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Art. Today is Monday, May eighth, twenty twenty three. Thank you
so much for joining me. In the words of Vladimir Lenin, there are
decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen. And
last week was that type of week, not only when it comes to the
amount of mass shootings in this country, in the United States of America and
trigger warning. This first story is extremely disturbing because of the descriptions of what
happened in Texas. We have had two mass shootings every day since the beginning
of the month of May. In this first week of May, we have
had fourteen mass shootings including Maryland, New Jersey, Missouri, California, Texas
Allen, Texas, where eight individuals were killed outside of a mall. And
you've seen the images. I won't. Obviously, this is a podcast,
so we don't have to worry about seeing the images, but the descriptions that
are coming up are rather disturbing. Listened to the very first first responder who
was a retired police officer and retired military officer who tried to save as many
lives as he could. Take a listen in The first girl I walked up
to was croutched down, covering her head in the bushes. So I felt
for a pause, pulled her head to the side, and she had no
face. But spain Hour says he found a child that survived well, covered
by his protective mother who died. And so when I wrote the mother over,
he came out and I asked him where you're okay, and he said,
you know, my mom has hurt. My mom's hurt. So rather
than traumatizes him anymore, I put him around the corner set him down.
He was covered from head to toe like somebody had poured blood on him.
It's that awful image that spain Hour and others who witnessed the horror will be
haunted by for the rest of their lives, because no one can see what
they saw today and not be affected by it. It's not a situation that
I would wish upon anybody. JD. It's just unfathomable to see the carnage.
It's tough when you see a family that'sout shopping having fun, get wiped
off the face of the earth because somebody with a gun has some other topic.
That took place Saturday in Allen, Texas. Eight people were killed,
including a five year old. The culprit the shooter's name is Mauricio Garcia,
who has ties with Neo Nazis. But for conservatives, because his name sounds
ethnic, Mauricio Garcia, they are saying that he couldn't possibly be a white
supremacist because he has a name that sounds like he's Hispanic, and as we
all know, Hispanics can't possibly be white supremacist. Nick Quintez of America,
first, he would like a word Nick Quintez, who is eagerly trying to
push a second Civil war. He would like a word, Nick Quintez,
who actually drives the time the kind of stochastic terrorism that's necessary. Right here
is a Hispanic fella who loves doing the bidding of white supremacy. So let's
not pretend as though American white supremacy and American fascism is not diverse. We've
seen plenty of people of color do exactly what white supremacy needs done. And
police have already identified that this man, Mauricio Garcia engage in neo Nazi content
sharing it online. That's the evidence so far. Now, this is just
Saturday, that this happened. On Sunday, a driver in Texas drove over
and killed eight immigrants, migrants who are as waiting at a bus stop in
Texas, killing them. We have had so many mass shootings that we can't
even keep track of the motivations of every single shooter. Those that we do
get the motivations of we see more often than not. It's the rarest of
occasion that a mass shooter is not a far right wing ideologue. That is
just a fact. But they are moving and happening with such frequency and the
intensity the violence of them. The scale of the violence is increasing so much
that we absolutely as a country must identify this for what it is. This
is an all out attack by far right wing extremists across this country. If
you place every one of their manifesto side by side, if you place their
social media engagement with white supremacist groups and neo Nazis language and beliefs side by
side, you will see that what the police and what the media are calling
lone wolves are in fact not alone at all. This is a variation on
the suicide bomber phenomenon. This is a variation on it because the radicalization takes
place on their own on the Internet, inside of their rooms, they sit
in their basements, and they consume this hate feel content truly and firmly believing
everything that someone like Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire says, something like Nick
Fuintez says, something like Ben Shapiro says, which, by the way,
is yet another perfect example of how someone could be of a particular ethnicity or
religious belief and do the bidding of white supremacy. Ben Shapiro, being the
Jewish young man that he is, always and regularly sides with the Nazis.
