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Carmen Talk - Making a Presidential Decision and Why It Matters to Say Something · All About The Joy

• 0:04
  Carmen Lezeth: Hey, welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:05
  Carmen Lezeth: This is Carmen Lisette, your host, and this is actually an episode of Carmen Talk, which is one of the offshoots of All About the Joy.
• 0:12
  Carmen Lezeth: If you're new to listening to our podcast, let me just give you a little background.
• 0:16
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy is an umbrella for three different entities that we play around with and we have the live stream.
• 0:24
  Carmen Lezeth: That's kind of like the neighborhood hangout on Thursday nights at 6pm Pacific and 9pm Eastern, and it is kind of like a Zoom call with a whole bunch of friends in the neighborhood, but they happen to be all over the world and we have a regular crew, but we invite people all the time.
• 0:40
  Carmen Lezeth: You're also able to chime in in the chat.
• 0:42
  Carmen Lezeth: So I hope you'll check us out and join at our next live stream Hanging Out in the Neighborhood episode.
• 0:48
  Carmen Lezeth: We'd love to have you, it'd be great.
• 0:50
  Carmen Lezeth: The other thing that I do is called the Private Lounge, and the Private Lounge is a place in which I can hang out with individuals who have something to add to the world.
• 0:58
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, they tell us a little bit about who they are and what they do, and it's more of an interview one-on-one with me, maybe also with one of our co-hosts or guests and we just have a little conversation, and that is a little bit more intimate.
• 1:13
  Carmen Lezeth: The other thing that I do, which is what I'm doing right now, it's called Carmen Talk, and this is just kind of like an offshoot of TED Talks.
• 1:18
  Carmen Lezeth: This is where I get to share just a part of me, something I'm thinking about, something that I think is important enough, and I had really tried to keep it under 20 minutes.
• 1:28
  Carmen Lezeth: So those are the three things that are under the umbrella of all about the joy.
• 1:31
  Carmen Lezeth: So I appreciate those of you who've been so supportive and are here, and for you new folk, thank you for stopping by and we hope to see you again.
• 1:37
  Carmen Lezeth: So let me start with this.
• 1:40
  Carmen Lezeth: We had a great conversation on Thursday on the live stream hanging out in the neighborhood.
• 1:43
  Carmen Lezeth: It was Cynthia and it was Rick and myself, and we had a conversation about customer service.
• 1:48
  Carmen Lezeth: They actually, in the work that they do, handle and deal with customer service on a much more regular basis, because they actually are people who provide customer service skills to people who they interact with and call and stuff like that.
• 2:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I was coming to it from a place of being the consumer and having to deal with customer service, so it's an interesting conversation.
• 2:08
  Carmen Lezeth: Please check it out.
• 2:09
  Carmen Lezeth: It's on YouTube.
• 2:10
  Carmen Lezeth: I will also post the audio here on the podcast so you can check that out when you have a moment.
• 2:14
  Carmen Lezeth: I will have more to say about customer service and hospitality in the future, especially when I kind of compare it to all the travel I've done, and most recently to Aruba.
• 2:24
  Carmen Lezeth: But I'm going to wait on that.
• 2:25
  Carmen Lezeth: But that will be an interesting conversation that I hope to have in the neighborhood and also on the podcast.
• 2:32
  Carmen Lezeth: Today, what I want to talk about has more to do with something that I think is truly, truly important and something that I think has been misconstrued.
• 2:42
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't know how else to say that, but we all know this quote that's been attributed I would say incorrectly to Edmund Burke.
• 2:49
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't think he actually said it and there's evidence to say that he never said this quote.
• 2:53
  Carmen Lezeth: But the quote is the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
• 3:00
  Carmen Lezeth: I know this is not the first time any of you have heard this quote.
• 3:04
  Carmen Lezeth: You've heard different variations of it, but basically it's about the idea that when something is happening that we should intervene in, we choose not to, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter whether it's a valid reason or not.
• 3:17
  Carmen Lezeth: If you choose not to get involved in something that's what this quote is about and when good people with good hearts and good meaning and good intellect and good possibility don't jump in the fray when something is wrong, when something is bad, when something could be fixed, then that's why evil triumphs all the time.
