Speaker 1: What's up, guys. This is Rob and you are listening
to a special presentation of some of Softcore History's Patreon content.
The following is a presentation of some of the amazing,
incredible content you can get on our Patreon ad free
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catalog of content, including an audiobooks worth of original sketches
like this one. This sketch in particular, is a full
cast audio short story. So think of an audiobook and yeah,
it's about two people arguing on the Internet about history,
and it goes about as you would expect. Please enjoy
the following presentation from the Softcore History Patreon Two people
Arguing on the Internet about history. Soft Cool History Theater
presents two people arguing with each other on the Internet
about history a short audio story. It was nearing midnight.
John Phillips, a bulky fifty two year old married father
of three and the owner of a small but successful
landscaping company in Des Moines, was still awake. The only
light in the otherwise black room was the cold blue
glow from his Hewlett Packard laptop. Though it did nothing
to cool the man's temper most days, it was joy
that reverberated off the wood paneled walls of this cozy burrow,
like when John cheered on the Chiefs on chilly fall
Sundays with his lifelong pals, Hank and Tweener, the latter
nicknamed so by John and Hank because in high school,
all he needed to bet a girl to get tween
her legs was his patented formula of a few shots
of schnaps, a light of her smoke, and an offer
to listen to whatever the coolest new cassette tape was
in his truck's cabin.
Speaker 2: Those junior high girls are too easy, something man I swear.
Speaker 3: Wasn't nothing junior about her, though not me more anyway,
You are an animal, Tweener.
Speaker 1: They were also evenings spent watching pro wrestling with his
boys over the years, and quiet, serene summer nights alone
with a baseball game or a World War two show
and a few beers. Even the reception John and his
wife Carol hosted after Tweener's funeral the year prior found
John's den filled with more laughter than tears, with everyone
recounting the memories of their suddenly pasted on friend.
Speaker 3: Let's all raise a glass to tweener, don't uh, don't
let anyone tell you different. He did what he uh.
He left us because he was bored, just like he
always did when things got a little too dull at
the bucket or a barbecue, on a float trip, or
anywhere else, well, anywhere except for the field hockey freshman
orientation camp out in the summer of eighty nine. He's
snuck in there with a sixer of Bartles and James
and a pack of Salem's and was chased out of
there by Coach Gamble without his paints. We'll miss your
tweet her now.
Speaker 1: Though the room was empty, a vacuum, a dense ball
of hate sitting in John's chest seemed to suck every
ounce of warmth and joy from every corner of the space.
John's wife, still awake despite her dreariness, came to the
bottom of the stairs in the hope that her husband
would join her in their bed. She'd been waiting for hours,
but she stopped herself on the last step, not wanting
to intrude any further. She pulled the bottom of her
wrinkled pink slip up her milky plump thigh, just slightly
inside John Her husband's gaze remained a fixed to the screen.
Speaker 4: Come to bed, I've been wading.
Speaker 3: Not yet.
Speaker 1: His eyes narrowed, and he pounded on his keyboard, forcefully
submitting apply into the Facebook comment thread argument he'd been
embroiled in for hours.
Speaker 3: If you hate America's so much, then why do you
still even live here?
Speaker 4: John?
Speaker 3: I'm not done.
Speaker 1: Carol dropped her hands to her side, and the slip
along with it, resigned to sleep. John kept his eyes
on the screen. He knew a response to his comment,
which was a response to a previous comment, all part
of an online argument over American history that by this
point spanned hours, was imminent. The woman he was arguing
with had been responding to him within minutes for the
better part of the day before the argument had begun.
John's day had been a good one. He laughed over
breakfast with his two teenage boys as they showed him
tiktoks from an account they agreed their father would enjoy
and were excited to show him. It was called Fat
Bitch Throwdowns, and it featured exclusively videos of obese women
fighting each other. One video, in particular, security footage of
two bulbous black women facing off in a sloppy slap
fight in the aisle of a seven to eleven, had
scrambled eggs, tabasco and ham falling out of John's mouth
and onto his shirt. He was laughing so hard as
one of the black women's tank tops was ripped to
shreds by the other and she screamed, bitch, get off
my titty. That's my titty, Bitch, that's my titty. Your
cheap ass press on scratched up my titty. John lost
control to the point that he jabbed himself in the
cheek with his fork while attempting to put the eggs
he lost back into his mouth. He and the boys
then shared an even bigger laugh at his clumsy mishap.
After he finished breakfast, he kissed his wife goodbye and
headed off to work on a bright sunny morning. After
checking in on one of the work crews, John got
a text from his wife. It was a picture of
her in their bedroom mirror, trying on a sweater she'd
ordered that had arrived that morning. She wanted to know
if John liked it. Looking at the picture of the
wife he loved so dearly and found so beautiful, John
decided to do something spontaneous.
