#40: Out of Your House & Into the Street (Or Else) (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
In this 40th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world though an evolutionary lens. Find more from us on Bret’s website (https://bretweinstein.net) or Heather’s website (http://heatherheying.com).Become a member of the DarkHorse LiveStreams, and get access to an additional Q&A livestream every month. Join at Heather's Patreon. Like this content? Subscribe to the channel, like this video, follow us ...
Welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast live stream number 40 with a cat's ears barely in the frame.
We are facing the most remarkable stuff and we are continuing to grapple with it live with you all.
Heather Hying, how shall we start today?
May we start with a brief reading from The Coddling of the American Mind?
Excellent.
All right.
So this book, for those of you who don't know, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
It was published two years ago this week.
It's an extraordinary book.
It was based on an article in the Atlantic of the same name, I believe, from a couple of years prior.
Pamela Peresky, who was their senior researcher on the book, approached us along with Jonathan Haidt, just as Evergreen was blowing up, to talk to us about what we were seeing there.
And so we were privileged to be able to see this book as it was emerging.
I just want to briefly summarize a couple of their main points and then read a little bit from it.
So, they start by naming what they call three great untruths, which are what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, what they call the untruth of fragility, always trust your feelings, what they call the untruth of emotional reasoning, and life is a battle between good people and bad people, the untruth of us versus them.
This, of course, is akin to what we've been calling the battle between the star-billed snitches and the snitches without.
That was cat chaos in the background, if you guys could hear that.
So, in this final section of the book, they refer to those truths and they say, okay, but what may explain them?
And they say, we present six interacting explanatory threads.
Rising political polarization and cross-party animosity.
Rising levels of teen anxiety and depression, changes in parenting practices, the decline of free play, the growth of campus bureaucracy, and a rising passion for justice in response to major national events combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.
So all of those, of course, are, if anything, more relevant, more apropos today than when they published the book.
And, you know, they, of course, books aren't written the day they're published.
So when they were writing this, when they were first seeing some of these things emerging on campus in particular, and they point to 2014 as a sort of a pivot point.
And then they wrote their article in The Atlantic.
I can't remember if it was 15 or 16.
And then this was published two years ago.
And here we are today.
with such extreme examples of polarization on the streets and all of these things, but also to look to their last one, changing ideas about what justice requires.
So here they have, earlier in the book on page 75, 76, they describe a scene From September 6, 2017.
So this would have been after Charlottesville, within a month or so of Charlottesville, I think.
And I just want to read to you their description of what happened here.
Appeals to common humanity still work just as well today as when Dr. King made them.
On September 16, 2017, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a group of Trump supporters organized a rally they called the Mother of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering.
Counter-protesters from Black Lives Matter showed up and shouted at the Trump supporters.
The Trump supporters shouted back.
Someone on stage told the Trump supporters to pay no attention to the counter-protesters.
They don't exist, he said.
Hawk Newsome, the leader of the BLM counter-protesters, later said that he expected to, quote, stand there with his fist in the air in a very militant way and to exchange insults.
Tensions mounted and onlookers recorded video of the potentially explosive situation.
Then the Trump rally organizer, who goes by the name Tommy Gunn, took the stage.
It's about freedom of speech, he said.
In an unexpected move, he invited Newsom and other BLM supporters onto the stage.
We're going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out, Gunn told Newsom.
Now, whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant.
It's the fact that you have the right to have the message.
Newsom took the stage.
I'm an American, he began, and the crowd cheered.
And the beauty of America is that when you see something broke in your country, you can mobilize to fix it.
But then, as he spoke about a black man being killed by police, the crowd began to turn on him.
They booed, shut up, that was a criminal, a woman shouted.
Newsom explained, we are not anti-cop.
Yes you are, people shouted.
We're anti-bad cop, Newsom insisted.
He still seemed to be losing them.
We don't want handouts, he told the crowd.
We don't want anything that is yours.
We want our God-given right to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Now they were coming back around.
People cheered.
Someone in the crowd shouted, all lives matter, which is usually intended as a rebuke to those who say that black lives matter.
But Newsom responded in the tradition of Pauli Murray by drawing a larger circle around everyone in the crowd.
You're right my brother, you're right.
You are so right.
All lives matter, right?
But when a black life is lost, we get no justice.
That is why we say black lives matter.
If we really want to make America great, we do it together.
The crowd cheered and chanted, USA!
USA!
In an instant, the two groups were no longer us and them.
Their ideological differences remained, but within that larger circle around them, their enmity melted away, and at least for a short while, they interacted as fellow human beings and fellow Americans.
It kind of restored my faith, Newsom said when interviewed afterwards.
Two sides that never listened to each other actually made progress today.
One of the leaders of Bikers for Trump came up to Newsom afterward and shook his hand.
The two men talked and then posed for a photo together, with Newsom holding the other man's young son cradled in his arm.
So that has many of the elements that we recognize from today's protests and riots and yet has a very different tenor in part because members of both sides, the would-be leaders of both sides, are willing to say, you have a space to talk here and we are going to listen.
We don't have to agree.
People on our side may yell at you, but we're going to listen.
Let me compare that to today's rhetoric before asking you to comment.
On August 20th, just a couple days ago, we received an email, actually before I say this, I will say that actually right now, as we are live, right now in downtown Portland, there is a rally, a set of rallies and a set of counter rallies in downtown Portland Between basically right-of-center protesters and left-of-center protesters, and I think that at least one of the groups right-of-center is the Proud Boys, and certainly one of the groups left-of-center is Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
Two groups with tight correlation, and they are right now meeting on the streets of Portland.
Squaring off, which is something that they have done regularly.
They effectively announce, one group announces that it will be there, the other group announces that it will show up, and things unfold from there.
I should say I've attended one of these just to see what it looked like on both sides, and in general, It is a contained version of what is now uncontained in Portland.
We'll hear about it.
We'll find out.
But I'll bet that today's events are not as contained.
In part, this is one of the first times that the people from the right have declared in advance that they're going to show up for a while.
Certainly, I think.
I may be wrong about this.
But certainly the first time maybe in this 80 plus days that the riots have been nightly in Portland and maybe you know if they showed up it was at all it's been it was early in this.
So on August 20th, today is the 22nd, so two days ago we received an email from a viewer of this live stream who lives in North Portland which is two blocks from the police union building.
