Latest / Normal Men / Episode 60 - Smoothgroins, Smoothbrains

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Episode 60 - Smoothgroins, Smoothbrains · Normal Men

• 0:03
  Ed: Attention, ladies, gentlemen, and non binary friends of all persuasions. This episode features a late title drop. I repeat, a late title drop. Please do not be alarmed and do not adjust your podcast players. Thank you.
• 0:23
  George: Who is normal men's HR lady?
• 0:26
  Ed: That's a good question. Any name we. We give. They're going to be offended.
• 0:32
  George: Pikachu.
• 0:34
  Ed: Yeah, probably. We do need a lawyer for this sort of thing.
• 0:37
  George: Yeah, I mean, she's a lawyer. No nonsense.
• 0:41
  Lowtax: Yeah, that's a good.
• 0:42
  Ed: I'm afraid of her.
• 0:43
  Propter: She does labor. She's terrifying.
• 0:46
  George: Yeah, a healthy dose of misandry in there. I mean, it's. It's great.
• 0:50
  Ed: It's perfect. It's true.
• 0:51
  Lowtax: Yeah. If we were gonna go the non lawyer route, like maybe Kat Manning, because she'll. She'll yell at Ed and I all day.
• 0:58
  Ed: That's true.
• 0:58
  George: If she did today over video games. If I'm correct in my understanding, yes, she did.
• 1:04
  Ed: My opinion was correct. But I retreated in the face of. Of overwhelming firepower.
• 1:10
  George: And yet you fell to the unstoppable power of the HR lady.
• 1:16
  Ed: So, yeah, no, you're not wrong.
• 1:17
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 1:18
  George: She got your ass,
• 1:20
  Ed: so. But she got low tax more. And that's the important thing.
• 1:25
  Lowtax: She did get me more. I do not want that smoke. I am. I'm Charles Barkley with Beyonce's mom. And ripping on Galveston.
• 1:37
  George: So if you're not terminally online like the rest of us, the thing we're referring to here, first, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Let's keep it that way. And that's why you listen to this podcast. So you have to be terminally online. It's perfect. Everyone wins. The thing we're referring to here vis a vis HR Ladies, is an outgrowth of the ongoing end of civilization election in Maine. Is that a fair way to describe it?
• 2:04
  Ed: I don't know why you're asking me. I have no ties to the state of Maine. That you can prove.
• 2:10
  George: Yeah. Okay. If I dangle a bottle of Moxie in front of you, you're gonna start purring, but yeah, no ties to state of Maine.
• 2:19
  Ed: I'm not the one who bought Moxie on purpose in, like, the last calendar year. That was a certain other person on this podcast who shall remain nameless.
• 2:31
  Propter: It was a gift, and I appreciate it, even though it's disgusting.
• 2:33
  Ed: Okay. All right.
• 2:34
  Lowtax: No, actually, I. Oh, I thought he meant me, because I actually did buy a bottle of Moxie.
• 2:41
  Ed: I. I was trying to throw low tax under the bus, but thank you for volunteering. Proctor,
• 2:49
  George: look what the Publix Offers the Publix shopper must enjoy. I just. This is how it works.
• 2:54
  Lowtax: No, this was not Publix. This was. I went down to the Fresh Market, which is like Bougier Publix.
• 3:02
  Ed: Oh, we've got one of those.
• 3:04
  George: They had moxie at Fresh Market. Yeah. That's extremely odd.
• 3:12
  Ed: It's fresh.
• 3:14
  George: It's not. It's. It's pretty much the opposite of whatever Fresh is.
• 3:20
  Ed: So. Yeah, the.
• 3:21
  George: The Platner candidacy in Maine. We're not going to talk at length about Platner specifically on this episode, because Ed, you know, Ed has.
• 3:30
  Ed: I deserve nice things.
• 3:32
  George: Yeah, we like being nice to Ed sometimes.
• 3:36
  Lowtax: Yeah. I wouldn't go as. I wouldn't go so far as to say he deserves nice things, but he deserves a little break now, and that is a treat.
• 3:44
  George: Ed deserves a chance. It's the sanity the rest of us enjoy. And we're going to give that to him tonight by talking about Platner as little as possible. Well, what we can say about Platner is that he has spawned a series of really impressively bad takes about masculinity from people that really have no business talking about masculinity, in my humble opinion. And so we're gonna talk about that because, you know, it's kind of our raison d'. Etre. We're not going to talk about masculinity. What are we here for? So Proor. Do you want to be the explainer guy on who dropped the takes and why? You know, the basics of what was being argued here? Sure.
• 4:27
  Propter: I'll take a stab at this. Correct me if I. If I get the details wrong on this, because I'm definitely going to conflate Matt Staller and Zay Giuliani's comments on this one.
• 4:36
  George: Oh, that would be a third one. So we've got Stoller, Jayla. I don't even Zade something with a J. And then Jelani, I think. Saeed Jelani. Okay, thank you. Yes. Okay. So three idiots.
• 4:50
  Propter: Go. Okay, so I thought Zayd was. Was the HR way to comment, but maybe I'm conflating that.
• 5:01
  Lowtax: I think they both made the HR lady comment.
• 5:04
  Ed: All right, so this is now just language they use.
• 5:07
  Propter: Yeah, The. The overwhelming thrust of the commentary here is that the reason to object to Graham Platner as a candidate for the Democratic Party for the office of Senate in the state of Maine is one that is scolding by HR ladies, specifically of the Democratic Party, that you should not object to someone who has had a. Let's go with complicated past. Is that fair to say that might. Might offend several large groups of the coalition.
• 5:44
  George: Just, just, just to be clear here, this is not our opinion. We are relaying the opinions of others in order to make fun of them.
• 5:52
  Lowtax: I think that is a very generous and soft description of what we've been dealing with here.
• 5:58
  Propter: And that, and that really, the kind of things that Platner has both allegedly and extremely demonstrably said and done validate him as an everyman candidate and make him more real in a lot of ways than the sort of drones that the Democratic Party likes to run for office who, you know, haven't done things like assault women or gets Nazi tattoos or the various other things that Grant Platter has done.
• 6:32
  Lowtax: What was it, what was it one of them said? I think it was Klippenstein who said that the Democrats always run asexual robots from Harvard.
• 6:44
  Ed: Smooth groins.
• 6:46
  Lowtax: Yes, Smooth groin asexual robots from Harvard. Which, like, obviously he means buttigieg there. Right?
• 6:54
  George: Yeah, yeah. I think that's straightforwardly just homophobic. I don't, I don't think that's anything other than that. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:01
  Propter: Which, which seems especially uncharitable for a guy who, who from all accounts sort of wrestled with his sexuality in a lot of ways before coming to terms with it. That's anyway good. Whatever the topography of the groin there is, it's not, it's not smooth. So
• 7:21
  Lowtax: topography of the groin.
• 7:23
  George: That's worth, I think it's worth I, you know, taking the clippingstein argument or again, I'm going to lose track of who said what stupid thing here. But taking these at face value just for a second and sort of going through some very obvious counter examples of what they're claiming is the only kind of person that the Democrats nominate. I like. Look, I am not a fan of the senior senator from Pennsylvania, but Fetterman does not fit that mold. Ruben Gallego from Arizona does not fit that mold in any way, shape or form. Mark Kelly. I'm sorry, this man was an astronaut. Like, are you, are you serious? Neither of the senators from Georgia fit this mold. Right. I mean, I'm just going through a list of very successful Senate campaigns from the past two cycles. Right. That, you know, and again, Fetterman hasn't gone off since. Gone off the rails, but still. Right. This guy was, by a wide margin the Senate candidate nominated by the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania. And we've, it's, it's, it's. Things have gone badly, but the idea that you can only get nominated as a Democrat as some sort of like, again, whatever, smooth growing.
