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Speaker 1: And now let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: Emily Dashinski is in the house for Ryan Grim and Crystal.
Speaker 1: It turns out and out of the leftists who work
Speaker 1: with us want to work.
Speaker 2: It's a joke.
Speaker 3: He planned it.
Speaker 4: Also, you scared the hell out of me with your
Speaker 4: good morning. It was so absurdly l.
Speaker 2: You don't understand.
Speaker 1: We got to turn it on whenever we're starting here
Speaker 1: at this or This is what I try and tell people.
Speaker 1: Whenever you do this gig, you got to bring the energy.
Speaker 1: And I know that that's what is for everybody at home.
Speaker 1: So since my conservative critics all think I'm a leftist anyway,
Speaker 1: I will be trying to bring.
Speaker 2: The leftist perspective. I'm going to do my best.
Speaker 1: Emily just maintain the hard right position, and we'll give
Speaker 1: everybody as balance of a view as possible.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: Hell, everyone, We're gonna have the most ambitious crossovers of
Speaker 1: all time here on the Breaking Points Channel.
Speaker 4: So we've never done it before, but we've never done
Speaker 4: it before.
Speaker 2: I feel like we have.
Speaker 1: We've done a couple of podcasts and stuff together. We're
Speaker 1: old friends, so I think it'll work. So we got
Speaker 1: a bunch of topics that we're going to be discussing today.
Speaker 1: Obviously the horrific shooting in Alan, Texas. We're going to
Speaker 1: break down everything we know about the shooter. There's been
Speaker 1: a little bit of a controversy around whether the information
Speaker 1: that we have is.
Speaker 2: True or not.
Speaker 1: We're going to give you all the details possible, just
Speaker 1: so you can know where things stand and you know
Speaker 1: what possible takeaways we can have. We'll talk abut a
Speaker 1: little bit about the media about whether Hispanics can be
Speaker 1: white supremacist. What a twenty twenty three topic, not something
Speaker 1: that we'd ever thought to be discussed. A secretary Buddha
Speaker 1: Edge woke up from a three year coma. He's decided
Speaker 1: to try and do something about airlines. We'll tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit about that one. There's some lab Lak
Speaker 1: news which just seriously, it's one of those where you
Speaker 1: can't even believe it's real, but it is real, and
Speaker 1: we will break all of that down for you.
Speaker 2: AI.
Speaker 1: We've been trying to stay on top of this story, Emily,
Speaker 1: I know you guys have been looking at it to
Speaker 1: We know it's going to change everything. This is one
Speaker 1: where AI and education in particular, we're seeing massive disruption
Speaker 1: and somehow we've decided Kamala Harris should be in charge,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what could go wrong?
Speaker 3: And then the artificial intelligence in charge.
Speaker 1: Of the artificct that's right, Yeah, that's a good I
Speaker 1: like that, all right, So reparations Also, since it's just
Speaker 1: the two of us, we're like, hey, why don't we
Speaker 1: pick one of the hottest topics in social science California
Speaker 1: deciding possibly trying to pass reparations.
Speaker 2: We're going to tell you what we know about that.
Speaker 1: Emily's taking a look at the New York magazine Education
Speaker 1: I will not say gay and new cover, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be looking at gun control and talking about facts
Speaker 1: of fiction. We also have Ken Clippenstein who is in
Speaker 1: the show today. He's got a great news story about
Speaker 1: new disinformation initiatives are.
Speaker 2: Popping up all across the US government.
Speaker 1: Ken has done some of the absolute, like the best
Speaker 1: groundwork I think in terms of exposing the disinformation industrial complex,
Speaker 1: if you will. And so we are going to get
Speaker 1: into all of that, but let's start with Alan Texas.
Speaker 1: So we didn't touch it yesterday because we're still a
Speaker 1: developing situation.
Speaker 2: We didn't really know and much about it.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, it has become a major national story,
Speaker 1: not just because of the horrific tragedy that's happened and
Speaker 1: the victims, but now it's a sparking a meta conversation
Speaker 1: around not only guns, which I'll be talking about in
Speaker 1: my monologue, but also about you know, wide identity politics,
Speaker 1: far right, the motives of said shooting, the way that
Speaker 1: this media treatment is happening. First, just some on the
Speaker 1: ground fact the initial reaction from a breaking news reporter
Speaker 1: an NBC affiliate.
Speaker 2: Here's what he had to say now.
Speaker 5: Authorities report the first gunfire came in around three thirty
Speaker 5: Saturday afternoon. That's when witnesses say a man dressed in black,
Speaker 5: wearing body armour looking similar to a police officer, began
Speaker 5: walking through the mall property here, firing indiscriminately, sending thousands
Speaker 5: of people running for cover. Authorities tell us a police
Speaker 5: officer that was responding to an unrelated call heard that
Speaker 5: gunfire and ran towards the sound, immediately engaging the gunman,
Speaker 5: shooting and killing him. But in the moments before police arrived,
Speaker 5: we are told that hundreds did whatever they could inside
Speaker 5: this property to survive.
Speaker 6: So we ran to the back, barricaded it with some
Speaker 6: concrete bricks, and then right then on the security camera
Speaker 6: and thank god we went in the back of that
Speaker 6: time we saw him walk right by, masked up, fake
Speaker 6: police outfit on there you go.
Speaker 2: All in Texas.
Speaker 1: The initial reaction, you know, kudos to the police officer
Speaker 1: not taking a tage the Uvaldi playbook running towards the
Speaker 1: sound of gunfire.
Speaker 2: Actually doing his job.
Speaker 1: So questions, now, Emily, after a couple of days, who
Speaker 1: is this guy? And there were some initial reports about
Speaker 1: how we knew the name of the shooter. His name
Speaker 1: is Mauricio Garcia. But then there were media reports about
Speaker 1: how he had been inspired by possible white identity politics. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get to said tattoos and alleged social media
Speaker 1: profiles and all of that, let's start with what we
Speaker 1: actually know. Let's put this up there on the screen
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post. This was actually released also by investigators.
Speaker 1: These are verified facts from the investigators who are on
Speaker 1: the scene.
Speaker 2: They say, not only were they.
Speaker 1: Investigating the Texas gunman's quote alleged white supremacist ties, but
Speaker 1: they have now confirmed that mister Garcia. Mauricio Garcia joined
Speaker 1: the army, the US Army in June of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, but was quote terminated three months later for
Speaker 1: some sort of mental health condition. Three months obviously not
Speaker 1: that long of a time to be separated, didn't even
Speaker 1: qualify for his initial training before he went ahead and
Speaker 1: got separated. So, in terms of the verified facts, we
Speaker 1: know that the gunman's name was Mauricio Garcia. We know
Speaker 1: that he was thirty three years old. We also know
Speaker 1: that he lived somewhere in the Dallas area. Now from
Speaker 1: that point on, it's all coming down to some breadcrumbs
Speaker 1: that were possibly left online. And the reason that I'm
Speaker 1: saying this kind of in a more trepidacious manner, Emily,
Speaker 1: is because it has sparked a bit of concern as
Speaker 1: to whether, quote, this is some sort of psyop or not.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to withhold.
Speaker 1: My judgment for now, and I'm just going to show
Speaker 1: you what people are reacting to.
Speaker 2: Just a warning.
Speaker 1: These are you know, these are really terrible images. But
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and put these up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: Initial images that were taken off of a Russian social
Speaker 1: media website. I'm not even going to try and tell
Speaker 1: you the name, something like Odo Klassaniski. I think I
Speaker 1: did that pretty well, the second largest social media site
Speaker 1: in Russia where the alleged shooter was posting on those
Speaker 1: profile apparently had a profile or allegedly had a profile
Speaker 1: where he had no connections, no friends, and was almost
Speaker 1: using some sort of personal diary. On the left, you
Speaker 1: can actually see a vest, bulletproof vest with the RWDS
Speaker 1: logo that was on.
Speaker 2: It that stands for right wing death squad.
Speaker 1: That's something that's been appropriated by far right groups here
Speaker 1: in the United States. In the middle, obviously, you can
Speaker 1: see two fresh SS tattoos and a swastika hearkening to
Speaker 1: the Nazierra, as well as a Texas tattoo that was
Speaker 1: on the shoulder, a very odd meme that he actually posted,
Speaker 1: which is certainly a discourse igniter, saying Latino children have
Speaker 1: two different pats. One of them is to quote act
Speaker 1: black and the other one is to become a white supremacist,
Speaker 1: and also posting a YouTube account. The YouTube account was
Speaker 1: live last time I looked at it, and I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie. I mean, anytime you see any of these
Speaker 1: people are straight up freaks, you know, wearing masks and
Speaker 1: pulling it down and just acting in a really, really
Speaker 1: bizarre manner. So, Emily, I want to get your reaction
Speaker 1: to this, because the initial take that I've been able
Speaker 1: to see so far from the tinpools of the world
Speaker 1: and several other people who are out there.
Speaker 2: Is that this all seems a bit too convenient.
Speaker 1: A number one these images were unearthed by Belling Cat,
Speaker 1: which is certainly an organization with I would. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say, like a more neoliberal bent in Micraine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know it's a group that has been connected
Speaker 1: to the State Department in the US government. We're not
Speaker 1: above some conspiracy minds here. On the other hand, whenever
Speaker 1: we look at this, we see tattoos, including Dallas tattoo
Speaker 1: that's on the shooter's hand, compared to one taken from
Speaker 1: the scene that was released there they do those two
Speaker 1: appear to match? The name is it seems to match
Speaker 1: the in terms of the details that were released. We
Speaker 1: know that the right wing desk squad was included on
Speaker 1: the shooters vast that included in the photo here. So
Speaker 1: what is your take this? Like a do you think
Speaker 1: that it rings true? Possibly true? Again, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: withhold my judgment and look at it dispassionately. I can
Speaker 1: see why people have questions about this as to how
Speaker 1: it was on Earth and how quote unquote it looks
Speaker 1: a little bit too convenient. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: so many of the details do appear to add up
Speaker 1: here on the social media profile.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the.
Speaker 4: Likely answer is probably the I mean, the less suspect answer.
Speaker 4: It's probably just most likely that this is one of
Speaker 4: the very many mentally ill, mentally struggling people in this
Speaker 4: country who chose to act out this expression of their
Speaker 4: personal anguish in an incredibly tragic and awful way. And
Speaker 4: that's really not that hard for me to believe. And
Speaker 4: I mean, of course it happens every week. And in
Speaker 4: terms of the identity question, well, I mean this is
Speaker 4: again also not that hard to believe, because people's.
Speaker 3: Minds are swimming in garbage.
Speaker 4: So like this idea that you can come up with
Speaker 4: a Hispanic formulation for white supremacy in the media, I
Speaker 4: think we have this as an element.
Speaker 3: It's the last element in this block.
Speaker 4: You can see side by side here Washington Post Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal headline.
Speaker 2: Shown and put a eight there up on the screen. Yes,
Speaker 2: thank thanks Sagar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can see white supremacist views after eight killed.
Speaker 4: And this is on both of these I think it
Speaker 4: was on both of the front pages of the print
Speaker 4: editions yesterday too.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that is again it's misleading.
Speaker 4: It's out of context because if you don't know that
Speaker 4: the shooter is Hispanic, you have a completely different takeaway.
Speaker 4: At the same time, you have a guy with USS.
Speaker 2: Tattoos and a swastika and the swastika.
Speaker 4: And a lot of strange tattoos, a lot of strange beliefs.
Speaker 4: But given the sort of worldview that we're all swimming
Speaker 4: in right now, I don't think it's particularly strange to
Speaker 4: imagine that a confused and mentally ill person would get
Speaker 4: involved in an ideology like that.
Speaker 1: Right, So elon, apparently jumping on the train here, let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up there on the screen. Redheaded
Speaker 1: Libertarian tweeting out that quote it's a sy op, and
Speaker 1: it's not even good about questions around how exactly this
Speaker 1: guy's social media was profile was posted, He says, quote,
Speaker 1: this gets weirder by the moment. So again, I think
Speaker 1: I just want to spend some time and look at this.
Speaker 1: And given the fact that we have photos a face
Speaker 1: reveal by the gunman which appears to match the person
Speaker 1: we have the age, the way that this profile was
Speaker 1: actually found you can actually go check it for yourself,
Speaker 1: was by searching for the verified birthday of said person.
Speaker 1: Now the question is is why is this weirdo freak
Speaker 1: posting on the Russian social media website. Now, apparently this
Speaker 1: Russian rous social media website has zero content moderation. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons that Garcia has had problems with previous
Speaker 1: social media platforms in the past is it kept getting
Speaker 1: booted off of Facebook and of a normal US based
Speaker 1: social media companies because he was posting like weird hitlerized
Speaker 1: propaganda and Nazi inspired stuff. So that is a plausible
Speaker 1: explanation as to why he would be keeping some sort
Speaker 1: of odd video diary. I guess the only other theory
Speaker 1: that is out there is that this is some sort
Speaker 1: of plant and I mean, look.
Speaker 2: I guess it's technically possible.
Speaker 1: We should wait all of the facts that arise as
Speaker 1: to what we're going to see that the investigators release,
Speaker 1: whether they verify that these are social media profiles. I
Speaker 1: should say, there are some social there are some company
Speaker 1: or news organizations which claimed that they have verified that
Speaker 1: this social media profile does belong to this gunman. Now
Speaker 1: once again, it is certainly possible. One of the breadcrumbs
Speaker 1: that we had met was that the investigators had seized
Speaker 1: the laptop and the computer and the cell phone of
Speaker 1: the gunmen, and they were the ones actually who initially
Speaker 1: said it looks like he was into some crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: which is what prompted some of the investigations.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I think.
