Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the recent reports coming out of Arizona that the partisan review of the 2020 election results actually show what all the evidence has shown so far that Joe Biden won. And we're also going to consider whether this or anything matters anymore as far as what people are going to do and what people believe.
And later on we're going to consider some pretty counterintuitive research which suggests that free time is making people less happy.
Joining me today is a man that all he does is get dough, spit flows and try to stay out of trouble. Tunde. Ogon. Lana Tunde. You ready to knock this joint out?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Always knock it out the box.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: All right, all right.
Now we're recording this on September 27, 2021.
And yeah, this has been a pretty interesting week or so. This past week was pretty interesting.
This reporting was coming out that draft reports or excuse me, draft conclusions or of the review that was taking place, the so called audit in Arizona of the 2020 election results were showing that Biden did in fact win. And this was a highly partisan review and also a centerpiece of Donald Trump's big lie that he won the 2020 election.
And this was actually supposed to provide the first bit of proof that you know of Trump's claim. You know, because everywhere else they had looked for proof, had they come up empty, it just, you know, the evidence all was saying the same thing. So instead this thing shows what everybody had said all along. Well, everybody who was looking at the evidence had said all along that Biden actually won. And this thing is actually, they're saying it's showing a larger margin of victory for Biden than previously believed.
So to get us going, Tunde, what is really going on here is stop the steal a genuine even if misplaced belief or is this just a grift and people, politicians are going to fundraise on it or give contracts, you know, to whatever companies, their favorite companies or their friends to come in and do audits and just taxpayer money, you know, here, here, have a million dollars, have 50 million, have a couple hundred thousand dollars.
You know, is this prep work for, for the next coup attempt? I mean what are there people who genuinely don't believe and they need to be convinced by all these audience like what's going on, man?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Well, it's funny cause I need to find friends like that that can just throw me a few hundred Thousand or a few million bucks just to audit something.
And it's funny cause you alluded to.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: This with the same answer.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And you alluded to this in a private conversation recently.
If they were serious about audits, wouldn't they hire firms like Deloitte?
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: PwC, you know, like firms that actually do audits at major levels for that.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Serious people hire if they need serious audits.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Exactly.
Not code ninjas or whatever it was.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: For their first audit.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So the thing is. So let me answer the multi pronged question here. So the answer is, I think there's probably a lot of different ingredients in this stew. Let me put it that way. I do think that what we're seeing here is coming together of grifters and true believers. Let's just put it that way. Right.
You and I might believe that enough audits counts, whatever you want to call it have been done.
The 63 or 67 federal and appellate court judges that tossed out all these claims, most of the judges actually being pointed by former President Trump.
And the absolute facts that we heard, the President's own attorneys, when confronted by these judges to actually show proof of what they have in terms of any evidence, not even like smoking gun evidence, but just anything, even anything on the.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Periphery, something to substantiate with.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: They all fall down and can't bring in anything. And then we already talked on other shows about the news networks that then had to take people off air who kept pushing the lie because they didn't want to deal with being sued by the voting machine companies, so on and so forth. So to your point, there's clearly enough evidence for any rational, fair minded person who may be upset about the election results, but understands how to critically think and look at, you know, general evidence of things to say, yes, this election now is one of the most scrutinized probably in the history of the United States. And it appears that Joseph R. Biden is the legitimate president. And let's finish off with this one we're talking about here in Arizona. After all of this and six, seven months of this mess and wasted money and time for the state of Arizona, they actually came back with a result that showed, and they acknowledged this, that Joe Biden had 99 more votes in his favor than the actual election showed. So they actually showed that he won by slightly higher margin than the actual election results show. So, so that's what I would say is I think there the grifter crowd is there and I look forward to definitely getting in the weeds on that. But I do think what they're doing is they're preying on a crowd that is legitimately misled and in some cases, legitimately delusional. I mean, you know, I'm not here to make fun of people that don't like Biden.
And that's what I want to be. Careful, I'm not lumping all Republicans.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: There's a big gap between not liking Biden.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Correct. And that's what I want to be.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Believe in everything.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Remember, everything is so hyperpolarized in today's conversations that just by saying that if somebody doesn't agree with Biden, just by.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Saying Joe Biden's a human being, you're.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Like, you might have put him already. They might assume on this conversation, we're lumping them in with the guy at QAnon who had the bear outfit that got arrested in the Capitol on January 6th. Because I have a lot of good friends, close people in my life that voted for president, you know, former President Trump, they didn't like Biden at all.
And, you know, they got caught up in some of this kind of stuff after the election of believing it was stolen.
I think most of them at this point have. Have backed off the ledge. But some I know deep down still believe in a lot of the conspiracy theories. And so. And that's my point. Like, you know, I think there's a spectrum of this.
And, you know, it's sad.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Let me harmonize, because I feel what you're saying. But I think actually this is a grift.
I think this actually reveals that it's a grift.
But what's happened is that it's the grift married with modern propaganda, modern marketing techniques. And so you end up with, like, there are people who know at the top of the food chain, so to speak, that know that they're not going to be able to prove that the election was stolen.
They've known that all along. Remember, Trump's plan, if he lost in 2016, was to say that it was stolen and to do this, then he wanted to pull this string then. But he won. And so he was like, oh, well, never mind. And so this was just his play.
