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- [00:00]
A
Everybody wants to be loved.
- [00:03]
B
All right. Good morning, Doug. You are back in the United States. I'm still here in Uruguay, but I want to talk to you about the economy today and Trump and other things. But, you know, I wonder. Historically, it seems like the economy is rolling over like consumer sentiment at an all time low since they've been tracking it in 1952. Student loan delinquencies are all time high. You know, credit card delinquencies at a high. All kind of signs of issues affecting the consumers of America, which make up 70% of the economy. Has there ever been a time where the economy was trash but the market was on fire? Has that happened before?
- [00:48]
A
Well, I wasn't there, but at one point, the German stock market, during their disaster of 1923, when they were carrying their money in wheelbarrows to a store to buy a loaf of bread that they'd bring home the value of Daimler Benz, supposedly the market cap of it, went from being as low as the most expensive car that they were producing, because they were still producing, to then exploding and being, if you had any spare money to put in the market, the only place that you could. Yeah. So this is, this is absolutely crazy what's going on right now. The market is at an all time high when the average guy is having trouble. And of course, my ground, my, my boots on the ground experience, just having gotten back to the US Here, gotten off the plane that. What time do we get off the plane? An ungodly hour in Atlanta. And I could talk about the nature of my flight from Buenos Aires to Atlanta, but that may be something that's not of interest to most, most people. But I will say kudos to Delta because they actually are imitating a lot of the features of flying on Emirates, which is the best airline in the world. So I was very pleasantly surpr with the accommodations in Delta and the quality of their crew, which was superb. I actually had to comment to them. I've gotten so used to thinking of the air crew as being kind of like flying waitresses. Flying waitresses from a greasy spoon. But you know, Delta apparently has got a program to make sure that people that work for them and contact the, the people flying. Very good. Anyway, so anyway, boots on the ground, but not important boots on the ground. How many people fly from, from, from BA to Atlanta. So that's kind of an ethereal boots on the ground, I've got to say. But when I, when we drove back from Richmond, where we connected to, back to here on the shore in Virginia, My wife and I had a breakfast roll from Wendy's and for two tiny little sandwiches and the drinks, which cost nothing, was 15 bucks. And of course, I've lost all contract with what's the value of the dollar anymore? I don't even know. I don't think anybody knows. The prices are so out of line that we went that evening to a sushi place here in Virginia. And you won't believe this, but it's true. And basically for the two of us, okay, in an ordinary sushi place, it was $175. I mean, it's a lot of money. How's the average guy afford that?
- [04:01]
B
I think they're not affording it. I think that's the problem. But just, just how much would you, do you think your, your breakfast at this fast food place should have cost, you know, based upon, you know, just memory of how much things cost?
- [04:16]
A
Well, I do remember when the most expensive thing on the menu at McDonald's, which happened to have been a Big Mac, was 99 cents. That genuine fact.
- [04:28]
B
Yeah.
- [04:28]
A
So the government's inflation figures are just cockamamie and meaningless and made up at this point. And at some point you'd think that the average guy would. This is the way the average Argentine felt about the inflation figures under Kirchner, which were totally manufactured and made up. Make people feel better.
- [04:52]
B
Yeah, I just think. I doubt that most people even know what the inflation, what the CPI is or keep track of it at all.
- [05:01]
A
I believe the actual number is around 3% that they report.
- [05:05]
B
But it's 3.8. 3.8.
- [05:07]
A
Oh, it's moved up a little bit. They'll have to do something about that. In other words, not by, by not stopping the money printing, which it is impossible for them to do as long as the government's running deficits, which must be financed. Federal Reserve buys the deficit and. No, no, there's nothing they can do at this point except disguise things that are going on. We got to be heading for an explosion. I mean, if there's any righteousness left in the world, there's got to be some kind of a vindication of the just here.
- [05:46]
B
Well, you know, I don't.
- [05:46]
A
Just people. It's like trying to, trying to, trying to find somebody in Sodom and Gomorrah that doesn't deserve to be smited.
- [05:58]
B
What do you think? I don't know if you saw this, but like, foreign treasury holdings decreased by $139 billion last month, which is the largest monthly decline since September of 2 of 2022 so it does seem like something's happening with it, right? I mean, this is a big deal.
