Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to continue our Stream between the Lines series and discuss prohibition, the 2011 documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.
Over five and a half hours, this three part series gives a pretty extensive look at not just America's experiment with the prohibition of alcohol, but also at alcohol in American culture leading up to the passage of the 18th Amendment, which is the amendment that established prohibition and also how prohibition affected the American people and really had an impact on the American system.
Joining me today is a man who you will never find babysitting with only two or three shots. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, are you ready to show the people how to turn it up a notch?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but I just want to make sure you're talking about for real, like if I'm watching my kid that I gotta be drinking or.
We weren't supposed to give away my parenting skills.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Nothing literal, man.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Oh, man. Now we're recording this on April 25, 2022, and I want to jump right into our discussion, really. We're going to touch on our biggest takeaways from the documentary. So Tunde, just, you know, to get us started, what stood out really in the first part of the documentary, which covered, you know, things that were going on in the nation, were kind of leading up to prohibition, which kind of set the stage for something as drastic as, as a prohibition, a complete prohibition of alcohol to come about.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, no, great question. This was a great documentary series, but this was probably my favorite part, that first part, because, you know, what really stood out to me was just a reminder, I think, for all of us, right. That nothing happens in a vacuum. So we talk a lot about history and what we're taught and what we learn. And in defense of all of our teachers and however we were taught, you know, you can't teach everybody everything, right? There's a lot of information out there on certain topics. And so again, the prohibition was something that I ignorantly thought kind of magically appeared in the 1920s type of thing.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: You know, like, no, we learn everything kind of in a two dimensional framework. And so when you see stuff like this, you get more of the three dimensional kind of. Oh, okay, yeah.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: And that's what I mean is like, it reminded me that nothing happens in a vacuum. This period of the, let's say 1918. 19 to 1930, 31, you know, this prohibition period, just like the Depression didn't happen. You know, that came after. Didn't happen in a vacuum.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah, this, this.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: This really had roots from 100 years prior from a cultural standpoint. And so that, to me, what was interesting was really the focus that Ken Burns did on the 1800s culture in America of drinking and alcohol and how it went from something kind of more jovial and celebratory. And you pointed this out to. As technology improved, the refining ability in the early 1800s to refine distilling alcohol. Yeah, distilling the whiskeys, the moonshine. And for the first time, you went from 3 to 5% dark ale, beer.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: In the pubs, beers and wines, you know, you know, very weak beers and wines to, like, something that'll get you.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Lit, like 40 proof, you know, 40%, 90 proof moonshine that will get you lit and that will actually make, you know, corrode the liver, like, give all these side effects and so.
And certain things, too, like learning that there was just like, we have masculinity attached to parts of our culture today. At the time, of course, drinking heavily was seen as very masculine, but then the kind of duality of the fact that what it would cause over time was men to lose their jobs and to lose their family.
So it was like the masculine behavior kind of castrated a lot of men culturally as well, which I found very interesting. And so all that, I'll say, and then I'll pass it back, is, you know, building up to the early 1900s and the experience of a lot of women and then. And then highlighting how this was, like, this all led to the temperance move and it was like the first interest group politically, too. Like, I found, like, there's seeds of our modern politics with all of these debates about alcohol. It's just very interesting.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: So, no, definitely, definitely, like, I'll say to me, like, and you had already mentioned this, but the idea of distilling and how previous to, you know, really distilling becoming a science like that, where you can really get these highly concentrated alcohols that, you know, it's beer, it's wine, and they're weaker than even the beers and the wines that we drink normally now. But that. That's what. That's what everybody drank. And that there was a culture around drinking those things too, just. And which was very ingrained. And, you know, you see in the documentary how the Prohibition itself, actually, it went at the people who were using the stronger stuff, and which I'll talk about here shortly. But it also affected that culture of drinking just dinner, you know, Having a drink with dinner or, you know, family gatherings or something like that. And so. But the distilling part about it, it kind of remind me the way that you see images and. Because the documentary did a good job of showing images from then and so forth. But like, it reminded me kind of crack in the sense that you look at how you have this change and something becoming more concentrated or more potent and it really affects society in a way. And like you said, like, it was. Became a thing where men couldn't take care of their families anymore. And, you know, like, they're just out there just like, yo, I just. I'd rather get drunk all the time, you know, with this, with these whiskeys or whatever. And so that to me was just to see that change where everybody. It went from, oh, you know, the doctor made this point. Like, it goes from, oh, when you walk into somebody's house, you take a spoon of cider, you know, that might be like a 2% or something like that. Just one cup, you know, no big deal as you walk in. And then from that to like saloon culture, which, like, here's the thing to me, man, it must have been really bad. Like, what. We can't even really picture how bad it was like, for people to come to the conclusion, like, yo, we just got to get rid of this stuff. And like on mass, like you said, temperance movement and all that. And it was like, yo, men have lost their, you know what, like they're, they're going to these saloons every week or every day or whatever. And, you know, that was the male only thing. And you're in there drinking hard liquor. So, yeah, I'm looking at that and it's just like, it must be. It's. We still can't even. Watching something like this. I don't think we still can understand how bad it must have been for the answer to have been, we gotta get rid of this thing altogether. So all of those things kind of, you know, and those kind of. Those are related. But those really stuck out to me as far as, you know, how they, in the lead up, how they kind of walk out on that path.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things I was gonna mention is, you know, me with my history buffness. It was kind of cool how they cited different historical figures of the 1800s at different points of the culture around all these conversations. So, yeah, early on, when he's talking about. When it was more of a jovial thing, he had quotes from people like Abraham Lincoln. I didn't. I Learned there that Abraham Lincoln had a. Had a whiskey distillery on his property in Illinois, and he was selling like a couple cases a day of whiskey.
