Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 433: Whence Shame?

Transcript

Episode 433: Whence Shame? · Words & Numbers

0:00
Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony and this.
0:02
Is words and numbers brought to you by the fine people at
0:09
Polyhymnia Ants? What's new and exciting in your
0:13
world this week? Well, I'm surprised, probably
0:16
for the first time in our work together on this podcast, I was
0:21
listening to the episode couple episodes back.
0:24
You and I and Clark were recording and I thought it was a
0:29
superb episode, and we got a couple of comments saying that
0:36
it sounded like propaganda. In fact, I'll read this one from
0:40
Twitter. Today's podcast feels like
0:43
straight up propaganda. That's the best way to kill
0:46
something you've spent time building up.
0:49
And so I respond, well, what about it feels like propaganda
0:54
and for whom? Because we were, you know, going
0:57
after both sides here. And the response comes back.
1:00
I didn't vote for Trump, but it's really hard to listen to
1:03
people give the MSNBCTDS talk. I think TDs is Trump Derangement
1:09
syndrome. Sure.
1:11
That doesn't answer the question in any way though.
1:14
Yeah, I found it ironic because a large portion of that episode
1:20
was all three of us saying that people have got to step back
1:24
from their preconceptions and listen to what each other are
1:28
saying. And what came at me here is what
1:32
I've experienced elsewhere, where people hear some of the
1:36
words that I say and then fill in the rest based on their
1:40
presumption of what I'm actually thinking or feeling, and so
1:44
respond to something that I actually never said at all.
1:48
But they do respond to what they think they heard.
1:50
Yes, they respond to what they think they heard, and somehow
1:54
people never think they heard something that they would agree
1:57
with. Somehow they're always thinking
1:58
that they're hearing something they don't like.
2:01
It never works in that direction.
2:03
Never ever. But you know, if that's the
2:07
worst thing that happened to you all week, somebody said bad
2:09
words to you on Twitter. Well, I guess you're used to
2:13
that, right? Well, yeah, me and everybody
2:16
else who's ever been on Twitter. Well, I have to say in defense
2:19
of the person, there was no name calling here.
2:22
It was very polite exchange, but I came away wanting.
2:26
I'm not hearing what it is that the person thought was
2:30
propaganda. I'm sure it'll be interesting
2:33
once we figure it out. I want to talk about Donald
2:37
Trump again. All right, go for it.
2:43
Well, you know, there was this interesting thing that came out
2:47
today, yesterday for the people who are listening some weeks
2:51
into the future where Donald Trump took issue with Walmart
2:56
after Walmart said they were going to have to start raising
2:58
prices because of the tariffs and Trump said just eat the
3:04
tariff. What?
3:07
Now, Aunt, I could have swore Donald Trump told me that China
3:14
would pay the tariffs. Right, exactly.
3:17
So now he wants Walmart to pay the tariffs, which is closer, in
3:22
fact, to what will happen. Yeah.
3:25
And I've just looked up because I'm trying to remember in my
3:28
head and I am remembering correctly.
3:30
Walmart's net profit margin is 3%.
3:36
Tariff is 10%. Right.
3:41
So they can't eat the tariff. Literally can't.
3:47
Yeah, and somehow the foreigners were supposed to pay for this,
3:50
which economists everywhere and including the two of us said no,
3:54
that's not going to happen. The consumers are going to pay
3:56
for it. Yep, that's right.
3:58
And where we're left right now is that everybody on on Trump's
4:07
side of the aisle, they're all convinced that everything he
4:11
says is correct, but they never take a second to tell me which
4:18
part is correct when he contradicts himself, which
4:22
happens all the time. Who's going to pay the tariffs?
4:26
The Chinese will pay. But then why are we leaning on
4:29
Walmart to pay? Well, yeah.
4:31
And let's drill down on that for a minute.
4:33
Because we're not leaning on Walmart.
4:35
We're leaning specifically on Walmart's stockholders.
4:39
That's who would end up paying who are largely Americans.
