Latest / Before You Speak / Before You Speak | Episode 37 | LBJ and the Great Society.... are we great yet?

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Before You Speak | Episode 37 | LBJ and the Great Society.... are we great yet? · Before You Speak

• Derek: What's up y'all? Welcome back to the Before You Speak podcast where we thoughtfully deep dive into topics that we believe are relevant for the times we're living in right now. But ⁓ before we do that, I'm your host, Derek Peterson, and as always, I'm going to start by processing the fire hose of my newsfeed with this ⁓ guy over somewhere here. Up, down, left, right. Elwyn: What's up everybody? Check out that new intro. I like it. ⁓ I am I am Elwyn and this week the fire hose of my newsfeed is just shut off as I wait for positive news about Lindsey Graham and his career and legacy. That is not overflowing with he was a great senator, great man, yeah, what a guy. It it is the the tears that are shed for Lindsey Graham are Derek: Yeah. Elwyn: Non existent and dry. Derek: Are only the male escorts that were making a living on him in DC? That's and I don't even think there was a tears, tears on that. But hold on, before we jump into this a little bit, I have a I have an admission to make because I woke up the morning that that like he died in the middle of the night. And I woke up and I read it. And I immediately like I'm half awake, right? And I open threads and I type a scathing message. Elwyn: So Derek: ⁓ about how CNN needs to fire Scott Jennings for saying that he talked to he talked to Lindsey Graham. And then I go downstairs and I get my coffee and I sit on the couch and I start to sip it, only to realize that I had comp I had completely confused Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. And immediately I was like, ⁓ I am going to get lambasted online if I don't delete this as quickly as humanly possible. So Elwyn: Ha ha Wrong guy. Derek: I ran and ⁓ deleted it ⁓ as fast as I could, but I guess old ⁓ old terrible white guys I they I get they're easily confusing or confusing. Elwyn: Well well McConnell put out what was obviously a proof of life photo later that day, where he's holding he's holding the day's newspaper like like a hostage in prison, you know, and and AI people are like, No, that's actually the front page of that newspaper and people like, ⁓ they can still AI it into his hands. It's like absolute proof of life photo for Mitch McConnell. But I went out Sunday afternoon and ⁓ Lisa and I were at a cigar store and we were like Smoking a cigar, doing some work, nice Sunday afternoon. And ⁓ there was a group of like eight or ten guys in there also, and they're talking about it. And what one of them makes the crack. He you know, and I'm pretty sure these guys were all sort like MAGA chuds. He goes, Well, you know, maybe he swallowed the wrong thing. And they all they all knew immediately like Derek: Okay. Elwyn: what the guy was talking about and I was just like, All right. I hate it, but that's also pretty good. Derek: ⁓ Dude, well I wanted to talk a little bit about Lindsey Graham because I ⁓ apparently today they came out and said it was ⁓ aortic dissection. so basically yeah, his heart exploded, which also, you know, my initial thought after I realized that it was Lindsey Graham that had died and not ⁓ Mitch McConnell, my head immediately goes to Elwyn: His heart exploded. Derek: This guy got Navalned. So like he ⁓ he was the warmonger that got Trump to, I think, you know, he had Trump's ear on Iran. ⁓ he's historically ⁓ very pro-war about everything. So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. And and on top of that, I think he was just coming back from Ukraine, right? So ⁓ the conspiracy theories were flying. Elwyn: Yeah. Derek: But it's it's funny because my head immediately went there before I even read anything online. And then I obviously go over and ⁓ I think that one of the first comments I saw after that was like, Did somebody check his underwear? Which is ⁓ that was what happened to Alexei Navalny. They they they put poison, ⁓ this really powerful poison on the on the inside of his underwear. And ⁓ that's and they they kind of figured it out that way. So ⁓ but yeah, I mean Elwyn: ⁓ In his underwear? Derek: Th this just speaks to a ⁓ age limits. I mean, like what are we doing? Like half of our half of our government's Elwyn: Yeah, I mean ⁓ i age limits, he was seventy one, so like if we're gonna set an age limit, seventy two, seventy five, you know, it's like he I I don't see this as like an age limit deal. People die in office, you know, whatever. If if ⁓ you know, he was running again and he was gonna win again and and he would have been then seventy seven, okay, that's definitely on the line. But at seventy one, ⁓ you know, I'm not I'm not quite Derek: Still. Elwyn: I w I would s I personally would set the age limit in somewhere in the low to mid seventies. So, you know, McConnell is the age limit guy here and Chuck Grassley and Chuck Schumer. But, you know, Lindsey Graham's like I know there's a lot of like libs getting mad at Democratic senators for, you know, speaking kindly about him. I'm I'm not mad about that. They worked with him, some of them for thirty years and you know, you develop a relationship with a guy when you work with him and they happen to be in a job where public statements have to be made, so I it it doesn't it's not like a I'm not all hoppin' mad at Kamala Harris saying something nice about Lindsey Graham. To me, you know, though like I don't know. I thought he was a piece of shit when he's alive, when he was alive, him being dead doesn't change that. It's just a dead piece of shit. Sorry, like Derek: Yeah. I'm with Yeah. I'm with you. I I think I just I I'm more about honesty, right? Like the ⁓ look if you had a good experience with with Lindsey Graham and worked with him and you can say nice things about him, do it. Like no I'm I would never be mad about somebody for that. Like ⁓ but if it's some kind of fodder, then yeah, like that's dumb. ⁓ so anybody that's getting mad because somebody had a genuinely good experience with the guy, like, you know, screw off. Like that's life. Like ⁓ there's a lot of people that I like that other people don't like and vice versa. So it's it's how the the cookie crumbles, right? ⁓ I think it's the flip side of it though, I think I've gotten to a point where, you know, like all of these people that are coming out and ⁓ lambasting people for saying something negative because they didn't like him. ⁓ you know, I I that's the part of it that I'm like, yeah, that that is par for the course now. Like If you when you sign up for this life, when you ⁓ you know, like the irony of like this guy being single ⁓ and closeted, like pretty well known. Like most people knew that he was into other men. Like this was not like something that was like a huge secret. ⁓ and there had been people that had rumblings of this and joke people joked about it for years. So like Now that a lot of the NDAs have expired because of his passing, like now people are actually coming out and talking about it. But like it's interesting to see like all these people that are trying to like ⁓ crap on people that had like this dude was openly ⁓ pushing and and marginalizing the LGBTQ community while engaging in it behind closed doors. The the biggest hypocrisy that you could ever imagine. And That's the kind of stuff that I'm like, yeah, like if you are in that camp, like I'm not gonna be mad at you for saying something negative about the guy. And then ⁓ funny is like watching the MAGA guys, the influencers coming out and being like, All these libs are so terrible for you know, crapping on Lindsey Graham right now. This guy is a father and a husband, and like, and then you're like. Well, it's good to know that you knew enough about Lindsey Graham to know that ⁓ he actually was not a father or a husband. Which is hilarious. Elwyn: Yeah, I mean he he was a complete warmonger. You know, he he he never met a war he didn't like. He was just kind of a he he was almost a parody of a craven flip flopping Republican, you know, j just he f very famously in twenty fifteen was just crapping all over Trump. And, you know, day one of Trump's presidency, all of a sudden he's all the way behind him. You know Derek: Yeah. Elwyn: ⁓ but he had power. You know, Trump listened to him because he loved war and he literally never met a more war he didn't like. But I think you know, one of the things that I found myself focusing on was like how we as people react to the statements people make. And it's like, you know, you can make a st if you were negatively affected by his policies, you can make a statement that, you know, I do think I'm glad he's dead is a bit strong. I think you can not say anything if that's what you're gonna say. But you know, you can say, you know, hey, Lindsey Graham's legacy, here's how it affected me, you know, and if you worked with him and and he was a colleague for thirty years, you can say he was a colleague that I knew for thirty years. And, you know, you you grow used to people, whether you like them or not. It's okay to to miss them, and it's okay for us as you know, the electorate and people who are reading this stuff online to just be like, Yeah, you know what, the the Bidens are probably gonna say something nice about Lindsey Graham. Derek: Agreed. Elwyn: And that doesn't make them assholes or traitors to the cause. It just makes them decent human beings because the alternative is like what Donald Trump did after Robert Mueller died, which was like I'm glad he literally said, I'm glad he's dead. Right? So Derek: And he well, he did the same thing with the ⁓ movie producer, right? ⁓ what's his name? Rob Reiner. Like, you know, like, yeah, exactly. I'm like, dude, you they're like, if don't come at me with that stuff. And then and on the flip side of it, you're right. If you if you have something positive to say, like if my dad died tomorrow, ⁓ I would have nothing positive to say. But if somebody else had a good experience with him and wanted to speak at his funeral, I would not hold anything against them. ⁓ you know. Elwyn: Yeah, Rob Reiner. Yep, Rob Reiner. Derek: I'm glad you had a better experience with them than I did. So like this is life is nuanced. Like let's just all accept that and ⁓ and move on. You know, and you know, I I I don't wish death upon ⁓ just about anybody. I maybe there's a a few people, but I wouldn't ⁓ I'm not gonna declare that publicly That's a great way to put that Elwyn: We we can not wish for death but passively watch for it. Derek: Hopefully anticipate it. ⁓ see that video of the ICE officer dragging a body out of a car where apparently his daughter in bluey pajamas was in the back seat. ⁓ man, ⁓ dude, ⁓ how are we here? Elwyn: Well you also had the the guy in Houston last week. So now we've got two we've now got two ⁓ two murders by ICE again. So ICE is back on the killing rampage. Now the guy in Houston was applying for legal status. He had been here for thirty-five years, had a family. The guy in Maine, I believe, had a social security number, had some sort of legal status. ⁓ and yeah, obviously father because his three-year-old was in the car with him. In both cases, ⁓ the the story is the same. ICE says that they were trying to ram that that that the victims were trying to ram ICE vehicles with their car. The vehicle in the video in Houston shows that conclusively not to be true. In they're not wearing body cameras. You know, they're they're just saying we shot because we I think in the one in Maine, they said we feared for public safety. They didn't even say they feared for officer safety. They feared for public safety. ⁓ you know, and there is no there is no accountability, there will be no accountability. It's just murder. But I think people are starting to see it more. Like I think it's inter it'll be interesting to watch we talk a lot about Maine around here, but like the the next day, this happened Sunday, on Monday. Derek: Yeah. Elwyn: There were, you know, pretty big marches to Susan Collins' office because she voted for that additional seventy billion in funding, which you would think would ⁓ supply the body cameras for these folks. Right? But instead they're blaming Democrat shutdowns, which guys, you got 70 billion extra dollars to put on your fucking body cameras. It's obviously an organizational decision. So how did we get here? we got here by not recognizing that. People were asking for an inch with the intention to take a mile. Derek: Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's hard because like the we live in such an odd time where you can literally and maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is just all of time. This is just human nature and like people believe what they believe and distort facts and distort experiences to benefit their own narrative, which may be the case, but It's just so weird to see how different these the algorithms like where they take us, where people like the stances people take on the opposite side when like it but then when you see it from the the angles that probably we're looking at from that are are relatively similar, it's like, man, we're walking ourselves. We're we are funding our own surveillance state. We're we're we're with taxpayer dollars, we are putting soldiers on the ground. and cameras in the air ⁓ to surveil us, which ironically is the very thing that Republicans ⁓ and MAGA were ⁓ vehemently opposed. And they have somehow twisted themselves into a pretzel and been like, this is what we want. So I'm like, I just don't I don't know how to get I don't know how I like there there's a level of of of maybe I don't want to say stupidity, but like ignorance or Elwyn: Yeah, I mean I Derek: Lack of information that you just you can't even argue with. Elwyn: Yeah, but I I think like in the case of surveillance state, you know, limited to that for a second. There's just this stew of like fear and reaction to bad policy in the case of immigration, Biden's pol immigration policy was bad, you know, and and fear and and rage bait and being led down a path by people who know how to lead with that stuff, and then tied to tied directly to the, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, right? This idea that the surveillance state only captures it it only matters if it's capturing someone