California’s Blue Coup: The 329th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

A

Foreign. Welcome to the 329th Dark Horse podcast live stream with me, Dr. Brett Weinstein. I don't usually mispronounce that. Dr. Brett Weinstein. And you, Dr. Heather Heying. To you and to everyone. Happy Sexual Public Depravity Month. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's. It's in. It's in full swing.

B

Yeah, we're well on our way.

A

We are well on our way.

B

Yeah. I just wanted to point out that 329 is not prime.

A

Of course not.

B

Seven by 47, obviously, just for those of you who are keeping track at home.

A

Yeah, right, exactly. I imagine there are people who have a big whiteboard and they are keeping track of these.

B

Yeah, I'm not sure you need a whiteboard at this point, but. But something. So today we're going to talk about extraordinary and glorious California and rigged elections and the nature of democracy, and also an executive order in Washington state that demonstrates just how powerless, spineless and in need of replacement our leaders are.

A

Yeah, I know. I mean, how it's, you know, you need superlatives aplenty to explain just how in need of replacement they are.

B

Yeah. What did I say? Spineless, powerless and in need of replacement. Yeah.

A

Yes. In need. Yes. In need of urgent replacement.

B

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So today we are going to do a Q and A after our livestream. Join us on locals. You can always join on Locals for watch parties going on during the live streams, Q&As both during and after the fact, other original content, and also just a reminder that YouTube has remonetized us but continues to throttle our channel. We hear from people who have been unsubscribed and had their likes unliked and such. So please, if you watch on YouTube, anywhere you watch or listen, but especially on YouTube, check that if you wanted to be subscribed, you are, and please consider doing so. It's free to you and like and share and all the good things that will help us without costing you anything.

A

Yes, it's. It's good stuff. It's free to you and let us know either way whether you're seeing notifications or not. That's one of the. The measures is people who subscribe for notifications don't get them. Sometimes other people do. So anyway, it's good for us to be able to keep an eye on that.

B

Very good. Okay, so as always, we have three sponsors carefully chosen right at the top of the hour. So let's get, let's get on to those. Let's get on to those. The first sponsor this week is brand new to us. It is Redmond salt and Redmond salt comes by the bucket. This is not actually what we're going to be talking about today, but we've been using Redmond salt as our table and cooking salt for well over a decade now. We like it so much we literally buy it by the bucket. Okay. Renamin salt is mined from a Jurassic era seabed in Utah and they've been in the salt business since the Eisenhower administration. These guys know salt and they've been making mineral rich, non iodized salt available for longer than most people were giving any thought to their salt. Really. I feel like people started thinking about salt in like the 90s maybe. I'm sure other people were before then, but the idea that these guys have been making this amazing Jurassic era, Utah sourced Salt since the 1950s is extraordinary. So Redmond salt has now made the obvious jump into electrolytes because guess what? Electrolytes are salts. Here's some of their stuff in bulk. And here is a packet of the to go, a bag of the to go packets which people are often used to seeing electrolytes in the form of. Electrolytes are salts and trace minerals that your body needs to function. So of course Redmond salt is going to make an excellent electrolyte and their relight is indeed an excellent, excellent product. If you're drinking plenty of water but still feel dehydrated, there's a good chance you've got an electrolyte deficiency. I honestly did not think much about electrolytes until we did the Camino de Santiago last year. Through hiking in northern Spain. And both Brett and I, different moments, felt woozy and disoriented. At the end of a long day of hiking, our walking companions, apparently much smarter than us, all insisted that we needed electrolytes. At first we resisted and yeah, they were right. They were totally right.

A

Not only right, but maybe you're going to say this, but the effect was near immediate. From feeling like you had just come down with the flu to feeling like, oh, I'm fine, I'll go out.

B

Oh, my vision. Yeah, yeah, of course I'll go and eat. Amazing. Yeah. So when you need electrolytes, you need electrolytes. And our favorites of the ones we got given by our friends on the Camino because we had come unprepared, whereas none of them had in this, in this regard we were unprepared was Redmond's salt. Redmond Salt relight. When your body runs out of the minerals it needs to run, it starts to fritz out. When that happens, relight gets you back on track. And sure, it seems like there are a million brands of electrolytes out there right now, but relight is different and better because of where the salt comes from. Because relight is made by redmond, the company behind Redmond Real salt. Again, who sells salt by the bucket. Their electrolytes start with unrefined real salt that naturally contains sodium chloride and more than 60 trace minerals from geology, not from a lab. And the rest of the formula is just as clean. Zero sugar. No artificial sweeteners, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no chemical preservatives. You get sodium from real salt plus potassium, magnesium, calcium chloride and coconut water powder in the flavored varieties. No filler, no junk. Tastes great. I particularly like their grapefruit flavor, which is not what I've got here because I didn't want to steal it for myself. This one is iced tea lemonade also really good. When it tastes really good to you, that's your body telling you that you waited too long and you need electrolytes, Whether before a workout, on a flight or after a dry fast. Or if you're not doing a dry fast but doing a wet fast during a fast. Relight is an electrolyte to rely on if you've written off electrolytes because the category feels oversaturated and gimmicky. Relight is worth a second look. Real salt mine, real mineral heritage, real ingredients. That's it. Ready to give relight a try? Go to Redmond Life Darkhorse and use code darkhorse to get 15% off your first order. That's Redmond Life Darkhorse Dark Horse with code dark horse for 15% off your first order or click the link in the video description, scan the QR code on screen or check the pinned comment.

A

Nice use of the word saturated.

B

Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to take my bucket of salt home and you can't play with it anymore. All right, now our second sponsor this week. I also have a prop for this one is Branch basics, which makes simple, all natural, non toxic cleaning products. We've been using Branch basics cleaning products for a long time now and we love them more than ever. They are effective, non toxic and easy to use. What more could you want in cleaning products? You prep food on your countertops, bathe in the shower, wash your laundry in a machine full of detergent. But do you know what you're actually cleaning your home with? Maybe you did some deep cleaning this season in preparation for a summer full of fresh air and a certain amount of dirt. But if the products you cleaned with are themselves full of toxins, the cleaning didn't do you any good. Your home environment plays a big role in how you feel, and you probably use cleaning products every day. But do you know what you're cleaning your home with and how it might be affecting how you feel? Many products look clean but contain ingredients linked to hormone disruption, skin irritation and respiratory issues. And because cleaning brands in the US don't have to list everything they contain, you don't really know what's in your products. Branch Basics changes this with full transparency about their entirely non toxic plant and mineral based ingredients. Their premium starter kit comes with one powerful concentrate that makes everything laundry detergent. Which one do we have here? Bathroom cleaner, glass cleaner, even pet wash and vegetable rinse. But again, this is no different from those other things. It's just a different concentration. The ingredients are the same same and the ratios of the ingredients within the concentrate are the same. You just mix it to different dilutions with water. Just one plant and mineral based formula replaces it all and it's safe for babies, pets, and anyone wanting to reduce their daily exposure to harmful chemicals. In the new year, Branch Basics ships as two products, a concentrate and an oxygen boost. And the shipment includes empty bottles that you fill to different concentrations for different jobs. When you run out, all you need to do is restock the two products on their site or on Amazon or at Target, and you're again ready to clean everything in your home, from laundry to bathroom countertops. Branch Basics was founded by three women on their own personal health journeys and created out of a desire to heal. Through years of research, trial and error, the founders discovered the powerful impact that removing toxins from their environment had on their health. And now they're on a mission to help others do the same. And here's more good news. Branch Basics is now available everywhere you shop. @tARGET, target.com, amazon, and of course branchbasics.com tossing the toxins has never been more convenient for anyone. Grabbing the premium starter kit, you can still get 15% off@branchbas basics.com with code DARKHORSE. Just use code DARKHORSE for 15 off the premium starter kit@branchbasics.com after you purchase. When they ask where you heard about them, please make sure to mention our show.

A

And the bottle itself lets you do the concentration. You just fill it to where it says with water, fill the rest with soap and you're good to go. Great Stuff. It really is now our final sponsor this week, Heather, is crowd health. Crowd health isn't health insurance, as you know. It's better. As you also know, we spent years buying health insurance in the marketplace after we left our salary jobs as college professors. It was awful. The family of four had health insurance for emergencies only and we were paying more than $1,500 a month for a policy with a $17,000 annual deductible to a company that was unresponsive and unhelpful. Tens of thousands of dollars paid out for no benefit whatsoever. Heather, that's you went looking for alternatives and she found crowd health. Crowd health is a community of people helping decentralize how health care costs are managed. From funding medical costs to helping negotiate your bills, they provide tools to help you take charge of your health care costs. We have now had two sets of great experiences with crowd health. Our younger son, Toby broke his foot in the summer of 2024 and Heather slipped on wet concrete and needed a CT a year later. Both times we went to the ER and got good but pricey treatment from the medical staff. Both times, the crowd health community helped fund our hospital bills with a simple, straightforward app and real people who were easy to reach and helpful. Health insurance in the United States is a mess, as you all know. From overpriced premiums to confusing fine print and endless paperwork and claims that don't get paid, and customer service that is unhelpful and hostile, these complicated systems are beyond dysfunctional and intentionally so, I would argue. We used to contend with this madness, but not anymore. There is a better way. You can stop playing the rigged insurance game. You can use crowd health instead. Crowd health is a community of people funding each other's medical bills directly. No middleman, no insurance, no networks, no nonsense. With crowd health, you get healthcare for under $100 per month for your first three months, including access to a team of health bill negotiators, low cost prescription and lab testing tools, and and a database of low cost, high quality doctors vetted by crowd health. And if something major happens, you pay the first $500 and crowd health steps in to fund the rest. Crowd health isn't health insurance. It's far better. With crowd health, you pay for the little stuff out of pocket. But for any event that costs more than $500, a diagnosis that requires ongoing treatment, a pregnancy or an accident, you pay the first 500 and crowd health pays the rest. Seriously, it's easy, affordable, and so much better than health insurance. The health insurance system is hoping you'll stay stuck in their same overpriced over complicated racket. Don't do it. Take charge of your health expenses and be part of a community. Join Crowd Health to get started for $99 a month for your first three months, using code DARK HORSE@joincrowdhealth.com that's join crowd Health Code Dark Horse. And remember, crowd Health is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win. Join CrowdHealth.com

B

all right, so we've been talking a lot about the west lately, both the west in general, as an idea, as an instantiation in our democracy, we hope, and as a place, a geography and the west coast of the United States being, as a man in Prague once said, the West, West, West.

A

The West, west, west, yes.

B

And so I've been thinking about, you know, much of our audience is on the west coast of the United States, but much of our audience, presumably the majority of our audience, is not and so are always going on about the place that we know and love best. May seem to. To get a little old or just you're not sure why we care so much. So I wanted to start before we. Before we talk about some of the continuing madness in. In the west coast as a manifestation of the west as a cultural ideal and a cultural and philosophical ideal with a series of excerpts of readings. And I encourage you to interrupt me between these readings. This will go on for a little while. They're all fairly short, but I think do a good job of describing some of our experience. I mean, it's not about the modern LA or California experience. These are all written by people, I think, who are now dead, actually. So this is more from the late 19th century into the mid 20th century. What was California? What was Los Angeles? All right, so I brought a bucket of salt on set today. I also brought a pile of books. I feel like those two things are defining, defining what I'm bringing today. So I have here, actually, you know,

A

they're now recommending against both, even though it's bad for you. Right? Yeah. Don't eat salt.

