Armed With Reason: The Podcast - Episode 31
Post-Election - where does the gun violence prevention movement go from here?
In this episode, GVPedia’s Devin Hughes and Caitlin Clarkson Pereira provide a wrap-up of the 2024 election and discuss where the gun violence prevention movement can go from here.
It’s understandable to be pessimistic, but eventually we need to pick ourselves up and do what we can to push the movement forward. And from GVPedia’s stance particularly, continue to strongly interrupt the well-funded cycle of pro-gun disinformation.
“It's not necessarily the case that information or disinformation has this linear relationship where you believe this, then you're going to vote this. But there is a cycle, a reinforcing cycle in terms of belief, wanting to find support for that belief, finding that support, making that belief even stronger, and so forth. And if we can interrupt that cycle, it's definitely possible to change minds. And we know it's possible to change minds because the gun lobby has done that over the past five decades with the idea that guns make you safer. A majority of Americans did not used to believe that, and now more than 6 in 10 do…. And it's going to be crucial work getting the American public back to an understanding that guns don't make us safer. It's going to require time. It's not going to be overnight, and it's going to involve multiple conversations, even with the same person. But we don't really have a choice….”
You can listen to the podcast via our channel on Spotify as well as watch on YouTube, or read the transcription below.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:
Devin: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us here on the Armed With Reason podcast, brought to you by GVPedia. So you may have already noticed this one's going to be slightly different because I'm trying out the intro this time. Today, Caitlin and I are going to talk about the victorious elephant in the room — Republicans sweeping the trifecta of Presidency, Senate, and House, and what all this means for gun violence prevention; and also what GVPedia plans on doing about it. So here we are post-election. What happened, Caitlin?
Caitlin: Yes, here we are. I think we're all still here at the moment. What happened? That is an excellent question. We are recording this ten days after the election now. And while there are still a few more races to be called for Congressional seats, one Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and a handful of seats in the House, the Republicans will control both. So by at least a count of 52 Republican Senators.
And the presidential election, which was, I think, something we anticipated to be a long, drawn out process of, okay, we need to wait for this precinct to come in, and we're going to recount these votes, and sort of like 2020, I think AP finally called it on Saturday of election week in 2020. So that's a solid five days going, not really sure what's going on. This was called within a few hours of polls closing, Trump won the Electoral College by 312 to 226 over Kamala Harris. And he also won the popular vote for the first time in his three races by about 3 million voters.
So we have some exit polling, which is interesting. And also it's important to keep in mind it's snapshot of voters. But we can tell that demographics shifted in his favor that the Democrats were not necessarily expecting to happen. And here we are with President Trump or president elect. 2.0. Trump I don't even know. It feels weird. I mean, he's former president. He's president elect. He's all these different things, waiting to be sworn in on January 20th, 2025. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And only time will tell.
We have started to hear who he's thinking of appointing to various cabinet positions. And we know that he appointed three Supreme Court justices in his last term, and we're not sure if he'll have an opportunity to appoint any more. But that's what happened from a numbers standpoint. That is the objective. The subjective of what happened, it's going to take a long time for folks to unwrap all of that, whether it's journalists, political scientists, the pundits, everybody has opinions and thoughts. And right now, there's a lot of blaming going on. And we will have to see what the conclusions are that individuals come come up with. It looks like Democrats didn't come out in as strong numbers as we thought they were going to. And it also looks like that first time voters did not vote as blue as we thought they were going to. So, yeah, so here we are.
Devin: So here we are. That's all folks.
Caitlin: But here we are. I think all of it feels, in some ways it's shocking... shocking, but not surprising that there's this emotional component to it where you're just like, I can't believe this is happening. But then you're not surprised because the pieces of the puzzle for this equation were there the entire time. And in this case, those pieces all just fit together. And that led to a sweep of the Senate, the House and the Presidency. So, you know, we have three branches of government which were created intentionally by the founding fathers. And this is a test, really, of what happens when one political party truly does have a hold on all three branches of government.