Speaker 1: This is all just a long way for me of
Speaker 1: saying of if you are out there and you are
Speaker 1: skeptical around this, I can tell you, like I spent
Speaker 1: hours of my life digging in seeing like where this
Speaker 1: social media profile came from, the verifiability, given the hand
Speaker 1: tattoos and all of that. The alternative explanations just don't
Speaker 1: pass the smell test to me. One of them was
Speaker 1: that this is some cartel related gun incident. The thing
Speaker 1: is is that the victims of this shooting one in
Speaker 1: is like a Korean family of four. By the way,
Speaker 1: the only surviving person of that family is a six
Speaker 1: year old child. And there's a gun, there's a gofund me.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put the GoF on me in the
Speaker 1: link here if we can. You know, we have an
Speaker 1: Indian woman, for example, like who was killed. It appears
Speaker 1: to be just completely indiscriminate. So in terms of victims,
Speaker 1: like why the cartel thing wouldn't make sense not saying
Speaker 1: that that there aren't innocent people who haven't been killed
Speaker 1: in cartel related violence, but I'm saying like, there doesn't
Speaker 1: even appear to be any link on this at all,
Speaker 1: we have the investigators themselves saying that this is some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, instigated attack by somebody with you know,
Speaker 1: far right views. And then on top of all of that,
Speaker 1: you know, from what we can see again in terms
Speaker 1: of the details. While I understand that this certainly will
Speaker 1: be used by people who you know, have a bone
Speaker 1: to pick on gun control and do a home monologue
Speaker 1: on this, or you know who want to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, white supremacy or whatever is the biggest problem
Speaker 1: that we face in the country, that doesn't necessarily negate
Speaker 1: some of the facts around the case. And I think
Speaker 1: that in general, instead, what we should try to do
Speaker 1: is have a productive conversation, not just to talk just
Speaker 1: about mental health, to honor some of the victims, including
Speaker 1: the small children three year old at one point and
Speaker 1: who were killed in this, and then try and arrive
Speaker 1: at some sort of consensus as to like who and
Speaker 1: what and what we can do about this as we
Speaker 1: move forward. Just to also show you, I know that
Speaker 1: there were some questions around the mugshot of this person.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: because this is this is what a lot of the
Speaker 1: initial confusion was around. So the two mugshots that you
Speaker 1: can see there on the right were the smugshots that
Speaker 1: were distributed on social media that appeared to.
Speaker 2: Match the name of the gunman.
Speaker 1: Now, those were never released by law enforcement, and so
Speaker 1: people were like, hey, the tattoos or whatever that were
Speaker 1: on this alleged gunman's social media profile don't match the
Speaker 1: mug shots that had been released or not released, that
Speaker 1: were initially distributed online. Now, this is also, i think
Speaker 1: is also a very long winded way of pointing out,
Speaker 1: don't believe everything you see on the internet. That's why
Speaker 1: it took you know, like we do this for a
Speaker 1: living at Lane, We're sitting there spending again literally hours
Speaker 1: being like, Okay, what's actually been released by the police. This,
Speaker 1: this is the name the Ties and right Wing Desquad.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's what we know.
Speaker 1: Now what was released from social media by a Belling Cat,
Speaker 1: which you know is definitely a suspect organization.
Speaker 2: Okay, Now just because released.
Speaker 1: By them doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it just
Speaker 1: means I'm going to scrutinize. It's like, okay, so I
Speaker 1: got this, and then I'm trying to match this up,
Speaker 1: and then where's the confusion coming from. I get where
Speaker 1: the confusion is coming from. Put that all together. To me,
Speaker 1: it appears to be the social media, the legitimate social
Speaker 1: media profile of the shooter. All of that said, all
Speaker 1: the questions as to whether he was some plant, people
Speaker 1: were like, oh, it's tattoos are fresh and all that.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think sometimes we try to apply a
Speaker 1: rational mindset to a psychotic killer.
Speaker 2: These people are freaks, like you.
Speaker 1: Know, mentally sane person murders eight innocent people in cold
Speaker 1: blood for no reason and then blogs and posts about it.
Speaker 3: And it's not going to make sense to you if
Speaker 3: they do.
Speaker 2: Ok, yeah, it will never make any sense.
Speaker 1: And actually the most disturbing part when you watch it,
Speaker 1: if anybody who's ever like watched videos of like truly
Speaker 1: mentally ill people or schizophrenics that they create, it's just
Speaker 1: like you. The reason why it's so foreign to us
Speaker 1: is because it's another planet. It's another world. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how I felt consuming this man's content.
Speaker 4: Well, and I mean, it strikes me as we're talking
Speaker 4: about it that this is not this is a story,
Speaker 4: because it's also a story about how we get the
Speaker 4: news now and that you have all of these people.
Speaker 4: Like listen, one of the best documentaries in the last
Speaker 4: ten years is Don't f with Cats.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 4: Okay, but you have a situation like that playing out
Speaker 4: on a micro level every single day, and every time
Speaker 4: there's a horrible tragedy like this. I mean, imagine, in
Speaker 4: all honesty if nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Had happened with Twitter. Yeah, I just like imagine.
Speaker 4: And so the alternative where you have total monopolized corporate
Speaker 4: media not great. But what we have right now is
Speaker 4: not great either, and it makes it really hard for
Speaker 4: us to litigate the truth in these circumstances without also
Speaker 4: getting bogged down in divisive, painful, and untrue politics at
Speaker 4: certain times.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, so let's go to the next part here,
Speaker 1: which is a more of a meta conversation.
Speaker 2: Can can Hispanics be white nationalists?
Speaker 1: Let's go to put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: The Rise of White Nationalists Hispanic Systems, written by Axios.
Speaker 1: This was kind of being passed around in a what's
Speaker 1: it like in a way where people were joking about
Speaker 1: the headline. I will admit that it does like sound
Speaker 1: ridiculous when you say it, and.
Speaker 2: Yet at the same time, we have to try and
Speaker 2: break it up.
Speaker 1: And this is actually why I think so many of
Speaker 1: our labels around all of this doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: at all, Like can you be a white nationalist Hispanic?
Speaker 1: It's like, well, one of the interesting things is because
Speaker 1: I am from Texas and I actually know third, fourth,
Speaker 1: and fifth generation Hispanics, is that the term white Hispanic
Speaker 1: does exist. And then you have people who have or
Speaker 1: are of Mexican descent but whose families have lived in
Speaker 1: Texas since before Texans came, but through intermarriage and all
Speaker 1: that ethnically identify as white.
Speaker 2: And so what do you do with that?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think in terms of our
Speaker 1: like box checks and all that. And this is also
Speaker 1: why I think all of our racial obsessiveness is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I am effectively just coming around to instead of can
Speaker 1: Hispanics be white nationalists? Can Hispanics or anyone else be
Speaker 1: far right? And I just think that that's a much
Speaker 1: easier and cleaner way of discussing it, Like like, what's
Speaker 1: to me the idea? You know, here's the other thing
Speaker 1: when you put it that way. Can Hispanics be fascist?
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever read the history of fascism?
Speaker 1: You know, where did all the Nazis go people? You know,
Speaker 1: it's not that hard to fail. Where were the last
Speaker 1: vestiges of like far right dictatorships you know throughout the world.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take a genius whenever you put it that way.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, there's all these questions about like
Speaker 1: why you would even be inspired by the SS or
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. Like once again, you know, many of these,
Speaker 1: you know, Latin American military dictatorships took direct inspiration actually
Speaker 1: from the Night. In some cases actually worked with the Nazis.
Speaker 2: Many of them.
Speaker 1: Even borrowed some of their ideology. Even many people don't
Speaker 1: know this. Even the Nazis themselves, like the SAS for example,
Speaker 1: had divisions and people who are within it who were
Speaker 1: not German and who were not even Aryan. You had
Speaker 1: like Serbia like Slavs who were members of the why
Speaker 1: because they bought into some you know, whatever the crazy
Speaker 1: ideology was, and it was actually kind of a controversy
Speaker 1: within the SS at the time. My point being is
Speaker 1: like people who are crazy, murderous, you know, uh, crazy
Speaker 1: murderous fascists are not always the most ideologically consistent, and
Speaker 1: so to me, I think it is easier to discuss
Speaker 1: and look at it as can Hispanics, can Blacks, can Indians?
Speaker 1: Can anyone be quote unquote far right can be inspired
Speaker 1: by fascist, non democratic politics be racially discriminatory.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's actually a very easy answer.
Speaker 4: Well, and I mean it depends on their definition of
Speaker 4: white nationalism, which is used all of the time in
Speaker 4: the super inflated sense. And now, of course in this
Speaker 4: case it looks like it hasn't been applied in an
Speaker 4: inflated sense. It looks like there's a legitimate case that
Speaker 4: this is somebody who believed he had an ideological formulation
Speaker 4: that allowed for Hispanics, as he says, in his own means,
Speaker 4: it's his own meme, to be white nationalists. So if
Speaker 4: he thinks he can come to that rational ideological formulation
Speaker 4: by all means to your point, though, by all means
Speaker 4: like that, that sounds like white nationalism to me. But
Speaker 4: to your point, it is what acxios seem to be
Speaker 4: doing with that article, and what you see on these
Speaker 4: front pages is this attempt to make it sound like
Speaker 4: something is extremely widespread when it is in fact a
Speaker 4: very small small percentage.
Speaker 3: Of the population.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that that can't be a dangerous, mobilized,
Speaker 4: animated percentage of the population. But we know right now
Speaker 4: that the establishment is inflating these definitions in order, very
Speaker 4: specifically to justify surveillance of people who have descending viewpoints.
Speaker 4: And so I think it's an interesting conversation, right, And
Speaker 4: we could sit here and talk about, you know, what
Speaker 4: constitutes Hispanic white nationalism all day, But when I see
Speaker 4: it coming from the press like this again, we can't
Speaker 4: have an honest conversation about it because what they're trying
Speaker 4: to do is just say, well, we actually need to
Speaker 4: surveil all of you because look, he's going to go
Speaker 4: to Russian social media.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is also why it is difficult. This is
Speaker 1: also why I hate racial terminology in the United States.
Speaker 1: For example, with Hispanic the typical definition, I think, according
Speaker 1: to the US Census is somebody who is a person
Speaker 1: of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or
Speaker 1: other Spanish descent. Now as Hispanics and people who are
Speaker 1: of quote Hispanic or Latino origin like to like to
Speaker 1: look at for example, if you are from Spain, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the odds are you are white and a
Speaker 1: mix of like Moore, Now.
Speaker 2: Are you Hispanic?
Speaker 1: I guess you know, under our definition, are you a
Speaker 1: Spanish American? Like, once again, this is where it starts
Speaker 1: to break apart, and then through our race kind of
Speaker 1: obsessed media, they'll say, like that person is somehow something
Speaker 1: in common with someone who is from Puerto Rico. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe five hundred years ago, not today, or same thing
Speaker 1: with Puerto Rico versus somebody from Columbia who barely has
Speaker 1: just as much in common with somebody who is from Honduras.
Speaker 1: Like just because you speak on the same language doesn't
Speaker 1: mean actually that anything is going on.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to Central America?
Speaker 1: I mean, even within Central America you have a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of ethnic diversity and the cultural practices.
Speaker 2: They're not all the same.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why whenever I think and and consider,
Speaker 1: you know, all of this, it just is easier to
Speaker 1: actually take that element out of it and say, can
Speaker 1: anyone who is on the internet be inspired by far
Speaker 1: right ideology far left ideology?
Speaker 2: Yes? Actually it seems it's quite clear.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, I think this is more of a
Speaker 1: meta conversation around how we can all discuss this without
Speaker 1: seeming like we want to blow our brains out. And
Speaker 1: it is a nuance and interesting question around ethnicity, around race,
Speaker 1: around identification, and around what multi racial, heterogeneous societies look like.
Speaker 1: I mean, one hundred and fifty years ago, if we
Speaker 1: were here in Washington, DC and we said that Irish
Speaker 1: people were white, you know, white Presbyterians would be like,
Speaker 1: what do you talk?
Speaker 2: Are you're crazy? No they're not, you know, they're different.
Speaker 1: Or and if you know, not even that long ago,
Speaker 1: if you said that, for example, Italians were white again,
Speaker 1: the Irish people be like.
Speaker 2: No, we're not.
Speaker 1: We had nothing in common with them one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: This all sounds ridiculous. So that's my point is that
Speaker 1: these things can evolve, and in reality, like it's more
Speaker 1: on us to try and make sense of this. And
Speaker 1: the last thing I guess I want to say is
Speaker 1: sometimes the semantics of the conversation themselves are so ridiculous
Speaker 1: because we haven't even spent enough time media and even
Speaker 1: here now just honestly honoring some of the victims. You know,
Speaker 1: some of these people were I mean, Korean American famili
Speaker 1: has been massacred. You got an orphan child, you got
Speaker 1: three year olds who were killed you have not only immigrants,
Speaker 1: but people who were born and raised here.
Speaker 2: Were murdered and cold blood their lives taken and ruined.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the alleged things that was
Speaker 1: said by the shooter was media always celebrates the people
Speaker 1: who is a shooter. They can't help themselves. The people
Speaker 1: who get killed never get as much attention. He literally
Speaker 1: said that in one of his alleged to social media musing.
Speaker 1: So you know, and sometimes, you know, it comes to
Speaker 1: the question of like should we even be talking about
Speaker 1: this person, But because it has become such like a
Speaker 1: meticultural talking point, I almost feel like we have no choice.
Speaker 1: But it's always difficult every single time one of these happens,
Speaker 1: and it is a horrific tragedy. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Emily A Secretary Pete budhaj Edge woke up, like I said,
Speaker 1: from a three year coma. He said, you know what,
Speaker 1: erl of travel has been so awful basically since the
Speaker 1: beginning of my administration and of my tenure. So I've
Speaker 1: decided to finally do something about it now that things
Speaker 1: actually have been more normalized and didn't do a goddamn
Speaker 1: thing during the entire worst part of the crisis. I
Speaker 1: guess better late than ever. President Biden apparently woke up
Speaker 1: to it. This is always my issue too with people
Speaker 1: like Buddhajedge and Biden. You people don't even fly commercial ya,
Speaker 1: that's an aligned private That's why you have no idea
Speaker 1: how bad it is out there. And it's not just
Speaker 1: for business travelers or people like me who fly a lot.
