The Culture War #18 - Emma Vigeland & Sean Fitzgerald, Debating Crime And Social Issues
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First thing I want to say is thank you to Jack Posobiec and Seamus Coghlan for guest hosting TimCast IRL while I was out.
I wasn't not, in fact, dead.
I just lost my voice and that really sucked.
I think on Sunday I was kind of sick and it sucked so I just hung out and was playing video games all day.
But then Monday I was talking like this and then I figured I'd be fine by Tuesday and then come Wednesday morning when I still couldn't talk.
We were like, we need to call in the big guns, so we reached out to some people to see if they would guest host for us, and we got some people.
We got Jack and Seamus, so thank you all for that.
This is the first The Culture War podcast we're doing live as we're now getting into the purpose for what this show is.
When we do shows on Timcast IRL at 8 or so p.m., We'll often have people come in who either disagree with us on certain issues, or that's primarily it.
When they do, the show transforms from topical news into political and cultural debate.
And so we decided we need to make a specific show that just handles those conversations and expands upon them so that we can actually get to the core of what people think, feel, why they want certain policies and why they don't.
And a topical news show doesn't really work for that, so Friday mornings, You know, here's what we're going to do.
And we were posting this at 1pm before, but now we'll probably end up doing it live just because.
So without further ado, without wasting any of your time, we've got two awesome guests.
I think the issue with that, I can understand why you'd say that, but it looks like this is a great way to kick off the show, actually, like the start of the cultural.
I actually don't think that whatever this space has more money because this is a fractured independent space of varying ideologies.
This is almost entirely because people pay to become members of our websites.
You know, if the majority report, you guys have been around a lot longer than I have.
The inability to provide a product to a customer does not mean that one political faction has more or is granted more because of capitalism or anything like that.
Like if Sam is unable to... I mean, Sam's had way more subscribers than me for a long, long time.
I'm saying if he doesn't know how to turn revenue, the issue is more so you need a COO or somebody who's going to say, here's how we provide something to a market that generates revenue so we can expand our business.
So we're better at that here, I suppose, is the easiest way to put it.
Well, no, because what you say here is more attractive to investors and advertisers.
I mean, we're basically only members... We have no investors.
Okay, well, other right-wing media like the Daily Wire and stuff like that, and even what... I'm looking at the Rumble... I don't know, what do you call that?
Logo right there.
Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a David Sachs.
That's a venture capital backed venture, I believe.
At the very least, Peter Thiel is involved and invested.
We just have, you know, advertisers that aren't A little bit more within our system of values and we're trying to combat corporate greed.
We don't have a ton of advertisers that I think align with leftist or we have advertisers that we try to include in terms of like leftist values as well, but just by the nature of left versus right.
It's asymmetrical warfare.
But honestly, Sam should just put those DMs out there.
Well, I mean, it was a little fun because it was kind of funny.
But I mean, Sam comes from a comedy background as well.
I would say that I think you misrepresent what our show actually does.
The first hour, the free hour of our program before we go to the membership portion, is one that we literally have experts on on Social Security, on international politics.
It's not honestly something that is conducive It's dry.
It's not conducive necessarily to a ton of capital investment or advertisers.
And we're trying to make a difference in the world.
The reason we started our own coffee company, it's because... I'm not going to say the name of this person, but there are organizations that lie in order to get our ads pulled.
And so that's happened to us.
Uh, one example is that there is, uh, well, I won't get into too much of it, but there's a group that has argued that I have claimed that Donald Trump won in 2020, and they've used that to raise tens of thousands of dollars.
So this is a really good example of the problem in the culture where I would say, see, you don't, you don't know what actually said, because I didn't say what you're, what you're describing.
If I can't explain to you that manipulating a story for political gain is the hoax, then I don't know what else... What's the manipulation?
Oh man, this is an old story.
I have to pull it up.
I think the issue was that they were able to actually get the treatment in state, but because of the law, they decided to seek it elsewhere.
And I said, that is a hoax.
I didn't say that it was a hoax, that the girl was abused.
I said, if They could have sought treatment in-state under the exemption.
I think it was Ohio, right?
There was an exemption saying in the cases of abuse, the treatments are permitted, but they decided to make a public statement and leave the state anyway.
But I mean, but honestly, this is a part and parcel of what you do is you put that kind of statement out there and then you put caveats in to protect yourself.
If there is a story and the story is exaggerated or manipulated in an effort to sway people into believing one political faction over the other, you are engaging in a hoax.
Subway crime to talk about all these inflated crime numbers and crime is down in New York City in 2020 by every metric I don't compare to what down compared to 2021 Publish if it's down in 20 compared to 2021 and there was a giant year-over-year increase from 2020 to 2021 Then you're talking about something it was down It wasn't giant.
I mean, we have a we do have a mental health problem in this country.
We have an issue with not having socialized health care where people are unable to access health care, mental health care in particular, but also every other kind of health care.
28 million uninsured people in this country.
That's a massive problem.
I mean, what is your stance on Medicare for All and healthcare?
Yeah, I think we'd have to have some kind of like basic coverage for universal standard, meaning like if you're having an episode, this is particularly where we bring you when we help you.
If you're broken bones, flu, things that it's like relatively simple and knowledge-based.
The challenge with it is that We got limited space, we got limited doctors, but, you know, I don't think we can function as a society if we have people just dying in the streets like we do with drug abuse and, you know, people losing their minds.
Well then you should promote housing first policies on your program.
Like in Houston, what they did, there was a pilot program under Obama, it was a HUD grant, and they reduced homelessness by 63% over 10 years.
Because they guaranteed housing.
Do you think that the 25 examples that you cite last year, and there's like over 2 million subway riders a day, so you cherry-picking them, I feel like is... It's not cherry-picking, it's... You mentioned that desperation leads to crime.
Well, I mean, they're experiencing a mental health episode.
We do not have adequate health care in this country, mental health care.
I hear a lot of talk often after mass shootings that mental health is the most important thing in this country.
Then we should have socialized health care so everyone can have access to it.
And that paired with a housing first policy where cities don't become urban centers for just Bridge and Tunnelers who want to come in and see a show or for restaurant associations where places where people can actually live and there's guaranteed housing for people.
If we were able to do that, we would be able to drastically reduce the crime that you guys are talking about.
So when you're talking about poverty leading to crime, what is that based on?
Because after Prohibition was repealed, during the Great Depression, crime fell.
During the Great Recession, people with your line of thinking thought we would see a crime spike nationwide.
It didn't happen.
You could actually look at the crime wave if you wanted to pull it up.
That didn't occur.
And that was the largest recession in the history of this country since the Great Depression.
So what we've seen throughout American history is poverty not leading to crime.
What we actually see is the opposite, that crime drives areas into poverty.
We look at store closures across the country due to the fact that we have shoplifting.
That leads to decaying in the neighborhoods.
When people abandon the neighborhoods and you see this blight, that has a psychological impact on people and that drives people to commit these crimes.
