who actually runs the government in your experience? Not who you think it is. It's, and in many cases, especially recently, the troubling part about all this is it's not even people who we vote for. When you look at what happened when President Biden had that infamous debate with President Trump, it exposed the reality that many of us have known for a long time, which is that President Biden has not been the guy calling the shots.
He's not been the guy making the decisions, nor has it been Kamala Harris, for that matter, nor will it be if she is elected president. It is this cabal of the Democrat elite, the woke war mongers made up of the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and people who are in the military industrial complex, who profit from us being in a constant state of war. It is those in the administrative state, the national security state who derive more authorities and ability to take away our liberty when we are in a heightened state of crisis or war. It is their friends and billionaires and people in media who all derive their power from being able to have a figurehead that essentially they can control.
And the most troubling part about, there's so many things wrong with this, of course, but really at the most fundamental level, you look at our country, the oldest democracy in the world, but the reality of a truly functioning and thriving democracy that has brought to life the vision that our founders had for us, that we really have a government of buying for the people and that we have the ability and responsibility for that matter to ensure that the government we have only exists with the consent of the governed, that becomes very hard to do to hold people accountable when the person that you voted for is certainly not the one making the decisions. How long has that been the case? Was it ever the case that the president around the country, when was the inflection point? I don't know that there's one specific, I mean, there has been, as a personality's come in and shift here and there, I would say the answer to that has probably changed, but in the election that we are facing here very shortly in the United States, it's our opportunity to hit the reset button.
And however people feel about the choices and the options that we have and they've changed a little bit recently, but really it's only the faces that have changed, the stakes have not changed. And the choices between the Democrat elite, and I've been saying this for months, like, hey guys, don't be, because it's like, oh, is Biden gonna stay or is he gonna go? And who's he gonna replace him? Is it Gavin?
Is it all of these different theories? They make for good chatter, I guess, on cable news, but I've been telling people all along, don't be distracted. You take one horse out, you put another horse in, you've got the same people who are running the show, and it is between the Democrat elite, will be Kamala Harris on the ballot. And those calling the shots behind the scenes are continuing to remain in power versus Donald Trump, who has a record of, I mean, the reason why they're doing all they can to destroy him is because he won't bend any, to this Washington establishment, which is made up of people in both political parties, by the way.
What makes you think that a Trump presidency would be any more inoculated against this nefarious behind the scenes control than the one that we have at the moment? Surely you're just, if the people out front don't make any difference, because it's people behind the scenes that are changing, then what makes Trump any better than what we've got at the moment? It's not that anyone who's put out front doesn't make a difference. It is specific to, in this world that we're living in now, specific to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
And the reason why they've been doing all they can to try to keep Trump off the ballot in over 32 states, all of the court cases and lawsuits and everything that the media's thrown out of them, the reason why they're doing that is because you may agree or disagree with his decisions or his policies or the way that he talks about things, but he is not beholden to those same establishment interests that so many of these establishment politicians are. And so he's not going in and saying, oh gosh, I gotta do what this person says, I gotta do what that person says. I think oftentimes even his own staff doesn't know what decision he's gonna make or what position he'll put forward. And that is, to me, that's the clear choice.
You have a choice between those who believe that government knows better for us than we do, that their power is more important than our freedom, that their power in many cases derives from being in a constant state of war that undermines our national security versus Trump who has the ability to, and frankly the backbone to say, yeah, no, I'm not gonna go down that road or we're gonna take a different path or we shouldn't be an unnecessary counter-productive regime change wars, we should focus on investing in our country and try to work towards a future of peace and freedom and prosperity. If that's correct, if it is the case that this sort of limp, flaccid, democratic party has permitted people behind the scenes to come and basically run puppeteer, people that are out front, that's happened very quickly because it was not that long ago that we had the very guy that was saying, well sanitize this thing in office. So is it going to then take a long time for that to be cleaned up? And also how do we know that some of this didn't already exist?
It did already exist. It did already exist because the party elite itself has been very powerful for a long time. So that hasn't come around very quickly. And I think one of the problems when President Trump was elected last time was, and he's talked about this himself, he came in and he never worked in Washington before and he ended up with a bunch of people around him who were a part of this establishment, this Washington establishment.
Do you think he didn't really have that much of a plan? Do you think it was a surprise to him that he got it in some ways? I don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way. Yeah, and they were, and it comes interesting because the conversations that I'm hearing coming from even establishment Republicans right now are very similar to the ones that I heard in 2016 when Trump was elected, which was okay.
Like we gotta balance the scales in their words by surrounding Trump with people who hold completely opposing views than he does to try to mitigate what they view as the quote unquote threat that he poses to not the country. Who is it that's saying that we need to surround him? Oh, I mean, it's basically like the Neocon Warmongers, even within the Republican party. So what do they say is the position he holds that they're trying to count about?
And he's been pretty vocal about this. Like he's like, no, we're not gonna wage more stupid wars. And we're gonna put America first in his words. And we will achieve that through by peace, through strength.
Who wants war and why? They would be shocked by how many people do. And they won't say I want war, or I like to see more people dead, of course, you know, they won't use those words. But there are politicians who are beholden to the big defense contractors who are making billions and trillions of dollars.
They are their political donors and their supporters and their friends. And ultimately it's those politicians who need jerk reaction to any challenger situation in the world instead of choosing diplomacy and seeing war as the last resort once you've exhausted all other means, understanding how costly it is, both in lives and in taxpayer dollars, it's just, hey, we gotta go and punish this bad guy, topple this regime, you know, wage this modern day siege through economic sanctions and warfare, all of the tools that they have at their disposal without thinking through what the cost and consequences of those actions and policies are. Prejudimably on the ground and also economically domestically too. Both.
It seems, these people... And it's by the way, it's not reflective of, I think, especially over these last 20 plus years, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of political party are sick and tired of this. So their view is not reflective, they're not just like, oh, this is what the quote unquote, people want. It is ultimately it goes back to this kind of cabal of power that they're trying to hold onto.
Do you think that those people, I struggle to find or meet people that are genuinely evil? There's people that have got goals and then they're kind of risky and frivolous on route toward getting those goals. And you think, ah, this is just collateral damage, he really cares, I'm getting my back handle from Raytheon or whoever the fuck. But it seems surprising to me that someone would think I want to go to war.
So do you think that these people that are pushing for it genuinely believe that it's in the best interest of the country? Have they been able to gaslight themselves? This Stockholm syndrome from whoever is sort of continuing to fund them? Or is it something a little bit more malicious?