He won't come out and say it directly, he would deny it. But
when you look at the total coalition that is represented by conservatism, Matt Walsh
and Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire tuck across, and all of them being at
the very top of the heap of the propaganda mountain, those are the people
who create the ideologies that motivate these mass shooters. We see regularly how people
like Ben Shapiro or Nick Quintez side with individuals who, at the end of
the day when they have gotten rid of all of the other minorities that they
hate, When these white supremacists and Nazis have exterminated everyone that they hate,
they will most certainly make their way around to Ben Shapiro and Nick Quintet.
But I guess these two people and people like them, like Candice Owens and
all of the right wingers who take a check to betray their ethnicity, or
their race or their people, at the end of the day, they will
be put on the wall by the same Nazis who are going out and doing
these mass shootings and these mass murder events. It's time for whatever authorities have
not been compromised yet wherever they are. The FBI is as horrific as the
FBI has been to the black community throughout history. Right about now we need
authorities that have not been compromised to identify this whole listic threat that reaches all
across this country that gives an appearance that they're individual lone wolves, when in
the actuality they are executing, they're opening salvo of what they believe to be
the Second Civil War. We have had two an average of two mass shootings
every day so far this month, and if we look at the ideologies underneath
them, If we look at the ideologies of the mass shooters across this country's
history, we will see that they are working and walking in lockstep with one
another, just taking turns as to who is brave enough to stand up and
go out quote unquote brave enough to go out and commit mass murders of children
and the elderly people buying groceries, people shopping at the mall. See,
these people are cowards. They won't go into a gun zone. They won't
go into a place where we are already shooting at each other. They won't
go into the South side of Chicago. They won't go into parts of Duval
in Jacksonville, parts of Mississippi where they got guns and they shoot back.
No, they have to sneak up on classrooms full of children. These cowards
have to sneak up on grocery stores of elderly women. They have to sneak
into churches, Mother emmanuel A and me. Because they are cowards. They're
cowards with guns who are trying to prove to themselves and prove to their white
supremacist friends that they're actually brave. And how do they prove it by killing
children and killing people shopping at the mall. So not only are they racist
Neanderthals, they're cowards to boot. As happens with these shootings, it almost
immediately turns to the political conversation about gun reforms. One state senator pointing the
finger at you and the GOP there in Texas saying there are loose and dangerous
gun laws. I want to put up a poll that we just had on
possible gun reforms here in the US. This is just out from Fox News.
When you ask people what they would favor, background checks for guns,
enforcing existing gun laws, legal age to twenty one, requiring mental health checks,
flagging people for danger to self, all of those score at more than
eighty percent. That's a Fox News poll that was being read to Texas Governor
Greg Abbott yesterday on Fox News, who has nothing more to offer America or
Texans than thoughts and prayers. And I pray every day, But can I
tell you that the Bible clearly says that faith without works is dead. Keep
and save your prayers. Your prayers don't go above your ceiling when you refuse
to do anything. Because they have refused, Conservatives have absolutely refused to do
absolutely anything to protect the lives of children. And we knew this was a
case after Sandy Hook, when Joe the Plumber was able to get on national
television and say very clearly to the world that your dead children don't trump his
Second Amendment rights, And is that not the life that we've been living in?
Greg Abbott had a reply, and I'll play that momentarily, But it's
just the frequency with which we have to have this conversation and how it always
devolves into the basic arguments of gun control, and the Conservatives who are in
lockstep and worship at the feet of the NRA absolutely refused to do anything about
this. We've been covered I've been covering mass shootings so long I can't even
remember. I can't even remember a time where we weren't having so many mass
shootings that when I get done reporting on one, I have to report on
another. This literally happened Saturday while Rebecca and I were doing Like It or
Not, and we were doing it live. We were discussing the shootings,
the mass shootings that took place in Atlanta too, that took place in Georgia
just Thursday and Friday, and then no sooner than we logged off the show,
we get reports of this horrific mass shooting in Texas. And then Sunday,
while I was talking to the audience about about the mass shooting in Texas,
then we had a mass murder event where someone drove over eight immigrants.