who's done something wrong. That if you're not doing anything wrong, well what do you have to fear from a surveillance state? Like that's just such a limited myopic view of what a surveillance state can do to you. You know, it's like I haven't done anything wrong, but I don't want flock cameras in my neighborhood. That's what freedom is. Like that like when we to we talk about freedom and and America 250 and all this stuff, and I agree with you. I don't I don't understand how MAGA and Republicans wind up on the wrong side of this. Right? You know that I've never squared the circle on. But to me, freedom is the idea that you can go somewhere without being surveilled. That's like a very, very basic form of freedom that you can say what you want without the government tracking what you say, that you can have sexual preferences that ⁓ are yours and yours alone, without the government being concerned about that. You know, and and it has flipped now on its head, but I think it's always been like this. You know, whenever there's some sort of anti-crime so I'm it's not going to affect me 'cause I'm not doing anything wrong. Right? It's gonna get these people who I'm scared of or this activity that I'm s that frightens me and stop it. So I'm willing to chip away at my own civil liberties because they happen to be civil liberties that I'm not really using that much, right? That I or that I don't care about that much. But that's only true until it's not. And that I think is the problem. Derek: Exactly. Well, I was introduced to flock cameras because I was watching an ⁓ a news article about this woman that ⁓ was they were trying to arrest her for ⁓ stealing packages off of people's doors in Colorado. And these flock cameras had captured her car. And the ⁓ on the at the similar times down the pathway or down the same streets that these boxes were stolen. Well, this woman vehemently fight f is fighting them and she has all this video evidence of her going back to her house and the clo cop showed up and they they wanted no in they had no interest in her evidence. They weren't looking at it, nothing. So she ended up having to go to court and then they found out from other their ring cameras at her house and ring cameras at the that it was actually a different woman that looked similar to her. And she was she was ⁓ finally released. But this is after a three-week legal battle, you know, like relatively short because it got but like yeah dude this is this doesn't come without mistakes as well. So like we're we're even for guys like us, like we're we we're potentially walking our all it takes is a wrong place, wrong time situation and your your life could be fucked up for a while. Elwyn: Yeah, and the thing, I think we talked about this in the qualified immunity episodes. Like the both these guys that were killed were ISAS admitted that they were not the people, they were not the subjects of the investigation and not who they were going after. You know, and we've just empowered law enforcement so to such a great degree that when law enforcement of any stripe kills someone, we We seek to justify, too many of us seek to justify rather than just say, no, that is the absolute opposite of any desired result. There's no desired result in either of these cases that has anything to do with immigration enforcement or ICE that winds up with these people dead. There's there's no reason for it. It's murder. They weren't career criminals, they weren't like rapists or murderers that had been let out of jail. They weren't the subject of the investigation, they weren't a threat to the officer. Right? And they wind up dead, and that happens a lot. It happens an awful lot. It happened to Renee Good Alex Predi. Right. And it's we have decided that law enforcement can operate with weapons that we're not allowed to have, even though we think we are allowed to have them. We've been through this too. If you've got a gun, you're not supposed to have it if you're dealing with a cop. Right? So law enforcement gets to have all the weapons. They get to not record themselves and get away with it. And they get to kill you. They get to operate as judge, jury, and executioner. on the spot and write it up in such a way that it reads, There was an ice involved shooting. You know, we and now, you know, I think it's it's obviously entering the national consciousness again because these two are pretty obviously bad. You know, my favorite Bellwether, the the mom on the necessary conversation, she was like, No, this was really bad. This was murder. Like there was no you know, she was like, No, Ice ICE was completely wrong. And I was like, Whoa, okay. You know, like That's Yeah. So Derek: I didn't hear that. That's interesting. Dude, I I've been this has been a shift, man. This these last couple weeks, I again, man, I I've had more of my Republican friends coming out and actually speaking, finally speaking up against what's going on in our country. Prices, inflation, job market, all the stuff is that's going on, and actually being frustrated. And ⁓ two of the guys that I I regularly ⁓ hang out with. ⁓ have very openly said I both of them looked at me ⁓ in the last two weeks and said that they'll never vote again. Like that's that's basically where they're at. And you know like I I'm not gonna fight them on that, but man man, like yeah it we are being lied to on about ice. We're being lied to. We're being told not to believe our eyes. We're getting monitored. Our money is being stolen while the president griffs up griffs us for billions of dollars, griffs his base. Like this this is This is the exact thing that we it all feared was going on for so long. And now we're watching it in real time and with real evidence right in front of us. And it's like it's it's just crazy to s to be in this situation. And my God, if the Democrats don't respond appropriately to this, if they do not put people in place that are going to actually change shit, I may never vote again. Like I may like like Elwyn: Yeah. Derek: I like I the only thing that brings me hope is that somebody is going to look at what's going on and see all of the cracks that this has exposed and actually like shure them up. Because if we don't do that, like dude, we're this never ends. It's just gonna be the constant. Elwyn: Well I I would phrase it more affirmatively. We all see the cracks. They're they're all there, right? Like the the the ice these two killings like make me, you know, fairly certain that there's some top down directive to increase enforcement and to start to be more aggressive. There's been enough time since this past winter and maybe they've learned how to do it a little better, you know, where they're not where they're not just quite so brazen. ⁓ and there's not five cot cars. Following these people, or maybe they've just somehow been like, All right, let's learn from last winter, but let's go back, let's sharpen up our guns and let's go back out in the streets. And if this happens, this happens. Like not wearing body camera to me is that's always for law enforcement. Like if you go out the door of the police station as an officer without a body camera, I feel like that should be a week's suspension