Speaker 1: It's like the families who were screwed on South Wet.
Speaker 1: Those are the people I feel for the most. People
Speaker 1: who plan vacations or honeymoons and they saved up all
Speaker 1: this money through COVID and you know you lose one
Speaker 1: day out of seven, that's your hard earned vacation time. Man,
Speaker 1: it's not a joke. I've watched people melt down in airport.
Speaker 1: I feel terrible for them, brides going on their honeymoons
Speaker 1: and things like that. Anyway, so here's Secretary of Boodhae Edge
Speaker 1: and President Biden talking a little bit about how they're
Speaker 1: going to fix it.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: The FAA and Department of Transportation are doing our part,
Speaker 7: but airlines need to accept their fundamental responsibility to better
Speaker 7: serve passengers. When they don't, we are here to enforce
Speaker 7: passenger rights and hold airlines accountable. In just over two years,
Speaker 7: this administration has delivered some of the most significant gains
Speaker 7: in airline passenger protections in decades. We have stepped up enforcements,
Speaker 7: rules and transparency. We've empowered passengers with better information. We've
Speaker 7: helped get a billion dollars in refunds and counting back
Speaker 7: to passengers. And we have secured enforceable commitments around customer
Speaker 7: service that didn't exist just a year ago.
Speaker 8: There's more. Last fall, the Department of Transportation proposed to
Speaker 8: rule that will be finalized this year. If finalized as proposed,
Speaker 8: it would require airlines to show you the full ticket
Speaker 8: price up front before you purchase it, including fees for baggage,
Speaker 8: for internet, for changing your seat. And I'm proud to
Speaker 8: announce two critical steps that my administration is taking to
Speaker 8: protect American air passengers. First, we just launched a new website,
Speaker 8: flights right dot gov. Flights right dot gov. It features
Speaker 8: a dashboard we created last fall to give travelers more
Speaker 8: transparency in the airlines compensation policies. So if it's the
Speaker 8: airline's fault and your flight was canceled delayed, you can
Speaker 8: check the dashboard to see how the airlines should be
Speaker 8: compensating you.
Speaker 2: He has the name behind him just so people don't
Speaker 2: know who don't. We're just listening.
Speaker 1: It's actually flight Rights dot gov, not flights right dot gov.
Speaker 3: You'll be shocked to dot gov.
Speaker 2: Dot Actually it doesn't make any sense anyway. So what
Speaker 2: are these.
Speaker 1: Proposed rules again? They're not even the new regulations going
Speaker 1: into effect. They're just proposals. Let's go and put them
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. That will require airlines to
Speaker 1: compensate air travelers and cover their meals in hotel rooms
Speaker 1: if they are stranded for reasons within the airline control
Speaker 1: and would be in addition to the ticket refunds when
Speaker 1: the airline is hit fault for the flight that's being
Speaker 1: canceled or delayed. Basically, these are the exact same protections
Speaker 1: that exist within the European Union. The problem is is
Speaker 1: that they a are writing the new rules, don't have
Speaker 1: a precise date for when they expect to finish quote,
Speaker 1: but indicate they.
Speaker 3: Are working to quickly publish.
Speaker 1: A notice that is required to get the process started.
Speaker 1: So not only did they wait two and a half
Speaker 1: years into their administration, Emily they didn't even finish the
Speaker 1: job of the proposal whenever they did the press conference,
Speaker 1: and they have no update.
Speaker 2: As to when they will be done.
Speaker 1: Listen, you know I have with buddhaj Edge, his level
Speaker 1: of incompetence, his lack of seriousness. It is so angering
Speaker 1: to me just because he was the chosen one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like starting.
Speaker 1: It's like were you are supposed to be, mister McKenzie.
Speaker 2: Mister I get things done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was only a small town mayor, but I
Speaker 1: have much more potential. He thought that the Office of
Speaker 1: Management and Budget was beneath him. He said, I want
Speaker 1: to be a secretary. I want to be a member
Speaker 1: of the cabinety. Give me transportation. And the reason why
Speaker 1: it's clear is he didn't actually want to do anything.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to fly around and cut ribbons and
Speaker 1: do nothing. And it turns out this is the first
Speaker 1: time in probably fifty years of the Transportation Secretary is
Speaker 1: one of the most important people in our government, not
Speaker 1: only because of the infrastructure Bill, but also because of
Speaker 1: the very basics like this two and a half years
Speaker 1: and they're still not even doing what they said that
Speaker 1: they're going to do. This is all literally just like
Speaker 1: some checkbox for a press conference and they're out of
Speaker 1: steplesness on this is just it's humiliating from a basic
Speaker 1: governance perspective. This is actually some stuff that the Trump
Speaker 1: administration would do. This actually reminds me of how the
Speaker 1: Trumpet straight used to govern well.
Speaker 4: But that's what I think is even doubly infuriating about it,
Speaker 4: is that you have Pete Boodha Judge play acting mister
Speaker 4: secretary on the camera. When I went back and looked
Speaker 4: at what was what he said around the Southwest Tobackle
Speaker 4: ro Conna was out there tweeting at the time, Bernie
Speaker 4: and I had a six months ago, told you guys
Speaker 4: to ratchet up fines and penalties on these airlines.
Speaker 3: And so why is that important?
Speaker 4: Because right now when he's saying that they don't have
Speaker 4: a finalized plan or date for the rest of this, well,
Speaker 4: that six month gap, how many people got crunched in it?
Speaker 4: Now whatever, how many months this is going to be,
Speaker 4: how many people are going to get crunched in it again.
Speaker 4: They don't want to actually do anything. They want to
Speaker 4: play act and have tough press conferences so that they
Speaker 4: can come out and say this administration has been very
Speaker 4: tough on the airline.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, you haven't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's like listen, I have flown several times
Speaker 1: since the Southwest meltdown. I actually was in Austin days
Speaker 1: after the Southwest meltdown.
Speaker 3: I was caught in Southwest Mountain. Really is because of
Speaker 3: Milwaukee DC.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing all the bags and all these people
Speaker 1: lined up to get their bag. And again we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of vacation. These poor people are lined up
Speaker 1: for hours trying to skate just to get their own luggage.
Speaker 1: Imagine how any stand alone with the privilege of proclaiming
Speaker 1: your own luggage after you already missed your flight. I
Speaker 1: was in the airport Christmas at that time. It was
Speaker 1: it was a complete nightmare personally, no people who had
Speaker 1: to drive hours and hours and heard so many stories.
Speaker 1: It's six months, almost six months now since that happened.
Speaker 2: And this is the first substance that thing you're doing.
Speaker 1: And oh and by the way, the FAA melted down
Speaker 1: to in between. Oh and by the way, we also
Speaker 1: had two near miss crashes on the tarmac. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. I was also in
Speaker 1: Austin the morning that that near miss happened. So maybe
Speaker 1: I'm maybe I'm the Jonah I guess, as they say
Speaker 1: in Master and Commander, my favorite movie.
Speaker 2: But put that all.
Speaker 1: Together, and you see that the spirit that he brought
Speaker 1: to this interview from about a year ago, it's still
Speaker 1: exactly the same.
Speaker 2: He still just to completely do nothing. Figure, here's what
Speaker 2: he had to say.
Speaker 9: Then, what about those lawmakers like Bernie Sanders Democrats in
Speaker 9: addition to him, who make the case that that fifty
Speaker 9: billion dollars that came with strings attached, and that the
Speaker 9: airlines when they do cancel on folks, when they do
Speaker 9: have folks waiting on the tarmac for X amount and
Speaker 9: out of hours, they should be fined heavily.
Speaker 7: Well, that's part of what we do as a department. Look,
Speaker 7: our preferred outcome is that the passenger doesn't have this
Speaker 7: problem in the first place. But when we find that
Speaker 7: an airline is, for example, failing to issue prompt refunds
Speaker 7: or in some other way not treating passengers fairly, we
Speaker 7: will act.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, a few.
Speaker 7: Months ago, we issued the stiffest fine in the history
Speaker 7: of our consumer protection program, and we have ongoing investigations
Speaker 7: about other practices again, we want things to go well,
Speaker 7: but when they don't, we will act.
Speaker 1: When they don't, we will act. That's a complete lie.
Speaker 1: You guys want to know when we did their segment
Speaker 1: about that July twenty five, fifth, twenty twenty two, it
Speaker 1: took him ten months just to get to the point
Speaker 1: where he's doing what they were asking him to do.
Speaker 1: At that point, how many literally hundreds of billions of
Speaker 1: lost productivity hours costs of nightmare has been now, you know,
Speaker 1: inflicted upon the American and global consumer Like this is
Speaker 1: once again, I want to say, their rules are not
Speaker 1: even going into place. It's May ninth, Summer holidays are
Speaker 1: going right around the corner. Me personally, I've got like
Speaker 1: eight flights I've got coming up in the next three months.
Speaker 1: I'm currently actually calculated around a twenty percent screw up rate,
Speaker 1: which is way higher than it used to be. It
Speaker 1: used to be that the delay rate and all that
Speaker 1: was around like twelve or fifteen percent, which is still
Speaker 1: way too high in my opinion, But you know, it
Speaker 1: was fine. Flying recently has just been a total nightmare,
Speaker 1: and it is also causing a lot of people to
Speaker 1: incur costs that they never would have before. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are eating two three four,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars in charges for paying for direct flights
Speaker 1: simply because they have no faith that they'll be able
Speaker 1: to get their connection. And then that's what rich people
Speaker 1: can do. And now you know, whenever you don't okay,
Speaker 1: now you're sleeping in a hotel for overnight. You know,
Speaker 1: if you if you miss your flight, oh, now you're
Speaker 1: in line with a bunch of people. So anyway, you
Speaker 1: look at this and it's just like the lack of
Speaker 1: the basic competence which they promised us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the rest is out the window.
Speaker 4: That was what Bran Biden was building back. It was
Speaker 4: building back better. But you know, I mean when people
Speaker 4: are why do people fly well? Because they have funerals
Speaker 4: to go? Do they have birthdays to go? Do they
Speaker 4: have special occasions? They have things that they've saved up,
Speaker 4: they're hard earned money for. And this is what our
Speaker 4: system looks like. And I think the really sad thing
Speaker 4: at the end of the day is that we.
Speaker 3: Are both overregulated and underregulated. And what does that amount to.
Speaker 3: We are just very poorly regulated.
Speaker 1: We're poorly regulated, but the airlines are richer than ever
Speaker 1: so don't worry.
Speaker 2: You know, they're doing great.
Speaker 3: They're buying they're buying back those stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, they are by stock back, and we are paying
Speaker 2: them for their privilege. What a country.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing country. Let's go to the next part here.
Speaker 1: Actually some decent news though we very rarely get to
Speaker 1: talk about here on the show.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: We had a big endorsement last night from former President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump on Truth Social He says, quote crickod Joe
Speaker 1: Biden has still not visited the incredible patriots of East Palaestine.
Speaker 1: Mayor Pete couldn't get out there fast enough. But that's okay.
Speaker 1: Our movement will be their voice. We will never forget them.
Speaker 2: JD.
Speaker 1: Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make
Speaker 1: sure nothing like this ever happens again. That's why it's
Speaker 1: so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act.
Speaker 1: JD's terrific bill has my complete and total endorsement. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why this is such a big deal is
Speaker 1: that this might be one of the few bipartisan areas
Speaker 1: in modern history where we.
Speaker 2: Might actually be able to get something done.
Speaker 1: Because don't forget only two months ago, President Biden endorsed
Speaker 1: the same bill. Put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: statement from President Biden on the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act
Speaker 1: of twenty three that was almost immediately released not only
Speaker 1: by JD. Vance, but we also had Sheriff Brown who
Speaker 1: was on there. We had John Fetterman, we had the
Speaker 1: Senators from Pennsylvania. We had a literal almost equal parts
Speaker 1: Democrat and Republican bill, Emily, something.
Speaker 2: You almost never seen.
Speaker 1: On stuff like this, especially on stuff like this, But
Speaker 1: now we're set up for a major titanic fight. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll be able to talk to Senator Vans on our
Speaker 1: Thursday show a little bit about this. But what we
Speaker 1: have to get to the bottom of here is the
Speaker 1: question of will the corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats acquiesce
Speaker 1: to this bill after heavy lobbying by the railway industry,
Speaker 1: because this is where it is a crazy bipartisan you know,
Speaker 1: nature to regulate them on this on this front. But
Speaker 1: also the caucus of people who have taken millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in donations from the railway industry is both right
Speaker 1: and left. We already know the Republican Chairman of the
Speaker 1: House Transportation Committee doesn't even want this bill to go
Speaker 1: for the power Yeah, I think is Troy Nell's yea.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is oh shocker.
Speaker 1: A libertarian at least whenever it comes to corporate issues,
Speaker 1: has long been a beneficiary of donations from the industry.
Speaker 2: They're Democrats to who have taken a lot of this money.
Speaker 1: And the major block right now is getting the institutional
Speaker 1: support of right and left behind this bill.
Speaker 2: When we have the.
Speaker 1: Crazy situation where the leading candidates in the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four race, the literal president of the United States and
Speaker 1: the ex president of the United States, are endorsing said bill.
Speaker 1: Why is this thing not passing tomorrow? There's no reason
Speaker 1: that it shouldn't be on the floor right now. The
Speaker 1: only reason it's not is because people like Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: and John Thune, corporate Republicans probably some corporate Democrats too
Speaker 1: that are in there, are not letting this thing actually
Speaker 1: come to the floor. And then even then corporate Republicans
Speaker 1: who are in the House of Representatives who are holding
Speaker 1: it up saying that they.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't pass it. You know, why are they standing against Trump?
