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A
Is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians the revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible?
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The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
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C
What if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
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The Dragon's Prophecy Watch it now or buy the DVD at thedragonsprophecyfilm.com.
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Coming up, I'll explain the oddity of Trump spurning Marjorie Taylor Greene on the one hand, while also seeming to embrace Zoran Mamdani on the other. Turns out it's strategy. I'll also reveal the full magnitude of foreign accounts posing as Americans and influencing the social media debate around Maga. Hey, if you're watching on x rumble or YouTube, listening on Apple or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel. I'd appreciate it. This is the Dinesh d' Souza Podcast.
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A
America needs this voice. The times are crazy. In a time of confusion, division and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding and truth. This is the Dinesh d' Souza podcast.
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Reminder. And here it is. The Dragon's Prophecy dvd. Still a bestseller on Amazon and the perfect gift for Christmas. Stocking stuffers. Way to share the message with friends and family. So you can get these DVDs right off of Amazon. Just search the Dragon's Prophecy or go to the movie website thedragonsprophecyfilm.com alright now, a group of Democrats made a video this featured Alyssa Slotkin. It featured Jason Crow, a number of others, very solemnly declaring a message to members of the US Armed forces and the military. We want to warn you about essentially your commander in Chief. The idea here is that you do not have to follow illegal or unlawful orders. In fact, it is a crime to do that. And the video went on in this vein and went viral on social media. And Trump lashed out, basically saying this is treason, this is sedition. These people need to be arrested. These people need even to be, even imply they need to be hanged or executed. Because Trump's point is you are urging the military to disobey the commander in chief. To which the Slotkin Crow team rushed to the television sets to basically say, oh no, we were merely asking the military not to follow unlawful orders. But even on places like MSNBC and cnn, they were asked, well, what are these unlawful orders? What unlawful orders has Trump given? And they couldn't say. In fact, Jason Crow ultimately goes, I'm not saying there are any. And Slotkin, the same thing at one point pressed on this Representative Goodlander, Maggie Goodlander actually referred to things like the Nuremberg Trials, which obviously goes back to World War II and doesn't involve these were not trial of Americans or trials of Nazis. And second, she says, well, you can see some examples in the movie A Few Good Men. So if you're talking about these hypothetical examples or examples that don't even pertain to Trump, why make the video? Why make the video if not to cause mischief? And that's exactly what the Democrats were all about. So I'm not sure this is a cause to arrest them. I certainly don't think it's the cause to hang them, but I do think that they are up to no good, and that needs to be exposed. All right, let me talk about. My theme for today is Trump's strategy. And I want to talk about a seeming oddity. The oddity is this. Trump lashes out at Marjorie Taylor Greene, basically saying it's a good thing that she's quitting. Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced she's not running for reelection. And when Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that she's been slandered by Trump and that he's put her life in danger by the things that he said about her, he basically goes, well, that's ridiculous. Nobody even cares about her, so why would anybody even bother to put her life in danger? This seemed to be Trump's rather blase implication. So on the one hand, you have Trump doing this, which is not entirely out of character for Trump to do, by the way. And on the other hand, this is what makes the contrast so striking. Trump is genuinely exuberant. He is laudatory. He's pretty favorable to Zoran Mamdani. He meets Mamdani in the Oval Office and doesn't just say things like, well, you know, I want to find a way to try to work with this guy. He basically says, I like some of the things that he's saying. And now that I've listened to him, I agree with some of his ideas. And they're along the lines of how I've been thinking. And no, I wouldn't be hesitant to live in Mamdani's New York. So Trump really goes well overboard here. And you can see that the White House staff is, like, uncomfortable, not only because this is ideologically weird, but even more than that, you have people like Elise Stefanik intending to run for governor basically on the anti Mamdani ticket, basically saying that, you know, you have a choice between dragging New York into socialism, Mamdani style, or the alternative that we represent. And if Trump is saying, well, I like Mamdani and he's doing some really good things And I'm looking forward to collaborating with him. Well, at the very least, you could say that this kind of blurs the line. So what's really going on here? I'd like to give you my take on it. We'll start with the first part dealing with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think Trump's point of view here goes something like this. American politics is a team sport and it is fought in teams. Politics, like war, is fought in teams. And what this means is that getting off your own team, particularly if you're doing things that are giving aid and comfort to the other team, the enemy, then you are a liability. You need to be taken off the team at the least, maybe even run into the ground. And Lincoln, for example, couldn't be more clear about this. During the Civil War, there was a Northern Democrat who was in a sense suggesting that people don't need to