Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the surgeon general's push to get warning labels on social media apps, Louisiana's new law that is requiring, or that wants to require the ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, and the significance of the first era of America's first ever, America's pastime, which is, you know, baseball, where all the best players played in the major league base in the major leagues following the death of Willie Mace.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it. Podcast.
I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me is a man who, when he hops on the mic, he's really doing a public service announcement more than the podcast. Tunde. Ogun. Lana tunde. Do you think it's time for me to just get out of the way and allow you to reintroduce yourself?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah, geez, I was ready for that Humpty dance thing, but I just, um. I'm getting old. And now for the YouTube viewers, I'm.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Standing back to reference.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: No. Isn't it Humpty dance? You know, the whole.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: No, no. That could have been a direction I went. I went a different direction, I suppose.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: My bad. So I'm definitely not with it today. And I'm standing back for the YouTube viewers so people can see my shirt because I wear smart alec shirts on purpose. But I realize when they edit this thing, it all gets cut off. So at least you know why I'm a cat person. If you get the joke, and then we can start the show.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Sorry. So that is you reintroducing yourself right there?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm reintroducing myself as a cat person.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Different kind of cat, only. Only for aviation nerds.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: There you go. There you go. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you hit, you subscribe, you hit, like, on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. We're recording this on June 25, 2024. And last week, we saw the us surgeon general come out advocating for warning labels on social media apps, really going hard on how harmful these apps are, particularly to young people. And we also saw some reports coming out that were relating to the court cases that have been going on. You know, 40, 40 plus states in the district of Columbia, through their attorney generals, have sued social media companies, including, like, meta and so forth. And there's been revelations as far as evidence that's been filed in court that's. That really illustrates how much these companies and how early these companies knew that their products were harmful and particularly harmful to children. And so it be, both of these hit at the same time, and it's looking like, okay, yeah, the social media companies and for, at least for many of us, are who we thought they were, and their products are as harmful as maybe they are thought to be, and all of this is hitting at the same time, then, you know, this is an interesting story, but we wanted to dig into it a little bit more. So let's start with the surgeon general piece. Tunde, you know, just what were your thoughts with the, the surgeon general coming out? Talking about warning labels like the kind that are on alcohol or tobacco?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: I don't disagree with it. So I think it's the fascinating part. To me, it's kind of another example of how we truly are now 21st century. We're full in the information age.
I'm not going to say we left the industrial age. Obviously, we have industrial age infrastructure.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: We're built on top of the industrial age.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: It's not the kind of what we do anymore.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Good point. Because you're right. We're built on top of the bronze age.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: We don't get rid of that point.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Though, so we are. So let me just keep going. We're in the information age, and that's my point. Like the now, the desire, the need, however we want to put it, of a regulator to say that now something digital has just as negative health effects as things in prior eras and generations that we could only find physically, like putting in our body and things like that. You know, I'm thinking of tobacco and alcohol and other things that have warnings on them. So, yeah, it's fascinating from that point that we've now developed as a society with the technology and kind of merged it together, where now we do have these issues, where the technology that we use every day also can have extremely negative health effects, mostly through the psychological side, um, on us as individuals, uh, and obviously with kids. So I, I commend it. I think I support it. Um, I actually think we should probably expand some of this stuff past just children. I think it's, it's well documented as doing most of our society, including most adults, a lot of harm as well. But that's. I'll save that for a different show.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that it's, I mean, this is, what if the surgeon general is the top doctor in the United States, you know, like the us government, you know, head to head, head of the medical kind of community in that sense, then, I mean, this is what the surgeon general should be doing, is trying to figure out where there's threats, where there's threats. Maybe that, because what a warning label does is about more so just letting people know, you know, like they're warning labels on tobacco, there's warning labels on alcohol, but it doesn't mean you can't buy it. It just means that there's just going to be this label there. It says, hey, you know, this is harmful for your health and, you know, whatever else. And so increasing awareness. And so I think the approach in a society that holds itself out or likes to think of itself as a free society, the approach isn't necessarily to say, hey, let's ban this or anything like that. The approach is to, hey, let's make sure people know what they're getting in, what they're getting involved in here, or what their kids are getting involved in here. And so that's what a warning label would do is kind of bring that to the forefront.
The fight really seems to be shaping up to be an interesting one, though, because social media companies like what they do is mind control. You know, like, that's literally what they do. And so it'll seem to be a really uphill to how do you fight back against a company that is built on controlling what you see and what you think? And so, like, I don't think this has a snowball's chance at hell because it's like, well, these companies will just be able to tune our, tune the algorithms of the majority of people and ultimately make it so that people want this harm, you know, like, that's what they want. Like, this is what charges them up and everything like that. So to me, I think he's doing what he's supposed to be doing and, you know, starting a conversation and so forth. And it's possible, I mean, I would like to acknowledge it's possible that something like this will get momentum and get moving, but it really does seem to be like, hey, let's, let's try to push back and, and restrict the group of people that have our minds under control. And it's like, well, hey, that, that, why would they allow us to do that if they're in control of our minds? Truly?
[00:06:54] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, man, as you're talking, because I know we had an offline conversation about the dynamic and the kind of polar opposite nature of two dystopian novels, one being 1984 and the other being a brave new world and how we've been conditioned in our culture to be more concerned and kind of look out for the 1984 version of authoritarianism and kind of the boogeyman that could get us all uncomfortable in a democratic society. And based on our conversation, the more even as you're saying it, the more I was like, yeah, this is all like a soma coma, if you remember a brave new world. Like we are, we are like you said, we are.