Speaker 4: Hey, is everything okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just thinking meet me at Henderson's for lunch.
Speaker 5: Henderson's Steakhouse. Don't you have that site check at twelve
thirty h.
Speaker 3: Miguel can handle it. He's been doing a good job lately.
There's a chance to prove himself. And I think you
and I deserve some gin and tonics and cheesy stuffed mushrooms.
Speaker 5: What's gotten into you? You want to play hockey?
Speaker 3: What's the point of owning your own business if you
can't take a day off when you want. I'll pick
you up in thirty minutes. You better wear something pretty.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, with their bellies foal and their jeans crumpled
at the foot of their bed, John and his wife
made love with a passion they had not in years,
fueled by the spontaneity of the day.
Speaker 6: Here you go, that's right, jus.
Speaker 3: Oh you got me?
Speaker 7: Here you go, Here you go.
Speaker 8: That hurt.
Speaker 5: You you got in.
Speaker 4: I want to hear you're getting there.
Speaker 3: I'm there, You're You're okay, I'm getting there.
Speaker 5: You're there, You're there, You're getting there.
Speaker 1: You were getting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When they were finished, they retired to their back patio
with a chilled bottle of chardonnay. They sat there and
talked about their children, about plans for a vacation that
summer to Destin, Florida, about their dreams for retirement. After
a bit, Carol got up to check the oven.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go check on your brownies.
Speaker 3: Stood okay.
Speaker 1: John took a sip of his wine and looked out
over his backyard, his property another blessing. His phone buzzed,
Oh what is this? John reached into his pocket to
check it. MIGUELID texted the site. Check went fine, that
could start next week. John texted back, and then, with
nothing else to do, started to fiddle around on his phone.
He opened Facebook and began to scroll. He liked a
Bible verse meme, and then under an obvious stock photograph
of a Ford raptor that John's neighbor down the street
posted with the caption goals, John commented, she's a butte
almost as purty as my wife. Almost, then three crying
laughing emojis, and then John came to another post, one
from a page he did not follow, a page that
was served to him by the algorithm. Though he had
no idea that was the case, or even possible. The
page was called Patriot American History Facts. The post featured
a pixelated photo of the famed flag raising on Mount
Serabachi during the Battle of Ewejima. Superimposed over the photo
was a quote from General George Patten spoken in his
speech to the Third Army, the one immortalized in the
film Patent. It read, Americans have never lost and will
never lose a war. The quote, however, was left uncredited
as Pavel. The Belarusian nineteen year old who'd created the
meme and worked on the troll farm that owned the page,
had no idea who the quote belonged to, or who
General Patten even was, and he didn't care. All Paveel
knew or cared about was that if he, a poor
orphan fresh out of the state foster home and newly
living on his own as an adult, didn't create three
hundred memes per day to be published across the farms
hundreds of Facebook accounts, he'd be fired and forced into
a life of male prostitution in order to afford rent
at the rooming house he'd recently moved into, trading black
tea and working around the cracked monitor of an old
desktop PC for meth and pulling back the cracking, wilted
foreskins of insatiable drunk old men. Visions of that path
haunted Paviel knelt down beneath the greedy, salivating man in
a dingy bar bathroom. Another month of shelter and bedding,
only a few perilous minutes away.
Speaker 3: Good, ye, take hold of it.
Speaker 1: Hundred roubles, yes, dah da.
Speaker 3: Hundred now go open op.
Speaker 1: And so with those visions in his head, Pavel worked
ever harder. His output of memes was unmatched in the warehouse.
He resolved that it would not be a lack of
effort that cost him his job. It would, however, be
ai A year and a half later, and four years
after that, Pavel's body, ravaged by drugs and old men,
was pulled from a river and minsk On his back
porch in Iowa, John nodded at the meme, Amen, he thought,
looking back out over his yard. He went to common
as much on the post literally amen, but was met
with an unpleasant surprise disagreement, disagree with as far as
he could figure, the most agreeable sentiment he'd ever read.
Of course, there were plenty of people agreeing as well,
most people were agreeing. In fact, a sixty four year
old woman from Arizona, Barb Copple, wrote, God bless our troops.
A thirty seven year old man wearing Oakley sunglasses and
a black, crumpled Carolina Panther's hat and his profile picture
left a bicep emoji as his comment. Another man, Greg Weathers,
wrote kill pedophiles, which John took to be a tacit
agreement with the overall sentiment of the post, But others
did not express the appreciation that John felt was required
of anyone inserting themselves into this conversation. One man a
thirty something sack of milk with bedraggled patches of pubic
hair that crawled up his neck like weeds to where
his chin should be, and whose typical contribution on social
media was assuring the world that all five feet eight
inches and two hundred and twenty pounds of him would
be helping lead the charge of revolution into the breach,
harvesting blood from political infidels as payment for their crimes.