fight, soldiers can desert if they want to. And Lincoln was like, listen, you want me to shoot the soldier who's deserting? What about the Democrats who are egging them on? Why shouldn't they be arrested? And Lincoln's point, again is we are in a war. Now, obviously we are not in a war, but we are in a kind of political combat with the Democrats with very narrow majorities in the House, a little better in the Senate, but not a whole lot better. We certainly far short of the 60 seat majority. And so Trump's point is, when you have guys like Massie or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, whatever their motive, it could be that they're just exhibitionists, it could be that they've got some neurotic problems. It could be just that they think that they are the real MAGA and not Trump. And so they use an issue like Epstein to go after Trump. And remember, in Marjorie Taylor Greene's case, she goes on cnn, she goes on the View, she even kind of apologizes for being a divisive figure, kind of repenting of her MAGA ism, if you will. And Trump is like, why do we need somebody like that? So Trump, I think in this sense is, thinks very much in terms of like, this is our side, this is my gang. If you want to put it bluntly, that's your gang. You want to go join the other gang, go do that. If you think you're the real maga, you know, start your own startup, but don't claim the MAGA mantle. That actually belongs, I think, quite rightly, to Trump. The Mamdani thing is a little bit more elusive, a little bit more tricky. And I think number One, it illustrates the fact that Trump is not all that ideological in the way that he sees politics. We assume he is because his instincts are conservative and he does conservative things. And he's done a lot, by the way, in the last 10 or 11 months. So he has actually been far better than he was in the first term. And I don't think that we on the right have good reasons to be upset with Trump in any way. However, Trump doesn't think the way we do in a kind of philosophical or ideological compass. Trump is an operator. And I think Trump is looking at New York from a real estate point of view, and he's looking at New York also from a pragmatic point of view. Look, this guy's been elected. Guess what? We're gonna have to work with him. And if he's willing to play ball, I think Trump's question is, who has the real cards? What cards does he have on me? Well, none. All his talk is all, I'm gonna prevent Netanyahu from coming to New York. It's all bluster. He even knows it. Everybody knows it. Netanyahu knows it. So it's all a big joke. It's positioning just in a campaign. But Mamdani does need federal aid. Mamdani only has two ways to get money. One way is from the New York legislature, and that's through the governor, through the legislature. And already Kathy Hochul has kind of said no to some of the Mamdani proposals. So Mamdani is basically thinking, well, maybe I can get some money out of the federal government for some of these things. And Trump's point is, alright, well, who does that give the reins to? Answer me. The federal government. That's me. So why am I going to slam Mamdani? Let me see if I can use my leverage over Mamdani to get some things accomplished. So if Mamdani, for example, wants to do rent control, Trump is likely to go, nah, I'm not going to help you on that. But if Mamdani goes, well, you know what? I want to build a thousand new apartments in New York. This is going to appeal not only to Trump's real estate side, which is like, hey, that's, that's something that's going to be good for the city. And the second thing is supply and demand. More apartments, more living space basically means prices will tend to come down at least a little bit. And I also think Trump has a certain sympathy for the, you could call it the working class people of New York. The kind of people you see that are doorman in his own hotels. Because think about it. They work in New York. They have to work in New York. The hotels are in New York. Where are they going to live? So almost none of them live in Manhattan. But it's not even easy to live in Brooklyn. It's really expensive, and it's not that cheap to live even in Queens. And so to the degree that the supply of housing can be increased and to the degree that prices can be leveled out or moderated, this is going to be good for those guys, those guys for whom making ends meet has become even more difficult. So I'm not really freaked out by all this. I think I could see the dismay on the faces of the White House aides when Trump was kind of coddling Mamdani. And some people, by the way, thought, oh, Mamdani spoiled a fast one on Trump. Not really. Trump is very capable, by the way, of saying nicer things to Kim Jong Un than he said to Mamdani. So that's Trump. He'll say things like that. He'll be like, well, this is the smartest guy I've ever met. You're like, kim Jong Un is the smartest guy you've ever met. But that we're not shocked hearing that kind of thing coming out of Trump. It's Trump's hyperbolic, bombastic, over the top way of talking. And Trump also jokes with people in the most, well, some would say inappropriate ways. He's talking to some guy from Qatar. He starts talking about, well, listen, give this to your wife. I don't know how many wives you have, but give it to your favorite. Ha, ha, ha, this is Trump. Or he'll say something like, well, listen, you know Biden, last time you were here, you know mbs, Mohammed bin Sultan, you know, Biden gave you a fist bump. I'm gonna. I'm gonna shake your hand, but I don't really know where that hand has been, to be honest. But this is Trump. He'll say these things, which are, let's just call it a little bit outside of the diplomatic handbook. And we've all learned over time not to take them all that seriously, even though there might be some strategic purpose behind them. Since 1971, the year the US completely abandoned the gold standard, inflation has averaged 3.98% per year. That's the official figure, which the government manipulates to keep it lower than it should be. But even so, it reveals that if you start out with $1 in 1971, that money keeps dropping in value in purchasing power. In fact, $1 in 1971 is now worth about 12 cents. Crazy but true. How does this happen? It's because the US government continually prints money. Now when more money chases the same amount of goods and services, well, money goes down in value. And because the money printing is not stopping, we know that our dollars are going to continue to lose value. The dollar is basically going down toward zero every single time. But you know the government can't print gold and gold has been money for thousands of years. 