Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider whether chatbots are safe in light of a recent story of a 14 year old boy who killed himself allegedly to get closer to a chatbot that he believed he had gotten close with. And later on, we'll decide if Kamala Harris's election loss is more about a rejection of Harris and the Democratic Party or an embrace of Donald Trump and the Republican Party by the American public.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man whose words have been known to be able to hypnotize Tunde. Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show us why you can be considered both notorious and big?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Wow, you threw a lot in there, man.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Got to keep doing.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: I'll say yes. I can give you all that. I'm just. Yeah, hypnotizing. Yeah, I got. I could go a few places with some jokes, but I think let's just get it. Let's just get on with the show here.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: You ready to go, man? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just don't want to get.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Myself in trouble, that's all.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Show us what you got for sure. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show, give us a rating or review on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps to show out.
We're recording today on November 12, 2024, and we begin by looking at the tragic story of Sewell Setzer iii, who earlier this year committed suicide and did so allegedly to get closer to a chatbot in the app character AI that he believed he had gotten, that he was intimate with, that he had gotten really close to. Now his mom is now suing the company. And while that plays out, though, there's a larger discussion that needs to be had about what's happening with these chatbots. Because, you know, for. For acceptable forms of entertainment that, you know, that you voluntarily participate with. I don't think that suicide or, you know, I think it's. It's reasonable to say that suicide should not be one of the plausible outcomes from that. You know, like this means that this is out of bounds, you know, completely. And so we need to take a hard look at this right away. So jumping right in. Tunde, what do you make of the story of the Orlando boy that killed himself allegedly to get closer to a chat bot?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Man, honestly, as a parent, my youngest kid, being one year younger than this kid who killed himself, unfortunately this year is.
My youngest is 13. This kid was 14.
It's tragedy. Like it hits home just being a parent and understanding also just being a human being that's already lived through that age. You know, I remember being a teenager like I'm sure most adults can. And you know, we all had a little bit more vulnerability and security, you know, as you're, as you're learning how to become an adult and look at the world. So that's what I mean by it's, it's a tragedy on all fronts because as a parent, losing a child clearly is a tragedy.
Suicide in itself, unfortunately, I've dealt with that in my family, extended family, where we've had some suicide in the last decade. So I know what that's like as well.
And it's just so all around it's a tragedy. And then to know that, you know, maybe this kid would have done it anyway, maybe not, who knows? But that modern technology we are learning is continuing to put certain people, you know, maybe he is vulnerable to a mental health concern, maybe not, I don't know. You know, like those are things I think we're going to continue to discover as these stories come up. But just the fact that we have this new age of technology and we're continuing to learn how negative it can be on mental health for many people, not just a few, but a lot. And so I do think this is another like, big sign that as a society we should be waking up and saying what's going on with this epidemic, especially of younger people committing suicide. I mean, I think this is, yeah, most unprecedented in human societal history because normally childhood is when is the best time of life. And in the last 10, 15 years we've been seeing a lot more younger people taking their lives. And I just think this is, you know, big wake up call.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: No, I agree. I think it's the technology, but then it's also how we're organizing our societies, you know, and I like the cultural direction that we've taken things a lot of times like people are lonelier than ever and yet. And then also we have these immersive technological tools which aren't going to solve the loan. Like while some in the tech sphere will say that'll solve the loneliness problem, you know, the loneliness is, is, you know, connected to human connection, not connection with, you know, or even, you know, it could be connection with another living being, you know, the dog, you know, pets, stuff like that. It could even be something towards that versus, you know, not, not a, a, an AI chatbot or something like that. So I mean, a, agree with you as far as just it's heartbreaking to see.
Just like you don't want to see any, anybody killing themselves for any reason. But, you know, like, again, the, the aspect of this being something that's voluntary, something that I, I or a person will choose to engage with, like, hey, let me go seek this out and engage with this for entertainment, for fun. And then that caused this kind of a, or that be even connected in any way, you know, because it's, it's alleged, you know, it's not confirmed that it caused it, so to speak, but it's alleged. It's, you know, the subject of a lawsuit right now. But like, that to me shouldn't be on the table for one of the potential outcomes of hey, let's play this game. And I might become, you know, like, as a part of this game, then I might go into this dark place and then want to do something really bad to me, to myself or to someone else, you know, like. So I think on one hand you have to look at this is what in our society is going wrong where the ability to make human connections. Now this kid, you know, apparently was, they said he was bullied, dealt with different things, ADHD and stuff like that. So he may not have been having a good go of it, you know, at least in terms of his own mind, you know, like, again, you know, you look at it as an adult and it's like, oh, yeah, those are things that people go through as they grow up. But, you know, when you're a kid, you do think everything is kind of the end of the world. And, you know, so, but so it's the combination of what's happened socially and then with this, this aim to ever increase our level of immersion in these artificial things. I mean, this is, you know, the metaverse, you know, and everything like that. But just the metaverse is like you're going to have an avatar walking around, but the chat bots are same kind of thing. It's like, okay, I'm just interacting back and forth with an artificial, you know, entity, so to speak, that's just, you know, feeding me this and that. And, you know, where we've seen it a lot of times is where it can make me feel like it feels me, you know, like it can. It's almost manipulating me to make it feel like it feels the emotions that I feel. And it reciprocates emotions. When it doesn't do that, I think it's very dangerous.
