Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Throughout history, pivotal moments in our social, cultural, and political development have shaped our world for generations at a time.
We're living through one of those moments, and it's being accompanied by numerous smaller changes. As a side effect, these are undoubtedly interesting times, and the decisions we make today will create history and impact generations to come.
In today's episode, we'll delve into the past inflection points that have shaped our present reality and explore how current ones will influence our future together.
Will you actively participate in shaping tomorrow or simply wait to see what unfolds?
If you've ever wondered what people were doing, thinking, or saying during the pivotal moments of history, just look around. We're in one now.
Hi there and welcome to Critical defiance.
It's Monday, March 3rd, 2025.
I'm Neil Zelson and joining me today is my co host and partner in thought crime, Bobby Socks, or Bobby for short.
Bobby has a background in sociology and psychology mixed with a strong interest in music, comics and pop culture, and an abiding love for cheese derived dopamine.
As for me, my social profiles describe me as a caffeine driven super monkey. That's pretty accurate. My own interests include science and technology, writing, and trying to figure out where I left the keys to the chest of devices that will one day help me establish complete dominion over the entire oh wait. In the booth we've got Tyler and Jack are two exceptional minions who are currently competing for a single surplus cybernetic body. The winner will be sent to space to steal Elon's Tesla to Mars, while the loser will sadly remain a meat Popsicle. For now, both of them will probably contribute to the podcast if we let them.
As always, you can follow us and find out more about the show over@critical defiance.com and if you'd like to follow our team on BlueSky, we're all listed on the socials page at the top.
Don't forget to subscribe to us in your favorite podcast app as well. And if you'd like to donate to our efforts, you can head over to buymeacoffee.com critical defiance all right, it's time for News this week. I want to start with what's going on at Doge. We finally got the Holy Grail. We know who's in charge of Doge. Supposedly it's not Elon.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: All right, Doge is always doing two things.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: They've named Amy Gleason as the acting head of Doge. Doge now has a director, so expect a profile on her next week. If you know, they're still ahead of Doge because Doge moves fast, kids. It moves fast and it breaks things.
And speaking of breaking things, about 20 members of the former Digital Service Now, Doge resigned Tuesday with a letter criticizing Musk for dismantling public services and basically saying they didn't want to take part in it. So that was, that was pretty intense. Doge is starting to get some pushback. That's, you know, it's not. Well, it's not that it's starting to get pushback. Doge is starting to see pushback with traction.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: They just keep breaking. They do interesting things. Like what did I see Elon tweet about? Oh, the need for ATCs. After firing a chunk of the FAA.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: ATCs are air traffic controllers. He knocked out about a thousand positions from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Now, you ready for this, Bobby?
Starlink is going to step up and fix it.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: No, just I. I can't.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: After all the cuts and damage at the FAA due to Doge, this guy.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Has the balls to say there's a shortage, shortage of top notch air traffic controllers.
If you are, if you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so. That is so desperate. That is so desperate. The.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: It's ridiculous.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: There's a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Absolutely.
It's open mouth, insert foot.
But we're starting to learn who they are. Right? You were telling me something about that earlier.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah. The New York Times started a list of Doge employees.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Oh, I've seen this. A chart of high level employees, their relationships. They're building an org chart from what they can find out, which is great.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Transparency is a good thing. Go New York Times.
They did something right for once.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: So what else have we got? So, oh, big announcements from AOMB and Russ Vaught. The White House is directing agencies to make deeper cuts to the federal workforce with large scale reductions in force.
The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo directing the executive branch to develop an agency RIF and Reorganization plan. RIF is short for Reduction in Force. So Reduction in Force and Reorganization Plan. Essentially, they have until March 13th to submit plans, which doesn't just lay off employees, it eliminates their positions.
It's a government structure change, not just a layoff.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: And it's a change with no permission, oversight. It didn't go through any channels. It was just, oh, we're here now doing this deal with it.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: I saw it coming when they put him in the Office of Management and Budgeting. As soon as I heard the budgeting, I went, oh, shit.