4:44
Apparently that's fine too. Well it's fine because you say
4:49
Walmart stockholders and people think about yo fat cats, the
4:52
Walton family and so forth until you realize that my guess is
4:58
probably 50% of Americans own stock in Walmart.
5:03
Oh, I don't think that's right. Well, that's great, I believe.
5:06
It's 60% of Americans own stock either directly or indirectly,
5:11
and if you own stock I would be extremely surprised if somewhere
5:15
in your portfolio you don't have shares of Walmart.
5:19
I would check, but I don't have a keyboard.
5:22
How is it if they were doing this over a computer and you
5:25
don't have a keyboard? It's taken a fair amount of work
5:29
on my part, I'll tell you that for nothing, for crying out
5:34
loud. But that, of course, brings us
5:35
to the foolishness of the week. Which isn't.
5:38
Which is James. Not a podcast.
5:40
Without a keyboard. No, no, no, no, no, Aunt, I want
5:44
to draw our attention, or your attention, maybe more to the
5:47
point, to the fine town of Johnstown, PA.
5:52
Oh, we've talked about Johnstown in the past.
5:55
What do you know about Johnstown?
5:56
I know about Johnstown's flood tax.
6:00
Yep, still being applied. Still being applied and that
6:02
flood was. If I'm not mistaken it was the
6:05
1950s, if not earlier. I think it was even earlier,
6:09
wouldn't it? May have been earlier, but we
6:11
talked about it years ago and back then we were saying this
6:15
Johnstown tax that was supposedly imposed to rebuild
6:19
Johnstown and it's collected so much money over the years that
6:24
you could have rebuilt Johnstown three times over and yet the tax
6:28
is still there. It's a miracle, isn't it, how
6:32
Johnstown is fine and yet there's the tax.
6:35
Once a tax has been implemented, it's carved in stone.
6:39
You don't get rid of it. But that's not what we're
6:41
talking about today, Aunt. What else you know about
6:43
Johnstown? Let's see, they've got the
6:46
airport to nowhere, is that correct?
6:49
Don't know, but that's not what we're talking about either.
6:51
There were some airport that they built their subsidized with
6:54
federal money. And as I recall, and this is not
6:58
far back, this would have been in the early 2000s, maybe 2000
7:03
tens. They built this airport with
7:05
federal money, and the federal money funded a flight maybe
7:10
twice a day to Washington, DC At the time we reported on it, they
7:16
had more TSA agents at that airport than they had.
7:20
Customers, that seems right. All right, I'm just going to cut
7:25
to the chase here. Because we there's more.
7:28
We could do this all day long with Johnstown, apparently, but
7:33
Aunt, a kindergartner at Johnstown, brought jello shots
7:37
to school and passed him out to her there.
7:40
Oh my God, that's so sad and so funny at the same time.
7:45
Yeah. Many questions.
7:48
What the hell are they doing in Johnstown that kindergarteners
7:51
are scooping up jello shots before they get on the bus?
7:55
Right. Yeah.
7:55
Where did they get it? How did they get it at that time
7:57
of day? How did they get it into the
7:59
classroom? And how long did it take the
8:02
teacher to figure this out? Well there's literally no way
8:06
this didn't come from parents. Oh yeah, right, right.
8:10
This stuff was in the refrigerator.
8:13
Yeah, kindergarten for crying out loud.
8:16
I myself didn't start drinking until the 3rd grade.
8:21
All right, now, in defense of the parents, you could see a
8:25
situation where the parent made jello shots and Oh my God, I've
8:28
got to make the treat for the kid tomorrow and makes other
8:32
jello as well because she already has a jello, because she
8:35
was making jello shots. And the kid gets a mixed up or
8:38
somebody gets a mixed up, takes the wrong one in.
8:40
I can see that. That's an understandable error.
8:44
It's not going to work out that way.
8:47
Is there more? I can guarantee you that that's
8:50
not going to be the answer. What's the answer?
8:53
The answer is that a parent leftist in the fridge,
8:56
unattended, and the kid said oh look colors, I'll bring them to
9:00
school. So what happens?
9:02
Do we know the details? The kid brings them to school,
9:05
hands them out. That's what we got.
