Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss what looks like an ongoing attempt by Donald Trump to big dog or the american legal and electoral system. And in part two of our discussion, we consider whether human consciousness may be a byproduct of just a physics concept like intro.
Hello. Welcome to the call.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I can see a podcast.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me today is a man who, when times are tough, is a big enough man to take one for the team. Tunde yoga and Lana Tunde. Are you ready to be our fall guy today? You know, if necessary.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: I mean, if you're gonna make me, that wouldn't be my first choice. You know, that's the role I need to play.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: I gotta play team player. Team player.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: There you go. She's gonna fall over.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, we ask that you subscribe, hit the subscribe, or, like, button on your YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing that really helps the show out.
Now, we're recording this on May 7, 2024 in Tunde. We have two ongoing stories that I think really illustrate what's an interesting occurrence, what's happening, the ongoing occurrence that's happening where Donald Trump is really trying to use the force of his personality to essentially just stay as, you know, to dominate, stay as the dominating force over american institutions, one being the legal system, the other being the electoral system. The first story it goes into, just yesterday, he was found in contempt of court for the 10th time by the judge in his hus money trial in New York. And essentially, the judge has a gag order in the case and is saying that you can't talk certain things about the jury or things like that, which is these aren't, like, unique things, things that have never happened before. Gag orders happen in times or protective orders, things that you're not allowed to say and, you know, for the purposes of allowing the legal system to run its course properly. And he's violating this, and it looks to be that he's violating it intentionally and almost daring the court to do something about it. You know, to him, $1,000 fine, which he's got hit with, is not the, the end of the world. And so he's daring the judge to escalate it. And the other was a recent past few days. He said that he will, when asked if he'll accept the election results, he says, well, if they're 100% honest, or paraphrasing, if they're honest, then yes. But otherwise, no, he'll fight. Which is an interesting thing for him to say, because in his mind, he's already also indicated that if he doesn't win, then there must be shenanigans. So he's essentially taking a position that as long as he wins, it's a.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Good setup, isn't it?
Like a win win.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: But it's for, we know, not to think that he's just joking around because the last time around he didn't accept him. And then 2016, he said, you know, he was calling him rigged already. So, tunde, I want to know just your thoughts on Trump kind of drawing the line in the sand that I think these illustrate as far as like, hey, the system is only legitimate when it works to serve me. You know, like whenever the system is bumping up against me or trying to constrain me, then I'm going to exert my will on the system instead. The american system.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, he's pretty much what the whole constitution, especially the first few amendments, were written kind of to stop. So it's an interesting, you know, on a serious note, even you setting up this, you know, the way we're coming into this discussion today just makes me realize how to continue to follow this path.
One must really have to deal personally with some dissonance because as you were saying this, you know, we're joking here a little bit about, you know, if the kind of attitude, if I don't win, it's illegitimate.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: And if I win, it's legitimate.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: And so the only way to tell if it's legitimate or not.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: And so, like you said accurately, that we have a precedent already set.
What it reminds me of, James, is I can't help but think of something like the Chinese Communist Party, that this is becoming like a one party rule type of environment. And a lot of Americans seem to be okay with the direction it's going. And I think that to me is just a fascinating thing, that in the last decade of us being Americans and just living, we've seen a large percentage, maybe not as many as half, but a large enough that it's, you know, we're all here living together. We see it of Americans who really are saying, yeah, I'm okay being part of a political party or apparatus that really won't have any opponents if it go like the way I think, because.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Legitimacy counter is only legitimately operated in the hands of one party.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Correct. And to have a counterparty to play off of and have a debate and compromise. And the whole way the system was set up, it doesn't seem to be of interest to as many Americans today as I once thought we all were kind of bought into this democracy. And whether you call it a democratic republic or a democracy, the idea that we all participate, we elect people to represent us in our government, and some represent certain ways of thinking and others represent other ways of thinking, but together, they would come together and compromise. That doesn't seem to be welcome by a lot of people in our country at this point.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: No, no. I mean, the people are, it seems like people are kept in a heightened emotion state, heightened, you know, emotional state in order to, to justify that, so to speak. That. And, I mean, I think you can date that back to the nineties, you know, with, you know, kind of the, the republican revolution. There was that, and then there was the, you know, I specifically look at where I first started hearing that out loud was with Karl Rove in the first decade of the 21st century when he would say, you know, yeah, we want republican rule for the next 40 years or something like that. And he would openly talk about that. You know, it's one party that should be in charge and everything. But I'm just more fascinated by the, you know, the way that Trump is. I mean, this is quite amazing, you know, like, the force of his personality and though in his relentlessness to essentially bend things to his will. And when you see it with the American now, and I'm an attorney, so, I mean, I'm seeing, you know, these things with his trials that are kind of routine things and just basic things, things that aren't typically very controversial. And