Latest / The Unsexy Businessmen / Your Opinion on The Iran War Is Wrong
Transcript
- Aaron Skinner: All right, welcome to the unsexy opinions by people with common sense. And so the topic today, or at least the first topic that we're gonna talk about is the Iran war. And we got a lot of opinions and ⁓ actually I don't. I don't have a lot of opinions about the Iran war. The reason I don't have a lot of opinions about the Iran war is because, or Iran, sorry, if I'm not saying that correctly, is because I'm not educated enough to have a educated opinion on it. Alex Skinner: doesn't even know how to say the country name. Aaron Skinner: Okay, so I think the first thing that anyone who's going to like anyone at these protests or anyone that's doing anything, if you have ⁓ like a one-on-one with someone like, all right, pull up your Google map and like show me where Iran is on this map. And I guarantee you the majority of the people would guess incorrectly. It's just like, stop, I don't know. It's like, stop pretending to be offended just to be offended. It's so easy. because all it is, and it's like the Bad Bunny episode, all it is is whoever you voted for in the last presidential election, that's which way you're gonna lean for every single topic. Like no one can just critically think about this. The only person who can, like, it's funny, because John Fetterman, who is the Senator of, do, do, do, do, do, do, that's gotta say Philadelphia. ⁓ my God. Alex Skinner: I'm looking it up. ⁓ it's that guy that looks, ⁓ Pennsylvania. Okay. You should have said, you should have said a polo, ⁓ hoody, hoody senator. Aaron Skinner: Pennsylvania, yes, Phil. Can we edit that part out? What I said, Philadelphia as a state? You know what I meant. I was thinking Philadelphia because he's a giant ⁓ Eagles fan. ⁓ so I think he was, I never agree with a lot of stuff he says, but it's interesting that it's just, my point being is, Alex Skinner: It just, I think it just proves the point thing. Aaron Skinner: Someone who is a Democrat and is well, way more informed can have a differing opinion from, you know, his constituency, I guess, or his side of the aisle. And so I just, I think that's super annoying. It's just, it doesn't matter what the topic is. It's who I voted for and it's the tribalism of it. And everyone talks about, we're so divided, but we're divided because nobody thinks for themselves. All they do is what they see in their algorithm on their social media or what they get from the only news outlet that they watch. People need to like broaden their sources of information. Alex Skinner: People go to these algorithms too and like they go, ⁓ that's AI. ⁓ that's AI. ⁓ that's AI. But then they will immediately believe anything that fits into whatever their vacuum is, whatever their echo chamber is. Like you hear all these people like, ⁓ my gosh, can you even trust social media? Can you even trust social media? No, the answer is no, you can't trust it. Why? Because people are liars. Aaron Skinner: Yeah, whatever their narrative is, Alex Skinner: People have been liars for all of human history and now billions of people have the opportunity to lie every single minute of every single day to an audience. And yet we will believe anything because it makes us feel good. That's what upsets me is like, we all know this. That's the upsetting thing. Everybody says like, Aaron Skinner: Yes. Alex Skinner: Especially when it comes to like sides like that person is lying. Okay I'll go research and prove that that person is lying But I'm not gonna do any of this research from this person who I have trusted for a long period of time Like I think about like Candice Owens like every day just kidding I think about Candice Owens whenever these types of topics come up and I love how much the right is turning on her because she's psycho Playing a caricature. I don't think she believes what she says and yet she still Aaron Skinner: Yeah Alex Skinner: has a following because she is saying the things that her people will continue to believe. And we all look at that. And when I say we, mean, general, like we look at that, we're like, that's crazy. And then we go and do the exact same thing. And so with Iran, something that ⁓ that we were talking about before that's frustrating is like you said, go talk, go talk to an Iranian, right? Most of us don't even have any Iranian friends. Do know how many Iranian friends I have? Aaron Skinner: Yes. Alex Skinner: Zero, I have zero Iranian friends. So I don't even have any of them to talk to. And guess what? There are going to be Iranians who are so happy that this has happened. And my guess would be a lot of these Iranians are going to live in the United States or outside of Iran because that's why they left. And then you're also going to have the people who are super stoked. If Donald Trump, hopefully this doesn't happen, if Donald Trump got killed tomorrow, you would have people celebrating and people mourning. And the people who are celebrating would be. Why, why