A (0:03)

Class is in session. Hey everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session. Today you just get me. My face seems flushed today. My hair is a little out of control, but you just get me today. And I needed to come on and rant a little bit. Sometimes I feel constrained by like even the 10 minutes of a, you know, of other social media apps or whatever or I want to be able to have a long conversation. And mostly, obviously, I'm having this with myself. So I want to talk about what's going on in the world a little bit, but I want to talk about it honestly, because I feel as though I haven't heard a lot of honest talk. Obviously not from the right, but even not from the left. And, and this is where I'm going to start, especially in the United States. But this, this applies to Canada as well. A lot of people want me to talk more about Canada. We've often had sort of mirror like issues in Canada that goes on in the United States, but it's always been on scale. Like the United States is just on such a massive scale. I'm gonna. This is my thesis. It's gonna be very essay ish today. You ready? Here's my thesis. It's all about the money. And a lot of you guys are gonna be like, of course it's all about the money, Joanna. We've always known that. But the problem is the left doesn't admit it. The right. Right basks in it as though they're like money's king. But the left pretends as though it's not an issue. There's the problem. Because as much as I dislike the administration right now, as much as it's terrifying, as much as it's devastating and destructive and horrific, it's on the same road we've always been on. We're just at the end of it. Countries have never done what's in the best interests of the world. They've never operated on moral or ethical principles. That has never been their fundamental sort of foundational motivation ever. In some countries say it is, and some countries don't even bother. But in reality, their motivation has always been money. How do we get it? How do we wield it? How do we garner power surrounding it? And then how do we pretend as though it was an ethical obligation in the first place? That's it. And the problem here is we're at a point where this administration isn't hiding that fact anymore. There he's saying it and his little minions are saying it outright. They're just Flat out saying, it's all about the money. It's all about the money. Ethics, more. We don't care. It's all about the money. I don't think. I think him saying it is new. I don't think the underlying principle is new. Let me. Let me walk you through some stuff. The Cold War. The Cold War has always been presented as though it was about dictatorship versus democracy. It was not. It wasn't. All right? It was an economic, ideological war for control, for power, for money. And just because the Soviets strategized and sort of compartmentalized the idea of money differently. We all know that the Soviets and that sphere of communism we're not going to compare to Marxism. It's ridiculous. They're more fascist than communist. Sort of ideology. Was all about growing their nation to get resources, to get bigger, to get more powerful, to get a bigger military, to have more money. The United States was the same. And proof of that is when you start talking during the Cold War about countries that the United States supported and the United States backed out of. And let me give you a little Coles Noltz hint. I'm going to skip right to the end of the story. It was not about dictatorship versus democracy. Let's start with Cuba. Before 1959, Cuba was ran by a dictator named Batista. No relation to the baseball player. And Batista was a pretty horrific totalitarian dictator. Didn't care much about human rights. But what he did do is he sold off a lot of land to American investors for sugar plantations and for whatever else they wanted to purchase land for. And American businessmen were making millions and millions and millions of dollars in Cuba. 1959 rolls around. Castro takes over. Right? So keep in mind, they like the dictator Batista. Castro takes over. Revolution, Communist uprising. Castro nationalizes all of that land. All of the land that Americans had bought up had colonized. However you want to frame it, Castro said, no, thank you, you gotta go. Doesn't give them their money back. Just shows them the door. That's fine. Shows them the door, and all of a sudden it's about dictatorship. No, it wasn't. It was never about dictatorship. It was about money. The Platt Amendment, all the things that then go with Cuba. The fact that the United States will never go there again until very recently, was all about who has the money and who has control. Because they don't hate a dictator. They just hate a dictator they can't make money off of. And that is true. Let me be crystal clear of Democrats and Republicans alike. South Korea, we supported The United States supported South Korea. Right? South Korean government during the Korean War was a dictatorship. But. But they were a capitalist dictatorship. The United States doesn't have problems with dictators. They have problems with communist dictators. And they pretend as though it's the dictator part they have an issue with rather than the communist part. And they don't care about control of the land. They don't care about abuse of human rights. They don't care about a lot of those things. And this is true for a lot of countries, not just the United States. They see it as, can we do business. You want to know why Trump has switched sides? It's real, real easy. And his dumbest potato son said it outright. The Soviet Union has way more minerals, way more oil, way more economic potential. And if Putin's ready to do deals with the United States, it's real clear whose side they should be on. You keep thinking that the United States doesn't like dictatorships. Again, commun. Republican and Democrat alike. That would be wrong. They love a good dictatorship as long as that dictatorship allows them to infiltrate, to make money, right? To be a part of that society. It has nothing to do with human rights. It has nothing to do with democracy. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy. Democrat and Republican alike. We've also allowed myths to be spoken about when it comes to our political heroes from both sides. Right? The right has this legend of Reagan. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever. And by the way, Reagan, as opposed to Trump is. Is like night and day, but again, same yellow brick road, guys. It all goes to Oz. Reagan. Reagan was just not as far along as Trump. Reagan bought and sold what he needed to do and made whatever trades he needed to make to make the United States money. And money for a very specific group of people. The United States has always been very, very clear in the notion that the more money you have, the more stake you have, the more perceived stake you have in the United States of America, the more power you should have in the nation. If you have a bigger stake in the game, you should have more power controlling the game. And I would expect that a lot of Americans would stand very firmly beside that and say, yeah, that's true. They have a bigger stake, therefore, they should have a bigger say. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. You know, so we elevate Reagan, but the left does it, too. Now, it's weird right now because Trump's elevating jfk. But. But the left, the. Sorry, the right elevates Reagan and the Left elevates guys like jfk. Let's talk about jfk. Why is nobody honest about that family? I mean, everybody's condemning RFK right now, but. But nobody's been. The left hasn't been very honest about who JFK was, who his dad was. He was criminal. Everybody and their brother talk about and it, and it's pretty much an accepted historical fact that Joe Kennedy bought the election for jfk. And by the way, JFK wasn't his first choice. He had an older brother that died at war. That was his first choice. JFK was a distant second. He shoved in there. He bought the election. He had criminal and mob ties that figured out how to fix that election, period. So number one, the left ignores that. Number two, what did JFK do when he was president? Oh, wait, while you go google something. What did he do? I know what he talked about. I know he made beautiful speeches. I know he was very handsome and his wife was good looking and the kids were gorgeous and they played underneath the desk and they opened up different. I get all of that. What did he do? Because if we're going to talk about what he did, the Bay of Pigs was a disaster. The Cuban Missile Crisis was almost an absolute disaster. And to be honest, I'm going to come back to that. He didn't win that. I know you think he won that, but he didn't win that. Okay. He dismantled the CIA and the FBI to a certain extent, right? Maybe, kind of. Did he. He put more troops in Vietnam. He said he wanted to take them out. He talked about equality and ending the race war and ending segregation. He never did it. Could he have done it? I don't know, guys. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But let's, let's go back for a second. So let's talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, so let's be clear about how badly this was messed up. Number one, JFK wants to denuclearize, right? He wants to de escalate tensions with the Soviet Union. I get it. It's a noble effort. As he's wanting to de escalate tensions with the Soviet Union. He starts the space race. These things are going on tandem. Those two things don't go well together. Just so we're all on the same page. It's the only reason we got to the moon. We got to the moon and we, we did it so quickly. And we did it. We put so much money into it because we had to beat the Soviet Union. Crystal clear. Ridiculous. Wonder how many people we could have fed anyways. Not. I'm not against NASA. I'm just saying, okay, so you have Kennedy trying to de. Escalate tensions. Everybody's calling him a communist, you're soft on communism, yada, yada, yada. And he then is sitting in the Oval Office and he gets reports from whatever sort of military spy, satellite, plane, whatever his people are. And they say, listen, Khrushchev is putting nuclear weapons. He's sneaking them in and putting them on Cuban soil. JFK picks up the phone, calls Khrushchev. Khrushchev says, I am not. Denies it. Kennedy believes him. He goes back to his cabinet, back to his generals, and said, absolutely not. Khrushchev is not putting nuclear weapons. I believe him. I'm a. He's a man of his word, blah, blah, blah. Little while later, they get satellite photos on his desk. And those satellite photos show Russian ships coming into dock, unloading nuclear warheads, putting them on Cuban soil. Kennedy loses it. Kennedy is losing it. He wants to go to war. And by the way, this is all very clearly outlined in McNamara, who is Secretary of State, is clearly outlined in his journal. So Kennedy's losing it. He wants to go to war. Why? Okay, think about it. Pause, pause. Want to know where the United States has nuclear weapons? Exactly. When the United States was losing their mind about putting them in Cuba, they had them in Turkey. The United States had nuclear weapons in Turkey pointing at the Soviet Union. And Kennedy has the audacity to be pissed off that the Soviet Union is trying to put nuclear weapons in Cuba. Hypocrisy is thick. All right, so he does this. He wants to go to