Your Therapist Needs Therapy 114 - Being a Full-Time Propagandist is Political Violence

Jeremy uses the shooting of Charlie Kirk to examine the hypocrisy in how political violence is defined and discussed in America. He argues that hateful rhetoric, propaganda, and systemic oppression are themselves forms of violence, and that mourning propagandists like Kirk ignores the ongoing harm they inflicted on marginalized communities. The episode pushes back against calls for “civility” in the face of fascism, insisting that empathy belongs with the victims of hate, not its architects.

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Transcript

Transcript

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of Your Therapist Needs Therapy podcast where two mental health professionals talk about their mental health journey and how they navigate mental wellness while working in the mental health field. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher, licensed marriage and family therapist. I am doing a solo episode because I didn't want to invite anyone on to have to take some online viriol. Charlie Kirk got shot recently and We're going to talk about what a weird response Democrats gave. What a weird response the mainstream media is. This is a weird talking point.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm recording Friday afternoon, September 12th, where there is a shooter in custody who is a white 22-year-old male who seems to be a Republican who was raised in Utah. Dad was perhaps a Mormon bishop which is not a paid It's not paid clergy or trained I think in what I know about Mormonism.

Jeremy Schumacher: was more of a elders type role for those of you like me who was raised evangelical and a sheriff and also why this is 100% expected and why it's not a surprise and why the media needs to be a lot better about this because anybody I am by no means an expert on right-wing extremism but as somebody who studied  and works with religious trauma, seeing extremism play out and see seeing people get radicalized, seeing people get pulled into cults. There's a lot of overlap here and there's just so much poor irresponsible conversation around these topics.

Jeremy Schumacher: And one of the main issues and I'll come back to this point hopefully throughout to make it clear how this all ties together is that fascists are not interested in maintaining an internal consistency to their argument. And so following social norms and social graces with fascists will never work. And  being antiviolence and wanting the world to be a better place does not mean we need to have empathy for white supremacists. Does not mean we need to mourn people who advocated for and created and propagated propaganda that did harm to other people.

Jeremy Schumacher: Another point that I want to make is that we need to change how we talk about political violence. Spreading propaganda is political violence. Calling trans people groomers leads to violence against trans people. America is a violent place. And we love this idea that the only time violence is criminal is when it is directly cause and effect in a 10-second window.  When somebody throws a punch is violent. When somebody who isn't white pulls a trigger, Kyle Written House looking at and cops everywhere. when somebody who isn't in a protected class pulls a trigger, that's violence. and are those violence. If you're against violence, you're opposed to those things. If you're against political violence, you're opposed to those things.

Jeremy Schumacher: But if you're against political violence, you're also opposed to bigoted speech. You're also opposed to hateful rhetoric that creates an unsafe environment for people. And a lot of folks out there who are condemning political violence have always been okay with Charlie Kirk's violent rhetoric. And again, this is the losing battle you have against fascism is that it does not need to be internally consistent.  It follows a power imbalance and an us versus them mentality where as long as you have an enemy, you don't have to stick to anything yourself. again, you can be constantly duped by your super strong enemy who's so clever and good at everything. And also, you're an untouchable strong man who's having to deal with morons everywhere, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: Joe Biden was this super sleuth who could, have this international cabal of evildoers and he had plotted all these things out and also he was a daughtering old man, right? and there's no internal consistency to that. it were true all of the time and the messaging was only whatever served a political purpose in that moment,  And so the people who want to turn down the rhetoric or say the left is violent. Again, these things are not true, it is predominantly Republican politicians and Republican right-wing people who are shouting for revenge and saying things like this means war.

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Trump just posted a meme of deportation now and loves the smell of deportation in the morning, which is a reference to apocalypse now. Love the smell of napalm in the morning, this idea of a war in a liberal city from our sitting president. And again, if you don't think that's political violence, you're wrong.  and no one wants to hear you say, " we need to turn down the rhetoric when you're supporting that, right?" Carly Kirk's entire career has been political violence against minorities against minorities. Full stop. specifically, women of color, specifically the LGBTQ plus community. he singled these people out regularly, routinely on his show.

