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Blood and Soil, Bread and Roses · Outside Issues

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Corporate greed is hurting Americans, not Democratic socialists who are fighting for universal health care, childcare, and clean water. The sponsor of this resolution took $10,000 from Phillips 66, a gas company. And that's a fact. And I wonder how many residents in Colorado's 5th pulled into a Phillips 66 and couldn't afford gas. Because today, residents in Colorado 5th are paying $4.26 per gallon for gas that's higher than the national average. Colorado's 5th district are paying the cost of Trump's reckless war. Since the start of the war, the average family in the 5th district has paid an extra $412 for gas. They've spent $3,700 more for basic living expenses. But yet we're not talking about the fact that warmongering hurts our families, not Democratic socialists. But yet here we are blaming, again, Democratic socialists who are trying to make life easier for our families, not the billionaire class. And I proudly, as a DSA member, say, tax the rich. Thank you.
• 1:18
  Speaker B: Welcome to Outside Issues with Audrey and Patrick.
• 1:23
  Speaker C: My spiritual practices lately have been going to church. I go to a church over in the boonies in Washington a little bit sometimes, and it was really interesting because today's speaker was a rabbi, and he was a very staunch Zionist.
• 1:44
  Speaker B: And so we're getting right into it.
• 1:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And interestingly enough, I had a conversation with him about this afterwards, saying, you know, that there's a genocide, right? And he goes, I wouldn't call it a genocide. And I said, why not? And he. I then blacked out a little bit in anger. Can't lie. Can't lie. And he said. He said something about the October 7th attacks that I did not agree with. But the reason I came up to him was because he made a joke during the. I don't know what you want to call it. Sermon. I call it speech.
• 2:27
  Speaker B: The service.
• 2:28
  Speaker C: The service. The service. He made a joke that landed very horribly. He was.
• 2:36
  Speaker B: It landed horribly for the. Just for yourself or for the room.
• 2:39
  Speaker C: For the room. For folks in the room who are black. He mentioned, oh, I'm gonna start preaching like I'm a black person. And so he started from what his perception was, was very animated and very Jesus. I love Jesus. I love Jesus very Just, you know, was he doing.
• 3:00
  Speaker B: Was he doing, like, a black voice and just kind of really hamming it up? Oh, yeah, that's no good.
• 3:05
  Speaker C: Yeah. So I went up to him and I was like, look, like, as somebody who has a degree in social welfare, that I'm trying to call in on top of, like, what we're talking about politically, I'm calling you out on that racial microaggression because I noticed that black folks in the con, in the service, we're not laughing at that joke. And because when you are mentioning things, when you're joking, joking about things about a specific subgroup that is marginalized, that's a microaggression. And where there's people in a place that are trying to find their higher power, and you make a microaggression and a joke about, oh, this is how black people are supposed to be preaching, or this is how black people are supposed to be reacting to their higher power, I don't think that that's appropriate. And he was like, oh, I agree to disagree. And I was like, okay, whatever. That's fine. But I just thought it was really interesting that I. That it was a rabbi preaching today and a Zionist.
• 4:19
  Speaker B: Was there some good stuff in there? Did you find it moving?
• 4:22
  Speaker C: He was talking about how Jonah got swallowed by the fish. He was just basically reading from the Old Testament. Climbing out of the whale. Climbing out of the fish, and having your higher power help you do that.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: Coming out of the darkness.
• 4:36
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
• 4:37
  Speaker B: You know, almost could be like a recovery metaphor a little bit.
• 4:40
  Speaker C: Coming out of the darkness using your higher power, using your spiritual. Your spiritual beliefs and your spiritual practices and your spiritual mental health. But the way that he delivered it wasn't great, and I had to let him know that. And in the process, I found out that he did not agree with the word genocide. And I was like, whoa. Well, I really did not have a great Sunday morning.
• 5:05
  Speaker B: Okay, well, it's not a genocide, so what is it? Does he take issue with the thousands and thousands of people, mostly children, who've been murdered? Is it murder if it's not genocide? Is it murder? And those. Those are the questions I think are. Are important to ask, because there's something like genocide. The way the context that that word is usually thrown around is like, a legal context. If it's a genocide, then the International Criminal Court will adjudicate it in a specific way, and the world government is supposed to address it and do some kind of an intervention or there should be, like, you know, ramifications for whatever party it is that's. That's doing the genocide. How'd you know he was a Zionist? Did you key into that before you approached him?
