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Cult of Personality, Global Conflicts, and Systemic Challenges · Bourbon & Rum

0:08
Welcome to another episode of Bourbon and Rum.
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This is a podcast of two brothers from opposite ends of
0:15
the spectrum. My name's Kent, I'm a rum
0:22
drinker, and I'm from the left side of the aisle.
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And I'm Kyle. I, like bourbon, tend to be a
0:26
little more conservative. Join us as we explore this
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experiment. Can two brothers from different
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sides of the political spectrum have a civil conversation and
0:39
celebrate our differences? What are you drinking?
0:53
I bought a bottle of bourbon today, just what I needed, and
0:57
they had 30 on the shelf and I hadn't bought one.
1:00
Well, actually I will say I'm not drinking it now, but I was
1:06
driving home. I had business yesterday or
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earlier this week in Kansas, and I drove just because I'm getting
1:14
so sick of the airline being late all the time.
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So it's like that's five hours I'll drive.
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And then of course, I got stuck in traffic, but I stopped at a
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liquor store. I always like to do a little
1:22
bourbon hunting. So I stopped at a couple liquor
1:24
stores up in Sherman, TX and I found the so Eagle Rare just put
1:29
out a 12 year version. It's a new variety.
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And my crazy neighbor was like I texted him, he's like buy it.
1:38
I'm like oh it's pricey and it's like 200 bucks.
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She's like buy it. We got to try it.
1:40
So of course I bought it and then he cracked it.
1:43
We tried it. It's a little hotter than the
1:46
regular Eagle Rare. It's pretty good, pretty spicy,
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but but I don't know that it's like the regular Eagle Rare is
1:53
really good. But anyways, I didn't that's not
1:56
what I'm drinking today. I stopped at this at specs and
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they had a a barrel, a private barrel selection and it's this
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stuff called copper and cask. I've seen it before.
2:07
It's a little, little place up in Rhode Island.
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It's MGP whiskey and it's like there's so many of these places
2:15
that it just stood up and you know, they buy the whiskey.
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This is this is like from 10 barrels.
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So they did a small batch and then supposedly they age it down
2:25
in Florida to give it another kind of interesting dimension.
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That's what I'm at. I'm in.
2:30
I still haven't sipped it yet. I'm still still smelling.
2:32
So what are you drinking? Well, I pulling out all the
2:36
stops. I'm going with the Malibu
2:38
Coconut Rum in a coconut daiquiri.
2:42
That's almost not drinking. Exactly.
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I was going to get some for my wife.
2:48
She she's a rum drinker and I was like and she likes spiced
2:51
rum and I was like why may I get coconut rum?
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But the coconut rum is like 70 proof.
2:57
Yeah, it's really more like a liqueur, like a coconut liqueur.
3:01
So I mean, I guess we could do the math.
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How how you know, how long would it take you to get hammered on
3:07
70 proof liquor? Probably not that long.
3:11
Twice as much, roughly speaking. I don't know if I'm ready to
3:20
turn loose of Epstein. I mean, I think that we'd have
3:23
to change the name of the podcast if we go back there
3:26
again. But I have liked kind of being
3:29
aligned with you on this. So maybe we need to find
3:33
something that we disagree about just to just to poke the bear,
3:37
so to speak. But wonder what do you what do
3:39
you see? And what what have you noticed
3:41
this week and what do you see? In the, you know, and I, I won't
3:46
hopefully go there too long. I guess to me, it's, it's still
3:50
a very much unresolved thing. And my trust and, and really
4:00
favorability rating of Trump was severely impacted by that.
4:06
And I'm not going to get over it.
4:08
You know what I mean? Like, it's still going to piss
4:11
me off, just like the bill pissed me off.
4:14
But you know, at the same time, it's kind of one of those
4:18
situations where it's like, I agree with you about the way
4:24
this thing went down, how we didn't like it.
4:26
But I'm not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree
4:28
with you and everything else. Like, you know what I mean?
4:31
Like, and I, I think there's a sense like, oh, well, your guy
4:35
screwed up. So now you want my guy.
4:36
Well, no, I don't want your guy. But, but you know, my guy's not
4:39
doing his thing either. So it's like, I guess where I'm
4:42
going is like, I guess I would just state that, you know, there
4:47
are things that he's doing. There's some things that I agree
4:50
with and I'll probably say I agree with.
4:53
But I get, I think it goes without saying that like the
4:57
overall, you know, if I had to rate the guy, that rating went
5:01
really low and it's still low. Now if he does something good,
5:05
you know it's not that. Oh my gosh, he's God's gift to
5:07
the like he, no, he's still in my mind has to resolve this
5:12
other thing. But I may agree with a direction
5:15
on something else, if that makes sense.
5:17
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense to me.
5:19
And you know what I've struggled with in this?
5:21
There are I've kind of got the the opposite problem.
5:25
Like, you know, my feelings about Trump are well known.
