Borat 2 and Our Uncomfortable Reflection

[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Now I'm James Keys, and in this [00:00:20] Speaker A: episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the Borat Subsequent Movie film and what the movie [00:00:27] Speaker B: reveals about the state of American culture [00:00:29] Speaker A: and Americans themselves in 2020. Joining me today is a man who [00:00:34] Speaker B: understands that to protect the sheep, you've [00:00:37] Speaker A: got to catch the wolf. And you need a wolf to catch a wolf. Tunde. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Ogunlana Tunde. [00:00:43] Speaker A: Are you ready to catch some wolves this morning? [00:00:45] Speaker C: Always, brother. All right. Got my trap ready. [00:00:49] Speaker B: All right. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Also joining me today is a man who, when it comes to the podcast game King Kong, ain't got nothing on him. Rob Richardson. [00:00:59] Speaker D: What up? [00:00:59] Speaker A: What up, Rob? You ready to burn this mug down, man? [00:01:02] Speaker D: I'm always ready to burn. Let's burn something up, brother. [00:01:04] Speaker B: All right. All right. For sure. Now we're recording this on October 26, 2020. And we noted that Sacha Baron Cohen released his second Borat movie, Borat Subsequent Movie Film, on Amazon prime this past week. The first borat, released in 2006 was frankly a cultural phenomenon. These movies follow Cohen as he plays Borat, who who is a Kazakhstanian journalist traveling through America and interacting with unsuspecting Americans in a documentary type of format to put them in uncomfortable or shocking scenarios, oftentimes with hilarious results. While the first Borat seemed to be all over the place and who it was targeting, this recent one was more targeted in what it sought to expose in Americans from a social and political standpoint. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Now, I want to mention that while [00:01:54] Speaker B: we do not go into everything that happened in the movie here, and we don't try to, you know, this isn't a recap per se. This pot does contain spoilers of the movie. So please proceed with that understanding. All right. So Tunde to get us started here, we have a movie with a just frankly shocking and over the top sexist [00:02:12] Speaker A: plot line and it's full of racism [00:02:14] Speaker B: and anti Semitism, but it's using all these as tools to offer a some type of or a level of social and and political commentary. So what was your reaction to the movie and to the commentary it offered? [00:02:26] Speaker C: I went into it expecting, like you said, that something similar to the first film that came out in 06. And personally, I was a little disappointed. I thought that one was a little funnier and a little more edgy. I cringed a lot more in the first one. But no, I thought about it, man. It's an interesting lens and mirror to hold up to our own kind of society and culture and to defend us as Americans. You know, he spent a few months filming footage and got it down to an hour and a half. So I'm pretty sure we got some of the craziest stuff that he got on tape. But no, it was an interesting, you know, again, a mirror that one could hold up to some of the aspects of our country and our society. And just like the first one, it was interesting to see, you know, ourselves reflected. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Okay, what about you, Rob? [00:03:19] Speaker D: This was, I think, comedy at its. One of its greatest effects, which comedy is obviously to make us laugh. That's part of it. But what comedy can do under the guise of being comedy is that it can give a really unfiltered critique of a situation, of a culture, of a society and of American government right now as we see it, by using just absurd comedy. That seems absurd when you look at it. But what's absurd is that all of this is common and just so many examples of how not only out of touch but just how outrageous our institutions have become when we're supposed they're acting as if they are these. And I'm talking right now specifically about the Republican Party who I should say, you know, 30, about 30, 40 years ago rode this wave of the Moral Majority. We're going to correct society and make sure that we're more moral because we've lost our way. And what's clear is that they probably never had their way found. But what's clear is that they are completely lost and are leading America not to the promised land, but to more misery and confusion if we keep going this way. And what he was able to show was how morally bankrupt many people are when you just take off the lens of what they say. Forget about what they say on Fox News, forget about what they say about Christian values. When you look to how they actually act, they don't act in a line with that. And he showed that clearly. And I'm sure that really, really, really pissed off a lot of the. Right. And I'm sure we're going to get more into examples. I can think of some specific examples of many times over where these so called moral people, once you pull back the curtain, you don't see any morality. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's, it's interesting. One of the things that stood out to me, there were two. Well, I would say it like this is the willingness to go along with purposefully shocking, abject, amoral behavior. You know, like Cohen, a lot of his provocations were, I'm going To do something that is clearly amoral, that is terrible. I'm going to put. I'm going to go buy a cage to put my daughter in, or I'm going to sing a song about chopping up journalists. And that people would join in and participate in that without much apparent hesitation, or without any hesitation, or in many cases, joyously, happily. To do so was what really stood out to me. It makes me. I come back to this oftentimes like, what do Americans think about each other? That we are so willing all the time to believe the worst about each other, to. To just be mean to each other all the time. And that's what really stood out to me in this, was just. It doesn't. Everybody's not necessarily leading the charge of being amoral or being evil towards someone else, but it does seem like people are more than willing to go along with it. And once somebody else picks up the mantle and says, hey, let's be terrible to these people, there's a lot of people that will go along with it. [00:06:20] Speaker D: Yep. [00:06:20] Speaker A: And that's really. That's the circumstance that. Because Borat being outrageous, the character Borat being outrageous, and then seeing how many people go along with him being outrageous is what really stood out to me about the movie. [00:06:32] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt. And I think about some specific moments. Well, there are many. And we could talk about the. You talked about his daughter, in terms of how he used his daughter and things like that. But we can also talk about the racism that has gone there. And I know you want to get to that point. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Well, no, I was gonna say. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, you want me? [00:06:48] Speaker D: Go ahead. Okay. So what I want to say is. So, like, the point I think about is the. I can't remember the exact racist song that they were saying, but they went along into the crowd. And you remember Borat was talking to some. Some folks who were Tea Party folks and some people that would probably get offended, like, why would you call me racist? And they. And then they came up with this racist chant. Not only racist, but anti semitic. And they started talking about how we need to put them in the gas chamber, like others did. And other. Other people were going along saying that. And they were cheering and saying, you know, proudly standing by that. And when you talk to. And I know, because I know some Trump supporters and you talk to folks, they say they get so angry. I mean, they get really mad about it. They say, how can you. Why do you call us racist? Why do you do these things? Why do you Associate us with people that are the extreme racist. Our reason is pretty simple because you go along with these people and you're okay with them joining you if they can help you advance your power. So in other words, you say you're not racist, but you're okay with racism as long as it helps you. That makes you a racist. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Well, it's. I would actually, I would separate or say it a little differently. It's that it seems like people are more tolerant of hate than they are of others. And so like the, the when Borat asked the lady to, to put the anti Semitic stuff on the cake and, you know, just looked like a nice lady, you know, just a cake store, you know, and that she was tolerant of that, of the, you know, whether or not she was all into anti Semitism and all that stuff, she was cool with anti Semit. She was cool with saying, okay, well hold on, this isn't appropriate behavior. And so like, again, she was willing to go along with it. She was willing to. She didn't want to stand in the way of that. [00:08:34] Speaker D: Which is how injustice thrives. Right, Exactly. When people aren't willing to. They may not be the ones who are leading the charge to, I don't know, have slaves. They might not be the ones leading the charge to beat up African Americans. They might not have led the charge in Germany to execute Jews, but they allow it to happen. They say, well, I'm not going to get in the way, which is as, as, you know, as well. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Or support it. Or support it. And like, okay, yeah, you need, you know, need a gun. Yeah, you need whatever. Yeah, yeah, sure. And so, I mean, and that's. Tunde mentioned that last week. [00:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I was thought about last week too, as Rob was saying that. But I have a question because it's interesting you stopped on the cake one, because I, I recognized that too when I was watching the movie, how easily she kind of just didn't push back or anything. And the question was, you know, did. Reminded me of that whole issue we had a few years ago with that cake, I guess, or the people that didn't want to bake a cake for, or make a cake for a gay couple and said it was their constitutional kind of right as a business. So that would be my argument. Not argument, but my question to you guys as devil's advocate, which is we might think that's morally wrong to not stand up when Borat's going there and asking to have a disgusting title on a cake, but is there a way that that should be addressed legally? Or should we just say this is the consequence of living in a country that allows businesses to make these choices? [00:10:00] Speaker A: Well, Tunde, though, see, that was. I thought that that cake thing was on purpose in that sense, because there you have the backdrop of that issue being litigated in our system. And the issue that was raised in the movie was not a legal one. The issue was one that you won't even object to this just you. You don't have a problem with this. Remember the. From the legal aspect, the issue is that I have a personal or, you know, a religious problem with this. And so therefore I won't do it. And that. That's kind of what I'm saying with that. The tolerance for hate or intolerance is very high, whereas the tolerance for just others being themselves is very low. [00:10:43] Speaker D: Because the environment breeds intolerance. It's easier for people to be susceptible to hate than it is to want to actually fight against injustice. I think the reason for that is because right now in our system, it is easier to go to fear. It is easier to go to intolerance. And when you can use that as a proxy to why you have problems in your life, which is what people do, and when you have. This is