These companies are getting us as a society to the point where we're running into kind of chaos willingly, just kind of an emotional chaos, intellectual and psychological chaos based on the fracturing of information and all the stuff we've talked about in various discussions on the show. But this is why it's interesting, because kind of like what Sandy Hook represented, at least at the time, was the first time a mass shooting really was targeted only at children. And there was a moment when the society kind of looked like, hey, we might have to look at how we deal with this mass shooting stuff in a certain way. And since then, not much has been done right. So we had a potential choice to do something we didn't. This makes me feel something similar that, again, like you well said. And I think about, like, the gun debate is similar. No one's saying that adults can have guns. No one's saying that we shouldn't honor the second amendment and all that. But then you can argue about things like bump stocks and certain types of weaponry that may be only reserved for military versus civilians. Especially not all civilians are responsible with these things. And I think we can look at the Internet via social media the same way where, yeah, adults can use it.
Not all adults are responsible, but we wouldn't allow twelve and ten year old kids to go out and buy firearms on their own. And I think the same thing here, because I'll quote from one of the articles. It says the state lawsuits against meta reflect mounting concerns that teenagers and children on social media can be sexually solicited, harassed, bullied, body shamed, and algorithmically induced into compulsive online use. So that all sounds very negative. And, you know, that's where I'll pass it back to you. Because normally in our society, when something like that is identified to having those type of collective negative effects on children, to your point, somebody usually wants to do something about it and make sure that kids aren't exposed to that kind of stuff.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, like the conversation on the books you were talking about was just, you know, because you and our, you and you and I are looking at then have been through the book amusing ourselves to death, which we'll be talking about in the coming month. On the show. But, and yeah, it really did kind of bring out this dichotomy of what we're worried about versus what we might just slide into the thing that to me, where this is, I thought the gun analogy was really good, but I'm going to go back to the alcohol and tobacco, what those are, and this is just following up on your point from before, those are chemicals that trigger our brains in certain way that lead to addiction and other harmful effects. What the social media thing is really interesting about is that it doesn't need, it doesn't have to do anything chemically to your brain in order to create those same type of brain chemistry effects that make you get hooked or affect your emotions in ways that could be harmful to life in general. And so to me, you know, like the question is, and this is the question that's raised with, you know, what you're talking about in terms of when we see, like following Sandy Hook, like who is going, do we as a society need protection from industry? In this sense, industry who is aimed, whose aim is to just make money and without regard externalize their costs or externalize costs, societal costs, whatever internalized profits. Like, that's what the industry is trying to do. Do we need protection from that? Or should we all be going on our own? And the ones of us that are responsible can, you know, just make do, and then the ones who aren't are going to have, you know, negative effects. And then those negative effects, the ones who aren't responsible, might bring down the rest of us and so forth. So that's when you start looking at the role of government, because typically when you have a industry that wants to dump pollution in a river, for example, the only people that can really stand up to it is the government, whether that be the court system or legislatures and so forth with, you know, clean water, you know, regulation or anything like that. So when we're talking about social media, it does, the question always, you know, comes up, okay, well, is what is the role of the government in this? Because this, generally speaking, throughout history, the thought is that the little guy doesn't stand a chance standing up to the big industry in that sense. If one person said, hey, I don't want you dumping toxic stuff into the water, oftentimes without action of the government. And that's action of the government through the court system, also, the little guy doesn't really stand a chance. You know, the little guy can't boycott a company and cause them to stop dumping poison in. If the dumping poison and may allows them to externalize costs. So that's the point we come to. We came to that point with. Or we've come to that point many a times with the firearm debate. We came to that point with tobacco, and tobacco, big tobacco one, for decades before the tide finally turned. And you. You were able to. To really start to hold them account for saying, hey, you. You guys can still make money, but you can't lie to people about what this is doing to people. You got to be honest about that. And tobacco companies didn't go away. They're still there. That's the. And right now, it appears in our society that we're just not good at dealing with that. Like, there's certain threats. It's amazing to me, like, certain threats can get masses of people mobilized, or I should say that certain perceived threats can get masses of people mobilized. Like, the idea, oh, teaching black history is going to make people feel guilty, and we get. People get mobilized about that and get really fired up. And it's like, you know, there aren't studies that show that, you know, this is causing harm to kids, but something like this, you know, where there are studies, even internal documents in social media companies, like, yeah, this stuff is bad for the kids, but, you know, oh, well. And it. We aren't able to get mobilized, you know, as far as that kind of. That energy, as far as, hey, hey, we got to do something about this. And the same thing, you know, obviously with the firearms, to your point, where it's like, oh, well, we just saw these kids get killed, but we're not able to get mobilized as a society, really, to say, okay, we're gonna do something about this. Again, it doesn't have. We're not talking about banning things, but we're like, okay, we gotta come up with some way, or as a society, we can make this work in a way without it balance the freedom with the ability for everyone to exercise that freedom without walking around getting shot or walking around dealing with mass depression, because it's not a fair fight between all of those programmers and psychologists who were preparing social media apps versus me sitting in my living room, you know, anything like that.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah. As you're talking, I was thinking in my head, like, imagine if big tobacco was able to lobby the government in the fifties and sixties, you know, like they do today, like these. These tech companies, you know, spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to make sure that regulators don't.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Relative time.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say, but. But I just think that it's out of control now. In terms of. Because unlike tobacco, think about it. Most of the legislators, I mean, I'd say maybe not the judicial system, but the majority of our legislators, use these platforms to continue to maintain their own power through popularity, fundraising, and all that.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: But even with that, though, probably, I mean, most of the judicial system might be, or at least a good number of the judicial system might be using this stuff to get their information. And so, therefore, liable for the brain manipulation.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. It's. It's. It's more than tobacco or any other kind of topic. I think this is just so kind of, we're so enmeshed in it now with that. I think people are also scared of what would it be like if the world went back to, like, 20 years ago, 2004, where we're not totally, like, enmeshed into online, where you actually, instead of on your phone, everything's so easy, you might have to just go look at information on a desktop computer.