Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Life in Woke America with Author Joel Rakow, Secret Labs, and the Liberty Scorecard S3-EP15

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Life in Woke America with Author Joel Rakow, Secret Labs, and the Liberty Scorecard S3-EP15 · SpaceTomatoes

0:00
See this book?
0:02
Pretty simple.
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Okay, so we're printing 300 copies for the library campaign.
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And the first books come out of the printer without that word.
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Hmm.
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Now, it's already been printed once before.
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This isn't the first printing.
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All right, everybody.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast
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with your hosts, Havoc and LX.
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And today we are joined by a special guest, Joel Rakow, author of Life in Woke America.
1:03
Welcome to the show, Joe.
1:05
Yeah, thank you. Glad to be here.
1:08
Yeah. So, you know, we had a little bit of a discussion before this, and obviously the title is somewhat provocative.
1:17
You know, what made you come up with that title?
1:22
And can you give us kind of a brief overview of this book?
1:28
Sure, sure.
1:29
Well, I'll give you the Paulist version of How It Up Came.
1:34
So the story is about an orphan boy who comes of age during COVID and the aftermath.
1:42
death. So orphan boy, no family, no, no parents to help him figure out what's going on in the world
1:53
and what he can be, what, you know, what's important to him. He's got to do it on his own.
1:59
And all he's got is the outside world. So what was dominant in the outside world was, you know,
2:05
billion-dollar sports franchises, AI, robots.
2:13
And to capture it all as a time, the era can be defined as the period of time
2:20
in which America was more woke than usual, we'll say.
2:27
So it's an era.
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It describes the era.
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now i could have called the book life in a sports crazed america and told the same story
2:39
all right well that i would i like actually i'd like to do that book
2:45
i want to go down the road like what does woke mean to you i mean i i have a general
2:52
concept of what it means uh i'm like the least political guy of anybody but i mean i've heard
2:58
it, obviously. What does that mean to you, that term? Well, I can tell you what has been
3:03
the definition. I don't mean the definition in terms of technical stuff, but just the common
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thoughts about it. And then what is evolving now? So it was that there's an oppressor
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and there's the oppressed. And that everything is examined, analyzed through that lens.
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That's essentially what, you know, wokeness boils down to.
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And you can apply it to, you know, okay.
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So in America's case, what I used to love was that the government was evaluated based on whether the middle class was growing, getting stronger.
3:48
You know, that was a good thing.
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For some reason, what's happened is now, no, we don't use that as the standard anymore.
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And somehow it got turned around.
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So now that we look at all the fringe elements, the fringe of society, the marginalized, how did that happen?
4:08
Who authorized it?
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Who decided?
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I mean, that's like pretty crazy.
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Now, the new theory, and with us three guys sitting here, we could get lamb blasted.
4:19
So I won't say too much about it.
4:21
But there is a couple of female sociologists who are articulating that as America, like workplace, professions, universities are getting more and more women, that what this really is is a feminization of America.
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and that the same things you see, the dynamics that you see in women groups are starting to show
4:58
more in society than they used to when it was primarily male dominated.
5:05
And I going to take it So I live I in California right now but I live half time on a ranch in Texas And this ranch is so big and old It was you know from the late 1800s
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So big that no living person has put their eye on every inch of the ranch until the fire that came through a couple of years ago.
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but the standard practice on the ranches,
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the girl horses are in one pasture and the boy horses,
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the geldings are in another pasture.
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And everybody thinks that that reason is because, you know,
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you don't want them trying to, you know, fight.
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They don't, you know, they don't, you know, you know,
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guys do they'll try and jostle and get in position until they get noticed by
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the best looking horse, you know?
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It happens.
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But what you see is that there's always one horse that's cut out.
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If you've got six horses, there's one standing in the corner.
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If you've got 30, there's three standing over in corners.
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It's just, you know, there's a biological thing that goes on.
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But anyway, that answered the question?
6:27
Yeah.
6:28
A little bit of color?
6:29
We actually have horses as well. And an interesting thing as well is in the horse world, predominantly the mares will take lead over the geldings. Predominantly. This is not a truism. It's just a, on average, that happens more often than not.
6:48
However, my gelding for some reason has tackled the two mares and he is, he's become the lead.
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Well, I don't know why he's also younger too.
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So it's very interesting, but you know, that is interesting.
7:02
Very cool.
7:03
So in your book, one of the things that, that comes up as a topic is the Reedley lab in California, right?
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Which was a real event, right?
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what made you choose that and how did you kind of incorporate that into your book?
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How did I or why?
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Well, why, sorry, yes.
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Okay, well, because I thought it was emblematic of what wasn't happening.
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And what wasn't happening was the pursuit of truth.
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The media had completely become its own thing.
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unresponsive to the needs of the people.
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So whatever was driving them, and I have my theories and I have my facts,
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but whatever was driving them, they would either suppress it if they didn't like it.
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They would smear it if they didn't like the person.
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I mean, look at what they've done with Trump and all those guys.
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I mean, nobody could be as bad as Trump is portrayed.
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You know, I mean, they just couldn't.
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And so this was a real biological bioweapon lab, secret, unlicensed, operating in California, about maybe 30, 40 miles outside of Fresno.
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25,000 population towns, so not tiny, but rural, small.