without pay. If you if you leave the police station while you're on duty. the and to not have them now we have four officers involved, none of whom are wearing a body camera when someone got shot. No, that is by design. That is not an accident. That's a directive. They've come up with a reason they're going to use to say why it doesn't work. Right. So I I think the ice stuff is just going to get worse before it gets better because I think they're testing it. They're just taking the temperature. What's the level of outrage? Is it less than last winter? If so, keep going. You know, but I think the Democrats Derek: Yeah. Well Elwyn: They have to r they people have to go to jail. We have in South Korea, like a year ago, the president tried to like initiate a coup, right? Like kinda in the middle of the night. And he was I think one the leader of the opposition like was filmed climbing over the fence of the parliamentary building to break in and ⁓ and and cast a deciding vote. And the the president was arrested and he was just sentenced to jail in a year. Like this can be done, folks. It it we can put Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and J D Vance. We can put these motherfuckers in jail. It's allowed. And I think that's what people are starting to see is they're like, wait, Trump's talking about a war in Iran, which we don't give a shit about, that he doesn't know what to do with, and that's very obvious. And we're now paying we're just all on the yo yo ride of inflation because of him. He's talking about some bullshit election and and talking about communism and his ICE agents are running around killing people and nothing is actually happening that represents the will of the people. There's no health care. Inflation is bad, right? We're being we we all know now that we're being nakedly lied to and there's corruption everywhere. And I think when your Republican friends say that, I think they've just kind of like, I'm glad they're not voting, but they're also just cashing out in a system that's ri that that they helped rig. You know, I feel like maybe they should decide I want to start a new party, or you know, why do I hate the Democrats after all? Like what are what are the Democrats standing for that I find so offensive? And maybe that's how we lead into like LBJ and the Great Society, because all of that work that LBJ did is to me this incredible encapsulation of what good government can do to help people. It it it it is a snapshot of a role that government can play in a country that it plays in basically every other developed wor country in the world that we've decided to argue with for some reason. Derek: Yeah. Well let's let's ⁓ let's transition to that because I think it's ⁓ it's time to get into our the meat of our conversation today. So like we are gonna talk about LBJ and the Great Society. And ⁓ I don't think we want to hit too much on what happened with Vietnam. ⁓ I think we're gonna kind of focus, but you know, ⁓ LBJ's presidential ⁓ run was kind of overshadowed like by Vietnam because it was that was such a clusterfuck. But ⁓ prior to all of that. ⁓ he actually did got some amazing legislation passed. So like let's start with ⁓ I guess like basic for anybody listening to this that doesn't know ⁓ who was L L B J and how how did he become president? Elwyn: Yep. So LBJ was JFK's ⁓ vice president. So he became president when Kennedy was shot. Prior to becoming the vice president, he was really a very, very powerful senator. He was just legendary for being able to work the levers of power in the Senate and, you know, prod and yeah. Yeah. And like prod and convince and cajole and arm twist, whatever needed to get stuff done. He was Derek: He was the Senate majority leader, right? Elwyn: Very, very effective at that. And before that, he was a a school teacher, ⁓ you know, in a small town in Texas. He was Texan from here in Austin, or close to Austin, ⁓ and and a Democrat, which is interesting and you know, I think really it's not relevant, but it's worth keeping in mind when we talk about like what Democrats are and what Republicans are and how all that has shifted over time. You know, it's like Derek: And a democrat, which is interesting. Elwyn: Republican peop Republicans will say, Well, Lincoln was a Republican. Give me a fucking break. LBJ was a Democrat. Like things change over a hundred and fifty years. ⁓ so LBJ assumed the presidency after JFK got shot, and that was November nineteen sixty three. So he had to run for reelection the next year. and he you know immediately assumed Derek: Yeah. ⁓ Elwyn: the the mantle of some of JFK's ⁓ domestic policies. But it wasn't that he just sort of continued what JFK started. He had a a ⁓ real sort of theory or belief that at that point in time, at that moment in time, ⁓ Americans should be, the American government should be working to make America even better. That One one guy, know, we listened to the same podcast. I don't know if got to the the last part where it's a round table. ⁓ and LBJ is kind of an extension of New Deal Democrats under FDR. And the the this historian he says the New Deal under FDR was about quantity, not quality. People didn't have enough food to eat. They didn't have enough bread. They needed more bread. They needed more heat and more housing. ⁓ Under LBJ, the Great Society was about quality. It was about the quality of life that people can access, that people have in the United States at a time when the United States was confident and wealthy and powerful in the in the early to mid sixties. Derek: Yeah. So let's ⁓ let's jump into the Great Society, because that was that was his thing. That was his, you know, ⁓ that was the legislation he wanted to push through. There was a lot involved with that, which I had I had no idea. This was a kind of an introduction to LBJ for me, to be honest. growing up in Utah in a red state, ⁓ ironically enough, he was never talked about. So ⁓ But I also grew up and there was not a single black person in a high school of eighteen hundred kids that I went to. So ⁓ not necessarily that surprising. So what was the what is the Great Society and what was like let's jump into some of the impact of that and cause some of that legislation is still still re almost all of it is still relevant today. Elwyn: Yeah, I mean the Great Society was what LBJ called a package of legislative ideals, right? So there was there's no Great Society bill. Right? Like we have we have the one big beautiful bill. ⁓ LBJ did not have the Great Society bill. He had the Medicare Medicaid bill, he had the Voting Rights Act, he had the Civil Rights Act, he had Head Start, right? That was all part of sort of the Great Society. And It started with this idea of, you know, he wanted to wage a war on poverty. He wanted to eliminate poverty ⁓ in the United States. And that was one of his first endeavors. And that one didn't quite work. Some of that Martin Luther King was working on when he died also. I think this idea of a war on poverty is a tough a tough sell for presidents. But ⁓ you know, when he won election in and he also took a stab at Medicare, when when I talk about Medicare here, Medicaid is included with that. ⁓ you know the the those