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Episode 432: Where Are the Democrats? · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers
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brought to you by the fine people at Polyhibnia Ants.
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What's new and exciting in your world this week?
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Listener Elliot Zarowski wrote this week asking about our
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discussion of right to Repair, and Elliot wrote some good
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stuff. He spent a lot of time on this
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e-mail, so rather than summarize, I'm just going to
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read some excerpts from his letter.
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Hello James and Anthony, my name is Elliot Zarowski, I'm a 16
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year old high school student and have been listening to your
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podcast for a long time with my father.
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I have a lot of computer knowledge and I'm working toward
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a cybersecurity job in the military.
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I recently listened to episode 423 where you talked about right
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to repair laws and I wanted to share my views.
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This is great. I do not know a lot about
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politics, but I do have opinions about a few topics and the right
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to repair is one of them. When people talk about the right
1:04
to repair, they usually mention cars and how they should be able
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to work on their own car without the manufacturer purposefully
1:10
making it harder. This is a good example, but I
1:13
think there is a more pressing matter.
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Computers, especially laptops, have been getting increasingly
1:20
harder and harder to repair. As I write this, I'm typing on a
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MacBook Air. It has what's called a fused
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keyboard, which means the keyboard is fused to the
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motherboard. Do you get that?
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You use Macs? Yeah, Well, it's fused to the
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keyboard. I didn't realize that that was a
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thing. The motherboard, of course, is
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the expensive part of the laptop.
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So Elliot goes on. Let's say a key broke on my
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fused keyboard. I would have to replace the
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majority of my laptop to fix it, which with the age and model of
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my laptop would cost me more than to just get a new one.
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Now I wouldn't say no to a brand new shiny laptop, but this
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brings up an issue that you both mentioned.
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Suppose my keyboard broke and I was forced to buy a new laptop.
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What happens to the old one? Well it lovingly gets shipped
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off overseas to a country that deals with the lithium and
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chemicals in our computers. My laptop would be sent to a
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quote recycling plant, which I think you can guess isn't really
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recycling as much as we would imagine it to be.
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I love this phrase. All the chemically parts and
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toxic components turn into horrible pollution and e-waste.
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Our recycled computers pollute other countries.
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Even though I agree with the free market and I have faith
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that eventually people will come around and these companies will
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change their behavior and make repairable computers, I'm afraid
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that by the time that happens, the damage will already be done.
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In conclusion, I also have a soft spot for right to repair
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legislation. Even though I think the market
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would do better without the government getting involved.
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This has been an issue for so long and has already caused so
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much damage. I think this is a good step in
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the right direction. I think it's pretty clear that
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he doesn't think the market would do better well.
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He's raised some interesting points, but I want to give you
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this closing paragraph which just touched me.
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Also, I want to say how much I love this podcast.
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I know you both joke about how much hate mail you get, but just
3:21
know there are a lot of people out there like myself and my dad
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who listen, learn, and laugh. The hate will always stick out
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more than the love. Please keep doing what you're
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doing and let me know your thoughts with reply.
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I would love to talk more on this subject, Elliot.
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OK, Elliot, let me dig in here because you have raised an issue
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that lots of serious adults raise and they point to stuff
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just like you described. And they said, look, this is a
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market failure. This is an instance in which
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capitalism needs to be reined in because the market fails.
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You get pollution because of people just throwing their
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laptops into the trash and gets it's a polluting the
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environment. To which I respond, this is not
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a market failure. This is a government failure.
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The government's role is to protect, define, enforce
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property rights. And whenever you have a
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situation where someone is polluting the environment,
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they're imposing a cost on someone else, they're violating
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that person's property rights, this is a good and proper place
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for government to step in and do something.
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I don't think I want to say that.
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Well, let me give you one more thing.
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There is a cludgy way that you can deal with this through
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market processes, and that's to use what's called a Pigouvian
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tax. PIGOUVIAN Pigouvian tax.
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A Pigouvian tax is a tax on the product that's meant to raise
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its price enough that you dissuade the people from
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polluting as much as they were polluting.
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And I think in theory, it's an interesting thing.