why it's so dangerous, when you have leaders in this environment, it really can take over people's. I will say good people, because I'm not one of these people. And this is a controversial statement. I'm going to say it. But when people go back. I've said it before on my show before. When you go back to look at what happened in Nazi Germany, right. I think people look at that too easily and say everybody was there was evil, the whole country was evil. That's foolish. What happened is the whole country was human. It was led astray by a really effective, charismatic evil leader that took over the culture of that country. And most people will go along with the status quo rather than upset it. And so what you. What you see happening right now in one party, right now in this country, it is. It is using the flames of hate. It is using the rhetoric of hate in order to advance power. Making people feel like that's part of what you have to do to be a part of the group. And they will say whatever. Whatever story they need to justify it. Just like they said whatever story they needed in Nazi Germany. They. No, we're not executing and putting people in the gas chambers. That's the extreme point. We want to make sure we don't get to that point. And this is why it's so important for us to stop hate before it metastasizes, before it grows. We want to stop it early on and often. And we need people within the party, people that see this stuff up close. When you're in those rallies, you should be outraged when you hear people talking about gassing, gassing up their opponent like they did in Nazi Germany. But it was accepted. And people. And we know that. [00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah, like just things are said all the time in the movie. Like just the one of the lines that they were. Everyone was singing was to chop up journalists like the Saudis do. [00:12:36] Speaker D: Yep. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Which is. I mean, that's jarring. Like somebody was murdered a couple of years ago and now that's a song, you know, like that. Now people will sing along to that in America as far as something that they want to do. [00:12:47] Speaker D: Normalizing, normalizing, normalizing it. Normalizing violence against the media. [00:12:52] Speaker A: It takes courage to stand up when your circle is going a certain direction. [00:12:58] Speaker D: Correct. [00:12:59] Speaker A: And so it's not to say that everyone should easily be able to just when something's going a direction they don't want to go, that it's easy to be able to stand against that. But I think that what you have to bring together is the fact that the movement that we saw on the right with the Moral Majority was supposedly, it was purportedly about moral courage, standing up for morality, standing up for humanity. And so if that's what the movement was about, then when we look at amorality and evil treatment of people, and the same people won't stand up against that, it's like, well, hold on. So you have courage to stand up against 1% of the population or whatever homosexuality would be, for example, and say, oh, this is just amoral and we have the courage to stand up against this, but you don't have the courage to stand up against just run of the mill intolerance or hate towards people all around us. And so that's the issue. And Tunde, I would also just mention that not everything can be addressed by law. Sometimes something like this, showing this, revealing this in terms of what Borat does, can be helpful in the sense that, remember from the Dr. King book, we did certain things you cannot make a law for. You can't make a law to make people treat each other nicely, for example, or to make people treat each other with Tunde It's about enforcing the unenforceable. And that comes from social pressure, not from legal pressure. So the issue, I think we have to turn around and look at ourselves, and I say ourselves all of us as a society. Because then I'll move us to the next point. One of the things also that stood out to me in this. It's a mockumentary. It's meant to mock the people that Borat is interacting with, put them in situations and see how they will react. I think that TO can be harmful as well, though, in the sense that I think that we actually need more compassion for, like, the type of people we saw in the movie. What struck out to me is that how isolated they were in terms of their life, generally speaking. Not everybody there, but it just didn't strike me as people who came across people from all over and ran into lots of different trains of thoughts and interacted with lots of different types of people. And it can be very easy to slip into kind of a worldview where everything should be easy. Everything is easy. If everybody just did what I said or did what I thought, then things will work out. Like, to have a pluralistic mindset, which is kind of necessary in a nation of 330 million people, you kind of have to be in a plurality. And so I kind of feel like we need to. We, all of us Americans, need to recognize that the type of people being shown, like the documentary showed to me, that these people are particularly at risk to these two messages of hate or messages of intolerance, because they don't run across people on a regular basis, by and large, that would refute that and say that to give them a broader experience. And so that was one of the things I like. I don't think it's all something you take away. You laugh. Ha. [00:16:02] Speaker B: You. [00:16:02] Speaker A: You. How could you fall for that? How could you say that? And then you walk away and move on to the next thing? Like, I think there should have been. It's not Boras role to do this, obviously, it's not Cohen's role to do this. [00:16:11] Speaker B: He's a comedian. [00:16:12] Speaker A: But society at large, how this is received. I think there needs to be some compassion and some empathy and figure out a way to address this. Go ahead. [00:16:20] Speaker