5:29
That said, it's possible that even someone that I severely
5:35
disagree with in general might do something that I in the
5:40
moment I'm that I don't hate, right?
5:42
I'm not, I'm not going to knee jerk just because it's Trump
5:46
doing it that I, that I hate it. I will say that a lot of the
5:50
things that I really loathe about Trump are consistent.
5:55
And it's a thread that runs through a lot of issues.
5:57
And so it, it winds up and it probably winds up feeling to you
6:01
like I just, you know, I'm just a hater and I'm going to hate no
6:05
matter what. But now I'm grasping at straws.
6:09
Is there anything that that I would be OK with?
6:12
I think it's interesting that he's going to talk to Putin.
6:15
I, I don't know, I, I, I feel like I don't have confidence
6:22
that he's going to go into that meeting and not basically power
6:26
of up Ukraine and just hand it over to Trump or to, to Putin.
6:31
But if he can pull peace out of a war-torn region, then that's
6:36
great, right? Well, I mean, honestly, I mean,
6:40
I think that's what's going to happen.
6:41
I mean, they're, they're not, this thing's going to go on
6:45
indefinitely if, you know, you're fighting over the Donbass
6:49
or, or whatever. And I and several presidents
6:52
before, well, I mean, Obama and Biden and Trump before, I mean,
6:59
everybody was, I'm not saying OK with them taking Crimea, but
7:03
nobody was. We weren't going to, we weren't
7:05
going to blows over it. We weren't going to put our our
7:07
own credibility. Online and then it's like, and
7:10
I, you know, certainly really respect the sacrifice of all the
7:13
Ukrainian people that have died for this war.
7:16
But the same time I see, you know, article about Zelensky and
7:20
he's like, well, I'm not backing down.
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And I'm like, well, OK, if the weapons shut off, you're backing
7:27
down. I mean, you know, it's like it's
7:30
easy for him to have all this tough talk.
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I'm not. That's not easy.
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But you know what I mean? Like, you know, we just enabling
7:37
genocide. I mean, that's probably the
7:40
improper term. But like, are we enabling the
7:43
the meat grinder by just continuing this thing?
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Because they're not. I mean, they're, they're blowing
7:49
up stuff in Russia, but the Russians are still there and
7:53
they're sending every Tom, Dick and Harry they can find into the
7:56
meat grinder. And it's like like, OK, we can
8:00
go and do this for we can watch this happen for another two
8:02
years and find weapons over there and see another 100,000
8:05
soldiers die and nothing else happens.
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Or do you just say, OK, you take this cornfield and let's call it
8:11
good? You know, you think about some
8:13
of those eastern provinces in particular, right?
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Like this. This border is not, it's not the
8:21
same as a, you know, the Rhine River that is acted as the
8:26
logical border between France and Germany.
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Like, like this is a fluid situation and the time can be
8:37
measured in a couple of decades. And not that that makes this OK,
8:42
but it also does point out that you're going to have like
8:47
Zelensky and Putin are never going to agree on a fair
8:51
resolution to this. So do you keep fighting period,
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or else? Because then if you if you get a
9:00
ceasefire, then it's just a matter of time till it bubbles
9:04
up again. You know, real peace has got to
9:07
be honestly, we agree, OK, these provinces are Russian speaking
9:11
people. If you if you don't want to live
9:13
in Russia, there's a window where you can move to the other
9:16
parts of Ukraine. And we're just going to call it
9:20
is the likeliest thing to hold on to some peace over time.
9:25
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's A and I, you know, people say,
9:30
oh, well, all this work for nothing.
9:32
No I think the accomplishment is huge.
9:36
Russian Russia went through 200,000 men and billions of
9:40
dollars and all they got to show for it is the the land they
9:44
already had plus a couple grain fields in eastern Ukraine.
9:48
I don't think that's like Russia making out like a bandit.
9:51
To me if what would be horrible is if the weapons to Ukraine
9:58
ended and Russia takes over Kiev and the whole freaking place is
10:02
Russian. That's what that's what Putin
10:04
wanted. And if there wasn't the backing
10:07
of the West, that probably would have happened.
10:10
Yeah, well, to your point, we've got, I mean, even if it if a
10:15
couple of West of eastern provinces wind up falling to
10:18
Russia in here, I'm like Churchill carving up the map,
10:23
you know. But at a minimum, I have to
10:27
believe that rational leaders in Russia are unlikely now to
10:32
think, you know, we ought to just go grab Poland like they're
10:36
they're probably not thinking that probably at least for a
10:42
while. Well, in backyard thing like,
10:45
oh, we're going to pull nukes out, OK, You think they work?
10:49
Do you even know where the keys are?
10:51
You know a lot of threats. I mean, I think the, you know,
11:00
the flip side is, is you you say, I don't know that he'll say
11:04
this, but what I wish he'd say to Putin is OK, you get these
11:09
green fields, but you blank this up.
11:13
OK. B Twos are dropping J dams over
11:16
Moscow. You.
