Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 250: Chris Rufo Allegedly Discovers An Alleged Cabal of Alleged Piss Fetishists At The NSA. Allegedly.

Transcript

Episode 250: Chris Rufo Allegedly Discovers An Alleged Cabal of Alleged Piss Fetishists At The NSA. Allegedly. · Blocked and Reported

0:07
SPEAKER_00: Jesse, you're alive.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: Not only am I alive, I am thriving, Katie.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: We witnessed an incredible cosmic collision in the bar pod firmament.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Is that the right word?
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Firmament?
0:17
SPEAKER_01: What is a firmament?
0:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what a firmament is, actually.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a space term.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: A impossible force met an irresistible object, I think.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Is that also what I'm looking for?
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Katie, fact check me again.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is Newton's seventh law of internet.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
0:35
the former BarPod guest who has had sex with the most men in
0:39
one day collided with
0:42
SPEAKER_01: BarPod's closest friend.
0:44
I'm of course referring to,
0:45
and I don't remember which is which,
0:47
Helen Lewis and Ayla.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes,
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Helen has a new profile of Ayla in this month's edition of The Atlantic,
0:55
SPEAKER_00: and it's quite a fun read.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: It's quite a fun read.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: I should say this is Blocked and Reported.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm Jesse Single.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: You're Katie Herzog.
1:01
We're almost five years in,
1:02
still haven't figured out a consistent way to introduce the show.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: This is a profile of Ayla, who has been on the show before.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: What was the headline they went with?
1:11
SPEAKER_01: I literally have the paper here somewhere.
1:14
It's basically like the internet's favorite sex researcher
1:16
because that's what Ayla is.
1:17
I would have gone with the internet's favorite whore,
1:20
but I guess it's the Atlantic.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Jeff Goldberg probably nixed that.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe Jeff Goldberg was calling for that and Helen was like,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: no,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: that is not in the spirit of my right.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Is that a good Helen?
1:30
SPEAKER_00: She's a good feminist.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Lead with the brain.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: It was very interesting.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:34
SPEAKER_01: first of all,
1:34
Ayla in some ways is not relatable because I have never had sex
1:38
with dozens of men
1:39
SPEAKER_01: in one day.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: And you've never had a birthday party.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: But in other ways,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: it turns out she's very relatable,
1:45
SPEAKER_01: foremost being she had a Atlantic staff writer traveling to Austin,
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Texas to interview her,
1:54
SPEAKER_01: and she just slept through it.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: Helen was at the door knocking, texting, and she was asleep.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: And then Helen didn't actually meet up with her until Ayla had woken up,
2:04
SPEAKER_00: gone for a swim,
2:05
SPEAKER_00: I believe.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: In a local spring.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: They love their swimming holes in Austin, Texas.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: And then, right.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: And Ayla's assistant made Helen some mushroom tea, as one does.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: I assume Helen immediately started tripping.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: So we were off to a good start.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
2:18
SPEAKER_01: mostly I just thought this was – first of all,
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Helen is an incredible writer and I'm jealous of her ability.
2:23
And just this sort of deft touch of like inserting her own
2:26
values and judgments but
2:27
SPEAKER_01: letting Ayla be the star.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: It was very interesting to me, this idea of –
2:32
Basically,
2:34
she's something of a guru,
2:35
Ayla,
2:35
and she has created this online data.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: I would question the validity of it because of sampling issues,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: but just a huge number of people opening up to her about their fetishes,
2:48
SPEAKER_01: about their sex lives,
2:50
all while she has this very strange persona and this very
2:53
interesting story.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Ayla's a national treasure.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: We must protect her.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: What did you think of this profile?
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was great.
2:59
And Helen does something that I basically never do anymore when
3:04
it comes to reporting.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, that.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: But she also leaves her house.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't just get in a car.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: She gets on a plane and she travels somewhere.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: She goes across the world, even.
3:15
to meet people and it makes her writing richer because she's
3:18
not describing someone
3:20
SPEAKER_00: how they look on zoom.
3:21
She's not just talking to people on the phone,
3:24
which,
3:24
you know,
3:24
I do that all the time.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
3:26
SPEAKER_00: I assume you do that all the time as well,
3:28
SPEAKER_00: but actually being able to describe someone as a person,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: describe their home,
3:33
SPEAKER_00: uh,
3:33
SPEAKER_00: it makes for really rich reporting.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's just something that I, I just never do anymore.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: That being said, uh,
3:40
SPEAKER_01: We should acknowledge Helen's privilege.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: It's what she would want.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: True.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: She's a superstar or star reporter at the Atlantic,
3:45
SPEAKER_01: and they will fly her wherever she wants to go.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: Which is apparently usually Florida.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Florida.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Austin, she seems to go to— No, no, no.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: Helen—I mean, Helen seems to really enjoy Florida.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, she enjoys Florida, but she's also done multiple trips to Austin.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think she did this on the same trip as her Rogan trip.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, she's picking the right places during the right times of the year.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: So good on her.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: All right.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Anything else on Ayla?
4:09
I mean,
4:09
I don't have much to say other than Ayla's interesting and
4:11
she's nice.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: I've met her.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: No humble brag there.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: It was not at a... Birthday party?
4:16
SPEAKER_01: An event.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was at an event, but not that kind of an event.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: It was not at a birthday party.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Anything else on this, on the Ayla thing?
4:23
SPEAKER_00: No,
4:23
SPEAKER_00: but Ayla,
4:24
SPEAKER_00: we never overlapped,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: but she lived for a brief time in the town where I live in Washington,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: like a quarter mile from my house.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Really?
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: In Navy town, she probably would have done very well.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: There are lots of autists and lots of men who like women.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Katie, once again, this is Blocked Reported.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: We've got... You already did that part.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I know.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm just reminding everyone.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about today?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we have a few things today.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about straws, paper straws, and bad statistics.
4:56
We're also going to talk about Chris Rufo's latest campaign to
4:59
de-wokify the
5:01
SPEAKER_00: national intelligence agencies.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Before we get to any of that, so we have talked a few times about
5:07
on the show about this type of person who figures out how to
5:11
blame every social ill
5:13
SPEAKER_00: on their pet project.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: So if you're Brett Weinstein,
5:15
SPEAKER_00: every conflict,
5:16
SPEAKER_00: every famine,
5:17
SPEAKER_00: every hangnail,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: it always comes back to COVID jobs.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: If you're Naomi Wolf, it comes down to chemtrails.
5:22
If you're Katie Herzog,
5:24
it comes down to people blaming every social ill on their pet project.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, that and leash loss.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: And juice.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Just you, actually.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: I saw an example of that the other day that I just need to show you.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: So I put a link in our show notes.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Please read this, starting with the original tweet.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the original tweet is by the fat electrician.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: He should get it on his iPad.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: What the fuck happened to hipsters?
5:48
SPEAKER_01: One day they were everywhere,
5:49
dressed like they worked a blue-collar job and never shutting
5:51
the fuck up about
5:52
SPEAKER_01: vinyl records.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Then the next day they all vanished.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: Indian Bronson quote retweets,
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Who is he?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: I've seen the name around.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: Everyone's an influencer now.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: It's like, who's Donald Trump?
6:07
SPEAKER_01: He's an influencer.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Walkness.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Walkness.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Walkness killed hipsters.
6:13
They started to go away with Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael
6:17
Brown in 2014.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: By 2015, with the clash between BLM and MAGA, they were gone.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why?
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Hipsters were the last gasp of a white American identity which rejected
6:29
SPEAKER_01: quote-unquote pop politics.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I love this for a couple of reasons.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Mostly it's ridiculous.
6:37
Like,
6:37
for one,
6:39
he's saying this like the death of the hipster is something to mourn.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you,
6:43
but I don't really miss dudes with mustache wax and suspenders
6:46
serving me cortados.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Plus, he's wrong.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the hipster died because...
6:51
SPEAKER_00: All trends die.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of trends.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: It's the nature of fashion.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Fashion comes and goes.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: It's cyclical.
6:56
So there are 16-year-olds wearing JNCOs today who will be
7:00
growing ironic mustaches
7:01
SPEAKER_00: and moving to Portland in 10 years if it still exists.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't about wokeness.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: The hipster died because the look went mainstream.
7:10
Wine moms started wearing skinny jeans and shaving parts of
7:13
their head so it looked
7:14
SPEAKER_00: like they just had brain surgery.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: It became uncool.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And what's more,
7:20
wokeness didn't kill the hipsters because it was some sort of
7:24
white identitarian movement.
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SPEAKER_00: Hipsters were the wokes of the era.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: They were super progressive.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: They hated conservatives, mostly their parents.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: They were queer or pretended to be queer.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: They rode bikes everywhere,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: especially the fixie,
7:36
SPEAKER_00: the worst kind of bikes,
7:37
SPEAKER_00: those stupid ones that don't have gears.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: They performatively cared about the environment and social justice and
7:42
SPEAKER_00: gentrification while being gentrifiers.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: They might not have known the term anti-racism,
7:48
SPEAKER_00: but they considered racism a social ill,
7:50
SPEAKER_00: maybe the worst social ill.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: They wore fucking keffias.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And then they decided that keffias were cultural appropriation.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't wear them anymore.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait till that comes back, by the way.
