From "White Trash" to a Beacon of Love: How Community and Nonviolence Can Shape Our Future

After being slapped with the label "white trash," Steve Scot turned it into a badge of honor; he jokingly calls himself "The King of All White Trash."  That's precisely what Steve Scot did as he navigated through the turbulence of his childhood, marked by his father's alcoholism and his family's relentless disarray. From the depths of poverty and homelessness, Steve Scot emerged with an unshakeable belief in the transformative power of love, a testament to the community that rallied around him—from church to coaches. His tale is not just about overcoming adversity; it's a celebration of the joyous life he built with his wife, complete with 12 grand brats and lessons in love's redemptive embrace.

This episode isn't just a walk down memory lane; it's a clarion call for a resurgence of love in our political sphere, an area too often marred by cynicism and the almighty dollar. Reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s enduring philosophy, Steve dissects how nonviolence and love can be the salve our nation desperately needs, capable of mending rifts and shaping a society where families can thrive. Join Steve as he blends his narrative with poignant insights about love, raising the banner for a direct democracy steeped in compassion and commitment and envisioning an America where the dream is alive and accessible to all.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

The iron curtain fell and the wall came down. Now we're forced to live in our hometown, children waging wars where stickball was played. It's the dawning of a saddened day.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Hello America. This is Steve Scott coming to you with politicsandlovecom in Lubbock, texas, and that beautiful music was my beautiful wife, barbara Rose. Wife, barbara Rose. Today I just want to talk about and explain how I would have the audacity to take politics and love, even put them in a sentence, much less build a website and then do a podcast. You know, I'm either a fool here and maybe I am, I've been called worse by bigger Um or maybe I think I'm onto something, and I think I'm onto something because of my life experiences. I don't my my degrees in intercultural communications. I don't have a degree in political science, I don't. You know, I'm not an expert in anything except for love, I think, and the way I would measure that is when you look at my 12 grandbrats and my daughters, and you know you can conclude readily, I think, that there was love there. So how did I go from 12 grand brats and I left home with a suitcase, literally a suitcase. You hear about people saying stuff like that, but that's literally all I had. I went out in the world. I was white trash. That's all there is to it. There's no way of putting it, of course. Now I like to think I'm king of all white trash. That's all there is to it. There's no way of putting it. Of course, now I like to think I'm king of all white trash, the self-proclaimed king of all white trash. But we can't afford a castle or anything like that, because we're white trash. We don't even have any geographical boundaries. But we exist and that's really all you did is exist.

Speaker 2: 2:25

I was a Franklin Quaker in Portland, oregon. I kind of know why all the kids are riding up there at Portland State, because I went to high school for a while around it. I ended up graduating from there. I also went to high school back in West Virginia too. Being the son of an alcoholic and white trash, I saw it all Gambling, alcohol, drugs, moving around the country, one of our moves I remember. I came home and it was the summertime. I'd gone to a couple of years of high school and my dad said pack your stuff, we're going to West Virginia. You know, I thought I was settled into high school and maybe it was going to have some stability in my life.

Speaker 2: 3:13

And up we went, me, and in that car was, of course, my dad, my mother, our dog, my two younger sisters, my cousin and my cousin and my foster brother. I'm sorry. Sorry, scott, I had to stop there. I knew you were in there somewhere, but I had to get it out. He's a Scott too. At any rate, we had all of us in a car. It was a four-door, I don't know. I think it was an AMC, and my dad took the back seat out and put a mattress in there, and so all of us in the back seat were in that. I remember starting to fall asleep. One time I was like oh, it smells like gas back here, mommy, and my mom's like get out of there, get out of there.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Because my head was like in what would have been the trunk and my feet were stretched out. My mom all panicking get out of there. Get out of there. That's gas fumes, roy. Gas fumes is getting through to that kid. That might explain a few things right there.