9:08
If it makes you feel any better, 1/5 grader in Texas did it last
9:12
month. Yeah, All right.
9:16
Yeah, I could see that. What's coming though from these
9:19
two, two, count them two incidences over however many
9:23
schools in multiple years we have.
9:25
What's coming is a ban. It'll be Tide Pods all over
9:29
again. School districts all across the
9:32
country saying you may not bring jello.
9:36
That's probably going to happen. Hats off to Johnstown, PA making
9:41
the news again. This is a town of.
9:43
I don't know what their population is, but I would guess
9:45
it's somewhere underneath 20,000.
9:48
Yeah, 20,000 And yet they still find a way to get to the top of
9:56
everybody's. News Feed.
9:59
It's kind of astonishing, really.
10:01
While we're on the topic, I want to remind listeners we talked
10:05
about Johnstown back in the day because there was this tax
10:09
instituted many decades ago and it never went away as taxes have
10:13
a tendency to do. There was 1 tax at the time, and
10:17
since then it is still the only tax I'm aware of that was
10:22
instituted for a particular reason and was then subsequently
10:27
repealed after that reason was no longer a thing.
10:31
And this was a tax on telephone service to help fund the Spanish
10:36
American War. That tax was subsequently
10:41
repealed after we're done financing the Spanish American
10:45
War, and it was finally repealed in the early 2000s.
10:51
Well, when was the Spanish American War?
10:54
Like 18 something. Ain't nothing perfect, aunt.
10:58
This is just how it is. For One Stop shopping for all
11:02
things James and Aunt, visit our website wordsandnumbers.org.
11:08
We give a special shout out to our Patreon sponsors who help us
11:11
keep the lights on. If you'd like to contribute, go
11:15
to patreon.com/words and Numbers.
11:19
We have an equally ridiculous main topic today and, and I know
11:24
this isn't exactly in your wheelhouse, but I could probably
11:27
walk you through some of it because I don't know.
11:32
I mean, how do you even start talking about something that's
11:36
this asinine? I'm going to let you introduce
11:38
it. You sent me the video and I
11:40
watched it and I'm perplexed. That's all I'll say.
11:43
And we're not going to be sharing that video with people
11:46
in the show notes because I don't want you to be clicking
11:50
through on that. Making Kanye West more famous
11:54
than he already is. He's written a song.
11:57
I don't know if it's the official title, but it might as
12:00
well be called Heil Hitler. What the hell is going on in the
12:07
world that this kind of nonsense can bubble up to the surface?
12:13
I mean, Aunt, it wasn't too terribly long ago when I was
12:16
saying things like, Gee, nobody talks about Hitler in glowing
12:23
terms. Why on earth do we talk about
12:26
the Soviet Union in glowing terms?
12:28
Right. And instead of dragging the
12:32
Soviet Union down to Hitler, we've dragged Hitler up to the
12:37
Soviet Union. Yeah.
12:40
How did we get here? Well, let's give it a little
12:43
background, and I'll just say you sent me the link.
12:46
So I watched this thing, and I'm not a Kanye West fan.
12:49
I'm not against him. It's just not my thing, right?
12:52
But I'm watching this and I'm surprised he's got this chorus
12:57
of, you know, people singing repeatedly how Hitler and the
13:03
chorus are all black men. And I'm thinking, what the hell,
13:09
Hitler was putting blacks in concentration camps simply
13:13
because they were black, along with, you know, the Jews and the
13:16
Catholics and the whoever else. And I asked you, is this
13:21
supposed to be ironic? Because I couldn't tell what the
13:24
lyrics were about. It is not ironic.
13:29
What's he thinking? Well, I would hazard to guess
13:35
that Kanye doesn't think much. The real question is, who's
13:40
paying money for this? Who on earth heard that and
13:47
said, I got to run out and buy that.
13:50
I got to go see Kanye on tour. Kanye should be shamed right off
13:55
of every stage that he's ever been on.
13:58
And yet that's not happening. And it's bad enough that he
14:02
wants to have a a Nazi song. It's bad enough right?
