Ep. 206: "The OG Haoles"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
So good.
So super duper super.
Different day, different time.
Yeah, right.
It's not too early.
It's not too Monday.
It is just what it is.
I'm always ready for you.
Is that right?
Mm-hmm.
That can't be true.
I'm treating myself today to, I have this new thing I'm doing called the Taste of My Youth, where I go and I revisit Taste of My Youth.
So right now I'm having a six-ounce can of Dole pineapple orange juice.
Oh.
Oh, God, it's good.
It's all from concentrate.
Yeah.
Right.
Comes in a can, so you know it's healthy.
Is that something that you actually had as a youth?
This is my Madeline and my tea is in gym class in 10th grade, we had a drink dispenser, you know, like a pop machine, but it dispensed juice.
And there was this brand was called Bluebird.
Bluebird orange juice, which I've never heard of anywhere else.
And it was orange juice that mostly tasted like pineapple, and I always enjoyed it.
I think when you get the concentrate, you know, you get a pineapple aspect to it.
Well, that's the thing.
What is a pineapple?
It's concentrated orange.
Oh, my God.
I never thought of it that way.
Yeah, sure.
You take a bunch of oranges.
Well, this is what God did.
Yeah.
A bunch of oranges.
What was it, the fourth day, third day?
Scrunched it into an armadillo.
Yeah.
He squoze it into the pineapple.
Yeah, and then took a cactus and stuck it in the armadillo's butt.
I learn so much from you every week.
Yeah, well, that's the thing about science.
You don't encounter pineapples like you used to.
I think pineapples, like people in gorilla suits and quicksand, I think it might be a thing mostly of the 70s.
Well, you know, in the 70s, I spent a lot of time in Hawaii, as we've talked about, probably either many times or never.
And in Hawaii in the 70s, there were pineapple fields as far as the eye could see.
Pineapple fields forever.
It was pineapple fields forever.
Sorry.
Living was easy with eyes closed.
Uh, and it was like one of the great things about going to Hawaii.
It was sugar cane and pineapples.
This kind of this, um, I mean, they were plantations, but, but a big part of the culture there and all of that stuff is gone.
Now you go to Hawaii and there are no, there's no sugar cane.
There are no pineapples really.
Right.
Really.
Because it's just so much cheaper to grow that stuff elsewhere.
Oh, in China.
Well, I don't think they grow pineapples in China.
They will.
They will.
It'll get cheap enough.
They found Dole Pineapple Conglomerate, Inc., GBH, found enormous places in Central and South America, I think, and in Africa probably, where they just said, oh, well, we'll grow pineapples here.
Yeah.
And now a lot of those fields in Hawaii are either fallow or, I don't know, it's kind of weird to go there and not see that stuff.
And I don't even understand why they just didn't let the pineapples grow wild, although I don't know what wild pineapples look like.
This is an interesting thing.
It's a double turns out because for a long time we heard about and talked about peak oil and we talked about the idea that there would be a point when...
you would reach more than 50% of the oil that could be gotten from the earth.
And then after that point, it would become much more costly and much more expensive, which led to a lot of interesting discussions.
I'm just basically paraphrasing.
What's his name?
Kunstler.
But, but, but the idea that like the whole magazine, I always enjoyed his legal career.
Remember Kunstler?
Yeah.
Good old Kunstler.
With the glasses on and then the glasses on top of his head and then the third pair of glasses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The other glasses and he had that cool hair.
He was cool looking.
But, you know, if you read any of that stuff, which I found very absorbing in the 2000s, there was the idea that so – well, setting aside slavery, so much of what happens in America in the last 150 at least years is based on incredibly cheap –
energy that you know what i mean just the idea that that you know we could not you could not have walmart be walmart without ships running on you know relatively cheap fuel and so a lot of stuff changed actually i'm reading a book about walmart so i kind of have walmart on the brain right now but that's changed now walmart has become extremely interested in environmental sustainability not least because it's cheaper now and but uh but then the fuel prices went down
So, like, what happens?
I mean, is our economy going to get all wackadoodle, just continue to be wackadoodle based on these kinds of prices of fuel?
And, like, how could you not get pineapples from Hawaii?
That just seems weird.
I'm not sure if there's a question here.
I'm just concerned.
I think that the other factors are labor is more expensive in Hawaii, and there's a lot more regulation in Hawaii because it's America, and land is more expensive and got increasingly more expensive.
Yeah.
And it's just when you're talking about a multinational corporation that's like, how do we make 10 million pineapples as cheaply as we possibly can?
And if fuel prices are low and we can fill up an Exxon Valdez full of pineapples.
That's my dream.
Because it's already expensive to get pineapples from Hawaii to anywhere.
It's not that much more expensive to get them from Nicaragua or probably from Nigeria.
I don't know.
I keep throwing these.
I know I'm looking right now because I honestly don't know.
These ideas out where they're growing pineapples.
But what do you need?
You need water.
You need hot.
You've got to have hot.
And you need ground.
Costa Rica.
Costa Rica.
There it is.
Philippines and then Brazil.
As of 2013, Costa Rica produces 2.7 million tons of pineapple a year.
It's a lot of tons of pineapple.
Yeah, it looks like it's a pretty tight race between the Philippines, Brazil, Costa Rica.
I found Hawaii, I was not a good match for Hawaii.
I like the way that you pronounce Hawaii.
Hawaii.
Hawaii.
You know, we West Coasters for a long time, you know, we just like, we anglicize everything.
Hawaii.
Hawaii.
Hawaii.
But you put that little extra, like, Hawaii.
Hawaii.
I like it.
Sylvia Poggioli.
It sounds good.
So you went to Hawaii and did not, you didn't bond with it.
Well, here's the thing.
First of all, I think you know this about me.
Sometimes I have trouble relaxing.
Mm hmm.
And slightly separate from that, I have I sometimes am a difficult acclimator.
I don't always acclimate well or quickly.
Like you seem like a kind of guy.
You got a bag.
You're on a plane.
You go somewhere and like you're already part of the culture.
Yeah, you try.
You try.
But like it takes me a while to get into.
I've gotten better over the years, but there was a time when it would take me like three days to enjoy anything that wasn't being at my house.
Just to shake off the like change.
yeah yeah yeah but i mean hawaii also i also uh felt very very foreign not least because the people of hawaii um don't love people coming there it's not and understandably it's not the warmest welcome and also i uh didn't like the food i couldn't get with the food i think you're either the kind of person it's like scottish food you're either all about it or you're like i can't believe this is food yeah
I couldn't shave ice in the spam.
But that's right up your alley.
Well, what's wonderful about Hawaiian food is it really is kind of like made out of the worst elements of like four different kinds of food.
Right.
It's like the worst kind of Japanese food and the worst kind of Portuguese food and the worst sort of American food.
And I love it.
Right.
A pile of rice.
Right.
with breaded chicken with a fried egg covered in gravy.
Oh, you know what?
I should give it another try.
Where I was just like, this is a thing?
And they're like, oh yeah, it's called Loco Moco.
Dive in.
I was like, I am feeling Loco Moco.
