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Paradox of Tolerance · Outside Issues

• 0:00
  Speaker A: It's happening. No one, no matter their circumstance, no matter how wealthy or white or pretty or whatever, is excluded. Trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I'm never going to stop being trans. A letter and a passport can't change that. And F this administration.
• 0:34
  Speaker B: Welcome to outside issues with Audrey and Patrick. It's just a nightmare every day. This is the. I think I was telling somebody the other day, like, this just isn't my century. You know, like, for somebody who believes in collectivism and rule of law in the Trump 2 era, things have been kicked up about 100 notches. And now I just feel like we're bombarded with, you know, horrors every day of just the way that people are being brutalized. And I. Yeah.
• 1:05
  Speaker C: How do you.
• 1:06
  Speaker B: How does it. How does it greet you these days?
• 1:08
  Speaker C: I think that it is specifically a terror campaign. Right. Because we often don't talk about. Right. The ICE deportation numbers under Obama were huge. The drone strikes under Obama were huge. They just weren't being touted as threats, and they weren't being celebrated. And I think that it's meant to break people's spirits, and it's meant to manufacture consent for fascism. Like, the. The immediate thing we see, right, is like, every day is something new about trans people, right? It's like he subpoenaed the records of the kids from the children's hospitals, and now, what was it yesterday? Trans people are not allowed to have guns, right? Like, it. Every day, it's a new thing. By creating this much distress, like, both for targeted populations, like, I'm gonna talk about trans people because that's who I am, right? But by creating this level of stress for targeted populations, you decrease their efficacy targeting us and simultaneously vilifying us. It makes liberals more willing to cut us loose. And, like, the most disheartening thing about this moment is seeing the way Democrats are caving. And honestly, the polling says that most Democrats agree with Trump about trans people anyway.
• 2:51
  Speaker B: Democratic base or Democratic politicians.
• 2:54
  Speaker C: It was the base. So, you know, depending on where the poll happened, that matters, too. And I don't remember exactly, but it was a disheartening number. Right? I am exhausted. I came out as bi when I was 15 and then lesbian at 16. And since then, since I've been politically aware about that, I have known that I am a political chess piece and that at some point, that could very well cost me my life at this age, now hitting 38. So what? I came out as 16. Let's do math. I play D and d I should know this.
• 3:42
  Speaker B: It's been about, like, 20 years, something like that.
• 3:45
  Speaker C: Sure. Yes. Years. Thank you.
• 3:47
  Speaker B: I like to round. Yeah.
• 3:50
  Speaker C: I am exhausted. Right. Like, so many trans people. Right. Like, I am dealing with suicidal ideation. I am dealing with lack of resources. I am dealing with having a community that is underwater in all of these things, and the people who can are getting out of here.
• 4:19
  Speaker B: Getting out of here meaning leaving the country.
• 4:22
  Speaker C: Leaving the country. Everyone who can afford it. Everyone I know who can afford it is, like, getting out. And I would get out if I was not also disabled and, like, at the mercy of my parents.
• 4:36
  Speaker B: I saw you follow Erin in the morning.
• 4:38
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 4:39
  Speaker B: Aaron Reed, I believe her name is, Right?
• 4:40
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 4:41
  Speaker B: Yeah. And she. She published a story recently about how the creators of the Trans Pride flag just left the United States because they're worried about being killed. You know, it's.
• 4:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a very scary time, right, because, like, you don't want to be the one who gets targeted. Right. And at the same time, fascism requires consent in advance. Right? That's how it works. They scare you enough that you don't stop them. And they are very, very scary. Credibly scary. If I was the creator of a trans something, which I am a little bit. I would bounce out of here, too.
• 5:26
  Speaker B: It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful thing, that flag.
• 5:29
  Speaker C: You know, I'm gonna be honest. It's not my favorite flag. I don't love pastel, but I love that it's there even as I'm wearing my trans Flag shirt. Right. One of the things that has been joyful about this moment, right, is I am in a Facebook group that's now starting to migrate to discord of the trans men I met when I was 18 on Livejournal.
