Episode Transcript
The following is a computer-generated transcript.
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Hello. Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See It, we're going to react to a recent piece from The Atlantic which asserts that if you look at the actual definition of conservative, that the Democratic Party is now America's conservative Party. And later on, we're going to consider whether the huge amount of plastics being used in modern society is poisoning humanity and our habitat in ways that will ultimately kill us all or make us live less fulfilling lives. And also that we can't reverse, at least in any reasonable time frame. Joining me today is a man who definitely knows how to bring the ruckus, Tunde Ogunlana. Tunde, are you ready to share with the people how when you're bringing that ruckus, you know how to protect your neck? Yes, sir. All right. We'll see. We'll see if I can do that today. All right. All right. Now we're recording this on June on July 10th, 2023. And last week, we saw an interesting thought piece in The Atlantic that asserts that the Democratic Party in 2023 is actually now America's conservative Party. And it lays out how now for many issues the Democratic Party is on the side of and takes the position of preserving a status.
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The existing status quo with the status quo is right now. And essentially the author David Graham, takes a look at looks at how many of the social changes that have occurred in the United States over the past half century created a modern status quo that embodied what many of the Democrats or many Democrats and people, progressives in the 1960s and 1970s were agitating for and what they were trying to create when they were trying to to be progressive and move society in a different direction and get rid of that existing status quo in the 60s and 70s. And so now the the party has become about preserving those victories, so to speak, more so than keeping the push the issue with society on issues and trying to make more big changes to the status quo in other areas or in the same areas that they've done. Which would be considered to be continuing to be more progressive. So to get us started today. What's your reaction to this argument that the Democratic Party is actually now America's conservative Party?
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The first reaction would be to laugh and be surprised and say, what are you talking about? And so I wrote down here, you know, in preparation, I said the first reaction is culture shock because yeah, yeah, there you go. Because because we've been in all these culture wars for, you know, it feels like for so long. But obviously the heightened culture wars for probably a decade or so, you know, and I think So just to answer it quickly is. It almost sounds amusing on its face because we've been conditioned through our current culture. Of believing that the Democrats represent only progressives and liberals and kind of, you know, the left of America, and that the Republicans are the ones that occupy or sorry, I should say this, the Republican Party is the one in which conservatives go to and want to occupy that party. So to hear someone make the case that America is now left with the Democrats as their conservative party on its face sounds crazy, but that's what I like about doing a podcast with you, because we're going to break it down. Yeah. So, yeah, no, so I'll pass it back.
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No, but there definitely is kind of a reaction or like just a shock to hear that. Like conceptually, I mean, that's why it drew us. It's a headline.
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That stands out.
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Yeah, exactly. What is what's the argument here? And so, you know, but what I was what I recalled seeing, this was way back when we first started doing the podcast. One of the first shows we did talked about how the the labels that we use in politics a lot of times are really divorced from what they actually mean. And this was back in 2019 we talked about this and just looking at how people who you'll have the most radical people saying that they're here for conservative values or, you know, people like somebody like Joe Manchin, who's a Democrat, seems to be the most conservative guy out there, like in any party. Like he's like he's very you know, hey, let's let's move slow. Let's let's not make any big changes and everything like that. And so with a lot of and I'm not going to rehash that whole show, but just a lot of the labels seem to be more so there's there's a we're used to them meaning a certain thing. And so they just become more ways to signal like, again, what we use verbal, verbal gang signs. They're used to signal an allegiance or signal a tribe more than describe how someone wants to approach problem solving or even describe someone's politics. It's just saying, Oh, I'm with them or I'm with these people or whatever. So it's interesting to see how in this and we'll get into how he does it, how he looks at. Okay, Well, let's look at which party is trying to change the status quo and which party is trying to maintain the status quo. And then if you match that up and understanding that when you look at what conservative means, you know, conservative generally speaking, if you're looking at Merriam-Webster, it's like tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions or institutions. It's status quo, maintaining the status quo. And so, yeah, if if you're on the side of, hey, let's not change this, then that is oftentimes looked at from a purely word meaning type standpoint as conservative.
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Yeah. Well, the first problem you have is that you read a quote from a dictionary, which not many Americans are going to be with you on that one. And the second thing is then assuming that most people are rational, are going to be, you know, you know, married to that definition. I think it's interesting because like you said about, you know, I agree we're not going to rehash an old show. People can go listen to it. But the idea of the gang sign really reminds me of the idea of the importance of marketing things like slogan. And we've talked about this on other discussions about words, right? The words like communism or the word woke or the word liberal. Right. They they've become bigger than the actual what the original definition was. They now are a pejorative as a way for somebody to say. You know, to kind of identify how they feel about things.
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It's not always a pejorative, though. Sometimes it's like conservative people who some of the most radical people in this country will tout themselves as conservative.
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They're just making the point, specifically the words like that, like the word communism, Like you and I could sit here and be nerdy and be like, Oh, it's all about an economic system and blah, blah, blah. But people just use the word communism to label their political enemies as kind of like it's that, like you said about the slogan or gang sign, it's like, okay, I'm going to use these words so that everybody knows where I stand, the people I don't like.