• 8:43
  Lowtax: This is brain dead. It's just obviously stupid brain dead townie ass hat.
• 8:50
  Propter: And also, also, very memorably, we whiffed on a major set of pickup opportunity in North Carolina a few years ago because Cal Cunningham's groin is unsmooth.
• 9:02
  George: Okay, I will defend Cal Cunningham's groin.
• 9:06
  Ed: Go ahead, say it. Say it.
• 9:09
  George: I don't think that had anything to do with why he lost for the record. Okay. I mean, look, the voters in the state are a weird bunch, but you know, I just don't think he was. I just don't think he was going to get across the line. But again, yes, another good example. I mean, Roy Cooper, who's going to put up Assad margins here in the fall. Like, yeah, he's a mild mannered southern man, but this is very clearly like an XY chromosome type, right? There's no, there's no. Come on, what are we talking about here?
• 9:45
  Lowtax: I was going to say, can you imagine, I mean, can you imagine Roy Cooper getting a Nazi tattoo and beating his girlfriend?
• 9:55
  George: Oh, no, I literally can't. I literally. Or Josh Stein.
• 10:00
  Lowtax: I prayed hard on this.
• 10:07
  George: I. This is a completely, this is a take that is completely out of sync with reality. Even before we get into all the other myriad and sundry ways in which it doesn't make sense on its own terms. Like, it's not accurate about the candidates that Democrats have been running lately. It's just straightforwardly wrong.
• 10:28
  Propter: It's not, I mean, it's not accurate about the, about the Democrats in office either. Like, like I think through the Senate caucus and you know, sometimes laudatory, sometimes derogatory, but like the, These are not ungendered people. No, of either gender.
• 10:44
  George: I mean, we go. We literally have a guy named Dick. He's one of my least favorite senators and I can't stand the man. But like, come on.
• 10:56
  Propter: So like, yeah, there's a lot of gender happening here. There's, there's a lot of. Seems maybe a little bit weird that we're inserting misogyny into this race that maybe doesn't need it. Like, I feel like we could have centered the objections to Platner on the Nazi tattoo rather, rather than going into gender relations. Women weren't necessarily.
• 11:25
  Ed: But they don't care about that.
• 11:27
  George: It is worth pointing out that the reason that we have now centered gender to this degree is because of a Republican operative. So like, that should probably tell you some stuff that is going on here. Or at least that was a major catalyst for it this week. Maybe not the exclusive reason I think were her. Was her story pre or post the Clippingstein article? They were, they were within a couple days of each other.
• 11:47
  Propter: I thought it was pre.
• 11:49
  Ed: I think so, but I'm not sure.
• 11:50
  Propter: Yeah, so, so I mean, so to give, to give background, if you haven't seen this, the New York Times dropped an article on Graham Platner last week that detailed a set of allegations made against him by several women, but particularly one ex girlfriend that he dated for approximately two years in D.C. who professionally is Republican. Not only is she professionally sure Republican, she was specifically the person who organized the campaign to discredit Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings. Like, like she's pretty, pretty offensively professionally Republican. She had a podcast with Bethany Mandel. Like Jesus. Like, you know, that's, that's rough.
• 12:40
  George: That's raw like sushi.
• 12:41
  Ed: So you cannot jump those sorts of things. Proper.
• 12:44
  Lowtax: That is Bethany, I want your grandma to die from COVID Mandela.
• 12:48
  Propter: That is, that is the one. Yeah, I think it was Bethany, I'm willing for my grandma to die from COVID Mandel.
• 12:57
  Lowtax: Oh, I don't remember if she said it about her grandma.
• 13:01
  Propter: Anyway, so, so like this is, this is somebody who I, I think it's fair that the identity is setting off alarm bells for people. But that said, the story she's telling is in places undisputed and in places credible in a way that, that makes it not dismissible. There are three central allegations that she makes, two of which I think are essentially self affirming and one of which is extremely plausible but boils down to basically her word against, against Platners. The first allegation is that Platner has been lying about whether or not he knew about that his Nazi tattoo is a Nazi tattoo. She says that he referred to it as, as Mein Totenkopf. And she put that in a text prior to the discussion of that last summer when Platner says is when he became aware that it was a Nazi tattoo. So the only way she's lying about that is if she was aware that it was a Nazi tattoo. But somehow Graham Platner wasn't aware that it was a Nazi tattoo. I don't think that's credible. I think we have to kind of take it as granted what's been obvious for some time, which is that Platner is lying about not knowing that that was Nazi Inc. We can get into the ramifications of that and what it means for whether or not he's a Nazi later. But that's allegation number one. Allegation number two, this was, this was the one that's probably going to stick most in my brain, despite not being the most serious of the allegations, is that Platner used to comment. Her description was that he said this a lot, that if someone broke into the apartment, he would rape them, not in a gay way. It was important that Graham Platner specify that this would not be in a gay way, but it would be as a display of dominance.
• 15:07
  Lowtax: I would totally rape you. No homo.
• 15:09
  Propter: I mean,
• 15:13
  Ed: I'm, I'm not even gonna touch that. I'm just not.
• 15:16
  Propter: Like, this is not, this is not a normal way to talk about. This is not a normal way to talk about burglary. This is not a normal way to talk about dominance. It's not a normal way to talk about.
• 15:30
  Ed: Is finding this abnormal.
• 15:32
  Propter: Like, like, like, this is, this is, this is a, this is just a deeply weird and disturbed thing to say. I think it is largely self guaranteeing in terms of the, in terms of the thing, because Grant Platner has, in other contexts repeatedly used similar verbiage to talk about war crimes. He's talked about pissing on corpses of defeated enemies as a dominance display. He's talked about burning corpses as a dominance display.
• 16:04
  George: And
• 16:06
  Propter: those. That, that particular phrasing kind of stuck in my brain when I saw him use it for these other things which he's been doing for like the last 20 years. These are, these are quotes going back in newspapers to, like, when he came back from his first tour in Iraq. So if it's a lie, it's a very good lie. It's a weird, specific lie that seems sufficiently unlikely to me, especially given that we know that Platner is lying about the Nazi tattoo, that I think we have to take that as true. The third and final allegation, and this is probably the most explosive, is that she says that Platner was, was physical with her on a number of occasions, that he twisted her arm behind her back, that he threw her into a room and held the door closed until she eventually passed out on the bed. And he, she was specific that he never hit her. So points for that, Graham. But, but, you know, these are, these are allegations of domestic violence. Let's not, let's not beat around the bush there. Like, like, these are, these are things that you cannot physically do to somebody. These are, these are descriptions of assault. For that there is no external validation.
• 17:28
  Ed: Yeah. And like
• 17:33
  George: the.
• 17:35
  Ed: This is. Show of hands. Who's surprised, right? Like, this is exactly the guy you thought he was.
• 17:45
  Propter: Okay, okay, I'm gonna be honest. I will rape a burglar. Surprise.
• 17:50
  Ed: All right,
• 17:53
  Propter: I did not have that on my bingo card. I,
• 18:01
  Ed: I mean, that's on you. You knew he had a Reddit account.
