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A lot of my fellow atheists gets so irritated at me when I say that
I don't think we can effectively change minds without involving emotion, and they're like,
no, no, this is about logic, it's facts, it's data.
They hear emotion and they think manipulation. And I'm not talking about manipulating
people, especially in a malicious way. I'm talking about engaging the heart as
we engage the brain. Psychologist doctor Lawrence Read talks about how even our facial
expressions might change whether or not people accept us, receive us, believe us,
even give us the time of day. This is huge. Doctor Reid's
One Dream series is so good on this. It's called Understanding Human Emotions.
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drem dot com slash seth. That's w O N d r i UM dot
com slash seth. Get your free month, do it now, one drem
dot com slash seth. What the hell is going on in Texas now?
Actually, I have this conversation about many states in our union. I'm calling
it a union because it seems like the United States is actually two warring nations.
I want to talk though, specifically about Texas with Texans, and so
I have RN Rob. He is an activist, producer, author legend.
I've got Will Judy, State Director of American Atheists. You're still state director?
Is that correct for Texas? Will? That's me yes? And I've
got Michelle Palmer. She is a teacher and she is a former candidate for
the Texas State Board of Education and she ran as a secular person. I
got to start there, Michelle, you announced out loud, I'm not religious.
I would like to run for Texas State Board of Education pretty much.
If you look at my ballot pedia, which has religion on it, mine
says secular humanist. You know, we have pretty open conversations in my classroom,
and my students know that I am not religious, and many of them
are not religious. I teach high school, and it seems like about a
third of my students, and this is in a completely black and brown school,
are not religious. Now, this is a taxpayer funded public school.
Correct, So you talk about your own positions. Does that get sticky at
all when you are speaking personally about your position, whether it's politically, religiously
or whatever. Because I teach social studies and I have to teach about all
of the religions and all of the political persuasions and so forth, I do
a lot of class discussion, and I need to be open with my students.
It's a big part of who I am. Sure I think what I'm
asking those like, we're telling religious people, well, you can't proselytize,
you know, how much of the classroom is about you personally, in your
positions, philosophies, etc. You're not telling people what they should think,
but if they ask, you tell them what you think. Is that fair?
That is fair? Okay? And you know my students, they have
questions and so forth. And I'm pretty honest about myself. So when you
ran, don't you have to have God on a resume? In Texas?
Isn't it like a requirement? Like to run, don't you have to waive
the banner of Jesus? And did they use that against you whenever you were
running? The Texas Constitution actually requires that you believe in God to run for
office. Now that's unconstitutional as we know, but it is in the constitution.
I would say, you know, amongst a certain group of Texans,
yes you kind of have to waive the Jesus banner. But I mean I
don't run on that party, and in the other party it's a little less
important. I would say, are and Raw what did you run for?
Remind me I ran for a Texas State Senate and I knew that there was
no chance that I was going to be elected, but it was just frustrating
to me that normally in this district. It's just Republicans running a primary against
each other. They never have anybody else run against them, and so what
you end up with election after election is two conservative Christian Republicans each accusing the
other of being Satan. Well one look at you, and they must have
got distracted at least for a moment. I just pictured No, we've all
seen those Robert Stamped political ads ago. You know, John Doe is a
man of the people. He came from nothing and he worked his fingers to
the bone to become a success in the great state of Texas. He's a
man of faith. Obligatory shot of John Doe and a church pew with his
family and the music plays. He loves God, and he loves Texas,
and he loves America. So I'm trying to picture you running against that in
the state of Texas. Well. This guy's platform, his primary issue was
to make sure that trends people couldn't pee. I'm sorry, I just I'm
sorry. I hang out was his platform, Like it was this about the
transgender bathrooms. He wanted people checking IDs in public restrooms. He wanted police
to be checking people's IDs to get in to a public restaur I mean,
like any restaurant anywhere, and so I thought this would be great. I'm
not gonna get I'm not going to win this election, but if I can
get a debate with this guy, that would be hilarious because of course he's
a Young Earth creationist, doesn't know fuck all about anything, and it would
it would have been great to get It's just a guy who won, the
guy that always wins. Yeah, And by the way, I was told
that when I started, when I ran, I was told that you would
need thirty five thousand dollars to start with and build up your money from there,
Whereas if I was running for a similar office in the UK, I
would be capped at thirty five thousand pounds. You can only spend up to
that much. And so that's where I see a fundamental problem with American politics
under this guy. My opponent at the onset of the election was given a
check for two million dollars for his campaign. Were you as Satanist at that
time or was it did that come later? Just as good as I mean,
I've been accused of being a Satanist since I was eleven. Okay,
all right, well, I know you you're affiliated with the Satanic Temple.