• 5:45
  Speaker C: Mm. He believes that, you know, Israel should stand alone as an ethnostate and not integrate, essentially. And then he's.
• 5:55
  Speaker B: He said that to the congregation.
• 5:57
  Speaker C: He said, that to me personally, I basically want Netanyahu to perish in hell. And I think that it's all of our duty to recognize that what we're doing is murder by funding this war, by fun, by, by aligning with Benjamin
• 6:14
  Speaker B: Netanyahu, just the idea of Israel and our responsibility and our like commitment to Zionism, to the ethno state of Israel, to Palestinians being dispossessed and not having equal legal rights in that place, and then us kind of have writing a blank check for weapons, for Israel to kind of enforce its apartheid, those things, right?
• 6:36
  Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. And it's, it's, it's difficult to talk about that with me because I've seen so much good and so much harm happen in this debate. And I think that, I think DSA members really need to have conversations together about trauma, informed language, I think. And when we talk about Zionism, it's, it's a thing. And I've seen people be harmed by it. I've seen folks who are from Israel, who are in the movement, who are in the DSA movement be discouraged because they're being called Zionists because they're from Israel. And I've seen a DSA member cons make, you know, voice concern about something that having to do with Israel, a building in Israel or something and being called a Zionist. You know, if somebody's from Israel and they express, oh, I'm upset about a building going down in Israel and then labeling them as a Zionist, I've seen it happen and it makes me sad because we're all in it for one purpose and that's to make the world a better place and to end the genocide and to end the violence. And I think that division is necessary to a certain extent when it comes to especially calling out the establishment Democrats. I think that we need to really be focusing on calling them out, focusing on calling out their harm because what they're doing is harming the Palestinians, it's harming us.
• 8:16
  Speaker B: I think it's really cool that you approached him and had like a one to one conversation. And I, I can point to like a couple actually specific examples in my life over the last couple months where I have not had that direct confrontation with somebody that I could tell was like more pro Israel than me expressing some bigotry. I did not engage, I did not go towards it. I long to get along. I think in certain situations, some of it's my fear of confrontation. I'm kind of doing that math in my head of like, you know, okay, who is this person? What do they matter to me? You know, what am I trying to build long term? Picking my shots, basically, when it comes to Jewish friends and Jewish neighbors, I am choosing lately to believe in the goodness of their hearts. In the long arc of history, they'll be able to disavow the actions of the sovereign state of Israel just the same way that we are. And I can understand the difficulty. The structures that they were raised in, they're there to reinforce Zionism. I just think we have to like trust in ourselves, Audrey, you know, that we're not operating from a place of bigotry but of wanting to do the most life affirming thing. Israel's got so many components to it right now because there's the genocide, which is the most important thing, and then there is the way that American politics, and especially like, you know, Democratic Party politics are being subordinated to the imperial drive of Israel. Israel's imperial drive is just an extension of American imperial drive. The Israel question is like kind of one of the most important things in our politics right now. I am confident that we are on the right side of history about that because we are pro Palestine. That doesn't mean we are anti Jew. It's Norm Finkelstein is like this prominent scholar on Israel and Palestine and he was making the rounds recently. He was on Hasan Stream for a while and then he was with, on Breaking Points with Crystal and Sager and he wrote a whole book really about like what, you know, October 7th and the fallout from it. He's, you know, Jewish man and highly educated and he says that he doesn't call, he doesn't call it Zionism. He calls it Jewish supremacy. Just like you and I would call Nazis white supremacist. We are white, but we are not white supremacists. We do not believe that, you know, our ethnic credentials make us more, our lives more precious, you know, we don't have access to more rights. We're in a diaspora, you know, of, of different people. And Norm Finkelstein advises against using Zionism so broadly because, well, first and foremost a lot of people don't know what that is. And it can kind of like be. And it's a term that, you know, like you're, you're pointing to things like, you know, calling this person a Zionist and that person a Zionist. I don't know what this example you mentioned about like buildings being taken down in Israel. So, you know, that person is called a Zionist is like a pejorative. What's like the woke way to talk about Zionism.
• 11:11
  Speaker C: Definitely calling it an ethnostate.
