83: On the Sad State of Society à la Hypernormalisation

~ Let's get politicaaal ~

In a slight variation from usual themes, we zoom out to discuss... well, it's a big topic, but pretty much: politicians don't care about us, anyone with the power to create change is motivated by money, and We The People are encouraged to ignore it. To the point that it's terrible for our mental health when we DO see what's wrong but feel powerless to fix it.

Loosely a recap of the Adam Curtis 2016 documentary called "Hypernormalisation", which is free to watch here: https://youtu.be/Gr7T07WfIhM

Source list: https://bit.ly/4i982T5

Patreon ~ patreon.com/sadgap
Merch ~ sadgap-podcast.com/merch 

ig: @sadgap.podcast / @misandristmemes / @txgothgf / music producer @iamjonnibrooks.eth 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hello, and welcome to Sad Girls Against the Patriarchy. I'm
Alison and I'm Alexis, and we are your sad girls. Okay,
I'm gonna take the red pill and the blue pill
and put them on the table. Take some paper cups,
three of them, flip them upside down. Two of them
are going over the pills. One of them doesn't have
anything under it. Okay, okay, and then we're gonna do that.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Where's the going keep track? All right?

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Left, right or center?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh boy, I'm gonna have to go left.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Nothing underneath. If you learn nothing, you lose nothing, you
win nothing. Honestly, that's kind of better.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, I was you know what, I'm not gonna lie.
That's what I was going for. I don't want any
fuck and pills. Okay, No, I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, well, we're about to tell everyone because I got
on a hypernormalization kick recently and I'm very excited that
we're going to be talking about this. Yeah, it's much
bigger than feminism, but obviously it's all connected.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, it's you know, societal which you know, it's all connected. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
As we've said for the past eighty episodes and for
a little time's sake.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh wow, No, oh, that one had some pre com
coming out.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oozing on my laptop. Oh, it wasn't a V eight.
I did open a can if you couldn't tell. But
that's what I get for cheating on V eight. That's okay,
that's a kreatum seltzer. No, I mean you can cut
that off. Well, that's a seltzer. That's so lovely.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I guess I talk about creatim a lot. It's legal.
A pause for a second. He's the corner of my sweatshirt. Okay, Yeah,
we're rolling legal addictive harm reduction strategy. Lots to go
into there. Maybe another time we'll do an episode on
cretum and somehow spin it to feminism.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know, we can.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
I believe in us we can. We can turn anything
back to feminism. I think that's our superpower.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
I think.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, actually yes, because there are more men who abuse substances.
I'm sure that includes creatum, even though the data is
not out there, they seem to be more susceptible to addiction.
Boom done, spun it.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
You already did the work. It's been it.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Did you relate to the kind of essence of hypernormalization,
which is it? I know you have the history of it,
but is it okay if I just give a really
quick like talk, just I'm just gonna keep I'm just
gonna keep going on. I don't want to step on
what you're doing. But we've mentioned it in the last
couple episodes, basically like we're on a very negative path

(02:48):
and it's not the one that we want to be on.
But the powers that be, the lizard people, politicians, global leaders,
they're not going to educate us about this. We're just
going to keep acting as if we're fine, when in
reality we're on clown timeline. Yes, timeline clown Yes?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Did you feel that way? I know you have felt
this way before we researched for this episode. How long
have you felt that way about clowns and timelines?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I mean, I think feel like since twenty sixteen.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's like each year's just gotten progressively more and more clownier.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
And interestingly, the documentary of the same name came out
in twenty sixteen, yes, and ended with kind of a
sense of hey, here's the Trump presidency and I won't
spoil it, but he did make some foreboding comments.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Related to that.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I just think it's hilarious that he didn't know
how bad it would really be.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
H He like made his like everything's terrible. I'm like,
you have no fucking idea, buddy.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, but that's just speaks tune his cleverness to have
anticipated it, you know, before it even really took flight.
Because the last nine years now somehow eight years ago
you're like, yeah, two terms of presidency twenty sixty, twenty four,
that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Nine years, that's basically ten years.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
We're on a decade now of badness. Yeah, and before,
but it's especially it's harder to overlook now.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah, because I think we could also argue when did
it get really bad? Like, I don't know, fucking nine
to eleven was a big fucking game changer.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Not a good not a good thing, no big deal.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, Like our world changed drastically for the worst after that.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I mean, the airports used to be chill guys.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Oh god, yeah, I don't even I don't actually I
hadn't flown at that point yet, but I've heard stories.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, you could like walk people to their gate and
like be like bye, I love you, sweetie.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
And yes to the gate.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
My mom wanted to do that the first time I flew,
when I was like sixteen.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
She was like, I wish I.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Could go with you.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I'm like, sorry a bit so she could have, but
I'm glad that you got your independence.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Was she our parents allowed to do that? Yeah, sixteen
though not like well sixteen, yeah right, don't tell anyone.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, you like basically have to call ahead and make
arrangements like my child's a minor, okay, and you're accompanying them.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
No, I don't think we knew that. And that's fine.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I mean the time has passed. The time.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
No, but I've taken my mom who's disabled to her gate.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Before the more, you know. Yeah, and I didn't have
a fucking ticket. Well.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Growing up in that very religious family I mentioned, we
always were told that basically we're living in a matrix,
which is for one thing, my family really liked that movie,
and like my church friends liked that movie because they
thought it was an allegory for Jesus, Like Neo is Jesus.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
I know you told me that, And I told my husband,
who was like, what the fuck that is the thing?

Speaker 1 (05:37):
It is on the internet. I did not make it up.
We didn't make it up, no, of course not. But
it's written by trans women.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
So I have a feeling it's more of an allegory
for that. Yeah. I think they've said that too. I'm
sure they have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
When it came out in ninety nine, we weren't on
like IMDb Trivia Facts. No, but I was taught that
this world is coming to an end within my lifetime.
God is going to return, There's gonna be war, We're
going to rebuild kind of Heaven on Earth, Judgment Day
and like all of this is sort of biding our
time and not this isn't really life. This is the
sad part about being very religious and waiting for the afterlife.

(06:15):
You don't think this is your time. That's really fucked up.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
I think about that all the time, and you end
up wasting time, right, And maybe there is something else
I don't know, But if there isn't, then I'm sure
as hell do I want to have wasted my seventy
six years just like dicking around.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Or like like not doing things you want to do
because you're worried that there's some like omnipotent being that's
like judging.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
You for every little minor thing you're doing.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
We'll say it's comforting having a voice in your head
to talk to that you think is listening and cares
about you.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
It is a little sad.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Losing that, but yes, yes, I will say the religion parts,
like feeling like you're never alone and that there.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Is something at the end of the tunnel, is like comforting.
It is I wish I could have speaking of the afterlife,
have you seen the good Place? Oh?

