Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we revisit the question of whether Russia's goals in dividing and undermining America have been largely achieved in light of what seems to be an increasing one way love affair with Russia coming out of our political right. And in part two, we'll consider whether our society tends to overemphasize messages of victimhood to black Americans in a way that is actually detrimental for black Americans.
Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and riding shotgun with me is a man whose takes sometimes may be too mature for a juvenile. Tunde Ogon, Lana Tunde, you ready to turn this up to 400 degrees?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: All right.
Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you please hit subscribe on YouTube or on your podcast app. Give us a like, this really helps us as far as getting the show out there to more people.
Recording this on February 19, 2024, Anton Day. The idea that Russia's objectives in the US, from an influence standpoint, that those objectives have already been achieved, was actually floated in the Washington Post a couple of years ago, 2020. And in the past few weeks, though, we've seen members of Congress actively spreading russian propaganda about how Russia's victory in Ukraine is inevitable. We've seen coming out of media puff pieces coming out of the american media for mainstream, not necessarily mainstream, but what would present itself as mainstream media puff pieces for the dictator in Russia, Putin, coming out of the american media. And so essentially, we look back at 2020. They had seen nothing yet. So to get us started, I want you to tell me, what do you make at this current time in 2024, of the idea that Russia's influence objectives in America, which we'll touch on what those objectives were, but that they've been largely accomplished.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think no matter how someone feels about the way you asked that question, I think we can all acknowledge that our internal discourse and the way we deal with each other as Americans has definitely shifted over the last, let's say, 1516 years in a way that.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Would presumably be beneficial to adversaries or people who see themselves as adversaries. And just to call out a couple of things, it's been said, according to our intelligence assessment back in 2017, that Russia's goal was to undermine the US led liberal democratic order.
Another objective, which that has been stated, this was from the Mueller report, was that Russia wanted to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States. So looking at those as, like, concrete from research back, coming out of the US, either our intelligence community or investigative people.
That's what Russia has been trying to do here as far as influence in this country.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think one of the things we can get into is why would they be motivated to do that?
And also not just Russia.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Why would other countries be motivated to sow discord in the United States? Number one, to potentially keep our eye off of them. Right. If we're distracted, we're not looking around the world as much. Number two, to influence, I would say the third and second world nations out there that are dependent on the first world nations and competing for their resources and their alliances. And so if you can show other countries in the world that the United States is not as big and bad as everybody thinks, that our style of democracy and our soft power shouldn't be respected and appreciated around the world, we're not good allies. That when somebody gets invaded or is threatened of invasion, that we're going to back them up with our military. Those are all things that someone who doesn't have our interest at heart would want. So it's understandable that Russia, along with other countries, I mean, I know our conversation today is on Russia and its influence in our domestic politics, but any adversary of ours would have an interest in fomenting discord here, just like we do to other countries that we consider adversaries. I mean, this is part of nation states using proxy tools like espionage, intelligence, psychological operations, all that instead of doing hot wars with each other.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Well, and then there's other tools as well, like it could know also trade is used to try to influence someone's relative position in the world. I mean, in Russia considers themselves as a, quote, unquote, peer of America. And so in their mind, you can understand how if you decrease the relative influence of the United States, they can then increase their relative influence in the world. And so that's understandable. And as you pointed out, I mean, countries do this all the time for varying objectives. Right. Now, what's interesting about this, I think, is that we're able to see the Russia influence campaign as it's been talked about, maybe in the 2016 election or even before that, before they invaded Ukraine. It still could be discussed in a more abstract way. But right now, what we're seeing is that there are very specific and concrete ways that the russian influence campaign is intended to be and is, in fact, being leveraged to help Russia attain goals that it specifically has that are beyond the United States. And so specifically, right now, what we see, we didn't have the benefit of this necessarily in 2020, even though the war was starting then. But 2022, when this article in the Washington Post came out, which we'll have in the show notes. But by sowing discord in the United States right now, Russia is able to try to increase and prove its chances in prevailing in Ukraine. Because what we do know is that Russia sees that while it wasn't able to run through Ukraine the way it thought it was going to be able to do, it sees that if it can get the United States to waiver on the commitment to Ukraine or stop providing aid to Ukraine, that will be a significant domino in its ability to win that conflict. So there's actual concrete way now that this type of influence can influence significant world events if they can convince enough Americans that, oh, no, you shouldn't be trying to help Ukraine, you shouldn't be trying to help this democracy like you should let a dictator take over. It's all good. That's either in your benefit or you shouldn't care or you shouldn't want to spend the money, then they can actually advance an interest they have specifically military objective through this influence campaign in the United States.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because I want to continue on that vein. But real quick, I'll mention just this morning and just thinking about today's show, I decided to go back to one of my favorite reading things, which is George Washington's farewell address.
