July 15, 2025 • 54 mins
Cloud seeding is the new chemtrails conspiracy theory. We talk about weather modification, the Trump store, the Ark Encounter protest, the IRS, and more!
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Episode Transcript
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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 this country is going through.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
Truth Usian 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've been having these weird dreams lately. Have you ever
had a kind of an experience where your dreams are
just weird and kind of tragic and alarming and negative
and what the hell? Right? Well, that's kind of how
I'm feeling. I had this dream that my neighbor was
killed in car wreck, and I had this other dream
where my car was stolen. I woke up and I
(01:18):
was like, oh, my God, to thank Goodness because in
your dream, I'm like, what do I do? Will it
ever be found? How will I afford a new car?
Will my insurance cover it? Will my insurance premiums go up.
Do I just buy an old shit box? And you know,
and I mean, it's just one of those logistic I
have logistical dreams where things kind of go wrong and
(01:39):
I can't figure them out. One of the classics is
when I'm on the air. I have this recurring dream
I'm on or the radio and all the buttons, the knobs,
the fader knobs on the mixer board are broken off.
So I need to change volumes, turn things on and off,
and I'm unable to because the buttons are broken. It's
(01:59):
just we Natalie says, it's because I want control, like
or I don't like being out of control. Do your
dreams reflect where you are personally? They say dreams can
mean things. I tend to think that dreams are part
of the blender of the brain. Maybe they reflect your attitude,
Maybe they reflect things you are obsessed with thinking about,
(02:24):
affected by. I don't glean a whole lot of deeper
meaning from dreams, but you know, maybe it echoes back,
it pings back to with certain things about it. So
I've also heard this. I sure would like to know
if it's true that if you have a problem and
you're thinking about how to solve the problem right before
(02:45):
you go to bed, that your brain continues to try
to work it out, and sometimes the next day you
wake up and you figure it out. Now that sounds
kind of bullshitty to me, or maybe there's something to
do it. Does the brain actually problem solve when you're sleeping.
I have many questions anyway, as we wait for you
(03:09):
to dial in with whatever it is that is on
your mind. Today, I had somebody we were talking about
recent events. Trump makes it impossible not to talk about them.
Some people get pissed that I get political, and those
people can go somewhere else if they want have a
nice day. So Natalie was, I think, speaking on her
Facebook page about this video, this interview that Stacy Abrams
(03:35):
had done about how authoritarians operate, the totalitarian dictator Playbook,
and she went through I think it was nine or
ten points. They're really good.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Okay. So this happens in every nation that has become
an autocracy having been a democracy. So whether we're talking
about Brazil with Wilsonaro, or India or Houten and Russia,
the Philippines with Dutorte. So start with winning an election,
usually the last one you're going to get to have
for real. Number Two, you have an expansion of executive
(04:08):
power the president decides he wants more than he's supposed
to have. Number Three, you start to make the Congress complicit,
so you weaken them, and you neutralize or neuter the judiciary, like, oh,
I don't know the Supreme Court giving you unfettered power
and saying we don't have the ability to stop things.
Then you move on to firing all the people who
(04:30):
know how to make government work, so you gut the
civil service, and you do that because you want to
break democracy. So people forget the stuff that used to
get done, so you can't get your Social Security check,
so the CDC doesn't know what diseases are anymore. Then
you put in place these loyalists, people who are only
responsive to you. You put them in charge of the
FBI so they go after your enemies. You put them
(04:50):
in charge of the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense,
so they can signal to their friends and tell them
all about the evil plans that you have. Then you
make certain that you break how we communicate, so you
criticize the media and you create your own echo chamber
of propaganda. You call it truth even though you know
you're lying. Then you go to the next step, and
(05:12):
I call that step seven. So at step seven, you
have to blame someone. You have to blame people for
the broken government, for the broken promises. So you go
after DEI. You go after the vulnerable that dispossessed. You
go after any community that doesn't look like what you
think power should be. While you're doing that, you make
certain that you in step eight, you eliminate anybody who
could help them. So you sue law firms that do
(05:34):
pro bono cases. You go after philanthropies and accuse them
of giving money to the wrong people. You go after
colleges and universities that can teach people possibly what else
they should know. You get to step nine and you
start to private, start to encourage and incentivize private violence.
You send the US Marines into spaces they should not be,
You send the National Guard in. You kidnap people off
(05:54):
of the streets and pretend that's normal, because that's how
you quiet dissent, because you make everyone afraid that if
they don't do what you want, they might be next.
And once you've done those nine steps, steps ten is easy.
That's when you decide there won't be new elections because
everyone's either afraid, poor, broken, or complicit.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Okay, wow, well that is really good, by the way.
Stacy Abrams, in case you're curious, was a former Georgia
state representative. She is a humanist, a human rights activist,
and I am a fan. So she lays out the
classic authoritarian playbook and we've seen this throughout our history.
(06:34):
And my wife posted the video and said, how in
the world can anyone support this because it's happening all
around us. How do you not see this. She's a
woman of conviction, she's grieved about what's been going on.
And somebody I don't know, Inner Circle pops in and
all they say is TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. That's it.
(06:59):
There's not an art, there's nothing about it. In fact,
she never even mentioned Trump, although we know that's who
she's talking about. But his response isn't to say this
is not happening and here's why, and here's the evidence,
and here's all this other stuff. His response was TDS,
Trump derangement syndrome. So I went and I posted, I said,
(07:22):
I've been accused of having TDS. Of course this must
be true. It's not like Donald Trump has a history
of messianic claims anointing himself the chosen one. It's not
like he claimed he was the only savior who could
fix America. It's not like he had. The official White
House social media account published monarchical images of Trump as
(07:44):
golden idol and crowned king, and of course I had
to post the actual I alone convince it from the
twenty sixteen Republican National Convention, Donald Trump saying in his
own words, I am the Chosen One, and the official
White House account postings of Donald Trump crowned head in
front of Manhattan with the words long lived the King
(08:04):
in this bizarre AI generated image of his golden statue
over Gaza. And then, because I can't do it straight,
I said, while you're considering this, folks, make sure and
s not buy the Official Trump Store, where no kidding,
you can pick up Trump branded and often president themed beverage, buckets, hats, hoodies,
(08:26):
pickleball paddles, perfumes, belts, golf club covers, whiskey, koozies, dog bowls,
serving trays, bow ties, key chains, handbags, collectible coins, diffusers, mugs,
flash tree ornaments, blankets, towels, coasters, doormats, candles, books, slippers, flags, cheeseboards, corkscrews, pillows,
(08:46):
teddy bears, candles, pajamas, umbrellas, cheese, knives, necklaces, ice trays,
and more. Don't ever let pearl clutching Magas gripe about
Hunter Biden and conflict of interest. The Trump family has
turned the White House into a cash register. And this
is very much true. And for those who aren't familiar
(09:09):
with the whole Hunter Biden argument, Hunter Biden the son
of President Joe Biden. Republicans went crazy after this guy
because he took a board seat on a Ukrainian gas
company called Barisma, and he held that board seat from
twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen in exchange for influence in
(09:30):
the US Ukraine's policy decision. This was the accusation that
was made by Maga. Total conflict of interest. He's on
the board of this gas company and he's calling in
favors and he's filling his pockets and this is atrocious.
It's on American it's treason. And then we turn around
and it's just the grift of the censure. And we've
(09:53):
never seen anything like this. The Trump Storm has this
lovely the collection of I don't know what those are.
They beach bags and there are scarves. Everything has Trump's
name emblazoned on it. It says experience the world of Trump.
You've got a Mara Lago umbrella, row hat, a pearl necklace.
(10:18):
There's a ton of golf stuff because obviously Trump is
a premier golfer. Have you seen those videos where he's
shanking the ball off into the weeds and the trees.
Nobody cares. He's on the putting green and he just
sort of pats the ball, just kind of bats it
like a cat is bat and a cat toy until
the ball happens to fall in the hole and then
he gives himself a three. There's a video of him
(10:40):
on the tea box. He grabs his driver and he
swings as hard as he can at this ball on
the tee. He doesn't make contact, but he just takes
his club and walks off as if he hit a
two hundred and fifty yard drive, and nobody says anything.
It's the total Emperor has no clothes thing. Everybody's afraid
to say it, like, well, he's my golden ticket, so
(11:03):
if he whiffs it, I still look down the fairway
and say, ah, wow, nice drive, big power, straight line,
you so talented, and then you cast your check. This
is what these people are home and SPA goods diffusers,
Trump scents. That's right. When your house feels a funk,
(11:28):
nothing fragrances the air like Trump diffusers. Ah, the sweet
aroma of old nasty shoe lifts and rotting mango. It
fills the house, certainly fills the nose. H lovely stuff.
Forty five forty seven mugs Save America. Of course, he's
(11:52):
got the picture on the cover where he had supposedly
dodged the bullet. And I still struggle. I'm not a
conspiracy guy. Still struggle with the idea that this guy
got clipped by an AR fifteen bullet and his year
healed in a day and now there's no scarring. I mean,
I struggle with that. I don't. I just struggle with it.
(12:13):
But then again, didn't it wasn't There was a fireman
who was killed, so there was a lethal weapon that
was fired. But jeezus, I mean, who gets hit with
an assault weapon projectile traveling thirty five hundred feet per
second and the next day, after they wear the tampon
on the side of their head for a day. It's fine.
(12:33):
That just bothers me. It buds me. I wish time.
