SNAP out of it! - Republican Jesus Wants You Hungry

Lots of interesting conversation about the recent U.S. elections, SNAP, and far too many who want cruelty in their Christianity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
The population of atheists in this country is going through the.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish and working together for a more rational world.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Feel so much more happiness.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist Podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I am going to get to the collar section of
the broadcast here in Jesic you, but first we have
to talk about these election results on Tuesday. Democrats making
a clean sweep of the three biggest contested elections in
the country. I think the most fascinating one, well one
of them for me, is going to be the New
York mayoral race, and I was delighted when Zoron Mamdami won.

(01:23):
We saw billionaire after billionaire after billionaire be a part
of this smear campaign against him. You know, he's not
just a Muslim, he's an Islamist extremist, terrorist, or whatever
else they wanted to say about it, because here in
this country, no one really understands the Muslim faith. They
haven't read even part of the Qoran. Now, admittedly I

(01:45):
couldn't get through the whole thing, but I've read part
of the Koran, and I understand at least enough about
the religion and the difference between a Muslim and an
Islamist extremist, and they are different things. We know that
the terrorists are out there, We know that there are
people who are destroying themselves and other people because they
want to please the prophet and Allah and get the

(02:07):
virgins and all that stuff. But Americans like to paint
all Muslims with that brush, and we know that the vast,
vast majority of the people who are oppressed by Islamic
regimes and extremists are themselves Muslims. Most Muslims are like
most Christians. They ignore most of their scripture, they have

(02:29):
a cultural faith. They just want to live in peace.
That is not an unfair characterization of the American Muslim
and Muslims around the world. I think that's fair. So
some people are like, well, how could you be happy
that a Muslim won the New York mayoral race, and
I'm happy for a couple of reasons. First of all,

(02:51):
I think he has more humanist values, more egalitarian, more
pluralist values. And I just like the fact that Maga
despises him. If Maga goes hard against you, that's the
first indication that you may be doing something right. Secondly,
I think that democratic socialism is something that we can

(03:14):
talk about and debate, but we are living in a
culture now where hey, Jesus would be a free market
capitalist is the message of the modern day Republican Party.
Maybe it's been the message of the Republican Party since
Reagan or before. I don't know, but you know this
idea that he is more of a society has a

(03:35):
responsibility to take care of its citizens. The government has
a proper and necessary role. And this whole pull yourself
up by your bootstraps bullshit is usually a narrative that
is victim blaming, or it's said by billionaires. We are
a society and we have to take care of our
own And I like that about him. Now, let me

(03:59):
play just a few seconds from his acceptance speech, which
I found refreshing for its inclusivity. I have to be
a little pedantic and deduct a few points for islama phobia,
because that's a bullshit term. Anti Muslim bigotry is extremely real.
It is very real, and it's horrible. But islama phobia

(04:20):
is a shield against the faith, the criticisms of the
Quran and Islam and the doctrine, etc. Islamic extremists love
to use Islamo phobia to keep themselves from ever being challenged.
So I'm not a fan, but I get it. I
understand why he used the term, because you know, Islam
was part of the arsenal that was used against him. Anyway,

(04:42):
here's the clip.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
I to Kloma only the best in private life, the
final time, I honor his name to the politics that
abandons the many and answers them only to the few.

Speaker 5 (05:08):
We believe in standing up for those we love, whether
you are an immigrants, a member of the trans.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump
is fired from a mineral job, they from the lam
still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down,
or anyone else.

Speaker 5 (05:32):
With their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours too,
and we will build a city hall.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
That stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not
flavor in the night against the.

Speaker 6 (05:49):
Scourge of anti.

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Semitism, where the four than one million Muslims know that
they belong.

Speaker 7 (06:01):
Not just in the five throws of.

Speaker 5 (06:03):
The city, but in the halls of power.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
No more will New York be a city where you
can traffic in Islamophobia and niation.

Speaker 5 (06:18):
Together we will.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Rusher in a generation of change.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than
fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism
with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it graves.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by
Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city
that gave rise to him. He cares any way to
terrify a testament, it is by dismantling the very condition

(07:00):
that allowed him to accumulate power.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
This is not only how he.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
Stopped Trump, it's how we stopped the next one. So,
Donald Trump, since I know you're watchings for you, turn
the volume up.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
It was interesting because rights after the acceptance speech, I
logged onto Facebook and I was just kind of scrolling
around and I saw somebody who was listed on my
friend's list on Facebook and they had posted it was
an echo of this Fox News newsmax Oann right wing
Trump talking point that New York has elected an Islamist

(07:52):
domestic ji hottis terrorist and I am just not in
the mood. People are going to say, well, Seth just
deletes everybody who disagrees with him, which tells me that
you don't follow my page. But I'm just not in
the mood. Bye, bye life short, get out of my

(08:13):
living room. Jesus. Anyway, that's the kind of thing we're
going to hear. The Jihattists have again arrived in New
New York and we must protect a miracle. Prepare yourself
for an hour by our onslaught of character assassinations. And
it's going to get even nastier, if that's even possible.

(08:35):
Are the tenets of his Muslim faith on the table?
Is Islam fair game? Absolutely? He and I could sit
down and talk about his Muslim faith, fine, just like
I sit down and I'll talk with people about their
Christian faith or their Hindu faith or whatever, and we
can talk about that. But more than that, I think
he's a good man, and I like the fact that

(08:57):
people are bucking the narrative that's coming down from on high.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Look, Democrat Mikey Cheryl is the governor of New Jersey.
Congratulations Abigail Spanberger, the first Virginia female governor, also a Democrat.
Pennsylvania voters kept three incumbent Democrats on the state Supreme Court,
and Prop fifty in California passed solidly. Now, this is

(09:24):
California's response to Texas's plan to try to read district
the Gerrymander, etc. To stack the midterm and actually the
twenty twenty eight elections in the favor of a very
unpopular party, the Republicans. So Gavin Newsom said, Okay, fine,
we're going to put to a vote before the people

(09:45):
Proposition fifty, which is going to allow us to make
a new map for US House districts to counter that.
So he's playing more hardball. Prop fifty past. It was
just a good week, and this is a much needed
in fe usion of goodness in what has been a
day to day litany of awfulness. So I am feeling

(10:07):
optimism because I have not been feeling optimism. In fact,
I'm wearing a shirt that was given to me by
a couple of friends of mine in Sarnia. When I
go out to Baha Khan, the Bluewater Atheist Humanist events
in Sarnia, Ontario, we have a lot of people who
come out who are familiar faces and friends, and Casey
and Faith are among them. And they gave me a gift.