he uses them as opportunities to say, hey, I don't need to be confrontational here, but I want to be confrontational here in one sense, because I want to make the people who are attempting to enforce an order on me, I want to make them sweat. I want to make them buckle. And then on the second hand, to make people who are behind me, who are supporting me, to make them constantly have to choose. And it really reminds me of, it stuck with me, you know, for years. You know, I've brought it up many times. The quote James Comey had, former director of the FBI that Donald Trump eats your soul. And it really. Cause there's a progression involved here where, you know, you follow him on one step and then, okay, you're good. And then you follow him. You gotta follow him on the next step. And then eventually you followed him along so many steps that you do look up and say, hey, yeah, the legal system or the electoral system is the problem because it's standing in the way of Donald Trump getting what he wants you know, and it's like, so the idea that he picks a fight, essentially, with, you know, the, with the judge and with the court to say, okay, hey, you know, you can't be out there trying to threaten witnesses, you know, things like that. Like, again, things that aren't in normal trials, you know, aren't things that are, you know, like, controversial. Like, you can't do that. And it's like, okay, since you've told me I can't do that, I, in fact, want to do it more. What are you going to do? And so it's constantly this, what are you going to do? And that is how you can see how it affects the supporters, you know, and how they continually go further and further in a bunker mentality. But it really puts a lot of pressure on the judge. And the judge is talking yesterday, I really don't want to have to put you in the contempt of court is punishable by $1,000 fine or 30 days in jail. And obviously, one of those is a bigger stick than the other, particularly when you're talking to somebody who has a lot of money. And so he's like, oh, I really don't wanna put you in jail. And you're a former president of the United States. You might be a future president of the United States. And it's like, well, if that was just some dude that was on trial and he was doing this stuff, that judge would've put him in jail a long time ago. So you can see the way that the pressure Donald Trump is putting on the judge and on the court is bending them. It's actually changing their behavior as it relates to him, which is what he wants. And so it's, in a sense, he's already won in this battle, you know, and then we'll talk about kind of how this plays out on multiple iterations. But that, to me, is the fascinating part, is that he already has gotten to, he's already bended the people who he's going against by constantly provoking them and picking fights with them and saying, what you gonna do? And then also he does that with the people that support him as well. So to me, just looking at it, you know, as an observer, is just amazing, because you typically look at these institutions, these american institutions, as being, you know, old and powerful, strong and so forth, and to see what they be able to bend, it is amazing.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: You gotta let me in because you said a lot, man. You've made some very good points. And that's why I don't want you to. I gotta jump in low because. No, you. So a couple things. I mean, this is very interesting because, number one is, in preparing for the day, I just started looking at history. Okay. What other moments in our history have paralleled this? And there are a few, primarily the 1920s and thirties, which we'll get into later in the discussion. So that was kind of the interesting thing because there's a lot of similarities in certain things you're saying and the way the system responded to some of those pressures that we had back then. So we'll get into that later. But you made a good point right here at the end of your section. There is when you said, observe that you observe certain things, and that's, that's a backdoor way in for me to observe something that, you know, I mean, I think we've all observed this, which is the information silos that people have settled in in terms of their cable news, their social media feeds, you know, the algorithms that feed them stuff really have us as Americans literally observing two different realities. So when you and I really probably got more than. Yeah, no, but I'm just saying I got friends and people I'm close with that really are all in on Donald Trump, and they only watch certain media and they don't. So when I'm talking to them and we're having a conversation, I'm realizing we're actually, we're on two different wavelengths, sets of facts. You know, obviously, I think my stuff is facts. They think their stuff is facts. Right. And, and so we almost have seen in the last eight years. And really, this is, I'm glad you brought up Karl Rove in the nineties because this energy has actually been there for a long time in our culture. So this isn't something Donald Trump started. He just kind of got, as you said it, before he got to the front of the parade.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: He sold the parade and jumped in front.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so, and so, but what I'm saying is that what we really have to kind of accept here is that we live in a big country, but we now have two different cultures when it comes to how people look at politics. So that's the one thing that I think frustrates a lot of us, is that on all sides of the spectrum, is that when we talk to other people that we have in our life that are on the other culture politically, we seem to feel like we're talking to a foreign person.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: We're talking to somebody who's in a different reality. Like you said, their collection of facts that they find important. Don't really overlap with your collection of.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Facts that, you know, that's why I want to keep going, because that comes back to the observation. And then you say something when you started, which was very good about when you talked about those Comey comments and all that is to constantly have to choose. This goes back. I mean, I think, like, just to remember these things. The access Hollywood tape was a great example.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Remember back when you mentioned people like Karl Rove and George Bush? Remember what conservatism, at least the rhetoric and the kind of way of being of the conservative republican party was used. Terms like values voters. Remember that?
Family and life and George Bush, compassionate conservatism. Right. Trying to put this softer face on the conservative brand.
Then you got a guy out there who called, you know, I remember his. His, uh, the lady that. The lady that was the CEO of HP that was running for president in 2016 when he called her ugly on the stage. Who would want to vote for that face? Remember that?
