(Not So) Deep Sh*t with Chris & Steve
(Not So) Deep Sh*t on Business, Politics, and the Media
Join Chris and Steve as they take on a number of pressing issues from the vital to the trivial, and occasionally completely irrelevant!
In this episode, Chris and Steve talk about the impact of technology on our lives and our complex (one could argue unhealthy) relationship with social media. They also kick around the idea of corporate ethics and media's role in shaping public perception, exemplified by events like Max Azzarillo’s self-immolation and the Boeing whistleblower(s) allegations.
And if that's not enough, they also touch on American political tribalism, conspiracy theories, and the power of media, also reflecting on the future of work, economic growth, and cryptocurrencies.
And finally, Chris and Steve talk political division and the potential for unity.
Tune in for an exploration of today's societal challenges as well as the possibilities for the future.
But don't worry, they'll be back to talking about UFOs very soon!
Contact Us:
Twitter: @NotSoDeepShit
Facebook.com/NSDSChrisandSteve
Instagram.com/nsdschrisandsteve
Email: nsdschrisandsteve@gmail.com
Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE, LIKE and LEAVE A REVIEW for the show!
Join Chris and Steve as they take on a number of pressing issues from the vital to the trivial, and occasionally completely irrelevant!
In this episode, Chris and Steve talk about the impact of technology on our lives and our complex (one could argue unhealthy) relationship with social media. They also kick around the idea of corporate ethics and media's role in shaping public perception, exemplified by events like Max Azzarillo’s self-immolation and the Boeing whistleblower(s) allegations.
And if that's not enough, they also touch on American political tribalism, conspiracy theories, and the power of media, also reflecting on the future of work, economic growth, and cryptocurrencies.
And finally, Chris and Steve talk political division and the potential for unity.
Tune in for an exploration of today's societal challenges as well as the possibilities for the future.
But don't worry, they'll be back to talking about UFOs very soon!
Contact Us:
Twitter: @NotSoDeepShit
Facebook.com/NSDSChrisandSteve
Instagram.com/nsdschrisandsteve
Email: nsdschrisandsteve@gmail.com
Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE, LIKE and LEAVE A REVIEW for the show!
I'm Chris, I'm Steve and we're talking after a brief hiatus to talk about some more deep shit, hey.
Speaker 2:Steve Chris, how you doing.
Speaker 1:Good, it has been a while.
Speaker 2:It has.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have been remiss in recording episodes. Life gets in the way sometimes.
Speaker 2:It does, it does, and, uh, I'm happy to be back here speaking with you, though yes, yes, long overdue.
Speaker 1:Lots of things to talk about. So much has happened. When is the last time we, we put out an episode? It was, uh, january, was it january? I think it was january, wow, and now it's april. We're well into the thing, well into 2020, 2024. So I would say that we're going to get better at this, and we are, but I'm not going to make any specific promises, because any specific promises we make in regards to, you know, releasing content, I'm not 100% sure we can come through on it. So, let's, we do intend on getting more content out there more regularly. We're going to get better at this and we appreciate those of you who have stuck with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Will there ever be a regular schedule? I don't know, I don't know. Will it be more consistent? I promise that I'm going to try.
Speaker 1:Yes, same here, same here. So what have you been up to these days? How's 2024 treating you thus far?
Speaker 2:Not bad, not bad, looking forward to actually some actual nice weather. I have been kind of housebound, I feel like in the last four months it's either been cold or rain or both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's for those who don't live in an area that sees seasons Because some people live in like perpetually warm places Right, which I envy to some degree, or perpetually cold places, which I do not envy at all At all I have to say we have it pretty good up here in the New England area. We actually get seasons of a sort Spring is really nice here. Fall is really nice here. Spring is really nice here. Fall is really nice here. Summer is really nice here. I am not a big fan of the New England winters Never happened Me either. I'm just not. But I don't think I'd ever move away. I don't think I'd ever want to live somewhere like Florida or California where it never got cold.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Well, I like the change of the seasons, right. I don't particularly like the cold, but I don't really mind the cold because I know it's going to change, right, so it's temporary. Sometimes I don't like it when it just seems like it's never going to end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the early parts of the cold, like when we're talking, you know know, getting a little chillier around, halloween, dig it. Uh, obviously, like december, christmas, get to new years, I'm still good, uh, even a little bit past. I think when it really starts to hit me is like end of january. As we get into february, it's just that relentless, like you still have several months of cold, but there's no holidays, there's no reason to celebrate the cold, it's just there. Uh, you know, and some people love it and I, you know, I get it, but and I don't think I could live without the option, but I don't. After a certain point I'm like, okay, I've gotten my taste, like good enough, can we just warm up now and we'll come back at this next, next december, right, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely but what are you going to do? We're almost there.
Speaker 2:How about you, chris? What's going on with you? I know you've had different things happening with you and you have your um, uh, the presentations that are are actually ramping up for you.
Speaker 1:Yes, speaking engagements to a senior centers where I talk about a variety of things, mostly UFOs, but I also talk about AI and YouTube and teach technology to some degree, which is great. That's ramping up. I had to have two surgeries on my shoulder. I tore my rotator cuff and they fixed it the first time and it didn't quite take, and so I had to go back for a second run. But happy to say that it is fixed now and it is well on its way to being good.
Speaker 2:So is that your throwing arm or not, that you had to have done?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my left hand, it was my left arm. It was a pain.
Speaker 2:So that dream of being a pitcher for the Red Sox is gone that?
Speaker 1:dream is gone.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would like to say that some people have asked me oh, did you play a sport?
Speaker 2:No, I would like to say that.
Speaker 1:I was some people have asked me oh, did you play a sport? No, I tore it and moving stuff in a storage unit and lifting things in an improper way. Yeah, you compromised it and yeah, and overstretched it, and boy, I learned that lesson. So that was a tough lesson.
Speaker 2:Hopefully that never happens again. That's a difficult surgery to recover from. I mean, everyone generally recovers. It's just that the the what you have to go through.
Speaker 1:I couldn't drive for a little while. I understand now Like I get it when people lose their ability to drive, whether through age or whatever, that loss of independence. Wow, I felt it, you know, when I'd be sitting at home and just be like I'd love to go out and grab a little something to eat. But I can't. Even though my car is sitting right there, I can't drive because my left arm is, you know, it's unsafe. Now, of course I could get away with it, but at a certain point, like if anything happened, the arm had no strength, so like even taking a left turn would be difficult because you don't have anything there.
Speaker 1:So now that I'm back and I can actually, you know, drive easily and and and I'm good, uh, yeah, it's, it's something, but it was pain. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2:that's life it is I'm glad you're feeling better.
Speaker 1:Thank you. There are worse things people have to go through. I've come to the point where it's like I'm not gonna complain about my pitiless little problems because they're not that bad. You know, did it? Did it suck? Sure it did, uh. But there's a lot of people out there with a lot worse problems than that, so I'm not gonna bitch too much very, true, very true as the world descends into chaos around us. Uh, you know, I'm not gonna complain about my little. As they say, first world problems, right you?
Speaker 1:hit it all the time, but you know you matter and you matter to everyone listening you know and you know I I often say to people you know, first world problems, true, but they are still problems. They're not. They're not not problems. They're not. Maybe they're not as important in the big scheme of things, but that doesn't mean they're not issues, you know although I don't know if I'd consider needing rotator cuff surgery a first world. No, no, but I mean just that's like you know your phone dying.
Speaker 2:I mean right, yeah, although nowadays it feels like if you don't have your phone, you're in trouble. You can't keep up.
Speaker 1:No, it's amazing how these little devices have become so integral to our very existence when not too long ago, they weren't a thing. They were a luxury, you know.
Speaker 2:They weren't a thing at all, they weren't a thing.
Speaker 1:And then, when they became a thing, you're right, they were a luxury at first and they weren't necessary. They were nice to have, but they weren't necessary. But now we've come to the point where they're necessary, like it's, you know. I mean, I know sometimes there was a time when you'd run into people who didn't have the newer phones. They're still operating with flip phones and still texting with numbers and things like that, and even that's difficult. But if somebody doesn't engage in that stuff at all, it's hard to interact with them.
Speaker 2:It's strange, it's weird.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:Although I have to tell you that's one thing in the last maybe three, four months, I eliminated social. I still have social media accounts, but I eliminated them from my phone. It's unbelievable how less I'm on my phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's just stupidity. Most of it is I've. Long ago I stopped going to Facebook for the most part. It just doesn't hold my attention. I still do Twitter, Twitter, I'm not going to call it X.
Speaker 2:That was stupid. Why will you not call?
Speaker 1:it X Because it was stupid to change the name.
Speaker 2:I don't know why he changed it.
Speaker 1:It was a typical listen. I'm elon musk hater by any means, but I do find him to be an unstable, capricious billionaire who just does shit.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds like you don't like him. No, you give him those adjectives but he deserves it.
Speaker 1:There's some things he does off the cuff that I'm like good, good, decent, you know, not, not, you know, but you got to think things out. So it was called twitter. The things were called tweets. So he comes up with the idea I'm just going to change the name to x, because some stupid that was his company name or something, something where he had some fondness to x and I think he wanted to get away from twitter, like it the name. But then what do you call? What do you call individual messages on x? Like you don't call them X's, people still call them tweets, and so it's like when Prince changed his name. It's just a dick move that makes everything more complicated.
Speaker 2:But he changed his name to a symbol, to a symbol.
Speaker 1:So you had to say the artist formerly known as Prince, and it just made things longer and more difficult. And so now it's like this stumble. Well, what happened, you know, posted on X, which was previously known as Twitter. Somebody posted a tweet. Wait, they're still called tweets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're not called Twitter. I actually thought by now he would have. Somebody would have said you know, maybe we need to actually re rebrand this, you know, because it's like it's been a while that they keep saying formally known, as there's a point where the new name should have taken right right, you can't be formally known as whatever anymore and didn't even like follow through, like okay, it called X, but it still has that little bird. Does it, it's still like.
Speaker 1:Not much about the site has changed, except the stupid name, which doesn't make sense anymore. Again, are those individual messages? Are they Xs? Are they what?
Speaker 2:are they? Well? What does the platform call them? Do they even call them anything except messages?