Yeah, I would go was very recent, that's that's within the last two
years. I would vote for Will Judy for public office. I don't know.
Will. I know you're a leader, right, You're one of those
natural leaders, So will have you run for office of any kind? I
have nuts, I've thought about it. I almost did, almost, kind
of almost ran for the Texas Senate in my area. But I haven't found
a position that is worth me running. I had to envision me in the
seat, and hey, what kind of change can I affect with that position?
And I just think I would hate campaigning. I think I would.
I just I see it. I know my personality. But again, if
it's a means to an end, then I'm all in. I just wanted
to throw out that I was in politics just long enough to know that I
don't want to be in politics. Yeah, I concur with Will when he
says that he wouldn't like campaigning. I hated it, okay, because it's
all it is is asking for money, right Will? I hate asking for
money, and I would love the debate part. I would love putting a
spotlight on running as an open secular humanist, open atheists, whatever, I
want to have a spotlight on it in the world generally, in Texas specifically.
But again, I'm still thinking about it. I have absolutely not ruled
it out, but I'm always looking for something to run for but haven't found
it yet. And but An, I give you mad props for running when
there is no one else running for that position, knowing that it's a super
red area. I know other people that have done it and have nothing but
respect for y'all. Will tell me about the specific types of activism right now.
In Texas, you got Governor Abbot. He is looming above all.
It's like the death eater. They just come to suck away everyone's soul.
Am I exaggerating? Well soul and maybe that's part. He's sucky and they're
all sucking. They are sucking something. And it's not just as Abbot.
In Texas, I've learned. I'm really new to the political stuff, but
in Texas it's kind of like a three headed monster. Governor, Lieutenant governor,
and attorney general. They kind of run the show and they're sycophants.
Their crew does the rest in the legislature. So it's a lot of work,
a lot of work, but they're over they being the people you just
described and I just described, they're overrepresented in the Texas legislature. They don't
represent whose Texas is and what Texas is is a non voting state. I
you can count on half of the registered voters not voting, and with that
you get the representation that we currently see in Texas. And people like Michelle
and I and are all all of us on the screen are working to fix
just that. If if I was ever going to run for another office,
it would be Board of Education, even though I know it's an unpaid position,
it would be it would be quite taxing, and it would be a
lot of work for no pay, but it would still be I think symbolically
important perhaps that I'd be on the board after fighting against the board for so
long. Michelle Palmer, tell me about the school boards. There has been
a concentrated effort by evangelicals, many who are well funded and highly organized,
and they're saying, we need to jam in, we need to actually stuff
the school boards with Christian nationalists. Can you flesh that out for me?
Sure? So, there's several layers of school board here in the state of
Texas. There are the district school boards, which is where a lot of
that is happening. Several of the suburban school districts in Harris County where I
live, the Houston area have fallen to the Christian nationalists insanity. They are
banning books left and right they are trying to do. You know, they're
they're like frothing at the mouth for these things about every school have every classroom
having the Ten Commandments prominently displayed, and acquiring the Bible or other religious texts
to be read in class. Things like that. They're just waiting for these
things to be passed because they're so excited about it. And what's super sad
to me about it is that you know, they are white nationalists as well
as Christian nationalists, and many of these districts, because we are Texas,
we are a very diverse state, you know, our majority black and brown
students, and they're having to be represented and be controlled or have their education
controlled by these horrible people. And then there's the state Board of Education,
which is what I ran for, and they're the ones who tell teachers what
to teach. So they're the ones that create the standards that we teach in
social studies or science or whatever subject. It is social studies and science being
the ones who that generally bring the controversy, of course, and I know
that in about ten years ago now, there was a documentary made about the
Texas State Board of Education called the Revisionaries because they liked to revise history and
science so much. The cover of it has dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. As
was mentioned earlier, many Young Earth creationists on the board. Sanity had been
gaining a little bit of traction. But then, of course last year we
had redistricting which took away some of that sanity and made the board go back
in the other direction again with very very jerrymandered districts that are virtually unwinnable for
those watching from the outside end. We talk about jerrymandering quite a bit,
but define it for those who aren't familiar with what jerrymandering is, if you
would, Michelle, of course, so I'm a government teacher, this should
be easy for me. Jerrymandering. So when you redistrict, you are looking
at the census data that happens every ten years, and you are redrawing the
lines of all all the different districts from school boards and city councils, all
the way up to Congress to make the districts more equal in size, and
jerrymandering was actually named after a person that did it one hundred and fifty years
ago or whatever, is to make those districts as favorable for your party as
possible. And now with computers that can be done down to the block.