• 3:36
  Carmen Lezeth: I know that there is also I think it's Proverbs 24.
• 3:42
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, if you're a Bible person or a Christian person, you probably know more than I do.
• 3:46
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, I went to 12 years of Catholic school, but I always say I'm a recovering Catholic.
• 3:50
  Carmen Lezeth: I do believe in God, but I don't really adhere to religion in and of itself.
• 3:56
  Carmen Lezeth: But with all that said, I think in Proverbs 24, there's something akin to this as well.
• 4:04
  Carmen Lezeth: My point is this On our show All About the Joy, we don't talk about politics and religion, and I want people to understand why.
• 4:10
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not because I am not an avid, avid political person and it's not because I don't have opinions about religion.
• 4:17
  Carmen Lezeth: I absolutely do, as I've already kind of stated.
• 4:20
  Carmen Lezeth: But the reason why I make the choice is, I think there are a lot of places where, especially on the interwebs, especially on all social media, where people have these conversations, I don't think they're healthy conversations.
• 4:32
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't think they're helpful conversations.
• 4:34
  Carmen Lezeth: I think a lot of people spew a lot of stuff and I want all about the joy to be a different place and look at.
• 4:40
  Carmen Lezeth: I understand that controversy is what brings people and an audience to have conversations, but I don't want to fall into that.
• 4:47
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't want to have arguments and hatred and violence and being mean to each other.
• 4:52
  Carmen Lezeth: I want All About the Joy to be a place where we can just come and chill out and hang and talk about whatever, and maybe have differences in whatever it is we're talking about, but it not be so painful that you leave there angry.
• 5:03
  Carmen Lezeth: So that's why I don't talk about religion and that's why I don't talk about politics in the live stream or even.
• 5:09
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, when I'm doing interviews, unless that person wants to talk about that.
• 5:12
  Carmen Lezeth: But usually when I'm interviewing people in the private lounge, we want to know about them personally, you know.
• 5:16
  Carmen Lezeth: So, unless they want to talk about politics or religion, I really don't touch base on that.
• 5:20
  Carmen Lezeth: So why am I bringing this up?
• 5:21
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm bringing this up because I also believe, back to the quote that I have a purpose in making sure that people understand something that I believe in and that when I think something is wrong, when I think something is not at its best, when I think there is something quote unquote evil happening, I'm not going to just stand by and allow that to fester and allow that to be something that I don't get involved in because I'm afraid or I don't want to be bothered or I don't want to have the hard conversations.
• 5:50
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, I've spoken to quite a few people recently who are staying out of the political fray and I reminded them.
• 5:56
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, I understand that you don't want to talk about politics, but this is the moment where we're supposed to be doing this.
• 6:02
  Carmen Lezeth: This is the moment where we're supposed to be doing this, and you staying out of the fray, or you deciding not to vote or you deciding that's allowing bad things to happen, when you know very well we need all boots on the ground.
• 6:18
  Carmen Lezeth: We need everyone out there trying to deal with this current situation here in the United States, where we are about to possibly reelect Donald Trump into office, and that is look.
• 6:24
  Carmen Lezeth: I know I have a lot of people who come on the live stream and listen to my podcast, who are Trump supporters?
• 6:29
  Carmen Lezeth: I am not by any means, not even a little tiny bit, a Trump supporter, so I don't think anyone is confused by that.
• 6:37
  Carmen Lezeth: By the way, I think everybody knows that.
• 6:39
  Carmen Lezeth: But why would I say evil, right?
• 6:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Why would I even dare to say that?
• 6:44
  Carmen Lezeth: That's kind of a really strong thing to say about former president or a politician, right?
• 6:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Well, here's the thing.
• 6:51
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not angry with Trump supporters.
• 6:53
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not even disappointed anymore in Trump supporters.
• 6:57
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm more upset with the fact that all of us don't get in the fray and try, from a place of respect, from a place of sympathy and compassion, to understand what's happened here.
• 7:08
  Carmen Lezeth: Because of the live stream and because of some of the podcast audience that I have, I know that quite a few of them, if they are involved in politics at all, are Trump supporters.
