Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the story of Lawrence Southern, the right wing influencer who now is publicly questioning the trad life lifestyle and mindset that she once embraced and promoted a lot. And in part two of our discussion, we react to the death sentence given to iranian hip hop star Tumaj Salahi for his political speech and more particularly, criticism of the government through his lyrics and his music.
Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me today is a man. Well, maybe this time, I'll let you guess who's bizzak?
It's Tunde Ogun Lana.
Tunde Ogun lana. Ready to talk to me, man?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Of course, man. That was a nice surprise. One of my favorite songs.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: One of the last times we heard the great Scarface on an album.
Maybe not the last time.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say maybe the last time you did.
Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you hit the subscribe or, like button on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps to show up.
Now, we're recording this on May 14, 2024 in Tunde. You and I may not have been following, following Lauren. Lauren Southern, but she's been a substantial influencer in right wing circles for many years now. And she's young, you know, so she's been doing this and, you know, for a good chunk of her life. And she has really, one thing she was really big into is the, and promoted a lot was the, what's called the trad wife, you know, try, like, traditional wife trad wife lifestyle, which is kind of a focus on a nurturing, feminine, domestic role for women that's promoted, you know, in right wing circles and, you know, by traditionalists, quote unquote. But now after experiencing a difficult and toxic marriage where she tried to live out this lifestyle, she's publicly questioning the rigid approach and the mindset behind it. So, Tunde, what do you make of this story and her evolution from kind of this absolutist mindset to a more nuanced, you know, thought process and kind of approach?
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a good question because I am new to this person, Lauren Southern. But like you said, quickly realize that she has been very popular and has had a big following for years and might have been a bigger following prior to her getting off the Internet grid and when she was married and some of the things that she discussed that she went through in the last four or five years.
You know, I find this very interesting. I know we'll deal with this throughout the conversation and later on. But it's just this idea of the evolution that made me realize that you and I and everyone, let's say that's older than 30 at this point, got a chance to have our own evolutions privately for the most part. I mean, unless you were a child star or an entertainment or something like that.
But she's an example. And I think we're gonna see more of this over time of people now that, like I say, people under 30, I mean, their whole life is online, so. So you're gonna have people like, like you and I. I mean, I used to say some things that I'm probably not proud of now looking back at my teenage years, you know, the, you know, ways to talk about other people and things like that, and, you know.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: I don't verbally like. And it wasn't recorded for posterity.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Correct. That's what I was gonna say. I don't have to deal with that. If I go for job interviews today or if I, you know, if I wanted to become a public figure and run for office or something, I don't have to worry about someone digging up stuff from my late teens or my early twenties because I'm 46 years old and the social media didn't exist at that point, especially the way it is today. So that's why I find this interesting, this kind of arc of a person. And she's very young. I mean, I think she's only 28 or 29 right now.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're talking about an evolution of a person.
430.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: From that, from that standpoint, it's very interesting to watch a person grow like this. And I use that term specifically, that she's appeared to have grown as a person. And I've watched her in preparation for today, I watched a couple of interviews with her. And what I appreciate is, as much as she's grown in this area of her life, she's also quick to say, don't assume that I changed all my views and that I'm still the base core person that I was, but I'm willing to stand up and say that my approach to this specific topic of the trad wife and this fantasy about marriage and all that was wrong. And here's what I'll have to say about it. So, you know, if she can help more women avoid the negative stuff she went through, a more power to her. That's kind of my attitude.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: And it's really, I mean, the nuance piece is really the, I think the biggest takeaway from that, in that. Cause you say it was wrong. And that's not to say that it's wrong for everyone or that it can't work. But I think what you have to understand with this time, when people preach this type of thing is it's a very absolutist thing to say. So they're not saying that, hey, this might work for you. Try this out. If not, you can try some other alternatives. The kind of trad life mindset is that this is what is for everyone. And so this is, like, kind of universal and necessary. So to go from an absolutist, this is what, this is the only way to do it. To say, hey, you know, different people can figure out different ways to do something is an evolution, but that is in itself a repudiation of the kind of trad wife mindset, because that is a rigid mindset, saying that this is what's for everyone. I look at this, and what really stands out to me about this, though, is looking beyond looking. Looking beyond just the actual story and looking at how we focus on, and we've talked a lot about how the current media ecosystems, whether it be news media that siloed or social media, which can silo your news and silo whatever, how that may change people. And there's a bias in that because we're in our forties, and so we're looking at it like, okay, yeah, we were something before, or we have friends that were something before, and then we've seen them evolve into something more. And, again, that's social media, but that's also just traditional media. You know, like, traditional media does the same thing. We've seen studies where if you have somebody who watches, you know, Fox News nonstop, and then if you take them out of that for four weeks and have them watch something else, their extremism or their their extreme of the extremity of their views will change. Their view. Their their positions won't necessarily, their ideology won't change, but they won't necessarily think everything is as dire. So it actually does change based on what they're, they're consuming. What was interesting to me about this was that this wasn't about her experiencing the current media environment as, you know, the teenager. And then as a young adult and changing who she was. She went to these sources and that she was engaged in this and developing who she initially was. And so she was drawn to these kind of messages on the Internet as a teenager and built her kind of Persona around it. And so to me, that was very interesting in that this is something that we're, like you said we're gonna see more of. And I would imagine we are because this is what's happening. And again, a 40 year old won't necessarily understand this. Cause this is a generation below them. But it's like so many people right now are developing their understanding of the world in online spaces, which online spaces often lacks contacts, often lacks, like, the kind of real world experience that, excuse me, can moderate views. You know, can say, okay, like online, it's easy to say everything works for, or this one thing can work for everybody or anything like that. But when you live, then it's kind of like, and when you're interacting with people, you can see that one size doesn't necessarily fit all in the world. So to me, that was what really stood out, is just watching her talk about her development as a person and her kind of initially setting her ideas one way and then living a little bit and being like, oh, wow, that was kind of that. That was very narrow, what I learned.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, it's a very interesting conversation. Cause you bring up some interesting things, like when going back to the idea of, is this a right or wrong lifestyle?