And because I was reminding myself that didn't George Washington allude to some of this type of risk? And he actually did. So I'm not going to quote and get into it so people can go read his farewell address, but it's a good reminder that this is nothing new. Back then in the formation of our country in the late 17 hundreds, it was Spain and France that were trying to influence the young american government. Remember, they were adversaries of England. France had helped us in the revolution, and I'm sure they were trying to call in a few favors. And so George Washington was warning the american people as he left office from being influenced, both negatively influenced, let's put it that way, against our own interests, both internally.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: And piece on that. Remember, though, was it, was that the use of partisan divides, because it's one thing to have common goals and to be, quote unquote, influenced by somebody pointing out, hey, both of our interests are served if XYZ happens. But it's a whole nother thing. What I think Washington really pointed out and what we can see now is that a lot of times, if partisanship is the basis for so much that happens if you have this high partisan divide and Washington railed against partisanship is that you can be influenced not necessarily for strategic reasons from a geopolitical standpoint, but just because it serves your partisan interests. And so therefore, there's this risk when partisan interests become so high that you then put your partisan interests over your national security interests or things like that. And so that, I think, is the concern Washington expressed at that time is, are you going to undermine America because this other nation is giving you or trying to help you get a leg up from a partisan standpoint, but that's not necessarily helping you from a nation standpoint. And then that presently, right now, is Russia able to use partisan carrots, so to speak, or present things in a partisan way that helps Americans advance their interests versus something that the Americans put in, quote, unquote, America first. But I do want us to keep moving. So the thought of just, I want to nail you down on this a little bit, and I'm going to say when you get my piece first, but just the idea that it's been successful, if you lay out the two objectives that, based on the US government, things that Russia has been trying to do, I think you would say that it's successful. But the interesting thing to me is that I don't think Russia's been successful specifically because they've created this tide of, hey, let's get Americans to be more divided, so to speak. It seems like Russia saw a wave that was rising, which was partisan divide in America, and saw it was an opportunity for them to try to push it along. But it seems like this boulder was rolling down a hill already, at least to our knowledge, before they were really involved in this. If they were really getting involved in 2012, 2013, when they were really amping it up, this boulder was already rolling down a hill at that point already. So to me, it seems like Russia has jumped into the fray and is adding more fuel to the fire that was already burning. But it does actually seem like the partisan divide, which inherently would undermine the kind of us liberal democracy order inherently. If there's a divide brewing in America that prevents America from being able to actually function in a way that countries would look at like, okay, yeah, that's a legitimate, the way that country operates is something I can kind of rely on and so forth that seems to have happened. And then Russia may be accelerating and stuff like that and participating in it, or more particularly, throwing their hat in the ring so they can more specifically benefit from the division. Like if we, hey, let's create divisions that we can benefit from as opposed to just divisions that generally bring America standing down. That, to me, I think is notable here is just that they didn't take the boulder up to the top of the hill. They didn't start it rolling, but as it started rolling, they seemed to.
Let's roll. Let's try to direct this a little bit or nudge it a little bit this way in ways that will benefit us.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, look, that's understandable. I mean, that's what nation states do to each other. I would say this.
I'm totally understanding of the idea that we were doing that in Ukraine, right? Like Ukraine was at the edge of being in between, kind of going back into the soviet satellite style of operating know, crony oligarchs running it and stealing from the state treasury and all that, just like the russian oligarchs and Putin himself.
Or it had another faction that was very strong that wanted democracy and wanted to be closer to western Europe, wanted to join the EU, wanted to be part of the way that we see the world, right? Democracies that are allies, that have treaties, that have free trade with each other, so on and so forth. And so we tried to subtly support the side of the ukrainian system that was looking like it wanted to be allied with the west, and Russia didn't like that.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: That kind of thing goes, that that's cold war.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: That's what between us. I mean, what do you think the Vietnam war was? Right. We didn't like that Russia was influencing China under Mao and spreading communism in Asia, and we wanted to stop it before it went what we feel was too far and we had a war.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: But that's the endpoint that, as you pointed out, that most of the time doesn't get there. Usually these influence campaigns are in place of that.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: And it's one that's when there's no more influence, no more politics. You're right, James. And another example would be. So that was an example of how, let's say, the Russians backed a group that was, we were fighting then, you could say in the years later, was the mujahideen that we're backing, and it was like Vietnam in reverse for the Russians in Afghanistan. And so this is not new. Right? And this is where I think it's interesting now, where this is why I think, going back to the initial start of the conversation, the russian influence has been successful on this one because, and you're absolutely right. That's why I want to Judge James, the truth to me is always somewhere in the middle. I'm not saying that Russia caused us to be divided. I think you well said, the way you put it, that we were already going this direction because of many things. I think the post 911 environment, the nativism, the fear that was already there, coupled with the economic crash of eight, coupled with the demographic shifts. And I hate to say this, but I do think that the presence of a black president did disturb enough people that once Russia comes in and really starts aggressively attacking us through the new medium, as you point out, the Internet, like 2012, 2013, remember, the iPad just came out in 2010, the iPhone in eight, Facebook and all that. I think it's 20 years old this year, but let's say by the time it got going, it was probably six, seven. So my point is that all these technologies were very new and the Russians did a good job of exploiting it.
Part of it is, I think they got lucky, too. I don't think that opportunities were.
Yeah, I think they were surprised with the level of success that it had.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think whether you can judge it on whether it's been successful, and I like the context you've given it, because like you said, people are always trying to do this. And again, some of it's underhanded necessarily. Some of it may not even be underhanded. It's just like voice of America conceivably is a quote unquote influence campaign where you're trying to show people, tell people, hey, here's what's going know, you don't have to necessarily believe what your government says, yada, yada, yada. But I think the proof will be in the pudding. Honestly, in terms of if, again, Russia tried to enhance the divisions that were already building in the United States and then also tried to kind of nudge them in directions, those divisions in directions that Russia could directly benefit from. So I think what we're seeing now, the debate over whether Ukraine will get aid from the United States, even with Russia seeing the Ukraine war as winnable, as long as they can get waited out till the United States stops giving Ukraine aid, it seems like whether this vote goes through or not and the US continues to supply aid to Ukraine is actually a place we can judge whether if that aid package goes through, their campaign wasn't as successful as they hoped, but if it doesn't go through, if they're able to block something like that, which if you go back to american politics for the last 40, 50, 60 years, Ronald Reagan, all of the presidents, but, hey, we want to support democracies around the world against authoritarians, against dictators, against hostile takeovers, then if they can get America to back away from that kind of mindset that it's had for decades based on or through a campaign like this, then you would have to say largely it's been successful because that would help them then start achieving military goals based on pure influence campaign.
