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Transcript

A Vision for You · Outside Issues

• 0:00
  Speaker A: The conscience of the entire world is now currently in Gaza. I feel like we are witnessing an extreme campaign from especially the mainstream media and the people in power who are trying to make it seem like these issues are competing against each other. They're competing about our attention. A journalist asks me all the time, why don't people care about the climate as much as 2019? And I'm like, because you deprioritized it and because you are not making the connections to all the other crises. Because of course, we are fighting against the same system. The same systems that are oppressing people, enabling and fueling genocides are also the same systems that are destroying nature and destabilizing our entire atmosphere.
• 1:02
  Speaker B: Welcome to Outside Issues with Audrey and Patrick.
• 1:06
  Speaker C: Capitalism is designed to make us miserable.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: Well, you and I aren't miserable. At least not most of the time.
• 1:12
  Speaker C: Most of the time. Most of the time I'm miserable kind of a lot because I have a severe mental illness. But is that really.
• 1:20
  Speaker B: Is that really how you characterize your day to day?
• 1:25
  Speaker C: I try not to. I try not to think of myself. Oh, today I'm bipolar. I'm waking up. What's. What's my. What's my mood today? But it's very hard because sometimes you're in an episode or you're not in an episode. You can't tell if you're in an episode. You can tell if you're in an episode. Right now I can't tell if I'm in an episode, but I do know that last weekend I was in an episode, so it's confusing.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: It was then. That was the first weekend after your trip.
• 1:54
  Speaker C: Right, right, right. It was about. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, it was. It was pretty much exactly after I got back, which was. Yeah, I had to take the day off of work and I got. I recently was granted an accommodation at my job under the ada, which is great. Um, just, you know, advocate for yourself, advocate for your health, advocate for making your work as easy as possible and as fun as possible. I went to la, where I'm from, for Thanksgiving week and sort of weekend plus a few days. Saw you got to go to Good Stuff Restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants. Had some avocado toast.
• 2:43
  Speaker C: Let's see. Spent some time with my family, spent some time with my partner, spent some time just. I spent some time at the beach by myself.
• 2:56
  Speaker B: I'm so glad. Yeah, you got to take advantage.
• 3:00
  Speaker C: Exactly. And I was so lucky to get a parking spot on a. What was it, like a Friday after Thanksgiving Day at around noon? Or something like that. I was so lucky.
• 3:14
  Speaker B: Everyone was too bloated with, like, the four turkey dinners they had to go to the beach. So I think that's why you lucked out, I hope.
• 3:20
  Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds about right. I actually took a client call at the beach, which was very, very serene and they appreciated it. So I was very happy to go to the beach and see. See my. My roots, I suppose. Yeah, my sand roots.
• 3:40
  Speaker B: I saw you posted a picture of the coast from. Because you stay in pv, right?
• 3:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's where my parents are. They're in pv. PV Estates. And so, you know, they have a pretty good view of the sunset. And I have a couple other pictures that I forgot to post that, like, that were on the ocean and stuff. But yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was a good trip. It was. It was a good trip. My high school reunion, however, was a little bit whack.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, whack was the word you used to describe it.
• 4:14
  Speaker C: That's the. That's the word that I've been using is whack.
• 4:19
  Speaker C: It was in a. First of all, it was kind of hard to find. It was nowhere near our old high school. It was like in. It was on. On the border of like, Hawthorne and Englewood.
• 4:30
  Speaker B: Oh, that's like a bad location. Because, see, mine. My tenure was at least it was like on Pierre Avenue, you know, it was like, close to.
• 4:38
  Speaker C: Yeah, see, that makes more sense. Ours was just an absolutely random location and it was a brewery. And I was under the impression, like, oh, I could get like a seltzer with cranberry sauce. I mean.
• 4:56
  Speaker B: I could go for that.
• 4:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, I had cranberry sauce earlier, but cranberry juice. And the guy's like, no, we just got beer and wine and some water. And I was like, well, fuck, you know, like, I just wanted to be able to, like, you know, hold a. Hold a drink and feel part of the group.