She does acknowledge in the interview that she did with the publication that she knows people that are absolutely. Yep. That she knows people that are absolutely miserable in these relationships. Now that she's got a group chat in her WhatsApp that, you know, she calls the underground railroad for trad wife. Some of these trad wife women that are having a very miserable time. And she says there's people that she knows that are living a very healthy marriage and they're both happy and so on and so forth. So I think it's a good point you make, that this whole idea of how to live and be with someone and be married and the way you be married and all that go back to the idea of our country, right. The freedom of the individual. We all have the right to live how we want to live.
You know, she unfortunately discovered the hard way that really, I'm not going to blame trad wife. I'm just going to say she married a wrong guy.
She married someone that appears to be very selfish and treated her like crap. And so, you know, to defend him. We only got one side of the story right now. But, you know, if what she's saying is true, which I have no reason not to believe her. I'm just saying that the idea that somehow this should reflect at all on the way people get married. I mean, what happens? Like, you said, I think more specifically is that she was a young person.
And the article, even I'll allude to it, it says by the time she met her husband, she'd been condensing conservative values into listicle form as a media influencer for some years, to the point where it seemed possible to realize this framework in real life, too. And to me that's very interesting because that's what I'm saying is that she got is more like she sold herself on this idea that all the contemporary way of looking at marriage and life and these complexities and nuances were just wrong and that somehow, and I think a lot of people are doing that with other areas in today's world as well, in our life, which is, this all seems complicated and scary out there. I don't really understand what's going on. But you know what? This here on the Internet is telling me that it could be this easy.
Everybody else just, yeah, just figured it out. And I think that's what happened is she realized, and this is a cool thing about watching her evolve is like, no, it's actually complicated. And I had a baby and, you know, this guy was treating me like crap and I had to make decisions. And so, and so I think that's one interesting thing to see. And the other interesting thing to see is the regular fault lines that, you know, one of the words I really like is that word schadenfreude. Like now you see people coming out of the woodwork saying, haha, I told you so. You know, and it's just like, and this isn't a conservative or liberal thing. This is just what people do to each other, unfortunately. So again, I think we're going to have to get used to seeing this more often with people that they evolve over their life and to not beat them up all the time just because maybe they came around to an idea that you already had. You know, maybe we should just be celebrating. Hey, that's one less person that's going to be promoting this kind of stuff that could hurt, end up having other women be, be in a position of vulnerability. Maybe she'll be someone that can champion, you know, looking for the right man and also teaching men how to behave in a relationship.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean that, yeah, that was something, I mean, and that's mentioned in the article, the questions asked. Well, you know, like the kind of trad wife, you know, very submissive kind of lifestyle. Does that, is there a selection bias there in terms of men that are to that? Yeah. That are looking for that you know, that men that may want to, you know, have, do, do things that they might not be able to get away with in a more equitable distribution or, you know, set up with, you know, power sharing and, you know, kind of authority sharing and lifes, you know, when you share your lifestyle. But to me, I think, yeah, and then the word I want to add to what you just said is, like, she developed an affinity and, you know, like a kind of a view of these, of these kind of concepts and lifestyle approaches in the abstract. And, but it was, it was divorced from kind of real life experience. And so, I mean, this is, this is how we learn. So I'm not even saying that this is unique to now. The unique piece about now is that historically, I would imagine the kind of habits and thoughts that you had on the way to live came from very proximate to you. And that could be good or bad. It could be from your parents, your household, or things that were happening in your family or neighbors or neighborhoods and stuff like that. And so that's how you're kind of learning what works and what doesn't work, or at least what you think work and what doesn't work.
But you're looking at real life things. And so it could lead you astray. If you're a house from a house where there's domestic violence and stuff like that, that can lead you astray, but you still are learning in a real life context when you're learning from pure media sources, particularly when you're divorced from the context when you're young, you're going to be divorced from the context in many respects. Or, you know, you're just not going to be able to modulate, so to speak, when you're learning things, okay, and balance that against real world experience, it's just, you're more inclined to take it as gospel if it speaks to you a certain way. It's just coming from other sources. And it's all in the abstract. It's all, it's not like, oh, I'm seeing this relationship and these people, and they look happy or whatever, or I'm seeing these people and they don't look happy or whatever. So you're learning about these things in the abstract. But again, you could learn bad lessons then. And so part of life is the development. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's, you see somebody kind of come into these realizations, like, I don't know that this is something you want to mock somebody for. I mean, like, we're all learning lessons in life you know, so to speak. If. If we're smart enough to. If we allow ourselves to kind of not continue to bang our head against the same wall because nobody's coming from a place or starting in a place or ending up in a place where they. They have nothing left to learn. So, I mean, I think the. The real takeaway here, the thing that I really, you know, took note of here was more about just kind of the source of how she kind of formulated her worldview on how she wanted to live. Not even, like, how she formulated her worldview on, we know this happens with, like, people's worldview on immigration or people's worldview on, like, political issues. But this is, like, she formulated a worldview on how she wanted to live and then tried to put that in place and then was like, okay, yeah, this at least, you know, in the setup I have now, this isn't for me. And, you know, pushing back on because, yeah, you live life long enough, and a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times, you learn the kind of the absolutist approach. While it may be appealing in its simplicity, it's difficult to say one size fits all, but the author, and I want to ask you about this because I thought it was interesting that the author, it several times, the author was coming from a different perspective, where she said that from her perspective, she was looking at it more from when she was growing up. She looked at things and kind of was drawn to in the same kind of way, online sources or media sources to left wing things. And so her growth curve, she seemed to be a little further along in the growth curve is that she was going down similar, not similar, but kind of rabbit holes in similar ways on left wing side and different things in terms of just trying to find herself for what's normal and what's not and learning that from left wing sources. So she's living in a commune and things like that. And then as she grew up, she learned, like, okay, well, yeah, this stuff isn't for me. What did you think of the kind of comparison that the author drew to saying, hey, this doesn't just happen and take people down right wing directions. This can also happen taking people down other directions?
