Dan Carlin (0:10)

Yes. Commissioner Dan Carlin. Common sense. I keep hearing from people telling me that I'm somehow shirking my duty in this particular day and age to be speaking out politically. After all, we've been doing it for years. Common sense podcast radio shows. I have a responsibility and how can I be, you know, leaving the playing field now with the stakes as high as they are? So you think you want a common sense podcast from me? I'm not so sure you're right about that. And if you really do and you end up walking away saying, yeah, that was exactly what I wanted, you probably didn't need it to begin with. We have spoken for years and you long term listeners know this already about systemic things. This is what's important, important in our system, right? The framework, the way we're running, the various major elements in play and how they're pinging off each other. So when we talk about things like corruption, this is a foundational problem. Because if you're not talking about that, you're obsessing and getting all worked up over things that are not a major part of the scene, that are subsidiary problems that are symptoms of a larger cause. Donald Trump is a symptom of a larger problem. And so when people want me to jump into this fray right now, the stakes have never been higher. I don't see the same problem you do. Now, let's understand, I could be wrong about this, but the fact that I'm even saying that, to me, is a part of the situation. How often do you hear that from anyone anymore? That's the underlying problem. Donald Trump's going to go away someday. The things that led the situation to turning out the way that they did are still going to be with us. Those of you who are, you know, rah rah ing over a possible impeachment seem absolutely oblivious to the counter reaction that that is going to prompt. And this is, you know, again, why it's maybe giving me a bit of a crisis of confidence in my whole political worldview. But, folks, the problems that we're dealing with here are complex enough to challenge those of you out there who are really deep thinkers. So what does that mean for the mass of people who aren't in a society where we are all supposed to at least tenuously understand what's going on and how things are working in order to play their role in the society? If it's too complicated to understand and if, well, pretty much forces on all sides like to throw up dirt to sort of cloud the underlying truths and reality anyway, right? It's tough enough to figure it out without the smokescreen, but everybody's throwing up smokescreens. You have to be a really discerning, really informed person. And not just on the state of current events, but how they got this way. Write history to be able to make heads or tails of it. And let me just tell you, because I arrogantly think of myself in that category. I don't know what's going on. Another answer I give to people who say you really have a public duty to be doing this common sense show right now. I said, even if I don't know what's happening, I have to get up there and say something without really understanding the situation. The people I feel sorry for, sort of if they make a lot of money to feel the way they do are the people that have to go on at 6pm no matter what on the Cable News Network to talk about today's events. How would you understand understand today's events yet? I don't know how you organize your world. Fill in the blank of the talk show host's name. But I do so based on history, based on what's happened before. This is outside our normal parameters. So my understanding of how our system works and the natural balances and counterbalances that tend to come into play, not really applicable in the way that they normally are. So I'm not going to get up here and analyze a situation that I'm trying to analyze myself for you. I did do a couple of shows because we should have gotten one out. So I got up there and basically said in my own confused way, with you together, is this what we're seeing? Seems to me there's a natural limit of those kinds of shows you could do before somebody rightly asked the question, exactly what is Dan telling us that we don't already know? Now, as you all know, I do a history show, which you're screaming about, rightly so that we don't get enough out, you know, and I'm working on other projects for you. I'm an idiot, folks. I mean, I just don't know how to balance out outside opportunities with current. Anyway, no reason to go there. But I mean, I guess what I'm saying is unless I feel like I can give you something really worth the time that it takes to do them, I'm not sure you need this. But let me show you that maybe I'm right about this. Although as I said, I could be wrong that I'm not going to give you any kind of satisfaction no matter where you are on the political scale. And if you're the few kind of people that are like me, you didn't need to hear this anyway. But folks, we have to focus on the underlying problem in this country, which is we have no way to have arguments anymore or discussions we can't have. I mean, I love a good public debate and discussion. I love it. It's a hobby. It's fun, right? Listen, you don't have to have very many Irish genes to make that one of the top 10 things you consider a sporting event. But it's pointless now. And this is without romanticizing that there was ever a period where you could all sit there and go, well, here is the factual beacon of truth and I'm citing it. Therefore the argument's over. Things were never that cut and dry, but they were never like they are now. And there are a whole