• 5:17
  Speaker B: They didn't even have non alcoholic, kind of like a nice cocktail mocktail for you?
• 5:22
  Speaker C: No, they had just beer and wine and like a pitcher of water. It was.
• 5:28
  Speaker B: That's fucked up.
• 5:29
  Speaker C: It was fucked up. And so I was like, am I gonna have to go to the bar to purchase a non alcoholic beverage? They're like, yeah, basically. So I ended up not doing that and I just ended up hanging out with my. My best friend Mandy from. I've known her since sixth grade. We've had kind of an on and off relationship over the last. God, almost 30 years.
• 5:57
  Speaker C: Wow. Almost 30 years. But, you know, now it's definitely back on. We had sort of a falling out because of my mental health issues in the past. But.
• 6:11
  Speaker C: We hung out together. And her husband doesn't drink either. She doesn't drink, actually. So none of us were drinking. We were just there. There was random. Just candy hanging around. Like, I could.
• 6:27
  Speaker B: I could fuck with that, right?
• 6:29
  Speaker C: Her. Her husband, who's actually just trying to get sober, he's been struggling with alcoholism for a long time, probably 20 years. And he's had a lot of scary health problems. And so my friend just went. Was trying to get him to eat the candy, and he got. He was eating. He was just mostly eating candy during the reunion. And I saw a few people, you know, like, that I knew and people that I was never really close to in high school hugging me and saying how nice it was to see me. And I was like, I didn't know you.
• 7:08
  Speaker C: And it was just hot and sweaty, and it just was uncomfortable. The whole vibe was uncomfortable. So I left quite early.
• 7:17
  Speaker B: Social media has made it so that we can keep track of the people that we wish to keep track of. It's one of, like, maybe the better utilities of it. And so much tends to change since high school. I think the proving ground for people is when we get out of that amniotic container and we're actually in the world. And then I think, like, that's where most of the time, our found families. Our found families don't usually, if we're very lucky, we grab onto them in high school and we stay with them through life. But, you know, it's. For me, it's been like a roller coaster. It's been like a very tumultuous pathway towards some degree of stability that I have now. And that definitely wasn't happening in high school. That shit needed to happen later.
• 8:03
  Speaker C: I wanted to say, like, you know, oh, what have you been doing since high school? I'm like, well, I had a bit of a hard time.
• 8:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, I had a little bit of a saga. Yeah.
• 8:14
  Speaker C: I eventually got my master's and moved to Seattle, but it did take about 12 years, so that's okay.
• 8:21
  Speaker B: Well, hey, it's better than me. Like, I was talking about going into your field, or I was, like, mowing it early this year, and I was looking at how much school that would take, and I'm just like, that amount of work, forget it. It's a lot of work. So I don't think I've talked about it on the show yet. What I've been dealing with.
• 8:39
  Speaker B: In my life is my ex, girlfriend, friend of the Show Maddie.
• 8:47
  Speaker B: Called me with, like, a suicide attempt. Cry for help. Like.
• 8:53
  Speaker B: A few months. No, a couple months ago. Maybe like a little more than a month ago. And so me and my parents have been working with her lately. It's more of my parents, but trying to get her housing, trying to get her mental health treatment, fostering her cats. And. And it's been super stressful, and it's been very disheartening. And there's. The entire time. Well, first of all, there's, like, you know, the sting to my ego, I guess I don't know how else to describe it, that, like, this is somebody that I love and somebody that I was living with, and we were partners for a long time, and I've never had the experience of having somebody that I was that close to fall on such hard times and, like, really hard times, like living out of their van, you know, with, like, physical injuries that were going septic.
