 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, November 8th, 2020. We do our live recording at that time on Sundays and rebroadcasts. We do our live recording on Wednesday evenings on WOZO Radio. I'm Larry Rhodes, doubter five, and as you usually have our co-host, Wombat on home with us. Hello, Wombat. Cruisin' on down Main Street, you're relaxed and feeling good. Next thing that you know you're seein', octopus is in the neighborhood. Must be in mushrooms or something. Our guests today are Doubtfire, Bugsy, Red Pirate Higgs, and George. George is just now coming in. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And personally, we also talk about religion, religious faith, it's God, it's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheists, free thinking, and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville. And what would be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show breaks? Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist calling video show broadcasting here in Knoxville? Yes. It has been for over 10 years. Absolutely. Did you know that, Wombat? Yes, and I think it's really, really good because it teaches kids about science. And I think the funniest part is when Arnold's like, I knew I should have stayed home today. Like, whenever the school bus shrinks down into like a tiny little thing that goes in one of the school kids' bodies, he's like, I should have stayed home today. I'm sure that's a great show, but it's not my show. It's so good. It's my favorite thing. It's a magic school bus. It's amazing. But you're having trouble finding it, so we'll tell you how to do that after the mid-show break. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments on Sunday morning at 11 o'clock Eastern. Wombat, what do you have for us today for as topics go? We're going to be talking about what's the deal with misinformation and probably take a nice collective sigh. One by one if you go around. Indeed. And maybe you can go into the nature of like, particularly in this season, why SC is useful, why we can use it to determine like true things, false things, but also standards of evidence in the upcoming weeks, maybe even months, as we will hear things that are patently not true. What can we do this week? Yeah, that's what we have already. And what can we do to be able to parse these kinds of things in the future? Because we want to hold everyone to those same standards. But before we begin, I'm going to throw it over to our own Dreadpower Higgs for our weekly invocation. All right. Well, in honor of this suspicious event. While Trump whined the Dems had conspired, the subterfuge wasn't required. Joe win the vote. In history, I'll note, Trump didn't lose. He was fired. That is Trader Room. If you're watching that right now, you're going to love that. So that's a good one. I want to go around. Maybe we can just take a sigh of relief. If your candidate didn't win, that's totally fine too. But at least in America, there is, and probably even the world over, there's just anticipation for healing and potential for unity. And I think that's something that we can all agree on, that we need to take these tensions and cool them down a little bit. And I think we have the best candidate in order to be able to do that. So here's me going, Scott, how are you feeling? Do you need to take a breath right now? How have you been this week? I've been taking breaths all weekend, man. Oh, weekend. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I've been staying in the house, staying out of the mix because in Newport Beach, which isn't far from me, there's been a lot of demonstrations. It would be a Trump people really mad about the results of the election. And they've just been all on the news feed and everything else and just going crazy. And you know, I'm not too far from there. So they're driving around with their Trump trucks and all of that stuff. So I've been kind of wanting to kind of stay out of that whole thing right now. Good move. Yeah. I, if it wasn't for the coronavirus thing going on, I would be out there with a table and two microphones. But even then, I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to risk it out. I want to wait until we have an administration that knows how to make a vaccine. I'm so, so super glad that we will have a vaccine that comes up. That's not pressured because you can't rush biochemistry. I'm saying this as a biochemist sometimes bacteria anytime to do things. You can't be like multiply faster. Myosis. I don't have times like they don't work on your clock. Larry, I'm going to fill this out at you too. How do you feel? How are you this week? Collect a sigh relief. Oh yeah, definitely. It was a great week. I have to say that I wasn't feeling too good on November 3rd evening. When most of that was read, but I'm, I'm a died in the wall Democrat. So it sure was nice to see those states flip as the week went by. And finally Saturday morning to get the news that Biden had actually taken Pennsylvania. Help me out. How sick did you feel November 3rd evening? Like I went to bed. I felt bad for the future of the country. I felt bad for how our country did not respond to this threat to democracy. I mean, I lost a lot of faith. I guess it was Tuesday evening. But Saturday morning. We have to talk about that. It wasn't the blue wave. It was more like a blue tide. Don't let a Christian hear you say that. Yeah, the tide came in. But today is. Larry touched on a great point because I did want to talk about faith in this show too. Because I do agree with the idea of atheists even have faith as well. It's that we just don't use faith as a means to determine if something's true or not. Like everyone can believe in something without evidence. But is that a good way to know if something's true or not? And I think atheists would agree that it's not. But I have, I had faith that we'd be here today, but it was shook that evening. And I was, I went to bed and I thought, man, I hate feeling more and more so than I'm a second class citizen, third class citizen in this country that I was born in, that my parents were born here, grandparents were born in. And I don't know how I'll feel going outside looking people in the eye and and knowing that these people chose not to see me as someone whose life matters and and could be a contribution to the society rather than just a statistic on a crime sheet. You know, like we, right. It also shows the