You know, what is that theory about how time could
be traversed like a landscape or a valley or something
where time isn't necessarily just linear, but you could actually
go forward and backward through time as if you were
(12:53):
walking on terrain. So I'd like to walk through time
back to that moment. Deserving trays, Concho, toads, jars and
all the people. Look an airplane ornament of Trump's jet
knew and improved, just like the Trump seven fifty seven
airplane one hundred and ten dollars. It's a matter with
(13:18):
these people. There's just such hypocrites. Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden,
Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunt h Bryden. Meanwhile, the guys
back when he and Elon were bosom buddies, he's selling
Tesla's on the White House lawn. Eh, he's such a
good businessman if he can prop it from the position, Eh,
(13:38):
what does it hurt anybody? Hashtag capitalism. We knew it'd
be bad. We all knew it'd be bad. The internal
Revenue Service has now announced that it's not going to
enforce the Johnson Amendment, which was supposed to prevent all
(13:58):
five OZHO one C three read nonprofit institutions from endorsing
political candidates. And we know churches have been violating this
law since forever. Well, now it's pretty much official. They
defanged the Johnson Amendment which put that prohibition in place. Now,
the other five oh one C three's that aren't churches, nah,
(14:19):
they're not able to endorse anybody, or they risk losing
their nonprofit status. Churches, Eh, knock yourself out. And I
wonder which candidates those churches are going to be promoting.
And then I have stressful dreams. I'm in a valley.
(14:43):
I feel like we need to change. Natalie and I
were talking, We're like, how do we how do we
get off the hamster wheel? Do you ever feel that way?
You get up in the morning and you see that
the world's on fire, and then you get on with
your day and you go through your inbox and you
meet your deadlines hopefully, and you do your honeydoes and
(15:07):
clean up the kitchen and what do you want for dinner?
Let's watch a little TV ten o'clock, Good night, love you,
alarm goes off. The next day, Get up, they carry
your stuff, go through your inbox, tay, carry your honeydees,
clean up a little bit, grab some dinner. Ten o'clock,
(15:28):
go to sleep. But you don't feel inspired to plan
anything else. You don't feel like you are mentally charged
in a way that makes you proactive to do something different.
It's just easier to stay on the wheel. And then
you add to that the knowledge that all of this
(15:49):
is happening, and it just gets worse and worse, and
we're like, we need to change. What's that look like?
How do we break the routine when there's so much
that has to be done? What's that line that says,
sometimes you do what you want to do, the rest
of the times you do what you have to. Now
I'm in a pretty good position. I mean, Natalie and
I both love what we do, but god, we're just
(16:11):
on the fucking wheel and we feel the same ness.
And then we think, well, how do we break? How
do there's got to be a cycle break? So this
is a force of will. If we do it, we'll
be glad we did it. What does that even look like?
I don't know. I don't know what the solution is.
(16:32):
I'm gonna cheat just a little bit because I'm going
to Nashville for nanocon, so I'll be able to get
out and interact with people. It's hard for Natalie to
come to things like that because we don't get to
spend time really together. I'm engaged, I'm working for the hosts,
I'm at the table, I'm hanging out getting ready for
the speech and shooting videos, and so she and I
(16:54):
don't get a lot of quality time unless we tack
on a few extra days, which you know we're usually
not able to do for a lot of reasons. But
we got to find it. Brian, and know I'm just
I'm drifting. I am drifting, But I know you felt
this right. You're on the wheel? How do we break out?
(17:15):
Short break your calls and more ramblings coming up next.
Thanks for spending the week with me. It's always an
honor to be able to hang out with you. We
have plenty of colors on the switchboard, so let's find
out what you have to say. Six oh five, Robin,
(17:37):
are you with me?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Yes? I am fis.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I will be at manacon To, so I'll see you there.
And we did the Art protest here in Kentucky this
past weekend. It was great, It was great. It was hot,
really hot.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
For those who don't the counter protest is describe what
that is for people.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Well, in Kentucky we have a replica supposedly it's not
really actually a boat anyway, but in Williams Sound, Kentucky
that is supposed to be Noah's Ark, like a replica
of nos Arc. They have, you know, the dinosaurs there
that we're supposed to be on the boat. And it
was a really nice time. We had a guy up
(18:22):
on the heel filmingis.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Was he with you or was he with the Arc encounter?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I don't know who was that. He like put out
he was doing a live stream of our protest, but
he was definitely not with us. Of course we marched down.
Have you ever been to the Art protest? I didn't
know if you had ever been or not.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, I attended one years ago and I spoke it
was okay for I'll add to what you've already kind
of set up here if you don't mind real fast.
Ken Hill, go ahead, founder of Answers in Genesis, is
a Young Earth creationist who believes that the planet is
younger than the Sumerian civilization, okay, six thousand years because
(19:04):
God said so, and he believes the literal story of
Noah's art. So he built the Creation Museum, which is
an oxymoron, which is a horrifying place in Kentucky. I
did a video called Atheists at the Creation Museum, where
I and a skeptics group in the area. We all
went in and we toured it, and I mean, it's awesome.
(19:26):
You know, you've got it's a high dollar event. I
got dinosaurs hanging out with Adam and Eve. You've got
the declaration that the reason we have weeds in our
gardens is because of human sin. There's an exhibit promoting incest.
I mean, it's just amazing. So anyway, we came out
of that and produced a video, and then he builds
(19:47):
this one hundred and ten thousand dollars paper weight. I
believe it's in Lexington, where it's supposedly an exact replica
of Noah's Arc based on the dimensions given in the Bible.
So I went into Williamstown.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
The arc is in Williamstown. I think the Creation Museum
might be in my thank you, thank you for.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
That, Williamstown. And it's an exercise in hypocrisy because when
kin Ham wants to get tax breaks for being a ministry,
he calls it a nonprofit religious organization, and when he
wants tourism money from the government, he calls it a business.
(20:27):
So he's sort of double dipping. And Matt Delahunty and
I went and toured it. There's a video of that
called Atheist at the Ark Encounter, and it's wacky. It's
just bizarre to go into this place. And I think
most tragically, we see a lot of these little homeschool
(20:48):
groups going in, these small private school groups who are
going in and these wide eyed children are looking around
at velociraptors in cages and you know, all of this
crazy stuff, and they are being brainwashed, programmed to believe
that this is true. I think this is going to
hamstring them in many ways for decades to come, if
(21:10):
not the rest of their lives. And so once a year,
skeptics go out and do an outdoor protest just outside
the entrance, right off the highway, and they bring signs
and cameras and we have a platform and there's a
sound system, and I went out and so you give
a short presentation and everybody's essentially saying to everyone on
(21:31):
the highway, Hey, check out the bullshit factory behind this,
and check out the bullshitter who put it all together
and helped to helps to run it. So that's what
the arc and counter protest was. But it was a
good time when I was there, And you're saying you
had a good time as well.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Yes, yes we did. We had like Hainburn sponsored it,
and then we had like the Kentucky Atheists was the
one that put it on, Joe Roberts, and we had
the course of I say, Free Thinkers is probably who
put it on when you were there. They're going to
do it next year for the tenth anniversary, but they
were just not planning on doing it this year because
they've done it every year. But yeah, we had a
(22:11):
good crowd. There was a sign that says Museum of
Incest and Genocide and the guy that filmed this was
like mad because he thought we were accusing the people
of going in the arc and committing genocide and interests
that he wasn't getting what the reference was to.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
No, no, that's not us. Those were Old Testament characters
that did that stuff. Huge confusion. Robin, thanks for letting
us know what happened, and thanks for standing up for
skepticism in Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I know they need you, Okay, yeah, and I'll see
you at Nenacon.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I'll be the weeks I'll see in a bid all right.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
So you walk into the ark Encounter and one of
the first things you see is what looks like a
puppy mill for those who don't know what a puppy
emil is. They're horrifying realities where breeders, these immoral pet
breeders for money, will take dogs and cads them and
(23:12):
these tiny cages and they're often massive. There might be
one hundred and fifty cages and they're all grouped together,
and they tramped these animals in there, often for their
entire lives and horrible conditions. And I saw one that
had PVC pipe that ran all the way through it,
with little outlets in each cage, and that's how they
gave them their drinking water. So they didn't even open
(23:34):
the cage to fill up the water, so they just
sort of piped a hose in and that's how the
water was filled I don't know how the food was filled.
And the dogs said, we rescued little Henry years ago,
and he had been in a cage they thought for
five or six years. And when we got him out,
I mean, it was just like you could tell it
(23:56):
had affected him. He was the sweetest dog. But when
we get excited, he could only he would only run
in circles, small circles. And it's because he had spent
his life confined in a box, and that's all he
knew to do was run in circles. And the good
news was is once we gave him a loving home
and opened up his world, those circles got a lot bigger.
(24:19):
So he would start small, and then he would run
around the perimeter the living room, and then he would
run through the kitchen. Then he would run so he
was still running. He would always run one direction. He
ran to his right clockwise, but his circle got much bigger.
But the puppy mills themselves sometimes you see them on
the news. These barbaric people will essentially leave these animals
in the worst of conditions for a buck. So when
(24:41):
I walked into the arnk n counter, I saw a
poppy mill. It was this row of tiny cages, all
grouped together, boxed together, and supposedly this is how they
transported some of the animals for a year or were
(25:01):
they were there eggs in them. I was just such
a bizarre thing, and I think it was his way
of trying to cover the sheer volume of creatures that
would have had to have been on the arc. Well,
you know, they were either really small or they were embryos.
So we put them in the poppy milk cages and
(25:22):
we stuck them here in these boxes, and then a
year passed. That's the kind of shit he has been there.
What is that sign? There's an actual sign in the
Arc Encounter that says, if you I'm paraphrasing, if you
can convince people that Noah's Arc isn't real, you can
convince them that the Bible isn't true. And Matt and
(25:46):
I took a picture in front of that and said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's that's that's true. That's true. Forgive me. There's a
garbage truck outside. Maybe you can hear it bleeding into
the microphone as I talk about. Go watch the video
Atheists at the Arc Encounter. I think you'll see Matt
Dillahunty and me on the thumbnail image of the video.
