[SPEAKER_00]: You know I told a lot of lights about a cheap man Is it because you when they got you to believe in I'm a finger held to the forehead and an hell show Trapped in a cover on the sales game Let's fight back in, have you talked about class in the past Cause of the disaster's brought to ashes And not spank at you folks
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcasts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcasts.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn and with me today we have the author of a sub-stack I enjoy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Men yell at me, do you want to tell my audience who you are and what you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I just recently moved to Patreon, but yes, I have a newsletter called Men Yallet Me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a journalist and an author.
[SPEAKER_01]: I live in the Midwest.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also a feminist, which is why men love to yell at me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a newsletter about places where our politics and personhood meet in it's everything with the feminist angle.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also an author and wrote a bestselling book about divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just out here doing the lords work by which I mean making
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the description, but yes, I also have a name that's an important part of my name is Liz Lens.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've talked a lot about divorce on this show because I wasn't married, but I got engaged and I owned a home with someone and I consider that a divorce.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have to go to court to break up, that's a divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I also think any long-term relationship breakup, even if it's not technically have to go to court.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that counts too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything can be a divorce if you want it to.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you put your mind to it, I feel like it gives you gravitas to be divorced.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right when I was like freshly minted divorced and I felt like really kind of like embarrassed by that because you know there's that whole like cultural stereotype of the sad sack single mom divorce say and everybody was like oh she must be looking for a man to come help her out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember this very glamorous journalist came to town.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't use their name.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might be able to guess from the description.
[SPEAKER_01]: Blonde, Willowie, the journalist, du jour of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got gone out to eat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, tell me about being divorced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, man, man, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she goes, no, it's so chic to be divorced these days.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: That actually was what I needed at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, here's this young blonde, you know, hot thing telling me that I'm very chic, but I'm just like a dumpy Midwestern divorce size.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have used that exact word to describe divorce on this show.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's so chic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so chic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I look very young even though I'm in my late 30s and so I want people to take me seriously and when they don't I'll often say I'm almost 40 and divorced because I want people to take me seriously as a person
[SPEAKER_01]: people take a divorced person very seriously, you know, like you're like, I know how to walk out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I will walk out at any moment you start dropping nonsense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's just like a powerful statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've said that to people when they're like, no, I'm too far in or whatever, sunk cost fallacy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was engaged in that at home with someone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Things could end at any time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hear stories about 80-year-olds, big divorce, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You have one wild and precious life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, why would you waste it matching socks for some potato head?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who, you know, goes and gulfs for seven hours a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get your shit together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cubs that my mom's a divorce attorney.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is terrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just interviewed a voice lawyer for a piece that I wrote for my newsletter about great divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because January is divorce month.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like your mom's super ball, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I'm kind of a subject matter expert, but I really in my book didn't write a lot about great divorce, and I wanted to so I was like, oh, right, a newsletter about it, and I was talking with this lawyer out of Florida, and she really specializes in just like older divorces.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so my daughter, she was telling me we're insane.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I've heard everything, so tell me about your mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was gonna say my mom is a divorce lawyer out of Florida.
[SPEAKER_02]: He just left Florida.
[SPEAKER_02]: She told me one time that there are specialists.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she was upset, so I'm queer, my sister's queer.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was upset because there's one woman in Florida that it has cornered the market on gay divorce.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, I should have done that.
[SPEAKER_01]: She really should have also your mom sounds cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that cool to say?
[SPEAKER_01]: She sounds cool as hell because she raised two queer kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's what I want to be one of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm like telling my kids, I'm like, I'll give you cash if you are queer gay.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, in my 15-year-old, it's like, I don't think you should be saying that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh, Gen Z calm down, but both my sister and our both millennials and we both came out quite late in life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, but she's she's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom's just a lunatic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's our jokes playing my parents because they're very liberal and so that's a gift.
[SPEAKER_02]: like I don't really ever have to explain anything to them and they they take pride in being up to date but they are also so annoying and so crazy in ways that are so stressful you know like you're like ADHD type be friend who you're like constantly trying to make sure they don't walk into traffic that's like both my parents to the extreme
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I feel like my daughter thinks that about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like watching her realize what an absolute spas I am has been like so humbling in the past couple years because like, I got me shot together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pay my taxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I own a home, you know, I clean regularly, but I am also a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also living in my head.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also a little bit of a space cadet in my ADHD.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who cares?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't matter to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: She'll go into the fridge and she'll be like, mom, why did you put, you know, the frozen parrogues?