And right now we're in that phase where everything's just going so fast.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: And Then usually society will take a second after people die and all a bunch of stuff happen. Like you have all these cars, they go 80 miles an hour, and then they're like, hey, you know what? Maybe we should make people wear seatbelts. You know, like. So. But that seatbelt piece doesn't. That conversation doesn't come first. Usually it's that there's a lot of tragedy that happens and then we start figuring out. So I think with this, we need to start getting to the phase where we start figuring out, okay, what are the seat belts here that we need or the speed limits or, you know, whatever we need to put on this stuff. Because I think we're going to see this spin out of control very quickly because the technology moves so fast.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think you hit something on the head, which makes this more difficult. I think. I think one thing that makes it difficult, like it always does, whether it was tobacco or like you're saying regulation of motor vehicles because we're young enough where we weren't alive during some of this. But from what I read, like, Even by the 1960s, you know, most cars didn't have. They weren't manufactured with seat belts and things like that. So like you're saying it took decades from the original Model T Ford until let's say the 70s or early 80s, when probably the modern version of regulating, you know, cars and the safety, you know, got to where it is.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Well, remember though, and it was the regulation. But then there also was. Has been, and it continues a decade long kind of public relations kind of thing to get people to think it's okay or it's cool to buckle up. You know, we did live that part. We lived through that part where people were like, oh, I don't wear a seatbelt. You know, seat belts are for suckers. You know, yada, yada, yada. And then slowly over time, you know, it's like after much effort and much kind of public education, so to speak, it becomes more of the norm.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think one of the things that you alluded to is very important is why I think this one is much more difficult it's going to be for our society to deal with. I think one, like, with a lot of these other new technologies, that the hurdle will be industry because they're going to lobby and try and defend themselves. But that's kind of. That's more normal, historical. That's tobacco. Yeah. That's fossil fuels, all that. I think the big.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: We don't want to tell you what's in the.
Anything.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Yeah, let's not get into that. But I think that the issue, like you said, I mean, let's see how this legal case that the mother brought plays out. But I think it'll be much harder to say because the seat belt analogy you gave is a good one, because it's pretty straightforward, Right. You get in a car and you're going 80 miles an hour, and if you have a crash, you're going to go through the windshield. So we can identify that's an issue. The way to stop it is put on a seatbelt. Case closed. Whether I was getting bullied on my way into the car, you know, whether I had a fight with my wife when I got out of the car, doesn't matter. And I think what you alluded to is very important, which is the kid had adhd, he was bullied in school. There's a lot of other factors because of what we're dealing with now is really about mental health and about how people's minds are wired and what their triggers and how they respond to those triggers are. And that's as opposed to more complex.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: As opposed to a physical threat, so to speak, Correct?
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's also. It's like we'd have to look at all 300 million Americans and figure out exactly what makes them tick versus just saying, okay, every single car basically has similar specs, you know, similar in length, it has four wheels, it's got a steering wheel, you know, a windshield.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Human skull is a human skull.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: The human body. Yeah, exactly. So. So that's an easy one to fix. Airplane safety is easier. You know, tobacco, you. We get it. You smoke a cigarette, you're breathing something into your lungs, you do it for a long time, you get cancer. Okay, we understand that. And I think that's the issue we're going to face here, which is, number one, industry is going to protect itself like it always does. So this company is going to have an army of lawyers trying to prove to a court that it wasn't their actual AI that did it, that it was the bullying and it was, you know, the other stuff, his own adhd. And they're gonna.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: And.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: And who knows? That's what I mean. It's interesting. And so I do think we have enough evidence after 10 to 15 years of this, especially from the Instagram, and even, I would say the research that's been leaked out of these companies that produce this stuff, like Microsoft and Facebook.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Like on social media stuff.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have enough evidence that it does do damage emotionally and Mentally, especially to younger people.
I just, that's, that's the concern I have is how are we going to deal with this moving forward since there's so many. It's almost like so many people are addicted to this as well now.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Well, that was going to say people don't want anything.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: That's what makes it harder actually, is that. Yeah, these things. There's no kind of. There's. Remember the companies study how to manipulate our dopamine response and how to make us kind of Pavlovian for this stuff and just want it and we want it more and more and more. You know, even though I know I shouldn't be sitting here. Doom. It's called doom scrolling. I know I shouldn't be doing it, but I just can't stop it like that. It's not like people were getting, having this reaction to seat belts where it's like, yo, man, I just, I want to put it on, but it just. I can't make myself do it. Like, like. So it's actually even harder.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Hey, that didn't work when I was 20 years old. Got pulled over by the cop for no seatbelt. I tried that one. He didn't believe it.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, so there's no, it's not a compulsory thing. Whereas we know that with the social media and that stuff and then with the, with the, the, the AI that that stuff is able to, to kind of change us and to, to kind of manipulate us in ways that are profitable for whoever's providing the service. Because a lot of the times this stuff is provided to us for free. Well, why is it provided to us for free? Because we are the product. You know, our attention is the product. And so ultimately, what. Where this is going to kind of have to come from. The only place that something like this can come from is well on the first line of defense is litigation. You know, it is, you know, product safety type litigation. That that's usually the first shoe to drop on stuff like this. So we're getting into that right now. But it has to be regulation from the government. And so this is where, you know, you get concerned. If there's no government there that is open to kind of evaluating things like this and figuring out is, is there a thing that the government should be doing here? And if so, okay, what is the best way to approach it here? And that just hasn't been kind of the, like our government right now. This reminds me of the amusing ourselves to death book that we did a while back. Like our government Right now is really more about show and you know, like they're about getting people's attention and using social media to maintain a following and stuff like that than they are about, okay, what are the people, what's going wrong with the people, what do we need to do? You know, a lot of this, like the government seems to be kind of co opted into this kind of this social media, AI chat bot type of environment where they're just trying to keep our attention, keep us siloed, keep us kind of manipulated and locked in as well. So they're not incentivized to be like, hey, hey, hey, maybe we should put the brakes a little bit on how immersive we allow the businesses to take people in for them to make money on the people and for the people to kind of be at the mercy of these, of the technological entities.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, the other thing that concerns me is you're right, those, like the way that our current system works is that those who profit from these companies that, that, that are, you know, pushing this out into our culture and our population, they, they, you know, they lobby those in power who are supposed to be protecting us from this stuff and then they all benefit. Because like you said that our leadership.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: And those that are in power utilize the tools of.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: That's what I was just saying. Yeah. Like our leadership class is using these algorithms now to keep us kind of fractured and siloed so that we only pay attention to, you know, the things that trigger us. So I think, just to give an.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Example, I'm sorry, let me give an example real quick because like, for example, my concern would be, and this wouldn't be necessary. I'm not saying this about any, any party. I'm saying that my concern would be a leadership person might look at this and instead of saying, oh, we need to figure out, you know, how we can lessen the chances of something like this. Allow people to still enjoy stuff, but lessen the chances of it. I'm more concerned that they're going to look at this and say, hey, how can we make a chatbot that convinces people to vote for me? You know, like, that's my concern is that they're going to look at this as the opportunity for themselves to benefit as opposed to how can we protect society from the worst impulses and the worst practices.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: I mean, I agree with you. Like, think about it. You and I are just two regular guys that, you know, happen to be, you know, small business type of guys here in South Florida. So if we're talking about it, obviously this should be known by our leaders and by people that study this stuff for real. And I think that's my bigger concern, James, is not like that this has to be stopped. Is that like you said, this is moving so fast.