• 9:48
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 9:49
  Speaker B: Shaved head. Yeah. Like, I mean, really, like. I mean, I. I did something yesterday that I haven't done since this all began. And, like, for whatever fucking reason, on my iPhone, the. The photos app just. It only suggests I look at albums of me with Matt, with. In that relationship, which is already, like, a couple of years ago. And, you know, I mean, I've been with Suanne, you know, coming up on two years now. I would like for my iPhone to honor that by showing me the good times in my current relationship. But every time it's tried to show me an old album, I have not clicked on it because, you know, it's telling me a story that was true at the time and is true no longer. And it's not constructive. It hasn't been constructive for me to look at it, but I started looking through the photos the other day when it suggested I look at them, and it's a lot of me and her and the cats living in Joshua Tree. And, like, God, did that hurt the heart, you know, like, at such better times. I mean. Yeah, better times for her than there are now. Like.
• 11:01
  Speaker B: There was, like, a place for her in my world for a while, and I wanted her to have that. A place elsewhere, her own place with her own partner, a different partner with. She can make her own family, she can make her own career. Um, she could continue with her mental health, you know, treat treatment development like we all are. You know, I mean, I met her at an AA meeting years ago, and.
• 11:31
  Speaker B: And that just didn't happen. And, you know, it's. You know, right now, I think my parents have her put up In a. In like a Motel 6. In like thousand palms or.
• 11:42
  Speaker C: Thousand palms, 100 palms, 29 palms.
• 11:45
  Speaker B: 29 palms. I don't know. What. Yeah, a thousand palms.
• 11:48
  Speaker C: That, I mean, makes sense.
• 11:50
  Speaker B: There probably are a thousand palms there. Or there should be anyway.
• 11:53
  Speaker C: Makes more sense than a number 29, but.
• 11:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 29 palms. And. And she's trying to get a bed somewhere and get in. And get in on a rehab and.
• 12:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I said it was a sting to my ego, but it's just also a sting just to. It's so many feelings, you know, like, we're fostering your cats, and I don't want to be fostering her cats. I want her to take care of her own cats. The cats have their own bathroom now in the two bedroom house that I'm renting for my parents. So I'm sharing a bathroom with my parents, and they live like college students, so it's just gross. And it's four animals in the house now, and they're pissing and shooting everywhere. And it's. And it's just I resent her. It's like I feel for her and my heart breaks for her. And also I kind of hate her. And I want, you know, like, I think anywhere across all demographics, all political bents, when you feel that you are losing control of your own life, and then when you can't dictate the terms of your own life, you start to feel some kind of way about that. And I think, like, what I've been dealing with in my own sobriety and just is, how can I change what I can accept what I can't? And for the time being, I'm just like, I don't want the. I don't want the cats to be, you know, fending for themselves in the elements. You know, I don't want to kill some cats. I want to help her out to the extent that I can while not sinking my current relationship or, you know, my sobriety or anything else.
• 13:32
  Speaker B: So that will require a compromise on comfort and control and all the things that, you know, that Patrick wants to do the way he would like to run his life at this point in time. And I was mentioning before my Internet took a shit, before that I'm renting a desk in my girlfriend's new apartment so that I can work there because I work from my desk at home right now. And I just need to be out of the house as much as possible for the time being, you know, until such time as, you know, the Conditions there change or I'm ready to move in with Sue Ann full time. So I'm just, you know, I'm paying, gonna pay 500 bucks a month, bring my desk over. I can set up the desk in like a room that she's using for storage otherwise. And. Yeah, and so anyway, that's just one. Like I'm, I'm, I'm doing all the strategies, you know, like renewing my AMC A List membership so I can be out to the movies as much as possible when I'm not working and not have to be a house that I don't get a lot of joy from being at.
• 14:37
  Speaker C: Oh yeah, that thing would be, is perfect for you.
• 14:40
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I was at a movie like, and I'll stop on this rant soon, but I was at a movie a couple months ago in San Francisco and it was like a very late movie. It's that horror movie, weapons. Great film, by the way. And anyway, right as the credits started rolling, I went to the last show of the evening and so the movie ended at like 1am or something like that and some security guards, some tacked out kind of ice looking guys came in to shoo out homeless people from that, I guess, like to stay in the movie theaters late at night or maybe they like to like hide like the Kevin McAllister and Home Alone, you know.