On North Lombard that has been at the center of some of the protests and riots in Portland.
So there's sort of four broad areas, not large areas, but sort of four buildings really that the protesters and then the rioters have targeted.
And the police building on North Lombard in North Portland has been one of them.
So this is a viewer who lives just a couple blocks from that building.
And he said, yesterday these pamphlets were placed on the front porches in my neighborhood.
It's blatant propaganda and some of the verbiage is disconcerting at best.
So I just, he included screenshots, not screenshots, he took pictures and he showed us that.
So we're going to show you these.
Zach, would you show the first of those four pictures from the, yeah, and maybe just make it a little bigger so people can can see it a little bit more.
Okay, it's fine.
Okay, so that's the cover.
Next page.
Somewhere on this, we can't read this, but somewhere on this it says, do not expect peace from the police, a fundamentally violent institution which functions to suppress effective social movements.
That's a claim.
Next page.
Somewhere on this page it says, night after night, police respond with violent escalation regardless of protesters' actions.
Another claim, I think, unfounded.
And final page, how you can help.
On the ground, you can leave water bottles out for protesters.
You can provide verbal support from your homes.
Most importantly, you could join us on the streets.
There is strength in numbers.
The more people there are out on the streets, the less likely it is that the cops will injure people.
So just one more thing before I ask us to talk about this a little bit.
Zach, if you would show the video that I asked you to show from North Portland last night.
Out of your house and into the street!
Out of your house and into the streets!
So that is by far not the most violent of the videos from the nighttime protests slash riots.
In fact, there is no real violence there, though you might understand there'd be a threat of violence.
But what they're saying is, out of your house and into the street.
Out of your house and into the street.
Which is, of course, quite not what they suggested in their pamphlet that they were distributing to exactly this neighborhood the day before.
They were asking you to voice support from your house, which is itself an ask that is potentially a big one, because it would appear to be a kind of payment that you must give whether or not you believe it.
But the very next day, what the protesters who might later become rioters are doing is demanding that you not merely show support from the safety of your own home, but you get onto the streets with them.
So there's a trope built in here that were you to see it in a different context, everybody would get it 100%, which is the veiled threat.
It's not even a threat with plausible deniability, it's implausible deniability, where a threat is leveled but it's done in a way that is unprovable.
You can't tell for sure that it's a threat, not at the level that it would be required to prosecute somebody for it, but it's obviously a threat from the point of view of the person Just hearing it.
And so, you know, so out of your homes and into the streets.
That's a demand.
A demand being shouted by people shining very powerful lights into people's homes.
Imagine you were at home and an angry crowd that is setting fires nightly in Portland is outside your house.
Breaking windows, breaking into buildings, police precincts, yep.
Night after night.
Um, and, you know, well, you could report this as, uh, protesters marched through neighborhoods and, you know, invited homeowners to join them.
I'm sure it's been reported that way.
I'm sure, to the extent it's been reported at all, and I must say people around the world who we're in contact with have the sense that things are calming down in Portland.
I see no evidence of that.
Nope.
It's hard to know because you have to, the protests are so concentrated that it's not like the evidence is, you know, we don't encounter it on the way to the market or the post office or whatever.
Well, we were assured things would calm down once the governor and the mayor negotiated that the feds would leave so long as state and local police came forward and started doing their jobs.
Right.
They're not being allowed to.
No, but the point is, okay, so that's a, that's a implausibly deniable threat.
The shining of bright lights into people's windows, um, and... Out of your house and into the street.
That's, that's on the cusp of deniability, right?
Zach, could you show the one that I had, the similar looking video from one of the last couple of nights?
Now this one, we cannot hear it.
Wake up, motherfucker, wake up! Wake up, wake up! Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!
Wake up, wake up!
Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!
Can I hear you?
Wake up! Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!
Wake up!
Wake up! Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!
Wake up! Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!
So that one... Wake up, wake up, wake up, motherfucker, wake up.
Right?
Now, that doesn't sound like an invitation.
Not really.
Now, it could be a temporally inappropriate wake-up call.
I mean, as long as we're doing plausible or implausible deniability.
Maybe they think the people of North Portland are nocturnal.
Right, who knows?
But the point is, that's very threatening stuff.
It's threatening to anybody who sees it.
A lot will rest on the fact that you're not likely to see that.
If you're tuned into certain accounts on Twitter, you'll see it.
You could, you know, you could subscribe to those accounts and you could see this stuff from every single night.
And the few accounts that those videos are coming from have been described as unreliable because they report the same kind of story all the time.
As if reporting the same kind of story all the time itself makes you unreliable when actually it's because we've got 86, 87 nights now of uninterrupted?
Uninterrupted.
Can't be certain of this, but I think that from the point that violence showed up late, it's been consistent every night.
There's been at least some.
So, OK, you've got a situation in which if you're tuned into certain if you're tuned in, let's say, for example, to the Portland subreddit.
The Portland subreddit is quite consistent in reporting that peaceful protesters are out working hard and being attacked by police.
As would be led to believe by that pamphlet.
Right.
So basically you've got two stories.
They're completely incompatible with each other, right?
And one of them is just absolutely insistent on the fact that this is about racial injustice, that the demands are reasonable, that the response is unreasonable.
Well, there's just a couple of tropes again, phrases even, that you see repeated over and over again that seem to have lodged themselves in people's brain and that are just very effective.
Mostly peaceful.
The vast majority of the time you can go and you don't see violence.
And in this particular case, the fact that you can predict it based on time of night and position of sun in the sky makes that an even less compelling argument than it would be otherwise.
Who cares?
Most war zones, in an average moment, don't look like there's much going on.
Actually, maybe this is too far-field and won't land for people watching, but I used to make this point when I would teach animal behavior.
All these students streaming in, I love animals, I really want to watch animals do what they do.
And I say, okay, you're going, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, have you be in the field doing animal behavior and you are going to recognize how boring most of it is.
Because for the most part, animals sit around doing nothing just like humans do as animals, right?
Think about your own last 24 hours or week.
How often were you doing the sort of thing that you would be excited to see an animal doing?
For humans, maybe eating would count because that would be prey capture in a carnivore, but it would just be browsing if you're doing deer behavior.
But you know, how often are they actually like having sex or engaging in territorial interactions or, you know, feeding their chicks?