[00:15:53] Speaker B: No, I thought it was. I mean, look, I think she was trying to balance the article out, and especially, I mean, the author stated that she used to be a far left kind of little bit more radical, I guess, in that direction in her youth. And I think she was trying to be fair minded, which is fine, and point out that, hey, on my side.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Try to find commonality. Yeah.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: And I think, you know, look, there's, there's, there's truth to that, right? I mean, the people on the left and far left that are absolutist are no different than people on the right that are the same way. And I think that's really what I think comes out of kind of maybe this era we're in, everyone wants to point in all these labels and left and right. I mean, I think there's just, you know, kind of some people are more authoritarian and how they view, you know, how they want to approach everyone else and they're more absolutist. And they, and they think that because they got some good idea in their head and the points we're making, right. That things are complex, whatever their issue is, there's a certain complexity that they're uncomfortable with. And they think that if you just do it my way, this way and then listen to me and it'll be simpler and we'll get it done and any other ideas are a threat. And so, you know, I would say as just preparing for today, and in my mind, I was thinking about things like what we're seeing on these college campuses. And again, I don't know if those kids are far left, if they're left, if they're center left, if they're right wing, I don't know. But the idea that somehow this complex issue in Israel and Palestine and Gaza and all that is just going to get solved because your school divests from Israel or something like that, again, that's a very simple way to look at it. And, you know, it got me thinking about things, you know, just on, I would say, the left of center side in american discussions on politics, like, you know, anti capitalism that, you know, defund the police, a very simplistic idea of how to deal with the complexities of our justice system and even things like, you know, like the anti colonial stuff, some of the stuff we hear on the college campuses. And it got me thinking, like, well, you know, like a school like Columbia, you know, the name is lenape tribe, were the original natives that were there. So if there's argument about anti colonialism and divesting of all this stuff and giving land back to the indigenous people, then everybody except Native Americans need to get out of the United States, including me and you. So, you know, the complexities of being a human being and living in a world that has a lot of people and migration and different religions and different.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: And a lot of history and a.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Lot of history and we're all shoved together, especially a nation like this that's not homogeneous. A lot of immigrants come in with different histories and religions.
That's what I mean. She's an interesting door into a bigger discussion in our society today about how the Internet has kind of warped people into thinking, number one, that there's probably more problems than there ever was.
Number two, that the, we can just have these simple answers in these, you know, six, seven minute clips on YouTube by, you know, famous people. I don't even want to name them just to not trigger people here, but, you know, like, like, you know, these famous online personalities now that are giving us all these answers and they somehow the same person every night talking about something different as an expert in all these subjects. So, yeah, I think, I think it's, it's a good comparison that both the left and the right have these forces.
And I guess it's just whichever side gets funded more is the one that more people see.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Maybe. I mean, I don't think that, I think equivalencies are dangerous when you try, when you effort to say, okay, well, what's happening here is the same as what's over there. You can see kind of reflections of it. And I think the biggest distinction that you have to look out for, and this is, this isn't unique to, quote unquote, left or right. This is unique to the type of individuals you're dealing with or people who want to, there are people who want to persuade you to live a certain way or to do things a certain way, and then there are people who want to impose on you to do things a certain way or to live a certain way. And that is a, that's the key distinction to me. And so I, I don't, I wouldn't. Protesters who want to say they want their school to divest if they're trying to persuade by using mass demonstration, I think that's healthy. I think that's what we want. I don't think that we should mock them or try to demean them and say they're trying to solve the problem. It's like, well, no, let's, let us pull our funds back from contributing to the problem, so to speak. That may not, may not solve the problem, but it's as opposed to sitting on our hands and doing nothing. If they go as far as to trying to impose their will on others, then I, that's where you draw the line. So now, that's not always an easy distinction. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is. If we're talking abortion bans, that is imposing, you know, like that. That's not persuasion that that's imposing. So I think that you have to be careful, though, basically. And when, because we have a natural, a lot of us fair minded people have a natural inclination to want to say, oh, the same thing that's happening here is what's happening there. But just because the tactics of or meaning or just kind of the, it may, if you're kind of a center left or a center right person, what people may be asking for may be abrasive to you. You do stuff to stop and say, okay, are they trying to impose a certain way on everyone else, or are they trying to persuade people to live a certain way? Now, with the author, I found it notable that she tried to kind of chime in and say, hey, yeah, the idea of trying to find your way and being influenced by what you're reading online in the abstract happens in other contexts. I thought that was very valuable because it's either because of the way just kind of what gets promoted or what we see. We see a lot more of this on, you know, like a tendency at least, you know, like the trad wife or, you know, the alt right stuff, you know, we see a lot of that, you know, and so to say, okay, yeah, there are also people happening, and maybe we're seeing that with the school protests and anti colonialism. There are these ideas, these absolutist ideas that are percolating around from all over. And we should be aware of this as well, I thought was very helpful to the discussion because it does center the fact on this or center it on the idea of absolute positions versus the ability to take in information and be able to. Now, you can be principled and not necessarily be absolute. You know, an absolute position is not necessarily meaning you're not having an absolute position. I mean, you're not principled. So. But to say that these kind of threats are ever present and again, the alliance has to be amongst rational and reasonable people. The alliance has to be among people who are people who can live and let live, and it's against the people who are trying to impose whatever they want on everybody else. And that can come from any direction. And I think that's the key. There is just that whatever direction it's coming from, if your objective is to persuade, fine, you know, you can try to persuade. But if you're. Once you go into the realm of trying to say, okay, I wanna live like this, so I'm gonna say everybody has to live like this, then, in my opinion, you've crossed a line and you are then against a pluralist society at that point.