isn't more people, why aren't more people celebrating with us? And the mourners would be like, why, why are people not mourning with us? Because that's how crazy the world has become. Or maybe they're happy Iranians and maybe they're sad Iranians. I have no idea. And I'm not going to take the time to figure it out because guess how much impact that this has on my life right now. What about the gas prices? What about the gas prices? Hey, I got news for you. Gas prices have increased by 40 cents a gallon. What that means for you is about Aaron Skinner: Yeah. Alex Skinner: $8 additional if you have a 40 gallon tank, $8 additional. Well, that's pretty expensive, Alex. That's easy for you to say $125 to 139. So forgive me $14 difference. Like they make up all of it. Like don't get me wrong, that sucks. I would much rather have the $14 than not have the $14, right? Like I want more. I want to keep more of what I have. But guess what? We live in this rat race world where we have to figure out how to play the game and how. how to survive regardless of what everybody else is doing. Maybe you should have been saving some money for this time. Maybe you drive less. Maybe you're not going on long road trips anymore. There's ways around this where it should have a negligible impact on you. I don't know why I just got so fiery hot right there, but I think it's just so exhausting. Honestly, like... Aaron Skinner: Well, I'll tell you why. Because if, this is why sometimes I would love to have a time machine and it wouldn't be to go make money. It would be actually not a time machine, but just the ability to switch presidents. And if Biden were to have done this exact same thing, all the Republicans would be pissed off. And then, all the Democrats are like, he's liberating the people that have been held down and had horrible lives in Iran. Good for Joe Biden. He's the greatest. And the Republicans would be saying the opposite. It's just like, I would love to be able to just switch those just to prove the point that has nothing to do with what's actually happening. Alex Skinner: Aaron, we low key have an example of that with Biden exiting from Afghanistan. Most everybody wanted us to be out of the Middle East. Charlie Kirk was huge. hate pretty, I love just like using the opinions of like very popular figures to like prove a point. Like he was huge on, man, good job Donald Trump for not getting us locked into a war, into a never ending war, blah, blah. Like I know that nobody wants those wars. Biden pulls us out of Afghanistan and Republicans lose their mind about how poorly it was executed. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it's so yes, to your point, no matter what, there is nothing. I know it's social media's fault. I was listening to the Bill Simmons podcast earlier where there were actually no, it was the rewatchables and how the internet has changed everything. And that's, that's not groundbreaking. Aaron Skinner: Breaking news, yeah. Alex Skinner: But he said something that I kind of remember because we didn't have the internet in our house like regularly to like the 2000s is the only way you could know what a different country looked like is if you had people who visited there or a movie. Now you just go online, you search, boom, I want to see what Barcelona looks like. I want to see what Denver looks like. And so these movies had power, more power back then because they were giving you insight into like a secret land. Aaron Skinner: Yes. Mm-hmm. Alex Skinner: that you hadn't been able to explore, especially like as a child. And now the internet just has everything out there for you, every single opinion. And what's different about the internet early on is you went and looked for those things and now those things are hunting you. And so just like something that I've been thinking about a lot today where it's like, ⁓ like the world is so much less interesting because we can see everything that we want to see. And we can choose the opinions that we get to be bombarded with. don't know. Aaron Skinner: Right, well, I don't know if you could choose as much. Like, I guess you can because it's just depending on what you're clicking on and that's what your algorithm turns into. But I just wanted to show you a couple of clips really quick, Alex. Alex Skinner: Yeah. Aaron Skinner: it's a guy interviewing someone at an Iranian protest about how America sucks. So, well, let's just watch this real quick. Yeah, ⁓ I don't know if that's true. ⁓ I think they're talking about America. That's what I, I want to think. Okay. And then let me show you this other one. This is what, okay. There's just circling back. This is what I want everyone to do. So then he interviewed someone from Iran. All right. So let me pull this up and it's, ⁓ it's just like, this is, this is how you, this is how you do it people. It's not that hard. Alex Skinner: You you Aaron Skinner: Get your evidence from the people that have actually experienced it. All right, so that's just, again, if