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And they discovered that it was owned and operated by Chinese personnel,
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that the Chinese guy that had his name on the lease was wanted for $300 million,
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dollars had a 300 million 300 thousand dollar warrant for his arrest from canada yet he was
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across the border he was able to get this lab going and when it was found you never heard about
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it yep okay it was are you aware that the second one has been found with the same guy
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no you have well that's isn't that the one that was found in las vegas or no right right right
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yeah yeah right right okay so you heard about the second well i i happen to uh i happen to
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have a lot of alternate channels for news and information because i i have you know my thought
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is anytime you're getting information from one side, you're getting maybe half the truth.
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If you're getting it from the other side, you're getting half. If you get both sides and then take
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your time and really muddle through it, you can kind of get to something closer to the truth.
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So yeah, I've heard of it. You'd be amazed at what you can find as information that never
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makes the news and it's
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kind of shocking.
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I haven't heard of either one. It doesn't surprise
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me though That I want to layer on top of this So one it was compelling enough that there was a congressional investigation of it So when I downloaded the report
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I looked at it, I go,
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there's no doubt that that was true.
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There's not a thing about it that was false.
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I mean, it was like rigorous.
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There were photos.
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I've seen pictures of the lease agreement.
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I've seen pictures of the guy.
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I've seen all his driver's license with all three of them that all have the same picture but different names.
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I mean, it was fishy.
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All right.
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And so they had this report.
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Now I'm thinking, why did they call it a biolab and not a bioweapon lab?
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And you're not going to believe this.
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So the weapon that was being developed was changing the DNA of mice so that they could be contagious, carry one of these viruses that were in the vials in the refrigerator, all labeled Ebola, HIV.
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HIV, hepatitis, COVID, yeah, HIV, and get it so that the mouse would be contagious.
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And then they could release the mice.
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But there's another level that I think is that they would then put the mice in the cages with rats,
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and they would infect each other.
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And so then they could release rats, which are hardier and more aggressive.
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Okay, so there were mice and rats there, but we don't really know what they were going to do.
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So, you know why?
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I can tell you why it's called the lab and not a bioweapon lab.
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Or a biolab, not a bioweapon lab.
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And that's because somehow somebody in the congressional committee was able to argue the case that a single mouse is not a bioweapon.
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right yeah even though 1200 mice are yeah and and the purchase of mice single mouse does not
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have the lethality and the purchase required to be called a bioweapon and the purchase of mice is
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not regulated in any way shape or form so it's an easy enough transaction same with rats uh yeah
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no i i i yeah fully aware of all that and and so you know so just think what would have happened
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if that would have been promoted in the news
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in the way things used to get promoted in the news that were scary.
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Yeah.
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You know how to fix it, right?
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We just ban rats across the board.
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Make them illegal to own.
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Make them illegal to own and buy,
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and that'll fix the problem 100%.
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You know what?
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I think there's an election season coming up, man.
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You should run.
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You've got the great ideas there.
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I mean, does that not fix the problem?
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Or better yet, we just put a sign on the front of the building that you're not allowed to bring rats into this facility.
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Well, you got to remember this is a secret.
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That'll stop people right at the door.
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Nobody knew what was going on in there.
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They presented themselves as being a pregnancy test facility.
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That's how they got away with it for the couple of years.
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Call me crazy, but I'm just going to say that if the government knows what you're watching on your TV,
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i'm sure they had to know about this place and like they had to have some kind of vested interest
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in it or something i don't know well there's there's there's little question of that and here's
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why uh i think we gotta watch him i think he's gonna get pretty political he's not at least two
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of the substances there are highly regulated right you you don't get to just have those and ship them
14:30
around the country and and it doesn't you can't so in some way shape or form someone knew that this
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was going to a destination they knew where it was going who it was going to it was under a license
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etc it's it's just not there were enough vials in there and they had all the labels on them so they
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were transported you know in an effective manner it's just you know uh so you you know you can
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info from that so in the book there they find a so the story takes place in amarillo texas
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and um and so the boy grows up he gets a girlfriend um you know they're gonna do a
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family and then he notices behind the the house that there's a a hinky house behind her property
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and they study it for a while and it ends up being a forward operating base
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in connected to the lab in Wrigley so you know they similar people similar names so the idea is you get the uninfected rats and you put them in cages in Amarillo and you bring a few mice that are contagious and put them in the same cages for you know a few weeks
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And pretty soon all the rats will be in.
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You didn't have to move a whole bunch of rats that are contagious at one time.
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That's the theory that I developed for the story.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it's probably not that far off.
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Although, you might have to wait for a birth pattern to get genetic sequences to pass on to the next generation.
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but I don't know that you could effectively transmit that.
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Well, yeah, that's why it's a big project, right?
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You don't know when it was going to be.
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You don't know when the actual launch date of the attack was going to be.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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But you've got to start getting things prepared and set up.
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And so they were able to catch the one in Amarillo.
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This is fiction ahead of time.
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And so the way he takes it down at the end in the big battle
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is he uses InfoWare tactics so that they can take it down
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and he can vanish, and they'll never be able to determine
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that he's the guy that took it down.
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Very interesting.
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I must say, it's pretty clever, pretty sophisticated,
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and you don't have that silly thing where you've got two guys brawling in the street,
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you know, punching each other out at the last battle.
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Oh, man.
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No unrealistic battles.
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That's my favorite part.
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Nope.
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So, oh, go ahead, Alex.
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No, I was just going to say, you know, they're not like shooting it out in the street and they have like unlimited ammunition that never, you know, stops.
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So when they make the movie, they can.