[SPEAKER_01]: We always have frozen parrogues on hand in the refrigerator.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, oh, I just forgot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't thinking or I lose lids all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she'll be like, mom, like, where's the lid to the ranch?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll just be like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it's just like you can just see how disappointed she is, she's like, I told her one time I was like, well, you know, my brain's a little bit like a hamster in a wheel and she's my brain is color coded.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, damn.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't wonder.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty sure they're both autistic, but there is like an element of stress to me because they are very stressful because they both have no fucking filter and that is also so they're like occasionally just like so mean for no reason.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot wrong with them, I will say.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, they can just both out of no, like, I'll be like a little bit relaxed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'll be like, oh, my, I've relaxed a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then one of them will just be so fucking out of pocket for no reason.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like the minute I've relaxed.
[SPEAKER_02]: They got to keep you on your toes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The minute I've relaxed, it's some fucking insane mean shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: What the hell?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this makes me feel better.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, much like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, wrote all families are insane.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what he wrote in that in the beginning of Anna Karen and us, and nobody fact check it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly what the Russian translation is.
[SPEAKER_01]: All families are insane in their own ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so I've done episodes of this show about whether being a right-wing pendant is more lucrative than being a leftist influencer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the stuff that you write about, I don't even want to know about it before it's happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to see it in your newsletter.
[SPEAKER_02]: How is that for you mentally checking into those places?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's important to note that I grew up in those spaces.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I grew up homeschooled in Texas in the 90s, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I had an NRA membership when I was 10 years old, which I won in a shooting competition through for each where I made my own muskipols.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually it's I brag about it a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you like how I work that in there, but yes, you know cool I grew up like you know the Bible was our textbook a lot of like what we're talking about now I grew up in that alternate you know world where like the only media we were allowed to consume was Christian media We had a TV my parents kept it in the closet They'd roll it out when we were allowed to watch PBS or whatever movie
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in the line to the checkout aisle, my mom would flip fashion magazines over so we wouldn't see the covers and she's she wants me to say she's not like this anymore, but like that's how I grew up so I
[SPEAKER_01]: grew up in this world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in a lot of ways, it makes sense to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it's just frustrating to see nothing new is under the sun that what was so niche when I was growing up is now so mainstream and has become the entire world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when I was growing up, obviously, like you could rely on a couple newsplaces
[SPEAKER_01]: to kind of like have, they, they were the new sources, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And now media is so fractured that even CNN is supposed to be, you know, liberal media, which got I wish, you know, I wish, I wish, what's liberal media?
[SPEAKER_01]: Going into these spaces, it sounds sick and pervert, but did to say, is very familiar to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I understand the language of it and I understand, you know, like I can quote the Bible with the bus to them, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So really, I'm just, I'm just harnessing the trauma to talk about it, I think, in a way that is relevant and hopefully helps people understand why we got here and you know a little bit of perspective because I do think there is like a tendency among liberals and has always been the case to just be like, well, that's just stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: it's not serious and you have to be like it's actually very serious and you need to understand why it is serious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it doesn't change your jokes or the way you think about it but then you know later when that stuff comes back to bite us culturally in the ass you see how we got here and in that constant mocking I think there is still this tendency to believe that right wing stuff
[SPEAKER_01]: you know that it's just this weird freaky little fringe and it'll all go away once Donald Trump has gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: That has never been the case right wing influence has constantly been the bedrock of American society.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say even before Ronald Reagan, but definitely was cemented during Ronald Reagan and I think we have to pay attention and understand it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's funny you bring this up
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the shit that I love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm trying to work on a big essay about Bill O'Reilly and he's written so many books and at some point I was like, how many books do I have to read before I can say?
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what he has to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that answer is seven because I'm done.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're right, fiction too though.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a huge seller.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had my agent look up the book skin numbers You know, which is that kind of weird secretive platform that agent some publishers use and the rest of us don't have access to I had her look it up and she was just like damn if you could sell like below Riley
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, yeah, okay, thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is he up to now?
