 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Bigaredo. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Bigaredo and this is episode 315 of the program. Today is Friday, November 19th. And unfortunately, this is the final episode of the podcast. Now, the show will continue on in YouTube, but in terms of these long-form videos where I take all the videos that I filmed throughout the week and put them together in a single video, either for the video podcast that you're watching on meansTV or through Spotify, that will no longer be a thing. So I'll follow up this introduction with a little bit of an explainer on why I'm choosing to do this. But before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of the people who make this show possible. That includes our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members. This week we have Susanna, Paul Vega, and K001. Daddy, thank you all so much. I truly appreciate you. I will be trying to find a new way to spotlight new Patreon supporters in Super Chat and YouTube members since we're not going to be doing the full YouTube podcast. But this is the last episode. If you're listening to this on SoundCloud or Spotify or you're watching this full episode on YouTube, uploaded every single Sunday at noon, this is the last episode. So if you do want to see me speak at length, you can do that by clicking on the All THR Videos playlist and it'll just play all the videos back to back to back. So you kind of still get that same fix. And if you're listening on SoundCloud and you prefer the audio version, well, you can actually download the YouTube Music app and we are on the YouTube Music app. So if you're working out, you can still listen to the audio version technically of the Humanist Report. It's just not all together in one large sum, like three-hour video or audio file, right? So that's basically the difference. But because for whatever reason I love doing this, I'm going to go through what's coming up on the episode for the last time. Elon Musk attacks Bernie Sanders. Alex Jones was found guilty when it comes to the defamation lawsuits filed by the families of Sandy Hook victims. Why Cal Rittenhouse is already a winner, regardless of the outcome of his trial. I'll talk about that. Also, Tulsi Gabbard may be gearing up for a 2024 GOP presidential run. We'll discuss what I think she might be doing. And Katie Porter schools everyone on how Louis DeJoy is destroying the U.S. Postal Service. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. But first, I will be talking about why there's no longer going to be these long podcast episodes and why the Humanist Report is now exclusively a YouTube show and a Facebook show. And it means TV show. It's no longer a podcast per se, but here it is. Well, folks, I have some unfortunate news for you today. I've been thinking about this for quite some time, and I think I'm finally ready to pull the trigger. The Humanist Report podcast is coming to an end, and this Sunday's show will be the last episode that you will see. Episode 315 to be exact. Now, what does this mean? Does this mean that I'm quitting? No, contrary to the clickbait title that kind of drove you to watching this now. I'm still going to be uploading videos regularly, daily on YouTube. That's not going to change. But what will be changing is specifically the podcast format of the Humanist Report that's going to be going away. Now, a lot of you, this isn't even going to apply to you, because the podcast itself isn't really even necessarily a podcast. The podcast element of the Humanist Report show on YouTube was always kind of shoehorned in. It dated back to the beginning of the Humanist Report podcast. I launched this show when I was a full-time PhD student and research assistant, and I knew that if I wanted to be successful on YouTube, I had to continuously feed the algorithm. So one additional way that I can, one, get the podcast out to additional formats and just have an extra YouTube video to upload each week is to take everything that I filmed Monday through Friday, put it together in a single episode, create an intro and an outro, call it a podcast and then throw it up on YouTube, send it to iTunes and Spotify. And I am a creature of habit, right? I create routines and I adhere to them as if my life depended on it. But this routine is really unnecessary. So there are a really dedicated amount of people that listen to the audio versions on SoundCloud and on Spotify. There is a very, very dedicated group of people who every single Sunday they'll tune in and they'll watch the full episode. But overall, I think that this podcast format is, honestly, it's too much work. It's not that, you know, filming a quick intro and smashing all of the videos together is difficult per se, but it's time-consuming in the sense that I have to take time where I'm exporting this two-hour plus-long video and then I'm uploading this two-hour plus-long video to multiple platforms. And you might think, well, just shorten down the length of the episodes. Well, I can't control it because I just kind of, I take what I film for the week and I put it all together so I can't really get a sense of how long the episode will be until we're towards the end of the week. And, you know, furthermore, not enough people watch it to really make this extra work worthwhile. And I think rather than focusing on this weekly podcast just to get it out to additional people in audio format, I'd rather just not do that and focus on improving the show for people who watch predominantly, which is just on YouTube every single day. So with that being said, the podcast will be coming to an end. But the show, the Humanist Report, is not coming to an end. So for the overwhelming majority of you, nothing is going to change. But for the few of you, the couple thousand who are really dedicated to watching the full episode or listening on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, whatever they're calling it now in Spotify, there are alternatives. So if you wait for the full episode every single week, then understand that if you like watching everything together, there's a playlist called All THR Videos. So if you go to the Humanist Report YouTube channel and you see the All THR Videos playlist, it's just going to play all of the videos that I put out back to back to