Or Frederick Douglas was saying, like, you know, with a glass of whiskey, you feel like you can conquer the world. And then as time went on and the culture shifted, then the same two men, they quoted as negatively, you know, that.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: And even I think, like, their views had changed on, you know.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I think Frederick Douglass was maybe not seeing the reality here, but he was quoted as saying as extreme a comment as if it was, if you got rid of alcohol, there would be no more slavery.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: And I was thinking, okay, I don't think those two are connected, but I see that this. Your attitude has changed a lot.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. That evolution over. That's what I mean. Like, it must have been a real, like, wild time, you know, like, for people to. These are not like, people who just say the first thing that pop in their head, you know, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln. These are thoughtful men. And for them.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Well, I think, because to your point, I mean, think about all the rules we have now. We're not used to people showing up, like, literally, and I partner say the phrase right, but for effect, face drunk at the job today. Like, you're not used to going into your office and seeing that the high rise on the 30th story in the big city in the cubicle, some guy literally just lit at 2 in the afternoon. But could you imagine, like back then if you were some big farmer and you got farm hands and they're showing up drunk and they mess this or they're not showing up at all.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, like 50% of them, like, whoa.
So, yeah, so, yeah, I could see.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: It being an issue.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it must have been. And then, you know, like, we laugh at that. But I mean, also there's the domestic aspect of it in terms of, you know, and I want to get into this actually right now, but just it changed. Like, the activism, the face of activism and politics in America. And one of the ways we see that is that women really had a voice and a large voice, a substantial voice in the temperance movement and trying to move towards prohibition. And not just like the face of activism in the face of politics was changing, but also the ways that these things were being gone about. So what did you find notable about her? What kind of did you take away from how activism and politics changed? And we can get into, you know, like I said, how women had a part in it, but leading to the amendment.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: So it was fascinating because I Found a lot of parallels from that period to today.
And I think like we talked about too right. New technologies. If you look around that time of the late 1800s, early 1900s, you had a bunch of constant, like every decade there was something big that was new, like electrical grid and then cars than, you know, planes, radio, radio. So, you know, things like the film Birth of a Nation, they talk a little bit about the Ku Klux Klan's influence on some of this stuff.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: And it was just propaganda videos, so to speak, trying to get people to see, oh, if you have one drink of alcohol, you can go crazy.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, like. Yeah, yeah. And that's what I mean, the kind of modern style propaganda. And I think you said it in one of our conversations, like, I don't know if this is the first time in history, but at least in kind of the modern format of like a single issue voter. Because even some of the women quoted were saying that like we purposely are here to tell you we don't care if the trains run on time, if the fire department shows up. All we care about is getting rid of this, this, this alcohol stuff.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: And it's just, it's like people today, I don't care about anything but abortion or I don't care about anything but, you know, raising minimum wage. Whatever someone's hot button issue is, they don't look at anything else that needs to be done in society except for that issue. Yeah. And, and so like I said, I think that's partially a human thing. So I don't think that's the first time it happened, but I think in the, the modern discourse, like you saying.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: From an organized standpoint is what it was like.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: And in American politics, I think, you know, with the ability to do the mass propaganda through print and radio now and through film.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Let me add something that before you go on because yeah, that part really stood out as far as like, really the, the prominence of like a single issue voter or single issue movement and how they talked about how certain groups, organizations, whether it be religious based or not, they would go around talking about any wet candidate we're gonna try to get you voted out, or any dry candidate we're support and so forth. And what was notable to me, not just that and how that kind of was being introduced into the American democracy from a widespread standpoint there, but also how it wasn't partisan. And that's a distinguishing point today in terms of right now. A lot of times we are picking parties and then we're. And there's research on this, by the way. We pick our parties and then we can form our beliefs to what our parties are saying. Whereas here it was forget the party, it was like, we'll vote for whatever party, whoever's going to give us what we want. It was almost more of a pure form of, you know, like that advocacy, that single issue mindedness and that you're going to say, look, this is even superior to party. I'm not changing what I think about alcohol depending on whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'm saying no alcohol or I'm saying yes to alcohol. And so I'm going to vote for whichever party in my area, whichever candidate in whatever party is going to do that. So to me, that really stood out as being. While, like you said, there's some similarities here that we see and how, how things have evolved since then, but that was very different, you know, from what we're doing now.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Well, I think that's because I think just politics in this country at least was younger and maybe there wasn't enough as much time generationally as there is now with kind of this entrenchment of what each party thinks they're supposed to be and trying to.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Well, the Republican Party was relatively new then, remember, because that's, that was Lincoln and all those guys.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: It was only like 60 years old. Yeah, exactly.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: And 1800s and this stuff. It had been, you know, it was just, it was 20 years old in the 1880s, you know, so. Yeah, it wouldn't have been time.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting because the other part that I really stood out to me about that period of time is similar to now, which I think is just probably has been in most societies that I've had, you know, you know, some sort of rural versus urban cultural.
