Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss Smedley Butler and the business plot, which was the alleged effort to install a fascist system here in the United States in the early 1930s.
And later on, we're going to take a look at the idea of chronotypes and consider the extent to which the idea of an early bird or a night owl could be something that's coming from our genes and not just our habits or whatever.
Joining me today is a man who, if you let him dream, he may have a shot at eventually being considered the king of podcasting. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to bring hips shaking to the mainstream of podcasting?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I was ready to go somewhere else when you say that if you let me dream. But I guess I'll take on the podcast challenge. Yes.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: There we go. There we go.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Make it happen.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on September 5, 2022. And today we wanted to take a look back and discuss one of the more overlooked but honestly concerning efforts in American history. It involves employing a private army to either overthrow the Franklin Admin. Franklin Roosevelt administration, or at least render him a puppet and install a fascist dictator to run the executive branch of our country and really just run the whole thing.
The plot was brought to light by Smedley Butler, who was a decorated Marine. Like the Marines Marine, the model Marine, well decorated. Everything conflicts from Spanish American War in 1898 for decades after that. And he was recruited on behalf of many titans of capital and industry to be a leader of this private army that would dislodge FDR from power. Butler was an enduring patriot, however, and that means, remember, patriotism is loyalty to the Constitution. And so he brought the plot to light and ultimately testified to Congress about what was going on. And following a congressional investigation and hearings and so forth, Congress's report did find Butler's allegations to be credible and corroborated. But after that, in large part, it seems like everybody kind of moved on, and the alleged conspirators were not prosecuted or really even publicly identified at the time at least.
So just kind of an interesting way that all that resolved. So to get us started, Tunde, what was most notable to you in this story about the, you know, the quote unquote business plot and then Smedley Butler blowing the whistle and then, you know, kind of how it was handled after. After he blew the whistle?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, man, great question. I'd say, like several topics we've covered on, you know, the last couple years of this podcast. I'd say one of the things that stuck out is that this isn't something I learned in school.
You know, this isn't something that I think most of us as Americans understand and know that this was really part of our history, that there was an actual coup planned, not executed, but planned in a serious way, like you said, by people that probably could have pulled something off, meaning the. They had enough. The industrialists that had enough power and wealth that they could have pulled this.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Off, had in their mom's basement. You know, like, this is like the big people who do the biggest, make the biggest moves in the country.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And what's interesting, though, is similar. Cause that's what kind of stood out to me, too, is reading about that period in time in American kind of history and culture, the early 1930s through the mid-30s, there were a lot of similarities that from today. And one of the things, I think just specifically to this attempt that I found similar to, let's say, the January 6th insurrection and those attempts were that, number one, former military members were sought out in the 1930s in this coup attempt. It was the Smedley Butler, as you mentioned, former Marine general. And then the organization that was tapped was the American Legion, which was ripe with former soldiers getting better veterans. And if we look at today's, the January 6th event, there were groups like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters and groups like that, which, quote, unquote, I guess what we could call militia groups today. But as we Learned from the January 6th insurrection, there were unfortunately, many retired and some active military and law enforcement who took part of this. So I think it's kind of the idea of violence as a means to a political end, because a small group who has power through wealth is not happy with the direction of the country from the electoral process, meaning power, the process of Americans voting and the majority rule type of thing, that fascism seems to be the alternative, which is the use of violence for political ends and intimidation. Yeah. So that's. To me, what was interesting was first, we generally have not been taught this in American history. And number two, then the kind of the mirroring of some recent events, and not just the events themselves, but the kind of rhetoric and culture that we see in politics today in America.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things actually with that that stood out was that when he blew the whistle how a lot of places in the media, it's a hoax.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: And he's making it Up. He used the word hoax. That's what he is.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: He used the word hoax. It was the effort to try to discredit him immediately. Because if you have bunch of titans in capital and industry out there, you got newspapers, you got media control. And so now. And in that. Those days, you know, things were very. Ownership was very concentrated in many respects. So it was interesting to me to see how the media initially, you know, generally speaking, you would imagine they're doing this at the direction of who's owning and controlling it, but jumped on him as this was not credible, to try to discredit it immediately because it's a very shocking thing to come out with. And so Butler going in is a very credible guy, because this guy, the reason they went out, they wanted him is because. And I think the quote is, he could get a million veterans to follow him tomorrow. You know, he's, you know, he's that renowned as far as, you know, as the, you know, a general from the Armed Forces. Thirty plus, you know, at this point, it had been 30 years, you know, since he first started serving. And, you know, so they looked at him as kind of the linchpin of this. Like, we can put together this private force that can exert. They can do this intimidation that we want to do easily. We got the money, but we now we need, you know, like the. The. The. The brown shirts or, you know, something of that nature. And so to me, like, how he becomes like he's chosen because of his credibility, but then he. He's not with it. He's not down with it. And so. And then they. They approached him several times. You know, so it, like you. If you read more on it, like, just kind of. They approached him, hey, would you do this? Or hey, would you do that? And then ultimately it came down to, okay, here's what we really want. And like that he went from the chosen one, the one that's like, oh, this guy's so credible, this guy is so serious, that if we want to pull this off, this is the guy that can get the muscle behind it for us to immediately.