D: Yeah. To speak to that point. That's where leaders come in, James. And the issue that we have in our society right now is that the leaders are using how they feel, the vulnerability of how they feel. They're using that just to fuel their own power and to not solve their problems. And so, you know, we need more responsible leaders. I still put a lot of this on, a lot of. A lot of it on the Republican Party, because they. When you have leaders, we need leaders like that within the Party to say, this is. This is not how we're going to lead. We're going to lead in a more effective manner. And so. But they've chosen because it's worked for them to do this. I'm reading the. Finishing up the autobiography of Malcolm X. In Malcolm X, you know, black men in this country were and still are going through a lot. And a lot of people mock or ignore what black men have gone through in this country. And because of that, that. Because they were ignored for long periods of time, particularly during that time. We're talking in the 40s and the 50s. He got it. He got introduced to the Nation of Islam. And the Nation of Islam did some things well in terms of teaching black men to uplift themselves, to be proud of themselves. But they also taught some things that weren't right. They taught hate. They taught hate outright. And Malcolm X, through his evolution, realized that once he broke away and got a chance to recognize true Islam. And he said, look, I'm for humanity on the whole. I'm for justice, whoever sees it, black or white. But it took him a long time to get there. And we need leaders to get there when they get there on all sides. And we don't have that right now. And that's the only way we're gonna get there. Because it has to be with people that they trust. Here's the thing. If Rob Richardson goes in there and. And says something to folks, I may be able to reach some union people that I work with, but generally they're not going to trust me. And that's just because of how they've been conditioned not to trust people like me. It doesn't mean that I don't have their interest in mind. But we need people who have been there with them in their communities to talk to them about this. We need to have real conversations about history. And then we need to go forward together as brothers and sisters. But that's not the type of leadership we have right now. And Borat shows that. But I agree we need to have that. It's not about mocking people that are like this. It's about figuring out how we get better solutions. But we gotta have people who are leaders in their community to not just exploit people and exploit their anger just so they can get more power. [00:18:36] Speaker A: That's an excellent point because. Yeah, what you see is that it's used right now, presently as an opportunity primarily to escape accountability. You use the unfamiliarity with the other side to breed distrust of the other side, to. So that no matter how badly you Perform the other side is no longer an eye, still not an option for you to look at what they have to say. And so, yeah, it takes more so selfless leadership or leadership that puts America first and says, look, you know, all of us need to look at this and solve our problems together. The solution to our problems isn't to banish our fellow Americans or to do whatever to our fellow Americans or just blame them for all of the problems. The issue is we have to work together. And that is not something we see at the top of our politics. Tunde, did you have anything you want to throw in on that? [00:19:27] Speaker C: You guys covered everything. I was thinking, I was about to just say the same thing, James, about this. It was an interesting reflection of the current leadership. And as you guys are saying it, it's really because, as you said, the inability to govern or govern effectively almost creates a need to always have a bad guy and a boogeyman. And I think that also is to Rob's point, that people are conditioned of how to think of other people and that sometimes depending on how much the conditioning and how effective it is, it becomes very difficult to then have a cohesive kind of society. And again, it's not even just to beat up on current leadership. Right. It's. It's the ecosystem of which these a lot of Americans are conditioned. So it's the cable news, it's the social media, it's the algorithms that push certain articles to people and kind of get them more ginned up over time and a little bit further down their own ecosystem. And that was another thing I felt that the mockumentary, as you call it, really. Actually I kind of saw it throughout. It was interesting when he was pretended to be Donald Trump with his daughter on his back at the CPAC convention and trying to give his daughter as a gift to Mike Pence. What a shit show that was. I can't imagine being there in real time, but the reason that stood out to me was not because of Borat at all. It was a reminder because here we are in late October of 2020, I believe they filmed that CPAC convention in February of 2020. And that was at the time where Mike Pence was on stage saying, there's only 15 cases, we've only had one case in two weeks or something, and this is going to go away and don't worry about it type of thing. And that's kind of reminded me like, wow, there's a whole fact bubble out there of people that have just been hearing this stuff, like a total opposite to what the rest of us have been hearing. And I think it's not even that they don't hear. What we hear is that they want to be told something and there's an avenue for them to get it and there's enough of it that it can be believed. And then it runs up against the facts of the actual virus and what's happening. And so it's just, you know, so then you've got this weird thing where we've got, you know, 30, 40% of this country that kind of doesn't believe that the virus is happening and then, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right. And I. [00:21:59] Speaker A: Virus is just to make Trump look bad. [00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:22:04] Speaker D: It's either that or they just believe that it's going to happen and there's nothing you can do. And nothing works. Masks don't work, social distance don't work. [00:22:10] Speaker C: What happens is the situational ethics then change to the moment. Right, because it was a hoax in February. Now enough people got it, you can't say it's a hoax. But now it's no different than the flu or something. It always changes. [00:22:21] Speaker A: But that goes to your point of ineffective leadership, though, because throwing your hands up and saying there's nothing you can do is the hallmark of ineffective leadership. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Go ahead. [00:22:31] Speaker C: Just to finish the last point. This is not to tie the two together, but it was another example of me of just the kind of chaotic nature of our current. Just the way of being. Of the leadership which then permeates the country. Right. Like leadership is so important. That old joke, the fish rots from the head. Whether I'm at home as a father and I'm leading my household, you know, they're gonna. My house is gonna somewhat be reflected of my own behavior and my personality or if I'm a coach, you know, coaching a basketball team, whatever. So obviously whoever's leading our country is gonna have some sort of effect on our, on our character. And. And it was the last scene with Giuliani and not to get into the whole scene itself, it was just more as this was happening, I thought, hold on. In what other administration have I ever seen kind of a guy that is considered a close friend, right hand, ally of a president, United States being set up like this so easily and he'll fall very big. [00:23:27] Speaker A: That's what I mean. [00:23:27] Speaker C: Like you're talking about national security. These people got to this guy, these, that easily because of some hot little blonde girl that he, you know, that's what I mean. It's like the sloppy nature of this Whole thing was exposed just by the fact they got the interview with Giuliani. And. And it's just, you know, that's why I was just kind of. I was like, this whole thing is just a mess. You know, that's. That's really what he's exposing. This is just a. It's. Oh, yeah, you guys go, well, I [00:23:55] Speaker A: was just going to say yes. I mean, like, that. That would seem to be a very big national security concern, that just anyone can get an audience with Giuliani and get him into a bedroom or whatever. Like, they could be giving him, like, a fraudulent laptop or a bunch of files that they hacked from somewhere, and that the Russians could set him up with intelligence for all we know. Like, that kind of stuff could happen. And Giuliani comes out in the paper saying he has all this information. But as you see, it's not easy to set Giuliani up. [00:24:22] Speaker D: So how can we. [00:24:23] Speaker A: Like, it's shocking that the person that close to the president, that has that level of a microphone can just be duped. [00:24:30] Speaker D: It's shocking. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Not just actually the setup, but actually the whole. The whole thing. Like, this didn't just happen. Like, I didn't just pass them in the hallway, say, hey, can we talk to you for five minutes? Like, they set this whole thing up. Presumably. Presumably they vetted the people who are going to be interviewed. Like, what in the world is going on? [00:24:45] Speaker D: It's shocking, but it's not surprising because this administration, we know, just taping today, yesterday, we had the present occupant of the White House walk away and get frustrated with 60 Minutes for asking a couple of basic questions, because they're not allowed to ask those questions. They just want to have. They believe the media just, like, this is how they wanted. This is their. They want to be dictators. They believe the media is there to praise them. So all someone has to do is just say how great they are. I can tell you that's true. [00:25:13] Speaker A: I already know that was very good. [00:25:15] Speaker D: Right? [00:25:15] Speaker A: They're buttered them up. [00:25:17] Speaker D: Yeah, they just said they buttered them up. They said, julian, we love Trump, we love you. You're doing great work. We want to make sure the more you're just being treated unfairly by the media because there's such a high level of insecurity, and they need so much praise that anybody can get to them. So that is the risk. You have somebody like Giuliani and people say, what happened to the mayor's mayor, The America's mayor? He's been this person, he's been corrupt. He's been doing lots of things through this whole administration. And before that he's always been a risk. And so now we know how susceptible he has been and we know how susceptible we are. And I want to get to the question you said earlier, what can we do? [00:25:55] Speaker A: I was going to, let me say one other thing. Go to that, you know, with that again, I look at that like, okay, this is a comic that did this. I mean, imagine what other intelligence services around the world, like real spies could do. You know, like, this is crazy to me. But no, I do want to get [00:26:11] Speaker C: to, I actually don't want to imagine, to be honest with you. Imagine seeing about four years of these guys exposed to real high level espionage, psychological operation type, worse than we think. In other words, much worse. You're right. I never thought of it that we got a comedian who made a mockumentary who got basically Giuliani to almost basically be on tape getting in bed with a chick. I mean, I'm being, I never thought of it the way you're saying, I'm like a comedian. And he said, that's it, he's not trained at this. And that's what I was saying. Like I was watching the thing and how the hell did this guy get to Giuliani? And I mean like, and it's like you're saying this