[SPEAKER_01]: He just published a book back in September.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he have a show?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's mostly just writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think is this the most recent one.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I read it, I have to take the cover off because if I'm reading it on an airplane, I don't want to get into a conversation with anyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it called killing the SS?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yes, yes, it is literally about Nazis and you're like, read the fucking room, Bill over, but he is, but you know, his whole, he's just out there living his best life frading all these books, but they sell really well, but they're not because the New York Times doesn't write about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: people just don't think it's that popular and they can ignore it but the grip this man still has over the collectus consciousness of so many people in America I think is worth understanding exploring I mean it's the same reason you know why I think for me not for everybody but for me it was important to go see the millennia movie and
[SPEAKER_01]: talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Read the Malania book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Read the Cheryl Hines book.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to understand what's happening in our culture even if we don't like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But to your point, I think all the time about how I would make so much for our money if I was like doing this grift.
[SPEAKER_01]: I sometimes go and like look at the little bright wing newsletters or something and I read a lot of them and
[SPEAKER_01]: Check News Max every day.
[SPEAKER_01]: See what those crazy heads are up to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get a little pissed off.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, if I could just have a life where I just fed people exactly what they wanted to hear and said the most insane shit, I would be able to afford a house in the Hamptons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really lucrative griffed.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I know, I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a friend to pours through the Heritage Foundation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that has been really useful to us because everything that they're doing now was spelled out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was in Project 2020, 25.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in the Heritage Foundation.
[SPEAKER_02]: What the Heritage Foundation is up to in the future is spelled out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see exactly what they're going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that it's difficult.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've said this before.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a window where I follow all these right wing people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I follow a lot of Zionist accounts too.
[SPEAKER_02]: what they're saying because oftentimes I will go into left to spaces and they will think that it's one thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to be like, no, it's actually weirder than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's somebody told me the other day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Iowa is one of the is a red state.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was per bullish before.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's one of those places that, you know, Chuck Schumer really believes they can flip, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But really believes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll say they can maybe get one thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll get either a Congress seat or the governor's ship.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not gonna get it all.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I have been saying this and that doesn't make me very popular.
[SPEAKER_01]: Among anybody, you know, liberals don't like it, Republicans don't like it, but like I'll just say I've lived here for 20 years and I haven't been wrong about an election yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because I'm always I'm going to Republican rallies like I'm sitting in the back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm listening and I'm reading all this stuff But somebody came up to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a candidate in Iowa for the governor ship who's you we still haven't had the primary But it's this Republican his name's Adamstein.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think his campaign's got some juice and he's somebody worth keeping an eye on
[SPEAKER_01]: for sure and I had said this like online or something and then a local activist emailed me him was like oh but did you see this crazy thing he said about monitoring the water to see if women are on birth control and all this kind of like you know doing abortion stuff and I was like he was like that's so fringe and I was like that is such a mainstream view.
[SPEAKER_01]: like from Republicans.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, do you know that like RFK has been talking about this for like years?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, you're right that there is a real misunderstanding and also May I say a little bit of a condescension in the, oh, that's just crazy talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter and that all of a sudden.
[SPEAKER_01]: matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden rose over turned, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're so right about the Heritage Foundation because their job is to sane wash every single thing and they do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have been doing it for years.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, where it's like, okay, we all we want to take right to away from queer people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Heritage Foundation is like, you
[SPEAKER_01]: you got it boss they put out this big white paper that makes it sound really smart and all this quote unquote research you know and there's the foundation like the one that really drives me insane is the one that David Brooks and Ross do that constantly quote from it's like the family research council.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, according to the Family Research Council this and this and this it is a right wing research research I'm using air quotes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: People can't see that, but just let you know
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so completely biased, and it's been called out many times, you know, by academics, like this is spurious data at best, but it doesn't matter because they sound a third hate of the God-a-good website, and then they keep getting quoted, and it is this way of whitewashing, sanewashing, these really important ideas, and then all of a sudden we get to this place in America, where people are like, wait,
[SPEAKER_01]: of vote.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are we getting to this point where now we're talking about denying, you know, trans adults health care.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was just kids and you're like, I just want to scream, you know, you're like, and liberals all for some of that same washing too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number of fights I've had to say, that's David Brooks's job, right, is to make it sound normal and then you read it and you're like, yeah, we can find some common ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: here, it's like stop seeding ground to assholes.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the big thing is to enter a debate about something that should not be debated.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because when you debate it, it gives it legs in any way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it gives them ways to quote you about a topic.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you should just say, this is not up for debate.
