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Musings and Prognostications · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: no Stradamus host Abraham.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm your predicting host Shane. But with more concern.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the things that people do and animals do, and sometimes
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the things that people have done and the fallout of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: those decisions that they have made. Yeah, and so if
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: you're joining us for the first time, this episode is
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: going to be kind of a different format, a different
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: way that we have talked about these in the past,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and I'll get into all of those things as we
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: sort of move into our topic. But while we're here,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I would just would like to say thank you so
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: much for joining us. We appreciate you being here. If
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: you like to support the show, if you end up
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: liking what you hear on this episode in this discussion today,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: head over to our Patreon, pick up some merch leave
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: us a rating and review, and tell a friend. I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: hope that we're reaching as many people as we can
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: to at least have our you know, the conversation happening
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: among a lot of people, and I think that what
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about will reflect a lot of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: our listeners as well, because you know, they listen to
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: us and that's why they're here. So anyway, be here.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for being here today. We are going
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about our concerns, some using
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: some prognostications that are related to the recent election in
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  Speaker 2: the United States and some of the Really, at this
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: point in time, it's only been like three weeks and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: it's already chaos. Yeah, at the time that you hear this,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: it'll be about a month, but it is already utter chaos.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: What is happening and alarming more than anything else. But
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: we'll talk a little bit about those things as we
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: get into it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think we're going to just sort of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: muse a bit on what happened and then try and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: speculate into the future. This will not be the most
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: ever green of topics we've ever done, but it might
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: be interesting to revisit in a couple of years and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: maybe even like six months and see how on or
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: off the mark we were. But in the meantime, thank
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you for being here. I'd like to wish you a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: happy Cabernet franc Day.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: It is also extraordinary work team Recognition Day.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: It is International Cheetah Day.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Don't play poker with them. It's a National cookie Day.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Let's get a copy off card. It is National Dice Day,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: but not with a cheetah. You know you check those
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: dice before you play.
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  Speaker 2: It's a National Package Protection Day, so make sure you
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: get your cups.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Sure, yep. It is National Sock Day, so wear some socks.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Wear some socks. It's also Santa's List Day, so check
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and make sure you're on the nice list.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It is Brown Shoes Day, apparently with your socks.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also Women Wednesday.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Oh I agree. Yeah. It is World Wildlife Conservation Day.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: That's very important.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Love that. Love that. It's also Cookie Cutter Week, which
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: is fun.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: National hand Washing Awareness Week, sure.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, It's National Influenza Vaccination Week.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: That's very important. I got my flu shot. Did you
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: get your flu shot?
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  Speaker 2: I did not, but I think I'm planning on it.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: But I have also never had the flum Well cool, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's wild I'm gonna get my shot. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I also think I think I've ever had the flu,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but it's only in the last six or seven years
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: or more that I've been regularly getting my flu shot.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I just really wasn't seeking it out, and now I am.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good idea. I like that.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah absolutely. I sometimes go in there and I see
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: all their vaccines. I'm like, can you just give me
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: all of them? Can have all of that, like.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: All of those things.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know why they won't give me a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: shingles vaccine. Well I do know why, but I want
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: them to give me a shingles vaccine.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I need it, but I will
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: consider it.
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  Speaker 1: But moving on. It is National Older Driver Safety Awareness Week.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, that could be a whole topic unto itself.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes it could. It's also National Car Donation Month,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: so if you have a car that you're not using,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: give it away.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. It's a National pair Month. It's fun, oh tasty.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: It's a National tie month. Don't like that, never wear
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  Speaker 2: a tie.
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  Speaker 1: It is actually Carols by Candlelight Day. I found out.
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  Speaker 2: Ooh, I like that. That's pretty. And it is also Root,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Vegetables and Exotic Fruits Month.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And apparently if you're in New York, it is the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Rockefeller Center of Christmas Tree Lighting Day. So if you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: want to go catch that or something, then go do that.
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  Speaker 2: I did that last year. It was very crowded. I
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't there for the lighting, but we did see that
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  Speaker 2: and it was very very crowded down in that area,
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  Speaker 2: like beyond measure.
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  Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, all right, we don't actually spend
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  Speaker 1: full length discussions going over holidays, but you know, it's
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  Speaker 1: December fourth, and we're gonna go over these holidays for today,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and we'll do the same thing again next week. If
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  Speaker 1: you're joining us for the first time, welcome. As I said,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: this is going to be sort of an odd one
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: in the canon of our traditional topics that we tend
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: to take on. We tend not to just sort of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: muse off the cuff when we're discussing. Hopefully you enjoy
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: what you hear today and find some value in this discussion.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But it's going to be a lot less structured, a
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: lot more sort of dialogue heavy, and yes, you know,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: we'll just see how it goes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So a big thing happened in the US a
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: few weeks ago, and that was our four year presidential election.
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  Speaker 2: And leading up to this election, there was a lot
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: of kerfuffle and a lot of confusion about who was
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: going to be even nominated or and it's kind of
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: how in the last I would say, the last several elections,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: it has been kind of this wild circus instead of
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: it being about politics, it's been very I guess maybe
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: a word I would look for would be like, almost
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: like reality TV.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It's a spectacle versus it's a spectacle.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think that that appeals to a
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: certain crowd or a certain group of people. But when
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  Speaker 2: you're talking about politics and decisions that impact millions and
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: millions of lives, billions of lives, even I do have
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  Speaker 2: concerns with it being entertainment. Sure, but we had our
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  Speaker 2: election and Donald Trump won the election as far as
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  Speaker 2: we can tell right now.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so for people who were or were not
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: paying attention, I got to imagine, if you're here listening
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to us, you're someone who who likes to learn things,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and you're generally paying attention for the most part, that
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: would be my suspicion. So we can probably rule out
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: that there's any Trump supporters that are really I mean, like,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: for the Trump supporters, I think learning is not a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: thing that they value or seek out. And so listening
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to a podcast that basically just talks about that seems
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: pretty out of character for that particular audience. But just
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: in case you are here, we're going to be criticizing.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of what happened, and I think
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: it's just to take a critical eye at things. So
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I guess I hope you enjoin it, get out of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it what you're going to get out of it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I would say is when when
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  Speaker 2: everything goes wrong, I mean, my emotional reaction was that
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  Speaker 2: this was really really bad and that I felt a
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  Speaker 2: similar feeling that I did in twenty sixteen when he
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  Speaker 2: was elected. And this is not to say that I
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  Speaker 2: want to be really clear about this. I don't think
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  Speaker 2: this is because I, a Democrat, didn't win. I have
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: voted in election since two thousand and four. I was
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  Speaker 2: not particularly thrilled that George W. Bush got re elected. However,
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  Speaker 2: I felt a sense of defeat in that election. I
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  Speaker 2: did not feel a sense of doom in that election.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that there is a major difference between
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  Speaker 2: somebody who is a politician getting elected from like maybe
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  Speaker 2: a differing or different value set, which you know, I
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  Speaker 2: would argue that George W. Bush not not close to
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  Speaker 2: my value set, But I don't think that I felt
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  Speaker 2: any sort of like doom or like immense kind of
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  Speaker 2: malaise related to elections, except for every time Donald Trump
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  Speaker 2: has been elected. Now I don't, and I want to
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  Speaker 2: be clear, it's not a personal like bias situation either,
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  Speaker 2: Like it comes from my understanding of his policies and
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  Speaker 2: what he has done historically that makes this election feel
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  Speaker 2: a little bit worse, I think.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so just for people who are listening who maybe
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: are not as in the knowicularly those outside of the
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  Speaker 1: United States. Essentially, we had we had a pretty historic
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  Speaker 1: election based on the candidates and the characteristics of those candidates.
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  Speaker 1: One of them had already been the president, had been
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  Speaker 1: impeached twice, had been convicted of multiple felonies. Thirty seven
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  Speaker 1: thirty seven felonies had been found less I heard of
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  Speaker 1: thirty four increase.
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  Speaker 2: One is too many, Okay, I would like to point
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  Speaker 2: out one is too many for the president, but yes,
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  Speaker 2: that it might be thirty four, but it is over
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  Speaker 2: thirty and that is an absurd number of felonies for
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  Speaker 2: a president.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, definitely. So Nope, he was found also criminally
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  Speaker 1: responsible for sexual assaults. So anyway, we've never had a
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  Speaker 1: president who ticked all of those boxes before, and as
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: you said in twenty sixteen, there was definitely a lot
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: of fear going into what that presidency could look like,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and it ended up being just so much worse than
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I feared that it could be. And anyway, then the
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  Speaker 1: other candidate in this election was a non white woman,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and the United States has never had a woman before.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: We've only ever had one president who had who was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of color before, and so it would have been pretty
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: historical either way. We either would have a convicted felon
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  Speaker 1: who has been impeached twice, or we'd have a woman
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  Speaker 1: of color and other of those would have been the
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  Speaker 1: first time that that had happened in the United States history.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: And our country has a problem with women broadly speaking. Yes,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And so a woman on the ticket was already in
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  Speaker 1: my thought when she when she joined, when she became
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  Speaker 1: the nominee, it was ambitious, let's put it that way.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I thought. I was, like, you know, I think sexism
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: is just it's still too real here, It's still too
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: embedded in the judgments of people who are the voters.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: We've never had a female president, and I think it
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: only takes one. I think as soon as we have
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  Speaker 1: one the doors will be open, but we haven't had
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  Speaker 1: one yet, and it's going to be very hard to
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: cross that threshold. I don't know what it's going to take.