And right now our culture is a bit dysfunctional just in the way everything's going and the way our political class behaves. And again, this isn't a partisan comment. It's just the way it is right now on all sides of the spectrum that I would wish that this would be what our political leaders are focusing on. Meaning that let's say the Congress and the Senate would be having hearings, inviting in experts about AI and all that, and the owners of these companies not to hammer them about freedom of speech issues or did they hide some politicians, you know, Advertisement with their algorithm. But really talking about, you know, how are we going to deal with this in the 21st century going forward? And also dealing with educating like the next generation, probably we should start teaching in school at maybe the middle school age, because that seems to be the age kids are getting phones and getting on social media. How to deal with social media, how to deal with your emotions, how to.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: How to deal with social media. Because here we're talking about chatbots, you know.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just making a point of how do you deal when you get triggered emotionally from something online and you have that feeling like you want to respond. And like you said about chatbot teaching kids at a young age, now that, hey, the technology really is such that if something's talking to you from a screen, you need to recognize it's probably not a human, you know, and if.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Not feeling emotions the way. Even if it, even if it is mimicking feeling emotion, it's not really feeling emotion. What it's doing is cosplay, basically. It's pretending that it, so to speak, can do the things that you do and feel the way you feel, but it can't actually feel us. I want to get one comment for you before we leave or before we get out of this. On topic. We're talking right now whether there's a will, like whether we can we as a society can generate the will. And I imagine eventually we will, you know, like eventually we'll get there, you know, like it's, it's. Right now we're talking about the challenges of getting there. And, you know, like a lot of those, as we said, we've seen with other types of things, you know. But I want to know, though, also, what do you think do you think there's a way? You know, like. Because the reason I bring that up is that the nature of like with going back to the car, the analogy when you look at a car, what it was now it got better, more efficient, faster and all that from the first 50 years or something like that. But the fundamentals didn't really change. It was still human beings riding in a metal cage, moving at a high speed, being propelled by an internal combustion engine. So that fundamentally didn't really change over a large period of time. And so society had the time to kind of evaluate those risks and then figure out how to mitigate those risks. Here. This stuff moves so fast. Like, we haven't even gotten a handle on social media. Now we got to worry about AI too. You know, like, so in social media, we haven't gotten a handle on social media with actual human generated content. Now we got this other thing coming and it's like, okay, these chat bots, this is going to be computer driven content. And then by the time we even really get a handle on it, they're getting an idea of what we should be doing here. There'll probably be two other things that we got to worry about. And so, like, do you think they're like. So we talked about whether there's a will. Do you think there's a way, like. Or what do you think about this? You know, this challenge from just the practical, practical aspect of it, I should say.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: I think this is where a lot of us, me included, are going to have blind spots because it's so easy to get attracted to the topic. You just said like the overarching title of the topic, right? AI, computers and all that. But there's something you alluded to at the start of this conversation which isn't part of that, just on the surface, which is loneliness.
And that's why I think the way is much more difficult and would take a concerted effort from the top down. In our country, there's really a cultural shift we'd have to make because we've basically, I think, unintentionally have developed a culture of loneliness without realizing it.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Meaning.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: And I've thought about this. When you and I were little kids in the 80s, right? And every prior generation of that had television, and then prior to television it was not television and people had to actually talk to each other. So think about it, we had one TV in the house mostly, and it was in the living room. And what did that force us to do? Number one, we came together more congregated to Watch tv. It also forced us to have to deal with each other. You got to negotiate. Remember, not everyone had a VCR. So I like my shows at 8 o'clock, but your shows at 8. So we got to figure this out. Those, I mean, it seems kind of basic and dumb maybe for some people to hear me say this, but I mean those are all part of being a human being and interacting with people. And now we've all got our other.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Don't always get your way, you know, you don't have.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Yeah, every single room except the bathrooms in my house has a flat screen in it. Then my kids, we all have phones and my wife and I have the iPads, you know, so there's time I'm sure everybody watching this will have because we can all relate to it now where I'll walk in my living room and my wife and the kids are all in their devices. So we're all kind of present with each other, but no one's really together. Right. And I think if you extrapolate that out off of millions of people and all that stuff and then the algorithms like you're saying, are even better at siloing us to more, you know, just tighter information and smaller groups of people.
I think one way to deal with this because as you mentioned at the beginning, one of the things going back to what we started the show on this kid that committed suicide, unfortunately, one of the things is that he was lonely and being bullied. He didn't have a support network. And so how do we change that? That's not going to be by some regulation by Congress or something. Even though I do think they should be looking at this like I just said it would. It's going to take us doing things like how do we deal with the epidemic of loneliness, understanding what I just said, understanding that everyone's got a flat screen and everyone a phone in their hands. How do we promote culturally people just getting back together? And that's a bigger ask in a bigger way than. You know what I mean?