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I'm like, what is that going to end?
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Anyway, sorry.
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Well, you take all the weight of all those bullets that they shoot and they never could have been running in the first place.
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Exactly.
17:54
Yeah, no question. Yeah. Shouldn't you have reloaded by now? I think that's your like 3000th shot.
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I know. You had a revolver and you shot like 100 rounds. How does that work?
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Silliness, general silliness. So what else did this young man encounter throughout his life that was, you know, interesting, extraordinary, etc.?
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um well he sort of educated himself online you know he found that a useful way to go
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and he was right at the beginning period with um maybe mid reddit early x if you think about you
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know the tradition and he caught um he caught a fellow um that became went on to become very famous
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early on and sort of was his mentor for a little while,
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even though they never met.
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You know, it was just an online thing.
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And then that guy ends up giving him some prototypes
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to some robots that he's building.
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And he uses those robots to upgrade his home repair business
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to make it like a technology-enhanced home repair business.
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And so he's building a pretty interesting enterprise in the panhandle of Texas while he's romancing this girl, woman, and getting more and more ensnared in the woke world around him.
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and so the woke world kind of hits him by one when he was in the military and and he that's when he
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discovered um the lab and he came back and he was a hero among all the other troops he was only a
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private and um um and for a few days you know it was like well we got it we get we got we got an
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enemy. We get to go attack. We get to take it down. Then he started getting suppressed.
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And these civilians, I don't know if you know it, but there are civilians that suddenly became
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integrated into the military, never having served, never having been commissioned. And yet,
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as they say in the book, they know that they're getting more and more authority
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inside the military.
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So they threatened him with a dishonorable discharge
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if he didn't stop talking about this
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and said they'd put him on a watch list,
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a no-fly watch list,
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like they did Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hedsethe,
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not just the police.
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Not unreasonable that they wouldn't use that.
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I don't know if you know this, but that fly list that they have, Quiet Skies, isn't even a real no-fly list.
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But they call it one, they put people's names on it, then they use it out in the press to smear people.
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Well, they do use it. No, they actually do use it.
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Yeah, so you're already an extremist because you're on this list.
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Well, but they actually do use it. The list does exist.
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I work in my work.
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One of the individuals that is part of my division was actually denied access to fly.
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And he was on that list.
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But it wasn't him was the thing.
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It was.
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It wasn't what?
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It wasn't him.
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It was the exact name.
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Right.
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Oh.
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But someone else's name was the real person.
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but it took him like months, six months or something, six, seven months to get his self cleared.
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To get it straightened out.
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There was no incentive.
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Right.
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It wasn't a real operation.
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They didn't even, I mean, it was no procedures because it had never been set up.
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It wasn't real.
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Yeah.
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But they could use it.
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If they still let you fly, there's no list.
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Yeah, right.
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Oh.
22:07
Yeah.
22:07
But the point is, so then he gets stopped by a cop, and that causes some problems, you know, even when he's been out for a few years, because they never took him off the list.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, stuff just starts building up, and so then he's got to fight back.
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So there's the robot thing.
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He's building his business.
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he's uh the woman's um so in amarillo there's a real shortage of people who have um executive
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level talent and so this kid even though he didn't he has he's got um you know personal
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attributes which make him pretty stellar so he succeeds in a lot of areas um from the you know
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the ground up. So, um, he's,
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he's attractive to the woman's father because he can help him run a part of the
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business, which is kind of annoying, uh, for the prop, the guy that owns the
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father. Um, everybody in the book,
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all the main participants of the book have a ambiguous ethnicity.
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that's a i made i made that a character in the book because if you're going to have identity
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politics what do you do when you can't identify somebody to fall into a category
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it's like it so the whole thing is kind of like a um uh you know it's kind of like a a poke at
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The woke people, right?
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So what was the actual spark, the impetus for the book?
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Like what made you decide, I'm actually going to write this
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and this is what I'm going to write?
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Well, there's the last step and then there's the couple before.
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The last step was I woke up, I knew exactly what the story would be.
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Everything, I never, I knew everything.
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I just said, just do the work.
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It was never, it was not going to be a problem.
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wow i don't know and i don't know and i've never written a novel i've never written fiction before
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and so but it's getting four stars four and a half stars on amazon it's gotten two book awards from
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real reasonable you know competitions um i just got a um recruited away from my small little
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publisher to the publishing arm of the world's biggest distribution book distribution company
24:51
in the world. And they connected to me with the number one book sales organization
25:03
in North America with 100,000 stores.
25:09
Wow.
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And what they do is they rent space in like a Walmart or a bookstore
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or like an airport bookstore.
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So they own that space, and then they merchandise it,
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and they do all that.
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And so the bookstores, they don't,
25:30
and the bookstores don't even have to buy the books.
25:32
So all they do is collect whatever money comes in, and then it gets sorted out between the author and these two other companies.
25:41
And we're in 100 libraries in the state of Texas alone, and that's only after three weeks of a campaign.
25:53
So the book's proving it's holding up.
25:56
You know I say all that just to let you know that it turned out to be you know a book that you have to take seriously So how did you find the actual publishing and editing process
26:10
Was that difficult?
26:12
Was that challenging?
26:13
You know, to a certain extent, you know, accepting criticism or critique is, you know, fine.
26:20
But at some point, you know, I've heard stories from other authors where, you know, editors and publishers just are very bearish on what they want.
