Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong is Joe Katty.
Speaker 2: I'm Strong and Katty and he Armstrong and Getty. Fired
Speaker 2: for my job. I was aspired for my job.
Speaker 1: I was aspired for my job. I was as fired
Speaker 1: from my job.
Speaker 3: I was just.
Speaker 1: Fired from a job. I have nothing but this, nothing
Speaker 1: but this hobsite, nothing any more.
Speaker 2: Nothing have nothing any more, nothing anymore, nothing.
Speaker 1: Nothing other than that. How's it going, Jim, sir? This
Speaker 1: is a Wendy's always amusing.
Speaker 4: That is a transgendery looking guy who lost his job
Speaker 4: for posting online his glee over Charlie Cook being murdered
Speaker 4: in cold blood. More on that multifaceted discussion, including the
Speaker 4: whole transgender thing.
Speaker 1: We gottaing up. We got a text somebody who said,
Speaker 1: my man and I went to a viagraa Boys concert
Speaker 1: last night. They're a Swedish punk band. I don't know
Speaker 1: their work, do you? I do not, Katie. I love
Speaker 1: they are awesome. I love them.
Speaker 5: I saw them when they were a small band and
Speaker 5: now they've just blown up. They're fantastic. Actually, we've played
Speaker 5: them before on here. That song that goes sports.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh, you're right, the VIAGRAA boys have grown, have
Speaker 1: they anyway? Ah, as musicians tend to be, you know how.
Speaker 1: This would be about an hour into the concert. The
Speaker 1: lead singer started with we Live in Strange Times. I
Speaker 1: looked at my guy and I said, let's go. I
Speaker 1: knew it was coming. The crowd was cheering. We were
Speaker 1: walking out as he continued to have we live in
Speaker 1: Strange times when our world leaders mourn the death of
Speaker 1: a fascist. Oh, there you go, you're gooining one of
Speaker 1: my Yeah. I mean, I go to concerts knowing that's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. It's just whatever.
Speaker 4: So on a similar topic, I found this interesting is
Speaker 4: a piece by James Lindsay about what excuse me why
Speaker 4: cult beliefs don't stop when they're proved wrong? And you know,
Speaker 4: this applies to all sorts of different cults or cultish
Speaker 4: political you know, subcultures and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 4: he's he starts, he's talking about in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 4: there was this UFO cult called the Seekers, and they
Speaker 4: believed there was an impending catastrophe that would strike the world.
Speaker 4: On December twenty first, nineteen fifty four on that there
Speaker 4: would be a gigantic global flood right out of the
Speaker 4: Book of Genesis. As a cult, they engaged in lots
Speaker 4: of rituals and awareness raising activities about the pending disaster.
Speaker 4: They believed it was aliens ufo cult. The aliens would
Speaker 4: save the faithful seekers from the coming disaster. In particular,
Speaker 4: the aliens would rescue the faithful seekers for trying to
Speaker 4: warn people about the coming catastrophe.
Speaker 1: So they are pretty public about this.
Speaker 4: And the scientists by the name of Leon Festinger wanted
Speaker 4: to understand how cult beliefs operated, how they worked, and
Speaker 4: so he infiltrated the cult, posing as a faithful seeker,
Speaker 4: and he observed it through the lead up to the
Speaker 4: Faithful Day. Additionally, he was positioned to observe and interview subjects.
Speaker 4: When it turned out that that date nothing of the
Speaker 4: sort had happened, and that day came and went and
Speaker 4: nothing happened.
Speaker 1: It didn't The world was not drowned by a flood
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four. So this failed prediction marked a
Speaker 1: crisis of faith for the seekers. So what they do?
Speaker 4: Did they abandon their beliefs? No, they did not abandon
Speaker 4: their beliefs. Except in a few individual cases who were like, ah, right,
Speaker 4: you had me going there for a minute, but no flood,
Speaker 4: no dice.
Speaker 1: I am out. But most of this cult sucked.
Speaker 4: The vast majority of seekers experienced some form of emotional
Speaker 4: crisis and emerged from it with a powerfully increased commitment
Speaker 4: to the seekers beliefs. Infestinger the scientists was really intrigued.
Speaker 4: Most of the seekers emerged firm and a new belief.
Speaker 4: They believed that their faith and devotion had saved humanity
Speaker 4: because the aliens saw it and intervened to prevent the flood,
Speaker 4: thus saving not just the seekers, but also humanity at large.
Speaker 4: Yay seekers. Now, anybody who's ever watched, for instance, the
Speaker 4: QAnon phenomenon from a safe distance is familiar with this phenomenon.