With glee and ease, wrote if you like winning World
War two, thank a communist. A digitally politically acting mother
of two young boys. In her early forties, Ashley Ives,
who'd graduated with a communications degree from Michigan State in
two thousand and six, wrote, Vietnam and Desert Storm proved
this isn't true, but even if it were, why celebrate violence?
But the comment that caught John's eye or.
Speaker 9: Read yeah lol, We're such a brave country slaughtering indigenous
peoples and drone bombing brown people from the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: The comment was authored by Claire Matheson, a pan sexual
Amazon employee in her early thirties living in the Capitol
Hill neighborhood in Seattle. Originally from Houston, the clever brunette was,
though typically dressed in beanies and boots, conventionally attracted by
modern American standards. Though she never stood out much in
the bright blonde Texas world she grew up in. Claire's
day hadn't been as idyllic as John's when the meme
from Patriot American History Facts slid across her screen. She'd
been reprimanded by her manager Paul at a team meeting
that morning, maliciously, she believed, over messages she'd sent on
their workplace messaging app chime.
Speaker 10: Hey guys, before we finish, I wanted to address some
controversial communications that have been going out on workplace channels.
Speaker 1: The unexpected announcement piqued Claire's anxiety. Her chest tightened. She
knew this was about her. She began to see that
her techno fascist corporate overlords and their enforcer, Paul I understand.
Speaker 10: We have very passionate people here and diverse viewpoints. That's
part of what makes our culture so exciting, and we
encourage expression and authenticity we do.
Speaker 1: The hypocrisy maddened Claire. The nerve of them to trade
on the suffering and structural violence experienced by their most
vulnerable employees as they deploy that structure to strangle what
little voice she and the others had left out of them.
Speaker 10: That said, we still do need to remember that this
is a workplace and professionalism and appropriateness is expected.
Speaker 1: Claire braced herself, ready to grin and bear the unbearable
once again, to agree with an oppressor with sufficient politeness
so they may continue to give her some of all
that they have. It would be easy, she knew, to
numb herself to this degradation in order to endure it.
But to Claire that would be surrender. She wanted the
depravity to terrator, to not viscerally suffer. The in justice
was to be complicit in it.
Speaker 10: So I hate to do call outs. I don't want
to do call outs. I don't like them. But we're
we're I gotta do them.
Speaker 1: Paul flipped to a slide on the projector displaying what
were apparently some of the messages they determined to be inappropriate,
though Claire thought threatening was a more apt adjective, because
that's what these people really felt when they read. These
threatened their order, their peace and quiet, their power, the
lie they portrayed to the public.
Speaker 10: Stuff like this just you know, it just doesn't fly
in an office setting.
Speaker 1: The messages on the screen were exactly the sort Claire
expected to see. She could not help but scoff audibly.
How fragile these powerful men must be to want to
censor this. There was a reply Claire sent on the
General Channel in response to Paul, saying Happy Pride Month
that read they can prye the pussy from my cold,
dead mouth. Under a picture Paul posted of himself with
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Claire replied, it's so hard to
want to eat the rich when they all look like
they taste like shit guests, We'll just have to leave
Jeffy in the oven hashtag the richer inedible hashtag just
kill the rich. In response to a message from Paul
telling the team that he brought an orange chicken his
wife made for the office, Claire wrote, Hi, sorry, gonna
go ahead and skip the imperialist buffet. The only thing
I trust cis white women to cook is a hearty
meal that gives a colonizer the energy he needs to
rape cultures hashtag support black owned businesses.
Speaker 10: So Claire, as well as Eduardo and Toshura, we're gonna
have to be more mindful of the setting in future communications.
Speaker 1: Okay. Replies from Claire's two most similarly tempered coworkers were
also displayed under Claire's comment about her militant unwillingness to
ever stop eating pussy. Eduardo, a chubby, feminine gay man,
posted a picture of himself at a Pride event holding
up a sign that said good people don't oppress good boys,
while his penis fully exposed save for the Dalmatian pattern
paint on it, was leashed and being walked by a
fully naked fire fighter. To Eduardo's photo, Claire replied, you
are my queen. To sure is highlighted in fraction was
a reply from another team message from Paul, this time
a milk toast statement from their corporate caretaker and celebration
of Martin Luther King Day. Tish's response to it read,
y'all still owe us a body from Martin? One for
Malcolm two Claire chimed in, yes, and one for Matthew Shepard,
also which to Schuer liked. Then Claire to Shura and
Eduardo toss around ideas about the best white men to
kill and how to kill them as repayment for the
aforementioned victims. The white men suggested as sacrifices were stock
standard targets for the Trio, so predictable is to be inoffensive.
The methods of execution that were offered, however, were jarring,
so much so that even a typically politically sympathetic coworker, Nina,
made a complaint to Paul after being presented with the
idea that Joel Ostein be boiled alive with used lube
and all seamen and anal juices that came with its
harvesting in front of his children.
