Speaker 1: M oh yeah. Here's the thing, guys, I got a
Speaker 1: bunch of new co workers in the studio now who
Speaker 1: apparently really loves broccoli. Right now, I would love to
Speaker 1: record another episode of politics. But here the thing, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep it real with y'all due to my new coworkers. Um,
Speaker 1: I just never got around asking someone to be a
Speaker 1: part of the show this time. Yeah, can give you
Speaker 1: all a lesson in parenting as to how to learn
Speaker 1: how to tune that stuff out right now since we're
Speaker 1: all working from home. But I do have an episode prepared. Um,
Speaker 1: I just forgot to ask anyone to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. This is very strange and peril times. Um,
Speaker 1: but if you're all ready to get into it, it'll
Speaker 1: just be this time. Um you guys, okay with that?
Speaker 1: Me and my other coworker, the politics, y'all. Right, now, politics, y'all.
Speaker 1: So this episode is called big Out picked Out. Who
Speaker 1: do I mean by the big dog? Well, at this point,
Speaker 1: in a normal episode, what I mean, what is normal?
Speaker 1: I would have asked my guests what the big dog
Speaker 1: is and how all that stuff work. Here, I'll drop
Speaker 1: it in with you in a lot of gang life. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe not inside of gangs in general, because remember, your
Speaker 1: host has just lived in a lot of place is
Speaker 1: and lived around this culture for a long time. But
Speaker 1: you know, I never gang bang the day in my life,
Speaker 1: just from a lot of areas that have had I
Speaker 1: don't need to readjudicate this, but here's the thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of gang stuff is really just in relation to
Speaker 1: the other gangs. A lot of times it's it's a
Speaker 1: pissing contest. Let me just I don't know how else
Speaker 1: to say this. And the people that are what you know,
Speaker 1: actual gang members will call civilians, were kind of inconsequential.
Speaker 1: It's really more like the beef. We're not even the beef,
Speaker 1: but just the war on perception of who got bigger guns,
Speaker 1: who can run the hoods better, who can run the
Speaker 1: streets better. It's a desire to sort of win the
Speaker 1: allegiance or the hearts of the civilians. That's really just
Speaker 1: a transactional relationship anyway, because they kind of really don't care.
Speaker 1: It's just more about their own bravado and authoritarian rule.
Speaker 1: So they do a lot of things to make sure
Speaker 1: that their perception of strength and benevolence are widely known
Speaker 1: by us. Civilians ultimately, so they can run their illegal
Speaker 1: economy in relative peace and to secure a whole a
Speaker 1: neighborhood full of watchful eyes to protect their assets. One
Speaker 1: of those ways they do that is by leaving bodies
Speaker 1: on the streets in the mornings. Right now, granted, this
Speaker 1: is not the nineties, like this, this is a very
Speaker 1: stylized version of a very nineties version of what gang
Speaker 1: activity is. Nowadays, it's much the most of that stuff
Speaker 1: is happening online now. I don't want to like sort
Speaker 1: of minimize parts of our countries that are still living
Speaker 1: in active hot areas, but you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just not the way it was when I grew up. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you would leave bodies on the streets, and they were signals,
Speaker 1: not even to the neighborhood, there were signals to the
Speaker 1: other gangs just about this is how we handle things.
Speaker 1: But then they would also doing things like and I
Speaker 1: experienced this personally when I was living in the Sink
Speaker 1: Valley in La Pointe or specifically Valinda. Anybody from Cali
Speaker 1: would know that the ice cream truck would pull up
Speaker 1: and one of the big dogs you know, or or
Speaker 1: your neighborhood like O g would come out and just
Speaker 1: basically buy the whole truck out for everybody, so all
Speaker 1: the kids would be able to have ice cream. You know,
Speaker 1: we would look at this guy like, dang, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: He got all this money, he could buy us all things.
Speaker 1: But he was in a lot of ways that again,
Speaker 1: it was a war on perception. You were presenting yourself
Speaker 1: as this benevolent ruler, this protector that I get to say,
Speaker 1: no matter what happens, when the police comes, when when
Speaker 1: this happens, when this happens, when somebody asked for this,
Speaker 1: when somebody comes around this block looking for him and
Speaker 1: they're shooting, and all this stuff, Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: remember how well he took care of me, or this
Speaker 1: hood took care of me when my bike got stolen,
Speaker 1: you know, by the dudes a couple of blocks over.
Speaker 1: You know my laot Valinda guys came and take care
Speaker 1: of me. You know what I'm saying, it's a war
Speaker 1: on perception. This is no different than politics. We are
Speaker 1: in the middle of a global pandemic, but we are
Speaker 1: in the middle of a war on perception. M M M.