B

Don't eat salt. Don't read books.

A

Don't do your own research.

B

Yeah, yeah. So here we go, guys. Dark Horse Today eat salt and read books. There you go. Oh, I'm holding this book upside down. Yeah, I'm gonna read the book upside down.

A

If you can pull it off, I'll be impressed.

B

So this is from. I'm going to start with a few readings from a book called Many California's Literature from the Golden State. It's a. It's a collection of pieces and it has some pieces from books that I should. I own and I don't know where they are, and a couple of just good starting points. So to the very beginning. I could figure out where the very beginning is. Where's page one?

A

I'll just say, while you're heading towards this, we are going to talk later about what's going on electorally in the Western states. And the fact is, this is. What's going on is new. And so anyway, it's really important to have the context of what we've lost and what we're jeopardizing.

B

Yeah. So anyway, and that's. That's. That's why I'm doing it, you know, why. Why do we care so much? Why do we care so much? Well, this is part of why. Back at the turn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt observed, when I am in California, I am not in the West, I am west of the West. So that's just. That's one quote interesting. He didn't feel that it was the West. It was west of the West. Similarly, Joan Didion, I'm going to read some from the White Album later, but Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a book that I have loved and don't happen to know where my copy is at the moment. An extraordinary author and chronicler of California and la. She was a native of, I think, Sacramento, Sacramento River Valley, wrote in Notes from a Native Daughter, an essay, a 1968 essay from Slouching Toward Bethlehem. It is very easy to sit at a bar in, say, La Scala in Beverly Hills or Ernie's in San Francisco, and to share in the pervasive delusion that California is only five hours from New York by air. The truth is that La Scala and Ernie's are only five hours from New York by air. California is somewhere else. So that's the sort of thing that Didion writes that she says, and people who haven't been to California think, oh, my goodness, the Californians are at it again. They're being ridiculous. But we're going to return to some of Didion's thinking LA in the 60s and 70s, and I think you will find that you understand more of what. What she's talking about. So let's go back in time now. We're going to go to just a brief couple of brief descriptions of the very first peoples in California. These were varied cultures, varied types. The Mojave were tall, muscular and formidable. The Pomo appeared soft with dark, round Faces. The Yuki were the shortest tribe in North America. California's Indians were, in fact, as physically varied as the Europeans who would one day disrupt and overwhelm them. None had written languages, so their tales and poems were oral and were employed to explain and establish both sacred and profane worlds, the domains of the spirit and the body, a distinction they believed was by no means absolute. The diversity of ecosystems in California is a match at some level for the diversity of people who are in California.

A

Yeah, and those two are correlated, obviously.

B

Exactly.

A

People tend to fill a habitat the way a species does, and they define its edges.

B

Exactly. Exactly. So fast forward thousands of years and we have a memoir from a priest from Aragon in northern Spain named Francisco Garces. In 1776, with a mule and two Mojave guides, this adventurous man trekked across the Mojave Desert over the Tehachapi Mountains, then arrived at a Yokuts village on a great river which made much noise and whose waters were crystalline, bountiful and palatable. End quote. Garces had an unusual affinity for native peoples and Kern river dwellers. He was on the Kern river, seemed to sense that the priest explorer was unable to swim, so he stripped to his drawers and was carried across that stream's icy water by four Yokuts, whose village was near the present site of Bakersfield. Wrote Garces in his journal. The people of the rancheria had a great feast over my arrival, and having regaled me, well, I reciprocated them all with tobacco and glass beads, congratulating myself on seeing the people so affable and affectionate. The young men are fine fellows and the women very comely and clean. They take great care of the hair and do it up in a top knot. They wear petticoats of antelope skin and mant of fur, though they are not very coy. They were certainly not coy by Spanish standards of that day at any rate, and too trusting for their own good, as it turned out, because this visit presaged the end of the Yokotz world. But this was never the intention of Francisco Garces, of whom the ethnocentric font wrote, he is so fit to get along with Indians and go about among them that he seems just like an Indian himself. He squats cross legged in a circle with them, or at night around the fire for two or three hours or even longer, all absorbed, forgetting aught else, discoursing to them with great serenity and deliberation. And though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as Their dirty selves. Again, this is not Garces. This is someone writing about him. The padre eats it with great gusto and says it is appetizing and very nice. And just an aside for a moment. I have actually. This is the first time I have ever heard a European refer to the Native Americans as dirty in general is exactly the opposite impression. Like, how are they so clean? Why are they so clean? What is the value of being so clean?

A

Why. Why are the teeth so good?

B

Yeah, exactly. Garces represents, well, the paradox of that age of conquest. He appears to have been a good, brave man who genuinely sought to bring enlightenment, as he understood it, to a people he admired, but who opened the door to the destruction of their cultures in the process.

A

Okay, so I wanted to just add something. I happened to be on the East Coast, I guess, a week ago and close enough to Philadelphia that I went to see my aunt, my Aunt Judy, who is my father's sister, 100 years old. And she recounted to me how troubled the family was when my father moved with my mother to California from Philadelphia. From Philadelphia, originally from Philadelphia, because the family, nobody had been on an airplane, and California seemed like such a distant reality that it was like they would not see him again. It was that far away. And. And so there's something about this idea of, yeah, it's five hours by airplane. Well, for us, yeah, it is five hours by airplane. And it has been sort of brought into the American fold in a way. But it was even, you know, in living memory, a very distant place for, you know, the beating heart of the republic. And, you know, it's. It's easy not to know that or to forget it.

B

Yeah. Or to have heard things about California that are laughable now, and to imagine it, therefore, as a dismissible place, which, I will argue, it really is not. Okay, so next I want to do a short reading from Wallace Stegner. Wallace Stegner is one of my absolutely favorite authors. He's an extraordinary storyteller and chronicler of California, like Joan Didion, in a very different vein. And earlier, although they are both dead now, Angle of Repose, somewhat earlier, they were actually somewhat contemporaries, although he was based up in the Bay Area. This book, Angle of repose, written in 1971, won the Pulitzer, and it is his most epic work. In it, the protagonist, Lyman Ward, I remind myself, it's been a few years. A man in his 60s who's living in Grass Valley in California, is working to reconstruct the life of his grandmother, Susan Ward, as she was Living in the late 19th century, mostly in places in California. California, as she, an educated woman from the east, was traveling around with her, if I remember correctly, her mining engineer husband, as he had to go to different places as California was being mined. And our hero, the protagonist of this book, is also struggling to understand his own son. Rodman, who, remember this book takes place in 1970, is a countercultural sociologist. And Lyman does not understand him, does not understand his dismissal of the old ways and his embrace of all things hippie and Berkeley in the moment that he is writing. So he writes. This is in Lyman, the protagonist of the book's voice in Stegner's novel the Angle of Repose. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience. He's writing of his grandmother's experience, fictional experience, although based on a real American woman. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it coming back here, but it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces. We have consumed too much transportation. We have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that anyone of Rodman's generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband. She could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visiting only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she could have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being the wife of a failure and a woman with no home. When frontier historians theorize about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless and the socially cut off who settled the west, they are not talking about people like my grandmother. So much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up. And the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization. What was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced. In that sense, our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelley called merely cultural, not even living in traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases, and polluted at that, are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no atavistic domestic sentiment. They have suffered empathectomy, their computers hum, no ghostly feedback of home sweet home. How marvelously free they are. How unutterably deprived.

A

Wow.

B

Wow, indeed.

A

Yeah. I don't know if this is the place for it, but you've heard me say many times over the years, probably gotten sick of it, but that California is a marvelous place, but it's being lost. And I made the point by saying that Yosemite is only half as big as it was when we were kids. Now, that's my clever way of pointing out that the population has doubled since we were born and there's only one Yosemite on earth. And so the point is it has to serve this bigger population and there's no accommodation for that. And I don't know if you noticed, but a week or two ago, the evidence emerged of the consequence of the Trump administration, I believe, lifting the long standing practice of having to have a reservation to go see Yosemite to keep the crowds manageable. And it's absolute chaos. Right? Like literally, there's no place to park, people are driving on meadows. It's just, it's, you know, it's being destroyed by exactly the force you would imagine is destroying it. And I spent a lot of time there as a kid. And just the thought that we would allow this national treasure doesn't begin to cover what Yosemite actually is, that we would allow the same dynamics that are degrading our lives at home overtake this park. I'm not saying the system that they had worked. It didn't. It was lousy, but it was better than a free for all. And this is what's happening. California was a magical place. I mean, John Muir, reporting back, was disbelieved because it sounded. Yes, it sounded like he must be embellishing. And so much of the state is that way.

B

It really is. And I was going to say, I haven't chosen pieces from John Muir or from John Steinbeck or from many of the other extraordinary nature writers, like explicitly nature writers of California. And, you know, I am both a fan and sometimes a creator of nature writing, but I think really, of all the things that words can be used to evoke and describe, nature is one of the places that it is weakest. And you really have to go. But of course, so does everyone else and. And that makes it over overrun and overwhelmed. And the nature is becoming harder to see.

A

Yeah. And you and I, as lovers of animals around the world, find ourselves having to work ever harder to see the genuine article in its own environment, unmolested. You really have to work to do that. And that wasn't always the case. It's a tragedy.

B

That's right. So just one. One more piece from Stegner. This book, Angle of Repose, was written in 1971. In 1992, what turns out to be very near the end of his life. He was old, but he died suddenly, the result of a car accident. He was in Santa Fe to give a talk. But this piece, the Sense of Place, is an excellent essay. I'm just going to read a couple paragraphs from it. Written in 1992, if you don't know where you are, says Wendell Berry, you don't know who you are. Barry is a writer, one of our best, who, after some circling, has settled on the bank of the Kentucky river, where he grew up and where his family has lived for many generations. He conducts his literary explorations inward, toward the core of what supports him physically and spiritually. He belongs to an honorable tradition, one that even in America, includes some great Thoreau, Burroughs, Frost, Faulkner, Steinbeck, lovers of known earth, known weathers and known neighbors, both human and non human. He calls himself a placed person. But if every American is several people and one of them is, or would like to be a placed person, another is the opposite, the displaced person. Cousin not to Thoreau, but to Daniel Boone, dreamer not of Walden Ponds, would have far horizons. Traveler not in Concord, but in wild, unsettled places, explorer not inward but outward, adventurous, restless, seeking, asocial or antisocial, the displaced American persists by the million long after the frontier has vanished. He exists to some extent in all of us, the inevitable byproduct of our history, the New World, transient. He is commoner in the newer parts of America, the West, Alaska, than in the older parts. But he occurs everywhere, always in motion. Now that, I think, warrants a whole episode, like a whole discussion. And I would say the one, the one piece of that beginning of a Wallace Stegner essay that I disagree with is that I find that I, and I think most humans would find that they, if they could discover this for themselves, am at my very best when I have a home that I love and that I can return to, in which I find solace and beauty and comfort and love. And from there I can explore into new places. And I think the West, California and Oregon and Washington for us, has offered both of those things. And that is, of course, an actual description of what parents should be creating for their children, a home in which they know that no matter what else, they are absolutely safe and beloved and able to try out new things. But from which they can venture. They can venture out and they always can come back home and know that it is home for them.