14:08
But what's really atrocious is that people are giving him their
14:12
attention, not like we are today.
14:16
I think this is more of a public service announcement.
14:19
Although maybe you can make the case that even we shouldn't be
14:22
talking about it because it just draws more attention to it.
14:26
But I don't understand how people just fall in line with an
14:33
obvious anti semite like this and they don't stop to think
14:37
jeez maybe this isn't OK. Is this, and again, I don't
14:43
follow these things, but is it possible that his career was
14:47
flaming out and so he goes and does something like this just to
14:51
generate the type of response that we're giving?
14:55
I mean, he does all kinds of horrible things.
14:57
So I don't think I would say that it's likely that it was
15:01
done as a career rejuvenation tactic.
15:06
He's just a terrible person you actually see him walking around
15:09
with. I don't know if it's his wife or
15:11
his girlfriend at this point, but he takes her out the house
15:14
naked. What?
15:17
She just kind of wanders around naked and nobody stops and says,
15:24
hey Kanye, what's up with this? These seem to be reasonable
15:29
questions to me and I would like to know when it became so
15:33
acceptable to be an open anti semite again.
15:37
Right. Yeah.
15:39
Right, because I remember when anti semites knew enough to be
15:43
embarrassed enough by their own beliefs that they kept them
15:47
quiet. Which is a little baffling,
15:51
right? If you believe something, why
15:53
you embarrassed by it? But they were, and they knew
15:56
better, and they held these idiotic beliefs anyway, so they
16:00
kept them close to the chest. But not anymore.
16:06
And I can't quite figure out how we got here.
16:10
I mean, how is it that Jewish college students don't feel safe
16:14
on campus anymore? And they shouldn't, right?
16:17
That's not an unreasonable thing for them to be saying.
16:20
The climate is such that all kinds of people are paying a
16:26
price for idiocy like Kanye's. So what's wrong with us, I
16:35
guess, is the open question. This is an US problem, right?
16:41
Kanye is one of us. Yeah, we've become intolerant of
16:46
each other. And very callous.
16:49
Yeah, as if disagreeing with me, whoever me is, is somehow
16:55
anathema. But all of that, I think it's
16:58
built on the presumption that everybody should should think
17:02
the same, want the same things, have the same aspirations,
17:06
whatever it is. And if anybody disagrees with
17:09
mine, there's something wrong with them.
17:13
We've lost the sense that we can just have different opinions.
17:17
I'm going to push back on that a little bit because Kanye is not
17:22
entitled to that opinion. He's not.
17:26
That opinion was settled in World War 2.
17:30
That would be like saying we have to go back to segregation,
17:34
right? Yeah, you can have that opinion,
17:36
but it doesn't mean it's at all respectable, right?
17:40
There's nothing good about these opinions, right?
17:43
So some opinions are so stupid that they should be off the
17:47
table. I mean, who in Kanye's orbit is
17:51
thinking, well, maybe we'll just see what happens?
17:56
Nobody pulled them aside and said, hey, Kanye, don't do this.
18:01
This is a mistake, right? I don't know what to make of it.
18:05
People have become so obnoxious and so callous towards one
18:09
another. You can't talk about the
18:13
Holocaust in this way and not be offensive.
18:19
There's just no way. Is it possible?
18:24
I guess I've lived long enough that I've met a number of people
18:28
who are powerful enough that the people around them are afraid to
18:34
say no. They're afraid to contradict.
18:37
Like Donald Trump, for example. Is it?
18:40
Possible that Kanye is surrounded by a bunch of people
18:44
like that and so he says something no matter how off the
18:46
wall and they just say, Oh yeah, this is a great idea.
18:49
I think it is, but that doesn't answer the question of why he
18:54
has fans who enable him. If my favorite performers put
19:00
out this song, they would not be my favorite performers anymore.
19:05
They would never get a dollar of my money again because this is
19:09
beyond the pale. And yet here we are.
19:14
And I see people not exactly making excuses for Kanye but not
19:20
holding him to account either. Would you let one of your
19:25
children get away with this? Oh no.