- [06:15]
A
It makes all the sense in the world that, you know, other foreign, central bankers and government officials look at what's happening to the US and they say, well, why do we want to hold their paper when interest rates are going up and the dollar is being destroyed before our very eyes? Get rid of these things. Hit the bid. And of course, this explains why gold has done as well as it has not in the last couple of months when it's fallen from a rather manic peak of 5,400 to 4,500. But in general, where are they going to put their assets? Okay, gold, frankly, gold, because of its unique characteristics, which we can enumerate, which I've done many times in the past. So yeah, that's, that's the way it is.
- [07:06]
B
And probably the single most germane characteristic is that it can't be printed by the Fed at this point.
- [07:12]
A
Exactly. But central banks are not buying gold stocks, so they are lagging gold at this point. And the public at large has had propaganda about anti the mining industry for so long, it rapes the earth. And NGOs have used it as a punching bag, as have governments extracting royalties and taxes from it. You can't move the mine and so forth. So mining stocks are still very cheap. I'm still long them along with oil stocks, which have responded better to higher oil prices than gold and silver stocks responded to those things.
- [07:54]
B
Even though gold at this point is like record profits. I mean, they're just minting money at this point, literally.
- [08:02]
A
Yeah, at some point the fund managers are going to catch up with that reality. As much as they hate gold because the fund managers are all Ivy League educated and have been indoctrinated against commodities, resources, mining, this type of thing forever. So of course they hate it. And maybe DEI isn't so prevalent anymore, but ESG still is. So yeah, it'll roll over and it'll change. So I'm happy still being long gold and oil and commodities generally, I am not long. Well, I should have been, I guess should have bought things to capitalize on the AI bubble like Nvidia. But I got to believe that's coming to an end. And all these data centers which are being built everywhere, I got a feeling that they're going to turn into white elephants, many of them or a lot
- [08:58]
B
of them that get built and end up, you know, not connected to the electricity required to power them because the pipeline there is so massive.
- [09:07]
A
And even if they are. The amount of revenue they generate will not be very much compared to the huge capital costs made to build them. I think it's a bubble. I mean, I know that the Silicon Valley people are the smartest guys in the room, at least they say so. But this is a giant bubble.
- [09:32]
B
Well, and it went from where they're basically using their huge cash flows to fund the AI build out, to now using debt to finance it. So these companies like Facebook with huge cash flows could make sense as an investment for them, but when they, as soon as they start floating bonds to finance it all, it changes the dimension of it completely.
- [09:54]
A
Yeah. So the average guy is having a very tough time taking his family out to McDonald's or Wendy's. Forget about someplace more expensive. And he's having a very hard time paying the insurance and the utilities, which of course run off of petrochemicals, basically, insurance, maintenance on his house and the taxes on his house, which are going up at more than 3% per year, so.
- [10:28]
B
And gas prices now up near 50%.
- [10:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the average guy is not doing so good, but people that are in the stock market, which is at all time highs at bubble, double bubble levels, are doing great. The economy is really being bifurcated between the haves and the have nots at this point. And. Yeah, Oh, I, I was just going to say in the past when people were complaining about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, you know, my answer to that in the past was always, well, there are people that are rich that fall to the low levels and people that are poor that rise to the high levels. So, you know, there's a certain amount of dynamism in the economy, but at this point, it seems like the people that are rich are kind of in an area where they're staying rich because they're connected to the powers, the, the halls of power in the government or halls of power in Silicon Valley, and they're really, really getting really extra rich at this point, while the average guy is not doing well. It's planting the seeds of a revolution, but maybe we won't have one because the average guy is on Prozac and 100, 100 of its lookalikes out there and smoking pot too.