What we're coming up on is an inflection point on whether or not this thing has really been successful beyond just, oh, yeah, throwing it in your enemy's face or whatever, stuff like that. But actually, no, we've accomplished real objectives.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Let me just hit you on that point there, because you're absolutely right. And I think it's important for the audience that we stop on this point that really the post World War II order has relied on the United States behaving like it did in World War II, showing the world that we're not perfect. Like I mentioned Vietnam. I know we had the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
There's a lot of bad things in central that people can criticize the United States for. And hey, have at it.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: But what I would say is, if you look at the systems, and I've said this in other discussions we've had, the 20th century, the post World War II Cold War, was kind of like, okay, how is humanity going to choose how it wants big nations run? Because remember, we've talked about this like, the industrial age, being about 200 years old really changed how societies and nations organize. We don't have monarchs, and the Catholic Church isn't running half of Europe like it used to and all that. So the bottom line is that it seems like the world chose to go the direction of the United States and the west. That's why we had, and it's through migratory patterns, people en masse tried to leave countries like Russia and China over the second half of the 20th century. People weren't running from England and America and Canada to Russia. So clearly the world, and when the Berlin Wall came down, that was kind of, like I said, we grew up in this era of democracies versus totalitarian regimes. And so that's why I just want to say you're right, that if the United States is now going to be, because of infighting, backing off from publicly defending a european nation that was invaded for the first time since 1939, that a european country really did what Russia did to Ukraine, then, yeah, that is going to be a change in the world order. Does that mean the whole world collapses and all that? I don't know. But I would say that would have.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Been brought about by the russian attempt to undermine the US led liberal democratic order and to sow cultural and social divisions in the United States. It would be as a result of that, which I think is the key piece in terms of judging the question.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: And that's why NATO is such a hot topic for everybody who's on this, because NATO is what's standing in the way of Putin doing what he wants in Europe.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: And I just feel like I'd rather have a strong NATO than have us leave it in Western Europe. Let me finish this, because Americans don't realize this. If Western Europe is stuck trying to defend itself from Russia's aggression, they're not going to be buying our goods and services. We're just going to have a global recession and depression. So I don't think Americans appreciate that.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Yeah, but on to the next thing. The question I wanted to get to you, and we were kind of messing with it a few minutes ago, but I want to hit it directly, is that you talked about how Russia, you're back 100 years, that they have been either an actual out and out adversary to us or just someone who they've been, at minimum, someone who has been pulling in the opposite direction of us. So it's pretty open even to this day that Russia and then Vladimir Putin, they do not wish America well. And Putin has many occasions talked about how he is against, quote unquote, western civilization.
That's something that he's anti and wants to do something totally different from that. So with all this out there, this isn't secretive. Why do you think there's a real segment of the american right that is ready to embrace Russia and Putin? I mean, to the extent that we've seen Tucker CARLSOn and do a puff piece with Vladimir Putin go and extol the virtues of russian grocery stores and I mean, really trying to really build them up. And it's like he believes there's an audience for this and that there's somebody that has an itch that he's scratching with this.
Why do you think that there are so many or there's a significant number of people that are ready to embrace someone who openly wishes us ill?
[00:21:37] Speaker B: I just want to say a nice joke first, that he just showed us that he must be a true elitist here in the United States because he seemed to be surprised about things at grocery stores that I've been seeing for the last 20 years, like a card elevator.
But no. So on a serious note, I think there's a mix of many things. Right. I thought about this. Right.
I. It. The easy answer is for me to say, oh, because Russia's done a great job with propaganda over the last 25 years and the american right. About convincing some people, not everybody, that they are the last bastion of white hope in Europe and all that.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: There'S a real thing, that kind of thing.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there is a real thing there. And I'm sure there's a percentage of people that are fawning over Russia today that believe that. But I think that's too simplistic for me to just say, oh, that's the reason I do think there is a true streak of isolationism in parts of the american kind of body politic that's been there forever. I mean, these are the same people that didn't want us to go into World War II, didn't want us to go into world war. I mean, that's just part of the american political story that there's.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Didn't want to go into Vietnam, didn't want, not necessarily just purely from a political ideological spectrum standpoint, but just to be there. They're just more isolationist than general. Yeah.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: So I think we got to acknowledge in a democracy, I'm willing to listen to those people. I think they have a seat at the table in a conversation. I may not agree with them, but I'm not going to say that they're illegitimate. So that's why I think it's difficult to kind of unpack some of it, because I'm sure there are all these competing reasons why people side with Vladimir Putin's view today and not what we traditionally would have considered the american view. Now.
It's interesting to me because the propaganda is so good once you look into actually what Russia is about and what Vladimir Putin has said out of his mouth. I found a speech he gave in 2022. So this is well months after the Ukraine war started. This was around the time when a gas line had been sabotaged. And he says, quote, sanctions were not enough for the Anglo Saxons. They moved on to sabotage.
