If you're black and American you're conscious you better have multiple cultures or else you won't survive

Hey everybody welcome to another edition of tangentially speaking. I'm Christopher Ryan. Glad to be with you today.

Luckily I am not paid by the federal government so I'm able to still function despite the fact that our government is being held hostage by terrorists,

like all terrorists like all fundamentalists say it's my way or I'm taking my ball and going home. So here we are. You know it's I think it was at Bill Marrow called them the the American Taliban.

I got into a conversation with someone earlier about this they were saying yeah but the left does the same thing you know when they don't get what they want they do it but they don't do the same thing because the left for better or worse.

What we call the left which of course isn't always the left but let's call it the progressive wing of whatever party or the progressive contingent of a population they're built in self limiting mechanisms you know when on the left.

When even even extreme what the government calls echo terrorists right like earth first to advocate destroying logging equipment spiking trees you know doing shit that'll stop roads being built into wilderness areas and sabotaging construction projects for high tension power lines or whatever it is that they're dams and things like that.

They even them even they insist upon all sorts of measures to try to make sure people aren't hurt like even they'll put up signs so the loggers know like hey this this grove has been spiked don't go in there with your chainsaws you might get hurt right.

That doesn't happen on the right on the right they seem and again I'm using right left in a lazy sort of way what I mean is extremists and the extremists tend to be on the right they're more unified they're more persistent you know it's like what the fuck man obama cares a law it passed every every hurdle that laws have to pass to become laws give it up move on but no we're still gonna.

I have to listen to their bullshit anyway sorry I shouldn't get that political I probably lost my four right wing hardcore Republican listeners sorry sorry to see you go but anyway it's it's that kind of a podcast episode today I'm a little pissed off I gotta say.

I don't know pissed off isn't the word I'm I'm I'm sad I'm hurt I'm grieving a little bit.

I'm a man who I work with is my editor actually he edited sex at dawn at Harper and then moved over to Simon and Schuster shortly after our book came out and and I'm getting I'm writing the next book civilized to death with him his name is Ben Lohnen he's my editor but he's become a friend over the years he's you know sort of held my hand as I went from guy teaching

English in Barcelona to whatever sort of you know minor fame and frenzy I'm experiencing now which you know from my perspective is pretty intense but it's good to have someone there who's seen it happen before and and sort of could guide me anyway Ben was out yesterday taking his dog for a walk in the park literally Riverside Park in New York on a beautiful morning and

and some deranged maniac with scissors in his hands started stabbing people stabbed a woman in the neck stabbed a guy who was out with his baby and he stabbed Ben in the stomach and that's all I really know my agents sent a link to an article in the New York Times talking about it.

And that's all I know I know he's in the hospital and as far as I know he's doing okay but who knows who knows anyway you know what it makes me think is there's a line I don't know if it's in the Bible or where it is but a line about how a society can be judged by how it treats its weakest members

and our society is falling apart folks I don't I don't mean to sound like Rush Limbaugh here but things are get things are bad and they're just going to keep getting worse until you know we have one of those I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore cultural moments which the sooner it comes the better you know we're the guy who stabbed him

is mentally ill by definition if you're running around in a park stabbing you know women out for a jog and guys walk in their dogs and a man with a baby in a carriage any stab the baby to by the way as far as I know nobody's died but what the fuck that's a sick person you know it's not an evil person I don't even know if I believe in evil because everyone who does nasty shit has been the victim of nasty shit.

Whether it's nasty shit coming from other people or just you know nasty a nasty deal of the deck and you ended up with a fucked up hand you know you've got I mean schizophrenia is genetic it happens it happens just like you know cancer.

So you know I and in fact it's interesting Ben's husband there was a line from him in the article saying that Ben almost feels bad for the guy who did this and the thing is I know Ben and he probably really does feel bad for the guy you did this even while he's bleeding even while he's in surgery and lying in a hospital in New York he's smart enough and has a big enough perspective that he knows this isn't about him or it's not even really about that.

That guy it's about a society that ignores the mentally ill happy to give them guns thank God that guy didn't have a gun right but happy to give them guns happy to throw them in prison but not happy to let them see a psychiatrist and get some support given a place to live take care of them give them the minimum

so that they don't lose their shit. I just saw along the same lines there's a soaring number of elderly US women live in extreme poverty according to the National Women's Law Center the number of elderly US women who live in extreme poverty has gone up abruptly since last year.

18% increase in the population of women over 65 who are living on less than 55 hundred dollars per year think about that we've got the highest percentage of our population in prison of any country we've got one of the highest levels of child poverty I think it's like a third of American children are living in poverty

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