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  Speaker 1: And a lot of people, you know, I think, said
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: in the United States that they were not particularly enthusiastic
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: about Harris as a candidate, and a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: also said they weren't particularly enthusiastic about Trump as a candidate.
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  Speaker 1: But that I mean, there's going to be probably virtually
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  Speaker 1: every election, there's going to be people who are not
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: very enthusiastic. This felt like at a very high level.
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  Speaker 1: It's just like everyone's like, I don't like either of them.
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  Speaker 1: I felt the same thing in twenty sixteen. I felt
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: pretty much the same thing in twenty twenty. Yeah, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it really hasn't been since twenty twelve the last time
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  Speaker 1: that I think that the majority of people were at
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: least felt positively toward their candidate, if not just I'm
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: voting in opposition to the other candidate, if that makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, that's how this election felt. This election
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: didn't feel that we were voting for somebody, we were
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: voting against the other person. And that in itself, when
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: you would weigh the two candidates, and I say two candidates,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: we are effectively a two party system, despite the fact
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: that other people can run and do that. But the
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: way that our system has built is that nobody has
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the critical thinking to be able to vote third party
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and make that and our voting system is just not
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: set up to support third party candidates in the way
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: that they should. So like we effectively are you either
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: have to vote Republican or Democrat, or your vote is
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: there's weird. It's just basically we're not ready for a
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: third party.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, mathematically there's really no way for it to happen. Right.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So, but when you way the two primary candidates that
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: were in this race, you had Donald Trump, who effectively
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: failed as a president previously, and you have Kamala Harris,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: who had experience to be president given that she was
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: also part of the administrator the current administration, I think
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: she would have been and arguably is more qualified on
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: so many levels. However, I think that the Democratic Party
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and the way they ran their campaign really dropped the ball.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: They did not get Kamala Harris in early enough to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: do any sort of real true campaigning to you really
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: make sure that her stances were clear, her policies were clear,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: and they let Joe Biden go too long as the
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: potential incumbent that was going to be up for a vote.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: And I think that they waited very very long to
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: make that happen, and unfortunately, I think that was something
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that was pretty detrimental to their campaign.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Well, and that actually, I think that brings us to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: essentially one of the main discussions for this we're sort
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of musing here about as people have been describing sort
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: of autopsy and the carcass of this most recent election,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: maybe the carcass of democracy itself is trying to understand
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: what happened. And I think that you are right, well,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of variables. There were a lot
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: of variables. Switching to a woman, I think was going
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to affect some people's votes, Switching as late as they
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: did was going to affect some people's votes. And so
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have tried to unpack where things
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: went wrong for the Democrats and went right for the Republicans.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: And because the essentially, just for some historical context, the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: presidential candidate for a Republican has not won the popular
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: vote since two thousand and four, when there was an
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: incumbent sitting president George W. Bush, and had not won
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the popular vote of the presidency before that since nineteen
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: eighty eight. So like is about a sixteen to twenty
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: year spread in instances where the Republicans get the popular vote.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: But you'll also notice we've had more Republican presidents than
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: presidents have won the popular vote because of the electoral college.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: And what happened in twenty sixteen was Donald Trump lost
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the popular vote but won the electoral college. In twenty twenty,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: he lost both the popular vote and the electoral college.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, he won both the popular vote
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and the electoral college, the first time Republican had done
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that in twenty years in the United States in the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: last however, many elections at his five I think that
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: was also a sort of pretty remarkable shift. And also,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: given again the divisive this of these candidates and the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: trends over time, that one caught me way off guard
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: because it would have been one thing if he had
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: once again lost a popular vote and won the electoral college.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I again would think, all right, so this country hasn't
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: drastically shifted on a lot of things here, but the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: system is still set up to more or less favor
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the small, loud voices and not the majority of the
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: will of the people. In this case, the people actually
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: chose their iron maid and climbed inside and said, slam
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the door as hard as you can.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think we are going to spend a
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: little bit time talking about some other things that happened.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: But I think we should probably take a quick ad
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: break so we can catch your breath and kind of
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: maybe if you're not familiar with this format, reorient to
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: like and prepare yourself to kind of understand what this
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: discussion is going to be. Normally we're very funny and
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: we're very charming, but today it might be it might
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: be a little bit darker. So let's take a quick
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: guy break and then we'll come back and we'll dive
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: into this a little bit more barn.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: All right, So back from the capitalists propaganda, just kidding,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: we're not that podcast. And so a lot of people
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: have made a lot out of the democrats strategy here
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: that they felt like Democrats didn't do a very good
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: job of reaching out to low income households, that they
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: weren't capitalizing on the issues. And I do think like sure,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: like probably there were factors in there that are relevant.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: The two different parties are just playing different games, you know.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: One of the criticism was like that one of them's
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: playing chess and the other one's playing Like the Republicans
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: are playing chess and the Democrats are playing I don't
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: know something else, Nana Banana.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Sure they weren't even playing a game, like they were
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: so out of it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, I feel like it's hard to say
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: that Republicans were playing chess. The Republicans are running around
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: basically blowing things up, and the Democrats were playing trying
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: to play the game. Like the Democrats are sitting down
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: trying to play the game. The Republicans are just like
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: setting a.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Board on the fuck at the table.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they were very different strategies. You know.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: One side is essentially just using fear mongering, lies and
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: hateful rhetoric, and the other side is using very traditional
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: political messaging that they have historically employed. And I feel
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: like part of the problem of the strategy on the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: right is the tactics they employ to disseminate misinformation. So
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think the correct strategy is to follow suit.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I think that that their strategy is part of the problem.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think when you consider the strategies that you
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: looked at during the election, I think that you had
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: somebody who was very poised and try to be very
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: political and play that part. And then you had somebody
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: who does not give any about the rules themselves, and
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: because of that elicits very strong emotional reactions out of
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: their followers. And so you have somebody who is using
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: fear and hate and othering and all the things, all
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: the hateful rhetoric that you just talked about. They're using
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: that as an emotional response rather than a critical thinking
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: and educational response to voting. And so you have somebody
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: who is getting voted into office because of fear, not
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: because of actual statistics, not because of actual information, not
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: because of actual like policy change. It's just, oh, you're
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: afraid of this, Oh you hate that your eggs are expensive.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Well I can fix that, and we'll talk about some
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: of the cabinet picks and stuff too that have come up.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: But that's how you get RFK in the Department of Health,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: because it's the same fear mongering about certain things to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: people who are not educated enough to understand or to
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: critically think about what is actually happening.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's as very easy to be hoodwinked by
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: that kind of fear mongering. It is. It is like
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: what you can see is that things are expensive, life
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: is challenging, there's multiple wars going on, and you have
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the current administration, and a lot of people have more
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: or less said like it's simple math, which, by the way,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: if you said that, you're just wrong, someone has misled
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: you start over here on the wrong path. We'll talk
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: more about that when we cover like the economy and
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a separate discussion, but as far as like why things
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: turn out the way they did, so anyway, what happened,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, COVID was the monkey wrench in all of this.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: There has been a general global shift to the right
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: in the wake of COVID, which is essentially people saying
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: things are broken, we promised to fix it, and the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: sitting administrations were more generally liberal now they had nothing
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to do, of course, with the fact that COVID happened.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: If it had been the opposite, and it was largely
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: conservative administrations around the world that had been sitting in
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that then it would very likely have shifted the other way.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, that's basically what we saw
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: in the United States. We had a very conservative president
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and when he oversaw the beginning of the pandemic disastrously,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I might add, and part of the reason that inflation
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: got out of control was the horrific response to this pandemic.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: And then so it swung the other direction, and pretty
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: much every country did that. It basically just swung whatever
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the direction away from the norm. It was basically just
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: people saying things aren't good, I don't like it. Changed direction.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: That was it. Sure, that was very common across multiple
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: countries and different parts of the world. Now, early on
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in the pandemic, around the end of that first year
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, well, actually right away what happened was
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: supply chains slowed down, and that made everything on the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: whole planet get more expensive because they could charge more
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to ship things because they had fewer shipments going out,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and so shipping containers and shipping became a premium that
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: could they could charge more money for him. People would
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: just have to pay it. That drove prices up on
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: every place that does any kind of international trade in
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the entire planet, which is most of the planet. So
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: although Donald Trump and Joe Biden are not president of Earth,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: they were people who were in power, and at the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: end of the year, the impact of the diminished supply
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: chains started to be really felt in terms of inflation
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: across the board for a lot of people in the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: whole planet. But that was a thing that happened. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the reason I mentioned this is because when they asked
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: people at the end sort of as we said, sort
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: of following the election, why they voted the way they did,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the economy came up over and over and over again
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: as the most important thing that people were attending to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: and making their decision. And that happens like the sitting
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: president is Joe Biden. They feel like things are too expensive,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: even though if you actually are economy is in a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: very very good shape right now. But they feel like
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: things are too expensive. Make a change was essentially the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: logic that they had.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Right, And I think people just have a fundamental misunderstanding
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: of the economy in general. Like we've talked about this before,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Like you just mentioned that a lot of times people
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: don't realize how slow the effects of policy change are.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Typically, Yeah, typically you're.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Talking about a couple years out from a major policy change,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: do you see the true effects of whatever that is?