Devin: And is very intent on like taking down institutions and stuff. And that's not a partisan point, that's the explicit goal of potentially eliminating Department of Education, completely revamping and hollowing out a lot of governmental organizations in the name of efficiency. And it remains to see how effective or ineffective those measures are. I mean, anything could happen. It could turn out, yeah, we don't actually need 75% of the federal government actually. Our bad! But the odds of that are quite, quite low.
And in terms of like, yeah, it's shocking, but not surprising is a good way of putting it. Because back on September 25th, I was at the CAP conference — or the Center for American Progress Conference — had been the two previous days. And I was at the States United Conference [too], and I remember sending an email to my dad basically saying, like, I bet Trump's going to win. During that time. And this was at a time when FiveThirtyEight had Kamala Harris at like a 55% chance of winning. And like the polls were still in her favor for winning the blue wall states, which I don't think could be called a blue wall anymore.
Caitlin: That's true.
Devin: Yeah. I mean, in a way, it's kind of like the southern border wall. Like it's not really a thing. But yeah, the reason I did that was, or felt that way at the time, was from what I saw in the lack of attention on disinformation, which is one of the things that GVPedia is quite focused on. And one of the trends in the post-election and people having takes on it is it tends to reflect their own biases potentially more than what actually happened. Like on any specific point, you'll see like two polar opposites very confident this is what happened. So here's my very confident this is what happened. And to be clear, before starting out, I don't think that there's any one specific thing that caused this election result. The results were too broad to have been caused by any one particular thing. I think it was a multitude of factors that went into it.
And while at least on the popular vote, it's historically close. I mean, Trump did win the popular vote as well, and the Electoral College quite decisively. So it, was to use a term from 2010, a shellacking. And I think one of the contributing factors was there is a lack of attention to the Republican messaging. This goes to not only gun violence and crime, which we're going to focus on, but also on inflation and economic issues, immigration, and even abortion. Although Democrats won on that issue pretty strongly, which we can see from the state constitutions being amended to protect abortion rights in many states, which was a small glimmer of hope in an otherwise depressing landscape.
But on the issues of, say, the economy and crime, Republicans were pushing out an extensive amount of disinformation on it, and particularly with crime, arguing that crime was dramatically increasing, and that the FBI was trying to cover up what the crime rate was doing. And there was signs that this messaging was working. Even back in October, there was this Ipsos poll that asked voters four questions on immigration, crime, and the economy. And one on crime was violent crime rates are at or near all time highs in most major American cities. Which is false. If the person responding to that question got it correct, that it's false, they were 65 percentage points more likely to vote for Harris. If they got incorrect, they were 26 percentage points more likely to vote for Donald Trump. And this was the widest discrepancy in terms of views on crime, immigration, economy and so forth that affected vote choice. And there is another like YouGov poll that was surveying voters on the crime issue, and the numbers bounced around a little bit from month to month, but it steadily increased in Donald Trump's favor by the time of October, where there's an eight percentage point gap between people thinking Trump would do better on crime versus Kamala Harris.
And this didn't arise out of a vacuum. It was part of a coordinated disinformation campaign. And the response to that coordinated disinformation campaign was overwhelming silence not only from mainstream media, but also a decent portion of the gun violence prevention movement. And when you see the playing field on an issue so profoundly, while it might not have been the decisive factor, it certainly contributed. And there's even like fact checks on the crime issue that were saying like, no, no, crime is actually down. But they would never talk about what the Republican talking points were, why they were incorrect, and who is responsible for it, which was none other than John Lott.
And so you had a situation where his claims about the FBI revising and hiding an increase in crime in that crime was increasing would reach, based on social media and viewership, at least 100 million people. And the scattered fact checks maybe a few thousand here are there. And our article going into John Lott's firehose of falsehood on this, a thousand plus views. And there just wasn't an element of taking what the other side is saying, engaging on it, and showing why it's false. And all the academic research out there shows that merely pushing out one's own facts is not sufficient. You have to engage with what the other side is saying and push back against falsehoods. And if you don't, you end up losing.
