Speaker 1: What's blanket training my baby? Now, that's a horrible way
Speaker 1: to introduce your show. Thank god Sophie's not here. We
Speaker 1: have been talking. This is behind the Bastards podcast Bad People,
Speaker 1: Part two dugger episodes about blanket training my cats. Um,
Speaker 1: But it turns out cats are incapable of learning things.
Speaker 1: That would have been a you know, a great slogan
Speaker 1: for Godard n t. I would have been uh, training
Speaker 1: your baby's We have the blanket answers. We have the
Speaker 1: blanket answers. Yeah, blanket abusive. I don't know, there's not
Speaker 1: great jokes to tell about. There's profoundly abusive cult Um.
Speaker 1: Sean back again to finish our two part on the
Speaker 1: duggers um and hopefully finish talking ship about Ted Wheeler. Um,
Speaker 1: Who's who's who's bad? Mayor? Uh? And who got tear gassed?
Speaker 1: Uh for the fucking likes Um fucking baby. It was
Speaker 1: a real baby about it. Like that's the that's the thing,
Speaker 1: Like after having all of us tear gassed to helen
Speaker 1: back for weeks, thousands of people his cops gassed. As
Speaker 1: soon as it becomes a national anti Trump thing, the
Speaker 1: motherfucker goes out to get like tear gassed once like
Speaker 1: a big baby, and say like, oh, this shouldn't be done,
Speaker 1: and then goes right back to tear gas and people.
Speaker 1: His cops never stopped gassing people. I just anyway, Ted
Speaker 1: Wheeler sucks. Go to Total Recall PDX to help recall him.
Speaker 1: Um and and if anyone wants to start a band
Speaker 1: that makes fun of Ted Wheeler, here's a good name
Speaker 1: for you, tears for fear gassed. Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. I would have gone with. Shit,
Speaker 1: I don't actually have one in the chamber, Um Wheeler
Speaker 1: in this guy, damn it. Okay, you're ahead of me
Speaker 1: on this. Um guns and Ted's is now that's terra
Speaker 1: guns and Rose Cities. God damn it. Okay, Well all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give up trying to trying to win this one.
Speaker 1: So Sean, are you ready to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about Josh Dugger? Oh yeah, I can still feel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a we'll deal with that little problem. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, Josh Dougger returned home from the
Speaker 1: treatment program UH run by a t I that he
Speaker 1: even sent to because he molested two of his sisters. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: It was at this point that his father, Jim Bob,
Speaker 1: decided to involve law enforcement, likely as a matter of
Speaker 1: self protection. If this ever came out in the future,
Speaker 1: he'd want to be able to say that he went
Speaker 1: to the cops when it first started. The cop they
Speaker 1: picked was a state trooper who was a friend of
Speaker 1: the Dugger family. Joshua confessed, and the trooper presumably told him,
Speaker 1: don't do it again. Now, there's a federal law that
Speaker 1: says that people who are like cops and teachers are
Speaker 1: what are called mandatory reporters. This means that if a
Speaker 1: child or anyone really reports child abuse to you, you
Speaker 1: have to report it to somebody like like somebody else
Speaker 1: in You have to escalate it up basically, like you
Speaker 1: can't just be like, yeah, it sounds fucked up, um,
Speaker 1: like it's you're committing a crime if you don't then
Speaker 1: go on to report it. This is the case for teachers,
Speaker 1: it's the case is it for health pare I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, it's like did to even go like to
Speaker 1: to see, like how basic of a protect the children
Speaker 1: thing is. When we get an amber alert in the hospital,
Speaker 1: everyone that's an employee drops what they're doing and goes
Speaker 1: to doorways to make sure like if someone you know,
Speaker 1: if like someone's trying to escape, like maybe the kid
Speaker 1: wander off, maybe someone like tried to steal a baby.
Speaker 1: That happens, Um you yeah, you there. I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's new stories that come up every now and then,
Speaker 1: like someone gets like either grief or they're having mental issues,
Speaker 1: and so they go and they try to get a baby.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah. So but basically everyone has to drop
Speaker 1: what they're doing and go by like a public doorway
Speaker 1: check everyone that goes by, like you got a backpack,
Speaker 1: you got about you gotta make sure like in that Again,
Speaker 1: that's that's if we're not working directly we don't work
Speaker 1: directly with kids or not. Everyone is like I don't
Speaker 1: from doing any cleaning and stuff like that. But that's
Speaker 1: like everyone stopped. There's there's a child safety thing going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes Yeah. So this is again as
Speaker 1: you're saying, like, this is a really basic and very
Speaker 1: like you are supposed to if you are a mandatory reporter,
Speaker 1: take this very seriously. You can go to fucking prison
Speaker 1: if you don't take it seriously. It's a big deal. Um,
Speaker 1: the state trooper did not report this to anybody, didn't
Speaker 1: didn't tell a soul. Uh, And the decision of a
Speaker 1: lawman to break the law in order to protect a
Speaker 1: child molester may seem confusing if you don't know much
Speaker 1: about the cop in question. This is this is supposed
Speaker 1: to be one of those things, even all of my
Speaker 1: issues with the police, as a general rule, most people
Speaker 1: are like, well, but child molesters, Like, we can all
Speaker 1: agree for those people, right, Like, it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a thing that even very wildly opposed people are like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we were all on the same page about this
Speaker 1: this issue, right, Um, not in this case, So he's
Speaker 1: more of a mentor in this a smart lem mentor
Speaker 1: in this case. In two thousand seven, four years after
Speaker 1: his conversation with Josh Dougger, officer Joseph Hutchins pled guilty
Speaker 1: to eight felony counts of quote possessing visual or print
Speaker 1: medium depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to five years in prison and served three. Hutchins
Speaker 1: was released from prison on good behavior in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: and then, while still on parole, he was arrested again
Speaker 1: and charged with four counts of distribution, possession or viewing
Speaker 1: of sexually explicit material involving a child. He was resentenced
Speaker 1: to fifty six years in prison, where he is now
Speaker 1: and will probably die because even cop privilege has his limits.
Speaker 1: They did try to let him out after three years,
Speaker 1: but that's I mean, that's his cruel. Fifty six you know,
Speaker 1: one more one more year could have gotten that Hinz deal,
Speaker 1: could have gotten that sponsorship. Heinz Hines is very big
Speaker 1: and sponsoring child you don't really you got a fifty
Speaker 1: seven in front of anything and some money Scott them
Speaker 1: in trouble a lot. It's you know, they should have
Speaker 1: rethought that idea in hindsight. So from two thousand five on,
Speaker 1: the Duggers grew increasingly popular and relevant. The wild success
Speaker 1: of their and Counting because they changed the name. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of more kids is like whatever, and Counting
Speaker 1: shows We're just gonna call it and Counting, Yeah they were.
Speaker 1: This made them the single most popular public ministry for
Speaker 1: the quiver Full movement. They were never identified as being
Speaker 1: part of such a movement on air. Of course, Josh
Speaker 1: Dugger and continued to be a major part of the
Speaker 1: show because again, nobody knew that he had done this
Speaker 1: right outside of this small circle. His marriage was the
Speaker 1: focus of a special very dugg Er wedding episode. The
Speaker 1: births of his three children were also covered. Now, while
Speaker 1: the family was successful in covering up Josh's crimes, the
Speaker 1: crimes themselves continued. He molested at least three other miners
Speaker 1: a total of five victims UM during the early aughts UM,
Speaker 1: and four of them were his sisters. One of them
Speaker 1: was a baby sister we'll talk more about this was
Speaker 1: a babysitter. We'll talk more about this later. But he
Speaker 1: has at least five child victims UM. While the truth
Speaker 1: about Josh did not become widely known for years, there was, however,
Speaker 1: evidence of it if you knew where to look. In
Speaker 1: two thousand six, Oprah Winfrey booked Jim, Bob and Michelle
Speaker 1: Dugger on her show. The whole family was flown to Chicago,
Speaker 1: taken out for expensive meals, and put up in hotels
Speaker 1: at Oprah's expenses the way Opra Obviously, that's the way
Speaker 1: the show works. The episode never aired, and as best
Speaker 1: as I can determine, it seems that someone close to
Speaker 1: the family found out Josh's secret. There are claims and
Speaker 1: it's kind of weirdo we I don't think we know
Speaker 1: exactly what happens, but like some family member like wrote
Speaker 1: or someone close to family wrote about what had happened
Speaker 1: on a note and like put it in a book,
Speaker 1: and someone else who was I think an associate found
Speaker 1: the book, a woman in her sixties. This person wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to Oprah saying like, hey, don't have these
Speaker 1: people on your show. Their kids a child molester. I
Speaker 1: love the John of God episode. You know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things, um point nine percent of the time
Speaker 1: when Oprah comes up on one of these shows, we're
Speaker 1: being very negative towards her fact checking. This is not
Speaker 1: that kind of story. Oprah does exactly the right thing
Speaker 1: in this situation, which is not a thing that happens often.
Speaker 1: But I will give credit where it's due here. They
Speaker 1: handle it right. So, because obviously Oprah has an effectively
Speaker 1: infinite pile of money, she set a team of people
Speaker 1: into investigating the manner and again a fairly rare example
Speaker 1: of journalistic integrity for the Oprah Winfrey Show. They seem
Speaker 1: to have found some comments online repeating the allegations. Whenever
Speaker 1: they dug up concerned Oprah enough that she it seems
Speaker 1: that she reported them to the Arkansas State Police Child
Speaker 1: Protection Agency and the Washington County Child Protection Agency. She
Speaker 1: didn't just this. The episodes never aired. She did just
Speaker 1: cancel the episodes, but it seems that she reported the duggers,
Speaker 1: which is the right thing to do. Um. That's always
Speaker 1: like the heartbreaking thing for me with Oprah. It's like
Speaker 1: she's the stand in for the gullibility of America. They
Speaker 1: just I just wanted to be true. This sounds so good.
