Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is
Speaker 1: today about something that did happen here and absolutely sucked.
Speaker 1: And with me to talk about the Atlanta shooting is Scarrison. Hello, Hi,
Speaker 1: not happy to be here? Yeah, yeah, No, this is
Speaker 1: This is not a We're not talking about a current event.
Speaker 1: This happened like what was it last year? So yeah,
Speaker 1: in case someone's listening and wondering if there was another one. No,
Speaker 1: this is specifically talking about Actually there have been a
Speaker 1: couple of shootings in Atlanta since then, obviously there. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're talking we're talking about is is from from last
Speaker 1: year and it ties into many of the topics we
Speaker 1: discussed something the show Yeah A. March sixteenth, two one,
Speaker 1: Robert Aaron Long, a regular at Young's Asian Massage, refused
Speaker 1: to tip after getting a massage shouty a Ton, the
Speaker 1: SPA's owner, confronted him about the tip. Long simply walked away.
Speaker 1: He got dressed, went to the bathroom, pulled out his
Speaker 1: gun and started shooting, leaving shout yit Ton dying on
Speaker 1: the floor. Driving from spa to spa, Long shot nine
Speaker 1: people and killed eight. The loan wounded survivor Alicia Fernandez
Speaker 1: Ortiz got on his knees and begged Long not to shoot.
Speaker 1: Long shot him anyways. There's a there's a there's a tendency,
Speaker 1: when confronted with true horror, to retreat into abstraction, as
Speaker 1: if the abstract is sheltered from the violence of the storm.
Speaker 1: I intend, if briefly, to do it myself. But there
Speaker 1: is no safety there, only the same violence, repeated again
Speaker 1: and again and again in a thousand ways, with a
Speaker 1: thousand names, wearing a thousand faces. Because this is hell
Speaker 1: and we live in it, so on onto the abstract.
Speaker 1: There's a concept in Marxism called trigger um. It's a
Speaker 1: German word. It's usually translated as bearer, in the sense
Speaker 1: of an individual capitalist being the bearer of capitalist social relations.
Speaker 1: They enact this relation by, you know, turning capital into
Speaker 1: more capital, which is what makes a capitalists. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is you know, literally endless debate over what this actually means.
Speaker 1: Most of it is pointless, and the meeting is contested
Speaker 1: enough that I'm going to abuse it a bit further
Speaker 1: and argue that a person can become a bearer of
Speaker 1: historical forces larger than themselves. Robert Aaron Long was the
Speaker 1: bearer of a great number of historical forces. He bore
Speaker 1: the violence of capitalism, of misogyny, of racism, of horror, phobia,
Speaker 1: of whiteness, of Christianity itself, and he unleashed it into
Speaker 1: the world. It's just like the idea of like invoking, right,
Speaker 1: drawing on these external ideas into yourself, and then becoming
Speaker 1: them for like a brief period of time. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's slightly different in that with bearing. It's
Speaker 1: it's not so much that that you're briefly invoking them.
Speaker 1: It's that you're you're constantly a part of the relation.
Speaker 1: So the relation defines you and it and you you
Speaker 1: sort of you constantly enacted by the things that you
Speaker 1: do and doing, like the relation reel. It's more of
Speaker 1: like an ever present thing that is Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah. It's something that's just sort of structures
Speaker 1: how the society works. Right, Like we're all sort of
Speaker 1: like enacting the wage relation, right every time we like,
Speaker 1: do you know like doing this right now? Jobs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are, we are enacting the wage relation. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: after the shooting were left asking, you know why and
Speaker 1: you know, we can name social and historical forces, we
Speaker 1: can talk about sort of antiation, violence and racism and horophobia,
Speaker 1: but what does it actually mean? And you know what,
Speaker 1: what are the forces that long and least in this world?
Speaker 1: What do they look like? And I think I think
Speaker 1: we have we have a good example of this from
Speaker 1: right after Long was arrested. Police Captain J. Baker the
Speaker 1: Cherokee Sheriff's Department UH said this to reporters at a
Speaker 1: press conference. This is about Long in the shooting. He
Speaker 1: was pretty much fed up and at the end of
Speaker 1: his rope, and yesterday it was a really bad day
Speaker 1: for him. And this is what he did. He apparently
Speaker 1: has an issue what he considers a sex addiction, and
Speaker 1: he sees these locations as something that allow him to
Speaker 1: go to these places and it's a temptation for him
Speaker 1: that he wanted to eliminate. Now, Yeah, that there there
Speaker 1: was a lot going on in in in in those
Speaker 1: like two sentences, Um, so you know Cherokee Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there is there is so much going like
Speaker 1: there's somebody somebody somebody later. Yeah, it's incredible. One of
Speaker 1: the things that we're going to go more into the
Speaker 1: next episode. Is it like this, this is where I
Speaker 1: what's his name? This is where the guy who just
Speaker 1: like drew a random line on a map that he
Speaker 1: found from like that he pulled out of his like
Speaker 1: national geographic thing who divided Korea and half like this
Speaker 1: is where he's from. There's this is yeah, there is
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of historical violence in this very
Speaker 1: specific part of Georgia that is all coming together here.
Speaker 1: And oh yeah, his school was also super racist, Like
Speaker 1: there's they had a mascot that was like doing all
Speaker 1: the racist stuff. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: before we go any further, it's worth mentioning that, like
Speaker 1: almost immediately after the Honorable Police Captain gave that press conference,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people on the internet found out that
Speaker 1: Baker had posted like a shirt that said uh COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and imported virus from China. I remember this? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sheriff was pretty pretty racist himself. Yeah, a part of
Speaker 1: many many anti Asian tropes relating to conspiracy theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is you know this, this this is classic twenties
Speaker 1: like anti Asian rhetoric. It's you know, it's stuff that's
Speaker 1: led directly to hundreds of attacks nation Americans since the
Speaker 1: start of the pandemic. And you know, the race is
Speaker 1: on slat, driven by every sector of American society. Now
Speaker 1: people immediately start speculating that Jay Baker had collaborated with
Speaker 1: Long to cover up the racial like motivation for his violence.
