Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, Welcome. Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to react to the ongoing January 6th hearings and consider what we can learn about our overall news environment from the way the hearings about the insurrection are being covered.
And later on, we're going to look back at the government loan that helped Tesla become the power that it is today in light of the company's plan to do another stock split, and consider how we should weigh a success like this in terms of how we view the government's role in promoting economic and technological growth.
Joining me today is a man who could be considered a maverick in the podcast game, Tunde. Ogon. Lana Tunde, are you ready to shoot your shot today? As you know, our Top Gun, and.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: I guess with the Top Gun reference, I will be maverick, sir.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: I'll be shooting. All right. All right.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Fly the plane. Well, I'm gonna land the plane today, as they say.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: All right. All right. Now, we're recording this on June 13, 2020, and I want to get right to our discussion today whether people have watched or been able to watch the hearings from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 U.S. capitol attack, which began on June 9 and continued today, June 13. We've all heard about them and we all remember the event that they're discussing in the lead up to.
So, Tunde, what is your reaction or has been your reaction to the hearings thus far?
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Well, I mean, straight reaction is, I'll put it this way, I don't think anybody coming into this hearing now, after almost a year and a half since the event and all of the discussions around it, no matter what kind of media ecosystem one is watching, I think that most people already have their mind made up about how they feel about January 6th. So that was my kind of feeling in watching it that I don't know how much this moves the needle. However, I do appreciate that the hearings are happening. You know, I think it was a pretty important event in the nation's history and, you know, for it to be well documented and for the public record and to see people that were there that day, witnesses and, you know, people just talking about the experience. I think, put it this way, I'm glad they're doing it. I'd rather see it than not see it. Put it that way.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I think you're right about that. Because the thing is, like, remember when we did the Reconstruction documentary and there was congressional testimony that when they did hearings on things that were happening in Memphis at the end of reconstruction and terrorist acts and so forth that form the record, things that didn't really make it into the history books or that were told with a certain level of bias in terms of how we learn about them. And so this creates, like, a government record of this thing that I think will be helpful for future generations in understanding and hopefully trying to prevent the circumstances that let something like this happen. But the other thing I want to make sure that we point out with this is that much has been made, and it's visceral, so you understand this and it's rightful. But much has been made about the physical aspect of this, the, you know, kind of the kinetic aspect of this. And, you know, even we've seen comparisons thrown out. Oh, this isn't, you know, like, there have been other physical or kinetic types of, you know, things that have happened, you know, recent times. And why is everybody focusing just on this? And so I think a lot of not enough is made. I think enough and the proper amount is made of the physical aspect of this, but not enough is made of the why, you know, and the why is really the focus here. It is really why this stands out and why this is a focus of a congressional hearing and investigation. Why they were there, what they were trying to do, what they were trying to accomplish here. They were trying to subvert an election, overturn an election based on false claims. And so I thought the hearings so far have done a good job of talking about that. Yeah, the people who were at the top here understood that what was happening here was that there was no legitimacy to the claims that there was an election that was in dispute, that the election was not in dispute by people who were serious and on any side of the aisle. And this was essentially a coup attempt that was organized, funded, and set up to try to take out the government or intimidate the government, at very minimum, into doing what certain people wanted done. And so I think that we need to make sure we don't lose sight of that when we're talking about how violent it was, even though, again, the violence always will draw the eyeballs and attention. And it's worthwhile, it needs to be talked about, but that's really not the why is what it needs to remain the focus here. And so I do wanna make that point. But one of the things that kind of the next day, at least, when you're looking at the Thursday hearing and one of those things that was circulating around just in the Twitter sphere and Everywhere out there was that. In particular, cable news, I would say Fox News. It was pointed out that not only did they not show the hearing, just, you know, with audio and video in general, but in playing their regularly scheduled programming instead of the hearing, they weren't even doing commercials or anything like that. Like. So it was. It was interesting to many people that they would go commercial free, not to just to show what was happening at the Capitol, but commercial free to not show what was happening at the Capitol. So what did you make of that?
[00:05:48] Speaker A: No, I mean, look, actions speak louder than words, right? In every aspect of life. So the actions were very. Actually on a serious note, like pronounced. I mean, like you said, for two hours, the number one cable news primetime network, which commands, you know, probably somewhere between a quarter million to half a million dollars per 32nd AD, decided that for two hours they were gonna forego that revenue. And that's why I think it's very interesting and that's why I wanna talk slow and break it down, because these are decisions made by executives within the company. So this is a very manipulative example of. And this is as close as we are. And I hate to say this because I don't want to sound partisan, because I know that all current modern media uses certain forms of shock value.
They deal with the algorithms, they know how to play in our psychology and our emotions and tug on them. But Fox has been going more and more in a direction of true propaganda. And I think it mirrors what we see in Russia when from the outside, we're wondering, how can the Russians believe that they're going to denazify a country that has a Jewish president? Right. Like from a rational standpoint, we look from the outside because we don't understand that world of propaganda for a country because we generally have not had that in the United States at that level. And I think Fox, what they did Thursday, was really, for the first time ever, and that I've seen at that level, went out of their way from an executive decision level to say. And this is the other thing, I'll say this, too. It speaks to a lot to me of what they think of their audience. That was.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Finish your thought, though. They went out of their way to what?
