Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the appalachian high school shooting in Georgia and whether stuff like this is really now just a fact of life. Consider why russian propagandists seem to be so keen on secretly amplifying right wing voices in american media and react to the question on whether marijuana is too strong nowadays.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who may be mischievous, but many find him quite endearing. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. You ready to show the people what happens if they say your name three times?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I'm not sure I'm ready for that.
Let's just have a show.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: All right. I said it was.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: That's it. No. No more.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, we ask that you subscribe hit like on YouTube or your podcast platform.
Doing so really helps the show out.
Now, recording this on September 10, 2024. And last week, there was a school shooting in Appalachia High School in Winder, Georgia, which is an Atlanta suburb that left four dead.
Both the alleged shooter, the 14 year old Colt Gray, and his father, Colin Gray, who gifted him the assault rifle used in the, or allegedly used in the shooting, have been charged in connection with the shooting. Now, since the shooting happened, happened, in addition to the kind of the mourning that the individuals and the people close to this situation and also the nation as a whole has gone through, there's been renewed discussion on what we as a society can or should be doing about the mass shootings, the shootings in schools and so forth. And as a part of this conversation, Senator JD Vance, who is also the republican vice presidential candidate for the upcoming election, has asserted that school shootings are, quote, a fact of life. And he suggested that the problem is really more so that schools are soft targets, with the suggestion that the solution is tied into making the schools less soft targets, you know, more more higher in securing a higher level security. So, Tunde, just to start us off, what were your thoughts on the shooting generally and also on Vance comments? You know, as far as that, this is kind of just a fact of life now.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously the shooting is a tragedy. I don't think we need to go into that in more detail than it's already been. But, you know, and then JD Vance's comments are also a tragedy because I think it shows, I would have in another time in my life said it shows a lack of leadership. But I think in a more mature version of myself, I can just say it just reflects a different ideology to mine, so I can respect it if people think that, you know, the only way to do things is to shoot your way out of them. And violent, more violence will help solve violence and all that kind of stuff. And this whole tough guy attitude of, you know, we just need to, you know, make schools into, into military bases or something in order to defend kids when, you know, in just preparing for today, I was reminded about how historically we have had different leadership in this country, that when things like this have happened, have used their power and their position to actually make changes so that the american people can have a different experience in kind of day to day life. And I'll give examples of that. But, I mean, that's, that's my initial thought, just to pass it back to you.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a good thought. You know, the idea of fact of life, you know, and that phrase that, you know, that kind of clip has caught a lot of people's attention.
You know, the, it's not factually at a, at the core level incorrect in the sense that, yes, this is something that seems to happen periodically, and so therefore, it is something that we have to continually deal with. It is a fact of our lives that this type of stuff, like, we don't, nobody's sitting around saying that this isn't gonna happen again based on the current trajectory. But, yes, the idea that it happened, I think first, joy, is you take second, and there's a morning in terms of and just a senseless violence. And it's like you never want to see it, whether it's in schools, whether it's in neighborhoods, whether it's anywhere, you know? And so, you know, I think that part of the role of the government, though, is to try to create conditions where this won't happen. And so I think what it reflects is almost a surrender. You know, like the idea of, you know, what the comments, what Vance's comments reflect is a surrender, the idea that we don't want to do anything about the availability of guns. Like, he's essentially taking that off the table. And so you go to, without saying it expressly, and then so you go to all the solutions going to be to put more guns in the schools and you have, you know, like you said, turn it into military base style security and so forth. And it's really a surrender. It's kind of like if you don't have a solution to a problem yourself, then you start talking in these defeatist terms. And so I think that that's really what it is. It, it's kind of like I, based on his view, you know, and I don't even know if it's an ideological view. It's just like, kind of like the way he thinks the world should work in a sense of he wants people. He wants. He doesn't want to, in any scenario, in any case, take away the ability of people to carry around guns as they want or buy as many guns as they want, any kind of guns that they want. Conceivably, you know, that. Conceivably there's limits to that. You know, like, but the limit he wants to be, you know, something that is beyond anything the government can do in the short term. So, yeah, the surrender aspect to it, that throwing your hands up, hey, you know, this is just what's going to be. So let's just work on security and not, not even trying to come up with, hey, well, what have we done in the past to address this? You know, is there anything else that's going on in society that we can do to try to make this better? And so, yeah, the white flag is really just, it's disappointing, I think, more than anything, from somebody in leadership, because if you're not, if, if you're going to wipe up the white flag, then you should get out of leadership. We need people in there that can see problems and say, hey, let's try to figure out solutions.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Well, that's why I realized that this is an ideological issue. I don't think this is like, I don't think he's lacking of leadership on this and that he doesn't, I just think he doesn't believe that the way to approach this might be a way that you and I might, or that historically, many of the United States has approached it in general.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: See, but my point is that, okay, so let's do that. Let's say that that's true. There could be other ways still to solve the problem. Like, again, it's not only take away all guns or leave, have guns be unfettered, you know, like, that's a false choice to create from somebody who intellectually has surrendered on the issue. No, I don't want to think about it, but it's.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: But that's why I think there's a bigger strategy at play with topics like this in general, which this show isn't about that, but it reminds me of things like abortion or something like that, where it's either this extreme all one way or the other way, and it's certain way to create single issue voters. So this touches on something like the Second Amendment, which we know has been a sensitive kind of cultural issue in american history and political dialogue.