Jeremy Schumacher: I found multiple sources from his shows and from interviews he did on other shows where he uses slurs against transgender people. He refers to them as groomers and he advocates for violence against them. He advocates for physical altercations with trans people.  his followers had a doxing campaign against a number of women of color who worked in higher education and did work around diversity, equality, and inclusion. At his behest on his many public platforms with a huge following, he wanted to go after these people so that they would get fired.

Jeremy Schumacher: and instead They received rape threats. They were doxed online. That's violence. Somebody having to live in fear because there is an u impending threat of violence against their person or against their loved ones is Violence is not just throwing a punch or pulling a trigger. Violence is using and abusing a platform so that other people do violence for you.

Jeremy Schumacher: And again, we just as a country get this whole thing wrong as far as what is and what isn't violence. I mean, we have been a fascist police state for black and brown people for as long as we've existed as a country. but also, the comfort with violence like policing comes out of catching slaves who had found liberation, and again the way that gets worded in other places is escaped slaves as if that was an okay status for them and they really should have stayed where they belong. and so we just get this whole conversation wrong. And so when you have somebody whose entire career is political violence and is a full-time propagandist, he was not a journalist. He was not an interviewer. He was not somebody who was studied or trained in these things.

Jeremy Schumacher: He started Turning Point USA at 18. this is not a career man who figured it out. This is a propagandist who had right-wing money and foreign influence money flowing in so that he could indoctrinate people into his hateful worldview. Do I think he should have gotten shot? No. I don't think anyone should get shot. I think every human life has inherent value.  I think that's all on an equal playing field because humans have Charlie Kirk used the value he had in his life to do harm to people. And I'm not saying it's justified, but violence, an entire life of violence had a violent end.

Jeremy Schumacher: People do not mourn mobsters when they get shot in a shootout, right?  A lot of us are so burnt out on empathy that the people who have shown no mourning for Democratic lawmakers who were assassinated by a right-wing extremist, the same right-wing extremist groups that Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, and Secretary of Defense Pete Haggsith come from, the new apostolic reform. people who did not offer consultances or say that things need to get turned down but posted memes and made jokes about it. Those people who made jokes about Paul Pelosi having irreparable brain damage because in a political assassin broke into his home looking for Nancy Pelosi to try and assassinate her.

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: again like that the idea that one side the the center in America we don't have a leftist party the Democrats need to turn down the rhetoric and need to have empathy when the other side doesn't again like shows that this is the right just continually needs to be called out for and named in being hypocritical and not having any sort of moral high  They are amoral and they do not follow sort of any internal consistency. so did he one deserves to be shot. But the same day he got shot, three schoolaged children were shot in a school and more than 900 kids have died this calendar year in America while at school. Forgive me.

Jeremy Schumacher: and everyone else who is not sad that the person who has spent his entire career advocating for the violence that exists for our school children also met a violent end. Right? I said it when James Dobson died. Around here we celebrate when bad people die. is it more comforting when they die of old age? no. if James Dobson would have died when he was 31 years old, he could have done a lot less harm in his life. And I can say that confidently with hindsight, knowing how much harm he did in his life. Does a three-year-old deserve to see their dad die at a public event that he's hosting? No. Absolutely That's horrific, right? That's horrific. I also don't want a racist bigot raising a three and a one-year-old to also grow up and be racist bigots.

