Podcasts/Sacred Tension-Lucien Greaves Conspiracy InsurectionMASTERED8t3e0

Lucien_Greaves_Conspiracy_InsurectionMASTERED8t3e0 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, trump, feel, system, hear, question, push, point, rock candy, claim, listening, united states, thinking, absolutely, twitter, conspiracy theories, autocratic, talking, podcast, power SPEAKERS Will, Doug Misicko, Stephen Bradford Long

Will 00:00 You're listening to a rock candy podcast. Hey, I'm Will and they call me the doctor. And I'm Joe, the maestro, we host a podcast called common creatives where we break apart the art we love to see what makes it tick. Basically, we give you the definitive take on whatever or whoever we're discussing, you don't need to go anywhere else. So check out common creatives wherever you listen to podcasts.

Stephen Bradford Long 00:47 This is sacred tension, the podcast about the discipline of asking questions. My name is Steven Bradford long, and we are here on the rock candy Podcast Network. For more shows like this one, go to rock candy recordings.com. In this episode, I speak once again with Lucien Greaves, co founder and spokesperson for the Satanic Temple. Now, we did record this quite a while ago, we recorded it on the 12th when Trump was still in office, and right after the insurrection at the Capitol. So if you do not want to hear about Trump, if you don't want to hear about conspiracy theories, if you don't want to hear about the general degradation of democracy in our culture and tech platforms, then this might not be the episode for you. But even though this conversation is a bit dated, I do think that there is some interesting stuff here and I hope you enjoy it. But before we get to that, I have to thank my patrons. As always, my patrons are my personal lords and saviors, and they are ensuring the long life of my work. This week, I have to thank Jonas, Jim, Melanie, Mobius, Audrey, Catherine and Meghan, thank you so much. I truly could not do this without you. If you're listening to this and interested in joining their number, please do every little bit helps. You can go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long and for $1 A month or $5 a month you get extra content every week, including pre release unedited versions of my episodes and my patrons only podcast house of heretics. So if that interests you do please become a patron. I also have to thank my incredible discord community. You know, sometimes it isn't enough to listen to a podcast. Sometimes you need community sometimes you need to be surrounded by like minded people. And so I set up my Discord server just for that. So if you are a Satanist, a pagan, a progressive Christian and atheist, someone who is interested in my show and the topics that I discussed, please consider joining my Discord server every single day. There are different conversations going on over there. It is a lot of fun. You will find a link in the show notes. And finally we are continuing to grow the rock candy podcast network we have some incredible shows on the network. If you haven't checked them out already. Magnified pod bubble and squeak, Bible basher, brown sugar, diaries, and so many more. And if you have a podcast or you are thinking of starting one and you relate to rock candy recordings vision of creating a kinder, more compassionate and interesting world, then please reach out to me. I would love to hear your pitch. You can email me at Steven Bradford long.com forward slash contact well with all of that out of the way. I am delighted to bring you my conversation with Lucien Greaves, Lucien Greaves, welcome back.

Doug Misicko 04:13 Good to be here. Thank you.

Stephen Bradford Long 04:14 Yeah. So, you know, I'm inviting you on. What day is today? January 12. Yes, thank you. So last week, was it this week? No, it was last week. Last week, we all witnessed the storming of the Capitol. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Oh, by the way, I should probably introduce you. I will in the intro but everyone Lucien Greaves, founder, co founder and spokesperson of the Satanic Temple and semi regular guest on the show now, so glad to have you here again, but the storming of the Capitol, you know, it's like this convergence of just all of this. All of these things. that I feel like are in my wheelhouse and might be in yours. You know, it's like this convergence of theocracy, conspiracy theory, absolute delusion, tech stuff, you know how tech and digital media can create these bubbles. So I'm I'm just really curious to hear what your thoughts are on on what happened last week? Well,

Doug Misicko 05:29 the surprise, of course, is that they were able to that security was lacks enough that people were able to reach the actual

Stephen Bradford Long 05:38 fate. It was like the fucking carnival just just decided to walk in and no measure. It didn't I mean, I don't know, maybe there were measures taken. But it's it was stunning to see the footage. And you know, I was listening to a podcast with a bunch of journalists. I was I was listening to the fifth column, and they're professional journalists. And they're like, I have been at that building so many times as a journalist and the amount of bullshit you have to go through just to get in, like, all the checkpoints, all the security just to get in. Like, how the fuck were they able to do that?

Doug Misicko 06:19 Yeah, but beyond that, right? Where's the surprise? Like, were we not expecting, right, that type of rhetoric from Donald Trump? Absolutely. And to be clear, this absolutely is not to say that I am against them proceeding with impeachment. I absolutely think they should, and do everything they can to prevent him from holding public office again, holding him accountable. In fact, I'm disgusted to hear still to this day, some others and some Democrats saying that this will just divide the nation further. And I really feel that that failure to hold people accountable is what has gotten us to this point. And I think it's disgusting at this point, even hear anybody saying, well, we should just stand back and let everybody kind of magically unify without addressing this thing. That's about the stupidest thing that could be done right now. And I really feel like they're, they're doing the right thing by moving forward and trying to impeach this fool. But I'm really it's kind of shocking that anybody shocked by what happened? Absolutely. People looking at upon these pictures of the crowd and saying, Wow, there's people holding up white supremacist banners and things like that. And it's, you know, on my end, I'm thinking, Where have you been for the past four years? or what have you been watching going on here? This was signaled from miles away. This has been culminating all this time. Trump has been trying to exasperate exacerbate these tensions, his entire tenure within Office. I just, I'm glad to see people shaken by this. And I have to say, it is gratifying to see some of the video footage tagged with the hashtag of no fly list now to see these entitled fools who thought that there was really no repercussions to doing this and that they could just march right in. And obviously they thought they were doing this on the authority of the President himself.