importance of getting out there to vote. Yes. Yes. It's the only voice we have. The only voice that the powers that be will recognize in this country and most countries. But I mean, look at, I mean, if it hasn't been for Joe Biden getting 70, what 4,000 or 474 million votes, Trump would have gotten the most votes in the history of the presidential race. Yep. But the only thing they say do was that we got out there more. We got out there more. That should be the double underline of this election. Get out there. Yes. It's important. And not only that, but shout out to the people who were being well-held by voter suppression. I know some guys in Georgia who were in line literally for seven hours, they put blogs on YouTube of just like, I'm in this line for seven hours in Fulton County. That's near Atlanta area, near Gwinnett County. And I'm like, seven hour line. That is such really terrible suppression. And you look at the margins of what Georgia won by. Won by. It's like literally less than 10,000. So like every person in line who didn't turn away, who stayed in that line. Thank you so much for pulling through the people in Pennsylvania who stayed in line, the people in Nevada who stayed in line. We won and saved democracy by the thinnest of margins today. And I want that to be a lesson for, for anyone who is like an autocrat who comes into the situation and just wants power. Don't follow that playbook because we stopped you today and you can do whatever you want now. But January 20th, you're getting kicked out whether you like it or not. George, what is up? I'm so glad to see you. Thank you, Tyrone. Oh boy. What a discussion this is. I have to say, at my age, I am apprehensive, you know, it's hard to let it go. It's, it's hard to, I mean, to see this country get so fascist. You know, the way my mind works is that I'm wondering what is the collective amnesia. With which we as a country have forgotten the lessons of World War II. Yeah. And, and then the American Revolution itself, you know, when we fought to free ourselves from a king, from a dictator, that we're right ready to install another dictator, another king. And I can't help but think that the amnesia is emotional. You know that because there are people I simply cannot talk with using logic about. Right. Like my doctor, you know, that's, you know, people believe that there is a force at work to undermine Trump. It's, it's crazy. Yeah. Well, but we all know that. We all know that. And, and how do we as a nation, as a society, prevent this? Can you put a name to that force? I can't. I can't, Larry. I don't know what. I mean, you're not talking about Satan or something like that, are you? No, of course not. It's the dark side of the force. The dark side? Well, no, I'm talking about. Well, I mean, the Democratic Party is a force that was trying to undermine the Democratic, the Trump administration. Well, they did. Yeah. Yeah, basically. They did not do it. As usual, the Democratic Party did a terrible job of it. The Democratic Party did such a bad job of fighting back that. I mean, during the four years. During the four years. Yeah. I mean, the, the impeachment was so limp-risted. Yeah. He could have been accused of so many things. Yeah. And they picked exactly one thing, which of course, the opposition easily shot down. Well, I think a lot of it was having to do with the blinkers that was put onto the administration. I mean, the investigations by the DOJ. Correct. There was certain things we were allowed as a party to bring to the table. Yeah. Correct. But I agree. It could have gone better. Also, as a populist, it's not a surprise that there were Democrats that didn't like Trump. It's just a question of like, when there's actively people already in Congress, actively people already in Senate in the House and in Supreme Court fighting to keep power, even if it means to protect Trump, then you have essentially a group of people who are fighting against the interests of, you know, like our people. We've never had a government that's worked for the people as much as they've fought against themselves for a really long time now. And what's really frustrating, I would say this, is it's embarrassing. On a global scale, a democracy is a very delicate thing. And it's not, in the test of history, not a very successful form of governance. It's typically something that's prone to falling apart. And what we have is a very special kind of democracy because we're the rare superpower that is actually a bottom votes its way up to the top. Bottom chooses the elected officials. Bottom puts in the laws in place. Bottom works hard, and the top should work for the interests of the bottom. Like we have that, and it was losing, we were losing our grip on it. And I wonder how other countries were reacting to that idea because there are burgeoning democracies as well. And so, like, I'll throw it up to Canada, Dred Pirate, how you been, how do you feel about this whole situation? Well, you know, I am so happy for you guys, and I know that there's certainly a lot of interest, Canadian interests, that are, you know, sying their collective sigh of relief as well. You know, I know, you know, certainly the news I've seen of Trudeau, he's got a great poker face. But underneath it, you could tell that he was keeping a very close eye on things. I remember seeing one of the opposition party leaders, Jagmeet Singh, he was a bit more vocal about his stand on it. And so, you know, definitely Canada is behind the choice that the Americans have made. Great. Good on you. I remember Trudeau, when he was in the room, press conference board, and Trump was there. And for whatever reason, his daughter was there, too, like he brings his family everywhere. And like Ivanka's making floaty eyes, floaty eyes at Trudeau, and Trudeau's like, none of this, none of that, I need to get these day full. I can't wait to get away from them, please, please, please. And it's just like, every picture is like Ivanka's like, Hey, what's up, Trudeau? It's like, please leave me alone, you crazy lady. And I'm like, this guy kind of gets it. So yeah, hey, we have a show to get into. And I think it's probably, oh, George, we'll get right to you. But I think it's important that we get into misinformation. We kind of started late today. George, final points. Yeah. Well, I was talking with a buddy of mine in Denmark last week, and of course, he's a former journalist as well. And he was like biting