But Hawaii doesn't feel foreign to me because we went there a lot.
Why were you going there a lot?
Remind me.
Well, because in the 70s,
The 49th and 50th states had a very special relationship because Alaska entered the United States in 1959 and Hawaii in 1960.
I don't know.
In my head, I always imagine they came in on the same bill.
No, there's a brief period where there was a – where they made flags, US flags with 49 stars.
No way.
I don't think it was for very long.
And it might – Hawaii might have even been in at the – within 1959 too.
But there was a brief period where the US had 49 states.
You can double check this.
But –
But so, you know, by 1970, what both both places had been U.S.
states for 10 years.
I mean, it was still very new.
It was also very exotic.
I mean, Hawaii, like do you think about Hawaii Five-0 or the Brady Bunch?
It was like it was it was for my whole childhood.
That was the idyllic.
location sure my mother's entire life she all she ever not all she wanted but she really wanted to go on a vacation to hawaii it was one of those things like that was her dream yeah sure you get on a vacation to hawaii exactly right it's just just the just the term has all this all the smell of kalitas rising up through the air oh i don't think they have kalitas there
I have that.
I have ulcerative colitis.
Yeah, I know.
That's painful.
It's in remission.
I'm all right.
Thank you.
Thanks for asking.
But when you think about Magnum PI, that's only 20 years after Hawaii became a state.
Whoa.
Less than that, right?
So it's still very much like new turf.
And so anyway, all by way of saying that the Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, which were both sort of new-ish –
newish carriers that were making a play to be bigger than just regional airlines.
They had this like $100 ticket, $100 reciprocal ticket, Anchorage to Honolulu.
Damn.
And it was... That's crazy.
And understand now for the youngsters, for the millenniums, millenniums don't know from travel.
It used to be you were not going to go anywhere for less than $700 to $1,000.
It used to be very expensive to fly.
It was, and Alaska was, you know, it was such a different animal.
And it was hard to know, like, what, because Alaska Airlines had these things, $100 tickets.
They had a $100 ticket at one point.
When I graduated from high school, Alaska Airlines gave every graduating senior in Alaska a free ticket to Alaska.
To anywhere in Alaska.
Chimney.
And so you could use this ticket to go visit somewhere like a Barrow or Unalakleet or something where you would never otherwise go.
Right.
You're not going to go to Unalakleet for probably as part of your job.
But if you got a free ticket, why not go there?
And so I left Alaska immediately after graduating, and I didn't come back until after my free ticket to anywhere in Alaska had expired.
But all of my friends, my high school friends, all got together and flew to Kodiak, which is like, okay, that's not exactly the most exotic place to go, Kodiak.
You find out where they make the snuff.
Well, yeah, right.
Or find out where they use the snuff.
And they went down to Kodiak and they all rented some big hotel room.
Not nice hotel room.
I mean, I don't think there are any nice hotel rooms in Kodiak.
But, like, they got hotel rooms in some shitty hotel.
And they sat and drank beer.
You know, drank, like, Keystone.
They didn't have Keystone then.
It would have been Stroh's.
They drank Stroh's in their cold, shitty hotel room while it rained outside for three days.
And then they flew home.
And I was like, that was a waste.
And they were like, yeah, it was a waste.
Like they should have gone.
They could have gone anywhere.
You know, gnome.
How many times are you going to say in your life you went to gnome?
I don't know.
I mean, maybe, maybe two, maybe.
Yeah.
Two, two plus.
Probably zero, but maybe two.
I don't think I'm going to say seven.
But we went to Hawaii all the time.
Uh, because of this hundred dollar ticket and it was a direct flight anchored to Honolulu.
So it was just like, you didn't even have to go to America.
Damn.
And Hawaiians came to Alaska.
And at the time, like, uh, Waikiki still had most of the stuff on Waikiki was still like grass roof, like, like, you know, um, yeah, like little, little shacks with no windows that were bars.
And they had those little tiki lanterns out front.
You know, the streets kind of – if you went five or six blocks off of Waikiki, the streets would kind of dirt.
I mean it was very still just like – it felt like a small town.
Obviously there were – you know, the Royal Hawaiian was there.
That big Hilton was there.
There were some hotels along the strip.
But if you got down the road a little ways, it was just –
It was so Hawaii and so chill.
And at that point, there wasn't that hostility to outsiders because it was – outsiders were sort of contained.
It was like, yeah, if you came to Hawaii, you went to here, but you didn't go –
We went to Maui back then and it was... Maui was nothing.
If memory serves, it was always Honolulu and Waikiki.
And then Maui was like, even into the late 70s, Maui was the hidden gem.
Like if you really want to go to Hawaii, you got to go to Maui because nobody's ruined it yet.
The streets were dirt for most of... And Maui had little towns, right?
You drive in and it's just a little... It's like a little town kind of carved out of the...
out of the wild and oh my god it felt like a it felt like um it was it was it was a paradisical and now you know maui is a constant traffic jam it's still incredible don't get me wrong but it's a traffic jam what's the one we went to we went to kawaii kawaii yeah which seems like there's like a few outposts around the rim and it's been a lot of land
Yeah, and I think probably your experience of Native Hawaiians being like less than aloha about you.
Don't get me wrong now.
I mean in the same position, I would feel the same way.
Well, who knows?
But they probably now increasingly – I mean everybody there feels encroached upon.
Even the Howleys that have been there 15 years feel like they're the OG Howleys and –
They don't want any new Howleys.
That's just the, you know, that's true of everyone.
That's true of, as I sit and think about it, do I know a person that lives anywhere in the world who isn't mad about new people coming in?
Nope, nope, nope.
As soon as you've been there for a couple nights, you're entitled to talk about how things are changing.
I'm trying to think.
I read something the other day.
Oh, it was an article about New Zealand saying that there were all these towns in New Zealand that were really encouraging people to move there.
And I think that they are like the, you know, the old sheep farming towns kind of like, I feel, I feel like there are towns in Nebraska and Kansas that everyone, all the young people have moved away and,
And I'm not entirely sure whether the residents of those towns are encouraging people to move there as much as they're just surrendering.
They're just like taking deep breaths off of their oxygen machines and hoping that the Lord comes soon.
But in New Zealand, I feel like a lot of – I read this whole article about like –
They're actually like incentivizing people to move to these small towns just because they're losing – and the pictures of these places, they seem idyllic.
But anybody that's read a real estate magazine knows that you can take a pretty good picture of a place.
Sure.
But yeah, maybe that's the future.
Maybe –
Maybe we should move to New Zealand, Marlon.
Have you been to New Zealand?
Because I have.
You've been to New Zealand?
I'm here to tell you, it took me maybe 48 hours to seriously contemplate moving there.
Did you go as a result of some sort of thing, some tech thing, where they wanted you to come talk about their inboxes?
Something like that.
Did you take all 43 folders there?
I'm so tired.
So very, very tired.
No!
I went there for a really cool conference, and I did a talk, and I cried on stage, and lots of people liked it.
It's kind of one of my famous talks.
But...
