Podcasts/TTA-Ep561

The Thinking Atheist Ep. 561 - The Satan Shoes: A Conversation About the Controversy (with Lucien Greaves)
2021
Lucien Greaves, co-founder of https://thesatanictemple.com, weighs in on the recent moral panic regarding Lil Nas X's recent video and The Satan Shoes.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/thethinkingatheist/podcast561-satanshoes

Transcript

[WIP]

Unknown Speaker 0:35 the Thinking Atheist, it's not a person, symbol, an idea. The population of atheists this country is going through the roof rejecting faith or silly knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth. Not because I put my hand on a book and made a wish

Unknown Speaker 0:55 and working together. For a more rational world take the risk of thinking for yourself much more happiness true fusion wisdom will come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything and start thinking.

Unknown Speaker 1:12 This is the Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.

Unknown Speaker 1:26 So this big controversy blew up in the headlines. And I just couldn't help myself. So I bumped the original topic for this week to next week. And I wanted to speak to somebody who was a Satanist about little NAS X. Okay, there is video of this conversation. The YouTube link is in the description box of the show. Satan shoes. Alright, let's talk. Let's talk about the Satan shoes. And a rapper singer that I'd never heard of. I mean, maybe I'm showing my age. But until a few weeks ago, I'd never heard of little NAS but apparently little NAS there's a little NAS X S e and X after his name makes available. Satan shoes now these are Nike Air Max 97 shoes. And without the permission of Nike. Lil NAS decides to make available 666 pair of Satan shoes. They have a bronze pentagram, there's an inverted cross on them. And apparently the shoe is contained a drop of real human blood. I didn't see exactly whose blood this might be. But, you know, obviously, the Evangelicals lost their minds, right conservative Christianity did what conservative Christianity does and they just break out totally lose their shit. Which shows you how easily provoked they are. Nike has sued them there's I guess a temporary injunction a halt to the sale of the shoe is for trademark infringement. I get that right they you know Nike should have proprietary rights over their own logo. And so you know, little note as I said, Okay, fine for now, we're not going to produce anymore. But the freakout continues and so obviously with the satanic imagery and a video that we're going to talk about that shows the devil devil horns and that you know the depths of Hades, I thought about my buddy Lucian grieves. And I thought, well, I'll bet everybody's tapping him on the shoulder want to talk about, you know, Satan? I don't know, we just make that connection illusion, right? We're like, oh, look, it's the devil. We should see what Lucian thinks. And this happens often. And you didn't say anything? Like you didn't post anything. You didn't have any commentary? And I'm curious as to why, like, Why the silence at least initially.

Unknown Speaker 3:53 Yeah, I got a bunch of interviews, requests right away. The first people reached out we're rolling stone. And they wanted to know first what I thought of the little NAS X Video Montero, which came out at the same time, he released the shoes, some music video in which he gives a homoerotic lap dance to Satan. And I think this really kicked off the outrage and controversy, homoeroticism, and Satan really gets the the conservative writers really worked up and they were worked up over this and the media was really eager to sustain the outrage and come up with more upon which to keep the keep the controversy alive. And I think they were hoping I would have some really inflammatory things to say, either in outrage against the video not properly representing Satanism, or whatever they were looking for there. And there were some leading questions in that regard. Of course, when I started doing interviews later, or embracing the video and doing more to say things that would piss off the evangelicals. So or, or whatever, in any case, so they're always looking to keep the fight alive in the controversy. The propagating and, and do more to fuel the flames and I just was not interested in it. I also was not aware of the artists or the artists work, it did so happen that as soon as the video came out about an hour after it posted, a friend of mine texted it to me. And I watched it and I could tell that this wasn't a this wasn't a low budget video, you know, this guy must be a famous pop star. Now it's to me, you know, there was a lot of, they obviously threw a lot of money into this one music video. But I didn't find the imagery, terribly unique, or really, really that that thought provoking to me. Ever since we've been children, we've been seeing little devils whispering messages into somebody's ears in cartoons or whatever. And they the image of red skinned, horned tailed devil isn't entirely unknown to us. So we all recognize it is immediately as we recognize Mickey Mouse or whatever else. It's just very prevalently available, artistic, raw material for anybody. And that was part of the reason I thought I really didn't have a place to give commentary on it. I couldn't openly embrace it as being a portrayal of Satanism because I don't know that that was what the artist intended it to be. For all I knew he could come out with a statement saying that he felt enslaved by his homosexuality or something and that he was trying to defeat the devil and that he was looking to become a recovered homosexual in the, in the evangelical school or something. Later on, he made some statements that were more clarifying. But immediately, I wasn't sure what he was trying to convey. And it wasn't my place to state the artists intentions. Nor was it my place to claim some kind of proprietary rights over this imagery.

