Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the impact, or lack thereof, from, from the January 6 hearings, as it appears at this point that we may have seen the last one. And we'll also react generally to the hearings from a big picture standpoint. And later on, we'll take a look at some recent research that gets into how just changing when you eat as opposed to what you eat and how much you eat can make a huge difference as far as chronic illness and just managing wellness in general.
Joining me today is a man who, if you get out of line, will tell you to hit the road. Jack Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Do you ever let these folks come back?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: No.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: All right. All right.
Now we're recording this.
Now we're recording this on October 17, 2022. And last week, we saw the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack have their final scheduled public hearing, which they happen to end on a notable but likely symbolic note of voting unanimously to subpoena former President Trump.
But over the past few months, these hearings have provided an opportunity for Americans to hear testimony from prominent political officials, many of which were Republicans and even worked in the Trump White House, and also from law enforcement and national security sources. So really to try to get a big picture of what happened and what was going on. And through this testimony, the hearings painted an unmistakable picture that both the big lie, that is the lie that Trump has been pushing in the media, he tried to push it in the courts and unsuccessfully, but in the media that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And then also the lead up to January 6th and the actual January 6th insurrection were essentially a concerted attempt to override allegedly our small d democratic system, our system of voting and elections and peaceful transitions of power. So it was trying to override that.
So, Tunde, I mean, big picture, now that we've seen what is most likely going to be the last of the. It's the last scheduled one and we got elections coming up next month of the January 6th hearings, what's your biggest takeaway as far as what's been revealed? Just as far as what was covered.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: I would say the biggest, there's several. So I'll start. There's three that come out to me standing, like in preparation for this answer.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Hey, going above and beyond, man. That's what you're talking about.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: No. So, yeah, you did ask me for one. I'll give you three.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: I'LL take three. Go ahead.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Sorry.
No, so one was just the, you know, it dawned on me at this last hearing that through the, through all the hearings, the primary witnesses who told the story were all Republicans and not just Republicans that could be labeled rhinos or, you know, the kind of, the never Trumper types. Right. These were people who are on the real inside. We're talking about inner circle. Yeah, Inner circle Attorney General William Barr, Ivanka and Jared Trump, Mike Pence and his whole, you know, his team, his staff and people on, you know, his side of the work side in terms of the chief of staff and a few others.
And I don't need to name every individual. Right. But meaning these were people who were in the side of Trump to the end. I mean, a lot of these people were even there post the 2020 election and were explaining what was happening. So these aren't people that jumped off the train in year two or three of the administration.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Yeah, never Trumpers or people who jumped off, like Cassidy Hutchinson White House Aide These are inner circle people.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and that's what I mean, like William Barr, you don't get more inner circle than the attorney general who did a gallant job defending the president against the Robert Mueller investigation, for example, and made that go away. So this isn't somebody who wasn't into protecting President Trump when necessary, is just a guy that wasn't into, I guess, lying and trying to blow up his country's democracy when, when there was no proof of or need to. So that was one just interesting thing to me, that this wasn't like Democrats piling on about Trump or finding the Lincoln Project members or these Never Trumpers.
This was truly people that were in the administration. And I think many of them expressed it outside of the chaos that happened post election that led to the January 6th insurrection. They all believed in everything else they were doing, you know, the policies of the Trump administration and all that kind of stuff. So that to me was interesting that it was really Republicans. And then at the state level, too, they had representatives from Georgia and Arizona. I remember specifically earlier in the hearings that again, were all. They had the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who was a Republican because it's a Republican controlled legislature. So again, the sources to me were interesting that they were primarily Republicans.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And I'm sure that was in part intentional. I mean, they did not want it to be to appear, at least to an observer who was trying to look at this with a fair mind. They did not want it to appear as if this was a pile on a political hit job. They wanted to show and demonstrate that this was something that was ideally something that people could see as above partisan politics.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the other two, which are quick, one was they laid it out that President Trump decided he wasn't gonna leave prior to the November election. Like, no matter what the outcome was, he was gonna stay in office. That was number one. So to hear the plans and the proof of that was interesting. And then the last one was that by 8am on the morning of January 6, we heard the radio traffic and all the reports, and they're confirmed by, again, some of these people. We mentioned earlier that the president knew that there were armed people, like, in this crowd. He knew that people had long guns, pistols, all that kind of stuff. And the Secret Service knew. And again, so instead of saying, okay, we gotta tone this down here and all that, his response.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on. They knew that they were armed and they knew that the plan was to march to the Capitol.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my point. So instead of kind of saying, holy, you would think somebody said, man, all these people got guns and all that. You know, let's maybe we should rethink what this is gonna turn into.
It appears that, like you just said, not only did he understand there were armed people there, but the intent, when asked about it, he says, well, they're my people. So it shows you, like you're saying that contrast of, I'm not worried about them because they're not here for me, implying that, well, they must be having the guns for somebody else then. So those are the three things that stuck out to me.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Quite an implication.