But where I'm getting at, James, is think about it in researching today. That's what really sobered me about this topic, because I learned that in 1934, we had something called the National Firearms act because of the Tommy gun. If you remember things like the Valentine's Day massacre in the thirties and the way that the Mafia was beginning to, and people like John Dillinger and things like that, they were massacred.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: They were outgunning the authorities, basically.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's another good point. They were better armed than the police at the time. And so the Roosevelt administration said, okay, we're gonna stop this here. And guess what? The United States didn't collapse after 1934, right? We survived the depression. We beat everyone on robots.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: We didn't show up and start taking everybody's guns out of their house.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: You know, like.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: And that's my point. Like, so we have that history, then, more recently, this is in you and I's lifetime. And I'm just gonna cite what I found here, because, again, I'm born in 1978. So in my lifetime. In 1989, there was a shooting at a school that killed a teacher, and 34 children were shot, five of them whom died.
And that had. It was with a Kalashnikov rifle. 19. 91, 23 people dead, 27 wounded, with another shooting, July 93 in California. Eight people killed, six wounded from a tech, nine with hellfire triggers. You know, it reminded me of the conversations about bump stocks and things like that today and what happened after that. We had a 1994 assault weapons ban that was presided over by former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan at a signing ceremony signed by Bill Clinton. And reading that, it reminded me, like, hold on. First of all, that was leadership. The country was having an issue with mass shootings. They decided to do something about it, and it was supported by former presidents of both parties.
And it was a like me reading that from just 30 years ago is a huge contrast to now. Like, wow, what happened and to the point we made was for ten years, we had an assault weapons ban in this country. And again, between 1994 and 2004, I think everything was generally okay in this country. Like you said, the government wasn't confiscating Americans guns and all that. So clearly, we have done something about this in the past with different leadership. Now we have leadership that, like you said, is just saying, oh, well, put up the white flag. We just gotta accept kids getting shot in school, so on and so forth.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Or we're just let's let's start preemptively by just taking potential types of solutions off the table, you know, and just immediately taking things off the table. And, yeah, like, it's, I think it's a good point that you raise as far as the, the bipartisan nature of previous attempts to, or previous efforts to do this in the sense that that showed kind of a solidarity, hey, Americans first party is not over country. And so you said something very specific that I think is at play here. And you talked about one issue voters, you mentioned, and creating one inch issue voters. And also the idea, they also want the idea of politics. And so what we're seeing here is the perpetual fight for power overtake. The, any objective with, when having that power to actually try to solve problems that are going on in the country, it's just about keeping and maintaining or trying to acquire more power. So the reason someone goes immediately to this idea of, hey, well, before we even have any substantive conversation about this, we got to take certain solutions off the table is because it's trying to gain political advantage and it's trying to do something with, you know, like dealing with or to not deal with the actual problem, but just to say, hey, can we either, you know, put more people in saying, okay, well, look, you know, the Democrats are going to take away all your guns. They're going to, despite, as you pointed out, this, the government has dealt with this before without showing up in people's doors and taking all their guns. Let's try to create, insinuate that or say that this is what the Democrats want to do and we're not going to do that and everything like that. So it's to make it a political issue, but it's not even politics in the sense of, okay, then I'll get in power. Once I have the power, I will use that to help people. It's just power for the purposes of acquiring power. Like, it's not like they want to do something after they get in power. So it's kind of like it's this real view, cynical view of all of this is just a game for power. But then once you have the power, it's not supposed to be turned and then used to help. It's just supposed to be turned to acquire more power.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's, well, yeah, go ahead.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: No, just one of the things to add because it's also, it's almost like I said things, some of these people in leadership, I mean, forget about voters, but just the leadership that, like they live in a fantasy world like their world is the movies, for example. So one of the remedies that JD Vance mentioned, this is the sad part that these same remedies keep mentioned. And at some point, the public will not stand for it, but a lot of people will get killed and hurt along the way, which is, again, arming teachers, having more security at the school. And I'm thinking, okay, so this has been going on long enough that we've already got those examples. Uvalde. Remember, even the whole cop, police force of the city showed up. And because there was a lack of who was in command on the ground at that time, they still all hung out there for 15 minutes while this guy was shooting kids in the classroom. You could hear it on the, on the body cams. And then you got the one here with us in Florida, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. And again, I don't want to, I'm not here to make fun of that security guard, that off duty cop or whatever, a retired cop who stayed outside while the guns were going. I'm just saying that the fact that you have police presence and all this on the schools, those guys are still human beings, too. They may or may not act a certain way in the given moment. And also, like we discussed about what happened in the 1930s, a lot of these people who want to harm other people in our community are better armed than law enforcement a lot of times, especially the guy just showing up. Maybe if a guy just shows up and he's got a pistol and the perpetrator has these assault weapons.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: And so is the answer that we're going to put SWAT teams in school? Are we going to do a arms race with people?
