 For centuries, capitalists ruled the world. They crafted a dystopian healthscape and commodified everything. Life, democracy, even the planet. Facing extinction, a rebel group emerged to challenge the capitalists. The online left, a group of deviants, zoomers, and millennial misfits devoted to shitposting their way to a better world, one tweet at a time. Will they put aside their hatred of one another to defeat their capitalist common enemy? Find out now, on dystopian times. Folks, welcome to the eighth edition of dystopian times. My name is Mike Figueredo and we have a fantastic panel for you today, folks. So, first and foremost, you may have heard of him before. He is, I think, the biggest person that we've had on. He also is a longtime friend of mine. He created a level in Super Mario Maker 2 that made me literally rage quit because it was that difficult. Folks, it is the great Farron Cousins. Farron, welcome to the program. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. How's the surgery doing? It's great. Day after was pretty rough, but I've got to move. I can move my fingers backwards again, which is wonderful. So, a wonderful doctor is down here, by the way, in this area. Super expensive, but really, really good doctors. We have the Andrews Institute, which is where all the athletes go from all over the world. So, it's nice that that's a five-minute drive from my house and that's where insurance always sends you. So, it's nice. Hey, that's great. Well, I'm glad that you're feeling better. Super excited to have you here and the audience is excited as well. So, thank you so much, Farron. Thank you. Well, the next person that I have is a newcomer to the game of progressive politics. I think he is the next Kyle Kalinsky, possibly, folks. It's a good politic guy, AKA Mack. Mack, how's it going? Hey, I'm doing pretty well. I'm just excited to be on this show. I've been watching pretty much every episode of dystopian times and, yeah, I like the whole feel to the show and I'm just excited to be here. Hey, that's awesome. It's cool that you've seen every single episode. Like, I don't even think my husband has watched all of them, so that's good. He might be watching now, so disregard that if you are, Robert. Okay, well, folks, the next person, I wasn't sure that they were going to make it, but I feel a little bit bad because I think I pulled this person away from another cool live stream with another cool live streamer. Folks, it's the great Dylan Burns of Dylan Burns TV. Dylan, how's it going? You know, the world's looking up, everything's on fire, but, you know, so is this stream, so I think we'll be good. Hey, hey, perfect. How's Papa Burns doing? Oh, he is doing a lot better. They were able to get three stints in his heart and they were able to revive him after 11 minutes. So I didn't think he'd make it, but he did and he was able to take a picture with me flipping me off, so I think he's fine. If he can do one of those hospital middle finger pictures, everything's going to be okay. Exactly. Well, folks, I'm really excited to get started here today. We have a really like a diverse array of topics. The first thing that I want to talk about is the Line 3 pipeline that is making some headlines recently. The first thing that I want to show us is a video from Democracy Now. For those of you who haven't kept up, this is just like a really brief explainer video, but it's really, really informative. Heels Court has denied an appeal aimed at halting construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota. In a 2-to-1 ruling, the court upheld Minnesota Public Utilities Commission's approval of the 340-mile-long pipeline. More than 700 people have been arrested since June in indigenous-led protests against the pipeline. Indigenous lawyer Tara Hauska of the Ginu Collective condemned Tuesday's ruling. Today's ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court is yet another example of Minnesota not responding to the climate crisis, not respecting indigenous sovereignty, and continuing to ignore what's happening in real time all around us with smoky skies, the world burning, the rivers and drought, and water protectors being brutalized by police that are being paid by Enbridge. And one thing that I want to add to that is Ruth's action is showing some really great videos of the footage from the protests. You see people marching, I believe, like thousands of people here, and now the situation has come to this where a lot of people, including many lawmakers, progressive lawmakers are exerting pressure on the Biden administration to halt the construction of the Line 3 pipeline. This is also from Democracy Now, and I just want to read this real quick before I take it to the panel. Lawmakers are calling on President Biden to halt construction on the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota until a thorough environmental review is undertaken. Meanwhile, indigenous leaders Winona Laduk and Tara Huska met with UN Special Rapporteur, I haven't said that word out loud in my gears, on human rights defenders last week to share the police violence suffered by water protectors at the Line 3 construction site. Activists say law enforcement ramped up their brutal attacks last week dislocating one person's jaw, but land and water defenders say they will continue their resistance repertoire, I think. It's going to bug me. So basically this feels like a repeat of history a couple of years ago towards the end of 2016. We saw the same thing with the Dakota Access Pipeline where we had this private military slash police force that was brutalizing protesters, literally sickening dogs on peaceful protesters and really we got word from the Obama administration that he would just kind of wait to see how everything happens and we're in the same situation essentially now where we're hoping that the Biden administration takes action. He hasn't necessarily spoken much about this at all and he's not really reacting to pressure and it just feels a little bit surreal to still be talking about the construction of new pipelines in 2021 after the IPCC just told us that we're basically fucked when it comes to climate change. So, Mack, you've talked a lot about the Line 3 Pipeline. What are your thoughts on this situation? Yeah, I mean, this is just one of those examples. I feel like where Biden, you know, he'll go out there and he'll make speeches where he's paying lip service to how he cares about addressing climate change and then you just see him go radio silent on something like this. It's like, it's completely ridiculous, like you said. I mean, we've seen this game play out before and, you know, I mean, there's no reason after, again, the IPCC report that you just said giving us as much of a red alarm as you could possibly have on climate change then, you know, there's no excuse right now for even staying silent but even allowing something like this to happen. It's just, it's ridiculous. Yeah, and it's frustrating because, you know, there's only, I think the article said it was like 40 lawmakers or so but really, or two dozen Democratic Party lawmakers. I mean, every single Democrat who purports to care about climate change, I mean, this should be their go-to issue. They should be exerting pressure on the Biden administration because this is, again, like not only is it egregious because of the lack of proper environmental review but we're not respecting indigenous rights. I mean, we've seen throughout history, the United States government isn't honoring treaties with indigenous peoples and it's just, it's, it just feels like history is repeating itself. Dylan, what's your take on this? Generally, my take is that first off, I would like to say that I support anybody engaging in direct action on the ground right now. Absolutely. Physically going out there and putting yourself in the way of police batons, pepper spray, police dogs, all of this takes an enormous amount of bravery and you're putting your body at an extreme risk to do this. So I just want to give like a direct like round of applause to the people who are actually putting themselves on the ground to do it because if it wasn't for that, then the Dakota Access Pipeline would have been a non-issue for most people because the media didn't cover it until the violence against protesters started and it was very clearly that the local community did not want that to go through. The same thing is true here, that the media didn't cover this until people put themselves in between the profit motive and their local community. That is when people started to cover this. So the first thing, all compliments need to go to them. The second thing is this should be a rallying cry for people trying to push on climate change and trying to fight climate change. Right now, Biden has the opportunity to go after this, to go after this issue. He did the same thing. He proved that he can do it. He did it with Dakota on the first day in office. We saw him do this. So it's not like he doesn't have the ability or he doesn't have the political leanings to do it. He has the ability to do it. So for me, I think it's merely a conversation of how are we going to pressure Democrats into doing this because the Republicans are a lost cause on this one. There's no way in hell we're going to get Republicans to be able to, number one, care about Indigenous People's Rights, the Republican Party, or about the environmental impacts that this could have. And the thing is, if you look at the demands that are being made, these are on extremist demands like you need to blow up the project, it's simply, a lot of these are just give it larger environmental review. And if that itself cannot even be met, then I don't know what could possibly mean. Just literally a question of have a conversation with the community because it feels like if you can't even put in the effort to put in a larger scale environmental review on a project of this size, then it feels like you don't even want to have the conversation with the community. It sounds like you don't really care about what the community thinks. So you shouldn't be surprised when the community comes out in force and stops you from doing your project. Yeah, I wanted to, great points, by the way, Dylan. I wanted to ask Farron, because you oftentimes cover a lot of legal issues and whatnot. And a lot of what we're seeing with the Biden administration, what's being greenlit and a lot of the continuation of the projects from the Trump era is all the result of Attorney General Merritt Garland. Do you know who in the Biden administration is pulling the strings here? Because it feels weird, when Biden came into office I was giving him credit for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline. Being to the left of the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. But now we see basically an action on Line 3. And what do you think is the underlying motivations here for the Biden administration? I think they do things when they think they're going to get a lot of good reaction from it. They looked out over the country. They saw the opposition to Dakota. They saw the opposition to Keystone. So they understood by doing this, we're going to make a lot of people happy. We're going to get some good publicity in these early days. We're going to get some progressive street cred. But Line 3, nobody knows what that is. There's been no coverage of this. Yes, we know about it. We've talked about it. But outside of these small circles, most people aren't familiar with this. This is not an issue that has been as well-covered, I guess, as it should be. So they don't see, I'm assuming, and I don't think they see any benefit to it right now. So as Dylan pointed out, we have to make this a bigger issue. We have to make sure that we continue talking about it. It's the same thing that we did with the Keystone XL pipeline. I mean, I was writing for Dismogblog about the problems with Keystone all the way back in 2010. And back then people, well, what is this thing? What's it about? It took a long time. And unfortunately, as we know from the IPCC report, we don't have that kind of time. So these lawsuits are great. And honestly, legally speaking, it is kind of shocking that this Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in the way they did because if a proper environmental review was not done, legally speaking, the project should not be allowed to go forward. So, you know, that kind of blows my mind. We just saw a project in Alaska last week put on ice because they did not do a proper environmental review. So we're seeing progress in some areas. We're seeing nothing in other areas. And what concerns me about it is that's what we saw with Obama. We had really great action in some arenas when it comes to environmental protection, emissions. You know, the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards Act was wonderful. And then we increased offshore drilling to a level never seen before in this country. Domestic oil production was booming, fracking was exploding. So good and bad negates progress. And we're in a position, we can't negate progress now. We have to be moving forward, especially after four years of moving backwards. So if it's a whole publicity thing, they don't know that enough people care about Enbridge to actually do something about it. Then it is up to us to make a big fuss about it, to publicize this and to make sure everybody knows what this is and why it's such a bad idea. Yeah, and these are great points. If you're watching this right now, make some noise because I feel like this is an easy win for Joe Biden. He knows that people are thinking more deeply about climate change than ever before. We have more organizations now related to climate change and climate action than ever before. So I think that trying to stop this, we just have to make enough noise. And the difference between this and the Dakota Access Pipeline, if I could point out like these parallels, is that there was actually a lot of people dedicated to the Dakota Access Pipeline. And I think that a lot of people leading YouTuber was talking about DApple. Activists were kind of like flying across the country to talk about DApple. And with this one, I don't necessarily see that. And I think that part of the issue is that everyone is just kind of exhausted because there's so much going on right now. A global pandemic, extremism in the country, it's exhausting. So a lot of people have tuned out, but I think that this isn't necessarily a lost cause. This is something that we can make progress on so long as we sufficiently exert enough pressure on the Biden administration. So yeah, folks, line three is really important. And I hope that more people pay attention to this and follow this because, again, in 2021, I don't want to hear anything about the construction of new pipelines. We should be thoroughly converting our entire energy infrastructure to clean, green, renewable technology. And I just, this feels insane to put it frankly. But I wanted to move on to another topic. I'm not sure how many of you talked about this. I didn't actually talk about this, but this is concerning only fans. So they made a lot of noise or pissed a lot of people off, I should say, when they announced that they would be banning sexually explicit content. Now, there were some reasons as to why they said that they decided to do this part of it, because they were not necessarily able to easily secure new investors. Also banking was an issue, JPMorgan Chase apparently was not allowing transactions for certain sex workers on the platform. But I just want to read a little bit of this and get your take because this is a really bizarre story. And it makes me feel like we really haven't made progress in the United States when it comes to sex positivity and normalizing sex work and treating sex work as work because like all of the sex workers that built the platform, just like in one fell swoop, they saw the rug pulled out from under them. And, you know, we're not on the platform, but on YouTube, I'm sure that, you know, all of us individually have experienced moments where it's like, kind of feels like this isn't sustainable. So this is from Ivana Seric of Axios. So only fans and online creator platform known for its adult content announced via Twitter Wednesday that it has dropped plans to ban sexually explicit content on its platform in October. The move comes after the proposed ban sparked an outcry from sex workers who relied on the platform to safely make a living. Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard the platform tweeted. We've secured assistance, assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1st policy change. Now, to make matters worse, I'm not sure if you all have been following this story. So after they announced this ban of sexually explicit content, they put out this incredibly patronizing tweet saying, hey, sex work is work. We support sex workers. We stand by sex workers as they like basically deplatformed all of them. So only fans announced the proposed ban on sexually explicit content last week. So just to show you like this is a flip flop within a week, the company has struggled to attract outside investors and the move was done at the request of its banking and payout partners. It said the move concerned many sex workers who had made long-term financial commitments, including mortgages based on the presumption that they'd continue posting on the platform. Now, one of the largest creators on OnlyFans says we should all be suspicious of the word suspended and continue to build up pages on backup platforms. As a sex worker, we are never truly safe anywhere we go. And this is really an important point because, you know, finally when you see a platform in, you know, 2021 America that seems like, you know, sex workers are finally safe. They have an outlet. This happens. So anyone want to weigh in on this? Because I feel like this story is we've got a long ways to go, folks. I don't know. Maybe somebody has a less doom or take than me. So I remember when I was an intern for a health care workers union and 1199 ACIU. And I was, during one of the times I was learning and growing while studying other organizers there, we went and we were talking to political candidates who were going to run in D.C. for D.C. elections. And they went on and on and on in conversation. And eventually they turned Dylan into Dylan. We're about to wrap up. Do you have any questions? And I just thought and I asked the person, what's your thoughts on decriminalizing sex work? And it felt like I had just pulled the pin off of a grenade. I have no idea why it was such a bombshell. This is an industry and a profession that has existed since before the birth of Jesus Christ. And it will exist until this world collapses in on itself. So the idea that people had really considered running for office or going out there and getting that deeply involved in politics and just the word sex work just like gets them a little hot under the collar on what they're about to say is so strange to me because it's not like nobody understands what this is. Everybody knows what it is. So why is it such a dirty word? And so I think the biggest thing we need to do to make it easier for sex workers to work is to de-stigmatize the profession. Now, people can make moralistic arguments about, well, I don't like sex work for this reason or I don't like sex work for that reason. And then I could just say easily in response to them that there's a lot of professions that I don't think I would like to participate in. I don't think anytime soon I'm going to be a sword swallower or a fire breather, but you know what? I don't think I can just ignore them and those jobs are going to go away. They're going to continue to exist. They've existed for a long time. So the best thing we can do is make it a supportive environment for these individuals. De-stigmatize this and talk about it so we can actually address the issues that sex workers face and really make it as safe as possible. Prohibition did not make people stop drinking alcohol. It just meant people started drinking poison alcohol and people died at higher numbers. The more this is de-stigmatized, the more that this has to be done in back rooms and alleyways and the more risk you place upon sex workers and those who consume the product that they put out there. Yeah, no, and that really is an interesting thing that you mentioned about how it was like a bomb when you asked the politician about this. I feel like that's even true on the left. On the left, we like to talk about how egalitarian we are, how advanced we are in our thinking. But really, a couple of years ago, I saw conversations from a left-wing standpoint that this whole industry is horrible. There's exploitation. And Mac, what do you think about this argument that from a left-wing standpoint, we shouldn't necessarily support this because it's inherently exploitative. Oftentimes sex workers, they don't do it because they want to. I feel like this argument is bogus and everything that is a negative from a left-wing perspective about sex work, that's all the more reason why we should bring it to light, stop making it remain in the shadows, make sure that it's decriminalized and legalized. What should take on that? Yeah, no, I mean, 100% would fall in the same camp as Dylan on this. I mean, I think that's a ridiculous argument. But no, I mean, 100%, this is the same thing as the abortion argument to me is you can criminalize abortion, but people are still going to get abortions and all you're going to do in the process of criminalizing it and making it more difficult for people is you're just going to make it more dangerous for people. So it's just ridiculous, 100% right by Dylan that we need to be destigmatizing it, talking about it as much as possible. And just on another front, I don't even understand this from a business perspective, from the perspective of only fans. Wasn't this the whole thing that they were doing? And then they just decide, oh no, now we're going to bow down to the credit card companies and completely change our business model. It just, it didn't really make any sense for me the entire time throughout this story. So I kind of understand why they backtracked and then realized like, oh shit, okay, maybe we're going to be losing a substantial portion of our business. So, you know, it doesn't matter if we have the credit card companies, but yeah, no, I think 100%, we need to be destigmatizing it, talking about it openly. It's not something that should be in the shadows of society or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I wanted to ask your thoughts on this, Farron, because you've covered politics publicly for longer than any of us. Have you seen any progress on this issue? Do you think that sex positivity is something that has increased over time? Even like in leftist circles, I still feel like it's really, really, you know, if people are pro-sex positivity or pro-sex workers, they still don't necessarily want to talk about it, because in America, we kind of have this like weird aversion to, you know, discussions about sex and sexuality, and I feel like that's starting to change in large part due to younger generations just being more vocal. But have you seen any progress? Because I feel like if we've made progress, it's been like almost nothing. Yeah, no, I mean, there's been progress, but it's almost so small that you don't really notice it. You know what I mean? You know, we've changed attitudes in some ways where we're starting to come around to certain things, but then when it comes to actual, you know, sex work, that one is still the big taboo. You can't talk about it. You can't do it. You can't, you know, be near it. You can't even say that I'm okay with it without that massive stigma. And it's so weird how we have these stigmas on these things here in the United States because people get cringey about it because they feel like they're supposed to. You know, that's really what it comes down to. It's just these trained behaviors like, okay, you're talking about this thing. Well, I think I'm supposed to not be okay with this. That's how I was taught, and that's because that's how they were taught. There's no real logic when you start digging into these people's arguments of why this is not good, why you shouldn't support it. There's nothing there. It's just because we've been pounding it into our heads for decades and centuries, really, that, oh no, this is only what the bad people do, but that's not the case. That's absolutely not the case here. And I think only fans has been a wonderful outlet for people to do this, again, and stay safe doing it. And then, you know, they try to go corporate and we all know what happens when that happens. It's the same thing that happened when, you know, drug companies were suddenly allowed to advertise on TV. Oh my God, look at how much money we're making. Let's focus more on the money than on the creating new things. That's when drug prices in the US skyrocketed. When you started having defense contractors, you know, Lockheed Martin and Boeing advertising their services in general dynamic, general electric, on corporate media. That makes no sense. Are you going to go out and buy missiles? Are you going to go buy a jet? No, you're not. But what they're doing is they're buying the loyalty. Anytime the corporations start coming into something, they destroy it is the point. And that's what they tried to do with the only fans. And hopefully this is more than just a suspension of this, you know, change of heart. Hopefully it's okay. We realize, wow, we messed up. We're not going to do that again. Things are going to keep rolling the way they were and everybody's happy. I agree that we need more investment in here. We need to build the next generation of fleshlights as soon as possible. We need to invest in this industry. Move forward. Okay. I am looking forward to the technological bliss that awaits us. But I have one question for the group. There is when I bring this up and I do bring this up with local politicians and it is a topic that gets them uncomfortable because the term that comes up is red light district. That well, this is an interesting idea, but if we do it here on the locality, what we'll do is create a red light district and we're going to make a lot of people feel a little unsafe because then our little locality is where everybody is going to do to travel for sexual tourism and then we're the cine of the quote-unquote degenerates. How do you guys think we should respond to that because the red light district talking point has been thrown around because a lot of people don't necessarily want to be like Amsterdam. I think the best way to say that is it's already happening. You just don't know about it. But I think people, oh, you know, because you don't know about it, suddenly you think it's not in your community. No, it is. It is. You're just happy living in your little ignorant bubble not knowing the terrors that face these sex workers every day. If we can provide them with safety, if we can make sure that everything is cool, calm, and under control, properly vetted and protect these individuals, this might actually be a net benefit and not actually, it definitely would for local economies. And again, as you said, you may not like what they do and yeah, there's plenty of jobs. I don't like that people pump oil out of the ground, but I'm not saying you shouldn't have a right to do that job. So, you know, I think there's definite inroads that can be made there. Possibly somebody more eloquent than me, you know, would be able to explain it a little better and maybe convince more people. But people need to understand that just because you don't like it, just because you don't want it happening. Yeah, it's already happening where you are. I can promise you. Yeah, I think one thing. Oh, sorry about that. No, go ahead, Mac. I was just going to add on, yeah, I think Farron is right. Is that like, it's like, you know, the abortion thing is like, you can criminalize something, but it's not going to go away. But then in addition to that, to answer Dylan's question, I think that I think that a lot of reasons why Americans would be like super hesitant to accept something like that is because of the nature of how sex work functions currently in the United States and how we typically have understood it historically here because we've never had, you know, communities that are accepting of it or, you know, having actual protections and changing that dynamic. So it's like, you know, it's something that we haven't even had a perspective on here in the United States. So I kind of, you know, would understand why people would be hesitant to accept something that would be such a dramatic change. But yeah, that's why we have to continue, I guess, destigmatizing it and making it more mainstream like that. Yeah. On that note, I think that destigmatizing it is that would be accelerated if the law changed. And I've seen this, you know, so many times just in my lifetime, just in the time that