• 15:18
  Speaker C: Right.
• 15:18
  Speaker B: And like, I felt, I felt really bad because like there's part of me that my first instinct, as I'm sure yours would be, is like, you see a tacked out guy shining a flashlight and you know, I don't know, I don't know if he had a gun, but he definitely had like a taser and some other stuff. You know, my first instinct is to not like a guy like that because, you know, instruments of order usually aren't like nice people that I consider as part of my wolf pack. But at the same time, you know, it's like, you know, I, you can't, you can't stay in the movie theater overnight. You know, it's like it's, it's not going to be, it's not a tenable situation. You know what I mean? Like, those people need to be in, you know, inadequate housing. And so, yeah, movie theaters can be a refuge for, for all people, all kinds of reasons. It's a quiet, it's a quiet place where nothing of incident happens much except what's on the screen.
• 16:11
  Speaker C: So.
• 16:12
  Speaker B: Sure. Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker C: Well, it's very admirable what you're doing for what you're doing for Maddie and also your parents. That's very admirable. My question is, you know, you mentioned like, what, where does Patrick come in? You know, and, and so what I talk about a lot in my work, obviously is boundaries. So what, you know, what would you say your boundaries are with this situation?
• 16:40
  Speaker B: I blocked her number. So I blocked her number about a month ago and I blocked her parents number. We've been trying to get her parents to pitch in on the situation and, and you know, basically take more ownership in a way that she can. Like, I mean, I feel like when I talk to friends and other people in recovery about Maddie and you know, we're all kind of in agreement like where, you know, each, every one of us, we need to kind of take as much agency, exercise as much agency as we can over our lives and if we have an opportunity to, whatever it is, do the, do the work. And you know, we got to do that ourselves. We can't, you know, expect other people to live our lives for us. But when you get into these, as I'd like to hear you elaborate on, you get into these areas of mental illness and, you know, poverty, like, she just has no money. You know, she hasn't been able to work or she hasn't been able to get work. So she just has, you know, she, she's in deep debt. You know, she went into debt to kind of like stay off the street for a little while and then all of her credit ran out. And you know, like, people need help at that point.
• 17:53
  Speaker B: It's just that.
• 17:56
  Speaker B: Call me old fashioned, I just think that like her blood relatives, you know, it's more incumbent upon them than it is on us to step in and to kind of offer that help to the extent that it's available.
• 18:09
  Speaker B: But I, yeah, so I blocked her and her family because I don't think that there's any. I ran out of, ran out of ways to communicate with Maddie effectively to where I felt like I could move the needle. And I was tired of hearing about her family's bullshit and self justification for why they couldn't help her not be homeless at this point in time. And beyond that, it's my parents, it's their game right now and I live with them. So I think it's a situation of. But you know, I could get real selfish and I could, I could, I could, I can try to impose my boundary onto them and say, like, look, I don't want, for as long as I'm renting this room here. I do pay money, you Know, I rent, rent the room every month. I don't want to share the bathroom with the cats. We got to find a different arrangement. And you know, and I think that you should cut Maddie off at a certain point. And you know, she needs to kind of like, she needs to chase down opportunities, you know, without being in your phones constantly. But I, and I guess that's just not, I'm just not there yet. Like, I feel like.
• 19:20
  Speaker B: I want to try and just get as zen as possible and, or get as strong as possible and like let, let my parents take a crack at it. You know what I mean? They still feel like they must feel, I mean clearly that they've got, there's more that they can do. They've got more energy in their batteries to like to help carry Maddie, Maddie and into whatever this next phase of her life is going to be. That the last thing they said is that once she's has sustainable housing that that's when they're going to pull the plug. And you know, I, I, I told them, the last thing I told them was like, you know, my experience with Maddie is that there's always another crisis and that it's important to have an exit strategy. You know, like, that's like those are two, two things that I told them. And then one other thing I told them, which is a little less PC, is like, you know, I'm just looking forward. Can we just as a family agree that like we're gonna work towards a point where we can tell her to off?