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Making fun of the disabled reporter doing all that stuff. Then the access Hollywood tape. So before even the election, there was already this beginning of forcing people, psychologically the distant, to have to make this choice. Like, I don't really like it. I'm a christian conservative, evangelical. And he just said, I'm a celebrity. I get to grab him by the, you know, in the. You know what? And I gotta put up with that. And that's when also this thing became, well, because Hillary's so bad, you know, the other side's so bad that I just gotta keep going with this. And so. And then I think it fast forwards. Remember the inauguration, the crowd size?
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: It kept being these chips away. Remember, like, famously, the Noah thing, you know, the NOAA, meaning the hurricane, when he drew with a sharpie.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Well, remember. And so many of these things. And this, to me, is the fascinating piece. So many of these things are things that it's voluntary. It's not like it was forced on him. It's like he chose that fight in order to make people choose and in order to put people in. Within the institutions, in the system, on the defense. And let me, I'll say one thing real quick. The access Hollywood piece, though, interestingly enough about that, that seemed that that wasn't by choice, so to speak, but the way they dealt with that, remember, wasn't, oh, you know, it was apologetic and so forth. It was like, so what? I think that might have been a lesson, you know, kind of for them, you know, like, oh, okay, hey, you know, like, maybe we don't have to take this typical tack, because politics up till that point would have been like, oh, when something like that happens, you go on an apology tour and you. You do all these things to try to make people feel okay. Their approach was completely different, and that might have been one of the key moments where they were like, hey, you know what? Actually, let's not go about this in the typical way. Let's lean in. When something controversial happens, something that makes people choose happens. Let's lean in.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I want to get to the judge part because I think this all relates to it. I just want to say that you're right. I mean, this is a pretty interesting observation that we're having here because that started with him. And remember, the other elites in the parties, other big politicians and all that, were all shocked. Oh, my God, what are we gonna do? Yeah, and think about how they were terrified, but think about how it's permeated through the party to this point. We're here in, like you said, may 2024, the most recent kind of issue that in times past would have been like, oh, my God, this is crazy. Was when the governor of South Dakota writes in her own book that she shot her 14 month old dog and then a goat.
And again, I've seen her recently in the last few days on tv, and it's this whole, now it's standing her ground. Now she's a victim of the liberal media and all this stuff. And it becomes where you're forced now to choose where I think most Americans hearing that a politician shot their dog and their goat in the face just because of some random stuff, you know, my attitude was kind of like, oh, well, maybe as a human being, you should have, you know, either trained a dog better or give it away or something. There's other ways to deal with things. What you're observing there, though, it's forcing, though, some of the people on that political side to have to continue to distance themselves from the feelings they might naturally have had. Like, hold on. What do you mean? You shot a dog?
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, no, think about it. What it is. It's following a new blueprint. And let me say this before you go to the comments on the judge, and then I do want to keep us moving, but that's the new blueprint. Basically, if you choose to go that direction, if you do something controversial, you do something that offends people, you lean into it, and then you then point at the media backlash and you force people to choose. And we see that that has been effective in many respects, not 100%, depends on who you are to some degree and the force of your personality. But that is a new part of the toolkit. The other thing I'll mention real quick, it just, you know, and I know you want to get to the judge, but I wanted to just mention this piece is what we also have to acknowledge and recognize is that there is precedent in recent time for this. We've seen, and, you know, it's been documented, the takeover by Donald Trump of the Republican Party, of the right wing media ecosystem, and in many respects of the evangelical church where you have now, you have like, pastors and so forth coming out saying, hey, what are we doing? This stuff isn't Christianity. And other people saying, hey, that type, the Jesus stuff is too old. It's too soft. Like, we have those debates going on, you know, and the people who are saying this isn't Christianity are losing. You know, those people are the ones getting pushed to the fringes of evangelical Christianity. And so this approach, you know, using the force of his personality and certain techniques, has already been effective in taking over institutions that seemingly were, you know, were self propagating and weren't subject to a single person taking them over. So this isn't something that we're just talking about.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Oh, ha ha ha.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: This is kind of funny. It is amazing to watch, to actually watch happen. But the threat that he poses, I mean, he has proven himself to be a very formidable person in terms of taking over institutions with the force of his personality and making these things all about him. So, you know, like, bringing it up isn't just for laughs and giggles and so forth. It's also to say, hey, he succeeded at this several times with other things.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and, you know, I think as, again, when we go into the historic part, this does have a lot of precedents. And just to finish off on the part with the judge in the system, I think you're absolutely right.
He's obviously changed.
He's won in a certain sense, and in another sense, he's just being another individual in the United States going through due process, which is the way the system's supposed to be. Now, I think that one interesting thing I find about someone like Donald Trump specifically is if you watch his behavior, he usually only behaves in this confrontational way when he doesn't have another way out and, you know, will not behave in a confrontational way in other, you know, situations. And so, you know, when he, when he might feel like, you know, he's in his interest not to behave confident I should say so. For example, you know, from everything, again, this is, again, observing, right?