And like, and I'm talking like, I'm sure even with the pharaohs and back in Egypt. Right. I mean, I'm sure there was around the pyramids, was buzzing and it was all urban. Right. And then probably. Yeah, exactly. And then probably, you know, 30 miles away was the rural area.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah. The boonies.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: So I don't think this is something new to us, but it was interesting to see it documented because what I find interesting is there's different groups of people. So. Yeah, back then it was the same arguments that began to come up, right. That it was the people in the rural areas that were more religious, that were, were pointing at the urban area saying, you guys are the bad guys, bringing all this alcohol and this dirty Stuff in. And then just like we see today, the urban versus rural had the cultural and then which bleed into the racial overtones, especially in America. So it became that the rural people were the real Americans.
Right. And the cities. Because they're saying the anti Saloon League ended up becoming more of an anti immigration group after a while because. And that's what I'm saying. It's just interesting that the demographics were different so that the people that were seen as threatening were different. It wasn't Mexicans. I mean blacks have always been threatening in this country. So unfortunately that, that, that was. Well still the case in that documentary. But what I found interesting was the amount of anti German because we were in World War I, remember that?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: And then you had German prohibition forward, you know.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Because you had all these German brewers like Busch and Eisenheiser and all these guys Miller and.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: And you had all this just anti. They said they were stoning duckhounds, the dog, you know, to death.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Change the name of Sauerkraut.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, they changed the name and it reminded me of like freedom fries after 9 11.
Well because we were mad at France because they questioned should we go on a like Iraq or something? Because they had nothing to do with 9 11. Then we had guys here saying okay, it's not French fries, it's freedom cry. So to learn that they were changing the name of sauerkraut in 1920. Yeah, I was just like people man. That's why I say like it's kind of sobering when you get look at this history stuff because you realize, okay, the time I'm living in isn't that crazy? Like people have been doing this forever. It's just maybe now I just get in my phone in my hand so it feels crazier. But yeah.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Oh, history is rhyming thing.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Correct. And so to me that's what I just want to put out there. That, that to me because the anti Irish, anti Italian, anti German. I mean because I grew up in the Northeast, I was used to hearing about anti Irish, anti Italian even in the 80s. But Germans have been I think more assimilated into American society since then. And so it was just interesting to see the amount of anti German discrimination. I was just surprised, like wow. And it's just like today those were used as, as bridges. Yeah. And battering rams. So they were the politicians. And that's what I found interesting too is similar to exactly today the politicians were just as two faced. Right. Yeah, yeah. So like you had the guy who was a Texas senator who introduced the, the, the actual. He introduced prohibition on the floor of the Senate. They found later that he had a still that could make 118 gallons a day of whiskey or something, or refine whatever on his ranch.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: And Texas. Well, we'll get into that because that was one of the big lessons or takeaways from here was the whole idea that people, the bounds of hypocrisy have yet to be found.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: We don't know.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of today how we have so many Ivy League educated people at very high levels, like senators of the United States, and they keep criticizing elites and keep criticizing people that come from these universities, when they all came from.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you this, the urban versus the rural thing was very interesting to me because we've talked about this in various pods throughout the time, particularly when we get on our political system is just how our country's governmental setup is biased towards rule. So the Senate, for example, gives two representatives to every state, regardless of size. So a state with a lot of. If you're in New York state, you have two senators and there's 20 million people. If you're in Wyoming and there's 800,000 people and there's two senators. So actually, rural America, generally speaking, and it all plays out the same in the Electoral College and everything has a greater representation than urban. And that's just the setup of the government. That's not some grand conspiracy. That's just if you look at the numbers and so forth. And so you see how that played out in this instance too, when rural America decided like, look, because by and large, it broke down again, not 100%, but it broke down like the rural America was more in favor of prohibition than urban America was. And so in that instance, rural America was able to impose on urban America. And there were plenty of people in urban areas that wanted it as well. But it's kind of like it is now, like where when these issues that rural America gets onto, they're able to, they have a lot more representation. It can't just be numbers of people. You can't say, oh, well, 20 million people in California support this, so therefore it's certainly going to go through. It's like, well, no, but those 20 million people in California got just as much representation as, as a million people in Montana, you know, or whatever. And that's it. So that aspect, as far as how the country has that bias towards. And again, bias is, I'm using, using it technically in that sense, just that on. On average you have more proportional representation if you're in a place with smaller population. But also, you know, and you touched on this as well, how that urban versus rule broke up with immigration because with a lot of immigrants were primarily concentrating in the cities. And then we're in this time period when we're talking about leading up to the 18th Amendment to where, and I think right around 1920, to where you start having more people in cities than in the rural areas. And so the population of the country.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, they did make a mention of that, you're right. And so I think at the turn of the century, there was something like 8 out of 10Americans lived rurally, like on farms. But by 1920, like that had already.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Shifted almost close to 50, 50. And so you're seeing that switch. And then obviously now it's gone even more. But the power base still stands, you know, to the extent that small states, the number of states that support something regardless of their population, plays a very large role. So all of those things, like you said, it shows how the same American system can react to different issues, different coalitions of people that banded together to do this or do that. And so you just see how in this case it brought on the result of prohibition. I do want to keep moving though. So we bring on prohibition, 18th amendment is passed, and then to pass that, you have to get 2/3 of the house, 2/3 of the Senate. You got to get, I think it's three quarters of the states and their legislatures have to pass it and so forth. So it's a high bar. And at the time the drives were like, this will never be undone. No constitutional amendments ever been undone. So they thought they had won. And you have that. Then you have the Volstead act, which is passed. That's a law passed by Congress that kind of details how the enforcement happens and what exactly you can do, what exactly you can't do and so forth. And so seeing how once that all happened and got put in place, the documentary showed us a lot of how the country reacted to prohibition with intended and unintended consequences. So what was your reaction to seeing all that? Because. Oh, and obviously that was when it got fun.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Right. Like, again, like we just talked about. So it's a good. That's why they. I want to say this, and Ken Burns doesn't pay me any marketing dollars, but man, his. All his documentaries are so well done because they go in this progression where you can really follow. So that's the point, right?