If he lost, he was going to use the loss to propel him to something else. And so that's what I think we're doing. But what we're seeing is, and you mentioned this to me offline, which I really saw this as like, okay, yeah, that's very insightful in this, is that you're looking at, basically, it's like we talked about a while back, this propaganda model, the Rand Institute, studied the firehood of falsehood. And so fire hose of falsehood. And so what is happening basically is you have at the top, it's like, okay, we're not going to concede defeat no matter what. Like, Donald Trump's not the first person to ever lose an election, but he has made it his goal to make it, to turn this into something that he can perpetually fundraise on, perpetually stay relevant with, all by not admitting that he lost and then having behind him an apparatus that can push these claims, even without evidence, without being challenged over and over again. So I think that a lot of people have gotten caught up in it, but that's because they have been, you can almost say, duped, so to speak. But some of them, they're willing, you know, like, it's not like people aren't willing for this message, but they've been overwhelmed with it. Like, I've seen reports that 36% of Americans don't think that Joe Biden has rightfully been elected. Yeah, I think they've been overwhelmed with messaging. This is what I think we're seeing. We've seen this before, like for example, in 20, in 2000, Al Gore believed it was important, even though he lost by 530something votes.
Like not thousands, but 530something votes. And the Supreme Court told Florida to stop counting. He said, it's important for me to concede, be gracious, because we need the country to get behind a president. We need, as a country, it's important for us to do this. I didn't get that at the time. Now I get why that's important and why we see with these transfers of power that when you lose or when you're, when you're declared the loser, it's important that, that you say, okay, fine, you may not agree, but you say, okay, well, we'll either, we'll live to fight another day or whatever. You know, you concede and you move forward. And so basically that norm has been turned on its head in this case. And apparently to me it shows. Like, this isn't unique here. Anybody could have pulled this card at any point if they didn't value the democracy, but they just didn't because they did value the democracy and you know, like, they kept it moving. So that's what I think is going on, really. I think the grift is full flow. But everybody who, or most of the people who are in this, of this mindset aren't a part of the grift. They're the ones who are donating all this money that's going to who knows what.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And I would say, because you said a few things there that I want to just kind of unpack for a bit. So one is you mentioned the ecosystem, you know, one of my favorite words, and it's the ecosystem of the media combined with the web apparatus of this type of mindset, let me put it that way, because I don't even want to call it anything political like conservative or anything like that, because that's a disrespect to genuine conservatives.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, this is.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: This is. Yeah. This is like the people that claim that they're doing things in the name of Islam, like killing other people. Right.
That's not what religion preaches, especially when they kill Muslims. So, you know, like they bombed their own people. So this is just as stupid, you know, and just as asinine of people that are claiming to be, quote, unquote, either conservative or they're patriotic, but yet they are actively blowing up and helping to make their democracy more dysfunctional.
So what I would say is you're right about Al Gore. And as you're saying it, it brings to mind that not only did he lose that election by only 537 or 13 votes. I know. It was less than 600 votes.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it was less than, like you said, 500 was the number.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah, change. 500 and change. And so it was.
They didn't even. We don't even know who won that election, honestly. Because remember, like you said, they stopped the counting of the votes.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: So we never actually at a federal government told Florida.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Florida was trying to recount and the federal government said stop or else George Bush. Well, hold on, hold on. I always got to say this. Or else George Bush may suffer irreparable harm. That was what the court said. It's wild.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So the bottom line is, is that the people who think that everything is deep state and about, you know, the unconstitutionality of whenever somebody burps or farts, that's in office.
You know, it's amazing how short memories are. We're talking 20 years ago, 21 years ago, this happened. So.
So, so, yeah, that seems pretty unconstitutional and kind of usurping the rights of voters when you don't even allow a major state whose electoral colleges will decide a victory to actually finish counting their.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Votes in the way they see fit.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And looking back on it, I mean, hanging chads and all that stuff we remember, maybe it was more Important. We could have just done a full reelection like in the state of Florida, just do a whole new vote if it was that bad, you know, like just wait a month and say, look, this is important for our country. But in any case, to not dwell on that, it's a good example, like you said.
And what I'm going to say is it's a good example that democracy not only is messy, but it's not easy to keep. And again, we've said this, alluded to this several ways, that we always used to be taught that and taught even things from the founding fathers, that the democracy is only as strong as you make it by the way you behave in it. And I think the things we're discussing today are a direct reflection on that. And we're watching this moment where certain actors are trying to bend a new reality into what most of us consider actual reality. And it goes back to when the former communications director in the first week of President Trump's administration, when they asked her about the big lie at the time, which was the crowd size of the inauguration, she looked at the camera and said, well, we're just gonna deal in alternative facts. And so again, this narrative has been coming and being pushed for a long time, which is if they don't, if certain people in this country don't like the reality, they just change the narrative and the reality for it.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: No, they don't change the narrative. They just subscribe to a made up reality that's different than changing. There are ways to spin things and change narratives. The, what we're seeing actually is saying, okay, I don't like a blue sky, so you know what, the sky has to be red. And what we, what I identify, I mean, actually through communications I've had with you, just as far as you, you get email, fundraising emails and stuff. I don't really get stuff like that. You get a lot of those things and it's perpetual now. It's constant, it's all constant outrage about something. You got to give somebody money. And like we're like not even near an election right now. Like we're more than a year out from the next election and it's constant fundraising. And it's like, if you're going to be constantly fundraising, you got to constantly have reasons to tell people that they should giving you money. So it's this constant. We got to keep having things to say, stop. The steel's been, you know, the head of a great fundraising campaign where it's just so much money and nobody knows where it's going. Because that's not like they're overturning any results, you know, like, it's just like, oh yeah, you know, we're just showing you what we already knew. And so what I see with that, like it used to be the swamp, so to speak, was fat.