• 11:14
  Speaker B: When you were called like a racist or you're called a bigot back in the day by somebody because you said something right? Like, what exactly happened?
• 11:23
  Speaker C: What I did was obviously go to the side of my friend and console them emotionally, politically. I cowered. I completely cowered because I was in an environment of toxic individuals, ironically, fighting for social justice and learning about social justice. You were just talking about white nationalism as. Yes, we're both white. However, in this dynamic, we were always encouraged to apologize for every single thing that we were doing. We were at one point being called colonizers because, yes, technically, white people colonized America. Not everybody's ancestral background colonized America, however. And so you have to use your privilege and understand it from the lens of a bipoc person or any person of, of a marginalized group. But it's also, there's. There can be this toxicity within this social justice sphere to helping the greater
• 12:23
  Speaker B: good just because our ancestors did something horrible. And I think most of us can, can claim that. But I'm. But I'm. I'm anti colonizer, I'm anti empire. I'm. I view my role, what I do with my privilege is I try use it to help the dispossessed to share what I've been given through no accomplishment of my own. But just by. Because I was born in a certain place, I look a certain way, but I did nothing to earn that. And so if that gets me a little further ahead in the race, I think that the right thing to do with that is, is to spread that around and to try to use it to kind of like lift other people up. Because I think we should all be on the same level. We should all be afforded the same dignity and, you know, respect as human beings. I know that you live in that also 1000%.
• 13:14
  Speaker C: And that's what our program was supposed to be, right? There's, I think now seeing the DSA being so successful, it puts my heart to ease a little bit.
• 13:28
  Speaker B: Their radicalism has not been a hindrance to them taking power or making gains. Jewish people, you know, they've got the right to tell me to fuck off. You know, there's things about their lived experience that I'll never understand. I acknowledge completely, you know, that I'm just operating from a place of limited, limited knowledge, limited lived experience, but I'm just using. Using what I can to the best of my abilities to kind of like live in accordance with my values. And I see a lot of Jewish organizations pro Palestine Jewish organizations out there in the protests and India City. And you know, it's not, they're not monolithic. You know, I mean, I think that like a big part of the way that Israel's actions are harming Jewish people worldwide as well is that they are suggesting that all their actions are on behalf of all Jews everywhere, when in fact it's, it's the actions of a sovereign state and by extension America. It's important to kind of dissuade people from any creeping anti Semitic feelings. You know, like to, to tell people that, like, look, you know, this is a lot of Jewish people in America and elsewhere are not with the program on this, no matter what we're being told and to not just paint everybody of any ethnicity with the same brush.
• 14:46
  Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I fully agree with you and it's, that's why I come from such a tricky place with, with naming things.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: But here's the thing, Audrey, like what do you, what do you have to be guilty about really, as far as all that goes? You use your words very carefully. I think you lead more with tolerance and sensitivity and empathy much more than I do, you know, and in many contexts. And not only that, but it's bolstered, it's bolstered by a lot of education. And so maybe that's, that needs to be the next chapter of your life is kind of like just finally putting all. Doing the inventory right. And just kind of putting all that stuff to bed because, you know, you got nothing to be. Feel guilty about or, you know, it's sounds like whatever somebody said to you in your past about, you know, you being a colonizer, you being intolerant, it sounds like there's stuff that they're projecting. Projecting on you. It doesn't sound like anything you did.
• 15:41
  Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That there some folks in my cohort are pieces of. And I'm really, I'm really concerned about the folks that they serve if they're licensed social workers now. But you know what? That's on them and I hope they do no harm. Speaking of doing no harm though, the right and a good part of the establishment are trying to harm our Hasan piker here. They're trying to. And I'm loving, I'm loving how scared they're getting of him.