His description of the culture of alcohol within American society from even prior to the 1800s, like you're saying it was beer and wine to people that it was normal for every house or not every, but a majority of homes to have the cider with the ladle in there. And you just, when you came in it was customary just to take the sip. So, so what you're doing then is taking a country that has a full on culture is like taking football or, and basketball and baseball at the same time away from America right now. You know, like something that is so entrenched in the culture of a, of a nation and like you're saying with one stroke of a pen type of thing, saying, oh, this is totally illegal now. Yeah, so what, what then he, you know, the documentary makers did a great job is then showing that not only that process, because it was interesting. You know, they came up, there was two sides just for the audience. There was the Wets and the Dries. And the Wets were the ones that wanted to keep alcohol going and all that. And the Dries were mostly the focus from religious or women's groups, but they were, they were wanted full ban on alcohol. And that's, that's another thing too that I would just want to digress real quick and say that the education I got from the women who were fighting for this for not only like in 1920 or 1919, but for decades, I was so ignorant to that kind of history. Like women peacefully marching and getting stoned by men. And the thing where there was this group of women outside of saloon and the men all came in Cincinnati in your hometown in winter and the men came out and dumped beer on them and the freezing cold and then pushed them out to freeze. Like, you know, you realize, man, there's a lot going on that we just never really hear about. And so, and so with all that, there was a lot of energy on the dry side and they were very, very rigid in wanting to just have no alcohol at all.
And I think there was a moment where the Wets were even considering agreeing to a straight ban on liquor in the United States. But as long as the drives would accept beer and wine. And the drives were so rigid, they were like, nah, not even that.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: So part of this whole passion, basically.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Part of this was a good lesson in watching. If you want to make a long term political thing stick, you probably need to give a little too. You can't be 100% rigid because at some point that will break down Enough of the population may not want it that rigid. And so just another interesting, like political observation.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: That's an interesting take because I thought, you know, they did talk about, you know, kind of how there was some negotiation at certain points, but that the drives were very, you know, whether it be from a faith based standpoint or from a societal ill paternalistic standpoint, that people can't handle it or whatever, they were very resolute in their thoughts. But I'll tell you this. I think one of the things that was shown in the documentary is that even if there was that compromise that would have been struck, that it seems like you still. One of the biggest unintended consequences of prohibition is the fact that you create a black market that is so lucrative for the criminal underworld. So you have criminals already, but you actually make criminals. You give them industries at that. And with prohibition, you give them industries that can be, that you can make their lives, it makes, allows them to make more money. And so prohibition did that basically like, hey, you guys are on the fringes here with pickpockets or, you know, whatever else is illegal. And it's like, well no, actually you guys can have one of the biggest industries in America. You know, like you all to yourself, underworld, you know, you can have it all. And so with that to me is a lesson even to this day. But beyond that, the, you still would have had the crime part if you would have done the distilled part, because you still, if you would have it made distilled spirits illegal but kept beer and wine, you still would have created, you still would have had gangsters gunning each other down, conceivably, because there's all this market to be mayor. There's, there's this huge market who's going to control the sale of, of the distill, you know, whatever is illegal. That's what they want to control. And so like to me ultimately like one of the biggest things, and I've always looked at prohibition in this way is like, how often do you see gangsters in modern day gunning each other down over beer and wine? And you don't, but it was a common thing during Prohibition. One of the unintended consequences because you made it lucrative, you made it so that it was worth all to, to someone who's controlling that territory. It was worth that you got the corporations out. Now I'm not saying corporations are the, the most honorable entities, you know, ever, but you got them out. They're at least in the public, you know, and then you, you turn it over to the black market. But I'll tell you this, the, the culture part, and you emphasize this to me when we first were talking about this, the how ingrained it was in the culture and that you, you cannot make a change when something is that ingrained into your culture. You cannot make a change with a snap of a finger. Like they would have had to keep.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: This going for like two or three generations. Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: To really make a headway here. And it just, it wasn't going to happen with the way like the society spiraled out of control because those unintended consequences that stood out to me, like people start losing respect for the law when you create laws that so many people won't follow. You know, and so it's like that's.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: The danger with that type of thing.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: One reason why they needed to repeal it was because, yeah, you run the risk of. Now every other law breaking down.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: They were talking about. There's 32,000 speakeasies in New York City. Like what in the world.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: With 200 agents that are supposed to go back them down.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: But I'll tell you this, the other.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Thing, that's why I said it sounds like the SEC, 20,000 publicly traded companies with 80 agents. I think somebody wants this thing to fail.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: But I'll tell you this, the other thing. And again, like I said, they show a lot of pictures and stuff like that. The prohibition time, it looked like when you look at those speakeasies and stuff, it looked like they were having fun. Man, they made it.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Well, you pointed this out too.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Actually. Let me say this.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: I was about to say that I'm.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Not going to take it.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: They talked about how, you know, like the saloon culture, you know, pre, pre prohibition was a very male dominated. Men go to the saloon to get drunk, to get away from their families or whatever, come back and you know, and do, you know, are in no condition to be, you know, a, to be a decent person.