It happens not very much.
And so the vast majority of time is spent in this sort of, you know, resting state, just like with these protests that become riots reliably.
So, we have not talked about this in advance, but of course I was thinking the very same thing, and I did a few back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Really?
Yeah, it turns out... I don't see an envelope.
World War I was 81% peaceful.
81?
Yeah.
World War II... You've got the receipts for that.
World War II was more than 85% peaceful, and here's the one that really blew my mind.
World War II was more peaceful than World War I.
It was more peaceful.
The presidential motorcade in Dallas in 1963 was 99.8% peaceful.
It's just that one moment.
Just a very brief moment of not peace.
So anyway, yes, these calculations about how peaceful something is can be very misleading if you're not paying attention to the objective, which actually is to wield power.
I'm banging this drum all the time, but it's another form of a numeracy.
Like, oh, mostly peaceful.
Mostly doesn't mean what you think it means there.
It's doing a job that is rhetorical, that is political, that is achieving a goal.
It's not actually describing something that is meaningful in the way that you think it is.
Yeah, it describes nothing.
And it's obviously completely preposterous.
It's a phony story here.
And so, all right.
The fact of us being unable to agree on the basic facts of what is taking place.
If you're paying attention to the Portland subreddit, you get the sense that there are protesters who are under attack by the police, that that's what's going on.
If you're paying attention to Andy Ngo or this account, BG on the scene, who's been documenting these things.
That's where that first video was from.
Yeah, you have a very different impression.
Now the fact is, The Portland subreddit cannot marshal evidence that these protests are peaceful in light of the fact that what they do is fail to report the part that isn't peaceful.
So that's not really... It's verificationist.
It's verificationist.
On the other hand, Andy Ngo and BG on the scene and these other accounts that have documented this have shown you evidence.
Now, it is possible, and I'm not saying that these accounts do this, it is possible to misrepresent this as what is going on across Portland, which is not true.
Or to show evidence of rioters being violent and not to show evidence of police being violent.
That is certainly a way that those videos could be cherry-picked to create a narrative that is not true.
Right.
It could be cherry-picked.
On the other hand, there's certain stuff here that's just very Completely unambiguous.
And if you have done what we've done, which is check in on what's going on in Portland, it's very clear what's going on.
You have a peaceful protest that precedes a riot.
The riot is reliable.
It involves arson.
It now involves harassing people in their own homes.
It involves breaking and entering.
Let's see, Zach, do you want to put up the fire?
So we have Nightly Fires, this one I believe is from last night.
Again, this is VG on the scene, this is a... What did that limescreen ever do to them?
Yes, this was falsely reported as a bird scooter.
It has now been corrected to a lime scooter.
Oh, I got it right.
You did get it right.
You nailed it.
That is some reporting on the ground right there.
False reporting is the wrong kind of scooter.
Wrong brand of scooter.
But, I mean, here's the thing, okay?
These things are being lit on fire.
Trash cans are repeatedly being lit on fire.
This is actually releasing toxins into people's neighborhoods.
This stuff actually gets breathed by people.
Sure, well, but what it's also doing is releasing pent-up energy.
Well, sure.
So, the cover story is one that some of the people engaged in this behavior actually believe, and it is nearly impossible for people in the midst of such activities, especially emerging as they have after... I mean, at this point, the protests and riots have been going on for longer than the lockdowns did before they started, which is amazing.
I remember when they started, it felt like, well, this is how the end of lockdown No, we're still in Portland.
We're still in phase one or something of reopening and the schools are staying virtual and all of this.
But people People who are engaging this, and even most of the rest of us, cannot begin to fathom how much of this is about the manifestation of a mental health crisis.
A mental health crisis that is only going to get worse.
You know, here we are in the Northern Temperate Zone, and indeed, for those of you who aren't in the Pacific Northwest, who have this image of it being rainy all the time, we truly have the most beautiful summers on the planet.
Brett and I have been, you know, not all over the planet, but a lot of places, and there is no place else we'd rather be July, August, September.
It is gorgeous.
This year has been a little bit weird, but in general, clear blue skies and 80 degrees and going down to 50 at night and no humidity and just completely gorgeous.
And it will become dark and cold and rainy and depressing soon.
The days are getting shorter faster now than they have been, and the election is coming What is this going to look like?
The only thing that will keep the stuff going on in the streets in check is the fact that it will be harder for people to motivate to leave their homes when it's gross and cold outside.
But this is peak beauty here in the Pacific Northwest.
It does make it easiest to get out there, but it's also the moment when people are probably At their mental health peak in general in the year.
And there's no end in sight to lockdowns, to virtual schooling, to being able to go back to live theater, live music, bars, clubs, hanging out in restaurants inside safely.
You know, hanging out at restaurants outside, you know, is pretty safe.
And I know some of the restaurants are open inside, but Probably not safe.
So what is going to happen?
It is a toxic, toxic brew.
You said, you know, it's going to release toxins when they're setting fire to the stuff.
Yes, it is.
But it's also this release of energy that is not in and of itself healthy, but is also not fully released.
Yeah, we are headed for a calamity here.
Zach, can you put up the public service announcement video?
It shouldn't be that way.
Honestly, we should be getting paid because we're working so fucking hard.
So donate to us, make sure these things keep happening, and you keep coming out here and getting more angry every day because black people are still getting killed.
Whether you see it on the news or not, black people are dead.
So in that video, the person making the announcement makes the claim, and it's very familiar to us from what happened at Evergreen.
In fact, a lot of this is, and I've seen people comment on... What is he saying?
She is saying that the protesters should be paid for what they're doing.
And there is this sense You know, it's either a complete lie or it is a level of delusion that is almost inconceivable.
That reminds me, and this is anecdotal, we heard several times that the protesters should have been paid at Evergreen.
But I also, up in Olympia, heard, it's an anecdote, but it struck me as such a perfect description of the problem.
That there was an employee at the local food co-op who was making trouble for everyone and also never showed up to work on time and made more work for everyone and was, you know, very much an activist but at a place that was, you know, this is a worker-owned cooperative that had some of the best, you know, best deals for food for people and that's where we shopped when we were there.
Out there and it was just very very hard to get work done apparently in the presence of this employee and a friend of ours who worked there said to me in all sincerity, I just wish that we could pay for this employee to go and do their activism somewhere else where they could really be doing good in the world and allow us to do the work that we need to do here.