Speaker 4: Trump is going to come in and save us, all
Speaker 4: all right, Trump comes in and he, you know, says
Speaker 4: there's really no dirt and Epstein files worth saying blah
Speaker 4: blah blah, and you well know, see what happened was
Speaker 4: they got to him and they blah blah blah. You
Speaker 4: just adapt the beliefs. As Lindsay writes, it's obviously nonsense
Speaker 4: getting back to the seekers, But it served as the
Speaker 4: foundation for the psychology not just around cults, but around
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories. What Festing are observed is that under certain conditions,
Speaker 4: people do not abandon their conspiracy theories or cult beliefs
Speaker 4: when prevented with solid, irrefutable evidence those beliefs are wrong. Instead,
Speaker 4: they modify and repackage their beliefs in even more tenuous
Speaker 4: ways so they can keep believing them. With the Seekers,
Speaker 4: the aliens magically intervened blah blah blah. Who could check
Speaker 4: this claim, Well, nobody, And that's the point.
Speaker 1: He explained.
Speaker 4: What happened with the seekers is formulating what's called the
Speaker 4: theory to theory of cognitive dissonance, which a lot of
Speaker 4: people have heard of but name may not fully understand.
Speaker 1: This is the guy who came up with this.
Speaker 4: When our minds are occupied with two contradictory but strong
Speaker 4: beliefs cult doctrine versus hard evidence, for INSTANCECE, a state
Speaker 4: of great psychological discomfort and unrest called cognitive dissonance arises, and.
Speaker 1: You have two choices.
Speaker 4: Essentially, one is to double down on the cult belief
Speaker 4: for conspiracy theory, which is called rationalization, and the other
Speaker 4: is to accept the hard facts of reality and repent
Speaker 4: of your error, which is also psychologically painful, and long
Speaker 4: story short and over again, the majority of people go
Speaker 4: with the rationalization, and one of the key aspects of
Speaker 4: that is that the new explanation is non falsifiable.
Speaker 1: But it's just less painful. Is that just the main
Speaker 1: reason that we do it. It's not painful to slightly
Speaker 1: alter my mind belief and stick with it as opposed
Speaker 1: to I was wrong this whole time, kind of embarrassed.
Speaker 1: That's painful.
Speaker 4: That's interesting, right, right, And actually Lindsay does a great
Speaker 4: job of explaining that. The question here is why that
Speaker 4: commitment is so deep that you stick with the group
Speaker 4: and go with an unfalsifiable claim. I mean, for instance,
Speaker 4: you can't verify or deny that the aliens appreciated the seekers'
Speaker 4: efforts and saved the world. How are you going to
Speaker 4: stress test that assertion? That's the point.
Speaker 1: Some of you atheists in the audience are applying this
Speaker 1: to religion.
Speaker 4: Feel free however you want, and we can. I'll still
Speaker 4: be friends and talk about it. But so Lindsey, here's
Speaker 4: where he applies it more to the modern day. Being
Speaker 4: socially locked into a cult is usually its primary holdover people,
Speaker 4: particularly at first socially locked in.
Speaker 1: Eventually the social lock.
Speaker 4: Will creep into one's own sense of identity through the
Speaker 4: processes of psychosocial value on the self, meaning how do
Speaker 4: I fit in as a valued member of the community?
Speaker 4: I esteem who am I in relation to this community?
Speaker 4: And just who am I in general? And at the
Speaker 4: point when the cult defines your identity and your sense
Speaker 4: of virtue and self worth, you're deep in and it's
Speaker 4: hard to escape. This gets worse, he writes, in ideological, political,
Speaker 4: and religious cult circumstances, especially rigid and militant ones like communism, fascism,
Speaker 4: the woke left the woke right. Part of this is
Speaker 4: psychosocial with a particularly vicious twist. You will be heavily
Speaker 4: punished both socially and psychologically for any defection, both while
Speaker 4: inside the cult and while attempting to leave it, and
Speaker 4: you know it. In fact, you've probably participated in that
Speaker 4: punishment rituals against others by the point of being fully
Speaker 4: discussed in such a cult. So, in other words, not
Speaker 4: only do you have to abandon your sense of self,
Speaker 4: but all of your friends are going to beat the
Speaker 4: crap out of you. First saying, for instance, look, maybe
Speaker 4: Charlie Kirk was a bit of a jerk, but political
Speaker 4: violence is sickening.