Caitlin: Especially when you're appealing to fear, right? I mean I see lots of posts on social media about how much are eggs going to cost now. And there is some fear when it comes to inflation and what it does cost to go grocery shopping, to pay rent, to buy a car today as compared to four years ago, eight years ago, and so on and so forth. But when you're saying crime is going up and you're punctuating that with disinformation about xenophobia and the border, you are really appealing to people thinking, okay, well, I need to keep myself safe. I need to keep my family safe, in the same way that the gun lobby does with this whole guns keep you safe, so you need to buy more guns. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's what it is.
So they had the advantage not only because they had the disinformation out there about crime, it's what disinformation about crime specifically does to us as individuals. So that didn't help the cause either.
Devin: Yeah. And I do think there's some evidence — though again, this will be the product of many dissertations by scholars — that there was an overarching focus on the Democratic side on broad philosophical terms, like John Kelly calling Trump a fascist and such. And while that should be rightly horrifying to almost everyone, the fact is that many swing voters and many people would just show up at the polls aren't following the nightly news. They're not following things. They just like, what's happening to my pocketbook. And do I feel safe? And abstract conversations over isms such as fascism don't really connect with people. Like John Kelly calling Trump a fascist doesn't impact the price of eggs or milk or anything else. It doesn't impact whether a person feels safe or not. What can impact that person is talking about, Hey, here's how Trump's policies would actually increase inflation going forward.
Caitlin: Tariffs. My goodness. Tariffs!
Devin: Yeah. Here's how tariffs actually harm you. You end up paying for them. Here's how. deporting millions of hardworking people is going to cause food prices to skyrocket. Here's how going after the FBI and defunding community violence interruption programs and abolishing federal funding for research on gun violence is going to make people less safe. Like what's actually going to be happening and how steps been taken to improve the situation of people is going to do a lot more, whether we like it or not. I mean, John Kelly calling Trump a fascist, that should be disqualifying. Like that's his former chief of staff, right?
Caitlin: Yes. Absolutely.
Devin: In a sane world, that would be the end of the conversation. But we're not in a sane world currently. But at the same time, even though we aren't in a sane world facts still do matter. And if you don't push the facts and then show why the disinformation is wrong, people are going to be like, Oh here's the point showing that I am in fact less safe. I'm hearing this messaging that I am less safe, that the government might be covering it up. Who knows? I'm less safe. Things are more expensive. I'm voting for change. And it can be that simple for people. And I think there's been a failure to recognize that and also recognize how facts and disinformation fit into that.
Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. And disinformation from Trump and the folks who surround him. This is not a new tactic. So, you know, in 2015, let's say again, we could be maybe surprised and shocked about the stuff that would be said. But in 2024, we have lost that privilege. We don't get to be surprised or shocked when any specific things are shared from him.
Devin: I mean, sadly, it's kind of like in the aftermath of many mass shootings where people are like, I can't believe that could happen here. It's like — what over the previous decades indicates that couldn't happen here?
Caitlin: Right?
Devin: And now I understand a lot of people aren't following the news and don't have a firm grasp of such things. But it looks like it can happen here. And in terms of the election, it did happen here again. Yeah. I mean, you don't really get to be surprised.
Caitlin: What are some of the biggest ramifications that will occur for gun violence prevention specifically due to this election?
Devin: Yeah. So, and a part of this is projection of future events, so I could be wrong and hopefully many of these cases turn out to be wrong, but I doubt it.
Caitlin: Also, don't give them any ideas on here too. So keep certain things like close to yourself if you're going to be really smart, because I know you have some some ideas like the most tragic things that could happen. So maybe we keep those in a smaller circle because we just don't want that to get back to the decision makers.
Devin: Yeah, I won't share any ideas that I haven't shared publicly.
Caitlin: Okay, fair enough.
Devin: Like, what's The Trace?