Speaker 1: War on perception. Now, if you guys would allow me
Speaker 1: to take off the propaganda hat and put on the Mr.
Speaker 1: Petty hat again. Those who have been following my career
Speaker 1: for a while, you know that I taught history. I
Speaker 1: taught ninth grade social science and history for a long time,
Speaker 1: which is kind of where the whole concept of hood
Speaker 1: politics came from. How do I make um geopolitics makes
Speaker 1: sense to people that have no in roads to it? Well,
Speaker 1: you find an in road anyway. A war on perception
Speaker 1: is not a new thing. Governments have been doing pissing
Speaker 1: contests for a long time. And the truth is you've
Speaker 1: experienced them multiple times. Now, pending on your age, you
Speaker 1: may have experienced like fox five of them. Let me
Speaker 1: let me drop in on two of them for you.
Speaker 1: The first one I would like to say is something
Speaker 1: that maybe you haven't experienced. If you're an American, you
Speaker 1: probably haven't seen this, maybe not on your own soil,
Speaker 1: but you've seen them on the news. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a military parade. You know a lot of times when
Speaker 1: the when when the news flashes to like North Korea
Speaker 1: and they show the guys like marching with these big
Speaker 1: tanks and then Kim Jong uh either whichever Kim Jong
Speaker 1: you want because it's been Three of them are standing
Speaker 1: on some sort of balcony above this parade of people screaming,
Speaker 1: and the guys are marching in lockstep, and then it's
Speaker 1: like tanks and stuff like that just parading down this
Speaker 1: this downtown area. And it was a funny thing because
Speaker 1: Trump said he wanted to do one of these pre rona.
Speaker 1: You know, RNA's a watershed issue where our life will
Speaker 1: be if you haven't figured that out yet, pre Corona
Speaker 1: and post corona. But some are arguing that there may
Speaker 1: not be a such thing as a post Corona, and
Speaker 1: just like there's no such thing as post HIV anyway,
Speaker 1: that would mean it's an endemic. But that's a whole
Speaker 1: other story. Let me stay on topic here. So the
Speaker 1: military parade actually serves no real purpose. I mean, what
Speaker 1: what are we celebrating? What are you signaling to the community?
Speaker 1: What do you I mean, what what is the point
Speaker 1: of this? I mean, and who are you actually talking to?
Speaker 1: Is this really for the general public to celebrate the
Speaker 1: nine trillion dollars you spent on tanks? I mean, who
Speaker 1: is this? Who is this for? Well, if you're following
Speaker 1: the story, it's not for North Korea does a military parade.
Speaker 1: It ain't for North Korea. It's for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It's a flex You're just you're flexing, and it's historically
Speaker 1: has been rather effective. The Nazi regimes did it all
Speaker 1: the time. You know those those images, you know, the
Speaker 1: black and white images of like dudes goose stepping and
Speaker 1: again the same it's the same motif with like Hitler
Speaker 1: standing aloft some sort of balcony looking over of all
Speaker 1: of this military power and process. It's just you're just
Speaker 1: it's a flex. It's it's it was it's geopolitical instagram.
Speaker 1: Before there was such thing as Instagram. You did a
Speaker 1: military parade, your your it's your trash talk, and you
Speaker 1: sell it as though you're talking to your own people,
Speaker 1: but you're not talking to the rest of us, Which
Speaker 1: was why it was so interesting and why there was
Speaker 1: there was such a visceral effect as to why President
Speaker 1: Trump wanted to do this, because it harkened back to
Speaker 1: this sort of authoritarian kind of way of showing might. Now,
Speaker 1: some of you might check my history and you say,
Speaker 1: probably we've done parades. Yeah, but we do parades when
Speaker 1: we come back from wars. Right, So the famous photo
Speaker 1: of the guy that grabbed a lady and leaned her
Speaker 1: over and kissed him. After World War Two, I believe
Speaker 1: you know the tinker tape parades of our boys coming
Speaker 1: back home. Um, the famous shot of President Bush Jr.