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It's reliefman.com I want to talk about a disclosure that is now roiling the X platform, namely the location search on the platform. In other words, foreign accounts that have over the past several years been quite active and had a big influence. And by the way, these are not foreign accounts that purport to be foreign. These are foreign accounts that purport to be American. In fact, they will have the most American sounding names or labels or and they list their own locations as being America, but in fact they are not from America. Now Elon Musk, by the way, was onto this a while ago. In fact, even before he bought Twitter, you might remember, he almost like didn't buy it. He's like, I've discovered that there are tons of bots and bogus and fake accounts on Twitter and he even alluded to foreign accounts that were not disclosed as such. Anyway, he went ahead and bought Twitter and people changed it to X and people kind of forgot about all that. But recently the chief engineer on Twitter basically did a very valuable service by allowing people to click on an icon and see when the account was started and where it is based on. So here's an example. Here's a guy, his name is Muhammad Gaza. Well right there you see where you think he's from Gaza and he acts like he's from Gaza. So for example, here's a tweet by this guy, Mohammed, Gaza, Israel bombed the tents right next to us. At least 15 death and many injuries. WTF do you want from us? Leave us alone. Blah blah blah blah blah. So this would appear to be a guy who's like flat on his back, like avoiding Israeli rockets. Well, all you have to do now is click on his profile and you realize that this account is based in Poland. So this guy's not in Gaza. This is a whole pretense and it's a big account. Now we look at an account by a seemingly Islamic woman. She has, she's wearing a headscarf. She posts a picture of herself. Her name is Ruwayda Amer and this is what she says. I am like the clouds in Gaza, sad and want to cry. We are fighting to survive. Click on her button. No, she's not from Gaza. She lives in Egypt. So she's like the clouds in Egypt and those clouds don't want to cry. There are actually no bombs raining on Egypt. This is all a masquerade. Mohamed Smiry was supposedly a Gaza journalist. And this guy was like on the scene reporting all this stuff, showing all these pictures. And even a lot of Israeli accounts thought this guy must be in Gaza because how else does he sort of have this sort of inside knowledge? And one of the accounts, this is Max Nordaunt. I assumed he of all people was actually there. Click on his profile and you realize, no, he's not in Gaza, he's in Indonesia. So all of this stuff he might be collating from the web, but he, the point is he's not there, he's not on the scene. All of this is a kind of smoke and mirrors. The very account called Palestine News is based in Australia. And on and on it goes. Now this doesn't just apply, by the way, to the fake accounts. It turns out that the New York Times and the BBC and other media outlets have been quoting these Gaza journalists who are fake. So for example, you've got this guy, Motasam Dalul, and this is a guy who lives in Poland. Is he the guy I mentioned earlier? Let me just check for a moment here. This is the guy. Let me see. No, this is a different guy. But in any event, the BBC has been quoting him and the BBC says that this is the guy who saw, heard the rockets in Gaza. Motasam Dalul, a journalist in Gaza City, told the BBC he had seen and heard multiple Israel airstrikes there on Thursday. And by the way, this is a guy who lists his reports as Gaza City, Gaza. In fact, he lives in Poland. He's posting apparently from Poland. And this also applies, by the way, this kind of fakery to a lot of these so called groipers, these, these Nick Fuentes fans. Let me give you an example. Here's a guy, Antunes, and I've seen this guy, I think he's actually attacked me a few times. Nick Fuentes is literally getting condemned on the Senate floor by Chuck Schumer. This guy is 27 years old, blah, blah, blah. They have never been so afraid. Nick Fuentes is inevitable. America first is inevitable, and this guy is antunes1. Turns out this message is brought to you from Portugal. Not only that, but some of the people who have been digging into these groiper accounts, a whole bunch of them, by the way, are from the third world. And so think of the humor of this. You've got this sort of Mexican, at least Mexican, named Guy Fuentes, and he's posing as a white supremacist. He's posing as a guy who wants to like, bring back the heritage Americans, bring back the original white man, the guy who built this country and his followers. And not to mention probably also his monetization on social media is driven by, by a bunch of Bahrainis and Bangladeshis. Now the reason that I'm stressing the kind of Muslim angle here is because think about it this way. If you're a Nick Fuentes and you're bashing Israel, who do you think is going to rally to your side? Who do you think is going to say, well, listen, if we come out and we're inshallah and Allahu Akbar, nobody's going to like us, right? All these Americans are going to say, get, get the heck out of here. We don't care about you. You, you're actually the enemy. But what if they pose as white supremacists? Then they can bash Israel, achieving their political objective, but conceal their own identity. They're posing ultimately as white guys who don't like Israel and don't like Jews. And so this gives them a kind of marvelous cover. Not to mention that they too build up pretty big followings because other groipers are like, oh, this guy's one of us. You know, this guy probably is like some really upset