What is it, you know, that you take tax money and then you give it to your friends and so forth and like, so you're basically using the government to. Or you give it to your friends, military contractors, whatever it is, you know, like military industrial complex. That's, that's, that's the normal corruption we're used to seeing is first you pay taxes and then the taxes, you know, aren't going to build a highway. They're going to, you know, like build something that we know we don't need to spend $500 on a toilet or something like that. Now there's that stuff still too. But now they're just hitting people up all the time for, for 20 bucks and 30 bucks all the time. And it's like, well, so the grift has gone direct to the people along with this marketing style, this fire hose of falsehood marketing style where you constantly hit people with things that aren't true, but you hit them in ways like the firehood of falsehood model basically has identified certain tenets that it doesn't matter if what you're saying is true, but if you present it in a certain way and if you follow certain tenets. Russia is an innovator here, but we've picked it up here too as well. Our political parties really have picked it up. And if you present information a certain way, regardless if it is true, then you can move your audience to believe it.
And so it's you, you combine that with the perpetual fundraising. And that's why I see a grift, I see a. And if people are on the inside, there's nothing I can say that's going to change their mind. They're going to keep giving their money even though they're not going to. It's not like that money is going towards anything other than putting somebody's just putting it in their pocket or giving it to their friend.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think it's. What's interesting is that like I learned that this Cyber Ninjas, sorry, not Code Ninja, but Cyber Ninja is the name of that company that was one of the lead firms in this audit in the state of Arizona. In the Maricopa county audit they were raised 5.7 million in order to carry out, you know, Their audit and all this activity.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: And they got paid by the government as well. The government of Arizona as well.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. But the money they raised was off the small donors. So it goes to your point about, you know, this kind of, this, this constant hitting of people for small amounts, but if you hit enough of them, you get enough money to disrupt. And I also believe, by the way.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Add into that, remember, Trump was raising money for this as well, but he wasn't putting any money up for the actual recount. So he was, was generating revenue from this as well.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and remember, you know, in December, I think of 2020, he had to give his campaign, had to refund 537,000. Thousand. No, something 67 million to 530,000Americans because of.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Well, that was, because they were, that was the checkbox where they. Yeah, it was reoccurring.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it was reoccurring. Another. Yeah, so.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: So.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: So it's just, you know, it's amazing and I guess, you know, and that's where I feel like maybe it's a symbiotic relationship and, you know, misery loves company, meaning people. I bet you that people that got grifted on and I got a refund from donating to his campaign, but being lied to about how much that they were gonna keep taking still are giving money to them today. So it reminds me, because we've talked about this too, the way that our politics is going is going kind of the religiosity route where people, rational thought is leaving and just it's good or evil, my side versus your side, my God is better than your God kind of thing. And so if you really think about.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: It, it's related to, remember that's related. Because if you constantly tell people every week that, or multiple times a day in some cases that whatever happening is the end of the world. And if we don't address this, you keep people on these high, in this high tension game, then they do start, look, they start to believe you that all of this stuff is life or death. And it never occurs to them that, oh well, all this stuff that they said was life or death, actually, it wasn't life or death. You just keep them on this constant edge. And that's what religion is for basically, is to find peace in that life or death. I have my hero, you know, my, my hero will save me in these trying times type of thing.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Well, and that, that goes back to then, you know, what leads people to behave in a way like them storming their Capitol on January 6th. Right. Because you're right. The religiosity of politics now has led a lot of Americans to believe that the other side is so bad that in the event that they even get power, like, literally, our lives are gonna end.
And it's sad, because when we've talked about it in other discussions, having a healthy kind of conservative and liberal flanks in our political system is actually a good thing. It helps us all.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: It's center left and center right is what we want to have in terms of trying. You want the center left to try to move you forward and the center right to kind of make sure that you don't go too far too fast, so to speak. And that is like Adam Kinzinger, you know, was talking about that. Actually, he had just learned about that in terms of. Oh, you know, like, it's. But, yeah, you need both. You know, like, you need both. You need the person to come up with the new ideas, and you need the person to vet the new ideas and figure out, you know, where the holes are and where to make it so that the new ideas can. The rollout basically can work. And you don't look too much before. Or leap before you look.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: And there's. There's another thing I want to point to, too, that that's kind of indirectly related to this, because I think some of this grifting, and not just the grifting part, because obviously there's people that. That, like, I think Steve Bannon's a great example. Right. He was caught on that. He was. He was arrested while on a $30 million yacht of a Chinese owner, which is an interesting wrinkle in itself, but.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Considering his rhetoric and, you know, rhetoric.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: He'S been a part of. So it shows addition, genuineness of people like him. But also.
But he had embezzled, basically ran a Ponzi scheme, embezzled 25 million from small donors about, you know, because he said that but that money was going to build the wall, and law enforcement found that it wasn't. He just was taking it and spending it on yachts.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: On yachts. So.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: And that's my point. Like, these people are constantly stealing from their own people. And that's what reminded me also of the religiosity, because whether megachurches like the Tammy Faye Baker and Jim Baker sagas, you know, remember when we were kids, or the televangelists that people give money to. And I want to be very careful here, because I'm clear. I'm not making a knock on religion. I'm saying that there are certain religious Figures and leaders that have abused their position and the trust in their congregation.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Well, I think you can say it like this. You don't have to tie it to. Well, let me add this to you because what you're saying is we've seen this scenario where people have stolen money from people who would identify as their people, but their people don't actually hold it against them. You know, I think that's what you're talking about, where it's like, it's kind of like they're like, oh, well, you know, their people are seemingly not as up in arms about being stolen from as we might think. As I might be if somebody stole from me.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's all I was going to say. Is this transitioning, that now kind of what we've seen in religion the last 30, 40, probably forever, but, you know, at least in our lifetime, what I remember now is really transition to politics. And it's interesting because, you know, I used to look at regions of the world, like, let's say certain Middle Eastern countries, where they have these Shia and Sunni fights between the Muslims. And kind of I'm looking over there saying, man, you guys are all Muslims. What's the big deal here? You know, and, you know, you find out that the real difference between both of them is one group believes that Ali is the direct descendant of Muhammad and the other believes that Ali was like his nephew or something. And, you know, and you wonder, like, really, people have been fighting for a thousand plus years over this.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You got the same thing in Christianity too, though. No, but my point is Catholics and the Protestants. Exactly. And my point, stuff that's happening battle.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: And that's my point, though. This is. That's religion. And one of the things that, you know, Americans traditionally prided ourselves on is the Constitution.