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In practice, you've got to set the tax at the right way and
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you're using government anyway because that's what you need to
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impose a tax. Or if you're going to do that,
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let's just have some laws here about what you can and cannot do
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with the pollution. By the time we get to Pigouvian
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taxes, I think it's time for me to say and another thing, or
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maybe, and now for something completely different.
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Well, the whole point of our book Cooperation and Coercion is
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that it's not markets or government.
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It's markets in government using each one in its appropriate
5:37
place. And here's an appropriate place
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for government. There aren't many, but there are
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some. Let's see what you've got to say
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about this hot mess that I'm going to talk about in a second.
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Do you recall the government's antitrust case against Google?
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Do you even remember this under the Biden administration?
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Vaguely. Well, I mean, the idea is that
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Google is so massive and so pervasive that it can't be
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avoided, right? That somehow there's an unfair
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advantage baked right into the present day system for Google.
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It's kind of like, dare I say it, when Microsoft with Internet
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Explorer had such a dominance that nobody could compete the
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browser wars without some sort of government intervention.
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Do you remember all that? Right.
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Yeah. Well.
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I mean, how good do you think Google is?
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Quick aunt, What's the second best search engine in the world?
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Yeah, well, I don't know if it's a second best, but one that
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people use for security purposes is DuckDuckGo.
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Yeah, DuckDuckGo is fine and Bing is pretty good, right?
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There are other search options out there.
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And yet that's not going to be what does Google in.
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What does Google in is going to be artificial intelligence.
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Oh yeah. Not only is Google not going to
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be the biggest search engine anymore, it might not be in the
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search engine business at all anymore.
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Yes, I had these thoughts just the other day as I was once
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again using ChatGPT to search the Internet.
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Well, and here's an interesting thing that comes along with this
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Google searches have fallen for the first time in decades, for
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the first time ever, for all intents and purposes.
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Well, it's already happening. So on the one hand you've got
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the government saying Google your unfair advantage just won't
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do, and on the other the market is saying what unfair advantage?
7:50
Right. Yes.
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And here's a beautiful example of technology moving so fast
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that the government is attacking a problem that existed years
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ago, the market's already fixed, and is on to the next thing.
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Now we're going to have to figure out which AI chat bot is
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too powerful and which others need some kind of help.
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But Google isn't going to factor into this for.
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Very much longer, yeah. The mistake that people make is
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they see some big thing like Google and they say this is a
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problem without asking why is it a big thing if it's a big thing?
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Because it's so good that that's what people want to use.
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Leave it alone. Yeah, that's not a problem.
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That's the exact opposite of a problem.
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Yeah, that's not a problem, that's a solution.
8:37
That's right. Which, of course, aunt, brings
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us to the foolishness of the week.
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Do you have a guess as to who the foolishness of the week
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might be about? I have been largely unplugged.
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I did read a headline, only a headline that Donald Trump fell
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asleep at some meeting with Saudi Arabian Princess.
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And then another thing about Donald Trump, it's the airplane.
9:02
Qatar is giving him a 700 million or $70 billion airplane
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or some ridiculous thing. By the time this podcast is
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heard by other human beings, we will be at least four more
9:15
foolishnesses from. The I know they keep piling up.
9:19
But you are exactly right, it is Donald Trump.
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It's just not any of the things you said, which is kind of funny
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in and of itself. Right, We should just change its
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name to Donald Trump of the Week.
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Well, we're kind of getting there.
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And this came up when Barack Obama was president quite some
9:37
time ago. The president has a daily
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security briefing, an intelligence briefing.
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Are you aware of this? Yes.
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Yes. Well, Barack Obama hardly went
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to any, right? He was lucky to make one a week.
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Donald Trump has been to 12 since he took office.
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Oh my God, 100 days ago. It's well over 100 days as we
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sit and talk to each other today.
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So we can conclude that he's making about 10% of his daily
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intelligence briefings. What could possibly go wrong?
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What in those meetings might they talk about that he might
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have to know in order to be an effective president?
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Listen to me saying all these idiotic things.
10:21
Well, but you know, James, between the last president and
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the current president, I think there's a compelling empirical
10:29
argument now for the claim that maybe we don't need a president
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at all. Well, we do because it's in the
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Constitution, but it could be more like a Calvin Coolidge
10:40
president and that would be just fine.