• 20:21
  Speaker B: Cause yeah, I mean, that's the way in the movies, that's how breakups work. You break up with somebody and then, you know, you kind of move on with your life. And that's not how this has gone. So that, that's what my boundaries, such as they are.
• 20:36
  Speaker C: Well, sounds like some pretty good boundaries so far. And obviously we all can improve on our own boundaries. I often tell people to set boundaries within ourselves.
• 20:49
  Speaker C: For me, it's not working late anymore because that will severely affect my own health. As much as I want to get the shit done that I need to get done, I just set that boundary within myself. I cannot work late anymore. I leave my office at 7pm most nights and I get there at 10am a lot of the morning.
• 21:20
  Speaker C: So I, you know, setting boundaries in yourself is so important. And it sounds like, sounds like you, you, you're, you're there for the most part, right? And, and it, it, it sounds, sounds good. It sounds good. I'm, I'm very happy to hear that.
• 21:37
  Speaker B: Well, thank you. I.
• 21:40
  Speaker B: This is unprecedented for me, so.
• 21:42
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not for me. I've. I've been in those situations multiple times, and that's why I. I get concerned for your emo, you know, emotional and mental health sometimes, because giving a lot of energy to somebody else, especially somebody else's problems is. That just drains you. It drains you and, you know, would never want to see you drained, so.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: Well, thank you, Audrey. You know, like, I'll just, like, leave it on this. Like, I have a lot of guilt because of. That's what comes up for me in all this. And it's guilt because.
• 22:27
  Speaker B: I. There were people carrying my ass for a while before I finally snap. Maybe snap out of. It's not the right word, but there was some switch that clicked in me where I realized, like, just how insane I was and that, you know, and then the clarity has been, like, coming more and more over time, and then I'm sure I have another period of confusion to look forward to, and, you know, I'll be crying to whoever my therapist is at the time about that. But, like. But yeah, like, I was not terribly different from Maddie, you know, or from anybody, any of the people, newcomers in meetings. I was a newcomer. I was a frequent relapser. And so there's the guilt of, like. For as much as I want to cut her loose, and the more I feel like it's not my responsibility necessarily to. I mean, it's not, you know, to do this recovery for her, to kind of like, to save her, quote, unquote, but, like.
• 23:30
  Speaker B: I should not see myself as better or distinct.
• 23:36
  Speaker B: In any meaningful way from her, because I do this at one day at a time.
• 23:42
  Speaker B: Tomorrow could be with her one day at a time. And, like, I don't know. I just feel like.
• 23:49
  Speaker B: It feels fucking bad to.
• 23:53
  Speaker B: We talk on the show a lot about homelessness and mental illness and, you know, to kind of be in a position where I have things and this other person doesn't have things. And all of a sudden, now I'm kind of the arbiter of, like, what do they get? What do they not get? Um, it's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's known what to do with that. It's like, you know, it's. It feels sometimes like I'm looking at a homeless person and I'm telling them, tough shit. You got to get it on your own, you know? And, like. And I don't believe in that, but my dictate my actions lately, maybe dictate the opposite.
• 24:32
  Speaker C: So I didn't know her that. That well, but from what I knew of her, she was a lovely person. You know, she. I liked the way she dressed.
• 24:42
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker C: Her style was very, very awesome. I always liked seeing her pictures online. You know, we chatted a little bit, and she seemed like a very strong woman at the time. And so I hope that. I hope that that strength that I saw, you know, comes back and, you know, gets to thrive.
• 25:04
  Speaker B: She's very feminist and she's very leftist. She used to serve men, restraining order documents that were in the domestic violence type situations. You know, this was like her heroic origin story, you know, of, like, when I met her in our relationship. And I was like, oh, this person's cool. And she kind of radicalized me a little bit from, like, you know, because I kind of began as a liberal. And then after Trump, there was a kind of like a process of kind of like.