19:28
Yeah, not in a million years. And yet, Kanye, here we are.
19:36
I think it says more about the place where we've gotten as a
19:41
people, where we just can't be kind to each other anymore.
19:46
There's no kindness at all. Is it that or is it that we seem
19:53
to have lost all sense of shame? People don't seem to feel shame
19:57
anymore. No shame.
19:59
And I wonder if that comes from this push that we've saw for
20:03
decades of accept people as they are, which there's a lot to be
20:08
said for that. But to just blanket accept
20:12
everything that erases any need for shame, right?
20:15
That's right, there's a bunch of people out there who should
20:17
never be accepted as they are. Yeah.
20:21
And Kanye's one of them. I pick on him because he's so
20:24
famous, right? He's such a big deal culturally.
20:29
Frankly, I don't know why. I think he's a talentless hack
20:32
and he always has been. When I saw him try to sing
20:36
Bohemian Rhapsody in front of the Glastonbury Festival, I
20:40
wanted to gouge my ears out with chopsticks just to make the
20:45
sound go away. So who's listening to this
20:48
garbage in the 1st place is an open question.
20:52
But who's listening to this racist garbage in the 1st place
20:55
is a better question because that takes the value judgement
20:59
of the music off the table. Now it's anti-Semitism, and yet
21:07
no big deal, right? No big deal.
21:09
Was this a song from a new album he's come out with or something?
21:14
Yeah, I believe it will be soon. I don't think his album is out
21:17
yet, but I could be mistaken on that.
21:19
OK. So then we could come back later
21:22
on and ask how did it do? I mean, they'll be dollars and
21:26
cents attached to it. It's already gotten 10s of
21:29
millions of views. Oh.
21:31
Really. Yeah.
21:32
Oh yes, yeah, no, his fan base is lapping it up.
21:37
What the hell? I don't even know what to say
21:41
about this. We've gotten to a point now
21:45
where anti-Semitism is so recharged, so rejuvenated, that
21:50
we are in a dangerous position. There's nothing good going to
21:59
happen as a result of what we're seeing now, so how bad will it
22:05
get is the open question. One can accept what you're
22:11
saying without having to go down the rabbit hole of, you know,
22:16
whether Jews have done well or badly or whatever it is, or talk
22:20
about the business with the Palestinians.
22:23
You don't have to go down that rabbit hole at all.
22:26
You simply ask the question, what happens when it becomes OK
22:31
to take a group of people and say it's OK to make fun of them?
22:36
It's OK to denigrate them, it's OK to exclude them?
22:41
OK, that's the first group of people.
22:42
Who's next? I find the whole thing to be
22:47
incredibly sad. It's just incredibly sad.
22:51
Yeah. What do we tell our Jewish
22:54
friends? Oh, I didn't want to speak up.
22:58
You know, I didn't want to get anybody upset with me.
23:03
That's what you say when you don't speak up.
23:06
That's what you're saying, that it's more important to you to
23:09
have a calm life than to speak the obvious truth.
23:14
And that's shameful. I mean, I don't know how I get
23:18
to be the voice of a new Moral Majority.
23:21
Of propriety. And how we got here.
23:25
But here we are. I'm just befuddled by it.
23:30
I'm horrified that everybody didn't stand up and say, Kanye,
23:34
you got to go because I wouldn't let him in my house, would you?
23:42
It's a blanket rule. Nobody who says Heil Hitler is
23:46
welcome in my house. I find that to be a rather
23:50
unremarkable assertion. Wasn't that salute actually
23:54
outlawed in Germany? Yes, you can't do that in
23:58
Germany. Yeah, yeah, it's that bad.
24:01
It's against the law. They're still dealing with their
24:05
shame. I don't know if they should be
24:08
anymore, right? Almost nobody alive had anything
24:11
to do with it. Right.
24:13
I'm loath to hold people responsible for what other
24:17
generations of those people did. This is the same argument that
24:21
gets you reparations here. You know, in a place where no
24:27
one was ever enslaved and no one ever enslaved anyone else, why
24:31
would we need reparations? So I'm with you that no one
24:37
alive today in Germany likely should be held accountable.