• 7:19
  Carmen Lezeth: And here's what I want to say about Donald Trump.
• 7:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Mr Trump, I was angry at people who voted for him and the more time that went on, I started disengaging from people who voted for Donald Trump, and part of it was because I just couldn't handle watching what was going to happen to our country.
• 7:39
  Carmen Lezeth: And, of course, what happened is exactly what everyone thought would happen is this huge political divide.
• 7:46
  Carmen Lezeth: And, in my point of view and from where I sit, what Donald Trump has done has been so absolutely heart-wrenching to me, because he has taken the pain and the suffering and the anger of a certain group of people who are having a real come to Jesus moment and I am talking about white people right now and he's taken that anger and he has used it to manipulate the situation, and what I mean by that is there is a change happening in our country that is involving us understanding, as Americans of the United States, as United States citizens, understanding that a lot of our history, a lot of things that we once knew, have been kind of flipped on their head.
• 8:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, we are now understanding things a little bit differently, and a little bit.
• 8:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, look at, black folk have known for a long time, and Indigenous folk for real have known for a long time what the real deal is.
• 8:46
  Carmen Lezeth: But for a lot of us, what's happening is we're starting to understand things like Tulsa, rosewood, understanding and none of us knew that before, right, understanding that our history was not fully told, not fully told.
• 9:07
  Carmen Lezeth: We're starting to grapple with the idea that we made a lot of mistakes, understanding who we are as a people, and what's happening is white people are being told that they are racist, over and over and over and over again, and people of color are saying you are racist, you are racist, you are racist, and that racism is flourishing in this country.
• 9:25
  Carmen Lezeth: We need to stop it.
• 9:25
  Carmen Lezeth: And so all of these things are this really amazing mix of such heartache for our country and Trump who, by the way, used to be a Democrat right?
• 9:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Nothing against people evolving, but Donald Trump didn't evolve.
• 9:40
  Carmen Lezeth: What Donald Trump did and this is we're talking about way back, okay, way back years and years and years ago is Donald Trump did what a lot of people do.
• 9:48
  Carmen Lezeth: He found the easiest avenue to jump into to get what he wants right.
• 9:53
  Carmen Lezeth: That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but that's what he did.
• 9:56
  Carmen Lezeth: And it was easier to tap into the anger, especially after Barack Obama was in office, the first African-American president, which I think also threw white people in for a mix right.
• 10:09
  Carmen Lezeth: It just kind of no matter how supportive you were of Barack Obama.
• 10:12
  Carmen Lezeth: That was a visual change.
• 10:15
  Carmen Lezeth: That was a concrete change that this country had never dealt with before and for people who were already feeling like they were being pushed aside.
• 10:23
  Carmen Lezeth: After being at the top of the hill, I think what happened is the pain and suffering.
• 10:29
  Carmen Lezeth: You were looking for somebody who understood you, who could understand that you had nothing to do, from your point of view, with racism and institutional racism and hatred or whatever, even though that's all you keep hearing over and over and over again.
• 10:43
  Carmen Lezeth: And then having Barack Obama be in office and having to hear all the rhetoric that went along with that, that was different than when white people were in office.
• 10:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, I think that kind of became this I don't know how to explain it, but like the perfect storm.
• 10:57
  Carmen Lezeth: And then here comes Donald Trump, who was a person at that time who imaged himself as a person of a lot of wealth and power with his name and influence, and he was able to tap into that Tea Party backlash, republican Party anger, hatred, thingamajiggy.
• 11:15
  Carmen Lezeth: That was happening, you know.
• 11:17
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, look, I'm no big time scholar or anything, and there are historians and academics who can talk about this in a much more eloquent way.
• 11:23
  Carmen Lezeth: But what I'm telling you is is that I understand why people voted for Trump.
• 11:27
  Carmen Lezeth: I can honestly say I don't know why you did it the second time, and I surely don't understand why you're going to do it a third time, but I am telling you that Donald Trump is not a good person.
• 11:38
  Carmen Lezeth: He's not a good person and the fact that, like I saw a meme yesterday that talked about all these things why you should like Donald Trump and like the first two, is like there's been no war.
