What's blanket training my baby? Now, that's a horrible way to introduce your show. Thank god Sophie's not here. We have been talking. This is behind the Bastards podcast Bad People, Part two dugger episodes about blanket training my cats. Um, But it turns out cats are incapable of learning things. That would have been a you know, a great slogan for Godard n t. I would have been uh, training your baby's We have the blanket answers. We have the blanket answers. Yeah, blanket abusive. I don't know, there's not great jokes to tell about. There's profoundly abusive cult Um. Sean back again to finish our two part on the duggers um and hopefully finish talking ship about Ted Wheeler. Um, Who's who's who's bad? Mayor? Uh? And who got tear gassed? Uh for the fucking likes Um fucking baby. It was a real baby about it. Like that's the that's the thing, Like after having all of us tear gassed to helen back for weeks, thousands of people his cops gassed. As soon as it becomes a national anti Trump thing, the motherfucker goes out to get like tear gassed once like a big baby, and say like, oh, this shouldn't be done, and then goes right back to tear gas and people. His cops never stopped gassing people. I just anyway, Ted Wheeler sucks. Go to Total Recall PDX to help recall him. Um and and if anyone wants to start a band that makes fun of Ted Wheeler, here's a good name for you, tears for fear gassed. Oh that's a good one. That's a good one. I would have gone with. Shit, I don't actually have one in the chamber, Um Wheeler in this guy, damn it. Okay, you're ahead of me on this. Um guns and Ted's is now that's terra guns and Rose Cities. God damn it. Okay, Well all right, yeah, I'm gonna give up trying to trying to win this one. So Sean, are you ready to learn a little bit more about Josh Dugger? Oh yeah, I can still feel. Yeah, we had a we'll deal with that little problem. So in two thousand three, Josh Dougger returned home from the treatment program UH run by a t I that he even sent to because he molested two of his sisters. Um. Now, It was at this point that his father, Jim Bob, decided to involve law enforcement, likely as a matter of self protection. If this ever came out in the future, he'd want to be able to say that he went to the cops when it first started. The cop they picked was a state trooper who was a friend of the Dugger family. Joshua confessed, and the trooper presumably told him, don't do it again. Now, there's a federal law that says that people who are like cops and teachers are what are called mandatory reporters. This means that if a child or anyone really reports child abuse to you, you have to report it to somebody like like somebody else in You have to escalate it up basically, like you can't just be like, yeah, it sounds fucked up, um, like it's you're committing a crime if you don't then go on to report it. This is the case for teachers, it's the case is it for health pare I was gonna say, it's like did to even go like to to see, like how basic of a protect the children thing is. When we get an amber alert in the hospital, everyone that's an employee drops what they're doing and goes to doorways to make sure like if someone you know, if like someone's trying to escape, like maybe the kid wander off, maybe someone like tried to steal a baby. That happens, Um you yeah, you there. I mean there's there's new stories that come up every now and then, like someone gets like either grief or they're having mental issues, and so they go and they try to get a baby. Um and yeah. So but basically everyone has to drop what they're doing and go by like a public doorway check everyone that goes by, like you got a backpack, you got about you gotta make sure like in that Again, that's that's if we're not working directly we don't work directly with kids or not. Everyone is like I don't from doing any cleaning and stuff like that. But that's like everyone stopped. There's there's a child safety thing going on. Yeah, I mean that makes Yeah. So this is again as you're saying, like, this is a really basic and very like you are supposed to if you are a mandatory reporter, take this very seriously. You can go to fucking prison if you don't take it seriously. It's a big deal. Um, the state trooper did not report this to anybody, didn't didn't tell a soul. Uh, And the decision of a lawman to break the law in order to protect a child molester may seem confusing if you don't know much about the cop in question. This is this is supposed to be one of those things, even all of my issues with the police, as a general rule, most people are like, well, but child molesters, Like, we can all agree for those people, right, Like, it's supposed to be a thing that even very wildly opposed people are like, well, yeah, like we were all on the same page about this this issue, right, Um, not in this case, So he's more of a mentor in this a smart lem mentor in this case. In two thousand seven, four years after his conversation with Josh Dougger, officer Joseph Hutchins pled guilty to eight felony counts of quote possessing visual or print medium depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served three. Hutchins was released from prison on good behavior in two thousand ten, and then, while still on parole, he was arrested again and charged with four counts of distribution, possession or viewing of sexually explicit material involving a child. He was resentenced to fifty six years in prison, where he is now and will probably die because even cop privilege has his limits. They did try to let him out after three years, but that's I mean, that's his cruel. Fifty six you know, one more one more year could have gotten that Hinz deal, could have gotten that sponsorship. Heinz Hines is very big and sponsoring child you don't really you got a fifty seven in front of anything and some money Scott them in trouble a lot. It's you know, they should have rethought that idea in hindsight. So from two thousand five on, the Duggers grew increasingly popular and relevant. The wild success of their and Counting because they changed the name. You know, a lot of more kids is like whatever, and Counting shows We're just gonna call it and Counting, Yeah they were. This made them the single most popular public ministry for the quiver Full movement. They were never identified as being part of such a movement on air. Of course, Josh Dugger and continued to be a major part of the show because again, nobody knew that he had done this right outside of this small circle. His marriage was the focus of a special very dugg Er wedding episode. The births of his three children were also covered. Now, while the family was successful in covering up Josh's crimes, the crimes themselves continued. He molested at least three other miners a total of five victims UM during the early aughts UM, and four of them were his sisters. One of them was a baby sister we'll talk more about this was a babysitter. We'll talk more about this later. But he has at least five child victims UM. While the truth about Josh did not become widely known for years, there was, however, evidence of it if you knew where to look. In two thousand six, Oprah Winfrey booked Jim, Bob and Michelle Dugger on her show. The whole family was flown to Chicago, taken out for expensive meals, and put up in hotels at Oprah's expenses the way Opra Obviously, that's the way the show works. The episode never aired, and as best as I can determine, it seems that someone close to the family found out Josh's secret. There are claims and it's kind of weirdo we I don't think we know exactly what happens, but like some family member like wrote or someone close to family wrote about what had happened on a note and like put it in a book, and someone else who was I think an associate found the book, a woman in her sixties. This person wrote a letter to Oprah saying like, hey, don't have these people on your show. Their kids a child molester. I love the John of God episode. You know, it's one of those things, um point nine percent of the time when Oprah comes up on one of these shows, we're being very negative towards her fact checking. This is not that kind of story. Oprah does exactly the right thing in this situation, which is not a thing that happens often. But I will give credit where it's due here. They handle it right. So, because obviously Oprah has an effectively infinite pile of money, she set a team of people into investigating the manner and again a fairly rare example of journalistic integrity for the Oprah Winfrey Show. They seem to have found some comments online repeating the allegations. Whenever they dug up concerned Oprah enough that she it seems that she reported them to the Arkansas State Police Child Protection Agency and the Washington County Child Protection Agency. She didn't just this. The episodes never aired. She did just cancel the episodes, but it seems that she reported the duggers, which is the right thing to do. Um. That's always like the heartbreaking thing for me with Oprah. It's like she's the stand in for the gullibility of America. They just I just wanted to be true. This sounds so good. I want to feel good about it, and then it just stuff spins out or she's like, oh, the more she follows through, it's like she did this time and again she's helped enable molesters and other situations unfortunately, but this time she did. She did everything right as far as I can tell. As far as we know, she did everything right. Um, that didn't matter as much as it should. Perhaps we can argue maybe there was more than could have, but she she took them off her show, and she reported them to the law, to law enforcement as far as we can tell. Uh. The official police report that we've quoted from was filed in December of two thousand six. So it does seem likely that she reported