Speaker 1: They'll turn on you. So one of the things it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me about that is you often assume there's
Speaker 1: some sort of profit motive in somebody pushing you crap,
Speaker 1: but this person or group that they just needed something
Speaker 1: to believe in.
Speaker 4: That happens a lot, I guess with cults. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: have a purpose for your life. You feel like you're
Speaker 4: doing something important. Yeah, two more points. Framework to explain
Speaker 4: the world, which is unexplainable, right right, frequently, Yeah, Lindsay writes,
Speaker 4: because the conditions of an ideological totalitizing totalizing cult can
Speaker 4: be so vicious to defectors. Rationalization is much easier road
Speaker 4: in case of doubt or in countering contradictory evidence, and
Speaker 4: most don't take it. Millions of people in communism, property
Speaker 4: was destroyed, everything fell apart in a horrible war. The
Speaker 4: last time we attempted a mass movement based on your
Speaker 4: new world changing beliefs, mister Mumdannie, that's because the people
Speaker 4: back then did it wrong and didn't believe in it
Speaker 4: sincerely enough. Obviously, of course, this belief cannot be falsified.
Speaker 1: You can't prove it's wrong. And then where's the part
Speaker 1: I really wanted? The Governor of New York endorsed mum Danmi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it did some big deal, unbelievable. All right, this is
Speaker 1: long I'm sniping at. I made a cult. I need
Speaker 1: to warm embrace of a cult. That might be just
Speaker 1: the way to finish out my life. You got any
Speaker 1: help me out with the search a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: like a chat GPT search matter what aspects of the cult.
Speaker 1: We're not going to go communism or something like it.
Speaker 1: Maybe flat earth something something, something, not that big a deal,
Speaker 1: not gonna harm anybody, just something to believe. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and he points out where the heck is that.
Speaker 4: When being in the cult or being convinced of its
Speaker 4: truth causes you to do terrible things, that makes your
Speaker 4: need to rationalize even stronger. Of course, for instance, if
Speaker 4: you got convinced that a teenage girl who just fears
Speaker 4: puberty and sex is actually transgender and should get their
Speaker 4: body mutilated and they should be fed powerful hormones, and
Speaker 4: you approved that for your child.
Speaker 1: That's the most extreme example I can think of, because
Speaker 1: it'd be hard to back down from that one. Am
Speaker 1: I just embarrassing? Oh yeah?
Speaker 4: Imagine how difficult it is to swallow that truth and
Speaker 4: say I was wrong and I did these things and
Speaker 4: I have caused this.
Speaker 1: Dad would be tough. It takes enormous emotional strength. About tupperware?
Speaker 1: Is that a cult? Cultish? Certainly? I don't think it
Speaker 1: exists anymore. Does That's right? They were not a business.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if the vast majority of people who
Speaker 1: thought the space aliens were going to save us from
Speaker 1: the flood couldn't deal with you know what, I got
Speaker 1: defrauded here, they couldn't even like blame other people for
Speaker 1: duping them. The vast majority stuck with it and invented
Speaker 1: a new rationalization. Imagine if they had like sacrificed a
Speaker 1: child to that belief. How hard is it to say
Speaker 1: I was wrong? Right?
Speaker 4: And that's one of the great challenges sanity has up
Speaker 4: against with some of these up against some of these,
Speaker 4: you know, neo Marxist, extremist, radical theory beliefs, people have
Speaker 4: done terrible, terrible harm.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the whole trans thing, does it play an
Speaker 1: important role and the death nation of Charlie Kirk or
Speaker 1: is it just kind of coincidentally tangentially related or is
Speaker 1: it like the thing We got more on that coming up.
Speaker 1: Stay here.
Speaker 6: I's already saying the suspect turned himself in after his
Speaker 6: father recognized him in these surveyllance images and urged his
Speaker 6: son to come forward. Law enforcement sources say the suspect
Speaker 6: initially said no, but later changed his mind.
Speaker 1: Man, So those same pictures that we saw when they
Speaker 1: came out last week, Dad saw those and saw, holy crap,
Speaker 1: that's my son.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and his friends online were like, dude, and he
Speaker 4: was joking, my doppelganger did it.
Speaker 1: So it was obvious everyone but Dad knew it was him.
Speaker 1: And it's a conservative family, as a lot of families
Speaker 1: are in Utah. Some of my guess is Dad knew
Speaker 1: his son was off the rails. Yeah, politically, so saw
Speaker 1: the picture, knew had been worried about his son, guaranteed
Speaker 1: and his politics for a while. That's rough, by the way,
Speaker 1: and when anybody bring this up, maybe this is not
Speaker 1: worth even mentioning. But the whole we got him and
Speaker 1: the FBI with their dragnet and everything. Dad recognized the
Speaker 1: sun turned him in. I mean, that doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: not good FBI, But you didn't go out and catch
Speaker 1: a guy Iden somewhere he turned himself in. I just
Speaker 1: don't quite understand that narrative. But anyway, there's more to
Speaker 1: the story you've probably heard.