• 25:33
  Speaker B: Recognizing that. That there's. The problem goes so much deeper and wider than just this one former reality star who lucked his way into the presidency. And she helped me with that and educated me about socialism. And I think our first. It wasn't quite our first date, but it was our first kind of like, meet and greet outside. The meeting with another guy is at a Bernie rally. We went to a Bernie rally in LA.
• 26:02
  Speaker B: In, like, 2018, I think. Yeah, it was, like, early in my sobriety, but. But anyway, it was funny. I. I just remember one of my friends in sobriety, I told him that I was dating her, and he was like, oh, Maddie, she's beautiful. But she hates men, though, you know, and then I told Maddie. I told Maddie about that later. I'm like, oh, yeah, Jack says, like, the word on the street is that you're beautiful and that you hate men. And she just laughed and she's like, oh, that's a great. I'm glad, actually, that.
• 26:34
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:35
  Speaker B: Infamous for such things. Yeah. So let's hope that. Let's hope that. That. That Maddie returns one day. And, you know, all I want is for her to be happy. You know, it's. Usually I'm the one. This is, you know, usually I'm the one whose stock has fallen, you know, in the relationship. And, you know, the. The one who I break up with or who breaks up with me, you know, they're the ones that are kind of wishing me well. And, you know, oh, Patrick, you know, he. Yeah, there's something wrong with him. And so now the shoes on the shoe's on the other foot. What do you think? Could we touch on, just briefly, just on some news? Sure.
• 27:12
  Speaker C: So some of the stuff that you sent me, I wasn't even aware of.
• 27:15
  Speaker B: It gets pretty heavy into the Trump administration's involvement in foreign policy adventures, regime change.
• 27:24
  Speaker B: You know, extrajudicial murder and Latin America. But it starts with, you know, we haven't checked in on Israel in a while. And there's the Eurovision contest that all the European, you know, countries do every year. I saw a Will Ferrell movie about Eurovision, like, a while ago. It was very silly and I didn't really. I'm an American. I don't know a lot about it, but it's a huge deal. It's like, almost like the World cup is for soccer.
• 27:54
  Speaker C: Yeah. I think I heard Russell Brand, very ironically, talk about it. It's the world's greatest.
• 28:02
  Speaker B: Man. Remember when Russell Brand was cool? Like, I miss those days.
• 28:05
  Speaker C: I miss when he would be really, really insightful about the 12 steps. That's what I really miss.
• 28:12
  Speaker B: Oh, God, yeah. That book really meant a lot to me. And I guess these days I'm just happy that Katy Perry's found somebody better.
• 28:22
  Speaker C: Right. Katy Perry's got her own issues as well.
• 28:25
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sure. But, you know, um, for me, less. Less pronounced than old, Old rust there.
• 28:32
  Speaker C: Russell Brands got. Got some partners, got some. Some charges, got some polyamory going with Dr. Oz and with RFK, going back to the Eurovision contest.
• 28:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker C: So they decided to allow Israel to compete. Obviously, we have our opinions on Israel. Pretty anti Israel.
• 28:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because of its actions. You know, because of its actions.
• 29:00
  Speaker B: Its racial composition or, you know, a religious composition.
• 29:04
  Speaker C: It's because I'm borrowing Hassan's language. I guess he's like, anti Israel, so it's just easier to say, I suppose, anti Israeli government actions.
• 29:18
  Speaker B: They did pretty well in the competition last year and there was some allegations that they may have done some tampering or. So there was some, like, backstage politics that maybe they were cheating in order to do so well at the last Eurovision, but, like I said, those are allegations. But.
• 29:35
  Speaker B: To boycott Israel's inclusion in the 2026 Eurovision, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain spoke out and it's because of the genocide. It's because of. There's a ceasefire. That's not really a ceasefire. There's been continued expansion and killing in the west bank and. And in Gaza and. Yeah. And I just think, you know, we. I would love to go along in it another time with you, but, like, this is this problem has not been solved. And it's this, maybe the greatest crime, human rights violation in my lifetime that's happening in Palestine. And you know, there's people are still speaking out like, you know, places like Ireland and Spain, they've got more moral backbone than America does at this moment in time. What's happening in the far right now because any criticism of Israel as reflected in the media here in the states is conflated with anti Semitism. Just as on, in the lead up to the election last year, there was like a schism.