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: I don't even think you need to go back to 20 years, though, because a lot of what you see when they're talking, like, remember, the social media industry has gotten, quote unquote, better at getting people addicted over time. So the question, a lot of times, these things come up, and that's what, you know, a lot of the, with the court filings, you know, that we're seeing is that, oh, okay, for infinite scroll or the push notifications, there's things that they've been, become, begun doing over time that makes them become more addictive. And so the question is, is like, it's not going back to either you have all of this stuff and all of its glory. Glory, so to speak, or you have none of it. It's like, okay, well, how much do that, do we allow them to turn up the kind of. The addictive quality of this things that they, once they learn something, oh, if we do this is very addictive, how much do we allow them to turn that up versus just providing the service? You know, how. How secretive are they allowed to keep their algorithms, you know, like, with respect to how they're presenting information and manipulating people with that? So these are all questions, I think, that have to be answered. The point that I have, the overall point that I have is just that if we want to have government, other people, by the people, and for the people, we gotta pay attention to this stuff. At least a good number of us do. And then we have to be responsive to leadership and hold leadership to account in terms of whether they're looking at this stuff or whether they're off, you know, playing other games or things that don't really matter in terms of concrete stuff that we can see from as being studied is affecting kids. You know, like, are we really protecting the kids? Are we just, you know, doing stuff that, you know, feels good and makes us want to scream and holler and that's it. And so that's kind of the. The obligation, you know, like, again, you. I say this often, you know, get the. In democracy, you get the government you deserve. So if we're, you know, constantly riled up on. On issues that aren't really that determinative, then that's what we're going to be doing, and we won't ever get to the important issues of, okay, yeah, these people are taking advantage of our kids. Hey, let's try to reduce the ability for them to take advantage of our kids more.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Well, it's, you know, this is, I think, a dilemma that's happening as you're talking. I'm thinking in my head about. Yeah, like, you're right. The people that have been very vocal in, let's say, the last just three, four years about parental rights at schools and that, you know, they don't want their kids being harmed by things like being exposed to, like you said, black history or not even black history. American history. That involves the contributions of blacks and other non white people.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Or what happened to black.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: So let's be very specific. This is american history, and we live in a state where a lot of those classes were banned in high school, advanced placement courses. So these were elective.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: And this is because it was said that this is to protect kids.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: This is protect kids. And then the same thing with, you know, if a book has a rainbow on the COVID that has to go because, you know, you got to protect kids from any influence of lgbt stuff and all that. So it's interesting, right, that that crowd that's so vocal about protecting kids and all that kind of stuff doesn't seem to be as vocal about the threat of social media, which, you know, my opinion, which is why this is our show, would be that the long term negative effects of social media would be way harmful, more harmful to a child long term than it is being exposed about studies back exposure of our history.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah. When there's studies backing it up and the others, there's not, you know, so.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, you're right.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: That's not the point.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: I think for a second. Hold on. There aren't any studies that show that teaching children full american history is detrimental to their health. I want to be sure that the audience heard you say that.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: That's kind of like, that's taken on faith. You know, some people can hear that and just believe it, I guess, because. Cause it just sounds believable. But. And I'm not. I'm not saying that those are the only people that should be concerned about this. I'm pointing out that if that's their issue, then I would think, and I would want them to lead the charge here, you know, like, and say, hey, this is. If protecting kids is your thing, then shouldn't we be looking at the things that have been proven to really be harmful to kids? But we all need to be involved in this. You know, like, this is something that. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. This shouldn't be something that's polarized. This should be the mind controllers against the people whose minds are being controlled. And, I mean, that's where I started with.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Some people are comfortable in the mind control world, so.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: But, no, I'll go ahead.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: You mentioned something. I want to throw it to you then. I know we want to go is. This is one of the few things, I just wrote a note here that has actually been bipartisan, at least at the government level. And as an attorney yourself, the fact that 45 states attorneys general have signed on to a lawsuit. I mean, that's.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Well, there's several lawsuits.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So, so that's what I mean. It's like one of the rare bipartisan things, which is nice to see here, that kind of, at least at the political level, both sides of the aisle would like to see this. This handled. So, you know, let me throw something.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: At you real quick, y'all, just real quick. And this is actually. I mean, this is unfortunate to say, but that's part of the problem, is that because it's bipartisan and because so much kind of ground is covered these days by trying to draw a distinction between yourself and your political opponent. That bipartisan thing, if everybody agrees on things instead of being stuff, hey, let's get some easy wins. It kind of falls by the wayside because it's like, oh, well, you know, I can't use this to drive a wedge between me and this other person. You know, I can't use this to show a distinction between me and this other person. I can't. So, you know, so that people who support me can be like, yeah, you gotta watch out for that person.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Cause they wouldn't get clicks on social media.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: That's exactly.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: And it wouldn't get people fired up. You can't say that, oh, this person wants to, you know, I'm trying to protect you from, you know, the, from social media, and these people want to let the social media, you know, raise your kids and all that. Like, you can't make those kids those, those contrasts. And as a result, it actually, in our current political environment because everybody agrees on it, so to speak, it gets less oxygen than it would if people disagreed and then could actually use it as a point of contrast.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: So, so, yeah. But I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on, on part one of this discussion. Please, you know, join us on part two and three as well, which will be coming up here short.