Like actually hoping for Payment within a, you know, a not very well funded people's food cooperative to basically offload, to make this problem person an externality into the rest of the world.
So, so much of this comes down to a failure to extrapolate about the simplest and most obvious kinds of game theory.
But when you have a problem person Who people think, well, maybe if we pay them to be a problem elsewhere, we can get our work done.
They can do their important thing.
In effect, that's what this protest is.
This protest is a demand for a transfer of resources, power, well-being.
Does anybody think that this movement is composed only of good people?
Because if it was, how would it not accumulate bad people, given that that's what it's angling for?
Wouldn't it tend to attract them?
Of course.
But again, with this mostly X configuration, right?
Like, even if, and I don't think this is true, but even if Black Lives Matter, for instance, was started out in good faith by really good, honest people who really wanted only the best, for black people and saw the injustice around policing that appeared to be racially motivated and courts that were still racially motivated and all of this.
That entirely benign and good faith movement would come to have some people who would game the movement and then you could still claim, well, it's mostly good faith, it's mostly doing the right thing.
Doesn't matter.
Bad faith actors win even when they are a tiny minority.
In fact, they win less often at the point that they become a majority.
There's a density dependent issue here too, that it's harder to do your thing at the point that you are becoming more and more densely represented within a population if you are a bad faith actor.
So, it strikes me that we are seeing, you know, I hear a lot of metaphors and I've wielded many of them myself.
I've long argued that what we're seeing are Trojan horse arguments, and I think that's a very powerful way of seeing it.
But one I have not heard said very frequently is the wolf in sheep's clothing.
And I think we are seeing something general of this form, you know?
You have a lot of these rioters.
In fact, it appears to be the great majority of the rioters are white.
They are masquerading as champions of black people, which makes them almost impossible to challenge in the current political environment.
Right?
Because black people have a real claim on long-standing injustice, systemic and otherwise, in this country.
So if you claim to be standing with black people, Then you can get away with crimes that other people could not get away with and that's happening now for 80 some nights But we are also seeing You and I have trans friends They want to be treated decently.
They want to be able to navigate their lives.
They want it not to be the only feature of their lives that anyone ever talks about.
Right.
They want it to be a feature of their life at a similar level of everybody else's sexuality where it's not the thing.
Sex ID, yep.
Yeah.
But we also have People who are clearly abusing the category in order to get away with all kinds of obnoxious behavior.
So that is to say, um, the, you know, the dragon that is masquerading as the damsel in distress is a very difficult entity to fight.
Right?
And so there, you've got a protected category.
Call me ma'am.
Right.
Exactly.
Um, and so.
There is, um, I don't know what, how obvious this would have to be in order to be able to get those of us together who want to live in a decent civilization and say, actually, we have an obligation to put down this protest because this protest is simultaneously not what it appears to be, not what it claims to be, is engaged in, I mean, I don't know how much clearer this could be.
You have people living in Portland terrorizing fellow Portlanders.
In what universe is that acceptable?
Even if those people who were being terrorized held obnoxious beliefs, they are entitled to hold obnoxious beliefs.
It's part of the freedom that allows the system to work.
That's right.
But there's no evidence that these people hold any obnoxious beliefs that would warrant any such thing.
So you have to put down this protest, but you can't do it because Somehow, this tiny number of routinely violent people is wielding a totally phony story, and here's the key, is that our We have descended from a polarized society in which there was overlap, in which we believed, into a discontinuous polarity, where we don't agree to the same facts.
And that means that if you are of the verificationist stripe, where you subscribe to somebody who's going to slant the news in a way that will make you happy, then you do think there's a peaceful protest In Portland and that it's being attacked by police and that they successfully drove out the feds who were sent by Trump with no provocation.
It is now considered sufficient to know who said a thing.
To know what you think of it.
You do not have to know what the words are, what the thought is, what the idea is.
All you have to know is the person and that person has already been slotted into I agree or I don't agree categories and that's sufficient.
And, you know, I think this is part of why we are confounding to the extremes on both sides, because we won't say, you know, orange man bad, and if Trump said it, it has to be evil.
And we also won't abandon the fact that we are actually progressives in the old style of progressivism, but hold no truck with this nonsense authoritarian garbage that threatens to destroy civilization.
And, most importantly, I mean this is implicit in what you just said, but most importantly, we do not in any way avoid the evidence that comes from the other side.
Right.
Right?
You've read Kendi, right?
Yeah.
In fact, that's where we're going next.
We're going, but we need to connect a few things up here.
So one… I'm not done reading Kendi, unfortunately, is part of why my voice is like that.
I'm still in it.
In a mafia movie.
If somebody comes into the shop and they say, oh, it's a beautiful shop, it sure would be a shame if something were to happen to it, okay?
It's a protection racket.
We all get it.
That's the trope, right?
Same thing is happening here, where you've got a protection racket that is threatening people unless they join up in some visible way and lend their fuel to that fire.
And I should say, You know, we've had this happen personally.
We've received correspondence at home signed by people who claim to be Antifa and, you know, done with the appearance of a greeting card.
That is an amazing fact.
It's there, obviously, it's meant to be taken as a threat and And it, you know, if one says I've been threatened, then it can be taken as a greeting card if that's what you're inclined to do.
But.
At some level.
So the words were written on a greeting card?
It's obviously a threat.
It's obviously based on nothing.
If you pursue the claims of the movement, those claims don't add up in even the most superficial way.
And of course there's a fail-safe claim at the bottom, which is that your attempt to evaluate claims with logic is itself part of the problem.
So the point is, you know, it's It's it's an infinite hall of mirrors in which people are wielding levers, including threats of physical violence against people who haven't done anything wrong.
Hiding, you know, wearing sheep's clothing in order to maneuver unfettered as wolves.
How obvious would it have to be?
Right?
Like, it's completely obvious.
And the problem is, somehow, Mayor Wheeler is so weak, even though, even though, these people are, I don't think I have it queued up, but calling for his head.
Sure.
Metaphorically.
Right?
Wheeler is the problem.
He still won't do what he has to do and say, you know what?
Enough's enough.
You can't simply be lawless, burn down what you want, break into buildings, We'll walk through neighborhoods and harass your neighbors.