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Somebody needs to run on the platform and maybe this is my
10:47
destiny, but the presidency is a part time job and everybody
10:50
needs to cut the and we're just not going to pay much attention
10:54
to this anymore. If you only need to go to 10% of
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the briefings, that's a part time job.
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And it's the kind of job I've been looking for my entire life.
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And James, Americans will do it for half the price that the
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current president is charging. No, I won't.
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Yes you would. No I will not because I can't
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take gold plated jets from the Qataris.
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For One Stop shopping for all things James and Aunt, visit our
11:23
website wordsandnumbers.org. We give a special shout out to
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our Patreon sponsors who help us keep the lights on.
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If you'd like to contribute, go to patreon.com/words and
11:36
Numbers. I digress.
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We'll get back to that some other time.
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Instead of Ant picking on Donald Trump, as we are want to do
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round about the foolishness of the week portion of the weekly
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program, I want to maybe take a look at Democrats, which we
11:54
haven't done in quite some time, but we hear them a lot lately,
12:00
railing against the Trump administration in a very public
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and hostile way. It's clear that they're of a
12:07
mind collectively, that it's impossible, literally
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impossible, for him to do anything right, ever.
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If he sat down and eat oatmeal for breakfast, they would find a
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way to claim that he did it incorrectly.
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Right. Right.
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So, OK, what are you folks up to right now if it's about maybe
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taking stock of where you are, given where we are in the Trump
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administration? You know, but this is a serious
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question. I've been thinking about this
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for a while. We're not hearing anything from
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the Democrats. Where the hell?
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Are any of them? I mean, the only time I hear
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about any of them is when somebody who works for Chuck
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Schumer sends out a tweet. That's literally the only time.
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Or when I turn on my TV. And we'll get to this point in a
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little bit I guess. And I see AOC and Bernie Sanders
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on their anti oligarchy tour on the private jet that Bernie
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Sanders is not ashamed of taking.
13:09
Let's just say that it's a little strange that a socialist
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would be interested in a private jet.
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But here we are. Here we are.
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We got 2 socialists interested in private jets, but what are
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the Democrats doing as a whole to indicate that they have a
13:29
plan? And dare I say that their plan
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is somehow different than the last plan that they lost with
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quite badly? OK, what are they up to?
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And I'm not sure I have any idea whatsoever what they're up to.
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I haven't thought about this until you raise.
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I think there's a second time you've raised this topic, and
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now that I think on it, it seems to me they're missing some
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serious political opportunities, for example.
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Golden time for them Golden. Opportunity.
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It is. Near as I can tell, the
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Republicans are cowed. Reasonable.
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Republicans are afraid to be reasonable for fear of backlash
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from Trump supporters in their districts.
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So here's a prime opportunity for Democrats to be proposing
14:20
all sorts of middle of the road, quite reasonable legislation for
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the sole purpose of getting those Republicans on record as
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being against it, and then to use that against them in the.
14:32
Midterms. Yeah.
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I think that's right. And you would think at this
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moment that the Democrats would be salivating at the very
14:40
possibility of a midterm election.
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Yeah. And yet.
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Silence. Where are they?
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All I hear are crickets. If you take a step back and
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maybe ask yourself a different sort of question and say, all
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right, what is up with them? What are they up to right now?
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And a couple of things kind of spring right into your field
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division. And the first one that I want to
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get back to is this anti oligarchy tour.
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What in God's green earth are those two clowns?
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I mean where do they get off going on an anti oligarchy tour?
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I mean come on. They are the very definition of
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oligarchs, and to the extent that they're not, it's because
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they haven't been able to get their way enough, not that they
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don't want to. Right.
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Well, OK, what do we do about that?
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They're getting crowds, 10/15/20 thousand people.
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And I think what we're seeing is a group on the Democratic side
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every bit as willing as their compatriots on the Republican
15:47
side to just simply ignore the obvious truth.
15:51
We've got a number of people who are politically active in the
15:56
American electorate right now who literally believe anything
16:01
Donald Trump tells them to believe.
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A perfect example. Somebody yesterday I got into it
16:07
because he claimed that Donald Trump has.
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How did the wording go, 'cause it is important.
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Donald Trump has lowered the deficit by 92%.