two were passed were started those two programs started together. ⁓ he took a stab at that before his election and it didn't pass. He didn't get it to the floor. ⁓ but he won in nineteen sixty four by a massive margin. It was a landslide victory. He had like seventy percent approval. He had a a huge majority in the House and the Senate. And one of the first things he did was and he ran on Medicare. He ran on the idea that on the legislative plank of Medicare. He did not try to like bootstrap it in or hide it. So he went and he said, I just won on Medicare, pass Medicare. So the first thing he does is pass health care for seniors. ⁓ you know, and and health Derek: Dude, that's a pandering to seniors, dude. That's a the i if there's one thing we've learned for over time, seniors vote. If you pander to seniors, you're gonna get your legislation passed. Elwyn: But I think in this case that's cynical, that's a little cynical, 'cause the Okay, fair enough. I'm not. Derek: I am B. I am cynical, Elwyn. ⁓ How did our roles just switch? Elwyn: Yeah. Now healthcare had been something that ⁓ FDR had on the table, but he never quite got to it. That Harry Truman had talked about, but never quite got to it. So national health care was something that had been talked about for a while. And LBJ, like like Barack Obama later, was like, well, instead of biting the whole thing off at once, let's take care of what we think we can get done. You know, and in this case You know, the idea that the elderly population needs Medicare, right? Like there's kinda no question. They they absolutely need that. So, you know, this is massive government program number one passed by Texan Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson. He goes on to pass the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination in public accommodations like hotels, gas stations, restaurants, things like that. It ⁓ eliminates racism in ⁓ voter registration. It creates the Equal Employment Opportunity Co Commission, once headed by Clarence Thomas, by the way. Marinate on that for a moment. ⁓ Derek: I know, I was I was about to say it and then I mean I is this that's not really an appropriate I was like maybe when you before before thank you. Elwyn: Yeah, Clarence Thomas can fuck off. ⁓ but no, like the the Civil Rights Act is is a massive piece of legislation designed to eliminate racism in our society, lim eliminate the the sort of subversive racism that existed in our society, or in many cases still overt. Right? You have the Voting Rights Act, and LBJ knew from an early time that you know a lot of the educational and and economic programs Even though they would help a lot of black people, the right to vote was the big one. Right? That was the one that they needed. That's the one that gives them actual direct representation in government. You know, if they can vote, they can vote in their peers. And now all of a sudden you get John Lewis and you know, people like John Lewis. You had Head Start. He passed Head Start, which is still an incredibly powerful and useful and beneficial program. So I I it you mentioned that it kind of surprised surprised you what LBJ did. It still surprises me when I think about it. Like, my God, in the span of really two years, this guy passed some of the most impactful legislation in our nation's history, some of the most democratic, some of the most rights-based legislation in our history from a Texas Democrat, right? Like it it It's too bad that the Vietnam War stains his legacy as much as it does, because otherwise his legacy would have been a top five president of all time. Derek: ⁓ for sure. Well, it made me realize how much I miss that kind of governing. Like we spend so much time now talking about personalities, scandals, culture wars, and we've forgotten how difficult it is to actually pass major legislation that lasts for generations. And whether you think the Great Society succeeded or failed, I mean you can't argue with the the ambition behind it. Like you can't argue with the fact that it was it was monumental for the time. And You know, like when you look at what was going on with the Voting Rights Act and ⁓ some of the the hardest parts of that podcast were listen to listen to were, you know, what black people were going through to we even once it was passed, to actually exercise that right afterwards. Because then you know, now you have a bunch of racists and bigots surrounding courthouses and voting places and basically, you know, trying to threaten and scare people off from having a voice. You know, and then you know, fast forward fifty or sixty years and we're dealing with the same shit. You know, like ⁓ we're we've basically gone backwards and gutted gutted all this. While meanwhile, while like everything else that ⁓ was in the Great Society, I think for the most part is ⁓ largely still intact. You know, Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start are still active programs. ⁓ and then but you know, for some reason we just can't get past this we can't get past racism. Elwyn: Yeah, and I think at the beginning of that you said something like, you know, you can you can argue for or against the Great Society or something like that and putting words in your mouth. I don't honestly know how you can argue against this this package of legislation without just exposing yourself as kind of a racist piece of shit. Right? Like Derek: Well, I'll get ⁓ here's what I'll here's what I'll real quick, I'll just kinda throw this at you 'cause I'm actually interested in your so last week when ⁓ when we talked about Reagan, we talked about deficit spending, right? And I think ⁓ and and military specific deficit spending where it just got went out of control. And I think what the right, you know, like the clips of Rush Limbaugh talking about this as actually the beginning of deficit spending, right? Of ⁓ these programs being a drain on society and a drain on taxpayer. I think that is probably the only angle you could take and look at is like, hey, you know, Medicaid, ⁓ Medicare, ⁓ Head Start, like these things were a drain on the economy. Elwyn: Educating educating young children that to give them to make sure that on they're on equal footing when they get to first grade is a drain on society. I don't th that's why I say like I I I understand your point and and I think that there is I don't think that what I'm about to say, I don't think that this is an oppositional argument to the Great Society, and that's my issue with people who would oppose the Great Society, which is you know, Reagan said that. There is nothing that that the government can do better than the private sector. Okay. The well you sure there is. Of course there is. There are things that the government can do better than the private sector. Right now, that that cuts both ways. There are a ton of things that the private sector does better than government. And the balance between what government is better at and what what responsibilities and roles government should bear versus what we you know say nope, private Private industry and the business and capitalism is better at doing this, that's an ongoing debate, and where that line is drawn shifts all the