Speaker 7: First of all, as the weekend began, they executed a
Speaker 7: search warrant on the family.
Speaker 1: Home in Washington County, Utah.
Speaker 7: It's about three or four hours from the side of
Speaker 7: the shooting. The governor, though, says multiple people are talking here,
Speaker 7: including the roommate of the suspect, who he describes as
Speaker 7: incredibly cooperative. The roommate, he says, had no idea this
Speaker 7: was happening, And he also says the roommate may have
Speaker 7: been in a romantic relationship with Tyler Robinson, may have
Speaker 7: been gender transitioning, But the governor says, there's no edication
Speaker 7: or no idea yet that's at all relevant to this case.
Speaker 1: That it might not be relevant at all. We don't
Speaker 1: know yet. But is it a coincidence, just like the
Speaker 1: craziest coincidence ever, that he's in a romantic relationship with
Speaker 1: somebody who's doing the whole transgender thing. And then the
Speaker 1: moment a question is asked about transgender to Charlie Kirky
Speaker 1: gets a bullet in the neck. Seems like a heck
Speaker 1: of a coincidence. Well, it's a crazy, crazy thing to
Speaker 1: do what he did the murder. So could he have
Speaker 1: gone about it in a crazy, crazy way waiting for
Speaker 1: the question that he found particularly objectionable, or knowing it
Speaker 1: was practically inevitable that that would come up at a
Speaker 1: Charlie kirk event and waiting for that moment. Again, that's crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: but it would be crazy because that's not going to
Speaker 1: make any difference in terms of what you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: It's going to make it more likely you get caught
Speaker 1: if before you accomplish what you're trying to accomplish, Right,
Speaker 1: if you wait until the right question.
Speaker 4: Although it happened to happen very early in the pros
Speaker 4: in the first question. Yeah, but somebody that sucked into
Speaker 4: an online ideological cult, Yeah, they might do something that
Speaker 4: strange and difficult to explain.
Speaker 1: I suppose do you think the transgender thing it plays
Speaker 1: a role in this at all? I do?
Speaker 4: I do, Yeah, especially judging by the FBI's investigations. Some
Speaker 4: other like transgender up with transgender social media accounts that
Speaker 4: were all cheering this guy.
Speaker 1: Or knew him, or they were online.
Speaker 4: Together, and Charlie was well known as rejecting radical gender theory.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it absolutely might play a role
Speaker 1: and the reason for killing the guy, right, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and it might have affected the timing to I don't know.
Speaker 1: And then you gotta wonder if it is if he
Speaker 1: has connected to any other group of people like minded
Speaker 1: that had a role in this, right, which would be who?
Speaker 1: That'd be a big story if that turns out to
Speaker 1: be true. We'll be following it Armstrong and Getty row.
Speaker 8: Time leading up to this moment, as extreme gardener Alex
Speaker 8: Bavish from Fort Wayne, Indiana goes for the record for
Speaker 8: the world's tallest sunflower. Clover stands nearly thirty six feet tall.
Speaker 8: Over the course of three months, Clover grew ten inches
Speaker 8: a day. As clover reaches up for the sun. Alex
Speaker 8: is mindful of his own roots. Born and raised in Ukraine.
Speaker 7: Sunflower is a national flower of Ukraine, so it's special
Speaker 7: to me.
Speaker 1: There you go, that's nice, So I needed that's what
Speaker 1: we needed today story about the world's tallest sunflower named Clover.
Speaker 1: It has a name. It's a plant with a name,
Speaker 1: and the name is the name of a different plant.
Speaker 1: World's tallest sunflower. Huh, there you go, world's tallest shaka weed.
Speaker 4: I call it corn. The hell thirty six feet is
Speaker 4: pretty tall. That's a tall sunflower. All in tribute to
Speaker 4: the poor people of Ukraine. Love it, confused, but love it.
Speaker 1: Now back to how the Great Civil War and death exactly?
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier in the show that the FBI is
Speaker 1: investigating seven. I think it was social media accounts that
Speaker 1: appeared to.