All right. For our second topic this week, Louisiana passed a law and then government signed, or, you know, the legislature passed a law, governor signed it into, into law, and it requires the display of the ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Now, Louisiana is the first person to come up with this, you know, or the first state to come up with this. This has been, you know, Kentucky, I know, is, has tried this several times and gotten struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional because the First Amendment says that governments can't make laws or rules respecting the establishment of a religion. That's the establishment clause in the First Amendment. And so, to say the least, it's interesting from a legal standpoint that Louisiana is doing this again in the sense that, or Louisiana's doing this in the sense that the same thing more or less has been found to be unconstitutional.
And so just when you see Louisiana going down this way, we've heard people just in the public discourse saying, oh, this is a waste of time. Now they're going to sue it and all this money is going to be wasted in court. Yada, yada, yada. This is a settled issue. What do you think's going on here? What stands out to you as far as Louisiana really going down this road of just passing a state law that goes in a direction that the Supreme Court has already said was unconstitutional and the fight that it's setting up and so forth?
[00:22:48] Speaker B: I mean, I see several things. I mean, one is in the true spirit of a democracy and the type of society we live in. Hey, they have a right, you know, the religious crowd has a right to try and push their case onto the rest of us.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: So, but is this pushing their case onto the rest of us? Because, now let me throw something at you because this is what I, this is my issue with it. Why don't they if this is what they want, why don't they just try to overturn the First Amendment? Or, like, again, the constitution could be amended, the First Amendment. And so if you want to. If this is what they want to do, why isn't there some organized effort with them and like minded citizens to either take out the first amendment altogether? Just to remember we have amendments that nullify other amendments. There was an amendment of prohibition, and then there's a subsequent amendment that nullifies that. So this can be done.
Why not try to amend the Constitution? Why are we doing this? But go ahead.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: I'll tell the audience. We did a show on this probably like two months ago on the historic illiberal forces in american history. And I think it's just an example where I think they believe whether they're right or not, I don't know. Cause you're right, maybe they should try it. But I think they believe that that would be generally unpopular and it wouldn't carry the two thirds of the states and the two thirds of the Congress and the House.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: So you're saying they don't think it would work.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, like, then what are they doing it so well, like illiberal forces? Do they want to shove it down your throat?
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: And they don't want to. They don't. And that's what I was going to say. I said, like, the first answer is more of, you know, hey, they have a right to do this. It's a democracy that can bring forth, you know, this kind of stuff. Like you said, it'll get challenged in the court.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: But see, tunde, remember, it's a constitutional republic. So if the, if the constitution says you can't do something, then I don't know that you can keep saying you have a right to do it.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Well, that's where I was going next is that was the one thing, is me giving that olive branch saying, hey, you got a right to, you know, try stuff. Right. The second, though, is where I was gonna go is exactly where you're going, which is this illiberal strain of energy in our country's history on this side. This example would be on the religious side of some of our population just doesn't want to accept the reality that the founding fathers wanted to create a secular nation. And I say that in all recognition that culturally, most Americans are christian and follow the judean christian culture.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Let me tweet something real quick, because I think your point is good. It's not that they wanted to create a secular nation. They wanted to create a secular government. And they weren't really saying that people can't be religious. Remember, it's all about just whether the government established a religion. And so that's the key, I think that's the key piece on what you're saying. But go ahead.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: No, that's a great, that's a great distinction. And so, but generally, the point is, is that it's like the idea, I mean, I've said this several times in various shows that we live in south Florida. This is a lot of Trump country, a lot of people in my neighborhood and around me that have flags that say f. Biden on them. And I don't care to bring this up in defense of Biden. What I'm saying is it's kind of the irony where they don't recognize that their ability to say f, the leader of a nation on a flag out in public is extremely rare in this world. And that's defended by the First Amendment, that the government, you know, Joe Biden can't come after these people individually just because they said that. And so I think that it's the same thing with the other pieces of the First Amendment, which is a lot of this fundamentalist christian right crowd doesn't really appreciate that the freedom of religion and the inability for the government to legislate religion. Like you said, the establishment clause allows them their right to practice their religion freely, just like it allows the Muslims and the Hindu and everyone else, or.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Just the different sects of Christianity. Like, there have been so many wars fought amongst Christians about, oh, it's this, it's that. And so, like, the whole point was to keep the peace, because the people who wrote the constitution had seen thousands of years of war, a thousand years of wars over minor differences in Christianity. And so I agree.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah, these guys weren't woke, these founding fathers, right, if I can use that term. They weren't saying, oh, you know, we gotta be nice to everybody. They were just saying, yeah, it's the 17 hundreds. And we've not only lived through, but we've studied last few hundred years of history on the european continent, and it's been a frigging mess between the Catholics and the Protestants. And then out of the Protestants are birthed all these different, say, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, you know, don't want to be.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Told what to do by the other.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly. So, so, I mean, but it's funny. That's why I'm amused even talking to you about it, because I'm smiling, because just in this few minutes of a conversation. You recognize the importance of the First Amendment and why it allows everyone to practice their religion freely. And it's another thing that I find offensive when the extreme religious right crowd, not, I would say, moderate and regular kind of Christians, but the extremes always act like they're being discriminated against and their religious freedom is being discriminated against because they can't do things like shove the ten Commandments down everyone's throat in the public school. And it's just like, well, you're not being discriminated against. You're being asked not to push your view on everyone else so that they don't feel discriminated against.