time, and that's a healthy debate. But you know, you can't tell me that somehow how is private industry going to do education better? Right? Pri they're they're not because they want to make money off of it. Right? How is private industry going to do health insurance better? God, we know that they don't. Derek: They're not. Elwyn: do it better, right? It's it's the easiest that was the easiest thing in the world. Derek: Yeah. Well we have Yeah, that's the hard part about a lot of this stuff is I mean, look, we just celebrated the country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. We have two hundred and fifty years of experience now to look back on and see what government actually does better than the private sector. This isn't really that in th this really isn't that much of an argument, right? Like there are very much things that the the government should be able to handle because it Elwyn: No, but it it it's framed as an argument, right? It that's that's what Rush Limbaugh's framing is. That this is, you know, runaway Ronald Reagan with the nine most fearsome words in the English language are I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Right? Like it's all it's all pitched as these programs are social engineering, and the only purpose, the only way that the government can fulfill a social engineering project is through coercion. So this is just big government come in a fuck up your life and take away your freedom by providing ⁓ preschool. Right? It it's just because people he see it and they hear and they're like, yeah, no, I don't want that. I don't I don't want the government to come and take away my liberties. And they don't ever ask the follow up questions, how does Head Start take away my liberty? So, you know, the the the the debate about government providing things versus the private industry doing things, you know, we should know. We should know very well what government does better than the private industry and what the private industry does better. But we don't because half of our country is just allergic to the idea that the government can do anything well at all. Right? If you look back on we've now talked about Reagan and we've talked about LBJ and we sure talk about Trump an awful lot. But you know what public programs can you think of that a Republican president in the last hundred years has put into place that have worked that that helped build people up. it they're all from democratic presidents, right? So you have one party that's saying, no, we can use government in the case of LBJ to improve the quality of people's lives by providing health care late in life, by making voting equal to all, by making sure that colored people can go into I'm using the term of the time, can go into hotels and gas stations and lunch counters in the South and can access public schools. Derek: Yeah. Elwyn: And that we can provide education because we know that you know Head Start is not a race based program, it's a poverty based program, right? That so we can make sure that people whose families are in poverty, that children who are in poverty, can get a head start on their education by providing programs over the summer, preschool programs. These are programs that are designed to uplift people. And only one party seems to ever do them. Right? So of course we haven't figured it out as a country. Derek: Everybody too. Yeah. That's been the part of this. It's it seems to me we're we're constantly fighting over these two ideas, big government, small government, what do they do better? And like most things in life, it seems like the the the balance should be actually in the middle. Like finding the lanes that government should actually run in to free up the private sector to innovate and and and economically thrive. Both of these things can exist. We can have a robust federal government and have a robust private sector that's very innovative. And I actually think the two things would complement each other really well. The problem is that the idea the ideology of the right and the left just are at odds with each other. And then you can't get shit done. And, you know, like there's this world right now that we live in where being a moderate is looked at poorly because we need the left or the right. to take over to get ⁓ in in majority fashion to basically get any legislation through. And my biggest frustration about all of this is and and the thing that flabbergasted me going back to the start of this conversation is just how much effective legislation actually went through at this time and that that legislation is still still available. So then do you think we've lost the ability to think that big or Do you think our country's just simply too divided to for another president to accomplish something like what LG ⁓ LBJ did? Elwyn: I don't know if we'll ever see like so many impactful laws passed in such a short time. Are we you know if you're asking me right now, yes, the answer's yes. If you're asking me like, can we ever have a transformative president again? Yeah, I think so. I I don't know who it is looking at the looking at the landscape. ⁓ and you know, there's a lot of sort of institutional hurdles that we have to clear. Cough Supreme Court, cough, cough. ⁓ you know, the but sure. Derek: By the way, did you see that they came ⁓ the Supreme Court was actually in front of Congress, I believe today, ⁓ request requesting ⁓ a bunch of money to increase their security because they're ⁓ they're stu which, you know, they've they've made enough ⁓ they've made the majority of our country angry enough that I'm sure that they're all getting, you know, death threats and different things like that. So Elwyn: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't Dolito. It was ⁓ I think Con Amy Coney Barrett and ⁓ Sotomayor, Lena Kagan. Derek: And yes. It was Kagan and I think it was Kagan. Elwyn: ⁓ but you know the the when we're talking about these things, until we start talking until we start agreeing what we're talking about as a country, then I then I think we're stuck. Because if one side is talking about Head Start being a drain on the federal government, you know, and costing too much money and not providing benefit, and at the same time, you know, supporting a $1.5 trillion defense budget, then we're not talking about the same thing yet. Right? If we're talking about the Head Start's budget in 2027, the proposed budget is $12 billion for Head Start. Head Start helps tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people. It is, you know, widely considered to be a successful program. It's been around forever. People use it. It's basically, you know, pre-K for families that can't afford pre-K. It's it's incredibly powerful. twelve billion dollars a year. Right. We just funded ICE an extra seventy billion dollars and they can't put on a fucking body cam. So, you know, if we can't have a conversation, you know, I I am pretty far left. I can have a conversation that says, okay, the single largest budget item in our in our country should be the military. Okay. I'm not I'm not gonna walk out on that on that conversation. If somebody comes to me and says, look, no matter what we do, The single largest line item