24:40
But by the same token, we shouldn't forget.
24:43
And I think when it comes to so many things, social, political,
24:47
economic, it seems to be the case that every 20 years the new
24:52
generation has to relearn the lessons that the previous one
24:56
learns with such pain. That's interesting, isn't it?
25:00
Because, you know, World War 2 ended about 80 years ago.
25:04
Yeah. And I can remember periods where
25:08
people obviously forgot. I remember it.
25:13
I mean, look, we were born 20 ish years after World War 2, so,
25:23
you know, we weren't that removed from it, right?
25:27
I remember, you know, going to high school and Holocaust
25:30
victims showed up to talk to us, showed us the tattoo on her arm,
25:35
right? These kinds of things.
25:38
But we've gotten further and further away from that now.
25:40
And the people who can remember anything at all about it are few
25:45
and far between. And somehow now we're all back
25:48
to the same stupid. And you start to think about
25:55
economics, and it's the same kind of story, isn't it?
25:58
We're back to mercantilism now, right?
26:02
Well, I mean, how many times do you have to play it out?
26:04
We got rid of the Smoot Hawley tariffs when I want to say the
26:08
early 70s, perhaps maybe earlier than that.
26:13
Way earlier than that. But same thing we've forgotten
26:16
and so now we've got the same business all over again.
26:20
And not only that, you can think about all kinds of other things
26:24
too, right? Communism.
26:27
Why does communism come roaring back every 20 years?
26:30
Right, right. It's exactly as stupid as an
26:33
idea now as it ever was. And yet we get a bunch of young
26:38
people who want to extol the virtues of communism all the
26:42
time. Well, OK, what makes you think
26:46
you're going to be in charge, young person?
26:49
You're going to be work in the fields, they all say.
26:53
All the young people who want communism are convinced that
26:56
they're going to be part of the ruling elite.
26:59
The thing I find amazing is it the people who want communism
27:02
are people who have never lived under it.
27:04
The people who lived under it want nothing to do with it.
27:07
I've said it 1000 times right, not real communism is far more
27:11
dangerous than not real capitalism.
27:13
Right. Yes.
27:14
Give me not real capitalism any day of the week.
27:17
It lifts people out of poverty and misery.
27:20
Not real. Communism, on the other hand,
27:22
kills them. Yeah.
27:25
Imagine how effective real communism would be.
27:29
I don't know how we ended up here, where all of these evil
27:33
things from the past are just bubbling up to the surface
27:36
again, as if we never talked about it before, as if it's all
27:42
a new idea. I just don't get it.
27:48
Yeah. And I think to come back to
27:50
where we started, people aren't going to learn from the past if
27:55
they aren't willing to entertain ideas that conflict with their
27:59
preconceptions. That's a trick we're very bad at
28:02
right now, entertaining things that conflict with our
28:05
preconceptions. And getting worse.
28:08
Yeah, yeah. And there's precious little
28:11
grace, right? There's no benefit of the doubt.
28:16
Everybody's just at each other all the time.
28:20
And then entered Kanye with something this stupid.
28:25
Well, now it's going to be worse, right?
28:28
Because you know, there, there's nothing good about him.
28:33
This is a terrible person saying terrible things, and I wonder
28:40
how he looks at Jewish people having said these things.
28:46
I mean, is he that stupid that he doesn't know to be ashamed of
28:50
himself? I have a hard time believing
28:52
that. But he might not.
28:58
He might be too stupid, I know. What do you make of idiot?
29:03
What are we going to do about all this nonsense?
29:05
Probably just nothing, right? I'm going to go back to doing
29:08
what I was doing before, which is not listening to him.
29:13
Well, I've been very good at that over the years myself, so
29:15
I'll probably also do that, but I wish he would go away.
29:21
And that's all the time we've got this week on words and
29:23
numbers. Until next time.
29:25
Send us e-mail wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
29:28
Try to be nice to one person who doesn't deserve it till next
29:32
week. Can't take it easy.
29:32
See you next week. James.