7:58
Like he seems to have this idea that the hipster was like the
8:01
last true lumberjack,
8:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:03
SPEAKER_00: and he just I just think he's completely wrong about this.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Were you ever hipster, Jesse?
8:07
SPEAKER_00: I actually know the answer to this.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to tell me.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: I was hipster, Jason.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: I didn't dress.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: I didn't dress well or poorly enough to be a hipster.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: You wear cargo shorts.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: You were never a hipster unless you had skinny cargo shorts.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: Wait, hipsters could absolutely wear cargo shorts?
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely not.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's also this interesting thing of like...
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I was just an SLC.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: And the people who... The fashion out there is so different.
8:31
And it's sort of related to Williamsburg hipsters,
8:36
except these are mostly not rich people.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: I think the fashion changes for what's considered a hipster.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: Also, I talked to a young person recently.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Not creepily young.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: This wasn't like a playground situation.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: And they said...
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, they were 30-ish.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: They were working with 20-somethings.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: The 20-somethings said no one calls anyone a hipster anymore.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: It's dead.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: It would be very passe to call someone a hipster.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: A hipster was a moment in time.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: I was like a surface hipster,
9:02
SPEAKER_00: so I moved to Portland,
9:04
SPEAKER_00: and I worked in coffee shops,
9:05
SPEAKER_00: and I got tattoos of inanimate objects.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: I very much regret that.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I drank a lot of PBR,
9:10
SPEAKER_00: and I went to shows all the time,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: and I rode a bike everywhere,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: and I wore a little stupid...
9:15
SPEAKER_00: cycling cap with the visor flipped up.
9:17
I had a mullet,
9:19
but mostly I was a hipster because I looked out on pretty much everyone.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: I still don't, I don't think I ever knew exactly what they were.
9:24
I think it was mostly a way for white people to laud and
9:28
criticize other white people.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Everything comes back to white people's approaches to other white people.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: It's the most important thing.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: This is blipster erasure.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: Blipster erasure.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: It is.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Let's move on to straws.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I saw something in the last couple of weeks that kind of blew my mind.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you have strong feelings about paper straws?
9:44
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, they're annoying and they disintegrate.
9:46
But it became such a right wing culture war thing that I don't
9:48
have it in me to get
9:49
SPEAKER_01: mad about it.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Like most normal people, I can't stand them.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: It's like having a spitball in your mouth.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: They're worthless.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: And I don't see them.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: But also, like, why is it taking you so long to slurp your Diet Coke?
10:00
SPEAKER_00: A, I don't drink Diet Coke.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And B,
10:02
you could not possibly drink Diet Coke out of a paper straw
10:05
because it would melt
10:06
SPEAKER_00: the straw.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Because of like the weird chemicals in it?
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the acids.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: But I don't see paper straws that much in North Carolina.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Even in hippie towns like Asheville, you can actually get styrofoam here.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: But Seattle banned plastic straws back in 2018.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: After that happened,
10:23
SPEAKER_00: I actually got a metal straw,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: like a little stainless steel straw,
10:25
and I would take it with me if I went to a coffee shop to get a
10:28
cold brew or whatever.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: That's such a hygiene disaster.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: You can wash them.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: I know, but I know you don't.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: I have a dishwasher.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: I know, but if Jana doesn't find...
10:40
SPEAKER_01: I bet you leave the straw like around the house.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: It collects bacteria.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Moose does whatever with it.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: And if Jana doesn't happen to find it, it never gets washed.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: I am a... Put Jana on.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you about this.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: I am neurotic.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: I am the clean person in the house.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I have a little brush and I clean it every morning.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
10:58
I wake up.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: I wear, like, the little sleeping cap of an English urchin.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: I wake up.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: I flip on the candle, and I brush out my little straw.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Look, I do wear a sleeping cap, but it's not like an English person.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: I wear the bonnet of a black woman.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: Is it starched?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not starched.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: It is silk, and it says, go, girl, and Yas Queen on it.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: It does.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: I also sometimes wear a do-rag.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: It's good for your hair.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: Metal straws suck.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: You can't get the same suction anyway.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: I've used them.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: They're fine.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: But you'd have to look this up.
11:28
You'd have to use a metal straw 150 times to equal the
11:31
environmental impact of a
11:33
SPEAKER_00: single use plastic straw.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: And I have like 10 of them.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: So I'm basically an eco terrorist at this point and not the good kind.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
11:40
SPEAKER_00: on February 10th,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump,
11:42
SPEAKER_00: our president,
11:43
SPEAKER_00: signed an executive order on,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: quote,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: the procurement and forced use of paper straws.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: We are in hell, Katie.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: We're living in hell.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: I know no one wants us to get all Trumpy or anti-Trumpy.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: We are living in hell.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: The president signed a thing about straws.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Continue.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: No, the forced use of paper straws.
12:03
Government agents from ICE kicking down your door and jamming a
12:07
paper or metal
12:08
SPEAKER_01: straw down your children's throats.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: It's disgusting and I'm sick of it.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: Continue.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Well,
12:13
SPEAKER_00: now that Trump's back in office,
12:14
SPEAKER_00: those same federal agents,
12:16
SPEAKER_00: they're going to bring you a bunch of plastic straws,
12:18
SPEAKER_00: but they're going to seize your face mask.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Well,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: because under Biden,
12:22
SPEAKER_01: they would yank the plastic straw out of your mouth painfully,
12:25
SPEAKER_01: force you to wear a mask.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: It's just a ping pong situation.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: It's bad.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: We need a middle ground.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me read you a bit from this executive order.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Please, God, no.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Bringing back common sense.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: The irrational campaign.
12:42
Okay,
12:43
I'll let you do this segment,
12:44
but you can't expect me to not comment on Trump.
12:47
And then our 15% of Trump,
12:50
well,
12:50
last time we checked,
12:51
15% of our listeners were Trump voters.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: They're going to get mad.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just warning you.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: We're the most diverse podcast in America.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Extremely.
12:59
The irrational campaign against plastic straws has forced
13:02
Americans to use
13:02
SPEAKER_00: non-functional paper straws.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: This ends under President Trump.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Cities and states across America have banned plastic straws,
13:10
caving to pressure from woke activists who prioritize symbolism
13:14
over service.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: So Trump signs his EO in the Oval Office and he says,
13:19
I don't think plastic is going to affect a shark very much as
13:23
they're munching
13:24
SPEAKER_00: their way through the ocean.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Why is he so funny?
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but why can't he just...
13:29
be funny about that is it is legitimately hilarious not
13:34
hilarious it's funny i
13:35
don't want to overuse hilarious you louise ck has a good thing
13:38
about this it's
13:38
funny to imagine trump's little brain being like what's the
13:43
problem they just munch
13:44
through the plastic but why can't he just be funny without also
13:47
doing the polio and
13:48
SPEAKER_01: hiv and malaria stuff
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Look, Jesse, the president is a very busy man.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: He needs to focus.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he signs his EO.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And environmental activists are unhappy about this.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: Makes sense.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Single-use plastic is truly a giant problem, especially in our oceans.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And this, of course, seems like a step back.
14:05
But the interesting thing to me about this is how plastic
14:08
straws came to be banned
14:09
SPEAKER_00: in the first place.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And the answer,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: it turns out,
14:12
SPEAKER_00: is that in 2011,
14:13
a nine-year-old boy in Vermont named Milo Kress started a
14:17
campaign to get local
14:18
restaurants to ask customers if they wanted straws rather than
14:21
just giving them out automatically.
14:23
He called it Be Straw Free,
14:25
and he wanted to get some numbers behind this campaign.
14:27
So he called a few straw manufacturers to see how many straws
14:31
they produce.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And then using some sort of nine-year-old math,
14:35
he deduced that the number of straws Americans use per day is
14:39
500 million.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: So that's about 1.5 straws per American per day.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Jesse, does that sound right to you?
14:46
SPEAKER_01: Well,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: no,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: but if a random nine-year-old from Vermont calculated that figure,
14:51
SPEAKER_01: who am I to question it?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's probably not correct.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Wait, that's really the origin?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So no one knows the precise number.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Am I MAGA now?
15:02
SPEAKER_00: That 500 million stat got passed from Milo Kress to Activist,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: to a recycling company called EcoCycle,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: to the National Park Service,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: to the media,
15:12
SPEAKER_00: and it just spread from there.
15:13
And that number really was cited by cities and states in their
15:17
efforts to ban
15:18
SPEAKER_00: plastic straws,
15:19
SPEAKER_00: despite the fact that there's no reason to believe that it's true.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So this had real policy impacts.
15:24
There are or were statewide bans or limitations on plastic
15:28
straws in California,
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Oregon,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: New Jersey,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: various cities.
15:32
Canada actually banned the sale and manufacturing of single-use
15:35
plastic straws in 2023.
15:37
And lawmakers and the media frequently cited that $500 million
15:41
number when
15:41
SPEAKER_00: supporting these bans or reporting on these bans.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know any of this.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: This is wild to me.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let me do a little throat clearing here.