Speaker 1: On the aircraft carrier with all of the military, or
Speaker 1: not all of it, but a lot of the military,
Speaker 1: you know, flanked around him as he proclaimed the end
Speaker 1: of the war in the Middle East, which now seems
Speaker 1: rather comical that moment. It's not really for us, it's
Speaker 1: for everyone else, the pissing contest. It's just the war
Speaker 1: on perception. Now there's another war on perception that you
Speaker 1: may not even know really was actually just that in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties we were in a hurry, an absolute hurry,
Speaker 1: to get to the moon. We know it as the
Speaker 1: space race, right, there was other things happening during the
Speaker 1: space race. It was the Cold War. And if you
Speaker 1: don't know what the Cold War is, it was a
Speaker 1: time where the idea of a Western liberal democracy and
Speaker 1: an authoritarian communist regime ultimately was having this idea war
Speaker 1: as to who could who should be running the Nation's
Speaker 1: what concept, what ideal should win? In the hearts and
Speaker 1: minds of the people, and what will history say is
Speaker 1: the best way to run a country. It was a
Speaker 1: race to be a superpower. And the superpowers, if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make them as full as possible, was the West
Speaker 1: or the United States and Russia. All of these different things,
Speaker 1: The Korean War, the Vietnam War, all these different things
Speaker 1: were really just ultimately, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: pissing contest, who's got the juice, Which one of these
Speaker 1: people got the juice, which one of these ideas can
Speaker 1: show that they can run the nation's better. And the
Speaker 1: space race, ultimately, if we're honest, was not about science.
Speaker 1: Do you think it really cared what's on the moon,
Speaker 1: what's in space. All we wanted to do was to
Speaker 1: be able to say we were there first. So when
Speaker 1: Sputnik got into space, everybody was worried. You were saying,
Speaker 1: we want to continue idea of the American exceptionalist, which
Speaker 1: is true. It would be rat It's a that's a
Speaker 1: mighty strong flex to say we was first to the moon,
Speaker 1: and that's what we sold everybody. So we drained all
Speaker 1: of our Money's black people just got their right to vote.
Speaker 1: We they'll think about figuring out what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: with Vietnam. But in the middle of all that, we're
Speaker 1: trying to put somebody on the move. Gil Scott here
Speaker 1: and dropped a song, why do you own the Moon?
Speaker 1: Was it about science? No? Was it about beating the Russians? Yes?
Speaker 1: Was it ultimately about beating the Russians? No? It was
Speaker 1: ultimately about liberal democracy. It was about the Western way
Speaker 1: of life and proving that this way of life, Western
Speaker 1: small government, capitalistic liberal democracy is the best way to
Speaker 1: rule the Nation's that's what's the point of getting somebody
Speaker 1: on the moon first. Now, every historian has a different
Speaker 1: take on this, but I'm trying to explain to you
Speaker 1: the idea of a war on perception. The argument is
Speaker 1: which one of us can run the world better. Now,
Speaker 1: having said all that, anyone who's ever been on a
Speaker 1: playground at any point in elementary school, which now some
Speaker 1: of our children will have a big gap on that experience.
Speaker 1: But we all know when you're We all know when
Speaker 1: we're witnessing a pissing contest. Um any I hate to
Speaker 1: say it because of how toxic masculinity works, but any
Speaker 1: young lady who has found themselves the object of affection
Speaker 1: of two male steeds often find themselves in the middle
Speaker 1: of witnessing a pissing contest. And at some point, ladies,
Speaker 1: you understand and you know you know what it is
Speaker 1: when you see it, when this contest, this this world
Speaker 1: for your affection stops being about you and just starts
Speaker 1: being more about them two dudes proving their prowess. Any
Speaker 1: parent has children, um understands that their children often get
Speaker 1: in just what we would call pissing contests, meaning the
Speaker 1: argument between the two kids is really more about them
Speaker 1: being able to stand their ground. I found that my
Speaker 1: own children oftentimes battle for our affection and I don't
Speaker 1: know what I've done to them, what my wife has
Speaker 1: done to them to make them think they need to
Speaker 1: do that. But it's something in us that needs to
Speaker 1: prove that we are the big dog. So you know
Speaker 1: what it is when you see it. Now. It gets
Speaker 1: real tricky when we apply it to what's going on
Speaker 1: in our news. Now we are hopefully all of you
Speaker 1: sheltering in place, maybe considering when do we get to start,
Speaker 1: as the government say, open our economy back. When can
Speaker 1: I start going outside again? I know I would love
Speaker 1: to have my coworkers go back to their own office.
Speaker 1: Here's the my coworkers, all my children, and that's that's
Speaker 1: the joke I'm trying to make. But I would love
Speaker 1: to see them go back to other places so that
Speaker 1: I could record politics in peace. But we're all kind
Speaker 1: of asking that question. You know, where's our masks, where's
Speaker 1: our ventilators, where's our leaders that are helping us lead
Speaker 1: the way in flattening the curve? And as a side
Speaker 1: note on my um instagram, I tried to give it
Speaker 1: a little explanation of how exponents work and what we
Speaker 1: mean when we say flattening the curve. You could go
Speaker 1: to my instagram for that anyway. That's a side note.