Speaker 10: So, you know, just clean it up a little bit,
I also said, and then email to Greta, who was
taking part in these conversations while at home on her
two year paid maternity leave.
Speaker 1: Fucking fascist. Claire thought, are we good?
Speaker 3: Okay? Great?
Speaker 10: You're doing a great job, guys.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work. Claire fumed her desk for
a half an hour after the meeting, before she decided
she could not sit inside these walls for another moment.
She marched over to Eduardo into Shore's desks.
Speaker 6: I can't be here anymore, not after that.
Speaker 4: Nuhuh no, girl, me neither.
Speaker 1: That was insane.
Speaker 6: Let's go.
Speaker 1: The aggrieved trio marched into Paul's office. Hey guys, what's up.
Claire looked Paul dead in the eyes and advocated for
herself and her friends.
Speaker 6: We're uh gonna.
Speaker 9: Take a mental health day if that's cool. We're just
kind of you know, ah right now?
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, yeah, I totally get it. You guys take
care of yourselves. I'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 1: Thanks. Claire loathed herself for saying thank you you, a
line of code programmed into her by years of surviving
in this broken society that she had not yet been
able to successfully disembed She to shore. Eduardo left work
and went straight to a brunch spot nearby to commiserate
about what they'd experienced that morning over drinks in an
early lunch.
Speaker 9: I think what just makes me so angry is that
you just know Paul is so full of shit. He's
so fucking fake.
Speaker 4: He doesn't mean anything he says.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's so fake. I got on grinding there at
work just to see if he secretly on.
Speaker 9: There, and you just know how he really votes. I
bet if anyone ever caught him, he'd be all panicked, like,
oh oh oh, I just move my kids safety, move
my kid's crime.
Speaker 3: For my kids.
Speaker 9: Sometimes I just feel so gross working for a company
that makes so much fucking money.
Speaker 1: Back in Paul's office, his supervisor had popped in to
check on the department. Where's the socialty?
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, they took him mental health.
Speaker 3: They what again?
Speaker 1: Well, I did those callouts like you asked.
Speaker 10: The callouts can be tough, you know, it's not so
easy having such a harsh light shine on you like that.
Speaker 4: How many metal Well, if these they have left, they
take them all the time.
Speaker 1: Uh, let me check.
Speaker 10: Twelve out of twenty one.
Speaker 3: This company makes too much fucking money.
Speaker 1: After their drinks, Claire and her friends parted ways, and
Claire went home to her apartment to further decompress. She
grabbed a package from the girl who worked the lobby,
checked on her plants, and refilled her cat's water, which
she was surprised to see already empty.
Speaker 9: Oh you're a thirsty guy. Glad I was able to
come home. You would have been waiting all day for more.
Speaker 1: Despite it only being the early afternoon, Claire poured herself
a glass of wine. A few drinks, capped off by
some tie food from Postmates in an early bedtime sounded
like an ideal way to put the stress from the
day behind her. She curled up on her couch with
her cat, Nolan, whom she'd named for Nolan Ryan, the
baseball player her dad idolized. Though she felt embarrassed admitting
to her friends or anyone else she brought over to
her apartment that the name had such a Texasy origin,
she'd often lie and say the cat was named for
director Christopher Nolan, though ironically that still elicited the sort
of derision she'd hoped to avoid. Her friend, who started
going by Scout, after moving to Seattle, was particularly haughty
about that explanation for Nolan's name one night, and said
between guffaws exaggerated in the hopes that others in the
room would share and laugh, along with the observation that
Claire may as well have named the cat Michael Bay
or Logan Paul. You're so basic, Claire, But I feel
like that's just the Texas in you, like you just
genetically have megaplex tendencies. Claire gave an insincere obligated laugh,
as did the handful of people in her apartment, none
of them interested in drawing the pointed attention of such
an insistent personality. Claire wasn't happy with Scout's comments, but
convinced herself that her tactfulness was necessary because Scout, who'd
only recently begun flourishing as a person, was still figuring
out how to take up space after spending so much
of life with no space at all to exist in
let alone.
Speaker 6: Command I had to call it out. That's just a
stupid fucking name. It's so fucking stupid.
Speaker 1: Frustrating as Scout was, Claire still held the night close.
It was her first night with Zoe They'd flirted for
weeks after meeting through these mutual friends at a drag
show for Turtles, but hadn't been able to find a
chance to be with each other until then. Lying in
bed together in the early hours of that morning, Zoe
ran her thin tan fingers through Claire's hair.
Speaker 4: Did you really name your cat after Christopher Nolan?
Speaker 8: Um?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's cute.
Speaker 4: I don't know why Scout was shitting on it. Who
doesn't like the dark night?
