Podcasts/Sacred Tension-Lucien Greaves Free Speech Part 2MASTERED8dmi4

Lucien_Greaves_Free_Speech_Part_2MASTERED8dmi4 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, feel, twitter, satanic temple, question, streets, point, fucking, satanic, demands, person, developing, tst, internet, apa, asks, community, thinking, satanists, canceled SPEAKERS Doug Misicko, Stephen Bradford Long

00:00 You're listening to a rock candy podcast

Stephen Bradford Long 00:30 So let's pivot to some questions. Do you have time for some questions? Yeah, let's hear from the audience all right so so we have a fuck ton of different questions both from discord and from Twitter. So...

Doug Misicko 00:42 Which ones are better what is there a different quality between discord and Twitter? Is it like the difference between like, I don't know, 4chan and Twitter? One's going to be really stupid...

Stephen Bradford Long 00:54 I am personally very proud of my Discord community. I almost never have to break up fights. i They're all very smart, very mature, treat each other very nicely. They are petitioning me for a porn channel. So I might, I might, I might have to institute that at some point. In general, they're great people. Much better than than Twitter because Discord is private. And it's only by invitation and I reign supreme. I am the queen of my Discord server and I can be head anyone I fucking want. And so yeah, okay, so a question from from Timothy on. Discord asks the tenets of TST were written by only one person, should they be revisited and examined by more than one person? First of all, is that true? And second? Thoughts? Okay. Okay. Okay. Written by two people. You and Malcolm? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And should they be revisited and examined by more than I guess, in this situation? Two people?

Doug Misicko 02:04 Well, I mean, it doesn't matter, the people, I guess, or the number of them, but I guess the arguments put forward, you know, that Yeah. Into the tenants themselves is the idea that they're open to revision, right, that we should always be available to change our points of view or whatever. So you know, if it comes to be that there really is a rational consensus that there's something that should be updated, omitted or added? That's, that's always a conversation we're available to.

Stephen Bradford Long 02:37 Okay, cool.

Doug Misicko 02:39 What's really a reason why I think of something interesting that people probably don't know anymore. That's really the reason I rejected the idea of putting the seven tenants on our monument. It was proposed that we should put the seven tenants on the Baphomet monument, or at least engraved in the back. And the thinking was, is that it's the wrong message that this isn't actually etched in stone, we shouldn't worship words that are placed in you know, that are that are etched in permanence like that, that we should always be able to kind of change our viewpoints based upon what we know. In real time.

Stephen Bradford Long 03:18 Yeah, that's fascinating. So So kind of along those lines, another person on Discord asks Oh, actually, just one thing, just don't bring up Facebook again. We get it Facebook sucks. What person on Discord? Oh, it's too late. It's too late. It already came up. Let's see here. One person says, Will Lucien be writing our TST Satanic Bible?

Doug Misicko 03:45 Probably not. I mean, it's, it's likely I'll write something that will kind of be taken that way. But I'm not really interested in writing. In writing some pretentious tome that lays down the standards for how one lives in how the satanists behaves. And, you know, that kind of thing. I think the the thing I can do now is really put together like a book of essays and write kind of contemporary account of, you know, where we've been and where this came from, and that type of thing. And those are the types of things I'm working on. Cool. Now's not really the time I don't think for a type of manifesto that that makes these kinds of bold, timeless proclamations because they're again, you know, we're fluid we're changing where we're open to revision and updating, and I would hate to see what happens to LaVey happened to the Satanic Temple after lightly and Malcolm die and then all of a sudden it becomes this cult of, of fundamentalism looking back there origins and never deviating from whatever words were spoken in that time or whatever. I mean, I like to think that we'll always be a community that even if you know, things progress to a point where, if you look back at what we did now and find it hopelessly outdated, it won't matter, because we've grown enough, you know, with or without Malcolm and I and the rest of the founding Council and everybody else.

Stephen Bradford Long 05:29 Absolutely, yeah. And you know, one of the things that I do get a very strong sense of, I don't feel like I have to agree with everything you or Malcolm, or other people say, in order to be a member, because I really get a sense that it isn't about you. It's about the community. You know, it is about, it's about the Satanic Temple, as a community, and it isn't about your particular statements or Malcolm's particular statements. It isn't about your individual beliefs. And that's something that I really appreciate about TST actually is I don't have this sense of, it's about you, I have a sense that it is about me and the community. And the members.