[SPEAKER_02]: This, what you're saying is actually insane and this is not up for debate.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my problem right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm involved in a lot of anti-ice activism.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it is just, I can't understand why.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's no opposition party is really what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's the Democrats Gavin Newsom just gave a whole, he had Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk on his podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, he just gave an interview that said, I think the Democratic Party should stop talking about things that aren't normal and should stop talking about pronouns and identity politics.
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea of ice-waring body cams.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: or they just need more training.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just need training is what the centrist Democrats say.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, no, they need to be abolished.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need to go to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need, I mean, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not an expert on prison abolition, but they need to something needs to happen where they need to be tried.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they need to all be punished for their crimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although that's hard for me to say, too, because I don't necessarily,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't I need to know more about this, but I don't necessarily like the idea of sending everybody to prison, but I also don't really know we didn't even really do that with the Nazis.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had Operation Paperclip.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just brought them in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just brought them into the US government.
[SPEAKER_02]: I should say.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think to what right wing media has been able to do is yank that overt in window, you know, so far over to the right that we have, like you said, like we've found ourselves debating things that shouldn't be debated.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't just like Donald Trump got elected and then it was yanked.
[SPEAKER_01]: over this happened through seeding that ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when Hillary Clinton gets up and says, actually, my husband and Barack Obama deported more people than Donald Trump and you're like, that's not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a defense.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is still exists this idea that somehow we can just, we can just be reasonable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was looking at some data recently because there's this idea that all
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I, I voted for Trump, but I didn't vote for this, and sure you anecdotally, you're going to get a couple people saying that, but statistically that is not influential and statistically when you dig into the data on the base, it's they will support him no matter what I live in Iowa I am surrounded by right wing people I still have some of my family I co-parent my ex is
[SPEAKER_01]: very rightly, and I think that's just like a myth we like to tell ourselves, but where you actually see the fracturing, where you see the disagreement is on the democratic side, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's where the party is not united and I think for so many good reasons,
[SPEAKER_01]: is that there is a huge contingent of let's call them liberals because I don't think they identify as Democrat like saying we want an opposition party and then there's another contingent of people being like well we'll be like at the Gavin Newsome.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know and every time I see people out there being like he's our savior You're like you haven't learned anything from the past 20 years I swear to God because people don't want to do the work of systemic change They just want to white man to come in and save them a white man with a great head of hair to come in and save them And so be it Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden or whoever
[SPEAKER_01]: The real problem and where we're talking about right wing media, I assume two is that there actually needs to be systemic change because this is a deeply rooted problem that affects everybody and again, I'll talk to people and they'll be like, oh well, you know, I don't consume that kind of media blah blah blah blah blah It's like, but you do watch CBS
[SPEAKER_01]: you reach the NN, you need to know why these topics are coming up because they are structured propaganda to move the conversations in the direction that people want, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the whole idea about immigrants causing all this crime is completely factually untrue, but when you get mainstream media news outlets making a big deal over these cases and then and that's how you get people
[SPEAKER_01]: saying things like, I'm fine if they come to this country as long as they follow our laws.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't even follow our laws.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I mean, I like to pour every man who has a parking ticket.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so infuriating to watch these conversations happen and then to see how we get there and Gavin Newsom is the worst.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are they splintering at all around Epstein?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here I want to tell you story.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Trump first started running, my marriage was in shambles, but I was still married.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had married at 22.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wasn't, he was, I'm not a Republican.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an independent.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were 22 and it was 2005.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I was a fucking idiot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a different time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as 2015, 2016 started to roll around, everything was bad in our marriage, and then Trump started to get a hold on the Republican Party.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was this idea floating around in the media.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I believed it, they wouldn't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Republicans will do a lot, but they won't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that I saw the people in my life whose claim that they loved me and who I thought I love, go from this isn't saying a ridiculous to coalescing the power and watching those conversations happen like, watching my now ex-husband talk to his family and say, if we want to succeed, if we want to do all these things and this is what we have to get behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, this is a conscious choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when I was like he's going to win the nomination.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to win.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I kind of see it happening with obscene a little.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas this is idea where it's like, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they'll follow him here, but they won't go break on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think perhaps there was a moment in the early beginning where there was the possibility that it could break.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the Epstein stuff is too complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been going on too long.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the party is not going to break with him because right now they're just ignoring it.