his fingernails watching this election, you know. And a long time ago, I said that, I told him that Trump had been recycling techniques that were used successfully by Adolf Hitler. And one of them is about attacking the press, you know, and I said, fake news. And I said, Hitler called it the lying press, and he says, oh, yes, a delegated press, you know. So he was following that maneuver. It's literally textbook. How do you how do you misinform the government? You make them distrust the people who tell credible news. And if you read a book called, what is it, Animal Farm? What is it? It is Orwell's step by step. People knew this is not a new thing Trump is doing. It's just a question of do we educate our kids to be able to recognize things like this? And I remember reading Animal Farm when I was in middle school and it went way over my head. I'm just like talking animals, but they're not saying anything awesome. Can we watch Charlotte's web, please? Can we go back to that? That's fine. And it's not until that I'm an adult and I reread the book that I was like, oh my goodness. Like that was Bush era. That was when the Patriot Act was coming in and he's just like saying, like, hey, we need our own news source and Ted Turner came out like Fox News. I'm like, this, they, this isn't real. This is what this book is saying. And it's just progressively gotten worse and worse, but you can recognize all the steps in science. You need, for example, one person that you can like argue and lambast as your scapegoat. So Nancy Pelosi became that or crooked Hillary became that or the Obama thing came back. You need, you need targets that are easy for the ignorant to, to be angry at. So that way you can stand on top of it and be like, that's the problem. Don't look at me. Don't look at what I'm doing back here. Look at that thing. That thing's the problem. It's, it's essentially building a bunch of straw man. Yeah. Scott, how do you feel? Yeah. You know, what's scary is I learned about more, what I kind of, what I suspected already is that people are so driven by emotions and driven by conspiracy theory. And I just didn't know how widespread it was. And it's like you said, they, the, the, the playbook is to destroy the credibility of those who speak truth like science, Trump attack the news media, anybody that pretty much spoke against him or his policies or whatever it was Trumpism and whoever went against it, he was going to be discrediting that person. It was just so funny to me to say, look, as a skeptic, you should consider the source, like think about what's in it for that person to lie and there's a lot. Motivations. You should be just as skeptical about his claims because of what's in it for him, you know, but no one thought or the people who bought into it, they didn't think of it that way. They're just went, they just went right with it. Yep. I don't even really scary. It's scary to see that even in like the times that we're in, in the forceful country that we're in, in the modern age that we have access to information for everyone, we're still susceptible to the, the base tribalism that cause things like World War Two or the, the Nazi youth, et cetera. I think it's very important for us to understand, I mean, us as a society, our children, especially to understand the news media and how it functions and who owns what, you know, like, understand the role of the puppeteer, like Rupert Meridoc, who is pulling the strings about the information that you hear. Yeah, it's like when you wake up in the morning and all the news stories are on the same sentence, same verbatim words, and it's like, who chose these words? Who's ready? Well, I used to do that. I used to be. Oh, look at him. He's the puppet. We got you. No, no, I was, I was part of that because I was reading newscasts that came over the Telethon machine and every radio station was getting the same words. Yes. Like what you're talking about. Yeah. Word to one wrote them and someone had an interest. And so how, how do we make sure that interest is in the interest of the public? I have said this on a number of times and Dredpire, I want to go back to you. I actually felt like I interrupted you. Did you have something to say? Anything you want. Hi. Hey, what's up, buddy? I thought I'd get the silly hat on. That's how we know it's a cult. It's my, it's my praise bacon. We praise bacon. So, okay. Okay. So I didn't have anything specific. I remember looking at a globe when I was a kid, I remember looking at a globe when I was a kid and I saw the borders on the globe and it was like USSR and have this country. Ukraine was here. And I'm like, this is how it is. We're done warring like wars are over. And for the most part, this is where the line for the map. The map's the map. I'm just a kid and I'm like, well, these things changed a lot in the past, but this is how they are. And then I remember like growing up and I'm like that country that I remember isn't a country anymore. This country that was a country is a new country. They just claim independence. I'm like, what, what's going on here? New periodic table elements. I remember seeing that for the first time. And I'm like, what do you mean there's not only 89 elements? There's like 100. There's 90. Like we haven't even come up with names with them. This is insane. The flux of things that happened in the past won't happen today was, was an eye-opening experience for me because terrible things happened in the past. Horrendous acts against humanity happened in the past and they can just as easily happen today, tomorrow, next year, if we don't have a standard for accepting true information and how to treat people. And when I look at the Trump administration, all I saw was a person dedicated at coercion, at division, at making people angry and victimizing people as a result. And people supporting this person, not so much in the interests of claiming that he did what's right, but they've attached their identity so hard to what he represents, that they refuse to look at him as, as a critical agent that's responsible for his actions. And it's the same kind of lack of accountability that's applied to people who are like in a religious institution where they perform horrendous acts against people. And I find that so troubling that, and, and so important that like you can't just be someone who's like, Hey man, I don't have to critically think. I don't believe anything weird. It's just, you know, the way