Doug Misicko 06:15 You know, it's funny, I can, you know, we have meetings every Sunday night, and the council does its votes in the I'll be on the council meetings. But I don't take a voting role in the council. So I can give my point of view. But Council might vote one way or the other.

Stephen Bradford Long 06:37 So yeah, so you're like the Queen of England. So with with your little dogs, and

Doug Misicko 06:44 it's kind of a checks and balances system? Yeah. It's something that keeps us from being you know, just some kind of autocracy or whatever. And we'll have our meetings. And if people argue with me, you know, then they'll argue that I'm wrong about things. And I'll talk to friends of mine in the Satanic Temple. And they tell me, they've been talking with other people who I don't talk with anymore, who've left the Satanic Temple, or whatever. And nobody tells them not to. And, you know, we'll argue viewpoints everything else. And then I'll log on somewhere and see somebody declaring a cult. Yes. I think if you only knew if you only had any working definition of a cult at all, you know that this just does not fit.

Stephen Bradford Long 07:35 And absolutely, yes, 100%. So the devil's angry accountant, also known as ad who we love on Twitter says, I have one question, when are we getting that satanic planet album? We've been promised. I've been impatiently waiting for it. And then he goes on to say, I also have one comment. I love you both for everything you do for us, which is very sweet of you to say you guys have really helped us push through one of the worst periods in American history, which is very sweet of you to say. So satanic planet album, what's, what's the status on that?

Doug Misicko 08:15 Yes, well, well, first off, I'm way familiar with ADHD comes down to the movie nights to good. And then I second that we love you at Yes. And you You're great. But as for the Savannah, I mean, nobody's more frustrated with slow progress than me. So yeah. I was supposed to get like five more final mixes for the satanic planet last week. But I don't think the guy who's mixing it is getting paid anyway. So I can't complain too much. But we are in the final mixes stage. And we're almost there. And then after final mixes stage, we can take this to labels, get our label, but my understanding is that after we get a label, and say I would, I would say it's yet early, it's going to be like a month from now that we start shopping for it. So once we're picked up by one, I think we've got at least six months before the album can come out.

Stephen Bradford Long 09:17 Great. So Heather on Twitter, asks, if there are any misconceptions people have about you that surprise you.

Doug Misicko 09:27 Oh, no, no, nothing seemed to surprise me at this point. Everybody has misconceptions. Yeah. But after a while, nothing shocking. It's like I go to events, sometimes, you know, chapter events and things like that. And sometimes I just look around at what's going on in these rooms I'm invited into it just strikes me sometimes, how little it strikes me how normal some of those lifestyle is for me. Yeah, and just other people's heads would explode if they lived my life for a year, or whatever. So I think I think in some cases, I just hit overload and nothing's gonna surprise me anymore. So any misconceptions I see about me are not likely to surprise me very much.

Stephen Bradford Long 10:19 Great. Excellent. Okay, so is there anything ileum? Shadows, Williams shadows, I'm not entirely sure what your name is. But he asks, Are they asked? Is there anything that has happened since the temples founding that has surprised you or greatly exceeded your expectations?

Doug Misicko 10:41 The thing? Yeah, the temple itself has greatly exceeded expectations, I think I think I had kind of lofty goals. But they were very pessimistic ones, too. I really thought we had a good shot at redefining the whole religious liberty debate in the United States. And that we would, you know, I really felt good about our chances for getting people to think, again, about pluralism and real diversity and that type of thing. But I didn't expect the level of support we gained in the way we did and as fast as we did, and I'm really happy with the kind of community and support network we've, we've developed at this point. And I thought, I thought all this stuff could happen. But I didn't think it would happen at this speed, early thought we had the potential to get where we are, but not as soon as we have gotten there. And I'm really happy about that. In a lot of ways, this is all played out to a best case scenario. And I would not have had the hubris to imagine eight years ago that we could have had a documentary about us at Sundance, and I would be doing interviews with some members of mainstream media describing what we're doing as inspirational and had noble

Stephen Bradford Long 12:04 Yeah, definitely. Did you ever foresee or expect the kind of community that has come up around the Satanic Temple

Doug Misicko 12:13 that I, I felt we would get? I didn't know we would get it in these numbers, you know, but I did know, from the beginning that there was a real need that we were filming, you know, that, that there was a real point to what we were doing. And there were people identifying with the blasphemous imagery and Satanism who saw things from the perspective that we were coming at it, you know, and in that I expected, but still, the immediate expectations were that it would be far more obscure and countercultural than then it's been it is now that it wouldn't spread is widely as it already has.