working class white guy. And sometimes the profile picture seems to suggest that, you know, got some white guy wearing a kind of flannel shirt and he's got his baseball cap and he's turned it back to front and he's got his truck in the background, but the guy's actually like in Sri Lanka. So this is, it's very good to know. By the way, now some guys, some of the foreign guys have been weighing in saying, well, listen, you know, I mean, we do live abroad, so why can't we comment on X? And the point of my diatribe here is not to say that you can't. I mean, I comment on things happening all over the world. I comment on things happening in England and Australia and the Muslim world. So I'm not saying that somebody who doesn't live in America can't comment on American politics. But what I am saying is that in many of these cases there's a complete masquerade. If you're some guy, if you're some Muslim guy, let's say in North Africa, you want to comment on American politics, well, why don't you disclose your location? Why don't you say that from your point of view, this is how you see the world. Why don't you say, hey America, you may want to pay attention to this thing happening in my part of the world or hey America, you know, we in North Africa don't like what we see that's happening in California. It's perfectly okay to participate. But the point here is that apparently now for several years the false impression has been created that we are having an American debate about the future of America. And as it turns out, we haven't. In fact, I bet you if I went back to a few weeks ago when all these guys, some of them griper types, were like, we need to deport Dinesh. I bet you some of this was actually coming from places like Pakistan, we need to deport Dinesh, you know, Karachi, Pakistan guy, we need to deport Dinesh, some guy from Islamabad or Turkey, you know, and so it's possible. It's not that I'm not saying that there are real people behind some of these ideas obviously are, but the magnitude of their following may be exaggerated. Not to mention the fact that some of these guys have nothing better to do. I mean, think of some third world guy basically, you know, you know, eating his like his naan and you know, and this guy is like jobless, you know, but you know, he lives on like 40 cents a day and so he can spend 10 hours a day on. So this is a point I made before. These are guys with a lot of time on their hands. And so they put out 3, 400 posts on X and people think, oh wow, there must be a lot of them because you know, that's like a swarm of hornets. You don't realize it's basically like Abdul and his four brothers. And these guys alone have a massively disproportionate impact because of the amount of time that they devote to it. So this, I think has become a very welcome, very eye opening development. We begin to realize that MAGA is perhaps not as divided as we previously suspected and that a lot of the troublemaking, not all of it, but some of it, has been coming from beyond our shores. In 2000, Blockbuster passed on buying Netflix. Whoa. By 2010, they had filed for bankruptcy. Sometimes saying no can really cost us. And today, many people over 62, they're saying no to reverse mortgages. And they're overlooking the value of their home equity. For those who have under saved, it can be a lifeline for more cash flow to supplement Social Security. For those with money, reverse mortgages can improve tax planning, make investments last longer, even allow you to leave a larger inheritance or help family while you're still here. Reverse mortgages can be one of the smartest moves in the fourth quarter of life. Don't miss out. Read the book I did. It's called Home Equity and Reverse Mortgages. The Cinderella of the baby boomer retirement. Get it free from our trusted partner. That's Movement Mortgage. Just go to movement.comdinesh that's movement.comdinesh. you can call Movement Mortgage at 580-reverse. That's 580-738-3773 and MLSIB 39179. Thanksgiving holds so many memories. I'm sure it's the same for you. And right now, there's a girl finding out she's pregnant. And in the next couple of weeks, she's going to make a decision. And whatever decision she makes will become her memory of this Thanksgiving season for the rest of her life. What will she be thankful for a year from now? Well, I hope the answer is you shall be thankful that you introduced her to her baby by providing a free ultrasound. And she'll be thankful that she chose life. As she prepares for her baby's first Thanksgiving, take a stand for life by providing an ultrasound with preborn. When a young woman sees her baby on the ultrasound and hears her baby's heartbeat, she's twice as likely to choose life. Just $140 provides five ultrasounds that can save five babies. $280 saves 10 babies. A gift of 15,000. If you can do that, provides an ultrasound machine that can save thousands of babies for years to come. Please help. Call 833-850-2229 or go to preborn.com dinesh that's preborn.com dinesh Guys, I'm delighted to welcome a new guest to the podcast. He is Alma Ohane Opari. He's an author. He's an entrepreneur. He is the author of My American Privilege and host of the restitch America podcast. This is a young man born In Ghana. He became a US citizen in 2021. And he's got a nonprofit that talks about patriotic assimilation, elevating the voices of legal immigrants who love the country. And he's also the creator of Willful Positivity. This is a platform helping Americans strengthen character, agency, personal responsibility, all the stuff we like. By the way, the website is willfulpositivity.com and Alma, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for joining me. I got to say, my wife Debbie, came across your commentaries, I believe, on Instagram, and she's like, hey, you gotta check this guy out. He's. He's talking a lot of sense. He's saying a lot of interesting stuff, and he's also issuing a kind of warning to the right into the GOP that's very important for us to hear. So let's kind of begin at the beginning, because you've had a really remarkable story. Maybe in some ways it parallels mine. I'm not really sure. But talk about your upbringing in Ghana and how you came to the United States.