- [12:00]
B
Where it gets to a point, though, where people literally can't afford to live. I think, you know, the odds of violence go up a lot, you know, and I think that people have been, there's been all these new financing vehicles that have popped up to help people fill in the gaps, like, you know, that you can basically do a buy now, pay later when you order food from your Uber app. You know, I mean, you can, so you can just delay, you put it on payments and delay it out so you can stretch that way. I also learned recently that a lot of the payroll systems in the US now have an integrated system with them where you can essentially take an advance on, you can do a payday advance automatically with like one click of a button. So essentially, you know, if you, let's say you get paid every two weeks and you know you're four days into a pay period, you can take that. You can. For a small fee. Small fee that ends up being a high apr. If you do it all the time, you can, you can take that money now. And so there's all these things that have just, you know, allowed people to kind of pull forward more to the moment, to be able to keep going in the moment. But I think that those are running dry. I just don't know if there's any more places you can, you can finance people to, to can, you know, for them to be able to live today.
- [13:21]
A
Yeah, absolutely true. But you know, during the 70s, I don't take it anymore. I don't even know if it still exists anymore. There was a publication called the Bank Credit Analyst, which was very well respected. I hate to use that phrase because it's such a dangerous phrase generally the people that use it. Anyway, it was a great publication that actually covered bank credit and government spending and all this type of thing. And maybe the numbers that were used were more reliable than they are now. But even back in the 70s, these were very level headed, conservative, establishment leaning Republican economists were talking about this has got to end badly, this has got to be a disaster. It really seemed like that when interest rates hit 15, 20% back in the early 80s, the days when the Bank Credit analyst was ringing a bell saying this is, this can't end well and by God, here we are over 40 years later and everything seems normal. I mean, on the surface it does.
- [14:39]
B
But the, but the standard of living of people has gone down in that time period. I mean, you have some improvements because of convenience and technology and stuff like that, but I think people's standard, I mean certainly in that time period, you know, not that there were always two parents working at that stage, but now it's almost, unless you're affluent, you have to have a, you know, two people working in the household to be able to make it. And young people today are entering a employment environment where it doesn't you know, you. I was reading about this guy from MIT who was a computer science major, applied many to many jobs, can get. No, can. Can't get hired. And he was talking about his classmates who had the same thing. This is, you go to the best school, you study the thing, the. The one thing that should, you know, get you gainful employment. And even they can't find a good job. So it's just. It seems different. I mean, we're not a productive country anymore. You know, we're a service economy that relies on consumption. It's, like, hard to. Hard to make that work.
- [15:44]
A
Yes. And consumption financed by debt. So you get your college degree, which is more or less worthless, as you pointed out, and that money that's borrowed, which you probably won't repay or a lot of people won't in the years to come, comes from capital saved by past generations or mortgaging your own future. Past, future. That's where the debt comes from. I don't know. I think we're at the edge of the precipice. I mean, I've been afraid of this in my own mind for, God, most of my life, since I've studied history and economics and always taken kind of a gloomy cast of these things, despite being a technophile and seeing that for the last 10,000 years, the greatest trend in motion has been the ascent of man, the increase in technology, the constant decrease in real terms in raw material prices, all of which is true, and we'll still be true in the future, I believe, unless we have a nuclear war, which is possible. But anyway, a subtext to the great positives that I've mentioned are the negatives primarily imposed upon society by government action. I think it's coming to an end, especially with unbelievably and unfortunately, the increasingly evident corruption of the Trump regime. I'm really affronted and disgusted at how unseemly the things that Trump is doing now really are and the things that he's saying, which are batshit crazy. And he has been saying and tweeting these things now for many months, but I think he's finally out of control.
- [17:47]
B
Yeah. And the latest one is there's two things that have come up lately. He had to report his stock trades for the first quarter and then his settlement with the doj. And, you know, the settlement with the doj, it's just a messy thing. Like, he sued the doj, sued the irs, because an IRS contractor illegally released his tax return during, you know, prior campaign. And so he sued him for $10 billion. Now, that case was set to go before a judge for the first time last Wednesday. On Monday, though, they come out with a. They announce a settlement agreement between Trump's DOJ and Trump's lawyers representing him where a slush fund of $1.8 billion is created.
- [18:39]
A
Which, you know, is it 1.8 exactly?
- [18:43]
B
Well, no, it's 1.776, you know, for 1776, it's 250th year.