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What? What?
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He hasn't loaded by 9%, let alone 92.
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Or Ant by 1% because it's projected to be $1.9 trillion
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this year and we all know about projections that's going to turn
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out to be low. It's going to be higher than
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that. Last year it was 1.8 trillion.
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So no matter what happens, it's gone up, not down, and certainly
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not down by 92%. What on earth are you smoking
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that you could even think that remotely plausible?
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And yet here we are. Another thing that comes to mind
17:00
rather quickly. Doge How many hundreds of
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billions of dollars of waste and fraud and malfeasance as Doge
17:10
ferreted out? How come there are no charges
17:15
pending? Right.
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Yeah, no criminal charges, right?
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You'll know that Doge found something when somebody is found
17:23
guilty of it. You know.
17:25
But not only are we not there, we're not to a place where
17:29
anybody is actually being charged with anything.
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One more example on the Republican side, a non monetary
17:37
one, our attorney general Pam Bondi.
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Where are those Epstein files again?
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Because those were coming out on day one.
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Remember, just like that trifling war in Ukraine was
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going to be over on day one. People buy this nonsense hook,
17:55
line and sinker and then they just roll with it and it's
18:00
impossible to point out to them how unbelievably incorrect they
18:06
are without them just throwing some kind of insult back.
18:11
And I'm all for cutting government waste and not waste,
18:16
just cut government. However, it's possible that Doge
18:21
is doing more harm than good. I hate to say that because I'm
18:25
all for cutting government, but I'll give you an example.
18:28
There was, and I'm forgetting what the term is, it it might be
18:31
provisional. There's a category of federal
18:34
employee, and I'm going to use the word provisional.
18:36
Just put an asterisk. That might not be the right term
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where you come in, you're a new hire, you're consider
18:42
provisional employee for a certain number of months, and
18:44
then you become a real employee. Probationary is what you're.
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Thank you. Thank you.
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Probationary. And So what Doge has done, one
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of the things is to say, OK, all those probationary hires are all
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cut and you can kind of see that these are people we just hired.
18:58
Want to get back to square 1? It's a lot worse than that
19:01
though. Oh, it is worse because
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apparently if you've been in government for some time and you
19:07
get promoted to a new position, a higher position, you are
19:11
automatically probationary in that higher position.
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And so all those people are getting cut.
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The dose cuts against probationary employees is
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hitting the actual people you don't want to get rid of.
19:24
Right. And it gets even worse than
19:25
that, because we're going to come to a point where all kinds
19:30
of things that we thought were ridiculous turned out to be more
19:33
necessary than we first realized.
19:36
And now it's going to cost all kinds of extra money to hire new
19:40
people and train them to do the job that older people were
19:44
already doing right up until the moment we fired.
19:47
And you see the foolishness that this brings with it.
19:51
But all right, OK, said all that to the side.
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What are Democrats doing? Why am I looking at an anti
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oligarchy tour? I mean, look, AOC is clearly
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already running for president. And if you don't think she is,
20:08
you're out of your mind. This woman is already running
20:11
for president, and I would dare say she probably has the inside
20:15
track in the Democratic. Party.
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Because who gets through the primaries?
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Somebody reasonably far out on the leftward tail.
20:24
And that's right where we find her.
20:27
How are we sure Bernie Sanders is giving her her debutante
20:31
ball? Every time I open my eyes, he
20:34
clearly thinks that she's the new him.
20:39
I mean, if that doesn't terrify you about her, what does?
20:44
Oligarchy tour? I don't even know what to say
20:46
about this, but what does it tell you about the Democratic
20:49
Party as a whole? They have no plan.
20:53
Yeah. How else do I know they have no
20:55
plan? Every single thing they did to
20:59
lose the 2024 election, they decided to do more of the day
21:04
after they lost the election. Yeah.
21:09
Do you think the American people are all that interested in
21:13
hearing why boys and men should be allowed to play girls and
21:19
women's sports? The vast majority of the
21:23
American people know that. That's just foolish that sooner
21:29
or later, girls and young women, they're going to get killed
21:35
playing against boys and men. The reason why we have girls
21:38
sports in the 1st place is that they couldn't compete with boys
21:43
and men. Right.