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, you make a good point, which is why it's so nuanced. Because if you get back to just like, the current protest, you're right, you can be principled and say, I want to protest against the harming of civilians in Gaza and the use of, you know, certain weapons and all that, and, you know, dropping these big bombs, you know, just to get one guy on a refugee camp and killing 100 people. So there's humanitarian principles that you can espouse and want to protect innocent people. However, the point you made, that's what I'm saying, is on a lot of these protests, there's people talking about the colonialism and, you know, anti capitalism and this is all. This is all big bad people trying to make money and, and all that. And I think. And then, of course, when you get to the anti semitism and all that stuff, you really get into people being off the reservation. Right.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: And I think if you're principled on the idea of the, you know, like, which I. I would consider myself, like, hey, you shouldn't be dropping bombs on camps to get one person if you're killing 100 innocent people. You also have to be principled on. The idea of Hamas shouldn't be running up into residential neighborhoods and kidnapping and killing civilians. You know, like the principal, there is no clean part. There are civilians and there are states and or non state actors. The non state actors and the state actors all seem to be crossing lines. The civilians all seem to be in, you know, like. So it's civilians on both sides. If you're going to be principled, it's civilians on both sides that you need to be speaking up for, not just civilians on one side, because the civilians seem to be losing across the board here, but go ahead. I'm sorry.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: No. And so, and so. And that's where I think, you know, going back to just the Lauren Southern and the tradwife thing, we could see that in that, right? One could make good arguments and discussions about relationships and how you should treat people and, you know, you know, having it a male and a female mom and dad in a household and, you know, the homemaker versus the guy that's out there, you know, hunting and gathering. And, you know, those are all fair discussions. But what she got into was domestic abuse. So there's. There's. There's a line, and I think that's what we're talking about is that a lot of these, unfortunately, the Internet. And I think this is what's interesting, watching her, too, or just reading and getting to learn who she is. I kind of do feel sorry now for younger people, like people 30 and under, because, you know, I'm realizing as I read this, you know, number one, I say this with a smile. I realize I'm middle aged. I'm getting, you know, I'm getting old now. But, and the reason is, is because, number one, like you say, we, we have had time now in our life to go through some of these. You know, I was a little more absolutist and ideological or, or, you know, about certain things when I was younger, which I've since calmed down about and learned that everything is nuanced. But then the idea that, that, like, she is able to go through this experience in front of all of us and that she admits that she was influenced by the online world. And I'm thinking, like, yeah, like, at least you and I, when we were born, you know, there was a certain sources of information. We got taught how to look in a psychopedia and addiction. I mean, literally, sometimes I text that to my kids, my older kids, that, you know, just look this up like. And then, like, I can appreciate now, younger people don't have the ability to trust things, which means that they accept a lot of things that us older people look at and think, man, you really believe that?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Well, but it's a different, and I don't want to go down this road because it's a different thing because they've been conditioned to, like, because of the way television and the Internet, because the way we experience that they've been, if you grew up in an era in certain areas, you've been conditioned to accept it. We're, you and I, we're more conditioned to accept things that we see on tv, certain, particularly certain stations then generations before us, because it's like, oh, well, tv is a reputable source, so, especially if it's something that confirm, if it's confirmation bias, you know. But before you get too far away, I want to ask you about this. And that is the idea of one of the things that stood out in both of us when we were talking about this before the show. It was the idea of how you get kind of a person can get when all of your opinions and all of the things that you've kind of, as you've taken all this information in from television or the Internet or whatever, and you kind of develop your Persona and you put all that you're not just talking about that amongst your friends, you're posting that online, and that's, you know, for everybody to see, it can kind of lock you in, and you're kind of pot committed to a certain approach of life and can make it harder to kind of change gears. If you. If you. If you have experiences and you learn from that, it takes, I would say it takes a strong person to. To be able to say, hey, you know what? All of the stuff I've been saying, or not all the stuff, but. But all the stuff I've been saying about this subject, I think I was wrong, and I'm gonna go a different direction. What do you think about that in terms of how difficult that would be, how that may be made more difficult in a world where you're contemporaneously learning and posting, so to speak, and, like, kind of, you're always kind of telling everybody else what you're thinking, and then you may not want to, even if you start having second thoughts about what you were, what you're thinking, you may not want to change just because that's kind of your Persona. That's what everybody knows you as, and you don't want to seem, you know, weak or flimsy or whatever by switching back and forth or, you know, switching from that.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you're talking to a guy whose only online exposure through anything related to social media is the show. So, I mean, I used to have a Facebook account back in the day.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: You're on LinkedIn, aren't you?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm on it. Do I use it? That's a good story.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Not posting a bunch on it.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah, no, unfortunately. So, no, that's what I'm saying. So I'm not someone who's steeped in being online a lot in terms of social media and all that, but I. One reason I got off was because of exactly what you're saying is I did feel that it was starting to change my own perception of myself in certain ways. Like, you know, I would find myself. I mean, I'm talking five plus years ago, I was on Facebook, and I remember doing all that. Like, if I got a certain amount of likes for a post, I felt good. And if, you know, next day I posted something and it only got two likes, I'm kind of like, man, how come I don't have more likes?