• 18:04
  Propter: I mean,
• 18:08
  Ed: all right, granted, does the fact that this guy who, who has had. Takes around, like, good wars and generally, you know, he's got, he's had some real fun comments about women in the past. Like, maybe not the magnitude, but I'm not really surprised at the direction and I don't think anyone else can be either.
• 18:31
  Propter: No, I mean, like, like there's, there's a reason that, you know, domestic violence is kind of cliche for ptsd, right? Like, this is, this is, this is a real danger. It's not that everybody who has PTSD commits tv, but that there is an elevated risk after you have been in a war zone, surrounded by violence, committing violence yourself, having violence enacted on you, that. That violence comes home with you. And that's real bad. And you know, you can, you can weight that however, however you want to weight that. But this is. Grant, Grant Laudner is not the first person in this situation to have problems along those lines. That was not surprising to me.
• 19:13
  Ed: No. And, and like, frankly, it's. That is absolutely a thing. But he also just acts like the guy who has, like, terrible relationships with humans. And like, I'm sure, you know, you, you can't discount service related stuff. Absolutely. But, like, everything that we dredge up about his history is just. He's an unsuitable person to be in a position of leadership or control over any people.
• 19:46
  George: Yeah, I think that's a really important point, Ed, because having issues from ptsd, especially from ptsd, from service, even if that verges to dv. Right. I don't think that in and of itself at some point in his past is instantly disqualifying. That's the end of the conversation. We're done here. How he has responded to things he has done in the past or things that are a consequence of what happened to him when he was serving in the military and thereafter is a completely different story. And there is no sign whatsoever of repentance or seeking grace is what we've talked about in the past with this guy. There's just no sign of that. Like, there's none at all. This is not somebody who made mistakes and hurt people and tried to make amends and tried to take responsibility for that, if anything it looks very much the opposite. And you know, I pointed out earlier before the very detailed and very well done proctor, the background around the allegations and who this person is. Just because she's a Republican operative doesn't mean that it's not a completely legitimate allegation. It is a completely legitimate allegation. It's happening on Republicans timing and in a way that benefits them. But I have no reason to doubt really much of what this woman has come forward with. Yeah. And even if she's wearing the wrong colored jersey. Right. Like if you have an ethical system that centers the experiences of survivors of all sorts of different bad stuff, then it doesn't matter what color their jersey is and hers is the wrong color. But doesn't mean she's lying and I see no reason to believe she is. So, you know, if this had been a thing where at some point in his past he had had this sort of stuff happen in a relationship and then he had gone to therapy and made amends with the person in question and sought accountability and yada, yada, yada, there's a bunch of different ways this could have played out. That would be a really different conversation. But I don't think anyone would even begin to argue that is what happened in this particular situation.
• 22:01
  Propter: Right. There's also this kind of, like, there's this kind of double trap surrounding this person in question who, who has said some extremely racist things. Again, like, like, like I'm not a fan of the, of the woman who was making these allegations on, on, on a number of levels. But it's not disputed that she and Platner dated for like two years. And it doesn't speak super well of Platner that he dated an extremely racist Republican operative for two years.
• 22:32
  Ed: So clearly we just have the next James Carville here. Proctor.
• 22:37
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, like, like, so I do think she's not a good thing. You know, I think we should probably talk a little bit about, about what it means to believe women in context like this because that, that gets trotted out as a, either a laugh line or a talisman every time we have allegations that ultimately turn on the assessment of credibility. That doesn't mean believe that women are incapable of telling lies and they have eidetic memories. That means try to compensate for the discount that you are giving women stories, because as a society, we discount women's stories when they're alleging abuse.
• 23:21
  George: Yep, yep, yep.
• 23:23
  Propter: You know, like, it's not like women, it's not like it's impossible for women to lie about sexual Assault or abuse, but it happens less often than we think it happens. The tendency is to say, okay, well, she's probably lying or exaggerating or something to excuse the behavior, and you shouldn't do that. So in this case, you know, we have, we have somebody who's a decent test case for that. Somebody who again, has, has been involved in attacking the credibility of, of another woman who has claimed to have been sexually assaulted, who I think again, is a, is a pretty unsympathetic figure from a number of perspectives. But also, like, when you look at her story, parts of it are definitely true and parts of it are overwhelmingly plausible. So I think you really have to be motivated to go out of your way to dismiss her as a liar because of who she is. One of the things we've seen that has been interesting as many of the people who are circling the wagons around Platner on this are not dismissing her as a liar, they're just pointing it, they're just pointing to who she is and saying she's awful. Which seems to me to be kind of accepting the charges, right?
• 24:40
  Ed: And like there's a lot going on here and it's all coming back to the permission structures to be a piece of shit, right? Like, that's what they're here for and like that's why it's these particular people and we will get into those particular people in this. Moral failures, insulting people is why I'm here. But like this, this is entirely so they can get to be transgressive pieces of shit like Republicans normally are. Like, like this, this is them attempting to adopt right wing coded behaviors, but leftishly right.
• 25:17
  George: Like, and, and when you say right wing, a specific part of the right wing, right, because dirt bag fascists, right, but like a part of the right wing where the thing that you're adopting is just straightforward misogyny, just straightforward inegalitarian views around the roles and the rights and responsibilities of men vis a vis women and women vis a vis men in society. And that's it. Like, that's, that's straightforwardly it's right. I, it's not talking about tax policy or religion or foreign policy. It is straightforwardly, I want to be a part of a society where I can do what I want to women and they have no recourse.
• 26:04
  Ed: I would perhaps go further and say it is not only women, though women are a common target. It is people in general, right? Like this is, this is like a really fucked up set of behaviors around, like just how you interact with human Beings, right? Like, right, you see a lot of this from this particular set of the right wing when it comes to black people, right? Like, it's not just women. It's. It's anyone who they feel like is insufficiently grateful, let's put it that way, is insufficiently willing to provide, provide opportunities to folks. Like, let's be honest, Matt Stoller, who is kind of a failure of a policy wonk, right? Like this dude is, this dude is a dead ender Gen x. He's almost 50 and he's out here complaining about Democratic HR ladies, right? Like, this is, this is him trying to find a way to lash out at somebody else and using Graham Platner to do it.
• 27:12
  Lowtax: By the way, I also, if you have, if you're listening and you have never seen a photo of Matt Stoller who is claiming to be carrying the flag for manliness, go look up a photo of Matt Stoller.
• 27:27
  Propter: I think the one commonality on this, that we should maybe dive into a. Let me preface this by, by talking very briefly about the other two women in the NYT article who, yeah, good call. Whose allegations? Who, who both alleged that Platner was, was a very bad boyfriend of a kind that is familiar, that he was beyond inconsiderate. One of them alleged that, you know, he came to her house drunk despite her telling him not to come and, you know, stood outside and yelled for a while. That. I think the commonality of this, and this kind of goes back to me too, and group cancellation and all of that, is that there is this incredulousness that there can be repercussions for treating people badly that expand beyond the parameters of the relative power relationship you had with them at the time. That part of the outrage here is that you are being punished for something that you thought was over, that you thought was done within the confines of that relationship you had to that other person at that time where they were comparatively powerless, right? Like the blast radius is limited. And it turns out the blast radius isn't limited because later on people, people find out that you were acting like an asshole and you know, they might make judgments based on that. That's part of the power of kind of cancellation or of, you know, kind of kind of group social sanction is that you might be treated in a negative way because of something you did to somebody who you thought was powerless, not because they have power. They, they didn't acquire more power later. It's not like they're, it's not like they're directly taking revenge on you, but because other people later learn what you did and sympathize with this person that you thought was powerless.