And so what is generally done is what's called cracking and packing, which is
where you cram as many of the other party into districts as possible. We
have eighty eighty five percent Democratic districts in the city here in the Houston area,
and then spread the Republican voters into as many districts as possible. So
Texas generally votes about fifty four forty six Republican, so definitely Republican, but
not overwhelmingly. But about two thirds of our elected officials, two thirds of
our congress members, two thirds of our state legislators, more than two thirds
of our state senators are Republican because of the way that redistricting is done in
state of Texas. Interesting to watch the districts that have been jerrymander. Just
like abstract art, they sort of spider out in all these bizarre ways,
and you realize this is by design right. They want to walk out the
opposition. Maybe that explains how people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others get elected.
I don't know. That's another conversation, Aaron. Back to the text
books in Texas public schools, was it true that they used to teach that
Moses was a real guy? Texas history books that was proposed said that the
United States government and or our legal system was based on a covenant between God
and Moses, which the Board of Education knew that that was false. There
were a couple of history professors that had come in from the East to give
testimony, to give specific quotations from the Founding fathers to the effect that they
were based on Greek democracy and enlightenment, and there was one that specifically said
that we were that it was not influenced by the Ten Commandments at all.
There was a quote specifically saying that from one of the Founding fathers, the
type of government the United States has was designed to be purposefully the very opposite
of the type of government that is commonly associated with Moses. The Board of
Education knows that they know that it is fact where they talking about the people
that were taking our testimony. They knew that what they were teaching was not
factual, that it was wrong, but they said they openly admitted that they
are going to teach American exceptionalism. That they had to have the kids believe
that America was a blessed nation only because we were founded on God's principles,
and as long as we stay by God's principles, that our country will remain
blessed. They tell this lie to the kids, and it doesn't matter that
they know that it's not really true. They said in the Board of Education,
the chairman of the board at that time said that we can't teach anything
that would be embarrassing. So they wanted to make sure that they did not
teach civil rights issues. They wanted to make sure that they did not They
didn't even teach about slavery. They wanted to remove Thomas Jefferson and replace him
with Jefferson Davis, who ironically advocated that the whole purpose for the Civil War
was slavery, not states rights. But they're still arguing that it should be
states rights, that that's what the Civil War was about. One of our
history teacher, one of our history books, actually said that It described the
slaves as immigrant workers who benefited by adopting Christianity. Typical history book written by
white people or a white nationalists rather will judy. There's a book out by
Catherine Stewart called The Power Worshippers, and she asserts that much of this isn't
about theology, it's not about personal faith, it's not about Jesus, etc.
It's about weaponizing religion for power. And they see the demographic changes.
I'm just going to focus on Texas. They see the demographic changes happening in
Texas, which is easy to see that it's getting more black and brown.
So they're going to lose their power as a results with their calculation, and
so they're doing things now to hold on to this power as long as possible.
So they know that and eventually they'll be phased out, but they don't
want to delay that as much as they can. And religious freedom has been
a more of a shield a protect in generations past, but they've turned that
shield into a sword. I borrow that from from our friend and recital.
This is a very apt description of what they're doing. So religious freedom again
used to protect people, but now they're using it to impose their views on
a population for the purpose of holding on a power again as long as possible.