Unknown Speaker 7:10 I mean, you and I are way ahead of this, our audiences are way ahead of this. We know controversy sells, I can already hear the whispers of the marketing departments going, Hey, check this out. We're gonna get so much free press, we're gonna sell so many copies of the album or the single or whatever, I mean, 50 million streams on Spotify in one week, rocketing to the top of the Billboard Top 100. I mean, I remember back when, you know, Ozzy Osborne Diary of a madman album cover which today seems like a freakin cartoon. Back then, you know, parents are setting it on fire because it's imbued with demons, you know, and they're forbidding their children to be anywhere near any sort of Ozzy Osborne stuff, Black Sabbath Iron Maiden, the toys that we were playing with Star Wars was imbued with some sort of a new age thing, right? The forest is part of a satanic spiritual thing, blah, blah, blah, that's been going on for decades. And so, you know, I was looking around at some of the people in my religious circle here in Oklahoma, as they totally lose their shit about how well how the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And this is the latest piece of evidence. And I'm like, Dude, you not remember the 80s? You know? So I mean, have you gotten into any of that, right? Look, you're like, This is not there is nothing new under the sun, right Lucian,

Unknown Speaker 8:34 right? I mean, there is the question of why is there this outsized reaction? Is that indicative of a broader Satanic Panic, but it really did start bothering me when I was seeing Satanic Panic invoked so much to describe the controversy over the little NAS X video. And that's really what compelled me to write my Patreon piece too, because when people when academics use the term Satanic Panic, they're not merely talking about isolated flare ups of outrage, controversy over single products like a video or a pair of shoes, and they're not talking about the offenses somebody took to the representation of their religion or whatever else. They're talking about a much broader type of witch hunt in which people are generally being accused of crimes they never committed. And they're invoking a conspiracy of Satanists that do not exist in in the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, which is what academics are really referring to when they say Satanic Panic, they're referring to a timeframe span around 1980 to 1995 where people were being accused of heinous crimes connected with a non existent Satanism in some of them going to prison. That is a Satanic Panic. And it's important to me that people recognize what a Satanic Panic is because I think a lot of people are still unclear how damaging and devastating Satanic Panic was, how close we are to a new Satanic Panic in what kind of in what kind of harm that can really do us. And I think if you're just looking at evangelicals who are pissed off, that their religious dominance is being challenged, or that there's blasphemous, imageries imagery out and pop culture, you're really missing the point. And you're really leaving us vulnerable to another Satanic Panic, because

Unknown Speaker 10:43 let me make sure I understand you then. You're concerned that I mean, we call it a marketing stunt artistic expression, as he and he's declared this, I think that this is part of his liberation exercise over the shaming of religions against him his identity, his sexuality, and if that's the case, good for him. But you're a little bit concerned that this sort of, I don't know single, dustup might distract from or perhaps even misrepresent these false accusations of satanic ritual sacrifice the imbuing of Satanism or superstitious thinking into law enforcement, psychology, etc. I mean, without putting words in your mouth, if I put words in your mouth, Am I close? What do you think?