Stephen Bradford Long 08:25 You know, there's almost like this LARPing quality to it. You know, there's that video of a woman at the Capitol who had gotten pepper spray in her eyes. And she just, she seemed so mortified. And the journalist who was interviewing her was like

Doug Misicko 08:47 she was she was incensed that the cops, she was incensed. And then the journalist was like,

Stephen Bradford Long 08:52 So what are you doing here? Like, why are you here? And she said, it's a revolution. We're storming the Capitol, you know, and then I, you know, I saw other videos of people, when they find out they're on a no fly list and, you know, having breakdowns in airports like this is what you do to us. And there really is like this detachment from reality. There's this LARPing, this revolutionary LARPing, where when their imaginary play kind of comes up against reality, and the consequences of their behavior. It's shocking to them. It's fascinating to watch.

Doug Misicko 09:35 Well, I feel like there's a whole kind of Trump mindset there where, you know, things are okay because one declares it so, you know, Trump, whatever Trump does is legal because he's the president and he creates the law and that's kind of bled over into the position of his crowd where, you know what they're doing is lawful and In orderly because they're, they've aligned themselves with law and order, and they don't understand that the cops are there and going to try to stop them from doing something that, in fact, is not legal. And on the other side of that, you know, I think on the left a lot of times, you know, there's a real bad taste in people's mouths over identifying as patriotic in any sense. And I understand that, and I understand holding people accountable, and nations accountable for their history and things like that. But I really do feel that the core premise of our democracy has created, or at least tried to create a system by which we correct things that are not that make us n equal things that don't contribute to democratic processes or make things, you know, less equitable for the people, the citizens of our country. And I think it's kind of time that we embrace that and not just abdicate and say, This is the nature of America kind of thing. And yeah, allow the Trump crowd to, to claim the title of true patriots. When in fact, they're, they're attempting a coup. Yeah. And in their vision of the United States could not be more misaligned with I think, the vision of the United States that is more appropriate to anybody's understanding of the Constitution.

Stephen Bradford Long 11:35 Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is basically we shouldn't we shouldn't let the right lay claim to what is justly ours, you know, and that that's something that I that's something that I have been thinking about quite a bit actually, you know, I think about this in terms of free speech where it's like no free speech is not a right wing issue. Maybe it maybe they cynically use it as as maybe they you know, cynically and maliciously use it as a weaponized cudgel. But, you know, this is universal, same, same with being a patriot. Same with religious freedom. I think that there is this temptation to just, you know, throw up our hands and be like, Okay, well, I'm just going to take my ball and go home and let them have it, let them have that term, let them have that word or that idea. I just really, really resist that impulse. I get it. But I really resist it.

Doug Misicko 12:40 Yeah, because it is it's demotivating. Yes, right, yeah, to do to just just settle on that and say, well, this, this is the nature of Americanism. And I want nothing to do with this, this legacy of colonialism and all that kind of thing, that it just advocates your place here. And as long as this is where we're going to be, we should really stick it out for for better purposes than and allow these assholes to come in and claim that this is the definition of patriotism. And this is how the United States is. Because if we're really founded on religious freedom, the Trump crowd has no understanding of what that actually looks like in practice, and then not even try this idea that Christian nationalism, holding dominance and, you know, one particular religious viewpoint, having a type of preferred placement on the public grounds. It's something we've been fighting against for a long time. And it's symbolic of the rest of their efforts to assert dominance in every way for their lifestyles to impose upon others for their moral structure to be imposed upon everybody else's viewpoints. And they've done a really good job playing with the semantics, yes, you know, that only. Only deregulation of business really matters when it comes to issues of individual liberty. Now that corporations are people, you know, religious freedom, means their freedom to impose their religion upon everybody else. But you know, that really is playing with semantics. And that isn't the meaning of these things. And it's really time to take some pride in who we are. It takes some pride on the good things that have been built, the advances that have been made, look at some of the things that have been done during within the rights revolutions within the last 50 years, and really push those things further. Yeah.

Stephen Bradford Long 14:37 And, you know, just to clarify, I don't think what you're saying is that, you know, we don't have a terrible history of colonialism, because we do you know, and so just to clarify, it isn't that we're denying that America has done some shitty things but, but rather that maybe now is not the time to abandon ship. and that we should really lay claim to the legacy of the positive legacy, the good legacy, while you know, we can acknowledge and and try to repair the harms that have been done, but we also shouldn't jump ship.