And you know, when prohibition happens, it becomes more social. Like they're at bars and you know, like that jazz music playing and the men and the women start drinking together out, you know, going out to drink together. And, and it's like, man, I mean, as far as unintended consequences, I'm happy that life is like that now. Like that would be, you know, it's much better, you know, to go drink with, you know, with men and women together, hanging out, partying like. So that's one of those unintended consequences I think we should thank prohibition for is like, oh, yeah. Get everybody partying together.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and it's interesting because it also, they said it kind of represented the beginning of, like, the women's, like, sexual revolution. Like, there's a joke. One of the people said, like, you know, in the 1920s, men discovered a woman's clitoris in America because.
No, because for the first time, women. Because they were drinking with men. I'm sure that created a different behavior of women as well, where they might have gotten more aggressive. Because think about it. Like we said prior to 1900, if over 80% of this country lived rural in farms. I mean, you know how it is. Kids went to school together, got married by 18 or whatever and lived on a farm and 18.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: If they're waiting.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah. If they're. If they're lucky. Yeah. If they're. If they're waiting, you're right. So. But point is that women didn't have a lot of agency back then in.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Those environments or a lot of options.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: And like we said, too, there was no such thing as really legal divorce or even the idea of marital rape. So guys coming home drunk on a Saturday, you know, I'm sure it wasn't that romantic, let's put it that way.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: So those are the kind of things you can understand, like. Oh, yeah, that's why people were demonstrating and marching and. Exactly.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: That's why this is probably the first time when women could go out and actually kind of court men. You know, like, they could go to a speakeasy or the jazz club and, like, you know, a guy's looking at them and they could decide, no, yeah, they're choosing it.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: They're choosing.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. Or I don't want that guy to talk to me. And, you know, I'm gonna go home while I got girlfriends tonight.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So. No, that's exactly it. Like, it's not just, oh, well, this guy lives three miles away and nobody else lives within 30 miles.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: And my mom and dad told me that his parents are friends, so I gotta marry him.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: So. No, but that's. I think that that's one of those unintended consequences that we can be like, yeah, yeah, that works out.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: You know what's interesting? Just before we move from this section, you made a good point about when something's so ingrained in a culture. Culture, you can't just change it with a stroke of a pen. And I think. You know what? It got me thinking too, honestly. And I hate to bring it up because. But it's very similar. Like integration.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: You know, you wonder why we still have so many racial, kind of just this tensions in our culture now. And it's because we're only. I mean, 1965 is what, 57 years ago?
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: So that 50, 60 year time frame, like you said, we're kind of just there. And it's still not easy. Right.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Compared to a much longer time period which proceeded.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly. And so it's like think about all the arguments we've just had in the last two, three years in our country about Confederate monuments in the flag, you know, from a group that went to war with the United States government.
That's a culture issue, that's nothing else. Right. Some people are really ingrained in the culture. So I think again, when you study this type of history, it allows you to kind of calm down about today's stuff that's going on because you realize.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: To understand it.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, that's why I said, like, it made me realize that the prohibition thing didn't just start in the 20s. Right. Or the teens. It was 100 years of alcohol culture. And so we're going to have 100 years from 1965 to maybe when racial stuff starts calming down in this country. There's just going to take that long for enough people to die out, to have the certain memories and then the in between generations to kind of, you know, die out. And then at some point down the road, there'll be people that really have no connection to.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Well, and also they become comfortable with a different normal.
And so I think now that we can move on from Toonday's CRT banned book discussion in our prohibition show, segregation was a myth. What are you talking about, man?
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Can I talk about math?
[00:30:39] Speaker A: No math, no crt, no nothing.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: All right, Whose fault is this?
I'm gonna blame somebody.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Hey, got to, man. Got to. That'll make you feel better. But I think I do wanna move to the last piece now. And this is actually something you can pull from all three parts, which is really just the lessons that we can and should take away from the failed prohibition experiment. Because ultimately the arc is that you have this run up. Like you said, it's like 100 years of effort and just a groundswell that reaches a fever pitch, reaches a tipping point and you get a constitutional amendment. It's there. And then 12 years later, it's gone, you know, and then it's like, so it's building for all this time they do it. And then during, you know, the documentary shows how that the problems and like things We've touched on briefly, but the documentary goes into, in detail as far as the problems with enforcing it and people not wanting to enforce it and all this other stuff. And ultimately it's gone. And so, like, what do you think about, you know, just the lessons we can take away from it and just anything else that in the documentary that you wanted to make sure you got into our discussion?
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Well, not to go, like, on a serious note, not like an extreme leap. Right. But I started thinking a bit about things like the insurrection and some of the things we're seeing today about accountability.
And I think you're right. I was. The documentary did a great job on. Is showing there was such corruption at all levels of government, including. I mean, I was amazed that they were talking about. Remember that guy, George Remus? He was for the audience.