Unknown Speaker 11:31 Well, it's close when you when you minimize something like this. And you think of it as something as superfluous is just this kind of minor uproar that we can stand on the sidelines and laugh about, it doesn't really compel you much to fight back against it or push back. And I kind of feel like, we've seen that a lot in the fight against the rise of Christian nationalism as well, even as they're changing legislation to fit their ends, even as they're, they're pushing advancing bills, to allow them unique privilege to discriminate against people that they disagree with upon religious grounds. In order to discriminate against non believers to discriminate against people based upon their sexual orientation, or identity or whatever else. You still have people saying, well, this is the last gasp of Christian nationalism. They're, they're losing their, their pride place within American politics. And we don't have to worry about this much longer. And that's in that kind of complacent attitude, just let them keep advancing further and further. And I feel it's similar to this, under recognition of what the Satanic Panic actually is, and the harm that it can do. And to not recognize the people who were falsely accused and people who went to prison, the full depth and breadth of that witch hunt that took place in modern times in our lifetimes, is to place us in danger of experiencing that very type of thing all over again. So I would like it. If people when people heard the term Satanic Panic. They, they felt more of that horror and revulsion of all those things I had talked about, rather than thinking of it as something that's, you know, a very temporary thing that you can laugh off, because it's just uproar confined to a small group of people that nobody takes seriously. Anyways, I

Unknown Speaker 13:44 do find myself laughing, though. I mean, first of all, the hypocrisy, right? Our God is the most powerful God in the universe. Satan doesn't have a prayer, if you'll pardon the expression, right? Satan is powerless against our all powerful deity. And these same people spend their whole lives totally freaked out about the power of Satan, the influence of Satan, he's under every rock, he's in the closet. He's under their children's bed, he's in their books, he's in their music, he's in the films, he's in their culture. For people who are getting one, one breath, they say the battles already won, Satan doesn't even have a shot, he is already defeated. You know, this is all just an academic exercise. And then in the next breath, they are losing their shit. And I find it funny. I don't know if you do or not. I find it funny. That

Unknown Speaker 14:34 aspect of it is funny when you just look at like this superstitious uproar that there's some kind of spiritual environment that is being irreparably corrupted and that children are going to be driven to marijuana and homosexuality and then they're never going to go to heaven because of it. But that's when you're isolating the Satanic Panic to evangelical uproar, superstitious uproar in the horror find truth about the Satanic Panic because it would have never taken off if it were just a flare up of the religious right being offended by satanic imagery. It's not what it was. And it took bipartisan support for bad ideas and pseudoscience for the Satanic Panic to really take off. And I know people are so politically polarized now that they don't like to admit to any fault on, you know, within their political alignment. But the Satanic Panic wouldn't have been anything during the 80s and 90s. If it weren't for anti porn, sex negative, liberals also fighting this battle, claiming that any claim of abuse no matter how absurd, or how implausible, needed to be taken at face value, and could not be questioned. And this was, you know, and this came from those good intentions of realizing that claims of abuse have been under recognized previously. But then, you know, when overbroad into this idea that no claim of abuse could be questioned to the point that when people in a therapeutic setting started recovering memories of being involved in intergenerational satanic calls, they felt it a point of obligation to take those claims at face value, and accept them as absolute truth. And we're still at the point now where people who propagate these notions of the veracity of recovered memories and try to instigate a new real Satanic Panic. We'll say that if you're questioning their narratives about satanic ritual abuse, Illuminati mind control or other absurd things, that you're merely covering up against crimes of sexual abuse and human trafficking, and you can see with Q anon now that they understand this, they hijack that whole believe the children thing, and they tried to paint themselves as merely soldiers in a war against child trafficking. In in the same way, if you question absurd Q anon conspiracy theories, you're probably going to be accused of being some kind of defender of child trafficking. And this has its roots earlier on in the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s. And that's where things get really dangerous. And that's when people start being afraid to speak up and call bullshit when somebody attaches their bizarre notions to an unquestionably moral cause. And they begin to learn to conceal the absurdity of their conspiracist narratives. And that's what happened with people in the earlier Satanic Panic. There's an organization called the International Society for the Study of trauma, dissociation, and they're a professional organization for mental health professionals. And they put on annual conferences where they give out continuing education units to professionals. And in their conferences, they will talk about satanic ritual abuse, they will talk about Illuminati mind control, and they're still propagating these notions that there's a worldwide satanic conspiracy, abusing people brainwashing them in trying to initiate this one world order. It's a very Q anon but it's not is a politically right Q anon it's a it's more kind of politically neutral Q anon. But it precedes Q anon and Q anon is kind of an evolution from it, in this, I think, is where the real damage occur. People who aren't already invested in being some kind of