And he accused the west of outright Satanism. And he said, western hegemony will be smashed. This is inevitable. We must do this for our people. And what made me realize is the naiveness of Americans. And this is what I think I saw when Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin, and Putin owned him.
Tucker was his puppy dog, is that we are so simplistic in America with our racial way. We look at race, white and black and all this. And a lot of white Americans are convinced that all Europeans look at themselves the same way. And it was interesting to see, and refreshing for me, actually, to see Vladimir Putin saying the Anglo Saxons have moved on to sabotage. When I say refreshing, I mean it as a joke, because what he's reminding us is there's real ethnic differences in the european continent, and Russians are slavic people and they don't see themselves as in hegemony with western Europeans. They see themselves as different than Franks, the french people, than Anglo Saxons and from Italians, who they call Romas and all that. So in Vladimir Putin's mind, he doesn't want to be our friend. He doesn't like, he doesn't see, oh.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: You guys are white, or you guys have a lot of white people. He doesn't have a lot of white people. Let's be.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Exactly. I mean, and it's no different how we look at Africa. Simplistically, I'll just give a win to white Americans, too. Black people look and see, a lot of people will think Ethiopia is the same as Nigeria.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Well, your point being that in America, we look at the kind of racial context as being the end all, be all, whereas in the rest of the world, there's much more tribalism and much more going on beyond that. Ethnic, beyond just, oh, okay, let's see your skin tone. And then. Okay, this is what group you belong in because of that.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: So it's more complex. Yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: And I think that's why, if you listen to Vladimir Putin in the interview, I mean, what's he talking mean? This is number one, the propaganda is interesting because, remember, his goalpost has moved several times now. First it was he was going into Ukraine to invade Nazis because the government was run by Nazis and they were on his border. He had to do something about it. Then I think about a year ago, I saw him in a speech talking about, well, it was because they were having pedophiles and promoting LGBT stuff and all that. So it was a culture war, which is why they were too woke. That's why he had to go into Ukraine. And then on Tucker Carlson's show or the interview of the two weeks ago, whatever it was, the 30 minutes diatribe about history and the Middle Ages and that Ukraine never existed because it was part of Russia in the 9th century or the twelveth century or whatever. So my point is that it's a good example. That's a different culture.
We're projecting all our Americanness on the Russians.
They don't see things the way we do.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: But that's a good answer. Just that we're projecting our american kind of view of things over there, or at least the people who may be susceptible to kind of fall into this guy who's talking greasy about you. Yeah, we're going to side with him again, talking directly bad about us. But I think actually this is an example. We touched on it before, just kind of the work that was done before Russia really picked up this and really started to push the divisions in America, kind of when Russia was still reorganizing itself post the fall of the Soviet Union, before they really got back and started pushing forward under this current order that Putin has set up.
And that is just, there has been a partisan divide here that has amped up. And based on that, this is 2022 numbers. And again, from that Washington Post piece where you have Americans view, or at least they ran a poll, yougov poll, and it's talking about who Republicans have a very unfavorable view of. And they have a much more, many more Republicans have a very unfavorable view of Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi than they do Vladimir Putin. Like by 30 or 40 or 50%. It's a significant gap in terms of, you look at negative view of american politicians that are Democrats, and that's like an 80%. Putin is like 50% or so. So I think that the work that was done previously, it's plausible to say that many people see Putin as the lesser of two evils in this context versus their own countrymen. And so if your own countrymen are the greater of the evils that you faced in the world, then, of course, even if Putin is talking crazy about you, you still won't see him as the threat again, even though he is a declared adversary of yours. He's saying, yeah, I'm trying to knock down United States a peg or two. And even with him saying that, it doesn't register because the work that was done and then that continues to be done. As far as this partisan divide, and I think that we've talked about that in many times, a lot of that goes into the idea of if you convince, if you just go back to a bipolar or like a polar standpoint with just two sides, if you convince people that the other side is so bad, then what you end up with is your people will never hold you accountable. If the other side is so bad, then no matter what I do, I could rot, lie, cheat, steal, but I'm your guy. And if you go to them, then the whole world's going to fall apart. So that effort, from a partisan advantage standpoint, let's get a partisan advantage by making people think that all Democrats are pedophiles, or let's get this partisan advantage like that, that actually set the stage for Americans to view, or some Americans to view, someone who outright will say out loud, an adversary nation, a nation that's been an adversary for 100 years, for the leader of that nation, a dictator, to say, yeah, I'm trying to knock you guys a peg or two. I'm trying to divide you guys up. And many Americans saying, yeah, that's cool, because you're still the lesser of the two evils that I face today.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think Vladimir Putin is intelligently playing the american system for what it is.