• 29:22
  George: It's a fundamental rejection of both reciprocity as a concept for ethical behavior and also a rejection of the fundamental ability of your social environment to place restraints on you. Right. Like if you believe that you should treat other people the way that you want to be treated, then this argument that is being put forward that these acts should never face consequences down the road is ludicrous. Right? It's completely ludicrous. These men wouldn't want to be treated this way. They wouldn't accept being treated this way as just what should happen and no consequences for it. Ridiculous to expect that. And they also believe that those same social connections that they want to use for advancement of their career, of their material circumstances, of their politics, shouldn't bind
• 30:23
  Ed: them in any way.
• 30:25
  George: And that ain't how it is, fellas.
• 30:31
  Lowtax: I just can't believe that nominating the pod John's coke dealer from Capitol Hill didn't pan out.
• 30:41
  Propter: You know, it's an open question whether or not he's still got a decent chance to win the race. Technically, the primary hasn't happened yet. I don't think there's any way he loses at this point.
• 30:50
  Ed: No, probably not.
• 30:53
  Propter: There has been a negative inflection in the polling, probably coming out of the sexting allegations from a couple weeks back. There were sexting allegations from a couple weeks back. I don't think we have polling that demonstrates what the NYT story has done as yet. But the most recent polling we have released by the Platner campaign showed him in a statistical tie with Collins at this point, which it's not drawing dead, but it's not necessarily where he was a couple weeks ago. That's definitely not where you want to be.
• 31:31
  Ed: And like, you know that this is the next.
• 31:34
  Propter: The.
• 31:34
  Ed: The. The next trench. Right? Like they are going to fall back to, oh, he would have won if not for people taking this so seriously. Right. But it is serious and like, you can't have people like this. I'm gonna say something that's going to sound painfully naive, gentlemen. You can't have people like this running the country.
• 31:58
  Propter: Come on, man.
• 31:59
  Ed: You. You can't. Look at what happens. They start. They start tearing down the White House.
• 32:05
  George: For what it's worth, prediction markets still have, and this is not an endorsement as prediction markets being correct. This far out. They are pure vibes, pure conventional wisdom. They do not have any real insight. I will die on the Hill that prediction markets are extremely useful on election night when votes start getting dropped and basically just conventional wisdom up to that point. He is still the favorite in prediction markets. Democrats winning the Senate seat in Maine. There may be some tiny, you know, outcome price where he gets replaced somehow or loses the primary or something but you know, basically 5842 is, is what production markets have for Maine in terms of Democrats being favored. Which you know, I do, I do think regardless of what the polling says right now, I do think that the Hill for Collins to climb is enormous. Could Platner blow it based on everything we've been talking about, et cetera, et cetera? Sure he could, but it would really have to be a screw up. I think given how all the sub demographics are looking, given the specific circumstances of her last few wins and really how impressive they were versus the broader national vote at the time. There is good reason to believe she is a very, very deep in the hole incumbent at this point. And that doesn't mean that he's going to win necessarily locked in. But I think prediction markets are right to have him favored still. Even though all of this, which is,
• 33:33
  Ed: I mean this week bad, it's, it's
• 33:36
  Propter: going to be a hell of a gut check for the DSCC in a couple of weeks because people like, people like specifically Kristen Gillibrand who runs the dscc, who you may have recently, who, who you may remember was one of, was, was the senator who spearheaded the final push that got Al Franken to resign over allegations of groping people. I say allegations, he was definitely groping people. I don't mean to cast out on
• 34:04
  Ed: that good note but
• 34:10
  Propter: Kristen Gillibrand runs the DSCC and she's going to have some, some I think very difficult decisions to make about how much money to steer towards Maine in light of this stuff. This is the kind of thing that could have blowback outside of Maine. Maine was headed for being a very expensive Senate race this year. It's still going to be a very expensive Senate race this year. Grand Planner is a good fundraiser. So even if the outside money doesn't play like this is still going to be easily 100 million dollar, probably a 200 million dollar Senate race.
• 34:40
  Ed: That's offensive. There's like 1.6 million people in the state.
• 34:44
  Lowtax: I mean that's like 600% of Maine GDP.
• 34:48
  Propter: 20, 20, 20 was a 200 million dollar Senate race in May. So like that's great. This one's, this one's going to be costly but you know, the big Organs of outside money for the Dems in particular are going to have to decide whether and how they're going to support that. If they're going to do it through kind of the upfront channels, if they're going to do it exclusively with the left hand, and they're going to have to start making those decisions fairly soon.
• 35:17
  George: There are lots of other places for the money to go that are not as likely a pickup as Maine. But you can make the argument that my state and Maine should stand and fight on their own because there are places where the Democrats can play offense. I actually also happen to think a little bit this way about Texas. Texas is a little bit different. But just because Texas is such a big media market, moving the needle there is so expensive that maybe you don't spend as much there as you otherwise might. Whereas Alaska, Iowa, even Ohio is, are places where you really can see high impact dollars for pickups in those, in those races.
• 35:59
  Lowtax: $200 million buys a lot of salmon.
• 36:05
  George: The issue is less the buying of the salmon and more that there aren't enough. You know what, never mind. Forget it. Although, have you all ever heard of a salmon cannon?
• 36:15
  Ed: I don't want to.
• 36:17
  George: No, you do. It's really cool.
• 36:18
  Propter: Is this the thing they use to get salmons up over dams?
• 36:21
  George: Yeah, there's the Columbia river basin boy, coming through. So basically, if you've got this damned river system and this isn't as big of a deal in Alaska because they haven't like building a dam in Alaska is really expensive and like, you know, whatever, but huge deal on the Columbia river system and a few other west coast river systems where salmon used to swim all the way upstream. I mean, you can look at a map of the Columbia River. Salmon used to swim to Kootenay Lake, which is like I grew up on, and even further up into the Arrow Lakes up north where Micah Dam is now. I mean this is thousands and thousands of miles. Swimming up through mountain passes, basically through. Over waterfalls, through rapids, just swimming, swimming, swimming to spawn in these creeks, right in these mountain creeks that are deep inside the continent, across several mountain ranges from the Pacific Ocean where these salmon spend their adult lives. And one of the solutions that have has been experimented with the two actually quite a bit of success in getting salmon back towards these streams over these dams that were erected in the middle of the 20th century and really messed up the whole spawning situation is right,
• 37:26
  Ed: because salmon ladders suck. They're. They're really exhausting for the fish that have to go up.
• 37:31
  George: Well, I mean Also, a certain, at a certain dam size, like a salmon ladder, is just not going to work anymore. Salmon ladders do work for some implementations, but basically this solution is you create this pneumatic cannon that literally fires the salmon up over the dam in a giant parabolic arc and it doesn't actually hurt the fish. There's been studies done where if they use the salmon cannon thing, they can still go and spawn and everything's fine. Coming downstream is usually not as big of an issue for the, from the dam, for the dams. There are turbines involved, and so you do have some attrition there. But generally there are ways to get the fish around the dams quite easily going downstream. But upstream you need the salmon cannon.
• 38:11
  Propter: So yeah, going. There's your b. Downstream. Going downstream, they're much smaller, which helps.