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C
All right, so I, of course, was born in Ghana, and I was born in a time of, I would say, political uncertainty. We had a dictator. I don't know if a lot of people knew about this man. His name was Jerry John Rollins, and he, by the time I was born, had committed three coups, and he was now head of state. And so I grew up in that world. My parents were of modest means, and they were educated, though. And so I would. Looking back, I think of myself as one of the lucky ones. I was relatively privileged. I didn't want for much. My parents may differ in their assessment of that. But as a kid, we had a good childhood. However, my mom had the opportunity to be an exchange student when she was younger in New York. So she had had a little bit of a taste of American life, and she understood what was possible in America. And so we grew up in a world where we were unlimited in our scope of potential because we had this idea that there was a place out there where dreams could come true. And then in 1989, my father had the opportunity to come to America as well. And he spent about three months in the US and one of the things I talk about in my book is something that really fascinated me. It's when my father came back from America after three months, he brought us, of course, he brought us gifts, he brought us toys, brought us all sorts of things. But one thing he did was he brought us pictures. And those pictures, we perused them, and that gave me a glimpse of what life could be somewhere else. And I caught on to that idea of America. I wanted to go to a place. And there was one picture that really stuck with me. It's a picture of my father at SeaWorld. And he had a picture of himself holding his hand up towards the mouth of a dolphin. And the dolphin looked like it was smiling at him. And I thought about that. And as I grew up, that picture kept kind of ringing in my mind. And I thought, no matter what I do in this country, I could never have that experience. And that meant something to me, like I live in a place through no fault of my own, that certain things are limited and unavailable to me. And I wanted to move to a place where my dreams could be free, that I would not be limited to the limitations of my circumstances. And that's where I caught on to this love for America and wanting to come here.
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B
Alba, so far, everything that you say completely parallels my own experience as someone who grew up in India, probably in circumstances not radically different from yours, and the same sense of exhilaration coming to America at the age of 17 as an exchange student. As I've gotten older, though, I've thought back on those days and it's occurred to me that there are a lot of Americans who are born here and they have these opportunities because they're living in the land of possibility. But for some reason or another, they don't tap into those possibilities. Right. Which raises the question of what is it that you and I brought with us to Americ that enabled us to reach out and sort of seize the American dream? And it occurs to me that we actually did not come to America empty handed, even if we think we did. We actually had parents who loved us. We actually grew up in a fairly stable situation. Our parents taught us that hard work does matter. So in other words, the cultural and behavioral ingredients of success were in fact already there. And then when we are placed in an environment where you have all this possibility, we're able to take advantage of it. Do you agree with this assessment of why it is the case that there are immigrants who are able to come here and achieve the American dream, and then there are other Americans, in fact, a lot of them, who somehow feel that those possibilities are not available to them?
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C
Yeah, I agree 100% with your sentiment. The people who come here, definitely many of them have very stable homes back home and are groomed from childhood about the possibility of hard work turning into something great. However, I think one thing that is different is that we don't have the narrative baggage, and what I mean by that is the people who are born here still have the same opportunities, but they have to deal with the narrative. And that narrative is perpetrated in our education system from young, you know, from childhood. And it's perpetrated in our media, it's perpetrated in our culture where these, I would say these narratives catch a hold of these people mentally. And sometimes that is the thing that becomes the obstacle that holds people back.
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B
So by the narrative, do you, Alma, are you talking about the narrative that says you're a victim, that you're being put upon, that you cannot succeed, that white supremacy will keep you down? Is that the narrative you're referring to specifically?