Speaker 1: And okay, I think there's some truth to this. The
Speaker 1: cops have been collaborating with Long and his family in
Speaker 1: various ways. I'm going to read a part of an
Speaker 1: article in Vanity Fair written by the journalist Made Jong
Speaker 1: called how the Atlantispas shooting the victims the survivors tell
Speaker 1: a story of America, which is it's this is one
Speaker 1: of the best things that anyone's written about the shooting
Speaker 1: so far. I'm going to read a little bit of
Speaker 1: it because it's Oh boy. I ring the bell at
Speaker 1: the family home, no one answered. Before I could decide
Speaker 1: what to do, a police cruiser showed up. An officer
Speaker 1: who introduced himself as Sergeant Clement, explained that the neighbors
Speaker 1: multiple people had called to report suspicious activity. The one
Speaker 1: good thing about Cherokee County, he told me, is that
Speaker 1: we look out for each other. It's like how it
Speaker 1: used to be in the seventies. I asked Clement what
Speaker 1: specifically the neighbors were worried about, to be honest, he said,
Speaker 1: what they are worried about is they are afraid of revenge.
Speaker 1: What is the context for the like revenge line? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was basically just they were released, like
Speaker 1: they were terrified that like Asian people were going to
Speaker 1: show up, like to this community and take revenge for
Speaker 1: the shooting. Thought they were like attack like the church
Speaker 1: or something. Well, no, like they thought they were gonna
Speaker 1: show up to like the family's house and like attack
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Ah, when is when is that ever happened? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and you know, and you can
Speaker 1: like what what this demonstrates a is just the kind
Speaker 1: of community you're dealing with here. And be also, like
Speaker 1: you just you have very obvious close connection between the
Speaker 1: cops and like Long's family at this point. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of like the covering up, the
Speaker 1: covering up of like the anti h violence part of it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how intentional that would be, because
Speaker 1: I don't think he even recognizes that as racism. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much the cops recognize that as
Speaker 1: a super big part, since that they are already uh,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty racist. I guess most Asian people, Okay, Like
Speaker 1: I I don't even know how much they recognize that
Speaker 1: as being like a thing that isn't normal. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but I think also, like I don't know it the
Speaker 1: the the explicitness to which particularly Baker is being racist
Speaker 1: like makes me suspect that he does that he would
Speaker 1: have been able to figure it out because he's like,
Speaker 1: like you have to go out of your way to
Speaker 1: like have a shirt that says like COVID imported from China,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, but I don't think that he would consider
Speaker 1: that racist, right, Like it's so so racist that, but
Speaker 1: but he can't even consider that. He just think it's
Speaker 1: just like normal, right, Like he's yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: it's like in terms of like them trying to cover
Speaker 1: up any kind of anti Asian um stuff leading towards
Speaker 1: the shooting, they may not see that as like as
Speaker 1: anything to be covered up because they think that's just normal.
Speaker 1: So they're not going to like even focus on it
Speaker 1: because they're like, yeah, I mean obviously right, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just we're so far down the rabbit hole that
Speaker 1: it's hard to even like recognize it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just I'm just it makes it makes
Speaker 1: sense consciousness. And I think also the other thing that's
Speaker 1: going on here that that's I think the other part
Speaker 1: of why they wouldn't have recognized it if they didn't
Speaker 1: use that. Like okay, so like like most people see
Speaker 1: this and they're you know, they kind of like analytically,
Speaker 1: they kind of throw up their hands and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is anti agent violence. They talk about like the
Speaker 1: stuff the particular dangerous face by like Asian women and
Speaker 1: sex workers, and they sort of call it a day,
Speaker 1: and the analysis sort of like stops there, and like
Speaker 1: they're right, like that this is anti Asian violence. The
Speaker 1: violence is primarily inflicted on women, and it particularly on
Speaker 1: sex workers or and this is also very important people
Speaker 1: who are perceived as sex workers no matter what they
Speaker 1: actually do. And yeah, like it's got worse than the pandemic.
Speaker 1: But there's a very very specific kind of violence that
Speaker 1: Long is doing here. It is and it's not it's
Speaker 1: related to, but not identical to the sort of post
Speaker 1: COVID stuff. And I think people really like did a
Speaker 1: disservice to what happened and did it diservice to help
Speaker 1: the people understand it by not actually poking at it,
Speaker 1: because this shooting is at its core and evangelical shooting
Speaker 1: like this is this is this is evangelical violences, is
Speaker 1: Christian violence, and this is this is purity culture. And
Speaker 1: you know, if if you want to understand what actually
Speaker 1: happens here, you have to actually you have to go
Speaker 1: back and you have to understand the Christianity angle be
Speaker 1: because it is critical. Now. East Asia's contact with Christianity
Speaker 1: in the last two hundred years has been broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: extremely bleak. Uh the conclusion of the First Opium War
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty two, which Britain forced China to buy
Speaker 1: opium to cover Britain's trade deficit with the country, and
Speaker 1: then the Britain also stole Hong Kong and then allowed Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all also had the effect of allowing Christian missionaries
Speaker 1: into the country, and it is genuinely unclear which one
Speaker 1: of those acts has the highest body counts. The product
Speaker 1: of the Christian missionaries work was the Typing Rebellion, in
Speaker 1: which the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ waged a
Speaker 1: failed war against the ruling Ching dynasty. That like, even
Speaker 1: if even if you use like the lower estimates of
Speaker 1: the body count, that war makes World War One with
Speaker 1: like a minor border skirmish. It is a just incredibly
Speaker 1: devastating war. And you know that the product of this
Speaker 1: is there's there's famines. There's a such a bunch of
Speaker 1: floods that happened at the same time, and this sends
Speaker 1: an enormous number of immigrants and refugees fling from their
Speaker 1: homes looking for any way to survive. And a lot
Speaker 1: of those people find their way to the US and
Speaker 1: they get imported by American capitalists who are, you know,
Speaker 1: looking for a new labor force to serve as like
Speaker 1: a racial racial buffer between right black workers after the
Speaker 1: Civil War. And the other thing is like it's really
Speaker 1: hard to get to the West coast in there, Like
Speaker 1: they don't the Panama Canal. You have to go over
Speaker 1: land and it sucks and it's hard, and so they
Speaker 1: need a labor force that they can just get to
Speaker 1: the West coast. And it's literally easier for people to
Speaker 1: come from China, and you know, and so they do,
Speaker 1: and it is a it is a brutal existence Chinese
Speaker 1: workers are worked at death building the railroads, and they
Speaker 1: you know, they struggled to carve out a life for themselves,
Speaker 1: and they do halting lead and certain leaps and spurts,
Speaker 1: but they create communities, they build towns and temples and
Speaker 1: cultures in the beginning of a new society. And that's
Speaker 1: when the white working class decides they want to exterminate
Speaker 1: them because this is this is a great country. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: White workers, you know, immediately start blaming Chinese workers for
Speaker 1: the low wages, and they use their workers organizations to