• 11:52
  Carmen Lezeth: And you know, no, no, there was no war under Donald Trump.
• 11:56
  Carmen Lezeth: And I forget what the next one was, but all of them were false.
• 11:59
  Carmen Lezeth: All of them were false.
• 12:00
  Carmen Lezeth: And you know the no war thing.
• 12:03
  Carmen Lezeth: That's such an interesting thing.
• 12:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I believe that people are so much smarter, but we've become so lazy.
• 12:09
  Carmen Lezeth: There is such nuance to what happens in this world, especially when it comes to war, and let me tell you, the biggest problem with war in this country is that men keep running the world.
• 12:21
  Carmen Lezeth: That's really, I think, one of the biggest problems with this country, but I don't want to digress.
• 12:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Donald Trump was absolutely involved.
• 12:29
  Carmen Lezeth: I think it was 65 or 67 American troops, military persons, died under Donald Trump.
• 12:37
  Carmen Lezeth: He was also involved in the whole ISIS situation, like there was war going on and the Middle East was not fine under Donald Trump.
• 12:45
  Carmen Lezeth: Are you out of your mind.
• 12:46
  Carmen Lezeth: You just need to Google and not go to your regular places of reading, which are places that keep bringing you towards what you want to read and see.
• 12:57
  Carmen Lezeth: The only president I think in you know, right now, times like in recent history that can actually claim having no war is, I think, jimmy Carter, and I'm not even 100% sure, but I think I read that somewhere.
• 13:13
  Carmen Lezeth: But here's the thing.
• 13:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Let's just go with the premise that that's the reason why you want to vote for Trump, because under Trump, you believe that there was no war and the Middle East was perfectly fine.
• 13:24
  Carmen Lezeth: What about everything else I would like you to think about?
• 13:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Not the things that happen in the world as we live in them, but the character of the person, the character of the person that you're trying to vote for to run the biggest and most important quote, unquote company in our country, right, the United States, and the fact that so many people keep trying to twist themselves in knots to explain away stuff.
• 13:54
  Carmen Lezeth: There's these great TikToks, and you know all these things, where reporters from Comedy Central, no less, will go up and ask people who are Trump supporters.
• 14:03
  Carmen Lezeth: You know these questions and they'll say isn't it horrible that Biden, you know, stumbled over his words and did A, b, c and D and he actually said blah, blah, blah.
• 14:13
  Carmen Lezeth: And the person who's a Trump supporter would be like, yes, absolutely, it's horrible.
• 14:16
  Carmen Lezeth: That's why Biden can't be president.
• 14:17
  Carmen Lezeth: Blah, blah, blah.
• 14:18
  Carmen Lezeth: And then when the reporter retracts and said you know what, I'm sorry, that wasn't Biden, it was Donald Trump Then they actually find a reason to support Donald Trump and not use the same basis of argument as to why that action should be a reason why they should not be president of the United States.
• 14:35
  Carmen Lezeth: There are so many of those everywhere, I don't even need to pin one out.
• 14:39
  Carmen Lezeth: Comedy Central continuously keeps doing that, so haven't other reporters and look at this whole thing.
• 14:45
  Carmen Lezeth: If you're going after Biden's age, okay, that is an absolute argument that we can have as a country about the aging population in our government and how that may or may not be a good thing for us as a country.
• 15:00
  Carmen Lezeth: We can have that conversation, but here's my problem with that argument about Biden being so old.
• 15:05
  Carmen Lezeth: Biden is, I think, three or four years older than Donald Trump.
• 15:10
  Carmen Lezeth: That's it Three or four years older than Donald Trump.
• 15:13
  Carmen Lezeth: That's a really bad, silly, stupid argument and that feels like that's all you have.
• 15:18
  Carmen Lezeth: That's all you have, and when I say you, I mean people who are supporting Trump.
• 15:22
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not good enough.
• 15:24
  Carmen Lezeth: You need to do better.
• 15:25
  Carmen Lezeth: And if Donald Trump was 50 years old and Biden was 80, okay, great, that would be a solid argument, I guess.