Speaker 1:I think common parlance is still to refer to them as tweets. It is because they still. It was just an easily understandable thing. I get it. It's under new ownership and the new owner wants to mark their you know. You know elon wants to mark it as a new day. Fine, there's. There's ways he did that good ways and ways that you know aren't so good.
Speaker 2:And like just suddenly one day going, I'm changing the name of this thing how do you feel about the narrative with him that he purchased twitter not to make money? Have you heard this narrative? Not to make money? Have you heard this narrative? Not to make money, but to stop controlled speech? Have you heard this narrative? He says that when he first bought Twitter, he came out. I keep saying he, elon Musk, people, that probably other people with him as well they released these things, basically saying that the United States federal government was trying to influence how Twitter allowed information to come out. Right, which is true, yeah, but did you ever hear the narrative?
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:He's basically saying I wasn't trying to make money with this, I'm just trying to basically save free speech. Have you heard this narrative?
Speaker 1:Yes, and I can believe it to a certain point, because maybe it doesn't need to make excessive profits, but I think it still needs to be profitable and not a loss, and I think that's what he's having a difficult time doing now is trying to get people to subscribe to it. There's some new thing I heard about. It is if you sign up to get people to subscribe to it. There's some new thing I I heard about it was is if you sign up to twitter, now, yeah, you can't post or anything until you you have to actually pay something to like. If you're on, you're good, but if you're new, they're going to start doing this thing. Where?
Speaker 1:you really yeah, because it's got to generate revenue like if it. He's not going to continue to operate it at a loss. Maybe making money was not his prime goal, but he still can't be taking a bath on it and I think that's an issue because people get certain sides, don't like Elon and people. I get it, I get it, and you know people I get it, I get it, but I like it as a platform. I think I don't know. I think it's a decent platform as opposed to threads. Is that the new one?
Speaker 2:With Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Instagram kind of. I don't really know anything about it. It was meant to be kind of like a Twitter alternative. It was a similar thing, okay, but I think the problem with it is is like Facebook it feeds you the people that you're connected with, which aren't necessarily what you're going to get on Twitter, you know what I'm saying You're going to be exposed.
Speaker 2:I thought on Twitter you can look at what you're following you can, but you also get exposed to a lot more like Facebook.
Speaker 1:Isn't Facebook mostly people you follow and people who are friends? I guess that's the-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know. I mean, sometimes they show you other things, I think. But generally I always thought these social media platforms made money mainly on the data they're collecting about your habits online. But maybe I'm crazy, I thought that and then they sell it. That's how I thought they made money.
Speaker 1:They do, but I think primarily they make money through advertising.
Speaker 2:Is that the primary way? That's the primary way.
Speaker 1:Which is the problem I mean, that's really the problem with social media is that this new thing came along, we didn't get our arms around it and we threw it into production without really thinking it through. So if this thing relies on you being on it, the more you're on it, the more advertisers will pay. Then you can see, the incentive is to do anything possible to make you stay on it like it's. We built a thing that is incentivized to do exactly what it's doing, and that thing is not great. You know the fact that people are getting fed.
Speaker 2:And the reason too, um, of why someone stays on they've have figured out generally is because they're responding negatively to things People I was. I saw a study that people spend a great deal more time engaging negatively than positively. So then you just keep seeing things that you don't necessarily that fire you up, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can believe that. I can believe that because a strong emotion evokes action. Something that doesn't give you an emotional response doesn't usually push you to make any kind of action. You just whatever and you move on Right. Something really. I have tried to not engage. I look at tweets. I'll occasionally, you know, post something. Very rarely, mostly I'll just retweet Again. It's like retweeting on X, whatever, but I try not to get in the mud If I see something that enrages me. I've even started writing something and then stopped and just deleted it and been like there's no upside to engaging 100%.
Speaker 2:The same way as you. There's no upside.
Speaker 1:I'm engaging a hundred percent there's no same way as you. There's no upside. I'm not gonna convince anyone, I'm not gonna make a difference. It'll just be little snarky tweets back and forth and whatever. And it's like if we all just didn't give the bullshit oxygen, maybe some of it would go away. And that's why I, kind of you know, I posted on UFO Twitter, which again is still called UFO Twitter. There's also a hashtag, ufox, but that doesn't get as much play. But UFO Twitter gets a lot of play Again.
Speaker 1:What is the platform called? Again? But, like I posted something, tweeted something or X'd something the other day where I just was like, don't engage, like that's a choice to engage in the bullshit. Right, you know it's a choice. It's one you don't have to make. You could just go by that incendiary tweet and ignore it. Tell you something that pisses me off about twitter slash x or whatever. Is elon in his infinite wisdom, changed the way that blocking and muting someone? The way it used to work is if you blocked someone, you never had to see their shit again, and if you muted them, it was in as severe as blocking, but again you didn't really need to see their their stuff again. It would come up and say this is an account you you muted or whatever, like you wouldn't see what the people say, especially when somebody who really their own how would you?
Speaker 1:even see the account. I don't understand. Well, I'm saying, like it comes up. So a tweet comes up and it's somebody who like, is constantly like, just being an ass like they're just they're.
Speaker 1:They're not trying to do anything positive, they're just trying to be an ass. And so I would previously block these people or mute them in the very least, like I don't want to see your shit, like I'm I'm here to look at ufo information, I don't want to get involved in all the little things. But now, even though I'll see a tweet and I'll be like, why am I seeing this shit? And I'll click on it and it'll say unmute or un unblock, and I'm like, if they're muted and blocked, why am I seeing their shit? And it's because, again, elon is like well, we want you to engage with the other side, and I'm like I get it and I'm all for that, but not with people who are really they're not looking to engage. They're not looking to engage, they're looking to start shit. Oh yeah, and that's their goal. Oh, to start shit, oh yeah, and that's their goal. Oh yeah, don't give it oxygen. But it's hard because, you know, I see stuff and I'll just be like I can't let that stand.
Speaker 2:And then usually I think better of it and I might be in the middle of typing something and I'll just be like not worth it, delete, move on doesn't doesn't add anything to my oh no, and I know it's not the topic of what we talk about generally, um, so I'm just saying, as an example, um, on instagram. So I'll go on instagram maybe once every couple days just to see what's going on, and I follow some accounts that I find informational. You know, um, and I I do follow different news outlets just to see, because you know you get the same story different ways, right? Obviously it is interesting to see, yeah, and what's going on in, excuse me, the Middle East right now, with Israel and Palestine and Iran or Iran, whatever you're supposed to call it, right? So once in a while I look, just I do not comment or anything because that's a minefield.
Speaker 2:It's just a lot of them are bots too, I think. I don't know, but the amount of just visceral hate between points of view is just insanity. And I'm saying to myself do you really think you're solving the problem? What are you doing? But it's just people needing. I just don't understand that human element of needing to act like that to each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of those things like. That's a complicated issue. There's a lot involved in that. I'm not gonna to presume to to be some. You know, white dude, and you know half a world away that's going to tell you how to solve it. I don't know how to solve it I do know what color you are. You're not solving it well, I just mean, like you know, somebody who's not even involved in it?
Speaker 1:I'm not, but no, I see this, the suffering, and it's like can't we just like find a way to stop that? I get it. There's a lot of years of hatred, there's a lot, there's a lot going on there. You can't just boil it down to a single thing and say you know, if not for this everything would be fine.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a lot there and I don't know that we ever can fix it 100 but, man, while we're arguing, at the fringes, there's a lot of people, innocents, who have no, you know, they're not in this fight, but they're in that region and, man, they're suffering and oh yeah we just like try to do something about that.
Speaker 1:But as soon as you do that, you're stepping on a landmine. Oh my god, people are gonna. It's. It's infuriating, because while we're bickering at the edges, there's a lot of innocent people who are living, I mean, either getting killed or horribly maimed or starving or suffering on an unimaginable level. Can't we just find a way to like stop that. Find a way to like stop that.
Speaker 2:Well, the reason why we can't, I think, chris, is that and I think it has to do a lot with a lot of things that happen in the world generally is those people. I would consider the common people right. The common people are always just leveraged by the leaders to what they want. I mean, both sides are leveraging everything to get what they want. Generally, whenever there's a conflict, you know well, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:You know I did want to talk about this, but I think do you heard about the guy who set himself on fire the other day?
Speaker 2:that was, yeah, like you sent me. I didn't know there was a manifesto that he wrote. You sent it to me. I started reading it. I got to tell you some of it actually was kind of interesting. It was To read Some of it. I said, well, I don't know what this guy's writing about, but taken as a whole I said, whether or not any of it is true, it's certainly an interesting glimpse into this guy's state of mind and his motivations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I thought was interesting is I happen to be watching. Did I have the TV on? No, but I was looking at Twitter.
Speaker 2:Just clearly who was this? When you say this guy, who are we talking about?
Speaker 1:So what happened was Trump's on trial.
Speaker 2:Yeah for something, oh, um for um. Is this the payoff paying off? Uh, the porn star that he's allegedly had something with in um? And anyway, I, honestly, I just don't myself, I'm not. I don't follow that, follow this so completely.
Speaker 1:You know. Obviously those on the left will tell you that you know every move he makes is a criminal, he should go to jail for the rest of his life, and anyone on the right will tell you that all of this is completely unnecessary, that it's all politically motivated. My guess is the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Like, did he do?
Speaker 2:some bad stuff?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he probably did. Is there a little bit of political motivation? Yeah, there probably is. Whatever, you know what, the fact that we normalize this insane circus we find ourselves in is just another example of why I think this guy, what this guy did, his name is Max Azzarillo, is that it?
Speaker 2:That's how I'd say it Azzarillo.
Speaker 1:Azzarillo. So when this first happened they said, okay, a guy, somebody set themselves on fire outside of the trial. So immediately the thought was first thought was you know, wow, this. That's weird because, like you wouldn't think that somebody would feel strongly about this trial on either side to to make an extreme act like that.
Speaker 2:Have you seen any video of it? Yeah, there's the video I saw. There's a woman. I just wanted to say this, chris. There's a woman sitting. I'm only laughing because of what I'm going to say. She's sitting on the bench within, I'd say, 30-40 feet of this guy right, and she's watching him and I said to myself that's the most New York City thing in the world. It was almost like she's disconnected. Other people are rushing in like first responders and she's just sitting there. It looks like she might be on a lunch break or something, but anyway, I wonder if it was.