You know, it's hard to tell until you've been somewhere two or three times.
It's hard to really make any kind of a sane reckoning of what's happening there.
But there were certain things about, you know, you go somewhere and you get a vibe, and the vibe there is crazy.
I mean, first of all, I mean, one of the primary things is that people there are...
unannoyingly unironically friendly and kind unannoyingly friendly and kind like people are nice they're not nice in like an annoying way uh they're they they are neighborly in some ways but not in like a in your face way second like
Like, every cup of coffee I had there, every McDonald's I had there, anything that I had there was, like, just about the best of that that I ever had.
It takes some fucking 20 minutes to make a cup of coffee in New Zealand.
A little maddening.
This is when I got into espresso, because they do the espresso drinks there.
But, like, the craftsmanship of what people do there is really palpable.
And there's a lot of, like, again, you know, it's a lot like Canada now that I think about it.
Nice people and a lot of civic pride.
That's not annoying.
America has kind of ruined civic pride for a lot of countries.
But it's nice to go somewhere where, like, you're walking around Canada and everybody's got a poppy because it's Remembrance Day.
That's really nice.
And it's not to, like, you know, have something to put on Facebook.
It's just because that's what people always do there.
You go there and, like, you know, you get a pair of shoes.
It's the best pair of shoes you've ever gotten.
You know, America has ruined civic pride for America, too.
Right.
I used to and I still kind of try like to have civic pride and national.
You can get it sometimes.
You go watch go back and watch the video of Whitney Houston singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl.
That'll still give you a little bit of a goose.
Yeah, I feel like, yay, America.
I mean, I say that shit.
I said that yesterday.
It's a great experiment.
We're still trying.
Yay, America.
America, we're still trying.
We're still trying.
Fuck yeah, USA.
But then, you know, and then somebody like fucking throws a can of skull at me and I feel like, ah.
Donk.
You know, what I was just saying had nothing to do with guns, for the love of Christ.
Oh, I know.
I know.
I know.
Yeah, with the Twitter in particular, you know, I know you're on the Facebook.
I'm not on the Facebook.
With Twitter, like, I feel so inoculated because I don't go much outside my circle.
But then when I do, I'm just, I'm stunned.
I mean, there's this part of my brain that likes to think the whole, like, men's rights, white power,
anti-immigrant, that whole cluster.
I like to imagine that that is still the fringe.
I'm not persuaded that that is so much of the fringe as it used to be.
And it's kind of everywhere and it's awful.
And they're like some kind of science fiction creature where they just go find people with a good heart and try to destroy them.
And throw a skull.
They throw a skull.
Yeah.
I mean, there's millions and millions of people that share that cloud of ideology.
So much so that I'm intrigued now that the liberal media, if you will, or rather, let me call it, you know, the intelligentsia, the thinkers.
Yeah.
The progressive thought leaders.
Progressive thought leaders are trying now to write think pieces.
And I know how you feel about think pieces.
And you know how I feel about think pieces.
I love a think piece.
Boy, you know what?
You couldn't have, you know, paper the ground with think pieces is what I say.
I had an erection at work for three hours.
Here's what I learned.
But there are now increasingly those think pieces, it's sort of Atlantic magazine style, long form articles saying, wait a minute, if 100 million Americans...
Share a cosmology in which these ideas, you know, these these these ideas are like some kind of foundational underpinning of a worldview.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not just something people tolerate quietly, like certain kinds of racism in the past, things like that.
It's not just something that's tolerated.
It's something that helps people bond together.
People who formerly had seemingly nothing in common in what we thought of as civil discourse.
There are people who are finding common cause with other people in a way that's kind of mind-blowing.
Well, and I think a lot of in a lot of those cases, right, the what we see as the as the like overt deal killing racism implied in what in a lot of what gets said, they see as like eye rollingly unimportant, small are racism that you should just get over.
Because they what they're seeing in some of that action and some of those theories, some of those philosophies is something else.
And a lot of and the liberal side stops at the racism wall.
And says, whatever's on the other side of this, I'm not interested in because the racism inherent in it, like, blocks me from going further into this idea.
And the hundred million people who are able to get through that wall, who live on the other side of that wall, are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, racism, racism.
But X or Y.
And there are so many of those different languages, right, where the gun rights stuff, where from the left we have just arrived at a place where it's like if you speak positively about guns, I just – I stop at that fence because on the other side of that fence I expect to hear –
rationalization and justification for machine gun killings of kids in schools.
And the a hundred million people on the other side of that fence are like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, like guns symbolize and represent this other stuff.
And they just sort of, I there's this eye rolling about the things that matter to either side of it.
And that, and I think that there is a lot of, well,
What we do cast one another in the most exaggerated possible role that we can think as a, as an antagonist, you know, that, and.
I am on Facebook, unfortunately, because I don't know why.
What's for your career?
It gives me as much pause as Twitter does because I don't curate either thing very well.
And so I just get tons of evil all the time from both places.
Cool.
and mostly the facebook evil is in the form of uh really really really long essays about people's um like current medical treatments it's not really evil it's just like no and i and i feel like looking at pictures of people's dogs on instagram is maybe the most evil but you can't say that because now i'm going to get 50 tweets from people of their dogs
Those are sweet, precious fur babies.
But I know a lot of people from high school, and this is how the conversation always starts, right?
You know a bunch of people from high school who support Donald Trump.
And so I go over onto their threads and lurk.
I'm definitely not trying to argue with anybody.
I'm not really even commenting.
If I do comment, it will only be a lull because I feel like lull.
Okay.
There are three LOLs, right?
That's a Rorschach test.
Right?
Three LOLs, right?
There's the capital L, lowercase o, lowercase l, period.
That's LOL, the sort of like grammatically correct LOL.
There's LOL, capital, all caps, L-O-L, caps LOL.
And then there's all lowercase LOL, L-O-L.
Oh, and that's almost like ACK.
Well, or it can be – all three of those can be deployed in different ways.
But like I routinely will carry on a conversation with someone else where they are just screeting at me and I'll reply with – throughout the conversation, all three of those lols, right?
Like lol.
You deploy all your lols?
Yeah, and then I'm like lol.
And then at the end I'm like lol.
and it's fucking amazing lol is i know there are a lot of people that that still have not gotten on board the lol train and the raffle train get on the raffle train but uh raffle kind of went away didn't it raffle was so great for so long roll on the floor laughing yes absolutely and ruffle ruffle ruffle because it sounded like the hamburglar
He loves hamburgers.
A little ruffle.
So I'm lurking on these Facebook threads of high school friends, and there's this like – there's a lot of humor –
In the in this group of guys who are supporting Donald Trump guys and gals.
Right.
I mean, it's very much like it's it's cultural rather than gender.
There are a lot of.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of women who are massive Trump fans.
And there's a there's a ton of humor.
And a lightheartedness about the way they talk.
But the humor right away is a style of humor that we on the other side of the cultural fence have.
We characterize that now as punching down.
Right.
It's humor at the expense of other people.
It's and so much of the humor is like, why can't you take a joke style?
