Latest / The Sense and Senseless Podcast / EP: 65 We’re All Brainwashed (And It Doesn’t Matter Which Party You Support)
Transcript
- Jason: the same shit we were doing before we went to church. So bryan: Snorting lines off of hooker's ass, man. Snortin' Jason: Yeah. bryan: lines. You ready? Jason: All right, roll it. bryan: Welcome back to the Sense and Senseless Podcast. I am Brian. Jason: I'm Jason. bryan: He is Jason. This is your first time joining us. Welcome to the family. We're just two guys talking about the world in a way everyone can actually understand. And tonight, we're diving into something that hits every single one of us. No matter which team you root for, we've all been brainwashed. From Santa Claus to the two party system, the Dunning Cougar effect. To lifelong programming that starts when we were kids. We're gonna unpack how the system keeps us fighting each other. While the same politicians stay in power, the debt explodes, inflation soars, quality of life tanks, and almost nothing actually gets better. We'll look at the data, the grass, and the long term patterns we ignore. Stick with us. This one's gonna make you think. Please like, share, follow, and subscribe. We appreciate every single one of you. Jason? Jason: What bryan: Gothing? Jason: w was I brainwashed about saying I don't exist? bryan: Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna point that out here in a second. Jason: Man, just mess me up, bryan: You gain thing? Jason: dude. Y you yeah, I guess. You just mess me up. bryan: All right, so let's talk about how we all brainwashed and how the the they them control all of us. And it Jason: That idea. bryan: and it doesn't matter what party you support at some point or even now you've been brainwashed. And they've been working on all of us forever. You have to be part of a team. Why is it considered being weird when you're a loner? Why did everyone always have to be part of a club or some group? Is it really because they are getting like minded people together? Is that why we all have to get together? I mean, if you was a loner in high school, people thought you were weird, you know, because you didn't think like other people. Jason: Well I can answer that real easy. It's a bryan: Go ahead. Jason: lot easier to control a group than it is to control individuals. bryan: And when you make that person that's singled out weird, no one Yeah, because Jason: Then you can really mess it up. Yeah. bryan: don't listen to him. He's a weird person. You know, look, he don't Jason: Yeah. bryan: even think like us, right? Jason: Man, if I could go back to high school, I would have done a lot of stuff different. I would have been I would have taken like mechanic class, welding class all them classes that we thought the all the dumb people took. I would have took those. bryan: I was the dumb person 'cause I had to take Welton. Okay. Jason: I'm just saying I wish I would have took more trade classes and things like that and went I wish I would have been more against the green instead of trying to fit in too. bryan: Well, if you don't think you've been brainwashed, I mean this let's just think of Santa Claus. All right. Now you wouldn't think of Santa Claus being a form of brainwashing, but do you remember what it was like to believe in Santa Claus? I mean, when you believe in Santa Claus, Christmas time was the best feeling in the fucking world, right? I I to this yeah, Jason: favorite time. bryan: to this day, I mean, right now I even feel it. To this day, no matter how old you are, you you still know what that feeled like. Christmas, Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: it was the best feeling in the world. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: It was all a fucking lie. You know? And when it was ripped away from Jason: Jase. bryan: you, it hurt like a motherfucker, didn't it? Didn't it? When you learned Santa was no longer was was not real, it fucking hurt. How's that? Jason: You know how I learned? I wasn't told. My mom and dad, I'll make this quick, we had a bathroom and a half. So we had a the main bathroom in the hallway, three bedroom house. Wasn't that huge. And then they had a half bath in their bedroom, in the master bedroom. So it just was a toilet and a sink and a closet and the hot water heater was in the closet and all that. So, anyways, I went in there to that was usually the poop bathroom, if I can share too much information. bryan: Yeah, gotcha. Jason: So you didn't stink up the main bathroom. So bryan: Yeah, under? Jason: you went into the other bathroom to to do number two in in their room. I seen something like blankets laying over top of something. I was like, what the heck? And it was December. And I just took my foot while I was sitting there taking a poop and I moved it over to the side. I was like, I don't know, 10, 11, something like that. My I had a brother six years younger than me. And It was a sentence spin. You remember the sit and spins? bryan: yeah. I'll I I'll play on my granddaughters now. Jason: Okay. Yeah, I d my big fat ass ain't gonna fit on one. So bryan: Ha ha ha. Jason: anyways, and I'm not good on stuff that goes in circles. I get real messed up and sick and all that. But anyways, so I seen that and I was like, Ooh, somebody's getting a sit and spin. So I thought at first maybe it it might be my brother. It could be my my mom's best friend's son that was my brother's age, 'cause they would they would hide Christmas