I've been covering politics, like when marijuana was legalized in Colorado and Washington. I mean, immediately within five years, you know, people who I knew personally who were very anti-pot, I'm buying them weed for Christmas. You know, everything, marriage equality 2015, you know, since it was legalized, support for marriage equality skyrocketed. So I think that in the event sex work was actually legalized and brought to light. I think that that would have a cultural impact. And just to kind of go back to what we were all talking about, this weird cultural aversion to sex in the United States, I'm going to date myself here. So I was a manager at Blockbuster before, and I've talked about this on my streams. And I would have parents sometimes, they bring up movies and they say, do you know if this movie is like appropriate for kids? And I'd be like, no, no, this movie, they chop off heads. Like it's, you don't want to watch this. Like your kids are too young. And they'd be like, well, I don't care about that, but is there any sex in it? And like, wait, wait, sex is natural. Chopping off heads is not natural. You want your kids to see the heads getting chopped or don't, it just, it's really weird to me that we even are more comfortable with violence as a society. And of course that's anecdotal, but you know, it just, it's such a weird thing. And it kind of goes back to what Dylan was speaking to, just this like, ooh, like someone brings it up. Even in 2020, I know that Bernie Sanders had a lot of criticisms from sex workers because he voted on a bill that I think got rid of some website that, I don't remember, like I'm blanking on the details here that made it more dangerous for sex workers. And so this is something that I feel like we're going to have to work on. And the only fans issue, if nothing else, at least kind of got the gears turning in people's heads. It certainly made me think about, oh wow, we, you know, we need to do more as leftists, I think to try to normalize this issue. But one thing that I really want to normalize. Is there one example I could bring up before we leave that I think is a great example of this? Oh yeah, absolutely. So everybody knows what that's all about and knows the controversies around it. Yes. But the biggest controversy that I can remember is people have problems with the violence of drugs and everything. But the thing that was the line too far that almost broke their ESRB rating and they had to like do a bunch of cover from wasn't the gang shootings. It wasn't the murder, the drugs, any of that. It was the fact that there might, at one point there was like a sex minigame that they removed. It was none of that. It was the fact that you could have, you could have sex in the game. And that caused ten times more outrage than the violence ever could. The hot coffee, Bob. It's referred to now. Oh, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Like it's so weird to where like we would rather see shootings and killings and murders. That's all based, right? I'm a video game player, so I love the violence. But to say that that's like, you know, better than just like seeing something that is totally natural is it's so weird to me. And when you sit back and think about it, it's like Americans have been conditioned in so many weird ways to have these weird and strange beliefs that it's really like it's worthwhile that we all just take time to reflect. But I want to talk about this story. So this is something that I saw before I went on. So, okay. Over the course of the last month or so, we have had multiple prominent anti-vax conservatives die from COVID-19. The first was Dick Farrell. He worked for Newsmax, and that's his real name, Dick Farrell. He worked for Newsmax. He was an anti-vaxer, got COVID, died. Then we saw Scott Apley, a prominent Republican in Texas, anti-vax, made fun of COVID and the severity of COVID, got COVID, died. Then we had Phil Valentine, was not anti-vax according to his family, but vaccine-hesitant, got COVID, died. Last week, Chris Johansson, who is a GOP lawmaker from the state of Maine, he and his wife are both anti-vax. His wife, got COVID, died. Days later, he was attending an anti-vax rally in Maine. And we have another story in this saga, which I don't know when this series is going to end. Anti-vax lawyer for dozens of capital riders is now on a ventilator with COVID-19. This is from John Wright of Raw Story, sorry folks. I'm not laughing like at the deaths. I'm laughing at the insanity. Okay, so don't come at me. Pearl clutching the MAGA Cheds. Attorney John Pierce, who has represented Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooting suspect, Kyle Rittenhouse, as well as more than a dozen capital riders, reportedly is on a ventilator after contracting COVID-19. Pierce's illness was first reported Wednesday after it prompted a hearing for accused capital rider Shane Jenkins to be delayed, according to independent journalist Marcy Wheeler and Washington Post reporter Rachel Wiener. Pierce is not at this hearing. He sent the lawyer from his office, who is not barred in DC, again, Wheeler reported, Mr. Pierce is in the hospital, we believe, with COVID-19 on a ventilator, non-responsive. One of the attorneys who was present reportedly told a judge. So this is the question that I have to the panel. And I feel like this is kind of a rhetorical question, because you're all going to have the same answer, I think. How many deaths is it going to take of prominent conservatives before they actually start to take it seriously? My answer is there could be a million, and they're still not going to take it seriously. Farron, what's your take on this? No, I agree. There's no limit. You know, to pull the quote from Mean Girls, the limit does not exist. So what we're talking about here, though, this story with John Pierce, this lawyer, I got a segment coming up on a tomorrow morning, actually, but I always make a point, because I cover every single one of these when they happen. And it's getting harder and harder to continue to talk about it. You know, some of these people, you know, and I always point out, listen, I guarantee you, I never agreed with anything this person ever stood for, anything they ever did, but I wouldn't want any of them to die. Athlete, like you talked about, has a infant son. Like that kid, that kid doesn't have a dad now. So he'll never know his real father because of this stupid anti-vax bullshit that these people just have latched onto with this. And it is heart-wrenching. You know, I hate this because I look at my own kids and, God, what would happen to them if something had happened to me, if I was this stupid and selfish? And luckily, I'm not. But it's tough. But I always, again, I point out to people, I'm going to talk about every single one of these that happens because maybe, maybe there's one person out there that hears it that says, you know what? I'm going to go get the shot because Valentine's family even said, because when he died Saturday, I think the family issued a statement Wednesday saying that he's going to make sure when he comes back, he is going to be more pro-vaccine for his audience. Well, they never got that. They didn't get to hear it. They never got that opportunity. And we're not hearing anybody, by the way, on their deathbed saying, oh, thank God, I didn't get the shot. No, it's always the opposite. Like, why did I do this to myself? So I use these as teachable moments. And I don't know that we're ever going to convince everybody. But if we can at least convince one or two people, maybe, by talking about these stories, I'm going to continue to do it. Because even if I don't like you, even if I disagree with everything you see, you think politically, I don't want you to die. But it is getting harder and harder at this point to have empathy. Because this is what happens. This is what happens when you're stupid. And I don't want you to die. But my God, my empathy meter is running really low right now. You get desensitized to it. Go ahead, Dylan. I'll let you be blunt, because you'll say the things that I won't say, and I'll live vicariously through you. Wonderful. So this just feels like that old meme. I never thought the leopards would eat my face. Some woman who voted for the leopard eating people's faces at the party. Yeah, who would have thought if you were able to fool yourself and all of your audiences, that if you don't take the one thing that has an over 90% effectiveness rate to stop you from getting COVID. Not only that, and people undersell this. Not only does it drastically decrease the chance of you getting COVID, but if you actually do get COVID, your chances of surviving are still much, much, much higher. So it's not only that this vaccine helps stop you get COVID and drastically increases your chances of not getting it. But then if you do catch COVID, the symptoms are most likely going to be less severe and you're most likely going to be able to walk away perfectly fine. It increases your chances dramatically. So even if you don't want to get it from the idea, well, it isn't perfect in saving me. Well, then don't you want a better fighting chance if you do end up getting it anyway? These are people who have perpetuated these lies about this vaccine. These are people whose their words have caused people not only to die from COVID, but the people who have gotten COVID, they're going to have to deal with medical complications for the rest of their lives. We see the number 600,000. That's not the only way we should wait it. Number one, we should do it on an international scale. I think we're being very American-centric, but we live here, I understand. But we need to think about the long-term health effects. This is happening on people. And the fact that these dumb fucks would rather, that waited for so long for FDA approval, waited so long and now that we got it, there is instead going to take fucking horse medication, well, the FDA begs them not to. I have empathy for human beings, but I cannot transplant extra brain cells into your brain. Science has not given me that yet. When it does, I'll do my best to do it. So I feel for these people's families, but I mean, it's like if I saw somebody stick their dick in the toaster and then jump in a volcano. It's like I do feel for the family who just lost a family member, but we all knew what was going to happen. That's a great way to put it. That was brilliant, Dylan. No, listen, I don't, when I see these stories, it's not like I'm, oh, yes, another one is going to die. I think that in the event that they survived, like Phil Valentine, that would be wonderful because I think that them surviving COVID after being near death and promoting the vaccine, I feel like they would be more effective than if they died. So, Mac, don't you feel like, well, I don't even know how to phrase the question because I'm just exasperated at this point. Like, do you think that being desensitized to all of this is morally acceptable because I do feel desensitized. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, no, I mean, like 100%, I get it. Like at this point where months into this, we've seen, like you were saying, like it's just story after story after story. It's not like this is like a one-off thing. So you would hope or think that some of these people who watch like their favorite conservative commentator get sick and then potentially die or even like barely survive COVID, you would hope that like, maybe that would be a teachable moment for them. But honestly, I'm not confident in that. We've seen the results of that. I mean, these people will shift the goalposts, you know, no matter what happens. And we just saw that again, like with the FDA fully approving the Pfizer vaccine, it's like it was never about the FDA approval for a lot of these people. And now it's just about, oh, so now you really trust the FDA. It's like, you know, we're never going to get through to a large, you know, portion of the population who are listening to these types of people. But yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know how much my empathy meter is at right now, but it's definitely decreasing as time goes on. But yeah, I mean, I would hope there could be some teachable moments in here, but it just doesn't seem like there has been. Yeah, this is where I'm at. I feel like I am very, very vocal about supporting vaccine mandates because I think that, you know, the hope in this story is that vaccine rates are increasing, but they're not increasing enough to get us to the point where we're going to reach herd immunity anytime soon. So this is where I'm at with the situation and anyone on the panel can weigh in if they want to add to it. I feel like we have two options right now. We can either a mandate vaccines and at least get us to herd immunity in the United States, hopefully, and effectively stop it, put a cap on it here, right? We still have to take care of the rest of the world, make sure everyone is vaccinated, but we can mandate vaccines and then do that or we can not mandate vaccines and choose to let the anti-vaxxers keep all of society in a perpetual state of plague all because they're uninformed or stubborn. So this is basically where I'm at. Like I think that vaccine mandates are the only way we're going to have a shot if it is vaccines that's going to help us end the pandemic. I don't know if anybody wants to respond to that because I feel like that's a pretty controversial statement. No, I mean, when this began, I was kind of more on the against vaccine mandates, but now that I'm seeing in my home state of Georgia here, all of my local hospitals are filled up with unvaccinated COVID patients. It's like, I don't think it's acceptable for there to be a situation and maybe this is selfish of me, but I personally think it's more selfish of people to not be vaccinated, you know, I wouldn't want a situation where one of my family members or myself, you know, we get into a car accident or a heart attack or a stroke or just any other random normal illness that could happen. And then you're getting diverted from the hospital because it's filled up with unvaccinated COVID patients. To me, that's like just an unacceptable red line. So if we have to do vaccine mandates to do that, I guess that's what we have to do. And then it becomes a question of how do you enforce vaccine mandates because, you know, the flip side of that is I don't want a situation where, you know, we have cops, you know, that are going around and harassing a bunch of minority communities and using it