back to back to back over and over again. So that is kind of a way that you can still get your extended fix of the Humanist Report if you don't prefer the individual segment format. And I know that there's not like a lot of you, but just in case you want that. Now additionally, if you prefer to listen on SoundCloud, if you're listening on SoundCloud right now, what you can do if you still specifically just want to listen to the audio versions of my videos, maybe you're working out of the gym and you're listening or jogging, if you download the YouTube Music app, audio versions of the Humanist Report is available. So on every single video that I upload, I make it available, each segment available to people who listen to YouTube Music. So if you find our playlist, All THR Clips, I think you can do that through the audio version. You can still listen to an audio variant of the Humanist Report. But again, the difference is just going to be that instead of taking everything, smushing the videos together and putting it into one long giant video, I'm just not going to do that. Not only is it time consuming, but also it actually hurts me with regard to the algorithm. So I'm not sure if many of you have noticed this, but what we're witnessing is sort of the tick-tockification of YouTube. They're getting rid of the dislike button. They've introduced shorts. And so when they see these really long videos and they see that people aren't watching them all the way to the end, that tells the algorithm, maybe we shouldn't recommend this channel to as many people. And really right now, YouTube is all about prioritizing watch time. And if a lot of subscribers, most Humanist Report subscribers aren't clicking on these full episodes because they've already seen the content that I've put out throughout the week, so why watch it again? And if they are clicking on it, but they're only watching for like five minutes because the episode is two and a half hours long or three hours long in some instances, then that actually hurts the channel overall. So not only is it time consuming, but algorithmically speaking, it's not the best practice if you want to make it on YouTube in today's climate where they're really interested in getting people to start watching a video and finish it to the very end. So that's why I'm stopping the podcast format. Perhaps we'll bring it back, but for now it just, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for me to continue doing this and for the few people who are going to be mad about this, who really watch it loyally that way. There are alternatives. So yeah, that's it. The Humanist Report podcast, as we know it, is over, but nothing else is really going to change. And I don't even know that it's necessary to do a video, so a few people will watch the full episodes. But I thought that since we're changing the show a little bit, I think it's convenient, not convenient, what's the word I'm looking for? Sorry, foggy-headedness today. I think it's polite and respectful to the people who have watched for years now in that way to be able to know. So yeah, more changes will likely be coming. I'm trying to constantly find ways to innovate and streamline the program. I've had these ideas of projects that I want to do for the show, many documentaries and such, that I haven't been able to do because I've kind of been unable to break out of this routine that I started from myself that was initiated at the beginning of the podcast. So by not focusing every single week on this full episode, that does free up my time. It helps me to enjoy the show more and not just kind of go through the motions every single week doing the same fucking thing, making sure I check all the boxes. Okay, I fulfilled my obligations. I've uploaded the audio version here. I have the fucking full episode uploading now. So four hours later, rather than worrying about something that doesn't really yield much of a benefit to the channel, I want to focus on better things. And I'm not saying this is a big enough change to where I can do a lot more, but it's just enough to where I think it's going to help the channel overall. So that's it. The YouTube show will continue. And you know, I'm always going to look for ways to improve that. But the podcast version, it's going the way of the dodo. And it's a little bit sad because, you know, again, like I said, I'm a creature of habit. And once I start doing something, I find it difficult to stop doing it just because I like the comfort that a routine brings me. But the podcast itself, it's just, it's not worth it. Again, I wouldn't want to watch all of these videos that I've already seen for the week. And if I did really want to watch one person's videos like back to back to back, there are playlists that kind of do that same thing. So it's just unnecessary. So we're no longer a podcast. We're exclusively a YouTube show and we're a show on means TV. But hopefully you all can understand. I don't think many of you will care because again, most of you don't watch that way. But you know, if you did, I'm sorry. I genuinely appreciate the fact that you've been watching, you know, so long. I'll have to retool Patreon benefits, by the way, because one of the perks is that, you know, if you sign up as a member on YouTube or if you send a super chat to a video by clicking Thanks, I'll thank you at the start of the video at the full episode. So I won't be able to do that since we don't have full episodes now. But I'll figure something else out. We'll roll with it, right? So more changes to come. So at a hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Representative Katie Porter shared some of the findings from the U.S. Postal Services Inspector General's audit. And what you're going to see here is that under the leadership of U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Postal Service has essentially been ruined. And this is very, very startling. Take a look. The audit found that by the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right around 92%. That is about 92% of the mail got there within the standard of on time. That dropped to 80% by the fall of 2020. And by January of 2021, was hovering at around 61%. I realize this has gone up somewhat since then. But I wanted to ask you, when did Mr. DeJoy take over as Postmaster? Do you know? The summer of 2020? The summer of 2020. So June of 2020. And what happened after he took over? City rate of on time mail delivery go up or down. Went down. And I'm a professor and I used to grade, do a lot of grading. And 92% is considered widely like an A minus. 