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Know, but he won't. He probably won't do that, but I
11:19
know I would be awesome to do that.
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Yeah, just one, just one, just one big explosion right up the
11:28
middle. Yeah, the the the equivalent of
11:32
a back them off the plate fastball like.
11:35
That's right. So what do you think?
11:39
OK. So what do you think happens in
11:40
Gaza Speaking of? Oh my gosh.
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Oh, we've just decided that we're we're going to occupy all
11:47
of Gaza now. That's Netanyahu's plan.
11:50
That's insanity. I'm sorry, there is.
11:53
What's left to occupy? Well.
11:57
I don't know, you know, and and again, what to what end?
12:02
What is your show me an end game in this?
12:05
I mean, I you know, I'm not some world leader, but I have read a
12:08
book or two and the one thing that I know is say what you want
12:13
to about HW Bush in Iraq, he said We have an objective.
12:19
We got our objective. We're going home.
12:22
That looks like winning and this we're just going to start
12:28
something and we're just going to fight.
12:31
As long as the least common denominator thinks that we ought
12:35
to keep at it. I don't.
12:37
I don't know what Israel's doing.
12:39
Yeah, I was listening to Rogan this week and he was reiterating
12:44
something I'd heard from somebody else and he he brought
12:48
it up. I forget who he said he
12:50
attributed it to, but the idea was why don't they just flood
12:55
the tunnels with seawater and be done with it?
12:58
Like, you know, you, you're worried about Hamas, you know,
13:01
fill in the tunnels and then, you know, But yeah, I don't know
13:06
if that would fix it, but I thought that was pretty
13:07
interesting. Yeah.
13:08
I just, I have to say it's kind of good to see that there's some
13:14
descent within Israel on this topic because I think it's just
13:19
outrageous. Look, I, there's no it, the
13:22
attack by Hamas on Israel was indefensible and they deserve to
13:27
get put out of power. No, no question.
13:30
But at this point, it's kind of like, you know, the one thing
13:34
that Israel has always made this, I mean, literally line in
13:38
the sand. It's like, well, you know, we
13:40
have this right to exist and these Arab states around us all
13:44
want us to, to disappear from the earth and, and we're out
13:48
here fighting. That's kind of the the mantra,
13:51
right? And yet, if you look at Israel's
13:55
relationship with the Palestinians, again, I
13:58
acknowledge that the violence and terrorism caused by
14:01
Palestinians is indefensible, but it's not everybody that's a
14:05
Palestinian or lives in Gaza. That's and basically what Israel
14:09
has said is that we don't believe that the Palestinian,
14:12
that we don't believe they have a right to a state with their
14:14
name on it. We don't believe that they have
14:16
a right to live in the Gaza Strip where they have.
14:19
We don't believe they have a right to live in the West Bank
14:22
where we're settling retirees from America to go occupy land
14:28
so the people can't live there. It it kind of takes two peoples
14:33
to cohabitate. Yeah, Yeah.
14:36
I mean, at the same time, that's not, it's like a, it's like an
14:41
ungovernable entity. I mean, how do you fix that?
14:47
Like, how do you get this collection of people?
14:49
I mean, honestly, ideally everybody just lives in the same
14:54
state and they all get along. But you know, what's the
14:59
likelihood of that? I mean, it probably existed at
15:01
one point, right? I mean, people like when you
15:03
went, when you were there, you could travel freely into Gaza,
15:06
right? In and out of Gaza.
15:08
I wouldn't say freely It was it was it was the most stressful
15:13
part of the trip we were in. We flew into Jordan, crossed
15:18
into Israel at the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River,
15:21
spent time in Israel, and then we went on to Egypt.
15:25
And the way you do that is that you cross through the Rafah
15:28
border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
15:32
And yeah, I don't think tour buses are going through there
15:35
right now, but that is. But it was pretty 10.
15:39
We, I was just talking about this over the family weekend.
15:43
Some of the family that went with us on that trip, you know,
15:45
we were in a bus and we were in the convoy of several other
15:50
buses. And there were guys that had a
15:54
machine gun mounted in a pickup truck running in front of us and
15:58
behind us as we blasted across the Sinai desert in the in the
16:03
Egypt. So it was not easygoing, but it
16:07
was not an active state of war, it was an active, functioning
16:10
international border. Yeah, I mean, So what is the
16:13
plan just to occupy like? I don't know.
16:18
So, you know, what I wonder is in, in my mind, you know,
16:23
occupying a place, one of the reasons you don't want to do
16:26
that militarily is because you kind of also inherit the the
16:33
responsibility for the people that live there, right?
16:35
If it's right, well, Hamas is, you know, they they can't keep
16:39
your power on and they don't, you know, OK, well, now if it's
16:43
IDF troops marching up and down the street, like at some level,
16:48
Israel's kind of responsible for keeping the power on.