Speaker 4: Predict what was going to happen to poor Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 4: and when at least one of those was directly tied
Speaker 4: to or followed Charlie Kirk's allegedly trans I'm sorry, the
Speaker 4: murderers allegedly trans romantic interest and roommate, and there seems
Speaker 4: to be a circle of young radicals who really are
Speaker 4: into the trans thing that wanted Charlie Kirk dead and
Speaker 4: seem to know when it was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Who knows.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of crap on the internet, stop clock
Speaker 4: is right twice a day, etc.
Speaker 1: So that's what we were referring to last segment.
Speaker 4: I thought this was great, as always from Nelly Bowles
Speaker 4: of the Free Press talking about the aftermath and discussions online.
Speaker 4: The rest of it a couple of things she writes,
Speaker 4: And then came the New York Times obituary, a classic.
Speaker 4: The headline, Charlie Kirk, right wing provocateur and close ally
Speaker 4: of Trump, dies at thirty one. Right wing provocateur a
Speaker 4: person trying to provoke if you think about it as
Speaker 4: though there's no belief system behind it, just a provocateur
Speaker 4: for the sake of it. In the mainstream media worldview,
Speaker 4: there are two kinds of people. Those fighting for left
Speaker 4: wing causes who are described as people of conviction, activists
Speaker 4: for justice, deep believers inequality, and then there are those
Speaker 4: fighting for right wing causes who are described as provocateurs, cynics,
Speaker 4: racists and shills arch conservatives. They eventually changed the headline.
Speaker 4: Here's the New York Times obituary quote. He was so
Speaker 4: vocal in his willingness to spread unsupported claims and outright lies.
Speaker 4: He said that the drug hydroxychloroquin was one hundred percent
Speaker 4: effective in treating the virus, which it is not that
Speaker 4: Twitter temporarily banned him in early March twenty twenty, but
Speaker 4: that move only added to his notoriety and seemed to
Speaker 4: support his claim that he was being muzzled by a
Speaker 4: liberal elite. Nelly writes, fascinating a man is murdered in
Speaker 4: public in the middle of the day while practicing his
Speaker 4: First Amendment rights, and the paper of record decides that
Speaker 4: this must be the perfect moment to do some fact
Speaker 4: checking about hydro oxy chloroquin.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent point. What role does that play in
Speaker 1: the story? Whatsoever?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: What you need to know from this?
Speaker 4: If your politics are that of a standard normy conservative man,
Speaker 4: your New York Times obituary will find the various things
Speaker 4: you said that weren't exactly right. He got into hydroxy
Speaker 4: chloroquin in twenty twenty. Can you believe that? And they'll
Speaker 4: paint them in the sky. My politics, he writes, are
Speaker 4: lib centrist, and these people would certainly celebrate my death,
Speaker 4: highlight my many errors and refer to my defense of
Speaker 4: the sat test is my repeated advocacy for a return
Speaker 4: to slavery or something. What I'm saying is, just try
Speaker 4: to stay alive, because when you die, a New York
Speaker 4: Times reporter gets to juice your corpse for likes. On
Speaker 4: Blue Sky MSNBC will invite on talking heads to suggest
Speaker 4: that the shooter could have been your mom who forgot
Speaker 4: to put the safety on.
Speaker 1: We simply don't know.
Speaker 4: Then she talks about clicking on the blue sky to
Speaker 4: see what was happening. I was served hundreds of posts
Speaker 4: with people celebrating. I don't follow anyone, so this is
Speaker 4: just what the standard blue sky algorithm wanted to show me.
Speaker 4: Also dropping this right here, thirty four percent of college
Speaker 4: students think political violence is acceptable, according to a Nurse
Speaker 4: New survey. On Facebook, the first thing I saw was
Speaker 4: an old journalist Buddy mocking Charlie and cheering his death.
Speaker 4: We were talking early early in the show about how
Speaker 4: wide spread that sort of thing is and how it's
Speaker 4: difficult to know because the volume and algorithms of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Right, Can we do a snap pole on it to
Speaker 1: try to figure that out. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's so sick. I know that Mark Alprin
Speaker 1: tweeted over the weekend. For the first day, I refused
Speaker 1: to believe that anyone who was actually going on social
Speaker 1: media to celebrate Charlie's murder. Then I realized there was,
Speaker 1: in fact some of it but I assumed it was
Speaker 1: a very small amount. Now I see how naive I was.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with someone who would do that? Then
Speaker 1: he tweeted, CNN and MSNBC are not taking the remarks
Speaker 1: of Erica Kirk live. She spoke for the first time
Speaker 1: and gave a speech. MSNBC and CNN did not carry it.