nuclear war. He wants to go to nuclear war. Not because he thinks it's a good idea. Not because he thinks that, oh my God, we're going to beat them. He wants to go to nuclear war. Remember, the United States at this point is the only country to have ever dropped any atomic or nuclear weapon on any civilian population to this day. He wants to go to work with the Soviets because now he looks like a chump. I wonder how many wars, trade or otherwise, have been started because world leaders don't want to look like they got taken. I'm just curious how many people have died as a result. So he wants to go to war. The way the story goes, Bobby Kennedy talks him out of it. They form that little blockade, the naval blockade. You have a. The 13 day is a great movie, by the way. You have. You have a Soviet warship coming towards the blockade, supposedly nuclear weapons on the Soviet ship, nuclear Weapons on the blockade ridden US Ships coming closer and closer and closer. I think they get within a football field of each other. We think we're going to nuclear war. And the Soviets turn around. By the way, in that moment, the Soviets lost the corporate cold war. They sh. We. We would have saved a lot of time. Had in that moment, they gone. We got it, we lose. Why? Because it wasn't about anything other than you blinked, you lose, you're done. You're never gonna, you're never gonna get the support of your people. The economics are going to follow after that, right? All the economic consequence is going to follow after that. You blinked, you lose. Should have given up. Would have been totally different. Nonetheless, here's the funny part. Kennedy claims victory. Everybody. Yay, jfk. What a hero. Later, it would be reported that the 6, 7 nuclear weapons that they actually caught and then had shipped off Cuban soil and taken back to the Soviet Union as punishment for stepping out of line were just a fraction of the nuclear warheads that they had smuggled onto that island. That when Khrushchev got caught, he says, oh my God, he takes them off, he puts them back on the ship, they send them back. But in reality, it changed nothing. It changed absolutely nothing about the security of the United States of America or nuclear weapons on Cuba. There's still a boatload of them, and the United States still had a boatload over there. Perception, money. That's it. So we, we elevate these individuals to levels of, of godlike status, right? And we pit them against each other. But we don't call out the hypocrisy, because if we call out the hypocrisy, we bring our side down and the perception is we blink. If somebody on the left, if a Democrat was to seriously call out hypocrisy, all you're doing is destabilizing the Democrats. You're blinking. It gives rise to more power on the Republican camp. But it's all about money, right? When Reagan decided to weaponize and elevate evangelical Christians in the United States, it was about money, power. If I can tap into their emotions and elevate that kind of power, we're going to get more money. We get more money, we get to stay in government longer, we get to be more powerful. And we've ignored having the hard conversations. I know a lot of people will say things like, well, the Democrats and the Republicans, different side of the same coin, yada, yada. Well, it's all semantics. You got to be specific. Because the underlying breach or problem within the crux of the United States and its democracy. And I swear to God, if you come at me with, it's not a democracy, it's a republic, I'm going to lose my mind. But at the foundation of it, the problem is money. How do you get elected? How do you stay elected? How do you get enough coverage? How do you get enough control? It has always been money. And the Democrats have never tried to take that out of the mix, ever. They've never really taken it out of the mix. And when Trump got on stage with Hillary Clinton, and I will never forget it, and Dave Chappelle does a great bit about this, and Trump points at her and says, why didn't you change the tax codes? Because I follow the rules, but I just know all the loopholes, and that's how I stay rich. You have a problem with me using the loopholes. You should have a problem with all your friends using the same loopholes. He called out that kind of corruption. He called out that money is the center. He called out that corruption was the center. But guess what? He never said he was going to fix it. He never said he was going to fix it. My problem is the Democrats never fixed it either. Bernie Sanders talks about it. Wonder why he didn't get elected. The most articulate, impressive, intelligent person I've heard in politics in a very long time. And the Democrats don't choose him. Everybody's like, well, he was too left. Was he. Was he too left? Or did he say the truth? And by saying the truth, it looks like the Democrats are blinking. Don't get me wrong. I really do think that the different sort of sides of the coins are really pushing towards a different narrative, especially right now. But religion's always been a problem in the United States, always. The notion of a separation of church and state has never been clear. It's never been enforced. Because you can't be free from religion unless you're free of religion. You understand? You got to have freedom of. I can choose what I want to do, but I also need freedom from. You need to stop jamming that down my throat every five seconds. With days off, with holidays, with saying the Lord's Prayer, with putting it on my national anthem, constantly jamming that with controlling who can get married, who can't get married, how you can get divorced, who get all of it religion, but it serves money. We're at the tail end of it, I think. The