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, okay, we just eat it. We just finished it,
so it's good.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
I was thinking that was like, we're talking about this
and that is about literally racking up points for the afterlife.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
And they say, and I guess this is a little
bit of a spoiler, but they realize that there is
no pure moral decision these days because everything's so interconnected.
So it's like, okay, is it morally okay for you
to buy from Walmart? Like look at all the ramifications
of that our world is too complex, which definitely links
into today's topic. Absolutely for us to just have a
black and white point.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
System, yeah, because I mean they made that those examples
and it was really good because it's like, yeah, in
the fifteen hundreds, you know, Joe over here gave roses
to his grandmother.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
And he got like fifty points.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
But then Roberto gave roses to his grandmother last week.
But you know the migrants picked then they're not getting
paid very well. And the store that he bought it
from uses child labor and he's just like aout and
you like lose it. And as we've talked about, there's
no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
So no, unfortunately not but raised to believe that we're
in the matrix, and then got out of that, stopped
believing in God as a teenager, and then believed in
recycling and that things we were doing could make a
positive difference. And then I know that was a nice time.
I think it only lasted until I was about twenty one,
and then I learned about how corrupt the world is

(08:18):
and how how people aren't.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Talking about that enough.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
I feel and like thinking this push for like, oh,
if we just don't use plastic straws, like the world's
gonna be okay. And then he's like, no, you guys,
it's so much out of our control. So I had
a good like six year window of believe it, of hope, right,
and then now I'm back to clown land.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Now we're back to pure nihilism, where we're like nothing
matters and nothing means anything.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Which is a psychological consequence of hypernormalization. And I looked
into some psych studies there too. But why don't we
go back to the beginning and then should we actually
take a break though, let's do it? Okay, okay, yeah,
it seems so early, but when we come back, we'll
be talking about the origin of the term hyper normally.

(09:05):
Say Sean, Okay, I think we should name Clownland. I

(09:25):
really like this clown motif. We have pinned over it. It
was your idea, and I think Clownland is good. But like,
what's a good name for like a theme park? It's
about clown I'm.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Trying to think of like famous clowns.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
What all I can think of is like Boso and
Presty Rusty's didn't think about that one. That's a very
famous clown.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yes, well we'll keep working on that.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yes. In the meanwhile, Alex, just take it away. So
I was gonna start with the definition, but I'll get
to that in a second. So the origin of hypernormalization
was coined originally by Russian anthropologist Alexei Yrchak and his
two thousand and five book Everything Was Forever Until It
Was No More, colon the last Soviet generation and popularized

(10:08):
by the twenty sixteen documentary of which we've been talking
about by Adam Curtis, of the same name hypernormalization, but
with an S the British spelling. Don't get confused for
all you Americans out there. Other places use is instead
disease for words lack THEUS. So I try to look
up like an official definition of like hypernormalization, Like you know,
Miriam Webster defines hypernormalization as.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
But it's not in the dictionary.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's kind of it's a concept, a sociological concept. So
I feel that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
They're pretty good about putting things in the dictionary. Do
you be putting things in the dictionary? You're right?

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Actually, yeah, is it in dictionary? That's the real question.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
You know what. I didn't have time to.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Check my favorite reliable source with Urban dictionary.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Fuck, you could add it, But I was going to
give a couple of quotes that I liked that kind
of surmised it, which again because there's not an official Yeah. One,
this one was from a new Yorker article and an
in tropic acceptance and false belief in a clearly broken
polity and the myths that undergird it.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Quality Yep, what does that mean? Like political system?

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh? They were being a very New Yorker, which is
also why I.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Liked this because like, okay, I went to fucking college
polity and undergird m M undergird yeah g I RD okay, yeah,
And I look that up to It basically means like
the fastening of something underneath something, so.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Basically all like yeah, like support, got it? Yep. But
what's that one from? What's this quote from? I think
that's probably from Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Great.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Uh. The hypernormal results from the manipulation of reality through media, propaganda,
social conventions, and society to create unsustainable perception of reality
that differs from differs from the underlying physical surroundings.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
I mean, it's basically like there's reality, but then there's
the narrative we're being fed and we're supposed to eat
that up. And it's a form of cognitive dissonance too,
where it's like I am uncomfortable knowing that reality doesn't
align with what is being told to me, but there's
not much we can do about it because you're in
the system.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
You're in it.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, so how do you change something when you're living
it in every facet of your life every day.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, you can't fix it when you're the one oppressed
by it, and then that you feel like there's nothing
you can do about it, it's futile. This is another's
apparently it's famous quote from a Russian guy, but they
quoted in an article about hypernormalization. We know they are lying,
they know they are lying, they know that we know
that they are lying. We know that they know that
we know that they are lying, but they're still lying.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, when you meet a celebrity in LA, you know
who they are, they know you know who they are.
You know they know, but nobody says anything. Yeah, you
just give it a little wink.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yes, we're all.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
In on the joke, but unfortunately in this one, we're
kind of the butt of the joke.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yes, it reminds me when I saw Fred Armison and
I was trying so hard to play it cool, and
I was like.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
I should just fucking talk to there's someone else here,
just like hey, man, like two feet from me, there's
no one else there. I fell rude at that point.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
I don't think he's big enough also that he would
mind when I, like a smaller celebrity gets recognized, they're like,
oh my god, like I've made it and he's big,
but he's pretty bad. But he's not like Chris Pine,
Like he doesn't have like fangirls like oh, Fred Harbison.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Well you sign my tits.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
I mean, I'm sure that has happened to him before. Absolutely,
And that was me actually I said.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
That to him. Yeah, I mean we kind of talked
about like what it is.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
It's kind of a concept that's all over the place,
and yeah, I mean, you guys get it. Though.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
You guys are smart.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
You're listening to us exactly, must be smart. A lot
of the podcast I was listening to was like giving
the example of like you know, when you're a kid,
and like you know Santa's not real, but like your
parents don't know that, you don't know that Santa's not real,
so we're all just pretending that Santa's really even that
we all know he's not real.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I was always told ten, it's not real because my
mom's in a Christmas and I told the whole second
grade class and the teacher was not happy with me.
I wasn't trying to be a bitch. I was just like,
what are you guys talking about?