Unknown Speaker 18:50 tribally identify Christian nationalist or whatever, aren't terribly affected by the Christian nationalist uproar about a little NAS X video, but when you get that kind of bipartisan coming together on some kind of common ground, which has them both feeling obligated to either not attack bad ideas and conspiracy theories, or, you know, and similarly, just to accept those conspiracy theories at face value due to the moral cause there, they're advocating for that that's, that's all the makings of a Satanic Panic right there. And that's what I really want people to recognize is that the Satanic Panic is not just merely a matter of superstitious religious people getting pissed off. It's finding some kind of common ground with a bunch of other people have a bunch of other political identifications and beliefs and using that common ground to ignore science, ignore fact promote pseudoscience. adds an advocate for bad ideas that cause real harm.

Unknown Speaker 20:04 This is a sticky one isn't it? With the believe the children aspect I'm reminded of the McMartin trial right McMartin daycare trial back in the 80s, the most expensive trial up to that time in the United States, as there were, I think it started with one child who had spun a wild story about Satanism or something. And then it sort of, before you knew it, you had all of these. I don't know if they weren't even child psychologist, really, but they were sort of feeding these lines to the children. And then you've got the imagination going, and now things spin out of control and lives are ruined, right lives were ruined a decade in the court system, and it was just a nightmare. And you know, believe the children in that moment, that was the first part of the statement, like we need to listen to the children and take their initial accusation seriously, but then we need to vet those accusations. So when a child says, Oh, they were sacrificing, you know, they were doing rituals in the basement. How hard is it to find out that there's no basement at the McMartin preschool? Right? So I get your point, right. But if it's noble, to say, believe the children hashtag, and it sounds like you're an enabler of abuse, if you say, let's take a second let's pause that pause sounds like hesitation, hesitation, sounds like weakness, even complicity. And we see some of that even among a lot of that even among people on the left, I get that.

Unknown Speaker 21:34 Yeah, no, and that's part of my concern is now I think, we're kind of in this environment, this environment, this cultural environment, spurred on of course, by the way people communicate and social media, where people keep going further and further into their isolated points of view, and making more and more bombastic statements that get more and more interactions in they become further further removed from principle. And soon. Questioning any aspect of what they're saying becomes a becomes a heresy. And you can take a noble cause, but at the point where you're not accepting anybody's commentary about maybe what the best means to the ends are, you know, to question even your tactics of getting to those ends that you claim you see, become some kind of heresy, then I think you're really primed to find ourselves in a new panic, where you know, bad bad techniques, bad ideas, are being unquestioned because people are more interested in signaling their, their connectedness to a certain tribe, rather than actually pursuing facts or pursuing positive attitudes.

Unknown Speaker 23:03 More with Lucian grieves in just a second going to talk about another music video you might be interested in and how the Satanic Temple is sort of, in many ways on many fronts leading the Church State fight Christian nationalists want to put up Christian stuff on taxpayer funded property in the Satanic Temple says, Okay, fine. We're going to buy a ticket on the same ride and then the Christians flip out anyway, we're going to talk evolution about that and more next, hang on.

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Unknown Speaker 24:57 Thanks so much for listening talking to Lucian grieves About the Satan shoes, the big desktop little NAS X rapper singer provides satanic shoes for sale with human blood and people take that bait flip out lose their shit. So anyway, I couldn't help myself I had to talk to Lucian, grieves co founder of the Satanic Temple, about the controversy and a whole lot more. If we're seeing the decline of religiosity in this country, then people are less and less religious, more and more secular, certainly disinterested in religion. How does that affect the whole Satanic Panic thing? How does that affect the Christian nationalist? Obviously, you've done some thinking about this, what do you think?

