The Exception of Me, Free Speech, and LifeWise’s Antisemitism

[0:04] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. We’ll talk about a phenomenon seen from people who hold extreme political viewpoints called the exception of me. Then we’ll discuss a Toledo Fire Department officer being fired for not being sad that Charlie Kirk was murdered. And how this is not the first person punished for a political social media post. And finally, did you know that LifeWise Academy teaches young kids that Jews killed Jesus? Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[1:00] One of the things that we come across when dealing with Christian nationalists or other Christian extremists is that they claim to be following the teachings of Jesus or their Holy Bible or whatever version of the Bible that they choose.

[1:18] And it can be obvious that they aren’t following it, such as when they support deporting undocumented people. When it’s obvious in the Holy Bible, it says to take care of the immigrants. Treat them as your own. Treat them like family. Make sure they’re clothed and fed.

[1:40] But I want to be honest, and I don’t know verses, total verses of the Bible. I don’t have it memorized, but I am familiar with those words. And so, you know, we just kind of talk about hypocrisy and how they are hypocrites when they talk about some family values or something that they themselves do not practice. Well, there’s also another context to that, and that is it doesn’t necessarily have to be religious, but it could be conservatives saying something. And then on my side of the aisle, where they call it F-A-F-O, F around and find out, well, a lot of conservatives who voted for Trump and for his bigotry, they’re now reaping the sow of that hypocrisy that Trump and his cronies do, is that it’s affecting people that voted for him. and they’re not happy. And what it’s called is, there’s a term for it, it’s called the exception of me.

[2:55] And basically, people can hold extreme views of something or different views of something that they claim then doesn’t affect them because they’re different. An example that I’m going to play for you here in a minute talks about the anti-abortion people who then get abortions, who are patients of abortion clinics, even though they’re protesting abortions.

[3:21] And so this is a video clip that I found on Facebook that popped into my feed.

[3:28] And it’s from Professor Neil Shymensky. I think that’s how you pronounce it. He’s an English professor from Canada. And he talks about the exception of me. So I just wanted to play this clip and then we’ll talk about it. Jessica Valenti has reminded me here of a tremendously useful sociological concept, particularly when it comes to making sense of some of the self-defeating and even contradictory statements that we hear coming out of the mouths of conservatives. That being the idea of the me exception, originally coined to describe anti-abortion protesters who were also patients of the abortion clinic. This is actually a fairly new concept. It was only first described two years ago. In this Daily Beast article where an abortion provider says, we in the movement often say people believe abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest, and me. While this me exception was originally created, it was formulated to describe these people with anti-choice politics who nonetheless make the choice for themselves personally, I think it can be extended pretty effectively to describe a lot of situations where conservatives’ political statements just don’t seem to align with the actions that they take for themselves, as well as the fact that they don’t tend to view that as a contradiction or even as hypocrisy, because they really and truly believe that.

[4:51] That they are the exception to the rule. And if you need more examples, the sex educator Chippy Lipton has put together a compilation of some really fantastic, by which I mean also horrifying, examples of Trump supporters who thought they were the exception and are coming to realize they are not. For instance, the business owner who depended on undocumented labor but didn’t think that mass deportations would affect his business. Or the parents of children with autism who didn’t think that cuts to the Department of Education could possibly affect them. Or the person who receives health care through the Affordable Care Act who didn’t really think he would go through with killing it.

[5:27] Would he? For the most part, it’s not as if that me exception is totally imaginary. Not as if they have invented it for themselves. Oftentimes, it comes from a sense of entitlement that is tied to some manner of privilege. Whether that be because they are white, they’re men, They’re straight. They are Christian. They think an exception will be made for them now because at some point, probably at multiple points in their lives, exceptions were made for them then. Totally clear, those exceptions will still exist for an incredibly small number of people who can, in most cases, afford it. Because even if abortion is outlawed, there will always be people who can afford to obtain them, who obtain the labor of undocumented workers, who can leverage their intergenerational wealth in order to become wealthy despite failing over and over again. The me exception does not guarantee that we will continue to be exceptions in the future. There is a point where the promises that are made by the me exception just become empty. A whole lot of people are about to run face first right into the limits of the me exception. That was Professor Neil Shymensky. I’m probably pronouncing that wrong I apologize.