Caitlin: Okay.
Devin: Yeah. So one of the main things is that the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is either going to be gone, or somebody who's extremely pro-gun, like John Lott, is going to be put in charge of it to where it basically is a disinformation source. Basically the gun lobby directly working in the White House sort of situation. Funding for stuff like CVI programs, federal research — that's all going away. But it's hard to tell what will happen with the CDC given that RFK Jr. has actually been supportive of gun control measures in the past. But he wants to kind of like eliminate large swathes of the medical infrastructure. So data from the CDC could be at risk. And there's definitely going to be an attempt to politicize the FBI, and so that data could definitely be at risk. ATF director is going to be gone. Whether they're actually able to install a new ATF director who's very friendly to the gun industry or just put the agency in turmoil — who knows?
While the Biden administration had done a good job of getting the ATF to inspect more and more gun dealers and actually hold them accountable for bad selling practices, that's going to go away. And there will probably be like loosening on imports and exports in terms of firearms. Basically, if it's in the power of the executive branch to do and it's pro-gun, they're going to attempt to do it. Now stuff like concealed carry reciprocity, which has already come up, unless they find a way to put that in a budgetary resolution, they'd have to abolish the filibuster, which I'm not sure that they're going to want to do, at least yet. Could happen. But if they don't abolish the filibuster, then there's not really going to be much in terms of Congress other than funding for various programs, which will be going away.
Oh, and there's also the potential if they do abolish the filibuster to end things like gun-free zones across the country. Now, whether that happens with Congress, because the congressional majorities in both the House and the Senate are still fairly slim, it's unclear how unified that approach is going to be. But there's basically going to be no positive news at the federal level.
Caitlin: Yes, This is a very bright and cheery list that you're putting out there.
Devin: Yeah. Have I brightened your day?
Caitlin: Right. Debbie Downer turns to Devin Downer here.
Devin: Yes. I bring the depression. So yeah, it's not going to be great on the federal level. And so while that's going to be difficult from a legislation perspective, there's still going to need to be defensive work done at the federal level as well as in the courts still, which is going to become even more challenging. But also it's going to open up an opportunity and the real need to focus on education and countering disinformation — not just from GVPedia, but the movement overall, because that's something all of us can do, even when the federal cards are stacked against us. It doesn't matter who's in the White House, Senate, or Congress to educate people about the dangers that firearms pose. And countering the disinformation that's going to be pushed out at, unfortunately, likely even higher levels.
So on that cheerful note, what are some of the few GVP wins that we had during the election cycle? I wouldn't want to break my depressive trends, so I'll turn to you on that one.
Caitlin: Yeah, I'm happy to provide a little bit of sunshine here. So you brought up being on the defense, and there are certainly individuals in Congress and then at various state levels who were able to either retain their seats or win seats for the first time who are going to be part of that defense for sure. I personally was grateful to see Maxwell Frost win again in Florida's 10th District. A huge advocate and ally for us. And other than that, really what I would say is in Colorado, there is an excise tax that will be put into place which will be applied to firearms and ammunition. And this tax is estimated to generate right now they're saying $39 million annually, and the bulk of this money will be going towards organizations that support victims of certain crimes, most specifically domestic and sexual violence. So we talked about in October, we talked about domestic violence quite a bit. Unfortunately, sexual violence goes hand in hand in that and then has has its own caveat. But we know that these are seriously underfunded. We typically have domestic violence victims that have no services provided to them after they have had to leave their home, right, maybe leave the town or the city that they're a part of, try to figure out how to start a life over if they've been able to end a relationship or get away from an abuser who ends up getting arrested and going to jail. And so, you know, $30 million sounds like a lot and it's a start. But you know that it's something that needs to be funded. It's been seriously underfunded for a long time.