A

Yeah, that's beautiful. And I, I agree with you. It's like way better than the American dream, right? Like I want a patch of territory and a, you know, a little white picket fence. No, what you want is a real home, whatever it looks like.

B

Yeah.

A

And a real home that is secure, that gives you the security to go out and see what else is out there and see who else is out there, you know, with that, you know, that tether that brings you back to the thing that, you know, that functions that, that sustains you. Anyway, it's, it's a, it's a lovely idea. And for those for whom the white picket fence has always rung a little hollow, this is a better vision.

B

Wonderful. Okay, let's switch gears a little bit into more explicitly la. Mid 20th century la. I actually, I couldn't find my copy of Raymond Chandler's the Big sleep, published in 1939. Excellent book. And Raymond Chandler was, was a, a master of noir detective fiction. He never claimed the mantle of having invented it. He, he, he gave that to Dashiell Hammett. But Raymond Chandler combined the hard boiled detective fiction that he wrote, of which the Big Sleep was one of his four main novels, with a keen sense of Los Angeles. He loved Los Angeles, but he saw its grit and its underbelly quite quite clearly. And he also. I didn't find anything in looking through various excerpts from his novels that I thought was quite appropriate, but here we have just the first paragraph from his 1938 short story called Redwin. There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that, every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge. So I just love Chandler. And instead of exploring Didion on the Santa Anas and going all the places that we could go, talking about the effect of the Santa Ana winds on LA in September and October, which were always the bringers of dangerous fire forces in the past. That's all I'm going to say about the Santa Ana's today here in terms of reading from them from the very same moment we have Nathaniel west, less known but also extraordinary in the Day of the Locust, which was also published in 1939 in this book, the protagonist is an aspiring artist who has moved to Hollywood from the east coast after a talent scout saw his work in an undergraduate exhibit at the Yale School of Fine Arts. So here's an east coast guy with real talent who's been brought to Hollywood, and in his voice he writes again. This is from the Day of the Locust by Nathaniel west, published in 1939. When the Hollywood job had come along, he had grabbed it, despite the arguments of his friends, who were certain that he was selling out and would never paint again. He reached the end of vine street and began the climb into Pinyon Canyon. Night had started to fall. The edges of the trees burned with a pale violet light and their centers gradually turned from deep purple to black. The same violet piping, like a neon tube, outlined the tops of the ugly, humpbacked hills. And they were almost beautiful. But not even the soft wash of dust could help the houses. Only dynamite would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and combination of these styles that line the slopes of the canyon. When he noticed that they were all of plaster, lathe and paper, he was charitable and blamed their shape on the materials used. Steel, stone and brick curb a builder's fancy a little, forcing him to distribute his stresses and weights and to keep his corners plumb. But plaster and paper know no law, even that of gravity. On the corner of La Huerta Road was a miniature Rhine castle with tar paper, turrets pierced for archers. Next to it was a highly colored shack with domes and minarets out of the Arabian Nights. Again, he was charitable. Both houses were comic, but he didn't laugh. Their desire to startle was so eager and guileless. It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous. Does that remind you of some parts of LA architecture?

A

Yeah. Although, you know, I'm also struck when we go back to la, looking at the, you know, the flats and the. All of the kind of quaint little

B

Spanish houses, little Spanish houses or stuff from the Arts and Crafts or Craftsman era.

A

Yeah, and there's. There's definitely a style to it. And, boy, you know, it's. It's nostalgic to see it. And, you know, understandably, they're all getting modernized. It's very hard to resist because the property is so valuable and the houses are so tiny and drag the property Value down. And so they all.

B

And they were built in a different era. Like they don't, you know, they don't have master bedrooms. Right, right. Like, you know, it's, it's hard to turn them into a place that a modern wants to live in, even if they love the feel.

A

Yeah.

B

I do think that the flats tended to be more coherent architecturally. And it was in the canyons that were built up somewhat later by people who had, you know, sometimes more money than establish aesthetics or just, you know, we're, we're untethered by the limits of a heavier building architecture. And, you know, you don't build with brick or cinder block in LA because earthquakes make it dangerous. And so they were stick built in an era when that was somewhat newer and there was more freedom in architectural form.

A

And I think the nature of the canyons is such that it will get built up, not at the same time, because as, you know, somebody pioneers building in a particular canyon and then somebody else says, well, actually I can make that. You know, I can do something cantilevered over there. There. Even though there's not enough flatland to build a house on. So it gets built at different times and then fires will take out a bunch of homes and so they get rebuilt. So it's, it's inherently more eclectic.

B

Yes.

A

It invites more eclectic people.

B

Right. Yes.

A

You know, the artsy types who, you know, dream of a garden with sculptures all over it, you know, into the hills.

B

Yeah.

A

And the flats. You know, at some point this piece of territory is ripe for building because plots are finite. Right. And it tends to get built at the same moment, which means that it's just, you know, it's, it's more similar architecture.

B

Yeah.

A

So anyway, it's a. It's interesting. And you know, and the gardens.

B

Right.

A

The thing about LA is you can grow anything there if you're willing to water it. And of course, people have gotten less willing to water it because of the price of water and the restrictions on it, but it is kind of amazing. It's like a. If you know what you're looking for, it's like a botanical garden on every block.

B

Indeed.

A

Just amazing stuff from around the world.

B

Yeah. I haven't, I haven't chosen anything about water in California for this, but there is, of course, a ton to be said there as well.

A

I think they might tax us for even talking about it.

B

Right. Well, but I mean, it's literally, LA is a desert. And so, you know, there are millions of people living in a place where with very Little natural water. So just two more. Two more excerpts about California, in this case, both about LA, both from Joan Didion, both from her 1979 collection of essays, the White Album. I don't know why this book is in such terrible shape, but it is the.

A

When Was this written?

B

1979. Published in 1979. So this is RLA. Yeah, we were young, very young, but here she is.

A

Humor me a second. Does it cover the fires?

B

The. Which?

A

Any fires in la?

B

I don't actually. I didn't reread the entire. The entire book she talks about. There's a whole essay on water. I don't know that she. Actually. I think fires come up, but not explicitly, not as a separate essay, not at least in this collection. You know, she only died recently, so she. She. She may well have written about fires elsewhere. Section 4 of the eponymous. Is that the right word? Essay in this book? The White Album. The essay, the White Album. Speaking of. I think I feel like this is. I feel like this is Canyons, but I'm not actually sure. Someone once brought Janis Joplin to a party at the house on Franklin Avenue. She had just done a concert and she wanted brandy and Benedictine in a water tumbler. Music people never wanted ordinary drinks. They wanted sake or champagne cocktails or tequila neat. I just love that list because now those are totally normal cocktails, right? But in 1979, sake and champagne cocktails and tequila neat were out there. Spending time with music people was confusing. It required a more fluid and ultimately more passive approach than I ever acquired in the first place. Time was never of the essence. We would have dinner at 9, unless we had it at 11:30 or we could order in. Later we would go down to USC to see the Living Theater. If the limo came at the very moment when no one had just made a drink or a cigarette or an arrangement to meet Ultraviolet at the Montecito. In any case, David Hockney was coming by. In any case, Ultraviolet was not at the Montecito. In any case, we would go down to USC and see the Living Theater tonight. Or we would see the Living Theater another night in New York or Prague. First we wanted sushi for 20 steamed clams, vegetable vindaloo and many rum drinks with gardenias for our hair. First we wanted a table for 12, 14 at the most, although there might be six more, eight more or 11 more. There would never be one or two more, because music people did not travel in groups of one or two. John and Michelle Phillips on their way to the hospital for the birth of Their daughter Chinna had the limo detour into Hollywood in order to pick up a friend. And Marshall. This incident, which I often embroider in my mind to include an imaginary second detour to the luau for gardenias, exactly describes the music business to me.

A

Wow.

B

And one more. And Didion was such a spectacular and unusual writer. This from an essay in the same collection called Bureaucrats. One paragraph, one long paragraph. To understand what was going on is perhaps necessary to have participated in the freeway experience, which is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can drive on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do. Hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participants think only about where they are. Actual participation requires a total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture of the freeway. The mind goes clean, the rhythm takes over. A distortion of time occurs, the same distortion that characterizes the instant before an accident. It takes only a few seconds to get off the Santa Monica Freeway at National Overland, which is a difficult exit requiring the driver to cross two new lanes of traffic streamed in from the San Diego freeway. But those few seconds always seem to me the longest part of the trip. The moment is dangerous. The exhilaration is in doing it as you acquire the special skills involved. Rainer Banham observed in an extraordinary chapter about the freeways in his 1971 Los Angeles, the Architecture of Four Ecologies, end quote. The freeways become a special way of being alive. The extreme concentration required in Los Angeles seems to bring on a state of heightened awareness that some locals find mystical.

A

Wow, that reminds me a little bit of Matthew Crawford and his descriptions of driving. But.

B

Yes. So Matthew Crawford, who we've. Matthew Crawford, who we've talked about on the show quite a lot, who's written the World beyond your head, why We Drive. And. Well, that was the one you were talking about, but the. The most. The one that I've talked about the most, who now bits out of my

A

head

B

on Shopcraft is Soulcraft, Shopcraft is Soulcraft, and. And I think most recently of those three, why we Drive, which is a

A

remarkable book itself, but interesting in that description from Didion, you get what the freeways are like in the rare circumstance now where they're not so packed, that that experience is now the exception, not the rule, because, of course, LA was architected. I mean, the whole thing that I think we're trying to characterize here is that when California was still far from the center of the country, you know, it was wide open because it's gigantic and, you know, as many people as

B

there were, it's a massive piece of land.

A

So big.

B

Yeah.

A

And of course, the freeway system is a marvel, but it's not really a marvel when you've added, you know, three times as many people as were anticipated. You know, it's a nightmare. But that the idea that actually it is kind of. There's something video game like about driving,

B

but in a good way.

A

Oh, it is meditative.

B

It is the secular communion of Angelenos in a way, as she writes.

A

Yeah. I love the idea, the rhythm of the lane change, because that really is a phenomenon because cars tend to space themselves out for obvious reasons, which means that there's a pattern which, if you could see it from above, it would be really obvious. If you're seeing it from the driver's seat, you have to intuit that it's there. But depending upon how much of a hurry you're in, the pattern of cars in front of you sets up a rhythm to what you're doing anyway.

B

You have to time it just right. Like, not drive when there are too many people on the road. But to this day, I love driving in L. A. Yeah, I do. And I mean. And maybe this is a segue back to the. To the next topic, to elections in California now, but I. As we mentioned in the last couple of weeks, we both. We met at Crossroads. We went to Crossroads, and I went there for six years. And I lived in the Palisades in the Alphabet streets. And so once I was driving myself to school, I would drive out of the Flats, right. Right at the base of the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains. Drive just a little bit and down Chautauqua, make a left on PCH on the one drive with the ocean on my right. And PCH was generally. It's not. Not that long a stretch. And there wasn't a whole lot of this sort of weaving. Weaving. There was amount of it. But then you go through the tunnel and you're on the 10. You're on the San Joaquin Freeway now. And it was only, what, three stops? Three stops, three exits, if you want to drink. Yeah, three exits, I think to 20th, or is it Olympic? I can't even remember. Was it called 20th or Olympic? Was the exit 20th? Yeah. Where you get off to go to Crossroads. But that little bit on the freeway every day was often exhilarating because people, as long as everyone knew how to drive and trusted that other people knew how to drive and that trust was well placed. The speed was extraordinary and fun.

