Today, Dan and Jordan go back to the past on a time travel adventure recommended by Policy Wonk Jim. There were a lot of theories about what Alex Jones might have been interested in talking about back in Fall 2011, but no one could have predicted that he would dedicate about a third of his show to talking about how much he likes the idea of teachers hitting students.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, drink novelty beverages, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are. | ||
| Dan! | ||
| Jordan! | ||
| Dan! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Have you ever heard Broken Social Scene? | ||
| I don't know if you... | ||
| I've never talked to you about the old broken social scene. | ||
| I don't know if you're interested. | ||
| I'm definitely aware of them. | ||
| I don't know if I... | ||
| I bet... | ||
| It's one of those groups that I'm sure I've heard, and if you played a couple songs, you'd be like, I know this. | ||
| But not off the top of my head. | ||
| No. | ||
| Not a fan? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe I am. | ||
| Maybe you are? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Cue it up. | ||
| We got a clip right there. | ||
| Not a chance. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's a whole litany of groups whose names I knew and I just had written off as, like, even when I was in college and all that, it was like, ah, don't college rock bullshit. | ||
| No, this is not that. | ||
| How about Feist? | ||
| College rock bullshit. | ||
| How about Metric? | ||
| I actually like Metric. | ||
| How about Do Make Say Think? | ||
| I have no idea what that is. | ||
| All right. | ||
| How about Godspeed, You Black Emperor? | ||
| I'm aware of them, yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All Canadian. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| All essentially in the same band. | ||
| All just garbage rush ripoffs. | ||
| That's what I say. | ||
| Rush ripoffs! | ||
| Any Canadian band, just a rip-off, a rush. | ||
| I'll stand by that. | ||
| Every member of all of those bands has probably been in Broken Social Scene at one point in time. | ||
| Is that why they're called that? | ||
| Uh-uh. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| I had an aversion. | ||
| And they just released a new EP, which is why I was curious. | ||
| I recognize this as a deficiency on my part, but I am very prejudiced when it comes to bands, but just about the people I think like them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| When I was younger, I never got... | ||
| I went into Nirvana because the cool kids at school that didn't want to hang out with me all wore Nirvana shirts and stuff like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotcha. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Well, if it's for them, then it's not for me. | ||
| I'll go listen to Ska. | ||
| Fair, fair. | ||
| Something like that, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I'm not saying I'm better because of it. | ||
| I'm saying it's a piece of my brain I've not been able to coach out of myself. | ||
| I famously discovered the Go Team a year ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Famously! | |
| Famously! | ||
| Everyone knows this! | ||
| I texted my brother. | ||
| I'm like, what does it mean if I think the Go team is pretty cool? | ||
| He's like, it means you were in college ten years ago. | ||
| I'm like, I'm an asshole. | ||
| Thunder, lightning strike. | ||
| There's a lot of good music I miss just because of that weird blind spot that I have. | ||
| I try to rectify that. | ||
| I try to be more open. | ||
| But it's tough because I just end up listening to old... | ||
| No Limit Albums and Steely Dan. | ||
| What if I threw this wrinkle in there? | ||
| The way that I would describe Broken Social Scene is Baroque post-rock. | ||
| Does that sound interesting to you? | ||
| You've actually made it less likely than I'm going to listen to now. | ||
| Come on, man! | ||
| There's horns? | ||
| You love horns? | ||
| You like a ska band? | ||
| I do like horns. | ||
| You love horns? | ||
| You love a good horn section? | ||
| Broken Social Scene's got the horn section for you. | ||
| All right, I'm going to give you a maybe on this. | ||
| Something I'm not going to give a maybe to is giving a shout-out to some of our new donors. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| We appreciate everyone signing up so much. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to say to Lon, L-A-H-N, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you, Lon. | ||
| Thank you very much, Lon. | ||
| Next, Emma. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you, Emma. | ||
| Next, Drew. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you, Drew. | ||
| Thank you very much, Drew. | ||
| Next, the ex-conspiracy theorist. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you very much, the ex-conspiracy theorist. | ||
| And finally... | ||
| Although I have a conspiracy for you. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| He's not ex. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Finally, I'd like to say thank you to somebody who donated on a little bit of an elevated level. | ||
| We appreciate it oh so very much. | ||
| So, Emmy, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a globalist. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Four stars. | |
| Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | ||
| Someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. | ||
| Daddy shark! | ||
| Thank you, Emmy. | ||
| Thank you very much, Emmy. | ||
| EMI? | ||
| If I recall correctly, that is someone who has requested that we send them a postcard, and I just got a postcard. | ||
| You just got a postcard? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I got a postcard finally. | ||
| I'm not around postcards very often, so I hope I'm not mixing up people. | ||
| If I am, I feel very bad. | ||
| If this is the correct person, postcard's coming soon. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| And if you out there would like to support the show, like these wonderful wonks have done, you can do that by going to our website, knowledgefight.com, clicking the button that says support the show. | ||
| We would appreciate it. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| And if you have requested a button, thank God, but I have finally gotten up off my lazy cop ass. | ||
| Well, you should blame the shipping department, which is you. | ||
| That's a different hat I wear. | ||
| That guy's a fucking lazy piece of shit. | ||
| You need to break heads in that shop, man. | ||
| That union is too strong. | ||
| No, come on, man. | ||
| Too strong. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| No oversight from management. | ||
| Fair days work, fair days pay. | ||
| That's all I'm saying. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| But you recently just sent out all the button requests. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I sent out, we literally have one button left. | ||
| So I sent out all of our buttons. | ||
| If you requested a button, hopefully it will be coming soon. | ||
| If you are in England and requested a button, I bought an international stamp, but I honestly don't know how that works, so it might show up. | ||
| It might just go to England. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So thank you all for requesting them buttons. | ||
| They should be coming. | ||
| So now, Jordan, we need to make good on something here today, and that is a at least year-old time travel suggestion. | ||
| Hey, somebody's in that department. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| The time travel department. | ||
| That one's me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Jim, policy wonk Jim, actually came to Chicago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And we got some drinks with him. | ||
| Cool, dude. | ||
| I was supposed to do a time travel episode for him, and I delayed on it. | ||
| And now that I have re-asked him what his date was that he wanted me to do... | ||
| I got everything fucking backwards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| So, I didn't want to do the episode a year and a half ago, or whenever he requested it, because the date that I was looking at for it was the day that Benjamin Netanyahu came and addressed Congress. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Alex had some very weird thoughts on it, and I didn't think we were in a position to know what was weird and what wasn't for Alex to be saying. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, good point. | ||
| So, I didn't want to do that, but I wanted to get to it down the road. | ||
| So, I forgot. | ||
| So there we go. | ||
| But I would constantly be reminded whenever I would think about the time travel episodes, shit, I gotta get to that one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But by the time I was sitting down to really get it prepared, I'd forgotten what date he actually requested. | ||
| So I sent Jim a message. | ||
| What date would you like us to do? | ||
| We're finally gonna get around to it. | ||
| So sorry. | ||
| And Jim was like, Jesus fucking Christ, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He said September 1st. | ||
| I'm not sure what year. | ||
| Oh, that's when the Twin Towers fell. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| That is not the date that Benjamin Netanyahu came to the United States, so we're not doing that. | ||
| Although, maybe because we were so bad about doing this in time, we'll do that episode for him, too. | ||
| About a year and a half from now? | ||
| Right, but he said September 1st of whatever year, so I ran with that. | ||
| We gotta do what we can to make things right. | ||
| So, I chose September 1st, 2011, because I feel like that's a time period that we don't know a whole lot about. | ||
| That's in the sweet spot between our two investigations. | ||
| Somewhat, yeah. | ||
| And I think that we have a pretty good sense of like after December 2012, things get real weird for him because that's when Sandy Hook happened. | ||
| That's when Sandy Hook happened. | ||
| December 2012, yes. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| And so I had a sense of like, let's see where he's at. | ||
| I think that's the sweet spot for a random year choice. | ||
| So I chose 2011. | ||
| This episode's weird, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| He's already claimed that the Sandy Hook kids are crisis actors? | ||
| No, but actually... | ||
| A year in advance? | ||
| Since I obliquely brought that up, I want to address the structure of the show moving forward a little bit. | ||
| I think I'm done with 2009 for now. | ||
| I went and listened to Tax Day. | ||
| We were going to cover that for today's episode and do this episode on Wednesday, but it's just nothing. | ||
| The show is really bad. | ||
| It's really boring. | ||
| The only thing to take away from it would be two clips of him basically expressing exactly what we've said about him getting in board with the Tea Party. | ||
| That he believes that Ron Paul and the 9-11 truth movement... | ||
| is responsible for the tea parties and Glenn Beck and his ilk are stealing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we've come to the conclusion. | |
| There's not really a whole lot left there. | ||
| I think it would be better use of our time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I've said that I think Occupy Wall Street would be a good investigation. | ||
| I think that Ebola timeline would be an interesting one. | ||
| But the one that I want to do the most... | ||
| The alternate timeline where everybody got Ebola and died? | ||
| The one where Alex is a liberal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, the one I want to do most is Sandy Hook. | ||
| I want to start on the day of Sandy Hook and see what Alex says moving forward. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I want to soft pitch that and see what the audience thinks. | ||
| If you guys think that that's a good idea, let me know. | ||
| I would like that to be what our Monday episodes are moving forward. | ||
| That's going to be emotionally intense. | ||
| It may be. | ||
| It might be deceptively not that emotionally intense. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| He might ignore it for a long time. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's possible. | ||
| We might find it. | ||
| Who knows what we might find by opening that box up. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Sandy Hook kids are all crisis actors. | ||
| Day two. | ||
| Where did ice cream go? | ||
| Didn't we used to eat ice cream? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think that that might be the best use of our time. | ||
| I think we could find a more detailed version of what he was up to in that time. | ||
| But I understand if a large portion of our audience would think that that would be somehow, like you're expressing, too heavy or something like that. | ||
| And if so, then maybe the Occupy Wall Street would be the next one to jump to. | ||
| But whatever it is, I want to jump to a new investigation. | ||
| I'm a little bit raw on 2009 at the moment. | ||
| I don't feel like there's a lot of answers left there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotcha. | |
| In April, at least. | ||
| I think later in 2009, it probably is. | ||
| So yeah, that's that. | ||
| Let's get to the show. | ||
| Oh, do we do a show? | ||
| I thought we were just doing production meetings on air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| 2011, September 1st. | ||
| Here's an Out of Context drop from today's show. | ||
| You don't have to take vaccines. | ||
| It's not the law. | ||
| You can spank your children. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It's a law. | ||
| I feel like that should be switched around. | ||
| You don't have to take vaccines. | ||