[6:42] But yes, what he talks about is pretty much true. And that was the argument that I made during the Reproductive Rights Act debate that we had here in Ohio was that, you know, even if they ban, totally banned abortion, like completely banned it in state law, there would still be people who would receive abortions. And either it would be doctors or hospitals that would do it under the table like they used to do and give it a different diagnosis, like genital warts, removing genital warts or something like that to hide what they were doing. Usually you can’t do that now because of insurance plans. And then the other way that people would receive abortions would be if they could afford to. They could go to a private hospital and pay a huge sum of money to get an abortion. And so the only people that would be punished for it would be the people who can’t afford to be punished. It would be the poor people.

[7:55] So I just thought that that was an excellent video talking about the me exception. And I see that all the time. And I hope that in the future, when you listen to conservatives drone on, that you’ll spot it immediately. I tend to spot it immediately, you know, especially with the Trump administration, because a lot of times the things that they talk about that they hate is stuff that they’re doing.

[8:28] And so it just, sometimes it just blows my mind that trying to say, well, are they just saying that just now? And they’re doing that. It just doesn’t make any sense. For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[9:09] So a few months ago, a podcaster who happens to be an acolyte of President Trump and the MAGAs, his name is Charlie Kirk. He was murdered at an event in Utah. What he would do is he would go to college campuses and raise all kinds of ruckus with his views, his negative views, and his Christian nationalism and bigotry. And he would just cause a commotion. He was founder and CEO of Turning Point USA. They are the group that sponsored a speaking tour by Riley Gaines, the former competitive swimmer who tied for fifth with a transgendered woman. And now that’s what she does now. She goes around the country and complains about transgender women.

[10:06] So that’s who Charlie Kirk was, and he was murdered, and that was a terrible thing. Nobody deserves to be murdered, but that’s what happened. What happened after that, though, was classic conservative Christian nationalist thing. They go on and on about being censored or canceled. They don’t know why they can’t just use the N-word whenever they feel like it, and they get upset. They had a lawsuit against a bunch of the tech companies claiming that their views were being censored, which wasn’t true, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, after Charlie Cook’s murder, there was obviously some people who were dismissive of it or that didn’t care. They weren’t sad about it. And they expressed that viewpoint online in social media or in public. And there was a backlash. Many people lost their jobs or lost friends over it. And here in Toledo, we had a fire department lieutenant who was fired over comments that he made about Charlie Kirk.

[11:27] This happened, it was announced on November the 13th that Lieutenant Jeffrey Schroeder’s social media post on September the 10th was unacceptable and most importantly does not reflect the values or standards of the Toledo Fire and Rescue Department. Fire Chief Allison Armstrong cited four administrative or procedural charges the department brought against Lieutenant Schroeder, carelessness and failure to meet a reasonable standard, conduct unbecoming a lieutenant, and a conduct detrimental to the department, and two violations of the department’s social media policy. Then it goes on here in the Blade article, Following a comprehensive disciplinary process, he was found guilty of all except the carelessness and failure to meet a reasonable standard charge. The chief said, based on the severity of the infractions, Lieutenant Schroeder has been terminated from his position, effective immediately.

[12:20] This decision reflects our commitment to accountability and our zero-tolerance policy for conduct that promotes violence, disrupts our operations, and damages the reputation of our department. And that didn’t sit well. You know, yes, I’m one of those people that’s not sad that Charlie Kirk is dead. He was not a good person, and he’s held up as a martyr to the magas, which really is unconscionable. But, you know, he wasn’t an elected official. He was public. He was a public person, but he wasn’t an elected official. He’s a podcaster, and he operated within the conservative welfare system. You know, he never graduated college, et cetera. Okay? So he was privileged and I didn’t appreciate his views. So yes, I am not sad that he is no longer with us. I am upset that he was murdered though. I’d rather that he die a natural death.

[13:30] So I don’t know what this social media post that this Lieutenant Schroeder supposedly posted. They don’t go into any details. All that it was not a condolence post, I’m assuming, because it was about Charlie Kirk and then they fired him. So it really concerned me about how it was handled. And in reading and seeing the news reports on this termination, like that Blade article I just read and in the TV stations, I’m bothered by how really nonchalant the decisions seem to be. You know, to lose your job over a political post, because that’s exactly what it was. It was a political post.

[14:17] It had nothing to do with the guy’s job. That’s a drastic action to take. You know, the right-wingers talk about getting canceled. This guy got canceled. And for what? Because he was not sad that some conservative blowhard was murdered? I see his point. I see his point. I understand it. It’s a political post. And so what I was doing was when I was checking this stuff out, because I heard about this before the investigation concluded, I thought maybe this guy, Lieutenant Schroeder, had a checkered record, you know, like he had always been in trouble and saying stuff and they were like, don’t say anymore. And, you know, and that’s.