them and there was an official police report, right um now, if so, if if this is how it actually went, Because all of this is a little murky, Oprah gets kudos for being more critical of the Dugger's image than any other mainstream media organ Nobody else really devoted that much of a critical eye to them. And again, I'm going to be a fair man here now. In more recent years, once all this blew up, Gawker did a deep dive to see what allegations they could find online about Josh Dugget that might have been floating around when the Duggers were supposed to be on Oprah. The earliest comment they found seems to have come from a commenter on a two thousand five blog called in the commentary was the name she used was concerned Mom, and this blog alleges misconduct by the anonymous son of a political man at her church. Quote a few years ago, the men of the church were meeting after church to discuss my friends teenage daughter's apparel. They felt like their blouses were too tight and they should bind their chests up more go figure. At the same time, the son of one of these political men was touching one of my friends teenage daughters in a sexual way as she slept. This was found out and apologies were made. Although the boy was tempted by the girl's tight blouse. The boy was sent to one of the training centers to be punished. My friends did not return to the home church for quite some time after this. At the same time, the boy mentioned earlier was betrothed to a girl in the group. Both were fourteen at the time. The betrothal was broken up by the boy's actions. Just this last year, the family of the young man mentioned before was highlighted on the Discovery Channel. At the time, they had fourteen children, were about to have another, and the mom was receiving a Mother of the Year award from our governor. Since that time, the same boy was betrothed again to the same girl. He was working very hard on a campaign for U S Senate for the girl's father. The father lost the campaign. He immediately began looking for sin in the camp as that could be the only explanation for the loss. He found out that the young man betrothed to his daughter had committed sexual sins while on the campaign trail. The young man now sixteen, was made to stand in front of the church and confess his sin. So again she doesn't name the Duggers, but it's there's the only family with the Discovery show. And there was another memory. Jim Holt was his name, who was running for office and in Josh, because they wanted Josh to in politics, worked on the campaign. The campaign didn't go well, and they aimed it on the fact that everyone knew he was a fucking molester. And it only became a problem when another man in the church couldn't didn't win election, because then they had to start looking for We'll talk about more the scriptural justifications for this, but basically there was sin in the camp and that's that's when he became an actual problem for them, that he was molesting kids. Typical guy getting mad at someone else when he couldn't get his election up. Am I right? That's that's that's That was a rough one. I'm not gonna lie to a show. That was a rough one. Now in order to understand why this fact, after again molesting kids not a big punishment, sending in a way that lost a political election to another prominent man in the church, that got him a significant punishment. In order to understand why there's that kind of discrepancy, why molesting kids does not earn you much of a punishment in this community, you have to understand what the Institute for Basic Life Principles calls the umbrella of action. I'm going to quote from their own stupid website here. God given authorities can be considered umbrellas of protection. By honoring and submitting to authorities, you will receive the privileges of their protection, direction, and accountability. If you resist their instructions and move out from their jurisdictional care, you forfeit your place under their protection and face life's challenges and temptations on your own. The institute goes on to state, under the overarching umbrella of his protection, God has established significant jurisdictional structures family husbands and parents, government leaders, church leaders, elders and other believers, and employers. There's a lot to talk about like with that that's not great. So the way this works in practice is that if anything goes wrong in a child's life or with uh, you know, someone's wife, it is because they were not properly submitting to authority and thus lost Godly protection, the protection of God's umbrella. Likewise, the reason Jim, or the reason this this other member of the church's campaign political campaign failed isn't that he was a bad candidate. It was that Josh Dugger sinned and opened up a hole in the umbrella that let satan it. Basically, that's the that's that's the idea here. This not repeatedly molestic. Well, this was caused by molesting his sisters, but the fact that it it damaged the umbrella protection is why he got punished, right, That's what was actually bad about this. Now, the reason for this involves a few different factors. One, as I elaborated on earlier, is that men's sexual misdeeds are seen as fundamentally rooted in the behavior of the women they assault or molest. That's pretty fucked up. But the other factor here is arguably even worse. Under the fundamentalist doctrine the Duggers follow the Gospel of Bill Gothard, all sexuality outside of procreative marital sex is a sin. Again, quiver Full kids aren't allowed to date. They engage in something called courtship, which has very frustrating rules and under which if you're like holding hands before marriage, that is not okay. That's that is a serious sin and in fact is a sin on the same level as what Josh Duggar did to his his his siblings. Now every interaction prior to marriage between male and female must be carefully chaperoned. Healthy exploration is not seen as something that exists. And when all sex and even like hand holding is equally taboo, when masturbation is the same as child molestation, there's no reason to punish a young man who molests his sisters more than a young man who finds a playboy in the woods, because the sin is the same, which is not great, not great. I mean it's kind of like how when you you attach these like draconian penalties to possession of large amounts of illegal drugs, there are people who be like, well, why shouldn't I just kill the cop or something who's trying to arrest me, Like it's a life in prison either way, I might as well try to get away, you know, Like it's this if you if you treat I don't know, it's it's not great, it doesn't work well. Ever, when you you do well, it's and in the specific way and what you've seen from the episodes is it creates an extremes on two ends where one because everything is under the umbrella of sin, under of just like this just general sin outside of marriage, things that are super fucked up, like molestation get uh the severity gets not treated seriously and the stuff like holding hands gets treated way too seriously. And so then you get those those uh, those kind of extremes where you have Josh Dougger molesting people and possibly that that guy in Atlanta shooting up a spa. It comes from that saying it's it's one of those like kind of a total lack of proportion to lack of proportion. It's like throwing a bouncy ball into an empty room, you don't know where it's going to end up hitting. Yeah, that's exactly right. Um. Now, repeated studies have found that abstinence only a approaches to sex education um and again, these are generally way less restrictive than quiverful sex. Just absence only is not the same as quiver ful sex said, but repeated studies have found that this attitude towards sex just absence only programs do not decrease sexual behaviors among kids, but do cause kids to engage in riskier sex because they lack the education to do it safely. It also robs kids of the vocabulary they need to adequately explain when something unacceptable has happened or been done to them. In her book A Love That Multiplies, Michelle Dugger gives a story that her husband tells to their kids to explain the importance of purity. From this, we can get an idea of the kind of sex said that the Dugger kids, both perpetrator Josh and his victims benefited from. This is Michelle Dugger's writing, So buckle in for some pros. Imagine that your parents are going to surprise you and give you a brand new bike for Christmas. Two weeks before Christmas, they buy your bike and hide it in the storage shed in the backyard. But then the boy next door sneaks into the d and borrows your new bike. He stunt rides it up and down the back alley. On Christmas morning, your parents lead you out to the shed to reveal the special gift they bought for you. And as they opened the door and say surprised, they're just as surprised as you are. You're all shocked to see that the bike looks like it's been thrown off a cliff. The front fender is missing and the front tire is warped so it rubs on the frame. It's dirty, the paint is all scratched and chipped, and the seat has a big rip in it. It looks worse than something you would have bought at a garage sale. I'm sure you would still be grateful for the bike, and you would have fun writing it, but it won't be in the condition your parents had hoped and dreamed it would be when you received it. You would miss out on the a lot of and a lot of the enjoyment they meant for you to have. In the same way, we don't want any boy or girl to come and steal your purity. Pros more like amateurs, am I right? Yeah, because everyone will be an amateur because you don't know anything when you're married. But also also it's a little bit of shaming that. I mean some people are into rip seats. I mean combo people