Speaker 1: Weeks went by after that without the two being apart
for more than the eight hours a day Claire was
at work. They spent every free moment together on coffee dates,
perusing bookstores, sprawled out on a blanket at Gasworks Park,
or curled up on Claire's couch with wine and tequila
and takeout watching trashy Netflix reality shows. Claire was completely infatuated.
Zoe too, was full of affection for this spunky little
Texas girl she'd found, But Zoe had been having trouble
finding work in Seattle, and she missed her hometown, San
Diego and her parents and friends there. Their connection was exciting,
but too new for them to ask big things of
each other, So when Zoe broke the news to Claire
that she was moving home. There was only one thing
Claire could bring her self to ask.
Speaker 6: Why, if I'm going to be poor, it's at least
got to be sunny.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm already living off ramin and cereal. That's
just too many vitamin deficiencies.
Speaker 6: I can get you a job at Amazon.
Speaker 3: I don't work in tech.
Speaker 6: No, it's a huge company. It's great. It's so great.
Speaker 9: There's so many different things you can do, like pretty
much whatever, media marketing.
Speaker 6: I mean, you can even cook. You said maybe you
wanted to do that.
Speaker 4: It's not just that my parents are getting older. I mean,
I just miss.
Speaker 6: Home, but I'll miss you.
Speaker 1: Zoe knew Claire was hurting. She insisted she'd visit all
the time, that they'd talk all the time, that Claire
should plan a trip to San Diego because she'd never been.
The sudden shot of hope Zoe provided caused Claire to
blurt out the sword of ideas she'd been keeping to
herself in order to not add embarrassment to the night's
list of misfortunes.
Speaker 9: I can help you move I can drive down with you,
help you move in. You shouldn't have to do that
drive alone.
Speaker 3: That's that's okay, that's that's too much. I don't I
don't want you to do all that.
Speaker 9: Okay, Well, we at least have to have one of
our here before you leave.
Speaker 6: One last time, Claire patted her couch.
Speaker 1: They did, and it was wonderful and bittersweet, and Zoe left.
The next morning, Claire was on the couch alone, now
save for Nolan, whose name she never got to actually
explain to Zoe. They hadn't texted in weeks, and Claire
was actively avoiding Instagram after seeing a story from Zoe
with another girl. So Claire sat with a glass of
wine in a dating show playing in the background.
Speaker 7: One woman looking for love, eight male suitors who she
is only allowed to communicate with via text message, and
thanks to the fact that we're filming in Dubai, she
is legally obligated to marry the winner and consummate the
marriage that night. The catch one of the random men
is her dad. This is Daddy issued us.
Speaker 9: My name's Ashton Tyat and hug as you could say,
I'm looking for an old soul.
Speaker 1: To pass the time, Claire scrolled Facebook, hoping that at
least some measure of schadenfreud from the dull and un
spectacular lives of high school acquaintances might make her feel
better about her own day. In recent life, morbid glee
was her main reason for scrolling Facebook at all. At
this point, she hadn't posted on the platform in five years.
The algorithm knew this and served her accordingly, never judging
only feeding. Claire got a sprinkle of dopamine from a
few depressing posts that crossed her screen between ads and
suggested pages that she did not follow and did not
have even the remotest interest in following. But the algorithm
must feed too. Claire's joy was particularly sparked at seeing
a status from a former high school classmate complaining about
the current quality of fast food dollar menus. It read,
dollar menus are whackaf now, y'all angry emoji. Angry emoji.
Angry emoji used to roll up a blunt, cruised down
to wend dizzles, and be able to feast like a
king with just the change of my cup holders back
in the day. Now my high ass is putting junior
bacon cheeseburgers on layaway like dey Kelsey's school clothes. Laughing emoji,
laughing emoji, laughing emoji. Least I can still pay for
Swiss or sweet with quarters lmao, laughing emoji. Claire was
pleased to be once again assured that the trashy asshole Stoner,
who was one of the first people to ever suspect
she was queer and would based on his suspicion, challenged
her to pussy eating contests in the middle of English
class had not emotionally nor financially progressed beyond high school.
But the moment fled lost in scrolling like turds in mud.
Then she came to the meme, the Patriot American History
Facts patent quote meme contents she never asked for, but
the algorithm, by now running low on posts to suggest,
tossed this history account at Claire because a few days earlier,
she'd lingered over an infographic about an eighteenth century pirate
queen from a suggested page called Yassified History. That and
because the algorithm knew there was a forty seven point
thirty nine five one zero percent chance it would elicit
rage engagement from Claire.
Speaker 6: Uh, why am I seeing this?
Speaker 1: Claire started to scroll past it, but still in a hole.
She flicked back to the post and decided to open
the comments in search of more rubes to stand on.