We're ending this now.
Really, other leaders should take note.
We tried to encourage – you know, we were really speaking to other college presidents after Evergreen, going like, okay, this college president that we had at Evergreen was a disaster because he sided with them, but he did so weakly, and of course they came for him when they didn't get the outcome they wanted.
This is exactly what happened to Wheeler in Portland.
And other mayors, other college presidents, other leaders of any sort take note.
Pretending to be on their side or even actually really thinking that you're on their side, you're going to sign on as an ally and you're going to do their bidding, you're not safe.
You will not be safe.
And more to the point, because if you took that position with any sense of good faith at all, you were supposed to be protecting your constituents or your students and faculty and staff, depending on what kind of organization you're in charge of.
You are doing the opposite of keeping your people safe by doing that.
You need to stand strong against this stuff as early as you can and back it up.
And that is not to say that there isn't a place for good faith protest.
We need that in a democracy.
We 100% need it.
But this thing that is happening to Wheeler?
Utterly predictable.
Utterly predictable.
An early version of this happened last summer with the protests at the ICE buildings, I think.
And he did exactly the same thing then.
Of course he's not going to win against these people, because they can tell that he doesn't really know what he's doing and he's not really on their side.
And also, this form of allyship is not really ally.
It is, you're useful until you're not, at which point we'll kick you to the door.
All right, before we move on, I want to point out, you read that description from Coddling of the American Mind, known informally in some circles as Coddling.
The Coddling.
About Hawk Newsome, who had gone to the Trump rally as a BLM supporter and had that very extraordinary interaction.
Now, if you haven't seen the video of that interaction, you should.
Look it up.
Just look up Hawk Newsome.
I'm sure it's on YouTube.
It'll be one of the early results.
It's an absolutely beautiful thing.
And I must say, it represents a possibility that hovers everywhere.
Right?
People are, in general, decent.
And if you are willing to give them a chance, they will very frequently give you a chance.
And you can cross these bridges.
And you and I have been doing this.
It's extremely rewarding.
There's no reason you shouldn't do it.
However, the tragedy of that particular case is that Hawke demonstrates on video, and many people saw it, I mean it was like the kind of stuff that brings you to tears in an environment like this, that Hawke obviously has that capacity within him.
As did the leader of the pro-Trump movement, but I don't remember his name.
Absolutely.
If you will check in with Hawk more recently, he is no longer of this mindset, and I think that this represents a... really a catastrophe, because... What do we see?
Well, so, you should look up a podcast that John Wood Jr., who if you're not familiar with him, but that sounds familiar, you may remember him from the Black Intellectual Roundtable that we did on Dark Horse So John Wood Jr.
is an ambassador for the organization Braver Angels.
And the Braver Angels podcast, John had Bob Woodson, a friend of ours, on with… Who was Bob Woodson who marched with King in the 60s.
He's an original civil rights activist from the 60s.
He's an original civil rights activist.
This is interesting.
He marched with King.
He was originally very much on board and then he watched the movement change and he parted ways with it and he's been doing amazing work ever since.
So really high quality work that has saved a great many people.
But definitely speaking now from the right side of the aisle.
Not the correct side, the right side.
So he's a Republican now.
He is, but at some level He is on the personal responsibility side of things.
On the other hand, personal responsibility demonstrably works, and he has been absolutely tireless about this, and the positive effect is undeniable.
So, he speaks with a great deal of credibility.
Hawke Newsom was having none of it on this podcast.
So John Wood Jr.
is leading a conversation between Bob Woodson and Hawke Newsom.
Yeah.
And basically Hawke Newsom effectively repudiates his openness that he displayed in the interaction with the Trump supporters.
When is this?
Do you know?
It's last three months.
Yeah, I mean, it's so sad.
And it unfortunately reinforces the point that I was trying to make, which is that even this book that was published two years ago and written one and two years before that, which was pointing out how dire a situation we are in, and was able to find a couple of examples of good faith and openness.
Even those doors are closing, right?
And that we just, we are not seeing anything of the kind of openness and generosity of spirit or imagining that other people have intentions and honorability just like you do, that we were even a couple of years ago.
So I think the thing that I'm getting out of it, even in a very polarized environment, there are still things on which You might agree, right?
In other words, there are things that are simply good for the nation, and we can be divided about a lot of stuff, but we should agree, obviously, on the stuff that's good for all of us.
Why wouldn't we?
It'd be insane not to, and it would be crazy if there was nothing in that category.
But our style of interaction has now produced an assumption that if it's good for you, it's bad for me, right?
This can't help but be a disaster, and what it means Is that we are botching the stuff that should be within our grasp, right?
If everybody feels good when they watch a BLM guy and a Trump guy have a positive interaction in which they come to agreement about the fact that all lives are valuable, right?
If that makes people feel good, you would imagine there'd be a lot of it because it would be a, you know.
But what happens is one gets demonized for it.
So if you have poles that are serving their own interests, selfish poles that don't want us to find common ground because it is not in their interest that we do so, what they will do is they will demonize you when you seek it.
I must say this is in the Unity 2020 context, I have seen a huge outpouring of patriotism and decency amongst people who have gravitated to it.
But I have also seen the most amazing emergence of this bitter, toxic, cynical, despicable voice, right?
Where people, I mean, look, you can disagree with Unity 2020 if you want, right?
You could say, well, You know, it's too late.
You could say, I don't believe that your anti-spoiler measures are actually going to work.
So, you know, we have to reject it.
But the thing that has come back at me has been the accusation that it is not a good faith proposal.
That I am actually up to something, that I'm working for somebody, or that I'm trying to accomplish something greedy or something like that.
And it's a shocking thing, but if you take out the content of that accusation... That's always the first thing that shows up though, isn't it?
I mean, we saw...
We've seen this and we've heard from other friends who've gone through the looking glass that that is one of the first.
If you emerge and you're standing, if you have a movement that appears to be that has some traction and has some support, the things that start getting lobbed at you are you're working for Koch Brothers, right?
You're part of the Fox News Network.
You aren't what you say you are.
You're grifting.
All of these things will show up.
You're serving your own interests, right?
Yeah.
I find this shocking though.
I mean on the one hand I think it basically, you know, if you take our motif of you're very often better off turning down the sound on human interactions because you'll understand better what's going on.