| No, you do have to take vaccines. | ||
| And you can spank the hell out of your children. | ||
| You should not be allowed to spank the hell out of your children. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| Switch them around. | ||
| This episode takes a lot of time with Alex talking about whether or not it's appropriate for people to hit kids. | ||
| And... | ||
| That seems odd. | ||
| It goes... | ||
| It's 2011, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| It's not 1911. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It's 2011. | ||
| It's weird and... | ||
| I didn't think his angle on it would be what it is. | ||
| I thought it would be very different. | ||
| Yes, but only with rocks. | ||
| From what I can tell, he is staunchly pro-Hidden Kids. | ||
| That sounds right. | ||
| Which we'll get through, but before we do, Alex starts off the show with an announcement that I thought was the definition of trivial. | ||
| Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Welcome and thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| It is Thursday. | ||
| The first day of September 2011, and we're going to be live here for the next three hours. | ||
| We have Alex Schaefer joining us at the bottom of the hour. | ||
| He is the Southern California-based painter who painted images of the town burning and of a bank burning, and the police were called by a good see-something, say-something citizen. | ||
| And the FBI was dispatched. | ||
| We're going to be talking to him. | ||
| So he has this guy, Alex Schaefer, on. | ||
| And we'll listen to a tiny bit of his interview. | ||
| But just to give you the details of this. | ||
| Oh, the broad strokes, if I remember. | ||
| No, no, stop it. | ||
| Bad. | ||
| Bad deal. | ||
| He's a guy who set up and was outside painting a Chase Bank, but was also painting it on fire. | ||
| That's pretty funny. | ||
| And someone who walked by was like, this is weird. | ||
| And probably told police that maybe you should check in on that guy. | ||
| And they checked in and just wrote an incident report about it. | ||
| And it's not a big deal. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Noticing it's weird, I disagree calling the cops. | ||
| No, totally. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No snitches. | ||
| I would say that there's a fair conversation that this person should have minded their own business. | ||
| But also, if this guy wasn't a white dude, he probably would have gotten actually arrested. | ||
| That's kind of what I was... | ||
| At this point in time, it is almost a negative moral choice to call the cops. | ||
| Like, it is almost an act of violence to call the cops at this point. | ||
| That's something I was talking about with my parents when I was in Austin. | ||
| Like, the first night that we were there, next door there was like a huge raging college party until about 3 in the morning and none of us could sleep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And one of the things I was talking to my dad about was like, it's probably, like, this sucks, but it's probably awful, the idea of calling the police right now. | ||
| Because, like, what you could accidentally bring into somebody's life, like... | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Maybe there's someone who's undocumented who's at that party and then they have to leave the country or something like that. | ||
| There's so many unintended consequences from calling the police that it's weird to think about now. | ||
| No, if you call the cops on a black person, that is almost attempted murder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It kind of really is. | |
| Attempted... | ||
| Attempted strong. | ||
| But I know what you're saying, and I don't disagree with the idea that you're putting forth. | ||
| But the point is that this guy just got a talking to from the cop because he was painting a building on fire as he was looking at that building. | ||
| Pretty funny. | ||
| I have some questions. | ||
| That's pretty funny. | ||
| I would probably come talk to him like, hey, what's up, weirdo? | ||
| Was he just like a regular painter? | ||
| Yeah, he was just a painter. | ||
| He was just a regular painter who just decided that he wasn't like a mural guy. | ||
| He was just like a jobber just going in there. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Not like a house painter. | ||
| Oh, he's not a house painter. | ||
| No, he has an easel. | ||
| Oh, okay, okay. | ||
| He's painting the... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm not sure what you're imagining. | ||
| I was imagining just a regular old painter wearing the white overalls and the white hat. | ||
| You know, the painter from the 1970s? | ||
| I don't know why that's the painter I'm thinking of. | ||
| That's not the case. | ||
| That's not what we're talking about here. | ||
| So, in this next clip, Alex has big news, and that is that Ron Paul agrees with him. | ||
| About stuff. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That is huge news. | ||
| But at this point, the Iowa straw poll had happened already for the coming 2012 elections. | ||
| And, of course, as we remember, Michelle Bachman won that, with Ron Paul coming in a close second. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Because Mitt Romney said that he wasn't taking part in straw polls, only caucuses and primaries. | ||
| I remember Michelle Bachman's statement she put out after she won that straw poll, which was just... | ||
| She was very thrilled. | ||
| Very thrilled. | ||
| So, in this next clip, Alex talks about Ron Paul, his momentum, and then disparages the fact that he got beat by Michelle Bachman because she was cheating. | ||
| Ron Paul, feds preparing for breakdown of law and order. | ||
| I was able to confirm his views that he gave Robert Wannick, reporter a few weeks ago at the Iowa Ames Straw Poll, that he was a statistical tie with Bachman, who bought 90%-plus of her votes. | ||
| And I brought up the FEMA centers, and he agreed that they're preparing for collapse because they understand what's happening in the economy because they've engineered it. | ||
| So I don't particularly care about this, but Alex seems to be surprised by Ron Paul agreeing with him on this, which shouldn't be happening in 2011. | ||
| If you've already been, like, Ron Paul comes on your show all the time. | ||
| Like, you guys are buddies. | ||
| You've been supporting him since the 2008 election. | ||
| You shouldn't be, like, it shouldn't be news that he agrees with you about FEMA camps. | ||
| That implies that for years he hasn't said that or something. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| Right, so that's weird. | ||
| I don't really care about that. | ||
| Second, Michelle Bachman buys all her votes at the straw poll or whatever. | ||
| Sure, is that how that works? | ||
| I guess so. | ||
| Like, any time there's something inconvenient to Alex's political narrative of how things are going, ah, paid protesters, they bought the votes, they shipped in the illegals, all that. | ||
| No matter what, any time a fact is inconvenient, fuck it. | ||
| There's a conspiracy behind it. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Smart. | |
| It's good to think of. | ||
| Is she using campaign funds to buy those votes? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Or is she using those former governor of Minnesota monies? | ||
| Who knows, man. | ||
| Could be anything. | ||
| Could be all of it. | ||
| Totally inconsequential because almost immediately after this, Alex starts talking about kids getting hit in schools. | ||
| That sounds right. | ||
| Starts talking about corporal punishment. | ||
| And I was certain when I started hearing him talk that I was going to hear him say, like, These goddamn teachers better never lay a hand on a kid. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I thought for sure. | ||
| No chance of that in my mind. | ||
| He hates schools. | ||
| Never got there. | ||
| My first default was he would say, why aren't those paddles with the holes in them anymore? | ||
| Why aren't we using devices that were specifically invented to hurt children more? | ||
| I thought he would be so against the idea that there are public schools and stuff like that. | ||
| That by virtue of the fact that they're run by the globalists and UNESCO makes their information that they put out, the unified curricula and what have you, by virtue of that, teachers are suspect. | ||
| Ergo, they can't hit your kids. | ||
| I thought for sure that would override whatever I like the idea of violence stuff would, but no, he is, he didn't blow my mind. | ||
| That's not fair. | ||
| But he really took me aback for a second when he starts talking about this. | ||
| And he seems to be really into the idea of teachers hitting kids. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, in this first clip, he sort of expresses that it's better than them getting arrested. | ||
| But that is reliant on a false dichotomy. | ||
| There are only two choices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's either we hit your kids or the cops hit your kids. | |
| Sure, that's a problem in thinking. | ||
| The idea that it's either or. | ||
| But here, let Alex speak his piece. | ||
| And then we will see where he's at. | ||
| They want to destroy law and order. | ||
| So, yes, in the name of allowing spanking and corporal punishment in schools, they passed a law restricting the right of the independent school district, which I don't like government training centers, and I wouldn't put my child in them, but some people don't have a choice. | ||
| And if you're going to put them in there, they've got to maintain order. | ||
| But see, instead, in a few areas in Illinois and New York where they do not have corporal punishment, dodgeball's not allowed either because it's seen as aggressive. | ||
| That's where they have the shootings. | ||
| That's where the teachers are getting attacked. | ||
| That's where your kids are being beaten up. | ||
| That's where there's absolutely no control. | ||
| But then, if there's a little fistfight or a scuffle or even kids shake hands, it's not allowed in many schools, the police are called. | ||
| See, instead of being run around the track until you throw up, or being given a few painful pops that don't hurt you physically, but sure staying, instead of that happening, you're just going to go to a jail cell when you're 13, and there's 17-year-olds in there, they're going to take you in the shower, and they're going to rape you, and they're going to give you STDs, and that's what goes on every day. | ||
| That's a little much. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| He's almost there with the school-to-prison pipeline, but he's way off on the solution. | ||
| I also think that, I mean, when you're really looking at it, I agree, Alex. | ||
| We should reform the prisons and the child detention centers. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Isn't that the answer? | ||
| Not let the coach hit him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| Or let the teacher give him a couple painful pops? | ||
| Those don't hurt you physically, though. | ||
| This is painful. | ||
| Suggests physical harm. | ||
| I don't understand how he sees the problem of, like, an assault at a detention facility. | ||
| Or, you know, whatever. | ||
| He sees that problem, and his solution is, let the fucking teachers beat their ass! | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, the solution is, you know, systemic reform of the place where the assault is happening, not, hey, let's introduce all this archaic old, you know, sort of, respect your teachers or you get the hit. | ||
| Did juvie exist in the 1800s? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| They kept order just fine, didn't they? | ||
| I don't know if they did. | ||
| Yes, they did, of course. | ||
| If you remember Anne of Green Gables, she got hit all the time. | ||
| I'm not sure that makes your case. | ||
| I think it does. | ||
| So he loves the idea of, like, and you know what? | ||
| Here's the other thing, too. | ||
| Like, just the idea of, like, a teacher giving you a couple pops or whatever, terrible. | ||
| But the idea of, like, being run until you throw up is an emotional abuse, too. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because there is the, like, if you don't complete the punishment I'm ascribing to you, you are weak. | ||
| There's that level. | ||
| And then if you're doing that, if you're running until you can't run anymore or something like that, it's also a public shaming. | ||
| Like, everyone else is watching you do the running. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And stuff like that. | ||
| So there's layers upon layers of abuse that Alex is really into. | ||
| When it's being directed towards children, which is really fucked up, and I did not expect to find this. | ||
| Do you know what the problem is? | ||
| They make those kids run and run and run until they throw up, and that's because they stop using the stocks for public humiliation. | ||
| You just put a big stock right back next to the basketball court, and you have the kid, you know, hang in there. | ||
| Everybody gets to throw a few painful pop tomatoes at him, and then everybody moves on. | ||
| So I kind of thought that that was going to be the extent of it, him being like these... | ||
| These child detention centers and stuff like Juvenile Hall is a bad place that we don't want kids to go to. | ||
| And the only solution, the best way to deal with that is prior abuse to get them in line. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I thought that that kind of bad thinking was going to be it. | ||
| But Alex does an hour about this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| He does an hour. | ||
| And in this next clip, he starts talking about the problem with liberals. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| The problem with liberals is they need to hit their kids more. | ||
