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Aug. 4, 2020 - Minion Death Cult

01:11:45

SH!TPOST - Corona Skeptics w/ Minion Death Cult

We join Jared Holt of the SH!TPOST podcast and Right Wing Watch to discuss Covid skepticism in the form of professionals like Alex Berenson and the more grassroots efforts of local facebook groups. Subscribe to SH!TPOST at www.shtpost.substack.com/subscribe

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	Welcome
	to a very special episode of Shitpost featuring the fellas from Minion Death Cult The website describes it as a leftist podcast about the deranged cesspool of right-wing internet, and I can't think of a better descriptor than that.
	This is a collaboration I've always wanted to do, but frankly...
	Couldn't get off my ass to think up an idea, but I finally, you know, had a moment of clarity in this pandemic and the guys are gracious enough to join me now.
	Alex and Tony from Minion Death Cult.
	What's up guys?
	Hey Jared, thanks so much for having us on, man.
	What's going on?
	Love the show.
	Uh, admire your work.
	Very glad to be here.
	Oh, well, I appreciate it.
	Uh, so we're recording this on August 1st.
	Uh, I, I guess this marks, we've been in a pandemic mode for what, like four, is it four months now?
	Five months now?
	I think, I think five.
	Oh God.
	Yeah, because I think it started like in March.
	Yeah, because I didn't even think for my birthday.
	So yeah, it started in March.
	Yeah, I'm trying to remember when I was supposed to fly down to California to see Tony and Stereolab at the same time, both at once, and I couldn't do it.
	I think that was beginning of April or something.
	I will always remember that it started in the beginning of March because I had gone to CPAC in February and had spent a lot of time sort of roaming the hallways and talking to people about the coronavirus.
	Then the message was, Trump is taking this seriously, China didn't take it seriously, and that's why we have this problem to begin with.
	It's been very interesting over the last four or five months now to see it evolve into full-blown Alex Jones trutherism in the right-wing base.
	Really remarkable.
	But I remember walking around, you know, six inches from Sebastian Gorka, you know, five inches from Alex Jones and, you know, hearing just dumb dog shit about this pandemic and then, you know, getting the call from my editor.
	Apparently, you know, someone at CPAC had coronavirus and now it's like...
	I've been inside ever since.
	What can I say?
	I did all the coronavirus things.
	I got a dog.
	I started neglecting my hobbies and exercise and I don't know man.
	It's hard to know when this is gonna end but have you guys sort of seen the same thing?
	You guys cover sort of like deranged right-wing internet.
	How have you guys seen this kind of morph?
	I mean there's I saw a little bit of what you were saying at the beginning was that you know Trump took it seriously by doing a lot of racism and I think that's how we thought we could stop the virus at first was just by just like hitting the ground running on being really racist towards Chinese people.
	And when that didn't work, people on the right just gave up and were like, I don't know, it must not be real.
	If me yelling Wuhan flu and further alienating myself from friends and family hasn't worked, then it's probably fake.
	Lately, it's become more apparent when I go to protests and actions.
	We just did a march on Tuesday in my little town.
	And they were counter protesters there.
	They didn't even know why they were there.
	We were doing a Defund the Police protest, they were doing a Defend the Police protest, and they just yelled USA at us a bunch.
	But the mask is such a statement now.
	None of them wearing a mask.
	And there was a couple people that like You can tell they kind of came with a mask, but it was down around their chin by that point.
	I feel like they probably just got shamed into it.
	But yeah, it's morphing into this, like, that stuff and the precautions doesn't even reflect the disease to them at all.
	It's just this weird, like, statement and not making it.
	It's like this, like, aggressive act.
	And it's really, um, it's really strange to the point where I recently saw a cop at a protest.
	Every time someone would come near him, he'd pull his mask down to be like, stay away from me.
	Oh wow.
	Yeah.
	And we called him out on it and he was like, no, this is going to keep you six feet away, right?
	That's the whole point, right?
	And we were just like, fuck you, dude.
	Thank you so much.
	Other than saying it's completely fake.
	I mean, he goes hand in hand with saying it's fake.
	When they say fake, they just mean like, it'll kill people that aren't me.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's kind of what they mean by fake.
	Like, the media is trying to make me afraid when, you know, I don't have any, like, underlying medical conditions, so why would I be afraid, you know?
	And, uh, they're, they, in the very beginning, they were just openly, like, asking for their, you know, wait staff to come back to work or their employees to come back to work.
	So, uh, you know, just so they could, you know, fulfill the freedom, the only freedom that they know, which is being able to purchase, you know, uh, the, the butter with the Native American woman on it.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's, it's kind of like weird to, to think that now, you know, Herman Cain has died from this thing.
	Uh, what's his name?
	Bill Montgomery at one of the like original Founders?
	Donors?
	Something like that to Turning Point USA.
	He died from coronavirus and it's just been really bizarre to see right-wing politicians and media figures kind of actively encouraging the people who presumably give them money and patronize their shit to like place themselves at further risk for this thing.
	And I'm wondering, like, if we are past the looking glass on this, like, is there a number of people or is there, like, a certain person who would die from coronavirus that would, you know, make them try to take this seriously?
	I mean, I remember, like, Trump came out in a press conference a couple weeks ago and just was like, Blah, blah, blah.
	Dr. Fauci sucks.
	Everything is stupid.
	Also, can you wear a mask?
	Oh, God.
	Like, looking back at his days, being like, I can't believe you made me say that.
	And then, like, just going forward.
	I don't know.
	I keep looking to see if there's going to be, like, a change of heart with anybody.
	And I'm not seeing it.
	It's, I mean, it's an ideology that's completely based on, like, individualism.
	Yeah.
	And, like, the self above all others.
	And so the only way you're gonna get these people to change their tune is, like, Chuck Woolery, whose fucking son got it.
	Like, who was an adamant COVID denier and then his son got it.
	And it's, like, then he changed his tune and, like, I think deleted his Twitter.
	Like, it's... that's the only way that these people will, I don't know, recognize the cost?
	Like, they're never gonna recognize a social cost other than something that directly affects them via, you know, their income.
	Yeah, we literally need everybody's firstborn to get it in A Plague of Locusts.
	It's the only way they're gonna take it seriously.
	So, uh, for listeners who haven't picked up yet, uh, this episode is about COVID skepticism, trutherism, uh, denialism, whatever you might want to call it.
	Um, and I think this is a particularly sort of interesting topic that once I started looking into it, because in March, you know, back when I was getting that call to stay home from work because I had been at CPAC,
	I did not imagine that this pandemic would end up growing into, of course, you know, what it has become now, but also producing this sort of, how would I, like a cottage industry of media personalities and pundits, Facebook pages, and all that sort of thing.