But to people who feel that they are aggrieved, it's anything but punching down.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
I mean, they're they're under assault because, you know, because there are God bless us.
I wish we could again have the days where that was considered punching down.
But now there's blacks everywhere and lying lying dishonest Hillary.
Well, and, you know, and also like there are only whatever a billion Christians in the world.
So, of course, they're a minority.
And when you look at growth, that curve, what's killing Jesus.
But you know, the thing is that the, that all of those people on my Facebook page would probably identify as Christian, but they're not, they're not Bible thumpers.
They are very different from like an eighties feel.
Yeah, they're beer drinking hell raisers, right?
They are Alaskans who got big trucks and they like to shoot guns and fuck the world.
And, you know, and they're fun.
They think of themselves as fun and their support of Trump.
Oh, yeah, they're fun and they can take it.
They can take a joke.
Exactly.
And the thing is, you know, you and I were raised in in a culture where the why can't you take a joke style of bullying was the norm.
and somehow through the course of our lives we've arrived at a place where hey you know why can't you take a joke style bullying is sort of like pretty bad way of socializing people it is but it was also but if i remember correctly especially amongst family members as a young person as a young man uh i think they meant it to be helpful where it was like a pull you aside thing hey look man you gotta learn how to take a fucking joke
Yeah, sticks and stones will break your bones.
Yeah, like maybe don't keep bugging the cab driver about racist jokes.
Like fucking dial it down.
Well, and so all of my Facebook pals, which is to say my friends from high school, I mean the only people online who follow me who avidly disagree with me are my high school friends or trolls, right?
And exes.
Well, none of my ex-girlfriends are on social media.
Was that part of the agreement?
Yeah.
No, for many, many years, every woman I dated was... Were you grooming them?
You would only get the ones that didn't have computers.
It had nothing to do with me.
It was just like I was attracted to Luddites.
And I don't know why, right?
I mean, every girl I ever dated had... The thing that attracted me to her from across the room was something on the order of like...
does that girl have leaves in her hair?
I think she does.
She's got strong bones.
She churns butter and she knows how to take a fucking joke.
Yeah, why does she have leaves in her hair?
And I would walk over and go, nice leaves.
And she'd say, fuck you.
Can a bite, a can of peas.
Should we take this?
She goes full Nell on you.
Should we take this to a third location?
Because I am intrigued by you.
Tell me more about your leaves.
There are some girls in my past, some ex-girlfriends, that I would just like to talk to because it's like, hey, it's been 15 years, just checking in.
The only way I, the only even...
way I have of knowing anything about their continuing existence is that some friend of a friend of hers is on Facebook and every once in a while something will float by where it's like, oh, that's, you know, I'm following her friend of a friend.
I see some picture of the back of her hair and I'm like, I know those leaves.
That's right.
Somebody puts a photo of Tammy.
Now you're thinking about Tammy.
Tammy.
But but yeah, so that so what what I find over there in that world is like there is a tremendous feeling of togetherness and lightheartedness and a feeling like they're the only people left in the world who have even a reasonable outlook on life.
And that over here in the liberal, like we're all a bunch of on the liberal side of the fence.
We're all a bunch of thumb suckers and concern trolls, basically.
Like, what are we so bent out of shape about?
Well, because, and again, implicitly, I don't mean to keep making this about perceived status, but what do we have to be mad about, especially because we're on the ascent?
We're the ones who get to redefine the idea of, you know, gender not being digital and things like that.
We're the ones who are fucking everything up.
Like, we're not allowed to be mad.
Yeah, we are the ones imposing an agenda.
And that informs their narrative about the things that are on their agenda are either status quo things that they would like to maintain or things that they perceive to have been traditional things which have been encroached upon that they would like to regain that turf.
But they think about themselves as just holding the line of
of what normal is and they they see us on the other side pushing what and you hear this term all the time radical agenda yeah but it is you know it is an encroaching agenda so when i when i you know when i hear that litany of descriptions of the of people that represent now millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people i i i have to resist my own
like knee jerk reaction to say like, they're all idiots.
Right.
And try and get inside that culture a little bit and be like, what is it like from in here?
And if you think about all those people at the Trump rallies that we look like and look at and just go like, Oh my God, they're the worst.
They're the worst.
Right.
The only thing missing is a baseball hat with two beer cans in it and fucking straws coming down.
But from within that Trump rally, they think of themselves as having a blast.
And Trump is having a blast.
It's a monster truck show.
It's a monster truck show.
And from the outside, we look like a bunch of just joyless, gray, like...
Can't take a joke.
Don't appreciate this is people whose lives have been—it's a little bit like the whole states' rights thing kind of played out again, where it's like, hey, we had all this worked out.
You're going to stay off our shit.
We stay off your shit.
And, of course, that was never the case.
And so, you know, not only are we the aggrieved party if we chose to look at it that way, but, like, we have a sense of humor.
We see—like, you sit there and, like, you have—
I just listened to three episodes of a podcast about how horrible life will be if Donald Trump becomes president.
It's a very good podcast called The Trumpcast that I highly recommend.
It's very good, and it's very opinionated, and it's very well done.
But people look at that and go, oh, my God.
But I think what they also see is they see how scared we are.
They see how...
How terrified and powerless so many people feel.
And that's all the more reason to start pulling for that particular pro wrestler.
It's like, holy shit, somebody finally put a scare into John Roderick.
Shut that fucker up.
The dog can smell your fear.
Yeah, right.
But, you know, I was on a conference call earlier today with a city agency.
And it was a group of probably 20 people all talking into probably 18 of them were sitting around a conference table and I was laying in bed talking to them with my podcast.
That is all around.
That's a terrific way to get a lot of stuff done.
It's just get a bunch of people in a room with a speakerphone.
Yeah.
And at one point there, someone spoke up and said, we're, you know, we're looking for people to participate in this event.
It's, you know, the event is targeted at, you know, young women of color.
And so, and as the person is describing it, she sort of says as an aside to the people in the room, like,
So anyone here that wants to get involved in this, please, you know, talk to me after the meeting.
And sorry, we're not really looking for any cis males.
Mm hmm.
That was, you know, like, yeah, self-evidently, right?
You're looking for people that can identify and in particular people that these young women can identify with, right?
That is the element that's missing.
That's why this event is even happening because these young women of color are not represented.
They don't see – they don't have role models the same way.
And we're trying to now build these institutions where there are these mentoring relationships.
But from within a Donald Trump rally, what is the answer to that?
From the men's rights organizations or the Gamer Gators.
Two huge problems.
Problem number one is you're excluding the people who are never allowed to be excluded.
And second, you're using a term that they find unnecessary and potentially offensive.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, it's more than one thing.
It's not just roll your eyes over this neologism.
It's that, oh, my God, I can't believe you have the temerity to leave us out and then to use this faggot name for us.
Well, that and the way that that would then – the way that they would – the way that argument would coalesce is, well, what would happen if I said that we were having a meeting and no women of color were?
Right.
Why don't we have a men's government club?
Right.
Right.
Like, oh, you mean every meeting?
You mean everything that's ever happened for 400 years?