[00:22:00] Speaker A: No, for Dr. I think you're 100% correct that that I think the. What we're. Because the types of risks are will evolve faster than we will be able to. To kind of regulate them or you know, kind of mitigate the worst circumstances from it. What we have to do is try to reduce our vulnerability. So I saying basically all the stuff you just. That's what I think as well. Like what we need to focus on in the short term is decreasing our vulnerability to these types of, to this type of stuff causing us to kind of lose it, you know, so to speak. So how do we do that now? I do think some of it can come from the top down. Like how can we encourage like for the longest time right now, you know, and this contributes to our society of loneliness. Everything has been done from a zoning and a building and all that kind of stuff standpoint to isolate people further and further and further and further apart. You know, everything that we're doing, you know, in terms of even from a profit standpoint is that everybody silos individually because that allows you to maximize how much you can make off of each person individually. So what I think we have to do, I mean, and just for example, you know, like it may be in the way that you build neighborhoods that you make it so that everybody's not their own. Like you, everybody has their own house, but you have the, you know, yards are shared, so to speak, or something like that. Or I don't have the answer obviously I'm not a civil engineer, a planner in that sense. But what we're going to have to do, I think is configure our lives in a way that bring us together a little bit more, you know, like, and that may be incremental, it may be a small amount, but yes, I think our vulnerability because we have become more and more and more kind of floating individually on our own little islands and removed from potential support systems, removed from places where we can find fulfillment outside of these, you know, kind of like the, a chat bot, you know, so to speak, or a social media app. The further we get removed from human touch, the more vulnerable we are. And so that's, I think that's the only way we can deal with it because we're just not going to be able to keep up with each threat and do something about each threat. I mean, you and I, what's not being said is you and I are not people that want over, over heavy handed regulation on things. You know, like we want regulation, think regulation is important, but it's more about, you know, like that's not the only solution to every problem, so to speak, you know, like, and regulation does have a downside. So you got it. When you want to use it, you got to use it. You know, like you want to be cautious with it, you don't want to overdo it. So, you know, like that's that not being said or I guess I say it now, but that's kind of why we're not going straight to that, you know, just from a sensibility Standpoint. So, last comment before we get out.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: No, I think that's, you know, let's. Let's see how it goes.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Well, the first thing, though is to recognize we have a problem, though, really. I mean, that's the thing.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: And so now they're gonna say, james, we'll do a show in 20 years for the audience. We'll let you know how this played out.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Oh, man, I didn't want to end it on such a negative note there.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Hopefully we're here in 20 years so we can tell everyone how it played out.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah, Tunday AI will do a show in 20 years.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Well, I'll be in my pod being a battery. Like the Matrix is some machine.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Yeah.
Well, now, yeah, sorry to leave you, but no, like, yeah, definitely. We appreciate you joining us on this episode. Call like I see it and join us for part two of this as well. And we'll talk to you then.
All right. For our second part of today's discussion, we wanted to discuss whether Kamala Harris election loss in the 2024 presidential election was more about a rejection of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party and. Or the Democratic Party or an embrace of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And this is in the backdrop of the. There's been. Since Kamala lost, there's been a lot talk talked about all the Democrats and losing the working class and whether they, you know, too woke or this and that. There's a lot that's going around about that. And a lot of it, you know, is hindsight. But at the same time, there surely are lessons that can be learned in terms of, one, what. How we got to this situation, and two, whether or not what we're hearing. Because we're also hearing a lot about how, you know, this is the country moving to Trump or, you know, something like that in the Republican Party and so forth. So, you know, sorting that out as well, because a lot of times going straight to the most abstract point or the broadest point can get you to a good answer, and other times it can't. So tune that, you know, just kind of starting. Starting it off. Do you think, you know, just with the primary question, do you think that what we're seeing here is more about an embrace of Donald Trump and the Republican Party or, you know, kind of a rejection of either Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party because of who they are or maybe because of what they're about or what they're talking about and so forth?
[00:26:50] Speaker B: I think you mentioned it a little bit. I think it's I think there's a little bit of reality in various opinions we've been hearing. I think it's a little bit of both. In terms of that, I do think. I mean, one of the things I've been very careful of since the election, I've been very conscious of this feeling also between this information that we're all consuming now about the why this or that happened, as well as things like the reaction of the stock market.
I keep thinking of that saying, fools rush in. And I remind myself not to do that. And I'll say this now about kind of mentally not being a fool to just rush in and try and say, oh, it's this or that. Because I see a lot of that. And to your point, I see, you know, the Democratic, let's say, leaning folks are more fractured, of course, because they're, you know, some people are blaming the far left and wokeness. Others are blaming that, you know, the more centrist left would, you know, forgot about the working class and all these kind of things that we hear. And of course, Republicans are happy because, you know, they won the election. So we have, we have all these competing kind of narratives right now. But I do think one of the things that I realized, James, and I think, you know, we did a recent show on the book Nexus and we've done other shows and I'd say the last year or so that have kind of brought me to this realization that I really realize I've had some blind spots. I mean, this is really a really interesting time for me to reflect.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Mayor Culpa, here we go.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't realize, honestly, man, because more of being a more rational reason, intellectual type of person, I was the type of person that believed that more information would just solve something.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: That, that, that, that if you just tell people, hey, this and that's going on, they would be like, okay. What I never appreciated was really that all of us human beings, we, we still need things packaged in a story and in some sort of. To put the information in a formation of understandability. And, and by. I want to be very clear, I'm not saying a story that is disinformation or propaganda or that kind of thing. I'm just saying a story that people can get behind. And what I'm learning is just for clarity.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Those are forms of story too. But. Yeah, well, that's what I'm getting at is not inherent.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: But that's what I'm getting at is what I realized looking back now is that both the Democrats and Republicans were telling Two different stories to America. And, yeah, maybe the story that I saw coming from Donald Trump, this is where I'm saying, to your point, I didn't necessarily believe that story. I didn't believe that Haitians were eating cats and dogs. I didn't believe that. I believed that the border needed work, but I didn't believe that the border was an existential crisis that would make the American people go away or that would replace people like me, because I feel like I'm an American. Right.