He's a joke. This is the worst guy ever. Like, how the media just flipped it on him like that. And it just shows how control of messaging can be so vital with these things. Because I think that plays into ultimately how the public perceives it, how important the public. How much importance the place the public places on it. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, freedom of speech and not having just one voice or two voices in the media is very important because one or two voices are much more easily compromised than 20 or 30. So I mean, along that line, though, what does stand out to you as far as what was happening in the US and around the world at that time that could make the US right for such prominent citizens to seek to take out democracy?
[00:08:52] Speaker B: No, it's interesting. I think it's a very. We're in a very similar period. I mean, that great saying that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And I think we do have a rhyme from the 20s to the 30s, 1920s to 30s to kind of this era now, which is, you know, you had a big boom in the 1920s, which then led to a collapse. I shouldn't say the boom led to it, but we had a collapse after the crash of 1929, which then the world because of new technologies. Remember back then, the early 20th century, basically, the telephone was brand new, the radio was brand new, pretty much Airplanes were pretty new, automobiles were new. So you had all these new technologies which allowed what information to spread exponentially in a way that prior generations weren't used to. And so what you have is, well.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: And also just to your point, like, and the public was still learning how to deal with, how to decipher what was real, what was just like, remember the whole the War of the World story on the radio and people are thinking it's literally an invasion because they're playing that. So but people just, it was so new that people didn't, didn't have a sophistication with it yet. And then also there probably wasn't regulation in place.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: And not to make fun of people, right? But, but, but World of Worlds is, as you fast forward today would have been something like Pizzagate or some of this QAnon stuff, right? Like people are just taking it literal just because it's on the Internet. Like you're saying, just because, like, because the news was reported on the radio in the 1930s. Then when somebody came out with the War of the Worlds that Martians were landing here, people believed it, like it was official. And so you're right, that's what I mean. Like you have these. That's what I was going to get to. Now we have today, we have in the last, let's say two generations. The new things are the cable TV is pretty new, satellite and the ability to broadcast radio and syndicate shows, talk radio shows and all that, to get a certain narrative around the country. Then you go to the Internet, like we just talked about, and then you take the Internet and you take certain branches of it, like what developed with social media, things like YouTube, all that kind of stuff. So in that sense, I think, yes, we're similar in new technologies that, like you, well put it, people are still trying to figure out how to navigate them. Plus, then, as I alluded to, you have some economic conditions which are favorable to authoritarians. Because what happens, whether it was the Great Depression of 1930 or let's say, the Great Recession of the 2008 through 2010, 2012 period, that gave rise to people who could then point fingers at other groups or other people within the same nation and say, see, it's their fault. It's their fault that you're living, that you lost your job. It's their fault that the stock market crashed. It's their fault. It's their fault. And then you add to it changing demographics. You think about the early 20th century domestically in the United States, we had a lot going on. We had the great migration of African Americans from the south to the north, the Midwest and the west, which created tension within the country from about 1910 through 1930. Then you had the great migration of Europeans, right. You had, remember, Ellis island and all these stories on the East Coast. So you had Italians, immigrant, Irish, sorry.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: German immigrants look at now like, oh, that was, you know, that they look back fondly like I was. But that caused a lot of tension.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, and there was a lot of tension within European groups. I mean, this isn't just racial, like, like black and white stuff. I mean, there was huge discrimination against German Americans for, sorry, German immigrants when they were, when they were going into the Midwest and the Dutch and areas like Wisconsin and Minnesota, and there was a lot of discrimination with that. And that's one reason why those groups had to move out west, because what they called the native white Americans, the ones that were kind of the snooty ones that could trace their roots off of ships from Britain in the 16 and 1700s. They didn't want them living on the east coast, so they kind of pushed them out west or pushed them out to the South. So when you have what I call those three main forces of technological change, negative macroeconomic forces, and then you have human migration patterns which create demographic changes, which allows for tribalism to be kind of like a scab to be picked, then you kind of have this, this, this, this, this condition that's like ripe for an authoritarian style. And I think what we saw. Oh, go ahead.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say, because I think what it is basically like What I would say. And it kind of pulls in what you're saying. But it's like before the New Deal democracy and our form of kind of unfettered monopoly capitalism just wasn't working for much of the population, many segments of the American people. And so. And that leads into what you're saying, like these conditions happen and people may become more receptive of a more authoritarian or intimidation based style of leadership. Like, no, we're gonna make this happen because we're gonna make everybody else scared of us or something like that. And so. Cause remember at that time, in the early 1930s, you know, late 1920s or whatever, fascism wasn't the bad word that it is. You know, like there were people who openly were fascists or you know, like, and there's an American Nazi party and all this other type of stuff. And so that we know that now post genocide, you know that, you know, they went through with the Nazis in Germany. But at that time it was something that wasn't immediately you heard it and it's like, oh no, like that's not us or whatever. So there was at that time, you know, Great Depression, everything like that. Our government wasn't living up to providing a better life, so to speak, for people. And so honestly that was why the New Deal was very important is because that was kind of leading out of. That was when the government was able to deliver prosperity more broadly. But at the time you have record wealth inequality, like that was the big thing. In terms of your second point, as far as how the economic conditions weren't, not only did you have the contraction, but the gains weren't. When things went well, it wasn't going well for everybody. For most people, it only went well for very few. When things went poorly, it went well for those same ones that it didn't go that well, that great for when it was good. So I think with though with that type of stuff, those kind of conditions, people look around and say, well look, maybe democracy isn't the case. And I guess this plays with the demographic changes too. Like, look, maybe democracy isn't the right way. Maybe we should just more of us. So why don't we instead of trying to all vote together, why don't we just stand there and not let these other people vote, you know, type of thing?