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Start. You spend 30 minutes thinking about it. Yeah.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: And I just started thinking, like, why do I care about this? You know, like, why. Why am I allowing this to dominate my brain, and I got off it, period. And so I think that if you are a Persona, I got to imagine it's very difficult if you built a certain Persona for yourself, which is also a value set for yourself, which is also then a community, because the people online are a community, and we are human beings who want community and who engage in social relationships. It's part of how we're wired. So I do think it could be very difficult. And that's why I commend this young lady for having kind of courage to speak out and take the incoming fire that comes along with it, which is.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Also from the same circles that she used to be praised from. You know, those right wing ecosystems now are criticizing her for her reversal on the idea that trad wife is for everyone should be the only thing anybody does.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Yeah, and we've seen this before. You know, as I was thinking about, like, you know, this is similar to, like, Malcolm X after he went on the Hajj and, you know, changed from being a militant, you know, kind of Nation of Islam guy to being a moderate pluralist that said, hey, you know, everybody shares this earth and, you know, God loves everybody.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: I don't think if there was anybody that was. Was guessing, I don't think there's any scenario that somebody would think that Lauren Southern would get compared to Malcolm X on any show anywhere. So you got the most far out connection, but it's 100% accurate. Don't get me wrong.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: My next one is interesting, too.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: You got another one?
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Then I thought about. No, seriously, I was just thinking about. It's interesting how people do make these big life changes, but we usually learn about them in the abstract. I think Malcolm X is one of the few of that era that when we didn't have Internet and all that, that made his change in real time.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: It's an excellent comparison.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Because then he caught arrows from, literally from where he, you know, the people he had previously been aligned with. I mean, it's. It's very.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: It's very good, you know, and the other example, though, is Clarence Thomas. I was thinking about it, which is night and day with Malcolm X, but the idea that he was a member of the Black Panther party in the 1960s, a lot of people don't know that. So, I mean, that's one we've learned of after the fact that he was more militant in pro black stuff when he was a young kid somewhere in the late seventies and the eighties, he changed his, you know, he changed how he felt about, you know, politics and everything else. So the. No, but I'm just saying it's a pretty amazing evolution for a person. That's. I mean, these are pretty extreme examples I'm giving, but I'm giving them for a reason, that this isn't new.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Well, but the X and the southern one is different. You know, like in the. How publicly they were committed to something and then made a public.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: No, I agree. But that's why I say Clarence Thomas.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Wasn'T necessarily a prominence.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: But if he had Twitter and Instagram back when he was 20 and he was a member of the Black Panther party, he might have been spewing some stuff online that would have derailed his ability to make those changes later. Cause he'd have been trying to apply to government jobs during the Reagan administration, like he did. And he was the head of the EEOC at one point in the eighties, and they might have looked at his post and said, dude, hold on. What are you talking about? You can't hire this guy. So that's what I mean is we could. And that's what I meant when I started our discussion by saying we older generations could make these changes a little bit more in private. Whereas even though, I mean, Lauren Southern is an example of someone who was already a popular influencer and then made the change, but those of us who are just regular folks, because if I was 15 now, I'd probably have a Twitter account and an Instagram account. So I'd be posting stuff that's going to stay with me forever. So if I was 30, and that.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Shows your age right there, because you would have a TikTok account if you were 15. Sorry, Twitter? Come on, man.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Next thing you know, you'll be caught telling 15 year olds to have my space pages.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: No, but I got to take that arrow to the face, because you're right. I got no comeback. That was the old man coming out.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: But you're saying two different things, though. You're saying, on one hand, there's the difficulty of someone who publicly has espoused certain views and promoted certain views and then making a switch. And, yes, that's. That requires a lot of intestinal fortitude, so to speak. Like a lot of, you know, in you internally, internal strength versus the. You're pointing out also the difficulty that newer generations face, younger generations face because they're kind of pot committed publicly, even if they're not a public figure. You know, Malcolm X was a public figure. That's the reason why he was pot committed publicly versus, you know, and Lauren Southern was a media personality. Or social media person, whatever, she would, you know, so she had built up a online kind of, and just a public Persona, you know, so that the idea of the public Persona being able to change, I think, is something that we've observed it throughout history. You gave a interesting example, you know, in Malcolm X. It fit, but we've seen it throughout. But I think the point is, is that it makes it hard. But the more interesting on rank and file, people, like, not people who are prominent. The, I do think the difficulty, I hope, basically, because life is about, if you're smart enough to, you should still keep learn, keep learning. And if you keep learning, your mindset on things should evolve, you know, or can evolve some things. I'm not going to say that everything shouldn't be absolute. Like, I can name things that I don't think, or I could say absolutely or wrong, you know, like, like pedophilia. Absolutely. Like, they're not gonna be able to give me a scenario where it's like, oh, well, you know, like, that's just wrong. But that's, that's more of the, the kind of the, the smaller things are not smaller in scale, but, like, smaller in terms of, like, this issue. Yes. Okay. I can name it. But a lot of issues that we deal with are issues where context, perspective matters. You know, context and perspective matters. So as you get more context, more life and stuff, so forth, then your mindset on these things, or at minimum, whether your mind changes as a general principle or you just become more open to the idea of, oh, well, in certain scenarios, things might not necessarily have to play out just one way. You got to leave yourself space to grow and evolve. And I basically, to your point, I agree that if you're all online, everything, you know, like, if you maybe in 20 years ago, you might have just been telling your friends, and then you gotta, like, oh, I thought you were never, you, you said you would never get married. Now you're getting married. Ha ha. But, like, now, you know, it's kind of like, it's much more than that because it's, you may feel beholden to a bunch of people you don't know to maintain a certain kind of mindset and, and approach to living life, which is just more pressure and, you know, where people would just have to overcome that, you know, like, it's just, but it's something, I guess, to take note of more than anything. So you got anything else before we close this one up?