26:33
Yeah. OK. So, you know, Life in Woke America is not going to be a title that flows easily through the publishing industry.
26:45
There's that blue haired army. Right.
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So I can tell you a story for every single step on how we got suppressed, banned, censored, slow walk, gated, everything.
27:09
So much so that I've written a four-part article called Death to a Thousand Stories, Writing a Conservative Novel in Woke America.
27:24
Interesting.
27:26
And it goes through the publishing part and then the marketing part.
27:31
and I've come to think that I could be paranoid
27:35
because I expected at every single threshold
27:40
that there are going to be things.
27:42
But I'll give you a couple examples.
27:47
See this book?
27:50
Pretty simple.
27:51
Okay, so we're printing 300 copies
27:55
for the library campaign.
27:58
and the first books come out of the printer without that word.
28:09
Now, it's already been printed once before.
28:12
This isn't the first printing.
28:15
So somebody took it out and nobody noticed it
28:21
and they felt so strongly that they have their employer printing books
28:26
that are going to have to be thrown away.
28:30
So they totally jeopardized their job to do that.
28:35
Where did that happen?
28:36
At the printer did that?
28:38
Well, it could have been the art house.
28:41
You know, whoever did the artwork for the cover.
28:44
They just left it blank with nothing in the middle?
28:48
Every time I ask them, they're not telling me.
28:51
But I'll get to it.
28:53
So I'm going to say right off the bat that I've worked with printing before, printing.
29:01
And if you're doing repeat printing, it's usually already something the printer has.
29:07
So if you've done one, they keep it.
29:10
They don't, unless you request a new design.
29:13
So, you know, take what you want from that.
29:16
But I never had to go back and resubmit my design so they could recreate, you know, the plates, et cetera, on the press.
29:25
It was always, oh, yeah, we've got that.
29:28
Any changes?
29:29
No, no changes.
29:30
All right, cool.
29:31
And that was it.
29:33
Well, I'm only running theories here on this.
29:36
But I'll bet you that the artwork that was used is not as secure as the evidence room of a police department.
29:45
True.
29:45
So the ARC people could have gotten in there to get it.
29:48
Because it wasn't like the word was totally gone.
29:52
It was, you know, it was space so that it looked great.
29:55
Oh, okay.
29:56
Yeah.
29:57
Yeah, it wasn't like they just put something over it.
30:00
Maybe at your book signings you can get some of those error copies
30:03
and just write it in there yourself and autograph it.
30:05
I think that would be, you know, like a unique copy to have.
30:10
Get a white paint pen.
30:11
Oh, boy, did you just set me off?
30:13
That's great.
30:14
I love it.
30:14
I will go to them and see what they did
30:16
I hope they haven't disposed of those books yet
30:19
It's like an editor
30:22
You can put the little arrow thing and just write it in there
30:24
Yeah, limited edition, signed copy
30:27
That's the one I want
30:29
I want the one that they tried to hide
30:31
I at least want a few
30:33
Real books like that
30:35
Yeah
30:35
I can have fun with them wherever I go
30:38
I mean, I can go to
30:40
Even under here, I can show you the two books
30:43
right now i do have photos yeah okay but here's the real real deal so we live on this ranch
30:54
and the ranch does have minerals it has oil and gas and so um you know the the in the biden
31:03
administration we were um we were debanked i would say we were in the process of being debanked
31:09
They said that the money comes from fossil fuels Therefore you can do any you not entitled to any loans That what they did to us And it would have it might have could have gotten worse but that how that where they were starting
31:25
And then the other thing was, so we, my wife and I quarantined on the ranch, which was great because, you know, there's, I had more chance of getting mad cow's disease than I did.
31:39
COVID. And so near the end was getting to be about January, early January. And I realized,
31:50
hey, a couple of days from the ranch, we could be in Washington and we could go to J6 and do that
31:57
thing. And so after that, I realized how close I came to getting jailed for three years, four years,
32:08
no writ of habeas corpus
32:10
they would never have charged me with anything
32:13
and I'd be in prison for those years
32:17
and I would get out
32:20
I would be getting out about a year ago
32:23
I said that's scary
32:26
I have looked into your
32:32
background a little bit and I know historically
32:35
you were actually on the democratic side,
32:38
weren't you up until about 2020?
32:40
2020 is when I,
32:41
when I resigned.
32:43
So third generation,
32:45
personally,
32:46
50 years,
32:47
I didn't always,
32:48
I don't never,
32:49
of course I wouldn't vote party a line all the time,
32:52
but I,
32:53
I never,
32:54
you know,
32:54
the whole,
32:54
the family had been Democrats didn't really matter to me because I vote what
32:57
the votes,
32:58
what matters.
33:00
And I wasn't,
33:01
I didn't,
33:01
wasn't active in the party,
33:03
but my,
33:05
My position was socially liberal, fiscally conservative,
33:11
and my faith in the government is measured by the middle class.
33:17
And as long as the middle class is getting stronger,
33:19
that creates peace on earth, as far as I can tell.
33:24
You were essentially a party of Kennedy Democrat.
33:29
The what?
33:29
The party of Kennedy Democrat.
33:31
Right, right, right.
33:32
The old, like, I'm going to make my decision based on what's good for the people and who's presenting things that are good for the people and, you know, all of this, which, you know, partisan politics really irks me because it's gone from that to what's good for the party.
33:51
That, you know, to me is the antithesis of what this whole experiment was about.
33:59
You're absolutely right.
34:02
You're absolutely right.