Speaker 2 (13:58):
He's not real. She's like, hey, Alison, could you do
me a favorite? Shut the fuck us, trying to say
with her eyes.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
And one other student was like, I know that too.
We don't have fun childhoods.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I feel like that kid.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Those parents were probably like, don't say this to the
other children at school.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
You will ruin their lives. And your mom was just like, man,
it's not real.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
No, yeah, and she would have liked that. I told
other people. I don't remember if I reported, but she
would be like, good, he's not. They shouldn't be lying
in their kids. But yes, that is along with the
cognitive distance, that sort of grappling with multiple realities, even
when you know one of them is false, right, which
makes it not a reality, but you're todd it's a
reality by authority.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Figures good analogy.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yes, So I talked about the origin mean from your
Chex's book Who. In the book, he was writing about
the final days of the Soviet Union under communism.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
So the book focused on.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Social, political, and cultural conditions of what he calls quote
unquote late Socialism, which isn't actually a term period after
Stalinism but before Parstrokia. I'm doing my best Russian there,
which is basically like the nineteen fifties to nineteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
That's an era. Yes, okay, yeah, p E R E
s t r oh I ka got it. Yeah, it's
definitely a Russian word.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Do you know why or anything about the Soviet Union falling?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Because you don't have to.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
This wasn't really part of it.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
And I saw that come up too, but it was like,
I don't I know that it was a Soviet Union
and then something happened and then it was Russia.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Do you know how to bridge that?

Speaker 3 (15:32):
I was gonna look that up, but I felt like
I was going to get into a hole and like
get off the fucking tangent that all. And I don't
want to like talk out of my ass took on
a break.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I'll look it up real quick and see if I
can give a two sentence blurb for anyone who's I
was gonna say, who's dumb like me? But we started
with like you gotta be smart to listen to it?

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Well, I mean not, I mean I think it's a
very classic American thing to like not know about world politics.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, it's never been an interest of mine, but it
really helps give more context to these kind of things.
But yes, I know, the Soviet Union fell, and before
that they were being fat a narrative that it wasn't
going to.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Fall correct, and it did fall eventually in nineteen ninety one.
I do have that written there, tipped over.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, it was walking down the stairs and it slipped
on fairs.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
It was nineteen ninety one. That's what that means. Moving on, Uh.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
But during this time the propaganda was so heavily perpetrated
that no one in Russian society, not even like the disruptors,
like the artists and the journalists. During of these people
that are supposed to like break this kind of stuff,
anyone all thought it was like too late to do
anything about it, and they couldn't conceive of any other
alternatives to what they had, And everything was a lie,
was fake. Everyone knew it, and no one could do

(16:43):
anything about it. But over the mass illusion became a
self fulfilling prophecy, with everyone accepting it as the new norm.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Sound familiar, it sure do, But like what else are
you gonna do? Is the problem? Yeah, I mean I
get it.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
It's like you've been living in a society that's been
the society your whole life, and it's in your parents'
society and their grandparents and et cetera. It's an empire,
and you're.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Like, but what else.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
I feel like, especially as Americans, because we're like, oh,
they can do that over there, but that won't happen here,
or we can't do that here.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
We're special.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
I will say America has main character energy because when
you go overseas as you know, like all the music
is our music, and like the ads. Like I was
overseas when Barbie was being marketed and it was fucking everywhere,
and it was like, this is an American movie in English. Like,
main characters are not always good, but we do have
that main character energy.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
We absolutely do, and we think we are special little
snowflakes because of it.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well or something.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, I didn't write too much about the Soviet Union,
but I mean someone at home is screaming right now.
It was Well, it's also like I didn't want to
get into it, and like because we do, and like
we're both very left leaning and it's like it gets
into like communism and like the problems of communism, and like,
I don't know it was their problems.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
I don't want to get into it.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
I don't want to have a fucking discussion about Russian communism.
Not today, No, maybe another time. We could absolutely do
an episode on.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Russian communism and feminism.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
I mean, I feel like, actually that could probably be
pretty good.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
I'm sure it would work.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
My assum should be like, oh, it's communist, everyone's equal,
but I have a feeling that women were not.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Somewhere more equal than others.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Yes, thank you, Then, moll fun George Orwell's been coming
up a lot in this.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
During this research. Yep. So, oh god, what did you
think of the documentary?

Speaker 1 (18:25):
I did fall asleep. Okay, I woke up though, so
I watched things as I fall asleep. It did keep
me awake for like an hour. I was like, whoa, Okay,
this is interesting. Then I fell asleep for like twenty minutes,
and then I kept going. It's almost three hours long.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
It is. It's very dense, incredibly dense, and also very like,
it's very all over the place.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
I did like it.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
I did see what he was trying to the tastree
he was trying to build that.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
The Yeah, the thread he was weaving between all of this.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
It starts in the seventies, goes through twenty sixteen and
is talking about the origin of many of our problems,
which involves a lot of global politics that I wanted
to know more about, Yes, conflicts in the Middle East
and how that contributes to what we have going on locally.
I loved the juxtaposition of like we're looking at like
a bombing and then we're looking at like Jane Fonda
doing workout exercises.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yes, like he's had a very much a vibe that
he was going for and was like really graphic.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yes, we like enjoyed, Yes, but it's very.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Not English because England always like shits on us for
like how violent our television is and how we like
promote violence. Like this is like literally rotten dot com
level fucking gore. Like this guy is like bleeding out
the mouth dead.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
That's I mean, that's all part of it, and that
I think is really important to talk about. And at
some point I was gonna bring up my terrible ex
boyfriend to I realized I could just name him. He's
such an attention horror Aaron. He would love being mentioned
on I think he was looked.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah. Actually though, if you're tuning out Aaron, it's like
there's a million errands you can yeah about the other
one a little bit harder.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Ning Aaron would watch isis beheading videos. He watched lively.
He would watch all this horrible things and at first
I was like, why are you watching this? And he's like,
this is what's fucking happening right now.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
This is real.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
This is not the narrative you're being fed. He's I'd
bet everything he's seen in this documentary and loved it.
And I got into that with him, not like ooh,
I love watching beheadings, but just this mindset of like
I don't want to turn a blind eye to anything
that is happening around me that is doing a disservice
to the person who's being betted, right, everyone in between, right, And.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
It's easy to just like brush it off when it's
not happening in front of you, and it's not happening
in your backyard, or it's not happening to your neighbor.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Bar way, but we don't have something to do with me,
And if you.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Don't realize how horrific these acts are, like being stoned
to death, getting beheaded, killing, you know, fucking firing squad,
all the shit.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
You don't know how bad it is until you see it. Yep.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Otherwise it's just words and the documentary it did give
you this whiplash of all of these different graphic images,
but that's what we get on our Instagram feeds. Yes,
it was making me think of that of like how
old go from like a cat picture to like a
quirky cute girl doing cottage corps to like a child
who's dead on the ground, you know, to algorithm stuff. Yeah,