Doug Misicko 15:19 Well, exactly. I hear a lot of the rhetoric of apathy. Sometimes when I hear people saying nothing, nothing has changed, nothing has improved. That's not true patently false to say that things aren't aren't wrong. But if we don't recognize what we've done, right, it doesn't give us any map forward, either. Yeah, you know, we do need to recognize those things, and we need to embrace them. And we have to see, we have made progress. I mean, this is not par for the course, you know, 20 years ago, these assholes were hiding away and holes, you know, we've taken a step backwards, I think we should recognize that. Yeah, you know, yeah, I really do think they need to be driven back into their holes again, in we can't give up and yield and say that, you know, this is their territory. And we need to understand that this is something we can never move beyond.

Stephen Bradford Long 16:11 I completely agree with that. And you're just talking about the progress that we've made. And I see I don't I wonder if you've seen this, this is kind of a tangent. But I see usually, men, usually young men, usually on the internet, kind of reminiscing for this sunny past, where things were so much better. Things were so much more just where, you know, maybe the pink haired social justice warriors weren't, you know, ruining their lives or something. And that there were still institutional and religious structures in place that gave us a sense of meaning. And now, you know, what I hear from a lot of these guys is, you know, they feel like their life is meaningless. They feel like their life is empty, and that things are worse now than they've ever been. And just I look at it. So I see, I see that pessimism that you're talking about on the left kind of this doom or ism of everything, so fucked. We can't fix this. And then on the other side, I also see I see this pining for like a, a mythic ancestral past a mythic religious past, where, where there was structure in the world and where there was meaning in the world. And I, I just look at that. And I look at both of those narratives as a gay man. And I'm like, You do realize I would be burned at the fucking steak at literally any other point in human history in the West, like, Crimea fucking river, about the past?

Doug Misicko 17:53 Well, right. But on the other hand, it's difficult for people is aware as they might be of history, it's difficult for people to see past their own lifetime. Yes. And now we're looking past, you know, the past 12 years, which is a significant chunk of most people's lives, and especially some of these younger people you're talking to are talking about. And there is a sharp distinction between the Obama era and the Trump era. And it can really make it look like we've taken a dive.

Stephen Bradford Long 18:31 Yeah, for sure. And we have we tangibly have

Doug Misicko 18:37 it. I mean, for me, it felt like it started right away. With Trump, it felt like we were no longer living in a system we could rely upon. It was very clear that we had an incompetent narcissist in office, and not smart enough to know how stupid he was or how unaware he was. There was a time you know, with George W. Bush, I thought this is the worst we could get. This was this was obviously a very stupid person caught like a deer in headlights in any emergency situation. But now we look back in realize how much better he was in Trump. Because at least you know, he might have had a sinister cabinet, but they understood the process and how our institutions work, and they really, don't get me wrong. They did a lot to really expand executive power in terrible ways.

Stephen Bradford Long 19:37 Yeah, you know, I kind of want to push back on that just to just to explore this some more. So, you know, hindsight is 2020 and I feel like we're still there's a problem of you can't see the mountain when you're standing on it. And so maybe part of this is that it will really take time to assess the damage of the Trump administration and you know, really only time will tell I'll just how extensive the damage has really been in terms of like, policy in terms of actual tangible effects on people's lives? I do. I wonder, I wonder, which was worse, you know, Bush launched this horror, you know, this horrific war had had a whenever I think of his cabinet, I think of those big scary bird things in the Dark Crystal, this guy axes, he basically had a cabinet full of sky axes, and war hawks. And do you think that the tangible effect in terms of what happened with like policy and and real lives being lost? How does that compare to Trump? I feel like Trump did greater cultural damage. You know, I feel like in terms of the institutional and cultural damage, Trump has done, maybe irreparable harm to our country, but in terms of the effect affecting actual lives on the ground and launching this war that killed 1000s of people, you know, I don't know, it's hard for me to decide which one is worse. Does that make sense? No,

Doug Misicko 21:13 no, you're right. And I feel like the Bush administration really set the stage for Trump, which makes you wonder, you know, what is Trump set the stage for? I hear that Trump is set the stage for somebody with autocratic ambitions to know what they can get away with. And, you know, maybe be able to execute it because they're smarter than

Stephen Bradford Long 21:37 honestly, we are so lucky that Trump is as fucking stupid as he is know