Stephen Bradford Long 12:56 Yeah. Oh, I just saw a really great question. Where did where was it? So Lucifer Morningstar fan asks, Does tsp plan to get involved in any way regarding Black Lives Matter? Or the fight for justice for violence by police, against bipoc? I guess that's how you pronounce that. I know, he touched on it briefly a few months ago, but I'm interested if there are any updates,

Doug Misicko 13:22 yeah, we are still developing our satanic action committee that is going to work towards lobbying and legislative reform, in the types of things we can we think can really lend some lasting change to this. And we're also developing our Satanists of color coalition to be blended in as part of that, to work towards those ends with us, because a lot of those a lot of the issues taken on by the satanic Action Committee, we will be the types of things that we think can help stop police brutality and murder and, you know, taking away qualified immunity, looking for that kind of outside oversight towards whichever entity is doing policing, you know, trying to find like, the best methods for doing that. And I think, like I said, last time, you know, as soon as soon as protests broke out, again, people were asking that, you know, we released a statement, and I have to say, it's kind of a crippling fear when things like this happen, that there's no right way to go about it, because I release a statement sometimes on these issues and told rightly, in some ways that I'm not the guy to do it, because I'm a white guy talking about these these issues or whatever. But so it'll be nice to have the satanists of color coalition to kind of speak to these things from the, from the lens of what it means to be a satanist and a person of color. That's how we're going to go about these things. Yeah, and have that kind of consultation. But in this is the part where I might go too far. And so people's opinions. But it is a little disheartening to me that people feel the need to come to the Satanic Temple and ask what we're doing with Black Lives Matter. Because in one way, you know, Black Lives Matter is a slogan that everybody can get behind. Yes, black lives do matter. But it's also an organization in when we're talking about the organization, I think the bigger question is, what is Black Lives Matter doing for black lives matter? I'm really concerned about the fact that, you know, we were speaking earlier, you know, and I was saying that organizations pop up in there taking a position that's unquestionably a morally, just one. But to the point where nobody can question you know, either their tactics or or efficiency, and Black Lives Matter pulled in 10s of millions of dollars in donations after the George Floyd murder. And I'm still at a loss to see where this is going. When it comes to advocating for real solutions to these problems. I'm seeing a lot of statements about creating safe places and stuff like that. But I don't know how that's necessarily Trent, I was just looking at their website, and I'm at a loss to see as to, you know, how some of this translates into tangible action, it doesn't mean it's not there, it just means that I maybe it's not being effectively conveyed yet, I'm not really seeing the message, I'm not seeing the the entire agenda in a way that makes sense to me. But it does. This organization, and I'm not going to raise money for an organization unless I really know where the money is going. And that it's really being used towards the intended ends, I see shitty commentary asking us all the time where our money goes. And I think it's pretty obvious, we don't make a whole lot of money, you can still see, you know, what we're spending money on, if you're looking, you can see that we're litigating these things in the courts. And when we're fundraising for our reproductive rights campaign, we definitely have an idea of where that $100,000 will go. And, you know, once this goes into litigation, I guarantee you, we will have to spend every penny of that.

Stephen Bradford Long 17:18 Yeah, go it's not fucking cheap. Like, you're not Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, funding these things off of T shirt sales is, is pretty challenging.

Doug Misicko 17:29 Right? Right. So I really do get concerned that people are too easily placated by by people putting out statements and all the rest. And, you know, creating a creating a really nice hash tag that people can get behind to the point where people want to identify with that by giving money, the organization or whatever, but you really do have to start asking what are the most effective tactics to get where we want to be? It's not enough to know where you stand on an issue. Yeah, you also have to have a plan for getting there.