80 is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest possible B. 60% is at best a D minus. The Postal Service delivers 48% of the world's mail is an institution. It is a civic treasure. And we let it get all the way, what you found is we let it get all the way to that D minus level. Whenever she breaks out the board, you know she's going to bring the heat. Now I want to go over some of the numbers that she stated there not to be redundant, but this is really huge. So mail delivery was at 92% in spring of 2020, but fast forward to winter of 2020 through 2021. And it's down to 61%. Now she noted that it has increased slightly, but the overall trend is downward in a very steep manner. This is substantial. Louis DeJoy is ruining the Postal Service and he's ruining it fast. Now you may be wondering why would the Postmaster General ruin the agency that he's in charge of? Doesn't that seem pretty weird? Well I think that this is part of a likely ploy to pitch privatization as a solution to all of the problems that he's causing. Now maybe he doesn't do this explicitly himself, but I think that we all know what happens in a late stage capitalist society when government institutions begin to break down. Privatization is on the table. It's been happening with social security. There's been constant attempts to privatize or partially privatize social security. Medicare turned that into a voucher program so people can purchase their health care plans on the private market in lieu of getting it from the government directly. So I think that what he's going to do is he's going to break the Postal Service and then of course what do we do? You explain to the people who are dissatisfied with this government service that they previously liked that the one thing that can fix it is maybe outsourcing some of the services provided by USPS to FedEx. Maybe to UPS. Who knows? So there are people in both parties, neoliberals who want to see the Postal Service at least partially privatized. They've been salivating over this for years, decades. So this is what I think he's working towards. Now we're going to talk about what can be done to stop him, but first I know you enjoyed that clip of Katie Porter. So I do want to share a clip from last year where she grilled Postmaster General DeJoy to his face in the lead up to the 2020 election where he slowed services knowing that during a pandemic, mail-in ballots could be affected by him destroying the US Postal Service. Take a look. I'm glad you know the price of a stamp but I'm concerned about your understanding of this agency and I'm particularly concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action when you became Postmaster General. You started directing the unplugging and destroying of machines, changing of employee procedures and locking of collection boxes. As a professor, I've always told my students that one of the most important rules in life is to read the instructions. Did you actually read and independently analyze the major overhaul plans before you ordered them to take effect? Again, I will repeat that I did not order major overhaul plans. The items you identify were not directed by me. I did and we don't need much analysis to run your trucks to a schedule. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Joy, could you please tell me who did order these changes if you as Postmaster General did not? Because these changes have resulted in and you have said yourself in this hearing. The Postal Service has been around for 250 years. There are plans. There are many, many executives almost 30,000 executives within the organization and there are plans that existed prior to my arrival that were implemented. Mr. Joy, if you did not order these actions to be taken, please tell the committee the name of who did. I do not know. That was incredibly satisfying to watch. Now he can feign ignorance all that he wants but the fact of the matter is that as of March of 2021 his 10-year plan went into effect so he can't blame anyone else now for all of the woes that the USPS is experiencing and the changes that he put in place led to reductions in the hours of the Postal Service. So they're open for less amounts of time. It lengthens delivery times and as the ACLU pointed out, this is bad for democracy. So the question is, we have a Democratic Party president. So what can Joe Biden do? Why hasn't he fired him? Well, you can't directly fire the Postmaster General but there are things that Biden can do to get him out of that position. The first and the most easy thing that he can do is exert nonstop pressure on Lewis to Joy. Call on him publicly to resign, name him, shame him. But unfortunately with that particular method, even if Biden should still do that it doesn't seem likely that Lewis to Joy is going to buckle to pressure given that he literally told the House Oversight Committee back in February to get used to me suggesting that he's not going to back down in spite of the backlash that he's experiencing. So Biden, I mean he should still exert pressure even if it won't actually work. You have your bully pulpit as president and you should definitely use it but another thing that Biden can do is actually change the makeup of the USPS Board of Governors so that way he can be ousted. As Jake Johnson of Climate Dreams explains, while the president can't remove DeJoy on his own, analysts have noted that he can soon replace both Ron Bloom who is currently serving a one-year holdover term and John Barger whose term expires in December. Such steps would give Biden appointees a majority on the USPS Board and potentially the votes that oust the USMASTER general. So there you have it. That is what Biden can and should do. And this is a necessity because we need the USPulsel Service. Not only do countless seniors rely on it for life-saving medications they wouldn't otherwise be able to get easily but it's a service provided by the government that's valuable that we like. So it's not just a good thing to do for citizens but it's a good political move as well because if you save the USPulsel Service after we've