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Welcome to I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, a conversational, culture-savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We’re here to unpack the issues that boggle our minds, all rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility.
Chris Bevolo (00:00)
Do you remember what he said last Tuesday? No, no. He said like 6,000 things since then, half of them insane.
Desiree (00:01)
I don't.
Chris Bevolo (00:07)
itself is sane watching.
Desiree (00:07)
Would you
Chris Bevolo (00:17)
Hello, welcome again everybody to episode five of I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, a conversational cultural savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone even more sideways since the last time I said this, which is hard to believe. We're here to unpack the issues that Balghar Minds all rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor.
a little group therapy and a little humility. I am your host, Chris Bevello, owner of Bearing 287. We're an organization that's fighting the good fight to make the world a better place for all. And we're the sponsor of the show. I'm joined by my co-host, Des, who is a social impact comm strategist by day and who spends her nights remixing history to make sense of the present. Welcome everybody and welcome Des. How are you doing, Des?
Desiree (01:12)
you know, just another day in the upside down.
Chris Bevolo (01:15)
the upside down backwards. I mean, literally, it hasn't even been a week since we dropped our last podcast, which was all about fear. And then we had the situation that unfolded in my home city again, Minneapolis on Saturday with the murder, execution, killing, pick your choosing.
of Alex Peretti by ICE agents. So it's what I mean, the world has gone even more sideways.
Desiree (01:52)
And it just speaks to the truth of the, what we talked about the fear, but then also just the, the bravery, the resilience of folks really standing up for each other. Then what toll does that take? And just all the calls to the action. It really feels like this was a, a waking up moment. you know, not too similar to what six years ago and just the
The way the conversation has shifted, at least on the internet, on the socials, on the algorithms, it feels like people are more galvanized now after this past weekend. I don't know, that feels a little bit hopeful as far as we're gonna do something about this and not just sit idly by, which not everyone, of course, has been sitting idly by. A lot of folks have been doing a lot of work, but yeah, I don't know.
And people are talking about it feels like an attorney point. hopefully.
Chris Bevolo (02:54)
I hope so. you know, why wasn't Renee good at turning point if that's the case? I will say, though, I mean, it's weird, know, what's the something makes strange bedfellows, right? So now you've got all of these folks that you would typically think are on the right who are on the right politically who are coming out upset because of the Second Amendment component of this. And it's it's it's surreal to watch.
Trump and Bavino and Gnome and these right wing folks go so far around in a circle that they're saying like, well, you can't have a, you can't bring a gun to a protest. Like what? So that part's interesting. And then I will say the media seems to be interestingly, ironically, given our topic for today's podcast, actually holding people to account more than they did even with Renee Good.
not just accepting the company line, not just accepting the government's bullshit, frankly, and actually pushing back on him and saying, well, how can you say he was approaching him with a gun? He never had a gun out. So that kind of thing, I don't know that we saw that to the degree, we certainly heard it from so many people with Renee Good, but we didn't see it from, at least I didn't feel like as quickly and as strongly as we're seeing it from some of the people we're gonna talk about today.
some of the media who are sane washing less. They're on a light sane washing cycle for their sane washing machine. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm trying to create a segment, like a metaphor, the sane washing machine, my Maytag sane washing machine. Yeah. So yeah, we, you know.
Desiree (04:45)
Wow.
Chris Bevolo (04:51)
It's so weird how we plan these podcasts and then the world events just like line right up or sometimes even leapfrog. But yeah, we want to talk about this concept of sand washing today. Should we just get into it?
Desiree (05:06)
yeah, let's get into it.
Chris Bevolo (05:09)
All right, so this is a crossover pod. We're gonna do more of these, but along with this amazing podcast that Des and I have launched, part of my next chapter is launching the 1985 project, which is something that I've been thinking about for a number of years. And really what that is, is a reference to 1984, if you can't figure that out. 1984, obviously the George Orwell novel.
And it's this idea that, you know, it's kind of on us to fight back against the propaganda, against misinformation, all the things we have. Like, it just has become so prevalent in our world. And so this initiative was really born from the idea that we can move beyond this modern or Willian landscape and really emerge in a better place.
So if we're living in 1984, we want to get to 1985. And so through all kinds of things, content connection, there's going to be another podcast coming. We're going to explore propaganda. We're going to explore misinformation. We're going to explore all the bullshits, all the narratives that shape our understanding. And how can we identify? How can we understand and how can we combat all of that? Because we're going to need, in my belief,
to do that to get to a better place. So one of the things we've already launched is the 1985 report, which is a substack newsletter. You can subscribe to that. And the very first post, Des, is about sane washing. And so in this report, we're gonna be covering topics of the day, theories and philosophies of propaganda and how to fight it. And sane washing is really part of that.
And so we're going to lean on the 1985 report for this, but we're going to go a lot deeper actually, I think, than that short report did. So we want to kind of start with the idea of Donald Trump. You know, the theme of this podcast is we're not even supposed to be here today. The idea that we have a president who is losing his faculties.