Speaker 1: I want to feel good about it, and then it
Speaker 1: just stuff spins out or she's like, oh, the more
Speaker 1: she follows through, it's like she did this time and
Speaker 1: again she's helped enable molesters and other situations unfortunately, but
Speaker 1: this time she did. She did everything right as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. As far as we know, she
Speaker 1: did everything right. Um, that didn't matter as much as
Speaker 1: it should. Perhaps we can argue maybe there was more
Speaker 1: than could have, but she she took them off her show,
Speaker 1: and she reported them to the law, to law enforcement
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell. Uh. The official police
Speaker 1: report that we've quoted from was filed in December of
Speaker 1: two thousand six. So it does seem likely that she
Speaker 1: reported them and there was an official police report, right
Speaker 1: um now, if so, if if this is how it
Speaker 1: actually went, Because all of this is a little murky,
Speaker 1: Oprah gets kudos for being more critical of the Dugger's
Speaker 1: image than any other mainstream media organ Nobody else really
Speaker 1: devoted that much of a critical eye to them. And again,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a fair man here now. In
Speaker 1: more recent years, once all this blew up, Gawker did
Speaker 1: a deep dive to see what allegations they could find
Speaker 1: online about Josh Dugget that might have been floating around
Speaker 1: when the Duggers were supposed to be on Oprah. The
Speaker 1: earliest comment they found seems to have come from a
Speaker 1: commenter on a two thousand five blog called in the
Speaker 1: commentary was the name she used was concerned Mom, and
Speaker 1: this blog alleges misconduct by the anonymous son of a
Speaker 1: political man at her church. Quote a few years ago,
Speaker 1: the men of the church were meeting after church to
Speaker 1: discuss my friends teenage daughter's apparel. They felt like their
Speaker 1: blouses were too tight and they should bind their chests
Speaker 1: up more go figure. At the same time, the son
Speaker 1: of one of these political men was touching one of
Speaker 1: my friends teenage daughters in a sexual way as she slept.
Speaker 1: This was found out and apologies were made. Although the
Speaker 1: boy was tempted by the girl's tight blouse. The boy
Speaker 1: was sent to one of the training centers to be punished.
Speaker 1: My friends did not return to the home church for
Speaker 1: quite some time after this. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: boy mentioned earlier was betrothed to a girl in the group.
Speaker 1: Both were fourteen at the time. The betrothal was broken
Speaker 1: up by the boy's actions. Just this last year, the
Speaker 1: family of the young man mentioned before was highlighted on
Speaker 1: the Discovery Channel. At the time, they had fourteen children,
Speaker 1: were about to have another, and the mom was receiving
Speaker 1: a Mother of the Year award from our governor. Since
Speaker 1: that time, the same boy was betrothed again to the
Speaker 1: same girl. He was working very hard on a campaign
Speaker 1: for U S Senate for the girl's father. The father
Speaker 1: lost the campaign. He immediately began looking for sin in
Speaker 1: the camp as that could be the only explanation for
Speaker 1: the loss. He found out that the young man betrothed
Speaker 1: to his daughter had committed sexual sins while on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail. The young man now sixteen, was made to
Speaker 1: stand in front of the church and confess his sin.
Speaker 1: So again she doesn't name the Duggers, but it's there's
Speaker 1: the only family with the Discovery show. And there was
Speaker 1: another memory. Jim Holt was his name, who was running
Speaker 1: for office and in Josh, because they wanted Josh to
Speaker 1: in politics, worked on the campaign. The campaign didn't go well,
Speaker 1: and they aimed it on the fact that everyone knew
Speaker 1: he was a fucking molester. And it only became a
Speaker 1: problem when another man in the church couldn't didn't win election,
Speaker 1: because then they had to start looking for We'll talk
Speaker 1: about more the scriptural justifications for this, but basically there
Speaker 1: was sin in the camp and that's that's when he
Speaker 1: became an actual problem for them, that he was molesting kids.
Speaker 1: Typical guy getting mad at someone else when he couldn't
Speaker 1: get his election up. Am I right? That's that's that's
Speaker 1: That was a rough one. I'm not gonna lie to
Speaker 1: a show. That was a rough one. Now in order
Speaker 1: to understand why this fact, after again molesting kids not
Speaker 1: a big punishment, sending in a way that lost a
Speaker 1: political election to another prominent man in the church, that
Speaker 1: got him a significant punishment. In order to understand why
Speaker 1: there's that kind of discrepancy, why molesting kids does not
Speaker 1: earn you much of a punishment in this community, you
Speaker 1: have to understand what the Institute for Basic Life Principles
Speaker 1: calls the umbrella of action. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: their own stupid website here. God given authorities can be
Speaker 1: considered umbrellas of protection. By honoring and submitting to authorities,
Speaker 1: you will receive the privileges of their protection, direction, and accountability.
Speaker 1: If you resist their instructions and move out from their
Speaker 1: jurisdictional care, you forfeit your place under their protection and
Speaker 1: face life's challenges and temptations on your own. The institute
Speaker 1: goes on to state, under the overarching umbrella of his protection,
Speaker 1: God has established significant jurisdictional structures family husbands and parents,
Speaker 1: government leaders, church leaders, elders and other believers, and employers.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to talk about like with that that's
Speaker 1: not great. So the way this works in practice is
Speaker 1: that if anything goes wrong in a child's life or
Speaker 1: with uh, you know, someone's wife, it is because they
Speaker 1: were not properly submitting to authority and thus lost Godly protection,
Speaker 1: the protection of God's umbrella. Likewise, the reason Jim, or
Speaker 1: the reason this this other member of the church's campaign
Speaker 1: political campaign failed isn't that he was a bad candidate.
Speaker 1: It was that Josh Dugger sinned and opened up a
Speaker 1: hole in the umbrella that let satan it. Basically, that's
Speaker 1: the that's that's the idea here. This not repeatedly molestic. Well,
Speaker 1: this was caused by molesting his sisters, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it it damaged the umbrella protection is why he
Speaker 1: got punished, right, That's what was actually bad about this. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason for this involves a few different factors. One,
Speaker 1: as I elaborated on earlier, is that men's sexual misdeeds
Speaker 1: are seen as fundamentally rooted in the behavior of the
Speaker 1: women they assault or molest. That's pretty fucked up. But
Speaker 1: the other factor here is arguably even worse. Under the
Speaker 1: fundamentalist doctrine the Duggers follow the Gospel of Bill Gothard,
Speaker 1: all sexuality outside of procreative marital sex is a sin. Again,
Speaker 1: quiver Full kids aren't allowed to date. They engage in
Speaker 1: something called courtship, which has very frustrating rules and under
Speaker 1: which if you're like holding hands before marriage, that is
Speaker 1: not okay. That's that is a serious sin and in
Speaker 1: fact is a sin on the same level as what
Speaker 1: Josh Duggar did to his his his siblings. Now every
Speaker 1: interaction prior to marriage between male and female must be
Speaker 1: carefully chaperoned. Healthy exploration is not seen as something that exists.
Speaker 1: And when all sex and even like hand holding is
Speaker 1: equally taboo, when masturbation is the same as child molestation,
Speaker 1: there's no reason to punish a young man who molests
Speaker 1: his sisters more than a young man who finds a
Speaker 1: playboy in the woods, because the sin is the same,
Speaker 1: which is not great, not great. I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of like how when you you attach these like draconian
Speaker 1: penalties to possession of large amounts of illegal drugs, there
Speaker 1: are people who be like, well, why shouldn't I just
Speaker 1: kill the cop or something who's trying to arrest me,
Speaker 1: Like it's a life in prison either way, I might
Speaker 1: as well try to get away, you know, Like it's
Speaker 1: this if you if you treat I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not great, it doesn't work well. Ever, when you
Speaker 1: you do well, it's and in the specific way and
Speaker 1: what you've seen from the episodes is it creates an
Speaker 1: extremes on two ends where one because everything is under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of sin, under of just like this just
Speaker 1: general sin outside of marriage, things that are super fucked up,
Speaker 1: like molestation get uh the severity gets not treated seriously
Speaker 1: and the stuff like holding hands gets treated way too seriously.
Speaker 1: And so then you get those those uh, those kind
Speaker 1: of extremes where you have Josh Dougger molesting people and
Speaker 1: possibly that that guy in Atlanta shooting up a spa.
Speaker 1: It comes from that saying it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: like kind of a total lack of proportion to lack
Speaker 1: of proportion. It's like throwing a bouncy ball into an
Speaker 1: empty room, you don't know where it's going to end
Speaker 1: up hitting. Yeah, that's exactly right. Um. Now, repeated studies
Speaker 1: have found that abstinence only a approaches to sex education
Speaker 1: um and again, these are generally way less restrictive than
Speaker 1: quiverful sex. Just absence only is not the same as
Speaker 1: quiver ful sex said, but repeated studies have found that
Speaker 1: this attitude towards sex just absence only programs do not
Speaker 1: decrease sexual behaviors among kids, but do cause kids to
Speaker 1: engage in riskier sex because they lack the education to
Speaker 1: do it safely. It also robs kids of the vocabulary
Speaker 1: they need to adequately explain when something unacceptable has happened
Speaker 1: or been done to them. In her book A Love
Speaker 1: That Multiplies, Michelle Dugger gives a story that her husband
Speaker 1: tells to their kids to explain the importance of purity.
Speaker 1: From this, we can get an idea of the kind
Speaker 1: of sex said that the Dugger kids, both perpetrator Josh
Speaker 1: and his victims benefited from. This is Michelle Dugger's writing,
Speaker 1: So buckle in for some pros. Imagine that your parents
Speaker 1: are going to surprise you and give you a brand
Speaker 1: new bike for Christmas. Two weeks before Christmas, they buy
Speaker 1: your bike and hide it in the storage shed in
Speaker 1: the backyard. But then the boy next door sneaks into
Speaker 1: the d and borrows your new bike. He stunt rides
Speaker 1: it up and down the back alley. On Christmas morning,
Speaker 1: your parents lead you out to the shed to reveal
Speaker 1: the special gift they bought for you. And as they
Speaker 1: opened the door and say surprised, they're just as surprised
Speaker 1: as you are. You're all shocked to see that the
Speaker 1: bike looks like it's been thrown off a cliff. The
Speaker 1: front fender is missing and the front tire is warped
Speaker 1: so it rubs on the frame. It's dirty, the paint
Speaker 1: is all scratched and chipped, and the seat has a
Speaker 1: big rip in it. It looks worse than something you
Speaker 1: would have bought at a garage sale. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: would still be grateful for the bike, and you would
Speaker 1: have fun writing it, but it won't be in the
Speaker 1: condition your parents had hoped and dreamed it would be
Speaker 1: when you received it. You would miss out on the
Speaker 1: a lot of and a lot of the enjoyment they
Speaker 1: meant for you to have. In the same way, we
Speaker 1: don't want any boy or girl to come and steal
Speaker 1: your purity. Pros more like amateurs, am I right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because everyone will be an amateur because you don't know
Speaker 1: anything when you're married. But also also it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of shaming that. I mean some people are into
Speaker 1: rip seats. I mean combo people are into rip seats.