But also, if income inequality is the driver of crime, then how come we saw a giant crime decline after the mid-90s when income inequality was going up?
In fact, we saw this happen all the way to 2019.
Can you repeat that?
We had a giant crime decline from around 1995-1996 nationwide from all the way to 2019 while income inequality was rising during that period of time.
I mean, I'm not exactly sure you're the expert, but I do know that you're saying that there was an increase in crime in 2021 and 2022, and it doesn't matter now that it's going back down to 2023 levels.
I mean, crime dropped everywhere throughout the country.
Since lead gasoline was outlawed.
There is a massive connection.
Lead paint, lead gasoline predominantly affecting poor and lower income people, which probably did contribute to some of the increase in volatility in that kind of instance.
It was fascinating that when we started taking lead out of the atmosphere, Crime started to drop, but that would also make the argument that it's not poverty driving crime.
I think public policy has a huge impact as well, because again, we saw a dramatic crime.
The crime wave started.
In the 1960s, right?
And this is when we started embracing this idea that poverty was the root cause of crime, that this was more the realm of the social workers, all things that sound really familiar to today.
And from 1960 all the way to 1979, the incarceration rate, even though in raw numbers it was rising, was dropping per capita.
So we saw this crime increase, and what you would end up getting in 1979 for murder, on average, was something like five years.
For rape, it was something like 3.4 years.
And obviously, like, this created a problem because we just weren't prosecuting people.
This is why we ended up going with a mass incarceration solution, which, by the way, did work, and all these other policies to get tough on crime.
No, when I say it worked, we started expanding the prison population seriously in the 1980s to the 1990s.
If you go to the Brennan Center for Criminal Justice, which is a left-wing organization, they say post the year 2000, mass incarceration lost its effectiveness.
But most of the mass incarceration was pre the year 2000.
So obviously it had some impact and it ranges.
Low estimates are about 6% on the crime rate, which is very low, but the high estimates are about 30%.
And the reason it worked is because the philosophy behind mass incarceration is pretty simple.
What you're trying to do is incapacitate criminals because the same criminals are often re-offending.
You brought up shoplifting earlier.
You can actually pull up an article to find out that the same 300 people in New York City represent a third of the shoplifting arrests total for a single year.
So this is all about the fact that you're not in favor of bail reform because in New York State, which is now currently being rolled back, we decided that we weren't going to require cash bail for nonviolent felonies and for misdemeanors.
to not require cash bail yeah uh no i think or that that that we're rolling it back i think i think look if if you're concerned about people not being able to get out of jail because of their financial means then i can understand reducing or even eliminating the cash bail system because i understand if you don't have a lot of money even though you really only have to throw down 10 for bail in most cases unless it's a you know like a set figure for the bond then i get that argument but But what you need, and the state of New York desperately needs this, is some kind of threat assessment.
Like you should be able to hold somebody if they present themselves as a danger or a repeat offender, regardless of bail, without bail, so that they don't continue to re-offend.
If you pull up like NYPD crime data, for instance, since you brought up stop and frisk, you can look at the shootings, like the shooting suspects in any given year.
And if you find me a year where 92% or greater is not black or Hispanic in terms of the shooting suspects, then I mean, I would be shocked because I've looked at it for the past 20 years.
The reason he did it was because the cops would go into the black neighborhoods and give people drinking 40s on their stoops tickets.
And he said, how can these people at their own homes on their own porches get a ticket for drinking booze?
Then when I go into Central Park and say, we're going to apply the same standard, I get in trouble for it.
So New York's got serious problems.
Even Bloomberg, like that guy's awful.
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He made a bunch of, like, I'm not going to say that- But the reason- I just want to cut you off because you mentioned Bloomberg and I want to respond to what you said.
And it's a racist argument. - So you're wrong in a bunch of different ways.
So let me just like run through them.
So first and foremost, the highest year was 86%.
And that was the year with the dramatic increase in stops.
And if you ask me if I'm in favor of just expanding stop and frisk, which is different from Giuliani's stop question and frisk, although, you know, you might not be interested in that specific difference, to the levels that Bloomberg did, I would say it's unnecessary.
It aggravates people, creates a whole bunch of problems.
That being said, they're not over-targeted because again, there is no year during the entire tenure of Bloomberg where the shooting suspects were any less than 92%.
So what the NYPD does, because it's the most data-driven police force in the entire world, is they map crime through a system called Comstat.
When there's a lot of shootings in a specific area, they send the police to those areas.
The stops, questions, and frisks all relate to where the shootings are, and it just so happens to be those areas are black or Hispanic.
But to your point about hit rate, because you brought it up, hit rate was not the goal of Stop Question and Frisk.
Like, this is one of the things where you're like, oh, well, this program didn't work because my standard that I look for arbitrarily shows that it was ineffective.
That's like saying a plane doesn't work because it's not a good submarine.
I could have been stopped and frisked and I could have gone to prison or I could have been held if I had a little bit less money in Rikers indefinitely until my trial came because a cop just decided, hey I'm gonna stop and frisk you but they wouldn't do that to me because I'm a white woman.
That's nice, but anyway, it's about shootings and the point of the program, and this is shaded quite literally to deter people from carrying illegal firearms.
I mean, that's why you definitely But Emma's not gonna agree with me The idea that the police can decide to arbitrarily stop people because they might be carrying a firearm Violates the second and fourth amendments well get up and frisk is completely unconstitutional.
I, they, this idea that because a particular group of people may be carrying guns, we're going to go start stopping a whole bunch of them.
I'm like, the constitution protects our right to keep and bear arms in the first place.
So now you're violating, you're using the second, you're ignoring the second amendment and using that as, and by ignoring it, now you're violating the fourth amendment.
This is why I'm actually critical of Bloomberg expansion of the program, because the way it used to work is that if you had a shooting suspect, you would have a description, you'd send cops to the area and they would stop people with that description, ask them questions.
And if there was a reasonable suspicion, they would conduct a search.
This is why under Giuliani, the maximum amount of stops in a year, and you know, New York City of 8.5 million people, was 90,000 people, and under Bloomberg, it was something like 700,000, maybe 800,000 people.
So he dramatically expanded the program to the point where I do think it was constitutionally violative.
Donald Trump's first step back had a lot of language about going soft on youthful offenders.
And that's one of the reason why a huge portion of the increase in homicide that we're seeing is among young men and specifically among young black men in this country.
But this also coincides with one of the, if not the, largest economic expansion, or I shouldn't say that now because who knows how you define it with the pandemic and all that stuff, but we had a massive economic boom in the 90s.
So this would interestingly correlate with the idea that as people started to get more things, like their lives started to improve, murder rates started to drop dramatically.
Yeah, and I would say that there was that was a temporary kind of sugar high based on neoliberal policies of Reagan and Clinton where there was a lot of money that was released back into the public because of massive tax cuts.
I mean, we can talk about Confiscatory taxation, if you'd like, and the top marginal tax rate.