Stephen Bradford Long 18:05 I completely agree with that. And I think that in this day and age in particular, I feel like you know, in the age of social media, hashtags, I think there are a lot of impotent leftist slash progressive movements that go fucking nowhere, while they feel like they are being successful Twitter, Twitter, like, and you know, this might just be me, this might just be me being cynical, but it may be I'll get in trouble for saying this. But I really think that, for example, the Women's March was a complete failure in that I don't feel like it really enacted any tangible change whatsoever. This brought

Doug Misicko 18:45 the March for Science, the March for Science was similar ever. Yes. Yes, exactly. The thing is, is those kinds of marches, they aren't nothing, you know, they do get people to identify with an issue that really motivates people and generate, but

Stephen Bradford Long 18:59 it can't, It can't end there. Like there, there has to be another step after that.

Doug Misicko 19:04 Right? Exactly. It is squandered energy, though, if you if you aren't making specific demands, if you haven't, if you don't have a theory of action, you don't have some roadmap for change. And I really don't think that taking the streets to the streets means what it used to, I think, you know, in former times, anybody in the Oval Office would have been really concerned with the fact that there's hordes of people marching out on the streets, we don't have that level of shame in the oval office anymore. That level of concern we have an administration in that really just knows like, okay, they're gonna be out on the street for a while, but they're not asking shit of us. So, you know, it's it's really no, not much of a concern. Now, is it exactly after a while, you know, there's the question of whether a whole lot of violence out on the streets or whatever helps Republicans when they're running On a law and order platform, and that's what worries me too. If you don't have a theory of action, you're not really asking for making tangible demands. When you're out on the streets, you might just be after a while, you might just be raising the hackles of the of the normies in, in their suburban houses, you know, who are feeling like, oh, well, we need to get the riffraff off the street or whatever we, you know, we need to we need to vote for law and order or whatever else. And so, you know, taking the street is not an unimportant thing. But it's it's squandered energy. I think, if you're not really pushing for, you know, a valid action plan.

Stephen Bradford Long 20:38 That's interesting, how if there isn't, if there isn't an action plan, than if it does spill over into rioting and violence, that, that really, that that really, that can really hurt the cause. So I'm, I'm on the record as as saying, I actually, I think it was on tst. TV, I was talking to Jackman Turco and I, and I was just like, I am pro riot. And then it wasn't until afterwards that I'm like, let me back up and think about what I just fucking said and process that. Because I'm not pro riot, no one has, I don't know anyone who is pro riot. But I think what I meant was, I want to be able to understand why this happens. Without necessarily condoning it. If that makes it stand

Doug Misicko 21:25 it you can understand that level of doubt, understand that people see a guy get murdered for exactly 10 minutes out on the street, and nothing to stop them. And you know, they get away with it. That's one thing, I really do think the cops would have gotten away with it Minneapolis if nobody had rioted. And yeah, just murdered George Floyd, that, that I think would have would have been a thing. So you can understand that outrage, you can understand that, why that rioting took place. But to condone it indefinitely, you know, it's it's after a while less and less people are going to be sympathetic to it less and less people are going to understand where it came from. Less and less people are going to acknowledge its roots. In more and more, you know, you might see people just exploiting that situation, just to, you know, just just to act badly out on the streets or whatever else, you just you just don't know, you know, that the whole, the whole scene begins to shift and it begins to change in people's sympathies go elsewhere. And that's like, if you're thinking tactically, you know, it's nice to shake people up, you know, have the riots in the time in the moment where people know exactly where it came from, and why, but really, you know, kind of, you know, probably quickly develop your action plan to see how you stop this from happening again, yeah, how you resolve these issues, and how you have them addressed in such a way that your needs are met?

Stephen Bradford Long 22:53 Yeah, definitely. And, you know, it also just brings to mind something that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, which is there are times when catharsis and strategy are not bedfellows. And I think that that we are very used to instant gratification in the world of social media, we are very used to that instant gratification, that instant dopamine hit with likes, and so on. And so you know, if you say something outrageous on Twitter, or if you say something inflammatory, whether it is true or not, you're going to get that that dopamine hit. And I think the reality is very often is that is that activism. And change requires long suffering, grueling strategy, in a way that is often uncomfortable and very frequently boring. You know, I, I think of, I forget where I heard this story, but I think the one of the best examples of this actually is gay rights. You know, gay activists have been doing this for decades. And I feel like a lot of gay activists were really fucking good at identifying specific demands and just hammering those demands for decades. You know, and like one of those demands, I forget where I heard this story, but one of the demands was for Library of Congress to to list gay and lesbian as a genre, or as a category in the Library of Congress. Super tiny, fucking boring thing. But when the Library of Congress recognizes gay and lesbian as a category, the subtle cultural shift that takes place is huge. And so it was like, here's this specific demand, and it was long and it was boring, and it was excruciating. But that's often how activism is and I really feel like there are times when catharsis and activism just sounding off on Twitter, or sounding off in a way that isn't very strategic will actually work against our strategy. He and I feel like a lot of activists on Twitter err more on the side of catharsis, rather, on the side of strategy,