Are they actually sort of trying to land grab or this sort of odd power game that imagine, it feels powerful for you to be America and for you to have a foothold here and have a foothold there? You got any idea what kind of motivates these people? I think they tell themselves whatever they need to tell themselves to sleep at night. But as someone who's been, I still serve in the army today, I've been deployed to war zones in different parts of the world, seeing and experiencing firsthand the harsh ugliness and realities of war and the costs.
The people who are so quick to go to war and see that as the first response rather than the last, number one, they don't have any excuse. I don't believe everybody should get into the United States mandatory to serve them. I don't advocate for that. But if you are in a position to make these decisions about war and peace, you need to be very responsible and do your due diligence to actually truly understand what the consequences of those decisions will be.
Might be worth a quick visit to the front lines maybe. They do those all the time for photo ops. I saw this while I was deployed and I've seen a bunch even when I was in Congress for eight years where they'll go and they'll do like, we'll stop here in this war zone for 12 hours and hop off the private plane and take some quick photos and wear your flak vest and the helmet for the picture. It's visually impressive but I'm like, I really think the other person.
Yeah, I mean, it looks really goofy to me. But for them, it tells the good. I have to pick a pop-wise go. I've heard that I've been to Iraq 27 times.
It's like, okay. Yeah, condition jet wasn't bad. And yet, and yet, even those who are saying this are some of the very same people who are saying, like we should just go bomb this country to smithereens. Like, okay, like, there's maybe a really, a really big problem that we're dealing with here.
But is that really the right answer? Is that the best answer? What happens as the second and third and fourth order of effects after we do what you're proposing? What will the cost and consequences be?
Again, in human lives and economy and in all of these other ramifications that a responsible leader should be considering before you go and advocate for such a serious thing. So it seems like you've got democratic party, not happy with Trump generally. Some factions of the Republican party, not happy with Trump. So it seems like, you know.
And Nikki Haley, just to put a name to Nikki Haley is one of kind of the figureheads of that faction within the Republican party. So Nikki Haley is driving forward this, Neocon, warmongering. Yeah. How can she sell that?
Because there are people with a lot of money who make money from that position or supporting that position. And they see again, I don't know what they tell themselves to be able to sleep at night and be comfortable with what they're doing. But they have convinced themselves that this is the way things should be. That's what makes me think that it is self-convention as opposed to self-convention as opposed to leading this sort of double life, where you know that it's wrong and then you go out front because the level of certainty that you need to be able to step out in front of the camera and we sure do this.
We need to do that. You go home and you drink yourself into a hole because it would be for me to just straight up multiple personality disorder that I'd have to go through would break my brain in half. Because you're a good person. Well, other people would disagree.
But yeah, I know what you mean. But it's like, OK, well, I get what you're driving at. And how do you define someone who was evil or driven by evil intent? I would argue that even if there's not like some Jekyll and Hyde situation going on, I would define that evil intent as someone who cares more about their position, their political position or their power or their influence and definitely in certain cases.
And this is why Kamala Harris would be so dangerous as president, commander in chief because I've no doubt in my mind she would immediately feel the need to exert strength and to assert her position and prove that she is a truly strong and powerful commander in chief of the United States of America's military. And what better way to do that? What more effective way to do that than to actually use our military and go out and commit an act of war. So that sort of need to prove yourself makes you quite easy to manipulate in some ways, it makes you fragile.
Yes, especially when you have so many interests. And this is not new. You heard Eisenhower warn about the military industrial complex and their influence and their cozy relationship with members of Congress. You go back to President John F.
Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy who were battling against even for Sargenans and civilians who were beating the war jumps and go to war, go to war, go to war. President Kennedy's compelling speech at American University about peace and the hard work that it takes towards peace was the pushback against that. And that doesn't only exist today, it's far more powerful today than even it was back then. Going back to what you mentioned before, which was the fact that everybody knew behind the scenes that nobody was talking about out front, which was the declining mental health of Biden.
Just how widespread was that internally? Do you think? I mean, it was impossible to ignore. If you can't put mentalize and keep them away, we don't let them out front.
That's a cheap fake edit. That's whatever. I think that's the challenge though, is they even as they did all of that, it wasn't enough to try to hide his physical and mental decline. I was with him on the debate stage in 2020 when I was running for president.
I've known Joe Biden for a very long time. His friends with his son who also served in the Army National Guard. People say, have asked me, did you see signs of this back in 2020? No.
I mean, it was the same Joe Biden that I'd known for many, many years. And I think recently someone did a side-by-side of his performance on the debate stage in 2020 versus now and how significant that difference is. So even hearing Kamala Harris and the people around him and mourning Joe and MSNBC's, he's never been sharper and he's in the best form. He's ever been in his life.
Like anybody who knows him now and certainly has known him over the years knew that that was all, it was all crap. We've all seen those photos of before term and after term. I mean, even Obama, who entered as this sort of vibrant, handsome black guy, and he comes out and you go, that's two decades and eight years. Congratulations.
Cool job. Yeah, of course. Every president, every president that served. So obviously when you're in your late 70s, just imagine the toll.
The truth. So this is something about to make one of the most unpopular cases that the internet's going to hear this year. Every time that I've seen this sort of commentary around Biden's decline, it's made me feel sad, it made me feel uncomfortable as I watch this. And for two reasons.
First one is the one that everybody kind of agrees with, which is it's an older man who's sort of being forced by this organization to be the tip of the spear when he's evidently not capable of doing it and blah, blah, but the other side is this is the twilight of his career. And people remember the thing that you left them with. The lasting impression is often the one that kind of continues through. And you know, you've got, you can make whatever criticisms you want about what he's actually done or said throughout his career.
I don't really know that much. But I know the way that people socially interpret signals from others. And to think that you've got this guy, how long has he been, like five decades or something he's been forever? I think he was the youngest US Senator ever elected when he got elected to the US Senate.
Right. And now he's the oldest president ever. This guy's like the parentheses of US government, right? You know, the alpha and the fucking omega.
Yeah. And to think, you know, doesn't matter what you say, that was a very, very long career, culminating in you getting into the pinnacle of this. And that being this sort of really awful lingering aftertaste that everybody gets, oh, that makes me sad. That makes me feel sad for somebody.
I don't think that's unpopular at all. I think it's just, I mean, as humans who have empathy. Not much of that in political discourse. Sadly not.
And that's been, I think that has been one of the sad things that I've seen is, is, you know, all of the different clips and the footage that's out there that gets replayed over and over and over again. And just the mocking and the ridicule. It is unfortunate that that is where today's political discourse has gotten, rather than just recognizing exactly what you've said. Like this is, it is sad to see any person in this state, especially on a global stage.
The thing is, I mean, you know, Joe Biden's run for president a few times before he got elected. It's what it's what he's always want. This is the pinnacle of what he has always wanted to be to achieve that title, to be the president of the United States. And so, you know, ultimately, he's the guy who made the decision to run.