I guess it's all over our algorithms. It's all up in our bubbles. It's not new. And we had this issue with our last president, with Biden, where there was a lot of accusations of mental acuity dropping, particularly coming from the horrific debate that he had that was kind of his downfall. But we talk about Trump. You can even just look at some things recently that are a bit crazy, right? So when he's at Davos, and he's talking about Greenland, he says Iceland multiple times, confusing Iceland and Greenland. He wrote what many believe to be a fairly insane letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, accusing Norway of not giving him the Nobel Prize, which is not their want to do. They're not responsible for the Nobel Prize. And basically saying, you know, since you didn't give me the Nobel Prize, I get Greenland.
⁓ He at a tech summit, wandered off the table and started looking out the window. He goes on these long rambling things. He has been very proud of his multiple cognitive tests, which actually isn't a good thing that he's had to take multiple cognitive tests. And just today, Des, there is a Daily Beast story that is talking about how when questioned about his mental health, he literally forgot what it’s called. So he was being interviewed by the New York Magazine and they asked him about his father who had Alzheimer's. And he said, quote, he had one problem at a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it? I mean, that's unquote. That is ironic and sad and
He had to look over to Catherine Levitt who said Alzheimer's and then Trump said, well, I don't have that. So there's been a lot recently about this, right? And so this could be dementia, this could be Alzheimer's, this could be some other health issue. We don't really know for sure and we're not really here to talk about what his mental issues may be. Instead, what we wanna talk about.
using kind of this current state, but going back even further with President Trump is how what he has said and what he has done almost from the get go has been saying watched by the media and why that might be happening and what are we going to do about that? And so, so many times we can, you know, we can recall people saying, well, if any other politician said this, their career would be over, right? And Gavin Newsom said, I think at Davos,
⁓ You know Trump is graded on a curve meaning he is treated differently than any other politician has been treated So what's up with that and that's saying washing. What do we mean by saying washing? That's what we're to talk about Dez
Desiree (10:38)
You want to give like a quick definition of sane washing?
Chris Bevolo (10:41)
Sure. So in the post that I wrote from 1985 report, we use Merriam-Webster's definition, and they say, St. Washington is quote, the practice of making a rational, extreme or otherwise problematic people or ideas appear more reasonable or normal than they really are. And this happens from all kinds of quarters, but I think where it is most frustrating is when it comes from.
the media, though we're going to talk about more than just the media.
Desiree (11:11)
Yeah. And, know, I guess when I think about this and, and again, the, the, term St. Washington is a little new to me, but kind of how I'm interpreting it is almost, just kind of explaining a way or maybe even shifting the narrative of what is being said. so like, I think you talk a little bit about like people saying bonkers or, know, something is insane when it's like,
it almost makes it seem like, this is normalcy, right? But something that I had noticed over the weekend is, so I was blissfully unaware of what was going on. was working on a project and you had said, hey, you need to turn on the news. And so the first thing I turn on, I actually don't have cable here, like cord cutters, I had to find a way to even get the regular news. But I found this,
I think it was a NBC today streaming thing on like a Samsung. but the first thing that popped out to me was the reporter kept calling. I on one channel, it said that Alex Peretti, was shot by border patrol. And this other channel was saying this woman kept saying, calling him a suspect. Like with the suspect at this or there a suspect is going to end it's like suspect. What do you mean? And like it just.
My partner and I were like, what? And then the reporter we get on and say like, no, this person was shot by border control, like essentially like almost correcting her. But then she would get back on and call him a suspect. And it's like, all right. And then they would go on and do a little bit more reporting. And then the next time they both reported, come back on, that guy that was correcting her was gone and has been replaced by someone else. And I was like,
Why? Because he's actually stating what is actually happening here. And it just was so wild. And I thought, okay, where is she getting this, know, quote unquote suspect language from? And the verbiage comes from the direct report from the Department of Homeland Security is calling him in their official statement, they're calling him the suspect, not a victim, not a nurse, not an American citizen suspect.
And so then you get this idea around like, okay, is this person just pushing what is being put, said by this, the administration instead of doing actual reporting, doing actual journalism to uncover what is going on and not just repeating what the narrative is. And so you, you have this moment of two reporters, almost like a kind of the, the kind of stuff that you would see in the show, the newsroom where they were kind of going back to like.
how journalism should be, where they're correcting the other. Because you remember a couple years ago, there was a video that came out that was showing how essentially it was like a couple of hard cuts of different reporters basically saying the same script. Like they're different reporters for different cities, different areas, but they were just saying the exact same thing, which means like, these people are just being fed a script. So is there any actual journalism, any actual reporting going on? That was the first thing that just really popped out of my mind, because I knew we were going to be talking about this.
it's, it's happening real time. It's not just with the president Trump. It's happening kind of all over the place.
