This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 282 of the program. Today is Friday, March 19th and before we get started, as we usually do, I want to take some time to thank all of the folks who make this show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members who either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us. And of course that includes the great Arthur Morris, Johnny Hoogland and Laura JKQ. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive video revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. While we've got another great episode for you this week, we will talk about why Joe Biden's push to reopen schools is absolutely reckless and how one-third of COVID related deaths were due to a lack of health insurance in the United States. And additionally, we'll talk about the revelations from Amy Parn's new book called Lucky about the Democratic Party Establishment and how Democratic Party elites were torn between another Trump term and a possible Bernie Sanders presidency. And when it comes to right-wing grifters, Fox News has suddenly reversed their stance on cancel culture. Tucker Carlson dabbles in vaccine skepticism and Stephen Crowder decides to ramp up the racism to level 11 on his show. And finally, we closed the week by talking to MMT advocate and podcast host Steve Grumbine, who is going to explain the fundamentals of modern monetary theory to us. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you will enjoy the program. Let's get right to it. So believe it or not, it has been more than a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. And finally, things are starting to get a little bit better. We're starting to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Both cases and deaths are down substantially and 12% of Americans have now been fully vaccinated with 20% getting at least one of the doses from either Pfizer or Moderna. We just had the FDA approve Johnson & Johnson single shot vaccination, which is both safe and effective. And Joe Biden ordered 100 million additional doses. So it seems as if we're starting to get to a place where we can resume normal life, pre-pandemic life in America and throughout the world. The issue, however, is that a lot of folks, not just the American population, but political leaders are already pretending as if the pandemic is over. But if we don't see the writing on the wall, if we don't look at the warnings that are right in front of us, we could very easily find ourselves in another COVID-19 surge and right back to square one. Currently, Europe is experiencing another wave of COVID-19, which has led to more lockdowns in Italy and calls for more lockdowns in France, although the French prime minister has resisted calls from health experts to impose new restrictions. And in the United States, Joe Biden's White House is anticipating another wave of COVID-19 and they're currently racing to vaccinate as many Americans as possible, as new, more easily transmissible variants are beginning to spread and pop up across the world. Meanwhile, since cases are down, however, Republican governors have already preemptively declared victory in the fight against COVID-19. And in Texas and Mississippi, they've even lifted their mask mandates. I mean, the bare minimum, they won't even allow for that. It's not just Republican governors who are acting irresponsibly. Democratic governors are following Joe Biden's lead as well. And you have some like Oregon's Kate Brown already deciding that it is time to reopen schools and she just signed an executive order, which mandates in-person learning fully resumed by April 19th, April 19th. It doesn't matter if we're in a fourth wave by then, it doesn't necessarily matter if there's some new variant that's more easily transmissible that becomes the dominant strain in the U.S. We're just going to reopen by April 19th because I say so. And she's following Joe Biden's lead because as you all know, he just passed his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and there's more than a hundred billion dollars in funding to safely reopen schools. The issue, however, is that it's no longer the case that we're trying to reopen schools by following the science or basing the decision to reopen schools and fully resume in-person learning on whether or not we can do that safely. We're just like doing it because that's exactly what is demanded of our system. Like you have to understand that we live in a dystopian late-stage capitalist society and if we do not resume business as usual, then the system suffers. And there's a reason why Biden all of a sudden sounds a little bit different. He's saying things that he wasn't necessarily willing to say on the campaign trail and all of this is laid out in a really long but excellent article by Walker Bragman of The Daily Poster. And he explains the country's approach to the pandemic has been one of suppression over elimination of acceptable losses and acceptable spread. While other countries have been able to better control the spread of the virus through ambitious zero COVID strategies, the United States has never once seriously considered far reaching responses like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to shelter in place. For both Donald Trump and now Biden, the political risks of such moves were too great despite the arguments of scientific experts and the pleas of many of those on the front lines. Biden promised to be a different kind of president, one who will let the facts dictate policy rather than the other way around. In August, Biden told ABC, I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. I would shut it down. Biden said, I would listen to the scientists. But after the election, Biden and company changed their tune. On November 19th, Biden told reporters that there was no circumstance which I can see that would require a total national lockdown. I think that would be counterproductive, he said. In December, Biden announced that his key COVID priorities for his first 100 days in office included school reopenings. Today, he is still actively moving forward on that plan. Now, let's just pause there for a moment and reflect on why he's doing this. I think it's pretty obvious. If we do not resume business as usual, that's bad for capitalism. Capitalism requires that everything in our country functions as normally as possible even during a pandemic. Otherwise, profits and growth might be stunted, even if it's a detriment to our health as human beings. And I mean, COVID is just a microcosm of a broader issue, of a broader theme that happens with crises in capitalism.   Because if we were to stop doing what we're doing currently, then that would be so disruptive to global economic capitalism that alone, that short-term loss to profits and growth is worse than long-term death and destruction that might come about because of global climate change. So our political leaders around the globe have collectively decided, inadvertently or unwittingly or sometimes directly, that they would rather just try to manage climate crises than take action right now to stop the crisis in the future. And we're seeing that same exact decision-making processes play out, but when it comes to COVID-19, I think there was a solution that could have stopped this from becoming a pandemic, but we never opted for that solution. We never opted to pay people to stay home. And now we're trying to resume business as usual as quickly as possible, when the science does not, in fact, dictate that reopening schools is what we should be doing. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily displeased with Joe Biden's handling of the pandemic, because thus far he is doing a much better job than Donald Trump. He surpassed his goal of 100 million vaccinations within his first 100 days, and that is something that he should be applauded for. He has ramped up vaccinations, and that is really good. But when it comes to the issue of reopening schools, this is where I've had a lot of disagreements with him, and this next portion of the article from Walker Braggman really explains why reopening schools right now, it's absolutely reckless and irresponsible. For Dr. Deepthai Grittisani, the push to reopen schools is alarming. A clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, specializing in machine learning in genomic and clinical prediction, she has found herself waging a Twitter war on misinformation surrounding school reopenings. Very early on in the pandemic, at least in the Western world or in Europe and the United States, this sort of narrative was built that children were somehow exceptional or unique, and that they were less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and less likely to transmit, Grittisani tells The Daily Poster. And this narrative very quickly got entrenched in political decision-making as well as in the scientific community, despite having very little evidence behind it. Grittisani explains that many of the studies cited as evidence that children are not major spreaders of the virus relied on symptom-based testing. Children, Grittisani explains, are not likely to be symptomatic. When you do symptom-based testing in a household, you could very often pick up adults who were infected actually from children but classify them as the index case who brought infection to the household because the actual index case who was the child was silent, she says. Similarly, transmission to children is being missed if you base testing on symptoms. Indeed, a study from January funded by Austria's Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research noted the failure of several previous studies to take into account asymptomatic spread by children and other flaws. Grittisani told The Daily Poster that new evidence actually suggests that children are more likely to spread the virus to households than adults. Such was the finding of a study from the Office of National Statistics in England published in late December. Researchers found that young people ages 12 to 16 were seven times as likely as those older than 17 to be the first case in their household. They also found that children ages two to 16 were twice as likely as those over the age of 17 to spread the virus to family