What you see.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Well that's really what, what I think it's very interesting because when you think of European style fascism, if I can call it that, because I think, you know, fascism is just, it's new in the last century or so because it's an offshoot of the Industrial revolution and the way human societies began to organize themselves, you know, post, let's say, mid-1800s. So. So, like, you couldn't have fascism in a monarchy because there's no politics and no voting. So.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, so my point is that modified, like there's a appearance of a democratic element. But yeah, like you said, like in a monarchy, like, you don't need all that. The king owns everything anyway. So.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's why to me, fascism is interesting just because it's an offshoot of these new styles of the last couple hundred years of organizing large societies. But it's the. Is the default version that seems to be attractive when everything else seems broken in the system and it's easy to tell for, let's say, the right charismatic leader. That's why it's interesting. Guys like Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, obviously they were terrible human beings, but they were very charismatic in their day and they galvanized and caught the attention of their respective nations. And so what I'm getting at is. You're absolutely right. I'm glad you brought that up, because that's where I was going is that at the time, in the 30s, early to mid-30s, there were a lot of Americans that were attracted to this, to Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, they were seen as very strong.
We were weak.
This whole democracy thing and trying to give everybody a say was seen as weakness. And there was famous people. I mean, Charles Lindbergh was a sympathizer of Adolf Hitler's. Henry Ford is someone who expressed sympathy with those kind of views. A lot of people don't know this. You can look it up. He wrote a series of pamphlets in the early 1920s titled the International Jew and Henry Ford, a big anti Semite. And he basically was parroting with the Nazis. And the Nazis took some of the stuff he was saying in his pamphlets from the early 20s and used it in their rhetoric in the 30s. And then you had this group that was formed in 1936 called the German American Bundle. And those are the ones if anyone wants to look it up. You can see they had held Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden in the late 30s, you know, out in the open, swastikas and everything. So it kind of reminded me of today, not today today, but meaning this last decade or so as people in America, some on the right, have been fawning over perceived strong men around the world. Right. So we have like, remember up until the invasion of Ukraine in February of this month of this year. Sorry, A lot of people were starting to fall in love with Vladimir Putin in the United States. And remember this whole thing, how he was a strong leader. Strong and compared to our leaders, you.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Know, what's happening with Hungary, still happening with Hungary and Orban, like, that's why I was.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: They were next to my list, bro, we're on the same page because I had CPAC inviting Viktor Orban a month or two ago from this recording to the Texas CPAC convention. And he says in his speech that, you know, race mixing isn't good or however he wants to say it. And then a major news channel which calls itself conservative here in America, sent one of its star hosts to Hungary to do a whole expose of how great the Hungarian system is.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, because I agree with you, by the way, like, the, there is the appeal of the projection of strength and, but that strength also, like, what that projection is a lot of times is we're going to assert dominance over others, you know, like, and that's kind of anti the kind of democratic thought process or mindset because in a democratic, everybody's supposed to get a say. And like you said, people perceive that as weaker a lot of times. And I know that from just like, just reading on this kind of stuff over the years, a lot of smart people over time have pointed to the idea of imperialism and how, you know, and using, you know, like, using force to go into other countries and then extract what we want or allow our people to, to do what they want to do ultimately brings home the kind of imperial thinking that like is then used to say, yeah, it's important that we project this strength. And so I'm not here making that argument, so to speak, I can see the merits of it, but it's just interesting to me how, you know, in some facets, even in the democracy and our, our democracy and some facets of the way America gets down, it is about, we do project strength, you know, like international relations and things like that. It's not all about when, you know, when, yeah, we have elections, when we're doing our own leadership. But there is, there is, there are times for, no, no, we're not here to talk. We're here to, you know, like, we're here to do business, you know, and so forth. So you can understand that that is appealing because it's like, hey, yeah, people who, some people want to have a meeting, some people want to get stuff done, you know. And so like, you can understand how when you have the charisma behind it as well. But Ultimately, and again, you've talked about this before. That's why the setup of our country, I mean it happened, it was set up before we saw a lot of this stuff. But as you said, things rhyme throughout history. It's set up the loyalty supposed to be to the document, you know, and so that's why it's supposed to keep people from becoming basically where it's like we're just in it for this person. The loyalty is, it's not idolatry.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: You mean I'm not supposed to have a man crush?