all seen a slowdown and it's destruction first hand you can brag to that in 2022 and 2024. It's an easy victory assuming he actually wants to fight for it. So there you have it. Katie Porter is shedding light on a really important issue that I think that people are aware of but just not paying close enough attention to but this is really important because the USPulsel Service is needed. As you might have seen over the weekend Elon Musk billionaire in fact the richest person on the planet currently decided to randomly take a shot at Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders often times will talk about the need to tax excessively wealthy people but I mean this time he didn't even name-drop Elon Musk. It was fairly innocuous for Bernie Sanders but yet Elon Musk took issue with it. So Bernie Sanders tweeted out, we must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share period. Not controversial right? Well not if you're Elon Musk because he responded saying I keep forgetting that you're still alive. I mean this is a man who is supposed to be an adult. I believe he's in his 50s if not his 60s I might be wrong about that but this is an adult and here he is childishly attacking a United States senator for just saying what is common sense if we want to live in a society that's healthy. So this proves that billionaires aren't uniquely intelligent because somebody who responds like this isn't very bright in my opinion but it also demonstrates how brazen these billionaires are because they know that they can say and do whatever they want and get away with it because in a late-stage capitalist society they hold all the cards. They have all of the power in this type of a system wealth equals power and you saw how the billionaire tax that was proposed just a couple of weeks ago was killed by the Democratic Party's own members. Their party proposed it and then their own members fought tooth and nail against it. Now we don't necessarily know if it will pass yet but if I had to bet I'd say probably not. Now immediately I just want to show you a couple of responses that stood out to me. So Rob Israel responded saying this piece of shit cold leader quadrupled his wealth during the pandemic while telling everyone COVID wasn't real. Then he adds Elon Musk is a tax dodging anti-union crypto scheme pushing scuzzball. Well said Frank Vets responded simply by sharing a meme telling him to shut the fuck up along with a picture of him and Jeffrey Epstein's alleged accomplice. Simple yet effective and that photograph is seen here. So basically to give you some additional context Elon Musk has always been a douchebag on Twitter but his douchebaggery is increasing exponentially and it really started to ramp up when this new so-called billionaire tax was proposed. Now I say so-called billionaire tax because even if it's a tax on billionaires specifically they're still billionaires if you tax them. So it's not like they're not going to be billionaires in fact this was produced by the Washington Post and it shows you that if we actually put into law the bill proposed by Democratic Senator from Oregon Ron Wyden Elon Musk would lose about 50 billion if his unrealized capital gains were taxed. But odds are this isn't going to pass and even if it did again he's still going to be a multi-multi-billionaire he will still be obscenely wealthy and to just kind of put things into perspective for you here's a couple of facts that you may or may not already know about billionaires. So this is from BuzzFeed's Natalie Ogensian so Elon Musk is currently the world's richest billionaire with 306.5 billion to his name even if you were to make 100 million per year it would still take you 3,065 years to amass that level of wealth oh and also he's earning about 11,415 dollars an hour. Imagine if you made that much money it's inconceivable right? We'll also throughout the past two decades American billionaire wealth has increased from 240 billion adjusted for inflation to 4.18 trillion in March of 2021. That's 17 times more than their total wealth in 1990. Now finally if you can believe it there's a huge wealth gap even among billionaires. The majority 94% are worth 10 billion or less after that 5% are worth between 10 and 30 billion while mega billionaires who comprise less than 1% of all billionaires are worth more than 30 billion dollars and Elon Musk obviously is in the latter category there. So if I were Elon Musk and I knew that there were all of these efforts both politically and socially to tax my wealth I might want to be a little bit quiet not be too brazen but he's just demonstrating why this needs to happen. Why his wealth absolutely needs to be taxed because again when you have this much wealth you influence policy you actually pose a threat to democracy and that's not hyperbole there was a 2014 study from Princeton University's Dr. Gillens and Paige and they found that when it comes to policy outcomes what gets are the policies that are disproportionately preferred by elites and special interests but when it comes to average citizens we have a statistically insignificant impact on policy outcomes. So again what billionaires want they get there's a reason why we're not seeing an increase in the minimum wage there's a reason why we don't have Medicare for all because in this country currently the way that it stands is we're functionally in oligarchy that's the sad reality and Elon Musk doesn't even have to do much because there are already swarms of lobbyists who are rallying against this proposed billionaire tax by Ron Wyden so he doesn't even have to do much he can keep his mouth shut and continue to accumulate wealth but he's brazen he can't help himself. He has to attack Bernie Sanders one of the best senators in America one of the only senators actually fighting for real people and say oh I can't uh I can't believe you're still alive or what did he say specifically um I keep forgetting that you're still alive imagine that what a piece of shit but um I mean this is something that normal people already see with regard to Elon Musk I mean he's he's shown his true colors time and again and sure there's gonna be nerds that respond to this video defending him for no reason but understand that if you're defending Elon Musk and billionaires like him you are a useful idiot you are a bootlicker