For the last 250 years.
But but that is there is a you know, there's a libertarian logic to that.
Which is no regulation of any kind is the purest form of life.
And as soon as you start instituting rules, then you're already on the way to totalitarianism.
Especially if those rules are about me.
Right.
If those rules affect me or – It's amazing how rarely people who self-identify as libertarians are fighting to have things lifted from people that aren't them.
Well, yeah, right.
Because if there were no rules about who could go to meetings, then it would just be back to a question of –
Neighborhood stick fights.
Yeah, neighborhood stick fights.
Exactly right.
And I think affirmative action as a notion was the moment at which some number of carriages on the train of progress just got unhooked because it was a leap of logic, a leap of like –
Like a kind of faith or an understanding that redress is even possible and that redress would be beneficial to all.
That is – that's a –
Right, right.
To not frame it as like a handout to get these people off our back, but rather something that could improve the culture and society for everybody.
Yeah, that the benefits of affirmative action, the benefits of equal rights for all are not a, they're not a machine to newly privilege another group over you.
They're not taking anything away from you.
It's it is an attempt to continue to perfect the notion of the American experiment.
It's a it's a continuation of a of a of progress that we've made throughout time that benefits everyone because progress benefits everyone.
And the more you know, we have watched wealth.
And we're so consumed with how wealth is concentrated right now.
And it is.
It's like unfairly, grossly concentrated in the 1%.
But the fact is compared to even 60 years ago when people were still routinely starving to death around the world in numbers that would astonish you even now to look at.
You know, we have – as a human race through technology and through democracy have turned the earth truly into a garden of plenty.
And people now live – life expectancy has doubled and education has doubled or, you know, like people are –
are so much more educated and cared for.
Just think about medical care for old and young people.
Yeah.
The amount of things that we know to avoid doing so we don't die as young.
And, you know, if something does happen, we have ways to treat stuff that didn't exist 50 years ago.
The life expectancy of people in 1900 was, what, 40?
I think it was in 40s or 50s, yeah.
You know, and so...
So with that in mind, you know, you can just make this case that this combination of science and philosophy, science on the one hand, you know, improving our material life and philosophy on the other, sort of improving our, like, agency, our political agency, our belonging, right?
Um, and I mean by that political philosophy and also, you know, the philosophy of the mind and that case that, you know, that case of affirmative action in that case of social justice, which in the context of like reparations, um,
It just naturally offends the people who aren't making a philosophical leap.
It offends them because they say, well, my grandfather had it hard.
I mean, we had a hardscrabble life.
Nobody ever gave me free money.
Yeah.
Where's my parade?
Right.
Like my great grandparents came over from Ireland and they didn't, you know, they didn't riot or whatever that that logic of the logic where you're only seeing reparations in in terms of.
like a cash out or or an unfair advantage being afforded to you rather than seeing it as like part of this grand experiment how are we trying to create what are our theories about political science where we can we can raise the bar for everybody and now we're at a place where that has been so poorly explained and
That we've lost half the country.
And I do put the blame on the intelligentsia, the academy, for lack of a better description, for having done such a poor job of articulating what the project is.
And I think within academia, because within academia, they also perceived themselves to be a threatened minority, right?
The college life and the ivory tower folks saw themselves as revolutionaries too, right?
At war against a, you know, a majority of dummies.
And so they, you know, they used the same inflammatory language of resistance and and and war.
That we were we were under siege and we were going to we were going to take it to the level of like we were going to in a lot of ways impose these theories because if people didn't like it, they could suck it.
Right.
Like if you didn't like it too bad for you, this is what's right.
This is what's right for you.
And the, and the, and the, and trying to get people to rally, which is what we need, trying to get people to understand and, and get on board that crucial step, the Academy stopped even pretending.
And so now we've, we've failed, we've utterly failed to, to get everybody to understand what, what we're trying to accomplish.
And, and, you know, and, and it's, and a lot of that is understandable.
But you and I have talked about this a lot.
Every single group of people feels like they are the minority.
Yep.
And they all feel like they have to defend themselves.
And I think many people really do.
Let's put it this way.
There's not that many people.
Well, one of my old saws is like, I don't think there's that many people in existence today that would describe themselves as stupid.
And I don't think there's actually that many Americans who would describe themselves as being uncommonly fortunate and privileged.
That's changing a little bit, but I think there's still—everybody's got their reasons for why they think the way they think and do the way they do.
And based on strong feelings and anecdotes and traditions and things like that, there's—I mean, that's—but that's always been the case.
It's just we always see the log in somebody else's eye.
Mm-hmm.
But the other part of this that I think is another failing of, I don't know if it's the academia, but the failure of all people, but I'm going to have it fall hardest on the liberals, is our inability, like you described how, oh, this is getting racist, shut it down.
Like this is getting, like you're obviously, you love guns, so you're an idiot, shut it down.
Like there's a failure of imagination, I think, on the liberal side and a failure of empathy to understand why people are saying what they're saying in the way that they are saying it.
And the fact that we disagree so strongly with the very top level of how they present themselves and what the rhetoric is and choosing not to play by the same rules that we do in terms of, you know, online discourse or discourse in general.
I think that leads to a very dangerous lack of empathy of not actually listening to what these people are saying, because when you actually you read these pieces about people who go into a Donald Trump situation.
Yeah.
And you're going to get the feeling that you're going to make all this.
I'm not trying to defend Donald Trump, but I am saying there's a lot more going on than just we love Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the figurehead for a thousand different hydras.
And to think that that's all the same people with the same view and you just put this in this big pile of dumb people who don't get it and I don't like, you're missing out on a lot of stuff.
Did you read that New Yorker article?
I think I've read all the articles.
There was one where the guy went and there was the one guy there who was into chemtrails and was handing out bottles of water.
Is that the one?
I'm sorry.
You were reading my blog.
No, this guy from the New Yorker did one of those wonderful New Yorker pieces where he was just like, I'm just going to go to this Trump rally and see if I can make any friends.
And he did.
And he had that thing where he would say, because people would say, we've got to build a wall.
And he would say, well, what about this one situation where this gal was born or, you know, was born in America or I'm sorry, was born in Mexico, but brought to America when she was three months old and and got a parking ticket and now she's being deported.
And almost everybody he asked was like, oh, well, I mean – and the first thing they said was, is she a good person?
Yeah, right.
Well, if she's a good person, then we should figure out – I mean there should be exceptions certainly.
You know, like in each case, their initial argument of like –
Build a wall.
Keep them out.
But when you do that, you're problematizing something that seems very simple, which is, hey, we're here at this rally to talk about how mad we are.
Like, you think in a year people are going to give fuck all for Donald Trump?
They're there because he represents a very deep anger and discontentment with what has happened in America, some of which a lot of people might surprisingly want to agree with.
A lot of stuff happened between 2008 and 2010 in this country that a lot of people are mad about on every side of every aisle.
That's a lot of it.
That changes everything, because now it's not about people, it's about a person.
But we rarely do the same thing with people we disagree with, and that's on us.