34:03
So how much time do we have left?
34:05
Because that's your perfect segue into what I'm doing next.
34:09
Oh, no, we're good.
34:10
We've got plenty of time if you've got time.
34:15
Well, I went to the doctor on Monday for an annual,
34:18
and I got talked into taking the flu vaccine.
34:25
And so then I got the flu that afternoon.
34:30
You know, I started, and so I'm still recovering.
34:32
So I don't know, maybe another half hour or so and I'll be running out of gas.
34:36
Okay.
34:36
I don't feel that's a coincidence.
34:39
Oh, it is.
34:40
And it wasn't.
34:41
I've had one in my life.
34:43
I literally got the flu seven times that year and I never get the flu, man.
34:48
So that was the last one.
34:51
I'm like, I'm good.
34:52
Well, the argument that you gave me was that at my age,
34:58
there are more people going into the hospital this year than have in the past several years.
35:05
And if that happens, even though it's not likely, being in the hospital for an extended period of
35:12
time, you never really come all the way back from that. So I said, oh, how could I fault that
35:20
argument? You know, I would never be able to look her in the eye again if that actually happened.
35:25
Yeah, no, I understand that. I honestly, you know, I have my own position and, you know, I have no qualms about stating where that is, but I am firmly in the camp of everyone should be able to make their own informed decision, period, right?
35:43
Nobody should be forced into it and everyone should be able to say yay or nay.
35:48
Regardless, you just, I don't want to, or, you know, I have some deep seated religious
35:53
religion or reason, or it doesn't matter.
35:56
You shouldn't even have to be defined.
35:58
It's just sure or no.
36:00
That's it.
36:01
It's not forced.
36:02
It's not forced at all.
36:04
It's just, we'll take your job and, and, and you can't go anywhere and, and, and you're
36:08
not going to be able to use your, you know, bank card if you don't get it.
36:11
That's all.
36:12
It's not forced though.
36:12
We'll take the kids away and we'll put you in re-education camps.
36:17
My goodness, some of the ideas that came about.
36:19
And I was like, are you people serious?
36:24
Not to mention the fact that they didn even tell the truth about what just how it was dangerous into what groups yeah yeah yeah yeah that was a very scary
36:37
time in our history to me but it also brought about something that gave me a lot of hope
36:45
right, which was a good 20 to 30 percent of the population globally stood up and went,
36:52
something's wrong and no.
36:55
Was it that much?
36:57
Yeah, I think it was.
36:58
There were really large movements against it, you know, globally, right?
37:04
More so in some places than others.
37:06
Obviously, there's, you know, differing authorities in different countries.
37:13
uh, but you know, and systems, uh, but I, I do think there was a lot of pushback and a lot of
37:20
it was soft, right. And not necessarily standing up and saying no, but like, no, I'm not doing that,
37:25
uh, you know, in a quiet, but perfect purposeful way. Right.
37:33
Okay. Tinfoil hat off. I'm good now.
37:35
No tinfoil about it, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you know, at least to my mind, it doesn't take much critical thinking to go, hey, it takes seven to 10 years to put a vaccine out.
37:49
This new technology hasn't done so well previously in lab tests.
37:55
It's under emergency use authorization.
37:58
And they're saying, no, you can't look at this thing or you can't look at that thing.
38:03
And they're demonizing things that are showing potential signs of efficacy to keep it in place.
38:10
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to go, you know, something's wrong here.
38:15
Right.
38:15
and maybe I should look into this a little bit more, uh, before I make my decision, right? Not
38:22
again, I'm not going to try and sway anyone. This is your decision. It's your body, man.
38:27
Uh, but at the same time, you know, urging some critical thinking and some, you know,
38:33
true thought process of, of how realistic is what they're telling us period. Right.
38:39
I don't know, but absolutely I can tell you with
38:42
100% accuracy that it was not developed in a lab
38:46
at all, period
38:48
Sorry
38:52
There was too much hocus pocus going on
38:55
doing things, the whole mask thing
38:58
everybody knows that those masks are good for 30 minutes
39:03
and then they're just as infected as
39:05
anything else, so that doesn't make sense
39:09
no and it's especially when you're real clear early on that you know that young kids were not
39:15
going to get this yeah and so you shut down the schools you distort the whole life of you know
39:24
early life of kids in their form formative years yeah children were born and spent years without
39:30
seeing their parents' faces.
39:33
No faces from anyone.
39:36
So, and children need that developmentally, right?
39:40
It's an important characteristic.
39:43
But, you know, what do you say, right?
39:47
You know, one would hope that there were lessons learned,
39:50
although, yeah, I don't know that they necessarily were, right?
39:57
I think.
39:58
Well, none of them were lessons that society hadn't learned for centuries before.
40:05
I mean, these guys didn't do anything that heinous that hadn't already been done.
40:11
Yeah, true.
40:12
I mean, you go to China, they do propaganda all the time.
40:17
Well, yeah, every nation does.
40:19
Open knowledge.
40:21
Yeah, every nation does.
40:22
We used to have a law against it, but even that didn't stop us from doing it.
40:27
But, you know, now there's no law against it.
40:30
So, hey, you know, whatever.
40:31
It's all fine.
40:33
It's good.
40:34
Well, that's the Smith-Munt Act.
40:36
It is.
40:37
Okay.
40:37
You guys are familiar with it.
40:39
We don't need to go through it.
40:40
But that was an Obama move.
40:42
Yep.
