# Seth Andrews: Dissent is our Duty

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 13 May 2025, 53 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/65974599/podcast803_dissentisourduty2.mp3

In our critical cultural moment, protest is patriotism. Yet is there any reason to hope that democracy and decency might still prevail? Seth Andrews has thoughts. VIDEO of this speech Special thanks to WeCanReason Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Room, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
[0:18] Speaker 3: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 3: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 3: made a wish.
[0:25] Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
[0:28] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feels so much more happiness.
[0:31] Speaker 4: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: Do you have any idea what it's like to travel
[0:59] Speaker 3: with Forest Valci? The science communicator, the biologist, sometimes guest
[1:05] Speaker 3: on this show, co host on the Line Network, and
[1:09] Speaker 3: of course host of his own channel Blah blah blah.
[1:12] Speaker 3: Forest Valci, who is and I've told him this, the
[1:15] Speaker 3: Jack Russell Terrier of Science Education Boundless Energy. And since
[1:23] Speaker 3: he and I live in the same city, we were
[1:25] Speaker 3: on the same flights going up to Calgary for the
[1:29] Speaker 3: We Can Reason conference. So it's like five in the
[1:32] Speaker 3: morning and we're sitting at the gate. He plops down,
[1:34] Speaker 3: Hey morning, Forest, I'm sipping my coffee thirty seconds later,
[1:39] Speaker 3: We're talking about not just everyday small talk kind of stuff.
[1:45] Speaker 3: It's the world, the country, politics, education, science, all of
[1:51] Speaker 3: this biology based stuff. I'm sure the people sitting next
[1:55] Speaker 3: to us were like, oh my god, I'm tired, it's
[1:59] Speaker 3: too early. My mind is mush. Please stop it. Talk
[2:02] Speaker 3: about the weather.
[2:03] Speaker 2: No, no, there is no talking about.
[2:06] Speaker 3: The weather with Forrest Balci. And then we started talking
[2:10] Speaker 3: about weather or not we were going to have trouble
[2:12] Speaker 3: getting through customs getting into Canada. And I think I've
[2:15] Speaker 3: asked this question on the show before. I wonder how
[2:18] Speaker 3: Canadians are going to receive me, who they might see
[2:21] Speaker 3: as one of the clowns in the American circus?
[2:25] Speaker 2: Right?
[2:25] Speaker 3: Are they going to give me trouble at the border?
[2:27] Speaker 3: And I've really been fretting about this. It was a
[2:30] Speaker 3: big question mark. And I am not kidding. He was
[2:35] Speaker 3: the easiest I have ever gotten through customs anywhere in
[2:40] Speaker 3: the world. I mean, it's bizarre. Got off the plane,
[2:45] Speaker 3: walked up to the customs area. It wasn't busy at all.
[2:48] Speaker 3: Went to the desk, purpose of your visit, great, have
[2:51] Speaker 3: a good time, see you later.
[2:52] Speaker 2: Boom.
[2:53] Speaker 3: It took less time to get through customs at Calgary
[2:57] Speaker 3: Airport than it took me to get through my own
[3:00] Speaker 3: own airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was wild Forrest and
[3:04] Speaker 3: I just looked at each other like, are we on
[3:07] Speaker 3: like a reality show? Is this hidden camera? Is there
[3:09] Speaker 3: something else going on? We just cruised right in. So
[3:13] Speaker 3: then we did the conference, and you were about to
[3:15] Speaker 3: hear the speech that I gave at that conference, And
[3:19] Speaker 3: the video version with like a hundred slides is linked
[3:22] Speaker 3: in the description box, so if you want to watch
[3:25] Speaker 3: it after you listen, you can certainly do that. But
[3:29] Speaker 3: we both went to the conference an amazing time, and
[3:32] Speaker 3: then coming home we were like, okay, let's see how
[3:35] Speaker 3: we do on the exit. Is it difficult for Americans
[3:40] Speaker 3: to get back into their own country? Thirty minutes in
[3:43] Speaker 3: the queue because it was a little busier, walked up
[3:46] Speaker 3: to the desk, high purpose of your visit. We spoke
[3:49] Speaker 3: at a conference, wonderful, thanks for visiting Canada, have a
[3:53] Speaker 3: nice day. Boom, We're gone. It was cake, right, it
[3:58] Speaker 3: was cake or easy pie. I don't know why we
[4:01] Speaker 3: use food analogies for a piece of cake easy as pie.
[4:05] Speaker 3: I don't know why we do that. It just occurred
[4:08] Speaker 3: to me at the moment we were on a plane.
[4:10] Speaker 3: Got home, no problem. Now this will make everybody, including me,
[4:14] Speaker 3: feel a lot easier, a lot better about traveling back
[4:18] Speaker 3: to Canada, because I've got another conference on the agenda
[4:21] Speaker 3: in early August, the Baja con event, the Bluewater Atheist
[4:25] Speaker 3: Humanist Conference in Sarnia, Ontario. So if you are in
[4:29] Speaker 3: the States and you're traveling up north, you're not going
[4:31] Speaker 3: to have any trouble. I'm sure of that now. I'm
[4:35] Speaker 3: obviously can't make the same guarantee for people who are
[4:38] Speaker 3: in other nations coming here. That's a whole different conversation.
[4:42] Speaker 3: You know, when I'm in Calgary, I'm walking around, I
[4:46] Speaker 3: didn't see any you know, white vans full of ice
[4:50] Speaker 3: agents jumping out going hello, you have dark skin and
[4:54] Speaker 3: a foreign sounding name.
[4:56] Speaker 2: You strike me is suspiciously illegal. Get in the van.
[5:02] Speaker 2: That shit's going on here. It's not going on up
[5:05] Speaker 2: in Canada.
[5:07] Speaker 3: I have been told that Alberta is like Canada's Texas,
[5:12] Speaker 3: its own red state. They call it Maple Maga. There's
[5:17] Speaker 3: trumpers in Canada apparently. So somebody said that there are
[5:26] Speaker 3: parts or factions that want to secede and actually become
[5:32] Speaker 3: our fifty first state.
[5:33] Speaker 2: I can't even imagine.
[5:35] Speaker 3: Of course, Canada had been watching all of the crazy
[5:38] Speaker 3: shit that's going on in the States, and there was
[5:41] Speaker 3: a big worry that right wing elements were going to
[5:44] Speaker 3: take over. With the election for Prime Minister Mark Kearney
[5:49] Speaker 3: for the Liberal Party, who I don't think was expected
[5:52] Speaker 3: to win against a popular right winger, the Conservative Pierre
[5:57] Speaker 3: polyev Bought. Canada apparently looked south and said.
[6:02] Speaker 2: Oh no, we don't want any of that.