We don't want to regulate our media. We don't want to regulate our social media algorithms and force companies to not spread BS. And then we have people like Elon Musk who were praised for buying Twitter so that people can say whatever they want on it without any guardrails, which is, you know, I've been preparing for today. I read how many articles or so many articles about how much russian bots and the BS, just their own propaganda, has been permeating Twitter to the point where Elon Musk himself has been retweeting things that have been sourced to russian intelligence. I'm not saying he's in on it. I'm just saying he's been influenced on it and he's believing it. So I think the train has left the station in terms of Russia even being needed at this point.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: And this is where, again, Russia is a rider of this. They're not a driver. This was happening.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Well, here's the thing.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Russia amped it up.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Let me back that up. Because there was a time when Russia did actively, I think, play more of an influence game than it is right now, today in 2024. Because, man, in preparing for today, I can't afford the time to rattle it all off. But it was just being reminded about things like Donald Trump's campaign manager in March became Paul Manafort, who never knew Trump personally, came out of nowhere, hadn't been in politics for like, 30 years or something. And then I'm reading, before Trump, he was a lobbyist for the dictator of Angola, for the dictator of Zaire, for Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines. I mean, this is a guy who was kind of bad news, right? Then we've got, remember Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from the investigation on Michael Flynn or something because Michael Flynn was trying to run diplomacy with the russian government and looking for back channels before they were even in office. I mean, that would be like finding out if we saw that Nikki Haley was talking to some foreign government right now, just assuming she's going know, it's just weird. So in any case, what I'm getting at is we have now Americans that propagandize each other. And a great example is what just happened last week with the gentleman who was seen as the star witness for the whole Biden impeachment over this hunter Biden stuff and the Burisma in Ukraine, the stuff I've had to hear about for three, four years now from everybody I know that watches Fox and this guy got charged for lying. There appears to be nothing in this story. And instead of reporting that last week like it has been reporting about the lies to its viewers, Fox News stayed silent on it for many days. And I think that's the issue, which is we have a half of this country now that consumes media, that makes their own political, domestic political opponents seem more nefarious, dangerous and corrupt than our actual foreign adversaries who look to your.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Point, by selectively reporting what they curating what they see in a way that leads to this conclusion and never reporting.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: That anything is wrong that they see.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah, that's what I mean.
They curate what people see so that people never do see, like, oh, okay, well, what we were told here was all wrong. Okay. No, because people will continue to believe that without any knowledge that this guy has been indicted for lying about this stuff. And then that was the basis. And I think that this gets to the end. And this is where I don't think this goes to your point, of the lack of a regulatory environment, which there was one, like, up until the 1980s, there was a regulatory environment in terms of media, news media in particular, fairness doctrine and the like. And what that did was that helped. But that regulatory environment helped separate the profit motive from or the profit driven decision making from pure news reporting and gathering because I think that's what we're living with right now. The concept of Russia wants to enhance the social and cultural divides in America. Well, you know, who else wants to do that? And you know who else benefits from that is the american news media. And some are greater offenders than others. But by and large, what we've learned and what they've learned, and they're smart people, is that telling people what they want to hear is better for business. From a news media standpoint, telling people what they telling, giving people news they don't want to hear is bad for business.
The best example of this or the most prominent example of this was in the aftermath of the 2020 election when Fox initially was. Fox was initially reporting. Yeah, the election was real.
He lost. Unfortunately, he lost, but it was real. And they started losing viewers by the hundreds of thousands. And so they changed their tunde and started saying that the election was stolen because that stopped the bleeding of them losing viewers because there were other stations that were reporting that, oh, it was stolen. It was stolen. And so Fox was losing its viewers to those other stations. And so in order to not lose ratings, and so therefore, to not lose money, they had to start reporting something else regardless of whether it was true. Just, hey, our people don't want to hear. So let me jump in with you here. Go ahead.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: On this one specifically, and I'm sorry, I just got to do it because to show the level that this stuff is effective, and this is why I wanted to stop right here. Think about as you're saying this, then we have, last year, Fox actually lost a lawsuit, which is one of the largest ones I've ever heard of for this.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Well, they settled it for a lot of money.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Sorry, settled it? Yeah, for 787,000,000. Again, that's something they haven't talked about on their network much. Right. I mean, I understand why. So their viewers, a lot of them don't even understand that the network that they watch had to settle because there was enough evidence in writing through emails and texts that they allowed these lies to proliferate. So that confirms that the big lie is a lie. Then what we got is confirmation from their text. The reason why Tucker Carlson doesn't work there anymore is a confirmation of all this, because he was texting, they're calling his boss the c word, and they had to fire him for that, along with other stuff. And he was texting about how he thought the whole big lie was a lie. And he hates Trump. That's why none of this, it's sad that we have this many Americans that have been manipulated. And it's sad because I know a lot of these people, and they're great people. They're not bad people, they're not dumb, but they do believe in something now, and it's difficult.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah. They're in an information silo.
The silo is built around the idea of profitability and maximizing viewership amongst a segment of population.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: But there's a real risk there. Emotionally invested.
That's the sad part.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to get to that.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: The emotional, sorry, to interrupt?
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Well, no, that's actually where I wanted to go to is okay.
I want to have a discussion on whether this can be undone, where Americans can get back on kind of the same page, generally the same page as far as, at least to the countries that wish us ill, maybe we might have different views on our friends or the countries we're kind of just do business with or whatever, but actually the countries that say, yeah, screw you, dude, can we get on the same page with those? Do you think this can be undone? And I think the emotional investment piece is a big part of the concern here, is that there are many people, as we know, once you get emotionally invested in something, then new information. But the way our mind works, bias wise, unconsciously, the way our mind works is once we're emotionally invested in something, we tend to filter information through that emotional investment. Which explains also why the idea of not reporting the big lie or not saying the big lie is true. It could lead some to want to change the station or whatever. So are Americans too emotionally invested, or at least some Americans, in the idea that Americans want to be divided or Americans need to be divided, or that our fellow countrymen are the biggest threat, bigger than even Vladimir Putin, who openly wishes us ill? Where do you think this goes from here?