In this case you can't really turn down the sound but you can turn down your focus on the actual content of the accusations.
And you can say, When a party sees its interest in division, when it doesn't want unity, what will it do?
It will drive up the costs of anything that tries to find common ground.
And so the point is, when you see something Seeking common ground and then you see it taking fire from outside This is simply what it is.
Somebody doesn't want that middle ground discovered, right?
They don't want the 70% of Americans that the hidden tribes report identifies as the exhausted middle that basically agrees on what direction the country should go Doesn't want that thing to unify it needs it divided and so that
The punishing of the honorable middle is just so despicable and We should just we should name it somehow and then just learn to recognize it because it's gonna happen every time and since the only way out of this pickle is Finding some path in which we can do what Hawk Newsome did in that interaction where we can cross bridges and find the humanity and and
In our fellow Americans or fellow Portlanders or whatever, if that's what has to happen, then we've got to be able to resist the accusations that come back at you when you attempt it.
Yeah.
Okay, slight pivot, although it's all on similar stuff today.
Zach, if you would show that tweet from James Lindsay, just to start us off on this little A little segment.
So, I can't see it there.
He's just quote tweeting someone who says, there is no way until we eradicate capitalism, we cannot eradicate white supremacy.
Capitalism is inherently a vehicle for and created to spread white supremacy.
Okay, so, well then.
I found that absurd, of course, and it just reminds us of what has now been acknowledged as some of the actually Marxist roots of the actual Black Lives Matter movement.
Um, but it's also true that capitalism is plenty useful, um, to those who are trying to gain power.
In fact, they're going to need it.
Um, and as evidence, here we have, um, you want to pull up, Zach, that, um, NBC Boston article, um, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donates $10 million to the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research.
The sub-headline being, the social media giant, CEO, and co-founder donated $10 million to a Boston University research center founded by Ibram X. Kendi to combat racism.
Note, this is not to combat racism.
That's what Candy wants you to think.
I don't know if Jack actually thinks that or not.
This basically amounts to a Don't Hurt Me payment from Jack.
This is the same thing.
He needs to look woke so that no one comes after Twitter at some level.
Maybe he believes it at this point.
It kind of doesn't matter.
But no, despite what the headline says, this is not to combat racism.
What it is, quite explicitly, this new institute at Boston University, is to promote anti-racism.
And as we talked about in episode 39, at some length, This is Kendi's rhetorical trap.
He's created a binary, which is a false one, in which he said, if you are not anti-racist, and I, Kendi, get to define anti-racist, then you are racist.
Everything that is not anti-racist with my special definition is racist.
And if you don't quite know this, then you can mistake promoting anti-racism for combating racism, right?
Those words, those things sound like they're the same thing, but they're not.
And if you think they are, as presumably the authors of that NBC article believe, then you've fallen prey to this rhetorical trap of Kendi's.
So no, once again, you should be opposed to racism, obviously, Uh, and you should be opposed to anti-racism, which no, is not in fact a racist position.
So, um, not only is this being, you know, this is awful, uh, that we've got a drop in the bucket for, for, was it Jack Dorsey?
Um, but it's going to make a huge difference in the efficacy of this new organization that Kendi has been Just the summer to create at Boston University, but it's also dangerous.
So Zach, would you show the PDF with the job announcements for this thing?
So I'm going to have to pull it up so I can see it.
Yeah, that would be great because I cannot.
We can't see that.
It's still too small.
Here we go.
So here we have it.
This was sent to us by someone who's at Boston University who was asked to be anonymized because like so many of the people who are contacting us now, they say, I can't afford to lose my job.
I still need to pay off my loans.
I don't want to be canceled by my neighbors.
You know, those are all different things that we've heard from different people.
And so this was from an internal email to staff and faculty at Boston University for the Center for Antiracist Research, this center that Kendi has founded and that Jack Dorsey has just contributed $10 million to.
And they are looking for associate directors from within the Boston University faculty.
They are now seeking two BU faculty to serve in the following roles.
The second one is the one that's of particular interest.
Zach, if you would scroll down to the Associate Director of Narrative.
The Associate Director of Narrative will lead the Center's Narrative Pillar, which aims to foster public scholarship that shifts the racial narrative problematizing people of color.
So that itself is a claim that there is a dominant racial narrative problematizing people of color right now.
But maybe more important is the idea that one of the four pillars of this work is narrative.
We've got research, policy, narrative, and advocacy.
And usually at a university, you would have research and policy, maybe.
Policy would be a separate sort of an institution, right?
Maybe, what is it, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, I think, which presumably does some policy work.
And think tanks tend to do policy.
When policy-oriented organizations are within universities, they are generally a little bit isolated from the work of the university, which is research and teaching, which is about truth-seeking.
So not only are research and policy here together, and fine, maybe this is that sort of institute, but narrative and advocacy.
And if you click through onto some of the actual links on the site, you find that they are talking about training journalists and working to get into extant journalistic outfits with the narrative that they will be creating.
Which strikes me as so dangerous and so counter to what should be happening at a university that I can't believe I'm still surprised, frankly.
Yeah.
Well, it matches, it is the type specimen of everything that we and others have been talking about on this front.
You cannot be, as Jonathan Haidt has clearly pointed out, you cannot be a university that is focused on truth-seeking at the same time that you are focused on social justice, that these two things are distinct and that they are in a trade-off relationship.
But the very idea that this institute is constituted around the idea of research at all, what is there to research, right?
First of all, we've already had the conclusion spelled out up front, which is that anything that isn't anti-racist is racist, okay?
So, that claim ought to make very clear that there is no research to be done, because that claim is false, and it already dictates the two categories that things could go in, leaving no opportunity that anything is anything else.
Worse, the category of Anti-racist is specifically defined by Kendi as positive discrimination.
Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be.
But anti-racist is about equity, and equity is about equality of outcome.
So when, you know, given that equality of outcome is what you need to be fighting for if you are anti-racist, then positive discrimination is almost certainly going to be a tool that you need to deploy, right?
Well, and he specifically says... Oh he does, it's just not, it's just not, you know, central, you know, positive discrimination isn't central to the definition, but it's clearly all you have to do is follow it one or two steps, and he does, repeatedly, in the book.
So... Not to be an anti-racist.