(21:10):
so this I don't think that was what he was
basing it off of, but that is what I felt
watching it, Yes.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
And I think he was trying to make sure that
we got all of the like big bullet points that
happened in the last when this came out forty years
is now fifty, oh my god, and trying to be like,
see all these things are connected, all this and then
get to the point where we are now. And I'm like,
that's forty years of history trying to get down in
less than three hours, which, if you think about it's
actually kind of fucking impressive, and not just American or

(21:37):
English history.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
It's like world history.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
You guys should go watch it because it is everything
is everywhere, all at once. You know, it is all.
It is all connected, and we are here for a reason.
Trump winning is not an isolated incident. Nothing that's happening
now is in a vacuum. Everything has decades of history
that led us here exactly.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
But assummation of the UH documentary that I got from
a Guardian article and I think is a really good
summation of the documentary is quote. He argues that an
army of technocrats, complacent radicals and faustian Internet entrepreneurs have
conspired to create an unreal world, one who's familiar and
often comforting details blind us to a total inauthenticity.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Conspired is I think that's a great word for this act,
because it's not accidental. It is was an intentional We
will do this and therefore the people will be easier
to control. Yeah, or do you want to walk us
through what those broad events were that he talked about?

Speaker 3 (22:37):
So in nineteen seventy five, we're in New York City,
and New York City is on the brink of economic collapse.
The middle class has fled to the suburbs like they do,
and their taxes went along with them. So New York
was paying for everything by exchanging bonds and loans from
the banks to help pay for the city's needs.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
It's like an iowe you.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Right, Yeah, And I think bonds are government issued IOUs
like they're specific, because I remember they give war bonds
out during World War Two. So I think it's like
some government money stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
That sounds real. I'm with you. I'm so smart, okay,
but I know about that money.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Okay, it's all made up anyway.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yes, the money isn't real anyway.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Where were we, Okay, economic on the brink up, economic collapse, borrowing,
borrowing from the banks, okay. And they had this like
weekly meeting where they would meet with the banks and
they would talk, they would talk money. And one day
the banks said did not show up and they said
they were not going to give them money this way anymore.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Oh, New York was desperate. It was not in a
good fucking state. Like there was so many dilapidates. Oh,
it was not a good Oh I see what I did.
I'm in a bad state right now. Oh shit, dude,
you're you're in Ohio, Ohio.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Screen up.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Sorry I didn't China, Ohio never been. I think you
should talk the last episode two year I think is
that Iowa Okay, a different.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
In western state. We love the midwell, no, we do.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I just it's easy scapegoat for me because I don't
want to say Texas, which is actually probably the correct answer.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
All right, So New York is in a bad way.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yes, they are not doing too hot.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Half the buildings Manhattan are abandoned and dilapidated and shit's
just bad. But the banks are like, fuck you, guys,
we're tired of doing this. So New York, being desperate,
was like, we'll do whatever you say banks and banks
were cool. So we're the leaders now and we're going
to take over the city. And now the banks control

(24:39):
like the government spending for this because the government's not
able to do it from their taxes because the taxes
are basically.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Not nearly what they used to be money.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
It's power.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Money is power, So they changed the system completely to
get away from the politicians and put the power in
the hands of the banks. So they're looking at things
in terms of money now instead of in terms of community,
which is how auticians used to work.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh see, you know I've heard about that. Yes, I
thought it's a fairy tale.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
I have.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yes, I've never lived it. This was before our time.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
So the first thing the banks did, of course, was
cut cops, firefighters, and teachers okay from their jobs.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
And this is the system that so the seeds for
credit scores too.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
It sounds like this is the origin story that then
just spread across the country because what you're saying of like,
the money is the power. We don't care about the people.
We're going to defund anything that supports the people. That's
kind of everywhere.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Now, yep, this was the beginning of neoliberalism, where money
is what's actually the decision maker.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
I just looked up a definition of neoliberalism because it's
just another one of those like I should know those things.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So it's in.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
It's an economic and political ideology that emphasis free market
capitalism as the most effective way to drive growth. So
the plan is reduce government intervention in the economy, and
then they want privatized state on enterprises, deregulation of industries,
and then lower barriers to international trade and to investment.

(26:17):
This doesn't sound liberal to me at all.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
I mean, sometimes it's I feel like words are stupid.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Sometimes I think we just have the idea like liberal.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Means yeah, okay this, but no, I mean that's what
it is, like just let the free market rule. This
is like sowing the seeds of like the eighties, like
stock market and greed is good, and you know, we
care more about money than we do our fellow neighbor.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
The critics argue that this contributes to incoming equality. We
can labor rights, diminishes the role of public services. Supposedly,
it fosters innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, but it doesn't seem
to be working out in our faba.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Just like again controversial, just like any actually government system.
But I was gonna say, just like communism. Everything sounds
good in theory, but you have to forget that people
are at the helm of this, and people that want
power usually the people that should have.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
At the least.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean communism seems like one of those
things that's like good in siri, but hasn't been good
in practice, because we ready do hear about communist countries.
I'm like this, this doesn't seem to have worked but
that doesn't mean I'm anti communism, right, anti corruption?

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Well, and that's the whole problem. It's like, if you put.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Power in the wrong hands, it'll go bad no matter
what the fucking system is.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Well, this is cool to know that. It was the seventies,
It was New York. It was because the city was
running out of money.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
The city was desperate.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Damn yep. But uh, there was a statement in should
they have just created an only fans? Oh?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Fuck? The Empire State Building just like takes off its top.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
I mean, it's nipples already out, one nipple, the elusive
second nipple, the entire state building.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
She's kind of sexy. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
She could do great on the internet these days, but
they didn't have that option.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
They had all the bank they didn't even have the internet,
you guys. Things were really tough in the seventies.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
True, But there was this chilling statement that I think
it was the documentary too, but it might not have been.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
It was definitely this.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Article politicians solved crisis with negotiations When the market rules,
it can't be negotiated.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
With politicians all crazies with negotiation. Okay, yeah, so you're
negotiating your mercy yep of the market, and that doesn't
care about the people.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Correct, got it?

Speaker 3 (28:25):
You can have empathy and have a discussion with a person, right, ideally,
right what I would think?