Speaker 1: But we're all trying to figure out how do we
Speaker 1: do this. And what's interesting about a virus, which some
Speaker 1: of you already know, is that, uh, borders are made up,
Speaker 1: so your virus really don't care. It makes no distinction
Speaker 1: between California and Nevada. The lines made up. It's imaginary.
Speaker 1: It makes no distinction between France in Germany. So whatever
Speaker 1: a government says they're doing for their people, it's important
Speaker 1: to couple that with an understanding of how viruses work.
Speaker 1: It's not like the ron us all came to the
Speaker 1: border and tried to show its passport so it can
Speaker 1: go to the next place. It just that don't. But
Speaker 1: we're all in a race to see if we could
Speaker 1: cure this thing and how to sort of protect the
Speaker 1: people that if you're a nation or a governor that
Speaker 1: you are put in charge of and responsible for keeping safe.
Speaker 1: And every nation has responded different as to how to
Speaker 1: get the messaging out as to a number of things, Um,
Speaker 1: what we're doing for it, how we're gonna fix it,
Speaker 1: and whose fault is it in the first place. And
Speaker 1: if you've been following the American news, it's simple, we
Speaker 1: blame in China, easy, right. And now China also, if
Speaker 1: you're following the news, are now having a second wave
Speaker 1: of coronavirus and they're blaming um tourists. It was like, look,
Speaker 1: we had it under control, and now y'all coming back
Speaker 1: and bringing it back for us. And we're all trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how we're gonna make sure our messaging
Speaker 1: comes out clear and that our people understand that their
Speaker 1: leaders are doing the best they can for them. But
Speaker 1: what I would like to submit to you is what
Speaker 1: we're witnessing is a whole bunch of big dogs trying
Speaker 1: to prove that they more gangster than the other ones.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know what I'm looking at, because
Speaker 1: ultimately the argument is who got the better system of government,
Speaker 1: who can fix this quicker, who can show they got
Speaker 1: more power, more authority over an unforeseen virus than the
Speaker 1: other person. And it's interest same way that they're that
Speaker 1: that that countries are responding as to how to control
Speaker 1: their media. If you're watching Trump, you understand he just
Speaker 1: tried to bully everybody through and just say only talk
Speaker 1: about the things I've done. Well, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: not new Russia, however, says listen, you get five years
Speaker 1: in prison if you spread false info about the Rona.
Speaker 1: They locking fools up. It's Bekistan. You get a ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollar fine. Zimbabwe you get twenty years for spreading
Speaker 1: any fake news. Didn't you hear me? You get twenty
Speaker 1: years if you spread some fake news about about the Rona. Turkmenistan. Listen,
Speaker 1: they banned the word of Corona from the media. Turkey.
Speaker 1: You know what they did. They gave their president absolute power.
Speaker 1: Listen to me, absolute power. India said they wanted all
Speaker 1: reports are add that for the media to always report everything.
Speaker 1: They're gonna say, you gotta run it through the government first.
Speaker 1: Not a Supreme court shut that down. It was like,
Speaker 1: now you listen, you're going to you're doing too much.
Speaker 1: That's that's you can't be doing all that. Ultimately, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we're trying they're trying to
Speaker 1: control the narrative. That's not necessarily wrong, but control the
Speaker 1: narrative for who. And none of these laws define what
Speaker 1: they mean by fake or false news or media about
Speaker 1: the RONA ain't no definition for it. Are we really
Speaker 1: going to ride in the streets now? Do you think
Speaker 1: the people don't actually understand that they presidents, they prime
Speaker 1: ministers can't control of virus. You think I don't know that,
Speaker 1: You think we all don't know that. No, the race
Speaker 1: to get this thing covered and get that curve flattened
Speaker 1: faster than everyone else ain't really about the people, suppissant contest.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to prove to you that our way of
Speaker 1: life is better authoritarian governments. What they're doing, they're acting
Speaker 1: authoritatively by saying everybody, shut up, you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: do this. If you talk, you're going to jail. This
Speaker 1: is what we're doing. Everybody stay home, and I'm approved
Speaker 1: to these Western liberal democracies that we can do this
Speaker 1: better than you. Why is China not telling everybody what's
Speaker 1: happening right now? I'm trying to prove to y'all that
Speaker 1: I'm the big dog. It's not about the RONA. It's
Speaker 1: about my way of life the president of the United States,
Speaker 1: and about the RONA. It's about my leadership. Aren't you
Speaker 1: watching the briefs. It ain't about the RONA. It ain't
Speaker 1: about us, It's about his leadership. I'm trying to prove
Speaker 1: to y'all and to the world that I'm your guy,
Speaker 1: big dog. You've got governments refusing to receive aid from
Speaker 1: other countries. Boris Johnson rejects Trump's offered to help with
Speaker 1: the coronavirus stuff. He's like, now, I don't need your money.