Speaker 1: Takes a lot to surprise me. Mark Alpern wrote, this
Speaker 1: is shocking the BBC is taking it live. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess internally they thought they get too much blowback on
Speaker 1: MSNBC if they let her speak.
Speaker 4: Or the thing that surprises me over and over again,
Speaker 4: maybe I'm a dope. Is that a lot of people
Speaker 4: who are in a media bubble, social media bubble, they
Speaker 4: believe the worst of what's being said.
Speaker 1: They actually think it's true. They've never seen an alternative
Speaker 1: point of view, and so maybe the person in charge
Speaker 1: of it at NBC actually believed. I mean, I mentioned
Speaker 1: a friend told me from the pulpit. Their minister in
Speaker 1: church Sunday said, now, Charlie Kirk spread division and hate.
Speaker 1: That was his career, but his murder is wrong and
Speaker 1: we pray for his family. So they just repeated as
Speaker 1: fact that that's what dude did, Man, i'd a got
Speaker 1: up on a church and walked down. Yes, this friend
Speaker 1: is not going to return. I believe that's unbelievable. What
Speaker 1: a thing to say. Yeah, and again, even if we're true,
Speaker 1: you don't want them to get shot. That's not the
Speaker 1: way we do things well. And two spreads division in politics.
Speaker 4: What Yeah, Well, it's just like Nelly Bowles is saying
Speaker 4: about The New York Times. If you energetically advocate for
Speaker 4: your point of view from the left, you're an energetic advocate.
Speaker 4: If I then stand up and say, look, I think
Speaker 4: you're wrong, and here's why I'm spreading division.
Speaker 1: So Mark alpernanded on his newsletter yesterday this morning, with
Speaker 1: significant time to reflect for the first time since the murder,
Speaker 1: I am now deeply, deeply worried about the country. We're
Speaker 1: going to go one of two directions. It's not going
Speaker 1: to stay neutral. I don't think this is a pretty
Speaker 1: big event. It's either going to bring it more people
Speaker 1: into the tent of We need to calm down. We
Speaker 1: need to stop vilifying the other side. We need to
Speaker 1: step stop calling people Hitler are saying this is going
Speaker 1: to be the last election. If we lose blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: or both sides are going to double down on the
Speaker 1: we have to fight as dirty as they fight because
Speaker 1: they fight dirty and we've been too nice. We got
Speaker 1: to fight dirty. Now both sides are going to do that,
Speaker 1: and it's going to get worse and more ugly, right,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna end up with worse people in politics
Speaker 1: because normal people won't get into politics because it's too dangerous,
Speaker 1: which obviously it's that, it's beyond the heckler's veto, it's
Speaker 1: the assassin's veto. Not good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this is going to accelerate that trend
Speaker 4: of good people not wanting to get into politics, which
Speaker 4: was already way down the road.
Speaker 1: I mean, you had.
Speaker 4: And I won't bother name checking them because everybody's so
Speaker 4: fired up and divided these days. But some of the
Speaker 4: best people in Congress in the Senate have checked out,
Speaker 4: they've left, they've resigned or not run for reelection because
Speaker 4: they're like, this is ugly and stupid. We don't accomplish anything.
Speaker 4: It's all just fundraising and hate. And if you add
Speaker 4: to that a little and now it's really dangerous. What
Speaker 4: sort of people are going to run for office.
Speaker 1: Or our journalism. So I was listening to the Dispatch
Speaker 1: podcast and Mega mccardal, who writes for the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: was on there. I don't know what you'd call her politics.
Speaker 1: She's a conservative, but uh, I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of you people would disagree with her. I think she's brilliant.
Speaker 1: But any who, she said, Oh, she gets death threats
Speaker 1: all the time. She gets people send her pictures of
Speaker 1: her house with a bullseye over it. She many as
Speaker 1: an opinion writer for the Washington Post. Yikes, she said,
Speaker 1: you just have to get used to it. I could
Speaker 1: not get used to that. I mean, we get more
Speaker 1: hate and veiled and sometimes not veiled threats ourselves that
Speaker 1: I don't like it. But a picture of my house
Speaker 1: with a bull's eye over it would be oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know. My first thought is I'd be
Speaker 4: sorely tempted to open up a taco stand. But there
Speaker 4: is a definitely a bit of I'm not going to
Speaker 4: back down to you. Depends on your life, your circumstances.