I have no doubt in my mind that he firmly firmly, even against other people, maybe telling him he shouldn't run for reelection. Joe Biden is well known to be a very stubborn man, a very stubborn man. So the fact that he chose to run, he chose to stay and he chose to run for reelection. You know, I'm sure there are people, I know there are people around him who benefited from him staying, but that was, that was his decision.
That's why so few people are going to give him any sympathy for what's happened. You should go, you already know that you're in decline, you already know. And if this is true, if it is the case that he wants to run it, it's not Jill, you know, Marionette. I'm sure she's got a role to play in it as well.
Marionetteing him behind the scenes or whatever, that he is continuing even now, you know, and then you actually get yourself into a much more awful conversation, which is, is he cognizant of exactly what he's potentially trying to sign himself up for? Like are we talking about, you know, someone who's really, really detached? I have no idea. But yeah, I mean, what an absolute.
The fact that the Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Jill Biden story makes Trump's reality TV campaign actually just look like one smooth arc between it all, you know, stuff behind the scenes and stories and what's going on in Ukraine and there's this deal and there was a back-hander in all of these photos and there was a laptop thing. You go, like, this country is mental, like this country is crazy. And the worst thing, I mean, all of this is deeply troubling, but when you really look at it, who, you know, who's forgotten along the way in this whole narrative, you know, it's the everyday working man and woman who's struggling to get by. It's, you know, the fact that we have more and more kids graduating from high school, functionally illiterate, failing education system that you open borders and everything that's happening because of that, the real issues that are actually affecting everyday Americans' lives are too often lost or go on, their voices go unheard because of all of this other stuff.
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Yeah. If there were fewer stories to talk about, we wouldn't be talking about them. So yeah, is it the chicken or the egg? I think one of the most interesting things, you were vice president of the DNC and then 11 years later, spoke at CPAC.
Still as a Democrat. Yeah. Slightly non-typical trajectory. My whole life has been untypical.
Can you explain that, ah? Yeah. Yeah. I've always been a very fiercely independent-minded person.
Even in, you know, I served as a state representative in Hawaii for one term. I served as a member of the Honolulu City Council. You know, had a district with over about 100,000 people and dealing with literally things like potholes and sewers and parks and public safety. And then I served in Congress for eight years.
And throughout that entire period, I was a Democrat and always a very independent-minded one. I was asked to serve as vice chair of the DNC roughly two weeks after I was sworn in as a member of Congress. The freshest of freshmen. Yes.
And literally when I got the call, it was an evening, I was sitting in the back. I'm pretty sure there was Uber back then. I don't know. I was sitting in the back of a taxi or something.
And I got a call saying, would you serve as vice chair of the DNC? And my response literally was like, what is a vice chair of the DNC? What are you, what are you really asking me? What do you want me to do?
But I, you know, I agree to do it. I believe in taking advantage of opportunities and seeing how and where can I make a positive impact and ended up resigning from that position in 2016 when I saw a couple of pretty problematic things in that election. Number one, how completely not only the chair, chairwoman of the Democratic Party at that time was rigging the primaries for Hillary Clinton and against any other candidate and how both in the party as well as across the mainstream media, they were universally touting Hillary Clinton as the most qualified person ever to run for president in our nation's history. And no one qualified that with, they said, oh, she read off her litany of titles, but they never qualified it with her actual record.
What did she do in these? Yeah, she does. She has had a lot of fancy titles in her life. But what did she actually do when she was when she was in these positions?
And again, as a soldier, as an American, I felt it was my responsibility to try to speak the truth about her record. She is the queen of war mongers. There's never been a war that she hasn't liked and hasn't advocated for, been the architect of in all of these different positions. So I resigned as vice chair, you're not supposed to take sides as an officer of the party, even though people clearly were.
I resigned as vice chair, the DNC and Doris Bernie Sanders at that time, specifically around this singular issue of war and peace and foreign policy, seeing how starkly different Hillary and Bernie were on that issue. And use that platform as an opportunity to be a voice of truth. So at least Democrat voters would know who they were voting for and what kind of president, commander in chief, they would be. If you go from that election in 2016 to, I think it was 2022 that I, yeah, it was I think the summer of 2022 that I spoke at CPAC.
The message that I delivered there would have been very similar to a message I would have delivered in 2016 about freedom, about civil liberties, and about ensuring our security and keeping us out of counterproductive, costly regime change wars. It's funny because the organizers of CPAC at that time, they were too afraid to call me directly to invite me. So they went through a friend who tested the waters like, would you be open? I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go talk to anybody.
Why not? I had some Republican friends of mine even after I said, yes, call me and say, like, what are you doing? Like, I won't even go and speak when I got there, the organizers, and I was about to go out and speak. They're like, we're going to walk you on the stage.
It's like, I can walk. I'm good. Like, well, we just don't know what I was like, are you afraid people are going to throw food at me? Or what?
Like, maybe we really don't know. It's a lively crowd. But anyway, they walked me out and I gave my speech and I got a standing applause. And after we went out and just was kind of walking around and talking to people.
And I was really moved by how many people, some strong Trump supporters, you know, we're in the red hat and everything and others, I don't know, maybe not, I don't know. But just people saying that the message I delivered was very unifying, and one that resonates with everybody, regardless of your political leanings, or should resonate with everyone, regardless of your political leanings or affiliation. And you were a Democrat still at this time. Yeah, I ended up, I ended up leaving the Democrat announcing my departure from the Democratic Party later that year.
But it wasn't something that I, you know, even was planning at that time that I gave that speech. Why do you think that you are so popular with conservatives given Bernie as far left as left goes only a couple of minutes ago to CPAC standing round of applause? I think it's because the, well, first of all, going back to 2016, after Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton in that election, there were a lot of Bernie supporters that voted for Donald Trump, people who were driven by a more populist message of working people and peace and investing in our communities and our societies and so forth. You know, I think that the Democratic Party has gone so far away from its roots to the point now where, you know, someone like me, if I say I love my country, and we should defend the right to free speech for everyone.
We should uphold the Constitution. We should ensure we actually do have a true thriving democracy that you may say something that I find to be abhorrent. I will defend your right to say that. These are all things that are completely unpopular in today's Democratic Party.
And that is something that has radically changed. And I think a lot of it started in a lot of it started. I think in 2016 when Trump got elected that the Democratic Party took a rapid shift away from the party that I joined over 20 years ago. It's unrecognizable today.