40:43
And it's, yeah, okay.
40:47
Here we are.
40:50
I don't know what to say about that, right?
40:52
But it certainly is tragic.
40:55
So you spend half your year in California and half your year in Texas.
41:03
I have to assume that the summer in Texas is the part you choose to avoid?
41:09
Well, so when I say half, we spend usually a couple of weeks each month in Texas the first two weeks and then in California the other.
41:20
and some of the reason is it's a live working ranch.
41:27
And so my wife can't be away that long.
41:30
She's the only one in the family right now that can run it.
41:33
And so there's always summer vacations.
41:39
We take the...
41:39
summer vacations to other places on the time that we're supposed to be in Texas in the summer.
41:47
All right.
41:48
But it was transformative to start spending time out there.
41:55
It really was.
41:56
It was a beautiful experience.
41:57
Probably never would have written a book if I hadn't been living there for, you know,
42:02
out there for so long.
42:05
I might not have ever done it.
42:06
I actually used to live in California in the Orange County location.
42:13
Orange County, yeah.
42:13
I live in Newport Beach, Corona Del Mar.
42:17
Yeah, I was Newport.
42:17
Four blocks from the beach.
42:19
Newport, Costa Mesa.
42:19
Right in that little village.
42:21
Yep, yep.
42:22
I know exactly where it is.
42:22
We're halfway between the beach and the village.
42:24
Across from Fashion Island, right?
42:27
Is that the one you're talking about?
42:29
Yeah, that's within my mile walk from here.
42:32
Kind of catty corner or something, yeah.
42:34
Yeah, well, that's wonderful.
42:36
I've always, you know, honestly loved California.
42:40
I really have.
42:42
I just, I had to get, I had to get away.
42:46
And so I've been in North Carolina now for what, 17, 18 years, 17 years, 18 years.
42:57
And I love it.
42:59
It's an interesting thing.
43:00
One of the things I always thought was interesting is, you know, you hear quite a lot, at least in the area where you live, where I live, about the backwards, you know, southern folk.
43:15
And you hear a lot about racism out here.
43:18
And I have had an opposite experience.
43:23
You know, there is definitely a lot more racial diversity here.
43:31
Defied intention.
43:33
Right.
43:34
But people seem to get along and it seems to work well.
43:37
And I don't really see, you know, blatant racism at all.
43:42
Whereas I remember, you know, in a number of occasions we had, you know, a Latin American family move into our neighborhood and the entire HOA community and a number of the neighbors were just like, oh, you know, we got to we got to get these people out of here.
44:00
Look at it. They're just going to do this and they're going to do that.
44:02
And I'm like, that's just like over racism right there.
44:06
You know what I mean?
44:08
And I experienced a lot more of it.
44:10
And I always thought that that would be the opposite.
44:12
And it just has not been the case.
44:15
And it's weird to me, you know?
44:17
Yeah, I experienced that too.
44:19
I mean, I've seen it in the South.
44:22
They're more comfortable with each other.
44:25
Yeah.
44:25
If you went back to the 60s, whole different ballgame, right?
44:30
No question about that.
44:32
Right.
44:33
Things have changed.
44:33
So I grew up about 20 miles north of the Mexican border.
44:37
and my family had a black doctor from the time I was like two or three years old until 20.
44:46
So, and that doctor, he was like the, you know, my father's kind of like,
44:53
he'd always ask him questions and stuff and get his opinion.
44:56
And like, he was, you know, an educated, smart, sophisticated guy.
45:01
And so I grew up with that.
45:03
who was the attending doctor for my sister when she was born
45:08
and my mother when she had her hysterectomy.
45:11
I mean, it's like, you know, so between living in a border town, essentially,
45:19
and playing sports with all of them, you know, and a black doctor,
45:25
I've never really felt like it was much of an issue.
45:28
Yeah, no, and I think, you know, in general,
45:31
I think that is true of most people, to be honest with you.
45:34
I think there's just a vocal, very, very small minority that is.
45:40
That's my opinion of that.
45:41
But I don't know.
45:42
Maybe I'm wrong.
45:43
Who knows?
45:45
I do have a question about the ranch in Texas.
45:49
When you have that much property that you said you couldn't even have walked the whole, you know, like managed to see all of it.
45:55
How do you keep that from like, how do you know that somebody is not dumping a thousand tires over in the corner over here?
46:03
Or, you know, they're setting up shop and just squatting over in the other, you know, area.
46:08
Or how do you police that, you know, I guess for lack of a better term and manage it all?
46:15
Well, you ever heard of the Texas gun laws about and trespassing?
46:20
Hmm.
46:20
If anybody's on your property, especially in the evening or the dark,
46:27
or they shouldn't be there, you can shoot them.
46:32
So it's a deterrent.
46:35
It works So my wife a born and bred Texan and I couldn believe it We go driving around and she say oh don go on that road That private You know and she was like super vigilant about that
46:49
And I realized that, you know, there's meaning there.
46:55
Well, there is.
46:56
Because there's some angry guys sitting out there, right?
46:58
Just waiting for somebody to come down their road.
47:01
I live rural North Carolina, and I will tell you that the exact same thing exists out here.
47:07
There are private property signs at the front of people's driveways for a real reason, and they don't want you on their property.
47:16
That's literally it.
47:17
Or they want to be able to say that you were warned so that they don't get in trouble.
47:21
In California, someone can invade your house, have a weapon, and you can defend yourself.