Doug Misicko 21:42 exactly why we are so lucky. Best thing about him was how fucking stupid he's been. Exactly. I mean, obviously, he intended a coup here, but the best he could do was rant about it on Twitter, press these ludicrous lawsuits under the impression that judges would fall into line with loyalty to him, he didn't manage to put together the kind of alliances, he really needed to pull this off, because he was he was just too stupid. It looks like it wouldn't have been that hard. Honestly, I mean, that's the really disturbing part about all of this is that it's gotten as far as it has, with as little coherence as as he put forward, he just kind of signaled his will, and a bunch of really thoughtless and gullible people followed along, but nobody really had a clear idea of how they would execute any of this. And they were all kind of hoping that the system would intervene on Trump's behalf. Next time around, that won't be that won't be the case. And that's why it's vital that things get fixed now. But when I say about George W, Bush being better than Trump, I do mean on that kind of cultural social level, where it leads, you know, they were able to do it within the system, and they were able to push legal cases, scary ones to set bad precedent, no doubt about it in the Bush administration. But it wasn't so alarming to people, because they were doing it within the within the system. And the unified executive theory, you know, they were really pushing that with the Bush administration really trying to give the executive powers much more of a carte blanche, than ever before. And a lot of that persisted up to Trump and Trump wasn't able to exploit that. But when you had 911, Bush was clearly unprepared. He didn't. You know, they have this footage of him just looking scared and confused. If you saw how little people needed to feel confidence in our in our elected officials in that time, because they put him in front of a teleprompter, just to say the mandatory things that you're supposed to say in an emergency. Let's all pull together, that kind of thing. And by God, we're Americans and all of that, in his ratings just skyrocketed up. And people ignored the fact that he was so unqualified and so witless because they didn't want to believe it. They wanted to feel more comfortable than that. Trump couldn't even meet that basic minimum. The Coronavirus, breaks out he starts bitching that it's a plot against him. You know, it the point where he had the opportunity to really flex some autocratic muscle and put a police state in place like other countries did, to really kind of solidify their autocratic powers during the pandemic. That was too much work for Trump. He wanted to be an autocrat, who didn't have to do any work and didn't have No, yes, it wasn't wasn't effective enough. So he just said, Hey, this shits up to the state say I have to take care of it. The protests started breaking out, after George Floyd got killed. The obvious thing to do the bare minimum thing a president would do is get up on the stage and tell people like, look, relaxed, we can pull through this together, this is terrible. You know, we're going to fix this, we got to, we have to unite as a nation kind of thing. They have templates for this kind of shit. And it's so easy. And his ratings would have skyrocketed. Also, if he had done the bare minimum of just deferring the science, and trusting the CDC, and allowing people qualified to put together a federal plan for COVID. You know, he would have won the re election, if he had, yeah,

Stephen Bradford Long 25:49 he would have it would have saved his second term. I mean,

Doug Misicko 25:54 to to anybody else that would have been, that would have been something that would have really sealed the deal, these catastrophes, you know, he just had to do a bare minimum, he had to say that the trite cliche things to get people on board, but he was just too fucking worthless to even do that. And that's what that's what I mean, when I say that Trump was was so much worse than George Bush, she inspired absolutely zero confidence in the United States, but also around the world. I mean, this is, I think a lot of people don't realize how far we fell, when COVID broke out worldwide. And nobody was even looking to the United States to lead this charge at all. Trump blames the World Health Organization we even pull out of the World Health Organization, at possibly the stupid is time you could do such a thing. And, you know, it just seems like not too far back in the past, the world would have been looking to the response of the United States, the vaccine work behind the United States, the Federal program to roll out vaccination put forward by the United States and the messaging. Nobody was thinking that way. Now, it's, you know, it's kind of the open question as to whether they'll look to the United States in the same way, again,

Stephen Bradford Long 27:21 and, you know, speaking to Trump's just pure idiocy, and his inability to even be a, like a, an effective dictator, and effective autocrat. You know, I listened to parts of his call of that phone conversation with the Georgia senators in which he was basically I mean, I think it was worse than Watergate, or as bad, you know, I, like do a truly criminal things. But what I heard listening to that conversation he had with those senators was, he's a believer in his own conspiracy theories. He isn't he isn't above it. He isn't above. Like when he says, when he said in that conversation, that the Democrats stole the election, and all of these conspiracy theories about how the how he actually won a landslide. And, and, you know, I guess we will never really know what he believes. But he talked like someone who was convinced he talked like someone who believed his own conspiracies, his own conspiracy theories.

Doug Misicko 28:38 Well, he has been living in a world where he makes things true by Fiat. He declares that things are so and I kind of feel like this leads to a bigger question about the deliberation of public officials. And to what degree do we allow them to be wrong? And that kind of a it's kind of a big topic in a lot of fields?

Stephen Bradford Long 29:05 Yeah. Could you could you expound more on what you mean by that? To what degree do we allow them to be wrong?

29:11 Well, I mean, factually, there is no evidence for this bullshit about a stolen election. Right. So how much do you allow public officials to get away with grandstanding on the grounds that an election was stolen? Especially when it foments so much division and possible violence and things like that? How much do you tolerate Josh Hawley your or Ted Cruz standing up in in in talking about how this election, you know, is somehow so much different from other elections that the results shouldn't be respected or they should be, you know, gone over again until we come to the proper results, which I guess would be Trump winning or Whatever, at what point is there lack of factual basis in any of this grounds for removing them from office right now there? It isn't. Right? This is a similar kind of debate that comes up when you're talking about academic freedom. You know, sometimes tenured professors will go off in a bizarre direction, chasing conspiracy theories themselves or whatever, like, John Mack at Harvard who started

Stephen Bradford Long 30:30 Oh, yeah, who did the abduction? Yeah, abduction book. Yeah, I have that on my shelf. Right. Right.