I didn't feel that, you know, the transgender issue as much as we've had shows about it. And, you know, I can acknowledge that I'm uncomfortable with that topic at times, but it wasn't a hill I was ready to die on thinking that that was going to stop America.
So what I realized is Donald Trump was much better in the Republican Party at telling a story to Americans, and that story had a direction.
The Democrats lost the ability to tell stories to Americans, and that's kind of like we can now break that down. But I just feel like from top down, that's kind of what I realize here.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Well, see, I don't think that that's true. I think the Democrats told a story. I think the biggest issue was that the story the Democrats told was about. I mean, what did they say? It's Dobbs and democracy. I just don't think that resonated. Like, I look at this election, and what I. What stands out to me the most is that Trump, as far as his vote, like, if you compare the popular vote from 2020 to 2024, as of right now, he got 74 and change, 74 million and change in 2020. He got 75 in change in 2024. So within a million or so votes is. So he got pretty much the same amount of votes. You know, Donald Trump got pretty much the same amount of votes. All this stuff we could talk about, it's not like he got a ton more votes or anything like that. He got, you know, about the same. Whereas if you look at Joe Biden's performance in 2020, he got around 81 million votes.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Harris got around 71 million votes. So this big drop where you see the big swing is that the people who voted in 2020 for the Democratic candidate were not excited and did not come out and vote. A large number of them, you know, a substantial more than 10% did not come back out. To me, that means their message missed the mark. You trying to. Maybe the democracy, you know, question was motivating in 2020. Maybe it was, maybe there was other messaging, maybe it was an anti incumbent because the economy wasn't going great and stuff in 2020. They got people out in 2020 and you may have misdiagnosed and said, oh, okay. So to me, the biggest issue here was, and we're seeing this and you see this play out. I'll bring up some comments of Bernie Sanders in a second. But the, what the Democrats decided to make central to the campaign was not something that a large number of people that otherwise had been inclined to work with them that they found compelling. You know, it might have been compelling to a certain segment of the Democratic base, but it wasn't compelling broadly to the Democratic base. And that brings you to the Bernie Sanders, which he's come out with recently, talking about, I'll quote him and from, you know, his X page. It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo. The American people are angry and want change. I think he's on to something there. Now, I don't think, though, that that's necessarily why she lost the election. And just to nuance it a little bit, and I'll kick it back to you, I think that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class and I think that's a terrible thing. And they've become from an economic standpoint, they basically starting with Bill Clinton really, they became Republican light, you know, like they did. They weren't banging the drum for the working class. They were just like, hey, we just won't go as far for the corporate class as the Republicans will, but we'll still kind of bend over for them.
So I think that's true. But I think the reason they lost the election, if they had been the exact same party but had spent the whole election talking about economic stuff and all the stuff they were going to do, economics, economically, I think they would have performed much better. What we see, and this is hindsight to some degree now, not, not completely, but that the economic concerns were what was going on. And by Democrats not making that the central or a central focus of the campaign, they just weren't able to galvanize enough support to, you know, Trump has his ceiling. Trump, he, Trump hit his ceiling. Harris underperformed the Democratic ceiling. And I think that is reflective of them choosing the wrong messages to make the campaign about.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, or you can just believe that the Democrats stole the 2020 election and this proves it.
I mean, that'll be that'll be the case.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Or you could say that Elon Musk stole this election. You know, like, well, that's, that's what.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: I was going to say.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: So that started. Play that game forever.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: I know, but listen, let's getting back to serious stuff is because I think you're right. I'm not arguing the point about the Democrats losing the working class because that is traditionally who they are supposed to represent.
And again that's something that is like we said in the first part, the first discussion of the show, if you're going to address loneliness as part of the issue of how to deal with humanity going forward with AI, addressing the needs of the working class is also a long term game plan. This isn't something that you're just going to fix in four years like that, especially as the minority party now, the party out of power. So I think that there's, that's it, that's a big part of it. So there's no denying that. I think there's just other things also that in this election I think affected. Because you're right.
You know, one thing. Donald Trump and the Republicans were very good as telling the story about inflation. Now whether you and I personally believe that they're going to address it the way that many people think they are doesn't matter. That's what I mean, that's what I realized. It doesn't matter.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: But they talked about it like it was a big deal, which.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: It's just that they addressed it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that was my blind spot because, you know, I'm fortunate enough that I'm able to not be bothered if my grocery bill went up 50%. $50. I mean when I go to the grocery store every week, and I don't say that to knock anyone, I'm just saying that I'm in my own bubble. That's what I realized. I, I realize how important that is for a lot of Americans and that's okay. Like it's like, okay, set another way.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Just real quick, set another way. Like what you're saying there is like the inflation issue was an abstract issue to you. It wasn't like a day to day life. I gotta get like you, you said this to me offline. Like someone has to, I can't do this because of this growth, this inflation on groceries. I can't go and hang out with my friends now. So that's something that's going to affect you much differently than it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I understand the numbers say inflation is up It's a little inconvenient for me. But so, yeah, it hits you less hard, so to speak. Not just like literally, but also kind of subjectively in your own, you know, in your own gut.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and that's why I think part of the other big stuff, because I think the working class thing is huge. And I do agree that if society, I mean, it's been proven throughout history so many times that we don't even need to go into it too much. But obviously if there's too much income inequality, you get the environment where things like bigotry and xenophobia are much more easier for someone to come in and foment because people feel more scarcity, they don't feel abundance.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Anti immigration. Anti immigration.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Exactly. And so, you know, and so that's why I say it's, it's all related. And so that's where I want to get. I want to actually bring this up and then get your feedback on it because there's a couple interesting tie ins I see. One is the, the other story that I think was big now just saying for this election cycle, not 10 years ago or 10 years from now, was the immigration discussion. And you know, I've been thinking lately in my head, because when I was a kid, Ronald Reagan, I was born in 1978, so my memory begins in the 80s with Ronald Reagan. And I've shared this with you in the past, that to me, Reagan was to me more of an inspirational leader in terms of his eloquency and his dialogue, because he told a story of America, the shining city on the hill that to me was kind of the post World War II, 20th century version of America that I grew up with, which is you got all this crazy stuff going on. You had Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini and you had Pinochet in Chile and you had Castro in Cuba. But we in America will welcome all these people because we're the big melting pot. And so I remember Ronald Reagan, one of his final speeches In I think 88 or 89, right before he left office, was that you can come from anywhere and go, you know, and go to Japan and move to Japan, but you'll never be Japanese. You can go, you know, from anywhere in the world, move to Germany and not be a German, but only in America can you come from somewhere else and move here and you can become an American.