You know, the top marginal tax rate in 1961, it's funny that you brought up that figure in 1960, it's 91% compared to 37% now.
It went down in the 60s?
Reagan cut a bunch of taxes during that time period and a lot of people got an influx in cash and then... Crime didn't drop!
Let me show you guys something which will add some context to the current crime spike.
So you see right here this drop-off after about it looks like about 2007 there's a major drop-off in murder and then it spikes in 2014.
The problem with a chart like this is that it doesn't account for technology.
The reason the murder rate declined in 2007 was cell phones.
So, when cell phones became ubiquitous, the ability to call emergency services became instantaneous.
So when people were victims of violent crime, you had emergency service notified immediately.
And so this resulted in a drop in the murder rate, but not a drop in violent crimes.
Not a direct correlation, meaning crime had been going down, but the murder rate dropped more than violent crime in general because people weren't dying.
They were being stabbed, they were being robbed, they were being shot, and they were living.
That's not murder, so it wasn't counted as murder.
Yeah, I know, but you said it had nothing to do with broken windows policing, but that assumes that there isn't a greater decrease in crime in New York than nationwide, which is not the case.
There was a greater decrease in the city of New York.
Like, Chicago had a decline too, but Chicago's homicide rate, which is almost on par with the city of New York, is six times higher per capita than the city of New York.
And in terms of raw numbers, it's double, even though they're at a third of the population, which is the same thing that I just said with different math.
So New York became the safest big city and our crime rate actually declined.
And in fact, Freakonomics actually attributes this to the legalization of abortion, which happened in the city of New York pre Roe versus Wade.
It was one of the of the six states that had it legal electively.
So this is like a known thing that people have talked about and speculated on what the result is.
Now also for the environmental point- - Wait, can I just ask you a question about that? - Sure.
- What does the connection to, what does crime have the connection? - That's what Freakonomics says that the legalization of abortion and they compare it to Ceausescu, whatever country he was the dictator of, they say that that correlates with crime because they say all these unwanted children end up being born and then they end up committing- Well, that is certainly a claim.
I would love to decrease desperation in terms of families in this country.
I'm not sure if you've talked about it a ton on your program, Tim, but we should have made the child tax credit permanent that we expanded in the twenty twenty one American Rescue Act.
So, there was a tax credit that was in place, but during the pandemic, it was expanded to be a monthly payment.
Also, the amount was increased, so it was up to $3,600 a month for 6 and under, $3,000 for 6 to 17, and then it also was expanded to include people who had too little income to qualify previously.
We cut child poverty by nearly in half.
Instantly.
And the reason that we don't have it is because the entire Republican Party and Joe Manchin and Sinema essentially nixed it.
But this is the kind of stuff that's possible in this country to make people less desperate.
If you want less crime, make society a broader, more beneficial place for people with a bigger safety net so people don't have to turn to desperation.
I mean, I know that there have been certain proposals.
In places like Hungary that are like that, but they are heavily, heavily tilted towards heterosexual families as opposed to if a gay couple wants to adopt or have children.
I don't agree with that because I want more taxation, frankly, so that we could have socialized health care, we could have a College for All Act, which honestly you could pay for With the tax on Wall Street speculation, it would be incredibly easy.
It's only $48 billion a year, which is less than the military budget increase that we did in 21 to 22, which is around $71 billion.
I want to do that kind of stuff.
And so getting rid of income tax, I would not be in favor of it.
But if you want to create tax incentives for families so that they can raise their kids and they aren't in poverty, I am all for that, Tim.
Well, I'm trying to connect it to this, but like... Right, right.
In the broader sense, I think... I think the most important thing to take away from this here is that every single Republican voted against the American Rescue Act and the expanded child tax credit.
There is one party that is Look, it's not good enough.
I'm more obviously in the Bernie Sanders wing.
I have deep disagreements with Hillary Clinton-esque neoliberal politicians.
But yeah, it's the Democratic Party in favor of policies that are going to be helping people on a day-to-day basis like this.
All of those people despise him for obvious reasons.
But then you go and meet some of the more moderate, don't really care, middle-of-the-road people, and they're just like, what happened to that guy?
And look, man, I see what you're saying, but I'm telling you, like, No, I get why you're against him because- It's not about me, I'm saying like, we'll go hang out in any one of these- and this is the panhandle, don't get me wrong, but I'm even- we were hanging out in Charleston, uh, five hours from here.
Not a single person I've ever met in West Virginia is like, I like that guy.
Not one.
I've talked to people who are like, who have told me, in West Virginia, that they don't like Trump, they would rather have DeSantis, and then they say, Manchin's gotta go, he's gotta go, we gotta get somebody else, he's awful.
Because he's like, He's not a Democrat or a Republican at this point.
He has a fine line to walk, in my opinion, to hold a state like this as a Democrat.
I get why she, being more progressive, doesn't like him, but he's one of the only Democrats that could have won here, which is why when they tried running a progressive in the primary, that person got slaughtered by him.
In order to smear Donald Trump, ran fake images of him kissing and hugging Fauci alongside real images and then wrote real life Trump over the top.
Right.
And it's one thing to play politics, which I despise, when you get someone being like, you know, Nancy Pelosi voted against this act.
It's like the Saving Puppies Act, but it's actually a bill that like cuts taxes for oil companies or the inverse where it's like, you know, insert Republican voted for whatever.
I despise all of that.
But actually fabricating images, shrinking them down and placing them alongside real images and writing real life Trump on it.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no They ran it as real life Trump.
Now, I understand if you scrutinize the images, you can tell they're fake.
This one says Mehehap Wems.
Okay, that's not English.
And it's under the White House emblem.
But when it's in a video that's a minute long, and you pass this, I've already had people tell me that they didn't realize it was fake.
And I've heard people say, I talked to my parents about it, they thought it was real.
And so what the DeSantis fans are doing now is they're like, can you believe Tim actually thought those were real?
Like, dude, if you wanna play that game and call me stupid and insult me for calling out DeSantis' campaign for doing this, I literally don't care.
It changes nothing of my moral stance that this stepped well over the line.
Now, I gotta be honest, you go back in time to the first time a politician lied, and people were probably like, can you believe he actually lied to us?
And we know that's bad, and I hate all of it, but this is the next level.
Well, what's the core of your disagreement otherwise then?
I mean, because if it's with COVID, I would say I'm more on Trump's side with that kind of stuff.
I liked Operation Warp Speed.
Look, I would have done a little differently for giving away government money for vaccines that we should have nationalized them and the intellectual property should have been waived so that everybody could have had access to it also when the poll was out.
But what policies do you like generally about him?
I mean, besides the COVID stuff, what are the other policies, like as governor?
I mean, you think it's just the state legislature that's putting together these anti- I mean, look, Sam, you said that there was a grooming event happening at Club Q, and that was after the shooting, right?
Which is essentially kind of saying, well, look, they had it coming a little bit.