• 5:56
  Speaker B: Audrey's fucked with some Livejournal from time to time.
• 5:59
  Speaker C: You know, we've been talking about the flag a lot, you know, and how at various times in our lives, we've loved it, we've hated it, we've worn it, we've. You know, I think there's also a new website specifically for, like, trans folks, disabled folks, autistic folks with guides on how to leave. They're not quite live yet, but they're. They're coming on. They're being staffed by a lot of queer and trans and neurodivergent people. So if you know anyone who's struggling with that, like, get online. Like, places are popping up. People are starting to notice. Like, people from outside of the country want to help. Like, we should be helping people leave.
• 6:53
  Speaker B: And for those of us that either have to stay or can stay. I don't want to leave. I mean, I want to fight, you know, and, and I feel like it's a. For me, how it meets me. It's a similar dynamic with immigration, which is that there's the hardcores, the bigots, you know, the people that really want to do harm, and they are organized and intent on doing it. And, and then there's like a broad, squishy middle. And I feel, and I, But I feel like you can't treat that squishiness as being like, foregone for evil, you know, or at least I don't want to. And I. Because I feel like they don't forever for a whole host of reasons. You know what I mean? They ever haven't thought about it or they're very susceptible to right wing bullshit. And so you just have to hammer on it over and over and over again that this is like, this is nothing new. This, this is all manu. This trans panic is a, is a manufactured kind of witch hunt, you know. Yeah, I hate to use one of Trump's favorite terms, you know, but. And it's. And the thing is, is that, like, the reason that, that the right would want to banish things like that, like the trans pride flag is just because, like, I believe that there has been a cultural shift, you know, in my lifetime, you know, towards like, greater acceptance and empathy towards LGBT people.
• 8:31
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 8:32
  Speaker B: This represents a clawing, the clawing back and a kind of like they've triangulated the trans community as being like the easiest, you know, to kind of like wage this information campaign, again, misinformation campaign against. And, and it's, it's a thousand percent scapegoating. And, you know, just like it, just like it was during Harvey Milk's time, you know, when they were trying to make, you know, just being gay or being, you know, any, any kind of queer identification into, you know, some pathology, you know, that wanted to indoctrinate your children, you know, and, and they're not stopping with us.
• 9:11
  Speaker C: They're already challenging the, the marriage stuff. Nobody learned about the paradox of tolerance.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: What's the paradox of tolerance?
• 9:20
  Speaker C: The paradox of tolerance is that in order to have a tolerant society, you have, you must tolerate everything except intolerance, because when there are fascists, they're not going to stop. And so when you have that squishy middle who's both sides in this issue, who's saying, well, we do have to tolerate Nazis Right. Like we do have to let people do and say what they want because free speech, right? And that's true. But then they don't stop that group from killing another group, right? And they don't stop there. They move to the next. Like that poem that we all learn to read, right? Like first they came for the Jews, then they came for whoever, right? Like it's because of the paradox of intolerance. If you have an intolerant group, they are just gonna slice through people one by one until there's no one left. But if you are out here, right, Saying like, this is absolutely not tolerated, right? Well now you've. It's a constant flip, right? And I think that's the thing is there is no end point. There's only up and down and there's only like trying to get to something that's more egalitarian. There are people who exist whose ideology demands that I be dead, right? So I cannot coexist on a planet with those people unless there are people keeping them away from me.
• 11:05
  Speaker B: Their ask is to erase and kill you. Your ask is to live.
• 11:11
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 11:12
  Speaker B: So your ask is much more reasonable than their ask. Just, you know, if I was completely non ideological and I was just looking at it.
