Humanists Take on the World

40 What's at stake?

• Dustin Williams, Lauren Studley • Episode 40

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What’s at Stake?

  • Trans rights
  • Reproductive rights
  • Women’s rights
  • Access to Health care
  • Right to privacy
  • Education
  • Checks and balances
  • Free press
  • Free speech
  • Fair Elections
  • Democracy itself

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/

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humanist take on the world episode 40 what's at stake welcome to the episode of humanist take on the world i am dustin and joining me is lauren and yeah this is gonna be a interesting topic i'm gonna try not to rehash all the stuff that you've already heard everywhere else a whole bunch i'm over here rolling my eyes it's like let's take a nice relaxing hiatus then we would come back we'll be refreshed and oh you're gonna jump right into this okay yes yeah so what we are going to jump into is something that is in the news all right so by now everybody i'm sure is well aware that trump got cbs to end their contract with stephen colbert he got abc to suspend jimmy kimmel and he got back on there is a definite attack on all of the basic principles of democracy this is all the stuff all of them yes all of them this is all stuff that was documented and published at least a year ago in project 2025 and we've been talking about the blueprints for that for years yeah because ultimately that blueprint goes back to the sounds of the confederacy and other racist movements to go back to the way things were before the civil war yes yeah so that's that's how humans are supposed to live according to many people apparently except for everybody that's signing on to these movements doesn't realize that that's the whole point yeah okay the the end goal of this is for white land-owning men being the only ones allowed to vote and even then for them to only be able to vote for the candidates chosen for them yay that sounds that sounds lovely in other words the end result of this the end goal is uh not that your vote counts it's just that you have to vote so there is a count party har har where'd you hear that one from uh i'm sure that's some version of one of those uh old in soviet russia jokes probably it's still pretty good or at least in that style it's relevant it is it's like the old soviet russia jokes so specifically though there is you know since charlie kirk was assassinated uh trump used that to issue an executive order declaring antifa to be a terrorist organization who was not related with the death of charlie kirk whatsoever by the way no the is a defunct whatever whatever antifa is a loose movement it makes you wonder who actually shot charlie kirk the guy who did it who paid him off was republican it doesn't start with a capital t not directly but indirectly maybe and the what's what's fun with all of that is and we've talked about this on the you know pre-rebranding of the podcast man this would have been heck back before trump was president the first time when idaho's own amon bundy and some of his goons seized the malheer wildlife wildlife refuge yeah we thought that should have been considered terrorism if you're gonna label terrorism as anything that doesn't involve a foreign agency or it should have counted or it should have been counted as an insurgency there we go that's actually the correct instead it was counted as trespassing small case of civil disobedience and trespassing only so for for how far things have come an armed group of right-wing radicals seized federal land and started destroying native artifacts and the response was kept primarily to being handled by the local sheriff the fbi was in support the oregon state police was in support there was no military anything no they wanted to avoid another ruby ridge yes which in idaho that's we know about that you know people can rise up against the government and then the government goes into massacres everyone doesn't look good so they try to avoid that right by letting the guy off so that's how it was like over six billion dollars or something and freaking fines it's great but so that's how things went back you know wait in the obama years in the before times and now we've got you know trump sending the actual u.s marine corps into u.s cities to stop protests of illegal immigrant snatchings or or not even illegal immigrant in many cases these are ice agents snatching u.s citizens because they're brown well they'll claim otherwise but yes the protesting is against the whole idea of going over after illegal immigrants because you catch some citizens in your net and that's a direct violation of everything we hold dear there is the proper way to handle that these snatch and grabs is not that so all of that came to though the defining of it oh but but one of the reasons why bundy could never be considered a terrorist is the way u.s federal law defines terrorism in terrorist organizations is as being foreign in nature right we're always looking out for well russian chinese anybody who's pissed us off recently which is everybody apparently but when there was the rise in right-wing extremism and right-wing extremists attacking people that couldn't be considered terrorism because they're not foreign that would have been so much easier then it gets called terrorism but the proud boys could not be considered a terrorist organization oath keepers could not be considered a terrorist organization because they're not foreign now that's also possibly bs because it wouldn't surprise me if they're getting funding from russia yeah i mean you know that conspiracy theorists follow the money it's like oh man because once you have a foreign government involved or foreign entity involved then you can actually call it terrorist but