you want to find out what's actually happening in a certain place that you're, you know, you're just don't get immediately offended about what's happening. Talk to the locals and see how they actually feel before you get offended for those locals. It was the same thing with Venezuela. I'm married to a Venezuelan woman. She has a lot of family in Venezuela. When the whole thing happened with Maduro, we had family members that were outraged that we did that. And talking to my wife, talking to her family that still live in Venezuela, all the Venezuelans were very, in fact, all the, sorry, let me finish it. All the Venezuelans were very happy what Trump did. I would say, okay, that's hyperbolic. The majority of Venezuelans were very happy that Maduro got taken out. And not only that, but Alex, you and I were at the bank recently and our banker was a Venezuelan. We asked him how he felt about it. He's like, I haven't been back to Venezuela in nine years. Maybe I'm finally going to be able to go back and visit my family. It's like just whatever is happening, go to the source, go to the actual source. And if you don't have a, like just, I don't know, this is that, I think that's what pisses me off is, you, especially for, for me and probably you Alex, where you, when you have like family members that will post these opinions about how horrible Trump is because he took Maduro out. It's like, You have, you have a sister-in-law, you could ask how Venezuelans actually feel. That's nothing more belittling than telling people how they're supposed to feel that are suffering. That's just like, it's so crazy to me. Like, I just, I don't get it. I don't understand it. Alex Skinner: Well, and the irony being at least like with the way that we've been leaning in terms of like these two were because it's a Republican president right now who did both of those things. is a liberal backlash that is happening. So it's going to make us seem like we are more conservative than we are liberal. that the irony is I'm going to go back to I guarantee there are Iranians who are pissed. We did what we did. Aaron Skinner: Sure, yeah. Alex Skinner: I guarantee that there are Venezuelans who are pissed at what we did. But the overall sentiment that I've got from people that I've talked to on the Venezuelan side has been, we are happy that that guy is gone. Iran, have nothing. But if I were a betting man, I bet you the people who are in power, the people who were benefiting from these regimes of Maduro's or from, I bet you those people will complain. So, you your top 1 % in those countries. Aaron Skinner: Yes. Alex Skinner: So the irony is that the liberals who hate the top 1 % of the United States are supporting, more often than not, the top 1 % of those in Iran and those in Venezuela. The people who were enjoying in, I keep thinking, disfrutando. What is that? What's disfrutando in English? Enjoying? Is it enjoying? Enjoying the spoils of a... ⁓ Aaron Skinner: Mm-hmm. Right. It's a joy, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex Skinner: terrible, terrible regime if you are middle or lower class. Aaron Skinner: Yeah, it's, ⁓ just to point this out, if it was Biden that went and freed the Venezuelans from Maduro, I would be happy he did that. Like it's, I really am a very centrist when it comes to politics. I try to think as rationally as I can. And it's hard because I have a lot of very ⁓ hard conservative friends, very hard leaning conservative friends, which is. Alex Skinner: Yeah. Yeah. Aaron Skinner: The thing about it is like, it's like Biden never did anything good. And like, I'm just so not into politics that much that I was like, I guarantee you there are good things that Biden did. Like, do I know all, can I name them off the top of my head? No, but I'm sure there are some good things that he's done. There's good things that Trump has done and there's stupid things that Trump has done. Like, we can't just be like, because Trump did this good, because Biden did this bad or vice versa. It's just. You have to call people out when they do good things. Actually, like I was watching Bill Maher the other day, just because I watch everything. So I'm curious about other people's opinions. And his final clip, or what does he call it? The new rules or whatever, I can't remember. And his final thing was Trump had called him out and made fun of him because... Trump said, Bill Maher never says anything good about him. And he just went through all these clips of all the nice things and saying, Bill Maher's like, he did this right, he did that right. I was wrong about this, Trump was right. And it was just interesting. You have to be able to kind of take a broader view of what's going on and not just be like, because I don't like that person, they're wrong. And they did everything stupid. I don't know, fucking pisses me off. Alex Skinner: And with that example, it's essentially Trump got pissed at Bill Maher for disagreeing about him with one thing. Just like, ⁓ he's agreed with me on a