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Sometimes, but yeah, so like the bank's kind of controlling everything.
Also down the line created credit scores because it's like,
if we're going to be running things, we need to
have a vetting system on who we're going to give
money to.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh wow, I never.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Thought about the origin of credit, but that makes total sense.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Like, yeah, credit scores weren't invented till the eighties.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Why would you need that unless you were being loan
so much money from a powerful institute that wanted to
assess your trustworthiness.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
Right, A lot of times it doesn't mean shit because
you can have a bad credit score. It just means
you don't have any credit because you're like, you know,
twenty one or something.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Everyone.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I do recommend that, like get a little credit card,
just like buy your groceries with it, pay it.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Off, build it up.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
It's annoying, but it's grown up stuff. And I highly
recommend also Built. You can pay your rent through Built.
It's a type of card through Wells Fargo, and you
can pay, make sure you pay it off. Otherwise you're
gonna pay a lot of money and fees and being
in a way behind on your rent. But then you're
putting your total rent on a card, getting that credit,
getting that those points built. This is not an AD.

(29:34):
I mean it is an AD built. Please pay us.
I'm just fucking pimping them out for free. Yeah, you
could be paying us for this anyway. It's just for
any youngu's out there. Unfortunately, matters a lot. Get going
on as soon as you can.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
I know, we were just talking about not wanting to
be a judge on a point system, but I forgot
that we already are judged on eight points.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Everything. Yeah, everything is. It's very it's very black mirror.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
There was that episode where literally everyone has like a
rating over their hands. We're alway thirsting for our Spotify
ratings and whatever, and even like your follower count on Instagram.
It's all a forum of a rating that we're judging
ourselves and each other on. I love it, yeah, I
love I love it when my points are high.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
When they're not, I don't love.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
It unless the points are like golf, in which high
score is bad.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
I don't know, well, sports are weird too.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Sports and money there for the boys couldn't be me.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Oh god, where was I? Okay? Oh got it? Credit scores. Yes.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
So there was a lot of despair around this time
because it was a lot of economic issues as well.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
We had like the gas crisis, we had.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
A lot of turmoil in the Middle East as well,
which that's a whole fucking can of worm to get
into that.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
I feel like, that's don't have fucking time to get into.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
I saw that it was very educational, it was super interesting, overwhelming, yes,
but long story short, there was a lot of unsettling
times in the Middle East, and it was nudged along
by Harry Kissinger, who was also one of the biggest
villains of all time.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Is your president? No Secretary of State? I've heard his
name before. Oh he's horrible, it's very important.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, he is a war mongering piece of shit, but.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Also seemed very smart, like he made a lot of
choices that were just very tactical.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
And cold and were horrible for a means to an end.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
But he miscalculated a couple steps and here we around
an I.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yes, yeah, so he had intentional disruption to Arab unity
that I will get more into. But around this time
we started to kind of feel that sense of hopelessness.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
So even like the.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Artists, the you know, journalist, the disruptors, like the counterculture
kind of came. This is like the beginning of them
kind of becoming a part of the machine as well.
They're not defiant, everyone's just getting into this like rugged individualism.
Like the climate around the whole country's beginning to change.
We're kind of seeing the beginning of the crumbling of
this like utopia that we thought we had before.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
See, the seventies were good.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
We said it was back as no computers, but like
I'm not saying it was ideal, but there definitely seemed
there were all of these stride strut equality, yes, women's liberation,
women's lip.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
As my dad used to women's lip.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, the women's lip the seventies and that way. Are
we still pre Reagan when you're talking about even the artists,
Oh wow, even pre Reagan. The artists are starting to
be absorbed into.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Things are already Like I said, it's beginning of things
crashing around. And because of now, it's beginning of letting
the free market rule. We're going through the gas crisis.
We're having all these issues in the Middle East, like
we're there's still a lot of stuff happening, even though
there's a lot of good stuff happening, Like I don't know, rights.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, yeah, that was good.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
The seventies contain multitudes, do truly, but there was this good.
Just try to TLDR Harry Kissinger, because again, this is
a very dense, fucking documentary. But this is a quote
Kissinger leaned towards running the world as a stable market system.
He had been an expert in nuclear strategies quote unquote
delicate balance of terror and aim to keep the world

(32:55):
in balance through turmoil.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Delicate balance of terrorism on my dating probe while from
now on, so turmoil. Okay, maybe he's not as smart
as I thought.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
No, that's why I'm I'm like, no, all is it bad?

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Well, when I was watching the documentary, there were just
some very like tactical strategies moves he was implementing where
I was like, okay, like he was evil, but he
was trying to just like he didn't care about kind
of who died along the way, but keeping the world
in turmoil, yes, so that I mean, that's a way
to control people, yes, right, that's got to be like
if they're scared and if they're needy, then we can
control them.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
And what he wanted to do was destabilize the Middle
East because what they were trying to do was to
be a strong, like connected Middle East, like a strong
Arab country, like all the countries being strong together. And
what he went out to do was to intentionally destabilize
the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
So fracture them so they can't gain more power I'm guessing,
and overthrow us in any way.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yep. Put me over rooting for Henri Kissinger.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, who was like literally considered like one of the
most evil men that's ever lived.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, but you can be evil villains or they sometimes
they have really cool houses that they built.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
You know though, he just he sucks. I'm glad he's dead.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Rod In peace, no way, rod In perversity.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Rotten piss, rotten piss.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
There we go.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
He had a double game where he called constructive ambiguity,
and he once persuaded Egypt to help Israel while he
led Assad who was the leader of Syria, to believe
that he was helping Palestinians return back to Palestine. But
he wasn't and he didn't do that, and he straight
up lied to the leader of Siria's face. And then
when assad found out, he was really mad and stopped
trusting the Americans, which cause even more turmoil of distrusting

(34:33):
the West.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
That seemed like a fork in the road there, and
like if that hadn't happened, things might not, like the
relationship between the Middle East and the West and the
relationship within the Middle.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Eastern countries would be different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Sorry, I just want to make sure you understand. So
he lied to Egypt about there what was going to
happen with Israel.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yeah, so he persuaded Egypt to help Israel, okay, but
he told Syria that he was to help Palestine. Okay,
So he double crossed him, yes, sewing the seeds distrust
among each other and against us, which I think was
not smart.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
So okay, genius.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, all right, I'll stop defending powerful, evil white men.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah, and I know he did. He did a lot
of bad stuff during like the Vietnam War too. Like
there's this Anthony Bourdaine quote where he goes to Cambodia
and he's like, come to Cambodia for one day, and
you'll want to stab Harry Kissinger in the fucking face
till he dies. Like it's or it's like you want
to like punch Harry Kissinger in the face. It's something,
but it's like Cambodia got really fucked over because of
like strategies that Kissinger did too, and they had like

(35:43):
it was fucking terrible.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
So you stirring shit up with the intention of keeping
us powerful and destabilizing other places. But this has led
to then decades of poor relationships between global powers.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
It sounds like yeah, and I.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Mean, they didn't get into this too much, but this
is just begins all these fucking like starting of these
proxy wars in US, like arming different countries and even
countries that seem like we should not be arming them.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Why are we arming them?