bunch of elements at play that are impacting this system in ways. Again, this is why I step back and try to view it that you cannot figure out where it's going to go. Let's just take one, but let this prove the rule. Look at the social media aspect of this. And I don't even mean Facebook and all that kind of stuff. I mean going back to message boards, the comments underneath news stories that the reading audience can make everything, right? The ability to have us all jump into the public sphere, either totally anonymous or not doesn't seem to matter as much as it used to. People are wildly insulting even with their name attached to things now. But this is new, right? You can't say that we know where it's going to go. Any number of things could happen, right? Eventually things could go to the over tip moment where eventually there's a natural correction and people, you know, turn back towards a different way of behaving. You can argue that this is a new way of behavior based on something that this sort of capability brings out in human beings. You could suggest that we've always been this way as human beings, but never had a way to express ourselves like this. But no matter what you want to latch onto as your theory, its impact on all of us as a whole is unprecedented. And so we don't know what's going to happen. And look from where we. I mean, if you force me to sit down and say from where we are at this minute, what do you think you might be seeing, Dan? Is that enough qualifiers? I go right back to what we said in the last few common sense shows, however long ago those were. I mean, folks, it looks like civil war and maybe not like a hot civil war, but a cold civil war. People who do not want to live with the people on the other side of the political ledger as they see them at all and leave no margin for compromise. And the problem has moved much more beyond the ideologies that these people don't like about the other side to the people themselves. I mean, even the children that they have every. I guess what I'm saying, folks, is this is a level of. Amongst a decent sized number of Americans. Once again, this may be unrepresentative size wise. They may be overrepresented in the social media and whatnot, punching above their weight class in terms might be Russian trolls for all we know. But it's making a difference. This level of hatred that Americans have for one another and our inability to have any sort of meaningful, productive discussions about it because of about a thousand things. I mean, the fake news thing. Let me take you back. I'm old enough, this is funny. I'm old enough to use myself as a primary source reference sometimes. But when I was a kid first getting into political discussion. So we're talking about the early 1980s here, when I'm getting into it, there were certain agreed upon tomes that normal people would all agree over the water cooler count as citing the basic truth, right? You could cite the New York Times, the Washington Post. I mean there were a few just on Time magazine, unimpeachable sources. But there were always people going around. I had like a great uncle who was one of them, where they would they give you these pamphlets or these right wing fringe group sort of things that would talk about the media as sort of like an arm of Russia and it was fringe stuff. But that led to a whole. In the 1980s, it sort of blossomed this whole idea that there was a narrative, there was, that was being fed to the American people from the socialist left or something like that. Sometimes they weren't so open about saying that. But I mean there were a bunch of books. I remember one, Poison Ivy, specifically for the 1980s, was about Dartmouth, I think, and how it's being indoctrinated into our kids. And at the time it was like, sounds like fringe stuff. Today you hear it everywhere, all the time. So the stuff that in the 1980s we thought was cuckoo John Birch type stuff is part of the actual narrative that we talk about and the reality that we live with and something that helps create this atmosphere where we don't trust anybody. Now I'm not letting anyone off the hook. I mean, if you listen to my old shows, too. We would talk about how often the, you know, the pillars of truth in our society, the bedrock argument, ciders, the Time magazines and the New York Times would not tell the stories that were important or would whitewash things or would, you know, keep stuff out of the papers that would really make a difference in terms of us understanding things from whether or not we're talking about undercover activities. Whatever you want to say. I mean, the news media, CNN's a perfect example in the modern world. I mean, they didn't do themselves any favors when they thought they had the playing field all to themselves. They were not really careful about how they handled the whole truth question or giving multiple viewpoints. I mean, there's a lot of things that would have been really helpful towards nipping this whole idea in the bud that you can't trust the reputable sources. But now we can't trust the reputable sources. There are no reputable sources. You just write off. I mean, you all know this. I'm telling you stuff that is manifest, and a lot of people are talking about it. We live in an age now where you have your own truth, you have your own people who think like you. You can read your source. You know, let me stop, because there's a part of me, this is a stupid, arrogant, weird thing to say, so I'm not even thinking about it, so please cut me some slack. But in the 1990s, I was pushing amateur content, and when you