We are making it worse when we try to demonize the people that we don't agree with, where we don't have the empathy to try to hear what's happening behind what they're saying, where because it's a culture that's foreign to us, it's like watching bullfighting.
We're not even sure what to be mad about.
I know what to be bad about.
Because of the sun.
You know, yeah.
Just so you know, I was reading The Guardian, an article by Dave Eggers, where Dave Eggers goes to a Donald Trump rally.
See that the man in front of me said?
He was pointing to a jet's white trail in the sky above us.
That's the Air Force.
They're spraying shit in the sky.
And Eggers says, I'll call this man Jim.
Good.
And he liked Jim.
Jim was buying bottled water for everybody and being a match.
Anyway, I'm sorry to dissemble and to be such an unloyal fellow traveler at such an important time, but fucking A, everybody.
Well, yeah.
I'm mad about Donald Trump, too.
I think he's a dangerous man, but just yelling across the aisle is not going to make this better.
The more things that we do to show how we're right and they're wrong, the further we dig ourselves into a completely untenable situation.
You hit on an interesting thing a second ago, which was that.
Thank you.
I mean, you know, it was a rare moment.
That's three for me now.
206 episodes.
A rare diamond in the horse shit.
I don't know how the horse ate the diamond.
Don't ask.
Somebody put a diamond in a banana, fed it to a horse.
Oh, like a turducken.
And then I saw it come out of the poop.
Poop shoot.
No, the idea, I mean, the idea of privilege
Right now, whenever, whenever someone speaks about privilege, there's a, there's an aspect of recrimination and apology in it.
No one talks about their own privilege, you know, with any pride, certainly on our side of the fence.
Right.
If you say the word privilege, you are saying it now.
Like, I mean, you know, in terms of white privilege, you have this thing and you're sorry for it.
And you're trying to amend for it.
I think it gets to that second, but I'm not going to interrupt, but first of all, I think it's a little bit like acknowledging that air is free and we get it.
Yeah.
Part of it is just acknowledging that it is actually a thing that rather than my emotions about how I feel butthurt about somebody calling me that, then I have to really stop and go, you know what?
You're actually really fucking right.
I can walk anywhere I want and I'll be fine.
But the issue, I think, in our culture at large is that no one is acknowledging that they are in charge.
It's always somebody else.
Everyone's a victim.
Right.
And I say this about about the liberals as much or more than anyone else.
This this sense of being under siege means that there's no intellectual tradition or cultural tradition that doesn't.
that doesn't describe itself as under siege, including all of the rich preppy guys at the Yale club in, um, in New York city who are kind of circling around their gin and tonics and saying, you know, they're coming at us from all sides.
Um, we're the last of a dying breed.
So no one in America will acknowledge that they are the establishment and
And in that, in everyone's failure to acknowledge that they are the establishment, no one is in charge.
No one has to take responsibility.
And so right now, effectively, the liberals are the establishment.
We really are.
Like our candidate is going to win the presidency and our candidate has been the president for the last eight years.
Yeah.
And liberal ideas are ascendant and have been for a long time.
Now, we feel under assault because there are hundreds of millions of people or 150 million people on the other side of the aisle who
who are throwing spit wads at us and who want guns to be unregulated and who want abortion to be illegal and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And they are the – they're the other side of the aisle.
But really they benefit from liberal ideas too and the degree to which they acknowledge that or don't is just a failure of language or it's a failure of comprehension more than anything.
But at some point, the people with privilege who are, for all intents and purposes, every American listening to this podcast, regardless of race or gender.
You have electricity in the computer.
And you are smart enough to be listening to the phony award-winning podcast, Roderick on the Line.
Roderick on the Line.
Yeah.
Right.
You are the intellectual 10%.
We are.
You're the reason we do it.
You know what?
It's all for you.
Just for the kids.
For the kids.
But to accept that mantle and to say, I am part of the leading – I'm part of the leadership.
And I have a responsibility not to think of myself constantly as a victim and constantly under siege.
I have a responsibility to be the adult in the room and to say, here are our ideas and why they make sense.
Here's the larger world we're trying to construct –
It's a world where fairness does predominate.
It's a world where a rising tide does lift all boats.
And it's some version of, you know, socialistic, capitalistic, democratic, you know, like secular, whatever this cloud of ideas that we all sort of bathe in and pick and choose grapes from.
To to to create a worldview that we can proudly hold up and say, you know, I do have privilege.
It is the privilege of being a person in this culture who is responsible for.
Yeah.
is also a leap, like an intellectual and spiritual leap.
And it isn't to say, you don't say the word privilege with a tone of apology.
You say, I'm privileged to be able to say the following things, right?
I'm privileged to be able to come to you today and describe the world I imagine and the world we collectively are trying to imagine.
And I feel like over time, the way to to to have this experiment not devolve into what it is, you know, what we're all afraid it's doing right now, which is just this like two nations scenario where in order to get from Seattle to Minneapolis, you're going to have to fly over hostile territory or have a passport.
Right.
To go to go across red state land.
Right.
Um, we're going into cloak mode, you know, and like Minneapolis and, and, uh, and Chicago are kind of up there in this weird, like lake, lake town, lake town country that goes up to Ontario.
Um,
Um, in order to, in order to not have that happen, we, we just, and we're the ones that have to do it.
We have to make a better case and we have to articulate a case that isn't from our own, our own state of victimization, but a case that is encompassing that says, listen, you guys, we're not trying to be humorless, uh, drudges here.
We're not trying to force you to all be gay.
Um,
That would suck.
We don't want you to be gay.
We really don't want you to be gay.
We just want the gay ones of you to be happy.
That's different.
Right?
Come on.
I'm very interested in this idea, though, of taking leadership, just kind of grabbing it, being the one who's going to let it begin with me.
I'm going to run this meeting.
It's a very interesting idea.
Acknowledging that you already have it, that you're already kind of
Running the meeting.
That's strangely existential.
I like it.
I got it.
I tweeted an ex of mine is the gal that's spearheading the shout your abortion movement.
Oh.
And I retweeted one of her tweets and I got a reply on Facebook from a guy that I went to college with.
And I went to a Catholic college for a couple of years.
And this friend of mine is a big, big, burly kind of, you know, Irish Catholic guy, taller than me, bigger than me, like a big.
Jiminy.
I know.
Right.
Well, that's his name.
Jiminy.
Mm hmm.
Jiminy O'Shaughnessy.
And he has, I shit you not, eight kids.
Oh, God.
I need a nap.
And he has eight little darling kids ranging in age from probably 24.
From zero to 11.
And he's a wonderful guy, a hilarious guy.
He comments on my Facebook page all the time.
He's a liberal guy.
He's a funny guy.
But he is anti-abortion.
And he's anti-abortion because every life is sacred.
And that is a worldview, right?
Catholics got their reasons.
I mean, it's an encompassing worldview.
And it begins at an initial premise, which is every life is sacred.
And that sacredness comes from the fact that there is a soul.
So we are essentially stewards of those lives.
Right.
Right.
And from their perspective, like just as we look back at our founding fathers and go, how could they possibly have had slaves and simultaneously been writing these like florid and beautiful documents?