Speaker 1:You know, and what?
Speaker 2:are you gonna do?
Speaker 1:anyway, part of it could just be shock. I mean, you're seeing something in front of you that you just maybe, like your mind, just can't even wrap around it. So cnn apparently had was doing the live shot, and as soon as this happened oh, I didn't the camera got away from it, so it didn't show it and just focused on the anchor, the field, and I can't remember her name, but she did a nice job. She was like watching it and kind of narrating what was going on, oh, so they didn't act like it wasn't happening. They weren't showing it though, okay, whereas I saw the footage from Fox News, and initially they started showing it and then I think they quickly thought better of it. And Fox News, and initially they started showing it and then I think they quickly thought better of it. Now they just went to a different feed. So for all I know, they still filmed it. But so when I first heard that— he's alive too.
Speaker 2:I heard he died. Oh oh, oh. Yeah, he did die. He didn't die immediately. He did not die immediately, okay.
Speaker 1:He was in critical condition, but he has passed.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay he has passed. Okay. So when I first heard that, so that was the first thought, and then the second thought was well, maybe this has something to do with the israel, palestine, because there was that other guy who lit himself on fire, which you notice that quickly went away. Like here is what do you mean, what should, what do you think should have happened? I don't know, but we stopped talking about it, like there is this serviceman, like it was the air force or you know, just say no, I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. That's the thing. There was a somebody in the military who was so against what was going on there and the killing of what he saw, and what's his connection?
Speaker 1:with any of it, and he lit himself on fire in front of I think he was in like he lit himself in fire in front of to protest like it was a whole is he was?
Speaker 2:was he actively in the military?
Speaker 1:Yes, he was. And he basically said I I cannot be complicit in, in what I see as a genocide, I cannot do this anymore. And he lit himself on fire and then it quietly went away. So what's interesting about this is the Trump trial. This is a big deal, like the fact that they had banks of reporters who were there. It was jury selection, like they were picking a jury, but they're covering it every moment of it. And so here's this guy who has this other message and he picks that place to set himself on fire.
Speaker 1:Think about that Now he is linked to this Trump trial thing. Think about that Now he is linked to this Trump trial thing. So in this Trump trial, which is going to city street in New York, you know, lights himself on fire, you would have seen a couple of headlines. It would have quietly went away. But because this took place, where tons of cameras, like every network, got footage of it, he threw his, his flyers or whatever. And then I guess he like told the lady nearby, some photographer who got like the last picture of him, like get away. He was concerned for the wellbeing of the people around, that they didn't get hurt, and his little thing, the fire was big.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of flame.
Speaker 1:He had this little thing on Substack where he basically said I mean, what's Substack? Substack is like a blog kind of thing, oh, okay. It's like people have Substack accounts and they'll write articles and things like that and then you subscribe to them it's like medium yeah, very similar, very, all that is very similar thing.
Speaker 1:And he basically put on a subject uh, my name is max alizarolo and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside the trump trial in manhattan. This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery. Now, what does it?
Speaker 2:mean, like I don't know what he means by investigative researcher.
Speaker 1:But you know what? What, what detractors would say he's just a conspiracy theorist anybody who looks into conspiracies, considers themselves a researcher.
Speaker 1:Is he? He's researching stuff? I mean, I don't know. His thesis is this and this is what it says we are victims of a totalitarian con and our own government, along with many of their allies, is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup. And then he goes on to talk about Bitcoin and how it's a big scam and it's a Ponzi scheme. I don't know enough about this stuff. I know there's a lot of people who just will reject it scheme. I don't know enough about this stuff. I know there's a lot of people who just will reject it immediately. I don't know, I can't say if any of this stuff is true. I don't know enough to say it's not true. I don't know enough to say it is true.
Speaker 1:But what I thought was really interesting is some of the things he said, like you alluded to. They're not that far off the mark. I mean, this is a quote from it. As it turns out, we have a secret kleptocracy. Both parties are run by financial criminals whose only goal are to divide, deceive and bleed us dry. They divide the public against itself and blame the other party, while everything gets worse and worse and more expensive, and a handful of people take all the money. Okay, it's like I can kind of see that, Like it's not that far out of the realm. Well, what just happened the other day? One thing just happened is we just got past tax day. You know, a lot of people just wrote big checks to the IRS. What also happened in the last couple of days.
Speaker 1:Well, these two warring parties, the R's and the D's, the ones that can never get along whenever we need something. You know, people who are democratic would say, hey, I want universal health care. Sorry, we just can't do that, man. The other side, the Republicans, they're blocking that. We just can't do it, it's nothing we can do. Sorry, it's just nothing we can do. And then, if you're on the other side, you might say, hey. The Republican side you might say, hey, I want to enforce the border. Sorry, we can't just do it, man, those Democrats, they just won't do that. Nothing right. But what did we just see happen? To get through those? Money for Ukraine, like 60-something billion. Money for Israel to keep doing what they're doing 20-something billion. So somehow they managed to get past their divide and do together.
Speaker 2:So what he said is true, Well, and then we all accept that that is for national security, which I'm not going to dispute that um, on its face it is, but somehow that will keep us safer than some of these other things that american people need yeah, and my we agree, we just go. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay I can see why you just spent $100 billion on that and you can't house whatever homeless veterans.
Speaker 1:Right, right. And that's the thing is people have pointed out whenever the money is for us, we're told there's not. How are you going to pay for it?
Speaker 2:There's not enough money.
Speaker 1:Money doesn't grow on trees, all that crap. But when it's something for the machine because think about that they're funding a war they were bragging about. You know where all that money is going to go? It's not going to go to Ukraine. It's not going to go to the Middle East. It's going to go to defense contractors in the Virginia area who are going to send weapons and stuff to that. That's what they don't say. Well, they do. They actually said it, I think.
Speaker 2:I know, but they don't, they don't. It's not something, that's just the way they speak, like we got to get money for the contractors.
Speaker 1:They'll tell you it's for democracy. They'll tell you it's for the good of all.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, do you know what's?
Speaker 1:going on in Ecuador? I have an idea. So, ecuador my wife's family is from Ecuador. Her mother is from Ecuador and still has family there. It's lawlessness, like the government has fled the country. The drug oh, I didn't know that. Yes, there is no government. There is no police. We just had dinner with her parents last night and her mother was saying that she talked to her family. That's still there. They get, I think, electricity. I thought she said like once every couple of days.
Speaker 2:Really, why is this?
Speaker 1:not more in the news. Yeah, the Ecuadorian. They basically went into the embassy the Mexican embassy who's they, whoever the forces are in Ecuador actually entered the embassy the Mexican embassy who's they, whoever the forces are in Ecuador, like actually like entered the embassy and to get back the former vice president or something like that, who had been hiding out and had gotten asylum in the embassy of Mexico, and so they stormed the embassy and took the guy back. Mexico's trying to have them thrown out of like. There's serious stuff that's going on just south of us. Ecuador is a lot closer to us and a lot more meaningful of what's going on down there than, arguably, what's going on half a world away. Not saying that that's not important, but I'm saying, if you want to really like weigh our interests, isn't what's going on, like right in our backyard?
Speaker 2:especially they. I was reading something, chris, when they um totally different subject, but it has to do with ecuador. Ecuador, I guess their regulations on uh people coming from other countries as more lax than other places. So they say a lot of people from around the world fly into Ecuador and from Ecuador they make their journey to the United States. So it's people from not just people, most of the people aren't from Ecuador that are leaving Ecuador.
Speaker 1:Maybe now they are. They're just coming in and using that. Yeah, it's weird yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, I didn't realize that. I I mean so it's, it's. Is it kind of like what's going on in haiti?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it's similar. I mean, not too long ago there was this whole thing where these, this drug gang, had basically taken over the tv station, like this footage of like see, that's one of those things that there's a lot goes on in this world every day, like there's a mind-boggling amount of stuff goes on. It is impossible, impossible for regular people to keep up with it. You know regular people have lives to live. You know they have to. They have to have to go feed the machine, they have to go. You know have to go toil in the mines and make sure they you know, earn their living.
Speaker 1:God forbid anyone slack, you know, gotta. They have to go toil in the mines and make sure they, you know, earn their living. God forbid anyone slack, you know gotta. Gotta be working. So I don't have time to look into it. So, really, you depend on the media to curate the world. Look at what's going on, tell me what's important, tell me what I need to know, and and that we've abdicated abdicated our responsibility to the media. You tell us what's important. I don't have time to look up all this stuff. You tell me what's going on. So if they don't cover something and it could be innocent, a lot goes on. There aren't enough resources to cover everything, so some things have to go by the wayside. But it's telling what they cover and what they don't. You know, I mean the fact that you'll see endless on cable news, endless talk about these, this trump trial and this and that and the other thing. Oh, we're gonna go to live to where they're picking the jury, live to where they're doing opening let's interview someone that was on the prospective jury.
Speaker 2:Like it's unbelievable right and just the number of hours that they spend on it. Do you why?
Speaker 1:can't I, I don't like it, no, I, I, I generally I used to watch cable news, I used to watch fox news. I I didn't buy it all but I was like, all right, at least they give kind of give both sides. And then that started changing, like it, it was true at a point, and then you could just see it like changing like all of a sudden they had like the few token people from the other side who just seemed to be on there to be ridiculed, and just the general vibe was a certain way and and um, and then you see the same thing on on cnn and ms and like it's all trash again. What is the motivation? As I say to people, their main job isn't to keep you informed, it's to fire you up. It's to fire you up and keep you watching. That's their job. It's not. Hey, we got to inform the public of what's going on.
Speaker 2:And let them come to their own conclusions.
Speaker 1:Right, and let's face it, if you just got the facts of what's going on, that can get pretty boring. How do you jazz it up? You know, if you just had boring facts like this went on today and then this went on today and this went on today, people would watch for a couple of minutes. I'm not that interested.
Speaker 2:I always say this, and I want to go back to this Mark.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, not Mark, but Max Max, but I always say this about almost every issue that we I'll say the United States but if I lived in another country I'd say the same thing Almost every issue that there is. Because we have a jury system, right, and the jury is eight, 10, 12 people and they come to a consensus on and they do it across the country every day, right. So if you had an issue as hot button issue as, let's say, abortion, I don't want to talk about abortion here but you can't get more hot button than that right.