[00:38:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't think this goes away for several reasons. One is, to the point we're making, right. People are emotionally invested in something, and whenever someone's emotionally invested in something, like we're saying, it's hard to dislodge that. Right. Number two is what we already identified, too. Information silos. We have people in this country, a lot of us, that are in such different information silos that we don't even know what the other person is talking about. Right.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: And it's profitable to keep people in information silos. So not only you have a psychological barrier, you also have the profit barrier. That's saying, hey, let's keep people in these information silos, because then we can make more money from the news media perspective.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: So there goes two things we've already identified in this conversation that I think make it difficult for us to kind of see things together in any easy way in the near future. But then I think about just not only what we talk about, but the way that our environment today, for whatever reason, our culture, keeps everyone on edge and angry, because that's what I found with a lot of.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Which is another profit driven thing from the news.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what I was going to say. I find a lot of the people I know that really consume a lot of that media and that buy into the russian talking points and kind of this way of being in our politics today are also just constantly consuming things that make them angry. Right. And then what happens is some of these folks that I know well, like where I have a good personal relationship to, I don't fight them, but I'll just start slowing down and talking to them. And it's interesting almost 100% of the time, like, walking them off the ledge in a sense. And almost 100% of the time, they end up agreeing with me. And not because I'm right or I'm better viewer or something like that, is because it's about pragmatism and rationalism. So, for example, I thought about this whole thing, like one of my friends talking about, well, how would you feel if NATO was on your border? And I see why Putin's doing this and this and that. And I just asked him, I was know you didn't seem too concerned about what Saddam Hussein felt before we invaded him. Why do you care what he like, what about what we point. Yeah, why are you on? And that's what I was kind of thinking. And I remember slowing down and he's saying, well, they speak Russian over in Ukraine and this and that. And I said, from that logic and what Putin said at the interview with Tucker about the 9th century or whatever, I'm like, so Texas and Colorado, and we have a state called New Mexico. They used to be part of the country of Mexico until we had a war in the 1840s. And guess what? We got that. And now it's part of the United States. And guess what? There's a lot of people in border states that speak Spanish. So just to your logic, Mexico would be justified literally rolling tanks over to the Texas border and sending in cruise missiles to southern California, hitting residential apartment buildings. Why can't they just do that?
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Russia did.
[00:41:37] Speaker B: That's what Russia did and Russia claims is because those people speak Russian and that this used to be and that land was historically.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:41:45] Speaker B: So they'll take that logic further, and then the Native Americans should just be able to do what Hamas did to Israel on October 7 just because they're upset at us that we're here. My point is that once you slow people down and start talking like that, they start, oh, yeah, man. You know what? I didn't think of it like that. And so I think that's part of it, too. Is the information silos keep people's minds so angry and so.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Well, no, but it's the silos plus the need to keep them on edge, to keep them a captive viewer. Like, don't turn it off because everything, there's a catastrophe waiting around every corner. So keep watching. So, yeah, again, the way that profit drives, the way that news media presents things. I mean, we're distinct. I say news media because it should be distinct from entertainment. But what ends up happening is that the lessons from entertainment media are being used by news media to keep people captivated and make more money, so to speak.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: But it's your favorite terms, heels and baby faces.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: They, and I'll say that, to me, I would think that it can't continue like this. So I guess I have a slightly more, at least from a position standpoint, optimistic take than you. But the reasons I say that are maybe more pessimistic and the reason it can't continue like this is because you can't operate a nation in a democratic system like this perpetually.
This is one of those things where to be a part of any team, you got to want to be a part of a team.
At a certain point. If a certain number of people don't want to be a part of the team anymore, then you can't hold it together anymore. And so right now, what we're seeing is that there's this pullaway and maybe it's more one sided, but it's still regardless, the distance is happening.
And I'm not going to say maybe it's one sided, it is more one sided, but the result doesn't really matter because you got to have a certain level of buy in amongst a broad spectrum of the population in order to have the kind of government that we have. Like we always look and say, okay, let's go. When historically, America's tried to use military force, take out a government in a foreign nation, and then give them democracy, and it never works. And the reason why you can't just give someone democracy is that the people there have to want it sufficiently to want to fight, to stay together, to want to fight, to work through their problems, to compromise and things like that. That type of stuff isn't easy. What's easy is for one guy to pull out the biggest gun and just say, everybody do what I say. And so our form of government is harder. It requires a level of buy in. And what we're seeing right now is that for various reasons, there are various forces that are causing or taking advantage of chicken and egg type of thing, a segment of our population that's pulling away from that, that doesn't really want to make the whole work anymore. They just want to run the whole show, and that's it. So either you keep pulling and pulling and pulling, either it's going to break or there's going to be a reaction in the form of the type of regulations from a news media standpoint that we've had in the past or something like that, not necessarily doing the same thing that was done in the past, but accomplishing that type of an objective in a way that accounts for the way the information is presented now, or we're going to have some kind of reaction that then allows people to get perspective in what's going on in the world and not just siloed information designed to keep them amped up and keep them as a profit center, keep their attention as a profit center. One of the two have to happen. Like, we can't just perpetually keep going. You're going to bin, bin, bin, bin, bin, and either you're going to break apart or you're going to snap back together. And so I don't know which one of those is going to happen because it depends on a lot of things that need to happen. But I think that's the direction you.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: Know what's going to happen.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:45:33] Speaker B: The tech stocks, big tech stocks will keep going up like meta and Facebook, Google and then Microsoft because they make a lot of money when we click and we have this conversation by the Nasdaq 100. But that's not financial advice.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but I do want to keep us moving on to the next topic, so we'll jump to the next topic after the break.
All right, coming back, second topic we want to discuss today.