• 11:20
  Speaker C: But that's the thing, right? As long as that ideology exists, there's someone champing at the bit to start wiping people out. But if you say I'm going to wipe out people who believe that Jake shouldn't live, well, now you've started your own genocide, right? I don't know. It's a paradox. That's the paradox of tolerance. But you cannot achieve, you cannot appease a fascist by, by, by throwing them a group. You can't. It's give a mouse a cookie, but so much less cute. You can't.
• 11:54
  Speaker B: You know, I talked to my sponsor about politics and, and he was really pissed at me for not voting for Harris in a blue state. You know, I think we've talked about it before. Is that like. I just felt like because of Gaza, you know, and immigrants and, and other things, you know, I just felt like I wanted to protest my, my undecidedness or my uncommittedness. Yeah. But anyway, he's of the, of the mind that we need to, we need to attain power by any means, you know, electorally. And he's like, but Patrick, you're not going to like how we do that. And what he means is that, you know, we need to go with somebody like Gavin who's going to toss marginalized groups overboard or who's not going to, you know, that you're going to. We're going to need to beat the right at this point in time. We're just going to need to like get less woke or something, you know.
• 12:53
  Speaker C: And just basically argument for softer fascism.
• 12:58
  Speaker B: Well, right. And I'm just saying.
• 13:00
  Speaker C: But you know what I mean?
• 13:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. And if you give a mouse a cookie and I mean I'm just kind of going off of what you said, which is that like, that is like, that's not a recipe for taking power and in fact it destroys our credibility. We just need to say we're there with us.
• 13:18
  Speaker C: The paradox of tolerance, I think you can apply it to Congress, right? It's like, okay, we'll meet you across the aisle. Great, meet us further. Okay, great, meet us further. Okay, great, meet us, right. We met across the aisles so much that we don't even have like basically a liberal party, right. Like when the other countries look at us, they say we have an ultra conservative party and a conservative moderate party.
• 13:43
  Speaker A: Kind of speaking to what you were talking about, like genocide of trans folks. I wanted to ask you your thoughts on as a clinical social worker.
• 13:54
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 13:56
  Speaker A: It was a very sad day when the trans lifeline for 988 got shut down. I viewed that personally as a trans. An attempted trans suicide.
• 14:10
  Speaker C: The line closure has meant that the other lines, particularly the non carceral ones, are slammed and they do not have the capacity. Friends, people I know are desperate. They are calling and not getting through. And when they are getting through to people, the people they are getting through to are so burnt the fuck out they are. And people are absolutely dying. And you now have to pair that with the horror campaign that we talked about, right? It is being shoved in our faces, right? Constantly, constantly. Trans this, trans, trans, trans. It's terrifying, right? So you've turned up a psychological pressure, psychological warfare. You have taken away a very important resource, right? One that keeps people alive. You are creating hostile geography that is causing people to have to flee, right? Parents of trans kids in places like Texas are like, how do I flee my state? And that's something that's going to impact your family financially forever. That knocks your life all the way off balance, right? The removal of that resource, the addition of the terror campaign, the emboldening of just the casual violence of, you know, not even the state, right? Is, is causing people to die, is causing people to attempt suicide. Like people are dying right now. And then Medicaid, right? You can't forget Medicaid one. Medicaid Just being gone. There's that. But then you go and you say, because we're overrepresented on Medicaid, right? We're underemployed. It's so hard to get a job as a trans person. We, we don't have the same financial power because we are more often cut off from family wealth. We don't get inheritance in the same way, we don't have family support in the same way. So we're overrepresented on these programs. You take away Medicaid, you take away that line, you take. Right? It all happens at the same time. It's coordinated.
• 16:46
  Speaker B: When you talk about cutting Medicaid, I think of the, the bill, you know, the big beautiful bill and, and it's. Which is essentially a eugenics package.
• 16:58
  Speaker C: My friend, her dad fell and the care that he is getting is abysmal. He is being abused, he is being neglected, things are dirty, people are sick and he's in a good facility. Rumors about to find out they are hitting this age. They've destroyed social safety nets that meanwhile the people who do elder care and disabled ill care, mostly women of color from Central America, South America and the.