[15:02] I don’t have a problem with that because your employer can control what you say while you’re working, for example, and as long as you don’t speak as that employee of that company.

[15:16] So, you know, unless he was using a city social media thing or saying, I’m Lieutenant Schroeder and I think this is not, I’m not sad about this. I don’t know. But none of that comes out. And I understand that that doesn’t come out either. It was probably, you know, because you think of progressive, progressive discipline. Usually when people work, you get, you know, you do this and this step happens. If you do something else, this step happens, et cetera. You know, so they went from zero to 60. They went from from the post to termination with nothing in between. And that didn’t set well with me because the Toledo Police Department has had multiple incidences of excessive force complaints and have disciplined officers in the last few years, starting with the George Floyd protests. And none of those officers were ever terminated from the job. These people, the police officers that did the successive force, they hurt people. You know, one lady had a hole in her leg that she had to have surgery on when she was hit by a, quote, non-lethal, unquote, projectile during a protest. And none of these officers get terminated. They get suspended.

[16:42] They might have lost their rank. Who knows? But they were not terminated.

[16:49] And I know it seems like an apples to oranges comparison, but to me, it seems that the hot take by a longtime member of the Toledo Fire Department was treated as being much, much worse than Toledo police officers injuring people due to excessive force. And I understand the political climate is very raw right now, and many people have lost jobs for being demissive of the murder of the hero of the MAGA crowd. And these are the same people, like Trump and Vance and some of these other people, are exactly the same people who loudly complain when they’re forced to be decent humans and asked to use the preferred pronouns of the people that they teach or that they work with or that they interact with. You know, oh no, I can’t use the preferred pronouns. You’re violating my free speech rights.

[17:42] And as I said, Charlie Cook was not a good person. He hurt many people and held views that conflicted with 99% of the public. He was not an elected official or a sports hero or anything like that. And he didn’t deserve to be murdered, for sure. But the reaction towards people who aren’t sad that he’s dead really concerns me. And I think that the Toledo Fire Department threw Schroeder under a bus for political reasons. And so based on the limited information I have, because it’s a personnel matter, they’re never going to make any of that stuff public unless a reporter goes and does an information request for it. Lieutenant Schroeder should have been punished, obviously, you know, if people knew it was him. But I would think a political social media post about a public figure would merit maybe a suspension, a reassignment, you know, a desk job or even a demotion. Maybe he gets bumped down to captain.

[18:44] But termination seemed to me like they were using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. And I don’t know Lieutenant Schroeder personally, but I, as a taxpayer in this community, I’m concerned about how this was handled. And Lieutenant Schroeder isn’t the only one. Reuters News Service has an article that was published on November the 19th that said that up to, from their accounting, 600 people have been punished in a pro-Trump crackdown over Charlie Cook’s, over reactions to Charlie Cook’s assassination. It’s been a government-backed campaign that has led to firing, suspensions, investigations, and other action against more than 600 people. Republican officials have endorsed the punishment, saying that those who glorify violence should be removed from positions of trust. And they give some examples. Lauren Vaughn, a kindergarten assistant in South Carolina, saw reports that right-wing influence Charlie Cook had been shot at an event in Utah. She opened Facebook and typed out a quote from Kirk himself. Gun deaths, Kirk said in 2023, were unfortunate but worth it if they preserved the Second Amendment to protect our God-given rights. Following the quote, Vaughn added, thoughts and prayers.

[20:07] And essentially, that’s what I did as well. I said thoughts and prayers. That’s something I commented to. Vaughn, a 37-year-old Christian who has taken missionary trips to Guatemala, said her call for prayer was sincere. She said she hoped reading Crook’s words in the context of the shooting might prompt her friends to rethink their opposition to gun control. Maybe now they’re listening. A few days later, Vaughn lost her job. She was one of more than 600 Americans fired, suspended, as I said. Some were dismissed after celebrating Armaki Kirk’s death. At least 15 people were punished for allegedly invoking karma or divine justice, and at least nine others were disciplined for variations on good riddance. Other offending posts appeared to exult in the killing or express hope that other Republican figures would be next. One down, plenty to go, she said. And yeah, that is over the line.