members. Another ONS study released last month found that teachers were at high risk ranking fourth among the 25 professions survey. The ONS studies are part of a growing body of research suggesting that reopening schools spread the virus. A Princeton study from September which surveyed more than half a million people in India found that children and young adults made up one third of COVID cases and were especially key to transmitting the virus. Similarly, a study released the month before in the Journal of Pediatrics found that children could be super spreaders even without displaying symptoms of COVID due to the amount of the virus in their systems. Meanwhile, the evidence on school closures cutting the spread of COVID is mounting too. A study from October based on data gathered from 131 countries found that school closures could reduce viral transmission by 15%. The next month, another study which looked at a number of mitigation strategies found that closing educational facilities ranked as the second most effective measure. Research studies aren't the only evidence that students are fueling the virus. Where schools are open, COVID is spreading. In the UK, where Girdasani is based, cases are surging among children ages five to 15 while dropping among other demographics. On February 21st, Democratic Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg tweeted that roughly 3,000 children had contracted COVID-19 since Republican Governor Kim Reynolds reopened schools with no restrictions in late January. A week earlier, public health officials in Onondaga County, New York where schools are open warned that they were seeing a rash of new cases among children around 50 to 60 per week, likely due to the prevalence of the new UK COVID variant. When you look at global evidence, school closures emerge as one of the most important and most effective interventions in reducing the spread of the pandemic, Girdasani says. So the conclusion I think is obvious. To reopen schools, to just impose an arbitrary date and say that schools have to be reopened within 100 days or by April 19th, this is not a decision that is grounded in science. It's a decision that is being made because it is the most politically expedient decision that is being made in service of our late stage capitalist economic system.  And that's not to say that you can't try to make sure that we reopen as safely as possible because that's why Joe Biden included funding for schools to reopen. But the goal in and of itself should not be to just reopen for the sake of reopening. The goal should be to do what is necessary to stop the spread of the virus. And from the very beginning, we could have contained the virus if we just did one simple thing. We paid people to stay home. We are the richest country on the planet. We can afford to pay people to stay home. Subscribers of Modern Monetary Theory, individuals such as Stephanie Kelton know firsthand that any excuses that we've made are complete horseshit. If you're suggesting that we can't afford to pay people 2,000 to $3,000 per month to stay home. That is completely a fabrication. If we paid people to stay home, that is exactly how we could have saved thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives. And back in the Trump era, his administration was literally just hoping that Americans would grow numb to COVID-19 deaths. And now that we are more than 500,000 deaths into this pandemic, I think it's safe to say, unfortunately that most people have just grown numb to it. And because the American people has demonstrated that they are willing to grow numb to crises like this, our public officials now know that we can probably adapt to any crisis. Global pandemic, man, we can just kind of resume business as usual to an extent. And people will just eventually become accustomed to it.  Yeah, they're gonna happen, but so long as our citizens aren't directly fighting in those wars over water themselves, they'll probably just kind of forget about it and resume what is the new normal to them. So I want you to think about this story in two different ways. The first way is obviously, I need you to acknowledge that Joe Biden is being reckless here in this decision to arbitrarily reopen schools just so he can brag about it. And so that way the economy can function more smoothly so parents can go to work and send their children to school. I mean, schools were never fully closed, distance learning, online learning that is a form of education. And it may not be ideal, but it will suffice during a pandemic when there are lives at stake, when teachers who are paid starvation wages don't have to risk their lives. Like isn't that preferable? Well, of course not because we live in a late stage capitalist society. So we do what capitalism dictates we do. And that's the second way that I want you to think about this. I want you to reexamine this system of capitalism and that might make some people feel uncomfortable, particularly in my older viewers who kind of grew up during the Cold War and we're basically trained to never question capitalism but I need you to acknowledge that if we do not kill capitalism, if we don't kill it first, capitalism is going to kill us. And when I say us, I don't just mean lots and lots of human beings on this planet. I'm talking about other species on this planet. We're currently possibly witnessing another mass extinction. There's evidence that we're undergoing a mass extinction currently because of climate change and we're doing nothing about it because we can't disrupt the capitalist status quo because the economic system that we designed requires that we prioritize profits and growth over our own lives. That's insane. That is insane. We created this economic system. So very clearly there's a better way. We can change the system that we as human beings created. So think about this, not just in terms of like the way that the United States is reacting to COVID-19, the way that Joe Biden is irresponsibly reopening schools but think about the bigger picture. Think about the way that capitalism has set us up for failure and disaster and extinction quite literally. I think that because the Republican Party's discourse and hysteria over cancel culture has been so overly bombastic and sensationalist, they're starting to kind of like undermine their own message because they've taken like this alarmism over cancel culture to such a high level, people are really starting to see through it. And now it's really evident more so than ever that this is a really, really lucrative grifting opportunity for not just Republican hacks but Republican politicians as well. Take a look at what NBC News reporter Von Hilliard tweets out. Ted Cruz is signing copies of Green Eggs and Ham for $60 campaign contributions. So if you donate $60 to Ted Cruz, he will sign a copy of a children's book that he didn't even write. Why? What's the point of this? Who's actually going to do this? So here's the text that Ted Cruz is sending out. This is a fundraising text that he is sending out to constituents in Texas. Ted Cruz here, the left is outrageous. They're trying to cancel one of America's most beloved authors, Dr. Seuss. I love Dr. Seuss and that's why I'm defending his works and I'm asking you to stand with me. As a special offer, if you make a $60 donation or more, I'll sign a copy of Green Eggs and Ham for you. And then he also has the little image of himself that says, help me stand with Dr. Seuss. Do you like Green Eggs and Ham? Okay, first of all, why would anyone want to purchase a book that's signed by someone who didn't write that book? What's the point? That's extremely weird. Who does that? Second of all, he's saying that the left is trying to cancel Dr. Seuss. This is a decision that the estate of Dr. Seuss made on their own accord. Nobody pressured them to withdraw six books from publication or sales. Like this is a decision that they made. This is a business decision that the estate of Dr. Seuss has decided to make. This wasn't even an instance where somebody said, hey, look at these pictures of these Dr. Seuss books. Aren't they a little bit sus? Nobody said that. This is something that Dr. Seuss's estate did. So how is this cancel culture? This is the free market. They're making a business decision knowing that American culture is evolving and we're becoming more aware about stereotypes that are politically incorrect and hurtful. They decided, you know what? Maybe it's best that we don't sell this book. So how is this cancel culture exactly? Isn't this something that doesn't really relate to cancel culture? If you're truly trying to prove how detrimental cancel culture is to society, isn't there a better example?   Well, Ted Cruz announced via Twitter that he raised $125,000 in just 24 hours. Yeah, so lots and lots of people apparently fell for this and he adds, lefties are losing their minds that I'm signing and sending copies of Green Eggs and Ham to anyone who donates $60 or more. And I love how he adds that, you know, the hand-wringing by leftists probably helped him sell more books. And that may be the case, but it's not like we're scolding you saying that it's bad and you shouldn't do this. The question is, why would you do this? Because it's bizarre that you're signing somebody else's work for your own opportunistic gains. Like, that's why we're saying this. But the fact that that many people decided to buy a book, donate more than $60 to Ted Cruz for a children's book that he's signing, I mean, doesn't this prove to you why conservatives have been talking about cancel culture and focusing on it so heavily? Because it's really beneficial for them politically. And it's not just Ted Cruz. When Steven Crowder complains that YouTube demonetized him or deleted one of his videos, guess what happens? He gets to complain about how he's being censored and he sells lots of mugs, lots of his own merch. Dave Rubin can sell a literal book called Don't Burn This Book where the premise is that, you know, the left is trying to cancel everyone and he's being censored and the right is being censored. Meanwhile, you literally published the book. Like, if you were actually being censored, you wouldn't be able to publish the book if cancel culture was that bad.  