[SPEAKER_01]: and they can't ignore it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people have been ignoring it because Epstein was convicted in 2008 and then maintained all this power and influence in our society for however many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not fresh and the more complicated it gets, the more people are going to do now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also think about this is that like,
[SPEAKER_01]: People aren't invested in media.
[SPEAKER_01]: People consume less straight news now.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get it all on like TikTok or quick soundbites or podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's all being filtered through these niche visions of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can't even agree on what is truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, in most people in America are not consuming news, if they are, they get it in soundbites on TikToks, they're not reading past the headlines.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you even skew mildly, and you know, there's a lot of research on like algorithms, like especially for like straight white men.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're on the internet for 20 minutes, studies show that you're going to start getting fed misogynistic content.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and then that leads to more right-wing content.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think that they're gonna break with him on that, given all these reasons, you know, if we could all just sit around and watch NBC together and then have him be like, the water gate breakin' is bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we all might be like, well, maybe the water gate breakin' is bad, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think that that's gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I even was surprised to learn that,
[SPEAKER_02]: They had published multiple stories on Watergate before anybody thought it was serious, which is so hard to believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to take in based on what we've been told about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I will say, so my next question is, when that started happening with your ex, what was the things that they thought Trump would solve?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what was the appeal of him?
[SPEAKER_01]: it's money.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of it was money taxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we want to keep our money of people who have a little bit of power want to keep it and hoard more.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the same Reagan era stuff for a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was abortion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not abortion for my ex in the beginning, but now it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think for a lot of Republicans, it was abortion, it was a Supreme Court.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, getting a Trump who at a point justices, which is exactly what he did, which is exactly why we're seeing America and the space that we're in right now, and it was money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also, we cannot deny the racism in the misogyny because when you talk about money, when you talk about the economy, you have to then understand the solution, the Republican solution to these economic problems is to kick out anybody who they don't want participating in the economy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right, that'll significantly black women also deporting immigrants, you know, but like black women are being forced out of the workforce at a rate as yet unseen, you know, in American history.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was the 19th news was comparing it to the way that white women were forced out during the great recession of 2008.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these are staggering numbers and it's because of like, you know, ending work from home stuff, ending D. I protections wage gap inequality, all this kind of stuff and like we're not even talking about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we talk about the economy, that's the kind of stuff and then they're like, oh look, jobs are up.
[SPEAKER_01]: because we've forced a bunch of people out of the workforce.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you murder a bunch of people and take their jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that's one way to fix the economy, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like that's that kind of stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like people who aren't working and need to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why we cut snap benefits or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of it is culture war stuff, a lot of it is putting Christ back into America, you know, that whole thing about prayer and school, that motivated people and so those I think are some of the motivating issues and they still are and now they're kind of coalescing around like.
[SPEAKER_01]: what books children read in these public schools, you know, which is just a vehicle to pass homophobic in, you know, anti-trans laws, and then also defund public schools, as you know, when you defund public schools, you disadvantage, especially immigrant kids, especially black and brown kids, and especially women who are the primary caretakers, and school teachers, so.
[SPEAKER_02]: portkids in general.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a fast divide.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of my problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I would say my biggest problem is that
[SPEAKER_02]: These people that I am talking to that are not seeing what I'm seeing on the ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I understand denial and fear, I get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that I have been called crazy for about 10 months now.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the idea, like you said, oh, we'll he'll do this, but he won't do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or the administration's gonna do this, but they won't do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's written down, you can see what they want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, they're not gonna put people in camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are in camps and they're building more camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: I saw something the other day that someone was saying, you know, not to say these people are Nazis.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, we're not at the level of Nazi Germany.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, we are.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we are.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't know what's happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have access.
[SPEAKER_02]: to what's going on in all of these camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're finding stuff out in trickle-down ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's the zone of interest of it all.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's living next door to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think there's such a huge level of denial because it's scary, but it's also somebody's going to stop it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oftentimes it's frustrating because, oh, well, they won't do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing it already.