How does that explain your particular sort of acceptance and attraction of conservative people? Because the thing that I think the Republican Party or conservatives, maybe not the Republican Party as a whole, but I would say those who call themselves conservatives are very much rooted in those fundamental principles of the Constitution and freedom and limited government and go live your own life that once existed as kind of those traditional liberal values in the Democratic Party. And so I hear conservatives all the time saying, you know, we miss those traditional liberal values that President John F. Kennedy held.
And imagine how quickly he would be drummed out of the Democratic Party of today for the things that he stood for. And so I think it goes back to the basics. It goes back to the foundations. It goes back to the Constitution and how conservatives are very much rooted in that.
Whereas the Democratic Party has not only gone so far away from it, you're seeing now the news of the day as we're sitting here is how President Biden and Kamala Harris and the Democrats are trying to reshape the third co-equal branch of government in the Supreme Court and to exert control over it. What is that? I don't understand. We have, you know, we have the executive branch, which is the presidency, the president leads, and all the federal agencies that founded the executive.
You have the legislative branch, which is Congress, House, and the Senate. And then the third co-equal branch is the judicial system, the pinnacle of which is the Supreme Court. Democrats don't like a lot of the decisions that are coming out of this Supreme Court lately, one of which by the way was a unanimous decision came a few months ago saying, no, you are no state is allowed to remove President Trump or any candidate from a ballot. That needs to be decided by the American people.
The Democrats hated that decision. They are trying to institute term limits. I think it was, I don't know, it was 14 years or 16 years or something like that. They're putting out there and there are like five different things the Democrats want to put in place that would.
The reason that a 14 or 16 year term limit is like just speaks to how long these people are in like, oh my god, we can't have it only 14 years. Am I going to do in my late 90s? Well, I mean, you know, you have some judges who've been appointed in their late 40s. I think the underlying issue here is you know, we know that if the Supreme Court was more aligned with decisions and policies that the Democrat elite support, they would not be introducing any of these quote unquote reforms.
And it just it just again, it goes back to the Constitution in the legislative branch and executive branch trying to exert power and control over the system that that exists to serve as a check on balance. So no single one of these over extends itself to the other. And you're an independent now? Yes.
Why did RFK not get the momentum that you should have been? He's an independent. He's sort of aware that that covers a broad range of sense. But what did you make of his campaign?
Why did he not catch perhaps the wins that people were thinking he might do? I think there's probably a lot. I think there's a lot of reasons that go into it. The fact that he started running for president in the Democratic primary, I mean, he is, he is, I don't know, actually, if he still calls himself a Democrat or not.
I actually don't know that I know he's running as an independent, but like Bernie is an independent who runs as a Democrat. So whatever, these are labels. But you know, he switched strategies pretty late in the game. Number one, number two, the two party system is completely bought in and trying to prevent a viable third party from challenging either one of them.
We've seen that play out already. So in order to, you know, obviously we haven't seen it done successfully in our country, but in order to even have a shot at it, in my view, you would have had to have started and had a very strong strategy to do that much longer before he did have a lot more money. You'd need a ton of money, because you're not only battling the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, you're battling the entire mainstream media machine. And, and having to, you got to have the money to be able to break through all of that.
It's, I mean, it's a huge feat and it's a huge task. And what to speak of getting on the ballot. RK is not on the ballot in all 50 states. I don't know what his current count is, but even states that had previously accepted his signatures and have said, okay, you're going to be on the ballot.
He's fighting legal challenges and lawsuits in many of those states. When when are those going to be resolved? I don't know. It's a very tough, it's a tough situation.
Yeah, talking of those sort of swings and moves, it does, I think, create just confusion, you know, people like an easy sort of simple narrative. And why were you doing before? And what's actually going on? So given that you've had some pretty big swings over the last decade or so, how do people know that that is coming from a place of principles and motivation and not a desire for power and just more attention?
My foundation and principles haven't shifted. They have always been rooted. They have always been rooted in, for me, the reason why around is, how can I best be of service to the American people and rooted in those principles of freedom and liberty, peace and security? And my challenging even leaders of my own party, President Obama was the president.
He had just gotten re-elected the year that I was elected to Congress. He was the president from my home state of Hawaii originally. And I think the first example or sign to the leaders of the Democratic Party when I was elected to Congress that I wasn't just going to be a follower to the party line, you know, go along, get along that whole thing. It came within the first six months of my being in Congress when President Obama said he was going to come seek authorization from Congress to go and start a new regime change war in Syria.
I was sitting on the Foreign Affairs Committee and, you know, did all my due diligence and briefings and hearings and all of these things. And ultimately concluded that this would be a very bad idea that could end up in disaster. And said so publicly. I mean, this was why I ran for Congress to actually be in a position to at least influence impact or make those decisions to prevent us from making those costly mistakes of the past that had taken the lives of people that I served with immediately upon I was the first Democrat first Democrat to speak out against President Obama's request.
And within 24 hours got a call from the White House not saying, Hey, Tulsi, can you just explain to us like, what's your thought process? Why are you coming out in such strong opposition? What are we not sharing that you've whatever there was none of that? It was just how dare you go against your president?
Period. Why are you not a team player, essentially? And it was a betrayal of the party. They viewed it as a betrayal of the party and a betrayal of President Obama, rather than seeing it for what it was, which was a very serious disagreement on the policy that that he was putting forward.
Very tribal, internally. Very much so. Demissive. Which part?
Oh, I don't know what the daily routine of I don't I don't miss it. You know, and then this I didn't run for reelection that last year that I was in Congress. I don't miss how dysfunctional it has become. And it's gotten vastly more dysfunctional, you know, in those later years, but especially now, even when I was there, you know, when I was there, I passed my first piece of legislation very quickly under as a freshman Democrat and Republican controlled Congress, because at that time you could still build relationships and get things done, actually solve problems.
That's a rare, very rare thing to see these days. I think that there are many people who are just not interested in it. They're more interested in the talking point or fighting the so-called fight instead of saying, hey, you know, let's figure this out and put our heads together. There are some who are afraid of being criticized for working with someone from the other party.
There's a lot of different factors going through it. Downstreaming a lot of this tribalism again, this sort of inability or underpaddness. And at its core, what does it come down to? It comes down to people who are putting their own self-interest or their political interest ahead of the interest of the country and the American people, which is really like, that's the whole reason why you should be there.
And so for those reasons, for those reasons, I don't miss it. What I do miss it. There's been a couple of situations over this past little, almost four years since I've left, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the disastrous and tragic fires that happened in Maui in Hawaii, in those two situations, as I saw either in action or lack of true accountability. I thought, man, if I could only be on that armed services committee questioning those general officers and the secretary of defense about all that they did wrong in that withdrawal and the fact that even still, there hasn't been any kind of true accountability or oversight over the multiple layers of failures that occurred for people who I served when I was in Congress for eight years in Hawaii.