(10:31):
They gave me a shirt that made me an honorary Canadian.
It's his honorary Canadian Ah on it. And so I've been,
you know, and when I go up there, I am
tempted to ask for asylum. Hey, you know, I'm just saying,
can I sleep on Canada's couch until all this is over?
And they gave me this amazing shirt, So thank you
so much for that. Baha Khan has already listed its

(10:52):
lineup for August of twenty twenty six. These folks like
to plan in advance, and they're already promoting it for August.
I also got word in about another big event that's
happening in October of twenty twenty six, with a lineup
already announced. It is Rocket City Reason, a conference that's

(11:16):
going to be in Huntsville, Alabama, the third weekend in October.
So anyway, if you want to find out about those
and much more immediate is my appearance. I'm going to
be at Secular Hub in Denver, Colorado, on the sixth
of December in twenty twenty five, like a few weeks away.
I'm going to be in Denver, and all the details

(11:36):
are at the Thinkingatheist dot com slash events. Natalie and
I don't get to travel together very often because I'm
useless to her when we are out at an event.
I'm doing my thing, and so it's not like we
can spend time. But we've tacked a couple of days
on to Denver because, for the first time for me
in about thirty five years and the first time for

(11:58):
her ever, ever, ever, in her whole life, we are
going snow skiing. Now I'm nervous. I told a friend
I was joking and I said, you know, I'm planning
in advance, which acl I would like to tear you.
I mean, I've just you always hear about it. I

(12:20):
fell and I broke this, or I smashed that, or
I ran into this, or I just spent the whole
day face down. But then you talk to other people
who were like, it was awesome, man, it was one
with the mountain and we snowboarded, which I hear is
harder than skiing. Snowboarding, We're not snowboarding, but we are
gonna try skiing, and so we are going through these

(12:42):
newbie questions. What do we wear? Is it layers? Do
you do the down thing? We're gonna wear helmets? Obviously
we're taking lessons. How are we gonna do? Is it
gonna be fun? Is the gondola gonna scare the shit
out of us? Are we gonna you know? Is the
mountain gonna I don't know? Am I going to careene
off into the abyss?

Speaker 7 (13:03):
You know?

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Am I going to hit a tree and pull a
Sonny bono? I don't know what's going to happen, but
it's going to happen after I speak. I actually plan
the speech in advance so that in case I am
killed or horribly injured, the folks at Secular Hub will
have already gotten a good show. I'm just saying anyway,
December sixth, Secular Hub, Denver. Go to the Thinkingatheist dot

(13:25):
com and you will see the events have there. Okay,
I am excited to announce that I have joined the
Creator Accountability Network. Now I talk to Sarah from can
a few weeks back, we're talking about this organization that
is it's around because there is a need for I

(13:46):
don't like the word mediation because it sounds so clinical.
But we have seen in every culture, and the free
thought culture included, we've seen harassments and abuse. We've seen
people saying and doing untoward and even offensive things. And
it's going to be a content creator, or it can
be someone who is approaching a content creator, and we

(14:07):
see a lot of escalation out there. Something happens, an
incident takes place, people don't feel like they've got recourse,
or they're just simply pissed off, and they go online
and it becomes the nuclear option. Everybody goes hard at
everybody else, very publicly. It's all escalation. Well CAN is
all about promoting the safety and well being of community

(14:30):
members and helping content creator sort of make a pledge
to everybody that, hey, I'm going to operate as best
I can in good faith, and if I do something
that ends up being untoward or offensive or you know,
if I do if I make a big misstep, it
can be brought to my attention and then there can
be a kind of path toward resolution and restorative justice, restoration. Right,

(14:56):
let's find out what happened, Let's make sure everybody's talking,
not shouting, if possible, and let's operate in good faith
to fix it. I'd rather build a bridge than burn it.
Whenever possible, not always possible. But the Creator Accountability Network
is a resource that I am now a part of.
So I've listed their website and their phone number. It's

(15:19):
on my pages and whatnot. And so if something was
to happen, I'm trying to think of what I would
be doing that was considered offensive. But I'm trying to
lead by example. I feel like, you know, it's it's
a good move. You know, if something happens and you're like, ah,
you know, I'm not going to talk to Seth about it,
but Jeezy screwed up, you can contact CAN. I am
listed with. Can they reach out to me and say, hey,

(15:42):
we need a talk. So it's kind of a It's
a cool way to try to build safer communities and
encourage dialogue. And I'm all about that. Creator Accountability neetwork
dot org is the website. I sure appreciate those folks.
I think what they're doing is a good model, and
I wanted to be a part of it. I have
on the agenda here for the month of November an

(16:05):
interview with an author. His name is Scott Latta. Latta.
He's got a book called Gods of the Smoke Machine, Power, Pain,
and the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch, and
he did a lot of traveling to and through the
megachurch scene. We talk a little bit about these the
kind of rock and roll shows. You go in and

(16:26):
they have a membership of I don't tens of thousands
of people, and it's a pac performing arts sort of
set up with the fancy chairs, big stage, light, fog machine,
full band that sounds like they've been touring somewhere. And
then the pastor comes out and he's doing the hip
thing with the half buttoned shirt and the jewelry and
the tats, and he's given the message from the Word.

(16:48):
And how often do we then see scandal explode out
of these churches. We see some crazy stuff going on,
whether it's abuse, sexual abuse and appropriate it's ungodly behave
yearned that they have to repent from, or maybe it's
a financial thing. These people are living it up. They've
got mansions and luxury cars and fancy vacations and all

(17:11):
these things. Well, the constituents, the people at the other
end of the offering plate, are struggling to get by.
A lot of these folks are working on the prosperity
gospel model, GiB till it hurts and God will bless
you kind of thing. And I thought it was an
interesting book. So I'm going to talk to him about
gods of the smoke machine later on in the month
of November, and a lot of cool stuff as well,

(17:33):
So make sure and keep tuning in for that. Okay,
let me take a short break and then when I
come back, we will talk to our colors about whatever
is on their mind. Thank you so much for your

(17:53):
support on Patreon. If you like what you hear and
you'd like to support what you hear, just go to
patreon dot com slash Seth Andrews and thank you so much.
Let me go and speak to I believe it is
Jesse at five one five. Jesse, thanks for being a

(18:13):
part of the conversation. What's on your mind?

Speaker 8 (18:16):
I've been thinking kind of about, you know, the Christian
affiliation rates and wondering if those will be impacted by
the current administration. I think I've kind of kept an
eye on some of the I want to say it
was Pew that had come out with those affiliation rates,
and I think as of recent we're seeing like down
to like sixty three percent, if I recall correctly. And

(18:37):
I think I know from a personal standpoint. You know,
I was a Christian for twenty years and I'm now
an atheist. So I'm just curious, you know, your thoughts
on do you think that you know this administration will
have an impact on I don't know. I kind of
feel associated from the Christian Church even from my past.
All right, think you've seen or no, I'm an atheist now.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, I can see why you would not be affiliated
then with a Christian church. But I understand what you're saying.
Where before you may have been more charitable, these days
you tend to be perhaps more cynical. Am I reading
that right?

Speaker 8 (19:11):
I think so I would say I am cynical in
the sense of, you know, I grew up with Actually
I just had a conversation with my grandparents the other day,
and these are very rural farmers, and as growing up
they would talk about that, you know, the importance of
the words of Jesus and the constitution and democracy. But
these are also the folks and also support our current

(19:32):
administration and see the complete opposite. And so it's kind
of a strange dissociation from the beliefs that I've heard
them say for thirty years versus now supporting an administration
that flies in the face of, you know, the values
that they've esteemed for years, the.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Stuff of our parents told us don't bully, don't be jealous,
don't steal, don't be arrogant, don't love money, don't do
all stuff. And then we see the same people who
pounded that into our skulls exposed as total hypocrites. Keeps

(20:08):
me up at night, and I think about the people
I thought I used to know, and I went from
being well, we've all been victims of ban nine dance.
I used to be that, But after ten years, that
part of me is almost dead. I've really become more
the you should know better, and I'm not giving you

(20:28):
any quarter. I don't know, does that make any sense?