Speaker 1: Some people like you know, mud on the on the tires,
Speaker 1: some people like don't need a fender. Um. It's also
Speaker 1: you know, not great number one one of the weird
Speaker 1: things about this is that for a community that like
Speaker 1: attacks the secular world as being like obsessed with sex
Speaker 1: and sexuality, they're completely reducing marriage to just fucking to
Speaker 1: just virginity, right as opposed to just like, well, people
Speaker 1: tend to meet and get married and like life has
Speaker 1: already happened to them, and you kind of take the
Speaker 1: person as they are and everything that's happened to them.
Speaker 1: And that's part of if you're in love with someone,
Speaker 1: what you love about them is the experiences they've had
Speaker 1: in the person that's made them. This is saying like, no,
Speaker 1: if they're used at all, they're not as good well,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's a it's a warping of the
Speaker 1: experience of a love because the you know, the the
Speaker 1: the idea and the life experience and the joy of
Speaker 1: love is that the more you give, the more you have.
Speaker 1: And this is saying that, no, your love is a
Speaker 1: finite thing and that any sort of usage of it
Speaker 1: takes away from it. Like it's like Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: his I don't exercise because my body's a battery. It's
Speaker 1: to run out. But yeah, what with love? But with
Speaker 1: love and it's yeah, I mean there's a lot that's
Speaker 1: wrong with it, including Nadia that like, well, it's actually
Speaker 1: like if your parents got you a bike, but by
Speaker 1: the time it was in the shed because it got
Speaker 1: roaded so much, other kids came in and upgraded the bike. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was a much better bike because people had realized, oh,
Speaker 1: you actually need these new wheels to like do a
Speaker 1: better job of going up these hills. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: we could. I don't want to continue making bike as
Speaker 1: fucking metaphors, but you could. Well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's something that's gonna happen. It's very cyclical, yeah, Jehan.
Speaker 1: You know what else is cyclical? Uh? The rising of
Speaker 1: the seventh moon on the planes of a distant planet
Speaker 1: where presumably yeah, I mean unless it's like an elliptical lore,
Speaker 1: but I guess yeah, I mean that's kind of But
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, what cyclical is capitalism because you
Speaker 1: start with money, and money buys products, and products create
Speaker 1: more money, and then you get more money to buy
Speaker 1: more products. It's a perfect circle. Yea perfect circle. I
Speaker 1: mean the products are fine, I mean once you use
Speaker 1: the product once I mean, it's it's not what your
Speaker 1: parents wanted for you, so you get, so don't don't
Speaker 1: buy the bikes that are advertised on our show if
Speaker 1: someone's had sex with them, I think is the conclusion
Speaker 1: we're coming here, you know, or just like get like
Speaker 1: uh you know, like how you get those one used
Speaker 1: like dispense packs, but just get but with bikes. Geta
Speaker 1: of bikes from Costco. Yeah, you don't want to ride
Speaker 1: a bike twice? So yeah, yeah, hopefully Costco is gonna
Speaker 1: come in here with me. Look, your parents are sitting
Speaker 1: at home going, oh god, I hope he doesn't get
Speaker 1: a bike that's already been ridden. Someone else's aid my
Speaker 1: boys bike? What have I done? All right, here's products.
Speaker 1: We're back. So in the almost ten years that followed
Speaker 1: at first police report, which is again two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the Dugger family grew more popular and more powerful within
Speaker 1: right wing political circles. Mike Huckabee, former governor and presidential
Speaker 1: candidate A turn Um, was regularly seen with both Jim,
Speaker 1: Bob and Joshua. They were very tight in with Huckabee.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, he hired Josh to help run
Speaker 1: his failed presidential primary campaign. In two thousand and twelve,
Speaker 1: Josh spoke at rallies for presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a
Speaker 1: man so bigoted that his last name was turned into
Speaker 1: a recognized term for the mix of ship come in
Speaker 1: lube that results from anal sex. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: Josh Dougger was hired by the Family Research Council, who
Speaker 1: are themselves kind of like political Santorum. Now. The f
Speaker 1: RC wanted him to be the new face of their organization,
Speaker 1: and he was made as like he's like nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: like young man here. He's made the executive director of
Speaker 1: f RC Action, the lobbying arm of the right wing organization,
Speaker 1: actually been in his mid twenties. I think now. A
Speaker 1: Fox News article functioned as a press released for this
Speaker 1: because Fox News is basically the press arm of the
Speaker 1: f r C uh and in that article they wrote
Speaker 1: quote the FARC's political platforms include firm stances against abortion
Speaker 1: and same sex marriage. Josh and his wife Anna have
Speaker 1: been an inspiration to millions of Americans who regularly turned
Speaker 1: in to see the Dugger family show, and all of
Speaker 1: us at f r C and FARC Action have long
Speaker 1: appreciated their commitment to the pro family movement. F RC
Speaker 1: Action President Tony Perkins said in a statement, we welcome
Speaker 1: him to the FARC action team and look forward to
Speaker 1: taking our grassroots outreach to the next level. Now. The
Speaker 1: f r C itself called Josh the new face of
Speaker 1: faith and politics. People who walk who walked in similar
Speaker 1: circles to the Dugger family at the time, will claim
Speaker 1: that Josh was seen as an eventual candidate for higher office,
Speaker 1: perhaps even a potential presidential candidate someday. That's always the
Speaker 1: dream of these people, right, they want like Pince was
Speaker 1: a big deal in part because like that's as close
Speaker 1: that's the closest they've gotten one of their you know,
Speaker 1: someone who's in the cult, so to speak. Um and um,
Speaker 1: that what they kind of hoped for for. He was
Speaker 1: being groomed from childhood to do something nationally in politics.
Speaker 1: Um and. As the face of f RC action, he
Speaker 1: fought to block and roll back the rights of LGBTQ people,
Speaker 1: conflating them with pedophiles and arguing against their right to
Speaker 1: adopt children because they might molest them, which again, he's
Speaker 1: a child molester, arguing the trans and gay people can't
Speaker 1: be trusted with kids because they'll molest them. As he's
Speaker 1: molesting people. I don't know. I like, how much do
Speaker 1: you get harp on it right, like it's the thing? Well,
Speaker 1: but yeah, because he's here's part of the other thing
Speaker 1: with like the having everything under the umbrella of sin.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, if you're if you're in the club
Speaker 1: of if you're in the Jesus club, you can always repent.
Speaker 1: We can put you in front of the congregation. Well
Speaker 1: we can't put these LGBT. They might just raise their
Speaker 1: kids and not molest them and never repent for being gay.
Speaker 1: Whereas it's better I don't know that really is the
Speaker 1: attitude that it's better for these kids to be molested
Speaker 1: by godly people who can then. So that's and that's
Speaker 1: to hammer that point home, to do a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tangent that does hammer that point home. It's
Speaker 1: like a lot of when you get into like the
Speaker 1: dominionist reconstructionists whatever, Like if you get in talking about slavery,
Speaker 1: a lot of them will be like slavery was good
Speaker 1: because they weren't Christian and they and the black people
Speaker 1: were in Christian households. So the fact that they were
Speaker 1: in a Christian household as slaves and the way they
Speaker 1: were treated. It was a better life for them than
Speaker 1: being a heathen. Their souls were saved, right, their souls
Speaker 1: were saved. So that's also what you're again, what you're
Speaker 1: looking at it, it's it starts with the It starts
Speaker 1: with a conclusion, Oh, Jesus's head of everything, and then
Speaker 1: and is in charge of everything, and then works backwards.
Speaker 1: So any anything that is close closer to him as
Speaker 1: we define it is always going to be better objectively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you. You you've seen the same argument has been
Speaker 1: made recently. I forget the exact website, but there was
Speaker 1: just a big column about like how all of the
Speaker 1: Indigenous people murder did resident American conservative? It was americansservative,
Speaker 1: like it was actually good because even though they died,
Speaker 1: they were being they weren't heathens anymore. So like any
Speaker 1: amount of death is okay if they're not heathens anymore.
Speaker 1: Which goes back to colonialism, and which is which they
Speaker 1: kind of both aided each other on colonialism and evangelizing
Speaker 1: to do fun things. These people suck is the people
Speaker 1: think they're not great. Um So in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: the Dugger family went to war against an anti discrimination
Speaker 1: ordinance that would have gone into effect in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: The ordinance was meant to strengthen protections for LGBT and
Speaker 1: particularly trans residents. It would have created a new position
Speaker 1: on the city staff dedicated to handling discrimination complaints pertaining
Speaker 1: to housing, employment, et cetera for LGBT people. It would
Speaker 1: have also banned businesses from discriminating against queer people. The
Speaker 1: Duggers spoke out against this ordinance, and Michelle even went
Speaker 1: as so far as to lend her voice to a
Speaker 1: robo call. I'm going to read a segment from this
Speaker 1: and please do your best to not explode from the irony. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Michelle Dugger. I'm calling to inform you of
Speaker 1: some shocking news that would affect the safety of Northwest
Speaker 1: Arkansas women and children. The Fayetteville City Council is voting
Speaker 1: on an ordinance this Tuesday night that would allow men, yes,
Speaker 1: I said men, to use women's and girls restrooms, locker
Speaker 1: room showers, sleeping areas, and other areas that are designated
Speaker 1: for females only. I don't believe the citizens of Fayetteville
Speaker 1: would want males with past child predator convictions that claim
Speaker 1: they are female to have a legal right to enter
Speaker 1: the private areas that are reserved for women and girls.
Speaker 1: And obviously if somebody beat they trans or not had
Speaker 1: convictions for child molestation, they're not allowed to go and
Speaker 1: do a restroom where children are because they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to get close to children. To be fair, she did
Speaker 1: not list their own beds as a place of privacy
Speaker 1: for you know, women and child so you know, on
Speaker 1: her end it works right, Yeah, And they're oh my god,
Speaker 1: their arguments after it came out. We'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this later, but after it came out
Speaker 1: publicly what Josh had done, there's this this they got
Speaker 1: questioned about like, well, you were just like yelling about
Speaker 1: how trans people shouldn't be able to use bathrooms because
Speaker 1: it's bad for kids. But your son molested your children.