15:49
Does the fact that we don't know how many straws are used each
15:52
day and it's
15:52
SPEAKER_00: probably not half a billion mean that plastic straws are not a problem?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Any dead sea turtle is one too many, except for that asshole George.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: He's lonesome for a reason.
16:02
But I think this is a really good example of how activists in
16:06
the media launder bad information,
16:09
SPEAKER_00: usually unwittingly.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: So someone pulls a number out of their ass, media cites it,
16:14
And it just becomes accepted as true,
16:16
even if the source is a nine-year-old kid in Vermont.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
16:19
SPEAKER_00: if you were a big paper straw person,
16:22
SPEAKER_00: stock up now because in Trump's America,
16:24
SPEAKER_00: we suck plastic.
16:25
And if you're wondering if the plastic straw thing is going to
16:28
piss off Trump's
16:29
SPEAKER_00: friend Bobby Kennedy,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: noted hater of forever chemicals like PFAS,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: the answer is no.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Are they called PFAS or PFAS?
16:36
SPEAKER_00: PFAS.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: What does that stand for?
16:39
SPEAKER_00: It's poly something something.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Polyfluorichlorobar?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Polyfluorichlorobar.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Paper straws actually have higher levels of PFAS than plastic do.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: And so do plant-based straws than bamboo.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I was surprised to hear that.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, are there other chemicals that there's higher levels of in plastic?
16:56
It can't just be that plastic is better than paper for all
16:59
forever chemicals.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: So the study that I looked at was out of Europe,
17:03
SPEAKER_00: I think Belgium,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: and they weren't looking at like the level of PFAS per straw.
17:09
They were looking at the percentage of straws that they tested
17:13
that had PFAS.
17:14
So something like 90% of paper straws have PFAS,
17:16
whereas 70% or 75% of plastic straws have PFAS.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: if you'll allow me a bit of an aside for a moment,
17:26
this reminded me of something I reported on years ago at The
17:28
Stranger that I want
17:29
SPEAKER_00: to revisit.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before, but I've never told the full story.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: So...
17:34
This insane statistic was spreading online and through the
17:37
culture that trans women
17:38
SPEAKER_00: have a life expectancy of just 35 years.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: This was a meme.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people believed it.
17:43
A trans activist named Ashley Marie Presto started a campaign
17:47
called hashtag thrive over 35.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And you would see this statistic repeated all over social media.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Like it was in the LA review of books.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Pink News,
17:56
SPEAKER_00: The Nation,
17:56
SPEAKER_00: USA Today,
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Marie Claire,
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Buzzfeed,
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Fast Company,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: The Advocate,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: The Guardian,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: The Root,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: HuffPost,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: The Hollywood Reporter,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: on and on and on.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Trans women are lucky to reach the age of 36.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: This sounded obviously false to me,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: but I finally decided to look into it in 2019 after Patricia Arquette,
18:13
SPEAKER_00: the actor,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: she was accepting an award at the Emmys.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And she mentioned Alexis Arquette, her sibling.
18:19
This was a male to female transsexual who died of complications
18:22
from AIDS at the age of 47.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Now,
18:24
if the life expectancy of a trans woman is just 35 and Arquette
18:27
died at 47,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what Patricia was complaining about.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: But regardless, she repeated this stat.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Probably her dead sibling.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
18:42
She repeated this stat on a huge platform and annoyed me enough
18:45
to finally try to
18:46
SPEAKER_00: get to the bottom of it.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so was this the nine-year-old kid again?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Milo fucking Craig.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Crayon math.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
18:56
SPEAKER_00: so most of the outlets that repeated this,
18:58
SPEAKER_00: just like the case with the straws,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: they didn't cite a source.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: But I found an article in Fast Company that had this passage.
19:05
Around 65 trans people,
19:07
nearly all trans women of color,
19:09
have been murdered in the U.S.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: since 2017, according to Human Rights Watch.
19:12
So it's no wonder the average life expectancy of trans women is
19:16
only between 30 and 35.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: So there,
19:20
SPEAKER_00: at average life expectancy,
19:21
they link to a press release for a report titled An Overview of
19:25
Violence Against
19:26
SPEAKER_00: LGBTI Persons in the Americas,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: a registry documenting acts of violence between January 1st,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: 2013 and March 31st,
19:33
SPEAKER_00: 2014.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: It's got a nice ring to it.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, explain, because I take it this was not true.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
19:41
So this was a report that was published by the Inter-American
19:45
Commission on Human
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Rights in 2015.
19:47
Researchers examined almost 600 homicides of LGBT people over
19:52
15 months in Argentina,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Bolivia,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Brazil,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Chile.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Can I say Chile?
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Can we say Chile or Chile on this podcast?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Chile.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Colombia,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Ecuador,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Guatemala,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Honduras,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Jamaica,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Mexico,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Nicaragua,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Panama,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Paraguay,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Peru,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Suriname,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: the United States,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Uruguay,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: and Venezuela.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Here's what the actual report states.
20:11
Latin American organizations report that life expectancy of
20:13
trans women in the
20:14
SPEAKER_00: region is between 30 and 35 years of age.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: There's no data attached to that.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: They say.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's sort of it.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: That's it?
20:22
SPEAKER_01: That's where the stat came from?
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's one more.
20:24
So I reached out to the group to find out what organizations
20:27
they're referring to.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: And to be clear, this was not recent.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: This was when you recorded on this.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is when I wrote about this in 2019.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: So at the time, I reached out to the group.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: They didn't get back to me,
20:37
but there was no information on what organizations they were
20:40
referring to,
20:41
SPEAKER_00: where they got their numbers,
20:42
SPEAKER_00: what population this was.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know why anyone would believe that.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: But the next sentence was this.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: According to data collected by the IACHR,
20:50
80% of trans people killed during a 15-month period were 35
20:54
years of age or younger.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Jesse, what does that say to you?
20:57
80% of trans people killed during a 15-month period were under
21:00
the age of 35.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:02
Well,
21:02
so they're just talking about the subset of people who are murdered?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, murder victims skew younger.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: Younger people are less likely to kill or be killed, I believe.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that's like a pretty strong effect.
21:14
That is incredibly normal,
21:15
not just in Latin America,
21:17
but pretty much everywhere.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: So in the U.S.,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: most homicide victims are between 17 and 34 years old,
21:24
SPEAKER_00: male,
21:24
SPEAKER_00: and either black or Latino.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:26
So there is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about these
21:30
particular murder
21:31
SPEAKER_00: victims being young,
21:32
SPEAKER_00: male,
21:33
SPEAKER_00: and black and Latino,
21:34
SPEAKER_00: even if their gender identity is female.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: This is tragic, sure, but not unexpected.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: It's completely typical.
21:41
And through this bizarre game of telephone where activists made
21:45
some outlandish
21:46
SPEAKER_00: claim and the media repeats it without pausing for a second to be like,
21:50
SPEAKER_00: wait a second,
21:50
SPEAKER_00: that sounds off.
21:52
You had like white ROG girls in the Twin Cities convinced that
21:56
they were gonna die
21:57
SPEAKER_00: before they were 36 years old.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And when I pointed this out in The Stranger,
22:02
SPEAKER_00: not just that the statistics were bad,
22:03
SPEAKER_00: but that this sort of shit terrorized trans people for no reason,
22:07
SPEAKER_00: people in the comments,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: I read them the other day,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: were pissed at me about it.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm the asshole here.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And then,
22:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:13
SPEAKER_00: three years later,
22:14
SPEAKER_00: after I wrote this,
22:15
SPEAKER_00: trans activists and pro-trans outlets figured it out and were like,
22:18
SPEAKER_00: stop repeating this.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: It hurts our trans brothers and sisters.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
22:22
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
22:23
it's spreading these incredibly fear-mongering statistics
22:27
obviously hurts people
22:29
SPEAKER_01: unless they're true.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: I just,
22:31
SPEAKER_01: that one's always driven me crazy because it's such a ridiculously,
22:34
SPEAKER_01: like in the US,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: we have a good life expectancy.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: 35 is just,
22:39
people would be getting killed left and right in a way that
22:41
luckily is not happening.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse,
22:44
SPEAKER_00: when I was looking into this the other day,
22:45
SPEAKER_00: I Googled trans life expectancy to see what people were saying now.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: And I saw this amazing headline in Forbes.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Please read it.
22:52
transgender people twice as likely to die as cisgender people
22:57
study fights wow you
22:59
know i'm sort of relieved that i'm in the category of people
23:02
who might not die
23:03
which i always suspected i wouldn't die but yeah and me too
23:07
strange uh justy can
23:09
you off the top of your head can you think of any other
23:11
examples of this sort of
23:12
SPEAKER_00: thing bad stats going mainstream
23:15
SPEAKER_01: There's so many.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: It's not specific ones,
23:17
but there's just widespread misperceptions about things like
23:20
the police shootings
23:21
SPEAKER_01: of unarmed people.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: Anything having to do with youth gender dysphoria, suicide rate.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I would love someone to do a poll asking...
