Speaker 1: Keep on riding, would have says, we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop
Speaker 1: Weekly Studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, rams'.
Speaker 2: Jah, this is this is cute, y'all. But I wow man, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're here, man, yeah, man, we were here.
Speaker 1: But stick around because we are going to be talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, in the interest of trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of you know, I still believe that human beings are
Speaker 1: generally decent, if not given it fear and you know
Speaker 1: it can be convinced to do bad things. We're going
Speaker 1: to explore how the two parties in this country make
Speaker 1: the country better both parties do. We're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to have that conversation good luck. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a tough time to do it, but we're going
Speaker 1: to attempt to do so. So please stick around for
Speaker 1: that and much more. But right now we're going to
Speaker 1: discussed Baba becoming a better ally Baba and Today's Baba
Speaker 1: sponsored by Friends of the Movement. You can sign up
Speaker 1: for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to
Speaker 1: support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make
Speaker 1: an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot Com.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna share a letter that we received just kind
Speaker 1: of trying to encourage us. This is from a listener.
Speaker 1: His name is Pat and I thought this was I
Speaker 1: was moved by it, and you know, we need to
Speaker 1: be better allies now more than ever. So it says,
Speaker 1: Brother Ramsays and Brother Q, I listened to your November
Speaker 1: ninth show this morning on my way to work, and
Speaker 1: it broke my heart. I'm filled with sadness for our
Speaker 1: efforts to make the election outcome be different, and certainly
Speaker 1: I have concern for what these next four years will bring.
Speaker 1: But this year, my family and I threw it all
Speaker 1: in for Kamala as well as an important representative for
Speaker 1: the good in Virginia, Missy Carter, Smassi Smuscle. I believe
Speaker 1: for my second district, we gave personally significant money, many
Speaker 1: days walking neighborhoods with our boys, knocking doors and working
Speaker 1: the polls, and maybe this outcome, like watching our brother
Speaker 1: George Floyd having his life squeezed out of him on livestream,
Speaker 1: will serve as an opportunity for awakening. We need to
Speaker 1: be aware, awake, and so many of my white brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters woke for a bit after the George Floyd murder,
Speaker 1: only for so many people to be caught in the
Speaker 1: BS culture wars and fear and propaganda to eventually go
Speaker 1: back to our comfy living rooms and wonder if isolationism
Speaker 1: is the right way to go right now. And you
Speaker 1: two beautiful, gifted, committed and in action brothers, have even
Speaker 1: less to regret than I do. Your show has grown
Speaker 1: and grown and grown. Hearing Attorney, General Holder and Secretary
Speaker 1: Rice back to back daily shows followed by Kamma's brother
Speaker 1: in law and sister Powerful. You guys are crushing it.
Speaker 1: You guys are making profound difference, in my honest opinion,
Speaker 1: the progress you and I are out to see everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's continuing the so sis and bear fruit at the
Speaker 1: same time. Nothing but love and respect. Pat. We appreciate you, Pat,
Speaker 1: thank you for the letter. We do need that love
Speaker 1: and that vot of confidence these days, you know, and
Speaker 1: we're going to try to keep you encouraged as well.
Speaker 1: So onward, all right, So I came across a question
Speaker 1: that I thought was worth pondering. You know, Republicans think
Speaker 1: that they must save America from liberalism and its policies.
Speaker 1: So what is it that they think that they're saving
Speaker 1: America from? Now? I know, I know, I'm doing my
Speaker 1: best to try to approach this. For a person like me,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to laugh because it's like, I know
Speaker 1: that their fears are unfounded. I know that, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to view it as though their fears
Speaker 1: are valid. And if their fears are valid, then perhaps
Speaker 1: I can speak to them. And if I can speak
Speaker 1: to them, or I can find a way to speak
Speaker 1: to those fears, then maybe I can empower our listeners
Speaker 1: to maybe have similar conversations. You know, this country changes
Speaker 1: in you know, at the dinner table. That's where it starts.
Speaker 1: You know, if anybody's going to get pulled one way
Speaker 1: or the other, it's going to be over dinner. It's
Speaker 1: going to be in the living room. It's going to
Speaker 1: be at the around the water cooler at work, It's
Speaker 1: going to be in places like that. There's a quote
Speaker 1: that Bill Clinton made a long time ago that is
Speaker 1: I'm like rolling it around in my head. He says.
Speaker 1: The quote. It says, the left is at its best,
Speaker 1: The left at its best tears down walls that shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been there, and the right at its best stops
Speaker 1: the left from tearing down walls that should be there.