[00:13:05] Speaker B: But, James, here's the thing. This is coming from the same crowd that criticizes anybody that says, we want to give kids free lunch at school. Oh, we don't have the budget. We don't have the budget. No, seriously, because I came across an article about 14 states, GOP led states this summer in 2024 that sent back Medicaid funds for free lunches in summer for the kids that live in those states. So again, this is ideological. Like, this is not about spending. It's not. Because you're right. If someone were to come and say, let's hire a SWAT team for every single school in America, there's some people in this country that will say, yeah, let's do it, and not care about spending the money. So that gets me thinking into other things.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Like, but if it's like, hey, let's, let's give kids that are, let's give kids home.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Let's get healthy lunch.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, so, no, so what about the money?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: No, it's too. We don't have the budget for that. And. And so my point is, I start thinking, okay, because money usually drives decisions for people, right? So I think, who's incentivized nothing about things like the NRA, the gun lobby and all that? And again, we're tap dancing and our whole country's being driven.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Before you go down that road, though, let me move the conversation along. There is an aspect of a cultural kind of divide or a cultural disagreement, but the question of who does that cultural divide serves is not really dealt with enough. And that's why I know where you're going. So, I mean, like, let's drill down a little bit on that. And I don't want to spend too much time on this, but why do you think enough Americans are willing to kind of live like this, you know, and willing to allow this to be a fact of life, you know, that a consensus on trying to solve it, again, trying to solve it, not even solving it, but just a consensus on even trying. Let should we try to solve this is, you know, something that we can't even come to, you know, like, is it purely the Second Amendment? You know, like you're, as you're alluding, are there financial concerns that, you know, or cultural, you know, financial concerns that are preventing us or that create this, these barriers for people even to agree, hey, maybe we should try to solve this, you know, or is it cultural or I. What do you see as the impediments, you know, for us, for our society to have so many more people to have to die before a consensus can be reached on trying to solve this?
[00:15:14] Speaker B: So I think it's a conflagration of things.
Yeah, no. And it's a long, it's a long moving iceberg or aircraft carrier. So this isn't something that someone just snapped their fingers two years ago and all of a sudden everything changed. I think this is generations of effort, probably really 30 years, ever since the assault weapons ban, when some forces behind the scenes and, you know, figured out that, hey, we better, we better just like with abortion, we better start doing things long term outside of the scope of traditional electoral politics in order to have the results we want. And in that sense, I think the Supreme Court has been very instrumental. There's a case from 2022 called the Bruin case, b r u e n, which is allowed, for example, a case to just happen. I don't know. If you heard about this, James, I was reading about this two weeks ago, early September.
You now are allowed to have open carry on public transportation in Illinois because the judge who overturned a previous court ruling that said you can't carry a gun on your hip in the subway in Chicago, maybe that's not a good thing.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Well, I think upholding a law that said that.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And what I'm saying is that they heavily cited that 2022 case from the Supreme Court. So it seems like, again, just like other things we've seen, that the Supreme Court has been very good at leaving some breadcrumbs for other judges around the country who want to knock down some of the laws. And that's my point. This is ideological because I don't think it's a good idea to let people have open carry on a subway in a big city that already has issues with violence. That's just me. Right. And I think that, again, people in the courts are very choosy because they're very constitutional and want to do everything by the book on some topics, but then not on others. So something like the First Amendment, which is freedom of speech, we know that there's limitations of hate speech, and you can't yell fire in a theater. And there's also things like burning the american flag as part of freedom of speech, even though we don't like that and it's uncomfortable. But when it comes to the second amendment, this court doesn't appear to want to rationalize, like, not having a gun on the subway.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: It's just that they, it's just where they choose to draw the line because they're not arguing that you should have, you should be allowed to have a tank, you know, or an rpg type of thing. You know, like, they're not arguing for that.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: You know, like, or in front of the court. Let's bring that up. Let's see what they say.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: So, you know, it's. But to me, I think that, I think it's ideological, but I think the ideology more goes towards the. Because again, I look at this and I'm not even looking at specific solutions. Like, to me, it's the will to try to solve. That's where you get kind of the ingenuity to come up with solutions, because you can come up with solutions that don't offend the traditional interpretations of the, of the second amendment. Now, that's to your point, where the court plays fast with these traditional interpretations as it sees fit at the court as it currently stands. But I think the ideology, ideological problem is that the Republican Party at a certain point, you know, before, maybe 40 years ago, really went down this path of the government is the problem and not the source of any solutions to problems. And so once you go down a certain, certain distance on that path where the government, your ideology is based around the government's the problem, the government seems to get out of the way, yada, yada, yada, for all of these things, then the type of people that you will send into government won't even have the mental kind of mindset. They won't have the mindset. They won't have the kind of the constructs in their mind on how to use government to solve problems, to address the issues facing society.