Give that man control the purse strings and he controls the country. Here we go.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: We're doing cuts to increase our budget. We're also having a citizenship gold card.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Speaking of purse strings.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Talk about money. Their next delusional plan to bring money into the country. Trump said, we now have a gold card Visa. How much are they? About $5 million.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: We don't have it yet. It's in the planning stage, but. Holy shit.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: It gives wealthy buyers a bargain. You have to be wealthy buyer.
It gives you permanent residency in the US And a path to citizenship.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: I can't.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: And how hard the current path to citizenship is.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: I'm sure 5 million makes it easier to become a citizen. They probably give you the light version of the test.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Oh, God.
Oh, my God. I don't even know what that would be. I remember in high school government class, they passed out the citizenship test.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: We all failed it.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we all failed it. They didn't tell us it was the official US Citizenship test. It was just take this. And we were all failed.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Speaking of bargains, first Trump wanted half of Ukraine's minerals. Then 500 billion in minerals. Then we had the Ukraine send their president to the White House to sign a minerals deal.
Did you see how that went, Bobby?
[00:07:12] Speaker A: President Zelensky, on behalf of all sane people left in this country, I am sorry.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: We are sorry as a nation.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: That was disgusting.
Honestly, that upset me.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Set the scene for those who missed it in the audience.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: I will be honest. It was hard for me to sit through the whole thing, but I did see a good part and was like Trump berating Zelensky. Not letting this poor man get a word in, telling Zelensky he's in a very bad place right now, and he.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Not thankful enough.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: He's not thankful enough.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: That was Vance. How many times have you said thank you? Zelensky conducted himself well.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: He tried to speak rationally and fairly. Our elected officials acted like children.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Children.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: It was really embarrassing. Really embarrassing.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: It imperils the deal between us and Ukraine, and it imperils peace.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And I've also seen us key to not getting World War III kids.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. There are people in the House who I've seen speak who are worried. This meeting basically announced the US Is ready to be on the other side.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: It seems like our president and perhaps our vice president and others in this administration are compromised by Russian interests. It just. You can't shake that feeling anymore.
We are suddenly playing for the wrong team. And I don't get why.
Well, I get why. Money, money, money and influence. Sometimes blackmail.
So, yeah, we had that happening. And then here on home soil, we had that Texas measles thing.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: We have one child so far who was not vaccinated, got measles, died in the hospital. Do we have more than one kid death?
[00:09:08] Speaker B: The time we're recording, there's only one confirmed. And RFK called this normal and something that happened.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: I've heard rumors of adults having measles parties similar to Covid parties to the height of stupidity.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: And RFK saying this is routine is insane. The last death from measles in this country was over 10 years ago.
Like, what's that happening? Science exists.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you mentioned polio, but this is a guy who actually sued the federal government to pull the polio vaccine. At one point, he tried to get it pulled.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: We're just so. It might make a comeback, and we're.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Still struggling to get accurate information about the bird flu.
And now we're bringing back polio and tuberculosis and just. It really does feel like the Four Horsemen.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: It does sometimes. It really does. Now I want to get to something we had talked about. Something that you saw in the news. When was it? Last night. You saw it morphing?
[00:10:09] Speaker A: I think it was last night.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: It was either last night or the night before.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: The night before.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: But Bobby Sox noticed a strange change in the headlines of a story we covered in our last episode.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: The unfortunate and devastating story of Sam Nordquist, a transgender man from Minnesota. His body was found in Syracuse, New York. I believe five people are accused. Then the New York Times is covering the story.
I haven't seen any dead naming or.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Misgendering, but the references to Sam Nordquist being trans are faded in the New York Times. Right?
[00:10:52] Speaker A: They're faded. Taken out of the title and out of the headline.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: You had put me onto this last night, so I went down the news rabbit hole. I primarily used Google News because I like their search feature.
It's not just New York Times, it's everywhere. They're taking out references to Nordquist being transgender from headlines and moving them way down the article or killing them entirely. There are articles where you wouldn't know this was a trans man.
That's key to the crime because it's a hate crime.
Trying to bury it for political or social reasons.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: It's just another form of erasure.
