Welcome to Hallway Transgressions. I'm Chris.
I'm Ryan.
We are two private school alumni and this podcast serves to examine the worldviews of Christian pastors and teachers through a postmodern lens.
Hey, Ryan, what's your bright spot?
Well, for this week, I went to PetSmart and got both of our cats, Nezuko and Kiri, we got them harnesses because we want them to be walking cats.
So, we want them to go outside because they were outside cats at one point.
So, we want them to experience that again.
But we got, well, they didn't have any cat harnesses there.
So, I went to the dog section and got extra small dog harnesses, but they can still get out of them.
But it's pretty funny looking at them with them on.
I still put them on them every day and I'm trying to get them to walk in them because all they do is just kind of fall over.
That's my bright spot for this week.
It is a harness trading.
How about you?
That's so funny. That's what our cats, they don't like their harness.
They just kind of flop over and wait for them to take it off.
I don't have a leash yet either.
We just have the harnesses because I didn't want to spend, they're like $25 for a leash.
So, I have bungee cords.
I attached a bungee cord to one of them just to see if I could get them to walk and they just kind of lay there.
I can like pull them, they'll just kind of like get dragged.
So, we'll make progress eventually.
I did order better cat harnesses from Chewy.
Chewy sponsor us.
Anyways, yeah, what?
How about you? What's your bright spot for the week?
My bright spot is I've been so excited to start a podcast like this and I finally convinced you to join me.
And then tonight, I was just making dinner before it recorded and I just sliced my finger while I was cutting bread with just a serrated blade right into the tip of my finger.
And I went to the emergency clinic and I said I don't need stitches.
So, that's a win.
That's probably less expensive to you.
I don't know.
I haven't gotten the bill yet.
I haven't had stitches before.
So, I don't know what that would be like or how expensive it would be.
The last time I was in the emergency clinic was about 10 years ago because I smashed my other finger in a door and sliced it open.
I needed three stitches.
So, that was the last time I got my tightness shot too.
So, I got another one of those.
There you go.
Just keep enough to day on your shots.
Give it another 10 years.
You'll probably smash slash cut your finger open again.
You'll get another tightness shot.
I'm sure it's two out of 10.
I got eight more to come.
All right.
You want to jump in here?
Yeah, let's go.
So, I started out since this is our first episode with the cast of this podcast we're responding to.
So, we're responding to hallway digressions by the Lakewood Park Bible Department.
And we both went to school at Lakewood Park.
So, we have a little bit of history there with one of the teachers.
But the first one and arguably the host is Luke Johnson.
So, he graduated with a bachelor's of science in religion and a minor in biblical studies from the good old Luke Johnson.
The good old Liberty University in 2013.
And then he went to Grace Theological Seminary and got an MA in local church ministry.
And now he is currently a student at the Grace Theological Seminary in the doctor of ministry program.
He's just moved across three different schools.
This is Grace twice though.
Grace for that post-grad.
Or is it two different graces?
There's just one, right?
I think it's just one.
Yeah.
So, he writes in his bio that he began his time in ministry as a youth pastor for four years.
And then transitioned into a teaching position at Lakewood.
And after three years as a Bible teacher, he moved into a pastoral position with the church as the associate pastor of family and student discipleship.
And he continues to teach Bible with the school, oversee the spiritual formation of the student body at LPCS, and pastor their families and students at Lakewood Park Baptist Church.
He's the pastor at Lakewood?
He's the associate pastor of family and student discipleship.
Okay.
So, not the head pastor.
Gotcha.
Can I just say, I think it's crazy that we always start people out in youth ministry where there's the most malleable people.
It makes no sense to me why we put just like, oh, you want to help out in the church?
We'll put you with the youth.
We'll let you just form these young people and have them have to deconstruct that later on in life.
Yeah.
While you're learning how to teach and counsel and minister, but you're doing it with really young people.
Yeah.
It's super cool.
I would rather have people do it with adults who can actually like challenge them and not just kids who feel like they can't say anything because like, oh, it's an adult.
They know more than the type of deal.
Like we're always taught just like basically don't object or don't go against anything adults say.
Yeah.
I mean, arguably that's what they teach in the church anyway, as an adult too, is don't argue with the pastor.
Yeah, that's true.
I just think it's silly that I don't know, I don't think people should start in the youth ministry.
I mean, I was at a church in the youth ministry while I was going through school and they probably second guessed that after they were asking me about my beliefs.
I got interrogated at one point.
It was not fun.
That sounds like a church to me.
Yeah, a good time.
Good time.
Yeah, arguably youth ministry probably just shouldn't even exist.
But I think that's a conversation for a different episode.
Let's leave that job to daycares.
Daycares and schools.
America's healthiest institutions.
Are there any healthy ones?
Like are there any good place for children?
Go children don't have rights.
They just got to do whatever they're told anyway.
I like the library.
I think it's pretty good.
Our most social institution really.
What kids go to libraries anymore?
I don't know.
Is there Fortnite there?
Anyway, so he has two other podcasts actually.