A

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a very different experience than being degraded by the hour.

B

Yeah, yeah. So two weeks ago, the mayoral and gubernatorial election, the primary ish. In California were coming up or they were happening that day. I can't remember. We must have done it on Tuesday something.

A

It was the second.

B

June 2nd, but I'm just trying to remember. It doesn't matter. And then last week was. Oh no, it was coming up. And then last week it was the day after the election is, is when we were, we were talking to you guys about the election results, which the KTLA recording of them was, was changing in a way that was inexplicable, actually. And this is what we showed. Nope, this is what we showed you. If you can see my screen last week in terms of from 8am the day after the election with Karen Bass having been declared one of the two who would go onto the primary and onto the general in November and Spencer Pratt clearly leading. Nithya Rahman at 63 reporting. And as of this morning at 8am

A

we by 8 points for those who

B

are just listening, by 8 points with what was supposedly 63% reporting and as of this morning with supposedly 92% reporting, we have from the very same site, Bass's percentage has not changed, but Nithya Raman has not only caught up to, but passed pressure that in. In the official vote count.

A

Shocking. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, yeah.

B

So looks like that seems organic.

A

We're headed towards a runoff between folks on the blue team. Even though we had this amazing insurgency from a guy who was unashamed to admit he was. He was red in nature.

B

Yep.

A

Yeah. Is a shocking but not surprising turn of events. In fact, many people and Poly Market seem to have predicted in advance that this was going to happen. How could they possibly have seen it coming? So what I was hoping that we would do today is talk about why our elections look the way they do. And, and I will cut to the chase a little bit here and say that we are going to have an endless battle in which those of us who see what we believe is clear evidence of some kind of election rigging or fraud are faced with indignation from a vast array of people portraying themselves as more rigorous and careful who say where is your evidence? Where exactly is your evidence that there was something wrong with this election? And we are going to be caught in the following predicament no piece of evidence is sufficient to establish that case. And the sum total of all of the evidence contains true things and false things. So it is also no good. So the question is, can you logically deduce that something has gone wrong? I believe you can, easily. Can you prove it? No. And not being able to prove it means that the election will proceed. It will be validated by all of the structures, including the courts. And that means that those who take on the power that derives from these elections will be the result of whatever process we just went through. Whether it was an election that happened to be anomalous through organic means, or it was the result of some kind of fraud or election rigging. That is not an accident. That is not an accident. And the point that I want to make primarily is the primary evidence against elections that look like this being organic is not actually in the trickle of evidence that we are actually able to see, you know, the, you know, moment by moment vote count that does something strange during the night when some large tranche of ballots is suddenly counted or something like that. The evidence is in the structure of how the elections are actually carried out. These elections are designed to allow fraud that cannot be detected and will not be prosecuted. And that's really the thing that we must focus on.

B

Can you walk us through the design or what you're referring to?

A

Yeah, let me, Let me talk to you about some of the features of elections in California. And that's of course not unique. California, the particulars differ by state. And actually we should probably talk about the reason that the particulars differ by state. And those reasons are derived Primarily from Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of

B

the Constitution of the state of California

A

or the Federal Constitution. Okay, which says. You want to read that?

B

Do I want to read that? Sure. U.S. constitutional Elections Clause, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1. The Times, Places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. But the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators. Choosing. Sorry.

A

Well, senators workshop.

B

I'm laughing at the.

A

The spelling sender. Oh, laughing at the spelling. I am not in on those jokes. That is an inside joke amongst those of you who can spell, which I assume there are others. But yeah, Senators. I will remind you the way senators were chosen now looks. The way senators are chosen now looks very much like the way representatives are chosen. That wasn't always the case. They were supposed to be chosen by state governments. And anyway that was changed Federal Senators

B

rather than state senators were supposed to be determined by. By chosen by state governments.

A

Right. So the two, the two houses looked very different, and now they look different, but less so because they're both by popular vote. But in any case, that clause has been interpreted to give the states broad latitude to run the election any way they want, which is not what the clause says. What the clause says is the states are free to decide, you know, when to open the polls, that kind of thing. Where the polls should be. The federal government's not going to interfere. It does not mean that we should not have a federal standard that dictates how elections are run so that we can at least all agree that they are fair. And in fact, we have a national interest in exactly that.

B

Yes.

A

Right. You do not want California to engineer the effective appointment of some person that is not desired by the population of the state because that affects national policy when they get to Washington.

B

Well, also, if you don't have fair elections, you don't have a democracy.

A

Yeah.

B

And that the democracy is not in evidence if the elections are not fair.

A

Yes. And in fact, one of the taglines here should be voting is not the same thing as democracy. And of course, we don't have a direct democracy. We have a constitutional republic. But we are supposed to have consent of the governed, which is the sole basis for the legitimacy of governance. And so we have to have fair elections and we manifestly do not. And this comes down to states having done some very bizarre things that make them the perfect place for fraud to emerge and for it to be either undetected or unprosecuted. They invite fraud is effectively what they do. So in California, you have things like universal mail in voting, where every person who is registered to vote is mailed a ballot at the last place they were known to reside. So what that does is it puts a huge number of ballots out into the world. Right. Huge number of ballots. At the same time that the parties are creating the impression that somebody, it's not every election, but somebody in many elections is so frightening and dangerous that they must not take office. This is effectively an invitation to people who see ballots that went to somebody who's moved.

B

So there, there's also in person voting with ballots that you receive at the polling place.

A

Yes.

B

So there are inherently many more ballots than there are voters.

A

There are inherently many more ballots than there are voters and many of available to the public. Yes. Many of ballots languish somewhere. Right. In an apartment building where the person has moved on. There are extra ballots so if you imagine that you've got some sort of hyperbolic language describing the, you know, the evils of Spencer Pratt or whatever, and you've got a bunch of ballots sitting around that are not spoken for because the person to whom they belong has died or has moved, then the question is, well, what would you do to save your state? What's the patriotic thing to do? You know, we can't. Or your city, we can't very well have this evil person take office, can we? So that invitation is coupled with an opportunity that is presented by this. This pattern of just simply mailing a ballot to every registered voter. In addition, ballots that are received up to seven days after the election will be counted so long as they are are postmarked by the date of the election. Now, in principle, that could work. If you had a very aggressive pursuit of people who, you know, abused the postmark or something like that, then the point is, well, maybe that doesn't change anything. But at some point here, I'm going to compare the system that we now have to the system that you and I remember from when we were growing up. Up. And the head scratcher is, why did we change that? Because it had certain features that would have made all of this impossible. Right? So the other thing is that they can take up to 30 days to count the votes. So if you imagine that there's some powerful force, not little people picking up ballots that weren't spoken for or collecting them at nursing homes or whatever, but if you imagine a powerful force, you know, there are hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe more, at stake in a statewide election in California, you know, probably hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in a Los Angeles election. So that means there's a lot of incentive to get power in the hands of people who favor whatever it is you're up to. And you know, so the fact of 30 days to count the votes, if you have the level of power that some people have to figure out, you know, which votes you want counted, which votes you don' Want counted, you know, all of that, it gives a landscape in which higher level fraud can take place. Does it? I don't know. But the question is, what's the benefit of it? Right? In effect, if you had a system in which you all voted in person, unless there was a very good reason not to, which is the system we used to have, everybody voted in person, the answer is, well, that's going to quote, unquote, disenfranchise some people, you know, who have an injury the day before and can't get to the polls or whatever. But the point is that doesn't affect power. Right? The number you're not more likely to get an injury that keeps you from going to the polls because you're red rather than blue. So the point is, yeah, it disenfranchises some people. The disenfranchisement is randomly distributed. It's just a tiny amount of noise on a system that is designed to collect the signal of what it is that the public wants. And then there's a national issue which flows down to the state of California. Oh, and I would point out the state of Washington is even worse than California because we don't even have in person voting anymore.

B

Right.

A

It's all mail in ballots that are sent to everybody. So, you know, the point is the entire system is unaccountable.

B

The, the one thing that that is, the one way that that is better than what California is doing, I would say, is that you don't have the potential for duplicate, duplicate ballots for a lot more ballots in existence that have been given to a voter who's, I don't know, has or has not presented an id.

A

Right.

B

And also had for that same person had a ballot sent in.

A

Right.

B

Sent to them.

A

True, okay. But at the national level, the thing that cascades down to all of us crazy Westerners is that there is no proof of citizenship required to register to vote. Now if you want to look for one piece of evidence for there being non incidental fraud, or at least the opportunity for it being deliberately created, this is the place. Because when you poll Americans and you ask them do you think you should be required to demonstrate citizenship in order to register to vote? The polls consistently show at a minimum, minimum, more than 50% of the population favors this. And that's when you give them an option like no preference. So the number of people who are against this is tiny. In every poll, yes. But the number of people who ford who are for it is always over 50%. If you run the poll properly, you get numbers above 80%, 80% of citizens think you should have to demonstrate citizenship before you get to vote. What happens when you try to make that law at the federal level? It's stunning. What happens is the Democrats will literally filibuster to prevent it from happening. And this is happening right now with the SAVE act where the Democrats have got it stalled in the Senate with a filibuster to defeat the majority that wants to pass a law simply requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Now, now this is conspicuous for two reasons. One, you have what will be familiar to those of you who think carefully about what our elected representatives actually do when they get into office. But once again, this is incoherent. Why would you ever have a situation where you have broad agreement across both parties that something is desirable and have the people that we've elected to represent us oppose it? Why would that ever happen?

B

Happen?

A

Right. It's almost inconceivable that there would be an organic reason for that. Something wants us not to have proof of registration, require a proof of citizenship required for registration. And the fact that they would actually take the political risk of opposing this and shutting it down despite the fact that people want it tells you that this is important to somebody. That they would use the filibuster over this.

B

Yeah, it's. It's important. Even though it seems like anyone who opens their mouth to defend not requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote will have to lose that argument. It is impossible for me to imagine what that argument even sounds like.

A

That's because there literally is not a coherent argument for it.

B

Right. And so they're filibustering over the importance of an argument for which there is no argument.

A

Right. They are revealing themselves in having to deliver the paper thin rationalization. Remember, a rationale is the reason you did something. A rationalization is the reason you pretended you did it. The only thing they can deliver is rationalizations. Like if you require, you know, id, it disenfranchises people who you can't get one who will be disproportionately from oppressed backgrounds or something like this. It's insane. The fact is we require ID for just about everything important in society. Does that disadvantage the occasional person? Probably. But you're talking about the security of elections of the most powerful country on earth. Earth compared to a tiny number of people for whom they will be disenfranchised. And there's literally no system that you could build that wouldn't disenfranchise a tiny number of people. So the point is, you really want to risk the most powerful nation on earth over a concern about a disproportionate inconvenience to some population? No, that's not a real argument. You're making shit up in order to explain why you're doing unholy things to our electoral system. And the only actual reason reason that you could do those unholy things is because you're not into the idea of democracy. If you wanted the democracy to work and you wanted us to trust that it was working, then you would build a system that was robust. And the irony is that doesn't require some sort of, you know, game theoretic thinking, some kind of innovation. How could we possibly make elections secure? The fact is we used to have them. Not perfectly so, but vastly better than what we've got. And basically the point was they were low tech and had fixed rules that we all understood.