[6:05] Speaker 3: And something happened, which analysts have been calling the Trump Bump,
[6:10] Speaker 3: and there was a swing back towards sanity. Now it
[6:13] Speaker 3: was still a squeaker, but by a slim margin. Canada
[6:18] Speaker 3: came to its senses enough that the Liberal Party won
[6:23] Speaker 3: the election and Mark Kearney is the new Prime minister.
[6:26] Speaker 3: Did you see him sit down with Donald Trump? And
[6:28] Speaker 3: he wasn't having any of it. Donald Trump's like, fifty
[6:31] Speaker 3: first date, It's going to be amazing, and Mark Kearney's like, yeah, no,
[6:36] Speaker 3: good luck with that. It ain't gonna happen. It was awesome, right.
[6:38] Speaker 3: He just pushed right back sanity in the world. The
[6:42] Speaker 3: Trump Bump helped Canada escape its own right wing fanaticism.
[6:48] Speaker 3: And this also happened in Australia. The Conservative opposition leader
[6:54] Speaker 3: who was running for Prime Minister in Australia, guy named
[6:57] Speaker 3: Peter Dunton, has some momentum gus oh no. Australia. Watching
[7:03] Speaker 3: the United States, the Trump bump kicks in and Labor
[7:08] Speaker 3: wins the election with the appointment of Australian Prime Minister
[7:12] Speaker 3: Anthony Albanize. The rest of the world is getting it meanwhile.
[7:18] Speaker 3: According to Pew Research Center, and this is from April
[7:22] Speaker 3: to twenty eighth, white evangelicals continue to stand out in
[7:28] Speaker 3: their support of Trump. Seventy two percent of white evangelicals
[7:33] Speaker 3: in this country say he's doing amazing, sixty nine percent
[7:38] Speaker 3: say he has very good ethics, fifty seven percent say
[7:43] Speaker 3: they trust what he says more than any other president.
[7:48] Speaker 3: This is where we are. So apparently the rest of
[7:51] Speaker 3: the world has been learning the lessons that we have
[7:55] Speaker 3: not yet learned. So here in the United States, those
[8:00] Speaker 3: of us who haven't lost our way, lost our compass,
[8:03] Speaker 3: lost our minds, are fighting desperately to survive and to
[8:09] Speaker 3: defeat authoritarianism, autocracy, the rise of the king, and the
[8:14] Speaker 3: cult that supports him. What do we do, how do
[8:18] Speaker 3: we maintain? How in the world do we keep from
[8:21] Speaker 3: losing our minds? And that was the message of the
[8:25] Speaker 3: speech that I wanted to bring. I've been doing a
[8:28] Speaker 3: version of this speech. I did it in Phoenix, Orlando,
[8:33] Speaker 3: in Minneapolis, and finally in Calgary, and I wanted to
[8:36] Speaker 3: go ahead and to throw it out on the internet
[8:38] Speaker 3: so that you might find encouragement from it. I don't
[8:43] Speaker 3: want to split this speech up by taking my commercial
[8:46] Speaker 3: break in the middle of it, so I'm going to
[8:48] Speaker 3: take a break now and be right back.
[8:51] Speaker 2: Hang on. This is about a forty three minute presentation
[9:01] Speaker 2: I just gave in Canada.
[9:03] Speaker 3: The video of this is linked in the description box
[9:07] Speaker 3: from the We Can Reason conference on the third of May.
[9:11] Speaker 3: The presentation is titled Dissent is Our Duty.
[9:24] Speaker 2: It is an honor to be here.
[9:26] Speaker 3: It is an honor to be among these featured speakers,
[9:29] Speaker 3: and it is a joy to be among friends. Thank
[9:31] Speaker 3: you so much for having me again. My listeners often
[9:41] Speaker 3: call in with a frequent question. They say, do you
[9:45] Speaker 3: have any hope? You have any hope that it's going
[9:48] Speaker 3: to be okay? And man, I wish I had a
[9:50] Speaker 3: better answer for them. Sometimes I go all John Lennon,
[9:56] Speaker 3: we all know the lyrics. Imagine there's no countries, it
[10:00] Speaker 3: isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for,
[10:03] Speaker 3: and no religion, to imagine all the people living life
[10:08] Speaker 3: in peace.
[10:10] Speaker 2: You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the
[10:13] Speaker 2: only one.
[10:14] Speaker 3: I hope someday you'll join us and the world will
[10:17] Speaker 3: be as one.
[10:19] Speaker 2: And I do imagine. I imagine.
[10:22] Speaker 3: I imagine a world where border lines aren't dividing lines,
[10:27] Speaker 3: where the one true religion is human goodness, and where
[10:32] Speaker 3: we all are living in peace together.
[10:36] Speaker 2: I imagine.
[10:37] Speaker 3: And I try to hold on to just a little
[10:40] Speaker 3: bit of hope, but I have felt starved of hope,
[10:46] Speaker 3: just starved of hope. I'm not sleeping well. When I'm awake,
[10:51] Speaker 3: I'm spinning. My brain is spinning like a hard drive,
[10:55] Speaker 3: and all I can really hear is the white noise
[10:57] Speaker 3: of a world gone crazy. My reserves are low, my
[11:02] Speaker 3: optimism is even lower.
[11:05] Speaker 2: I have come to this moment where I fear the worst.
[11:08] Speaker 3: In most situations, can anyone relate to them? I'm reminded
[11:14] Speaker 3: of that line from George Carlin. He said, when you
[11:17] Speaker 3: scratch a cynic, you find underneath a disappointed idealist, and
[11:24] Speaker 3: there's still some little flame alive somewhere that says, wouldn't
[11:27] Speaker 3: it be nice? I talked to my wife Natalie all
[11:31] Speaker 3: the time about how it feels like democracy and decency
[11:35] Speaker 3: are circling the drain in the United States. What happens
[11:38] Speaker 3: if we collapse upon ourselves? And I wonder if it
[11:42] Speaker 3: will have died of two specific things, absurdity and cruelty. Now,
[11:50] Speaker 3: the Oxford Dictionary defines absurdity as the quality or state
[11:55] Speaker 3: of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable. I think we can
[12:00] Speaker 3: all agree that every day has been a blitzkrieg of
[12:03] Speaker 3: the ridiculous and the wildly unreasonable. Ours isn't a culture
[12:10] Speaker 3: where these terms are simple adjectives. They are a demographic.
[12:16] Speaker 3: For instance, a recent survey of Americans.
[12:20] Speaker 2: Has fifty six.