Jeremy Schumacher: We have so much research that suggests that Children naturally They share their toys. They share the food they're given. If they have snacks and one of their classmates doesn't have them, they naturally share. human beings, civilized people, socialized that out of them before they're aged five. By age five, we have socialized out of them their natural inclination to be altruistic.  And we know the generational trauma that exists in communities that are insulated and cultlike. And so, do I feel for kids who have to grow up without a dad? Yes, absolutely. Do I feel like it is a fairly likely imprinted trauma to see a parent die at a young age like that? Yeah, absolutely. That's horrific.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think it's horrific that people spit vitriol and teach racist slurs to their kids. I think it's horrific that a kid could grow up and Google their dad and see them using slurs on the internet. That's bad parenting because should somebody be shot for that? No. am I going to grieve for that person? No. This is addition by subtraction. He was a garbage human being.  If he would have died because he had too much aderall and cocaine and Red Bull, I would feel zero grief about it. And I think people would do some of the same. He was 31, which people are positing as I'm not saying 31 is old, but some sort of tragedy as if he hasn't spent 13 years of his life being awful publicly and doing violence to minorities.

Jeremy Schumacher: And again, on the same day that children are shot because the only country who has the problem school shootings, refused to pass any meaningful legislation. And a full-time propagandist like Charlie Kirk actively advocated for not limiting our access to guns. So, I have no empathy for him. I don't think people should have empathy for him. I think it is addition by subtraction.  the world is a better place without a full-time hateful, bigoted propagandist here. And he didn't deserve to be shot. And again, I'm going to do an hourong podcast on this because these topics require some nuance. Shocking, I know, right? The world is a complex place and maybe we can't solve it all in 10-second clips that can go on TikTok.

Jeremy Schumacher: I have a lot of people in my life who exist in a lot of different marginalized communities. Whether I am friends with them personally in my personal social life, whether that I am related to them or whether I work with them professionally as my clients who have been harmed by Charlie Kirk's rhetoric. He was a violent person.  He wasn't a calm, pleasant person who debated and brought, calm, thoughtful, well-reasoned debate to the masses. He was a divisive figure who spread hate, who normalized bigotry.

00:15:00

Jeremy Schumacher: No one needs to be sad that that person is gone and certainly not the people that he was actively harming. And people holding the standard up that how dare you celebrate a bad person dying, how dare you not feel bad for this event are also trying to do violence. I'm not sad that Himmler died,  I'm not sad that leaders of the Confederate army who were also slave owners were shot and killed. Sucks to suck. I am In an ideal world, there is no need for violence. We do not live in an ideal world.

Jeremy Schumacher: And we need to stop pretending that in the- moment active violence is the only thing that is violent. The United Healthcare CEO did violence on a daily basis. With a stroke of his keyboard, he killed  Hundreds of thousands of people in America every year die from preventable diseases because they do not have adequate access to health care. That is violence. And that stroke of a keyboard that's sending an email that's saying our new policy is to deny this thing even more aggressively is violence. We have this obsession with distant death with clean distant ethical concerns.

Jeremy Schumacher: We can go to the Apple store because it's nice and clean and neat because we don't see the factory and the child laborers who are forced into unsafe working conditions to make that cheaply, right? There's a distance to it.  The health United Healthcare CEO wasn't going around stabbing old people to kill them, but he was killing old people and marginalized community and people of chronic health issues regularly, routinely through the choices he made, wielding the power that he had. That is violence.

Jeremy Schumacher: And it is exhausting as somebody who has empathy, who works to make the world a better place, who works to help people regardless of their belief systems, regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their identities. It is exhausting to see this double standard play out and not be called out.  It's exhausting to see people try and play nice with bad faith actors who are fascists, who are authoritarians, who are extremists, right? I do not need to feel sorry for the Catholic Church while they continue to defend pedophiles. I don't need to feel sorry for Republicans while they continue to defend pedophiles. Right?

Jeremy Schumacher: No, I stand with the marginalized people because what privilege I've experienced in my life has taught me that those people need my support because other people with privilege are harming them, are standing on their necks, are executing them with qualified immunity. So empathy needed.  Nobody owes an awful person a respectful death. and if quoting somebody's hateful rhetoric is uncou because they have died, then just maybe, somebody should have taken that stand.

