Based Camp: Growing Up in the Progressive Cult

Here is a terribly translated transcript of the episode (mostly just here for SEO):

Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today. I'm gonna give you a topic today because I want you to talk more. I talked way too much in that last video. I don't like that. So I want to hear about your origin story growing up within the San Francisco Bay Area sort of your parents' background, how that shaped your worldview today.

Interesting. Sure. Yeah, because I would say that meeting you was, it did feel like entering a cult deprogramming program that I only realized after meeting you that I'd grown up. With the subconscious understanding that there were certain things I wasn't allowed to think or feel, and that I just wasn't allowed to hold certain beliefs and so I couldn't which I think is really interesting and I think we're seeing more and more of that being discussed openly.

So this is a fun thing to talk about. I guess I'll dive into it. I, let's start with your parents. What. How did they meet? What's their background? Yeah. I think they ended up in common circles after graduating when both of them were married to other people.

I know that my mother. Would babysit for my father and his ex-wife. They would do various, things and that she had a close relationship with my half-brother and sister early on.

And that they, my mother and my father were also in a polyamorous relationship, which sounds awfully familiar, like in similar. She was not doing things with your brother and sister, she was taking care of them as a nanny. Yes. And she's in a polyamorous relationship with your father, with dad and his wife.

Great. Yes. And it's actually sounds very similar to common relationship structures in the Bay Area today. There are many polyamorous families so it's, oh no, they're real trailblazers. In terms of that stuff, is it, how don't, and I think that's the thing is people say that polyamory and act like polyamory is this new invention and that it's, so to you, it's not new.

I promise you that stuff was not happening in Texas. This is a, your family was just on the cutting edge of this new cultural movement. But I maybe, but to some extent she thought this was all normal. So you can talk about what were, so they ended up I'll just because you're taking No ill I will explain a little bit more.

So, obvi in this case, actually polyamory did not work out. It led to a fairly not fun divorce from my father and his ex-wife. That was really difficult for my half-brother and sister. My mother basically gave an ultimatum to my dad saying listen, I, I. I can't do this polyamorous relationship either I need to move out of state and just kind of quit you cuz I'm too in love with you or we need to be monogamous.

And he ultimately decided to end his marriage and get with my mom, which was rough. That's polyamory doesn't always work out. But anyway, so I. You'll fast forward if you're going. So they ended up going together to Japan and then they were gonna go to China to train under different masters.

Your dad was an Aikido master in Japan. And your mom was going to be a Tai Chi master who was going to study Tai Chi. Yes. In China. Yeah. But in Japan, after a long time of trying to get pregnant, they didn't think they could get pregnant. They accidentally got pregnant with Simone. And that is where you were born.

I was born in Japan. That's right. Made in Japan and they moved back to the United States after my first birthday where they were turned to the Bay Area where both of them grew up, where, you know, both our, of our collective families are and they were still very involved in all these cultures. So, talk about things like what you thought of politics growing up, what you thought of gender growing up, what you thought of sexuality, what was this world that you were in?

Yeah, I mean it, I in many ways think it was very ideal. I, back then there, there was so little discussion of it. Everything was just kind of taken for granted. Like I, I actually thought I think there were more, I. Lesbian couples I knew that were raising my friends than like straight couples.

So, I had no sort of prior on what a, like a marriage should be. I figured it was just as likely that I would end up marrying a woman as marrying a man. I, it just didn't seem any different to me. I thought that, a wedding meant like a naked sweat lodge and then masks in the forest.

That was my prior there politics. There was, in my school, there was one. One student who was the son of a Republican, and it was just considered this like point of curiosity. Like if they were an albino student in the school, I think that would be kind of the same thing of oh yeah, we have an albino student.

Like kind of cool, right? Like we have a Republican. But I had no idea what, republican values were. It was just a matter of course that. Any Republican political candidate was evil and, not good. And that, of course, everyone would disregard them and see them as well. Terrible.

What did you think of Republicans in that environment when you grew up and you thought of your average Republican, what were you thinking? Were they like the same species as you or were they like No. Yeah, they, yeah, it actually felt like they were very different species. I almost I wonder how North Koreans feel about like outsiders maybe.

I feel it could be something kind of similar to that of just Who could model these people, and I remember when I was like 11 or 13 years old, I spent a month in Mexico staying in a hostel, working on an environmental preserve where we would do sea turtle conservation. And we met a lot of families that would come in and visit and just, join.

The Ecological Center for turtle walks and stuff. And so I would speak to other people and at one point I met this young woman around my age who came from Texas on vacation to this place where I was volunteering in the Yucca 10. And she was like, I. Oh, all I wanna do is, grow up and get married and have kids.

And I just remember the shock at hearing that from someone. I, I lived to 13 years old and this was my first time hearing a young woman say that she wanted to be a mother. And I was honestly a little bit. Shocked and worried for her. Yeah, like you thought something was wrong with her.

Like she was, something was definitely wrong. Yeah. And I would argue, now you can tell me if I'm saying this wrong, but it was almost like there wasn't real animosity for these people because they were subhuman.

I don't think you, no, it's not. It's not about someone is less than human. It's just It's the same way that you would view someone who is in a toxic cult or something. Like one, I can't even model your weird worldview. You think that, aliens walk among us and the earth is flat.

It's just like, how could you be so wrong? I can't possibly, like it, it's dangerous how wrong you are. I can't even wrap my head around it. I don't even know how I would argue with you. So I never tried. Here's my question now, given that you accept many conservative views as being broadly right.

Why was it that you were unable to consider those views back then? Why? I think when you grow up in a normative culture, that's just like everyone holds the same view. And I think, people who grow up in conservative Mormon communities, people who grow up in like any sort of isolated, conservative community, when you don't get exposure to people with other worldviews, and especially not just that, but you don't get exposure to debate around these issues.

That nothing is. Ever questioned. That's when it's a problem, because obviously like I was exposed to I was aware of the existence of these other groups. I was aware, and I think that's how it is with many cults that other outsiders exist. You understand broadly their worldviews, but because there's no interchange