Speaker 1:People have very strong feelings on either side.
Speaker 2:If you put people together, they'd come to an agreement. They would eventually it might take a year. They'd come to an agreement that everyone could live with and we'd move on to something else.
Speaker 1:A reasonable agreement could be reached.
Speaker 2:Yes, we would move on and they'd say listen, well, we're not going to talk to the people that won't compromise their position. Sorry, You're never going to be satisfied and we can't have it your way because we have the vast majority of people want to compromise. So you could say the same thing about guns.
Speaker 1:Almost same thing. Anything, you could find a compromise.
Speaker 2:Every issue that is yelled about in the news, you have 5%. I'm just saying an example 5% crazy on one side, or 5% dig their heels in, let's say, 5% on the other side. Most of the people are in the middle, somewhere on the spectrum of being in the middle, and they can compromise it. But the way they do it is they just keep hiding the ball from us. They want the controversy to continue controversy to continue.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing is is it's been said by by multiple people that, um, you know, some people in politics will admit it that an issue is more important to us, open and raw, than it is solved like. If we solve the issue, then it goes away, but we want the issue to fundraise. So if you're, you know, if you're on the on the left, you're going to say you know, we got to win this time because otherwise the other side's gonna, you know, take away the right to. You know, if you're on the on the left, you're going to say you know, we got to win this time because otherwise the other side's going to, you know, take away the right to have, you know, abortions. Or if you're on the right, you got to say hey, you know we got, we got to got to make sure we win this time because they're going to take your guns. And while we could come to a reasonable consensus, reasonable people can come up with a solution, but they don't want that because then the issue goes away.
Speaker 2:And then so the incentive and then people start looking at well, how come this isn't being solved?
Speaker 1:That's what happens, Because the incentive is not to solve it. And I don't think we realize, I don't think we've come to grips that if we look at what the incentive is, you can see what the result will be. What is being incentivized here? Well, that's what you're going to get, and we do that, like all our things are set up a certain way to incentivize it. And then we wonder why we get what we get. I'll give you another, you know, example of different thing. Is this thing going on with boeing? Right, we're shocked, shocked to find out that Boeing allegedly has been putting profit above safety.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh God, right, cannot imagine it. And like people like shocked and like, oh my God, I can't believe that they would, you know, take parts that were defective and force them on planes, like like, let's not even talk about the whistleblower who, like suddenly decided to kill himself on, like the second day he said if, if you find me that I committed suicide, I didn't Right.
Speaker 2:He said that to his friends or family.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm also going to say? His last day he had Taco Bell. Nobody, nobody who is deciding to kill themselves, is going to say you know what I'm going to do for my last meal? I'm going to get, you know, some soft tacos or some hot.
Speaker 2:you know like, no, you're not I would like to think that maybe there's somebody Chris.
Speaker 1:You go like I'm going to go to a nice restaurant and charge up. I don't care, I'm not paying this credit card bill, I'm going to die Whatever. It is Like he had no, but all right. So anyone who looks at that and doesn't say I won't call that proof positive.
Speaker 2:But you're onto something.
Speaker 1:It's like come on. It's like, wow, awfully convenient. But you know what? It didn't solve their problem, because now two more whistleblowers just testified in front of-.
Speaker 2:Well, let's say allegedly solved their problem. I'm not gonna-.
Speaker 1:Well, it didn't solve their problem completely, because if he was the only whistleblower, if the intent of that was to get all the other whistleblowers to look back down, it didn't work. Because? And? But what I'm saying is is that you can see the incentive. What is boeing trying to do? Trying to make maximum money for shareholders, can we? Is it that we can't believe that somebody would put money, their own selfish interests, above the well-being of others? What are you kidding me? We see that every day. It's this cognitive dissonance that people see how the world is but then, on the other hand, say, well, the world couldn't be like that but it is.
Speaker 1:We see it right in front of us. It's there. And it goes back to what I always say is, when there's an uncomfortable truth, people just choose not to see it, because then you have to deal well, that's, you know, outside and inside, that's how people are, people are, and I get it, it makes sense.
Speaker 1:But like what are we kidding me? Like, of course I can believe it. I won't fly a boeing plane. We're flying out to california, uh, for you know, for a work trip, from for rosie yep, and uh, I said what's what plane? She looked it up it's airbus. I'm like good, because I'm not going on a boeing. I'm not, you're not, I'm not, I have tickets to california and I was looking at.
Speaker 2:I'm not just. You know why. It's not the um, it's not the super max or whatever it's called. I don't trust any. Is that the one that's having the Supermax or whatever it's called?
Speaker 1:I don't trust any. Is that the one that's?
Speaker 2:having the big problems.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't trust any Boeing planes. Yeah, they pointed out a few specific ones, but if they're doing it on that, why would you believe that they're doing it on others to some degree? I just say that because my gut is telling me not to fly Boeing. Yep. And if I go against that and I'm on a Boeing plane and all of a sudden we're going down Rosie's, like well, wouldn't you want to spend your last minutes? You know telling, telling you, you know telling me I go, yeah, but I'd also be kicking myself and go. Why didn't I listen to myself? I didn't want to fly Boeing and I went against my better judgment and the whole time I'd just be like I'm basting myself as we plummet to the earth going. I knew this man. I always love those.
Speaker 2:I always love those stories where you know there's some of them made up. Some of them are true where you know the plane is going down, and then people start telling others their secrets, and then the plane levels out by the way you know. I fooled around on you with your sister.
Speaker 1:Then, all of a sudden, the turbulence stops and you go yeah boy. I was hallucinating there for a second.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I said. Was it the logical oxygen? Something affected me.
Speaker 1:You can believe it that that would happen, and it seems like it's happening, I don't know. I'm very surprised that they haven't grounded all Boeing flights, like I honestly think. I honestly think that they need to ground every bone plane, pending a thorough inspection of each plane.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not going to happen because you'd you'd halt the economy, Right.
Speaker 1:You know how about this? Rosie had this suggestion where she said she said the executives of Boeing should just have to fly Boeing planes from now on. I was like that's a great idea, like randomly, like no, no, no, no, you don't get to fly your private plane Randomly. We're going to pick a Boeing plane out there and that's what you're going to fly around. Are you good with that? And I bet you most of those executives would be like, well, I can't do that Really, really. Well, that would be interesting. You know they'll say we fly Boeing planes. Yeah, you fly a Boeing plane that you know has been checked out. Would you just take one out of the you know random? Hey, we'll, we'll route one from from Chicago and have it come here and have it pick you up. I bet you a lot of them would be like, ah, I with that, but yeah, it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I always go by the old adage and it to me it's always correct and it's too bad just because of the, the way we have our society right. Every single problem. Follow the money, follow who's benefiting financially and you'll most likely figure out the issue and, and going back to this, you know max, uh azzarello.
Speaker 1:The reason why I think this is important is because we see what's happening, like what he's saying in this manifesto. Yes, it's rambling. Yes, there's some parts of it that are just kind of like oh, it's a little out there, but the core of it is it's a rigged game. As George Connolly used to say, it's a big club and you're not in. It is essentially what he's saying.
Speaker 1:And right around now. We see that playing out. We see that the two sides that can never agree on anything for us somehow got their shit together to pass more money for war. That helps out. You know their friends. We see people in government being able to bet on stocks that they oversee. So they have advanced knowledge. You know insider trading is illegal unless you're a member of congress.
Speaker 1:When it seems to be okay, right, you know it's what this guy is saying. It's going to be interesting to watch how the media handles him, because already I see it, there's a lot of people who just write it off completely and say he's a crazy conspiracy theory. You know, and? And yeah, okay, you can say that theory. You know, and and yeah, okay, you can say that. What I found fascinating and this is the part that I okay. So he goes into this big jag, I love this about Harvard being a criminal organization and basically saying that that billionaires it's just a billionaire machine, harvard to just create billionaires. And then he talks about how the simpsons have, um, you know most a lot of their writers are from harvard. So then he talks about specific simpsons episodes and like this is so like bizarre. But listen to what he says here. Um, and I don't mean to laugh, because it is a tragedy that this guy felt like he had to do that, but uh, where does he?
Speaker 2:say I don't understand when he says the simpsons exist to brainwash us I mean I get it on some level, like I can understand kind of what he's trying to get at.
Speaker 1:But so I find it fascinating. So this is speaking from him. This is his sub stack. One of the key findings of this research is that Harvard University is one of the largest organized crime fronts in history, which is how they churn out billionaires. It's a major hub of this sprawling criminal network. As it turns out, dozens of the writers of the Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question if the Simpsons served the interest of organized crime, how would it do so? Well, it offers a dysfunctional family suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems, a worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances.
Speaker 1:There are some notable specifics as it relates to this research too. In Marge versus the monorail, the town's folks are too oafish and divided to invest in the town's needs, fix Main Street and fall for the charms of a dazzling showman with a bogus monorail Ponzi scheme. When we know that the show is closely linked to an organization that invests billions of dollars in Ponzi factories, this becomes quite damning. Okay, I don't know if I agree with that, but okay. Then he says in Lisa the Iconoclast.
Speaker 1:Lisa discovers that town founder Jebediah Springfield was a secret criminal, con artist and that the townsfolk's lives are a lie. Realizing that this is an important discovery, she desperately tries to get the townsfolk to listen to her. But they meet her with his hostility, apathy, disbelief and partisanship and she fails to get through to them. Fails to get through to them. Ultimately she realizes the town is so far gone that perhaps it's better for them to be lied to by con artists and she keeps the secret to herself. And he says and here I've been like Lisa Simpson, desperately trying to get friends, family and the public to believe the proof of a totalitarian con. I'm trying to show them and they've turned away with hostility, apathy, disbelief and partisanship. And you know what I identify with. That's kind of the reaction I get sometimes when I talk to people about UFOs, like literally, hostility from some people.
Speaker 1:Hostility, Like I can't believe you believe in that stuff. It's all crap Like anger and apathy. Why do you think people are?
Speaker 2:angry at that.