are into rip seats. Some people like you know, mud on the on the tires, some people like don't need a fender. Um. It's also you know, not great number one one of the weird things about this is that for a community that like attacks the secular world as being like obsessed with sex and sexuality, they're completely reducing marriage to just fucking to just virginity, right as opposed to just like, well, people tend to meet and get married and like life has already happened to them, and you kind of take the person as they are and everything that's happened to them. And that's part of if you're in love with someone, what you love about them is the experiences they've had in the person that's made them. This is saying like, no, if they're used at all, they're not as good well, and it's and it's a it's a warping of the experience of a love because the you know, the the the idea and the life experience and the joy of love is that the more you give, the more you have. And this is saying that, no, your love is a finite thing and that any sort of usage of it takes away from it. Like it's like Donald Trump and his I don't exercise because my body's a battery. It's to run out. But yeah, what with love? But with love and it's yeah, I mean there's a lot that's wrong with it, including Nadia that like, well, it's actually like if your parents got you a bike, but by the time it was in the shed because it got roaded so much, other kids came in and upgraded the bike. Uh, and it was a much better bike because people had realized, oh, you actually need these new wheels to like do a better job of going up these hills. And I don't know, we could. I don't want to continue making bike as fucking metaphors, but you could. Well, you know, I mean, that's it's something that's gonna happen. It's very cyclical, yeah, Jehan. You know what else is cyclical? Uh? The rising of the seventh moon on the planes of a distant planet where presumably yeah, I mean unless it's like an elliptical lore, but I guess yeah, I mean that's kind of But I was gonna say, what cyclical is capitalism because you start with money, and money buys products, and products create more money, and then you get more money to buy more products. It's a perfect circle. Yea perfect circle. I mean the products are fine, I mean once you use the product once I mean, it's it's not what your parents wanted for you, so you get, so don't don't buy the bikes that are advertised on our show if someone's had sex with them, I think is the conclusion we're coming here, you know, or just like get like uh you know, like how you get those one used like dispense packs, but just get but with bikes. Geta of bikes from Costco. Yeah, you don't want to ride a bike twice? So yeah, yeah, hopefully Costco is gonna come in here with me. Look, your parents are sitting at home going, oh god, I hope he doesn't get a bike that's already been ridden. Someone else's aid my boys bike? What have I done? All right, here's products. We're back. So in the almost ten years that followed at first police report, which is again two thousand and six, the Dugger family grew more popular and more powerful within right wing political circles. Mike Huckabee, former governor and presidential candidate A turn Um, was regularly seen with both Jim, Bob and Joshua. They were very tight in with Huckabee. In two thousand eight, he hired Josh to help run his failed presidential primary campaign. In two thousand and twelve, Josh spoke at rallies for presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a man so bigoted that his last name was turned into a recognized term for the mix of ship come in lube that results from anal sex. In two thousand thirteen, Josh Dougger was hired by the Family Research Council, who are themselves kind of like political Santorum. Now. The f RC wanted him to be the new face of their organization, and he was made as like he's like nineteen twenties, like young man here. He's made the executive director of f RC Action, the lobbying arm of the right wing organization, actually been in his mid twenties. I think now. A Fox News article functioned as a press released for this because Fox News is basically the press arm of the f r C uh and in that article they wrote quote the FARC's political platforms include firm stances against abortion and same sex marriage. Josh and his wife Anna have been an inspiration to millions of Americans who regularly turned in to see the Dugger family show, and all of us at f r C and FARC Action have long appreciated their commitment to the pro family movement. F RC Action President Tony Perkins said in a statement, we welcome him to the FARC action team and look forward to taking our grassroots outreach to the next level. Now. The f r C itself called Josh the new face of faith and politics. People who walk who walked in similar circles to the Dugger family at the time, will claim that Josh was seen as an eventual candidate for higher office, perhaps even a potential presidential candidate someday. That's always the dream of these people, right, they want like Pince was a big deal in part because like that's as close that's the closest they've gotten one of their you know, someone who's in the cult, so to speak. Um and um, that what they kind of hoped for for. He was being groomed from childhood to do something nationally in politics. Um and. As the face of f RC action, he fought to block and roll back the rights of LGBTQ people, conflating them with pedophiles and arguing against their right to adopt children because they might molest them, which again, he's a child molester, arguing the trans and gay people can't be trusted with kids because they'll molest them. As he's molesting people. I don't know. I like, how much do you get harp on it right, like it's the thing? Well, but yeah, because he's here's part of the other thing with like the having everything under the umbrella of sin. It's like, well, if you're if you're in the club of if you're in the Jesus club, you can always repent. We can put you in front of the congregation. Well we can't put these LGBT. They might just raise their kids and not molest them and never repent for being gay. Whereas it's better I don't know that really is the attitude that it's better for these kids to be molested by godly people who can then. So that's and that's to hammer that point home, to do a little bit of a tangent that does hammer that point home. It's like a lot of when you get into like the dominionist reconstructionists whatever, Like if you get in talking about slavery, a lot of them will be like slavery was good because they weren't Christian and they and the black people were in Christian households. So the fact that they were in a Christian household as slaves and the way they were treated. It was a better life for them than being a heathen. Their souls were saved, right, their souls were saved. So that's also what you're again, what you're looking at it, it's it starts with the It starts with a conclusion, Oh, Jesus's head of everything, and then and is in charge of everything, and then works backwards. So any anything that is close closer to him as we define it is always going to be better objectively. Yeah, it's you. You you've seen the same argument has been made recently. I forget the exact website, but there was just a big column about like how all of the Indigenous people murder did resident American conservative? It was americansservative, like it was actually good because even though they died, they were being they weren't heathens anymore. So like any amount of death is okay if they're not heathens anymore. Which goes back to colonialism, and which is which they kind of both aided each other on colonialism and evangelizing to do fun things. These people suck is the people think they're not great. Um So in two thousand and fourteen, the Dugger family went to war against an anti discrimination ordinance that would have gone into effect in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The ordinance was meant to strengthen protections for LGBT and particularly trans residents. It would have created a new position on the city staff dedicated to handling discrimination complaints pertaining to housing, employment, et cetera for LGBT people. It would have also banned businesses from discriminating against queer people. The Duggers spoke out against this ordinance, and Michelle even went as so far as to lend her voice to a robo call. I'm going to read a segment from this and please do your best to not explode from the irony. Hello, this is Michelle Dugger. I'm calling to inform you of some shocking news that would affect the safety of Northwest Arkansas women and children. The Fayetteville City Council is voting on an ordinance this Tuesday night that would allow men, yes, I said men, to use women's and girls restrooms, locker room showers, sleeping areas, and other areas that are designated for females only. I don't believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter the private areas that are reserved for women and girls. And obviously if somebody beat they trans or not had convictions for child molestation, they're not allowed to go and do a restroom where children are because they're not allowed to get close to children. To be fair, she did not list their own beds as a place of privacy for you know, women and child so you know, on her end it works right, Yeah, And they're oh my god, their arguments after it came out. We'll talk a little bit more about this later, but after it came out publicly what Josh had done, there's this this they got questioned about like, well, you were just like yelling about how trans people shouldn't be able to use bathrooms because it's bad for kids. But your son molested your children. How do you square that? And like one of their arguments