Speaker 8 (20:31):
I think so. Maybe what you're getting at is, you know,
I have, in some sense, over the course of my
childhood and young adulthood, have felt in some sense of
obligation to adhere to these principles that I've been taught,
and so watching the folks that have taught me those
principles completely do at one eighty and not be able
to recognize the you know, the things they talked about.
You know, Nazi Germany was always a you know, an

(20:52):
example as I grew up of what you could convince
a society to do given the right circumstances. And now we,
in some sense, we're kind of there. So it's kind
of a scary thought and experience watching family go through
these sort of intellectual associations, if you will.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
We've got the holidays coming up as well. You sit
at Thanksgiving table with people who are in active opposition
to the things and the people that you care about
doing active harm. How does that even work? And I'm
going through that in my own mind. Part of me
like to just do my own thing, and I think
I just might because hashtag life is short. Do I

(21:31):
think more and more people are seeing the hypocrisy of
the evangelical rite and if nothing else, the silent complicity
of many churches and saying screw this. I do. I
think there are a lot of people I know church
affiliation overall has dropped in the United States. Interestingly, though,

(21:52):
I read just recently that attendance in megachurches seems to
be on the rise, So apparently the biggest churches are
seeing a bit of a surge. But overall religiosity church going,
specifically in the United States is dropping, and I think
a lot of folks are and they see it for

(22:14):
what it is. It has been kind of a black light.
Have you known anybody in your circle who has professed
Christianity and looked around and said, hey, where's the Jesus
and all this?

Speaker 7 (22:25):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (22:25):
For certain, I have a aunt and uncle who you know,
they go to one of these megachurches that you kind
of talk about, and I would say that they're probably
the exception to the rule and their congregation, and that
you know, my uncle and I actually get along quite
well when it comes to politics, and so him and
I will sit down and have these conversations. But I
think he is the exception to the rule where he

(22:46):
thinks the current administration is a is an unhealthy one
and a dangerous one for our nation. But coming from
the state that I'm in out in the Midwest, it
almost seems that social expectations or the beliefs that you
were born with with have much more significant impact on
their views now than their current religious views are. Sometimes

(23:07):
it seems as if you know, those religious beliefs are
more of a Sunday punchline, if you will, as opposed
to those are the conditions in which I'm going to
live my life.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
I don't think it makes me a politician when I
say that we must be fair and say there are
devout Jesus loving Christians who are on our side and
on our page. I'm thinking of one person. So long story,
very short. She was a senior in high school when
I was a freshman. She was like a rock star.

(23:38):
She was dropped dead, gorgeous, super popular, homecoming queen, and
if she said hi to a freshman in the hallway,
it was like meeting the Beatles. It was just a
big deal. Oh she's that. I remember we were doing
a production of Fiddler on the Roof and the guy
playing Purchack was supposed to kiss her character on stage,

(24:00):
just part of the production, and he got sick and
I was the understudy. And they're like, all right, Seth,
if you have to go up there, get ready because
you're going to kiss her. I'd like to say her name,
but I'm not going to do it. And of course
I was like, oh my god, I'm I'm freshman, she's
a senior. I'm terrified it did not happen. I got

(24:21):
off the hook, but I did have my fantasies. But
after forty years, she materialized on my Facebook page. I mean,
after four decades. She is a Jesus loves everybody and
God bless the children. She's that kind of person. Okay,
all right, fine. What I found more interesting was that

(24:45):
she started to express on her own page the grief
she feels at the culture of cruelty that is being
carried out by people who share her faith, Bible bangers
who were out there doing the most horrible things. And
so she went on her own page, and I saw
the post chiding people going, how could we do this?
How can you believe this? How can you support this?

(25:08):
How could you be a part of this horror? When
you say that you're about love and charity and feeding
the poor and blessed are the immigrants and whatever else
is in the Old and New Testament, if you're charity picking,
she was like calling out her fellow Christians. And I'll
tell you the people that came after her, they, I mean,
they descended like vipers and it was hard to watch.

(25:30):
But she's an example of a brave believer who her
Jesus would never put up with any of this, and
she's taken a hard stand for it. And for that
I am deeply grateful. One day and I can sit
down and talk about Jesus, we can talk about the Bible.
But there are some Christians who are on our page
and they are extremely grieved, and I think that has

(25:52):
to be said out loud. Anything else, Jesse before I
move on.

Speaker 8 (25:55):
No, I think that's okay.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Thanks, Seth, appreciate you so much. We'll catch you later.
That drives a lot of not as many of these days,
but it used to drive a lot of people who
were anti theists crazy. You're giving Christians cover if they
affiliate with Christianity. That means they're giving cover to the

(26:17):
Christian nationalists. Christian nationalists are often aligned with white supremacy
in this country, which means they're elbow to elbow with
Neo Nazis. So all Christians are Nazis. You think that
I'm exaggerating, but I hear a lot of this type
of stuff and I just don't buy it. This is

(26:38):
not a binary model, and we're not supposed to be
binary thinkers. Nuance has to exist in our conversations about
this stuff. It's all about context and it's just fine,
in fact necessary to look at a flesh and blood,
three dimensional, often extremely good human being of professors of
faith and say what are your values? And let's start there.

(26:59):
And that's exactly what I do without apology. Jared, what's
on your mind? What do you want to talk about?

Speaker 6 (27:05):
Christian nationalists? You know, I was raised in it like
you were, and they're so cruel. And now I look
back and I say, you know, they're so You see
people saying they're own Christian, but they're not. They're like
the way I was raised. They're just following their values.
So like the whole SNAP thing, right, the whole argument is, oh,

(27:29):
they're lazy, they're taking from us. Am I still there
you are?

Speaker 2 (27:34):
And let me add some context that make a few people,
especially those outside of our borders. We have a global audience.
For those who don't know what SNAP is, it is
essentially government assistance to the disadvantaged. Other people like to
use the word welfare. I find that sometimes a derogatory term,
but you know what I mean. And so with our
government shutdown underway, you have the complete or partial I

(27:59):
don't know if Trump going to abide the court order.
The court said he could not suspend SNAP benefits, but
we're talking about tens of millions of people who are
potentially not able to pay for their food, who may
go hungry, and this has become a massive political football,
and I think Trump wants them to go. I think

(28:19):
he wants SNAP to cause misery the absence of it.
I think he wants whatever harm happens to be there
so that he can blame his political opponents for all
the misery. And I also think he's a sadist. So
I don't know. Did I set it up? Okay for you?

Speaker 6 (28:36):
Well, yeah, that's good background. But I think i'd like
to point out that the Christians want those people to
suffer as well.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Which Christians, the.