Speaker 3 (36:08):
We're arming they're like, you know, they're whatever faction that's
against the current rulers. So we're arming the like the
militia groups that are against the current government regimes, and
we're giving them fucking AK forty seven's and then this
other terrorist group over here we're giving like we used
to give money to fucking not isis what's on the Taliban,
Like we gave money to the weapons to the Taliban, Yes,

(36:30):
when they were fighting against Russia.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, during the I think seventies or eighties.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
People need we need to talk about this more and
understanding more, because it totally fits into what we're saying
of Like, it doesn't align with the narrative, which is
that right America wants to help other countries and just
build them up so we can I'll be strong, right,
that ain't what's happening.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
No, is that reported here? Well, I don't think it
ever has been.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Not just like I was just someone was talking to
me about Obama's family having.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
All these ties to the CIA. Is that a very
conspiracy theoristy.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
But then I found a bunch of articles confirming that,
like people not just him, but people in his family
being connected to the USAID.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
But it's another government agency.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
And I can only find articles that were like from
New Zealand or from England, but it was being reported. Yeah,
I'm not saying he's like a government plant. It's just
like that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
He's a political nepo baby.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, and it did as a netbo baby baby. It's
just these things aren't even secrets. It's not even like
this is like locked down. It's just not well reported
and not something we talk about.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yeah, we intentionally don't report. And that's the thing what
we're saying too. It's like journalists used to like go
against the government and like show you corruption and like
bring hard hitting stories. But now the journalists are just
part of the machine. They're working with the government. The
Washington Post is owned by fucking bezos. The people that
are supposed to start the revolutions and like help with

(37:56):
the revolutions are fucking there.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
That they don't make unbiased investigative journalism like they used to.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, where's the Upton Sinclairs of the world, now you
know what I mean, Like, let's go serious.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
I don't know who that is.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
But he wrote The Jungle that showed like the meat
packing industry, okay, horrors of the meat.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
The cuttle animal lesbian packed as meat.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
And then all people took away from that was there
might have been human meat in their meat.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, which because people would get injured on the job,
be like, oh no, Frank's hand when in the meat grinder.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oops, Smarlent green as people.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Another example of hypernormalization that was happening during this documentary
in history, which I also didn't know. I feel like
I try to know about stuff, but sometimes things just happened.
There was like a bunch of terrorist attacks in this
movie that I.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Was like, I've never heard of this terrorist attack.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, like we just said it's the reporting and also
are blissful ignorance.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, but we used to use different scapegoats to cover
up other threats elsewhere. Like there was a bunch of
terrorist attacks that were happening. I think it was the eighties,
like in airports in Europe where there was suicide bombers
that were going in and get exploded in. They were
splowed in in these airports intentionally trying to kill Europeans

(39:10):
and biproperty. Also like Americans like just you know, hitting
the West, and all the investigators in Europe were like, oh,
this is definitely fucking Syria because like we talked about
our guy and Syria's fucking mad at us, which is
fair and he's you know, that's kind of the birthplace
of suicide bombing, which was also the documentary which I
also don't need to go into because it's just so much.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
But No, that was interesting to see that that was
a turning point. Yeah, suicide bombing like that gave people
a weapon that they had never conceived of before. Yeah,
like flying the towers, flying the plane into the towers. Yep,
you couldn't have done that with a remote bomb and
done as much destruction. I mean, I'm saying, like I know,
it seems like they wouldn't have had people do it

(39:51):
unless they needed to, and that was the most distractive way.
Right now that this is on the table, it's like
we've invented a new kind of bomb.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
And I think there was like the leader of oh god,
I forgot what it was. Oh my god, he called
it the poor man's nuclear bomb.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wasn't the guy whose names started with an F.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Probably probably there was a lot of nazy guys there was,
but yeah, they called it, yeah, because I mean it
is it causes like, yeah, total devastation.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
I mean, this is a very successful, terrible, horrible act
of violence.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
And the guy Asad from Syria, he didn't just like
do a four year term and then leave, like that's
not how it works. So he was around for decades
and then until he died and yeah, and then took over.
So A saw his hanging onto this grudge understandably. I
mean he's had a course like spiteful and just like

(40:45):
it went from like politeness to like, well fuck you
us A. And now that relationship goes on for decades,
and now the Middle East has this duke kind of
nuclear bomb in a way of suicide bombings.

Speaker 3 (40:56):
Right, but this started happening and Europe knew it Syria
because Syria was also like, yeah, we fucking.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Hate you guys. They're like, not KOI about it.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
But America found a scapegoat in Goadaffi in Libya, and
he was okay being the scapegoat because he kind of
just wanted the attention.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
How is he?

Speaker 1 (41:16):
So if it was Syria in stating the bombing exactly,
we weren't quite about it. Why did America need to
find a scapegoat?

Speaker 3 (41:21):
You know?

Speaker 2 (41:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
That's the weird part that I was trying. Again, wish
they went into more detail.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
We're talking it out, but I.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Think this is all intentional to just like keep the lies,
keep things at bay, have a boogeyman like make it
to where if we're if we are sending money to Syria,
people aren't like, why the fuck are you sending this
is again my guessing. It's like, yeah, all of this
has to do with something, but there was like tons
of reports and like old footage. Were the detectives in
Italy being like, no, this is definitely fucking Syria, like

(41:48):
there's no evidence that it was Libya, and then our
Defense secretary being.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Like, Nope, I don't believe in that it was Libya.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
I think it's good for us to even make our
guesses like this because it's means that we're questioning the news,
the powers that be as we should be.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And I'm sure we probably were funding something in Syria
because we're probably funding the people that were the military
militia anti group to Assad, like you know what I mean, Like,
who knows what the fuck we were doing.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I think I was talking to my sister about talking
to my sister about Biden's incredible supportrait Israel. We were
going into that and I was saying, I don't think
this is out of the goodness of his heart. I
don't think this is because it is a soft spot
for a certain type of person or something. I think
this is motivated by how can this situation serve me?

Speaker 2 (42:35):
This last in the Middle East?