From the stuff that I've observed in this recent week in this New York case, the information seems bad. And this is one thing I've noticed, too, with a lot of the stuff about all of these legal cases involving him. The information isn't coming from. That's it. That is making it appear that he may have guilt in certain areas and why he's even on trial for a lot of these things. I'm talking, all you're saying, like, for.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Example, like the testimony and stuff like.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: That, like people that are coming, testimony, the witnesses, there are people coming from his side. Meaning on this New York case, it was David Pecker, his friend, who was the CEO of the National Enquirer. This started with his CFO, Alan Weisselberg, all this stuff. Remember, his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, already was in jail for two and a half years for pleading guilty to this stuff.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: So he was.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: So this trial is really just to uncover the facts of why Michael Cohen did this stuff, which he's already been in jail for.
Then you've got hope Hicks, his assistant, who was just on trial. You got Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, which are his ex girlfriends. They're from his, his circle. I'm thinking of even things like the Georgia election thing. Is his voice on tape saying, finding me, find me the 11,800.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah, these aren't all, he tends to frame these things as partisan, but these aren't the people that are all those.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: There'S fake elector cases with this guy, Chiz bro. And all that. This all comes from Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, Chiz bro, his lawyer, John Eastman, his lawyer. You know, these are all people that were in a circle. So when I'm observing, unlike some of my close friends I talked to, I'm looking and saying, well, how can this be that much of a witch hunt when these are all people that were in his inner circle just saying what was happening? And so what I'm saying here is when I see him constantly picking at the judge and now being held in contempt ten times, my attitude is just like I felt with the Supreme Court. Yeah, I see a two tier justice system, but he's getting away with a lot more than regular people like me and you would, you and I wouldn't have the Supreme Court stopping everything they're doing in their busy schedule and deciding if you or I have immunity from crimes. We don't get that luxury. We don't get the luxury of a special master to slow down an investigation. If I walked out of my office with classified information and then refuse to give it back, that's the thing that a lot of people supporting that one, him on that one, don't acknowledge that. Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Mike Pompeo, all these guys that everybody else gave it back.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Everybody else gave it back right away.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: And then, and so again, he wanted to force a confrontation with the Justice Department on the classified documents because he knew he shouldn't have taken them in the first place. So this is another attempt, and this is why he's very effective. As you're saying, it's working very well where, because he doesn't have a legal defense for most of the stuff he's in trouble for, he becomes now a political martyr, a messianic figure, and it's working. A lot of people are saying, well, you know, this is unfair and all that. And I think adjacent to that, and I'll shut up here, is we've had a demonizing of the other side for a generation. So there's a lot of Americans that just immediately think, okay, I can't even look at a Democrat or anyone other than this what I've been comfortable with because it'll be the end of the country if I do. So I guess I don't like, I know there's something uncomfortable with what I'm following here, but I just got to stay in this lane. And I think, I think it's a combination of all these different forces.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Well, and then, you know, once you get people going down a certain path, you know, confirmation bias and certain cognitive biases, and beyond that make it easier to continue going along that path. And so that aspect is being taken advantage of as well.
Now, my question for you in looking at this, we talk about observing this effort to exert your personality and the force of your personality over these institutions and over these systems and essentially cast it so that if the system gives me what I want, the system is okay. And if the system does not give me what I want, then there's something wrong with the system. The system's illegitimate, which, if you boil that down, basically what you're saying is that I am the only authority. You know, like, I, the system either serves me as the authority or the system is illegitimate if it doesn't serve me. So when you have something like a brazen attempt like that to have to go on. And again, we've seen this with an institution like the Republican Party. We've seen this with an institution or with, with institutions and organizations in the right wing media. And like the right wing media, they're not a variety of opinions by and large of Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump is centered. And then people can disagree and agree about what Ted Cruz or JD Vance, they can have different opinions on those, but everybody has to have the same opinion on Donald Trump. And then again, even in the starting to see in the evangelical church, what do people who want to maintain, what are there lessons we can learn from that they didn't do at the RNC or just throughout history?
What kind of things? People who want to maintain the american system, the constitutional system, rule of law and all that stuff. What types of things should they be doing or should they be avoiding, do you think, to avoid this kind of takeover of the american system?
[00:25:03] Speaker B: What should they do? If they want to avoid it?
Don't let him get on the ascend of the throne, speaker one.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: But that they're not letting him. The whole point is that nobody's letting him. He's taking it by force. No, I know, and that's my point, saying, this is mine, you know?