He has a healthy homes podcast and one called 21 minutes to encourage your walk with Jesus in 2021.
And I'm sure we'll be digging into those at some point as well.
Yeah, sounds fun.
Yeah, so our former Bible teacher, Nick DiDomenico.
He was an unbeliever until college when he found Jesus at Penn State University.
From there, he transferred to Baptist Bible College and seminary
and got his bachelor's of science and pastoral studies and counseling.
And after that, he went and worked in a church and then came to Lakewood.
He's had a few roles there, but has mostly been teaching.
And I think it's been over 20 years at Lakewood.
His favorite course to teach is the infamous UTT Courts,
which stands for Understanding the Times,
which is basically just a course to dismantle every worldview
to prove that Christianity is the only viable one.
You take it your senior year and it is, of course, mandatory.
It's pretty bullshit and very obviously slanted to bias a Christian worldview,
but I do have to give it a little credit.
It was my first step in pushing me towards deconstructing my faith.
Yeah, and I had a good time memorizing fallacies.
That was always fun.
No, that was the year before.
Never mind.
That was the 11th grade class.
UTT, we had one of the other people that's on the show that we're talking about.
Yeah, we didn't really have his course, unfortunately.
But we did vicariously live it through, or at least I did.
I had friends that were a year above me that took his course,
and I went and sat in on some of those classes.
Yeah, you want to talk about the final?
Yeah, so this, the final, which who knows if it's still around.
I bet it is, but that's just an assumption.
The final that would be for this course.
So this course teaches you the different worldviews, right?
And of course, like Chris said, it is very biased towards Christianity.
But basically at the end, Mr. D would sit at the front of the class,
and each student would have to go up, and he would role play one of those worldviews,
while the student would have to figure out that worldview.
And I think the main gist was figuring out the worldview,
but you can feel the evangelical tendencies behind that,
because the whole point is to find their worldview
so that you know the right slant to use to evangelize Christianity to them.
So 10th grade Bible was apologetics, 11th grade Bible was theology,
and the senior year Bible was UTT.
So it's just all just building up to the big old,
making little evangelical soldiers who can argue for Christianity,
and somehow preach to someone with a completely different worldview
and show them that Christianity is the right worldview,
which I'm not, I don't know, somehow that made sense, I guess.
Chris Really worked for us.
They did a good job brainwashing us.
Chris For a little bit there.
Chris It lasted a few years.
Good job, guys.
Chris I don't like thinking about that class too much, but...
Chris I barely remember much of that class.
I kind of coasted through high school most of the time in senior year.
I was just doing whatever I wanted to do that year.
It was just kind of a blur.
That's where I kind of went off the rails for a little bit.
I want to say off the rails, but I didn't have, yeah,
I explored a lot of different things that year.
And yeah, I blame most of my friends I hang out with most
were like a year older than me.
So they graduated and the people that I ended up hanging out with that year,
I'm still friends with them.
I think we had a good time.
I don't regret anything I did that year,
but it would be questionable for, I would say for any 18 year old.
Chris And the newest host of this podcast is Jed Barber.
He went to Taylor University and double majored in biblical studies and history.
His mom is an absolute foundation at Lakewood.
So he grew up at the school, honestly, probably spent more time there than at home.
And they talk about that in the episode.
And it was convincing evidence.
At Lakewood, he teaches US history and Bible 10, which is the apologetics class.
And he teaches one semester of geography.
And then next semester, it'll be current events and mass media.
And it just makes me laugh thinking about doing a Christian worldview
and mixing that with critical thinking in the media.
I have in my notes just a LOL.
Jed Yeah.
Chris Is there anything else you want to say about him?
Any of them?
Jed Um, not necessarily.
I don't really know Luke Johnson.
Mr. D I've had my issues with in school and out.
And then Jed was just an underclassman kid who really just seemed like a little geek.
Like we're we're geeks.
He was kind of on our level, but like a little bit more.
Like he just makes me think of like the kids in Stranger Things,
like playing D&D down in the basement.
Chris Yeah. What's next?
Chris So Ryan, how do you feel about worship?
Ryan What do you mean by worship?
Because first of all, with us growing up, worship was always like the music singing portion.
Everyone would just call that worship.
And I always had an issue with that.
So what do you mean by worship?
Chris You know, that's exactly why I phrased it like that.
Because that's what you're going to say.
Singing specifically.
Ryan Okay, well, I was a part of the worship team at
Lakewood for three of my high school years, 10th through 12th grade.
And my I don't know, my biggest issue with that is more about like song choices and emotional
manipulation. I feel like the music in churches and in school is meant to get an emotional
response out of people before hearing a message. So they hear it in a certain way after having
their emotions heightened, which is just a very manipulative thing, in my opinion, I know they
probably don't mean to do it that way, but it works. And that's why they do it. And they see it as the
Holy Spirit moving and not as, oh, there's a bunch of kids with a bunch of hormones racing through
them. They're obviously going to react very emotionally to a lot of these things. So yeah,
my thing with worship is I didn't I don't like it really not the way it is right now. I would rather
it's way more authentic or genuine when it doesn't necessarily sound like a show like a concert. I
could go on a whole rabbit trail about worship and worship music.
