Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Up next, we take a look at the recent attack ad in the Ohio governor race that was published by Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and attacks Democratic candidate Amy Acton, and it aims to weaponize the abuse Acton faced as a child.
So, Tunde, for our call out this week, I wanted to discuss how hyper partisanship and party loyalty can be used to make people monsters, or said more specifically to disconnect people from their own moral compass and cast any wrongdoing as a necessary means to a partisan end. And I wanted to look at this in light of the recent Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad against Amy Acton that apparently aims to weaponize the abuse Acton faced as a child at the hands of her stepfather, using her mother, who was there at this time and didn't prevent it in the end. So what stands out to you in this ad?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: I mean, what stands out to me is this is the new normal of American politics, seems to have no bottom. No, I think what I'll say this, what stands out to me is in a positive way would be the backlash that the Ramaswamy campaign got for this. So at least the country.
I would say this in a bit of a bipartisan way because we're talking about partisanship here. It seems like people on the Republican and Democratic side seem to generally agree that that was a bridge too far.
So what surprised me, and as I say, and I guess it shouldn't surprise me, can you laugh when you hear me say it's
[00:01:39] Speaker A: a new normal, then you shouldn't be saying what surprised me.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a new normal. That the president doubled down and was like, nah, not only did he do it, but I'm glad he did it. And I think that I recognize that part of the skill of the president is to be able to take moments like this that could be a gaffe and be able to turn them into something that forces the people who still are fond of him to have to make a continued decision as to are they going to follow him or are they going to follow their
[00:02:22] Speaker A: own moral compass?
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Correct. Whatever they perceived as their principles and moral compass prior to this moment. And I think
[00:02:28] Speaker A: that a little differently.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Well, hold on. Let me just finish
[00:02:30] Speaker A: this. Well, I want to let you keep going, but there's a certain term I want to use on this. It's to create a bunker mentality. Like, any time there's these things that happen that it's like, hey, we can use this to create this bunker mentality. Circle the wagons and be like, what happened becomes immaterial. It Only is about at that point we have to circle the wagons and because this is what we're going to stand on again, regardless. There's never a defense of, oh, this is, this is, you know, the right thing to do. It's always like, no, no, no, we got to circle the wagons here.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I think that's what we've seen it a lot.
January 6th is a good example where I think a lot of people prior to that moment, if you would have stuck a microphone generally in everybody's face in this country, including the majority of Republicans, I believe, and told them that, hey, one day you're just going to see a bunch of Americans just storming the Capitol and peeing and crapping all over it and just breaking windows and stuff. How would you feel about that?
That has always been considered sacred ground for us Americans. The Capitol, the White House, these important historic government buildings. And so again, the country seemed to be in one position.
We remember what people like Republicans in the Senate were saying during the attempt to impeach him and how many people said it was his fault and all that stuff. And within six months later, they all changed their tunes. So, I
[00:03:54] Speaker A: mean, it was less than six months, man, it was pretty quick.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Six months was all of them. Some of them were quicker.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: They were holding out. Some took a little longer than the others.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah. But no, and I think that the files that the Justice Department released starting last year were the real kicker for me because that's where we saw people, even people in the entertainment side and news side that support the president begin to. I remember there is a woman by the name of Megyn Kelly who is a famous former Fox News host who now has her own millions of subscribers on YouTube, who's always been very, tells the audience very anti trans because she wants to protect her teenage daughters, all this kind of stuff. So she seems to care about kids.
But I remember seeing in December of last year as she is trying to figure out how she's dealing with those Justice Department files that were released, she had a guest on our show and it was another female and they begin to say how? Well, you know, you know, messing around grown men messing around with 14, 15 year old girls isn't really that bad. You know, it's, it's at least they weren't six or seven. And I remember talking to you about it, saying, I can't believe I just saw this lady say that, you know what I mean? And, and it's kind of this, you know, the term they call Overton window. This thing moving around. And I think that's what this represents, is that Vivek made a gaffe.