I love watching these people lose their I mean, I don't love it,
but I find it fascinating and amusing and interesting to watch them lose their
minds over things like a black little mermaid, right, I mean, of
all the things going on in the world. Oh no, we have a
protagonist of a fairy tale and we have representation, and they call it an
attack on white people or American heritage. Yeah, it's it's an affront to
their privilege. When you grow up explicitly and implicitly told that this is your
country, this is your space. You are the ruler of everything you see.
You can move about as you wish. When there's any challenge to that,
it's pearls are clutched, and they get very uncomfortable with that notion.
And a lot of people don't even know it. They they kind of don't.
They can't intellectualize why they're getting so upset that there is a black,
a brown little mermaid, or now there's these people they don't agree with on
their beer cans. What's the phrase equality feels like oppression to the privileged I'm
paraphrasing, but that's we will see it every day, and it's it's just
getting more and more obvious, getting louder and louder, and that's something that
again, all four of us are fighting against. Ten years ago, the
Board of Education was saying, in this weird language that they can't teach the
civil rights issues because that was embarrassing, and they can't teach slavery because that
was embarrassing, and they can't teach anything at all because all of that was
embarrassing. And then somebody published the critical Race Theory, and the Board of
Education and the Republican Religious Right basically adopted that name. Not the actual thing
that is not being taught in schools, by the way, they just adopted
the name critical race theory because it fit what they were trying to censor.
So when they say that they when they used to say that they can't teach
about slavery and they can't teach about civil rights because both of those imply that
we are not divinely guided. They've now taken the label that they've taken the
name of that and applied that to this other thing. So now they're calling
it critical race theory. And they're pretending as if if we know what our
forefathers did that somehow we will personally be ashamed or hateful of ourselves, just
like teaching how to hate white people, which of course it's not. I'm
fully aware of what people, what the United States has done to Blacks,
to Jews, to the Irish, to women, to Native Americans, to
the Japanese, to the Chinese, to Mexicans living in this country after the
Civil War. I'm fully aware of the atrocities my country has visited on its
own people. If you want to know how bad things can get, just
look at how bad they've already been. But if you have this illusion that
we've always been perfect and things like this can't happen, that's how things like
this happen. More to come in just second, I want to talk about
making America great again. Apparently we were great. Now we're not great.
We have to return to great. What do these people mean? I will
ask my panel of guests next. Today we're talking Texas as it relates to
the rest of the country. My special guests are in raw Will Judy,
and Michelle Palmer, all activists and all Texans. Michelle Palmer I'm interested in
a clip I saw by one of my favorite actors, Brian Cranston Walter White
from Breaking Bad, and he was just speaking to its values about maga make
America great again. And he had a great point because if you ask someone,
well when was that, like, when were we great? Well what
specific decade? Quite often you will hear the nineteen fifties, the Golden Age.
Yes, So when I teach US history, you know, I have
to teach the Texas version of that US history, which you know y'all were
talking earlier, And this is from World History standards, but I wanted to
read this to you. This is literally in the standards you have to teach
for world history, identify examples of American ideals that have advanced human rights and
democratic idea is throughout the world. That is literally something that the world history
teacher that I'm a mentor for has to teach next week. But you know,
there is a lot of American exceptionalism in the standards that we have to
teach as social studies teachers here in the state of Texas. And you know,
when I'm teaching government and I have to teach about the twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty elections. You know, my students have a lot of opinions about
this, and so they're very interested, and they get really energetic during the
discussions and so forth, and you know, they want to hear about the
fact that, you know, they I try to leave my personal politics out
of my government class and let them come to their own decisions. I never
try to sway them in any way. I often even take the other side
and argue with them, just to make sure they can flesh out their own
arguments. And you know, when one of them will point out that,
you know, make America Great Again is a play on Hitler's motto when he
ran, you know, make Germany great Again, which was basically the German
that in German is basically his motto. It's very challenging teaching the Texas version
of history in a classroom that is not full of white students, because they
know they have experienced, they have lived what it is to be a Texan
who is not white. They experience racism. They are not big fans of
our former president. During the twenty twenty election, Joe Biden came to a
building literally next door to my campus and gave a speech and while he was
there, those lovely Maga trucks that we have in Texas that have the giant
flags on the back, there were hundred of them just circling that building over
and over and over again, and my students were freaking out. I mean,
if it look it feels like a threat. I mean, they've got
plausible deniability. We're just driving around waiving our flags because hashtag freedom. But
when you realize who these people are, many of them come from kind of
a literal weaponized point of view. Right They've been stockpiling waiting for a holy
war on God's democracy. They're capable of anything that's terrifying. Absolutely. Aaron
mentioned something earlier that made me want to point this out my entire and Will
knows this. My entire reason for running for state Board of Education was because
I was looking at the eighth grade US History curriculum, which is the first
half of US history, and then I teach the second half in high school.