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Because those policy changes affect multiple laws, multiple states, multiple
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: systems acting upon one another. There are things that happen
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: when like a major policy happens, or like as an example,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: when you have a change in a sitting president, it
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: takes some time to see the actual effects. So right
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: now the economy is better than it has been before,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and yes there are problems. That is not to say
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: that there aren't problems. Do people still need to be
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: paid a living wage? Yes, inflation is a problem. But
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: also let's take into account the fact that companies and
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: organizations are making record profits, which tells you that maybe
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: inflation is not the issue. Maybe the actual issue is
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: caps in capitalism. Going into that, but we'll talk you well,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: that's a different conversation. So again it's multiple parts and
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: multiple systems and multiple things acting upon one another. But
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: people will not argue that there was a boom in
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: the stock market the day after Donald Trump got elected.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: After the election, there was a big spike in stocks
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: in the stock market, but he's not the sitting president
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: when that happened. So there are unique circumstances that happened
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: in the world that also impact things like the stock
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: market and those different systems too. So we cannot argue
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: that one single variable i e. A sitting president is
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the thing that changes everything. It is a ripple effect
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: of things that happen and multiple policies, multiple government entities,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: changes within those government entities, the heads of those departments,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: and the decisions that they make inside of those entities.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Those are the things that have a larger impact on
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: the populace at large.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. The economy is wildly, wildly complex, and so
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: this starts to get into as we said, the number
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: one thing for most people was the economy, and also,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: as we said, it's actually not that people in general
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: are making a broad swing toward more conservativism. In this election,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: we saw in almost every place that there was some
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: kind of what is typically thought of as a Democrat
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: initiative on the ballot that passed, even in red states,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: states that typically vote conservatively for president and even often
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: for their congress people. They were passing increased minimum wage,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: that's a democratic initiative. They were passing rights to abortion,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: those are democratic initiatives. They were passing legalization of recreational cannabis.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: That's a democratic initiative that passed almost everywhere that it
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: was present, and the places that it didn't pass, it
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: was usually because they had a ludicrous debt stacked against them,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: as in Florida, where they changed the rule that it
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: has to win by a sixty percent majority. Florida had
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: on the ballot access to abortion. It got fifty seven
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: percent of the vote and lost fifty seven percent and lost.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: That is insane. That is not how voting is supposed
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to work.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Nope, And I do think that when we talk about
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: the context of this election, I think it is important
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: to understand what happened in Florida specifically, because I think
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: that if you're not paying attention and people don't really
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: pay attention to like specific states, life like this, I
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: think what ends up happening. And Florida is just such
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a strange place because Florida has historically been a or
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: described as a swing state, when arguably.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It's not not anymore.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: That's the nineties. So but here's the thing that happened
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: in Florida that I think is really important and part
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: of the reason why Florida became so conservative compared to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: what it used to be. So, when COVID happened and
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: all these lockdowns started to occur, Florida was an open state.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: They actively DeSantis, actively dismantled any laws that had protections
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: around wearing masks, dismantled any guidance or any CDC guidance
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: on anything they had to do with the virus.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Fyi de sand This was the is the governor of
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Florida for those who don't know.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this terrible, terrible, tiny, tiny little man. So part
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: of what ended up happening, though, was because Florida was
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: this basically open state free of COVID rules. What ended
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: up happening was people from blue states, especially New York,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: that did not like the lockdowns and did not like
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the guidance around all the restrictions that came around with COVID.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: A lot of folks moved down to Florida. A lot
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: of folks that had very conservative MAGA values moved down
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: to Florida and gradually turned the state very very red.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And when I talk about like people moving down, I'm
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: not talking about like a couple thousand. I'm talking about
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: over a million people moved to Florida explicitly because of
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: these rules. And these the guidance that like basically didn't
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: exist around COVID. So Florida got far more conservative in
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: their voting and their policies and their procedures because one
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: you had DeSantis, who was just a mini Trump, but
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: two you had a group of people who were not
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: happy with how COVID was handled in their states and
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: moved here because they thought that they should have the
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: freedom to do whatever they wanted. And lots of people
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: died in Florida. Lots of people died from COVID and
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: all that. A lot of people died and we don't
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: even know the numbers because they dismantled the reporting on this.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: They like DeSantis, partially dismantled the health department inside of
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Florida that would have allowed us to report accurately on
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: this stuff. As a matter of fact, he targeted people
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: and had a specific raid on somebody's house who was
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: helping report this that was a former employee of the
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: state of Florida. So there is this wild shift in
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: these states that you're seeing, And I think this is
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: kind of like what has partially happened with this election,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: is that states have become more siloed and started leaning
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: heavier to one side or the other. You don't have
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of people that are centrist inside these states anymore.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, I think as we'll get into some of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: our prognostications here in a moment thinking about the fact that,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: like you might hear like tens of thousands or hundreds
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of thousands of people dying and be like, why didn't
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that have more of an impact? And I think it's
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: just understanding, like there are so so many people, and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: essentially people in high up positions can make a calculated
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: decision to ensure that a lot of people die in
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a way that doesn't totally miss things up and so
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: they're like, well, we can afford to lose these people,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and it's sort of a numbers game, you know, it's
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: like what do we get out of that. I don't
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: think the Santis is actually thinking, well, we'll get more
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: people moving here, but I think that he was thinking
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I can get away with a lot of people dying
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and that will be okay, because like I'm going to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: sweep it under the rug and no one will even
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: really know how bad things are. And like if you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: don't know someone personally who has died of COVID, then
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: you essentially are insulated from the experience of the people
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: who do know people are who died of COVID, you know, right,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And so it's easy to believe in the sense that
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: things are not as bad as they are when you're
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: not the person in the thick of it, particularly when
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the people at the top are telling you that there's
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: no real thing going on, which is a really common
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: play for like people in countries around the world right
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: leaning governments are basically just tell the people whatever you
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: need to tell them to have them just not challenge
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you on anything, right exactly. Well, okay, we should probably
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: give the advertisers another chance to pick at your ear holes,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: so we'll do that, be right back. Uh all right,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So I want to I want to put a bow
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: on the whole sort of financial discussion here, because, as
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: we said, in most of the places where there were
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: are democratic policies those past, which means that people voted
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: for democratic policies and then voted at the same exact
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: time for a candidate who essentially promised to dismantle those
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: exact same policies. Right, They're like, I want minimum wage
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: and a president who does not believe in the minimum wage, right,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I want to protect abortion rights and put in a
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: president who will eliminate abortion rights. Right. Those were the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: choices that people made, and like that confuses me greatly.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: And again, I think it speaks to a lack of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: just understanding of what where people were at. I think
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the as far as they thought was things were cheaper
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: four years ago. Trump was president in twenty twenty four
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: years ago, I'm voting for Trump, I think is essentially
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: what it went down to. So this is, there's a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: couple of like things that people talked about here. One
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: is they're like, okay, so let's just say it was cheaper. Essentially,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: let's pretend that Donald Trump will actually lower prices. He won't,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: but let's pretend that he will. You're basically saying, like, Okay,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to vote for someone who's going to dismantle
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: all these policies that I care about. He is promised
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: to destroy the country, to eliminate democracy, to be a dictator,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and to essentially just burn down everything in this country.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Well at least they could to save a buck on
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: some eggs, you know, like that. Essentially, assuming that he
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: would do that, you're basically saying I would, I'm willing
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: to sacrifice everyone and everything so that my groceries are cheaper.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Now again, I understand that like it became impossible for
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: some people to live on the amount of increase they
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: saw in groceries. Things went up by as much as
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: twenty five percent in some areas where there are monthly
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: budget for groceries and went from one hundred dollars to
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five dollars. And for some people
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: that crossed the line into unaffordable. And I don't want
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to trivialize the experience of people who were really struggled
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: under inflation. And again, I think you're putting a lot
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: on the line to put trust in this person who
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: says like both that the Democrats are the problem and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: that they can fix it. When that's that seems like
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a huge gamble when you like already know the things
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: that he's capable of and what he's planning to do. Right.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: You brought up a great point like having that logic
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: being able to hold those two ideas is really difficult
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: for us to understand. But I do think that there
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: were multiple voters in this place that you know, there
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: are different voter profiles that I think there are. There
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: are the folks that are struggling day to day that
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: you know, when you've got a situation like this where
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: you've got somebody as a soothsayer essentially, who comes out
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: and starts kind of telling you that they can ameliorate
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: all of your issues through a sweeping policy change, and
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: they never will because they don't actually care about that.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It's very easy to go this is what's happening to
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: me right now, and this person is telling me that
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: they can help me, Like I need an answer, I
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: need relief. I am in a dire state, and this
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: person is telling me that they can help me. I
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: believe them. And because I believe them and I trust
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: in them and I don't have any other options, I've
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: got to believe this person is willing to help me.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: So you've got those folks that are desperate and willing
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: to vote. But then you have and because I've really