was, well, it's not he wasn't a pedophile because he was a child too. Okay, okay, Michelle, is that what you gotta tell yourself to get to sleep at night? Um? Okay. Now, that same year two fourteen, more than thirty of Bill Gothard's female employees came forward with allegations that he had molested or sexually harassed them. Have you been aware of this? Yeah? This, Yeah, so this is a big deal and it like torpedoes his organization. Some of the people he molested were children. So again, this is the third child molester we've encountered in this community. Um, and there's you can find a lot of other stories about Again there there's we We quoted someone earlier saying that, like I knew multiple families where this had happened. It's because this in a lot of ways, this cult is built around providing predators with access to victive. I was gonna say, like a cult just just as a concept is built on predation, and so be predation is pretty much allowing uh desire, the desires of the predator may be freely met being humans, they'll be going to be sexual and this is just gonna happen. Yeah. Now, my cult is based around the desire to prey on the f d A, which is I think very ethical. So yes, we might attack f d A convoys, we might kidnap f DA officials, that's possible. Anything's possible when the FDA is in play. But that's the only people we hunt is the f d A and hey if the if the first maybe maybe well and if you you know what if you go through a bunch of iterations and the first forty four don't work, you'll have Oh yeah we can. We could We could get a sponsorship from Billy Dee Williams. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Or if you get to you know, fifty seventh iteration, you got the h and we get we get that Hinz money which we used to buy arms in order to fight the f d A. I'm pretty sure you can get John Kerry as a sponsor if you get that Heinz money. I think you know John Kerry. John Kerry has a combat experience which will be useful for our guerrilla war against the Food and Drug Administration. This is all coming together now. So Bill gothardeen more than thirty of his female employees, and and some of these people again say that he did it when they were children. Bill resigned from the Institute for Basic Life Principles and from a t I, but women continue to come forward with allegations. Eventually, like more than sixty I think we're at right now, like we're talking cosby numbers um. And obviously it's much more than that right. That's the number who were willing to come forward. Ten more victims suited him in two thousand sixteen. Here's a quote from an article about that by the Washington Post. One of the Jane Doe plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleges that she was raped by her father and her other relatives, and said she was sold by her father through human trafficking when she was a minor. She said she reported the abuse in trafficking to ib LP staff, which failed to report to authorities. Families in the ministry would sometimes send their children to institutes across the country, including its headquarters in Illinois. When the Jane Doe plaintiff was at a ministry's training center, she and Gothard both called her father, and Gothard asked him if abuse allegations were true, the lawsuit states. After her father denied the allegations, she said Gothard threatened her. Gothard taught that children were to obey their parents even if they were being sexually abused, the lawsuit says. The Jane Doe then alleges that Gothard had sexual intercourse with her without her consent, saying she notified ib LP of the rape through an email. In two thousand thirteen, she alleges that an IBLP employed counselor also raped her in his office at an IBLP training center in Indianapolis. David Gibbs, the third, the plaintiff's lawyer, said that she is not sure how old she was at the time of the alleged rapes, but was likely around seventeen or eighteen years old. Again, these kids don't have documents a lot of the time. Another woman in the lawsuit, Ruth Cope Lee Burger, who was the adopted daughter of the counselor in question, alleges that her father's actually molested her. I'm reading this very unpleasant too. That's it's fucking endemic. It is all over and I have never heard any alliations about Jim Bob this way, but it is a lot of the patriarchs so are involved in this. It is fucking everywhere in this cold um. It's not cool and good. It's it's really not cool and good. But you know, thankfully, this is the only large religious based organization where that's ever happened. No other church has done anything like this. It's not like when you claim that there's a hierarchy that gives certain people more access to God, they will use that perceived moral authority to prey on people's That's never happened another time. There there is there. In fact, there's a giant banner outside the head of the archdiocese in Boston Molestation free since one a d. That's that's right there, that's their code. The famously never been involved in any horrible I know, you know, one of the things I've always been interested in. I'm a and not not a religious person, um, but I'm there's a pretty fascinating history of Catholic anarchism and and in Christian anarchism in general that is based in a lot. A lot of what it's based around is this idea that like, well, every time you set up a hierarchy that gives certain that presupposed to certain people are closer to God than others, it seems to be a nightmare. Yeah, that leads to death and molestation in war. Um, perhaps that should never be the case, which I also think I don't know, not a Bible expert, but seems like Jesus would have been more on board with well, just like, let's stress something different is it's it's the most frustrating thing is the lack of acknowledgement that it's that being at a specific place in a specific hierarchy, regardless of what you think that means, somehow makes you in a way less human as far as not being susceptible to abusing that position. And it's just it's kind of like, well, no, that's you have to that's you know, there's yeah, and it's it always and you always see like there's just a it's lack of transparency as how is the first wall to go up because it's yeah, yeah, it's a bummer. Um. So at this point in US history, it should be clear that any moral crusaders who base a lot of their arguments on the idea that trans or gay people are threats to children, as a general rule, these people are either harming kids themselves or enabling other people who are harming kids. It's just such a consistent thing, um, not a hundred percent, but a lot of the people who do that kind of ship and the rank hypocrisy, and there in the rank hypocrisy of the Dugger clan goes further than that. Well, they kept their mouths fucking shut about Bill Gothard in the wake of his fall from grace. They've been doing that for years because their job was to subtly influence people towards fundamentalism without scaring them off. So it's not like they had been super public about Bill, but they never like, I don't I don't have any real faith in the idea that they've disavowed this guy either. It's well, it's like they're they're they're the Tom Cruise to his Yeah to his Now Josh, the face of the Family Research Council and the last best hope of heavenly rule on Earth, spent his entire time as a family values lobbyist as a paid member of the website Ashley Madison. Now, if you don't recall Ashley Madison was basically it may still exist, was a dating app for married people who wanted to cheat on their spouses that eventually got all of its data leaked and hilarity ensued. From two thousand thirteen to two thousand and fifteen, he paid a total of nine hundred and eighty six dollars and seventy six cents to the side, So he was a he was a power user. You could say, yeah, that's a lot of money to spend on the adultery website Christian Morals cents as there was like tax it. I hate, like, you can't even go and cheat on people without having that ninety nine cents they like just round up. Come on. I bet he was really angry about tax being this is gonna fun sin people might get welfare. Yes, makes me angry, which makes me horny. So he listed his desire in finding He listed his desire like the web. It's a dating website, right, so you get to like list your stuff about you. He lists listed his desire as to finding an extramarital partner for quote conventional sex, experimenting with sex toys, one night stands, open to experimentation, gentleness, good with your hands, sensual massage, extended for play, teasing, bubble bath for two, likes to give oral sex, likes to receive oral sex, someone I can teach, someone who can teach me kissing, cuddling and hugging, sharing fantasies, and sex talk. Now. I wouldn't be getting into this if it weren't for the fact that every aspect of his life and job was based around the idea that all of this should be illegal. Right like now, he listed his services listed as services. The fact that he had like these are like the reasons people should be interested in him, the fact that he had good personal hygiene, a secret love nest, and was drug free. Now Also in two thousand fourteen, the year that Bill Gothard got busted from a lesting children and one of the years in which Josh Dugger paid money to cheat on his wife, the four older Dugger sisters cashed in on their family fame by publishing the book Growing Up Dugger, It's All About Relationships. Josh and his wife Anna were invited to discuss their marriage. The book includes this passage from Josh. As I became a young man, I was constantly tempted to have lots of wrong thoughts, and often battled to keep my heart right. One of the greatest things that helped me in my struggles was my parents commitment to accountability. They were faithful to talk