Like, anyone who falls for this is a rude but because people fall for this, this is specifically why Republicans go all in on something.  So, that's where we're at.  America is certainly living in the stupidest timeline imaginable. That's not even disputable at this point.  A new report from Public Citizen confirms what we already knew was the case. That our dysfunctional for-profit healthcare system has exacerbated the bad effects of this deadly, devastating pandemic. And they state that for-profit healthcare actually worsened the pandemic and that hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of infections would likely have been prevented if we had a Medicare for All single-payer healthcare system. Again, not necessarily the most surprising conclusion, but it is nice to actually see an analysis confirm what was obvious. So they state the US remains the only one of the 25 wealthiest countries to not provide universal healthcare and the healthcare systems focus on profits and not health has cost Americans their lives despite having less than 5% of the world's population The US has had 25% of the world's confirmed cases and 20% of deaths. Public Citizen's new report demonstrates how before the pandemic, approximately 87 million Americans were uninsured or underinsured. About one third of COVID-19 deaths and 40% of infections were tied to a lack of insurance. About half of Americans received their healthcare through their employer with more than 22 million Americans losing their job during the pandemic, millions lost their health insurance. Racial health disparities including access to care have led to disproportionate deaths in communities of color. We have the highest rate of unmet need of any comparably wealthy countries with one third of Americans reporting that they or a family member has avoided going to the doctor when sick or injured in the past year due to cost. Americans are significantly more likely to die of chronic respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer than people in comparably wealthy countries with universal healthcare systems and a lack of essential funding led to insufficient hospital capacity. The US had only around half the hospital beds per capita of pure nations and far fewer than countries like Japan or Germany. Thousands of deaths would have been avoided if Medicare for all had been in place prior to the COVID-19 crisis, highlighting the need to enact policy before the next pandemic hits. Under such a system, hospitals, particularly rural hospitals would receive the funds they need to stay open via yearly budgets instead of relying on admission rates and elective procedures. Providers would better be able to coordinate patient care. No American would have to skip a doctor visit because of cost or a lack of insurance and people of color would no longer face disproportionately high rates of uninsurance, reducing an important contributor to racial disparities and access to healthcare. So I will link you to their full analysis down below, but that was basically the main takeaways from their analysis. It is exactly what we should have expected. I mean, it's not necessarily surprising to suggest that a healthcare system based entirely on the prioritization of profits over people would yield these results, not surprising in the slightest whatsoever. And understand that this is the logical result of our for-profit healthcare system. If you don't have insurance or you do have insurance and you can't afford the co-pays that you're gonna have to pay, what's that going to do in terms of us handling the pandemic? Well, if somebody is experiencing symptoms, they may not go to the doctor. They might not even know that they have COVID and therefore spread COVID-19 to their peers. It is logical to deduce that in any situation, whenever there's a health crisis in America, we are going to be worse off because we don't have a universal healthcare system. It's absolutely ridiculous that in 2021 in the richest country in America, you have Americans regularly dying because they don't have healthcare. I mean, that happens when there isn't a pandemic, but when there is a pandemic, of course the situation is exponentially worse. And that's exactly what this analysis shows. And I've said this once, I'll say it again, that it was never acceptable for any Democrat, for any politician, let alone Democrats to be against Medicare for all. Because if you're against Medicare for all, then you're admitting that you're okay with thousands of Americans dying every single year because they don't have healthcare. But during a pandemic, to not have a change of heart, to not adjust your position, that just makes you insane. It makes you insane. You are comparable to the looniest people in society.    So it is not acceptable. Any Democrat who is against Medicare for all should not have a career in politics. They should be defeated. Any think tank, any news pundit who is doing propaganda against Medicare for all, they should be discredited and they should be thoroughly defeated. They should be canceled for lack of a better word because to defend the status quo means you are defending deaths.  And that is absolutely morally unacceptable to me. So this just further demonstrates the need for Medicare for all. Will our government officials take any action on this? No, because we live in a late stage capitalist, dystopian society where policy outcomes aren't dictated by need or desires of the masses. They're dictated by the interests of business elites and special interests. And that's not me saying that. This is according to a Princeton University study that was published in 2014 by Drs. Gillins and Paige. So I mean, this again, super obvious, not necessarily shocking results. Nonetheless, it does emphasize how necessary Medicare for all would be. That is, if you care about saving lives, which we should care about saving lives. A new CBS poll found that vaccine hesitancy is actually the highest among Republican men and more than a third of Republicans are refusing to take the COVID vaccines. Now, this isn't necessarily too surprising because this is a political party that just outright denies science and the only time they even say the word science is when they're trying to deny equal rights to transgender Americans. So this isn't necessarily surprising news. And especially when you consider the way that Republican lawmakers have never taken the pandemic seriously and currently they're not actually getting the vaccine and they're not promoting the vaccines themselves. I mean, obviously this is what's going to happen. Their values will be reflected in their base. But to make matters worse, the most popular cable news pundit is now deciding to use his platform to spread vaccine skepticism to his millions of viewers. Take a look. So all of this should prompt some pretty tough questions for our public health experts in this country. And one of those questions is how effective is this coronavirus vaccine? How necessary is it to take the vaccine? Don't dismiss those questions from anti-vaxxers. Don't kick people off social media for asking them. Answer the questions, especially now. The administration would like you to take this vaccine. Joe Biden told you last week, if you don't, you can't celebrate the 4th of July. But it turns out there are things we don't know about the effects of this vaccine and all vaccines, by the way, it's always a trade-off. He literally asked on national television, how effective is this coronavirus vaccine and how necessary is it to take this vaccine? If only there was some way of finding out this information that is seemingly nowhere. I mean, there's no way he's serious. He knows all of this information, but in case he's genuinely puzzled, there's this thing known as the internet where you can easily look up this information and find the answers to all of your questions in a couple of minutes. Hey, I'll Google it for you. So how effective is the, here we go, we have Autofill will do Moderna's vaccine. Turns out it is 80.2% effective after a single dose and you'll be 95% protected after you get your second shot. Okay, now let's look up the Pfizer vaccine. Turns out it's 46% effective, 14 to 20 days after the first dose and 92% effective seven days after the second dose. As for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, it is 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe COVID and 100% effective in preventing COVID related hospitalization and death. So I think this answers the question as to whether or not you should take it, but let's ask anyway, COVID vaccines are safe and effective and it looks like you should definitely get it as soon as you are eligible and that's it. I just did the work. One person within a couple of minutes did the work that Tucker Carlson and his entire team apparently couldn't figure out how to do. But this is not him just being ignorant. He is very clearly trying to drive skepticism about the vaccines, vaccines that we actually need people to take if we want to end the pandemic. Because if there is a large portion of the American population that does not take the vaccine, then the virus will continue to spread which increases the potential for mutations that are resistant to the vaccines. So this isn't just like, hey, I'm going to make this individual choice.  It's my choice if I choose to not wear a mask. Liberty, freedom, except that's not actually you exercising your own liberty and freedom. You're impeding on the freedom of others to not be infected by the germs that you're spreading because you refuse to wear a mask because you think that that impedes on your liberty and freedom. Tucker Carlson is very much aware of all of this. But he's being purposefully obtuse because he wants his viewers to fear the vaccine. And I mean, I don't even know what the reason is for this. I don't know if he'd be saying this if Trump were still president because Trump could then get credit for getting people vaccinated. But I mean, what's the end goal here? I don't know what his end goal is. I don't know why he's trying to foster skepticism and fear mongering over the COVID vaccines which are safe and effective. But what I do know is going to happen is that if his viewers actually believe his lies and do fear the COVID vaccine, they could die. Like, does he actually want his viewers to die? I mean, how irresponsible are you to so doubt about the efficacy and safety of these vaccines that are lifesaving?  