You and I have kicked this around before, just in terms of the presentation of black Americans in our society, a lot of times takes one as a victim. And that's not unfounded. In fact, you can say historically there wasn't enough attention paid to the things that were happening from a negative standpoint to black Americans, either from a standpoint of economic opportunities, things like, if you go back even to the new deal things, they were kept out of GI Bill, like all types of things, where there wasn't enough attention paid to how our society was underserving black Americans. The question we've seen raised now, which is an interesting question, is whether too much attention actually whether we've swung too far to the other side, and so too much attention now is being paid to black folks. Being a victim in the United States, to the extent that that much attention focuses people not on not necessarily focuses too many people, particularly African Americans, young African Americans, on the idea that things are hopeless and there's no point in even trying because things are, oh, it's just all bad for you. It gets people in that kind of mindset, as opposed to one of, okay, let's keep working and so forth, or let's find constructive ways to address this hurdle so that we can make things more attainable or accessible. So what do you think, man? Do you think it's possible that kind of the negativity in the messages that we see about what's happening with blacks in America, or it may be too much, it may be actually undermining looking at. And again, this is a loaded question because it comes with all of the idea of what black Americans have been through from a standpoint in this country and the way that race has been dealt with in this country. But do you think it's possible that there's too much negativity in terms of what people are seeing now, particularly young African Americans?
[00:47:57] Speaker B: That's kind of like in the last section, it's a difficult question to ask because, number one, there's millions of things being looked at every day on the Internet.
I think there's a smorgasbord of probably disinformation and bs that probably leans people to feel more negative about their own place in their own society than otherwise maybe we might have seen had we not had this type of technology develop.
And I do think there's also in this era, like we talk about with politics and everything else is kind of post truth era. Right. I think one of the victims of that is actual history, and we've seen this campaign in our state. I find it interesting now that our governor here in Florida is beginning to reverse his attack on kind of the books in the school system because it clearly has been sloppy. But I think that this narrative of everybody picking at our history has kind of obscured the ability for us to see and really discuss things like progress. And I've had this kind of running joke to know. Sometimes I feel like part of the reason why we're in some of these cultural wars is because integration worked.
We don't like to talk about the history of America, segregation, what happened post reconstruction, so on and so forth. So we have a lot of Americans on various sides of these debates spectrums, whether white or black Americans, that are misled about what happened in the past, what's going on now. And I think from directly to your point about black Americans. Yes. Sometimes we don't focus enough on the progress that's been made. We do focus a lot of times on negative parts of the past and then things that are still negative today, but without the context of, hey, things are a lot better. Like, it's 2024. I'd rather be black in this country today than in 1974 or 1944 or 1914 or 1874. And obviously before 1865. So that's the conversation we tend not to have. It's either this or this. I got to say, america is awesome. It never had, like Nikki Haley, America's never been a racist country, da da da, and have this delusion about the past, or I got to be Mr. Militant and talk about how oppressive everything is today. And black man has a terrible and our neck is at the boot of the white man type of thing, and neither extreme is true.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'll quibble. One thing. You said there was a sliver, like in that 1860s, late 1860s, early 1870s called the reconstruction, where things were okay. I think for black folks before then it got put down violently.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but they didn't have a PlayStation five.
I didn't have a dispensary 1 mile from my house back then.
I guess I got out of farm.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: That's just being an American, but nonetheless.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: So that's why 24 is still better for after I get back from the dispensary. But anyway, go ahead.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: By and large, I do think that you're on to something, and I think what it is, basically, is, at least I know for me, sensitive to the idea that a lot of what was actually happening from a bad standpoint had been covered up for a long time, and then a lot of either the bad or the good had been covered up historically. And so learning this stuff, there's a black history month. We're in black history month right now. Because it had been the tendency of the mainstream of society to not get into this stuff for various reasons. If it was things that was positive, they either didn't want that out there or didn't find it to be significant or like, nefarious or un nefarious reasons why I didn't make it out. If things that was negative, then people feel guilt about it or something like that, they don't want it out there. So for various reasons, the reasons actually for the point of this conversation aren't as important. The information wasn't out there. But I think what we're seeing and what needs to happen is we need to recalibrate for our modern information environment. What we know about our modern information environment right now is that negativity is what's going to spread faster than anything. And what we know about social media and things like that is that it causes imperceived changes in behavior. And so if you put those two together, then if you just keep presenting things, if you try to present things in a fair and way with a lot of perspective, like, hey, here's the things that have been good, here's the things that have been bad, the things you say that are bad are going to just, they're going to spread more because negativity spreads faster and because of the repetition and the way information is presented to people in our current media environment, social media and so forth, this is going to change them, change their brains, change their minds in ways that they may not even know. So they're going to receive the negative messages more and they're going to internalize those negative messages more. So I think really the problem is less that as a society we've become more negative in terms of what people trying to get information out there are doing. But I think that the negative just resonates more now, spreads more now and then also, whatever spreads more is going to change us more now. So you hear things like, and I mean, when you sent me this piece, what came to mind actually was you actually mentioned in maybe a couple of years ago how you had a friend of yours tell you that, oh, things are worse for black people now than they've ever been. And you and I were just blown away by that statement like, wow, is this person aware of Jim Crow or slave?
