Episode 7 Brothers and Sisters

Deconstructing leaving Mormonism all issues are on the table and game for discussion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

All right. Well it's official. Now we're recording.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Uh-oh. Can't say anything bad anymore?

SPEAKER_00 0:08

No, no, no. Now you have to say something bad.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Oh. I gotta get my mouth ready. I'm from the South and I'm a girl. I can get my mouth ready.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

I got some good swear words. I learned from the best. Dad was a great swear.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Remember when mom told us when we first moved to Texas, we don't have to say ma'am or sir. We're from California, Arizona. We don't do that. And then about a week later, like, we say ma'am and sir.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

You understand me, kids? Yes, ma'am.

unknown 0:43

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I guess the principal called or something. It was like they were not, they were not having these.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

We were a scamble.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Oh yeah. They were not having it. They were not having that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

I think that's hysterical.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

We got some good education coming up in the world, didn't we?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Oh yeah, yeah. Uh man, I think my favorite place I ever went to school all the time was Hitchcock. If I could have spent all 12 years undergraduate, as it were, you know, first grade to high school. It was best room socially, great teachers. It would have I'd have been saved me from the suburbs of the snotty Oklahoma folks or the snotty Kentucky.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

I know that sounds like a contradiction, but well, the problem is when we moved to Oklahoma, it was during an oil boom. And we moved from Texas, which was very uh integrated in racially, you know, um, to Oklahoma to Edmund, Oklahoma, which was all white. So we moved from uh when I was a kid, I would say half the school was black, and there was one child in my whole high school um graduating class who was black. So we went from one extreme to the other, and it was not kind to us as kids. And and and no black teachers, no, no, and they were the best, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Oh yeah, they they told us like it was no sugar, so good. So good, so good. Oh I saw Miss Mrs.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Gordon and Mrs.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Olson.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

That's not true. I was gonna say I don't remember any of my teachers, but I just did. Um, Mrs. Baxstrom, she was a black woman who had this um green car with fins on it, like grandma press. Oh, okay. Texas state history from her and had to draw the Texas State flag. And it was, you know, it was an interesting education because um while we got Texas and Oklahoma state histories, we didn't get a lot of the real state histories. Like we didn't really learn about the Charleters, really. We didn't really, we never knew about the Tulsa riots. Like we grew up an an hour and a half from Tulsa and we never knew that that happened. Like I I learned about it a few years ago from TikTok, you know? It's crazy what gets kept from you.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Even even as modern day school children. So I had a big week last week.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Okay, tell me.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Um, I was on a podcast with my brother last week, sitting next to him. That was just a week ago.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

That's crazy to think of all the things I've done since then.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I I I I saw you hit the send button. On the your video that you sent me.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Oh, yeah. So I filled out my paperwork for quitmormon.com. Um, we did that on the podcast, and then um the later in the week we printed it out and took it over to a notary and had her notarized that. I gave her ten dollars and it went to the community fund, so I felt good about that. Um, and then um we scanned it and then we had a little ceremony, and it's called an uncoupling ceremony. And that uncoupling ceremony was really beautiful. Um, Larry's friend Yvynne did it for me, and she just basically cut the ties, you know, um verbally, and she had me repeat the things that she said that you know, this thing that happened to me no longer has control over me, and I take my software back. And it was really, it was really a beautiful um moment. And what was weird about it is she'd given me a few dresses that are out of her closet because she's you know in a nudist colony, she doesn't wear very many, so she was giving me a few dresses, and she gave me one that was a scoop neck, a pie hair, and then it had long sleeves and it was all the way to the ground, but it was this swirl of blue and white, it kind of looks like the ocean, and I wore it down to the pool, and I thought to myself, you know, this looks like a baptismal dress, and so it was really interesting because this was the day that the uncoupling happened.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

The unbaptism, the unbaptism.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

So I unbaptized myself, and I had a whole little thing that I did myself down at the pool and um unbaptized myself, and then later on we did that uncoupling ceremony, and then I hit send, and that's the the video that I sent you. So, I mean, when you got baptized, you were eight years old, and I was old enough to make my own decisions that affected me for the rest of my life because I'm eternity. Oh, yeah, let's not just not till the end of this life for forever.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

So so do you feel like you're old enough now to make this uncoupling decision?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Now that I'm 63 years old, I hope that I'm freaking old enough finally to take some of my take all of my sovereignty back. I'm taking it all back. Okay, it's all coming back to mama.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

What about those feelings of those old white men with the suit and ties and polished shoes and flick words and crafted messages from communications and so I have a couple of things flick history?