B

In a case where what we had worked and what we have doesn't, why are we looking to advance the ball on the system that doesn't work? Why aren't we doing what did work?

A

Right. And let me just point out, there's a feature of what did work that is missed by most people. So what we used to have, what you and I remember when we were kids and you probably went with your parents to vote. I went with my, my dad to go vote. I remember being traumatized two years in a row by the women of a certain age who looked at my curly hair and said, I should have been born a girl.

B

Oh dear.

A

Two years in a row, they said,

B

I'm bet it wasn't two years in a row.

A

Oh, two. Two elections in a row. Yeah, well, our family voted every year, but it was probably the same women who had the same reaction. My same curly hair. But anyway, so you went in. Was there absentee voting? Yeah, technically. But the way it worked was you had everybody went to vote in person at a known polling place, the same place every year, and you went into the booth and you had a paper ballot and you did a physical thing and it marked the ballot or whatever, however exactly it worked. But the point is, it was there was no technology involved beyond the physical, but even Chad's, and I almost wonder if Chad's wasn't designed to break us of the habit of a reliable voting system. Yeah, okay, so you went in person and you voted in an unambiguous way. Either you filled in the bubble or you punched the card. I think it was punch cards. As I remember it, you punched through with a, some kind of stylus in a place that was unambiguous. And the only people who didn't were the military. And I got familiar with how the military did this when I was doing my grad work in Panama because of course there were, you know, military bases there. Right. And so the point, you know, people who are deployed get to vote too, and they have to vote through an absentee mechanism that the, you know, the post office and the military have a concrete relationship. So it's all done very Seamlessly, when you're in the military. Who else got to vote by mail? The tiny number of people who were like, oh, I'm going to be, you know, in France during the election. I'm going to think ahead, I'm going to get myself an absentee ballot and fill it in. And so the way that played out.

B

But it took some work. It was never the default.

A

Yeah.

B

Oh, it was rare.

A

It took enough work that there wasn't a lot of it, which meant that you actually had election results almost right away. The stuff got counted. And you knew that night, you know, there were going to be some absentee ballots in a race that was razor thin in terms of the margin. You know, those absentee ballots could flip it. But it almost never happened. Not never, but almost never. What else did you have? And this is the part that people miss this when everybody goes to vote in person. The press, when we had one, sent people to various polling locations and they did exit polls. And those exit polls would tell you if there was fraud going on because what the precinct reported and what the press had detected from people they talked to didn't match. So the point is, it created a detective sector that has been obliterated by having massive amounts of mail in votes. So that's not an accident. We are not supposed to know when there's fraud. What we're supposed to do is go after each other. You say there's fraud, I say, where's your evidence? Right. That is supposed to be happening so that we do not notice that what we had, the democracy that we had, is being stolen right out from under us. And it held has loads of people convinced that they are working for the good guys and that even cheating to get make sure the bad guys don't take office is the right thing to do. They think it's morally right. And the opportunity for them to cheat has been distributed literally by mail. Right. It's like mail fraud in reverse. They've been. The opportunity for fraud has been sent out like junk mail and it invites people to participate in frauds. Now, here's the other thing about that system. It seems like. Well, I will remind the viewers there's this important distinction that doesn't get taught well in school between random error and systematic error. Random error is like hanging check, okay, where the failure to punch a card fully makes a vote ambiguous. But is a red vote likely to be more ambiguous than a blue vote? No, they're equally likely to be ambiguous. So some tiny number of votes is ambiguous even if it's A large number of votes for every one that is ambiguous and points wrongly towards blue. Another one tends to point wrongly towards red. They cancel each other out. That's the nature of noise, is it doesn't lean in one direction or the other other. But in our system, what we have is the party in power benefits from the invitation to fraud. Right. Imagine that the average citizen has the same instinct in having been whipped into a frenzy over the danger of the other side. Right. Let's say that blue people and red people are equally likely to think, hey, we better not lose this election. You know, maybe it's not such a bad thing to file my dead neighbor's ballot for.

B

For him.

A

Right. Well, if you were in a blue state, right. What do you think the chances are that they're going to go after you if you file a few extra blue ballots? Well, I don't know. Prosecutorially, it's very hard to trace this stuff, which is a feature, not a bug, I'm sure, from the point of view of people who are interested in fraud in our elections. But the point is, if the structure is rabidly blue in a state, right, where the judges have their thumb on the scale, the judges are activists and they're constantly hobbling anything that leans in the other direction, if the enforcement mechanism is rabidly blue, the press is rabidly blue, you're not going to feel a tremendous amount of danger. If you commit election fraud in California, if you do it on behalf of the blue team, what are the chances it's going to be detected? Low. There's not a lot of enforcement. What are the chances if it is detected, that it's actually going to result in some penalty that matters to you? And when I, when I started investigating how much prosecution of vote fraud there is, the answer is actually over the last decade, nationally, there's like a few hundred cases, and most of them are cases where it's an honest error, where somebody has, you know, there's a bunch of cases in which prisoners or felons thought that their right to vote had been restored and it hadn't. And so they voted, but they didn't realize they were voting illegally.

B

But why would we possibly think that clear cases of voter fraud represent most cases of voter fraud?

A

Well, I, frankly, I don't think. I don't think we have an apparatus looking for voter fraud. So I think.

B

Exactly.

A

So I think there's.

B

There's no way it, if it's effective, it isn't found.

A

Right. And the people who benefit from the Fraud are the party in power. And the party in power A. They've created these systems that are so vulnerable, they have every interest in preserving them. Because, you know, geez, what would happen if a Spencer Pratt showed up? Right. That would be bad.

B

He might clean up the streets.

A

Oh, clean up the streets. He might discover what we've been up to. We cannot let him take office, damn it. Right, so. So they want a system. I'm not saying they use it every time. They probably don't. In fact, they almost certainly don't. But do they use it when something threatens them? Yes. And so what you have is a system. Remember my definition for Goliath is the force that opposes meaningful change. Right. Goliath opposes meaningful change. If you're in one of these states that's so resolutely blue that nothing red can happen happen, then the point is, well, anytime something red shows, you know, a surprising strength, you want a system that can protect you from it. So if you're blue. If you're blue, yeah. And so the people in power don't want to fix the system, even though the solutions, you know, could you get a perfect system? No. But could you get a system that basically worked and was pretty secure? Easily. Why are they filibustering that at the national level level? Right. Why are we not investigating whether or not there are ballot harvesting operations that are designed to elect one candidate over another? We're not looking because it's a feature, not a bug to the people in power. The incumbency and more importantly, the people whose interests the incumbents represent don't want the system fixed. So what do they want? They want electronic voting machines. Why? Because they're hackable. It's impossible that they wouldn't be hackable. Talk to hackers about this. Right. Not only do we have innumerable demonstrations of their hackability, and in fact they're malfunctioning in ways that sometimes the voter can even see. Right. But the idea that they could be made perfectly secure and then distributed into the hands of people who a, have a political posture and a belief about, you know, how important it is that their person win. Right. It's inconceivable it can't be made secure. So they want electronic voting. They want massive mail in voting, if not total. Why? Because it's impossible to know what's going on if you discover that somebody has, you know, surged way ahead of where you expected them to be. There are things you can do well. How long can you do? Do them well, let's See, a month. You've got a month. That's a lot of time for, you know, a powerful force that knows that this is never going to be prosecuted, right. To. To take action. So it wants a system in which these games can be played. And what I really. The final point here is not only in California, in the other blue states, do you have a system that is an invitation to fraud. Not only at the national level do you have the literal filibustering of the most fundamental check on the system, just a simple requirement that you demonstrate you're a citizen, but all of the structures that you would want in order to find out that something was wrong with the structure of our actual elections doesn't function. The press has gone from being an entity that actually investigates things like that to a series of partisan rags that don't have an incentive to expose fraud on the side of the people who they've sided with. We don't have an FBI in a meaningful sense. In fact, I would argue that we have an FBI that prevents actual investigation, investigation of important things, like, among others, assassinations, of which we have a number that don't seem to add up. So we have no FBI, we have no press, we have minimal penalties and very few prosecutions for actual fraud. And certainly nothing about systematic fraud. Right. We've got little people being punished here and there, and not very severely, not enough to make people think twice.

B

It feels like a victimless crime. Crime, and in fact, it may be a crime with the biggest victim of all.

A

It doesn't even feel victimless. It's worse than that. It feels like a moral good to these people because they don't understand what they're doing.

B

Right, Fine. It's a different group of people I'm talking about to whom it feels like a victimless crime. Like how, you know, how do you make decisions about. Like, where do we spend our prosecutorial energy?

A

Oh, right.

B

Oh, well, we're not gonna go after voter fraud when we can go after homicides and rapes and assaults and domestic intrusions and all of this. That's victimless, isn't it? Well, no, that's the death of democracy.

A

Right? It's. It's like, you know, the analogy is that when they print money, they rob you without ever getting access to your bank account, they make the dollars in your bank account worth less. Right? They line their pockets and the dollars in your bank account get worth less. It's theft, but it's. It doesn't read like that.

B

It's this. Exactly the same thing.

A

This is power theft. They are taking, I mean, they are taking the most sacred right that we have in our democratic republic, which is the right to the consent of the governed. That's it. We get to govern ourselves. We do it representationally, but we get to govern ourselves, which means that we have a right to throw the bums out. And when the bums have a system that makes it so, that becomes impossible. Because as you manage to. To get past all of their safeguards, they can actually tinker the election itself. Then the point is, well, I don't know what form of government we have, but it has a lot of voting in it and has precious little democracy left. And I guess the final point I want to make is what has really allowed this to happen is a mindset set in which people have come to identify with these parties. And I want you, whatever party you may belong to, I remind you I am still a registered Democrat. I don't vote for these people anymore. I think they're incredibly dangerous. But I'm a registered Democrat. I'm a member of a party. Both of our parties are. Well, parties themselves, I would argue, are necessary evils. They are not described in the Constitution. They arise as a matter of game theory. You are more powerful if you coordinate your political activity than if everybody's a lone wolf. So it is natural that people form coalitions and they exercise some discipline over the way they vote for policy in order to get things done. That's not a good thing, but it's a necessary evil. But that necessary. It's inevitable. For reasons of game theory, however, it is not described in the Constitution. And the parties have gone from a necessary evil that would naturally emerge in a democracy to actual evil. We have two parties that are de facto evil. They are acting consistently against the interests of the public. The public has been divided by them, them into imagining that their neighbors are their enemies. This is not true. As frustrated as you may be at the insane thing your neighbor is saying, if you actually spent a month and talked stuff out, you'd find you basically want the same things they do. Not every time there are crazy people on the fringes, but you know, the hidden tribes report from years ago showed that there is a vast exhausted middle of people who basically agree on the way things should run. We have disagreements over priorities. We have disagreements about how strongly we should do this or that. But by and large, people want the same thing. They want a country that works. They want a country that's fair. They don't want to be interfered with terribly much by Government. And it's not even that hard to accomplish if we just simply were to elect people who were going to do our bidding in office. But instead what you've got, and I believe this is, is disproportionately on the blue side, though it exists on the red side too, is people have defaulted into this team mentality. Where do the people in California who are looking the other way with respect to election fraud or participating in it or rationalizing it, do those people feel like they are behaving in an anti constitutional, anti democratic way? No, of course not. What they think is actually the blue team are the ones who know how to govern and so we should do anything and everything to make sure they take office. That ain't it. That is the antithesis of the republic spelled out by the founding fathers. And the fact that it feels like because you're voting for it or something, that this is in fact, you know, a perfectly honorable way to, to carry out your duty as a citizen. No, that's insane. You don't have a right to do this to our democracy. We have a right to free and fair elections. Everybody should be agreed on the desirability of having them. Every single person. And that means that there should be Democrats who are irate at the anomalies in the west coast states and their voting systems. Both the vulnerability that's been created by the policy that built these systems and the anomalies that we see when the votes are counted. You should have Democrats who are, are livid that this system isn't accountable and obviously functioning properly, even if it means they lose sometimes. And we don't see that. Instead, a little video that I think we should see. Jen, you want to play this? This is, this is actually taking place in California. I believe it is a men's chorus rehearsing. There ain't no way to lose it.