I mean, you didn't say that, but that's the implication.
So that's why I hope you have dedicated so much of your program to talking about the Catholic Church, because that is the institution in this country right now that is most associated with child abuse, and queer people, gay people, trans people, that is not a thing.
They're most associated, but they're actually not more abusive than any other religious institution, and they're not nearly as abusive as the public school system.
Parental rights and education bill, yes, that one's fairly obvious.
I don't know about the Disney stuff, that's kind of absurd.
What I was going to say is, let's go back in time to why I said I was for Rhonda Sanders in the first place and why where I'm at now is not.
The first thing was last year I was having a conversation with the Daily Wire crew and I said Trump is brash, Many people don't like him, and he won't shut up about 2020.
He's a sore loser.
Ron DeSantis, at the very least, is dry, and can get us something better than, say, Joe Biden.
So, we can look at what happened- And you said parental rights, I'm curious what you mean by that.
Yeah, like- Because, I'm in favor of parental rights, eh?
Right?
Like, I want parents to be able to, if their child is transitioning, to be able to work with their doctor, with a plan, and make sure that children are not- Let's talk about one of his policies.
Honestly, do you know, Tim, that the more children learn about sexual education in the way that's productive and done in schools, the less likely they are to be sexually abused because they know what is good and what is bad?
So, listen, if your argument to me is that I or anyone else should support your politics because you want to show blowjobs to children, you're going to lose.
But yes, censorship is a good thing, but when done bad is a bad thing.
Yeah.
For instance, Ian Crosland, who is a co-host on TimCastIRL, used to be a moderator for Minds.com, and he had to filter out graphic depictions of murder and rape and child abuse.
Censorship is absolutely vital in that regard.
So if we're talking about a book like, in particular, there was one called There's a Teacher, Who provided a book to her middle schoolers called This Book is Gay.
I'm not in favor of censorship. - As an objective observer that's sitting here, you asked for a specific example, he gave it to you, and then you try to say he's broadly in favor of censorship.
- Yeah.
- It's possibly to make a hypocrisy point later on when he complains about social media censorship or something like that.
- No, I just-- - But it's like, he's talking about this specific issue.
And I remember I was working on an education series about this kind of thing years before it was popular.
Yes, I was ahead of my time.
And yeah, these kind of things were popping up all over schools, and I am happy that DeSantis is like doing something about it.
If someone comes to me and says that they think this book, which Amazon says is 18 up only, should be given to children, I'll say, I will vote against you.
The Bible probably is not appropriate for children for a lot of reasons.
And I am not a Christian, so I don't particularly care about whether or not they're going to give a book to children that has something like Deuteronomy 2320 in it.
I don't think kids should be reading that kind of stuff.
However, I'm in favor of the parents deciding when it is appropriate for their kids, which comes with very difficult moral questions in that my morality is different from the morality of each individual parent.
So that's why I'm kind of like, the government probably shouldn't be the one doing it.
So many individuals on the left have made arguments in favor of kink for kids, which is weird to me, and I think it's inappropriate.
I think kids should learn about sex.
I think the parents should decide when it's appropriate.
This is why typically at schools they would give out notice to the parents like, we're intending on doing sex ed, here's the subjects we're going to cover.
The issue with Florida was that they had a policy where they would not instruct parents and actually were told not to talk to the parents if the kids were suffering identity issues.
Now that's, the state should not intervene and take away the rights of the parents in that way.
So in Florida, what prompts a bill like this, and it also happened with stuff in like Nashville, was that the schools, and I think they do this in like Washington and Colorado, the schools were actually telling teachers not to talk to the parents if the children were having some kind of identity issue.
And there was also another, right, I'm not talking about, look at this anecdote, let's set policy, I'm saying Florida set a law because, okay?
I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm saying a thing led to a thing, right?
My position is that parents should be fully informed about what's going on with their children and teachers should not withhold that information from them.
It is not up to the state to decide what is best for the kid.
But the state is deciding what is best for the kid in these instances.
They're essentially saying that children, take Florida for example, you're talking about Florida, let's talk about it.
They're saying that children cannot, under the supervision of their doctor and with their parental consent, none of this happens by the way without parental consent, it's illegal, they cannot Work with their doctor on a health care plan for them to transition into the talking about that.
I mean you're talking about medical intervention I'm talking right, but you have spoken about knowledge Yeah, I think like if a doctor prescribed a lobotomy to a kid the government should stop it's not a lobotomy I'm saying that there are certain things in the medical world that we've prohibited Right, but this is not what should- And it's one of them.
unidentified
But the American Journal- You disagree, you think it shouldn't be, I'm not arguing that you are.
No, then the 6% that were remaining, 3.5% identified as cisgender, 2.5% went back, yes, but they were heavily weighted under the age of 10 years old where they never had any medical intervention.
This is how actually trans care actually goes, Tim.
8 to 13 years old, you're put on puberty blockers.
What is actually interesting, because what you're asking, we've actually talked in a great depth about on Timcast IRL, that Are you for parental rights or not?
Where do parents' rights begin and where do they end is strictly a moral question based on the moral frameworks of an individual.
If there is someone who goes to a doctor in, say, Saudi Arabia, and the doctor prescribes female circumcision, they're going to argue it's the parents' rights.
So, right, your morality says that you think that trans children and parents, even if they agree with their child and the doctor is supervising this kind of transition, You're essentially saying that you don't believe that they should have the power and ability and that the state should intervene.
So, at first, my position was, you know, early on, you know, if the doctors are prescribing it and it's the best thing they can do, I think we're looking at, in the past four years, about 50,000 or so cases of cross-sex hormones for kids, you know, so be it.
Then we started seeing, like, the Tavistock scandal.
We saw Finland, Denmark, Sweden start pulling this.
The research coming out showed that it was not particularly effective.
And then we also had multiple studies showing that desistance rates for those who did not take any, who did not receive intervention was actually upwards of 95%.
And then my position became, it probably is the appropriate thing for the legislature to say, we're not going to allow this anymore.
Those studies were based upon whether a child was placed on puberty blockers or not.
When a child is placed on puberty blockers, they tend not to desist.
When a child is left alone, they tend to desist.
So the issue is then, if according to, you know, 10 prospective follow-up studies from childhood adolescents found desistance ranging from 61 to 90 percent, then the safety of the children would lean towards non-intervention.
Again, we should probably agree to look at these kinds of studies before we're going to pull them up for a debate, because what I'm pulling up and what I'm referencing is inherently reputable, and you can find any information that you want on the internet.
So what's happening is you're referencing detransition under a system where they wouldn't be put on puberty blockers necessarily, and then they would go through the cross-sex hormone.
So everybody who would have desisted at the point of puberty, which is what you're referencing, is already excluded from her sample.
Like, and I don't even think you would disagree with that, that once they're actually past the point of puberty, and they still think they're in the opposite body or whatever, and they go through the process, there's a very low detransition rate.