how I was raised and it's all good, or like, I'm an atheist. I'm a scientist. I'm done now. I don't have to think anymore. It's like, no, every single moment you have a chance to ask a question, question why you're doing something, put, throw some doubt into a situation, go for it because it's for your own interests to do so. Else you might end up like how we were in the past. And do everything you possibly can to question everything. It doesn't matter what it is, because truth doesn't mind being questioned. Truth wants to be questioned. Larry, go for it. Yeah, it's the whole thing of those who don't know history or condemned to repeat it. But those of us who do know history or condemned to watch people repeat it, who don't? It's true. Yeah, speaking of which, Larry, you're going to have a birthday soon, not many times soon, but when you do, you know, plus four more, you could run for president and actually potentially win. You're a spring chicken. You got to feel pretty good about that now. Doubter five for president. Yeah, you're like, I could probably knock this out. How do you feel? We saw it. Did you see the acceptance speech on this part? Do you seem like run down the blue carpet? Biden, sure. Yeah, it was a great speech. It was the most forceful and most present speech I've ever seen him do. It was really well done and really the points that he said, and it worked great. I didn't agree much with the religious way he ended it. Sure. But at the same time, you know, everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe. That's true. They should have good reasons for it, but I don't believe the same way he does. But I think that he represents what is best for the country right now. Right. And he said it well. That's actually an interesting point that you hit on, faith and Biden. He used the word faith multiple times during since like election night. I remember the thing that he said the most was like, Hey, you know, these numbers are looking bad. But that was when the red and mirage was occurring. That's what he said. Keep the faith, keep the faith. And I remember seeing hearing that word and getting triggered because, you know, atheists, we don't like that word as much. But I didn't find an issue because we weren't necessarily using it as a mechanism to to establish that God was real. He was just saying, this looks bad. We don't have data to show that it'll look good, but I want you to believe that it will be good anyway. And I'm like, that's basically what faith is. And I found it very good to hold on to that. Yeah, well, people should remember that faith has multiple definitions. If you look at it in the dictionary, it doesn't just have one definition. Doesn't the other definition of the Bible? It has multiple definitions and faith is one of them. Yeah, yeah. If I may, I jump in. Absolutely. I just wanted to say that, you know, if at the end of voting, you're, you know, he's putting it out there to have faith. Well, the decision has already been made. Yes, so the faith will not change the outcome. The outcome is already set. Absolutely. It's one of those. It's like having it's having faith in, you know, that your numbers, once you check them, will match the draw that's already been drawn. Right. Faith that you passed the test. Exactly. Faith has nothing to do with it anymore. So it's a use definition anyway. It's a useless objective technique. But I would say this, it did make me feel good. And I think that was all purpose. Yeah. And I think purpose and I needed a guy at that point, at that night, at that hour to just say something that made me feel like, OK, I can at least try to get three hours of sleep tonight. Right. Like that's what I needed. And it worked. And I'm like, I, it's like, I have the Christian. I was, I was raised Christian. I understand the appeal of being, you know, fed emotional placebo. That was one of them. In my opinion, I was like, that's cool. I'm not using it as a means to say, hey, we're not winning the election on faith. We're going to do on a statistics and science. But not bad, though. He does go into the Bible hymnal book a lot of times. And he did so at the end of his acceptance speech. Here's my two points. I'd feel free to get, I'll get a round table on this, but we had, for example, an immoral. I don't think Trump even knows how to hold up a Bible. Like, I think we have. So like we have an immoral, a religious person. I won't even give him the dignity of being called an atheist, right? But we also have a very moral, in my opinion, I think Biden has like very good vibes about him, very open, very open to being diverse, love science, like acknowledges climate change, wants to work together, wants to unify good moral values there, but also religious. And I'm thinking like you can be moral and religious. And I'd rather have that as my president than immoral and a religious at the same time, you know? So for me, this is a this was a contest on character. Scott, how do you feel? I see you thinking. Oh, yeah, that's you're exactly right. And in Biden seems to be a progressive type of Catholic. So he doesn't deny science, which is a good thing. So with all the meat and potato stuff or the main things that we need to worry about, he's on board with it. You know, he's he may speak with religious language or whatever the case may be. That may be something that plays to his advantage in some ways. So as long as it isn't, you know, he's for separation of church and state. Yeah, he's for plurality of religious belief, which I forward well. Yeah, he's he's he's for everything that Trump was again, which is a big plus. You know, so for me, I don't I'm less scared of someone like a Biden or an Obama. Even if they use religious language, it's just a way of speaking the same point, I think, in this case. I mean, if you're someone like an evangelical, then we've got a problem because they don't believe in separation. And they want to legalize or mandate religious belief one way or the other. That's their whole goal. But I don't think that's what Biden's about. That's not a platform. Biden strikes me as like the best kind of religious person who inspires progressive attitudes and other religious people and pulls them actually further away from the text that's in their holy books. Larry, what do you think about that? In the sense of like a progressive religious person. No, in the sense that like, hey, he's if he was textbook Catholic, he would be a really