[00:07:29] Speaker A: No, they went out of their way to basically avoid having their audience see any light or shed any light on a narrative other than what they wanted them to hear. Even though, to your point, the narrative is factual. From everybody that was there and everybody at the top, William Barr, seeing Ivanka Trump saying, I trust what William Barr says, The second hearing had a gentleman who was, the second hearing had a gentleman who was from Fox News like he was a former executive saying, yeah, this is exactly how we talk to the public and all this. So my point is that it tells me a lot about how they must feel about their viewers because they don't even trust to allow their viewers to change the channel. Doing a commercial break, like, feeling like it's almost like an insecure, abusive relationship. You know, the person that's saying you can't even have any friends anymore. Yeah, because if you go out and have friends, they might actually show you something other than me and my way of doing things. And I can't afford that, so I gotta lock you in this House type of thing. And that's what they basically did with their viewers for two hours. That's what I mean, like, the actions are very clear. It's pretty amazing actually, that they don't honor the spirit of the First Amendment. Let's just put it that way.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: On one hand, they're allowed to do that. They're allowed to.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: They're taking advantage of the First Amendment.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Well, but I think, yeah, the big takeaway there actually is one, how important they believe it is to maintain a, a single narrative for their viewers. And then also what that says, what they think about their viewers, that, that, that does express a concern that if the viewers see something that's not presented to them in a packaged and, and put together way, curated way, like we do it, then either they will see something that's upsetting to them that they may not be able to handle, you know, or that it will undermine what we've been telling them, what we've been feeding them. And so it's really interesting that, like, hey, we can't let you see a hearing that again, this isn't a press conference from Joe Biden or something like that. We can't let you see a bipartisan hearing that's happening at the U.S. congress, you know, the House Select Committee that's being head headed at least in part by Liz Cheney. And that is jarring. That's like, we, we can't, we can't have your equilibrium. Fox News saying this to their audience. We can't have your equilibrium disturbed like this, you know, because we don't think you can handle it or our ability to, to keep your attention is so tethered to us always giving you this emotional satisfaction that anything outside of that and we risk the whole thing falling apart. I mean, I've seen, this isn't from me But I've seen people talk, point out that that's cultish in a sense, you know, like, that is how. And then you use the abusive spouse thing, but, like, say, hey, I. You cannot let anyone else, no one else's mindset, you can see when it comes to this, you can only see it as it's packaged the way I like to, or the way I'm going to package it, if it's curated the way I do.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, it is. We keep, I think most of us that aren't in that bubble, so to speak, keep staring at it and wondering, you know, like, wow, what. What's going on over there? And like I said, it's interesting to me for me to feel like for the rare time I'm looking at, like, wow, they really must not think their viewers are like, either capable of carrying multiple thoughts in their head or are even capable of being loyal to being conservative. Like, somehow if they see this information, they're just gonna.
Just change their views. And so the reality is, first of all, the question about are they honest news media and all that. I think that's already been settled through the lawsuits where Tucker Carlson's lawyers use the defense that no one, no rational thinking person would, Would consider his show factual. That's how they defend themselves. So clearly.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: And they successfully defend themselves.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I mean. So the court of law agrees that they're not factual. Right. Because clearly the court of law, they.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Argue to the court that they're not. Nobody would even think that they're factual.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: And so. And so, and so the point is, is that I think it's been. That's, that's just, that's just that what, what I'm getting at is the first time that I've kind of thought about the viewers themselves and how the network basically disrespects their intelligence. That's my view, but I don't know how they feel about it. But one of the things I wanted to jump in here is in preparing for today, I did some reading about some of the stats. And one thing that I felt good about, and this is where I feel like maybe sometimes we look too much at some of the train wrecks on cable news. It says the three major cable news networks and what they consider the three major in this article are Fox, CNN and MSNBC. They say they average only 4.2 million viewers during primetime. And I had no idea. These stats, it says, meanwhile the three nightly news broadcast. So that's CBS, ABC and NBC on the public airwaves pull in 21.5 million viewers.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: So my point is, is that this is going to be an interesting moment to see because that's why I think the actions were so loud last week from Fox, because it's saying, look man, we're already behind the numbers in terms of if everybody's going to see this now, this is going to be like the Wiz of Oz. They're going to see behind the curtain and maybe that the narrative that, you know, I guess one side of the discussion, former President Trump and his and his allies that want to push the big lie, more Americans are going to get exposed to the truth. So we got to make sure we hold on to at least our core base and make sure they don't see it.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: And so those numbers and those numbers actually used to be more stark. The broadcast networks used to be in the higher tens of millions. But one thing I'll point out with that is that there is a selection bias here and that in some respects, I don't know that it's looking only at their viewers intelligence. In some respects the people who go to Fox go to Fox for that, they would be upset with Fox. And we've seen Fox hosts get pushed back and I think we saw Fox host gets pushed back just this past week for talking about the hearings and so forth from the audience. They get angry if Fox does not present information, whether it's true or not, that sticks only to this narrative. And so we've seen that even back when we did the movie, the dramatization of it, where if a host talks about things that are out of turn in terms of the chosen narrative that everything must stick to, then the audience gives them negative feedback. When after the election actually happened and Fox initially was on the train with everyone else, all the other major media sources saying yeah, the election wasn't stolen and they got pushback from their viewers and their viewers started going to other newsmax or whatever because they wanted that narrative. They want only what they want. They so there could be an intelligent, you know, there could be something saying, oh well, some people can't hold the two thoughts in their head. But others, there is an issue here of they don't want what would be the most accurate information necessarily. They want the information that conforms to what they want to believe. And so that part about it, I don't know, we can distinguish from the outside, you know, any which one of those is more at play or less in play, but just both of them are at play.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah, well, look, Roger Ailes, he said it best. This was his quote. People don't want to be informed. They want to believe. They're informed, they want to feel. And so. And so. And the other thing that quote actually.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Does just drill it down.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it just, you know, and the other thing, though, to think about, too, is, is cable news.