• 17:31
  Speaker A: Philippines, everybody's impacted, everybody's sucked. That's my driving force, I guess, is just the thought of fucking people dying. And it makes me, it makes me angry. And of course as a therapist I have to be like, well, channel your anger into something that's productive. But I want to channel my anger into punching nazis and punching people.
• 17:58
  Speaker C: Well, I, I read an interesting thread that was like, Americans are still waiting for like it to get that bad and it's already that bad, right. The seats of power are held, the media is held, right. Like TikTok is now suppressing political content, but the White House has an account, right? Like it's done. And in the last 200 years when this shit has happened, there has not been and end without an internal war or an outside power comes in. There is no land border really, except Canada and Mexico. It would be so hard for anyone to come save us. Basically. Like it's just got, you know, cosigned.
• 18:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I, I agree. Tell me about the help line. Like when did you ever need to call it? Or like what, what was like. Yeah, what is that? What is that resource? Like I don't know a it, but it seems to have like an incredible impact.
• 19:08
  Speaker A: I was referring to the 988 trans section.
• 19:11
  Speaker C: Yeah. The national hotline.
• 19:13
  Speaker B: How does that help people and what does that look like? And what has been the role and like in saving, preserving life and you know, instilling hope or at least providing some kind of companionship.
• 19:26
  Speaker C: I think we as a whole, as society beyond trans people need to be talking more about suicide. The fact that these hotlines exist I think is indicative of a deep problem. And that. Right. Suicide in my belief and the way that I experience suicidal ideation and activity and the way I observe it in my community, suicide is often like the end expression of there is no way out and no one is hearing me and no one is helping me. Right. And the role of the suicide hotline is actually like pretty bare bones. The role of the suicide hotline is to keep you alive for the night and get you to morning. And beyond that, you're on your own, buddy. Right. And so if you are trans and you are punted to someone who doesn't know anything about trans people, someone who maybe is even actively hostile towards trans people. Right. Even if they are not expressing that in the call, you're not getting good care.
• 20:51
  Speaker A: I mean, Obviously I've called 988 and you know, before 988, as, as this podcast knows, I am bipolar. So you know, I've dealt with quite a bit of suicidality myself.
• 21:06
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker A: But you know, the 988 line, especially now, is so over flooded that it's kind of like I have to be like, hey, I'm a mental health professional and I'm feeling suicidal. What do I do? And they're like, are you safe? Do you have a knife at home?
• 21:24
  Speaker C: I'm like, everyone has knives at home. I cook food.
• 21:29
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. I've only gotten one, one person. And I was actually on the domestic violence hotline. That which I think is much better. It's much better than 988. They gave me some good tips because I was having a crisis about my domestic violence experience. And so they were able to be, you know, domestic violence affirming, like survivor affirming. Yeah. So, you know, as compared to 988, which is over flooded and as, as a social worker, I'm essentially like obligated to promote it because it's, it's kind of the only thing we have and don't have anything better. And it's the worst.
• 22:24
  Speaker C: This seems like a we share about ourselves podcast. So here we go. My stepmom asked me the other night because I was struggling. I, I, I made a very earnest attempt like two years ago and I'm still recovering. I was in it again and you know, she was like, what Am I supposed to do, right? How am I supposed to respond when you say these things, when you talk about these things, right? And I'm like, the fact that we're here means it's already too late. The conditions of suicidality had to be met at all. My family network and my friend network allowed me to continue living in such a way and in some ways trapped me in living in such a way that I felt that the option was to kill myself. And most of the people who make me feel this way say, it's not on them. It's not their fault, they're not going to change. It's my problem, right? Well, when I'm on the ledge, what can I do to help you, bro? You could have helped me by, like, giving me a healthy home life. You could have listened to me about my feelings and helped me deal with them. You could have believed me about my problems and helped me find solutions. There were so many steps before we fucking got here, you know? And I think that we as a society do not care. And once someone hits suicidality, we say, don't talk about it, don't talk about it, don't talk about it. You know, I had a friend come barging into my life after some. After she ghosted, right? And was like, hey, how you doing? I was like, I'm actually really bad, and you popping in and out isn't good for me. Like, this is my situation. If. If you want to hang out, I would love to hang out, but I need a certain level of consistency and consideration here because I am suicidal, right? And you don't have to take that on. You don't have to. I'm just telling you what's going on. If you want to be here, be here. If you don't want to be here, I understand, right? So she took a week to think about it and then was like, yes, I want to be friends. And also, like, we will figure out boundaries. Take care of myself. I'm like, great, I have Covid. I'll text you when I'm better. Three weeks later, text to hang out. Thought about it. Not really up to this, but I really, truly believe you can get better. Blue heart, right? And it's fucking suicide awareness month.