Chris Bevolo (14:37)
It is. the, you know, as we dive deeper into this, I think we'll spend, we'll spend as much or more time on the almost opposite of what you're talking about, though both are examples of scene watching and that is almost the dilution of the thing. So another example from, from this weekend was, you know, you, you see these stories again, at least initially, but I think the media has done a better job of actually
calling this out for what it is saying, there's varying accounts of what happened or the DHS account doesn't line up with the videos that are being, they're kind of like trying to soften the idea that the DHS was just lying. And some of this, you can say like, this is my point of view that they're lying.
But when they come out within 20 minutes of the shooting with the statement they came out with, or 30 minutes, it wasn't very long, and they've already put all this stuff together, right? He's a terrorist, he clearly was there to massacre law enforcement, 200 rioters showed up, like they have all this language in there, but they've already convicted the guy 30 minutes in, right?
That's your first sign that there's propaganda going on. So the idea that you see the videos and you see what they're saying, and then somebody in the middle, the media is saying like, well, there's differences of opinions. It didn't take long for the New York Times to say their account is wrong. The DHS account is wrong. Wall Street Journal, like, so that's what I mean by they've moved away from sane watching this far faster than I've seen in the past, right?
⁓ So this isn't new, or maybe new to you, Des, but the idea of Washington's been around for a while. And if we come back to Trump, because I do want to focus on Trump a little bit, because that's where the accusation probably has the most evidence, right? If you think back to some of the things that Trump has said, and how, of course, his opponents call this stuff out, but the media would...
treat it with, you know, this filter, basically, washing, right? So I'm not sure if his grab them by the bleep bleep was sane washed, right? Maybe a little bit by some media outlets, like, it's just locker room talk and boys will be boys. That's sane washing. That's normalized. A crazy, crazy thing for a presidential candidate, for anybody, but definitely for a presidential candidate, right?
Desiree (17:25)
is normalized.
Chris Bevolo (17:34)
During COVID, he said insane things. He said, if we tested less, if we tested fewer people, we'd have fewer COVID cases. Because all he was concerned about was the number, like making them look bad, right? That's insane. That's insane. That's like a third grader knows that that's not how the world works. Yet he says this stuff and it just kind of washes away. During the debate, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs.
You know, and Vance was called out on that and Vance said, yeah, that may not be true, but we say it just to prove the point. And like, we just move on. There's so many things. More recently, some crazy things he said, right? He's been complaining about Jerome Powell, who's the Fed chair for a while. And a lot of times he'll say like, I can't even believe this guy got in the position. Like what? I think a couple of times he's literally said, what idiot nominated this guy?
Well, Trump did. He did himself. doesn't even know or remember this, right? That's crazy. His preoccupation with Greenland, right? The things he says about like, they landed some boats there 500 years ago. That doesn't give him a right to have the land. It's like, what are you talking about, dude? Does that mean we all have to leave this continent because we landed boats here and took over the land from all the natives? You don't make any sense.
⁓ He doesn't understand how tariffs work. He thinks that when people are seeking asylum in the United States, that means they're coming from insane and mental asylums. These are all crazy, crazy shit, Des. Right? And it's just like, we're just gonna, just gonna kind of give it a soft headline and move on. And so again, we see, we see this from the right wing all the time.
right, Fox News all the time. But we see it from other places too. And I call out the New York Times and the Daily Beast as two left leaning media outlets. I don't think anybody would argue with that. In my post for that, and you mentioned this before, right? So using, using words like, meddling, meddling was my favorite in terms of
words I hated. So back when Mueller was investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections, the word that the media outlets would use constantly is meddling. there's evidence that Russia meddled in our federal elections. Like your aunt medals in your social life. You it's a foreign adversary doesn't meddle. You know what I mean? In our elections. That's just like why? Why not say that?
The inability to just say he's lying to say Trump is lying He's lying. He's lying lying to me means it's a falsehood and it's said with intent right, so when he says I've I've I've you know solved eight wars he knows that's not true and He and his falsehood. That's a lie. Call it a lie. Why do you have to call it like well like CNN?
and then I'll be done with this rant. I won't forget this headline, right? Trump claims to have ended eight wars. The truth is more complicated. It's like, no, it's not more complicated. It's the truth. He's lying. So he has done this forever. And the sane washing, to your point, you said it, is normalizing what is crazy and maybe
literally mentally insane statements and actions.
Desiree (21:33)
I, so when you said like, this is crazy and I been thinking about this and I think I was, had a conversation around this about that term essentially has been thrown around so much that it doesn't have the meaning because you're using it as especially around like derogatory towards women. like, she's crazy, da da da da. And so it's just, it's like a brush off. So when you were calling something crazy, it's like, it's, does kind of like, it's fine. We're used to like, crazy bonkers or what have you, but really
Chris Bevolo (22:02)
Hockers.