There's been things that in America, if you want to point to negative stuff, things aren't perfect. There are definitely things that can be improved upon, things that are unacceptable currently, but worst time ever is just, it's jaw dropping from the standpoint of, okay, there's a lot of perspective, but it's understandable. Again, if you look at the current environment and how that can, how the repetition and how what will be repeated and how that repetition can affect you from your brain standpoint. So I think really it's just a matter of we need to be able to adjust how our messaging, people who want to make sure people know what's going on, historical perspective, the current perspective, we have to adjust and we have to keep in mind how information is spread nowadays.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that it's a couple of things. One is, yes, I think just like we alluded to in part one, there's a lot more negativity around every topic. Right. Just because of the way the information ecosystems are made. I was thinking about.
[00:54:34] Speaker A: And what catches fire.
[00:54:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I was thinking about. Even in my profession, I mean, you've heard me say this even personally, right? I see that financial media has followed the line from the political media, which is. Everything is alarming. I just read an article the other day about the s and P is going to drop 70% from here.
If you constantly consume this stuff, you're going to be scared to put your money in a bank. Right?
[00:55:00] Speaker A: Over the past couple of years, in your industry, they've been saying a recession is coming every year for the past, like, however many years.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Every year.
No. I get phone calls from people asking about the brick countries and is the US dollar going to implode and all that from, like, 80 year old ladies. I'm like, why are these people being scared of this is sad that they got to worry about this.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: All this is Bs and all that stuff is done. Just to touch back on the point we made in the lab, all that stuff is done because that's the kind of messaging that keeps people attention. Keeps people.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's my point. I think that the black community is just a subset of a victim of all this stuff. Right? Meaning we're all victims of this in our culture, in our society, that everything is negative, and it makes us feel negative about our situation. We've done a show about, look how the economy is doing pretty fine and everybody thinks everything sucks with the economy. So it stands to reason. And I mean, even with our part one, our country is in pretty good shape, especially compared to a country like Russia, which has an average salary of $14,000 per person per capita, versus we have an average salary of 60,000. Right. I mean, there's so many people telling.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Us how great it is over there compared to this.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. And they're down on their own country here. So is it surprising that there's a subset of black Americans that think this is the worst time ever to be black in America? It's not that surprising when you think about the ways that negative information and the speed at which it flies around our society has been able to capture other people in other parts of our societal culture to be negative about things, too. And so I just want to finish one thing.
This is a tough thing, I think, for me to say. I hope it comes outright, which is that a lot of times, in any society, in any culture, people behave to what the society kind of expects of them and kind of pigeonholes them into. And so I'm remiss sometimes where I still have black american friends that will tell me things like they don't feel that they belong in this country, they don't feel safe in their own country, things like that, which I understand where some of that comes from. But I feel like there's a lot of black folks that still behave like we rent this country and they believe this kind of almost the manifest destiny narrative that, oh, this is a white man's country and all that stuff. And I'll give you an example, James, my neighbor, next door neighbor, who I'm friends with during this last few years of the culture wars, he went and bought the Betsy Ross flag with the 13 stars and put it up on his. In front of his house. Now, I understand that some people have taken that flag to mean that that's when America was pure back then. So what I did the next day is I ordered one of those shirts from Amazon, and I wear it when I go walk in my neighborhood, because the idea is that this is my country, and those 13 stars represent the colonies of the United States before it was a country, but this is my country. So that also is what I represent and what represents me. And so I think we, as black Americans, I would like us to start embracing and owning this country, even understanding that. Yeah, it was founded by people that owned slaves and all that stuff. That's just the complexity of being alive. And not everything's perfect, but right now, we're more american than we are african, right?
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: Just like, we don't hear white people calling themselves European Americans and all this stuff, they just call themselves Americans. So we got to stop saying, we're african Americans alike. We're Americans, period. And I think that's something that will help us emotionally and psychologically stop feeling like we're on the outside.
[00:58:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting point.
[00:58:54] Speaker B: Along with fighting racism and everything else, the people that want to keep us on the or make us feel like we're on the outside, I recognize they're there as well.
[00:59:01] Speaker A: And I just wanted to comment the piece about that people oftentimes will live to the expectations, and I think that's something to be very. That is very insightful and that we also have to keep in mind. I think that's the harm. If you focus on the negative, particularly amongst the younger generations, then what you end up with or what you end up teaching, basically, is this lowered expectation or creating this lowered expectation and this environment, like you said, where people. There's no point in trying because it's all stacked against me anyway. And that is not necessarily what you want to leave people with. If your goal is to teach people so that they can survive in the american environment, which has historically and remains somewhat hostile, at least to black Americans.
You want to teach resiliency, you want to teach that this stuff has happened, but it can be overcome. You don't want to teach hopelessness. And so I think that's kind of the stakes here. When Nikuya asked the question, are we too negative? Are we too focused on the victimhood? And so forth, is that if we create a generation of victims, then they won't be equipped from a psychological standpoint to learn how to navigate through the unique challenges America may present to a black person and then be able to overcome those, because that's what we want to build ultimately, is that resilience that allows you to overcome. Yeah, something's going to be thrown in your way. Roadblock here, roadblock there. Dangerous situation here, dangerous situation there. How can you learn to overcome that to be the best you you can be and not come in with the mindset already of, oh, well, society doesn't expect anything of me, so who cares? Type of so. But I do want to wrap 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. Until next time, I'm James Keats.
[01:00:50] Speaker B: I'm Tundevalana.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
[01:00:52] Speaker B: I'm a Nigerian.
All right.
[01:00:56] Speaker A: From the guy who just said, don't say african American anymore.
[01:00:59] Speaker B: I'm a Nigerian American. Look at my name. I can say it. You can say it. I got you.
All right, we'll talk to you next time.