[00:25:18] Speaker B: So, no, look, when, when I think the, for me, the very symbolic thing was the takeover of the RNC and installing his daughter in law, Laura Trump, as, you know, the main figurehead. I know she's the co chair, but.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: That'S a culmination more than an actual like that. By the time that happened, it was already over takeovers.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: But that's what I mean, it's just symbolic. Kind of like the nail in the coffin that this is over now. It is Donald Trump's party. And the reason I say that is a couple reasons. One is one of the things, again, from me, observing from the outside of why Donald Trump had finally run afoul of Ronald McDaniel was because she refused to end the primary while Nikki Haley was still running as an active kind of, you know, campaigning and still actively in the primaries. She hadn't stepped down yet. And Ronald McDaniel was still trying to hold on to what we're talking about here. The fact that this is the republican party, it's a political party that's assembled by a lot of people, and it's here to represent a certain ideology about the country and how we see how.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: The primary system works.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we had multiple people running for president, and mister, you know, former President Trump, you're one of them. You're in the lead. Not only, and that's the thing about Donald Trump, right. He clearly was an outsized lead with Hennicki Haley and no one. She had no chance of even, you know, coming on his heels to get this thing. But like you're saying about forcing a confrontation, that wasn't enough. He couldn't. He just wanted to say, end it for me because this is mine. And so, I mean, that's really a king or a dictator at that point with that kind of attitude. So that was one of the things that he said, no. Then when this primary is over, you're gonna step down. And what did he do? He installed his daughter in law. What did she say when she started doing the interviews on Fox and all this stuff? I was, again, I was observing it. She said the number one goal of the RNC is going to be to elect Donald Trump. And that was while the primary is still on. So again, if I was running for president and the Republican Party, I'd be like, what do you mean? That's the job. The job should be to support all of us, and the best one wins. And so that's, again, one symbolism. The second symbolism, James, is, again, these are the facts that don't permeate, unfortunately, into the conservative media ecosystem right now. The RNC, for example, has zero field offices in the United States. The DNC has around 500.
And that's what I think when you see this one person take something over like this just to do it for themselves. That's my concern for the republican party is there's not money going to the congressional races. Kind of the down ticket, the real infrastructure of the party. I mean, zero field offices mean they're not going to have people knocking on doors, putting out signs, all that. So what you really have is. That's why I say this is symbolic. It's the collapse of the party. It's really a collapse of the republican party that is not like party apparatus.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: That's the national is just all about serving the one man. You still have regional.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: It's not, it's not like if you and I were running for Congress down here in South Florida as a Republican, we would have a much different relationship with the RNC than congressional candidates in the past. We'd be scrambling with the Florida Republican Party and trying to raise money certain ways, but we couldn't go to the.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Big dog party office and so forth.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. That's what I'm saying. So, yeah, I would assume that if he gets back into the presidency, he's going to try and do the same thing with the federal government, which the 2025 project from the Heritage foundation, all that. Like, these people are telling us, and he's told us in his Time magazine interview recently what they're planning on doing. And yeah, he's going to try and bend this system to be his and to have some sort of american one party dictator type of rule. That's why I say it reminds me of the Chinese Communist Party. And it's interesting that a lot of Americans want this. That's, to me, the more I'm not surprised by him, I'm surprised by a lot of my fellow Americans are kind of running into this.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's actually one of the interesting things about it, is that you get why, you know, any person who understands, like, you don't have to be selfish, but if you understand selfish impulses, you would understand why he's doing what he's doing. But it is hard to see people who are signing up for this are getting out of it. But some of it is, I mean, and this is something he's good at, is kind of giving people, making people feel emotionally connected either to his rise or emotionally disdain for the rise or the success of someone else. And so that he's tied all that together skillfully, I would say it's been something that has, like, he has set it up to where his supporters feel good when he does well, you know, and it's like, okay, well, I mean, so they're getting out of it. He gets, he gets the success, and they get to feel good. Cause he got success.
It's a symbiote, you're right.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: And it's a very good observation. Cause it's a, you know, he's a very unique and talented in this way. I mean, he can bring a lot of these cross currents kind of together for people. So to your point.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Well, but that's one thing.
Let's keep moving because I want to get to the piece on what people can do about this. And to me, it's really interesting. I think the contempt of court case in terms of what the judge, for example, right now in the hush money case and the New York City or New York, New York case, he represents essentially the system. Literally, he represents the system. He is the court, and that's rule of law, the legal system, and it's his courtroom. And he says what goes and what doesn't go and so forth. And contempt of court is typically considered a serious penalty, a serious threat. It has become not a serious threat for Trump. He is intentionally going into getting held. They're doing things that will give him cause to be held in contempt of court and daring the judge to do something about it, basically. And these fines are escalating. The question is, I think, and I think reasonable minds can disagree on this. Should the judge escalate? Should the judge say, okay, well, I'm allowed to give you up to 30 days in jail. I'm gonna give you a day in jail, or I'm gonna give you two days in jail, week in jail, or I'll give you, you know, whatever it is. Should the, and the bet that Trump is making is that one, that the judge won't do it, or if he does, his people will be so outraged that they'll be even more drawn to him. Like, it'll be another decision point for his people. And