• 16:18
  Speaker B: I wanted to pick up where you left off. I just wanted to be clear about which candidates Hasan has campaigned with or kind of like done media to boost. He's been supporting Abdullah Syed in Michigan, who is not a DSA backed candidate or endorsed candidate. Necessarily, but he's been lumped in with them because he's kind of anti establishment and he's pro Palestine. So it's. Yeah. Abdullah Sayed from Michigan, Adam Hamaui from New Jersey, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Cori Bush, of course, a member of the squad from Missouri. We've got Francesca Hahn, the Wisconsin governor who, who lost her, lost her election recently, Claire Valdez and Dariel Darieliza Avila Chevalier from New York. That's enough. I mean, there's more. But like, what Hasan has been doing ever since Trump's win and since Mamdani's win. I mean, he was also campaigning pretty hard to get Soran Mamdani elected in New York is that he's randomly been kind of like using up his celebrity capital and you know, his popularity on Twitch to build interest and energy behind these different challenges to the Democratic establishment, to kind of try and get some kind of like a winning coalition together to fight fascism, the fascism of Trump. That, that, that was ascendant, certainly. I mean, it's still ascending, but definitely that first year in 2024, some kind of challenge to it electorally. And yeah, and as a result, the James Carville's of the world, the Chuck Schumers, the Hakeem Jeffries, the kind of like the Nancy Pelosi's, the kind of like machine Democrat political operatives really don't like that one because of ideology. Their careers were built on donations from billionaires and you know, from, from pro Israel groups and stuff like that. And so they know where their bread is buttered and you know, that's, they're kind of there to like, not to not be permissive of people like Hasan. And then also they're like organizational power. You know, like if, if all of these progressive socialist challengers get in there into these seats, that kind of. And then, and the American people, the voting population is shown that this is a recipe for, you know, for being Republicans at the ballot. Then all of a sudden those consultants that a certain type of politician will become irrelevant. And I mean, and as far as I'm concerned, in 2024 they were proved irrelevant, you know, by the fact that Trump was elected a second time. And you know, Republicans just made all these gains, you know, and you know, down ballot in that election. But, but yeah, so for, you know, for all these reasons on the stuck, Gavin Hassan has become the, you know, has a big target on his back. And like, what they've chosen to do, they don't estab. The Democratic establishment doesn't really want to talk about Hasan's, you know, whatever policies he's advocating for. And the. They don't want to talk about ideological matters necessarily. They just want to focus on his character. They want to, like, you know, build him into this person that's like this. This, like this onerous individual. And, you know, and that's the problem. And that's what we all need to be focusing on. Because I think if they were to really. It's been pointed out that, like, very few of these media sources, like cnn, you know, or like, the different kind of op EDS that have been written in mainstream media, like anti Hasan op eds, none of them have interviewed him directly.
• 20:15
  Speaker C: Has he really been interviewed directly? Like, no.
• 20:18
  Speaker B: I mean, semaphore. There's some. There's some kind of prominent, I think, a journal or, like, media called semaphore. This guy, Dave Weigel, who does a lot of really great election coverage, interviewed Hassan recently about this controversy. But there, I think, yeah, the dynamic is that they're talking about him constantly, but they're not talking to him. And, you know, Hasan is pretty open and willing to talk to people. You know, it's not a question of, like, well, he just wasn't available. It's that I think they don't want to get him talking, because if they get him talking, maybe people will like what he has to say, and that would, you know, disengage their argument somehow.
• 20:56
  Speaker C: And that's a big reason why I was at. I don't know if I told you this, but he was poised to make a speech at University of Washington a couple, maybe last month, and then the last second, they pulled it, citing a reason of ideology, which who the knows what that means? But I was like, I wonder, first of all, I wonder what that is. But second of all, why is everybody so scared? But third of all, I love how everybody's scared. Like, I'm. And that's why I get that dopamine hit of whenever a DSA candidate wins. I get that dopamine of hope.
• 21:39
  Speaker B: Just that dope of hope.
• 21:41
  Speaker C: The dope of hope. You know, I used to do dope. Now I do hope. But I'm not. I'm not. I'm not the corny N A person of a hope dealer, not dope dealer. I'm not doing that and not doing that trope of N A. I do.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: Like, there was a guy. I love this guy. I'm trying to remember his name. And he's like. He's like a biker, and he used to call himself a Dopeless hope fiend, which I always like.
• 22:03
  Speaker C: I've, I, maybe I've met that guy. I think.
• 22:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, you have. He's nice, I think. Yeah. You know. You met him probably. Yeah. Do you remember his name?
• 22:11
  Speaker C: I don't remember his name, but I know, I know the saying.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. He used to always hang out in the smoking pit inside the meeting.