Speaker 2: That should be the the question.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, but we'll see media doesn't want to talk
Speaker 4: about it in that context, obviously, but get you have
Speaker 4: the heads of both parties, the heads of both parties
Speaker 4: as you just mentioned, the former president, the sitting president.
Speaker 4: But more than that, they're the heads of their respective
Speaker 4: parties who are in favor.
Speaker 3: Of this bill.
Speaker 4: And I mean they're what National Review editorialized against the bill.
Speaker 4: John Thune has come out, who's a real industry guy,
Speaker 4: and said, oh gosh, no, we don't want to overregulate
Speaker 4: this industry.
Speaker 3: We were talking about this just earlier.
Speaker 4: It's true that there are burdens, some overly burdens, some
Speaker 4: regulations in rail.
Speaker 3: There's true. It's also true, though, that.
Speaker 4: There's incredibly lenient and lax regulations in rail. And this
Speaker 4: bill is a perfectly reasonable, like stop gap measure until
Speaker 4: we can completely go back to the drawing board, which
Speaker 4: is essentially what has to happen at this point. Because
Speaker 4: both of those excess regulations and lax regulations are carve
Speaker 4: outs from the industry.
Speaker 3: That's all you need to know at the end of
Speaker 3: the day.
Speaker 4: Where it's overregulated, why is that, Well, it's in many
Speaker 4: cases because really the big guys know they can hurt
Speaker 4: any other competitor by screwing around with regulations and where
Speaker 4: it's underregulated, well obvious, I don't even need to explain
Speaker 4: why they would want something to be underregulated, although you
Speaker 4: might have to explain it to National Review because they say, well,
Speaker 4: it's not in their market interest to be underregulated, to
Speaker 4: which you obviously would reply, they have a freakingness.
Speaker 1: Totally exactly, thank you for saying that, which is that
Speaker 1: it's in their interest because they have a monopoly. And
Speaker 1: we also remember that these have not been responsible corporate entities.
Speaker 1: Their profits have gone up by billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: the last decade, at the same time that they've been
Speaker 1: fighting for fighting against paid sick leave, sick time and
Speaker 1: vacation time for their hard working employees. That they've also
Speaker 1: poured said profits back into the purchase of their stock,
Speaker 1: so that the stock buybacks have made up a massive
Speaker 1: portion of their balance sheet at the very time that
Speaker 1: they should have been investing in infrastructure and in technology,
Speaker 1: which would have prevented possibly the train d rail mint
Speaker 1: in East Palacing. But at the very least, look at
Speaker 1: other countries, Look at Jered, look at even China.
Speaker 2: You know the amount of money that they.
Speaker 1: Pour into their railway infrastructure. I'm not saying we only
Speaker 1: need passenger high speed rail. I'm just saying, like, if
Speaker 1: we're going to have rail through which we move at
Speaker 1: dangerous chemicals, maybe we should make sure that they don't
Speaker 1: spill all the time. It turns out we have a
Speaker 1: one thousand trained derailments or something like that per on
Speaker 1: an annual basis here in the US. Compare that on
Speaker 1: a per capita per mile versus other countries, and they
Speaker 1: are laughing at the rest of us. And it's because
Speaker 1: we don't properly regulate these monopolies. They have to choose
Speaker 1: either we'd have a totally free market whenever it comes
Speaker 1: to railroads, which by the way, is not possible in
Speaker 1: their entire populist episodes in this entire country in the
Speaker 1: past of our country, specifically around railroads monopolies.
Speaker 2: We're talking about John D.
Speaker 1: Rockefeller and the power of the railroads and the gouging
Speaker 1: rates and all that. Like, we literally had the fight before,
Speaker 1: and we won. Actually the people won against the monopolists
Speaker 1: whenever it came to that. Now though we seem to
Speaker 1: have forgotten that lesson, and in the context also of
Speaker 1: what's happening with the airlines, you know, basically the new
Speaker 1: transportation monopolized infrastructure.
Speaker 2: It's like we haven't learned anything. The consumer always loses.
Speaker 4: Infrastructure is yes, the infrastructure is the most basic function
Speaker 4: of a government safety infrastructure the combination of both of them,
Speaker 4: and we to like bridge both of these segments between
Speaker 4: airlines and rail we cannot even do the most basic
Speaker 4: things despite being one of the wealthiest countries who ever
Speaker 4: exist on the face of the earth, one of the
Speaker 4: most technologically advanced societies who ever exist on the face
Speaker 4: of the earth. We cannot use all of these amazing
Speaker 4: resources that we have to do basic things anymore.
Speaker 3: And it's completely tragic.
Speaker 2: Right, it really is sad.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Look good news by Trump endorse it. So let's
Speaker 1: get this goddamn.
Speaker 3: It's huge news.
Speaker 4: And that's we'll keep people saying yeah it genuinely will keep.
Speaker 3: People saying yes it.
Speaker 2: Actually it literally a could save lives.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll all be a little bit better off knowing
Speaker 1: the chemicals and I bought be accidentally spilling, and that big,
Speaker 1: big billionaire railroad executives won't be getting fat paychecks. Well,
Speaker 1: cats are literally dropping dead in East pala steam. We
Speaker 1: haven't forgotten about that story, and we're going to continue
Speaker 1: to keep up on it. Like I said, hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: be able to get Senator Vance. We're working on it
Speaker 1: right now. In the show on Thursday, to discuss the bill,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and talk about the lab leak theory.
Speaker 1: So this is one where of course, you guys know
Speaker 1: you can't get enough lab leak here.
Speaker 3: And for me, you and Ryan are just like the
Speaker 3: lab leak because here's the thing.
Speaker 2: For me, Originally it was where tod COVID come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's layer one, but layer two is, well, whoa,
Speaker 1: what is this multi billion dollar infrastructure that exists for
Speaker 1: funding labs?
Speaker 2: That's actually a second layer.
Speaker 1: Third layer is Wait, this multi billion dollar infrastructure funded
Speaker 1: by the US government is completely unregulated, unsafe, and has
Speaker 1: been propagated by maniacs like doctor Fauci and ideologues who
Speaker 1: believe that genetically engineering dangerous viruses is going to make
Speaker 1: us more safe. Then you peel the layer back even
Speaker 1: more and you find out that it all traces back
Speaker 1: to the two thousand and one anthrax attack in October.
Speaker 1: And then you go a deeper level and find out
Speaker 1: that we never actually solved that so called attack or
Speaker 1: release or whatever you want to call it, and that
Speaker 1: there are some still very sketchy questions that multi billions
Speaker 1: of dollars were printed off of. Basically, we had almost
Speaker 1: a Patriot Act level of revolution in the sphere of
Speaker 1: bio defense.
Speaker 3: Was literally part of the Patriot Act.
Speaker 2: No, I know, but I'm saying it got no attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like everybody knows about the overreaches of the Patriot Act,
Speaker 1: of the dangers of the billions of dollars spent on
Speaker 1: fake tsa screening, nobody ever asked any questions, including me
Speaker 1: until twenty twenty one, basically when we were talking about
Speaker 1: lab leak in twenty twenty to say like where did
Speaker 1: all of this come from? So like, whenever you start
Speaker 1: to peel back the layers, you just see this like
Speaker 1: vast infrastructure of basically Jurassic Park playing out on a
Speaker 1: mass human scale.
Speaker 2: And the craziest part.
Speaker 1: Is, you know, using the Jurassic Park analogy, it's like
Speaker 1: we just had the dinosaurs escape from the cage, and
Speaker 1: all of us know the dinosaurs escape from the cage,
Speaker 1: and the answer from the scientific establishment is let's give amgen.
Speaker 1: I think that's the company even more money so they
Speaker 1: can genetically engineer even more vicious dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna do that.
Speaker 4: Don't you dare say we shouldn't be agin don't say
Speaker 4: that we shouldn't do to these dinosaurs, because if you do,
Speaker 4: you are an enemy of science.
Speaker 1: You're an enemy of science itself. So let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up there on the screen. Scientists currently linked
Speaker 1: to the Wuhan Lab are back in business because the
Speaker 1: US is renewing a grant for natural origins research to
Speaker 1: Eco Health Alliance. Now I've talked about this previously, but
Speaker 1: this is actually a new grant. Quote from EcoHealth Alliance,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of human serum samples in freezers
Speaker 1: around Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2: They will provide clues.
Speaker 1: We are resuming as of this month, the funding of
Speaker 1: the EcoHealth Alliance with Gain of Function Research in South
Speaker 1: East Stasia, the very same group that was funding the
Speaker 1: Wuhan Lab. Under the current terms of the grant, they
Speaker 1: will receive approximately six hundred thousand dollars for the next
Speaker 1: four years to continue work unquote bat origin coronaviruses. It
Speaker 1: is committed, however, to not subcontract its work to China.
Speaker 1: Instead it will just focus on Southeast Asia. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this isn't just existing samples, collecting new virus
Speaker 1: samples from the wild to engage in recombination aka gain
Speaker 1: of function research still headed by doctor Peter Dazak. For
Speaker 1: those who don't need the reminder or neither reminder, Doctor
Speaker 1: Peter Dazak was not only the conduit between doctor Fauci
Speaker 1: and the Wuhan Lab for funding. He was also emily
Speaker 1: a member of the World Health Organization team investigating lab leak,
Speaker 1: where they came to the conclusion that it was not
Speaker 1: a lab leak. The way he doctor Dazac arrived at
Speaker 1: this conclusion, by the way, is he asked the Chinese
Speaker 1: and they said it was not a labla and whenever
Speaker 1: even sixty minutes, was like, are you just taking the
Speaker 1: words for the Chinese.
Speaker 2: He's a British guy, and he said, well, what else
Speaker 2: can we do?
Speaker 1: And like, you know, I don't know, like circumstancel evidence,
Speaker 1: actually subpoenaing records.
Speaker 2: Within the who in your own organization. No, no, we
Speaker 2: can't do any of that. Okay.
Speaker 3: I like how you did him sort of a misdoubt fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's what was necessary. He actually is a
Speaker 1: clownish figure. I don't just mean that, I guess I
Speaker 1: do mean in a very mean way. Yeah, anyway, you
Speaker 1: should go watch the interview if you're interested.
Speaker 4: Well, the audacity though Peter Dazak is like unrelenting and
Speaker 4: somehow remarkable. It is. That's why he shouldn't be able
Speaker 4: to show his face in public after what he did,
Speaker 4: and yet he's being quoted with this like very arrogant take,
Speaker 4: like well, we're very glad to resume this type of
Speaker 4: blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me too of how badly the media
Speaker 1: has done a job here. So for example, if everybody
Speaker 1: remembers Valerie Plain, this was the household name in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousands, and the reason why is that she
Speaker 1: was a CIA agent. She was married to this ambassador,
Speaker 1: and the ambassador was linked to the yellow Cake uranium story.
Speaker 1: The point that I'm making is that's got the Bob
Speaker 1: I've got the Bobby Novack book behind you. Back in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands, after IRAQ WMD, the media actually
Speaker 1: did their job and said, how A, how do we
Speaker 1: get this so wrong? I'm not saying that they didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, apologize, but they at least investigated and household
Speaker 1: names were people who were intimately involved in the cover
Speaker 1: up of Iraq WMD, from the intelligence officials, just people
Speaker 1: like Scooter Libby.
Speaker 2: Like Valerie Plane.
Speaker 1: All of these were characters who Americans could tell you
Speaker 1: about because they knew the chain of events which led
Speaker 1: to the false story about WMD in Iraq, which led
Speaker 1: ultimately to the invasion. If you are not you know,
Speaker 1: online and consume our content or the Joe Rogan podcast,
Speaker 1: you don't know who Peter Dazak is. Sure you know
Speaker 1: who fount You is, but you don't know some of
Speaker 1: the secondary and frankly most important characters in this story.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put the next one up there on
Speaker 1: the screen, Richard Ebright, who, once again I want to
Speaker 1: give Richard a shout out. He is the Board of
Speaker 1: Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers. But
Speaker 1: the thing is is that Richard has been on the
Speaker 1: forefront of biosafety and pushing back against this vast behemoth
Speaker 1: for decades.
Speaker 2: I've cited him before.
Speaker 1: I found a quote of him as Scientific American back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, pushing back against biodefense research
Speaker 1: in the posts anthrax world, so probably we owe like
Speaker 1: if there was ever a Cassandra around this, like it's Richard,
Speaker 1: and he has also been on the forefront of this
Speaker 1: from the beginning. And as he currently points out, there,
Speaker 1: despite possibly having caused a pandemic and definitely having repeatedly
Speaker 1: and gravely violated terms of US government grant, EcoHealth Alliance
Speaker 1: currently has sixteen active US government grants and contracts, totally
Speaker 1: more than fifty seven zero point eight million dollars. And
Speaker 1: that's another thing that I want to emphasize. Not all
Speaker 1: of what we're funding Eco Health Health Alliance has to
Speaker 1: do with gain a function. Some of it actually traces
Speaker 1: back to what I alluded to, this shady like National
Speaker 1: bio Defense thing which is housed within the same you know,
Speaker 1: WMD office inside of the Pentagon that we know nothing
Speaker 1: about these agencies. They're basically black holes that have been
Speaker 1: operating with impunity now for twenty years, and the only
Speaker 1: reason that we even know anything about it is, oh,
Speaker 1: they've caused one of the worst pandemics that the world
Speaker 1: has ever known.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, there's that, And there's also this question of
Speaker 4: like the media knows that the stuff exists and Ken
Speaker 4: and Ken segment will talk a little bit about this,
Speaker 4: like they note exists, they don't ask any questions about
Speaker 4: it because partially, if you do ask questions about any
Speaker 4: of this, you're a crazy conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 3: And Peter Dazac, who's being quoted in the article that
Speaker 3: was just up on the screen, was.