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: It reveals that implicitly they believe that they have the right to push everything down other people's throat, and by taking away their right to shove it down your throat, you have discriminated against them. So it kind of reveals what they really think, you know, in that sense. And, and I just going back to kind of the question I presented to you, like, well, why not just try to amend the constitution if this is, if this is the country you want to live in, our constitution, it allows for amendment. To me, that is what is revealing about this in the sense that we know we at least, okay, the Supreme Court at various times, at different times has said, yes, this is something that is unconstitutional, a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in a public school classroom. And so you brought up the term illiberal. And, you know, that that's what's, what's interesting to me about it is that it all comes together in the sense that we've seen. Now this is similar to Dobbs, you know, but it's a little different in the sense that what we're, what we're doing here is we're saying, okay, it has been determined. There's no, I should say similar to Dobbs, but it's different in the sense that this and Dobbs, they were overturning existing Supreme Court precedent that was not, there wasn't something in the constitution that said, hey, the government's gonna make, no, no government can make a law restrict an abortion that wasn't in the constitution and analog to the establishment clause. You know, like with the establishment clause, there is something in the constitution that says this, and this has been upheld by various supreme courts. So it seems like instead of putting energy and effort towards and maybe this could succeed, I don't know. I mean, I think that they don't think it would succeed is why they aren't doing it. But instead of putting energy and effort to saying, okay, let's try to take this part out, take the establishment clause out of the First Amendment.
We're going to push, try to get, you know, what is it, three quarters of the states and all this other stuff that you got to do to amend the Constitution. And we're going to try to take that part out, and then we can do this all we want and there's no problem. Instead of doing that, it seems like the goal is to get activist judges that will ignore this part of the Supreme Court, or, excuse me, they ignore this precedent of the Supreme Court and this part of the Constitution. So the goal has been over the last, however, and this is why you hear so much about judges and so forth, is to get judges that will essentially just not maintain the establishment clause. And so if you read it out of the constitution without amending the constitution, you can change the government, you can change the way that the country works. And that seems to be the goal. And that is, I mean, that's about as illiberal as it gets. And that's. That's anti constitution, that's anti democracy, that's anti. All that stuff. It's just saying, hey, we're just going to ignore this.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Why don't you add the last one that's anti american.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Anti american. Yeah. American is supposed to be that other stuff.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and because it reminds me as you're talking, that, you know, the founding fathers, if these people who say they revere the founding fathers actually do, they would go and read what they wrote about everything we're talking about. And it kind of reminds me that the mindset of a lot of these folks, similar to what we saw in the immigration debate recently. Earlier this year, I remember having an argument with a friend, and he was just glued to his media and the misinformation there. And I was telling him how James Langford, who was the republican senator who wrote the bill, was on tv saying the exact opposite of what my friend was saying. And my friend yelled at me and said that I was wrong and all this. And I'm just like, look, the guy that wrote the bill, who's a republican, I think I would listen to him over this talking head. Then I think about things like we've talked on the show about, like, the Confederates, right? People like Alexander Stevens, Jefferson Davis, they told everybody what their purpose was with seceding from the union. But yet we have millions of Americans today that just literally can't bring themselves to that reality and just say, yeah, these guys wanted to secede from the union, specifically over an issue that I don't want to believe the issue was. And so I'm going to spend some time here just quoting someone who people would recognize. Pretty famous guy. His name's George Washington, and this was in one of our early treaties with another country. He quotes, the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the christian religion. Close quote. That seems pretty direct from the main guy. Then we've got one from a famous letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut. It's a long letter, but I'll just read here that the whole act of, quote, the whole act of the whole american people, which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Close quote. That was Thomas Jefferson. So that's the whole point. Like you're saying, these people don't like that version of America. And what you're saying, you're right, they're going to try and do is manipulate the courts to find the right judges that can look the other way on this stuff because they're unpopular politically. So it's all a projection, just like they projected. Their opponents are activists and want to do all this crazy stuff.
Their opponents seem to just want to uphold what Thomas Jefferson and George Washington just said that I read, at least.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: In this context, like what, you know, and it's interesting. It kind of, it brings it full circle in the sense, when you just read that, it's like the people who want to ignore the writings of Alexander Stevens on the reason for the south succeeding in terms of, you know, that slavery must remain as an institution and all that stuff, or the people who want to ignore what you. The quote you read from George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. It seems like the goal is to find justices or federal court, you know, like, whether it be appeals court judges or Supreme Court justices that also will ignore the things either that these people said or the things that are in the Constitution and just read them out of the Constitution. And that seems to be the fight that's setting up. I mean, if you look forward, the only reason to do this, again is on the belief that now they have enough Supreme Court justices that are willing to overlook the establishment clause and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, and overlook established Supreme Court precedent and interpreting that establishment clause and say, yay, I know that this Supreme Court said multiple times before that this doing this would violate the first amendment of the Constitution, the establishment clause. We're just going to ignore that. And we're going to say, this is okay now. And because we've decided to not to read that out of the constitution. And that's just as you pointed out. You know, it's anti constitution, it's anti constitutional republic, and it's bad, therefore, it's anti american to do so. And, you know, it's in, it's in plain light or it's in, it's in plain view. And, you know, again, but I just wish at some point we could have these conversations out with and just people just say, hey, yeah, this is what we want to do. We want to have justices that will ignore parts of the constitution that we don't like, and let's have those debates. And because I think they would be surprised how many people would still agree with it if they just came out and said that stuff and say, look, this is, this is what we're trying to do. You know, we, we know the constitution says this. We don't really care, you know, and then, but if something's in the constitution, we do, like, then we do care, and we just want to do things our way. And I think.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: I bet you kind of how they look at the Bible, huh? Kind of how they look at the Bible.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Things they, like. They care. The things they don't like. They just don't even know.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Ignore them. Ignore, you know, that's for sure. So. But, no, I.