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, like, are they developing something for us? Are we
funding something that's happening there that we are invested in.
It's not about what people we care about, it's how
will this make us the most money and give us
the most.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
Power all the time, one hundred percent. And that's a
part of hypernormalization, time pretending like we don't fucking know
that everything is about keeping them in power and keeping
them their pockets lined. Yeah, anyway, Yeah, another area that
I think is depressing that has to do with hypernormalization
as well. Okay, that he talked about is the focus

(43:09):
on things that didn't turn out super great, like things
that we had hoped for that we thought, maybe this
is the revolution, maybe we are fighting against the man,
and then it did kind of fucking nothing like Street.
You remember Occupy Wall Street.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, I knew where we were going. Oh, it was
such a stupid thing.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Because I feel like, yeah, maybe it was good in
the sense of like maybe it opened some people's eyes,
Maybe some people didn't realize the corruption. Maybe some people,
you know, it shined a light on an issue that
is still ongoing, where there's the top one percent are
hoarding all the wealth.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
That's still a fucking thing. But again, has anything changed?

Speaker 1 (43:49):
That's why, Yeah, stupid is a little harsh to say.
But as it was going on, because I was like
the right age, you were too, I think to have
friends who were joining those protests. I was also in
parts of Washington that we're very into it, that we're
all showing up. But then I was just waiting for
like what are you asking for and.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
What are we gonna do? What is your plan? Like
who are the leaders here? Because you're not asking for anything.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
There was a I remember in that time, there was
a Move your Money Day when people moved from big
banks like Chase to credit unions.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
That was cool.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
I was like, I like this, this is an actionable item. Yeah,
let's do stuff like that. And I shouldn't shit on
protesters who are doing things when I'm not doing anything
other than pitch about it, you know, armchair whatever activist here,
Like that's not really fair. But it just did seem
like so much momentum that went.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Nowhere exactly because that was really big and they did
cause some disruptions and it was something that I feel
like most people can fucking get behind, Like it was
a cause that we should have rallied the people.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
And this was twenty eleven.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
This was after the two thousand and eight financial collapse
where we bailed all the fucking banks out and the
people got screwed over.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
In the process.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Do you know what that means to bailing the banks out?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
They give them fucking money, so like the government gave them.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
So I have a family who works in the mortgage
loan business, so I was around seeing what we're called
subprime mortgages, which is where we're going to have people
who shouldn't really qualify for a loan be approved.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
For a loan.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
It seemed I think they weren't able to then make
their payments and follow up on this. So then we
just have a bunch of money that was loaned out
and it's not really getting paid back correct and the
way it needs to. Okay, So then the banks are
suffering because the bank owns your house until you yeah,
the bank really owns your house. You're paying the bank.
The bank like buys your debt, they pay it to
whoever you bought your house from. So if you can't

(45:35):
pay the bank, the bank takes your house. And then
or the government bails out the banks by giving them money,
people still.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Lost their houses. Fair.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yes, people lost their houses and the banks got their
money back.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Unfortunately, it might have been people who shouldn't have been
approved for a house.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
And we're doing that again now. From my understanding, I
have friends that work in cool mortgageet, big key money stuff. Yeah,
and they're like, oh, it's really cool to see the
shit that they did in like the early two thousands
that cost the two thousand and eight collaps starting to
happen again because no one can afford fucking housing anymore.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
So yeah, so what are we going to do?

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Just not sell houses?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Right? Okay, so we're doing that again.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
We're doing that again.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
It's a little bit different circumstances because now it's more
like nobody right.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
It's not like it's going to afford a house.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
That's fair. I think in the past it was like
some people could, some people really shouldn't have been eligible
for the loan, which I'm not saying that's their fault
or anything.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
You're not like, oh, why.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Aren't you making enough money, it's just given the disconnection
between wages and cost of living, Yeah, it's hard to
buy a house, yep. Okay, but the banks were saved
by government money, which I guess is like taxpayer money.
That's where that money comes from. I love when my
taxpayer dollars go right to Chase Bank.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
That makes me so. I love it that it.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Goes to Chase Bank and then it goes to Raytheon
and Lucky Martin and it makes uh, you know war
machines that kill people in other countries?

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Are those manufacturers of weapons? Yeah? Yeah, Raytheon and Lacked Martin.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
They make a lot of like aircrafts and stuff that
drama that drop mombs, fifth child.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yes, can't you money?

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Dinner time for catch? Or if there's a girl Raithionetta.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
That's a bit of a mouthful, but I get fox
with is a name.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
I think, so we made it too. You were talking
about big activist movements but not always leading to any change.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
Right, which I think has fed into the feeling that
you're feeling right now of hypernormalization where it's futile, you
feel nihilistic. What's the point? Change doesn't do anything? There
is no change, Nothing makes change.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
There was a Guardian article I looked at called how
did learned helplessness become commonly used to describe US voters? So,
you know, off to a great start. I was looking
for psych research that goes more into this feeling of
helplessness that we're talking about right now and how it
leads to apathy, that feeling even when its areas that
we want to change. So it's a sad it's a

(48:05):
sad story, it's a sech study. But it involves the
dogg ohs. So I'm sorry content warning.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
Why dogs, I mean not the rats are better? That
makes me sad too. Anyways, can take your dogs.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
I feel like they do these things with the rats
and mice now, but in the sixties they weren't the
same kind of laws.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
They're like, shove those dogs into space and make them
really sad.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
So they were jolting the sweet little dogs and electric shocks,
which probably didn't kill them, but I'm sure they didn't
enjoy it, and they probably did a lot because these
studies aren't like we'll try it twice. It's like we'll
do it over and over and over for a long time.
But they had two groups of dogs, and some of
the dogs were able to stop the shocks by bopping

(48:46):
a little panel with their cute little noses, and the
other dogs in the other area, even if they bopped
the panel, it wouldn't do anything. So some of the
dogs they were able to stop their torment. Some of
them they were not able to stop the torment. In
the future tests, the dogs that had previously had the
ability to avoid the shocks would keep trying. They would