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I'm with you on that. What I'm saying, though, is that it's interesting, though, that it actually it does do both ways, too, though. It's sometimes people do that to label, oh, this person's okay. He's a conservative. Yeah.
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And so I think that this idea of as we're getting into this idea of being a conservative represents something to a lot of Americans that I think has become divorced from that definition, you read or from maybe what older generations of Americans grew up to believe in, conservatives represented.
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And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting in the in two ways, because you have the, the like conservatism like that. There's a policy aspect like I'm trying to maintain a certain policy and then there's more of that disposition of moving slow, not wanting big changes and stuff like that. As far as we don't want to go in and just change everything right away. We want it smaller changes if we're going to change things. We don't want them to change too fast. And so right now, I think if you want to drill down a little bit more like in the social area, it's interesting to me in the sense that if you take a person from 1960 or 1970 and ask them what they're pushing for or, you know, like, hey, here's what it's going to look like in 2020, Let's let's not let's not let's not look at what the status quo is now, after the past month or two of Supreme Court rulings or the past year or so, you know, with with Dobbs overturning Roe. But if you say, hey, what would you what what would be what you'd want in 50 years, you'd they would be pretty pleased with what things were in 2020, so to speak, you know, in terms of what the social status quo was.
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I don't think this is universal, though, because I think in certain areas you do still have people that aren't happy with the status quo in the Democratic Party and that are pushing for big change. And the area, I would say in particular that is environment. So it may be more of cultural issues and social issues that we're looking at more where the Democrats have become more of the party of the status quo than other issues with economics. I don't think you can really even look at it like this, because since the Clintons really I don't think the Democrats don't really have like a coherent economic like, here's the here's the thought process. Here's what we want to do. It's kind of like they're just Republican lite in that sense. But ultimately, I if we look at it from the big picture standpoint and the other thing. Oh, actually, to add to that, it's also what you're talking about the prevailing leadership of the Democratic because Democratic Party still does have wings that are more aggressively pushing for change. That's what I was going to say or not.
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I think where the Democrats become labeled as the extreme and, you know, I'll say it like this way, like the extreme on the left type of thing is because there's such a big tent and they, you know, Democrats kind of tend to want to represent. Everybody, right? So they got the majority groups, the minority groups, the fringe groups, everybody. So when you have topics like transgender or LGBTQ or blacks or whatever, you know, immigrants or whatever the kind of the group is, the Democratic Party has become a big tent trying to manage. The concerns of all these disparate groups, whereas the Republican Party. Partially. Not everybody in the Republican Party has become the place for people who don't who aren't comfortable with those other groups, or at least where they've come in that 50 year period that you mentioned, let's say, from 1970 to 2020. So I think that it's just it's interesting in how these ideas or we should say these slogans and these concepts of are you conservative or liberal and this and that, how they kind of have morphed. Because one thing before you go there.
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Let me because there's I would use the word coalition and like with the Democratic coalition, so to speak, to the point you were making, you have all these groups that are in there and you've labeled some, you know, whether it be groups that their main issue is the LGBTQ or, you know, blacks, African Americans or, you know, the, the, the the the unions or the labor type of people. Like there's all these different coalitions, the environmental people. And within the coalitions, there may be people who are more, more expressive, more aggressive and with their issue in particular. But the party, because it's trying to balance all these the party and the leadership tends to be, okay, we're we're kind of with you, so to speak, but we're not going as far as you would want to go necessarily. And so, you know, it's.
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Let me stop you for.
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Let me give me give me an example real quick, because if you look at an issue like defund the police, there were the social justice was going so well, but like there were the social justice. That's why we have part of that together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the social justice people were part of that coalition and they wanted to go further. But the, the mainstream in the party were like, okay, no, no, no, we're with you. As far as like, yeah, there needs to be accountability. Yada, yada, yada. But we're not going all the way to defund the police, you know? And so it's it's interesting to see how that happens within that coalition. And you point out correctly and we'll talk about the Republicans a little bit, though, but how there's more of it. Like the Republican Party doesn't have the same level of diversity of coalitions and I mean diversity in terms of, okay, there's people who this is their main issue and that's their main issue. Not like they tend to want right now more uniformity in that which, you know, it takes you in a slightly different direction.
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Yeah. And so that's where I think it's just interesting because I was going to say it's the same thing. I'm glad you brought it up of defund the police because you're right, the fringes were talking about defund the police in the summer of 2020. And like we're saying, the fringes, the more the people that want that can't wait for change, that need it now. And what was Joe Biden saying when he was asked during the campaign? He was like, defund the police. That's crazy. That doesn't make sense. And so what happens is.
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But when it came to social too, like, hey, should police be held accountable or should they have a blank check whenever they do stuff? He was like, No, no, no, police should be accountable. So it was like he signaled that he understood the concerns of that coalition. But it was like, well, we're not going all the way. Yeah, we're not going to your extreme.