16:51
Well, so the plan as I'm reading it here is like installing an
16:57
alternate governing authority, possibly involving Arab
17:00
countries or some local council like the Arab League or some
17:07
other Gulf endorsed entity and then having permanent security
17:13
zones on IDF control. I mean, there is AI think there
17:19
is a logical element of like, how do you really get, like,
17:26
transform the governance of that place from terrorists to, like,
17:31
people that care about their people?
17:33
Yeah, 'cause it 'cause they could go bomb.
17:35
I mean, they could have ended the war on Gaza a year ago and
17:40
like, hey, we bomb the crap out of Hamas.
17:42
Well, they're just going to reconstitute, right?
17:46
Well, I, I, the one thing that you said in that plan, and I
17:49
don't know if I take it seriously or if it's just lip
17:51
service and BS, but you know, a coalition of other Arab nations
17:56
would be a really nice place to start in that.
17:59
In fact, there's this one nation, it's not too far away
18:03
and it's got more oil money than God, Saudi Arabia.
18:08
Why don't you take a little responsibility in this, right?
18:12
Like what would be wrong with that?
18:14
Isn't that interesting that none of the Gulf, like nobody's
18:17
coming to the the the defense of the Palestinians, are they?
18:22
Why isn't that? Yeah, I don't know.
18:24
I think part of it's that Hamas is so toxic and it's it's kind
18:30
of fraught on the international stage.
18:32
Like there's, there's not a lot that can go right there.
18:36
But the right thing to do in my mind would be, I don't know, you
18:42
know, the the one thing, and I don't even agree on the details.
18:45
But the one aspect of the MAGA approach to foreign affairs that
18:51
does resonate with me a little bit is we are not the world's
18:55
police. And I like, I don't want to fix
19:00
this. This isn't ours to fix.
19:02
Well. You know that.
19:04
I mean, you can attribute that to mega, mega, whatever the
19:09
hell. But I think it was also, I don't
19:14
think that's that much different than the Cheney doctrine and
19:19
the, and the Bush and Reagan doctrine.
19:21
Like, you know, the, the Cheney doctrine was essentially like,
19:25
we're not going to get the military, U.S. military involved
19:28
until there's a substantial national interest that has to
19:32
be. And that, that's the big, to me,
19:34
that's the biggest problem that all the the Warhawks have
19:39
created over the last 50 years is what they call like a
19:44
important national interest to the United States is BS.
19:49
I called BS on a lot of it. Like, you know, was was Vietnam
19:54
a national interest to the United States?
19:57
Like the the communist takeover, Vietnam.
19:59
I mean, really? No, you know, this is
20:02
sidetracking. I have to tell you, the the more
20:07
I read about Vietnam, I that whole saga is just fascinating
20:13
to me. And the most interesting
20:16
character in the whole thing is Ho Chi Minh.
20:19
We could do a whole episode on Ho Chi Minh.
20:22
Did you know, maybe, I mean, maybe you're way ahead of me on
20:25
this, but it, you know, I was pretty late in life when I
20:28
learned this. First of all, Ho Chi Minh
20:31
traveled the world before he became the leader of North
20:37
Vietnam. He was working.
20:40
He worked as a chef at a hotel in London.
20:44
And then later he was working in Paris during the negotiations of
20:51
the Treaty of Versailles. And he actually tried to get an
20:56
audience with Woodrow Wilson to plead the case of the Vietnamese
21:01
people who were really being left out in it by the French.
21:05
Wow. The other thing that I think one
21:08
of the most telling facts, when he was, I think it was when he
21:13
was like sworn in as the leader of North Vietnam or something
21:17
like that, there was a a public event.
21:20
His speech was a direct quotation from Thomas Jefferson
21:27
in the Declaration of Independence.
21:30
And we've vilified this guy as a communist.
21:34
I don't he was a communist. I I get he was a communist of
21:38
convenience. Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist.
21:41
He wanted his country to be free of the controlling interest of
21:46
the French and to be unencumbered by the Americans.
21:51
And, and he landed in the communist hands because we
21:56
created this world view of you're either for us or you're
22:00
against us. And you know, you're you're just
22:03
a pawn in the Cold War. Yeah, I mean, you know, it
22:07
sounds like a real peaceful guy other than the 50,000 executions
22:10
of his own people. I mean, other than that, he
22:12
sounds like a great guy. Well, look, I mean, I'm, I'm not
22:18
justified executions of his own people, although I will say that
22:23
when you hear a stat like that, you can hang that.
22:26
You can hang that kind of thing on on almost anybody, depending
22:30
on how you define and word it. Yeah.
22:33
I mean, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know.
22:35
That I would he seemed like a pretty brutal.
22:37
Dictator. How many people did?
22:40
What's his name? DM the South Vietnamese guy
22:43
kill. Probably not 0, right?
22:46
Probably not zero. I feel like you're looking up
22:49
stuff to smack me with. No, I mean, hell, I don't know
22:54
anything about this. I mean, you, you're a lot more
22:56
knowledgeable about this than me.