these folks don't care about you they don't care about their future they don't care about the planet they care about their own wealth so I'll leave that there. Elon Musk attacked Bernie Sanders in the most shameless and childish way yet this man is a fucking baby the families of Sandy Hook victims sued Alex Jones of Info Wars for defamation after he claimed that that mass shooting was a false flag incident intended to galvanize wide ranging support for a gun confiscation program after he made these claims his viewers harassed the families of these victims and now he's gonna have to pay up so as Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times explains a state court in Connecticut granted a sweeping victory to the families of 8 people killed in a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown Connecticut suing the far right broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Info Wars media outlet for defamation the judge ruled on Monday that because Mr. Jones refused to turn over documents ordered by the courts including financial records he was liable by default the ruling combines with previous rulings in Texas to grant the families of 10 Sandy Hook shooting victims victories in all defamation lawsuits against Mr. Jones juries in both states will decide how much Mr. Jones should pay the families in damages atop court costs those trials are scheduled for next year in both states now according to the attorneys of Alex Jones they will be appealing this but for now this is a victory this is good news because what he did was truly morally reprehensible and just to put things in the context for you in case you don't remember what he did these families already dealt with dealt with the worst thing that any human being can possibly deal with they lost their child pain that is inconceivable I can't even fathom what they were going through at that time and then on top of that pain that they were already dealing with that grief Alex Jones decided to lie about the circumstances surrounding the death of that of the children in their family and his viewers harassed these families it's truly disgusting on a number of levels but one of the families involved in this defamation case who was harassed by Alex Jones's supporters while the father actually committed suicide back in 2019 tragically now we don't necessarily know that this was specifically because of the harassment that he received because of Alex Jones's viewers I mean losing a child in and of itself is really it's again it's unfathomable right but I'm sure that it didn't help so Alex Jones created even more pain for these families and for that he absolutely must pay damages now during a divorce proceeding his attorney claimed that Alex Jones wasn't actually a bad person I mean he was merely a performance artist simply playing a character now during his deposition he didn't necessarily claim explicitly that he was playing a character as his attorneys once did but he claimed that he was possibly suffering from psychosis and that's the reason why he decided to spread these disgusting lies about the victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting which caused pain and harassment take a look at what he said that I've you know I myself have almost had like a pool of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged you know I've now learned a lot of times things aren't staged so you know I think as a pundit and someone giving opinion that you know my opinions have been wrong but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people well what I'm getting at is this stuff we're looking at today kids going in circles schools closed emails EMTs quarterpotties these aren't comedy skits this is journalism yes well this is punditry because I wear a journalist hat punditry hat satire hat just just reading news just you know just being a news reader I mean I do that as well so I do a lot of things but when I was covering Sandy Hook I was genuinely trying to get at the truth of it uh huh sure it's because of psychosis that's why he used his massive platform to spread these lies about the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting he is a really bad person and you know after his lawyer said he's a performance artist after he said you know I saw a false flag in everything I was maybe suffering from psychosis the sad part is that people are still going to take him seriously because it's not reasonable people who are watching Alex Jones unironically hate watching him the people who are watching Alex Jones believe what he has to say and you think that perhaps this would maybe you know reveal to him that he's not a genuine person and he's lying he's doing this for clicks and views and attention but instead they'll think well since there's this effort to discredit Alex Jones and he's saying these things I mean he can't possibly be saying this on his own volition it must be part of a conspiracy to silence him because he is indeed a truth teller telling the truth about things that the government doesn't want us to find out about so this only you know makes them double down and triple down in believing that he is a truth teller so if he genuinely feels bad then he should just stop he should stop everything shut down in full wars stop being a pundit because it's clearly causing pain you're spreading disinformation and he knows about it I don't care if you're a performance artist or if you were suffering from psychosis whatever excuse he wants to use what he's doing is negatively impacting society and it's leading to people feeling real harm in particular the families of the Sandy Hook victims so you know we don't necessarily know how much you'll have to pay in damages but I hope that the victims or the families of victims take every single cent from this scumbag I want to talk about the Carl Rittenhouse trial keep in mind that at the time I filmed this I don't know what the verdict will be so I'm talking about this with incomplete information in the event you're watching this in the future but having said that though I don't expect him to be found guilty and I never expected him to be convicted even before the trial started because we have a very biased system and our so called criminal justice system both protects and upholds white supremacy and this is just going to be another chapter in that long