Their mindset is about obstruction. Their mindset is about playing politics and gaining partisan advantage because that's ideologically what the party's about. The party's not about saying, okay, well, here's a problem that we have. Here's our constitution. How can we figure out a way within the context of the Constitution to address this problem? Like, that is a kind of a thought process that I think the biggest problem is from an ideological standpoint, that thought process has been removed from the republican party because they don't look as a government role, as an idea of, hey, let's figure out how we can address things, just problems that are solving the issues facing society, that having power is just a means of acquiring more power, you know, and so because they're really good at that, that part. They're really good. They're good at using existing power.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Let me ask you questions to get more power.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: And so I think that. Oh, go ahead.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: I got a question. So you're telling me that when they're ready to deal with guns, they'll storm the Capitol. That's how we'll know.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: I just think that you just said.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: You wouldn't do it the traditional way.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: It's clear that the energy and the kind of the mindset that the mental energy in the party, in the Republican Party right now is, is about how can we use power to gain more power. It's not about, and this is where you get to, oh, yeah, we can put judges in. We can, you know, do this with elections and all this other kind of stuff. We can, you know, file lawsuits and all.
They have a lot of ingenuity when it comes to that stuff. But it's when it comes to saying, hey, we have some power, we're in the government. We're, you know, government of the people. By the people, for the people. Let's use that to try to figure out within the constraints of the constitution, how can we address some of the problems that are facing the nation? And that's that their mental, their ingenuity doesn't go to that at all, you know, and which our party, two party system fails when one party basically gives up on trying to make people's life because one party can't be kind of the both sides of the debate, you know, like the reason we have it set up with both to having two sides of a debate is try to come to a better answer, to try to look at pros and cons and all that kind of stuff. And one side on that.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like having two spouses in a marriage and only one is taking the relationship serious. Or two parents. And only one is parents.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Like, hey, the other one, parents laying on the couch. Yeah.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: And just, and so I'm laughing because I'm thinking, like with the recent ruling that gives a president of the United States immunity, or I guess at least certain presidents, maybe.
I'm trying to think about the people in the court that supported that sitting down for me. How can we make a president a king within the confines of the constitution?
I mean, somehow they manipulated that.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: It's another example, I mean, it's another example of how can we use power to acquire more power versus how can we use power to try to help people and make people's lives better. And so I think that's ultimately the problem that we have. And you end up just saying, hey, these problems are a fact of life when you no longer even think about, hey, how can I use my position, my authority within the constructs of the constitution to make it better so, or make people's lives better? And obviously, in our democratic system, unless and until the public holds people accountable for not having, having that thought process in their head anymore, we'll just keep going down that road. So, but I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everybody, for joining us. We'll have two more topics here today. So check those out as well, and we'll talk to you then.
All right. Today we also wanted to discuss, we've seen recent reports coming in, I mean, coming in on, you know, from all over the place talking about the department of justice and the secret effort by russian intelligence and russian propagandists to funnel money to right wing media personalities to help them amplify their messages or to amplify their messages, hey, we'll repost this and so forth and really get that stuff out there. And, you know, Russia doing so, according to the Department of Justice, Russia doing so because Russia is trying to sow discord, create distrust and all. They're trying to harm american sentiment, you know, to american sentiment towards their country, towards their fellow Americans. And apparently based on their actions, they funding these existing Americans, they found to be better suited for that than endless bots, you know, operated by machines and so forth. So this is, this effort has picked up really in the last couple of years. So, tunde, any of the revelations really hit you here? What really stands out to you about what's happening, what's been unfolded thus far? We've seen thus far in the indictments and just kind of what this represents?
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunately not a surprise. We know that the Russia and the United States have been adversaries conducting espionage on each other for 100 years plus. That's not a surprise.