Speaker 2: 4:31

So, at any rate, we had this cross-country trek and I came back across the country on a bus, and it wasn't the only time. By the time I graduated from high school I had gone across country and lived in seven or eight states several times, and my dad was just. He was an alcoholic and he would get something in his brain and he'd take off pursuing that. And my mother followed him. God bless, god bless her and God. So this crazy childhood. But somehow at a young age I started realizing love was the thing to do, not somehow the church people got a hold of me and taught it to me. My coaches reinforced it and community members reinforced it, and so at a very early age I knew there was a force out there called love and I knew that love was a great thing. Remember one time a family picnic and my dad got all these beer poured out. I mean, we would go to this place and there was always a big sign that said no beer or alcohol, and I used to drive in thinking, oh, this is great. No beer for the day. And of course, my dad would whip his beer out. Well, one day the deputies caught up with him and they made him pour his whole thing of beer out, and that was. That was one of the very few times I saw any revenge. I'm not endorsing that, but it seemed like, when the police showed up, I was safe, and through all that, though, I could see that there were people that had love. I had, you know, friends from high school and uh, in and out of their homes, and I could see the love in it. So I knew love was essential. I knew it was. You know, it was mysterious, couldn't relate to everybody in the family getting along, but it was there. So I learned about love, and it took me out of poverty. I was homeless before the word homeless was popular. You know, you just sleep in the car till you figure out a place. That's all we were doing, just temporary residence. That's what we were sold, all seven of us, one summer. You can't forget this. Seven people living in a hotel, my dad on one of our cross-country trips. You know we seven of us spent the whole summer in a hotel, the dog too. But I learned through all this darkness that there was light and I'd see these, I'd see these bits of light, and that was love. Then I became an adult and I started studying about it more and more and in a way I became obsessed with it. I wrote that algorithm of love. I wrote that came out of that years ago, but at any rate, love became the vehicle that I knew that could only get me out. Twelve grand brats later we safely made it to shore. Now love I've seen as a great force in others too. I'm probably going to get my butt kicked, but I'm going to talk about Sergeant Frack, a guy that was a year ahead of me in high school and I've gotten to know him through Facebook better than I did in high school, and everybody knows where they were on 9-11. I did too. I wasn't in contact with Sergeant Frack then, but I would later learn about it as Facebook came out.

Speaker 2: 8:27

And in normal wars the supply sergeant has it made, they're behind enemy lines, but in this war it wasn't. So you see, sergeant Frack had to, in this war, give the orders for the convoys to go out to take supplies out to the troops in the field. In other wars that was fine. You came from a secure behind-the-lines position, drove the stuff up, went back to your secure position with an empty truck Except this war was different. Truck. Except this war was different. They put landmines because that was the only way the enemy could fight back was through crude warfare like that. And they went after those trucks and from what I've gathered from Sergeant Frack, he had to make the assignments for those trucks. He had to make the assignments for those trucks and his best friends often got killed and Sergeant Frack to this day carries the pain of that with him.

Speaker 2: 9:36

But let me tell you how Sergeant Frack made it through that hell. It seems like he has a lot of love in his heart still and it's not passion to get you through a war. Your sergeant can yell charge and maybe you get a flash of passion, but you do that because you love your country and you love the soldiers that you're serving with. And out of love, even the hellishness of war, beautiful things come around and you can see it with Sergeant Frack, his camaraderie that he has with his army buddies and his good-natured way, the way that he explains things. But the scars are there too, and he made it through that horrible war with love in his heart.

Speaker 2: 10:30

Dr King, look what he did these silly little protesters you know, 2,000 of them have gotten arrested and they made it violent. And my humble opinion from what I understand of Dr King, I think he saved America from just total chaos and he did it with love. He did it with peace. They weren't breaking into universities and these people had a reason to protest. Believe me, I've been around it. I'm in Texas, I saw it. I had members that were Klan members. I mean, I had family members that were Klan members at one time. You know, I've seen it. You know, when you're so poor, you don't develop racism, because racism is something that comes from people that feel threatened in a silly way and feel like somebody else is going to take them away from it. So they just label them, like they do with the Jews, they do with the blacks. They label them and they get into racism. But even with that going on, even with evil coming down on Dr King and the black people of America, he still protested with love. You ever see that guy's granddaughter? Oh man, she's going to be a great leader. She may even top Dr King himself.

Speaker 2: 12:04

His love was in his family. It's obvious. It's obvious as you see his son just passed. But as you see them on display publicly, you know that he just wasn't doing it for political reasons. You could see that he practiced love because you could see it through his children and now his grandchildren. Love does that for people. Love can change a nation. Dr King proved it and he didn't fire a shot. He didn't break into any capitals and trash them. He didn't break into any universities and trash them. He did it because he had love in his heart and that inspired him to use nonviolence, to follow the teachings of Gandhi and Christ and just fight with love. And he did it. He gave his life doing it. I'm sure that night on the balcony there was love in his heart.

Speaker 2: 13:08

In America we can do this too, but destroying things ain't the way. You just don't do it. You know your kid doesn't take care of a toy. You take that toy away from him. That's just common sense. We can't keep destroying our universities in the capital in the name of political ideologies. That's not love. Love is building things. I would challenge.