• 22:19
  Speaker C: So I, Patrick lovingly, lovingly gifted me a membership to Town Hall Seattle, which has a lot of political discussions, a lot of artistic discussions, which I actually can be, you know, sought online. So even you can probably be privy to it. A lot of creative works. Last night's conversation was with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and she was hosting two people, one of which, two authors, one of which is a congressman. I completely forget his name. I believe his first name was Ben. He was talking, they were mainly talking about January 6th and interesting. And white nationalism, white Christian nationalism in particular, and how the white Christian nationalism movement fueled January 6th. And Skype Harriman, her name. One of the authors was. I bought her book and I, I don't read, so this is a big deal that I bought her book. Her name was Sky Perryman. I believe that could also be a music artist. So I'm gonna have to double check with the name, but her name, her first name was Sky. What she did was she wrote a book that I'll, I stupidly did not write down the title, but essentially it's like a guideline for how to, how to, how to help the working class person while you're, while we're in these unprecedented times of information. So she, she discussed a lot about, you know, taking in news sources and figuring out what's, you know, ethical versus unethical in yourself and in other people, specifically within yourself, which I thought was really interesting. There's something that she talked about called Media Sobriety, where it's like you don't, you know, you, you take in a certain amount of information, you put it aside, and then you decide to do what you want to do with it. Obviously, I haven't read the whole book, but I've skimmed through it and it's like a guideline book and it's very, very satisfying to look at. But essentially, yeah, the, the, the talk was with, with Congresswoman Jayapal and, and these two authors talking about Christian nationalism and just January 6th and how incredibly devastating that event was and what we can do to prevent it.
• 24:53
  Speaker B: You've got a packed schedule, a clinical schedule, you know, and you've got a lot of Personal stuff going on. So where it is, how, how do you stay informed in a way that doesn't like totally you up Listen to
• 25:07
  Speaker C: K U L W K U K W O U K U L M
• 25:14
  Speaker B: N O P
• 25:17
  Speaker C: K uow Seattle's NPR station.
• 25:22
  Speaker B: All right.
• 25:23
  Speaker C: Yeah, Classic. Yeah, it's very, it's very mellow. That's how I get most of my, most of my news just every morning. Kuow. And you know what's funny is actually I was listening to Majority Report the other night, the other morning while I was taking a shower and I heard Sam mention a source he uses. It might have been an ad, but for Ground News, the Ground News app. I don't know if you checked it out, but it's Ground news. No, it's a completely neutral news website where it says this is from a democratic or left leaning source and this is from a right leaning source and then this is from a neutral source like Reuters or for ap, something like that. And so I check, you know, I've checked out the, checked out the app and it's, it's quite interesting. It's quite interesting. You just have to sort of shift through what's misinformation, what's not. But I think that, I think Sam has a good idea there of just looking at things neutrally from like a, like a mindfulness perspective like we were talking about with ren and non judgment looking at headlines and saying, oh, where, where did this come from? Where did this come from? And, and that's kind of how I look at it. Just neutral. I try to look at it really neutrally. But then of course I'm human and I'm a radical leftist. So I get, I get very upset and I get very emboldened to say stuff and to think stuff. But maybe I'm not there yet with the overwhelmed over news kind of situation. What I'm getting, what I get overwhelmed with is carrying emotional weight lately. And that's why I see, that's why I'm turning so much to the, the aspect of hope with all these wins for dsa, putting out a lot of emotional labor. That's with people who view the world negatively because of their mental illness. And of course, of course they do. You know, if you're suffering, you're suffering. I think that seeing these folks stand up for what's right in our country and actually wanting to take necessary, maybe unpopular steps towards goodness, it makes me, it makes me feel a little lighter. It makes me cling on to that hope of okay, things will improve Even if you know, the. The is like just all over the place in the world right now. Is all over the place in all of my clients lives right now. I can't really do much about either one of those except comment and guide. But I do find these, these candidates winning as some sort of light at the end of the tunnel where each day I'm seeing things, I'm seeing the tunnel close or seemingly close every single day with individual people and, and I'm getting more and more, I'm getting more and more frustrated with the system and emotionally how people's emotional health are coinciding with the system even more because I'm seeing people who are on Medicaid and have housing instability and there's suicide suicidality associated with that. So much suicidality associated with unhousing and with food scarcity and even transportation. Like there are folks that over here that can't get to a doctor's appointment unless it's by transit and that's three hours of transit time. So it's like when I see these candidates winning and beating what was it makes me feel hopeful for a new breakthrough. And I'm hoping that I can see some sort of breakthrough in the world like this. Even if I'm not seeing breakthroughs with people I'm seeing individually. We're done with being pussies essentially.