It's like we simply cannot get through reporting or discussing the trauma that just happened
before. We are inundated with a brand new trauma, and yet we have
the capacity as human beings to absorb it all and to normalize it and to
move on and to turn the channel because we've got other things to take our
attention away from the reality that we are under siege. And you can't do
independent media or any form of journalism and not cover mass shooting so frequently that
it becomes almost just repetitive. Here's here's my conversation with Rebecca Azora on Saturday
about that exact thing. But this mask this situation has just happened yesterday.
This is another thing. Then, just like with all the things I labeled,
they want us to act like it didn't happen yesterday or the other day.
This is just a few days ago. Right before that, there was
something else that happened. A young boy was shot for pulling up to go
get his kids, to get his siblings, you know, and right before
that. But we are just going through a day to day like just another
day, another shooting, another day, another shooting, then another day another
shooting. They're like, it's not the it's not the guns. It's the
people. It's the law tiny, it's Georgia, Florida, Texas. It's
almost like they want to get as loose as possible until we're all shooting each
other up and they're still gonna say, it is not the guns, it's
not the Like, what's like, it's not the guns. Meanwhile, people
are sending out postcards and threatening people on social media with pictures of their guns.
America does not care about us losing people. America doesn't really care about
mental health. They don't care about vets. They care about guns. Facts,
that's it. They care about guns. Here's the response that Texas Governor
Greg Abbott gave to the Fox News host who was making it plain that even
this Fox News poll that showed that Fox News viewers alone with the rest of
America, supports gun regulation in all forms. At a clip of about eighty
percent, which means it is the most popular thing that you can do as
a politician to end Act gun control, but of course they're not going to
do so. Listen to Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. Are
there things that you would consider in Texas or that you think Congress should consider
at a federal level along those lines. Well, on the federal level,
as you know, some laws were passed last year to begin to address this.
At the state level, Listen, this is something that we've been grappling
with over the past year, and there are some potential easy solutions, such
as passing laws that we're working on right now to get guns of the hands
of dangerous criminals, into increased penalties for criminals who possess guns. But Shannon,
we need to recognize a reality. Well, we've seen across the United
States over the past year or two, and that is an increased number of
shootings in both red states and blue states. Shannon, we've seen an increased
number of shootings and states with easy gun laws as well as states with very
strict gun laws. I think that the state in which the largest number of
victims have occurred this year is in California where they have very tough gun laws,
where eleven people died. And so one thing that we can observe very
easily, and that is there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of
anger and violence that's taking place in America. And what Texas is doing in
a big time we are working to address that anger and violence by going to
its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it. No
no, no, no, no no. See it's not the mental health
problems that it is behind the anger. What's behind the anger is conservative politics.
Because conservative politics, conservative commentary, conservative media, they all depend on
hate, they depend on rage. They can't function without a scapegoat. And
then when one of their people commit violent acts of murder of war, then
they blame mental health, simultaneously making it easier for people with mental health issues
to get weapons because it's not about the mental health to them. They don't
really care about someone suffering from mental health issues. They want to sell as
many guns as possible. This is why they send out postcards every year at
Christmas time of them saying how much they love the little baby Jesus while their
little five year old Kayleie McKenna is holding an AAR fifteen in a Christmas postcard.
The absurdity of it all. We are living by the sword in this
country, and we are dying by the sword in this country. And underneath
the routine mass shootings that we see every day now twice a day, there
is an interconnected web of far white wing ideologies that drive the anger and the
violence. Go to www dot patreon dot com, forward slash the BPD Show
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at the Benjamin Dixon Show dot com. Welcome back, Yeah, welcome back.
As I started off with this morning, this morning's episode, I took
a quote from Vladimir Lenin that says that there are decades where nothing happens,
and then there are weeks where decades happen. And I believe the first week
of May twenty twenty three is one of those types of weeks. We saw
not only the coronation of the new king over there in the UK, King
Charles the Third. I was going to pretend like I didn't know his name,
but King Charles the Third, which was a momentous occasion for monarchists.