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: struggled with this idea of like how could anybody vote
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: this way or do this? And you've got people that
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: will vote and think that like that's I mean not,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: let me rephrase this. There are people that that is
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: their value. Their value is absolutely to eliminate abortion. Their
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: value is absolutely to make sure that child labor is
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: a thing that can happen. There are people that value
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: the idea of removing women's right to vote. I mean,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: you're seeing. And the thing is, and I think it's
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: really important to point this out, is none of this
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: is happening in secret. So this is not But the
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: problem is there's so much information and there's so much
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: misinformation and disinformation and so little education around this stuff.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: And that's not to say that Trump voters are uneducated.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I want to be really clear about that. I think
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: that that's an easy talking point to diminish people's autonomy
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: and go like, oh, well, they just don't they don't know.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: But we do know that like some of the lowest
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: education ranked states do tend to vote read. We do
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: know that based on statistical analyzes. Again, that's not to
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: say that Trump voters are not educated. The point is
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: is that every voter is going to vote based on
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: immediate need and value sets. And that is what has happened,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: and that is what has happened here, and that is
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: what has happened in so many other elections. And it's
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: very I think it's very difficult for me to understand
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: that value set. I cannot understand conservative value sets. I
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: simply can't. I can hear the argument right, like I
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: can understand the argument that some people will make, but
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I can't myself understand having the value of making abortions
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: more difficult, or like criminalizing cannabis, or I can't understand
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: those when the data that are in front of us
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: and the information that we have in front of us
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: tell us that there's a better way to do what
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: we're doing right now.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think, you know, we obviously are pretty
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: left leaning people, but I would say, more than anything,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: my allegiance is to science and my enemy is anti science, right,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: And it just like the Democrats have done a lot
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: where that are not scientific and have been and have
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: had some issues with being a haven for like conspiratorial,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: non scientific thinking, but that has changed particularly recently, and
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I do think there are still plenty of problems over there.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that the Democrats are perfect. I
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: don't think that they have like the best overall policies
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: all all the way around, but like they are more
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: on the pro science side of things, and what has
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: become the Republican. Well, the Republican Party has become is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: so anti science, anti education, anti expertise, like that's almost
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: their bread and butter anymore. Yeah, don't believe the experts,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: believe us. Don't believe the person who spent forty years
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: of their career becoming an expert of this particular field.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Believe me the guy who's going to benefit from selling
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: you the snake oil, like the guy with brain worms,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the guy with brain worms. I only have your best
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: interest in mind, not that scientist over there who only
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: thinks about data and numbers and evidence. Blah blah blah.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, so anyway, I don't know why I even
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: went down that rabbit hole.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Actually, But no, that's a good point, and again I
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: agree with you, Like my allegiance is to what works
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and what benefits people, right, Like, it's really going back
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: to the science and really taking care of one another
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: in that pro social aspect of it. But to your
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: point about the conservative viewpoints not leaning on expertise, a
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: perfect example of this right now, and we're watching this
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: unfold is every single every single cabinet pick that has
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: been announced, every single one of them is the opposite
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: of expertise. It is truly the I mean, and I'm
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: not saying that from the perspective of going I dislike
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: these people. It is actually it is actually the opposite
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: of this. You've got RFK who's going to be responsible
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: for health and well being. This guy is an anti
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: vaxxer and a cancer truther. Like, he has no and
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: he has actually caused deaths. This is not something. He
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: has gone to places and he has caused deaths through
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: anti vax rhetoric. You've got doctor Oz who's going to
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: be in charge of Medicaid, A billionaire who's in charge
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: of a social program who he has no fundamental understanding.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Twenty five percent of government funding goes in through CMS
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: to help pay for people to access medical care that
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: they need. This guy does not want people to access
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: He's basically said, if you're uninsured, you deserve you deserve
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: whatever illness you get.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Like, he is a grossly incompetent person for this role.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Oh yes.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Linda McMahon. Linda McMahon in charge of the Department of Education,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: a person who does not have any experience in education
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: and has spent her entire career working inside and around
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: the WWE.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, uh, you're exactly right. Yeah, it's not even
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: just that they're not experts at those positions. They're literally
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: anti expert of those positions. He had originally appointed Matt
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Gates to attorney General, someone who has like multiple allegations
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and charges and like fella any charges essentially leveled at him,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: putting as the attorney general. I mean I've been sort
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: of liking in this too, Like putting a jewel thief
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: in charge of the security at a jewelry store he.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Had the Department of Treasury.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, putting a fox in charge of the safety of
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: hens in the hen house, or much more closely because
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of who Matt Gates is, putting a pedophile in charge
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of like the welfare of kids at a daycare. Like,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that's what that choice was. It wasn't even just like
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: someone who's not good at law. It is someone who's
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: like actively working against the law. That's characteristic of all
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: of them.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to be clear, there's a difference between being grossly incompetent,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: like Linda McMahon is incompetent to run that role. Yeah,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: RFK is maliciously incompetent, like like that's the other side
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: of this. There are some folks that just don't know it,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: and they're probably perfectly fine people. Maybe I don't know.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to speak to their personal character. But
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: when you start talking about these department, these people that
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: are going to be responsible for making these huge decisions,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: You've got a lot of people who are not just
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: grossly incompetent and lack the experience to do these things,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: it is also that they are maliciously against what those
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: departments do. You've got I mean, like the Department of
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Government Efficiency. Like we can unpack that for a second.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: First of all, you've got two people running one department
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: about efficiency, so it's our they're already off to a
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: ridiculous start. Second, you've got Elon Musk, who is arguably
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: the least competent for any government role because the amount
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: of times his his just I mean, let me, let
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: me take a step back, because I'm starting to get frustrated,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: and I want to be I want to be like,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I want to be precise in what I'm saying here.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I think that when you have these departments that are
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: incredibly complex, with large systems in place, who that require
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: decisions that are educated decisions that are database decisions that
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: are supportive of the constituents, that are supportive of the
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: nation and the people at large. You cannot have people
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: coming in with these gross far leaning biases that they
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: are actively there's no more dog whistles here. They are
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: actively telling you they are going to dismantle these things
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: that help millions of people.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll get to essentially sort of the prognosticating here,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: because mostly what they want to do is cut regulations.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's more than that, but that's one of them.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And obviously Trump's cabinet picks, he's just stacking them with
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: people who are loyal to him, So it doesn't matter
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: what they know or don't know, or how incompetent they
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: are as far as he's concerned. It only matters whether
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: they're going to do as he tells them to do,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: which is absolutely not how a government can or should work.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Literally the recipe for corruption, Like that's how you get
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: corruption right anyway. You know a lot of people, I know,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: just again sort of putting a bow in the why
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: people voted the way they did, a lot of people
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: looked at Trump's rhetoric and said, like, you know, he
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: says all of that, but I don't really believe him.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hold on, so you're actively voting for someone
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: you already don't believe that, you think that they're lying
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: to you, and that's your pick, Like, yeah, again, why
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: And so let's I think we're sort of on the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: edge of getting into the prognostications here, because, as we've said,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: essentially what he's done is fill the top government positions
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: with people who are incompetent at best at best. You know,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I remember in twenty sixteen he was saying, drain the swamp,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, first of all, swamps are beautiful,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: amazing ecosystems, but let's pretend that they're these gross, horrible
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: places like you're alluding to. I'm like, what you replaced
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: it with is a septic tank. So like, I'll take
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the swamp any day over living in aceptic tank. Right, So,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: his cabinet pics have been grossly incompetent at best, or
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: actively against the departments that they are supposed to oversee
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and specifically advocating for more or less tearing them down,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: like the Republicans have basically been trying to eliminate the
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Department of Education for a while like it's one of
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the first ones they want to see. Go let me
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: let that sink in. They want to eliminate the Department
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: of Education gone. And the thing is like everyone says, oh, well,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: he won't really do that, and like then don't why
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: would you even vote for him? But let's like, here's
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the thing is, they're right now dismantling all the guardrails
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: that would prevent that from happening right now, like the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: he's not even the president yet, and they've basically set
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: up the bowling pins that are what remains of the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: skeleton of our government and preparing to knock them all down.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of people have pointed to I mean, essentially,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: this is you know, he says promises, made promises, cap
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: so essentially like we we know what's coming. Like he's
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: he's already told that's what he's going to do. He
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: said he's going to be a dictator. He said he's
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: going to make it so we don't have to vote anymore.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: He's basically like said, he's already thinking he's going to
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: run for another term. And again people are like, well
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: he can't do that. I'm like, where do you think
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: law is applying here, Like he has flouted the law
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: time and time again. He's a convicted felon. He stole
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: class like boxes and boxes of classified documents from the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: White House and wouldn't return them. Like rules don't apply
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: to him, They never have, they never will. So I'm like,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and right now, what rules did apply? He is currently
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: destroying the foundation so that they won't exist anymore. So like,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: he's kind of told us what he's going to do,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: and he's already more or less set up the infrastructure
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: to do it. And so let's talk about what the
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: outcomes of those things are likely to be.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Do you want to do that? After an ad break?