• 30:09
  Speaker B: Well, people need relief. People need relief. You know, I showed you that Brace Belden Doom Scroll. I love that show by the way. I love the format. Brace was talking about how, you know, he's actually further to the left than Zoran Mamdani. But he was out there campaigning for him and you know, just door knocking and stuff. And, and he was, went to the festivities afterwards. Like he likes Zoran quite a bit. He's glad he's mayor, but he just needed his rent to go down. You know, like that's the main. And the way he talked about voting was that like look, it's, and this is, this is the way I feel about voting is that. What else was I doing that day? You know, like it's, it's a, it's a nominal effort that you make to kind of like improve, you know, your material quality of life hopefully or maybe prevent, you know, something bad happening to a neighbor. The Republican Party is not interested in addressing the material issues of people and, and you know, as it happens, the Democrat political establishment isn't interested in addressing those things. So that creates an opportunity which these candidates that you're pointing to have been seizing upon. And that just seems like the only direction to go, you know, it's, it's the, and, and people like, I am not. Even if Trump was able to pick up support from independents and from first time voters in 2024, there were all these gains that the right made. I still believe that the plurality of Americans, a plurality of people are in line with the kind of politics that you and I are interested in and the kind of better world that you and I are interested in. It's just that in a void, you know, in, in a world where these types of candidates like Angie Nixon or like Abdul Al Sayed or like Zora Mount Dani, in a world where, you know, those two never get in front, that those guys never get in front of a microphone, you know, then things do default to the right, you know, to the forces of fascism and. Yeah, you know, like. But I, it's, it's, it's the structures kind of dictating a certain status quo that, you know, if, if that gives me despair, you know, that, that's the thing that gives me despair. Not, you know, what's in the hearts of people or my neighbors or. I think, you know, more often than not, you know, they want what's best for their children. If we're feeling despair, you know, I think there's enough evidence to, you know, to make that reasonable. But if we're feeling despair, let our despair lead us into some form of action that will be able to give, give some relief to us or others. Let those feelings motivate you into doing something loving and positive and compassionate and courageous. Do the next life affirming thing.
• 33:00
  Speaker C: I also think I've always dreamed of the day. I think it's a generational thing and we're, it's, it's a running joke with, you know, Senator Mitch McConnell being a essential rubber chicken, you know, on a,
• 33:13
  Speaker B: the very, the very much, the very much alive.
• 33:15
  Speaker C: Very much.
• 33:16
  Speaker B: Gentlemen from Kentucky.
• 33:18
  Speaker C: Yes, very much alive. I think that while that generation is quite literally dying, I think our generation and the generation even below us, you know, because some of these candidates are a couple of years younger than us, actually.
• 33:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:36
  Speaker C: Which makes me.
• 33:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, she's younger than me.
• 33:40
  Speaker C: She is younger than me, too. And so I think that once. I think it's a big generational thing because the boomers don't get it.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: I don't. I never like to condescend to people younger than me. You know, it's like, do you do.
• 33:57
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 34:00
  Speaker B: I'm like, well, I guess it would, it would depend on what the what's the thing? What are we condescending about?
• 34:06
  Speaker C: Usually 2000s culture. Yeah, yeah, because, because they're. The Gen Z is trying to bring back to early 2000s culture. And if you're a woman, you would understand. No, not saying that you don't understand the, the horribleness which was the 2000s, but as, as, as, as a young woman growing up in the early 2000s, it was very body shaming, very misogynistic.
• 34:33
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 34:36
  Speaker C: It was hard being a woman or a female presenting person or AFAB person assigned female at birth person during the 2000s because of the cult, the societal and the cultural and pop culture takeover. So I think that millennials in particular, we're a different breed. And I've been just, you know, happy that Mitch McConnell is on his way out and metaphorically that they're all on their way out and we can be, they can be replaced by younger folks like us who have quite frankly, better interests in heart because we, we've lived through these experiences as young people, whereas people in generations before us, they, they survived horrors too. However, there's some disconnect.