But you're specifically talking about desistance, and I remember this because this happened when you argue with the serfs.
I don't have, like, the arrogance to believe that my personal preferences for how my life would be lived I mean, come on.
and other people.
I'm trying to make a argument for a case for I'm trying to make a case for a broad set of policies that are going to make sure people are as happy as they can possibly be and can live their life to the fullest.
So if you want to impose your morality on people, it sounds like fundamentalism.
For me, I'm in favor of a real argument.
But if most know that, no, but I am having a real argument.
unidentified
You just said your morality- I said, here's a study.
When I explain to you that you are opposed to parental rights because you're in favor of vaccine mandates, I don't think you can understand the duality of the statement you're making.
Are you in favor of parental rights can go in one of two moral directions.
I was using that as a way to talk about your statement on parental rights.
unidentified
My point is, if you have a moral position on public health and you want to impose that, then you too would be a fundamentalist and you've made a nonsensical statement.
I... If you want to make an argument about why me using this data is incorrect, I'm all ears.
unidentified
If you want to tell me I'm a fundamentalist... I haven't seen the data, so I can't... Well, then don't make an argument about it if you don't know the data.
No, I'm dealing in politics, and politics can create outcomes that are moral or immoral, and I'm dealing in the ones that I think will create the most... So you're moralist?
No.
Moralism in the way that I was referencing it is one that falls back on notions of fundamentalism and imposing morality that is individual to you on the rest of society.
I'm not talking about imposing morality.
unidentified
I am talking about creating a society, creating a society that gives people the freedom that they... Moralism.
And even the parents were going to doctors to get it prescribed.
There are limits.
There's the famous story of the Kennedy.
They got the, what is it, the Kennedy got lobotomized because the doctors prescribed it.
Just because there's current scientific research that leans one direction doesn't mean we move absolutely in one direction.
What we have here is a very prominent set of studies, which we've referenced on the show numerous times, showing desistance rates for minors who do not receive intervention in terms of affirmation or gender sex change is upwards of 95% in which case science dictates we do not intervene.
If you want to take the 5% chance that we then intervene in these children's lives and that can result in even one kid being harmed that sounds like an immoral action.
Now these are extremely specific hypotheticals that you are maximizing in this current instance and I am interested in creating a society that is not not that is yes moral but it's based on outcomes not just that's what I just pulled up I mean, I can read to you again.
- Right, but pull up the American Pediatrics study. - But we're talking about, can I ask a hypothetical while you pull that up? - If it is true that prescribing puberty blockers prevents people from hitting that point of puberty where they would decide, and largely they would decide to desist, right?
When they hit the point of puberty, Would you be in favor of removing that from the gender protocol?
Because this only is talking about desistance at the point of puberty.
So, like, what he's concerned about is that if you stop people from going through puberty, you stop the changes in their bodies and all that, and then they can't, like, rationally make that choice because they haven't hit that point in their development.
If you deal with hypotheticals, because when you actually deal with the practical reality and the outcomes that you're dealing with and that you're prescribing onto society, It creates an inherently unjust society.
As the right-wing conservative Destiny said recently when he was debating the left-wing pro-lifers, it is a definite red flag when somebody is unwilling completely to engage with the hypothetical.
If you want to say why the hypothetical doesn't apply, that is totally fine, but for you to just say, oh, it's a hypothetical, I can't talk about it, as if you don't know what a thought experiment is, it's kind of odd.
Look, I've asked you, we have here, I literally just pulled up detransition Wikipedia, we pulled up this study that shows that without intervention, desistance rates are from 61 to 98%.
And here I have general acceptance of standards of care.
The overwhelming weight of medical authority supports treatment of transgender patients with GNRH agonists and cross-sex hormones in appropriate circumstances.
Organizations who have formally recognized this include American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Physicians, American Medical Association, American Pediatric Association, dozens and dozens of the most- Remember when doctors said smoking was good for you?
You're citing medical organizations, despite the fact that there have been numerous instances throughout history, in fact, basically all of them, where we've been like, hey, we were wrong about that.
Like, maybe we shouldn't drink mercury if you get syphilis.
But what I'm referring to specifically is, if there is no intervention of a trans child, desistance rates are from 61% to 98%, showing the majority of kids are better off not receiving period blockers.
No, look, I mean, you're on detransition Wikipedia, I just listed a list of dozens of- Again, he mentioned desistance, not detransition, this is like very important that we nail down what we're talking about.
I think that life should be protected under the Constitution at the federal level, and that it probably does make sense for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, but that means Congress needs to codify it.
Okay, but that's not going to happen and that's because we don't have a- Well, that's a different question.
Because we need filibuster reform.
So I'm not really interested in process, I'm interested in outcomes as we get back to, again, the differences that we clearly have here.
unidentified
I don't really care who imposes the right to abortion in this country, I just care that we have a right to abortion in this country and we don't- Well, right, yeah, I think at first when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I thought that it was probably good it would go to legislation.
Okay, well 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester, which is the first 12 weeks. 99% 99% happen in the first 20 weeks.
The rest that happen, the 1% that you're talking about, which is over-represented constantly for fear-mongering purposes, is the 1% that happen when the life of the mother is in danger or there's an issue with the fetus.
So there's no need to...
parse and draw arbitrary lines because what that does is it essentially, especially with rape and incest exemptions, which you speak about, it makes it seem like- I'm not in favor of incest exemptions.
I'm not even speaking about your specific opinion about this.
I'm talking generally about the notions of abortion.
You can't have rape and incest exemptions because it takes so long to prove those cases that it would completely nullify the need for an abortion because as the pregnancy is going along, you would be unable to perform the abortion in the time that it takes to prove that kind of stuff. you would be unable to perform the abortion in the So when that stuff is put into legislation, what it does is it waters down and makes the public seem like, oh, we're not so barbaric.
That's why we should not be intervening in what doctors and patients are doing.
I want people to be empowered over their own healthcare.
No, I'm not because I would never want to overturn something to go backwards and then bring it up to the legislature where we have crazies and Republican nutjobs in the Senate and there's a filibuster that doesn't provide us with the ability to codify it.
You called it a hoax because you know that your audience is going to feed into it, and then you parse it later so you have plausible deniability about it.
But specifically what I said was, and we talked about it in depth, I think the issue is you don't watch the show.
To be fair, I don't watch Majority Report.
Uh, but if, if, like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come out here and be like, you said this one time, this one thing.
I've not watched the show, so I don't know exactly what you're talking about.
But I said, yeah, the idea that you would take a tragic circumstance like this and then create a political story, put out to the super PACs to try and change laws, that's a hoax.
Okay, I'm gonna do something I don't normally do, but that was an egregious over-the-line statement where I don't know if you are intentionally trying to just generate clips that are nonsensical or you're just really that stupid.
The idea that because a Nazi watched your show, your show appeals to Nazis, is like... Look, if you want to have a real conversation, we have a real conversation.