Jeremy Schumacher: Maybe these people who are asking for a change in rhetoric should have done that to the hateful person spewing that rhetoric while they were alive. Somebody who says an acceptable amount of death is required to keep the Second Amendment around who then dies from gun violence is not a sympathetic figure.  And the part that a lot of people are missing about that quote is again the idea that the Second Amendment exists so that you can overthrow a tyrannical government. And again, sucks to suck when you throw in with the tyrants. That's what's going to happen. I mean, not soon enough, This isn't advocating for violence here. This advocating for overthrowing a tyrannical government, There needs to be a societal change.

00:20:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And That includes less violence. But acting like victims responding to their oppressors violently is the problem when oppressors violently oppressing people is the problem. And we have lost the plot on that conversation. A hit dog is going to eventually bite that person. Right?  The dog's not bad for defending itself. It's a crooked vulturous u lyric and spinning and daffodil is you bite the hand that feeds you s*** and the oppressors are violent. Lots of these talking heads Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder.

Jeremy Schumacher: Stephen Crowder is a garbage person. We know very publicly for a lot of other reasons, too. Ben Shapiro, what's I mean, like any Fox News host, right? Tucker and Bill O'Reilly, who's also a rapist. I can picture his chubby little face. the hatemonger who used to be on radio. it's driving me. I want to say Carl Rove. that's not who I'm looking for. That's not an incorrect name. but yeah, the guy who used to just spew all this stuff on the radio before podcasting and the YouTube shows were really the thing and Tik Tockers. tell I'm recording this at the end of the week because I can't think of this thing and I talk about it somewhat regularly because a lot of my clients who have religious trauma grew up hearing their parents listen to them.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah. I don't know. We don't need to feel bad when bad people die. We can, in fact, celebrate when bad people die. And if you don't want people to celebrate your death, lead a life that doesn't have people Connect with people. Build community. giving Nazis slogans to put on their t-shirts does not mean you're somebody who brings people together. That makes you a divisive figure. You are not somebody who unites people under the banner of debate. If you are giving the hate groups things to rally around, that makes you part of a hate group.

Jeremy Schumacher: the right-wing response to this makes sense, Obviously, starting with the play playbook to blame an immigrant or a trans person right away because those are the cultural bugaboos right now with no evidence and no proof. these things were stated because they served a political purpose and the Wall Street Journal is right leaning right it's not a reputable source of information but they ran with that story right away from an FBI that is run by a couple podcasters an FBI that looks woefully inept here in anything close to rising to the moment.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, just like I don't know the irony of a lot of the situation is not lost on people who have been following along at home. the leftwing response is maddening again like firing a news anaker who referred to Charlie Kirk's work as divisive and hatefilled. no, we can't keep creating this mythical standard that one side refuses to agree to. And again, if anybody's listened to me talk for any amount of time, There is not a political party in America that is left-leaning enough for me. We don't have anybody who is anti- capitalist.

Jeremy Schumacher: So this one side or the other again we keep going further and further right because we're not calling out these unhinged tactics. We're letting people refer to radical leftists when right-wing extremism is on the rise. And to the surprise of zero people who know how statistics work, that was a statistics joke. the shooter ended up being a white male cuz it's a college I've never heard of in Utah. So, first of all, who do we think goes there? White Mormons. a shot just a touch under 200 yards from what I've heard, which is not unheard of. especially out west where there's a little bit more flat land before you run into the Rockies. I don't know where the college is located.

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: It might have been in a more mountainous area. but boltaction rifle. somebody who was wearing right-wing gear.  And again, for somebody who's like, Charlie Kirk was right-wing because he hated trans people and immigrants and black people and so was obviously right-wing might not understand the weird umbrella that coalesed around Trump and not understand that MAGA as a political movement is untenable. there's a definite cult of personality that follows Trump around because Trump allows people to bring all sorts of bigotry to the forefront because he is a bigot. and who also normalizes stupidity because he is a stupid person. And so people who want to have uninformed opinions and think that those things need to be respected love Trump.