with each of us children if we were willing to share honestly and openly with them to maintain a clear conscience. I learned quickly that great freedom can be achieved by accountability, but that deep accountability requires humility and openness. I often had failures in my early teenage years. But I found that I had a clear conscience only when I was willing to confess my thoughts quickly to God and to my parents. The Bible passage Dugger sites uh in this like he cites a John one nineteen, which reads, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all in righteousness, which is what you were talking about. So wait, wait, wait, you're telling me the family that does a capitalism on how It Runs released a formed statement with an inspirational quote. Well, I mean, they released a book and then he gave up quoted. But yeah, I mean, and it's it's yeah, it's yeah, I mean, but it is. Yeah. The way in which the daughters he molested, his sisters have responded to this is also very bleak. And I'm because they're also as victims. I'm not gonna like get into a lot of criticism or great detail about it, but like, I mean, they're trapped. We'll talk about it a little later now. Of course, Josh kept his sins hidden while he was you know, and he just had said that, like, you have to confess quickly and openly to God and in people's but he kept his sins hidden while he was lobbying against the rights of gay and trans people to raise children. Uh, this is a big part of what he did for the f RC. He was a big anti gay rights advocate um and it was always judges like this is bad for kids. But those sins did not stay secret and may have. Two thousand and fifteen, the gossip website in Touch succeeded in foya ng their way to the truth. They published the long buried two thousand six police report detailing abuse by Josh Dougger. Josh and his family initially claimed to deflect criticism. Are initially attempted to deflect criticism by making weasley claims about the exact extent of the abuse. In a Facebook statement, Josh wrote, twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply and deeply regret. I heard others, including my family and close friends, there was a lot of talk about like, oh, it was above the clothes. It was never like they it was. It's almost as gross as anything, just like reading them. Try to talk about why it's not really a big deal that he molested four of his sisters in a babysitter. Now, Josh was forced to resign from the Family Research Council. Jim, Bob, and Michelle made weasley statements about how they'd watched their son like a hawk ever since the initial incidents and that they believed he had changed with God's help, but the hits kept coming. Two of their daughters, Jessa and Jill, chose to self identify as their brothers victims in July, and they actually spoke up to defend Josh and claim that they've been victimized by in Touch publishing the police report. Jessa claimed the system that was set up to protect kids, both those who make stupid mistakes or have problems like this in their life and the ones that are affected by those choices, it's greatly failed. I don't agree with them on this, and again I'm not going to like morally go after them for defending Josh because whatever, they have to live in this. But I don't think it touched in anything wrong. They did not publish any names. They did not say here's who he molested. They published that this guy was a sexual predator who was not punished and who had a very public position claiming to defend children. That's in the public interest. I'm sorry, but it is like it just sounds like it's it's that kind of like whether you with the kind of that cold atmosphere, there's that kind of uh, sometimes literal in this figurative bunker mentality where it's like, yeah, there's problems in here, but they're supposed to be just in here, and so you kind of you put you put a unified front and attack the out there. Yep, yep, that's exactly what's and it's you know, you also you get into this, there's this There are cases there have always been of people who have children who are molested and do not see what was done to them as bad. And I guess a good public example would be you have a couple of different rock stars who had sex with groupies were fourteen fifteen, sixteen, right, a number of those women and we're like, I'm fine with it. It was a good experience. It's still rape. It's still like even if and I'm I'm I'm not gonna say like they should be more trial. Obviously, if that happens to you, when you feel you don't feel traumatized. That's good. I guess it's always better to not feel traumatized. But like that person, that is still statutory rape. That's not acceptable to Hey, it's it's it's the it's the power dynamic that or even if they even if the person on the lower end of that feels that was consensual enough where they weren't, but still, like, you know, these people they're they're taking advantage of you, and it's it's a another step in predatory behavior that could come out and his worse for the next person. Yeah, and it's it's the I mean, obviously this is much more severe than that, because yeah, this is like obviously, but it's on the same chain. It is the fact, and it's very morally kind. And I'm not going to get into this much more in focus on like his victims, but like the idea that like they have downplayed what was done to them, which you know, people have the freedom to say it, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't a serious crime, right, it's it's yeah, um, but you know what is a serious crime not buying these products, buying these products and services, that's right, that's right, Jesus Christ. Okay, Well, we're back, so right, um. So, Josh's sisters kind of came to his defense. Um. They argued that the charges against their brother, that their brother was a pedophile and a child molester were quotes so overboard and a lie. One argument that Dugger parents made was that since the abuse occurred while he was also a child, he can't have been a child molester or a pedophile. We'll put a pin in that for right now. It's worth noting that two other Dugger sisters were molested by Josh. Again, it started with two and I don't know the exact time frame, but four sisters. Um at least one was molested after Jim and Bob Dugger Jim, Bob and Michelle became aware of the abuse. Another victim of Josh was a non family member who worked as a babysitter for the family when she was a teenager. I have not found a lot of details about this case. The Dugger family repeatedly stated their belief that their TV show would not need to be canceled as a result of these revelations. On July, it was like two thousand six was when Oprah kind of figured stuff out. So you kind of have that as far as like a timeline. Yeah, so before that, it seems likely it was like two thou three to two kind he was born, it's that's fifteen, yeah, exactly. Um. On July sixteenth, though, TLC permanently canceled nineteen kids and counting some Republicans who's who had posed with members of the family like Mico Rubio slinked off into the background and try just not to make a statement on the matter. But Mike Huck could be charged headfirst into this as a culture war issue. He called Josh's actions inexcusable, but that doesn't mean unforgivable and then said that like we're, you know, coming to the family with love and support. Um, if only they had been around when cancel culture was in full sway. Can't cancel someone just for repeatedly molests to children. Now on July, Yeah, so right around this time, um, the abuse the user database for Ashley Madison leaked. So all of this comes out, Josh duggers out of then it comes out that he's been paying the cheat on his wife. Um. Not a great year for Josh dougg. He made another peddling apology where he called himself a hypocrite and talked about his pornography addictions, like I'm a it's the evil porn that has paid me to all these bad things. Almost immediately after this, a sex worker, Danika Dylan, came forward and filed suit against Josh, alleging that during a paid consensual sex encounter, he brutally assaulted her. Josh and I the allegations, and Dylan did eventually withdraw her lawsuit, claiming I didn't have the money to take on TLC or the Dugger family, and I again don't have a lot of detail on that. Seems very like that's a very good I get, I get why she would have done that. I believe her seems totally in character for Josh Dougger. Um, we know he's willing to pay for sex one way or the other. We know he's willing to assault people. I believe his sense of boundaries do not. Just his sense of boundaries don't. Because he claims to have some evidence that, like I think of the TAXI received, he was in a different place. I don't know. I'm not an expert on the case. Um, Josh checked himself into rehab. Of course, it was a biblically based program called Reformers Unanimous, and for a while he was able to successfully hide from public scrutiny. This kind of goes away a little bit. His wife Anna stayed with him, and TLC did eventually decide to reboot The Duggers Show without Josh, under a new name, and it seemed as if they were going to get to sweep all this under the rug in the name of TLC's profits, obviously, but that's not what happened. From a write up by Delanere Bartlett, who again grew up in the same community, in late two thousand nineteen, there was a hint that trouble might be on the way back to Josh when federal agents rated his used car dealership, always a sentence you can say about the best people. The entire incident was kept very hush hush, the nature of their investigation, what they were looking for, If they found anything, none of it was released to the public. But then those of us who knew Josh Duggers suspected it was something more. Sex offenders, especially