as an excuse to, you know, crack down on people. So there's definitely a nuanced discussion to be had there, but I think I've been trending more in the pro vaccine mandate discussion recently. I got two things I can say. The first thing I'll say is, when it comes to who can die to like or what can happen for like these people to fall in line, Trump recently on his stage just recommended getting the vaccine and he got booed. He got booed by audience for just suggesting it. Alex Jones turned on him for that. He's saying, I guess Donald Trump's really a dumbass. Right? If him just recommended in an after he had the backdrop, but you still have your freedoms and you don't have to if you don't want to and just him back trapping so quickly. So if even he can't convince him to take it, then there's no one figure that can do it, right? There's no way that, and the thing is, we should have all been able to kind of see the things that were happening when we had a mainstream Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, arguing with a surgeon and Ben Carson on the Republican Nat stage in 2015 saying, I don't know, maybe vaccines do cause autism. Those are planting some pretty dangerous seeds that I think we're now reaping. But here is my bipartisan solution. Okay? So I got something for conservatives. Okay. So for the liberals, it's a vaccine mandate, right? But then for the conservatives, what we're going to do is we're going to get M2 Browning machine guns from General Dynamics and we're going to fill them full of vaccines and we're going to go through local communities and just shoot vaccines directly into the arms of every American. They can run and hide, but I will get a vaccine into them. And therefore, we helped the defense contractors, which, you know, the Republicans will love, and with the liberals, get their vaccine mandate. So there you go. We got it. Everybody will be happy. There's my solution, bipartisan. That's even more extreme than my take. Go ahead. I think there's obviously, there's varying degrees when it comes to the anti-vaxxers, right? You have people who are vaccine hesitant, like, I don't know, do I really need this as COVID as bad as they say? And then you've got the Robert F. Kennedy juniors, right? The people that are actually cashing in on this crap. And I say that because that's very personal to me. I don't know if anybody's aware of this, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is actually the co-founder of Ring of Fire. He and Mike Papantonio began it as a radio show on Air America back in 2004. I was a researcher. I did research for Bobby every single week. He left, you know, many, many years ago. But I've known him. I've worked with him. And this evolution from the very first time he put out that article, like, we were just badly immunity. We were just flabbergasted down here. We're like, what, what the hell? Wow. This isn't, this isn't even real. And we thought, and we had hoped that was the end of it. But then to watch over the years, and again, he's been gone from us for many years at this point, to watch what has happened to him, like how far down this rabbit hole that he has gone, it's obscene. And it's really, really sad. You know, this was somebody that I worked with for over a decade. And now he's a menace. He truly is. His advice, if you can call it that, his lies are going to get people killed if they haven't already. And so to me, it is a difference between the people like him that are out there spreading these lies and this misinformation that they have been told I know for a fact for over a decade that it's not true. There's a difference between that and there's a difference between the people who are out there saying, I don't know if it's right for me. You know? So when I say, when I say there's people we can reach, we can reach those people. The Bobby Kennedys, you know, the little groups he's running now, they're gone. You're not going to reach those people. There's no bringing them back. So, you know, that's my stance on it and that's why a couple years ago, actually, before COVID I compared anti-vaxxers to climate change deniers because I think that's an apt comparison. You're both looking at all the available data and still just saying, no, I don't want to believe that, so I'm not. Bobby off something fierce and he had messaged our producers and said, I want to debate Farron. I was like, why, I'm not going to waste my time on you doing this because I'm not going to give you a platform again. And it's ridiculous and I hate it and I hate to see, you know, the fact that this guy used to be associated with us and it's really embarrassing now. Can I ask one really tough question that I don't even particularly, I think I know the answer to it personally but this is a question. So, a big issue you just brought up with the spreading of misinformation. Now, more than ever, there's less barriers between people and communicating to thousands of people online either through Twitter, Facebook and all these things and there's not a lot of filters. Like, if I was to go out and tweet right now, COVID vaccine doesn't work. Like, there might be like a notification under it or something like that. There's not a lot of filters that could affect thousands upon thousands of people and whether they decide to get vaccinated and can have real effects on whether people live or die. And so, my genuine question is, how do we tackle we can all say get the COVID vaccine force mandate but how do we tackle the topic of disinformation when it comes to things like health that envelops the lives of millions of millions of people when there's some people who are so financially incentivized to spread disinformation whether it's about forced medication or COVID not being real? I think that this is one of the biggest questions of the time right now because this is all relatively new. Like, we're only now recently reaching this phase in human history where lots and lots of people most Americans have access to the internet and so this is something we have to figure out how to deal with. You know, we want to make sure that we maximize people's ability to speak freely but at the same time we have to draw a line are we going to allow platforms to profit off of misinformation? I mean, Facebook has been a misinformation machine where there's the most I think it was like the Disinfo 12 or something, they come out of Facebook individuals like Dr. Tenpenny who claims that the vaccines will make you magnetic so I feel like when it comes to public health crises like this I am about drawing a really strict line and people will say that I'm pro-censorship but I mean everyone is pro-censorship to an extent, right? Like, if somebody said that they were going to post a video of somebody getting beheaded and that was deleted I think that most people would be okay with that so it's just a matter of like where you draw that line what's appropriate, what's acceptable and when it comes to misinformation as it relates to public health this has real consequences people are dying hundreds of thousands of Americans have died and so if people are actually propagating misinformation these platforms they need to regulate that and I think that the little notifications on Twitter that you referenced Dylan is a really great start saying this is incorrect but if there are some voices that are very very prominent like Dr. Tenpenny, she shouldn't be on Facebook how many, I mean you can't quantify this but how many people has she killed because of her, you know, anti-vax misinformation but then again it's really messy because if we decide that we are going to get rid of this on platforms how do you do that? How does the government regulate that? It's a really complicated question Well another possible route that doesn't involve having to rely on the tech companies to do the right thing because you know as you just said they don't like to do the right thing and this is a slippery slope but I'm offering it up as a potential solution here if we loosened libel laws a little bit, just a little bit and allowed these companies who make vaccines you know whether it's COVID vaccine or an MMR vaccine because the true anti-vaxxers you know attack all of them and we allow them to just take them to court put them through the ringer and basically you know bankrupt these people that's a path we've actually seen the right wing start weaponizing defamation lawsuits against a lot of people on the left, I don't know if anybody else here has experienced that recently but yes it's really starting to become a weapon that they're using and so I say in these instances these companies ought to be able to do something about this because they're the ones essentially getting slandered by these individuals they're the ones who are losing money you know not that I care about big pharma money but they are technically losing money they would meet the standards for defamation lawsuit against these individuals so I think we need to loosen it for these corporations a little bit let them go after these people and watch the situation sort itself out see I think that is a good potential solution but it does fall under the relying on private companies which makes it so tough and it is a slippery slope because it's like I've been kind of like on the side against these corporations like I've played a 30 second clip of like a CBS interview with Donald Trump and they've come after me and it's like okay it's fair use but I don't have a team of lawyers so it is tough and this is like the complexity the complexity of it I don't know what the answer is I know that this is bad and it has to stop but I don't know what to do and I think that this is something that people really have to try to have a nuanced conversation about because any solution is usually demonized as oh well that's just your pro censorship or your pro there's no nuance it's always like this binary thinking and I think that we really have to think deeply about this because we've never dealt with this before we're in a situation where in theory we should be smarter than ever because we all have access to mini computers cell phones and I sound like a boomer for saying that but I mean it's true we have more information than ever but we're dumber than ever as a society so how do we adapt to this time and I don't think that there's any like cut and dry answer to that I think we're gonna learn as we go along the only issue is that there's a lot of deadlines that are catastrophic you know climate change and misinformation with that a global pandemic so it's really hard like we don't have the time to sort all of this out so we're doing it real time and it's not going too well I'm kind of at a loss if I'm being perfectly honest I would suggest two things and there's room for nuance on a lot of these things but in my opinion honestly I think the world would be a hell of a lot better off if we just simply deleted Facebook and TikTok from existence that's just my personal take on that Facebook is more so like older people that are getting misinformed with all the COVID misinformation but I know a lot of people that are in even my circles are pretty smart people who get wrapped up in a lot of stuff on TikTok and it's just wild to me seeing and it's just a cesspool like a breeding ground for this stuff but so yeah I think we should delete those from existence and we'd be better off from this and then number two I think the thing that people don't necessarily talk enough and I agree with both Dylan and Farron on a lot of those things that you guys were just talking about but I think the thing that people leave out of the conversation a lot is we have a ridiculously healthcare system here that has consistently screwed over Americans for decades and decades and so it's like if you don't want to have a landscape where people are susceptible to misinformation well then maybe create a healthcare system where people actually have the ability to go and form a relationship with a doctor and they're not getting screwed over by their health insurance company and they're not falling into bankruptcy and they're not getting screwed over by big pharma companies etc it's like we need a complete overhaul of our entire medical system so push for something like Medicare for all for health insurance we need to nationalize big pharma those are the types of ways that I think we could actually like in a long term way address the problem of misinformation is stop allowing for a situation where people don't trust the medical system in the first place but those are just my takes on it you know rebuilding trust in these institutions I think that that is important because people rightfully they don't trust the government they don't trust big pharma and I get it right these are you know their vultures you know we live in a late-stage capitalist society so there's not a lot of trust to go around but yeah I think that rebuilding trust in institutions trying to fight like this anti-intellectualism where we think that doctors are part of some grand conspiracy like trying to do all these things at once is important but it's a matter of like how do we get it done so before we move on to the next topic I just want to do a quick check here so we're about more than halfway so here's what we'll do so we will get to our featured content creator of the week give all of the panelists a three minute break and then when we come back we will get to the weekly dose of stupidity featuring one of my favorite right-wing political commentators so folks this week I have a new content creator that I discovered that took my recommendation that leftists should occasionally touch grass to heart and he films all this videos outdoors so folks this is our featured content creator of the week hey everybody so my name is Eric and my channel is called left alone talking which I'm pretty proud to have thought of because I think it works on a few different levels look at that bam dragonfly on my thumb first is I'm in nature dragonflies find my thumb I've been left alone to talk and so that's pretty undeniable the second is that I do fancy it myself as somebody who's on the left politically but then I listen to other media outlets and pundits and what they tell me is that he's on the left and that she's on the left and that he's on the left and that she's on the left and these are people that I do not agree with by and large and I don't respect and I certainly wouldn't want to be grouped into the same ideological framework as them as the left and so if I'm not on the left like them