presents at each other's houses so we couldn't find her own. So anyways, but They didn't know we were on the phone sitting there working the other person saying, Hey, you look at and I'll look. Come Christmas time, we opened Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. And then Santa came Christmas morning. So we did our full openings, the big openings on Christmas Eve. Went to bed. We got up in the morning and there's the sit and spin from Santa to my brother. So I thought I'd be a big, big smarty and go up to my mom. And dad and say, Hey, come here. I said, busted. And they're like, What? I said, I seen that sit and spin two weeks ago in y'all's bathroom. I said, Santa ain't real. And mom's mom's like, Well, guess what? Since you don't believe anymore, Santa ain't coming for you no more. And I'm like, Whoa, time out. That meant one less present. And that's how I found out Santa wasn't real. But bryan: Did that crush you though? That made Christmas Jason: It crushed me that I I made that that I f figured it out and then it screwed me out of a present. But yeah, it did take away from the Christmas thing. bryan: I was a lot younger 'cause my my siblings were just cruel. You know, I I mean they made sure I love my siblings. I do. And I w I gotta admit, I was a smart ass my whole I still a smart ass. So I I get I'm very aggravating person, but man, they yeah, everybody made sure I didn't have no fun in life. You know, made sure every day I knew I was a mistake and I and I yeah, I knew Santa Jason: Gosh. bryan: didn't exist earlier. I don't remember how old I was, but it was early and it crushed me. I mean, it crushed me when I learned that Santa didn't exist. But And I'm not comparing politics to Santa, but when people believe in something, even when it isn't true, they can get real emotional about it. That's why I'm saying this, you know? And even today, when you believe in something You have to be right. Everyone has to. I can't say this enough. Everybody always has to be right, no matter what. So if you believe something and it isn't true, just like Santa, and you're emotional about it, and now somebody's telling you you're wrong, you start doubling down on stupid. You know, because you can't be wrong. Now we talked about the Dunning Kruger effect many episodes ago. I don't remember when it was, but I want to touch out on it again. Just So everybody has this fresh in their mind. See, I love to question everything. Now I would Jason: I got in trouble as a kid for that crap, and my aunt still runs her mouth about me. You could never just do stuff because you were told to. I said, No shit, I was trying to learn. bryan: That's right. And I I would imagine everyone knows someone that just thinks they know everything. And people say they they they say the same thing about me. It's like, I don't think I know everything. My whole I learned in life that I don't need to know the specifics of every subject, but I want to understand the concept of just about everything I I learned, you know, I I learned. I I don't want to know exactly how you put all this together, but what's the concept of it? That's how how I learn, you know. But there are people that learn something and then no matter how much little they know about it, now they're the subject matter expert. You know, they know everything. There's a lot of people like that. And that's why you get the Dunning Kruger effect. And you can't no matter what you tell them, they'll never understand that they're just dumb. You know, they're so dumb that they believe exactly everything that they believe. They they cannot be wrong ever. And I think we have a lot of people in this world. And if you Jason: Right. You're never gonna learn if you think you know everything. And there's no bryan: Exactly. Jason: way you can know everything. bryan: Ever in life. Ever. And Jason: Yeah, I've got yeah, I can't yeah, if the more I talk, the more I'm gonna start dropping example of people I've I'm around or w yeah, so bryan: Yeah. Well we we we we all know someone like this. And it and if you don't know somebody like this, you are somebody like this. You know? So it may be you. And Jason: Nope, I don't. I admit I don't. And I and I'm always trying to learn. That's why I question everything because I'm trying to learn. People sometimes take that that I'm being defiant. I'm not being defiant. When when l when senior leadership, I'm a supervisor, so when manager, director, AVP, whoever brings something down, I ask questions. I'm not being defiant. You have to sell this to me so I can sell it to my guys. Does that make sense? bryan: No, I agree with that. Jason: And and if I don't understand what we're doing or where we're going at with this, how am I supposed to execute this? bryan: And and I agree with that too. But this can still be me and you. And this is why I said I question when I say I question everything, I even question how I think and why I think the way I think. I don't know why. It's just weird. Because you don't know what you don't know. Right? You know what I'm getting at? Yeah. Exactly. Well, when you the more Jason: I know, I know, but when you're questioning yourself like Brian, Brian, are you are you d was it okay to make that comment to that person? Yeah. bryan: The more I dig into shit, the more I realize that we've been programmed our whole lives. And and Jason: Yes. bryan: how did we get here? And we're going to talk about that tonight. So here's the first