Speaker 1: How do you square that? And like one of their
Speaker 1: arguments was, well, it's not he wasn't a pedophile because
Speaker 1: he was a child too. Okay, okay, Michelle, is that
Speaker 1: what you gotta tell yourself to get to sleep at night? Um? Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: that same year two fourteen, more than thirty of Bill
Speaker 1: Gothard's female employees came forward with allegations that he had
Speaker 1: molested or sexually harassed them. Have you been aware of this? Yeah? This, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a big deal and it like torpedoes
Speaker 1: his organization. Some of the people he molested were children.
Speaker 1: So again, this is the third child molester we've encountered
Speaker 1: in this community. Um, and there's you can find a
Speaker 1: lot of other stories about Again there there's we We
Speaker 1: quoted someone earlier saying that, like I knew multiple families
Speaker 1: where this had happened. It's because this in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, this cult is built around providing predators with
Speaker 1: access to victive. I was gonna say, like a cult
Speaker 1: just just as a concept is built on predation, and
Speaker 1: so be predation is pretty much allowing uh desire, the
Speaker 1: desires of the predator may be freely met being humans,
Speaker 1: they'll be going to be sexual and this is just
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah. Now, my cult is based around the
Speaker 1: desire to prey on the f d A, which is
Speaker 1: I think very ethical. So yes, we might attack f
Speaker 1: d A convoys, we might kidnap f DA officials, that's possible.
Speaker 1: Anything's possible when the FDA is in play. But that's
Speaker 1: the only people we hunt is the f d A
Speaker 1: and hey if the if the first maybe maybe well
Speaker 1: and if you you know what if you go through
Speaker 1: a bunch of iterations and the first forty four don't work,
Speaker 1: you'll have Oh yeah we can. We could We could
Speaker 1: get a sponsorship from Billy Dee Williams. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: we go. Or if you get to you know, fifty
Speaker 1: seventh iteration, you got the h and we get we
Speaker 1: get that Hinz money which we used to buy arms
Speaker 1: in order to fight the f d A. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure you can get John Kerry as a sponsor if
Speaker 1: you get that Heinz money. I think you know John Kerry.
Speaker 1: John Kerry has a combat experience which will be useful
Speaker 1: for our guerrilla war against the Food and Drug Administration.
Speaker 1: This is all coming together now. So Bill gothardeen more
Speaker 1: than thirty of his female employees, and and some of
Speaker 1: these people again say that he did it when they
Speaker 1: were children. Bill resigned from the Institute for Basic Life
Speaker 1: Principles and from a t I, but women continue to
Speaker 1: come forward with allegations. Eventually, like more than sixty I
Speaker 1: think we're at right now, like we're talking cosby numbers um.
Speaker 1: And obviously it's much more than that right. That's the
Speaker 1: number who were willing to come forward. Ten more victims
Speaker 1: suited him in two thousand sixteen. Here's a quote from
Speaker 1: an article about that by the Washington Post. One of
Speaker 1: the Jane Doe plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleges that she
Speaker 1: was raped by her father and her other relatives, and
Speaker 1: said she was sold by her father through human trafficking
Speaker 1: when she was a minor. She said she reported the
Speaker 1: abuse in trafficking to ib LP staff, which failed to
Speaker 1: report to authorities. Families in the ministry would sometimes send
Speaker 1: their children to institutes across the country, including its headquarters
Speaker 1: in Illinois. When the Jane Doe plaintiff was at a
Speaker 1: ministry's training center, she and Gothard both called her father,
Speaker 1: and Gothard asked him if abuse allegations were true, the
Speaker 1: lawsuit states. After her father denied the allegations, she said
Speaker 1: Gothard threatened her. Gothard taught that children were to obey
Speaker 1: their parents even if they were being sexually abused, the
Speaker 1: lawsuit says. The Jane Doe then alleges that Gothard had
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse with her without her consent, saying she notified
Speaker 1: ib LP of the rape through an email. In two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, she alleges that an IBLP employed counselor also
Speaker 1: raped her in his office at an IBLP training center
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis. David Gibbs, the third, the plaintiff's lawyer, said
Speaker 1: that she is not sure how old she was at
Speaker 1: the time of the alleged rapes, but was likely around
Speaker 1: seventeen or eighteen years old. Again, these kids don't have
Speaker 1: documents a lot of the time. Another woman in the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: Ruth Cope Lee Burger, who was the adopted daughter of
Speaker 1: the counselor in question, alleges that her father's actually molested her.
Speaker 1: I'm reading this very unpleasant too. That's it's fucking endemic.
Speaker 1: It is all over and I have never heard any
Speaker 1: alliations about Jim Bob this way, but it is a
Speaker 1: lot of the patriarchs so are involved in this. It
Speaker 1: is fucking everywhere in this cold um. It's not cool
Speaker 1: and good. It's it's really not cool and good. But
Speaker 1: you know, thankfully, this is the only large religious based
Speaker 1: organization where that's ever happened. No other church has done
Speaker 1: anything like this. It's not like when you claim that
Speaker 1: there's a hierarchy that gives certain people more access to God,
Speaker 1: they will use that perceived moral authority to prey on
Speaker 1: people's That's never happened another time. There there is there.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a giant banner outside the head of
Speaker 1: the archdiocese in Boston Molestation free since one a d.
Speaker 1: That's that's right there, that's their code. The famously never
Speaker 1: been involved in any horrible I know, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things I've always been interested in. I'm a
Speaker 1: and not not a religious person, um, but I'm there's
Speaker 1: a pretty fascinating history of Catholic anarchism and and in
Speaker 1: Christian anarchism in general that is based in a lot.
Speaker 1: A lot of what it's based around is this idea
Speaker 1: that like, well, every time you set up a hierarchy
Speaker 1: that gives certain that presupposed to certain people are closer
Speaker 1: to God than others, it seems to be a nightmare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that leads to death and molestation in war. Um, perhaps
Speaker 1: that should never be the case, which I also think
Speaker 1: I don't know, not a Bible expert, but seems like
Speaker 1: Jesus would have been more on board with well, just like,
Speaker 1: let's stress something different is it's it's the most frustrating
Speaker 1: thing is the lack of acknowledgement that it's that being
Speaker 1: at a specific place in a specific hierarchy, regardless of
Speaker 1: what you think that means, somehow makes you in a
Speaker 1: way less human as far as not being susceptible to
Speaker 1: abusing that position. And it's just it's kind of like, well, no,
Speaker 1: that's you have to that's you know, there's yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it always and you always see like there's just
Speaker 1: a it's lack of transparency as how is the first
Speaker 1: wall to go up because it's yeah, yeah, it's a bummer. Um.
Speaker 1: So at this point in US history, it should be
Speaker 1: clear that any moral crusaders who base a lot of
Speaker 1: their arguments on the idea that trans or gay people
Speaker 1: are threats to children, as a general rule, these people
Speaker 1: are either harming kids themselves or enabling other people who
Speaker 1: are harming kids. It's just such a consistent thing, um,
Speaker 1: not a hundred percent, but a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who do that kind of ship and the rank hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: and there in the rank hypocrisy of the Dugger clan
Speaker 1: goes further than that. Well, they kept their mouths fucking
Speaker 1: shut about Bill Gothard in the wake of his fall
Speaker 1: from grace. They've been doing that for years because their
Speaker 1: job was to subtly influence people towards fundamentalism without scaring
Speaker 1: them off. So it's not like they had been super
Speaker 1: public about Bill, but they never like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have any real faith in the idea that they've
Speaker 1: disavowed this guy either. It's well, it's like they're they're
Speaker 1: they're the Tom Cruise to his Yeah to his Now Josh,
Speaker 1: the face of the Family Research Council and the last
Speaker 1: best hope of heavenly rule on Earth, spent his entire
Speaker 1: time as a family values lobbyist as a paid member
Speaker 1: of the website Ashley Madison. Now, if you don't recall
Speaker 1: Ashley Madison was basically it may still exist, was a
Speaker 1: dating app for married people who wanted to cheat on
Speaker 1: their spouses that eventually got all of its data leaked
Speaker 1: and hilarity ensued. From two thousand thirteen to two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen, he paid a total of nine hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty six dollars and seventy six cents to the side,
Speaker 1: So he was a he was a power user. You
Speaker 1: could say, yeah, that's a lot of money to spend
Speaker 1: on the adultery website Christian Morals cents as there was
Speaker 1: like tax it. I hate, like, you can't even go
Speaker 1: and cheat on people without having that ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: they like just round up. Come on. I bet he
Speaker 1: was really angry about tax being this is gonna fun
Speaker 1: sin people might get welfare. Yes, makes me angry, which
Speaker 1: makes me horny. So he listed his desire in finding
Speaker 1: He listed his desire like the web. It's a dating website, right,
Speaker 1: so you get to like list your stuff about you.
Speaker 1: He lists listed his desire as to finding an extramarital
Speaker 1: partner for quote conventional sex, experimenting with sex toys, one
Speaker 1: night stands, open to experimentation, gentleness, good with your hands,
Speaker 1: sensual massage, extended for play, teasing, bubble bath for two,
Speaker 1: likes to give oral sex, likes to receive oral sex,
Speaker 1: someone I can teach, someone who can teach me kissing,
Speaker 1: cuddling and hugging, sharing fantasies, and sex talk. Now. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be getting into this if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: fact that every aspect of his life and job was
Speaker 1: based around the idea that all of this should be illegal.
Speaker 1: Right like now, he listed his services listed as services.
Speaker 1: The fact that he had like these are like the
Speaker 1: reasons people should be interested in him, the fact that
Speaker 1: he had good personal hygiene, a secret love nest, and
Speaker 1: was drug free. Now Also in two thousand fourteen, the
Speaker 1: year that Bill Gothard got busted from a lesting children
Speaker 1: and one of the years in which Josh Dugger paid
Speaker 1: money to cheat on his wife, the four older Dugger
Speaker 1: sisters cashed in on their family fame by publishing the
Speaker 1: book Growing Up Dugger, It's All About Relationships. Josh and
Speaker 1: his wife Anna were invited to discuss their marriage. The
Speaker 1: book includes this passage from Josh. As I became a
Speaker 1: young man, I was constantly tempted to have lots of
Speaker 1: wrong thoughts, and often battled to keep my heart right.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest things that helped me in my
Speaker 1: struggles was my parents commitment to accountability. They were faithful
Speaker 1: to talk with each of us children if we were
Speaker 1: willing to share honestly and openly with them to maintain
Speaker 1: a clear conscience. I learned quickly that great freedom can
Speaker 1: be achieved by accountability, but that deep accountability requires humility
Speaker 1: and openness. I often had failures in my early teenage years.