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C
I think beyond that, I'm also talking about even those who don't have the so called systemic issues there are still living under the narrative of a sense of America is not the good guy in the room, right? They're living under this narrative that our success, just like Marxist would say, is ill gotten gains. Right? We came here, we displaced, you know, the natives, we, you know, destroyed, you know, people who were, you know, close to nature and who were at, you know, peace with, you know, the, the world and everything around them. And then we came here, we brought this mentality, we overtook this country. And somehow where we are today is not a representation of our own doing, but the exploitation of a system that we'd had nothing to do with. And, and so I think that narrative affects not just people who are minorities who might think that because of America's history, something is holding them back. I think the narrative goes, it's more universal than that. It's about America itself. It's the idea, if you think about the 1619 Project, is the idea that this country has rotten roots. And because of that, even our successes, if we find them, should be. We should basically be ashamed of those successes. Right? And so I believe it wasn't always that way, but it has caught hold on this current generation and it has created this sense that even if I have the opportunity, it is almost like immoral for me to go after that opportunity because it is part of a system of oppression. And I want to be able to kind of kick that out and start all over. So I think it's a more pervasive narrative that affects everybody.
- [38:59]
B
Yeah, that's a good point. We're not just talking about the kind of principal pretexts that are made to minorities. I think you're saying that this propaganda is, you know, this sort of fire hose is dispensed on all students, everybody and done from elementary school all the way through college and sometimes even beyond through the media. Let's pivot a little bit, Alma, and talk about something you've talked about in a couple of your recent videos and that is this kind of emergence of a very self conscious type of white nationalism on the right. Now I actually talked earlier in this podcast about how some of this seems to be inflated. You know, there are accounts like in Senegal and like Sri Lanka, you know, posing as these white nationalists. There's a humorous aspect to all this. I mean, wouldn't it be funny if like Nick Fuentes main following is like Bangladeshis, you know. But putting that aside, there is a movement here and they say some very abusive things to blacks, to Latinos, to brown people, to people from India. They want to deport legal immigrants. So you have sounded the alarm about this. And can you state why you think this is something that we should not succumb to in the MAGA movement or on the right? What is the importance of the right maintaining a kind of colorblind multiracial coalition?
- [40:35]
C
And thank you for asking me that. I think unfortunately we decry a lot of identity politics on the left and that is something that we have seen grow pervasive over the last decade. But we are seeing the beginnings of, of, you know, the embrace of these kinds of ideas. You're talking about the idea that, you know, being American is no longer an idea, but more of an identity associated with a certain type of person. And that's not the America I came to. I've been here for 22 years and that is not the America that I aspire to. And the funny thing is I never conceived of my race as anything other than a characteristic I'm asked to put on my passport or something like that. Until I came here and realized, like the hyper focus on race, the America that I imagined was a place where opportunity saw no color. And what mattered was people willing to put their shoulders to the wheel, leverage the opportunities in front of them, leverage their connections, leverage their education to, to create a more prosperous situation for themselves and those around them. And so my fear is that we are embracing in one way or another a certain kind of low level bigotry. And for some reason I feel like it always intersects with antisemitism. I don't know why, but it always starts with this idea that in order for us to be truly America free, first we have to eschew any kind of responsibility to any other group of people anywhere else. And then it always starts, I think, and this is my personal perspective, that it always starts with a tinge of anti Semitism. And the reason I say that is most people would say, hey, I'm just talking about Israeli policy or policies of, you know, a government and not necessarily identity. However, there's no other country that people talk about like that. Like, how many people are out there making videos talking about the policies of governments in, you know, so many other countries that would be adversaries of ours, right? How many people are making such videos? How many prominent people in the conservative movement are making stories about, you know, Lebanese foreign policy or, you know, any other kind of country? So the way that I put it, I say antisemitism is like the gateway drug to ideological incoherence. Because what happens is as soon as you begin to embrace the idea that our support for Israel has something nefarious associated with it, that kind of opens your mind to begin to accept all sorts of conspiracies that in effect, makes you incoherent as someone who is trying to espouse conservative ideals, because conservatism is agnostic to identity. Conservatism is something that, when applied, can lift anybody, irrespective of their background. And that is where our focus needs to be. America first is about ideas. And if you come to me and you say, well, we shouldn't spend all this money on Israel or that place, I ask you, have you been concerned that we have soldiers in so many other places that are rich countries that, you know, if you were to quantify financially our support for them by just having our bases there, we would have much more expenditure for the support of those economies than we do for Israel. So I see that as the red herring. And unfortunately, it's caught a lot of people in its grasp, and we end up in a place where we're breaking apart the movement because of this? I think it is a spiritual warfare that, you know, for those who are Christians, I say the devil uses this suspicion around Israel as a wedge that grows and grows and grows and tears apart any society. It tore apart Germany, it tore apart other societies. And if we allow it, it will tear us apart. And I can't stand it as an immigrant.