I'm just drawing they're armed, but they're on my side.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: So I'm just drawing lines here. I don't know if they can.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: No, no, I, I actually, for me, I thought that, I thought the committee did a better than expected job in showing, like, your point, too, that the decision was made prior to the election. Like, look, we're going to try to make this happen. You know, like, we're just going to try to make this happen and stay in power. And by kind of like by hook or by crook, we're going to try to make this happen. And how, from that decision, all of this stuff, everything that happened after that, it was all. There was a shell game, basically, that was happening, and it was a concerted effort to, okay, if we don't win, then we have to throw confusion out there and make it seem like, make people pick sides, not based on what the media, you know, who's calling elections or even what the number of votes are. We just got to get stuff out there, you know, like. And we got to. And so there's that managing of that so we can have support because behind what we're going to do. And then you've talked about this, you know, they went the legal way, they, they tried to file lawsuits, they filed countless lawsuits and so forth. And so to me, to see all that as one continuous progression that ends basically January 6th. And that was kind of the, you know, almost, you want to say the last ditch. But I would say that it was kind of just a, the, the, the, the last ditch effort for that iteration. Because I think from this, I also see that this is going to happen again. You know, like, this is the idea of, okay, I lost an election, so now I'm just gonna go lick my wounds and get ready for the next time may be over, you know, because this has been shown to be galvanizing, you know, for people. And so to me, what it actually reminded me of, if you look at it at a long arc like that, you can see almost we've talked about in the past the fire hose of falsehood. You know, I'll bring it up again, how important it is to get out there to be. One of the tenets of it in terms of is being, you know, you want to be rapid, continuous and repetitive from a propaganda standpoint. And so the reason being rapid being because first impressions, you lock people's first impressions in. So the fact that the decision was made beforehand to say, hey, whatever happens here, we're going full go with, we're not, you know, this is ours. That allowed them to be like, to get out there so quickly and to say, hey, you still got majority Republicans believing the election was stolen. How do you do that? Well, you get out there, you're fast, you right away say, no, no, it was stolen right away, you're ready to go with all that stuff. And then you repeat it over and over and over and over and over again. So to me it showed like the hearings did a good job of, to me revealing the, that the plot wasn't a haphazard kind of, you know, jumping from here to there. Because in real time it felt more disjointed than now with some, with some time. And to hear it talked about from people on the inside, it's like, oh, wow, this was quite an effort. This was quite an attempt, you know, in terms of, you know, forget seceding from the union, let's just take this joint over you know, like that to me, that that's what really stood out. Once you get the way they laid out the big picture and the plan and the continuous nature of it. And when it started, I think was just, it was, it was amazing to see, so to speak, that it was that well or that, that, that that big, you know, and that well or not, I wouldn't say well planned, but that cohesive, coherent.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think there's several things to pull out of that. I mean, one is for me, it's not a surprise to learn that President Trump has the personality that once he would, you know, get into this seat of power, the ultimate power of being President United States, that it would be hard for him to leave even in a fair loss. That was not surprising to me at all. Because we already saw. We saw.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Remember, it's 2016 he was talking about. Yeah, okay.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the seeds of it. In 2016, he was already making the case before he won. That's why he looked so surprised, the 91, because I'm sure he had another plan for if he lost and how to make money and a big thing off of it, you know, being a sore loser. And then the other was, this is what people forget. I mean, like you said, the fire hose of falsehood. The problem is the fire hose. Right. There's so much information at all times, constantly that we forget actually important things. Like he did this to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus in the 2016 Republican primary. Remember Cruz beat him and he in Iowa. And he immediately said that it was stolen, that it was rigged, that he even called the people of Iowa dumb for doing that, which I'm not sure looking back now, if it was stolen, then they might not be dumb. So if he really lost, then I guess he could call him dumb. So which one is it? But the bottom line is, to your point, like this happened already, so that's not. Was like for somebody to tell me Trump doesn't want to leave office after he lost to Joe Biden, I'd be like, okay, tell me something new. Like, you know, yeah, but to your point, did what the hearings did a great job. I thought laying out were like you said, it kind of felt ham fisted on the six. I remember watching it live on TV saying, what the hell's going on here? And it did. One could, if this never got investigated, one could argue that, yeah, there was just a mob that was there to support President Trump and try and maybe pressure through words from the outside, you know, just showing that they were Angry and pressuring the Vice President.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Show a force with all those people, like a march, you know, type of thing.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but, but the reality is much different. And that's what you're saying. We've laid it out before, but just, you know, they, they is not even just, let's start with the courts or let's start with this. It appears now that there were all these plans in place. Like you had certain people in place, like, let's say the Roger Stone and the Steve Bannon types were the ones to take care of the outside relationships of force, which primarily would be the proud boys and the Oath keepers and the 3 percenters. So they're the liaison to those groups that if we need them to show up and do all that tactical stuff and coordinating, you know, like we saw with the military gear and all that those guys take care of it.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Stand back and stand by.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah, they had this.
Stand back and stand by.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what they were called on, apparently.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: I know. So we should listen to what people say. Right. But then you had the Sidney Powell's and the Rudy Giuliani's. They were the ones lined up to try and deal with the legal system. Right?
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And then you had the. I mean, that's why Donald Trump was so angry at Fox right after the election when they were actually being honest, because he had his other organs on oann and all these other, you know, outlets of cable. And I'm sure, you know, they had the guys online ready there, the trolls ready to start disrupting stuff. So there was a.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Well, no, it reveals that because that was first. And so that was. That was actually the plan wasn't for that to happen because they needed to get out before. Remember, his plan was to declare victory.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: And. And you know, like. And then Fox beat him to doing that. And so he was angry because it threw off that part of the plan. We thought he was just mad because. Oh, you know, you're. But no, actually that there was a plan there that was thrown off by that.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah. That they wanted to declare victory even under a loss. And so that's my point is just, just to wrap it up and I'll throw it back is that it was much more coordinated than prior than I guess we knew. And this idea that all these levers were being pulled before the election. So if you look at the Steve Bannon and Roger Stone contacts with the muscle. Right. The Brown shirts, the guys that were supposed to go in and intimidate everybody after the legal stuff and all that Failed. They were talking to them prior to the election.