23:31
SPEAKER_01: What do like liberals,
23:32
SPEAKER_01: moderate liberals,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: conservatives,
23:34
moderate conservatives think is the rate at which like LGBT
23:38
people kill themselves,
23:39
SPEAKER_01: particularly youth like morbid subject,
23:40
SPEAKER_01: but it's constantly overinflated.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: So,
23:43
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
23:43
there's like a lot of bad stats that support a specific
23:47
political agenda on both
23:49
SPEAKER_01: sides of the aisle.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have a few more examples.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: So 100,000 children in the U.S.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: are sex trafficked each year.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard this one?
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have.
23:57
I think this is something that friend of the pod Liz Wolf has
24:01
written about.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: She probably has.
24:03
So this one is a bit older,
24:04
but it was widely cited in the media about a decade ago.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Here's a passage from a 2014 article in the Huffington Post.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Selling children into sex trafficking may seem like a remote issue,
24:13
something that happens in far-off places where kids live in
24:16
extreme poverty and
24:16
SPEAKER_00: their rights aren't valued,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: but are just happening right here,
24:19
SPEAKER_00: all over the United States.
24:20
And a new campaign wants people to take note that more than
24:24
100,000 children are
24:24
SPEAKER_00: victims of sex trafficking in America every year.
24:27
So that campaign was started by a group called In Child
24:31
Prostitution and Trafficking,
24:33
or ECPAT.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: ECPAT.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it rolls off the tongue.
24:38
And their source for this was a 2010 congressional testimony by
24:42
a guy named Ernie Allen,
24:44
who was then president of the National Center for Missing and
24:46
Exploited Children.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: So Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: he looked into this,
24:52
and Allen told him that he got the number from a 2001 report
24:55
that claimed that
24:57
SPEAKER_00: 300,000 youth were,
24:57
SPEAKER_00: quote,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: at risk for commercial sexual exploitation,
25:01
SPEAKER_00: whatever that means.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: So Allen took that number and
25:03
SPEAKER_00: He estimated that 60% of that population were runaways,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: so especially at risk,
25:10
SPEAKER_00: and then he rounded it down to 100,000.
25:12
Quote,
25:13
I was attempting to come up with a conservative,
25:16
defensible number.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: And Kessler's piece has a lot of other good detail.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll link to it in the show notes.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
25:22
I forgot that Chris Rufo passed around this zombie stat about
25:26
how like schools,
25:28
SPEAKER_01: there's more sex abuse there than in Catholic churches.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: And I did a piece sort of laying out the history of that.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: We'll link to that in the show notes.
25:36
I mean,
25:36
that wouldn't surprise me because every children goes to public school.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Every children goes to?
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay, George W. Bush.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Is it like per capita?
25:46
SPEAKER_00: What was the truth there?
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
25:48
SPEAKER_01: it was just – if memory serves,
25:50
it was partly because so many more kids are – it was just – it
25:55
was bullshit and it
25:56
SPEAKER_01: was basically disavowed by the woman who was the source of the statistic.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: But Chris Rufo wanted to make a point about –
26:06
it was some culture war thing so he spread this statistic about
26:09
like the rampant
26:09
sexual abuse in schools which just isn't really i mean it's
26:13
obviously any amount of
26:14
sexual abuse in schools is bad there's some sexual abuse in
26:16
schools because
26:16
millions of how many millions of kids are in school right now
26:19
do you think tens of
26:19
millions i mean how many millions of kids are in the u.s it's
26:22
and how many of them
26:22
are hot how many of them are hot so like oh wait the last time
26:25
i made a joke like
26:26
SPEAKER_01: that it ended up on blue sky so i were trying to
26:30
Was there a sex scandal or sex abuse scandal at any of your
26:34
schools growing up?
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
26:36
SPEAKER_01: there was a,
26:37
SPEAKER_01: I believe,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: no defamation,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: no defamation,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: driver's ed teacher who was very visibly creepy,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: who I believed,
26:46
SPEAKER_01: and I'm going to Google his name now.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was acquitted of rape charges.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: In 2005, I was like, I had just graduated.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: And then another... Okay.
26:58
So I genuinely don't know what happened here because he came
27:01
across as very creepy.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know... Which is illegal.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: Which is illegal.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: No, I could see coming across as creepy either...
27:10
Cause he's a rapist or like lead giving rise to situations
27:14
where he's like,
27:15
move this on.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Actually leave this out or don't leave this out.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: The point is I don't know what happened,
27:20
SPEAKER_01: but yes,
27:20
SPEAKER_01: this was a,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: there,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: and then there was another one about like a,
27:23
SPEAKER_01: a rumor of a teacher,
27:25
SPEAKER_01: like later marrying one of his students.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Did you guys have any more juicy specific ones?
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had a science teacher who was in prison.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Very, very well-liked teacher.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: I never had him.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And I believe band teacher.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: There were some coaches.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I mean, obviously, this exists.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking high school, not like elementary school.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: It is a problem.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of children in schools.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of creepy adults.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Teachers are female.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: I will trust whatever the AI tells me.
28:02
77% of public school are teachers,
28:05
according to actual statistics that the AI pulled from.
28:08
You would expect any situation involving adults and kids where
28:12
the adults are 77%
28:13
SPEAKER_01: female to have way less sexual abuse.
28:16
Yeah,
28:16
I mean,
28:16
in my school,
28:17
it was like band teacher,
28:20
science teacher,
28:20
and coach.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: The token men.
28:24
Anyway,
28:24
I wonder if Chris Rufo has done the analysis of sexual abuse in
28:28
Catholic schools.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, he has not.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: That's probably the hotbed.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's a ton of these bad statistics.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, 10% of the population is gay.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: 50% of marriages and divorce.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: School shootings happen every week in the US.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: 800,000 American children go missing every year.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: You'll swallow eight spiders in your lifetime.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: That one's actually true.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: But the lesson here is,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: if something sounds not just too good to be true,
28:53
SPEAKER_00: but too bad to be true,
28:54
whether it's a half a billion plastic straws or trans life
28:57
expectancy or missing in
28:59
SPEAKER_00: traffic children,
29:00
SPEAKER_00: it probably is.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Katie, thank you for telling me about the stats.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: I still can't believe that fucking nine-year-old.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Let's get him.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Let's get his ass.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was a billion straws a day.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: Every day, each American swallows 800 straws.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Plastic ones now.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: The sharks could just... They munch through them.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Dude,
29:20
SPEAKER_01: if it was 2014 and he didn't have power,
29:24
SPEAKER_01: I could just have a hearty chortle at that and get back to my life.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: But then you think about the AIDS kids.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: He would be so good on like a Osborne style reality show.
29:35
He was supposed to be an influencer and something went horribly
29:37
wrong in the fabric
29:38
SPEAKER_01: of the universe.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: This is a podcast blocked and reported.
29:41
We're trying not to talk about Trump and E star star star star
29:46
star star star or
29:47
SPEAKER_01: his organization star O star star.
29:50
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29:56
SPEAKER_01: Katie, let's just rattle off those perks off the top of our head.
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SPEAKER_01: Also... That's it.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: You wanted to talk about
30:48
SPEAKER_01: My favorite conservative intellectual,
30:50
someone I think has been unfairly tart and has done nothing
30:54
wrong and who looked
30:56
super cool in a photo of him that was printed by the fascist
31:00
New York Times,
31:01
SPEAKER_01: Christopher Q.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say Ruffo.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: So, of course, most people will be familiar with Chris Ruffo.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: You just mentioned him.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Strong feelings about public schools.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:12
But he's a conservative activist who has become very
31:14
influential in the last few years.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And he was instrumental.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: I made fun of him.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: He's not wrong about everything.
31:19
He was instrumental in the right taking on critical race theory
31:22
as the cause du jour.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Although you don't really hear.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like DEI.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Now you don't hear about CRT.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: We've moved on.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: He was also instrumental in the cancellation,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: the firing of former Harvard president Claudian Gay over allegations of
31:34
SPEAKER_00: anti-Semitism and plagiarism.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: He helped orchestrate the hostile takeover of New College of Florida.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: He turned it from a hacky sack school to a baseball school.
31:42
He offered a reward to anyone who could provide proof that
31:45
Haitians were eating cats in Ohio.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: I think he kept his money in that case.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: The cats and dogs thing,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: which I think we talked about,
31:51
was really disgraceful because it took some other like grainy
31:55
video of something
31:56
SPEAKER_01: being cooked on a grill,
31:57
SPEAKER_01: not in the town in question.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: It's just like it really fomented.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: Rufo isn't wrong about everything.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: It's a target rich environment.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: But in some cases, he's really stoked ugly moral panics in my view.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I keep editorializing.
32:10
He's probably the most influential thinker out of Seattle since
32:13
Robin DiAngelo.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: And Katie Herzog.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Not a great record.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Not a great record.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Really bad record.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Come from that city.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: So before I get into Chris's latest campaign,
32:21
I have a pet theory that Chris is who he is now because of
32:25
something that happened
32:26
SPEAKER_00: like seven years ago.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So I met Chris in 2018 after he reached out to me.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: I was working in The Stranger.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: He was running for city council.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: And at the time, he was very critical of Donald Trump.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: He
32:35
SPEAKER_00: He was a filmmaker who'd made documentaries for PBS.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: He was married to a Thai immigrant,
32:40
SPEAKER_00: a woman who,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: it turned out,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: had actually been undocumented at one point.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: He tends not to advertise that.