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And so and I think that's where some of this stuff gets morphed, too, because then if you look at I mean, let's just keep on this subject, right? If you look at someone like Joseph R Biden himself. Right. And this isn't a commercial for him. His whole career was always seen as pretty much a moderate guy. They even tried to accuse him of being racist. I remember in the 2020 campaign because he was against bussing in the 70s and things like that. And so he and he they used to joke, I remember because I'm in the financial industry, the joke used to be his name. His nickname was Joe, because MBNA was the big insurer of municipal bonds, because he was a senator.
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Senator from Delaware, Delaware, which.
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Is the friendliest state in this.
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Country, the state.
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Corporations and financial firms. So he's always been, like you said, about that corporate Democrat. That's Joe Biden all day. And anyone that knows that is like, okay, all these labels that he's so far left is just a joke because he's just a regular old moderate Democrat from back in the day. Right. He's a typical 80s Democrat, 80s or 90s kind of guy. And and so that's where I think today by 2023, some of these labels have gotten moved because we've had in our national discourse. That's what I said about culture shock because of our culture wars. When we started the Republican Party has been so focused on labeling Democrats just far left, no matter who it is. Yeah, that when you get someone like Joe Biden in office and he's actually, like you said, like him and Joe Manchin, more conservative Democrats who are saying, no, no, no, we get it. We might have to do certain things around the edges on some of these topics. But we can't. Just like Joe Biden, another one would be the Green New Deal. He was totally okay with some of manchins proposals of of getting some of the more aggressive side of the green energy and the spending on that kind of lowered. And so you're right it.
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Actually it's an illustration of of a conservative like the whether you look at the green New Deal how he wanted to approach that. It's like, look, we can't turn the whole system upside down. Let's let's do a little bit here. We'll go a little bit your way. But we got to keep the we got to keep the system running, turn fossil fuels all over. Exactly. But and it's the same thing with the I was going to make the point with the social justice stuff, that's a very conservative reaction to the person that says, oh, look at this. This is so messed up. Let's just take away all their money. It's like, no, we can't take away all their money. Look, well, let's let's make them subject to the law like they should be. That's very that's a very conservative response to the person who wants to, again, flip over the table and say, this isn't working. Let's just get rid of it all, you know? And so it's interesting to see if you look at it, if you look for examples, you can see examples of people in the leadership in the Democratic Party behaving or taking a very conservative approach. So it's not out of the blue that you see this. But again, I do think that in certain areas, though, the party at large, like whether you're looking at the leadership and you're not looking at every single member of that big coalition, this big tent coalition, because ultimately you can find almost any mindset or position when the coalition is that big. You know, and but I do want to we mentioned a couple of times and just the the idea of, you know, the the Republicans from wherever they're standing now, still wanting to paint it as, you know, the far left, you know, the Democrat and so forth, and and that would be that's that's very much undermine if you if the Democratic Party is looked at as a party that's conservative now. So. Well. So my question is, is well, if the Democrats are conservative, then what are the Republicans now?
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I'm smiling. I say the author of this article called The Democrats Conservative. I don't think everyone else is bought into that yet. But of course.
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Not. Of course not. But I mean, just from the thought standpoint, like. So if no, if the Democrats are America's conservative party, which is what the authors, you know, assertion is and the Republicans are against that, then what are because they said they were for conservatism. You know, so what what so there's a.
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There's a line that we can draw and I'm going to start it and you'll jump in and this will be this section of the conversation because there's a few things I see. And then I want to end it at where we're at now. So I want to start and this is again where history is important and we always rail about that. But going back to the famous era that we keep talking about, the 60s and, you know, specifically the Southern strategy, right? And we've talked about things like this, how there was a time I mean, this is why the amazing thing about the United States, why it is truly an experiment in human kind of society and having all these different types of people together in one society to share it because. For most of American history except the last 58 years. We didn't have a full democracy. We had a partial democracy where certain Americans enjoyed the fruits of all of it. You know, they got to vote. They got to participate in financially and be, you know, own businesses and enjoy capitalism and buy life insurance for the next generation and all that stuff. And you had other Americans that were excluded from that. So. First of all, all those battles in the 60s were won on the margins. They weren't landslides. So it's not like the Civil Rights Act was an 85 to 15 vote in the Senate. It was like 41 or 50 1 to 49. So there was a lot of people in this country that weren't happy with the direction of the 1960s into the early 70s. And this isn't just blacks, this is the feminism. This is the.
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Roe v Wade.
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Is another example. Roe v Wade of 73. This is the antiwar crowd and all the hippies and, you know, the long haired hippies that, you know, the older conservative Americans at the time were threatened by. And that's what Nixon did so well when he talked about law and order and all that. In the summer of 68, it was a very similar convention.
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The growing secularism, you know, or at least the the feeling that there was a growing secularism, because, I mean, you could say that the First Amendment is a very secular amendment. But but we're not going back to the. Well, but like.