Speaker 1: But I found that I had a clear conscience only
Speaker 1: when I was willing to confess my thoughts quickly to
Speaker 1: God and to my parents. The Bible passage Dugger sites
Speaker 1: uh in this like he cites a John one nineteen,
Speaker 1: which reads, if we confess our sins, he is faithful
Speaker 1: and just and will forgive our sins and purify us
Speaker 1: from all in righteousness, which is what you were talking about.
Speaker 1: So wait, wait, wait, you're telling me the family that
Speaker 1: does a capitalism on how It Runs released a formed
Speaker 1: statement with an inspirational quote. Well, I mean, they released
Speaker 1: a book and then he gave up quoted. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's it's yeah, it's yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but it is. Yeah. The way in which the daughters
Speaker 1: he molested, his sisters have responded to this is also
Speaker 1: very bleak. And I'm because they're also as victims. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna like get into a lot of criticism or
Speaker 1: great detail about it, but like, I mean, they're trapped.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it a little later now. Of course,
Speaker 1: Josh kept his sins hidden while he was you know,
Speaker 1: and he just had said that, like, you have to
Speaker 1: confess quickly and openly to God and in people's but
Speaker 1: he kept his sins hidden while he was lobbying against
Speaker 1: the rights of gay and trans people to raise children. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a big part of what he did for
Speaker 1: the f RC. He was a big anti gay rights
Speaker 1: advocate um and it was always judges like this is
Speaker 1: bad for kids. But those sins did not stay secret
Speaker 1: and may have. Two thousand and fifteen, the gossip website
Speaker 1: in Touch succeeded in foya ng their way to the truth.
Speaker 1: They published the long buried two thousand six police report
Speaker 1: detailing abuse by Josh Dougger. Josh and his family initially
Speaker 1: claimed to deflect criticism. Are initially attempted to deflect criticism
Speaker 1: by making weasley claims about the exact extent of the abuse.
Speaker 1: In a Facebook statement, Josh wrote, twelve years ago, as
Speaker 1: a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am
Speaker 1: extremely sorry and deeply and deeply regret. I heard others,
Speaker 1: including my family and close friends, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about like, oh, it was above the clothes.
Speaker 1: It was never like they it was. It's almost as
Speaker 1: gross as anything, just like reading them. Try to talk
Speaker 1: about why it's not really a big deal that he
Speaker 1: molested four of his sisters in a babysitter. Now, Josh
Speaker 1: was forced to resign from the Family Research Council. Jim, Bob,
Speaker 1: and Michelle made weasley statements about how they'd watched their
Speaker 1: son like a hawk ever since the initial incidents and
Speaker 1: that they believed he had changed with God's help, but
Speaker 1: the hits kept coming. Two of their daughters, Jessa and Jill,
Speaker 1: chose to self identify as their brothers victims in July,
Speaker 1: and they actually spoke up to defend Josh and claim
Speaker 1: that they've been victimized by in Touch publishing the police report.
Speaker 1: Jessa claimed the system that was set up to protect kids,
Speaker 1: both those who make stupid mistakes or have problems like
Speaker 1: this in their life and the ones that are affected
Speaker 1: by those choices, it's greatly failed. I don't agree with
Speaker 1: them on this, and again I'm not going to like
Speaker 1: morally go after them for defending Josh because whatever, they
Speaker 1: have to live in this. But I don't think it
Speaker 1: touched in anything wrong. They did not publish any names.
Speaker 1: They did not say here's who he molested. They published
Speaker 1: that this guy was a sexual predator who was not
Speaker 1: punished and who had a very public position claiming to
Speaker 1: defend children. That's in the public interest. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: it is like it just sounds like it's it's that
Speaker 1: kind of like whether you with the kind of that
Speaker 1: cold atmosphere, there's that kind of uh, sometimes literal in
Speaker 1: this figurative bunker mentality where it's like, yeah, there's problems
Speaker 1: in here, but they're supposed to be just in here,
Speaker 1: and so you kind of you put you put a
Speaker 1: unified front and attack the out there. Yep, yep, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what's and it's you know, you also you get
Speaker 1: into this, there's this There are cases there have always
Speaker 1: been of people who have children who are molested and
Speaker 1: do not see what was done to them as bad.
Speaker 1: And I guess a good public example would be you
Speaker 1: have a couple of different rock stars who had sex
Speaker 1: with groupies were fourteen fifteen, sixteen, right, a number of
Speaker 1: those women and we're like, I'm fine with it. It
Speaker 1: was a good experience. It's still rape. It's still like
Speaker 1: even if and I'm I'm I'm not gonna say like
Speaker 1: they should be more trial. Obviously, if that happens to you,
Speaker 1: when you feel you don't feel traumatized. That's good. I
Speaker 1: guess it's always better to not feel traumatized. But like
Speaker 1: that person, that is still statutory rape. That's not acceptable
Speaker 1: to Hey, it's it's it's the it's the power dynamic
Speaker 1: that or even if they even if the person on
Speaker 1: the lower end of that feels that was consensual enough
Speaker 1: where they weren't, but still, like, you know, these people
Speaker 1: they're they're taking advantage of you, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: another step in predatory behavior that could come out and
Speaker 1: his worse for the next person. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: the I mean, obviously this is much more severe than that,
Speaker 1: because yeah, this is like obviously, but it's on the
Speaker 1: same chain. It is the fact, and it's very morally kind.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to get into this much more
Speaker 1: in focus on like his victims, but like the idea
Speaker 1: that like they have downplayed what was done to them,
Speaker 1: which you know, people have the freedom to say it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean that it wasn't a serious crime, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, um, but you know what is a
Speaker 1: serious crime not buying these products, buying these products and services,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, Jesus Christ. Okay, Well, we're back,
Speaker 1: so right, um. So, Josh's sisters kind of came to
Speaker 1: his defense. Um. They argued that the charges against their brother,
Speaker 1: that their brother was a pedophile and a child molester
Speaker 1: were quotes so overboard and a lie. One argument that
Speaker 1: Dugger parents made was that since the abuse occurred while
Speaker 1: he was also a child, he can't have been a
Speaker 1: child molester or a pedophile. We'll put a pin in
Speaker 1: that for right now. It's worth noting that two other
Speaker 1: Dugger sisters were molested by Josh. Again, it started with
Speaker 1: two and I don't know the exact time frame, but
Speaker 1: four sisters. Um at least one was molested after Jim
Speaker 1: and Bob Dugger Jim, Bob and Michelle became aware of
Speaker 1: the abuse. Another victim of Josh was a non family
Speaker 1: member who worked as a babysitter for the family when
Speaker 1: she was a teenager. I have not found a lot
Speaker 1: of details about this case. The Dugger family repeatedly stated
Speaker 1: their belief that their TV show would not need to
Speaker 1: be canceled as a result of these revelations. On July,
Speaker 1: it was like two thousand six was when Oprah kind
Speaker 1: of figured stuff out. So you kind of have that
Speaker 1: as far as like a timeline. Yeah, so before that,
Speaker 1: it seems likely it was like two thou three to
Speaker 1: two kind he was born, it's that's fifteen, yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: On July sixteenth, though, TLC permanently canceled nineteen kids and
Speaker 1: counting some Republicans who's who had posed with members of
Speaker 1: the family like Mico Rubio slinked off into the background
Speaker 1: and try just not to make a statement on the matter.
Speaker 1: But Mike Huck could be charged headfirst into this as
Speaker 1: a culture war issue. He called Josh's actions inexcusable, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean unforgivable and then said that like we're,
Speaker 1: you know, coming to the family with love and support. Um,
Speaker 1: if only they had been around when cancel culture was
Speaker 1: in full sway. Can't cancel someone just for repeatedly molests
Speaker 1: to children. Now on July, Yeah, so right around this time, um,
Speaker 1: the abuse the user database for Ashley Madison leaked. So
Speaker 1: all of this comes out, Josh duggers out of then
Speaker 1: it comes out that he's been paying the cheat on
Speaker 1: his wife. Um. Not a great year for Josh dougg.
Speaker 1: He made another peddling apology where he called himself a
Speaker 1: hypocrite and talked about his pornography addictions, like I'm a
Speaker 1: it's the evil porn that has paid me to all
Speaker 1: these bad things. Almost immediately after this, a sex worker,
Speaker 1: Danika Dylan, came forward and filed suit against Josh, alleging
Speaker 1: that during a paid consensual sex encounter, he brutally assaulted her.
Speaker 1: Josh and I the allegations, and Dylan did eventually withdraw
Speaker 1: her lawsuit, claiming I didn't have the money to take
Speaker 1: on TLC or the Dugger family, and I again don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of detail on that. Seems very like
Speaker 1: that's a very good I get, I get why she
Speaker 1: would have done that. I believe her seems totally in
Speaker 1: character for Josh Dougger. Um, we know he's willing to
Speaker 1: pay for sex one way or the other. We know
Speaker 1: he's willing to assault people. I believe his sense of
Speaker 1: boundaries do not. Just his sense of boundaries don't. Because
Speaker 1: he claims to have some evidence that, like I think
Speaker 1: of the TAXI received, he was in a different place.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not an expert on the case. Um,
Speaker 1: Josh checked himself into rehab. Of course, it was a
Speaker 1: biblically based program called Reformers Unanimous, and for a while
Speaker 1: he was able to successfully hide from public scrutiny. This
Speaker 1: kind of goes away a little bit. His wife Anna
Speaker 1: stayed with him, and TLC did eventually decide to reboot
Speaker 1: The Duggers Show without Josh, under a new name, and
Speaker 1: it seemed as if they were going to get to
Speaker 1: sweep all this under the rug in the name of
Speaker 1: TLC's profits, obviously, but that's not what happened. From a
Speaker 1: write up by Delanere Bartlett, who again grew up in
Speaker 1: the same community, in late two thousand nineteen, there was
Speaker 1: a hint that trouble might be on the way back
Speaker 1: to Josh when federal agents rated his used car dealership,
Speaker 1: always a sentence you can say about the best people.
Speaker 1: The entire incident was kept very hush hush, the nature
Speaker 1: of their investigation, what they were looking for, If they
Speaker 1: found anything, none of it was released to the public.