were pushing amateur content to venture capitalists and whatnot, you're talking about the wide. I was trying to explain the wide range of things that were going to be available. So you're Talking about the YouTube videos, what became the YouTube videos as one of the things, because people can always understand this is going to be like television. People are going to do. Are going to do it for each other. But one of the things that we were selling because I designed it was something we called news Based on your views. Based on your views. And what this was was a webpage that had a slider on it. So think about something like the Drudge Report now. So you pop it up and this is the first time you would have ever gone to this page. This is exactly how I designed it. I have the. It doesn't matter. So you go there and the slider bar is in the center, and the news stories that would be there on the main page. The first time you go there with the slider bar in the political center would be the sort of stuff you would find in Any mainstream sort of deal. This is the front page of today's news as seen from the mainstream in multiple different countries, maybe right in the center. But then if you played with the slider bar a little, you could slide it over to the left, for example, and it was today's paper, but organize for somebody from more that vantage point. So the stories might, you might have some of the same stories but from different perspectives, with different headlines, more reflecting the biases of that group. Or you might have different stories entirely. Certainly you would have them from different sources. But what it allowed you to do, besides getting the news you wanted from the position you were from, is it allowed you to compare coverage. Right. Shows you sort of the power of an editor to decide, you know, like, I mean, one thing we did was we had bought the subscription to the AP photos, which is great, by the way, because you can sit there and say, oh, I can choose from any of these photos from this particular event of the day. And so we would take, if it was a big event, I would take different photos so that you would have on the center page one particular photo and it was, you know, of the one probably you saw in the New York Times. But then on the left or the right one, I would put the same photo, but that showed a completely different narrative just because of the way the picture's framed. Right. And you put a different headline. So it was a way to kind of show the way news could be manipulated on the very same page on the very same day and you could just move the slider around. And we envisioned eventually the slider being able to move in all kinds of directions, north, south, like a compass. But there's a side to me that I think about now all the time is. And I don't know how you can ever imagine that you could control the directions that things like technology would go. And I don't think it would have been better to stay where we were. But you do wonder about the double edged sword nature of all this stuff, because we can obviously see all the pluses. My daughters who are 16 and 13 cannot even imagine a world that doesn't have all this stuff that if you're 25 years old, you remember living without. And yet with all the good stuff, we obviously can see that there's some not so good stuff. And as I said at the beginning, I don't know if it is the enabling of the expression of stuff that's always been there in the human psyche. Right. We finally have a way to tell fellow Americans how much we Hate them. Or if it's. I was going to say, or if it just has changed the culture. But maybe there's an interplay. I mean, I'm tempted to think and old man, get the hell off of my lawn morning right now to everybody out there. But I'm tempted to think it's created sort of a ping effect back and forth where the end result is you almost have like a troll culture, an a hole culture, a dick culture. And it's almost something that begins to feed on itself or reinforce itself or become one level one strata of the new foundational norm online so that we build off of this from here. The problem with that is if you mix something that's already likely to divide people like politics with a sort of a trollish dick culture online, I mean, you get a toxic stew going here that's enabled by the ability to communicate with each other instead of it being some rainbows and unicorns thing like this will bring people closer together. This will allow them to counteract the narrative being fed to them by the mainstream media. It allows them to deny any truth and to fight with each other. Hmm. Or both. Right. It's a little of this, a little of that. But in terms of trying to figure out what this means for our system, again, you'd hate to have to be, if money didn't matter, one of those people that has to go on 6pm every weeknight to try to analyze what the hell is this doing to our system because we're in the middle of it. Get back to me in 30, 40 years and we'll talk about it. By the way, since we're talking, can I just throw out my one little contribution to the whole the Russians were trying to influence the American election debate if we want to. And I'm totally for this, but this will unfortunately flush out all kinds of, you know, little shadows from the corner. If the country, if we, the United States, are so offended by the Russians trying to get the kind of president in there that they can work with the best, I suggest some sort of a global treaty along the lines of a Salt 1 or Assault II Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. Let's get out