pedophiles, require long term, intensive therapy from qualified mental health professionals. You can't pray it away, and Josh was practically swimming in a culture that excuses and enables sex offenders. Evidence shows that Duggers knew something else was going to go down. After the raid, Josh started moving a lot of his assets. He sold the family home and bought a new, unfinished home in Springdale, but he didn't move into it. Instead, he sold it to an LLC in Anna's name and immediately put it up for sale. He then moved Anna and their six children into a windowless outbuilding on Jim Bob's property. He also shuddered his used car dealership and immediately opened four limited liability corporations in Anna's name. Remember, in the Dugger's fundamentalist worldview, only the husband, as the head of the family is supposed to own and manage the family's financial resources. But not if you've just gotten rated for child born. Yeah, and see, I mean total amateur bastard moved their Look, this is the point where you're supposed to go to Mexico. You should you should have got Mexico, right to Mexico. I'm not going to give a child molester crime advice here, but already you look, you got you got a used car, used car dealership. Always you know, next you have an untraced or harder to trace car. You know, there's you can go down to Mexico. I hear there's some great doctors that will give you some plastic surgery. Uh. Yeah, that's a shame. Well not a shame because he's a pedophile. Um he also yeah, so again just just goes to talk about like how related to convenience all of this ship is like it's perfectly fine to um uh, Like, you know, women aren't supposed to have access to money at all. But like if you know you need to hide the fact that, or if you need to hide your assets because the FEDS are after you for child porn, well God will understand. Now we have more recently learned what the Feds were after. We're like, after all on this rate. So there's rate, but they don't say, you know that they're the Fed. They're not going to say what anything is about until they're done like building their case. That's the way that kind of stuff tends to work. Um. And of course we now know that he was rated because Josh was viewing and downloading child pornography. He absolutely as a pedophile, and a rather extreme one. Based on the evidence we have the Homeland Security special agent who examined Josh's computer described what he found there as quote in the top five of the worst of the worst that I've ever had to examine. And so again with with Bellan Catt, we do some work with Interpoll in terms of trying to track down, um, particularly people making child porn. And the way that it works is that they they have people who actually view the pornography and will take screen grabs from it and cut out, you know, the human beings, remove anything that's actually like sexual in nature, anything that's obviously illegal, and you will just get like photos of like stuff that's in the room, so like toys that are in the room, like maybe views out of And the goal was like where is this happening, because sometimes there's certain resorts that these people use. Um is this the same person in this other video? Well you don't. You never see the people, but it's like here's a if there was, like not not the person involved in the act, but like if you see someone, Yeah, any anything that might help you track down details around it. UM. And it's it's very complicated and painstaking work. UM. But the worst work is the people and it's a very small number of people who are actually viewing the original pornography, which is you have individuals like that who are in law enforcement, both federal and kind of internationally. And I think there's also there are certain like researchers and journalists who can there's like ways to get legal approval to like analyze certain ports and like that kind of work is the worst thing I can imagine doing because like they have to look at the UNET like the child abuse videos. Um, I can't imagine a more difficult or traumatizing job. And a guy whose job is to do that, says Josh Suger's porn stash is like one of the worst things I've seen in my career looking at child pornography, which is a statement, Yeah, that's I mean, it's oh yeah, it's any of that because like I've actually it's about a decade ago. Now, I was on a grand jury, which is if people aren't familiar with that, there's you get you get jury duty. You're on a case. Grand jury duty is where you have your four weeks. It's a nine to five in a room and you see a bunch of and the prosecutors bringing evidence and you kind of give a yes or no vote to whether it goes to truck right. Uh. And we was in Multnoma County. It was the I forget which number it was, but we had cases where it was involved like child abuse, sexual abuse, and the kids had to come in and be witnesses and they we had and we had people that work specifically just with them and with the stuff that they have to do with coming in and helping them through it. And it was just also just incredibly tense and fraud and to just be in any part of that, especially the part where you see the trauma happening in real time. Uh yeah, that's yeah, I mean it's there's um that whole the legal framework set up to deal with all of that, all those kind of cases is um very interesting in a lot of ways. I interviewed a guy when I was working for Cracked years ago who's side job was so obviously, when children are molested, they're going to need to talk to some gift statements to law enforcement, right, which means ideally, if you're trying to do this in the most ethical way, because cops don't normally talk to children about stuff like that, you want to train them, right, and you don't want to train them on children because you don't want to like have a kid come in. You don't want to learn on the job with that sort of thing because it's already traumatizing for the kids. So there are actors, generally adult actors who look much younger, who train and how to mimic being a molested child and will train like federal agents and stuff to interrogate not interrogate that storm, but interview children who have been victims of second Like it's there's a lot of work that goes into trying to protect kids as much as possible within what is already a nightmare for them. But what's the worst that can happened, like a satanic panic or something like um, And if anyone is a super bund up by what we just talked about, go to Belling Cat and look up what's app flash cars nuclear secret for the nuclear secrets article. Yeah that all of the guys. So, yeah, we did an article recently. I had no involvement in it, uh, which you know it is people who are much better journalists than me. But yeah, they found that like all of the people guarding our nuclear secrets had like been using public flash card apps. You could search them and find like code phrases to like get onto nuclear weapons site. It was like a place in eastern Europe that Yeah, it was never a confirmed lear. Yeah, there's a lot. It's very funny, very funny, how slap dash all of that is. But thankfully they put a little more thought into I don't know, job Molestasian. It's good. So yeah again this fucking this the FED whose job is to like analyze this stuff as like Josh Dugger's computer is one of the worst things I've seen my career of watching nightmares. Um. The agent stated that he found multiple images on Josh's computer depicting sex abuse with children from twelve to eighteen months old, so he has a preference for very very young kids. Um. Now. This came after Josh had made public statements about his Ashley Madison account, which he blamed on his pornography addiction. As a result of that, he'd installed a program called Covenant Eyes, a Christian based web like Christian based program that takes screenshots of your online activity at random and uses machine learning to analyze them to see if you're you're looking at porn, and it sends those screenshots to a trusted ally to keep you accountable. Right, the goal is to stop you from looking at porn. Now, Covenant Eyes apparently did not detect Dugger's prolific child porn browsing because he'd installed tour and was saying he was he was obviously like, the dark web is where you go for that ship, right, you want to buy drugs, you want to hire a hitman who's actually a fed, or you want to find child pornography. That's what the dark web is for. Um And yeah, so presumably that's how he found his porn. Josh was charged with just a lot of federal crimes, a whole bunch of federal crimes. He currently faces up to forty years in federal prison. The U. S District judge who handled his detention hearing, said that he could not return home to live with his wife and children for reasons that I shouldn't need to explain now. The cult being the cult, Josh is still their special boy, and his crimes are obviously the fault of Satan and probably those sin for children. As a result, his community leapt into action to defend him, while expressly ignoring the interests of vulnerable people who weren't Josh Dugger. They found another quiverful couple, couple Maria and le Count Reaber, and convinced the count that they should put Josh up while his trial went on. LeCount told the judge their home would be good for Josh because it doesn't have WiFi or children. But of course, the story behind this was much more fucked up than was initially reported. From a write up by Jessica Leigh on the website church leaders dot Com, Josh Dugger's father, Jim Bob Dugger, called people in his church to see if any would be custodians for his son. When Josh was released on bail. Jim Bob found a man willing to take Josh in, except that man's wife teaches piano lessons to children and she was not comfortable having Josh home with