We have said, repeatedly, that the problem with this movement is that it does not wish to end oppression, it wishes to turn the tables of oppression, and that this is specifically that put in a form that is hard to fight.
So I'm going to try to be candy here for a minute and say, well, we're not trying to turn the tables of oppression.
We're trying to make everything equitable.
That's certainly how.
How could you object to that?
Aren't you just trying to maintain the position that your white supremacy has granted you all of these?
Thousands of years.
My white supremacy.
My white supremacy that I presumably earned as my ancestors were being persecuted by the same white people that you're complaining about.
My ancestors who were literally being enslaved in the heart of Europe in the middle of the last A century.
Yeah, that white supremacy.
Yeah, that white supremacy.
Obviously, that's easy to knock down.
Not that anyone else seems to be doing it, but what do you do with the argument that will come back?
No, we're not trying to turn the tables of oppression.
We're just trying to make things right.
Well, first of all, I would just say, game-theoretically speaking, no, you cannot do this.
Second of all, if you were even trying to do this, you would be spelling out an end point, right?
Because, you know, the problem... And they are!
The end point is equality of outcome in every regard.
Right, except for the game theory, because if you set up a quality of outcome... Well, no, so the game theory explains why you can't get there.
But I think that is the stated goal.
I would say more relevant than the game theory says why you can't get there, actually your stated goal isn't yet fully stated enough because it requires Exactly the racial categories that you all, you know, legitimately complain about, criticize.
And you know, what, how, how is it that we will keep dividing these spaces up?
And you know, this is part of what the rise in trans activism is about, right?
How is it that we will keep on dividing these spaces up so that now, you know, it's only Disabled trans people from the Pacific Islanders who are underrepresented in college administrations, and therefore we definitely have to hire one of them here.
So, you know, if you can continue to make new categories all the time, there is no end point and there is no win that is even imaginable.
But, you know, put that aside.
Even if you had stable racial categories, which, like, who wants that?
But even if you had them, you won't get there because it will fail because of game theory.
Well, yes, it will fail because of a massive collective action problem and a free rider issue, which is if you demand equality of outcome, then the person who profits most is the person who invests least.
So you're basically setting up a system of freeloading that has no mechanism for policing.
And so anyway, The whole thing is so obviously wrong at such a simple level that nobody as smart as Jack Dorsey could possibly believe it.
But here's the thing that I get from this Dorsey bit.
You point out this is a small amount of money to him.
It is a huge amount of money in an academic context.
And the vast majority of us.
Right.
And the point, though, is it follows the exact same pattern as what people are now doing in much more mundane ways a thousand times a day in every institution in the Western world, which is they are solving their own problem by making a gesture that is then empowering the movement that then comes after the next person so that they will solve their own problem and make a gesture.
So the point is, look, I hate to say it, right?
It's very easy for those of us who don't have the kind of money that Jack Dorsey does to misunderstand what it would be like to be in his shoes.
But in this case, I have to say, Jack Dorsey has enough money that he can set himself up for life.
He can insulate himself completely from people showing up in his neighborhood.
Frankly, he can move wherever he wants in the world and be safe by virtue of the
Kinds of things that that kind of resource will buy for him to externalize harm on others for him to empower a movement that is Threatening other people by giving them a token amount of money for him and a huge sum for them he basically just hurt the rest of us by
Creating a huge amount of pseudo-legitimacy, to what I've called idea laundering, an institute at BU that's studying anti-racism for the point of view, for the purpose of generating policy and writing narratives.
This is nonsense, and Jack, you just threw a whole bunch of gasoline on that fire, presumably to solve your own problem, and it's absolutely unacceptable.
I'm reminded of the famous, I want to know how to pronounce his name, Martin Niemöller.
Do you know how to pronounce this guy's name?
First they came for the socialists, quotation.
So let me just read it first and then say what I hear you saying as the modern update, which is just horrifying.
So he wrote, no I'll just read it.
You can show it, sure.
First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.
Well, the update that you were suggesting that Jack Dorsey, everyone from Jack Dorsey to the people with BLM signs on their lawn who put it up for fear that they would be the people who would next see the light shined in their windows and be told to get on the streets or else they aren't part of the right side here.
First they came for the socialists and I, you know, first they came for the socialists and not only did I not speak out, I explained to them why the socialists were wrong.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and not only did I not speak out, but I explained to them why the trade unionists were wrong.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, and I also explained to them why the Jews were wrong.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
It's not quite right, but there's some horrifying update to his to his comment from the Holocaust that people are engaging in now that is even worse than just being silent.
It is people actually offloading the well-being of their neighbors and the rest of society in order to protect themselves for a very brief moment.
Yeah, it's a increase.
Instead of your cowardice leaving others vulnerable, it's whatever the active version of cowardice is, where you're bending over backwards to make life easy for the people wielding the threat.
You are, in effect, increasing the power of that threat against The next people in line.
And I have to say, I see an awful lot of cowardice at the very top.
The people who can afford best not to be cowards are in fact most reliable in this respect.
That they are the most likely to bend over backwards.
And I think it's some perverse version of because they have a huge amount stored up They're calculating how much they would lose rather than how safe they actually are.
I mean, if you can buy your own security force, you know, you can put your house, you know, on a hill and surround it with guards and whatever else you're doing, you're in a much better position to say the truth than those of us who can't do that.
And some of us are standing up.
So what the hell?
I mean, seriously, if we can't depend on somebody like Jack Dorsey to say, you know what?
That anti-racism stuff you're selling isn't anti-racism.
Anti-racism, if that word is to mean anything, would have to be an end to racism.
It's not some new racism that counters racism until some, you know, utopian future point.
Well it's I mean it's related to the truism that there's sort of a rolling goal that I don't remember if it's from corporate America or from from tech billionaire space but people will say you know until until you have your first million you imagine that that will be enough and then you get your first million and they Oh, well now I need five million.
I can't remember.
This sort of emerges from the 80s maybe in corporate landscapes where people, you know, become rich and then realize that rich isn't what they thought it was and they need more and more and more.
And so you don't, you know, maybe even Jack Dorsey doesn't even feel like he's safe, right?
Uh, yeah.
I'm not, I'm not justifying it.
I get it, you know, but on the other hand, this is a, this is an international emergency.