Desiree (22:03)
It's concerning. It's deeply concerning that our president doesn't understand the actual things that are occurring, what words mean, what words are. And that is not a leader. And so I think that's the part here is even just like having these just terms for everything is that we're, we're now, it feels like we're starting to actually say the things and that
Again, I go, I keep going back to the reporters and journalists because that's, you know, that's where we're getting most of our news. Well, I mean, not anymore, but those are supposed to be the truth sayers of what is going on and giving more of that here is what is going on and not just a spin or a narrative that they're trying to push. But that's the era of, you know, media that we are in and have been for the past couple of decades.
Chris Bevolo (22:59)
All right, so I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna let you keep going because if you, I actually use the Beast a lot. I like the Daily Beast, but they are awful at this. their editors need a fricking thesaurus. Like they use the words bonkers and goons more per capita than any media outlet, maybe all of them combined.
Like in this story I posted, I took a screenshot of my phone and there were three stories and every single one of them had goons in the headline. That's just poor, that's just lazy journalism to start with. Like come up with something else besides using goons all the time, and they do, and bonkers. I think I said meddling. It's bonkers. They say bonkers all the time, right? And it's like, know, Trump invades Venezuela in a
Bonkers foreign policy move. It's like it's not bonkers. Like I'm all left. Remember the game bonkers you ever played bonkers? No Bonkers is fun bonkers is nice bonkers is never the same game twice Bonkers Milton Bradley game. That's a real ad. I just gave to you right there Right like the clown who drops five balloons and they all turn into into like fairy dust. That's bonkers
Desiree (24:02)
I did not.
Chris Bevolo (24:25)
Right? Trump invading Venezuela is not bonkers. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah.
Desiree (24:33)
we're doing.
Well, I have a little bit of a theory around this. of course, like I always go lean on my dear friend history to see where have we seen this before? Because we've seen a version of this, not exactly this, because we're in a new era of how media gets around the world. But I want to scroll back the years and we're going to go back to the 1930s as we've seen and heard a number of
comparisons to what was going on in Germany in the 1930s. But the New York Times described the situation that was going on in Germany at this time, kind of similarly. So as a quote, with coordinated newspaper headlines overpowering him with radio voices beseeching him with newsreels and feature pictures arousing him and with politicians and professors philosophizing for him. This individual German is surrounded until he scarcely knows whether his opinions are his own.
or whether they are regurgitated ideas of Dr. Goebbels propaganda. So we're talking about the rise of Hitler, right? And I feel like I've, I talk about this documentary all the time, but there's a documentary series on Netflix called Hitler and the Nazis. And I highly encourage you to watch it. It's several parts. I think it's like seven episodes, six or seven episodes, but it is a rousing watch because it gives you the full timeline of his rise.
Within his own army with the world war one to of course the end of world war two but they go through and They throughout each episode they kind of touch on this there isn't like an episode that's fully focused on just the the media and the narrative of all this But they go through all of these different things where you're looking at the normalizing of Hitler's Behaviors in the decisions and they chaos like it each step of the way
And so initial coverage treated him as just this fringe figure, you who couldn't possibly gain real power. Remember that. and then gradual acceptance of his rhetoric as economic nationalism, essentially what we're hearing now is like, we're, know, this is all for the betterment of our economy, framing his scapegoating of minorities as addressing legitimate economic concerns of, know, yeah, we're just
Chris Bevolo (26:51)
Wait,
legitimate immigration concerns, may I suggest? Please continue.
Desiree (26:59)
And then soft peddling the violence that's happening towards whether it's political opponents or this chaos, which is the chaos we're seeing today. And then the business and political elites, getting them, assuring them that they could have control over him once he was in power, right? Any aristocracy that we techaroxy, what's the word we've been hearing about the tech aristocracy here?
Chris Bevolo (27:26)
Yes.
Desiree (27:26)
But again, all of this sounds very familiar. And then I ran across something more present day, which is Viktor Orbán. He's the prime minister of Hungary. And he just was elected to his fourth term as the as the prime minister. And essentially he has this media playbook and there's this quote around the path to power is to have your own media. And so essentially what we're seeing here, and I think a lot of the sane washing is a component
of this playbook being played out. But this has been like decades in the making when you think about it. But anyways, his playbook is around these five, five different steps. Wealthy allies buy up media outlets. So we have in the U S Ellison buying up CBS, CNN, trying to get paramount. Tick tock was just acquired Musk acquiring Twitter now X the next one critical outlets face.