And I realized that if I had been an eighth grade US History teacher,
that I would have to teach what he was talking about. This as
a part of the founding of the United States, And that's the whole reason
I'm running. Did I run for this position? Whenever it's up. It's
absolutely insane to me some of the things that are in the curriculum to teach
history here in the state of Texas. It's funny. I saw a meme
that I laughed a little too hard at and it showed a bunch of people
in big jacked up pickup trucks and there's black smoke billowing out of the exhaust
pipe and they're covered in Trump flags and American flags, and the caption is
when the extra small condoms go on sale at Walmart. And I just thought
it was fun. I've just made me laugh out loud. Are and raw,
let's talk about this particular culture. They are draped in flags, American
flags, Jesus flags, Trump flags, Fuck Biden flags, Confederate flags.
What's your take, Well, they're very binary and they're thinking, so that
has to be us versus them. Tribalism. And one of the things that
bothers me is where I constantly hear that you're either on the right or you're
in the far left, because there can be no left without saying the word
radical in front of it. Because Fox News will only talk about the radical
leftis, and somehow Biden is counted on the radical left. I had to
tell a friend of mine, an old friend of mine, just a couple
of days ago, that the problem that we on the left have with Biden
is that he's not on the left. Everybody president in my lifetime, and
I'm sixty, every president we've ever had has been on the authoritarian right.
Now, hang on, hold on, let me push back just a little
bit. And I'm not a huge Biden fan, but in terms of his
acceptance of LGBT people and the fact that he isn't a Christian nationalist, I
mean, we know he's a devout Catholic and he took his oath on a
Bible that's you know, the size of a large cardboard moving box. Did
you see that thing. It's massively big bid board and whatnot. But as
far as inclusion, in terms of being a humanist, I would align him
more with liberal values. I mean, that's fair, isn't it. He
is more in line with liberal values than some other presidents have been. But
if you go over the course of my sixty year life's been JFK was also
Catholic and was also surprisingly progressive for a Catholic at that time and for a
president now. But even he is counted on the authoritarian right. Jimmy Carter
evangelical Christian. He's also atypical for an evangelical Christian because you know, the
man is ninety some odd years old building homes for the homeless. How leftist
is that? But even he was listed in the authoritarian right. Kamala Harris
had proposed some leftist policy, so we could argue that she's quasi leftist there,
and she may be across that boundary because it's not just the far extremes
of either side of the political compass. There's four quadrants there, because there's
two axes. And one of the more important things that people don't look at
is that there's the authoritarian and the libertarian. When I say libertarian, I
don't mean the right wing political party. I mean the anti authoritarian ones,
those who don't want more I want. I'm accused of being a status I'm
accused of worshiping the state, when in fact I want less government than the
GOP wants to impose. Okay, we'll hang up hold. But if Biden
is pro government programs to help minorities, marginalized groups and the disadvantaged. That's
a liberal value. If Biden is against the death penalty, that's a liberal
value. Yeah. But I'm understanding liberal to be more of a centrist position.
I mean, if you look at the political compass, I mean,
we can get lost in the weeds all day. This is all semantics.
I know, definitions are all subjective, right labels are essentially how we apply
them. But if I I don't see any comparison. You know, if
I look at basic humanistic tendencies, I see that there is no contest.
And even though I'm not a huge Biden fan, for me, I'm like,
well, for me, it's there's not not even a moment of hesitation.