Doug Misicko 30:35 But, you know, Harvard felt like they were in a, in a real tough spot with that, you know, they were investigating his research and everything, and they weren't sure. You know what to do, if they should get rid of him or whatever. But that just, you know, leads us into the direction of discussions about, at what point should our politicians or our representatives, be held accountable to follow the facts, the evidence that we have, and not just be able to get away with claiming that they're being driven by the passions of some voter base that they they prefer over another voter base, or whatever? And this is a vital question, I think now given with climate. I mean, how much longer do we tolerate assholes who are making money from oil companies or other polluting industries, coal, whatever else, fossil fuels that, you know, pushing an agenda, to roll back environmental protections when the preponderance of the evidence in science goes the other direction? And I don't feel like we've we built the proper structure to mitigate these kinds of petty political ploys in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and I feel like there really should be there needs to be something in place now, that wouldn't allow for people to pull that kind of bullshit that Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, we're polling, where you can't just make assertions like that, you know, you can't just stand before Congress and claim that, you know, the election was stolen, without some kind of repercussions for making a false claim. That's a false accusation, you know, as far as we can see. And they had no no other reason for saying it other than their own vision of, or their own attempts at political game,

Stephen Bradford Long 32:36 you know, it I feel like it's even broader than that, where it's, it's like, to what degree do we as kind of this organism that is a country that as a society, tolerate you know, charlatans misinformation, hate hatred against minorities? It's like, you know, how do we as the body politic how do we as this organism manage that and and kind of have the what are the antibodies in this body in order to kind of push push that insanity away and out of our system? Because it's, it's poisoning us right now and this actually, so let's go ahead and move on to some questions from my audience. And this this point actually leads really nicely into one of the questions that someone on my Discord had by the way, everyone on my Discord is an is anonymous. So I am I won't use anyone's names on my Discord server. Oh, well, okay, so while here here's a softball question from someone on Discord while I'm looking for the bigger question. Someone wants to know, what are your general opinions on breakfast food? I think this is a question that should be asked of anyone in a position of power or leadership.

Doug Misicko 34:03 I think it should be served all day. God damn, what

Stephen Bradford Long 34:07 do I agree with that? I mean, who I 100% agree.

Doug Misicko 34:12 Yeah. places that have breakfast on the menu. I'll end up getting that for dinner.

Stephen Bradford Long 34:18 They they are for the win. Okay, so I might have actually not even posted the question to my notes here. But there was one question which was what are your thoughts on the dismantling of parlor? So for people who don't know parlor by the way, I was on parlor because I spy on people. And because parlor is all about free speech and self expression. I decided to be my true self. And so I went with the user name Haggard's come slot, and, you know, just spied on everything that was going on on parler. Now it's down because Amazon yanked its servers and So parler is having to rebuild from the bottom up. Of course, we don't know, all of the details there. We don't know if there was some contractual thing. I assume there was a contract between Amazon and parler. We don't know all the behind the scenes stuff. But it looks like it was in response to parlor being a hotbed of insurrection of plotting political violence. What are your thoughts on just the wholesale dismantling of a platform like parlor over over something like this?

Doug Misicko 35:33 I think breakfast is the law breakfast under will?

Stephen Bradford Long 35:40 Absolutely. Breakfast makes right. Not might as right but breakfast is right.

Doug Misicko 35:48 Right. You know, this is this topic is worthy of an entire book. Absolutely. And in there's there's a lot of mixed feelings to even about Trump being banned off of Twitter. And, you know, let me let me draw back a bit and talk about something that ties in though it might not seem that way at first. There's been plenty of occasions throughout the past years now, when people have really soured to Republicans and Christian nationalists and seeing them for what they are. And, you know, getting really irritated by these bigoted politicians running on, you know, Christian nationalist agenda that's anti LGBTQ and all that. And then they get out and they'll do their speeches or whatever. And they'll be playing a song. And the musicians get pissed off. And they say, We don't want to be associated with this. And sometimes they've announced that they're going to sue, they're going to sue because or for however many 10s of 1000s of dollars for usage of the song and this happened with Huckabee and that one woman who wouldn't sign the marriage certificate. I forget her name.

Stephen Bradford Long 37:10 I, I cannot but I can picture her. I am seeing her right now. Yes, I know exactly who you're talking about.

Doug Misicko 37:18 Right. She's that asshole. Kim? Kim, someone would just beliefs too. Apparent apparently her her belief against gay marriage prevented her from signing a wedding certificate as a county clerk or whatever. Yeah, she felt that was that was her place somehow. And of course, they glorified her. And Huckabee had some thing. You know, some outdoor rally or whatever was speaking, they played I have a tiger in the band that the band that created the song I have the tiger said they were gonna sue for like $25,000 or whatever. They were demanding that kind of payment. And of course, you know, people on my side of politics are immediately cheering like, Yeah, fuck you pay on that kind of thing. And, you know, I don't immediately go that way. I'm thinking, who's going to be preferencing a video of that events, you know, over getting the song if they want to buy it. You know, how many times have I unwillingly heard that song because it was playing somewhere. And the idea that they should get paid some $25,000 or whatever for that being played outdoors at a rally is absurd. Me and it didn't matter what the rally was, of course, I can't stand Huckabee and I couldn't stand her. And I couldn't even stand what they were talking about or what right. But you're you're setting a precedent, then you know, you can't let those emotions overtake you to the point where these ridiculous songs you never wanted to hear to begin with or playing outside and somebody saying you owe them money for an exorbitant amount like that, when they can't guess when they can't reasonably be claiming a loss of that amount of money for for anything they did, you know. So it was absurd. It is kind of an attempt at a punitive measure against them. And I feel similarly when it comes to things like Trump being banned from Twitter. Now, in the case of Trump being banned from Twitter, I'm not convinced they did anything wrong. These are these are extreme circumstances and these are in Trump is different. Yes, any other private person, and I really do feel somebody like him should be held more accountable rather than less accountable, even though that's not the direction we've gone. And it seems like the more power somebody gets, the attitude is, the less accountable they are it really should be the opposite. Yes. But on the other hand, we do have to think about giving that type of power to a company like Twitter that seems to arbitrarily apply its standards unevenly only when they feel like it And I'm thinking, of course about threats made to tsp and Satanists that they, you know, they never find to be in violation of their terms of service. And they have these opaque gag algorithms. And we don't know who makes these decisions. And you know, that argument now with the tech companies seems outdated, where people say, hey, it's a private company, if you don't want to use them, you don't have to, you kind of have to, you know, you're at this point, you simply do not have access to the public. If you're blacklisted from Facebook or Twitter, you're you're, you're missing a significant market and way to reach out to people. And I don't know what the percentages are, but they're high of people who get their news, almost exclusively, from Facebook or Twitter. So if you're not on there, you're you're kind of dead,