Speaker 6 (28:49):
Christian nationalists, the right wingers, the Evangelicals, the people I
was raised by and who are still in it. And
here's the logic behind it. God is in control. The
nature of man is evil. So if you're disadvantaged, if
you're experiencing hardship, it's God's plan to use that hardship

(29:10):
to bring you to Him. So if we help those
people through the government, then they become reliant on the
government instead of relying on God. Whereas if the church
provides the charity, you know, the lunch counter or the
roof over their head or whatever, that's bringing them to Christ.
So I guess the political subtlety I was raised with

(29:32):
is that government providing charity is inappropriate because it subverts
God's will. The government there is to provide justice, but
they only look at justice from the sense of vengeance
or retribution, not justice in the sense of allowing everybody
to live as equals. So it's twisted. It's gross, it's

(29:56):
bad news, but it's not illogical, and it's not uncreat
the position they're taking. And I think it's it's so
subtle that you know, if you weren't in it, what
I've just laid out is just absolutely bumpers.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
When I was about Christian if I may our position
was more, we didn't see it as cruel as much,
but it was. It's the whole bootstrap thing. This is
the land of opportunity. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps,
and the world is your oyster. Work hard, It's what

(30:30):
they used to say, work hard and your dream will
come true. These bumper stickers about what's possible and what
that allowed us to do is partition in our minds
that a lot of the people who fail simply weren't
motivated enough to succeed. And of course it's monumentally dismissive
and wrong and harmful and crazy and cruel, but that's

(30:52):
often how we thought. We didn't see it as well.
God is using your light in momentary affliction to produce
for you an eternal glory that far out to weigh
them all. It was more like, I'm not doing you
a favor by giving you a handout. I'm not going
to give you a fish and feed you for a day.
We need to teach you to fish so that you
can eat for a lifetime. The thing is, none of

(31:13):
us wanted to teach anybody to finish. We didn't want
to long term commitment. We were busy living our own lives.
So I did see a lot of that as well.

Speaker 6 (31:22):
Yeah, and the thing is like, it's not the government's
role to teach these people how to fish. That's the
role for Christians to step up and be an example
to the heathen masses, the unwashed masses. They need to see.
You know, if the government fed everybody, there wouldn't be
poor people, and the Church wouldn't have a role to
bring people to salvation because it's such a predatory thing.

(31:45):
They recruit from the destitute, and if the government eliminates
destitute people, their entire recruitment pool is gone. If you
don't have to rely on the church for medical charity,
for your food, for your healthcare, for your kids education,
if our society provides that, then what's the church going
to offer some blank check to a non existent bank.

(32:09):
But I think that's the angle people are missing, is
that Christians don't want to help their fellow man. They
want to bring them to Christ, and they do bring
them to Christ as the legitimate goal. I buy that
book Temporary Trials and Tribulation.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Christians, but don't or Christians do. It doesn't work for me.
I think this is situation. I know Christians who genuinely
are grieved by suffering. Hell I just gave you an example.
And there are others in my circle and they do
want to help people, and they are charitable and they
would give you the shirt off their back. And so

(32:46):
to say Christians do or do not, I think we
can probably expand and make that more contextual. That's fair,
isn't it German?

Speaker 8 (32:53):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (32:53):
Absolutely? Okay, So what I'm saying, I guess I misspoke.
I'm not saying Christians don't want these people to be helped.
They want to do the helping. They don't see a
role for government in that because it cheats them of
the opportunity to shine for Christ. If you follow what
I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Maybe in some cases I don't remember speaking it or
thinking it when I was a devout believer, but I
can see what you're saying that it might be true
for some out there. That's something to chew on. Jared,
and I appreciate you so much being a part of
the conversation. We'll talk about it, okay.

Speaker 6 (33:27):
Well, and thanks for all you do, Seth.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Thanks for calling. We'll see you later.

Speaker 6 (33:31):
Yeah. No, I'm taking easy.

Speaker 9 (33:32):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
I tend to hear a space and want to fill it.
Sometimes I overstep my caller. It's a host of flaw.
I'm so sorry, by the way, at my feet and
I'm hoping that nothing outside happens while we are doing
our show today. But I have my grand dog here.
His name is Harry, seventy pound golden doodle. This dog

(33:57):
loves me, so he's right here. He's trying to lay
on my feet, but he can't quite get there. This
dog loves me. It's like having a big, fuzzy four
pod toddler. He's what seven years old, bounces around the house.

(34:19):
He's just a puppy. He's a puppy. And he's got
this big, deep, booming, guttural, imposing sounding bark that will
rattle the teeth out of your head. And you know what,
he barks at everything. So I've got my window partially cracked.
He likes to look out, and I'll be in here

(34:39):
trying to record audio, whether it's for this channel or
true Stories, or him narrating something else. And he will
see the mailman drive by, he goes crazy.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
Woo.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Somebody's walking their dog. He goes crazy. A moth flies
by the window, he goes crazy. I'm astounded he has
been as quiet as he has been. I haven't sedated him,
so maybe he just got worn out from today's walkies.
But if at some point something happens out there and

(35:14):
it becomes canine chaos. You will know my granddog Harry
has activated. Don't worry, it's okay. I'm not being mauled
to death here in the studio. Forgive my digression. Let's
see I've got down. He's calling out a Texas four

(35:34):
three zero. Hi. Don you there?

Speaker 7 (35:37):
Yes, I am.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Welcome to the show. It's on your mind.

Speaker 7 (35:40):
Great to talk to you, first time caller, and for you, man,
you're a You're luck, You're like a celebrity of mine. Anyway,
I want to talk to you about the soul. Yeah,
I know, especially like EVPs or something like that. I'm
not going to go into storytime, but i have had
my experiences and I'm not a ghost hunter or anything

(36:04):
else like that, but I've had experiences as a Christian,
I've had experiences as a Muslim, and I've had experiences
as what I am now a heathen. So I know
what aarn Ross says. I know what's all the call
in shows say about it and everything that. It's something
that I have a block I cannot get past in

(36:25):
order to be full on atheist. And I'm, you know,
kind of needing some help with it because I'm right now,
I reserve judgment on this sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
So explain what you mean by EVP. You mean like
the patterns you hear in static well.

Speaker 7 (36:43):
Electronic voice phenomenon is what it's called. I captured one myself,
and like I said, no, I'm not no ghost hunter.
It was me and my son. My son was eighteen
years old, and we were we were living in this
rent house in Arkansas and there was crap going on
and during that time, grabbed my digital recorder and I

(37:08):
just let it roll on the record, and I was
doing what the ghosts But you know, hunters always do,
you know, they have questions, and so I was asking,
you know, I asked a question, why are you here?
Of course you don't hear anything while you're recording and
stuff like that, but if you stop it, I stopped it,
rewinded it, played it back, heard my voice why are

(37:30):
you here? And a voice said I like it here,
and it was a voice that was deep throated, not
like me or my son. And then after that it
started whistling a tune. So things like that is just
that's what puts me on the sense maybe something like

(37:51):
this is emergent property of the human consciousness.

Speaker 6 (37:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Well, having not been a part of that, and having
not heard the actual recording, I have no idea. I
fall along the Okham's razor side of it. Do I
think that there are other worldly spirits who have passed
on or exist in an outer membrane somewhere, who are
contacting us in the physical world, and the way they
communicate it on a frequency that our radios or tape

(38:19):
recorders or whatever pick up. Yeah, I tend not to
go that direction. I tend to think there's a much
simpler explanation beyond that.