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You're saying about the feeling. So let's stay in that era of the 70s, right? Like you're saying 73 Roe v Wade. By then, you also had affirmative action, which we talked about last week under Richard Nixon. So you had this, this, this and women.
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Challenging gender roles.
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Correct? Yeah, the feminism. So so it wasn't just racial stuff. It was the culture. It was everything just like now, like if we include transgender today, right? This is a whole new culture of of stuff that we're dealing with. And I think what we're seeing now is because a lot of the efforts of. The 1960s and 70s, like you said, have worked out like integration appears to be permanent. You know, feminism, you know, work. Women have a lot more autonomy than they did 50 years ago, blah, blah, blah. Right. Lgbt stuff is more accepted. It's interesting because there's this flip now the Democrats are trying to hold on to what's and preserve what's been created in that area. And the Republicans seem to be the ones that want to be radical and take it apart. So it's it's it's almost like like it flipped. Yeah.
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I would say kind of in a succinct way, just that the what you end up having is the Republicans have become more of a reactionary party and that they want to try to return. They're not trying to to to preserve the status quo as is. But if you consider the status quo to be 1965 or 1962, that's the status quo. They're trying to preserve, but it's not there anymore. That's 50 years ago, you know, almost 60 years at this point. And so what that what that is, is a reactionary that's someone who's trying to go back to some previous time and they're not trying to go back there in a way in a slow and steady way, you know, which would be a conservative way to, okay, we want to make some change. Let's make the change slow and steady. It's like, no, no, no. We want to flip the table up and get there right now. We want to make this change happen immediately. And so that's what I think we're seeing is more reactionary.
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How would you go back to segregation? Slow and steady? Like, hold on. We're just going to start with the busses. Okay? We're going to say you guys can't sit on the front of the train now, you know.
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But I mean, it's more so. But that is what we're talking about, though, in terms of like a conservative way to to do those things would be something where, okay, well, let's let's implement this in a way that disturbs the status quo as little as possible. Now, I get you. And what you're saying that the status quo I'm just so fundamentally changed that, you know, like you can't get there without huge disruption. Yeah. And so but that's what we're seeing right now basically is okay, we don't care if it takes a huge disruption, we're willing to flip the table over to get back to where we want to get to. And so that's why you term it as a reactionary type of movement. But more so and I'll get your thoughts on this as well, because as we've talked about now, it seems to be Trumpism is what Republican is like. He defines what it means to be a.
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Let me pick that.
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Up. Yeah. So let's think about that.
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Because no, I think that's a perfect place to to to to to pass it back because that's a that's something I was going to kind of share my thoughts on, which is very interesting, which is and I hate to talk like this because I have a lot of Republican friends and they're very smart people and intelligent and they're loyal to, you know, being Republican and quote unquote, conservative. But I would say this. I think what's happened in the recent culture of the Republican Party is that they've they've they've jettisoned the idea of being intellectual. I think, you know, if you look at the Milton Friedman's through the, you know, Ronald Reagan to to to, you know, William Kristol, David Frum, these guys, you know, there's a lot of intellectual thought on the conservative side. And there are ideas about how to organize society and all that that, you know, not are not bad ideas. Right. And that people can take good things from it. But one thing, because I want to get your thoughts on this. I thought of it in preparing today and I thought, who today is considered conservative in the culture? And I thought because, you know, guys like John McCain or Mitt Romney are no longer welcome in the conservative movement of today.
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Right. And so, you know, that kind of more, I guess, liberal conservative, we could call it. And so I wrote down some names. Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Elon Musk, Nick Fuentes, Kanye West. And I started thinking, what are these guys all have in common? I got Ben Shapiro, who's a Jewish guy who I'm lumping in with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, who are anti-Semitic, and Steve Bannon. And and I thought, well, what these guys all have in common is they're all people that want to just that enjoy literally just sticking it in someone's eye. They they have they are popular with our culture now because they are going against the grain and they have a grievance. And it seems to me that that's what I realized. That seems to be what unites. It's almost like they hijacked the title conservative. And that's what I want to get your thoughts on that, because I don't see anything else uniting guys like this and they're all. No and actually. Right.
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Well, no, I think it's confusing, actually, too, because they're not conservative in demeanor the way.
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You and I would. Yeah, well, no, in either.
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Demeanor or policy, they're not conservative.
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But the culture holds them up to be conservative now because they're not liberal. Well, right.
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Like, no, that's not why The reason is because the term and this is what we talked have talked about before, the term has become to signify something different than a aversion or a affinity for the status quo or at minimum, trying to slow play change. If change is necessary. We want to slow play it. We want to give deference to the status quo and not flip the table over, you know, when we're upset. And so that aspect of it, it doesn't mean that anymore. And that's where I was going when I said that it's really become Trumpism is now what people think of when they think of conservatism, when they when they what they identify is more of that Trump style. It's it's a style more than anything. It is part of the style is I'm going to stick my thumb in the eye of people I don't like or that you don't like. You know, I'm going to say stuff. But also part of the style is you can say whatever you want whenever you want it. You don't have to be consistent from day to day on what it is that you're doing. And so I think that's one of the bigger things that we see now with the Republican Party is the level of inconsistency. You know, like they're in favor of big business a lot of times, but then they're not sometimes a lot of times for arbitrary reasons, like the people can't make sense of the Republican. Like you have the same Republican Party that's taking care of. You know, that, oh, they're so pro corporate and everything like that. And the same party you got Ron DeSantis, who just has a thing for Disney and he's just doing all this stuff costing billions of dollars to the state. But it's not just him.