Jeremy Schumacher: he's one of us when he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has done zero useful things in his life is because he's a moron and so if you like watching The Apprentice or any reality TV that's not the British Baking Show. I don't watch the British Baking Show. there's a difference between whatever. I'm not going to get into Not in this podcast.  That's a separate topic propaganda. It's on CBS every night. the right-wing split from you're not right-wing enough. you're not authoritarian enough, you're not Christian nationalist enough.

Jeremy Schumacher: you can't have part of your base be the Jewish space laser conspiracy people and maintain that best friend of the world's most famous pedophile are leading your party. those things are not compatible over time. the QAnon crowd isn't going to deal with the pro-Israel crowd for too much longer. The Christian nationalists are not going to deal with the pro-Israel crowd for too much longer. And again, someone's like, wow, if you're loosely aware of something, you might say, all the Christian nationalists in Congress are pro-Israel.

Jeremy Schumacher: They want the world to end and it is in their preferred book of fairy tales that Israel needs to be a country for that to happen. they think everybody who is Jewish and lives in Israel will go to hell and deserve it. So they're not pro- Israel so much as they're apocalypse. it's a weird blend of anti-semitism over there.  The shooter posted a bunch of what is known as griper memes. The griper pipeline is pretty associated with Nick Fuentes. knowing some of this stuff is irrelevant. but it's just a bunch of 8chan meme culture stuff.

Jeremy Schumacher: and it seems the other shooting that happened the same day was sort of the perpetually online incel blackpill is anti-natalist movement. it's this weird interpretation of nihilism where we shouldn't be alive and so the correct thing to do is kill yourself and take as many people as you can with you.  Again, the internet's a weird place and if you do not have any media literacy, you can get dragged into some unhealthy places fairly quickly. but again, a lot of these hateful groups are incompatible with each other and they hear what they want to hear from Donald Trump because he doesn't have actual stances. Again, fascism does not require any sort of internal consistency. And so, he can flit from hateful thing he says to hateful thing he says, and scandal to scandal.

00:30:00

Jeremy Schumacher: He brings in people who are attracted to those dog whistles, right? Steven Miller couldn't run the MAGA side of things even though he's doing most of the policy because he's JD Vance will be He's deeply unlikable. he has zero charisma and he's a sick fan. he doesn't believe any of these things. Steven Miller is a hatefilled white supremacist who very much believes in the movement, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: the movement of white supremacy. And so, yeah, they're true believers in extremism. I think Mike Johnson believes the version of Christian nationalism that he espouses. I think he believes on some pretty deep level that he was chosen by God and that Donald Trump is a means to an end to get Christians and keep Christians in power. he thinks Donald Trump is a good person.  I think he does the evangelical sort of thing where it is worthwhile for an eternal reward. but there are all these different groups that coales around Donald Trump because he's such a hatefilled person that he drew all these opposing hate-filled groups together and they are splintering.

Jeremy Schumacher: they will continue to because no one's happy with a stagnant economy and prices rising. but he has a bunch of hate groups that hate each other and Charlie Kirk was a mega influencer. He was a propagandist for the Republican party and he was not enough for the and so this shooter having those ideologies and seeming to have been somewhat radicalized online in the communities that a lot of shooters are radicalized when it's not terror, I'm pretty surprised. If you're unfamiliar with terror, it is a community who have created a pseudo religion around mass shooters. and is the inspiration for some pretty heinous stuff.

Jeremy Schumacher: why it's allowed to exist and continue. Great question. Capitalists who own the way that people use the internet, why is that? so yeah, I mean for every I did look it up before you can find different data sets on this but overwhelmingly right-wing extremism is the cause of violence in America whether it is school shootings or assassinations.