Speaker 10 (38:27):
Though.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Let me ask you a question, because I find this
more interesting. Do you believe in a god, any god anywhere?

Speaker 6 (38:35):
No?

Speaker 7 (38:35):
Not anymore?

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Okay, well, you're an atheist. There are atheists who believe
in spirits, ghosts, reincarnation. There are atheists who believe in
a great many things. Atheism relates only to the lack
of a belief in a god. And I've talked to
a lot of atheists who say, well, I don't think
there's any God out there, but I'm withholding judgment, or

(38:59):
I have a auspicion that there might be. I don't
know something beyond the physical realm, and you know, I'm spiritual.
I've heard the gamut. But those people are still atheists.
And I wouldn't get hung up on whether you call
yourself that or not. At the end of the day, though,
we have to see ourselves as patterns seeking primates, often

(39:21):
with a tremendous aptitude and desire to connect dots. We
have in many cases a desire to believe. And honestly,
if you heard something on a recording, I would want
to hear that. I would want other people to hear that.
I would want it analyzed. I'd want to see if
that could be repeated. I'm not going to knock that down.
And you know, whatever's true, let's do that. And I

(39:43):
think that's the responsible way to approach this kind of stuff.
Don't beat yourself up because well, I need to call
myself an atheist. I think, yeah, you're living your own
life and and you discovered something that you found difficult
to explain, you're fascinated by it, you're keeping your eyes
years open. I buy that. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Don Well, yes it does.

Speaker 7 (40:05):
And I also take into account the history of it,
the concept of the soul or something with you know,
other than that's within us. Is that's a concept that's
older than religion. It's older than Homo sapiens. I mean,
it's on cave drawings and stuff like that, of some
kind of notion of an afterlife or something like that.

(40:28):
And then you know, you go into the spiritualist movement
at the nineteen thirties and forties and things like that,
and it was so prevalent that even Thomas Edison, right
before he died, he was going to invent an electronic
device that would do just that, that would pick up
the voices of spirits and stuff like that, because it

(40:49):
was just so prevalent during the spiritualist movement. And that's
where we got where these spirits can communicate through electronic devices.
It was during that time, and we know it came
with the with the Industrial Revolution, we invented electronic devices.
Never we're hearing things on them, just like I did

(41:09):
on my digital quorder.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Well, there are a few challenges. One is we have
to come back to patterns seeking the reason that someone
was hearing something on a frequency which has recently only
recently been discovered and translated to an electronic device. I mean,
that's where they're going to hear the pattern. That's where
the brain's going to connect the dots. The fact that

(41:33):
people pre dating specific religions believed in the spirits, first
of all, if you relate it to religion. I remember
Christopher Hitchins once said that religions were our first explanations
for all things, and because they were our first, they
were our worst. So somebody two thousand years ago who
didn't know what the stars were, who didn't know what

(41:54):
epilepsy was, who didn't understand that there were germs in
the world, they weren't part of the noledge economy. What
they believed is interesting, but I don't put any special
credibility to it simply because it happened a long time
ago and there are people who emulate that today. Is
there a spirit world? I think it has to meet

(42:15):
the burden of proof, and that's a fair approach. All right, Fine,
is there something that is trying to communicate? Is there
something that is being received on a recept or somewhere, Well,
show me, let's take it into laboratory conditions, let's replicate it,
let's peer review it. And as far as the soul
is concerned, I still think the soul is a scientific

(42:38):
question because those who are brain dualists, who believe that
the soul exists in the spirit or the mind is
the physical flesh of the brain. I still think there's
a point where the soul would actually be connecting to
the physical body and then that could be measured. So
the soul is a scientific question. There's a neuroscientist named

(42:59):
doctor Julian who's got a great book about this, called
The Soul Fallacy. But I'm not going to discount what
happened to you, what you saw, what you heard. But
I think that's the beginning of our conversation, and I
think there's a burden of proof that we should be pursuing.

Speaker 7 (43:15):
Okay, yeah, and that eedt and things when when it
that's my proof. But you know, that happened so dull
and long ago, and it stuck with me. I no
longer have that digital recorder anymore. It was just too
long ago. But you know, when it happens to you,
you know we isn't that proof?

Speaker 4 (43:36):
You know?

Speaker 7 (43:37):
Can't that be proof? I mean, if you get it
on a digital recorder, you know, I mean, well, I heard.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
A sound, I heard a sound. Is it's interesting? But
that's the first part of a much larger journey toward
meeting a burden of proof. I myself think, wow, I saw,
I heard, I felt well. Human perception is flawed and

(44:04):
we are creatures of susceptibility, conditioned response bias, etc. And
again back to Wakham's razor. Do I think it as
a spirit world thing? Or do I think there may
be another explanation? I tend to go toward the more simple. Hey,
just something happened here and we connected dots. But keep scanning,

(44:25):
use a different recorder, and if you find something else,
then let's find a way to get that into a
lab and see what else happens.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Okay, I really do want to do that.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Okay, all right, good luck, let me know if you
find anything.

Speaker 7 (44:36):
All right, Thank you, mister Andrews.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Thank you, Seth. Please all right, we'll see you later. Bye,
mister Andrews. I can feel part of myself turning brittle
when someone says that I was on the tennis court
two nights ago and I was playing a match for
my team. There's a guy. He's a singles player playing
the singles line. His name is Matthew, twenty five years

(44:59):
younger than he's on the bench while I'm playing my line.
And after the match was over, he came out and
he said, you know, I was telling my friend over here.
He said, you know, older guys like you play smart
because you have to place the ball because you can't
necessarily run fast enough to get there, totally straight faced.

(45:20):
Older guys have to hit more accurately because they can't
breaking move. That was supposed to be a compliment. Three
other people in the circle just looked at him like, oh, no,
you didn't. And I'm sitting there about to just, you know,
find a sharp object and just impale myself on it.

(45:43):
Oh my god, you old people, you have to hit
the ball strategically because you can't cover the distance. Ah.
That wounded me deeply. Okay, I'm going to go and
don my wole brown old man sweater and get some ensure,

(46:08):
and uh, you know, I'll be right back. I want
to talk a little more about snap in just a second,
because I remember that I posted something on Facebook which
kind of clarifies a couple of things. I'm going to
do that and take a whole lot more of your
calls in just second. Don't forget. My second podcast is

(46:31):
releasing roughly three times a week. I'm trying to do Monday, Wednesday,
Friday if production time allows. We're up to like four
hundred and twenty five episodes over three and a half
years True Stories with Seth Andrews. You can find that
on all major podcast apps, or go to True Stories

(46:52):
podcast dot com. Let me roll back to SNAP for
just a second. This idea of government assistance for the
disadvantage and the narrative that, well, these people are all parasites.
I wrote something on Facebook a few days ago, and
I think it relates here. I said, according to the USDA,

(47:16):
thirty nine percent of SNAP participants are children, twenty percent
are elderly, ten percent are individuals with disabilities. Now, the
claim coming out of Magaville, the Trump administration, etc. Or
that all these people are and I'm just going to
be crashed because they are. They're saying it's all a