It seems like the pace of everything is ramping up at the moment, whether it's the sort of vitriol and tribalism that's happening internally, whether it's the inflammatory rhetoric of just normal people online, whether it's the pace that memes move out. Just think for a second, that in the last six weeks, we went from Hock to a Girl, to... Which, there's been this weird intersection between the Hock to a Girl in Political Memes, Oh, yeah. I just wanted the same.
Straight into the Biden-C-Nile-Lucky-The-Debate thing, straight into Trump gets shot in the ear, straight back into J.D. Vance, into Biden-Sep-Sam-Kamala, now as... And now, by the way, the latest one of today and yesterday is, if you type in Donald Trump assassination attempt, nothing comes up in the Google algorithm. Yeah, they put out a statement about that.
Oh, did AI had mislabel something and mischaracterized something like that? I don't know whether that was Gemini re-racing the founding fathers. There was that. Did you see Trump talking about how Christians will never have to vote again?
I saw a clip. I didn't see the speech or the context, but I saw a clip. Okay, so there is a section of a Trump speech where he says, in four years, you don't have to vote again, and many, many clips stop there. The next sentence is, we'll have it fixed, so good you won't have to vote again.
So, in a world of cheap fakes and stuff like that. But it just seems to me that, on top of that as well, we also had... Who's the guy that called out Elon Musk recently? It was Gavin Eustin said that he wanted legislation to stop AI- manipulated speech going on.
Well, selective editing is able to achieve the same outcome. Is there something that's particularly special about chopping together words that somebody did say versus actually creating from an AI-GPT? Something that somebody didn't say. It doesn't surprise me that the general public are becoming kind of despondent.
I think one of the things that you get is not people really being convinced by any one narrative, but just sort of holding their hands up and going, I'm... I just don't trust anything now. I'm just confused and kind of a bit nihilistic and disengaged. I think that you're seeing, especially, I know that this is the fact, young men, specifically Gen Z men, are more likely to say that no particular political pursuit, no particular political issue, is of great importance to them than ever before.
So, they're just very, very sort of stepped back. We're also, this is coinciding with a movement away from left-leaning beliefs amongst Manada Gen Z as well. I had the guy that did the original research on that and did the original analysis of all the data. I had him come on the show.
Fascinating luck. But I think part... So, I have a few thoughts on some of the things that you're saying. First of all, you really cannot blame people for feeling that way.
I completely, completely understand it. I feel that way sometimes. And I, every day is just having to look at all this stuff that's going on. I think it's a positive step for people to be generally distrusting of everything that's being thrown at that.
I think that is actually a positive step versus people blindly believing like, oh, I saw this on TV, therefore it must be true. Even though that still happens, the more we have people knowing that they have to be critical thinkers and exercise some kind of analysis, whatever they're being told by whatever side is a positive step. The thing about Gen Z men, in particular, not finding resonance with any political issue, I think this is where there's work that has to be done to... I mean, I have a lot of friends who are like, I hate politics.
I don't want to have anything to do with politics. But there's for some reason a disconnect between quote-unquote politics versus the things that affect you in your everyday life that actually are very much directly connected to what kind of people we are electing into office, either by voting for or against or by just staying home, staying home and not voting is a political action in and of itself. And so, of course, at the basic level, it's taxes, at the basic level, it's the health and well-being of our communities and our schools. A lot of parents and families have been activated over these last few years around the whole boys playing against girls and girls sports.
You see that there's two boxes in the Olympics. That this morning, unreal, unreal, exhibit A. It's just, look, I think... And anyone who has an open mind can see that insanity for what it is.
I think that it's going to take a little bit of time to overcome the conceptual inertia of what there's people that are biologically male competing in female sports. That's strange. Like, oh, okay, actually legislating against this across each different sporting body is going to take a long time and that's just going to play catcher. But if there was a front line, if there was a vanguard of sports, it would be the ones that involve punching each other in the face.
Like that should be, you know, I mean, swimming. Swimming did the thing at 13 years old, whatever it is, a median stage three, if you get past whatever you can do, you can't do it. I'm like, okay, well, yes, good to get all sports on board with that. But let's prioritize the one where you punch each other with your hands.
Like, that seems like, and yeah, these two athletes failed gender tests. I think it was called a sex test only within the last couple of years. And then because the IOC don't abide by the same type of testing protocol or the same procedures, I saw one of them fuck up a girl earlier on today. Yeah.
And something like that, especially in this age of even the corporate cancel culture, something like that will only change if enough people actually speak up and criticize it and call it out for what it is and how dangerous it actually is. I think the change that we saw in swimming happened specifically because of that. There were female swimmers who were the tip of the spear and who are the tip of the spear in actually vocalizing it in order to force that change. Traveling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I am a massive fan of nomadic.
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Speaking of media and kind of the pace that all of this stuff moves out, talk to me about this TikTok bill. At its core, it was being sold as a lot of things. Obviously, it passed the House and the Senate with bipartisan support. It's been signed into law by President Biden.
So it is now law of the land. At its core, the thing that you would have only heard people like Ron Paul say, or Thomas Massey and the House of Representatives or Rand Paul in the US Senate is actually something that even the ACLU was focused on, which is at its core, it is an anti-free speech bill. And any time you give the government the power in this case, the president of the United States, the power to decide what platform you and I are allowed to both exercise our right to free speech on and what platforms we are allowed to gather information from at its core. That's a violation of free speech.
The other issue that was tied to the usual, usually the most egregious violations of our liberties occur in the name of national security, keeping us safe. Patriot's act is tight. And this was no different. And Ron Paul, as usual, was very powerful and very correct on this.
And his statement that this was the most egregious violation of civil liberties since the Patriot Act was passed. But basically, in a nutshell, again, I didn't hear the proponents for this legislation naturally didn't highlight this provision that was in the bill. It's a very small provision. But it basically says that the president of the United States alone has the power to designate a firm or a business as being, and this is not the exact verbiage, but basically an agent of a foreign adversary period.
And while there are a few different examples of countries that they are calling out as foreign adversaries, in theory, let's say President Biden is there. Elon Musk and X are the only platform that are not playing ball with the White House and taking their direction on who they want censored or what words or phrases or narratives they want censored. In theory, let's say President Biden says, okay, well, Elon Musk is doing business with this country that we deem as a foreign adversary and has, I think, I don't know what the percentage of the business interest was, but it was a quite low bar, and therefore his platform needs to be shut down because I, as president, deem his association, I deem him to be an agent of a foreign adversary, period. There's no, well, there's no way to appeal that.