(26:08):
It runs about eight ten minutes and it's wacky. And
the best part is is there's already freaking water damage
on the outside of the arc. So he's expecting people
to believe that this thing, which is not an actual boat.
It's a facade on the front, and there's a building,
an actual office building that's the whole back of the structure.
But he's expecting people to believe that this thing sort
(26:30):
of traversed and handled seawater for up to a year
without any trouble, while the actual arc has water damage
appearing on a whole side of the ship. Don't tell
me that thing with seaworthy. It's crazy. Plus, nobody else
on planet Earth owned a boat or was able to
build a boat in the time required. The whole thing
(26:53):
is insane. It's insane. Let's talk to area code three
zero one high. What do I call you?
Speaker 6 (27:04):
Hi? My name is Jeff him.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Welcome, what's on your mind?
Speaker 6 (27:10):
I had a very satisfying career with a Food and
Drug administration, and one of the things I did was
to advise medical device companies on how to comply with
the law and it became something I did on purpose.
When I ran into trouble trying to figure out how
(27:30):
to solve some of these problems. I would get up
from my computer, go for a walk, and find somebody
to talk to about some unrelated topic. And nine times
out of ten, by the time I got back to
my office, the answer was in my head.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Your brain simply needed a few minutes to process the information.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
Is that what I'm hearing without me actively thinking on it.
So the thinking happened in the background while I was
actively engaged in a typical conversation. Hey how's the weather outside?
Or Hey, did you win that soccer game this last weekend?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So on the back burner, subconsciously, there might be some
ram being allocated to the conundrum in question, and then
later on you can access the results of the calculating
that had been going on as you talked about pet's dinner,
the weather, et cetera.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Because the active brain got out of the way of
that other part of the brain that does that background thinking.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I may try that. I may try, if I have
a problem to back burner and then go do something
else where it's impossible for me to think about the
other thing. Exactly all right, anything else for today, No,
just to.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
Thank you for having come into my life and help
me figure out all this shit so much. I'm seventy
years old now and I'm the happiest, most satisfied I've
ever been in my life. So, and you're a part
of it.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Oh, you're very kind. Well, it means a lot that
you called and that you're a part of the community.
Be safe, Okay, Yes, thank you, sir.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Bye, I see you later.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Speaking of bad shit claims, we were talking about the
six thousand year old Earth and all of that stuff.
Well did you read that after the horrible, deadly floods
in Texas. Now we're seeing all kinds of conspiracy theories
that are just bandying about left and right, many of
(29:45):
them having to do with weather manipulation. Ryan Hall runs
the weather channel called Ryan Hall, y'all, And it sounds
like a punchline, But I'm telling this guy's awesome. Let
me pull up his page real fast, Ryan Hall, y'all.
(30:05):
I followed this guy whenever there's severe weather. He is
an actual meteorologist who will do these long form live
streams whenever there is weather anywhere. And he's good and
he's got correspondence, for lack of a better word, he's
got drone footage from the field. He's got people sending
him information from all of the places he is reporting on,
(30:28):
and he is legit. And he posted something that I
felt was really good. And then I'm going to get
into Marjorie Taylor Green, Okay, because how can I not?
He posted this. He said, y'all, when it rains a lot,
it floods. It's always been that way. Flooding has existed
as long as rain has It can destroy homes, wreck communities,
(30:51):
and take lives. That's why we built warning systems. That's
why I do what I do. But lately there's a
rise in conspiracy theory about weather modification and government floods.
These claims aren't just false, they're dangerous. They distract people
from real preparedness and get in the way of saving lives.
(31:12):
Please check your sources. You're being misled by folks who
don't understand meteormology, or worse, don't care. Other meteorologists are
coming forward to say this is weapons grade that shittery
proceed with caution, will I'll just read from Forbes. As
(31:36):
as this story came to light always reliable is miss
Jewish space laser herself. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia District fourteen.
Published on the seventh of July. Marjorie Taylor Green fuels
government weather conspiracy after deadly Texas flood Green wrote in
(32:00):
a Saturday post on x she would introduce legislation that
bans the release of anything into the atmosphere for the
express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,
saying quote, no person, company, entity, or government should ever
(32:21):
be allowed to modify our weather by any means possible.
Green did not reference the deadly Texas floods dominating the
news that day, but said she has been working with
the Legislative Council for months writing this bill to make
quote the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and
(32:42):
geo engineering a felony offense. The Georgia congresswoman said the
bill would be similar to Florida's new law and makes
cloud seating and other weather modification activities illegal. Green has
a history of stoking conspiracies that a government deeps date
creates catastrophic weather events, including suggesting hurricanes have been engineered
(33:06):
to hit Republican areas harder than those with more democrats,
and speculating that lasers spark wild fires. The conspiracy that
weather's manipulated by forces other than nature has been repeatedly
debunked amid an increase in dangerous weather caused by climate change.
(33:29):
NOAA does not fund or participate in cloud seating or
other weather modification projects. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
writes on its website. Here is a meteorologist named Paul Delegato.
This was posted this morning. Cloud seating, cloud seating, cloud seating. Apparently,
(33:52):
cloud seating is now the cause of all major weather
events Texas floods, cloud seating, Hurricane Milton, cloud seeding, snow
in the Florida Panhandle. Cloud seeding. Let me set the
record straight about cloud seeding. First thing. First. Cloud seeding
has been done for decades. Operation Popeye was a cloud
(34:13):
seeding mission to enhance the monsoon during the Vietnam War,
though historians will tell you that it is debatable whether
or not it had any impact on the outcome of
the war. Cloud seeding is not geoengineering. Cloud seeding is
a small scale weather modification that aims to enhance rain
or snow from clouds. It cannot make rain from clear skies.
(34:38):
It cannot end droughts. It involves introducing tiny particles softened
silver iodide into specific types of clouds to act as
nuclei for ice crystal formation. These particles help water droplets
in the clouds to freeze and grow, eventually falling as precipitation.
(34:58):
It is done using small planes or even cannons on
the ground. Cloud seating does not make contrails in the sky. Well,
then see it could have made the floods in Texas. No,
it didn't. Think scale. Cloud seating is done in a
cloud or a group of clouds. Those clouds with additional
(35:22):
nuclei from the cloud seating can drop an additional ten
percent to maybe twenty percent more rain or snow in
a tiny area. Think of it this way. There is
no need for cloud seating over Florida. We get enough rain.
It would not be worth the time or money, which
is why the Florida anti geoengineering bill was a waste
(35:43):
of time. But let's say we hired a cloud seating
company to seed clouds over Tampa. Small planes would take
off from a local airport and would drop silver iodide
into a tall cloud that was about to become a
shower or thunderstone. That shower or thunderstorm would have extra
nuclei to produce more rain. How much more rain may
(36:07):
be ten to twenty percent, So instead of a thunderstorm
dropping one inch of rain over downtown Tampa, the storm
may end up dropping one point one inch or maybe
as much as one point two inches of rain. That
is it, and the cloud seating over Tampa would not
result in any noticeable increase in rainfall over Saint Petersburg
(36:32):
or Clearwater or lakeland. It is small scale weather modification. Okay,
then if it increases rain or snow only ten to
twenty percent, then why bother? Because areas out west primarily
are desperate for rain, and even the hope for rain
is sometimes worth the expense, cloud seeding is boring. The
(36:56):
chances of you or I ever being impacted in any
way by cloud seating is pretty much zero. China has
a big cloud seating program, but if it was that good,
why did they have to truck in and make artificial
snow for the twenty twenty two Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Dubai has a big cloud seating program, and the big
(37:17):
flood there a few years ago was not caused by
cloud seating like the storm in Texas. It was predicted
to occur days in advance. Yes, even in Dubai there
are big flood events on occasion. Some of you are saying, whatever,
I do not want anyone messing with the weather. You
know what. You certainly have the right to feel that way.
(37:40):
Any weather modification or future studies research projects on geo
engineering should be openly discussed and should not be done
in secrets. Watch the meteorologists, Watch the meteorologist, and listen
to actual sign It is amazing how much people can learn.
(38:05):
Plenty more to talk about, and plenty more of your calls.
We continue in just a second. We had mentioned Nanocon
a few minutes ago. There are some great events coming
up all around the country. Free Thought events still planned
for the rest of twenty twenty five, and if you
(38:26):
want to find out where and when and how and
tickets and details and everything, you can go to the
Thinkingatheist dot com and then click on the events tab
right there from the homepage. Four zero three. Hi, thanks
for waiting. Who's this?
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Hey?
Speaker 2 (38:46):
This is Ron.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
How are you doing, Seth?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I'm good, Ron let's talk what's on your mind.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
That the wee can readon conference in Calgary. Ween, we
came and it's a boat Trump and I know you've
kind of done whole store there in all the merchandises drifting.
