Kings of Democracy

HEY AND WE ARE BACK! My laptop is back out of the shop after again spilling water on to it and I have learned my lesson and I hope to be more careful in the fture but I can't guarentee that so why do i even bother to say it.
The Westboro Baptist Church are a weird family cult run by a lunatic in a Buffalo Bills Starter Jacket who have a long history of standing on street corners and calling everybody gay. And while that could have been about half of us in 2004, they managed to make national news out of themselves.

I want to do one thing before this episode that I’ve never done before, issue a little but of a disclaimer. This episode is about the Orthodox Jews of the United States. I wanted to tell their story because they are a fascinating and complex group, they live in stark contrast to much of contemporary American life while also being some of the largest and most interesting examples of how the rubber meets the road on issues like Immigration and Freedom of Religion.

My original plan was to cover Orthodox Jews as a whole but while I was writing it was clear the story was too complex and too diverse to tell any kind of accurate story in the usual time frame. While writing I decided I wanted to use the Satmar, the famous round fuzzy hat Orthodox of Brooklyn as an example of Orthodox Jews in America. But as I recorded and edited the episode I realized we had drifted away from the topic of Orthodox Jews as a whole and I wasn’t telling the Orthodox story in general, but the Satmar in specific. However the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jewish groups don’t live like the Satmar, they are usually much smaller, much less powerful and often less conservative. The Satmar are a unique group among American Orthodox Jews, and I don’t want all you drunken children thinking that the way the Satmar live is universal among Orthodox Jews. Similarly it can be very hard to nail down the exact line you want to take when talking about issues like this. It can be really easy to just be vague and non-comittal to avoid offense, but it can also be easy to lean on sterotypes and common misconceptions that are as inaccurate as they are hurtful. The Satmar are very much in that gray area, they are a small, religious, ethnic and cultural minority that mostly wants to be left alone to live as they see fit. They have been subject to persecution in the United States up to and including targeted murders, including one just last year. But at the same time they are a very patriarchal society, have no problem with taking advantage of the various systems, and don’t always play nice with their neighbors. They are a living example of the gray areas created by a free society, and that is the exact reason I wanted to do this podcast, to give people a better understanding of the complexity of life. But I’m going to lean on the fact that I think our audience is smart enough to understand.
So don’t @ me cause I don’t care.
Also Check Out Our Subreddit r/kingsofdemocracy and just give me money on the patreon. I'm using it to pay the hosting fees.

you asked for it, you got it, more Ben Shapiro/AOC fan fic: “C’mon, just let me say it once. Just once,” Charlie’s slimy voice echoed through the labyrinthine halls of TPUSA HQ.

“For the last time, no,” said Candace, “we’ve talked about this,”

“But ‘the pass’ is the only thing that my daddy’s money can’t buy for me. And you’re my only black friend, so-“

“We are not friends. And for the last time, ‘the pass’ doesn’t exist.”

“Well I say we’re friends. You know what, I’m just gonna say it. Here I go... N-“

Ben opened the door to the office, interrupting Charlie’s proclamation.

“Oh hey Ben,” said Charlie, “happy you could make it to picture day. Anyway Candice, I just made a stinky, so......”

Candice sighed and put down her phone. There was a mostly-finished tweet in progress on the screen: Y’know, Hitler wasn’t that bad of a guy. The only reason anyone doesn’t like him is because he was a socialist. There is no other reason that smart people disagree with Hitl...

“Charlie, you always do this,” said Ben, “as soon as someone doesn’t let you say a racial slur, you ‘make a stinky’ and ask them to clean you up. It’s happened 3 times this week already. That’s just facts and logic, buddy.” But Charlie had already led Candace out into the hallway, a victorious grin on his tiny face.

It had been 2 weeks since Ben’s fight with Tucker. 2 weeks of leveraging the combined oil-billionaire-provided resources of The Daily Wire and Turning Point USA in his attempts to find AOC. It had become hard to concentrate on talking louder and faster than college students and then declaring victory in the “debate”, an activity that usually brought Ben so much joy.

Ben snapped out of his reverie and remembered that as Charlie had said, it was indeed picture day. An intern was setting up a tripod in the corner of the office. “Okay Ben, this tripod doesn’t let us hold the camera low enough to take a picture of you, so you’re gonna need to stand on some of these books,” she said.

Ben stepped up onto a 3-book-high stack of The Right Side of History, his own book. He had bought a dozen copies to give to his friends, but after Charlie, Candace, a few other conservative “intellectuals”, and his parents got copies he couldn’t think of anyone else to give them to. At least here they were being put to good use.

Picture day was one of Ben’s favorite regular TPUSA events. He didn’t have to think, which was hard for him, just look smug, which was his greatest strength. “His ideas” would be added later in red and blue text by a team of interns educated at PragerU, the most prestigious YouTube-based university.

Picture day progressed as usual:

Hold up the sign, point at the sign, smirk, the camera flashes.

Cross arms, smirk, the camera flashes.

Hold up a copy of the Affordable Care Act, light a match, smirk, the camera flashes.

Build an effigy of Hilary Clinton out of copies of the Communist Manifesto, swing an axe, smirk, the camera flashes.

Pick up an American girl doll that looks a little like AOC, hold it close to you, stroke its feet, ignore the confused look of the intern behind the camera, smirk, hold this position until the camera finally flashes. Ask the intern for a copy of that one.

Ben knew that some of these pictures would be deemed too extreme by the interns and would be used more rarely, because unfortunately, most of the interns were still in the process of learning that nothing in this world matters except for smirking more confidently than everyone else and thereby being the smartest person in the room.

The history of NASCAR is a history of America's love affair with the car. Which is to say a lot of us actually hate it and it's too expensive and we wish there was a better way but that might involve taking the bus and god knows we can't have that.

every wonder why there's no movies about 9/11? because we all remember how we felt and any movie that tries to tell us anything would seem so stupid and fake and corny and tacky that we'd never go see it. the only made westerns after all the cowboys were dead and they never cast vets in actual war movies. becuase they'd make it so real it would be ugly and we never let ourselves be truly ugly in our own memory. you will let yourself forget this year and you will forget that you forgot.