And I've been thinking about that lady, because lately, because 40 years later, we have the RNC this year, the Republican National Convention, people held signs that said Mass Deportation now. And that's kind of what I realized is the story, the narrative has changed. And what Donald Trump was successful in telling a story, which the Democrats weren't. And like you said about economics, instead of standing their ground with their own story, they just kind of went Republican light and hugged the Republicans, which was, this is no longer the place where we're going to welcome everybody that way, because these people are coming in to replace you. That became the story. And then Democrats, what they do in January for the immigration bill that Trump helped blow up, they went harder. They said, okay, as Democrats, we're just going to become like Republicans or we're going to shut off asylum and all this. What I'm realizing now is, again, whether someone agrees with me or not, the Democrats lost because they try to tell a story like Republicans, but they're not Republicans. If everyone knows that, what they should have done is stood up for the ideals of Democrats and said, no, no, no, we don't want open borders and we don't want criminals coming in, but you're not going to use this fear as a way to shut everything down from immigration. And it should have told the story that Ronald Reagan told. And that's what I read.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: But that's Republican light too, though. But see, here's the thing. I think that what we're talking about and what I, what my overall point initially was the misalignment in the messaging that they chose versus the mood of the country. And so I think what you have to recognize is that with the inflation, with inflation going on, the, as you just mentioned, I think it's a, it's an excellent point that in times of scarcity, immigrants are one of the first things that any society look at and be like, yo, man, like, this ain't gonna work. You know, like, this isn't gonna work. And so the, it was a, the, the mass deportation and stuff. While I don't agree with that, I recognize it as a very strong strategy because that hit the economic concerns of people in a way that was even deeper than if you say, oh, yeah, we're going to do a stimulus checks and stuff like that. Like, actually you are, you are satisfying the, or you're addressing the concerns about the economy with people. When you start talking about deportation at a very deep level, you know, like. And so actually, I think that that was part of an economic message that, hey, there's. Things aren't good. I mean, I think you point out, we go from the shining city on the Hill to American carnage, and so, and that's trying to capture a mood, you know what I'm saying? This is why I think there were two things that the Trump campaign did, I think that were, in hindsight again, very smart. One, they had messaging that was geared towards keeping their people motivated, ready to vote. And then they had messaging that was designed to discourage or to point out, like, hey, if you're not doing great right now, then why would you sign up for another four years of this? And I think that that exposed and without counter messaging from the Democratic Party. And Harris, Harris, that's focusing on, hey, we're going to switch this up. We know that, we know you're hurting and we're going to make it right. And that's kind of Bernie's point. Bernie's point is really talking about policy, though. I think that again, people talk about stuff in politics all the time like Trump's answer, this tariff thing, this answer to the inflation is the worst answer you could imagine. It wasn't about the policy. It was the fact that he, that people have this concern. And his rhetoric was designed to say, I have a solution to this concern. You know. And so I think that in that instance, and I will say this though, I think that, I think that while, you know, we've heard sexism, racism and stuff like that, I think those played a role. I don't think that that was a, I don't think that's a role that you walk away from and say, if we just avoid sexism and racism would be okay. I think that like that's something that, yeah, it played some marginal role. I'm sure it played something, but I don't think that was determinative here. More determinative, I think was, Remember, we're in 2024 has been an anti incumbency year and that's on both sides of the political spectrum. You know, right wing governments have been taken out. In uk, the, the right wing people took the biggest losses they ever had this year, you know, and then other countries has been, you know, left, left side, you know, all that. So it's been an anti incumbent because of inflation, primarily. Yeah, this is an anti incumbency environment. So if Harris wasn't coming in and saying, hey, here's how I'm going to change it to get the economic system going, then she was, not only was she going up against this hurdle, this anti incumbency hurdle, then she wasn't even meeting the moment with the right message that would resonate. And so, and again, I think that is revealed in not that Trump had a huge bump in votes but that Harris couldn't hold together the people that already voted for her on, as the Vice President on the ticket. Yeah, you know, again, she wasn't like somewhere, you know, in, in, in, you know, Kalamazoo, you know, like in 2020, she was on the ticket, you know, so people already, people already pulled the, the, the Biden Harris lever when they were talking about stimulus checks and all that other stuff. But you know, ultimately like I don't think that, like they, I think that they missed the, the signal and for whatever reason you talk about blind spots, I think that's very, that's very on point. So I mean ultimately like we've also heard then I want to get your thought on this that you know, like potentially we're looking at changes in voting blocks and you know, like whether we've seen masses of college educated people of all races moving more towards the Democrats and we've seen working class, non college educated workers of all races moving towards, and that's not saying there's a majority, but just moving towards the Republicans. We've seen men move more towards the Republicans, women move more towards the Democrats. Do you think that we're seeing anything lasting that's happening here? And again not acknowledging that anything that may be happening is ongoing and this stuff is fluid. But do you think we have some lasting changes or do you think this is more relevant to the anti incumbency bias, the missing the mark of their messaging or even what Bernie saying as far as hey, you guys have abandoned the working class so over time you're going to start losing them?