All of them, all three major networks, their viewers average in the mid to late 60s.
And so what's happening is we have.
Our national discourse is being driven by just the 4 million people primarily, that are glued to these things every night, and then on top of it, a smaller percentage of older Americans who are. Who are. Who are kind of controlling our national narrative. And I think that's why a lot of other Americans are actually frustrated that things like, you know, younger Americans believe that things like the climate should be addressed or the student loan issue or other things that just don't really get attention because the politicians are now conditioned to play to this 4 million, 4.7 million people base.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: It definitely. It has an outsized influence in terms of. Yeah, because you would think, oh, 4%. That's. That's barely. That's barely over, you know, one. One and a half percent of the people. But it has an outside influence on our politics. And the movie I was speaking of, by the way, was Bombshell, you know, from 2019, which we did a show on.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: And. But I do want to keep our discussion moving.
I want to ask as far as what this says about the current state of our overall news environment in our country. And, you know, like, I think this kind of question or what we were just talking about really leads into this question, because is our news media, and the news media environment here that's driven by the broadcast, which is more voluminous or has more viewers by multiple times, versus the cable news, which seems to have figured out, or at least it's been led by Fox. But all of them participate in this, that catering to a certain narrative, whether you provide misinformation or not, but just catering to the certain narrative is a more profitable way of doing this, because the cable news, you know, while they may not have the numbers of broadcast news, they are very profitable. So where are we. Where are we heading here with our news environment? Where the cable news, which has an outsized influence, is driven by this profit and driven by this profit motive, and the profit motive says you have to find a narrative and stick to it, whatever that is. And different stations will serve different narratives and that narrative for. At least for Fox in particular, but all of them it doesn't always seem to be the narrative of what's best for the Constitution. It's always best what. What is best for the way I think America should be.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Well, I think where it goes, if it's kind of unchecked and people don't wake up to take this more serious. And when I say people, I just mean, like, us every day. I mean, I'm getting to the point where I used to be quiet about things like politics and all that when people mentioned stuff. And of course, if it's someone I bump into in a gas station that talks about a stolen intellectual, I'm not going to sit there and try and lecture them. But when I have people in my personal inner circle who start going down those roads, I just challenge them and I'll just tell them, you know, like, you know, show me the evidence. Because there's a lot of evidence that you're wrong. Yeah, but you're choosing, again, that's what I just call people out. You're choosing to want to believe something. So it kind of like when we did that flat earth documentary discussion, we did a show on that. Like, at some point, if I had someone in my life that really kept telling me the Earth is flat, you know, at some point I got to make a choice, do I want to be their friend or not? Because at some point I realized I can't keep talking to them and telling them to go look at their own facts. They clearly made a decision that they want to believe the Earth is flat.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: No matter what evidence in a situation where they're trying to prophesize to you, like, it's one thing if it doesn't matter.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: I'm just giving that as such an extreme example, because I think most people listening to this podcast probably believe that the Earth is round. So what I'm saying is now we can talk about the big lie in the election or whatever else other topic might come out of cable news that doesn't all seem put together right, that at some point I've come to the conclusion, like, some people want to live in these fantasies and these universes, and I guess it just needs to be a fringe minority of them so that society doesn't go out of whack. Because I think that's why I said this will keep happening. Because what's happening is that misinformation is not being challenged. And what's happening is the messengers who might be able to challenge it over time are being less and less trusted by our society. So this is why it's Dangerous like.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Well, but this is, we spend another.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: 10 years like this, it might not be recoverable. That's what this is.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: To your point, though, that the friend, the people who want to buy that, who are in whatever reason psychologically invested in that, don't want it to be challenged. They want to operate, operate in a space where they, it'll just be constantly reinforced. And I think what we're seeing here, really, and this is when I say.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: That'S the danger of freedom of speech, unfortunately, because the government can't tell FOX they can't be on tv. Well, that's the interesting thing, right?
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Like, the thing is, I think when I say ecosystem and you know, we're talking about cable news, it's, it's the regular broadcast news, too. But where you see this more play out is in cable news, but also in social media. And what we're seeing here, actually is that they have convinced those type of, that ecosystem has convinced many on the center right and on the center left. But I would say in this instance, like with January 6th more detrimentally on the right. But they've convinced both, they've convinced the center right that they're on the same side as the far right and they've convinced the center left that they're on the same side as the far right. And so therefore, the center right and center left, instead of working together to be constructive and move things forward, they're sitting there trying to defend the Senate right, is trying to defend the far right, the crazy right, and the center left is trying to defend or excuse the far left and people who don't have constructive things to do and say over there. And so ultimately what's happening is that, and this goes to that outsized influence is that these ecosystems are emboldening and empowering these people on the fringes and then making the people, the bulk of the people that lean more towards the center and being practical and so forth, pulling them away from the center, pulling them towards like, no, you gotta defend your side.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it gets your sign. Tribalism.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's tribalism and so forth. And we're really the center right and the center left are the responsible ones that we should be having these conversations. This is what I get into when I say sometimes if people start going down certain pathways, you can't, you don't engage with them on those conversations. It's like, you know what? I get it. You have your right to think that, you know, like, you say that climate change isn't real. You say that we, you know, like that, that's just it. Like it's not real. It's like, okay, fine, you have the right to think that, but I'm just not going to engage with you on how to solve this problem because you're either not able to contemplate this or you're unwilling to contemplate this because of whatever's going on with you psychologically. And that's, hey, you know what, in a country like this with like you're allowed to think that. But people need to be the constructive people need to work together and stop trying to bifurcate out to the edges where the ecosystem is trying to tell them that that's their side.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, well, I think that's what Liz Cheney and Kinzinger and some of the Republicans that maybe, I know they're the only two on the committee, but others that have participated, well, that's.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: What Biden represented as well, remember? And I'm not going to say Bernie Sanders isn't constructive, but he's just more, he's further to the left, whereas Biden was presented more as a center left person. And the voters in the Democratic Party, we want the guy who's in the center left. And that was a good thing. But go ahead. I'm sorry, No, I was just going.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: To say the fact that an example of Biden is when they tried to stick the defund the police on him and the first thing he said on a press conference is I'm not defunding the police putting that on me. And my point is that and this is what we get to right, like Joe Biden. First of all, the Democrats picked him because they believed he was the most moderate and the one that wouldn't scare the center right crowd. Right. And give a chance to give a victory over President Trump, which it did.
