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 take a look at what's happening with the state government in Florida and consider whether the desire for a more limited government and less regulation has been abandoned in many respect respects.
And later on, we're going to take a look at some recent research which claims to explain why human beings tend to die from natural causes around, give or take, the age of 80.
Joining me today is your friendly neighborhood podcast man, Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to shoot some lines against the wall and see what sticks?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Always, man. Just like spaghetti.
All right. I love a good food fight.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on April 18, 2022, and looking at our home state of Florida, Tunde. Over the past year or two, we've seen a trend with a series of state laws being signed into effect by Governor Ron DeSantis and the legislator voted on and enacted by the legislature and signed into effect by the governor, which operate in large part to usurp the power of various local authorities and require that they all follow decrees that are coming from the state capitol.
The trend not only includes statewide regulations which have gotten a lot of press attention, like the don't say gay law and the ban on school books that contain certain information about racism and so forth, but also state regulations which have passed under the radar, or more or less passed under the radar, like the law requiring public school students to, quote, reflect and be able to pray as they see fit every day. And the law that restricts cities and towns from banning fossil fuel use.
Now, we're not going to have time to hit all of these, but we do want to take a closer look at just the trend in the state to pass these laws that are designed in large part to override the authority of the local authorities and local governments to govern their communities, to restrict freedom, so to speak.
So, Tunde, what do you make of this trend, man?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: I mean, it's interesting because I was gonna say it is what it is, but I guess the show will be over. So. Yeah, let me not start off that way.
Cause I guess for me, it is what it is because I look at it from a pragmatic lens. That's why it's not an emotional thing and all that. I just mean it is what it is. That.
Yeah, this is authoritarianism masking itself in conservative branding. Let's put it that way. I think this is. It's great the way you cite it in the intro, because one of the things I've always appreciated about those that call themselves conservative in American politics is the kind of the knee jerk, almost like. Almost lack of desire. Yeah. Reflexive negative reaction to any strong central authority, let's put it that way. That's the way I wanted to have it come out. So the idea, the Thomas Jefferson's of the world, from the idea of the founding fathers, of overthrowing the yoke of what we've dubbed the ultimate authoritarian, a monarch. King George created a beautiful system in the United States here, which we usually identify through the U.S. constitution as a way to have a society with some sort of guardrails against those who would come and try and put their stamp down on everybody. And the idea part of it was to make the system messy enough where we had local municipal governments, like counties within states and then states themselves.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Within counties. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: With somewhat autonomous. And so that's what I see Here is Unfortunately, Governor DeSantis, in this example that we're going to cite, looks to be more of an authoritarian. He wants to govern from the center down and tell everyone else what to do.
Even though their local municipalities may respond more positively or negatively to individual things, they might not all copy the state.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: No, I mean, and that's kind of. I mean, this is state using big government. This is big government. Basically. This is. Okay. We at the state level know better for what all of you individual communities have, which are very different. You know, the needs of Miami are different than the needs of Ocala, are different from the needs of Tampa and so forth. You know, like, they're different from the needs of Tallahassee. And so our system is set up to allow a lot of. A lot of autonomy, as you said, amongst the local communities to determine what fits best for them if it's a city, a metropolitan area of 2 million people, or if it's a town of 15,000. And so that's something, as you pointed out, that the conservative mind oftentimes has fought for hardest in our country to varying degrees of justification or success.
Things have been centralized more, and that's been a ongoing battle. How much central authority do you want? And we're looking at this not necessarily on a national federal government level, but just on a state government level. And what really stands out to me is that the regulations and these laws are written to say local officials can't do this anymore. And it's like, well, hold on. So you're specifically saying that you don't want the Local officials to be able to determine they're the most accountable. And this is, I guess, let me back up from a theoretical standpoint. Local officials are generally going to be, and in most cases going to be most directly accountable to the voters. So the thinking is that things that affect the voters lives the most you want handled on a local level to the extent possible. Now all that's going to be within the context of our national constitution, our state, state, every state has constitutions and so forth. But in general, the things, the day to day stuff, we want the local officials to have a lot of authority on that stuff because they're the ones that talk to the constituents, they're the ones that are there. It's a much closer relationship. So yeah, this trend where it's like, well man, so now we're saying, hey, we don't want the local authorities to be able to do this. We don't want the local authorities to be able to decide this for just their community, not again, not for the whole state, but just it does show a troubling trouble trend and a view where it's like, well, hold on, is this, this, this couldn't be a conservative person that this is coming from because they've always defaulted and as you said, like, or I might have, you know, thrown out the term reflexively. They've always been the one that automatically when the, whenever a central government was doing something, we're the ones saying, hey, I don't know that the government should be involved in that. Keep the government out of this. We want more liberty, you know, like, and that means to the, the, the, the smaller municipalities or local officials and so forth.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Well, they can call themselves a conservative if they didn't really care about being conservative and they just wanted power. So, you know, it wouldn't be the first time someone lied to get into power. Right?
Or as a politician didn't tell the truth.