Speaker 1: ethnically climb as the West. The results of this is
Speaker 1: a series of masscres that goes on literally for decades,
Speaker 1: stretching like into the ninth like this, this, this, these
Speaker 1: things starting like the eighteen seventies and they're still going
Speaker 1: in like the nineteen like like in the in the
Speaker 1: like the early nineteen hundreds. Um. And it's at this
Speaker 1: point where Christianity gets involved. Um. I think like most
Speaker 1: people who are listening to the show have probably heard
Speaker 1: at least in passing with the Chinese Exclusion Act, just
Speaker 1: this sort of like the great triumph of like the
Speaker 1: dark alliance of racist and the white working class but
Speaker 1: what I think is less known about is the page
Speaker 1: Act of eight, which band quote lewd and immoral women
Speaker 1: from entering the United States. And this is this is like,
Speaker 1: this is directly targeted at Asian and Chinese women, um,
Speaker 1: who were seen as a threat to the sort of
Speaker 1: racial and moral character of the white Christian American nation
Speaker 1: because of like they're supposed to like inheritent immorality demonstrated
Speaker 1: by the popular US demonstrated by the popular image of
Speaker 1: all Chinese women as sex workers. And you know, I think,
Speaker 1: like looking back on this, this is extremely recognizable that
Speaker 1: this is literally just an anti trafficking panic, like this
Speaker 1: whole thing. It's just it's like this this this, this
Speaker 1: is like this is like proto this is like proto
Speaker 1: q shit um. And you know, and like like there
Speaker 1: is there is legitimately like sex trafficking going on, but
Speaker 1: the existence of like like the fact that there is
Speaker 1: sex trafficking gets used as this sort of like political
Speaker 1: and racial image. It gets projected onto just like all
Speaker 1: Asian women who get portrayed as trafficking victims and you
Speaker 1: simultaneously be like saved but then also expelled from the
Speaker 1: US to preserve both there in the U s's purity
Speaker 1: and you know, like this image of Asian women is
Speaker 1: literally never changed. You will find it today, like to
Speaker 1: this day, people find people using like the exact same
Speaker 1: racist projections like consciously or unconsciously to talk about Asian
Speaker 1: immigrants and like particularly SPA workers. It's it's this like
Speaker 1: it's it's this like incredibly toxic mix of like Christian moralism, sexism,
Speaker 1: horo phobia, and racism. And the racism element is really
Speaker 1: important because like, okay, well this is going on, Like
Speaker 1: prostitution is legal in California, Like you could just do
Speaker 1: this like there, there's there's no law against it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's so you think that like oh
Speaker 1: hey there, you know that this sort of like Christian
Speaker 1: panic would just be targeted against brothels, Like no, it's
Speaker 1: it's like very specifically against Asian women. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: this is because all of this sort of like the
Speaker 1: Christian fears about sex work is you know, and and
Speaker 1: their horror phobia is and and still is today incredibly
Speaker 1: deeply fused with this sort of like that this is
Speaker 1: this is like incredibly racist like concern over the purity
Speaker 1: of the race. Yea, and yeah, you know this this
Speaker 1: will sound familiar to anyone who has been like paying
Speaker 1: attention at all to any of the trafficking panics, and
Speaker 1: if the anti trans stuff, any of just interracial dating
Speaker 1: was only extremely recently allowed at all of like the
Speaker 1: biggest Christian universities, like like they have like they yeah,
Speaker 1: not a it is it's a it's a thing. It's
Speaker 1: a yeah, and it's and and that's and like the
Speaker 1: thing about it it's it's really it's it's really close
Speaker 1: to the surface, right, even even when they're not explicitly
Speaker 1: just saying it, Like if you look, it's been about
Speaker 1: two seconds looking, it's like, oh, this is what's going
Speaker 1: on here? Huh yeah, yeah, And you know, so so
Speaker 1: that that that's sort of that's sort of one side
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, right, is you have this sort
Speaker 1: of like you have this sort of like Christian like
Speaker 1: anti trafficking panic that that creates that that like you know,
Speaker 1: it creates the sort of image of way age women
Speaker 1: are and has a lot of effects. But the other
Speaker 1: side of this coin is that there is a just
Speaker 1: incredible amount of sexual violence that America has inflicted on
Speaker 1: Asian women, like particularly through its war. Successive invasions of
Speaker 1: the Philippines, China, Korea, and Vietnam saw American soldiers committing
Speaker 1: just untold and horrific sexual of violence and Asian women
Speaker 1: like to to the extent that like the US essentially
Speaker 1: just inherit Japan's like mass military rape system in Korea
Speaker 1: and just runs it for itself. Like there's this all
Speaker 1: of all of those things came home so massively. All
Speaker 1: the things that were normalized to oversee is just came
Speaker 1: right back when all the souldiers came back. Yep, yep, yes,
Speaker 1: I think I canna stay next year like the and
Speaker 1: this this has a like the I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think people get the relationship between pop culture depictions and
Speaker 1: of you know, racist despictions of people in pop culture
Speaker 1: and the actual culture backwards. Like they don't help and
Speaker 1: they spread it. But like you know, the the like
Speaker 1: me love you long time ship from like Kubrick like
Speaker 1: that that doesn't come out of nowhere. That's not just
Speaker 1: Kubrick like that's that is that's something that was brought
Speaker 1: home by the American racists and you know, like when
Speaker 1: when they got back and that stuff like it's it's
Speaker 1: not just that like the stuff is being spread by media,
Speaker 1: it's that the media is being influenced by the people
Speaker 1: who did this stuff and then came home. It is
Speaker 1: the full circle thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: even still now, there's such a such a degree of
Speaker 1: like Asian women being like an object to possess, even
Speaker 1: more so than like it's like even more so than
Speaker 1: like regular women, which obviously under under like a lot
Speaker 1: of like Pachechal stuff in the States and you know
Speaker 1: overseas everywhere, you know, women are seen as objects to possess,
Speaker 1: but specifically there's that is so much heightened for uh
Speaker 1: women of color and specifically like Asian women. Um that
Speaker 1: that idea, I mean you see it everywhere, for like
Speaker 1: the libertarian Asian girlfriend trope. You like, you see this
Speaker 1: in media all the time. Um that, like the Asian
Speaker 1: wife is something you own and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: very extremely pervasive. Yeah. And I think the reason why
Speaker 1: is that, like this image gets refreshed every time of
Speaker 1: generation comes from from a war in Asia. And you
Speaker 1: know that that's what because because the US has been
Speaker 1: fighting wars in Asia like forever, I mean basically since
Speaker 1: like they've been fighting wars of Asians late Agian hundreds,
Speaker 1: and you know, like the violence of each subsect generation
Speaker 1: just sort of refreshes this image of like Asian women
Speaker 1: as prostitutes bodies are supposed to just be like accessible
Speaker 1: to white men at all times. But this has a
Speaker 1: sort of there's a kind of clash that happens here too,
Speaker 1: because like on the one hand, you have this sort
Speaker 1: of like racial and sexual feticization, and on the other
Speaker 1: hand you of Christian horror phobia, and this gives you
Speaker 1: this culture where like Asian women are at once seen
Speaker 1: as like hyperdesirable and hyper available, but are also just
Speaker 1: like utterly despised for both. And this sort of like
Speaker 1: racist pathology, this like this, like this, like this, this
Speaker 1: sexual desire bixed with loathing is at just the absolute
Speaker 1: core of of the Atlantic shooting. And as if remind
Speaker 1: us if its origin, Long carries out as massacre on
Speaker 1: the fifty three anniversary of My lie and We're bad.