But to most of the people that call themselves Republicans today, Joe Biden is a far left crazy man. You see what I'm saying?
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Well, he's presented that way, but it's within these ecosystems.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my point. And so that's what makes it and the same with people that might be even moderate on the right get presented certain ways too in other ecosystems. So my point is that that's where it becomes difficult because like I said, if we have another decade or so of this where there's going to be no one trusted anymore in our society in terms of leaders that can get more than 10% of people to listen to them.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Well, but that's, you're illustrating you gave an example of what I'm saying, though, because, yes, in those ecosystems, the someone who's center right is. It's. He's told that you're on the right. So this person, because he's not over here, is completely antithetical to everything you stand for. It's like you might be one step away in your beliefs from Joe Biden and four steps away from Marjorie Taylor Greene, but you need to side with Marjorie Taylor Greene because it's on the same scene side.
So that's an example of what you're. What I'm. You've given the example, I think, in a good way of what I'm saying. And so. But I think that's the disconnect right here. And the problem we have, actually, I. That I see and I don't know, the solution to this is that this form of communication and informational environment, the propagandizing of it, has proven to be profitable. Like, Facebook was on the cutting edge here, showing that you're trying to give people truth, you're trying to give people balanced information and so forth, trying to give them things that. Okay, yeah, you see, you're going down this rabbit hole here. Let me show you something that's not necessary, that may call this into question. Boom. I turn off the screen. I don't want to see you show me something. I don't want YouTube, you know, like the algorithm you show. I want to go. I'm going down this flat earth, the rabbit hole. You show me something that calls that into question. I turn it off. So they don't want it. They don't want to show you that. So they demonstrated. And now cable news has gotten into this as well. I guess radio, you know, has. AM radio showed this a while back, as well. I should. Should be, you know, acknowledge that as well, that the narrative, even if it veers, you know, sticking to the single narrative, even if it veers to propaganda, remains profitable. And so there, that's the dilemma here, is what happens if in our economic system, in our media environment, propaganda is profitable. What happens then? How do you address that? Because what leads to profit will drive. That's where the market's going to go. And it's like you said, we believe in freedom of speech. And so, like, that is a dilemma that I think we're going to have to figure out a solution for before we can pull any of this back.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah, man. But I think, you know, it's getting to the point, and this is pie in the sky, because I know society doesn't work like this. But it is getting to the point where all of us really got to check ourselves internally. Kind of that gut check. Because you're right about radio priming the pump for a lot of this.
But I think with all the different levels of technology now between the TV media.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Immersion is the word immersion.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: The social media, this Internet and all that, what's happening is we're able to shut each other off from dialogue. And remember, transparency, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Right.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: So if we're transparent even. Because like I said, I'm a fan of the First Amendment, so I don't believe the government should come in and start telling the cable news that they can't say what they're saying. But I do think we need to have some new form of regulatory environment around it. Meaning. And you said this on a recent show. Right. The freedom of speech is part of the amendment, but you can't yell fire in a, in a. In a movie theater.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Yeah. There are existed previously the Fairness Doctrine like that.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying is getting back to things like that. Exactly that. Okay, well, transparency would be. Both Fox and MSNBC got to at least give some time uninterrupted and unedited to an opposing viewpoint. Right. So.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Or they have to be honest. Like, look, we're only going to show you something that supports this point of view.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what I was going to say. Like.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: And we will hide from you things that do not support.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's okay. Like, I'd be okay if they didn't call a Fox News and just call a Fox opinion.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: And did exactly that. Have a disclose like, like how they do on the drug commercials when they tell you all the side effects and all that in 15 seconds, you know, you know, could cause. You know, basically, like, there's a 90% chance you're gonna die if you take this drug. But don't listen to us. I'm talking fast. But they could do that at the end of every show. This has not been.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: If you watch this show, you may attack the government.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. No, but, but it's. But you know what they could say by being exposed to this, this is gonna cause elevated levels of anxiety, cause elevated levels in your blood pressure, cause.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: You to lose money from political donations that may or may not.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: We're gonna ask you to give money to places where we can't tell you where it's going. And maybe, I mean, look, they don't have to get. They could say something about the anxiety, because it is true. But what I'm saying is they could say, like, be forced to say, these have not been fact checked. This conversation is not fact checked. Just in a little crawl at the bottom whenever there's one of these hosts at night. And so. But because here's the thing, I want to read this, by the way.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Just let me just add to your other point, by the way. You would think they wouldn't object to that, because when these people do get called into court, that is the argument they make, they are making in court, as you pointed out earlier, is that no reasonable person would take this stuff to be factual. This is what they.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: It all comes together. Because what Robert so accurately saw is that people don't want to be informed. They want to believe they're informed. And then you go to what you already pointed out, the tribalism, the team approach, Right? This is my. Like we talked about righteous mind. The hives is my hive. That's your hive over there. I don't want to be a part of that. So. And then you put into something, like we've talked about in other discussions, kind of the fight or flight mentality of humans, our evolutionary track of being suspicious, you know, of the tall grass.