I'm more of the opinion of my friend Owen Jones from the UK. This
is what he said about the monarchy. Oh, I know, this is
a day of celebration for the monarchy, and for monarchy is full of pomp
and ceremony, and that's understating it. Amongst the regalia include the Sovereign's orb,
the sovereign's ring, the jewels orb of offering, and golden spurs,
as well as the crown obviously, which will be placed on the king's head
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. So we can all pretend that a monarch has
been personally appointed by God to reign over us, rather than just being randomly
borne into a particular family. Now, the BBC and other broadcasters are furiously
manufacturing consent, trying to claim that the nation, the whole nation, is
a wash for jubilation, that a people is united, enthralled with the monarchy,
besotted with their new king. It is all complete and utter nonsense.
And because the correlation is being used as a pr exercise for this outdated and
frankly completely preposterous institution, it is important to be direct about the truth,
no matter how much it might upset a few people. Now I abviolusly agree
with him, But then you see all of the friends and family who are
just like so obsessed, and they just enjoyed it, and they watched every
second of it, and they watched every second of the queen's funeral, etc.
Etc. It's really kind of amazing how much America and how many Americans
fall madly in love with kings and queens in the royal whenever it is displayed
on television with such pomp and circumstance. That was last week as well.
Last week we also saw the murder of thirty year old Jordan Neely at the
hands of Daniel Penney, the former marine who was protected by the police as
well as the media in the same fashion that police officers are protected when they
killed anyone, particularly black people. Daniel Penney, I want to take a
pause and think my comrade on Twitter scarlet Red at scarlet Red, they were
the individuals who actually found out this guy's name, because well, he was
being protected by the media, who had his name and had his military record.
He was being protected by the police. He was even protected by New
York City Mayor Eric Adams. And the reason this is so momentous at this
particular moment, it's because we've crossed a rubicon. Last week. We crossed
the rubicon where now we have Christian conservatives feverishly advocating for the murder of these
individuals, of homeless people, like they have to find a way to justify
the killing of this black man by this white former marine, and they have
now crossed over into completely rejecting Matthew twenty five, where Jesus said that when
I was hungry, you fed me. Not this batch of evangelical Christians,
these white Christians, No, no, no, no, They are now
violently advocating for this type of behavior, justifying it. And so we have
crossed the threshold where there's no need for conservative Christians to even pretend as though
they are loving Christians when they are actively allowing their racism to just completely obliterate
any remnant of doing anything that Jesus actually told them to do. We crossed
that rubicon this week as well. In addition to all of the mass shootings
that we've sold that happened last week, In addition to the extremely significant convictions
that the Department of Justice was able to secure in regards to the January sixth
insurrectionists, the conviction of the Proud Boys leader, and all of these militia
groups, this is a flat Last week was a flashpoint for American history as
well as global history and the enemies of the people of good faith, those
of us who are doing our best to live at peace and in coexistence.
The enemies of good faith. They have mastered the art of overwhelming us with
so much, with so many tragedies, so many historical moments happening week after
week, compounded by the violence, compounded by the hate. They really count
on us just throwing in the town. Not today. Yeah, if we
brought in our lens out to two weeks, just two weeks. In the
last two weeks, the state of Texas has passed legislation that is requiring the
Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms across the state. Clearly unconstitutional, but
I'm sure they're counting on the Conservative Supreme Court if it ever reaches that far.
They're counting on that Conservative Supreme Court to allow it. Well, here's
a response from that. I think was a brilliant response from Representative James Tollarico,
who was a Democrat from Austin, Texas. Listened to him as he
explains not only the unconstitutionality of this, but as a Christian and I agree
with this, it is deeply Unchristian to force people to live according to your
religious beliefs. I mean, the entire point of Christianity is to willingly involuntarily
except our beliefs listen to this brilliant extent. This bill, to me is
not only unconstitutional, it's not only un American. I think it is also
deeply Unchristian. And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous.