Despite knowing what she'd find and finding what she'd hoped for,
the waterfall of comments from the carpenter gene clad Cabella's
tableware owners, submitted in blind, simple enthusiastic support of the
memes sentiment delivered her no joy. Instead, this exurban nationalist
digital pep rally sent her into a spiral. Claire was
incredulous at their clueless exuberance, their celebration of something that
was neither true, nor valorous, nor something they themselves even achieved.
How could it be so they cheered without reason, They
cheered without cause, They cheered without reflection, knowledge, or pause.
Unable to let this stand, Claire fired off a comment
she thought would illuminate these people's ignorance, if not for themselves,
at least as context for other readers thinking about joining
in the revelry.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Lol, we're such a brave country slaughtering indigenous peoples and
drone bombing brown people.
Speaker 6: From the stratosphere, she.
Speaker 1: Closed out of Facebook and disgust and moved over to
Pinterest to decompress with pictures of home crafted succulent pots.
Sitting on his back porch, his wife still inside, John
ced that Claire's comment, the petulance of it, the void
of gratitude, to typical of these younger generations, that they
could so viciously ignore all they'd been given. John looked
out again at his yard, the hoop and his driveway,
the trampoline, his grill, Carol's garden. No, sir, he thought
he would not let this ingrade ignore the gifts they
were unwilling to acknowledge.
Speaker 5: Brownies are done, but the kids won't be home for
another hour. If you want to go back upstairs, hass
hold on a minute.
Speaker 1: John's round thumbs pressed his response below Claire's comment, you should.
Speaker 3: Thanks soldiers for keeping terrorists from killing you. If they
had their way, you would be wearing a bed sheet
all day.
Speaker 4: Who were you talking to?
Speaker 3: What? No one?
Speaker 4: So what do you say about? What do you want
to go upstairs again? Before Aiden and Hendrix get home
from school?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: On her couch, Claire's Pinterest browsing was interrupted by a notification.
John's replace, Oh, I ugh, this should be good. Claire
clicked the notification and read John's comment. It was exactly
the sort of fat fingered slop she expected to get,
but she wasn't amused by it like she thought she'd be.
His indignation was infuriating, unearned. He sounded like a child.
Claire shot a quick reply.
Speaker 9: Back sheets, Oh honey, I'd never steal your wardrobe.
Speaker 1: The landing had been stuck. Claire thought it was a
dig cleverer than anything John would be able to come
back with, if he could even bring himself to show
his face again in the comments after she'd so searingly
called out his bigotry.
Speaker 3: Don't have to worry about that. Men don't dress like
women where I come from.
Speaker 1: John had typed his response. Standing at the foot of
his bed, shirtless, stopped in the middle of pulling down
his pants while his wife lay on the bed working
herself over with a rabbit to get warmed up. His
mind was elsewhere and his erection was flagging. Eventually, John's
wife noticed her husband's absence from the moment. She removed
her rabbit from its hutch and propped herself up on
her elbows to see what he could possibly be doing.
Speaker 4: John, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Sorry? Just a text for Miguel. It sounded important.
Speaker 5: Well, come on, the boys will be home soon, and
you're standing there at six o'clock.
Speaker 1: I got first turn on court night.
Speaker 3: Fuck you, I called it.
Speaker 4: Oh nice, the boys are home.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Listen, I promise I'll make it up later.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Carol got up off the bed and kissed John on
the cheek.
Speaker 5: Now, I gotta go deal with those two animals with
my girl slobign like a bulldog.
Speaker 1: Carol hurried to put on her shirt and pants and
walked briskly out of the bedroom.
Speaker 4: Boys.
Speaker 1: Claire, meanwhile, was reading John's comment in a rage. Not
only was he so shameless as to reply at all,
but he doubled down on his hate with Claire believed
a pointed jab at her identity group, knowing me out
from the kitchen for food. But Claire didn't hear. She
was typing an encompassing, biting response to this unrepentant monster one,
addressing every ounce of ignorance in his comments and the
meme he and the other idiot commenters supported.
Speaker 9: Hi, your ignorance is showing, though I'm sure you wear
it as proudly as the female Body Inspector T shirt.
Speaker 6: I assume you own.
Speaker 1: John did in fact own a female body inspector t shirt.
He'd purchased it in Brandson seven years ago to the
great amusement of his boys, and he wore it proudly
to the public pool every summer after, delighted by his
own sense of humor and his son's giggling maniacally each
time he did. And no amount of complaints which came
immediately and in great volume from lifeguards, pool management, other parents, friends,
and his wife could get John to stop. Even tweener
before he passed, had thought it was a bit much.
Speaker 2: It's a family pool man, the saint backwater jacks down
at o Sage Beach. No one's getting their titty pierce
on top of the bar with the course tree from
a pocket knife to win Sammy Hagar tickets. You know,
I mean, I gotta sure this is tough muffer, funny
as hell, But I don't wear it to high school
cross country meets.
Speaker 1: I wear it to backwater jacks. But John stood fast.