But, and I don't want to blanket Desantis like that, you know, and it's interesting I have this conversation for me personally is interesting because other than what we're talking about here in terms of the authoritarian streak that I definitely see and that we're going to continue to lay out here, like this is one of those nuanced things where I've generally been okay with the Santos's reign over my life here in Florida, right. Like I look at it, the guy took a big risk during COVID Could have gone the other way and we could have had 2 million Floridians dead of COVID because of his, you know, keeping the state open more than maybe other states and all that. And it worked out in a way that, you know, more people wanted to move here, the economy is booming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, this is one of those things where if you look at a leader, they have their good qualities and their negative qualities. And sometimes, you know, in looking at something factually and neutrally, you got to just pick and choose what are the things you can really, really live with and what are the things you can't. And I think for someone like me, you know, I appreciate the way that the state was managed during COVID I appreciate the great economy we have here and the other things that I'll give DeSantis credit for being in charge of. But for me, certain things like the US Constitution and living by its spirit, let's put it that way, I think that's an important point we'll come back to is very important. And that's very important for me living in this country to look at from any elected official that is over me, whether it be my congressperson, senator, governor, or president.
So what I'm saying with that is that these things that we're discussing are not in the spirit of the constitution. And one of them that I'll add here is in June of Last year of 2021, DeSantis proposed legislation for universities that have state funding. So schools like University of Florida, Florida State, Florida International big schools that are nationally and globally recognized that if he didn't agree with their politics, he was threatening to pull their funding and he.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Was requiring them to register their political thoughts with the state.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: He's gonna have a survey and you had to answer. And that's like Russia. This is like good old Stalin esque kind of state run authoritarianism. Whereas if you don't agree, this is like the Politburo in old style. And Russia, if you don't agree with our politics, if you're not toeing the line, we're purging you. And in this case, maybe it's not a purge with a gun yet, but it's a purge with the financial pen, right? It's withholding funds.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: It's all cancel culture. It's old school culture.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's cancel culture at its finest. You're right. And so the reason why I say it's about not living up to the spirit is because you and I both know, and you know more than me being a well trained attorney, that the constitution takes precedent until the courts decide or we have enough national politicians that changed the Constitution, that freedom of speech. You know, as a governor, he can't do that. Basically, the state can't threaten people because of speech, because of their political views. But the problem is, is that it's going to take three, four years for someone opponent of this to, to, to win that in court. And over that period of time, his threat will have a chilling effect on discourse at the university level.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: So. Well, no, I mean, I can appreciate, you know, just going back a little bit, I can appreciate the idea of not being a fanboy, you know, like, so you like certain things that he did. And so that doesn't mean that because you like certain things that he did, that everything that he does, you're going to find a way to justify it in your mind or say, oh, that's okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to explain it away. I'm going to be an apologist now because I like this other stuff and I think that's important. I mean, like, honestly that's kind of, this is not emphasized enough to people. But that's kind of our job in citizen government. If the citizens are going to be a part of the governance of a nation, then the citizens have to be able to look at things, at least a substantial number of them, because some people are going to be fanboys. I mean, that is what it is, fanboys and fangirls. But you have to be able to look at things in some measure of objectivity, at least to the extent you can, to try to make the attempt to say, okay, well, just because I like one thing to, it doesn't mean that everything I'm gonna, everything this person does I'm gonna try to explain away. But I will say this, the only thing that I'll say is that you can't follow the results with these things. I think at least to some degree you gotta have some level of principle. And so I don't like by and large the state coming down and just saying, okay, local municipalities can't do this. Unless you're talking about real deal discrimination, you know, which again, you talk about the spirit of the constitution, equal protection under the law and so forth. Unless you're talking about that kind of stuff, then the state's role really should be to allow the local governments, you set certain standards and that's it. It shouldn't be to say, ok, I don't want local governments doing this, I don't want local governments doing that. Because another example of this which didn't, if you follow the results it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it still, to me, it's the same thing was when they did, whether it was an executive order or a law that was put in place that said local municipalities can't do this or that as it relates to the COVID masking or whatever, it was like, oh, local municipalities, you know, small town of 10,000, they can't do it. Big city of 2 million, they can't do it. No one can do any. Do these certain things as far as mask requirements. And again, that's taking power out of the local authorities who are more directly and most directly accountable to the people. And so although, as it worked out in Florida, that didn't seem to really create that much harm. But it can't be that. That's okay because it didn't create that much harm. Because, I mean, the other thing that was happening with the COVID stuff is they underreported it. So we don't really know a hundred percent compared to some states. Compared to other states, we probably do. But what exactly was the fallout was. But ultimately, my point is that the principal has to at least, you know, if you're going to look at this stuff and try, if you're going to try to be objective, people in general aren't very objective. But if you're going to try to be, then you can't just play the result and say, okay, well, this, this worked out. So therefore, I will look back and say, okay, that was. That was acceptable because it worked out. Cause ultimately, if it's the principle you're on, it has to be the principle you're on, whether it worked out or not.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, thank you for the nod here. I try and be objective.
I try and adjust.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: You said earlier that you were like, yo, I do like certain things about him, but that doesn't mean I have to like everything.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying is I try and use my own brain and not let the TV or the. Or the algorithm tell me what to think.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Hey, man, the algorithm knows you better than you, though.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: It's tough. You're right. It knows all my screen time, remember?