[12:22] Speaker 3: Percent of residents saying we should not be using Arabic numerals,
[12:29] Speaker 3: the decimal based number system that Europe adopted from the
[12:33] Speaker 3: Arabic world eight hundred years ago. More than half of
[12:37] Speaker 3: the US doesn't see zero through nine. They see Arabs
[12:43] Speaker 3: and they want nothing to do with that. In our
[12:47] Speaker 3: absurd country, vaccines cause autism, and more recently, fluoride can
[12:54] Speaker 3: kick down your IQ. The Earth might be flat, airplane
[13:00] Speaker 3: lights and stars in the sky are actually a coordinated
[13:03] Speaker 3: drone army. The world's richest man and major Trump influencers
[13:10] Speaker 3: says that C section babies have larger brains because vaginal
[13:14] Speaker 3: birth squishes babyheads. The presidential speech of twenty twenty five
[13:25] Speaker 3: included a reference to transgender mice. Georgia's fourteenth congressional district
[13:37] Speaker 3: re elected Marjorie Taylor Green twice twice. The Jewish space
[13:46] Speaker 3: laser woman, the woman who said that the acceptance of
[13:51] Speaker 3: LGBT people would make straight people go extinct within five generations,
[14:01] Speaker 3: who warned about Bill Gates growing fake meat in a
[14:06] Speaker 3: peachtree dish, who warned that our Congress was being spied
[14:16] Speaker 3: on by the gaspa sho police.
[14:21] Speaker 2: On and on and on.
[14:23] Speaker 3: Georgia District fourteen looked at this woman and they.
[14:27] Speaker 2: Said, mawk, please, I would like more of that.
[14:30] Speaker 4: Thank you more piece.
[14:33] Speaker 3: By the way, I bought this for my office. It
[14:36] Speaker 3: actually sits on a shelf. It's made by a company
[14:39] Speaker 3: called Concord Aerospace, a company that obviously has a great
[14:42] Speaker 3: sense of humor. It is an actual Jewish space laser.
[14:52] Speaker 3: This is a bona fide electrical switch.
[14:55] Speaker 2: You can actually take.
[14:56] Speaker 3: The light switches out of your wall and you can
[14:59] Speaker 3: replace it and turn on your light and ceiling.
[15:01] Speaker 2: Fan with a Jewish space laser.
[15:06] Speaker 3: Now, I don't know if they meant to misspell art
[15:08] Speaker 3: reactor or not, but because it's Marjorie Taylor Green, I'm
[15:11] Speaker 3: going to say it was done on purpose.
[15:14] Speaker 2: And sometimes it's.
[15:15] Speaker 3: All we can do is just to laugh, is to
[15:18] Speaker 3: laugh at all of the absurdity, and then I just
[15:22] Speaker 3: get numb from the dumb.
[15:24] Speaker 2: You ever feel that numb from the dumb?
[15:27] Speaker 3: And I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's words from the demon
[15:31] Speaker 3: Haunted World. I have a foreboding of an America and
[15:35] Speaker 3: my children's are grandchildren's lifetime, when the United States is
[15:39] Speaker 3: a service and information economy, when nearly all the manufacturing
[15:44] Speaker 3: industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological
[15:49] Speaker 3: powers are in the hands of a very few and
[15:52] Speaker 3: no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues,
[15:57] Speaker 3: When the people have lost the ability to set their
[16:00] Speaker 3: own agendas are knowledgeably questioned those in authority, when clutching
[16:05] Speaker 3: our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes are critical faculties
[16:09] Speaker 3: in decline, Unable to distinguish between what feels good and
[16:14] Speaker 3: what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition
[16:21] Speaker 3: and darkness. It's like he had a working crystal ball,
[16:26] Speaker 3: isn't it? And then after the absurdity comes the cruelty,
[16:33] Speaker 3: the callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering.
[16:39] Speaker 3: There is an epidemic of cruelty in the United States
[16:44] Speaker 3: right now, a cancer of cruelty, and we have seen
[16:49] Speaker 3: daily examples of this in that culture. Immigrants aren't human beings,
[16:54] Speaker 3: often trying to escape suffering and harm, but are instead
[16:58] Speaker 3: vilified their pa sites.
[17:00] Speaker 2: They're pushers, they're predators.
[17:05] Speaker 3: Gay people are sodomites, deemed wicked by.
[17:08] Speaker 2: Both God and man.
[17:12] Speaker 3: Trans people are bathroom stalkers, hunting your children.
[17:19] Speaker 2: Murdered.
[17:19] Speaker 3: School children are ignored while ar fifteens aren't protected.
[17:26] Speaker 2: Where the poor are too weak and pathetic to not
[17:29] Speaker 2: be poor.
[17:30] Speaker 3: Did you guys see that truth social post by Donald
[17:33] Speaker 3: Trump where he said only the week will fail. This
[17:38] Speaker 3: is his philosophy. The strong crush the weak, and if
[17:41] Speaker 3: you suffer and you fail, it.
[17:43] Speaker 2: Is your own fault.
[17:46] Speaker 3: We've seen throughout human history in groups building up walls
[17:50] Speaker 3: to lock out the out groups, the other, the vermin,
[17:55] Speaker 3: and in those moments of cruelty, they deny someone else
[17:59] Speaker 3: his or her humanity. I like this definition by psychologist
[18:04] Speaker 3: and journalist Brian Resnik. He says, dehumanization is a mental
[18:09] Speaker 3: loophole that lets us harm other people. How often have
[18:14] Speaker 3: we seen human beings dehumanized to justify their mistreatment? How
[18:19] Speaker 3: many authoritarians have set false narratives about them and demanded
[18:25] Speaker 3: their mistreatment In the culture of cruelty, scientists are vilified,
[18:32] Speaker 3: insurrectionists get exonerated, Neo Nazis march with flags and torches.
[18:37] Speaker 3: And of course, the poster child for American cruelty is
[18:41] Speaker 3: this man, the guy who is the person we teach
[18:46] Speaker 3: our children not to be liar, cheat, bully, abuser, predator,
[18:52] Speaker 3: A man so filled with poison he can't even say
[18:55] Speaker 3: Merry Christmas without telling his declared enemies to rot in hell.
[19:03] Speaker 3: Seventy seven million of my fellow Americans turned toward this man,
[19:08] Speaker 3: raised their hands and said, I want that the American
[19:14] Speaker 3: experiment may die of absurdity and cruelty. But lately, when
[19:21] Speaker 3: I look at the man who would be king. And
[19:24] Speaker 3: this second image on the right, posted by the official
[19:26] Speaker 3: White House social media account in February. When I look
[19:31] Speaker 3: at this and I think about this, I wonder if
[19:34] Speaker 3: empires die of authority. Now again we recognize there are
[19:41] Speaker 3: necessary contexts for authority. A parent tells a child, do
[19:46] Speaker 3: your chores, make your bed, don't bully your sister or brother.