That's supposed to take a lot of the emotion out of it and the tribalism and allow us to focus on America as a country. And whether it was your favorite president or not, that person's job is to serve and then kind of move on one day either lose the first election or they have done their eight years.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: So let me jump in with that because I think that you make a good point. Like the Constitution is supposed to be the thing that we're all supposed to be the proudest of. And when people take their oath of office or the military takes their oath of enlistment, that's to the Constitution. That's not to a party, a political party or an office. They don't take it to the president or take an oath to the Congress or whatever. And so that is supposed to be the thing that we hold highest. But I think that that has deteriorated, at least amongst a certain segment of Americans where that is not the most important thing. And in fact, you know, what's interesting, though, is that it always still is presented in those terms. And so that's still in there somewhere. That's why I look back at the propaganda model, the marketing style even, of how people are getting information, how people are influenced. Because it's not like people just come out and say, screw the Constitution. It's not working for us anymore. Even though that's what their actions are actually showing, they don't say it. They still try to couch what they're doing in terms of constitutionality and all these other things. It's just. It's for an audience that won't think about, well, hold on. The Constitution, you know, like, under the Constitution, these issues are solved already. This is over. You know, so.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Well, but that's. I mean, the January 6th is a great example. Right?
They went. People stormed the Capitol to try and stop a constitutional process of counting the electoral votes to certify the election win of Joe Biden.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: So it goes back to kind of like religion. That's what I mean.
When you allow this side of our humanity to creep into these things, irrationality wins the day and reason doesn't. And I think that you look at the readings of the Founding Fathers, that's why in the Constitution, in the First Amendment, they said that the Congress will not legislate a religion in this country. That's why separation of church and state was put in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Because, like you just alluded to, they're coming from a Europe that was divided between Catholics and Protestants. And you got the whole Martin Luther thing, then you got the Anglican Church. So the bottom line is they understood this. They understood that these passions can run the risk of derailing a society over nothing. Over stuff that is conspiracy and suspicion. I mean, we even had, let's say, the Salem witch trials. That was before the founding of the Constitution, before 1790 and all that stuff. So they had seen that here in.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: The U.S. yeah, they knew. I mean, and George Washington railed on partisanship. You know, George Washington was like, yo, partisanship's gonna send us to the same place. But his warnings weren't heeded. Or maybe the partisanship is almost inevitable. You just don't wanna have the extreme partisanship. I'll tell you as far as the answer to the question, I think this will continue as long as it bears fruit, which is probably the obvious answer. And so the bigger question I have is how much longer the can this hand be played? How much longer can it be if I lose and if I win an election, I'll just take power and we'll just keep it moving. If I lose the election, then we're going to say it was a fraud and we're going to continually raise money off of it, we're going to continually rile up our supporters on it, and we're going to bombard them with this propaganda style that immerses them in this concept that it was fake even without any evidence. And again, the propaganda style, you can't really argue against the efficacy of that because that's been demonstrated and it doesn't requ. Things can be flatly false. And I'll put the link into it again into the show notes we discussed it before. We'll probably discuss it again as far as in more detail, as far as the actual components of this propaganda style. But it has been demonstrated to work over and over again and it does not require truthful information.
In fact, one of the things that's identified is that it's easier if you don't do truthful information because being first is more important and because, you know, just the way the mind works, but being first is more important. And if you have to wait for facts, if you have to wait for truth, then whoever, somebody else can get out there with stuff that isn't true. You can just make up stuff quicker than you can verify stuff. So it's, I think that as long as this thing bears fruit. And I actually, I mean, since I bring that up, I would say that ultimately there's going to have to be, there's going to be a reckoning. You know, like, we've had them in this country. You mentioned this actually when we were preparing for this show. And if you look at like the Civil War as a reckoning, like, people decided after the election of Abraham Lincoln that they just weren't going to try to be, they didn't want to be a part of this country anymore. They, they were insurrectionist. And, you know, they were like, we're out. You know, and so now they didn't try to rush the Capitol. They just said, look, we're out, we're leaving now. We also had something similar which I said, like you brought up, which was a great point with Smedley Butler. And you know, during the FDR Presidency where he was approached by illiberal forces, people who were anti liberal and wanted to establish more of an oligarch type system and saying no, hey, we want to overthrow. We wanted to have a coup. Mr. Butler, we want you to be the leader when we do this. And he turned them in. They thought he was a critic of fdr, so they thought he would be down. He turned him in. But these weren't just guys on the side of the street, like these were very powerful. These were the, you know, the barons of the day, you know, so to speak. And so they had decided at that point, hey, we're out, we're not here for. And that was about all of the economic reform stuff of the New Deal. And so it's not like it can never happen here where you're just going to have Americans being like, you know what, we're out, you know, we're not doing this anymore.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because I could hear as you say that, you know, so many people have been convinced that things like wearing a mask and being, asking people to wear a mask because of a pandemic is literally like violating your constitutional rights. And I think this is the result of us not teaching civics for 40 years in school. People don't understand what the Constitution is. They don't just like the Bible. That's what I mean. It's becoming like religion where some of the most zealot people that are religious really, they don't read the Bible or their Quran or their Torah or they only read it in a way to just self perpetualize whatever they already think of the religion. They don't actually.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Or they only hear what other people say is in it.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. And so, and I think that's where we're at with the Constitution. You know, it's like, it's like people just want to pull out of it what they want. But when something, you know, kind of doesn't go their way, then they just, you know, well this didn't go my way and I'm just going to blow it up. And so yeah, I think we have that risk that we do become like an Eastern European bloc country that it's just, you know, grifters rule the day, a kleptocracy. And you know, we're a illiberal constitutional republic. And you know what I mean? Because realistically we're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Well, Tucker Carlson was just saying how in Hungary, Hungary has basically that type of system and he was Saying, hey, that's a model for here. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he was called out by even some Republicans who are saying, hey, what are you talking? Romney was saying, what are you talking about?