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Yes, I think so. To answer directly, yes, I think we're seeing the beginnings of a shift. I wouldn't say that the entire political stars have realigned, but I think for you and I that are born, you know, in the 70s, we're seeing it for the first time in our lives. The last time was probably during the 60s with the Southern Strategy when the Southern Dixiecrats went to the Republican Party and you know, African Americans went to the Democratic Party because a lot of younger people may not appreciate that the Republican Party prior to the mid-60s used to get almost, you know, 30 to 50% of its votes from black Americans. And so what I think is we're just seeing a realignment of political kind of alliances. But I don't think it's over. I think we're in the early stages of it. So I'm not going to try and predict how it plays out. But I do think because I Just think that we're now losing the living memory of the civil rights era. People are older and a lot of younger people just don't. Aren't caught up in the cultural battles of the 50s through the early 70s. So I think that's happening. But I also think that a part of it is going back to the stories. You made a great term just now that stuck out in my mind, which was the mood of the country. And I'm going to say something that I don't think many people will recognize, but there is a through line between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. And they're very different men. And of course, they're very different in their politics and ideology. But if we remember in 2007, what got Barack Obama popular to win the Democratic primary and then eventually to become president was because, number one, he was newer on the scene. He wasn't George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton or John McCain or one of these folks.
But without being the same type of rhetoric as Donald Trump, actually, Barack Obama was pushing America first quote, unquote message. We were in two wars that were unpopular. He was talking about getting out of the stupid war, remember, and finishing Afghanistan, you know, the, you know, a certain way. He was talking about, remember the whole. He got accused by Joe the Plumber of being a communist because he talked about spreading the wealth around and the roads. He didn't build that. Remember all that.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: And it was also, remember also, similarly, it was a time.08, a time when incumbency. Not a good time to be an incumbent.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So. So really without the xenophobia. I mean, Trump's. The domestic message between Trump and Obama, when they were both initially campaigning, Trump and, and Obama in 07 was very similar. And I think that's what allowed both men, because Trump in 2015, when he was on that stage, remember, bashing Jeb Bush for his brother getting us into the wars, he was talking about how he couldn't be bought like these other politicians. So what I'm saying about how the.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Economic system, about how the economic system was rigged.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Was rigged against. Yeah.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: So what I'm saying, a lot like Bernie.
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so that's. And look, it's no surprise that Bernie Sanders was extremely popular in 2016. Right. And the kind of progressive left and the working class left, or I say all working class, has a right to be angry with the Democratic elites and the establishment, because we found out through the Russian leaking of the emails, you know, this is all connected, right. That they were actually putting their thumb on the scale internally in the Democratic Party for Hillary Clinton. So we got here from both parties over time, and we can maybe add in the Citizens United, allowing all this money to come in. But that's a different show.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: But just to finish off, probably the biggest factor.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: That's a separate show. That's a separate show. But I'd like your thoughts, James, on that, which is what most people might not be seeing, because you said something when you said the mood, the mood in 07 was similar to the mood in 15, which gave us Trump and Bernie, in a sense, which became the mood again this past year in 24. So I think the problem is that actually we're being distracted with this Democrat Republican thing because Americans seem to have been unhappy for the last generation, ever since the Bush administration.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Rightfully so, though, because again, once again, once the Democrats abandon the working class in terms of really going. And one of the things Bernie cited, for example, is that, hey, how come we don't bring any minimum wage legislation to the floor and really go to the floor for that, go to the map for that. How come, like, he's pointing at those things. And I agree, like, there is no party that is trying to advance, that truly is trying to advance the interests and go into the mat for the needs of the working class. The Republicans. I look at the policies as the Republicans as. And let me say it like this, actually, this is because I think this is part of the faulty assumption that the Democrats make with this. I think the Democratic Party assumes that because the Republican Party and its platform, its policies are hostile to working people. You know, it's anti union. It is all about consolidation of wealth at the very top. They think that because that's actually the policies that are put in place by the Republican Party, that workers will reflexively keyword there, reflexively stick with the Democratic Party as saying, okay, well, the other side is completely anti me, so I gotta go with these other people. Even though the Democrats actually aren't advancing the cause of the working people, they're just not going as far as the Republicans are in favor of the wealth class. And it's like, well, hey, man, that, that's. That's a terrible.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: I mean, it's like, you know, it's like. It's like Diet Coke versus Coke. You know what I mean? Most people just. That's what I'm saying at this point. I think that's what the working class said. We'll just take the real Coke again, you know, like, you know, I'd rather have some shit.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: And that's what Bernie's saying. And again, like I said, I think that saying that she lost the election because of that is, is not necessarily accurate. Because I think even if the Democratic Party was still working in the interest, not just slow, not just not going as far for the wealthy as the Republicans were, I think the issue here was that they didn't campaign, they didn't center the campaign around it. Not that they don't actually do that, because again, if it was about whose interests were really being served, then the working class wouldn't move to the Republican Party. It's not about who's actually doing the work. That's about who you're. Who. Yeah, who are you talking. What are you talking about? What are you making people. Do people feel heard by your needs or do they feel like you're talking? And I'm like, no, no, no, like you said earlier, like, yeah, yeah, the inflation thing, it's, it'll all catch up. Your incomes are going up. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about the inflation. Like, yo, what do you mean, don't worry about it? You know, like, that's not the answer that people want to hear. And so I think that this assumption that, oh, they'll come home because they see that these other people are going to cut the taxes on the wealthy, are going to increase income inequality, are going to break unions and stuff like that, they'll come home because of that, that's a bad assumption. If you, you have to make these things salient in people's minds and you have to keep them salient in people's minds. And now, and I would, I would endorse the approach of Bernie also to say, hey, let's also take care of working class. But see, and the biggest thing, and I don't want to go down this road, but I got to mention it because I'm here, the, the biggest issue that I have personally, you know, and my personal, like, views on this stuff, is that the kind of New Deal approach where you do ensure, like, you don't let wealth accumulate too much at the top, you keep the velocity of money flowing, the money gets up to the top, you, some of it can stay, but a lot of it has to keep coming back down, get put back into the economy, and then it comes right back up again and you keep that cycle going. That New Deal style is the only thing that's been shown to work in an economy like ours. You don't, where you don't need to incessantly borrow money when we do The Trump economy or the Reagan economy or the George W. Bush economy. We got to borrow trillion dollars a year, you know, like so or more, you know, so that doesn't work. When we do the Republican light stuff, it doesn't really work because we're not putting enough money in the economy that not letting it stick at the top. So personally, for me, the craziness about all of this is that nobody is advocating for the only type of an economy that's actually been proven to work and deliver. A huge middle class, a prosperous middle class and an economy that grows by leaps and bounds every year. You know, and that's what we had with the New Deal economy. So. And they had tweet kinks. You had to work out the kinks. But the delivering like that, nothing else has done, you know, in the last hundred years.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: So one of the things. Let me, let me just piggyback on that because that's a great point.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead. But we got to get out of here. So I throwing it in like that.