there and remember how you used to have these treaties. And let's have everybody sign a treaty saying that no one's going to interfere in any way. And you can spell it out. I mean, those Assault II agreements were exhaustive in detail. Get out there and say, you know, we're going to have a treaty, we're going to have Putin sign it. We're Going to sign it. The Iranians will sign, everybody will sign it. Nobody's going to interfere in anybody else's elections. That's not going to happen, folks. And you know why? If you know the context, and this gets back to what I was saying earlier, it's maybe an unreasonable amount of educational background or historical understanding or reading that has to be done for people to understand the background. But the United States is the number one interferer in other people's elections since the end of the Second World War. And number two ain't even close. I saw that on one of the major fake news outlets, but it's not even close, folks. The United States, we interfere in people's elections. And the stated excuse, sometimes true, is that we're pushing democracy. We're helping those people. We are helping the side that wants those people to rule themselves, to win. And sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not. And for people that think this is ancient history, we were doing it with Boris Yeltsin. How many of you remember, was it Time magazine, one of the Newsweek magazine has Boris Yeltsin waving an American flag on the front cover, you know, I mean, basically thanking the United States for helping him win. So to all of a sudden be screaming bloody murder like Vladimir Putin has done the unbelievable. I mean, folks, he's taking. If he did this, he's taken the modern tools, which you can use in a way now, just as you used to use the analog version, say, in the 1970s, to undercut your competitors in a way that falls short of war. You know how you stop that? Not by shaking your fingers at people, not by being holier than thou when your hands are dirty, too. Get a treaty going, right? Make him sign it. If he won't sign it, that tells you something right there. If we won't sign it, that tells you something right there, too. I mean, look, this is all new stuff. As we said, there's no rules governing Russian buying ads on social media sites. So let's make some. We've been in this world long enough. My kids can't even imagine another one. There's no excuse for not having come up with something to this point. We have little cyber treaties here and there, but let's have something major like, you know, thou shalt not interfere in another country's elections by any way, shape or form. You watch how many great powers sign that, and if they do, you watch how many stick to the deal. This is not to excuse anything, nor to deny the danger, but if you recall from our show we did on the Cold War. I mean, the premier of the head of Russia in 1959, 1960, Khrushchev was taking credit for getting John F. Kennedy elected by interfering in American elections. The same way every major power, I mean, folks, to try to get the guy or woman in another strategically important country into power. If you have a choice, we have one that really likes us and one that really hates us. You're going to do anything you can to help the one that really likes you. It just kind of makes sense. Now, should we be concerned? Hmm. Let's back up again and talk about something else. What we were getting into a minute ago, how we hate each other. How many of the people who really, really hate other Americans online aren't Americans? Hmm. This is an interesting question, which gets back to what we were just saying. You know, I mean, you can talk about a presidential election coming up and the Russians all of a sudden, or the Chinese all of a sudden, or the Iranians or whoever, feeding a lot of money to try to. That's here right now. But what about the steady, ongoing work that these kinds of trolls, for lack of a better word, these paid trolls, can do to a society by exploiting the cracks and the fissures that are already in it? Once again, don't think that I'm trying to tell you something that I don't think you know, because I think you do, but because, you know, they've got this wonderful plausible deniability thing going, too, where if you see somebody saying really nasty things from an American perspective, supposedly to other Americans, you have this part of your brain that just goes, okay, this could be an American, but this might also be some Russian troll, which creates another weird disconnect from the whole thing. But, folks, let me just point this out to you. If we got worse, and I think we have gotten worse in terms of how we feel about each other because of the efforts, the concerted efforts of some other foreign power to tear us apart through the use of, like, paid Internet trolls. 