SPEAKER_02 6:17

I have a couple of things to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

I don't think we're at a time in the world where we can afford to keep suckling these old men. It is time to jettison them, it is time for us to have our society back, it's time for us to look out for the next generation of people that have to inhabit this earth and stop being such bloody uh industrialists. You know, it the the economy here is really scary. But what scares me really more than all of that is just how invasive what's going on with our government is, and it just scares me to death. We got news yesterday that here in the state of Utah, we're in Utah right now, and this is where we live. Um last Wednesday they did a transfer of deeds for this $145 million warehouse where they're planning on keeping over 7,000 ICE detainees and prisoners. Um, and it's just a warehouse, so there's no facilities in it. The community has no facilities for the sewer that it's gonna cost take to house that many people for the security around it, for everything that the people um who have to live around it are gonna have to see, and they're putting it in a neighborhood that's you know, a lot of Hispanics live there. It just is it's meant to intimidate. Um they snuck the they did a uh transfer of the title or the deed on Wednesday night and didn't say anything to anybody. And when people found out, they started researching it, and it turns out that the the holding company that held the deed is the same holding company that Jeffrey Epstein's real estate is under. It's a shell corporation, and it's the same freaking organ, it's the same freaking organization. So it makes me think that all of this is tied up, every single little stitch of it is tied together, and it's tied together to to pedophilia, and it's tied together to the power grab that people are trying to do right now, and it just really scares me to death. I think if there is a little white man with a balding head at the head of any church right now, they should be brave enough to say, I have moral clarity on this issue, and what we are doing with ICE is wrong for humanity, it's wrong for Americans, it's wrong for the immigrants, it's completely against Christianity. Where are the voices on that side? Where are the people standing up for what is going on? Because that's what happened in Germany. Everybody let the camps come in and they just lived with them. They knew something was going on, but nobody paid that much attention. And when the Allied forces finally came in and recaptured France, and they were finding camp after camp after camp around all these cities, people would just shrug their shoulders. They didn't want to see it. And I want people to see this right now because it's we're we're repeating the the sins of our past. And this really is a sin, in my in my opinion. So I I would call for those leaders of the churches, like the Catholic Pope did. If the Catholic Pope can come out and say this is wrong and this is against humanity, then where's the leadership of uh my former church?

SPEAKER_00 9:40

During World War II, the Catholics were on the side of the fascists. They bless their bombs. There's not a lot of precedents for churches standing up to do the right moral thing.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Right, because usually they're the ones doing the Inquisition thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

There's it's just like, you know, on the principle, for the sake of humanity, uh, there's just no precedent for that.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

It's because those two systems feed each other, right? Government and religion. Religion is the hammer, and government is the the the bullet, you know, they're the ones that go out and and round people up, and but religion has to play into that.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And if you if you look at the history of the world, it's always been, you know, that's why there's such a strong message in Roman Catholicism, Roman Christianity about being docile, and that because it's easier to control masses when you're docile. That's why there's all that emphasis on humility, you're easier to control.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Um because you won't put up a fuss, because you're humble. And I don't feel humble about that at all.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Turn the other cheek, be humble, uh, don't get involved. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, you know, and just the the people who want power want a docile population to rule. The problem is it's too much work to have an informed populace to rule.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

In Utah, you have too many people that are triple Trumpers. They're, you know, President Benson was a real political guy, and they're they're conservative here because of it. I mean, it's lasted a long, long time. Um, I think religion in in general is mostly conservative.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

So it it just well uh if if you think about the message, it's like these people that had these ideas, ideas, and stories that explain things that are difficult to explain. Uh thousands of years ago, we're sticking with that. That's the revealed truth of God, and to discover something else is heresy.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