21:45
So let's not lose our minds and claim it's anything other than
21:50
that women cannot compete with men in these sports, OK?
21:56
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have their own sporting events,
22:00
which they could measure their talents and abilities against
22:03
one another. That seems perfectly reasonable.
22:07
And yet the Democrats have gone out of their way to tell anybody
22:12
who says what I just said to tell them that they're bigots.
22:17
You just alienate people left and right.
22:19
I don't want to hear that I'm a bigot for speaking the obvious
22:23
truth about something. But you have examples of this in
22:27
at least in boxing, right? It has nothing to do with
22:31
gender, but has everything to do with size.
22:33
That they're weight classifications and you box.
22:36
In your it has everything to do with gender because a 200 LB
22:40
woman is going to get her clock cleaned by a £200 man.
22:44
Granted, but you're not going to put £150 man in the ring with a
22:48
£200 man. Actually, that can happen.
22:52
Really. You they go across weights like
22:54
that. Only in One Direction.
22:56
Somebody who weighs less can move up.
22:59
Somebody who weighs more cannot move down.
23:01
Fine. OK.
23:02
But again, you've got that same principle of putting some
23:06
protection for the smaller guy. And there are boxers out there
23:10
very, very good ones. Bantam weights, for example,
23:13
weigh 112 lbs. Good Lord.
23:16
Wow, right? You go find me a grown man who
23:20
weighs 112 lbs. Turns out they exist, and they
23:23
fight as Bantams. There isn't any such thing as a
23:27
professional bantamweight who could knock out a professional
23:31
heavyweight. Now, one of them might be able
23:35
to, I don't know, knock out one of us, right?
23:38
We're not fighting as a rule. We would probably have trouble
23:43
with a professional fighter even if he were small, but we know
23:47
better than to put him in with a 200 LB professional.
23:50
Right. That's a way to get him killed
23:52
and nothing else. I mean, how entertaining is that
23:56
going to be anyway? The idea of entertaining sports
23:59
is that people who have relatively similar levels of
24:03
ability, they play against each other, right?
24:07
That's what makes it so fascinating.
24:10
And women do quite well relative to men when you get the things
24:15
that include distance. So distance runners, female
24:19
distance runners, almost as good as male distance runners.
24:24
At the 5K level, it's not even close.
24:27
But at the 26 mile level, it gets much closer.
24:31
And that's kind of interesting. And you know, we don't feel the
24:35
need to separate the genders for running events, right?
24:39
Because nobody's going to get killed for it.
24:41
But when's the last time you turned on the Boston Marathon
24:44
and saw a woman win the whole thing?
24:46
Oh yeah, it was never so to every other marathon.
24:50
This is not a slight against women.
24:52
It's to make peace with the difference in biology.
24:56
And that is what the Democratic Party is refusing to do.
25:01
Make peace with biology. Now, you can claim that you
25:05
don't like the answers that biology spits at you.
25:09
I think that's just fine. But anything else?
25:13
It's kind of like arguing against math, which we tell
25:16
people they ought not do because math will always win in the end.
25:21
Find me the time when biology doesn't win in the end.
25:27
So why can't the Democrats see that?
25:29
Why do they take an issue that is deeply important to almost no
25:34
one? To those people for whom it is
25:37
deeply important, it is deeply important, but they don't make
25:43
up anything close to a rounding error in the electorate.
25:48
So why on earth are Democrats dying on that hill?
25:54
I don't know but they fall all over each other to get furthest
26:00
out into the left hand tail of the party.
26:04
I'm trying to think now about the game theory here.
26:07
This game theory would suggest that in a general election, you
26:10
want to move to the center to pick up as many voters as you
26:13
can. But to get to the general
26:17
election, you have to win the primary.
26:19
And to win the primary, you're picking up not the general
26:23
voters, but the more, how should I say, probably the more extreme
26:29
people they're that invested that they would get up and go
26:31
and vote on an off year. But see, I think even a little
26:35
worse than that, right, Because in order to get into the
26:39
primary, you have to already have stoked some interest in
26:44
your very liberal electorate, your very progressive
26:48
electorate, right that side of the aisle.
26:51
And in order to make any headway that way, you've got to be kind
26:57
of strange, right? Centrists can't do that, right?