1. It's brilliant. From a million. I mean, if you're looking at this like, how can I undermine the United States? And you're Boris from the old Bullwinkler show. It's brilliant. It's nefariously brilliant. But if you fall for it, folks, what does that say about us, right? If we let them tear us apart? I mean, there's this little bit of a sense that we're being played, which gets me back to some of my own personal problems in terms of. I don't Know, if you call it growth or evolution or continuing changes all through my life in terms of honing my political position, let's call it that. I always say that wisdom requires a flexible mind. And of course it's always easy to say, harder to live by. But as you take in new data, you've got to be willing to sort of, okay, allow that data to then affect various viewpoints you have and alter things and to color things a little bit differently for those who don't know, for lack of a better word. And that's why we were using the term forever neo prudentist. I'm so jealous of people who have words that describe their political viewpoints in whole. But I'm kind of like what I would think hope maybe a modern day Jeffersonian agrarian supporter of the old republic might be a Jeffersonian republic or some people have called me an old fashioned Whig. What would the Whigs look like today? I don't know and I don't know if I agree with that. But by and large my viewpoints sort of have as one of their founding bedrock sort of elements that the people can actually run things, a believer in the basic fundamental tenants of democracy. Right. That we can govern ourselves, that we are smart enough to play the role of informed citizenry, et cetera, et cetera. This sort of corresponds to a lot of the American traditional marketing material. So it's familiar to Americans out there. This is nothing unusual. Every politician probably says this about themselves, you know, when on camera. But I'm looking at the complexities of our world right now and I'm trying to make sense of the dichotomy. And the dichotomy is I cannot figure out if grading on a curve, if life has always been as complicated for people living through it as it is now, or if it's more complicated than it used to be. Right. In the 19th century world or the 18th century world when Jefferson's around, for example, are the trials and tribulations of the people who voted back then as complicated to them as our situation is as we look at our world right now is to us? I don't know. I think if you're going to come from things from the Jeffersonian old Republic perspective, you have to assume that they were. Because otherwise you get to a point where if the belief was true once, that the citizens of the country could intelligently vote and figure out what was going on and govern themselves once, when it was less complicated, there's going to become a point on the graph as it moves upward in Complexity where they can't anymore or where a larger and larger number of them can't. Because let's be honest, there's always been some people that can't. There's a failure rate in your system, right? 10% of your electorate maybe is always going to be nuts, but how large can that number grow before your entire system's out of whack? You know, 50% of the electorate's nuts, but we're still doing okay. So I'm looking at this world around us and the complexity of what's required to both stay informed and, and to weave through all the crap out there. I mean, what it takes to be a person that literally comes into things, trying to learn and trying to have discussions based on logic, trying to get from okay, problem to solution. It just seems to me that it's an unnatural burden to expect in the population. You know, it's funny, can I compare it to something that probably nobody's going to relate to, but my oldest kid's looking at colleges now. It's crazy how the competition to get into US colleges from a lot of really intelligent people from other countries. China's sending wonderful scholars who have fantastic grades to American universities to study, which is great, except that it sort of raises the standards that these universities set. And so we're looking at schools that, you know, that I have relatives who went to, they could never get in, you know, with the standards they have today. You need like a 4.1or a 4.2 to go to a school you used to be able to get into with a 3.5. Now what does this have to do with anything? Well, once upon a time, maybe you needed in Jefferson's time, a nice 2.50 C average to be able to be a good informed citizen and do your job in the system. Maybe things got more complex in the mid 20th century. Now you needed to be a good 3233 low B average to be a useful, informed citizen playing role in the system. Is it possible, as we look at the system today with the massive complexities and the need to be able to filter your way to some level of truth through all of the on all sides smokescreens that creates the ability to hide behind phrases like fake news, which delegitimizes any shared truth. How smart do you have to be, how informed, how educated to weave your way through that and come up to some sort of an answer that doesn't make you a hopeless fanatic? If you follow this line of thinking long enough, folks, you start getting to an elitist place which is as far from my normal sensibilities as possible. But you start going, listen, if you don't have a 40 average, you can hardly maintain an understanding of what's really happening out there. And then if you're voting and you don't understand what's happening, well, you're screwing all of us. It would be better for even the heck, even the solid B average people out there are smart enough to know you'd rather have me voting for you than you voting for yourself. You're going to make mistakes. I'll do a much better job. How many systems do you see that in? Have a nice little oligarchy, got to own a farm, got to pay at least this amount of money in taxes and then you can vote. We had that, if you recall, in Jefferson's day. So maybe he would have been okay with that sort of, let's just call it blue blooded egalitarianism. But he liked a natural aristocracy, so he was okay maybe with the cream rising to the top and there being a top, he just didn't like it to be inherited. You would all be surprised how often I sit and just think of what a modern day version, a 