has to be the military. All right, great. But I want to get back to how we're gonna spend that and what that means, but fine, right? But could we have increased ICE funding by thirty billion and doubled Head Start funding? That would be a forty-two billion dollar legislative package, which is twenty-eight billion dollars less than the seventy that we gave to ICE to not wear body cameras. So, you know, the we're not We're simply not talking about the same thing because I don't know if we fully understand what these programs do if they don't affect us directly. Derek: Yeah. Well the and the the rights position on a lot of this stuff is that if you if you give people money and services then they're going to be accustomed to those money and services and that they're and then they're just gonna be a leech on society, right? And the I love how ⁓ Lyndon B. Johnson kind of fought back against that with the the whole phrase that you know this is ⁓ not a handout, it's a hand up. And the ⁓ the you know, which is just a beautiful thing. But ultimately, like, you know, like I made this decision a long time ago. Like when I lived in Los Angeles, there's a large, really large homeless population, right? And there was this internal struggle for a very long time. Like, because every corner you walk past, there's somebody asking you for money. And you know, Austin's similar to that now. And I made a decision at the time, ⁓ after ⁓ you know years of kind of like internally struggling with like do I give this guy money knowing that he might just go buy drugs or but ultimately what I decided was that there is ⁓ it's it's not as it's not always just about the person it's about the act and the there is like we have to decide as a society at some point it whether we we choose to stay divided or if we choose love. And love oftentimes means that we like people will take advantage of programs, which is no different than I mean, to be honest, it's it's no different than billionaires taking advantage of government subsidies because they have access to, you know, higher ups in the federal government. And ⁓ I get a government contract for 14 million dollar to do the do the reflecting pool. Like that that's just as much of a handout as it is to a poor kid in a in a in a classroom or in a rural area of Texas that you know, whose family can't ⁓ feed them. And that there's this this mentality of like, ⁓ if we give them food, if we give them benefits, then they'll get stuck on those. And that could be true. Like there is a world where like, yes, there is a grouping of people that get stuck and they decide that that that the life that that is being provided for them is a life that's good enough for them. But there is a world where all that pulling people out of poverty that they they choose to try to do something different. And what if that's just one or two people? What if what if what if it is it worth it if there is just a handful of people that end up getting pulled out of poverty and start companies that change the world, that start ⁓ businesses that employ thousands and thousands of people, that they get that. And that's the part that we're missing is that we like we s focus so much on what could go wrong rather than focusing on what could go right and That's the part of all of this that I miss. And we spend so much time squabbling over bullshit while our you know, our wallets getting stolen from us. That we're it's that all of this stuff is just it it's infuriating. It's infuriating to see that we cannot fund some of these really important programs that are very much going to help people like universal healthcare, meanwhile while funneling ⁓ you know, trillions of dollars to our military who went to war that And started a war that nobody wants, you know. Elwyn: Yeah, I think the the handout hand up comparison is a good one. ⁓ you know, Trevor Noah ⁓ in his book, he wrote something that sticks with me. He's like he says you can teach a man to fish, right? There's the famous saying, you know, if you want to feed a man for a day, give him a fish. If you want to feed him for his life, teach him to fish. That's all well and good, but sometimes you need to give that guy a fishing pole also. Right. you can teach a man to fish, ⁓ right? There's the famous saying, you know, if you want to feed a man for a day, give him a fish. If you want to feed him for his life, teach him fish. That's all well and good, but sometimes you need to give that guy a fishing pole also. So to me, that's what these programs They're the fishing pole. They're the opportunity, right? They're the opportunity to participate in public discourse because you're allowed to vote. So to me, that's what these programs are. They're the fishing pole. They're the opportunity, right? They're the opportunity to participate in public discourse because you're allowed to vote. They're the opportunity to get a head on your education because there's a government program that subsidizes that and helps you do that. They're the opportunity to eat at the same restaurants as everybody else. They're the opportunity to live late in life and not have to worry about going bankrupt for health care on healthcare because your wife or your husband gets sick. They're all The hand up, they're all the fishing pole, the proverbial fishing pole. And I think, you know, I I I don't differ from you in concept, but I differ for you from you a little bit in what I'm looking for. Right? I I don't need us all to love each other. I d I I think that's a pipe dream. But I think that if we respected each other, and if you know, when you look at public works programs, if you look at ⁓ Medicaid. Let's say, because that's the income tested one that's available regardless of age. Medicare is age based. You know, are there people committing Medicaid fraud? Of course there are. Right? It's foolish to say that there aren't. But the question is, do you believe for the most part? The question to me is, do you believe for the most part that people would rather support themselves or rely upon an administrative state to support them? And I believe that they would rather support themselves. Most people would rather support themselves, and they just might need some help. And I think that if you you you can come down on the other side of that, in which case I have just sort of a fundamental moral disagreement. If you're like, no, people who are who have found themselves needing public benefits are by definition losers, you know, and and you know, sucking off the teeth of the government. I Fundamentally we're we're not starting in the same place at all. But if you can start from a place of like, I don't know how they got there. I have no idea how they got there. And maybe they are shit bags, right? But maybe they're not. And more often than not, and I worked at legal services, I helped people with unemployment and social security disability and Medicare accessibility and public housing. And I can tell you, of course, I saw people who who were taking advantage of the system and gaming the system. But mostly I saw people who were trying to figure out how to get by. And if they could be elevated above the level where they needed the government