[19:50] Speaker 3: A teacher says, do your homework, don't disrupt the class.
[19:53] Speaker 3: Police officers arrest the criminal court's sentence people who are
[19:59] Speaker 3: acting illegally. The managers are overseeing employees. We understand authority,
[20:04] Speaker 3: we even get chains of command right, but it's authority
[20:07] Speaker 3: with accountability, authority with a small A. And Yet time
[20:13] Speaker 3: and again we see people who are primed by nature, nurture,
[20:17] Speaker 3: or both to surrender themselves to authoritarian strong men savior figures.
[20:25] Speaker 3: And again, the people who are responding these are not
[20:29] Speaker 3: just a few people.
[20:29] Speaker 2: They are an entire voting demographic.
[20:32] Speaker 3: They are willing to suspend all rules, remove all checks
[20:36] Speaker 3: and balances, and to give up everything from their passwords
[20:40] Speaker 3: to the rule of law, to the United States Constitution.
[20:43] Speaker 3: And many, especially many American evangelicals, are primed from childhood
[20:49] Speaker 3: for loyalty, oaths, and allegiance promises. This is a psychologist
[20:57] Speaker 3: or name is doctor Karen Stenner, and she has spent
[21:00] Speaker 3: a lot of her career chronicling the rise of authoritarianism
[21:04] Speaker 3: and far right politics. And she has noted how cruelty, intolerance,
[21:09] Speaker 3: and blind obedience threaten democracies. Some characteristics are the types
[21:15] Speaker 3: of people who respond to authoritarians. They seek a normative
[21:21] Speaker 3: order or the status quo. They have a resistance to change.
[21:25] Speaker 3: They talk a lot about the good old days, make
[21:28] Speaker 3: America great again. Identity believers are often threatened by those
[21:34] Speaker 3: of a different identity. Somebody's always coming. They're a danger,
[21:38] Speaker 3: they're a threat. They're going to take what they have,
[21:41] Speaker 3: and they're going to harm who they love. As we're
[21:45] Speaker 3: seeing in the United States, authoritarian culture is prepared to
[21:48] Speaker 3: smash it all down if it means rewarding the righteous
[21:52] Speaker 3: and punishing the wicked. Ideological lockdown, no compromise. This is
[22:00] Speaker 3: considered a strength, compromises, weakness, maybe even betrayal. Theirs is
[22:06] Speaker 3: a world of absolutes, all nothing, black, white, freedom, tyranny,
[22:10] Speaker 3: good evil. Doctor Stenner estimates that about a third of
[22:17] Speaker 3: individuals are wired.
[22:19] Speaker 2: To respond to authoritarian figures.
[22:22] Speaker 3: Now I realize I might be making a correlation causation
[22:26] Speaker 3: jump here, but I find this is an interesting number.
[22:30] Speaker 2: Right, Let's look at the one third.
[22:32] Speaker 3: Next to the twenty twenty four US presidential election. We
[22:37] Speaker 3: see the race divided almost exactly into thirds, with an
[22:41] Speaker 3: authoritarian elected right along that thirty percent mark.
[22:46] Speaker 2: I find that interesting.
[22:48] Speaker 3: I also find it interesting how many of those Trump
[22:52] Speaker 3: voters are Bible literalists who have been primed by their
[22:57] Speaker 3: faith to respond.
[22:59] Speaker 2: To behavior strong men.
[23:04] Speaker 3: The shepherd and the sheep model right. Pastors and priests
[23:08] Speaker 3: are given special treatment. I was at an event in Orlando,
[23:13] Speaker 3: Florida a few years ago, and they do a Friday
[23:15] Speaker 3: night costume party and I went as a priest. I
[23:21] Speaker 3: got a legit looking outfit too.
[23:23] Speaker 2: It was awesome. So my plane landed, ran out to
[23:27] Speaker 2: the room, got.
[23:27] Speaker 3: On my priest outfit, and I walked out to the
[23:31] Speaker 3: elevator and there was a family of people on the
[23:33] Speaker 3: elevator and they're.
[23:34] Speaker 2: Laughing and joking and carrying on and having a great time.
[23:37] Speaker 2: And I walked on and you should just see the
[23:39] Speaker 2: immediate labor, immediate deference as I walked past the cafe.
[23:49] Speaker 3: As I walked down the halls toward the conference center
[23:52] Speaker 3: where the party was being held, it was remarkable how
[23:55] Speaker 3: I was treated. I could have made almost any request,
[23:59] Speaker 3: I will bet and they would have granted it.
[24:01] Speaker 2: They had afforded me authority.
[24:04] Speaker 3: Why, because they had been primed to see the clerics
[24:08] Speaker 3: as authority figures to surrender some of their.
[24:12] Speaker 2: Own critical thinking.
[24:13] Speaker 3: They wouldn't have even asked the critical questions, Oh, he's clergy,
[24:16] Speaker 3: let's do it right. The sermons, these are presented as
[24:23] Speaker 3: roads to be traveled, choices to.
[24:25] Speaker 2: Be made or avoided.
[24:26] Speaker 3: The authority of clergy, which is of course handed down
[24:30] Speaker 3: by the authority of God.
[24:32] Speaker 2: Is Christ an elected and accountable leader.
[24:35] Speaker 3: Of course, not as the songs in the scripture say,
[24:39] Speaker 3: Christ is king. He's the king in heaven who establishes
[24:44] Speaker 3: kings on earth. And in this model, those that God
[24:49] Speaker 3: appoints and annoyance are not to be questioned. Now, if
[24:54] Speaker 3: we ignore the water down Christianity, and I appreciate moderate
[24:58] Speaker 3: Christians I do.
[24:59] Speaker 2: I think many of the people who have.
[25:01] Speaker 3: Ignored the awful verses and embraced the love verses, I
[25:05] Speaker 3: think they're doing their best to try to align perhaps
[25:08] Speaker 3: an inherited faith, with their own values, their own moral
[25:11] Speaker 3: centered right. But if we're not just cherry picking the
[25:16] Speaker 3: follow your heart, love your neighbor's sermons. And we go
[25:20] Speaker 3: back to the Bible. Is it a book of suggestions?
[25:23] Speaker 3: Do the scripture say, well, you know, follow your.
[25:26] Speaker 2: Own moral compass and do what you think is right. Right?
[25:30] Speaker 2: Of course not.
[25:32] Speaker 3: Time and again the Bible lays down the literal law,
[25:35] Speaker 3: and it says, obey me fully. Did God tell Abraham
[25:42] Speaker 3: all right, look, if you think it's a good idea,
[25:45] Speaker 3: I want you to grab your son and take them
[25:47] Speaker 3: up and put them on the altar and drive a knife.