• 25:12
  Speaker B: She takes her time, huh?
• 25:14
  Speaker C: This really fudged me up, man. Like, I asked you for consideration, I asked you for this job. The other thing, right? Like, this is triggering my ideation and this was fucked up. Like, I'm going to be okay, but this was fucked up, right?
• 25:28
  Speaker A: The blue heart gets me. It's Suicidality month or awareness. It's suicide awareness month. Be safe. Oh, my God.
• 25:37
  Speaker C: I know you can get better, right? So she calls my dad, tells him that she suspects I have beat PD and that he should call the cops. There is nothing wrong with bpd. It is horrible how it is stigmatized. And because it is stigmatized, being diagnosed with it, especially being trans, I bring.
• 26:01
  Speaker A: This up all the time. The executive order that Trump signed about, you know, crime off the street. And if you have a mental illness and you're houseless and you happen to be trans also, or another marginalized community member, I believe that the cops will take homicidal ideation if somebody has, you know, a serious mental illness and expresses themselves in a scared way or in any type of way, a defensive way. Homicidal ideation. You're going to institution.
• 26:36
  Speaker B: How have you survived these bouts with. With those ideations? And like, you know, the. The hopelessness and the grief, you know, and like, I know it's not just one thing. It couldn't be just one thing. But, like, have you. Have you identified yet? Like, just what is that? Where's that strength that you keep locating?
• 26:58
  Speaker C: The trauma that I went through manifested in such a way that my life was not working by the time in my early 20s. And I deeply wanted to be a good partner and friend and whatever, understand my family, blah, blah, blah, right? So I go to therapy and go at it like it's my fucking job. And I ended up being like a little fucking therapy Yoda. So I packed on so many skills, I went to so many retreats, I went to whatever, right? So, like, I worked at it. I worked at wanting to stay alive. I worked at being emotionally healthy. I worked at building community. I applied myself to things that would make this better for everyone, you know, like that things can be bad for trans people. But if I'm out working at domestic violence shelter, updating their policies so that trans women can go here comfortably now, then that's something I'm doing, right? The way to survive suicidality is to remember that everything changes. Nothing is static ever. Like, you will feel differently. It might take a long time. For me, sometimes it takes fucking years. And it is the worst. But I know that it will change. And applying myself to concrete things in front of myself that I can see is what makes it better. So I go and I do work at the Devexis Violence shelter and train them on trans stuff. I go out and the thing I'm doing right now, though, honestly, is like, I can't handle A lot of stuff. So I'm working on, like, revitalizing the wetlands. You know, like, you pick things that you can see, because seeing the change, I think, helps remind your brain that if it can change out here, it can change in here.
• 29:36
  Speaker A: I love that response. That's perfect.
• 29:40
  Speaker B: I mean, it's all the same mechanisms that I rely on to keep me going to the next day. You're doing kind of like what I'd like to think me and Audrey are getting engaged with is to heal yourself. You heal the world about you, you.