Trans people and queer people have seen this throughout history. We're villainized, erased, even to the point that it was a few years before I learned Marsha P. Johnson was a transgender woman of color.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: And who is that? Just for my sake, who has.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Marsha P. Johnson was the first woman, the first trans woman of color to throw a brick at Stonewall. Okay, sorry. At Stonewall, it was such an affront. They took all mention of trans and non binary people from the Stonewall monument. Same. Because especially when you put that in context, it was three trans women of color. It wasn't just Marsha P. Johnson. She had two friends that, unfortunately, I cannot remember their names. We would not have pride today. There would have been no riot at Stonewall without trans women.
So to see this erasure again with Sam is really disheartening. Terrifying. It's not okay. Sam Nordquist was a transgender man who was tortured and murdered.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: To make it anything less than that is a total disrespect, not just to Mr. Nordquist, but to people like him living in terror nowadays because of what our society is doing, from the government down to such a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people.
So, yeah, we're going to keep covering that story because it's important that it not fade or go away or get minimized.
We'll keep an eye.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
Recently in the news, they've been throwing a lot of big changes at us in a very small amount of time that are going to have very big and lasting ramifications.
Throughout history, there have been other events that have also had lasting impacts on people and societies, like the industrial revolution, 911 Covid, and the digital revolution.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: I think there's a mix of both events and periods in history triggered by events that create or have an impact on longer periods in history.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I believe these are called inflection points.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Well, that's one of the terms for me. You hear many pivot points, turning points. Inflection points is one of the cool intelligentsia ones. I happen to like it because I'm part of the cool intelligentsia.
Do you want to join our club?
[00:14:11] Speaker A: That sounds.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: I can tell you how. If you go over to buy me a coffee.com/forward/critical Defiance, for a dollar, you can be part of the cool intelligentsia. For $3, you can be an East coast elite. And for $5, you could be a Hamptons public librarian's assistant.
That's right. Right now, you can buy in. You can show your wealth at Critical Defiance over on Buy Me, buy me a coffee.com/forward/critical defiance.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: So, anyway, I want to talk about some of these big moments in history. These turning points, inflection points, whatever you want to call them, and have those lead to the ones that we're seeing today.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: One of the things I noticed studying history in college was that when they come, each one comes almost sooner than the last. In other words, the period of time between them drops every time there's a new one.
I'm going to run through a few of them. I know you have a few you want to talk about too, and we'll just cruise through so we at least have some context. The Industrial Revolution, for me is the starting point because you see all these transformative changes going on in technology and in manufacturing that lead to a total shift in how the human workforce is distributed and what people are doing for a living, where and with whom.
And then you've got mass production kicking in due to mechanization. So that's huge. And then at the same time, because of all this, we start urbanizing. So the Industrial Revolution was one of these inflection points. It was one of these places where we shifted from an agrarian or a farming based economy to an industrial economy to an industrial lifestyle to a new lifestyle adapted to that world.
And we held that lifestyle for a while until we hit the first one that you wanted to talk about, Bobby. So I'm going to kick back to you for this one.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: I wanted to go over the civil rights movement. This is something we probably all remember learning about in school in the 1950s, 1960s. There were a lot of big moments that pushed that movement forward.
One of the biggest ones I remember is the Montgomery Bus Boycott with Rosa Parks. I know you had told me.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah. We had this conversation the other day. And I wanted to say this actually in the show so that people understood where I was coming from. I'm a little bit older than you are. When I was taught this in school, they told us about Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus. And they moved on. It was time for the next chapter.
I didn't learn about the Montgomery bus boycotts until much later in life where they. You guys, you know, they were taught to you.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Tell me about this. Like, I never heard about it before.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Rosa park started a movement when she refused to sit on the back of the bus. I believe she was a friend or a friend of a friend of MLK at the time. She got incarcerated. Word got out and it started a huge black bus boycott. But also there were white people that got involved.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Who participated in the entire town of Montgome, which at the time, their economy relied heavily on the bus system. For about eight months, this whole city was boycotting buses to the point that it forced them to start looking at desegregation.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: An actual real life example of an economic protest that worked. That's probably why they didn't teach it to us. They didn't want us to know how.