Do you think that the midterm elections is going to
be enough to turn the tide?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, honestly, I would love for the twenty twenty four
presidential election to be held right now. I'm convinced that
the moderate maga is the people who were kind of like, oh, yeah,
he's a businessman, and then they kind of did their
own thing. They kind of checked out. I think they're
having their own shit moment, and I think even a
few hardcore magas whose lives are being upended are going
(39:32):
on cramp like this isn't what I've voted for, and
you and I are like, oh, yes it is. The
problem is I have two problems. One, the public has
no memory. Secondly, what's that line? A person is smart,
but people are stupid. People are stupid. I mean the
people who are jumping onto every batshit keim trail, cloud seating,
(39:54):
deep state, vaccine, all this other crazy stuff. Those are
the voters that have helped get us in this position
in the first place. I also think that all it
will take is for one tiny incidental bump in the
stock market for people to get amnesia and they're like, oh, well,
things are a little better. I guess, status quo whatever,
(40:16):
and then they click the box. I worry that there
will be something that may have nothing to do with Trump,
or it's like blind squirrel finds nut right, he just
accidentally happens to get something right, and the public develops
amnesia about a decade worth of atrocity and the assault
on decency and the attack of the constitution and the
cruelty and the concentration camps and Alligator Alcatraz and everything else,
(40:38):
and they're like, ah, yeah, maybe things aren't so bad,
and they just go back to the status I worry
about people. I also am frustrated because Democrats have a
history of pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory,
you know what I mean. But I'll tell you this,
I do think the midterms seem like a thousand years away,
don't they. But I forever I do think that if
(41:02):
we survive a Congress that isn't totally an invertebrate Congress
might finally, since the Supreme Court is now failing us
left and right, I think that may be a stop
gap and help to prevent at least some of this
from going through until we can, I don't know, get
him out of there and as a massive coronary. Look,
(41:25):
don't judge me. Okay, don't judge me, ron, but I
don't judge me. I never thought in my life I
would ever do anything like this. I am going to
have a custom I don't even drink. I'm gonna have
a custom champagne glass made, and I'm gonna put just
two words on it. He's dead. And when that day
(41:49):
comes and he finally kicks it, I'm going to go
and I'm going to fill it up with something delicious
and I'm gonna have a little toast. I can't believe
I feel that much resentment. But the day he dies,
it will there will be a party. There will be
dancing and festivities in my circle. Do you does that
(42:11):
does that make you think lessons run?
Speaker 5 (42:13):
No? Not at all, Okay, I mean it runs across
my mind all the time. It's like, can't somebody take
him out somehow?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (42:24):
Isn't there someone around?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
No? I don't want that. I don't want that. I
don't think martyring him. I don't think threatening the president.
I totally have And I know you didn't mean it
that way. I know.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
It's just that what the thing, the stuff that he
is causing, it gets me sold. My blood starts to
boil with all these immigrants that he's detaining and then
the lies that he spews about them, and the lies
that he spews to his base, and he's just sticking
the knife in their backs and he doesn't care. He's
(42:57):
a true focio path.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
I would like him to be stuck in one of
the concentration camps that he is now endorsed and promoting.
I put him in there. Thanks so much for being
a part of the conversation. We'll see you later, Okay,
i'd see you later. I just released a video, you
know what. This will be a good way to leave you.
If you've followed the YouTube channel, you've probably already seen this,
(43:25):
but I'm going to go ahead and play it for
you here. And then the audio for the podcast audience.
The audio podcast audience, which is actually much bigger than
the YouTube audience. This may be new for you, but
I had thoughts about what's been happening under the Trump
regime as we see the funding now one of the
(43:47):
world's biggest secret police departments, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are
really a terrorist organization. And I'm surrounded by people like
the guy Natalie's Facebook feed who was like, he actually said,
I don't care what happens to anybody anywhere if they're
not American, and he sort of gives you that America
(44:10):
born in bred. I was born here, I'll die here America,
true and blue, right. And I had thoughts on that
about what it means to be born American. If you're
here in the United States and you don't have any
reason to worry about Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting or
deporting you. I am glad for you. I'm glad for
(44:32):
both of us, really, and I'm humbled at how lucky
we are. You and I have no idea what it's
like to have to live in fear, fear that a
Mexican drug cartel might hijack us on the highway and
take everything we've got, maybe kidnap us or our children
for ransom, or abduct them and traffic them for drugs, rape.
(44:57):
Whatever You and I are not forty percent of Niger's
population that are trying to survive on two dollars a day.
You and I have available food to keep our families
from going hungry. As families in Somalia, Yemen, the Republic
of Congo, Haiti, Ethiopia, elsewhere, they are seeing themselves and
(45:20):
their kids starving to death, often because oppressor governments are
hoarding the resources that everybody needs to survive. Every year,
in the US, fourteen hundred people starve to death, but
South Sudan sees over thirty two thousand. Now one is
(45:40):
too many, but I mean twenty two times the rate
of what we experience here. It makes me realize how
fortunate I am. You and I aren't dipping buckets into
unsanitary rivers to drink water that might kill us with cholera.
We turn on the taps and we buy our bottled water.
We don't even think about it. Even the most desperate
(46:04):
among Americans still have access to better healthcare and medicines
than much of the rest of the world. We've got
our issues, many issues, But show me a place that
doesn't have an emergency room required by law to treat
us in a crisis. Compare our doctor's offices and operating rooms,
(46:26):
to the failed hospitals of places like Venezuela, where patient
beds are filthy, physicians are hard to come by, and
medicines are even more scarce. So many people outside of
our borders are born into nearly unlivable conditions they're forced
to survive, and shelters that are made out of old blankets.
(46:46):
They sleep on the dirt. They exist almost completely exposed
to the rains, the winds, the sun, the predators. Schools
are often a luxury, yet mothers and fathers are desperately
working to try and have their children educated, even if
that means the kids have to sit at a desk
in a brick box and the blistering heat of the
(47:08):
middle of the day. You and I don't know what
that's like. We haven't experienced those terrible realities. And I'm
glad we're lucky. Our accidents of birth landed us as
infants in the US. By nothing we said or did.
We were born into a better life. And it's in
(47:30):
the light of that good fortune that I have come
to see better. How strange it is for someone to
say they're born and bred American and proud of it.
How strange is it not to look at the suffering
people inside and outside of our borders with grief in
our hearts, and to give those borders such power, especially
(47:52):
with the understanding that our world's dividing lines were subjectively
drawn by men, and even more often than meritoriously defining
our nations, which is fine, they also too often set
us up to feel superior and dismissive about those who
were not born into our cradles of privilege. You and
(48:14):
I don't know what it's like to hold our children
close in case mask ice agents smash into our houses,
homes that we've known for decades, stripping husbands away from wives,
fathers away from sons, mothers away from daughters, many of
whom may never speak in person again, many of whom
(48:37):
were guilty of what only desperately trying to survive. They
worked hard day and night. They lived peacefully, and they
prayed every day they could continue to escape the guns
and knives of the cartels, the contaminated drinking water, the extortionist,
dirty cops, unsafe medicines, unsustained anably small bowls of cheap food,
(49:03):
beds without mattresses, disasters with no recovery programs, ratty clothes,
no shoes, the peril that comes when you're not born
lucky like you and I were born lucky. Are these
people all of the horrible things that they have been called.
(49:23):
It has been politically convenient to blanket blame the outsider
for our problems. Immigrants legally here and otherwise. They have
been tagged as everything from vermin to rapists and murderers.
But in my life, I've seen a whole lot more
headlines about the monsters already among us, many of them
(49:47):
born among us, who are the beneficiaries of that strange
luck that comes with a certain birth certificate, skin color,
or sexual orientation. The human tenden see is to turn
a blind eye to our in group because it's instinctive
to vilify the out group. It's us and them, American
(50:10):
and non American, clean and dirty, good and evil, and
yet we are all the human condition. Now, nobody's saying
borders should be a free for all. Nobody's saying the
border system isn't terrible and can't be a whole lot better.
But the solutions to our problems do not fit on
(50:30):
a meme or in a campaign slogan or on a
T shirt. I'm convinced that we must realize that born
American isn't the flex many people think it is. It's
just what happened, and we must ask ourselves what we
would do. How many dangerous mountains we would climb, how
(50:51):
many deadly rivers we would cross, how many desperate measures
we would take? How far would we go just to survive,
to help our kids survive, and maybe just maybe carve
out a way to live a better life in peace
and safety. The reason so many are horrifying that ICE
(51:13):
has become a kind of American gestapo is because the
whole idea of ICE raids is one of dismissiveness, dehumanization,
and cruelty. Imagine the masked men waiting for you outside
of your appearance in a court of law. You get finished,
you walk out the door, and suddenly you are grabbed.
(51:35):
You're in the back of the van. Your loved ones
are screaming and crying, and without any due process, you
have become both less than human and a punchline for
people who are cheering your abduction. You become an anonymous
face and a concentration camp, hoping that you won't be forgotten.
(51:56):
You become a political football tossed around in a gain
that you never asked to play. You face decades potential
decades of isolation away from the people you love, potential
torture by guards who are not there to protect you,
and a world of suffering that's marked by mimable signs
(52:16):
like Alligator Alcatraz, places where tourists will stop to take
Facebook photos. You and I woke up this morning without
any worry of any of that happening to us. But
we have to ask ourselves why what does it mean
to be born American? What does it mean to be
human and have humanity? And for those who hold to
(52:41):
a peace loving faith tradition, how might this culture all
around us have treated Jesus, the brown skinned immigrant, whose
best teachings were about loving your neighbor, kindness, forgiveness, service, humility,
rejecting hate, not loving money, doing unto others. Right, I mean,
(53:03):
whether or not you believe in that Jesus. Those that
do should ask themselves if the Jesus Christ who drove
the money changers out of the temple and spoke in
First John three point seventeen about giving to brothers and
sisters in need, how would that Jesus be treated by
people today? And how might that Jesus feel about a
(53:27):
kidnapping culture of celebrated cruelty that has valued and devalued
flesh and blood human beings based only on what side
of a line they happen to be born on. There
is an old line that was originally attributed to Sinclair Lewis.
It has never been verified, but I still find it interesting.
(53:49):
The saying says this, when fascism comes to America, it
will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Should the flag and the cross stand for cruelty? Or
are we all eight billion of us on this planet?