Speaker 4: Colluding with Fauci and with Francis Collins to cast anybody
Speaker 4: who was suspicious of the Eco Health Alliance grant being
Speaker 4: used in Wuhan partially with American tax payer money that
Speaker 4: we could talk about as a conspiracy theorist. And so
Speaker 4: that's how they've been able to shield themselves impenetrably from criticism.
Speaker 4: We'll have sort of independent media talking about this, but
Speaker 4: basically nobody else gives it airtime because the government itself
Speaker 4: will collude with the Pentagon with the media to make
Speaker 4: shut down any questions of it, or to have the
Speaker 4: very least ostracized you and passed you as a crazy
Speaker 4: person if you happen to have questions about to your point, Sager,
Speaker 4: they'll even tell you how important this research is.
Speaker 3: Well, if it's so important, then maybe you should have
Speaker 3: a little bit of transparency.
Speaker 2: Well said.
Speaker 1: We talked a lot here about AI regulation, what AI
Speaker 1: regulation might and should look like. I've done monologues, so
Speaker 1: it is crystal about what you know, how we balance
Speaker 1: free speech concerns and political correctness with the genuine fear
Speaker 1: that technological development will overpass us and could possibly supplant us.
Speaker 1: So of course what you want whenever we're talking about
Speaker 1: AI regulation, Emily is the best and the brightest who
Speaker 1: are involved.
Speaker 2: And because of that, it seems of the White House
Speaker 2: taking heed.
Speaker 1: They're taking heed about how seriously they want to take
Speaker 1: this issue.
Speaker 2: And so they put Kamala Harris in charge, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: they say, Biden and Harris are meeting with CEOs about
Speaker 1: AI risks. They met with the heads of Google, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and two other companies involving in developing artificial intelligence as
Speaker 1: they are rolling out their initiatives meant to ensure the
Speaker 1: rapidly evolving technology improved lives without putting people's lives at risks.
Speaker 2: During that, they had this weird and bizarre drop.
Speaker 1: In by President Biden into the meeting, which was totally
Speaker 1: just a non plan drop in. Right, we always have
Speaker 1: cameraman pointing at the door with subtitles that are ready
Speaker 1: whenever somebody does drop into a meeting.
Speaker 2: President Biden came in.
Speaker 1: Here's what he had to say about Aire.
Speaker 5: No one has an enormous potential. I know you understand that,
Speaker 5: and I hope you can educate us.
Speaker 8: What you see is mostly tech society as well as
Speaker 8: to advage really really important.
Speaker 2: So a lot of platitudes. Still not really sure what's happening.
Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say we should just pause there,
Speaker 4: and he was asking industry leaders. That's like going, you know,
Speaker 4: to a bunch of railway barons and saying, I'm really curious.
Speaker 3: I want you to tell us what we need to
Speaker 3: do to protect the people from this.
Speaker 4: And so that in and of itself is amusing, but
Speaker 4: it actually reminded me as we were talking. I did
Speaker 4: an interview with Nita Farahani recently, who's super interesting, has
Speaker 4: that new book Battle for Your Brain Out. She actually
Speaker 4: said she was on a commission on bioethics and the
Speaker 4: Aboma administration Trump dissolves the commission. She said to me,
Speaker 4: I was incredibly surprised that President Biden, who our commission
Speaker 4: met with under the Obama administration didn't after he took
Speaker 4: office create his own counsel or commission, despite the fact
Speaker 4: that there had been this gap during the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: And so again we have our leaders being caught completely
Speaker 4: flat footed by the fact that GPT. Obviously, it took
Speaker 4: a lot of people by storm, a lot of people
Speaker 4: weren't prepared for how quickly it was going to move.
Speaker 4: It is now the fastest growing social media platform of
Speaker 4: all time. Like, if you look at the chart, it's
Speaker 4: just nuts. You have like Facebook, Twitter, right, Yeah, in
Speaker 4: terms of daily it's insane how quickly it caught on.
Speaker 4: But again, when you were going to talk to industry
Speaker 4: leaders and ask them to protect the consumer, that's how
Speaker 4: you get caught flat footed because they think they're fine
Speaker 4: and the arrogance of the AI industry has been there's
Speaker 4: been cracks in it, and we've covered that, You've covered
Speaker 4: that a lot. That you have a lot of people
Speaker 4: who are in the industry who are like hinted, who
Speaker 4: have recently left the industry, who have different opinions about this.
Speaker 3: Well, why did he leave Google Because.
Speaker 4: He didn't think he could be an effective advocate for
Speaker 4: the protections that people need inside Google and I think
Speaker 4: that's when you see the President turning to Microsoft and
Speaker 4: Google appointing. Actually, it's a pretty fitting appointment for Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris because in some ways she really is the champion
Speaker 4: of artificial intelligence in a very literal sense.
Speaker 1: The funny problem to have talked about this with regulation is,
Speaker 1: of course Microsoft and Google will want regulation and licenses
Speaker 1: for people who are new entrants, because what they want
Speaker 1: to do is they want to come and they want
Speaker 1: to roll up the existing AI market incorporated into their
Speaker 1: search and battle it out against each other. And then
Speaker 1: basically what they would want is regulate.
Speaker 2: All of their up and coming competitors. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: the regulation is an answer.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that their type of regulation that they appeared
Speaker 1: to like the most is one which definitely would be
Speaker 1: a helping hand to the monopolists, whereas, let's say we
Speaker 1: had proper antitrust legislation on the books. Here's an interesting
Speaker 1: history for everybody involved Microsoft. Microsoft was actually sued under
Speaker 1: the Clint administration for antitrust.
Speaker 2: Now that suit.
Speaker 1: Itself, even though it was dropped by the Bush administration.
Speaker 1: Microsoft felt compelled not to enter certain markets at that time,
Speaker 1: specifically because they were concerned that by doing so, they
Speaker 1: might add to the monopolistic argument and to the case
Speaker 1: that was being brought against them by the DOJ.
Speaker 2: So, once again, not even a successful case.
Speaker 1: Just the pressure of political pressure itself was enough to
Speaker 1: make sure that they didn't get involved. Now, let's say
Speaker 1: that we had proper AI legislation, or even monopoly legislation
Speaker 1: on the books.
Speaker 2: Google not even as allowed to get into AI, not even.
Speaker 1: Allowed to try and pursue AGI whenever it comes to
Speaker 1: their search products.
Speaker 2: Same with Microsoft.
Speaker 1: You know, these companies would be so big that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't even be considering it. Well, imagine that world, a
Speaker 1: world where Chat, Shept and open Ai remain open instead
Speaker 1: of ten billion dollar multi billion dollar companies who are
Speaker 1: partnering with existing corporate giants. Now we have a startup,
Speaker 1: a brand new competitor, and then we have all these
Speaker 1: other different startups and competitors that might actually revolutionize search
Speaker 1: and change things, where Google at the very least would
Speaker 1: be able to have to pay for it, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're not even blocked by that. We could have a
Speaker 1: different licensing regime. We have to go back and think
Speaker 1: about the web and if we think AI is as
Speaker 1: revolutionary as the web.
Speaker 2: What went wrong with the web?
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that went wrong is
Speaker 1: if we think about nineteen ninety eight being on the Internet,
Speaker 1: We're all having an awesome time.
Speaker 2: It's super cool. People are checking out different websites. They're like,
Speaker 2: have we chocked out this website?
Speaker 1: That website It hadn't been rolled up yet, and you know,
Speaker 1: Yahoo and all these other directories. They weren't even really
Speaker 1: search It was more like a list of cool websites
Speaker 1: that were around.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: There were genuine communities, There was a serious free speech,
Speaker 1: and there was the idea this will lead to you know,
Speaker 1: all these great ideas and creativity and freedom.
Speaker 2: And then what happened. It got corporatized.
Speaker 1: It got rolled up effectively both by Google, by Facebook,
Speaker 1: by Twitter, and the vast majority of web traffic and
Speaker 1: our experience on the web happens through portals of let's say,
Speaker 1: like five to ten different websites. That actually is what
Speaker 1: was the opposite of what people predicted in kind of
Speaker 1: the early days of the kind of crypto libertarianism that
Speaker 1: sprung up from the early nineteen nineties Internet. Why would
Speaker 1: we choose emily to go down and do the exact
Speaker 1: same thing whenever it comes to AI.
Speaker 2: You would never choose to do.
Speaker 4: That, No, we wouldn't, but this headline might give you
Speaker 4: some some answers. This is from June twenty second, twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, so it is a couple of years ago
Speaker 4: in Washington post Biden administration, full of officials who worked
Speaker 4: for prominent tech companies. The ties are most prominent at
Speaker 4: the White House, where thirteen aids, some of them with
Speaker 4: the ear of the President, have previously worked for Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Lift, Microsoft, Twitter,
Speaker 4: or Uber. That's pretty much the answer to the question,
Speaker 4: because the way that Washington works is when you do
Speaker 4: have the ear of the president, you know, it's known
Speaker 4: that you may have had ties to the industry or whatever,
Speaker 4: but it runs on like goodwill. And if you have
Speaker 4: built up this bank of goodwill, you've been a loyal
Speaker 4: foot soldier to the president. Your friends at Google, your
Speaker 4: former co workers are chirping in your ear about how
Speaker 4: it's actually going to be a disaster if you regulate it.
Speaker 4: We're going to fall behind China, which has very heavily
Speaker 4: regulated AI and is developing it. And there are all
Speaker 4: these national security concerns. If you have that person chirping
Speaker 4: in your ear, and you go tell the president that
Speaker 4: your message gets priority over any other message. And so
Speaker 4: it's not just that people are paying cash bribes, obviously,
Speaker 4: but it's more that like you have the influence and
Speaker 4: you have the amplified voice over everybody else. And so
Speaker 4: Biden coming to them and saying, you know you're Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris said the same thing. They said, you have ethical
Speaker 4: obligations here. What you're doing could be very dangerous. Great,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? But Joe Biden does not understand
Speaker 4: artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: I would be surprised.
Speaker 2: I mean I barely do.
Speaker 1: The whole point is that we need real experts who
Speaker 1: don't have any who don't have any stake in the companies,
Speaker 1: to be making the legislation, not the other way around,
Speaker 1: which actually brings me to the next point and some
Speaker 1: really interesting news. Actually, sal Kan of con Academy, let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up there on the screen, is
Speaker 1: actually piloting a version of chat GPT called con Mingo,
Speaker 1: and it's a new tool trained to act as a
Speaker 1: tutor and.
Speaker 2: A teacher's assistant.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting managed version of the open AI platform.
Speaker 1: That quote can help guide students in their studies, not
Speaker 1: enable them to cheat. A pilot currently running with a
Speaker 1: handful of schools and districts to try and test the software.
Speaker 1: The thing is about con Solcon and con Academy is
Speaker 1: obviously the revolutionary revolutionized like initial tutoring with YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, even watching some of his videos
Speaker 1: back when I was going through late high school and
Speaker 1: throughout college, and a lot of STEM people I know
Speaker 1: were just absolutely obsessed with it, and with Wolf from
Speaker 1: Alpha you know things and brands like this by looking
Speaker 1: at it and how he is developing this technology. What
Speaker 1: they're trying to do is have, like they say, engage
Speaker 1: in conversation, even with voices of literary characters, to serve
Speaker 1: as debate partners, to guide students through math problems, to
Speaker 1: help debug code. And I wanted to pair this, I
Speaker 1: think with the previous one because one of the places
Speaker 1: where I see the most hope Emily is in helping
Speaker 1: revolutionize education because education is bogged down by bureaucracy and
Speaker 1: busy work through pop quizzes and bs.
Speaker 2: It's all fake and we all know it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about you know, online homework assignments like you
Speaker 1: remember did you take intro to econ those e coon courses.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about the economy.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, actually, anybody who's ever taken like intro to
Speaker 1: macroeconomics or whatever, this is all sanitized homework that you're
Speaker 1: doing on a computer program that your university has licensed,
Speaker 1: and that you're not learning anything. They're like, there are
Speaker 1: very basic questions where you know they code in some
Speaker 1: ways that you can't cheat, and it's all just checkbox.
Speaker 2: Same with statistics.
Speaker 1: If I remember my statistics statistics courses where the quizzes
Speaker 1: and all that, it was just nonsense, like it wasn't
Speaker 1: conceptually getting into anything. What I hope is that AI
Speaker 1: will destroy all busy work because it would be ridiculous
Speaker 1: to even sign it when you know it is so
Speaker 1: easily cheated on, and instead in my statistics statistics classes
Speaker 1: or macrorec nomics classes, instead of doing box checks from textbooks, we'd.
Speaker 2: Be like, what is GDP? Why does it matter?
Speaker 3: You can ask Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm saying we want in the course.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, laptop clothes, I'm sitting with a professor, like,
Speaker 1: explain this to me in terms that I can understand.
Speaker 1: In a real dialogue instead of six seven hundred people
Speaker 1: in a classroom all looking at some stupid PowerPoint, everyone
Speaker 1: fake taking notes and then fake doing homework and we're
Speaker 1: all just you know, gaming our GPA so we can
Speaker 1: go work at Mackenzie afterwards.
Speaker 2: Like this is this is why it's like I want
Speaker 2: that dead and gone.
Speaker 1: And from what I've heard with the destruction of CHEG
Speaker 1: bringing back in person essays written by hand, I love that.
Speaker 1: Love that, like courses and stuff written by hand Emily
Speaker 1: and removing busy working and bringing back socratic discussion in
Speaker 1: classroom we might actually learn something.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. Actually, yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Like there's doom and gloom about generative as this is
Speaker 4: what I'm happy.
Speaker 3: This is good stuff. Walter Russell Mead had a great
Speaker 3: piece of tablet yesterday. Don't if you read it.