they don't want to they want to make this now trump on the other hand is trying to go after antifa which is not an organization i still pronounce as antifa but i would love to have a poll do you where do you put the emphasis okay anyway with an inherently anarchist movement uh i i don't think there can be a definitive uh definition uh i'm going with antifa pronunciation of if we're going to anarchy then so trump issued national security presidential memorandum seven wow mouthful to provide guidance to security and defense organizations into how to find identify and investigate antifa and it is called countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence okay so now we have the word for it it's domestic terrorism not insurgencies which under federal law doesn't exist well nothing he does is guided by federal law and uh organized political violence which so far we haven't seen yet yet except for why do you think they're targeting portland except for ice agents yeah you could call that organized political violence but the the key point in this is where it defines yep it's not the lies and the exaggerations and the selective uh picking of what attacks to be considering there is a link to the actual directive from the whitehouse.gov website included in the show notes the middle of the fourth paragraph of section one this anti-fascist lie has become the organized rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions constitutional rights and fundamental american liberties common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-americanism anti-capitalism anti-christianity support for the overthrow of the united states government extremism on migration race and gender and hostility towards those who hold traditional american views on family religion and morality end quote yeah that's uh sounds like the 50s right there definitely resembles the red red scare and mccarthyism resembles more like copy and pasted yeah true copy pasta uh especially since the mccarthyist thing a huge part of that was if you were anti-capitalist or anti-christian you must be a communist because communism is atheistic therefore if you aren't christian you must be a communist yep that logic doesn't i mean i definitely count myself more as a socialist but we you know they lump those in together too despite being very different in how the they don't want to hear it they don't want to hear it so with this list of crimes against humanity this is who trump is directing the government to investigate and monitor and track to look for anything that could be construed as untoward promoting violent conduct trump's guilty of that now in the further down it does call out the crimes that are they're supposed to be looking for and that is money laundering trump's guilty of that conspiracy to deprive rights trump's guilty of that i'm sorry i'm starting to note a pattern here couple other things uh conspiracy to deprive rights is a particularly interesting one it's almost impossible to prove conspiracy for one that's dumb phrasing that's a law to stop mobs kkk no not mobs that would have been the other one and segregationists from keeping black people voting yeah that's what that exists for telling somebody they're wrong is not depriving them of their rights disagreeing with someone is not depriving them of their rights even boycotting their business is not depriving them of their rights yeah us conspired conspiring to pass laws is yeah not believing in someone's god does not deprive them of their freedom of religion unless their freedom of religion includes forcing everyone else to follow which that's up for debate apparently now that's the world we live in do you remember those days when we were stuck inside with covid so scared to go out how peaceful that was yeah okay moving on i also can remember back to you know starting blogging and then starting podcasting and having concern about doing an atheist podcast and that coming to bite me like getting booted from payment platforms or hosting services or having it interfering with employment there is risk there is inherent risk that was all concerned back then that is hilarious by comparison to what's happening now where because you've had those same doubts all come right up you say the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk yeah and you've got people people doing that getting doxed and then their employers being told to fire that person or else yep yeah that's real now that's the threat they're not going to come after us little guys not yet but going after late night comedy is just so classic dictator isn't it oh yeah yeah cut the heads off the jesters who make fun of the king kind of thing it's like this doesn't end well by the way because late night comedy the sarcasm is a weapon and it is a powerful one and if you are seen as depriving people from that then it's like well now you're the baddie and that's definitely been the case over the past couple weeks as we watch this unfold absolutely it's not going to change much in the long run those people will still have to shut down or shut up or they'll get censored or whatever but it's this we're just watching classic stuff play out here and it sucks so what I where I predict this is going to actually go in the near term I'm not going to make any predictions on the long term it's that any organization that can be found because you can't find an Antifa organization so they're going to be looking for the Antifa organizations even the people who marched in those protests would never have admitted to be Antifa because it was made up so what they're going to do instead is look for organizations that are anti capitalistic anti christian or help out migrants who work with lgbtq plus issues notice the net getting wider so it's you'll find lots of people are anti capitalists