Are we fellow travelers who deserve mercy, empathy, consideration, respect, safety,
(54:12):
opportunity regardless, to see ourselves as citizens of the United States,
but more importantly, citizens of the world. Maybe that should
be the American dream. And with that I will leave
you to it. It's always an honor to spend time
with you. I'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
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Speaker 2 (00:10):
The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
Truth Usian 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've been having these weird dreams lately. Have you ever
had a kind of an experience where your dreams are
just weird and kind of tragic and alarming and negative
and what the hell? Right? Well, that's kind of how
I'm feeling. I had this dream that my neighbor was
killed in car wreck, and I had this other dream
where my car was stolen. I woke up and I
(01:18):
was like, oh, my God, to thank Goodness because in
your dream, I'm like, what do I do? Will it
ever be found? How will I afford a new car?
Will my insurance cover it? Will my insurance premiums go up.
Do I just buy an old shit box? And you know,
and I mean, it's just one of those logistic I
have logistical dreams where things kind of go wrong and
(01:39):
I can't figure them out. One of the classics is
when I'm on the air. I have this recurring dream
I'm on or the radio and all the buttons, the knobs,
the fader knobs on the mixer board are broken off.
So I need to change volumes, turn things on and off,
and I'm unable to because the buttons are broken. It's
(01:59):
just we Natalie says, it's because I want control, like
or I don't like being out of control. Do your
dreams reflect where you are personally? They say dreams can
mean things. I tend to think that dreams are part
of the blender of the brain. Maybe they reflect your attitude,
Maybe they reflect things you are obsessed with thinking about,
(02:24):
affected by. I don't glean a whole lot of deeper
meaning from dreams, but you know, maybe it echoes back,
it pings back to with certain things about it. So
I've also heard this. I sure would like to know
if it's true that if you have a problem and
you're thinking about how to solve the problem right before
(02:45):
you go to bed, that your brain continues to try
to work it out, and sometimes the next day you
wake up and you figure it out. Now that sounds
kind of bullshitty to me, or maybe there's something to
do it. Does the brain actually problem solve when you're sleeping.
I have many questions anyway, as we wait for you
(03:09):
to dial in with whatever it is that is on
your mind. Today, I had somebody we were talking about
recent events. Trump makes it impossible not to talk about them.
Some people get pissed that I get political, and those
people can go somewhere else if they want have a
nice day. So Natalie was, I think, speaking on her
Facebook page about this video, this interview that Stacy Abrams
(03:35):
had done about how authoritarians operate, the totalitarian dictator Playbook,
and she went through I think it was nine or
ten points. They're really good.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Okay. So this happens in every nation that has become
an autocracy having been a democracy. So whether we're talking
about Brazil with Wilsonaro, or India or Houten and Russia,
the Philippines with Dutorte. So start with winning an election,
usually the last one you're going to get to have
for real. Number Two, you have an expansion of executive
(04:08):
power the president decides he wants more than he's supposed
to have. Number Three, you start to make the Congress complicit,
so you weaken them, and you neutralize or neuter the judiciary, like, oh,
I don't know the Supreme Court giving you unfettered power
and saying we don't have the ability to stop things.
Then you move on to firing all the people who
(04:30):
know how to make government work, so you gut the
civil service, and you do that because you want to
break democracy. So people forget the stuff that used to
get done, so you can't get your Social Security check,
so the CDC doesn't know what diseases are anymore. Then
you put in place these loyalists, people who are only
responsive to you. You put them in charge of the
FBI so they go after your enemies. You put them
(04:50):
in charge of the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense,
so they can signal to their friends and tell them
all about the evil plans that you have. Then you
make certain that you break how we communicate, so you
criticize the media and you create your own echo chamber
of propaganda. You call it truth even though you know
you're lying. Then you go to the next step, and
(05:12):
I call that step seven. So at step seven, you
have to blame someone. You have to blame people for
the broken government, for the broken promises. So you go
after DEI. You go after the vulnerable that dispossessed. You
go after any community that doesn't look like what you
think power should be. While you're doing that, you make
certain that you in step eight, you eliminate anybody who
could help them. So you sue law firms that do
(05:34):
pro bono cases. You go after philanthropies and accuse them
of giving money to the wrong people. You go after
colleges and universities that can teach people possibly what else
they should know. You get to step nine and you
start to private, start to encourage and incentivize private violence.
You send the US Marines into spaces they should not be,
You send the National Guard in. You kidnap people off
(05:54):
of the streets and pretend that's normal, because that's how
you quiet dissent, because you make everyone afraid that if
they don't do what you want, they might be next.
And once you've done those nine steps, steps ten is easy.
That's when you decide there won't be new elections because
everyone's either afraid, poor, broken, or complicit.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Okay, wow, well that is really good, by the way.
Stacy Abrams, in case you're curious, was a former Georgia
state representative. She is a humanist, a human rights activist,
and I am a fan. So she lays out the
classic authoritarian playbook and we've seen this throughout our history.
(06:34):
And my wife posted the video and said, how in
the world can anyone support this because it's happening all
around us. How do you not see this. She's a
woman of conviction, she's grieved about what's been going on.
And somebody I don't know, Inner Circle pops in and
all they say is TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. That's it.
(06:59):
There's not an art, there's nothing about it. In fact,
she never even mentioned Trump, although we know that's who
she's talking about. But his response isn't to say this
is not happening and here's why, and here's the evidence,
and here's all this other stuff. His response was TDS,
Trump derangement syndrome. So I went and I posted, I said,
(07:22):
I've been accused of having TDS. Of course this must
be true. It's not like Donald Trump has a history
of messianic claims anointing himself the chosen one. It's not
like he claimed he was the only savior who could
fix America. It's not like he had. The official White
House social media account published monarchical images of Trump as
(07:44):
golden idol and crowned king, and of course I had
to post the actual I alone convince it from the
twenty sixteen Republican National Convention, Donald Trump saying in his
own words, I am the Chosen One, and the official
White House account postings of Donald Trump crowned head in
front of Manhattan with the words long lived the King
(08:04):
in this bizarre AI generated image of his golden statue
over Gaza. And then, because I can't do it straight,
I said, while you're considering this, folks, make sure and
s not buy the Official Trump Store, where no kidding,
you can pick up Trump branded and often president themed beverage, buckets, hats, hoodies,
(08:26):
pickleball paddles, perfumes, belts, golf club covers, whiskey, koozies, dog bowls,
serving trays, bow ties, key chains, handbags, collectible coins, diffusers, mugs,
flash tree ornaments, blankets, towels, coasters, doormats, candles, books, slippers, flags, cheeseboards, corkscrews, pillows,
(08:46):
teddy bears, candles, pajamas, umbrellas, cheese, knives, necklaces, ice trays,
and more. Don't ever let pearl clutching Magas gripe about
Hunter Biden and conflict of interest. The Trump family has
turned the White House into a cash register. And this
is very much true. And for those who aren't familiar
(09:09):
with the whole Hunter Biden argument, Hunter Biden the son
of President Joe Biden. Republicans went crazy after this guy
because he took a board seat on a Ukrainian gas
company called Barisma, and he held that board seat from
twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen in exchange for influence in
(09:30):
the US Ukraine's policy decision. This was the accusation that
was made by Maga. Total conflict of interest. He's on
the board of this gas company and he's calling in
favors and he's filling his pockets and this is atrocious.
It's on American it's treason. And then we turn around
and it's just the grift of the censure. And we've
(09:53):
never seen anything like this. The Trump Storm has this
lovely the collection of I don't know what those are.
They beach bags and there are scarves. Everything has Trump's
name emblazoned on it. It says experience the world of Trump.
You've got a Mara Lago umbrella, row hat, a pearl necklace.
(10:18):
There's a ton of golf stuff because obviously Trump is
a premier golfer. Have you seen those videos where he's
shanking the ball off into the weeds and the trees.
Nobody cares. He's on the putting green and he just
sort of pats the ball, just kind of bats it
like a cat is bat and a cat toy until
the ball happens to fall in the hole and then
he gives himself a three. There's a video of him
(10:40):
on the tea box. He grabs his driver and he
swings as hard as he can at this ball on
the tee. He doesn't make contact, but he just takes
his club and walks off as if he hit a
two hundred and fifty yard drive, and nobody says anything.
It's the total Emperor has no clothes thing. Everybody's afraid
to say it, like, well, he's my golden ticket, so
(11:03):
if he whiffs it, I still look down the fairway
and say, ah, wow, nice drive, big power, straight line,
you so talented, and then you cast your check. This
is what these people are home and SPA goods diffusers,
Trump scents. That's right. When your house feels a funk,
(11:28):
nothing fragrances the air like Trump diffusers. Ah, the sweet
aroma of old nasty shoe lifts and rotting mango. It
fills the house, certainly fills the nose. H lovely stuff.
Forty five forty seven mugs Save America. Of course, he's
(11:52):
got the picture on the cover where he had supposedly
dodged the bullet. And I still struggle. I'm not a
conspiracy guy. Still struggle with the idea that this guy
got clipped by an AR fifteen bullet and his year
healed in a day and now there's no scarring. I mean,
I struggle with that. I don't. I just struggle with it.
(12:13):
But then again, didn't it wasn't There was a fireman
who was killed, so there was a lethal weapon that
was fired. But jeezus, I mean, who gets hit with
an assault weapon projectile traveling thirty five hundred feet per
second and the next day, after they wear the tampon
on the side of their head for a day. It's fine.
(12:33):
That just bothers me. It buds me. I wish time.