For me, you know, there's a gap for me because when I think of inflection points, I think of the civil rights movement. And then from there it kind of goes straight to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in something I don't.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Know a lot about.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: But in the middle, we don't really talk about it because it's not a single point in history. It's more a decade that came after the civil rights movement.
You had sort of cultural and sexual liberation period going on.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: And that had an impact. The impact of that was felt in a bunch of different communities in a bunch of different ways.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: I feel like the whole decade of the 70s to the end of the 80s, that was a weird time.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: A lot of stuff happened simultaneously. You had big evolutions in women's rights.
For me, I guess it jumps next to the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a kid who grew up in the Cold War, where there was this constant sense of us versus the Russians all the time, it was weird. When the wall came down, it was a relief. The symbolic end of an era of communism ver democracy.
Now I look around and go, well, we see how long that lasted.
But at the time it heralded this spread of democratic values throughout Europe. That was sort of a big win moment for western civilization.
And that set up talk about inflection points. But that point in history set up a period in history where we saw more democratic governments in more places doing more cooperative things, participating in better economies.
It wasn't a golden age, but it was a better age than what had come before it.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Earlier when we were talking, you said something about an analog computer, which I had to stop and go, wait a second, what now and then?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah, there were mechanical computers.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: You have seen hidden figures. That big IBM computer, that's a analog computer.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: I'm not sure because I don't remember hidden figures precisely. So I'd have to check to be sure. They could just be a mainframe.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: It was the first IBM computer at NASA.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: And I'd have to do some research.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: That would be a two based analog system. It gets picky. I don't want to oversimplify it. Let's put it that way. Yeah, but punch cards were just starting to fade. When I was a toddler, our phones had tails, our computers weighed 80 pounds.
Laptops were not a thing. I remember when you connected to the Internet in the early days, you connected to a phone line and your computer just sort of screamed into the void until something screamed back in computer speak. It was sort of terrifying in those prehistoric.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: See, I remember being three or four and there being a computer room in the house because the computer took up that much space. Plus fax machine that was the size.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Of a small child.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yes. And it would scream as I loaded up ABC mouse. But I know it really different for me because by the time I was in second or third grade, cell phones were flip phones and probably like the Sidekick or something like that.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't have any of that. We didn't have cell phones. We had payphones on street corners if you knew where they were.
And you know, you carried change and called mom if you needed to or if the shit hit the fan or if you were running late and you.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Know, you couldn't be traced. And it was probably a lot easier to get away with shit back then.
I feel like talking about the privacy changes that came from the digital age because that does in a way go 9, 11.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: And you can super simplify the biggest privacy changes, right?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: In a pre digital world, to get a hold of information about somebody, you had to break in somewhere. You had to go someplace and steal things.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Whether it was their home, their office, their bank, the safe, whatever.
In the post digital age, all you had to do was tap the wire for the correct run of communications and you could own them.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: So it was a game changer in terms of surveillance, monitoring and evidence chains when it came to criminals. So yeah, digital was a big change for us. It revolutionized everything. It took us from an interim technology to a longer term technology or a group of technologies really.
But yeah, yeah, it was a weird transition. Wild transition.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: For me it was strange going from tape to CD to the cloud.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: I mean for me, I remember I had tapes when I was very little and then mainly had CDs.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: I had vinyl.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: For me it was stranger to go from burning CDs to put em on an ipod to then go to streaming music like Spotify because I felt like I didn't own my music anymore.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: The biggest transition for me was from tape to cd. It was random access. It was not needing to rewind or fast forward anymore. Oh yeah, random what I wanted.
Yeah, that was the big change for me.
We went from avenue to libraries and deal with card catalogs to hunt down books that might be out of date on topics that were kind of like the ones that we were interested in. To being able to sit down behind a computer and get specific information that was current from a broad variety of sources instantly and for free.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: That was a big one. That was a big one.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Then there was 9 11.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So the digital revolution gave us some fascinating stuff, but it also gave rise to some terrible things. It's a chain. You go from the digital revolution and making information accessible and freely available to turning it into something that can be used for terror. Which in the case of America, 911 was a massive wake up call because we'd never had something like that on our soil other than Pearl Harbor. People forget Pearl harbor. But that's my point. People in the mainland don't feel Pearl harbor the way that the people there do.
