Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
I am your host, Ramsey's job. He is Ramsey's job. I am kward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher did you are? And there's a lot for you to stay tuned for as usual, because.
Today we're going to be talking about some interesting stories.
Is going to be kind of like a true crime episode for us. Those are those are popular, so hopefully I bet all of our episodes are true crime. Yeah that's that's fair.
But this this one is gonna get a little little ruesome, So buckle in.
We have to talk about.
The truth of the matter is that, you know, we talked a lot on the show about how trump Ism is kind of like a cult, and today we have some examples to help flesh that out. You'll hear what I'm talking about in just a second, but the short version of it is that there's a story that broke.
Recently of a young man who.
Took his father's life because his father was a Joe Biden supporter or not a Trump supporter, you know, either way, the Trump fanaticism has gone far enough for us to have evidence to show exactly what we're talking about, and so stay tuned.
We're going to be able to kind of help paint that picture for you.
We're also going to spend some time talking about black unemployment rates, and we learned recently the black unemployment rates since the data started getting collected, have consistently been double that of white unemployment rates. And despite the positive momentum in the economy, as of late, black people still lag behind white people in terms of employment rates. And we're going to talk about that in the implications exactly what that means. Yes, sir, and we have a whole lot
more to talk about as well. You're definitely gonna want to hear our way Black History fact, because if you haven't heard of the Green Book, you're in for a treat. But before we get there, let's discuss some of many excellents, shall we? I think we shall? I think you shall.
This week's EBNY Excellence brought to you by Actively Black. There is greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. This story from Sports Illustrated Detroit's own Terrence mathis ma I'm smiling bigger inside than I am outside. Just excessively proud of my big bro. Morehouse College announced the appointment of Terrence Mathis as the new head coach of the
Maroon Tigers football team. A former NFL star and accomplished coach recently inducted into the twenty twenty three College Football Hall of Fame class, Mathis brings a wealth of experience and a passion for the game that will undoubtedly inspire the team to new heights. Morehouse College presidents said in a quote, it is my pleasure to extend a warm welcome to our football coach. Former NFL Pro and College Football Hall of Famer Terrence Mathis a leader who I'm
bodies the spirit of teamwork, dedication, and excellence. I look forward to watching Coach Maths take our program to new heights and establish winning football culture within Morehouse College athletics. I have had the privilege of being not just a fan, but you know, almost family too. Brother Terrence Mathis, for
you know, three fourths of my life. Got to look up to him when I was an aspiring football player and just got to watch the man he was off the field, be it the work that he did to help our church, to the work that he did to help me personally, so to Terrence, to his family, we are excessively proud of you here at Civic Cipher, and please believe we will be in Atlanta at some games
this year. I guarantee to the whole Morehouse College family, the House as they call it, and all of my friends and family members that are alum and supporters of Morehouse and Spelman and really the whole movement of HBCUs, especially down in Atlanta, Georgia, we support you and we are proud. Yeah.
Man, that's that's a big deal. So there's our any excellence for you. Now let's get.
Graphic. Yeah, that's why I apologize in advance. But that's the way.
Yeah, that's we we live graphic lives over here. And you know you've opted to join us for this ride. So I'm gonna share again a recent story. This comes from ABC News, and I want us to listen to this story and bear in mind that we're we're talking about Trump supporters primarily, but these are our countrymen and country women. They are still our brothers and sisters. This is what we we know. It's not always easy to get along with your brothers and sisters. But we maintain
that these people are our brothers and sisters. What we're trying to point out is the fanaticism and the cult like behavior that is prevalent within the ranks of the Trump.
Movement, the Maga community. There you go, Maga community. That's a better way to say it.
So let's try to listen and be understanding and know that no matter what, everybody suffers from a human condition.
Right.