You know, what is that theory about how time could
be traversed like a landscape or a valley or something
where time isn't necessarily just linear, but you could actually
go forward and backward through time as if you were
(12:53):
walking on terrain. So I'd like to walk through time
back to that moment. Deserving trays, Concho, toads, jars and
all the people. Look an airplane ornament of Trump's jet
knew and improved, just like the Trump seven fifty seven
airplane one hundred and ten dollars. It's a matter with
(13:18):
these people. There's just such hypocrites. Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden,
Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunt h Bryden. Meanwhile, the guys
back when he and Elon were bosom buddies, he's selling
Tesla's on the White House lawn. Eh, he's such a
good businessman if he can prop it from the position, Eh,
(13:38):
what does it hurt anybody? Hashtag capitalism. We knew it'd
be bad. We all knew it'd be bad. The internal
Revenue Service has now announced that it's not going to
enforce the Johnson Amendment, which was supposed to prevent all
(13:58):
five OZHO one C three read nonprofit institutions from endorsing
political candidates. And we know churches have been violating this
law since forever. Well, now it's pretty much official. They
defanged the Johnson Amendment which put that prohibition in place. Now,
the other five oh one C three's that aren't churches, nah,
(14:19):
they're not able to endorse anybody, or they risk losing
their nonprofit status. Churches, Eh, knock yourself out. And I
wonder which candidates those churches are going to be promoting.
And then I have stressful dreams. I'm in a valley.
(14:43):
I feel like we need to change. Natalie and I
were talking, We're like, how do we how do we
get off the hamster wheel? Do you ever feel that way?
You get up in the morning and you see that
the world's on fire, and then you get on with
your day and you go through your inbox and you
meet your deadlines hopefully, and you do your honeydoes and
(15:07):
clean up the kitchen and what do you want for dinner?
Let's watch a little TV ten o'clock, Good night, love you,
alarm goes off. The next day, Get up, they carry
your stuff, go through your inbox, tay, carry your honeydees,
clean up a little bit, grab some dinner. Ten o'clock,
(15:28):
go to sleep. But you don't feel inspired to plan
anything else. You don't feel like you are mentally charged
in a way that makes you proactive to do something different.
It's just easier to stay on the wheel. And then
you add to that the knowledge that all of this
(15:49):
is happening, and it just gets worse and worse, and
we're like, we need to change. What's that look like?
How do we break the routine when there's so much
that has to be done? What's that line that says,
sometimes you do what you want to do, the rest
of the times you do what you have to. Now
I'm in a pretty good position. I mean, Natalie and
I both love what we do, but god, we're just
(16:11):
on the fucking wheel and we feel the same ness.
And then we think, well, how do we break? How
do there's got to be a cycle break? So this
is a force of will. If we do it, we'll
be glad we did it. What does that even look like?
I don't know. I don't know what the solution is.
(16:32):
I'm gonna cheat just a little bit because I'm going
to Nashville for nanocon, so I'll be able to get
out and interact with people. It's hard for Natalie to
come to things like that because we don't get to
spend time really together. I'm engaged, I'm working for the hosts,
I'm at the table, I'm hanging out getting ready for
the speech and shooting videos, and so she and I
(16:54):
don't get a lot of quality time unless we tack
on a few extra days, which you know we're usually
not able to do for a lot of reasons. But
we got to find it. Brian, and know I'm just
I'm drifting. I am drifting, But I know you felt
this right. You're on the wheel? How do we break out?
(17:15):
Short break your calls and more ramblings coming up next.
Thanks for spending the week with me. It's always an
honor to be able to hang out with you. We
have plenty of colors on the switchboard, so let's find
out what you have to say. Six oh five, Robin,
(17:37):
are you with me?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Yes? I am fis.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I will be at manacon To, so I'll see you there.
And we did the Art protest here in Kentucky this
past weekend. It was great, It was great. It was hot,
really hot.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
For those who don't the counter protest is describe what
that is for people.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Well, in Kentucky we have a replica supposedly it's not
really actually a boat anyway, but in Williams Sound, Kentucky
that is supposed to be Noah's Ark, like a replica
of nos Arc. They have, you know, the dinosaurs there
that we're supposed to be on the boat. And it
was a really nice time. We had a guy up
(18:22):
on the heel filmingis.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Was he with you or was he with the Arc encounter?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I don't know who was that. He like put out
he was doing a live stream of our protest, but
he was definitely not with us. Of course we marched down.
Have you ever been to the Art protest? I didn't
know if you had ever been or not.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, I attended one years ago and I spoke it
was okay for I'll add to what you've already kind
of set up here if you don't mind real fast.
Ken Hill, go ahead, founder of Answers in Genesis, is
a Young Earth creationist who believes that the planet is
younger than the Sumerian civilization, okay, six thousand years because
(19:04):
God said so, and he believes the literal story of
Noah's art. So he built the Creation Museum, which is
an oxymoron, which is a horrifying place in Kentucky. I
did a video called Atheists at the Creation Museum, where
I and a skeptics group in the area. We all
went in and we toured it, and I mean, it's awesome.
(19:26):
You know, you've got it's a high dollar event. I
got dinosaurs hanging out with Adam and Eve. You've got
the declaration that the reason we have weeds in our
gardens is because of human sin. There's an exhibit promoting incest.
I mean, it's just amazing. So anyway, we came out
of that and produced a video, and then he builds
(19:47):
this one hundred and ten thousand dollars paper weight. I
believe it's in Lexington, where it's supposedly an exact replica
of Noah's Arc based on the dimensions given in the Bible.
So I went into Williamstown.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
The arc is in Williamstown. I think the Creation Museum
might be in my thank you, thank you for.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
That, Williamstown. And it's an exercise in hypocrisy because when
kin Ham wants to get tax breaks for being a ministry,
he calls it a nonprofit religious organization, and when he
wants tourism money from the government, he calls it a business.
(20:27):
So he's sort of double dipping. And Matt Delahunty and
I went and toured it. There's a video of that
called Atheist at the Ark Encounter, and it's wacky. It's
just bizarre to go into this place. And I think
most tragically, we see a lot of these little homeschool
(20:48):
groups going in, these small private school groups who are
going in and these wide eyed children are looking around
at velociraptors in cages and you know, all of this
crazy stuff, and they are being brainwashed, programmed to believe
that this is true. I think this is going to
hamstring them in many ways for decades to come, if
(21:10):
not the rest of their lives. And so once a year,
skeptics go out and do an outdoor protest just outside
the entrance, right off the highway, and they bring signs
and cameras and we have a platform and there's a
sound system, and I went out and so you give
a short presentation and everybody's essentially saying to everyone on
(21:31):
the highway, Hey, check out the bullshit factory behind this,
and check out the bullshitter who put it all together
and helped to helps to run it. So that's what
the arc and counter protest was. But it was a
good time when I was there, And you're saying you
had a good time as well.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Yes, yes we did. We had like Hainburn sponsored it,
and then we had like the Kentucky Atheists was the
one that put it on, Joe Roberts, and we had
the course of I say, Free Thinkers is probably who
put it on when you were there. They're going to
do it next year for the tenth anniversary, but they
were just not planning on doing it this year because
they've done it every year. But yeah, we had a
(22:11):
good crowd. There was a sign that says Museum of
Incest and Genocide and the guy that filmed this was
like mad because he thought we were accusing the people
of going in the arc and committing genocide and interests
that he wasn't getting what the reference was to.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
No, no, that's not us. Those were Old Testament characters
that did that stuff. Huge confusion. Robin, thanks for letting
us know what happened, and thanks for standing up for
skepticism in Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I know they need you, Okay, yeah, and I'll see
you at Nenacon.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I'll be the weeks I'll see in a bid all right.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
So you walk into the ark Encounter and one of
the first things you see is what looks like a
puppy mill for those who don't know what a puppy
emil is. They're horrifying realities where breeders, these immoral pet
breeders for money, will take dogs and cads them and
(23:12):
these tiny cages and they're often massive. There might be
one hundred and fifty cages and they're all grouped together,
and they tramped these animals in there, often for their
entire lives and horrible conditions. And I saw one that
had PVC pipe that ran all the way through it,
with little outlets in each cage, and that's how they
gave them their drinking water. So they didn't even open
(23:34):
the cage to fill up the water, so they just
sort of piped a hose in and that's how the
water was filled I don't know how the food was filled.
And the dogs said, we rescued little Henry years ago,
and he had been in a cage they thought for
five or six years. And when we got him out,
I mean, it was just like you could tell it
(23:56):
had affected him. He was the sweetest dog. But when
we get excited, he could only he would only run
in circles, small circles. And it's because he had spent
his life confined in a box, and that's all he
knew to do was run in circles. And the good
news was is once we gave him a loving home
and opened up his world, those circles got a lot bigger.
(24:19):
So he would start small, and then he would run
around the perimeter the living room, and then he would
run through the kitchen. Then he would run so he
was still running. He would always run one direction. He
ran to his right clockwise, but his circle got much bigger.
But the puppy mills themselves sometimes you see them on
the news. These barbaric people will essentially leave these animals
in the worst of conditions for a buck. So when
(24:41):
I walked into the arnk n counter, I saw a
poppy mill. It was this row of tiny cages, all
grouped together, boxed together, and supposedly this is how they
transported some of the animals for a year or were
(25:01):
they were there eggs in them. I was just such
a bizarre thing, and I think it was his way
of trying to cover the sheer volume of creatures that
would have had to have been on the arc. Well,
you know, they were either really small or they were embryos.
So we put them in the poppy milk cages and
(25:22):
we stuck them here in these boxes, and then a
year passed. That's the kind of shit he has been there.
What is that sign? There's an actual sign in the
Arc Encounter that says, if you I'm paraphrasing, if you
can convince people that Noah's Arc isn't real, you can
convince them that the Bible isn't true. And Matt and
(25:46):
I took a picture in front of that and said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's that's that's true. That's true. Forgive me. There's a
garbage truck outside. Maybe you can hear it bleeding into
the microphone as I talk about. Go watch the video
Atheists at the Arc Encounter. I think you'll see Matt
Dillahunty and me on the thumbnail image of the video.