Speaker 2: 13:41

All of you read that algorithm of love and if you're a right wing conservative MAGA, whatever your political beliefs, are a woke left wing conservative Democrat, you know. Whatever label you go by, ask yourself is this love what I'm doing? Because you're not going to change anything with hatefulness. That doesn't work. You know, a young mother doesn't get up half asleep because she was doing laundry until the night before. Get the kids off to school, get back, clean the house, take care of other little ones around the house, and then the father doesn't go out and go to work and bring the money into that without love, into that without love. Love permeates everything good in our life. Everything good we do is a result of love.

Speaker 2: 14:51

I did some horrible jobs and I've got the herniated disc to show it. But I love my herniated discs. You know why? Because I got them the love and they're a reminder that I could work that hard to take care of my wonderful family. Love gave me my herniated disc and I like them. Love gave me Barbara Rose, who you get to hear, and with love great changes happened. We did it as a nation, with Dr King. We can do it, bringing direct democracy. America. We can bring these things to where you're choosing and I'm choosing and not the people in Washington DC.

Speaker 2: 15:41

I'm going to say something now. Listen, real close. $61 million that's what some clown is paying to be a congressman for $175,000 a year, and he's just in a primary election somewhere back east. I caught the tail end of it. Like I said, I ain't doing research. You do the research and you'll find that fellow that spends $61 million to get $175,000 a year job. Why? Why? Because he wants power. These are the kind of clowns that end up in Washington DC. They want power. They may be from your congressional district, but they get Washingtonized. And when you get Washingtonized you get a lot of hate in your heart and these people just don't have love in their heart.

Speaker 2: 16:41

Spending $61 million to become a congressman man, a lot of people could have used that money. If you really want to be a public servant, you could have set up a kingdom buddy for $61 million. So, at any rate, I don't know. I think the price tag is $300 million to be the president. So we're going to spend $600 million, probably more. It's easily going to hit a billion, because the campaign season now starts two years out. You know, america's gone from a guy running for president. He didn't even leave his house because it was thought of as dishonorable to go out and campaign to where now people are declaring their candidacy and starting the primary season and so to get that four-year job. They campaign two years for the job and we'll spend $600 billion I mean, we'll spend a billion dollars watching these clowns do their thing and try to get their power, when all along that power you could be exercising, you could be going about the love that you have for your day and getting things done, because that's why you're involved in politics, that's why I am involved in politics.

Speaker 2: 18:06

It's because of love. You know when you go into a voting booth you're voting love. You know love gets you in there. All that love in your heart for your calls you do. But now imagine America, and I think there'd be a lot more love. Where, if you had a pet calls and I'm going to pick the most controversial one right now abortion. If the people could solve the abortion problem, you know they would come up with a reasonable policy instead of the craziness that goes on with it. The people could figure it out 160 million people collectively have what they need and in this day and age.

Speaker 2: 18:55

We can pull it off. Like I've said before, we couldn't pull it off when the congressman had to ride five days in the rain to get to their location. But we can pull it off now, america, because we have the technology to. It's just that simple. Don't tell me technology doesn't work. I'm sitting here in Lubbock, texas, and you're somewhere else in the world and you're hearing me. That same technology can be applied to how we govern.

Speaker 2: 19:28

We had to be a republic. It wasn't realistic. Now it's realistic to have direct democracy and get the people more involved. We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We don't have to get rid of Congress. But I think we would have a lot more responsible Congress if A they had term limits. B they knew they could get recalled and fired right away, not go through a big, long, drawn-out process like the politicians do.

Speaker 2: 20:03

Let the people get in there and do a recall election. That'll get their attention and that'll keep the pressure on them. And if they know that citizens are just going to go out and create these things themselves, they'll start listening to what's right. They'll put the walls in the books. To what's right. They'll put the walls on the books. So my prediction is that the politicians will see a newfound public that they have to serve, and this newfound public is armed with some tools. They're going to keep them in line, like that old country song Get an attitude adjustment. That's what they need and that's what direct democracy, as fueled by love, can do for you, america. God bless America. God bless you. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to a grandpa in West Texas. Hope this can do some good. I hope the love in your life will spill over to politics. America, god bless America. God bless you, and I love you. Thank you for your time.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Where will I turn? What will stop the burn? Children wonder why, wonder why, why or what have I done? Who has stopped the sun? Love love will open all the doors. Love love will settle all the wars. Love love will put our life in order. Love has never known a border. When will people see how to win history? Fathers wondering how, how they have such spoiled dreams? Life's found such extremes? Love love will open all the doors. Love love will settle all the wars. Love love will put our life in order. Love has never known a border. Can we find our peace? Will the struggle cease? The world is left to wonder how? How will families ever thrive? Will their homes survive? Love love will open all the doors. Love love will settle all the wars. Love love will put our life in order. Love has never known a border. Love has never known a border.