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Hey man, you do the man crush. But it's not supposed to be how we're governing, you know. And so I mean, honestly I think that what do I say all this to say that you can basically, you can see the human element in all of this and how this happens. You know, like there was concern of going off the gold standard or the government with the new deal trying to help create a middle class and give people more buy in into the country and the spending involved with that. But you know, like the system in place is set up to allow that kind of thing to take a chance. And if it doesn't work then, you know, in four years or whatever, you'll be able to get back in and undo it all if you want. But these people didn't want to do that. They were like, yo, we got to go. We're not waiting for the next election, we're not doing all that. And so that's where we go awry basically is when people decide unilaterally that, you know what, whatever just happened is so serious. I don't care. We're not waiting for another election. We're going to take power, we're going to take back what's ours right away without regard for process. And that's when you get into the anti things that are remembered as anti American, at least hopefully remembered. That's what I was going to get to was the next question I have for you though. Would you add something on this though? Go ahead.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: No, I was just going to say because some of the stats actually are that this cabal, this group of wealthy industrialists, they controlled about 40 billion in assets at the time, which is about 800 billion today, which is a lot. Yeah. And they had 300 million to support the coup, which they don't give in today's dollars, which obviously would have been a lot. And it says the plotters had men, guns and money.
You know, three elements that make for a successful revolution. And basically it's funny, J Edgar Hoover is a part of this story. Butler Smedley Butler reported it to J. Edgar Hoover. And Hoover is the one who told fdr.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: And so. And so. But what they had was their plan was because the arms were supplied by Remington. See, that's. That's the interesting thing about the control of industry, Right.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: That you have the resources. And they were gonna have established a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers. Which is interesting because you figure with a country as big and vast as the United States, I mean, that would have been a disaster. Cause I just don't think they could have held it all together for too long. I mean, there would have been people revolting anyway and all that. So it would just be.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Well, you never know, though, because once these kind of things take hold, then what they do, basically, as you've pointed out, if they're serious, they go through and either make people profess more people, profess loyalty to them, or they get them out one way or the other. And so you never know. Like, once, if they would have been able to take power, then whether they would have been able to leverage. They would have had a window that they would have had to leverage to stay in power. And whether they would have done that or not, because it would have been.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: It would have been shot.
Honestly, it seems like they had a much more organized situation than what we saw here leading up to January 6th in terms of.
And it was a very different thing. These were people trying to get a president out of power through means other than politics. Yeah. And this was. And what we had leading up to January 6, 2021, was a President who had been in power who didn't want to leave. But I think the one striking similarity is the use of the desire to use violence and intimidation as a means to solve a political desire. And I think that's, to me, that the standout is that.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: But it's always violence and intimidation, because it's not always violence. Sometimes it's just we're gonna all show up and we're gonna walk in and we're gonna make you afraid to do anything other than what we tell you. Or we're gonna send threats where. You know, threats aren't violence per se, but they are a means to try to influence people to do things that you want them to do that they don't want to do.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: But, I mean, that's the key. Right. Like those 500,000 soldiers. One area that says that they were going to do is they were going to go to the Capitol. They were going to go to the White House and they were going to take everybody out, like physically go into Roosevelt's office and be like, dude, you're out of here. And everyone down the line that could have, that he could have, could have succeeded him.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: The whole thing of succession.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's no different than people storming the Capitol on January 6th armed. And all the stuff we learned from these hearings that the president and others knew that people were armed by 8 in the morning. And the idea that it was intimidation trying to intimidate the vice president and others to do the bidding of the sitting president to not allow the transfer.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Of power to happen.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: To not allow the transfer of power. Yeah. And so what I'm getting at, and again, not to make this all about this recent election and all that is just this idea that that to me is what the definition of fascism is or one of the main tenets of fascism, let's put it that way. Besides obviously the corporate and capital structure being totally controlled by the government. What you gotta get to before that versa.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Basically you would say they merge together.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Well, that's what I mean. Then they're intertwined. Yeah. But really how you get there is by getting rid of the democracy. Right. Getting rid of the idea that the people can control something.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: And so it's really disconnecting. Cause you can still have elections. It's disconnecting the democracy from the power.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. How do you get. There is generally gonna be some form of violence and, or intimidation at some point. Because most people, most people who have been raised in a culture of a democracy don't just wanna give it up. Like, okay, man, yeah, you know what it's like today? If we just said, yeah, I'll just let like Amazon, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft and Dow Chemical and Philip Morris just run this country.