it'd be like, oh, I'm def. I'm even, I'm gonna go give Trump more money now because of this. Because, because, you know, setting aside the fact that he was held in contempt of court for things that he intentionally did, they just can't do this to Trump. And so I am of the opinion that in the face of this kind of dare, though, that the court has no choice, that the court has to. The court cannot. The court has two choices, essentially, and I don't think one of them is not a legitimate choice. One is to just allow Trump to, to have the floor and say, okay, no, you can do whatever you want to do. I will not use the tools at my disposal, under the rule of law, to stop you from doing things I tell you not to do. The other is to continue to escalate the penalties, and that would include going into jail time. So I think the judge has no choice. And you have to deal with whatever blowback is coming. The blowback is going to come no matter what. But if you don't enforce the rules, then what you do is establish a different precedent, that the rules don't have to be followed as long as you are willing to kick and scream enough about somebody trying to put the rules to you.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, I come down on the other side of that one just because, I mean, you make a good point that the rules maybe kind of feel like they're being bent a bit. But I do think the kind of nuance can be seen here that the judge has discretion. Cause remember, he is fining Donald Trump $1,000, you know, the maximum per occurrence. So there is some sort of penalty being applied. And also the fact that, look, Donald Trump is going through due process, right? He's showing up to court every day. There's a jury, there's witnesses. So in the end, Donald Trump is conforming to the system in that way. My concern with jailing Trump over this, not if he's convicted of one of these crimes or something, you know, including all of them, not just in the New York case. I'm just saying that convicting him, or, sorry, not convicting, but, but jailing him for something like that, even just for a day or two. Again, I think this is exactly why he wants the confrontation. I think the news, this was supposed to be the most, you know, the least of all the cases that was the most interesting. And now with all this evidence in the last week and these people testifying, it sounds pretty interesting. And so I think that there's no good news for Donald Trump right now, unfortunately for him. So what he could do is force the judge to put him in jail, and that would create a certain martyrdom and sympathy, and then he would have all the, the ecosystems, like Fox News and all this stuff talking about what a victim he is. And you're right, he would galvanize, like, that's it.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: That's not gonna, that's not.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: If he is allowed to just be in the spotlight without the system seen more encroaching. I mean, you know, obviously the system's already on him. I just think that there'll be continue to be small percentage of Americans that kind of just see him there standing with all this information.
Some of it will permeate through some of their ecosystems, and they won't have that contrast to say, remember, yes, the other side is the Biden crime family. It's the DOJ under the deep state, and all that stuff which will come right back into the fold in the event that he's put in jail.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: That's why for me, and here's where I disagree with that, I think that stuff's already happening anyway. Like, none of this stuff, like, all of the things you're worried about happening are already happening. And so to me, if you say, well, Trump is doing this because he wants you to put him in jail so that that'll fire up his people even more, to me, that is essentially you playing into his hands, I think it's the opposite. He's doing this because he wants to get you to bow down. He wants to get you to say, okay, I don't want to do it. This is what you're talking about is the same calculation that Merrick Garland made when he dragged his feet for years on whether or not, you know, the tape, you know, like all the election interference stuff, that stuff all those facts were developed back in 2000, 2001. Why did Jack Smith just start going after this stuff, you know, 2022, 2023? Like, it's because Merrick Garland was, was doing the same calculation that you're doing. Like, oh, well, if we try to enforce the law against this guy, they're gonna go kicking and screaming and then all the people are gonna be so upset about that. Well, guess what? They're going to do that. That's what's going to happen sometimes. If you're going to stand on principle, sometimes you have to do things that are going to make you uncomfortable, even though they make you uncomfortable. Donald Trump's game is to make you uncomfortable. So you won't stand on principle, so you'll make exceptions. Because it's like going this direction makes me too uncomfortable because of what I'm going to have to deal with. That's the point. That's what he's trying to do to the judge personally. When he's talking about the judge's daughter and he's talking about the judge, his family and so forth, he's trying to make the judge uncomfortable. So the judge won't do, won't stand on principle. And so I can understand where you're coming from, but what I'm saying is that I just think that the things you're worried about are happening and are going to happen either way. And so those can't be a reason to not stand on the principle of, okay, well, if you continue, and again, I don't think they should have started with jail. Like, yeah, okay, after ten times, okay, maybe, okay, maybe after twelve times. But at a certain point you have to escalate the penalties, you know, like you can't continue to do the same.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Thing on this one. I just see specifically this one, not other stuff that the law is dealing with, but specifically this issue. I just think that it would give him personally too. I think he's, he doesn't like the position he's in. I think he doesn't like going to the court every day. I think he's, he's tired of it. I think he's, he doesn't like that the facts aren't in his favor when the more that these witnesses that are from his internal, uh, side come out with. And so I do think that this would be one, because here's what I also think. Like most people that are kind of yellers and screamers, after a while it kind of, it kind of wears off and people start here, stop hearing it as much. And that's what I think.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Like you're still waiting on that.