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Real quick?
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Yes? I do?
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Who, So what does the future hold now? We do
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: not have any sort of crystal balls, and even if
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: we did, even if we did, we couldn't tell because
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: this is just an unprecedented situation, right Like, we are
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: in a space that is just unheard of, and that
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: is kind of the scary thing. And I think it's
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: important that we don't. I think that we can get
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: pretty emotional about this, but I think it's important to
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: move forward in this without the fear mongering part of this. Right,
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: like to be able to kind of temper our concern
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: and just kind of lay out what we think is
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: going to happen. Yeah, and just from like a rational standpoint,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: And I think that consistently what happens in anti science
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: spaces is a lot of harm is done.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Typically.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: The biggest concern that I have in particular has to
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: do with medicine and medical care. Like, I think that
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: that is like one of my largest concerns. And I
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: have a large concern with that because the two people
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: that are voted that he's trying to put in place
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: in that cabinet have explicitly stated that their values are
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: anti what the data, what the social services say about
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: the situation. Right, You've got RFK Junior, and you've got
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: doctor Oz. So you've got a TV personality, doctor Oz,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: who has routinely touted pseudo scientific claims, harmful claims, lots
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: of different types of just absurdities on his show. And
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: he's going to be in charge a billionaire like, you know,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: like a multimillionaire billionaire type of person is going to
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: be also responsible for the care of folks that belong
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: to the like some of the lowest socioeconomic status circumstances,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: that they could. And there's already discussions around how people
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: feel about people accessing care for free, which he does.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: He has explicitly stated he does not believe people should
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: be able to access medical care for free or for
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: a lower cost or a sliding scale. So you've already
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: got on the docket somebody who is willing to start
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: cutting funds or put policies in place to make it
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: more difficult for people to access necessary medical care. And
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: if you don't think that that's something that's going to happen,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: look at any conservative policy about that has happened already
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: around abortion laws, and look at any conservative policy that
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: has happened around defunding planned parenthood, which is not for abortions,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: it is for so many other things. And so you've
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: already got examples of systems that have been cut for
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: the people that are the most needy, and you've got
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: somebody who already has explicitly said that he believes they
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: should not exist. So you've got that situation. And then
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: you've got somebody that is responsible for a science division
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: of our of our government, the Department of Health. You've
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: got RFK who is explicitly anti science. He does not
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: believe that cancer should be treated the way it's been treated.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: He does not believe that vaccines work. He effectively believes
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: that the polio vaccine was not at all responsible for
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: eliminating polio. He believes that the polio vaccine was just
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: an ad campaign that resulted in people getting the polio
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: vaccine and then polio just going away just magically. Yeah.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: He also his organization around anti vaccinations has also killed
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: hundreds of people directly, Like in Samoa, there were some
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: issues with improper administration of vaccines for these two children,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: and it's a horrific situation. He went there and said, hey,
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: vaccines are bad. The government puts some things in place
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: to stop mandatory vaccines, and then over one hundred people
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: died as a result of not getting the vaccines they
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: needed to prevent things like mumps, measles, and all the
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: things that go along with having a vaccine. So this
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: guy's directly responsible for people dying as well as cutting
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: the head off a whale or whatever he says he did.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: But like, truly, you've got two anti science, anti people
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: people in these organizations making decisions for millions and millions
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: of people who need desperately need these services.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: He's also anti fluoride. Yeah, but I mean it's like
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: anything that science has more or less shown to be
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: safe and effective, he's against, right, And I think people
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: might hear this and say, well, okay, well it doesn't
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: really matter what he believes, because there are laws in
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: place that essentially say what they can and can't do.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: And so I think, projecting into the future, let's be
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: as realistic as we can about what could possibly really
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: happen and what, if anything, we can do about it.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: And essentially what they want to do, as I described earlier,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: is is cut regulations. They also want to He's already
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: said he's going to fire like sixty percent of the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: higher ups, which means he's just going to install more
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: loyalists who are just going to do whatever he tells
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: them to do. So you might be wondering, like, well,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't really matter if that's what he believes, because he
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: won't be able to get things through. I'm like, yeah,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: but the thing is, like, the only people that are
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: going to pose him are going to be gone. He
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: is going to only keep the people who are likely
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to be loyal to him anyway and install more people
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: who are going to be loyal to him and like
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: he might face some legal challenges, but that doesn't that's
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: not going to stop him from doing quite a bit
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of damage in the meantime. Let's say around things like regulations.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: So regulations more or less they do a lot of things.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: But one of the regulations is that drugs have to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: be shown to be safe and effective. So if you
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: cut that regulation, they no longer have to show that
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: they're safe and effective. They're regulations around whether or not
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: drugs are combined with like other things like pseudoscience drugs
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and things like that, and there are regulations around who
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: can manufacture those and how they're manufactured. Their regulations around
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: like who gets to call themselves a doctor, for example, right,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And when you start getting rid of those, you have
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: people who can say that they're doctors who have no
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: training or expertise whatsoever. You get drug companies who are
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: more than happy to not have to face the regulatory
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: burden of showing that their drugs are safe and effective.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: And by the way, they can now cut those drugs
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: or start marketing other drugs that are completely ineffective because
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: they're pseudoscience nonsense and possibly even dangerous and all that
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: happens for them is they just make more money. That's
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: part of the reason that they're perfectly okay, like those
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: people lobby on his behalf Big Pharma, for example, because like,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: if they don't have to face regulatory burden, they can
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: literally do whatever they want for less cost. And so
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the ironic thing is that might actually lower drug prices
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: because the drug companies are basically able to sell more
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: nonsense that doesn't work, and two don't have to deal
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: with a regulatory burden that comes with it. But the
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: downstream cost is what it costs to mitigate the fallout
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: of a terrible health infrastructure to begin with is way
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: way more expensive than preventing it in the first place. Right,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And because there we have someone in place who is
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: essentially saying they're gonna make it harder and harder and
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: harder to get access to any kind of medicare or
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: medicaid than those are basically people who are like things
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: have gotten like I can't get medicine. I just can't.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And to that point too, like some other regulations
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: that are in place, is that there's specific regulations for
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: like vaccine companies specifically that are designed to help with
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: liability issues in the event of a vaccine injury or
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: an improper administration. Yeah, so there are protections for vaccine
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: companies that are in developers that help make it so
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: they can a generate effective vaccines that are safe for
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: everybody and be continue to stay in business to be
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: able to produce those vaccines that we need. The minute
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: that you strip away any sort of liability protections in
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: those places where you've got organizations because vaccines and people
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: don't realize this, vaccines are not like a money making scheme. No,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: like vaccine companies are not making like like they're not
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: walking away and rolling around in like gold coins like
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Scrooge McDuck, like nobody's doing that. What's happening instead is
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: that they're hanging on and they're making just enough money
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: to continue to do the research to continue to improve
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: those vaccines. And what ends up happening eventually is without
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: those liability protections and without those regulations in place, now
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: you've opened up the gates for legal for lawsuits and whatnot.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: And why would any sort of reputable vaccine companies stay
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: in business when all that happens is everybody hates them
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: and they're in potential lawsuits for things they didn't do,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: and so you've got this risk of losing the actual
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: good organizations that are doing work around this.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think as far as what we can
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: expect from what our health care is going to look like,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: it's going to look very different. Right now, They've been
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare for
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: a long time and have a lot have had a
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: lot of legal issues. Well, now the Republicans control the
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: House and Senate and the executive branch and the Supreme Court,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: so like at this point there's nothing stopping them. They
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: will still probably face some legal challenges of courts, but
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: they're also appointing their own judges, so like, it is
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: very likely that this time they will be able to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: dismantle the Affordable Care Act or at least diminish its
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: capacity greatly. They're going to reduce or diminish Medicare and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Medicaid to the extent that it is possible, and they're
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: going to essentially cut regulations that make sure that drugs
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: are safe and effective everywhere they possibly can. So what
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: does that look like moving forward? Initially, things will maybe
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: get a little bit cheaper, down the road. Because people
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: are getting ineffective care, they will be facing more health
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: outcomes that are worse than they would have been if
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: they'd had good prevention. So I think what it's going
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to feel like is in your immediate day to day
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: you might not be pain as much, but it is
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: going to have a downstream of cost that is substantially higher.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: So that's one thing I think we can reliably predict
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: is that even if they can't get rid of Medicare
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and Medicaid, and that one I think would be tough.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of people that would have a
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: problem with them totally eliminating it. They're definitely going to
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: make it more difficult to use and benefit from. What
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: that looks like, we can't say for sure, but we'll
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: check back in six months and see. But I'd be
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: willing to bet that, like, although some drug costs may
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: come down, you're sacrificing the effectiveness and the safety of
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: those drugs to have them come down. And we could
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: go like down the whole pipeline of like free market,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: someone's going to come in and make a better drug
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: that is safe and effective. And I'm like, yeah, but
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: these these big companies have enough money to squash their competition,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: they can also just buy up their competition. And also, like,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: how many people is okay to die in service of