That's a good one. That's a good one.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: I'm just thinking I need to start figuring out how to make my marriage that way. Talk to my wife, like, hey, the stuff I like in this, you know, I'm good with the stuff I don't like. Let's not talk about it ever.
Don't come at me.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: I would say this, though, to a certain degree, I think we're all like that. It's kind of like a juvenile way. Like, hey, you know, like, my toy is my toy, and your toy is my toy. And I think a lot of times as people socialize and, you know, you mature and socialize, the thinking is that you, you start to understand the constraints of that and that, okay, yeah, other people matter, too. And you can't just always have your way, because that, that almost is just, I want my way is kind of what it is. You can boil it down to a two year old, I want my way, and if I don't get my way, I'm gonna cry, you know, even if it's not kind of equitable, me getting my way at that. Moment.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: So interesting, too. So you're. Now I gotta go talk to my wife about redoing this whole I want to act like that toddler now. I just want it my way.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: You got to go back. All that socialization you've done, see if.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: You want the next show. I still have the wedding ring. Let's see how well this works.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: But, no, I think we close up this topic from here. Thanks for joining us on part two of the discussion. We'll have part three coming up as well. So join us on that, please, as well.
All right. For our third topic this week, this past week, we saw the passing of Willie mates. And, you know, Willie Mays is a legendary professional baseball player, and he was really a giant in the first era of major League Baseball. Major League Baseball being, you know, baseball being America's pastime, so to speak, that included all the best players. So in a post integration world, you know, when you have. You put all the best baseball players prior to integration, you had the negro leagues and then you had. Where. Cause Major League Baseball did not allow black players in or did not allow hispanic players in and so forth. And so they separate leagues were created, and some of the best players were there, and some of the best players were in the major leagues. But you put it all together and you have this essentially what's, what's considered a golden age of baseball. And Willie Mays was really a giant in that. So, you know, what are your thoughts, you know, just on Willie Mays passing and, you know, honoring that man and then also just the era that his passing kind of makes us remember and kind of marks how, you know, we're.
We've moved beyond that into something that's different and maybe lost touch with some of that to some degree.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: First of all, obviously paid respects to Willie Mays as a great player and seemed like a really good person from what I read about him and lived a long life. I mean, he died in 94.
My joke would be, as preparing for this show, I can't get the name Willie Mays Hayes out of my head. Remember that movie?
[00:38:15] Speaker A: No, not off the top of my head.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: The one with Charlie Sheen. The baseball movie from the.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: He was like the outfielder. I remember I kept doing a reading. I kept thinking about that guy.
But no, it's.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: It's.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: It's fascinating history, man. This whole. Just as I even dove into reading about the negro leagues and just kind of, you know, really, really feeling like baseball is America's game. I mean, baseball as a sport, culturally, also followed the culture of the country. When you look at kind of the post civil war era as the country was kind of figuring it out again and getting back together, baseball became America's pastime and was beginning to be organized into formal leagues. And, you know, there's early history that there were, I think two teams early on that did. Were integrated, did have black players. And in 1887, there was a team that refused to play the team that had the black players. And that team manager kind of capitulated and let the team go on, didn't let his black players play. And that therein started in 1887, full segregation and the exclusion of blacks in major league baseball, what will become major league baseball. And so that's developed. Black people like playing baseball, too. And so that developed the need for some sort of league for blacks, which eventually became the negro leagues in the early twenties. So it just, you know, kind of reminded me of that end of reconstruction, the beginning of Jim Crow, and the formal state of segregation in the late 18 hundreds. Baseball mirrored that. And then, you know, Jackie Robinson begins to integrate it in 1947, the same year that the military was integrated. And within, you know, a generation, within seven years later, you got brown versus board of education. So it seems like kind of baseball went through a similar trajectory as the nation, which, again, made me feel like, yeah, this is America's sport. Wherever the culture has been of America, the kind of sport followed. So I found the whole thing interesting, but I'll pass it back.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: No, no, I mean, and yes, I think to start, to me, the biggest thing that was just the paying the respects, you know, because it. Someone. Just me growing up, you know, like, and growing up as a sports fan, like it would Willie Mays was like, you know, the. The.
A player that you looked at is like, I grew up thinking he was the best player, and I still, you know, think this best baseball player ever, you know, like, in terms of just looking at the league he competed in and the dominance he showed over the period, he showed. And it was, you know, to be reminded and to be able to get back into all that stuff when somebody passes, a lot of times we're able to do that. It's, it's, you know, it's. It was invigorating, you know, to kind of see and then the life that, that he lived. And I think that you make a good point as far as how baseball, it didn't mirror. It was more of a leading indicator of the, you know, of american culture during that time frame where you had this strict set where you had initially you know, when they were sorting it all out, it was kind of like, kind of like a reconstruction period, you know, like, oh, yeah. Well, you know, we haven't gotten to segregation yet, but, you know, like, it's. So there were some integrated teams, and then they were like, hey, you know what? We need to make this rigid. And so you put this color line up, and you track that through until the 1940s.