(26:08):
It runs about eight ten minutes and it's wacky. And
the best part is is there's already freaking water damage
on the outside of the arc. So he's expecting people
to believe that this thing, which is not an actual boat.
It's a facade on the front, and there's a building,
an actual office building that's the whole back of the structure.
But he's expecting people to believe that this thing sort
(26:30):
of traversed and handled seawater for up to a year
without any trouble, while the actual arc has water damage
appearing on a whole side of the ship. Don't tell
me that thing with seaworthy. It's crazy. Plus, nobody else
on planet Earth owned a boat or was able to
build a boat in the time required. The whole thing
(26:53):
is insane. It's insane. Let's talk to area code three
zero one high. What do I call you?
Speaker 6 (27:04):
Hi? My name is Jeff him.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Welcome, what's on your mind?
Speaker 6 (27:10):
I had a very satisfying career with a Food and
Drug administration, and one of the things I did was
to advise medical device companies on how to comply with
the law and it became something I did on purpose.
When I ran into trouble trying to figure out how
(27:30):
to solve some of these problems. I would get up
from my computer, go for a walk, and find somebody
to talk to about some unrelated topic. And nine times
out of ten, by the time I got back to
my office, the answer was in my head.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Your brain simply needed a few minutes to process the information.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
Is that what I'm hearing without me actively thinking on it.
So the thinking happened in the background while I was
actively engaged in a typical conversation. Hey how's the weather outside?
Or Hey, did you win that soccer game this last weekend?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So on the back burner, subconsciously, there might be some
ram being allocated to the conundrum in question, and then
later on you can access the results of the calculating
that had been going on as you talked about pet's dinner,
the weather, et cetera.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Because the active brain got out of the way of
that other part of the brain that does that background thinking.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I may try that. I may try, if I have
a problem to back burner and then go do something
else where it's impossible for me to think about the
other thing. Exactly all right, anything else for today, No,
just to.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
Thank you for having come into my life and help
me figure out all this shit so much. I'm seventy
years old now and I'm the happiest, most satisfied I've
ever been in my life. So, and you're a part
of it.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Oh, you're very kind. Well, it means a lot that
you called and that you're a part of the community.
Be safe, Okay, Yes, thank you, sir.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Bye, I see you later.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Speaking of bad shit claims, we were talking about the
six thousand year old Earth and all of that stuff.
Well did you read that after the horrible, deadly floods
in Texas. Now we're seeing all kinds of conspiracy theories
that are just bandying about left and right, many of
(29:45):
them having to do with weather manipulation. Ryan Hall runs
the weather channel called Ryan Hall, y'all, And it sounds
like a punchline, But I'm telling this guy's awesome. Let
me pull up his page real fast, Ryan Hall, y'all.
(30:05):
I followed this guy whenever there's severe weather. He is
an actual meteorologist who will do these long form live
streams whenever there is weather anywhere. And he's good and
he's got correspondence, for lack of a better word, he's
got drone footage from the field. He's got people sending
him information from all of the places he is reporting on,
(30:28):
and he is legit. And he posted something that I
felt was really good. And then I'm going to get
into Marjorie Taylor Green, Okay, because how can I not?
He posted this. He said, y'all, when it rains a lot,
it floods. It's always been that way. Flooding has existed
as long as rain has It can destroy homes, wreck communities,
(30:51):
and take lives. That's why we built warning systems. That's
why I do what I do. But lately there's a
rise in conspiracy theory about weather modification and government floods.
These claims aren't just false, they're dangerous. They distract people
from real preparedness and get in the way of saving lives.
(31:12):
Please check your sources. You're being misled by folks who
don't understand meteormology, or worse, don't care. Other meteorologists are
coming forward to say this is weapons grade that shittery
proceed with caution, will I'll just read from Forbes. As
(31:36):
as this story came to light always reliable is miss
Jewish space laser herself. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia District fourteen.
Published on the seventh of July. Marjorie Taylor Green fuels
government weather conspiracy after deadly Texas flood Green wrote in
(32:00):
a Saturday post on x she would introduce legislation that
bans the release of anything into the atmosphere for the
express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,
saying quote, no person, company, entity, or government should ever
(32:21):
be allowed to modify our weather by any means possible.
Green did not reference the deadly Texas floods dominating the
news that day, but said she has been working with
the Legislative Council for months writing this bill to make
quote the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and
(32:42):
geo engineering a felony offense. The Georgia congresswoman said the
bill would be similar to Florida's new law and makes
cloud seating and other weather modification activities illegal. Green has
a history of stoking conspiracies that a government deeps date
creates catastrophic weather events, including suggesting hurricanes have been engineered
(33:06):
to hit Republican areas harder than those with more democrats,
and speculating that lasers spark wild fires. The conspiracy that
weather's manipulated by forces other than nature has been repeatedly
debunked amid an increase in dangerous weather caused by climate change.
(33:29):
NOAA does not fund or participate in cloud seating or
other weather modification projects. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
writes on its website. Here is a meteorologist named Paul Delegato.
This was posted this morning. Cloud seating, cloud seating, cloud seating. Apparently,
(33:52):
cloud seating is now the cause of all major weather
events Texas floods, cloud seating, Hurricane Milton, cloud seeding, snow
in the Florida Panhandle. Cloud seeding. Let me set the
record straight about cloud seeding. First thing. First. Cloud seeding
has been done for decades. Operation Popeye was a cloud
(34:13):
seeding mission to enhance the monsoon during the Vietnam War,
though historians will tell you that it is debatable whether
or not it had any impact on the outcome of
the war. Cloud seeding is not geoengineering. Cloud seeding is
a small scale weather modification that aims to enhance rain
or snow from clouds. It cannot make rain from clear skies.
(34:38):
It cannot end droughts. It involves introducing tiny particles softened
silver iodide into specific types of clouds to act as
nuclei for ice crystal formation. These particles help water droplets
in the clouds to freeze and grow, eventually falling as precipitation.
(34:58):
It is done using small planes or even cannons on
the ground. Cloud seating does not make contrails in the sky. Well,
then see it could have made the floods in Texas. No,
it didn't. Think scale. Cloud seating is done in a
cloud or a group of clouds. Those clouds with additional
(35:22):
nuclei from the cloud seating can drop an additional ten
percent to maybe twenty percent more rain or snow in
a tiny area. Think of it this way. There is
no need for cloud seating over Florida. We get enough rain.
It would not be worth the time or money, which
is why the Florida anti geoengineering bill was a waste
(35:43):
of time. But let's say we hired a cloud seating
company to seed clouds over Tampa. Small planes would take
off from a local airport and would drop silver iodide
into a tall cloud that was about to become a
shower or thunderstone. That shower or thunderstorm would have extra
nuclei to produce more rain. How much more rain may
(36:07):
be ten to twenty percent, So instead of a thunderstorm
dropping one inch of rain over downtown Tampa, the storm
may end up dropping one point one inch or maybe
as much as one point two inches of rain. That
is it, and the cloud seating over Tampa would not
result in any noticeable increase in rainfall over Saint Petersburg
(36:32):
or Clearwater or lakeland. It is small scale weather modification. Okay,
then if it increases rain or snow only ten to
twenty percent, then why bother? Because areas out west primarily
are desperate for rain, and even the hope for rain
is sometimes worth the expense, cloud seeding is boring. The
(36:56):
chances of you or I ever being impacted in any
way by cloud seating is pretty much zero. China has
a big cloud seating program, but if it was that good,
why did they have to truck in and make artificial
snow for the twenty twenty two Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Dubai has a big cloud seating program, and the big
(37:17):
flood there a few years ago was not caused by
cloud seating like the storm in Texas. It was predicted
to occur days in advance. Yes, even in Dubai there
are big flood events on occasion. Some of you are saying, whatever,
I do not want anyone messing with the weather. You
know what. You certainly have the right to feel that way.
(37:40):
Any weather modification or future studies research projects on geo
engineering should be openly discussed and should not be done
in secrets. Watch the meteorologists, Watch the meteorologist, and listen
to actual sign It is amazing how much people can learn.
(38:05):
Plenty more to talk about, and plenty more of your calls.
We continue in just a second. We had mentioned Nanocon
a few minutes ago. There are some great events coming
up all around the country. Free Thought events still planned
for the rest of twenty twenty five, and if you
(38:26):
want to find out where and when and how and
tickets and details and everything, you can go to the
Thinkingatheist dot com and then click on the events tab
right there from the homepage. Four zero three. Hi, thanks
for waiting. Who's this?
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Hey?
Speaker 2 (38:46):
This is Ron.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
How are you doing, Seth?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I'm good, Ron let's talk what's on your mind.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
That the wee can readon conference in Calgary. Ween, we
came and it's a boat Trump and I know you've
kind of done whole store there in all the merchandises drifting.