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: letting a free market regulate itself. My money is zero,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: this zero, It's okay for zero people to die. R
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I'm in service of that, Okay, So that's one outcome.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about what happens when we get rid of
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the Department of Education.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of the arguments I've seen is
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: that the Department of Education is responsible for curricula, and
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: that's not really what's going on. Like, they're not responsible
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: for what.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Is taught, they don't dictate curriculum.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: That they don't at all. What they do is they
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: fund school so do you actually have schools in your area.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: They make sure that there are enough schools and that
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: your classrooms are not overcrowded so that you have actual
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: effective education. And that still goes down to some state
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: level decisions as well. But there are laws and protections
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: that the Department of Education are responsible for, things like FURPA,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: things like the idea laws that allow for special education
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: needs to be met, and if we are dismantling the
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: public education that those are just two examples. Now you
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: start dismantling Department of Education, which ultimately dismantles public education,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: you move to private schools, and private schools ultimately can
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: dictate whatever curricula they want. And also a private school
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: is not free of charge, So now you have costs
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: for education that didn't previously exist through curricula that are
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: not standardized in any sort of way, which again that's
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: not the Department of Education. But private schools can do
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: literally whatever they want. And now you're going to have
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: a bunch of I would make an argument a rise
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: in Christian nationalism because most private schools that exist, especially
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: in the South, are going to be church based and
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: faith based. Yeah, and so which you know is a
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: dismantling of church and state in a really a really
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: powerful way.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because they're they're starting. Yeah, I mean, it's
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: really the standard playbook, and I mean it's a multi
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: step plan, but it's like at every level, eliminate progressive thought,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: progressive thinking, and go toward like we're i mean, we're
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: really on a track toward the dark Ages, like going
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: back to that and those lasted hundreds of years where
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: progress that had been made was eliminated people were like
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: drinking rams blood out of golden chalices to cure all
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: their ales. It was pretty staggering how bad that was.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: And we're pretty much on that same path now, and
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of people will say, well, like there's powers
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: of be that protect them, Like you just voted them
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: all out of office, right, and you voted in people
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: who said that they would get rid of what was
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: left of that. So I don't know how bad it
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: could possibly get, but like, we're definitely looking at some
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: kind of backsliding, and I think as the prediction we
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: can pretty reliably make, I think is that some of
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the poorest schools are going to close because they won't
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: have funding that they were needing to stay open. And
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: there will be still some public schools because public schools
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: also get a lot of their funding from the states,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: so like there will be some of them. But that
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: also means that the people who are the poorest, who
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: are going to poorer schools, will now either not have
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: access to school or will have to commute much much
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: farther to get to schools, and that just can be
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: really difficult on people who are already struggling to make
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: ends meet. So and that also does mean that those
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: schools get increasingly crowded, which is going to have a
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: detrimental effect on the overall level for those students and
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: could come with all kinds of other problems as well.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: But I think reliably we can predict that if they're
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: able to close or greatly diminish the capacity of the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Department of Education, and it seems like they're going to
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: be able to the effect of that will be that
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: at least some of the poorest schools will close, and
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: some people will lose generally access to education, least public education,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: possibly any education whatsoever. And as you said, might have
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: the only option be essentially anti critical thinking, anti science,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: anti expertise, and that calling that education feels generous, but
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: that would essentially be the thing that's on the table.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: It would move from education to like actual indoctrination, which
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: is what they have used to like fearmonger some of
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: these spaces, like when they talk about like the woke
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: mob coming in and teaching I don't know, empathy, like
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: in how that's indoctrination, But like now you have a
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: private school that's got an explicitly dictated curricula that is
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: faith based, and not at all based in reality, not
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: at all based in science, and really a value system
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: that is harmful to the people that are not the
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: same as them. It's going to be a real mess.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: I mean that we've seen that. You see that in
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: small town communities, in rural communities, a lot where they
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: may not have the funding or the talents themselves. Are
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: are like where you know, they will send students to
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: a specific school because that school has like the most funding,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: but it's a private school and there's all sorts of
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: stuff going on there. So I don't know, I just
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: dismantling an anything related to education is going to be
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: a real bad time.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It's going to be chaotic. We're running a little long.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I do want to touch just a little bit on
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: taxes and democracy. But first, the tax that we pay
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: as a podcaster is having to seticide space for advertisers. Okay,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I just want to touch on a quick thing because
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: obviously people have Again, the economy is a big thing,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: and so they're going to be cutting a lot of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: regulations for things as a way to facilitate the economy.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: One thing to know is part of the reason gas
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: prices came down. One of the reasons that gas prices
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: went up was because of the Russian Ukraine War. We
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: essentially stopped buying a lot of our gas from Russia
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: and we had to get some of our own, basically
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: had to find alternative sources. Right now, the United States
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: is drilling more gas than any country ever in the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: history of mankind. So like we're drilling a lot already,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: so that's unlikely to change. Moving into the next administration,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: they're obviously going to possibly even drill more. I don't know.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: It's already drilling a lot, so maybe maybe there will
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: be more, who knows. But anyway, there's this whole idea
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: of tariffs and those idea of cutting regulations, and I think,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, again cutting regulations, we should probably
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: do a whole thing on regulations at some point, but
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: it does reduce costs for companies. But a lot of
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: times those regulations are in there for a reason, and
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: it's things like it protects our drinking water from people
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: dumping chemicals into them, it protects our air from people
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: putting smoke into them, and like research shows that in
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: the places where those regulations, those regulations got put into
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: place because people were like developing these weird mutations and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: cancers and health problems right and moving away from areas
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: that are incorporated, and then those areas eventually die out
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: because they don't have people to work or shop there,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: or that those people just die there also is or
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: like they develop these horrible health effects that again we
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: won't have health infrastructure to support them with, and it's
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the company's faults for putting them in that position anyway.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: So anyway, all the these regulations have downstream effects that
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to be feeling for a very very long time,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: even if they're only temporary. So like the initial effect
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: might be the cutting of costs in the initial experience
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of it, but the downstream effects are that it is
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: going to absolutely cripple our overall well being moving forward.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: You get multiple cities that are like Flint, yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: but basically what happens, yeah, is that like drinking water
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: is no longer safe and then they'll sell you a
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: bottle of water, so your price of getting water just increased.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Anyway, So there's like there's a lot of things that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: will shift and change, and the people who are going
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: to feel the brunt of this the most are the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: people who already have the least amount of resources, right
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: because they now have to buy things that were freely
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: made available to them, or they have to move when
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: they barely have the means to afford the place that
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: we're living to begin with. So like, the poor people
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: are the ones who are going to be hit the
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: hardest by those types of things. And then there's the tariffs.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: And again people are learning of what tariffs are, and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I think it's hard for me to wrap my head
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: around the logic here again, but essentially the idea is
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: that tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Now, we
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: can't tax other countries, we would have no ability to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: enforce those taxes. Who pays those taxes, you the consumer, right, Like,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: essentially the people who are importing goods have to pay
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: more for those goods, which means they charge more for
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: those goods. So tariffs will raise a lot of revenue
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: for the government. They will also drive up inflation, they
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: just will like that. That's the only thing that can
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: happen as an outcome of people having to pay more
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: for imported goods, and we have a lot of imported goods,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: is that it costs more for those things to be purchased,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: which means inflation goes up. So, like all the economists
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: more or less said, this is what's going to happen.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: So Donald Trump said he's going to cut all these taxes.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: I believe that he probably will, and he doesn't have
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: a Congress that's going to oppose him. So he's going
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: to cut a lot of taxes. And again some people
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: are going to feel that initially, but that also is
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: going to send our deficit absolutely skyrocketing. And it's like
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: ten trillion dollars, like it's a crazy amount right now.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: They're expecting that could almost double or more the amount
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: of tax cuts he is proposing. So our deficits are
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: going to be in huge trouble. We're not taking in
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: very much revenue, and the money revenue we are taking
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: in are just taxes on people buying goods. And again,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: the people that's going to affect the most are the
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: people who already have the least to pay for those
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: goods in the first place.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Right Exactly, it's such a gross misunderstanding of what any
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: of these policies. Again, this is that's just what comes
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: down to. People are voting based on things they simply
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: don't understand.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: And they'll talk they'll talk about the stock market like
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: surging in the wake of Donald Trump's victory, and again
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: that has to do at least in part with the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: fact that he's saying cutting regulations. Now, I'm like, I
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: don't know why you think the stock market surging is
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: a good indicator of the economy. Do you own stock?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Like most people I think own very little or no stock,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, essentially, all the reason the stock market
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: is surging is because those companies are expecting to be