47:30
But if you use a weapon that is measurably more powerful than theirs, they hold that against you.
47:38
It's like you didn't have a right.
47:40
Yeah, I got it, Alex.
47:41
It's pretty stupid.
47:43
I remember the important questions.
47:45
Like, does Amazon deliver out there to a place that big or no?
47:49
Oh, yeah, yeah.
47:50
Well, it took a while.
47:51
It took a while.
47:53
Remember when Trump got mad at Amazon because they were using the post offices?
47:59
No.
47:59
They would go and dump stuff at the post office for these rural towns where, you know, they didn't drive around.
48:06
But they fixed all that.
48:07
So let me give you a slightly different perspective on the big ranch and how you police it and why you need to.
48:18
So a cow is worth about $3,000 a piece, right?
48:22
so and if you leave the cattle out at night and and they go into the pasture that's far away
48:30
people can pull up a trailer take 10 head and they just got thirty thousand dollars
48:35
so you think of what thirty thousand dollars means to you know some guy that's down on his luck
48:42
and broke and he's got a buddy with a flatbed trailer or something like that they're gonna
48:47
they're going to start thinking, right?
48:50
Especially if they know that there's nobody around the ranch.
48:53
You know, they went on vacation or they get any of that kind of word.
48:56
It's a serious issue and has been since the beginning of time.
49:01
But the reason it's a bigger issue in Texas than it is, say, in Missouri
49:05
or North Carolina is because you need more than 160 acres,
49:15
which was the original allotment for a lot of people back from the homestead act that cannot
49:21
support a family in texas certainly in the panhandle you can't get enough you can't feed
49:27
the cattle you can't get enough milk it's not going to work so that's why you got the smart
49:34
guys who figured out that if they had a job and they kept they had the money coming in they could
49:39
buy up other people's land, especially during the Dust Bowl and the Depression.
49:47
So that period of time was a buying opportunity for anybody who had a legitimate job.
49:53
And the great, great, great grandfather sold hay to the cavalry.
49:58
He'd bring it from Atlanta all the way out to the Fort Sill and whatever the fort was
50:07
in Mobidi.
50:08
and so he had his money
50:10
and so he had enough to buy up
50:13
and he just lived in a dugout
50:15
hole in the ground
50:17
boards over the top
50:19
that's where he lived
50:20
as he accumulated all this land
50:22
yeah
50:24
there's
50:25
it's an interesting
50:27
it's an interesting thing
50:30
because there are very huge ranches
50:33
but you know in Texas again
50:34
you need way more land to support
50:36
cattle, right? And so that is, it is an interesting thing. I was actually looking into this
50:43
a few months ago is the cattle rustling, not only is alive and well, but is actually,
50:48
I think in the last couple of years increased in, in frequency in Texas, which you, you just,
50:56
you know, you think, gosh, that is, you know, old stuff. People still do this, you know,
51:03
and it's crazy to me, you know?
51:05
The easiest thing to steal in today's world is cattle and oil.
51:12
Yeah.
51:14
Yeah, I could imagine so.
51:17
So this ranch is, remember the name T. Boone Pickens?
51:22
Mm-hmm.
51:22
You do.
51:23
Do you, Alex?
51:25
No.
51:26
So his ranch is next to our ranch.
51:29
Oh, wow.
51:30
Okay.
51:30
Very cool.
51:31
That is pretty cool.
51:33
That's an interesting thing.
51:36
Well, hey.
51:36
Then I got stuff like in my mind, like thinking about like property taxes and stuff.
51:39
I don even know how that works But that why it got to yeah everybody nobody realizes yeah there no state tax but the property tax is like six seven eight times what it is in California
51:51
You know, you pay it.
51:53
But the land produces money.
51:56
The land you have in California, you live in.
51:59
You know, you don't, you hardly ever use it.
52:01
You know, it doesn't quite, the economics don't quite work.
52:04
Plus fresh beef.
52:06
Everybody loves fresh beef.
52:08
I do.
52:09
and milk, fresh milk, raw milk. Yummy. We did an episode on that, but I think it's probably a
52:17
great place to start wrapping up. And one of the questions we really like to ask our guests is
52:22
throughout our lives, there's a figure that has a lasting and meaningful impact. Could be an author,
52:30
historical figure, could be sixth grade science teacher or mom. Who would you like to give back
52:36
and shout out to? Well, I had a really good professor. I had a really good, and I was a
52:43
pretty good athlete and I had some coaches that were fantastic. So I could pick any number of them.
52:49
So I'll pick one. So Earl Trutman was my little league baseball coach and his son was in the same
53:04
great as me. And I didn't really care for his son, but I really liked him and I liked his wife
53:11
and I liked their family. And the older daughter was a character. And then they had a younger,
53:19
younger boy. And so I spent a lot of time over there with him and he took care of me and kind
53:25
of like helped me along. He was the captain of the fire department in the town that I grew up in.
53:33
and uh his so there's a character in the book which is um his wife and the family
53:44
the nature of the family so i couldn't quite fit him in in a way that didn't seem like i was
53:50
shoe warning but this just the the feeling of his wife and the the uh how she created no you know
53:59
on a very little salary.
54:02
I mean, you know, fire people, fire guys don't make a lot of money.
54:05
She made that house into a place that was just a wonderful place to be.
54:10
And that's what this kid aspires to, and he achieves it.
54:16
First, he experiences it with his sergeant.