terrible choice and we'd be between a rock and a hard place. But he's actually was a fundamentalist. He was like a fundamentalist. Yeah. But the fact that he's has the label and people identify with him because of the label, but he's showing that he's so much more progressive and thoughtful and aware and tolerant. That's going to inspire other people to be not as crazy and probably pull them out as well. Well, I've always said that people are good, moral characters in their society and an inverse proportion to how closely the follow of the fundamentals of their religion. Right. So I do respect the Catholic upbringing and that they do tend to give you a good general education. They they do value that quite a bit. And I think it helps to fuel a progressive point of view. And I'm I'm all with it. John Kennedy was a Catholic and there was a big worry back when he was running that if he got to be president, it would really be the pope who ran America. And that that he had to actually make a speech that said that that would not happen. Of course, didn't come down to that with Joe Biden. Right. But you know, it's not something that really, really I would think that we have to worry about with Joe Biden. Yeah, I think so, too. OK, Larry, how about we take us to the midshow break? OK, sounds real good. This is digital free thought radio hour about halfway through the show. We're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM W.O.Z.O. Radio. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, November 8th, 2020, second half of the show. Let's talk about the atheists and free thought groups that you can join here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Or you can go to meet up or Google and search for Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. And that's right. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville. All the rationalists of East Tennessee. Just go to rationalist.org and click on upcoming events to find out what they're up to. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about Knoxville Atheist calling TV show. Well, it's called Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. And go to YouTube and you can find their live streaming and archive shows. And you can also find their old archives under Free Thought Forum Knoxville. We've been doing the show for over 10 years. Let's say if you're interested in getting involved with the radio or TV show, just come to an Ask Meetup or RT meeting or go on Facebook and look for either one of those and tell us you want to be involved. You could be our next co-host or guest. Our guests today are Dot Fire, George, Dred Pirate Higgs and Scott. Welcome all. And we were talking about misinformation, disinformation. No, we're not going to get to love or no. Don't ruin it for me, Larry. We're talking about we're all missing ballots were because this is a yeah. This is a huge conspiracy. We need to look into this like where do they go? Did they go here? Did they get fall on the lake? Are they coming from dead bodies? Are the cremation center? Where are they? Where are they? Where is their love? We got where is the melody of where is the. Are you are you correcting my talent? I am. Everybody's singing out of tune. I don't know what the melody is. OK, I think Hillary took those. He killed those emails. Yeah, I don't know. He'll do the ballot. We had a really thoughtful comment today from this week's show by Dottis. It was long. It was a long comment. So I can't go through the whole thing. But he is basically making illusions how we did in the first half of the show where he's actually from Poland, right? Like he is much more steeped in the culture of watching how fast this can destroy the local environments around you. And he was just astonished by how the steps in our society were following the same steps that he had seen or that he's aware of. He's he's he's an older gentleman. And I can't begin to empathize with a person who went through something like that or at least the aftermath of stuff like that and saw, you know, in the twilight of their lives, oh, it's happening again. Like we haven't learned anything. This is this is really bad. And like what can I do to to inform the next generation to not make the same mistakes that ours had and make them realize that it wasn't a quick fix, that it was a lengthy deliberate process that that set us back. And it's not worth going through again, not worth making the same mistakes go through the same turmoil again. You know, the one thing that really got me was that people nowadays really think I mean, some people really think that anti-fascism is a bad thing. Yes, anti-American. I mean, you know, antifa means anti-fascism. Fascism is bad. No, no, you know, we've got to get those antifas. Yeah, they've made it a bad word. Right. And that's one of those things where it's like, hey, I don't like it when people start wagging the dog or the tail wagging the dog. It's like they they take something that makes sense, but they force feed it to you as if it's bad and it's it's assumed that they're right by all the people who are agreeing with them, even though it's obviously not true. And so like if you have a bunch of police people being like, hey, there was some protest or them, for example, we had in our country or in my state, Nashville is nearby, there was a lot of pro Trump support rallies that were going on this weekend and no police whatsoever. But lots of guys with guns just just mulling around the streets, being like, yeah, I'm flags and holding up assault rifles and all that stuff. And I'm like, you know what, I won't go to Walmart today. Let's just wait until this thing gets settled out. Then Biden wins. And like a different crowd rushes into the street in completely different areas. They're dancing in the streets, unmarked cars all over the place. Police just strolling up and down, watching everybody left and right. And I'm like, the narrative is wrong. The parodies are all wonky up. So I don't know. I do know it's not a good thing. And it's easy to say, well, we arrested some people today. It's like, well, what were they doing? They were dancing because someone got a leftist. Like, well, that's not a problem. Well, they're anti fear, they're antiphoes. Like, so they're anti fascist. That seems like it's generally something that we would want to have in this country. Yeah, we should all be anti fascist. We should be. All right, Scott, how do you feel about