Yeah, that's where that's that's where we're going. So in the in the episode, I took a quote from
they were asking they're talking about the junior senior retreat. And that's just where
obviously the juniors and the seniors will go to camp somewhere for a couple days as like a
breakaway trip. It's kind of spiritually motivated. You do a lot of worship, you do a lot of talking,
you do all the all the fun stuff, bearing your soul. But Dee mentions that it wasn't like chapel,
a lot of them were singing and raising their hands. And that just got me thinking back on just
the junior senior retreat. And he also mentions how there was a two hour student led devotional
for the seniors, but apparently no one talked in the junior class. So that just got me thinking
about the concept of the jealous God who demands worship and how worship is commanded in the Bible.
Like in Exodus 34 14, for you shall for you shall worship no other God for the Lord whose name is
jealous is a jealous God. Deuteronomy 1231, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way
for every abominable thing and that the Lord hates they have done for their gods for they even burn
their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. And sometimes even in the same sentence,
sacrifice was commanded like in second King 1736. It says, but the Lord who brought you up out of
the land of Egypt with great power and stretch out arm, him you shall fear and him you shall worship
and him you shall do sacrifice. Which is always a great thing in the Bible. I like in the Old
Testament just how many people get, you know, murdered. So.
Stan It's a lot of it.
James It's so bad.
Stan Oh, no, no. But yeah, Bible is full of murder and a lot of other things. We'll leave it at that.
James Yeah, I agree. I don't like the contrast that he makes between like, oh, they were raising
their hands there unlike chapel like chapels bad because people aren't raising their hands
and participating in the way that they think they should. Like, I always felt ostracized
because of that because I was never one like, yeah, when I was on the stage, like, I had to sing
and play. It was a performance really. I was performing for people. But when I was in like,
the crowds and places, I always felt ostracized just because I never felt like I wanted to sing
the songs or raise my hand or like, I didn't feel anything during those. And I always saw all these
people around me doing those things. And it's like, am I missing out on something? Am I doing
something wrong? It's just when you set a standard like that, it can be harmful to students that do
not that aren't wired that way that that's not their way. Like, it doesn't work for them. Not
everyone like, there's not like a standard of every person needs to be like this in order to
be a good Christian. Like, I feel like that's what they what they do. They're like, this is good.
This is bad. If you do anything different, then you're wrong.
James Yeah, it gives you I'm the same way. I never felt the same with singing. Like, I don't
I enjoy music and I enjoy listening to good people sing. And I enjoy listening to good people play
the guitar, but I'm not one to play the guitar. I'm not one to sing. And like, I never felt
deeply spiritually moved into raising my hands or dancing or singing. And I remember one sermon of
one sermon when I went to a different church, where they were talking about it was like a
guys chapel kind of there. It was a guy sermon kind of thing where it was like, like you guys can sing
too. You don't have to be embarrassed. It's not like feminine to sing kind of thing. And I just
like, yeah, but what if I just don't want to sing like I don't feel that emotional connection there.
And it just gives you such an anxious attachment. Yeah, definitely. And the only times I ever did
like, like I have raised my hands before, and it was literally out of peer pressure, like it turns
into a thing where it's like, if I'm not raising my hands, I'm going to look like a heathen, like I
am not worshipping. And a lot of the argument is that they say it's not the worship isn't for a
jealous God, but it's for your pleasure. But I mean, it's not seems like it doesn't seem to be
that way in the Bible. And it just kind of sounds like some reconciliation taped onto a command to
make it easier to swallow later. I pulled this quote from Michael Lang, a Christian worship leader
and artist. And he says, when we understand the greatness of God, the stability of his character,
the perfection of his justice, the depth of his depth of his grace, the limitless nature of his
love, the wonder of his holiness and the sacrifice of his son, it should not be difficult for us to
be moved greatly in our desire to worship God and worship him passionately. So if we take this
opinion as the correct interpretation of being commanded to worship, then every Sunday, are we
manipulated by music into being moved greatly in our desire to worship God passionately? And if
that's the case, then are those feelings even real? Like, are we really feeling the Holy Spirit move
through us if we're just manipulated by dopamine releases from listening to music? Yeah, I would
be more on the side of no, that is not the Holy Spirit. That is chemical reactions in your brain
from auditory signals. But I remember always being told stuff like that of like, the Holy
Spirit's moving through this place. And like, it was always said with such command. It's a type of
persuasion. Like it's trying to get people to believe that. Yeah, manifesting the Holy Spirit
to come. Oh, they're manifesting. Yeah, exactly. There's conditions. It's a ritual. Or to a moron
gathered. Also, people would always use that phrase, so wrong. That was literally the stupid
part of the Bible is confronting people. Had to do with confronting your neighbor when he's doing
bad actions or something. Not to do it by yourself, but to bring someone else. I do have to give
a D credit. He did point that out to us. He pointed out the Jeremiah 29, 11 too. I did appreciate that.