- [45:08]
B
I mean, you're making a very interesting point here, which I'll restate slightly. And you're saying this. The United States is allied with a lot of different countries. We're allied, for example, with Taiwan. We don't want the Chinese to invade Taiwan. We probably have all kinds of preparations, all kinds of commitments to try to prevent that from happening. But nobody makes 300 videos about Taiwan. And so why are we helping Taiwan? Why are we coming to the defense of Taiwan? You know, we have other alliances all over the world, and not only that, but we have sworn enemies. We have, you know, Islamist regimes in places like Turkey. Turkey is obviously far more hostile to America than, let's say, Israel. But who makes 300 videos about Turkey? Who goes into Turkish politics and tries to find out what leverage Turkey exercises over America? What Turkey is up to? Are there people being trained in Turkish, you know, terrorist camps? Are there ideological movements in Turkey to spread propaganda? What is the influence of Turkey on American universities? As far as I know, no investigations at all. And I think what you're saying is, ha, this puts the light on because Israel is being singled out. The Jews are being singled out. And that is actually even, even for you and me, who don't have any normal stake in Israel. It's like, whoa. But we can't help but notice that there are a lot of people who seem a little obsessed with this tiny, tiny country out there. Let's close out this way. Alma, let me ask you about this issue of. You said America is an idea, and I agree, but I would qualify it slightly. I would say that that is true insofar as our policies are concerned. Our policy should be colorblind. Right? This is not to say that somebody can't have other affiliations that they're proud of and that they want to affirm in one way or another, not against that. What we're really saying is simply the fact that we want equal treatment under the laws. And that is a core principle of American conservatism. And that seems to be the principle that some of these white nationalists, or whatever you want to call them, that's the principle that they are warring against. Do you agree?
- [47:27]
C
I think so. So when I think about it, yes. When I came to America, that did not invalidate my culture or my history or, you know, the things that make my life, I think, you know, rich and interesting. My children were born in America. They don't have the experiences that I did. And I love, you know, being able to give them tutelage in an understanding of my home culture, like the way we do our marriages, the way we do our, you know, kind of our respect for our elderly and things like that. So those are all rich things that can add to our experience here as Americans. And that is perfectly fine. Where it begins to become a problem is when we begin to put those ideals ahead of Equal, you know what we call it, the equal administration of law, the equal administration of justice, and so on. We cannot, as a country remain united if we begin to spread out and start implementing in various pockets, different laws, different ideas, different ideals. And that is what we're seeing in some cases. And that's something that we need to be concerned about. If you come to this country, one of the things that I hope that is your goal is to add to our culture but not tear down the things that have made us the shining city on the hill. And that has to do with our Constitution, our rule of law, our jurisprudence. And yes, you will find opportunities for improvement here and there. But the fundamental stock is good. And anyone that fights against that stock is fighting against American ideals and we should fight that. So I agree that, yes, people, we can welcome people from all cultures. And that is the cool thing. When I came to America, I came to Los Angeles. And in two years in Los Angeles, I met people from 50 different countries and I thought, wow, how is it possible that one society can have 50 different nationalities living in it and all thriving if they choose to? That means that there is something that is more fundamental than their identities or their home, their origins, and if we can teach people. And that's why I talk about assimilation a lot. We talk about, you know, benefits for immigrants, we talk about all sorts of economic things, but we don't focus on actually creating a national assimilation program that we maybe in the future require immigrants to go through to say, here's your culture, but this is where your culture meets what it means to be American. That is something we need to invest in. And that's what I hope that we can do rather than focus on identity in a way that is destructive and creates factions that weaken our movement.
- [50:27]
B
Very interesting stuff, guys. I've been talking to Alma Oheni Opare, entrepreneur and author. This is the website to check out. It's willful. W I L L f u l positivity.com you can also follow him on X at Alma Ohaney O H E N E and then O P A R E. Alma, thank you very much for joining me. Let's do this again sometime. But I enjoyed having you on the podcast.