[00:30:05] Speaker B: And that's the interesting thing because it's this fascism is an interesting system because it's only been tried a few times in the 20th century. And those were things like Mussolini's Italy, the Nazi Germany of the 30s.
And it seems like, and I'm not talking about now atrocities like the Holocaust. What I'm saying is it seems like that style of government in terms of where there's a blending between the uber wealthy and corporate owners and their friends in government.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: And what happened, it's like IG Farben in Hitler's Germany that was supplying the Zyklon B gas to the oil and gas for the railroads and the army tanks. But those were kind of like the grifters, those were the cronies who helped back Hitler getting into power and Goebbels and all those guys. Then you had the guys like Goebbels with the propaganda, right.
Hitting on marginalized groups like Jews who weren't big in the population in Germany, and also on groups like gypsies, gays, Catholics, others that were small enough in number that they couldn't really congregate to defend themselves. And then other people didn't want to become associated with them, to be on the bad side of kind of the society. And if you look at today's world, a lot of the fundraising. What's interesting, one of the articles I read to prepare for today, it was actually an article that was describing what the people who have been arrested for the January 6 riot and insurrection, what they actually have been saying in court, like their actual testimony, 100% of them, all of them, named Antifa as one of the reasons why they had to stop this, all this Biden win and all this stuff.
And it's interesting because Antifa is a great boogeyman and it's a perfect one because Antifa actually is just a loose federation of left leaning people that call themselves anti fascist. Right. But there's no central body.
And it's kind of like BLM in a way. We know there is a central BLM organization, but BLM is really again a confederacy or a conglomerate of people who believe in just things like ending racism and the justice system and stuff like.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: That, and among other things too. And so that's why. But there's no formal platform.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: It's kind of like the war on but it's like the war on terror. Terror, right. It's, it's very vague. So it allows people who get ginned up into this that now that the grifters. This is where the genius of it is. Unfortunately for our democracy, the grifters can just put out like the emails I share with you, Antifa, the left, blm, all this stuff, and it just creates an emotional response from a trigger inside of an individual. Instead of saying something like, china's going to invade us tomorrow. Well, people would say, well, hold on, that's a whole country. They're over there. Oh, we can look at them. You know what? The military hasn't said that we're at risk. You know, I don't really believe that. But when you've got this vague thing like an antifa, and there's no one really there defending Antifa, because they don't really exist in that way, to have like a platform to defend themselves then. And it's also like blm, like there's no defense for BLM because it's either like you get it or you don't type of thing, or you either look at that as such a threat to you or.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Hold on. No, it's. Even Antifa is even more of a shapeless figure because it's not like people get on television and say, yeah, I'm chapter head of Black Lives Matter and start talking about Black Lives Matter. You don't see that way. You don't see people on TV talking about, yeah, yeah, I run this section of Antifa and this is what we think. And, and we think that you guys are like nobody. There's never that, you know, like, it's like, it's, it's, it's a nameless, faceless, shapeless thing that you can make people afraid of. And some of the worst atrocities in the world, world history have always been about protecting people from nameless, faceless, shapeless boogeymen.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Correct. They really don't really. They're kind of like, remember that group ACORN that in the 08 election that was ACORN existed. I know, but that's what I mean.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Try to go to an antifa office.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Try to get somebody from Antifa on the pile. I'm telling you, it's, it's an enemy that you can basically create in the imagination of your followers. And so it.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: But that's why it's great for a grifter and a con man because.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: It never disappears. That's what I mean. It's like the war on Terror. And so the last thing I just wanted to say here, and you know, I've railed against this in private conversations, which is, you know, like, look up the words of Representative Paul Gosar, who's a U.S. congressman from Arizona who's been railing against this audit, the results, and that he has now proof that 750,000 ballots were discarded right after the election. So that this audit now from Maricopa county is baseless.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: And all this stuff, it was worthless. Now he's saying the audit was worthless. Yeah.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: So, but my point is, is like, and this is a serious, like, concern of mine and a serious question of mine.
He took an oath, like you said, as a U.S. congressman elected by, yes. People in his district in Arizona. But they didn't send him to his state capitol to deal just with Arizona. They sent him to the US Capitol to be a United States Congressman. He took an oath of the United States Constitution to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
At what point do we not look at him as a domestic enemy? He is actively lying. He is actively ginning people up to believe that their country and their democracy doesn't work in the way that it does work. At what point is he a cancer within our system? And do we look at impeaching a guy like this or putting him in jail for treason? I mean, that's what I mean. Like, at what point are elect, like, I get it. Like we're talking about that there could be, you know, the symbiotic dance and some are grifters, some are Marx and I get it.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: No, I.