All the emotional muscle memory of things like the Mueller report in 2016 and the spies that were infiltrating the NRA ten years ago, and all that stuff comes to mind. So it just is another reminder that the russian government sees an easier path through disrupting the american narrative from within as a means to its goals of getting the United States to kind of leave it alone to operate how it wants in Europe than any other means. And they don't seem to be knocking.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: The United States down a peg or two just in general in terms of influence internationally and so forth and knocking.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Down the global kind of energy that was running the direction and how people.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Around the world view the America, but.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Also like the western democratic ideals that up until about ten years ago was where a lot of the world looked like it wanted to go. And so, and so I think, you know, for me, all that comes up into play. And the sad kind of reminder when I see something like this is, you know, in one way I can say that the fact they get caught, that that stuff and all that shows that they're somewhat ineffective at it or in one direction a little bit negative on their results. But in another way, they've been very effective at it because they've basically gotten one of two american political parties to basically change its platform and outlook on how it wants to view Russia and many people in its leadership and how.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: It wants to view western democracies. That's western or NATO?
The NATO, which is NATO alone.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: I guess one of the things that Russia fears, it's a great long term. It's been so far a successful espionage play over 20 years, if you look at it from that standpoint. So, yeah, it's just another continuation of this in the coming out to light now.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah, like, now people have, you know, since this has been revealed, you know, people have kind of really had their way with it in terms of, oh, I'll see. Yeah, you know, all this makes sense. Or, you know, see these people, this person's on the take and yada, yada, yada. And then we've had media for conservative media personalities, right wing media personalities coming out saying, oh, well, I, you know, they, I know, I, they didn't tell me what to say or anything like that. To me, it, it, actually, I'll give you an analogy that's, that harkens back to your NCAA days.
And to me, it, this would make me question myself if I was a right wing media person. Because let's say you're playing basketball, right, and one of the five players on the court, you, you're going against the team. And it's like, hey, if we want to beat this team, we want to let that guy shoot. We want that guy to shoot. So we're going to guard everybody else really tight. We'll double team will help off of that guy. We want to funnel all the shots to this guy. We think that this player over here, you know, player number five, the more times that person shoots, the worse it is for the other team. That is something that that player number five would notice and be like, oh, man, I'm the weak link. I'm the one holding the team back because the other team's whole strategy, they think it's harmful for my team if I'm the one shooting a lot. I'm looking at the conservative, these right wing media people and saying, yo, Russia thinks you're the weak link. Russia's like, yo, we can really hurt America if we can get these guys, if we can amplify their voice and we can get these guys talking a lot, that'll really hurt America again. It actually is even more embarrassing for people coming out and saying, oh, well, you know, I maintained editorial control the whole time. This was just me saying, you know, I was gonna say this stuff anyway. It's like, whoa, really? So the stuff you were going to say anyway, the other side, the other team has said, oh, yeah, yeah. The more you say that, the more people that hear that, the worst for your team. So to me, it's amazing. The, like, kind of, again, looking at it from a sports context, this is like, this would be the most embarrassing thing you know, it's like, yeah, the other side, the other team looks at you as not, like, keeping, you know, not just you as a neutral, but, like, you are actively hurting your team from their perspective. And it's. So, to me, that part is just, like, amazing.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: And maybe that's why it is what it is. But actually, your analogy is good, because that might explain why they appear to want to go play for that team and not our team.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: They're throwing the game. If we could gamble on this thing. They getting, they be getting accused of point shaving.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: No, they're like the Washington, they're like the Washington generals. You know what I mean?
It's predictable, and it looks sloppy while they're doing it. That's why it's like, it's.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah, and again, this isn't me saying this. This is the russian propagandists and their intelligence operation identifying these people and their messages as being messages that the broader their broadcast and the more out there they are, the worse it is for american interests, you know, like, from Russia's perspective. So that's not some american commentator saying that or anything like that. That's what I. Russia, looking at the whole landscape, has determined.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's interesting.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: It's not much different. Just real quick, it's not much different than when Russia was looking at ten, you know, 1015 years ago. We talked about this offline. Like, how can we sow discord in America? It's like, hey, NRA, let's infiltrate the NRA. Let's send people in there. Those people can be flipped and worked against what we think are America's interests pretty easily. So Russia does this. They think, who are the people that are the least loyal or the, or whose messages are the most harmful to Americans coming together and being able to do things? And, you know, they, whoever they think it is, that's who they're trying to work through and work with in order to get them to say what they would already say.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, look, you're right. Russia's goal is to disrupt the United States because we're their greatest adversary so that we are distracted doing something else and not looking at them. So to your point, today, it's the American right 55, 60 years ago is the American left. And so Russia's pretty neutral on who they want to destroy. The weak link.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Yeah, they're only looking for the weak link.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: And it's not an ideological thing. It's like, who's the weak link here in terms of american unity? American being able to work together as a team.