There's no, there's no recourse from that for a guy like Elon Musk, for example, and obviously, he's the most prominent example now and something that he even spoke out about in warning about the consequences of this legislation. And those are the two primary major problems with that legislation that again, go back to the fundamentals and the foundations and very often it's like, oh, we need to protect kids or we need to protect people from disinformation. We need to protect our security and all of these arguments that were at the forefront of those who were proponents of this bill again from both sides. But even those who had good intentions, if you're not making those decisions that are rooted in these fundamental freedoms that make us who we are in this country and that are the pillars of the founding of our country, this is how we continually find ourselves in positions just as with the Patriot Act.
Again, many people with good intentions voted for that, but we find ourselves in these situations where increasingly our freedoms and liberties are taken away and very often in the name of, well, we have to do this to protect you that we find ourselves in a place where we are, we are, we are not in the free country that we that we thought we had. It talks very dangerous, I think, and a lot of people have problems with it. I'm not a fan of it. I think that it's almost certainly trying to craft a narrative that makes people in the West hate the West.
I know that there is a Chinese sort of kale version of it that's restricted at certain times and the sort of stuff that's pushed through the algorithm isn't shown in the same kind of a way. So given the fact that you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, which is we have foreign power, that definitely does not have the West's interests at heart, owning the fastest growing social media, which most young people use and get their news from and get their insights from and all of the rest of it, data, facial mapping, micro expression detection to really, really ramp up the limbic hijack of how this algorithm works. If all of that, presumably you're not that much of a fan of it, like in and of itself, even though you might support it principally, and then you have the other side, which is this bill, which contravenes and sets precedence that you're worried about. I choose freedom.
I choose freedom. Because then where do you draw the line? If you have a government that says you are only allowed to get information from these sources and not any other sources, they are taking away our free will and our own faculty to get information for ourselves and make decisions for ourselves. So in this environment of information warfare, the answer is to, the answer to speech and situations that you don't like is always more speech.
Did it seem like it? Anytime, because okay, well today they're talking about TikTok and what is it going to be tomorrow? What country or what entity or what platform or what business is it going to be tomorrow? I just think it's a difficult precedent.
I think that we have such a unique pipeline at the moment of saying that countering bad speech with good speech is a good idea. But when particular types of speech get algorithmically suppressed, that leads to a world in which the good speech is essentially an unexistent speech. Which again goes back to, okay, so we have X as the one social media platform that is not playing that game. This legislation has put the power into the hands of the president to essentially be able to take that platform away.
So we assume, and this is the danger, and this is the difference between a free society versus an authoritarian society, is when you put this kind of power into the hands of government, you would hope that they would do the right thing. But in every situation that we've seen, there are people in positions of power in our own government here in the United States who choose to do the wrong thing and weaponize those authorities that have been put into law to serve their own political interest, to serve their own financial interest, to serve their own interests of remaining in power. And ultimately in doing so, taking away our freedom. What would you do?
Let's say that this didn't get passed, repealed, whatever. There are a lot of people that have concerns about TikTok, especially parents, and what is doing to their kids. What would you suggest? Have you got any suggestions?
Okay, we don't do this. People do have to, they're going to be exposed to it. I think that the comparison with X is kind of fair, but on the other side, anybody that's looked at X and looked at TikTok knows one of them is way harder to swipe off, and it's TikTok. It's permanent, endless feed, stuff, and a dual design.
And that's where, and this is one where I think there was, and there still is, there should be opportunity to get bipartisan support in dealing with all of these different social media companies that ultimately are all finding ways to profit off of our attention, and selling our attention and interest to improve their bottom line. And kids often, and there have been multiple studies done about how this is affecting them. The social dilemma documentary was very, very powerful. And so I think there is an opportunity to look there, especially as we look at how these algorithms and these platforms are affecting young people and kids.
I don't know what exactly that looks like in the end, but that's a very real conversation I think that Canon should be had, both from the standpoint of how this impacts kids, and also just from the standpoint of basic privacy. That if I'm going to go and use a social media platform, I should have the right to know how my information and my attention to the things that I'm choosing to spend time looking at is being monetized. And frankly, like how even an American company is taking that information and selling it to the highest bidder of any other country in the world, that may or may not have our nation's best interests as possible. It's such a difficult one because I can see, I really can see both sides, and it seems like I think a lot of people maybe sort of center, right, kind of working class.
I don't like what my kids are being fed on this Chinese social media thing. And I also don't like increased state ability to stop me. So they're kind of like, yeah, split their brain in heart. But I think again, this is where this is where also I think it's important to have as a central point of this conversation, especially as it comes to kids is like government shouldn't be the end all be all answer.
And I know there are parents who are working with exactly and some parents are taking action and working with their schools and taking phones away from kids while they're at school. But ultimately it's like, okay, if you're a parent, you've placed this phone into the hands of your child and there's responsibility that goes with those decisions. It would be so interesting to see a full phone ban in schools. I know that there's certain schools that are sort of putting that out now that basically you cross the threshold.
Maybe it has to go into a locker or once you get past a particular pressure with whatever. But yeah, I mean, I'm just so glad. It would make a huge difference. I mean, the difference is the choice at the moment apparently is between kids either using their phones or vaping.
There's like no vaping in class signs because that's apparently a sufficiently big deal that it needs to be legislated by the schools. So he was the other thing and I've been thinking about this quite a lot, especially given that everyone's over the fact that the ex, the former president got shot in the head only three weeks ago shot in the head by an actual gun with an actual bullet in it. Ex during that time was it was the first time, you know, the town square and it's very important for people to have this opportunity and free speech and blah blah. And I was like, ah, yeah, I know.
But you know, there's other areas that can get your information. And that was one day where I thought, oh, this serves the most unique purpose because I wasn't going to Instagram. I wasn't going to Facebook. I wasn't going to get it on threads.
I wasn't going to get it on TikTok. I was for eight hours checking every 20 minutes on X, find out what it happened. And that was the place that went. Oh, that's that it serves a very unique purpose.
Yeah. And even in the specific example, that was where I first saw and learned about it. And it came from videos that, you know, iPhone videos that people were posting and seeing how that information was was relayed in real time and how different it was from the headlines, the very first headlines that we saw coming out of, you know, CNN, MSNBC, even AP and a lot of these mainstream news outlets, you know, it was it was so stark to see the difference between like, clearly, if you have if you have heard shots fired before, like, I know that sound. And as soon as I saw video with with sound, it's like, oh, he either multiple shots fired.
And then to flip over to CNN and be like, President Trump fell to the ground and popping sounds were heard. It took several hours before they would even issue one headline that said, you know, there was an assassination attempt or even just that there were shots fired at a Trump rally. What's the, so I understand that that was the headline. Some people would say the prudence during a time when you're uncertain not wanting to cause too much public panic or the rest of it would maybe be a good strategy.