That's a great question. Where is the line between.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Let me just finish this thought, though, because a person in the public sphere, like a regular citizen like me or you, that is watching television every night on the news and seeing people who are calling themselves newscasters with conviction in their eyes saying that the election was stolen and then interviewing elected officials who are serving in office right now, like Paul Gosar, like Ron Johnson, like a lot of them. I'm not even going to start naming them. Right. We all have seen them talk and they all play this footsie game.
And like, at what point are they not doing what Aldrich Ames did or what Lola Montez did or some of, you know, these are people for the audience. If you don't know these names. These were people caught spying for Russia or other countries or the Cubans who are working in the CIA and FBI and spying on our country and selling our secrets to China or some other country or Russia. They get put in Prison because they are actively subverting our country and they are helping our enemy. And that's from my point. Like, at what point? Like you're saying we've had now this third audit in Arizona that shows that Biden won by 99 votes more than they actually count in the election.
And all by groups that are fully supporting former President Trump.
There's no Democrat or liberal in those groups. And somehow now Paul Gosar is allowed to behave like this. Again, I just don't understand. Or elected officials that say that it was antifa and BLM storming the Capitol January 6th. Like, at what point is this not like they're enemies of their own country?
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Well, that's the question that nobody knows the answer to. Because in terms of, yeah, like they are actively undermining the functioning and the operation, the execution of the US Constitution.
It's almost like if you could show that Putin told them, Vladimir Putin told him to do this, then people would be comfortable saying, okay, we can't let them do this, but if they do it on their own volition, then what?
[00:37:58] Speaker B: I think we're beyond that. We had a three year investigation to show people that Vladimir Putin was trying to do some stuff in half the country just looks the other way.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: I'm just saying, like in terms of people want there to be a source of the bad that comes from the outside, not someone deciding to come from, not just deciding to do it on the inside. Like, I think people are very uncomfortable with that and I think we all should because other people's sensibilities, like, okay, well, the lie, the fudge, the exaggeration, like all of these things are slippery slopes. Slippery slopes in a society where you're supposed to have freedom of speech, you know, government's not supposed to be locked.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: Just remember, it's all Hunter Biden's fault.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: But I mean, I think it's a good question though. But the question is further than what you're saying. It's not just the people who are actively subverting it. It's the people who do not push back on the people actively subverting it. You know, like when there's people just let that happen and just say, oh well, hopefully these guys will just go away at some point. But they let them, they keep them on the platforms. Like, Liz Cheney didn't get on board with a lot of the things that we would consider to be dishonest. And so therefore she was punished by her party.
People who actually do dishonest things. Gosar is not about to be punished by his party or by the Congress in general.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: We'll see how. Hopefully it doesn't have to go too far before this is reined in.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: No, that's the understatement of the day.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think it's already gone too far.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but. But I don't know. I think we can move on from there.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: I was so warm and fuzzy in that conversation. I wanted to stay, but. You're right.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Well, I wanted to also get your thoughts on this second topic, which just seemed to be the most counterintuitive thing that you can imagine Most people. And this does the article we'll put in the show notes. It does discuss how free time is oftentimes considered in contrast with work. So you have work and then you have leisure work and free time and so forth. But what it gets into is how oftentimes because we work so much or other factors, the desire to make free time so fulfilling and so dope, basically we end up almost making like the free time becomes the standard. We can't reach the happiness we want to obtain. We can't get there. So we're disappointed with the leisure time. And so it's making people unhappy is the premise here. What was your reaction to this, man? Is this as crazy as it sounds? Are they onto something?
[00:40:32] Speaker B: No, they're onto something. It's amazing because what this does really is point out a lot of our humanity that how we have things like anxiety and we have cultures over time because they talked about what leisure was during the Roman days, all the way up till now, the Industrial age. And I think that part of the way we look at leisure, and I can even speak to some of my own feelings from different parts of my life, I think is reflected a lot from just the Industrial Age and how we've developed as humanity in terms of work.
So, you know, we're all conditioned to have a certain amount of time off per year. Right. In America it's two weeks. In Europe it's six weeks or eight weeks. But we all believe like, okay, well, I just had my two weeks vacation. Well, who really said that? What if I want to take six months off? You know, but in. Because of the way that the Industrial Age conditioned society where you had, you know, this is something that goes back to your world, right? Concentrated capital at the top, you know, you're talking about like the Carnegie's, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the people that had the big steel plants and people that.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Could afford to do a plant, you know.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Correct. And what happens is Then you had all the workers.
And what happened is the workers needed to work.
But in the early part of the 20th century called the 20s and the 30s, there became the kind of unions and the agreements between labor and capital. So that's when you started having things like a 40 hour work week and you know, overtime and then things like vacation. What was the agreement between labor and capital on something like vacation?
So the. Because, for example, during slavery, slaves worked six days a week, only had Sunday off and only had holidays like Christmas off. That was it.