But these outliers certainly helped tell a story about the culture within the Maga movement, the type of environment that could breed these outliers. The environment is toxic to even breed folks that behave like this. So the first story we're in a share comes from ABC News. A thirty two year old Pennsylvania man is accused of decapitating his father and then making threats against federal officials in a
video posted online. Following the gruesome murder, officers responded to reports of a deceased man in his sixties at a home in Middleton Township Tuesday night. Lisaid the victim, Michael Mohn,
was found dead in a bathroom by his wife. According to the police criminal complaint, victim had been decapitated, and a machete and large kitchen knife were found at the scene, according to the The video posted to YouTube shows Justin Mohan wearing rubber gloves that had been observed at the crime scene while saying that his father is now in health for all eternity and the video reviewed by ABC News, the suspect, who says his father was a federal employee,
refers to the federal government as the enemy and makes threatening statements against federal agents, judges, and other federal employees. The suspect also states that President Joe Biden is no longer in power and refers to himself as the acting president. So first thing I want to say here is clearly there's some mental health problem.
Yeah, he's we can say he's unfit. Yeah he's mentally yeah yeah, absolutely right.
So this is not I don't want to paint all MAGA people with that same brush. But what I want to do is use this story in some other stories to illuminate again the toxicity that is prevalent.
And the aggressive.
Language and energy that is very present in that camp.
It's an ideology, it's identity politics. I think you and I have had conversations on air and oft. I've voted since I was eighteen. I've never flown the flag of that person from my home as sign of them in my living room. I don't start conversations with strangers defending decisions that they make right. I vote as is my civic duty. I hope for the best outcome, but I have not indoctrinated myself passionately to following, supporting, or loving
the people who I have elect to public office. And the identity ideology and almost religious cult like politics that the MAGA supporters subscribe to is a bit different than anything I've seen in my lifetime. There's a grouping of politicians in a singular way as all bad and sure, but he is an outlier, and the way his base follows, supports, and loves him is also not normal, not normal behavior that I've observed from people who are just running for
political office. I think back to when I was a kid. My mother had coworkers who did not vote the same way that she did. But the day after the election, they were not fighting about the outcome of it. They went back to work there January sixth. Yeah, there was no They didn't become enemies because they cast a different vote from each other. They still cared about us, her children, She still cared about their kids. They were still friends
at work. Right, So this, this identifying as the candidate you support, is something that's new and something that's different and something that's dangerous, as these stories will likely illuminate.
Yeah, yeah, and there's something else here too. So one of the things I read I read an article recently and the conclusion there was a conclusion drawn from some data in terms of people and personality traits that they find endearing in terms.
Of like who they vote for whatever.
And one of the things that was true across the board that was even more prevalent or more pronounced than race, socioeconomic background, blah blah blah whatever that really angered a person to Trump was they really liked the authoritarianism. They like that character trait in there, like his.
Almost fake macho man.
There you go exactly. Now here's the thing. I was also watching something recently, and I think it was Trevor Noah was talking about this, and I know that you'll appreciate this because you've been all over the world just
like I have. He was saying, you know what, it's weird because in other countries they elect their officials very reluctantly, and then they criticized them the whole time, like even if they voted for them, and they plan on voting for them, movie should exactly exactly, And they're they're critical like places like France, places like you know, any any place.
That we would consider like first world. You know, they're and it's almost unfair to say that they're critical, Right that I'd assume because I've lived in multiple countries, but I've never participated in the politics there. One because I couldn't, two because the reasons why I left here would not have me go somewhere else to sign up for the same fights. Right. But the criticism is often just them holding this person responsible for the promises they made while
trying to be elected. It's not like, hey, you're awful, it's hey, you said you were going to do X, Y Z ABC and we're still waiting on a so, so watch this.
The difference with Donald Trump specifically is that a lot of his supporters, most post to all, are not critical of him. They will either willfully ignorant or they will turn the blind eye to.
Even their own hipocrisy and even to their own detriment and to do things to actively harm them. Yeah, they will support him. So watch this.
You know, I mentioned January sixth. When people try to, like you said, they try to say all the politicians are the same. I can't think of a politician ever who could have pulled a January sixth and got that many people to come and then fight and then there were people even died.