lack of just normalcy, right? Like there would have been 30,000 layers in any other administration to get as close to a guy as Giuliani who's kind of admittedly the consiglierity, the President, United States, right? [00:27:05] Speaker A: And it's just, it's crazy. [00:27:06] Speaker C: You know what, but, but if someone who wanted to defend it was hearing me say this, you know what they would say, right? [00:27:12] Speaker A: Well, they would figure up something to say. [00:27:14] Speaker C: He's not an official member of the administration, he's not on the payroll, blah, blah, blah, which makes it worse because we know he can get in there anytime, which means how many people can get through, people like him? If there's five Giuliani's that exist, imagine the amount of, you know, crashing the gates that have happened over the last four years. So it's again, it's just a reminder of how back to Rob's point about, you know, the kind of the bystanders, the people that allow this to happen. And that's what I mean by this ecosystem, right? We've got a leadership, that's one thing, but the fact that we have 40% of the country that supports this and if this was a movie made 10 to 20 years ago, none of us would have believed it. And I bet you 80% of his supporters would have vomited, you know, thinking about supporting something like this, you know, 20 years ago. It's just that this becomes like a. It's like a cult that people get caught up and then they don't realize how far down they've gone. Kind of down the rabbit hole. [00:28:14] Speaker A: Well, the ecosystem. That's what I'm saying, though the ecosystem is set up to excuse incompetence or just lack of being on top of things. That's what the ecosystem always has a villain. I think one of you guys said it always has a villain to point to. That's not. It's never about self reflection. It's never about, hey, did we look at this the right way? Or do we need to double check what we're thinking about? And so that's an interesting point. And that leads to my next question, which is, is there a way forward here? You know, like, this type of. This is type of, you know, like, circumstance here, this type of setup here. This isn't something that changes with an election. And so if we. If we're in this situation right now, you know, what can we. How can we move forward with a stronger America? America that has. It's more united, at least around the facts, for example, or united around anything more so, like, because we, America obviously can't be united around owning the libs. So what can America, how can we move forward, you know, in terms of a national purpose, if the purpose, you know, that we see here is just about demonizing the other side? [00:29:22] Speaker D: You know, the Simpsons predicted the Donald Trump presidency. I know we've talked about that before. And the writer of the Simpsons said it was a joke. He thought it would be the lowest point when American society devolved to its lowest point and was at a breaking point. And so I think that that's a comedy, but I believe that's a true statement. And so the saving grace in Barat was one character. It was a black woman. She was the only one talking to people like, no, this doesn't make sense. This is not. And she. She was working methodically to try to change it. What we're going to have to do is we're going to have to get. [00:29:57] Speaker A: But it wasn't in a mocking way. [00:29:59] Speaker D: It wasn't in a mocking way. And so she used that reasoning, working to convince her not to say, your dad is horrible. This is not what you. This is. This is not what you need to do. She tried to get him to understand, like this, these are not your values. We're going to have to wake America up, and 40% of our brothers and sisters who will continue to be that we are going to. The 60% of us are going to have to lead, and we're going to have to get leaders in place, hold them accountable to continue to lead, and then I believe once we see some results, people will move forward. That's how we've always done in this country. So we are at a critical moment right now. This is not one of those, you know, we just want to elect somebody to lower taxes and reduce the deficit. This is. Are we going to have America the same way we've known America to be? Are we going to continue to not be perfect? Because we haven't been perfect ever. But I believe over time, we've always headed towards the right direction, even if we take some zigzags along the way. [00:30:54] Speaker A: Even more importantly, Rob, I want to say this because this is a key point. We've always aimed the highest. We never lived up to it, but we've set our sights the highest in terms of the type of society we want to build. And at least we're aiming higher. And so. And that's kind of the thing right now for many, we're starting to aim a lot lower in terms of our principles, in terms of what we aspire to be. And we need to. If we want to still lead the world, then. And if we want to still just be the America that we were founded as, we have to turn our sights back upward. And again, not. Not worry about the tax rate right now, but worry about what we're trying to be as a nation. [00:31:33] Speaker D: You know, I was. I would just say very quickly that that's kind of subjective. I don't want to go too far down this. I mean, I think we've always said we've aimed high, but sometimes we've. We've made our. We've taught ourselves great stories and done horrible things here. But. But we've tried to aim high. And then, you know, when. When. When the world sees where we actually were to, where. To what we profess to be, we had to try to aim higher because the citizens here pushed us to aim higher. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Well, but that's the point, though, remember? [00:31:58] Speaker D: And I will say this. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Well, the reason we've been able to progress is because when it's been shown that, hey, we're not living up to all the stuff we're talking about, then there's A reason built in reason to try to do better. And so it doesn't affect. So it allows us to improve without having to have wars every 10 years. It's built in the. Because we say a lot of stuff, we don't live up to it. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying because we have those high ideals, it gives someone like you something to point to, something concrete to say, look, we say we're about this. If you're in China, none of this free speech stuff. [00:32:33] Speaker D: You don't have to disagree with and [00:32:35] Speaker A: we don't have to go down this. [00:32:37] Speaker D: I don't disagree with that point. But it's not. There are lots of societies that put in high values, but they can throw the papers away afterwards. It's because of the methodologies that we have here and, and our systems that make it very hard for us to abandon those. Because we have pluralistic society. We have states that have a lot of different rights. So there's a lot of different people have a lot of different power in our system, which makes plurality possible, but also makes it challenging. So that, that's the saving grace we have, is that, you know, no matter what, you know, Even though there's 40%, maybe say 45% of the country that wants this too, there is still a lot of people that don't. And the majority don't. They have to continually push, they have to vote, and then they have to hold people accountable to have a more inclusive society. That's how we get there. And there's enough of a. No matter how strong this president wants to be, no matter how much he wants to push, there are limits to his power. Seemingly. This is the reason why we have to make sure we push forward and continue to fight, because systems can be reversed. And then once society gets a certain direction, once an institute, once institutions in society go a certain direction, it's very hard to reverse those kind of institutional habits. So we do have institutional habits of inclusive systems built into America because of how our systems were built. Not necessarily only because we are ideals. I think that helps us tell a good story. [00:33:54] Speaker A: That's true. [00:33:54] Speaker D: The better part is because of our systems are in place to incentivize that [00:33:58] Speaker A: you have them both, you know, like it allows you to do that. So, Tunde, what do you think, man? How do we move to a better place, man? [00:34:04] Speaker C: I don't know what happened to Borat? Nah, I mean, look, that's what this is all about, you know, in terms of what you guys are talking about, right? It's the. It's the ebb and flow of society over time. And you know, that, that. I don't know how the quote was, but that kind of long, long arc of, of justice kind of bends towards the right direction over time, but it's just not a straight line and it's choppy. So, you know, I think. I think this is part of it, right? It's, it's, it's. It's even this going back to Borat. It's the ability of artists to. To kind of do the mockery and point at the problem. And I think that's also happened in societies over time, Right. Whether you go back to the Renaissance with some of the paintings and the artists to just Hollywood, to musicians, it's Borat. And what we're talking about represents another way that, like we said, a comedian, right, has kind of held up a mirror to our society and through comedy, I guess, is asking us, do we like what we see in a certain part of society? Again, I don't want to blame, you know, paint the whole country like that, but we know that there's a lot of elements like that. And you made a great point, James, is. And I think that's. It kind of hits on where I think Hillary Clinton got in some hot water with the use of the term deplorables, right. That a lot of people look down on certain people in society like that. But you use the right word as compassion. I think that if we want to see this healed, a lot of people like us who look at this movie mockumentary and do laugh at it and find it amusing also need to just remember that these people aren't going anywhere either. And just because leadership might change, we got an election in a week. If the current leadership is voted out, there is symptom, not a cause. So this can come back. And I think we need to all remember that as well. [00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but think about it like this. I mean, we talk about, you know, united we stand, divided we fall. Well, the things like this that this movie exposes, if we're united, then we're only as strong as our, quote, unquote, weakest link or whatever would be like, so we can't look down on in the same way that we would say to them, hey, don't hate your fellow Americans. Then on the other side, you shouldn't be looking down on your fellow Americans. If you think that they've been fooled or if you think they've fallen into a trap, then the way you try to bring them out of that isn't to laugh and to mock really. Now there is a role of showing a mirror on it. And I think your allusion to Hillary Clinton is perfect because her mindset on that is a deficiency. That is a problem. You shouldn't be looking down at your fellow Americans in that way. It's problem, it's concerning. And there are certain elements that are you that are looking at that and looking to capitalize on that. And we are. Now you do want to work against those elements that are looking to capitalize on that. But the actual human beings, the people, they've been led astray. That's the way somebody's been led astray. You don't step on them, you know, you don't mock them. You reach out your hand and try to bring them back to the road. And like you said, there was a character in the movie that played that role. I think so. I think that there's one. You're pointing out the problem which, you know, the Borat movie does and he's a comedian, so he's going to be heavy handed. So I mean, I don't get into, you