assistance, then that is a good bet. And the bet might lose. They might fall back below that level. They they might simply not have it in them. Okay. But I believe that that's a good bet every single time. And it's a bet worth making on people more and more and more. I we I would make that bet on an individual many times before I completely gave up on that individual. Because the smallest win is someone who is now on their own and and living free in the in what I what I think is the greatest and richest country in the world. Free to get married, free to have children, free to sit at home in their own apartment and watch TV all Sunday. That's the smallest win. The biggest win is you have a family, the bigger win is you have somebody who starts a business or goes to work and and rises up to become bid manager, mid level manager. The even bigger wins are they start a successful company, right? Like the it we lose as a society by not making that bet, right? We the bet on an individual basis, bet by bet, of course we lose. But in the aggregate, we win. And we win because if you hit it, you're hitting thousand to one odds. Right? And that I think is that's how I look at sort of this issue. So, yes, we should be funding head start. Right, more than we are, and we don't have to take away all the military spending in order to do it. Right. And I think that's just a smart bet for society. Derek: I a thousand percent agree. And I think we'll we can kind of wrap this part of the conversation up first ⁓ after this, but I there was ⁓ so in the mid-2000s, ⁓ I was very involved in a church in Los Angeles and ⁓ this church was ⁓ I loved it because everybody that went to this church had moved to Los Angeles from like the middle of the country. Everybody was from like Ohio and Utah and Nebraska and like all these weird places, and so When you get this collection of people that grew up in churches in the middle of America and then they all moved to Los Angeles, most of them are pissed off and skeptical, but they still believe. Like there there's still this kind of draw to a higher power or something else. And so through that process, I ended up ⁓ connecting with ⁓ some of the people in the church that were just going on a missions trip to Kenya. And I had always kind of had a heart for some reason Kenya. And so when they announced that they were doing this, I was like. Maybe I'll go. So like I ended up going, everything works out. And I'll never forget this because when we got there, we we were there to obviously tell people about Jesus. That was the that's the point of a mission trip, Elwyn, in case you didn't know. ⁓ I don't know. I don't know. Throughout the ⁓ which but the best and this is this is Elwyn: I I am aware. To to spread the glory of Jesus throughout the world for all the good it's done the rest of us. Derek: changed a lot for me because we got there and then though the woman that that ⁓ so we we were meeting kids from a slum in Kibera and Kibera is this giant it looks like a garbage heap essentially ⁓ in the middle of Kenya where I think more than a million people live. ⁓ and it's disgusting. And you know, they poop and wash their hands in the same water and wash their clothes and dishes and there's disease and Do kids, so we we do this camp, and there's like probably a hundred to two hundred kids at this camp. And the woman that ⁓ that was helping us orchestrate all of this, she she was a a wealthier woman in Kenya and she owned a big property. So what we would do is we would actually go get the kids out of Kibera. So we would take them out of the slums and bring them to this big property. So we would bust them in. And then they would hang out. And the first thing that we would do is feed them. And she sat us down the day we got there and she said, These kids, a lot of these kids haven't eaten for weeks. And that none of these kids will ⁓ will open up or ⁓ listen to a word you have to say unless they can actually pay attention for long enough for you to do that. A lot of them are tired, they're hungry, they're in survival mode. And dude, we I don't think what we had like a serious conversation with anybody about like sharing the gospel of you know, what we believed at the time. But the joy of just feeding these kids and actually seeing them for like some of these kids for the first time were getting two meals a day, ⁓ and hadn't had them had a meal like or can with any consistency for years. And just that alone, from the beginning of the week to the end of the week, it they were like different humans. ⁓ and it was insane to watch. And so Programs that feed children work. Like when children are hungry, they can't learn. Like basic needs have to be met for progress to be made. And that this is this is not a debatable thing. This is just a fact. If somebody is hungry and hasn't eaten for days, they can't think straight. And ⁓ especially when they're a child. And so there are things in place that have to be in place if we want to see our our society continue to move forward. And the fact that people are c cutting these kinds of programs and and calling them ⁓ you know handouts is i is infuriating because if you haven't actually seen it and experienced it in real life, you know that like, yeah, foundate food, water, and shelter like are critical. And if you don't have them, you're in survival mode and you likely won't get out of it until you do have them consistently. ⁓ and so, you know, I think we can probably ⁓ and so Thank you for I like I was stoked to see some of the stuff that ⁓ LBJ passed. ⁓ the Head Start program also provided food for those kids, which was ⁓ in the morning. Like the just so much of this stuff was done right ⁓ at the start. and I I think that's what I took away from like learning about all this this week. And it was cool. I I didn't know much about it and ⁓ this was a fun one to ⁓ to do some research on. So ⁓ So who we telling to shut the fuck up this week? Elwyn: Shut the fuck up, Lindsey Graham. I'm done. I'm actually done. That's it. Just shut the fuck up, Lindsey Graham. ⁓ Derek: Alright. Dude, have you seen the have you seen the ⁓ the threads and Twitter accounts of ⁓ Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell's ghosts? ⁓ dude, ⁓ they're ⁓ they're on a tear at the moment, so that's They're they're they're ⁓ they're borderline ⁓ cringe but also hilarious. So ⁓ if you haven't looked them up. Elwyn: No. Yep. Derek: Is that really it? That's amazing. Well, this might be your best one yet. ⁓ well, so what are we talking about next week, Owen? Elwyn: I will. That's really it. Just shut the fuck up, Lindsey Graham. Forever. Forever. Goodbye. Do we want to do surviv surveillance state? Derek: I think it might be ⁓ yes. Yes we do. Elwyn: Surveillance pricing, surveillance state, all that kind of s the the surveillance world. Derek: You know that's gonna put us on the radar, right? Elwyn: Probably. Derek: Yeah, one of us is gonna end up in jail in the next two weeks. Elwyn: Well yeah. We can go from the Great Society to the Surveillance Society. Derek: Well, there we go. Well, for all you loyal listeners out there, stay tuned. Next week's gonna be a banger. ⁓ and we'll see you then. Elwyn: There you go.