The person that walked into the grass got eaten by the lion, and a person that was suspicious ran away and survived. And we're descendants of all those suspicious people. Right. And kind of things like a herd mentality, like, we have a natural instinct. If you see a crowd of people running, you kind of just start going with the crowd. Why? Because back into the evolutionary times, if there was a forest fire or a natural disaster, the people that didn't think and just ran with the herd type of thing survived. And so if you look at the media, the way it hits us, it gets us all into this tribal and herd mentality. The problem is, and you've identified this, too, back when there were things like the Soviet fear during the 20th century of the Cold War, there was a collective kind of American versus this or that. Right. And so. And so I think that's what's happened, too, is, as you know, integration, not having that external. Yeah, we don't have an external threat. Yeah, there's. There's less threats, external and domestic in that sense, that are easily easy for people to see. And so the threats become kind of out there. Like, okay, now it's kind of this murky transgender and CRT stuff, or it's. It's China, but I'm not sure because I know we buy stuff from Them, but. Or the Saudi Arabia stuff. Like, yeah, they're kind of our ally, but they're not. It's kind of, it's not as clean cut as it used to be as to who's a good and a bad guy anymore. And for some people, they need that.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say for some.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Out.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Some people are wired. That's exactly what I was gonna say.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, they need it.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: They actually need that. So you need to create a villain.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: That's all. Let me go here. Cause I wanna get your thoughts.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: But let me make your point though. Let me finish this point because. And if you need to create a villain, it's all bad. What we're seeing now is it's not just the Soviet Union, it's actually the other side of the political aisle. And so villains are internal in our country now. And people are willing to go to greater extents to attack those villains. Or not greater extents, but going to those extreme extents to attack those villains. Have Americans attacking Americans. Go ahead.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that's what I'm saying. It's happened internally and externally. But no, I had added something for us in preparation for the show, which talked about is a totally separate article about a totally separate topic, but it was about a National Enquirer piece and it talks about the, the, the actual reporter there. And I wanted to share it because what, what I realized in reading this is we used to think of like you say about cable News in the 90s. And it was kind of an under the surface thing that not all Americans knew about Rush Limbaugh and these people, but the people that knew about them really gravitated towards them. And I think when I walk into aisle of the supermarket and I'm getting ready to cash out, I see the National Enquirer and some of the Sun Times and I'm reminded that yeah, these conspiracy theories, it's nothing new. It's just that back then I was exposed to it twice a week. When I went to 20, 30 years ago was when I went to the grocery store and I had to choose to pick up the National Enquirer and maybe buy it and take it home.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Well, even if you didn't know that still would enter your brain seeing the headlines and stuff. And they knew that.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: The thing about that though, and we touched around this. But I want to make sure we make the point explicitly. The difference between whether it's the National Enquirer or AM radio is that those were. Had a harder time or they just weren't immersive you see them, as you said, once or twice a week, or you hop on for a couple hours a day and then that's it, you know, you're back to living your normal life. Whereas cable news, 24 hour news, it's always on, it's social media, it's always there, it's always trying to trigger you and it's always trying to get you the stake. It wants you to stay, it never wants you to leave. And so these things that are triggering your emotion, they're doing everything to get you to stay. And it becomes immersive. And so it does rewire your brain. It does become that what we, what we called out or what was called out and you know, in the movie, missing the name, but where it's basically, it's incremental or imperceptible. Excuse me, imperceptible changes in the way you think, in the way social media does. And same thing with the, we're seeing with, with news media now. And. But I'll say for the hive thing and I do want to move on after this, but I do want to make this point as well as far as, yes, the hives, the teams and so forth. The real battle that we need to have or that we need to fight for is the moderates versus the extremes. And that's really what it is. And when I say moderate, this is mistaken a lot of time and I've heard people, other people make this point, but I think it needs to be made. Is not moderate as in mild or you feel mildly strong about this? A moderate can feel strongly about a view. It's not flimsy, it's not like, oh, I can go this way or the other way. It's just that your views are not radical, it's not extreme. You're not taking, okay, well, oh, I think that police need to have more accountability. That's a moderate viewpoint. So therefore, if a police does something wrong, we will punish that police officer. An extreme would be a police officer can do no wrong or we need to get rid of the police.
I can feel strongly that there needs to be accountability, but not say I need to take extreme position that you need to get rid of them or that they can do no wrong. And so I think that that's where we need to draw and we need to figure out a way to draw lines there. Okay, Moderates.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: I think it's also another way to look at it is, you know, moderates can be just as passionate as the fringe or the extremes internally about their topics. The difference is they recognize the idea and the spirit of compromise within a greater society. Correct.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Let me give you the example. There is that. Okay. I am very passionate that there needs to be accountability, but I'm open to discuss how that accountability needs to be administrated, how that accountability needs to be meted out. I don't have all the answers there, but there needs to be accountability. So exactly. Like, I'm not taking this position that there's only one door to walk through. Either you let them go for everything, or you get rid of them completely. You know what I'm saying? The position I feel strongly about inherently involves trying to find the line, trying to find the right approach. And so.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: But yeah, man, just to finish off there, I wanted to add there, because we saw this is the difference between this moment in time and maybe other moments in history, excluding the Civil War and the Confederacy. Right. Because when you said, when you asked me, where do we go from here? And I said, this is gonna, like you said, about race to the bottom type of thing, this only gets worse if we do nothing.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Correct is because.