22:57
But yeah, I mean, it sounds like thousands of people are executed
23:02
by him too. So yeah, he doesn't sound like
23:04
a, he doesn't sound like the nicest guy either.
23:07
But I mean, obviously these guys in these developing countries to
23:15
lead, they're not leading like a structured democracy like we
23:22
have. They're all strong men and
23:24
they're all brutalizing people to to get their point across.
23:30
But it's like, to me, an interesting thing is, did he
23:35
have like a pure beginning thought process?
23:39
Like, I want to make this better 'cause that I mean, that's like
23:44
what you, the, the, the characterization you put out
23:47
there is like, you know, you made the speech like Thomas
23:49
Jefferson and he had this view of freedom and goodness and
23:53
everything. But, you know, in practice, he
23:55
turned out to be a, a maniac. How many of these other strong
23:59
men wanted to do something, but in order to lead their
24:03
governments and through whatever they let their governments
24:06
through because of the way they're systems are set up and
24:10
they don't have the, they don't have mature institutions.
24:14
The only way to do it is by mass killing.
24:16
I, I don't, it sounds like I'm excusing mass killers, but I
24:20
mean, you see that with all these kind of developmental
24:23
regimes. Well, and it's one of the things
24:26
that I think has been bad, honestly.
24:29
It's been bad since Hitler and Stalin.
24:32
I mean, it's been bad before that.
24:35
Wrong, but but the personalization of things right.
24:40
We talk about Hitler, this bad guy Hitler like Hitler caused
24:45
World War 2IN no way am I trying to let Hitler off the hook.
24:51
But it goes back to the old thing.
24:54
If they'd have capped him at wolf shots when they tried to
24:57
kill him and he did die, you think the you think that
25:01
everybody on the general staff of the, of the Nazi high command
25:07
was going to come out with their swords in their hand like, oh,
25:11
I'm so sorry, war's over. Hitler's dead, therefore we're
25:14
back to, we're all good now. I, I don't think so.
25:18
I think Hitler is the personalized and extreme
25:25
personification of what was a systemic problem.
25:30
And I guess I don't think Ho Chi Minh killed those 50,000 people
25:35
themselves. It, it was probably people in
25:38
his organization and he probably countenance some of it and
25:41
probably didn't know about some of it.
25:43
And I, I don't really have a point other than that this our
25:47
only problem is this one bad guy.
25:49
That's crazy. Yeah, well, it's a good point.
25:52
I mean, you, you look at the Nazis and some of these
25:57
sociopaths that were involved like Gobbles and, and all these
26:03
other these, these personalities that have done these horrible
26:08
things. If somebody had killed Hitler in
26:12
the 30s, what would have happened to that asshole?
26:15
Would he have still been a torturous maniac?
26:18
Or would he have all of a sudden been a really nice guy and
26:20
everything would have been fine? Or you hand over control to
26:23
these people and they come out 10 times worse.
26:27
So again, no justification of any kind, but the idea that that
26:33
all of our problems boil down to this one bad guy.
26:37
And we've been making that mistake really ever since World
26:41
War 2. And and maybe before was it the,
26:43
you know, the Kaiser in World War One, but now, you know,
26:46
because what's the there's a term for this?
26:49
Like every argument goes to Hitler.
26:51
Like if you're having an argue with somebody on the Internet
26:54
and it's like, oh, so you're just like, you're just like the
26:56
Nazis. But but we do this right.
27:00
We did this with Saddam Hussein. We have no problem with the
27:04
Iraqi people. Everybody, every single one of
27:07
y'all is fine. It's him.
27:09
It's only him. It's Osama bin Laden.
27:13
I mean, everybody, it's choir boys all around.
27:17
But this bad? Because, you know, once we
27:20
killed Saddam Hussein, everything in Iraq was peaceful
27:23
ever since. Well, right.
27:25
I mean, this is the thing it, it doesn't work that way.
27:29
And so you, these are systemic problems.
27:33
They're not just bad actor problems.
27:36
No, I'm not saying people aren't bad actors.
27:38
I think Putin's a terrible, terrible human being, but
27:42
there's probably Putin. A long list of terrible human
27:45
beings all throughout that government.
27:48
Exactly. When Putin dies, the world will
27:51
rejoice a little bit, and then later that afternoon you're
27:54
going to figure out what we traded for, and it might not be
27:56
that great. Yeah, well, and it's, you know,
28:00
the flip side of this is true as well.
28:04
You know, hey, we're going to vote for this guy Trump.
28:07
He's going to fix all the problems.
28:08
Well, and then he's intercepted by the deep state.
28:12
But the flip side of that even, hey, Trump came in, it's the end
28:16
of the Republic. You know, there's other people
28:19
in government also. So, you know, I I see that
28:22
cutting both ways. Like the world isn't to some
28:26
extent, isn't it almost comforting to be able to say,
28:33
well, you know, Hitler, that bastard killed all these people.