Speaker 4: It's called you are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times,
Speaker 4: And the way he frames it is like, listen, the
Speaker 4: reality here in the same way that this is the
Speaker 4: reality in the Oppenheimer era, is that this is a
Speaker 4: massive rate of change. It's happening over the course of
Speaker 4: your lifetime, whether you like it or not. And so
Speaker 4: that means some of it's going to be really, really dangerous,
Speaker 4: and some of it can be harnessed and channeled for
Speaker 4: the good of mankind. When you look at Jennit of
Speaker 4: Ai and you look at the state of our education system,
Speaker 4: which we're going to be talking about a little later
Speaker 4: in the show. You posted last week the crazy history
Speaker 4: scores for eighth graders plummeting in the United States. Well,
Speaker 4: how much history homework do students do That is rendered
Speaker 4: basically completely useless. If you send them home in a
Speaker 4: world with chat GPT, they can get one hundred percents
Speaker 4: on that stuff. So like their radical change is going
Speaker 4: to have to happen right now, no matter what. And
Speaker 4: if we can actually come to the question of education
Speaker 4: with a new mindset because we are being forced by
Speaker 4: a stupid robot to prevent kids from cheating, then by
Speaker 4: all means like bring it on, that sounds great.
Speaker 1: I mean, And the questions that they include in these
Speaker 1: history exams are just so stupid and they really do
Speaker 1: not help anyone in any way. It's just wrote memorization.
Speaker 1: So I've pulled up, for example, from the a Push exam,
Speaker 1: the ap US History exam. Here are some samples from
Speaker 1: the free response questions. Okay, so they will give quotes
Speaker 1: and they'll say, you know, to respond to different excerts,
Speaker 1: describe a major difference between this excerpt and another expert's
Speaker 1: historical interpretations of the New Deal, or briefly explain how
Speaker 1: one event or development from nineteen thirty two to nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty forty five is not explicitly mentioned in excerts that
Speaker 1: could be used to support in argument. This is an
Speaker 1: arguments published in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Around the New Deal.
Speaker 1: This leads to just rote memorization and wrote memorization is
Speaker 1: just the worst possible thing that you could try. And
Speaker 1: you know, you could try and give people like other
Speaker 1: examples that I've seen is they'll they'll be like, what
Speaker 1: here are four read like like, which of these reasons
Speaker 1: is why America abolished slavery?
Speaker 3: You can't multiple choice that.
Speaker 1: It's like there are It's a multifaceted question that which
Speaker 1: requires us all sitting down and reading a range of
Speaker 1: different books from the original perspective to the postmodern perspective,
Speaker 1: and you know, reconciling which has validity and not historically
Speaker 1: and all of us would come up with a different
Speaker 1: answer why was America founded in the first Why did
Speaker 1: America ditch the Articles of Confederation? Like we all have
Speaker 1: these stupid history textbook answers. That's it's much more complicated
Speaker 1: than that.
Speaker 4: But well, yeah, and this is the lesson of the
Speaker 4: Articles of Confederation is not that there was another constitution
Speaker 4: named the Articles of Confederation, And that's what history teaches
Speaker 4: you to memorize, as opposed to like you actually truly
Speaker 4: internalizing what happens, like, well.
Speaker 1: We had this idea we have fought a revolution to
Speaker 1: have less power in the hands of the federal government.
Speaker 1: Maybe we took it too far, and then there was
Speaker 1: a rebellion, and then in the context of that, we said, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to have a constitution convention and we're going
Speaker 1: to try and figure this thing out, which was very
Speaker 1: different from the original conception. That's pretty interesting whenever you
Speaker 1: kind of get into it a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: how we arrived at the Bill of Rides and the
Speaker 1: Constitution and all the stuff that we eventually all lived
Speaker 1: under now for over two hundred and fifty years. That's
Speaker 1: a story where you might actually get kids to look
Speaker 1: up rather than like you just said, well.
Speaker 2: Well we had this thing and then we ditched it.
Speaker 2: Thirteen years later, we all still sing that. What's the song?
Speaker 2: Like the School of Rocks?
Speaker 3: Oh the Yeah, both of us are public school kids. Mostly.
Speaker 3: I used to just like mercilessly mock homeschool kids. Obviously
Speaker 3: because I still do. I'm a bully. Yeah, No, they
Speaker 3: deserve it. In many cases.
Speaker 4: We're speaking as people.
Speaker 3: Who know a lot of home steal kids.
Speaker 4: But that said, when I talk to them now and
Speaker 4: realize how much better their educations were than what I got.
Speaker 4: Not everyone, but when I talked to them, it just
Speaker 4: like blows my mind and I feel like I lost
Speaker 4: out on something. And so if we can, because if
Speaker 4: the robot forces us to educate ourselves in a way
Speaker 4: that makes us better regulators of robots in the future
Speaker 4: generations have more civic mindedness, more socratic learning. I'm not optimistic,
Speaker 4: but to your point, Sager, if anything pushes us.
Speaker 3: To that, it's this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope that it does.
Speaker 1: This actually is what college education in America used to
Speaker 1: look like pre basically bureaucratization post nineteen forty five. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of interesting reasons as to why that happened,
Speaker 1: money probably being number one and if there is one
Speaker 1: hope as to how we can escape it, this is
Speaker 1: what it is. Let's go to the last part here.
Speaker 1: Had to throw this in because Emily is here a
Speaker 1: resident culture war expert.
Speaker 2: I think let's go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen.
Speaker 1: A California reparations panel has okayed a state apology and payments.
Speaker 3: They caut apology first.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of funny. They say, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and get into it here a little bit. California's Reparation's
Speaker 1: Task Force has voted Saturday to approve recommendations on how
Speaker 1: the state may compensate and apologies to black residents for
Speaker 1: generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies. The nine member committee,
Speaker 1: convened two years ago, has given final approval at this
Speaker 1: meeting in Oakland to a list of proposals that now
Speaker 1: go to state lawmakers to consider for reparations legislation. Barbara
Speaker 1: Lee is actually co sponsoring this bill in Congress to
Speaker 1: study restitution proposals for African Americans. Reparations are not only
Speaker 1: morally justifiable, they say, but they have the potential to
Speaker 1: address long standing racial disparities. One of the recommendations included
Speaker 1: here in the legislation Emily is payments apparently up to
Speaker 1: a million dollars in some cases per resident. Now, I
Speaker 1: think this is always a hot topic. It's what people
Speaker 1: feel very strongly about, and it's one where I think
Speaker 1: it really bears scrutiny in terms of not just Black Americans.
Speaker 2: How do all Americans generally feel about this issue? The
Speaker 2: polling on it is actually quite complicated.
Speaker 1: One of the better approximations that I try to come
Speaker 1: to is affirmative action. So affirmative action effectively is like
Speaker 1: an in kind, like an in kind acknowledgment of discrimination
Speaker 1: and of It's almost like in kind reparations. Can we
Speaker 1: agree on that definition? I think that's fair. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead put this out there.
Speaker 3: That's the explicit ambition of its writers.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: And so Yet in California, remember this in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the same time as this so called Reparations Council was formed.
Speaker 2: Well, guys, on a voter.
Speaker 1: Levels, fifty seven percent of Californians, some ten million people
Speaker 1: voted against affirmative action. They voted against bringing affirmative action
Speaker 1: back in college admissions. So I think that this is
Speaker 1: a great approximator of how Californians, some of the most liberal,
Speaker 1: democratic minded people in the country, even they don't agree
Speaker 1: with affirmative action. And there we're talking about in kind
Speaker 1: effective racial benefits within the state system. Now we're talking
Speaker 1: about straight up cash. Now again, whenever it comes to
Speaker 1: the polling on this issue, it is somewhat complicated, and
Speaker 1: we had our team do a good job.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put E three up there please on
Speaker 1: the screen. To the best of our ability. Whenever it
Speaker 1: comes to the view of reparations and all of that,
Speaker 1: some seventy seven percent of Black Americans, compared with eighteen
Speaker 1: percent of white Americans do support reparations specifically for the
Speaker 1: descendants of enslaved people all of US adults, though, the
Speaker 1: answer comes to no sixty eight percent and yes at
Speaker 1: thirty percent. For White Americans it's eighty and then eighteen
Speaker 1: for yes. Black Americans it's seventeen No, seventy seven Yes,
Speaker 1: Hispanic Americans fifty eight thirty nine, Asian Americans sixty five, no,
Speaker 1: thirty three. Amongst age groups, it's actually unsurprisingly kind of
Speaker 1: split up fifty two forty five for ages eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty nine. The majority, but slight majority saying no, who
Speaker 1: are younger thirty to forty nine is sixty three to
Speaker 1: thirty four, seventy four, twenty four.
Speaker 2: Eighty one and eighteen.
Speaker 1: Now, in terms of the general polling here, there's some
Speaker 1: changes whenever it comes to income, which I find kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So if you ask lower income Americans, the
Speaker 1: slight majority are still against fifty four versus forty two.
Speaker 1: Middle income Americans it's seventy four and twenty four, and
Speaker 1: upper income Americans seventy two and twenty seven. So lower American,
Speaker 1: lower income Americans more kind of on board with reparations.
Speaker 1: Middle and upper middle class Americans generally against it. So
Speaker 1: I think it's important to put in the context of
Speaker 1: in general, this is a quote unquote divisive policy on
Speaker 1: the merits just whenever you look at it in terms
Speaker 1: of California itself, they have already rejected and voted against
Speaker 1: this effective type of policy. So then the question is
Speaker 1: is that is this solving the problem problem that we
Speaker 1: want to solve, and the problem that we want to
Speaker 1: solve is that we have had racial discrimination in this
Speaker 1: country that has manifested itself in economic disparity.
Speaker 2: Now, what is the best way to do that.
Speaker 1: If you were to look at this policy, you would
Speaker 1: posit then that solving racial discrimination through economic inequities that
Speaker 1: have manifested is to have direct cash payments of some
Speaker 1: x sum to specifically black Americans, with an acknowledgement that
Speaker 1: what has happened there is obviously a moral crime. It
Speaker 1: must be rectified. However, and I would posit this, and
Speaker 1: this is my kind of view of this. I wish
Speaker 1: Crystal was here. I would like to hear it.
Speaker 3: Also what she had to say, we need, we need
Speaker 3: more white people in this country.
Speaker 2: You're right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And actually though, that's what it gets to you is
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we are talking about
Speaker 1: taxpayer money. We are talking about a democratic problem, a
Speaker 1: small d democratic problem. So we all do kind of
Speaker 1: get to say as to how we want to address
Speaker 1: rights and wrongs that are all been done in our name.
Speaker 2: And the way that I've always looked at is this.
Speaker 1: If you look at the lower income Americans that I reference,
Speaker 1: they disproportionately include Hispanic Black and lower middle class and
Speaker 1: lower class White Americans. The wage gap between lower income white,
Speaker 1: Hispanic and Black Americans is effectively marginal. So I would
Speaker 1: pause it then that if you want to address racial inequity,
Speaker 1: one of the best things that you can do is
Speaker 1: just simply help all poor people, because what will happen
Speaker 1: is that you will both increase the livelihood, the opportunity,
Speaker 1: and the disparity of past wrongs that were done, yes,
Speaker 1: specifically only to Black Americans, but you will also at
Speaker 1: the same time help lower middle class, lower income Hispanic
Speaker 1: and white Americans. And instead of pitting set groups against
Speaker 1: each other, you actually end up helping everybody. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: this is better easier said than done. It involves possibly
Speaker 1: minimum wage increases, maybe it involves cast transfers, maybe it
Speaker 1: involves tax credits, a variety of myriad different ways that
Speaker 1: we could go about this.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of the framework where I'm coming at
Speaker 2: it from.
Speaker 1: And I would say also that the framework that I'm
Speaker 1: coming at it from is dramatically more politically popular.
Speaker 2: And why does political popularity.
Speaker 1: Matter, Because we're living in a democracy, we don't live
Speaker 1: in a unilateral dictatorship.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I think two things are absolutely true, and they can
Speaker 4: be true at the same time. One that generational wealth
Speaker 4: disparities are very real and are very directly and obviously
Speaker 4: the results of explicit white supremacist discrimination policies that were
Speaker 4: baked into our constitutional system for far too long. On
Speaker 4: the other hand, I think it's also true that there's
Speaker 4: no way to meet out a reparations policy with a
Speaker 4: semblance of justice, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: proving this is going to be extremely difficult in a
Speaker 4: country where everyone is so mixed and has been mixed
Speaker 4: for years and years and years and years. So what
Speaker 4: justifies why one person there are people who are We're
Speaker 4: getting into the grossness, the just absolutely repulsive, one drop
Speaker 4: disgusting type racial science at a certain point, because what
Speaker 4: justifies somebody who is completely white, probably looks like me,
Speaker 4: who's able to trace their ancestry back to slavery? And
Speaker 4: that's California does directly redlining in this proposal that you
Speaker 4: get X number of money up a certain year. If
Speaker 4: you're for each year you were affected by redlining policy
Speaker 4: in California, probably easy to prove, and it can probably
Speaker 4: be proved more directly.
Speaker 3: Than slavery itself.
Speaker 4: But you're then going to take from Hispanic taxpayers money
Speaker 4: and give them you may be forced to give them
Speaker 4: to people who look exactly like me and whose family
Speaker 4: has been in this country long enough to have been,
Speaker 4: for instance, likely on many sides of this conflict.
Speaker 1: This is exactly why I think that trying to parse
Speaker 1: all this is so ludicrous. And once again I would say,
Speaker 1: I am not against helping poor black people or all
Speaker 1: poor people in this country. In fact, though, and this
Speaker 1: is why you know, trying to parse this and I've
Speaker 1: never necessarily wanted to, but I think, you know, possibly
Speaker 1: are forced to. Is you know what, there's better evidence
Speaker 1: to say that the worst economic hit that ever happened
Speaker 1: to black Americans was the two thousand and eight recession. Actually,
Speaker 1: the greatest wipeout of black wealth in the history of
Speaker 1: the United States happened in two thousand and eight. It
Speaker 1: actually was not you know, necessarily redlining policies from Jim Crow.