The people in the mainland felt 911 the way that people felt Pearl harbor back in the day.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: The response was world changing.
We went into the Middle east for better or for worse. We did things socially and politically that were, you know, we became regime change specialists, I guess you could say. And it turned into a security state. And for me, the security state was new for you. The security state's always been there. And that's serious to me because the TSA for me is this new pain in the ass that thinks they're actually doing something.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah. For me, the TSA have always existed.
There's never been a world without it. TSA, basically because I was 3 or 4 when 911 happened. I don't have an active memory of it. I have stories. I got taught about it in school.
But everything that came after, however society changed. That was just the new normal my age group was.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: It was what you grew up with.
It's a very different world for us in texture and color.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: I think a big one too is. Remember what the New York City skyline looked like with the twin towers?
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Well, I remember the train station and the twin towers. I remember the mall. I remember my friend's office.
I remember a lot of things about the towers. They're a very real place to me. For you, they're a very symbolic one.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: I was just going to say that when I watch movies from the 70s or 80s and 90s based in New York and show the skyline, when I see the towers, my brain still just goes, what's wrong with the skyline?
And I have to go, oh, those used to be there.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: And that's.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: They were Big.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: So next big one in terms of sociocultural pivots in the US and globally was probably Covid, right?
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Covid was the first time I really sat down and I was like, all right, I am living through a global event, a global emergency that could have.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Been an extinction event.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was like one of those times where I went, oh, this is going to be a textbook chapter in 20 years.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: What's going to be a textbook chapter in 20 years? All of the birds in my town are dead.
Oh, God.
Yeah. One of the environmental departments is doing an investigation right now into how widespread bird flu is here, but all the birds in town are pretty much that. It started at the waterway up the road and crept out from there.
I'm waiting because there's all these outdoor cats on my street. So I will be hiding inside the bunker.
Yeah, I will be hiding inside the bunker. I'm not repeating that with Slappy anti vaccine pants at the helm. No way.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: I know people had different opinions on the lockdown and the quarantine. What I'm scared of right now is having a government in place that won't quarantine when it's needed.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: The world is changing. If you've ever wondered what it was like to be alive during a pivotal moment, you're in it. Look around.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Growing up, I always wondered, what were people during the rise of the Nazis doing?
Well, hello.
Welcome to the next inflection point. There have been a good amount of inflection points in history. We talk about the industrial revolution, civil rights, Berlin Wall, anything more recent to people like the digital revolution. Covid, 9, 11.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: These very big points, tilt points in our history, but now we're in one that's shifting us to a strange new place, a place that a lot of us feel isn't really very American.
Isn't America that a lot of us feel we should have never gone to, and now we're halfway there.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yeah. People are seeing it and outright refusing to believe it. It's because of this tidal wave of cognitive dissonance.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Yeah. It's massive. I see it all the time. I report on stories or talk to friends about things and tell them what's going on. The response is, well, they can't do that. That's illegal.
And you have to sit there and go, yeah, but they're doing it.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: But they're doing it.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Regardless of the fact that it's illegal, they're doing it and no one's doing anything about it.
You need to acknowledge what's actually going on.
Billionaire taking power.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah. It is terrifying and scary. And when you first let it sink in, it feels almost hopeless.
It's not if you just ignore it and say, oh, well, that's illegal. They can't do that.
That's being part of the problem.
You have to stop, digest and accept this is happening right now. So then you can turn to, what can I do?
I don't think most of us as Americans agree with what's happening right now.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: People who understand what's going on are either angry, scared, or both.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Probably just tired, man.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Well, that's part of the plan. That's part of the plan. When you work this kind of regime change, you exhaust your enemy.
You hit them with so much so fast, they can't deal with it.
You leverage the periods where they can't cope to do even scarier things. And this is the playbook they're using.