Speaker 1:Because when something challenges their worldview, people lash out. It's all ontological shock or something akin to that. When somebody's worldview is disrupted in big ways and little ways, we all do it. We ignore it because it's more convenient to ignore something that makes us uncomfortable than to deal with it. It's a human reaction. Every one of us does it in various ways every day, think about it.
Speaker 2:Although I will tell you, the older I've gotten, Chris, I've noticed that I have the greatest progress with any problem I have work, personal life, whatever it might be. When I'm feeling uncomfortable about something, I go towards it. Now, Right, I go right at it. It's making me uncomfortable because I say that's my weakness, yep. Right, I look at it as my weakness. That's why I'm uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Identify the weakness and try to do something Right, and it is easier said than done.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:It's one of those I'm and done it is. It's one of those I'm actively trying. That's all you can do. Like in anything, you can try to be a little bit better today than you were yesterday. That's really. I'm not a friggin so, but I love. Back to this is he says. And so we realize the criminal truth of the simpsons. Our elites are telling us that our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault and we can't do anything about it, while they steal the american dream from us, it is, for a lack of a more eloquent word brainwashing all right, okay.
Speaker 2:And then he says, I mean I get his line of thinking and then this part again.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that everything this guy says is gospel truth. I mean, I don't. But I'm also not going to say that everything he says is full of shit, because there are some things in here. So he says consider America since 1988. Yes, institutions like healthcare and universities have become parasitic in their skyrocketing prices. True True News media tells us to be angry and tribalized. True Daytime television warns us of moral decay. I don't know. Local news tells us to fear our neighbors well it can.
Speaker 1:The simpsons tells us we're too oafish and divided to save american. The american dream. Seinfeld tells us to celebrate the assholes and be irritated by all the normal people around us. Reality tv tells us that real life is filled with hedonism and strife. Social media, owned by crypto criminals like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, is flooded with nonsense, conspiracy theories and memes reminding us that we are hopeless, helpless, anxious, depressed, ironic, scared, apathetic, escapist, lonely, misguided and and jaded, telling us we can't do anything but have a laugh at our own circumstances. Well, you know what?
Speaker 2:took out owned by criminal, yeah, criminals.
Speaker 1:Then what he wrote um and at some level is kind of profound and that's the thing, is the flourishes on some of this stuff, the lines he goes down Again, I'm not going to stand here and say, or sit here and say that it's I know for a fact, it's all bullshit, because I don't. I don't know that it's true either and I'm just going to take an agnostic like maybe, maybe not. Some of what he says is totally on the nose and the fact that he chose that event to do it and now, theoretically, as this thing goes on, that event is now linked to the trial.
Speaker 1:I don't know, just keep in mind you know, obviously somebody that has significant mental issues can still string coherent thoughts together, and I'm not saying that everything he says is right, but the thing is the core of his message and the fact that he felt so strongly oh yeah, that he lit himself on fire, I think was just to say, hey, man, look at this stuff, don't, don't just brush it off, because that's what a lot of people are going to do. They're going to look and they glance at a couple things and you know some of the things he says sounds wacky. I know it does and they're going to just disagree on everything he says and yeah he.
Speaker 1:He probably had, you know, mental issue, like there's a lot going on there. I'm not saying that this guy is like a prophet or anything like that. What I'm saying is is that some of what he says is undeniably true. Maybe you can quibble about the, the causes of it, or you know the, the machinations of, of what's, but he's not wrong. He's not wrong with a lot of the stuff he says. Maybe people will look at and go you know, why can't we fix some of this stuff? Like why, why, why is it we have, why is it we have no health care in this country? And yet we're sending money to pay for a war for a country which, by the way, gives all its citizens free healthcare.
Speaker 2:You know like-. Here's one thing I don't understand, Chris, and you spoke about how people get angry. When you talk about these types of things with some people, they actually get angry at you Not you particularly, but the person saying it, right? Hey, why can we send 60 billion to Ukraine, but we can't figure out this problem?
Speaker 1:here, Right?
Speaker 2:Well, it shouldn't be anger. Why are you angry about it? Yeah, excuse me, I'm just talking about something here, right, and it's something that would help everybody.
Speaker 1:Why are you mad at me. The biggest trick that politicians have managed to do is managed to get people with very little means to defend billionaires. You know like it's funny to me when I see on both sides, you know, I see people in rural West Virginia saying how Trump's going to be great for everybody and a lot of people. They don't have much and they believe in it. They believe in it Even the last time. It didn't really happen. Both of these two guys running for president both had a shot. We had four years of each of them right. Neither one lit up things. I will say that selectively, individually, there were certain things that happened in both administrations that were good and there were things that happened that were bad. Whatever I mean, you know people are going to do the tribal thing, you know and do their thing. Whatever I mean, you know people are going to the tribal thing, you know and do their thing.
Speaker 2:But if you can't agree that both Democrat and Republican have good ideas at times, then I don't I.
Speaker 1:You lose credibility with me and that's what happens with this tribal war is is that you get into a, you get into a mode where you're forced If you stick to the tribal mentality, mentality you're forced to defend reprehensible behavior done by your side because you can't show weakness to the other side and you're forced to, you know, decry things that probably, on some level, you kind of agree with. But because it's being suggested or proposed by the quote-unquote, the bad guys, you see it as your goal to shut it down and we just don't think you know, not not, they can't agree on certain things, but I saw on the news they agreed last night right before midnight.
Speaker 2:Did you see this? They do they, the Senate, what do you know? They agreed on keeping a United States surveillance program going, yeah, without warrants, without, yeah, so we're all continuing to be watched.
Speaker 2:Yep, right, this is like an idea. Nobody talks about All your communications, text, phone calls, things you do on social media. All of it is monitored, all of it. Right, right, right. But you know well, I guess that's just not important, right, right, because. But my guess, how do they all agree, how do all the politicians come to an agreement on that but you can't agree on?
Speaker 1:you know, paying for homeless people like and and that's something we really we need to wrestle just we need to think about it like why is it that politicians of all stripes end up being this way and they would say, well, because it's the right way. That's why you convince you know, you convince someone on the d's and someone on the r's that this thing is right to do.
Speaker 1:Well, that means it's right to do and is it because it seems like the only time you guys agree are on the wrong things. You know like when, when you? Because all the good things, all the right things you fight about and they never get done. Oh, we tried, we really tried, guys, we would have passed that. But oh, that other side, they just stopped us. They stopped us dead in their tracks, can't do anything sorry, right, that's the system.
Speaker 2:You know how we're gonna. You know we're gonna win this. Gonna vote for me again, right?
Speaker 1:next time I'll do it promise I'll do it. Promise you it'll work, it'll happen Right, and we keep buying it, you know, and so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm not here saying that this, max. Well, I was reading along Azzarello and you know a lot of it. I guess this manifesto right. I'm not sure where that word came from, but it's a manifesto.
Speaker 1:Remember from the Unabomber back in the day.
Speaker 2:No, I know but is that where it came from? Is that? I mean, that was the first time I heard it used Me too, you know as your written thing, I mean manifesto.
Speaker 1:Isn't that like your core beliefs or whatever? Isn't that what the title? Isn't that what the definition of it is? I don't know, is it?
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:I mean at least that context. I mean it could be.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it meant it's something positive or negative, I didn't know. You know you never hear mastermind generally in a good context. No Right, it's always somebody bad Right. Yeah, you know, but it might not. They did something bad, right? Yeah, that's true, that's true. You never really hear about the mastermind of something great that happened.
Speaker 1:Occasionally, but yeah, it's more. The context is more usually negative, yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyway, he writes liberals this was in that manifesto thing liberals mock the hypocrisy of I'm sorry of conservatives thing. Liberals mock hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of I'm sorry of conservatives, conservatives mock the hypocrisy of liberals and our collective circumstance erode. That's a hundred percent true, right, but I don't know, because it's a hundred percent true, that the rest of it's true you know, but does it matter?
Speaker 1:like no, no, no, but I mean he's right, but I mean anyone could write that individual points and and I see a lot of this is like well, he didn't tell us anything, we didn't know. You know he could have saved himself. You know the pain of what he did. We all know that.
Speaker 2:Who's this? Guy that he's talking about at the beginning of his thing, this billionaire guy, oh, peter Thiel. Yeah, oh, he's a big investor guy.
Speaker 1:I actually think he was actually married for a short time to Jennifer Aniston. Oh really, yeah, he's a big. What do you call it? Finance and stuff like that. Venture capitalist, I believe, is the term they use now. Ah, okay, pirates. Pirates and criminals have been rebranded venture capitalists and they're heroes now. But yes, and I mean obviously he's ascribing malicious intent to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and I'm sure Bill Gates is mentioned somewhere in here. But you know what I don't know, like maybe it's all. I just I'm interested how easily it is for people to reject something and not consider it, and that's what I'm always going on is like you can consider an idea and you're not locked to it. Like you can say I'm considering this proposal. It doesn't mean you're married to it. It doesn't mean you're married to it. It doesn't mean you're full, but somehow or another it's become. Considering something is akin to endorsing it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, chris, what I seem to find on resistance, if I talk about an idea right is, let's say, this idea, this manifesto that this guy put together, right, if you follow along with it. There's a lot of reflection you have to do, there's a lot of thinking, and if you were to fully consider maybe not what he seems to think, are the motivations? Okay, because those, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say the motivations for all. This is what he says it is.
Speaker 2:But the after effects of whatever he claims. You can't sit here and say it's not happening, right? So I don't necessarily agree with the why. I agree with the circumstances, right. So what we just said, it's true, I agree with the circumstances, right. So what we just said, it's true. You know how we're divided, right, and how we seem to entertain ourselves in such a way that, you know, you could look at it and say we're basically kind of sedating ourselves to some of these issues.
Speaker 1:Excuse me Very much so.
Speaker 2:But I think that if you're, if you're somebody that is uncomfortable with introspection, you're not going to like that, so you'll just move on. That's, that's a lot of it.
Speaker 1:Yep, because your worldview, if even a little of this is true, I think most people who, who, who took the time to read what he wrote, would say at least pieces of it.