| You can't go to a movie with your children and not watch the liberals come in and just gripe at their kids and get in their face and needle them and psychologically mess with them and peck at them. | ||
| I mean, I had to leave a movie a month ago with my children because in the ten minutes before, these people were, these socialists were in front of me. | ||
| And I heard enough to then hear that they actually were basically socialists and they had like this three-year-old daughter. | ||
| They were totally screwing up. | ||
| Just needling her and telling her this and that. | ||
| And guaranteed they don't disappoint. | ||
| These are mentally ill people. | ||
| They've taken control of our society, they've totally wrecked it, and they love it. | ||
| So, he ran into some socialists. | ||
| Who were obviously expressing their economic beliefs while at the same time needling a three-year-old. | ||
| They were saying that the three-year-old wasn't doing enough to help seize the means of production at the movie theater. | ||
| I think that's right. | ||
| For the workers. | ||
| The concession stand needs to be unionized. | ||
| Everyone needs to work together. | ||
| And that baby isn't pulling its part. | ||
| That's probably true, though. | ||
| Just talking about its diapy. | ||
| The baby was like, oh, trickle-down economics actually works. | ||
| And they were like, no! | ||
| Reagan was evil! | ||
| No, they didn't yell at the kid. | ||
| They needled it. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Oh, you think Reagan was so great. | ||
| Don't you, little baby? | ||
| Don't you, little baby? | ||
| They're sarcastically mocking the economic ideas of a three-year-old. | ||
| That image is so fucking funny. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| And Alex had to leave the theater because this didn't happen at all. | ||
| No! | ||
| It's so hilarious. | ||
| What kind of imaginary situation is this? | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| But it's also reliant on this idea that liberals don't hit their kids enough and they do stuff like this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| And so, in this next clip, Alex develops this theme a little bit more and talks about how liberals not only are bad at raising kids. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| They can't raise anything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Like plants? | ||
| Maybe a plant. | ||
| I learned what all the old-timers said from experience. | ||
| You let them be lazy, you start getting problems. | ||
| As soon as you start getting on them, then they're a lot happier. | ||
| Just like a dog. | ||
| You don't train a puppy, it's going to be absolutely miserable and have a horrible life. | ||
| You train it, it's going to be happier, smarter, people are going to like it. | ||
| First of all, we're going to get to his later theme here, but that is a fucked up way to look at kids, I think. | ||
| I think that when you compare it to training a dog, I don't know, I don't know, I mean... | ||
| This should be in his custody stuff. | ||
| This is an episode that should be played in his custody hearing. | ||
| He's comparing child raising to having a dog. | ||
| Yeah, well, that's not... | ||
| Yeah, that's great. | ||
| Damn liberals. | ||
| I mean, I challenge you. | ||
| A study should be done at dog parks. | ||
| They'll ask people, are you a conservative or are you a liberal? | ||
| Have them marked down a note and observe them for a month when they come to the dog park. | ||
| And I'm telling you, when liberals on average have animals, it is because they're so nice. | ||
| They let the dog bite your dog. | ||
| They let their dog act weird. | ||
| They let their dog urinate on the carpet. | ||
| They let the dog run off and get run over by a car. | ||
| They don't understand any basic laws of anything because they were taught to be rudderless by the social engineers. | ||
| So you can't, if you're a liberal, you can't really raise a dog because you allow it to do weird things. | ||
| I don't know in the realm of dogs what weird, like wearing a beanie, wearing a propeller beanie, that's weird for a dog. | ||
| Liberals do, liberals are more likely to dress up their dogs in costumes. | ||
| I do think that is true. | ||
| But that's not allowing weird behavior on the dog, that's projecting a personality on the dog that's of your own accord. | ||
| And don't tell me that conservatives don't do that too. | ||
| Fair. | ||
| That's absurd. | ||
| Fair, fair, you're right. | ||
| Old ladies who think Barack Obama is the great Satan also probably put their dogs in dog boots. | ||
| So if we take the conclusion that Alex is sort of presenting here, it is also that you should beat your dog. | ||
| It is kind of that. | ||
| I mean, I know that's not what he's saying, but it's... | ||
| And I'm using loose lips here in terms of, like, you should beat. | ||
| Because he's not saying, like, abuse in a pummeling kind of way. | ||
| Yeah, no, that's still... | ||
| Yeah, I'm gonna go with beating is still bad. | ||
| What he would want to just be talking about is spanking in the home. | ||
| But because he's comparing it to corporal violence and punishment in schools being okay, it does cross that line a little bit. | ||
| It is insane to me. | ||
| And spanking is not really cool either. | ||
| Study after study has proven that if you use violence against your kids, they're far more likely to be violent later on in life. | ||
| It is not they become nicer and cool. | ||
| It is that you're just breeding violence over and over and over again. | ||
| Mild spanking is appropriate in certain settings when there's like a life-threatening condition or something like that. | ||
| Like running into traffic or something like that. | ||
| I believe, from my understanding of the literature on it, sociologists, psychologists agree that in those sorts of instances it's okay. | ||
| But once you expand it into a punishment, once you expand spanking into something that is then associated with behaviors and things like that, that's where you run into trouble. | ||
| And I don't think Alex is interested in the nuance of that and the damaging effects that can be the result of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's what he's saying people should do. | ||
| Liberals don't do it enough, and also they don't beat their dogs. | ||
| It's crazy to me because all of those guys who are like, I got hit when I was a kid and I turned out fine. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's like, dude, I got hit when I was a kid. | ||
| First off, you didn't turn out fine. | ||
| And second... | ||
| Neither did I. I did not turn out fine. | ||
| Right, and generally those excuses or those sorts of sentiments are being expressed when someone is trying to justify them hitting their kids. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's almost always like, I... | ||
| Sure, I spank my kid for a punitive sort of thing, but I got spanked when I was a kid with a belt and I turned out fine, not realizing that what you're doing is expressing exactly how this is passed down. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I got hit when I was a kid and I decided that it's a good idea to continue the endless cycle of violence. | ||
| Everybody knows that creating more violent young men is a great idea, right? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, he's talking about how liberals can't raise dogs. | ||
| There's socialists in the movie theater who needle their children when they should be disciplining them or whatever. | ||
| But at this point, he's kind of a little vague on his definition of liberal. | ||
| So you might just think he's talking about Democrats, any of that stuff, but no. | ||
| In this next clip, he legit defines what he means by liberal. | ||
| This is a disappointing definition. | ||
| When I get up here and I say liberals are a bunch of gibbering moron idiots, Hi! | ||
| I'm not talking about some organic farmer who sees themselves as a liberal. | ||
| See, it's all these labels. | ||
| Thomas Jefferson was a liberal. | ||
| But Thomas Jefferson is diametrically opposed to what a liberal is today. | ||
| I'm talking about these people that are scared of snakes, scared of guns, scared of the countryside, scared of cows. | ||
| Why did you start with snakes? | ||
| Snakes are... | ||
| Look! | ||
| Do you know who is the most disappointing liberal of all? | ||
| Indiana Jones. | ||
| Indiana Jones. | ||
| You bet. | ||
| Look, why do you start with snakes? | ||
| Guns, I get. | ||
| I get that serves his sort of political definitions and stuff. | ||
| And the countryside, fine. | ||
| You don't like people who are rural living or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Snakes? | |
| Well, Rex was just... | ||
| Snakes are something that a lot of people are afraid of. | ||
| Rex was just out in the Texas countryside and he was like, oh no! | ||
| I'm afraid of snakes! | ||
| And Alex was like, well, I guess I have to hit you now. | ||
| But now he goes to cows, too, which is the same problem as snakes, but here we go. | ||
| Cows scared of everything. | ||
| They're scared of everything, but things that they shouldn't be scared of. | ||
| What I'm saying is they're scared of things that they really shouldn't be that scared of. | ||
| And then things that they should be scared of, they have no basic instincts of understanding, no government. | ||
| Big, powerful groups getting together. | ||
| I feel like a basic instinct is being afraid of states. | ||
| That's what can really destroy societies and kill a lot of people and enslave a lot of people and humiliate a lot of people. | ||
| So now we know that Alex's definition of liberal... | ||
| Did he say they turn grape societies into very sour societies? | ||
| It sounds like he did say that. | ||
| So a liberal is one who is afraid of snakes, but not of the government. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Good to know. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Good to know. | ||
| That sounds right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That sounds really right. | ||
| Not sure I agree with that definition. | ||
| I'm not a poli-sci major or anything like that. | ||
| I don't have a degree, but I don't think that that accurately depicts the... | ||
| The political spectrum. | ||
| Well, I mean, these polarized, like, we're in a more polarized nation than ever before. | ||
| True. | ||
| And if you see these polls, there's like 88% of liberals disapprove of the job that Trump is doing, and they also agree that snakes are bad. | ||
| Well, so many liberals aren't afraid of Joe Rogan, and as we know, sneaky snakes. | ||
| Sneaky snakes. | ||
| So that kind of throws a wrench in there. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| Does he... | ||
| Does he... | ||
| Like, you should... | ||
| The answer's no. | ||
| You should at least be, like, specific snakes. | ||
| Because I'm not afraid of a garden snake. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm not afraid of a... | ||
| What, you want a medal? | ||
| You're not afraid of a garden snake? | ||
| Well, apparently I'm not a liberal anymore. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Gotta give your card back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unfortunately. | |
| DSA just kicked me out. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I think it's rational to be scared of all snakes. | ||
| Even though some of them aren't dangerous. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's still probably... | ||
| They move weird. | ||
| I think there's an instinctual human discomfort with things that crawl around on their belly and slither. | ||
| It's a weird way to move. | ||
| There's also that whole they bite you and you die thing. | ||
| Most people don't know the difference. | ||
| Not all of us are Crocodile Dundee over here. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Most of us are Indiana Jones, though, in that we are afraid of snakes. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| So, in this next clip, he gets back to talking about how teachers should be able to just go ahead and hit your kids if they want to, if they deem them out of line, basically. | ||
| And Alex is like, the part that I find very uncomfortable about this is he seems to be pining for the times when that could happen, when he is an adult and is not subject to that sort of thing, and he would never allow his kids to be put into that situation. | ||
| And see, it's so alien. | ||
| That today, that just 50 years ago, people wouldn't bat an eyelash if the football coach gave 10 pops to their son and if the son bowed up and hit the football coach and the football coach broke his jaw. | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh... | |
| And quite frankly, back in the old days, if the teenager ended up beating up the coach, everybody kind of bowed down to him. | ||
| I'm not going to tell any stories. | ||
| The point is that we have gone from a manhood-based society to a scientific ninnying society that is not altruistic and just failing and wrong. | ||
| It's designed to make us a bunch of weak jellyfish. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| Option two. | ||
| Option two. | ||
| Let me re-up on option two. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Scientifically based ninnies. | ||
| I'm fine with that. | ||
| Super fine with that. | ||
| Option two. | ||
| No manhood society. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, so he's trying to express that he beat up his football coach. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| A hundred percent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| That's what he's trying... | ||
| And everyone bowed down to him. | ||
| Everybody was like, yeah! | ||
| Which makes me very uncomfortable and I don't believe... | ||
| That's as believable as the socialists at the movie theater story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| I think what he's describing is a profoundly fucked up situation. | ||