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It's it's it's the Chick fil A, It's Bud Light. It's, you know, M&Ms. It's Mr. Potato Head, it's Dr. Seuss. It's the culture. That's what I'm saying is that and and, you know, and these are the same people that used to complain about cancel culture, but it's the culture of people that consider themselves conservative. And that's why I said I named these names specifically. I'm like, what do these guys have in common? Like, there's no policy ideology that seems in common. There's no idea for the future, right? It's all like I'm looking at and I'll pick on Ben Shapiro. I think he's a very smart young man. Like when I look at him, he's he's an intellectual guy, but he's very, um. All I know him about is being very anti-trans and homophobic, in a sense. Well, but I don't really know what what's conservative.
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About that is that the uniting piece is the grievance aspect. And so I'm upset and therefore I'm going to stick it to somebody.
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That's why it's confusing because.
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But hold on, hold up. It's not because that's the defining characteristic of Trumpism. And that's why in 2020, you know, when when the Republican Party comes up with a platform, the platform is whatever Trump says or, you know, even to this day. You sent me something offline today which was shocking. It was from The Washington Post, and it was a quote talking about how they were talking about Ron DeSantis trying to to out be be further, you know, be be out out conservative Donald Trump. And the quote is, you can't be more conservative than Trump when he defines conservatism. Yeah, exactly. And that is what we see. Right.
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But that's what I'm saying. So it doesn't.
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Stick. But that's what I'm saying. It's not tied to policy. It's not tied to belief system. It's not tied to demeanor other than a demeanor of, you know, hey, I'll be nasty to people that.
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We don't like. Let's say this, therefore the article headline is correct. Because what really it is, is the Republican Party has abdicated its role as being the conservative party for the United States.
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Yes, I think that's what I mean. They are no longer that clean break, though. Happened at some point in the past, but it became more evident, I think, when the party embraced Trumpism, not necessarily when they first put Trump. And again, it's not about Trump itself. It's what he the approach he represents. And once you go that direction because he's not conservative, I mean, he wouldn't I don't I wouldn't imagine at least most of the time he would tell you he's conservative. He's a very radical person. Hey, when we need to do something, let's do it right now. Let's, you know, don't ask questions. Let's just do it, you know? And that's been to his benefit and to his detriment in many times. But so you see that. And then you understand, though, basically from that standpoint, okay, well, yes, if this party then has decided that the status quo is untenable and they're saying we need to get rid of the status quo and we need to step on the feet of the people who are trying to maintain the status quo, then if somebody else is going to try to defend the status quo, it necessarily ends up being the Democratic Party. And then you have on the back end, as Graham explains in the article, well, it's a lot of these social issues that do animate the grievance that we see that that is animating the right, but it gives life to this grievance, a lot of these social issues. My point, though, is just that it's not everything. You know, like I said, the environment, nobody's winning on the environment.
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Guess the status quo from 1960s might be winning, you know, but not fully. You know. But again, you know, the people who are pushing for big change in the environment aren't winning for sure. So I don't know. I think the status quo with that still would be something from the past, more so than these social issues where, yeah, it's a different world socially than it was in 1965 right now. But I want to ask you, you know, because I want to keep us moving, Do you see the kind of ambiguity we're talking about? Do you see that as something that is like a new normal, meaning the parties aren't aligned on, hey, we with with economics, with social issues, with environment, we want to make big changes. That's the Democratic Party in 1965. You know, like we want to make big changes to the status quo when all of these and then the Republican Party being no, no, no, no, we like the social stratification that we have now. We like the hierarchy. No, no, no, no. We like the business friendly, no regulations, you know, environment, you know, forget the environment, don't worry about it. And then economics, whoever has money, they get to keep the money status quo. This kind of this ambiguity we have now. Do you see this as a new normal or do you think we're just living through another reorganization in American politics, which has happened to historically? It happens like once every 40 or 50 years, Like, yeah, the parties kind of mixed up and, you know, there are new coalitions are formed.