And then in the wake of it wipe his hands like he had nothing to do with it. He's like, if you let me again, I'll pardon them. Outside of that, I say that he has no problem with it, and most of his supporters celebrated like it was a holiday, even though they were taking up arms against their own country government while raising their fist in the name of patriotism.
Sure, and so well again, I'm going to make another
point after I tell this next story. But I feel like that is critical because knowing that Trump exists beyond the scope of what a politician should be and there's this cult like following that is toxic and breeds outliers like this is something that we need to be aware of when we're approaching people, you know, and talking to them and kind of doing our best to reaffirm our humanity in front of them and reaffirm their humanity to themselves, Like, Yo, you're a person on a planet we need to save,
and we share this planet with each other and animals, and you know what I mean. Like, it's not just you can't have that way of thinking, and so knowing kind of what breeds this type of thinking, I think is important in terms of developing strategies to have effective conversations with these Right. So this next story, we're going to go back a little bit. But this the first story I told you about the guide taking his father's life. I don't want to rehash all the groups of details.
I'm not a true crime fan guy, but that story reminded me of another story, and this is a sad story as well, for different reasons I'll share. This is from August twenty twenty one an NBC News article. A California surfing school owner who was charged with killing his two children in Mexico is a follower of QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories who thought that the children were going to grow into monsters, so he had to kill them.
This is alleged by the federal officials that were investigating this all right. Matthew Taylor Coleman, age forty, was charged with foreign murder of US nationals in connection with the death of his two year old son and his ten month old daughter, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. Authority said Coleman confessed to the killings and told the FBI that he used a spearfishing gun to stab them. A criminal complaint alleged, oh children,
by the way, Yeah, those were his kids. A criminal complaint alleges that he told the FBI that he killed his children because he believed they were quote going to grow into monsters unquote, and that conspiracy theories led him to believe that his wife had passed down her quote serpent DNA quote to the children. Coleman's wife, identified only by her initials, contacted Santa bar Repolice after her husband had taken the kids out on a Saturday but didn't
tell her where they were going. The complaints set. She grew concerned after he failed to respond to her messages, and knowing their husband didn't have a car seat with him, she called police. Now I'm going to spare the rest of the story because it's very sad. But along the short of it is that later in the article there's a connection to the Trump camp and the far right, and then of course these qanons and all that sort of stuff. Again the same sort of toxic reading ground
that breeds these sort of outliers. Now, before we decided to make today's episode, and you can confirm with me, because we built, you know, we build our episodes together before we decide we're going to talk about, we were looking for a third topic. Typically, you know, it's like the rule of threes. Anybody who's working in show business
at all, you know the rule of threes. You want to have three elements to kind of had to make a point or at whatever they could get a laugh out of people, whatever it.
Is that you're trying to do. So we're looking for a.
Third example that kind of illuminates the sort of outliers that that toxic primordial oose.
And sadly, we had way more than three to choose. And that's what I was going to say. Sadly, that's what I didn't. I didn't mean to cut no, no, no, no, no no, we just said we googled it. Yeah, that's just the idea if if you google Trump supporter or support or arrested, there are way too many results we
could have done. We could do a series of shows based on just those results, reading those stories and kind of going through the tribalist identity zell it like ideology of supporters of our former president, and stories like this were not rare, Like these aren't the two that stood out. This is just what just.
One happened today, and then one I remembered because he said lizard people or something like that. Right now now I'm going to piggyback onto that. So in the interest of being fair, you know, we try to be journalists on this show as best we can, and we try to preserve a degree of journalistic integrity here on Civic Cipher. We felt like it might be meaningful for us to google Biden's supporter arrested, and I'm going to be truthful. You can find examples of that. Have to dig very
very deep. I went to find please Obama supporters arrested, just because I know that. You know, Obama was a popular more popular president, and there are examples of that. But you have to go very very deep when you google Trump supporter arrested.