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's also, they know our culture so well. So in the sixties, it was them promoting, you know, trying to. Trying to promote things like the Black Panther party and all that could scare Americans and all that. In the fifties, it was them inviting the singer Paul Robeson, for example, to tour Soviet Union in Moscow so that he would be seen. It was a propaganda move. They treated him great. So he was over there saying, hey, wow, Russia has no segregation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And it was to disrupt the american narrative and to sow discord at home. So the tactics are used. And I hear this sometimes, oh, we do this. And of course we do. That's the whole point of having an intelligence operation in the government. And so this happens and other countries do other things like this. To us. It's well documented. The Saudis, the Israelis, the Egyptians, all have foreign agent registration act offices in Washington, DC. And they're foreign agents. And in terms of the companies in America, are foreign agents representing the interests of those countries.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: And they may give money or invest in media companies and all, or promote, you know, people on, you know, like doing social media stuff. They may do all that stuff to. They're, they're, they're public about it, you know, as required by law. Whereas Russia, you know, is. Is more hamstring, you know, more handcuffed in terms of how. How they can do that stuff with sanctions and everything like that.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And we see this.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: The secrecy part of it is really interesting as well.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah. But I was going to say, reminded me, remember in 2017, Michael Flynn, who was the security advisor for President Trump for ten days, he was busted because Turkey, the country, Turkey had paid him $500,000 to try and get some dude in Pennsylvania. And it wasn't that they were trying to get a retired us general to do their bidding that got him in trouble is that he didn't register as a foreign agent because he was paid by a foreign company to do something in the US. So that's to your point. Like, sometimes I'm like, man, these guys, you know, America is pretty good if you disclose your corruption just in public. You're right. Like lobbying and all this stuff. Like, we have a lot of laws that allow you just to buy people at this point. Yeah. So you're better off.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Supreme Court recently. The Supreme Court recently. You know, it had a whole.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah. A gift is not a bribe. Yeah.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: If you do the good deed first. Yeah.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: If you give whatever you want. Yeah. If you give it first, it's not a bribe. It's only if the guy does legislation in your favor, you do it after. That's a bribe. So apparently so, so that's my point is it's almost like the Russians desire to want to be in secrecy is what hurts them.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Well, that, that's the real question here also. Is that, is it purely the sanctions or does Russia think keeping their involvement hidden is kind of necessary for this to work? Because, I mean, you got people like Tucker Carlson, you know, who's prominent right wing commentator going to Russia, broadcasting from Russia talking about how great Russia is. You got, I mean, Donald Trump openly talks about how great Putin is and how he trusts Putin more than the american intelligence systems and so forth. So I wonder, is that all that even necessary? Or could Russia conceivably, again, now the sanctions complicate this, that the sanctions have been put in place on because Russia today, or now known as RT is its kind of shell companies that they set up and all that. But they've been, they've been sanctioned in the US, so they can't operate openly in the US. So that contributes to, I'm sure, some of the secrecy. But I wonder if the secrecy in itself is absolutely necessary or if they could just be upfront about all this, you know, and just say that, hey, this is what we're doing. It comes out now and it's a little more scandalous. But as you pointed, the first thing you said when we talk about this, you weren't really surprised. You know, it's like, hey, I think.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Actually they might help their cause if they just came out public with it. And these Americans just got honest and say, no, we're just trying to, you know, be Russia's friend more. And we want to change. And I'll just continue to tell us we want to change up our foreign policy, you know, how we're stance and we don't like NATO, we don't want to be hurt.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Donald Trump talks about NATO, complains about NATO, talks about Putin as, you know, great guy and all this. And like, oh, you know, like, so it would seem if he's the leader of the party that it seems like many Republicans basically, like the whole Reagan anti Russia, anti communist stuff seems to be gone now. Like it seems to be a different, the party's gone a different direction, at least by and large now. Maybe that's why people like Dick Cheney and, you know, so forth are getting out. Like maybe that's what's happening there. But nonetheless, where the party is now, it doesn't seem to be something that would be frowned upon to be working in concert with Russia.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, on their side.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: I mean, obviously people like you and me would be like, yo, you know, they wish us harm, right?
So, but I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate all for joining us. Check us. We got one more topic coming today. And, you know, we'll talk to you there.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: All right.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Our next topic today we saw a recent report and I laughed just even thinking I'm about to go into this, saw a recent report talking about or asking the question. And it was, you know, it's a column, you know, and we'll have it in the show notes. But just asking a question is marijuana, is we too strong now? And it really went through in terms of how the concentrations of THC in what's so, particularly with legalization and, you know, our decriminalization, legalization, depending on where we are in the country, the medicinal piece of it, where the concentrations of THC have increased and is standardized but have increased in a lot of what's being sold and so forth. And just the effects of it are so much more potent than when it was just stuff that you would get, I guess, you know, black market from a standpoint. And so that argument was, and, you know, that caught our attention because it's an interesting kind of question, you know, from the standpoint of, oh, hold up. You know, like this is something that illegally or legally people have done for a really long time, you know, and then, and to little effect relatively other than, you know, like the over criminalization and stuff like that. But, you know, it's something that's been a part of our culture for a long time. So to see this question, to ask one, it's like, well, did people really want it to be pure, stronger, harder, all that kind of stuff? And then now that it's here, is this progress or is this a concern or. It just raises a lot of interesting questions. So, Tundang, what do you make of the concern? Are the question raised and the concern of whether weed is too strong now.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: I'm not sure since I have no idea about this topic at all. It never.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: You don't feel equipped on this one?