32:46
His campaign manager was a lesbian,
32:49
a black Latina woman who is very cosmopolitan herself.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: So nothing about him coded conservative.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: He was a libertarian.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: A Gary Johnson voter in 2016,
32:58
and he was friends with a pretty cool group of fifth column
33:02
listeners who I later
33:02
SPEAKER_00: met and got to know.
33:04
Good,
33:04
smart people who neither do vape tricks nor incessantly talk
33:07
about the gold standard.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: They do talk about Bitcoin, though.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure they're friends with them anywhere.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Anyway...
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Chris went from being basically a free markets,
33:14
SPEAKER_00: free minds,
33:14
reason magazine type of libertarian to a giant influential
33:19
right winger with,
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I think,
33:20
SPEAKER_00: real authoritarian tendencies.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: He's very critical,
33:23
SPEAKER_00: not just of woke scolds and progressives and leftists and communists,
33:27
but maybe even more critical of like sideline centrists such as
33:31
myself who just
33:32
SPEAKER_00: want people to be fucking normal.
33:34
And my theory is that everything that has happened,
33:37
everything that Chris has done,
33:40
It's a butterfly effect that started with his unsuccessful city
33:43
council campaign.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: So this is like,
33:47
SPEAKER_01: and I do mean this comparison directly because they're the same person,
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Hitler,
33:51
SPEAKER_01: sort of flaming out as an artist.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Of art school, yeah.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so yeah, but what were the details?
33:56
SPEAKER_01: What happened?
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
33:57
so Chris was running on a platform of cleaning up the
33:59
homelessness problem in Ballard,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: which is the neighborhood where he lived at the time.
34:04
And really quickly,
34:05
as soon as he announced his campaign,
34:07
leftists started ridiculing him.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: So he was a fellow at the Discovery Institute,
34:10
SPEAKER_00: which is a conservative think tank based in Seattle.
34:13
It's probably most famous for its attempts to get creationism
34:16
taught in schools.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: So they started a campaign called Teach the Controversy,
34:20
which is like a backdoor attempt to get intelligent design
34:23
taught in science class.
34:24
And because of Rufo's affiliation with them,
34:27
he was called an evolution denier,
34:28
shit like that.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: And he really was an outlier in Seattle politics.
34:31
So if you go to Seattle today and you find the nearest white
34:35
guy who's wheat pasting,
34:36
SPEAKER_00: eat the rich on the outside of a small business.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: Wheat posting?
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Wheat pasting.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: What's wheat pasting?
34:42
It's funny that you said you were a hipster when you don't know
34:44
what wheat pasting is.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a hipster.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: What's wheat pasting?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: It's how you attach flyers to a wall or a telephone pole.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Are you surprised that I have never flyered,
34:56
SPEAKER_01: nor do I have a lot of flyers in my immediate social orbit,
34:59
SPEAKER_01: Katie?
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Do you think I have ever flyered?
35:01
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: In your 20s, you were in a band.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: You flyered everything.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: I did not flyer anything.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: It's like a piece that is made from wheat and water.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like glue, basically.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: That sounds really tasty.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: If I ever wheat pasted,
35:17
the risk would be I would eat all the wheat paste before I
35:19
could use it to stick
35:20
SPEAKER_01: stuff up.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: So back to my sentence.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Seattle and you find the nearest white guy wheat pasting,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: eat the rich to the outside of a small business,
35:30
SPEAKER_00: and you ask him what is the cause of Seattle's homelessness crisis,
35:34
he's going to say the cost of housing and maybe a side of
35:38
income inequality and
35:39
SPEAKER_00: late capitalism.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And his solution to this problem is going to be tax the rich.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: But Rufo, he had a different answer.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: He blamed,
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm quoting here from him,
35:49
SPEAKER_00: socialist revolutionaries,
35:50
SPEAKER_00: compassion brigades,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: the homeless industrial complex,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: and addiction evangelists.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: He wrote this in a white paper for the Discovery Institute.
35:58
And I think there's probably an element of truth to all of that,
36:01
like both Rufo and the Marxist.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: The cost of living is high.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: The rent is too damn high.
36:06
But I also once went along with the local do-getter to deliver
36:09
supplies to people
36:10
SPEAKER_00: living in homeless encampments.
36:12
And anyone who ignores the rampant drug use and mental health
36:15
issues in that
36:16
SPEAKER_00: population is willfully blind.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: When stable people get priced out of housing,
36:20
SPEAKER_00: they don't generally go camp out under an overpass.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: They move someplace cheaper.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:26
Anyway,
36:27
Chris launches this campaign and he immediately gets attacked online.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: And then not long after that,
36:32
he announces that he's dropping out of the race due to sexually
36:35
violent threats
36:36
SPEAKER_00: against his family.
36:37
I've told this story on the pod before,
36:39
but I'm going to tell it in more detail.
36:40
And it's worth repeating now that Chris is arguably one of the
36:43
more powerful
36:44
SPEAKER_00: conservative thinkers in the US.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: So Chris makes this announcement.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: He's dropping out threats to his family.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: And I call him up and I ask him for evidence of those threats.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: And he really does not want to provide the evidence.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: But eventually,
36:58
SPEAKER_00: after I had to be like,
36:58
SPEAKER_00: look,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: I believe you,
37:00
SPEAKER_00: but your refusal makes it look like you're lying.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: I did believe him, by the way.
37:04
Like,
37:04
there were stickers of my face calling me a Nazi sympathizer
37:07
around Seattle.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Of course I believed him.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
37:10
SPEAKER_00: he sent me the packet of screenshots from social media,
37:13
SPEAKER_00: specifically from a Facebook page where his kid went to school,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: and the school had called Chris's wife,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Supatra,
37:20
and they told her that a fellow parent was leaving
37:23
inappropriate posts about Chris
37:25
SPEAKER_00: on the school PTA Facebook page,
37:27
SPEAKER_00: and a moderator deleted them.
37:29
So that same person,
37:31
the person who was posting it,
37:32
he was a father at the school.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: He also spammed other Facebook pages, shit talking Chris.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And Supatra, very graciously, she responded him.
37:41
She posted in response,
37:42
quote,
37:42
you and I both have kids at the same,
37:44
she named the school.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: We have common friends.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Please let me take you out for coffee and listen and learn more.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Totally reasonable, polite, like above and beyond.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:55
That parent then went online and accused Supatra Rufo of doxing
38:00
his child.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: So this is a crazy person, not the wife.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I just find it very unlikely that she doxed his child.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: That was the doxing was saying.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the doxing was saying we both have kids in the school.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: What a fucking loser.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: So I did talk to that guy, by the way.
38:15
And while Chris never reported the alleged sexually violent
38:20
threats against his
38:21
SPEAKER_00: family to the police,
38:22
SPEAKER_00: this guy did report the quote unquote doxing.
38:26
He also thought his family might be in danger from Chris Rufo's
38:29
like millions of
38:30
SPEAKER_00: fans in Seattle.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: He reported to the police?
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: This guy's the worst.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing was incredibly dumb.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: So middle school.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Did this guy work for the stranger by any chance?
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Just an average Seattle dad.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: But there's no question that people were mean to Chris.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: They called him names.
38:47
They called him a racist,
38:48
a fascist,
38:49
a sad excuse for a human being,
38:50
all that shit.
38:52
But when I asked where the sexually violent threats against his
38:54
family were,
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Chris pointed to a Facebook post where that same guy,
38:58
SPEAKER_00: that angry dad,
39:00
SPEAKER_00: told Supatro Rufo to get bent.
39:03
Yeah,
39:03
which is like something Bart Simpson says,
39:05
not exactly a sexually violent threat.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: You can wear it on a t-shirt.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Not even get fucked.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Get bent.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: Not even get ass fucked.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: Just get bent.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Chris completely exaggerated what happened.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: And I will fully admit, until then, I was way too credulous of Chris.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: I'd been through the ringer with Seattle leftists myself.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: I'd been bullied.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: I'd been harassed.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Chris knew that.
39:30
And maybe he thought that I would be one of the only even
39:34
semi-friendly liberal
39:35
SPEAKER_00: reporters in Seattle willing to give them the time of day,
39:37
SPEAKER_00: which is true.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: I think that's why he approached me in the first ways.
39:41
But calling Get Bent a sexually violent threat isn't just a
39:45
misreading of the situation.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: It's dishonest.
39:48
And then I posted this on Twitter a couple months ago,
39:50
and Chris accused me of lying.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to be transparent about my bias here.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: We've got a little bit of history, and it's not good.
39:57
He called you a liar when he was the one who didn't provide any
40:00
evidence other than
40:00
SPEAKER_01: Get Bent of sexually violent threats.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: It's very SGW-y what he did.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: The like hysterical response to just normal online discourse.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: And it was like people said ugly shit about him.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: But if you're going to be a politician, get used to it.
40:20
Now,
40:20
later,
40:21
when Chris's profile really blew up,
40:23
I bet he did get some real threats.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't doubt that at all.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: I'd be surprised if he doesn't have some kind of security now.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: He probably needs it.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: He's become very famous.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: But I think that event,
40:32
SPEAKER_00: getting bullied during the city council race,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: which,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: he never,
40:36
SPEAKER_00: ever,
40:36
SPEAKER_00: ever in a million years would have won.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: both radicalized Chris and motivated him.