21st century version of an old agrarian Jeffersonian republic would be like. It's like a science fiction book I should write someday. So to get us back to some sort of point, for me, I'm looking at our system and trying to figure out how we get out of the mess we're in. I know so many of you wanna focus right on the, right now you've got Donald Trump in front of you, it appears to be the end of all reality. Or if you're a Donald Trump fan, you finally have someone in office who's gonna drain the swamp and who's, you know, everything that we see as ridiculous and stupid is actually some really smart, smoother than a fox move to undermine. I mean, I'm not buying either reality, folks. And the truth is, is that when Donald Trump goes away, all of this stuff is still going to be here. And those of you who want me to line up specifically on one side or another, let me just tell you, I'm an opponent of Donald Trump. I consider it a personal tragedy that you finally get an outsider in there and that this is the best representation we're going to have of that. Because it leads us into a debate amongst Americans between should we vote for more crazy or go right back to the status quo that was so corrupt and inbred and bad that people voted Consciously for crazy last time. I mean, that's no choice. I mean, if we really want to have fun. If you want to turn this into the ultimate farce, run Hillary Clinton again against Donald Trump in the next one. Do that. I'm sorry, I don't know what. There's like, a hidden screenwriter gene in me somewhere, and it just saw that movie one more time. Holy crap. Bottom line is, folks, we have some challenges that may be unique, and they may be part of us trying to evolve, to incorporate so many new elements. And let's be honest, elements. We'll take the social media as the one that proves the rule. Elements that are evolving so fast that it's difficult for not just the United States. We're talking about, like, a global society to deal with. I mean, this entire problem we may have had in the recent election with Russia trying to influence it with. I mean, that's an example of something that if times were moving more slowly, perhaps the agreements and understanding already would have been in place to prevent something like that. But the way things are evolving, I think governments and I think voters are all several steps behind where everything's going. And I think human beings always are. But as the pace of change speeds up, I think we lose more and more ground, as I was using that grade point average as a way to show losing ground. But, I mean, in this case, you think of, like, the 19th century and the pace of change. I had a book that I read once that was talking about. A guy was talking about his grandfather and how his grandfather lived in a world before clocks. I mean, really before clocks, like, ruled your lives. And he said his entire life's pace was different because there were no clocks. He was ruled on a whole completely sort of different basis. You have a lot more time to adjust to things at that pace. But then, of course, time sped up. By the time you get to the middle of the 20th century, the pace of change is blindingly fast. I mean, you go from no aircraft to nuclear power in a lifetime and space flight. I mean, that's crazy. Changes. But now it's even and faster than that. Change breeds more change. Accelerated change breeds more accelerated change. How far behind are we getting here and what are the ramifications of that? And this is not a new debate, because when you talk about, for example, the history of nuclear weapons, it's essentially a similar debate, isn't it? Have the ability of these weapons to destroy things outpaced man's ability to deal with them. So this is not a new issue. But that was Sort of one of those unique kind of ones back then. There were only a few of those back in the 50s or 60s. Now you could do a fill in the blank. Has man's new blank outstripped his ability to deal with it? I mean, the social media could be an example, but there's a lot of things that you could throw in there. How about the. Absolutely Orwellian spying by everybody. And this is where it's even crazier, folks. Because when I used to scream about the US government spying in the 1980s on their citizens and of course nobody cared. Just let's remember the truth as it was, nobody gave a rat's ass. But now Russia could spy on you, right? The tools can suck up data in such a way or simply can let somebody else, the rightful authority, the United States is able to suck up the data in certain situations, but then somebody can hack into their databases and steal it all. So we didn't even have to spy on you. We just stole the data from the guy who did. My point is that the level of information that's out there about everybody changes the ball game in ways that once again, are unforeseeable. Because we've never been here before, though we've never been here before factor. Again, all throughout history it's been a factor, but it's never been a factor like it is now because we've never had it operating on so many fronts at once as we do now. We've never been here before across the board in so many areas. And how we didn't even talk about how all those different We've never been here before is paying off of each other in chaotic and weird ways. I realize it sounds a little off the beaten path, but as you try to figure out where all this is going to go, it actually factors down to whether or not we're going to have a country that can live together and why you have a common sense show to begin with and why having