And if we can't depend on the smart people of Silicon Valley to figure out that Western civilization is coming apart at the seams, that they have played some role in allowing that to happen, they have some obligation to the rest of us to Put it right that, you know, we are now, you know, at each other's throats in the streets of major American cities.
People are fleeing those cities.
This is insane.
And people like Jack Dorsey have an obligation to stand up first, not last.
Yeah.
Okay, one more thing before we stop, before we take a break here, okay?
Zach, would you show the ABC, the Australia article that I gave you?
Yes.
Hotel quarantine officer quit over coronavirus safety concerns as inquiry hears of dehumanizing experiences.
First, just the first paragraph here.
An authorized officer put in charge of hotel quarantine operations at Melbourne Hotels says he completed diversity training but was given no formal instructions on how to use personal protective equipment.
And there's a video which, you know, we'll link to this in the description or a pinned comment on this video wherein you can see this, in which he is asked by an investigator Okay, what were you exposed to?
Well, you know, I got training in the app and I got training in diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Did you get training in what the virus is or how to help people?
Did you get training in how to use PPEs, how to distribute them?
No, no, no, no, no.
So um and of course there's this this is coming in the wake of these big outbreaks um that are happening exactly there but but for which maybe we would never even know right uh it should it should go without saying that if you are trying to reduce the spread of a virus I cannot believe we are here.
are in charge of reducing the spread of the virus should receive education in biology and health before they receive training in diversity, equity and inclusion.
The virus doesn't care.
The virus does not care.
I cannot believe we are here.
I'm just gobsmatched and I'm not even British.
Yeah.
And it's not just here.
It's everywhere.
I saw recently an expose, trying to remember, I think Rufo is the name of the person who brought it to light.
The Department of Energy is doing these trainings on, you know, The scourge of whiteness.
Schools of engineering.
This is what we need.
Civil engineers who are more focused on the sex and race of the people building the bridges as opposed to whether or not they actually are enumerate themselves.
I don't want enumerate bridge builders.
No.
And there will be innumerate bridge builders along every demographic line, and there will be numerate bridge builders along every demographic line.
What we need to focus on is skill in engineering, not the demographics.
Yep.
Now, you do need to have no racism in the system at the level of hiring.
If you did have racism, it wouldn't necessarily cause bridges to fall down.
It wouldn't be good, though.
I mean, if you had racism, it would prevent you from hiring the best people, which should be the objective.
But obviously, If there's a problem, it needs to be addressed.
But the assertion that it is a problem because everything must contain this, this, you know, this ghost is absurd.
And, you know, it's challenging our ability to manage nuclear weapons and, you know, reactors.
I mean, this is this is we are playing with nuclear fire.
Yeah, and schools.
Maybe next time.
We've heard from a lot of parents recently from across the Western world who are seeing this show up in their kids' schools for the first time explicitly right now, I think, rather than it's been going on and they're just noticing it.
But it is, you know, especially right now because parents are seeing more of their kids' stuff because a lot of schools are virtual, it is cropping up even more explicitly than it has been for a while, and it's terrifying.
I think we're stopping there.
Well, we need to say two more things before we go.
One, I want to just connect up a thread that just as it is true that we should be eager to find places on which we have agreement that allow us to move forward on that which is in everybody's interest and we're not having that because our level of polarization is now discontinuous.
You have two separate stories that don't reconcile.
This is really the explanation for what happened to us.
With respect to COVID-19.
That what happened was, instead of recognizing, oh my God, this is a dangerous situation, we don't fully understand it, but we certainly have an interest in containing this as well as possible.
We got two versions, both of which turned out to be wrong.
One was very focused on the rate of death, which was the wrong focus.
And that undercut the developing understanding of the hazard that this poses in other ways, the brain damage, the circulatory system damage, the long-term consequences.
Which, to be fair, would have been less obvious early on.
Sure, but the point is we all had an interest in finding out what the actual damage and risk was, but the basic point was, you know, half of us who were very concerned about this were being treated as nervous Nellies.
We turned out to be right about the danger, but the danger wasn't where we initially thought.
And I interrupted you half, you know, and then the other extreme was there's not a problem at all.
There's not a problem at all.
It's just kind of a flu.
Right.
And so, you know, as we've talked about before, when I walk around outdoors here in the summer with the sun shining and I see person after person walking by in their masks, I feel like stopping each of them and just saying, you know what?
Outdoors, you know, it's not like you're standing and talking to somebody, you know, face to face walking around outdoors, you should take that mask off because you're going to need to wear it at times you don't want to.
So, you know, this is the right moment.
So anyway, you've got people who are sort of Broadcasting their failty to the mask-wearing regime rather than... Even on bikes, right?
So the four of us went on a long bike ride yesterday, and the number of people we passed when we were on a bike path who were wearing masks was surprising.
It is surprising.
And it just, you know, it's a needless cost.
And, you know, and they look at us askance.
We may have masks around our necks, but they look at us like we're on the other team.
And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're just doing what the science suggests would be the wise thing to do.
But anyway, This would be so different if we were having a national conversation about the developing understanding of COVID and how to address it in the least psychologically and physically harmful way possible, instead of having two teams, both of which aren't making sense.
So anyway, I don't know what the distinction is between a very polarized situation in which there is still an understanding of there being some common interest, And one in which if it's good for you, it's bad for me, and that's the only thing I'm sure of, right?
That thing... And everything that's good for you is bad for me.
Not just if that thing is good for you, it's bad for me, but everything that's good for you is bad for me.
Everything that's good for you is bad for me, so I'm gonna root, you know, if your guy gets elected, I'm gonna root against him.
Like, how dumb would you have to be to root against... I hope the country fails.
Right.
Wow.
No, you should be rooting to be pleasantly surprised, right?
And wow.
Okay, so that brings me to the last issue.
Unity 2020.
We have nominated six people.
We are now on our site having an active discussion about which of them we should put on our ticket and attempt to draft.
So anyway, this is a very exciting moment.
The actual drafting should occur soon.
If you want to be in on it, sign up at our site with your email address.
The site being articlesofunity.org.
You can also follow us on Twitter at articlesofunity, and certainly join us for our campfires.
The last one with Dan Crenshaw was great.
It would be wonderful if Tulsi had been able to join us.
She was not, but hopefully Tulsi, Dan, Eric, and I will gather for a future campfire soon.