Speaker 1: And if I boil my understanding of the two party
Speaker 1: system in this country down to its essence, I think
Speaker 1: that that is a masterful way of explaining what each
Speaker 1: party stands for, what they're trying to do. There are
Speaker 1: people who again are like kind of like me. Everybody
Speaker 1: is inherently kind, everybody deserves a shot, everyone deserves equitable
Speaker 1: access to X, Y and Z, and we need to
Speaker 1: find the capacity to bring all these things into manifestation.
Speaker 1: And then on the right, they ask how, they ask why,
Speaker 1: they try to compare apples to apples, and oftentimes we're
Speaker 1: not dealing with apples and more apples, and there's a
Speaker 1: more realistic look, less optimistic look at things when folks
Speaker 1: on the right have a critical examination of what folks
Speaker 1: on the left want to do. And so again Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton's statement about and I think it's important to emphasize
Speaker 1: the left at its best tears down walls that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there, and the right at its best keeps the
Speaker 1: left from tearing down walls that should remain. That at
Speaker 1: its best part is really what we're speaking to because
Speaker 1: there's I think that a lot of the stories that
Speaker 1: you've shared on the on the show c about growing
Speaker 1: up in Michigan with your mom having friends that voted
Speaker 1: differently from her, but they were friends. I think the
Speaker 1: ideas in those stories and the people represent the left
Speaker 1: at its best, the right at its best. What I've
Speaker 1: also found is that it's easier for cancerous, toxic, fear
Speaker 1: based facets, forms of thought, schools of thought to exist
Speaker 1: under the right than it is under the left. That's
Speaker 1: not to say that it doesn't exist under the left too,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's easier for those things to exist
Speaker 1: and to breed under the right because the right is
Speaker 1: it's literally conservative, you know, the slower to move, slower
Speaker 1: to accommodate and account for, less likely to share, makes
Speaker 1: decisions more based around fear than what is morally just.
Speaker 1: It's more based around what's possible, not what is ideal.
Speaker 1: You know, what can we do, not what should we
Speaker 1: do or what can we avoid doing? And so I
Speaker 1: think that that's why in recent years we've seen more
Speaker 1: of that, But I don't and we've done a good job.
Speaker 1: I think so far on this show to try to
Speaker 1: delineate let's call them the Maga extremists from you know,
Speaker 1: your typical conservative folks who cannot conceive of voting for
Speaker 1: a liberal candidate, and so they're stuck with casting a
Speaker 1: vote alongside the Maga people, the clans people, the people
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the first half of the
Speaker 1: show that increase in hate speech toward women, they've historically
Speaker 1: been able to excuse use well, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the party that kind of shields all of the racist people.
Speaker 1: But I'm not racist. They just you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: fiscal conservative. But I mean they can excuse the fact
Speaker 1: that they're voting alongside those other folks. And I think
Speaker 1: this is why we have to go to such great
Speaker 1: links to delineate the decent folks who are Republican and
Speaker 1: conservative in their feelings from the rest, because they have
Speaker 1: to excuse so much in order to remain in lock
Speaker 1: locked what is it lockstep, or to remain under that
Speaker 1: same umbrella. Right. So again, this is something that I
Speaker 1: need to learn about. And I know that you have
Speaker 1: more to offer this conversation than I do, because you're
Speaker 1: the one that actually grew up with seeing that you
Speaker 1: know in Michigan.
Speaker 2: I honestly think that I might be the worst possible
Speaker 2: person to try to gain some understanding from in a
Speaker 2: conversation like this one, because, even in good faith, right
Speaker 2: talking about both sides at their best, the ideas in
Speaker 2: and of themselves that one party is trying to take
Speaker 2: down fences while the other wants to build them, even
Speaker 2: if that's the only even if that's all the information
Speaker 2: that we have, it's the difference between inclusivity and exclusivity,
Speaker 2: and the arguments that could be made for the necessity
Speaker 2: of both. We can't give all of our food away
Speaker 2: because we won't eat. We can't give all of our
Speaker 2: jobs away because we won't eat. But the exacerbation of
Speaker 2: that train of thought leads to we can't give anything away.
Speaker 2: All of this is mine, none of this is yours.
Speaker 2: And in the conversations of right and wrong, the extremes
Speaker 2: of those two are not equal. The person that would
Speaker 2: hoard everything for themselves and watch everyone else perish is
Speaker 2: not as decent a person as the one that would
Speaker 2: do the opposite.