Like, I don't think so. That doesn't feel too good.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: No, for sure. So one other point I wanted to get to on this and I guess I'll start with a question, is it goes into kind of like why this isn't more well known. Like do you think it's not more well known because the people involved, like I said, Congress didn't keep digging and try to expose all the people that were involved so they were effectively really able to cover it up or do you think it just kind of fell along the wayside more organically? Like there are many things that happen in history that aren't tip of the tongue type of thing. So. But do you think this is more of a conscious thing to keep it out of the public mind, or that this kind of just circumstance happenstance kind of just fell by the wayside and didn't really strike the chord to be part of what's remembered?
[00:27:59] Speaker B: I'll definitely have to remove my Alex Jones conspiracy theory.
No one ever walked in the moon hat and say, yeah, I don't think it was. I think it was more organic that it fell by the wayside. I mean, if you look at it, this was like 1934.
The country was in the Great Depression at the throes of it. And then within five years, we get attacked by. Or, sorry, six, seven years, we get attacked by Japan and Pearl Harbor. And that's what I mean, like I said earlier, there were a lot of Americans, just like today, there's a lot of Americans who kind of. And I think this goes down to just human psychology. There's always gonna be a percentage of the population in any large society that kind of gets stimulated more by authoritarian type of leaders and tendencies, and if.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: An election doesn't go their way, are willing to say, hey, forget the election.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. They have that kind of streak of the ends justify the means. And so I think. And that's why, to me, it was interesting to kind of rediscover, as I was reading and preparing for today, how many. The large percentage of Americans that had sympathies for Hitler and the Nazi Party and just those kind of sentiments in general. Like, remember, we started eugenics in the United States.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: So this idea of racial purity and that races were different and that, you know, and what I mean is, 10 years later, by 1944, no one was sitting there saying, oh, we love Hitler in America. Right. It became embarrassing to say, I used to think that way or whatever. So I do think part of this going into the obscurity in our history is not necessarily a conspiracy of just trying to keep it out. Like I would say the Daughters of the Confederacy and forces in the late 1800s to early 1900s doing a propaganda on the history of the Civil War, trying to kind of whitewash and try to erase Reconstruction, correct the heritage, not hate. And this was just about states rights. I think that is more of a sinister and malicious attempt.
Yeah. Intentional. This one, I think, is just a lot of stuff happened after. And I think this kind of right after, too.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: A lot of significant stuff that everybody knows about World War II, the New Deal. Everybody knows about the New Deal. Everybody knows about dropping the bombs. You know, the Atomic bombs, all within the next like 10 years, 10 to 12 years. And so now I agree, I think.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Because also this didn't get to an operational level, like, if you put it, if you look at it that way, January6 actually got, was an example that that attempt got a lot further than this one. Yeah, I mean, they actually carried out violence.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah, they would have chilled out in December. Like, you know what? Forget it. That wouldn't be remembered the same right now. Exactly, you know, like so. But I agree with you actually that this, it probably is more organic in the sense because of all the things that happen right after it. And because I think the biggest factor in that is that the things that would have captured the public's imagination and would have kind of set it in stone. Like the names of these super famous people that everyone had heard of that were involved in this coming out, or them testifying at Congress and trying to defend themselves or whatever. That's the more, and I want to say salacious, as if it was, if it's not meaningful. But the kind of stuff that like unnamed, unnamed faceless people trying to do something bad doesn't stick in the memory, you know, it just doesn't. And so when they didn't, when that didn't come out and there's theories out there that FDR agreed to keep them, keep their names private as long as they stop messing with this new deal, you know, and who knows, you know, like what the truth is with that. But like the fact that that piece was kept out of the public, you know, like the hearings that they did, they interviewed Smedley Butler. He had brought in a newspaper guy to help him corroborate stuff while things were going on. And they interviewed, you know, had those two testified and a couple other people. And that's it as far as like the test, like they didn't go up the chain. So without that, then it's understandable to me why. And then again, because they didn't get to operational and we don't know who was really behind it, it kind of would fall by the wayside, particularly because, yeah, that was not a uneventful decade, two decades. Cause you keep going, I mean, the mid-1900s is like country changing, world changing stuff, you know. So I mean, to me, you don't assume, just if you look at the big picture, that it was sinister or that it was intentional. No, I'm in the same boat as you on that.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah. No. And then before we jump, you know, what a fun fact I learned.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: What was that?