Government advertising boycott so you lose revenue. So this is where government can direct where the agencies advertise So about a year ago, maybe year and a half ago. There was this big push because Elon owned Twitter There was a big push from the big agencies Omnicon and IPG that were pushing like you have to their clients had to have a certain amount of spend on X like what? the next one regulatory pressure
So this is where in the US, FCC owns and leads the licensing of broadcasts. And so there was a lot of threats around this. So then you saw with the Jimmy Kimmels and all that, that was the threat of, if you don't say what I want you to say, or if you say something that I don't want, we're gonna threaten your license, which is what caused some of these cancellations and conversations around chaos and bringing them back, whatever.
and then lawsuits and then eventually an alternate reality on the airwaves, which is what we've been seeing from Fox News for all of these years. But I say all this to say, again, we have to pay attention to what has occurred in the past, so how we can address it, because we are always repeating this thing. But that was the first thing that really popped into my mind, was just looking at how this has played out and that everything has been a playbook from Project 20.
Uh, is it what I can't remember the name of it, but project 20, 20, 25, 20, 35, um, to this, everything is a playbook. And that's what really kills me about all of this is that they are so well organizers, whole orange, hundreds of organizations that go in that create these playbooks and then they just execute and like, where's our strategy? But I don't know what I, I'm, but why is this a thing now? Do you think?
Chris Bevolo (29:51)
2025. Yeah.
Why is it a thing now? Well, I mean, I think it's more of a thing now because you've got you've got a person who has broken every norm and every mold when it comes to politics and Trump and the media was not prepared for how to deal with that. And I do think he's created on a curve. That's the best way to put it. There's no way he should have survived grabbing by the bleep bleep. When you go all the way back to that, there's just absolutely no way.
But for all kinds of reasons, he did right. So it's that you have somebody who has broken the norms, somebody who is mentally diminished. I don't think there's any question of that for whatever reason. I mean, he's an old guy, but for whatever reason, and then combine that with he's somebody that is pursuing power and pursuing government to serve himself first.
maybe only, combine all those together and we're in a place where sane washing is doing tremendous damage by not allowing people to truly understand the threat we're up against. mean, there's a book that I encourage people to read that riffs off of what you're talking about. It's called Autocracy, Inc. It's by Anne Applebaum. It is an incredible book. And it talks just about what you're talking about, how the autocrats
around the world have a playbook that they share, that they support each other, that they have all kinds of political backgrounds. It's not like they're all left-wing communists, are far right. They're all over the political spectrum in a traditional way, but they all have the same playbook and they work together because it's in their best interests to work together in many cases, to support each other.
And say like, hey, you got a problem with some protesters over here? Here's some tips on how to get rid of that or how to use it to your advantage, right? Her book is chilling and it's definitely a must read. So I think, you know, all of those things combined lead us to where we're at today. And it's it's why we need to be on the lookout for sane washing. It's why, you know, it's it's.
It's wise to think now, but I think there's a little bit more, there's some pretty big shifts that have occurred, right? We're focused on Trump, but I think you did some really interesting thinking around some shifts that maybe, coincidentally, or these things go hand in hand with what I just described with Trump.
Desiree (32:49)
So.
Yeah. Again, looking back to how is this even possible that I'm thinking about the reporter and her just calling him a suspect and that all of these reporters that are essentially fed a script and that they're just reading from. And so I started to go back to look at the history of journalism, right? So I'm going back to the Walter Cronkite era and that essentially the first shift is around
Going from that era to the rise of the billionaire overlord. So what I just mentioned about, you know who owns the different media networks and conglomerates so back then Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America Back then there were only three networks CBS NBC ABC and radio So there weren't all of these different outlets like social media and all of the news outlets
And the FCC required news as a public service and that there was so much protection around the Porter reporters to actually report on the truth and get that out there. And then we get to today and it's only a few billionaires who own all of these entities. So Rupert Murdoch, the most famous of them originally from owning Fox news, wall street journal, New York post, Larry Ellison. mentioned earlier.
Jeff Bezos with the Washington Post, Amazon MGM, and of course X with Musk. And then when billionaires own all of this, then their interests, which is their main focus, is what matters more than just the truth telling. And this could be anywhere from Bezos is looking for government contracts, you know, for Amazon, Ellison, it needs the government not to regulate Oracle, then
Critical coverage that is saying and calling him a liar means that they would lose access, then they would lose retribution against some of these business interests, right? And so the owners are telling the journalists exactly what to say and that they should soften their coverage. The second shift, which has had a little more conversation around, it's the rise of the 24-hour news cycle.
So in 1980, Ted Turner, of course, launches CNN and then competition is, doesn't rise for number, for another 16 years. But what really made that hit was around the clock coverage of the Gulf War. I was a kid during that. And so I was just kind of hearing news, but I remember it being on the television like all the time. And at the time I didn't like, knew that news was only on like in the mornings and the evenings or something like that. But I remember it like just constantly.
And so that is what really gave rise to like, this is an important thing to have. So then competition comes in. So 96, you see the creation of CNBC, MSNBC, and then of course, Rupert Murdoch launches Fox News. But with this, with this constant news cycle, there can't possibly be enough news to fill all of this all the time once, you know, the war is over. So what this brings is that you lose this meticulous research of news reporting.