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No, I think we're seeing that the realignment mean I don't think because you know when you know, I've been thinking about this part of the discussion, you know, I start thinking about like the Bull Moose Party and the Whig Party and the Anti-masonic Party and all these other political parties that actually, for a little bit of time had a little swing sway and they had some juice, but they never really lasted because it seems like the American system, just this are a constitutional democratic republic function, seems to be best oiled for whatever reason with two major parties. And, you know, so I think that we're watching, like you said. This shifting of maybe allegiances, maybe ideas, how the two parties are. And I think we've identified it right. It's actually interesting in our young lifetimes of just being in our 40s, we've seen this where, you know, in the 80s and 90s being conservative kind of meant you wanted to go like preserve the pre 1970s status quo and now we're alive to see that kind of preserving the status quo of the last 5060 years is is now more conservative and the people who aren't happy with the culture that's developed since 1965 1970 appear to be the more radical people. But yet in our lifetimes, they're the ones who've been calling themselves conservative. So I do think that this will create new fault lines over time, over the next 10 to 20 years. You see what I'm saying?
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Those those fault lines don't necessarily mean conservative versus progressive or reactionary or anything like that. Because when you did, you have the two major parties. Primarily. The reason for that is that when you have winner take all elections, meaning whoever gets the most votes, you're going to generally you you form coalitions before the vote. You know, you don't have coalitions because you got to get whoever gets the most votes wins. And so if you've got three parties, somebody might be out here winning elections with 34% of the vote and nobody's happy, then 67% of the people are unhappy. You know, at that point, or 66% of the people. So you're going to form those coalitions. You're going to end up boiling it down into into parties. So whether the both parties end up being the same names but different coalitions, different groups of people. The last time this happened was after the civil rights movement, you know, where and the women's rights movement and all that, when you had all that women's lib, because from that, you know, the the the Dixiecrats, so to speak, were the segregationists. They used to be Democrats and they left the Democratic Party when the Democratic Party laid it on the line.
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And also remind people that blacks used to about 30% of the Republican electorate were black Americans up until you're talking 6040.
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Yeah, mid mid-century America. So that was a realignment that happened. The one happened before that, you know, so this isn't the first time that the politics of realigned. So this is one of those moments though we talked about this like with the pandemic. We talked about this at different times. When you're living through the dash, you're living through the time when things are actually being reorganized and so forth. And so everything is kind of just right. One of the really interesting things right now, which I think is the signal that this is happening, is how the language has become reversed in terms of the meaning. You know, and we talked about this in the past just as far as, oh, wow, that's interesting. Ha ha ha. But now it's like, okay, yeah, Actually, we may be living through the moment where what's going to end up happening. Maybe it's not quote unquote conservative and liberal as the two sides. Maybe it's something else, some other factor that maybe it's the grievance versus the, you know, the cooperative or something like that, like it's something else. So we don't know where it's going to end. But I definitely think that I don't think we're going to live with in a two party system. Again, the coalitions are going going to form. And right now things are getting mixed up a little bit and that something also gets set, I would think, for a few decades and then it would get mixed up again. But I think that's what we're living through. Basically. It's not much different than what we what the society lived through from the late 60s to kind of the mid 70s, early 80s. I agree.
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I just think that for anybody born after 1975 or 1970, I mean, I know if you're born in 1971, you don't remember, you know, every day of your life in your first year. So let's say people born around that time and later, this is going to be our first time seeing these kind of shifts, you know what I mean? And that's where I think it, like you say, about living through the dash, it's just going to be interesting to see. And I think going back to what you said about Trumpism, it's actually a very good point. And that's why I hesitate to go in this kind of direction in a conversation. But I want to say this, not making this about Trump himself. Right. But it's. Once. And this is the danger of giving fealty in a political system to one individual, because I would say probably Russia's dealing with this with someone like Putin there for 25 years, which is even as unpopular as George W Bush was by the time he was out in January of zero nine, one could still say that there was a certain political ideology and. Kind of vision that he, his administration and Republicans in general in the party, let's say senators and congressmen and all that had. Remember, you had the project for a new The New American Century in the late 90s. You had the idea of, you know, what they were doing in the Middle East to capture oil. I mean, those are things that maybe people didn't disagree with, but it's some sort of coherent idea. And that's what I think we're missing now, that one of the two major parties has has fallen into this fealty to to kind of the Trump ism, this idea. Because I kind of thought about it and say, what? What is the today's quote unquote conservatives represent? Again, if I throw all those names together to say, what do they have in common? Or if I look at, like you mentioned, Ron DeSantis and how he's approached campaigning so far as we record here in July 2023.
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I'm saying how he's approaching governance, though, you.
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Know, like that, too. I'm just saying like, yeah, his whole way of being right. Well, I.
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Think though, what this what the kind of this analysis, this conversation reveals is that the nature of conservatism itself at its core, really is dependent on what the status quo is at that moment. You know, if you're happy with the status quo, then it for most people that will have you take a more conservative approach, like, hey, let's let's protect this. We like this. And if you're unhappy with the status quo, then that will bias you against conservatism. That will make you that for many people, that will make you more radical, you know, in terms of, hey, no, we don't need to we don't need to keep this and we don't need to to slowly transition away. We need to just end it right now. And so the circumstances seem to play a role for many people. Now, there are some people that just have a disposition one way or the other, you know, But for many people, it seems like the circumstances do play a role in almost how they look at the the right way to approach governing or the right way to approach organizing a society. What's the what is the status quo? And then we'll I'll tell you if I'm conservative or or not.