B

This is our life, this is our

A

song we like the powers that be

B

Just don't think our destiny Cuz you

A

don't know us, you don't belong. We're not going to take it no we ain't going to take it we're not going to to take it anymore. Catchy. No.

B

What aren't they going to take?

A

They're fighting back against the man. You didn't hear them. They are, they are saying no to the dangerous powers and they are.

B

I'm asking for more specificity.

A

I don't know. There are men's chorus in, in California.

B

I mean I'm. It's. It's kind of facetious But I'm actually. I do wonder. Increasingly, I've seen. I hadn't seen that video, but I got fed a video a day or two ago of some unspecified woman, I think at some hearing, maybe in front of elected officials, saying, now I'm going to scream. And she just screamed for like 30 seconds.

A

Yeah.

B

And people behind her like, yeah, at what? Like, I actually. Like. Yes. All of us, all of us are frustrated by so much of what is going on and see real problems in the world I cannot actually fathom. Especially like, is that contemporary?

A

Yes.

B

This is during pride month in the state of California that a bunch of gay men in a room, as safe a space as you could possibly have, are singing. I'm not going, what aren't they going to take? And I'm like, I'm not trying to be mean. I don't feel like it's a mean question. I actually really, truly wonder what it is that they think they don't yet have that they want.

A

Well, I actually think they were fairly clear. We're not gonna take it. We refuse to take it. We're disinclined to take it anymore. I mean, right? No, no.

B

So. So, so far. I mean. Nice. Nice rendition.

A

Thank you.

B

Don't go singing with that choir, please. Um, but I. I'm not like, I'm. I'm actually. I would actually like the opportunity to ask people in that choir whose video you just showed the woman screaming. We met. We met. We saw so many of these people in the blow up at Evergreen at, you know, on various college campuses. People who have been fed by some. Something fed the emphatic conclusion that cannot be disagreed with, that people hate you. Life sucks for you. It's never been harder for you. And what you need to do is get your power back. Could you look at what your life actually is and what you've been granted and what rights you have earned and what you have? And what are you asking for more? And how is screaming gonna help, by the way?

A

Okay, but this is. This is more or less why I showed. This is. First of all, look, I'm not faulting them for joining a chorus. And a chorus does involve de individuation. That's what a chorus is. It's a bunch of voices that subordinate to some cause. But that was a religious phenomenon we were watching.

B

Sure. And. And I mean, as. As when that song is played, it tends to. It. It tends to feel somewhat religious. The last time I thought about that song was during the Truckers Convoy. The Canadian Truckers Convoy. In January of 2022 when one of the amazing compilation videos used that song as backdrop showing just, you know, the truckers and all the Canadians and way sub zero temperatures on the side of the road with their, you know, their hot drinks and their, you know, please let's get our, you know, our lives back and our freedoms back. And then, you know, with cut ins of Trudeau being the, you know, banal corrupt idiot that he is. And you know, that that was, that felt like a true, a true coming together of Canadians, not Americans who said we are not going to take it anymore. And we, everyone knew whether or not you agreed with them or not, everyone knew what they were, what, why that song was being used there, right? It wasn't even them singing, but they could have been singing because a lot of us felt that we are not going to take this anymore. Enough with the lockdowns, enough with the masks, the vaccine mandates, enough. We are done. What are they done with, right? What, what is a gay men's choir in Los Angeles right now done with?

A

This is exactly the point is that that song resonates. The reason you and I both know it is that it resonates. It was a genuine something. It has been used when that emotion is the right emotion. Trucker's convoy. It has been co op by something. Now I'm not saying that that something put that song in this choir, but my point is you have people engaged in these incredibly powerful ironies, right? Where these gay men in a completely tolerant country, frankly in the most tolerant of states, are one of the most

B

tolerant of cities, in one of the

A

most tolerant of cities, have been convinced that they are up against a demonic force that wishes to oppress them and that they, individuating to this choir are proclaiming their refusal to take it, when in fact they're taking it up the yang yang. And worse, they are forcing the rest of us to take it up the yin yang also. And it's not your goddamn right. The fact is we have a republic. We are allowed to disagree and we are allowed to vote based on those disagreements and may the more popular viewpoint. And when it proves itself to be wrong, it will be thrown out and something else will be done. It's not a perfect system, but that is the system. And the idea that these parties are so marvelous that they are effectively allowed to cheat to prevent the evil alternative from taking office is insane. It is insane. And worst of all, by doing this, by allowing your parties to engage in one party rule over the particular state you live in, you are effectively guaranteeing that the children you're probably not going to have and the children that the rest of us do have are going to live in hell because a democratic republic is the only viable alternative. You're destroying the goose that lays the golden eggs that make your marvelous tolerant life possible. It's not yours to destroy. And that's the thing is at some level, level we are at the point where we have to wake up our fellow citizens and say, listen to what you're singing. You are talking about resisting power and you are doing it on behalf of power. You don't even realize it. You've become the most useful idiots that useful idiocy has ever produced because you are the foot soldiers of Goliath even as you're singing about resisting him. Right? That's what you're doing. People aren't hostile to you living your life the way you would live it. What they are hostile to is being told how we are supposed to live our lives and having governmental power at your disposal without an actual vote. That's the thing. We have to have an actual vote. It's not hard to do. Paper ballots worked. Exit polls were great. Knowing who won the election that day. So there wasn't a vast landscape in which people could commit fraud. That was marvelous. And it's gone. Not because it was difficult, but because somebody wanted it gone. Because frankly, democracy is scary to those in power. They don't like it. They don't like it because it means they can be thrown out when they lie to us and steal from us, which is what they do. 24, 7, 365

B

Foot soldiers of Goliath

A

Foot soldiers of Goliath they have become and they have no frickin idea. That's how pitiful they are.

B

Yep, amazing. I don't really feel like going at the last story now, but because that was extraordinarily powerful. But I. We're going to do it briefly before we, before we finish up this week. That was in California where the foot soldiers of Goliath are busy at work. And in California though we've got a governor who was just on a PR tour at Pennsylvania.

A

What?

B

Did I say?

A

California?

B

I said California again.

A

Farther south.

B

Yeah, yeah. In, in Washington. By contrast to California, our our home now for some number of years with a break in the middle, the PR tour of Governor Bob Ferguson advancing his latest executive order which seemed to bring health. Right. Finally, finally this state which has so many problems is going to get going to get some help. We are going to. Are we Going to address corruption. Is that what the EO is going to be about?

A

Oh, probably, yeah.

B

Reign and spending time perhaps of accountability and fantastic. And thus not need to leave everybody wondering who's going to be taxed next and what it's going to be wasted on. Maybe we'll fix transportation. Bridges, ferries, roads. Hey, that would be good because we got a lot. Boy boys and I were on a couple ferries yesterday. Ferry system is not doing well. Guys. If you're in Washington and you're anywhere near the Puget Sound, you know that.

A

Is addressing crime on your list.

B

Yes. Drug use, homelessness. Stop making it legal to trans kids without their parents knowing. That'd be useful.

A

Yeah, I'd be for that.

B

I'd be for that. Maybe. Maybe we could put a little bit of the money that is being thrown away, wasted, lost, back to state parks and forests and some of the rest of our amazing natural resources that people in Washington state want to use. But it's any of these things, really. Any. Any of them. Is it any of those, do you think? The new executive order, the PR tour.

A

Wait, wait, you said Bob Ferguson.

B

Bob Ferguson. Bob.

A

I'm gonna say no. No, I don't think it's any of those things.

B

It's not. Because what he seems to be best at is pandering. Pandering in the most obvious and stupid of ways. So, okay, before I. I'm gonna. I'm gonna put up the EO and we're gonna quickly walk through it paragraph by paragraph. But first I'm just gonna to say, because it's just too easy to tear apart. But before I do that, I want to say that what it's supposedly about is Executive Order 26 01. It's supposedly about supporting women employed by the state, mostly who are experiencing perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms.

A

Say that again.

B

Supporting women who are experiencing perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms to do. Right. So the state's in crisis, like, in crisis across so many, so many domains. And he's making a nod to a demographic that is real. Do. Do women experiencing menopause exist? Yes. Do women experiencing paramenopause exist? Well, another time, another day, we will get back to whether or not that brand new diagnosis actually makes sense. But let's say yes. For now, let's say yes.

A

Can it be treated with a statin?

B

Not yet, but I'm sure we'll get there. Let me also say that a rise in the symptoms of menopause, and maybe this Whole condition that is now being called perimenopause almost certainly has to do with some modern reversible trends in our air and water and food and meds. And if we really want to think about whether or not there's a real organic rise in women experiencing symptoms associated with. With an utterly natural and totally ancient life change, then maybe we should look at root causes. But, ooh, that's probably too maha for some people. And so they don't want to think about root causes. No, we're going to do this probably with a pill and a nice chat. Yes, possibly. Or, you know, paid time off. I don't know. I'm getting ahead of myself.

A

We don't know.

B

Bath salts, maybe. You know, I, you know, I'm a fan of Epsom salts, but, you know,

A

as a guy who's supportive, I was an honest suggestion.

B

Yes. Um, but like, individually and collectively, we have the capacity to change a lot of what is wrong in our modern environment that is almost certainly. Almost certainly contributing to a rise in people, in women experiencing menopausal and let's say it's real for now, perimenopausal symptoms. But. But those are things that we can change. So also, we should be willing to acknowledge that change. Change happens. Like change happens over time. Okay. And we age. Women age differently from men with the end of fertility. Women experience a more dramatic and I think, more sudden change, although it doesn't feel all that sudden for most people than any comparable change in men's bodies as they age. But there are. As in. As in women, men experience hormonal changes. Like, you know, there are changes as we age. I'm not going to try to sing Bowie here. You already did the men's chorus. That was great.

A

Yeah, I'm not going to sully Bowie by trying to sing him now.