Yeah, that one does annoys me so much now. So, I don't give him credit for that one because it's
just everywhere. And like, it always just makes me upset. But on the other hand, it gives people
comfort. So, maybe they should do what they want to do. Are we utilitarian? Are we saying the ends
justify the means? If it gives this person, if false hope makes a person feel better, then it's
worth it. I would say most likely in the context of a Bible verse. Yeah, if someone reads that and it
comforts them, sure. But if they keep using that to tell other people not to worry about stuff,
you should probably still worry about certain things. Don't just drop everything and leave it
to God. Yeah, I heard that a lot too. Yeah, God doesn't seem to take that away from me.
Can't just leave my stress there. But you sure will take my money. Anyway,
I guess that's not God, it's the church. We should text the church.
We should. I always remember bonding and having a great time with classmates at the Junior Senior
retreat. But I never remember those connections really staying around once we entered into the
real world again. I'd say that was true across the board at any church camp for youth group as well.
It was just a place to be on fire for the Lord because it was the only focus for it was the only
focus for a week. And once you got back into the real world, the focus would wane as you work
through life. It just always felt like emotional manipulation without a purpose. You mean to say
that you didn't stay on fire for God, Chris, how could you? You're supposed to keep you're supposed
to keep the fire burning. It's always crazy that, you know, people would have spiritual highs or be
on fire for God after some untraditional like not common event. Like it always happened like,
oh, missions trips, oh, a Junior Senior retreat. Why did it always happen after events that weren't
routine? Couldn't be emotional manipulation. Couldn't be that.
It obviously isn't that. The Holy Spirit just tends to work more when people's schedules are
changed and you know, they're not used to what they're experiencing. That's just how the Holy
Spirit works, Chris. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were just talking about humans, right? Are we talking
about like actually the Holy Spirit? Oh, I don't know. I don't know anything about the Holy Spirit.
I feel like the more I think about the Holy Spirit, the less I know and it's very confusing.
If the Trinity is even real.
I'm sure the Trinity does not make sense. It was always the same thing as like the end of the week
of a church camp or the reach of retreat. It's like you'd always have the same sermon like two
nights before you'd have the big revival sermon and then the last night was like, make sure you
stay on fire for the Lord's sermon and I was like, you know that it's not going to happen because
you keep putting this sermon at the end here. Like you know, like statistically, we're just going
to go back into our normal lives because that's just what we do and like you can't keep the
conditions the same to keep us on fire for the Lord. So, is it just like you preach this and
you just feel better? You're just like, my hands are washed to this, it's up to the Lord to keep
them on fire now. Like that has always felt weird to me. Yeah, I don't think they see it like how
we see it either because I just see it as like a means to guilt trip people too. It's like you
were this way before, you remember how you felt here, why aren't you feeling that way now? And
then you're like, oh, it's because I've been doing this, I've just been going through routine. It's
like just guilt tripping kids. That's how I felt. It's just like you should feel guilty for not
feeling this way type of deal. That's always great to do to growing teenagers and I mean,
I went to my first camp in elementary school, so even younger than that, like just guilt trip and
make them feel bad and that they're not good enough. That's not going to be a problem later.
That's total depravity. We all fucking suck. You are a piece of shit. You are nothing. You're
only anything because God decides that you are. That's terrible. I don't need you to tell me that.
I tell myself that every day already. That's not true. You can't hurt me when I've already hurt myself.
That's not true or maybe it is. Oh, for that, I just wanted to be different than the people that
just spew that this is absolute truth. I can be wrong. Put that up there.
Stan Just gonna throw that out there.
James Just throw that out there. I am most likely wrong about a lot of things, but you know what,
it's still fun to grow and learn new things and you know, maybe change, you know, like grow,
like how growth requires change and not the same thing over and over again.
Stan Would you say maybe you're evolving? James Oh, that's a forbidden word, Chris.
Unless you include macro in front of it or micro. No, micro. I used the wrong one.
Stan I'm trying not to cry.
James Is this whole podcast just going to be inside jokes about our experience in a Christian school?
James No, none of this is staying. Or maybe it should. I don't know. Who knows, maybe the kids
that are at Lakewood right now still experience those exact same things because I, like I just
said, like growth requires change. I doubt they have changed that much. I bet a lot of the stuff,
like the building might look different, but a lot of the experience is still the same there.
James Little teaser is that our cover art, the hallway in the background is the Lakewood High
School hallway where we used to go to school and it looks the exact same.
Stan Is that a recent picture?
James Yeah, it was a picture from yesterday actually.
Stan Oh my God. Yeah, that is slightly triggering to look at those hallways.
James Yeah, that's why I put flames around it.