But now in the time of science, it's heresy still. Yeah, yeah, it's by Galileo.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, yeah, it's just uh it's just the model. It's just the model. Conservative, conservatism is a cognitive thinking error. It's keeping the same opinion despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Overwhelming, Zane. It's overwhelming. And that's right, that's what I told mom, you know, when she asked me about leaving the church. I said, Mom, you guys raised smart kids. You have smart children. You taught us how to look at things analytically. You cannot think that this is something that all six of your children that we know of most, yeah. Like, how does that no you have to understand that there's overwhelming evidence that we feel this way and that we are willing to take these actions because we overwhelmingly see the evidence, and once you see that evidence, if you don't want to see it and you turn your back to it, then you're culpable for all the bad things that happened because you didn't pay attention, you didn't act, you didn't you didn't look at the things in your life and say, Hey, maybe I do have this wrong. I don't know what is so hard for humans to say, hey, I got this wrong. I've been wrong so many times in my life. I mean, really wrong. Look at Mormonism.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, well, uh the difference in my mind between religion and science is religion comes up, or at one time came up with the best story that they could to explain things. Science today just comes up with the best story that they can to explain things. But the difference with science is once you find evidence and a better explanation, you adopt that.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Right. You can change your mind or increase your mind, increase your thinking. That's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

That's all that's the whole point of science, making new discoveries, challenging the status quo. Challenge the status quo. Can we do better? Can we do better? Can we do better? Not hold on to the original version no matter what happens. Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Right. Larry's leaving. Bye, honey.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Bye, honey.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

At least he didn't crawl across the floor this time.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Oh, Larry's got a good heart.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

That was two weeks ago because you and I podcasted last week from Florida. So I was I was thinking that was way too many things that happened in a one-week period, but it's because I had a missing leak week.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

No, that was that week also.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

No, last week I I I podcasted from Florida.

unknown 14:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And he crawled across the floor in Florida.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

But I said I was with you last week.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

I was with you two weeks ago, no, no, no. That was two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Yeah, I don't I don't know what's going to happen politically here because Governor Cox is completely MAGA. He's soaked in the MAGA red. And I uh am really disheartened by that because that means that things on the state level here are gonna remain really dicey. But the mayors of both um Salt Lake and Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City are fighting this. Um just found that they had uh already um issued a contract for a company to do all of the transportation for these poor people in and out of this ice detention center in Salt Lake City. So they've been planning this. It's not something that, oh, we forgot and just did the deed overnight because we forgot and we're stupid because we're MAGA. They did it intentionally and have already set things up to, you know, milk the taxpayers out of more money still. For really no good result. So then the with the backlash, the Republican House member here said, Well, it's really it's not gonna be um because people are saying it's gonna make it more unsafe in the area. And he's like, it'll be safer because all we're gonna do is round up the really terrible criminals. If they were rounding up terrible criminals, don't you think we'd be hearing those stories? And where are those stories?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, as a as a percentage, there are more felons in ICE than there are people detained by ICE having felonies.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

That didn't make any sense to me. Explain that.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

You look at the backgrounds of these ICE officers, a lot of them have felonies.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Oh, oh, for sure. It's like getting doomsday guard the coaster at work.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah, a higher percentage of ICE officers have felonies that have been waived than the people they're arresting having felonies. The officers are more criminals than the people they're arresting.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Uh I'm it's like I'm living in an upside down world. And and like half of it's upside down. It's really, it's really disconcerting.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

So do you have that's a little Indiana reference, upside down world? Stranger things.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Oh, well, I didn't we started to watch that and I wanted to watch it because Harper was so into it. I wanted to, you know, see what it was about.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

But it's in Indiana, yeah. It's Indiana, yeah.

unknown 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Coming of age in high school when things are crazy.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