[21:06] When you say that, you know, hope that other people are next, that, yeah, that’s over the line. That should be punished. But the stuff like that Vaughn said, that Lauren Vaughn said, I don’t think she should have lost her job. It says Americans, and the article continues, Americans sometimes lose their jobs after speaking out in heated political moments. 22 academics were dismissed in 2020, the year George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. Most were comments deemed insensitive, according to Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group. In 2024, the first full year following the outbreak of the latest Israel-Gaza war, more than 160 people were fired in connection with their pro-Palestinian advocacy, according to Palestine Legal, an organization that protects them. The backlash over comments about Kirk’s shooting stands apart because of its reach and its public backing from Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other top government officials. It represents a striking about face for Republicans who, for years, chastated the left for what they called cancel culture, the ostracism or punishment of those whose views were deemed unacceptable. And it says supporters of the firing say that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. Gee, I think I’ve said that quite a bit. And like I said, you know, if it was like, you know, hey, I hope so and so is next. Yeah, let’s punish them.

[22:30] You know, somebody’s being extra cringy about it. Yeah, let’s have a talk to them. Let’s, you know, write them up, reprimand them. You know, when you fire somebody, that is a drastic measure. And the fact that it happened in Toledo, which is not a Trump bastion, it’s not a bastion of Trumpism for sure. It’s a Democratic-controlled administration. You would think that they would put hand over fist to try to keep a lid on it, but they didn’t. I think that they handled it terribly. And unfortunately, because he’s a lieutenant, he doesn’t have a union representation.

[23:12] I don’t believe, I’ve looked it up, and it’s like the fire chiefs and battalion chiefs, they have a union, and the rank and file have a union, and I don’t know if the lieutenant does. I would assume that he doesn’t because of how quickly they fired him. Now, I could see somebody getting fired if they harmed somebody, or if they wanted to harm somebody, or whatever. I can see doing that. I just don’t think that firing somebody over a public media person being murdered is grounds for termination. But then again, I’m not in charge. I just think I’m concerned that they handled it incorrectly.

[24:16] I’ve talked many times over the course of the last couple of years about LifeWise Academy and why it is a problem. I know in the last episode, we went through a review of their recent documentary that they released, Off School Property, and highlighted some of the historical inaccuracies that they made.

[24:41] Well, I want to know, and we know that they have a problematic teaching about LGBT issues and issues about divorce, and they always are teaching the kids to put God first before their parents and things like that. That’s kind of problematic to be teaching young kids. But would it interest you to know that they also teach anti-Semitism when they have in the movie Off School Property, they didn’t, they touched very lightly on the curriculum. And that, to me, if I was a parent and I had children and I was considering sending them to LifeWise, I would want to know what the curriculum was in detail. And a lot of these conservatives, these right-wing conservative Christian extremists, that’s what they always complain about when they talk about public schools indoctrinating their children for woke stuff. They call it woke stuff, is they want to see all of the curriculum. Well, unfortunately, LifeWise protects, well, protects is a bad word. They hide their curriculum. They hide their curriculum so that you can’t look at it in full.

[26:10] They dose it out to you. When you contact them, they didn’t used to do this because they claimed it was copyrighted and they couldn’t share it. But what they have set up now is that you have to give them personal information like your email address, your name, and the reason why you want to see the curriculum. And then they send you a little bit, a little taste of the curriculum. And I’m sure it is self-selected to show in the most positive light.

[26:42] And so, like I said, in the movie, Off School Property, they didn’t even get into the curriculum. They just lightly touched it. I know some, when they come into some school districts and they talk to parent groups, they talk about teaching character and using the Bible to teach character. Now, in the movie, they said that they want to teach the Bible, which is different because they have a different audience. And when they get into the classroom and they’re teaching these, quote, character, unquote, traits, they use Bible stories. And one of the lessons that they teach is that the Jews killed Jesus.

[27:27] Now, I know some Christians and some religious people that are familiar with the Bible will say, But Doug, that’s the fact, that’s what happened, that Jews in Jerusalem betrayed Jesus and he was crucified, the Romans crucified him. They didn’t believe that he was the son of God, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, a couple of problems with that is that that whole frame framing of that teaching that to little kids is problematic because it encompasses a lot of Jewish tropes, anti-Jewish tropes that have fueled anti-Semitism for for millennia. And one of those anti-Semitic tropes that the people trot around is the Jews killed Jesus.

[28:21] That is the greatest, I guess, sin the Jews did. They aren’t, and they are like, look at the Jews. They’re not the chosen ones. They killed Jesus. Now, the reason why that’s problematic is really the thing is that it was a political move. If you look at it in context, it was a political move. The people that were in charge of the Jewish community in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, they didn’t like this upstart usurping their power. They wanted to get rid of him. It wasn’t specifically that they were anti—they weren’t anti-Christian, because Christianity didn’t exist at the time of the crucifixion. Christianity was a belief system or religion sect that evolved after the time of Jesus, when Paul, the disciple Paul, went into everything. So Christianity didn’t exist. So Jesus was not anti-Christian, or the Jews were not anti-Christian. Jesus was Jewish. Everybody that lived in that area, in Galilee and Bethlehem and Jerusalem at the time, You were either part of the Roman occupation or you were Jewish.