• 38:17
  George: Yes, yes.
• 38:18
  Propter: It's the other great thing about the salmon cannon. So, so salmon on their way back to spawn, they kind of zombify over the course of the process. Salmon going back to spawn do not give a. They are in it to get to their spawning point. They will do it even if there are bits falling off of them. Like, like, like they are. They are on a mission at that point.
• 38:41
  George: Who among us fellas?
• 38:42
  Lowtax: Who among us.
• 38:43
  Propter: Right. I mean, I mean, right, they're no longer eating. They are just exclusively, you know, heading. Heading back home to. For one last hurrah. And what that means is, is that I think George is broadly correct that, that the salmon cannon doesn't hurt the salmon, but as long as it doesn't kill the salmon, it doesn't really matter if it hurts the salmon a little bit. As long as they're still capable of.
• 39:08
  Lowtax: They are.
• 39:09
  Propter: They are sexual berserkers at that point.
• 39:12
  Lowtax: That is, that is good to know. So scientists, you can hurt the salmon a little bit as a tree concussed salmon.
• 39:19
  George: Speaking of sexual berserkers, back to Graham Platner.
• 39:22
  Ed: No, no, no, we're cutting that one. John.
• 39:25
  Lowtax: John Fetterman salmon.
• 39:29
  Ed: But like the. I would like to stop talking about Graham Platner. I'm going to be honest, because like the, the thing that is like, sure, he's. He's gonna get the nomination. Who, who's gonna, who's gonna replace him? Batman? Right. Like, so, like, I'm sorry, man, you have to vote for him. But, but like the, the way that these tools are trying to turn this into a media thing is interesting. Parentheses, pejorative. Right? Because like the fight they're trying to pick is one with, with women. They've Invented in their heads. For the most part, Matt Stoller has not had a real job probably in a year that begins with a two. But like, I.
• 40:15
  Lowtax: Excuse me, just a correction here. Matt Stoller was a writer in the 2010s. He's had a job on Brand X with Russell Brand.
• 40:26
  Ed: All right, I said a job and not a cursed sentence from which one cannot recover.
• 40:33
  Propter: You guys, you guys know how he got hooked up with Russell Brand, right?
• 40:36
  Ed: I heard this, but I don't want to. Isn't it his brother?
• 40:38
  Propter: Yeah, it's his brother who's a director. His brother directed Russell Brand and in forgetting Sarah Marshall and get him to the Greek.
• 40:45
  Ed: Oh.
• 40:46
  Propter: So anyway.
• 40:50
  Ed: But like, like, he's. He is literally just acting out his, his juvenile defiance at people who do actual work. This is wrecker. This is red brown. You know, welcome to the Horseshoe. Shit.
• 41:05
  Propter: I think this is something that the Democratic coalition has gotten a lot worse at in recent years, which is that sometimes you have to ask some of your. Some parts of your coalition to eat on something. In recent years, it's been, you know, we've asked, We've asked Arabs to eat on Palestine. We've asked. We've asked Jews to eat on Israel. We've asked Jews to eat on Nazi tattoos. And with Platner, we are asking women, particularly women who have been the subject of intimate violence, to eat a heaping platter of shit. In the context of the VRA being gutted. We're already asking black people in our coalition to eat a steaming terrain of shit. And our.
• 41:55
  George: Hold on, though, I, I think that's a little different, isn't it? I mean, it is, yeah.
• 41:59
  Propter: Well, it's the Democratic Party.
• 42:00
  George: No one in the Democratic Party wanted the VRA to go away. Like, that's not. And that, and that's something that we're going to run on. Like, that's not.
• 42:06
  Propter: But some of the corresponding moves to that are going to involve weakening black districts in blue states. So we are going to take districts that have been VR, that have been packed, VRA districts that are, that are like 70 black, and we are going to turn those into still, still very blue districts, but for the sake of creating extra, extra seats in places like New York, we are going to turn those into districts that are not necessarily still black districts, but also, like, black people are about to lose something on the order of a fifth of their representation in Congress as a result of this.
• 42:42
  George: Are we, Are we going to, Are we going to work to keep black people out of primaries in Those districts or, you know, I mean, I, I
• 42:50
  Propter: mean, don't get me wrong.
• 42:51
  George: I think, I think directly we'.
• 42:53
  Propter: Right.
• 42:53
  George: But I think it's worth thinking through the implications of VRA and what it means in a realpolitik sense. But I think it's qualitatively different from the planner stuff.
• 43:02
  Propter: Okay, fair enough.
• 43:05
  Ed: That's true. But that's not saying that it's not, you know, take one for the team.
• 43:09
  Propter: The similarity is that this is something where a portion of our coalition is suffering injury. Not necessarily because it's injury we ask them to suffer, but they are suffering injury. And we need to, as good coalition mates, try to make it better, try to do some kind of healing, some kind of give back. It's still our problem, even if it's
• 43:30
  George: not our doing and sort. And that's my point. Right. Like with the VRA stuff and New York being a really good example, there is no reason that if you crack a bunch a 70% black district into a more efficient alignment that you don't then say behind the scenes, however you want to do this, look, you're still gonna get a black candidate representing you. We're gonna make that happen. There are ways around this in a way that there is no way around the Democratic Party getting fully behind Graham Platner. And that may not happen, as you said with the dscc, you know, we'll see. But there is no way to tell a woman who's been a victim of Democrat, of. Excuse me, not Democrat, domestic violence.
• 44:14
  Propter: That one. That one will.
• 44:14
  George: God, they are not being told to eat a pile of shit when the whole party is buying platter. And again, maybe the whole party doesn't get behind platter, etc. I, I think the other two examples, you know, Arab Americans and Palestine and a certain segment of Jewish voters, because a lot of Jewish voters, I think, are perfectly on board with cutting Israel off. I think that's. That there, there's a lot of polling on this. But, you know, for that segment that are pro Israel, like, you're Chuck Schumers of the world. Right? Like y. Yes, they are. You're right. They are absolutely. Being asked to eat a pile of. I just don't think that's as true with the V stuff. And I think it's worth thinking through.
• 44:55
  Propter: Yes, I agree with you that they're different situations. They're both situations in which a little bit of TLC would go a long way in terms of, in terms of maintaining good, good coalitional relations.
• 45:09
  George: Yeah.
• 45:10
  Propter: You know, part of this is trying to acknowledge other people's pain. You know, if you feel you're being asked to eat, even if, even if you're maybe being a little bit unreasonable about it or it's not entirely my fault that you're being asked to eat, it's still nice to have the direct acknowledgment, which is like, you're taking.
• 45:29
  Ed: It's like being part of a coalition, which is what these tools are not doing, Right. Like, this is just ax grinding because a woman said something mean to them once. Right? And like, we're, we're seeing a lot of this from the quote unquote thinkers of, of the, the, the marginal left. Right. I guess Stoller, I, I don't know if you could say is that far left. He's really just like, he doesn't like monopolies. And will. Will pretty much accede to anything else that somebody says when they're, when they're being nice to them. But, like, it, it's really troubling that this stuff kind of goes without too much question, right? Like, say Jelani is.
• 46:15
  Lowtax: I'm.