28:37
Like you just put it all on Hitler.
28:39
Like I'm not, I'm not taking up for Hitler, but like, it's more
28:43
comforting to think there's only one bad guy out there then.
28:46
No, actually there were 10,000 sons of bitches that we needed
28:50
to get rid of there. Exactly.
28:53
Yeah, No, I, I, I do think that's it.
28:56
I think it is. It's like intellectually easier
29:00
to get your head around, right? There's this bad guy, we got to
29:03
go fight the bad guy, we get rid of the bad guy and everything's
29:06
back to normal. And it's very seldom like that.
29:10
You know, it's, it's complex. They're competing interests of
29:15
peoples, of groups of people. So that, but that is so then you
29:21
you take that on into the political scheme of things and
29:25
we put so much effort into, hey, we got to get rid of the other
29:28
guy and put our guy in power. And then, OK, well, Trump, you
29:34
know, same thing what I started at the beginning of this, like,
29:36
OK, there's some stuff he's going to do that I agree with.
29:38
Obviously there's stuff that he does that I disagree with.
29:40
So, yeah, well, great, we got him in power.
29:42
He's not doing everything I want him to do, OK, Get him replaced
29:45
by somebody that you want. AOC takes over.
29:49
She's probably not going to do everything you want, you know?
29:51
So then it's like, how then how do you, for those of us like us
29:57
who sit here and talk through the politics of everything,
30:00
like, what do you, who do you support 'cause you're not, you
30:04
know, you're only going to get about 30% of what they tell you.
30:06
They're going to get you right. Right.
30:09
Well, in my mind, so this does bring it a little more personal,
30:13
I think the harder it is to govern.
30:18
I mean, this is so this is the flip side of the coin of the
30:21
deep state, right? That it should be relatively
30:25
hard to change things. I believe that the Constitution
30:28
is great and one of the things that makes it great is that it's
30:32
changeable and it can adapt over time.
30:35
But you don't change the Constitution on a whim.
30:37
The bars pretty high for that yeah.
30:40
And so keeping like building monopolies in politics is really
30:46
bad and so I'm going to pay. I'm interested in your thoughts
30:48
on this. Your own state legislature has
30:52
decided not associated with a census like is normally the
30:57
practice. They've got the power in the
31:00
State House in Texas. They're going to redistrict, and
31:04
they're going to basically create more Republican
31:08
congressional districts by gerrymandering and by dividing
31:12
up people. So the response is, I mean, the
31:15
fleeing to Chicago is only going to last so long, right?
31:19
I mean, I think that they've called attention to the thing,
31:22
but that's not going to hold out.
31:23
The scary thing is that New York and California can do exactly
31:29
the same thing, but maybe with more numbers.
31:32
And that process is only going to weaken our country by making
31:38
it more more divided, more winner take all in things in my
31:43
opinion. Well, yeah, so you can
31:46
redistrict after a census. Or.
31:50
You can do it middayade. If there's a credible allegation
31:56
that a another redistricting was done inappropriately, that's the
32:02
that's the accusation. That's the legal basis for the
32:06
redistricting they're doing. Who did the one wrong?
32:10
The the one that was alleged to be wrong was I think it was in
32:15
21 as the last redistricting that they did.
32:18
Who? Ran.
32:19
Taxation. That they did it based on was
32:22
no, it was municipalities that had done the I don't know.
32:26
It was based on I, I, I don't purport to be an expert, but
32:30
there's a legal basis for it. But my point is if that's a
32:33
flimsy legal basis and it's incorrect, the courts can
32:36
overturn it. It's not, you know, it's not
32:39
beyond reproach and anybody can do it.
32:42
Redistrict at any time. I, you know, fleeing to Chicago.
32:46
I mean, other than, I mean, the only thing I was going to do is
32:48
get everybody in Iowa and every other state, you know, the, if
32:53
they hadn't fleed to, to Chicago, nobody else in the
32:56
country would have known and, or cared.
32:58
But now it's obviously a national issue, which is fun.
33:01
But I, you know, I, I guess the question is, will it hold up in
33:04
court? I mean, people can do whatever
33:06
they want, but there is a court system.
33:08
Yeah, I, I guess the redistricting in the Electoral
33:12
College the same way to a degree what I wish and and it's like
33:18
nobody would agree to this. I wish we would go through and
33:22
the redistricting would happen through a computer or an AI
33:27
mechanism that made every district as close to fair, as
33:34
close to 5050 in the last election as it could be.
33:39
In other words, you're not trying to to build safe
33:43
districts for either side. You try to make every district
33:47
possible as unsafe. Unsafe for voting.
33:51
I mean, make every put everything in play at all times
33:56
so that they've always got to earn their teeth.
33:59
But the problem is the blue districts are all inner city
34:03
where the high population center is the red.
34:05
You know, you look at the you look at the, the map of the
34:08
United States and it's like if you did away with the Electoral
34:12
College, Chicago, LA and New York would have decide every,
34:17
every leader of the country. Right.
