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Is Everyone Stupid? An Election Investigation – EARLY ACCESS, AD-FREE, AND UNCENSORED (Patreon)

Published:
2024-12-03 21:04:32
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hi. Well, we're doing this again.... I guess. So, let's ask the tough question: are Americans just plain stupid for electing Donald Trump?

Files

Is Everyone Stupid? An Election Investigation – EARLY ACCESS, AD-FREE, AND UNCENSORED

Hi. Well, we're doing this again.... I guess. So, let's ask the tough question: are Americans just plain stupid for electing Donald Trump? Hosted by Cody Johnston Executive Producer - Katy Stoll Directed by Will Gordh Written by David Christopher Bell Edited by John Conway Produced by Jonathan Harris Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales Graphics by Clint DeNisco Head Writer - David Christopher Bell Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Whoops! 04:13 - Is Everyone Stupid? 13:53 - Are Democrats Stupid? 26:35 - It's Nice To Have A Friend 27:56 - Are Liberals Stupid? 41:24 – Are Republicans Stupid? 56:24 - Are We Stupid? 1:04:32 – So, What Can We Even Do?

Comments

Steve Snyder

Vooster and Andrew beat me to it.

Cory Hammerschlag

Ugh I'm already having a physical reaction to all the "this attitude is why you lost" comments this will get when it goes live

Nate

There's other factors, but probably also yes.

Joe Boone

See, here's my thing. Personally, and I'm also an idiot so keep that in mind. Also haven't watched the video yet. But I have no self control. Anyway, I can understand why people don't like the democrats. I truly understand. And if the dislike of democrats is why someone voted for Trump, I get it. It's incredibly stupid and short sighted, but I get it. The thing I don't understand, is why people LIKE the Republicans or Trump. That is just wild to me.

Steve Snyder

Got 13 minutes in and had to stop.

Bree Pail

This summarizes a ton of my feelings. Americans are far too comfortable in their ignorance in being able to think of politics as something that “just happens” and that they don’t need to be involved for their lives to be stable. People fortunate enough to be born here believe democracy is a birthright instead of something we must fight for every day (ironic that this released the same day South Koreans successfully blocked a coup attempt by an authoritarian). A majority of Americans do not know how our government functions, either due to their lack of caring or not having a good education with civics foundations. I know personally people who hate Trump, voted Harris, but thought the “border needed closed again” but could not explain what that meant. They also did not know what a tariff was or who pays it or believed that he will actually do anything he campaigned on because they are so numbed by decades of political apathy. The average person could be considered more “ignorant” than “stupid”, but that doesn’t diminish the real cruelty and (yes) stupidity a lot of people harbor. Moving further right has lost Dems their base and they should not be considered a serious opposition party on a national level if they continue this slide. I’m not really sure where we go from here on a federal level and no one can really tell the future on if elections will ever be the same again, but as leftists have to try to form coalition with one another and stop fighting over doctrine and theory. We have to at least try to gain real power local, and hopefully at some point, national levels. I’m trying not to be a doomer about this all or fall into accelerationist thinking as someone who fears I will not be able to access medical care or even have a job next year (I do auditing for the ACA), but it’s going be very hard for us all and we need to be there for one another. Not all of us are in a privileged or safe enough situation to do outreach with those who are misinformed and hostile to people they don’t understand, but we can at least be kind to people in our lives we are in community with and know may need a helping hand.

Potatoes

I would 100% watch the SMN gang play Dungeons & Dragons

Andrew Carkner

About the last part: I've been a political organizer for decades, and for most of that time I saw politics and culture as completely separate domains. I thought politics is a battlefield and arts/athletics/gaming/etc is like being a soldier on furlough. But I'm starting to understand that they aren't separate at all: culture is how we build community, and community is how we make political change.

Celena Meland

Katie, you rock. I wish I could talk like this with others but there's so much to teach and learn to get there

Sam Larson

The problem with working people in the US is that they lack class consciousness.

Armando MC

At the risk of sounding cliche, that last segment was exactly what I needed to hear. These next weeks, months, and years are going to be brutal, but the only way we get through them is by building the support networks locally to weather the storm.

Jane Heyer

thanks for being there and helping me laugh about the hellscape our society has become.

Ricochetv1

The short answer is yes, by about the exact percentage of the popular vote for Trump.