[SPEAKER_02]: They've been doing it for months.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a psychologist.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know how to get people to realize that it's happening, but I think people are
[SPEAKER_02]: scared.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was ill-prepared and I still am.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I was talking to a friend and we do all we can, but I don't have the skills to rush into a detention center and shut it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have those skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea that everyone would have these perfect heist skills is like we are so behind because we weren't paying attention and these people were doing this stuff already.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were laying the ground
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, I was raised in that environment and I remember at that time like going to church conferences, there's something called the homeschool legal defense association and the the guys who run in are very influential and right-wing circles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would go to those conferences for the HSLDA and they would talk about they're like train your kids up to be conservative lawyers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can take over the Supreme Court so we can reverse Roe v Wade.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was being told when I was 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there was a time where I was like, oh, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,
[SPEAKER_01]: over the head with something yeah for the past three years I've been board president of my local abortion access fund that was something you know I felt like I could do to make a difference and it was hard good work but I remember going to a democratic event to go talk about what we were doing and these are like-minded individuals everybody's on our side we're not fighting and afterwards a man comes up to me and he goes I'm really appreciate you know what you guys do it's
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really focused on the threats to democracy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's where I'm focused on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, disenfranchising a population from their health care rights is exactly a threat on democracy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, the misogyny is still on the other side, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Their racism is still on the other side.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're just like, oh my God, how many times you have to tell someone that this is how these attacks begin?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later, they're all ringing their hands like, whoa, what happened to Iowa?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did it become so conservative?
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, that's exactly how.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's exactly how because you kept giving and giving and seating ground because it wasn't you because you didn't care.
[SPEAKER_01]: again like it's people driven people want to see it as a personality driven thing and that what Trump has gone everything we can just go back to normal and normal wasn't good either baby normal was so bad abortion wasn't accessible people will be like I don't want to live in a red state because I won't be able to access abortion is like
[SPEAKER_01]: abortion was inaccessible and so many blue states even pre the fall of row even New York was criminalizing miscarriages pre the fall of row you just were able to ignore it and this is what I always say when people were like I don't know what happened to x, y and z state or place how did it get so conservative you're like it always was
[SPEAKER_01]: You just were able to ignore it and now all of a sudden you can't so now you're seeing the racism now You're seeing the misogyny, but it existed before you know people love to say what happened to Chuck Grassley
[SPEAKER_01]: When he was like a Congress person, he was endorsed by the KKK.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was trying to overturn no fault divorce here in Iowa.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back when he was in the Iowa legislature, like he hasn't changed.
[SPEAKER_01]: your way of seeing it has changed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This stuff has always been a part, but people don't want to see that because they have that and that means they have to grapple with their own racism, their own misogyny, their own homophobia, they have to grapple with their own complicity in these systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think those are the harder conversations to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is not one day when I wake up and I don't think I would make so much more money if I didn't talk like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I didn't go the full right week, every mainstream media outlet has the woman who will whitewash misogyny for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll be like, I know, but I love big, very.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love having babies.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want the same name that we all know who they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at you, the Atlantic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, maybe I should be that little.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just felt like soft little essays about how much I love my children.
[SPEAKER_01]: What, my children will punch me because they don't want to be written about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't believe you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're also like we don't believe you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't believe kids, but I'm not going to write, you know, sell them out for fun and profit, but maybe I should.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of the memeification of stuff?
[SPEAKER_02]: When they're talking about, you know, I'm guilty of it, too, of the little, like, I hope we're next to each other in the camps, or like how Epstein's become a meme.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's on purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of that sort of aspect of the media escape?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, media is so fractured.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guilty of it too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get our news from these little bits and pieces here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll talk about the memes first.
[SPEAKER_01]: This impulse to turn everything into a joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's partially the rise of Donald Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you so incredibly memeable.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's so perfectly ripe for the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more he got mocked, the more he was satiared, the more people on the right loved him because he became a symbol of that idea of liberal condescension.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two liberals who are listening, I live in Iowa.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you, but the number of times I have heard people say, well, that's what you get for a living in a red state.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, death.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I get.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Liberals love to say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a way of controlling culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a way of controlling the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we think it's like, oh, it's so funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also fuels the other side, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then when they can take those same things, you know, those same memes that we're putting out and use them as a tool of empowerment and motivating the base.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a problem, but I think it doesn't have to control us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's not going to stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to get better at participating in these conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tressy McMillan Cotton, who writes for The New York Times, Sociologists, talked about this pre-the election and post-the election about how liberals, Democrats, are not as good at controlling the online conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it sucks, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're gonna exist in this America, you have to participate in communicating with people in the ways in which they are communicating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I get it, you hate TikTok, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you wanna successfully communicate with people, your base, influence, policy, influence, culture, then you have to get all those spaces.