Stan Burn it down. So, Barbara was talking about his critical thinking and media class
and Johnson mentions, he goes, how often do you think you'll be using Babylon Bee in that class
for news and information? And it was kind of a joke because Barbara replies, I'm sure they'll
come up and them getting labeled as like a misinformation source, they are very clearly
trying to be satirical. And you know, that was just really triggering to me. So, now we're just
going to talk about the Babylon Bee for a long time.
James Yeah, you go for it and inform me because I honestly have never heard of that before.
Stan So, for those who don't know what the Babylon Bee is, it's a conservative version of The Onion
where they write satirical funny takes on top of possibly real news stories. They started out
poking fun at conservatives and then moved on to poking fun at the left wing. So, the problem with
conservative media is it's not funny. Like, it's funny to laugh at someone poking fun at your
subculture, which is how the Babylon Bee started. It's not so funny when your subculture tries to
poke fun at another subculture and especially conservative commentary, it's not great.
The conservative always likes to say that they're not given the same opportunities to be in comedy.
I'm specifically talking about Dave Rubin and Steven Crowder, who always say that they're being
oppressed and I don't know, I'm trying to be nice. They're always cut out and not given the same
opportunities as other comedians, but that's because they're just not funny. And you don't
get jobs being a comedian if you're not funny. So, the Babylon Bee, they have a problem right now is
where they can't seem to get away from the same three jokes. Their first joke is just make fun
of trans people. Their second joke is make fun of liberals for being triggered. And their third
joke is just a basic shallow misunderstanding of an issue. They sometimes still poke fun at religion,
but they don't get a lot of views for the religious satirical, or they don't get a lot of views for
the religion satire compared to their culture war bullshit articles. People on the right wing
really like the culture war. I mean, they created it, so of course they like it. And it's the only
thing that they can all make fun of and agree on besides making America worse. My favorite part of
the Babylon Bee is the onion wrote something about Elon Musk, and he just got really upset about it
and said it wasn't funny on Twitter. And then the Babylon Bee wrote something really nice about Musk,
and then Elon Musk tweeted at them and praised them. And then he went on a show or something,
and they were super hyping it up that Elon Musk was going to be on there. And it's just really
funny, he's so shallow with his ego that the onion made us some satire and he got really upset. And
then the Bee was like, oh hey, if we praise him, then maybe we can be on his side. And now Elon
Musk like really to his day, he really likes the Babylon Bee, he thinks they're very funny.
Stan Wow. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now just to see what kind of articles are on here.
Marshall What are the top ones right now?
Stan Buzzing right now, the top one, 10 woke changes Disney is making the old cartoons.
Some of these are, they don't, yeah, they don't seem to like,
uh, they want to keep things from being a thing, I guess. Like, Snow White will be a black man
accompanied by seven normal sized persons, each of a different gender. Like, here are 10 changes
coming down the pike is what they're saying, they're making jokes about the changes they'll
be making to old Disney classics because they don't think they were problematic, apparently.
Marshall Yeah, and it's just the same jokes, like, it was a trans joke.
Stan Pinocchio, the little wooden boy becomes a real girl.
Marshall Yeah, every time, it's just like, it's just every time.
Stan It has to do with homosexuality, this one's about polyeth. I think some of these are funny
from my perspective, I know what they're trying to do, but I just think it's funny because
there's the lady and the lady and the tramp and the tramp and the tramp.
It's this polyamorous love story will normalize polyamory
because I guess we need to normalize everything now.
Marshall I fucking hate those songs.
Stan Oh, this is great, I'm glad I learned about this website.
Marshall You want to learn some awful shit about them because...
Stan Yeah, tell me because I can see some of the articles on here where it just seems passive
aggressive.
Marshall So, they wrote a couple books, their newest one is the Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness
and I'm sure this is just going to be a treat. So, it was written by the website editors Kyle
Mann and Joel Berry. In it, they made a drinking milk joke, which in case you're unaware, it's a
reference to a 4chan meme that was a ruse to make it appear that white nationalists were using it
as a meme, only for it to be then adopted by white nationalist Ernest Lee. And then conservatives
got angry at the left for pointing this out. They got mad because they were now providing cover for
a racist dog whistle, so now they're upset about that. They constantly quote grifters like James
Lindsay, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, etc. Let's dive into James Lindsay. So, they had an interview for
their book launch and someone asked them who their expert was that they interviewed and they had said
James Lindsay. So, I kind of scrolled through his Twitter profile and he tweets a lot about a lot of
different topics and how they are communism. For example, he tweeted that being inclusive is doing
a communism and that doing a COVID policy, that's communism, big old communism.
It is. So, that tweet about the COVID policy, he quoted a tweet explaining how the Department of
Education and states are going to use COVID-19 relief funding to help recruit and retain teachers.
Big old communism right there. Retaining teachers.
Communist.
It gets so much worse, don't worry. So, here's the problem with all of this is that people take
this shit super seriously. Like, their audience is like, like you can say that it's satire
and you can compare it to the onion, but it's not, it's not really that. So, I went on Goodreads and
I pulled a couple reviews and it's just like, let me just read these two, they're interesting.