her all day because she would be alone with him while her husband was at work. That didn't matter to the husband, However, she has to find a new place to teach all those children because her husband wants Josh to live with them. That's a quote from a member of the community. Now, you know, if he hadn't been re arrested, he would have been They would have set him to live with that trooper. Well he's in prison, yeah if he if he hadn't been, he will be soon maybe so. Maria Reaber has said that she is uncomfortable being alone with Josh Dugger and is also uncomfortable with her with her twenty two year old daughter being alone with him. However, at Wednesday's hearing, Reber testified, my husband has made the decision, and I'm here to support that decision. Healthy ship. Healthy ship. Now, in the reaction to Josh Dougger's charges, we see more evidence of women in his community supporting him at a cost to their own safety. And again, these women are victims. I'm not like criticizing for them, but it's this is what's happening. They are mortgaging their own safety and the safety of their family members to protect this man. You know. Can keep in mind too, like they're in there under the same value system where like, yeah he did this, but you know, like I held hands with so you know, yeah, yeah, I looked at a man when I was out in town recently, both that same None of us is perfect. He molested multiple children. One time I looked at Kurt Russell in a movie and thought he was hot equal crimes, which they kind of. So you know that that again that tension of like, oh, well, the civil authority or the government has civil authority over a few things, and then everything else is under God, and while this is a family matter, so it's under God. So we're going to be a united front. Yeah, yeah, God, it's not great. So the right up, I just quoted sites racial din Hollander at several points. She's sorry that and that was it was a member of the community that was quoted. There was racial din Hollander. Well kind of is so. Rachel din Hollander is best known as the first woman to speak out and file a police report against USA gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, one of the most prolific child abusers in the history of child abuse UM. She says she was groomed for the abuse she received by Nasser because she was molested as a child in an evangelical church. She was disgusted to see Maria Reaver being pushed to accept a child molester into her home. Quote, every single family who takes piano from her and the wife herself has to up route their routine livelihood and the child's musical education because Josh everyone is expected to bear the cost except Josh, and the wife's own very reasonable fears about being alone all day with a man who enjoys the sexual torture of tolers didn't matter to the husband either. The men in the situation are the leaders making the decisions, while the women are expected to submit. She also provides what I think is a realistic explanation for why and Dugger Josh's wife has stood by her husband for so long, even after getting uncontrovertible, in controvertible evidence that he is not safe to be around their children. Quote din Hollander. Scenes sees Anna Dugger's silence about her husband's sexual proclivities as symptomatic of certain evangelical teachings about the proper role of wives. Din Hollander referenced several concepts promoted in some conservative circles, including the complimentary in teaching that wives need to respect and submit to their husbands. Some conservative Christians emphasize the idea that God hates divorce so much that they encourage women to stay in abuse of situations, and it is not unusual for Christian women to be taught that they are responsible for men's lust. If they are married, women are encouraged to make sure to have regular sex with their husbands so that the men will not be unfaithful. Anna certainly couldn't tell anyone because that would not be respectful, said Den Hollander. That's how we counsel wives in these marriages. But she was certainly taught to have sex more to fix it. Her own mother in law wrote blog articles that said as much. TLC at least canceled Counting On in June, after eleven seasons on the air. They claimed that it was important to give the Dugger family the opportunity to address their situation privately, as if the family had not been given ample opportunity to address the situation privately in the more than ten years between the first allegations and the widespread reporting on Josh's behavior. He you remember when we all thought Honey Boo Boo was the worst thing on TV. Yeah, Jesus Christ, I mean yeah, it just was always great. Yeah, but like it's like, oh, yeah, that's what we were, that's what we looked at, that's what people were freaking out of. This was just sitting there the whole time. Well, Sean, how do you feel did you get do you feel good about this two parter? Oh? Yeah, it's feel good that it's out there now. It's it's like I said, it's a I feel like it's this the people and some of the and the depth is it's something that comes up more in people that are kind of more versed in the communities, and so it's good to have it, you know, out there and to have other people kind of look at or be aware of these communities, especially because you know, again in that kind of like you brought up like the people that are under the umbrella of authority, employers, people, this and that you know, it's it seems like a maybe like a this isn't just like an off road into some little group. It's like this is this comes back to climate change because you have people that either they're they're they're concerned is the end of the world, either to prepare it or that it's coming, so they don't really care what shape the planets in the employee fix it all. If we just fix it, we have to focus on doing all this moral stuff can't be But yeah, the way we recycle or treat the environment with our waste has nothing is fine, because we're successful companies, so we're clearly blessed by God's h you know, it's just wanted to they seem like a tangent, but it's just there's all these things that that are very real to people who may not feel they have any sort of connection to what's what happened in this story that's like, well, no, this is this thinking that leads to this leads to a lot of other problems that we have because this specific religious idea at ideology, and obviously the quiver Full is kind of a more extreme expression of it, but the thoughts behind it are incredibly mainstream because again it being a cult that you don't get to the really you don't get to the really heart of it until you're deep into it. So a lot of stuff and again it's it's kind of it's an offshoot of something larger that's gone mainstream, Like you talked about with the Southern you know, the Southern bat Is Convention. What what's been brought up in past episodes about Um Evangelical coming together as a voting block and and throwing themselves behind the Republican Party and then eventually kind of being more the the main driver. I'm sure you can go back and look and see a lot of this stuff with the tea party, which you know it goes as a precursor to Donald Trump, and you see the same thing. It's like grabbing by the pussy. Well, you know, he's you know, he's he's one of us. He's it's it's you know, who hasn't who hasn't held a hand or grabbed a pussy? It's you know, yeah, who hasn't. Yeah, if you looked at someone with lust in your eyes, it's the same as assaulting somebody. So he's no worse than any of the rest of us. And they see him as you know, obviously he became president like they wanted Josh Dougar two, so they were going to kind of try to keep the way Greece for him to go and not hold him accountable because they see him as a ticket. Well, Sean, this has been bleak but important. I'm glad that you picked this subject. I've been on again. I've been meaning to kind of to deal with us at some point, because it turns out we actually have some of the same friends who have got involved in aspects of this, and and I've seen people like over the years kind of I feel like they kind of being more if tending to be conservative and religious, tend to slip into it. There's kind of and it's and it's not necessarily that all religion or conservatives necessarily lead to that. There's actually I've seen a lot of it's there's a lot of the great reporting on this has been done by other Christian even evangelical news sources who are very critical of this, and they're very critical of like Bill Gothard in the abuse in that chunk of the community. This isn't a problem with Christianity. This is a problem with I mean, it's a problem with human beings and the way religion generally works. It's a it's a it's a deeper problem. It's not just an it's not like the specific issue isn't Christianity. The specific issue is how people abuse each other and use systems, including really just systems to abuse each other. It's to to be to be really clear and to also kind of again bring people in who maybe not from as familiar on the religious side, more on the secular side. You know, think about this is gonna hurt, but think about Bill mar for a second. And you know the whole like the kind of along that lines of where it's like, oh, religion, you're just taking shots of religion. Religion is a problem. If religion went away, all the problems would be solved, that kind of that kind of thinking or posturing. It's like, well, yeah, people killing, like there's deaths after sporting events when the team won, like burning cars and flipping like people are gonna be people. It's the it's it's it's Christianity gets not singled out, but it is looked at mainly because of the power structure that it has within this country puts it right at the heart of a