• 29:55
  Speaker C: Know, and I hope so.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: No, and I do believe, like, I just. I just feel like if more people would understand that their individual interests are bound up in the interests of society writ large, you know, then the world could start moving in the right direction. But for as long as people feel like, you know, it's the building of our individual fortresses that are going to save us, you know, I mean, it'll save some of us, but it won't save most of us. That's what I believe.
• 30:25
  Speaker C: It won't even save them, though, because these people are living in this fantasy that they are doing this themselves, that they are independent, that they're not driving on roads, that the food in LA won't be gone in 48 hours if the trucks stop. Right.
• 30:44
  Speaker B: Wasn't it incredible how during COVID there was like this narrow aperture that was opened? This sense of. It was when the operation warp speed and then the vaccine became available, and all of a sudden you could just drive to a place for free and get the vaccine that you needed, or you got a $1200 check in your checking account just randomly and you're like, wait, they could just do that, you know, and there was this like, burgeoning sense of possibility that like, you know, maybe there we've been looking at this all wrong and maybe there's capacity at the state level to kind of like have something a lot more pro people, you know, and. And then there was just such a concerted effort to just slam that aperture closed and to like shake the Etch A Sketch, remind us that we didn't, you know, tell us we didn't see what we just saw. Let's just get back to exactly what we were doing before and. And here we fucking are.
• 31:46
  Speaker C: You know, the drive to back to work. You would think that company would say, I don't have to rent real estate, I don't have to pay for power, I don't have to da da da, right? But they own money in the real estate. If the office rentals go under. All sorts of shit goes under, right? Their company is devalued because now their real estate is worth less. So we're driving people to go sit in these boxes, to spend energy, to spend gas, to spend all of this so that this company can pay shareholders. Right? Like, it's truly wasteful and it's truly absurd. And I. How did, how did we let them force us back into the office?
• 32:35
  Speaker B: In terms of my addiction, which I struggle with for many years, you know, and I now seem to have found some way to live, you know, where I. I live more peacefully and I, I'm recovering, you know, but, like, I didn't want to change the way that I lived and like, I just, I couldn't conceive of another way of operating. And so I think that, that there is something of that in all of us. This, like either inability or unwillingness to kind of imagine that life could be any different.
• 33:05
  Speaker C: I mean, I've gone through so many ego deaths in my life that it is wild. I have, like a formula at this point. Like, I think I could write a book like. So you're going through an ego death.
• 33:15
  Speaker B: That'd be a good children's book.
• 33:17
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah. We have to. We have to. Well, it's recorded, so I'll remember. I think our mental health is so bad because the way we are living is deeply unnatural. Right? Like, even just the invention of the clock tower is super recent, right? Industrial revolution five minutes ago, right? Making people work like factory parts, like interchangeable factory parts is not at all how we lived for generations and generations and generations. It's not. Right. It is a huge change, a huge change. The way we live in the United States is not in any way sustainable or reasonable. Right. What's happening in Gaza is directly related to our consumption. What's happening in Sudan, what's happening all over these places, right? We can take it back to these people and consumption and like making things to buy, right? To. To live our lives, other people must be exploited and they're far, far away and they try to make us forget about them and they try to make us think that they're bad and that's why they deserve to die, blah, blah, blah, right? And I think the ego death that a lot of leftists have yet to go through is that life must change significantly.
• 34:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, consumption choices, but then also just the, the flow of profit to certain, certain powerful interests, you know, under capitalism is what, you know, makes certain imperial projects, you know, continue and then all of the all the consequent death and the collapse of democracy and, you know, all these things that we're living through right now.
• 35:18
  Speaker C: The Kindle is a great device, right? It is tough. It'll last. There are first generation Kindles out there working, right. But the previous owner at the Kindle has to log out. Otherwise I'm hooked into her Amazon account and I buy books, I see what she does, blah, blah, blah. The Kindle is two generations past. So now it's a brick. All of those components in there, people were murdered for and enslaved for and tortured for. And now it's a brick. We don't even have to not have Kindles. We just have to not destroy them on purpose.