And also, he loves to play loose with the facts. He says that Joe Biden told you that if you don't take the vaccine, you can't celebrate the 4th of July. Really, is that what Joe Biden said? That's not what Joe Biden said. I don't like Joe Biden, but what you're doing is lying. Most people who are Republicans are probably not even going to pay attention to any of the CDC guidelines.  I mean, conservatives across the country, they've just never taken it seriously. Look at Florida. They've never had a mask mandate. The governor of Florida literally instituted a ban on mask mandates. So that way, if a local government wanted to institute a mask mandate, it wouldn't be effective legally. They wouldn't be able to enforce that. They wouldn't be able to find people who disobey that law. All across the country, Republicans have been pretending as if the pandemic is over. You all had an in-person CPAC, as opposed to a digital one.  So what does Biden saying that if you take it seriously, you can celebrate 4th of July, have to do with you. It's not even applicable to you because you already decided that the vaccine isn't something that you're going to take seriously. So what's the issue here? Like, why are you fear mongering specifically about something that is obviously innocuous? It's not like Joe Biden is saying, I'm gonna stop you from doing what you want to do.  You're already doing that. So what is the point here? He's just needlessly fear mongering because his goal is to do propaganda against the Democratic Party because he is part of the Republican Party's propaganda arm. So for whatever reason, he has taken it upon himself to drive fear about a vaccine that is necessary to save lives and end a global pandemic.  This is absolutely irresponsible and disgusting. Fox News just spent the last two weeks screaming at the top of their lungs about the woke mob supposedly cancelling the Muppets. Mr. Potato Head, Peppy Lapue, Lola Bunny, what else? I'm probably missing something, the Bernstein Bears. Have they been canceled yet? I don't know, I can't keep up. But they've just been screaming about how bad it is to participate and engage in cancel culture. Now, of course, it is the case that none of these examples that they've been citing are actual instances of the woke mob trying to get something canceled. These are all business decisions made by private companies. Nevertheless, they've decided to make this their number one issue and all of a sudden they've chosen to completely abandon that. Now, they're the ones who are outraged over something, the Grammys, because Cardi B performed WAP and they don't like that. So because she said naughty words, now all of a sudden their position on cancel culture is completely different. They call this great, they say this is fabulous, that this is the stuff that children should be aspiring towards. So at the same time, Tucker, that we have kids that are not learning hard academics anymore in school, right? Forget about mathematics and science, you can trust the science and trust Dr. Fauci, but you have these kids learning about critical race theory. They're learning that they should aspire to people like Cardi B. You see that fundamentally, we are seeing the destruction of American values, American principles and it's terrifying. I think parents should be terrified that this is the direction that our society is heading towards. And again, we are weakening America. That's real what we should be talking about. This is a weakening of American society. We are setting the stage and it feels like we are looking at corrosion. Like we are about to see the end of an empire. America cannot survive. It cannot be sustained under these sorts of values and principles. So all that stuff about cancel culture, I'm assuming we're just gonna throw that out the window, not gonna address it.  It is literally destroying American society. But all of a sudden they're bringing on a guess that's saying, actually this thing that I find offensive personally, that's what's going to destroy society. So maybe we should cancel it. And I don't know if you saw, but on the screen, it said WAP is likely the most vulgar song to ever be performed at the Grammys. Who cares? Who even watches the Grammys? I don't think I've ever seen the Grammys once. I don't know anyone who watches the Grammys. Who cares? Don't watch it. If you find it offensive and you're outraged, perhaps just tune out. No need to cancel it, right? Like what is the suggestion here? What's the implication that you want to cancel Cardi B, ban naughty words and sexually explicit songs from appearing on television? Is that what you want to do? How is that not cancel culture? The thing that you said is literally the worst thing ever. Now, Candice Owens, she says that America cannot survive. It cannot be sustained under these sorts of values and principles. Literally the American empire could collapse because of a song called Wet-Ass Pussy by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. She also says this is a weakening of American society. It feels like we are looking at corrosion. Like we are about to see the end of an empire and you have these kids learning about critical race theory and that they should aspire to people like Cardi B. When exactly did schools decide to start teaching children about critical race theory? I don't think that they teach that in elementary school. I don't think that kindergarten teachers are telling their students to look up to figures like Cardi B. The song is sexually explicit and very obviously intended for adults. And I mean, I just got to ask Candice Owens. This is someone who is a fan of Kanye West. Kanye West and Lil Pump, both Trump supporters, by the way, they made a song called I Love It, which is also sexually explicit. Did she not want to cancel them? Was that not disgusting? Or would they have to perform it on national television to basically trigger her outrage? And I'm pretty sure actually that they have performed this song on television. I don't remember conservatives actually freaking out about this. So like why are they selectively outraged about this? What is it about WAP in comparison with like all the other sexually explicit songs that makes them want to cancel Cardi B? Now Cardi B actually saw this segment and she responded to it on Twitter by saying, hey, I made it on Fox News and Candice Owens responded by saying, just at me next time directly, you are a cancer cell to culture. Young black girls are having their minds poisoned by what you were trying to package and sell to them as empowerment. I'm one of the few that has courage to tell you the truth. You should thank me. Oh, well, how brave of Candice Owens to actually speak up. Like, wow, truth teller right there. How bold of you to say that you're offended by WAP.   I don't honestly, even though, because I don't think that this segment in particular actually is bad for Democrats, like they're not necessarily attacking Democrats. They're literally just explaining that like, they don't like this and they're offended by it or that liberal elites are saying that this is female empowerment. I mean, why is this such an issue to conservatives? I mean, Ben Shapiro, of course, decided to read out the lyrics to WAP last year and everyone made fun of him for it. Why do you care about this this much? This is female empowerment.  So when women do it, all of a sudden that's bad. Like, who cares? Who cares? I just don't understand why you feel the need to explain how offended you are at something that you could easily just not listen to. But I mean, this is cancel culture. What's next? What other songs are the, is the mob gonna come after? I mean, we can say the same things that they said last week. We could turn it around on them, but they don't actually care because this is Fox News and hypocrisy is part of their brand.  Perhaps if someone like Niels during the national anthem, then they'll go back to wanting to cancel that individual. But this is the modern right. They can't focus on any substantive political issues because their ideas are wildly unpopular. So they try to focus on cultural war issues, but on the issues that they focus on, like social issues and cultural war issues, they can't even remain consistent on those issues. So if you can't even remain consistent on your own key issues, then what is the point of view?   You are the individuals who are actually the problem here. So there's nothing left to say. I think that this segment speaks for itself. All of a sudden Fox News has changed their position on cancel culture. Shocking, I know. In a recent episode of Louder with Crowder, Stephen Crowder decided to dedicate a couple of minutes to a segment on black farmers. And rather than actually trying to grapple with the substance of a subsidy that farmers will be receiving, farmers of color in particular, he decided to just like make fun of black people. And this segment basically devolved into a competition between him and his co-hosts. And they all tried to compete to say the most racist thing. Now this isn't the first time that Stephen Crowder has said something explicitly racist or homophobic or transphobic. But in this clip, like this is next level, like even for Stephen Crowder, this is Yikes, this is bad. Here's the clip. I don't know where you find this many farmers of color, but they did. And 5.2 billion are being allocated exclusively for colored farmers. Farmers of color, farmers of color, roll the date. We begin today's show looking at a major provision in President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that aims to address decades of discrimination against black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers who've historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support and allocates about half the funds to farmers of color who are, quote, subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group, unquote. The US commission on civil rights confirmed as long ago as 1965, the US Department of Agriculture discriminated against black farmers, but little was done to address the problem. 