It's almost like they're from a different time.
It's like they're from a different time that had different values.
So the Catholics are there's a large proportion of the philosophical Catholics who who imagine some future day when people will look back in time and say, how could we have sat?
How could our forefathers have sat idly by during this genocide?
of souls but also at the same time if i may compare the amount of volunteer time five of your any five of your friends have spent versus an average sampling of five people from your local parish people who are like tremendously involved in good causes and like trying to be stewards of trying to trying to fit a certain new testament idea of good works
Right.
Right.
Well, and and and again, I say they're not baddies up in a up in a tower with some sandwiches and toilet paper taking shots of people, you know.
No, they're not baddies, you know, there.
And and I and I and this guy is just one of thousands of people I know on that side of the fence, you know, who and some of them are really, really philosophical.
But it begins at this initial premise.
And so he wrote on my Facebook page, you know, can I please ask you to take this post down and
In respect of the millions of souls that are, you know, that are and he used some inflammatory language at that point, you know, a few a few adjectives.
But equivalent to you putting up a picture of Auschwitz on a Elie Wiesel page.
Yeah.
Like, you know, come on, dude, that's not cool.
But he's he's a friend of mine.
He respects me.
He follows me.
He is, you know, he's one of what I would consider to be my or he's in my orbit.
And this and I and I got into his sandbox.
Right.
And he's a supporter of Obama and Hillary.
But this is his, you know, his little like core issue at the at the center of his world, at the center of his vision of the world.
And I wrote him back very – I didn't write him back because we're living in this shit world where all I did was comment on his – That's what I did.
I didn't write him back on fucking scented paper like I should have.
I said I gave him all three lols.
No, I didn't.
It's like the Holy Trinity.
All three lols.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Lord.
Dominic, Dominic, Dominic.
Fave.
But I wrote him back and said, listen, you know, like in all honesty, we have a different foundational idea of the value of human life.
And
I do not share your view that every life is sacred.
Or that the sacredness of that life trumps this other right that I consider pretty important.
But within that, you have to acknowledge, if you're going to get into that and wade into it, you have to just say like,
I because if you say that, like, there is a small amount of sacredness to a life and it doesn't and it's not equivalent to the right spectrum of sacredness.
Yeah.
Make your own choice.
There's not really.
It's like you have to say to your sacred sacred.
You're pulling the sacred card.
When you say it's sacred, like, that's taking it from, like, don't curse on Sunday, don't masturbate after 9-11.
This is more like, no, sacred, that's a different kind of thing.
Yeah, well, and it's equivalent to, like, why do we, why if we kill somebody when they're one month old, is it murder?
And when they're eight months old in the womb, it's not murder.
We have within us, we have made within our laws and within our minds some,
honestly some pretty arbitrary decision about what almost everything is there are many spectra in life and there are hard decisions to make about spectra but if you act like there's not a spectrum not sure your science is going to hold up so well well and so but there so there's a spectrum right and and a lot of that is is legal and a lot of it is moral depending on your point of view almost every decision anyone has ever made is arbitrary
Well, certainly they are because in a natural state, we're just, I mean, we're just prey for tigers, right?
But we're, you know, like if you think about humans in their natural state or whatever, I mean, that's where we're so far down the river from that.
But yeah, our decisions are predicated on prior decisions, and the whole idea of sacredness is predicated on monotheism, which is evolved from— That there is a God whose will is knowable, and that it's our responsibility as the stewards of that truth to make sure that that is enacted in every conceivable way on earth.
But there's a lot of – you're making a lot of lily pad leaps to get to that.
Well, and it's just like, you know, what is God?
He's a silverback gorilla who's jealous of the smaller gorillas.
That's from Descartes' first meditation.
So I wrote him and I said, you know, we're just – this is – we're just foundationally going to be – we're never going to come to an accord on this because I don't share your view that human life is sacred.
The people who have a belief that human life is sacred, they believe that all laws and morals that we live according to proceed from that initial premise.
Why be good to each other?
Because human life is sacred.
Why do we not kill and rape and thieve?
Because life is sacred.
You proceed from that initial idea.
Oh, I get it.
The chicken's involved, but the pig is committed.
You know that saying?
That seemed like a Garfield quote.
You know that saying?
No.
The chicken, the hen, goes to the pig and says, hey, you know what?
We should start a breakfast restaurant.
And the pig says, no way.
And the hen's like, why not?
And then the pig says, well, you know, you're involved, but I'm committed.
Yeah.
That's right.
You're involved, but I'm committed.
Hen's exactly right.
So the harder case, actually...
Falls to the liberal in that situation to say, I do not, I do not have a foundational belief that every life is sacred.
And yet I believe in morality and law and those things stem from some cause, some case, some initial case.
that we have yet to describe.
Like why, if you take away the idea that life is sacred and that there's a monotheistic God, why be good to each other?
And the liberal case is constantly to say, no, we are making this argument from the rights of man that are a priori, that these are self-evident rights.
And, you know, and this is all this all proceeds from from Descartes and Locke and Jefferson and Augustine or whatever, you know, like like it's a it is the theory.
It's the philosophy of history.
And it's happened simultaneously with Augustine.
You know, with the sort of theistic approach, which is that you cannot divorce these ideas from the source, the fountain, which is a loving God.
And a secret source where – I mean this is admittedly a stretch where let's say even if you were super into the idea of abortion as a thing, you wouldn't let yourself because of the sacred law that had been passed on to you.
Basically to extend that kind of – I don't know.
jurisprudence of God that if this is the law, it must be followed down the line every single way.
But I'm not going to pick and choose which of these things.
No matter how strongly I may be personally for or against anything, the law is the law.
Right.
You can't pick and choose.
And that's what gives the law authority because it represents something that's real and not something that you just dreamt or something that you believe maybe today and not a year from now when you've read a different book.
This is one of those Shabbat elevators.
It's a Shabbat elevator.
But like it was when when they went in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson and and Ben Franklin collaborating or whatever came up with this.
Like we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
That's an that's a moment where they're kicking the ball down the field.
You know, they are they are saying we hold these truths to be self-evident.
Well, that's nice.
How do you hold these truths to be self-evident?
Oh, I see.
Show your show your work, sir.
Exactly.
Show your math.
And what they what they were playing off of.
was the intellectual tradition of the – as they saw it, of their immediate forebears and of Thomas Mann and so forth.
Obviously, I'm talking about John Locke here.
No, like Thomas, man, but but, you know, they are they're playing off of this, this deist sort of rights of man.
But deism was, you know, was a leap that that maintained the existence of a God.
So here we are now 200 years later.
Oh, my God.
Almost 50 years later.
Yeah, I know.
Do you remember the Bicentennial Quarters, how you want to collect those?
I still have them.
I still have them.
I'm sure you do.
In any case.
We are still kicking that ball down the field from the liberal side.
And we continue to do a poor job.
We talked about this yesterday.
We're really into Hamilton in our house.
And there's so many lines, so many great lines that we end up talking about.
And she's like, no, tell me.