lot of the things going. And it's it's power and structures of power and a hierarchy that always are what enables the abuse, whatever forma takes. Because again, if you want to talk about and I think people you know, and I had my angry atheist years, but I think one of the ways in which people go wrong is thinking that it's something inherent to religion when it's something that's inherent to power. Because for example, the fucking We've done a number of episodes on Nexium. You know that that horrible cold, which was very much based in like these evolved in scientific attitudes. And that's at least the way they framed it was not like supposed to be a religious cult as it was supposed to be as much of like a it was. It was it was a rape cult. For the NPR said, you know, like that was the way it was framed. It's just anytime you give people these positions of power where you're investing them with um special knowledge and acknowledging that they have some sort of like special knowledge and special uh cause, and when you're saying that, like that person is closer to some sort of special truth that makes what they say and do more valuable than other people, you invest them with a kind of power, it will more often than not be used to hurt people. Yes, that's the way it is. You have quiver full on one end, and you know, I don't know Goop, yeah, goop nexium. Um, I mean it's again And there's an element of this that's like this isn't all cult behavior because I don't think I don't know if i'd call Goop a cult, but Google a number of the things that are toxic about Goot are also things that are toxic about toxic about cults in the same way that like a number of things that make you a successful stand up comedian could also make you a good cult leader because certain these are these are patterns that can be and there. Yeah, I don't know this is this is more of a discussion than I want to get into right now. But there's a lot that gets into why cults are deeper than religion. Colts are about some things very hardwired in the human mind. UM. And I don't think that that hierarchy is hardware. It's not hardware is the wrong way to put it. Um. We have been abusing each other using systems of power for you know, ten thousand is years, if not much longer. Um. And there's a reason why. And it's because our brains are vulnerable to that in the same way that certain people's brains are, you know, vulnerable to heroin or alcohol or whatever. Everyone's brains are vulnerable to cults. It just depends on finding the right cult. Um. And it's my I think the reason that Christian cults are much more dangerous is in our society is because they have so much more political power, because there's so much more mainstream that makes it easier to hide, right, because a lot of nexium gets busted up much quicker than Bill Gothard does. You know. Um, but that's not anything inherent to religion. That's something inherent to the level of power we give that specific religion in our society. Yeah, it's more under an accepted umbrella. Yeah, yeah, back to umbrella's. So, Sean, you wanna you wanna plug anything before we uhh yeah, I got me personally, I don't have like on my if. I don't do much on social media. A couple of things I would like to plug that are just near and dear to me, Aside from you know Ted Wheeler every calling Ted Wheeler Com. There is a place in down by Los Angeles. It's l A Guinea Pig Rescue. It can be l a Guinea Pig Rescue dot com. Uh. They have like a YouTube channel I have. I have had four guinea pigs. I still have three with me. Um. They're they're sweet little creatures. Uh. They there's a thing they do called popcorning. It's like they get super excited. It's like a full body joy gasm. And uh, it's one of those things where it's like with that and I've had hamsters too. There's this people kind of think it's like, oh, it's it's a starter pit, like because it's they're gentle or easy enough a kid can take care of them. It's like, no, they're still complex creatures with big personalities and specific needs. So l a guinea pig rescue so kids get them and then can't take you in. Total problem all over again. Yeah, and they have Like one thing that people don't always realize with guinea pigs is they are unlike hamsters, where you can have them by themselves and they do their own little thing. Guinea pigs are very social creatures, to the point where there are there are laws in at least Belgium and Switzerland that like pet stores have to sell them in pairs because they get very, very depressed if they're by themselves, and I would split them up, and you know, it's like they have to And there's also you have to make sure they're bonding and this and that. But anyway they do, Ellie Guinea Pig Rescue does. It's like two thousand undred adoptions a year. Right now, they're in a bit of a struggle because they just rescued almost two hundred guinea pigs. Was this like handemic. It was in north northern California. I want to say, it was like someone that was like grazing guinea pigs to feed to pythons where they were or it was like pythons they right, or they were like hoarding them or whatever, but they weren't taking care of so they were and so and and to the point where there's a lot of them are special needs. Um, some may never be adopted and they'll just be they'll make sure they're taking care of for the rest of their lives. But you know, it's like because they when they're smushed together, they were given the wrong food, so like they're messed up, teeth, their their eyes missing because they've getting and it's it's really bad. Um. So what is this place called again, l A Guinea Pigs Guinea Pig Rescue. Well, so if you help out the l A Guinea Pig Rescue, Yeah, and like I said, there's videos on that. They have a YouTube channel. And even if you're not you know, in the l A area, because you can volunteer and help out there even if you don't like aren't able to you know, send a couple of bucks to help them. Just looking at the videos or like if you're gonna get a guinea pig, like looking at these because they're they're there too, because they want the animals to live their best lives. So, uh, just informing yourself and being prepared and taking care of of of of the animals. It's kind of like you saw with the pandemic people got a lot of dogs and put them back. It's there's this I mean, people, if you understand the concept of fua graw, how terrible that is. This is like emotional fua graw where you're just stuffing an animal with your sadness, sadness to feel the hole, to fill the hole inside yourself. And it's like that's it's it's not good and it's going back to cycles of abuse and human behavior. It's like it's just down cycling the abuse onto animals when they can be a huge source of unconditional love and helping you break out of your cycles. They help me a lot with like depression, anxiety, stuff like that. It's an a guinea pig. Yeah, so l a guinea pig rescue. One other thing. Uh So, there is a movie that came out it's about one hour. It's a documentary came out in November. It's called The Forgotten Italian. I have a friend who I met through my brother when they were in high school. Uh, he was in the Marines, went and fought in Afghanistan. Last day there is like doing uh like they're having him show the patrol um and they're like, oh, let's go down this way, which is not a way they usually go. So I E d uh he has ended up losing both legs. Um. And it's so the the area where they were at and this isn't two thousand and eight in Afghanistan, it was It's about the size of Oregon, I believe. And they were past the supply lines, they were past air support. They were just left out there. And why it's called a forgotten battalion? Is it hash as far as I know, and I hope this is true because it's terrible news if it isn't the highest suicide rate in the Armed forces four times the average for the Armed forces and like fourteen times the average and American But why I'm I'm drawing people towards this. So Chris Bride, that's the guy's name. He Uh amazing guy. He's he's worked. He it's it's a very direct and blunt documentary about dealing with suicide, about dealing with people out so because he you know, he's very directed. It's like, yeah, I know I wake up and I want to kill myself every day. You but he he is, like he's all anywhere. He's been like San Antonio and the v A up here, he was an organ for a while. The documentary is actually filmed on the Organ coast. He would always try to, you know, do stuff to to kind of help out the other veterans. Uh he's doing this is like they went on like a fishing trip on the coast and it's basically they all get together, they talk about it. It's been super super helpful for all the u UM, all the soldiers involved. It's like a couple of people that had worked with him wanted to do this documentary because of the change that he had been able to affect. And again, it's it's very it's it's b it's not it's I feel like sometimes we we're not always as direct and realistic and not in like a a bleak, terrible blunt sor but it just basically like, no, this is the reality. This is how they deal with it. Um, and so just kind of soot that battalion, the Forgotten Battalion. You can find it on Apple or Amazon. I would prefer Apple over Amazon, just given the company. Yeah yeah you yeah, you're picking yeah yeah yeah, um Tim, Apple hasn't gone to space yet, so I generally with you there. Um yeah, okay, they Forgotten Battalion, the l A Guinea Pig Rescue and um check out Total Recall PDX, especially if you're in the Portland area and you wanna sign on to recall our shitty mayor um Sean. Thank you so much both for you donnation, for the episode idea and for helping me make bring it to life for the Frankenstein Monster of Sadness. Yeah all right, well that is an episode. Bam.