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No, I think that's a good way to to finish it up on this discussion, because what you just said explains the headline. Right. As shocking as that headline could be to people to say, oh, the Democrats are conservatives. What do you mean you're That explanation kind of confirms it, right, that what we've been talking about the last 60 years of status quo is now being defended by the Democrats and trying to be.
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Status quo that came as a result of the last 60 years because it hasn't been the same status quo the whole time. Like right now, is it the same or 2000? 2020 is not the same as 1995, you know, but that what what was the the kind of the culmination of that shift in culture. It became a status quo then that the party who had been trying to shift the culture ultimately is the party trying to defend now, hence being called a conservative party because they're trying to conserve the current status quo. But I think we can move from there. The second topic we wanted to discuss today, the headline on this one was also shocking Plastic May be Killing Us All. And this was from The New Yorker, and it just looked at how much basically we when we're looking at our dependance, I mean, you can say dependance, but you can just say how our society uses so much plastic and just correction. The title How Plastics Are Poisoning Us. And when you look at how much we use plastic and then how persistent it is in the environment like is for all intents and purposes, you know, it's going to be here much longer than human beings are and how it then ultimately contaminates our bodies, contaminates our habitats like this. This doesn't seem like it's going to end well. You know, you got plastic in the placenta, plastic in people's lungs, plastic everywhere. And we're just making more and more of it. But it also plays a large role in how our society has evolved. And, you know, medicine with food, transportation, food, you know, everything, food preparation, all that stuff. And so what are your thoughts on this warning that plastics may be poisoning us all, you know, for now and in the future? You know, until until.
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Well, my thoughts are the same as they always are when we talk about this stuff. I'm sad. Oh, man. It's a glass half empty Tunde for this one. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, that's for sure.
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That's for sure.
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No, I mean, just one of the things. I mean, just reading this article, it says the annual production of plastic exceeds 800 billion pounds. I remember when we did a show on the environment like 2 or 2 and a half years ago, the number was 660 billion. I remember that. Yeah, And I was just thinking like, wow, we just we're ramping it up like and so reading this and like you said about it's being found in the placentas is being found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench 36,000ft under the sea level. And it just made me realize like, yeah, we're talking, I mean, climate change and all that stuff's important, but we're kind of focused on the wrong stuff. This plastic is way more in our face in terms of can harm us than I think most other things. And like you said, the dilemma that our whole lives are dependent on this stuff. Yeah.
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I mean, I think that if you look at the tradeoff aspect of it in terms of our dependance, like we use it. You okay? Yeah. I'm not going to use a plastic bag. And when I go to the store, I'll use a paper bag. Well, that is worse from a climate change standpoint and you know, and carbon that that creates a larger carbon footprint. I'll use a you know, a bag made out of cotton. Oh, well, that's even worse. You know, you got to the article has the stats in there. You've got to use the the 7100 times.
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Yeah.
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It's like what. So no, it's just going to be a net negative from a carbon standpoint. But I think what really what what it really reveals is that there are no easy answers here. The plastics are bad and they're bad for us. They degrade, they break down into microplastics, microplastics get into everything, including us. And it does all types of stuff. Endocrine disruptors, messes up your system, all that stuff. And it's everywhere. But if we're if we're going to try to phase that stuff out, one that we've talked about in previous shows like Plastics allow for sanitary handling of like a lot of food, things that we use or medicines and so forth. And so we that's.
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Something, say like the wiring inside of our walls on our home insulated, isolated. How's it from burning down, you know, having.
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Insulation on on the wiring in our homes. And so there's a lot of things that we use plastics for that we don't have a replacement for that would be either feasible or that wouldn't put us in a worse situation from a climate change standpoint. So a lot of these things you end up at the at the conclusion like, oh, okay, well, there's just too many people on the earth, but there's no fix for that. Like there's no like the Earth is going to fix that for us. That's kind of what all.
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The I'm gonna call Thanos. Okay, Well, let me. But let's see.
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Earth ultimately is going to fix that for us. And that's kind of the all of these warnings that we're talking Oh, climate change. Oh, plastics like it. Really, what the warning is, is like, hey, if we don't find a way to be a little bit more sustainable, then the earth is going to we're going to change the earth in a way. The earth is going to be here. You always got to keep that in mind. You're not saving the planet. You're saving the habitability of the planet. The Earth is going to ultimately change enough that we won't be able to survive here anymore, you know, and I think that's what we're looking at when we're when so we're looking at this and say, okay, well, let's get rid of all the plastics. Well, that's not something we can just snap our fingers and do because we don't have replacements for all that stuff, at least in terms of, again, how we want how we're used to living now. It's fascinating, though, and I'll kick it back to you after this. But because when you look at it and the point made in the article as well, like we haven't been we haven't had plastics that long. So for us to become so dependent on them so quickly and now it's like if you tell like, Hey, we got to give up plastics, you wouldn't be able to do it. Like, it's like, how did that happen so quickly? You know, like in terms of where we are now and again with plastics, the fact that they last so long in that microplastic form, there's no way out that we've determined so far. Yeah.
