Speaker 1: Show. So I just popped into my head to day
Speaker 1: as I was listening to various conversations over the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, comparing these current times to which I
Speaker 1: used to look at, read about history books, watch documentaries
Speaker 1: about and think, man, that must have been something to
Speaker 1: live through. Ugly constant protests, violence, police versus the people
Speaker 1: in the street. You're either on their side. There's no
Speaker 1: there's no staying out of it. You're either on that
Speaker 1: side or that side. We're clearly there now. Well to discuss,
Speaker 1: to compare it to contrast, and to just say hello, please,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the Armstrong any show. Are esteemed a newsman,
Speaker 1: Marshall Phillips, Marshally, you were with us for a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee? What was it fifteen years? It was about
Speaker 1: fifteen years, Yeah, a little more than a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: By the way, guys, I have not left my house
Speaker 1: since January one. I've had to deal with things like
Speaker 1: raccoons in the chimney, and you know, the the neighbors
Speaker 1: complaints about my growing pyramid of chardonnay bottles out in front,
Speaker 1: that growing pyramid of chardonnay bottle. I was actually thinking
Speaker 1: because I remember before you retired from this program, discussion
Speaker 1: of how much you're gonna follow the news or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and I could see checking out completely. So it just
Speaker 1: occurred to me. We could get you on the phone.
Speaker 1: You could say that what now the protest about what
Speaker 1: there's a there's a disease. You're not following news? No, no,
Speaker 1: my friends, I h a. I have been following the news,
Speaker 1: probably even too much. In fact, you get to a point,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking talking about the pandemic and and
Speaker 1: the action on the streets, and that well, as far
Speaker 1: as the pandemic goes, I get a cough, you know,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'm going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've got the virus. You know. Then you just got
Speaker 1: to calm yourself down. Then I looked at what has
Speaker 1: been going on in the streets, and I got to
Speaker 1: tell you, in a lot of ways, this is very
Speaker 1: similar to what was happening in nineteen sixty eight, except
Speaker 1: it's not being played out against the background of a pandemic.
Speaker 1: It is being fueled by a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are just really chicked off with what they see as
Speaker 1: the current state of affairs. Back in the sixties, it
Speaker 1: was the Vietnam War, which a lot of people felt
Speaker 1: was illegal, hadn't really been explained to them. They had
Speaker 1: friends dying, and now you've got another another ground swell.
Speaker 1: It's actually, you know, spread worldwide, fueled in large part
Speaker 1: by young people who have just gotten out in the
Speaker 1: streets and said we've had enough. Well was it? Was
Speaker 1: it the same way in it's the way it seems
Speaker 1: from eating about it. But I wasn't old muff to
Speaker 1: know what was going on. Where you're either on one
Speaker 1: side or the other. It was very, very difficult to
Speaker 1: be neutral. Yes, yeah, I mean you were. You really
Speaker 1: were on one side or the other there. It was
Speaker 1: hard to find a middle ground at that point and again,
Speaker 1: and the anger was fueled by both sides. People who
Speaker 1: wanted peace and would condemn the soldiers and people who
Speaker 1: thought the war was righteous and would condemn the people
Speaker 1: who wanted peace. There were it was real hard to
Speaker 1: find a middle ground. Do you remember people being uh
Speaker 1: dragged out into the public square and their careers being
Speaker 1: executed for being on the wrong side of various arguments?
Speaker 1: Back then? This, of course a lot of its social media.