• 15:34
  Carmen Lezeth: But stop with the ageism, because these two candidates are old, they're older, they're older people, and what I'll say is the age thing doesn't bother me as much and is not even a valid argument for either one of them, because I think I would like to vote for younger people.
• 15:49
  Carmen Lezeth: So I think that's just a wash.
• 15:51
  Carmen Lezeth: They're the same age and it's just not a good, coherent argument.
• 15:58
  Carmen Lezeth: If you're going to vote for Donald Trump, then you actually have to pull the policies that you believe in and you actually have to do the investigative work, because what you're listening to over and over and over again are these you know little lines, these little tiny memes, these little momentary things that organizations are telling you.
• 16:21
  Carmen Lezeth: I want you to really think about in your heart.
• 16:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Have you really done the work to understand what it is that so many people are troubled by with Donald Trump?
• 16:30
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not even Democrats like me.
• 16:31
  Carmen Lezeth: There are so many people are troubled by with Donald Trump.
• 16:31
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not even Democrats like me.
• 16:32
  Carmen Lezeth: There are so many people that worked for him that are against him.
• 16:36
  Carmen Lezeth: There are so many Republicans who worked for him who are against him.
• 16:41
  Carmen Lezeth: I want you to understand something you voting for Donald Trump the first and second time and, I hope to God, not the third time is not your fault.
• 16:49
  Carmen Lezeth: He is a master manipulator of the truth and there is no shame in understanding that.
• 16:58
  Carmen Lezeth: He hoodwinked so many people to become president of the United States, especially when there was an underlying hatred of Hillary Clinton, who would have been the first woman president right, which again is kind of like that first black president thing.
• 17:12
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, we're a great country, but it really takes us a long time to figure out the right thing.
• 17:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I've been saying this since I was a kid, like I love my country but, my goodness, it takes us forever to figure out what the right thing is.
• 17:25
  Carmen Lezeth: But when we do the right thing, then we double down and we're solid.
• 17:28
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just so hard.
• 17:30
  Carmen Lezeth: It's so hard and I feel like there's a little bit of light.
• 17:35
  Carmen Lezeth: That's happening Like the January 6th situation is really a great example of how he has been able to change this into these people being hostages, into these people like just taking a stroll, as they're breaking into all of these buildings.
• 17:53
  Carmen Lezeth: And here's the thing.
• 17:54
  Carmen Lezeth: I know that the people who are in any way, shape or form listening to this podcast.
• 18:00
  Carmen Lezeth: I know that you know that that was wrong.
• 18:03
  Carmen Lezeth: I know that you know it, but you keep trying to justify it.
• 18:07
  Carmen Lezeth: Because, listen, we're human.
• 18:09
  Carmen Lezeth: When we are human, we don't want to be wrong.
• 18:13
  Carmen Lezeth: We want to be right, especially when our whole heart, our full chest, is all up in it.
• 18:18
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, we want so badly not to have done the wrong thing.
• 18:22
  Carmen Lezeth: That's such a human, human thing to be and I get it.
• 18:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I totally get it.
• 18:28
  Carmen Lezeth: But voting for Donald Trump again is going to destroy everything that we believe in and it's going to take us that much longer, it's going to be that much harder to move forward.
• 18:38
  Carmen Lezeth: And I am not going to sit here and tout the Biden storyline, but I will tell you that the job numbers just came out.
• 18:47
  Carmen Lezeth: The economy is doing well.
• 18:49
  Carmen Lezeth: You need to get out of the bubble.
• 18:51
  Carmen Lezeth: The economy is doing the best it's been able to do in so long.
• 18:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Am I going to attribute that all to Biden?
• 18:57
  Carmen Lezeth: No, because when we understand how the economy works, you can't just pinpoint one person, one aspect, one thing and give them all the credit.
• 19:06
  Carmen Lezeth: You can't do that, whether your party is in office or not.
• 19:11
  Carmen Lezeth: It is so nuanced, it is so intricate.
• 19:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Does the president of the United States have a lot of power when it comes to the economy?
• 19:18
  Carmen Lezeth: Of course, but then if you're going to be so black and white about it, then you have to go back and look at what Donald Trump did when he was in office and how the economy suffered so hard.