[00:32:37] Speaker B: That Smedley Butler enlisted in the Marines in the year 1898.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: He was 16.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Yeah, his first.
Immediately they sent because we had the Spanish American War.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: But that's why he enlisted. That's why he enlisted. Yeah.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: But you know where he got sent?
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Where?
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Cuba, and we had just annexed Guantanamo Bay.
It's just interesting. I was like, so that's how we got. I always wondered, like, how is it even the whole time Cast was in power? Yeah, like, we had a naval base in Cuba, but yet they're communists and they were siding with the Soviets.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: I was like, I never land like that.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: And I never. I never got, like, how the hell does that work that we actually own part of Cuba and they're our enemy. But so just amazing how all this stuff is connected, you know, just historically that. That, you know, that was over 100 years ago. We got Guantanamo and Smedley Butler was there. Just interesting connection.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: He's a fascinating. One of the things I saw in reading about him either recently or a long time ago, was someone called him like the Forrest Gump of, like, the early 1900s. Like, he's everywhere. And, like, if you look at his life, actually, it's a very interesting life because, yeah, he was a part of the military and a big part of the military as far as all these different campaigns where the military, in a sense, was going around and clearing out space for American capital to come in and do things. But he ultimately became very anti war and wrote a book called War is a Racket. I mean, many people have heard of that, where he talks about how, like, all this war stuff that we're doing is just to make money for people and everybody else pays for it with taxes and with lives, you know, like. And it, like the profiteering and, like, it's a pamphlet. I'll put it in the show notes. As far as the war is a racket, because it's not long. You know, I read it this afternoon, just, you know, having fun with it, because he goes through all the numbers, all the money, all the debt, and it's like, yeah, like, this thing is not what you think. You know, it's sold in patriotism. And obviously, you know, Pearl harbor is not necessarily what he's talking about there, but in general, he had lived it where he saw. They go in, they take out what they need to take out, and the people right behind them on the boat are, you know, representatives from the company X or company Y. Yeah, man. So I do want to move to the second topic, you know, because, yeah, we get into Smedley Butler and spend another hour talking about his life and his, all his stuff. But I wanted to, you know, have a conversation with you. You had sent me something this week and it was talking about individual chronotypes and really what it's, it's, it goes back to, it's just the concept of early birds or night owls and so forth as far as people that, you know, either up early, you know, no alarm or whatever, or being able to stay out late and you know, not, you know, then enjoy it and so forth. And so it's just one of those interesting kind of human topics I wanted to conversate with you on. So do you, what do you, what do you make of it that you know, how you feel at certain times of the day does actually go beyond getting enough sleep or going, go beyond what you ate and when you ate it and the kind of foods and all that kind of stuff. But actually there's some genetic stuff going on as far as when our bodies are, how they're optimally functioning.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting. I think like, like a lot of things we've discussed on the show as relates to kind of how our bodies work and, and our evolution and kind of our, you know, how we're hardwired in certain ways.
It's not unbelievable that we have a spectrum of chronotypes, terms of kind of how our body relates to sleep and then like not just sleep, but as you're saying, when we different human beings have different, let's say, peak energy and.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: So, and like how the light affects different people slightly differently.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: But I think, you know, just to set it off like the way that I think most of us are familiar with just simple terms would be like the early riser type and then you got the night owl type. And like it's interesting reading this because it reminded me, my assistant and I in my, in my professional practice, we always joke with each other because I'm a morning guy. Like I like to be up 5:30, 6, be at my desk by 7, you know, banging out emails and all that. And I'm, I feel all accomplished by 9, 10 in the morning, you know, like half my day's done.
I better not call her before 11 because even though she might be up at 7, 8, she just is not good shit's happening Sunday, I'm not. But then I get emails from her at 1:00 in the morning, you know what I mean? When I got to be in bed by 9:30. So she works well later in the day, into the evening. I'm the morning guy. Somehow we figure out how to talk between 1 and 2 in the afternoon.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: No, it's like. It's like you're in New York and she's in London, basically.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah, but it works.
And so that's the interesting.
I think we all have that just from people in our life, we understand that not everybody operates exactly the same at the same point in time, in the day, or in the same way. But what I found interesting, one of the things, and I'll pass it back, which from a evolutionary standpoint, some of the stuff we're hypothesizing, that humans evolved with these different chronotypes, specifically when we were hunter gatherers. So that if you're kind of imagine small kind of village of humans out there in the middle of the wilderness where you had all these creatures, right?