Doug Misicko 25:07 right? To the point that they don't they don't even seem to recognize that there's any kind of failing and then just morally posturing in such a way that makes them look better to their internet friends in a failure to recognize that this doesn't necessarily help the situation on the ground at all. Yeah, another victory in the gay rights campaign that was a lot bigger was lobbying the APA to take homosexuality out of the Diagnostic and Statistical map. salutely. Yeah. And they they protested, they they lobbied they protested at conferences, they had, you know, they appeal to people in the APA, directly, and they made it an issue. And then the APA took it out of the DSM. And it was not it was not based on any new science that they had. It was the diagnosis wasn't based on science to begin with. Yeah. And it was taken out for reasons that had nothing to do with science as well. And oddly enough, that didn't help people to realize that the DSM isn't a scientific manual, but they just applauded the APA for applying their non science to better political ends.

Stephen Bradford Long 26:22 Yeah. And, and the huge cultural shift that occurred over decades, as a result of that one thing is just gargantuan, you know, it's it's huge. But it's having those specific demands. And I I'm with you on worrying that a lot of these protest movements, that their demands are not clear and specific enough. And when that happens, it's the that energy, just diffuses. And that's an enormous waste of, of energy.

Doug Misicko 26:52 Yeah, I do see a lot of things online, where people are getting angry that some of the protests that are still going on now are receiving very little coverage from the press. But that's understandable, too. It's not, it's just not news anymore. After a while you're not getting attention, because it's it's an old story. And, you know, it might seem unfair, given how important the topic is, but it's still subject to those rules of supply and demand where, you know, if it's, if too much of is is going on, you've just kind of inundated people with it. And that just kind of goes back to that whole issue of prolonged protest, starting to get further and further removed from its origins and becoming its own own course of events that people begin to feel a lot differently about. So I do feel that, you know, I'm, again, really, really kind of disappointed that I haven't seen as strong a push as I would have hoped for real change in policing. And all of a sudden, everybody kind of rallied behind this idea of defund the police. And at the same time, they were saying, Well, when we say defund this is what we really mean. Yeah. And I was concerned that it didn't matter what they were saying they really meant, but it was going to get boiled down to economics, and people would be satisfied with budget cuts. And I feel like we've gotten to that point where people aren't talking about real tangible changes that might help. They're just talking about diminishing budgets now. And that, to me, is just not going to help anything.

Stephen Bradford Long 28:32 Or they are fighting over what the slogan means, instead of what people actually meant by the slogan, you know,

Doug Misicko 28:42 in therefore, it only needs, you know, to less than the budget, at the end of the day, people will will just take it because they're still struggling with, you know, trying to figure out the economics of defund, yeah. When I think you know, I really think there should have to be, you know, more multifaceted approach here that that confront several things at once isn't going to be satisfied with with merely a lower budget. All right.

Stephen Bradford Long 29:12 So there's one question that got a ton of of requests was, so listeners really want to hear your take on this? What is your take on Kancil culture?