• 19:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Now a lot of you will turn around and be like, well, no, that was COVID, that was da-da-da, and you'll get into all of these conversations.
• 19:34
  Carmen Lezeth: But either you're going to look at it as a nuanced thing right the economy and look at all the aspects and not give anyone one credit, or if you're gonna give people credit or blame people, then they've gotta take all of it.
• 19:48
  Carmen Lezeth: So then you've got to say Biden has done an amazing job all these years he's been in office and give him all the credit for this economy right now, and that Trump was horrible and you've got to give it all to him because he messed up and COVID was an issue.
• 20:00
  Carmen Lezeth: You can't parse those things.
• 20:02
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not how it works and I know that y'all know that.
• 20:06
  Carmen Lezeth: I know you do, but this is what happens when somebody is so fixated on power and money and manipulating people.
• 20:16
  Carmen Lezeth: He's supposedly a billionaire.
• 20:19
  Carmen Lezeth: Explain to me why he was selling Bibles.
• 20:22
  Carmen Lezeth: He is selling things because he needs to, because he needs money in order to turn around and pay for all of these things that are happening that were his doing.
• 20:32
  Carmen Lezeth: There is no way on the planet that people that I respect and think highly of do not understand that.
• 20:40
  Carmen Lezeth: Even if you want to take away some of the indictments that are against him, there's no way all of those have been fabricated or come on, you are smarter than that.
• 20:52
  Carmen Lezeth: You are better people than that.
• 20:55
  Carmen Lezeth: Americans, at the end of the day, are good and decent, honest people, and we don't even have to go back that far right To think about some of the things.
• 21:04
  Carmen Lezeth: He said that right away.
• 21:06
  Carmen Lezeth: I know most people don't agree with.
• 21:08
  Carmen Lezeth: My whole point in All About the Joy is to remind people that even when things are bad, there's a way in which to move through them and to move forward.
• 21:18
  Carmen Lezeth: In this hostile environment where our politics and our country is so fractured, it saddens me that we can't even have conversations on policy because we're about to fight for just keeping the Constitution in place, you know, just to keep our country on track to be a democracy Not about being a Democrat, but being a democracy.
• 21:44
  Carmen Lezeth: There's never been a president who has said they just wanted to be a dictator just for one day.
• 21:50
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, that's not a funny joke, that is not something.
• 21:53
  Carmen Lezeth: If you had ever heard that from the mouths of any other president, we would be up in arms.
• 21:59
  Carmen Lezeth: We would be so scared.
• 22:01
  Carmen Lezeth: If Barack Obama had ever said that, can you imagine?
• 22:03
  Carmen Lezeth: Or if Bill Clinton ever said it, or if Ronald Reagan had ever said it.
• 22:09
  Carmen Lezeth: We don't do dictators.
• 22:10
  Carmen Lezeth: We don't do this craziness where we're going to lock up people we don't agree with.
• 22:16
  Carmen Lezeth: We don't do that in this country because we don't have kings and queens, right.
• 22:21
  Carmen Lezeth: That's why we left.
• 22:22
  Carmen Lezeth: That's why we left Europe and when I say we, I mean white people, but I'm saying it as an American right.
• 22:30
  Carmen Lezeth: The reason why we came to this country is because we no longer want.
• 22:34
  Carmen Lezeth: We wanted a better way to govern and help each other and be there for each other.
• 22:40
  Carmen Lezeth: And what Donald Trump is saying over and over and over again and he's not even kidding around, I know he's acting like he's kidding around, but at some point, when somebody has that much power and they're saying they want to put their you know enemies or people that don't believe what they believe in jail, that's a problem.
• 22:57
  Carmen Lezeth: That's a problem.
• 22:59
  Carmen Lezeth: And it's a problem because that's not how our country works.
• 23:01
  Carmen Lezeth: It's we, the people.
• 23:03
  Carmen Lezeth: It's we, the people who decide.
• 23:05
  Carmen Lezeth: We, all of us, all of us and I'm going to get back to the race thing for a moment.
• 23:09
  Carmen Lezeth: I know this is a tough time for white people, white men in particular, but white women, you right up there doing your thing, and you know a lot of my friends get mad at me, both white and of color.