• 46:18
  Ed: Let's use the word credible, right. And this will not make him not credible. Like, this stuff should make these people Persona non grata. It won't, but it should. And like, I think there's a question to be asked about that, right? Like, Clenn, Ken klippenstein is like, 1. People take this guy seriously for reasons I cannot comprehend, but, like, they do, and they're not going to take him less seriously because he's going on about smooth groins. And I apologize for making you hear that term again, listeners, not you guys. But, like, how this is, this is a technical term, but I think this is bad, fellas.
• 47:04
  Lowtax: Yeah, well, there should be punishment for it, and there won't be. I mean, the good thing is I don't know what Matt Stoller actually does. You know, Klippenstein has. I, I assume Klippenstein is a substack guy.
• 47:20
  Propter: He is, yeah.
• 47:21
  Ed: Yeah.
• 47:21
  Lowtax: I don't know where Zaid Jelani works. Is he also a substack guy?
• 47:28
  Propter: I assume so. Maybe he's gray zone. I don't know. These are all, these are all X intercept guys. Like, that's, that's the commonality.
• 47:35
  Lowtax: Oh.
• 47:35
  Ed: Which, I mean, like, we haven't touched on that, but, you know.
• 47:40
  Lowtax: Well, Stoler's not an intercept guy.
• 47:42
  Propter: No, Stoner is not an intercept guy. He's sort of adjacent spaces. But, but, but he's not intercept.
• 47:48
  Lowtax: I've been Fighting with Stoller for 25 years.
• 47:51
  Ed: So he had his own separate newsletter. But, like, it. It feels as though. I mean, the Intercept. Who else has come out of there? Hello. Glenn Greenwald. Right? Like, right. It's a piece of shit factory. Yeah, it always has been.
• 48:11
  Propter: Our man Ryan Grimm.
• 48:13
  Ed: Oh, Oh, I forgot about that. Oh, so, like, the most legendary bowl cut on the Internet.
• 48:22
  Lowtax: Yeah. I mean, like, Klippenstein is historically been maybe the least problematic of the Intercept cinematic universe.
• 48:30
  George: Characters, definitely.
• 48:32
  Propter: Yeah.
• 48:32
  Ed: He's. He's over the Specter Society.
• 48:37
  Propter: Yeah. Like, I posted about this a little bit, actually.
• 48:41
  Ed: No media san's okay. But, like. But he got out early.
• 48:45
  Lowtax: Oh, that's true.
• 48:46
  Ed: He got out early. And, like,
• 48:50
  Propter: people say nice things about Pierre Omadyar, who's the billionaire who funded the Intercept, and I kind of believe them. He doesn't seem like a terrible guy.
• 48:57
  Ed: I mean, I haven't seen any bylines.
• 48:59
  Propter: Yeah. So I don't. I don't know. I don't really understand the whole deal there in full. I posted a little bit. A little bit about this the other week, but, like, they're kind of two major camps fighting for the soul of the American left. In my view, that camp number one is sort of the sewer socialism. Mom, down sewer. Socialism refers to a specific moment in time. Not socialists who are living in the sewer. It refers to socialists who are trying to fix the sewers, who are trying to do good. Good, particularly good local governance and, you know, thereby. Thereby, through good works, promote socialism as a good functional system of government. I think that that is one of the two strains that's fighting for the soul of the American left. The other one is kind of the DSA IC that they're dirt bag left.
• 49:51
  George: I'm glad you added the IC there, because dsa.
• 49:54
  Propter: Super socialism.
• 49:55
  George: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:56
  Propter: The IC is not.
• 49:57
  George: Yes, yes.
• 49:59
  Propter: No, they're like.
• 49:59
  Ed: They're. They're Chapos.
• 50:01
  George: Yeah.
• 50:01
  Propter: Wait, wait. Like.
• 50:03
  George: Well, that's. That's. That's the weird thing. I haven't listened to Chapo in a long time. But, like, if you. If I had to imagine what 2017 Chapo would have said about this current debate, like, I don't think they're getting on board with the guy that has Nazi tattoos who's being promoted by former Obama staffers. Like, I have no. And I'm. Again, I have no idea what Chapo has said about this guy so far. So I have no idea.
• 50:26
  Lowtax: They would have seen. They would have seen the pod johns go in on Platner and they'd have been like, nope, we're done. He's probably a CIA plant or something.
• 50:33
  George: Yep, that's exactly right. I. And again, please sound off in the comments with how actually, they're huge Platter fans. I have no idea. You. I. I'm totally at in the dark on this one.
• 50:45
  Ed: I. I agree with that. From, like, 2017, for sure. But, like, this is the same sort of transgressive shit on people stuff that, like, they really got into their. Their crowning achievement. Their. Their contribution to the discourse going forward is that they made relatively. Normie. Guys who go to work wearing a suit think that it's fun to post this stuff on Twitter.
• 51:09
  Lowtax: Right?
• 51:10
  Ed: Like, Matt Stoller, carrying that flag of masculinity must be very difficult with a concave chest. But, like, like, like, does he think he's one of them? Does he think he's cool? Yeah, because, like. Yeah, I know, I know. I understand. But, like, does he think he's David J. Roth? God, that's a depressing thought.
• 51:33
  George: Yeah. I would just like to say open invite to anyone we've mentioned derisively on this podcast. If you would like to come and hang out on my squat rack, you are more than welcome. And then you can start talking about masculinity after that. Right now, I'm doing. I'm in marathon training, so, like, you know, you'll have a leg up. You're still.
• 51:55
  Ed: I was worried you were going to extend an invite because, honestly, this podcast can't hold me, and any one of them, I will simply just curse loudly for 90 minutes.
• 52:05
  George: They're not welcome on the podcast. They can come to my garage and we can throw some plates up and we can see how masculine they are.
• 52:10
  Ed: Let's do that. Oh, all right.
• 52:15
  Propter: Are we done with gender for the night?
• 52:17
  Ed: I don't think we're ever done with gender.
• 52:19
  George: Just one. Just. Just two more things. Really quick thing. One. I'm sorry, man. I played college football. I have worked in the finance industry my whole life. I am a father. Like, you cannot. I drive a pickup truck. I like beer. I like.
• 52:33
  Ed: It's an electric, though.
• 52:35
  George: It's faster than whatever.
• 52:37
  Ed: I think they're terrifying.
• 52:40
  George: Yes. Anyhow, you cannot come and tell me I'm not masculine enough, because I think there is a role for HR in a corporation or any large organization. Any large management organization. Right. I'm sorry. I don't want to hear it from you. Like, I'm serious. Come to my squat rack and tell me that, like, it's so frustrating to hear from these just pathetic dudes that that is what's holding them back. No, it's because you're not actually anything.
• 53:10
  Lowtax: The other thing is, how the hell do they have this much experience with an HR lady?
• 53:16
  George: Do you want to know the answer to that question?
• 53:18
  Lowtax: I've met my HR lady, like, once when they onboarded me and I had to pick my health care plan. Am I retired?
• 53:25
  George: The second thing I was quickly. Note to close this out. Whenever anyone talks about gender, and especially men, and especially me, given the little rant I just went on. But also all these other dudes who suddenly have opinions about smooth groins. Every time someone's publicly talking about gender, they are performing gender. It is. They're incepting themselves. Right. Is recursive. It is projection that is so important to keep in mind. We are all performing our gender because gender is a social construction. And it is really important to remember that anytime you see someone hold forth about what defines masculinity and why they are more masculine or what. What thing is holding back men or whatever crap. Right? Including, again, including me. Right. Like, discount me on this too, please.