• 35:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, a big. A big hack for me to understand the stakes of all this is the fact that we have a surplus of food and yet so much hunger, you know, that like so much food is wasted that could otherwise be used to keep people alive.
• 36:18
  Speaker C: The grocery stores have locks in the dumpsters so people don't take the foods. Right? The. When you go out and do Foods Not Bombs these days, the cops will show up and pour bleach in the food and not let you feed it to people. So the more I learn about gardening, because I've just gotten into gardening, right, Is that there is a lot of city ordinance that's put in place specifically so that you cannot grow your own food. I wanted to put planter boxes on my front lawn and I was going to put food in them because there's a lot of unhoused neighbors. My neighborhood has a produce exchange. I'm like, swing by, grab your cherry tomatoes for the night. Right? I'm not allowed to do it. Not allowed to grow food in the front yard. Those. Those shitty little tomato caterpillars that destroy everyone's shit. That was a CIA caterpillar meant to, like, fuck with black people. Check out Black Forager's video on that. She will explain how it goes back to shadow slavery.
• 37:32
  Speaker B: I've got a friend who, he used to like to talk politics with me until he realized I was a little more radical on some things than he is. And then he got freaked out. And he's just like, I'm scared of extremism on both sides. I don't want to talk about that much with you. And. And anyway, he was. He was. Wanted to tell me the other day because I'm a big movie head, he wanted to talk about sinners. That vampire movie sinners that came out. Yeah, yeah. And so anyway, which is very much About Jim Crow and, you know, kind of like the legacy of slavery. And. And it's about capitalism, too, and kind of black. Black capitalism or the kind of the. The dream of being able to defer yourself from, you know, bigotry just by earning and, you know, like, being able to kind of build your fortress and. Anyway, I wanted to hit him with the whole, like, capitalism's tied to slavery and kind of like these. These. These. The existence of these inequalities that we could both agree on because of the cotton gin. And, you know, there needed to be a narrative, racial supremacy narrative to justify, you know, enslaving this work for this, you know, very cheap workforce in order to produce the cotton, you know, on the level that, you know, needed to be produced. And, you know, it's like, it's not. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. You know what I mean? They needed to make that money, and so that.
• 38:53
  Speaker C: So.
• 38:54
  Speaker B: And hence, you know, America's legacy of slavery, you know, But I don't know, maybe I should. Maybe I could still talk to him about it.
• 39:01
  Speaker A: Probably piss off as much people as you can.
• 39:05
  Speaker B: I'm just trying to explain why everything sucks. That's what we're all trying to do. I'd like to think, right. It's just like. And I want to learn for myself, because everything does suck. And I think that, like, you follow that curiosity, you know? I mean, sadly, some people follow that curiosity. Some pretty weird places, you know, like, whatnot.
• 39:24
  Speaker C: But this last year, I got really back into Scooby Doo. My life, I feel like, has been like, Scooby Doo, right? Like, I'm running around trying to figure out what's going on. Shit is very scary. And at the end of the day, it's a white dude doing a land grab every time. Like, every time. And that has been, like, the answer in life as well. Like, sometimes it's not a white dude, but it's always a land grab. Shaggy, new, you know?
• 39:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, so that. That's good, though. So if you've been, you know, getting back into Scooby Doo or, you know, that means you've got, like, a Mystery Machine with some cool friends, you know, that can go on the adventure with you, you know, and unmask the bad guy. And we all want to be Shaggy, but, like, I'd be down with being Fred, you know, or Velma, even, you know, Velma's pretty cool.
• 40:19
  Speaker A: I want to be Daphne. Of course.
• 40:20
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 40:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, you are. You're Daphne.
• 40:24
  Speaker C: Thank you.
• 40:25
  Speaker B: Well, Jake would you. I would love to. We'd love to have you back. We should make this a thing, you know?
• 40:29
  Speaker C: Yeah. I was happy to be back.