| The idea that a coach would punch a kid ten times, first of all, too many times. | ||
| Second of all, kid hits him back, and then the coach breaks his jaw, and Alex is like, no one would bat an eyelash at that. | ||
| I think even back then, someone might bat an eyelash. | ||
| I would hope so. | ||
| I think that that goes beyond what is acceptable, even in the times when corporal punishment was much more regular in schools. | ||
| Now, Jordan? | ||
| It's really interesting. | ||
| When you look at the map of states that still allow corporal punishment in schools... | ||
| South. | ||
| Man. | ||
| It's pretty much just the South. | ||
| I didn't even... | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Don't even... | ||
| It's the South. | ||
| The South! | ||
| It's pretty much just the South, with a little bit of the Midwest thrown in, like Missouri and Kentucky. | ||
| Both. | ||
| Basically the South. | ||
| And then Wyoming, where it's legal, but not used in any public schools anymore. | ||
| So it's still legal, but it's kind of a vestigial thing. | ||
| This may be slightly dated info, as some of the states here that I'm going to discuss may have passed laws since the 2016 map I was working off of from NPR. | ||
| Things might have changed since then. | ||
| But it's legitimately jarring to see the geographical split so clearly defined. | ||
| The more likely a state was to be a part of the Confederacy, the more likely it is that they still allow corporal punishment in schools. | ||
| Those are things you can track. | ||
| Pretty clearly. | ||
| Our children's butts will swell again. | ||
| Is that what they're... | ||
| The South will rise again and swelling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In 1977, the Supreme Court decided 5-4. | ||
| The corporal punishment did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, nor did it deny the student in question of due process. | ||
| In the case, Ingraham v. | ||
| Wright. | ||
| That case involved a 14-year-old 8th grade student who didn't promptly leave an auditorium when asked to by a teacher. | ||
| At that point, he was taken to the principal's office, restrained, and struck with a paddle at least 20 times. | ||
| A paddling so severe, the child suffered a hematoma that required medical attention and was advised by doctors to rest for 11 days. | ||
| Another student at the school had received a paddling that allegedly was so severe, he was unable to use his arms for a brief period of time. | ||
| Nothing cruel and unusual about that, according to our legal system. | ||
| It's pretty fucked up. | ||
| Like, if you have to use both of those words, like, it is 100% cruel, but it is not unusual for the South. | ||
| It's both to me. | ||
| All but 19 states now have laws prohibiting corporal punishment in public schools. | ||
| But get this. | ||
| Only two states, Iowa and New Jersey, have passed laws about hitting kids in private schools. | ||
| Those are the only two states out of the 50. That have rules about what private schools can do to your children. | ||
| Dude, you don't want to regulate private enterprise. | ||
| You don't want to keep corporations from dumping toxic waste into our natural parks. | ||
| And you definitely don't want to keep corporations from hitting our kids. | ||
| Interestingly, a 2016 study in the journal Social Policy lays out some interesting information found by digging into data gathered from school districts that allow corporal punishment. | ||
| Imagine my surprise to read that black students are way more likely to receive corporal punishment, in some states as much as five times more likely than white students. | ||
| Equally troubling, their research revealed that students with protected disability statuses were similarly more likely to be recipients of corporal punishment in schools. | ||
| All of their data was examined for possible explanations that didn't involve bias and punishment, but they were all excluded by further examination of the data. | ||
| Pure and simple, black students, male students, and students with disabilities were consistently the target of disproportionate punishment in terms of corporal punishment. | ||
| Their summary is crystal clear. | ||
| The data make clear that where school corporal punishment continues to be used, it is typically used disproportionately with some subgroups of children more likely to be corporally punished than others. | ||
| They went in and found that, like, obviously there's a bias in terms of, like, suspensions and expulsions. | ||
| Well, there is a very large discrepancy in expulsions and suspensions that is on a racial basis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Even controlling for other factors in terms of, like, what percentage of the school is black and what is white, it is disproportionately applied, those punishments towards black students. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And a very similar trend is found when you look at corporal punishment. | ||
| Four similar infractions... | ||
| Irregardless of populations, like majority black school, majority white school, any of that stuff, it doesn't matter. | ||
| Across the board, black students are far more likely in almost every locale that they studied to be the recipients of this. | ||
| And that is, as awful as that is, you kind of expect it because of how bad we think humans are. | ||
| You kind of expect that. | ||
| The revelation of looking at this was the disability students, the people with protected disability statuses. | ||
| Like, that's really fucked up. | ||
| The idea that corporal punishment is consistently used at a higher level. | ||
| On students who are disabled is really troubling. | ||
| You know, it makes sense to me mainly because I know how much abuse happens in old folks' homes. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| In nursing homes. | ||
| Because they're easy. | ||
| Because they're easy targets. | ||
| Because rather than being... | ||
| Because they're clearly like, I'm frustrated, I can't talk to you as fast as I normally talk to people, so I'm just going to hit you. | ||
| Yeah, and who knows how much of it is... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| The study stops short of making any kind of, like, this is why this is the case, or anything like that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, psychological analysis of some sort. | ||
| Yeah, and I can't really come up with a good reason. | ||
| I mean, your idea is fine. | ||
| I don't know if that's the case, but, like, it's really fucked up. | ||
| I mean, just based on the fact that there are these statistical anomalies that you find in terms of who is the recipient of these corporal punishments. | ||
| That's enough that we shouldn't do it ever again. | ||
| Like, it should be outlawed across the country. | ||
| Just based on it being used as a systematic tool against certain subgroups. | ||
| And if Alex wants to get on board with that, male students were one of those subgroups that were disproportionately affected by the corporal punishment. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| He wants to, you know, stand up for men and stuff like that. | ||
| He could do that. | ||
| Unfortunately, he thinks... | ||
| That getting hit in schools makes you better as a man. | ||
| God, it is something that never, ever fails to be a massive disappointment, no matter how many times you hear it. | ||
| But a black child at seven years old is told already that you're worse than other people and is then hit. | ||
| And this continues for their entire life. | ||
| For their entire life in the United States. | ||
| It is a constant... | ||
| It is something that is constant. | ||
| I think based on the data, all we can say is that that happens to them at a much elevated rate, comparatively. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| Yeah, but your point is very real. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| So, I was looking at all this stuff, and I was trying to make sense of it, because I know that Alex hates violence against children. | ||
| He talks about it all the time. | ||
| Like, it's one of his biggest issues now. | ||
| I mean, it's imagined violence against children. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Satanic blood drinking and what have you. | ||
| But you would think that the trend would still be towards, hey, the data's clear. | ||
| This is bad. | ||
| I understand if you want to have a debate about in the home whether or not spanking is good. | ||
| You know, I understand where that gets messy. | ||
| You know... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I get you. | ||
| I'm squarely on the side of you shouldn't spank kids, except in those severe situations that it may or may not be necessary. | ||
| But I do understand where the debate is a little bit, I guess. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| It's the vaccine debate. | ||
| Somewhat. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I don't think that there is much of a debate about school. | ||
| Oh, no, absolutely not. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| And for Alex to think that there is not only debate about it, the other side is right, the side that says hidden kids is cool, is very weird to me. | ||
| And so I was wondering, where the fuck does this come from? | ||
| Because it has to come from somewhere. | ||
| There's an idea, a belief, somewhere that's powering this. | ||
| And he says this in the next clip. | ||
| I think he expresses where it's from, but it's still confusing. | ||
| And so under common law, when you give your child, and that's in the penal codes, go read it, in every state, when you give your child to anyone to be their guardian, they now can use reasonable force to protect that child and to order that child. | ||
| And that reasonable force goes up. | ||
| Child's throwing a fit, throwing things around, you can restrain them, spank them, whatever's needed. | ||
| The child starts attacking people with a weapon? | ||
| Now you can defend yourself. | ||
| I don't like the way you said that now you can defend yourself, as if you get to now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The freezing is interesting. | |
| It's unpleasant. | ||
| You can't just go out and shoot somebody, no matter how much you want to. | ||
| But if somebody breaks into your home, guess what? | ||
| You get to shoot somebody. | ||
| You've always wanted to. | ||
| Now you get the chance. | ||
| That was weird. | ||
| I mean, he's talking about common law, and we know that that's where a lot of his weird sovereignty, citizen kind of beliefs come from. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Like, hearkening back to common law. | ||
| So I want to say, like, off the bat, I'm not 100% sure that I know what he's talking about, but the idea that teachers are legal guardians for the students, and that somehow you give up your rights whenever you send a student to school, that sort of thing? | ||
| That doesn't sound right. | ||
| It's not, but there is something that's close to it. | ||
| So if I had to guess, I would say that this is a reference to the in loco parentis principle. | ||
| But even this is super weird. | ||
| In loco parentis, just sort of in place of parent... | ||
| That sort of principle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It was something that was established by Cheadle Holm School in Manchester in 1855. | ||
| But it wasn't that weird for them to declare themselves parental over their students, since that was largely a school for orphans and wards of the state. | ||
| I was literally about to say that's an orphan school. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So that is where this idea comes from. | ||
| It's like boarding school type of place where the parents are dead. | ||
| So your brain doesn't have to stretch too far to get that. | ||
| No, in the 1850s in Manchester, either your parents were dead or your kids were dead. | ||
| There really wasn't much middle ground. | ||
| So the idea of in loco parentis is a vague concept that really doesn't have much legal backing on its own, and in fact has been regularly eroded by Supreme Court decisions. | ||
| West Virginia State Board of Education v. | ||
| Barnett from 1943 ruled that students couldn't be forced to salute the flag, which means that the students have First Amendment rights in the schools that they wouldn't have in their own home. | ||
| So there's a difference already in terms of that, and it's a substantial difference. | ||
| In cases like Tinker v. | ||
| Des Moines Independent Community School District and New Jersey v. | ||
| TLO, the court found that officials of the schools operate as representatives of the state and not purely in some sort of parental capacity towards students. | ||
| So many of the protections from state abuse offered to citizens also applied to students. | ||
| Now granted, the history of a lot of these decisions, that's not nearly the entirety of it and it's way more complicated than that. | ||
| I really wish this weren't true, but I swear to God I misheard you and I heard ELO and I was like, whoa, the electric light orchestra is involved in this? | ||
| They wanted to hit kids. | ||
| Little known fact. | ||
| Take the long way home. | ||
| To avoid a switch. | ||
| So one of the important things to consider is that the roots of a lot of the educational systems, particularly in this country, were in religion. | ||
| As schools became more secular in nature, a lot of these weird ideas about authority changed a little bit to reflect the changing priority as being actual education as opposed to schools being a place where you got moral instruction. | ||
| You'll notice that in Catholic and private schools, they still haven't changed that much, and those are the places where corporal punishment is... | ||
| Legally protected. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Much more. | ||