[SPEAKER_01]: half to start participating in meme culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to make your little Instagram reels.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can't be condescending about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be honest and authentic and get out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it is a problem, but it also doesn't have to be the problem in the way that it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if more people would participate in these spaces and these conversations, like one thing I really love about the opinion columnist Jamal Bowie.
[SPEAKER_01]: is how he's very much on TikTok.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's click almost 300,000 followers on TikTok.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because he's like, I want to communicate to people in ways in which still digest my ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to go there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to be condescending about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get my ass out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also talks
[SPEAKER_01]: you know movies and it's great but it's also like this is this is participating in the conversation and I think that needs to happen more and more because if you're a Democrat and you want to run for office and you're sitting around being like why didn't the newspaper cover me it's like well I'll tell you why the local journalist get paid 35 thousand dollars a year they're not getting paid enough to write about you there's not enough space nobody cares nobody knows
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, and also you're lucky if you have a local paper because most places don't get your button those spaces and start using the tools that are available even if they suck
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my counterpoint to that is that I think it causes less seriousness.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the use of Epstein as a punchline, as caused less seriousness about the topic.
[SPEAKER_02]: You should say, these are pedophiles.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are pedophiles who are raping people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's some element of memeifying, oh, you know, the camps are giving me anxiety.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's a picture of a bunny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think there's,
[SPEAKER_02]: This washing away that is very easy for liberals to do by participating in TikTok or meme culture and it sucks because you want to be able to consume three minute videos But Republicans and conservatives and right wing and Nazis have actionable items in their work
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of what becomes overwhelming is the fact that as you said, the files documenting the pedophile Kabul at the center of our entire world, there's so many pages.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that once you make a video about one aspect of it, I think there's a lot of commenters that say, well, what are we supposed to do?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have had the problem of people commenting what are we supposed to do in a way that I don't see right wing because they know what they should do.
[SPEAKER_02]: They know what they have to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I get this, I mean, I'll probably get in trouble.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but like when people comment under leftist videos, I don't know the political affiliation of these people on the on the left spectrum, they'll see an ice agent hurting someone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they'll type, this is why we have the second amendment, why isn't anybody using the second amendment?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always feel, and that's so many people write that, and I always feel, you do it then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you think that someone should be going out and shooting ice agents, get a fucking gun and shoot ice agents, otherwise I don't know why you would write that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's doing nothing, writing that is doing nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is why, if someone steps on your property, they're standing your ground so you can just shoot them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, you do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: See how it turns out.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of posturing and talking where the is agents are shooting people, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the examples that are coming out of Minnesota in Chicago to of people finding ways of using those tools to then organize, right, to coalesce to raise money, to feed families who are hiding from ICE.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you're saying is exactly the problem of social media, it dumps down things, it turns very serious stuff into a joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it makes people feel like if they shared a video then they've done their activism for the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was at an act, so this is part of research for my next book, but I was at an activist meeting in Minneapolis three days after Renee Good was murdered.
[SPEAKER_01]: mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in this meeting and just listening in and there was a man who was kind of saying similar stuff in the sense of like well what are we got to do to make it up to stop it all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's what he said he goes well I started delivering meals with this church but I want to do something more important.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to personally kick ice out and I'm like what's more important than feeding people first of all?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing more important than giving somebody
[SPEAKER_01]: that's my politics giving people a home, a warm place to live and food that should be available for everybody I don't care who you are kids whole thing was like well we gotta do something and make it all over because again it's this magical thinking that they think okay ice ice is gonna go and then all of our problems will be solved
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, if we just start this like kind of civil worship out then it will all be over and it's not again it's a systemic problem and I tell this to people all the time I'm like find the one thing you're going to do and do that like for me it was raising money for Iowa abortion access fund doing mutual aid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm working on a book, but like next, I'm going to be locked into helping them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Goldman clinic, which is the only independent clinic in Iowa, only one of two clinics in Iowa.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still doing abortion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because other things I can do, I'm really good at raising money because I'm good at bullying people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm going to do it for good, but it's like, what can you do and go do those things and don't anticipate that your five calls a day to your Senator are going to solve all the problems right away because we think again that these problems will just be solved with the drop of the hat, the next election, the next election, and I think what we really have to do is
[SPEAKER_01]: a lock in for the long call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a conversation I've been trying to have with people in my newsletter where I'm like, it's not going to be over after the midterms.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to even be over after the next presidential election.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got a lock in and we have to start putting our efforts.