So, Connor Burke wrote, Babylon Bee's guide to wokeness is more than just a simple commentary
on today's society and inevitable future. It is incredibly witty, intelligent, and flowerbed,
and hilarious. The graphs and side comments are particularly humorous. Through the humor,
the authors illustrate the faulty, non-existent logic of woke culture and warn against continuing
forward towards culture-wide wokeism. This other review by, I'm gonna butcher this name.
This other review by Rochelle states, highly entertaining and truthful. Truth and jest as
they say. Satire is at its finest here. This will stay on my coffee table for a very long time and
continue to entertain and educate my family and guests. Long live Babylon Bee with a little bee
emoji. And this next one, this next one's long, but I promise it's worth it. Probably not because
we're talking about the Babylon Bee. Ever since the ascendance of the woke Democrats and their
destructive socialist agenda of destroying American values and history, Babylon Bee has been my
refuge from depression. Their daily cartoons cheer me. Their piercing of radical hypocrisy so spot on
that I've often daydreamed about sitting in their daily editorial meetings. I mean, how cool would
that be? Now comes the Babylon Bee guide to wokeness. In a single volume, the editors have
managed to squeeze in the essential rebuttal to left-wing craziness with huge dollops of the humor
they are known for. With chapters on racism, brainwashing the next generation, and how to
fight fascism with violence, they have exposed the duplicity of those running our country at the
moment. But as a historian of women's suffrage, I was more amused by the chapter on feminism and
gender. Because women are perpetually oppressed, the best way to liberate them is to turn them
into men who sleep around, work grueling corporate jobs and avoid having kids, while allowing men to
become women, thereby making women irrelevant as a category of humanity. Under this paradigm,
wearing a pink knitted hat to represent your genitalia, getting an abortion, and shunning
marriage are a must. As for LGBTQ plus people, they must be represented on 75% of all casting
characters in TV and film. They require that we defeat Mike Pence once and for all, and that all
our kids have access to essential puberty blockers. A delightful part of this section was a sample list
of possible genders, including agender, bgender, nonbinary, and my favorite, two-spirit. I hope
this book is a bestseller to validate the observation by author Mary Pettibone Poole,
he who laughs last. And she didn't change the pronouns, I guess she's not woke, at least Babylon
Bee is. The worst part is, so there was a research poll done by The Conversation, and almost, so they
took claims by the Babylon Bee, they took their headlines and editorialized them a little bit
for a survey, and almost 30% of people who identify as Republicans believe that the headlines were
real. Like, it's, the problem with the Babylon Bee is that they hide behind this satire, like,
oh it's funny comedy, but like people believe this, like they're just parroting these problematic
points to a huge audience. And like it's, and it's always, it's always simple things where,
like it's the same three jokes, and they just, just recycle the same jokes. And I've been doing
a lot of thinking, and it's, it's just, it touches in on this, and it just touches in on this,
how it's been, the concept of nuance has been degraded, and once you lose, and a lot of social
and political issues right now, once you lose the concept of nuance, then you just lose the concept
of a gray area in life, and the world totally becomes black and white, which is easier to create
content for, and to create quick bucks. But like, it's the same thing you learn in church, that good
and evil are the only two things that exist, like there's a right and a wrong, but like life isn't
like that, and like once you try to get rid of that, you just create two different classes of
people, and just the class that feels like they're better, and the class that feels like they can
never be good enough. Well yeah, it's just like sarcasm, but like you can say it's a joke, say it's
sarcasm when really it's passive aggressiveness, and there's a lot of like them saying this is true
behind the type of deal, like people will, yeah, it's like making jokes, but it's sending a message
and separating, just like creating a divide even more. Is that what you're trying to say?
Because I can see that that's usually what, like that's why like the internet has just divided
the country because of content like the Babylon Bee, this is getting just fed to one side of people
creating an echo chamber, and I feel like the same thing happens on the other side, because all I get
is just like leftist jokes about the right and making fun of the right, and it's like they just
feed these certain people these same ideas over and over again, affirming stupid beliefs.
And you can say, oh, I was just joking, but it's still affirming a lot of beliefs that people have
that are harmful. Yeah, exactly, and like I bring out the Babylon Bee because they made a joke about
it, and like I didn't want to get super political about it, obviously, I lean left, I think. I don't
want to try to hide that behind anything. But like my problem with the Babylon Bee is that they write
their headlines in a way that tricks a significant amount of their audience, and like the intersection
between being on the right, being right wing, I know I use that term, being on the right wing,
and being conservative is very significant. And so that's why I make the correlation here,
with Johnson making a joke about the Babylon Bee being a news source, like he even made it in the
podcast of like, you're going to use them as a news source kind of thing. And like the problem is,
is that like, like their audience gets tricked significantly more than, well, here in the
conversation, they do the same thing with the onion, and the highest satirical claim by the
onion that was believed by Democrats was 14%. Like it's like significantly less. And like,
that's what scares me is like, I feel that church has trained people, I want to be careful how I say
this. I feel that church has trained people to take things that people in power say as fact without
double checking it. And that's like one of my biggest things that I have against sermons is
that you just listen to someone who has a lot of power over you who has a huge power dynamic between
you and a pastor on the stage, as much as you think that a pastor is your friend,
and they most likely are your friend. I don't have any problems with personal relationships
with pastors, but when they get on the podium, and speak to you and do a sermon, there's a huge
power dynamic there. And your inclination is just to believe what they're saying, because you trust
them and you have a friendship with them. And they're the ones that went to school. But if you
don't go and look and read it for yourself, you don't fact check everything your pastor says,
and you don't double check into it. And it just it's you're getting a college, you're getting a
class of like, like you're learning, but without the homework and the research and the stuff that
you put in by yourself later after your hours, so you can study for the test, like you're missing
half of the equation and learning something, and you're not looking at things for yourself.