So There was no two week break and there was no 40 hour work week. In that environment, there was no paycheck either. Yeah, exactly. But I'm just making a point that still, like leisure was something that human beings still deal with.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: I was just throwing that in, Alfredo, but go ahead.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah, and so what I'm saying is today we still operate from the hundred years ago kind of agreements between capital and labor as the industrial age reached one of its early heights. Right. The mass productions of the early 20s and 30s, like the model T, Ford and all that kind of stuff. So fast forward to today.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Well, let me say this actually, because what it is more so is that that was a kind of setup that worked well enough. Like before, those kind of agreements and kind of ways of operating were really finalized. There was a lot of violence. There was a lot, a lot, a lot of issues with, between capital and labor in terms of just the way things were happening.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: Like, so that was almost.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: You kind of got like a truce.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. It's like a compromise. Yeah, we'll coexist this way. And really that's been the pull and tug, ebb and flow between labor and capital since then. And so I think the issue we have and why this article is very interesting is we need time off and we need time to recharge.
But in today's society, we almost made to feel guilty by taking time off.
And it's a very interesting dynamic. And then I think I would say in the last 18 months, the pandemic even throws more of a monkey wrench into it because of the stay at home working. Are you really taking time off or you're not? And what is the definition?
[00:43:50] Speaker A: How do you even delineate? Yeah, how do you delineate between the time off and the time working?
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah, because I could have been working out of my house on Zoom for the last year and a half, but I didn't take a vacation either. So I'm kind of stressed out. But I don't know if I should be because I've been at home. There's all these new questions that kind of come up with how this works. And the last thing I'll say before I get off my high horses.
Compare this to other conversations we've had in the past about how humans split their time up, let's say in the days of the hunter gatherers, where in one, in a one week period, 80 to 90% of one's time might have been leisure.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Because the time it took to hunt and to forage for food was really all you did. And that didn't take too much time. If depending on which parts of the world he lived in and areas that were lush with forests and all that you might have hunted in the morning and you were back home in an hour and the rest of your day was yours.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: I mean, even with agriculture, you'd have peak times and then you'd have times when it wasn't much going on, you know. And so like, yeah, I think that, I think the frame you gave it was very interesting and very like, it was a good frame in terms of. It goes back to when we talked about just work itself. The concept of work as we perceive it now is a relatively recent thing in humanity. I thought, like, the thing that really stood out to me in this was the concept of trying to make leisure perfect, like making. Because I think this is something I've dealt with in my past, like going out and stuff. Like, particularly it hit me when I had kids and we got like, you know, me, my wife and I would get maybe, you know, we have a babysitter come, you know, once, once every couple of weeks or something like that. And I felt like, man, we get the babysitter, we got to get out, we got to have a great time. Because we can't just do this whenever we want, like we had done prior to kids, you know, we can just go out whenever we want. And it's like, oh, you know, sometimes it's cool, sometimes it's whatever, you know, whatever like it. But it's like, no, we got to go out, we got to have a good time. We, it has to be the best time ever. And my wife would get on me about it, like, oh, you know, why, why are you putting so much pressure on this? And I read this like, ooh, that, that's one for me. But the other one, the other piece that I've seen, you know, just in terms of this type of thing is the leisure time after work, where and then Again, this brings in with kids as well. Like you take care of the kids and so forth. And then finally you're done with work, you're done with the kids and you know, it's 9 o' clock or something like that. And it's like, really if you want to be well rested, you know, and you want to really get a good jump on the next day and all that stuff, you should probably start winding down. But it's like, man, my day has been on. Everything else prior to this, I want to do some stuff for me, you know, I want to just have my own time. And then you end up staying up late. And it was like, well, but you didn't even need to stay up late. But it's just kind of a mental thing where you just, I gotta squeeze in some leisure time here because all my other time has been dedicated. So both of those aspects were touched on here, which I found both of those to be like just something I could relate to. And it's like, well, what are you supposed to do about this then? You know, how do you come off of the ledge? Because I mean, we're human beings, you know, and we are conditioned in this society.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one of the things that this article is great because what it was a good reminder. And you know, I've been trying to do this more as I've gotten older and just, you know, life experiences is just be more present.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: I think that's one of the things that causes all of us a lot of anxiety is not knowing how to really just be present and be still. And I mean, I'm literally talking like today I was walking my dog and I had my headphones on and listening to some audiobook and I actually realized, you know what, I'm not being present. Let me turn this off. Yeah. And it was cool because I walk and I look up and there was these two blue jays going at it, you know, just having a little fight about something in the tree above me. And I said there and watched them and they were beautiful. Just blue jays, just good looking birds. And it was fun. I was like, wow, this is great. And it was just.
And what I'm saying is, because if you're taking time off like that, you can just be content. You know what I mean? Yeah. And yeah, obviously I like going on vacation, I like doing certain things. But I think you're right. Like this, this like the need to kind of pack in your leisure time with a whole bunch of stuff then creates more stress or potentially and then the other thing I thought of too, and just some of this life experience about being present is again, it goes back to our conditioning. And that's what I mean by this kind of this, this, the industrial age. Because if you look at also what happened during that era of 100 years ago in the industrial age and all that, you know, some, something that's a region that's not far from us became popular for the uber wealthy, which was Palm beach, the island of Palm Beach. And it's because in the starting and let's say the 20s, the uber wealthy, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, those type of families would come down in the winter from the Northeast, from their homes in Connecticut, New York, so on and so forth, and they would spend the winter in Palm Beach. And so what happened is to the higher, high net worth crowd, the ability to actually take leisure time became a status symbol. Because that's like. And that's what I mean by humanity is interesting because it's kind of like today how people now use, let's say, selfies on social media as a status symbol. Like, oh, I'm off, but I'm climbing a mountain, or I'm at the top of the tallest building in Hong Kong.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: Still performing. Yeah, correct.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: I'm performing. Exactly. I'm showing all you guys how good my life is. And that inevitably will create some stress in someone because they're not really being present. And I think we've all seen that. How many times have we been somewhere we see a mom who's being a good mom, but she's taking pictures of her kids so much at a birthday party.