[00:51:41] Speaker B: But no, well, here's the thing. And that's why, because I, you know, let's just give me, you know, a minute to get this out. One is that is where we can have a separate show on this. The money in politics matters. Because it doesn't escape me that, you know, it's been about 15 years since the Supreme Court really whittled down about 100 years of prior laws about campaign finance and all that. So now you're right.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Or wiped out.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: That's right. Let me get it out.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: All the stuff that was put in place after the Gilded Age. But yeah, go ahead.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, so, but that's what I'm saying. It's important for people to know these things are all connected, that now the reason why Democrats had to become Republican light is because they couldn't compete. Once you allow billionaires and large corporations start writing checks like Elon Musk did in public this year, saying, I'm just going to spend $45 million a month at the end of the last couple months of the campaign, how many people does Harris have to go raise money from at 25, 100 bucks a pop? So the idea of the system protecting the collective, meaning the labor class from the very small oligarch class was dismantled by the Supreme Court. So Democrats also have to run to very wealthy interests to win elections. And what's that naturally going to do once they win? They can't go tax those interests. So that's one of the point of.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: The Citizens United is To make both parties beholden to them.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: We should do a separate show on that. But the last thing I'll say before we get out is I also think Democrats and I look back on this seriously, they also lost the story of America. They allowed Republicans to frame who is an American and to take that culture. Because the reason I felt that is it hit me with this election. Tim Walls is the first Democrat I've seen in a very long time to have his name stenciled on a camel hat. The ability. The fact that they were showing the American flag so much at the. At the. At the rnc, I mean, dnc, what I'm saying. And the fact that when I put on Fox after that, Republicans were upset, saying, hey, the flag, that's ours. And so what I'm saying is Democrats need to get back into behaving patriotic and saying, we love this country, too. Because I think they've abdicated that to the Republicans. And when the average person who's not into politics looks and they're seeing all these American flags and this Americanism on the Republican side, and then the Democrats are like, yeah, we're for everybody. And all this, you know, constellation of different isms and Latinx and blacks and Latino, you know, and. And trans people, it's confusing, and it's easier to say, oh, America first. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think, especially for immigrants, they want to be American. They don't want to be in all this constellation of stuff. So, you know, I think. I think, you know, the Democrats have to get better at storytelling. That's. That's.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: No, no, I mean, we got that. But no, I don't think you're right. You know, like the, like that feeling.
[00:54:38] Speaker B: You know, like, of Americanism. That's what me and North Reagan gave us.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: What it breaks, what it breaks is that there's an aversion to kind of a nationalism. But see, nationalism is not the same as patriotism. You know, like, we are trying to build something collectively here. And part of doing that is feeling good about what you're trying to build, you know?
[00:54:56] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:54:56] Speaker A: So you have to own that. You have to live that. So, I mean, that's good. I mean, that's something that should be done, and efforts should be made to do that, to make people feel good about what we're trying to do here and not always be, like, always be seen as. While you want to critique and make things better, you don't always want to be seen as the person who is always unhappy about whatever's going on. You know, so, you know, I think that all of those are lessons. And so my hope is just that like, as you know, you both of both of us have said it, like our hope is that we can get both political parties competing for Americans votes and actually trying to help Americans. You know, like the system, the two party system really only works when both sides are kind of trying to pull America to a better place and then arguing about how to do that. You know, like, we're not necessarily there right now, but that doesn't mean that's where we are now, is where we're going to stay. But the miss that the Democratic Party, I think the story of this, of the 2024 election is kind of the miss of the Democratic Party. They're just to us be standing here a week later and just see how completely and thoroughly they missed the mood of the nation and what they were talking about, whether that was because they were looking, what they took the wrong lesson from 2020 or maybe, maybe the whole democracy thing worked once, but it just wasn't going to keep working over and over again, you know, like, and so, and again, I support the Constitution and the democracy, but I'm just saying that looking at the numbers, clearly that was not the priority, that the urgency was not felt on that in the same way that it was felt on other issues. And they just missed that conclusion. So I think we can wrap this from here. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like. I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. So next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Verlana.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you. Talk to you soon.