but still have to participate in the system you'll see lots of people who are even anti government but still enjoy the benefits of said government but people who have a trans kid or come from a family of immigrants it's getting less extreme you're just boiling it down to basic humanity so you'll for fellow man I jail I could definitely imagine very soon especially since they're talking about money laundering and they're looking for this antifa organization I hope they spend so much money looking for this organization they're not going to have to with these definitions they could go after lambda legal and glad and the american humanist association and american atheists and secular coalition for america and the list goes on right start with the big ones and then that until finally it just it's easy to push the little guys over if the because we exist because places like ffrf will come to our aid if we need it yeah if they don't exist anymore if the constitution means nothing well we don't think about that lots of people go off on how trump can't get a third term that's not you can't don't call him a king he can't be that and we're looking at him doing these executive memos and those are being carried out as law it's like he can't do that either but it's happening so what do you do when the next step just it's the little baby steps that lead up to that oh crap we're in this too deep now we have a the system of checks and balances in the US government the federalist struggle between the states and federal government those all require everyone involved in good faith doing their part that requires congress holding the president accountable that requires the court staying independent when congress lies down and rubber stamps everything the leader wants and 50% plus one of the supreme court is in the pocket of when the supreme court rubber stamps everything when 34 states have governors who are willing and ready to send their national guard to clean up the blue states clean out jesus it creates a scenario where everybody to the left of the extreme right which theoretically should be almost everyone in the country yeah needs to go out and vote in the midterm elections for the candidates who are not beholden to a dictator in the making which means voting for the democrats yeah and not and if a democrat screws up or if anybody who isn't i'm not even gonna just say democrats you're it's everybody to the left or the far right because there are moderate republicans who have been completely excised from their own party at this point yeah and they don't they don't need to be called democrats but they do need to be they are a part of this group um yeah it's hard because like our midterm elections was one person who was unopposed who was a democrat by the way so yay and um this would be the even more off cycle oh okay it's the city that's true two more years so city are in boise the city elections are in between um it's sometimes there's unopposed so many unopposed uh oftentimes you have two far right up against each other who become so extreme that the moderate gets pushed out um or get threatened out so they just don't bother there's people who aren't running anymore because this isn't worth their their and their family's lives or their careers because that's been a problem um there's so I love this idea of just go vote these guys out but that's that doesn't work anymore I'm a bit defeatist here but I don't know what the answer is but it's not the mantra of go vote them out that doesn't that has not been working the system set up so that doesn't necessarily work anymore it hasn't been working because people haven't been doing it that's I mean that's a good theory I didn't you know if you look at the total numbers of voters and the people who actually show up you're right a lot of the they don't vote so why is that a lot of people on the left aren't willing to vote for candidates they don't view as perfect and I think that really is the root of the problem we just had a Democrat here in Idaho who went to Israel on an Israel government funded trip and she's gotten just absolutely blasted for doing that they went as a good natured but critical view of what was going on there they went at a really bad time there's no good time there but when they got back both her and the Republicans that went were being called to step down and to be voted out because they how dare you be pro Israel this is obviously by the other group of people the people who are pro Israel thought it was great but those are actually dwindling as more and more strife happens but it doesn't discount the fact that this person who went is still a fantastic statesman state woman and she shouldn't get voted out or have to feel like she has to step down because she in good faith went on this fact gathering mission and then came back and got you know absolutely just torn apart by the media which I highly suspect was actually the far right calling for everybody to step down anyway because they want them all out of power if somebody messes up in your view it means that they're not perfect anymore are they still better than the alternative far far far right wing white you know what don't not even white let's not even make this a race thing but Christian nationalists who wants to just take your rights away who is likely to step into the power vacuum now in Idaho that is absolutely the case if this person steps down it's a blue district that doesn't mean there aren't people waiting in the wings so no don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough I look lots of people say that quote with just the good no we're just going to say good enough at this point just to get our feet back under us and I think that is the if any if there is any hope in the quote unquote go vote that's the one is it doesn't have