hundred other things, but it's this one thing that I'm never going to let go. There's really a story here in all of life, everybody. You can't just look at, depending on how bad it was, I do, I use this app with my wife. I don't even remember the name of the app. ⁓ Aaron Skinner: Yes. Yes. Yes. Alex Skinner: Yeah, my wife and I are both on Grindr. ⁓ It's like a couples app where it asks you like a daily question to see what each is responses and ⁓ crap, what was today's? I'm so embarrassed. forgot where I was going. I'm going to have to edit this so much more than I initially thought. ⁓ and today's question was, you believe in second chances? And the answer is almost resoundingly yes, with exceptions, you know, like murder. I don't think that there's a whole lot of like I can do in terms of murder or any honestly, and even like accidental killing of my child. Like if someone accidentally shot my son, if someone... Aaron Skinner: ⁓ Alex. Yeah Alex Skinner: accidentally hit my son with their car, especially if they were drinking and driving, that would be pretty hard for me to forgive. like with everything else, like, you know, not life and death related. I think there are opportunities for and maybe that's like what has happened. Like, do we just not allow people the opportunity to fail? Like everyone has to be perfect except for ourselves. I've like lived this in Aaron Skinner: or texting. Alex Skinner: I try to apologize as much as possible. suck at apologizing, but I try to apologize as much as possible. And the amount of grudges, or the number of grudges that I have tried to squash, and the number of wrongs that I've tried to right are so hard. Don't get me wrong. That person gets to decide if they're going to forgive me or not. But people generally don't want to. That is, but maybe it's because I've made far too, far too many mistakes, but people were living it on a day to day basis now with, all of the, especially like with social media being as prolific. You did one thing wrong. I don't get me wrong. Like Louis CK is a weirdo, like a weirdo for like doing the masturbation thing, but it's just like, and now this guy shouldn't be allowed to do stand up ever again. Aaron Skinner: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Skinner: It's just like weird to me, like the things that we pick and choose to like, all right, this person can't do and obviously eventually time heals all things, but it's, just frustrating. It's frustrating where the world is. And I don't, maybe it's always been like that. Like, and I always look, look back. I like look back at my dad. I remember one time, one of my, I'm going to just say family or friends. I don't want to make this too specific after I had offended them. Aaron Skinner: The unfrigable things. Yeah. Alex Skinner: this is going to be way too specific. They reached out to me about my dad and like there was like this song, it was like this song, I don't remember. was like, this just reminds me of like how much your dad like loved people and how much he would take care of them. Like he didn't talk to his brother or sister who he lived like five miles away from for like 30 years. I was like, don't get me wrong. I'm not like saying my dad's bad or anything like that. I just thought it was hilarious. Someone who I'm just like, you're trying to weaponize my father against me. And he literally stopped talking to two of his siblings who lived within five miles of them until they died. Aaron Skinner: I would argue he didn't even talk to him after they died. Alex Skinner: But like I don't say that to like besmirch my dad I got okay I have no idea but it's more along the lines like maybe we've always been like this and like essentially we humans have always been the same I just spoke at a conference where I use the Bon Jovi quote it's all the same only the names will change ⁓ Those who don't learn from their past are doomed to repeat it humans repeat their shit all the time over and myself included over and over and over again Aaron Skinner: No, right, right, right, yeah. Alex Skinner: All that really changes is the technology. And now because we have social media, that is the technology that has changed and is just for like a megaphone just made it very apparent. All of these flaws in human nature. Am I optimistic for humans? Of course, dude, we used to live in caves. Like we used to not have wheels and now we have the stuff that we have. I'm incredibly optimistic. We're always innovating and so I'm not like down on it. It's more just like come the fuck on man. What the fuck? Aaron Skinner: I think, dude, I honestly, like, for me, I just, I think we have these kinds of conversations in hopes that we can reach the other people that are like-minded of like, let's just think critically about things and not just make a decision based off of political leanings. Like, that's all I want. That's all, I mean, I want a lot of things, but just for this podcast, that's what I want. I just want to find out, there other people like