[25:49] Speaker 3: And it was just I mean, only if you want to,
[25:52] Speaker 3: only if it's okay with you.
[25:54] Speaker 2: No, of course not.
[25:55] Speaker 3: And yet Abraham remains a beloved figure right the cornerstone
[25:59] Speaker 3: of the abram Hammock faiths. He is so admired as
[26:02] Speaker 3: a hero within Christianity. Did you always say to Joshua, Okay,
[26:08] Speaker 3: circle the walls of Jericho and blow the show farst.
[26:11] Speaker 2: But when the walls come a tumbling down, you can
[26:14] Speaker 2: decide if you want to go in and slaughter everybody.
[26:17] Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave it up to you. You're a
[26:18] Speaker 2: good person. You don't have to kill every living thing.
[26:22] Speaker 2: Did he say that.
[26:23] Speaker 3: Nope, slaughter men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep
[26:28] Speaker 3: and donkeys. This was a command that had to be obeyed.
[26:33] Speaker 3: Take the gold, burn the city. Joshua is considered a
[26:37] Speaker 3: hero of the faith. In the New Testament, the Angel
[26:43] Speaker 3: appeared to Mary, an unwed teenage girl. The plan was
[26:47] Speaker 3: to impregnate her with Jesus Christ, and she was afraid.
[26:50] Speaker 3: In fact, the Book of Luke says she was troubled.
[26:53] Speaker 3: The message was what, hey, look, Mary, this is an option.
[26:56] Speaker 3: Would you like to give birth to the Savior of
[26:58] Speaker 3: the world. You get to choose, of course, nons not
[27:03] Speaker 3: in the culture of command. You will conceive, you will
[27:06] Speaker 3: give birth. You will call him Jesus. Mary never actually
[27:11] Speaker 3: gave consin At its core, Christianity sells a hierarchy. Conveniently,
[27:21] Speaker 3: then those who are claiming divine appointment can say that
[27:24] Speaker 3: they are also to be obeyed fully, or else you
[27:30] Speaker 3: risk the judgment of God. How many kings and would
[27:35] Speaker 3: be kings have invoked the name of God throughout human history?
[27:39] Speaker 3: How many do so today? The authoritarian he claims the throne,
[27:44] Speaker 3: he waives the Holy book, and he does.
[27:46] Speaker 2: What gods do?
[27:48] Speaker 3: They give, they take, they reward, they punish, they pardon,
[27:52] Speaker 3: they judge. Oh, this man loves to judge each command
[28:00] Speaker 3: and is also a threat. Even Trump's new official presidential
[28:05] Speaker 3: portrait is designed to communicate authoritarian power.
[28:11] Speaker 2: That pose is a message.
[28:13] Speaker 3: Of course, the pose came easily to him. He had
[28:16] Speaker 3: had practice when he had his mugshot taken. All right,
[28:21] Speaker 3: he speaks it, and so it is, he does it,
[28:24] Speaker 3: and so it is legal. He commands it, and you
[28:28] Speaker 3: must obey. Some people obey out of love and loyalty,
[28:35] Speaker 3: other people because they're just easily led by charismatic figures. Still,
[28:42] Speaker 3: others obey out of fear. What will happen if I
[28:46] Speaker 3: don't obey? In their blind obedience, they give away a
[28:52] Speaker 3: part of themselves, the authority to decide for themselves. Arrian
[29:00] Speaker 3: Benito Mussolini engaged in his own power grab back in
[29:04] Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two.
[29:05] Speaker 2: He was imposing, He was charismatic.
[29:07] Speaker 3: He assembled some disgruntled politicians and anarchists and power players
[29:12] Speaker 3: to establish a new political entity called the Fasci Italiano dicombatumento,
[29:19] Speaker 3: which meant Italian fighting bands. Fasci is drawn from the
[29:23] Speaker 3: ancient word fascio, which was a symbol.
[29:26] Speaker 2: It was an axe that was supported.
[29:28] Speaker 3: By Styx authority, supported by the commoners. Of course, Mussolini
[29:34] Speaker 3: got to be the axe. He marketed himself as the
[29:39] Speaker 3: strongman savior. He would often pose from tall perches, sometimes
[29:44] Speaker 3: literal high horses on horseback, and he rose to power
[29:49] Speaker 3: doing what he promised. If you give me total control,
[29:53] Speaker 3: I will remove the undesirables and I will.
[29:56] Speaker 2: Restore national greatness. Does that sound familiar?
[30:04] Speaker 3: Mussolini aligned himself with another authoritarian, a tyrant. That association
[30:09] Speaker 3: is also alarmingly familiar. I'm not saying that Putin and
[30:12] Speaker 3: Hitler are exactly alike. I'm just saying there is an
[30:15] Speaker 3: association that can be made. Yet, Mussolini's authoritarian rule would
[30:20] Speaker 3: end in disgrace, defeats, and even his own execution. The
[30:24] Speaker 3: authoritarian was overthrown. Doctor Martin Luther King Junior understood the
[30:32] Speaker 3: nature of authoritarians.
[30:33] Speaker 2: He said this.
[30:34] Speaker 3: He said, we know through painful experience that freedom is
[30:38] Speaker 3: never voluntarily given by the oppressor.
[30:41] Speaker 2: It must be demanded by the oppressed.
[30:48] Speaker 3: During the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties,
[30:51] Speaker 3: those in power preach that God wants us segregated whites
[30:56] Speaker 3: and non white separate America first, or white America first.
[31:03] Speaker 2: But good people resisted.
[31:07] Speaker 3: Against the shouts and the threats and the danger, defiant
[31:12] Speaker 3: and the best sense of the word, not allowing somebody
[31:16] Speaker 3: else to strip them of their humanity, their quality, their
[31:20] Speaker 3: own authority. And with the landmark Supreme Court decision of
[31:26] Speaker 3: nineteen fifty four Brown versus Board of Education, segregation was
[31:31] Speaker 3: declared unconstitutional. The High Court made the ruling, but it
[31:36] Speaker 3: was everyday people that applied the pressure, who stood defiantly
[31:41] Speaker 3: and smashed down that barrier between minority children and their
[31:46] Speaker 3: promising futures. Wasn't that long ago American men happily assumed
[31:53] Speaker 3: authority over women. I'll do the thinking, little lady. I'm
[31:58] Speaker 3: the man of the house. I'll go out and earn
[32:01] Speaker 3: the paycheck, bring home the bacon. I put the roof
[32:04] Speaker 3: over our heads. So I decide, I'll vote for the
[32:07] Speaker 3: rest of us. Right, it's a man's world. Even the
[32:11] Speaker 3: founding fathers didn't let women into the halls of power.