Doug Misicko 29:25 Well, you see, a lot of people can be talking about a lot of different things with this. So I kind of want to define my terms carefully here. I absolutely will. People will decry canceled culture. And then at the same time, people will say that canceled culture isn't really a thing or then they'll justify the the alleged cancellations of people by saying that they were, you know, appropriate, given the circumstances or or whatever. So if we're kind of just thinking broadly about this new kind of moral culture that is very unforgiving, unforgiving, have any type of slip ups of language here and don't accept any type of apology, do their best to take the most offense without allowing for any remediation, I do see a problem with that, I do really think that we as progressives should do more to try to change people's minds and not try to fight this battle of attrition so vigorously, where we tell people, they cannot be on our side, because I really think if you don't give people flexibility to grow, you're just going to force them into into, into remaining in one camp or the other. And if you can do a little bit to at least try to account for where people have come from, what level of exposure they have, to certain ideas, what level of education they have, or at least give people some space to consider another side of the argument, or really to, to figure out themselves where they're coming from, if they really didn't mean harm, but but maybe said things the wrong way, or whatever, I think, you know, there really is a need to allow people for that kind of flexibility. I, I don't see a whole lot of that now. And it's it is concerning, because I really feel like, I just feel like there are a lot of people who could be corrected, you know, and it wouldn't take too terribly much. You know, there's a, there's a black guy who goes around and does these YouTube videos where he meets up with white supremacist, and just to ask them, where they're coming from, why they do this, you know, meets up with Klansmen and things like that. And sometimes it just doesn't take much dialogue at all for him to get these people feeling, you know, at least very confused and apologetic. And sometimes if you just start up up front screaming in somebody's face, telling them they're wrong, and there's no no correcting them ever, you're only leaving them one available tribe. To go to, if you're going to if you're going to split up people's politics to get you know, just in a simplistic left and right framework. But, you know, the more you kind of try to fit somebody into the enemy's camp, the more they're just going to embrace that status that you've given them.

Stephen Bradford Long 32:25 Yeah, you know, I left the internet for about a year, it was back in 2015. Because my, my mental health was just very, very poor. And I was like, I have to get the fuck offline and just, you know, focus on my mental health and on my new relationship with my boyfriend, and just all this stuff. And so I, I took a sabbatical from the internet, logged off Twitter, logged off Facebook and just did not get back on for a year or two year I forget how it was like, it was a long period of time. But then in 2016, I got back on and you know, started writing again, started kind of being more of a public figure again, and I was and I was just doing my same old stuff I was I was doing the stuff that I'd always done and that people enjoyed my writing previously for that was when I was writing mostly about homosexuality in the church. And it felt it felt like I reentered a completely different internet. You know, I maybe it was just the spaces I was in. Or maybe there was a tangible shift between 2015 and 2016. No, no, no, no, I got on. Again in 2015. It was back I can't remember fully. But it was it was back during that time, kind of GamerGate ish that time. And it felt like I had gotten on to a completely different internet. And the the kindness and generosity and conversation that I had become used to just suddenly wasn't there. And before I knew it, I was dog piled by a ton of people who called me who are saying that I was an enabler of homophobes, and that I was enabling gay suicides, and I'm like, Excuse me, I am gay. What the fuck are you talking about? But it was, it was just like this massive dogpile that I was suddenly at the bottom of and I had no clue what was going on. And that was when suddenly the alt right started making a lot of fucking sense to me. And on the one hand, people,

Doug Misicko 34:31 when people talk about canceled culture, I think what they're really concerned about are, you know, this this segment of the population that does exist, that seems to feel it's a moral imperative to take the greatest offense at anything they can possibly take that offense to. Yeah, to the point where I have found that sometimes just acknowledgement of race or ethnicity will be seen as a slur And when in fact it's very questionable that it is like look at the look at the Trader Joe's controversy where they had trader Jose's and trader Ming's.

Stephen Bradford Long 35:09 I don't even I don't even know about this. Yeah, it was.

Doug Misicko 35:13 Trader Joe's has their trader Jose, where they have their their Mexican foods and trader make. They have like their Chinese foods and that kind of thing. And, you know, there was this outcry that they they needed to not do this because it was racist. And I wasn't sure that it wouldn't be racist for them to do exactly the opposite of what they did. And make these in put these things under the trader who Trader Joe's brand, is sometimes it feels like it's just whichever way you decide, and then you decide to run with the greatest defense you can possibly take. Yeah, and that either way, either way, the company or the individual might have taken it. It was kind of a lose lose at that. And I do think like the standards will change after a while. I think it's I think sometimes the concern about cultural appropriation has been has, in some ways turned into new segregation ism, you know? Yeah, sometimes that seems to go too far to like the idea of I had offered a scenario A while ago, and another podcast I had done years ago with an ex Muslim apostate. And she was asking me about a similar question about canceled culture and or cultural appropriation. And I imagined people to picture a scenario in which you say you have a couple of little girls were friends, one's black and one's white. And say the black the black girl is putting cornrows in her or white friends hair. Are you going to stop them and say that this is inappropriate? Because you know that the white girl has no right to wear these cornrows that are black friend is putting on her like, where do you draw those distinctions then in cultural appropriation? Like what about that idea of like that kind of cross cultural contamination, which we shouldn't be opposed to? What about that kind of, you know, cultural diversity and sharing that kind of thing. And I'm sure there's arguments I could be persuaded on where it seems really inappropriate, where people feel that they're being mocked, or whatever, because they had no hand in it. That's different, you know, I mean, and it's only different in the way that I don't think that that's that people are doing those kinds of nuanced judgments. They're just saying, like, oh, this belongs here, and this belongs squarely over here and never show the two MCs in such a way that I think is counterproductive to people really having comfortable, you know, cross cultural relationships with