this? Are there other people that know that Joe Biden did some great things and Donald Trump has done good things and Joe Biden did bad things and Donald Trump has done bad, are there people that know and can admit to both of those things? That's all, I don't know. If we could just get more people that were more like self-aware and courteous than... there wouldn't be as many issues that are going on, but instead of just being pissed, it's funny, cause this whole podcast was pissed off people. And I'm not like pissed at people, I'm more pissed at, but I'm not mad at people, I'm mad at that mindset is what frustrates me. It's like, and we could go for a long time, try to figure out what exactly has caused that. again, we kind of already talked about it. Alex Skinner: But we're not calling anyone out specifically. Like that's the difference. It almost be more interesting to have somebody like that on because like I do feel like I'm I am heavily opinionated, but I feel like I am a lot like you or it's just like there's probably two sides to the story. And so I'm going to inevitably lean one way or another. like if I was like, here's the thing we should all be like concerned about Iran. Anyone who has children in between the ages of 16 and 24, those are the people who should be concerned like Aaron Skinner: Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Alex Skinner: That's the thing that terrifies me like now having kids where it's just like, all right, we'll be out of there by like, we'll be out of there in 15 years, right? Nothing that I have to worry about. Like we'll be able to skirt over a war. Like, don't worry Alex, there's no draft. It could come back. Aaron Skinner: We should be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, good news, Alex, even if this Iranian thing doesn't turn into a long war, there'll be plenty more after that. Yeah, there's always war. Alex Skinner: There'll be more wars because rumors of and rumors of wars were living in the last days everybody because this is the only time that there have ever been wars. And on that note. Aaron Skinner: for the past 250 years. Yeah, but I think, all right, that's, but I would love, I just, if anyone's out there that's listening to this and they can relate to what we're saying, please, I just, are we the only ones? Are we the only ones? Please let us know. Alex Skinner: I also be curious to hear some specific stories where the craziness comes out. Where it's like, you've said this before, Aaron, you can't have a rational conversation with an irrational person. I'm very interested in those stories. Aaron Skinner: Yes, because they happen and it's always great. All right, well, that was the unsexy opinions with Alex Skinner and myself, Aaron Skinner. Thank you for listening. I don't know what else we say after this because I've never done this part. Have a great day. Yeah, be good. Just be good to people. Be good to people. Alex Skinner: Stop sucking. Be good. Good. But just like I think like I really do like the entire thing of this is just like it's what you said. The courtesy part like struck a chord with me like you can be courteous in this process. Like you sure I'd never thought of it. Sorry. I know that we're trying to end but I've never thought of it that way. Like what are you talking about Lorraine because I'll be honest like the Venezuela thing. I don't care about it all. Like I have no opinion either way like good bad. Just like it happened. Aaron Skinner: Hahaha Alex Skinner: The Venezuela thing happened. And then we were like, think about how this impacts people that you care about and interact with. And then like, if I were to be on the side where it's just like, this is the worst thing ever. I probably should have talked to her first to know like what the impact is. ⁓ Before I start just throwing, throwing my, cause who knows like the, what pain that caused like, ⁓ I felt like you cared about me, but really you just care about feeling superior. Aaron Skinner: Yes. it bothered my wife that people were throwing out the opinions that it was a bad thing Maduro got taken out without talking to her about it. So it just proves your point. yeah, if you would have been like, yeah, this is horrible. We need Maduro to stay there. She would have been like, why didn't he like ask me how I felt about it? Like someone who has tons of families that still lives there. So yeah, no, that's kind of where we're going. Just. Alex Skinner: I need to get more Curtis Curtis Curtis like. What's the word? I need to be more courteous. Be more courteous, there we go. Jesus Christ. Aaron Skinner: Courtesy, courteous? Be more courteous. Courteous. Don't listen to us because we're really literate or know what a state and a city is. Alex Skinner: That's the point. Aaron Skinner: We're always learning. I can admit when I'm wrong. But yeah, how do we end this? Alex Skinner: Go, it has to be like, go be courteous. Like just go be nice. Go be nice. Aaron Skinner: Just go be nice people. Thanks for watching.