political discussions with each other anymore is fruitless. Fruitless. Now it's not fruitless. If you want to get together. I mean, I'm going to get emails from somebody that go, Dan, you know, you said exactly what I was feeling. And you know, that's exactly why we need a show like this, because you're the only guy saying what I was feeling. Yes. And if you and I and five other people like us got into a room, we could come up with some really sober, deep things. But that doesn't affect everybody else. The biggest challenge we have is how do you get back to where we can have the sort of meaningful debates that a country that is run by the citizenry has to be able to have to run? And I know it's the human tendency to focus on what's right in front of us, and sometimes that's the right thing to do. And maybe I can be faulted for not doing it more, but that's not how I think I look at systemic problems. The systemic problem here, that is not going away. I mean, it's funny, I never thought anything would be a bigger problem than the corruption problem. And if you recall my thinking, you know, the one thing that had to happen to fix the corruption problem is Americans of different political stripes needed to work together to solve the common problem, even if it was just temporary working together. And instead we've gone off the completely different end. We can't work together at all. Forget solving the corruption problem. If we can't solve the working together problem or just living together problem, you're not going to have a country to be bought by lobbyists anymore. And I know you think I'm overreacting, ladies and gentlemen, but you can see the cracks in the ground now, and you would be shocked how quickly things can change. What's more, another pattern that you tend to see in situations like this are the multiple earthquake pattern, right? Where out of nowhere could be soon some earthquake that nobody foresees happens. Maybe some. I don't want to give anybody ideas, but, you know, fill in the blank. We can all understand what can happen that can change everybody's mind overnight about everything. Boom, Earthquake. Okay, everybody calms down. We're not going to have this happen again. Look at the tragedy. Look what happens when extremists get out of hand. Everything gets quiet for another five or six, seven years, another president election, another bad, you know, boom, boom, boom. This just continues, the trolling continues, the Facebook buying of ads from other countries, and it just goes on and on. And the next one's bigger earthquake. This is how things happen, folks. And they're hard for human beings to incorporate into their mental framework. Because five years sounds like a long time. If I'm going, oh, one earthquake separated by another earthquake. But it's not a long time. If you can go from no airplanes to people landing on the moon in a lifetime, think about what you can do in a political system where you can go from where to where. Now, as I said, I don't have any answers, which is why you don't want me doing a program. I think it would Be weird, don't you, to get up there when you don't really see the picture clearly and start analyzing it for people where you don't know where things are going to go because you're in unprecedented territory, but you're going to tell people anywhere where you think it might go. Now, I realize people are doing that everywhere, all the time, in the media, all over the world, but they have to and I don't. And one of the things I'd love to preserve if I can. Listen, I might be an idiot, but you know that I'm honorable and that I'm not going to tell you something I don't believe and I'm not. You know, I have my faults, but I like to think that on something like this I'm credible. If I knew where things were going, I would tell you, because I don't. You shouldn't want me to. And I'm not the kind of person that's going to do it if I don't. Especially since you're all screaming for the latest history show, and you're absolutely right to do so. And let me just take a couple seconds on that, because my wife says I get really weird when we don't get content out for a while and sort of depressed and just sort of mute. But I wrestle all the time with the quality of the work versus getting it out. And we've talked about this before, where there's this problem that you've got two audiences and there are other podcasters who deal with this too. But one audience is the people waiting right now for the next show who would be glad maybe if you cut corners and did a worse job if they could get it sooner. But the other audience are the people that won't find it for a while, and the only thing they care about since they didn't have to wait for it at all, it was already done, is how good it is. And so we're trying to bear that in mind, trying to do more hardcore history addendums if you haven't discovered that show already. I'm finding people that are surprised. They'll say, we haven't heard from you in a long, long time. And I said, I just got three hardcore history addendums out this year. Oh, didn't know about that. So if you don't, we have another podcast we started for me to probably ignore and take really long times between releases. But listen, you knew what you were getting into when you signed up, right? You people have been very good to me. I hope you always know that even if you disagree with me about politics or anything else, my heart's in the right place. Especially if you think the right place is wishing. I still wish for an America that matches the marketing material. And that's always been my goal. Back