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No, I think this is one of those that's what I said To me, this is more impactful than just the concept of climate change and things like that. Because like you said, I mean to know that this isn't placentas, you know what I mean? And like, like, like we now cannot divorce ourselves from plastic. And I heard an interesting stat too, once, which just was one of these somebody said it and it just stuck out. They said, you know, every piece of plastic ever made right now is still on the earth. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, even metals that human beings figured out how to put certain things together like steel and copper that might not like steel is not something found just under a rock. Right? It's different types of metals and minerals put together. In the end, steel beams from 100 years ago don't exist now. They've already degraded back into the earth, right? And wood degrades back and everything. Everything else is kind of organic. The earth ends up swallowing it up, but plastic it doesn't because it's all synthetic. And so that's where I think you're right. The fact that it's only been around the the article did a great job, kind of giving us a little bit of the history at the beginning that it was around 1865 when the first plastic was created. And you know what I found interesting about that story? You know, there's an interesting story for the audience to read. It was to replace billiard balls because billiard balls were made of ivory. Yeah. And they were poaching enough elephants that they were starting to run low on, you know, ivory to make billiard balls. So part of what I thought is that's what we're great as, as humans is, is creating ideas for replacements. The problem is, is that, like you said, instead of extincting all elephants by 1900 and figuring out something else now we created something that might extinct all of us. Well, hold on, hold on.
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You got to say that a different way, man. You got to the way that that ends up being presented that you had to. The classics were originally created to save the elephants. Plastics were an environmental solution. Yeah, that's right. It was.
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The.
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Environmentalist that said, hey, or, you know, like, hey, we got to we got to save the elephants. Let's come up with something else. And so, yeah, that's but that kind of portends to, you know, okay, we're going to come up with some other answer. But there are no free lunches. Basically. That's that's what we end up with. And that's why I said like it, it ends up with the conclusion like, Oh man, what we're trying to do, we're just swimming upstream. You know, Like what we're trying to do is, is do more than what we really should be able to do and we're able to pull it off for a while. But some of the things, some of the results of that are things that we can't ultimately run from, whether it be like, I'm not going to put this above or below climate change, but both of those things are coming for us. And there's it seems like not just with the collective will of a society, but just in terms of what the actual solutions would be. We don't seem to have them yet. Now, I'm always willing to bank on human ingenuity. It's gotten us a long way, but at the same time, the story about where the plastic, where plastics ultimately came from is to show you like, Hey, well, we may solve this or come up with a way to kind of deal with this, but ultimately and then 100 years, we're looking at some other issue and it's like, oh, now what are we going to do Now we got this and that.
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Now, it's interesting because I think, you know, one of the areas and they talk about it is we forget, we think about plastic only and kind of the hard like like a one time use bottle or a plastic wrapper. But they you know, one of the major sources of microplastics is actually our clothing, you know, all the synthetic stuff like nylon and all that. And the fact that every time we just brush against something or it tears a bit, you know, there's these there's tiny microplastics that come off. And so you're talking about how micro fibers can get pulled deep into our lungs. And so I think it's we need to start talking about this different. So that we can like have a shared narrative that this is affecting all of us. But we keep because of the way our culture and the media has developed, we keep having this conversation and fractured ways, and I don't think that's helping us.
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I think the bigger issue that we have here is that until there is like people tend to deny problems they don't have a solution to like that's that's pretty that's that's human beings, you know, we'll be like fanciful about it. We'll make up stories, we'll do a whole bunch of stuff. But if we don't have an answer to it, it's just like, all right then, Like we just have a hard time of confronting that problem. And so I think in this instance, this is one of those things. Same thing with climate change. Like we're trying to go on the path of doing better, but. We're not there. And now part of the problem is, is that going down the path means we're not going to have the solution right when we start walking down the path to do better. And so that's where to use one of your phrases. That's where leadership is important. My hope ultimately is that we come up with some microorganisms that eat the stuff and turn it into something useful. Either find something or come up with something. But ultimately, like I said, I'm very well aware, very well aware that if we do come up with that, then ultimately it'll turn on us and it'll be some impending disaster in a year or excuse me, in 100 years, but at least it'll be something that can turn turn the plastic around. And then, like I said, it'll be, oh.
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Maybe, maybe.
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The next year.
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Maybe the next. Culture, war and politics will be the freedom to pollute.
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Oh, man, that's already. That's already been there. That's the whole internalized profits and externalized losses gain. So but I think that was the.
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That was that Norfolk Southern train this year in Ohio. Right.
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Hey man that is that's that's the whole that's the actual standard. That's the status quo standing up for standard operating procedure.
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The Exxon Valdez, when we were kids. All of them. Yeah.
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Yeah. So but yeah, we can close it up from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend and then next time, I'm James Keys.
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I'm Tunde Ogunlana.
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All right, We'll talk to you next time.