book and really what I think is going to happen ultimately is going to see themselves in Carl Rittenhouse and they're going to vote to acquit I think they saw the crocodile tears and they bought it they fell for it hook line and sinker because they think well you know this is just a misguided young man who did something that he's going to have to live with for the rest of his life no need to unnecessarily punish him and of course you know I can't get into the minds of the jurors but they view him as this naive 17 year old who made a mistake and sure we're all foolish and naive and do stupid things at that age but most people don't kill other people at that age and you know this idea that he never intended to hurt anybody is a little bit bizarre to me considering the fact that he crossed eight lines to do quote security at a black lives matter rally and we know what that means security from far right militias and right-wingers usually is code for intimidate black lives matter protesters and when they talk about doing security they're not meaning security for the protesters protecting them from police brutality or anyone else who's going to harm them they mean protecting property because property to them is more valuable than human life and you know it doesn't even matter that Kyle written a house before he killed two people was at a CVS talking about how he wants to use his AR to shoot people that doesn't even matter and I admit it into court because it would be viewed as tainting the jury I mean you think that that piece of information would be relevant considering he's on trial for killing people with that same gun but it's just it goes to show you how terrible our system is and there's no amount of reform that can fix the system it has to be torn apart and rebuilt from top to bottom if somebody can show up to a black lives matter rally and shoot two people and get away with it and claim self defense that's a bad system if the prosecution can't even refer to his victims as victims and you have a judge that's 100% on his side that's a bad system and even if by some miracle he's actually held accountable for the lives that he took that will never come back well he still wins either way as was explained by Isaac Bailey eloquently so in an op-ed for NBC news because if he's convicted he'll be a martyr and if he is able to walk free then that's a victory in and of itself obviously so this really highlights the flaws that we already knew existed within our system and when you consider the fact that a black teen would never be able to get away with this nobody would buy this self defense line if it were a black teen it goes to show you how terribly flawed and racist our criminal justice system is really breaks it down in this op-ed that I want to share to you because he explains why this is likely going to end in Kyle Rittenhouse being acquitted he writes if Rittenhouse is convicted he will likely stop being a right-wing mascot and become a right-wing martyr if he isn't convicted he will set a precedent for others like him to pick up guns they shouldn't have and thrust themselves into the middle of unrest they should avoid confident in knowing that president won't be in their future to his supporters and even many of his detractors Rittenhouse isn't a monster not really he was a young dumb kid hyped up on the foxification or fox news effect of American discourse on the black lives matter movement in a country that fetishizes guns for show for sport and for killing not a white supremacist like say Dylan Roof not really he wore no hoods and didn't wrap himself in the confederate flag he's a patriot who tried to bring calm to chaos because as Fox News prime time host Tucker Carlson told us at the time of the shooting the adults around him wouldn't maintain order he was so nonviolent that police officers greeted him and those like him like fellow guardians of the community before he killed anyone he didn't open fire until absolutely necessary it was self defense his supporters have told us outside the courtroom and his lawyers have argued inside the courtroom had quote criminals who many of us prefer to call Rittenhouse's victims though the judge said they can't be called that during the trial not rushed him had not provoked him they would be alive and he would never have been charged none of his decisions before the moments he pulled the trigger seemed to matter he defended himself that's all predominantly white voters were trying to defend their freedom so they flocked to an open bigot like Donald Trump and stormed the US Capitol angry parents most of them white are storming school board meetings demanding an end to critical race theory lessons to protect white children from feeling guilt about America's violent racist history and how it has created the foundation of inequity we still see today politicians and local officials again many of them white have stoked this by framing the teaching of race and books that explores context as something constituents should defend their communities from the truth is that too many white Americans probably see themselves in Rittenhouse afraid of anyone whether white or of color who wants to live in a more equitable country even if some don't want to say so out loud so I think that he's making really important points here either way Kyle Rittenhouse is going to emerge victorious if he's found guilty he'll be a martyr and when he's released he'll be able to have a book deal and he'll be a superstar but I mean if he is freed and he walks then he has his freedom and he gets to live his life unlike his victims who are gone forever and on top of that now this is going to legitimize vigilante justice justice in quotes in the United States and the people who are defending Kyle Rittenhouse notice how they can only defend him narrowly they have to strip the entire event of its context you can't mention that he threw up a white power sign you can't mention that he crossed 8 lines looking for trouble you can't mention that a week prior he was on video saying that he wants to shoot people with that gun you have to strip away the context in order to do this mental jujitsu to make it seem as if well he's really the one who's the victim then he was just defending himself you know against these scary black lives matter protesters and either way this should be a