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
That's funny to sitting here thinking, shoot, I've been smoking weed for 30 years, man. That's crazy. I started, I took my first hand.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Tell us.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: My first, my first, my first hit was that I was 16 in high school and I'm 46 today. So anniversary license with a licensed marijuana card from the state of Florida, sir, which is valid because I just had to renew it three weeks ago. So I am legal in my marijuana intake, so I can have this open conversation without.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: So, yeah, I was gonna say you could. You can tell us, the authorities.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Yes. Beating down my door.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: So no decree needed there, man.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah. No. Now, let me tell you, man, it's interesting. So, number one, having it legalized is so much better because you're right. I don't feel like I gotta go, you know, to somebody's house to go get a bag or something and we'll drive home with it and be worried about that. So I'm glad that they decriminalized it, you know, in various ways in various states.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: And, you know, the craziest thing, man, like, the world didn't stop spending, spinning. You know, it was like, I was sure, you know, in the nineties, if that ever happened, that, you know, the world would stop spinning and, you know, people would stop going to work and, you know, like, people would stop playing sports and. But it didn't happen. Like, things continued on. Ho hum, you know. So go figure.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, hold on. Yeah, I showed up to work yesterday, so. Okay, so we're good.
So. But no, it's. So, yes, it's interesting about the potency because you're right. I mean, it's number one.
I've read the studies about some people having a higher rates of psychosis, things like that, in reaction to some of the higher levels. I'm not surprised because it's interesting, once industry gets their hands on something, usually there's changes. And so in this case, it appears that once marijuana was kind of industrialized. Right. The production of it, the potency of it all that is allowed to be more concentrated and increased because the supply, the logistics of it is no longer diffuse. You know, it's not just guys in the mountains of Mexico just, you know, growing weed and just trying to get it over the border and all that.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: You've got most of their energy going towards that type of stuff. As we standardize this, how can we, you know, really industrialize this?
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Yeah, and also that's what I mean. Like, like it's growing in the mountains and nature and all that, versus in some grow house somewhere in the United States with. With lights on that plans for 24 hours straight almost, you know, the plant version of steroids being injected into the ability for science and scientists to really manipulate the DNA and the genetics of the flower and the potency of the THC within it. So that's what I mean. Just like tobacco. I mean, cigarettes are not the same tobacco that George Washington was smoking out of a pipe in the 17 hundreds, right? Like, that was just natural tobacco leaf out of the ground. Now we know it's got all these chemicals and things in it, and it's no different than our food, right. And it's no different than other things that as hunter gatherers we could take from nature, but now we take from.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: As farmers, we could grow, you know, but just we were constrained with, you know, like the amount of changes. And like you said, the optimization that we could, we could put in place.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: So that's what I'm saying. It's no surprise that marijuana's gone that direction where industries figured out how to refine as well as, you know, kind of manipulate the actual genetics within the plant. So that's why to me it's, it's kind of like, yeah, okay, it definitely take two hits instead of a whole joint, then.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Well, that was kind of one of the things mentioned in the article was that the kind of the enjoyment of it changes because, yeah, you got, you're sitting there like each time you touch it, it's like, yo, let me make sure I'm okay. As opposed to being able to just sit there and relax. I think you raised a good point as far as how industry, you know, gets its hands on it and does what, you know, I'll put in air quotes, optimize it, you know, because again, it's not, it's optimizing it from one standpoint, but that may ruin the experience for others and so forth. I think back to, like, pharmaceuticals. I think back to, like, alcohol. Like you pointed to tobacco, but alcohol, for example, is like, we don't, the goal of the, the alcohol industry is not to give us the highest concentration of alcohol to not continue like they could, you know, like, but, you know, but the highest selling alcohol isn't the 190 proof stuff. You know, like it, it's almost like an agreed upon thing where like typical, you know, bottles of liquor, you know, maybe 840 percent alcohol, 80 proof or a little higher than that, maybe getting up to 110 or something like that. But it's not to try to jam as much alcohol into whatever beverage, you know, whatever liquor bottle that you have. It's to create an amount that is deemed to be kind of, that works. Basically, it gets you, get you where you're trying to go, but it's, again, it's not ever clear. It's not 190 proof or whatever. So I wonder if that's where we're going with the marijuana industry where right now it's in the process of just going up, up, up. But if there will be kind of a leveling off or even a drop down at some point saying, okay, we think that, you know, a 15% THC content, content is kind of a good standard. And again, this isn't gonna be something legislated or regulated necessarily, but we're kind of the, the industry determines that. Yeah, people seem to like this. We don't have to keep trying to make this a higher and higher, higher TNC THC contact. We can just say, okay, yeah, 20% seems to be. That's where people like it. You know, they can sit there. They, you know, they can, you know, do their, their normal process and enjoy it and not sit here and, you know, one, two hit, and then they're just like, oh, my God, you know, I'm so out there, you know, versus, you know, where it was before. So ultimately, it seems like we're at the beginning of a process that seems to happen. You know, and then with the pharmaceutical drugs, I was, I was indicating like, a lot of that stuff is naturally derived, and so then, or supplements, you know, like, a lot of that stuff is naturally derived, and you'll look at the bottle all the time. It's standardized to x percent active ingredient, and that's been through testing and then kind of trial and error of what is effective, what's safe, and, you know, and so forth. So I wonder if we're gonna get there with, with the weed industry at some point, basically, where they kind of find a good level where you still might have the super potent stuff for the people who want that. They still do sell everclear, you know, like 190 proof, 95% alcohol or whatever they call it, you know, wherever you are. But, like, that's not you. You gotta go find that.