this? I don't want you to you want to devil's advocate some interesting points? Well, I feel I feel I can't help but feel great about it because, you know, my wife is from Africa and my children are biracial, of course. So for them, it was great. Number one, seeing a vice president that's going to be someone that makes race. Yeah. It's good to get rid of this Trumpism and this whole division for them, too. And it's it's just a good thing. I don't know the only maybe if I was to play devil's advocate with the space, we have to be just as vigilant about this information on the other side, too. But like there's humans on one side and then super humans on the other. I mean, you know, Democrats, liberals can make mistakes, too. And in fact, there's a lot. I mean, as far as my political philosophy, I don't I'm not in the tank for either party, so to speak, I'm kind of in the middle somewhere for myself. But I don't agree all the time with political correctness and what that might lead to or social culture and these things. I'm not really for that either. I'm not on board with all of the maybe the economic progressive ideas. Maybe there's some problems I can point out on that, too. But again, I don't think Biden represents that extremism, what I'm kind of referring to. I don't think he's he's going to be pushing in that direction. So there's nothing I can really kick back. I think he's more conservative than Trump is actually. I think he's like the Lincoln post-civil war kind of mindset of like, we just need to get everybody together because we just went through it as you fall out, yeah, like this is not time to skew in the hard left direction or be a crazy Democrat in his point of view, because he was a Republican. Dred Pirate, what do you got? I was just going to say, because a couple of times there, Scott mentioned the word race. And what I'd like to what I'd like to see is that we eventually just move away from that whole notion that, you know, that there are races. We're one race, we share 99.99 percent of our genes. There is no there is no there is no real fundamental difference between any of us, regardless of our color, of our gender, of, you know, of any of it. And to artificially place this race label on to people is, you know, it makes a problem that doesn't exist. And I think it's time to start moving away from that whole that whole label. I'll be happy to move away from the label when we actually have accurate representation of I think those got to work in tandem. Yeah, like it's not as important anymore. I agree. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, because when I see my wife in the morning every day, I don't see a black person. You know, I don't because you don't open up your eyes in the morning. You stumble, you've helped your toes. It's an unfortunate mess. Yeah. Actually, I just I just see people, you know, I don't I know. It sounds kind of flaky or whatever to say. I don't see your race. I don't see color. But, you know, what I've kind of learned is that you can you can train yourself not to see those kind of things because if you just if you're just around people that are different from you enough, yeah, it's all going to dissolve away. Yeah, it's a thing called there's a thing called cognitive ease. And it's about just repeating the thing that you want to appreciate over and over and over again until it's what comes. It's what comes to the top of mind. Yeah, essentially. Also, if you were to look at how the counties voted in the election map, like states, yes, red, blue. But if you go into those states, it's like big city with a lot of different people together, living together, blue area where there's very few people, no big colleges and and it's very rural red. And that was the pattern across the entire map. It seems to be the case that exposure to different people makes you realize that different people are cool, too. And if you don't have those experiences, that's what happens. George, what do you got? Well, you know, having moved here to the south and living in a rural area, I've been thinking while we've been chatting. And one thing that I seem to zero in on now is that people around here are very afraid of change. Oh, yeah, of course, everyone. And comforted by familiarity. I think the same way that our cats are comforted by the familiarity of where there's where their food bowl is located. Sure. Yeah. And I move that around all the time. I like to mess with my. You move the cat's food, the cat gets upset. Yeah. And and so because I think that one thing that we as a society should do is to pay a lot of attention to the psychology of what has happened over the last oh, maybe 30 years in politics in this country. I don't think that we're going to understand and benefit from the understanding unless unless we we do dig deep into the psychology of what's gone on. Yeah. Yeah. And that takes education. We're not going to reason our way out of this. This is we got to understand the mental stuff that's been going on. So the other thing that the other thing that's occurred to me is that somehow I've I've been thinking that we should make subversion of democracy a crime. Yeah. Whoa. I worry what that would be in the hands of the wrong people. I know I'm thinking that because all you have to do is redefine democracy or just have the wrong person win and then they'll be like, now I'm going to arrest all my enemies. You just gave me another tool. Isn't that great? I would say this. I like schools. I like universities. I like college because that was my first time where I was meeting Muslims. I have Muslims in my family and it wasn't until I went to college that I was not thinking about them as people I'm related to that I don't talk to as much. But like people that I'm working with on a day to day daily basis. And now those guys are in my friends inner circles. And I respect them on an intellectual level, on a family level. I talk to them like almost more than like my own sisters for the most part. And I, if you had told me before college, like, what do you think of Muslims? Like, I don't even know how to recognize them. I don't even know if like the headguard means that they're Muslim or they're from Punjab, like I don't understand it. Now it's like, oh, man, it's Ramadan. I can't wait to tell all my friends happy Eid or Eid Mubarak. And it's nothing that's no weight on my shoulders. It's just the fact that I was exposed to a culture. I had the chance to to