Vilacom

On the one hand, its really easy for me to watch this video and say “That all totally makes sense, sure hope democrats pull their heads out of their ass and we get a real campaign next time”. But at the same time, as noted in the video, this happened globally. Did none of the incumbents anywhere in the world try running on a more progressive message? It’s difficult to reconcile to myself spending years telling people that its unreasonable to blame biden(or even trump) for inflation when the entire world has suffered from it but say this election is the democrats fault here when there is a very similar global trend against incumbents. Also in the data, yeah obviously what they tried didn’t sway republicans at all. But swinging far more to the left doesn’t mean you ONLY gain votes, you’re going to lose some votes as well. Now I get the argument that they lost anyway so may as well swing for the fences, which i fundamentally agree with, but isn’t “Bernie would have won” movement counting on the same things as the asshole who said that LGBTQ people need to vote democrat even if democrats aren’t openly supporting them? Aggressively pursuing a progressive agenda will push people who call themselves moderates further to the right as clearly for a great number of people embracing right wing ideals is justifiable so long as they believe it will result in more money for themselves. If we accept the premise at the end of the video that America just isn’t as progressive as we’d all like to think then going with that seems to be that a truly progressive movement also would not succeed. Like Biden tried to do something that was genuinely progressive with student debt relief, it was stopped for bullshit reasons by the Supreme Court and the common response seemed to be people being upset with Biden for not following through on his campaign promise. Then you have people who seem to be voting for Trump with the explicit expectation that he’s lying about what he’s going to do or with no concept of what he is promising to do even means. Is there genuinely a way to fight that?

Eileen Doyle

gonna blow right past any substance of the episode to say that Katie is extremely beautiful and glamorous and i’m glad when she hosts!!! cody is also beautiful and glamorous so winners all around

Tim S Root

This is a little tangential, but there was a lot of talk about the fear that seems to (at least in my opinion) fuel a lot of the conservative movement. I grew up in a religious conservative house in a small, very white town. I'm a white, straight, cis dude. Yes, I know that gives me a lot of advantages. It also didn't really open my eyes to a lot of the world. As I've grown up, I've moved around the US, and had the pleasure of working with people with a variety of backgrounds, life outlooks, and nationalities. Does that make me comfortable with everything? No, of course it doesn't. But, I have been so incredibly fortunate to have some healthy curiosity and some very graceful friends who are willing to answer questions that I know are ignorant. After all, how else will I learn? Honestly, a lot of that fear is natural. If you are put around something you've never seen before or been around, I do think that it's normal to have some degree of concern. Evolutionarily, that has been to our advantage. But trans people or people of a different race as you aren't lions out to kill you. They are just different. I think that it is okay to acknowledge differences. It's healthy to be curious about things that are different. I don't think it's reasonable to be expected to relate to everything that's different than you. My brother is gay, there is a thought process that is just simply different than mine. That doesn't make it better or worse, it's just different. But you can accept that, even if you are uncomfortable with parts of it, and still love people who think differently than you. I know I'm rambling. I'm sure that some of this could have been phrased better. But especially after Gov. DeWine (yay Ohio, welcome to the new conservative hellscape) signed the bathroom bill last week and as the US Supreme Court is set to further hurt Trans rights today, I feel like it's worth saying. Different isn't always bad. Sometimes it's just different. It's okay to ask questions about things you don't understand or relate to. But for pete's sake, people, just be kind to each other.

Jez Bel

Can you call someone "liberal" if that someone blames minorities, wokeness, whatever for the election loss? I think a core problem with terminology is the right-wing, via its billionaire-backed mediasphere controls the narrative and has redefined terms to suit their narrative. Even this video falls into that narrative where the folks shown as "liberal" are truely not. A more appropriate question is, "Are what the corporate, right-wing media call as Liberals stupid?"

beRn

I dont know how they condense so much info into such poignant relatively short bits (I watched their live steam.....). and wall thing matching suit outfit? is Pantone linked to clothes now? ;)

The Big Shakuna

Another great (and depressing as always) episode News Dude and crew. Cody, let me first say that I’m sorry for 2 reasons; 1) about this election. We tried man..we really fucking tried. And 2) sorry about John K winning Sexiest Man Alive. For what it’s worth, you will always ALWAYS be the sexist man alive in all of our hearts. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back into my cave of despair while the world burns. 😅

Cerulean

Here's the thing about "trying to reach" or "help" the lost young men, or whatever low-information group being endlessly scammed you identify as a problem: they don't want to be reached and helped by you. Throw yourself at that if you want to, I did for years, I understand the impulse. But people who are navigating the world by fuzzy vibes are doing that because they want to do that, and they're choosing the fuzzy vibes that make them feel however they prefer to feel. They have plenty of options in that buffet. To put this another way, anybody with a mobile phone who doesn't know what a goddamned tariff is doesn't want to know, and you're not going to save them from that. They live that way because they want to live that way. I'm not dooming. I'm experienced. Centering our own communities of people who can tolerate dealing with reality is a better use of energy.