Speaker 1:We should put a link on the podcast. And I will be saying this to anyone who I talk about this with is don't take the media's word on what this guy was about. He put his writings out there. I'm not saying again. I'm going to have a lot of people who reflexively go he's a nut job. He did this thing. He's crazy. He's ranting conspiracy theories. He did this thing. You know he's crazy. He's ranting conspiracy theories. Yeah, but we're living in a world where some conspiracy theories are turning out to be kind of true and that's a lot of people are having difficulty with it, because once one conspiracy theory is shown to be true, and how much gravitas do you have when you're saying well, conspiracy theories are nothing? We're told. Don't believe in conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are always wrong.
Speaker 2:And conspiracy theory is again negative. Right People that like them. It's not.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I was just saying are we saying that conspiracies don't exist Because they do?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean all a conspiracy is, is two or more people that are getting together to try to formulate a plot. So of course they exist, of course they exist. These are all time people conspiring, but we as a collective, not me, I mean.
Speaker 1:I kind of like them right, I mean, that's the point of what we do, me and you. We love this stuff.
Speaker 2:I like it, but and I know that when I read about them, are they all true.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Are some of them interesting enough to make me want to read more? Yes, right, but when they say on the news conspiracy theory, it's always to marginalize it.
Speaker 1:That's the only reason they call it that well, do you know that that term, conspiracy theorist, was made up for the ufo thing like that's? There's there is again. This is there are documents from the cia that have been released by a freedom of information act, which pretty much show that that was their plan.
Speaker 2:Oh, I knew that I didn't know. That's how they came up with the term.
Speaker 1:It's just how do you discredit someone? How do you discredit here? You know we hear all these things about misinformation and malinformation right, and people will repeat that all the time They'll be oh, there's lots of misinformation and malinformation on.
Speaker 2:All right misinformation.
Speaker 1:We know what misinformation is. It's supposedly information that's wrong. But do you know what malinformation is? I would assume bad information, no malinformation. The definition of malinformation is facts that are technically true but inconvenient for the social order. What like malinformation is not, but it sounds negative.
Speaker 2:It sounds negative because mal I think means bad, it's, it's it's true, it's stuff that is not necessarily made up.
Speaker 1:It's just inconvenient because malware is bad, it's just inconvenient you don't want people to.
Speaker 1:You know, in keeping a society together, it has to be managed. Like, do you really think you can dump? How many people are in the united states? 300, 300 million? Is that the number right? All right. Do you really think you can dump 300 million people together and just let shit go? No, you gotta, you gotta guide stuff a little bit. You gotta set some parameters.
Speaker 1:Or you're looking at anarchy and so everybody, everybody agree with that. People go yeah, of course you gotta set some parameters, you gotta set some laws, you gotta set some things, okay, and you think that's as far as they're to go? Like, do you really think, like we know the science out there exists the sociological science on how you would sway a population? Like, we know our intelligence agencies sometimes do this in other countries. Do we really think the same thing's not being done on us here because we do? We think no, that could never happen here. We'd spot it, would? You right? You know your news is all owned by major corporations. Like, as I often say, do you think abc will ever air a negative story about disney of?
Speaker 2:course they won't. They're owned by disney.
Speaker 1:Do you think nbc will ever air a negative story about Xfinity, comcast? No, and when you start to look at it, these companies don't just own that, they own everything. Pharmaceutical companies Everybody sees the ads, right, we make jokes about the ads all the time. The pharmaceutical commercials, right. Think about that. Why do pharmaceutical companies run ads? Is it really for individuals who are going to watch a commercial and go? I got that. I'm going to go ask my doctor for a Vlexis, maybe, if that happens a little bit, but that's not the motivation.
Speaker 1:Well, what is the motivation? Well, if you ever watch daytime cable, it's pretty much exclusively ads for pharmaceutical companies. And that's expensive, that's not valuable advertising time, it's daytime, who cares? But it's big money for the. You know like, a news channel is not going to piss off Pfizer because Pfizer, you know, represents a certain percentage of their advertising revenue, because Pfizer represents a certain percentage of their advertising revenue. So do you really think a news organization is gonna attack the hand that feeds it? That's a conspiracy theory. And it does sound like a conspiracy theory, but if you quickly look it up you go well, that's kind of true, it's life, it's like that, and that's the way the world works, at least in our world.
Speaker 2:And I agree with you because what basically you have is the news that is a corporate show. That's what you have because you have corporately controlled media.
Speaker 1:Right and it doesn't have to be over.
Speaker 2:People say oh, are they? It means they're, they're in the room with them. I'm not saying that. But it's pretty obvious that if you're right that they're just not going to have an investigative story to tell you, hey, there's some stuff that happened with Pfizer, we need to tell you about it, and we did this big piece and here we go. It's never going to happen. It's just never going to happen.
Speaker 1:And you don't need to control everything. All you need to do is you need to set the guardrails. This is the realm of what reasonable people talk about, and this is the realm of what unreasonable people and most people chris will say to that, to the pharmaceutical thing, because I I'd love to have an episode we talk about pharmaceuticals, because I just think the whole thing is a.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of good, but there's a lot not just like it nothing.
Speaker 1:Nothing in this world is all good or all bad. There's mix.
Speaker 2:There is mix, but there's levels of the mix, of course, of course. And I think that a lot of people, if you say this to them hey, what do you think of this? That pharmaceutical companies basically control the information you're receiving about pharmaceutical companies, right? Well, I don't really want to think about that. Hold on, let me take my prescription, like that's what it is.
Speaker 1:It's that same thing that goes back to that idea. When something challenges your worldview, when dealing with it, when acknowledging it opens up a host of other problems, the easiest course of action is to just ignore it, don't acknowledge it, move on. And it's very easy, because news cycles being what they are, this thing that's in the news today, it's going to be flooded out by 10 other things tomorrow and unless they bring it up again, we'll soon forget about it.
Speaker 2:Right. So it kind of goes with this Max, what's his last name? Azzarello Yep, His manifesto, which is kind of linear, kind of disjointed yeah it's a little all over the place.
Speaker 2:For sure. But one of the undercurrents of what he's writing made me think about the inflation that we're dealing with, especially since the pandemic. Yeah Right, how much just regular items cost at the grocery store, how much it costs to buy a can of Coke, all that kind of stuff. And you know, we all see it in our different aspects of how we live our lives and we all complain about it, but we don't do anything about it right, because there's nothing you can do, there's not one action you could take to fix it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, then there was a story I think it was sometime late last year about, well, you know, different politicians wanted to explore how these big CEOs, these big companies you know they're talking to their CEOs how can you keep telling us that it's inflation that's causing these problems? Yet you're all making record profits, right? So that story was out there. Guess what we all did collectively nothing. We just keep paying the bills, right? So we're all getting blanked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and we all it's a hundred percent true, we all know it all getting blank we all know it, we all see it yet we all just say let me bend over a little further for you that's it, because practically what could you do like that's the thing is, practically what action could you or I take individually that would matter well, we probably take our eye more on that ball.
Speaker 2:If somebody solved some of these issues that keep us occupied, yeah, I, that's all I mean. If somebody just took abortion issue away, let's say, and took some of these stupid I'm not calling that stupid, but abortion is not a stupid issue. But the fact how we've been bickering it for generations is stupid. Right, then we can't come to a consensus A reasonable, a reasonable.
Speaker 1:What do you call it Consensus? Consensus, a reasonable. Uh. What do you call it consensus? Consensus, a reasonable agreement. Yeah, say hey, let's. Let's figure out what the core of our issue is. What? What is the core? Can we agree on this? Because that's the way you do it. You have to like what. Do we both agree on this? Okay, let's move one layer out. Do we both agree on this? Yes, okay, then we move one layer out. Do we both agree? No, we don't disagree. We don't agree on this. So let's focus on that aspect of it. How can we come to? But that's not what people do.
Speaker 1:People frequently will argue. I watch it all the time. People will be arguing, some people will be arguing facts and other people will be arguing those facts with conclusions and not differentiating facts which presumably are immutable, things that are provable, and conclusions which use facts to build a case. You know kind of like what you do. You know you use the facts of the case that this is what, these are the facts, these are the undisputed facts. And if we take these facts and we say that it leads to this, now does that mean that every set of facts always lead? No, because you can take facts and you can present them in a certain way to lead to a certain conclusion, but those facts don't actually mean that you have to really to really get at it to any issue.
Speaker 1:It takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy. It takes, you know the, whether it be the abortion issue or guns issue, we're not going to solve it on a three minute cable news segment, like you're not going to solve it on a three minute cable news segment. Like you're not going to solve it. It's going to take hours and hours and hours of you know figuring out what the deal is, to come to something. But that's not how we handle things. We just, you know a little. You know cable news talks about it for three minutes. We move on the next thing. You know they fight over it and you know, but they don't want to solve it because what are they going to fundraise off of next time? You know if the, if the right didn't have, you know, scare people with the guns and the left didn't have scaring people with, you know, taking away your rights, you know you're taking away your.
Speaker 2:You know whatever it is, you know I noticed the gun thing, chris because, um, somehow it's a constitutional right excuse me, right If you think the Second Amendment gives you that right, which I think it does, but it's a constitutional right that somehow the states get to consider. It's just more fracturing of people that will never come to a conclusion, because never in a million years would they tell you that your freedom of speech or freedom on unlawful search and seizure is a state issue. Never, right. But somehow they do that, and they've done that with abortion. Now they say, hey, guess what? We're going to even make this worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're never going to come to a conclusion.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, you're almost like, intentionally like making making it worse.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, do you want to? You know, we almost got this, we almost got the conversation to a point where we want, oh, and all of a sudden the state passes this insane law. That was like from 1860, you know. But the gun thing too, like I'm not anti-gun, uh, I'm not a gun guy. Um, just because I don't trust myself, I don't think I'm always that confident. I don't want to have something that if I, whatever, um, but I'm perfectly fine with people who who do, and whatever it is what it is, and I see the use of guns. I mean, obviously, if stuff falls apart, you know, those of us without guns are going to wish we had them. But on the other hand too, like, all right, I get it, it's in the constitution. We they didn't have like the degree of firepower that we have. And you know I'm not the first person to say this, obviously but like, hey, you want to have muskets, knock yourself out, man, you can have as many muskets as you want. You want to have an automatic weapon. That's not really what they were talking about. They did say guns and an automatic weapon is a gun, but obviously they could not have foreseen that. But obviously they could not have foreseen that.