| Protected, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So these are the ideas of where this in loco parentis stuff, sort of, where it had sway and the sway has eroded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Our public school system as it exists now has no business being engaged in this sort of thing. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Because teachers aren't, well, they're an authority figure in as much as, you know, they're an authority figure. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But they're not in the sense of like... | ||
| The Catholic priest who's over the school who is there to safeguard the virtue of all the students and all that stuff. | ||
| It's very different. | ||
| So while in loco parentis type ideas haven't entirely disappeared, they've eased up considerably in the past hundred years. | ||
| You still see some things like on a college campus, they'll say it's a dry campus, where there's a zero tolerance policy towards alcohol, even though students there may be of legal drinking age. | ||
| These are remnants of this legal principle that we've all just kind of decided to live with, and I'm not entirely sure why. | ||
| But here's the larger... | ||
| Same way with daylight savings time. | ||
| We're all like, this is dumb, but I guess we're just not going to change it. | ||
| Here, Jordan, is the larger issue. | ||
| Alex cannot be supportive of this sort of in loco parentis common law bullshit in order to justify teachers hitting students, and at the same time be so opposed to schools placing restrictions on students bringing guns to college campuses. | ||
| The entire principle he's arguing for is that students do not enjoy the same rights as they do in the outside world at schools, and that needs to extend to guns, too, if he actually thinks this is a real principle. | ||
| Of course, he doesn't, since he actively worked to try and disrupt the efforts to ban firearms on the UT Austin campus, and he's now hired Caitlin Bennett as a reporter who's really only famous for carrying a gun on the Kent State campus. | ||
| So, like, you understand, like, a lot of these in loco parentis ideas only exist nowadays as these sort of weird restrictions that exist. | ||
| Like, and they existed until the 70s in terms of, like, you could be kicked out of school if you went to, you dated the wrong sort of person or whatever. | ||
| Like, there was one case where there was, I can't remember the name of the court case. | ||
| I wish I could. | ||
| But there was a restaurant on campus and the university were like, you guys can't go to that restaurant. | ||
| It was bad. | ||
| What? | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was deemed okay. | ||
| That was just fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They have the right to say these students are not allowed to go to this restaurant. | ||
| That doesn't sound right. | ||
| No. | ||
| And that sort of thing is still okay in private institutions. | ||
| Like, private colleges can still do that sort of thing. | ||
| That still doesn't sound okay. | ||
| Public colleges can't. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It's this very weird... | ||
| Except in Iowa and New Jersey. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Private colleges still can't do that. | ||
| How is... | ||
| How is Iowa somehow out in front? | ||
| A bastion of child freedom. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's really weird. | ||
| But this idea that he has about, like, you give over your authority when you give these kids to the school or whatever. | ||
| I don't know if he understands the ramifications of it. | ||
| Like, if he really believes that, then, like... | ||
| Like, where does it end? | ||
| If they can physically assault the kids, can they assault them in other ways? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Can they teach them lies? | ||
| Like, at what point do their fictional parental authorities end? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I don't know, man. | ||
| It's just really weird. | ||
| It's very, very, very weird. | ||
| I don't understand where Alex's middle ground is, or his center is, his truth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think he just wants kids getting hit at schools. | ||
| Because I think he thinks it makes them better and tougher or something like that. | ||
| And I mean, no, absolutely, he's wrong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But if it comes from that common law thing, if that is really where he gets it from, then he has to be, like, he has to be for so many school prohibitions that he ostensibly isn't for. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I just don't understand. | ||
| It's too late in this podcast in terms of us doing it for two years now for me to be surprised that there's something that is inconsistent. | ||
| So I'm just going to go ahead and put that baby to bed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Let's move on to this next clip where Alex really makes it seem like he wants kids getting hit. | ||
| So they create a power vacuum. | ||
| They take it away from parents, coaches, teachers, pastors, Boy Scout leaders, Girl Scout leaders. | ||
| And now the young people don't respect you. | ||
| In any mammal, animal kingdom... | ||
| This is already wrong. | ||
| I've seen it even on the nature shows. | ||
| The seals going over the whale breathing hole on the ice. | ||
| Killer whales are hunting and eating them. | ||
| The mom barks at him, comes over, nudges him away. | ||
| Goes over a second time. | ||
| She comes over and really barks at him and nibbles on him a little. | ||
| Just kind of starts to bite him. | ||
| And it's the same instinct. | ||
| She does it further down his hindquarter, away from the eyes. | ||
| Don't want to hurt the baby seal. | ||
| She's trying to keep him from being killed. | ||
| They can't fucking talk! | ||
| Can you talk to your kid? | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| I don't know if these seals have schools where teachers hit kids. | ||
| So that metaphor is falling apart already. | ||
| Well, where do they go to learn how to honk those fucking horns? | ||
| I don't think it's a... | ||
| It has to be a school. | ||
| I don't think it's a centralized school with in loco parentis rules for seals. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| It's absolute nonsense. | ||
| But what he's describing there in terms of the animal kingdom, I don't know. | ||
| I didn't watch the same nature special that he watched or whatever. | ||
| But that goes to the times when spanking is appropriate. | ||
| Like the idea of when the kid itself is in danger. | ||
| When it's life-threatening. | ||
| Yeah, that sort of thing. | ||
| That's where you can make sort of exceptions to that no spanking principle or whatever, from what I understand, as someone who doesn't have kids and won't. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
High five on that. | |
| What he's describing in The Animal Kingdom is the analog to the possibly okay version of spanking a child, but he's trying to make that as an analogy towards teachers and people in the schools hitting kids. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And that just doesn't work for one reason. | ||
| Again, like I said, SEALs don't have an educational system. | ||
| And second, in a school, it's not a life-threatening situation. | ||
| It's always a punitive thing. | ||
| It's always a physical punishment that you're doing to a kid. | ||
| It's not appropriate. | ||
| It's not productive. | ||
| Nothing along those lines is okay. | ||
| So he's trying to muddy the waters by using an animal analogy. | ||
| And it's stupid. | ||
| Does it ever cross any of these people's minds who are making these arguments about the animal kingdom? | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| That we're trying to, like... | ||
| Improve? | ||
| Like, do they ever get this, like, well, if SEALs do it, then it's okay for us to do it. | ||
| And it's like, dude, SEALs don't build stuff. | ||
| So, like, maybe we're trying to outpace the whole SEAL evolution. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| You know, like, maybe we'd create a better society. | ||
| If we weren't exactly like seals. | ||
| And just to say that something is a natural response to something doesn't mean it's a good response. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or is a productive response. | ||
| Maybe the seals aren't getting anywhere because they abuse their kids. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like maybe, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that it? | |
| I don't, that's not an argument I'm making. | ||
| But like, you know, maybe something an animal does that's totally natural isn't. | ||
| The best thing it could do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Because we have higher cognitive functions, we could observe that behavior and then be like, oh, they shouldn't, that's fucked up, those animals do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's plenty of examples of that if you want to get into it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Look, I'm not a crocodile Dundee over here. | ||
| Hey, it's natural for a praying mantis to kill its mate, so there you go. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Solved. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So anyway, in this next clip, we talked a little bit about seals. | ||
| And now Alex wants to talk about deer. | ||
| I have seen, when I'm in a deer blind, and fawns, baby deer that are almost grown up, almost leaving their mother, run out, but she smells something. | ||
| She comes out, gets in front of them, tries to push them back in. | ||
| They don't listen. | ||
| I've seen both. | ||
| She reaches over and bites them on the back. | ||
| They kick and get angry, but then run off in the woods. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or... | |
| Shield, I've seen them turn around and kick them. | ||
| Look, I smell a predator. | ||
| You're about to get killed. | ||
| Oh, but see, the liberals would say, walk right on out there. | ||
| That really doesn't sound right. | ||
| Now, I'm not planning to shoot that little deer. | ||
| We're too busy being afraid of snakes. | ||
| The point is, is I'm waiting for the big buck to come out, but she smells the smell of the creature that she knows kills deer. | ||
| That's you, Alex. | ||
| She smells a murderer. | ||
| Someone who commits murder on a regular basis to her family. | ||
| She's a dumb deer, but she knows I'm bad news. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| It's a weird story to be illustrating your point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And again, even in this metaphor, it's still... | ||
| Life-threatening. | ||
| It still is that muddying the waters of what sort of... | ||
| Is appropriate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That sort of thing. | ||
| This is a life or death situation for that fawn because Alex is coming. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| No, even if your kid walks out into traffic and there's a car coming and you're like, I don't know what to do, but I got to get this kid out of the way. | ||
| If you jump kick the kid and he goes flying out of the way, that's abuse. | ||
| But you did save his life. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I hope he lives. | ||
| If he doesn't live, it was all for naught. | ||
| If you were a deer, that might be appropriate. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But... | ||
| You know what you could do is just be like, hey, come back. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| If the kid understands those sorts of demands. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| But, look, it's a mess. | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| These metaphors don't work. | ||
| His attempts to tie it... | ||
| To animal behavior doesn't work. | ||
| And I gotta stress, he does an hour on this. | ||
| I can't believe he does an hour. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| Does he just choose different animals to compare it to? | ||
| No, those are the only two. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But now he gets back to his main thesis, and all I can really describe it as is he wants teachers hitting kids. | ||
| Because it's common law and penal code for hundreds of years in this country that when someone turns their child over to the school, They are now the guardian. | ||
| And I know I'm belaboring this. | ||
| It's been a lot of time, but it's a big issue. | ||
| And so the state tries to pass a law saying that schools can spank children because it's out of control. | ||
| Because parents are saying, I can't spank, so why are you? | ||
| You can spank, you idiots. | ||
| So they passed a law saying now the parents have to give the approval. | ||
| The parents give the approval when you put them in that school. | ||
| I think, if I had to guess, I don't think he really believes this is true. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Because it's ludicrous. | ||
| But what I think he's doing is trying to spread more fear of public schools by being like, whenever you put them in there, they own your kids. | ||
| They won't hit your kids. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| It's more that... | ||
| And they're filled with snakes! | ||
| It's more that you can hit your kids. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Do whatever you want to do. | ||
| And whenever you give over... | ||
| You've already... | ||
| If they're in the school, you've given up your guardianship to the school. | ||
| Is that in a contract somewhere? | ||
| It's not. | ||
| In order to be a legal guardian for somebody, there's a whole legal process. | ||
| The court has to recognize it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's very complicated. | ||
| The idea that your kids now... | ||