Made of Stardust

Katy Stoll telling my husband, who I foolishly sent this video (well the ad version so you got a view on youtube), I was toxic for spitefully saying, in the privacy of my phone or computer monitor, "this is why trump isn't the president I want, but the one we deserve" when I see an annoying democrat being an asshole online, and never not once posting it or telling strangers it as a retort hurts me. Not because he thinks it's toxic, I admit I'm being spiteful, but he's calling me a lib, something I call him when he's being cringe online and showing me old political memes. Please tell him to stop picking on me in the pod cast. It would be very funny to us (me) personally. (This is a joke based on a true story, you do not need to do this. It would be funny I agree with that, but like, I don't want to tell you how to run your show. <3 )

Eric Herde

I refuse to believe that “CIA Jim” is the sexiest man alive.

Richard Frias

Back in college I read a sociology paper about people trying to leave the Neo Nazi Movement, this was around 2012. The take away from the article I remember, and employ to this day, is the idea that a lot of people who would otherwise leave extremist movements feel that they can't because they don't have a community or anyone who is willing to accept them if they leave. Being able to reach out to people who voted for Trump or those enthralled to the MAGA Movement is painful, but in my personal life I have made strides when talking to people while being non-judgemental and actively trying to have a good faith discussion. It is possible to chip away at the hogwash. I call it 'tactical niceness'.

Benjamin Zuses

We need a link to the video provided. YouTube refuses to play embedded video and just immediately says "Sign in to confirm you are not a bot." It happens so fast I can't even click the icon on the video that would take me to the actual clip on youtube (Where I am signed in).

Shane Azevedo

You'll always be my sexiest man alive.

The Boustrophedonist Bricoleur

I am not in the least bit elitist, and I have the very, very modest income to prove it, and yet I DO truly believe US people deserve Trump. My only hesitation in saying that is that I know the worst will fall upon the most vulnerable. That includes my own family, likely. (We are already trying to figure out what we are going to do when he does the things he says he will do to make “America great, again.”) I am reminded of what a historical just-so story tells us was said about the reign of Louis XIV: “France was great, and the French were wretched.”

The Boustrophedonist Bricoleur

Obama a cause for “grievance politics:” it would have been a good deal less effective if we’d all seen a good deal more of that Hope and that Change, instead of a well-polished knob of a personal brand that took the nation more or less nowhere changeful from what was before.

jh_in_sf

Pausing to write a message of appreciation for the "marks and rubes" bit.

Stephanie S

Perspective comment from someone in the Financial Industry who previously worked at Tesla: Yes, agreed, everyone is stupid. I work for one of the largest global investment firms -yes, I have an existential morality crisis daily - and while inflation has been a constant conversation for the last few years of my tenure, the reality that most investors don't understand it even for the high net worth individuals is astounding. The reality is that almost every average voting American doesn't understand economics and the time-frames the peaks and troughs take for inflation, stagflation, and deflation, particularly how they influence the cycle with recession and depression. They frequently emotionally react to changes in the markets and have short-sighted views that they apply to current policy decisions instead of underlying build up. That many in government also don't understand it either. They don't understand the levers required to move the economy. They don't understand what causes inflation - it's just a buzzword to vote on. When you add in Elon's "scrappy" mindset veiled in rich-bro charisma with "action is best regardless of it's downstream effects", where you just pivot once something blows up, it's stacking us up for a run away train. Elon is an opportunist. He's not an inventor, he's an action bank account with a power complex. But he does see himself as smart enough to outthink any opposition to his demands because he'll simply cut them loose if he feels he has the upper hand, and now he always does. Agreeing with Katy that once Elon's goals of deregulation have been met, and additional funding and approval for his projects are in place, he'll no longer need trump. But not before he gets all he can out of the relationship to further his own ideas. Elon realizes it's not in his benefit to try to go into politics, instead he'll just control it in an attempt of running trump as a puppet. Also yes, Elon was an insane person as a CEO. He swings wildly from one decision to another. His overall goal is to die on Mars, just not by impact, and he doesn't see anything in the interim except furthering that goal as particularly important in the long term. Unfortunately, most people trying to build their own wealth and in the republican party see Elon as someone they could become. People -particulary men- stupidly see themselves in him and align themselves based on his views, using their money to invest in ways that further prop him up.