Like, it's not gonna be. You'll see a ton of 80 proof everywhere, you know, a couple of, you know, maybe 100 proof, 110 or whatever, but you want to go find the super concentrated stuff. It's like a specialty item, more so than anything. So I wonder if we're heading towards that, and that's what we're, that's what we're living through right now.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: The. I think. I think it's a good observation. I think we're already starting to see that. I know that Governor DeSantis here in Florida has proposed legislating a maximum thc quantity of 30%.
And so that. So that if someone made, you know, marijuana, some company produced it with a higher content. I guess they couldn't sell it in the state. And I think your illusion to alcohol is probably where I could see it going because that's where it is now. Like, I think about the dispensary. I go to buy my house. They have, you know, I can choose as low as 910 percent thc and as high as 30. So. So. And I play that game sometimes. Sometimes I'll buy, you know, a little, you know, one. One container that has, you know, 15% or 12% for when I, you know, if I want to just smoke and be able to still kind of move around and operate, you know, maybe on a Saturday afternoon or if I'm doing chores around the house. But if I want to get, you know, stuck on the couch playing some ps five one night, I might go to 25 30% and really enjoy that call of duty game I'm playing. So, you know, that's, that's, um, that's like saying about alcohol. It's like if I want to have a nice chill night with my wife, not get too crazy, you know.
Yeah. But if me and you want to go, you know, hang out, watch a game, you know, maybe I have a couple old fashions and.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: So I think.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. I think that's a good analogy from that standpoint.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And which is also to me, why, I mean, I thought the marijuana industry would take off a little bit quicker. It's amazing looking at, if you follow anyone that follows marijuana stocks and kind of the ETF's that track it. I mean, they're all like, down 90% over the last five years. It's pretty amazing that from an industry standpoint, it hasn't taken off the way I thought it would with all these.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: States legalizing the federal schedule.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they need to do like, with alcohol and just say, all right, you know, just like after prohibition didn't work in the twenties, I think the government just needs to say, look, let's say, I mean, what is it, 48, 49 states now there's some sort of legality anyway, so at this point, just rip the band aid off federally. Let's let the banks deal with it. Let's let people carry it in their state and.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Yeah, because that's the, that's the biggest problem right now, is that it, from a. The financial aspect of it, is still very disjointed because under federal law, it's still under the highest schedule with, you know, the most addictive and the least beneficial things. And it hasn't been removed. So, yeah, from a banking standpoint and, you know, the financing standpoint, it's still, it's still in the Stone ages, basically, which affects its ability to do anything as far as, you know, really becoming a viable product from a, like you said, from the financial product standpoint.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's, you know, but, hey, the conclusion that we. Too strong.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: Now, do you agree with that or do you say, no, no, they're doing the right or they're doing that. They're doing what they need to do.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Again, depends if I want to be stuck on a couch or if I want to be able to vacuum and.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Hey, and wash my windows. I think that's the, that's the, that's the answer, is it? There should be choice. There should be choice. And shocker, you know, you got american people talking about there should be choice. But yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that you can have the strong stuff and you can have you, but that shouldn't mean that everything needs to go towards, let's make it as strong as possible. You know? I guess, like, some things should be like, yeah, let's have, I mean, alcohol.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Is a good example. Right? Some people just like beer. Some people like their 100 proof stuff. And, you know, everybody's got a choice.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Some people want, yeah, 5%, 6%, you know, so, yeah. Cool. So I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like, I see it. Check out our other two parts that aired earlier today. And also check out our library on YouTube or your podcast app. I'm James Keyes.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogun. Lana.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