Unknown Speaker 25:45 I don't know how much it really affects it. There was a lot of secularization of Satanic Panic during the 80s and 90s. And when you see Geraldo Rivera startup his his famous report on Satanism aired in like 89, or something like that. He did this whole Expo Ze, where he was discussing a type of Satanism that just didn't even exist, but he was able to call together this whole mythology and put it out there. So we're this prevalent problem it causing for all these murders and disappearances and things like that. He started out with this preface that saying, whether you believe in a Satan or not is irrelevant. But Satanism does exist. And this is what it means. And then he was attaching all these anti human activities and beliefs to it. So it didn't really necessarily require anybody's religious belief. It just required their credulity. And I think that's we're seeing a lot of credulity now. And if you look at the the numbers when it comes to people who are anti Vax, when you see how large the Q anon movement is, and when you see the proliferation of ideas that are facially absurd being taken as fact, I think that's a real cause for concern. Regardless of what the numbers are dwindling church membership or identification.

Unknown Speaker 27:19 I stole one of your lines. You said something last time we talked about, think we're talking Q anon and you use the phrase irredeemably stupid. I've just borrowed that, like I'm using it all the time, that's just irredeemably stupid. We're surrounded by it. And so much of it is rooted in these superstitions, these weird, magical ideas that everything is part of a struggle between the dark and the light, you know, good and evil, nothing is neutral, it is all part of a precursor to Armageddon, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I am seeing under the temperature's going up, even as the numbers of the Evangelicals might be going down, they seem to become like the desperate, wounded animal, they become even more dangerous in many ways, but that be your opinion.

Unknown Speaker 28:12 Yeah, I think the push in our lifetime with the Christian nationalists has been to get into politics, I think they, they smelled the demographic trends sometime ago, knew they were going to be on the minority side, also knew they weren't going to get anywhere in the sciences. So they started training everybody to go into politics and really pushing hard to get their tribe and political office. So that if even if they didn't have the numbers in the general population, they would have it in the legislative bodies, and they'll be able to impose their will upon everybody else. And I think the ultimate hope is that with godly direction, coming from political higher offices, there'll be a new great coming to Christ of the general population overall, like if we just have the 10 commandments posted everywhere, people will realize that abortion is bad, and homosexuality is a disease and all these other notions, I think, I think they have that they will reclaim their place as the dominant belief system, just so long as they push it upon everybody in make it mandatory that they subscribe to it. They'll find themselves willing participants shortly thereafter, but in the meantime, you know, we have to deal with them doing this and if we don't, if we don't fight back, they're going to make it i I'm kind of amazed that at this point, even after the Trump administration, I still see people kind of taking this dismissive position about it like this is dwindling away. This is this is about to expire. We don't have to deal with the Christian nationalists much longer like this is some kind of transient phase that will be laughing off like the the uproar of little NAS X video later on, in, you know, the little NAS X video could be an indication a symptom of the of a larger Satanic Panic, really brewing. But the Christian nationalists within the politics, that that panic is present now. It's something that this is a clear and present danger, and it's working its destructive power in the moment.

Unknown Speaker 30:45 I mean, how screwed up is that? Like if Ted Cruz is determining the moral compass, you know, Marjorie Taylor green is determining just mad get. I mean, it was just, it just, I just fear for the species, you know, I'm saying if I had to ask and you don't have to answer, but if you have you take a personal position now that you've become more familiar with a little non Zach's video and the story and the imagery and the reasons for doing it. And the response. I mean, have you spoken about your own personal opinion on it?