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I got just, just a couple more, just for fun. One is, I'm reading this thing about Lauren Southern. That's what I said. She's born in 1995. You know, I'm thinking, man, she's young. And that's what I'm thinking. Like, hold on. I appreciate, really, that she's talking this way in public. But then I'm thinking about, so five years ago and seven, eight years ago when she was such an influencer and so popular. I'm thinking, like, this was an 18 year old kid. So part of me was also realizing, like, man, you know, we, as the older people in our society, also got to maybe do a better job of not giving these kids so much attention.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Because it may not be the older people giving her attention. It may be she was an 18 year old influencer for 16 year olds, you know, and for other.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: A lot of the stuff I saw was, you know, adults basically, you know, being very engaged in a lot of these discussions with younger people.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Maybe that's confirmation bias where if they're saying things, if she's saying things that they like, I mean, but be careful because we're in our forties doing a show that references her, you know, she's 28, you know.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: No, no, what I'm saying is that, is that there's a lot of people, like, there's a lot of people that were on the, I would say, feminist side of these arguments when I was going back and reading. I'm talking people, like grown women our age arguing with a 16 year old because she's saying some stuff like that. I think it's like, well, of course she's a kid. She doesn't know anything yet. She has to go through experiences, which she did.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: But you. So you're saying you wouldn't challenge her in that case, like, if she's a kid, then you should challenge her.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: I'll say this. I think just as the Internet has created so many more nuances for us as humanity in our society, I think those of us who are nuanced, you know, need to, need to do a better job at approaching some of these, the way that these topics get discussed, especially when it's coming from someone that is a kid that's immature, that doesn't have life experience yet. Because what I realized, and I don't.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Get what you're saying, so what would be, so somebody's 18 and they're posting stuff online. What do you say you're supposed to do? A mature person is supposed to do?
[00:37:27] Speaker B: Maybe you don't respond, and so you.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: Just let them influence the six?
[00:37:30] Speaker B: I guess so. Like, cause here's another thing. Like a workable, like it's, it's, maybe this, maybe there isn't an answer. That's, I guess what I'm coming to my conclusion here. Maybe it's just we got to go through this as a culture for a generation or two for there to be a new normal with how we as a society deal with this kind of Internet traffic of conversations.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: But I think any new normal is going to involve exchanges, exchanges of ideas. If you want to exchange ideas, I don't think based on how old you are, you should either be immune from somebody challenging what you say or anything like that. Like, that's just a part of it. Now, I would say we don't need to be out there if they're 40 or if they're 18 or whatever. If you disagree with somebody saying explain why you disagree. It doesn't necessarily need to become, hey, let's just call this person names or give them dirty nicknames or whatever.
If somebody wants to get involved and they're 18 or they're 16 or they're 58, with the exchange of ideas, like in an open society, that's their right to do. And then other people have their right to challenge them. And ideally, I'm not saying don't have.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: A right or shouldn't have a right. What I'm saying is, like, if a 15 year old kid, it was on, let's say I'm on a bus train and they start talking smack. I can say to myself as a kid, no, but what I'm saying, James, is that for whatever reason, the Internet just draws people out more.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: What they're, well, but that's, it's a medium of exchange. And so, yeah, if you're going to jump into the medium, then, and, you know, you can expect blowback. I don't think that that's something that, based on age, that you should then be immune to that. So.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: But I'm not saying you should be. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying is the older people should take more time.
No, I didn't say they shouldn't. I'm just saying they shouldn't give it so much attention. That's all. My point is, is why make a 16 year old person that powerful? When you're older and you kind of know better?
[00:39:12] Speaker A: You're not making them powerful, though. Like, you're misunderstanding the nature of the power, people who draw attention, then you're saying, oh, well, I'll ignore them and that will take away their power. And it's like, well, no, you're not the only person whose attention matters, you know, so, but I, like, again, we got to get keep.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: That's not what my mommy told me.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: For sure. For sure. But no, we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode. We're going to wrap this one from here. We'll have part two coming up shortly. Thank you for joining us on part one. And so, but be sure to check out part two as well.
All right, our second topic this week we're going to discuss now, we're going to actually discuss real issues of freedom of speech, not freedom of speech on, you know, whether you can say something on a social media platform or anything like that, but whether or not you can end up facing criminal liability or death based on what you say. And that is, it's over in Iran. And there is a popular iranian rapper. You know, they say that they call him a hero face of a generation. And, and yes, rap is big in a rant. And, you know, and there, there's reasons for this. We might be able to get into that later on or in this part of the conversation. But it's Tamaj Salehi, and he is, he has been critical of the government in his, in his music. And, you know, and he has been arrested numerous times, you know, detained, different things like that. And now he's been sentenced to death. And this is, again, about his music, the music that he's making. So, Tunde, just seeing this, you know, what kind of, where does your mind go? What's your reaction to seeing this? Like I said, real freedom of speech going on. Your real freedom of speech issue going on?
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's very sad. I mean, look, it's just the fact that you and I are children of the hip hop generation.