(49:08):
be like, oh, like, this panel is gonna help, Like
I'm going to try to escape, Like there was a
way I could help myself, I'm gonna look for that again.
The dogs that could never stop their shocks from happening
were less likely to try escaping at all or fix
their situation at all. It seemed like even if there
was a way, like oh, now you have a panel
that will let you out, they don't even fucking try
because they're like, it's pointless.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
So the conclusion is that if someone is repeatedly subject
to averse stimuli and they have no control to help
themselves or solve their situation, they feel powerless and they
eventually stop trying to escape the painful situation.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Altogether. I feel like a dog right now. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
I was thinking would cats do anything differently? I feel like,
no matter what, they just like curl up and just
get mad at the world.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
I feel like cats aren't very good test subjects because no,
just do whatever they want, and only certain cats are
like super food motivated.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Oh yeah, I no, my cat's not at all.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
No, my cat will like smell stuff and I'll be
like nay, nay.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
But yeah, we are those dogs who have been shocked repeatedly,
who have pushed on that panel repeatedly and have not
been able to enact any change, and that makes us
less likely, not like a we have poor moral character
or anything kind of way, just this is how psychology
works if it happens like this in dogs. I didn't
go into the neuroscience of it all, but I mean
our brain is always like looking for comfort, looking to

(50:28):
ease our pain. But if we train it that like
there isn't a way to ease it, then we're going
to look for that relief somewhere else. Then we're going
to find it in like drugs. Yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Escapism. Yeah that oh yeah, that's what I'm inant. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
That could be TV, that could be substance used, it
could be distraction. But unfortunately, like that is what we
are doing as a survival mechanism. Because the activism hasn't
had a history of leaving eating our electric shocks.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Right, especially in the recent time time since kind of
all this shit started happening. I mean, when's the last
time demonstrations and protests caused real change? What the fucking sixties?

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, and I want them to keep happening. But there
is also a certain amount of risk involved.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
I mean, you and I are just activists and not
the with the signs on the streets of Los Angeles
kind of way. We're in like the educate the masses
and donate to the people.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
No, I think this is really what this podcast is
really good. I think is a form of activism. Might
be a stretch, but I'm like, you know, like we'll
share stuff, yeah, like social media.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
This is the most in depth education that we do.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
I mean then in a really good way like this. Yeah,
this does make me feel like I'm doing something. And
when I'm like, fuck, I'm not doing anything, it's like, no,
We're talking to hundreds of people or maybe even thousands
through mean pages and whatever about things that are really
important and that does count. And I think everyone at
least like we should be talking about it with your
friends and if you go out with a guy and
here like hypernormalization. He's like, what are you talking about?

(51:58):
That's boring? Don't go out him again.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
If he doesn't know what it is, that's okay. But
if you explain it to him then he hates it,
then you fuck him? Yes, don't fuck him, don't fuck him?

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (52:09):
No, I mean that's I feel like what helped radicalize
me was I mean, I'm a weird internet kid day one,
but you know, like reading stuff and like seeming like, oh,
what is that?

Speaker 2 (52:18):
What's not about? And then like looking more into him,
being like, Wow, that's really fucked up.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
I'm mad about that. Oh no, now I have an
opinion on it. Ah, this is gonna ruin me for
the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
It does, yes, but bare minimum we should be aware,
eyes open, try to understand what the propaganda is and
what the truth is.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
And that is not an easy thing. But even though I.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Do have that apathy of the shock dog of like, well,
what the fuck are we going to do to escape it?
At least know who is shocking he right.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
I think that's that's very app Allison. We are a
bunch of shock dogs.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
I was thinking about an example of it, like recently,
and I remember during the TikTok bands. It was a
bunch of like Tiktoks and other reels and stuff of
gen Z's, you.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Know, being really mad about the TikTok band.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yeah, but I remember one girl was basically like, oh,
you guys are mad that China stealing my data. You're
stealing my data already. I don't give a shit, what's
up China?

Speaker 2 (53:15):
I mean I feel bad for gen Z in that
sense too.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
It's like they have seen this like decades and decades
and decades of like shit storm and they're like, I've
grown up where my date has always been stolen.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
You're just worried someone else? Are you met?

Speaker 3 (53:25):
If someone else has my data? Do you want it
all to yourself? You're trying to break into your data clubhouse,
and now you're bad.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Was that real about like Russia spying on us during elections?
I never got too much into that rabbit hole, but.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
They, I think again, same thing.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
I didn't really go into it, but my understanding is
that they did find evidence that Russia tampered on Facebook
to help sway the election.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah, so you know it's already happening. Why take away
my comfort blanket of TikTok.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Well, that's the thing too.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
It's like I think the Internet kind of start out
as like with the idea of like a utopia and
a place of information in a place of community that
we sort of lost.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
But it's now.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Turned into just another propaganda machine and another pacifier, and
what is it?

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Opium to the masses was.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Supposed to be an equalizer and a way to spread
unbiased information. Let's take our second break and then we'll
wrap it up. Let's bank it on the bottom. Everything

(54:39):
I know about Soviet Union history I learned from Anastasia
the cartoon.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
See it comes with Glutch.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
I just looked up a little bit on the break,
a little bit about the Soviet Union tripping and falling
down the stairs because I had a feeling that wasn't
quite exactly how it went. So it collapsed in ninety
one because the economy was failing, people didn't trust it.
The government was that are outdated, So the country broke
apart into multiple independent nations, and that ended communist rule.

(55:07):
I don't think we should be the United States of America.
I think we should be the American Union of States.
Any state should be treated like its own country, like
in the European Union, where we have open borders, we
have a common currency, but we don't have so many
like the federal laws say this, but the state law
say this because it's stupid bullshit.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
I agree, thank you well, because I just think about,
you know this in California exactly what I say. They
really do be their own little countries. I mean Texas
and California.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Their GDP alone like carries the fuckings the whole country.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah. I think trying to align such a fractured country
isn't helping anyone and is just driving us further apart
and making it impossible to change anything.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
It's almost like it's intentional.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
More on that next week, because next week I'm to
go into hypernormalization twenty sixteen onward and how that has
impacted our politics, the negative effects of social media playing
into this a little bit on feminism just because we
gotta you know so here, Yeah I might as well,
But definitely a very broad topic that covers a lot

(56:21):
of nastiness we're all living through.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
Yay.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I am miss Sandris Memes on Instagram and I am
t x scoth GF and we are sad Gap dot podcast.
You can email us at Sadgap dot podcast at gmail
dot com. Visit our website sad Gap dash podcast dot com.
Follow our Patreon for ad free episodes Patreon dot com
slash sad Gap. We're gonna work on our merch that's
gonna be bigger and better than ever before. You can

(56:49):
find us on Discord, you can find us on Reddit.
We're just all over the fucking place.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Yeah, go on over to your podcast platform of choice
and give us a five star rating. If you'd go
on over to Apple and Rice review, we would love
to hear you have to say, rate, review, subscribe and
share with a friend.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Please. Everything was forever until it was no more, and
we're stronger together. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Why