Speaker 1: Right well, and almost always if somebody is not going
Speaker 1: to do anything, almost always, yeah, like very close to always,
Speaker 1: it's somebody it's not going to do anything. It somehow
Speaker 1: makes them feel powerful or cool or whatever it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just want to cause pain or discomfort. Because we've
Speaker 1: dealt with this a lot from threats, and we immediately
Speaker 1: turn them over to police friends, and then they get
Speaker 1: in contact with you. If you want to send threats,
Speaker 1: you're going to get contacted by the police, and they
Speaker 1: almost always, well always in our case, thank god. Oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that. I was just you know, I
Speaker 1: was pissed off from blah blah blah. Yeah, jeez, have
Speaker 1: some restraint, eh, I know.
Speaker 4: I know part of it obviously, and this is obvious,
Speaker 4: and it's been said many times. The very culture of
Speaker 4: online communication and anonymity and being behind the screen and
Speaker 4: the rest of it is you get further and further
Speaker 4: down the really letting your id run wild road because
Speaker 4: over and over again, there are no repercussions.
Speaker 1: Well, didn't you deal with that a lot over the weekend, Katie,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if we want to get into
Speaker 1: that or not, because we don't want to egg that on.
Speaker 1: But you had a lot of hate coming your way
Speaker 1: for something you said, I don't.
Speaker 5: Know what, but oh yeah, no, and it was merely
Speaker 5: correcting someone who posted misinformation and then the next thing
Speaker 5: I know, I was a bigot, I was a racist.
Speaker 5: I should go f myself, I should go kill myself.
Speaker 1: You name it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, from people that I know and people that I've
Speaker 5: never seen before in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So that's not going to go away. I
Speaker 1: don't see that ever changing. So are we just gonna
Speaker 1: get thicker skin to it? Like everybody? And then I
Speaker 1: don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah, get offline. I don't know. Well, man,
Speaker 1: I've come individually, sure, but I mean as a as
Speaker 1: a culture, Oh, we're doomed as a culture. I was
Speaker 1: just hoping that the next generation we're old, this is
Speaker 1: all new to us. You know, we didn't grow up
Speaker 1: this way. But I'm up in the next generation that's
Speaker 1: lived this way their whole lives are going to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to adapt to it. Yeah. I have
Speaker 1: told the story many times that it was my son
Speaker 1: who first said to me, Dad, haters are gonna hate,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. And I thought, Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: bit of wisdom there. It reminds me of the road
Speaker 1: rage thing, where you know, at some point in my
Speaker 1: life I realized, oh that person has a lot of
Speaker 1: anger and they're looking for a target. And if we
Speaker 1: all learn, all right.
Speaker 4: That person who's posts something just horrible online, that's entirely
Speaker 4: about them. It's not about me at all. It's a pathetic,
Speaker 4: sad and angry person. I hope they get help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, that works for a very vast majority
Speaker 1: of people. The haters gonna hate. There's a certain chunk
Speaker 1: who they're hatere is gonna kill, hater's gonna attack, hater's
Speaker 1: gonna blow up.
Speaker 4: Well, my final note on this, and we are doomed,
Speaker 4: is that, uh, you can't look back to any prior
Speaker 4: spasm of violence.
Speaker 1: Or you know, the early seventies or whatever. No, I
Speaker 1: was just about to say that, yeah, because.
Speaker 4: The mechanism for exchanging ideas has changed so completely.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we had like a bombing a week through
Speaker 1: the seventies. Do you realize that across the country. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't have social media. Yeah, dang it, one boy.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I was going to pick
Speaker 1: a side, but I'm not sure it makes any difference.
Speaker 1: You have some sort of right wing I'm using my
Speaker 1: finger quotes because their politics could be all over the place,
Speaker 1: and they could be crazy kill somebody on the left,
Speaker 1: high profile. Roughly, now we got a big problem. But
Speaker 1: same as the other side. You get another conservative killed
Speaker 1: by a left wing loon. Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's going to be no calling off many many dogs.
Speaker 4: My final self serving note on this, he says, having
Speaker 4: already issued his final note. Came across this. When George
Speaker 4: Floyd died, they burned down cities. When Charlie Kirk died,
Speaker 4: we pray and host vigils. We are not the same.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of truth to that.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of truth to that. We will
Speaker 1: finish strong.
Speaker 3: Next forty five seconds, that's what you got to start
Speaker 3: the show. I am going to donate one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars to the Boys and Girls Cla of America. So
Speaker 3: if you stay forty five seconds, it stays.
Speaker 1: At one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Every second you go over forty five seconds, we will
Speaker 3: adduct one thousand dollars away from the Boys and Girls Club.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I can't change it.