100 years ago. Yeah, most happy about the new policy, these people. So yeah. I'm a black, I'm a black plow man. I'm gonna plant that corn. Go get a John Deere, Barack Obama mother, I'm the president, I'm plowing that air. You. I thought the lesson they would want to do is be farmers. Wasn't that a big problem for hundreds of years? Isn't that why Arsenio Hall called himself the urban man's Johnny Carson? I think so. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, are people lining up out in the middle of Cornfield, Iowa for new dunks? How would you prove this, by the way? Like, how would you prove that you've been discriminated against? You don't have to, you just say so. Well, I didn't get that loan. Sir, you had no credit. Well, that should not have stopped me from getting the loan. I planted a Hennessy tree, but it's not growing.  I put it in the ground. I planted a VSOP XO tree. I'm getting in some niche esoteric cognac.  Don't white people just go to their neighborhoods and build urban farms and ruin their communities? Yeah. Isn't that what's how it works? Detroit, yeah. Turns out the soil content, there's a high level of meth. Yeah, crazy. Wow, I didn't know. That and teeth.  And, by the way, there's pain in my arugula. Yikes.  Get it right. Second of all, I don't get the joke. Like this is supposed to be comedy. He's a comedian, a conservative comedian, but nonetheless he identifies as a comedian. What's the joke?   Like I don't understand. Like I'm struggling to wrap my mind around what the punchline is here.   Had you decided to do a quick like five minute Google search, you would have learned this. And as Summer Sewell of The Guardian explains, the number of black farmers in America peaked in 1920 when there were 949,889 farmers. Today of the country's 3.4 million total farmers, only 1.3% or 45,508 are black, according to new figures from the US Department of Agriculture released this month. They own a mere 0.52% of America's farmland. By comparison, 95% of US farmers are white. The black farmers who have managed to hold on to their farms eke out a living today. They make less than $40,000 annually compared with over 190,000 by white farmers, which is probably because their average acreage is about one quarter that of white farmers. So that last paragraph there gives you some insight as to why black farmers are disappearing and why this subsidy is necessary. Because less property leads to less profits.  So the farmers of color that exist need the additional assistance that they otherwise wouldn't necessarily need if they were already advantaged in society. But it's not just historical racism that's the issue here. It's also modern day racism. And the article that we just read cites the story of a farmer named John Boyd who explains specifically how he makes less money as a black farmer because he's black. In Baskerville, Virginia, huge sunrises turn ponds into fiery gulfs. Strangers in cars wave as they pass. Food is fried and smothered. Things move slowly. This is also Trump country with support displayed on bumper stickers and hand-painted roadside signs. Dixieland, as Boyd calls it, has palpable racial tension. He is a big man with deep set eyes usually in the shadow of a cowboy hat brim. His voice could rumble floorboards. Boyd, 53, seems most content bouncing in the seat of his tractor, smoke tufts marking his trail. He'll harvest the soybeans he's busy planting today in the fall once they're about knee high. He needs 45 bushels from each agor to make a profit. To avoid being docked, getting priced down for moisture or debris in the bushels, he will ask his wife, Kara Brewer Boyd, to enlist her white stepfather to sell the beans for him. When the other man takes Boyd's beans, he's not docked, but complimented. I lose money if I sell them myself, he says. In 2019, that shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be losing money because I'm black. So do you understand what's happening?  Because when he sells the beans, they'll say, oh, well, look at that, there's moisture in it. But conspicuously enough, when he has his white stepfather sell the beans, no complaints. Hmm, I wonder why that is. And to Steven Crowder, black farmers, I mean, that's preposterous. That's not a thing, except it is a thing. And they're disadvantaged in comparison with white farmers. And that's just like one example of the way that black farmers are disadvantaged. Another issue is that Boyd and 400 other farmers literally had to come together to sue the USDA because they were denied loans and other services provided by the government that farmers are supposed to get. But because they're black, they were not getting said loans given to farmers. But Steven Crowder thinks that this is a joke.  You're just being racist and you're trying to pass that off as comedy when in actuality we see right through you.  So I mean, this is bad even for Steven Crowder, but he just continues to do it because his audience of rubs is going to continue to reward him on Patreon and by buying his merchandise when he says more outrageous and explicitly racist things because that's what they like apparently.  So I mean, there's not much left to say that segment speaks for itself, but holy shit, that is some next level racism right there from Steven Crowder. He's like almost saying what he thinks out loud. He's like really close. Not quite there yet, but really getting there.  And usually when leftists say this, they're being facetious or half serious, but there is some merit to that claim because the World Values Survey actually finds that centrists, not socialists or far-right extremists are the most hostile towards democracy. And when you consider the fact that the Democratic Party was literally willing to destroy their own party to stop a socialist from winning the 2020 Democratic Party primary, I mean, this is why leftists say that. And it's not like Bernie Sanders was a real socialist. He was a social democrat, which means that he was a capitalist who wanted to kind of soften the edges of our capitalist system and offer more social programs, maybe give workers a little bit of the wealth that the owner class has. But we have even more evidence to confirm that maybe it is the case that liberals hate socialists more than fascists because in a new book by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes titled Lucky, How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, they explain how centrists were actually contemplating what would be worse, a second Trump term or a Sanders presidency. I repeat, Democratic Party elites didn't know. They were literally torn between Trump having another four years and Bernie Sanders having four years as president. So obviously we can't read the entire book, but I do want to point you towards a book review done by Bronco Marcetic for Jacobin. We're gonna read what he has to say because he gives us some key details and quotes that absolutely stood out to me for obvious reasons. Quote, many unnerved democratic establishment centrists weren't sure what they would do if it came down to Trump and Sanders in a general election, right Parnes and Allen. Founder or not, their fears of losing their party to socialism competed with their fears of Trump winning a second term. This is not going to be the party of Bernie, Bill Clinton told DNC Chair Tom Perez in 2017 about what mattered most in the following four years we learn. 30 House Democrats considered backing Mike Bloomberg at the prospect of the worst case scenario of Sanders winning the nomination, the author's right, scared equally that Sanders would lose to Trump and that he would beat him and transform the party. And while Barack Obama was open minded about the primary contest, we're told he didn't want Bernie Sanders to win and he didn't think Joe Biden would be a good candidate. Obama's thinly veiled doubts about Biden's ability to carry the ball over the end line without fumbling as one time rival Cory Booker put it was widely shared. Despite his poll numbers and self-confidence, the former vice president was humiliatingly rebuffed by party elites and top staffers who didn't believe he could win. As he limped into Iowa, much of the Democratic party's elite had already given up on him or was in the process of doing so the author's report. Alarmed by the diminished figure they watched make all the wrong headlines in public event after event, various corporate Democrats weighed launching their own 11th hour challenges to Sanders, Deval Patrick, John Kerry, even Hillary Clinton. By late February, Biden had posted embarrassing finishes in the first two contests, ran out of money, and in a detail that would be too on the nose if it were fiction, the power went out at his hotel and the wheels on his bus suffered a mishap. That Biden would end up the party nominee regardless was the product of several factors out of his control. And of course, there were Obama's calls to Biden's rivals that consolidated the field against Sanders, which the authors recount in greater detail than any previous account, like Mr. Magoo stepping on a sewer lid or a construction beam at just the right moment. Biden was propped up and rescued by a series of twists of fate he'd barely noticed and came out of the other side convinced it had all been his doing. So do you remember when all throughout the Democratic Party primary in 2020, we heard nothing but electability, electability. Joe Biden's the most electable. The media pushed it and Bronco makes that point as well in the article. Even Joe Biden's wife basically said, look, I know that you don't like my husband's healthcare policies, but really you should be thinking about who can beat Donald Trump. We heard all of this nonsense about electability and it turned out that they happened to be correct. But behind the scenes, nobody in the Democratic Party establishment actually believed that Joe Biden was capable of beating Donald Trump. And this one quote from a longtime Biden advisor, it was really fascinating.  