• 23:20
  Carmen Lezeth: They get mad at me because they think I'm being too compassionate to this situation.
• 23:24
  Carmen Lezeth: But I'll be honest with you.
• 23:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I wouldn't want to be a white person in this country right now, because it is a tough, tough time.
• 23:40
  Carmen Lezeth: It is hard to keep hearing over and over again, I'm sure, that you're racist, or that what you're doing is inappropriate, or that institutional racism, this and DEI this and woke that, and what white people are doing, instead of trying to understand that situation, is they're.
• 23:50
  Carmen Lezeth: So I know white people are having a tough time right now.
• 23:58
  Carmen Lezeth: But what I want to offer is this when somebody tells me and it's happened more than once that I did something wrong Most recently I called someone by the wrong pronoun and I did it over and over and over again in a conversation we were having and the person turned around and said to me you know what, carmen, that's not the appropriate way to talk about that one individual.
• 24:19
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't automatically turn around and get defensive and start talking about all the people I know who are gay or trans or whatever it is.
• 24:28
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't get defensive about it.
• 24:30
  Carmen Lezeth: I turned around and I said you know what?
• 24:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm so sorry I misspoke.
• 24:33
  Carmen Lezeth: I apologize.
• 24:34
  Carmen Lezeth: What is the correct thing to say?
• 24:35
  Carmen Lezeth: And I'll give you another example when I was having dinner with a whole bunch of friends, they all happened to be white women.
• 24:43
  Carmen Lezeth: We were going around the table talking about things and I said one of the things I was grateful for was that I went to this dinner and on this trip with all of these lovely white people.
• 24:54
  Carmen Lezeth: And you know, I didn't know how it was going to work out.
• 24:56
  Carmen Lezeth: And I realized as I said that that all the people at the table were a little bit thrown by me saying that and their first reaction was I didn't even see color.
• 25:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't see color.
• 25:05
  Carmen Lezeth: And look, I get that reaction all the time.
• 25:07
  Carmen Lezeth: You have to see color, because I do.
• 25:10
  Carmen Lezeth: I see color because when I walk in a room, it's hard not to not be the only black person in a room.
• 25:16
  Carmen Lezeth: I went to the University of Vermont and when I walked into my biology class, there were 300 white people in the room, and unless you're a white person who has walked into an auditorium full of only black people, if you've walked into your classroom in high school and it was only black people, then it's probably not the same.
• 25:32
  Carmen Lezeth: But at least you'd have some relative understanding that, if you're doing that every day in your life, that sometimes you're not sure how people are going to take things right.
• 25:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I've been with white people a lot of group of white people many times, and it's not gone so well.
• 25:44
  Carmen Lezeth: So what I'm trying to say is that we're all working through all of this, and being woke is a weird thing that people keep trying to use as a definition as to how stupid we're being.
• 25:58
  Carmen Lezeth: But all being woke means is being someone who is awake and aware of everyone around them and trying to be as compassionate as possible.
• 26:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Why wouldn't you want to be a good and decent person and treat people the way that you would want to be treated?
• 26:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Right?
• 26:14
  Carmen Lezeth: This whole thing with DEI right, diversity, equity and inclusiveness I mean, that's going through the ringer now and it shocks me because I know you all understand that that was put in place as a good thing to try to equal out all the bad things we've done in history, all the things that we're learning about.
• 26:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Let me just get back to this and kind of put a cover on all of this conversation, because I know I'm going off on tangents, but it all comes down to the same thing I want our country to get back to a place that I'm scared we've lost, and part of it has to do with our politics and the way in which we have conversations.
• 26:55
  Carmen Lezeth: And the fact is and I say this with my heart and my soul and on my mother's grave, which people know I don't normally say that.
• 27:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I said it the other day on the live stream we are in a really terrible place because people who are voting for Trump can't really dig down deep and see him for who he really is, and it scares me.
• 27:18
  Carmen Lezeth: He is not a good and decent human being and he's manipulating so many of our good citizens, good people.
• 27:24
  Carmen Lezeth: The only thing necessary for triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, and I don't want to be one of those people.
• 27:32
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't want to not share my part and my piece.