So maybe it's a good opportunity to see what that looks like when we put it into play in Colorado. And we will just have to watch that over the next couple of years. So that's not as much sunshine as you gave with the negative aspects of what was happening, but it's just the reality of what it is. I certainly don't want to sit here, I don't think anyone in the movement wants to to sit anywhere and pretend that things are rosy, because that's just not the situation that we're in at the moment. So we'll count the small victories where they are. And some actually are rather large victories. But in the grand scheme of things, we know there's a lot of work to be done. But that's okay, that's what we're here for, is to do the work.
Devin: And to cheer people up. GVPedia's core mission.
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Caitlin: Right. So you were talking about disinformation in the first couple of minutes of the podcast, so this might be a little bit redundant, but is there anything else regarding disinformation in this election cycle specifically that you would like to highlight?
Devin: Yeah, I think in this election cycle in particular, crime was definitely more at the forefront than normal, even though it didn't feel like gun violence prevention stuff was. So there's like that interesting balance. But it was also one of the swiftest and most coordinated disinformation campaigns that I've seen. Because when we talk about the gun lobby's firehose of falsehood campaigns — one which was to turn the Second Amendment from a collective to individual right, and then the other one being guns make us safer — this was something that occurred over a period of five-plus decades. It was definitely a long game and slowly planting those seeds and watching them grow into the horror that they are now. Whereas with the crime-based firehose of falsehood, it was over the course of a few months.
And you basically had John Lott pushing out that, Hey, crime actually increased significantly under Biden, and the Democrats are lying to you about this. And then when the FBI releases 2023 figures, it revised previous years — which is what they do every single year — Lott took those revisions to say, Ah-ha, there was a massive crime increase in 2022, which he manufactured out of the FBI revising crime down substantially in 2021, raising it slightly in 2022. He then pointed to that gap between 2021 and 2022 to say that look at all these additional crimes that the FBI was hiding. Even though the overall number of crimes for those two years went down. So it was basically data fraud. But despite its obvious falsehood that he initially published it in Real Clear investigations, it was picked up by Fox News, Breitbart, NRA, News One, uh...
Caitlin: Everybody.
Devin: Yeah, everybody. And I don't use everybody lightly, it was any publication right of center was running it. It had multiple news segments, you had Elon Musk's PAC pushing it out, Elon Musk himself pushing it out. You had the Trump campaign advisers and officials who appear on CNN and other places talking about it as well. It was everywhere. Like the level of coordination to push that out was insane. And again, the response from GVP and mainstream media was silence on it. And that sort of push meant that people were far more likely to hear like, Oh the FBI's covering stuff up and crimes actually increasing than hearing the accurate information or why that was false. And it even went into where the House committee on oversight and ethics I think, something like that, like they're launching an investigation into the FBI.
Caitlin: Of course! Why would they not.
Devin: Yeah. So it was just like uniformly everywhere. And there was no response. If there's no response, that basically means the disinformation wins. And again, people are concerned about crime because it impacts them and their specific safety. And so if they're seeing things that like, Wow, I'm less safe, and they aren't hearing any counterbalancing message or why that's incorrect, it can definitely shape their vote. And I think there does tend to be an element on the political left, unfortunately, that in these situations goes, Oh facts don't really matter, people vote based purely on vibes and heuristics, and like what you're telling them on specific issues doesn't matter. And I hope that narrative goes to the graveyard after this election — because where do those vibes and heuristics come from? They aren't formed out of a vacuum.
It's not necessarily the case that information or disinformation has this linear relationship where you believe this, then you're going to vote this. But there is a cycle, a reinforcing cycle in terms of belief, wanting to find support for that belief, finding that support, making that belief even stronger and so forth. And if we can interrupt that cycle, it's definitely possible to change minds. And we know it's possible to change minds because the gun lobby has done that over the past five decades with the idea that guns make you safer. A majority of Americans did not used to believe that, and now more than 6 in 10 do. And you even see on the political left in the aftermath of the election, a lot of liberals saying, I don't feel safe, I need a firearm. Which it's understandable not to feel safe currently, but getting a firearm is the exact wrong approach to that.