(47:37):
bunch of meth heads and crackhores and welfare queens. That's
how they're getting away with justifying the cruelty. They're saying,
they're all freaking they all deserve it. If they starve
to death, only the weak will fail. So despite the
claim that people of color primarily benefit as well. Twenty

(47:58):
twenty three data would feels that whites white people outnumber
black and Hispanic Latino recipients on SNAP. Adults who receive
SNAP often work, and they work hard in low wage
in often on the bubble service jobs, cashier's cooks, and
health aids. The US Census bureaus twenty twenty one survey

(48:23):
revealed that most of the recipients of SNAP have jobs.
Trump claimed largely, when you talk about SNAP, you're talking
about Democrats. It is true that general numbers show Dems
at a higher percentage slightly, but one in seven rural
households depend on SNAP. Rural areas are overwhelmingly Trump and ultimately,

(48:52):
I wrote, the big picture is about human beings who
deserve better than to be branded crack cores and welfare queens.
Many were born into or are locked into disadvantage, and
any SNAP benefits they get are nothing compared to the
sneezed away riches of the billionaire class. Snap is just

(49:12):
another way to divide people, the haves and the have nots.
They're rich and the poor, and the poor deserve to
be poor. I've got six y one nine. I do
not see a name. Who's this? Uh, Lenny, letn me
appreciate your calling. What's on your mind?

Speaker 9 (49:29):
I kind of wonder if you have similar thoughts about
a thing. I struggle with the society and the world
that we function in. It feels like it's all very incoherent,
the mega crowd, the religious, it's tribalism, it feels like,
and we come up with an idea of who we

(49:53):
are and what we're doing and why we're doing it.
But really we're all just kind of meeting our needs,
the same human needs. And then after we've met those needs,
however we've learned to meet them, we kind of come
up with the narrative or along the way, we develop
a narrative while meeting those needs, and you know, whatever

(50:15):
community groups we come up in, we view those as
being the right ones.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
You know.

Speaker 9 (50:21):
I wonder if a lot of the things we're dealing
with where you can kind of look at how people
have interpreted Bible doctrine or religious doctrine in general, and
you can see it shifting over time to meet the
needs of the people of the era that they're in.
It's kind of similar to how the constitution works, and
you can see it being reinterpreted to meet the needs

(50:43):
of the people. And it's kind of words changed and
have different meanings, but we don't see it as that.
And I just wonder if really we're all locked in
the different tribes meeting our needs and creating a narrative
that really has never been coherent.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
I get. I think what you're saying, people will fashion
the model for or the framework maybe for a kind
of culture, society, coping mechanism to meet their needs, be
it religion, group that's wrapped around a specific philosophy. We

(51:22):
look for families that validate and support us. And I
tend to think that people construct a God, a religion
of faith, a denomination, a culture in their own image.
That's why when you meet a Christian, that's the first
part of the conversation. Well are you a Bible literalist
Christian or do you not hold it the body? Do
you think Jesus is a fire in brimstone god or

(51:45):
do you think Jesus would forgive and love everybody? And
I think people if you go to different cultures, and
Jesus is a great example, you will find different looking
and sounding Jesus is based on where you go. There's
an African American Jesus, a ative American Jesus. There's an
Asian Jesus. It's wild to see these people depicting Christ

(52:06):
in a way that relates specifically to them. And you
show that stuff to white evangelicals in the United States
and they lose their minds because Jesus is white, because
he has to look like us. But you know, if
you're making the point that people will construct a framework
to navigate through life based on what they want and
what they need, whether it's religion or otherwise, absolutely, I

(52:29):
think they do so, and I think they are attracted
to tribes that validate those things in them. So was
I tracking with you or did I miss the point?

Speaker 5 (52:39):
No?

Speaker 9 (52:39):
I think so simultaneously. It's kind of met up. It's
like a loop. It like reinforces itself in the sense
that we need you know, we're social creatures, so we
need a tribe, right, And then I feel like that
is a very natural web or quote unquote normal or
the typical way that humans in general engage with dislike

(53:00):
that we have and trying to make sense of our existence.
But I feel like that in and of itself, you
spoke about our biases and things like that. And I
feel like those proquivities that we have in our nature
kind of lean away from actually having a coherent behavior
that relies on truths. Rather we rely on what our

(53:23):
experience is, how we feel, how it that we're trying
to meet these needs, and truth doesn't necessarily feel like
it's a need for a great many people.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
People are often more interested in using confirmation bias, scanning
around to be proven right, the inconvenient truth that makes
them uncomfortable, that may be a challenge to the model
that they are living in, and so they're not as
interested in whether or not there is accurate information. They

(53:55):
want to be personally validated emotionally, and that's what drives them.
And I think that is very much a human tendency.
It's why you and I walk into a room and
there's somebody who has a deeply held, baked in belief
that is part of their identity, and we're like, well, no,
actually that's factually incorrect. And not only do they not
change their mind, but often the fight flight or freeze

(54:16):
reflects kicks in and it's even harder to break through.
They are more interested in feeling right or being proven
right than they are in actually being rights? Am I close?

Speaker 6 (54:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (54:30):
What's that line when an honest man realizes he is wrong,
he will either cease to be wrong or he will
cease to be honest. I always like that quote. I
know it's a little bit simplistic, but there's a lot
of psychology to belief, the desire to belong and believe, tribalism, etc.
I think it all plays in. So anything else before

(54:53):
I move on?

Speaker 3 (54:53):
My friend, and I.

Speaker 9 (54:55):
Just wondered if that's on those things. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
It's messy and it's a long ask conversation, but thanks
for starting it here. Take care out there, all right,
all righty, all right, we'll see you later. I've got
Harold on a web call who wants to talk about
Jared on a previous call. Harold, are you there?

Speaker 10 (55:14):
Oh yeah, I didn't actually think I called it in time.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Hey, back off your mic just a little bit. You're
distorting just a bit on the show.

Speaker 8 (55:22):
Figure this out.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
It's all good. Usually it's just a couple of inches
further away from the from the microphone and you should
be fine. So Jared had called earlier and he was
talking about how Christians are motivated when it comes to
snap benefits.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yeah, just just a few things like maybe you'll see
the connection, maybe maybe people won't. I totally get that,
like a lot of former Christians and current Christians, is
completely unrelated to the motivations Jared described. But there are
also some things. So if you remember the HPV vaccine
or when they were firststributing narcan to people, or you

(56:02):
can go all the way back to the AIDS crisis.
So there was an argument when the HPV vaccine came
out that they shouldn't give that to kids because that
would encourage them to have premarital sex. So the risk
of cervical cancer should be a deterrent, And when they
were distributing narcan, doing that takes away the deterrent that
comes from supposedly overdoses. Or way back in the eighties,

(56:26):
when the gay activist came up with ways of preventing
HIV infection, there was interference with them trying to spread
the message of this is how you prevent it, because
there was a desire that to be a deterrent from
acting in the way they acted at all.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Yeahs riff on, we don't support birth control because if
people can have sex outside of wedlock without consequence, specifically
the consequence of a potential pregnancy, or if we have
preventatives against STDs, well, then they might be even more
likely to participate in carnal and ungodly behavior. That kind