Chris Bevolo (36:11)
Thank
Desiree (36:20)
You lose that, um, essentially goes back to sensationalism and that that sensationalism has risen through the years now, especially back then. It wasn't as bad as it is today. Of course we had yellow journalism from back in the day that had more to do with like celebrity news and like, um, like stuff like that. But the consequences of all of this is that there was so much focus on just getting it first. It didn't matter if it was right. If what we were saying was right, we got it. We got to be the first to report it. And that.
there was less fact checking and that everything was breaking news and an essential infotainment and everything was all in the name of ratings and advertisement. that news analysis that we used to get is, excuse me, what we used to get was reporting is now news analysis. And it's just all people giving their opinion on what this is. And we saw that especially with Fox News, that people are just kind of pressing this agenda. And there's a lot to be gained from that.
But before I go into some other examples, like any, just from your background of kind of watching this, any takes from you?
Chris Bevolo (37:25)
Yeah, it's, it's, I don't know which is worse of these two shifts, right? Like, I actually think the ownership issue is worse. And this has always been the case, right? Like, maybe the greatest movie of all time, Citizen Kane is about this. William Randolph Hearst. So you had these media moguls always, but it seems like
They're at least dispersed over the political spectrum and now they're consolidating over into one. There was always a claim it was, you know, it's a liberal media, but now it seems to have gone the other way. So that's a huge contribution to this. And then just the money, money, money, money. It's always about money, Des. We're always gonna come back to money on this show. And there used to not be so much pressure for news to make so much money so they could.
Desiree (38:12)
money.
Chris Bevolo (38:21)
you know, there was that, I don't know if that's politically correct to call it a Chinese wall, but there was a Chinese wall between the revenue and the journalism. But that's just gone. And it's, it is all about the money. And I think, you know, in some ways that helps explain the sane washing, but maybe we'll get to that in a little bit.
Desiree (38:48)
And like some of these shifts, we have been warned about them, like television, movies, you know, our favorite subject. These things always tell us what's going on at the time though. It's like, okay. Interesting. But then it's like years down the road. see the impact of these things, you know, like, shit. So of course with network, everything going sensationalized, all the president's men really looking at how a reporter can really upend some things for a president, which
Honey, we don't want that happening ever again. They're gonna not gonna let that happen. Wag the dog, which is looking at media manipulation, which is what we're essentially seeing here with the same washing. But then you get the newsroom where they're trying to say like, hey, what if we got back to that original, know, Cronkite era and actually tell the truth like we're talking about here. But that's not possible because with succession, that's exact example of
being able to control that narrative is that episode where they were like, let's just announce that this guy won the presidency and then see what happens. Where if you are the owner of the media, you can just dictate in that way. And that's what we're seeing. Like all of this is just falling into that. These examples, they're just telling us, Hey, this is what's going on and this is what's possible.
Chris Bevolo (40:06)
Well, you know, again, we're getting so deep into the rabbit hole here, but it's still really important to understand this. You know, the lawsuit, I'm not sure which lawsuit it was, but it was a lawsuit related to the voting machines against Fox News. It was they lost, they either settled or they lost. can't remember. It was a lot of money and they had to apologize because they claimed that, what was the name of the voting machines were rigged.
But in the discovery for that lawsuit, all of this communication, backroom communication among the Fox News personalities was released. And they don't believe any of the shit that they're saying. They have, they think very little of their audience. They know it's a show, they're putting on a show. It might as well be a fiction to them. You wonder sometimes how people can...
really honestly believe the stuff that they're saying and then you find out that they don't believe the stuff that they're saying, that they realize, hey, it's just for ratings, it's just for money. That's why they do it and it works. It works, but the problem is the people on other side don't know that and they take it as gospel. They take it as actual news, actual valuable opinions, whether that's just pure propaganda and outrageous statements or sane washing, which is harder.
usually actually to pull out of all of this because it's more subtle. It'll fly right by you if you're not looking for it. Whereas somebody making an outrageous statement, that's something you can easily just point to.
Desiree (41:47)
And he said, it's all about the money. Trump is profitable. Putting Trump on the air is profitable. He's a ratings machine. Cause everyone's like, Oh my God. Whether it's from Fox news or it's from MSNBC, you know, you hate watching, hate talking about him. Like you're still talking about him. Um, this was a really interesting, uh, report around the fact that when he left office in 2021, that ratings dropped, revenue dropped for the station.
And that as soon as he was back in the mix, like they went back up and it's like, my God, he is the product. They're selling, is the, they're selling him as the product. There's too much profit to be lost for them to stop. the same washing must ensue because you have to be able to keep this guy in office to keep the same, to keep, the control that you have, because if we, what are we going to do? Go back to, you know, status quo, which we can never do.