Speaker 1: But then those of us who knew Josh Duggers suspected
Speaker 1: it was something more. Sex offenders, especially pedophiles, require long term,
Speaker 1: intensive therapy from qualified mental health professionals. You can't pray
Speaker 1: it away, and Josh was practically swimming in a culture
Speaker 1: that excuses and enables sex offenders. Evidence shows that Duggers
Speaker 1: knew something else was going to go down. After the raid,
Speaker 1: Josh started moving a lot of his assets. He sold
Speaker 1: the family home and bought a new, unfinished home in Springdale,
Speaker 1: but he didn't move into it. Instead, he sold it
Speaker 1: to an LLC in Anna's name and immediately put it
Speaker 1: up for sale. He then moved Anna and their six
Speaker 1: children into a windowless outbuilding on Jim Bob's property. He
Speaker 1: also shuddered his used car dealership and immediately opened four
Speaker 1: limited liability corporations in Anna's name. Remember, in the Dugger's
Speaker 1: fundamentalist worldview, only the husband, as the head of the
Speaker 1: family is supposed to own and manage the family's financial resources.
Speaker 1: But not if you've just gotten rated for child born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and see, I mean total amateur bastard moved their Look,
Speaker 1: this is the point where you're supposed to go to Mexico.
Speaker 1: You should you should have got Mexico, right to Mexico.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give a child molester crime advice here,
Speaker 1: but already you look, you got you got a used car,
Speaker 1: used car dealership. Always you know, next you have an
Speaker 1: untraced or harder to trace car. You know, there's you
Speaker 1: can go down to Mexico. I hear there's some great
Speaker 1: doctors that will give you some plastic surgery. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a shame. Well not a shame because he's a pedophile.
Speaker 1: Um he also yeah, so again just just goes to
Speaker 1: talk about like how related to convenience all of this
Speaker 1: ship is like it's perfectly fine to um uh, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, women aren't supposed to have access to money
Speaker 1: at all. But like if you know you need to
Speaker 1: hide the fact that, or if you need to hide
Speaker 1: your assets because the FEDS are after you for child porn,
Speaker 1: well God will understand. Now we have more recently learned
Speaker 1: what the Feds were after. We're like, after all on
Speaker 1: this rate. So there's rate, but they don't say, you
Speaker 1: know that they're the Fed. They're not going to say
Speaker 1: what anything is about until they're done like building their case.
Speaker 1: That's the way that kind of stuff tends to work. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course we now know that he was rated
Speaker 1: because Josh was viewing and downloading child pornography. He absolutely
Speaker 1: as a pedophile, and a rather extreme one. Based on
Speaker 1: the evidence we have the Homeland Security special agent who
Speaker 1: examined Josh's computer described what he found there as quote
Speaker 1: in the top five of the worst of the worst
Speaker 1: that I've ever had to examine. And so again with
Speaker 1: with Bellan Catt, we do some work with Interpoll in
Speaker 1: terms of trying to track down, um, particularly people making
Speaker 1: child porn. And the way that it works is that
Speaker 1: they they have people who actually view the pornography and
Speaker 1: will take screen grabs from it and cut out, you know,
Speaker 1: the human beings, remove anything that's actually like sexual in nature,
Speaker 1: anything that's obviously illegal, and you will just get like
Speaker 1: photos of like stuff that's in the room, so like
Speaker 1: toys that are in the room, like maybe views out
Speaker 1: of And the goal was like where is this happening,
Speaker 1: because sometimes there's certain resorts that these people use. Um
Speaker 1: is this the same person in this other video? Well
Speaker 1: you don't. You never see the people, but it's like
Speaker 1: here's a if there was, like not not the person
Speaker 1: involved in the act, but like if you see someone, Yeah,
Speaker 1: any anything that might help you track down details around it. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's it's very complicated and painstaking work. UM. But
Speaker 1: the worst work is the people and it's a very
Speaker 1: small number of people who are actually viewing the original pornography,
Speaker 1: which is you have individuals like that who are in
Speaker 1: law enforcement, both federal and kind of internationally. And I
Speaker 1: think there's also there are certain like researchers and journalists
Speaker 1: who can there's like ways to get legal approval to
Speaker 1: like analyze certain ports and like that kind of work
Speaker 1: is the worst thing I can imagine doing because like
Speaker 1: they have to look at the UNET like the child
Speaker 1: abuse videos. Um, I can't imagine a more difficult or
Speaker 1: traumatizing job. And a guy whose job is to do that,
Speaker 1: says Josh Suger's porn stash is like one of the
Speaker 1: worst things I've seen in my career looking at child pornography,
Speaker 1: which is a statement, Yeah, that's I mean, it's oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's any of that because like I've actually it's about
Speaker 1: a decade ago. Now, I was on a grand jury,
Speaker 1: which is if people aren't familiar with that, there's you
Speaker 1: get you get jury duty. You're on a case. Grand
Speaker 1: jury duty is where you have your four weeks. It's
Speaker 1: a nine to five in a room and you see
Speaker 1: a bunch of and the prosecutors bringing evidence and you
Speaker 1: kind of give a yes or no vote to whether
Speaker 1: it goes to truck right. Uh. And we was in
Speaker 1: Multnoma County. It was the I forget which number it was,
Speaker 1: but we had cases where it was involved like child abuse,
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, and the kids had to come in and
Speaker 1: be witnesses and they we had and we had people
Speaker 1: that work specifically just with them and with the stuff
Speaker 1: that they have to do with coming in and helping
Speaker 1: them through it. And it was just also just incredibly
Speaker 1: tense and fraud and to just be in any part
Speaker 1: of that, especially the part where you see the trauma
Speaker 1: happening in real time. Uh yeah, that's yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's there's um that whole the legal framework set up
Speaker 1: to deal with all of that, all those kind of
Speaker 1: cases is um very interesting in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I interviewed a guy when I was working for Cracked
Speaker 1: years ago who's side job was so obviously, when children
Speaker 1: are molested, they're going to need to talk to some
Speaker 1: gift statements to law enforcement, right, which means ideally, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to do this in the most ethical way,
Speaker 1: because cops don't normally talk to children about stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you want to train them, right, and you don't want
Speaker 1: to train them on children because you don't want to
Speaker 1: like have a kid come in. You don't want to
Speaker 1: learn on the job with that sort of thing because
Speaker 1: it's already traumatizing for the kids. So there are actors,
Speaker 1: generally adult actors who look much younger, who train and
Speaker 1: how to mimic being a molested child and will train
Speaker 1: like federal agents and stuff to interrogate not interrogate that storm,
Speaker 1: but interview children who have been victims of second Like
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of work that goes into trying
Speaker 1: to protect kids as much as possible within what is
Speaker 1: already a nightmare for them. But what's the worst that
Speaker 1: can happened, like a satanic panic or something like um,
Speaker 1: And if anyone is a super bund up by what
Speaker 1: we just talked about, go to Belling Cat and look
Speaker 1: up what's app flash cars nuclear secret for the nuclear
Speaker 1: secrets article. Yeah that all of the guys. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did an article recently. I had no involvement in it, uh,
Speaker 1: which you know it is people who are much better
Speaker 1: journalists than me. But yeah, they found that like all
Speaker 1: of the people guarding our nuclear secrets had like been
Speaker 1: using public flash card apps. You could search them and
Speaker 1: find like code phrases to like get onto nuclear weapons site.
Speaker 1: It was like a place in eastern Europe that Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was never a confirmed lear. Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's very funny, very funny, how slap dash all of
Speaker 1: that is. But thankfully they put a little more thought
Speaker 1: into I don't know, job Molestasian. It's good. So yeah
Speaker 1: again this fucking this the FED whose job is to
Speaker 1: like analyze this stuff as like Josh Dugger's computer is
Speaker 1: one of the worst things I've seen my career of
Speaker 1: watching nightmares. Um. The agent stated that he found multiple
Speaker 1: images on Josh's computer depicting sex abuse with children from
Speaker 1: twelve to eighteen months old, so he has a preference
Speaker 1: for very very young kids. Um. Now. This came after
Speaker 1: Josh had made public statements about his Ashley Madison account,
Speaker 1: which he blamed on his pornography addiction. As a result
Speaker 1: of that, he'd installed a program called Covenant Eyes, a
Speaker 1: Christian based web like Christian based program that takes screenshots
Speaker 1: of your online activity at random and uses machine learning
Speaker 1: to analyze them to see if you're you're looking at porn,
Speaker 1: and it sends those screenshots to a trusted ally to
Speaker 1: keep you accountable. Right, the goal is to stop you
Speaker 1: from looking at porn. Now, Covenant Eyes apparently did not
Speaker 1: detect Dugger's prolific child porn browsing because he'd installed tour
Speaker 1: and was saying he was he was obviously like, the
Speaker 1: dark web is where you go for that ship, right,
Speaker 1: you want to buy drugs, you want to hire a
Speaker 1: hitman who's actually a fed, or you want to find
Speaker 1: child pornography. That's what the dark web is for. Um
Speaker 1: And yeah, so presumably that's how he found his porn.
Speaker 1: Josh was charged with just a lot of federal crimes,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of federal crimes. He currently faces up
Speaker 1: to forty years in federal prison. The U. S District
Speaker 1: judge who handled his detention hearing, said that he could
Speaker 1: not return home to live with his wife and children
Speaker 1: for reasons that I shouldn't need to explain now. The
Speaker 1: cult being the cult, Josh is still their special boy,
Speaker 1: and his crimes are obviously the fault of Satan and
Speaker 1: probably those sin for children. As a result, his community
Speaker 1: leapt into action to defend him, while expressly ignoring the
Speaker 1: interests of vulnerable people who weren't Josh Dugger. They found
Speaker 1: another quiverful couple, couple Maria and le Count Reaber, and
Speaker 1: convinced the count that they should put Josh up while
Speaker 1: his trial went on. LeCount told the judge their home
Speaker 1: would be good for Josh because it doesn't have WiFi
Speaker 1: or children. But of course, the story behind this was
Speaker 1: much more fucked up than was initially reported. From a
Speaker 1: write up by Jessica Leigh on the website church leaders
Speaker 1: dot Com, Josh Dugger's father, Jim Bob Dugger, called people
Speaker 1: in his church to see if any would be custodians
Speaker 1: for his son. When Josh was released on bail. Jim
Speaker 1: Bob found a man willing to take Josh in, except
Speaker 1: that man's wife teaches piano lessons to children and she
Speaker 1: was not comfortable having Josh home with her all day
Speaker 1: because she would be alone with him while her husband
Speaker 1: was at work. That didn't matter to the husband, However,
Speaker 1: she has to find a new place to teach all
Speaker 1: those children because her husband wants Josh to live with them.
Speaker 1: That's a quote from a member of the community. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, if he hadn't been re arrested, he would
Speaker 1: have been They would have set him to live with
Speaker 1: that trooper. Well he's in prison, yeah if he if
Speaker 1: he hadn't been, he will be soon maybe so. Maria
Speaker 1: Reaber has said that she is uncomfortable being alone with
Speaker 1: Josh Dugger and is also uncomfortable with her with her
Speaker 1: twenty two year old daughter being alone with him. However,
Speaker 1: at Wednesday's hearing, Reber testified, my husband has made the decision,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to support that decision. Healthy ship. Healthy ship. Now,
Speaker 1: in the reaction to Josh Dougger's charges, we see more
Speaker 1: evidence of women in his community supporting him at a
Speaker 1: cost to their own safety. And again, these women are victims.
Speaker 1: I'm not like criticizing for them, but it's this is
Speaker 1: what's happening. They are mortgaging their own safety and the
Speaker 1: safety of their family members to protect this man. You know.
Speaker 1: Can keep in mind too, like they're in there under
Speaker 1: the same value system where like, yeah he did this,
Speaker 1: but you know, like I held hands with so you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked at a man when I was out in
Speaker 1: town recently, both that same None of us is perfect.
Speaker 1: He molested multiple children. One time I looked at Kurt
Speaker 1: Russell in a movie and thought he was hot equal crimes,
Speaker 1: which they kind of. So you know that that again
Speaker 1: that tension of like, oh, well, the civil authority or
Speaker 1: the government has civil authority over a few things, and
Speaker 1: then everything else is under God, and while this is
Speaker 1: a family matter, so it's under God. So we're going
Speaker 1: to be a united front. Yeah, yeah, God, it's not great.
Speaker 1: So the right up, I just quoted sites racial din
Speaker 1: Hollander at several points. She's sorry that and that was
Speaker 1: it was a member of the community that was quoted.
Speaker 1: There was racial din Hollander. Well kind of is so.
Speaker 1: Rachel din Hollander is best known as the first woman
Speaker 1: to speak out and file a police report against USA
Speaker 1: gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, one of the most prolific
Speaker 1: child abusers in the history of child abuse UM. She
Speaker 1: says she was groomed for the abuse she received by
Speaker 1: Nasser because she was molested as a child in an
Speaker 1: evangelical church. She was disgusted to see Maria Reaver being
Speaker 1: pushed to accept a child molester into her home. Quote,
Speaker 1: every single family who takes piano from her and the
Speaker 1: wife herself has to up route their routine livelihood and
Speaker 1: the child's musical education because Josh everyone is expected to
Speaker 1: bear the cost except Josh, and the wife's own very
Speaker 1: reasonable fears about being alone all day with a man
Speaker 1: who enjoys the sexual torture of tolers didn't matter to
Speaker 1: the husband either. The men in the situation are the
Speaker 1: leaders making the decisions, while the women are expected to submit.
Speaker 1: She also provides what I think is a realistic explanation
Speaker 1: for why and Dugger Josh's wife has stood by her
Speaker 1: husband for so long, even after getting uncontrovertible, in controvertible
Speaker 1: evidence that he is not safe to be around their children.
Speaker 1: Quote din Hollander. Scenes sees Anna Dugger's silence about her
Speaker 1: husband's sexual proclivities as symptomatic of certain evangelical teachings about
Speaker 1: the proper role of wives. Din Hollander referenced several concepts
Speaker 1: promoted in some conservative circles, including the complimentary in teaching
Speaker 1: that wives need to respect and submit to their husbands.
Speaker 1: Some conservative Christians emphasize the idea that God hates divorce
Speaker 1: so much that they encourage women to stay in abuse
Speaker 1: of situations, and it is not unusual for Christian women
Speaker 1: to be taught that they are responsible for men's lust.
Speaker 1: If they are married, women are encouraged to make sure
Speaker 1: to have regular sex with their husbands so that the
Speaker 1: men will not be unfaithful. Anna certainly couldn't tell anyone
Speaker 1: because that would not be respectful, said Den Hollander. That's
Speaker 1: how we counsel wives in these marriages. But she was
Speaker 1: certainly taught to have sex more to fix it. Her
Speaker 1: own mother in law wrote blog articles that said as much.
Speaker 1: TLC at least canceled Counting On in June, after eleven
Speaker 1: seasons on the air. They claimed that it was important
Speaker 1: to give the Dugger family the opportunity to address their
Speaker 1: situation privately, as if the family had not been given
Speaker 1: ample opportunity to address the situation privately in the more
Speaker 1: than ten years between the first allegations and the widespread
Speaker 1: reporting on Josh's behavior. He you remember when we all
Speaker 1: thought Honey Boo Boo was the worst thing on TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, I mean yeah, it just was always great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like it's like, oh, yeah, that's what we were,
Speaker 1: that's what we looked at, that's what people were freaking
Speaker 1: out of. This was just sitting there the whole time. Well, Sean,
Speaker 1: how do you feel did you get do you feel
Speaker 1: good about this two parter? Oh? Yeah, it's feel good
Speaker 1: that it's out there now. It's it's like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a I feel like it's this the people and
Speaker 1: some of the and the depth is it's something that
Speaker 1: comes up more in people that are kind of more
Speaker 1: versed in the communities, and so it's good to have it,
Speaker 1: you know, out there and to have other people kind
Speaker 1: of look at or be aware of these communities, especially
Speaker 1: because you know, again in that kind of like you
Speaker 1: brought up like the people that are under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of authority, employers, people, this and that you know, it's
Speaker 1: it seems like a maybe like a this isn't just
Speaker 1: like an off road into some little group. It's like
Speaker 1: this is this comes back to climate change because you
Speaker 1: have people that either they're they're they're concerned is the
Speaker 1: end of the world, either to prepare it or that
Speaker 1: it's coming, so they don't really care what shape the
Speaker 1: planets in the employee fix it all. If we just
Speaker 1: fix it, we have to focus on doing all this
Speaker 1: moral stuff can't be But yeah, the way we recycle
Speaker 1: or treat the environment with our waste has nothing is fine,
Speaker 1: because we're successful companies, so we're clearly blessed by God's
Speaker 1: h you know, it's just wanted to they seem like
Speaker 1: a tangent, but it's just there's all these things that
Speaker 1: that are very real to people who may not feel
Speaker 1: they have any sort of connection to what's what happened
Speaker 1: in this story that's like, well, no, this is this
Speaker 1: thinking that leads to this leads to a lot of
Speaker 1: other problems that we have because this specific religious idea
Speaker 1: at ideology, and obviously the quiver Full is kind of
Speaker 1: a more extreme expression of it, but the thoughts behind
Speaker 1: it are incredibly mainstream because again it being a cult
Speaker 1: that you don't get to the really you don't get
Speaker 1: to the really heart of it until you're deep into it.
Speaker 1: So a lot of stuff and again it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's an offshoot of something larger that's gone mainstream,
Speaker 1: Like you talked about with the Southern you know, the
Speaker 1: Southern bat Is Convention. What what's been brought up in
Speaker 1: past episodes about Um Evangelical coming together as a voting
Speaker 1: block and and throwing themselves behind the Republican Party and
Speaker 1: then eventually kind of being more the the main driver.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can go back and look and see
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff with the tea party, which
Speaker 1: you know it goes as a precursor to Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and you see the same thing. It's like grabbing by
Speaker 1: the pussy. Well, you know, he's you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: one of us. He's it's it's you know, who hasn't
Speaker 1: who hasn't held a hand or grabbed a pussy? It's
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, who hasn't. Yeah, if you looked at
Speaker 1: someone with lust in your eyes, it's the same as
Speaker 1: assaulting somebody. So he's no worse than any of the
Speaker 1: rest of us. And they see him as you know,
Speaker 1: obviously he became president like they wanted Josh Dougar two,
Speaker 1: so they were going to kind of try to keep
Speaker 1: the way Greece for him to go and not hold
Speaker 1: him accountable because they see him as a ticket. Well, Sean,
Speaker 1: this has been bleak but important. I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: picked this subject. I've been on again. I've been meaning
Speaker 1: to kind of to deal with us at some point,
Speaker 1: because it turns out we actually have some of the
Speaker 1: same friends who have got involved in aspects of this,
Speaker 1: and and I've seen people like over the years kind
Speaker 1: of I feel like they kind of being more if
Speaker 1: tending to be conservative and religious, tend to slip into it.
Speaker 1: There's kind of and it's and it's not necessarily that
Speaker 1: all religion or conservatives necessarily lead to that. There's actually
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of it's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: the great reporting on this has been done by other
Speaker 1: Christian even evangelical news sources who are very critical of this,
Speaker 1: and they're very critical of like Bill Gothard in the
Speaker 1: abuse in that chunk of the community. This isn't a
Speaker 1: problem with Christianity. This is a problem with I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a problem with human beings and the way religion
Speaker 1: generally works. It's a it's a it's a deeper problem.
Speaker 1: It's not just an it's not like the specific issue
Speaker 1: isn't Christianity. The specific issue is how people abuse each
Speaker 1: other and use systems, including really just systems to abuse
Speaker 1: each other. It's to to be to be really clear
Speaker 1: and to also kind of again bring people in who
Speaker 1: maybe not from as familiar on the religious side, more
Speaker 1: on the secular side. You know, think about this is
Speaker 1: gonna hurt, but think about Bill mar for a second.
Speaker 1: And you know the whole like the kind of along
Speaker 1: that lines of where it's like, oh, religion, you're just
Speaker 1: taking shots of religion. Religion is a problem. If religion
Speaker 1: went away, all the problems would be solved, that kind
Speaker 1: of that kind of thinking or posturing. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: people killing, like there's deaths after sporting events when the
Speaker 1: team won, like burning cars and flipping like people are
Speaker 1: gonna be people. It's the it's it's it's Christianity gets
Speaker 1: not singled out, but it is looked at mainly because
Speaker 1: of the power structure that it has within this country
Speaker 1: puts it right at the heart of a lot of
Speaker 1: the things going. And it's it's power and structures of
Speaker 1: power and a hierarchy that always are what enables the abuse,
Speaker 1: whatever forma takes. Because again, if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about and I think people you know, and I had
Speaker 1: my angry atheist years, but I think one of the
Speaker 1: ways in which people go wrong is thinking that it's
Speaker 1: something inherent to religion when it's something that's inherent to power.