So that's why this is not a haphazard.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, it reveals, I mean, that's the thing. It reveals the depth of it, you know, and because, yeah, when you're in, like we said before, and talking about other things, when you're in the middle of the storm, it just all seems like it's happening and that you can't necessarily see the connection. So, I mean, I think that was the biggest thing that I took away from it now, just to kind of pivot. I want to mention, because we've seen over the last few months, you know, that the hearings, with the hearings, you know, Americans by and large aren't changing their views as far as what happened in the 2020 election and on, you know, leading up to January 6th and on January 6th. And so what, like, we have to grapple with the. What, what that means, you know, what does it mean that polling seems to indicate that people kind of are locked in to what it is that they think about this. And then these facts come up and. Or this information comes up. And if you've. It seems like most minds are already closed off to new information about this. And that's like, I just, I want to comment real quick before I throw it to you on this. It seems like, and I mean, this would make sense if you look at it in this way, that time basically has hardened everyone's position. By the time the, the January 6th commission got going, more than a year had passed really, as far as what had happened. And so people had kind of settled on what it is that they, you know, what, what their impressions of it was. And we know how confirmation bias works. Confirmation bias is very powerful, and it is very effective for our brains to automatically block out information that conflicts with what we believe and to seek out and find information that confirms what we believe. You know, it works in both ways. And so to me, what I see here with this is an exercise basically in confirmation bias. And so there's two pieces here to actually look at. When you say, okay, the polling indicates people's minds haven't changed. One is the part of how their minds got made up in the first place. And two is, okay, well, once their minds got made up, all this information, is it not getting through, or is it that they just don't care? Like, what are your thoughts? Basically, I'll throw it, you know, do it to you now at this point, what are your thoughts on what we're seeing there where all of this kind of information it's not like there have been hearings and government hearings in the past where people get more information. It's kind of like, oh, I have more information now. My feelings have evolved on this. What do you see here? That it has. No, no or not? No. It has minimal effect as far as how people are viewing what happened only two years ago.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I mean, I think you called it partially in your setup here, which is that people, you know, and this is just everybody. This isn't about politics. Right. That time has a way of hardening our thoughts and our minds about all kind of subjects. Right?
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: And once, like you said about confirmation bias, and I mean, it takes a certain understanding of these psychological terms and understanding how the mind works around them. But, you know, you even have things that we've talked about, like the Dunning Kruger effect, you know, this leaving people to start figuring stuff out on their own can be good and sometimes it doesn't work. Right. And I think so part of it is the time. Like you said, everyone's kind of, especially in a hyper polarized environment, a lot of people have made their decision. And I think that to your point, once someone's made a decision and kind of from an emotional level that they're now their value system is attached to this direction or this narrative, it's very difficult to dislodge that because I think there's a lot of things happening at once. I don't think it's like, okay, we could point and point, you know, 30.6% of people are just because of this and yeah, 25%. Because I think it's a combination of a lot of things. It's understanding that. But then who else understands that has the power to influence it are the big media companies, you know, the social media platforms like Facebook and have the algorithms that continue to drive things to certain people and all that. And so what I'm getting at is you put the ecosystem, the information ecosystem and how we're all receiving information and information, everybody gets to watch this. Like everyone getting a trophy when they're a kid. Everybody gets to watch information that they want and not things that'll upset them.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I used to call that participation trophies for news. Everybody wins.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: What I'm getting at is, so here's what I was preparing for that sort of thinking, like, where'd this all start? And it started with this idea, the big lie. Right. Number one, it's this idea again that certain people just think, I guess their opponent is illegitimate to have a say. So remember, right after the election it was the justification for all these court cases. And all this was because, well, 70 million people voted for President Trump. It was a record. It was a record.
But they left out of that part that, okay, 80 million people voted for Joe Biden. Like it's not. And I don't say that as a knock to Trump, it's just that like more people voted for Bush than Gore or more people voted than for Reagan than Carter. That's how elections work.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: But the omission of that, to your point, was telling, like, correct?
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: The fact that 70 million voted for Trump is not directly relevant unless you also know how many voted for the other.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I mean that's the whole thing. Like 60 million voted for Biden and 70 for Trump. We wouldn't be having this conversation. The reason why Trump lost is because more people now then you get into. Because remember at this time, this is my memory, started getting jogged about this period of time around the election. Then you go to all that, when you say fireholes of falsehoods, all this fast moving information. How many people in my life, clients of mine and all that, that when, like the day or two after the election they were getting motivated by all these videos they saw online of, you know, the black people in Atlanta wheeling in suitcases of votes or they didn't come in the truck coming into Detroit. Yeah. And at six in the morning. And again we joked about this, I remember on a conversation, like, it's funny how without even realizing, it's always the brown people's fault. Right. Like the whole state of Michigan, it's gotta be Detroit, the whole state of Pennsylvania, but it's gotta be Philadelphia. The whole, you know, and this is funny, the whole state of Georgia has gotta be Atlanta.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: You know, you talked about these codeways. It's the inner city.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: The inner city. Yeah. All these bad people in there that would steal from you and all that. And so it's this. So it, when you're talking about then confirmation bias and psychological narratives. Right. That already fits a narrative for enough people.