That's never changed. Um, do you have the video of me sending it in? Do you want to play it right now, or we'll just tell people I did it.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I don't know how to play that on Zoom.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Okay, we'll figure that out later for later. Okay. We'll figure out how to do that. So um I haven't had the euphoric feelings of freedom right now. I have feelings of uh just being still in my own with my own company, my own self. I feel really uh still and peaceful inside. So that's how I feel about it. I haven't been sad, I haven't cried, I haven't, you know, all of that stuff kind of fell away the first three days because I spent the time really feeling sad under the covers, falling my eyes out. But but now I just I'm just excited to get on with the rest of whatever I have to do in this world.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Let me screen share. I think we can do it we can do it that way.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

One moment, please.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

That's really good quality. And that's such an action shot. That's that's like truly a Spielberg moment right there. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

All right, let's see if that shows up now.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

That's hilarious. Maybe we figured out how to do it. I want to start playing some clips because there's a real trend going on on um social media now with Christians who are just euphoric over the war in Iran because they think it's gonna cause total nuclear meltdown and they're gonna get raised up and saved, and they're just euphoric about it, not even taking into consideration what it's gonna do to everyone around them if that happens and Jesus doesn't come again. Like, how many times are we gonna go through this narrative of it doesn't matter the the world, there's no global warming because Jesus is gonna come and fix it, or it doesn't matter about this because Jesus is gonna come and fix it. I thought we were here to learn to fix our problems.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yeah, this fixation on Jesus' sex life is really worrisome.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

I don't get it.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

You said Jesus is gonna come again fix it.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Come again.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

His sex life has caused a lot of problems in the world.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

It's true, too.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Really, yeah. I I religion and sex together, it's just such a deadly combination because they they hit you with the one thing that everyone is, and that's your humanity. Because it really is part of your humanity to be a sexual being, and for them to take that away from people is taking away part of their humanity, and it's taking away a lot of their happiness, a lot of their centeredness, a lot of their peace and calm, and the things that you know but but in all fair, in all fairness, there is Prozac. There is Prozac. And uh here in Utah, it's like the number one place for a um it's the highest prescribing per capita for Prozac and other anti-depressants than anywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

It's it's it's depressing to turn your to turn your life and your will over to the care of these angry white men who want to keep things they want to keep the judgment sound, and that's what the church is to me.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

It's a big population.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

They want a docile population, they want to hoard more money, and if a few people have to take some Prozac, so be it.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Well, I just think I think that if you're a triple Trumper and you're a Christian nationalist who is just jubilant and buoyant over Christ coming again when the nuclear bombs drop, that we should look at that really, really soberly as an entire world.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

And he got he got elected on the promise of no new wars.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

I know it's so pathetically said, overwhelming evidence, saying overwhelming evidence that this guy is not who he says he is to his followers, he's not what they think, and they just will not see it because it makes too much cognitive cognitive dissonance in their head that they cannot square the fact that the thing that they really believed in, that they some people severed relationships over it. I mean, it's it has not been an easy road for some of these guys, so they see that again as sacrifice, like Mormon C pioneering.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

People who aren't used to lying have a really hard time seeing other people lie. believe in it because they would never do that and because they would never because they would never do that they just can't really think someone else would actually do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Someone else who they revere and have hero status on. Because if they're I'm sorry if in CGI they're painting this guy with abs and a superman case. Abs with a diaper abs and a diaper. Yeah.

unknown 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

And then his beautiful orangey pancake makeup. It's it's a it's a show uh that I just I I just cannot believe that we're falling for it as a name.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Well we've been like the knitting cult lady says we've all been groomed to be members of a cult. It took a lot of effort to get us to the point where we could accept this.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

And they're cat they're cashing in on it.

unknown 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

They have a charismatic cult leader and they're trying to cash in on it while it's good because there's not a good charismatic cult leader after he goes.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

In the wings waiting to take over.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

And and he knows he's super unpopular and for their agenda to succeed for fascism for authoritarianism to succeed you need a period of overwhelming popularity to to to cement your power and fortunately that hasn't happened yet to me it's what it's like a ticking time bomb every day and I I hate it.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I want it to go away. I uh wanted to tell you when we were talking about the second coming and you know how bought in the Christians are to Jesus going to come and save all of us and all the problems all of our problems we should have solved are going to go away.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah you know Armageddon is a modern invention of the 1980s.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