	On this episode, we're going to take a look at one of those such figures, little cottage industry media boy named Alex Berenson.
	And then Minion Death Cult guys are going to bring it to Facebook and share with us.
	You know, we're going to do a little bit of armchair psychology here and try to figure out what's really going on, man.
	That was my best Marc Maron impression.
	I felt like it was still shit.
	That was good.
	Now that I know what it is, I totally understand what it was.
	You nailed it.
	Thank you, Tony.
	I appreciate that.
	So let's get right into it.
	Alex Berenson.
	If you are on Twitter with the rest of us, more addicted to this site than ever before because of this pandemic, you have probably come across Alex Berenson.
	He is a Former New York Times reporter, which is, you know, I can't take that from him.
	As, you know, kind of outlandish as you'll see this character is, you know, for all that has been reported, he did some pretty good work at the New York Times.
	has carried that title on you know if you see him on Tucker Carlson or you know I think you went on Newsmax the other day or something you know it's it's not Alex Berenson author it's Alex Berenson former New York Times guy.
	The only way to take that from him is to get him rehired by the New York Times.
	I believe we should be starting a campaign to get him back on the payroll staff.
	And unironically, that would do more to delegitimize him, I think, than anything we can say.
	To the people he's appealing to, for sure.
	Oh my god.
	So Alex Berenson, he started, he kind of broke into the scene in March, you know, right on the cutting edge of the coronavirus pandemic and quickly became a favorite source to cite as an expert on coronavirus statistics, right on the cutting edge of the coronavirus pandemic and quickly became a favorite source to cite as an expert on coronavirus statistics, coronavirus media coverage from people who have a financial and political interest in downplaying the
	You know, Alex Berenson, for a while he had this Twitter profile that was just like a sheep sticking out its tongue.
	But last I checked, it is now a photo of Dr. Fauci with a mask pulled down saying, So this guy's, you know, kind of a, how would you, I don't know how to describe this guy diplomatically.
	I think his banner picture is more important because the banner picture is a guinea pig wearing a mask.
	And I think that kind of speaks more on yeah, I don't know is that is that him in the profile picture?
	Okay, yeah, it looks like a young guy wearing aviators.
	Yeah, so so he's changed it back It's him now, but yeah, we've got the the guinea pig wearing a photoshopped on mask, you know big big big statement guy, you know, it's a Uh, if you look at the mask, like, there's a little logo on it, and the logo is a bar graph with, like, increasing incidence over time.
	And there's no, you know, information about like what the y-axis or the x-axis axes represent, but I don't know if that's like the sort of imagery you want on your the coronavirus is a hoax banner.
	It's a bad look because it's clearly going up whatever it is.
	It's a curve.
	It's a non-flattened curve.
	So, Alex's whole point is ultimately that media coverage and those damn libs are just completely blowing the threat of the coronavirus to astronomical proportions and, you know, that we have suffered for it.
	There is a July piece in the Washington Post.
	He told the Post that he believes his overall view of the virus is correct, but, you know, adults should make their own decision.
	And he says that people rely on him because he provides quote, Data and information they do not see anywhere else.
	I wonder why that is.
	He adds, I do not traffic in conspiracy theories.
	I provide facts and figures from local, state, and national governments.
	He said, "People want to know why a few months ago they were told masks were useless except for healthcare workers and now masks are required." Yeah, this is a common refrain in right-wing spaces.
	This is what a lot of people have latched onto.
	The fact that Fauci and other experts did say that, I think even maybe the CDC said that there wasn't any I saw both statements.
	I saw the statement that, you know, oh, you shouldn't wear a mask because there's no concrete data to, you know, support the idea that a mask will help stop the spread.
	And then I saw other statements that were more like, we don't have enough data yet to definitively state that a mask will, you know, basically like don't sue us type language about how wearing a mask will prevent the spread.
	And I mean, it's been pretty thoroughly documented that that statement was just because they were, we don't have enough masks in this fucking country, or we didn't at the time.
	This country was totally unprepared for an epidemic at this scale.
	And so our only option, at least according to these experts, you know, was to lie to people and say, you know, oh, don't worry about the masks because we just don't have enough.
	Right.
	And now that we do have enough, it doesn't matter how many TikTok videos of you spraying through your mask you put out, they still just don't believe it.
	They don't believe any type of proof that we've given that the masks do do something.
	They're still like, I still personally don't have it, so the mask is still bullshit.
	Right, yeah.
	And, you know, you have people like Alex Berenson here kind of offering, you know, these very, you know, in these Twitter threads, these very sort of official, trustworthy-looking facts and figures to kind of support that notion.
	So Alex Berenson ended up attracting sort of his first few rounds of national media coverage on he himself in about April.
	So he had kind of been at this for about a month.
	He was starting to go on Fox News, was getting cited in all these right-wing publications.
	There's a Vanity Fair article, you know, that kind of runs through this.
	His commentary reads, his earned him mentions in The Blaze, The National Review, The Washington Examiner, Breitbart, and The Daily Caller, as well as a lengthy Fox News profile, lauding him as a former New York Times reporter who is sounding the alarm about what he believes are flawed models dictating the aggressive strategy.
	Fox News describes him as not a known partisan, but rather a data- and facts-driven savant.
	So... I hated some... Did you guys look into his book at all?
	The book he's written, Tell Your Children?
	I can't talk.
	Oh yeah, I've got some of that that we'll get to here in a minute, but it is... That is its own can of worms, man.
	And it's like somehow that book also gave him some sort of credibility, which I don't understand at all.
	But yeah, it's that whole data and facts driven thing.
	It's like, oh, you made a graph or you saw the graph or you just said this other graph was wrong, but you're not really stating anything at all.
	Right.
	It is more of an effort to discredit the people who are trying to do reporting and trying to spread information than it is to offer any sort of alternative to it.
	Yeah.
	Alex Berenson, just going through his Twitter feed, he's not the kind of guy that really makes it onto Facebook.
	It's not a lot of people, in our circles at least, that are screen capping his tweets and making memes out of them or whatever.
	Just just a cursory glance, you know, it's like of the IDW stripe, of the like edgy facts and logic guy with a little bit of sass, a little bit of like, you know, millennial irony or whatever.
	Extremely annoying.
	Fairly insufferable.
	Like like one of the tweets signed off with with virus gonna virus.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's his pinned tweet.
	You can tell he's one of the cool ones because he's using a meme from like three years ago.
	And, I don't know, just this tweet right here, the idea that he's not partisan or that he's not ideologically driven.
	I mean, he has a tweet right here that's about James Murdoch leaving Fox News.
	It says, so James Murdoch walks the plank and Fox News will stay conservative.
	Phew!
	With the rest of the media increasingly openly leaning left, losing Fox as a counterweight would have been disastrous.
	And then he goes on to say, aside from OANN, One America News Network, which is far more psycho than Fox, which has limited carriage and some conservative radio, I would have no national media presence the last four months if not for Fox.
	Even CNBC, after inviting me, refused to have me.
	Fox is far from perfect, but it's more important than ever.
	And it's just, I don't know, these seem like really important tweets to me.
	They seem like, I don't know, very honest tweets about what he cares about and who he thinks are valid sources of news.
	Oh, the people who pay me to appear.
	Right, right.
	It is crucial that we have a balanced media, especially the outlets that invite me onto a national platform to talk to people.
	Now more than ever, it's crucial that people put me on TV.
	But what sucks though is that when CNBC does say we're not having you back, that's like clout though.
	That's good.
	They're not having him back because he's telling too many truths and they can't have that.
	Yeah, I mean, folks like this guy who kind of posture themselves the way that he does, it's kind of like a losing game, I think, to even engage most of the time.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, I think the best person I saw try to engage in this was Advice News.
	This journalist, her name's Laura Wagner, she did this email interview with Alex Berenson in April and she, you know, sent him some questions trying to just be like, you know, what the fuck is up with this guy?
	He doesn't actually do anything except tweet that the coronavirus is like, A bunch of bullshit.
	And she sent over this list of questions and was like, oh, this is going to be a Q&A.
	I'm going to publish whatever you write.
	So go along if you want.
	So then Alex Berenson does the, you know, original Twitter gangster move and just screenshots all his replies and posts them on Twitter.
	But what he doesn't do is screenshot her follow up questions, which are trying to fact check him.
	Or just, like, get him to clarify what the hell he's talking about.
	Like, it is ostensibly a fact check, but it's like, I don't know, I read through the article, it's pretty good.
	Like, she's just like, which article are you talking about?
	You're saying that, like, oh, this reporting is hyperbolic or hysterical.
	What reporting?
	Can you give me, like, an example, please, of the reporting?
	Like, that's not even a fact check, that's just like, what are you talking about, please?
	Right and he just he exploded in this tantrum at the time I remember about this article because yeah I mean like you said Alex it was uh you know this reporter was just like what?
	How do you square, like, this data into your worldview?
	And he just lost it, man.
	So, like, not only does he posture himself as the sayer of truths that can't be told, but under any sort of scrutiny or, you know, close examination or questioning, he just kind of, like, melts down in sort of a how-dare-you type posture.
	Yeah.
	It's very defensive.
	Because the correspondents, it's all there in the Vice article.
	She asks him the questions, he responds, and then she asks him follow-up questions, and he's like, this wasn't part of our deal.
	This wasn't part of our deal for you to... and if you print any of these follow-up questions, I will kill the article.
	And it's... I don't understand.
	I mean, you know, his audience isn't that discerning anyway.
	They don't Probably don't really care.
	You know, they're looking for their biases to be confirmed.
	But it's just, I don't know how you put that out there yourself and not expect to look like a total fraud.
	Like, no, I will not answer one single follow-up question.
	And if you ask me a follow-up question, I will kill this interview altogether.
	Well, it's like a child getting caught in a lie.
	It's like a child being like, so wait, you don't have any homework?
	Yeah, I don't have any homework.
	Well, how do you know?
	Your teacher said that?
	They said anything home?
	Like, oh god, you don't believe me?
	Like, why don't you believe me?
	You guys never believe me.
	You and my teacher hate me.
	This is not fair.
	So, that puts us around April.
	Let's fast forward a few months, and Alex Berenson, even more so than he had already, sort of a month into this pandemic exploding, has emerged into the forefront as, you know, coronavirus, or, I'm sorry, conservatives' favorite person to tap to discredit media coverage on political statements about the coronavirus.
	Alex, of course, needs to get a little bit of cash in his pocket.
	Can't blame him.
	The economy's tough nowadays.
	So he publishes a book about COVID-19, which is kind of more of like a pamphlet, and then pulled another classic conservative move.
	Amazon, I guess, sent him an email when he tried to self-publish this book saying that it didn't meet the guidelines for sale, citing the book's topic.
	Amazon later says that the denial was sent in error.
	But he did that classic right-wing move of being censored by the corporate powers that be.
	It wasn't Twitter, but...
	I don't know, and there's like an Elon Musk connection.
	We'll get into that here in a second, but like, it was just, this guy, the point I'm trying to make is this guy keeps showing us who he is, you know?
	Well, it's wild, too, is like that, in order to get denied to have a book self-published on Amazon, it like has to be pretty wild, and like, can we talk about the premise of the book real quick?
	Yeah, yeah.
	The premise of the book is... Well, this is the COVID-19 book.
	There's two books.
	Oh, I was talking about his first book, because I saw his first book.
	They let that one go, which is wild.
	That one should have been stopped.
	That one, in my mind, was pretty racist and pretty wild and just basically no effect.
	Well, the thing is, you can write a book about women having sex with velociraptors and Amazon will publish it.
	Exactly.
	Like, it takes a lot to not get published by Amazon.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It takes a whole lot for that.
	Like, you can't just... You can't just say no for no reason.
	The thing I, not to sidetrack too much, but like, couldn't Amazon just say, okay, so this is a guy who like has a pretty substantial Twitter following.
	He's done media appearances.
	He banks himself as like a truth teller and a controversial figure.
	Like, I mean, in his Twitter bio, it says something like inappropriate.
	Like that's one of his own descriptors for completely inappropriate is how he describes himself.
	So the, you know, he's like a, He's like a little fire starter, you know?
	Couldn't Amazon look at this guy and say, okay, this guy's trying to self-publish a book.
	Let's just, let's just refuse to do it for a couple weeks and see what happens.
	Let's refuse to do it for a couple weeks.
	And then, oh my God, Elon Musk promotes the book for him and, oh, we reinstated the book and now it's got 150,000 pre-orders.
	Oops, our bad.
	So sorry about that.
	We'll let him publish the book now.
	Like, isn't it possible that it's just a grift from both parties?
	Yeah, totally.
	I mean, Amazon stated that the denial of publication was sent an error, but I'm not fucking believing what Amazon says.
	I don't know.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's not like they said, oh, we reviewed it and it's okay now.
	They're just like, no, oops, oops, our bad.
	It was actually always allowed.
	And fortunately for us, we're going to make, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars off this probably.
	Yeah, oh shucks.
	I don't know what they would actually make.
	And to compensate for our error, we are going to increase the price of the book $2.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So Alex Berenson, you know, here at this point in the arc, he has published something on the coronavirus.
	He's making right-wing media appearances going on, White Power Hour, Tucker Carlson, all that good stuff.
	He eventually gets a prominent spotlight in a New York Times piece from Ben Smith, who's a great reporter, which kind of got me thinking about the whole premise of this episode.
	It's very good.
	I've included links to everything we cite in the show notes.
	Go check it out.
	So, uh, and Tony, now we're going to start talking about, uh, this guy's first book.
	because Jesus Christ, man.
	Yeah, I hate it so much.
	So the way that Ben Smith writes about Alex Berenson, I'll just read a little bit here.
	While he was at the New York Times, he was a contrarian with a big ego and some problems with authority.
	A talented, bristling, swashbuckling character, Roger Cohen, a former Times Foreign Editor recalled.
	During an internal times crisis in 2003, Mr. Berenson was the one who stood up at a staff meeting and asked the executive editor, Howell Raines, whether he would resign.
	Mr. Berenson's road to his new cause began last fall with the book Tell Your Children, which was inspired by conversations with his wife, a psychiatrist who worked with the criminally insane.
	The book moves from studies linking marijuana with psychosis to a broadside against the drug's safety.
	Advocates of legalizing marijuana accused him of steering nuanced science to simple and unfounded conclusions.
	Which I just want to time out real quick.
	Is his wife not violating patient-doctor confidentiality?
	I forget the turn of phrase for that, but isn't there a law against psychiatrists discussing their clients with their husband?
	I think she just can't say specifics.
	She probably went home and was like, you know a lot of these fucking psychos I work with, they all smoked weed when they were teens.
	I think that's okay.
	And I think he was probably like, oh, I'm gonna write a book on it, that makes sense.
	I do see that a lot of rappers also seem to be violent and they also seem to have smoked weed when they were teens.
	It's, uh, there's something up here.
	There's something going on here.
	Yeah, so... Well, it's funny, like, all you would have to do is just say, oh no, she told me, you know, about, like...
	They were anonymous or whatever.
	He could have literally been doing the Stefan Molyneux thing of listening through the keyhole at her sessions with her clients.
	But all she would have said is, oh no, we just discussed them with the data disambiguated from the individuals or whatever.
	And you get away with it, I think.
	I'm not saying that she didn't say exactly what happened with every patient, show him pictures and give him background.
	Like, I'm sure she probably did exactly that, but I mean, as far as, you know, following up on that.
	Unless he does cite specifics in the book, which would be interesting to see.
	Yeah, I was just... that was a question I had when I read that line in this profile, where I was like, is this allowed?
	But I am, you know, not an expert or a lawyer.
	So, in this New York Times profile, Ben Smith cites Alex Berenson's book and sort of the I guess a less than favorable response it received as an inspiration for Alex Berenson's sort of current public persona.
	Ben Smith writes, By the time the coronavirus arrived, Mr. Berenson was primed to believe that public health voices in the media that covered them had been politicized and were perhaps out to get him.
	Flawed early pandemic coverage set off his contrarian side.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	And then, let's see, yeah, that's just about his pamphlet.
	So, it seems, you know, to be the case that Alex Berenson, you know, put out this book saying, you know, smoking weed will make you a violent, terrible person and that's why it should never be legal.
	And then people were like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude?
	Like, this is ridiculous.
	And he became convinced that, like, it was all a lie.
	All the public health stuff you've ever heard was a lie.
	Because, you know, it goes back to what you were saying, Tony.
	It's the kid who gets caught lying about the homework.
	Where it's like, are you sure that weed causes violence?
	Because, you know, we've got plenty of data here.
	And it's like, you guys have always hated me!
	This is not fair!
	Yeah, totally.
	And he's seriously, he's like, no, I've seen many documentaries where people are both like smoking weed and like being violent and he's just talking about rap videos.
	He's like, that's like all this is based on this.
	That's all this is based on in my mind.
	So wild.
	It's like everybody knows that like weed does not cause, you know, violence, uh, or a violent demeanor.
	And it's just, it's just such a, a, a beautiful stretch and it's so corny and lame.
	Well, it's another instance of, like, I don't believe the experts anymore because the experts didn't believe me.
	Or the experts, like, found fault with me.
	So they're not the good experts anymore.
	Just like the news channels who won't have me on, those aren't the good news channels.
	Those are the biased news channels because they wouldn't have me on.
	Right.
	I'm waiting for someone to respond to a positive COVID test that way, just being like, nope, this isn't real.
	Throw it in the mail.
	They're going to do it on Twitter.
	They're going to be like, I got this positive COVID test back and I know this is fake.
	And they set it on fire and then like died days later.
	Oh my God.
	So, that book that we're talking about was published in early 2019.
	It's called Tell Your Children The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.
	There was a Vox article about the book when it came out because in some circles I guess this book was getting... How would I describe this?
	It was sort of like the centrist style of like Wow, sure is interesting to hear another side of the argument that we just don't get to hear from very often.
	But Vox News, I think, wrote about it pretty frankly.
	They called the book what it is, Refer Madness 2.0, and quote, an exercise in cherry-picking data and presenting correlation as causation.
	Tell Your Children claims to inform its readers of the truth about marijuana, but it instead repeatedly misleads them.
	And, you know, this was kind of, you know, despite his book getting panned over and over again and sort of debunked and, you know, there was this open letter from 75 doctors and scholars from places like Columbia University and Harvard, you know, I guess respectable people, people were led to believe are respectable people in these fields, you know, came out, said the book was pretty much bullshit and
	You know, it, I mean, I don't know, man.
	It's just like, he has seemingly achieved so much in these last few months on the tails of this coronavirus stuff and kind of fits into that cottage industry.
	You know, if we're going to like pick out one person from the COVID cottage industry of like media skeptics,
	this guy is maybe like the the shining star of them all and it seems to be uh you know at its core if you start chopping away the layers uh motivated by very uh you know sort of resentment you know from being told he was a dumb piece of shit for thinking that like you know rappers are being violent because they smoke weed
	Yeah, it seems like that's the roadmap for radicalizing everybody.
	A lot of the people we talk about who aren't on our show, who are just normal psychos on the internet, Um, you know, they might be successful in the sense that they own a business or they're like retired and living on a pension and they could afford, you know, to buy an RV or whatever.
	Uh, but they've also just been called out, you know, either on Facebook or either, you know, in person by their families.
	And it's like, It's that, you know, the... what is it called?
	It's when prophecy fails, you know?
	You don't have many other options.
	When you've picked, like, an ideology or when you've aligned yourself with an ideology that's, like, so reprehensible to a good majority of people, not just, like, Morally or ethically, but also professionally, you know, as like a professional scientist or a doctor or something, this is utter garbage, you know, and you probably don't feel any compulsion not to call it garbage.
	And I don't know, it's like, how do you come back from that?
	Well, you can't.
	If you're a proud individual, you can't.
	You can't admit you're wrong.
	So you're just like, you know, I'll find my niche audience and just dig in, you know, because With the internet, you can find them.
	Yeah, just lean into it.
	You're gonna find a new home.
	You're gonna find a new family.
	They're all waiting for you because they've all done it to themselves and they find each other and they're like, see, I'm not alone.
	I'm not alone.
	And like, here's a book about it now.
	Right.
	I can buy that.
	Yeah, it's weird because it's like, you know, I think a good way of dividing like the left from the right is like an honest compassion or a responsibility you feel towards like the community, towards society.
	And I mean, the coronavirus and pandemic is like a very good illustration of that.
	I mean, I think it's pretty clear that there's There's, like, a spectrum of people who either don't care at all about the community, the community health, which is obviously the right wing.
	Then there's people who, like, care a little bit, which I would say would be, like, the Democrats, who are like, oh, you're not allowed to go out, but also we're not gonna give you any money to, like, live.
	You're not allowed to go to work, but also, like, I don't know, figure it out.
	And then there's, like, the left, who wants, like, you know, universal health care, and for this to have been possibly prevented, or at least, like, Killed in the cradle a little bit, a little bit better by, you know, a actual network of social health services.
	And I, it's what I was going to say was, is sort of replacing that idea of society or community is just these Facebook groups like for the right wing.
	Like, they don't need to actually form solidarity with their community because they can just go on and go onto a Facebook group and, like, find, you know, a couple hundred people that they're never actually going to meet, that they never actually have to rely on, that won't ever rely on them, just to, like, you know, bounce the same talking points off of.
	Let's talk about those Facebook groups because that is some minion death cult fucking specialty.
	That is the feature.
	I'm fucking this up.
	The main course, if you will.
	What have you guys been seeing sort of in these groups?
	Because, you know, Alex Berenson, who we just talked about, is very much like Like a media creation, right?
	I don't see him, like, really shifting the zeitgeist, you know?
	He is maybe helping frame media coverage, which is sort of trickling in maybe through, you know, places like the Daily Caller and then, like, going into the zeitgeist, you know?
	But he is not, you know, at least yet, one of these people who's, like, walking into the trader shows and pulling their mask down and throwing milk all over the cashier, you know?
	What have you guys been seeing sort of in the slogs, you know, in the rabid base?
	How is, you know, what is the vibe?
	Can I get a vibe check?
	Is that too much to ask?
	Yeah, the vibe is that the masks are socialism.
	That's just it.
	There's no like explanation.
	It's just like they're testing to see if they can get you to wear the mask so that they can either later make you wear the Mark of the Beast or so they can put you in your like femdom penis cage at some point.
	Like, that's kind of what the discourse is.
	And, you know, you don't see a lot of these, like, more highbrow, data-driven, or even if it's cherry-picked data, you don't see a lot of those arguments on Facebook.
	You see mostly, you know, memes, and the memes are like, oh, here is sheep in masks, and here is me, a lion, without a mask.
	Epic.
	Like, that's...
	It's epic.
	Yeah, it's epic shit.
	But I have some examples of arguments that you see overwhelmingly.
	One is, I think it's a Tomi Lahren tweet, and it's, if the masks work, then why aren't we reopening the government?
	If the masks don't work, then why aren't we just staying home and not wearing the mask?
	And it's like, I don't know how you pose that argument with a straight face.
	It's not like a magic rock that keeps coronavirus away.
	That's not like what a mask is.
	Do people think that Like, any medication you take or any, like, workout you do or anything is, like, an automatic cure or an automatic 100%, like, foolproof thing.
	Like, I don't even think these people really believe it themselves.
	They're just like, oh, that seems, like, witty or that seems... It's got a cadence to it I like.
	It's like art, you know?
	It doesn't have to really make sense.
	It just feels good to see it and say it.
	And like it's funny because that statement kind of the it proves kind of our argument more you know it's like well we're not reopening because y'all motherfuckers aren't putting on masks it's that it's that direct it's that direct it's like Yes, we're not doing it because no one did it, so we can't reopen, and you should stay home.
	And that's what's funny, is people don't get that part of it too.
	That's part of the whole process, is like, okay, if you don't wear a mask, you also don't have to leave home.
	Like, just don't leave home.
	But that's, you know, again, stepping on your freedoms and your liberties, so it's like, there's just no winning with these arguments.
	It's so silly.
	The Christian argument I see a lot is by wearing a mask, you're messing with God's perfect respiratory system.
	Like, if God wanted you to wear a mask, you would have been born with a mask.
	And people are like, well, I mean, it's, it's like, it's not hurting your respiratory system.
	It's just adding something and it like, maybe it'll prevent you from dying or like killing other people.
	And then the response to that is like, well, God knows all of that.
	Like if, if it's my time, I would rather go to God with an open heart and an open face and, and, and, you know, uh, ascend into the heaven.
	And it's just like extreme death cult shit.
	It's just like, Oh, that's alright.
	Yeah, we're gonna die.
	Of course.
	That's why I believe in God.
	So I'm not afraid of dying.
	The first draft was why mess with God's perfect plague.
	We're not supposed to intervene with that.
	Yeah, I can't wait to arrive at the pearly gates of heaven and look God in the face and explain to God that, you know, I followed the divine plan.
	I went out and I got my 2 for 12 anitizers at Applebee's without a mask, just as he intended.
	I drove by an Applebee's I was doing outside dining yesterday and it was so it was just a wild scene I just I mean it's funny they were far apart I was actually pretty I was pretty impressed with Applebee's of all people but just what a wild thing to want to do right now go to Applebee's get them riblets and you know $3 margarita actually that $3 margarita sounds tight Yeah, I don't mean to knock us off track here, but can we just talk about the outside dining thing?
	It has no resemblance to... It's not enjoyable.
	It's the middle of the fucking summer.
	You could go fucking melt into your dinner.
	At least in DC, just get mosquito bites like crazy.
	I understand wanting to patronize these businesses, but I don't...
	I don't get it.
	Is that catching on where you guys are?
	Is it a popular thing?
	Yeah, I'm in Seattle and I'm in Capitol Hill.
	I don't know about Seattle.
	Yeah, I'm in Seattle, and I'm in Capitol Hill.
	And it's, I mean, the dining scene, the bar scene, the music scene hasn't reopened.
	But the restaurant industry is trying to come back.
	There's been closures of, like, restaurants that just couldn't make it, which is unfortunate.
	Because, I don't know, I'm, like, maybe I'm a contrarian here or whatever, but I like eating out, you know?
	Like, I think servers are some of, like, the best humans in the world.
	I think they do, like, One of the best jobs.
	Just after doctors and teachers, there's servers.
	They feed you, give you food.
	It's like a beloved thing.
	And they should obviously be treated better and paid better.
	And if they don't Want to work in a pandemic, they shouldn't fucking have to work and we should be, you know, they shouldn't be working in a pandemic period.
	We need to get this thing under control.
	But anyway, I enjoy eating out, but I can't.
	Like, I'm not going to contribute to that, to that.
	Like, I'm never going to get to eat out again because we can't just stop fucking eating out for a couple months.
	Like I and I don't know so they're trying it there's like there's like three tables outside and like or like two tables inside separated by plexiglass uh so they're trying it but it's it's not enough to keep the restaurant afloat it's not enough to kill the virus like it's just prolonging purgatory.
	And what sucks too is everybody who, not everybody, a lot of people who are like eating out right now, especially where I'm at right now, they're eating out like in protest.
	Like there's a way they're doing that.
	There's a way that people are aggressively not wearing masks, you know?
	And like that's what's happening.
	You'll go there and it's all a certain type of person who is like lined up the outside bar and they like all like look at you while you wear your mask walking by.
	Um, and like, It's like, I would love to stop and have a, you know, a burger 10 feet away from somebody else, um, and feel good.
	But everyone there is like actively not taking any precautions anywhere outside that restaurant.
	And so it's just like, it, it just, you're putting yourself in danger and it sucks.
	Lastly, the argument that I see very frequently, and this comes from Fox News too, but it's a very memed argument, which is they'll show footage of a protest.
	They'll show footage of crowds of people protesting on behalf of Black Lives Matter.
	And they'll say something like, oh, so the virus, I guess, won't attack you if you're on the left and in a crowd, as opposed to, you know, at church or as opposed to at school.
	Wow, how interesting.
	Like they're making...
	You know, some point about the bias and the coverage or whatever.
	And, you know, the argument here is like, oh, how come leftists or how come Black Lives Matter people are allowed to protest?
	How come they're allowed to be out in huge numbers when we're not allowed to go to church or we're not allowed to go to the bowling alley or whatever?
	And it's like those, like, we're not allowed to protest.
	Like, I mean, they're like arresting us and beating us and shit.
	The fact of the matter is there's just more of us.
	It's just harder to prevent us from doing that because there's so many of us.
	And like that's, I don't know, it's funny for how much the right does actually have a grasp of power.
	It's funny that they're so whiny in that respect.
	Like you could like commandeer an Applebee's if you got enough people.
	You could make an Applebee's run if you just filled it with 300 people.
	It's pretty simple, but they don't have the impetus to actually go do something like that.
	They'd rather just, you know, be aggrieved online about it.
	Right, right.
	And the old, you know, the cliche that, you know, I'm in DC, I go to the shit and I always go to like tea party protests.
	I'm like, why are there like 60 people here?
	And it's always like, well, it's because we're working, of course.
	The left is blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, It's like bullshit like that individualism that we were talking about earlier has like the The other edge of the sword there is that like they can't organize for shit Yeah, well they wouldn't be anything if they didn't have like a you know a billion dollars behind their movement
	Well it's another thing too it's like there's that gotcha video that people are sitting around about it's like Dr. Fauci being asked like well why don't we stop protests why don't we limit protests and he's like well we can't really do that like you said earlier but another thing is that when you show up at these protests a lot of you know like the Black Lives Matter protests and the defund the police and abolish the police protests I mean, as someone who attends at least weekly and organizes one pretty often, we all have masks, we all have hand sanitizer, we're all talking about it.
	And like this one we did last time, that was one of the first we had a pretty big counter protest there.
	Um, like none of them had taken any precautions.
	And so we're taking precautions.
	And like, there's been, you know, example after example of how this is not spreading amongst those protests, like, like, like wildfire, because people are taking the precautions still.
	And that's like part of the whole thing.
	Like they're not, that's, that's why, that's why it's not spreading.
	Like, that's why, you know, you're not seeing it because we're doing the work.
	Right.
	And you guys don't want to be out there.
	Well, well, you want to be out there, but you don't want to be out there.
	Does it make sense what I'm saying?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	You know, that's exactly what it is.
	I don't want to be out there at all, but we have to.
	Right.
	Should I go through maybe just the second half of what I've procured from a couple Facebook groups?
	Just the second one, since we're running a little long.
	Jared?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Let's do it.
	So I pulled up a couple threads for, you know, this topic, and the first one was a thread in the Reopen Washington group that I'm part of, you know, a local Facebook group with 40,000 members, you know, all about forcing these people's employees back to work or like, you know, getting their shitty kids out of the house or whatever.
	Or some people, I will say, like some people who are actually genuinely hurting because of the quarantine.
	And don't have an income, don't have a steady income, and aren't being helped by the government.
	And hey, maybe if we had a, you know, a, quote, left government, like an example of left policies that we're actually advocating for everyone, maybe there would be less psychos like this.
	Maybe there would be, I don't know, a different argument or like a, or an opposing narrative.
	But anyway, one of these threads was about doxing the people who work for the Washington LNI.
	Which is the Labor and Industries Department of Washington, which is like a statewide OSHA.
	So basically they're responsible for going into businesses and making sure they comply with like, you know, worker safety and things like that.
	And there's a thread about Sophia Way posts, publish the pictures, names, and addresses of all L&I inspectors immediately.
	And a couple people are like, hey, I don't know if that's a good idea and then other people are like No, actually they're Nazis and I have no sympathy for somebody just do quote doing their job So that's like This one guy, Jeff Broadland, I think the names and addresses of traitors should be public information.
	What the public chooses to do about it, meaning like threats to them once they've been doxxed, that's a separate thing.
	And I went to Jeff Broadland's Facebook page and it was wonderful.
	I think we might talk about it on our show later.
	But I think the more interesting thread is from Derek Haxton, who posts into Reopen Washington State Facebook group.
	Went into Rezauer's at Five Mile for some groceries today.
	Normally when I walk in and I'm told to wear a mask, a simple, quote, medical exemption, like he's saying that, medical exemption will suffice.
	Today, however, when I said that, the employee at the front of the store said, well, we have a badge for you to wear and held up a neon orange nine and a half by 11 inch laminated piece of paper that said, quote, medical exemption on it.
	Just like the Star of David that said Juden in 1940s Germany.
	I politely refused and carried on about my business in the store.
	These people have never felt oppression at all in their life, ever.
	That's exactly what I said.
	They just have no clue what that is.
	That's so wild.
	Remember the part where this is voluntary, friend?
	This is voluntary, but you're saying You're saying that you want that.
	It's not the same thing at all.
	Remember the part where this is like a courtesy that they're doing for you?
	This is like a treat that you get personally?
	Yeah.
	I would never do that.
	It's like, you know how in Nazi Germany, the Jews all got marked with the Star of David because they were granted benefits by Germany?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And if they came to take you to the concentration camps, you could claim that you had a medical exemption.
	Yeah.
	I was at this show before quarantine, you know, I was at this show and I was like, yeah, hey, I want to go outside and smoke.
	I'll be right back.
	And they said, okay, we're going to stamp your hand.
	And I get you right back in.
	And I said, what?
	You're going to put a mark on my body to separate me?
	Yeah.
	To separate me from everyone.
	And they're like, well, yeah, it's like, so like you get, you have the privilege to come back in.
	We don't get, we don't question you.
	We don't.
	And it's like, no, absolutely not.
	I demand that you allow me to exit and reenter without showing any purchase, any receipt, any stamp, nothing.
	And that's what these people want.
	Like, It reminds me of that video that went viral like a month or two ago and this woman really thought she did something by recording this.
	I think it was either a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods.
	She went up and she said, you know, I need to go grocery shopping.
	The manager was like, You have to wear a mask.
	And she said, I can't wear a mask.
	I have a medical exemption.
	And I don't have to tell you what my medical exemption is.
	I have this printout from the internet that proves it.
	And he was like, OK, well, just give me your shopping list and we will go shop.
	We will literally shop for you.
	And she said, and she's like thinking on the fly.
	She's like thinking of how this is all so bad.
	And so she's like, well, actually, I'm trying to make private purchases.
	And I don't want you knowing what I want to buy, what I'm going to buy.
	At a Trader Joe's?
	At a Trader Joe's, where you go to a check stand and they handle all the goods that you want to buy.
	And I'm running through a scanner.
	Also, if you're buying something that private at Trader Joe's, no one has to know that unless you get detailed.
	No one has to know what you're doing with that stuff.
	Exactly.
	No, but I mean it's like they have to handle your goods.
	They don't just turn their heads away as you walk through the store and then walk out the front door and leave the correct change on the nightstand as you leave.
	That's not how shopping works.
	Ma'am, you don't have to be so ashamed of loving hummus.
	That's okay.
	A lot of people like hummus.
	I see there's a lot of soy-based hummus.
	Do we have any milk-based hummus?
	Can I get some actual dairy in my hummus?
	Yeah, can you put some milk in my hummus, please?
	I'm worried about developing breasts.
	No, what you do there is if you don't like hummus for that reason, you just only eat cottage cheese.
	It's just cottage cheese is your hummus.
	Pita and cottage cheese.
	But yeah, it's just like they're offering you, like they're babying you.
	They're babying you and you're saying no, like this pacifier is the wrong flavor.
	Right.
	Yeah, right.
	It's it's what you were saying, Tony.
	It's people who have never experienced like people who have never heard the word no before and are just absolutely shocked.
	They're like, but I'm a paying customer.
	Yeah it blows my mind and we are we're running up on time here so I did want to you know put on my smoking jacket and my my bubbly pipe and you know play a little bit of armchair psychology here you know much like Alex Berenson's wife and
	Uh, you know, I, we already talked about sort of individualism and how this is kind of, you know, sending people over the edge, you know, and kind of I don't know a nicer way to say it than embarrassing themselves.
	At least to people like us.
	We see this and my first reaction is embarrassment for that person.
	Especially the people who are filming themselves and sharing it to these Facebook groups and being like, check out how epic I am.
	All I can think is in five years from now, time is the best judge.
	Are these people going to hate themselves?
	I mean, maybe they'll get COVID or something, not to get too dark.
	Hopefully they won't have a chance to experience that.
	I'm curious, you guys spend way more time than any healthy person should engaged very deeply sort of on the granular level with this stuff.
	And I'm curious if you guys have any thoughts about sort of the frame of mind, the state of mind that is kind of contributing to this.
	Because, you know, folks like Alex Berenson, who we talked about, there is a reason that he has risen up in this zeitgeist and has been able to sell all these books and stuff, and it's because there's an audience for it.
	So, you know, I'm curious your guys' thoughts here.
	I think it's only going to get worse.
	I don't think these people are going to come to their senses or look back in embarrassment.
	I think that they're going to find even more insane things to say.
	We've been doing our show for two and a half years.
	I've been following conservative media for longer than that, and it's only gotten More extreme.
	It's only gotten, like, more wild.
	I mean, like, there's that K.W.
	Miller guy on Twitter, you know, who is just overtly, like, he's not winking at QAnon, he's, like, overtly saying the QAnon things in, like, a meme-able way, in, like, a, a, uh, marketable way.
	And finding a huge, huge audience, you know, it's, it's...
	It's leftists making fun of him or gawking at him, reasonable people gawking at him, but there's a bunch of people who genuinely feel that way.
	And it seems like these crises have sort of unlocked not only, or what do you call it, revealed the failures of capitalism and the failures, the lie of the greatness of America, but it's also revealed a lot of psychosis in a lot of people.
	I think there's just like, a lot of like people who are unwell like mentally and emotionally in this country for valid reasons and uh it's it's shined a light on that and i think it's given you know the more people see it in the media the more people like feel comfortable expressing it i think
	I think the only recourse is just to take power and actually change society, actually make it better for everyone, and then hopefully blunt some of the trauma or some of the illness that people experience.
	No, absolutely.
	Just to kind of piggyback on what you're saying, it's unfortunate that, you know, we're talking about masks, but through talking about masks, We're talking about so much more because these things are often tied to other things, right?
	Things like what they propose to be our liberties being encroached on and whatnot.