And you've stated this too, right? That Fox News, Roger Ailes and the folks that created Fox News were a direct response to the Watergate hearings. Yeah. And the opinion of some that, hey, had we had a separate kind of ecosystem of information, then the country wouldn't have been turned against Nixon. Now, the main issue I have with that is, again, that's not the spirit of integrity.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: That's what we're supposed to be doing here.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: It's not acknowledging that Nixon broke the law and that, you know, he did something bad. Right. That he deserved to be investigated about.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Everyone is supposed to be under the law.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Correct. It's just saying that, well, next time our guy breaks the law, we want to have him make sure that half the country doesn't believe it. And this is what I'm saying. You fast forward and you look at when I say about moderates and the idea of compromise and doing what's better for the greater good of the society. I'll give Richard Nixon props for resigning and not forcing this country to go through an impeachment trial. I'll give Al Gore props for conceding an election which he had not really lost, that got stopped on him. And I'm sure legally he could have kept fighting in some way. And that's what I'm saying is that what we saw with the insurrection and the January 6th thing is bringing out more and more. So is that there was a group of leaders, President Trump and a few others, even though most of them did bail by the time it got to that point, that didn't believe in that spirit of compromise and to just say, okay, for the greater good of this society, I'll accept that this is over. With all the evidence and all that, or lack thereof, it was just basically a coup, looking for a reason, you know what I mean? And making up stuff, so to speak, which then divided the country further. And it's unfortunate. So it's really selfish. And again, the actions speak louder than words.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, and that's, I mean, the Al Gore piece is it really. It's a shocking comparison when you look at it like, Al Gore lost by 500 and something votes in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court, interpreting Florida law, wanted there to be U.S. supreme Court. No, the Florida Supreme Court.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: Supreme Court, yeah.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Ordered counting to continue. And so Florida, the highest court in Florida said, count the votes. The U.S. supreme Court stepped in and said that George Bush would be irreparable.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: States rights only matters and it's not your issue.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah. The U.S. supreme Court stepped in and overruled Florida and said, you would harm George Bush by counting the votes. So don't do it. So you can't do it. So. And he and Al Gore, like, you.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Know what the irony is?
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Well, let me say this. To his credit, Al Gore, you know, like, said, okay, well, for the greater good of this whole American experiment, I'll step down. I will, you know, like, I'll accept this.
But, you know, like in this case, you know, it was four states that they're talking about, and there was nobody, like thousands of votes, and there was nobody in those states that came up with any credible thing that said that there was a, that there was fraudulent. There was fraudulent, fraudulent votes that could change the outcome. So it's the two comparisons, it's crazy to put them side by side.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: But the strange bedfellows is so 20 years prior. So 20 years prior, we had a Supreme Court justice who cited against the Supreme Court of Florida in order to stop an election before all votes were counted. And 20 years later, we got his wife, the same Supreme Court Justice's wife, texting the chief of staff of the, of the President United States trying to egg on a lie about a lay. That's what I'm saying. Like, this is crazy.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: You couldn't make this up.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: It's people putting, you know, person or party before country, you know, which is just unfortunate. We all lose, really, in that scenario. So, I mean, like you said, it's not partisan, but it is. You got to call out when people are putting themselves or their party before country. And that's really, at this point, it's.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Either delusion or such lack of integrity that either way, people shouldn't be in these positions at this point.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: I mean, I'll tell you this, man, the reason doesn't even matter to me. You just got to call it out with me.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: It's either you're such a liar or you're crazy, one or the other. At this point. It's, it's.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: I do want to move on, man. I think that there's no easy pivot from here. But, you know, we didn't want to do the whole show on that. There was. We've talked recently about the kind of the environmental abyss we seem to be walking towards. A few weeks ago we were talking about how the west is running out of water and so forth, and we saw that Tesla is hoping or planning to do a 3 to 1 stock split. And it just got us thinking. You have been talking about this for the past couple of weeks. Also just how we really don't remember or talk about enough that Tesla is a successful or is an example of how the US Government can successfully promote improvements in technology, helping the environment and so forth. You know, going back to 2010 when they gave Tesla the half a billion or nearly half a billion dollar loan to help them as far as getting their production going and how that existed and you know, now it was the advanced technology technology vehicle manufacturing loan, 465 million and how that helped Tesla, they were able to pay it back ahead of schedule and really take off from there. And we just don't really, you know, like that, that kind of gets lost in the, in the, in our discussions on the options and things we can and should be doing with technology. So I mean, I wanted to just bring that to you and like I said, I know you've been wanting to talk about this. Do you think that kind of cess with Tesla is replicable? And if so, why aren't we, why aren't our discussions framed in this way? Why isn't Tesla being held up and say, hey, we need to do this again when it comes to this or that or even though in those same, you know, in that same timeframe there were governments or loans that the government made out, played out, that didn't pay off. But we don't need to hit all the bets. All we need to do is hit.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: A couple of them.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: And Tesla's an example of that.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Listen, has there been other examples of this in history? Can it work again? The answer is absolutely yes.