This is a Joe Biden advisor, a longtime Joe Biden advisor saying this, that they knew Joe Biden was not the strongest candidate. Now, we can't go back in time and try a different scenario where we run Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump. But the point is that while they were telling us one thing, they believed something entirely different. They believed what was obvious that Joe Biden was not an inspirational candidate. He was similar to Hillary Clinton four years prior, who didn't really have a message. They had to find a justification for his campaign to begin with because it seemed like he was just running because he wanted more power and not because he actually wanted to support America and change the country for the better. And I've got to say, this isn't necessarily surprising. The revelations from this book, I think are less shocking than the revelations from the last book that Amy Parnes put out, which was shattered, but still the fact that we now have concrete proof or at least anecdotal evidence that Democrats were confused or at least torn between Bernie and Trump. It would have been really, really interesting to see what would have happened if Bernie Sanders became the Democratic party nominee. Would he have beat Donald Trump? I absolutely am confident that he would have defeated Donald Trump handily. But to see some pundits in mainstream media who claimed that they didn't support Bernie or we shouldn't support Bernie because he couldn't beat Trump, like to watch them pivot and support Donald Trump in lieu of Bernie Sanders because they are more afraid of socialism than fascism, that would have been a very important mask-off moment. And I feel like we're gonna get that mask-off moment from Democratic party elites sometime. Like they're gonna show their cards. I think it's obvious, like leftists already see it, but we need normal Americans to see it, right? We need the normies to understand that the party never really cared about electability.  They cared about stopping Bernie Sanders. That was the real primary. It was Bernie Sanders versus any and everyone else. And in this article, Bronco actually goes a little bit deeper into how specifically the book talks about how elites killed off Bernie Sanders campaign. Obama jumped in, of course, at the last minute to make the field consolidate in favor of Joe Biden. The DNC then used the pandemic to effectively end the primary and the DNC even threatened to cut states, pledged delegates in half if they chose to delay their elections. I mean, it just goes to show you how corrupt the Democratic Party is and how the individuals who have power absolutely do not want to give it up. So that is the main takeaway. When we say that liberals seem to hate socialists more than fascists, it's because of revelations like this. They literally didn't know who they'd choose, who they'd support if it came down to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Imagine being liberal and even for a minute questioning who's the better candidate. It is absolutely outrageous and I really want them to name names. Like I want to know specifically which Democratic Party officials didn't know if they'd support Donald Trump over Bernie Sanders or not. Like I want to know because these individuals obviously should not be nowhere near the levers of power because they're just morally bankrupt and very clearly are only interested in their own careers and maintaining the status quo. And that is morally bankrupt to say the least. I'm not sure how I miss this, but last month, Marjorie Taylor Greene, my favorite member of Congress, very heavily implied that Guam, which is a U.S. territory, is a foreign country.  We believe our hard earned tax dollars should just go for America, not for what? China, Russia, the Middle East, Guam. Okay, not super surprising giving that she is a complete imbecile. However, in response to her seemingly thinking that Guam is a foreign country, members of the U.S. National Guard from Guam decided to extend an olive branch and do something nice.  They took the high road and they delivered cookies to her office. Now you're seeing video of this on the screen. I don't know that I could play the clip because the audio featured here is likely copyrighted music, but I mean, you get the point, you can see that they're being incredibly polite talking to our staffers. They're trying to figure out when she's gonna be back and whether or not they'll be able to deliver the cookies to her in person or if they should just leave them with staffers. They're being cordial. Certainly they're not trying to intimidate Marjorie Taylor Greene or her staffers. There's not really anything negative that you can say about this. They're being perfectly pleasant and they just wanna deliver cookies to a member of Congress. So hopefully she is maybe encouraged to educate herself. However, since it is Marjorie Taylor Greene, once she found out about the cookies that they wanted to deliver, she complained to the Pentagon about this. She complained that they were delivering cookies to her and she was offended by this. As Justin Vallejo of Independent Reports, Marjorie Taylor Greene complained to the Pentagon that the Guam National Guard quote, ambushed her office as a political tool to intimidate Congress and called for them to be sent home. In a letter to the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, Miss Greene said the stunt of the National Guard delivering cookies after she confused Guam for a foreign country was part of a dangerous and troubling trend of the armed forces intimidating civilians, harassing Congress members and attacking journalists. Guam's congressional delegate, Michael San Nichols, leading more than two dozen National Guard troops to ambush my office unannounced and subsequently video record my staff without solicitation or consent, Miss Greene said. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't remember her asking for David Hogg's consent when she was following him around, harassing him and videotaping him, but if National Guard members from Guam try to deliver cookies to your office, that's bad and she wants them removed. Now, she kind of alluded to the fact that there is a greater presence of National Guard members on the Capitol, but what she is failing to point out here is that that is the direct result of her and Donald Trump inciting an insurrection. They wouldn't be there if you hadn't lied about the election and encouraged those folks to do that. But this, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. The US National Guard has been there intimidating them. I thought that right-wingers loved the troops, by the way, and the fact that she got cookies delivered to their office and they filmed it, terrible.  The fact that she is a member of Congress is an international embarrassment. It's not just embarrassing as an American, just as a human being. This level of stupidity is, it just, it doesn't bode well for the long-term survival of the human race.  Now, the Guam Delegate responded. His name is Michael Sandnickles, as the article states. He says that the visit was part of a broader tour in which they visited multiple house leaders and he insisted that this wasn't them using the military service or military members as political props. This wasn't meant to intimidate. They were quite literally trying to be polite to her. It was a gesture in good will.  Maybe you'll learn about us and acknowledge that we're Americans just like you, except she didn't take it that way. Now, some conservatives are trying to defend Marjorie Taylor Greene by saying, you know what, actually she's onto something because US National Guard members, they're supposed to be apolitical. That's a joke, but they're supposed to be apolitical and by doing this act, delivering cookies to a member of Congress that is inherently political, so she's right to denounce what they did and to call for their removal. But the Delegate to Guam responded in an interview on CNN and he said the most reasonable thing ever. They are critical of you and elected official using military service members as they see it as political props. What do you say to that criticism? That criticism is unfounded. We were not at all using military service members or political props. I was taking my guardsman on a tour of the Capitol and we stopped by several members' offices and we delivered some goodies. Cookies should never be considered a political prop and neither should our military, but goodwill is absolutely something that we wish to extend from Guam to everybody and my guardsmen wish to extend the same and we're very honored to be able to facilitate that. They were just trying to be nice, but she went straight carrying on them. Unbelievable. Well, I shouldn't say that. It is believable. It's probably the dumbest thing that Marjorie Taylor Greene has done to date, but I don't wanna try to rank it because she will definitely try to outdo this in about a week or so. So there's nothing left to be said. Marjorie Taylor Greene is so deluded that she believes bringing cookies to her office is an attempt to intimidate her. How fragile these right-wingers who are supposed to support the troops are. Before I say anything, I just wanna address the elephant in the room. Yes, it is in fact the case that I am a man in my 30s wearing a Band-Aid with emojis on it. Yeah, not too proud of that. It was all that I had. So before you comment saying, is Mike wearing an emoji Band-Aid? Yes, I am. Okay, okay, it's not gonna happen again. I promise. Anyways, moving on, I wanna talk about the golden age of YouTube for right-wingers. And that is the anti SJW era where right-wingers would complain about basically any instance of what they viewed as outrage culture so much so that they inadvertently became the outrage mob that they were denouncing. But now things are starting to change a little bit. Now right-wingers have kind of softened their rhetoric towards SJWs and they're not seen as this existential crisis, existential threat rather to the human species. Now if you are Newsmax, they're actually becoming SJWs themselves. At least they're emulating the tactics of SJWs, albeit on the right, they're right-wing SJWs. Now Fox News on the other hand, they are really caught up on cancel culture. They're trying to make as much money from that as they possibly can. We see Ted Cruz selling Dr. Seuss books that he's signing as if he wrote that and he's making lots of money off of Republican rubes but Newsmax is going in an entirely different direction. They are embracing the fact that they are right-wing SJWs to the point where they are literally putting trigger warnings before their newscasts and I'm not kidding about that. Quote, trigger warning, new Netflix show uses Jesus to bash the NRA. And yeah, as you can see, Jesus is in fact being portrayed here in a way that might outrage people who are overly sensitive. So now the SJW phenomenon, it still exists. It's just that the right-wingers are SJWs. And on Newsmax, they took the time to vocalize how offended they were at Gay Captain America. There's a new Marvel comic where Captain America is a gay teen and they were absolutely outraged by this and they took the time to let everyone know why this is not okay. All right, Grace, this is maybe my favorite most upsetting story of the day. I have mixed emotions about this because it's just the country's going bananas.  