[29:43] There wasn’t anything, you know, and that’s the main faith at the time. And so that’s what they talk about. Now, I have a website that I’m going to refer you to here shortly, but I just want to read some examples from, this is from the curriculum. This is from the LifeWise curriculum. And this part is from Special Lesson 8. It’s in a folder or in a thing that’s grouped with elementary school students. So this is like K through three or K through four. And this is the leader Bible study. This is what the leader, the people that’s leading the class, this is what they read to the kids.

[30:30] And they start out, it says, the Pharisees and other Jews in Jerusalem did not like Jesus. He didn’t play by their rules. He claimed to be God and he extended salvation beyond the Jewish people. So they plotted several times how they might kill him. The events leading up to his death did not surprise Jesus. Each step was part of God’s established plan. But knowing God’s plan didn’t lessen Jesus’ suffering as he was betrayed by his friends, arrested, falsely accused, and beaten. And then it has a thing here. It says, as you teach students about the arrest of Jesus, helped them understand the gravity of the events. First, Jesus wanted to do God’s plan. Jesus came to earth to rescue people from sin. He was committed to doing his father’s will. When Judas showed up with a crowd, Jesus didn’t run. He didn’t even allow Peter to stand in his defense. Jesus willingly gave himself up for us because he loves us.

[31:27] And then it says, second, Jesus was betrayed and arrested, even though he did nothing wrong. The Jews tried to find a legitimate reason to kill Jesus, but they couldn’t find one. Jesus did what we failed to do. He perfectly obeyed the law. His arrest was not just, the trial was not fair, and this had to happen. Only a sinless, perfect sacrifice could take away sin, blah, blah, blah.

[31:54] And then in special lesson four most likely for the Christmas season talks about the wise men asked him where is he who has been born king of the Jews the wise men unintentionally challenged Herod’s reign not only was Herod not a full Jew he was not a descendant of David Herod was deeply disturbed by the news that this child had the birthright of being king as Herod’s fury grew He gathered his chief priests and scribes to determine where Jesus had been born. Then he lied to the wise men. When you find him, report back to me so that I can go and worship him too. What deceitfulness. The truth was Herod did not want to worship Jesus at all. He wanted to kill him. And so if you think that I’m reading too much into the curriculum, there’s a website called LifeWise Exposed, and they have a post up now that was posted this week. The title of it is Jew Hate During School Hours, Anti-Semitism in LifeWise Weekly Children’s Bible Study. And they have far more examples than I just read to you.

[33:04] For example in the beginning of the article it says detailed below anti-semitic content and life-wise curriculum specifically talks about jews and then they have stats starting riots at least two times stoning others at least 11 times killing or wanting to kill others at least 32 times wanting or plotting to kill paul at least 23 times and wanting or being responsible for killing Jesus at least 14 times. And it says, across elementary and middle school lessons, the LifeWise curriculum repeatedly portrays the Jews, Jewish people, Jewish leaders, a group of Jews, as a collective that stones, riots, plots, desires to kill, tries to kill, murders, refuses to believe, spreads lies, and opposes God’s purposes.

[33:54] And they go on, these depictions are not isolated. They are systematic, constant, and often written multiple times within the same lesson, without any nuance or historical context. In many lessons, the Jews, quote unquote, function as the primary antagonists, while the Romans are framed as protectors or neutral arbiters. So again, the Romans were in charge at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, If it in fact happened, that’s another time. We’ll talk about that another time. And so it had to be the Romans that agreed to crucify him. Just because some Jewish people were complaining about Jesus doesn’t mean that they killed Jesus. And that is, like I said, that is just an anti-Semitic trope that’s been used ever since the founding of Christianity.

[34:50] And so I’ll have a link to that LifeWise Exposed website that talks about it. And I think it’s going to be very interesting when I send this information to a couple of Ohio legislators that really support LifeWise. And they also are against anti-Semitism. And we’re going to see how they feel about it. Because, I mean, this stuff existed, but I’m sure that they didn’t read the curriculum if common, you know, if regular parents can’t even read the curriculum. And so this is just another reason why LifeWise should not be in a public school. Not just because of the anti-Semitism, that’s bad enough, but the fact that they’re teaching this anti-Semitism, these tropes, to young children, impressionable children, and that’s the point that LifeWise Exposed makes.

[35:49] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.