Do those searchers yourself, so you don't have to take our word for it. And it's this, listen, this. This is not a discussion as to whether or not people Obama and Biden supporters do criminal or otherwise evil things. The difference is most of us. I'll use myself as an example. Don't identify as supporter of anyone.
And know would I commit any arrestable act in their naticker on my car.
There's no flag waving for my porch. And I will not fight you to support any of them. I will not take issue with you in support of any of them, especially people that I know and cares about. I had personal friends of mine take issue with draw a line and divide themselves from me because I didn't support Donald Trump.
That's such a strange thing. I don't know him. I don't He doesn't know the people who argued and fought with me on his behalf, and if you ever let him, never care about them, and it has not done anything on purpose to help them. Right now, if he put a fire out on a building he owned and you just so happened to live there, that was not to save your life. As the best way that I can kind of paint that picture. He's not that type of
human being. I don't care about the type of politician that he is, right, because if we're rating politicians, then the argument that people make that they're very much the same in a way, in the way that they're out for self more than their constituents, I'd agree with you, right, but very much the same in the way that they
very very intentionally look to divide and destroy. I don't know, I don't know, I don't well, I do know it's not the truth that our former president was different in a way than really any other president in my lifetime, and his ability to motivate and inspire the worst of us.
So this is what I'm trying to say here. So I'm glad you said that. Watch this. You know, I said it briefly, but I didn't want to talk over you. It would be inconceivable to commit a criminal act in the name of a politician that I'd never met before. It would be inconceivable for me to commit a criminal act in anybody's name unless I was related to them and they needed to.
Really start a real argument with in the name of Obama. Like that, he's cool, but like I mean, like, if you got a point, you got a point, that's it, right. But what I'm I think what we're saying here is that because of these really extreme.
Uh people like it's their their identity almost like you know, Maga twenty twenty, you'll see it on their profile and it's zealot like man. And the thing is, it's okay to be excited about a candidate. It's okay to tope, be hopeful that the country is going to go in a direction that you value. Right, those things, they matter.
But at a point, because of these outliers, these stories, this man beheading his own father because he's not going to vote for Donald Trump, you know, this man taking his kids lives because he really sincerely believes in the QAnon conspiracy theories that Donald Trump is the real president and blah.
Blah, this and the third.
You know, at a point you have to look at this as a Trump supporter and say, you know what, maybe there is some kool aid that we're drinking. And that's not the worst thing in the world. Because human beings are susceptible to propaganda. It's not irredeemable, it's not
there's always a path back. You know what, I mean, like you started this by saying, these are our brothers and these are our sisters, even if it's a tough relationship that we have to maintain, that we we cute Ward and Ramse's jaw have resolved to being the brothers of the people that we discussed on the radio. Right, We're going to be your brothers no matter what. That doesn't mean that you're going to get off, you know, Scott.
Free over here. We're gonna we're gonna tell you about yourself. But yeah, but we won't. We have not decided that you are less than in any way because of the way that you love, because of the way that you pray, and absolutely not because of the way that you vote. Right, We just would love to have more in the way of empathetic conversations with an actual open mind and not be so determined to prove each other wrong and to other and make enemies of each other because we don't
share the same politics. I think that's insane. Yeah.
Now, one of the things that is very true is that you know, for those of you that follow us on social media, which, by the way, follow us on social media at Civic Cipher, at Civic Cipher, again, you might notice that we have a comment section that's full of people that hate us. Don't they don't have to say it with no colorful language. They have these file
things in the comment section. I disconnected myself as a administrator of our page because I don't do so well with hundreds or thousands of evil, hateful, negative comments which grow them back in eventually. But yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. But the fact of the matter is that we and that's that's I think that's a lesson that we're learning in real time. We have to maintain
that these are people that we're trying to reach. These are people that we feel could be lost, could have drank the kool aid, could be susceptible to getting sucked into that ooze that breeds these outliers, and indeed breeds a very toxic relationship and toxic split in the political climate in this country.
So food for thought.