Speaker 1: On the opposite end, you have your Jesus and your
Speaker 1: mother Teresa's and your Gandhi's you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So, even using good faith with both at their best,
Speaker 2: the ideals are not the same. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 2: They're not on the same level. They're not equivalencies of
Speaker 2: one another. So and then now there is no best
Speaker 2: of the right, m right. You have people like Mayor
Speaker 2: Gileska who said, I can't do that anymore. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: does not matter if I'm a fiscal Republican or I've
Speaker 2: always been a conservative in life grandfather.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: This other side has as its chosen leader a blatant, flagrant,
Speaker 2: out loud rapist, racist, misogynistic, pig, authoritarian fascist. And people
Speaker 2: look these terms up because I see people using words
Speaker 2: like socialists and communists and fascist and authoritarian, and they've
Speaker 2: just determined that they're all bad words that mean the
Speaker 2: same thing. They're not. So I challenge people, when you
Speaker 2: see communist and authoritarian and fascist and socialist and look
Speaker 2: these words up, understand what they mean. And if you've
Speaker 2: determined that you're against one of those as an idea,
Speaker 2: understand your why. Years ago, Bernie Sanders ram people called
Speaker 2: him a socialist, So people said, okay, I can't vote
Speaker 2: for him. I think a very large percentage of those
Speaker 2: people think socialist is a bad word, so I can't
Speaker 2: support it. I think a very large percentage of those people,
Speaker 2: if they understood what that meant, would not have reacted
Speaker 2: the way that it makes.
Speaker 1: It makes And he said he's a democratic socialist. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: So again. And we try to have these both sides conversations.
Speaker 2: They've always driven me crazy because it's an intentional fossil equivalency. Right.
Speaker 2: The idea of this democracy that we live in, in
Speaker 2: this capitalist society that we live in, requires that there
Speaker 2: be some of us that have nothing, even though we
Speaker 2: have more than enough for everyone to have something.
Speaker 1: Can I help you make that point please? In study
Speaker 1: being capitalism. I don't want to act like I'm an
Speaker 1: expert on capitalism or economic models for societies, because I'm not.
Speaker 1: But I did go to school a little bit back
Speaker 1: in the day. I do have a master's degree in
Speaker 1: business management. You know, I'm not stupid, but my understanding
Speaker 1: of capitalism is that you need to have some unemployment
Speaker 1: all the time. You cannot.
Speaker 2: Why would a system require that there'd be some people
Speaker 2: unemployed who are unemployed?
Speaker 1: That's a great question. The idea if there is some
Speaker 1: unemployment is that wages can be kept lower and businesses
Speaker 1: can succeed, spurring innovation and COMPETI because competition and innovation
Speaker 1: are bedfellows.
Speaker 2: And those are supposed to be the things that push
Speaker 2: societies forward.
Speaker 1: Right. But the sacrifice, of course, is that there's a
Speaker 1: human cost, because again, in order for capitalism to work,
Speaker 1: you need unemployment. If everyone has a job, then no
Speaker 1: one is afraid of not having a job. And as
Speaker 1: long as you have some people that you can point
Speaker 1: to and say, hey, look see those people. They're not working,
Speaker 1: so I don't have to pay you what you're worth.
Speaker 2: And by not working, they're not eating, and they're not housed,
Speaker 2: and they don't have clothes, and they don't have things.
Speaker 1: It's a whole you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 1: historically in this country, the people who have borne the
Speaker 1: brunt of that has been black people and women, black women.
Speaker 1: Let me say it clearly so you understand. Find me
Speaker 1: a time in this country, in this country's history where
Speaker 1: the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate.
Speaker 1: In any event, I think that you know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to have a good faith argu this is why when
Speaker 1: we look at the exit poll information from the last
Speaker 1: election and a lot of elections, you see where morally
Speaker 1: this country should be. By looking at how black women vote,
Speaker 1: you can see the right choice, the moral right choice
Speaker 1: by looking at how black women vote overwhelmingly. And now,
Speaker 1: of course there's millions upon millions of black women, all
Speaker 1: voting differently, not all of them, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: usually most of them voting one way, and you can
Speaker 1: very clearly see. But there are people that can say, well,
Speaker 1: this black woman didn't do that, and that black woman
Speaker 1: didn't do it, and pull out the Candice Owes and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the data, it's very clear
Speaker 1: and there's a reason for that. Those people understand what
Speaker 1: it's like to be on the bottom. Those are the
Speaker 1: people propping up Like in the day to day, it's
Speaker 1: black women in the real world that are propping up
Speaker 1: Republican profits, Republican systems. They're holding the whole country up.
Speaker 1: And they don't vote Republican because it's not in their interest,
Speaker 1: of course. But as long as black women are at
Speaker 1: the bottom and black men just above them and the
Speaker 1: rest of the minorities in this country, then they have
Speaker 1: the stratification of a society that will work. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to have that conversation because again, in
Speaker 1: trying to understand and trying to have a good faith
Speaker 1: approach and gain an understanding of how both parties make
Speaker 1: this country work. There's another quote that I came across.