• 30:45
  Speaker B: On the liberal side with people that backed Israel and people who criticize the genocide. Now we're seeing in the, in the right wing, you know, there's like the, the old school kind of the skewing older, like hardliners that, you know, support Israel no matter what, and then this younger crop who is no longer interested in that. And though, and though that part of the coalition is being funneled into this kind of neo Nazi tranche that like now Nick Fuentes and, and lately asmongold have been speaking to with a loud voice those that don't approve of Israel's actions. You want to move them to the, to the left. You want to move them in a more humanist, anti bigotry direction.
• 31:30
  Speaker C: What I know Nick Fuentes from is his line about, you know, your body, my choice.
• 31:37
  Speaker B: Oh, he was the one who said that. I forgot that was him. Or Charlie Kirk.
• 31:40
  Speaker C: That was him. And you know, I don't. I've been following politics and commenting and writing about politics for 15 years now. And that line was the only line in a long time that triggered me. That really triggered me because as a woman or a female presenting person.
• 32:07
  Speaker C: Saying that your body is not under your own control, I mean, dates back to prehistoric times, obviously, but the way that, the way he said it was so mocking and it felt like, oh, we're all gonna like put you in a bag and, you know, sexually assault you. It brought up memories and thoughts of sexual assault. And I, I can, I couldn't believe I was triggered by this. I even saw a TikTok where it was a woman and her daughter watching it together and the daughter teared up because it was maybe an older adult daughter, not, not a minor daughter. But yeah, they, she teared up because it was, it's scary that the, what he said was very scary. And you know, now that he's hooking up with asmongold this, this twitch streamer, I'm, I'm a little more worried about both. But all the commentary that they're going to be doing. Hopefully. I mean, hopefully somebody shuts it down. Twitch. Twitch is pretty good with shutting things.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: Down, I hear elsewhere in racism. Okay, elsewhere, no Donald Trump. So, yeah, he was in the Oval Office recently, and he's had this feud with Ilhan Omar. Apparently they're deploying troops to Minnesota where she's a senator, and basically just. He called the Somali population garbage and just like the most racist grandpa that any of us have ever known. But he's the president. He's got the biggest platform in the world. And only 5% of the people arrested in Trump's nationwide immigration crackdown had passed conviction for violent crimes. This is as of mid October, and It's down from 15% during Biden's last year in office. They're sweeping up US citizens everywhere. Focusing on Minnesota now. We're going to start seeing more of these videos of people being ripped from their neighborhoods in Minnesota. 90% of Somalis in Minnesota, they've got all their papers. They're completely tried and true US Citizens. They're working. It's about the color of their skin. You know, it's about otherizing people that are otherwise productive members of society. It's not about catching criminals. I mean, it's always been. This is one of the things that Hasan's always talking about is immigrants commit less crime per capita. I got in a frustrating, like, text argument with a friend of mine who kind of skews more conservative and libertarian about.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: About Trump saying this in the Oval Office or what it means to have the president just be so outspokenly racist and. Yeah, you know, and he pointed out that, like, look, it's a bipartisan problem, you know, like.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: Institutional. You know, Democrats don't give a shit about immigrants either. And I'm like, well, it's different. It's different. Kamala Harris was indifferent to the plight of immigrants and kind of vowed to kind of do a, like, tough on the border policy in competition with Trump on the campaign trail last year. What we are seeing now with ICE would not have occurred under a Harris administration. This is. This is every kind of, like, racist inclination on the concert, on the more conservative liberal side, on steroids times 100. You know, like, this is just. And you got to call that out. You've got to, like, you know, yes, it's a racist country. Yes. You know, there's. There's a lot of corruption and there's a lot of, you know, bad actors on both sides, but, you know, these are Nazis.