Speaker 1: So I think we now have enough context to like
Speaker 1: go back to long S initial description of why he
Speaker 1: carries out the attack, which to self describe sex addiction
Speaker 1: is desire to quote eliminate temptation. Yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you cannot overstate the degree in which both the police, uh,
Speaker 1: the church, and the shooter himself framed this not as
Speaker 1: an antigation thing, but as like as a as a
Speaker 1: as something addressing his sex addiction. Um, that was the
Speaker 1: angle he talked about it. Now, there's all of the
Speaker 1: antiation stuff that is like right under the surface, but
Speaker 1: it's like probably up so much of what's going on.
Speaker 1: But the thing that they were publicly talking about was
Speaker 1: this so called sex addiction. Yeah, and and I think
Speaker 1: this is this is you know, this is this is
Speaker 1: a very important angle of this is we should actually
Speaker 1: talk about what that is and because and to understand
Speaker 1: because he just not like okay, so like the six
Speaker 1: edition is I think like actually sort of a thing
Speaker 1: that is a hotly debated Yeah, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not a psychiatrist, don't take advice to be. I think
Speaker 1: it's the slightly more legit of the two things that
Speaker 1: the of the two like fake syndrome things we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about here, but this is not what's going on
Speaker 1: with him and you want to understand, Yeah, yeah, what's
Speaker 1: going on with this? We need to go back to
Speaker 1: enemy of the show. Purity culture. Um, friend friend of
Speaker 1: a friend of the pod. Yeah, I'm gonna say no.
Speaker 1: I I refused, I had I had friends, And there
Speaker 1: are a couple of times and I was like, I
Speaker 1: refused to call this friend of the show. Dem it
Speaker 1: like I can't pay myself to do it, right. Joshua
Speaker 1: Harris just unsubscribed so long. Like by all accounts, is
Speaker 1: extremely religious. He's heavily involved both his church and his
Speaker 1: high school. Like his high school. Here's a public high school,
Speaker 1: but the public high school has like Christian athletic groups,
Speaker 1: which is a fun thing that they let you do
Speaker 1: in public schools. Um, yeah, it's great. H So you know,
Speaker 1: to get it, to get it an understanding of like
Speaker 1: the kind of baptism we're dealing with here. Here's a
Speaker 1: line from the church's by laws. Quote. We believe that
Speaker 1: any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality,
Speaker 1: bisexual conduct, beast reality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any
Speaker 1: attempt to change one's sex or disagreement with one's biological sex,
Speaker 1: is sinful and offensive to God. Yep, you know, and
Speaker 1: all of that's in the Bible. Yeah, they have you
Speaker 1: can tell because they cite three passages not if we
Speaker 1: say that. Well, okay, I know there is there is
Speaker 1: beast reality, stuffy city is I think any incest is
Speaker 1: in there. Well, I mean they keep doing this stuff.
Speaker 1: But parts of the Bible are pro incests, parts of
Speaker 1: Bible are Antians. Yeah, it's um. The Bible has a
Speaker 1: real sticky relationship with the topic of incest um. But yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they thoroughly slite all of their passages for
Speaker 1: they talked about when they talk about bisexual conduct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's well, I mean, you know, the one that's great
Speaker 1: is the attempting to change one's sex or disagreement with
Speaker 1: one's biological sex, a thing that I I'm guessing they're
Speaker 1: citing God created males and females and males and females.
Speaker 1: He created them, and I don't actually think so because
Speaker 1: they're not. They didn't. Okay, Yeah, this this is me.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just speculating based on my experience in
Speaker 1: these in these types of types of groups. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so speaking of these types of groups, so Long is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so Long's church like expels him after the the shooting
Speaker 1: the murders. Yeah, but Okay. It's interesting because, like I'm
Speaker 1: they violated their own by laws because there's no way
Speaker 1: they could have done their expulsion through actual explosion protocol
Speaker 1: and that amount of time, because they would have acted
Speaker 1: like send people to visit him in jail. See, I
Speaker 1: think you're overestimating the degree to which churches care about
Speaker 1: what their by laws actually say. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: the blanking on it. What's the thing, Matt Matt eighteen.
Speaker 1: There's like the thing that churches have that's like their
Speaker 1: explosion protocol and they like send someone to this. This
Speaker 1: is I think you're I think you're slightly overestimating how
Speaker 1: much people actually care about that which it's all just
Speaker 1: a racket used to prop up the authority of the
Speaker 1: leaders and push people towards whatever political gains that the
Speaker 1: movement has. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, see speaking of getting
Speaker 1: people to submit to the authority and polue against the movements. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about purity culture on this show, like
Speaker 1: we had um. So we're not going to go into
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of detail about it here. The very
Speaker 1: should at least describe what it is. So the very
Speaker 1: very very short version is it's like it's an incredibly patriarchal,
Speaker 1: like Evangelical Christian religious system in which like sex before
Speaker 1: marriage is seen as like an incredible sin, and there's
Speaker 1: just like like focused on like the purity of the wife,
Speaker 1: and like like a woman is essentially the property of
Speaker 1: her husband, and the entire goal of for existence just
Speaker 1: to like bare and raised children. So it was it
Speaker 1: was invented, but it was the modern version. It was
Speaker 1: invented in the nineties, strongly influenced by a book written
Speaker 1: by someone named Joshua Harris. It was called I Kissed
Speaker 1: Dating Goodbye. The book promotes a pro courtship to marriage
Speaker 1: pipeline instead of dating sitting dating will probably encourage you
Speaker 1: to have sex before marriage, which is of course bad um.