No, but it's interesting from what you. Because I've noticed this, I'd say my whole adult life that I've been watching politics and I've, you know, read history and all that, because some of this stuff I'm going to mention, I wasn't born yet. But, you know, we. We've talked about things like the Southern Strategy in 1968, which, you know, I'm not going to go down that road here, but this idea of states rights, and it's, you know, Barry Goldwater, I would say, kind of the father of the modern conservative energy that kind of brought the Dixiecrats into the Republican party post, you know, 1968. And after Barry Goldwater, what made him this kind of new fresh face, I guess, of that movement was his ability to nuance this idea of states rights.
So what happens is at the time, this is becoming now kind of long ago living memory for older people. But during the height of the civil rights movement in the 60s, one of the ways that the segregationists were trying to throw off the yoke of the federal government, which was trying to force the country to integrate, was by saying states rights. This idea that we're in Mississippi, which.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Is the concept we're talking about here.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: In terms of. Now in that case, it's the federal. How much control should the federal government exert over the state? Because the federal officials are less report direct less directly to than the state officials do to the local community. And then we're talking at the next level down, local officials versus state officials. But it's the same concept. But go ahead.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah, and this is, but this is where it's actually kind of fascinating for the historic, you know, nature of all this stuff, but also the, the uniqueness of the United States with these different co. Equal kind of rules and, and, and strengths, the state versus the federal government. So just to finish that thought, dual sovereign, basically. Yeah, well, and to finish that thought is you've got something like, you know, states like Mississippi, Alabama, north and South Carolina, basically the whole, the whole, the whole Southern, you know, states had legal segregation, not only segregation, saying blacks and whites could not congregate legally and all this, but just basically that blacks were second class citizens. Blacks had to take poll tests at the polls to vote, they had to pay poll taxes.
You know, there was something called sharecropping, which was basically a second rate slavery for a long time after slavery ended. So long story short, you had this issue where the states were telling the government, you know, get off our back, we can make the rules here. But then the government saying, well, these people are citizens of the country and they're being disenfranchised. So at some point, and that's what.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: It came, it came down to you denying them their constitutional rights.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Correct. You know, whether civil rights.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yeah.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: So the idea here is the Supreme Court had to step in many times in the 60s and I'm thinking of the Loving case from 1967, which was. Or 68, I'm sorry, which was, you know, interracial marriages, marriages between a black and a white person were basically handled at the state level. And it was a famous case about a black woman and a white man who loved each other. And it's just by coincidence, the last name was Loving. And they got married in Virginia and the state basically kicked them out and said, you can't be here married or we're going to arrest you. And the case went up to the Supreme Court and the couple won. And that was the end of states making the laws whether interracial marriage was legal or illegal. And the point of some of this too was also just to clean up the messiness of this stuff. I mean, you've got someone, I mean, I'll pick on myself, I've got an interracial marriage, I live in a state where it's legal. Let's say I moved to a state cuz I got a new job where it's illegal. What does that mean?
[00:17:33] Speaker A: So, well, but I think that's not really, that's a result of this. But that's not what it came from. What it came from really is equal protection under the law, which is the 14th amendment of the Constitution, is that the state can't make laws that don't give all citizens equal protection under the law. And so the state can't deny. And that's when I said in the first part, the, my caveat being unless we're talking about discrimination, states or local governments or whoever, denying people equal protection under the law, treating people different under the law, you know, treating one group of people differently than another group of people, or this person differently than that person under the law. Then unless we're talking about that a lot of times, then I agree with the quote, unquote conservative thought process that we do want to have more dispersed power lower down on municipality level. And so this offend, what's happening in Florida offends me from that same principle. But just to point out that it's not necessarily inconsistent to take that and then say, oh, but I'm also against discrimination because that is an issue of denying constitutional rights. And what we're talking about here, none of these things we're talking about are there's no constitutional right for a municipality to not say you can't use fossil fuels. Like that doesn't involve anybody's constitutional right or a corporation's constitutional right and so forth. So the types of restrictions we're talking about not matter.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's why it's all, that's, that's why I'm going back to those who I find that cloak themselves in conservatism because I mean look, and this is why I'm not picking on Democrats here, right? They don't claim to be conservatives. So they're not out here claiming that, you know, that the municipal right is the best and all that. Even though I'm not saying that all Democrats don't want to. It's an interesting thing because it's just not there.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: One of the reasons we need the conservatives is because the Democrats, so to speak, lean to the other side. They need somebody to pull them back and say, hey, you know, like we, I don't know that we want on a statewide or a nationwide level to address all of these things. So we need the critique from like that's why the system is supposed to work is that each side is supposed to fill in a blind spot of the other side. And so I mean the problem we run into right now is that when the sides don't consider themselves legitimate or if one side doesn't consider the other side legitimate, then the system kind of breaks down because they're actually that there is a harmony, so to speak, that each side kind of sees the other side's blind spot. But I do want to move on because it kind of goes to where you're going already anyway. And do you think that the use of state government power in such a non conservative way will create a backlash from Florida's conservatives? Because Florida has a lot of self identified conservatives. Do you think we see a backlash coming to these things that are clearly the state grabbing power from local authorities in a way that's very non conservative?