[SPEAKER_01]: where our hearts are a and start doing the little things that we can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one, that combat's despair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're out there, you're feeding people then you feel like you've participated and done something and you're not just dooms, scrolling on your phone, being like, oh, whoa, it's me and now I feel bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get your butt off the couch and go do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: knock on doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even believe in like electoral change that much, but that's your passion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then go knock on a door.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're all like, why can't we flip the seat, go flip it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, go knock on a door, go help, go do social media for that candidate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do think there is still this idea because people have this idea of what they thought America was.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I say people, I should specify, I think a lot of
[SPEAKER_01]: I had this idea of what they thought America was, and every day under Trump they wake up, and they have to face what America actually is, and they don't like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you shouldn't like it, but they don't like that they have to confront that every single day, and they think that there's some sort of Gavin Newsom will be the president and it will all go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, no, this is the work of the generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if we get a democratic precedent in the next selection, what has happened in these past four years, or even past eight years, it's gonna take, like you were talking about the camps, those tension centers, we have no idea what goes on inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the little we do know is horrific.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what we know.
[SPEAKER_01]: and like undoing that damage, grappling with it and fixing the things in our constitution that allowed it to happen, fixing the things in our society that allowed it to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the work of a generation, that's the work of my children.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think we just really have to lock in for the long haul.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a marathon, this is like, this is an ultra marathon,
[SPEAKER_02]: My great-grandfather was part of the French resistance during World War II, and he suffered a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: He suffered a lot because of it, so I mean, he sacrificed a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what he did afterwards was he helped reunite families who had been in different camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: And no one thinks about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They think the Allies came in, they liberated the camps, and then what happened to all the people?
[SPEAKER_02]: What happened to all the people?
[SPEAKER_02]: That didn't have their homes, didn't have their money, didn't have their families,
[SPEAKER_02]: The families are in different detention centers.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's going to be a lot of trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's going to even be a lack of housing, a lack of food, a lack of healthcare, a lack of resources for the 70,000 people that are currently in detention.
[SPEAKER_02]: So getting those people out is then going to require
[SPEAKER_02]: The work of people like my great-grandfather and people fighting them housing, reconnecting them with their families.
[SPEAKER_02]: People don't realize that it is truly a generation and the generation after and the generation after.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we have phones now, so it's easier.
[SPEAKER_02]: But relocating those people to other countries, relocating those people, because in Germany, a lot of people didn't want to stay in Germany.
[SPEAKER_02]: which is I understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: And connecting them to your dad was here, but you're here, they didn't even know, at that point they didn't know who in their family was alive.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're so much that I don't think people are considering.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And think of all the damage being done to queer kids in schools, you know, there's so much that we have to grapple with in so many systems that need to be rebelled to rebuild those public school systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is intentional disinvestment from public education in favor of these, you know, horrific vouchers or whatever they're doing is like, that's a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: itself, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, exactly what you're saying last.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's always going to be the keyboard warriors.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I will say, it does seem like people are taking some of these lessons and walking in.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, I read this article in the New Yorker.
[SPEAKER_01]: While I was in Minnesota, watching people protest every day, go out and protest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I read an article in the New Yorker that was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, just because you don't see it on the news, does it mean it's not happening?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did the earnest girl thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'm not going to drag somebody online because I don't think this person deserves that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I am going to send them an email just to be like, oh, God, you're so wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wish you could see what I'm seeing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish you could see what.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all these articles started coming out, but like that person never replied.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was, of course, you know, it is easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're only interaction with the world is through screen to one despair and to two, you know, think of solutions like a second amendment violence solution, which is not a solution, don't use violence.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see how I feel about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-
[SPEAKER_01]: People can find me, patreon.com slash Liz Lens, L-Y-Z, L-E-N-Z.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am on Instagram where I am doing videos and trying to talk to people in the way that they like to consume content, also Liz Lens.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm on all the other social media platforms.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't post on X anymore, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a little light Googling, you can find me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm out here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fun conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very smart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a noted by sexual production, edited by Ali Mims, logo art by Dakota Becker.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you like this show, please consider subscribing to the Substack, a thousand natural shocks.substack.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: The sub-steck has episodes of this show ad-free, and also videos, and also my original writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would mean so much to me if you would subscribe, even as a free subscriber, but a paid subscriber really allows me to keep doing this work, and I can't do it without you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, love you, bye.