Speaker 1: As we're discussing repulsive of that bait. I'm not even
Speaker 1: necessarily comparing applestorm. What I'm saying, though, is that whenever
Speaker 1: we talk then about addressing you know, black wealth and
Speaker 1: making it so that we can restore people to some
Speaker 1: sort of equality, not necessarily in terms of outcome, but
Speaker 1: in terms of opportunity, I would again then have to
Speaker 1: come back to the idea that we should look at
Speaker 1: the policies, the actual policies that led to the wealth
Speaker 1: dispairity that we are right now, some of which include
Speaker 1: but Jim Crow, but also now we're now we're talking
Speaker 1: about two thousand and eight, which was a universalist kind
Speaker 1: of screw you to middle class into poor people, and
Speaker 1: then say, well, is there some way you can normalize
Speaker 1: opportunity here across the board and by doing so in general,
Speaker 1: as I've always come back to, I recommend Matt Brunegg
Speaker 1: if anybody wants to go and look at it has
Speaker 1: frequently looked at where actual wealth gaps are.
Speaker 2: My perfect personal favorite statistic.
Speaker 1: Is you'll often hear in the media like the white
Speaker 1: and the Black wealth gap. Well, the truth is, sadly,
Speaker 1: is that the wealth gap between white and Black Americans
Speaker 1: on an overall basis, the vast majority of that gap
Speaker 1: is between the top ten percent of white people and
Speaker 1: the top ten percent of black people. As in the
Speaker 1: top ten percent earners of whites out earned dramatically the
Speaker 1: top ten percent of black But if you take the
Speaker 1: median earner between whites and blacks, Hispanics and others. Like
Speaker 1: I said, the gap between those on a wage level
Speaker 1: is really not that big. And so if you want
Speaker 1: to help the most amount of people, increasing an overall
Speaker 1: wage in the economy has the actual benefit that we
Speaker 1: all come.
Speaker 4: To well, And we can't even have honest conversations about
Speaker 4: what's happened with entitlements and welfare state, and I know
Speaker 4: that gets into really hairy stuff. But Thomas Sowell can
Speaker 4: talk about this, Walter Williams can write about this, and
Speaker 4: they get cast as like white supremacists for raising some
Speaker 4: entirely legitimate questions about whether white liberals have wrecked the
Speaker 4: black community with well intentioned but harmful policies that don't
Speaker 4: have for instance, that aren't temporary enough, that aren't with
Speaker 4: the right incentives. And a lot of our audience probably
Speaker 4: disagrees with me on that. All I'm saying, though, is
Speaker 4: that we cannot even talk about the government structures that
Speaker 4: in some ways have been contributing to this, and I
Speaker 4: think very clearly, because we'll do, it's just you get
Speaker 4: knocked down as a bigot or whatever, even if you're
Speaker 4: a black economist, like a celebrated black economist, for having
Speaker 4: that conversation and again, the theme of the whole episode
Speaker 4: today is that we can't even perform basic functions as
Speaker 4: a society because we're so bogged down in these tribal divisions.
Speaker 2: Correct. Well, we do have one update though for you.
Speaker 1: Whenever it comes to these reparations, they probably are not
Speaker 1: going to app and let's gohead and put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen, despite the fact that they have
Speaker 1: been proposed and all of that. Even the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Gate here is saying quote why they are likely doomed.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why is that they say, whenever
Speaker 1: you've seen his way to make amends. The task force
Speaker 1: has spent the last two years. However, the package that
Speaker 1: is being discussed, even in terms of San Francisco, is
Speaker 1: some sort of one time payments, and all of that,
Speaker 1: even if they are formally adopted, never go into effect.
Speaker 1: Is because of the US Supreme Court. What they say
Speaker 1: is that the simplest form in terms of benefits is
Speaker 1: likely dead upon arrival because the idea of a particular
Speaker 1: race getting payments would almost immediately and certainly get struck down.
Speaker 1: This is Gabriel Chin, who is a law professor, quoted
Speaker 1: from the UC Davis most likely to be at play
Speaker 1: would be the Equal Protections clause in the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: which I speak specifically speaking down was say that any
Speaker 1: policy that sort people by racial categories known as racial classifications,
Speaker 1: are typically seen as a violation of the Equal Protection
Speaker 1: claus unless governments can provide quote a strong justification for them.
Speaker 1: So very likely even if this were to try and
Speaker 1: to go into effect, it would face blockage at the
Speaker 1: US Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: But who knows.
Speaker 1: We never know where we will get in terms of that,
Speaker 1: and even if they don't get implemented, the fact that
Speaker 1: they're on the table, I think for the discussion that
Speaker 1: we try to handle sensitively here at breaking points.
Speaker 2: So emily, what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 4: Well, just yesterday there was a flurry of headlines about
Speaker 4: Republican efforts to quote pan books. New York Magazine rolled
Speaker 4: out a new cover story on the topic with an
Speaker 4: unintentionally hilarious image showing the words quote I will not
Speaker 4: say gay, written over and over and over again on
Speaker 4: a chalkboard.
Speaker 3: This is a great place to start.
Speaker 4: Notice the wording from the magazine in this tweet about
Speaker 4: the story, quote convinced schools are brainwashing kids to be
Speaker 4: left wingers conservatives are seizing control of the American classroom.
Speaker 3: This is somewhat amusing because.
Speaker 4: The story is authored Jonathan Chate is forced to concede
Speaker 4: some three quarters of the way through his piece that yes,
Speaker 4: schools now instruct students to abide by the values of
Speaker 4: political liberalism on a wide scale.
Speaker 3: So why as is the scale? As Chait himself.
Speaker 4: Mentions, the country's largest teachers union is explicitly working to
Speaker 4: include critical race theory, for instance, in curricula from.
Speaker 3: Pre K through twelfth grade pre K. That's literally in
Speaker 3: his article.
Speaker 4: So right there, he's dispelled the myth of his own
Speaker 4: premise that Republicans are fantasizing about some left wing takeover
Speaker 4: of education. It's not a fantasy. They are correct that
Speaker 4: it's happening. But whether it's good or bad is actually
Speaker 4: the question. This is the case with the corporate media
Speaker 4: narrative on this topic time and time again. Hilariously, the
Speaker 4: New York Times reported last month that a billionaire desantist
Speaker 4: doner was cooling on the governor in part because of
Speaker 4: these alleged book bands in Florida. The media spin is
Speaker 4: straight from the Democratic Party talking points, and it's both
Speaker 4: incredibly stupid and incredibly powerful. It is, of course, literally
Speaker 4: true that Republicans want to ban some books from school libraries.
Speaker 4: It is true that some legislative proposals would target books
Speaker 4: that are probably fined for those libraries. What's missing is
Speaker 4: the context about one what's in the targeted books, and
Speaker 4: two that random legislators introduce imperfect and crazy bills that
Speaker 4: go absolutely nowhere every single day, and the media doesn't
Speaker 4: act like they represent a real threat unless it's convenient
Speaker 4: for the left. Indiana Republican Governor Eric Holcomb signed one
Speaker 4: of these book banning bills just yesterday. Here's how Gannett's
Speaker 4: Indie Star reported on that quote. The new law requires
Speaker 4: schools to publish their library catalogs online, create a process
Speaker 4: in which community members can request certain books be banned,
Speaker 4: and removes the legal defense librarians currently have to claim
Speaker 4: a book was available for quote educational purposes if felony
Speaker 4: charges a rose against them for making available books that
Speaker 4: are harmful to minors. The first part of that, by
Speaker 4: the way, is democratizing school libraries small d but the
Speaker 4: quote harmful to minders standard is thankfully a very high
Speaker 4: bar for litigation, and according to Indiana's code, the book
Speaker 4: would need to contain quote nudity, sexual content, or sadomasochistic abuse,
Speaker 4: persuasiveness for miners to engage in sexual activities, offensive content,
Speaker 4: to community standards for adults considering what's suitable to miners
Speaker 4: to see content void of quote, serious literary, artistic, political,
Speaker 4: or scientific value for kids. Now, those things are all
Speaker 4: broad enough that they're open for interpretation, but they're not
Speaker 4: crazy guidelines as a starting point.
Speaker 3: So what prompted all of this will As in.
Speaker 4: Many states around the country, the book Gender Queer freaked
Speaker 4: parents out Why the book is full of nude cartoon
Speaker 4: teenagers having intercourse, giving each other oral sex, and more. Really,
Speaker 4: it is Indiana's ACLU trumpeted Gender Queer is the state's
Speaker 4: most challenged book of twenty twenty two in a Sunday.
Speaker 3: Tweet, they're not making the argument that they think they are.
Speaker 4: In fact, pen America's data shows quote Gender Queer is
Speaker 4: the most challenged book nationwide. Last Ball was the most
Speaker 4: challenged book, followed by a book called Flamer. In other words,
Speaker 4: the so called bands are targeting legitimately inappropriate material. You
Speaker 4: can see it on the screen if you're not watching
Speaker 4: and you're listening. Essentially, it's what I described earlier, cartoon
Speaker 4: teenagers nude having sex with each other, talking about extremely
Speaker 4: sexually explicit things. According to Axios, now Biden's campaign has
Speaker 4: evidence that pinning book bands on.
Speaker 3: The GOP is pulling really well for Democrats.
Speaker 4: So expect to hear way more about these book bands
Speaker 4: in the next year and a half.
Speaker 3: And here's where it's important to just cut out the nonsense.
Speaker 4: The media will blame Republicans for stoking this culture war
Speaker 4: battle while ignoring, for instance, Muslim parents and dearborn fighting
Speaker 4: against genderqueer, and then the teachers' unions fighting against those
Speaker 4: parents to implement debunked history or gender career, or bring
Speaker 4: the sixteen nineteen project to their community and put it
Speaker 4: in their public schools. But the left stokes this cultural
Speaker 4: war by putting porn in middle school and high school libraries,
Speaker 4: a critical race theory for five year olds, then defending
Speaker 4: it with the ACE CLU and with unions. The rights
Speaker 4: pushback is nowhere near perfect. But if we're going to
Speaker 4: wrap it into this quote book band narrative and make
Speaker 4: it sound like this is all just about censoring, Tony
Speaker 4: Morrison we're making everything so much worse. As Sager pointed
Speaker 4: out last week, history scores are plummeting among American students.
Speaker 4: It'd be really easy for the unions and special interest
Speaker 4: groups to just seed the point on these glaringly inappropriate books.
Speaker 3: And move on. That's so easy to do.
Speaker 4: They put those books there, they can get them out.
Speaker 4: But because these institutions are captured by mediocre ideologues, they'll
Speaker 4: cling to the porn, rile up parents with good and
Speaker 4: bad consequences, and do a really, really bad job actually
Speaker 4: teaching students.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay, Inevitably,
Speaker 1: after almost every single mass shooting, we hear the same
Speaker 1: response from our media and the Democratic establishment, need more
Speaker 1: gun control, gun controls the only answer.
Speaker 2: President Biden is nearly on repeat with it.
Speaker 1: After a spate of mass shootings in recent months, and
Speaker 1: you get basically the same treatment from the media. I
Speaker 1: want to also acknowledge that a lot of people who
Speaker 1: watch the show probably agree with that.
Speaker 2: But something I've always.
Speaker 1: Tried so hard to emphasize here is it's just not
Speaker 1: that easy. If it was, then we would have done
Speaker 1: it already. It's not a matter of the NRA or
Speaker 1: the gun lobby. It has to do with our Constitution,
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment, a right to self defense, and ultimately
Speaker 1: a level of authority that we are willing to provide
Speaker 1: our government over our lives. In my estimation, the gun
Speaker 1: debate has amounted to this. Mass shootings are seen uniquely,
Speaker 1: maybe rightfully, this is the most visible sick and American
Speaker 1: unique phenomenon that has been conflated, though somehow publicly, with
Speaker 1: all gun violence in the eyes of the non gun
Speaker 1: owning public. So let's start with a review of what
Speaker 1: I've always touched on in the past, mass shootings.
Speaker 2: What are they and what are they not?
Speaker 1: If you don't follow this much, you probably would forgiven
Speaker 1: for thinking that mass shooting statistics cited by the media
Speaker 1: entail school shootings or the shootings that.
Speaker 2: Just occurred like at the mall in Allen, Texas.
Speaker 1: The actual definition, though, is actually up to the government
Speaker 1: and when the government is involved, and you already know
Speaker 1: that politics is involved. President Obama actually forced the FBI
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen to adopt this definition. A single attack in
Speaker 1: which three or more victims are killed. On its face,
Speaker 1: I guess it sounds reasonable, but is it? Consider us
Speaker 1: firearm homicides and the type that they are involved in.
Speaker 1: Mass shooting accounts for only point one percent of all debts. Sadly,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of homicides, especially those that involve three
Speaker 1: or more people, are those that involve a family member
Speaker 1: or an acquaintance, or by an intimate partner. A stranger
Speaker 1: killing another stranger is only about twenty five percent of
Speaker 1: all homicide, and that is almost all crime. Furthermore, what
Speaker 1: weapons do they use? When we hear calls for gun control,
Speaker 1: they are obviously focusing on assault weapons bans. Here too,
Speaker 1: data is important. Handguns alone account for fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of all homicides. If you include their involvement with a rifle,
Speaker 1: you would actually add a further twenty four percent. A
Speaker 1: so called handgun ban is really the only type of
Speaker 1: ban which would work somewhat, and nobody proposes that. Why
Speaker 1: because it's completely unconstitutional. In fact, as I've laid here before,
Speaker 1: there is absolutely zero statistical evidence to say that an
Speaker 1: assault weapons ban would have any impact whatsoever on mass shootings.