[00:20:21] Speaker B: No, not in the short run. I mean maybe long term if it got really out of hand, but meaning the real hand of the state got too heavy for most people. But I think in the short run, unfortunately from things that I won't go down the road with because we've cited them enough times and shows like the ecosystems, the fractured just areas where we get our information and where we have our own conversations.
And that's what I mean, a lot of people have been led to believe that conservative means this, liberal means that. Right. And so, and so I think a lot of people that call themselves conservative put it this way.
I mean Liz Cheney to me is a shining example of a traditional conservative who is standing up for the right of the Constitution even though it's hurt her politically. Let's say. Right?
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: A lot of people, you know, the woman that replaced her in the GOP and leadership has a conservative, quote, unquote, voting record that is about 25% less conservative than Liz Cheney's.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Correct. But yet she's more in the metrics of how the, how conservatives measure how conservative somebody.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: But because of the current political climate, she's more popular because she is taking the side of the story of the big lie and the former leader of the party and all that. So the point is that I think in today's politics, I think the conservative people that call themselves conservatives today don't see this. Some, I think, don't see this connection. Others are okay as long as it's on their side.
And that's it.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: A little more succinctly, you know, what you're saying, is that doing conservative things isn't really a requirement for being a conservative right now.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Well, not in today's politics, no. Yeah, yeah. I think it's pretty obvious. And so, because I would think there's a lot of behavior, let's call it that way, that we see from people that call themselves conservative. That's actually radical. It's not conservative.
And, you know, it's just so.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Well, no, the insurrection, they try to overthrow an election. That's all very radical. You know, like that's, that's not.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: That is radical, if you want to say. But I'm thinking of someone now who, I'm going to say this, this is a good example is Jeff Sessions, because he's someone that argued for states rights during the late 70s through the 80s when he was a judge and he was trying to fight some of the lingering cases of civil rights stuff that were coming out of the 60s and early 70s. So at that time when he was a judge in Alabama and an attorney, it was all states rights. But then when he became attorney general in 2016, I remember one of his first things he did, his first mission was to go hard after marijuana in states like California where it was legal, because he still could play the game with the federal government that it was still federally illegal. So what he was doing is he was starting to send DEA agents to stake out outside of marijuana shops in California and try and find a way to bus people.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: And.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: And it got kind of messy. I remember it was a couple months of this and then somehow it died down. I think it was too unpopular. But the idea, I remember thinking about that guy and thinking, wow, state rights only matters when you're at the state level, huh? But when you're in power.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: But that's why we want people with principle, because that's what we don't want. Basically, that should be. If you're a person of principle, that should be a disqualifying thing for you. You've been arguing this for 30 years, and then you get a chance to control the federal government, and you're like, oh, screw state rights. And it's like, well, hold on. You were only arguing states rights because you were on the state level.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: And that's kind of what I feel, is that. That just to answer the question that that's how I feel most conservatives are in our state here is that if it's going their way, then it's okay and they'll look the other way.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, I'll say this. The. We do seem to be kind of in an era of the fanboy. I mean, I referenced that earlier. Like, it's. It's. We did a show about this not too long ago. Well, actually, it was a pretty long time ago. But just talking about how we have a very big tendency in our country right now to judge people, judge actors, not actions. So we're judging.
When somebody does something, a lot of times it appears that the first question that people will ask is not what did they do? But who did it? And if they like the person that did it, then they'll figure out a way to like what was done. And if they don't like what was, you know, what was done, then they will. Or if they assume if they don't like the person, then they'll figure out a way to not like what was done. And so if you're always looking to judge the actor and not the action, then it's hard to actually take principled and consistent positions because you're always bending over backwards to try to figure out, well, if this person did it. I'm an apologist. I have to figure out if this person does something, and I got to support it somehow, some way, and if this other person does it, then I can't support it, no matter what. You know, the person I don't like gives me a million dollars. I got to talk about how it was an injustice and it's a waste of government resources, you know, type of thing. So it's. That's kind of just where we are right now. Because this definitely is more laws and less freedom. More regulation, less freedom. Like, there's no two ways to spend it. It's specifically laws being put in place to stop other people from doing things. That they normally have the authority to do on a local level that influences much less people.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: So, you know, but I want to say this. It's a repeat of the greatest hits of our history, because this. This happened already 100 years ago. This. It's kind of like when we have these moments of change where you have new tech. I mean, we've talked about this in other conversations, but I'll say that new technologies and then migratory patterns where you have these demographic changes.
A lot of times you have these fears out there. And, you know, I'm thinking of the show we did last year sometime where we talked about a riot in Philadelphia in the 1840s because the Protestants were thinking that the Catholics were trying to insert their Bible into the school system and indoctrinate the kids, that they would force their kids to read the Catholic Bible, not the Protestant Bible. Then. What I was talking about a hundred years ago was something that many people have heard of called the Scopes Monkey Trial.