27:00
So too on the other side. This is just a blanket problem
27:04
in American politics. Let me underline this because I
27:07
think this is important. To get to the general election,
27:10
you have to win the primary. To win the primary, you've got
27:13
to appeal not just to people in your party as opposed to people
27:18
in general, but specifically to the more emotionally invested
27:24
people in your party because that's who's going to come out
27:27
and and vote. No, let's call it what it is.
27:29
It's the lunatic fringe of your party.
27:31
OK, but that raises a question. If what I've just said is true,
27:36
then it should be the case that you see more extreme behaviour
27:41
from politicians who campaign in states with closed primaries
27:48
then you do from ones who campaign in states with open
27:50
primaries. Because with the open primary,
27:52
you could have Democrats and Republicans voting in the
27:55
primary. That's correct.
27:58
I have to say, at this point, I have not done that research.
28:03
I think it would go without saying in my brain that that's
28:06
exactly how it would work. And I have absolutely no
28:09
evidence to point to. I just have the logic of the
28:12
thing to point to. If we're wrong, I'm happy to be
28:14
corrected. So go ahead, go nuts.
28:18
We do have these things on YouTube, so people can say
28:21
horrible things about us in the comment section if they so
28:23
desire. But you start to think about
28:27
what all this means. Where is that reasonable voice
28:32
in the Democratic Party? Right.
28:34
All right, there are forces that conspire to keep that voice down
28:40
a little bit, but centrists pop up.
28:43
Bill Clinton was a centrist. Bill Clinton came of political
28:48
age at a time of great personal difficulty for him.
28:53
Right. He was able to overcome a lot
28:58
and make it all the way to the White House.
29:00
So don't tell me centrists can't because damage centrists can't.
29:05
I was actually in New Hampshire the day the first bimbo eruption
29:11
happened, and I walked into his campaign headquarters, and every
29:16
single volunteer and employee knew in their hearts that it was
29:22
over. It was like walking into a wake.
29:27
And the other candidates, their outfits were every bit as
29:31
exuberant as Clinton's was despondent.
29:36
But he overcame it, which tells me that lots of centrists could.
29:42
So where are they? Right.
29:45
Name me the one that's even making noise right now and there
29:49
aren't any. Ain't that something?
29:53
There is some hope though, and this is what got me on to this
29:56
topic in the 1st place. Because all I see are Democrats
30:00
shooting themselves in the foot. And one of the ways that they
30:04
shot themselves in the foot was allowing that little weasel
30:09
David Hogg. Remember him?
30:11
Oh yeah, right. They allowed that clown.
30:14
I'm using my words. I, I know what I'm saying.
30:17
I'm a wordsmith. I choose my words carefully.
30:20
And that man boy, whatever you want to call him, is an abject
30:25
clown. He should be nowhere near any
30:29
serious people trying to do serious things.
30:32
And the Democrats have decided maybe it's time to get rid of
30:35
him. Really, he's too extreme even
30:40
for them. They've decided that maybe it's
30:42
time to declare his election void.
30:46
Wow. Yeah, that's the kind of dance
30:50
with reality that I'm not accustomed to seeing Democrats
30:55
make, and yet they're doing it. I suspect you'll see the end of
31:02
David Hogg, maybe even by the time this episode goes live.
31:08
Well, that's actually quite encouraging.
31:12
Perhaps another step can be taken after, and another, and
31:16
another, and before you know it, we might have an opposition
31:20
party. And I would say we need a loyal
31:23
opposition party that matters in a constitutional Republic.
31:28
And we talked with Clark about the dangers of losing a
31:32
constitutional Republic. And, you know, part of the
31:35
unwritten rules is being part of the loyal opposition.
31:40
You can be against another group of people without demonizing
31:43
them. That's right.
31:45
It's about time people figured that out.
31:49
A little baffling that they need reminders every 20 years or so,
31:52
but here we are. All right, maybe that's cause
31:56
for hope. I don't know.
31:59
It's awfully thin, right? There's not a lot there.
32:02
But every other place I look with the Democratic Party right
32:07
now, I see them not only in disarray, but in disarray so
32:13
badly. Let's just say that they're so
32:16
far offshore that they can't see the lighthouse anymore.