Speaker 1: The other pet policy proposal of the establishment and the
Speaker 1: media is a high capacity magazine ban, the theory being
Speaker 1: that shooters would need to pause and to reload. This
Speaker 1: would allow first responders critical moments as well as reduce
Speaker 1: the initial amount of debts. Again, though, here's the thing,
Speaker 1: there is no statistical evidence on a societal wide scale
Speaker 1: that this would have any impact on mass shootings. I
Speaker 1: want to provide empathy for people who think all of
Speaker 1: this stuff will work, because I really do understand how
Speaker 1: one could be led to believe it. It takes an
Speaker 1: undue amount of research for the average citizen to see
Speaker 1: the actual facts surrounding this issue.
Speaker 2: The facts aside.
Speaker 1: I think what the gun debate does more than anything
Speaker 1: is show how much we are talking past each other
Speaker 1: and how little that we really understand our own countrymen.
Speaker 1: Gun ownership is probably one of the best single signifiers
Speaker 1: in America today for party identification. Consider this map side
Speaker 1: by side from twenty sixteen. On the left is what
Speaker 1: the electoral college would look like if only people who
Speaker 1: didn't own a gun were voters. As you can see,
Speaker 1: every single state save for one would.
Speaker 2: Go for Hillary.
Speaker 1: On the right is what the map would look like
Speaker 1: if only people who voted who had guns had in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Trump would win all but one state. That
Speaker 1: about says it all, doesn't it. Gun owners and non
Speaker 1: gun owners are completely at odds politically, But what I
Speaker 1: would argue is downstream from culture. For the non gun owners,
Speaker 1: guns are nextibly linked to violence, both by the state
Speaker 1: and by criminals, including mass shootings. Connotations around them are
Speaker 1: dark better left unsaid. In most cases, outside the realm
Speaker 1: of polite society, banning them seems just like the easiest option.
Speaker 2: Any discussion of the Second Amendment sounds ludicrous to this person.
Speaker 2: For gun owners, it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: Guns certainly are linked to violence, but they are also
Speaker 1: to other things that have nothing to do with violence,
Speaker 1: like hunting or bonding with family members, recreation as a tool,
Speaker 1: sometimes self defense.
Speaker 2: Much of this, too, comes from a rural and an
Speaker 2: urban divide. When you're out in the middle of the country.
Speaker 1: You're forty five minutes from authorities, possibly without cell service,
Speaker 1: the ability to defend yourself, either from another person or
Speaker 1: from a wild animal, actually becomes very much more acute
Speaker 1: compared to a city, where the response time is less
Speaker 1: than ten minutes from authorities and people are literally everywhere.
Speaker 1: In these cases, you can see why the other would
Speaker 1: react viscerally around the gun debate to each other, and
Speaker 1: how the lived reality of both on a.
Speaker 2: Day to day basis clashes so hard with others.
Speaker 1: Personally, I think it's important to look at things this way,
Speaker 1: and especially to the Metropolitan group who overwhelming a hold
Speaker 1: the view of more gun control. When you say things
Speaker 1: like the Second Amendment shouldn't apply today because there's no
Speaker 1: way that the founders could have predicted ar style rifles
Speaker 1: or high capacity magazines, it actually kind of opens up
Speaker 1: some dangerous ground legally. Imagine if someone stated that because
Speaker 1: the Internet didn't exist in seventeen eighty seven, the freedom
Speaker 1: of speech or freedom of the press should not apply there,
Speaker 1: or that the Fourth Amendment right to search and seizure
Speaker 1: did not apply to cars because they also are newer inventions.
Speaker 2: In both cases, it would be ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Because we understand the Constitution as a set of principles
Speaker 1: laid out to apply to a dynamic and changing nation
Speaker 1: which we can rely on to give us even in
Speaker 1: the face of unprecedented societal and technological change. Now, to
Speaker 1: the extent that there is a policy solution, it must
Speaker 1: come from a deeper and multifaceted understanding of the problem
Speaker 1: from loneliness, identity, politics, and the litany of social ills
Speaker 1: that seem to manifest in this sick freak in Texas.
Speaker 1: In other words, it won't be easy, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we still don't have to deal with it.
Speaker 1: So that's why always where I come on the gun issue.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 1: Joining us now is Ken Klippenstein's a great partner of us.
Speaker 1: He's also a reporter over at the Intercept. Great seaman.
Speaker 10: Hey, good to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1: Ken, you've been at the forefront of reporting on this
Speaker 1: disinformation industrial complex. Who came out with a brand new
Speaker 1: bombshell story. Let's go and put it up there on
Speaker 1: the screen. Quote the government created his new disinformation office
Speaker 1: to oversee all well the other ones. And you reveal
Speaker 1: here some new offices inside of the Pentagon. They're tasked
Speaker 1: with quote unquote overseeing disinformation. So tell us about these
Speaker 1: Dystopian Orwellian agencies being funded in our name.
Speaker 10: Okay, So we want to start with Dystope and let's
Speaker 10: talk about the one in the Pentagon because I dearly
Speaker 10: love the name of that. Okay, it's called the Influence
Speaker 10: and Perception Management Office. There's a term that harkens back
Speaker 10: to the Reagan administration.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 10: I think under his CIA he had a perception management office.
Speaker 10: I think the goal was to kind of try to
Speaker 10: influence the coverage of the Iran contract.
Speaker 2: Or the concerts in Nicaragua. That's right, right, And so
Speaker 2: now they've stood that up in the Pentagon.
Speaker 10: What's interesting about these agencies that they're working on now
Speaker 10: is that they're not just disinformation agencies.
Speaker 2: I found out in the course of the supporting that, for.
Speaker 10: Example, in the Department of Homeland Security, there are nearly
Speaker 10: half a dozen counter disinformation offices. So now they're creating
Speaker 10: ones to oversee the ones that they already have within
Speaker 10: the agencies and departments. And so what I found in
Speaker 10: this stow with the Foreign Malign Influence Office that's overseeing
Speaker 10: the ones that are overseeing all the various agency and
Speaker 10: departmental efforts. And so this is in the Office of
Speaker 10: the Director of National Intelligence, which has access to the
Speaker 10: full suite of intelligence across all components of the intelligence community.
Speaker 10: So this is really a significant elevation of their efforts.
Speaker 4: And can we talk about what these offices are authorized
Speaker 4: to do, because that's part of what you get into
Speaker 4: and the piece and can make a big difference as to,
Speaker 4: you know, whether something is nefarious or whether it's just
Speaker 4: the Pentagon being the Pentagon and doing what it does.
Speaker 4: There's actually indications that they have pretty serious authority capabilities
Speaker 4: in these offices.
Speaker 3: What are they authorized to do?
Speaker 10: Yeah, So what was unprecedented about the fm C is
Speaker 10: that instead of just having access to that specific agency
Speaker 10: or that specific department, they have full sweeping access to
Speaker 10: all relevant intelligence that they deem you know, pertinent to disinformation.
Speaker 10: And so particularly after her story on which you had
Speaker 10: us on to discuss and I appreciate that very much,
Speaker 10: without the DHS efforts there, it feels like there was
Speaker 10: a big rebrik and on the part of the federal
Speaker 10: government to say this is about foreign disinformation. Yes, but
Speaker 10: when you talk to experts about it in the age
Speaker 10: of the Internet, it's really hard to differentiate between four.
Speaker 2: So let's get into that though.
Speaker 4: And that's intentionally what they do, that they blur the
Speaker 4: line intentionally so that they can sweep Americans into the
Speaker 4: Hamilton sixty nine dashboard.
Speaker 1: So if we're like, oh, well, we're talking about Russian disformation,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, well, all of a sudden, now we're
Speaker 1: talking about Facebook and then we're actually talking about election as.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about Jill Stein or Chill Stein.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you pointed out that I
Speaker 1: still want noise a crap out of me was that
Speaker 1: they were going after criticism of the Afghan withdrawal as disinformation.
Speaker 1: For example, do you have any more concrete examples you
Speaker 1: could share with the audience, just to put this all
Speaker 1: into perspective, So why should people be afraid? Like, why
Speaker 1: should we care if the government is regulating disinformation?
Speaker 10: Yeah, So to give you guys a brief timeline of
Speaker 10: these kind of disinformation efforts, it began with twenty sixteen
Speaker 10: of the Russian active measures campaign. I mentioned in the
Speaker 10: story Rand Corporation report, which is the most detailed one
Speaker 10: to date that actually looked at the hard data and said, okay,
Speaker 10: what practical effect did the Russian propaganda campaign have? And
Speaker 10: they take a very dim view of it. Bear in mind,
Speaker 10: this is a Pentagon funded think tank, very respected, not
Speaker 10: the kind of like you know, highly politicized thing you'd
Speaker 10: expect from the think tank world generally, and they say that,
Speaker 10: you know, while they were Russian efforts, they had almost
Speaker 10: no practical effect. They were very disorganized, extremely incompetent, you know,
Speaker 10: all the sorts of terms that you think of when
Speaker 10: we look at how they're executing the war in Ukraine,
Speaker 10: it looks like that that's how they carried out this
Speaker 10: propaganda campaign. And so to you know, take that very
Speaker 10: negative view of it and compare with that this full
Speaker 10: court press on the part of the federal government and
Speaker 10: the national security state to respond to this, it just
Speaker 10: seems like very disproportionate to the threat.
Speaker 4: And there's also an interesting media aspect to this, which
Speaker 4: is that you know, as you you put, we were
Speaker 4: actually talking about Crystal and Coyle's wedding.
Speaker 2: This is in the budget right like this, this is
Speaker 2: in the federal budget.
Speaker 10: Yeah, this was not a classified I mean I have
Speaker 10: story based I've had stories based on classified documents and
Speaker 10: stuff that's not supposed to be public.
Speaker 3: This was sitting right there.
Speaker 2: Nobody. Yes, that's the other thing.
Speaker 10: This was the for Online Influence Center had been debated
Speaker 10: for years now publicly, and nobody covered.
Speaker 1: It, Nobody covered it, nobody's even considering what the potential
Speaker 1: dangers here are. Can I mean as we watch this
Speaker 1: behemoth expand we've had Jacob Siegal on the show to
Speaker 1: talk about the disinformation industrial complex, We've had you on
Speaker 1: the show, you and Lefong's reporting about the government, it
Speaker 1: never seems to actually stop anything.
Speaker 2: Or am I wrong?
Speaker 1: Our lawmakers actually waking up to this fact. Are they
Speaker 1: looking into what's changing or are they just changing their
Speaker 1: tactics and rebranding them in different ways.
Speaker 10: So the previous story that we had on the that
Speaker 10: focused on the DHS efforts, particularly the Countering Foreign Influence Office,
Speaker 10: not to be confused with the Foreign Influenced Task Force
Speaker 10: of the FBI.
Speaker 2: Much overlap.
Speaker 3: Do these different entities.
Speaker 10: The main effect that it's appeared to have so far,
Speaker 10: to be completely candid with you, is to cause them
Speaker 10: to drive it underground and become more secretive and disclose
Speaker 10: less about it. Because you'll recall the quadirennial Department of
Speaker 10: Home Security review came out just a week ago, a
Speaker 10: bear in mind, like six years past the date that
Speaker 10: they were supposed to release in and I had originally
Speaker 10: been leaked in my first story a draft copy of
Speaker 10: what that was. They were stripped virtually all mention of
Speaker 10: any of this from the quadrenial review that end up
Speaker 10: coming out. That's like their big strategy documents saying this
Speaker 10: is what we're going to do with the department going forward.
Speaker 11: Right, I mean, yeah, go ahead, Emily, Well I was
Speaker 11: gonna say, I mean, it's just insane that they appoint
Speaker 11: themselves with these massive powers and then they also they
Speaker 11: just strip away any semblance of transparency whatsoever.
Speaker 3: So it exists, but you have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 2: These are multi million dollars. Do we know some of
Speaker 2: the individuals who are in charge? I mean, we got that.
Speaker 2: Remember the czar or whatever her name was.
Speaker 3: Nina Janko Woods, who, by the way, just sweetheart.
Speaker 2: She still has an open invitation. I've invited her many times.
Speaker 2: Come on the show.
Speaker 3: Well away, I've invited her.
Speaker 1: I will give her as much time as she wants
Speaker 1: to speak, Ken. Do we know any of the figures
Speaker 1: who are involved here.
Speaker 10: There's a former senior CIA official who was I think
Speaker 10: one of the top officials for the analytics section of
Speaker 10: the CIA. There's the case officers that you know are
Speaker 10: work operating on the ground and they're ones that analyze
Speaker 10: the intelligence, and so I think reading the tea leaves
Speaker 10: there that means they're really are going to be collating,
Speaker 10: gathering and and you know, putting together all of this
Speaker 10: information from these various agencies that exist, you know, all
Speaker 10: over the federal government at this point to respond to this.
Speaker 2: Ken fantastic job on the reporting.
Speaker 1: We're happy to support some of the work that you're
Speaker 1: doing with the intercept and all of that, and have
Speaker 1: you had here on our show. You've always been at
Speaker 1: the forefront of this and we will continue. So thank
Speaker 1: you very much, sir, appreciate it. Emily, thank you for
Speaker 1: being a great coach with me. It was a very
Speaker 1: ambitious crossover.
Speaker 3: Concludes today's edition of Fascists Live.
Speaker 4: With y.
Speaker 2: Fascist points. I'm sure, I'm sure the haters will call
Speaker 2: crawl out of the woodwork. It's okay. You know, we
Speaker 2: we love our haters as much as we love our lovers.
Speaker 2: I guess is that is that the.
Speaker 3: Way you was say it to be clear that I
Speaker 3: am Regis and you are Kelly.
Speaker 2: There, I am give me a. I fully embrace the uh,
Speaker 2: I fully embrace that role. We love you guys. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much.
Speaker 1: Counterpoints are going to be on tomorrow for a normal show,
Speaker 1: and I'll be back here with Ryan on Thursday. Much
Speaker 1: loved to Crystal on her honeymoon. We missed her very
Speaker 1: much dearly. Thank you all to the Premius describers for
Speaker 1: our work. We will see you all later