40:41
So he then shifts from homelessness to culture wars,
40:44
especially progressives gone wild.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: He starts getting invited on Fox News.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: He attracts the attention of people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis,
40:52
SPEAKER_00: becomes more and more influential,
40:54
SPEAKER_00: and he gradually starts shaping national policy to fit his agenda,
40:57
SPEAKER_00: which is no longer just free minds,
40:59
SPEAKER_00: free markets,
40:59
SPEAKER_00: clean up the streets.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: It's we must destroy the left.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: It's payback time, bitch.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And he's really good at this.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: So Jesse, you've been more skeptical of his influence in the past.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you still feel that way?
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Skeptical as to whether he's influential.
41:13
He has a self-aggrandizing streak that I think sometimes
41:19
exaggerates his influence,
41:20
and sometimes it's hard to gauge someone's influence because he
41:23
can absolutely
41:24
SPEAKER_01: generate social media outrage.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: I think he helped make wokeness an issue,
41:32
SPEAKER_01: but since the election,
41:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to find the post now,
41:35
SPEAKER_01: but he had a post that was strikingly vindictive of basically,
41:39
SPEAKER_01: like you were saying,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: punishing
41:42
Like,
41:42
he's not looking to necessarily make the world a better,
41:45
more understanding place.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: And to me,
41:47
SPEAKER_01: like,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: the whole problem with,
41:49
SPEAKER_01: like,
41:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:50
some aspects of wokeness and the areas where Rufo and I might
41:52
agree about,
41:53
SPEAKER_01: like,
41:53
ridiculous diversity trainings is that they're humiliating and
41:57
they're sometimes
41:58
SPEAKER_01: unconstitutional and we just need – Counterproductive.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Counterproductive and we need to chill out.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't think Rufo wants to chill out.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: He wants to finish the crusade.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: He does.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: So this brings us to Rufo's latest campaign.
42:11
So on February 24th,
42:12
he published a piece at City Journal titled The NSA's Secret
42:16
Sex Chats.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Jesse, will you read the opening paragraph?
42:19
SPEAKER_00: It's in our notes there.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: The,
42:20
SPEAKER_01: quote,
42:21
intelligence community is one of the most powerful parts of the
42:23
American national
42:24
SPEAKER_01: security apparatus.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: In theory, it works tirelessly to keep the nation safe.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: But according to internal documents that we obtain,
42:31
SPEAKER_01: some intelligence agency employees have another on the job priority,
42:34
SPEAKER_01: sex chats.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: OK, so how would you interpret that term sex chats?
42:38
Like just reading that paragraph,
42:40
what do you think they're doing over there?
42:42
like talking about like uh sticking things and things and doing
42:47
other stuff licking
42:48
stuff however licking you know licking stuff scissoring yeah
42:53
girl on top boy on the
42:55
SPEAKER_01: bottom reverse cowgirl double reverse cowgirl 720 flip stuff
43:02
SPEAKER_00: Double triple axles.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Triple axles.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: Sex.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: I picture more or less that.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: I picture an Olivia Newsy Bobby Kennedy situation.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Cyber sex.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Exchanging nudes.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Like like actually doing sex to each other.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what's actually going on.
43:20
So what happened is that Rufo got a hold of chat logs from the
43:23
NSA's Intel link
43:24
SPEAKER_00: messaging program.
43:25
This is like Slack for government hackers and spies and infosec
43:29
dudes at US
43:30
SPEAKER_00: intelligence agencies,
43:31
SPEAKER_00: not just in DC,
43:32
SPEAKER_00: but all over the world.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: And he published the most salacious of these chats.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And it was a lot of trans employees,
43:39
SPEAKER_00: usually MTFs,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: of course,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: we're talking about shape rotators,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: discussing things like sex chain surgery.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: So Jesse, why don't you read this passage from his piece in City Journal?
43:47
SPEAKER_01: One popular chat topic was male-to-female transgender surgery,
43:50
which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it
43:53
into an artificial vagina.
43:55
Mine is everything,
43:56
said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: I found that I like being penetrated.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Never liked it before GRS, but all the rest is just as important as well.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Another intelligence official boasted that genital surgery allowed him,
44:07
SPEAKER_01: quote,
44:08
SPEAKER_01: to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it,
44:11
SPEAKER_01: end quote.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: What's a gaff?
44:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like a...
44:13
SPEAKER_00: Here, Google it.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like a type of underwear.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: Just Google it.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look gross.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: It kind of looks like a thong.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Continuing.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: These employees discussed hair removal,
44:24
SPEAKER_01: estrogen injections,
44:25
SPEAKER_01: and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Quote,
44:29
SPEAKER_01: getting my butthole zapped by a laser was shocking,
44:31
said one transgender identifying intel employee who spent
44:34
thousands on hair removal.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Look,
44:36
SPEAKER_01: I just enjoy helping other people experience boobs,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: said another about estrogen treatments.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: One of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when I pee,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to push anything down to make sure it aims right,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: a defense intelligence agency employee added.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so they also talked about polyamory.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: One employee,
44:54
SPEAKER_00: quote,
44:54
SPEAKER_00: claimed to be part of a nine-member polycule,
44:57
SPEAKER_00: adding that,
44:57
SPEAKER_00: quote,
44:57
some of our friends are practically polymers with all the
45:00
connected compounds.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: Fucking fire them.
45:03
Both for being greedy,
45:04
nine is way too many,
45:05
but also that's terrible puns.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: This strikes me as stuff people should not be discussing at work,
45:10
SPEAKER_01: let alone in this channel,
45:11
SPEAKER_01: which I read other coverage.
45:13
This is like a secure channel that's only supposed to be used
45:15
for work stuff.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: Did any of it get more explicit than this, like more outright sexual?
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Well,
45:21
SPEAKER_00: they talked about sex a bit in that context,
45:22
SPEAKER_00: like the context of sex changes and the context of like,
45:26
SPEAKER_00: I enjoy being penetrated now in a way that I didn't.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Here's how Chris described that on Twitter.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: They were talking about cutting off their genitals,
45:33
SPEAKER_00: enjoying piss fetishes,
45:34
SPEAKER_00: and organizing gang bangs on official Intel servers.
45:37
And he posted screenshots so you can see directly what these
45:41
conversations were about.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: So that first one, piss fetishes.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: So Jesse, we just read that quote.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: Let's read it again.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, the rest is nice too.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Wearing panties without worrying about anything,
45:52
SPEAKER_00: showing,
45:53
SPEAKER_00: seeing my reflection in the mirror,
45:54
SPEAKER_00: wearing leggings,
45:55
SPEAKER_00: etc.
45:55
SPEAKER_00: But the pee thing is something I never thought of, but it's really nice.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: And then later in the conversation,
45:59
SPEAKER_00: the same person says,
46:00
SPEAKER_00: one of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when I pee.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to push anything down to make sure it aims right.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's an example, a display of a piss fetish?
46:08
SPEAKER_01: It's on the border.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: You're saying it gives me euphoria to pee.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: But this is do you know the term gender euphoria?
46:15
SPEAKER_01: But I think it.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what this is a reference to.
46:18
This is a reference to gender euphoria,
46:20
which is not not which is not inherently sexual.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
46:24
I just I'm confused why this is taking place in like a
46:27
workplace secured chat channel.
46:30
I don't think anybody would argue that this is appropriate to
46:33
talk about at work.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about the appropriateness in a minute,
46:37
SPEAKER_00: but I'm just trying to see if you think that Chris,
46:39
SPEAKER_00: that Chris's framing of this is...
46:42
SPEAKER_01: I think describing that as a piss fetish is too much.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: I think it is too.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that there's automatically no sexual element to it, but...
46:50
SPEAKER_00: No, I agree with you.
46:51
But I think when people think of piss...
46:53
It's like moose pissing on you while everyone watches.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: A golden shower.
46:55
That is not...
46:57
I've never heard of any of a piss fetish being just peeing yourself.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: I like to pee.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: I like to pee.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Diaper stuff.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: True.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Diaper stuff.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: But there's no... Peeing into a toilet is not usually a fetish.
47:08
Yeah,
47:08
the tone of it just doesn't...
47:09
To me,
47:09
it doesn't read,
47:10
I get horny from pissing.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: And look, I'm not inclined to be overly sympathetic to this population.
47:15
And I think discussing this at work is crazy and shows
47:18
incredibly bad judgments.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: But it's trans women discussing the effects of sex changes and...
47:25
SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of conversations along those lines,
47:28
SPEAKER_00: like MTFs talking about new titties,
47:30
SPEAKER_00: talking about HRT,
47:31
SPEAKER_00: hair removal,
47:32
SPEAKER_00: that kind of shit.
47:33
SPEAKER_00: But none of it read to me as titillating.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you think I'm just blinded by my feelings about Rufo?
47:39
SPEAKER_00: Is that overpowering my feelings about public displays of AGP?