Jeremy Schumacher: for all of the shootings that take place, it's like a very small percentage of people who are on the left side of things. for 5,000 school shooters, four of them have been 01%.  So, when I made the joke earlier about zero zero people were surprised who understand statistics again, statistically a 0% chance this person is trans for all the people who jumped out to say it was a trans shooter. And the FBI did show one of the bullet cases TRN stamped on it, but that's the company that made the bullets. It has nothing to do with trans. So again, that shows the level of stupidity and also bigotry.

Jeremy Schumacher: that is an implicit bias to read it that way as a trans ideology. that is searching for It's not even confirmation bias of you saw something and it was confirmed your bed. you're going out of your way to make that fit. so there's not really a surprise Again, the cognitive dissonance of MAGA probably will collapse on itself.  hopefully sooner rather than later. And again, maybe that is in an ideal nonviolent world that is an overwhelmingly shift in politics blue wave in 2026. but the reality is zero things will be done to mitigate gun violence and so gun violence is going to continue.

Jeremy Schumacher: and we will see predominantly right-wing extremists do violence because they've been coached on it. They're being indoctrinated into it, it is seen as a good thing. for every post I saw online that was right-wingers responding and saying evil, leftists have declared war.  again without knowing who the shooter was in any way, shape or form and also saying leftists are not handling this shooting with the proper amount of respect. again, dealing with fascist extremism. there's no reasoning with it and so they will use whatever excuse they want.

00:35:00

Jeremy Schumacher: they will run with this even though it will come out just like the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania was a right-winger who was radicalized was anti-pedophile and so he took a shot at Trump because Trump's in the Epstein files this is not a hard concept to track and for some reason our media goes along our media is predominately owned by right-wing oligarchs and so they let it disapp  ipate. It's why Epstein wasn't a thing until Trump made it a thing by running on releasing the files and getting Mega and Qidon all whipped into a frenzy about seeing the files and then not releasing the files because he's obviously in them. It's a maddening time to have any sort of critical thinking skills. and again, a functional understanding of how statistics work goes a long way here.

Jeremy Schumacher: I have a degree in psychology and for as many people myself included who can make a joke about how a bachelor's in psych doesn't get you anything I did take lots of me semester worth of studying research methods and statistics to be very comfortable with those concepts to be in reviewed scientific journals and yeah I mean people lack media literacy people lack that understanding of how statistics work for understanding  It is a ridiculous and hatefilled telling on yourself bigoted moment to jump to the conclusion that this person must be trans. when again right-wing political violence is right-wing extremists are the largest by and large group of people who perpetrate violent activity, terrorist domestic terrorism in the United States is done by right-wingers.

Jeremy Schumacher: that's a statistically safe bet. And so it doesn't surprise the people who are Shout out to one of my favorite podcasts. I'm taking a break. I'm looking for new podcasts that are interesting and not about the world being a terrible place because that's too much of what I listen to and also what I see on a day-to-day basis. but I do love Weird Little Guys, the podcast Weird Little Guys.  Molly Conger is a wonderful researcher. I had Spencer Sunshine on my podcast not that long ago. You could check out that episode. He studies the Nazi movement and the communities. And again, this isn't a surprise. right-wing extremism is primed and prepped to be violent. And if you are not fully as extreme as they are, you are also part of the problem.

Jeremy Schumacher: if they are accelerationists and you're not doing enough to start the culture war, you are part of the problem. So there's no pleasing extremism, it just needs to keep getting more and more extreme.  And so whether it is the very actual fascist government we have in the mega movement, whether it's Robert Kennedy who is on a mission to kill both children and mothers and send neurody diverent people to camps.