If you want to come up here and do exactly what the majority report does, and exactly why Sam isn't welcome on my and many other shows, feel free to do it, and I'm willing to have you on here.
Did you know that, you know that, like, I don't know about you specifically, but this is exactly why people don't like your show, okay?
You say that because you're trying to draw a line and make the really far-right people that watch your show feel like their positions are a little bit more close to the mainstream than they actually are.
Did you say something like, it sounds like, I said, it sounds like a psy-op to have this profile appear one day after the shooting where it's got like a bunch of screenshots on it or something?
Some guy posts a screenshot of one episode of a show he's not subscribed to, and you think that's an attack vector for something political, but it's a personal snipe that has no bearing on any of the arguments we've made the entire show.
The first hour of our program will usually have Social Security and Medicare kind of discussions or we'll essentially talk to an expert on, say, policy in Latin America, that kind of thing.
The stuff that's behind the paywall and then gets clipped is stuff where we respond to right-wingers.
unidentified
We want to get into the... He got really mad when I said that he got kicked off of Bob's Burgers.
But used to be at TYT, and Gavin Long, who was the Baton Rouge shooter, watched, reposted, and did reactions to YoungTurk's videos.
A lot of them were straight misinformation.
There was one in particular where they were going after a cop who slammed a woman, which probably the cop acted inappropriately, but they wildly speculated that it was a black woman.
It turned out to be a white woman.
And there was a call in the video of like, what do you do if you see a pregnant black woman being assaulted by a cop?
Yeah, so if screenshots, which are of clips that weren't even him speaking, is Tim Pool inspiring this shooter, then how come you've never done this commentary at a place you used to work at, of direct inspiration?
Like, he saw a clip, cuts to himself, saying, I'm gonna step up because I'm the real one.
But I will say it is interesting because the Young Turks did cover this shooting.
And even though, again, reacted specifically to Young Turks videos covering the cops very poorly, propaganda inspired him to commit this violence, in my opinion.
So he does this, but The Young Turks' coverage of it called him just a sovereign citizen.
So this would be categorized as that right-wing terrorism, even though he was inspired by a left-wing news organization, specifically left-wing figures.
I'll do a semi-segue, and I'll talk about what irks me, like the Burisma scandal, for instance.
Any kind of reasonable assessment over the story pre-Hunter Biden, anything, is pretty shocking.
But it's not something you see in any of these quote-unquote left-wing media sources for like no reason.
I think the best example is it is so omitted from the narrative that when we had Hunter Avalon on the show, he didn't even believe that Joe Biden admitted to engaging in the quid pro quo, and so I played the video for him.
unidentified
You know, so what's troublesome is What are you talking about?
I mean, I am a consumer of leftist news wing news sources, but also I read right wing ones just to check in on it.
Centrist news organizations.
I think this is a very, very specific echo chamber that I can't speak to.
The Burisma thing.
I look, I'm not going to defend Joe Biden.
I mean, I'm a leftist.
I'm to the left of Joe Biden.
But this story, I mean, it's pretty much a nothing burger.
Uh, the Durham investigation essentially had... We're not talking about Durham.
Durham, sorry, I misspoke.
The investigation being done in the House right now is like looking into the whistleblower who's suspiciously gone missing and they have an FBI tip for 17 different calls between Hunter Biden and this oligarch.
Well, I'd love to criticize him on things that I think are actually real, like the fact that he's continued Trump's border policy and ramped it up, honestly, with Title 42, where he did sunset that because it was a part of the emergency during COVID, but he's largely, largely continued militarism around the border, other things like that.
Well I don't think and sure you can do an investigation everything that's come out so far seems like it's bullshit but I would rather criticize him on things I find more substantive.
Like, so I can tell you definitively, factually, it's not BS.
I mean, certainly there are political elements of it, but I mean, Joe Biden, this is what I was talking about with Hunter Evelyn, Joe Biden's literally on camera saying that he threatened to withhold congressionally approved loan guarantees unless they fired Victor Shokin.
Victor Shokin signed a sworn affidavit saying this was intentionally to protect Burisma from investigation.
I don't understand how, if you have an understanding of that, you would just be like, all of that's true, but the Joe Biden stuff's not true, because it doesn't make any sense as to why you would defend Joe Biden in that way.
If they want to do some sort of special counsel investigation outside of the political process where it's not a Republican witch hunt, I'm all for that.
And you're connecting it and saying it's a quid pro quo based on a variety of different assumptions that have not been able to be proven yet in the midst of the investigation.
But the idea that we would elect a president to negotiate on our interests when it comes to the issues of military, and then we would be like, but in this one instance, he doesn't have the authority.
Right, but the nature of the investigation that they're looking into is they're trying to say that there was a bribe via Hunter Biden and there has been no- Joe and Hunter.
Right, right, but there has been no actual evidence on that front.
But she's making a very specific point that for it to be a quid pro quo, you have to explain how Biden benefited from this.
So, like, it's not necessarily that she's disagreeing with what you're saying, although she's saying it's part of policy, but she's saying you have to actually, to complete this, like, basically you're two-thirds of the way there, that final third is how he benefited.
unidentified
Biden was not in opposition to congressional policy and Trump was.
This is where I'll say I have differences with Joe Biden.
First of all, I can't even like understand why he hasn't or didn't when he had a House and a Senate that was Democratic push for any kind of single payer or socialized health care.
I wish that that was happening.
He's certainly to the right of me on the border.
The fact that he broke the rail strike, that's something that I'm deeply in opposition to, and I'm happy to discuss those kinds of things with you.
So there's a counterterrorism director of the CIA on the board of this company, and the so-called left is like, well, it's fine.
What is going on?
unidentified
I don't understand how the left became pro-war, pro-Medic, pro-Big Pharma.
Like, like, government should be able to give multi-billion dollar, uh, no-bid contracts to- Tim, I'm against government corruption, the idea that these fail- that these fail sons- Vaccine mandates, like, I don't- That these fail sons- What about vaccine mandates?
No, I was literally just said earlier in the program that I wanted the state to own it since we gave our money to that and created life-saving vaccines with taxpayer money.
I believe that when we have investment into these companies, yes, they were going to make some sort of windfall, but then the vaccines themselves should be owned.
by the public since it was money, our money that was given into it.
That's the practical realities of what we have to deal with today in a for profit health care system.
I'm hoping that we transition away from that and that we have socialized health care.
So none of the things that you're talking about have to happen anymore.
Well, I mean, part of the issue was that in red states there were no- there was no ability to actually- They prevented death, but I think, like, wasn't it like, oh yeah- There was no- Mass mandates were immediately done away with in red states.
They basically had no social distancing.
That was much more of a- had much more of an effect on death in this country than Like, the inefficacy of vaccines.
This has been borne out by data after data after data.
And then we have new variations of the vaccines, which have also helped.
So my issue would be like, instead of having like three big companies, I think it was like four big companies just do it, would be to have it decentralized amongst many different producers who are not centralized.