47:43
I just think when you're talking about how much you enjoy
47:46
wearing leggings or bikinis,
47:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: I think it's this weird in-between space.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: And to me, it's the work thing that's the problem here.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody's arguing that this is appropriate conversation.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I absolutely think Chris Ruffo is sensationalizing it, as he does.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: I also... I think Chris Ruffo got where he got because...
48:11
SPEAKER_01: Liberal institutions have provided a lot of ammunition.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what a secured chat means,
48:17
but basically this is supposed to be a work chat for
48:20
intelligence personnel,
48:21
SPEAKER_01: is my understanding,
48:22
SPEAKER_01: like the Times reported that,
48:23
SPEAKER_01: New York Times.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: Just find some other place to talk about this shit.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: It just makes the agency look a little bit...
48:31
like a joke and i would say the same thing if like the
48:33
christians were using this
48:34
workplace secure chat feature to talk about jesus or whatever
48:38
it just looks bad but
48:38
yeah of course he's sensationalizing it in part i think he's
48:42
drawing upon just like
48:43
disgust of trans people among some of his readers and some
48:45
americans and where did
48:47
he get the um the gangbang things i'm not seeing anything about
48:50
a gangbang and i
48:51
SPEAKER_01: was hoping to find gangbang stuff
48:52
SPEAKER_00: So Chris tweeted,
48:54
the same people who would ruin a kid's life for singing along
48:57
to a rap song see no
48:58
problem with government employees organizing trans gangbangs on
49:02
Intel agency servers.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: Now, I looked high and low for the screenshot.
49:06
I expected that at the very least,
49:08
we'd see an invitation to Ayla's birthday party.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't find anything.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: I reached out to Chris.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: Didn't hear back.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: Reached out to his co-author.
49:15
SPEAKER_00: Her name's Hannah Grossman.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: Didn't hear back from her.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: But the exact passage from the City Journal article is...
49:21
SPEAKER_00: The former NSA source who is familiar with the chats recalled being,
49:23
SPEAKER_00: quote,
49:24
disgusted by a particularly shocking thread discussing weekend
49:27
gang bangs.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: So I guess that one's hearsay.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, give us a screenshot.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Why is it?
49:31
SPEAKER_01: But you can't.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't.
49:33
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't report.
49:34
It's such like an inflammatory one that you shouldn't report it
49:37
unless you can
49:37
SPEAKER_01: provide more details.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: Now you tell you tell the former NSA source.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: I can't put that in the story unless you can give me more details.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
49:44
And considering Rufo's history of making shit up like he did
49:49
about the sexually violent.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
49:50
SPEAKER_00: maybe the problem is that Chris doesn't actually know what a gangbang is,
49:53
SPEAKER_00: just like he doesn't know what get bet means.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: I bet it was somebody said, let's get fucked up this weekend.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: So what else?
50:01
I mean,
50:01
was there other stuff in the screenshots or was it all sort of
50:03
trans related?
50:04
SPEAKER_00: Not entirely trans stuff.
50:06
So he got screenshots of employees talking about other
50:09
unrelated to work things.
50:10
SPEAKER_00: They shit talk libs of TikTok and Ben Shapiro.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: They actually had kind of an interesting conversation about gender.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: Like he posted these screenshots of NSA,
50:18
CIA and National Reconnaissance Office employees discussing
50:22
what causes someone to
50:23
SPEAKER_00: be trans.
50:23
SPEAKER_00: Like, is it life experience?
50:24
SPEAKER_00: Is it genetic?
50:26
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely not a super woke conversation at all.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a little bit heterodox.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: And someone at the NSA says,
50:35
an intersex birth would be a great opportunity to raise a kid
50:38
as non-binary and
50:39
SPEAKER_00: then let them choose later.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: And then Chris posts a screenshot on Twitter and he says, leaked.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's a fair description of that conversation?
51:03
SPEAKER_01: That's idiotic.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: You can tell.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: An intersex person would be a great opportunity to raise.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: It's just like philosophical shooting the shit.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: Well,
51:09
SPEAKER_01: the other thing I want to know is,
51:11
is this supposedly a secure tool where everyone's just talking
51:14
about everything,
51:15
SPEAKER_01: like their kids' soccer tournaments and stuff?
51:17
SPEAKER_01: It would be useful to know if it just became a general...
51:21
SPEAKER_01: chat tool, like, and people talked about everything.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: And this wasn't actually an exception.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, do you know what I mean?
51:26
SPEAKER_01: Like, we do know the answer to that.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: What's the answer?
51:28
Okay,
51:29
so Washington Post talked to a former intelligence official
51:32
named Larry Pfeiffer.
51:33
And he said that there had long been problems with this Intel
51:36
link program.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: That's not at all surprising.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: It's basically Slack.
51:40
And so much of weird office politics plays out on these
51:42
internal messaging programs
51:44
SPEAKER_00: like Slack and Teams,
51:45
SPEAKER_00: like we've done shows about companies that are eventually like,
51:47
SPEAKER_00: fine,
51:48
SPEAKER_00: that's it.
51:48
No more talking about politics or controversial subjects on
51:51
these platforms.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: It's causing too much conflict.
51:53
And Washington Post reported that there had been prior issues
51:56
with these channels,
51:57
SPEAKER_00: bullying,
51:58
SPEAKER_00: talking about politics,
51:59
SPEAKER_00: talking about controversial subjects,
52:01
SPEAKER_00: racist chats.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: But in the past, if there was an issue, someone would get a talking to.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: And in this case, Chris Ruffo posts the screenshots.
52:10
He tags Tulsi Gabbard,
52:12
newly confirmed director of the National Intelligence Services.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: He includes screenshots of some employees calling her a Russian asset.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: And within a day, Gabbard fires over 100 intelligence employees.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: This is incredibly unusual.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: Pfeiffer said,
52:26
SPEAKER_00: now that I think about it,
52:27
I can't remember the director of national intelligence ever
52:30
directing the firing of
52:31
SPEAKER_00: anyone in one of the intelligence community elements.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: So those are the various intelligence offices.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: So Gabbard
52:37
stepped down from heaven and brought the hammer down on these
52:39
folks because of these shots.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: So,
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Jesse,
52:43
SPEAKER_00: we both agree the shots are inappropriate,
52:46
SPEAKER_00: but what do you think about firing people over them?
52:49
SPEAKER_01: No, no.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: like,
52:52
if this were just being used by people to shoot the shit about everything,
52:56
SPEAKER_01: I think it's gross to single out trans employees.
53:00
I think I,
53:01
because you actually looked into this story and I didn't,
53:03
I thought it was like,
53:05
or maybe because I internalized what Rufo was saying,
53:08
I thought it had just been a work tool.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: And then like suddenly there's this LGBT channel.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: Well,
53:12
the other thing is if there were different channels with labels
53:16
and this was going
53:17
SPEAKER_01: out onto the open across different intelligence agencies,
53:19
SPEAKER_01: so a huge number of government employees,
53:21
it's really unfair to fire people for something that under the
53:25
last regime was like
53:26
SPEAKER_01: totally fine.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: It's like completely unfair.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
53:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's a really important point.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: This was not like the general spy channel.
53:34
SPEAKER_00: These were channels specifically for LGBT issues and people.
53:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a little embarrassing to me that this is what...
53:43
SPEAKER_00: They use them to talk about rather than normal things like WNBA.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: But these were set up by the prior regime.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: So even if on paper the rule was like,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: you can only talk about work stuff,
53:53
SPEAKER_00: which Rufo says that it is,
53:55
SPEAKER_00: the prior regime set up these channels specifically for people
53:59
SPEAKER_00: to talk to each other.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: And people talk about personal shit all the time, all the time.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: I've worked in offices with Slack.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: It is not the idea that this is all,
54:09
SPEAKER_00: that people are only gonna talk about work issues,
54:12
SPEAKER_00: even if that's the rule.
54:13
Humans aren't bots and talking about your life or the Super
54:16
Bowl or your neo-vagina
54:17
SPEAKER_00: is part of bonding with coworkers.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: You do it all the time.
54:19
You're always like,
54:19
telling me about your neo-vagina,
54:21
telling me about your dilation.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's inappropriate, but people do this.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: And,
54:26
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:26
SPEAKER_00: for years,
54:28
corporations and government agencies encourage people to bring
54:31
their whole selves
54:32
SPEAKER_00: to work.
54:33
SPEAKER_00: I've always thought this was a bad idea.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: You should bring your work self to work, not your whole self to work.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, but this is particular.
54:38
I mean,
54:39
it's happened in general,
54:40
but I think it was accelerated by,
54:41
like,
54:41
the wokeness thing.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: Like,
54:42
SPEAKER_01: we're going to talk about our most personal identity shit at work,
54:45
SPEAKER_01: which was a horrible thing.
54:45
horrible idea and intelligence agencies were no word especially
54:50
bad give me black
54:52
material but they use this as a recruiting message so do you
54:56
remember that that ad
54:57
that the cia put out there was a it was a recruiting video
55:01
where this latina
55:02
employee is walking through the halls at langley saying i'm a
55:05
woman of color i'm a
55:06
mom i'm a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with
55:09
generalized anxiety
55:10
SPEAKER_00: disorder yes my service dog is real shit like that it
55:14
SPEAKER_00: They put out this message that you should be authentic.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: You should be who you are.