Like a 30% of the country that wants to believe that people in those parts of the state would probably do something bad if they could. Right.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: And so, and then the last thing, and I'll kick it back, is because the, the, the inability for the truth to come out, which was Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin specifically, which are the main states in question, I guess with some of this stuff, all are dominated, not just a little bit majority dominated by Republicans in the legislature of the state.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Remember, because it was A pandemic. All four of those states legislatures made rules changes to the time of mail in votings and things like that. This was all done by Republicans in power in those states, but because their guy lost then, remember when I think Arizona wanted to sue Pennsylvania or something like, then they're all. Then it was like, oh, well, the Democrats tried to steal it because they wanted to do mail in votes.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And that somehow, see, like that's what I mean by the lie took form. Like somehow there was something illegitimate because of mail in voting.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Because you started with the conclusion, not you, but people started with the conclusion and then they tried to find arguments to support that. And so, yeah, things. People who had supported one thing three months before their thing that they supported became one of the boogeymen for the reasons why the election was stolen. But I think looking at this implicitly, we look at the deniers because the evidence primarily presented by the deniers of the election, the people who minimize the insurrection, because the evidence Presented by the January 6th Commission indicated that they had staked out a position that was erroneous. So, I mean, I want to say that out loud because, yeah, if 60% of the people think that this is an insurrection, then you wouldn't expect that 60% to change anyway, you know, because, well, yeah, you thought it was an insurrection. Then you saw a bunch of testimony from all types of experts and many of it coming from Republicans saying, yeah, this is what happened then you're not going to change your mind at that point. So some of the resiliency, you know, or at least some of the people looking at it in their positions, not changes because the hearings supported what they believed. You know, the hearings reinforced what they believed. But I think when you look at the people who did not think that the narrative that was told by did think the election was stolen or did think that January 6th was a legitimate political exercise, I think it's important to realize that their sources of information haven't changed. And you kind of touched on this a little bit, but I wanted to say this expressly. The places where they're going for information, those sources are still saying more or less that the election was not that there were funny things with the election or that January six was overblown and, you know, this is. Now it's just personal and they're just trying to attack you. So it doesn't. It would make sense that if while they may or may not watch the hearings, the commentary that they're receiving over and over again still supports, they still would have them want to stay with their existing beliefs. So it'd be one thing if their sources of information say, hey, you know what, seeing all this information, seeing, you know, Attorney General Barr get up there and say, here's what's happening, we might have to look at this a little differently. If that would have happened, then you would expect, I believe, more people amongst the deniers to say, hey, you know what, maybe we need to reconsider this. And so I think that we, we can't look at this issue without also acknowledging that the people, by and large, if, and this, I mean to call it back up the fire hose of falsehood goes into this as well. Having multiple sources that are going to be putting out what it is that you're trying with whatever you're trying to propagandize. Have multiple sources doing it. Have them doing it a lot and make sure it's people that, you know, make sure the sources are people that have built in credibility. People already are on board with them. Because if they're already on board with them, then they will look at the things that they're saying with much less or they'll give it much more credibility.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: I should say this goes back to. Because I can't help but think, but leadership's important. It shows the selfishness of someone like Donald Trump, specifically, because I can't help thinking of someone like Al Gore, who also had an election that he lost in much more contentious way than this one. I mean, this was a straight election. That one was decided. Votes were stopped in the middle of a vote count in a major state like Florida. And with 513 or 37 extra votes. Yeah, little is over 500. Yeah, little. Supreme Court said no more. And this guy won over.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: After the Florida Supreme Court said, we're going to count all the votes, the US Supreme Court stepped in and said, no, you're not going to count all those.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: It's interesting how conservatives didn't want to protect states rights in that interest, but that's a whole nother conversation. But all I'm just saying, James, is that it shows that leadership's important because we had a leader for the first time in our country. And as I said that learning through these hearings, he never planned on leaving no matter what. So it's also bigger than just the people that stormed the Capitol and all that. It's almost like, what does our system do if we have a guy like this next time who basically says, you know, I want to be the king of the United States, I just don't Want to leave, and then I'm going to gin up brown shirts, basically, people to come intimidate other people.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Well, I mean, that's really what happened, right? That's what I've said. It's an honest to goodness attempt to take out the system. It's an honest to goodness attempt to take out the system. Like, look, this is what you guys have been doing. But you know what? Things have changed. I'm going to be. It's my show now. I mean, and that to me is what the hearings really revealed. And so I think that that leads me actually to my next point because I think that there's two options to really look at. Okay, how did the people who are in favor of this get there? And I say this from the standpoint, and I think it's important to understand this because ultimately, while we still have democratic system, which is not a given, and I think that people need to stop understanding or thinking this is just a given. This is just America's birthright, so to speak. You know, democracy is something that it always requires vigilance. And so because people want power, you know, and so if you want it, if you want to keep the power with the people, then the people need to stand up against individuals who might try to secure the power for themselves. But people have either been propagandized and, you know, I cited the fire hose, a falsehood propaganda model twice already, two different platforms of it, so to speak. And so, and that's out there, you know, like the media sources you trust, people you trust are telling you this stuff over and over. Leaders you trust are telling you this stuff. Regardless of their. Of what I might think their motives are, regardless of what I might look at is the fallacies in their evidence or what courts might look at in the fallacies of their evidence. People are hearing that, and I say, you know what? I believe this person, you know, that's a real thing. So you have that. But then also you have to consider the fact. And I think that this is looking at American history. This is something that is much, very much so on the table, is that some people are just okay with this. Some people think that it's okay if you don't win an election to take it by force. You know, if you. Some people think that, no, no, no, this is mine. Regardless of what the vote says, if the vote says you got more votes than me, then to stop you from voting or else need to stop people who are voting for the other side from voting. That's what Jim Crow was so it's not like it's not part of this country and that there's not people who have this kind of ideology that no, no, no, I'm the winner, we'll vote just to make everybody feel good. But either I win because I get more votes or I knock out your votes. And so therefore I win because I get more legitimate votes. Like they have elections in Russia and Putin miraculously gets 98%. But it's not because 98% of the people there vote for him. It's because it's not set up to where whoever gets. They're going to count all the votes and whoever gets the most votes wins. So there is an element there, and I say that to say, not to say, oh, we demonize this or anything like that, to say that the people who do care about a democratic, small D, Democratic system. Small D, meaning not the Democratic Party, but meaning people, you know, majority rules, you know, majority win election, so to speak. People who do care about that need to participate. Because if you don't participate, it will get taken out from under you if you're thinking it's just your birthright, so to speak.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that, you know, speaks to a larger kind of way that people think and are wired. Right. Because you're right. Like, I think a lot of Americans take for granted that democracy takes work. And we've talked about this in other discussions in our country is roughly 250 years old or so.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: And a lot of Americans take for granted the fact that they think that all other Americans are fully on board with the idea of a fair and open democracy for everyone. A lot of people take that for granted that everybody thinks like that. Everybody doesn't necessarily think like that.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Well, and that's what I'm getting at, really. It's humanity. Right. Like, if we're the longest running democracy known to human history in this, in the form that we're in, then we're only 250 years old and we've got 5,6000 years of written history.