| Like, there are shades of legal guardianship in terms of, like, hey, you're in a classroom, kid dies on your watch, or something like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You are responsible. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| There are shades of that, to that extent, but not the way Alex is describing it. | ||
| This is a ludicrous level of, like, what is it? | ||
| Giving over ownership. | ||
| Transitive property? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Transition of rights? | ||
| Just giving over your rights and responsibilities as a parent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He imagines that it's like, oh, you stepped foot in that school. | ||
| Parent now is Mr. Weatherby. | ||
| I really wish people would read those terms of service Apple agreements. | ||
| Because if you download music from the iTunes store in those terms and conditions... | ||
| They can also hit your kids. | ||
| Oh, that's true. | ||
| Tim Cook, come over. | ||
| Tim Cook, it's bananas. | ||
| So he gets to what he believes is the end game of this, I think. | ||
| I'm not entirely sure. | ||
| It's very weird, because he starts making some complaints about things that he's afraid of. | ||
| But at the same time, based on his idea that it's common law that the school is now your parent if you go to the school. | ||
| They should be totally fine doing these things. | ||
| They're certainly not worse than hitting your kid. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But he's complaining about them as if they are some sort of terrible transgression that the school's making, and he's also lying about them. | ||
| See, it's all hoaxes and bait and switches and shell games and scams. | ||
| Now, it gets worse. | ||
| In thousands of school districts, last time I checked, it was the majority. | ||
| And there's 20-something thousand school districts plus in the country, but in a large portion of them. | ||
| First, it's no dodgeball. | ||
| Then it's no tag. | ||
| Then it's no wrestling. | ||
| Then, in many schools, you can pull this up, schools ban jogging at recess. | ||
| Schools ban shaking hands at recess. | ||
| And now, the teacher's not allowed to touch him or talk to him. | ||
| Oh, Billy just shook hands with Bobby. | ||
| I'm going to call the police, and the cop shows up and writes you a ticket! | ||
| I think this is socialist at the movie theater level imagined scenarios. | ||
| Well, first they came for my dodgeball, and I did not say anything, for I didn't have an arm. | ||
| I think there are some schools, definitely, I wouldn't say the majority of them, from what I've been able to tell, that don't have dodgeball as part of their curricula in gym. | ||
| I'm really fine with that. | ||
| I'm also shocked it was okay. | ||
| Because there were a lot, as I recall when I was younger playing dodgeball, it was the sort of thing where people got hurt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whether it was from taking a ball to the head, falling over, hitting your head on the ground, or trying to dodge a ball and sliding on some sort of bad surface. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I can understand why some schools would be like, there are other ways to get recreation. | ||
| This is clearly, at least on some level... | ||
| Violent game. | ||
| Well, there's always, always the kid who is playing the game as a bad actor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Too aggressive. | ||
| Yeah, he's always like, I'm here to kill, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, in terms of, like, banning running or jogging, the only things I was able to find were, like, there are some schools that have banned running to recess. | ||
| Running out of the classroom. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Which obviously could create some problems. | ||
| Many people have banned stampedes in the past. | ||
| I don't know if it rose to that level, but in terms of protecting kids, yeah, going to recess in an orderly fashion kind of makes sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think what Alex is talking here about the handshake thing, though, is that there have been a number of schools who have banned post-game handshakes after sports games. | ||
| Without exception, all of these schools did so because of fights that kept breaking out between teams. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| Even in that order, though, the association made it clear that schools can decide to ignore the order with zero consequences. | ||
| But we're required to report any incidents that may have come about because of that decision. | ||
| Two dozen is way too many to finally get there. | ||
| Well, it's statewide. | ||
| I feel like a baker's dozen is enough to get there. | ||
| It's three years and it's statewide. | ||
| I do agree it's too many, but it's not like one school. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You have to kind of look at it in the picture that it is. | ||
| I get you. | ||
| I agree with the decision, but I also don't think it's like... | ||
| Why didn't they act way sooner? | ||
| Now that I know it's statewide, I kind of assumed it was in a smaller area, like in a conference. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And the decision, too, of making it a completely voluntary, non-binding thing is like, sure, do this at your own risk. | ||
| If you have faith that you can have your students not fight with each other, do it. | ||
| But if not... | ||
| Don't do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because fights keep happening. | ||
| Hey, also, I bet those kids who keep getting into fights probably were spanked in the home. | ||
| Just pointing that out. | ||
| Not sure if there's a study on that. | ||
| In 1994, Ventura County schools banned postgame handshakes for the same reason. | ||
| But they encouraged students to instead shake hands pregame. | ||
| To preserve sportsmanship. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that's nice. | |
| It wasn't a handshake that was a problem or anything. | ||
| It was just that, again, people kept fighting, but... | ||
| There wouldn't be that acrimonious difference between the two after the match if they just did it for sportsmanship beforehand. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right, exactly. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| Alex might be talking about the Quest Academy in Croydon in England. | ||
| That could be what he's talking about. | ||
| It's possible since they had banned all physical contact between students in early 2011 in an attempt to cut down on bullying. | ||
| That might be what he's talking about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking Quest and Croydon. | ||
| They do it every time. | ||
| I have no idea if that's a good idea or not, because quite frankly, I don't know what was going on in Croydon at the time. | ||
| But I do know that it's not in the United States, and I know that it has nothing to do with any schools here banning handshakes. | ||
| First Amendment! | ||
| And I further know that even if a school did ban handshakes, Alex shouldn't have a problem with that, because it's the school that's a kid. | ||
| It's in local parenthesis! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| His logic is entirely confounding. | ||
| Good point! | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| What the line is, or what the point is, it seems like it's just a vague preservation of what he thinks is the idea of masculinity. | ||
| I think that's really all it is. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And his horrible version of masculinity does involve, you get out of line, people are going to know, you're a child, you get out of line, the coach is going to punch you ten times and break your jaw. | ||
| I don't understand how you could get punched. | ||
| I guess if it was body blows. | ||
| But I feel like if you're punching somebody ten times, sooner or later you're going to break the job before you get to the second round of punches. | ||
| I don't know, you could have a week left, week right. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| That's possible. | ||
| So, now we're done for now with the school violence issue. | ||
| It's the way that Alex is so, he gives and gives and gives. | ||
| This is a completely random date that Jim suggested we go back to. | ||
| He does a fucking hour talking about how it's great for teachers to hit kids. | ||
| You never expected that. | ||
| No, I did not expect that. | ||
| It's very wild. | ||
| And now we get another unexpected announcement from Alex. | ||
| Starting tonight, 7 o 'clock, every weeknight except on holidays, and on holidays we'll have rebroadcast, we're going to have at least a 30-minute focused, power-packed news transmission. | ||
| With added expanded many nights special reports. | ||
| We've got one of those tomorrow night that Aaron Dykes is doing on bisphenol A and information that most of you probably don't know. | ||
| It's even worse than we thought. | ||
| And they are consciously using it as a chemical weapon on the population. | ||
| So that will be part of the other reports and interviews we do on the Friday show. | ||
| But tonight is the official premiere of InfoWars Nightly News. | ||
| So the bisphenol A thing is a matter for another day, because he just mentioned it sort of in passing. | ||
| He has a slight fair point. | ||
| That was a chemical that was created as like an epoxy resin years and years back before people knew how dangerous it was. | ||
| There are some absolute issues with that. | ||
| But Alex mixes up the science, and I'd like to save that for a time when he actually talks about it so we can discuss it. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| The point of that clip was that... | ||
| I didn't realize that InfoWars Nightly News started in 2011. | ||
| I kind of thought it already existed. | ||
| I really didn't know that they had a nightly news show period. | ||
| That's what David Knight started in. | ||
| That's where Rob Dew and Jakari Jackson cut their teeth. | ||
| But I really thought that it was going on in 2009 when we were going over that stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I thought there was a... | ||
| Well, actually, how could it have been? | ||
| Because in the evenings, Jason Burmess did his show. | ||
| Oh, right. | ||
| So, yeah, I guess that was just an unexamined assumption that I had, that InfoWars Nightly News... | ||
| It was way older than it is. | ||
| It started in 2011. | ||
| Is it still going? | ||
| In some fashion. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Probably? | ||
| Is Infowars like 24 hours? | ||
| No. | ||
| It can't be. | ||
| No. | ||
| He kept saying he was going to make it 24 hours. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He doesn't have nearly the staff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No chance. | |
| The on-air talent. | ||
| He could do it, but it would just be rebroadcasts. | ||
| In the same way that he used to. | ||
| Back in 2009, almost every episode ends with him. | ||
| Re-promoting what happened earlier in the show is he's like, we're about to go to rebroadcast. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because the Genesis Communications Network had a station where they would just play it in a cycle. | ||
| In perpetuity. | ||
| Yeah, and then when Jason Bermas came on for his show, they'd play that and then back to rebroadcast Alex's show. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| It's like Hotel California on an oldie station. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You could do that. | ||
| Like, Alex could do that now, but he knows that it's not worth it. | ||
| And the resources that he has isn't enough to make. | ||
| Like, actual different content for the rest of the day. | ||
| No chance. | ||
| And I don't think you'll ever get to that point, which I guess is comforting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would say the less InfoWars, the better for all. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So at the beginning of this, before we got off on that diversion about teachers hitting kids, Alex said he was going to talk to this painter, Alex Schaefer. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he comes on, and who cares about their conversation? | ||
| It's just... | ||
| It's mostly nonsense. | ||
| Government! | ||
| Coming for me! | ||
| Alex makes a prediction about selling this painting of a Chase Bank on fire, and he's a little off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But so far, it's been almost bid up to the value of an ounce of gold. | |
| It's at $17.75. | ||
| There's been 11 bids. | ||
| 35 watchers or something like that. | ||
| It's pretty awesome. | ||
| Well, it's about to go up to 50,000 right now. | ||
| Stay there. | ||
| 1775, 2.0. | ||
| It sold to a German dude for 25,000, which is, first of all, way too high. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| But also 50% of what Alex's prediction was with his listeners all coming in. | ||
| That's still crazy, though. | ||
| So Alex Schaefer tells Alex the story of what happened to him. | ||
| In this altercation with the police. | ||
| Not even an altercation. | ||
| That's not even fair to say. | ||
| Interaction with the police. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Hey! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quit it. | |
| I think you'll hear that they treated him incredibly well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think that the officers, I think they thought it was ridiculous a little bit themselves. | |
| But they filled out an incident report. | ||
| You know, they got my address, and I thought it was funny that they wrote down in the personal oddities line, That I had glasses and a blonde beard. | ||
| Well, that's evil. | ||
| You may be with Al-Qaeda. | ||
| But we actually have the training videos. | ||
| You now have been put in a Homeland Security database. | ||
| So that is a little bit excessive, probably, when he's just saying, like, they just talked to me or whatever. | ||
| He's on the no-fly list. | ||