It's it's uh with this the manychurches right it was all about being saved and Armageddon and yeah the the the rapture and Armageddon and all that stuff was a modern invention. It wasn't even considered a thing before the 1980s it's not in the Bible I mean you might say it's in revelations because you can make revelations pretty much mean anything you want it's so messed up. Well you can't read Revelations without dropping acid first and if you can't afford acid it's a nice substitution true I had a guy tell me like if you don't understand it thoroughly inside and out you will be damned to hell I'm like understand what it's like it's so deeply metaphored and it and just off it's off the chain that book anyway I um do you do you follow Dan McClellan at all? Oh I love Dan. Yeah he's probably a relative I'm just gonna be mom here for a second.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah he he he looks like um dad's cousins who was a soil scientist looks like one of those that side of the family the Ranches the Ranches yeah I was friends with Roger Ranch.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

So on my mission I um the Kirtland temple was uh accessible to us as missionaries but we had to have uh a convert with us or somebody we were teaching to to take them and to actually go outside of our area to go to see it. So I went a few times um as a missionary and would take people that we were teaching um and there was a guy there who gave the tours he was from the reorganized church which are now called I don't I can't remember what they changed their name to um they church of Christ I think oh maybe they they did they did uh meld in with the Church of Christ didn't they I think that's right. Anyway he gave these tours and he had some really weird ideas. He thought he was the second Joseph Smith so I guess if Christ came once and then twice then I guess Joseph Smith gets to come once and then twice.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

I I don't I don't know if you know his history he came a lot more than that. He was a happy boy he needed no prozac.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

No prozac. Um so this he had these ideas about Armageddon about how the world was gonna you know um he was gonna help the second coming he was gonna initiate well I'm not kidding things this guy that I had many many conversations with and we never got into heated conversations we weren't supposed to right but we could hear his philosophies and we could talk back to him and you know we became kind of friendly he broke off from the reorganized church and started his own congregation um that still believed in the Book of Mormon in the Bible but he was going to start the second coming and he had some followers and they were out on a farm kind of like the John Johnson farm um and they had a barn out back and he had a family of five the followers dug a shallow grave and took these family members out there one at a time and killed them shot them and buried them in a mass grave to start World War III. And to me that's what this this war in Iran is right it's us purposely doing something to try and look for the demise of mankind. That's why I have such a hard time with it because I've seen this for myself and what this crazy guy did to that poor family. And he's in jail I got home and somebody from my mission called Sister Passie look on CNN I look on CNN I don't remember the guy's name but there he was um and he did I I don't think he got the death penalty but I think he's gonna be in jail for the rest of forever.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

But people come up with these ideas all on their own all of the time we don't need it at the very freaking top of the government with people who could really damage we we we don't need a theocracy uh theocratic governments are horrible Iran is a horrible country because it's theocratic theocratic states are terrible there's a reason for separation of church and state you don't want the Roman Catholics running your government Inquisitions every day I promise you it's just there you know go let them go save your soul on Sunday don't let them run your government yeah don't do that so when I was tracting as a Mormon missionary in the Netherlands trying to save the Dutch from their non-Mormon ways those savages we were led into a house by this guy on your high yielding baptismal uh mission right yeah so we were let in yeah we were we were duking it out with Switzerland who is going to be the lowest baptizing mission in the church and go back and forth Netherlands Switzerland Netherlands Switzerland that's funny Larry would say that for every door that you knocked and no one answered someone in Chile got baptized you were doing a word for it you just didn't know it and those experiences are just not comparable. Yeah they're not not not comparable anyway we got let in by this guy and he loved to read and he was a a hoarder of documents and and um polit he was very politically minded and I asked him I said are you a John Birch society type of guy after I listened to him talk.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