But that's the ticket is that everyone wants to talk about this guy. has figured his entire life. He has been a figure in our, least my life because of, you know, when I was porn, but this guy has been a name my entire life, whether it was from him being on some of these weird, was it lifestyle was a rich and famous like type stuff to the apprentice to fighting with Rosie O'Toddle to.
running for, to winning presidency, like, this guy has been on the air for 40 years, essentially in some capacity and it's, it makes money. So why stop the gravy train?
Chris Bevolo (43:25)
I mean, I have a lot of opinions about Donald Trump. I think he's a horrible human being, but he has brilliance in some ways. And maybe one of the most brilliant things that he does is he understands how to own the cycle. like you hear every once in a while people should be like, like when Obama was president or Biden was president, maybe less so, but historically.
You wouldn't hear from the president or about the president but once or twice a week, maybe. You hear from this president dozens of times a day if you count his true social. He knows, first of all, he craves it. He craves being the center of attention and he knows how to put himself there. And everybody falls for it and or benefits from it in the media, to your point. And so,
You know, he's just, he is maybe one of the best of all time at knowing how to garner attention. and he doesn't care what that attention is. He doesn't care if it makes them look bad or good or it doesn't matter. Cause it's gone. Do you remember what he said last Tuesday? No, no. Cause he said like 6,000 things since then, half of them insane. That itself is sane watching.
Desiree (44:38)
I don't.
Would you say
he's the original influencer?
Chris Bevolo (44:51)
I don't know about the original influence. I'd have to think about that.
Desiree (44:55)
Not the original influencer, essentially that level of being able to, know, influencers today are seen as being able to, you know, manipulate the internet, social media to gain their attention. But this is someone that has been able to continue to manipulate larger media networks to pay attention to him at every stage of his life and career. It's insane.
Chris Bevolo (45:18)
Whatever
we describe it as an influencer or attention hound or whatever, he is probably the most prolific in history. In history, when you consider the audiences and means of communication now, I don't know that there's anybody else that has talked about across so many swaths of populace so constantly.
Desiree (45:30)
Mm-hmm
Chris Bevolo (45:46)
so constantly. So, and again, I think that is like a meta form of sane washing. It goes back to Steve Bannon saying flood the zone with shit. That's how you control the narrative, right? But just the very fact that you say 80 fricking crazy things a day, that sane washes all 80 of those. Because people can't even keep up. They can't even keep up.
You can't stop and say, that number 32, that's the most insane thing I've ever heard until number 47 and until number 62, and it's only Tuesday. So that has an impact on numbing and normalization, which is how sane washing works.
Desiree (46:34)
And desensitizing. think about all the conversations over the years of where there's been the unarmed black person that's murdered by police and that they're showing this person or their death or their murder and it just makes you desensitized to death. Or the conversation around like, if you're playing video games all the time, then you just become desensitized or seeing crazy horror movies, then you're desensitized to that. And that's essentially where we are. But like where
But like, okay, here it is. The same washing is in service of this person that is generating a lot of money for these businesses, whether it's the media networks, whether it is the tech giants. So there is something that there's an incentive, but what do we do about it? That is the big question.
Chris Bevolo (47:23)
Yeah, what do we do about it?
And I just want to put in a caveat, like, it serves the interests of media to have Trump there. I think that's that's that is completely true. But it is also fair to say that in no other presidential tenure, have we seen the media threatened and coerced the way we're seeing it now. And all I'll say is there's an amazing opinion piece in the New York Times last week.
⁓ And it's from a woman who put out a report who talks about more than 200 instances since the inauguration of his second term, where the Trump administration has tried to level censorship of one kind or another at the media, right? And so that could be all kinds of things, executive orders, lawsuits.
written threats, verbal threats, know, removal of federal funding from institutions. The name of the report is called Chokehold, Donald Trump's War on Free Speech and the Need for Systemic Resistance. The author is Nora Benavidez. She wrote the piece in New York Times, which is called I Counted Trump's Censorship Attempts. Here's what I found. We'll provide links in the show notes, but I encourage people to read the report, which goes in depth.
in all the ways that Trump has attacked the press and our First Amendment rights there, that also lends the same washing because you gotta be doubly careful what you say. And I don't wanna call him a liar because he might sue me. So I'm gonna say, know, Trump presents a complicated version of events or some bullshit. So what do we do about all this, Derek Poin?
What do we do about all this? mean, go ahead, you start.
Desiree (49:21)
Yeah, a few things. And we're already starting to see this and it's, how are we consuming media and how are we being critical about what we're seeing? You know, all day long yesterday and today I'm seeing people say, talk about like, my God, this is, they are lying to us. People are waking up to that. We're seeing Zapruder film levels of analysis and dissection of the tape with people like, okay, this is where it stops. And then you don't see the gun.