I'll say that. I'll call this guy a brother in solidarity. Right? Like, he's unfortunately being targeted by an authoritarian regime. And, you know, it's kind of just reminds you of certain parts of american history. But also, again, going back just like we talked about, part one, this isn't even about countries and all that. It's just about the way societies are. And some are authoritarian more so than others, and some others are more pluralistic and egalitarian and allow people to say things that maybe not everybody likes. And so what I think when I see this is, you know, unfortunately for the greater population of Iran, the inability for them to be free. And honestly, man, it did just go back to what I tell you sometimes in private conversation. My mom used to tell me when I was a kid that America was unique because of the constitution and the amendments. And I mean, the idea of, and I think it's a great point you bring up at the beginning. I mean, the bastardization of our own understanding of our own founding documents in this country is sad to me. And the inability to understand that freedom of speech embedded in the first amendment has nothing to do with what a company allows or not allows and what advertisers can or can't do. It's about the idea that the government cannot punish or imprison you for your speech. And I think when I read an article like this about this young man in Iran, it's, I mean, they are, he's got a death sentence because he is speaking out against his government.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: And it's funny, I was just eating dinner the other night, and a guy rides by on a golf cart with a huge flag that says F. Biden. And I'm not saying it because I care about his views on Biden, is more of, we don't appreciate in this country that the fact you can say f. The president or the fact that you can just go and challenge the government anytime you want is actually our biggest freedoms. And I just feel like, I'm just saddened when I read this because going back to even the first part of this show, the need for some people to have simplicity and the reality that a democracy and the ability to allow people that you disagree with to have a platform and speak, that's not simple, that's messy. And my concern is that Americans may give up things like their rights in order to have simplicity, but then what will come out on the other side might look something like what Iran looks like today. So sorry for the speaker.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: One, I agree with you in that sense. The, there is a concern that Americans are becoming tired of the messiness that comes along with things like freedom of speech and with voting and so forth. And the ia you may not win every time there's an election, you know, because there's other people and they may not vote for you. And so I think there is a concern that Americans have become tired of that. But looking at it from just what's happening in Iran, I find, there's a couple things I find interesting. One, that, you know, that hip hop is so popular and prominent there. And it's interesting to me not because it's surprising, you know, because hip hop is popular all around the world, but this is like homegrown hip hop, you know, like in the piece we'll share in the show notes, it talks about how, you know, once. Once they started hearing it, once Oran, you know, got Internet and started hearing, like, they immediately took to it. And how, you know, it's like, it's a culture that adores poetry. And so hip hop right away was something that was right in its wheelhouse. And hip hop has this streak. For whatever reason, it draws this. This rebellious kind of streak in nature. And so that it's been used in this way is not a surprise.
And so. But to see someone so popular in Iran and you don't know if it's because, you know, their popularity makes them more likely to do this, but it's quite a move by the government to say, okay, yeah, we're gonna take this person. It's almost like they're gonna make an example of it. And we've seen this recently with the repressive regime recently, you know, with. They're making examples of women, you know, in terms of the woman who didn't wear the hijab. And, you know, like, they think it's. So the government of Iran seems to be kind of stepping up its efforts of oppression, and that either can tamp it down, you know, tamp down any kind of the rebellious streak that's happening, or it could lead to further trouble for them. But in any event, the fact that they're taking a musician and saying, okay, yeah, we're gonna send them, this guy to death. You know, like. And it's not like we're just. It's not an issue of this guy just mysteriously is gone. It's like, no, we're gonna send some death under the law and so forth. So, to me, it's quite a shot across the bow, basically. And again, it makes me think of the idea of freedom of speech and be like, oh, wow, this is something that, you know, you really. When you see it like this. This isn't like somebody getting kicked off a twit.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: No, exactly. That's. Well, and a couple things. Cause at the end of the article, it says, I'll quote the article, his death sentence is a sign of the regime's growing concern over its own survival, a realization that it's one playbook is not working anymore. And it got me thinking of something like that guy, Navalny, you know, in Russia, that's another good example. You're like. You're saying when the regime is threatened, it does this kind of public stunts against people that it feels are talking against it.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: That's right. Remember, that was kind of a mysterious death. That wasn't like, yeah, you're sentenced to death here. We're gonna carry out this execution. You know, like that.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it was just, it's different styles of making it happen. Everybody knows it's like when the pergosians falling out of the sky, but it's a mysterious.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: But everybody, you know, one is more mysterious. The other is like. Yeah, like, the other is a bigger. One of them is a bigger flex, basically, like. Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:49] Speaker B: I'm just saying that it's different styles of the authoritarian. You know, one. One does it outright, the other does it, you know, in a way that, you know, it was them, but they just, you know, plausible deniability type of stuff. But, but I think that that, that, and again, that that pales in comparison to, like, what we experience here. Number one, protesters, whether they be BLM or January 6, people that get arrested for breaking laws, that's one thing they're not arrested for their right to assemble and what they were saying during their assembly.
And then, you know, it's. And this is where things get muddied in our political discourse here. And I'm not going to go down this road, but just the idea that, you know, the current justice department is being weaponized against its political opponents, you know, that's where this kind of stuff gets murky. And going back to simplicity, a lot of people don't want to take the time to look at the nuances of how that's different to something like what's going on here in Iran. And so, and the one thing that did stand out to me.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: How is it different, sir?