Stephen Bradford Long 40:55 you're fucked. And we know exactly what happens when people get blacklisted, you know, when Stefan Molyneux, Stefan Molyneux and Milo INNOPOLIS, both of whom, you know, don't get me wrong, I don't shed a tear for either of them, because they're both disgusting shitlords. And I don't think they should have a platform. Because I think that they're awful and disgusting. But when they were kicked off of all of the major platforms, their audience died, because everyone's on Facebook, everyone's on Twitter, everyone's on YouTube. And when Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos, were kicked off of Twitter and YouTube, it was done for them. And that this isn't a statement about either of those, but rather, you know, I, this is an issue that is so big. And I'm trying to kind of wrap my head around it. And the only way that I can kind of describe it is, you know, a, the metaphor of of the cuckoo, the bird where it it will lay its egg in another bird's nest. And then that baby cuckoo will push the other baby birds out of the nest. And then we'll take all the food from this poor, unsuspecting mother bird. And that is what social media has done to the public square. Yeah, it is a private entity, a corporate entity, that like the cuckoo has been planted in our democratic culture, you know, and in our, in our democracy in our culture, it is posing as the public square. But behind just beneath the surface, it is actually billions and billions of dollars of algorithms and technology pointed straight at your brain every time you look at it. Incredibly powerful technology pointed straight at your goal is to manipulate every second that you're on it, right? That is that's unprecedented like that is unprecedented in human history. And so it's like, how do I even begin to think about this stuff? How do I even begin to think about parlor? How do I even begin to think of people like Alex Jones or Trump being kicked off of Twitter, when it's like, this is so new. And so I'm really ambivalent I and I think it's reasonable to be ambivalent about this where it's like, Yes, I'm glad I think it's good that these people are off of these platforms, or

Doug Misicko 43:36 the normal, the normal free speech arguments don't apply when it comes to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the tech companies. And the reason they don't apply is because the standard free speech argument is for the open marketplace of ideas, which I stand by saying this, it's not that and Facebook, and Zuckerberg likes to use this, these free speech arguments, as though he doesn't realize that anything has changed. But what has changed is, you are not throwing ideas out into the public. When you throw ideas out, or when you market ideas on on Facebook, or YouTube or whatever. There's, there's paid advertising, there's algorithms that make sure that this material only reaches people who are gullible for it, who are persuadable to it. People want to hear it. And that's where it becomes the echo chambers. And it's not thrown out to a segment of the population at random, where people are analyzing this arguing about it. You have the the illusion of that. Most people don't realize I don't think how insular their algorithmic bubbles are,

Stephen Bradford Long 44:52 because it feels seamless, right,

Doug Misicko 44:55 right. That's why we've gotten people dividing into these such polarized times. bribes. But I feel like in order to kind of restore a type of balance, we need to, we need to kill surveillance marketing. I think the the, the monetization structure of Facebook and YouTube, they need to be gutted entirely. That whole, that whole tactic of building evermore elaborate personal profiles of people to know exactly what information to target them with, regardless of the veracity of truth behind the claims or anything like that, that needs to stop. We're seeing the outcome of that. Now, when we're seeing these conspiracies, mobs, yes, descending upon the Capitol. Well, there's another population of people can't believe it's happening and have no idea what these people are thinking. This is the world that Facebook has created. It's the world that surveillance marketing has created. And surveillance marketing I really feel needs to be killed.

Stephen Bradford Long 46:04 And for people who who don't realize the degree to which social media is literally second by second manipulating you while you're on it. Every every single pause and duration of that pause that you make as you scroll your feed everything you click everything you like. Some apps even according to Jaron Lanier will use the camera to measure your your skin tone and and measure of blush in your tone to determine whether what's on the screen is having a physiological effect on you. Crazy shit and then that feedback loop because they know you better than it, then your spouse does. You know, Twitter knows you better than your partner does, then they are literally second by second as you're scrolling up the very next item, the very next item that you see, as you scroll up each one is perfectly calculated to capture your attention. Each one is my newly manufactured by billions of dollars of technology, an algorithm that even its makers don't fully understand. So that you can stay on screen for as long as possible. But it's and part of its power is that it seems invisible. Right? Yeah.