to be perfect but it has to be good enough and right now it's the state elections and the midterm elections that matter the most there are quite a few governors up for election next month a lot of states do theirs when we have our city elections and if you're in one of those if you can help get the person the governor who won't kowtow to trump the gubernatorial candidate we're going to take your national guard folk apparently and send them off to other states so that increases the chances that there's no hanky-panky in 2029 or the 2028 election and who becomes president next we need governors to be independent we need the state legislatures to be independent you need to vote for the candidates who will maintain that independence and if you don't have the choice choose between the lesser of two evils is my only advice yeah um the congressional midterms also absolutely will matter those are further out those absolutely matter because if congress can hold the president to account uh that at least can provide a check and when it comes to the election the next presidential election the final sign-off on that is the u.s. congress so who's in congress matters there's a lot at stake steak is delicious sorry tangent from trans rights and reproductive rights women's rights access the health care the right to privacy education basic principles of democracy and checks and balances free press free speech fair elections these are all at stake the thing that puts America the United States of America apart from everybody else that has done this democracy style is that we have been doing it in good faith that the president steps down that another president takes over that there is a transfer of power and there's the checks and balances and everybody is just trusting the other guys to do good it hasn't always worked great but it has not resulted in the military coup I do not want to see what happens if we result in having to do a military coup or coupé as they say on top gear but there's no Ian coop by the way just saying but it is frustrating it's really easy to get defeated and say whatever do absentee ballots don't go out to vote if you don't want to sometimes it's fun to go do the whole party but how many people on the day of actually get the day off to go vote whatever plan on doing if your state allows it mail in do absentee do early get it out of the way early and at your convenience and it becomes way easier to do that's my I love absentee voting I used to love going down to the polls but there were so many you can still go down there I guess and high five somebody maybe get a cookie if you're lucky but at least try do some basic research usually newspapers are going to have a breakdown a guideline take a look at the one three weeks before the election and go just do your absentee vote and just do it looking at the voters guides in the papers that's often one of the best ways to find out if you don't have to pay for your paper it's one somebody somebody will do it it's often one of the few if not the only way to find out on nonpartisan positions like school board which used to be so easy now they are so partisan yep trying to make the sheriff partisan here in Idaho that sounds great that sounds like a good idea said nobody ever but anyway yeah that is this has been kind of a difficult topic like I said I rolled my eyes when he started going off on the research he's been doing I'm like wait you're reading the news again what is wrong with you kind of wonder you're stressed out no it's but it's important we next cycle we have a good city councilman representing us who's running unopposed yay and a question on a levy to for the I had to google temporary levies because I didn't know what that was but now I know and this is for the city to expand open spaces that sounds pretty harmless sounds nice yeah nice yeah they're doing a lot of park stuff here it's nice I love parks and rec by the show and the department even those tiny little city elections and those weird little random one-off board elections for school boards or the irrigation district board or yeah stuff like that man judges oh my gosh so many I have the judges always throw me off because I'm not going to sit here and do google search or duck go search judges I don't know their voting record I don't know that's hard but ignoring all of that judges are a weird one I know they're weird in some states especially in the east judges are appointed and they never show up on ballots they're they're states like Oregon where judges have to campaign to get elected and then there's Idaho which is in the middle you get elected and then you just ask if you can stay or not Idaho Bar Association picks who's going to be judges recommends them to the governor who appoints them but then they show up on the ballot as to whether or not you want to keep that judge that is so dumb like you don't know these judges how often are you in court that you know four judges and can say oh that guy's a great guy or that no she votes way too harsh no that's dumb I know but I bet lawyers pay attention so we'll let them vote okay we got that all right so on the plus side it's October so Halloween's right around the corner spooky season or for me the holidays quote unquote the holidays have begun starts at the end of September with Oktoberfest and yeah we have plenty of feasting to distract ourselves lots of drinking to distract ourselves you've got neighbors you've got schools you've got communities to support and interact with over the next several months I suggest getting plenty of that unless you have social anxiety then you know on your time it's good for you do it and don't forget that there are people around you who matter yeah like our listeners and on that note that's all for this time so remember not all those who wander are lost