[00:47:57] Speaker B: Oh, we're gonna go down that road.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: You might as well like that. Well, I'll throw in something. The one we do supposedly have an independent judiciary, like the Justice Department is the prosecutor. And so, really, the question with a lot of these things is, does the justice, can the Justice Department make it, make a case? If the Justice Department is chronically bringing charges against people in either dropping the charges or losing the cases, that would suggest that the Justice Department is over its skis with these things. If the Justice Department is bringing solid cases and getting convictions from an independent judiciary, then, you know, that's when it looks like, nah, that's not the Justice Department overreaching. That looks like it's not impossible for people who are politicians or in politics to actually commit crimes. And if we have rule of law, the Justice Department is supposed to go after them. Like, it could be that the Justice Department is overzealous against some people, or it could be that people commit a lot of crimes, you know, they got to get charged with a crime.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: That's why they're going to court with juries to find out.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: In this instance, this isn't something some jury of his peers in Iran who are deciding to that this guy, based on the charges of the government, that he's overstepped his bounds. This is just the government by decree, essentially saying, yeah, you gotta die. You know, like, so it's a different setup. Our country is set up, you know, with the distribution of power, the three branches of government, so forth, that the Justice Department on its own can't end up at sentencing. You know, the Justice Department needs to make a case and all that stuff. And so if you're going to, if you're going to, you know, go down that road, basically you're saying that the entire government's been co opted, which once you say that, that's more usually a pretext to overthrow the government, you know.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: But yeah, well, that's what I was actually, I'm glad you landed there because it's interesting, besides the fact the article says that when he was released, he from prison, one of the times he broadcast a video and the United nations actually reported they had a broken nose, several broken fingers and damaged legs. So of course they tortured him. But then it says that the actual Supreme Court in Iran, and it's interesting, like you're saying about the optics of this, they probably understood the optics. This wouldn't look good. So let's try and tamper this down. It says the regime chose to defy the Supreme Court, which had asked the lower court to drop some of the charges against him. So again, when you talk about three co equal branches of government in the United States, the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branches in Iran, it appears that the executive, meaning the regime, just override the Supreme Court when they can do what they want. And so again, that's what I'm saying, is that we need to be aware. There's a lot of Americans today that would like to have an american president who would have that kind of power to just tell the Supreme Court, no, you know what, you guys, I'm just not going to do what you say. I'm going to do it my way. And, you know, and that yearning for.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: Simplicity, that's what you were talking about at the very beginning, is like that simplicity of, oh, if my president, the president I like, if he wants to do something, I don't want the other parts of the government exercising their power to block it, you know, so to speak.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Well, maybe but maybe the president could solve the Kendrick and Lamar beef if he was able to do that.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Speaker one, the Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I think Kendrick Lamar solved that already.
But no, I, speaking of, you know, hip hop in the US with that, like, the other parallel I wanted to draw because, you know, like, oh, yeah, we're saying, oh, yeah, the US, you know, freedom of speech and all that. So great. But the US had to get there, you know, and there was an evolution to get there because it wasn't that long ago where charges were being brought against NWA or against Luther Campbell. Campbell and those, you know, Luke, I think Luke, you know, you got to look at him as a pioneer and as somebody that helped America along its way to realizing freedom of speech, because it was his lawsuits against government officials trying to restrict his speech that led to our current understanding that won't lead to this. But we were going down a path where people, for the content of their music, were going to be detained, arrested, sentenced, charged with this, sentenced with this. And we were heading down that path. And then you had people, like I said, like Luke, that are filing lawsuits, paying for law, taking this stuff all the way to the Supreme Court, making it so to establish the precedence that, yeah, this is freedom of speech means freedom of speech. You can't be arresting people for what they're putting on record. And so I think we have to also not just say, oh, yeah, the system, yada, yada, yada, but it's individuals who give life to the system. Because we see now there are scenarios where people in the system will be like, hey, you know, like, we've seen a lot, for example, from the Supreme Court where they're like, oh, well, you know, the president, you know, Alito is on record. I think it was Alito or one of the justices is on record now talking about, well, yeah, I mean, a president would never leave office if he's not given immunity from crimes. And it's like, well, man, we've done this 45 times. This is just never came up. So there are people in any system that would be okay with this sliding a certain way, and it's going to be on the citizenry and those citizens we recognize, like I said, like Luke Campbell. I think you got to look at him and say, yeah, like he did our system a service, you know, by making sure that these irony is crazy.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Two life crew out of Miami shaking the booties in the late eighties, nineties. Think about it.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: It potentially freedom of speech.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: But think about the amount of money that a lot of these grifters today online and on cable news, the amount of wealth they've created for themselves and these, all these ecosystems and these mini economies now of people talking crap about the government.
Yeah. So, so one of the people they can thank, I'm sure, is Luther Campbell. Yeah.
[00:53:41] Speaker A: They can thank the booty.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: That's the irony of it.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Yeah. They can, they can, they can shake the booty shake music. So, yeah, I mean, America has, has booty shake to thank for its, its robust protection for freedom of speech and music. And Iran, right now, what we're seeing is that that's not the case. And I mean, not the, there's no.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: Booty shaking in Iran.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Not the booty shake bar. Yeah. They, they don't even want the hair shaking in Iran. But the, you know, like that is, the point being, though, is that it's a progression to get there. You might put that stuff on paper. It still doesn't automatically execute. And in Iran right now, that stuff's not even on paper. And so there's two pieces that you really got to take from it. One is the appreciation for the american system and the american people who have really made that stuff mean what it says. But then also is the idea, like you said, the simplicity, I think, is a really good point, that a lot of times people seem to yearn for that. You can't have freedom of speech. You can't have elections, free and fair elections if you want, if you, if your priority is simplicity and to make things easier, I guess if you go back to part one, that's also, it's the yearning for simplicity. If everybody just lives like this, then we won't have all these problems. And people always want that. But that's just not how it plays out. And in the real world. Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: Plays out well in my head, though, of course.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: And online, in the abstract, online, in chat rooms at all. Like, you can solve all these problems in the abstract in your head, but, you know, when you're trying to apply it to hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of people, then, you know, your systems have to have a little, a little bit of vent to them in order to accommodate that in places where nuance is needed. And like I said before, everywhere nuances are needed. But in some places it is. So, but I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keeves.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: I'm Tundeban Lana.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