| The police did end up coming to his house shortly thereafter, but it was just a formal check-in. | ||
| You've been Peyton? | ||
| It was just a formal check-in of like, hey, we did this report because someone's like, hey, you should check this out. | ||
| People who showed up were like, yeah, it's weird, but we just kind of have to check it out. | ||
| Someone made a report. | ||
| We've got to fill out this paperwork that we were here. | ||
| Fine, you're cool. | ||
| I don't know why they checked back in with him either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| That seems like a waste, but maybe someone had a question. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe they have to according to their guidelines or whatever. | ||
| I don't know how the department works. | ||
| It's just best practices or whatever. | ||
| Even his story about them coming back was like super benign, friendly. | ||
| They show up and they're like, can we see the painting? | ||
| They're almost interested. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| What were you thinking? | ||
| This is a weird story. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Do you want to do that? | ||
| Is that your plan? | ||
| No? | ||
| Okay, that's fine. | ||
| Hey, guess what? | ||
| We got an Xfinity store. | ||
| You could totally paint that on fire. | ||
| Everybody's fine with that. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| I'm not super into his plight, and he made $25,000 selling this painting to a weird German. | ||
| So, whatever. | ||
| He wins. | ||
| That German did wind up eating him and the painting, though. | ||
| Yeah, we don't know what happened. | ||
| Actually, I do know what happened to Alex Schaefer a little bit later. | ||
| He ended up getting arrested again because he... | ||
| He's trying to push the boundaries of where he could make chalk art and sort of intentionally got himself arrested. | ||
| I'm not sure I dislike him necessarily. | ||
| I think he's alright so far. | ||
| Fuck Chase, first off. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I'm fine with that. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| The only thing I have against him is that he showed up on Infowars and was verbally supportive of Alex. | ||
| Ah, that is a problem. | ||
| That's the only thing I have against him. | ||
| The rest of this stuff seems like, eh, that could just be him trying to... | ||
| You know, get buzz marketing or something. | ||
| He sold a painting that was undoubtedly probably shit for 25 grand. | ||
| Of course you're going to start shit from there on out. | ||
| Yeah, why not? | ||
| You learned a lesson. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And that is that this works. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| It's like a kid throwing a tantrum if you didn't show it attention. | ||
| Alex would want him hit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But if you didn't give it attention, he wouldn't have kept doing it. | ||
| So now things get a little bit difficult. | ||
| And this is the only part of the show necessarily that I feel like I have real weird feelings about. | ||
| And that is that Alex has two 9-11 first responders on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And they want to talk about how the Bloomberg and New York isn't allowing them to come to the 10th anniversary event for 9-11. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have mixed thoughts about it, but we're not going to listen to a lot of them. | ||
| I just have one clip, and that is Alex really fucking it up. | ||
| Now, Joey, now that you're there with us, specifically expanding on that, you're saying you concur with my analysis that they know that they were poisoned, the EPA was ordered to lie about the deadly dust, they've been blocked health care, and the government doesn't want them there because they're scared of them. | ||
| All right, I think we're having some kind of... | ||
| Technical difficulties or something with folks. | ||
| We'll just interview Ted. | ||
| He can't get the other guy on the phone for most of the time. | ||
| But in a rare turn of events, Alex is actually pretty close to a real truthful story here. | ||
| He has these two 9-11 first responders on his guests to discuss how they're not invited to the ceremony at Ground Zero. | ||
| And I'm not going to play most of this interview because it puts me in a position I can't stand to be in. | ||
| On the one hand, I have nothing but respect for people who put their lives on the line to save their fellow humans in terrible situations. | ||
| And I don't want to impugn these people at all. | ||
| On the other hand, these guys and Alex have a very twisted take on what's going on. | ||
| For one, Bloomberg had released a statement that first responders weren't being given invitations because there was space constraints, and that the victim's family members and people who survived were deemed a higher priority. | ||
| I think that's a weak excuse, but it ultimately could have been the truth, since they did the ceremony in Zuccotti Park in New York, and there might not have been room within the space that they would have cordoned off. | ||
| I still think that's probably disrespectful to the first responders. | ||
| Super. | ||
| And I absolutely hear their argument. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I never miss an opportunity to tell Bloomberg to go fuck himself. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Now generally I think this is a shitty way to treat folks. | ||
| But speaking only of these two dudes who were interviewed here on Alex's show. | ||
| It seems like they might be the sort of types who would disrupt the event, talking about Building 7 and that sort of thing. | ||
| So I would be fine with excluding them on an individual basis. | ||
| But then that gets even more murky because even if they are going to disrupt, I'm not sure I think it's appropriate not to have them there, even if they're going to disrupt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm glad I never have to make that decision. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It is one of those things because that's one of the big things that Jon Stewart... | ||
| When he was running the Daily Show. | ||
| Oh, dude. | ||
| This dude, one of the guys who's being interviewed, this Joey guy, when he finally gets him on the phone, he talks about how Jon Stewart is working with them in terms of trying to get better health care and deal with these issues. | ||
| Alex cuts him off immediately. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| He even cuts off the 9-11 first responder because he brings up Jon Stewart. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| So Alex has political shit going on too. | ||
| So it is absolutely like a thing where if you guys had done your fucking, at the very least, basic human decent thing to do, which is take care of these people who were inarguable heroes. | ||
| Inarguable. | ||
| If you had just taken care of them, I'm guessing maybe the whole... | ||
| 9-11 with stage thing probably wouldn't get as far. | ||
| With them, at least. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And I actually think I misspoke a little bit because that is painting them unfairly. | ||
| Though these two dudes do seem to be kind of on that, like... | ||
| 9-11 is an inside job. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And all that stuff. | ||
| There's still a larger community that they are also a part of that probably would disrupt in a way that I think is very appropriate, which is to speak out about the lack of health care. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that sort of thing. | ||
| And so the disruptive aspect of it is probably what Bloomberg didn't want to face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And I think that's wrong of him. | ||
| But you understand why he would do that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Not supporting it. | ||
| No, no, yeah. | ||
| I think it's the wrong decision. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you get why. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And he should probably be called to answer for that. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| How much money does he have? | ||
| Alex is the wrong person to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| And this is the wrong place to do it for them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And especially since our show is so much on fact-checking and stuff like that and piercing narratives and stuff, I really don't have it in me to attack these 9-11 first responders for something. | ||
| That they're probably big picture right about. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I don't think it matters to point out, like, well, you understand why he would do that. | ||
| I don't want to dismiss their points, and it's not even... | ||
| Well, and it's entirely possible that, just like so many guests we have on Alex, they're like, yeah, Alex, you're right, in order to get out their message. | ||
| Like, it's entirely possible these dudes were going along with the whole 9-11 is an inside job, and you're shaking your head now. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I think at least one of them is, the Joey guy who brought up Jon Stewart seemed less like that, but the other guy, Todd or Ted, he was pretty harshly, yeah. | ||
| I'm still fine with them going on Infowars to spread that message. | ||
| I'm fine with them going on any show to spread the message of like, hey, they're fucking us over and we're actual heroes. | ||
| So maybe think about that. | ||
| No, I agree. | ||
| And that's why it's complicated and I don't want to listen to it. | ||
| So Alex then talks about how the nightly news is starting again. | ||
| He's trying to promote the nightly news. | ||
| And he's got a big interview. | ||
| With the CEO of Gibson, who had just been... | ||
| The guitar company. | ||
| Yep, they had just been raided, and they were in some trouble. | ||
| And Alex scored an interview with the CEO, and here he throws it to that interview. | ||
| Like a little chunk of it, just as a teaser for tonight, the debut of InfoWars Nightly News. | ||
| They do want to get rid of American Jobs, one of the few companies still making high-quality products in this country. | ||
| So here's a clip of what's coming up tonight on the television show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
*laughs* | |
| Okay, I tell you, today has been the gremlin-infested broadcast. | ||
| Absolutely gremlin-infested. | ||
| Oops. | ||
| No clip. | ||
| So he's talking about how they want to destroy these businesses in America. | ||
| They want to get rid of jobs in America. | ||
| Humble guitar makers. | ||
| And part of that is because in this interview with the Gibson CEO, he says that the courts told him he should do business in Madagascar. | ||
| You should just move to Madagascar. | ||
| That seems like a weird thing for a court to say. | ||
| So the reason they were told they'd be better off doing business in Madagascar was that they were using ebony that was illegally imported from Madagascar and rosewood that was imported from India to make their guitars. | ||
| But they could have legally been used, those products, they could have used it in the host countries where the products come from. | ||
| There's a law called the Lacey Act from 1900 that they were in violation of. | ||
| Using smuggled stuff like that in Madagascar would be totally illegal because you were there and you're using it according to their local laws. | ||
| None of it is itself illegal to possess here. | ||
| But exporting it out of Madagascar or India would be illegal there, and the Lacey Act makes it illegal to traffic in flora and fauna that would be illegal according to foreign laws. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ebony is flora or fauna? | |
| It's covered under the Lacey Act somehow. | ||
| I mean, it's just like it's not... | ||
| It's also the same act that would, you know, so you can't have these weird pets. | ||
| That are illegally smuggled out of countries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| No, no, I mean, not to make the ebony and ivory comparison, but it's not like ebony comes from a fucking tusk. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| I think that actually the ebony was... | ||
| So they were raided twice. | ||
| They were raided in 2009 and in 2011. | ||
| I think the ebony might have been the first raid, and then the Rosewood, both from India and Madagascar, were the second. | ||
| But Madagascar was also the source of the ebony. | ||
| It's a little confusing in terms of where were they getting their stuff from. | ||
| But the point does remain that they were sourcing it in ways that were against the local laws in the countries that they were sourcing it from. | ||
| And the Lacey Act makes it illegal for them to do that sourcing because of those countries. | ||
| Now I got it. | ||
| Now I got it. | ||
| So Alex is trying to make a big deal out of this. | ||
| Oh, they told you to go do business in Madagascar? | ||
| They want to get rid of jobs in America. | ||
| See through that real easily. | ||
| A lot of corporations are... | ||
| Getting rid of jobs in America by going to Madagascar. | ||
| And he's coming on InfoWars Nightly News to do this interview that, though they couldn't get the clip together for this, it does exist. | ||
| But also, he's trying to plead his innocence and all this shit, but also, Gibson would plead guilty and pay a $300,000 fine in August 2012. | ||
| So they ended up having to realize, eh, we did break that law. | ||
| You can use the shaggy defense on InfoWars. | ||
| You can't really use the shaggy defense in a court of law. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, that's what that's all about. | ||
| Alex is just trying to provide cover for a cool guitar maker. | ||
| They are a cool guitar maker, though. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| We're coming towards the end of this. | ||