(57:06):
of thing.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah, to me, that kind of ties in with his
idea of, oh, you take away the snap benefits, and
that can steer people towards the behavior that we approve of.
And so instead of the government benefits that give people
fighting chance to get back on their feet, you can
make them dependent on the churches so that they'll go

(57:27):
to where they hear the right message.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
I know that some religiously uned and themed outreach shelters
might be trying to meet physical needs because they are
more interested in a spiritual need. Oh look, now that
you're here, if you want your meal, your hot meal
for the night, you are required to sit through a
sermon and we're back to behavioral control. So yeah, we'll

(57:53):
meet your needs on our terms, for our reasons, and
we have a larger goal in mind.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Yeah, Yeah, there's nothing new. Just think that there's there's
a precedent for what I think Jared was talking about.
Maybe he was talking about something different, but.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
I think they overlap. I think they overlap, and that's
something to consider. It's certainly true that when we saw
Jesus giving the sermon on the mounta and he you know,
when he is walking and doing his miracles, and he
fed the five thousand, right the loaves and the fishes.
He fed them physically, but the point was to satisfy
their bodies so that then he could feed their spirits.

(58:30):
And a lot of people within the church hole to
that same thing. Look, let's go out and meet physical
needs when we take a mission strip or et cetera.
But the larger goal is to get them to a
point where we can then speak to the soul, and
we can speak to behavior and gain allegiance and another
soul into the kingdom kind of things. So there's a
lot of good stuff there, Harold, and I appreciate the

(58:52):
call to the show. Is there anything else?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
No, I mean, I just maybe contrast that with the
other vision, which would be you have a stable safety
net and then you let the individuals build off that
to decide what their larger goal is going to be.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
All Right, I appreciate you very much. Thanks for Colin, Harold,
thank you. Yeah, we'll see you. Later, somebody brought up
the salience point that the elimination of snap was in
Project twenty twenty five. I find that interesting. So maybe
the tactic is okay, fine, we can blame the Democrats

(59:30):
when we actually are doing what we always plan to do. Anyway,
here's an article from the New Republic. This is from
a few years ago, but it has to do with
the Republican's hate of food stamps. The paradox of the
food stamp program is that it was originally designed to
benefit three Republican constituencies, farmers, grocers, and wholesalers. Even today,

(59:55):
one of the program's biggest supporters is Walmart. Yet food
stam have come under near constant attacks since nineteen seventy six,
when Ronald Reagan, then challenging Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination,
disparaged a largely mythical African American welfare queen who used
quote eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to collect

(01:00:20):
food stamps, social security veterans, benefits for four nonexistent deceased
veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Food stamps were first
conceived of as a subsidy to business During the Great Depression,
President Franklin Roosevelt's Agriculture Department had been purchasing surplus crops

(01:00:40):
from farmers and distributing them to hungry families. Food wholesalers
and retailers, including the supermarket chains that were just starting
to appear and that marketed themselves as heavy discounters, objected
to being cut out of the deal. Food stamps were
the resulting compromise. Out of the government purchasing the surplus

(01:01:02):
food wholesalers did. The wholesalers sold the food to retailers,
who in turn sold it to individuals able to make
their purchases with government issued stamps. Today's Republicans fulminates about
non working counch potatoes who collect food stamps, never mind
that most recipients work already in households with children seventy

(01:01:26):
five percent due unless they are disabled or elderly. But
back in nineteen thirty nine, being unemployed was the reason
you went on food stamps. As with most New Deal
social welfare programs, the idea was not to punish jobless people,
but to help them. Christopher Bosso, a political scientist at

(01:01:47):
Northeastern University and author of the forthcoming book Why Snap
Works told me that eligibility for the New Deal program
often depended on the recipients being enrolled vocally in a
relief program. No welfare, No food Stamps, SNAP or the
Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program is what food stamps were renamed

(01:02:11):
in two thousand and eight, and a half hearted attempt
to reduce the stigma, which didn't take The very first recipient,
some machinist in Rochester, New York named Ralston Thayer, was
thirty five, able bodied, and unemployed. I never received surplus
foods before, Thayer told reporters. But the procedure seemed simple enough,

(01:02:33):
and I certainly intend to take advantage of it. Food
stamps appeared as the economy recovered during World War II.
In the nineteen fifty Senator George Aiken, a Vermont Republican,
agitated for food stamps revival, but the Eisenhower administration wasn't interested.
These were prosperous years then, As Michael Harrington would observe

(01:02:56):
in his nineteen sixty two book The Other America, the
poor became invisible even to liberals. That began to change
under President John F. Kennedy, partly because of Harrington's book,
and by nineteen sixty four food stamps had been legislated
back into being. The Food Stamp Acts preamble stated as

(01:03:18):
its purpose first quote, to strengthen the agricultural economy, second
to help achieve a fuller and more effective use of
food abundance, and only third, oh, yeah, to provide for
improved levels of nutrition among low income households. Even so,

(01:03:38):
Republican opposition, combined with resistance from Southern Democrats, nearly tanked
the bill. Representative John McCormick of Massachusetts, the Democratic House speaker,
finally secured support by tying it to aid for cotton
and wheat farmers. McCormick's maneuver established a precedent. Since nineteen

(01:04:00):
seventy three, the food stamp program has survived largely because
it's been folded into the big farm bills past every
five years or so, on which big agriculture relies. As
the political scientist Matthew Gritter observes in his twenty fifteen
book The Politics of Food Stamps and Snap, the strategy

(01:04:20):
provided the program with an institutional place outside the contentious
welfare program. It wasn't enough to spare the program. Reagan's scorn,
but it was sufficient to win support from key farm
state Republicans like Kansas Senator Bob Dole, who in nineteen
seventy seven teamed up with Democratic Senator George McGovern to

(01:04:42):
expand access to food stamps. Reagan's nineteen eighty election prompted
a series of cuts to the food stamps program. President
Reagan told Congress in nineteen eighty one that a program
originally intended to ensure adequate nutrition for America's needy family
had devolved into a quote generalized income transfer program, but

(01:05:06):
in fact, about ninety percent of the families receiving food
stamps or below the poverty line, with the average living
on thirty nine hundred dollars a year. That's about thirteen
grands in current dollars. Among the reforms Reagan imposed were
a ban on federal outreach to let poor people know

(01:05:26):
food stamp benefits were available, a reduction and cost of
living adjustments from twice yearly to annually, and the first
in a series of escalating work requirements. Reagan's assault on
food stamps and on welfare benefits generally abated in the
mid nineteen eighties because Bosso said Republicans got their heads

(01:05:48):
handed to them on being so cruel to the poor
and hungry. At that point, Republicans and Democrats struck an
unspoken bargain. Democrats would be permitted to enlarge overall eligibility
in the food stamp programs so long as Republicans were
permitted to tighten it in petty and politically charged ways.