in the 1990s, a good friend of mine who was a talk show host at the station where I worked, he had the late, great Ralph Steadman. And he said, carlin, I can sum up your whole shtick in one sentence. He goes, this is what we were promised. Here's where the promises have been broken. So this is what we're supposed to have in terms of constitutional freedoms and rights and all these sorts of things. And here's where that has been denied or reduced or eliminated or what have you. But the problem I have today, folks, and we talked about this, it's funny years and years ago, is we used to say what happens as succeeding generations grow up and they've never had these rights that we're screaming about the loss of or the diminishment of or what have you, or the lack of protection, right? We would talk about Fourth Amendment protections and we used to say, well, what happens when you get one or two generations from now with people who've never known these things? What are they going to think if you brought them back up? And it reminds me of a conversation I had with someone the other day who was very sure that Donald Trump is the second coming of Adolf Hitler, which I always say, as bad as Trump may be, it diminishes Hitler a little bit. I mean, let's remember it's hyperbole, always of the highest order. But anyway, okay, I'll run with that in a minute, but I was having discussions with this guy who I should be on the same side of the page with on most things, he thinks. And I said, well, listen, if you really want to go back and get these protections that you're saying are so in danger right now and restore them to their former strength and glory, if you could rub the magic lamp and you get your three wishes, and wish number one is to get our freedoms back to their high water mark, take the Fourth Amendment as our wonderful example and go back to the way the Fourth Amendment was perceived at its high water mark. So let's just say I'm going to pick 1977. 1978 could be wrong about the actual date, but stay with me here. In 1977, 1978, it was still pretty much considered to be against the Constitution for 99% of Americans to be subjected to any sort of a drug test. Now, if I said let's turn back the clock tomorrow and go back to that, how many Americans are going to be okay with that? I can guarantee you that far fewer Americans today see drug tests as a constitutional violation of your Fourth Amendment rights than did in 1977, 1978. And let's remember, as an aside, the sky was not falling in 1977, 1978. We didn't have this unbelievable problem with drug addicted people, you know, causing accidents everywhere. So you'd think the idea of going back shouldn't be so terrifying. But I imagine people would scream as though the sky were falling. Why is that? Because our belief in our ability to handle our freedoms is less than it was. And someone might say, listen, Dan, the truth of it is, because this generation has grown up the way they have, their ability to handle that freedom is diminished. You know, they never had it. They'll go crazy with it. I mean, look at the stuff we do to fight terrorism, folks. And imagine turning the clock back that to 1977 levels or whatever, right? In other words, I don't have a side to line up with anymore. If what you want to do is return this country back to the things we were once promised, right again, we'll just use the fourth amendment. But there's a lot of other ones that have their problems. But the idea that any. I mean, there's no fishing expeditions, folks. You have a right to be secure in your papers, houses, personal effects, unless there's a warrant involved. I mean, all this stuff sounds so quaint now, but that's what I'm for. So I feel like I myself sound a little quaint. But goals aside, we can still talk about the value of noticing systemic things. Maybe I'm a little useful there instead of my friend who's convinced that we have the second coming of Adolf Hitler in the White House. Now, I would say that my focus tends to be less on the Adolf Hitler directly in front of your face and ask why the heck we have so many people in our country to whom Nazism has such an appeal. Because you could assassinate Hitler. But if a lot of people are still Nazis and wannabe, they're gonna find someone else to run the party, aren't they? Well, let's hope that everything I just said's a lot of hyperbole and a lot of fake news. And after all, you know, how would you know anyway? And listen, I miss talking to y'all about this kind of stuff, but I felt like I was sounding like a broken record. We're still putting out shows. We're still doing content. I'm still out there. I haven't slowed down at all. I need to a little bit, but I'm not. So I appreciate your patience. We always appreciate your support. You know, you're the best friends. I was gonna say fans, but fans is. We're best friends to have out there. So thank you, everybody, for everything, and I hope you understand my thinking on this. Try to be nice to each other, okay? Because otherwise you're playing right into the hands of the Russians. Isn't it weird to think that if you're being a dick to somebody online, you might be undercutting your country? There's, like, a World War II era poster in my head right now. You know, don't be a dick. You're only helping the Russians. It's unpatriotic. You're treasonous. See how we can turn that McCarthyism thing into something? Fascism in the pursuit of niceness for the preservation of our liberties. And if that doesn't sound Orwellian, I don't know what does. You've just heard another edition of Common Sense with Dan Carlin.