• 35:36
  Speaker B: They were born in like the, during the time of spoils from World War II and of like great economic expansion. And you know, it's, it's funny, Sam, on the Majority Report, they were like looking at some clip, like the idea of any boomer being against the principle of forgiving student debt when the tuition, when they were growing up, college tuition was just a fraction of, you know, it was such a minimal cost to go to a good college in their day. You know, they didn't need to accrue debt, you know, and the wages were more in line with their, the income that they were getting. So it's, they were able to do that. You know, the context is just completely different now. And you know, I think that's when we talk about being, you know, shut up, Boomer. It's shut up. It shut up. The idea of kind of like standing in the way of, you know, millennials and zoomers enjoying a comparable quality of life to the one that they had in their time. There just seems to be a total disconnect between, you know, what the people are asking for and what the politicians are willing or able to give them.
• 36:44
  Speaker C: And it looks like these DSA candidates and these more left wing candidates are promising these things that we're asking for. And I think that we're, if you want to look at it as like a higher power and spiritual perspective, I think we need to step into an age of abundance. And it looks like what, from my eyes, it looks like all of these winds are beginning in an age of abundance, an abundance of, of hope and abundance of understanding of what needs to be called out, what needs to be change, what needs to be established and what maybe needs to be abolished.
• 37:25
  Speaker B: The structures of American politics are still governed by money. And money doesn't want things to change, you know, because they want, the rich want to maintain their place at the top of the pecking order and they can only maintain their place under capitalism at the top of the pecking order by keeping everybody else down to vote and to run these good left wing candidates in primaries, but to kind of keep, and I think Hassan does a great job of this keep an adversarial position towards that entrenched capital uniformly on the right and you know, the leadership of Democratic Party and it's going to be, you know, they're not going to give up without a fight, number one. And number two, Democrat in America take billionaire money and take, you know, money from AIPAC and don't want to see things change and are, you know, directly involved with this whole kind of Hassan smearing, Abdul Said smearing operations.
• 38:23
  Speaker C: It's not because, like there's any Islamophobia or anything going on at all. Not at all.
• 38:28
  Speaker B: That's part of it. Yeah, that's part of it. These are really. By the way, can I just say, Abdul, I sayed, is a really kind of Clooney esque guy. Like he's really, I think he's very kind of like, you know, masculine and cool. Yeah, he's kind of a sexy guy. And you know, all these guys, all
• 38:45
  Speaker C: these DSA guys are so hot.
• 38:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. You know what's funny? So I'm not, I'm not the biggest fan, but I thought it was, it was pretty funny. I saw a clip of Obama on one of the podcasts yesterday and he said that women used to grab his butt when he would go and do.
• 39:00
  Speaker C: That's not okay.
• 39:02
  Speaker B: I know it's not okay, but it's just, but he was kind of like, you know, I think he was saying that he, some of that attention he low key kind of like, you know,
• 39:09
  Speaker C: because at the time I feel like there's a bravery in the air and some hopefulness in the air. Some of us are, who on the left who are particularly wanting to see things change very rapidly and radically. I think that this feeling of hope is being, you know, like, like maybe we shouldn't like lean into it because look at what happened With Obama, you know, like, the hope change everything. Everybody went all in. And then the administration was obviously not perfect.
• 39:45
  Speaker B: The key is to be attentive through that process and to be willing to call our people into account, you know, if we feel that things are kind of sliding off the rails. And that's something that I think liberal, progressive, left people could have done a better job about.
• 39:59
  Speaker C: What I try to focus on in the positive of the Obama era and the positive of my drinking, to be honest, was when Obama got elected, I did run through Westwood Boulevard with a glass of champagne barefoot.
• 40:18
  Speaker B: I would have loved to see that. I wish we could have hung out during that time. I was. Yeah, I could have used a friend.
• 40:23
  Speaker C: I had some interesting friends during college in 2008. But, like, I think the hope is there. I think we. But yeah, we just need to. We need to tread lightly and carry a big stick.
• 40:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, you're so funny. By the way. Just running barefoot down. You said Westwood with the glass, champ.
• 40:41
  Speaker C: Westwood Boulevard. Westwood. And what was Westwood and Gailey or something like that? Just right in the heart. Right in the heart of the. The village. Just right in front of the hospital.
• 40:53
  Speaker B: Well, you don't do anything half assed.
• 40:55
  Speaker C: Oh, yes, I do.
• 40:58
  Speaker A: Sa.