- [18:49]
A
Yeah, that's highly appropriate, but I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
- [18:54]
B
So in this, this slush fund, you know, can be used for others who have been targets of lawfare by, by the government in the past, specific that related to Trump. So theoretically, the J6 defendants could be, could apply for and tap into this pool of money. But really, anybody in Trump's orbit in general who has been affected in any way by the, by this lawfare in the past, you know, can use this. And so what it. Trump doesn't personally get any of it, but there's a five. There's a panel of five people that are appointed by the same Attorney General who blessed this settlement, and any of those appointees can be removed by Trump. So Trump ultimately has control over how this thing works, and ultimately they apply, and then this panel of five people can determine whether they're worthy and if so, what the damages ought to be from this sort of slush fund. So that, that's one part of it. And, you know, you can argue again, and I would with these J6 people that they need some, you know, they need some compensation for what Many of them were jailed for years, you know, under, under this situation. Very bad. Although I do know some have independently sued and won, by the way, for, for the violation of their civil liberties, which did occur. So they have recourse outside of this. But this is another pool. But ultimately, you can see it being used for, to reward his, you know, his political friends, you know, so it can be used. It's broad based on what it can be used for. The bad part about the entire thing, though, is what it does in protecting Trump, his family and affiliates from liabilities from, you know, from basically, it's not exactly immunity from the IRS and from, you know, the rest of the government, but it's very close to it. And I, you know, the, the entire language, I'll actually just share it with screen. So if someone wants to take a screenshot of this so you can see it and read it, it's pretty profound. It's pretty tight. And it. Let's Just say it. I'll just read the last line of it. Basically, it frees them from any claims, any actions, you know, any inspection or examination or reviews. So like if they weren't paying their taxes. Right, it frees them from all that. But in third line, from any matters currently pending or that could be pending before, that's before the defendants or other agencies or departments, which to me implies if the DOJ went after him for something else or if, you know, any other department in the future were ever to go after him, you know, his family, it specifically says, includes without limitation family or others filing jointly or parties, including trust, parent, sister or related companies, affiliates and subsidiaries. It frees them all from any government action in the future. It's, it's a lot like the Biden pardoning himself and his family before he left office.
- [22:22]
A
A total get out of jail free card. And I can see how Trump is anticipating the fact that the Democrats, when they replace the Republicans, I think in the next election, will go after him and Pilrium and make an example out of them. So he's minted himself a get out a free card. So on the one hand you say, yeah, well that makes sense and he should be blah, blah, blah. But it's the same thing as Biden did and the next president will do so that essentially you can do anything you want and can't be. Nobody can go after you for it after the fact.
- [23:04]
B
Right. And I think, you know, Biden, you know, we looked at the corruption in the Biden administration and it was, there was a lot of it, it was blatant. And then he pardoned himself and his family and we found that quite objectionable. I did, I'm sure you did too. And, but, but it, but that set the standard. And then now Trump is taking that and engaging in, I think, pretty overt corruption. Whether, certainly whether, whether it's legal or not. I mean, I think it's clear corruption. What could be argued is that, and he's, you know, given himself immunity as well. And I think every president from here on out, I think you have to count on the fact that they're going to at least, at the very least pardon themselves and their families for everything that happens while they're president.
- [23:51]
A
Yeah, of course. And he said so many things. I mean, a lot of the things that he said are just, just egregious. They're way beyond unseemly. Like I said, they're actually batshit crazy. But things that have a direct relationship to the response of the stock market for. And somebody's been profiting from those things. We don't know.
- [24:17]
B
Right. And we were wondering, like, who's doing these oil trades, for instance, right before Trump would make a tweet that would clearly move the oil markets, you know, we were wondering about those things. But when Trump had to provide this, by law, a disclosure of all of his trades, for the first quarter of this year, there were 3,700 trades, which are just as an ungodly amount of trades, first of all, I mean, it's pretty shocking. 60 trades a day. I mean, that's a lot of trades. It's hard to imagine doing that many trades. And there's some very clear cut ones in there where, you know, he, he buys Nvidia and then the next week the DOJ or the State Department authorizes Nvidia, you know, buys Nvidia a week later. Nvidia is authorized to sell their H200 chip to China, you know, the next week. So it's insider information. Clearly he's trading on it. Oftentimes he'll, he'll share tickers, symbols in some of his tweets or true social posts. And turns out he was like, bought those companies just in advance of those things. So. And I was looking up the amount of the trades. You can't. And the disclosures don't tell you if the trades were wins or losses or anything like that. And they provide rough ranges of the value of each trade. But it's estimated that the total value of his trades goes anywhere based upon disclosures between $200 million worth of trades, up to $750 million of trades on the high end, which is a lot of trades for a quarter.