Or even like a mandated coordination of production, but not have one company just be like, we're going to give $10 billion to company X. That's insane.
I do think that there are legitimate concerns about The continuation of doing so without brokering a piece and it becoming some sort of proxy for US, like, war criminals within the United States.
But in terms of, like, the Russian invasion, I am completely opposed and in support of the Ukrainian people.
If the left position was only opposed to war because of the circumstances of the war, Then I would say the left is more pro-war and to the right of me on war.
I mean, and there's something that you can be said where, where should we draw a certain line?
I have already conceded that strings should be attached and we should be involved in peace negotiations.
But to flatten the power dynamics here, I mean, I would imagine this is like the same argument that you hear when it comes to Israel and Palestine, right?
Where Palestinians are defending themselves and then it's, oh my gosh, it's completely symmetrical, Israel and Palestine.
I'll say I absolutely lean against providing military aid to Israel.
I just don't know.
Uh, I will say, a new war in Ukraine, in a territory that we are not, United States is not, doesn't mean that I'm as far left as possible on the question of imperialism, it means that you are to the right of me on that issue.
And I think that's an interesting question about upholding our obligations that I don't disagree with.
It would be very difficult for us.
Granted, the issue is I think I'm like a little kid.
I'm like seven years old when something like that happens.
And now in my name, you know, we engage in this conflict and war.
I think it's fair to say that while I can understand that treaty exists, as a now adult who is paying tax into this, I have the right to object to past agreements that weren't made by me.
That being said, I just, my point on this one was specifically, I see all these Ukrainian flags and profiles.
I make a comment in agreement with Hassan, where I was like, he was right about Mr. Beast.
And then I was talking about military intervention and how it's wrong.
We're spending $100 billion on this war in Ukraine.
We shouldn't be doing it.
And then he laughed at me over it.
And I'm just like, genuine question, when did it become, or maybe I was always wrong.
When I was at like Occupy or doing these anti-Iraq war protests back in the 2000s, I thought that it was the left position to oppose military expansion, military-industrial complex.
But today, it's inverted.
Strangely, it's the Trump supporter saying no war, and it's the liberal saying per war.
But I'm in favor of committing and making our- and because they denuclearized and said that we're not going to create nuclear weaponry, I am in favor of keeping our promise on that front so that we are able to incentivize and keep our promises that we are going to back you up if you choose not to make nuclear weaponry.
I mean, I think it's, I think it's, um, that first of all, anti-war is, is a dumb like position.
I'm sorry.
It's everybody, everybody's like anti-wars they don't like, but obviously like I can composite a scenario where you would support like an intervention.
unidentified
Like if you gave me time to like, that's what I say, 99% because nothing's absolute.
Like if you were to tell me that, uh, a, you know, Vladimir Putin, But there's something to what she's saying where the Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union had the third largest nuclear weapon stockpile and in exchange for giving it up there were security guarantees now.
If you're worried about nuclear proliferation in other countries that might lead to a nuclear war, protecting or making sure that they can maintain their territorial integrity, just as an example to other countries that might want to denuclearize in the future, is a worthwhile stake.
So it's kind of like if some dude cut a deal with, like someone in my family cut a deal with someone else and then 30 years later they walk up and say, you know, your dad told me that if I ever had this problem, you're going to take care of me.
I'd be like, I'm not my dad.
I'm sorry.
Like governments change, policies change.
And the idea that because 30 years ago, someone cut you a promise means that I now have to spend $200 billion defending you.
The people of this generation who are inheriting this country did not agree to that.
The idea that we'd manufacture a car in China and then ship it on a boat over here just to waste energy because someone's willing to do it cheaper is nonsensical to me.
Just buy American.
So we need to build up the incentives for all the manufacturing to happen here in the United States to create good jobs, to protect the workers.
Worry less about whether or not we're gonna go blow up some foreign country a bunch of kids in it or something like that.
But I think I think like there's like a like you're not you're not seeing this past like what's currently happening now because I get it right and I was a big Ron Paul guy and he didn't like the idea that one generation could promise the sons of a future generation.
I understand that position, but if we don't want Saudi Arabia to nuclearize, we don't want Iran to nuclearize, and we're like, hey, like, you know, like, we got you.
Like, don't nuclearize.
We're going to try to, like, you know, be the 800-pound gorilla in the room so that you don't have problems.
And then they look and say, well, you made that promise to Ukraine.
And then 30 years later, they're invaded by Russia and completely obliterated.
Here's a treaty around, I'm gonna allow your citizens to cross my border with no visa, and we'll reciprocate, like back and forth.
And then having one being like, in 30 years, if anyone comes to fight you, we will fight on your behalf, despite the fact that you're not an allied nation, or a bunch of other issues.
I don't think at any point ever, the US should have been making these promises.
And then to come out and be like, but now Saudi Arabia is, oh, I'm sure.
Every country is gonna be upset if we don't fight on the behalf of some other country.
- No, no, it's not about- - There are limitations.
Look, nothing's absolute, I get it.
We're in this position now.
There's an interesting question of South Korea.
People ask me, what if China invaded?
And I'm like, well, we got a lot of troops there right now.
So I understand the circumstances of today.
But the issue is, you know, for one, we could have put a no-fly zone over Ukraine before the invasion started.
Well, a no-fly zone is a de facto declaration of war once the plane gets shot down, once the United States... And that means Russia would have to have shot down, would have had to attack us.
I mean, either way, the no-fly zone and us getting more directly involved in that way would be catastrophic, potentially.
That's the reason why they would keep them, is to protect themselves from Russian aggression.
Because Russia historically expands westward until they hit a stronger power.
And this is because the geographical limitations to how Russia can develop have been the same for hundreds of years.
So Russia always goes that direction.
That's why Poland immediately in the first opportunity joins NATO, because Poland was called the bloodlands in World War II, because they had the unfortunate situation where two strong powers were attacking.
So this is a misinterpretation that is often inflated and Gorbachev has clarified this specifically.
It's after the Berlin Wall fell, which the Soviet Union was still around, they said that they would not move their military forces within Berlin one inch eastward, right?
This did not apply to Poland or any of these other countries because they were a part of the Soviet Union.
And again, Gorbachev himself, who would have been the person in charge, has made this clear.
So this is like weird propaganda that gets put out by... What do you think happens if we let Russia take Ukraine?
I mean, I think they're going to try to expand their sphere of influence as far westward as they can possibly do, because that's what they do historically.
I think also the point I was making earlier is not that Saudi Arabia cares about Ukraine but like when you're negotiating with somebody right like you know pasta.
Like, past behavior is the best predictor of future outcome.
So when we're trying to negotiate denuclearization with any other country, and our example of what happened to somebody who agreed to give up their nuclear stockpile is Ukraine, which is currently now part of Russia, like, they're not going to want to negotiate with us.
So it leads to potential problems down the line.
Not to mention, historically, when conflict breaks out on the European continent, a lot of Americans eventually go over there and die in order to set things right.
unidentified
And I don't want to I think this is what makes the Third World War.