[32:15] Speaker 3: Right in their thinking, patriarchy was patriotism.
[32:20] Speaker 2: It was also God's will.
[32:21] Speaker 3: According to the Bible, I do not allow a woman
[32:24] Speaker 3: to teach or to have authority over a man. Instead,
[32:27] Speaker 3: she is to remain quiet. But American women in the
[32:30] Speaker 3: early twentieth century rose up and they resisted. The brave
[32:35] Speaker 3: activist of the suffrage movement organized and activated to fight
[32:40] Speaker 3: on fairness, inequality, in justice. They wanted to equalize the
[32:45] Speaker 3: man's world, resulting in the nineteenth Amendment to the United
[32:51] Speaker 3: States Constitution in August of nineteen twenty, the right of
[32:56] Speaker 3: citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
[33:00] Speaker 3: denied or abridged by the United States or by any
[33:03] Speaker 3: State on account of sex. Now, of course, misogyny has
[33:07] Speaker 3: not gone away, but twentieth century women knocked down sexist
[33:12] Speaker 3: barriers to the ballot box, barriers which had been installed
[33:17] Speaker 3: by authority.
[33:21] Speaker 2: Invoking God.
[33:23] Speaker 3: Famous religious bigot Jerry Folwell, founder of the Moral Majority
[33:28] Speaker 3: and those like him, by the Way, famously said that
[33:30] Speaker 3: gay people were dangerous, they were reprobates, They wanted a
[33:34] Speaker 3: modern day sodom and gomera, and homosexuals were blamed for
[33:40] Speaker 3: everything from pedophilia to the AIDS virus to the attacks
[33:44] Speaker 3: of nine to eleven. Those in power the authority figures
[33:50] Speaker 3: said society had no obligation to serve non heterosexuals. You
[33:55] Speaker 3: want healthcare, you want a job, you want to get married.
[33:57] Speaker 3: Would you like us to bake.
[33:59] Speaker 2: You a cake? Sorry, you don't have those rights.
[34:05] Speaker 3: Millions of good people banded together, informed of resistance, They
[34:10] Speaker 3: stood up and they continue to stand up for LGBT
[34:13] Speaker 3: rights today, gender equality, racial equality, equality of humankind across
[34:20] Speaker 3: the board. That resistance bravely battles the bigots. Today, and
[34:28] Speaker 3: of course, we have the shredding of the United States
[34:31] Speaker 3: Constitution by obscenely wealthy opportunists. To flaunt their power, they
[34:37] Speaker 3: ignore the rule of law. They gain the system, they
[34:41] Speaker 3: scoff and they golf, and they mug for the cameras.
[34:46] Speaker 3: And they've still got the adoration of the cults. But
[34:49] Speaker 3: as they have attempted to lock themselves in and lock
[34:52] Speaker 3: us out of our own institutions, good people are rising
[34:58] Speaker 3: up to.
[34:58] Speaker 2: Say no more.
[35:00] Speaker 3: So, many millions of people participated in the very first
[35:06] Speaker 3: Hands Off twenty twenty five demonstration in early April. They
[35:11] Speaker 3: were impossible to ignore. Here's Portland, Oregon, Richmond, Virginia, Austin, Texas, Macon, Georgia, Oakland, California, Manhattan, Chicago.
[35:41] Speaker 2: More than one thousand, four hundred separate protests.
[35:45] Speaker 3: Attendance estimates north of five million people. No violent outbursts,
[35:52] Speaker 3: no riots, no illegal behaviors. And this resistance to authoritarianism
[35:58] Speaker 3: sent specific, clear and critical messages.
[36:02] Speaker 2: Just look at the signs that they were wheeling on
[36:04] Speaker 2: that day.
[36:05] Speaker 3: No to Project twenty twenty five, Hands off our democracy,
[36:14] Speaker 3: no kings, no fascists. It's not right versus left, it's
[36:20] Speaker 3: right versus wrong. Here's a clever one. I just had
[36:25] Speaker 3: to show you. Ikea has better cabinets.
[36:36] Speaker 2: Here's another one that made me laugh.
[36:38] Speaker 3: A sign that said, but it was the Gulf of
[36:40] Speaker 3: Mexico at birth.
[36:47] Speaker 2: This one hit my sense of humor.
[36:49] Speaker 3: Imagine this car filled with bees, Mega America, Come for
[37:00] Speaker 3: the measles, stay for the secret kidnapping to a foreign
[37:03] Speaker 3: prison camp. Honk if you never texted secret war plans.
[37:15] Speaker 2: And you know this.
[37:16] Speaker 3: Next person was an educator. She had a sign that
[37:18] Speaker 3: said science keeps.
[37:19] Speaker 2: Your dumbass alive.
[37:25] Speaker 3: I live in Red State, Oklahoma, USA, and we had
[37:31] Speaker 3: a great demonstration with a lot of people there, a
[37:33] Speaker 3: surprising number of people.
[37:35] Speaker 2: And I made a sign.
[37:36] Speaker 3: I figure if I used a quote from the Founding Fathers,
[37:39] Speaker 3: it might be harder for someone to throw a brick
[37:41] Speaker 3: out of a car window at me.
[37:44] Speaker 2: But I had posted that.
[37:46] Speaker 3: Picture of Trump that was put on the official White
[37:48] Speaker 3: House account that showed him crowned as he stood in
[37:51] Speaker 3: front of Manhattan, and I included the quote from Jefferson
[37:54] Speaker 3: and said, I was much an enemy to monarchy before
[37:57] Speaker 3: I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more
[38:01] Speaker 3: so since I have seen what they are now. As
[38:04] Speaker 3: I was standing out on a very busy intersection of
[38:08] Speaker 3: seventy first Memorial in Tulsa's very visible spot, I was nervous,
[38:13] Speaker 3: What's going to happen?
[38:15] Speaker 2: Are any of us in danger? Right?
[38:19] Speaker 3: And the people that drove by were honking and smiling
[38:23] Speaker 3: and waving and fist bumping and giving us the thumbs up.
[38:31] Speaker 3: I mean, we saw some dissenters, we saw some people
[38:35] Speaker 3: who were shouting the name of Trump, etc. But I'm
[38:39] Speaker 3: telling you, almost everybody who came by was affirming our protest.
[38:46] Speaker 3: What a surprise that was. I love this one from
[38:51] Speaker 3: the National Mall, next to Lady Liberty was the sign that.
[38:56] Speaker 2: Said dissent is our duty.
[39:01] Speaker 3: And in the wake of stuff like this, for a
[39:03] Speaker 3: few precious heartbeats, I can feel something switch inside me,
[39:09] Speaker 3: and I feel.