And there was a gentleman named John Thomas Scopes. This was in 1925. I mean, this is almost 100 years ago. Exactly. And what do we have in around the 20s, right? You had big migratory patterns in the country. We had the great migration from the south within a decade prior to that. Plus you had all those Italian and Irish immigrants coming in the Northeast and Ellis Island. So you had a lot of angst and xenophobia like you have today.
And then you had new technologies. We had airplanes. We had radio. We had a lot of things that weren't there just 15 years prior. And so what comes out of this is this was a big trial because a guy was. Mr. Scopes was accused of teaching evolution in class in a school in Tennessee. And it became such an uproar that he would dare to teach evolution. And I want to read a quote says fundamentalists who said, you know, the ones that were against him who said that the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. And that was part of their. So what I'm saying, James, is that was their case. It's kind of calming. Yeah, it's kind of calming to read this stuff because you realize, all right, this ain't new. Like, obviously, there's these heightened tensions, and every so often in our history, those kind of on the fringes of this stuff get loud microphones and begin to.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: I think this also, though, it's not just on the. The individual, so to speak. And I'm rare that I would say something like that. Usually, I think, like, I Said there's a heightened obligation for citizen government, you know, like, that the citizens have. If you, you got to pay attention and be willing, willing to think, at least try.
But in this case, I mean, because one thing you can't escape is, and this is just how our brains work is, you know, our, our focus as a human being, our focus defines our reality. So if this was something that people who, let's say people who consider themselves conservatives or, you know, who are conservatives that they were being hit with and they're in place from places they trust, like, can you believe this is happening? Oh, my God, this is an outrage. This is so not conservative. This is against what conservatives stand for. I think that there would be a backlash, but I don't think that that's coming because I think that what we're seeing right now in all the media environments really, and you know, we're going to do some shows on this coming up in the future, just as that. And actually this hearkens back to what we did just last week, was that things that drive hate and fear just are. Get picked up more in our current media environment. That is, that's driven by how many clicks, how many views, you know, and so, like, things that they're driven by hate, things that are driven by fear, get more views, more clicks, and so are more likely to be featured, get prominent placement and so forth. This just does. This is kind of an intellectual, you know, kind of exercise, like, oh, principles, yada, yada, yada. And so nobody's getting angry. Like, you're not over here banging the table, you know, like, and this is something that offends you, but you're not like, oh, this is the biggest outrage ever. We're going to be, you know, in concentration camps in six months now. Like, that's not what the people who are complaining about this are talking about. So it's just not going to grab attention in a way that if it was being trumpeted up and being put in people's faces constantly, there would be more of a backlash. So I think part it's not just that people right now tend to just be fanboys is that the media environment promotes kind of fanboy ism, you know, and so it's like, oh, you know, we got to. If we already said who the bad guys are, and we've already said who the good guys are, so we have to stay like, we, the media people are, like, we have. Whatever channel you are has to stay consistent as far as who's being presented as the good guy. And who's being presented as the bad guy.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why I said I don't see.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Because among conservatives, amongst conservatives right now, DeSantis is considered a culture conservative media, I should say he's considered a quote, unquote, good guy. So. But ultimately, I do want to ask you or get to kind of a final point here and just in that, you know, do you think is there a level of concern, like, we're talking about a trend here we're not talking about. We're piecing together several things and saying, hey, there's a trend here that's something to keep an eye on that is inconsistent with what someone says they are from a philosophical standpoint or. Or what a group is saying they are from a philosophical standpoint. But is there really anything here, like. And again, obviously there's something from, like, what I just said, but is there something of, like, major concern here? Or do you think that this is just culture war silliness that is kind of, like you said, trying to boost up the profile of the governor as he prepares for 2024 or something like that, but not really something that is going to change the way people are governing themselves here in the short or long term?
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, there's a problem with it. I mean, it's. It's, you know, that's the, that's my love hate I have with DeSantis personally. You know, he's like, I want to like him. He seems like a good guy. Like I said, there's a lot of things I like about the way he's handled himself as governor.
But when I see this side of him, it gives me a lot of pause, because what my concern is, it's not even him personally, is that if he's going to continue to do this, to ride away to power at the top, let's say, to a. To a national nomination as a Republican nominee for president. I mean, number one, again, going down this authoritarian march that the RNC has been going. We just saw an article last week that they're going to pull out of. The RNC is pulling out of presidential debates. And if you want to be a presidential candidate, you've got to sign a pledge that you won't participate in debates.
So what I'm saying is DeSantis will have to continue to go down this authority.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Freedom, bro. Freedom.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. To cancel culture. That's the only. Cancel culture. But that's my concern. He'll have to go down this road to appease this kind of rabid base that wants this. And no human being is going to be able to pivot from that, right? Not like he's going to wake up in the White House and say, oh, now I'm just going to be president for all Americans. I feel like you're given a lot.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Of benefit of the doubt that he's not driving the bus down that road also.
I mean, and I'm not as fond.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Of the guy, right?
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Well, but then I, I mean, I'll say, I mean, I'm not as fond as the guy as you are. I think that most of what he does is by slight, you know, sleight of hand, you know, like so. And to me, anytime I see something like that, I'm like, you know, you got to watch out for somebody like that, you know, that always seems to have something going on behind their back as they're telling you to look at their other hand. But forget about him, though. I mean, I think the issue that we're having here is just kind of the abandoning of kind of the some.