55:19
And since these intelligence agencies allowed these subject
55:23
matter specific chats
55:24
SPEAKER_00: on the server,
55:25
it just seems really draconian to fire them for doing things
55:29
that before would not
55:30
SPEAKER_00: have gotten you penalized.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, like new regime, they're allowed to do what they want.
55:36
SPEAKER_00: But over 100 people were fired for this within a day.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: Do you think they took the time?
55:42
SPEAKER_01: Were they actually fired?
55:43
SPEAKER_01: I thought she was trying to find who they were.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: They were fired.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous,
55:49
but it's of a piece with the Trump administration's approach to
55:52
such matters.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Right.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: Like they didn't do a thorough investigation.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have time.
55:58
They didn't bother to find out if these were people who were
55:59
capable of their jobs,
56:01
SPEAKER_00: if they were necessary,
56:02
or if they were spending all day on the chat and not getting
56:04
their work done,
56:04
SPEAKER_00: which in which case,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: like put them on a PIP.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: And then if they don't shape up, fire them.
56:09
But firing that many people that quickly makes it seem like
56:12
they didn't even.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: Is a PIP like a piss fetish thing?
56:15
SPEAKER_01: It's performance improvement plan.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: I know.
56:18
But firing that many people that quickly makes me think that
56:22
they didn't bother to
56:23
SPEAKER_00: figure out if these were high performers or duds at all.
56:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm also,
56:27
SPEAKER_01: just because of the protections government officials have,
56:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm sort of curious about lawsuits and discovery.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: Because if it's like,
56:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure people have chat logs,
56:38
and if they can point to a million examples of people talking
56:40
about all sorts of bullshit,
56:41
SPEAKER_01: and then we got fired because we're trans,
56:43
SPEAKER_01: that would,
56:44
not knowing any of the details about what sort of civil service
56:46
protection they have,
56:47
SPEAKER_01: that would strike me as a potentially strong case,
56:49
SPEAKER_01: but.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, these agencies also have recruiting problems.
56:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of the people who were fired were working in info security.
56:56
Why would you go work for the government if you could go work
56:58
for Google or Amazon
56:59
and make a lot more fucking money and talk about your neo
57:01
vagina all that you want?
57:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, but this is Elon's argument.
57:03
He wants to move people from the public sector to the
57:05
supposedly more productive private sector.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: But what I'm saying is that if they have problems recruiting,
57:12
SPEAKER_00: which they do,
57:13
SPEAKER_00: they just got rid of 100 people.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: Who are they going to replace them with?
57:16
SPEAKER_00: Minors?
57:17
Are you saying that certain aspects – I don't want to get
57:20
politically here – that
57:21
certain aspects of the Trump approach to cutting government are
57:24
not thought through entirely?
57:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the sharks, they just munch through the straws.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Do we have any sense of how much time people spent on these chats?
57:33
Was it taking away from their attempts to overthrow governments
57:36
or whatever?
57:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: I would love to know the answer to that.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: It's not clear from the reporting.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: You know,
57:41
are these people talking about HRT and hair removal and getting
57:44
their buttholes
57:45
SPEAKER_00: lasered instead of spying on Americans?
57:47
SPEAKER_01: There's literally like outside the window of the employee,
57:50
SPEAKER_01: there's a terrorist sneaking by with a suicide pest.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Is it just every once in a while while they're spying on Americans?
57:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, a daily update while they're eating lunch at their desk.
57:58
SPEAKER_00: We don't know the answer to that.
58:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, Chris published a second piece on this.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: It's called Whistleblower.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: There's a trans cult inside the NSA.
58:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a Q&A with this leaker.
58:08
And that person says that the NSA has been completely captured
58:11
by woke ideology.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: Quote,
58:14
trans activists have entrenched themselves in positions of
58:16
power pressured
58:17
SPEAKER_00: employees to undergo re-education trainings in
58:19
SPEAKER_00: and compromise national security in the name of ideology.
58:22
SPEAKER_00: So this person claims that there's a small but powerful,
58:25
SPEAKER_00: a cabal perhaps,
58:26
group of Marxists within the intelligence services who hate
58:29
capitalism and
58:30
SPEAKER_00: Christians and are destroying the intelligence apparatus.
58:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you find that believable?
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Not remotely.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would depend on the specific evidence offered, but like...
58:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
58:40
SPEAKER_01: If you go to public policy school or you live in D.C.,
58:43
SPEAKER_01: you get to know people in and around the intelligence services.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: And they know they do not tend to be Marxist, although it's 2025.
58:49
SPEAKER_01: So maybe a few slipped in.
58:53
I mean,
58:53
the NSA alone has tens of thousands of employees,
58:55
like over 30,000 employees.
58:57
And there are hundreds of thousands of people working in
59:00
intelligence services
59:01
SPEAKER_00: across like 20 departments and agencies.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: It is a massive bureaucracy.
59:06
So is it believable that a handful of weird computer nerd
59:08
transsexuals are
59:10
SPEAKER_00: anti-Christian Marxists?
59:11
SPEAKER_00: I guess.
59:12
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
59:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's probably a handful of white nationalists, too.
59:14
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about a lot of people.
59:17
But even if the NSA and other intelligence agencies put on this
59:22
veneer of wokeness
59:23
SPEAKER_00: under the previous administration,
59:25
SPEAKER_00: like many corporations in America did,
59:27
I highly doubt that these agencies are actually genuinely
59:31
progressive in a way that
59:32
SPEAKER_00: changes the mission,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: which is to secure America's position as a world power.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: Like, we're not talking about the Portland School Board here.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: They aren't decolonizing.
59:40
Are they doing land acknowledgements before they convince some
59:42
rube to send a bomb
59:43
SPEAKER_00: threat to a mosque?
59:45
I mean,
59:45
this is like saying the military is woke because they have a
59:47
float at pride.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: I just I've had a hard time.
59:50
SPEAKER_00: I have a hard time buying it.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: Then again,
59:51
like we do know about institutions that have fundamentally
59:54
changed culture because
59:55
a minority group of assholes exert enough pressure to make
59:58
people scared to speak.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: That's not like government bureaucracies with tens of you.
1:00:03
You're basically already saying this with government
1:00:04
bureaucracies with tens of
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: thousands of career employees.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: They're so sclerotic.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: That's not going to happen.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't like playing the lived experience thing,
1:00:16
but it would be useful if more people just knew people who
1:00:21
worked in government and
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: saw what they were like.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: These are not people prone to fits of revolutionary fervor.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: I'll just say that.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: so last thing,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: you got into this a little bit,
1:00:31
but it's very clear at this point that Chris does not want a
1:00:34
return to the center.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want chill politics.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want normal Western liberalism.
1:00:39
He doesn't want more personal freedom for everyone,
1:00:41
including when it comes to speech.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: I think what he wants is power.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just my assessment.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: I talk to people who know him and he's been open about his aims.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_00: He's in favor of retribution.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_00: He wants cancel culture.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: He embraces it as long as it's him doing the canceling.
1:00:55
He saw what woke scolds were doing and was like,
1:00:57
yeah,
1:00:57
give me some of that.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_00: Give me that boot.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: And if my butterfly theory is correct,
1:01:02
this starts with mean Seattle leftists and one annoying dad who
1:01:06
told Chris's wife
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: to get bent.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's too bad because he's a smart guy.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: He's super clever.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: He's really good at messaging.
1:01:13
I actually think he would have been pretty good on the Seattle
1:01:15
City Council.
1:01:16
He would have brought some ideological diversity and it would
1:01:18
have been fun to hear
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: him argue with our local communist.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_00: But instead, he is dismantling the Department of Education.
1:01:27
I think there's a pretty big difference in general in terms of
1:01:29
people's personalities.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: I sometimes think about how our...
1:01:33
I don't even want to call him an enemy because I don't think
1:01:36
he's relevant not to
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: be a dick.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: But Jude Doyle would go to significant lengths to try to...
1:01:42
just start like hurt us and destroy our careers and complain
1:01:45
about outlets that platform us.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: Whereas we're just like, stop being crazy.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: Don't write stuff.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: That's false.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think Chris Rufo is in the camp of,
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: maybe because of the resentment over some of this shit.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: although as you said,
1:01:57
SPEAKER_01: he seemed to be exaggerating long before he was a famous figure,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: but he's,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: he's not in the camp of like,
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: let's return to a liberal center,
1:02:04
SPEAKER_01: live and let live,
1:02:05
SPEAKER_01: get the crazy stuff out of schools.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_01: He's in full blown retribution, destroy your enemies mode.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: I just think, um,
1:02:10
SPEAKER_01: There's an important divide that's not political.
1:02:12
It's the people who want to destroy and humiliate their enemies
1:02:14
and the people,
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: the good people like us,
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: this is very self-serving,
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: who just want people to be less crazy and want things to calm down.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: We're the good guys is what I'm saying.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
1:02:22
But the backlash to the backlash to the backlash to the
1:02:24
backlash continues.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: It's a bit much, yeah.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Katie.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: This has been Blocked and Reported.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_01: As always, we are produced with help from Jessica the 80s baby.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.
1:02:37
Thank you.