| And these last two clips are pretty weird. | ||
| On the first one, I know that we've discovered over the course of this show that Alex has a bit of a love for the authoritarian. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He's a fascist. | ||
| While at the same time being a libertarian. | ||
| Which makes perfect sense. | ||
| Total sense, not a contradiction at all. | ||
| Actually, it isn't a contradiction. | ||
| I feel like most libertarians are somewhat fascist, right? | ||
| Talk to Webster Tarpaulay about it. | ||
| He believes that libertarianism is the gateway to fascism, which is weird. | ||
| That is weird. | ||
| So, in this next clip, there's a situation going on geopolitically in 2011, and that is that Muammar Gaddafi is getting a bit weird. | ||
| Oh, I thought this was when Obama wore his brown suit, and that was an international... | ||
| No, it's not that, but... | ||
| Alex has an interesting take on Qaddafi. | ||
| And there's the headline, no surrender, says Qaddafi. | ||
| Let me be engulfed in flames. | ||
| It is a civil war, a humanitarian disaster, as Colonel Schaefer and others predicted, as we predicted as well. | ||
| Qaddafi said to be in Desert Town. | ||
| Reportedly, his family got out last week. | ||
| He could have left. | ||
| He's deciding to stand and fight. | ||
| Say what you want about him. | ||
| He's certainly not like the globalist scumbags we have running things, who are cowardly on top of being scum. | ||
| Something more respectable about being a dictator who will actually fight. | ||
| There's something respectable about a dictator who will actually fight. | ||
| Jordan, we don't possibly have the time here to get into the history of Muammar Gaddafi, but let's just remind people that this episode is from September 2011. | ||
| Mere months earlier, the Telegraph reported that Qaddafi was firing on civilians. | ||
| Quote, what we're witnessing today is unimaginable, one resident named as Adel Mohamed Saleh said. | ||
| Quote, warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. | ||
| There are many, many dead. | ||
| Our people are dying. | ||
| It's a policy of scorched earth. | ||
| After the situation deteriorated and Qaddafi had given an interview where he insisted his people would die to protect him, by March, the international community was really concerned about him using chemical weapons on his own people because he had tons of mustard gas that he didn't give up. | ||
| He had like 14 tons of mustard gas. | ||
| You know, there's something respectable about Prince MBS because you don't see a lot of royalty willing to kill journalists and dismember them. | ||
| You've got to give it up to him. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| We're at Somali Pirates all over again. | ||
| Yeah, we're at Somali Pirates. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| I don't understand where Alex is getting this from. | ||
| Because he recognizes what the problems are. | ||
| Well, this is another Hitler and Stalin are complete badasses moment. | ||
| Where you're like, you really don't... | ||
| It's almost like he sees a dictator murdering... | ||
| The subjects of the citizens of his country as the capital punishment of a school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Corporal punishment. | |
| Corporal punishment. | ||
| Of just like, hey! | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You gave up your rights when you decided to live there with that dictator, so he has the right to kill you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, it is a one-to-one kind of situation. | ||
| I think you may be right. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| I think there are parallels to that. | ||
| Doesn't explain the Somali pirate thing. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Not the Somali pirate thing. | ||
| That one is inexplicable. | ||
| In terms of, like, supporting dictators in foreign countries when he's Mr. I Love Freedom. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It does make sense to that, like, blaming the victim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Seems to be what his sort of MO is. | ||
| You decided to live in that country under a dictator, of course. | ||
| Yeah, you decided. | ||
| You should get hit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a mess. | ||
| God, what an idiot. | ||
| Yep, he's pretty dumb. | ||
| What an idiot monster. | ||
| So we get to the end of this episode. | ||
| And this clip, I should tell you, is ten minutes before the episode ends. | ||
| So take what he's saying with a grain of salt about how he's going to get to people's calls. | ||
| All right, I'm going to shut up and go to your calls. | ||
| I got some other news, but it's just been an overload today. | ||
| And it would happen that I haven't been sick with a fever in probably a year. | ||
| And I got a little fever last night. | ||
| I have a sore throat and stuff today, right when I watched the TV show. | ||
| Is that ill-omened? | ||
| No, it's just coincidence. | ||
| But that's why I'm a little bit all over the map here today. | ||
| I love that he's blaming having a fever for being all over the map. | ||
| When I would say... | ||
| He has been one of the most focused I've ever seen him. | ||
| I was about to say. | ||
| I was about to say. | ||
| So far, we have heard nothing but him being on topic. | ||
| I mean, he's wrong, certainly. | ||
| And I would say he's spiritually all over the map in terms of not making sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We spent a fucking hour talking about how great it is to hit kids in school. | ||
| That's pretty on point. | ||
| That's on target. | ||
| You want to talk about the corporal punishment being good, you stay on that topic for quite a while. | ||
| He did another half hour or so talking to the 9-11 responders, maybe a little bit more, stayed focused on that topic, did a much shorter interview with the painter guy because he just wanted a soundbite, wanted a little like, ha-ha. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| That sort of thing, but still... | ||
| See, the government's overreaching and so on. | ||
| But he hit his marks. | ||
| He hit his points that he wanted to make. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would say that the first hour where he's talking about, like, corporal punishment and stuff was probably unplanned. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But that makes it even more surprising that he stayed on top. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| He's like, he's... | ||
| He perceives himself as being off topic and all over the place when he is anything but. | ||
| Alex, without the flu... | ||
| Or Alex with the flu is like early period Orson Welles. | ||
| And Alex without the flu is Orson Welles in the commercials. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, perhaps. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just thought that was really weird. | ||
| I thought that was a very strange thing. | ||
| First of all, it's strange to be like, I promise I'm going to your calls. | ||
| The show is over in five minutes. | ||
| You take out the last commercial break or whatever. | ||
| You're not going to anybody's calls. | ||
| And then he's just like, I just got a fever. | ||
| I've been all over the place. | ||
| You haven't. | ||
| Very lack of self-awareness. | ||
| I really don't like him ever admitting that coincidences exist. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Like, I really don't like it. | ||
| He calls him to question a lot of his other assessments. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| If you're aware that coincidences are a thing, it seems like you have to admit that some of your conspiracies could be coincidence. | ||
| What's even weirder is the thing that he's allowing to be a coincidence in this episode is something negative that has befallen him. | ||
| He got a fever. | ||
| None of the tech is working in the studio when he's trying to launch his show. | ||
| Right! | ||
| Perfect scenario to be like, I got hit with a fever dart and everyone is disrupting my communications. | ||
| But instead, nah, it's a coincidence. | ||
| This is a Carrie Cassidy Bell's palsy all over again. | ||
| The fact that he is able to get to the point where he's like, nah, it's a coincidence, whatever, no big deal. | ||
| It means that he's, uh, it's intentional. | ||
| Maybe the only time that he is free of his personal and mental demons. | ||
| Is when he gets the flu. | ||
| We gotta keep that boy sick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe vaccines are good for everyone but Alex. | ||
| Alex, you can keep it. | ||
| Give him Ebola! | ||
| You can keep your... | ||
| Oh, no, no, no. | ||
| That works too quick. | ||
| I'm not saying that I want to kill him or anything like that, but Ebola, you're not gonna live with that for very long. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You're going to get cured or die. | ||
| You need a low-grade chronic condition. | ||
| What about... | ||
| What's the disease you get from ticks? | ||
| Lyme disease? | ||
| Lyme disease. | ||
| Let's give him Lyme. | ||
| Yeah, that's a chronic condition. | ||
| Give him Lyme. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| We've settled on it. | ||
| Let's give Alex Jones Lyme disease. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's give Alex Jones Lyme disease. | |
| It's the only way to keep him on point. | ||
| And also having weird fever hallucinations about socialists in movie theaters. | ||
| I think it works out perfectly. | ||
| I think it works 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Socialists belittling their kids in movie theaters. | |
| You're a stupid baby. | ||
| You don't understand a progressive time structure. | ||
| You've never even heard of Thomas Piketty, you stupid baby. | ||
| Boo. | ||
| So, we've come to the end of this, and I think it's been an interesting look. | ||
| I'm not sure how interested I am in Alex around this time frame based on this look. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I do too, but I also get the sense that I don't know how much of it is actually attributable to the fever. | ||
| I think he's in a holding pattern. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, whatever we're seeing here is like... | ||
| I don't have a varsity narrative. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm a man at sea, and that's why I talk about hitting kids for an hour. | ||
| Right. | ||
| See, that's kind of why I like it. | ||
| Compared to our 2009 and 2015 investigations, right? | ||
| Those are investigations. | ||
| We're trying to find something out. | ||
| What if we just investigate how ludicrous he can get on a day-to-day basis? | ||
| Right, but, I mean, there's no way to structure that. | ||
| I mean, you could just, like, a random number generator come up with dates and stuff. | ||
| I don't understand how that's a problem. | ||
| Well, because inevitably what you would do is you would land in the middle of some time that he does have a varsity narrative. | ||
| And now we have a new investigation. | ||
| No, I like that. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| Because when you... | ||
| What you have to do is, when you're creating that random number generator, every time you click the button, you say, no whammies. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| See? | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| No whammies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think there's fun in this, and I appreciate Jim bringing this to our lives. | ||
| But also, for my brain, how my brain works, I like it much more when we're in something that has a larger narrative structure to it. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| I'm not sure what the conclusion I'm making is, but this has been fun, and we have a website. | ||
| Indeed we do, Dan. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| You can also go to fillyourhand.com. | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And we're on Twitter. | ||
| We are. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| We have a Facebook. | ||
| Indeed we do. | ||
| We also have a Facebook group called Go Home and Tell Your Mother You're Brilliant. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're also on iTunes. | ||
| You can leave a review, subscribe, what have you. | ||
| I'm a big fan of Overcast, if you want to download that app. | ||
| You love it. | ||
| We're not sponsored. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| We're not sponsored. | ||
| Hashtag not sponsored. | ||
| So we'll be back on Wednesday with something or other. | ||
| It'll be an episode. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Of some variety. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| It's Thunderdome now. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Everything is out the window. | ||
| Our structure has been blown a hole in it. | ||
| Not because of Jim's episode, but because I'm done with 2009. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So we will see what happens from now on. | ||
| I'd love to retain the Monday, Wednesday, Friday structure that we have been doing. | ||
| But this week, it's up for grabs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Could be anything. | ||
| Anyway, thank you all for listening. | ||
| We will catch you next time. | ||
| But this Alex Schaefer guy who painted a building on fire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't think that guy's killed anybody. | ||
| I know Muammar. | ||
| I know Gaddafi has killed a guy. | ||
| We do know that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But Alex Schaefer just seems like a fine painter gentleman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who hasn't killed anybody. | ||
| But one guy who interviewed him technically has, probably. | ||
| And that guy, Alex Jones. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |