Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Getting threatened for voting for Trump, having your woke professor
scold you over your hairstyle, or having your abuser come
out as non binary to get away with it. We're
going to talk about all these crazy horror stories you
sent in for this episode of the Barad Versus Everyone podcast,
(00:24):
my daily show where we take on the craziest ideas
from across the Internet, our media, and our politics, all
from an independent perspective. On Fridays, we do voicemail Friday
episodes where I take voice notes from you guys and
hear about your personal life situations and your wo cars
stories and react to them and share them with the audience.
(00:44):
The link to send one of those in is in
the description, as always, if you want your story to
potentially be featured in an upcoming episode. And now, without
further ado, let's listen to our first scholler, who was
threatened simply for voting for the President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hi, bratty Addie, I'm a really big fan of your
show and I wanted to share a story today about
something that happened this past election. So this past election,
I voted for Trump. I'm a very religious conservative, and
that's not really something I keep secret about myself. So
I was I made a post on TikTok about how
I had voted for Trump, and it wasn't even really
(01:22):
very antagonizing, in my opinion. It was just something kind
of stating my views, and I actually got a d M.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It was a hate message.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
It was it said things like Jesus would want to watch.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
You burn, and you're horrible, and you're and you know,
burn in hell and just you know, horrible, like nasty things.
And eventually this person resorted to telling me that somebody
was that they knew what college I was going to
go to, they told me what college I went to,
and that somebody aling me a visit because quote unquote rape.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
The supporters don't deserve to live obviously, you know, kind
of antagonizing me about being religious and everything. So yeah,
that's that's my horror story. I made a police report,
but uh, it's kind of wild.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Wow, Well, this person who messaged you on TikTok seems
like a real treat. What a honey, what a sweetie.
I mean, look, obviously it's scary to receive a message
like this, and I am glad that you reported it
to the police. Although there's not that much they can do.
I too have been threatened for different reasons. I didn't
(02:36):
support Trump, but a lot of my opinions, you know,
offend people, and I've had people to send things to
my home. I had people threatened me. It's like, sadly
kind of par for the course if you're a political
commentator of any note. But you're just a normal person
who simply just expressed your viewpoint online. So that really
shouldn't be happening to you. I mean, it shouldn't be
happening to anyone, but especially not to you, just exercising
(02:58):
your opinion to a presumable a pretty small audience, and
especially because you said there wasn't even anything particularly antagonistic
about your post, although even if there was, that wouldn't
justify any of this behavior. The upside, though, or at
least the positive spin I can put on this, is
that ninety nine point nine percent of the time these
kinds of threats are just from like keyboard warriors who
(03:20):
will never do anything in real life, and so it's
still scary. I do totally get that, but I don't
know that you actually need to be that concerned or
that worried and just block people like this. They're totally unhinged.
They've lost the plot. I mean, imagine thinking that half
the country basically deserves to die because in a system
(03:42):
where you literally only have two options, they chose one
that they thought was less bad. And you can talk
about Trump's personal foibles. How could anybody vote for somebody
who may have abused or harmed women? And I do
understand that argument. But I also understand why good hearted
America could say, well, look, I think his pro life
policies will save thousands of lives, or I think that
(04:06):
we have a national security crisis at our border, so yes,
I'm gonna hold my nose and vote for him. I
don't think that makes you a bad person. We could
discuss whether that's right or wrong on a moral, political,
strategic level, but I will never accept that that makes
someone evil or that they don't have a right to live.
That's dangerous and unhinged and dehumanizing rhetoric. That takes you
to a very dark place. It's also like probably the
(04:29):
worst way ever to win support for a side. I mean,
I don't know people like this, don't aren't they the democracy?
People like like?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Eh?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Democracy, democracy, democracy, and they take it a little far,
but like, we are a country where popular will is
how the government is controlled. So presumably if you are
on the left and you want a Commo to win
or something, and you want Democrats to win in twenty
twenty six or twenty twenty eight, you should be trying
to convince Trump supporters, not threatening them. Just my hot take,
(05:00):
but people don't typically respond well when you threaten, insult
or demean them, and it's not a great way of
winning hearts and minds. Crazy idea, I know that's wild. Anyway,
thank you for the voicemail. Hope all is well. Hopefully
nothing ever comes from this. But you know what, honestly
I would encourage you not to back down because that's
what they want. So keep speaking your mind, saying your views,
(05:22):
and having respectful debates and dialogues, and don't let deranged
people on TikTok scare you out of exercising your basic, fundamental,
constitutional and human right to speak your mind and vote
for whoever you want. What do you guys think? Let
me know in the comments. Do with that like button.
Make sure you're subscribed to if you aren't yet, remember
the link to send in one of these is in
(05:43):
the description. Please do tell me your It doesn't have
to be political, but it can be a woke horror story.
It can be some far right craziness you've encountered, or
a personal dilemma. I'm happy to hear about anything you
guys have going on. I want to hear from you,
so check out the link in the description to send
me a voice note. We're going to hear from a
teenager whose friend's parents won't let her come over this
(06:04):
person's house because their home is unsafe because her parents
may have voted for Trump or something. Okay, let's take
a listen to this voicemail from our friend here, who
I think is in high school, who had this really
crazy experience.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Hi Brad, I'm Riley. I was recently in a class
with my friend A and I invited her over to
my house sometime because she hadn't come over in forever.
And I just told her that she should come over
some time, and she let me know that she would
be unable to come over my house anymore. I pried
a little bit and just you know, asked why because
(06:38):
she lives on my street. We live very close, and
she let me know that it was because her mother
believes that my house could be unsafe. I come from
a more right leaning household, and there's no really way
that it could be considered unsafe. Wh's just your average household.
But I guess that my friend A had told her
mom about my family's political views, and they're a very
(07:00):
liberal family, and from the information that my friend A
gave her, she considered it to be an unsafe household
for her daughters to be in. So I don't know
how I should proceed. Me and A we kind of
had a bit of a falling out due to political things,
because I believe in separating the political from the personal,
you know, just it doesn't need to be the same thing.
(07:23):
But A doesn't, So politics come up a lot with
her and we don't really agree. So just let me
know how to proceed, because I don't know if we
should maintain a friendship in this situation.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Wow, so this is not normal. This is like unhinged behavior,
particularly from your friend's mother. I have to just first
and foremost say that either way, this parent is wrong.
But this parent, this mom, this woke mom who apparently
watches too much MSNBC or whatever, is she's wrong in
(07:54):
one of two ways. Either she's suggesting that it is
like emotionally or mentally unsafe for her child to go
to a Trump supporting Families home, which I think is
wrong because that's not what safety means. The idea that
you might encounter a belief or opinion that's not your
own is not a threat to your safety. And that's
like ridiculous, condescending logic that I totally reject or more
(08:20):
sinisterly and I really hope it's not this, but I
actually kind of get the vibe that this might be
what's happening here. This mom actually thinks that her daughter
would be like at risk of you know, harm being
done to her, like physically or safety wise, at risk
in a Trump supporting home, and that is deranged because
that's just baseless, Like you, politics is not a proxy
(08:44):
for what person is more likely to like harm your
daughter or what adults can you trust around your children?
And what's so sinister about that? In my view, like
the correlation does not exist, The math is not mathing.
There there are people who vote for Trump, for Biden,
for Kamala whoever, who don't vote it all, who may
harm your kids, and you can't that is not any
sort of reliable proxy, and it's one is just like
(09:05):
insulting to people who whatever Trump, because many of them
are upstanding Americans and great people in their communities would
never harm a fly. But more importantly, from the parent's perspective,
it's actually very important to make sure that your especially
if you have a teenage daughter, is not put in
a situation where they may be harmed or taken advantage of.
And so for you to do it in ways that
(09:25):
are motivated by your partisan hatred and your tribal ideology
rather than actual fact, statistics, data, actual you know, criminal
background checks, knowing the offenders in your area are any
sort of factual or logical basis, is failing at that
purpose of keeping your kids safe. So it's like a
(09:46):
betrayal of the most fundamental responsibility a parent has to
a child, which I really find contemptible, honestly, And I
would find it contemptible in the opposite direction if a
Trump supporting family said no, I can't let my kids
go to a Kamala voting household because they know that's unsafe,
I would find that equally absurd and inaccurate. Now, as
(10:07):
for the friend that is kind of a second question here,
can you still be friends with this person? And I
generally think you can be friends with people with very
different beliefs. I have people who I consider close friends
who are all over the spectrum politically, some of them
who are to my right and love Trump, some of
them who are like very left, like have the politics
(10:27):
of Elizabeth Warren. And I do believe generally that you
can separate the political from the personal. In this case, though,
if this friend of yours has this parent interfering, or
in particular, if this parent or this friend can't handle
disagreement or coexistence and just like not talking about things
that you don't agree on, if that's what you have
to do or commonly civilly talking about them, then I
(10:50):
would say that that's the reason that you may potentially
need to just give up on this friendship. Not because
this friend is liberal or progressive, but because they don't
know how to civilly agree to disagree or simply agree
not to talk about certain issues. So that would be
a valid reason for not being friends with this person,
not the fact that they wanted Kamonala to win in
twenty twenty four or anything like that. Up next, we're
(11:12):
gonna hear from somebody who's woke professor lectured them about
what haircuts they're allowed to have as a white person. Yes, seriously,
let's take a lesson.
Speaker 6 (11:23):
Hi, Brad, this is m longtime viewer of the show.
I just had a quick story, kind of funny that
I thought I would share whenever I was going to school.
About two years ago, I took a critical race theory
class at a university, and during that class, my professor
(11:45):
thought she would enlighten us I advise that apparently braids
are exclusively for indigenous and people of color, and that
any white person is not supposed to wear braids, even
though there's historical instances of what braids being used across
(12:10):
the world. Just thought that was a funny one, quick
one for you. I hope you're doing well, have a
great one as always.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Thank you for the note, And actually, Loki, shout out
to you for signing up to take a critical race
theory class even though you knew you were probably going
to disagree with a lot of it. I respect that,
and I actually really recommend that I took a gender
studies class in college, even though obviously you know, I
knew I was going to disagree with ninety percent of
what they taught, but it was an eye opening experience
for me. And as long as you go into it
(12:39):
determined to push back and ask tough questions and not
just like gobble up the woke gobbledygook propaganda they're feeding you.
I actually think it's an eye opening experience and then
people should not shy away from it. So shout out
to you for doing that. But I find this idea laughable.
And it's not just this one professor. You will find
this in like some corners of woke school, this course,
(13:01):
that it is somehow progressive to argue that, like certain
haircuts are only for certain skin color people like that.
To me, oh am, I allowed to have this haircut.
Better check my flow chart of which races are allowed
to have it, Like in what universe did anyone consider
that progress? And you have a point that like white
(13:21):
people wore braids in some historical context, To me, it
doesn't freaking matter though, Like I don't accept the premise
that you can only wear this hairstyle of your ancestors
had this hairstyle in some textbook. No, that's stupid. It's
just a hairstyle seriously, Like I love this, so this
like scholar whose you know, career is dedicated to anti
racism research and professor. Really it's haircuts, babe, We're going
(13:45):
with haircuts. That's what's going to keep you up at night. Honestly,
it's like show me on the doll where the haircut
hurt you. I just don't accept for a moment that
any black people in the world anywhere are actually materially
harmed in any way, that their life is made worse
by a white person somewhere wearing braids. And I actually
(14:05):
think it's absurd and kind of offensive to the struggles
they might actually face to focus on such ridiculous fluff
and bs. But yeah, I encounter that kind of thing
all the time in college, and that's part of why
I made sure to graduate in three years rather than four.
I just couldn't handle. I mostly did it to save money,
but I just I couldn't handle too much of it.
(14:26):
And apparently guys in academia and this one comes a
shock to me given the work I'm doing on the
Citation Needed podcast with Colin Wright, where we do deep
dives into woke academia. I'll link to that in the
description you can go subscribe to our sub stack. But
this is not really a surprise to me. But apparently
wokeness is even infecting the hard sciences like physics. Take
(14:49):
a listen, hey.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Brad, So I wanted to tell you about a funny
situation that I experienced recently at a university campus. So
I with my grandmother to a seminar on physics and
the arts and all it had to do with Really,
it had nothing to do with physics, honestly. It all
(15:11):
had to do with the Indigenous ways of thinking and
how they're trying to impose themselves into physics. And it's
kind of like it made me laugh a lot because
essentially it was, oh, if a tree falls in the forest,
does it really make a sound? Well, yes, because nature
(15:32):
is there to observe it. Oh, you know, and I
don't know. I think you and your friend Colin Wright
mentioned that a lot of liberals and left leading people
take everything Indigenous people and what they have to say
for like exactly what they say, And it made me
laugh so hard that they had a whole seminar about
(15:53):
Indigenous beliefs in physics, like it's some things are you
don't need to politicize, you know, it's physics. Like, I
don't know, maybe you have something to say about that,
but I thought it was pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, I mean, thank you for your message. And I
am horrified by this. We talk about this kind of
thing a lot on Citation Needed, which is not available
on my YouTube channel. You have to go to the
substack to subscribe there to check it out. You can
get part of it for free, and then part of
it's for paid subscribers. But on this show that I
do with Colin Wright, we talk about this kind of thing,
and I find it concerning in general the extent to
(16:33):
which this like kind of woke brain rot has infected academia.
But when it's in the social sciences, that's bad enough.
When it gets into the hard sciences, which we've documented
a little bit on Citation Needed and we'll do more
in the future, and the kind of thing this caller
talked about, that's when it actually scares me, because, like,
I don't want the people doing physics in America, many
(16:56):
of whom who may go on to like design planes
and trains and all all this kind of shit I
don't understand, but I rely on their expertise to be
safe in my everyday life. I don't want them thinking about, Wow,
what would indigenous ways of knowing tell us about this? No, like,
what are the facts? What can we observe and confirm
to be true? Do science not activism? Keep it out
(17:18):
of the hard scientists. That's not too much to ask.
That's like a bare minimum if you guys want to
do that, totally unserious gobbledygook. And like absolutely this is
not shade to Native Americans or Indigenous people or people
with that ancestry at all. It's simply to say that, like,
science is about discovering truth, and if there's some truth
(17:38):
that Indigenous people know, that's valid. But this idea that
we should like instead of just traditional scientific method also
listen to indigenous ways of knowing as if that's like
a factual thing. If it's a factual thing, it's already
part of science. If it's not, if it's something else,
then it's useless and we shouldn't be doing it, not
(17:59):
in this domain at least. Yeah, this kind of thing
actually scares me when I encounter this stuff in like
the hard sciences or in medicine, which we increasingly encounter
a lot, because like, that's this is not gender studies discourse, right,
This is not like Marxist feminist journals publishing stupid stuff.
This is people who are being trained to do to
(18:19):
work in jobs and fields much more important than mine, right,
where people's lives are actually at stake, not reacting to
TikTok videos on YouTube, but like making life and death
decisions for patients, designing machines that fly in the sky,
keep the woke crap out of it. That's not too
much to ask at all. Up next, we're gonna hear
(18:40):
from somebody who's family member cheered for Trump to be assassinated. Yes, lovely,
lovely stuff. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7 (18:50):
Hey, Brad, I'm a college student and I hold what
I would consider to be relatively moderate beliefs, but my
family is pretty far left. Anyway. I was at my
cousin's wedding recently and I was talking to my uncle.
He's kind of like the stereotype of that crazy uncle,
and the conversation turned to Trump somehow. This was right
(19:12):
around the assassination attempt, and he just goes, ah, like,
why do you have to miss he was so close? Oh,
I just did not know how to react. I kind
of froze up. I kind of always freeze up in
these situations. That just seems to be my response. But
I want to work on that. And yeah, I would
just love your advice as to how to deal with
(19:35):
these situations, how to get my point across without sounding
hostile or angry. But yeah, I just think it's insanely
hypocritical of the Party of Love, as they say, to
just completely condone violence when it's against Republicans because all
Republicans are hateful or whatever the logic is. I really
(19:57):
just don't know at this point, But yeah, or should
I not? Maybe these people really are impossible to reason
with and I should just smile and nod. I don't
know anyway, any advice would help, all right, thanks.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well, you definitely shouldn't smile and nod when they're saying
stuff that's that crazy, like, oh, what a shame he missed.
Excuse me, sir, at secret service, we got another one
to check up on, Like, I mean, he's probably harmless,
but what a crazy thing to say. And you're right
to be clear, not all Democrats, not all liberals, believe
(20:31):
this kind of thing. But we've looked at polling on
this podcast that shows huge percentages literally think the murder
of Trump would be partially justified at least, And that's
a really scary thing to confront. So I think you're
faced with a couple possibilities here. One is that you
just write him off and decide he's beyond help, like
beyond saving. And I can understand that, though I think
(20:55):
that's generally something I caution against doing because I I've
seen people who are so far gone one way or
the other actually still somehow come back to it. And
the thing that you can do, rather than argue with
people is say to them ask questions that plant seeds
(21:16):
of doubt in their mind that they argue with you
in the moment, but then they go home and they
wrestle with it how they don't really have a good
answer to that perfect few questions I would have asked,
because you asked, how to talk about this in a
way where you remain calm and civil even if your
uncle clearly isn't. And what I would say is, okay,
so you think murder is justified when you don't like
(21:38):
the victim. What's your answer to that question? And I
would say, how would you have felt if you heard
Trump supporters expressing that opinion about President Biden, silence, crickets,
no good response to that. Would you really prefer Vice
President jd Vance? Hmmm, here's another question you could ask.
(22:00):
Do you really think that killing Trump would make the
American political discourse and culture move in a more stable
and healthy direction or would it have the opposite effect
of that? You might get defensive, but as long as
you're just asking pointed questions and you're not yelling, you're
not insulting him or anything like that, you haven't really
(22:21):
done anything wrong. So if he throws a fit, that's
on him, and I think maybe asking those kinds of
questions could plant the seat a doubt that if he's
at all got some rationality or logic still going on
there in the back of his mind, would cause him
to reconsider that position later. But it's up to you
if you want to engage. I would encourage you to, though,
because it is important to speak out for your values
(22:44):
in the real world around you, because you can't control
what happens in Washington, DC, but you can control what
happens in your community and your family, and you should
stand up for what you believe in, especially in the
face of like he didn't state an opinion on an
issue that you disagree with, right, Like he endorsed political
violence and terrorism, And that's like so beyond the pale
(23:06):
that I think you have an obligation to challenge it.
I really would encourage you to and maybe do it
in the way I described to avoid, you know, having
a blow up or making a scene or anything like that.
Though you may have to be willing to let him
make a scene if he chooses to in that kind
of context. But as long as you're not, then you
don't have any reason to feel bad or feel embarrassed. Honestly,
but thank you for your note, thank you for tuning in,
(23:28):
and sorry your family members are so interesting. Up next,
we're going to hear from somebody whose abuser came out
as non binary because he apparently identifies as the them
or something, and now people are shaming her for not
respecting his pronouns. You can't make this stuff up. We're
going to take a listen to this voicemail from a listener.
Speaker 8 (23:51):
Hi, Brad, I'm just watching your new upload from Friday,
June sixth I just started the video, but a similar
situation happened to me with my abuser back in my
junior year of high school, which was four years ago.
(24:15):
He came out as non binary and it got him
out of a lot of the trouble for the literal
like entire year's worth of abuse that he put me through,
and no one at school really understood when I'm like,
I'm not going to call him by non binary pronouns.
(24:37):
I Am not going to let him be seen as
the victim here. And people also got upset because I
was like, he does not get to go into the
women's bathroom anymore, Like that's not a space that he's
allowed to go in. And I actually got in trouble
for refusing to abide by his new name and his
(25:01):
new pronouns, and I still won't to this day. And
it's not just an isolated incident with this. This happens
a surprising amount where abusers will become non binary to
get out of trouble.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I'm a little speechless, like this is diabolical. What do
you mean people disagreed with you that he is not
allowed in the women's room. He's not even a woman
according to himself. That's the crazy part of that. Too me.
Everything about this is crazy. But like he says, he's
non binary, which means neither male nor female, neither woman
nor man. Now, of course that's not real, it's not
(25:37):
a thing, but we'll talk about that another day. So
YouTube doesn't demonetize this video for a hate speech or whatever.
But the fact of the matter is, if you're not
even claiming that you're a woman, why would you be
allowed in the women's room. I mean, we can have
the debate about whether people who claim their women but
aren't females should be allowed in but like in this case,
how is there even a discourse? How is there even
(25:59):
a He doesn't even claim to be woman, So yeah,
why would he be allowed in the women's room. And
if there's an assault accusation against him, which it sounds
like there is, or abuse allegations, all the more reason
he shouldn't be anywhere near the women's room. In fact,
you should probably have an order that he can't go
within a thousand feet of that school or whatever, if
he's really done all these terrible things. Now the I
(26:22):
forget sometimes I come from this. I come from the
part of the country where at like you know, high
schools in affluent areas, people would actually think like this,
like think you're the bad guy for misgendering someone who
abused you. But at some extent you just got to
stand on business. It's your free speech. You do not
have to say this. And if they're really if you
have friends or administrative officials that are shaming you for
(26:47):
not using the preferred pronouns of a non binary person,
first off, even if they're not abuser, Like, you don't
have to do that. It's a free country. You have
free speech, you have first moment rights. You do not
have to call someone today then if you don't agree
with the belief system and ideology that undergirds that, but
especially when that person is an abuser, you have no
(27:08):
obligation to show them respect. Like what if these people
would shame or bully you for that. I know this
is like trite and oversimplification, but like they're not your
real friends. I know that doesn't make it feel better.
I know that doesn't change the fact that you're like
losing important relationships to you or you were at the time,
But they're not real friends. Real friends would be like
ride or die with you if you experience something so terrible,
(27:29):
not like thought policing and speech policing, your like microaggressions
against this like nonsensical ideology. No, absolutely not. And it's
wild to me that I could have this episode and
the way I responded to someone's story, you had this
experience of an abuser come out as non binary, and
then receive multiple voicemails from additional people who that happened to. Now,
(27:50):
it's not really like meaningful data because my audience is
not a statistically representative sample of the population. It's a
very skewed population that's not representative of the whole country.
But it is interesting to me that that's like not
a one off, freak occurrence. It's something multiple people have
experienced just in my relatively small audience, in the grand
(28:10):
scheme of the entire country, and that's a shame. And now,
of course I'm not saying that trans or non binary
people are all predators, or all abusers, or all threats
to women. But it's more so actually that the self
id open door policies that are pushed in the name
of actual trans people who are no threat to women
(28:30):
also allow abusers to take advantage of those That is
the real point, not that those groups of people are
like actual members of those are some massive threat to people.
I don't believe that, and I don't think statistics spare
that out. But it's more so that bad actors, particularly
male bad actors, can exploit the loopholes and the systems
to actually get away with doing terrible things. And we've
(28:52):
seen that in many incidents that have captured national news
coverage and in some that haven't. Like your story, but
my heart goes out to you, and I'm really sorry
that instead of getting supported in your community and in
your school, you got this atrocious response instead. Okay, guys,
that'll be it for today's episode of the Bad Versus
Everyone Podcast. Thank you all so much for tuning in.
(29:15):
Please do make sure you're subscribed. If you aren't yet,
do it that like button before you go comment with
your thoughts. I do actually take the time to read
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to also check out the merch items that your de
(29:35):
Lulu is showing and on my last brain cell lines
are out now, and subscribe to my second channel. I'm
uploading exclusive bonus content that you will not see on
my main channel over there, including me reacting to like
unhinged Instagram reels that aren't even political but are just creepy,
and just like commentary on viral stories and political stories
that I don't have time to cover on my podcast,
(29:56):
that's only going to be on my bonus channel. So
do make sure you're subscribed, And thank you to Brown
News for sponsoring today's episode, and with that, we'll talk
again real soon.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
H