We're in this state of being beat up and beat down. We don't have to be.
We can be engaged, active, talking to people about the news and current affairs, sharing our opinions on this. I mean, look. Look at what we're doing. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this. I'd love to see more podcasts like this. I'd love to see more independent media.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Because I think it's time for all of that. Because without it, our voices get drowned out.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah. With what's going on, staying silent is violence. You have to start talking to people, family, friends. At this point, it's not about parties anymore. It's about the country surviving. Even your far right Republican grandfather talked to him about what they're planning to do to his Medicaid.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Just asked if he voted for Elon Musk.
We're in this place where decades of what we've worked for as a country is being slashed by an unelected billionaire and his friends. It's insane.
They're gutting our institutions, waging war on basic concepts like, you know, dei. The war on DEI is made real simple. When you spell out what DEI is, they're waging war on diversity, like that's a bad thing.
Equity, like that's a bad thing. And inclusion.
Wow. You might as well say you're waging war on desegregation and fairness.
And then we've extended it to this war on trans people. Why the hell are we beating the shit out of the smallest minority?
[00:31:38] Speaker A: I keep having this feeling. One reason that trans people and gender non conforming people are gone after first is because we represent a level of freedom that they can understand. And when trying to make a country no longer free, take out the most free spirited people first.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: You take out the most symbolic ones too.
Trans people are becoming a symbol in this society.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: But yeah, I am starting.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: What kind of symbol it is varies wildly.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like we've become the new Mockingjay. For those who read the Hunger Games, I'm starting to feel like Katniss and I didn't sign on to be Katniss. It's feeling like that symbol of hope and then on the other side, we are the biggest demons. And I didn't know I had that power. But apparently I'm Satan's number one.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: I was the boogeyman. I'm a homo. That made me a boogeyman for the longest time and then you took it away from me.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm the homo.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: What have you done?
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Showtime.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Um, let's take a second and talk about things you can do. My favorite Bobby. I'm gonna go off on it like I do every week. Call your reps. Call your reps on our homepage. There's a link on the right hand side under where you can sign up for our newsletter, which you should do.
It lets you find your reps at every level from federal to local so you can get in contact with them and let your voice be heard. Let them know how you feel about what's going on. Yeah, that's big for me.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Stop at their office, make an appointment, talk to them.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Huge impact.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: If you can't do that or if that's a bit too much for the people who get anxious about making phone calls, I sympathize with you. Email them. Email them. It's really easy to just sit and write up an email and flood their inbox. I believe you said in a previous episode, how Many emails are 15 to.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: 20 emails by most representatives are considered a flood of emails.
So yeah, keep it up out there, kids.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Get your neurodivergent crew together of 10 to 15 people who are too anxious to make phone calls. And all of you send out an email in one day.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: The trick to emails is don't use form emails. Change the wording so it's personalized. That counts for more.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't want to sound like a bottle. You want to come off as an actual human being who is affected by what's going on.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: My other big one for this week, get vaccinated now because we don't know what RFK is going to do. Get vaccinated for everything you can or might be affected by now. We really don't know what Captain Crazy Pants is going to do.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Continue to get your children vaccinated. Please.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Please follow the recommended schedule that is slowly disappearing and save lives, because this is not good. The direction they're going with this stuff is not good.
So we were going to talk about upcoming episodes, but we didn't have a plan for one until we started doing this episode. Right. Which is kind of funny.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: So upcoming. We're talking about self care during this inflection point.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Yep. I think that's a great way to pivot. We live in this strange inflection point. How do we take care of ourselves? What do we do to stay sane? How do we take care of each other? I think that's going to be our next episode. All right, Bobby Socks, give us an outro.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: I first want to say thank you, everybody, for listening, joining us, and experiencing this with us. It means a lot. We've been paying attention and seeing that our following has been growing, and we appreciate that. We appreciate knowing that there are other people who don't want to see this country fall to fascism.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Might be almost as crazy as we are, but the point is, we're really enjoying what we're doing and we're really enjoying sharing with you. It's an honor and a privilege from where I said so. Thanks for tuning in.