There are conservative principles that are important in terms of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
There are certain approaches to governance. You need progressives, you need conservatives. And so my biggest concern is just that if the conservatives are not going to be conservatives anymore, if they're going to be reactionaries, then we're just going to have progressives and reactionaries, then we're going to go nowhere. We're going to be paralyzed completely because progressives are trying the difference between a conservative and a reactionary. By the way, a conservative is biased towards the status quo and doing.
Being hands off, so to speak, and trying to let things, you know, kind of happen. We did a show a couple months ago on kind of conservatism, American conservatism. And so reactionaries are actively trying to pull things back the other way, like, so, like that's what defines them. And so if we're going to have progressives pull in one way and reactionaries pulling another way, we end up going nowhere versus if we have progressives being checked by conservatives, then we can make incremental progress and make sure we're addressing things as they come up, but not going overboard and just lurching from issue to issue, like a unchecked progressive may have the tendency to do. So to me, the problem, the risk that we run is that we need somebody at the conservative stand behaving as a good faith check on the people in the progressive side or in the progressive stance. And right now that conservative stance seems to be, you know, nobody's there.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: You got one. His name's Joe Manchin. The problem is he's.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, Joe Manchin.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: He's in the wrong party. He's the only one that'll negotiate with Democrats.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah, we got.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Cause he in a party.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
That's hilarious.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: He's doing what a whole party used to do, actually.
He should be commended. He's freaking carrying a lot of people on his back.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, no. I mean, that is an important role, though.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: You know, he's carrying 50 senators and 200 Congress people on his back.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: But I think we can move from this topic, though, man. But I think it's interesting, like I said, something to keep an eye on, because if someone's selling themselves and saying, this is what we're about, conservatism, blah, blah, blah, and then their actions don't align with that, then it is good to kind of say, okay, well, what exactly are you doing then?
What direction are you trying to take us in? And ultimately, like I said, that's coming from you and I both see how both of the center right and the center left are supposed to work together in our country to move things along, but also keep us reasonably stable, you know? And so.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: But you know what? I heard a good quote that came from. I think it was Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: And he said it was about this. It was one of those stupid sayings, but it makes a lot of sense when he says just simple. He says for you to have a nice gait when you walk, you need a healthy left foot and a healthy right foot and you can move forward. And he was talking about politics.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: No.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: What a simple but easy visual. Like, yeah, you do need a healthy left leg and a right leg to kind of have a nice stride.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's. That's very true.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Very true. Right now we're limping. We got both of them broken.
We got two broken Achilles and ankles on each. On each leg, and they're stumbling. Just one. One's fallen off, actually, in, like, tatters.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: One is turned the wrong way.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: That's what I mean. One is, like, falling off and is on by some ligaments, holding on. The other one's just broken, but they're both not doing well.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: But now I think we can move from there, man.
The second topic we wanted to talk about today actually was it's no easy transition to this, but this was really interesting to me. I sent this to you earlier or maybe sometime last week. And I wanted to get your take on it, and I didn't want to just give you a call. I wanted to hear what you had to say when the camera was rolling. But scientists apparently have figured out, or they've claimed to have figured out why, you know, from a natural cause kind of lifespan standpoint, humans at this time are. Tend to be dying around in their round 80s, give or take a few years either direction or whatever. But as long as, you know, obviously don't get hit by a bus or just eat terrible food all the time or, you know, drinking all day every day, like just natural causes, A reasonable life like that. And so what was your take on this and how they. They tied it actually to just your body's ability to. Or how. How you have mutations building up in your DNA and stuff over time. And once you get to a certain point, that is where you get to. And it's like, okay, well, once you get to this point, it's. Your body's going to start to fail.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Well, hold on, before I answer that, I was just going to say I think the audience has learned something new, that instead of calling me to talk to me for 10 minutes to get my opinion on something, you just throw it at me on the show.
I appreciate that, dude.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: I didn't want to deprive the people of what I'm sure is going to be an entertaining respect. So I figured you'd have something good to say about this. That's what it was.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: So we just record our phone calls, too. That's what I'm getting at.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Keep doing this podcast, man. I'm sure your phone calls will be recorded.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a whole nother conversation about algorithms.
But no, it's all fascinating. I mean, this goes back to some of the things we've talked about in second halves of shows about. About kind of this. This blending of. Of the. The advances in computer technology over the last. Yeah, let's call it 30 years. But I would speed it up in the last 10 years, even just with being able to see inside the body at these. At these really, really fine nano levels. Really. So when they're looking at. And also the ability to do it now while the body's still kind of alive, you know, Not.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Yeah, like they're just working. Like. Not.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean.
It's not just. Yeah. Putting it under electron microscope when it's a dead cell, but they can actually put a robot in there. That's a nanobot with a camera on it and have it Looking at your body while your body's actually functioning. So this all to me is fascinating.