Speaker 1: And under under all of this, under like the actual
Speaker 1: like you know, if you if you if you started
Speaker 1: digging into this, all the stuff it talks about in
Speaker 1: terms of like sexual purity um is about you know,
Speaker 1: women are responsible for men's sexual like um sins, right,
Speaker 1: Like if if a man lasts for a woman, that's
Speaker 1: the woman's fault, not the man's fault. Right, It's because
Speaker 1: women must be presenting in a way that causes that
Speaker 1: to happen. Um. Right, So women's women's bodies and clothes
Speaker 1: should be designed in a way so that it will
Speaker 1: not cause men to stumble. Um. And by stumble they
Speaker 1: mean get horny. Um. And you know it's something that
Speaker 1: you know, your your body is both this thing that
Speaker 1: should be pure, but also you should be ashamed of it,
Speaker 1: right because it causes the sin Uh, women can't really
Speaker 1: have any sexual desire on their own. Women are going
Speaker 1: to really enjoy sex. Um. It's it's specifically for men,
Speaker 1: and it's for procreation. Um. It's in in in intense
Speaker 1: value tied to your idea of like virginity and virginity
Speaker 1: extending out to like personal purity and spiritual purity. Like
Speaker 1: if you have sex before marriage, you are like like unclean.
Speaker 1: It's it's like it's like your it's like your chewed
Speaker 1: up gum, Like you like you would not pick up
Speaker 1: someone's Like if you found some chewed up gum on
Speaker 1: the street, you wouldn't put it back in your mouth. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the idea, like if you if if you're
Speaker 1: not a virgin, you are you are like chewed up gum,
Speaker 1: like you are already used your spent um. So you have,
Speaker 1: so you save save for marriage so that only your
Speaker 1: husband can chew up your gum, and then after your
Speaker 1: marriage you're just stuck there forever. Right. It's also like
Speaker 1: very very very anti divorce. Um. And there's really no difference,
Speaker 1: like there's they don't really there's not much discussion around consent.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, you know, as you know that they surprise
Speaker 1: you based on what I all just said, like obviously
Speaker 1: they don't care about consent. Um. There's like they view
Speaker 1: any they view a sexual assault just as bad as
Speaker 1: consensual sex before marriage. They see them as the same thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's basically the it's the same structures that they're
Speaker 1: both in equal sin uh And I mean that is
Speaker 1: that is purity culture one oh one. We could we
Speaker 1: could just do an entire episode on purity culture and
Speaker 1: we probably would do. We could do like yeah, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the really important thing about it is like
Speaker 1: this is basically like in terms of they're sort of
Speaker 1: being like like I don't know what if you call
Speaker 1: it a counterculture, but they're sort of being like an
Speaker 1: evangelical cultural machine, Like it's this like this is this
Speaker 1: is what they're pushing. Is like as like their mass
Speaker 1: movement for for youth expect especially in the nineties and
Speaker 1: two thousand's, we have we have stuff like purity rings,
Speaker 1: which is like you know, when you when you're a teen,
Speaker 1: you'll get like objects or jewelry which are like like
Speaker 1: almost like magical items you put on to like show
Speaker 1: that I am going to keep myself pure and by
Speaker 1: doing this, by doing this action, it's symbolizing that and
Speaker 1: therefore internalizing it. There's also um purity balls, which is
Speaker 1: not what you'll so when when you use the word
Speaker 1: purity ball, certain things will come to mind, right UM.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they're not as fun as what's what you are thinking. UM.
Speaker 1: A purity ball is just like a formal dance event,
Speaker 1: you know, like a ball that you put on um,
Speaker 1: which is meant to. It's a it's a meant to.
Speaker 1: Usually it's like fathers take their daughters there and then
Speaker 1: their daughters swear to make a ginity pledge um to
Speaker 1: protect their purity of mind, body and spirit UM, so
Speaker 1: that they will not then infect you know boys, uh
Speaker 1: and cause them to stumble and and commit the sin
Speaker 1: of lust, which again is an incredibly weird thing to
Speaker 1: do at a ball like it. It's so weird. We
Speaker 1: also yeah, it's ye most most Yeah, it's well, I
Speaker 1: think I think we've got into enough of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the specific sort of thing, I think the last
Speaker 1: thing I will look at. There there there is one
Speaker 1: more thing were But so before that, I do want
Speaker 1: to point out that Joshua Harris, who like is in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways responsible, like single handedly responsible for
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of this, she is Japanese. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking thanks for that one, buddy, great job, good ship man.
Speaker 1: In he announced that he and his wife were divorcing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you and and and now and now no longer
Speaker 1: considers himself like the type of Christian he was before.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm unclear what his actual spiritual beliefs at the moment,
Speaker 1: but he did he did try to distance himself from
Speaker 1: his from from what I've read, like, it's unclear that
Speaker 1: he knows. So oh he he knows. He definitely knows.
Speaker 1: I can, I can, I can. I can guarantee that
Speaker 1: he's he's used to be running. He has a new grift.