What is the, why would they do that? Yeah, what's a straw man case or what's the nefarious case for why they were trying to make Trump look silly at a time where the Fox News had been making Biden look silly for falling down on a stage and drawing some kind of parallel to make Trump look weak. But it's so exciting. I mean, I agree.
I agree. Because you're gonna have to change the headline at some point and you know that Jack Passobic or someone else is going to screenshot it and put his eyes on it. Here's the interesting though, interesting thing though, is you saw that happening just after the shooting occurred and for several hours after. And then you see Krista Fereta, FBI director in front of Congress saying, well, we still the other day, we still don't know if he was actually hit by a bullet or maybe it could have been a glass shard or maybe it could have been shrapnel or could have been this or that.
And this was just like in the last 72 hours, several days after the shooting had occurred, everyone agreed that the shots were fired. Unfortunately, someone was killed, others seriously injured. You know, how incredibly irresponsible it was for the director of the FBI. All he had to if he still wasn't sure at this point, which I find shockingly hard to believe, why wouldn't he just say, you know, I can't comment on this or we are still investigating this or whatever the case may be.
I think that these things, this was not an unforced error on his part. It was an attempt to cast doubt on President Trump's integrity and to make light of the seriousness of what had just occurred. Because the difference between actually being hit by a bullet and being hit by a piece of glass that was first hit by a bullet meant to hit you is symbolically well, you look at the narratives, right? You look at you look at, well, President Trump in his in his nomination, acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, I believe he said something like I took a bullet for democracy, something along those lines.
And it was after several days after that, that you have the director of the FBI and many others, by the way, I'm a San V.C. and Joey Reed, she's like, we still don't know if he was actually shot, calling into question and making it appear that this was some, it was fueling something that I saw a dramatically high number of Democrats. I don't know, it was like 30 something percent believe that President Trump staged the whole thing. So it all feeds into that.
I think was sufficiently far away from the blast radius of that event for me to put up like this is even more of an unpopular opinion, right? Okay, the internet's not mad at me enough already. So about the third of Democrats did or still do believe that this was staged, that it was kind of a false flag type event in order to bolster Trump's machismo and his positive standing with the electorate and everybody that got to see that. One of the ironic things, a more critical person than me might say is odd for people on the right to have a problem with knee-jerk conspiracy theories around presidential assassinations, because there has been a little bit of a culture, some would say, over large events like that, maybe being knee-jerked by people on the right to say, well, how do we know that this was actually the case and so on and so forth?
So the pearl clutching that I saw, how could you? He was shot in the ear by a crazy incel with a gun? How could you say that? I thought, hey, look, I don't think that that should ever be the thing that said, but it does feel a little bit rich coming from the side that quite often is a little bit fast and loose with throwing conspiracy theories at whether it's the basement of a pizza company that's holding children hostage, pick your favorite one of choice.
It did seem a little interesting, the sort of like, I think maybe we would switch it. Yeah, I understand the point, the exception I would make to that is one turn of ahead, and we would be talking about the now deceased President Trump and the seriousness of what obviously played out. I mean, it was... And I get it, yeah, there are theories about everything under the sun these days.
This one is one that I believe... It's sufficiently cut and dry, but also is one... And you heard people from across the spectrum and Democrats and Republicans talking about the seriousness of this, that's a whole other conversation about people who are increasingly divisive and violent rhetoric now saying there's no place for political violence. And that's a whole other thing.
Look, if this had happened to President Biden, there should have been the same immediate response of recognizing the seriousness of what had occurred. Thoughts and prayers for literally Hitler is an interesting juxtaposition that... That is an interesting point. Thoughts and prayers are literally...
I have thought of that for the guy that they called Hitler yesterday. Yeah. In other news this episode is brought to you by Maui Nui-Vennison. You just heard our resident Hawaiian Princess Telsi talking about her home state of Hawaii, whose Axis-Dia population is ravaging their ecosystems, and that is why I am a massive fan of Maui Nui...
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Can we just try and imagine for a second what would have happened had Trump's had been one centimeter, maybe an inch to the left, because that would have been the most, by far, the best video assassination in history. There's never been any, look at how many zapruda films you have of JFK. No, I mean iPhone cameras everywhere in every direction. And what do you think would have happened if Trump had actually been hit?
I don't know. I don't know. And I think in this environment, I know that I would like to have... What I would like to have seen in the sense of a coming together as Americans after such a tragic situation.
But it's honestly, it's hard to say. It's hard to say. And we're just on with whatever the next meme is now. People have moved on.
So it blows my mind how quickly people have moved on from the Trump cut shot in the head. And it's just new, we're all coconut pill. It's coconut season. No, like, don't worry.
I just go... You've got a few new zingers there that I've not heard of. That's a good one. That's a good one.
Yeah. I'm tapped into the Gen Z... I'm assuming that's a connection to Kamala Harris and the coconuts. Right.
Yeah, it's called making sure it's true. It's all been coconut-pilled. Is this a thing now? I don't know.
There was that thing Charlie XCX, something about brat summer. Yeah, I did see that one. I don't know what brat means. I still don't know what I mean.
But supposedly good. Like cool. Yeah. Is that cool?
Yeah. I mean, anyone that's ever seen that one instead. And it's green. Everything has to be green if you're brat.
Why? Okay. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it just the pace is absurd.
At the start of this year, Rogan mentioned he said sort of a... basically prepare yourself for the next... This is the first time that I've been at this level leading up to a presidential election. Right in the belly of the beast.
Fuck me. I mean, this is... You want to talk about front lines. This is the front lines right here.
Doing two emergency episodes back to back. That was doing the front lines. So one of the other things that we saw, you know, was it divine intervention, that sort of save Trump? Is it something else that was going on?
Certainly an interesting angle, I think, to the political discourse at the moment is the strained relationship that people on the left have with God and faith. And this almost antagonistic relationship with religion and certain religions. Certainly. What do you make of that?
How do you sort of... I have a whole chapter in my book on this, exactly. And in that, you know, I talk about how and refer to, once again, the history of the Democratic Party and how it really has grown as of late, where it was once a party that there was no aversion to mention of God. There was...
It was in this was a party that I joined. It was a more inclusive party. Welcome people from all different religious backgrounds and faiths, and different beliefs to now fast forward to. And it was something that happened over time.
I mean, Jimmy Carter was an evangelical Christian. And even when he was elected president, there were some people around him who were just like, oh, I don't know, if this is like too much. And this is something that has increased over time to where, in the last Democratic convention, that was held, obviously, it was held virtually during the whole COVID thing. But even saying the Pledge of Allegiance, they made a big show of eliminating saying, one nation, awkward silence, refused to say under God, even as they said, the Pledge of Allegiance.