know, and we've talked about Chappelle, we've talked about different things. I don't get into to getting into the weeds in terms of, oh, was this over a line, like comedy supposed [00:37:37] Speaker B: to be over the line. [00:37:38] Speaker A: So there's that. The other thing though, I think, and Rob touched on this several times, is the leadership aspect of this. If leadership or at least part of the leadership is going to try to capitalize on this to their own benefit, then we're going to be in trouble. We're going to need leadership to work on bringing America together. We saw just this past week when the Utah governor race, two candidates, you know, Republican candidate and the Democratic candidate doing a joint commercial saying, hey, you know, we are, we are competing in the election, but we're both Americans. We shouldn't hate each other, we shouldn't hate each other's sides. And we're going to respect what happens no matter what that shows. Yeah, that shows good leadership. And I'll link to something on that in the show notes here. But that's, that's the type of leadership that we need that say that's America first saying, hey America, we have elections and then we respect what happens in the election and then we go back and if we're not happy what happened in the election, then we try to win the next election. But we don't try to undermine America because we are not happy with the Results of the election which has been a stated purpose. Like The Congress in 2010 said that was their stated purpose with Obama. Like, that's a decay in leadership and attitude amongst our country oftentimes reflects leadership. [00:38:48] Speaker D: Yeah. I want to say this clue too. We know elections happening in a week and none of us knows what's going to happen. And I'm not going to make any bold prediction here. I will say that the President occupant in the White House has said he's not sure if he's going to accept the results of that election. No American running for president has ever said that. Ever in our history. [00:39:10] Speaker A: No one. One. The guy, the Republican candidate in 2016 said that. [00:39:15] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's. And the only thing that came closest to saying this, I'll say that. Let me, let me, let me correct myself, was when Lincoln was running and we knew lots of those in the Confederate said that if Lincoln won, we won't accept the results. And we know what happened then. Douglas, to his credit, his opponent tried to try to keep that from happening, but we have. There's not enough members of the Republican Party who say they love America, who will waive the Constitution, but just act like what he said doesn't matter. Like this isn't. This should alarm people, but the fact that it doesn't alarm the leaders and a lot of Americans should make you nervous. [00:39:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:39:57] Speaker C: So I think he's just a big bully that won't have the balls to actually not leave. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we'll. I mean, we'll see. So Tunde is in the business of bold predictions. [00:40:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:09] Speaker A: You got any more bold predictions for it? [00:40:11] Speaker C: That's my only prediction. I'll accept if I'm wrong, if it doesn't play out like that, but that's kind of. [00:40:16] Speaker A: Hey, we got much bigger problems if it doesn't play out like that. I know you'd be wrong on a prediction, so. Well, no, I, and I think that, yeah, we, we, we as people though, [00:40:26] Speaker B: have to understand it. [00:40:27] Speaker A: There's a, it's a tough cycle because, you know, our attitude reflects leadership, but we approve or disapprove of our leadership with votes. So as long as votes come in for leadership, then they will be emboldened that gets into the issue you raised. Hounde, with the cycle that we're in as far as, you know, just the media bubble that people get into and the information that just pushes them further and further and further into one position, all for the purpose of keeping their eyeballs, you know, and that's this attention economy is all about feeding people what it is that they want to hear, regardless of whether it's true or not. And so, you know, you raised a good point as far as just that CPAC clip where there Pence is out there talking about how the virus is nothing, basically nothing to worry about. And to see that in October of 2020 is jarring. But ultimately though, I think that the movie, as you can tell, you know, we thought it's a cultural event, so it was something that we all watched. We think we would encourage everyone to watch it. It's something that whether, whatever you agree, disagree, comedians are able to be heavy handed because the nature of comedy is that you just, you quote, unquote, tell it like it is and you allow the observer to make their own interpretation. So comedy a lot of times can say and do things that other areas of the media can't. And so it's valuable from that standpoint. But everyone has to remember though that it cannot be for the sole purpose of mocking, you know, it has to be a part of learning, you know, what we see what's going on and then trying to have some compassion for our Americans, try to reach out a helping hand and try to bring them back to us. And like Rob said though, is excellent point, that one of the limitations though is that that type of messaging or the messaging to come out of that also has to be from somebody that they already trust. And so it's a multifaceted problem. But you know what, human beings can solve multifaceted problems. So you know, we just got to roll our, roll our sleeves up and get to work. So we appreciate everybody for joining us on this one. And until next time, I'm James Keys. [00:42:30] Speaker C: I'm Tunde Ogunlana I'm Rob Richardson. [00:42:32] Speaker A: All right, subscribe Rate Review Tell us what you think and we'll talk to you next time.