Speaker 1: Because for example, the fucking We've done a number of
Speaker 1: episodes on Nexium. You know that that horrible cold, which
Speaker 1: was very much based in like these evolved in scientific attitudes.
Speaker 1: And that's at least the way they framed it was
Speaker 1: not like supposed to be a religious cult as it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be as much of like a it was.
Speaker 1: It was it was a rape cult. For the NPR said,
Speaker 1: you know, like that was the way it was framed.
Speaker 1: It's just anytime you give people these positions of power
Speaker 1: where you're investing them with um special knowledge and acknowledging
Speaker 1: that they have some sort of like special knowledge and
Speaker 1: special uh cause, and when you're saying that, like that
Speaker 1: person is closer to some sort of special truth that
Speaker 1: makes what they say and do more valuable than other people,
Speaker 1: you invest them with a kind of power, it will
Speaker 1: more often than not be used to hurt people. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the way it is. You have quiver full on
Speaker 1: one end, and you know, I don't know Goop, yeah,
Speaker 1: goop nexium. Um, I mean it's again And there's an
Speaker 1: element of this that's like this isn't all cult behavior
Speaker 1: because I don't think I don't know if i'd call
Speaker 1: Goop a cult, but Google a number of the things
Speaker 1: that are toxic about Goot are also things that are
Speaker 1: toxic about toxic about cults in the same way that
Speaker 1: like a number of things that make you a successful
Speaker 1: stand up comedian could also make you a good cult
Speaker 1: leader because certain these are these are patterns that can
Speaker 1: be and there. Yeah, I don't know this is this
Speaker 1: is more of a discussion than I want to get
Speaker 1: into right now. But there's a lot that gets into
Speaker 1: why cults are deeper than religion. Colts are about some
Speaker 1: things very hardwired in the human mind. UM. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that that hierarchy is hardware. It's not hardware
Speaker 1: is the wrong way to put it. Um. We have
Speaker 1: been abusing each other using systems of power for you know,
Speaker 1: ten thousand is years, if not much longer. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's a reason why. And it's because our brains are
Speaker 1: vulnerable to that in the same way that certain people's
Speaker 1: brains are, you know, vulnerable to heroin or alcohol or whatever.
Speaker 1: Everyone's brains are vulnerable to cults. It just depends on
Speaker 1: finding the right cult. Um. And it's my I think
Speaker 1: the reason that Christian cults are much more dangerous is
Speaker 1: in our society is because they have so much more
Speaker 1: political power, because there's so much more mainstream that makes
Speaker 1: it easier to hide, right, because a lot of nexium
Speaker 1: gets busted up much quicker than Bill Gothard does. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's not anything inherent to religion. That's something inherent
Speaker 1: to the level of power we give that specific religion
Speaker 1: in our society. Yeah, it's more under an accepted umbrella. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: back to umbrella's. So, Sean, you wanna you wanna plug
Speaker 1: anything before we uhh yeah, I got me personally, I
Speaker 1: don't have like on my if. I don't do much
Speaker 1: on social media. A couple of things I would like
Speaker 1: to plug that are just near and dear to me,
Speaker 1: Aside from you know Ted Wheeler every calling Ted Wheeler Com.
Speaker 1: There is a place in down by Los Angeles. It's
Speaker 1: l A Guinea Pig Rescue. It can be l a
Speaker 1: Guinea Pig Rescue dot com. Uh. They have like a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel I have. I have had four guinea pigs.
Speaker 1: I still have three with me. Um. They're they're sweet
Speaker 1: little creatures. Uh. They there's a thing they do called popcorning.
Speaker 1: It's like they get super excited. It's like a full
Speaker 1: body joy gasm. And uh, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's like with that and I've had hamsters too.
Speaker 1: There's this people kind of think it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's a starter pit, like because it's they're gentle or
Speaker 1: easy enough a kid can take care of them. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: they're still complex creatures with big personalities and specific needs.
Speaker 1: So l a guinea pig rescue so kids get them
Speaker 1: and then can't take you in. Total problem all over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they have Like one thing that people don't always
Speaker 1: realize with guinea pigs is they are unlike hamsters, where
Speaker 1: you can have them by themselves and they do their
Speaker 1: own little thing. Guinea pigs are very social creatures, to
Speaker 1: the point where there are there are laws in at
Speaker 1: least Belgium and Switzerland that like pet stores have to
Speaker 1: sell them in pairs because they get very, very depressed
Speaker 1: if they're by themselves, and I would split them up,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like they have to And there's
Speaker 1: also you have to make sure they're bonding and this
Speaker 1: and that. But anyway they do, Ellie Guinea Pig Rescue does.
Speaker 1: It's like two thousand undred adoptions a year. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're in a bit of a struggle because they just
Speaker 1: rescued almost two hundred guinea pigs. Was this like handemic.
Speaker 1: It was in north northern California. I want to say,
Speaker 1: it was like someone that was like grazing guinea pigs
Speaker 1: to feed to pythons where they were or it was
Speaker 1: like pythons they right, or they were like hoarding them
Speaker 1: or whatever, but they weren't taking care of so they
Speaker 1: were and so and and to the point where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them are special needs. Um, some may
Speaker 1: never be adopted and they'll just be they'll make sure
Speaker 1: they're taking care of for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like because they when they're smushed together,
Speaker 1: they were given the wrong food, so like they're messed up, teeth,
Speaker 1: their their eyes missing because they've getting and it's it's
Speaker 1: really bad. Um. So what is this place called again,
Speaker 1: l A Guinea Pigs Guinea Pig Rescue. Well, so if
Speaker 1: you help out the l A Guinea Pig Rescue, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like I said, there's videos on that. They have
Speaker 1: a YouTube channel. And even if you're not you know,
Speaker 1: in the l A area, because you can volunteer and
Speaker 1: help out there even if you don't like aren't able
Speaker 1: to you know, send a couple of bucks to help them.
Speaker 1: Just looking at the videos or like if you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a guinea pig, like looking at these because they're
Speaker 1: they're there too, because they want the animals to live
Speaker 1: their best lives. So, uh, just informing yourself and being
Speaker 1: prepared and taking care of of of of the animals.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like you saw with the pandemic people
Speaker 1: got a lot of dogs and put them back. It's
Speaker 1: there's this I mean, people, if you understand the concept
Speaker 1: of fua graw, how terrible that is. This is like
Speaker 1: emotional fua graw where you're just stuffing an animal with
Speaker 1: your sadness, sadness to feel the hole, to fill the
Speaker 1: hole inside yourself. And it's like that's it's it's not
Speaker 1: good and it's going back to cycles of abuse and
Speaker 1: human behavior. It's like it's just down cycling the abuse
Speaker 1: onto animals when they can be a huge source of
Speaker 1: unconditional love and helping you break out of your cycles.
Speaker 1: They help me a lot with like depression, anxiety, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It's an a guinea pig. Yeah, so l
Speaker 1: a guinea pig rescue. One other thing. Uh So, there
Speaker 1: is a movie that came out it's about one hour.
Speaker 1: It's a documentary came out in November. It's called The
Speaker 1: Forgotten Italian. I have a friend who I met through
Speaker 1: my brother when they were in high school. Uh, he
Speaker 1: was in the Marines, went and fought in Afghanistan. Last
Speaker 1: day there is like doing uh like they're having him
Speaker 1: show the patrol um and they're like, oh, let's go
Speaker 1: down this way, which is not a way they usually go.
Speaker 1: So I E d uh he has ended up losing
Speaker 1: both legs. Um. And it's so the the area where
Speaker 1: they were at and this isn't two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, it was It's about the size of Oregon,
Speaker 1: I believe. And they were past the supply lines, they
Speaker 1: were past air support. They were just left out there.
Speaker 1: And why it's called a forgotten battalion? Is it hash
Speaker 1: as far as I know, and I hope this is
Speaker 1: true because it's terrible news if it isn't the highest
Speaker 1: suicide rate in the Armed forces four times the average
Speaker 1: for the Armed forces and like fourteen times the average
Speaker 1: and American But why I'm I'm drawing people towards this.
Speaker 1: So Chris Bride, that's the guy's name. He Uh amazing guy.
Speaker 1: He's he's worked. He it's it's a very direct and
Speaker 1: blunt documentary about dealing with suicide, about dealing with people
Speaker 1: out so because he you know, he's very directed. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I wake up and I want to kill
Speaker 1: myself every day. You but he he is, like he's
Speaker 1: all anywhere. He's been like San Antonio and the v
Speaker 1: A up here, he was an organ for a while.
Speaker 1: The documentary is actually filmed on the Organ coast. He
Speaker 1: would always try to, you know, do stuff to to
Speaker 1: kind of help out the other veterans. Uh he's doing
Speaker 1: this is like they went on like a fishing trip
Speaker 1: on the coast and it's basically they all get together,
Speaker 1: they talk about it. It's been super super helpful for
Speaker 1: all the u UM, all the soldiers involved. It's like
Speaker 1: a couple of people that had worked with him wanted
Speaker 1: to do this documentary because of the change that he
Speaker 1: had been able to affect. And again, it's it's very
Speaker 1: it's it's b it's not it's I feel like sometimes
Speaker 1: we we're not always as direct and realistic and not
Speaker 1: in like a a bleak, terrible blunt sor but it
Speaker 1: just basically like, no, this is the reality. This is
Speaker 1: how they deal with it. Um, and so just kind
Speaker 1: of soot that battalion, the Forgotten Battalion. You can find
Speaker 1: it on Apple or Amazon. I would prefer Apple over Amazon,
Speaker 1: just given the company. Yeah yeah you yeah, you're picking
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah, um Tim, Apple hasn't gone to space yet,
Speaker 1: so I generally with you there. Um yeah, okay, they
Speaker 1: Forgotten Battalion, the l A Guinea Pig Rescue and um
Speaker 1: check out Total Recall PDX, especially if you're in the
Speaker 1: Portland area and you wanna sign on to recall our
Speaker 1: shitty mayor um Sean. Thank you so much both for
Speaker 1: you donnation, for the episode idea and for helping me
Speaker 1: make bring it to life for the Frankenstein Monster of Sadness.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, well that is an episode. Bam.