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: able to make more money with regulations cut, right, that's all, Like,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: this doesn't affect.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: You, They're going to benefit you are not?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This is basically them saying like, we're going
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: to make more money on the backs of more people.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: And you're like, I'm one of those people. Good for you,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: and like that that's what's happening. So I again, I
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: just I struggle to follow the logic of that. So
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: all that being said, with respect to the economy, there's
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: going to be some impact with things. Do the price
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: may come down on some things temporarily, but they're also
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: going to go up on some things permanently. And if
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: the value of the dollar starts to crumble, then prices
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: are going to go up very very fast, very aggressively,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: and the money that you make is not going to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: stretch very far. So like, I don't know exactly what's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: going to happen, but I think all of the economists
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: agree what we should, what we can reliably expect, is
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: that inflation is going to increase and that things are
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: going to cost more. Broadly speaking, some sectors might be
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: a little cheaper, gas might be a little cheaper, r
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: some medicine might be a little cheaper. Most other things
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: are going to be more expensive, right, exactly, all right,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: And the last thing democracy In twenty twenty and twenty
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: twenty one, actually there was almost a coupe to overthrow
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the government in Washington, DC to stop the electoral process
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: from taking place. A lot of people actually put the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: democracy is very high on as an issue for them,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and then they voted for someone who basically said I'm
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: going to end democracy. Trump said that he's going to
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: make it so people don't have to vote anymore. He
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: said he's going to be a dictator. He is planning
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: on leveraging the criminal justice system to go after his
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: political enemies and so looking back, like this does kind
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of mirror Hitler in a lot of ways, which is
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: to say, like where I'm going with this is essentially
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: that like in the nineteen thirties, Germany transitioned to a
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: dictorial state and a lot of things happen is the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: outcome of that, and we're seeing a lot of similar
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: things happen, and like they wouldn't have believed that that
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: was possible, Like, oh, well, he can't just take over
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the government, because when Hitler came to power, when he
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: was elected, he wasn't a dictator. He took about three
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: to six months to completely dismantle the government and replace
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: it with one that essentially allowed him to be a dictator.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: So like people voting him in didn't even necessarily know
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: that he was going to be a dictator. I mean,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: he moore Less again told them so, Like there's some
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: similarity there. But they're already taking steps to dismantle democracy
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: right now as they're preparing for this transition. And like
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of people think, well, he can't just do that.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't, I mean, what can't he do.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: He has control of the Supreme Court, he has control
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: over Congress, he has control over Senate, he has control
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: over all of the major cabinet positions, and he has
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: replaced a huge ton of judges. I'm like, who's going
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: to stop him? He has literally filled every guard wheel
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: with people who were willing to obey his every order,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: So like, why wouldn't he just take over and turn
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: the government into a dictatorial hellhole? Right?
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: And you know the thing about that is, and people
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: might be saying that that's an extreme thing, but you
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: can go back and you can look at examples of
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: VTOR suppression that already exists. You can look at examples
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: of gerrymandering, which alters the outcomes of the elections that occur.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: You can look at all these different steps that have
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: taken place that have allowed for people who shouldn't be
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: empowered to be empower or ways to disenfranchise people who
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: want whose voices need to be heard. So this is
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: already happening in a way that I think if you're
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: not paying attention to it, then you wouldn't realize it,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: or if it's not happening to you, then you wouldn't know.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: But it's happening in all these different ways, these insidious,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: small ways that are going to build and build and build.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: There's a cubative effect here, and I think that we
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: cannot sit back and ignore the fact that, yeah, it
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: will take it will take amendments, and it will take laws,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: and it will take all these things to happen for
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: this large group of effectively souls to make this work.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: It's going to take a lot of effort on that part.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: But all of the barriers have been removed. And I
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: think that's really important to remember that is like, it's
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: so much easier to pass law, to pass bills, to
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: do to even do things like make new amendments when
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: you have full control and you have everybody that would
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: be in your way on your side. And so it's
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: not unreasonable to think that you're gonna start seeing changes
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: in the way that voting happens and the way that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: states argue or or recount votes. You're gonna it's not
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: unreasonable to think that you're gonna see people lose their
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: voting rights. I mean, you look, all you have to
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: look at right now are just examples of how felons
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: who have served their time still can't vote in some
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: states even though they have effectively served their time. They
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: have served out their sentence, but they are continuously living
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: in a punitive state because of a mistake they made,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: even though they have rectified that mistake. So you have
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: these situations that are already taking rights from people and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: preventing them from being involved in this type of process.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: It's not a stretch, especially, and they're telling.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: You right, right, And so yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I think there are people who are pretty optimistic that like,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: we'll make it through another four years and we'll be
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: able to get things back under control. And I hope
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: that they're right, but like we're headed for four years
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of pretty extreme chaos and turmoil at least four I
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: mean at least right, I fully expect that Trump will
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: run for president again. And as we're sort of alluding to,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: like part of how dictators work is they often will
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: maintain the facade of democracy, Like Russia pretends that it's
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: a democracy. It's so not. It's a dictatorship. But they
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: like have elections, they won't allow opposing parties to campaign.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: The elections are basically a farce, right, they really don't
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: have a choice, and like they win by an absurd
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: margin that's like not even remotely possible if you're reflecting
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: like the actual experience of the electro they're like ninety
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: five ninety nine percent of the electric or something. They
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: went by it. It's nuts. So, like, right, that's what
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: could happen is we get the veneer of democracy, but
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: one where people's voice, votes aren't counted, aren't heard, and
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: they're just sort of putting on the show of democracy
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: to make it look like there.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: Is one or descent is eliminated.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. They shut down competition, they shut
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: down criticism. They've talked about essentially censoring the media. They've
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: already tried to do that. I mean, that's actually one
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: of the things right now that is a major guardrail
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: is that journalism right now is not being censored by
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the government, and there are part of the effect of
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: that means that there are journalistic outlets that are extremely
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: favorable to Trump's dictatorship. Those will definitely remain, Those will
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: get all widespread access and like attention.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: Right and even get government funding.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: And they yeah, they could get government funding. So as
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: far as what to expect for democracy, I don't know.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: It's not good. It's possible. We'll make it through another
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: four years. And that the guardrails and the system will hold.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: But the people who are coming into power are the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: people who don't want democracy to continue, and like they're
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: going to fight to make that be a reality. So
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, it's gonna look different, and maybe
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: some version of it'll will exist, but it's we're headed
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: for some pretty significant turmoil here.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: We can't predict the future. We don't know what's gonna get,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: what's gonna happen. I think generally you and I are
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: pretty optimistic people, but I think it's also very hard
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: to be optimistic in a space where you see so
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: much going wrong and being scientists and you're looking at
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: data and you're looking at exemplars of behavior. You're watching
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: this happen over and over and over again and going why, why, why,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: And it's very hard to keep up the sensation of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: hope and optimism when it feels like it's not even
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: going that direction. It feels like it's really it's it's
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: really dark.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think worst case scenario, we more or less
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: start to look like North Korea and it is just
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: a fully iron fisted dictatorship where there's no more freedom left,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: and then people can barely tell because the only news
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: that is portrayed as news that's favorable to the existing regime.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Best case scenario, we survive, survive, being the operative phrase here,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: another four years of this, and then we change administrations
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: and get some people in who do not have an
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: anti science, anti expertise attitude and actually lift, you know,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: fill the government with people who know what they're doing.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's any version of this where we
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: come out smelling like a rose and that things go
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: super well and are all hunky dory. I just don't
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: think that's in the cards. But I think optimistically we'll
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: survive and move on. Pessimistically, we never come out of this,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: not in my lifetime, right right, All right, Well, that's
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: enough doom and gloom for now. Yeah, there was this
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: great quote I'm sort of the Skeptics Guide to the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Universe podcast, which I strongly recommend for everybody. It's my favorite.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Go check it out. But they quoted Carl Sagan, and
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: so I have that book and I've been meaning to
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: read it, so I've sat down and started reading it.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to use the quote that they used
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: because it is terrifyingly relevant and has predicted a future
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people at the time
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: would have thought optimistically that's not going to come to pass.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: And here we are. This was published in like nineteen
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: ninety five or nineteen ninety six, But this is quoting
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: Carl Sagan from a deep and haunted world. He said, quote,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: I have a foreboding of an America in my children's
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: or grandchildren's time, when the United States is a service
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: are in the hands of a very few and no
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: When the people have lost the ability to set their
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority. When clutching
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: influential media. The thirty second sound bites now down to
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: ten seconds or less, lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: of ignorance end quote oof man.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: That is just brutal.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that last part too, the celebration of ignorance. That
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: feels like that's where we're at right now. And that's
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: what I mean by the sort of anti science, anti
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: expertise attitude. Is like it's a celebration of people whose
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: motives are definitely not aligned with your values. It's a
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: celebration of people who like want you stupid and complicit
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: and compliant and unquestioning of their direction, right, And like