• 36:02
  Speaker C: I was able to flip a Trump supporter, which I'm pretty. I'm pretty proud of myself for.
• 36:08
  Speaker C: A close friend of mine up here.
• 36:12
  Speaker C: I just had a feeling that he was very politically.
• 36:18
  Speaker C: New, I guess, just knew politically and didn't.
• 36:22
  Speaker B: He was ripe for manipulation.
• 36:24
  Speaker C: Exactly. He was right for manipulation. He was unfortunately pretty ignorant about policy and practice and.
• 36:34
  Speaker C: Different political figures and what they stand for.
• 36:39
  Speaker C: And so he voted for Trump, and now he's like, why the fuck did I vote for this racist, sexist piece of shit? And I was like, well, you know, I couldn't tell you. It's not my job to tell you. But now I can tell you what exactly you voted for.
• 36:59
  Speaker C: Which is, you know, I can go on a litany of, look at what happened here. Look at what happened here. And then he'll. Sometimes he'll come to me and say, I can't believe that Trump did this. Like, why? Why the fuck did I vote for this? And I'm like, you know, he'll say that every single time, why the fuck did I vote for this?
• 37:16
  Speaker B: It's kind of brilliant what they were able to accomplish, what the Republicans or what Trump was able to accomplish. TW and, you know, of course, I owe a lot of his victories both times to incompetence and corruption on the other side. You know, these could have been easy wins, but they weren't. But Trump was able to. He was able to create the perception of himself as a moderate both times, you know, and I think that, like, the one people like the individual you just mentioned probably assumed, like, yeah, he's a Republican, and, you know.
• 37:51
  Speaker B: We all know what the Republican Party's about, but Trump himself, maybe he'll be different. That's the thing. He's always able to create this perception of, well, maybe this time it'll be different. So, yeah, maybe we could just wrap things up by talking about some of these military strikes that have been happening in the Caribbean. Trump wants the oil in Venezuela, and he wants kind of like there's this vision, I think, that Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and Trump himself have of, like, American hegemony and dominance over that region. I forget the tally, but it's like at least over 40 people have died in these military strikes of boats that are alleged drug smuggling operations that. That the Trump administration is taking extrajudicial action against and, like, using, yeah, airstrikes, drones to, like, you know, blow up these boats, but, like, without the permission of Congress, you know, kind of like skirting congressional authority on it. There was a video, I guess, that members of Congress had access to recently that showed a double tap strike. So there were some people on a. On this boat, and they were shot with a missile. And then there were survivors that were kind of clinging to the wreckage for a long period of time. And then an order was given to, you know, to shoot them again and to kill all of them. And. And, you know, Hegseth, you know, there was this quote that's been going around where he says, you know, kill them all. He just feels like if the president. It's classic, you know, like Dick Cheney, unitary executive. I think the big story here is just how unaccountable the military has become. The extent to which this administration is just balls to the wall at the same time they're doing this. Trump wants to be perceived as a peaceful president, and he wants, you know, he wants to be lauded for, like, a kind of de. Escalatory posture towards the rest of the world when the actions are anything but. And if you look too. If you're following it too closely, you just go insane because of, you know.
• 39:55
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 39:55
  Speaker B: I think the good news, I suppose, is that, I don't know, I don't think most people are buying it, but. But it's tough because there's not a lot of Democrats, powerful Democrats.
• 40:07
  Speaker B: Speaking out against it. You know, I think that there's, like, a lot of consensus in Washington on military matters, on foreign policy. I would like to say that, you know, the opposition party to Trump is. Are a bunch of peaceniks, but that just has not been borne out by history, so unfortunately not. I love that we do this.
• 40:27
  Speaker C: Me too. This is what I would want to do instead of my own job, so.
• 40:31
  Speaker B: Oh, me too. So, hey, we gotta, you know, we gotta keep. Keep that flame burning. You know, maybe one day it'll happen.