Speaker 1: Maybe without social media you couldn't do that, do you
Speaker 1: remember anything about that. No, not so much. No, not
Speaker 1: so much. I mean, and again, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: social media has made a huge difference. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can be told you can say the wrong thing or
Speaker 1: try to say the right thing in an awkward way
Speaker 1: and be crucified for it. That that that was that
Speaker 1: did not exist back then. Although although fiery tempers did
Speaker 1: produce fiery results both in and today. You know, it's
Speaker 1: probably worth pointing out the average sandwich shop owner or
Speaker 1: or you know, NBA announcer or whatever, they had no
Speaker 1: way to communicate their opinion to the masses, and so
Speaker 1: you'd never hear about it anyone. You didn't know what
Speaker 1: Frank and Gifford thought about the Vietnam War necessarily right, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and yeah exactly, and again, uh, even if
Speaker 1: people would say certain inflammatory things, a lot of the
Speaker 1: reporters wouldn't report it. They would just say, all right,
Speaker 1: well that's just background, and they wouldn't actually put it
Speaker 1: in print. That and again it's when I started to
Speaker 1: work in radio. Oh god, no, so many years ago.
Speaker 1: You would call the president Mr President or Mr Trump,
Speaker 1: you would or Mr Nixon. You would never just say
Speaker 1: Nixon or it was always much more formal. And again,
Speaker 1: how about you lying communist, morbidly obese Nazi. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: as time went on that began to appear in the
Speaker 1: free press and other alternate media. Yes, yeah, what so what?
Speaker 1: But so in between sixty eight and recent times, we
Speaker 1: obviously came back together, you know, in a in a
Speaker 1: in a in a period of time where we we
Speaker 1: were now thinking, oh, those were the golden days. How
Speaker 1: do we get those back? What? What ended the division?
Speaker 1: Just the war ending or or did it run its course?
Speaker 1: Or do you have any idea you're talking about the
Speaker 1: end of the Vietnam War? Well, what what brought us
Speaker 1: back together from the sixties to a more a calmer
Speaker 1: period through the seventies, eighties, nineties. I think I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it was the fact that the war ended,
Speaker 1: the draft ended, and people started talking to each other more.
Speaker 1: You know, you had if you knew somebody that came
Speaker 1: back from the war, you saw they were in paid,
Speaker 1: so you you know, you might you might be more
Speaker 1: willing to talk to one another as opposed to just
Speaker 1: getting on social media and trying to dog somebody. Well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the race that go ahead and Marshall. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say I noticed that happening through
Speaker 1: the years, especially as we got to the end of
Speaker 1: the seventies into the eighties. There was a lot more
Speaker 1: of all right, I appreciate what you thought you had
Speaker 1: to do, and I appreciate what you thought you had
Speaker 1: to do, so you had more of that back and forth.
Speaker 1: It's also significant that the Nixon administration, in the wake
Speaker 1: of the race riots of late sixties, launched enormous social programs,
Speaker 1: huge spending by the Republican administration then, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people thought, Okay, that'll help, that'll be good, and so, okay,
Speaker 1: we won't burn the cities anymore. Um, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it actually didn't help. It hurt, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: but um, and then Watergate came and went, and then
Speaker 1: the war ended. So yeah, just was on TV and
Speaker 1: everything was you know, we we intended when you retired
Speaker 1: to check in with you now and then on retirement.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately you retired right at the moment of a global
Speaker 1: pandemic and a and a great depression, so rough timing
Speaker 1: for your retirement, I realized, And you know, I will
Speaker 1: be very honest with you. Part of me is sad,
Speaker 1: and I'm not happy that I retired at this period
Speaker 1: of time. But part of me is also saying, all right,
Speaker 1: you know, now it's a good time to step back,
Speaker 1: at least for now. You know, retirement doesn't mean forever,
Speaker 1: but at least for now. And it's given me, in
Speaker 1: all honesty, a really good chance to observe other people
Speaker 1: dealing with things in their real life against this whole background,
Speaker 1: against this panopally or what's going on. Hey Marshall, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry we have to jump in even as you're making
Speaker 1: a beautiful point. We got about twenty seconds left, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I we'll tell you this. I am
Speaker 1: living in an undisclosed location five months. It took five months,
Speaker 1: but my house, my other house, is up for sale. Excellent, excellent,
Speaker 1: And I assume you're continuing the stockpile gold and weaponry. Everybody. Marshall,
Speaker 1: Phillips are esteam News. Went always great to talk. Thanks
Speaker 1: for your Marshall, Armstrong and Getty