If I'm a humanist, I've got to go in this direction, right,
I've got to support this. If you're a communist, you would probably
appreciate JFK and Jimmy Carter. But that doesn't change there. It doesn't mean
that they're all so far on the right that they become virtual Nazis. You
don't, because there's a there's a bit of a range there, just like
there is on the left. You know, Bernie Sanders is one tick further
left than I am and he's still he's still a few ticks further to the
right of what most self identified Marxist or socialists would be. This a whole
other show. I'm sorry. Sorry to Pam and Will sorry, this a
whole other show. I may or may not include that whole section because I
feel like we may have to come back and cover all that. Okay,
okay, and you can do that as another show if you just need if
you just need source material, I can. Oh. I have to do
political experts on here hext Urn and he'll be ready to rock and roll in
ten minutes. I've never seen somebody who's ready to do a show like you
are. It's amazing. Will Judy, you want to talk about the godden
guns culture? I mean, if there's any state other than Oklahoma, Arkansas,
Florida, I guess it's Texas, but I think goden guns. Do
you want to talk about that? Yeah? I can, I can talk
about it. I was curious about that myself. I realized I was kind
of into my own bubble and hanging out with my own people for too long,
so I started talking to other people, other bubbles and people like me
that lived in deep red Texas and had for a while. So I just
I'm just asking questions, and what I learned is that in let's just say
East Texas, but I think you can extrapolate that to most of rural Texas.
They love their rugged individualism. We have that nation wide, but crank
that up five notches. And that's what Texas is. They love the fact
they want small government. They don't want government telling them what to do.
They want to have their ar fifteens to shoot their havelinas and or just because
that rugged individualism is cranked up again, justified by God and Moses and just
myth upon layer of myth, upon myth upon myth. But the narrative is
that, well, we have to well, first of all, God gave
me the right because of the Second Amendment. That's a whole other conversation.
But these people are also saying that the government that's the greatest government in the
history of history, may rise up against them and they have to be prepared
in case of a coup. Yeah, it was. These militia types are
the ones who were involved in the tempted coup. I do want to mention
something that Will had talked about a moment ago when he was talking about how
they want less government, they don't want government to intrude, and yet what
they want is anti trans bills. Texas leads to state in anti trans bills.
The Satanic Temple wanted to hold Satan Khan in Dallas. American Atheists,
you and I both said on the Board of Directors for American Atheists they wanted
to hold the twenty twenty four national Convention in Dallas because we're on track for
the eclipse. Both organizations said, no, Texas is too dangerous because we
have trans people who might be arrested or standing on stage addressing an audience,
because we have so many ridiculous laws. They try to pass anti sodomy laws
here. They did pass the Merry Christmas Bill, which was designed to out
non Christian teachers to their students, and then they tried to pass the show
your Papers bill, where police would just randomly identify suspicious people or whatever person
they decide looks suspicious, probably more often will than myself, if you know
what I mean, and then grab people and just make sure that they have
their papers showing that they're in the States legally. And if you don't have
your papers on you you will be apprehended. You could. You would be
caught walking across a college campus and pulled off because you didn't show your papers,
which sounds to me an awful lot like what proud patriotic Americans used to
describe when they were talking about how bad it is to live in Russia.
Well, now we're there, and the people who used to say that are
now learning to speak Russian because that's their hero. Now they would have put
the Ten Commandments in all classmens. Oh. Yes, rugged individualism, where
the government doesn't tell you what to do, but it does tell you what
kind of sex you cannot have, what kind of people you can't have it
with, and what religions you can't believe in. Michelle Palmer, you ever
feel like one of the handmaids in Gilead? I actually have a handmaid's costume
that I protest on the streets with on occasion. It definitely is feeling more
and more like Gilead pretty much every day here in the state of Texas.