get over my own ego faults or little obstacles and just start to genuinely appreciate the person underneath all those labels. Such that when I hear the label again, it's like, yeah, but I want to know about you because those don't even affect me anymore. And I feel like when you have those many so experiences in college and you're being taught by people from all around the world and you have friends that are from so many different kinds of colors, colors that shows on the election map that like where these big colleges and universities are located, all these kids are like voting blue because they they can see the rhetoric and they can analyze it and they can say, you're saying people from China are bad. I know like 40 people from China. They're all cool. I know this is not what you are telling me. They are not evil. You are being like you're deliberately misinforming the masses. That's bad, which gets to the heart of a lot of the evangelicals and fundamentalists coming along and saying that higher education is bad because they don't believe the same way that people were educated. Yeah. And it also makes me feel bad when someone says, oh, I went to a Christian school. It's like, oh, you went to a school for mostly just white people to take Bible lessons and learn really bad evolutionary points of view. Right? It's like you missed the whole point of school, like you missed the whole point. It's not to get a degree or piece of paper or letters at the end of your name is to humble yourself in the process of trying to learn new things and understand how to do that better. And if you haven't learned how to do that and admit when you don't know something and work harder to establish some grip on this tangible, beautiful thing called knowledge, you've wasted an opportunity, wasted four years of your life. So don't do that. And I respect to Atlanta because Georgia pulled that from red to blue. You haven't seen? Yeah. And that's Georgia Tech. That's Georgia University. That's Athens University. Good job, guys. I've been in Atlanta. I know it's like the Portland of the South surrounded by red for like 11 states all around it. And it's like, no, no, no, no, we got this. And I'm really, really proud of you guys pulled through. I feel like Georgia showed up at the party sort of like, hey, I brought chips and everyone's like, Georgia's here. What? And everyone's just like, yeah, yeah. And Nevada is like, I'm coming. I called. I'm coming on my way. I'm on my way. It's like, all right, Nevada, you're good. It's all good. Well, it was awesome. Yeah, it was just a wonderful, wonderful series. And I will I want to throw one last thing out. Here's a here's an idea and I'll do a round table on this. I'm glad that it's Trump that did this because if it was a very well spoken, very professional, very good looking young guy that had all the appeal that we looked for, but was doing the exact same things, this would be a much harder fight. We needed a buffoon to show a medic. Yes, we needed a buffoon to show us like how bad this could have been like to just make it as stark for easier to see in that case. Scott, what do you think? I was watching yesterday a GOP lawyer who was against Trump. And he was saying that he knew all along that Trump is going to leave. He's going to destroy the Republican Party because he's a buffoon and because he's not well spoken and because he's just so outlandish and out there. So he's glad to get him out of there because that might be the only thing that was going to save the Republican Party, but it's definitely going to be a little bit late for that for the next few years. Obviously, with Biden with probably an eight year term, but even beyond that, it might be a problem and that's what he was afraid of. But if he would have definitely stayed in there for another four years, the Republican Party would have been through, would have been done. And so he kind of was echoing your sentiment just now that, you know, it took a buffoon to get us here. And it's good for us, for people that value progression and progressiveness. That's that's a good thing. He actually emphasized the problem with that kind of thinking and hopefully we'll learn and hopefully progress will take over from here and get us on the right path. Yeah, like, what if Mussolini looked like Tom Howard, like the Spider-Man kid? Just like, oh, he's adorable. I'll follow this kid wherever he wants. Or if Hitler didn't have that stupid mustache, right? He's just like, I'm so glad like the people who are crazy do their effort to at least look the part because it's so easy for us to look. We got to remember that that mustache probably came from Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin. Did it really come from Charlie Chaplin? Yeah, was he a fan? OK, I think it was the other way around. I think Charlie Chaplin got it from him. Oh, I know Michael. I don't know. Relax, that's all I know. I don't know. It was funny. Charlie Chaplin didn't make a film, a parody of Hitler. I think that's right. That's what I did. But it was a good speech, though, like Charlie Chaplin is welcome. Yeah, it's like if you're still aware. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's still relevant even today. Dredd Part, what do you think of the idea of like, thank goodness, Trump was a buffoon if you look like Tom Hanks and acted like, you know, Tom Hanks, this would have been a much harder fight. Are you still here? Oh, looks like he is still figuring things out. I will throw this out. I will throw this out. George, the idea of Trump buffoon. If he was more suave, if he was a bit more well spoken, do you think we'd be here today celebrating a Biden victory? That's a great that's I think it's a great question because I've been I've been looking at the parallels between Hitler and Trump. And I think I think I'm Trump's part and his advisors as well. It's been a very deliberate process. It's been a very deliberate, calculated employment of those techniques. And I think one difference is that Hitler was a better actor. He was a better act. He was a scary, well spoken German dude. He was a very well spoken German. No, he he was he could be very dramatic as his rallies, what rallies being another technique and the rallies being a religious event of worship of the dictator. And but but that that Trump is impulsive to be a good enough actor the way I mean, Hitler really studied to portray to self portray himself this way. He was good at it. He was better than Trump. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm we're glad that we're here. We're glad that we're here. We could have gone some of the other directions, but we are here today. And I think that we should not be too so satisfied yet. You know, we shouldn't. We still have a big fight ahead of us. Yeah. What's weird is this? We're waiting for a concession from Trump and we may not get it, which will be a very bizarre thing in our American history. We got a concession speech, though, from guess who Kanye West. We did get a concession speech from Kanye West and that says something. And it's in my head and you guys are going to hate me for this. Yes, Kanye West says terrible things. Absolutely. But he's not running for well. He's not the president of the United States. He was running, but there was no chance he was going to win. And he wasn't even running in all the states. Who is this other guy on the tip? Kanye West kept. No, no, this is this other fellow who kept on popping up in the statistics. The election statistics, Joe, somebody, I think. Oh, it's a girl. It's a libertarian. Joe, Joe, okay, we can't take libertarian seriously on this show either. So but I was saying that the message, the message of Kanye West being willing to concede, it's like, who is a more bigger egomaniac? Common West or Donald Trump seems like Donald Trump, Donald Trump. Absolutely. Absolutely. But at least Kanye West is like legitimately crazy, right? And he pays his taxes. So that's it makes him already a better standard. But yeah, I'm glad to see that he conceded Larry. One thing that we do have to give Trump credit for, he's a very good, bad example. Yeah, I mean, it'll be Hitler and Trump from now on. When you're talking about fascists and people of that elk. And let's make sure we ran that home. Like, you don't want to be a Trumpist or a Nazi guy. And how do we associate the evangelicals who supported this guy? Oh, you know, I'm saying, I'm saying you tell me that Jesus is love and you support this guy and nothing but foul accusations and, you know, come out of his mouth. Yeah, yeah. One issue I had a talk with an evangelical, he said, I understand all of that. I understand that Trump was a terrible representative for us, but we still love him and endorse him because he's against abortion. And that's a single issue that we hear about single issue on that and let the world burn in climate change. But Dred, you got the last word. OK, I was just going to say I read this really great article on the comparison of Trump to Mussolini and how the evangelicals were really taking the place of Pope Pius the 11th and essentially duped by Trump's sort of pretend allegiance to their cause, but just using them essentially to forward his own agenda. The parallel was, you know, as it was described in the article, it was quite striking and disturbing at the same time. No, where can we find that? It's over. I'm glad it's over. The nightmare is over. But we still have some lead cramps that we got to work out until January. So just be aware that it's going to be a messy ride. But we we hit the slide and we got the momentum and we got off and we're good. We just don't need to go back. You guys are some of my best friends. And I really appreciate talking to you once a week. Thank you for sharing some of it on Dred Pirate. I know we can find you on YouTube. Is there any other cool things that you want to recommend that we check out aside from that article? Well, again, I'm working on this course, the the skepticism. So we're looking at some dates starting in late January and running through to May. Cool. So I'm hoping to start lining up some guest speakers, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. I'm there for you, baby. Perfect. Awesome. So I'll keep you all posted as that moves forward and stay strong. Nice. Scott, anything you would recommend that we check out over the next week? In particular, I didn't think about that. Not really, at least not relative to this topic. But yeah, to keep your eye on any video that you saw anything awesome that you saw in the in the world where the president, we have a new president. Like, was there any like inspiring thing? What inspiring thing that you saw? Not really. I mean, you've probably seen everything I have or more. Yeah, I would. So if anything, you might want to check out Biden's acceptance speech. I think it was very open. Even if you were a hardcore Trump supporter, there's not dialogue in there. That's like, you know, akin to when Trump won and it was like, we were going to fire Obama, it was more of like, hey, listen, I'm here to be America's president number one, and it's not just blue, we're here to unite. This is something that we have to do together. How to recommend that you check it out. Also, if you are more on the Biden-Harris side, you might want to check out a video, a TED Talk by Van Jones on what if the US presidential candidate refuses to concede, because there's a lot of issues that are unnot spoken or made explicit in our political process such that a person has a legal path from I didn't win the popular vote, I didn't win the electoral college, but I have an army and I'm going to do these four steps so that I will win and still be seated next year. And there's a legal pathway for me to do that. And that shouldn't exist. That loophole shouldn't exist in this country. And we can't support something like that. And we need to address that. And if we're going to address that, maybe we'll have opportunities to address other things with our electoral college that I'm not a particular fan of, too. But we it's a good video. It's Van Jones. What if the US presidential candidate refuses to concede? Van Jones, I'll put a link on this YouTube channel. Larry, do you have anything? And go ahead and take a step. Well, I guess I'm ready to go on. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Be sure to visit digitalfreethought.com for our radio show archives, atheist songs, many articles on the subject. My book is called Atheism, What's It All About? And it's available on Amazon. If you're having trouble with leaving religious beliefs behind, you can always search for and get help from recoveringfromreligion.org. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. We'll try to get to them on future shows. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it, enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.