Unknown Speaker 31:16 Had pretty neutral. I mean, it's not really my thing. You know, I, I thought the video was amusing to watch like, it was really well done. Right? I feel like in another 20 years, people will laugh at that, like you were laughing at the Ozzie stuff saying it looks like a cartoon. But look at all the CGI and a little nonsense video, you know, that stuff improves exponentially, you know, every, every couple years or whatever, it's going to be outdated soon enough, and we'll laugh at it and I'll shake our heads if there was ever some controversy about it. I mean, I don't mind it. I'm not offended by it. It's not something i i intend to revisit often. I don't know. I feel like I could have been somewhat primed to walk away from that controversy because I, you know, unbeknownst to some, I guess, I put out a video that that very same day, at the same time, the band I work with satanic planet put out its its first video, bafflement. And there were people who were offended by that for different reasons. Some actually, because it was satanic, even though were you know, very openly Satanic and our marketing, our imagery, our name and everything else are some people offended by that. But there was a whole crowd offended that we have the drummer Dave Lombardo, who used to be in Slayer and has this huge following is like this, you know, prominent metal drummer and stuff like that. He doesn't do much drumming on this album. And in this track, he doesn't do any live drumming at all, he said, atmospheric and electronic bass and stuff like that really pisses off some of the metal crowd, you know, and then some people are just really pissed off about your music when it comes out when they had ideas of what it should be. But, you know, or what they think you're trying to do. And they're angry if it doesn't do that. So, you know, we got a lot of great response from the video. But I just remembered seeing some of these comments of people pissed off and just thinking, how do you have this much energy to be pissed off about a song we've put out, you know, because I'm used to being a controversial person speaking about political religious issues and things like that. And I understand that really cuts to certain people's identities, and they're going to get pissed off. So I'm not used to like releasing a piece of art and people being like, Hey, who the fuck do you think? I think that was amazing. So at the same time, I've got my video coming out, and I'm just mystified by the people getting pissed off. People are reaching out to me saying, What do you think of this guy's video? I'm thinking why? Why are you asking me because it has the devil in it. That seems absurd to me, you know. So I do think I was primed, you know, just due to the events around me in my own life, to say, you know, asking my opinion on somebody else's video is ridiculous. But, you know, that being said, I don't want the controversy either to color my perception of this video. It doesn't elevate it in value to me, and it doesn't diminish it either. You know, I watched it. I'm glad I saw it, you know, very well done. Not necessarily my thing, but very well produced well done. Like, that's it, you know, like my opinion isn't better than anybody else's in that regard.

Unknown Speaker 34:39 Yeah, but it's funny if somebody sees the devil on like a piece of toast or you know, in a photograph and for some reason, they just have this inclination to call you. Oh, look, it's the devil call Lucian. I'm sure that happens all the time. It's one of those things, but before I let you

Unknown Speaker 34:53 go, controversy, that's already waning. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 34:58 any Any legal fights that you guys are speaking of the Satanic Panic and Christian nationalism and all that. I mean, that's involved into you guys still doing battle with Arkansas right. With raising job, Senator raybert. What are you doing over there?

Unknown Speaker 35:13 We're still battling with Arkansas. Been a long time since there was a ruling in Arkansas. And you're just wondering what what is going on here?

Unknown Speaker 35:21 For I'm sorry, I set you up. But I didn't do a very good job, a ruling on what is this till about the 10 commandments on government property or something?

Unknown Speaker 35:29 Yeah, Arkansas put a 10 commandments monument on their capitol grounds, claiming it serves some secular purpose and was just a historical document that speaks to the codification of constitutional law. And because it was privately donated, though privately donated by a senator, that it wasn't a it wasn't an establishment clause violation, because the idea is that any private donor then could donate a monument. So we call that bluff. And we offered to donate a satanic monument or bathroom at Monument and they said, No, so We're suing. Or we're joining a suit being put forward by also the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the ACLU. And I think maybe another party as well. But this lawsuit is been in progress for some time, the senator who donated the monument, he took a bunch of donations to pay for that monument. Well over the monument costs from what we can tell, and I believe was the Freedom From Religion Foundation that requested the financial information about the about the 10 commandments monument, a list of the donors and that kind of thing. The state was refusing to hand that over, at least the senator was, and the only recent ruling we've gotten is I think the judge is now demanding that the information be handed over. And this is only after, like, nearly a year of no motion on that case. But another lawsuit we have an action now is we just had, you know, I think under a month now, or maybe about a month, we filed lawsuit against Texas, fighting back against its abortion restrictions. And we've done this with a plaintiff there, who was following our abortion ritual guidelines in which when a member of the Satanic Temple is seeking to terminate a pregnancy, we have this kind of ritualized counseling process as an effort to help them contextualize their decision as indeed their own decision, and to be at peace with it in deference to our tenants, and to absolve themselves of the kind of guilt and shame that Texas Politicians might try to impose upon them. And we have our own kind of timeline for how this ritual is, is practiced. Right. And so to interrupt that process, in which actually having the procedure is part with medically unnecessary procedures, I can impose sonogram or waiting period, we make the argument that that's a violation of our religious liberty. And on those grounds, we're fighting these these Texas standards that call for those kinds of superfluous, medically unnecessary, invasive procedures that that just interrupts the process and are constructed to add elements of guilt and shame to the process. So we feel that this is a really difficult case in Texas, to be litigated, because they've done so much to make religious liberty, so much more robust and in untouchable by any type of government intervention. And it's going to be very difficult for them to find a way I think, to ignore our claims or to turn them down without also ignoring all the precedent they've set that they've been trying to set for the benefit of Christian nationals. Anyways, during the little NAS X controversy, all I could think is my inbox was filling up with media requests about some other guy's fucking video was how few interview requests I got about a lawsuit. We're pushing in Texas, but Satanists are pushing in Texas, that really stands a chance of setting important precedent, and kind of recontextualizing religious liberty arguments, so I couldn't help but just thinking this way Video is what you're getting outraged about this video is what's important to you. These shoes are what's frightening you about satanist right now. And we could hardly get coverage of this lawsuit. We were fighting in Texas. And it's just kind of a disappointing commentary, I think on people's priorities. I guess