Speaker 3: This is a game I'm made up and these are
Speaker 3: the rules.
Speaker 1: So that's a good idea. From the Emmy's Last Night Bargatzi,
Speaker 1: the comedians have a charity for a good cause, and
Speaker 1: if you go over the speech time ducks money. I
Speaker 1: can't change it. That's a pretty funny idea. Huh. So
Speaker 1: we got some texts earlier. If you didn't hear my
Speaker 1: story about giving donuts to my neighbors. That was an
Speaker 1: hour two on the podcast Armstrong You Getty on demand.
Speaker 1: I found myself with a whole bunch of donuts because
Speaker 1: the donut chop gave us extras when we went there
Speaker 1: closing time, and they're sitting around the house and I
Speaker 1: was worried about eating them. I got a brand new neighbor,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I'm gonna take this over to the neighbors.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, hey, here's a little neighborhood welcome gift.
Speaker 1: I felt bad about it, though, as I walked away
Speaker 1: and heard him say to his wife, Oh god, our
Speaker 1: extra neighbor's really a nice guy. Look he brought donuts
Speaker 1: when all I was doing was trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the donuts.
Speaker 3: In my house.
Speaker 1: Oh no, dear, he thought it would be nice. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, so did you weren't completely not thinking
Speaker 1: anything nice? It was there. It's like Michael said, I
Speaker 1: could say, hey, I got an extra pork chop you
Speaker 1: want to, But so you have to be a long
Speaker 1: time listener to get this. When we got this text, Jack,
Speaker 1: give your neighbor your used tennis balls. The story, I
Speaker 1: don't Oh my god, I'll have to tell that again
Speaker 1: on the podcast then if you don't remember it, I'm.
Speaker 3: Strong against bound Strong, get ready, Katie Green and.
Speaker 1: Strong your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.
Speaker 4: Hey, let's get a final thought from everybody on the
Speaker 4: crew to wrap things up for the day. There he
Speaker 4: is in the control room, Michaelangelo, pressing the buttons. Michael,
Speaker 4: what's your final thought?
Speaker 1: You kind of still mind?
Speaker 9: Jack, I was going to suggest giving all your leftovers
Speaker 9: to your next door neighbors. The other thing, too, is Joe,
Speaker 9: I'm really looking forward to this taco Stan. You've mentioned
Speaker 9: it several times that you're going to open one of
Speaker 9: these things, So I'm hungry for daktaves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Buddy in mine and I have been discussing this
Speaker 4: very long time. Joe and Brian's California tacos. Yeah, we're
Speaker 4: going to have the chicken, the fish, the beef.
Speaker 1: Sounds like, oh yeah, yeah, tacos in short, Katie Green
Speaker 1: are esteemed and used woman. As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 5: Thought, on the doughnuts, Jack, you could have thrown them away,
Speaker 5: and there are starving children all over the world, so
Speaker 5: you did the right thing.
Speaker 4: And did they eat some donuts? Or I've never understood
Speaker 4: that rational Jack? Final thought for us?
Speaker 1: Can I do a quick version of the tennis ball story?
Speaker 1: I was playing tennis with my son at the country
Speaker 1: club place where we are. I was dressed particularly poorly
Speaker 1: that day. A couple of guys who were playing tennis
Speaker 1: gave me their used tennis balls. I said, I thought
Speaker 1: you and your son could use.
Speaker 4: The pouring down trodden are attempting to learn this honored, time,
Speaker 4: honored game.
Speaker 1: Isn't that sweet? Here have my fuzzy balls. Oh, Armstrong
Speaker 1: and Geddy wrapic up another grueling four hour workday. So
Speaker 1: many people, thanks so little time.
Speaker 4: Good Armstrong andngeddy dot com for the hot links for
Speaker 4: the swag for Katie's corner. Drops an oat mail bag
Speaker 4: at Armstrong Engeddy dot com. You have an opinion you
Speaker 4: want to share it, be happy to read it.
Speaker 1: Look at that poor down fraud man probably gets to
Speaker 1: see his son once a week from the home eating.
Speaker 1: Let's give him our use tennis balls. See tomorrow, God
Speaker 1: bless America. I'm strong, and there have been so many
Speaker 1: magnificent moments.
Speaker 2: On today's arms Strong and Getty shown, but perhaps none
Speaker 2: finer than this.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you still want a pony so bad.
Speaker 4: I really do think a beautiful little pony I can
Speaker 4: call my own, and you.
Speaker 2: Can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just have a point. Let's not let's not
Speaker 1: give up over a small obstacles, but by Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Getty