[39:10] Speaker 2: Just a little more hope. I know it sounds naive, but.
[39:18] Speaker 3: Underneath this cynical shell, there is still part of me
[39:22] Speaker 3: that is an idealist whispering to myself, wouldn't it be nice?
[39:30] Speaker 3: I'll bet many of you are the same way. And
[39:34] Speaker 3: then I imagine again that world where borders aren't dividers,
[39:37] Speaker 3: and where the one true religion is just decency, and
[39:41] Speaker 3: we're all living life in peace because we have defied
[39:46] Speaker 3: the commands of the kings, the people who tell us where.
[39:49] Speaker 2: To go, who to love, who to hate, how to live,
[39:53] Speaker 2: who we are.
[39:56] Speaker 3: I've always liked this illustration about the power of the people.
[39:59] Speaker 3: What happened when everyday citizens recognize the.
[40:03] Speaker 2: Power they have.
[40:04] Speaker 3: Power in the best sense of the word, not power
[40:07] Speaker 3: in the context of manipulation or domination, the power wielded
[40:12] Speaker 3: by authoritarians. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell had a great
[40:16] Speaker 3: quote about power. He said, of power is bad as
[40:19] Speaker 3: it seems to be, let us reject it from our hearts.
[40:22] Speaker 3: In this lies man's true freedom, in determination to worship
[40:28] Speaker 3: only the God created by our own love of the good.
[40:35] Speaker 3: And this informs the mission today, And yet how do
[40:40] Speaker 3: those who love the good make even a dent against
[40:44] Speaker 3: so much bad? The so much bad part, by the way,
[40:50] Speaker 3: is by design. It is by design. It's a strategy.
[40:54] Speaker 3: In today's United States, the authoritarian agents want us stunned, disoriented, confused,
[41:02] Speaker 3: and exhausted. This guy's name is Steve Bannon, former Trump strategist.
[41:08] Speaker 3: He did a Frontline interview in twenty nineteen where he
[41:11] Speaker 3: just set it out right. The media is dumb and lazy,
[41:14] Speaker 3: can only focus on one thing at a time.
[41:16] Speaker 2: All we have to do is flood the zone.
[41:19] Speaker 3: Every day we hit them with three things, they'll bite
[41:22] Speaker 3: on one and we'll get all of our stuff done.
[41:25] Speaker 3: But we've got to start with muzzle velocity. And this
[41:29] Speaker 3: tactic works with everyday people. The general public use muzzle
[41:34] Speaker 3: velocity to disorient, confuse, and overwhelm people. The more everybody
[41:40] Speaker 3: gets lost or hits the wall or doesn't know what
[41:43] Speaker 3: to do, maybe they'll give up and go home.
[41:46] Speaker 2: That's good for us.
[41:48] Speaker 3: Our exhaustion is part of their master plan, which is
[41:54] Speaker 3: why I think our resistance efforts must begin with the
[41:58] Speaker 3: restoration and protection of ourselves first. Does anyone else feel emotionally, mentally,
[42:08] Speaker 3: and physically exhausted. Those of you who didn't raise your
[42:13] Speaker 3: hands are probably lying.
[42:14] Speaker 2: That's okay, I get that. I would guess you're too
[42:22] Speaker 2: tired to raise your hands. That's awesome.
[42:28] Speaker 3: I think people with an activist nature, and I think
[42:30] Speaker 3: there are a lot of world changers in this room right.
[42:33] Speaker 3: I think we struggle with life balance. We have a
[42:35] Speaker 3: hard time shutting it off because we're always activisting or
[42:39] Speaker 3: we're thinking about activisting, and that takes a toll. But
[42:43] Speaker 3: if you're in the race, you cannot win with the
[42:44] Speaker 3: pedal always jammed to the floor. If you do not
[42:47] Speaker 3: occasionally ease up on the turn, you will hit the wall.
[42:55] Speaker 3: You and I are no good to anybody else if
[42:58] Speaker 3: we are faced down in war out.
[43:01] Speaker 2: So before we.
[43:01] Speaker 3: Put ourselves out there, let's take a second and breathe,
[43:06] Speaker 3: and let's do a little bit of self focus. Let's
[43:09] Speaker 3: worry about in here. Don't be afraid to step back partition.
[43:16] Speaker 2: The time you spend.
[43:18] Speaker 3: On the news sites, on social media, whatever, Ah, I
[43:23] Speaker 3: can doom scroll with the best of them. I'm always
[43:28] Speaker 3: next to a computer. I'm editing a video, or I'm
[43:30] Speaker 3: working on a show, or i'm writing something, and all
[43:33] Speaker 3: I have to do is log on and scroll and scroll,
[43:36] Speaker 3: and before you know what, I've done at fifteen times,
[43:39] Speaker 3: and I just want to put my head.
[43:40] Speaker 2: Through the wall. We are not wired to handle.
[43:47] Speaker 3: The daily click bait, rage, porn fire hose to the
[43:51] Speaker 3: face that is being presented to us every single day.
[43:54] Speaker 3: We're going to have to focus our exposure if we're
[43:57] Speaker 3: going to be effective.
[43:59] Speaker 2: Hell, if we're going to you don't have to doom
[44:03] Speaker 2: scroll to stay informed.
[44:05] Speaker 3: Beyond that, the National Institute of Mental Health has tips
[44:09] Speaker 3: for those who are at the end of our tether
[44:12] Speaker 3: self care basics, and I think this is good stuff.
[44:15] Speaker 2: Right.
[44:16] Speaker 3: We've got to focus on eating better. Let's try to
[44:20] Speaker 3: prioritize getting sleep. If we can't sleep, at least rest,
[44:23] Speaker 3: let's do relaxing things. Don't forget to be thankful, because
[44:28] Speaker 3: we all have things we can be grateful for. Set
[44:31] Speaker 3: goals and work to achieve those goals, and when we
[44:34] Speaker 3: do achieve them, set new goals. There's nothing like the
[44:37] Speaker 3: feeling of accomplishing something. Identify and challenge negative thoughts. Am
[44:43] Speaker 3: I reflecting which is good? Or am I ruminating which
[44:47] Speaker 3: is not? And stay connected to our fellow human beings.
[44:53] Speaker 2: We are better together. We need each other.
[44:59] Speaker 3: And then, as we activists, we can support national organizations
[45:04] Speaker 3: that are battling for state church separation. Whether they are
[45:07] Speaker 3: fighting frontline legal battles or providing a hub for connecting
[45:12] Speaker 3: communities by zip code, we can help them to help us.