So clearly the state of humans organizing in this way, where at least the general population has a voice in directing traffic, I guess, for the country is very rare. And so I think part of it is we need to accept that tribalism and kind of suspicion and conspiracy are more common in human history.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: That's our natural state.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a natural way.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Just let me add this to your point. Even in our country, 250 years. Right. Well, until we had the Voting Rights act in the 1960s, you say that our country didn't have an open democracy in that sense, in terms of everyone voting and even forget race, women's suffrage. We didn't have that, you know, for the first hundred some years. And so, yes, this I was going.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: To say, I mean, if you think about it, 1920, women get the right to vote. The country's founded in 1789, let's call it 1790 for me to make the math easy. So that's 130 years from the founding of the country to when women could vote. And we're 102 years with women being able to vote. So where we stand now, the country has spent more of its time without a whole half of the country, you know, one of the two genders. At least back then there was two genders.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: And look, and look, you talk about, well, hold on. You talk about the.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Go to the 60s where it was brown.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: So let me add this, though, because. And you talk about, oh, well, the women got a constitutional amendment and then, you know, we're good. Well, remember, there was a constitutional amendment in the 1860s that guaranteed the right to vote for men. But even after that, there were enough people in this country to say, even with that, we don't care about that constitutional amendment. We're going to deny people the right to vote in the face of that constitutional amendment because we want to win and they won't. If we let them vote, we won't win. So again, it's not even a thing of, oh, well, they just did it because they could get away with it because the laws, like, no, no, no. Even if the laws said everybody can vote, they're like, not everybody can't vote. So to say that that kind of ideology has vanished would be turning a blind eye to the way what exists here, you know. And so I do want to move on, though, and just ask you, I mean, briefly, I want to get through this part really quickly. But just looking at the results at this point, do you think the investigation and the hearings were a waste of time then? We're talking about, you know, how people's positions have hardened. You know, you have your pockets of information, your information ecosystems that, you know, penetrate a lot of this information or, excuse me, they, they keep out this information, cannot penetrate. And people are reinforced in their positions that there may be disproven by, you know, if someone actually watched this with an open mind. So was it too little, too late, you know, or do you think that this has value beyond just, you know, what looking at it in this, in this moment?
[00:32:52] Speaker B: I don't think it's too little, too late.
I. I like it's. I guess let me just back it up because it's kind of weird the way I feel about it. Right. I think it's worth it. I think we needed to, you know, have something in posterity and something for the history books as to, you know, the first time since 1812 that the capital, United States was stormed. Right. And the first time that someone could get a Confederate flag in there, the famous picture of the guy ever walking. You know, they weren't even able to do that in the Civil Civil War, so. So is it worth having this looked into, documented blah, blah, blah. Yes. Right. I think so. I. So that's my answer there. Yeah. I'm glad they did it. I'm glad we learned what we learned, like from the first question you asked me.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: I learned a lot watching it. And so. But like you said about the stats, that a lot of people's positions really haven't changed. And that's the interesting thing.
Will it matter that this took place? I'm sure in the long run it will in some respect.
But the damage has been done before this in terms of the fracturing of our discourse in this country, the ecosystems that can keep people in these reality bubbles, whether they be true or not.
So all the stuff we said, you would think that, like you said, if everybody was on board with just making sure the country itself was healthy from a democracy standpoint, and that we had at least transparency and truth in stuff.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: Like this, and we all agreed on what that meant. Again, some people think that the country being healthy means that only they get the vote.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Well, that's what I'm saying. Because if it wasn't that, then you would think that all of these outlets, including the quote unquote conservative ones, would be doing what I just did there. But back after the election and into January of 21, which would be explaining that this wasn't stolen, the changes weren't made, the mail in ballots and all that were changes were made by Republican legislatures to deal with the pandemic and that these weren't black people shifting boxes of stuffed with votes for Biden in the middle of the night in Michigan. This is how their system, they explained it in the hearing. You got these huge cities and they have certain locations that are secure. So they bring in these boxes from the drop boxes and all that and just put me in this normal stuff that happens every election. And all of a sudden now everyone's an expert into election laws and Election security and people that never talked about election before.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: 10 second video.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: That's what I mean. And then, you know, and it's funny because then I remember watching 60 Minutes soon after and they showed the actual full video. So it's like, you know. But what I'm saying is none of that matters because the information is out there by now for anybody who wants to really learn about what happened in the election. So the fact that so many people choose not to tells me several things. And it could be a combination. One is like we talked about, they've made an emotional stake and it's very.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Hard to, to change that emotional and identity, their identity.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: It's just hard to change that. A lot of people think that if they were to acknowledge that it was a fair election, maybe that they're giving their quote, unquote opponent a win, we can't allow that, you know, or that.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: They may be ostracized from their group.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Yeah, all that stuff that's. I mean, that's the emotional part that's tough to dislodge. Right. It's not. And there's other examples in all of our lives with this, not just this election stuff. But then the other thing, I think you're right because there's just a certain percentage of people, I don't know how many, but enough that we got to deal with it, that really don't believe in democracy. They just.