That's the real line that needs to be drawn, is making sure that this does not become a proxy battle.
And there are forces that want to push for that.
I mean, I think that, frankly, the Biden administration has been a bit more disciplined and unhappy than I initially anticipated on this front.
I remember when the initial invasion happened, Hillary Clinton went on cable news and said, I think that America being a global hegemon is a good thing because those power vacuums will be filled when we leave.
And that's why I'm at the, you know, my view is strengthen this country, you know, shore up our defenses, focus on empowering our people with the ability to live, work, eat, sleep, Medicare.
I'm saying like, my limit is usually like if someone's got some like rare Degenerative genetic disorder that requires 20 billion dollars to treat like we have a limit.
We can't do that.
You know what I mean?
That's why I say basic There's a there was a story about a kid in like I think it was Louisiana who had a genetic disorder the treatment cost 1 million dollars and The family demanded the state cover it the states that we can't afford to cover it But why do you think that healthcare is so heavily inflated in terms of costs in this country?
Well, for one, the insurance companies are all corrupt and broken.
In Germany, in the UK, they spend half of what we do and they have socialized healthcare and they have better outcomes in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality.
But I just want to point out, like, those are horrible metrics, life expectancy and infant mortality for two reasons.
Number one, if you take out car accidents in the United States of America, our life expectancy shoots dramatically up.
In Europe, a lot less people drive and considering we're talking about medical care, I think we should focus on things that describe the impact of medical care.
As for life, I'm sorry, infant mortality, this is one of the worst metrics because if you are born at any point for a split second and you die, you go into our infant mortality statistics.
In France, for example, you have to have the pregnancy gestate for over 20 weeks and you have to be alive for a full 24 hours.
So this is just not Here's an apples to apples comparison.
I think the doctors would disagree with your assessment that the infant mortality rates are overinflated, but I'll then just turn to- They're just measuring different things.
And then when I, because I was between jobs, I left Vice.
And I was starting at Fusion, and I had this one week gap where I told the guys, I was like, give me a week to get, like, to move my stuff, and then I'll start.
unidentified
And that week, all of a sudden, I'm like, ah, like, what's happening?
People think that kidney stones are like you're going to the bathroom, and all of a sudden, you're like, no, it's like in your body, up in your back, like, in your gut.
Yeah, I think, like a lot of the conversations I have about taxes, people will be like, I oppose taxes because look what the government does with it.
And I'm like, so you oppose corruption.
You know what I mean?
Like if you were told that you were getting a really sweet deal at discount price, you wouldn't be complaining about it.
When you're told that they take your money and go blow up kids with it and then, you know, beat prisoners or whatever nonsense, I can understand why you're upset.
The concept of taxes doesn't bother me.
The concept of the government not being held accountable and corruption emerging from it bothers me.
And like our tax dollars, not even our tax dollars, but printing money and giving it to massive pharmaceutical companies or war, Then I'm just like now I can understand why you know someone can come out and say taxation is theft I disagree But I understand their point and I'm kind of just like you know It's really hard to argue against someone who says that when we know that a lot of evil people are stealing our money for evil things Like how do you how do you clean that up?
I think you clean that up and most people are gonna be fine with it Sure.
You know what I mean? - Sure. - If you were spending 50 bucks a month on Netflix and you knew that only 40 bucks was going to some random guy to go beat dogs, you'd be like, "I'm not gonna give Netflix any money anymore." - Well, how did those dogs look? - That's right.
It's like, are they foreign dogs?
You're like, yeah, so I take issues with that.
And I'm kind of like, you know, if you knew that you were contributing to a system that was using your money as efficiently as possible, you'd be like, "Okay, I'm getting some good from it Like, you know, a lot of people on the right, they don't want to defund the cops, right?
But the cops have a lot of broken issues within their systems that need to be fixed as well.
And I think just saying like the extremes of defund the police or just not don't really get to the problem of there's something wrong in the justice system as a whole.
Yeah, I would say I think societies are more comfortable with taxes when they have higher social trust, but I will say there is something to the fact beyond corruption that nobody's ever going to be as careful spending your money as you.
So like there is something that's just going to be inherently wasted when you transfer it to bureaucrats when it's not their money.
unidentified
So here's the funny thing, we'll start to wrap it up.
So, but I think that's the, like, I guess the final thought I'll say on this is that I think for shows like yours, you exist on a political space where you assume everybody to your right is right-wing, even moderates and centrists and liberals.
unidentified
I think I know some moderates and their politics are definitely to the left of yours.
But it's weird because in this culture war, the tribal left, whatever you want to call them, I'm not saying all leftists, but the tribal commentary left is like... Like, I'll give you an example.
The Young Turks did a video where they called me ugly because I talked about attraction privilege, I think, I don't know how you call it, beauty privilege or whatever.
And I was talking about how conservatives are more likely to be attractive because it's easier to go through life as an attractive person.
Thus, you're given benefits that you associate to your abilities instead of society, resulting in a conservative worldview.
And those who are less attractive have it harder, resulting in a collectivist worldview.
And instead of just like...
Telling me I was wrong?
They just called me ugly.
unidentified
Well, I mean, do you have statistics to back up their concern?
But who decides who's ugly and who's unattractive?
So they did studies where they would show images of people to men and women and ask them to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, then create a curve of attraction.
And those people that they showed pictures of, they had interviewed them on their political leanings and found a correlation between attraction and Political leaning, I'm sorry, beauty, perceived beauty and political leanings.
But this is like not even controversial among the left.
But so what happens is you go through life and you're ugly.
People are meaner to you.
They're less interested in you.
You have a harder time of things.
You're going to lean towards collectivist approaches to things like we need to work together to fix these problems.
But if you're attractive and people are nice to you all the time, it's like that 30 Rock episode, The Bubble.
where um i love 30 rock that was that guy's that john ham it's like everyone's super nice to him he thought he was really good at everything but he was just attractive and but like my point is not to talk about that my point is to just insult me instead of address the issue i disagree with the ad hominem but you know it's not me so well anyway i think we should wrap it up a little bit Do you guys want to say anything before we finish?
Oh yeah, so you can find me on YouTube at actualjusticewarrior, on Twitter at iamsean90.
And as for Sam Seder, I'm also a New Yorker.
I will not only go on his show in studio and debate him, I will also take him out to dinner, hang out with him, become his best friend, maybe even wear matching shirts and all of that.
And we're trying to figure out how to do this properly.
You know, I think because of who I am, it's impossible for just to like me to sit back and have people have a conversation.
So I do want to apologize because you're definitely two against one, like both of us.
Although on the Ukraine thing, you guys definitely had me.
I don't know.
I'm like, I'm looking at these both of you.
I'm like, what's going on here?
So, uh, just for the- for future, for everybody, we'll try and make sure that it does not so, like, I felt like we were very two against one, it wasn't very fair, you know what I mean?