32:21
And as long as that's true, and that's a terrible thing to be
32:26
true, but as long as that's true, they will be a minority
32:29
party, They will not get anywhere in American politics.
32:35
And I say this knowing how badly the Republicans can't wait to
32:39
shoot themselves in both feet. Well, that's what I was going to
32:42
say. The Democrats have a good chance
32:44
of moving forward so long as the Republicans keep doing what
32:47
they're doing. We've gone through 2
32:50
presidential elections now in which neither party could come
32:54
up with a reasonable candidate. Oh, I think it's more than that.
32:58
You can go back quite a while. As much as I disliked Obama as a
33:03
president, I could see him as being reasonable.
33:05
I disagreed with so many of his policies, but I couldn't say he
33:08
was unreasonable. I'm not so sure I agree with
33:11
you. I'm sure I agree with you that I
33:13
didn't like his policies. I'm not so sure he was all that
33:16
reasonable. But I take your point,
33:18
comparatively speaking, that's reasonable.
33:21
And when you look at Obama V Romney, OK, you had a couple of
33:27
reasonable choices there. Yep.
33:29
Reasonable enough. That was a while ago now, Yeah.
33:33
We both lived in the same town when that was happening, and we
33:37
haven't lived in the same town, let alone the same state, for a
33:40
very long time. Why?
33:41
I hate to say it, but since that the most reasonable of who we've
33:47
seen since that point is Hillary.
33:51
Oh, no, no, no, no. You stop saying that right now.
33:55
I'm not saying she's reasonable, I'm saying she's the most
33:57
reasonable. That tells you how unreasonable
33:59
everything else is. I'm going to stop the howling of
34:03
our listeners and say, without a hint of reservation, that Gary
34:08
Johnson was most reasonable. Yeah, I can't even count him.
34:12
I mean, look, I think he was the last gasp of the Libertarian
34:16
Party. I think that's right.
34:18
Because if we're right right this second about how crazy both
34:24
parties are, if the libertarians can't make a dent now, they
34:28
can't make a dent ever. Oh yeah.
34:31
I think it's clear that no dent will be made.
34:34
Yeah, I tend not to speak in the passive voice, but there you go.
34:39
You're in a market where the plurality of customers don't
34:42
like either of your leading brands.
34:45
There are nothing but crappy products.
34:47
It's like Pepsi and RC Cola out there and Coke can't figure out
34:51
a way to get to market. Right.
34:54
Yeah. It's baffling.
34:56
It's just baffling. I don't know.
34:58
I'm kind of heartbroken by the whole thing, but I'm somehow
35:02
aware that this nonsense keeps us in business, so it's OK.
35:06
Keep electing these lunatics and we'll just keep right on
35:09
insulting them and everybody will be happy enough.
35:14
It does keep us in business, but I hate to sound trite, but
35:17
honestly I think the solution is that we stop being at each
35:20
other. I've been in so many situations
35:23
where I'll say something quite reasonable.
35:26
If people perceive that I'm of the same party as they are,
35:30
they'll listen, engage. If they perceive that I'm of a
35:32
different party, you know it's name calling the whole thing.
35:37
And I'm happy to point out that no matter which party you're in,
35:41
I am not in the same party as you.
35:43
Yo. So there you go.
35:46
It's funny because I'll use that.
35:47
I'll say well, but I didn't vote for Trump.
35:49
And people just assume, oh, he voted for Harris, he's one of
35:52
us. No, didn't vote for her either.
35:55
So you wasted your vote. All the people out there who
36:00
voted for Harris or Trump wasted their vote by not voting with
36:04
me. I agree completely, those people
36:07
did in fact waste their votes. And if you decide who to vote
36:11
for this way right by just picking a party and saying
36:15
anything else other than one of these two Jack wagons, anything
36:20
else is a waste of your vote. I would declare that you
36:24
probably don't know what a waste of a vote looks like 'cause
36:27
you're the very definition of it.
36:30
And that's all the time we've got this week on words and
36:32
numbers. Until next time.
36:34
Send us e-mail wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
36:37
Try to be nice to one person who doesn't deserve it till next
36:41
week. Can't take it easy.
36:42
See you next week, James.