Speaker 1:Like it's that adherence to a system at a time when we were in a different place technologically. We have to. We have to circle back and re-evaluate some of these things with modern sensibilities. Like let's not keep operating like the world is the is in the 18th century. It's not. It's moved on. The world has changed, which means our systems need to adapt. You know, are is anyone out there doing things exactly in their life like they did it when they were 12 years old? Of course not. Your life has evolved, things have changed, time has changed, your needs are different. Like it's a different world now than it was when you and I. You know, let's go back to when we were in high school. It was a different world there, right, like you and I, when we were kids, we left our house. Nobody knew where we were, no, but like there was no easy way to commute. When you left your home, you were uncontactable.
Speaker 2:Like nobody could contact you you were just out, neither. Right now there's nowhere where you're, where you're not immediately able to be contacted well, that's why I like hiking, because when I get up there generally nobody can touch with me but that changes the whole complexion of everything.
Speaker 1:Like, look how much are like we talked about in the beginning, like our cell phones. Like you know, some number of years ago we didn't have them. Now you can't imagine life without them. The world has changed, the need has changed. We need to reassess some of this stuff and just go, hey, this is the way it is. Does that still make sense? Like, and come to a good conclusion AI is going to take all our jobs. Okay, if that can't be stopped, maybe we need to find a way to like work that in like be okay with it. You know it's no, we'll just whistle past the graveyard, we'll pretend it's not happening. Some people will deny it is happening. Other people will say, well, it's happening. Well, what can you do? Other people will say happening, but they'll, obviously, they'll be responsible.
Speaker 1:They'll do something, and I don't company will ever just get rid of employees for the sake of saving money.
Speaker 2:No, they won't be. They won't be motivated by profit.
Speaker 1:God, you couldn't imagine, now Could you no.
Speaker 2:Like obviously everybody's going to act with the pure I mean I think a lot of people with the AI thing they'll say, well, I mean, what, what? What are we all going to do if that happens? I don't think, generally speaking, the people that can make the most profit care. They don't care.
Speaker 1:Although, and in a strange way, it's self-defeating, like if nobody has money, nobody can buy stuff. You're right, don't you want? Everyone like that's it was Henry Ford who, like wanted to keep the price of his cars so that his employees could buy his cars. That's how it works. He's like I want people who work for Ford to be. I'm not saying he was a great guy.
Speaker 2:And he also is the one that's credited at least with the 40-hour work week, and the motivation of that was that you had time to go spend your money. Yeah, that was the motivation of the 40 hour work week, to that you have enough time to rest and spend money, right, because if you're working 10, 12 hours a day, you're not doing anything but working and sleeping, right.
Speaker 1:Right, hey, I'm just in all these things. We just need to reassess some of it.
Speaker 2:The motivation's always money, it is always money.
Speaker 1:And because we've made the system like that, we have created a system where the number one thing is money.
Speaker 2:And growth and growth.
Speaker 1:Exponential growth and like unlimited growth, which is ridiculous. Nothing, nothing does that. Nothing grows perpetually. How many of many of you know chains that have been like staples of our lives, gone now, like christmas tree shop? You know, am I mourning the loss of christmas tree shop? I don't know. I went there sometimes, we got cute stuff or whatever. I'm not you know, but it's gone. Now life moves on. Caldor doesn't exist anymore, bradley's doesn't exist. I mean there's a lot of stores that don't go, but the thing about a lot of- We've got the New England whole thing here with you.
Speaker 1:But a lot of these stores Almy's Go out and run out of business right, and that happens through time. But what about these ones like the Christmas tree shop? It just got too big. The core concept is good A that sells knickknacks and crap and all this it wasn't sustainable.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't sustainable for maximum profit, unlimited and just keep going. It's a controversial thing, but I'll say one of the things that's ruined everything is the purely investor class, like the people who are on the sidelines not contributing anything but skimming off the profits, and that's really all that's happened in the last bunch of years. Our only innovation has been making our financial system more convoluted and finding like, because the basic premise of a business doing a thing and having customers and charging for you know widgets.
Speaker 1:It still goes on it still goes on and that whole thing hasn't changed. But what has changed is now that whole process. It still is, at its core, a company or doing something, selling something, selling service, or whatever people buy it, whatever, however, you want to do that. But now that money doesn't just go to the owners of the company, now it flows through like a corporate structure. Now it has to feed stock shareholders who want to have increasing profits, and so you got to just keep. This quarter has to be better than last quarter. Next quarter has to be a little bit more. It comes a certain point where, like you've done all you can do, like the company's not going to get any bigger. So now, what do you do? Well, to keep the profits going, what are you gonna have to start skimping, you know. Maybe you pay the people a little bit less. Maybe you, you know, skimp on the material. You know costs are too high. How do you know, hey, boeing you, we can't spend all this money on quality control, it's just wasted money.
Speaker 1:Come on, yeah, like what do you mean? This part's defective. Well, it doesn't really fit. We'll force it in there, bang it in there, it'll fit. It's like why are we ever surprised that that's what we get? That is literally the point of it. That's the point of the system is to make maximum profit all the time. And you have this whole class of people who they don't contribute. They're not in many cases, they're not buying or availing themselves to the service. That's for the little people Like. They use other stuff. They're not selling it, they're not creating something, they're just there skimming off the top. Oh, that made some money. Why don't I get my cut?
Speaker 1:There's money my cut and that keeps happening and like don't we realize? And without investors you wouldn't have this, that or the other thing. There is something to that.
Speaker 2:You do need people with capital.
Speaker 1:Do you know that the idea of corporations originally were temporary things? Yes, a corporation formed to achieve a stated goal and when that stated goal was reached, the corporation would dissolve. Right. So they'd create a corporation to build a bridge. Hey, this corporation now exists and its job is to build this bridge. And when this bridge is completed and people are driving over it, the corporation dissolves and it goes away. And at some point, corporations became permanent fixtures. And that's where it corporations became permanent fixtures and that's where it all starts to go wrong, kind of like taxes.
Speaker 1:Taxes are supposed to be a temporary wartime measure. That goes. A lot of people now are just getting pissed and saying if we keep sending American troops over to die in faraway land for something paid for another war. A lot of people are like I'm not going to pay my taxes anymore and again that won't last very long. Because you don't pay your taxes, that come out of you with guns.
Speaker 1:Not right away not right away, but if you push it far enough, eventually guns come out, eventually it comes down to force. And it's just I don't know that there's a solution, because I think the impetus to keep it going I I always say right when it comes to.
Speaker 2:If you want to know how finances rule everything, right, go rob a bank. Right, have one. Watch one guy rob a bank, then watch another guy beat the crap out of his girlfriend and see the police force that comes after each one of them. I'd say, yeah, Right, You're good, yeah, they're going to get you if you robbed the bank. It's just you know and I'm just so you know. I think one's much worse than the other, and the one is the violence. Right, and I know you can have violence robbing a bank, but and I know you can have violence robbing a bank, but let's just say nobody got hurt.
Speaker 1:Right. All they did was take money Right, which is not.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying our values as a society and we're all okay with it.
Speaker 1:We're all okay with it we all, by by not protesting it, we are giving it our assent. We're saying no it's fine, right? So anyway, yeah, everybody complains about how things are, and then and then, when an opportunity may quickly. You know, any politician whose real goal is to fix this stuff never gets anywhere, obviously I you know.
Speaker 2:What do you think about this guy's whole thing about crypto? I I don't know a ton about. I know I did buy some bitcoin. I have to tell you I sold it. Yeah, um, I couldn't take it anymore. You know, I don't know a ton about.
Speaker 1:I know I did buy some Bitcoin. I have to tell you I sold it. Yeah, I couldn't take it anymore. You know, I don't know. I mean, I like the idea of cryptocurrency. I like the idea of a currency that actually has its own rules, Like Bitcoin is like, but I don't know. Like, to me, it's what is a Bitcoin now? Like super expensive, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's up to maybe just over 60 000 so to me at that point, like it becomes well, what the hell do we have this for? Like, what good is it like if you're, if you're operating in in multiples of 60 000? Sure, that's good, but like, I don't know. Initially I thought the the promise of bitcoin, the promise of cryptocurrency in general, was that decentralized, decentralized money that had its own value and the value was based on the amount out there, as it should be, as opposed to money now, which is just like illusion, illusionary. You know, it's money is just, it has value, because we agree it has value. You know, if things started to crumble, you know very quickly, paper money would be meaningless if, if you know, if things came down, the person who has actual goods would be in the high seat and somebody who has all the money in the world would be useless because they'd be like, what am I gonna do with that money?
Speaker 2:like the system has crashed now I'd love to talk to an economist one day, because I can't wrap my head around how, let's say, today there's $10 in the US economy, right, and that $10, just like you'd say, bitcoin or anything else that holds X amount of value. And then we split up that value right, that's kind of what money is. How do you keep adding to it and then try to tell everybody the value of what you have is the same?
Speaker 2:It doesn't make it. It just that concept. Maybe my brain isn't big enough to figure out, but that concept seems to be a scam.
Speaker 1:It probably is at its core. I mean, it's probably all. How do you?
Speaker 2:keep adding, like when they keep saying oh, we printed more money. Well, how does that not devalue everything else? Right, and they'll give you complications. To me, that's good, to me, that's the reason why things cost more. But uh, and people say, well, that can't be the reason. I said, well, well, what is the reason? If you keep adding money into a system that already had X amount that and you split up the value right, how do you? How do you not decrease the value, Like, if it's that way?
Speaker 1:why can't we all just be millionaires, just make more money? Yeah and I. But I think sometimes that's used as an excuse to say why something can't be done, like when somebody says, hey, we should raise the minimum wage. You know people like, oh, why don't we raise it to a thousand dollars an hour? It's like dude, like there's a long way from like trying to raise it so somebody can like live to raising it to a thousand dollars an hour.
Speaker 2:No, no, I think. I think raising the rate of someone's pay, the effect of that is you're decreasing the profit of someone else, right, right. So the value just shifts, right, so that kind of plays into the same thing. So you're just shifting the value, which I think should happen.
Speaker 1:Well, if the costs go up, then the if you want people to maintain their level of living, then as costs go up, then their pay has to go up, or else they're not going to be able to afford the same stuff. It seems pretty simple and straightforward.