And it seems that data seems to show that it's becoming a problem on one side of the aisle more
than the other. And I mean, it's definitely the fact of how social media amplifies things. And
definitely between there's more similarities on the right wing and conservatives and
and church going people and what they believe. And so it's easier to amplify misinformation on
that side. Yeah, yeah. But the problem is to as both sides are saying, do your research,
everyone thinks they've done their research and they know what they're talking about. No one
is willing to admit that like they don't know anything. And you could tell people that don't
know much when they claim to know something because most of the people that know a lot have
learned a lot, have researched a lot are usually like, I don't even know anything anymore. Like,
I know nothing. The more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know anything. There's like
so much out there. And so we've got a bunch of ignorant people that think they've done research,
think they know what they're talking about and aren't willing to budge on it because they did
their research according to them. So it's a problem because no one's willing to like, I feel like
people just aren't pointing it out. And if you do, then they just turn it into satire like this,
a website like any steps towards progress are just turned into a joke.
Yeah, because it's easier to make a joke than anything else. But like a lot of it is like the
bar for what you can consider research is like really low in the internet age too.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because people can find anything to affirm any belief. You could tell me anything,
I could find someone on the internet that affirms it some way. Like you can find whatever you want.
If you think like, oh, I don't have an example in mind, but anything you want, you can find someone
who agrees with you because of the internet and that reinforces it. All I'm saying is we need more
bullies. People need to get bullied more. Bullying works. I mean, that's my slogan. Like,
you didn't even know that. But like I say that constantly, like bullying works. We should bully
people. Bully people more and then we won't have these issues.
Kids aren't being bullied. Actually, they're just being bullied in a different way. It's very
different now. Yeah, I'm sure it is. I don't think I've ever been cyber bullied or like read
comments on something of someone like making fun of me. That's never happened. One time I made an
argument on Facebook in kind of defense. I used, I was making an argument about something apologetic
wise and I used something that sounded like evolution and you bullied me on Facebook about it, but
that's fine. I just literally popped into my head right now. I don't even remember that.
Yeah, I stay away from most social media and it's not like some like choice that I made. It's just
disinterest. Never, never really got interested. I tried. I tried. I tried. I tried. I tried. I
really got interested. I tried. I tried to fit in. I had like a Twitter post and now it's really fun
to look back at my Twitter posts and like sophomore year of high school because they're really cringy,
but that's all I have. After that, I just kind of gave up. I was like, this isn't my thing. I tried
it. It's not my thing and I've never gotten back into it. I'll know what it is. It's not interesting
to me. I don't care about your lives. I don't care about your opinions. I'm not going to read
about it more. You're so ignorant of so many things and I don't even have social media profiles and
I still just love looking at some of these grifters. I don't find any choice. I'll get some
entertainment from Reddit, but other than that, I just I don't really look at it. I don't even read
the comments on Reddit. I just use it. Like I just go on the home page because all the interesting
articles are at the top and I just look at them like I don't care. I'm the same way. I don't care
what you people think. Yeah, I just I use the internet for entertainment. I don't use it for
much like I don't do much research anymore because I'm not writing anything. The most I do is just
learn different points of view and perspective. Like I'll read that just to get an idea of what
other people are thinking. Yeah, most of the time, it's just like most people aren't willing to try
to understand the other side. They just think mine makes the most sense and it should make the most
sense to everyone. Like how cannot everyone understand this instead of being like oh, I see
why they think that. Here's why I disagree. It's less of a conversation. It's always one-sided.
It's not like talking back and forth. It's talking at on both sides. It's just I never see any
conversations like a productive conversation going on anywhere. That's just why social media is really
bad for those conversations. Whenever I'm criticizing the right wing, I'm not criticizing
normal people who are conservatives or Christians or evangelicals. I got plenty of criticisms for
them and a lot more specific. When I'm talking about the right wing, I'm talking like really far
right kind of people like the fascists and the Nazis and QAnon. I think I need to clarify that
a little more. Evangelicals are a lot on the right and that's kind of the problem is they sit
on the conservative side and they're very involved in a concerning amount of things that are becoming
very far right problems. I'm not criticizing, I think their economic policy of being fiscally
conservative is bad, but I can argue that. Those conversations people have in person,
actual economists have those conversations with each other and that's much better than two people
on Twitter just fighting it out. I just want to clarify when I'm talking about the right wing,
I'm not talking about the average people. I'm talking about not the people who got
bamboozled, but I'm talking about the grifters who obviously don't believe what they believe
and just being hateful because they get clicks and stuff. It's just a pipeline I'm talking about.