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: And bears and lions and things that were awake at night and so that different.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Yeah, Lions, tigers.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Oh, my. Sorry, I got to. I got to find this yellow brick road somewhere outside my house. But no, but that. That way people would, Would. Would have different rhythms and would be able to be awake at different times of night.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Now that makes sense.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: At least one person can always be alert, kind of up there standing guard at different times, you know, and actually.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Like I said, alert is the right word. Not awake, but alert. But somebody is naturally like, yeah, I'm good.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: So it would make sense over millions of years from an evolutionary standpoint that, yeah, not one chronotype would have just passed on genetically, and you would have had this spectrum of where people can deal with different, let's say, have different alertness. To your point, you pulled out there at different times of the day.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Now it's a piece from Prevention that we source this and they actually identify three. The early bird, the night owl, and then they call the hummingbird, which is kind of just in the middle, so to speak. Not super early, not super late. I'm probably in that throughout my life. I feel like I've been able to do either as long as, like, for me, I just need to be consistent is really what it is. Like, I. I can do the early bird as long as I'm doing it every day. But if I ask, if I don't, if I'm not consistent, then I kind of just go into the middle of the. Just sometimes I can stay up late, sometimes I get up early or whatever. But I think that two things stood out to me in this is. One is how the article did identify how like, our society is geared more towards the early bird and then, like the. What they call the hummingbird, the middle ground. And so, at least in terms of a lot of commerce. And so, you know, it's something that knowing you're knowing how you operate yourself, if you fit into where our society is geared, then it, you know, like, you can just kind of keep it rolling. But if you're a night out, then you have to figure out ways either where you work or the kind of work you do or who you work with. You know, like, your assistant found a good boss, you know, that can work with her as far as her ability to. When she's optimally functioning. And so you kind of just have to pay attention to that a little bit. The other thing that stood out to me is.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Hold on, I'm just gonna save that quote. I'm bringing you to my next team meeting. Just so you can say that again.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: That's the appreciate tune day moment.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, good stuff. You'll be sitting at the head of the conference table.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: So the other thing that I took particular note of was how they were saying they did an experiment where they took people out, like, to a camping type of experience. And so there's basically no artificial light, but no indoors either. So you're just going to be exposed to the light, natural light, whatever it is, at a given moment, all the time. And so what they found, though, is that the differences kind of contracted. They were less expressed when everybody is exposed to the same light stimuli consistently. And so it reminded me kind of like of the contact or, excuse me, in context of like, epigenetics, which are like, everybody's familiar with genetics, and your genes influence this and influence that. But epigenetics is more recent when it talks about how depending on your activity, depending on what you eat, depending on what you do, your genes can be expressed differently. So you may have two genes that go about this one feature of your body, and one or the other could be active, depending on what. How you're going about life. So light exposure does seem to still be a big part of this, but it's almost like how sensitive your body is to light exposure at different times, or insensitive. It is, you know, how long maybe for the night owl, you just need to be exposed to light for a little bit longer before you really pick up, you know. Whereas the early bird, once they see it, boom, it's immediate. Their hormones respond immediately, like, oh, I saw some light. I'm in. And then the same thing, like, you can, if You're a night owl. You may be able to be exposed to darkness for longer before your systems to go to sleep really kick in. So that adjustability in our bodies again, is just one of those things that you see in other areas as well. And how that might play out here.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think, I mean, the reality is, I mean, this is just another example of just really how complex we are as living organisms. I mean, if you can really say, I mean, all the stuff we've learned over even recent years, like the microbiome in our guts and that's just a little off, it can throw a lot of stuff off from mental health, if physical health, which is like, if you.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Think about that one, when we were young, 80s, 90s, the obsession was to make sure there's no germs anywhere.
Everything had to be sterile. And it's like, actually.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: And that created new problems. Right.
And people weren't able to protect against just normal pathogen type of things. And so that's what I'm saying is that this is another one where it's a good example that you're citing the experiment they did of bringing a bunch of people into just the more natural light and all that. Because I think, you know, it's like when we talked about, we did a show on caffeine or the shows that we talk about sugars and salts, like we don't know what humanity looks like without all this disruption.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Like, like, like I think we, we, when we did the show on caffeine, like 90% of human beings on planet Earth are, have caffeine. We have it constantly in our veins, especially because it takes so long for it to get out of our bloodstream.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Yeah. What is like 48 hours or something? Like, it takes a while.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: It took like several days.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Oh, several days.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: If you, if, if you have one cup of coffee just twice a week, spread out, your body really didn't flush all that caffeine.
And then there's a lot of caffeine and other things that we consume which we not even realize half the time.