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: No, what I'm saying is when, when, you know, in 2017, 2018, when Trump was on Twitter and all that and he's, he's screaming at people and all that, I think it was a, it was like more new, right? It was a newer thing, like, oh, my God. Now when he's doing what is technically is contempt of court and posting on true social, which, you know, does, barely has a couple hundred thousand people on it type of thing, what I'm saying is he's like a crazy man shaking his fist at this guy at this point. So that's kind of what I'm saying is specifically this one. I feel like if they were to jail him for a day or two, that gives him some, his crazy looking self some sort of legitimacy. I'd rather they let him keep blowing in the window, let him keep selling sneakers and bibles and crying for money to billionaires, you know, and having these fundraisers and making it appear that he's just what he is. He's a fish flapping on land and just grabbing at straws. If they, if they put him in jail for a night or two, all of a sudden it's back to, oh, see, the big bad system and the victim. And I just think that, but again.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: That would get people saying that now that's happening now it's still the big bad system. I just think you have more focus.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: On than the contempt of court.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Did you read the statement after the 10th contempt of court? Oh, this is just, you know, Joe Biden and partisan. And that's what they're saying now about the fines. Like they're saying the same stuff so well, but I mean, I think, you know, we've had that discussion. So, I mean, I don't want to be, of course, but, you know, I mean, and again, I can understand why you think, and I think you understand, you know, we both understand why the other person's coming down where they do. But, you know, it's just that it is a matter where reasonable minds can disagree. It really is a matter of, I think, where you prioritize playing or where you think is playing into the hands of the person that's trying to buck the system, you know, and that's kind of, do you think you're playing into their hand by putting, making a hard line and saying, I'm not going to continue to let you, you know, take over the system? Or it's like, hey, I don't want to draw more attention to this than I, than I think I need to. So I'm going to bend a little bit to try, to, try to keep the peace if I think I can still keep the peace piece, so to speak. So, but it's a difficult question, is what I think that illustrates. And so we're gonna see how, like, the judge, this was number ten, there's gonna be a number eleven and then a number twelve. And so we'll see how the, let's say this.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: If he puts him in jail, we'll do another show on it.
Then we can follow up with how the public is reacting, but we know.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: How the public's gonna react. Again, I think sometimes you have to do things, even though if you know that the reaction's not gonna be exactly what you want, sometimes you gotta do it, you know, like, and so the public reaction wasn't great when you know it, fill in the blank. But if that's what the law calls for or whatever, then you gotta do it sometimes, or else you risk making the system being about the whims of people instead of about the rule of the law. So, but I think we can wrap from there. Thanks for joining us on part one of this discussion. Part two of this week's discussion will be coming up, so be sure to check that out as well.
All right, our second topic this week, we're looking at consciousness and some recent publications and, well, recent over in the past, let's say five to ten years, and just further development of the idea that consciousness, which is something we look at human consciousness, and we understand that to be like our awareness of ourselves internally, externally, and our ability to contemplate these things, so to speak, contemplate our existence and so forth, whether that in our brains it may be a byproduct of entropy, which is, from a physics standpoint, the tendency of systems to move from order to disorder. So that happening in our brain and consciousness is like a byproduct of that. From what we know now. This is still stuff that we're still being developed because you can't get into animals heads. But consciousness is something that, at least to the extent that we have it, is a human phenomenon. Now, you can get into primates and so forth, question whether or not they have it to some degree or other animals. And, you know, there are far out theories that everything has consciousness and so forth, even inanimate objects. So, but we're not going to get into all that. Just, I know, Tunda, you, you look at and we've had conversations, you know, from a scientific standpoint just on entropy and systems and so forth. And so I thought this one, you know, this was something I sent to you and just like, hey, you know, what was your reaction? So what did. What was your kind of initial takeaway on this concept of consciousness being a byproduct of entropy in our brains?
[00:41:58] Speaker B: And I just think that's a fascinating way to look at it. And let's say hypothesis someone throws out there, because I know that from when we did our show on the James Webb telescope, I remember that that telescope is so advanced, it's starting to make certain observations like that.
There's some theories now that time might be basically, like, much different than we perceive, that everything is actually happening all at once, the past, the future, and this idea of infinite versions of yourself and all that. And that our view of time, what they call the arrow of time, that time only goes one direction, is our brain's way of basically making sense of that. And I think that that kind of, to me, melds with this entropy idea and that basically, entropy and time are somewhat related because without the. The fact of entropy, you couldn't have time. And I guess without time, entropy wouldn't be able to display itself.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: So, yeah, the arrow of time going, you know, because that's. The. Entropy implies a progression. You know, you're going from point a, where there's order, to point b, where there's less order, to point c, where there's less order and so forth. So that implies that linear time nature.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, the article that is, does a good example of, I think, just for the audience here, explaining entropy from. From that idea of a low entropy state. They said, you know, like, if you broke an egg open and put it in a bowl, everything, that's low entropy because you've got the yolk there, you've got the white there, you've got the shell in your hand, you know? But once you scramble that egg up, that's high entropy. That's a lot of disorder. And the reality is, and that's why I like this scrambled egg example, because once you scramble an egg, you can unscramble it. And so that's the idea of the arrow of time. You can't undo that entropy once you go from a low entropy state to a high entropy state. And so the idea is that, I mean, the study they did. And that's why they did a good job in the article acknowledging that their sample size was only nine people and that, you know, this is. Yeah, they were limited of an idea. Yeah, but they're not trying to say that this is absolute fact. It requires a lot more study. But the idea, I guess they studied people, like, from when they were sleeping to when they were awake, certain thing. And the way that the brain reacts, you know, when we're awake, we're in a much higher entropy state than when we're asleep.