Which points out a problem that I think I see with social media and everything is that I see it
portraying in people's minds that people on the right will get stuff and it will portray the entire
left as the radical left and the same on vice versa. We'll get this image that the entire right
is these radical QAnon believers. We'll just associate all of these things just with the
right in general. I feel like social media has a good... They do good at generalizing people,
and but the wrong type of generalization. It's not an average of the beliefs. It's the most radical
beliefs we're going to associate with this group of people that not necessarily have those.
Polarization has increased and there's a couple really good books I read recently talking about
historical. Voters used to vote for Democrats and local and then Republican for federal.
And as the parties polarized throughout the last 60 years, it's becoming worse and worse.
And that is true, but you can also talk about how the Overton window has shifted very far right.
It's disingenuous stuff. This is going to get really political. But it's disingenuous stuff of
you have people in the GOP party like Jim Banks and Braun and people who the evangelical voting
bloc, which is the biggest voting bloc in the US, have voted these people in. And these people
think that Joe Biden is a radical socialist who's bringing communism into the US, which is obviously
not true. But if you think that Joe Biden is on the left, then your worldview is so small compared
to like Joe Biden would be a conservative in a European country. It's a weird worldview that
like, like the right is so focused on just such small issues and the left is very expansive.
And so it's interesting to look at the center right and it's very interesting to look at the
beliefs the center right has. They hold a lot of the same values that the very far right has,
and they overlap in a couple of key instances. And so that makes the group look a lot smaller.
Then you have, you know, you have center left, you have liberal left leaning, and then far left,
and then you have a whole other separate area for democratic socialism, stuff like that. And it's
just interesting to see how similar the right is on key parts while being different on like,
do we actually want a fascist state or not? But that's a big problem is when these voting blocks
were created 50 years ago when the evangelical church was motivated by the Koch brothers and
a couple other people into mostly it was actually they were rallied together to overturn abortion.
So it's just been like a big 50 year mobilization effort. So we got what we got now, but
that's our difference. I think you like politics a lot and I have had zero interest in politics.
I like I barely know anything about political stuff.
You just got me on this voting block thing and I just I just read a couple like
four or five books about this. And it's been really interesting to see polarization happen
through like data earlier. Anyway. Yeah, I don't know if Luke Johnson was actually
like being serious about it as a source. I think he was joking when he said that though.
That's how I interpreted it was. Yeah. And making a joke about using the Babylon being a history
class. Yeah, it's hard to tell. Like I just pointed out though, because so many people like
like it. Well, it was it's because of the controversy. So that's what Barbara mentioned,
like the misinformation source. So they wrote a couple things. Let me pull those up. It's going
to take 10 minutes. Okay. So this is recorded and okay. So around the time this was recorded
in June 2021, one of the co-founders of the Babylon Bee responded to Facebook removing one
of their posts. The Bee made a Facebook post linking a story to their Amy Coney Barrett
Supreme Court nomination with the headline, Senator Jarrino demands ACB be weighed against
a duck to see if she is a witch, which was a reference to a 1975 film, Monty Python and
the Holy Grail. Facebook removed the post and demonetized the Bee's Facebook page, citing their
policies against incitement to violence. Dillinard said that in what universe does a fictional quote
as part of an obvious joke constitute a genuine incitement to violence? How does context not come
into play here? They're asking us to edit the article and not speak publicly and about internal
content reviews. And in June 2021, it happened again, because Facebook said they would moderate
satire that punches down saying in response that we're not punching down, we're punching back.
And August 2020, Twitter also suspended the Bee's account after it was mistakenly caught in a spam
filter. And 2021 Mailchimp suspended the Bee's account and what the company later said was an
error. In response, Dillin said that they would no longer use Mailchimp services. And August 2021,
Dillin accused Facebook of throttling the reach of the Babylon Bee after drop in referral traffic
from Facebook. So the big fight is that that's what Barbara was referring to with them being
flagged as misinformation. They weren't technically flagged as misinformation. They broke, in
Facebook's opinion, they broke content policies. And so they were removed. Gotcha. And like it's
the because it's so hard because we've had social media that's been unmoderated and left unchecked,
and it gave birth to like pizza gay and QAnon and all this other like horrible shit. And then we
start to moderate and then we start to moderate and then the Babylon Bee gets caught in spam filters
and they get flagged for breaking content policies. So like it's hard to like what are you writing
that gets you flagged in content policies like it's concerning. But that's what he was referring to.
I wish you would have talked more about it. It was an intro episode. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately.
I mean, there's so many more things that happen after this episode got recorded too,
because then he started talking about cancel culture. And that's always a classic.