Um. You know, I teach seniors, and I've had a lot of
conversations with my female students, especially about you know, they don't feel safe
here. They don't want to go to college here, trying to find them
colleges that they can get into that are not in a red state. We
have these conversations on a regular basis, and it makes me sad and angry
every single time I have to have those conversations, because you know, I
almost moved out of state to a blue state for that exact reason. But
I refuse to let them take my state away from me. This is my
state. I am just as Texan as the Trump flag waving crazies that I
see on my way home, and I refuse to let them take from me
what I love. And we will take it back eventually. But they're some
of the stuff they are passing, or at least looking at passing. It's
just absolutely crazy. One of the bills is a twenty five thousand dollars stipend
to teachers who are willing to be armed quote sentinels on campus. Twenty five
thousand dollars stipend. First of all, I don't trust a single person in
this building to have a weapon. I love my fellow teachers, but no,
I don't want that. This all sounds very Sean Hannity. The best
way to prevent school shootings is to have more guns. Do you remember when
Sean Hannity said that had he been in that nightclub in Las Vegas, when
the sniper from some unidentified tower, from some hidden window across the street,
or maybe two or three buildings away, he's got a completely concealed position nobody
can see, but he's picking out people in the crowd with his high powered
rifles. Sean Hannity said that if he had his nine millimeter or whatever the
hell it was that he carries his penis extension in his back pocket, that
if he'd been there, he could have saved everybody somehow. Okay, I
look at a map of Texas, like a voting map, and I I
see more blue than I would expect to see in Texas. What's that about?
We're going to talk about it after this. If you would like this
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Sath Andrews talking now with Michelle Palmer, Will Judy, and are in Raw
three Texas activists. Will Judy is Texas almost a blue state. I know
you've got blue pockets, right, the numbers are closer than one might expect.
Yeah, there we see it, Michelle, and I see it.
And I know we've been talking about the ills of both Texas and the nation
this whole time. And my energy has been, Okay, I get all
this, what do we do about it? And that's kind of where I
come in. My energy is to do something about this bullshit. And there's
there's two ways I want to do it, a political arm and changing hearts
and minds. And the political arm. They get to do this because they're
overrepresented in the legislature. Why are they overrepresented. It's because their side votes
and consistently has voted. And then the more power they get, the more
they get to redistrict, they get to jerrymander, they get to suppress the
vote and as well as two generations of misinformation which goes into voter suppression.
So there's a whole side of Texas it just doesn't care. They don't give
a shit, And I want them to give a shit and change the makeup
and dilute out the bullshit that's in the Texas legislature. So that's kind of
what I'm trying to do in multiple ways. It's just it's more than get
out the vote. A voting is everyone that's going to listen to the show.
I can bet it's going to vote, and that's great, that's but
that's basic. I'm trying to teach people that extra things you can do that
everyone can do to affect change. You can do it from the privacy of
your own home, and there's multiple ways you can help do something about this.
When Dods went away, so many people were like, Oh, ro
V Wade is gone. I wish there was something I can do. Well,
there is something you can do. It's gonna take a while, and
part of this is just teaching people you have to have patience. It's going
to take two, three, five election cycles to really see change happen,
but it has to start now otherwise they win. You've led me into kind
of my final cap of the show. Can you give me a few specifics
because this applies far beyond Texas. What can we do? Yes, there's
a whole list of things I've come up with in the short time I've been
in this world. My group Secular Houston, we vet candidates here in the
in Houston, we endorse people and basically we say, hey, these this
list of people aligns with our values, so separation of church and state,
okay, with nonbelief, fidelity and science, that kind of thing. We
vetted them, We did the work. These people aligned with our values.
Fucking get them elected and just that if you just send them five dollars a
month, if you go outdoor knocking for them, you tell your friends about
them, and it kind of lean on your friends. Hey, these people
are great. Let's get them elected. These friends who otherwise would not vote,
now vote. That is how we effect change. And that's if every
all the listeners do that. That's where the grassroots comes in. One blade
of grass isn't gonna do it, but multiple blades of grass. That's that's
grassroots activism. Find someone that you want to give a shit about and give
them energy that energies in the form of money or time. The hard part
is knowing who you like. And that's kind of why I said, I'm
doing the work. If you align with if you want the world to look
like I wanted to look like, fucking get these people elected. So that
is again, I'm doing the work for people. I'm trying to make it
as easy as possible. The Commandments a bill coming through. It passed the
Senate. Now it's in the Texas House. I'm trying to teach people,
all right, it's in the Texas House. This is where we can quote
kill the bill. This is what you can do to lean on your local
representatives, to put pressure on them. If everyone in earshot in Houston does
that, and bonus if you tell them you're secular. Now these representatives are
realized, Oh, these secular people are watching, and they exist and they
care about what we're doing. It's been a void before in this area.