Interesting. Over Zoom. So seeing how today's Democratic party is, they are targeting Catholics and Christians primarily, trying to eliminate God, really, any mention of God from every facet of public life. You had Kamala Harris when she was a senator on the Judiciary Committee, going after and attacking and ultimately opposing a nominee for a judgeship, specifically because he was an observant and devout Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus.
You... How is that? The Knights of Columbus. It is an all-male organization.
I don't think it's like, it's not governed by the Catholic Church, but it is a Catholic organization. Knights of Columbus. That's not cool. It's a community-like service-oriented organization.
They go and do good things in the community, essentially, but it is centered around a very Catholic system. To give it a less intimidating name, it sounds Masonic and dangerous. They did the same thing with Amy Coney Barrett, who's now in the Supreme Court, with now since passed away, but Senator Dianne Feinstein warned against her when she went for confirmation before the same Judiciary Committee saying, you know, I'm concerned the dogma lives loudly within you. All of these things going against our Constitution, which says there shall be no religious test to serve in any public office, period.
It just... Unfortunately, it goes against the whole concept of freedom of religion, where you can have your beliefs. You can be atheist, agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever your choice is. That is literally the concept of freedom.
It's not that you're not allowed to practice your religion in public, and it's got to be just a private thing. You can do what you want. Where's this come from? Is this a contamination zone from trying to maybe upend some of the history of the United States?
Is it that, you know, the sort of love of country and patriotism is right-coded, and so is maybe religious participation right-coded? And if we're not that, then it means that we're the... Like, I don't understand, given that there's so many Americans who are religious, Christian, it just seems like you're shooting yourself in the face. A lot of the things that they're pushing fall into that category, because they don't make sense, and they're so insanely radical that there are very negative consequences to those policies, just that a basic human that we talked about, some of them already, ultimately at its heart.
And again, I don't find any logic or rationale to the actual reasonings that they're giving, but at its heart, when you have a party that is controlled by people who don't believe in objective truth, that there are, for example, that there are biological differences between men and women, that they want to be the authority that tells us what is true and what is not true. They want to be the authority that tells us what is acceptable information, what is not misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, violent speech, acceptable speech, whatever the case may be. They see themselves as that authority, and they recognize that those who believe in a higher power, whatever that may be, are not going to buy into them being that higher power, or that authority, and the ultimate influencer that people should be concerned with. And so at its core, that is where this is coming from.
It comes back to power, and them seeing those who believe in God or who are following their particular spiritual path or faith as not being willing to bend the knee to the power of the Democrat elite and the positions that they hold in our government. So there's a story about William Tyndale, who was a scholar in linguist, who was the first person to translate the Bible into common English from the original Hebrew and Greek. And what you had when you went to Mass was a conduit between you and the priests. So you as a common, meaning of a common peasant, and we go on Sunday to church service.
Our relationship with God is mediated through the priest. And because the Bible is not written in a common language, we have to go. So the kind of centralized power in this one forcing point in the middle, just one person that can actually read it. And that William Tyndale was persecuted for doing that, because then the relationship had become completely decentralized.
It was totally accessible to everybody. And it doesn't feel too, if what you're saying, right, it doesn't feel like that's too dissimilar, that if you are able to get your meaning and your trust from something. Through a direct personal relationship with God. It's not a daddy government.
Then maybe you don't need us so much. If this stuff's true, and I'm too green behind the ears in this country to actually be able to sort of contextualize much of it, it's so unsophisticated and infantile. Like it's so unimpressive that the people that run the forefront of culture, the country that's behind economic engine and all the rest of the stuff, the America Calfes, everyone else catches the cold, all of this, that these people are like actually really unsophisticated and stupid. And they don't understand second or third order consequences.
They don't do that. They're not even trying. How? Which makes it even worse, in my view.
Right. If you've got to make the risk to be constantly. Exactly. Like just try.
Do the work. Try to figure this out. And look, you're ever all human. You might make a mistake.
You might make a wrong decision. Got it. But these are people who aren't even, they don't care enough. And this is the most disheartening and the most dangerous part.
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Right now, you can get a free 60-day trial by heading to the link in the show notes below, or go to shipstation.com slash modern wisdom. That's shipstation.com slash modern wisdom. So I'm not sure that you could see it as disheartening, but oh my god, look at the fucking idiots in charge. But I find it oddly actually quite reassuring that the bar is set so low to kind of clean house.
Now, I know that the dynamics that are in the incentives are much stronger than the individuals. And you sort of take the whole reason that this system works is that you plug one person out, plug another in, and the incentives warp what would be a maybe honest competent person into a useless lawyer. Like I get that. But I do get the sense that it is salvageable.
Maybe this is just a blind white pill, Michael Malice hope here. But I do. I just think, god, look at how useless these people are. And that's one of the enlightening things I think I've realized over the last three years is I've climbed up through the echelon of being degenerate, micro-neshi influencer to wherever I am now, and been exposed to people that really rich or powerful or highly regarded or whatever, and realized that it's actually idiots all the way up.
No one really knows what they're doing that much. There's people that are doing it with goodwill and potential and trying to do their best. Everybody's figuring it out as they go along for the most part. Hopefully not me army.
But that's reassuring to me. I think, oh god, well, I have friends that are, I think, would make unbelievable heads of state or they could be a leader of a great business or do whatever. And you think, oh, but they who are they to be able to compete with it? And you go, well, actually, I can compare them like for like, there is no secret source hiding behind.
And the veil kind of falls from your eyes a little bit. Yeah. I got this idea called a yogurt lid moment that a friend taught me about. So a friend was interviewing a famous atheist in the UK.
And as his camera guy is setting all the different bits and pieces up, they're a guy that he's speaking to. So I'm a little bit hungry. Would you mind if I went and got a yogurt? He said, to your house, your yogurt, please, crack on.
So my friend's still there, you know, sort of rewearing this unbelievable titan of podcasting and speaking and literature and stuff. And he goes over and watches this guy get a yogurt out of the fridge, it comes back down and he sits down, takes the lid off the yogurt, looks at it, and then licks the lid of the yogurt. He's like, in that moment, the veils fell off my eyes and I saw him for who he truly was. So we talk about a yogurt lid moment, which is when you kind of see the fallibility and normalness of someone that you used to think was godly.
Yeah. And I think that basically the last two and a half years for me has just been a permanent conveyor belt of yogurt lid moments as I've gone like, okay, well, I mean, still very impressive, but not in touchable, still very impressive, but not infallible, still very impressive, but not always perfect. Yeah, I agree. And this is and should be a cause for hope.