You realize she's actually not just enjoying the moment of watching her kid enjoy the birthday party. Yeah, she's more worried about trying to capture the moment for a future thing and instead of being present. And so I think that's why, I mean, it's very interesting conversation because it involves so much of our humanity and itself. Just like regular, I guess, humanity. Right. We don't realize that we make ourselves miserable a lot of times.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Yeah, well, because it's the constructs that we. The constructs that we operate in is kind of what does it. It's like we don't intend to make ourselves unhappy, but we engage in all these constructs are all we know. And I think the way you're putting it is a good way because the kind of the takeaway from the article was the need to change your attitude towards these things and, you know, to approach them in a different way. And that's how you can try to get more enjoyment out of them. And so I think that's a good way to look. I mean, just being aware of the concept, though, can lead you, can allow you to at least walk down that path. You know, not being aware of it, you just are in that construct and you don't even know that there's a different way or a better way. So from my standpoint, to me, that's why it's something interesting to look at, interesting to talk about, because it's like, okay, well, how for myself, how am I messing my leisure time up to where it's not even as enjoyable as it could or should be, so to speak.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And the one thing I want to say, and you know, I can wrap it from here, is, you know, the way that it's two things that I'm recognizing. One's from the industrial age. The other is really our culture of, I would say the kind of Abrahamic religions. I think all three of the major religions, you know, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, talk about the afterlife, right? And this idea of heaven.
And from an industrial age standpoint, where I'm getting at is the idea of, let's say, retirement, right? Like, think about it. I mean, a thousand years ago, some guy would have farmed, whether it be in England or some guy in the Maasai, you know, the tribe in the Serengeti in Kenya, they weren't worried about retiring, right? They were more present.
They lived day to day and they just worked till they got old and then the kids took care of them or something like that, or they died, right?
And I think in today's world, the part of what I think gives us all anxiety, most of us in just our modern world, like first world countries, is we're conditioned to always think about the future and put off the now.
So if it's religion is thinking about, well, I might have to suffer in this life, I got to suffer that because when I die, it's, you know, I'm going to. I'm going to be able to reap heaven. And then if it's your job, it's. I got to be miserable. I got to crank out like, you're a lawyer, right? When you were young and they made you work your ass off in the law firms.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Why?
[00:51:49] Speaker B: Oh, because in the future you're going to make so much money. Just put up with it now. And the same with me, when I was, you know, up until midnight every day in the week, when I was in my twenties in the office working, you know, and, you know, I guess as I gotten older, I realized, and maybe people die around you and things you realize, man, tomorrow's not promised. And I realized as I've been trying to live in the present more, that that's also part of the stress. Like, I was thinking, like, why am I stressed out about my 401k and how much money I'm going to accumulate when I'm 65 and all this stuff? I'll be sitting here at 43 worrying about 20 years from now, like, what the hell is that about? Like, people weren't doing that back in the day. Like, meaning hunter gatherer societies and all that. And I was. Funny, I was looking at my dog, my chocolate lab, wagging his tail, looking at me, and I thought, man, I got to be like him.
He's always present. Think about it. He's not worried about what I'm going to feed him in three days. He's not worried about the time I yelled at him two months ago for. For digging, eating in the trash. He's constantly present and his tail's always wagging. And, you know, obviously we have to. You know, I live in this society, I got a family, I pay a mortgage. So I know that I have to think about the future and certain things.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: You know, but thinking about something is different than obsessing about it or just trying to.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: Allowing it to have anxiety.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Like, give you anxiety. And so. And that's what I mean. Like, I realized I'm going to try and do my thing and make sure I have enough money in the future for retirement, but I'm no longer going to stress out about it because I got to enjoy my life along this journey. And I think that's what we've been conditioned to learn, too, about people that are on their deathbed and they have all these epiphanies.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: Because they've just been going so hard their whole life, they realize they never even got a chance to live.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: I mean, it's interesting from both the Abrahamic religion and the work aspect of it, one of the things that stood out to me when you just said that was that both of those are kind of arguably like cons from people who have more than you telling you to chill out, you'll get yours after.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: You die, or you'll get it is some years. No, but that's why I thought of the Palm beach example when I was reading the article and thinking, I was like, well, that's the same thing. Right? The wealth. Think about the wealth crowd coming down to Palm Beach. But then Their workers are back in a factory in Pennsylvania, you know, in a steel factory, and they're telling them, no, just keep working, man. You know, you'll have a good one day. And they're down there hanging out, you know, on the boat.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: So I think that. So I think that that's the state of mind aspect of it. There needs to be a way, obviously, to not starve tomorrow. You know, like, you can't be present if you go back to agricultural times where, you know, you can't eat all your food in the summer and then have nothing to eat in the winter if you're in a temperate climate or something like that. But there also needs to be a way. And you. I think part of this, it's your focus, you know, like, what you focus on is your reality, so to speak. And your focus has to also be on today and making sure that you don't put all your happiness off till Friday, you know, when, you know, it's the weekend or until your next vacation or, you know, until the end of the night when it's finally. Kids are finally in bed and. And whatever. And so I think, like you said, it's being present, you know, like. But the attitude change part, whatever works for individuals, whatever works for you may not be able to work for somebody else. But I think it'd be helpful for all of us to try to get there a little bit. I mean, then just being aware of it, I think is helpful. So, yeah, but, I mean, we can wrap it up from there, man.
We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See it. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Wanlana.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: All right. Subscribe Rate Review and we'll talk to you next time.