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: it's a celebration of ignorance, Like that is what it is.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Is Like, don't believe the science be ignorant. Ignorant does good.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: We can't trust people who have spent their lives getting
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: good at this. Trust us, the people who clearly have
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: an agenda that are trying to get you to do something.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Right, right right. Absolutely, So I would hope that this
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: leaves you with at least some onus, or like maybe
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: leaves you with some responsibility to take action and to
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: do something about this, like not necessarily, you know, storm
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: the White House. Please don't do that. No, But what
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: I would recommend is like getting involved with advocacy, getting
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: involved with elections, getting involved with you know, some cause
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: that you deeply believe in, and really making change on
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: those levels. You might not be able to change the
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: outcome of everything that happened, but at least you can
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: make some small change in your community and your state
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: and your city, do some good there, and really continue
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: to be that bright light in the darkness, because we
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: really really need that.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: I have a quote that I'd like to share that
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: I think will be helpful for us.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, Henry Rollins after the election where Donald
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: Trump won the first time, he came out and said, quote,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: this is not the time to beat us made, this
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: is punk rock time. This is what Joe Strummer trained
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: you for. It is now time to go end quote.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: So hopefully that motivates you just thinking about Joe Strummer
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: and what he told us.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, there was also I meant
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: to talk about this when we're talking about democracy, but
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: there was a in states that voted for Donald Trump,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: there was a huge spike and people google searching is
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: there a way to change my vote? That could mean
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. Maybe it was people who voted
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: against Trump who wanted to vote for him so that
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: they'd be in the winning group. But it does seem
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: it was more likely to be the case that they
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: were regretting their vote for Donald Trump. Right. There were
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who I know protest voted for
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump because they were mad about something in the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Biden Harris administration and now are real life sing whoops
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: and but who knows. It could mean a lot of things, right,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was a vote for something that was directly
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: related to their state. But the people who supported Trump,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: some of them are legitimately in line with his values.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: They probably aren't really going to get what they want
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: out of this, but they'll believe that they are. And
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: then a lot of people were just hoodwinked. They were
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: tricked into this, They were conned into it basically, And
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: the rest of us, all all of us are going
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: to be paying the price for what happened in this
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: most recent election. Like I said, I think at best
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: we survive it. I don't think there's any silver lining really.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: At worst things go considerably downhill, and who actually knows,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: but those are And not to leave everyone on a
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: super bummer note, but I can leave you on an
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: advertisement note. Ooh, all right, well, there's like so much
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: more to say, reflect, muse on and talk about. But
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: we've talked for a long time. We should probably wrap
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: this one up. If you're joining us for the first time,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: then this was, I said, a very weird one. We
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: typically are more structured and tend to really just break
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: down the science of a topic and not necessarily share
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: our personal feels about a thing. But this is what
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: we chose to do this time. Just is I needed
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: a little space from the election, but this all felt
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: still very relevant. Yes, but one of the things that
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: we do is we recommend some things that will be
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: It's usually kind of fun, often not related to our
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: topic at hand. This time it will be Before we
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: do that, I like to read the credits. And again,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: if you would like to support us, you can do
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: that financially by picking up some merch You can also
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: head over to our Patreon page join the Club of
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Cool People over there. Over there you will get some
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: bonus content, ad free content behind the scenes stuff, all
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing, but also maybe in a way
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: that this is enticing for you. Maybe not, But I'm
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: going to read the names of the people who have
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: made the commitment to help us because we appreciate them
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: so much. That is Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and Michelle. Thank you all so much for hanging with us.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate you, We love you so so so much.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, thank you to my team of
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: people without whom I could not make this show. Writing
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: and fact checking from Shane, Katie and myself. Our social
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And Justin is our sound
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: guy who does all the sound things to make this
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: sound like a sound.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you were in Mega Man twelve, he would
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: be a robot master named Soundman.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Wow deep cut. Okay, so specific recommend some things.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: We recommendations. So I'm gonna recommend a podcast. I know
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: that your ear real estate, your auditory real estate, is limited,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: but I do think if you are passionate about what
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: is going on and you want to stay current, maybe
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: you're somebody who's like I'm not very political. I don't
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: know where to start. I do think a good place
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: to start is a podcast called Pod Save America. It
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: is my favorite political podcast. It is left their leaning,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: I would say, just so you have that kind of
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: that understanding of the bias. But they do dive into
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: some really deep topics. They interview people, they interview congressmen,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: they talk about their current concerns. They do talk about
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: policies and kind of updates on like general politics in
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: the world of the United States. So I do think
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: it's worth listening to if you are unsure of where
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: to start and you just want to start by gathering information,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: this is a really good place to begin.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, I've heard a little bit of their
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: stuff and it's always really really good, So I should
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: probably actually give them a solid subscription. We shall see.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very like, it's very rational about very emotional
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: and very trying situations or trying like topics.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I can appreciate a lot of rational discussion. Yeah, all right,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: So I'm playing a little fast and loose with our
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: unspoken editorial policy around recommendations, which is we have tended
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: to only recommend for a thing we recommend a thing
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: that's like positive, go do this thing. And I am
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: in a way recommending that. I'm recommending take action in
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a way, but I've been thinking about this and I've
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: just wanted to sort of put it out there. And
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: that is the idea of you can vote in a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: lot of ways beyond just an election. And one of
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: the ways that you can vote is your is how
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: you purchase things. Every time you make a purchase, you
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: that is casting a vote for the thing that you purchased.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: And so I would like to suggest that as many
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: people who listen to this would be willing to do,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: we sort of all collectively choose not to vote for
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the things we would like to see less of in
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the United States. And what I mean by that is like,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: don't use platforms and materials from people who are actively
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: doing harm. Like I would say that if we want
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: to collectively diminish the power of Elon Musk, let's get
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: people off of Twitter. Let's not buy Tesla products. Let's
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: essentially protest Elon Musk's nonsense by not giving him our money.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: And I mean, this is not going to make him
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: a poor person and he I mean if it did,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: I would say like, let's really redouble our efforts here.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: But it sends a message, and it's you know, just
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: like the boycotts that other people have done, is that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: if enough people do it, it sends a message that
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: then changes the direction that those companies take. And that
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: same thing was true with like the buses when during segregation,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: right as the boycott crippled the financial infrastructure of those
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: companies so much they had to change their policies. We
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: can do a similar thing. And Elon Musk is not
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: the only one. There are plenty of people out there
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: that we could sort of collectively organize to boycott and
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: say we're not going to purchase things from them, Like
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: I suggest don't buy my pillow.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: I mean I would buy your pillow.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: My pillows right now for sale. Is like just let's
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: band together and choose products that we're going to say
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: we do not support the policies of this company or
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the people behind them. And there are quite a few
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: of those that we can go after. And so I
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: don't think I can even legally tell you what you
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: can and can't buy, but I can tell you what
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: kind of things that we can we can boycott, And
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: that to me is anything that Elon Musk is currently
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: a part of, Mike Lindella is currently a part of,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: and Trump and his sort of cronies are all a
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: part of. If you don't want those things in the world,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: try to actively avoid giving those people your money. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I don't know how well that's going to
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: land with everybody. It's kind of a blueprint for people
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: who disagree with me to go out and buy more
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: of those things. But again, like that could be true
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: in any situation. So I'm just saying we can vote
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: other ways. Let's vote vote in a way that is
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: aligned with our values. And again I assume most of you,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: if you're listening here are people who probably more or
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: less are in a similar sort of vote with us,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: because I think, as we've seen that the people who
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: are not do not really value learning at all, and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: we do so absolutely. So that's what we have to say.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: Boycott things. Check out Podsave America. If you would like
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: to write in and tell us something that we got
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: wrong or something that we got right, you can email
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: us directly at info awwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can reach
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: us on the social media platforms including Blue Sky. Yeah,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: we're over on Blue Sky now at wwdwwdpodcast dot, bsky
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: dot social is where you can currently find us there,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: and we're happy to hear from people. So write in
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: and let us know what you think, and feel free
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: to disagree with us. That's fine. Like I said, we
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: don't really know the future. We're just doing our best
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: to read the tea leaves as it will as you were. Yeah, exactly,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: if you will, I think is what I was trying
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: to say, as it as you were. That's a different
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: that means something to if you whatever something something. I
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: think that that is what we have to say about
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: all of this. Is there anything that I would like
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: to add or or sorry, is there anything you would
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: like to add or anything that I forgot? Switch around
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: this proNT out there before we close this one out, I.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: Would just say, just go out and do good work.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: That will make a difference. It will eventually make a difference,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: So just go do work, Go do meaningful work, help
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: the people around you, and it will work out.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Agreed. That's wonderful. All right, very good, Well, thank you
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: so much for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: We're out, so yeah, you've been listening to Why We
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: Do What We Do.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: we hope you have an awesome day.