	And what a lot of it really boils down to is protecting a system that enables white supremacy.
	Like that's what the backbone of a lot of this is even even if you are you know even if you're one of the the many you know black conservative commentators or a person of color like commentators out there who is a Republican and conspiracy theory pusher it's That's what a lot of the backbone of this is.
	So like Alex is saying, I don't see that going anywhere.
	I do see it only getting amplified.
	And that's why in my day-to-day and my actions, I always speak about, we're not gonna end racism.
	We're not gonna end these wild thoughts that people have.
	That's just not the goal.
	We can't do that.
	These people are set.
	These people stopped talking to their entire families.
	You know, these people have lost jobs.
	These people don't care.
	Who's left to influence them?
	Yeah, these people don't care.
	So like, you know, like you said, rather than try to change, you know, the hearts and minds thing is, that's great and everything, but rather than change that, you have to, you know, dismantle the system that enables those things to thrive.
	Because that's what's going to happen.
	Once they realize, oh wait, I have not only lost family and friends support, but also I'm struggling economically.
	It's all being pushed back.
	I am now like a pariah.
	Because they should be pariahs.
	We have to actually make a lot of structural change to get that to be impactful, because until then they're just going to keep on selling mesh masks and making money off of it.
	Yeah, it's something that I wish that liberals would understand, the well-rationed liberal types.
	You know, to what both of you are saying about how kind of the solution here is not to like, you know, produce a viral video that like, changes the hearts and minds of, of the Washington reopen Facebook group it, you know, yeah, what this is going to have to take if we're actually going to fix this is just taking power and doing it.
	And At some point we have to, it sounds heartless, but just, you know, understand that there is going to be a subset of people on the right that are just going to shriek and scream through the whole process and, uh, you know, treat it, you know, kind of in a surgical way, you know, like, uh, you know, if you're in the hospital and they're performing a procedure on you and you start, you know,
	yelling that like you know them pouring the the disinfectant in your wound hurts like they're not going to stop you know it's like you you just have to get it done for the the sake of the person um and i don't it's hard for me to imagine that like until that sort of until we become okay with people getting very upset and very stressed out about sort of this the change that we want to implement
	uh it's we're kind of our own worst enemy to fixing anything Amen.
	Well, it's going to get the shrieking, as you described her, the screaming is going to get left because that's like, that's going to be how capital defends itself.
	That's going to be like, I mean, we already see it with, you know, the, the moderate gains made by like democratic socialists or social Democrats, like in, in the electoral sphere.
	Like, you're seeing increasingly violent rhetoric on the right about, you know, throwing commies out of helicopters or about, you know, based cops like beating the shit out of unarmed protesters.
	Like, you're seeing this escalation of rhetoric and the escalation of, like, sort of a denial of like the humanity of others you know whether it's we're talking about coronavirus or whether we're talking about you know black lives uh or like left politics in general um because as a response i think to the crises that we're facing in society like i think they know that there's no
	There's no easy answer, and the left answers are the more popular ones, and they're not happy about that.
	And so I think we're only going to see increasingly more embarrassing and or overtly violent rhetoric.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Or, you know, also actions.
	Yeah that's what's kind of so like scary is it like it is it is all getting that um there's like this boiling point that's happening and I don't know whether it's going to end in like you know some gnarly violence or it's going to end in you know local people actually taking some sort of stand against all this stuff and like because I think the only one of the few tools we really have is is
	Choking him out like economically like if if someone is posting on Facebook pictures of like you know all their guns and talk this happened locally and it was really kind of nice to see like a woman locally did some post that was um if rioting looting is like protesting then shooting protesters is target practice Um, and that, that, that woman lost her job.
	Ace Hardware fired her.
	Um, and like, that's, that's what we have to do.
	And like, it sucks.
	It sucks so bad.
	Like we have to like, no longer, you know, the businesses should be closed down.
	People should lose jobs.
	People should have to like really like have to bend to this or else it's going to keep on going and they're only going to get more empowered the more we let it slide.
	Yeah, I don't trust businesses to do the right thing.
	No, not at all.
	You need to hold the business accountable.
	I think, you know, we, we, yeah, I, I just think, you know, uh, actually forming a popular, you know, uh, a popular set of goals and enacting them would do like the best thing possible.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, that's that, I mean, in the meantime, like we, there's no, there is no set of popular goals that me and, you know, Jimmy who sends me death threats like once a week, we're, we don't have a set of common popular goals.
	Yeah, I mean, to what you're saying, Alex, I think you're right.
	The shrieking is going to get louder because it's all they have left.
	Because as far as health care and minimum wage and, you know, a whole laundry list of issues, capital has lost the argument already.
	So it's kind of all like this is the death rattle of that possibly.
	And I think Ultimately, it's our choice, collectively, if we're going to let it die.
	I think on that note, we killed capitalism, so I think that's probably a good point to wrap this one up.
	Do you guys have any final thoughts to share about COVID skepticism, trutherism, denialism, whatever you want to call it?
	No, I mean, respect to everybody who's working, respect to everybody who is isolating and doing the responsible thing because they have, you know, family who is at risk or they themselves are at risk.
	I know it must be extremely hard.
	I am still working Monday through Friday, long hours, so solidarity with all the essential workers out there and solidarity with anybody who's lost anybody or anybody who is at risk of losing somebody.
	Yeah, same.
	I'm also working still.
	Yeah, we gotta hold our businesses to a higher standard.
	If you're working at a place that is not mandating safe protocol, I understand that you probably can't, you can't say anything about it because you're an employee there.
	So what I'm getting at there is everyone around us, everyone around you needs to say something.
	We all need to advocate for our For the servers.
	We need to advocate for the servers.
	We need to advocate for those people, for the grocery store workers, for everybody.
	We need to advocate for them if we're not them ourselves.
	That's the biggest thing right now.
	Petitioning for people's safety shouldn't be that radical, and we've got to kind of keep doing that.
	All right.
	Well, that, I think, is a good place to wrap things up.
	This has been an episode of Shitpost.
	I've been joined by Alex and Tony from Minion Death Cult.
	Fellas, where can people check out your podcast?
	It's very good.
	My podcast player, I think I'm subscribed to like 20 different ones or something, but yours is the one that I always listen to when it comes down.
	So, where can people hear the gospel?
	Thank you very much!
	Yeah, thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	MinionDeathCult.com or wherever you get podcasts, you know, whatever player you have, including Spotify, we are on there.
	We also have bonus episodes every week at Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult.
	And yeah, thanks again so much for having us on.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, yeah, thank you.
	It was awesome.

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