that would either leave me to be on the right which I'm certainly not a centrist which I just think would be embarrassing and so I guess that just means that I'm on the left but I've been left alone and so then I talk about it and that's what this channel is so a little bit about me I've worked a lot with different liberal institutions primarily NGOs and nonprofits mostly doing environmental organizing but I've also done different mid-level management type things and I've even worked for the Democratic party during the general election in swing states for two cycles but I didn't like it if that helps anything and I'm because I don't like them mostly but I'm able to rationalize it through kind of Chomsky and lesser evil voting arguments which I think are valid as well as a little bit of transparent careerism which I used to mash down the cognitive dissidents but I still feel gross afterwards and I have a yucky taste in my mouth and so what I do is I if you see that that's a van which I made which I use to travel the country and I see America and America's pretty effed up in fact I even just traveled to Akron, Ohio to volunteer for one of the only Democrats I've ever liked Nina Turner and we know how that went and I use all of that as righteous Ignatian which I used to fuel the fire of my political YouTube channel. What else do I discuss on my channel? Really anything which I think is important and interesting but under discussed or poorly discussed in the mainstream which unfortunately in my opinion is most of the issues and most of those issues are depressing and that's not an energy I want to put out there and so I try to counteract it by doing little jokes here and there like swamps in the background and stones and ferns and spruces and really anything to take the edge off and I do quirky fun thumbnails which the people love because it's a lot easier to hear about the Obama administration's immediate betrayal of the change that it promised to millions of Americans which for the first time in their lives actually hoped that things could change by instead immediately bailing out the banks which funded his campaign and then refusing to prosecute any of the sociopathic executives on Wall Street which crashed the economy on a scale which is infatable in favor of instead prosecuting more whistleblowers than any other president as well as nonviolent drug offenders at the Wazoo in continuing the drug war that's kind of depressing but if the president is represented in the thumbnail as a mother mallard slowly escorting its ducklings towards the lake that makes it great for everyone and so I encourage you to check out the channel please subscribe if you're interested I also did a 7 part podcast on Obama's memoir which is made into a 10 hour YouTube video and then broken to 7 part podcast and clipped into a bunch of videos if you want to check out that you can but thanks for the time well folks that was left alone talking I will put links in the description box if you're watching this on YouTube if you're watching on Means TV you will have to go to YouTube and search for left alone talking I think we can easily get this person to 1000 subscribers in the next couple of weeks so let's make it happen and support independent media but on that note on Tuesday that is the very last day that you could submit your channel to be considered as a featured content creator of the week because on September 8 that is the season finale of dystopian times it won't be coming back until next year possibly the year afterwards I don't know so make sure you get in your submission before Tuesday or by the end of Tuesday if you want it to be considered so there's two what is this episode eight so there's two slots left please make sure that you give yourself the opportunity send me an unlisted YouTube video and email it to mike at humansreport.com with the subject find DT underscore submissions in all gaps folks we've had some phenomenal people featured we have had Anthony Park of Next Step Productions Alex Kawa, Spencer Snyder and the great good politic guy who's on today so yeah folks definitely be sure to submit your channels okay so I'm prepping the next segment I don't know about you all but I'm a huge fan of Dennis Prager I think that he is incredibly entertaining and when I listen to his podcast I always feel like really inspired and invigorated and don't ever feel the urge to fall asleep this week he is going to make a pretty bold claim for him and he's going to assert that he's actually smarter than doctors he knows more than doctors when it comes to COVID-19 so folks this is our weekly dose of stupidity okay so this is the hottest take of 2021 by far folks Dennis Prager speaking to his expertise as it comes to COVID-19 I'm just going to pause for a moment and say press X to doubt but we'll continue and by the way it stands for Dennis Prager in case people didn't know so let me just let me ask the panel something if you have to have open heart surgery would you want someone who had 12 years of experience and training or somebody with wisdom as it relates to life I want them to tell me a nice story about a frog in the river as they tear my heart out with a pizza cutter that's what I want I don't usually focus on things like this but pay attention to the delivery there is about at least two different portions of this video where it seems like he's going to put himself to sleep and this is the only right winger who does this I feel like all the other right wingers are at least animated to an extent Dennis Prager is like putting himself to sleep and this is so bizarre this is invigorating he is checking that's the good news bad news is it doesn't happen instantaneously speak of an ASMR Massachusetts how many people know about that how many doctors sign that is it a thousand is it okay ask a doctor if he even knows about it your doctor knows nothing about COVID nothing all they know is how the virus works that's all they know that's an amazing thing listening to this show a non-doctor can we pause it for a second yes yes can you imagine being like he doesn't know anything about cancer he just knows how it progresses how it grows how you can get it yes he knows basically that is what you need to know about COVID is how it progresses yes it's a contradiction within five seconds he immediately says that after saying that they don't know nothing we all have our off days we're all on camera personalities but oh my god he doesn't want to be there he's dreading speaking and as the dude his Jamie looks up information about this you can just tell him just keep the B roll on for a while get some sleep this is so bizarre who washes this shit does he run this show at night time is this supposed to be something people just put on and they fall asleep I mean you would think right because I just I'm perplexed by it I just don't get it and every time I watch a clip of this show and not the regular PragerU videos I just don't understand it someone who's 80 years old you know drink the Kool-Aid they're not going to enjoy this even if they agree with everything he's saying the delivery is so painful I just I can't understand why people would listen to them and look I hate Ben Shapiro but he's far more entertaining to listen to than this fucking hack who has DP everywhere like why get the DP away like stop Dennis Jesus Christ okay so this is where he's going to talk about how he knows more about how he knows more than doctors to this show a non-doctor who have learned more about COVID more about masks than your doctor probably knows not only is it not a boast it is totally meant to be an attack on the medical profession I should not know 10 times more than your doctor about all of the issues with therapy 10 times more does any group that is stupid to declare war on is doctors because if they see that you were saying that about doctors on the news and you roll into their office if I was there I'd roll them back out like that I'd just kick them out they'd be like oh no insurance done like why would he out of all the groups who attack why doctors and why now it feels like we were all kind of united at least like we should report front line staff but does he think that doctors are just like I was told to put needle in arm and that's it like that's all they know yeah he hasn't gotten the message that every person who participates in society should have gotten by the age of like I don't know 12 that the two types of people who you don't fuck with doctors and people who make your food he hasn't gotten the memo but I mean like he's very famous I'm sure that doctors recognize him so he's insulting them pretending as if like they're stupid and he knows more than them but yet he would absolutely beg for a doctor if he like ended up on a ventilator or needed to a ventilator he'd go to a hospital if he had COVID-19 assuming he says no. Has he actually publicly said whether or not he got vaccinated? I don't know if he has I'm gonna assume by default he is anti-vax because he's a conservative but I'm not sure honestly so I could be a little bit unfair here you know after after hearing him say that I really just want to be at the point is like you know what fuck it is don't go to doctors stop getting medical care all together Dennis Prager has solved all your problems yeah and we're just we're just gonna let the problem work itself out over the span of a few years here I mean if you listen to this this this thing that's talking there and you're taking his advice over that of a medical professional there's no hope for you you're done like you can go ahead and just you know maybe I've got to be careful what I say here but yeah like there's just there's no hope for you there's no redemption arc for somebody that listens to Dennis Prager and says you know what yes this sleepy man knows more than the guy that went through eight years of training to become a doctor sure no if you're that person just give up it's over you peaked in life you're better than all of us you don't need to worry about medical care the rest of us will still you know get it but you don't need it trust me you definitely don't need medical care right or I mean he he doesn't realize like what he's inviting because he actually does take callers on the show so like imagine if one of his fans who actually took him seriously called it was like hey Dennis like I don't have anything to add about like the conversation here but I do have this like bump under my left butt cheek and I just want to like describe it to you can I like this is what you're inviting on your show and I kind of want to call him I'm not encouraging anyone to brigade I I'm not I'm not personally encouraging that in fact I am discouraging you from calling into Dennis Prager show and trolling him definitely don't do that but if somebody did that I think that it would be objectively hilarious hey hey if you have the phone number you need to give that out just so people make sure they don't call it yes troll him yes whatever you do not call 877 243-7776 Monday to Friday at noon to 3 p.m. eastern standard time that that is a number that you should avoid during those hours I'm just I just want to throw that out to you don't call it do not call that number yeah they don't need to know about one of your swollen balls don't call that number okay I know that he's an expert I'm sure I'm sure he can cure you with I'm sure if you have cancer or like a terrible degenerative disease Dennis Prager can cure you with whatever the hell he has in his medicine cabinet just horse paced and some thoughts and prayers always sprinkle a little bit of you know thoughts and prayers on it okay so we're almost towards the end does anyone want to take bets if you haven't pre-watched this does he make it to the end without falling asleep I think he'll be on against that I think he'll pass out and slide out of his chair cartoon style it's kind of hard to say right and by the way thank you Mr. Anderson that's 877-243-7776 don't call this number please do not tell Dennis Prager DP about you know potential medical injury that you encountered from DP you know drunkenly playing on like a playground but I'm just trying to be respectful just in case my mom's watching okay so we'll finish out this video here and if your doctor thinks Iver Mectin is dangerous change your doctor and I mean it might be a nice guy go golfing with him or her let's check out another doctor yeah so I mean you heard it here folks he never said he never clarified if he was talking to his horse or non-horse viewers when he gave that so we gotta give him the benefit of that here that is true that is true I feel like we're being too uncharitable so I'm glad that you pointed that out because yeah I feel like I've lost more IQ points from that you know two minute video than anything else I talked about throughout the week but it's just I think the addition of him like nearly falling asleep is what just adds to it okay folks I have one gift Easter egg for you that I prepared about Dennis Prager okay I don't know if you know about do you know about his article from 2008 when a woman isn't in the mood have you ever heard about this I have not heard of any discussions with Dennis Prager and sex this is a multi-part series that he produced where he describes in detail about why when a woman isn't in the mood they should still sleep with their husband so he made a multi-part series of essays which are still publicly available on his website where he tries to convince people to basically if they don't want to sleep with them you should still sleep with them wait he's married right his wife would be in the mood more often if he wasn't busy writing articles about why you should just have sex with me anyway you know maybe try a little bit of romance there Denny you've got the nice calm soothing voice put on the berry white light the candles and just say darling I know it's been a while but uh oh shit he's already out yeah yeah I guess I guess he's an expert in women who don't want to have sex with him oh my god okay that sounds like an open letter to his wife um that's that's weird it's really bad he wrote that article for one person thank you lady here's the opening line it is the axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood she'd need not have sex with her husband here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom I mean it really is just that for the entire article so I think we we know it's implied there for what the issue is with Dennis Prager what's missing in his life and the issues between him and his wife I feel like we could be counseling Dennis Prager based on the information that we have in this short segment right look I just hope he gets better game man I think look nobody deserves deserves not to have game and I hope he gets better I wish him the best so he's on his third wife now and they were married in 2008 I already now know way more about Dennis Prager than I ever should so I'm just wondering so you said these articles came out in 08 December 23rd 2008 was the first of this multi-part series oh damn okay so these must be about Susan then Susan is the most recent wife although it could be Francine she was the second or maybe maybe it was Janice I don't know but Susan Janice Francine my sincerest sincerest condolences to all three of you I don't know which one of you was never in the mood probably all of you but yeah you know solidarity on that because yeah that's a tough one here's one wrap up this by talk of this article I just bring it up anytime he comes up because this shit's hilarious here's his argument that men are animals so just give them sex number two if this is true men really are animals correct compared to most women sexual nature men sexual nacer is far closer to that of animals so what that is the way he has made blame God in nature telling your husband to control it is a fine idea but he already does every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self control he has married him he has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual nature's desires for variety for the rest of his life to ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he has permitted sex is asking far too much deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman if he is too moral to ever do that he will match your sexual withdrawal and other forms of withdrawal he is talking about sex like it is harrowing I never needed to know or wanted to know that Dennis Prager would just got him horny all the time imagine like the conversations that he has with his wife like honey I haven't asked for sex in two days some are calling me a hero for that but I mean what I also have to wonder too were they sitting down at dinner and he's like so did you read my article today multi-part she's like she's like twisting her spaghetti she's like so saw the article that you wrote he didn't bring it up I am so disturbed after this segment I didn't expect us to go down this path but wow thank you Dylan what I'm saying is do not call Dennis Prager at 877-243-7776 live Monday through Friday and noon from 3pm eastern standard time and bring up this article in perpetuity do not do that he would be very embarrassed yes please let's be respectful and not call that number all at once too and just don't bombard him with call after call the mole that you have on your dick I don't know oh my god okay okay so moving on to the next video this is another right winger who is terrible so this is basically what I feel like is a mask off moment and it speaks to how far the right wing has shifted further to the right in the United States he's just kind of saying like the quiet part out loud as it relates to refugees that we are hopefully going to admit from Afghanistan take a look at this bringing potentially hundreds of thousands of Afghanis to America this is a terrible idea now we should learn from the disastrous experience Europe had with Afghani men and systemic sex crimes against women just a few weeks ago a 13 year old girl was raped and murdered in Austria and three Afghani migrants have been charged with that heinous crime and because of that crime Austrian Chancellor Curz he made it clear just this weekend that Austria will not accept any Afghan refugees statistics show as I detail in my new op-ed that that terrible case in Austria it is hardly isolated it's not just an outlier it's the worst example but it's not an outlier police numbers show the relatively small afghan population there in Austria admits an astounding half of all sexual assaults in that country according to the Hoover institution at Stanford according to their research once the giant wave of afghan migration to Austria began in 2015 total sexual assaults there grew by a staggering 53% over the next four years as the Wall Street Journal reports next door in Germany foreign born residents right now account for one third of all sex crime suspects now given these realities in Europe is the mass migration of afghan men to America really a good idea good for your wife your daughter the left will call us racist for opposing any amount of migration at all since they believe in open borders but we have to be brave enough to put up with their ridiculous aspersions and brave enough to discuss cultural differences that matter will these afghans share our values will they try to assimilate into the American way of life it's not likely a poll a few research poll found that a stunning stunning 99% near you nearly unanimous of afghans believe that Sharia should be the official law of the land let me repeat that 99% of afghans believe that Sharia should be the official law of the land for some context let's compare that to Turkey which is also a Muslim country but a far more Muslim country there only 12% of their citizens in the same poll report that they want government enforced Sharia law so there's a lot to unpack there but basically he's just saying the quiet part out loud it sounds a lot like Donald Trump and why he was so popular like he first came out and said you know Mexico is in sending their best their murderers their rapists and now he's saying the same thing about people from Afghanistan and I have to wonder would he apply the same logic to other like statistical phenomena I mean for example white men are disproportionately responsible for mass shootings in the United States should all of us on this panel be deported to somewhere a different white country I mean it just yeah I actually would like to be deported to Canada not that I'm from there but you know it just it's the things that they're saying here it's it's ridiculous and they kind of like try to preempt any criticism by saying look the left is gonna call us racist but here's why that's bad and like trying to shut down legitimate claims of racism because what that was was absolutely explicitly racist and xenophobic so when it comes to these questions regarding Sharia law Sharia law itself is so broad it's left up to interpretation a lot of times where somebody who says they support Sharia law doesn't actually support what we view as Sharia law and they play on like these things that people aren't necessarily privy to you know you think that okay well 99% support Sharia law that must mean that they want to stone us to death I'm sure that many conservatives would support like what their interpretation of Sharia law is but it's just this is so frustrating to watch does anyone want to weigh in here I think like the thing that the main thing that I noticed was at the bottom of the screen he literally had on the Chiron it was like it's not racist trust me I believe me really definitely 100% not racist what I'm doing right now and I think that's like literally all you need to see to understand the dynamic of what's going on but especially at the end when he was talking about what you want you know these Afghan refugees moving into your neighborhood and interacting with your wife and your daughter it's like it's the same tropes that go back to you know the days of segregation in the United States and what they used to do and talk about African Americans here it's like the same old tired racist tropes and nothing new but you know on top of that I think we have a moral obligation 100% to accept as many Afghan refugees as quickly and efficiently as possible so I actually know what study the guy is referencing with the 99% and what he did was really scummy because what he's doing is misinterpreting data and not giving people enough context because if you read this and I could link it to anybody who wants it chapter one the first thing this study says from pre-re- research center because when he said it was a very simple organization listen to this according to the survey findings most Muslims believe Sharia is a revealed word of God rather than a body of law developed by men based on the word of God Muslims also tend to believe Sharia only has one true understanding but this opinion is far from universal in some countries substantial minority of Muslims believe Sharia should be open to multiple interpretations religious commitments is closely linked to views about Sharia Muslims who praise different times a God to say that there is only one interpretation is support the implementation of Islamic law in the country although many Muslims around the world say that Sharia should be the law on the land of the country the survey reveals the virgin opinions about the precise application of Islamic law generally supporters of Sharia are most comfortable with this application in cases of family or property disputes and most regions fewer favor other aspects of Sharia such as cutting off hands of thieves and executing people who convert from Islam to another faith so when we talk about this in the vast majority of cases we're talking about like property disputes and family disputes we're not talking about and this is what he's trying to display like cutting off hands and stuff like that which could you make a note about the deep deep implications of Sharia law played applied in family court okay but I don't think Afghan refugees are gonna come here then start a mass movement to change the family court system in the United States I don't think that's ever happened and I don't think anybody believes that's gonna happen and the other case where he brings up the specific instance of the 13 year old getting raped I mean Jeffrey Dahmer I mean was a horrible man who did a lot of stuff a lot of terrible terrible stuff if I was to try to use that singular instance to fear monger about the white man is coming for you and he's gonna butcher all your kids it would be bad to do that because you're perpetuating a stereotype based off of one instance but then the statistics he brings forward like the Sharia law statistics are terribly terribly misguided and he's not giving proper context to what he's talking about he what he wants to do is portray Muslims as a horde of the people who's gonna come to America and rape and kill and slaughter but the problem is that isn't the case when you look at what the data he's even talking about and the fact of the matter is if he's saying that they're gonna clash with American values they are fleeing from what he's saying they're gonna bring to us there's Afghans clinging on the plane falling to death to get away from the Taliban and they're not getting away from the Taliban because they think the Taliban are nice liberals who like gay people and are cool they're getting away from the Taliban because they are theocratic fascists and they don't like theocratic fascists so they're fleeing the Taliban to try to get to somewhere that would be maybe closer to a more moderate style of government that we would find in the United States so again he's just he's twisting this information to fearmonger about refugees so he can go against the old American ideal of bring forth your huddled masses if there's ever been huddled masses this is a great example of huddled masses we need to bring in you know to your point about him you know misrepresenting the statistics the one that really caught my attention was when he said you know in Germany I think it was he said one third of sexual assault suspects are a blah blah suspects okay you're not actually saying the actual perpetrators you're suspects that is such a lazy word and such a lazy statistics and it drives me insane when they try to do this and try to frame it as listen if you bring them over here they're going to kill you no you listen my wife and my daughter the biggest threat to their lives you know statistically here in the state of Florida is well at this point either going to be COVID or a crazy white redneck I mean those are the biggest threats to them where we live here and I think the Jeffrey Dahmer thing is a brilliant example like sure you can point out the worst of any particular group of people and say oh look at how bad this is and he even specified he said you know that was obviously an extreme case but the others are really bad too no they're not if they were you would have told those stories too you would have bombarded us with all this information you have but you couldn't you had to cherry pick one thing and just say look clearly this is all of them no they have nothing they have no substance they have no facts they have no statistics they drives me crazy to listen to these people on the right partially because we put a lot of friggin work into what we do we do research I've spent so much time so many nights just reading and reading and reading trying to learn something to do a three minute segment on it and these idiots just go out there screw it whatever I don't need to know anything I'm just going to make stuff up don't even worry about turning the teleprompter on I'm going to wing it and I'm going to make millions of dollars that's the life it really truly is they're poisoning America you know absolutely disrupting political discourse across the way but sometimes you got to think man it's got to be sweet you don't have to worry about anything you just make everything up you don't have to study you don't have to research but again you're destroying the country in the process so there's there's that tradeoff I guess yeah you make lots and lots more money than if you're on on the left you know you probably get funding you get Fox news appearances like I don't ever see many left wing podcast hosts on MSNBC or any or even like democracy now it's very rare but like I always see these really fringe you know right wingers like Steven Crowder whatnot they get invited on Fox News Newsmax Tim Poll was just on Fox News so yeah it's irritating part of the issue is that this is this has been done like this is we're watching history repeat itself as Mac was alluding to where it's like they'll take one anecdote or one story and they'll say okay this black person did X crime therefore all black people are likely to do X crime like this is what we've seen time and again and by now you think people would be privy to the fact that this is just the propaganda tactic right they did the same thing with trans people in bathrooms you know the trans bathroom panic