- [25:49]
A
Yes, yes, it is. And of course, this all started with Biden and Pelosi and the huge corruption that the Biden family was engaging in with the Ukraine. But they don't say anything about that now because the Ukraine is our friend and huge amounts of American money have been thrown in its direction. So Trump doesn't want to talk about any of that, just like he doesn't want to talk about anything that happened in around. Epstein was all supposed to be released. It's not because I'm sure he's knee deep. Knee deep? No, not hip deep. I'd say up to his neck in everything that Epstein was up to in those days.
- [26:37]
B
Yeah, I mean, this, you know, this whole settlement with the Department of Justice because the Department of Justice was also leading all the Epstein stuff. Todd Blanche, you know, is the guy now in charge of that Todd Blanche, former attorney for Trump. He's the attacking acting attorney general. You know, you could, yeah, it's all total speculation, but you could imagine like a deal, you know, hey, let's ignore this stuff and we got a deal for you. Here's how we can do this technically, you know, before it goes in front of a judge, you know, here's what you get. So it just, you know, I mean, I, I do think that Trump is all about the art of the deal. Unfortunately, the art of the deal is what benefits Trump and his cronies, not what benefits America at this point.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah, he's, he's totally immoral. And in an essay I wrote in 2012, when he first started to talk about wanting to be president, I very correctly diagnosed the fact that he's a person totally without an ethical or philosophical or moral center at all. He's a seat in the pants flyer. And this is becoming very, very evident now. But as my wife points out, who still supports Trump, and I just don't talk to her about it, even though she's very rational and a highly skilled lawyer that does the lawyer stuff as well as anybody I've ever met. The fallback position of, of many Trump supporters still is that he's not Kamala Harris. And I say that's absolutely true. But in a few months when the midterm elections come, I think the Republicans are going to be brutalized. They'll be punished for all these things, which the average guy is going to. And ex Trump supporters, of whom there are many are going to vote against the Republicans. And then I think the Republicans are going to be totally kicked out of office in the elections in 28. And then we get some really crazy Democrat, some Kemala on steroids. I'm pronouncing her name properly, which in Spanish is Kemala. How bad?
- [28:58]
B
How bad? Well, let me write a potentially alternate scenario because we just had these, these primary elections for a number of candidates, including Massey, who was defeated in his race. And, you know, people, if you look at the numbers about how he was defeated, it's, you know, it's suspicious. I mean, he lost by 10,000 some votes and there were 10,000 some mail in ballots.
- [29:27]
A
I heard the number was 50,000, but it's hard to believe anything that you see on the Internet when it comes to this stuff.
- [29:33]
B
Well, the guy, his, the guy he was running against got55,000 votes. And I think Massey got, you know,47,000 votes, something like that. But there's basically a10,000 vote swing between them. And there were10,000 mail in ballots in that district. And you, and you know, there, there hasn't been a, the Republicans haven't really wanted to pass the Voter ID act either. You know, it's been something that's been up in the Senate and they refuse to take up because I think this election corruption thing can work for both parties. And you know, of the, if I'm recalling correctly, there were 37 candidates that Trump opposed that were running in various elections in these primary elections now. All 37 lost. All 37. And so I, when you look at Trump, Trump is not at all concerned about the elections. You know, he says crazy things like when people ask him, aren't you concerned about the economic realities of the average American, you know, with the gas prices going up? And he says, no, I don't think about it. I don't think about it at all. Like, it is clearly not trying to curry voter sentiment at this point. I mean, he's pissing him off, if anything. And I, I just wonder, you know, ours, clearly we've seen corruption in elections. We've seen that. I mean, we, we saw it with Trump before. I'm not so sure that, you know, he, he didn't make a deal. And his deal is that he'll, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll win the midterms. I mean, I just have no faith in elections anymore.