Speaker 1: Your money got strings attached number one and number two,
Speaker 1: I got stuff to prove. You got the President talking
Speaker 1: about day he cutting funds from the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: because they're not doing this correctly. It's a pissing contest, y'all.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to prove they the bullies on the block.
Speaker 1: Why would anyone not help anyone. One would think that
Speaker 1: when the RONA came that all bets were off. But
Speaker 1: it don't matter because they understand the RONA gonna leave
Speaker 1: at some point and I need to prove to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world that I can get to the
Speaker 1: moon first. Gang bang. Now, we already talked before about
Speaker 1: gathering the money, securing the bag, and why it was
Speaker 1: so interesting to see Donald Trump being so serious about
Speaker 1: this uh malaria medicine and you know, I mean, he's
Speaker 1: got stake in it. We talked about countries being doing
Speaker 1: their best to get to cure, but then at some
Speaker 1: point somebody got a patent that cure. We talked about
Speaker 1: these things, and of course there's back seccurance, but there's
Speaker 1: also flex rights. Everybody wanta flex because at some point
Speaker 1: the ron is gonna be done and I need to
Speaker 1: prove to the world, big dog, this is my block.
Speaker 1: I do what I won't. I got powers and authority
Speaker 1: over viruses. Now, I don't want to move into conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory thoughts, because that's not really what this pots about.
Speaker 1: It's not about those things. It's about understanding what we're
Speaker 1: looking at. However, it's not like biochemical warfare is not
Speaker 1: a thing. And if I'm a government, I need to
Speaker 1: prove that my guns are better than yours. I'm not
Speaker 1: here to say no body COVID nineteen was creating a
Speaker 1: lab or nothing like that. Again, this pot is not
Speaker 1: about that space. This pot is about looking at governments
Speaker 1: and going, oh, y'all just gang banging. So if I'm
Speaker 1: a hood and I know that country got guns that
Speaker 1: look like this, and I can prove that your guns
Speaker 1: ain't effective on me, I feel like I've just proven
Speaker 1: to you I'm the bully on the block and maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't bring this over here. And everybody in this neighborhood,
Speaker 1: whether civilians or gang banging, all understand that I got
Speaker 1: the best interests in mind. Because I was able to
Speaker 1: prove I got mind control and virus control over y'all,
Speaker 1: I am the big dog. Well, that's our hood. Take
Speaker 1: a lot of my information has come from obviously, you're
Speaker 1: always welcome to check my sources. The main source of
Speaker 1: this episode came from Al Jazeera News. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: number of stories about authoritarian versus liberal democracy. Just scroll
Speaker 1: through their app or website and just it's a ton
Speaker 1: of stories. I again highly suggest that during this time
Speaker 1: you take take the opportunity to look at news sources
Speaker 1: outside of our country. It just it just gives you.
Speaker 1: It's just like you know, if you're going to counseling,
Speaker 1: especially like relationship or couples therapy, it's good to have
Speaker 1: someone not in the marriage, not in the relationship, to
Speaker 1: talk about the relationship. They just got a different vantage point.
Speaker 1: It's not right or wrong, it's just a different vantage points.
Speaker 1: So you can have someone show you yourself. So that's
Speaker 1: my suggestion. Pull up on the BBC, pull up on
Speaker 1: Al Jazeira, and it may help you see the point
Speaker 1: of this whole podcast, which is politics is just gang
Speaker 1: banging in nice suits. We'll see you next week and
Speaker 1: hopefully I will uh have a better plan. This podcast
Speaker 1: was recorded in my bedroom while my child was having
Speaker 1: a great time. Um. It was mixed and mastered by
Speaker 1: our man Matt. I was our sky. I should take
Speaker 1: this break to learn his last name. The theme music
Speaker 1: I can't even focus right now. The theme music is
Speaker 1: for not even for it. The theme music was created
Speaker 1: by our boy, DJ Shaun p. I'll see you next
Speaker 1: week with a better prepared pod. Oh yeah, believe that
Speaker 1: you all oh, yeah, thank you,