wake up call for people but it's not because all of these things that are being talked about to defend Kyle Rittenhouse understand that if he were black he would never have this luxury Mike Brown was demonized after he was killed by a police officer and as this twitter account points out Tamir Rice was 12 and was killed for having a fake toy gun Kyle Rittenhouse 17 killed two people walked by police after killing two people got to go home and sleep exactly Philando Castile was exercising his second amendment right to carry legally and he was shot and killed so do you understand that all of the things that we're talking about to defend Kyle Rittenhouse he gets this luxury of being defended of using self defense as an excuse for taking two lives specifically because he's white imagine if somebody who was black a black teen 17 years old went to a vaccine mandate protest disproportionately with white people and carried a gun and ended up killing two people would our legal system even buy for a second self defense they'd say this black person was very clearly looking for trouble they point to any posts on social media that indicate a history of violence if he's a smoking pot that person would never have this many people defend them as are defending Kyle Rittenhouse and as good politic guy put it on a historical extent of saying what Kyle Rittenhouse did was self defense I mean so you can just bring a military grade weapon to a place you know will be chaotic then just start murking people when you feel somewhat unsafe and that's exactly it that's what you can do if you're white because the thing is that white tears resonate with juries and with America whereas black tears black pain and suffering you know maybe people care about it for a short period of time it's the case with the George Floyd murder but it's really easy to get them to forget and turn against that I mean we saw finally people pay attention to police brutality in America with the black lives matter protests and now all of a sudden you know black lives matter and this slogan defund the police is toxic and nobody can understand why anyone would want to defund the police it just you know we have a shit system and part of the problem is that Americans they don't see the bias that's right in front of them and when they do see it they get propagandized they get manipulated by right wing media to forget about it or view it in a different way so you know this isn't this is a case that is unsurprisingly um showing the flaws in our so called criminal justice system where you have somebody who killed two people getting the claim self defense because America is a fucked up racist country you don't sound like a democrat to me I hear by you can raise your right hand you're definitely a conservative anyway always a pleasure Sean oh you've noticed it too Sean interesting I too have noticed that Tulsi Gabbard does indeed sound like a conservative interesting everyone is beginning to see it now she's not just going to come out and unequivocally declare that she is a conservative and she supports conservatism I think that would be a little bit too brazen given what I believe she wants to do in the future but what she's doing is she's dropping a few hints a few clues here and there she's giving you a puzzle piece here and there and when you finally have all of the pieces and you put them together it reads I am a conservative so let's look at what Tulsi Gabbard has been saying on twitter lately so she tweeted out anyone who disagrees with pro antifa MSM bias on written house trial is smeared as a white supremacist terrorist disgusting so I mean I guess that she's anti antifa in other words she's just fa she then tweeted out tacit support for republican governor elect of Virginia Glenn Yonkin because she's seemingly also against critical race theory like he is which is a made up issue and when it comes to build back better she tweeted out a video of her appearance on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News saying government is already too big and powerful as it is and the build back better bill is going to make it even worse now let me just give you some additional context before we watch the clip this is an individual who ran for president as a progressive in 2020 some individuals even declared her more progressive and left leaning than Bernie Sanders but here she is now going to speak out against what she supported about a year ago would you agree with me that it would be a good idea to go back to being energy independent yes of course not many democrats agree with you would you agree with me that we have too much debt we really can't afford one point seven five or three point five trillion in new spending yes Sean and and here's the reality with the bill that they're continuing to push forward is that our government is too powerful and too big even as it is and this bill is only going to make matters worse the provisions in the bill are so vague that really it's going to be unelected bureaucrats who end up deciding how these provisions are implemented and no accountability and and really it will empower them to be able to stick their noses into every aspect of our lives furthering this this cradle to grave mentality of government dependence that makes us lose even more of our autonomy as we are paying for it as government gets bigger our wallets are getting smaller big government bad covered twenty twenty one look this is not even an attempt to be a right wing populist this is just straight up Reaganism it's straight up Reaganism and to show you how sharply she's changed you look at her policy platform from twenty twenty when she was running for president and supporting all of these so-called big government policies that she's now inexplicably denouncing now you can't find it on her website because it's gone and currently she just has a link to her podcast but using the way back machine I looked at her platform so before she explicitly backed away from medicare for all she had this on her platform this is a big government policy she also supported medicare negotiating drug prices which was in the original bill back better bill at another point in the interview she agreed that America should be energy independent and I didn't play that part but basically what it means is that she thinks we should indeed continue to drill