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Caitlin: Right. Every action has a reaction. So it's important to know what the reaction might be to going out and getting a firearm. I think when we say vibes now here in 2024, it takes me back to when I remember hearing as a kid somebody say like, Oh I want to vote for somebody who I think I could just sit doith and have a conversation with. Writer Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton takes a dig at it because one of the lines in a song is like, “You could have a beer with him.” Like that's who we envision as the person who should be the leader of the free world? Like, I guess that's a great perk if if they're personable and charismatic. But that can't be the final determining factor. And if it was in this election, I mean, I personally know who I would rather sit down and have a drink with, who has the charisma and who is actually going to listen to you and process what you're saying instead of just cutting you off and saying whatever they want.
Devin: But yeah, it's the difference in this election between somebody you'd want a restraining order against and somebody who you'd be willing to sit down at the same table with. You might not enjoy the conversation, but it's far better than calling the restraining order.
Caitlin: Right. I don't typically have on my like dinner list I'm going to eat with felons. So, yeah, not to typecast a specific group of individuals, but I just I can't say that's on my short list. Well, here we are at the, oh I don't know, however many days that we have. I don't want to start counting until the inauguration. But for some folks listening, for me too, we're wondering what the heck do we do next? Give us some action items Devin.
Devin: Well, feel free to take a nap or two in the coming weeks.
Caitlin: Self-care? Yeah. Always.
Devin: It's best not to burn out within two weeks of something. But after that, I really do strongly believe that education and countering disinformation are fundamental. In addition to like, if you're an organization or you have a particular knack for fighting the defensive battles at the national level or at the States, or even advancing some positive legislation at the states, like that's still all going to be important. But there's a large chunk of things that we're just not going to be able to do in terms of forward action at the national level, which provides the opportunity and space to engage in the messaging war because it is a war, and sadly only the pro-gun side has really been fighting that war.
And countering the disinformation that says that guns make you safer, that's something that we can all have those conversations with people we know. It doesn't mean you have to go up to the door of somebody with a MAGA flag, an upsidedown American flag, that weird blue line flag, Confederate flag, other flags — you don't have to have conversations there. Like you're probably not going to change those minds. But there's a wide swath of people who either didn't vote due to apathy or just not caring enough or not knowing enough. There's a lot of people out there who are persuadable one way or the other. And there's a lot of Democrats out there who are currently considering getting firearms and not recognizing the personal risks that they're going to be taking on with those.
And there's going to be the massive firehose of falsehood that's going to be even stronger coming from the three branches of government. And now the richest man in the world putting it on blast on his own personal platform. Like, that's daunting, but it's something that can be countered. GVPedia has our countering the Fire Hose of Falsehood project that shows what organizations can do and what individual people can do to help counter this. And it's going to be crucial work getting the American public back to an understanding that guns don't make us safer. It's going to require time. It's not going to be overnight, and it's going to involve multiple conversations, even with the same person. But we don't really have a choice other than it's basically do this or we lose the messaging war forever. And I don't think losing the messaging war is a viable option. And this is something that every organization can do, every person can do. It doesn't have to have a GVPedia logo on it. Like, it'd be nice to have a GVPedia logo on it, but this is a lot bigger than GVPedia itself. Like countering disinformation and education are crucial. And GVPedia stands ready to help all those organizations and individuals do that work by making data even more accessible to people and trying to really democratize debunking disinformation by making sure that people have ready access to all of the answers that they're looking for in gun violence. And we have a number of projects going forward that we're hoping to accomplish, and we definitely are looking for help and support with those, but we're kind of doing what we always have done, but with even more focus and intention now, with the recognition that this is something we have to do in the coming years, and hopefully that can make a difference.
And even if it fails in the short term, we can provide one of those time capsules that you used to do in middle school, like let's bury it and people will eventually dig this up, which were typically construction crews like, Oh who did this right? But we can create that time capsule for times that are more sane; and provide that to where people in the future, even if it's us in the future, don't have to start from square one. But we have all the knowledge, information, data, resources, and so forth to be able to rebuild. And hopefully that rebuilding won't be necessary, it will be a continuation of the efforts that occur over the coming years. But in either way, it's going to be worthwhile to preserve all of that and to spread that knowledge.