Stephen Bradford Long 37:51 each other, you know, there, there are kind of these two paradigms that I've been that I've found really helpful while thinking about this, because, you know, I'm a I'm a minority, I have been both on the cancelled and the Canceler, you know, I've been both the Canceler and the canceled and, and I get it, you know, I get, I get the anger, I get the rage I get, especially, you know, after a lifetime of fighting for my own a, you know, for my life in the church, it felt like I just didn't have any skin on and it was just a raw nerve. And anyone who laid a hand on me in any way, even if it was kind, it, it activated, like this trauma, almost like a trauma response, just like this lifetime of compounded subtle conflict. And then I brought that onto the internet. And so it's like, on the one hand, I get it, I get the rage I, I get the desire to just want to shut someone up because it it hurts so much. On the other hand, I was only able to heal and become more mature and myself and as a gay man, by letting go of that, and by acknowledging that there will always be shitty people out there. And if I let them ruin my own peace and well being because they exist, then then I'm letting them win. And the best thing that I can possibly do is to live as full of life as I can as a queer person, regardless of what awful people on the internet say about me. You know, I

Doug Misicko 39:30 think I've actually witnessed people get pilloried by, you know, I guess what people would call canceled culture crowds on the basis of one accusation or another when I feel like, you know, they weren't, they weren't worthy of that kind of of disdain. You know, they may have made a mistake or whatever. Exactly. And I don't want to say a I don't want to give any specific examples because I don't want to end up defending any specific it's exact Apples, but, but I just will say, I feel like I've seen this. And I've seen it happen in the long term enough going back far enough that I feel like it really has changed some of these people to the point where now I don't recognize them anymore. And I feel like they do old reprehensible views. And because I feel like a lot of their views are starting to be held in absolute rejection to the crowd they feel and so so shattered them previously. Exactly. I think that's what you end up doing. You know, it is unforgiving to people. And you, you Outcast them that thoroughly. And you insist that they're in the enemy camp, you know, even when they're not, sometimes sooner or later, you're gonna find that they're there, you know, you put them there.

Stephen Bradford Long 40:51 Yeah, I mean, we're, we're, we're apes, we're social apes. Like we we rely on a sense of status and community, literally, for our survival. You know, back back when we were foraging and troops of apes or whatever the fuck we were, you know, being ostracized from the group was literally a death sentence, you know, it meant being left behind in the wilderness. And

Doug Misicko 41:19 it's still it's still as it does, and it still is, you know?

Stephen Bradford Long 41:23 Yeah. Like, that's more rain. It is, it is. And that, that wiring that that deep biological wiring hasn't fucking changed. You know, it hasn't changed, even though we're now in the modern world, on Twitter, instead of, you know, out in the wilderness with our ape troop.

Doug Misicko 41:43 And I'm still convinced that the majority of Trump voters at least, are assholes. And they didn't mean they didn't necessarily need to be turned into assholes. Right. But it is something to be noted that, it seems like half the time if not more, they seem to be holding the views they hold, just because they get a perverse joy of really pissing off those lib. tardes. Yep. No. And that's, that's where you place people sometimes if, if they're if you make their priority, you know, getting out of your social equal social ecosystem.