And, you know, when you're asleep, you're not really contemplating time the same way you are when you're awake. So, you know, I thought it was very interesting.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: Well, and if you, if you think of a dream state, also, time doesn't work in the same way that it does when you, like, when we're awake and conscious, you know, and asleep is kind of unconscious in that sense. You know, like, that's the way it's termed to me. The first thing I think you got to really to look at here is that is the acknowledgement, which, you know, people are aware of, but you just don't think about that often, is that we don't know where consciousness comes from. Like, this is a, hey, here's an idea. Let's test this. This is, you know, scientific method and so forth in terms of trying to understand and get more information on that question. And this is, I think that the allusion to the James Webb telescope and our discussion on that not too long ago is a good one in the sense that what we talk about there, and I think the same applies here, is that as the ability and the capability of measuring improves, then our understanding of things evolves. That's kind of the necessary implication of science. As long as our society and our culture is set up in a way to be able to receive and incorporate new information. Sometimes, you know, you have societies and cultures that new information is not welcome, and so that stuff is pushed out and people get killed if they challenge the status quo with better measurement and so forth. So we, that's our society allows for dynamic dynamicism in that sense that it's okay, well, we have better measurement. So the idea that they're measuring the states of entropy in your brain is better measurement. Now, if you look at the idea that entropy is how our brains will generate consciousness, I think that it makes a lot of sense in the sense that the state of disorder that things will progress towards will affect how our brain processes what's around us and what we know is all of our senses and so forth are pulling in all this information. And then our brains try to make. Try to make order of that. We try to what our bodies or, excuse me, our brains naturally try to create, you know, when we see stars, we see constellations and so forth. And so your illusion to the universe being as well, like when our body, or, excuse me, when our senses are pulling in all this information, and then our brains are then taking that information and saying, okay, let's create some type of ordered system again, constellations, seeing things in clouds or just a forest or whatever. Then how time progresses and how we experience that is that eventual disorder.
Another analogy I'll have then I'll kick it back to you. Would be culture as well, like cultures tend to. And then this would be collections of conscious individuals tends to progress from a state of order to a state of disorder, and then a reorganization into a new order, and then that progressively deteriorates and so forth. So I think that just the idea that what our observation and how our. How we're perceiving things and how these things are organized is something that is subject to the concept of entropy, which is a physics thing, is a good direction that they should continue going down. Basically, it's kind of my takeaway, like, yeah, tell me more. You know, try to study this more, because obviously, the limitations of the study, this isn't definitive, but it's an interesting thought process and an interesting kind of hole to keep digging and saying, hey, let's keep digging in here and seeing what we see, because this may come into play and interplay with a lot more things than we think.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's a great point you make about, you know, like, societies, the rise and fall of empires. One could say, you know, the star exploding, the supernova. Right? That creates a whole new set of things in the galaxy. So it's really a fascinating way to perceive how or think about how our brains and how we evolved. Like, you're talking about consciousness, and you're right. I mean, I'm trying to think and define consciousness, and I can't.
And it goes back to me. We did a show now, this was a couple years ago about how humans have equated either our mind or our body, how it works based on the. Whatever the main technology is at that time. So there was a time thousands of years ago that people thought of the internal workings of the body as, like, a flowing water or river, because a lot of the technology at that time was hydro related, like dams and all that kind of stuff. And today, we think of the human brain and how our bodies work more like a machine or a computer. And, you know, these kind of conversations just are a good reminder that we are so complex. I don't think we are even near having a computer or AI become like we are just because of things like that. I mean, think about what we're saying, if we're even near going in the direction of what this stuff really is. The idea that time is actually not linear and not going forward at all times like an arrow, that everything is already there, future and past. But our feeling of time is a result of how our brains deal with being in this universe that's so complex I can't even go, I can't even go past fathoming just that. So it's just, to me, it's an.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Inherent, there's an inherent limitation because, and this is, quote Emerson, we're living in it.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: Well, but also observe something you're inside.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: That's an excellent point. It's hard to get perspective of the storm when you're in the middle of it. But also just our hardware. Our hardware, like Emerson Pugh, you know, the famous quote, if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. And so we're trying to, with the machinery that we have. We're trying to then understand how that machinery works. And so there's an inherent limiting principle there. Now, as we continued, again, this is where we go into tools of measurement and how that's so important with science when we get to the tools of measurement. And then that's going to be, that might be moving forward, that might be AI being able to analyze us and so forth. But as our tools of management get better, we're going to be in a situation where we can get a better understanding of this in the future, more than what we would be able to grasp just with our existing hardware, with our brains and our own consciousness. So there's possibility of learning more, you know, like more so than there has been in the past. We'll see where that goes. But this is an interesting direction.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah, but ignorance is bliss, so I'll be fine.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: Just, well, that's the other question. Does knowing more make things better or happier? And the answer is not always yes. So, yeah, we have to worry about that as well. So, but no, I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Winlana.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