He was a bootlegger, but a very.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: He was a lawyer.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: He was like a corporate criminal. Yeah, he wasn't a.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: He saw how much money they were making and was like, I'm in the wrong business.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: And I mean, he was definitely probably the equivalent of a real billionaire today. You know, like someone making real, real money, owned a lot of assets out there and had homes in Europe and here. The whole thing and the thing is, is that, you know, he was paying the attorney general and I'm sure, you know, who knows, it probably found his way to the President. I'm not sure at the time, but they were talking about how many times he went to visit, literally, quote, unquote, the bagman for the Attorney General of the United States. And he would bring cash, $250,000 in cash in 19, 20 something, and then another 50,000 here, 30,000 there. That's real money back then, you know what I mean? And so it was like this corruption. And then they talked about the corruption at the local level, about how many cops were on the take. And they had that one example of cops beating up some bootleggers because they. Oh, no. Guys in a speakeasy like in New York or Philadelphia, because they didn't have. They weren't happy with the take. And so after they beat up the guys, they made everybody. All the patrons, they passed the hat around.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: The hat around. Yeah. To take that money, too.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: So it became so aggressive, like what we probably hear of now in third world countries, you know, like everywhere you go, the cops got his hand out for a bribe and things that I think we don't appreciate today, that we don't live in that kind of society because we don't know what that feels.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Like now, at least not as egregiously. Like, there's always some kind of, you know, like, stuff in the cracks. But this was, like, not as blatant.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was saying is. And that's what made me think about it. Like, okay, if you allow people who, who basically, you know, are just saying that elections don't matter and that try and do harm to the process of the law.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Doesn't apply to me.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you don't arrest them when they stand up. Subpoena, like, at some point, like you said, it meant the end of prohibition after a while. Because you kids can't keep this going if it's a charade. And I'm thinking, yeah, this might mean the end of our system as we know it, at least if we allow this to keep going and don't enforce it.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: No. And so particularly, like, you just kind of threw in there, like, which I think is a really big good point here as far as, like, with the Justice Department, there's being subpoenas that are issued by Congress, and then they're being ignored, and then the Justice Department doesn't do anything about it. And it's like, well, so subpoenas just aren't gonna be a thing anymore. Basically, they're kind of making that decision that, okay, well, then people can ignore subpoenas if they want to. That's the precedent. That's the president. So, yeah, like, the whole legal system that we have is supposed to be equal protection under the law. Everybody's supposed to be treated the same under the law. And so, I mean, that's. I think that you. I know you've been talking about just when we were preparing for this, like, the corruption aspect of it, I really think that gets into. And this is kind of like an overall philosophy I have in just that we have to be careful with the things that we make illegal. Things can be bad, can be frowned upon, can be culturally things that we don't think our people should do. But we have to be very careful with things that we actually put into the law because it's for the same reason. You just said once you put something in the law, you have to enforce it, or else the law itself becomes meaningless. And if we're gonna do this whole self governance, people governing themselves and rule of law thing, then we have to defend that stuff. We have to protect that stuff, because this isn't really the natural order of people. We will devolve into the more aggressive or the more.
The stronger hand or the people really, the people who will go the lowest will devolve into that pretty quickly if we don't collectively demand that our laws are enforced, you know, without regard for who's who, without regard for the person that, equal, everybody's going to be treated the same under the law. And so this is an example of that. Like, if the law becomes. If it's. If a law is not going to be obeyed and then it's not even going to be attempted to be enforced, then the law itself is in jeopardy. And so I think that we as a society need to be careful with things we make illegal. The reason to make something illegal can't just be, well, I don't like it, or I think it's bad. It has to be like, okay, this is causing somebody harm directly, or this is so dangerous, so negligent that we can't allow people to do it. And the example of that would be like drunk driving.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: It's also about the idea of policing. Morality, I think, is where you're getting at too. Certain, certain human behaviors that I would throw prostitution in there too. Like, it's almost like, inevitable that people are going to do it. So maybe find a different way than just this messy. Because like you're saying this all creates a black market underground.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: And then it jams up our legal system. Right.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: And it makes us hard to find the real criminal, the people out there murdering and the people out there doing all this real stuff. And so, yeah, like, it's. I am getting at that, like, saying we had more. So what I'm saying is more of a caution, like, we got to be really careful with the things we decide to make illegal. It can't just be, like you said, morality. Like, okay, well, we think this is bad. So therefore it's illegal. It has to be something about, you know, justice and order, you know.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Well, and, you know, it's interesting too, because part of that, and we discussed this too, which is it was like an irony of who was pushing the prohibition the most because it was the Republican Party.
And the irony was that they were pushing it the most. But again, the culture within the Republican Party at that time, just like today, is that they didn't like spending. Right. And they didn't believe in big government.
So I think it was in New York State when the Feds sent those 200 agents there. I think one of the, like the New York governor or somebody there was like, well, if you're gonna make this work in New York, you know, we got the border of that was the Other thing, booze was coming in from Canada, Bahamas, Mexico. So, you know, it was just. They didn't make it illegal around the world. Right. They just made it illegal in America. So. So they got the border of Canada. You've got the whole coastline of New York State.
You've got the whole coastline of all the waterways around Long Island Sound and all that. You got thousands of miles of coastline, and then you've got rivers and stuff, you know, all that stuff. So the bottom line is he was saying we would need 250,000 agents just in New York to do this. Right?