and when people actually looked into this they saw that like the only anecdotes that they pointed to were transphobic cis women basically angry that there was somebody who they thought were trans going into women's bathrooms so it's not even like they were predatory so they'll try to take these anecdotes and use this as a justification to totally subject an entire group of people based on their identity to you know discrimination or second-class citizenship status and in the case of Afghanistan people you know they're not even here yet so it's really easy to spread fear if we don't even interact with these folks but the minute they actually are admitted to the United States assuming we admit hopefully a good portion then that fear is going to go away because we'll talk with these people we'll understand that we're human beings they're human beings we have the same interests we have the same desire to like provide for our families and live good lives so it's just the fear mongering is it's the same fucking story over and over and I just I'm so sad that people continue to fall for it and one thing that's especially fucked up you know we ruined these people's countries the least that we can do is admit them here the people who want to come here admit them here after we fucked up their country but even before you know we're fully out there's already this broad robust fear mongering campaign against Afghanistan refugees and it's a rehash of the 2015-2016 Syrian refugee argument it's the same shit and at some point we have to wake up and acknowledge that it's not people with darker skin tones that is the issue it's other things that is causing harm to us as you said it Farron you know it's like COVID-19 or some redneck is going to be a bigger danger to your daughter and wife so it's just I'm so frustrated with this and what's scary is that they're not even using dog whistles anymore like they're just saying it like they want you to think that all Afghanistan's are going to do is come here and rape your daughter it's not that these are the more egalitarian people from Afghanistan who are trying to flee the draconian laws that the Taliban wants to institute as Dylan pointed out like these folks they want to assimilate they want better lives for themselves they don't want to live under Taliban role so it's just I'm exhausted I feel like Dennis Prager now because like this shit just like it drives me nuts there I do want to bring up two things one is like a paragraph from a from an Afghan pilot that I did want to read that I read anytime we talk about this but first I wanted to say this so there was this woman who's this Republican woman who's running in Florida I forget her name but you know carbon-caused carbon copy dime it does right and she goes out and she says we don't need to take these Afghan refugees we took all Europe in America took all the Syrian refugees let the Middle East deal with it if anyone actually looks at the hard data turkey took in four like what was it like 4.7 million people Jordan took in a 1 million or 1.3 million Lebanon took in a million people you want to know how many people we took in in total 50,000 there were some years where we took in like 600 we did not take all of the refugees we took barely any of the refugees and so a lot of people will bring up like well at the end of the day technically under international law they need to go to the first country next to them they do that and those countries took the vast majority of them but you know what there's only so much space some of these countries have there's only so much resources some of these countries have and some of these countries are destabilized as well or have been hosting refugees forever I mean Jordan has famously hosted Palestinian refugees for a very very long time and the idea that they can just take on millions and millions and millions of more is ridiculous not to mention Afghan refugees are being treated terribly at the Iranian border and terribly at the Turkish border and I think if these people are willing to put their lives on the lines for us in a dream that we tried to build with them in Afghanistan then the least we can do is take these people and now let's see if I can find this this quick little passage from this Afghan pilot because it here it is okay this is a question to the Afghan pilot anything you want the American public to know many Afghan soldiers died bravely I've been fighting for over 15 years we did not all just give up and quit yes some did once the Americans left we weren't ready to start doing all the logistics the logistics the maintenance and the corruption really hurt us I know people in the US are upset that we didn't fight longer but we've been fighting for decades and some of us even longer when the US left it really affected morale especially how quickly it happened we woke up one day then Bagram was gone everyone got scared it got out of control I'm mad at many of the senior leaders who lined their pockets and simply vanished from the country however thousands of Afghan officers were not responsible for that we were simply doing the best we could there are a lot of Afghans who trusted the United States not just translators not just civil society activists but also Afghan soldiers we loved fighting alongside the Americans please don't leave us behind please we will be great Americans does that sound like somebody who wants to come here to bring terror or somebody who just wants to live in peace in the United States yeah yeah but these things you you never hear right you the the loudest voices are the ones like you know we just heard from Fox News I mean immediately when we saw those viral videos of people clinging to planes like that night Tucker Carlson Laura Ingram they were already fear mongering so it's frustrating that like those stories don't get out and that we just like we demonize these folks by by default because you know that we're the other they're the others we don't know any afghan so it's easy to you know deduce the worst about them but it's a yeah it's it's really frustrating because the right wingers are really ahead of us on this topic and they always monopolize discourse when it comes to these issues because it's really easy to fear monger and with people into a frenzy and just think well you know what I'm gonna be like reverse and just say how about no immigrant or no refugees here I'm open to the idea but I'm gonna say no because I don't necessarily know I've heard some some bad things about them I'm sure some of them are lovely so it's it's hard to combat this level of propaganda and racism but at some point I hope that like we'll collectively as a society remember all of the previous times and the similarities with different groups and how the same shit is being said over again we'll just like move on and disregard the folks like the the newsmax individual well folks that is our show I believe that I got to everything we don't have time to finish the pet segment I have like a gigantic thread of pet pictures and I got through at least half of them last week I'll find I'll find time sometime maybe not on the stop in times maybe on like a twist stream but but folks thank you so much the panel was absolutely fantastic so one by one what we'll do is we will tell or have each of the panel tell us where they are on the internet and where we can find them so we'll start with Mack what do you do and where can the people find you yeah so first of all just thank you for having me on the show it was a lot of fun so you can follow me on Twitter good politic guy or on YouTube you can just Google it good politic guy and I basically do like daily videos where I do a couple videos a day covering the news in little like bite size segments and stuff explaining it from my perspective so yeah YouTube Twitter those are my main outlets good politic guy and yeah awesome awesome so thank you so much Mr. Anderson for the links Dylan Burns where are you at what can the people do to support you right now I think the thing I'm trying to do is grow my YouTube like really I'm really trying to push my YouTube at the moment so if you go to my YouTube I'd really appreciate it it's Dylan Burns TV it's just like what you see on the screen right now DYLAN BURNS TV if you want to watch me on Twitch I also stream on Twitch every weekday from 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to midnight I appreciate the support there as well you can find me on Twitter at Dylan Burns 1776 that's DYLAN BURNS 1776 I appreciate any support you can throw my way and I hope you all have a blessed rest of your week yeah thank you so very patriotic 1776 I like that oh yeah brother Farron yeah you can get me the big YouTube channel obviously youtube.com the Ring of Fire I also about a year or so ago launched my own YouTube channel youtube.com Farron balanced B-A-L-A in C-E-D on Twitter Instagram and Facebook at Farron balanced and we've also we've got a reddit thread as well so just go to reddit r slash Farron balanced so yeah basically you ever want to find me just type in Farron balanced somewhere I no longer have to worry about Fox News using that so you know the pun is a lot less funny since they switched that people don't get it anymore and it really shows my age but Mike thank you very much for having me and Dylan and Mack it's been wonderful talking to you guys as well yeah absolutely had so much fun and let me just say Farron your name is literally Farron so it works out so much better for you and you're actually fair and balanced so I'm willing to sign some legal brief on your behalf if it ever comes to that you follow me on Twitter but I don't follow you you juked me out before damn okay okay I gotta give you who do you not follow I wasn't no Farron was following me but I wasn't following him I just looked him up on twitter to give him a follow and he and he had of the game was it you were Matt that had the controversy last time you're on for not following people I can't remember and Matt still didn't follow me back Matt Matt Binder this is a this is a call out to Matt Binder he's dividing the left more than Jimmy Dore I'm saying it now but him not follow me back he's dividing the left more than Jimmy right now I'm saying it's the truth how dare you Matt how dare you Matt oh he doesn't follow me either that's crap wow I can't believe wow this is damn oh my god Matt Matt is getting called out left and right max checking nope damn wow wow Matt Matt this is this is a message to Matt Binder you have three days to follow all of these lovely panelists or we will call you Matt Binder no I love Matt Matt's I was actually just on Matt's show like three weeks ago I want to say and yeah always a good time but definitely give these folks a follow Matt I mean come on is there any other grievances that we want to hash out before we leave this program I'm following all of you so I'm the good guy I'm the good guy in this situation trying to think of a problem if I have any problems with Mike I'm trying to figure it out well he's in the pocket of big oil because of all the tattoos I mean we all oh my god that's pretty bad you know that's true that's my proudest moment of the six years of podcasting getting criticized for my greenhouse gas carbon footprint whatever because of the tattoos I'm really proud of that that was that that is going to live in my brain forever along with the dick in the toaster and then jumping in a volcano that's also burned in there too so thank you for that that's not going anywhere maybe Mike can get that as a tattoo I mean I have my dog's face tattooed on me so my like standards of what I will get tattooed is relatively low so I mean not that I don't love my dog but I mean I got my dog's face tattooed on me so yeah yeah and as somebody is asking where did I get my shirt from IGN.com not sponsored but they had a $10 sale so I bought a bunch of nerd shirts that I am rocking throughout the duration of dystopian times and then I've used all of them I have one more Zelda one play station shirt so yeah folks I think that's everything we'll leave that there folks thank you so much again this has been so much fun I will return after the credits roll for the bonus portion where I read through all the super chats I get the people who come in with occasional homophobic comments I love all of you equally so thank you folks this has been dystopian times I am Mike Figueredo I'll see you all next week well folks that was a fantastic episode thank you all so much once again to my panelists for watching so I have a couple of super chats that I missed let me pull those up real quick here so we have let me make sure these are from today by the way so we have Jeff Barnes with a $10 super chat saying we should restrict freedom of speech where it relates to medical advice that is determined by the CDC to be unsubstantiated by a panel of qualified CDC doctors yeah I mean that's a that's a pretty reasonable standard I feel like yeah thank you so much for the $10 super chat Jeff I think that's a that's a pretty I think that's fair it's a little bit tricky and as Farron said it's a bit of a slippery slow but yeah I tend to agree with you there so Roma check 75 says I'm all for vaccine dates but you know these nut jobs will take it to court and if it goes all the way to SCOTUS we all know how they'll rule yeah that's that is something that is worth considering although I will say I was pleasantly surprised by Amy Coney Barrett she basically did not vote down a vaccine mandate for a university I'm not sure which university I can't remember but a lot of conservatives were really mad at her for that so I was a I was pleasantly surprised by that I mean look there's legal precedent in the country for vaccine mandates George Washington one of the founding fathers supported vaccine mandates so it's not like this new thing it's new to us when it comes to COVID vaccines but I mean we all you know we know about mandatory vaccines as it relates to school it's not a big deal people just get the vaccine so we have another $5 super jet from Roma check 75 who says Tampa is having to treat tap water with bleach instead of liquid oxygen because hospitals need the chemicals to keep ventilated COVID patients alive wow I've not looked into this but it's getting a little bit frightening so in my state of Oregon this is almost like we're reaching the dark winter levels of COVID and basically the governor had to call in the National Guard that's how bad it's gotten the hospitals around Portland are at 92 to 96 percent full capacity and that was