He would not be compelled to suppress his authenticity by
mediocre people and others timid enough to be concerned with
their opinions. Was it a little inappropriate to wear a
shirt purporting that he had brought authority to inspect female
bodies around children and little girls in particular. Sure, but
that's what made it funny. He obviously was not going
to inspect any female bodies, let alone children's anyone thinking
that was, in his estimation, probably projecting perverts themselves made
nervous by their own darkness, not his harmless joke. Nevertheless,
John persisted, that is until one July afternoon, while the
female body Inspector shirt lay crumpled and unattended between the
pool chairs. The Phillip's family had claimed that day, and
his youngest son Aidan, commandeered it, put it on, walked
straight into the women's locker room showers with the shirt
hanging at his knees, and ordered a trio of nude,
soapy women in their sixties to quote line up. Finally,
John conceded that the shirt may have been more trouble
than it was worth, though still only out of a
misinterpretation of its meaning. Claire continued to type out her screed, ay.
Speaker 9: The American Revolution wasn't fought for liberty or freedom. It
was fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy. This has
been proven by renowned historians of color. B we used
two nuclear weapons on wait for it, innocent people of color. See,
we committed a two hundred year genocide against indigenous people
whose land we stole, and now we drone bomb brown
people because boat lives matter more than brown lives to
this country.
Speaker 1: John was walking into the kitchen as he got the notification.
His two boys were going through a Costco bag of
chili cheese friedos like hyenas tearing at a zebra. Their
eyes lit up at seeing their dad walk in, excited
to tell him about their day at school.
Speaker 10: Ohb dabt, we gotta tell you, Dad, the funniest shit Hendricks.
Speaker 3: Sorry, the funniest thing happened today.
Speaker 1: Hendrix made a kid shit his pants. We were playing
dodgeball and Jim and this kid on the other team.
Speaker 2: He was born without a butthole, right, so he has
to leak poop into a bag.
Speaker 5: It's called the colossomy bag, Hendrix, and you shouldn't make
fun of people who have them.
Speaker 1: Hendricks hit him in the bag and it explodes.
Speaker 3: Dad.
Speaker 1: It was an absolute dart. They had to evacuate the gym.
Speaker 10: A janitor called his union rep and the kid had
to lay sideways on a toilet in the nurse's office
until his parents came with new bags and hoses.
Speaker 4: That is not a funny story. That is awful, John,
tell them.
Speaker 1: John hadn't heard much. He was lost in his phone
and sensed reading Claire's diatribe.
Speaker 3: John, Oh, boys, don't hit cripples. It's wrong.
Speaker 4: What are you doing on your phone?
Speaker 3: Uh? It's uh Miguel again. I gotta go into my office.
Speaker 1: John retreated to his home office, leaving his wife confused
and his boys disappointed by his indifference to a story
they were sure would get a laugh from him. John
closed the office door behind him and put himself into
his chair with purpose. He was going to properly address
this pretentious bleeding heart who insulted him not only directly,
but also with her presumption to lecture him at all.
He threw his laptop open, logged into Facebook, and started
to smash his index fingers into the keyboard.
Speaker 3: Well, it's clear they don't teach history anymore. Innocent Japanese
people got nuked. I guess you can't look up Pearl
Harbor on Wokapedia. And how many comic Kazi planes do
you think we're flying right at our plane carrying that nuke,
trying to ram into the Americans, risking their lives for
you as they flew over Hiroshima and Indians. We're genociding
each other for one hundred years before we got here.
What were we supposed to do? Hug them? Why don't
you let squatting bull live with you rent free if
you feel so bad about it? But how I really
know you don't know. What you're talking about is judging
the past by the present. If Thomas Jefferson had slaves today,
he obviously wouldn't have had sex with them. But we
can't judge people by what they used to do before
we got here.
Speaker 1: Hours passed as John and Claire traded salvos in their
historical argument. John skipped dinner with his family, Claire forgot
to order hers. Claire's cat Nolan, remained unfed as well.
From the office. In order to keep his wife from
bothering him about what he was doing, John would yell
random non sequitars that sounded work related.
Speaker 3: I didn't order that much limestone. That Moultz job looks
like shit. God damn it, Miguel, God, damn it, Miguel God.
Damn it, Miguel.
Speaker 1: Carol, though hesitant, eventually did peek through the door of
John's office to check on him.
Speaker 4: I thought you weren't working today.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, just some stuff came up. It's stupid you. Okay, yeah, yeah,
I'll be done in a little bit. I'm sure.
Speaker 4: Okay, because you still need to come up to bed.
Speaker 3: Has Oh I'll be there. That girl warm for me.
Speaker 4: I'll do some stretches.