It made sense. Because even as you're saying like let's say a healthy person that lives a normal life expectancy, you know, one of the things that you cited, tobacco, alcohol, too much sun, all those do create mutations in our cells. That's why they can become cancerous.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Those cause DNA errors, which is. Yeah, yeah, I should say at an abnormal rate.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Correct. And you know, it's another thing that we've talked about, which is why I'm like, we got to make sure this planet stays clean for a long time. Because, you know, going to space, you know, the exposure to radiation, for example, in space.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: I thought you were going to get, jump onto your pollution high horse and talk about how like even the climate change debate has been taken over, has taken over the idea how. Hold on, why don't we just try to not have all this pollution? Because exposure to pollution is something that can speed up.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: We just did this show three weeks ago about microplastics being found in human blood now.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh my goodness.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: So you figure like what we're talking about, do you think a little microplastic will create a mutation?
So that's, it's just interesting. And what I, what I learned here was like, because it's some interesting things, like I used to hear the hypothesis of why small animals like mice live a short life expectancy and bigger animals like whales and, and, and elephants live longer. And it was all about the amount of heartbeats.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: And that a whale's heart could beat like once every minute where a mouse might beat, you know, 60 times a minute. And over the lifespan, if a, if a, if a heart can beat 1 million times, hypothetically, then clearly the one that's beating slower will last longer. You know, there'll be a longer life expectancy. This knocks that right off the, right out of the, out of the water type of thing. Because it's Talking about this 15 inch long naked mole rat can live 25 years, which is about the same life expectancy of a giraffe, which lives 24 years, then later on because they suffer only 93 mutations a year.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me jump in real quick because that's what I want to add to our discussion. It's earlier, you know, rather than.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Let me just finish the thing so you can keep going without me interrupting again. Is going to be a regular dormouse like the ones we might find in our home or our garage. Suffers 100. Sorry, suffers 796 mutations a year, and therefore only lives 3.7 years. Yeah, so that's why it's about size.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what they're tracking is how many DNA mutations or errors in the course of just cells replicating themselves and the animal just living, how many of those happen in a year? And so what they're finding is that animals that suffer a high number of mutations just as part of their normal life in a given year live less years. And that animals, like you said, the mouse and the giraffe, the particular type of mouse. What did you say? Or the mole rat. The mole rat, five inches long, has 93 mutations in a year, and the giraffe has 99. And guess what? They both live, you know, the mole rats living around 25 years, and the giraffe is living around 24 years. So it lines up that basically the. The more mutations you have in a year on average, as your species does, that the shorter your lifespan will be, which does line up actually with all these things, these negative behaviors that we found that cause more mutations, you know, that's one of the things they do. And whether it's causing cancer or just in general making the cells less efficient, less able to replicate and so forth, you know, like, all of those things add up. And so, you know, it's really interesting though, like, to find something like that. Like you said that the heartbeat thing sounds plausible on the surface, but what we have now, what this is, is just a more granular examination of the subject. So, you know, you look at the sky just with a naked eye, you can understand the stars and the planets to some degree. And then if you look at it, you know, with a microscope or something then. Or not a microscope, but, you know, it might a magnifying glass or binoculars, you can get another level of understanding. And then if you look at it with a telescope, you even get a better example. So the more detail you can look, and right now we're talking about DNA mutations, which is very detailed, the better answer, so to speak, you can give. Even though the old answers, like I said, weren't like, they sounded good, with our ability to measure at that time, we could measure a heartbeat, so it sounded good. But now, again, like, these. These abilities to measure better is giving us more information. And like I said, it's pretty interesting.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: That sounds like. What's that Sounds like trial and error, like science that it once thought, better.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Not try to teach that in school, man.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: I know. It was once thought of heartbeats, and now they were wrong. Wow. Should we Just say that all scientists are bad because they got that one wrong.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: They got that one wrong.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: And then because they didn't have nanobots 30 years ago to go inside of bodies and look at cells while they're.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Alive, couldn't sequence DNA for all these different things.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so. Yeah, I guess so.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: No, but let me say this because the other thing that interests me is I'm a person that looks up and reads about different supplements and different things you can do with your body. Diet stuff. And one of the things I've seen as far as longevity or different things be supplements and diets that tend to have less, that either create less oxidation or provide a lot of antioxidants with it. And because that oxidation can a lot of times cause these type of mutations within the cells. And so you're eating a high antioxidant diet or things that preserve your DNA and your cells better could conceivably give you greater longevity than things that, if you're eating, you know, things that are bad for you or you know, quote unquote bad for you, relatively bad for you, that cause more inflammation, that cause a lot of oxidation and so forth, the, those can speed up this process. So on one hand you read this and it's like, okay, well we have no, we have little control of it. You know, as long as I don't get hit by a bus, I'm gonna die around 80. Well, it's like, well, no, that's not necessarily the case. There are still things you can do that fine tune how your body's working, whether it be exercise, whether it be your diet, whether it be all a lot of types of things that you're doing. But it seems like more things that you do over the long haul. It's not like, oh, well, I do this once a year, so therefore that's gonna, you know, increase my longevity. It seems like more about what you do every day.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Well, I think also this, this is a big wake up call, like going back to like you're saying the environmental stuff, like, and that's the sad part, right, is the whole environmental conversation seems to have just got caught around climate change and whether someone believes that or not. But as you said, yeah, that's a.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Great point made several times.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: And I'm like, yeah, like people don't talk about pollution. You know, we just did it, like I said, we just did this show about microplastics in the body. It's got nothing to do with climate change. That's just, it's just evident.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: It's not that good.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: I know, that's what I mean. But what I'm saying is when you like the pollution that we all suffer, not only physical pollution, but let's not even get into the pollution of, of signals. I mean, we're sitting here, I'm at my house right now with all this WI fi stuff going on. We got signals, radio signals, television.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Surrounded by RF all the time.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Correct. Like, so who knows what that does at a very, very, very microbial level, like at the nano level to ourselves. This is also.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Let me, let me jump in here because there's something like. Because what studies show that at the level we can measure right now, or at least that we've been able to measure historically, we can't really see too much. But again, I just talked about how as we can measure as time goes on, we can measure better. And so, yeah, it's very conceivable that as we get close, as we're able to better measure what's going on, we're not, you hold your phone, you're not putting microwaves into your body. You know that. We know that would be bad for you.