- [31:17]
A
No, I, I don't, I don't either. And one comment that he made, which I thought was, it's one shocking thing after the other where he recently said, I could be elected Prime Minister of Israel. That's how popular he is there. And of course, going back to Massie, who actually, from everything I can determine, is the only remaining libertarian member of the House of Representatives, a decent human being who always votes for the right thing, from my point of view, the libertarian thing, pro freedom of the individual. I mean, pretty sterling guy. And Trump has called him the worst member of Congress ever. I mean, it's just a patent lie, looking at the kind of scum that you have in Congress, that he say something like that, which is verifiably false. And the fact that what was the number? 32 million doll was raised primarily from three maniacally pro Israeli American Jews, including Miriam Adelson, who's an Israeli citizen who's
- [32:37]
B
given half of half a billion to Trump herself.
- [32:40]
A
Yeah, so it seems like the Trump regime is totally under the thumb of Israel. And of course there was absolutely no Reason to launch a surprise attack on Iran. I mean, it's a war crime. Launching a launching attack. Forget about a surprise attack on a foreign country on the other side of the world because they're an obvious enemy of Israel.
- [33:09]
B
Right. It's called. Isn't it called perfidy or something like that?
- [33:13]
A
Yeah. And nobody. Nobody's really talking about this because if. If you are against anything that Israel does, you're obviously a Jew hater, you're anti Semitic, and you can't even talk about this because people that have talked about this, like, oh, goodness, the chap that wrote those wonderful children's books like Charlie and the Giant Peach and all this type of thing.
- [33:43]
B
Yeah, Charlie and Chocolate Factory guy.
- [33:46]
A
Exactly. And so he. He said something 30 years ago about it's really strange that, you know, people with Jewish surnames control the publishing and movie and other industries. And. And he didn't say it to be antagonistic. He said it in a way that it's a very interesting phenomenon for a group that's only 2% of the American population, which, incidentally, the average American thinks is 30%. So you even ask this question and your name is besmirched forever. In fact, even talking. Our podcast is relatively small and obscure. But it's dangerous even saying something like this. And I speak as somebody who has also often been considered an honorary member of the tribe. I've been to Israel a couple times, have no problems with it, have lots of Jewish friends. But it's getting out of control. Actually.
- [35:00]
B
Is out of control. Sounds like that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory guy was the Kanye of his time. Because Kanye, if you remember, was persecuted for just noticing.
- [35:09]
A
Yeah.
- [35:09]
B
Noticing that all the other counterparties and his label or, you know, on his contracts happened to be of the same tribe, you know.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah. And he was massively published. Punished for asking that question. The same thing is true of Mel, the actor. Mel.
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B
Mel Gibson.
- [35:29]
A
Mel Gibson, of course, that. See, what was. What was the story with Mel? He was drunk.
- [35:38]
B
Yes. But his big problem was doing Passion of the Christ. That's really where the. The great problem occurred, because, you know, he tried to get that done, and no, it couldn't get green lighted by anybody, that movie. And so then he basically bet his net worth on it and financed it himself. And it was a huge hit. I mean, it was, you know, gigantically successful for him. And it was that. That caused the biggest divide. It was after that point.
- [36:10]
A
Is that. Is that true? Where did it start? Did it start with.
- [36:14]
B
There was a. There was a phone Call where he. Where they got him recording with his ex wife and he's drunk and. Or he gets pulled over and he's recorded on body cam saying something about the Jews. But, but it was, it was, it was only after the Passion of the Christ. It was that after that time they were. They, you know, had his number and were going and looking for a way to attack.
- [36:37]
A
Yeah, well, there are certain protected ethnicities and races and other groups that you. I just can't say anything about. And this is improper in a democracy, which I don't believe in particularly, or at all, or a free society, which I do believe in. I mean, anything is open for discussion. This whole thing with hate speech supposedly is evil. Not that hate speech is a good thing, but I'm all for it. If somebody wants to say something, I want to know what's on their mind. I don't want to have to guess what somebody's thinking. I'd like to have a discussion about it and if you wish, a debate. I don't like debates personally, but I want to know what the other person's thinking. But now with these hate speech laws, and some of them aren't laws, they're just societal norms, people have to be quiet about things which other people say you're not supposed to talk about. It's. It's dangerous.