But I'm teaching people how to make our voice heard and officially run record.
We being secular people, pay attention to politics and leaning on them. With
time, we're going to be a voting block. We're going to be a
force here locally. I like when it's possible for us to give testimony before
the Statehouse, I've done that before. You know it. Yep. We
have with American Atheists. We have a statewide advocacy team that is making noise
in Austin and the legislature. And this is a very active time. This
session is in session is going on now and where you can give a testimony,
and unfortunately they give you a really small window like with a data advance,
and if they make it as hard, they make it really difficult.
But we're looking for someone physically in the Austin San Antonio area. They can
just up and go give testimony, because physical testimony in front of the committee
is actually very powerful. I like the idea where we don't just curse the
darkness, right, We've got to spread some light. I know it's a
cliche, but it's also true. Michelle Palmer, how can people get involved?
Just about every major city in Texas has an education advocacy group of some
sort. Here in Euston we have Community Voices for Public Education. Dallas has
won as well, and you know those are there to help specifically about education
related bills. And Will was so amazingly eloquently talking about, you know,
all the things you can do, and you cannot forget those education positions because
whoever controls education, especially what the teachers teach, is going to control the
narrative and the ability of students and in the future to critically think and reason
for themselves. Right. Literally, The Texas GOP platform from twenty twenty two
had a plank against critical thinking skills in high school. I'm sorry, I'm
sorry, I'm sorry against critical thinking. They posted the same thing twelve.
We are against critical thinking. We are against teaching higher order thinking skills that
would challenge that parental authority and students fixed beliefs or rental rights as the newcash
phrase they use that language. I'm not calling anybody a liar. I'm just
saying they said we don't want people to critically think. Literally, those words
are in their platform. So if we do not take back the state Board
of Education, I don't even know how long it's been since we had control
of it, but it's been a long time, you know, then they
control all of that. They control it and make it so that our voting
percentage is the lowest in the country. Texas has the lowest percentage of turnout
in the country, and it's because our education system is not good. We
do not teach our students how to register to vote, that they have to
register to vote, how to go vote, how to find out where to
go vote, how to look up candidates and figure out which one of them
best fits you. It's horrifying. We require teaching of government to graduate high
school. But it's not a great curriculum. Maybe they just have been watching
Ted Cruz and they faced upon themselves into unconsciousness and that's why we haven't seen
them at the points. Someone explained, I gotta finish the show. Someone
explained Ted Cruz to me, like, aren't Texans even looking at this guy?
Going? Wow? That human costume must be really uncomfortable, right,
I mean, does Texas like Ted Cruz? How's he still in there?
I've never met anyone who liked Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz's family doesn't like Ted
Cruz. And there was a Senator Al Franken who said that I liked Ted
Cruz more than my Republican associates like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted.
Let's end with proaction. I've talked to the other two guests are in raw
What would you encourage people to do to be a part of a solution in
Texas or beyond? Well, I do a show in the raw Man podcast
is all about celebrating people who actually are doing something right. And I had
to become an activist. I had to be involved myself. I had to
give testimony. I started my YouTube channel just so that I could give small
snippets of information to people that I knew were misinformed by the religious right,
by the propaganda machine. So I'm using the social media network to get out
the information that you can look up and verify in a moment, be physically
on the steps of the state capitol holding a picket sign. I've done that
over and over again. And people do need to be directly involved. If
you can run for public office, do so. I would love to see
Will's face on a political poster, wouldn't that be look at that the man.
He's not the hero we deserve, but he is the hero we need.
Judy, you would have my vote. I would sneak into Texas and
fake citizenship to vote for you. Don't say that they'll take you seriously.
R and Row, Will, Judy, and Michelle Palmer three Texas secular people
who are on the front lines for education, for advocacy, or humanism or
state church separation, and for sanity. And I'm so glad for the perspective.
I'm so glad you're down there doing the work. Keep us in the
loop and let's talk again soon. Okay, thank you for having us on.
Yes, thank you. It was a pleasure, Thanks a guess anytime.
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