Doug Misicko 47:39 According to Facebook's own research, some somewhere upward and over 60% of people who joined radical groups in their on their platform did so by recommendation by Facebook. Yep. You know and YouTube is is absolutely terrible when it comes to is trying to force radicalized material on you. I noticed I never watched political stuff on YouTube. So I'm always mystified when I see recommendations for really just kind of filth junk food material, have somebody ranting about something and current events or whatever or taking some ridiculous point of view. Or, you know, I have no idea how much Ben Shapiro must pay YouTube but it seems like everybody gets recommendations for that assholes videos and

Stephen Bradford Long 48:35 even I do anime as like, pink lefty commie fagot as they come in even YouTube thinks I should watch Ben Shapiro.

Doug Misicko 48:44 Yeah, I have no idea what what YouTube's vested interest is in, in Ben Shapiro. But they've been they've been popularizing that guy the best they can for some time now. And in you know, this, this, it's, it's having its real world effect. And I think if people want to see know what's different now from 20 years ago, you know, this is part of it. This is this is part of part of what's really causing people to section off into these tribes that don't understand each other at all anymore, just because they aren't participating in the same discourse together. Yep, they're not even seeing it.

Stephen Bradford Long 49:22 So here's another question from someone on Discord. They asked. Many activists, particularly those associated with Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements, have said they don't feel progress can be made working within the system anymore. It's too corrupt. TST has always worked within the system. When it comes to fighting injustice. Do you think this method continues to work? Will it ever need to be adjusted?

Doug Misicko 49:51 Well, let me just comment on how I really do get sick of people saying that, you know, working within the system doesn't work. anymore, I'm not so much irritated by that point of view, as much as I am disappointed in the lack of follow up to it, because I never really hear what the recommendation is for an entirely different system. But like I said, at the, at the core of it, we're supposed to have a self correcting system, one that is amenable to change, and one that we can, we can revise for our purposes. And that's why we push forward our rights in the courts, because, you know, the, the letter of the law is such that our claims are valid, and that we should, they should find in our favor, right. And assuming that that's the case, these are actually good laws, and where the laws are bad laws, we should challenge them. But until I hear something better, for a plan of complete overthrow and restructuring, simply saying that we can't work within the system is is, is just giving up, you know, you don't take to the streets, just screaming, we can't work within the system, because then you're just making a lot of noise. And you're not, you're not presenting any alternative, you really have to have an end goal in mind, before you give up on what you've got. And I hear a lot of this rhetoric and, you know, even questioning is sure to get some people pissed off, you know, I'm, I'm against the general will of, of the crowd, that's, that's out protesting or whatever, I think it's a matter of agreeing with what's wrong, but not agreeing with with the tactics. And in this case, I just don't hear tactics being addressed, that could be better than, you know, actually pushing to work within the system, that with the cop protests or anything, there's there have been a lot of people who have proposed real dramatic overhauls of the policing system that, you know, show a lot of promise. And you can't say that these things have never worked, we haven't tried them. And there's every reason to believe that a lot of these things would work. And there's a lot of things that are very obviously wrong with the current system that can be changed and revised. So I don't know why we wouldn't do those things into what point to what point you tear it down. You know, like, before you say those things, you really need to know which direction you're going,

Stephen Bradford Long 52:36 you know, I yeah, I, I think I'm right there with you. I get it, I really, I get the frustration, I get the rage with the system, you know, and especially if it feels like and not just feels like but objectively has been against you as a minority at every turn, you know, the system has not been kind to black people, to trans people to sex workers, et cetera, et cetera, you know, I think rage against the system is is perfectly reasonable. So I get it, and it does have to change, it does need to change like this is not a defense of the system. Some people talk about this of of not working within the system versus working within it, all of that. I sometimes wonder if there is an element of purity and contamination there. And that there's this sense of, you know, purity, Jonathan Hite talks about how purity is is. And contamination is one of the core evolutionary languages that have been that has been baked into us as a species. But then different cultures express that in different ways. And I do think that purity is is really important to a lot of leftist spaces. I'm not saying this at all to dis leftist I am one I sometimes wonder if there is a sense of contagion and contamination in working within the system, because it feels gross, you know, does that make Does that make sense?

Doug Misicko 54:08 Yeah. But it also begs the question of what do they mean by the system?

Stephen Bradford Long 54:13 Does I mean, that's, yeah, that's never clear. Right?

Doug Misicko 54:17 Well, we're right in my knee jerk reaction is to think that somebody feels that they have a higher moral authority than to answer to a deliberative process on something, because it's, it's not moving ahead. But we have to recognize the pitfalls of allowing some kind of autocratic force and, you know, in anything we do, yeah. So until it's really clarified, what the system is what we can't work with. And if there's anything we can, then we can move forward from those discussions. It's not to say, you know, that at a point where, you know, we lose all our legal battles and a theocracy. is installed in the United States that we wouldn't, you know, obviously have to shift tactics, right. I don't think we're there yet. You know, I honestly feel that the system such as it is, you know, at least on paper is on our side. But we really have been corrupted by people coming in claiming that they're upholding their patriotism and a true understanding of the Constitution. And what they're doing is, you know, couldn't be more antithetical to any of that, if we, you know, look at American history is, at least in part, the history of the rights revolutions, and, you know, some kind of affirmation of enlightenment values.