And it could be anything, could be ideology, could be race, could be whatever. I'm not trying to put a finger on it, but if their tribe, whatever that tribe is, is not the one on top or in power, they're just not happy, they're fearful. And I think, because we all project, right. And I think the problem with people like you and I who are okay if all of our needs aren't met every second and that if someone that we don't agree with is in power, that's okay as long as they're running the trains on time. And generally, you know, adhering to the norms of our culture and the country and the Constitution, we're okay with that. And we believe in the spirit of, hey, the next election, you know, our side might, might do better. Yeah, I think that we project onto everyone else because, you know, human beings project, do projection all the time. So we project that everyone else must be like us. And then we try and rationalize, well, how come people, it must be that they're being duped. It must be that they're lied to.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: But I think, you know, we gotta accept that, no, some of these people just don't want to share. They don't want to share this country with anyone that doesn't think of things exactly like them. And then when they say it's our.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Country, we gotta believe them. You know, they gotta believe that they really think that I should say, yeah.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Like we said with Sarah Palin in 08 saying, let's take our country back. I was naive to that. Now I'm not. It's like, okay, yes, think about it though.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: She wasn't. Her country wasn't being occupied by some foreign power.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: Exactly. That's my point. That's why I was naive to it. Cause I thought, oh, I don't know who she's talking to. That's interesting. Now it's like, okay, I get it. There's people that literally say, if it's not my people at the top again, and I'm not the definition of my people. It could be very broad, it could be ideological, could be the tribe, whatever. It's just, it's illegitimate. And I think what happens is, just like I said with human beings projecting, they project their own feelings on everyone else. So they think that anyone that wins must be a cheater or must have done it some other way because they don't believe.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Cuz they were willing to do that as well.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah, because they're willing to do it themselves. And so that's why, no wonder why Donald Trump was sitting there planning on staying in power and planning on saying, like you said, that he won no matter what the election results were. Just he got beat by Fox.
But look at his M.O. in his life. We know it's well documented that he has cheated a lot to get to where he's gotten.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Well, no surprise he would say his mind. Well, think about it. In his mind, I bet you he's sure Joe Biden is doing, is thinking just like him, trying to figure out a way to cheat to get in. You know, like Trump's figuring it out and he's like, yo, Biden's over there. I'm sure he's over there staying up late, trying to figure out how, doing the same thing I'm doing in the same way Biden projects onto Trump, like, okay, well, he's going to be reasonable about this and everything like that. And so yeah, you're kind of, you're in this, it's asymmetrical, so to speak, where everybody, people with bad intentions are projecting bad intentions on the other side and people with good intentions are projecting good intentions on the other side and so you end up.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yeah, and let's do this too. Not to make it partisan. Right. Like I think this is what happened first within the Republican Party itself. You had a lot of moderate Republicans who believe in the democracy and believe that, you know, if we lose fairly, you know, we're just, we'll just work hard and come back the next election and win fairly.
I think they projected onto their fellow party men who were of this mindset that we're talking about, like, oh, they're not serious. They wouldn't really try and do a coup. They wouldn't. And I think that's where we saw with like the William Barrs and the Mike Pence is their comments during the hearings, which was like at some point they figured they had enough because then they realized, oh, these guys are serious and it was just a little bit too late, you know.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Well no, that's actually what to me when I look at the results at this point, first I'll say this. Sometimes you have to do the right thing no matter what. So I'm not going to say like it would have been better if they could have done it earlier, you know, but I'm not going to condemn this in any way because they had to do it. This is when they were able to do it. And so they did it and they made a record. And whether it makes a difference now or in 10 years or it's something that, you know, if things continue on and you know, people can study it in the future and understand, you know, the nature of a democracy and how to keep it and so forth better, great. But the thing to me is to keep hearing, whether at the time of the insurrection or after the fact, to this day, keep hearing all these self identified conservatives come out and say, hey, the Republican, we gotta watch out for the Republican Party. These are conservatives saying this to me because anytime, you know, I'm the type of person that I'm always self evaluating are my position strong or am I seeing this? Right? And some of that is the nature of my profession because I don't like if I'm making an argument, I want to know what the counters are going to be and so I can prepare for those and so forth. But some of that is just how I'm wired. And so when I keep seeing all these, I'm, I'm looking at the, the, not the conservatives. I think conservative thought conservative mindsets are very important to balance with progressives. And because you, you want to have somebody who's looking, you know, a little more biased towards what is. You got to have somebody who's looking at more towards what could be, and then they figure it out together. So I think both mindsets are very important. And I see all these conservatives like, hey, this stuff isn't conservative. These guys are radicals. The GOP's turned into radicals. And I'm like, my goodness. So that's what I think I'm seeing too. And so coming out of the hearings now, I'm like, okay, well, at minimum, those people. And when I say those people, I'm talking about like, conservatives who are still coming at this stuff with an open mind and trying, trying to expand democracy and just expand the American republic. They are as offended of what's happening, I am. And so, okay, yeah, then we have a shot, basically, is what I come away with saying, okay, well, there are people who have a more progressive mindset. And I'm not talking about the rabbids of any side. I'm talking about right now, the center right, the center left. Like, okay, there's people on both sides that see there's a problem here of the both sides, meaning not partisan, but kind of thought mindset. See, there's a problem here. And so, yes, we have extremists amongst our myths. We have radicals in our midst. And we have to figure out a way. Again, the way we handle that in this country isn't by storming a Capitol. The way we handle that is we go to the ballot box and we vote them out. We make it so it's not profitable politically to be like that. And so to me, that's what that's the call to action from the hearings is that everybody who cares about a republic, democratically elected Republican officials, needs to recognize that that's what's on the ballot now is does our system of elections and peaceful transfers of power continue, or are behaviors that are antithetical to that going to be rewarded? So, but the next topic we wanted to discuss, you know, we've seen some recent research talking about, basically the presentation was that they eating after 10, eating meals after 10pm and how bad that is from health standpoint, which most people kind of get that, you know, I think intuitively, but just not just in terms of, oh, you gain weight like that, but they're talking about like metabolic syndrome, diabetes, like that. It really primes your body to go in these directions from a down to a hormonal level. And so this is not something really that you can mess around with. Like, you really set yourself up for negative health outcomes if you're consistently Eating at that time. So what was your, you know, did you have any thoughts on, on this, you know, this recent research, or is this kind of more of the same to you or anything you pulled away in particular?