It's happening. So that part is good. But just paying attention, notice these patterns and that, you know, you can't look at these things in isolation. Next, support journalists who are actually pushing back. There are a number of individuals who journalists who are stepping up and independent, doing their own thing, really telling the story the way it is because they're not beholden to those networks. But then there's also these nonprofit investigative journalists.
and journalism outlets like ProPublica, the Marshall Projects, Center for Investigative Reporting that you can pay attention to and give more of your attention to those. Mother Jones, PBS News. But then there's some reader funded places, international like The Guardian, which anytime you go there, they're of course, saying, please donate to keep this intentional reporting going.
But some of these independent journalists, if you aren't aware of them, if you were asking for like, well, who else can I follow? There's Joshua Doss of Doss Discourse, More Perfect Union, Under the Desk News, Now This Empath, the Humanity Archive. There's, and this is only a fraction of them, but they're on Substack, YouTube, Patreon, TikTok, Instagram, all the channels. Find them there.
Do not give your attention to these networks that are not actually telling you what is going on, but they are feeding you a narrative. Use your own platform. Again, this is an opportunity for you to even get in community with each other. We're talking about how we're isolated, but you can have these conversations, these book clubs are essentially just looking at the, I'm seeing this described as this thing that is a euphemism for something else. What is actually happening? then,
really having those critical conversations amongst yourselves and really having that opportunity to understand things in different perspectives and not just from an ideological standpoint. Share the journalism name, like those who are actually speaking truth to power, who are calling the lies, share their stuff. Like friends are already, of course, mostly from Instagram sharing stories, doing reshares, LinkedIn, what have you.
But like share that, tag these journalists, give them your attention, give them your dollar so that they can continue reporting all of this in an actual way. But don't make this, don't continue to fill their pockets. The more that we take away our eyeballs, add revenue from these places, the better that it is. it, or if you want to actually like take an extra step, if there are journalists that are out there doing the same washing.
St. Washington, email them. Be specific, not abusive. Don't call, you're an idiot. Just be like, hey, you said this, this was a lie, this was not factual. Please do better. The more that you start, because that starts to get at your conscience, I imagine. People are actually calling you out. Because one thing, we never actually reach out to reporters on this, but if they start actually getting letters from people saying, hey, I don't appreciate the way that you're actually not telling the truth here.
cancel those subscriptions. saw all of the, the Hulu's and all of that go by, last year, but again, stop hate watching. I can't tell you, I had to like turn friends off because anytime I saw them, did you see what Trump? Yeah, of course. Stop. No, I'm not saying like stop listening, but like these places that are actually not telling us the truth. Stop watching them because no matter if you're watching it or hate watching it, that equals ratings, that equals advertising daughters. That's that.
Find this to continue. Vote with your attention and go elsewhere. Start this business model.
Chris Bevolo (53:36)
Yeah, and I'm just going to add at the end, maybe as a wrap up, the thing about sane washing is it's, it's much more difficult to see and understand than many other forms of propaganda, right? When, when Dr. Oz brags about investing $50 billion in rural healthcare, and fails to mention that they're cutting 137 billion.
from rural healthcare and the big beautiful bill. That's something you can see and you can call out. The problem with a lot of saying washing is it is subtle, it's ingrained. Sometimes it's invisible. It's not even what is said, it's what's not said or what's left out, right? So I've mentioned meddled before, Des, meddled was used so often and even repeating words, which is what this post was about.
The fact that the Daily Beast use goons all the time, starts to lose meaning. It starts to lose meaning if you call everything and everybody in the Trump administration goons all the time. Or if everything related to potential political or election issues is meddled, right? You're softening it. Consumer-driven healthcare, well, that's a whole nother podcast. But we just say that now. People just say it, they don't even stop and think about the sane washing of what that is.
Right, what consumer drove the idea that they want to spend $10,000 in a deductible? No consumer ever, right? But we're to call it consumer driven healthcare. So some of this stuff we just say and repeat. And we and we when we read headlines, and we read stories, it flies right by us. So you almost have to like, put on a different pair of glasses to spot this. But but once you start looking for it, you're going to see it everywhere. And then you can take the steps that
that Des has called out. let's wrap before we hit the hour mark. We got a lot to say about stuff,
Desiree (55:43)
It's all good. mean people want to know like Hey, am I crazy? Is anyone else seeing this too? And it feels like especially after this weekend that more people are starting to have that same conversation They're saying it out loud that they are seeing it and that they aren't more aware and Hopefully this will change things you shall see
Chris Bevolo (56:03)
Hopefully it
will, hopefully it will, or at least it will just push us in the right direction. So, Des, thank you for another great episode.
Good times. Thank you all. Thank you all yourselves for joining us. We really appreciate it. We hope this has helped you cope in some way with this, this world. I'll just leave it at that around us. Please like and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify. It helps ensure more people can hear us. Give us those five stars. If you like us, visit us at Bering287.com for more information about how we can help.
charities and NGOs and nonprofits thrive in a really difficult environment. And then follow the 1985 report on Substack and you can get updates three or four times a week on this kind of stuff. And on behalf of I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here podcast and Bearing 287, thanks so much for joining us. We will see you next week.