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: And that's what happened. Like, no one wanted to fund that. Right. And so. And so that's where it became a little seam where the criminals could go through, because the state resented the feds for putting the law on the books and said, we're going to. We're not going to enforce this unless you fund it. And then the Republican president, I think it was Harding at the time, either him or Wilson, I can't remember, but he was like, yeah, I'm not going to increase the federal budget for all this. So it just was kind of like this law that's there, but then. And that's when they said it several times.
There's a difference between enacting a law and enforcing it.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: And if you don't enforce it, it means nothing. And they're so. Right. It's like you're saying, so it's just interesting lessons all around in the documentary.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, and another thing that I thought. And just to kind of.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: I thought I was just gonna watch three hours about how. Or five hours about how to make moonshine.
I'm learning all this. Cool. Important man. Yeah.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: One thing for to kind of book in the conversation we were having earlier about the women really taking a prominent role, another thing that they talked about in the documentary was how women played a role in the repeal as well. You know, like, they specifically called out, like, Colleen Sabin and, like, how it was like they were pushing back against the idea that the temperance people and the dryers were saying that all women were for dry and that all women, you know, like, almost like, oh, women are all in this camp. And so I think one of the lessons you have with that is just how there's always a reaction. There's always a reaction to everything. And so, you know, you saw, like, the kinetic reaction, which you saw the organized crime, like the creation of these huge crime syndicates comes from Prohibition, you know, that, you know, that's Formulated. Once you put that much money in play, then they organize to a degree greater than they had before. But also the reaction on other levels, you know, like, oh, okay, well, now you have more like the initial women speaking up for good reason. There's safety concerns, there's societal concerns, they're not getting the representation they should and so forth. But then there's even a reaction to that and saying, yeah, we want the agency, we want the representation, but don't have these other women speaking for me, telling them that this is what I want and so forth. So, I mean, all of that stuff was just interesting.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Well, it shows you that even the interest groups, they're not all monoliths, like groups today. Right.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Well, that's what I was going to lead to. That is that, like, you see this actually a lot in the black community now. You know, like, where it'll be. It won't always be that there's one spokesman, people like, oh, we don't have a Martin Luther King anymore. We don't have, you know, somebody. And it's like, well, yeah, because the community is much more, if you. If you consider it a community, because it's really a bunch of communities all over the country. But there is a mutual interest in not being lynched and it not being singled. Singled out because of your race. But there's a lot of different interests and a lot of different perspectives that are a part of that now, which. Well, at least more than there were during the times of segregation, so to speak. So you can see integrations.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: Integration worked. I mean, that's actually, it's at this point, disintegration in terms of.
Instead of being as much of a monolith, let's say the black American community is now much more diffuse and dispersed.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: And actually in certain areas may. May take on other groups, cultures even, you know, even more so than they might have in the past. So just interesting, like you're saying, and I think the prohibition, what we're talking about here, that was a period in time, when you think about it, for women, that was very similar because as we're saying, prior to 1900, the plight of women was generally very similar in this country.
But post prohibition, let's say by the end of it. Right. Like the late twenties into 1930. Think about it, women had the right to vote by then.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: So women were also starting to seek public office and do things that there was a lot of. It became, again, a more fractured and.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Disparate group that were more anxious, more like. And they probably.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Yeah. They weren't a monolith.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And you still could have a shared, like, okay, we don't want X Ray xyz, you know, like. But as a. As a. It's a big group, you know, but those issues. There'll be other issues that come up as well as it becomes more dispersed. So, yeah, I mean, it's. It's an interesting.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: You know, that's what I mean. That's why it's. Because in America, that's one thing that the documentary got me thinking too. We're so used and so focused in America on things like race and culture and all that, that, that we grow up with. But this is the same in all big societies. So if you're in China, you know, they got issues with their, their minority group, the Uyghurs or whatever. And if you're in. If you're in, you know, Europe, there were groups there like the gypsies that were discriminated against in various countries and all that. And. And these things change over time. And so.
So it's just interesting. That's what I think the documentary did a great job of. Really Prohibition was. And alcohol was almost like a backdrop to that period of time in American history and culture. Like, they did a great job showing all this other stuff that was going on that both led to it and like you said, also led to its breakup, you know, in terms of the breakdown of prohibition.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: And I'd say the last thing that I'd want to mention that kind of really stuck out and it was. There was a quote in there and it talked about how with the Dry's crusade, you know, it almost could be considered to be democracy on trial and whether, you know, our form of government can withstand the militant discontent of organized minorities.
And that was Mabel Walker Willibrand that had said that, who was an attorney. And she actually played a significant role in enforcement, but she was a thoughtful person as well. But that to me, I mean, that's something that you can look at today in terms of.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: I was going to make a bad joke about blm, say a militant minority group.
A lot of people today will be pointing out.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on. But using minority in that context is not minority as a racial minority.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: That's a number of minority.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Any kind of interest group, you know, that is not a majority of people, is not more than 50% of the people. And so basically when. When that happens and that happens from time to time, well, they will take on positions or issues and it becomes take no prisoners. And we're going to do it like this. That's.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: That's our world we live in today. I mean, how many, how many human beings are transgender in America?