thing that we're going to show is how they trap our kids. Think about that. Jason: I totally agree with that. Get us when we're bryan: Yeah, I mean and they they control us. Jason: young, that's when we're sponges. bryan: That's what I'm saying. We we've all been brainwashed at some point in our life. Whether we like it or not, if you grew up in this system and probably even systems all over the world, you've been brainwashed. And this is what I've been thinking about lately. When we grew up, they would always tell us that the people in North Korea, the people in China, they they always get lied to. They don't know what's going on. You would hear that a lot growing up. I don't know if they still, you know, talk about that, but we'd hear that a lot. And then I'm realizing That's what they were doing to us. You know, our own government, our own people were doing that to us and and blaming it on, you know, saying other people were doing it to their people. How we don't really get a whole lot of news about the world when you really think about it. We don't. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: We've we so self-centered on ourselves that we don't really understand the rest of the world. We don't. Jason: Well, we got flagged. One of my shorts did for what it said. So I mean we do it w we get shut down over here too. It's not freedom. You think bryan: yeah. No. Jason: YouTube or or TikTok or anything like that that you could put any other than threatening to kill somebody or do bodily harm. And they allow that. That crap is on there all the time. How in the hell does that go on there? But I bring up some kind of Was Israel involved with nine one one? bryan: Can't have it. Jason: And they shut that down because it was in the title. I'm just asking a question. Were bryan: Yeah, you gotta use cold words. Jason: they? What was it? No, we can't have that. But they allow people to sit there and talk about doing bodily harm. You played multiple videos of black people saying that there needs to be a weekly day to to to do bodily harm to a white person. Okay, so they allow all that stuff to go on there. And and before anybody speaks again, I know I keep. Twisting it around, there's probably some on there about whites to blacks somewhere. Not saying there's not, or Asians to Hispanics or whatever, but anybody doing bodily harm to anybody is wrong. And they they allow that, but they don't allow you to speak against this. You think these platforms would allow you to put anything out there like that that doesn't antagonize bodily harm to anybody? And who it it's Free for you to agree with it or disagree with it. If you don't like it, you swipe it and you just go on. bryan: Well, they find that threatening. Jason: why they find it threatening because it's it's going bryan: It's Jason: against bryan: it's threatening their narrative, that's why. Jason: And that's where the brainwashing is. bryan: Exactly. And Jason: We can't have people making people think. bryan: And it keeps us against each other. And and we we're brainwashed to think we need a two-party system. And that both parties, depending on what side you're on or what side you support, are fighting for you and have your best interests in mind. You know, it's our team versus your team mentality. But yet, how much has gotten better in your lifetime? You know? I I started thinking about this while looking at Trump's latest poll numbers. Because I was just curious. So the latest approval of the war in Iran is roughly thirty-three percent, meaning two-thirds of the country disagree with this war, yet we're still at war. So there's that. And here's a graph of Trump's approval rating in his second term. Okay, so as you can see, it's never been above 50%. So we started at 47%, dropped down to 37%. So now we had 36%. Looks awful, right? Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: Never been above 47%. So I was like, okay. That's the first thing I looked at. So as you see, it never went above 50%. And it dropped since getting in office. Now, if you're on the left, you think that looks awful and it proves the point that Trump is a horrible president. If you're on Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: the right, you're yelling at me and and saying I'm cherry picking polls to make Trump look bad. You know, what about his first term? Okay, I get all that. Cause I'm questioning that shit too. And and so my next thought was not so much how Trump was doing in the polls. As a president is only there for four to eight years, right? My Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: next thought was what do the polls say about Congress overall approval? So using Gronk, I started down the rabbit hole of data and graphs that I'm going to go over with you. So first I grabbed the data from Trump's first term through now and laid it out with the approval rating of Congress overall in that same time span. All right. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: I Right. So as you can see, from twenty sixteen Trump was only at forty. He got up to maybe forty two percent. So he was never really high in the polls, but look at Congress. Congress never got over thirty percent in the same time span. Jason: And that's both Democrats and Republicans or just Republicans? bryan: That's that's both. Yeah, it's all of Congress. It's all of Congress. Never got above thirty percent approval rating in that same time span. Now Congress is there the whole time. Trump was only there for what six years so far at this time. So We put too much weight in in our president is you know, what I'm saying is 'cause when you look at that graph, that shows we don't support our politicians. You know, that that can't be right. Jason: Okay, the president has some power, but can we both agree and we and everybody needs to be educated and reminded that a majority of our power comes from the Senate and Congress? can we agree that? bryan: It definitely comes from that. Because they they they're there longer. Jason: Okay. So why do we have a president? Because you have to have a spokesperson for our country. When you got China, when you have Russia, when you have North Korea, when you have these countries that have a dictator that has full control, he Putin can't just come and sit in front of our Congress and Senate in one big room. So you have to have a single person to go deal with these countries. bryan: You Jason: That have a single person. bryan: have to have a sing yeah, you have to have a a leader. Jason: Yeah, you would never get anywhere with Putin or or Zing or or any of these people that are dictators if they had to come sit in front of our Congress and Senate to talk and discuss stuff. You have to have a representative of the United States to do this, which is our president. And our president is given certain power, but they don't have the amount of power everybody thinks. And it's funny when we when we listen to the Can we not say s Congress and Senate could shut down what Trump's doing over in Iran? bryan: yeah, they could. I mean, well that's why they have they ha yeah, they have power to do that. If they would ever get together and vote Jason: Okay, so bryan: on Jason: yeah, so they Trump's doing this and Trump's doing this. Congress and Senate have the ability to shut that shit down and they're not. They're letting him look like he's the one doing it, but they've got the ability to sh they they have to approve and disapprove this stuff. He can he can do what was that called again, the what the executive orders and things like that. He can do those, but what happens when the next president comes in? They just redo bryan: Yeah, he just gives rough. Jason: them again and it's I bryan: Well, let me ask you this. Looking at that graph, Jason: Okay. Yes. bryan: is it does it look like we support our politicians that Jason: No, I don't even. bryan: So how the fuck why the fuck do we vote a minute? Jason: Because that w we're given two idiots and we vote for the lesser of the two evil, most of us. bryan: Yeah. And but could it be also possible that they always fucking with our brains? What Jason: Yeah. bryan: watch I'm listen to this next video. Yeah. So there's no way that we're putting politicians in the office that we don't support. You know, they there's gotta be. I mean, we we went over Bernays before. We had a black guy, you know, explain them a couple weeks ago. And I I think we load it with propaganda in this country. You know, Jason: Yeah. bryan: and that's one of the reasons why we have politicians in there and we don't agree with them. Like you said, you know, they choose who put is put in front of us. So They them doesn't matter which one we put in, it's still they them's choice. We just have that illusion of choice again. So in my lifetime, I I can say that I don't remember anything that the government has made better or easier for me. I just don't. So then I decided to check, and now how has the the job approval of Congress been viewed by the US people since nineteen seventy four? Yeah, that now reason I chose that is because That's the year I was born. So in my lifetime, how good has Congress been? And as you can see, Congress only went above 50% approval rating once. And that was 9 11. So it took the Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: bombing of 9 11 to get Congress approval above 50%. And that only happened once. Jason: Yep. bryan: Majority of the time it's been below 30%. Right Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: now they had the near record low. Okay. So long term average, I would say they probably around 30 to 32% overall, over five decades. All right. The all time high was 84% in October of 2001, immediately after September 11th. That was the rally around the flag effect. You remember when all the flags were Jason: yeah. bryan: sold and everybody was fucking patriotic, which I want everybody to be patriotic, but don't make it a fucking fad or a trend. Just love your country. Jason: Yeah, why are you that when something bad happens? Why aren't we that when nothing bad's happening? bryan: The their they had a all time low of nine percent approval rating in November twenty thirteen during the federal government shutdown. And as a recent low of ten percent in April twenty twenty six. So I don't understand why and I can go over all the ups and downs, but we're not. How we have political people in office that none of us support when you look at the polling. But yet we fightin' over these fucking people. Think about that. We're fighting over people that we don't even like because someone's telling us they're right. All right, so now let's look at the president and the congressional approval rating since nineteen seventy four. I'm doing all this to open your eyes with with just data. You know, I'm not presenting my opinion. So the blue line below is Congress approval, and the red line above is the president. And we have all the presidents: Ford, Carter, Reagan, George W. Bush, Clinton, or George H.W. and George W. Then Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump. All right. So the highest was up during the Clinton administration. Well, Right after the Clinton administration, right into George Bush, between those two years. That was presidential and Congress. But for the most part, the president was always higher. And I assume that because we put more of our emphasis in the president, we don't really Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: put our emphasis in our Congress people. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: That's what I assume. But for the most part, the president's always been approved as being higher. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: And that's kind of a problem when I look at it because there's a tenure of a president. A president's only there four to eight years. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: And we're gonna go over a little bit later. How long these fucking Congress people been in. Jason: To heath. bryan: All right. So again, Congress only went up once above 50%, and that was because 9-11. And Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. bryan: George W. He was pretty good for a lot of things. But one of the things I loved about George W. was all his gaffs. And I don't know if this was a gaff or if he really meant to say it, but this is him talking about propaganda. So was he really just saying the quiet part out loud? All right. That that was from May Jason: He was he wa he's w one of them other presidents that just would shit would come out of his mouth. And you were like, I think he's telling the truth. Like he bryan: Yeah, I mean right there, yeah. Jason: told on himself, he told on them, but you're like, I think he he slipped up. It just came out. bryan: Yeah, he was that was from May twenty fourth, two thousand five, in case anybody's questioning it. It was a conversation in New York. So yeah, I was it a gaff? Did the did the truth slip? Either way, they use propaganda and they just repeat shit to get it stuck in our fucking heads. Jason: Yep. I mean, you showed that with news clips we're repeating the same phrases on different media platforms and or not platform but different news platforms and they keep telling us the same thing, the same thing, and it just it gets whether you're paying attention or not, it gets in your head. It's the whole point it's the whole thing that that I say the the you know, I work in the telecommunications industry. It's supposed to be against the law for a commercial's volume to be exceeding the volume of the regular showing that you're watching. It's supposed to be against the law. But how many times do you get up to go to the bathroom and go get something during a commercial break and that commercial's volume is jacked up? They know bryan: Yep. And Jason: that. They know you're using that to go get your drink or go to the bathroom or do this or do that. So They you don't have to watch that commercial. They just wanna get it in your ear. If they get it in your ear enough bryan: Well Jason: You might buy their product. bryan: a a catchy tune or even a song that you hate but Jason: Yes. bryan: has a like a a catchy beat will stay in your fucking head. Jason: it's a proven fact that producers pay rec or or record companies pay radio stations to play certain songs a ton of times 'cause you're like, gosh dang, I've heard this song like six times today. Can we not play something else? They're trying to get You don't wanna they're trying to get people to go out back then to buy C Ds and things like bryan: Right. Jason: that and singles. What do we say with with our with our videos? You pay the money, you'll get the views. bryan: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Jason: And that's what I'm getting at. They're they're trying to put this stuff we're not trying to brainwash nobody. We're trying to enlighten people to go out and do your own investigation. bryan: Yeah, and and some people are gonna s you know, still be arguing, okay, it w wasn't my party, my party didn't do this, my party didn't do that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, Jason: come on, they both do it. bryan: so yeah, I'm gonna show you that they all one and the same. So here is a graph of who controlled the House and the Senate during this period. So the blue, that's the Democrat, of course, red is Republican, and the purple's the divided Congress. So it just goes back and forth, back and forth. But nothing ever got fucking better. One time, nine eleven, people supported it. But it never got better. Jason: Now hold on, that's congressional and presidential approval again. bryan: Yeah. This is but if you look at the bottom, see the colors? Jason: the bottom. okay. bryan: That's who controlled the House and Senate. Jason: Now who's purple and who's blue? Okay. bryan: Purple, that that that's a mixture. Purple's a mixture. So if you got purple, that's Republican and Democrat mixture. That's who was controlling it. R yep. Red is Jason: Okay, red is Republican and blue is Democrat, right? bryan: Republican and blue is Democrat. So it kept switching hands, right? It didn't matter. The Jason: Okay. But it didn't matter. The graph didn't change. bryan: only time it changed was in two thousand one when it really went up. Everything Jason: Yeah. bryan: else stayed below. So who's at fault? You know, everyone says that their party is better than the other one, right? Jason: But it's not bryan: But no. Jason: The graph doesn't show that. bryan: That does not show that. And I and I can go through all the dates, but I'm not gonna bore you with that either. So let's see, the national debt went up to $39 trillion, right? Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: So I would assume that one party or the other had to cause this shit, right? Had to. It couldn't be my Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. bryan: party. Okay. So it the green line now is the national debt. And he's a Who president, so it it was slightly went up doing George W. And if you see when it gets to Obama, it goes up quite a bit. Trump a lot. Biden a lot. So that's Jason: And Trump some more. bryan: yeah, Trump some more. So that's both Republican and Democrat that just destroyed. Well, it actually started back in George W. But I mean, it really escalated during the Obama, Trump, Biden eras, right? I didn't make this up. That's what the numbers show. I can't tell you where this money went, but if I had to blame national debt on somebody, it's all of them. You know, but we're gonna fight about it. Why? Because they Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: want us to. Jason: Right. bryan: I mean since around two thousand eight or something, the he the debt just went just blew up. And I don't know why I didn't I didn't research all that. But I figured shit, okay. Let's see it. Now how about foreign spending? I was just curious about all this shit. So now you got this purple dotted line. That's your foreign spending. Now, one thing I do like, and I don't know what Biden did or what happened, but during the Biden in the Biden era, or this might have been like during the Trump and all, you'll see foreign spending just drop. You know, Jason: Wasn't that dose? bryan: it could have been. I don't remember exactly it what year this is, but it just has the Biden, Trump, and I'd have to do a little bit, and it might have been doge. But that is one promising thing that I did see was foreign spending. So I was happy to see that. And that's the reason I put that up there. It was not so much to beat anybody up, but that is one good thing to say, hey, look, we at least accomplished that. Now, before we move along any further on these graphs, I want to discuss our tenure in Congress since nineteen seventy four. Because this is the problem I see. So about 80 members, roughly 15% of Congress, have served 20 years or more in their current chamber. In the House, roughly 65 to 70 members, And in the Senate, roughly 12 to 15 members. The absolute longest serving people are people like Chuck Grassley, Hal Rogers, and Chris Smith all were around 45 years each in Congress. Most members serve much shorter periods. Average tenure is only about eight to nine years in the House and eleven years in the Senate. So that don't sound so bad, right? So they're only doing Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: on average eight to nine or eleven years. But here's the fucking kicker. The politicians that hold the power of the committees and control oversight are often the longer tenured and older politicians. These are the Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: ones that can help you raise your money for your campaign and actually hold the strings to the purse that your younger politicians need. This creates the dependency on the older tenured politicians and in reality gives them control over all the votes in the House and the Senate. Think about it. If you're a young man and you having to sit in the office all day long calling to try to get money, and this older guy comes in that's been in there for forty years and says, Hey, look, man, I I can get you the money you need for your your political aspirations, but you got to vote on this this way. They have control. Examples as of mid-2026, we have Chuck Grassley. He's the Senate Judiciary Chair, President Pro Temporal. He's 92 fucking years old with 45 plus years in the Senate. 92 fucking years old. Dick Durbin, 81 years old. Maxine Waters, 87, 88 years old. Didn't have an exact date. Rosa DeLaro, 82 years old. There's many other key chairs and ranking members that are in the 60s, 70s, and 80s with 15 to 40 years of his service. Now, House Speaker Mike Johnson, he's an outlier at 54 years old with around nine and a half years in the House. So out of all 535 voting members we have in the House or Congress and Senate, 37% have 10 plus years, 22 to 25% have 15 plus years. Jason: That's too much. bryan: 20 plus years at 12%, 7 to 8% have 25 plus years, and 3 to 4% have 30 plus years. Only six to eight percent are under forty years old. we have twenty-five to twenty-eight percent or between fifty and sixty. We have twenty-eight Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: to thirty-two between sixty and seventy, and we still have twenty to twenty-five percent of seventy plus fucking year old people in our fucking political house and senate. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: The median age is around 58 in the House and 65 in the Senate. Now, outside of Congress, studies of leaders in regular jobs find the peak leadership ability often occurs in the mid to late 50s. And it also finds, studies find that after roughly seven to ten years in the same high-level role, the risk of ideas becoming stagnant rises unless the person keeps learning and adapting. All right. Bottom line on all this, a small group of long-tenured old members holds the most of the formal power in Congress. Their experience helps them navigate the system effectively, but a heavily concentration of power among people who have been there for decades can slow down adaptation and reduce fresh perspectives. Yet we keep voting the same fucking people in over and over and over and expecting a fucking change. Jason: We don't get any damn buddy else. That's the problem. bryan: But nothing changes. You know what changes? We get poor and we get more frustrated. Jason: Yes. bryan: Cause our politicians aren't supporting us or doing right by us. Jason: No, no. bryan: And we fight each other over that. Jason: I know. bryan: Fucked up, huh? Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: So does inflation bother you? Does inflation make you poor? Who's responsible for Jason: Yeah. Because it means my dollar doesn't buy as much. bryan: And who's responsible for that? Let's see. Jason: Our government. bryan: Red or blue? Jason: It's both. bryan: All right, so now I I got so much stuff in here. I got Cyan is the foreign international affairs spending dollars. And Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: You'll see which one's inflation. The purple. See that purple dotted line? magenta, whatever you want to call it. That's inflation. Jason: Mm-hmm. Yeah. bryan: So again, go back. This one actually started way back in Reagan. If you look at Carter, it jumped Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: up. Reagan kind of flattened it a little bit, and it's just been a steady climb, a steady climb up until Trump. And I'm assuming that this one right here was probably COVID. That shot our inflation up this much. But even if you stayed Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: on the steady climb we were on, we wasn't gonna be very far off from where we're at. And again, it's multiple different fucking parties Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: that's been in charge and nothing's gotten better. Jason: It's that whole wrestling thing I talk about all the time where they try to make it look like that they're these are the bad guys, these are the bad guys. No, they're they're all they're all in on it. bryan: yeah, for for those of y'all listening, the top approval rating in the graph is 60% for the president. No president since 1974 reached 60% approval. They got mid-50s at best and it was short-lived. On average, I'd say for the president was in the mid-40s. So when we first looked at the president Trump and he was in the 40s and it's like, that looks like shit. All of them still stay within that. Jason: Yeah, we're not going back and looking at the full Monty, the full spectrum to see that nobody really had a good approval rating for years. bryan: No. Jason: So but and that's bad bryan: In Kong? Jason: when now we're grading on a curve isn't that what they call that grading on a curve. bryan: Yeah. They said Congress is Jason: Forty's the new eighty percent. bryan: That's it probably right. Cause it's so fucking low. It well, 50 Jason: Yeah. bryan: would be the new hundred. Yeah, so forty would be the new eighty. And Congress has only reached forty percent approval twice since 1974. Twice. 40%. We vote in these fucking 80 and 90 year old motherfuckers in every year. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: And we can't get above 40% approval. Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of this is probably because 50% of the country just hates who the fuck people's in there. But when you have a mixture, especially when we have a mixture in office, you would think that the approval rating from Congress, you know, would be a lot better. But it doesn't. Man. All right. So let's d do is this all making sense? Jason: Yes, it does. I hope it's opening everybody's eyes. Their bow parties are de blank. bryan: They are. Now the graph is going to get a little bit messy, but now I'm gonna go ahead and throw in government assistance. Now, this is everything. This is SNAP benefits, yeah, cash Jason: These look like a three year old colored here, Brian. bryan: assistance, housing assistance. I mean, this is everything, unemployment. the shit the series shows the long term rise from modest levels in the nineteen seventies, recession driven spikes. And of course, we had the spikes during COVID and shit. And Followed by a return to elevated but lower absolute levels in recent years. So right now, in the mid-2020s, we were roughly at 1.6 to 1.3 $1.8 trillion range in government assistance. But you'll see this big spike during COVID and it dropped back down. And then during the Obama administration, this orange line, you see it went down, but they would they had some reforms that they'd done, which dropped it down, but COVID. brought it right back up. So we basically back on track to where we were before it went down in Obama. Again, nobody is really doing anything better to say, hey, look, we need to get people off of government assistance. You know. And then one last graph, and I think this one matters the most. This one's about qua w quality of life. Quality of life's at the top now. And you'll see quality of life tried to stay above 80% most of the time. And I don't care if you're a Trump supporter or not, but if you look at it started dropping after Obama and then it took a deep dive after Trump, Biden took a huge dive, and we're still diving under Trump. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: Our quality of life, people are thinking that our quality of life sucks. Now, I I don't know how how else to put this. Y'all can blame that on fucking Trump. You can, you know, you can blame it on Biden for either team you're looking at. In my opinion, this is all of us. We're not doing what's right by us. We we're Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. bryan: trying to fight each other over people we don't know, over policies Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: we can't control, because they them they don't even write the fucking policies. The people that pay them are writing the fucking policies that's being put in place to control us. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: And we're so stupid, we just steadily fight each other because we think we're right, because of the the Dunning Kruger effect. We learn a little bit of something and we think we're smart. And just because I'm saying all this and I'm looking at these graphs, that don't mean I'm smart. I just put something in the fucking AI to pull up some shit that I was interested in. You Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: know? And we're we're gonna probably fight about it. Not me and you, but other people, because they go, you just you just cherry I didn't cherry pick shit. And that It just leaves us here fighting each other daily over who's right and wrong. You know, who is the communists? Who are the Nazis? Who won? Exactly. Jason: Can we not discuss how to make it better? Why do we gotta Yeah, we're never gonna fix this shit if we can't come together. Like I tell my guys at work, stop coming to me with problems, come to me with solutions. bryan: Yeah, something. Jason: Say, I ran into this today, but I think if we do it this, if we do this, we can fix it. So people in the comment, man, I want to hear comments. I do. I want to hear what other people got to say, but come come with, hey, I think if we do this, we can fix this. Let's let's talk about solutions instead of pointing fingers. It's both sides. I'm guilty we're guilty of voting people in that mess shit up. bryan: And yeah. I mean we're all putting our our all our hope in these politicians we don't approve Jason: Yes. bryan: of and we're fighting over And Jason: Thinking that when they get in there they're gonna do something and they don't. They just get bought off bryan: They don't do anything. Jason: and go go on with the flow. bryan: And and maybe we're all insane. I like this next video. It's it's kinda corny but funny and I don't know. It's I like it. Check this out. It's true, huh? Jason: It is. bryan: There's a lot of people that you talk to that no matter what you say, no matter what you put in front of them, you'll never change their mind. Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: And this this is not your fault. This this is by design. It's the system at work. Once you wake up to this and you can start seeing through the bullshit and start asking questions. You know, who does this benefit? Who does this hurt? How does this make my life better? How does this help our country, our community? Don't get lost in the hype and being part of the team. And I want to leave you all with a couple short clips that brings all this together. And the first one will explain how they're using everything to control your mind. Pretty simple, huh? Jason: Yep. bryan: Everything that's in your life is trying to fucking make you think something different. Everything's Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: gonna brainwashing. And the scary thing is they try to hide shit in the shit that you believe in. And this guy's gonna break it down real quick for you. Wrap it up in a gift. Every day. Yeah, every day we we Jason: Bow on it. Yep. Put a bow on it. bryan: we're getting that gift. And we have to decide what we're gonna look at. So in in closing, I want everybody to remember we're we're better together. Try talking to people and understanding what they believe instead of just tossing around slurs because you don't agree with them. We all take in information differently. And as we talked about in this episode, your mind is getting fucked with. All day. Just remember that your mind is being fucked with all day. Everything you're listening to. And it can be Jason: Mm-hmm. bryan: exhausting trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong. But through discussions, we will at least understand one another, even if we don't understand what's going on around us. That makes sense. You got anything? Jason: Just stay educated and do your own research, people. bryan: Did you learn anything? Jason: yeah. bryan: All right. Thanks everyone. Jason: I learned exactly what you wanted me to 'cause you brainwashed me. bryan: Thank you. Well, I was I wanted to make sure that the graphs came across because I think data like that just shows you. Hey, look, I I don't care if you Yeah, you're screwed. You gotta quit arguing Jason: Both sides are screwing us. Yeah. bryan: with each other about politics, you know, and we need to get together and make it right for us. So that's what I was trying show. All right. Well, thanks everyone Jason: Yep. Nope. It was good. bryan: for joining us. I greatly appreciate you spending your time with us. This is the Sense and Sensors Podcast. I'm Brian. Jason: I'm Jason. Peace. bryan: He's Jason. Deuces.