Why can't. Aren't we celebrating successes like this more, let me put it that way, as a nation. And I think, you know, let's just rewind part one and have everyone listen to that from this show. No, I'm being serious. Because think about it, it's a good reminder. A lot of people today, not even 15 years later, right? This is. How is the danger of all this ecosystem stuff? Because information keeps moving so fast our brains can't even handle it. Who today would give Barack Obama and his administration credit for the creation of Tesla or the booming of Tesla? Not many people, you know what I mean? Meaning people. Because people are so stuck on narratives, right, that Democrats equal bad for business, that Obama was some liberal that didn't know he was a community organizer that didn't understand business and blah, blah, blah. And this is the problem with this heroes and villains stuff, because what gets lost in all of this and you say, you know, heels and baby faces.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Is the fact that it's the American system, which is so robust and awesome. It's not about these heroes and villains. These, you know, whether it's Thanos or Thor, like Obama versus Trump and it's Elon Musk. Or Elon Musk. Yeah.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Like now we want to worship him. And it's like, hold on, man, he did a good job, but our system is a big part of this.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: No, but that's what I'm saying. He got a half a billion dollar grant from the federal government, which was part of the 2009 stimulus. And my point is, is because by the time Obama announced that stimulus, again, going back to the. This is interesting that we decided these two do these parts together because actually this is unintentional. But I'm going to refer back to the first section that we discussed, right? Think about the way the media ecosystem for half this country handled his presence. Not the fact he was Democrat or whatever, just the fact that he was there, then he was illegitimate. So all these distractions came up. So the public really wasn't aware that much about this kind of investments.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: And then what a lot of people.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Remember, only when the investment didn't.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: That's what I was gonna say.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Was aware of Solyndra.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
And First Solar and all that. I know, that's what I'm saying. It only was told when it went wrong. And so now that's what I'm saying. No one would give someone like Baracko, except you know who does actually, which is kind of cool. I see him recently, I saw Elon Musk because he was railing against the Biden administration. And then somebody brought up something about Obama he actually defended. He goes, no, no, no. The Obama administration actually were very, very forward thinking. And he started like praising him. So it was interesting to see that at least he was being honest about how they helped him get off the ground. And here's the thing. Remember I showed you the IPO was about 11 years ago for Tesla. Tesla's down about 50% right now on June 13th today from where it was in December of 2021, six months ago. So we're in the middle of a bear market here, right? As we're recording this, Tesla today has returned over 13,000% for shareholders that wrote it from the IPO.
So I'm just saying six months ago, before started. Yeah, six months ago before it started collapsing, that must have been a 26,000% return. So my point is, is that now we talked about this offline, right? This isn't new in American history. I talked about the space race. Kennedy said in 61, we're going to the moon. And think about it. It's not like NASA had its own rocket ships and companies in its own factories, right? They went to Lockheed Martin, Bell Labs, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas. They went to the private sector and said we need help building raucous. Help us figure it out. Here's some contracts. And just like with leadership in 09, and this is not to kiss Obama or Democrats ass, it's just saying that, hey, we want to put this foot forward and take a look into doing energy a bit different here. We'll give you a grant, figure out if you can make an electric vehicle that the public will like.
And within just a couple years, the Model S is out and people are buying it. And 10 years later, now every other car manufacturer, Ford, GM, Mercedes, they're all making electric vehicles. So yeah. And to your point, James, the government does this all the time. What, what they, what they do a lot more that people, some people complain, some people don't, is they give subsidies to existing old industries because of lobbying, like the fossil fuel industry, right? Yeah. So the government is always spending money on energy and subsidizing things. It's just, do we want them subsidizing things that are kind of going to be in the rearview mirror regardless because there's only so much oil, or subsidizing new things that could create new growth like a Tesla did.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Or at minimum, where the focus should be. Like, they may give the fossil fuels a soft landing, but let's not.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: You don't want to rip the Band Aid.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, but what's the thing is, is that, that's the thing that's missed when people talk about the quote unquote Green New Deal. Like what company 10 years, five years from now, or companies may have been nurtured through something like that that would have us doing. There would be a behemoth on the stock market driving growth as far as asset prices and so forth. Who knows, you know, like, but we didn't go down that path. And I mean, the government, like, it depends on how you look at this. The government does this stuff all the time. The government greases the skids for business. I mean, and that can be as fundamental as public education. You know, where you have workers and innovator innovators and you know, sole proprietors and so forth that know things and you know, that are educated and customers. But it's also things like the Hoover Dam. I was thinking about this when we did the show a couple. Like, our government's not doing anything big and bad like the Hoover Dam that allows a whole region power and water and has this whole growth for nearly a century. And just now, like we're, we've been paying off on that investment for nearly 100 years. And just now it's starting to be like, okay, well, you know, this, this thing may be coming to the end. We need to come up with some other big idea. The Interstate highway system. What would FedEx and UPS and Amazon and all that be without the Internet? Interstate highway system, all these government. So the whole thing that government needs to get out of the way is silly. It's people who don't understand. Now, government shouldn't be out here selling TVs, shouldn't be out here building cars. But the government has a role. And we've talked about this before, there is a partnership, a public and private partnership that our system gets right when people aren't on fringes and extremes and figures out, okay, what's the right way to go up to promote certain types of behaviors that we want to not promote, to disincentivize other behaviors that we don't want in the marketplace. Because we do always have to be careful. Because capitalism will promote a race to the bottom if no guardrails are put up. But that doesn't mean that again, you don't take an extreme position. You get rid of capitalism, but you also Take an extreme position that capitalism needs to be completely left alone, because that doesn't work either. And so to me, it seems like, I mean, unfortunately, it seems like we have to learn this lesson just every five or ten years and then people forget it conveniently or just because it's not something that's drilled into our heads and then it'll work in some way. And a lot of times, you know, like it may be inefficient or whatever, but the breakthroughs, the hits are so big that we have to keep taking these swings even if we're going to miss some of them because the hits give us the industrialized west coast, which would not be like that if it wasn't for the Hoover Dam or something like that or Tesla, like you said, now everybody's making these electric vehicles. We don't know that that'd be the case without, you know, without Tesla being able to really show proof of concept on this and so forth. So to me, it's an unfortunate thing. Like we shouldn't have to learn it this often, though, I guess, is what I would hope. Like, I get it, we may have to learn this lesson every 20 years, every 25 years. But every five years, every 10 years we got to relearn this thing that. That's we're doing something wrong now and again. Maybe it's just. Yeah. Rewind to the first, first section. And you know, like. Because nobody gets emotional, I guess, except us about, about these issues.