[00:43:58] Speaker B: I mean, it's, it's a little bit more of the same, but not in a bad way. It's just that, you know, I mean, I think most of us have heard that kind of, you know, eating late at night and all that isn't good for you. I mean, it's, it's good to have that scientific, the study backup of it. Yeah. I think also because it makes sense, right? Like you're eating all this food and you go to sleep. So clearly your body. It's not like eating at 10 in the morning, right, where you have the whole day of just burning calories, Whether it be walking, thinking, reading, talking, all these things burn energy. And clearly when you're sleeping, you're just not burning as much energy. So I think that stands to reason. I think another thing that I've heard which makes sense too is most of the time when people eat late at night like that, let's say after 10, I mean, if you're sitting there trying to get snacks at 11, midnight, usually you're not eating the healthiest thing. I think that also because, I mean, if, if somebody really hungry and they hadn't eaten since, you know, noon and it's 10:30 at night, and they literally, you know, go and have a salad with vinaigrette dressing and it's all, you know, leafy greens. I get a feeling your body's not gonna have such a tough time digesting. Even if it's sleeping in your metabolism slower, it may not have the same, like you're saying about diabetes and all these other negative effects, it may not have that kind of outcome even if you did that regularly. Versus but most people don't do that. They're going to the fridge, grabbing something that was processed or something easy, throw it in the microwave. And so usually. Or they're snacking on junk food, right? Literally potato chips or chocolate bars or things like that that just kind of are quick and convenient because you just got a little hunger. So I think that has plays into it too, is that we usually have much lower quality intake the later you go at night.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: Well, yeah, and most of these things with the body, I mean, and this is why it's oftentimes so hard to have just concrete to do, not to do, is that it's multifaceted and we never know how to apportion percentages as far as what it is, because one of the interesting notes on the study was looking at the hormonal level and they talk about the hormone leptin. And this would conceivably, this wouldn't matter whether it was a salad or a pizza pocket, just that you, it decreases the leptin hormone. When you eat so late, which makes you hungrier the next day, it makes you a bit harder to do. So you'll be hungry, you'll want to eat more, and you'll burn less calories the next day. So it almost primes your body in a way. And where I heard something similar to this is that. And you kind of touched on this. But you want to be done digesting by the time you go to sleep. And when I say done digesting, like it's out of your stomach, it's, it's on to now. It's going to be in your intestines for a long time. So, you know, it's not, that's not the issue. But whether or not stuff is still actively in your stomach, they've basically tied some of the hormonal issues that come with this. And so if you, by eating late, even if you eat something healthy, set yourself up to be hungrier the next day and set yourself up to store more fat, you know, burn less calories and so forth, then those kind of changes also change the hormonal environment in your body, make you more prone to things like if you're storing more fat, that makes you more prone to metabolic syndrome. So it's these cascading effects that to me, the big takeaway here was. And the big takeaway here. Okay.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: We figured out these other things that eating, you know, again, it's kind of rule of thumb, don't eat too late. But we figured all these. We have some new thing reasons why it matters. But logic would have it. There's probably even other reasons that we don't know yet why there's more to the cascade and so forth. And so it's one of those things that as a rule of thumb, it's like, well, if we can make. The reason I think it's notable something to pull out is because it's still a relatively small change. Like if you're going eat that pizza pocket, eat it at 8, you know, or eat, give yourself.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: I'll go ahead. No, and that's. Sorry to just jump in, but that's where I was saying, like, because the study did say that all this, like eating later. Right. Leads to obesity.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: And then it's the obesity that leads to all the other bad stuff, like the potential for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, which is the number one killer in the United States. 647,000 people die every year of heart disease. And so the. That's why I think sometimes it's hard to. For people to make these connections because it's like. And I think this is where again, maybe kind of even a throwback to the first part of the show, which is when you throw too much at people, they just kind of tune out. And so I think when. When you throw in all this stuff about, oh, but if you eat late, you're going to get heart disease and diabetes and all that. It's kind of like, okay, that's too much. Whereas if you drew a simpler line and said, okay, eating after this time consistently will just increase your obesity or chance for obesity. And then the obesity is what's going to potentially kick all these. Cascade down all these other negative things. And to your point, that's what I'm saying, like, the quality of food that late at night being much worse also adds to that.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Is one of those aggravating factors.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Because I'm thinking, like, okay, if, if, if I had a cup of tea and, you know, again, a leafy green salad, or I chopped up a cucumber and dipped it in hummus at 10:30 at night, you know, that type of meal probably isn't going to be so bad for me, as opposed to, like a pizza pocket.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: I'm going to tell you something, Tunde. It seems like you're defending eating late as long as you eat something healthy. That's the second time you're like, yo, I'm going to eat something healthy. So, but no, I'm just messing with you, man.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: No, but you might be right, because that's usually when I get to munchies. So.