At the level we could measure 20 years ago, we knew that was bad or more than that. But the radio frequency, that electromagnetic radiation, it's like, oh, well, we don't think that that messes with us that much. And it's like, well, we'll see, we'll find out pretty soon as our ability to measure gets.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: We've talked about this too. I mean, it's been about 100 years, 150 years of the industrial age, under 60, and then maybe about 120 years or 110 years maybe of radio and certain technologies. And that's my point, like whether you want to, whether you want to be Mr. Scientist or not, we all can acknowledge that human beings have been around longer than 100, 150 years.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: And our bodies evolved with the nature that the Earth, you know, has had all this time.
So all these new artificial things which really, what, six, seven generations of humanity.
You're right. We don't know how it really plays out inside. We're just learning, I guess a good way you put it, that we now have the ability to measure at a point where we can learn about the cell stuff.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: I thought that the interesting things for those people that are really into longevity and want to, you know, research how, you know, there are people out there that want to live forever or want to expand human life to 2, 300 years.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: This Is interesting because now they have a target to go get right, like maybe slow that down. Yeah.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: And this kind of stuff's been kicking around like one of the benefits of fasting are the touted benefits of fasting, regular fasting, you know, like once a week or whatever, like depending on the duration is this, you know what like that you can do. There's been demonstrated that by calorie restriction, you know, regimen and then something like that, that you can influence this type of mutation rate and so forth. So there's information out there and people will be putting stuff together over the future. Now, whether or not you can fundamentally change how humans, you know, like how humans lifespans go or whatever is not beyond the realm of possibility in the sense that if you think, you know, in various cultures throughout the world, people's lifespan might have been 30 years or 40 years and so forth. And that depended on like, you can't compare apples to apples because for all we know they could have had aluminum in their water, you know, like so, like, like it could have been something that sped this up that they just couldn't have known, you know, just because of what the state of their technology at that point.
But ultimately we're going to keep learning more and more about this stuff. And yeah, like it does behoove someone to have a flexible mind and not say, oh, okay, well, just because the science has been updated, then that means I'm going to throw out science because I want things that are never going to change and there's never going to be a greater understanding than what I had when I was 12 years old or whatever it is.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: That's interesting. I wonder how the population would respond to a pandemic once, if, as they learn about it, people, you know, the scientists are telling us different things as.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: As they get more evidence, they learn more.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. As they, as they see how it hits you.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: I don't know how we would ever find that out.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: I don't know, maybe we can have a pandemic one day and find out. I hope, anyway. I've been sleeping under the rock. I went under to bed under a rock in February of 2020. I just woke up. I wonder what's been going on.
But that would be cool if that happened. But no, I was going to say something for you that now I got a tie in back to the first one because we were talking about the authoritarian streak in some politicians that want to control information and they don't want to, you know, people that don't want to talk about Science. I was like, and just as we're discovering about how people can live longer, now we can't talk about it because that means you got to actually like science and stuff. So the ultimate dilemma, right? The. The. The need for humans to continue to explore and grow the scientific method versus the need for those to dominate and control information, which is the authoritarian method. And they're gonna continually clash. And that's.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Well, yeah, and they always have.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: I mean, well, that's another beauty of the country.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Founding fathers, honestly, throughout history, usually the authoritarian people have been winning that battle, but the past few hundred years, it's been. You know, there's been a march the other way. So we'll see, man. I mean, we get to live.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: Freedom of speech, First Amendment.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: We get to live. We get to see how this thing unfolds in our lifetime and, you know, contribute to it in some way. So. But no, we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. You can get us wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. You know, share the podcast with your friends, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: I'm just wondering what it would have been like if Galileo had the First Amendment.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Well, he wouldn't have been on house arrest. Yeah, but, I mean, the church was. They were operating over multiple countries. Like, that's federalism for you right there.
They were coming in. It wasn't just one country.
But. Yeah, we.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: We got to get out of here, so.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And we'll talk. I'm James Keys. Oh, no, we already did.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't say my name. I'm too. Oh, yeah, you did.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Yeah. You're Toonday.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: We're a mess. That's okay. See you later.
I.