• 27:37
  Carmen Lezeth: Look, I'm done hating Trump supporters.
• 27:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I was really like when he was in office, I was just, you know, I stopped talking to a lot of friends and I stopped talking to a lot of family who supported Trump and, luckily for me, so many of those people have figured it out.
• 27:51
  Carmen Lezeth: It doesn't mean that they're all Biden supporters.
• 27:54
  Carmen Lezeth: It doesn't mean they're all jumping up and down.
• 27:55
  Carmen Lezeth: And now you know, look, I've never been a left wing person.
• 27:59
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, I'm definitely a more conservative Democrat, but I'm a Democrat nonetheless.
• 28:03
  Carmen Lezeth: But I feel blessed and lucky that so many of my friends who were Trump supporters have found their way back.
• 28:09
  Carmen Lezeth: And I really want to emphasize that.
• 28:12
  Carmen Lezeth: I am not criticizing anyone.
• 28:15
  Carmen Lezeth: If anything, I'm opening the door and I'm saying I get it.
• 28:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I understand, I know why, but please, please, dig deep, dig deep, do your research.
• 28:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Do not go and look at only the things you always look at.
• 28:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Do not go and look at only the things you're used to seeing, because that algorithm keeps feeding you whatever it is you keep looking for.
• 28:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, think about it this way If you do a research and you're trying to buy a new bag and you look for a new bag online, then how long does that bag that you were looking at, or bags in general, keep popping up as ads.
• 28:49
  Carmen Lezeth: That is the same thing that happens when you go online to look and you do your Google search or you do your Bing search or you do your whatever search, if you keep searching and looking only for the same things that you have always gone to.
• 29:02
  Carmen Lezeth: So if you Google something about Trump and you only go to Fox News to look at it, you're going to continuously get only that information.
• 29:08
  Carmen Lezeth: You have to force yourself to go.
• 29:11
  Carmen Lezeth: Look at other media, right, I look at everything Reuters, the Associated Press.
• 29:15
  Carmen Lezeth: I look at the BBC, I look at CNN, msnbc, I look at Fox.
• 29:20
  Carmen Lezeth: I look at everything and I try to understand it all.
• 29:23
  Carmen Lezeth: And then I realize there are places that I don't need to look at anymore because they're not telling the truth.
• 29:28
  Carmen Lezeth: And the reason why they're not telling the truth is because I can go to places like Snopes I think it's S-N-O-P-E-S, but I don't know if it's Snoops or Snopes, but Snopes.
• 29:36
  Carmen Lezeth: But they do fact-checking, and so doesn't Reuters, and you can fact-check this stuff.
• 29:40
  Carmen Lezeth: And when I mean fact-checked, I don't mean just get a thumbs up or a thumbs down, I mean actually go in and read whatever article it is that you heard this and this and this about.
• 29:47
  Carmen Lezeth: If you have to twist yourself and not to excuse something that someone's done, check yourself.
• 29:52
  Carmen Lezeth: You're better than that and no one running this country should make you have to question their integrity, their character.
• 29:58
  Carmen Lezeth: It should be really easy and all we should care about is the policies that they're going to implement.
• 30:03
  Carmen Lezeth: But we can't do that right now.
• 30:04
  Carmen Lezeth: We can't even fight that right now, because if Donald Trump becomes president, we're going to go down a really horrible, horrible part of the United States and I don't want to do that.
• 30:17
  Carmen Lezeth: So please, I hope those people who listen to my podcast or come to the live stream hear me and don't get too upset.
• 30:25
  Carmen Lezeth: Our live stream will not be about this.
• 30:27
  Carmen Lezeth: This is just my little TED Talk, my little thing I do, and it lets you know who I am as a person, so you make whatever choices you need to make.
• 30:34
  Carmen Lezeth: But, with all that said, thank you again.
• 30:37
  Carmen Lezeth: I appreciate so much that people stop on by and check out All About the Joy, and please visit us next week on the live stream at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern.
• 30:47
  Carmen Lezeth: And, as always, remember it really is All About the Joy.
• 30:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks for stopping by.
• 30:53
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy.
• 30:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Be better and stay beautiful folks, have a sweet day.