last death rattle. So you would say the notion that the United States has never led with ethics or morals and by the way, again, I like to point out all Canada was beside the United States and 90% of everything they've ever done on an international scale. So I'm not pulling Canada out of it. Right? But there's reasons we never went into Rwanda to stop a genocide. There's reasons we never went into Somalia. There's reasons the United States got drawn into World War II. It wasn't to rescue concentration camp victims, the Jewish population, the gays, the commun. No, it wasn't. The United States got dragged into that war because the Japanese drop bombs on Pearl Harbor. Now, the funny part is most Americans will say that's what started the war, because those Japanese, why would they do that just out of the blue like that? They just must have hated us. That's not how it worked. Want to know how it started? The United States put an embargo on steel and oil going into Japan. They were going to starve them and force them through economic means into complying with what the United States government wanted them to do. That was fdr. Japan was an imperialist, expansionist state. So was the United States. But that was FDR doing that. That was a Democrat. We don't talk rationally about mistakes and about failures and about motivations. We don't. We couch it in the right language and the right speech. And I love Obama, but he dropped more drone bombs on Syria. Most of them were stipulated to be war crimes. We don't talk about that. Should he have done it? Shouldn't he have done it? Was it illegal? Was it a war crime? Democrats don't want to talk about that. They just want to elevate. Now, do I love Obama? Absolutely. But if we don't talk about them honestly, how the hell do we ever have a leg to stand on? Now here's the problem. What happens when the other side does it? And this has always been the Democrat problem, right? The Democrats will always be a little more inclined to have bigger conversations, even if not perfect, a little more inclined to talk about failures. Whereas the whole Trump mentality has been never admit defeat. Never say you're wrong. Always pretend that you won. That's it. Never, never say you made a mistake. Never say you failed. This is January 6th. He still. He still denies that he lost that election. Right now. Still denies it. So here comes the problem. And I get it. It's complex. How do you have honest, authentic conversations with another side who has seemingly said it will be their strategy forever to never, ever say they were wrong, say that they lost? It will always Always be their strategy to say, we won even. Right now, guys, eggs are like $47 a carton. You know what people are starting to say now as we see that Trump can't bring down the price of eggs and they're going to go up even higher. You're starting to see all the right wing pundits say things like, it's patriotic to pay more for your eggs. We have to pay more for our eggs so we can bring the workers back to America. It has to be done. This is the way forward. This is what we have to do. What all of that has to change. So now, in opposition to that, they keep saying they're shedding truth on everything. Right? It's all about truth uncovering. If I hear the words fraud, waste and abuse one more time, I'm going to lose my mind because they cease to have meaning they haven't uncovered what fraud. Maybe waste, maybe waste. But if Trump and the Republicans were really concerned about going line through line, pulling out groups, pulling out whole sections of the federal government and actually saying, is this worth it? Why not put it in front of Congress? Why not televise every single department line by line by line, put it all on TV and say, this is what we're paying for. Do you want to be paying for this? What's the vote in Congress? We don't want to be paying for it. Cool. It's gone. They're not trying to cash light on anything. They're trying to give you the illusion, the pretense that they are, that, that everything they do is in, is in the auspice, under the auspice of finding the truth. Meanwhile, they've shed no truth. Meanwhile, when they make huge mistakes. Oh, well, sometimes we'll make mistakes, then we'll fix them right away. But really, it's not that big of a deal. We lost all of those nuclear scientists. You will have many international agencies and, and, and alliances shutting down. What is that going to do to international stability when you don't have international economic, military and political stability? You will have. When you have the rise of the BRICS nations coming up here, why do you think Trump's doing this? But this rise of brick, this was happening for a long time. Let's not pretend as though it's just a reflection of Trump or it's just a reflection of certain Republican ideologies at this point. Same yellow brick road further on down the path to Oz. That's where we are. What does need to happen is more people need to have microphones, nor more people need to be on social media. More people need to be talking and screaming and yelling and demanding. That's what absolutely needs to happen. We also need to understand that this very fragile thing called democracy does not work when 90 million people don't vote. This very fragile thing called democracy doesn't work when you vote for A, B, C, and D and and you get none of it. Thomas Jefferson said that every 19 years, the Constitution should be shred and a new one should be written to face the realities and the needs of today's society. We're a little past the 19 years, guys. I think it's time to shred. And on that note, have a great week. I will see you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat Channel dismissed.