Stephen Bradford Long 42:22 Yep. And you know, one of the things that I have found personally very helpful in navigating just all of this, it's kind of these two axioms that I keep reminding myself of one replace outrage with curiosity. And so you know, I try to when I when I start experiencing that outrage, even if it is appropriate, but very often when it first flares up, I don't know if it's appropriate or not, you know, maybe this person just slipped up and said something stupid on Twitter, maybe maybe this was actually a horrible thing caught on camera, or maybe it wasn't like the Covington High School incident that happened last year, where and that's a whole other story. People can look that up. If they're curious about that, regardless of just in every situation, when I feel that outrage, start building up, I'm like, Okay, I'm going to breathe through this. And I'm going to, to deliberately become curious about this situation. And that curiosity, taking that next step. Never works against us like that, taking that next step to be curious about the situation that makes us so angry, that will never work against me that will only ever benefit me. And then the other axiom is reminding myself that conflict is not abuse. There's a book by that title, conflict is not abuse and how a lot of minority communities and I consider myself part of this problem is we have this tendency to see certain conflicts that naturally arise as forms of abuse. And this creates a very toxic atmosphere. And so when someone disagrees with me when someone even intensely disagrees with me to deliberately put aside the idea of this being an attack, and, and that means that I might be able to reason with that person more fairly. And so I find those two kind of axioms really helpful in navigating my life on the internet. So one last question. We're over an hour and a half. And so we should probably wrap this up soon. But one last question. It's a big one comes from let me see where did where did it go? It comes from Apollyon Amman on Twitter. What is your vision for the future of the modern satanic movement? Where do we go next?

Doug Misicko 44:43 Well, I really think it's difficult to map that out explicitly with some kind of blueprint that's that we can't deviate from and that would kind of go against our our general ethic anyways, like everything You have to be fluid in be willing to, to change with, with the reality and the time. So I think my goals are more general in the sense that I really want us to develop a lasting sustaining community and as an organization have the processes in place that, you know, allow a system of checks and balances to keep us from going against our ethic of anti authoritarianism, but also be well regulated enough that our membership can be sure that we don't bring disgrace upon them or run rogue in some direction, one way or the other, that they can't rely on us or, or are taking a heavy risk and identifying with us. So you know, we really wanted to build that kind of stability in place and have a lot more available options, I think, for people to engage with the community in to that end, we've been developing our own kind of platforms for people to communicate on. And since COVID, has started, we've been developing a virtual headquarters for the Salem property, which is turned into a much kind of bigger project now. And we're hoping to roll it out in October, where, you know, it's a much more convenient and kind of organic, online environment for people to interact in see presentations and stuff like that. And so we know our population is going to keep growing. And at some point, we might even have a legal victory in the courts. And we can only just kind of wait and see, especially right now, which direction we're going in, when it comes to how relevant our fight against the theocrats is going to be. In the near future, this election really is. I mean, they say it every election, but this one is a really important election. And I think the most we can really hope for out of this election is to at least have somebody in office who actually understands the limits to the authority of that office, and what the office is supposed to do, and how the government is supposed to operate in what the laws are, especially in regards to the First Amendment and Establishment Clause places the cases, because you're having federal judges being put into position who might themselves not have any understanding of that might not have any respect for the laws that we leverage to assert our equality as a religion. And if we have to deal with four more years of that, I think we're going to see substantial changes to what it means to be an American in the United States. And we're going to see a real rolling back of certain principles that we thought were entrenched in the in the makeup of the United States. So you know, those are the concerns. But the guarantee is that one way or the other, the Satanic Temple will still be around. Well, I

Stephen Bradford Long 48:05 think that's a great note to end on. And thanks so much for hanging out this has been great. Thank you. And yeah, you're welcome back anytime

Doug Misicko 48:14 I'm available most anytime you want.

Stephen Bradford Long 48:17 Great. Well, people love people love these conversations that we have on sacred tension and so if you're down I'm thinking you know once every every four six months having you back on if you're okay with that if

Doug Misicko 48:30 you're cool, that works for me, great your recurring guest yes

Stephen Bradford Long 48:34 you and will you know and our conversations always go for like Joe Rogan podcast levels of time so you know, we can have like our, our, you know, long conversation it doesn't they don't have to be long but they often run long so we can have you on you know, every few months or so. People seem to really enjoy them.

Doug Misicko 48:57 Perfect. Well, glad they do.

Stephen Bradford Long 48:59 Awesome. All right. Well that is it for this show. The music is by the jelly rocks and eleventy seven you can find them on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to music The artwork is by Rama Krishna Das. And this show is written produced and edited by me Steven Bradford long and it is a production of rock candy media as always Hail Satan and we will see you next week I'm glad I'm metaphor I don't think Get the number