She's like, my daughter's like, so tell me again.
like, which one is the one that had slaves?
And I was like, tell us Jefferson.
And the thing is, as much as I love the Alexander Hamilton musical, I think I'm more on kind of Jefferson's side on a lot of issues, but with that said, yeah, the guy who wrote that, yeah, he totally had slaves.
Well, had slaves and had sex with his slaves.
I mean, they all had, I mean, Hamilton didn't have slaves because he was poor.
That's right.
How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and a Scotsman, or as Angelica Schuyler said, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
And when I
Yay.
I worked in some Hamilton through the side door.
So we got Thomas Mann.
We got Deists.
We got Abortion Facebook.
Yeah, Abortion Facebook.
I don't know how we're getting out of this one.
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I really, really, really want those of us that share this world, this liberal world, to do more self-examination.
Join the club, Johnny.
I know, man.
You know, and the thing is, there's so much I am not going to fucking talk about on this podcast because... But I'll give you... Here's a thought, technology.
Think about this one.
I'm not saying I have a feeling about this, but I'm just going to toss this out.
I happen to be very much on...
I'm very simpatico with the people who say, you know what?
Could we please stop killing the black people?
I think we need to stop killing the black people.
I agree.
I think we should stop killing the black people.
I know that's a strong stance.
I know.
It's a bold, bold stance on my very brave, bold stance.
When I stand before you today, is there a chance we could stop killing the black people?
Now, here's the thing.
Follow me on this and don't kill me.
The leap from let's stop killing the black people to guns are to blame for this is a leap that is not even a leap for most of my friends.
And personally, I'd like to see fewer of the guns, too.
Right.
But then the leap from let's stop killing black people.
So maybe not so many guns.
You are actually at this point strangely close to saying to a lot of people in America, you're responsible for black people being killed.
Whether you realize it or not, when you say that, and again, I don't have a dog in this fight.
I'm just here to say that I'm telling you, if you go and read what people on the other side here, when people say that, something I happen to agree with, what they are going to hear is, like, not only are you trying to take our guns away, but you're essentially accusing me of murder because I have a gun.
That's what it sounds like to those people.
I'm not going to tell you that's right, wrong or otherwise.
I just want you to think about it.
The harder even thing to get your head around is that even if you take the guns out of the equation and you just say, listen, the cops, the white cops in the South do not see blacks as full humans.
The evidence that we see is, I can almost guarantee you, is just barely even the tip of an iceberg for a much deeper cultural disconnect about how these folks get treated.
And what ends up happening is that the left takes on a very lecturing tone.
Oh, you know about Brexit, John?
You know, a lot of people became Brexit experts, Brexperts.
Dude, I'm a Brexpert.
I got to be a Brexpert really fast.
I know.
It took me almost eight hours.
You want to read some of my tweets?
They're top shelf tweets.
You sound like Donald Trump.
My tweets on this is going to be huge.
People are going to love it.
My tweets are the best.
We're making friends on the internet today.
The left has this culture, right, where we take in this American stuff and we say very briefly something about our own privilege.
to indicate that we are on the good side.
We're on the right side.
We write ourselves a hall pass.
Yeah, we say, you know, as someone, you know, as a white ally, or we say something that mitigates our experience just enough that we absolve ourselves of complicity.
And then we immediately adopt a hectoring lecturing tone toward everyone else that we presume are less enlightened.
Right.
Didn't you go back and read my timeline and what I had to say about this?
I can't believe we're still talking about this.
Right.
Right.
But in the meantime –
Largely living in white enclaves, largely benefiting from systems that are more or less like systematized segregation.
And.
There isn't enough real reckoning and it doesn't have to it doesn't have to take this form of like prostration.
It doesn't really involve even like being apologetic, fake or otherwise.
It's like a real acknowledgement of and, you know, and hopefully an acknowledgement of your of your power.
Without shame.
Exactly.
You know, like shame does not.
It's not empowering.
It isn't empowering for anybody and it doesn't accomplish anything except to make you to continue making it all about you.
Yeah, exactly.
And so to acknowledge your privilege and your power and then try to find a but to acknowledge it in some ways, even with pride and say, how can I now use this privilege and power?
And that's – I mean the people who are – who resist the Black Lives Matter narrative.
That's a terrific example.
You know, it's not just that they feel like their guns are – I mean that's way down the line.
They're afraid that we're seeing the cops –
It depends on how you choose to finish that statement that doesn't really need to be finished.
Black lives matter.
And to a lot of people who hear that, I don't happen to agree, but to them that statement is black lives matter to the exclusion of other people.
Black Lives Matter more or Black Lives – the fact that Black Lives Matter is going to translate into more entitlements for them that are not afforded to me and I'm also poor.
So what, you know, and I, so I, how to, how to get out of this reflexive state of liberal apology, um, where every, where every statement is preceded with a caveat that, um, that you, you know, that, uh, you acknowledge your, um, you acknowledge that your voice isn't the voice that's needed here or
Whatever, you know, to to proceed from that into a place where we are where we're actively trying to make a case and actively trying to be articulate about it.
And that begins with us acknowledging what our case is.
And I don't know how I mean, I've spent my entire life trying to figure out what those words we hold these truths to be self-evident mean.
I mean, I really have.
My whole adult life, I have turned those words over in my head because they are— Because it's Jefferson's way of going, duh, right?
I mean, like, no, I'm sorry, I'm being glib, but it's a way of saying self-evident is all—in that case, that is his supernal sanction, is that there's nothing, even beyond God and law, this is self-evident, that this is the age of enlightenment.
This is something that we can look at and go, this equals equals this.
Like, this is truth.
Right.
Well, and the thing is that the founders were really at odds with one another about this.
And my understanding of it is that Jefferson actually – his first draft actually used –
A lot more sort of quasi-religious language.
And it was Ben Franklin who sort of made the suggestion of the term self-evident.
Because, you know, Jefferson was maybe more of a deist.
And...
And initially said, we hold these truths to be sacred.
And Franklin was the one that said that implies too much that introduces too much God.
And let's, let's change it.
And so that collaboration between them, Jefferson, the sort of scientific New Englander.
I'm sorry, Franklin, the scientific New Englander versus Jefferson, the sort of scientific Southern philosopher.
I mean, just those two, the push and pull between those two intellects.
But it's it's such a kick the can down the road moment like self.
I mean, if he if he had said sacred, we hold these truths to be sacred.
We would be in a bit.
I think we'd be a different country.
And I think we'd be arguing it from a different place because we would be people that share my worldview would be at a disadvantage right now.
We would be saying like, you know, like if it isn't sacred, then what is it?
Then the whole then the the whole edifice starts to crumble.
And Franklin just got this little, he just planted this pole there with self-evident, undefined.
And it's given us this, it's given us 250 years to debate it.
And here we are still.
Yeah.
I'll put it out.
Don't worry.
Oh, I wouldn't.
Why would you not?
Of course I would.
Are you going to end it there with the lip smacking?
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And whatever you do, people, get out there and vote.
Holy shit.
Oh my goodness.
That was good.