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Well, but the question is, is whether democracy can withstand that at any time. Because if you're going to have people who are saying, look, this is what we think, if they're going to be our way or the highway, they don't make up enough to control an election on their own, then that's always going to put a certain pressure on a democracy. And so you end up seeing, okay, well, what you see, I guess, to tie that up is to say that these challenges.
You have a democracy now, see if you can keep it. You know, the quote being that. So that's a great. It's constantly, it's going to constantly be challenged by different groups, by different, from different angles and so forth. And so you see that then and you'll see that now. And you can pick, like you're filling in blanks on different groups, but you could, you can pick groups from anywhere in the political space.
These pressures being put on the democratic system, and the democratic system being the key word there, like, is the plurality or the majority going to control, or are the wishes of a minority who just wants it more going to control?
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Well, this is the interesting thing because we've spent a lot of time on various discussions on this show talking about the influence of technology on all of this last couple minutes of discussion. Right. This idea of minority interest groups, that really, that's why I made the joke about how many Americans are really transgender. I mean, maybe it's 0.001% that really feel that way. I'm not saying that more people than that don't sympathize with them, but the amount of people that actually represent, you know, out of 330 million Americans, I don't think it's many millions. Right. So, but, but the thing is, is it might be twofold about our country specifically, because what could be a real risk for this type of system that we have of this Democratic Republic? If I can say that not, not of Congo is.
It's small D, small R. But, but, but when you have the ability for not only minority rule through the influence of things like media ecosystem, social media and technology, but the actual ability through the system of minority rule through things like the Electoral College in the Senate and also the Senate.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: So that a state like South Dakota still gets two senators and a state like California gets two senators. So.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: And I know there's a Lot of Americans that. And probably a majority of Americans today that would want to keep that system out of fear that it's protecting them from some other. Right. From something bad happening. If you don't have the ability to protect that part of our democracy, the Electoral College and some of these, the Senate and how the country is shaken out.
And so I think, I wonder if for the first time, maybe that system plus the technology could be enough to really disrupt the democracy, which we're kind of seeing right now, because this, the technology allows for an outsized microphone by the minority groups for the first time ever in a real, real magnified way.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: Looking at this documentary doesn't seem like for the first time ever because the Dries had an outsized microphone, but that was just because they wanted it more.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Well, maybe point this out for me.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: How they talked about how the Dries were fighting this thing out of passion. And the wets, the people who are fighting it back to people who were selling it. You know, like the people who were just drinking alcohol weren't demonstrating in the streets. The people who really were fighting against prohibition were the people selling alcohol. And they were doing it out of commerce. And people fighting for commerce versus people fighting for passion.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Well, that's where I guess they don't.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Bring the same level of energy to it.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I mean. I mean, we've identified this isn't the first time this type of thing has happened. But what I'm saying. I guess you're helping me clarify. My point is, yes, it happened before, but look at how that did happen when there was only radio, newspaper and maybe some films. You gotta go walk into a theater and see a film. Now we've all got phones and iPads and the ability to watch anything we want because we have 30,000 channels that are, you know, give us all of our confirmation bias.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: That's. Let me double down. Let me double down on what you're saying.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Can we survive this combination?
[00:48:32] Speaker A: It's worse. No, but the reason it's worse is because these things in our phones or whatever are behavior modification devices. Remember, they create imperceptible changes in behavior. Is what social media does. Imperceptible. You don't know that it's changing your behavior, but it is changing your behavior incrementally. And so that's the piece that is, that makes it, you know, that puts this current cocktail of technology where a minority, so to speak, and again, to be clear, not speaking about racial minorities, but any minority from an interest standpoint, Where a minority can get into and do the social media thing, right? And create imperceptible changes in behavior amongst a larger number of people to get them to agree with whatever, you know, so. Yeah, that's an interesting point. You know, just as far as. There is a new frontier that we're looking at right now because of the technology we're dealing with now. It was a new frontier then when it was radio and so forth. But, you know, we're going to have to. I guess we'll have to wait and see, you know, like, what documentary they make in 100 years about whatever's about to happen. It has happened, you know, and then in the short term here.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's true. And that's why, you know, look, that's why I think people should watch.
I mean, it was just stuff. I think I'm done. I got.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Well, that's why we do.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: I think we got the show here, but now it was great. And I want to say this too, as we wrap up, that's why, to me, Ken Burns is very good at what he does. That's why, you know, country music documentary is great. The Vietnam documentary is great. Civil War. Because what I think he does a good job is. Yeah, he just. They discuss the main topic, but they do an excellent job in just showing the other parts of American culture during that time. Like, I had a whole new appreciation for country music after watching that one, after that documentary series, because I saw so many things about America. It made me feel patriotic as an American to like country music after watching that, you know, and that's in a different way, just learning the history of it all.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: Hey, man, stay curious, Tunde. There you go.
But we do.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Don't let me start singing, though.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: I thought that was coming next. That's why I had to jump in and cut you off.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: I can't, you know, break it for the audience yet.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: No, but. No, I mean, but real, though. Like, real talk. That is why, you know, we wanted to do this show and talk about this because it is worth seeing, you know, it is worth. It's good context from a lot of different perspectives, you know, as far as what happened, you know, and then just the rhyming nature of history and then given. Helping understand and contextualize what's happening today. So on that note, I think, you know, we can close this one up. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate it, Review it, Share it, you know, share it, Share it with your friends. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Alana.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: All right. And we'll talk to you next time.