Speaker 1: This was just some guy's thoughts online. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: his name, but I think it inspires some thinking. So
Speaker 1: this guy's name is Rob Bartley. He says quote or
Speaker 1: he's citing a quote here, and the quote is don't
Speaker 1: ever take a fence down until you know the reason
Speaker 1: it was put up. And that quote comes from G. K. Chesterton.
Speaker 1: So these are now Rob Bartley's words. The debate, largely
Speaker 1: between the right and the left, is over the value
Speaker 1: and the reason of the fences in place. The left
Speaker 1: dislikes fences on wages, for example, while the right dislikes
Speaker 1: fences placed on business. Both can argue the effects on
Speaker 1: the workers or the effect on jobs. Both have valid points.
Speaker 1: Either of them, left unchecked, is bad for the country.
Speaker 1: The tension between the two is honestly why we're still
Speaker 1: a great country. Our inability to enforce our ideas on
Speaker 1: the other keeps us all free from the good intentions
Speaker 1: of the other. And again, in a perfect world, that'd
Speaker 1: be great. But once this new administration gets the reins.
Speaker 2: The privilege of ever feeling like what he just said
Speaker 2: is is insane. Forgive me for saying that so flagrantly,
Speaker 2: but the privilege of ever thinking that what he just
Speaker 2: said was true. One side of that argument needs for
Speaker 2: their own benefit, for them to be for there to
Speaker 2: be those of us that have nothing, because we're talking
Speaker 2: about these things in principle right. One side of this
Speaker 2: argument wants to put into place things that will benefit
Speaker 2: one percent of us.
Speaker 1: That trickle down economics was a decidedly publican idea that
Speaker 1: didn't work after forty fifty years of trying, and.
Speaker 2: It's still in place in some ways, and the tax
Speaker 2: cut for the tax cuts for the rich, and all
Speaker 2: these policies, all of this stuff that they're trying to
Speaker 2: put in. If you read through Project twenty five, if
Speaker 2: you read through whatever Agenda forty seven, the things that
Speaker 2: they have in place are there to benefit one percent
Speaker 2: of us. So you'd ask, well, how do you get
Speaker 2: fifty percent of us to vote for something that only
Speaker 2: benefits one percent of us. You tap into all of
Speaker 2: our natural greed. I one day might be a part
Speaker 2: of that one percent and fears, so I want that
Speaker 2: to benefit me when you couple that with racism and fear,
Speaker 2: xenophobia and white supremacist nationalism and on and on, because
Speaker 2: fear sometimes we use as a synonym for hate, and
Speaker 2: they're not the same things. It's not the fear of
Speaker 2: black people or immigrants, or gay people or women. It's
Speaker 2: to hate. These men don't fear women. They hate them.
Speaker 2: They don't respect them, they don't consider them human, they
Speaker 2: consider them beneath them. They don't deserve the right to
Speaker 2: vote or the right to have their own jobs. They
Speaker 2: don't deserve the right to deny a man's sex. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and these aren't ramsen Q's thoughts. Yeah, go back and
Speaker 2: listen to the first part of the show if you
Speaker 2: missed it. They've pulled off the master con of pushing
Speaker 2: forth laws, litigation, legislation to benefit the one percent at
Speaker 2: the risk of failing everyone else, and they don't care.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm we're gonna need a round two on that one,
Speaker 1: because you know that there's there's got to be something
Speaker 1: else there, you know, I remember there was a gentleman
Speaker 1: saying that he's going to vote for Donald Trump because
Speaker 1: he protects the interests of a white future, and that's
Speaker 1: all he's interested in. You can excuse all the flaws
Speaker 1: and so forth. And he's a lifelong Republican and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was his guy, and he doesn't consider himself racist.
Speaker 1: So there's more layers to this. Definitely, we'll have those
Speaker 1: conversations at some point in the future, but for now
Speaker 1: we will say thank you for tuning in to this
Speaker 1: episode of Civic Cipher. I've been your host rams this jah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still cure. Thank you Pat for the letter. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I thank you to all of you guys that are
Speaker 2: still tuned in listening to us. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: tough mental space right now, right like that that I'm
Speaker 2: not racist, I'm not sexist people, but I still support him,
Speaker 2: so those things aren't disqualifiers.
Speaker 1: Man. That's tough, super tough. But lock in with us
Speaker 1: on all social media and the website at Civiccipher dot
Speaker 1: com and until next week, y'all.
Speaker 2: Peace,