54:19
They form a relationship, and so he gets over to the house during COVID.
54:25
Everything kind of shuts down,
54:27
And so, you know, they kind of invite him into his home and he gets to experience it.
54:32
So I figure that's pretty important.
54:37
That's a great one.
54:38
Personally, you know, one of mine is my sixth grade science teacher, Mrs. Bethke.
54:44
But hey, so where can people find you?
54:48
What are you working on next?
54:49
What do you have going on?
54:50
And where is the best place to purchase your book?
54:54
okay so um the the segue that we missed was the constitution so i pretty much have this character
55:08
making decisions which are consistent with the top four five six uh constitutional values
55:16
okay and emanate from it kind of you know without a whole lot of conscious thought for it
55:23
And then I realized that there's the Constitution, which is the bedrock of America, and everything above it is politics.
55:37
Okay?
55:37
There's no room for argument about the Constitution.
55:41
Now, we've made provisions so we can tweak it, but you've got to have 60% vote.
55:48
So, you know, I think it's actually 66% or something.
55:51
It's almost impossible to get. So it is what it is. And all the stuff that we're taking
56:00
into consideration with all these different voices and ethnic groups and gender groups
56:08
and all that stuff, that's politics. So to help, but the Constitution is pretty boring for a lot
56:18
of people to read. They're never going to read it. Nobody's figured out a way to have a constitutional
56:23
program that would enliven the experience of learning about it. So it stays in the background
56:33
and everybody will say, yeah, the Constitution, but they don't know what part they're already
56:38
living and they don know what they not doing that they could be doing in the Constitution So with the advent of AI my grandson and I built an application
56:53
a mobile phone AI app that you can point to any civic, any public official.
57:02
It can be a candidate.
57:05
It can be a mayor.
57:07
It could be the mayor of a town.
57:08
It could be the school superintendent.
57:10
it any public official any public institution and it will the ai does the research in 30 seconds 40
57:22
seconds of how aligned are they with the constitutional values okay then it gives a score
57:31
and then it gives four or five reasons on why that score and then it creates a card
57:39
with the picture, the title, the score, the reasons,
57:44
and it enables you to either send it, that card, via email
57:49
on an email distribution list,
57:52
or to post it, you know, on your, you know,
57:56
posted from your social media to your contacts.
58:01
That's simple.
58:03
And where is this?
58:05
How does someone find this?
58:06
It's called the Liberty Scorecard.
58:08
Okay.
58:09
And if you want, I'll send you a link afterwards.
58:16
There's a free trial period.
58:18
And then you can go and be an advocate if you want to advocate for somebody.
58:23
You get like 10 or 20 cards you get to produce.
58:27
But then you can do it with an unlimited number of people.
58:30
And then there's a pro level.
58:33
But it's like $9 a year because, you know, it's not an app that you use all the time.
58:38
Anyway, and the book, well, the thing's taken off.
58:43
Like I told you, we got that world-class distributor,
58:47
and then we got the company that does the 100,000 stores.
58:52
We got 100 books in the libraries.
58:57
Getting in libraries is important because it's like they're influencers
59:03
in what's considered a good book because they don't do all the page turner stuff.
59:08
It's got to have more to it than that.
59:13
But, you know, so Amazon, of course, it's got a 4.5 rating.
59:17
We've been bestseller there three times.
59:21
We're not well-known enough that we can stay there,
59:23
but we do a little campaign and it goes up.
59:26
We do another campaign, it goes up, and you got to push it.
59:29
But when it's out in the stores, we'll start getting a lot.
59:35
Okay, so best place to buy it?
59:36
So Amazon's the best place to go.
59:37
You can also go to lifeinwokeamerica.com.
59:44
Perfect.
59:45
Okay.
59:45
And what about if someone wanted to reach out to you?
59:48
Is there a social media or, you know, an info?
59:54
Yep.
59:54
So the easiest thing I think is Joel Rako at lifeinwokeamerica.com.
1:00:01
But there's also, this is a little tricky,
1:00:04
at, on X, at, in Woke America.
1:00:10
You know, a little at sign, in Woke America.
1:00:14
We do a lot of work there, and on Facebook, and LinkedIn.
1:00:20
And I have about 15,000 followers.
1:00:25
Wonderful, wonderful.
1:00:26
So, for your show, we'll definitely, we'll promote this.
1:00:30
We'll help you out.
1:00:31
Well, we will do the same and thank you for that. I appreciate it. It's good to hear.
1:00:36
Yeah, it's a great thing.
1:00:38
All right. Well, thank you so very much for giving us some of your time. It is our most precious commodity and thank you for giving us some of your time as well.
1:00:48
You know where you can find us? We're everywhere podcasts play. We're also on YouTube, X, Noster, now on Instagram as well.
1:00:57
and if you look for us, you'll find us.
1:00:59
You can do a Google search.
1:01:01
Find us at spacetomatoes.net.
1:01:03
You name it, you can find us.
1:01:06
And remember...
1:01:07
Fountain FM.
1:01:08
What's that?
1:01:09
Fountain.
1:01:09
Oh, yeah, and we're hosted off Fountain.fm.
1:01:12
Wonderful platform.
1:01:14
Oh, good, good.
1:01:16
And remember, wherever you are,
1:01:20
whenever you're watching this,
1:01:22
have an amazing day.
1:01:24
Okay.
1:01:25
Thanks for stopping by, Joe.
1:01:26
see you okay my pleasure i enjoyed it