Unknown Speaker 40:22 we'd like bright shiny things, you know, yeah, we like we're easily distracted. And we don't like gaps. We don't like nuance. We'd like it simple. We'd like it clean, black, white. Now Black and White, really, you know, good, evil, that kind of thing. And that's the, that's sort of the focus of your Patreon article, right? And you've released this free, I know, it's on Patreon. But this is available to everybody right now, is that right?

Unknown Speaker 40:48 At the beginning of the pandemic, I was seeing a lot of people financially hurting. I took the risk of opening up my posts for free for everybody, while putting a disclaimer at the top saying like, look, this is how I'm making my income right now. So if you can afford to subscribe, please do. It's worked out so far. And even though things are opening up, and people are generally considering the pandemic over, even though they're quite wrong. And people seem to have stabilized generally, economically. I'm still running on this system where I'm keeping my Patreon open everybody, but just asking that if you can afford any, any subscription fee, please do it. Okay, well, I'll

Unknown Speaker 41:32 put the link to the article. I mean, I thought about reading it, but I think I'd rather people go and, and read it themselves. And then if they want to choose to support you, that's, that's terrific. Do you have a link to like a YouTube link to the music video that you said it released a couple weeks ago? Is that somewhere online?

Unknown Speaker 41:50 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can send you that too. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 41:53 that in the description box, because dammit, little NAS x is not the only one who released a video that month, and so give you not that you need to signal boost on this end. I will say that I will take it as a compliment that you said no to Rolling Stone but said us. Yes. To us. That makes me that just fills my heart. You know, screw you a Rolling Stone. But you know, you make some salient points. I mean, let's not get distracted. There are people who have done real harm and continue to do real harm in terms of using Satan to weaponize even sometimes what sounds on its surface like worthy causes to harm people and to spread lies and misinformation and to do a great damage. And so let's keep our eyes on the prize. I mean, would that be a good summation of it, Lucian?

Unknown Speaker 42:45 Yeah, and I think also, if you're wondering what Satan is, think of a little NAS X video, you can't ask me and find out you're only gonna hear what I think about it. And that's part of why I didn't want to do interviews about it. You're gonna have to ask every statements because I feel like their individual interpretations of it are valid. They might like it. They might might not. But I'm certainly not somebody to sit here and say, This is what satanist should think about this little nonsense video. We have a diversity of tastes and interests in music and art. And that's the way it should be. We've always embraced that type of diversity. And there's, you know, it would be somewhat anti satanic of me to kind of try to dictate those tastes to anybody.

Unknown Speaker 43:35 Lucian grieves. Alright, links in the description box and I always enjoyed talking. Thanks for sounding off on this one. Appreciate you.

Unknown Speaker 43:42 Thank you so much

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