• 54:16
  Ed: I just. I just like to make one. One correction. I'm not performing masculinity. I'm performing woodworking.
• 54:26
  George: Okay. Should we talk Mormons? Let's talk Mormons.
• 54:30
  Propter: Oh, yeah, the Mormons are angry.
• 54:33
  Ed: Rightfully so.
• 54:36
  George: I will say Proctor. Proctor, I think. When. When did you have the blue tie take? It was like, mid-2024, I want to say.
• 54:42
  Propter: Oh, no, man, I've been beating that drum for years.
• 54:44
  George: Okay, Maybe this is the first time I saw. It was. It's been a long time. Proctor has been on the Blue Taw. Mormons are going to realign to the Dems train for a long time. And we got a story this week that I think at least partially vindicates his foresight. So I don't know. I don't know how it helps.
• 55:03
  Propter: It helps move the needle.
• 55:04
  George: So.
• 55:06
  Propter: So what happened here is, is that the Pentagon pared down the list of classified religions for the United States Armed Services that they have previously. They had, like, 800 classified religions that, like, okay, these are all. These are all things that we're going to treat as, you know, different specified things with their own rules for how we treat you because we respect these things and so on and so. And they reworked the list. And when they reworked the list, they have a subsection of Christian religions. Right. Of which there are, I don't know, maybe. Maybe 15 different. Different denominations listed, they've got Christian Catholics, they've got, you know, Christian Episcopalians, they've got Christian Lutherans, and then they have, notably not Christian Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints. The Mormons do not love this.
• 56:01
  Ed: Yeah.
• 56:03
  George: Even though, Even though Hegseth might have a point,
• 56:09
  Ed: they don't think so, and that's what wins. No, they don't think so and that's what wins. Right.
• 56:13
  Lowtax: But like, I, I love this idea of reclassifying all of these because when we take back the White House in 2029 and we appoint friend of the podcast, Mike Black to be Secretary of Defense, we're also, we're also going to do that. I am personally going to get Mike to assign all of the religions to Protestantism because all Americans are Protestants.
• 56:37
  Propter: So I think that they chatgpt this or something because, because one of the other things that they did, if you look into the subsections on this, is like, they've got like, Christian Orthodox and then they list a number of different Orthodox sects, one of which is Orthodox Jews.
• 56:56
  Ed: I'm going to go to bat for the fine people at Open AI. I'm pretty sure they would make that mistake.
• 57:02
  Propter: They also did that with Reformed Christianity and Reformed Jews, which, you know.
• 57:07
  George: Yeah,
• 57:09
  Propter: yeah, there's. There's a lot of Orthodox and a lot of reform out there, but those, insofar as there's a common ancestor, it's further back than that.
• 57:18
  Lowtax: I mean, if you listen to the Orthodox talk about the reform, you know, it's. It's kind of like the Catholics and the Jesuits, you know?
• 57:26
  George: Yeah, no, no, not, not. Right, analogy. Good.
• 57:32
  Propter: Yeah. Are Christian Reformed, like, hardcore? Am I, Am I off on my theology here?
• 57:37
  Lowtax: I don't even know what Christian reform means.
• 57:39
  Propter: Yeah, all right, we'll have to get a priest on.
• 57:40
  Lowtax: No, I was thinking Orthodox. How Orthodox Jews view Reformed Jews.
• 57:45
  Propter: Oh, yeah, that's contentious. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:47
  Lowtax: And how some of the weirder Catholics view the Jesuits.
• 57:53
  Ed: Yeah, yeah, right. I forgot about that. There's lore.
• 58:00
  Lowtax: I may be agnostic, but I know my people,
• 58:05
  Ed: man. But yeah, and like, like, it's, it's interesting because, like, one of the things a lot of people do not know is that there is a very large, like, Mormon contingent in tech there. There's a running joke that, like, if it's written in php, you know, check Utah more to the point, have been fortunate to work with a lot of, A lot of folks. Right. Like, very. Everyone I know for the most part is, Is very done with the Republican shit. Right. Like, I wouldn't presume to speak for them, but like, I don't. Some have been done with their shits and stuff. You know, 2021, this is, this is a long time coming. But at. And like, it's a fairly educated population. Right?
• 58:54
  Propter: Like, that's a super educated population. Yeah. No Mormons. If you look at Mormons just through like a demographic lens in terms of income, in terms of, in terms of, in terms of education, likelihood to hold a passport, likelihood to hold a passport, like, likelihood of actually having traveled abroad, they're basically Rocky Mountain Jews, except that they do radically differently. But like, but, but, but, but like, in terms of, in terms of subsets of people who tend to go, who, who tend to have collegiate degrees, Mormons are educated at a, at a super high rate, both men and women, which, which surprised me a little bit the last time I looked at it, because that's something that they've, they pushed in recent years. Like, like LDS has really moved very far and very fast on a lot of things. That's not to say that they're without problems. Like, that's still a faith tradition that is kind of finding its way and reforming through a lot of changes. But they have been moving from a very, very red starting point. They had been moving blue for a while, and that movement has accelerated in recent years.
• 1:00:03
  George: So there's, there's also something fundamentally communitarian about Mormons that just doesn't fit in the modern Republican Party. Like, and you're right to talk about the trend of reformation within the LDS Church. I mean, the LDS Church did a lot of work to expel some of its worst impulses a long time ago. And actually, where I grew up in British Columbia, there was a sect that was not welcome in the LDS Church that sat down to do polygamy and a bunch of other stuff. And that was like a sort of thing in the background. When I was growing up, my friend, closest friend from like kindergarten to middle school was a Mormon kid. And so I did a whole bunch of family home evenings and trips with his church, you know, to go hike and stuff. And like, there is a fundamental view within that community of how they want to treat other people and how people, they want people to treat them. That just, it just doesn't fit in the Republican worldview. It just like it did fundamentally. Like, these are people who want to be good neighbors. They want to make the community they're in be better. And yeah, they want to evangelize their beliefs, but they are very happy to be Told, no, thank you, don't want to talk about that. Like, you are. The Mormon missionaries get this trope of being annoying and showing up on your doorstep. But if you ever have an. I have never heard of an experience where someone says to a Mormon missionary, like, listen, like I said, I don't want to talk about this with you. Can you please leave me alone? And the Mormon missionary saying something other than, okay, bye, like, you know, and that's their worst attribute in the community that they're a part of. You know, like, and again, that doesn't excuse some of the dynamics within the LDS church that they're working on or some of the historical stuff. You know, gay marriage in California being probably the best example in national politics. But you're right. I mean, this is really. These people don't fit. They're not Republicans. Like, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:02:00
  Lowtax: The other thing is, like, does Pete Hegseth not know that, like, all of our spies and FBI operatives are Mormons?
• 1:02:07
  Propter: Right? No, he doesn't. So the story, the story on that a little bit is that we've had very restrictive policies about security clearance for a long time. Right. That it's harder to get a security clearance if you've done drugs, particularly marijuana. Well, guess who hasn't done any marijuana. So
• 1:02:30
  George: someone famously no marijuana.