Speaker 3: Oh no, Hon, I'll be the one stretching it.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Carol left the office for their bedroom to wait. She
undressed and reached for her normal pajama set, caught in
PJ pants and one of John's old T shirts when
she spotted the little pink slip she'd bought for John's
fiftieth birthday. Thinking back to their afternoon with a smirk,
she put back her everyday pjs and grabbed the slip
from its hanger. She checked herself in the mirror and
lay down on the bed to wait for John. John, meanwhile,
worked up again from the argument, relocated to his wreck
room to have a beer and calm down. In the meantime,
the strangers, who hated each other continued to commit their
entire evenings and all of their mental and emotional energy
to one another.
Speaker 9: You're right, America did slaughter her natives because they were
a threat. White men like Cortes showed up, saw a
bunch of sexually liberated brown people who were living harmoniously
with the people in landscape around them, and was threatened.
And it turns out we're still threatened by those brown
people today, considering that anyone who speaks Spanish isn't allowed
in this country.
Speaker 3: If America didn't exist, we wouldn't have won the Civil
War and freed the slaves. We wouldn't have beat Hitler,
we wouldn't have killed Bin Lauden. The world is a
better place because of a Meyerica. You gotta break a
few eggs to make an omelet.
Speaker 6: What are you talking about. Slavery wouldn't have existed if.
Speaker 9: It weren't for America, And you can thank America's Smoot
Holly tariffs for helping Hitler even exist.
Speaker 1: Claire had recently learned what the Smoot Holly tariffs were
after reading economic history for the first time in her
life in response to recent news about tariffs, and had
happily shared that conclusion on several occasions, including now, and if.
Speaker 9: We hadn't stationed troops in Mecca as part of a
neocolonialist oil grab, terrorists wouldn't exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, America invented it. Everything bad in the world, slavery, hitler.
Speaker 8: Terrorism, famine, nuclear war, racism, mean people, we get it.
Speaker 3: You hate America.
Speaker 9: I do hate this country's blood soakd history, and I
do hate that I live inside a world built on genocide.
Speaker 1: Hours had passed. It was almost midnight in Iowa and
nearly ten pm in Seattle. Both combatants had long ago
lost track of the time. Only John's wife's slight intrusion
to coax him up to bed to save what started
as a special day alerted him to the hour. Claire
only checked the time after the smell of hot, rancid
catpiss began to waft through her apartment. Nolan, hungry and
furious about it, had gone into the bedroom and shot
an angry stream of pungent urine onto Claire's pillow and
protest of his abandonment.
Speaker 8: Nolan, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: Still? They both punched away at each other.
Speaker 9: If you think America is so perfect, then why do
you get so upset when people point out that it
isn't take the fact that the true founding of America,
the most violent anti woman country on earth, was in
sixteen ninety two, when the Salem witch trials began. If
that was so obviously not true. It is true, but whatever,
you wouldn't even care.
Speaker 6: Would you get.
Speaker 9: Mad if someone called you a pretty pretty unicorn? No,
it'd be too ridiculous to get mad about. But you're
getting mad because deep down you know it's true. America
isn't an infallible country.
Speaker 3: Well, I agree with you there. America is definitely gonna
be a failable country if people like you get to
run it. People who don't appreciate our history will make
this country fail. At any point in this country's history,
I would have thought to keep it free from people
trying to oppress us. I would have charged up San
Juan Hill and Little Round Top. I would have braved
the jungles of Dnong and the streets of Fallujah with
no regard for my life, anything to keep the people
trying to conquer our freedom from succeeding.
Speaker 1: John sat Back took a sip of his beer and
waited for a response. Claire couldn't even commit to moving
to a foreign country forever. John was willing to risk
his life in the Spanish American War had he had
the chance to. They were not the same, but no
response came. Claire had gotten up to finally feed her
cat and throw a pillow in the wash. This was
the most movement she'd gotten in hours, and the two
bottles of wine hit her hard upon standing up. After
starting the washing machine, she went back to her room
and sat on her bed to collect herself. Still woozy,
she laid down. She was out within minutes. John waited
another hour until almost two in the morning before deciding
that his closing argument must have indeed left Claire checkmated
he'd won. He was right. He smiled, finished his beer,
and dragged himself up to bed. Hundreds of miles away
in a Boston brownstone, an old man sat in a
leather chair in his study. In his right hand, he
held a tumbler bourbon, his fifth or sixth of the
night in his life left a pistol, a Colt Model
eighteen sixty Army Revolver, a still functional relic from the
US Civil War. It had belonged to General Philip Sheridan,
the revolver was a prized historical possession among many for
this man, a historian, he too had been reading the
Patriot American History Facts comment War. It was served to
him while he was ineptly looking to see if his
niece had posted any new pictures of her children, But
he only lurked, never participated. He looked around his study,
at all the books, all the artifacts, at his own
tomes of painstakingly researched history. Then he looked down at
his pistol. My life has been a waste. This has
been soft core history theaters presentation of two people arguing
with each other on the Internet about history. A short
audio story