: Maybe.

0:50:30 Thomas: Oh, no, it wasn't. I mean, people had a lot of problems with his views on Islam. And I want to actually it's funny. We're just about out of time. But I wanted to bring that up because there are weird parallels here that I think maybe will be illustrative. You know, and I get that white supremacists have not pulled a 9-11 in this country per se. And so there's a big difference in how, you know, 9-11 was was fundamental. If you know Sam Harris at all, you know that 9-11 was very fundamental to his whole his everything.

0:50:35 Lindsey: Sure. Yeah.

0:51:03 Thomas: I mean, what happened when he cited that is like, that's why I wrote this book on, you know, Christianity and religion, the influence of religious ideas and et cetera, et cetera. But he never applies the same lens to right wing terrorism and white supremacy. And it would be useful if he did. I mean, can you imagine? Can you imagine if if the insurrection at the Capitol were Muslims, if that was a group of Muslims wearing what, you know, conservatives think is scary, like garb that means you're a terrorist kind of thing?

It can you believe what the can you imagine what the reaction would be if a group of them with zip ties with guns with with bombs by the way, like all this stuff we're seeing that they had, got breached the Capital, you know, like can you image the response it would be, never ending, we've got to find these cells, we got to fight with, this is unacceptable, we got a ban these, I, we got to, you know, find a way to stop them from communicate, like all the talk that Sam Harris did around Muslims in the wake of 9-11, it it would be never ending.

It would be like, we have to put an end to this. We got to see why these, here's the other parallel that I thought was interesting. Sam, in debates, Sam Harris would talk about how, you know, because often the other side of the debate with Sam Harris would be, look, Muslim terrorism, fundamentalism, whatever you want to call it, jihadism, all that stuff, that's, it's desperate people, you West, the other side of argument would be something like that. Like the West has, you know, done a lot to destabilize these countries.

0:51:42 Lindsey: Yeah, yep.

0:52:30 Thomas: You know, this is where a lot of this violence comes from, you know, to try to put it very succinctly, something like that. And his response would be, no, it's not that it's the, he would emphasize the power of the ideas because, you know, Osama bin Laden came from a wealthy family. A lot of these peoples are doctors, they're lawyers, a lot of these suicide bombers. And And what's funny is the same thing is true about these insurrectionists. Are doctors.

0:52:51 Lindsey: That's a, I think that's a great point.

0:52:54 Thomas: They are lawyers. They are well off. I criticize Stephen Colbert on Twitter, you know, because he did this like, well, the basement dwellers, essentially the joke, like, oh, a lot of basements will be empty because of these arrests. And it's like, no, that's not right. I'm not trying to like bash on Colbert, but we need to not look at things through that lens. These aren't basement dwellers.

These are people you, your people you do business with, people you customer, you might, you be customers of, these are you people who are well off and the ideas that they that are that are shaping their actions are very dangerous and I wish Sam Harris would treat those ideas with the same intensity, ferocity, and, and I, I guess, just like level of alarm that he treated and those sets of ideas. Because, yes, I get that these people haven't pulled off a 9-11 per se, but what they are doing is far more insidious in many ways and shapes our society in many waves and is in the background and does a tremendous amount of harm and arguably has contributed to an an excess loss of life during this pandemic that, you know, could be numbers far greater than 9-11. So, like, it's hard because it's not a visceral example where you see that, like a Tim McVeigh did a thing, you know, like it's little, it's little harder to get at, but the harm they do is probably much more massive than anything any religious Muslim terrorist has has done to our nation.

0:54:18 Lindsey: Yes. 100%. No, I, I really, I think that that's a great point, yeah, um, no, I got nothing, yeah.

0:54:26 Thomas: You. Remember Ted Cruz talking about how we should have, we should be like surveilling mosques. And by the way, we did. Who knows if we still do? I don't even know what goes on. But like, imagine if they applied that to this. And the reason they don't is white supremacy in different forms. Like it's, it's a bias because these people look like them and they treat them as part of their community who has maybe gone a little too far or, you know, has some bad ideas rather than a scary bad guy who's, and there's a huge difference there. And that's what leads to the disparate treatment.

0:54:56 Lindsey: Yeah. Exactly, exactly, I mean, so I mean, we've, we've talked about doing a, in a, an episode on implicit bias at some point, and I really hope we do that because I think that that gets misrepresented by people like Sam Harris a lot as well, and I think that, you know, the kinds of things that you're talking about right now are exactly how implicit bias intersects with systemic racism to, and it's sort of like a, uh, a mutually reinforcing kind of cycle. And I, I really think that that would be a good topic to explore at some point.

0:55:31 Thomas: We should do it. We will. Absolutely. All right. Well, I'm out of things to say. How about you?

0:55:34 Lindsey: Yeah. Same. Yep. I think we got to it all.

0:55:39 Thomas: Well, good. Good, he kept, he kept this one short and it wasn't half behind a paywall like his other episodes are now, so we were able to to cover it um. Lindsey, thanks so much as always for coming on, uh, hey, we'll be uh coming at a Twitch stream near you finishing up uh Zelda, I bet, so come hang out, it's been a lot of fun.

0:55:47 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, that's exciting.

0:55:57 Thomas: We'll See you then and in future episodes about implicit bias and every uh everything like that, so thanks, don't know, I don't know how the top line takeaway. Like I try to give Sam Harris a tiny amount of credit and he deserves a certain amount of credit for not being a MAGA idiot at this point. You know, like many people in his circles are now MAGA idiots. But, you know, he's still fundamentally wrong on this thing. And hopefully we drove the point home.

0:55:57 Lindsey: Yeah thank Mm-hmm. Yeah yep I hope so.

0:56:27 Thomas: See you next time, everybody.

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