B

Yeah,

A

but

B

normal change is normal. This is more. And we'll get to this in the EO Medicalization of normal female functioning. And it's coming under the umbrella of like, rah, rah, let's help women. But it's actually further medicalization of normal female functioning. And it is also, once again, refusing to look at root causes if there is indeed an uptick or an upsurge in menopausal symptoms for women, when, obviously, if that is happening, we should be asking why. And there are plenty of possible culprits. Everything from, well, everything from the meds, all of them. To the processed foods, all of them, to the herbicides and fertilizers and everything else used in Agricultural chemicals, all of them to other more diffuse risks to our sanity, like our attention being grabbed by us always being on screens and not being able to sleep well because we're bombarded with blue light constantly. Like, all of this is going to contribute to worsening experience of change that would otherwise be happening, happening naturally. Okay, so all of that said. Oh, and also, also, this feels like. This doesn't even feel. And I haven't even said what the EO is yet, but this doesn't even feel like a nanny state now. It feels like a daddy state. Like, this is. This is. This is women once again. And I'm not the first to say this, we've talked about this before, but this is women to some degree. And I'm not pointing to any individual women on the, on the commission involved here, here at all, who, instead of saying, like, you know what? I'm responsible for myself and I have people around me who love me and support me, and I love them and support them, and I'm going to rely on myself. Women who choose not to have families are less likely to know that they have support around them and to feel the agency to make decisions for themselves and are more likely to say, who can I go go to? Let's go to the state. Let's go to the daddy state. And so this EO feels a little bit like that again, that's really interesting.

A

I had not put that together, but yes, this bride of the state model.

B

Yeah.

A

And then you hear you have Bob Ferguson, informally, he's the governor. I think actual title is the empty suit and check chief. But here he is pretending to be a caring male figure who is empathic with females and the various mysterious phenomena. Yeah, that does sound like a pandering move of the state to which so many women are now brides.

B

And just one more thing before we go to the eo, uh, just like, full disclosure with regard to, you know, I've, I've said maybe we'll come back to, like, is perimenopause real? Menopause is clearly real. There's a cessation of, of reproductive function in women that varies in time, just like onset of menses varies, although that's just moving earlier and earlier with, again, all the new things in the environment. But I will say that I actually, years ago now, in 2019, much to my surprise, experienced a sudden and intense onset of hot flashes that prompted me to dive deep into literature. And I'm on hrt. The only pharmaceuticals that I take are estrogen and progesterone. They work for me, I am. I, you know, I go back in and to the literature and consider my own experience with them often. And so I'm not here to say that none of this is real. Real women's pain is fake. There is no change. There is no need for intervention ever. And I'm not dismissing menopausal symptoms as insignificant. They can be very real. But that doesn't make what's happening here with this EO anything like the right move. So let's see. Let's pull this up. You can show my screen, and I'm just gonna. I just. I scribbled notes on my, on my, on my hard copy of it as to what. What we're doing. Okay, so Executive Order 2601 addressing menopause related workplace accommodations under the Washington law against discrimination. Whereas approximately 1.3 million individuals in the United States transition into menopause each year, and 34% of people with menopause symptoms are not diagnosed. 34% of women of people.

A

Right. It can be any kind of people

B

with menopause systems are not diagnosed. What if you are going through a change in reproductive status, which is what menopause is, and you are one of the lucky many. I don't even know if it's a majority, A few, whatever. Many, many, many people actually go through menopause without experiencing much. Obviously your cycles stop and you stop menstruating, and there are obvious changes. But if you don't experience much, in terms of. Talk about hot flashes is the. Is the one that I'm familiar with. But people talk about brain fog and irritability and all sorts of other things. Right. If you don't experience any of that, that's not you not being diagnosed with menopausal symptoms?

A

Well, I mean, at one level, okay, so they don't have symptoms, but they are carriers of menopause. So at some level, we have to take that seriously too.

B

So, I mean, right off the bat, this is stupid.

A

Yes.

B

Okay. Whereas new research suggests that many women begin experiencing perimenopause in their 30s. Again, let's like, create a new thing and then expand the category. Whereas, research indicates that black, Asian, and Latino women tend to enter menopause earlier than white women, which suggests that they may likewise enter perimenopause earlier than their white counterparts. And, like, what are we doing here? Like, why do. Why. When did this become a DEI thing? Oh, actually, as it turns out out, the whole thing is a DEI thing. It's just women instead of any of the Other usual groups here. But seriously, like, why? What is that doing here? Whereas studies show that women living in rural areas are more likely to reach menopause earlier than their urban counterparts, and specifically that they may experience greater burdens associated with psychological and somatic menopause symptoms. Again, what, like, what are we doing now? The fairest analysis I can give those first four paragraphs is we're just establishing who the population like. Okay, Bob. Governor Ferguson, I assume you didn't write this. If you did, you're an idiot. But like, I assume this was one of your staffers or many of your staffers, and you're just. The first four paragraphs are just serving to establish who the demographics are who are going to be mostly served by this. Non. Existent. Like, non. Interesting. Eo. Okay, executive order. So we'll give those four paragraphs a pass. Sort of. Except for the 34 represent of people with menopause systems who are not diagnosed, which is absurd.

A

Wouldn't you. Wouldn't you just love to be in the meeting where this stuff is brainstormed? Wouldn't you just. I'd give anything to be a fly on that wall.

B

Yeah. Okay. Whereas research shows that menopause is linked to premature. Oh, my computer is not. Does not want to talk about this anymore.

A

It's not going to take it.

B

It's. It's not going to take it. Did it not work? Not yet. Plug it in. Plug it back in. We'll have to sing the song.

A

Gladly.

B

Okay. Can you see it now? All right. Whereas research shows that menopause is linked to premature departure from the workforce. Okay, what research? I don't know.

A

Research.

B

Research. Also, premature departure from the workforce at, you know, menopause is linked to premature departure from the workforce. Menopause, which often starts around 50 when a lot of people are considering, I don't know, premature departure from the workforce. So I'm not saying that's why people are leaving, but that may be contributing. Whereas a recent study. Where is it? A recent study found an association between increased menopause symptom severity and negative work outcomes, resulting in an annual estimated $1.8 billion direct loss to the US economy. Holy cow. That's a lot. Where's the. Where's the study?

A

And it's not a lot, actually.

B

Well, but like that. That's, that's, that's, that's ridiculous. Also. Again, address the underlying causes. Address the underlying causes. If, if what you're doing is asking people, you know, did you ever have a day when you experienced hot flashes that were so bad that you had to take a sick day that you weren't expecting to take. And they say yes, then that's going into this analysis. Just, just like, you know, earlier in their lives, presumably some fraction of women who experience really bad premenstrual symptoms occasionally said they had to take a sick day due to pain from cramping. And what are we doing to address that? Are we going to just stop the bleeding? Well, actually that was tried, wasn't it? So the reference to studies that aren't linked in any way, that aren't easily findable, and the lack of consideration that what is being discussed is actually something that can be dealt with by a totally different approach to governance is, is telling.

A

And you know, these are real things, as you point out, people who can't go to work because they're in too much pain from cramping. That's a real thing. Yeah, but you can't go to work because you're so, you know, you rolled your eyes so vigorously you've sprained them. Yeah, that's also a thing with EOs like this.

B

Yeah. Oh, well, exactly. And you know, we saw ah, after the James Damore memo at Google in the summer of 2017.

A

Remember good times.

B

Ah, good times. Remember female Google employees, obviously not all of them, but some enough to make the news, female Google employees were saying that they couldn't come into work because they were so emotionally distraught by his memo.

A

Yeah.

B

Right. So now we're talking about giving a population that is not entirely distinct from those women who were too emotionally distraught to come in to work. Excuses like the entire thing. And we'll get to the most gamble part of this, but the entire thing is gamable. On top of all of the other problems with this and that

A

at some level, your point about the purpose of this is to placate or enervate or something, some quadrant of the electorate to keep them on board by throwing them a fish or whatever it is that's happening here that does feel like what this is. It's like, look, oh hey, we've got a demographic here that is beginning to feel antsy that maybe we're not doing anything for them and the world is collapsing around them because we are stealing all the money and not putting it into services. Right. What can we give them?

B

We gotta make sure they vote to.

A

You know what it is? It's Menopausal and Perimenopausal Women Appreciation Month. It can't be this month for reasons that we covered earlier year. Yep. But it could be next month.

B

Okay. Yeah.

A

That's what this is.

B

Yeah. And I think he started it in May, so maybe we'll just make May.

A

May.

B

Yeah.

A

Yes. Okay. Don't forget to remind me next May.

B

Yeah. Although I think this may have actually come out on June 1st, so.

A

No, that. That. That is not. That is gonna overlap. Pride.

B

Yeah, we can't let that happen.

A

No.

B

Okay.

A

Although there would be a lot of separate. Celebrating the menopausal women and the lgbtqia.

B

I mean. Did I get it? There's a. No, you didn't.

A

No, I got. I got. I got the letters.

B

I think some of them. Okay, so let's keep going. Whereas the Washington law against discrimination, chapter verse, prohibits discrimination in employment requires reasonable accommodation of, quote, a sensory, mental or physical impairment that is medically cognizable or dangerous, diagnosable. End quote. Again with a medicalization.

A

Is cognizable a word?

B

Well, it's written in here. I'm just. I'm just reading their ridiculous words. Presumably, cognizable is meant to mean understandable, medically understandable or diagnosable. A sensory, mental, or physical impairment that is medically cognizable or diagnosable. Again, with a medicalization like.

A

Yeah, this.

B

This is a natural part of female aging, and turning it into a disability feels wrong about 800 different ways.

A

I would also point out that they have missed the boat, almost literally in the sense that there are very few other creatures that go through menopause, but one of them. Killer whales.

B

Yeah, we've got them here.

A

Not only do we have them here in Washington, but some of them are residents. See what I'm saying? The resident. You know what? I bet they do. We should check out some of the ballots. Yeah, why wouldn't they? Right? I mean, the people tracking them, we know their addresses totally. I'm sure they. I'm sure ballots are filed on their behalf, whether they actually have engaged in voting. That's. That's dicier.

B

Okay, so, I mean, if. If Bob Ferguson wants to write an EO for menopause support and organization, ORCAs, I'm in.

A

Just for the novelty.

B

Just for the novelty. Okay, so we go on with more medicalization. More medicalization. And then we have paragraph 11 here. Whereas employees experiencing menopause and. Or perimenopause and, like, they're not overlapping conditions.

A

Yeah. Or. Yeah, right, exactly. Okay, good.

B

Whereas employees experiencing menopause and. Or perimenopause may also benefit from other workplace adjustments designed to facilitate their well being and full participation network. Now, if there's not a gamable clause in an eo. I don't know what is. Yeah. Anyone? Any woman experiencing symptoms. No, not. It doesn't even say symptoms. Employees experiencing menopause and. Or perimenopause. It's just time of life. Just like if you are between the ages of. And I'm. I don't know, like, let's call it like 35 to 55. May also benefit from other workplace adjustments designed to facilitate their well being and full participation at work. Gamable Gamble gamble. And will be gamed.

A

It is a game. Yeah.