- [37:52]
B
Yeah. And I think that, you know, Massey is the latest sacrificial lamb in demonstrating that and reminding probably everyone else in Congress, you know, what they should and should not say. And I think that his real trouble started when he pointed out that he didn't have an assigned AIPAC person, whereas every other member of Congress did.
- [38:15]
A
Every other member of Congress has taken APAC money. And I understand that APAC is not registered as a foreign lobbying group, which it obviously is. Why is that? I mean, I guess anybody's afraid to call their bluff on that and say, doug, it's because.
- [38:32]
B
Doug, it's because of the Holocaust.
- [38:35]
A
That's right. And if you ask them to be treated like any other lobbying group, you're obviously anti Semitic. You're obviously a Jew hater. You know, so that's the story. Yeah. This is gonna, this is going to backfire, however, for them, because, you know, eventually people are going to figure that, wait a minute, this is just. Isn't right. So that it's going to. And a lot of the Jews that I know personally are personally paranoid and think that they're being persecuted. And you know, one of my oldest, a friend of mine for 40 years, I talked with Them. And he said, yeah, I'm really worried about being a Jew. And I said, well, Darrell, you can, you can stay with us anytime that you want. Yeah. And, but, you know, I mean, this is a rational guy who's pretty well to do, and he's actually worried what the hell's going on here.
- [39:33]
B
Yeah. And it's, it, it's, it seems like that. Yeah, I, I don't, I don't really know. But I will say that certainly their, their, their efforts to. I mean, I saw one commentator bragging about Massey's loss. It was a Jewish guy saying, saying that because when the Jews feel threatened, they will bring the resources together and they will protect themselves by going after people like Massey. And they see it as defending themselves is the way they see it. But we're just watching it. It's like, dude, you need to talk to a PR agent. You don't understand what you're saying. This is not serving your cause at all. You're basically saying to people that you will go out and crush anybody who says things you don't like. Like, this is, this is what this is. This is a trope. What you're saying that that's what you guys do. So it's, it's, it's a danger. It's, it's a dangerous situation and getting more dangerous by the day. It really is.
- [40:33]
A
Well, it is. And you know, why is it that the Jews have always had this problem? Because they're a tribe that prove, if you would, that blood is thicker than water. And you know, historically, people in countries where Jews have been, have been suspicious of them because they don't eat the food of the other people thinking and say that they're God's chosen people and blah, blah, blah, all this type of thing. Don't intermarry with other tribes because they're beneath them and so forth. Okay, this is, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Listen, I mean, the Irish used to do that with each other. The Italians used to do that with each other. Much, much less with the Irish Italians now than used to be the case. Not much less. In fact, more with the Jews. Nobody counts the gypsies, who have all kinds of bad habits.
- [41:44]
B
But yeah, they're not a protected class. You can say whatever you want. I think about the gypsies.
- [41:49]
A
They're not a protected class. That's right. But you know, Russell Means, who was, became a rather well known actor. But I was a friend with Russell and I liked him. We, we got along just fine.
- [42:06]
B
He was that Native American guy, right?
- [42:08]
A
Exactly. Yeah, he was very, was very big on the American Indians. Got a bad deal. Yeah, I can see how they got a really bad deal in lots of ways, broken treaties and the rest of this type of thing. But, you know, told him, Russell, this is 150 years later after Wounded Knee. Not the more recent Wounded Knee, but the massacre of Wounded Knee. I mean, a time comes to drop these things. But he had not just a chip on his shoulder, but a chip on both shoulders about being an Indian. So this happens with all of these groups. Quite frankly, I'm kind of feeling that way like a white man now.
- [42:54]
B
The thing is, this is the consequence though is that it becomes a point. Certainly young men feel this way.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah.