34:20
No, that's that's true, but especially on Congress.
34:23
So I don't, especially in congressional districts.
34:25
I like the 5050 thing you're going with, but like, how the
34:28
hell would you do it in Austin? You know, like everybody in the
34:33
city is like 9010. So like other than making the
34:38
district like Austin plus 1000 miles to the West.
34:42
Right, right. No, I mean, that's that's true.
34:46
I, I just think, and I, I don't mean to oversimplify what I was
34:50
saying, but I wish we could come up with a standard that the goal
34:55
was not that I get what I want. The goal is that elections are
34:59
volatile in this country. The more volatile the election,
35:03
the more I wish every time there was an election for Congress in
35:08
this country, people wanted to tune in because they weren't
35:11
sure how that was going to go down.
35:14
That would be so much better for us.
35:16
It would That alone would do a lot towards bringing us together
35:20
because it would force people to talk to each other.
35:23
Well, and it'd be great if other places besides Pennsylvania,
35:28
Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida decided every presidential
35:33
election. Why?
35:35
OK, it's maybe another topic, but why are the cities all blue
35:40
and everybody else's red? It's a good question and it's a
35:44
really good question because that is the one part of this
35:48
that is still true that hasn't shaken up educational
35:52
attainment. The parties have done a complete
35:54
flip flop in the last 10 or 20 years.
35:58
Income, education, a lot of those things have completely
36:01
flipped around. Yeah, right.
36:04
But yet the urban centers, and I think it's a shoe waiting to
36:09
drop for the Democrats, to tell you the truth, because, and I
36:14
think it's partly why we have Trump, the second round, maybe
36:18
the first round, but certainly this round, because people in
36:22
the cities have realized that they're actually not getting all
36:28
of the love that they've been promised by Democrat
36:30
administrations. And so you know that that could
36:35
get worse. Yeah, well, who's the, you know,
36:39
so Kamala Harris went on on the the retiring Stephen Colbert
36:44
show and you know this, she was asked, well, who's the who's the
36:48
leader of the Democratic Party? Well, you know, there's people
36:51
that all over and some people are leaders and some people
36:53
aren't then blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you got a word salad
36:56
answer. So who's the leader of the
36:58
Democratic Party? Well, I don't know.
36:59
I mean, that's a huge problem. It's probably not going to be
37:02
who I wish it was. You know, I I'm like Rahm
37:07
Emanuel all the way. And that's probably not where
37:10
that's going to go. I do think what was the?
37:14
What was the now we might have talked about the last one and my
37:17
favorite story about him, what is it where he went and grabbed
37:19
some guy in the shower to the Senate to argue with somebody?
37:22
What was that? You heard of that?
37:24
I think it was the House of Representatives in the gym and
37:28
he, yeah. When argued with another senator
37:31
in the shower like you son of a bitch.
37:34
Yeah, yeah, that's that sounds like ROM.
37:39
He sounds like he's melded a little bit though.
37:41
I've seen him in a couple of forums and seems like a
37:46
reasonable character. Well, that's why I like him.
37:49
He's very reasonable. He's he's moderate as Democrats
37:53
go. You mentioned earlier, just in
37:56
passing Alexandria. What is her?
38:00
What I know. Where's AOC?
38:03
Acacia Cortez, right? She's popular, she's telegenic,
38:09
and she she lights people up. She probably would lead the
38:13
country in a direction further than I would want it to go.
38:17
It's one of the great things that I worry about.
38:19
I worry about the degree to which Trump galvanizes some of
38:25
the worst instincts on the left. That scares me a little bit.
38:29
Hey, here's some fun facts about Rahm Emanuel You may or may not
38:33
know he was a ballet dancer before politics.
38:37
I did not know that. He lost part of his middle
38:39
finger in a meat slicer accident while working at Arby's as a
38:43
teenager. Wow, he he once mailed a dead
38:47
fish to someone. Not that now we're talking.
38:52
Now we're talking. He said it was meant as a joke,
38:55
but the recipient wasn't laughing about it.
39:00
I mean, maybe it was a live fish when he bailed it.
39:02
You. You don't know.
39:03
He served in the Israeli Defence Forces.
39:05
Did he really? In 91 during the 91 goal before
39:09
he volunteered in the IDF. Wow, that's interesting.
39:14
Well, we haven't got it solved unfortunately.
39:17
Well, I mean, so we covered a little bit foreign affairs and
39:22
I, I do like that's a, an angle we've explored a little bit more
39:26
about the, the cult of personality and whether or not
39:29
the cult of personality really is in charge or not.
39:32
I think is an interesting one. How is what's going on in Syria?
39:37
Oh, I have no idea. With, you know, now that we've
39:40
normalized relations, are we selling crap to Siri?
39:43
I don't know if that new government is working or not.
39:47
I have no idea. There's all kinds of violence.
39:50
There's places like that. I'd love to go someday.