Stephen Bradford Long 55:46 And, you know, to kind of harken back to the conversation we were having at the beginning about patriotism. I am personally not ready yet to give the quote unquote, system to the right. Well, that's

Doug Misicko 56:01 worked with me because yeah, if you want to talk about breaking the system, that's exactly what the Trump errs are trying to do. You know, he put people in charge of different departments who had absolutely no respect for them. He put, you know, Scott Pruitt is head of the EPA at first, and this was a guy who wanted to dismantle the EPA, you know, he had no, he had no care for environmental protection, he only cared about kind of breaking that system of regulation to allow businesses to make money at will, you know, while subtracting from the health of the general population didn't matter, Betsy DeVos she's putting in, in the Department of Education. And she has no respect at all for public education. She wants to give everything to private schools, allow them to indoctrinate children with religion while taking federal funds. You know, these are people, when I think of breaking the system, I'm thinking of Trump and the actually the powers that be and I think that's the difference between me and some of the people decrying the system, is that they see Trump as the system. I don't see him that way at all. I think he's running absolutely contrary to everything the system was supposed to protect us from. But the system hasn't worked in that regard, because it also takes active participation. You know, you can't, you can't expect it just to manage itself without any found any oversight. And that's what the people are supposed to do. And you know, to that, and I'm glad that the Democrats are pushing for impeachment, but generally, I felt like they proven themselves a bit spineless. And I'm surprised that they're doing that at all. Yeah, say, like you said, I'm kind of surprised that they're pushing for impeachment now. And nobody seemed to mention it at the point where a phone call came out where he was directly threatening officials in Georgia to find votes for him to overturn the election results. They're

Stephen Bradford Long 58:06 absolutely I mean it, but it's almost like we've been you know, human beings are pretty amazing, and how we can normalize how we can acclimate to stuff. And it really is just like, every day, Trump doing some crazy bullshit all the way up to, you know, strong arming Georgia, Georgia senators to get him votes that don't exist. And it's almost like, we don't see it anymore. Because it's, it's too much, and we've just acclimated to it. It's normal now and that, that is what really worries Right?

Doug Misicko 58:53 Right. No, that's that's the danger. Trump pushed it further and further, to the point where on a daily basis, he was doing things that ruined other people's political careers. And we lost that dignity along the way, you know, we lost it. The dignity of other people would protest those things and say that this cannot stand and that we need to remove this fool from office. You know, we got to the point where it was expected people kind of shrugged it off, and it really has paved the way for something terrible. Next time. Next time we get a Republican in office, you

Stephen Bradford Long 59:32 smart enough, right? So one person on my Discord wanted me to tell you let's see here, quote, Tell Lucien Greaves I challenge him to a dance off. Do you accept the dance off? We'll hold.

Doug Misicko 59:50 I don't know. Oh, yeah, that that's probably the hardest. In any of my interviews

Stephen Bradford Long 59:57 as well. Oh, great. That's an honor. I Oh, this person on my Discord should be honored by that. Well, I think I think that's it. That's a good note to

Doug Misicko 1:00:08 Well, let me let me give you a piece of

Stephen Bradford Long 1:00:10 news first though. Yes, please, please.

Doug Misicko 1:00:12 Satanic planet is we've entered a verbal agreement and we just need to sign the contracts now between all of us, but we have a three album contract with the label Cleopatra.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:00:25 Amazing. Yeah, there you go. That's fantastic. Congratulations. My understanding

Doug Misicko 1:00:31 is it'll still be like, you know, at least six months before the album comes out or whatever, but now at least,

Stephen Bradford Long 1:00:37 is that yeah, for sure. That's incredible. And that's great actually, because I did see some questions about satanic planet and the status of it so fantastic update and when it comes out you can come on again to talk specifically about the album and maybe some of your band members. Yeah, we can we can do a show together and talk about it. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, I'm all for it. And as always, you know, you're welcome back anytime if ever you want to just come on and rant about something just let me know. I'm sure people would love to hear it.

Doug Misicko 1:01:10 Thank you so much.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:01:10 Yeah, of course. All right. Well that is it for this show. As always the music is by the jelly rocks and 11 D seven you can find them on iTunes Spotify or wherever you listen to music The artwork is by Rama Krishna Das and this episode is recorded edited and produced by me Steven Bradford long and it is a production of rock candy recordings as always Hail Satan thanks for listening

1:01:40 Find a safe space I just want to say grandma got to say this nervous Christmassy this crisis is this way I'm traveling back into black holes Neil deGrasse Tyson.

1:03:34 name is Sal in the game we maintain the strain cables live in this shiny Googly blank the way you wish right gotta leave right me you might have to fight home. Look at this life. Yo,

1:03:46 we rock in located here right in the middle of the doors to go into the route but I got to start swinging away to make it out of this tree life is family history. Nobody is going straight from the bow