That was Benson he said oh no I was oh okay they don't go near far enough oh no no no no and the funny thing is is their battle cry is freedom we believe in freedom but what they want is freedom to do what they want they don't care about your freedom if you're not a Christian nationalist if you're not a white old guy at the top of some church they do not care i i i am as scared of the virulent anti-communists as I am of the fascists and the commies yes um you can you can take either viewpoint to very harmful extremes um and we've seen we have we have I mean our anti-communism gave us Saddam Hussein gave us Osama bin Laden um gave us Jeffrey Epstein well I think except I think there was more um pro-Israel pro-Israeli than anything I think he was simply an agent for them and their interests um but it's like when when you fight against one thing you're setting up something else and we've got to get smarter we've got to get smarter we've got to get smarter and we have to stop saying it's a bad idea for people to have health care and to share in the economic prosperity that they are education.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Right that those are not bad things and the people that tell you that those are bad things are nutcases and they're greedy psychopathic sociopathic capitalist bitches. Well it's even worse than that I mean there's a place for capitalism. Yeah I agree there really is there's a there's a very legitimate place for that but you can take it to such an extreme that it it's poison. You know you can take your communism to the point of poison. You can take your capitalism to the point of poison you know and it was our democratic process that elected Trump.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Yeah it's almost like no matter what system we're in, people are going to look for the weaknesses are going to be like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park and throw themselves on the fence and find the weaknesses to exploit it.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah we just have to watch people that are so fucking selfish. Yeah we need to it's like why are you that selfish? What is your massive insecurity that you need to be that selfish and hoard that much wealth and watch other people have to take Prozac and starve so that you can brag about being number one or two on the list. How does that help anything? It destabilizes society it destabilizes destabilizes everything. And it's like they do not need to be calling the shots yeah I'd much I would much rather have the populist masses my working redneck blue collar whatever calling the shots than those greedy folks calling the shots because those greedy folks will just hurt people for no reason other than they might they might benefit a little bit from it.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

They might get two more cents in a paycheck that's a billion dollars a year.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

It's just gross except except they they get big payouts they yeah they're getting big payouts well what they're gonna they'll never they'll never be able to spend it.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yeah it's uh what good is it gonna do them it slows economic growth down it politically destabilizes us um and it makes everybody else suffer for for what so but what happens to these people thing because you see in like Jeff Bezos right we were such amazon supporters and you know sadly I have to say we still buy from them he might he started out like as this entrepreneurial guy that had this big vision and it was against all odds and he he made it to the top and then he starts doing stuff like you know firing his workers and and and getting robots and buying the Wall Street Journal and decimating that paper. The Washington Post sorry yeah the Washington Post decimated that paper it's like what happens to these guys is it just a little bit of power I mean Joseph Smith that's one thing he said that I believe shows men get a little bit of power and yeah they they they go freaking nuts.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah their worst instincts come out sometimes I honestly think that we need people on the autism spectrum in the positions of power because they have such a strong moral compass they don't really give you know two shits about greedy stuff and other things. They want to do what's right and maybe they're not real interesting. They're not real entertaining but it might be what we need that might be the type of people we need to have in power um to straighten some of this out because there's the moral compass is just not there. Doing the right thing for the right reasons just is not there.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

I don't have any moral clarity it doesn't seem to me right now. When when it affects you personally I see some you know some oh I didn't realize but you have to know that when you put some of these things in place you're hurting real people children and babies and moms and dads and cousins and aunts and uncles the people that you love are going to be hurt and that's what's hard about being kind of left behind in all of this religiously is because I'm still out there fighting for people's rights to have their religion you know I think that yeah I I I don't mind religion in church.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Yeah but it should not be in government no they shouldn't be calling the shots you can have an influence but you do not need to be calling the shots and you don't need to have such a tax break structure that you're able to accumulate so much wealth that you are then able to accumulate power because wealth is speech it isn't united you know corporations are people and money is speech and we believe in freedom of speech it's just so corrupting it should we should not turn our decision making powers over to the people with the most money it's just I think it I think in some ways people might look at it and just say well he's already done something great like they look at Donald Trump well he's a businessman he's not a businessman he's had one failed business after another and he owes everyone and their mother money like I I just don't he e even the people that are quote unquote good businessmen aren't necessarily good political leaders. Right right because you have to have a certain instinct in order to make a billion dollars if your heart if your heart is not to to in general service of people in general you don't belong in politics. Yeah if you don't have a moral compass well you will stand up and do the right thing you know burn me at the stake motherfucker you know I am not backing down from this you don't have a spine you don't belong in politics I just don't see a spine anywhere I don't see spine one I don't see a single principle being stood on I don't see truth and right being protected I don't see kids being protected I don't see real values being protected I just see like they're the alpha male yeah but they have sweaty palms a soft handshake and no calluses don't buy it they're pussies yeah well like Betty White said a pussy can take a poundy uh a pussy's not weak no they're not no no so they they are weak though there I see a lot of weakness in our in our in our political class you know people that can stand up to this just refusing to stand up to it and and why why why are you in a position where you can stand up to things and and yet we refuse to and and the really weirdest part about that whole not not even even the opposition's not really opposition is Marjorie Taylor Green is the one person who stood up and that fucking pisses me off.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Well she's just playing it from a different angle yeah I think so too I do look at things like Mitt Romney stood up um but he got politically crucified for it.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