Do you think that the midterm elections is going to
be enough to turn the tide?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, honestly, I would love for the twenty twenty four
presidential election to be held right now. I'm convinced that
the moderate maga is the people who were kind of like, oh, yeah,
he's a businessman, and then they kind of did their
own thing. They kind of checked out. I think they're
having their own shit moment, and I think even a
few hardcore magas whose lives are being upended are going
(39:32):
on cramp like this isn't what I've voted for, and
you and I are like, oh, yes it is. The
problem is I have two problems. One, the public has
no memory. Secondly, what's that line? A person is smart,
but people are stupid. People are stupid. I mean the
people who are jumping onto every batshit keim trail, cloud seating,
(39:54):
deep state, vaccine, all this other crazy stuff. Those are
the voters that have helped get us in this position
in the first place. I also think that all it
will take is for one tiny incidental bump in the
stock market for people to get amnesia and they're like, oh, well,
things are a little better. I guess, status quo whatever,
(40:16):
and then they click the box. I worry that there
will be something that may have nothing to do with Trump,
or it's like blind squirrel finds nut right, he just
accidentally happens to get something right, and the public develops
amnesia about a decade worth of atrocity and the assault
on decency and the attack of the constitution and the
cruelty and the concentration camps and Alligator Alcatraz and everything else,
(40:38):
and they're like, ah, yeah, maybe things aren't so bad,
and they just go back to the status I worry
about people. I also am frustrated because Democrats have a
history of pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory,
you know what I mean. But I'll tell you this,
I do think the midterms seem like a thousand years away,
don't they. But I forever I do think that if
(41:02):
we survive a Congress that isn't totally an invertebrate Congress
might finally, since the Supreme Court is now failing us
left and right, I think that may be a stop
gap and help to prevent at least some of this
from going through until we can, I don't know, get
him out of there and as a massive coronary. Look,
(41:25):
don't judge me. Okay, don't judge me, ron, but I
don't judge me. I never thought in my life I
would ever do anything like this. I am going to
have a custom I don't even drink. I'm gonna have
a custom champagne glass made, and I'm gonna put just
two words on it. He's dead. And when that day
(41:49):
comes and he finally kicks it, I'm going to go
and I'm going to fill it up with something delicious
and I'm gonna have a little toast. I can't believe
I feel that much resentment. But the day he dies,
it will there will be a party. There will be
dancing and festivities in my circle. Do you does that
(42:11):
does that make you think lessons run?
Speaker 5 (42:13):
No? Not at all, Okay, I mean it runs across
my mind all the time. It's like, can't somebody take
him out somehow?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (42:24):
Isn't there someone around?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
No? I don't want that. I don't want that. I
don't think martyring him. I don't think threatening the president.
I totally have And I know you didn't mean it
that way. I know.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
It's just that what the thing, the stuff that he
is causing, it gets me sold. My blood starts to
boil with all these immigrants that he's detaining and then
the lies that he spews about them, and the lies
that he spews to his base, and he's just sticking
the knife in their backs and he doesn't care. He's
(42:57):
a true focio path.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
I would like him to be stuck in one of
the concentration camps that he is now endorsed and promoting.
I put him in there. Thanks so much for being
a part of the conversation. We'll see you later, Okay,
i'd see you later. I just released a video, you
know what. This will be a good way to leave you.
If you've followed the YouTube channel, you've probably already seen this,
(43:25):
but I'm going to go ahead and play it for
you here. And then the audio for the podcast audience.
The audio podcast audience, which is actually much bigger than
the YouTube audience. This may be new for you, but
I had thoughts about what's been happening under the Trump
regime as we see the funding now one of the
(43:47):
world's biggest secret police departments, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are
really a terrorist organization. And I'm surrounded by people like
the guy Natalie's Facebook feed who was like, he actually said,
I don't care what happens to anybody anywhere if they're
not American, and he sort of gives you that America
(44:10):
born in bred. I was born here, I'll die here America,
true and blue, right. And I had thoughts on that
about what it means to be born American. If you're
here in the United States and you don't have any
reason to worry about Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting or
deporting you. I am glad for you. I'm glad for
(44:32):
both of us, really, and I'm humbled at how lucky
we are. You and I have no idea what it's
like to have to live in fear, fear that a
Mexican drug cartel might hijack us on the highway and
take everything we've got, maybe kidnap us or our children
for ransom, or abduct them and traffic them for drugs, rape.
(44:57):
Whatever You and I are not forty percent of Niger's
population that are trying to survive on two dollars a day.
You and I have available food to keep our families
from going hungry. As families in Somalia, Yemen, the Republic
of Congo, Haiti, Ethiopia, elsewhere, they are seeing themselves and
(45:20):
their kids starving to death, often because oppressor governments are
hoarding the resources that everybody needs to survive. Every year,
in the US, fourteen hundred people starve to death, but
South Sudan sees over thirty two thousand. Now one is
(45:40):
too many, but I mean twenty two times the rate
of what we experience here. It makes me realize how
fortunate I am. You and I aren't dipping buckets into
unsanitary rivers to drink water that might kill us with cholera.
We turn on the taps and we buy our bottled water.
We don't even think about it. Even the most desperate
(46:04):
among Americans still have access to better healthcare and medicines
than much of the rest of the world. We've got
our issues, many issues, But show me a place that
doesn't have an emergency room required by law to treat
us in a crisis. Compare our doctor's offices and operating rooms,
(46:26):
to the failed hospitals of places like Venezuela, where patient
beds are filthy, physicians are hard to come by, and
medicines are even more scarce. So many people outside of
our borders are born into nearly unlivable conditions they're forced
to survive, and shelters that are made out of old blankets.
(46:46):
They sleep on the dirt. They exist almost completely exposed
to the rains, the winds, the sun, the predators. Schools
are often a luxury, yet mothers and fathers are desperately
working to try and have their children educated, even if
that means the kids have to sit at a desk
in a brick box and the blistering heat of the
(47:08):
middle of the day. You and I don't know what
that's like. We haven't experienced those terrible realities. And I'm
glad we're lucky. Our accidents of birth landed us as
infants in the US. By nothing we said or did.
We were born into a better life. And it's in
(47:30):
the light of that good fortune that I have come
to see better. How strange it is for someone to
say they're born and bred American and proud of it.
How strange is it not to look at the suffering
people inside and outside of our borders with grief in
our hearts, and to give those borders such power, especially
(47:52):
with the understanding that our world's dividing lines were subjectively
drawn by men, and even more often than meritoriously defining
our nations, which is fine, they also too often set
us up to feel superior and dismissive about those who
were not born into our cradles of privilege. You and
(48:14):
I don't know what it's like to hold our children
close in case mask ice agents smash into our houses,
homes that we've known for decades, stripping husbands away from wives,
fathers away from sons, mothers away from daughters, many of
whom may never speak in person again, many of whom
(48:37):
were guilty of what only desperately trying to survive. They
worked hard day and night. They lived peacefully, and they
prayed every day they could continue to escape the guns
and knives of the cartels, the contaminated drinking water, the extortionist,
dirty cops, unsafe medicines, unsustained anably small bowls of cheap food,
(49:03):
beds without mattresses, disasters with no recovery programs, ratty clothes,
no shoes, the peril that comes when you're not born
lucky like you and I were born lucky. Are these
people all of the horrible things that they have been called.
(49:23):
It has been politically convenient to blanket blame the outsider
for our problems. Immigrants legally here and otherwise. They have
been tagged as everything from vermin to rapists and murderers.
But in my life, I've seen a whole lot more
headlines about the monsters already among us, many of them
(49:47):
born among us, who are the beneficiaries of that strange
luck that comes with a certain birth certificate, skin color,
or sexual orientation. The human tenden see is to turn
a blind eye to our in group because it's instinctive
to vilify the out group. It's us and them, American
(50:10):
and non American, clean and dirty, good and evil, and
yet we are all the human condition. Now, nobody's saying
borders should be a free for all. Nobody's saying the
border system isn't terrible and can't be a whole lot better.
But the solutions to our problems do not fit on
(50:30):
a meme or in a campaign slogan or on a
T shirt. I'm convinced that we must realize that born
American isn't the flex many people think it is. It's
just what happened, and we must ask ourselves what we
would do. How many dangerous mountains we would climb, how
(50:51):
many deadly rivers we would cross, how many desperate measures
we would take? How far would we go just to survive,
to help our kids survive, and maybe just maybe carve
out a way to live a better life in peace
and safety. The reason so many are horrifying that ICE
(51:13):
has become a kind of American gestapo is because the
whole idea of ICE raids is one of dismissiveness, dehumanization,
and cruelty. Imagine the masked men waiting for you outside
of your appearance in a court of law. You get finished,
you walk out the door, and suddenly you are grabbed.
(51:35):
You're in the back of the van. Your loved ones
are screaming and crying, and without any due process, you
have become both less than human and a punchline for
people who are cheering your abduction. You become an anonymous
face and a concentration camp, hoping that you won't be forgotten.
(51:56):
You become a political football tossed around in a gain
that you never asked to play. You face decades potential
decades of isolation away from the people you love, potential
torture by guards who are not there to protect you,
and a world of suffering that's marked by mimable signs
(52:16):
like Alligator Alcatraz, places where tourists will stop to take
Facebook photos. You and I woke up this morning without
any worry of any of that happening to us. But
we have to ask ourselves why what does it mean
to be born American? What does it mean to be
human and have humanity? And for those who hold to
(52:41):
a peace loving faith tradition, how might this culture all
around us have treated Jesus, the brown skinned immigrant, whose
best teachings were about loving your neighbor, kindness, forgiveness, service, humility,
rejecting hate, not loving money, doing unto others. Right, I mean,
(53:03):
whether or not you believe in that Jesus. Those that
do should ask themselves if the Jesus Christ who drove
the money changers out of the temple and spoke in
First John three point seventeen about giving to brothers and
sisters in need, how would that Jesus be treated by
people today? And how might that Jesus feel about a
(53:27):
kidnapping culture of celebrated cruelty that has valued and devalued
flesh and blood human beings based only on what side
of a line they happen to be born on. There
is an old line that was originally attributed to Sinclair Lewis.
It has never been verified, but I still find it interesting.
(53:49):
The saying says this, when fascism comes to America, it
will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Should the flag and the cross stand for cruelty? Or
are we all eight billion of us on this planet?
Are we fellow travelers who deserve mercy, empathy, consideration, respect, safety,
(54:12):
opportunity regardless, to see ourselves as citizens of the United States,
but more importantly, citizens of the world. Maybe that should
be the American dream. And with that I will leave
you to it. It's always an honor to spend time
with you. I'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
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