- [43:02]
B
You know, they, who've grown up under this DEI and you know, every, you know, every minority or defined, you know, or self described minority is, is a protected class and must be coddled and taken care of and protected at all costs. Whereas, you know, white privilege is, is a thing and it has ruled our society. I'm telling you, young white people have this, have a little chip on their shoulder at this point. And if things don't, if things don't improve economically, the future for them, that chip is going to grow to Russell Means level at the rate it's going.
- [43:42]
A
Yeah, I agree. Because in the past I've always been favorably inclined towards giving black people the benefit of the doubt, which. Why should I give anybody the benefit of the doubt, but in particular black people? Well, I'm disinclined to do that anymore because of a lot of factors. It's like enough is enough.
- [44:11]
B
Yep. And all of this creates a dangerous societal tinderbox waiting for the, waiting for a flame before it blows up.
- [44:22]
A
Yeah. So I'll stick by my prediction, which I think I was one of the first people to have ever made that I ever saw that the US is heading towards a civil war that and it won't be just between two parties, but between several. And it'll wind up with the breakup of the US how soon? I don't know. But when the stock market collapses and people's pension funds go away and the bubble that we're living in bursts, people could get angry and violent when they can, when they can't afford to buy food at the wherever.
- [45:03]
B
Yeah. And the, you know, the other issue, that's not, you know, it's not, not just a racial divide. I mean, there's a generational divide where especially online you see a lot of back and forth between boomers and Especially Gen Z, but some millennials as well. There's a lot of resentment building there. And I think, you know, I think, I think it's just, you know, it's a, it's an economic situation more than anything else where if you, you know, if you're at a point where your life is really reflected in the stock market, you know that, that you've, that's where your wealth is. That's where you've, you know, saved everything and you benefited from that. And you look at that for like, real as reality. You can't understand what young people are complaining about at all. You assume it's like you're not working hard enough. It's too many avocado toasts and lattes. And that's what you, that's, you know, that's your mind. You know, you don't have enough grit. And the young people, look, in their situation are looking at a totally different reality. They're looking at the economic reality, not the financial reality. And they see nothing but problems. And they can do the math. You know, they can see what, you know, what the boomer paid for their house. You know, they can see what their, the, what, their, what their starting wage was inflation adjusted compared to what they earn today. You know, so that, that economic reality is going to meet that financial reality. Those two are going to come together in conflict at some point too. No doubt about that.
- [46:41]
A
In combination with the ethnic and other problems and the economic problems ignite the, well, perhaps deadliest of the seven deadly sins, which is envy. You know, you have a lot more than I do. You don't deserve it. And I'm going to, if I can't even take it away from you, I'm going to destroy it just so you don't have it. Because that's the righteous thing to do.
- [47:07]
B
Right? And that is the negative strain you do see in some Gen Z is this nihilistic view, you know, which is very dangerous and unproductive for them to have. But yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the thing.
- [47:19]
A
Yeah, it's, it's just fascinating to see this. Well, we haven't had a chance to
- [47:24]
B
talk for, it's been about a month.
- [47:27]
A
God, has it been that long? So we probably, we probably lost 90 of our listener base having been out of sight and out of mind in that time.
- [47:38]
B
Well, the, and those we didn't lose, our discussion of Trump and Israel may, may finish us off.
- [47:45]
A
That's true. Antagonize the rest of our base. Well, you know, sorry to see anybody go, but frankly, what do I care?
- [47:57]
B
Good luck. Yeah, good luck to you.
- [47:58]
A
Yeah, that's right.
- [48:02]
B
All right, well, I think we're out of there for today, Doug. We'll be back next Wednesday with more.
- [48:09]
A
Yeah. Oh, and we were supposed to have Bill Bubbert on, who does an excellent blog, but he's had some health problems. I've got to reach out to him and see what went wrong.
- [48:20]
B
Yeah, hopefully we can have him on because I'd love to hear his view of everything in Iran. I'd really like to hear what he's got to say about it.
- [48:27]
A
Yeah, Yeah, I will reach. I will reach out to him before I forget about it. And maybe he will be next Wednesday with us. So he'll be. I think it'll be most enjoyable. I hope he's okay.
- [48:40]
B
Yeah, me too. All right, Doug, thanks so much. You have a great weekend.
- [48:43]
A
Thanks. Thanks, Matt.