And also, though, the time period after, you know, Jackie Robinson broke the color line and you had the influx of black players and all other non white players into the major leagues, that the major leagues became bigger than they had ever been, you know, in terms of, like, the. The quality of play went up and, you know, just the level of competition. You know, like, so it was interesting to me in terms of, that's kind of what we are trying to do in our society. One of the big. The biggest. One of the biggest problems when you have, like, the segregated society is that you limit the society's ability for progress for you. You restrict competition, you restrict the ability to build on. You're spending a chunk of your resources trying to hold a group of people back. And it's like, well, hold on. If we just. If we just don't spend resources trying to hold a group of people back, society as a whole will rise faster. And then if we actually spend resources to try to push everybody up, then obviously it will rise even faster than that. So you really see the self defense.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: Don't forget, some people just feel good when they know they're pushing someone else to the side, but that's a whole different story.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: And, I mean, not everybody wants to be in an open, open marketplace. You know, a lot of people want. Would, like, just built in advantages and not have to compete, so to speak.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: So.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: And that's whether it be an athletic context or whatever.
So the. The idea that it. Baseball showed that, okay, yeah, if we create a level playing field or relatively level playing field, it'll never be 100% level playing field and let the cream rise to the crop, that we can go even higher than we could if we spend some of our time trying to keep others out.
And, you know, it creates also this interesting dilemma that also has come up over the past month or so with, okay, the Major League baseball decided recently to include negro league stats into its historical database. And that, to me, I mean, not without getting into the actual numbers and everything like that. That was just interesting to me. And I know I wanted to kick this to you just in terms of how that also brings up another conversation that we have in our society is this history of segregation and Jim Crow and lynching and all of this stuff. And how. What do we do with that history now? You know, like, we're not that country anymore. Like, we're still. We're still there, but we don't live like that necessarily anymore. And so what do we do in terms of remembering that stuff, in terms of acknowledging that it exists, in terms of learning about that stuff? Do we just bring it all in, just lump it all together and, you know, like, try to smooth out anything? Or do we keep in mind that? How do. How do we, you know, how do we learn about that? How do we teach that stuff? And I think that the stats conversation is a good analogy for that as well. So what were your thoughts on?
[00:44:26] Speaker B: Well, clearly, it's not going to be done taught in the public schools of Florida, so that's a whole different story. Or Arkansas, they probably got to baseball.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Stats, you know, take.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Maybe the private schools can teach them. Yeah, but. But the public schools are banned from it. But, um, no, I. Look, I think that's, you know, that's the whole culture wars right now. Right? Some people just want to erase all this. Other people feel that it's. It's important as part of the country's history. And, and, and, you know, I just think, you know, that tension is going to be there, unfortunately. But I do think that, you know, before I jump to the stats, I just want to jump to the comments of another kind of hall of famer type player, which was Reggie Jackson, who was speaking at, you know, one of these kind of commemorative days where they were commemorating Willie Mays and kind of the sport itself in Birmingham, Alabama. And that happened to be where Reggie Jackson began his career and the discussion he had about the early 1960s and the segregation and the fact that there were a lot of restaurants and hotels that wouldn't serve the team because they had him, a black player, on the team.
He also discussed how positive his teammates and his manager were, you know, in terms of they wouldn't stay at hotels that wouldn't let Reggie Jackson stay there. And he tells a story about how he was kind of couchsurfing on a few friends with a few friends for about a month. And unfortunately, they told him he's got to leave because the whole apartment complex was threatened to be firebombed because they were letting a black man sleep on their couch. And so I think that's the part of the american history that isn't discussed, because for every Reggie Jackson who's still alive in his late seventies, that experienced that. There's that person who was on the other end of the phone line, who was making that threat to burn down that apartment building. And what happens is we, as a culture, still kind of have, I don't know if it's not accepted or haven't realized that a lot of those people are still around and they feel very similar ways as they did 60 years ago. And so that, to me, is a very interesting part of this and maybe a way to discuss or answer your question about how do we deal with this history is, I don't know how we deal with it. I think it's going to be painful and messy and probably for another 50 to 100 years to really pass, like any living memory of this.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: Well, the living memory piece, though, is what's interesting about it, because the decisions we make in terms of how we're going to. To how this stuff is going to be remembered and documented and so forth, is when that matters, really, is once the living memory passes, because right now, there's still people with living memory that can speak on this stuff, like you said, like with Reggie Jackson telling a story, but after Reggie Jackson can't tell his story or 30 years after that, then how is it going to remember then? I mean, we remember history now. You know, all types of history, we remember in a much more two dimensional way than it actually was. And that's because whoever kind of established how this thing, whoever wrote the history, you know, they knew, I established how this is going to be remembered, that lives on, and that doesn't always track to exactly what it is, even if there's competing narratives. So the, you know, like, the question of. And again, I'm not trying to get to an answer of whether they should do this with the stats or not. I mean, I don't think that that's really the content that I'm trying to get into right here. I'm just. I more so am intrigued by the idea. Okay, so the effort to. They're trying to honor the negro leagues by incorporating the stats, but by incorporating the stats, do you actually. You know, is it a. You know, like an unforeseen circumstance where you end up 100 years from now? People don't understand the distinction between that. And it was like, oh, no. It was just all, you know, like, the black players just wanted to play in the negro leagues because, you know, like, that was cool for black people. And then, you know, something like that. Like, does the significance get lost, or does that bring it to a place of, okay, yeah, this was, this was one of the top places. And so I think these are kind.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Of like black people wanted to be slaves because they got skills and stuff.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: I mean, we've heard people say that. We've heard people who professional, hundred years.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: From now someone could say the negro leagues are just because black dudes wanted to be.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Exactly. So I think, and so that's the, what we're wrestling with. Like, we may not think this stuff matters, but what we're wrestling with is not necessarily how we're looking at this now, but how the claims and the arguments and the support people will be able to make for things later. And, you know, I think, I don't think there's necessarily a right answer, but I think it's helpful if we're at least thinking about that.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and I think, you know, part of the reading, I learned that in 1969, you know, the major league baseball commission, I guess, you know, the official kind of heads of it had to make similar decisions because there were a bunch of leagues from the late 18 hundreds to like the early, let's say 1920, there were like six or seven different all white leagues and some kind of like the NBA used to have the ABA, but it was like more of those. So in 1969, the league made a decision to incorporate all of those different leagues, the white league stats, officially into major league Baseball. And the question was asked at the time, well, what do we do about the negro leagues? And because of how they felt in 1969, I said, no, we leave that out. So I think part of it is maybe the long arc of american history and culture, which is recognizing that these people were excluded from participating and also having their stats included specifically because they were black, period. That is just part of american history. So the Major League Baseball decided in 2020, let's start looking into this and let's see if it makes sense to correct what might have been a wrong.