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Well, well, see, I'm gonna say something else that you're not gonna like, because the other thing I think that stands out about this is the idea, again, the. What you're doing when you're consuming calories that late is you're throwing off how your body processes those calories and then setting yourself up having a more negative hormone environment the next day. People often don't tie it together, but you drink calories as well, you know, whether it be alcohol, whether it be, you know, soda or juice or whatever you think you're drinking. You know, hey, I'm gonna drink some apple juice or something like that, you know, but it's like it's still. You're. You're throwing calories into your body. Your body's gonna have those calories right there. Maybe it's not in your stomach for long, but it's still gonna throw off your hormonal environment. Apparently your body doesn't like. Now, one other thing I'll mention here is, and I know this just from past reading, your body doesn't like it when you shoot your blood sugar up late at night. You know, like, so if you're drinking apple juice, it's like, oh, yeah, but I'm not digesting anything like that. But that it will shoot your blood sugar up. Not if you're a healthy person. They won't shoot it up in some unhealthy way. But that shooting your blood sugar up at night blocks the production of other hormones that your body's supposed to be making at night. And so again, it's all. To your point. All of this stuff is some. It's just some convoluted stew. And so it's difficult, I think, a lot of times for diet people to come up with tried and true, kind of just remember this, just do this, because things, the reasons why things matter a lot of times aren't straightforward. Like I'm. I remember for a long time, and probably in some circles still to this day, people were like, oh, eat a bunch of small meals throughout the day. And that's been shown. Okay, well, that throws off your hormones. But what they were telling people at the time when they were saying, eat a bunch of small meals at the day, they were saying, oh, well, that makes it so you're less likely to overeat. So they were trying to solve a different problem and trying to come up with simple rules for somebody. But actually by solving that problem, then you got people shooting their hormones up and down all day and not giving their body a chance to actually finish digesting, go into that hormonal state and then eat again. And so all of this stuff is so convoluted that you really have to, in a sense, it becomes an exercise and confirmation bias where you kind of just look, I'm going to do what I do. And then you look for the research that backs that up and you ignore the stuff that doesn't.
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, some of it is just, I think as you're talking, it makes me realize, like, the kind of common sense of how the human. We talk about this stuff kind of on and off in various shows, things like evolution of our bodies right about.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: To Go Paleo on me, man.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: And yeah, and no, but just the idea that you think about the modern way we live this industrial age where it's kind of not natural in the sense that, you know, we work all day, we're supposed to sleep. I mean up until the industrial age, most human societies had either a siesta type of thing where you would take like literally a two or three hour dose off in the afternoon to wake up later in the day and continue doing your stuff, or they would go to bed at sundown because there was no lights, remember? So no TV and no 7, 8 o'clock.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Yeah, like what are you gonna do?
[00:52:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you would go to sleep, you might wake up at midnight, 2:00, you got the little oil lamp or the candle in your hut or your little room and you're talking with family, doing whatever, and then you're back to sleep by 2, 3 in the morning and you wake up at sunup. And so now we've shoved our lives into this kind of, you know, one third of a 24 hour window, right? You've got eight hours is supposed to work, eight hours is supposed to sleep, eight hours to do everything else. And that's kind of unnatural. And having, you know, we've read all the studies, all of us, I'm sure listening too, right? Not having artificial light on, trying to before bedtime. And then, you know, we all sit there on our tablets and our screens and our phones or have a TV in the bedroom. Most people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the same thing with food, right? Like people didn't have refrigerators 2, 300 or 2, 3,000 years ago to just wake up at midnight and say, okay, I just want to eat something. I mean, maybe at the most you had like some grains near your bed because something that, you know, didn't need to be refrigerated and just some fruit.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Or some, you know, dried.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Like, but I'll tell you this, and I do want to rap though. But there is that thought process and I'm not knocking it. I mean like, I think that, I do actually think that there. As long as you're making an attempt, as long as you are trying to, okay, what works for me. And you know, we've said before in other shows, listen to your body, but make an attempt to do, to, to, to not just do whatever your your comes into your mind at any moment, but try to have some level of discipline. Then you're ahead of the game most likely. But like you could the line of thinking you're having, oh, industrial age. But the Paleo people go all. They say, look, human beings evolved well, but. And lived thousands and thousands of years before agriculture. So we should throw agriculture out. And in terms of that's. That's throwing our health off as well. And they make a compelling case as well. So you can play out the quote unquote, natural way for humans to live pretty far.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: I know, and I'm laughing because that's why nothing's perfect. Right. Because if we go prior to, like, whatever, the 10,000 years ago of history of farming. Right.
[00:54:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: When it was all Hunter Grand. Yeah. That's when life expectancy was 32. You know what I mean?
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Well, but people just throw stats at you to say that actually it was longer and then it got shorter during Africa agriculture. But. And again, I'm just saying that just the same point as you is that, yeah, if you follow any straight, Any path down too far, then you actually may lose perspective of the big picture. You know, and so it's kind of. This may be one of those things where it's kind of a good idea to have some knowledge of a bunch of different, you know, not a bunch, but several different kind of approaches. And then you kind of decide, okay, well, what works for me? What. What am I not hungry all the time doing, or what? It allows me to have a clear, functioning brain or whatever, you know, and then you kind of go that direction. So. But I think we can wrap from here, man. You know, we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast. Rate it. Review us. Tell us what you think. Tell a friend. Share with a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Toonday.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