Speaker 1: Now it sucks, they always get new grifts. But actually
Speaker 1: when we will, yeah, we will get into the new
Speaker 1: grift industry in the seconds. Um. But yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the other things that's that's a big part of this
Speaker 1: is like a deep and abiding hatred of porn. Like
Speaker 1: all of this is yeah, like as you said, like
Speaker 1: in the list of by laws watching porn again, it's
Speaker 1: the same as sexual assaults. Yeah, it's it's morally the
Speaker 1: same level of sin. Yeah. And and like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean and and you can read that both ways
Speaker 1: as how seriously they take watching porn and how seriously
Speaker 1: I take sexual assault because it does go it does
Speaker 1: go both ways. Yeah. Um. And this this thing, the
Speaker 1: fact that that this is this is like considered a
Speaker 1: sin is the apotheosis like the apothiosis that this is
Speaker 1: is poor an addiction, which again like not really dubious existence.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is even more dubious and
Speaker 1: sex than sex addiction. Like there's no there, this is
Speaker 1: this is like this is just fake. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: an entire culture that's that's a like developed around stopping
Speaker 1: manifest seeing poor and these like there's like these incredibly
Speaker 1: elaborate accountability setups where like there's like apps you install
Speaker 1: on your stuff, like the ways to alter your IP
Speaker 1: addressed to certain sites. Yeah, Robert Aaron Long the shooter,
Speaker 1: like he he uses a flip phone instead of a
Speaker 1: smartphone because he thinks having a phone will like lead
Speaker 1: in presentation. Um now Long. Yeah. And it's the product
Speaker 1: of this is that there's like, there's like this entire
Speaker 1: industry that is built up around quote unquote treating the
Speaker 1: porn addiction. Yeah. Um, and it's it's all bullshit. But
Speaker 1: Long had spent at twice been in one of these
Speaker 1: facilities called hope Quest. Now, hope Quest is an affiliated
Speaker 1: for old friends that focus in the family. But that
Speaker 1: that's not actually the part I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: because what's more interesting about hope Quest is that it's
Speaker 1: founded by roy A. Blankenship, a former ex gay who
Speaker 1: left both hope Quests and the X gay community to
Speaker 1: live with his husbands. Now fun Now this what a
Speaker 1: what a what what what a what a funny pattern
Speaker 1: we keep finding out? Yeah? No, Now, I think I
Speaker 1: think my two listeners, if you were, if you were
Speaker 1: not as cursed as as as we are as we
Speaker 1: are and you don't know what it ex gay is, um,
Speaker 1: X gays were. There are this movements of like Evangelical Gaze,
Speaker 1: who claimed that like this, this is the thing that
Speaker 1: starts in like the ninetcent two thousands, they claimed that
Speaker 1: like they've gone to conversion therapy and it made them
Speaker 1: not gay. Yeah yeah, and and this and you know,
Speaker 1: and in partial part of partial was going on here
Speaker 1: is they claim that that like they did it voluntarily
Speaker 1: because like involuntarily doing conversion therapy had gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where it was like bad pr wise, because Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: you were like nturing children and they're still torturing children,
Speaker 1: but but this time they're like, no, it's voluntary, and
Speaker 1: that this is like the big this is the rights
Speaker 1: big cultural campaign against the gay right foods in two thousands,
Speaker 1: and uh, like I I would say this, like it's
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the same thing as the way they
Speaker 1: use detensitioners, but like there's a lot of it's very similar.
Speaker 1: And of course obviously that we now have the x
Speaker 1: X gay movement yeah yeah, and and you know, and
Speaker 1: and and to to like so okay, so like the
Speaker 1: X gay movement falls apart in like the late two
Speaker 1: thousands and nearly dozen tents because like it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: The leaders, all the leaders were initially gay. He said
Speaker 1: they were X gay and then kept having gay sex
Speaker 1: because that rules. Yeah, and they all kind of realized,
Speaker 1: maybe we should stop doing this thing that keeps killing kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Blaken Blankenship to his credit, like he'd been a
Speaker 1: big person doing this and then he was just like
Speaker 1: like one of his friends like suicide and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, and so like he stops and he like
Speaker 1: he's announce in version therapy and he's now appropriate. So
Speaker 1: many of the focus on the family people who were
Speaker 1: involved in like love one out all of these escay programs.
Speaker 1: So many of them then renounced it, accepted their their gayness,
Speaker 1: and then moved to Portland's fucking Oregon. So many of
Speaker 1: them didn't though like this, this is what's interesting about this,
Speaker 1: so okay. So so while he was sort of figuring
Speaker 1: this out, blankets Ship had a founded hope quest, right,
Speaker 1: And so he leaves with the people who are running
Speaker 1: it now like our X gays, who they're like the
Speaker 1: only X gays left who didn't renounce it and who
Speaker 1: like still claimed to be X. I mean, they they've
Speaker 1: taken their stuff about how like homosexuality should be like
Speaker 1: dealt with by saying by having by marrying women and
Speaker 1: just not acting on it or whatever, like they they
Speaker 1: took thatself out of their bios, but they apparently they
Speaker 1: still believe it, like like they they've never they've never
Speaker 1: these people have never probably come out against it. And
Speaker 1: you know what essentially happened was that like enough of
Speaker 1: enough of the ex gays like that, the collapse enough
Speaker 1: that like they had to find and they had to
Speaker 1: find a new thing to do. And the new thing
Speaker 1: they found to do was they went and they went
Speaker 1: into the porn addiction treatment industry. Yeah, and also if
Speaker 1: if if you want more background like the X gay thing,
Speaker 1: you can listen to the my my two part are
Speaker 1: on Focus on the Family and James Dobson for Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards. Also for our week on the War on transpeople,
Speaker 1: we discussed some of the same stuff for the first episode,
Speaker 1: which is the evangelical gay marriage um like thing that
Speaker 1: so yeah, we we we have we do we we
Speaker 1: do have we do have something like produced scripted stuff
Speaker 1: on these topics if you want more background on them. Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a story where there's like
Speaker 1: every single thread you've ever done suddenly is coming together
Speaker 1: in one moment of horrific violence. This is where Long
Speaker 1: like winds up for treatments for like or and sex
Speaker 1: addiction addictions, which I kind of emphasize enough. This is
Speaker 1: literally what he's talking about is literally that he watches
Speaker 1: porn like like that that's what porn sex addiction like means.
Speaker 1: And because none of this is real, the treatments like
Speaker 1: don't work because again it's all fake. And I do
Speaker 1: would also say hope quest Is operates out of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, so so so.