I don't know if it's right or wrong, but it might have, you know, they obviously thought in 2020 different than they did in 1969, and here we are. So I think you're right. Does it run the risk of in future generations kind of whitewashing the history and just at some point the negro leagues will be forgotten? And maybe it does, but I don't.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Think, I don't think the league really will be forgetting the significance of the negro league and what it was about. Like what things about it will be made could be forgotten.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but I think, I think that's, I mean, it could be just like many things, like you said, have been forgotten in history. But I do. I do support the merging of all these stats because I do think it's nice to see now that, you know, was it John Gibson or Joe Gibson?
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Josh Gibson.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Josh Gibson, sorry. Is, you know, the highest batting average now. You know, it's like, okay, so if every. If you want to put the greats and compare them, then let's do that. I mean, could you imagine. And that's what I was thinking was Earl Lloyd was the first black basketball player to integrate the NBA in 1955, and I think he's still alive.
But could you imagine if basketball was, like, segregated for a long time and you had players like Michael Jordan and all these, and they weren't counted as even having played really at a high level? So I just think that. Yeah, it makes sense to.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: Well, the stat was tough because it actually, and I've seen compelling arguments that baseball should go the other way and categorize stats from segregated leagues differently than even the major leagues. You know, like that the stats really should begin once league. From major league.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Stats should begin once the league from 1947.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And, or, you know, whenever the leagues were fun for, were substantially integrated in the stats before that, which would be sacrilegious to many because that would be like Babe Ruth and all these other people. But the stats before that are just put in a different category altogether because the level of competition for segregated leagues is not going to be the same or as high as the level of competition in integrated leagues. And so when you're comparing baseball in 1960 to baseball in 1930, it's not the leagues. Those stats are not equivalent. You know, like, because so, but I.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Mean, again, I'm really supportive of that concept. You know, it's like an alternative to merging them.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: But I think the point, the biggest takeaway, I mean, this is just, again, I'll bang this again before, you know, we close this up, is just that with the baseball issue, it illustrates that with any of these. There's no easy answer. You know, we have to try to pick it, pick something that meets with our sensibilities, that we think acknowledging that the decisions we make are going to affect how future generations understand things and so forth. And then we have to pick something with that and then. And then go with it and try to do the best that we can. But there's not. We can't sit around and wait for some perfect answer, you know? So I. Even though I question whether this is the right move, I commend Major league Baseball for doing it, you know, for bringing in the stats, because it's like, well, you know, what else you gonna do with it at this point? You've gone this direction. The direction they've gone, they chose to go in 1969, was to incorporate more. So it's like, all right, well, if you're doing the incorporating more game, then knock yourself out. But I recognize I'm not sitting here just throwing tomatoes from the cheap seats like it. That may not be perfect, but there is no perfect solution. And so we'll pick something and then we'll, we'll try to make it work. And that's the try to make it work piece is the piece that Americans gonna just gonna have to hold on to more than anything. Because the trying to do a society, a pluralistic society, takes work, ongoing work. It doesn't become easy, you know, like once you go beyond try a single tribe or whatever, then it's just going to take work. But you can draw strength from that if you do it right, as baseball showed us.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: It's interesting. I'll leave here with a fun fact that I learned. It's interesting. There was a guy who played in the negro leagues who played, actually officially played on a baseball, professional baseball game in the MLB when we were alive, which I found fascinating. So a guy named Minnie Minoso, he first played in the negro leagues in 1949. And at age 56, he was, I think, a hitting coach and a third big coach. And I can't remember the team. He was just not here. But they actually needed him to fill in. And he played a few games in the 1980 MLB season. And so I just found that fascinating. Like, wow, I was born in 78. So I was two years old, and a guy actually played during my lifetime in Major League Baseball who was a rookie in the negro leagues. So it just shows you how when you talk about the living memory, that we're still very connected to this period of american history. And I think that's also why there's tension about it, because old guys like you are born in 79, don't we?
You were still one years old.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: That's good stuff. That's good stuff. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like I said, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:55:21] Speaker B: I am Tunde o gun. Lana.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