Jeremy Schumacher: whether it is the community on Achan or terror you can never be extreme enough for them and allowing this false dichotomy of we need to treat both these sides as with respect racism isn't a political stance bigotry is not debate if you cannot agree that trans people exist and deserve

Jeremy Schumacher: ve the right and the safe space to exist in the way that they would like to that's not a political stance. you're just a hatefilled bigot and I do not need to respect that stance and I don't need to hold any space for it. So no sympathy said it with James Dobson around here we celebrate when bad people die. Do I wish for violence? No.  Do I see a lot of folks participating in day-to-day violence who are now clamoring for less violence because one of their boys got shot? Yeah. And I don't have a lot of tolerance for that. If you're not speaking out against violence in all forms and fashions and you're actually perpetuating violence against marginalized communities, then you can f*** all the way off.

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And I don't have to feel bad when your hate-filled rhetoric comes to get somebody quote unquote from your side.*** all the way off. Either you are for humans and humans having the right to exist and be safe and have their needs met or you're not. And it's the paradox of tolerance. Tolerance cannot tolerate intolerance.  It's a losing battle against somebody who is not on the same page with the same goal as you. So, no, I will not mourn a white supremacist propagandist. I do not need to respect him now that he is dead when I did not respect him when he was alive and he did not lead a respectful life. Do I feel as a human who has empathy for his family? Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: Did I feel for his family knowing he was probably raising them to be hateful and bigoted? Yep. Because that's violent, too. if gang we were just all better? What if we were just better? what if we tried to be better, And that probably was a good place to end the podcast. this is obviously an issue of extremism. but again not the shooter being extreme that this is the inevitable consequence of extremism. So we need to be speaking out against extremism.

Jeremy Schumacher: We need to be speaking out against CPAC and Turning Point USA and whatever Russian money is going to f***** Tim Pool and whoever else was accepting Russian money to fund their YouTube shows. Brazil just gave Balssonaro 27 years for trying to run a military coup illegally. there need to be consequences for these things.  We need to hold the people who invest heavily in these hatefilled groups financially accountable for the harm that they do. ICE agents need to be not masking and not doing extrajudicial kidnappings, That's all viole Police officers do not need qualified im That's violence. The president does not need qualified immunity. That's violence.

Jeremy Schumacher: And so, yeah, it's a double standard to let the oppressors be violent and not be the people they're oppressing be violent. That is the oppressor's fault as well. I think that's what I've got. one more thing. So, this is this issue of extremist. This is also an issue of just gun control, less guns.  this stops happening. Doesn't probably never happen, but happens significantly less. And that's not a hard concept. that's well researched that's proven time and time again.

Jeremy Schumacher: other countries. There's so much research that shows that country counties or states that have enacted gun control because the Supreme Court kicked it back to the states have seen an increase in safety, less homicides, less domestic violence. we can track these things this with current research and wellestablished research.  Again, I generally say we could have fixed this after Coline and because of corruption and because the capitalist society we have built requires violence, we will continue to have it because the people who have the most money, the capitalists, the people who have the capital and are making money off of having such a unhealthy society will continue to make money and pour their money into making sure that

Jeremy Schumacher: extremism fractures us from focusing on the class issue at hand. rather than building a healthier a better society, we are sniping at each other literally in this case and dividing around culture war nonsense instead of unifying around class solidarity.  So I find your people and vote for people who support gun control. What a not fun time to be alive. Not that I want to die, and not that I want other people to die. There's a lot of lovely things where we could be so much closer to a happy, healthy society.

00:45:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And the fact that we have to daily be reminded that we are doing stupid things, that there are stupid people in charge doing stupid things on purpose because they are hateful is really frustrating to live through. So take care of yourself, take care of somebody else. I would love just to do a mental health podcast that never ever ever ever relates to politics.  And it is not okay to think what is going on is normal. And it is a good sign that your brain is working correctly. To be stressed and frustrated and burnt out on all the traumas we have to live through on a regular basis, regular school shootings, multiple genocides going on right now.

Jeremy Schumacher: your brain is working correctly for this to be stressful and that is why I talk about these things even though it is also stressful for me. So find your community, take care of somebody else. Next week we will be back with another mental health professional and that'll be nice talking about some autism, not in the way RFK does. W All right, peace.

Meeting ended after 00:46:31 👋

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