So this one to me was interesting because as I started thinking about how maybe we're naturally wired to deal with light, timing, all that, you've got issues number one in, in our even like more modern, modern form. Right. So this is not just like you and I, you're saying the 80s and 90s, we grew up with the television and you could stay up late at night and watch TV or you could have a light on in your bedroom or in your house. Right. For the last hundred years that kind of was normal. Well, now we've upped it again with all the cell phones in our hands and iPads in our faces. So we got constantly some light on whether, no matter how late at night and what does that do to our emotional state and all that and everything else when we don't have the right rhythms. And that leads me just to finish off with that is looking at.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: When.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: You tie that in to then how we eat, when we talk about everything in our water supply, the microplastics. The fact that our chronotypes are getting interrupted by our lifestyle is no wonder that a lot of people just feel off and don't know how to explain it. And that could manifest itself in depression, obesity, you know, other things that then it's like, you know, we're just a constant walking experiment, I guess.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: No, that was exactly where I. Well, that I would say is the beginning, exactly where I was about to take it. Because what I was gonna say, like, if, if you like people, it's hard to listen to your body, you know, it's hard to, because you don't really, like you said, you don't really have a baseline. And so like think of how much like when, you know, like if you're just working or whatever, you're feeling a certain way in the morning, so you might eat some sweets to compensate or, you know, you're in the afternoon, you're dragging, so you have some caffeine to compensate. So we do a lot of things to compensate for the ebb and flow in our energy level. And so what if just understanding our chronotype we could kind of understand the natural ebb and flow that we're going to have now again, that's taken out if you eat certain foods and they make you sluggish or whatever, but just understanding like, okay, well if I'm eating right, I'm doing everything right, or doing most things right, then I'm normally going to have a dip at 2:00. That's just how my body is. So I don't need to go get some coffee or go need to eat something, eat some sugar or whatever to try to perk myself up. If I just drink some water at 2, when I'm in the middle of that dip, it'll pass by 2:45 because that's just my normal rhythm. And then that may contribute or that may be something where you could live healthier and just being able to anticipate how your body's gonna flow based on Whether it's chronotype or just how you, you know, you observe, you know, as you do day by day. And so to me what we, what we have basically, and that's with everything we have all of these tools to compensate, you know, whether when we're in pain it's like well why are we in pain? Like that's not the question, it's just, well no, let's get a non steroidal anti inflammatory and let's just get rid of that pain, you know, like. So this is just another one of those things where we're learning that no, actually we have a natural ebb and flow to the way our body works. And so if we choose to, we can try to pay attention to that and then lean into and kind of learn and ride the wave basically instead of always trying to fight it.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and the last point was it was really the genetics. So this got me thinking about, and we've done this on other shows where we talk about some of these body functions.
Again, how our lives are really not in our control because so much of it is genetic and how we're born. So I learned in preparing today, and I'll quote here, having a longer allele which is spelled A L L E L E. I had to look it up, which I'll explain in a second. Having a longer allele on the PER3 circadian clock gene has been tying to morningness. And so when I read. Okay, so what's an allele? An allele is an alternative form of gene caused by mutation.
So I thought when this particular per three circadian clock gene. So that tells me they've identified the gene for the Sarcadian clock. When it has an alternative form of mutation that is longer it creates, it's tied to being more of a morning person. So I probably have that mutation because I'm a morning guy and I just thought like so boring. Born into our society obviously with the way we work nine to five and all that. Again, me being a morning person is really out of my control if that is a fact that it's just I have this mutation that this one little gene is longer than, you know, I guess the average should be. And just again so that's really, it's not about how great I am but I'm waking up like you know, crack of dawn and two days the early bird that gets to worm because he's so responsible. He's got a good moral character. No, it's because I got a longer gene that's mutated for whatever Reason, you know, because my mom sat in front of the microwave too, too long while she was pregnant, and that's the mutation.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: We got so and so, I mean, now that we've had this lesson of genetics with Toonday, yes, I think. But no, I mean, it's real, though. I mean, like, we always overestimate. Well, no, that's a known thing. Like, psychologists notice, they talk about, like, we always overestimate how much we're in control of everything that's happening around us. But so much of it, we don't really actually control, but it's things that we're in motion, and we're part of the motion. We think we're making the wave, but really we're just riding along with it in many respects. In some respects, you know, we might splash a little bit in the ocean, but, you know, it's not us kicking that. Kicking.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: You know, what happened is that the guys that tried to get Smedley, you know, with the. With the coup plot, they didn't know their chronotype.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah, they didn't know him.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. They didn't get him at the right time of day when they're trying to negotiate with him.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: There it was.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: So there you go. See? You learn something new. Maybe that's why we haven't heard of him.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: No. But I think we can wrap from here, 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, send it to a friend, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: I'm Tunde.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