When he takes off his skull cap there, he's got like a Mohawk thing. He's not very muscular. What has this world come to, Grace? Now, see, I was really thinking about this story all day and I realized that it's wonderful. I'm all for inclusivity and I think it's wonderful to, you know, bring anyone into this superhero world that you want. But what I find amazing is what would really be pushing the boundaries is that maybe they had a conservative superhero or a Trump-supporting superhero. That would really require the left to be extra tolerant of other people that they disagree with. You know what would really be edgy is if they did a conservative or Trump-supporting Captain America. How would that even work? Superheroes, their sexuality is kind of baked into their identities in a way. How would a political ideology work with a superhero? Would he be shooting out mega hats at bad guys? Would he be taking on the big bad climate activists? I don't even know what this would look like, but is this not some snowflake-free bullshit right here? How does this not constitute the right being snowflakes? The host called it upsetting and said the country is going bananas. What is the world coming to? He was also outraged at the fact that he had a nose ring, he had tattoos and that he was not very muscular. Well, this character is supposed to be a teen.  I just, I don't know how to watch that clip and not think, wow, aren't these overly sensitive adults kind of being snowflakes? It's almost like they're emulating the SJWs that they complained about before. Isn't that interesting? And on Newsmax TV, it's not just that they're overly offended by everything, seemingly. They also are embracing cancel culture. At least this guest did. You know, in the 1950s, if you openly espoused communism, you would be canceled in Hollywood or in the federal government and I think that's perfectly right and just. So that of course is Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire and he was a guest, but as you could have expected, the Newsmax host did not push back on him when he literally advocated for cancel culture, saying canceling communists is quote, perfectly just and right. So do we see what's happening here? We're seeing the right literally embrace outrage culture. They are the SJWs that they railed against just a couple of years ago. The only thing that's left that would complete the ensemble here is if some of them dyed their hair blue. I think that would actually be pretty lit, except if that were to happen, if we saw like a conservative host on Newsmax with blue hair screaming about how offended he or she was at the sight of a gay Captain America, that would prove to us that not only we're living in a simulation, but that that simulation is completely broken. So I don't know what's left to say. The right is now officially SJWs, but I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. They always were. They always were the SJWs. Remember evangelicals and how they tried to cancel gay marriages in 2004? Remember how they wanted their religions to be visible or at least statues to their religions, the 10 Commandments to be visible on public property, and that they wanted to be included. And if they weren't, if they couldn't shove their religion in your face, and they would claim that they're being discriminated against, they always were the SJWs. It's just now I think that they're making it easier for people to see that they are the SJWs or social injustice warriors rather, but you get the point. This is absolutely hilarious. And I hope that they continue with this trend of focusing on non-issues because while they're talking about that, members of the left are organizing for Medicare for All and raising the minimum wage and for union rights. So keep up the stupidity because we are going to capitalize on your focus on these issues that literally make no difference to anyone's lives. So by now it's been a couple of days since the absolutely horrific Atlanta Spa Massacre. And there's not really any words that I could offer you that will make you feel any better or make the situation any less heartbreaking. And when I think about this story, I can't shake the comments from the Cherokee County Police Captain who basically defended the actions of this mass murderer. The investigators, they interviewed him this morning and they got that impression that, yes, he understood the gravity of it and he was pretty much fed up and then kind of at the end of his rope. And yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. Was he merciful? I'm not going to go to, I don't know if he was merciful or not. He was a pretty good lawyer. Imagine being deranged enough to downplay the actions of a mass murderer by saying he was just having a bad day. Would we be saying this if the perpetrator wasn't white? I don't think so. And I love how there's this fake debate going on about whether or not this was a hate crime. Well, he says it's not a hate crime so we're a little bit perplexed here. We don't know if this was a hate crime or not. Of course it was. Are we really having this conversation? Are they really this clueless?  This is the mass murder version of that where he literally deliberately targeted Asians and then says, look, I'm not racist. Unbelievable. I don't want to take the time here to complain because I think that you're feeling the same way that I'm feeling but what really matters now more than ever is to elevate the voices of members of the Asian community because there has absolutely been an uptick in anti-Asian violence and hatred and harassment ever since Donald Trump has used words like a China virus and Kung flu to describe COVID-19. And it's not like there is this new phenomenon of anti-Asian bigotry and violence because of Trump but did he make matters worse? Absolutely. But with regard to this particular story, I do think it's important that we be nuanced and we look at all the issues. This isn't just an issue of anti-Asian racism. It's also an issue that relates to sexism as well. These issues are interrelated and this is what an MSNBC news reporter very eloquently pointed out. I know that the suspect mentioned he claimed that there was no racial motivation involved. The issue here is that experts and activists all stress that given the way in which Asian women have been seen in this country, historically fetishized, hyper-sexualized, it's made them particularly susceptible to sexual and physical violence. And so therefore it's impossible to divorce race from this conversation. And she is exactly right. In the United States, there's this history of hyper-sexualizing and fetishizing and dehumanizing Asian women. So when we see this uptick in violence against Asians in America, it doesn't apply to all Asians equally. And certainly women have disproportionately bared the brunt of that. And I wanna read an op-ed from NBC News where author Nancy Wang Yuan shares her experience and she talks about how violence against Asian women in particular has been an issue and not enough people are talking about it, presumably because they're ignorant to these experiences. So she writes, the only time I was ever in Atlanta where six Asian women were shot dead on Tuesday, a young white man shouted me so horny to me at the airport. And as the only Asian woman in the space, I knew he was talking to me. I locked eyes with him for a second and then rushed off to catch my flight back to Los Angeles. I was in Atlanta to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Asian American Studies presenting a paper there for the first time.  Tuesday's killings occurred at three spas in the Atlanta area. Two other victims, a white man and a white woman were also killed.  He was fed up at the end of his rope, Cherokee County Sheriff Captain Jay Baker said. He had a bad day and this is what he did. Based on the reported statement, investigators have so far concluded that the attacks did not appear to have been motivated by race as an Asian American woman who has endured sexualized racism all of my life. Such ignorance enrages me.  As lawyer Jai Min Kim argued in 2009, prosecutors and police may be even less likely to add hate crime charges in cases of rapes and sexual assaults targeting Asian women. In 1875, Chinese women were targeted by a federal immigration law called the PAGE Act. This law effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women to the United States based on a morals clause that considered all of them prostitutes at the time.  Sound familiar? Furthermore, the multiple wars with and various occupations of Asian countries have long contributed to the exploitation and fetishization of Asian women. In World War II, the unknown numbers of so-called Asian comfort women kidnapped by Japanese soldiers from China, Korea and the Philippines were transferred not to freedom but to the US military. To this day, sex work in camp towns around US military bases throughout Asia gives USGIs the illusion of access and perennial permission to Asian women's bodies. Jane Hong, an associate professor of history at Occidental College told me, many Asian American women have endured strangers yelling me so horny and love you long time at them thanks to American pop culture.  