Caitlin: There certainly is an element of self-preservation that is happening now, maybe even as part of the grieving process for some folks. And that's completely acceptable and understandable. Although I was listening to a podcast the other day. The podcast is called We Can Do Hard Things, featuring Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. And Glennon sister Amanda was explaining this thought of, my gosh, we just go into hiding for four years, like stay here in our house and, you know, just just be in this sort of bubble that we create for ourselves and pretend that all the noise isn't going on outside. But she stated really beautifully that, unfortunately, the history of our country has not been kind to so many people. And some of those individuals have spent their entire lives and their parents' lives, their grandparents lives, and their great grandparents lives in fear, in a state of realization that they don't have the rights that everybody else does; that their lives are valued less; that they have less access to safe places to live and education.
So in recognizing what Amanda was trying to say, which is, Hey, white folk, get up, get moving, like we gotta do something at some point. I think that's that provided a really good lens because that is true. There are some people who just can't look at this as four years and then think that everything will be okay if the Democrats are able to make some positive motions for the next election. So self-care, we don't want people to get burned out, right? We already see it. The Women's March is the perfect example. A lot of people mobilized physically. Not only do we burn ourselves out, we realize like, is this just performative and what is this really doing? We're making ourselves feel good. We're taking some photos and posting them on social media, but is it really making a difference? And there is value in reflecting on what we did last time, what we felt last time, and then how that determines how we move forward this time.
Devin: And one of the good things about educating oneself, educating others, and having conversations is it's never going to be wasted. As an indoors person myself, like I tend not to do marches because it's outside, but also it's like, at the end of the day were their minds changed, like what's going to happen from here? And it's not always obvious. Now, there are certain cases where marches can definitely be powerful and impactful, but there are other occasions where it can feel a little performative on occasion. And like kind of the same with even posting on social media, which can be a good outlet to vent, but at the same time, the real work, the real challenging work is learning, educating oneself, helping educate others, providing those resources, and spreading accurate information.
Because there's a lot of people out there who just don't have access to those facts or who aren't aware. And building that out, it's always going to be beneficial, and it can produce a compounding effect. Because if you have those conversations with three or so people and are able to change those minds, and they have conversations each with three more people, it can build rather substantially on itself. But it's definitely not easy. Having conversations, particularly with people we disagree with, can be challenging, but it's essential. And GVPedia is here to help with that.
Caitlin: And if you're feeling motivated to help in a small way financially, if you go on to our Substack — which is ArmedWithReason.substack.com -- you can subscribe to our Substack, there's a paid subscription option, and it's the actual cost of a grande soy latte with sugar free vanilla syrup. Don't ask me how I know this, but that's the cost for a month of this subscription. So if even a handful of people do that at the end of this podcast that makes a difference.
We also are part of the migrating population over on Bluesky where the sunshine is certainly more plentiful than in some other social media spaces. So you can look for us there at GVPedia. And we look forward to continuing these conversations over the next four years.
But you're absolutely right, there's a lot to be done, and these conversations matter. Facts matter. We can't just accept defeat. This is an opportunity to really show what we're made of for the next however long it takes. And it certainly does not discredit the work that individuals have done in in the White House and various elected offices and various advocacy groups individually on their own in the Biden-Harris administration. Because all of that is certainly extremely impactful. And we are always grateful for our partners who are doing fantastic work. So with that, I'm going to wrap up, and I guess we'll continue to chat about this lovely topic soon. And yeah, I opened bluesky a couple of minutes ago and saw that it is 66 days to inauguration. So I think it heard me and then populated that to the top of the feed.
Devin: Weird how technology does that these days.
Caitlin: All right, Devin, thanks for chatting.
Devin: And thank you. See you later.