• 1:02:32
  Propter: Yeah. And, and, and you also get this kind of, you know, enucleation effect where you get some members of, of, of, of any minority into a place and that creates a ladder for other people to get in. But yeah, the, the intelligence services are very heavily Mormon. The. One of the. One other thing that I want to say about lds, riffing off of what George said a minute ago about the polygamy splinter sex, is that whether or not you or. I think that Mormons experience discrimination by the government, LDS is extremely concerned about discrimination against Mormons by the government, in part because of their experience with government regulation of polygamy and these kind of this sort of faith memory of this, this set of crackdowns on what was then an established Mormon cultural practice of polygamy that almost tore the church apart on a number of. In a number of respects and, and caused a lot of disruption to Mormon lives now. I mean, I think it's good that we no longer have polygamy, and I think that LDS also thinks it's good that we no longer have polygamy, but that wasn't that long ago, as these things go. Right. Like, I mean, you're talking about, you're talking about a religion that's they're what, 150 years old, 170 years old, something like that.
• 1:03:55
  Ed: Like 1830s.
• 1:03:57
  George: Yeah. I mean, the family experience of the religion was getting pogroms literally across the continent, right?
• 1:04:03
  Propter: Yeah. And then it kind of happened again from Utah with like, one of the problems with cracking down on something like polygamy, right. Is like, you have these family relationships. Like, like you can't just stop having wives. That's not a thing that's easy to do. So what that meant is you had lots and lots of families who were fleeing to go. Fleeing to Mexico or fleeing to Canada because that was how they could stay a family. That's, that's why, for instance, Mitt Romney's dad was born in Mexico, because the Romneys fled to Mexico because grandpappy Romney had more than one wife. Now, again, a very, very good thing that polygamy's in the rear view. I am in no way arguing for polygamy here, but these are not very many generations back where you're talking about these memories of government crackdown in a way that was again, really painful to families. So you have a set of people who are hyper attenuated to government persecution of religion in a way that I think is sincere and that maybe results in overreach in some ways, but that this is, this is a, a more recent and more immediate ancestral memory than many faith groups in the United States have of what it's like to have your way of life cracked down on by the government.
• 1:05:35
  Ed: And like, I will never feel sympathy for Mike Lee. It's, it's, it's not possible. But like, he is definitely on the finding outside of like, oh, we're in the club of people who get to on people. No, you're not.
• 1:05:50
  George: No, you're not.
• 1:05:51
  Ed: Nope, nope, nope. Fascists. Fascists eat from the bottom up. And, and a lot of people are much lower on that than, than they think they are. And, and it's going to go bad if, if folks don't realign.
• 1:06:07
  George: Welcome Mormons into the fold. Those dirty sodas are not coming with them.
• 1:06:14
  Propter: Okay, I'm going to speak up, I'm going to speak up for the dirty sodas because I, Yeah, I enjoy the McKellen's offering.
• 1:06:20
  Lowtax: We can have dirty sodas. We can have dirty sodas, but they got, they got to get rid of crumble.
• 1:06:25
  George: I'm sorry, Crumbles, fine. I mean, crumble's weird because, like, okay, no, you do not eat a thousand calorie cookie. Who is eating.
• 1:06:33
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, that's the Thing.
• 1:06:35
  George: You do not eat a cookie if you just have a bite. It's. It's. It's fine. I mean, it's not great. It's. It's mids. But it's. It's a cookie.
• 1:06:42
  Propter: You know, whatever.
• 1:06:43
  George: Cookies don't taste bad.
• 1:06:45
  Lowtax: Whatever.
• 1:06:46
  Ed: We're not endorsing crumble on this podcast.
• 1:06:48
  George: I'm not endorsing. I'm not.
• 1:06:50
  Ed: I think you're endorsing. I think you're.
• 1:06:52
  George: I am just. This sounds like endorsing soda is a bigger war crime than the crumbl cookie. That's all I'm saying.
• 1:06:57
  Ed: I don't know. Those cookies are basically cakes. They're cakes. Delicious.
• 1:07:02
  George: What are you talking about?
• 1:07:03
  Ed: Sure, but that's not a cookie.
• 1:07:05
  Lowtax: I mean, isn't it dirty soda?
• 1:07:07
  George: There are rules.
• 1:07:08
  Lowtax: Isn't a dirty soda just a soda with some, some like, fruit syrup and cream in it?
• 1:07:14
  George: Yeah, pretty much the cream.
• 1:07:15
  Propter: The cream's the key part.
• 1:07:17
  George: The half and half is the issue here, to be clear.
• 1:07:19
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  Propter: For what it's worth, I tried. I tried that. I mean, have you ever creamed hi C. From McDonald's and it was all right.
• 1:07:24
  Ed: Have you ever had a root beer float?
• 1:07:28
  George: A root fleet float is different. It's got different textures in it because it's. It's ice cream. It's not cream. It's not just pouring cream into your Coca Cola. Well, not fair. Because the caffeine. But they're still doing the no coke because of caffeine thing, right?
• 1:07:42
  Lowtax: Yeah, no, I. Oh, no, the Mormons.
• 1:07:43
  Propter: Complicated.
• 1:07:44
  Lowtax: The Mormons are. Remember the, The Brits. The Brits do that milk Coke thing.
• 1:08:08
  Ed: The.
• 1:08:08
  Lowtax: The Birmingham people.
• 1:08:09
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  Lowtax: You pour. You put like, you pour yourself a glass of Coke like halfway up, and then you put in a teaspoon of sugar and then fill the rest up. Up with milk and mix it together and drink that.
• 1:08:21
  George: Adding sugar to Coke.
• 1:08:23
  Lowtax: Yeah. Apparently it's very big in Birmingham.
• 1:08:27
  Propter: This is how, like, they just kind of treat it like tea. Is that what's happening here?
• 1:08:30
  Lowtax: I. Yeah, kind of.
• 1:08:31
  Ed: And. And for what it's worth, George, Mormons don't drink coffee. They do drink soft drinks.
• 1:08:39
  George: Well.
• 1:08:40
  Propter: But contentious.
• 1:08:41
  George: Contentious.
• 1:08:41
  Ed: But, like, generally, like.
• 1:08:44
  George: No, because when I was. No, no, because. Because some of them.
• 1:08:47
  Propter: Entirely.
• 1:08:47
  Ed: That's true.
• 1:08:49
  George: Elementary end. Elementary school years and no caffeine of any kind. None.
• 1:08:54
  Ed: Yeah, I'm sure some do that.
• 1:08:56
  George: May I just. That was just my recollection, but my
• 1:08:58
  Ed: understanding is it is not a complete prohibition as opposed to coffee, alcohol, tobacco products.
• 1:09:03
  George: Got it.
• 1:09:03
  Propter: It's a weaker prohibition. Yeah. So, like, I think that the textual prohibition is on hot drinks.
• 1:09:10
  Ed: Yes.
• 1:09:11
  Propter: But that's been interpreted a couple different ways in the latter day.
• 1:09:15
  Lowtax: And also, like, I'm just looking forward to our coalition having to engage with the concept of. So.
• 1:09:23
  George: Oh, we're done. That's it. Yep. We're not explaining that. Don't Google it. We're done. We're done. Walk away for listening to our ramblings for the week. And yeah, that's it for Normal men. In Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:09:37
  Propter: In dc, I'm Proctor.
• 1:09:39
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm Low Tech Speed Run Enjoyer.
• 1:09:42
  George: And in Boston, I'm in Stay Normal, y'. All. This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are coming, clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much. I'm George in Charlotte.
• 1:09:53
  Propter: In D.C. i'm Prop Der Malone.
• 1:09:55
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm Low Tax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 1:09:58
  Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston. Look, I warned you about the late title card. You knew this was gonna happen. Why are you still listening? Go mow the lawn.