39:52
I'd love to go to Damascus. I would love to go to
39:57
Afghanistan and Iraq. I mean, all these places that
40:00
are these forbidden. And I want to go to North Korea
40:03
too. That's that's on the list too.
40:05
But. Ideally better to go to these
40:09
places when they're safe. Not so much for the the legacy
40:14
of war and danger. I if I were young and fit and
40:19
had the money to do it. I'm really interested in Central
40:24
Europe, in the Caspian, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
40:30
Afghanistan. I would really like to see those
40:33
places, but none of those places.
40:36
Or you. Do you take a cruise ship too,
40:37
you know? Like, what would be a wild one
40:40
to see too? I know you watching YouTube
40:42
videos about it is Turkmenistan. It's like the North Korea of
40:45
that region. I mean, it's like this military
40:47
and like, every building has to be like, white marble or
40:50
something. It's a funkiest looking place.
40:52
Yeah. Oh wow.
40:53
Looking, I have to check that out.
40:55
Yeah. Well, and you know, you don't
40:57
have to go to Central Europe for or Central Asia for crazy.
41:01
I mean, look at Haiti there there is no bigger tragedy in
41:05
the Western Hemisphere than Haiti.
41:07
And it's so weird that the same island you got Dominican
41:13
Republic and full of resorts that everybody wants to go to
41:16
and it's peaceful. Why is that?
41:18
Why is this would be? A good one.
41:20
Public safe in Haiti's. It is just a horrible legacy
41:24
that goes way back. I'll ask the producer to drop
41:28
into the to the chat. If you ever looked at look at
41:31
pull up Google Maps, the satellite view of Hispaniola,
41:37
which is the name of the island that spans Haiti and the
41:40
Dominican Republic. Make sure you're on satellite
41:43
view and kind of zoom in to the border and you can see, you can
41:50
see the different, the deforestation, like it's, it's
41:55
just plain to see. The color of the country is
41:58
different. There's certain places that you
42:01
look and it's just like, yeah, this country is like
42:04
everything's shaved to the ground.
42:05
All the trees have been hauled off.
42:07
Certainly not everywhere in the border, but there are parts of
42:10
that. And it's just such it's like
42:12
Stark. The other ones like the night
42:15
set, the light view. Oh yeah, yeah, that like looking
42:20
at, it's like looking at North and South Korea.
42:23
Yeah, yeah, just crazy. But it was like, I guess, you
42:28
know, in colonial times, like Haiti was Haiti was like the,
42:34
the operation and, and Dominican was kind of the lagging entity,
42:38
but it was all based on slave labor, right?
42:40
So like, and so it was almost like, I mean, Haiti was always
42:47
successful because of slave labor.
42:48
And then the colonial people all leave and all the slaves are
42:51
there and there's no, there's nothing versus Dominican just
42:55
kind of grew up in a state, a more stable environment.
42:58
Is that the way to think about it or?
43:02
I can't say that I know enough to to tell that for sure.
43:07
I know that a big part of what happened was, you know, Haiti
43:12
was the first successful slave revolt.
43:17
They, they basically overthrew their French overseers and
43:22
kicked them out of the country. Well, then later basically
43:29
France charged them like an exit fee.
43:36
Basically, France put a like a confiscatory, almost like the
43:43
reparations that Germany had to pay after World War 2 and that
43:47
completely hamstrung their infrastructure development at
43:51
the time when everybody else was really coming on.
43:54
And so really kind of hung them out to dry.
43:57
I mean, there have been a whole lot of other problems apart from
44:00
that. But well, and how much of it is
44:03
based on the fact that Haiti was all enslaved Africans that were
44:09
imported into the country. So they, their basis is of, you
44:13
know, no infrastructure, anything is a slave population
44:17
versus Dominican Republic was a, you know, it's more of like a
44:21
natural Hispanic entity that had been there and grown and matured
44:27
over time, you know what I mean? Versus like, you take this one
44:30
group that yeah, if there's a rebellion, but they didn't have
44:33
any infrastructure or any governance or anything.
44:37
And then you've got the other side, which it kind of grew up.
44:41
And what does that prefigure for what Gaza is going to look like?
44:46
You know, that's what I see in this.
44:50
OK, well, we we've obviously gone down a few rabbits, but.
44:54
I'm on that happy note. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll wrap
44:59
this one and look for some good news for next week.
45:01
Maybe something good will happen.
45:02
I heard that both Tulsi Gabbard and Trump mentioned in passing
45:09
UFO information they were thinking about releasing.
45:13
Well, that would be a good way to to get past Epstein and, you
45:17
know, a a couple flying saucers. That sounds perfect.
45:21
That's a great. He's like, he's like, well, you
45:23
know, nobody was ever able to do it, but they keep asking about
45:27
Epstein. He's going to be like, open up
45:30
the warehouse, roll them out. Hey, thanks for joining us on
45:38
this episode of Bourbon and Rum Podcast.
45:40
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45:46
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