I believe it is exclusionary, and I believe it is arrogant. And those
three things, in my reading of the Gospel, are diametrically opposed to the
teachings of Jesus. A religion that has to force people to put up a
poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion. And it's not one that
I want to be a part of. It's not one that I think I
am a part. You know that in scripture it says faith without works is
what is dead. My concern is, instead of bringing a bill that will
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, we're instead mandating
that people put up a poster. A very great wrong was done in our
classrooms with that nineteen eighty decision, because that's that they were this document was
in classrooms prior to that. In fact, I think that this bill actually
rights a wrong that was done all those years ago, based on what has
now been considered a failed decision by the Supreme Court. So I contend that
we're writing a wrong not causing one. Is I just worry this is what
gives us religious people a bad name, that instead of living out the way
of Jesus, we're instead imposing our beliefs and other people. Instead of leading
by example, we're leading by mandates. And so I'm very offended by this
legislation. I know you and I have worked together, and I'm not casting
aspersions on you, and I would love to work with you, but as
it is currently written, I find this to be a deeply offensive bill.
Thank you, Miss Truth. Don't worry, I will cast aspersions on her
for you. Anyone who is on this side of Christianity, they have devolved
their faith into nothing more than a bludgeoning tool of control, something that they
can use to hit across the head of people who they disagree with, people
who don't follow their every word. They use it as a weapon, and
they are, in fact the very reason so many people left the faith don't
want anything to do with Christianity, don't want anything to do with Jesus,
because the representatives of Jesus on this earth are more interested in forcing you to
recite the Ten Commandments when in fact they don't even know them themselves. They
got to find that clip of an advocate for this bill, who was it,
John Stewart maybe, who asked them to recite the ten Commandments, and
he cann't get through three of them. Not only can they not recite it,
they don't live these standards. They don't live up to the Ten Commandments
in any measure. And those who even get close to living up to those
ten Commandments, they still understand that they're using this as a way to gain
political power. I don't care how devote you are, devoted you are,
or how devout you are a Christian, trying to force other people to live
according to your faith is Unamerican, unconstitutional, and it is Unchristian because we
are not told to force people. But then that didn't stop them from committing
the Crusades, right, that has never stopped Christians, particularly white Christians,
from using their religion as a tool of control. It's never stopped them versus
using their faith as a way to not only make society better. But could
you look in the mirror and try to make yourself better? Because when we
look at the baggage of all of these religious institutions. When we look at
all of the baggage of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church, the
Mormon Church, all of these religious institutions who have a backlog of hurting people.
They're using their religion to harm others instead of even correcting themselves. So
really, what good is it are we saying we just want people to become
Christian because you want to create this massive Christian army that you can control power
with. That's what they're saying. Because if one last thing, and I'm
I'm not going to preach to you guys this morning, but because everything is
kind of revolving in this moment in American politics around religiosity and faith and who
loves God and who's a real all that kind of stuff, just let me
share this with you. The one last thing that the Bible says that is
very important for this conversation says that you will know a tree by the fruit
it bears. You will know who a person really is by what they do.
And I don't care who calls themselves a Christian when you see them out
there engaging in the most bitriolic hate feel bigotry, ostracizing groups, oppressing groups,
outright lying. The amount of lying that goes on out of the mouths
of white evangelicals, particularly in the political spaces people who claim to love Jesus,
they are engaged in the highest level of gas lighting, propaganda and lying.
So if we look at the fruits that these monsters are bearing, they're
nothing like christ and it is more accurate to refer to them as white nationalist
Christian devils because of the work that they're actively doing to harm the least of
these, the impoverished, the homeless, the unhoused, the mentally ill,
the sick. They do everything they can to exploit and harm these groups.
So, Okay, they're Christians, because I'm not going to engage in a
no true Scotsman polasy, but I will say they're Christians who bowed first at
the feet of hatred and bigotry before they would do anything that Jesus actually told
them to do. The Benjamin Dixon Show is only possible with listener support.
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