like a couple of weeks ago last time I checked and things have gotten substantially worse since then we have a lot of rural areas in Oregon getting infected with COVID-19 it's spreading like wildfire and it is really really scary so it's it's just it's a really worrying time and I kind of feel like you know the Delta variant if people are going to take this seriously then I don't know I don't know what it's going to take like they see how rapidly it spreads and you think people would want to protect themselves and I don't want to like be too doomer because more people have gotten vaccinated but we just we need we need to reach herd immunity that's all say we need to reach herd immunity so a make business with a 499 Superchat thank you so much for the support really appreciate that two episodes probably isn't enough for me to win that contest you've got going on for new youtubers right I'm a video essay guy I love the show well let me tell you this so I'm not a hundred percent sure I believe I haven't reviewed all of the submissions I'm pretty sure I've settled on the featured content creator for next week but there is one slot open that I have not selected like one for sure slot but I'm not sure I think I'm set on someone for next week but I mean it doesn't hurt to try I would say submit it and I do plan on watching all of them if I if I don't get to that then I would be surprised I'm going to try to watch all of them but hey give it give it a try right it's a it's a two minute video three minute video and you know you can never hurts to try oh there you are still there boom yeah is that yeah give it a try give it a try Mr. Anderson says I've become full agoraphobic me too me too it's it's really tough I started to try to like re-immersed myself with people and now that Delta hit it's like I kind of want to be reclusive again I mean I am like interacting and seeing family members who are also vaccinated as reclusive as I was in the first stage of the pandemic since I am vaccinated but it's hard to not be reclusive I would like to get out I would like to go to a movie theater I would like to go and have breakfast you know at a restaurant I haven't done that in since before the pandemic it's not like I did that very frequently anyway but it'd be nice to do it if I wanted to it's just really frustrating Chris says I had horrible allergies last week and tried to get at home there was only one within 10 miles when CVS gets 10 or more a day in a red state it was negative good I am glad that it's negative one thing that I can recommend it takes a couple of days to ship is I think there's this company called Everly I'm not sure what the prices are but they released an at home test and you it comes with like a prepaid envelope and the testing kit and you send it back to them and I think they're responsible in like 3-4 days I actually bought one when it was available but I figured just in case there's like a scare it's nice to have that so I would recommend picking that up if you have some extra cash because in the event you need a COVID test it might be a little bit difficult to come by if like you know your community is not doing too hot so RomaCheck 75 with a $10 Super Chat RomaCheck thank you so much for all of these Super Chats I really appreciate it Mike I hope you consider pausing this great series I hope you consider pausing this great series for such a lengthy period of time two episodes left and I already missed it well thank you so much that means so much yeah you know I think that 10 episodes in total is a pretty good amount when I initially started this I figured maybe I'd do like 25 episodes but it's really really difficult to do this like it's not like I'm doing this in lieu of the YouTube videos that I produced like this is extra work and it's a lot it's hard to communicate with people back and forth talk to so many people at once respond to DMs and emails it's a lot of work so I think 10 shows is good and going forward like if I do any other side projects 10 episodes is pretty good right like if I do some documentary series or some other series I think 10 episodes is pretty pretty good iced with a $2 Super Chat opinion on Hassan's hotness yes Hassan is goals Hassan is goals yes I'm jealous of Hassan's hair especially my hair is bad I gave myself a buzz and it looks like shit but it's okay it's the last cut of a summer oh so there's a $20 for two oh did I miss some Super chats let me pull that up if I did I am so sorry let's see Brian says Mike you should check out reset race that sounds really familiar I'm pretty sure I've heard of them I might have watched Tim Black on their show I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the right show they are is it I don't know I'm pretty sure it's like a reparations based podcast right I know that's one of the subjects I'm sure they talk about other issues but I am really really glad to see more channels popping up specifically to support reparations I absolutely support reparations I think that more people need to talk about it my soul was crushed in 2020 when I saw how many leftists didn't support reparations when it was brought up with Bernie Sanders so I want the leftists to take this seriously because it's an issue that is really important it's just it's a matter of like morality and legality reparations and black issues okay yeah thank you so I'm pretty sure I know this channel yeah I like their content I think that it's good they criticize a lot of other like podcast hosts but I think that's important the way that they do it is always constructive they hold lefties accountable they might have even criticized me I'm not sure but I think it's really important oh at home tests okay okay thank you thank you for the clarification Tara I wasn't sure $20 for a test is pretty good yeah I might have paid like 60 but I'm remembering 80 it was when it first was available in like September October of last year no no no that was probably this year actually I'm blanking on it but I know the company is Everly I want to say yeah also social justice is the only way to heal generational wounds yes yes yeah I absolutely agree I feel encouraged seeing people support reparations I did a video with Michael Graham I can't remember when it was like in 2019-2020 and there was like a reddit thread like we talked exclusively about reparations for like 45 minutes and people on reddit were like oh Mike is such an idiot SJW now he's advocating for reparations it's like you can easily dismiss it if you've never thought about it but when you hear the case laid out by people like Michael Graham Tim Black, Sandy Darity I feel like there's no way you can dispute it there's no way you can dispute it from a legal standpoint from an economic standpoint and from a moral standpoint yeah any podcast who's supporting reparations I would heavily encourage you to check them out and support them in any way that you can if it's through views, likes and also through patreons because it's a topic that people don't want to look at and that's really frustrating thank you, thank you I'm really excited about Metroid Dread coming out to the Nintendo Switch sometime in October I will be definitely getting that shirt from IGN.com there was a sale they were doing like $10 shirts so I bought like 5 or 6 of them and all of them have been incredible they fit really well too this one's a little bit big but yeah I'm very very happy with that oh thank you Brian reset race for those wondering yeah everyone go subscribe to reset race incredible incredible ok so it's Actify ok ok yeah so I'm pretty sure that I'm already subscribed to them I don't know if they changed their name but I am familiar with Actify because Michael Graham is with Actify Press yeah I love that I think it's really really crucial that we support reparations and we're not afraid to say it like there are some things that leftists white leftists don't want to say but I think that we should say the backs of black people who they need white allies right we can't speak for them but they could use the support that's to say the least right general strike in October I've heard about a one day general strike I don't think it's technically a general strike if I'm remembering correctly I think it's it's like a protest or some event like a call for a general strike um I don't want to be super-dumer but a general strike is something that's very difficult to accomplish with how low unionization is in the United States like I would be more optimistic about a general strike and I support one by the way if there was more unionization but there's no unions there's no like organized labor power in the US so it's really hard to pull that off having said that though I support the idea of like calling for a general strike so this event I would definitely back it Tara you found the link so this is the shirt that I'm wearing yeah super Metroid I wonder let me check I want to I want to see how much I'm not sure how much it is now but I bought it for $10 so IGN is kind of expensive so usually these are like 25 bucks 30 bucks yeah that's a good point you know practice strike can be beneficial as well yeah for sure for sure absolutely yeah yeah absolutely they are amazing they are amazing so let's see certain white leftists who don't talk about reparations or black issues because they know their base is white men or even a sizable mega audience yeah I think that one thing that I've tried to draw attention to and I agree with you Chris one thing that I try to draw attention to is audience capture audience capture is when you like inadvertently cultivate an audience with your underlying values and your underlying political ideology and so you begin to adapt to appease the audience that you've cultivated and you don't want to say anything that would offend them because then they might leave you and so audience capture is a really really huge thing on the left and I think that people like Jimmy Dore is absolutely he's he's been captured by his audience which is right you know mostly like right wingers now yeah I think geek does have cool nerd shirts there's also a website it's called Zavi I don't know if it's xavvi or zavvy I can't remember but they also have really cool like nerd stuff and I've never purchased anything from them but I did look at their selection and it does seem pretty pretty uh pretty good oh so the shirt is 25 bucks see I wouldn't have gone like I love this shirt I think it's dope but 25 bucks is too steep for me so the 10 dollar like sale that they had was um that is what led me to bite the bullet because if I spend 25 bucks for a shirt without trying it on and it doesn't fit me that's that's painful that's painful last general strike in the US was in 1946 and it lasted two days most people don't even know what a general strike is they just like to posture online for a cloud yeah I mean that's possibly likely it actually um yeah I think that people this is a little bit of like I don't have evidence this is just speculation but I think that a lot of people think that a general strike is just like when everyone protests around the country it's a little bit more than that right and I don't know how many people have this belief but a general strike is absolutely substantial like it is serious like you shut down the entire economy like we're talking about millions of people not going into work like it's a huge risky thing people potentially not paying right like it's there are serious consequences so if you're going to organize a general strike you can't miss because you could fuck up people's lives and so the idea sounds good on paper but it requires really fast organizational power which is why it's really important to advocate for greater unionization and work with unions if you're able to do that to organize this if it's something that you want to organize because it's a hard thing to pull off yeah it would collapse our capitalist system I mean we've all seen this right you can't with COVID-19 our economy shutting down is catastrophic right they're willing to send people back to work in the middle of a pandemic sacrifice their lives all to keep creating you know things that make capitalist overlords richer so if you do something like a general strike you're going to get people's attention right you're going to get the attention of lawmakers and the business class so that's why people I think I think they know about that I think that a lot of people are relatively new to politics and don't necessarily know what's required to actually facilitate a general strike it's not going to be politicians like I don't think that someone like Bernie Sanders or AOC is going to be able to facilitate a general strike I don't think that like podcast hosts can do that I think it's it's going to have to be labor leaders I'm talking about like the heads of major unions all coming together and collectively agreeing to go on strike it's a very difficult process but it would actually be effective yeah so that's why like any talks of general strike I'm supportive of I just want people to understand what it entails because it's a lot it's a lot Michael Cuomo with A499 I'm surprised Margaret Taylor Green hasn't said Sharia Law is a congresswoman that's a part of the squad I know it's a matter of time right it's a matter of time before she says something like that magic the gathering she ruined that acronym looks I am exhausted so I think that we're going to call it a night and we will end right there folks I will see you all next week we've got two episodes left of dystopian times most of the panelists I think I've got them on lock but there's going to be a little bit more work to do to put that together so yeah folks I I'll see you all next week and I will be live tomorrow on twitch twitch.tv slash humanist report I missed last week but I will be here this week last week I was desperately trying to finish up the episode for the main show and I needed to take that night off to just like get shit done and I did if I didn't take that night off I would have been working until like all through the weekend and not you know been able to take a day off thank you so much both Tara and Mr. Anderson posted a link yes folks please if you haven't already go over to twitch.tv slash humanist report give me a follow I go live every Thursday but after dystopian times I'll likely be changing the schedule I might be doing my twitch streams on Wednesdays instead maybe expanding it to two days per week depending we'll see but take care everyone it's so nice chatting with everyone I will see you all later