But what I think what happened is the President looked at it, hey, here's another opportunity for me to force the people, the loyalty test. And if you're going to come, if you're not going to come on me over and agree with me that this was okay, then I'm going to tell you I don't want you. And if you, if you agree with me, then you're loyal. And whether it works or not, I guess we'll find out with this upcoming election.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Well, but no, the effect on it is a cumulative effect. You wear down a person's ability to stand on their own two feet and they become dependent on you for a moral compass because then this is similar to what James Comey years and years ago referred to as eating your soul when for he was the FBI director and Trump demanded that he take a personal loyalty oath. Not loyalty to the Constitution, but loyalty to the President himself. And so I think that when you see this, first off, what this illustrated to me was just you look throughout history and you're like, wow, how can societies go from just normal societies where things that are bad, generally speaking, are pretty uniformly considered bad, to a society where they do types, all types of atrocities and people know it. Like, there's one thing, they do this kind of stuff and people don't know about it, or it's kind of hidden from public view. But when people actually know about it and they'll be like, yeah, this is what we think is appropriate, at least enough people, a, a, a insider group is like, yes, this is good. A party group, you know, like, hey, we're part of this party. This is what's, this is what's acceptable, this is what's necessary. And this one was a very interesting example to me because it's the attempt to weaponize someone. The abuse someone faced as a child would uniformly, in most, most moral places, you know, not, not putting that in a religious context or anything, but just moral places would be considered out of bounds repugnant. You know, like that, that would be the, the conduct of a monster. Like, okay, that, that, that's not the way you do things. Like, you know, with that, that would be pretty uniformly considered that there would be outliers. Of course, you got the, the, the psychopaths and all that kind of stuff. And of course in any society, but the fact that I, watching with my own eyes, this happened, the recoil from society from all corners, as I would Expect. And then the push again from the partisan lens saying, no, we should not recoil at this. We need to stand behind this and we need to make this.
We can't slip on this because if a Democrat gets elected, then it's going to be the worst thing in the history of the world. And it's like, well, no, that ad was really, really bad. You know, like some theoretical consequence if you lose an election does not justify that type of conduct. But to any rational person. But the idea of partisanship, the idea of belonging, people don't want to get outcasts from the group. And so you create this inner conflict in people.
Can I do the right thing? It's a lot like, it's peer pressure, you know, like that high schoolers face. It's the, like, can I do the right thing here? Can I stand on what's right? And what do we know about, like, with high schoolers and peer pressure, most people, a lot of people won't stand on what's right when. When it's that type of situation. So you get to see it in action right now, how the pressure from a. In group can. People who, people, anybody who still maintains their own independent moral compass, we get to watch that get overwhelmed in real time. And it's like, wow, that's how people become monsters. That's how partisanships make people monsters. That's what. And I went back and read the section of George Washington's farewell address this week and it was like, yes, this is in his warning against factions is what he called them, and then political parties and so forth. It's the same thing. People. It becomes about the party and not the nation. People become traitors to their nation to be loyal to their party.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Well said.
Sorry, sorry, I had myself muted. Hey,
[00:09:11] Speaker A: man, I brought up the George Washington Farewell Address. I didn't think that. I didn't think you'd be sitting back at that point. I thought I would get you up at
[00:09:18] Speaker B: a time just, hey, but you said it well. And I figure, you know, we keep it succinct and short, but yes, George Washington did warn the nation in his farewell address to be careful of demagogues who incite the passions of men. If I can say it so eloquently as he did,
[00:09:33] Speaker A: and also that factions and parties will enable unprincipled men.
I mean, these are the work. Unprincipled. Yeah, I know,
[00:09:40] Speaker B: it's fascinating.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Grab and hold on to power and use the means of power. Use power and all this. It's like, oh, wow.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fascinating how almost clairvoyant the founding fathers were in understanding humans, you know, and just that
[00:09:54] Speaker A: you know what it is, I know we want to rap. You know what it is?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: I think it's because sometimes people are human beings, too, in the words of online, and that people are civil or people. And so only sometimes impulses that we see now, it's not new under the sun. And so these are the kind of things that you have to watch out for, you know, and again, this part, hyper partisanship. Hyper partisanship can make you a monster, especially if you're with a demagogue or unprincipled men who are at the head of the party. So I think we can we can wrap from there, check out the other podcasts on the show. Appreciate you joining us for this call out. I'm James Keys. That's torn down, Lana. We'll talk soon.