[45:17] Speaker 3: I'm on the board of directors for American Atheists. They
[45:20] Speaker 3: have long been on the front lines of the fight
[45:23] Speaker 3: for state church separation. Just a few more of the
[45:26] Speaker 3: many were the organizations out there, groups and efforts that
[45:29] Speaker 3: we can fuel with our time and our dollars. There
[45:32] Speaker 3: are other reasons to be encouraged out there. American citizens
[45:36] Speaker 3: are pushing back so hard on even local politicians that
[45:41] Speaker 3: the politicians are leaving the town halls early so they
[45:45] Speaker 3: don't have to answer any more questions.
[45:47] Speaker 2: And it's awesome. It's awesome.
[45:50] Speaker 3: And then the party leadership is saying, and maybe you
[45:54] Speaker 3: shouldn't have town halls, and.
[45:55] Speaker 2: You can imagine how that is going over.
[46:00] Speaker 3: Citisen led coalition of librarians and data collectors is right
[46:04] Speaker 3: now feverishly archiving the files that the Trump administration is
[46:09] Speaker 3: deleting from government websites. They are rescuing, they are storing,
[46:15] Speaker 3: and they are helping to keep safe the history, the justice,
[46:19] Speaker 3: the reality that the authoritarians want erased, erased from history
[46:24] Speaker 3: and from public memory. These heroes are creating a new database.
[46:32] Speaker 3: The courts are often frustrating, but many American judges are
[46:36] Speaker 3: pushing back against White House overreach. Parts of our judiciary
[46:41] Speaker 3: are actually defending.
[46:43] Speaker 2: The rule of law, not the rule of the ruler.
[46:47] Speaker 3: Right now, we see about what one hundred separate lawsuits
[46:51] Speaker 3: just over Trump's executive orders, and that number is going up.
[46:57] Speaker 3: Some twenty national leaders and members of the Smart Local
[47:01] Speaker 3: one hundred union have been standing up for their coworker,
[47:04] Speaker 3: Abrego Garcia. You've seen him in the headlines. This was
[47:07] Speaker 3: the guy who was sent to an Al Salvador torture
[47:11] Speaker 3: prison because it was said he was in a gang
[47:13] Speaker 3: because of a likely photoshopped picture. American unions, not known
[47:19] Speaker 3: for being liberal hubs, are banding together and joining other
[47:23] Speaker 3: citizens to condemn the kidnapping of this man and demanding
[47:28] Speaker 3: his return. Trump violated a court order to turn around
[47:33] Speaker 3: planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members that were deported by
[47:37] Speaker 3: Trump under the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight.
[47:41] Speaker 3: He pulled that one out of the archive and tried
[47:43] Speaker 3: to implement it.
[47:44] Speaker 2: He ignored the order.
[47:46] Speaker 3: US District Judge James Boseburg has said ignoring the court's
[47:51] Speaker 3: ruling brings probable cause to file contempt of court charges
[47:56] Speaker 3: against Trump, even as he demands the judges impeachment. Defiantly
[48:02] Speaker 3: defending the rule of law and the judiciary, the judge
[48:06] Speaker 3: said this the Constitution does not tolerate wilful disobedience of
[48:11] Speaker 3: judicial orders, especially by officials of a coordinate branch who
[48:16] Speaker 3: have sworn.
[48:17] Speaker 2: An oath to uphold it.
[48:22] Speaker 3: Trump told Harvard it could lose nine billion dollars in
[48:26] Speaker 3: research funding if it didn't submit to Trump's government audits
[48:30] Speaker 3: of its students, faculty, governance, and curriculum. The Department of
[48:36] Speaker 3: Education sent sixty such demand letters to universities all across
[48:41] Speaker 3: the nation. Harvard President Alan Garber essentially and defiantly said.
[48:47] Speaker 2: Fuck off.
[48:50] Speaker 3: No government, regardless of which party is in power, should
[48:54] Speaker 3: dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit
[48:58] Speaker 3: and hire, and which he air areas of study and.
[49:01] Speaker 2: Inquiry they can pursue.
[49:05] Speaker 3: Resistance, refusal, descent, standing.
[49:11] Speaker 2: Up to the bully.
[49:14] Speaker 3: And generations across the gender, color, and culture spectrum are
[49:19] Speaker 3: rising up and locking arms to send the strong, defiant
[49:23] Speaker 3: message that we will not be silenced. And this ground
[49:29] Speaker 3: swell of courage and conviction has helped me to not
[49:33] Speaker 3: lose hope. I follow American historian Heather Cox Richardson. If
[49:40] Speaker 3: you do not, you must remedy this immediately. She publishes
[49:45] Speaker 3: an article or video almost daily, and I'm a fan
[49:49] Speaker 3: because she's able to chronicle on a day by day
[49:52] Speaker 3: basis what has been going on in the United States.
[49:57] Speaker 3: And she has said, what we're seeing is his story.
[50:00] Speaker 3: It is not totally unprecedented. The elite enslavers of the
[50:07] Speaker 3: eighteen fifties had control of pretty much everything, but the
[50:11] Speaker 3: nation rose up, dissented, course corrected, elected Lincoln, and began
[50:17] Speaker 3: to restore government by and for the people. And Richardson says,
[50:23] Speaker 3: we can do it again. We must do it again.
[50:32] Speaker 3: We are engaged in a battle to defeat absurdity, cruelty authority.
[50:41] Speaker 3: But we have seen what is possible when we join
[50:45] Speaker 3: and rise together in the United States with our neighbors
[50:50] Speaker 3: and allies, good people across all boundary line citizens of
[50:54] Speaker 3: planet Earth, joining and banding and rising together. I mean,
[50:59] Speaker 3: look at the world changers that came before us, look
[51:04] Speaker 3: at one another in this room, and see hope and
[51:07] Speaker 3: feel hope. Stay committed, spread hope. And as you and
[51:12] Speaker 3: I sound the dissent, which is our duty, Let's always
[51:17] Speaker 3: remember the humanity that has achieved and can still achieve
[51:21] Speaker 3: great things for the causes of justice. Let's nourish and
[51:26] Speaker 3: revive the idealist that still has a beating heart underneath
[51:30] Speaker 3: that cynical shell.
[51:33] Speaker 2: Let's stand firm and our values.
[51:35] Speaker 3: Let's stand tall with our friends and allies in these
[51:39] Speaker 3: uncertain times. If you and I stay the course and
[51:42] Speaker 3: we never give up, imagine a next chapter. Imagine a
[51:47] Speaker 3: better chapter in the human story that we could all
[51:50] Speaker 3: write together.
[51:53] Speaker 4: Imagine, Imagine, Imagine. Thank you very very much.
[52:22] Speaker 1: Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[52:25] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
[52:29] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[52:33] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[52:36] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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