Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Both were what? What does that mean? George: Oh, you haven't been around a toddler who can pronounce can't pronounce an r. That's how toddlers say r. It's like a whole thing in in English, actually. Have I have I told you all this? No. So in North American dialects of English, we do our r's really weird. If you think about how you say r, like r, r, r, tongue is pressing into the back of your upper molars to make that sound, which is an insane way to pronounce r. Like, very few people anywhere in the very few languages anywhere in the world do this. It's extremely unusual. There's a ton of different ways to pronounce r. It's not like there's only one way and where the auto auto ends out. There's it's very diverse. Like, you know, trilled r like in Spanish, like Yeah. You know, like a more guttural, like, can't remember the linguistic term part. But anyhow, we do our and, like, literally, your tongue is pressing in the size of your upper molars. So it's really weird, and your mouth doesn't do it naturally. So toddlers are very, very frequently the the last letter they can pronounce correctly is r. The last sound they can pronounce correctly is is r sounds. And so whenever you hear, like, a kid who can't pronounce r's, it's like a very common thing if you're doing an impression of a kid like like I just did, poyod. Like, it's because you they literally can't pronounce r because it's hard to do. So anyhow, that's your linguistics lesson of the day. Propter Malone: We doing alleles here? Is that the George: I made a joke involving the phrase toilet, and I had to explain it to the childless guys. Propter Malone: Gotcha. George: So, you know, normal stuff. Propter Malone: Yeah. Rs and ls. George: Yeah. Ed: So I wake up this morning, and now apparently Donald Trump is having a normal one because the Democrat he pardoned didn't switch parties. George: Oh, not switching parties is amazing. Like, honestly, we are I can't stand the man, but shout out to him for that. That's Yeah. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No. I mean, is he that congressman in the RGV? George: Yeah. Yes. And he actually said, like, last week it's not new news that he's not gonna switch parties. The reaction from Trump, I think, fact it's finally percolated through is the news. And Yeah. Yeah. I mean Ed: Only a short time after signing the capital p pardon, congressman Henry Coyar how do you pronounce that? I I can never pronounce it right. George: Coyar. It would be Coyar. Ed: Yeah. Coyar. I know how it's supposed to be, but I haven't taken Spanish in twenty years. Texas is Propter Malone: an art discourse here. Ed: Exactly. Announced that he will be running, quote, running, unquote, for congress again in the great state of Texas parentheses, the state capital s, where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded, exclamation mark, parentheses, as a democrat continuing to work with the same radical left scum, all capitalized, that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in in prison, capital p, and probably still do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Absolutely. George: Yeah. That's true. Absolutely go to jail. Correct. But, hey, if it takes a republican off the board on the RGV, absolutely, brother. Sure. I will say the fact that Cuellar isn't changing is a pretty interesting indicator of where he I mean, this is not a man who has a poor feel for what's going on in his district. And the fact that he is like, no. I am better off as a Democrat in the RGV right now is very bad news for Republicans in the RGV. That's in the Rio Grande Valley if you're not so basically, the Southwestern Edge of Texas. Propter Malone: We talked about this a little bit on the on the podcast before, but my overarching theory of the RGV is that it got a gigantic federal money hose pointed at it during Trump won, and that that was substantially responsible for the differential swing in Latino voters that we saw in the RGV as opposed to elsewhere. George: I think it's that and also just the inflation stuff. I mean, like, Latino voters were incredibly focused on inflation and relative to other groups even, and I think that played a big role in 2024 as well. There are other shifts that predate the 2024 swing that we saw mixed evidence for nationwide, but and that's right. You know, the RGB was a standout. South Florida is a standout. You know, there are idiosyncratic things, and I think you're exactly right, Propter, that the money hose is a big deal. But this time around, it's not really working that Propter Malone: way, obviously. I I mean, that's that's not where the money hose is pointed right now. Like No. Like in in Trump one, the emphasis was really on border enforcement. In Trump two, the emphasis is on terror against minorities everywhere to try to reduce immigration demand, essentially, to try to keep people from trying to come across the border. Yep. But there's not anything like the tens of billions of dollars in federal response and wall building, that was a big deal, during during Trump one, where there's dollars flowing directly to these relatively poor districts that just dwarf any other options out there. So I mean, I think that if if you buy that theory that this was that this was essentially that, like, during Trump one, Trump did the WPA, but specifically for the wall in the Rio Grande Valley, that that was that was a very effective economic program for those districts. He's not doing it now. All that ICE money is going elsewhere. George: Yeah. And they haven't been really aggressive about immigration enforcement in Texas the same way they have been in other places, but they have been doing quite a lot of immigration enforcement in Texas just by nature of the national baseline going up. And also, all politics is now national. So if there is an ICE raid in Chicago or Charlotte, it's gonna show up in the social media feeds of people in the RGV or San Antonio or Dallas or Houston. So they have real issues there. I I think the mistake everybody made in 2024 was the idea that there was this permanent realignment towards Trump based on very idiosyncratic factors specific to the context we were in. And I think it's gonna be really important not to make that same mistake this time around with a Latino swing that all evidence points to very strongly. I mean, whether it's polling, whether it's actual election results, whether it's vibes, like, is pointing to Latinos being like, absolutely not, dude. We're not doing this again. But it's gonna be really important to not re extrapolate that in the wrong way now that it's the idiosyncratic factors for the time being. We'll see if they remain they turn into structural factors benefit our side as opposed to Trump. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I think it's because of Texas Tech. George: And that in the business, folks, is what we call a segue. This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much. I'm George in Charlotte. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: In DC, I'm Propter Maloney. In Outer Florida, I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer. Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: It's because of Texas Tech and their nasty ass tortillas they make out there. George: So what? They're gonna be the four seed? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The three seed, I think. Three seed. Okay. Are they are they the three, or is Ohio State? I don't know. Who knows? All I all I really care about here is that people are really mad on television that Alabama may get left out for a team that they deem to be less deserving. And irony is walking into the fucking ocean right now. Like, kiss my fucking ass. Put Miami in there. Put Notre Dame in there. Put fucking Duke in there. I don't care. But y'all can kiss my ass. George: They're gonna leave Bama out with a five lost Duke team in the playoff, Paul. We gotta replay the whole season, Paul. Propter Malone: Congratulations to you and your Blue Devils, by the way, George. That was a nice win last night. You guys tried very, very hard to not make it happen. But ultimately Hey. Ultimately Hey. You won, and that's great. Ed: What are a George: couple pass interference penalties between friends? You know? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Manny Diaz won the ACC before Miami. How about that? Beautiful. George: We love it. Okay. Before before I we start lyrical about this, I do wanna explain the college like, how does college football work for people that are not college football freaks? We promise we're not gonna make this, like, every week going forward, but it just happens to be in the calendar right Ed: now. Really better not be every week George: going forward. No. It's not. Ed: But because I'm dying here. George: Yeah. So, Ed, you can go for a walk, and then we'll We'll call you. Alright. So low tax, this is your job. You need to explain how do you decide who the best college football team is every year starting week one and then season camp call it, the conference championships and then college football playoff. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Are we making me explain things again after the Lane Kiffin thing last week? George: Yes. Because this is your area of expertise, and we're calling on you. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Okay. So, well, week one, we just decided by these arbitrary polls published by the Associated Press and USA Today. But, ultimately, it is decided by a committee of morons who are athletics directors for all the various schools, and there are 12 teams chosen. Now the committee is obligated to choose the top five ranked conference champions. So in that case, that would obviously be Indiana, which is a statement I never thought I would say. They're only playing the happy Melloncamp songs in Bloomington. Second would obviously be Georgia, which is the SEC champion. And then I believe it would be Texas Tech from the big 12, Tulane from the American Athletic Conference, and James Madison University. And I have no earthly idea what conference James Madison actually plays in. I assume their schedule is mainly made up of, like, the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and, you know, Richmond Community College and things like this. But James Madison is going to be in, and and God God bless him. Propter Malone: I'll be honest. I thought I thought that James Madison played in whatever conference you get relegated to if you suck bad enough in the ACC. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: They probably should. That that probably should be the way it works. Okay. So those are the five. Those are the five who are guaranteed to get in unless the committee decides that an eight and five duke is better than a twelve and one James Madison, which low key they are, but no one's gonna believe that. So then you have seven more teams, and those seven more teams are chosen by a committee of perverts who operate a lot like the NCAA tournament, where they vote on it and decide, okay. We're gonna bring these teams into this playoff tournament. And most of those teams are going to be from the Big Ten or SEC because those conferences have all the money. And so that's how college football works. Propter Malone: So so the particular wrinkle that's happened this year is that after the teams play their regular season, they're in the conference championship games. That's what happened this weekend, and conference championship games are not scheduled at the start of the year. They're played between, depending on the conference, typically the the winners of the two divisions in the in in the conference, if it's a conference that has divisions, or the top two teams in the conference if it's not a conference that has divisions. I don't know if we still have any conferences that don't have divisions. But what happened this year Most don't, I think, at this point. Okay. I've completely lost track of the conferences in college football, except for p 12. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: But what happened what happened this year Propter Malone: is that Alabama played in their conference championship game and got curb stomped by Georgia. I think that's a fair way to put it. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Which I told y'all was gonna happen. I said they're gonna they're gonna go nine and three or ten and three, and they're gonna get rinsed by Georgia. Propter Malone: So this is interesting for the for for the selection committee, because Alabama over Georgia was Alabama's best win by a fair margin. You know, in the rematch, they got they got rinsed. So so there's there's some speculation that the result of that game, with Alabama looking bad, will result in Alabama getting dropped from from the from the roster. They're on they're on the bubble. They're, I I think, by any reckoning, one of the last teams in or one of the first teams out. But one of the concerns here for college football is that that creates an incentive problem, where teams don't wanna play in their conference championships because if they look bad, they might miss the playoffs, which are bigger money and a bigger deal. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Note that nobody brings this up with respect to Virginia. It's only Bama. Propter Malone: Yeah. I mean, because because the top five conference championships because the top five conference champions all get bids to the playoffs, this hits different conferences unevenly. This means that, you know, for power conferences, for the real power conferences like the SEC, it's it's it's very likely that the second and third best teams in the SEC are gonna be at least competitive, if not auto wins for the playoffs. Whereas for the ACC, it's not clear that the best team in the ACC should be in the playoffs. In fact, the best team in the ACC probably will not be in the playoffs. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: There is that common opponent issue though because Alabama, as listeners will remember, got its ass beat by Florida State. Virginia beat Florida State. So what is why should Virginia not be in that conversation? Like, I understand there's a thing in college football folks should know that whenever Bama is in danger of being left out of the playoff or the championship game, there's this idea that, well, Bama has really only lost to teams who beat Bama, and those should really count as wins when you think about it. What? Yes. Come on. You know this, Ed. I know you're from Boston. Ed: No. I don't. I I stick to sports that are good. But, like, they they rationalize and also, like, they're they're all up down sports. So you can just count, which I understand is sometimes a difficult prospect, which frankly does make all of this really weird. Like, why do you need an Excel spreadsheet for this when this is football? But, like and I can say that I played it. But, like, how how how did they rationalize this? Is it just like they think like, does Alabama this is a sentence I never thought I'd say. Does Alabama just think they're special? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yes. Yes. Okay. Fair enough. Pundits pundits think they're special too. So so there Propter Malone: actually is an underlying problem here, right, which is that these schedules are unbalanced. Different teams play radically different strengths of schedule. You can you can schedule cream puffs deliberately, you can schedule very, very easy opponents heavily if you want, and the strength of the different conferences is also wildly different. I mean, it really is harder to play an SEC schedule than it is to play an ACC schedule. That said, you know, the records are the records. It's not like we've had a good system for for identifying the the national college football champion in the past. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: False. We had a good system. It was called the BCS. Leave it to the computers. George: Yeah. I mean Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I mean, this People got people got so mad at the BCS. The BCS was right. And to do the playoff, what they should have done is none of this committee thing. Just use the BCS and pick the top six teams. Top two get a buy. Everybody else, it's a play in. Six teams. There's never more than, like, four teams who should reasonably be considered for the national championship. If you wanna go to six, at the max, I would say eight, but that's what it should have been done. Not this committee nonsense. Like, we need to stop with this basketball brain that is polluting the sport. Propter Malone: We're not we're not gonna stop with the basketball brain. We're gonna have, like No. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I know. Propter Malone: 16 teams soon, and who knows? Maybe maybe we're gonna wind up with a 32 team playoff. George: There there is just Ed: no way. Resident basketball liker, I would I would like to asterisk that no one cares about college basketball. Thank you. George: I care about college basketball. Propter Malone: Come on. That's that's one of the best weekends of the year. Ed: Yeah. But that's because it's it's like what your school is good at. I'm talking about normal people. Then again, I went to UMaine's, and no one cares about college hockey either. So everyone everyone is dismissed here. How do you watch a thing where they they shoot, like, 25% from the field, George? George: I it's not about the skill. It's about the intensity of the people doing it, and that is why MLS is good as well. It's the exact same theory there. Right? Like, MLS is the NCAA basketball tournament of the soccer world because everyone is running their absolute legs off and panicking, running around like just madness, and their skill level is is is not at the at the level you would hope for a very strong professional league. Ed: MLS is toddler soccer is the best idea I've seen heard all day. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Let's be George, be real here. It's because you went to Duke, and it's a part of the culture. George: No. But I liked I liked the NCAA basketball tournament before I went to Duke. I mean, you know, what kid interested in sports hasn't spent that first round weekend locked in and watching just basketball all day for the entire weekend? And it's just like, come on. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Me. Propter Malone: Me. George: You were you were interested in sports when you were that age, though? Come on. Ed: Yeah. Yeah. I have been a sports head most of my life. It was like after I did some analytics stuff that I was like, wait. The the weighted number generator cartoon is real and then kinda stopped watching. George: What are we gonna do with these guys, Propter? Ed: I I understand that, like look. Look. I understand that that people who went to the same school as noted luminary Grace and Allen have a certain amount of appreciation for these things, but not all of us care about college George: that much. The closest college to me closest American college to where I grew up was also, the school that produced, Adam Morrison. So I am very, very big on luminary schools. Anyhow, you know what? Y'all are trying Ed: to take George: the shine off of me right now, and I don't appreciate it. Propter Malone: Alright, George. Let's talk let's talk about them blue devils. George: Right. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Let's talk about the fighting mannies, baby. George: So Duke was in the ACC championship game last night, and the thing that's important to understand here is that as as the gentle gentleman outlined, you shouldn't be considered a very strong team in college football late in the season if you have, like, five losses. That shouldn't be a thing. So it was weird that Duke was in the ACC championship game, and the reason is because the ACC just kept falling flat on its face anytime a team had a shot at making a name for itself. And Duke only had two losses in conference, which is true of a whole bunch of other people as well. And we won all the tiebreakers. They had this Rube Goldberg machine of different metrics to decide if everyone's got the same record, who is the best team among them, and it turned out it was Duke. So last week, I was huddled over my phone at, I don't know, 11:30PM watching, Cal beat SMU. Because if Cal did that, if SMU had won that game, they would have had the best record. But because they lost to Cal on the West Coast last weekend, they dropped two losses in the ACC, and Duke had as a tiebreaker over them and other people as well. Miami was better than had a better record than Duke outright, and I think they would have won tiebreakers in the in the in the ACC, but they're in the other ACC division. And they lost to Virginia and and were or sorry. They were worse than Virginia in the in the conference. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No. They they missed out because Duke had the better strength of schedule. George: I'm sorry. Yes. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Which is which is one that I I deeply love because Florida State has now kept Miami out of the playoff because we tanked their strength of schedule. George: I love it. I love it. So the other thing to remember is that Duke's head coach is the former head coach of Miami. Manny Diaz was the head coach of Miami, and he ended up getting fired because he couldn't get Miami over the hump into, like, the top tier of national teams. They were good. They've been good for years and, you know, but they they haven't ever competed for a national championship and many well, they've been they've been on the cusp of that elite level. I'm getting a I'm getting a, hand signal from low tax here. Miami eight week runs fifty two weeks a year, baby. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. That's true. Manny was not great at Miami. He was like a seven and five, eight and four kinda coach. George: Right. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: And he appears to be a kind of seven and five, eight and four kinda coach at Duke. George: But seven and five, eight and four at Duke is a much, much bigger deal for that school than for Miami who wanna compete for national championships. So Right. Anyhow, so Duke ends up in the ACC championship game against Virginia. Duke is seven and five. Virginia is ten and two. And if Virginia wins, then they're a ten and two team in a power five conference, and they won the conference, and they get their bid to the college football playoff. They won't be one of the higher ranked teams, but in the playoff, but they're in. They're they're they're gonna make the playoff. If they lose, well, then you're a three loss team from the ACC. You didn't win the conference, and, no, like, you're you're definitely out. Whereas Duke I mean, look, I the committee may give Duke a a bid. I very much doubt it, to be clear. I I think it was very low probability. Yeah. They're everyone's shaking their heads. On paper, they could give Duke a bid. They could. I mean, there's nothing in the rules preventing them from doing that. But a seven and five Propter Malone: You guys you guys had to win your last two to be bowl eligible. George: A seven and five team that won their conference is just amazing, and we did it last night. And it also I will just say real quick, and then we can move on from this. Absolutely phenomenal football game. Like, blast. So fun to watch. Really exciting the whole time. Both teams were playing exciting, if not well. And the way it worked is, like, Duke had a a lead in the fourth quarter. We had one of the best punts I've seen all year that pinned Miami in or pinned Virginia inside their two yard line. Basically, they're playing right up against the end zone, and that led to an interception. And so and let us extend the lead back to seven. Virginia marches down the field with, like, thirty seconds left on the clock to score a touchdown, converted a fourth down, and then scored a touchdown. So they tied it up. We go to overtime. Duke gets the ball down to the one yard line. It's first in goal from the one yard line. So you only gotta move the ball forward one yard, and they had they took them four downs to do it, but they finally scored. So we are we're up seven. In college football, the way overtime's work, you need to then score a touchdown if you're Virginia. You can't kick a field goal. You got have to score a touchdown convert the extra point. They had took a penalty on the Duke scoring play that instead of starting at the 25, they started at the 40. And so why I think this was maybe the most important play of the game, that that dynamic, because Virginia's coaching staff got it into their head for some reason that they needed to run a trick play. I don't know why they did this. They had been marching the ball. They it was first and 10. They had been running all over us in the fourth quarter, like, just getting five, ten yard clips easily. So they do this, like, pitch out to the running back. He throws it back to the quarterback, and the quarterback tries to throw it downfield into triple coverage. Duke picked it off ballgame, and it was amazing. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: It was fourth down, though, wasn't it? George: No. It was first down. Propter Malone: No. First down. Ed: Ten First down. George: 40 in overtime, the first overtime. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Oh, well, Tony Elliott's an idiot then. George: He's an idiot, and their quarterback's just just very, very bad at all this, throwing into that triple coverage. Propter Malone: I just wanna take one minute to sit with a quote from the Duke quarterback after the game. Darian Mensah, who was the MVP of the ACC championship game, said on national television, we're underdogs. That's why we're at Duke. You have thoughts on that? George: Mensa is getting paid what was the number? 7,000,000? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Ed is dying. George: It's it is okay. Look. It is absolutely true from a football perspective. Anybody that anybody that's if you apply that to anyone else at Duke, it would be laughable, and it it is a funny quote. But with respect to football, it's true. He's it's a good quote. He's right. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: It is it is both true and deeply funny. George: Yes. It is deeply funny. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: That kid is probably going to, like, unwind Applebee's in the private equity market in, like but it's it is true in football. You are you are right, George. George: I he he got an $8,000,000 paycheck to come to Duke from the NIL collective. So Mensa specifically is less of an underdog than that quote would imply even in football terms, but a lot of other guys on that team. Like, no. They are in the in the sport they play, and the the thing that they spend the vast majority of their college time doing. I know this because I did it. Like, you spend a lot more time on football than you do on class. That Ed: they George: are they are absolutely underdogs. $8,000,000? Yep. Hey. They he he won them an ACC championship. Money well spent. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Fucking Cam Ward was only four. George: Price going up, man. Inflation, baby. Ed: Cam Ward was a deal. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Trumpflation. Propter Malone: I just wanna say one more thing about about the broadcast last night, which in addition to we're underdogs, that's why we're at Duke. The broadcast included the line. He wants to make a lot of money in private equity one day as a description of a Duke football player. Yeah. So George: Yeah. We there is a type, and we play to it. Propter Malone: Oh, which which I which I appreciate. You know? I I think it's I think it's good when when schools lean into their roles in the, in the sports watching Ed: Oh, schools, as you say. Is a school involved here? George: Not really. Easier to stay in than get in. I'll put it that way. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I mean, yeah, Duke Duke, there's probably some school involved. Georgia Tech, there's definitely school involved. The rest of us know. Propter Malone: Vandy Vandy does okay. But Ed: I actually had at least one and maybe two, I never figured out, future NHL players in my college classes, and they actually, like, showed up and participated. It was a fascinating experience compared to, like, all of the football people. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. Because there's no fucking money in hockey, Ed. No. There's Ed: they did quite well for themselves. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: In college hockey? There's no money in college hockey. Ed: Actual hockey. Like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Once they once they Ed: went on and became pros. Right. But, like, they still showed up. And I'm the football player sure didn't. Then again, I don't think anyone was paying humane players to go play football. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: We ain't come here to play school, Ed. Cool. Can you leave? Propter Malone: So in other news this week, the Supreme Court of the United States of America granted a cert, which means that they're gonna hear the case, on a birthright on birthright citizenship. They're going to hear whether or not the fourteenth amendment of The United States, which guarantees citizenship to everyone who was born in The United States, actually, in fact, guarantees citizenship to everyone born in The United States. George: Really quick before we dive into this, can we just read section one or or sentence one of the fourteenth amendment? Because I think I think it's worth level setting. Just all persons born or naturalized in The United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of The United States and of the state wherein they reside. Simple. So if you are a, born, b, subject to the jurisdiction of US law, then you are a citizen. There is no other way to interpret that. It is I mean, that's it. That's it. That's not in there's no interpretation. That's it. Propter Malone: That's how it's been understood. Ed: That amendment is going to get some real exercise when they get the human cloning, but, like, until then, I think we're probably okay. George: Let's let's leave that particular eldritch horror in the jar for now, Ed. Thank you. Ed: The term is decanting? Propter Malone: Is that is that the term? Oh, god. George: Well, it's in sci fi, like Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Well, you know, the fourteenth amendment is a reconstruction amendment. You know, in the eyes of the majority on the court, those don't count. George: It's true. Propter Malone: Yeah. So for those for those who may not be stooped in the history or the law here, the Reconstruction amendments were a set of constitutional amendments that passed in the wake of the civil war that were a little bit more than minor amendments. They essentially reshaped the constitution. The fourteenth amendment in particular is by itself most of a new constitution. The way constitutional jurisprudence functions after the Reconstruction amendments is fundamentally different than the way that it functioned before the Reconstruction amendments. There have been some issues with this. There have been some issues because, for whatever reason, when they did the Reconstruction amendments, they chose to write them as relatively worse amendments. There is a lot of content packed into not a lot Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: of Propter Malone: words, and people sometimes under read that a little bit. I think that it is not widely taught in schools that the Reconstruction amendments are a whole new constitution. It's not something you necessarily get at the at the elementary or middle school. George: General Reconstruction is basically ignored in a lot of American schools in ways that are extremely harmful. And not just American schools, by the way. I had to relearn states in my twenties because I didn't get a good education on Reconstruction either in Canada or aforementioned school I attended. Propter Malone: Duke Duke doesn't do a good job on the re George: To be fair, I didn't take any US history courses other than US economic history, which kind of Which is like history. But either way, Reconstruction not emphasized in my particular course of study. Anyhow, continue proper. Propter Malone: There's a there's a school of conservative jurisprudence that that has as a mostly implicit, sometimes explicit goal, writing the Reconstruction amendments out of out of history. John Roberts has been has been hard on the Roberts Court generally has been hard on the fourteenth amendment. Trump essentially made section three, which says that, you know, if you've done insurrection, you can't federal elected officer, or or a federal appointed officer. Trump versus United States essentially wrote that out of existence. We'll see whether or not we get it back at some point. But for now, that's a dead letter. You've you've seen jurisprudence related to the Voting Rights Act that essentially says, well, we know the constitution says that this is a thing we're doing and Congress can do it, but we're gonna pretend what if that's not the case? That, you know, that you can, in fact, do these things that are limiting the vote on basis of things like racial animus, and Congress doesn't have the power to stop you. It would be part and parcel of that for the court to potentially come back and take on birthright citizenship. The legal arguments for Nixon birthright citizenship are weak to the point of being nonexistent. This is how citizenship in The United States has been understood for many, many, many years. Even even prior to the Reconstruction amendments, birthright citizenship was understood as the law of the land for anyone who wasn't a slave. George: I mean, literally, it was much more liberally interpreted. It wasn't just birthright citizenship. It was if you can get here, you're in for most of US history up to that point. Propter Malone: Yeah. It wasn't it wasn't really until the the the Chinese exclusionary act that we had limited citizenship. And and, you know, that's that's part of kind of a process where you see governments move towards, more robust welfare supports that are coming on a citizenship basis, or or that are coming on on on a broad basis, that you see more exclusion happening in citizenship. Our basic problem is that we're a nation of immigrants, and if you're a nation of immigrants, it sure makes things a whole lot easier to have birthright citizenship than to have citizenship to send through your parents. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: But what about birth tourism? Ezra Klein Ezra Klein told me this was a thing that we could all agree on, even though seemingly no one on the left agrees George: on this. Agree on that, Ezra. Yeah. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I don't either. Ed: Yeah. Neat Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: shit, Ezra. George: Ezra needs to come run some Oklahoma drill with me, honestly. Ed: Yeah. I agree. He would keel over in thirty seconds. George: I'm just sir, would take a Propter Malone: lot of time George: in thirty seconds. Ed: I'm being nice. Propter Malone: Birth tourism for people who may be unfamiliar with the phrase is the practice of non US citizens coming to The United States for a relatively short period of time on a tourist visa, most commonly, but maybe on a student visa, for the purpose of having of of having a child in The United States who was then a US citizen. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The numbers estimates for how much this actually happens are kind of all over the place. Our best guess is that it's maybe triple digits a year, maybe. Literally dozens of people. But it would prevent Boris Johnson from being ever being eligible to be president. George: I I take back what Propter Malone: I said after George: an Oklahoma drill. It's fine. Now that I've realized that Boris Johnson would be thrown out. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I think he actually renounced his citizenship when he was trying to become prime minister, but, you know, whatever. George: Even if you wanna put on your maximal wonk hat here. Right? Like you're you're Iglesias. And the people that you are selecting with birth tourism, if this is even a thing worth talking about, are in a tier of means and wealth that that alone get making them American citizens and therefore opening them up to taxation is a practice that entirely justifies the entire, like, the birth tourism situation. Right? Like, these are from the perspective of dollars and cents, and we should not be making policy this way. But I just wanna make this clear. From the perspective of, like, dollars in dollars out, these are massive NPV positive things. Like like, you are this is writing a huge check to the US government on behalf of whoever's being born the moment you do this. So, okay. Like, I just it's really funny to see people like Klein, you know, fetishize certain arguments in certain contexts, and then just completely ignore them as soon as it's inconvenient too because of other political imperatives. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: These guys love latching on to these small, miniscule, just nonproblems and adopting the right wing attitude as as some show of, like, centristy seriousness. Ed: It's open mindedness to a stupid degree is, like, that's what they always do. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yes. It's we so we have we have this, the the birth tourism, and that's not unlike trans rights Ed: Mhmm. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: In my view. Like, people will bitch about, oh, you know, oh, this this cis head girl at at, you know, fucking Topeka State came in twenty seventh in a swim meet and was beaten out for twenty sixth place by a trans woman. And it's there's there's 20 fucking people in the whole country Ed: Yep. Here Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: for whom this would apply to. This is not an issue. Propter Malone: Well, and also, like, who knows to what extent this is actually happening or is going to happen, but, know, Trump is pushing for this gold card visa program where people can straight buy their way in to a US passport that is supposed to come without the burdens of taxation on on foreign residents, that there's no way to look at that and say, okay, birth tourism is a problem, but the golden card is not. Ed: I'm really looking forward to seeing how that tax stuff shakes out in about two and a half years. Propter Malone: I don't know if we have any kind of numbers on on on how many of those gold cards are actually being issued on account of, you know, it being George: None. Propter Malone: Illegal. I think there's there's a cash George: market for it, actually. Yes. Propter Malone: Really? I guess I guess that's a nice way for people to hedge if you happen to be a Saudi prince wing who is counting on their gold card. George: Well, it's it's it's tough to get liquidity, but currently, the market is priced at 0.5. That is like 0.5 gold cards. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Just not gonna happen. George: Zero chance. It's been I don't I haven't followed the news on this closely, but since late June, it's been essentially zero. And nontrivial amount of volume, honestly, like, $2,300,000 traded over the course of the past seven months. So Insofar Propter Malone: as as birth tourism is a problem, it's a very, very small problem. It's difficult to point to actual harms that come from birth tourism. It's difficult to point to a birth tourist other than perhaps Boris Johnson, who has US citizenship, but we kind of wish they didn't. You know, it's just this is a tempest in a teapot. This is not an actual reason to upend our system of birthright citizenship. From a functional perspective, one of the big reasons to defend birthright citizenship is that it is going to be very difficult for people to prove their citizenship Yep. Send birthright citizenship. I don't know about you guys, but my citizenship document is my birth certificate. Ed: Yeah. I George: actually had to do this because I was an American born abroad to an American mother, and it is incredibly difficult to do, to the point where my mom had to scrape through her parents' records or whatever to try and find elementary school report cards to prove that she had been present in The United States for at least five years. Right? Though, I don't know what the exact these are these are standards that can change over time, so I'm not sure exactly what the standard is to say. But when I applied at at the time in the mid two thousands, the standard was you had to have proven that you were in The United States for at least five years, not entry and exit time or whatever. You had to have pay stubs. You had to have report cards from a school, like, that kind of stuff. Proving that is incredibly difficult. Right? Like, it is really genuinely hard to do from the perspective of, like, thirty years later. And that's if you're a relatively well put together, organized, you know, professional person who attended college and grew up in middle class, whatever. If you have any, you know, challenges around that in your personal history, good luck, man. Good luck. You're just not gonna be able to do it. Ed: I would bet that most of the people I know couldn't do it, and they have Gmail and search. Like, it's impossible. Propter Malone: And it gets worse the further back you have to go. Right? It's not it's not just a matter of searching records that are relatively straightforward and relatively standardized. They're not that standardized, but relatively standardized. You know, once you go back two generations, you're in extremely dark territory. Once you go back three, you're screwed. Yeah. Ed: And I mean, like, even the ask of going back too is getting into some, you know, skull calipers bullshit. Propter Malone: Yeah. Yeah. Well, mean, unless unless going back two generations gets you to literally Ellis Island like, you're gonna have a problem. And it's not like there's no problems if you came through Ellis Island either, right? Like, they changed a lot of names. You've got to establish continuity of identity. It's just this is something that should be interpreted not just as a threat to people to people whose parents were not citizens but were born in The United States. This should be interpreted as a threat to people who are otherwise feeling very secure in their US citizenship. Ed: I would say that is probably the more direct intent. They've been doing this since my entire life. They have been saying that we are not real Americans since I was a frigging child. And, like, one, screw them. But also two, like, this is granted they would have to completely forget how to read again in order to to support this at the SCOTUS level, but, like, people have done this before. Not in The US, but, like, this sort of absolute this sort of absolute I'm trying to think of a word that isn't just authoritarianism, but that one. Like, this is this is how you discredit and depower people. Propter Malone: There's a famous quote from a German mayor in the lead up to World War two and the lead up to the Nazi takeover. I decide who is a Jew. That's Good times. The kind of territory that we're getting into here, if if this happens. That said, this is not a doomer podcast. I wanna be clear that, at least my personal stance on this, is that no judge has ever sided with the argument that birthright citizenship no federal judge has ever sided with the argument that that, that Fourth Amendment that fourteenth Amendment birthright citizenship is a dead letter. George: You're gonna get at least two in this decision, though. Propter Malone: Yeah. I mean, I think if if I had to handicap it, I would I would handicap it at seven two. I think I think they're gonna get Alito and Thomas to bite, and everybody else is gonna say no. We're gonna just keep doing what we've been doing. Thank you very much. Ed: Nick, I mean, you're not going to get you're not going to get Gorsuch on that, I don't think. But Roberts is a deranged homunculus of a George: I I think seven two is what is the is what the baseline should be. I think you can make an argument for one of Roberts, Gorsuch or Barrett waking up on the wrong side of the bed and writing something stupid. Actually, I Barrett's not gonna bite on this. Propter Malone: Barrett's issue with the Reconstruction amendments is through a different mechanism. She thinks that they're not really ratified. The way she's she's been sympathetic to that view in the past, which is an abominable view. It's Ed: It it says volumes. Propter Malone: But, like, it's a different argument. I don't think she's gonna bite on this. That said, like, the reason people are worried is because the stakes are very high. You know, even if it's a relatively low probability event, even if people are saying, yeah, yeah, you know, it's probably gonna be fine, it is certainly more likely today, now that SCOTUS has taken cert than it was last weekend when SCOTUS had not taken cert on this case, that there's going to be an adverse outcome. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: What was the decision on the prior court? Propter Malone: The appeals They said birthright citizenship is good. No federal judge no federal judge has ever sided with with the argument that that the anti birthright citizenship people are making. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: So the fact that they're taking it up raises the probability of the really bad outcome. Does it not? Propter Malone: It does somewhat. This is something that's kind of been perkle. This is this is getting into legal academy slap fight stuff here that I don't wanna get too far into because those guys buy ink by the barrel. But this is a relatively recent legal theory that has essentially been invented over the course of the past year. It wouldn't be crazy for SCOTUS to take this just to slap it down and say, no, we're not we're not doing this shit. We're going know a lot more once we get to the oral arguments, think. That's going be really the next scare card, the next gut check on how likely it is that something's actually going to happen here. Ed: Do we know when that is yet? Propter Malone: I don't know if they've set a date for the orals, but I'm I'm assuming that this is this is slated for them to try to decide in the summer term, but I should probably check the calendar before I try to speak authoritatively on that. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: This is gonna be when Gorsuch writes his great land back dissent. George: I mean, he's already come pretty close on a Propter Malone: Yeah. Ed: I mean, George: like those related to Indian law. Propter Malone: Gorsuch Gorsuch is gonna have a concurrent saying that, no. You don't have birthright citizenship for for The United States Of America, but you might have birthright citizenship for a tribe depending on where you were born. I really am pretty optimistic about the outcome of this case, and I don't think I'm being Pollyanna's here. This would be a surprise bigger than Duke beating Virginia. Damn. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Hold on one second. That's that George: wasn't they were only Virginia were only three and a half point favorites. So that is Really? Propter Malone: Oh, well, I mean, beat must be a much bigger surprise than that. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Did anyone not expect Duke to beat Virginia other than Las Vegas apparently? Propter Malone: Virginia beat Duke, like, three weeks ago. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Everybody look. Rematch always goes to the team that lost in the first game. Propter Malone: That is turning a slightly more intense shade of pale. So so let's Ed: Why why would you why? Why are you like this, Lotex? Propter Malone: Let's move on. Let's move on from college football. We spent we spent enough time on that over the past few weeks. I I regret my participation in this. Ed: See, Normal Men listeners, I am the normal one George: now, and I'm here for you. Getting way too into college football is actually the most normal activity imaginable, and I reject this narrative from mister Ed over here. Ed: Have you have you considered having a woodshop? Propter Malone: The one other explanatory thing I wanna say about birthright citizenship is is we mentioned the, the subject to the jurisdiction thereof clause. That has always been understood to be referent to ambassadors and children of ambassadors. That, you know, if you're if you're the ambassador from France and you're in The United States, you're not subject to the jurisdiction of The United States. You have diplomatic immunity, and your kids are not automatically US citizens. People are people are trying to make that clause out to mean something very different than what it what it means, but that's always been what it's been understood to me. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm in favor of preventing the, ambassador from France having his children get US citizenship, to be clear. Ed: We really are gonna do the go around all of Europe and insult all of them, aren't we? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. What European diplomats children would we be accepting of as Americans? I'll go with, the Scandies. George: That's yeah. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Norway, Sweden, George: Finland. Portugal, Italy are alright. I think they'd be fine. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No. Not Italy. No. No. Spain, Portugal. I might give the Irish a pass. George: Your Maltas, your Cyprus's, Cyprie? Cypriots. Propter Malone: Cypriots. Yeah. George: Never mind. Plural of countries named Cyprus, not plural of people from Cyprus. Forget it. It's fine. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Cyprices. Liechtenstein. George: Liechtenstein. Propter Malone: The Norwegians did did some nice, embassy outreach this week. Don't know if you guys saw those videos. We'll throw them in George: the show. Was the most Peasers and wrappy grilled cheese I've ever seen in my life. Ed: I mean, they they know their audience. Yep. George: Friend of the show Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Wait. What was this? George: Skelly on blue sky@iid.bsky.social, if you would like to hear what it's like to be a scientist living in France right now. Anyhow, Skelly was like, wait. Is the Norwegian embassy to The United States trying to fuck me? Because, yeah, they pretty clearly were, and everyone else watch who saw the post. Yeah. Well, The post was a Norwegian gentleman who purported to be the cook for the Norwegian embassy in DC making a very large batch of grilled cheese sandwiches in a Sleeveless undershirt. With black gloves and just really making it look like the start to a porn. I don't know how else to describe this. It was too hot for Instagram style content all over Instagram. And, you know, there's creamy bechamel going everywhere and melting, oozing cheese, and he's in his wipe. It's yeah. Propter Malone: Hornet for the mornay sauce. So the Norwegians are okay? George: Swedes. Yeah. Swedes, Norwegians, things of this nature. Propter Malone: Okay. On to the cocaine. Ed: Would you all believe that a Navy SEAL lied about something? Was there cocaine involved? Because, guys George: okay. Then definitely Yes. I would believe that. Ed: Actually, there was. Propter Malone: Alright. So we talked a little bit last week about the boat strikes in The Caribbean, and about the situation that Pete Hegseth has found himself in, where we have some strikes that are pretty clearly violations of the laws of armed conflict, war crimes, maybe just crime crimes that Where's the war? Yeah. Well, I mean, they're trying. But but they killed a number of people on boats in The Caribbean, and they killed specifically two people that are the subject of current congressional inquiry. Forty one minutes, I think that's right, after the initial strikes while they were getting up on wreckage and waving to the American aircraft around them. That's a no no. That's frowned upon. A little bit. They sure did it. Last week, I was skeptical of Pete Hegseth's story, which was that he was there for the initial strikes and then he, you know, left the room and was not involved in in the decision to strike the survivors. It actually kind of looks like he might be telling the truth about that. The forty one minute gap information is new and moves the needle a little bit for me on the double tapping the survivors thing. Obviously, he's still culpable morally and legally, for things that happened under his orders to kill everyone on board, but it shifts the focus in some ways to the former Navy SEAL admiral, who actually, it appears, ordered the second strike. I wanna take it just a second to discuss the justification we've gotten from him on why he ordered the second strike. For more than thirty minutes, Bradley said, he observed the two survivors among the wreckage. He told lawmakers there were bags of cocaine on the boat that were not ejected during the initial explosion. Because the bags of cocaine were not seen floating in the water, Bradley said he believed they were strapped in and had stayed tied down during the explosion, making it likely the drugs were still under the capsized boat. So to be clear, Bradley's explanation is that he is, in part, that he ordered the second strike because he did not see bags of cocaine. Ed: On a boat that was not going to The United States. Propter Malone: On a boat that was going to that was I don't I don't know if it was going directly to Suriname or if it was meeting or if was meeting another boat that was going to Suriname. But everyone seems to agree now that this boat was not going to The United States. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I want someone to diagram this. Just, like, draw a picture of it that follows Bradley's discussion. Propter Malone: I mean, we've had, I wanna say, six or seven different explanations for why this was a legit strike, none of which are legally sound. It seems increasingly likely to me the heads are gonna roll on this, whether it's Hagsteth's head, or whether it's Bradley's head, or whether it's both. Congress has bid into this, including Republican congressmen, in a way that we haven't uniformly seen on Trump administration scandals. This hasn't been one where everyone is taking the, you know, I haven't seen those statements route to avoid engaging with the material. You've seen you've seen even even some rock ribbed Republicans. Roger Wicker was out there. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Who's that about, Propter? Jesus. Propter Malone: Was out there talking about how, you know, this is this is a problem. I think you're gonna see some amount of blood sacrifice made by the administration on this. The question is who it's Ed: gonna And how literal that term is? George: At what point are we gonna start running out of generals? Ed: Well, he's an admiral, so, you know, George: these ones float, Dort. We have already had pretty significant purges of senior military officials, and not necessarily at the absolute apex, but throughout the upper levels of the of the Department of Defense. There have been a number of people that have been rotated out of pretty important positions in terms of planning and just executing basic stuff. So, like, at what at what point does that start becoming a preparedness issue where, oh, no. We don't have the person that's supposed to be able to do this execute this mission is someone that we promoted from captain, like, three months ago who doesn't know what's going on. It's kinda hard to imagine saying that given how bloated the department of defense is in personnel terms and just the layers of command and control that go from the people that shoot to the people that are elected, but still, I mean, like, at some point Ed: Oh, yeah. You're you're gonna get some some real colonel brains going on in here. George: Colonial the Kurzan variety? Propter Malone: Or You've already got some operational damage, based on the amount of expertise that has been that has been pushed out, and it's likely that the purges are gonna continue. Hegseth has been very clear that that kind of purging along lines of identity or along lines of ideology has been one of his goals at the Department of whatever we're calling it today. That's within his ability to do. In fact in fact, we already have one other rank in general. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: By the way, I love that the even the Republicans are still calling it the Department of Defense. Like, no one is buying this Department of War bullshit. Worst rebrand George: name is history. Propter Malone: The commander of SOCOM, it's it's it's come out over over over the last week, was pushed out by Hegseth prior to our contemporary with these operations. He's blacks, so I'm kind of surprised he was still around a little bit. There are other multiple star officers who are still getting pushed. Whether or not you think those guys are important to the continued functioning of of of the military, guess depends on your assessment of their of their particular skill sets, and that's out of my wheelhouse. But there's definitely a lot of turnover among the senior ranks that is unexpected and that is politically driven. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: All these people need to go to jail. George: I just wanna reiterate Propter Malone: Needs to be George: that this is happening on over the double taps is better than it not happening over the double tap, but it should have happened with the first boat strike. The first boat strike was just as illegal as anything that happened on on in the second and the third and the seventh and the double tap and everything. It's all completely legal. It's all murder. I I just it it's nonsense. And Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. It's straight up murder. And as Ed said last week, Ed and Propter, you know, it's literally in the book. This is an illegal order. It's an illegal act. All of these people need to be in prison, or really just line them up on a wall and, you know, do what one does on that. Propter Malone: Tribunals, let's say. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. George: Hooray. Yay. Ed: Hooray. Remember when we got to to ask about the fun stuff? Like, I don't know. Like, seriously, this is exhausting. And, like, that's obviously the point. Right? Like, they they are doing this to exhaust people who have consciousness. I used to meant to say conscience, but will take consciousness as well. Because when you're on that many drugs, it's certainly debatable. Just wish it wasn't so stupid, guys. Propter Malone: I mean, like, you still got saber rattling towards Venezuela as being one of the dynamics here. George: Do you What are y'all thoughts that you actually think they're gonna trigger and attack Venezuela now? No. Ed: No. Because Americans might die, and Donald Trump is terrified of that. Then again, Steven Miller might be the one running the country. Who knows? Propter Malone: I think that the the threat is more important than the follow through. They keep giving these kind of empty ultimatums to try to get personnel action in there, Maduro's not moving. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Steven Miller is too worried about yelling at Tom Homan over not going after Home Depot. George: What? I didn't see that quote. What happened there? Ed: It's a little older, but they've like, Miller was was yelling at at the election of goons that why are you looking for people to who are doing crimes? Just go to Home Depot type. George: Oh, right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. That was what? Back in March or April? Ed: Time is fake. I don't know. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I think it was August, but yeah. Who who Ed: That's the same Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: face points. Propter Malone: We did have one other major international development this week, which is that, Trump, in in in a great surprise, won the inaugural FIFA award. We're just moving directly to flattery and bribery as the international coin here. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Listen. You can't you can't mock this when they gave the peace prize to Kissinger. I'm sorry. Like, is it stupid? Yes. But the the Nobel Peace Prize has always been stupid. George: This isn't the Nobel Peace Prize. This is an invented prize that Infantino over at FIFA cooked up to make Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No. Right. Like, it's it's a parody prize. And especially for an organization like FIFA, which just held a couple years ago, the World Cup in Qatar, where, you know, like, 9,000,000,000 slaves died building a soccer stadium. George: They're gonna hold it in Saudi Arabia in four four years after this one too, or four years after twenty thirty four will be in Saudi Arabia. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. It's it's it's fucking ridiculous, but the Nobel Peace Prize was also always ridiculous. So I appreciate I appreciate absurdity is what I'm I'm trying to get at. Propter Malone: I agree that we shouldn't overrate the Nobel Committee on their identification of people who are fighting for the cause of peace. In fact, this year's candidate has been loudly advocating for us to bomb Venezuela. She's Venezuelan. Still, you know, inventing a brand new award is maybe a new low. This is this is something where you're seeing parts of the international community fold under to the Trump personalist regime in a way that other parts are notably kind of not, And from my perspective, the closer you get to large amounts of free floating money, the more likely it is that they're folding under. It's it's the same money laundering crew. It's the same guys who have just lots and lots of liquid capital sloshing around and are very used to doing business in ways that are compatible with bribery in a personalist regime. George: So in Ed: Lots of money and no imagination. George: So in country terms, this is The Gulf States. In, sporting terms, this is soccer. In financial market terms, this is crypto. It's it's pretty straightforward that way. Yeah. I think that's a good framework. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I like that the prize looks like these rotting hands coming up out of the ground. Speaking of eldritch horse. Holding up a soccer ball. Yeah. Just terrifying. I mean, he Ed: always wanted an orb of his own. George: Oh god. The orb. The orb. It was a simpler time. A better time. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: There were more linear cities in her future. It was a better time. The orb was at least funny. You know? But we're we're eight eight or nine years past that now, and, you know, it's it's just not funny anymore. We need to we need to move on to a new show very strongly, folks. George: To close out this week, we wanted to talk about normalcy studies and a really interesting video we saw. I saw it from Brian Hughes, BM Hughes at duckeastguy.social. It originally was from TikTok, Jason k Pargin Pargin. Jason k p a r g I n, on TikTok, which was really interesting. The upshot is there's this comic where it's a caricature of a blue haired barista. This person is short haired and it's orange, not blue, but you can tell what they're going for here. Who is offering someone in a military uniform, can I interest you in a soy latte? Just coffee, black, responds the guy in the uniform. Caramel macchiato, just coffee, black. Ice peppermint mocha, just coffee, black. And the person behind them in line is getting mad, like, for crying out loud, just make up your mind in order. And the point that the video makes is that this is illustrating a mentality that is driven around the idea that other people not liking what you like anymore, or maybe they don't like it at all, not in any more thing, but just don't like it at all, is somehow threatening to your sense of identity. Right? Like, if you if you are the only person that likes something, that means you're being you're like an outcast, essentially, or you feel like you're an outcast. And I thought that was really interesting. I think I think the video really nailed, and we'll link it in the show notes, really nailed the the subject. But it's also just so alien to me as someone who is among the most aspiring of any normal man anywhere that me liking something that other people don't like is somehow like an indictment of me as a person. I just don't understand people like this. Like, can y'all help me get into the mindset of someone that actually thinks this way? That thinks that I just like black coffee, but black coffee is no longer trendy and and fashionable. So, like, that's an indictment of me that everyone else is making. Like, what the hell? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The answer is who gives a shit? I mean, you like you like what you like. George: Eat Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: what you like. Drink what you like. Listen to what you like. There's a fun aspect to this. I I actually think of British food discourse on blue sky with this. Because make me have to go bleep something. Because you hadn't had to do it all day, Ed. We've been very good. But people will get really mad about this. The get really mad about this. There's a fun way to do this. Right? You know, you're shit talking about things you like versus things other people don't like or things that other people imagine they would not like as a kind of meme thing. But none of it should be serious. And at the end of the day, who gives a shit? George: Yeah. I I mean, I totally agree with that. I just am curious to get inside the head of to or get inside the head of somebody. Like, what what happens to your brain to make you think that way? Ed: This is one where I have a certain amount of, direct perspective given how I grew up. But for those who do not know, grew up in a very conservative family. And, like, there's there's two parts of it, one of which that I think is very I do conservatism as a thing in The United States and one that is just sort of more of a general thing. Well, two maybe. We'll figure it out. We'll we'll we'll all figure it out as we go along. One is the obvious fear of change. Right? It's like the world has changed and that's scary and sure, whatever. I own three d printers now. The world has changed and it's better, I tell you. There's a there's a real conformist streak, particularly to the right wing. Like, in terms of how they want to push memes, but not the not the kind that have impact fonts, the the the spread of ideas. Right? Like, this is why you see them all jumping on in various forms, things like Charlie Kirk. Right? Like, most of them had no idea who Charlie Kirk was before he caught a bullet. But suddenly now there there's a guy down the street for me who is flying freedom flags that have Charlie Kirk's signature on them. I can guarantee you he did not know who that guy was. And then, like, things like, oh, but my black coffee is no longer part of the centralized flow of of things. Right? Like, it's it's off the meme is scary because then it's like, am I now an outsider? Right? It's the in group out group thing all over again. And then sort of the the the second part of it in that vein is the implication. And this is a little less for the coffee one, but this is kind of just a one to one for vegans, right, or vegetarians or anyone who I mean, like, take me for example. I think college football is a crime. Sorry, guys. Right? Like, I I actually have Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: very sorry. Ed: I have very strong, like, political opinions about about college sports in general and and the assaulting of the earth thereof. But, like, I don't judge people who like them for that. However, it is very possible, and I have kind of moderated the way that I approach these things a little. I'm not good at moderation To, like, not imply that because I don't care what people like. Then you go to the vegan thing, right, where it's like somebody who says, no. Thanks. I don't eat meat. And now suddenly, it is an attack on your identity because there is an implication of moral superiority. Conservatives and conservative leaning people, which I would actually in the sense, not the not the Trump fascist kind, but the general idea of a conservative person, I think very much is sensitive to the idea of being out of the moral step. And while it's a coffee in this case, I think that that's kind of the line that's being drawn here. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: So I I drink black coffee every day because coffee is a purely utilitarian thing to me. I wake up at 5AM. I make a cup of coffee. I'm just trying to get caffeine in my system so that I can get up and go and do my thing. These guys love to come up with these dumb fucking bribal markers and then cry about them and try to pretend that there's some great nation of people somewhere out there who are trying to stop them from enjoying their little tribal markers, and it's bizarre. It is extremely abnormal. Eat what you like. Drink what you like. Watch what you like. They they obsess over pop culture, whether it's television shows or music. You know, we all saw the Sabrina Carpenter thing. Ed: That was great Propter Malone: Yeah. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: This week. I had no earthly idea who the fuck Sabrina Carpenter was. George: You missed the discourse around Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: her last album? That George: whole I mean, we're not gonna get into that here, but if you did miss that discourse, Felicidades is all I'll say. Like Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. Was that Ed: Yes. It was that one, Lotex. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The the one with the dog collar thing. Yeah. Okay. So I could not care less about pop music. Like, I'm 41 years old. I'm a child of the the grunge and alternative era, and I I know that it's not for me anymore. Right? Top 40 music is not for me anymore. It hasn't been for me. You just call Ed: it top 40 music. Yes. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yes. Because I'm 41 years old. Ed: I am 30 or 40 years old. Goddamn it. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: It it hasn't been for me in thirty years, but who gives a shit? Pretty much. Like, you just have to acknowledge that culture has passed you by, and you have to stop getting mad at things that are not an attack on you. So I will give Ed: it the strongest possible like, I will steel man this, and I apologize for using that term. So the read that they have because they are in an epistemic closure that basically looks like a suicide bunker is it's not passing them by. It's against them. Right? Because, like, it is a tote it is like this totalizing thing. Culture is against them because other people have choices is a very common thing. Like, you I'll be honest. You see it amongst predominantly white and male people on, like, the moderate and left as well. Right? Like Yeah. The I this is this is not a unique impulse on, like, the conservative side. It's just right now they're losing a lot harder, and they know that and they don't. Propter Malone: I think that some of this is reaction directly to waning feelings of cultural hegemony. Mhmm. And I hate to say it, but you know, that's coming for us too. Like, that's already priced in. Trump has done that to us. Internationally, America's stature in the future is not going to be what it was in the past. It is unlikely that we will maintain the degree of cultural hegemony that over the course of our lives. Some of that is just, know, we personally are going to keep getting older, as Wotex pointed out. But some of that is that, you know, America's star is maybe not as ascendant as it used to be, and I'm planning on having some big feelings about that at some point. Ed: I actually don't think I agree, but that's because I kind of think that despite our best efforts, America is the main character might actually be more true than we wanted it to be. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I I actually agree with Ed on that. Ed: This is not me saying this is a good thing. This is me kind of wondering if that's not what's gonna shake out. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The thing is we we as a nation have something that the rest of the world will never have. Drunk luck. No. Although, yes, also that. Propter Malone: Everyone's got that. We Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: knew soccer was bullshit. George: Oh, really? Ed: I didn't even see, I didn't say that. I'm I'm the one here saying you should like what you like. I'm the good one here. George: I do think in general, there's there's a one important rule that you should always lie to is whatever thing someone's enjoying good or bad. Does that thing create some negative consequence for someone else? Right? So, obviously, there's a huge spectrum of negative consequences. Eating meat does actually create a negative consequence for somebody else. There's a massive environmental and carbon and working conditions and you you name it, up and down the meat supply chain. So, like, yeah, eating meat does create now how heavy are those negative consequences? What else do we need to balance about that? Okay. That's kinda downstream. If someone is doing something Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: There's all there's also negative consequences to veg too. George: They're You Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: know, you think of farm workers. George: But Yeah. In general. Right? I I was using meat as a as an example because it's so salient to this kind of, like, discussion. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No. No. I got you. George: Something creates a negative consequence. Okay. Let's talk about those negative consequences and do some context around those. If there is no negative consequence, if there is no, in economic terms, negative externality to whatever someone's doing and I'm sorry. The difference between a caramel macchiato and a black coffee is not there is no that assumption choice has no negative consequences, no negative externalities anywhere, then do not bother critiquing that particular thing or determining it as morally unjust or whatever. Don't don't go to the matter of it. Let people do whatever the hell they're doing. Always. If there's no negative externality, ignore it. Doesn't matter. Let people do what they wanna do. Now, obviously, the discussion of how big is the negative externality, what how should we account for it, etcetera. I mean, I there's a lot of conversation there, but I'm just so struck by how many things get attention in our culture are debates about stuff where there is no negative externality whatsoever. Right? A trans person existing does not create an issue for you. Gay people getting married and adopting kids, that that has no impact whatsoever in your life. Like, these are some of the most hypersalient examples, but there are many others. And I I just that's sort of my schema for, like, how to think about this stuff, and it just blows my mind how much time we spend talking about stuff where there is no negative externality. Propter Malone: I think I think maybe one of the places where this joins the politics is through openness, which is, you know, one of the one of the big five personality traits. Right? So and openness tracks pretty well in America with with the liberal conservative divide. Higher openness tends to be a liberal trait. Lower openness tends to be a conservative trait. And in this context, I think you can think of openness as being sort of the propensity to get something positive out of this new stuff. George is talking about negative externalities, and that's that's an important piece of the puzzle. But another piece of the puzzle is, do these new things potentially do anything good for me? Like, might I like the caramel macchiato? Might I be willing to try the caramel macchiato? You have a different approach to novelty. You have a different approach to that sort of waning hegemony if you think there's at least potentially value in you for the new things that are being laid upon your table. I don't really have a fix for that. Like, this is this is something that's I think you can teach to some extent, but will tend to dig in on their openness. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Stop liking what I don't like. Yeah. Basically. Ed: And, like, I am frankly probably closer on the closed end than most people. It's just I know when to shut up, and that's also kind of part of it. Right? Like, I might be judging you, but you're probably not going to know unless you've done something to actually piss me off. Because it doesn't matter if I'm judging you. My opinion is not the one that is relevant here. And you see this a lot, I think, when it comes to specifically, like, what's the best way to put it? Going to that open close divide. There is also a often a perceived threat to, like, the the stability. Right? Like, if you're giving the the conservative mindset the most credibility that it can have, the most good faith that it can have and frankly no longer earn, doing things that are outside the norm is potentially destabilizing. And that has been a reaction forever. Right? Like, why did Nixon hate the hippies? Right? Like, it goes back further than that, but that's about, like, where my personal time horizon of thinking about these things sounds. Because of that, there is the oh, no. I am approaching this new thing, and it is default default scary is is a good way to put it, I think. Default scary versus default whatever. And I struggle a lot with a lot of the stuff myself because I think a lot of it like I said, I think a lot of this is dumb. But also you there is a process of getting over oneself that I think a lot of people never undertake. And I don't know how to make people do it, and I don't think you can. I think the best thing you can do is get them to stop talking. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: A lot of it is fed by bull drifting. Mhmm. Right? And a lot of it is fed by people who want to imagine that they're part of the grift too. Ed: Because they're trying to be part of the grift. Look at that look at that thing that came out. I forget. One of the one of those replaceable universities with the the essay this week last week, whatever time doesn't Propter Malone: Oklahoma. Ed: Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. Oklahoma. That's a state, technically. But, like, where it basically turned into an excuse to get a to get a grad student fired because they were trans. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Get them out of the playoffs too, by the way. Oklahoma's a fucking fraud. George: That's right. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Fucking fraud. George: Get them out. Give it to Duke. Everyone's happy. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: But that Ed: student is now going to be straight up on the on the grift circuit for until who people forget her name. Right? Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Oh, absolutely. Ed: And it's it's like the dark reflection of of everyone wants to be a YouTuber. Everyone wants to be an esports. No. They just wanna get TalkingPointsUSA to pay for their mortgage. Yeah. And that's a weird place to be in on top of all of this stuff. George: Alright. Well, with that wrapped up for the week, I'm glad we solved one particular problem. And as always, it's Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Just be normal. George: As always, just be normal. For normal men in Charlotte, I'm George. Propter Malone: In DC, I'm Propter. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: In Outer Florida, I'm Lowtax Speedrun and Enjoyer. Ed: And in Boston, I'm Ed. George: Stay normal, y'all.