B

Next paragraph. Whereas the Washington State Women's Commission exists to improve the well being of women and girls by enabling them participate fully in employment considering their unique needs and promoting policies that address issues relevant to them. Well, that raises the question of what the Washington State Women Commission is. So we're about to go there. But first I want to read one more paragraph from this EO before going to the Washington State Women's Commission which turns out to be the thing that has been granted the authority to spend the next year looking into how to improve perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms in women at work. Right. So like the entire thing is vague and. And doesn't do anything except through this commission. But first, the next par. The next paragraph we'll read here. Whereas the Women's Commission is working to address the silence surrounding menopause and perimenopause which may affect employees career progression and economic stability in their prime working years. Well, Bob, you did it. You addressed the silence. Good job. No longer silent. I feel like the work is done. I think Bob did it.

A

Well, can you agree that it is impressive?

B

No, I can't not.

A

Oh come on. You're a little impressed by this eo.

B

Yeah, this like three page pile of garbage. No, really not.

A

No, but I mean the audacity to put it out. That's impressive.

B

Yeah.

A

Okay, so.

B

Yep.

A

My suggestion would be that in honor of Bob Ferguson, that we change the state animal and seal to the giant pander.

B

The giant panda.

A

Giant pander. In honor of Bob Ferguson. Ferguson. And we could give an award for whoever in the state apparatus has excelled in bamboozling.

B

Okay.

A

Bamboo zilling.

B

Yeah.

A

You see?

B

Yeah, I do.

A

Giant pander.

B

Yeah. Okay.

A

All right. It was funny in my head, I'll tell you that.

B

It's not bad. I'm just.

A

You've had it. You're not going to take it.

B

No, I'm. I am just trying to get through the rest of this. We don't have a lot of time. Okay. So actually I wanted to show one more paragraph from the CEO in which it is clarified what the Washington State Women's Commission is going to do. There are six paragraphs worth of what it's going to do, most of which are just total vague nonsense. Paragraph 5 is work with the Department of Health, the Medical Commission, the Board of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, the Board of Nursing, the Board of Naturopathy, the Examining Board of Psychology. Okay. I'm going to see if my computer wants to communicate with the world or not. Does that work? All right.

A

Okay.

B

But of course, now it came in small. Okay. Work with all of these boards and departments and any other relevant health profession boards and commissions to review possibilities for providers to earn professional licensing credits for menopause and perimenopause education and provide any relevant recommendations to the governor's office within 12 months after the issuance of this executive order. Bureaucracy for the win, right? Education credits, Continuing education credits. We're going to make menopause and perimenopause education a new category for probably, let's call it social workers and maybe psychologists, maybe doctors and nurses and naturopaths and osteopaths and all you have to do. I don't know, why don't I try to be an officially trained perimenopause and menopause educator by which I can make classes and get people to sign up because they need those continuing education credits in order to keep their licenses current. And I can make bank on my perimenopause and menopause education training that I will give to them.

A

No, you can't, because I can't actually.

B

Because I actually know something.

A

Well, see, that is disqualifying. But also disqualifying is the fact that you have expressed concern over the governance in the state. And presumably such opportunities are reserved for those who have played along with the application apparatus.

B

Like for instance, the Washington State Women's Commission. What that is, that is the body that is going to take on this important unlawful work that Bob has recently inflicted on the State of Washington. About the commission. The Washington State Women's Commission is an executive branch cabinet agency in the office of Governor Bob Ferguson with an advisory board of nine commissioners. We exist to improve the well being of women and girls by ensuring their needs are reflected in and prioritize, privatized by the government that serves them. That sounds fine, right? Our mandate. Let's make this a little bigger person date. Our mandate is. Stop our mandate. A mandate is the authority granted to the Women's Commission by the Washington State legislature as defined in state law. With bipartisan support, the legislature passed House Bill 2759 in 2018, citing the disproportionate effect of economic, social and historical disadvantages on women that prevent them from achieving equal opportunities opportunity. Quote, the commission works on behalf of all self identifying women and girls as well as individuals with the capacity for pregnancy.

A

So, so it's an attack on women disguised as support for women as usual.

B

Well, I don't, I don't think it was formed primarily to be a trans inclusive thing, but it is trans inclusive and that part is an attack on women. Yes, but also think about when this was formed. It was formed in 2018. That's the MeToo era. This was formed as a direct response to the MeToo era, which as I've said many, many times, had the potential to actually allow the extraordinary majority of men in the world who are good men and because they are good men, don't know that the majority of women in the world have had bad run ins with the minority of men who are bad men. That is worth knowing. Of course, that is not what MeToo turns out into. It turned into a complete mess in which women now empowered, grab, tried to grab more power and said ridiculous things about, you know, like, like rape is equivalent to a pat on the ass. And that was, that was all absurd. But this women's commission was established. It's nine voluntary, it's nine volunteers and community focused commission. Commission fac. Washington State has five community focused commissions, including the Women's Commission and the Commission on African American affairs, the Commission on Asian Pacific American affairs, the Commission on Hispanic affairs and the LGBTQ Commission. So lgbtq, of course, now has two commissions because the Women's Commission is also the trans Commission.

A

Well, they've been underrepresented with respect to how many commissions. So this is.

B

And actually only in one direction. I don't know if natal women who think they're dudes are even covered under this commission. Commission. Who knows? Okay, let's just. Just a tiny bit more here from the state of Washington and its commissions. Why are there community focused commissions? I'm just going to read the top sentence out of each of these. Washington's community focused commissions were created at pivotal points in history when grassroots organizers and activists demonstrated to state lawmakers that their policies and programs were failing to meet community needs. That sounds great until you have lived through. Woke up. Yeah, this is, this is not what it appears. Okay, next one. How do community focused commissions differ from other state agencies? Commissions are unique due to their inclusion of governor appointed commissioners. These are volunteers from across the state devoted to bridging the gap between those who have been historically excluded from state decision making and the lawmakers and state agencies who can address their needs. These are activists with more time than sense. Okay. That's who they are. Are. I don't know any of them. I hope I'm wrong about that for most of them. I'm sure it's true for some of them. What kind of state agency is a commission? We are advisory agencies with the power to uplift, advocate and convene. Our commissions do not have the power to enforce the law or regulate other bodies. While we do not lead policy implementation efforts of other agencies, we can support and engage with them throughout their implementation process. Five verbs. What do the commissions do? They uplift, they advocate, they convene, they support, they engage. Engage.

A

Yep.

B

They don't think, they don't create, they don't discover, they don't explore, they don't do, they don't act.

A

Yeah, all of those are aspirations.

B

They uplift, advocate, convene, support, engage. Bullshit. This is insane.

A

Well, not only that, but we are looking at a state that is levying new taxes that the voters themselves have rejected. It is violating the constitution to levy them the state constitution. And it is doing so on the basis of an emergency that requires them to do it, which they've never told us what the emergency is. And at the same time, on account

B

of there not being one.

A

Well, right, there isn't one. But by simply invoking the magic word emergency, they've gotten the courts to agree that it's okay to do it. But the point is, at the same time, they're doing that because of the sobering emergency that we have to address with new taxes. Right at that same moment, they're engaging in this frivolous bullshit, which takes money.

B

I know what the emergency is.

A

What is the emergency?

B

The foot soldiers of Goliath are at risk of waking up. What we saw in L. A with Spencer Pratt and his campaign demonstrated that even true blue would never vote anything but blue. Democrats saw the trouble, saw the lies, saw the corruption, saw their city decaying in front of them and were looking for something different. Even if they had to hold their nose because they. They have enough TDS to not be able to accommodate someone who was possibly supported by Trump.

A

Yes.

B

And so when soldiers of Goliath start to wake up, that is an emergency

A

that trot out the eos you're right

B

out the law, trot out the new taxes, trot out everything.

A

That is the emergency. It's not an emergency for us, it's an emergency for them because their power is threatened.

B

That's right.

A

By that. And at some level, you know, when, when we first, first came to Washington back in 2002, 2002, I remember looking at the obscene clear cutting of the glorious forests that existed here and thinking, this is so dumb because not only did you take this resource that you would have an impossible time putting an actual value on and turn it into a foreign finite financial value, but the citizens of the state of Washington did not get their cut. Right. It's not like we decided to destroy our own forests because we could make money doing it. Somebody decided to destroy our forest and we subsidized their doing it and we did not get our cut. And this is like that, where you have a criminal organization running the state using the terrifying power of government to extract wealth from all of the people who live here in various different ways and squandering it on who the knows what. And in order to keep people calm, what they do is they will shine a light on a constituency and make you feel special. Right. It's like, you know, they've, you know, they've stolen stuff from your safe and they want to give you flowers so that you'll feel special for the day. And it's like the net effect of what these people are doing to your quality of life and what they are dooming your children to endure is obscene. And you don't even have the sense to compare this little exercise in making you feel special because you're in a demographic that's been noticed by the daddy governor. Right. The two things. There's nothing that these eos or any of this highlighting of your special difficulties. Difficulties could do to compensate you for the fact that they robbed you and are still robbing you today even as they're making you feel special.

B

Yeah, indeed. Again, it is really likely that if you are in fact experiencing menopausal symptoms, part of why is due to them having robbed you of clean air and water and food and safe drugs and the sense that you shouldn't be on anything unless you really, really have to. Yeah, that's, that's, that's part of how they robbed you. If you feel anxious or depressed or out of sorts or incapable of keeping up or any of these things, that's partially because they made it happen. And you still vote for them. Why do you still vote for Them, they're the ones who want to keep you in compliance. Sedate foot soldiers of Goliath. So you start with waking up and, you know, the dial gets turned up. And sometimes that dial might look like pain, but in this case it looks like, oh, wait, we got to give you more stuff. We gotta give you more goodies, more stuff for the people who might be waking up so they can just sit back and go like, oh, that's nice. I'm gonna get some paid time off for. For not feeling good. Cool.

A

Am I gonna eat a fish?

B

Yeah.

A

Yeah. And, you know, look, on the off chance that there is anybody who is solidly over on the blue side actually listening to this, yeah, we're angry at you, but we're angry at you because you're allowing this to happen. Because you've bought their story. Just look into it. Just think for yourself and talk to somebody else who's thinking for themselves. It doesn't add up. Even people who share your values as much as we do, who want to see a fair society in which people are not disadvantaged, everybody gets to taken up, taken care of. You don't fall off the bottom of the ladder and can't climb back up. Even people who believe that cannot stand what is being done in your name. And actually you're helping, so stop helping. Just check what it is that you're actually signing up for. Not what they told you it is and not what they told you it's for, because they're lucky.

B

All right, all right. We're gonna have a Q and A today. It's gonna have to be kind of short because I have a place to be, but we will make this break between the Q and A and the live stream as brief as possible. Please join us at Locals. The Q&As are fun. We pay attention to the chat as much as we can during them. Also, we're a reminder that we are supported by you, our audience, and we truly appreciate. Appreciate whether you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify or especially on YouTube, subscribe to the channel. Like, share those. All of those things help us in our understanding of who our audience is and and in helping to spread what we're doing to other people who hopefully will appreciate it. Reminder that our sponsors this week include Redmond, Salt, Branch Basics and Crowd Health. All amazing. Do look into them. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love. Eat real food and get outside and

A

don't take it anymore. But for real,