Speaker 2:Right. I guess what I'm saying is let's say, you had a corporation right McDonald's and the investors of McDonald's, the people that buy the stocks, the people that are on the board right, they 2023, they made X amount, right? So then they say, okay, we're going to pay workers more money. Well then there's two things that can happen those people that were making profits make less, or they make the same and they charge the customer more, or they just tell you the buns are smaller, or whatever it is. If they don't change what you get or what you pay for, the result is they get less?
Speaker 1:It has to come from somewhere.
Speaker 2:So the value just shifts around. But when you keep adding money in, I don't know how that works. But I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's meant to be complicated.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm not an economics person. I know that somebody who is would listen to this and go how stupid are these guys? Like they don't understand basic economics. And I'm like dude, it's all a made-up system. Like, can we just agree? We made all this shit up. I hate it when people talk about the economy as if they're talking about gravity. Well, what can you do? That's the economy, it's like. But we made it up. This is, this is one of the rules of, of just um, living. Right, it's like it's immutable. What can you do? And it's like but didn't we make this up? Like we can change it? You know we could all get together and go it's a different world now than it was. You know, I sometimes refer to myself as a libertarian, but I'm not aligned with the libertarian party in any way because to me, they're all just a bunch of people who, like, want to live, like the world is still in the 18th century, like you know, read john lock.
Speaker 1:I get it, dude. John lock was really good in his day. It is not that it is not that time much has changed. Maybe his fundamental principles have some merit, but, man, you just can't take a template that was around when we were in, like you know horse and buggy and wooden ships, you know and and just apply it to a tech into a civilization that has like cell phones and email and you know 24-hour cable networks and just like we're in a different place now than we were back then.
Speaker 2:It's time to reassess just a little just on the edges just go.
Speaker 1:You know this worked. How can we tweak it and make it right? But of course, the people who's? Who would be in charge of that, are the people who are like, well, I want to keep it exactly the way. It is right, I'm doing great, it's working for me. You know, I'm doing awesome. My 401k is flying.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile you got people who can't you know, can't afford simple medication. Well, that's the system. What are you gonna do? They should work harder, they should earn their living. Come on, man, yeah, it's, um, it's interesting. I really, you know to to kind of wrap this up and we'll, we'll, uh, we'll wrap up this episode at least, is that I feel there's a moment here with this, with this, not specifically with this guy, but the fact that I hope that some of what he brings up, at least a little bit, is at least looked at and go. Well, how is it that we're in a place where they can force through something so easily when it's something terrible, for you know, more war. You know, whenever you do, that they can agree a hundred percent Anything for us. Nah, I can't do it, man, what are you going to do? It's just the economy. It's just. That's the way economics work. It's immutable. It's like gravity.
Speaker 2:Come on so um, why does it? Why in that manifesto do you think he? Um, I know we're wrapping it up, but why do you think? Why is he calling it a klepto? Klepto, is he saying, just because they keep taking things.
Speaker 1:I gotcha. It's basically just you know stealing. The greatest trick, they say, is that you know the left and the right get the. You know the left gets their people to hate the right and the right gets their people to hate. The hate the right and the right gets the. They're people that hate that, but they, they're all together. They all, they all have belong to the same country clubs. They all, you know, pal around after not as much anymore. Used to see that more in the 80s remember that used to see that with like reagan and and uh, what's that?
Speaker 1:tipper? I don't know what's his name, not tipper core um tip o'neill? Tip o'neill and and he was the speaker of the house a Democrat and then, you had Reagan and that they were friendly.
Speaker 1:You know after, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, and everybody talks about the, the bygone days of when that that was the case, and you're thinking do you really want that, though? Like, do you, if you want the two sides to be adversary, don't you really want them to be adversary? Like you don't want them to be on the same side, cause then won't it just become them conspiring against you?
Speaker 2:Well, there's always going to be somebody. I mean, I think that, um, I don't know. Well, I can only relate, maybe, to my, my job, right. There's plenty of other people that would be adverse to me and I don't really have. I, I don't really have, I don't, I mean most, most, I mean just about everybody. I don't have any adverse feelings about them, I just have. We just look at the issue differently, Right. So I don't know if that's a real problem if it's being done sincerely, Right.
Speaker 1:But if if you, as an attorney, if you conspired with the other attorney, oh Jesus, to, to, to create a situation that was advantageous for the two of you, for the attorneys we lose our licenses. Right, that is a crime. Yeah, that is a.
Speaker 2:that is you know that is Well. I don't know if it's a crime, but we lose our license.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a crime. As far as a, what's the word I'm looking for? Yeah, it's a taking away your law license.
Speaker 2:That's it right. You can't do that.
Speaker 1:But if politicians conspire with each other to do something that's good for the politicians and not good for the people, isn't that kind of the same thing.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing, it's the same thing right.
Speaker 1:I mean, to me it's the same thing. This side and this side got together and made an agreement and did a thing, and it's good for them, because the rest of it's a charade. And it's like, well, were you really against each other? Like you know, like if you went out in the courtroom and you argued against this attorney and secretly behind the things, you're like, well, we'll cut a deal and it wasn't for the good of the client, because obviously, deals are made all the time for the good of the client, for the good of the clients. But if it was good for you guys and not for the client, hey, let's stretch this out so we can bill him more hours.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah yeah, yeah, you know, like that's oh yeah, that's baloney, but, like congress, people will, will conspire with the other side, you know, with the other party too, and it's like we're just okay with it, right, we're just okay with it. All this stuff is too big. We got so heavy on this episode back too. It's kind of funny, but this is kind of what goes through our minds. Yeah, but this is timely.
Speaker 1:But we're being linear here, chris, we are, we're doing a good job of staying on target, but, um, I don't know, I I just think we're, we're, we're, we're in a weird time in this world where stuff is just I don't, I don't know how it's gonna end up. Good, like you know what I'm saying, like every day it's something else and it's another powder keg, whether the middle east or you know the, with china or russia, you know ukraine. Like it's another thing that's just waiting to blow up and everybody has an idea how it can be fixed. If you just got rid of this side, if you just got rid of that side, all this would be fixed and it's like what is Right? Like, come on.
Speaker 2:People are people and you could just get let's just say you got rid of everyone that's against one issue right, and all we have is these people that are fought. And you see, it. You see it sometimes right, they'll find some, they'll find a subdivision there, you're not for this issue as much as I am, and because of that, we're not the same anymore. That's really. You see it, even in different political parties. You're not, you don't. You don't really like this as much as I do Like it's like. Come on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you'll see. You know Republicans talk about those who aren't true Republicans, what they call them rhinos, or you know, libertarians will be like this person's, or Democrat. You know liberal people will be like they're not really like that.
Speaker 2:You're a little too moderate for me.
Speaker 1:Right, it's, we love to divide ourselves up and so maybe that's the thing is, maybe humans. I think I heard somebody say and I don't what was it, it might've been on Rogan but I heard somebody say once that maybe humans just aren't meant to live in huge communities. Maybe we're best when we're like, you know, little villages of 20, 30 people, because you can get 20, 30 people and kind of get in the calm. There's a number there, there's a number that you can kind of get a cohesion.
Speaker 2:Then, once you get over it, you start having division Right because it just gets too big and that number is used, I think, in different organizations for things because they won't have certain groups of people larger than that, like in the military, and stuff because they know that once it gets too much you're now looking for problems with people.
Speaker 1:And, like I said before, society requires guidance. It just does. Society does not stay together without some rails to put it on, and I think we all think that the rails are minimal and I think they're a lot more than we think Like, come on, because that's the only explanation why shit never changes.
Speaker 1:Why does stuff never get better? It's got to be an incentive for somebody for things not to get better, right, because everybody would say, well, isn't it in our best interest to fix this or fix that? Of course it is, well, why doesn't it happen?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:And then we just go away and maybe that's why I don't know what's on. Netflix, right, maybe that's why we're kept so busy, I mean, and that there's something to that. You know, how do you get a population to stop sticking their nose in government? Ah, you, let them come out every four years and vote for something. It's meaningless.
Speaker 2:And then they go back and they, you know, oh what, you vote for us, I promise it'll work, really, do you? Because you had a chance, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean somebody's an interesting thing. I mean, if you dated somebody and they kept saying those things to you, yes, most, mostly everyone, unless you're in some difficult situation. Most people like come on, right, okay, you said this is the fourth time, right, you got it's not happening.
Speaker 1:I, I, I've heard it said that you, you know, in this next coming the election coming up, you know whether you get Trump or you get Biden. Either one is like a lame duck president right out of the gate. Right, because both of them only have one term in them. Right, which is interesting, because I don't think we've ever been here before Like where you have two no, who are both on their second term. It's never happened. So, no matter who wins, it's only a one-term president. Right and no, it's never happened.
Speaker 2:It's weird, not that I, I don't think it's ever happened.
Speaker 1:I don't want to get into this now because we go down a whole road. But there's much to be said about this whole third. You know RFK, like what. This is going to be an interesting election year. I really think this is. We're going to see something unprecedented.
Speaker 2:Not since.
Speaker 1:Perot, have I seen somebody who has the potential to upset the duopoly?
Speaker 2:They're not really covering him as much, of course not, but I think it's, it's catching fire but Ross Perot got more coverage than Kennedy's getting. That I remember, was that 92?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a different world.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:He yeah, it was a different world. Oh yeah, he also paid for some of that. Remember, perot used to put on infomercials. He had like a 30-minute time slot where he just came on TV and talked Folks. Now it's simple. I love that he had the charts. I would love to see a world. What would have happened if he had gotten what he would have gotten? I would love to see what would have happened. I'm now more of a fan of like I just want to see what will happen. I kind of like chaos, because I want, like the system's not working. I want to see it upset. So what? Whatever, whatever possibility, and I think, either the two main guys. It's just going to be more of the same. It's going to be different flavors of the same crap. So maybe it's time for something different. I don't know. Uh, who knows, but anyway, I think that's where we're going to wrap it up. We had a good discussion. Um, we'll be back soon with more talk. We have lots more to talk about, right?
Speaker 1:ufo stuff ai, there's a lot to a lot of deep shit to go over. There is right, and we'll be back to talk about it. So so, uh, until the next time. I'm chris and I'm steve, and this has been some deep shit, deep shit. We'll be right back you.