Speaker 1: So he goes into treatment twice and he's he's he
Speaker 1: says it like Maverick, which is dislike recovery center. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. And he goes home and his parents
Speaker 1: kick him out of his house for watching porn. And
Speaker 1: you know, and I think this is something that like
Speaker 1: is important to understand, which is that the people inside
Speaker 1: of this world really deeply believe this stuff, right and
Speaker 1: and like watching porn has real social consequences for them,
Speaker 1: and it has you know, and this, this has, this
Speaker 1: has has has like a profound affect on how these
Speaker 1: people think. I'm going to read a quote from watching
Speaker 1: post article Bayliss, who was Long's roommate at Maverick Recovery,
Speaker 1: a sober living facility in Roswell, Georgia, in two thousand,
Speaker 1: nineteen and two, and the months between his stay at
Speaker 1: Hope stays at Hope, Quest said Long felt his very
Speaker 1: salvation was at stake, as he told his roommate that
Speaker 1: he was quote living in sin and not walking in
Speaker 1: the light. He was walking in darkness. So this this
Speaker 1: is how these people like see this stuff right, like
Speaker 1: like this is this is literally about whether you're you're
Speaker 1: like yeah, they're they're talking about like something extremely existential
Speaker 1: like it like it is. This all seems very silly
Speaker 1: to people who are not inside it because it is
Speaker 1: it's it is. It is absurd. But if the people
Speaker 1: involved in it, it is like the totality of the universe,
Speaker 1: like it is, it is so big. It's like the
Speaker 1: biggest thing. It's so important because you're you're determining what you're,
Speaker 1: what you will, what's your conscious being will exist for
Speaker 1: if for thou the thousands of ears like that, like
Speaker 1: this is what they actually believe, So it's super important,
Speaker 1: Like it's it is it is worth killing before because
Speaker 1: that's that's how important this is. Like like I think,
Speaker 1: I think there's no sense to which it is more
Speaker 1: important than life or death because you dying, like, okay,
Speaker 1: you die, once you go to physical death doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Yeah, and and this, you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about this, like it's there. There's
Speaker 1: those things. There's there's a social consequences. You can get
Speaker 1: kicked out of your house. You can kicked out of
Speaker 1: your church if you keep doing this, like like these
Speaker 1: churches will kick you out. Um and and this, you know,
Speaker 1: this makes the ideology at work here incredibly powerful, and
Speaker 1: it provides a mixture of this like this, this really
Speaker 1: incredible self hatred for like falling into sin and giving
Speaker 1: him too temptation, and it also creates a hat of
Speaker 1: the temptation itself. And this brings us all the way
Speaker 1: up to the shooting. Purity culture. Purity culture is the
Speaker 1: key that onlocks, you know, the meeting of Long's words,
Speaker 1: we can under stand the explanation that the police gave,
Speaker 1: which again, like he apparently has an issue what he
Speaker 1: considers a sex addiction and sees these locations as something
Speaker 1: that allows him to go to these places, and it's
Speaker 1: a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate, you know,
Speaker 1: And there there was a at the memorial for for
Speaker 1: the shooting last year. UM sex worker organizer Kail and
Speaker 1: Jong said this, they hate us so they can hate
Speaker 1: themselves less. And I think that's that's a really great Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a really good analysis. Yes, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: perfect calculation of like what's happening here. But this is
Speaker 1: the part of the story with the media just violently
Speaker 1: and spectacularly fox up to adapt. They they dropped the
Speaker 1: purity ball. You might say, yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's really horrible there, Like, what they've essentially done is
Speaker 1: an act two years of racist violence against people who
Speaker 1: had either literally just survived a mass shooting or who
Speaker 1: are literally dead. And the way they do this is
Speaker 1: the press reads long talking about sex edition addiction, and
Speaker 1: they immediately assumed that the women in these massage parlors
Speaker 1: have been having sex with them, and they start there's
Speaker 1: like this whole hunt that they do to like search
Speaker 1: for evidence that massage workers were doing like full service
Speaker 1: sex work, based off of again the words of a
Speaker 1: literal racist mass murderer and their own racist preconception that
Speaker 1: like all Asian women especially SPA workers are also sex workers.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, on the one hand, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: true that this stuff is fueled by horror phobia, and
Speaker 1: also like morally, who gives a ship what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But the immediate problem here is that by doing this
Speaker 1: witch hunt, you were seeking the police on the survivor
Speaker 1: you're putting you're putting a survivors in immense legal and
Speaker 1: physical danger. Yeah, and and we we will talk about
Speaker 1: this more next episode. But like, these women have already
Speaker 1: seen more police violence and police raids than all of
Speaker 1: the journalists writing about this combined I've seen in their
Speaker 1: entire lives. And if any of these people had bothered
Speaker 1: to spend five seconds thinking about what purity culture is,
Speaker 1: they would have realized it long is from a fanatically
Speaker 1: puritanical culture, a culture where, for example, in massage given
Speaker 1: by a woman where the man is like almost entirely naked,
Speaker 1: uh is something that would absolutely have been considered a
Speaker 1: sexual service. And like you know, and and if you
Speaker 1: think about this again for like five seconds, right when
Speaker 1: he's talking about removing temptation, he already thinks of all
Speaker 1: of these women as sex workers, because that's that's what
Speaker 1: he thinks the massage is he thinks like that that
Speaker 1: that that's that's how he thinks about massages. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it is it women are the like women do this,
Speaker 1: then they caused men to sin, right, it's not it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what's going on with the man.
Speaker 1: It is specifically what the woman is doing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and and and even then like it doesn't actually like
Speaker 1: I think I think that the important distinction here is
Speaker 1: that it does not matter when Long talks about how
Speaker 1: this is a place that was giving into station and
Speaker 1: also like like he was giving inemptation and he was
Speaker 1: like he was going there for his sex addition, Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually matter to him whether or not any
Speaker 1: of these women have ever like exchange money exact at all.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It doesn't it doesn't need to be, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because these people are fucking like it just engulfed in
Speaker 1: like it's so totally engulfed in this incredibly like violence
Speaker 1: and racist and misogynists homophobic ideology that it just sort
Speaker 1: of you know, like that that's just how they think.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is where we're going to
Speaker 1: return one final time in this episode to race, because
Speaker 1: there's a mistake that people make thinking about this analytically
Speaker 1: that prevents him from understanding both what's happening in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and how sort of capitalists and racist violence happens everywhere.