He's not in politics anymore and I I'm not sure if you know he would have been a great president but he stood up yeah and people will not forgive him for that no take my honor you know um I I will not I will not surrender my honesty and and my and my honor for sake of office or popularity. You know that be damned what what what matters is the principle. Yeah and we need men of principle women of principle standing on principle I just don't see it. Yeah and and how in the political systems that are the Republican national party right and the DNC the RNC and the DNC where are you going to find those people within that because that's a political quagmire you know they're not doing the right things as conventions for the people a neoliberal is no better than your average conservative just it is not they don't care about health insurance they don't care about protective regulations they don't care about taking care of people in FEMA things like that. Things when you need a lifeline right and there is no there's not an honest opposition party and a system that doesn't have some honest opposition gets really really corrupted bad in a hurry. And then you have all there's just no honest opposition out there. And then you have buy-in on both sides from corporations and um think tanks and they they've all sold their souls to someone whoever will donate the most money to their campaign because they think they need money in advertising and airtime more than they need an actual message. You know where if people with a message would stand up and stand on a message they would get elected.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Right now especially because the discontent is so high. The one hope I have for Salt Lake is I saw um on social media last week before we got here they had a big no king's march and it was packed shoulder to shoulder going down State Street for as far as the camera could see so I'm I'm hoping that my good Mormon right wing neighbors understand who who have a spine and believe in honesty. Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

That this is coming believe in principles.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

This is coming to Salt Lake and now is the time to stand up and say never again we're not gonna have these concentration camps in and among where we live and take our kids to school and we're not gonna see the violence we're not gonna see people rounded up especially the children and the women it's just it's just a travesty for humanity. And I think it's time for us to find our Mitt Romney pants and put them on and speak out. I'm not saying I agree with everything he's said and done but I do think that kind of bravery especially in Utah where everyone has to sing from the same page in the songbook every every single day. So you can't go against what your how your mother or your father both or your brothers and sisters we need to be looking at this on an individual level and we need to be making really clear moral decisions about how we're going to not support it and how we're gonna speak out. Because if if we don't do it now and this thing gets installed it's gonna be forever for it to get to get taken out and the violence is going to follow this this prison cell this prison complex inside a warehouse.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Again no plan from the administration let's just go have a war we don't have a plan let's let's incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people no plan but meanwhile us as a taxpayers we're paying the bill yeah and and there's people getting rich off the grift so that's my that's my challenge that's my week all right all right well I'm about done complaining are you yeah you want to read some uh no I think I want to call it a day okay you're gonna do something funny you make a next next next yeah I'm gonna go visit my my friend Cindy did I tell you about Cindy no she she was a treasurer for the convention we're putting on oh yes you did tell me oh yes yeah she she works at a homeless shelter tripped over her own feet fell broke her neck is paralyzed I'm gonna go visit her um you give her love for me she doesn't know me but I thought about her a lot since you told me that story because really your life can turn upside down in a minute over the dumb things yeah just don't don't take anything for granted do your living now show your love now um stand up now have a principal be happy now this is the life that you know be your true self now now's the time to be your true self well I love you love you too Paula