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, look, the problem is everyone gets emotional about our part one, Right. They're getting, like we said, we've got. Basically that's why I say what I said in part one. I mean, this is funny. This is the most we've gone back and forth in parts in a show ever. But it's because if it, if we can't get a handle on, on how the media gives us information in this country, then this is just going to keep getting worse.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: And therefore it gives us information and all and pushes us to extremes.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Because what's going to happen is things like. You're exactly right. Like major investments in infrastructure like the Hoover Dam will not happen. And so my point is, is that, and it's interesting because I don't know enough about the Green New Deal to know if it was something that made sense or not all of that 3 trillion or whatever the hell they were thinking about. But I would say this, someone needs to start talking about some long term planning in this country again like they did 100 years ago. And to your Point, it's not even about climate change and stuff. It's just about things do change. Right.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: Well here's. Let me make this point before we get too far. The Green New Deal. See the problem there, we don't know if everything in there was a good idea or whatever. But what we needed with the Green New Deal is we needed some center right people, some conservative people to take a look at it, at the substance of it and try to cut out the fat and say, okay, well this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. Not just make it some boogeyman that, oh, well, the far right doesn't like it. So therefore we just have to make this a boogeyman. It's like, well, no, we need, this is the back and forth that we need from the center left and the center right. The center right needs to come up with these grand ideas. The center left needs to figure out, okay, ah, that's a little much. We don't need to go that far. Like that's, that's the back and forth we need. But if, if everybody's pulling to the extremes, then we can't get anywhere. And yeah, we are going back and forth between the two parts.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. Well, that's what I mean. It all kind of is funny that we're saying this. It's our first time audience ever, that we've really just gone back and forth between the two, the part one and two. Because in the end it does all kind of match up in the middle. Right. It's the same like. Because what you just said is we need the center right. We do need the center left. It goes back to what we said in part one. The problem is, is that the moderate. Because what you need is people that are willing to compromise. That's it. Like somebody. Because that's what I was going to say. You and I might believe that it was climate. It's been climate change that's added to the drying up of the lakes and the droughts and all that.
But it could, I'm a person that says, yeah, it could be just that in 100 years after building a dam, maybe that lake would have dried up anyway. So we should always be nimble enough to say, hey, we should be looking especially as new technologies come on board, like solar and wind, that we should be looking at other ways to incorporate these things into our infrastructure. And you're right. Someone like the lady who. I remember I told you about this, I don't remember her name, she was the one who was being.
She was nominated by the Biden administration earlier this year to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And in the hearing I started seeing the Republican senators hammering her because she had put out in public places like Twitter and other social media during the height of the pandemic in March and April of 2020 that this should be the time that we strangled a fossil fuels company. She wanted to use the CARES act to choke and not give any government benefits to fossil fuels anymore because that's how strong she feels about the environment.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: And that's an extreme position.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Exactly. I remember we talked about that. Yeah, that's extreme. What are you gonna cut off the whole fossil fuel industry and just kill it like that? You can't do that without disrupting our whole society even worse. So what you want is you want people from both sides of those conversations, but you want the moderate people that can compromise and say yeah, yeah, you know what, I might not be a fan of fossil fuel if someone that's more on the green energy side, but say I recognize it's going to take 20 years for us to maybe really get wean off this stuff because we can't disrupt the other engines of our society that are being well greased by this whole sector of the economy.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: But don't forget though, being someone who is moderate, so to speak, doesn't always necessarily mean compromise. But it is though is reasonable. Like you're not looking to address a problem, like you're not looking to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That I think it's the chicken and egg. But I think what comes first is the ability to look at something with a level of level headedness and reasonableness that leads to the ability to compromise. Because a lot of times if you come at it from that point of view, you will realize that one side, one party doesn't have all the answers. And so by when you approach it in a way from like from a reasonable mind standpoint, you can get more feedback and more opinions on thoughts because actually you find value in that. It's only when you're sure you have all the answers and everybody else is an idiot because you're in extreme position that you can't compromise. Because that's so I think the ability to compromise comes from where you are in terms of your ability to how you're analyzing things and how you're looking at these and whether you're level headed or not. And I will say this, or I'll.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: Say this or if you just want to lie and manipulate people you're going to do, like we said in part one, you're going to. You're going to avoid even getting revenue so that your viewers can't turn to change a channel, actually see the truth.
[00:54:36] Speaker B: Because the.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: We got to stop thinking that. It's always just people that are so built into their belief. There are a lot of people out here who want to just manipulate other people because they're not thinking.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: And there are people who do want to be manipulated, but we can't focus our attention and discussion on them. And that's ultimate, ultimately, the takeaway, because we take a lot off the table when we do so.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: No, I know, but I think the problem is we've identified that those 4 million people are starting to. It's like tail wagging a dog. They're starting to make the narrative for the rest of us, and I think we need to wrestle control of that. You know what I mean?
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we're calling out here, so I think we can wrap from there, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate it, review us, tell us what you think, share it with your friends. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: I'm Tund. Wana.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