Speaker 1: Which is that like, okay, so right when this happened, um,
Speaker 1: like when when the when the press conference dropped, you
Speaker 1: got all that there are a lot of people like
Speaker 1: I think Glenn Greenwalld did this thing leef fang, Like
Speaker 1: there's a whole crew of people who were like, this
Speaker 1: isn't about Asian racism at all. This is about him
Speaker 1: like hating sex workers. And okay, it is true that
Speaker 1: human labor has been transformed into a commodity that can
Speaker 1: be bought and sold at will. Now on on a
Speaker 1: on a more theoretical level, right, you will see sort
Speaker 1: of incredibly theory brain people who will talk about how
Speaker 1: you know, in in March's Critique of Political economy, right,
Speaker 1: all labor is astracting, interchangeable. Each unit of labor time
Speaker 1: is equivalent, identical, and exchangeable. But here in the massage parlor,
Speaker 1: this is a deadly simplification this labor. That the labor
Speaker 1: that is going on here is Asian. It is indelibly
Speaker 1: stamped with race and ethnicity and nationality and hundreds of
Speaker 1: years of violence and perception. Um Rumors Paca, a assistant
Speaker 1: professor at the Institute of Women's Studies at the University
Speaker 1: of Georgia. Rohod a piece last year called white supremacy
Speaker 1: in the wellness industry or why it matters that that
Speaker 1: this happened at a spa um and I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a passage moment because it's very good. Massage spas,
Speaker 1: also called salons or parlors like the one where these
Speaker 1: crimes took place, are part of a broader industrial complex
Speaker 1: that capitalizes on the racist belief that Asian people and
Speaker 1: Asian woman in particular, possess magical, spiritual, and sexual healing abilities.
Speaker 1: These attitudes belong to an entrenched Orientalist infrastructure in the
Speaker 1: United States that connects yoga and meditation and massage to tourism, pleasure,
Speaker 1: and escape. Signaled by the exotic tropical flower and the
Speaker 1: photo above and there's a photo of flower at a parlor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And and this this labor, the labor of
Speaker 1: of of the massage that's happening here is it depends
Speaker 1: almost entirely on a very specific performance of a specific
Speaker 1: kind of Asian femininity. And you know when this sort
Speaker 1: of gender and racialized violence, but when when this gender
Speaker 1: and racialized labor comes into contact with Long and all
Speaker 1: of the sort of historical forces that he's bearing, Humbird
Speaker 1: is the workers, And yeah, I think, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the part of the story of the Lanta shooting that
Speaker 1: I think if people know about Atlanta shooting at all, like,
Speaker 1: this is the part they know about, right, they know
Speaker 1: the story of Robert Aaron Long. But there are other
Speaker 1: stories here, stories that aren't stories that in large part
Speaker 1: are just not about the US at all. Um. There
Speaker 1: are the stories of the victims, the survivors, and the
Speaker 1: absolute hell that brought them into the massage parlor in
Speaker 1: the first place on the horrific night. And those are
Speaker 1: the stories that we're gonna tell in part two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that doesn't for us today. I do want to say,
Speaker 1: I know, uh, I know Christmas planning these for the
Speaker 1: anniversary of the shooting, but they proved to be quite
Speaker 1: the daunting task to put together. I had to get
Speaker 1: I had to get pushed back for a while. So
Speaker 1: but but big thanks to you are doing the work too.
Speaker 1: Read through all of the horrible things, and if, like
Speaker 1: the other thing I said about this, like if if
Speaker 1: you think this is bad, wait till part two, which
Speaker 1: is even more wide spanning and has horrific and disturbing
Speaker 1: violence in a way that will I don't know, reduced
Speaker 1: media tears multiple times. And yeah, we'll leave you an
Speaker 1: existential dread of the condition of this world. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I guess again there there is there There is ways
Speaker 1: to combat it, right, because all of these a lot
Speaker 1: of these things, all right, you know, problems with like
Speaker 1: viewpoint and ideas in terms of how we view sex,
Speaker 1: how we view women, how we view race, um. And
Speaker 1: there are things that when you see you can interrogate
Speaker 1: in people, um, especially if you're especially if you're a Christian,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're going to church. These there are
Speaker 1: things to watch out for and you can push back
Speaker 1: on because it's and doing so can maybe save people's lives,
Speaker 1: because these ideas have a death count. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I think there's another part of this too, which
Speaker 1: is that you know, I mean, the reason we talk
Speaker 1: about purity culture stuff so much, the reason we talk
Speaker 1: about the mobilizations of the evangelical rights so much, is
Speaker 1: that they keep producing these movements that you know, that
Speaker 1: that put that put our lives in danger. And the
Speaker 1: only way that we can stop this, and this is
Speaker 1: a thing that we can do, is you have to
Speaker 1: actually destroy their movement, right you have you have to
Speaker 1: you have to actually break their power. You have to
Speaker 1: you know, you have to find various ways to break
Speaker 1: the power, break the power of these churches, and you
Speaker 1: have to find ways to break the power of their
Speaker 1: political movements. And that is not an easy task. But
Speaker 1: if if we want to live in a world well,
Speaker 1: I mean, just point blank, if if we want to
Speaker 1: live in a world and not in you know, like
Speaker 1: four degrees fahrenheit, like unlivable death scape, like, we have
Speaker 1: to deal with these people because they are the source
Speaker 1: of almost every right wing movement that that we're facing,
Speaker 1: and they have to be crushed before they do this again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're they're going to try. I mean, there's yeah.
Speaker 1: Because the biggest thing would would say is like reaching
Speaker 1: out to people who you know are indus or if
Speaker 1: you if you go to church, I think it's your
Speaker 1: duty as a Christian to push back on these things
Speaker 1: because I'm not gonna bash anyone specifically for whatever religion
Speaker 1: they have I understand why people have this. I I
Speaker 1: can see how they work. Um. You know, I was
Speaker 1: raised in something very similar. Um. But you can you
Speaker 1: can still push back on the type of rhetoric that
Speaker 1: leads to these things, in the type of like like
Speaker 1: objectification and racism that necessitates violence and gets people to
Speaker 1: be okay with violence, um, and pushing back against like
Speaker 1: a Christian apocalyptic worldviews, and like the idea your your
Speaker 1: actions will determine your you know how, the spiritual quality
Speaker 1: of your soul and where it's going to reside for
Speaker 1: all of eternity. Right. All these things are our ideas
Speaker 1: that are pretty pretty like innately dangerous. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: ways to do religion that don't have that. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: I think I think that is a good enough place
Speaker 1: to leave it for today, because I know part two
Speaker 1: we're going to have some more more fire. Why why
Speaker 1: widespread problems? Yeah, alright, well this has when make it
Speaker 1: happen here. You can find us in the social media
Speaker 1: places that happened here pods. You can also flee into
Speaker 1: the woods to the woods. But but but before you
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