(01:06:13):
Sometimes the Democratic hostage is something other than expanded food
stamp eligibility. Today the hostage is the debt ceiling. In
nineteen ninety six, it was President Bill Clinton's welfare reform.
When Clinton said he wanted to end welfare as we
know it, he meant cash welfare, not food stamps. But

(01:06:34):
one of the prices Republicans demanded was a variety of
restrictions on food stamp eligibility, including the denial of benefits
to legal immigrants who weren't American citizens and a three
month limit on benefits to able bodied recipients who didn't work.
President George W. Bush broke this pattern by expanding food

(01:06:57):
stamp eligibility in various ways in the spirit of quote
compassionate conservatism, But the Republican food stamp trashing Caucus roared
back to life under President Barack Obama, whom Newt Gingridge
labeled the most successful food stamp president in history. He
didn't mean it as a compliment. More likely, he meant

(01:07:20):
it as a racial slur, HARKing back to Reagan's Welfare
queen epithet TEA Party Republicans and later Freedom Caucus Republicans
tried to break into the Farm Bills of twenty fourteen
and twenty eighteen so that food stamps could be separated
from farm programs and McCormick's old left right coalition be

(01:07:42):
broken apart, but both efforts got halted in a Republican
controlled Senate. The odd thing Bosso said is that there's
no good evidence that snap disincentivizes work. Two decades of
studies have shown that work requirements are effect that kicking
recipients off the rolls, but not at getting those recipients

(01:08:05):
to acquire a job. Yet Republicans keep at it. At
this point, we have to conclude the GOP long ago
stopped caring about getting into the workforce. That minority of
able bodied food stamp recipients who aren't working already, all
they want to do is take away their food. That

(01:08:27):
article penned by Timothy Noah of The New Republic back
in twenty twenty three. Why Republicans hate it when poor
people have food to eat? One last break, and then
we're back to the phone. It's next. I am sipping

(01:08:50):
my tea Earl Gray hot out of a Thinking Atheist mug.
It doesn't have the word atheist on the mug. It
just got the symbol. And then assume nothing, question everything,
start thinking. It's kind of a cool mug to have
when religious people come over and you can say, hey,
here's some coffee, and they will never know the difference.
But it's also a great way to support the channel.

(01:09:11):
If you want to get a mug for yourself or
gifted for the holidays, go to the store at the
Thinkingatheist dot com. Let's see, I think I have. It's
a web call out of Hell. I don't know where
it's from, but I'll put you on the air. What
do I call you? What's your name?

Speaker 10 (01:09:30):
Heyeth, It's Zito from Costraca, Latin America.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
What's on your mind?

Speaker 10 (01:09:35):
Well, a little bit of everything. First, preparing for war
against the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
You're you're preparing for war?

Speaker 4 (01:09:42):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Are you in Venezuela? I missed it Costa Rica, Okay.

Speaker 10 (01:09:48):
From Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Okay, I have.

Speaker 10 (01:09:51):
I have Venezuela and half a straet Censers, so half
and half. I have family in Venezuela. My father was
Venezuela and et cetera. So you know, after the US
terrorist military group marines that drug have committed over sixty
four murders in the recent months and two days Agojima,

(01:10:12):
one of the battleship, I'm not sure if it's the
battleship or or one of those ships is now near
to the Venezuela and waters. We expect that to blow
up this month and it's gone of the amass.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
I don't know how Donald Trump is not on trial
for murder for targeting those boats. You know, they say
that it's drug runners or whatever that are coming, and
logistically that does not make any sense. But let's say
that they were trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.
You're going to have to demonstrate that and then there

(01:10:47):
is a process, not hey, wow, bad people, let's kill them.
I was reading an article here in the United States. Culturally,
we as an entire nation are at expecting, We're not fearing.
We are expecting a dramatic increase in political violence and
in the next ten years the assassination of a major

(01:11:09):
political figure. And I don't think it's going to be
ten years. I think it's going to be probably tragically
much sooner. And I fear an actual civil war even
as we are looking at potential wars against. I mean,
how many people does Trump wanted to go to war
with or invade or co opt or take over or
make one of our own. Now you know he wants

(01:11:29):
Canada to be the fifty first age. This guy is
playing army five time draft Dodger wants to play army
with the billions of dollars force of the American military.
And I think he's a psychopath. I think he has
no ability to empathize. I think he has the weak
man's idea of what strength is. And he is getting

(01:11:50):
people killed and it's going to get worse. So I
share your fears.

Speaker 10 (01:11:55):
It's no longer fears. It's fading up to what's going
to happen today. Ago I saw the publication from the
ex Ambassador James Story, an interesting analysis in regards of
his experience as an ambassador of the United States Venezuela,
and he actually was an ambassador for the first administration
of Donald Trump, and all this that is happening was

(01:12:18):
delayed because Donald Trump was expecting to kick off if
he had not lost to Biden. That's one part of it.
I don't know. Have you read about what happened in
the field somewhat correlated to this story, Rio Genato, but
tell me about it. So the Major Really Genaro, contrary
to the federal government that was recommending other actions, executed

(01:12:43):
a twenty five hundred men's raid to Major file Us
in Really Gennaro to attack the Commando of Vermelo. So
they did, and one hundred and thirty two people were
killed by the armed forces of the major A really Genera,
including cops. Because they were received with heavy governments, they

(01:13:06):
were opposed, so a war broke out. In fact, both
were using new technologies like drones to attack. Once the
doest settle, one hundred and thirty two people were dead.
The pro Orznado Mayor has now been heavily criticized in
regards of the massacre he committed, and the second in

(01:13:28):
command of Commando Bermelo was able to escape. So bittersweet
situation over there in Brazil.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
Well, the world's on fire. I think that's the point
before I'm going to have to move on here in
just a minute. But I understand that you are rightly
concerned that we are essentially looking at violence from within
and from without, and it is always seems to be
the innocent to pay. So I do share those fears, okay, And.

Speaker 10 (01:13:59):
Before I move on, And the issue of the so
called drug war, that's complete another responsibility of the United
States and has been so since seventy one, from the
Nixon administration onward the last ten presidents, and that responsibility
of the deaths as well as in Mexico, Colombia now
Gracil Venezuela. The excuse that's being used, there's no doubt.

(01:14:23):
And this is a bipartisan problem, but it has been
aggregated on the Republican mandate, especially Bush, both Bushes, Reagan
and Trump. And I implore to people like you, citizens
of the United States, to start calling it out, because
I'm putting the dead while up there y'all are debating

(01:14:45):
what's left and what's right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
You know, well wait here you did, so thanks for
calling from Costa Rica, and we'll talk again Okay, we'll
talk again, all right, see you later. I want to
say a huge thing you out to Rebecca, who has
super jatted the show and is a wonderful supporter. She said,

(01:15:09):
got a bit of extra funds today. Happy November. We
love you, Seth, you your soul of neurons and your voice.
Oh you're very kind. Thank you so much. And the
support really does matter, especially saying that, hey, I might
get banned in the next few months, depending on what
happens with the administration. We've already got major major networks

(01:15:34):
who are self censoring, or they're censoring at the request
of Donald Trump what might be considered inconvenience information. Because
the oligarchy is tied up the channels of official media,
the rest of us around here thinking, hmmm, I wonder
when they'll come after me. I'm not going anywhere. We'll

(01:15:55):
figure it out. And in the meantime, thank you so
much for watching and for listening. Be safe. We'll do
it again next time.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
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