The casual racism of this scene has haunted Asian American women for decades. As writer and musician, Christine Luang Dixon noted in response to the Atlanta shootings, the hypersexualization of Asian women plays a huge part in the violence we face. I've been cornered on the street as men say, me love you long time. I've been offered money for a happy ending massage. I've been hit on because I'm Asian and told it's a compliment. Indeed, contrary to the insinuations and assumptions made by Georgia law enforcement officials, I can't remember ever having experienced racism separate from sexism. When I turn into a lane too slowly on the streets of Los Angeles, I am not surprised if someone rolls down the window to call me a C slur B.  Even the perception that I will not fight back if I am attacked racially is a form of racism intersecting with sexism. This is the lived reality for too many Asian American women. Since the pandemic began, Asian American women are 2.3 times more likely to report hate incidents than men. According to data compiled by the reporting forum, Stop AAPI Hate. In total, the organization received nearly 3,800 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents from March 19th of 2020 to February 28th. The mass shootings in Georgia seemed to be part of a nationwide pattern of Asian women being disproportionately targeted and hate incidents. We are more vulnerable to attack precisely because of the intersection of racism and sexism. And to immediately remove racism from the equation neglects how racism has always intersected with sexism for Asian American women in this country. So this is really important to hear these experiences. It really is important because I'm sure that there will be people who revisit full metal jacket, for example. And that scene and, you know, conservatives will just chalk this up to cancel culture.  But it's not just jokes to everyone. These jokes lead to real world consequences that actually affect people till this day. That old movie still affects the lives of Asian women. So we have to look at racism and sexism and how it uniquely impacts Asians here in this instance.  It's also Asian men. Of course, there's the viral video of the Asian man being assaulted. This is basically a call for all Americans, this article here, to understand, be mindful of the things that other people are going through and experiencing, even if you can't necessarily relate to them. We all have these subjective experiences as human beings and we have to talk to each other. We have to listen to marginalized communities and women because we don't know what they're going through. And it is important that we learn from them by listening, listen to their experiences and don't be so quick to judge and dismiss it as cancel culture. Or they're just complaining, this is the oppression Olympics, this is people's lives. And as a humanist, I wanna make sure that people's lives are as good as they possibly can be. And that means we have to look out for more disadvantaged people. And that's where we will leave this. I think this was a great op-ed and I really, really feel terrible for the families of the victims. And we'll leave that there because there's nothing else that you can really say about this. It's just tragic all around. But what we all need to do is inform ourselves about the experiences of the Asian American community. With more than a third of Republicans stating that they are not going to be taking the COVID-19 vaccines, I don't necessarily blame the Biden administration for asking Donald Trump to encourage his supporters to take the vaccines because usually I wouldn't want someone who is a terrible human being to be legitimized and given this credibility. But this is a public health crisis and Trump supporters like it or not trust what he says. So if he tells them they should take the COVID vaccine, they're going to be more likely to listen to him than someone like Joe Biden or Dr. Anthony Fauci. So I think it's good if Trump actually were to join the campaign to get Americans vaccinated. And in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, he was asked about whether or not he wants his supporters to get vaccinated and he actually did endorse the vaccines. Kind of. Mr. President, I know that you received the vaccine. Mrs. Trump also got the vaccine. Would you recommend to our audience that they get the vaccine then? I would, I would recommend it. And I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it. And a lot of those people voted for me, frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that. And I agree with that also. I'm gonna go out of my way to be more charitable than I usually am and say, I think that that was better than nothing. It was better than nothing. He did work in the idiocy about freedom. That's not how vaccines and public health works. This isn't necessarily an issue of freedom. And this is what conservatives have been saying about wearing masks as well. Well, don't I have the freedom to not wear a mask in public as in this America?  So this freedom argument is completely just idiotic and Trump in the past has explicitly endorsed anti-vax misinformation. He claimed that vaccines cause autism which has been thoroughly debunked and is proven on numerous occasions by experts. Nonetheless, what he said here, if we're being charitable, it does matter. I think that his supporters hearing it from him, they are more likely to listen to him than anyone else. I think that that's obvious. I mean, this is a cult. Trump supporters, this is all a cult. So what are you going to do if you need them to do something that they don't want to do? You get the cult leader to instruct them to do said thing and that's what we need to see happen if we actually want Republicans to get vaccinated because again, one third of Republicans being hesitant to take the COVID vaccines, mostly Republican men, I mean, that's not good. We need to reach herd immunity and we can't do that if there's a substantial portion of the American population that doesn't want to take the vaccine. So for him to do this, I do think it's important but I mean, he's going to do this irresponsibly. So on one hand, I want him to come out and say, take the vaccine, but on another hand, he also undermines what he's saying by talking about, oh, well, this is also about freedom. So you should definitely take it, but you're free to not take it if you don't want to take it. I mean, this is why vaccines should be mandatory because this isn't quite literally about freedom. It's not about freedom. It is about public health. And if we are going to talk about freedom, then we should be arguing that Americans should have the freedom to go in public and not have to worry that they're going to catch COVID-19 because we're unable to reach herd immunity because Republicans don't want to take the COVID vaccines because they don't believe in science. That's the conversation that we should be having if we're going to talk about freedom. But regardless, I don't want to be too down on Trump here and make it seem like I'm an unreasonable hack. Him telling his supporters to take the vaccine is good. Should he be more responsible in promoting the vaccine? Obviously, but it's Donald Trump. He's an imbecile. So anything is important. And him saying this, it does matter. I just wish that he came out to say this on his own accord. He shouldn't have had to have been asked about this if he actually cared about his supporters because for me, I want my viewers to get vaccinated.  I don't want you to get COVID-19. So if he actually cared about his supporters, you think that he'd do this on his own volition and he shouldn't have to be asked. Nonetheless, again, I think this is a step in the right direction aside from some bad points that he made. Unless I'll take it and I hope that this actually does have an impact because again, if they're going to listen to anyone it's going to be Donald Trump. And if they don't listen to him if he says they should take the COVID vaccines then I don't know. But what I will tell you is that I will take any of the COVID vaccines. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, the Johnson and Johnson vaccines, stick all those fuckers in me. I'll be a guinea pig for new vaccines. This virus is serious and it doesn't matter how old you are or if you aren't immunocompromised, if you get this, there is a very large likelihood that you will deal with long-term health issues. Scar tissue in your lungs. And I don't want this. I don't want this for my viewers. I don't want this for anyone who I love. I don't want anyone that I know. My mom, my mother and father-in-law to be subject to getting COVID-19. I want all of us to be safe. And as a result of me wanting this I'm encouraging everyone to get vaccinated.  It's just a matter of making sure that we convince others that they should be vaccinated as well. Well, that's all that I've got for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've made it this far, as usual, we're not gonna end the show without thanking all of the people who make the show possible. All of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, of course. Thank you so much for helping us not just to survive but thrive as well. You all are absolutely crucial to our growth. I just wanna let you know, PSA, I will be streaming on Twitch this weekend. You can go to twitch.tv slash humanistreport. I will be streaming Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice. I just finished Bloodborne. I've worked my way through the entire Soulsborne series and I am going to play the final Soulslight game from software game on Twitch. Maybe not all of it, but I'm definitely gonna start it on Twitch and I hope that you all will join me there to watch me. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Anyways, I'm done talking. I will see you all next week. Take care, everyone. My name is Mike Figueroa. This has been The Humanist Report. Have a great weekend.


You guys need evacuated, but we'll help you there now mate. The flood waters are only going to start coming up and it's going to be high tide in like three or four hours. He said it was okay for him to come here, is that right? It's getting quite deeper. I'm waiting for you sir. Your house is locked up? Yeah. Ah, okay. You guys alright?