away when she sponsored legislation to get off of fossil fuels it was literally called the off fossil fuels act and she had it on her twenty twenty policy platform she also supported immigration reform and she went further on her own platform then build back better but yet now she's suddenly against it she's against these things because it's too much government it's big government overreach when build back better itself is a compromise and even her policy platform went further than build back better this is a 180 and as shoe points out on twitter I understand ditching the democratic party as they are full of demons but this is a complete 180 in ideology and policy she ran on medicare for all and student that relief and progressive taxation and shit like a year ago exactly it's pretty brazen I mean she did a Dave Rubin at four times the speed as Dave Rubin it's a really sharp turnaround and I don't necessarily know what motivates her but this is my thinking here and this is all nothing but speculation so bear with me I think that she basically saw that when she ran for president which she clearly wants to be president she had no route to success in the democratic party moderates rejected her the left rejected her resoundingly so I'll be it you know the moderates and the leftists rejected her for different reasons but still she was rejected and she pulled it like one percent so now she's thinking I don't really have a path to the White House through the democratic party perhaps I can run as a Republican in 2024 and now she's using this time before the GOP primary to kind of build up her credibility with conservatives they already kind of were open minded to her when she was running for president in 2020 because of some of the things that she said but now she's just kind of going mask off and she's really going hard in terms of pandering so I think that what is going to happen is if she chose to run in a GOP primary against Donald Trump she would absolutely lose because Donald Trump would point out correctly so that she endorsed Kami Bernie in 2016 and she's going to get laughed out of the room and perhaps pull at less than one percent do even worse than she did in 2020 but in the event Trump isn't running and she competes in a GOP primary you know assuming that the voters won't care that she was a far leftist a couple of years ago maybe they will see her as an outsider but then again I'm skeptical to think that considering she's not really running as anti-establishment anymore she's not trying to be a Josh Holly right wing populist she's just espousing Reaganomics and fearmongering about big government and I just I don't even think that this is going to appeal to people in the Republican Party at this point and she has no core ideology she's a serial panda who is going to see this person and take them seriously on either side she's just saying what she needs to say to get ahead she represents everything wrong with American politics and she is the quintessential slimy politician that she wants denounced she'll say anything to get ahead but in a GOP primary honestly I think she has a better shot than in a Democratic primary maybe she'll even pull above one percent if she's lucky but either way the people who were relentlessly promoting her back in 2019 the podcast hosts in particular maybe they should you know show a little bit of humility and humble themselves maybe they should admit that they were wrong and maybe we shouldn't trust their judgment because now Tulsi Gabbard she's not mincing words she is basically functionally a conservative at this point and I don't know when she's going to officially identify as a conservative but either way what she's doing is trying to build up credibility with right wing audiences either she's doing that because she wants to show at Fox News maybe she wants more viewers on her podcast maybe she wants to run for president in 2024 I don't know but either way Tulsi Gabbard at this point is a right winger and when people like me pointed out these red flags back in 2019 you all called me an establishment shill and said that I was smearing her well turns out I was right to look at these red flags and take them seriously so perhaps listen to the people who sounded the alarm about Tulsi Gabbard because perhaps we know more about what we're talking about than people like Jimmy Dorr supported her seemingly because she went on his show and Bernie Sanders didn't go on his show well folks that is everything this is the last outro that I am filming of course I'm not going anywhere it's just that this format this version of the humanist report is ending I mean all good things come to an end but I think that most of you prefer to enjoy the show in the bits that we we upload a la carte right is that what it is am I thinking of the right thing I have no idea I don't know what I just said but this is the last episode folks so I am a little bit sad but I don't think many people will miss it I certainly won't miss it because a lot of people don't like to watch the show this way um so you know it's just the things that we talked about throughout the week I just take them and I re upload them in a single big video and that's really unnecessary so I won't be doing that any longer but of course I'm not going anywhere I'll still be making YouTube videos and yeah folks so it's been a great run of 315 episodes but now you know the humanist report is evolving into a higher plane a greater um not a greater I don't know what word I'm looking for I'm fucking up this outro I'm fucking up the outro but it's okay because it's the last one so um look folks I'll just call it quits because I'm rambling and I don't know what the fuck I'm trying to say but if you've been watching and you genuinely enjoyed the shows in this way I'm sorry that this is ending right but of course you know I think that most people understand that what the humanist report is about is this is first and foremost a youtube show not a podcast right we got started and blew up on youtube and our podcast version is even mildly successful because of the success of the youtube show so the youtube show isn't going anywhere but the podcast is coming to an end maybe I'll start a different podcast in the future an additional podcast uh who knows but for now that's everything I'll see you all later take care folks