- [50:53]
C
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
- [50:57]
B
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I've been talking about discoveries in modern physics and cosmology that undermine the idea. This is an idea going back to Bertrand Russell, that we can't really believe in life after death. We can't really believe in these extraordinary ideas of heaven and hell and eternity and resurrected bodies. All of this is nonsense because of our actual experience with what matter and space and time are like. And I'm showing that matter and space and time are utterly different from how we have experienced them to be for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. Let's start with matter. Right in front of me is a table, and if I wrap my knuckles on it, you'll get a sort of tapping sound. And matter appears to be thoroughly solid. In fact, it appears to push back on me when I push down on it. This is, in fact, one of Newton's laws. But the truth of it is that if you look inside the matter, it's made up of atoms. And if you look inside of the atomic, you realize that most of that is empty space. I kid you not. The atom typically has a center, and that center is made up of quarks. And around the quarks at a great distance away are these electrons. And I say great distance away. It's kind of like if you imagine a foot, a circular field, you can think of the quarks as all present in the nucleus, which is to say, in a kind of small circle in the middle of the field. And then you think of the electrons are scattered randomly around the large circumference of the whole field, and the rest of it is purely empty space. And these quarks and electrons, even them, when we think of them, you think, what's a quark? Well, it's some kind of stuff. Stuff. Not exactly. No one's really ever seen a quark. These quarks are understood in mathematical terms. They're not solid stuff, they're probability distributions. And so the materialism that had assumed that matter is made up of this solid, hard stuff that you can sort of wrap with your, with your knuckles. No, it isn't. Now, not only that, but I've mentioned before, there is also dark matter and dark energy. And dark matter and dark energy make up the vast, vast majority of matter and energy in the universe. How much? Well, if you put dark matter and dark energy together, 95% of all the matter and energy in the universe is dark, which means it has qualities that we are unable to specify. We've actually never seen it, nor are we able to measure it through our instruments, and we certainly aren't able to locate it. So how do we even know it's there? Well, the answer is something like this. Galaxies hold together, right? They, you have the stars and you have the planets and the galaxy, and they're holding together. And there needs to be a certain amount of gravitational force for that to happen. And if all the matter that you see is not enough to do that, it turns out that there has to be some dark matter, otherwise the galaxy would fly apart. It would, it would break open because the gravity in there would be insufficient to hold the galaxy together. Hence dark matter. Similarly, with dark energy, the universe is expanding at a, in fact, rapid rate and something is pushing the galaxies further away. The original big bang can account for some of that, but not all of it. So what is making these galaxies move away from each other so fast? Answer. Some form of energy. This is the so called dark energy. We know it has to be there because otherwise the galaxies wouldn't be moving so fast away from each other. And yet nobody knows what this energy is. And so the point I'm trying to make is, look how silly Russell is making statements matters like this matter is like that. First of all, this guy, even if he had the scientific instruments to tap, all the known matter in the universe would be only looking at 5% of it. It's kind of like I'm making generalizations about something. I'm making generalizations about a group of people. It turns out that out of every hundred of them, I've only met five. What kind of valid generalizations can I make? Answer None. My Sample size is too small. So that's the point I'm trying to make, that matter and energy are quite different and have possibilities that ordinary matter cannot exhaust. Now we go on to talk about the fact that the universe has a beginning. This is another big finding of modern physics. For many centuries, people thought, well, maybe the universe has been around forever. No, it hasn't. The universe is about 14 and a half billion years old. So it had a beginning. But not only did it have a beginning, space and time also had a beginning. And this is a very profound idea that is not easy to get your head around. In other words, before the universe. And you have to put the word before in quote marks. Because before the universe, there was no time, and beyond the universe, there is no space. This is, as I say, a mind bender. And it's a mind bender because in theory, in fact, if you go back to the ancients, they thought time and space both seem to be infinite. Time stretches backward and forward, and you can always specify the day after or the day before, 8 million years ago. Well, before that was 8 million in one day. And before that, 8 million in two days. And on and on it goes. And similarly with space, how can there be an end to space? Can you ever run into a wall and say, well, here it ends over here? No. What's beyond that wall? Well, seemingly more space. But as it turns out, this kind of human intuitive way of looking at it is wrong. And by that I mean space and time are local properties of our universe. And what that means is that beyond our universe, if there's a realm that is sort of outside our universe, that realm would have no space and it would have no time. Wow. And so suddenly you realize that when Christians have been talking about eternity, and when you hear medieval philosophers talk about the fact that eternity doesn't just mean more time, but it is a God who lives outside of time. For many centuries, that concept seemed incoherent. How can you live outside of time? Time and space appear to be the sort of modes all existence. Even if there is a God, he would somehow have to inhabit space. He'd have to be somewhere, and he would also have to inhabit time. Even if the God was a spirit, the spirit would have to be somewhere. But once we now understand, even in our own science, the concept of a realm beyond space and time, suddenly what I'm getting at is these ideas which were previously just the province of Sunday sermons and theological treatises and papal encyclicals, suddenly these become coherent scientific concepts. And not only that if you think about something like heaven, someone would say, well, heaven is in a realm outside of space and time. We live forever, which is to say that we live eternally in heaven, and that means that we live outside of time. There's no it's not just that time never ends. There is no time to end. And what I'm getting at is that these ideas, which were previously fanciful, imaginative, you required a lot of faith to believe in them. They are now rendered to be coherent possibilities within the orbit and within the understanding of modern science itself.
- [60:13]
A
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