← Unlearn16: Class is in Session
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Classes in session. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session. Guys, I have. I have some bad news for you. I don't know if you're gonna like this podcast. I really don't, because I think. I think. I think it's time we say some hard truths. And I know I come hard in the paint about the United States a lot, but of course I do. The United States has been sitting in the privileged position of being the superpower for a very, very long period of time. Right. When you talk about other superpowers, I condemn the British for what they did during colonization. I condemn the Soviet Union, you know, what they did and what Putin has done since during that kind of expansionist history. And I come hard in the paint against the United States now. But in all fairness, right, we always should have. And I, and I say this again, not because it's the United States, but because they sit where they sit in a position of power. And again, I'm going to say some things I don't know if everybody wants to hear. I'm going to say some things that people will be like, whoa, what is she. What. What do you mean? Like, why are you. Because I think it's time. Unless we own the whole picture. And I'm doing a series on TikTok right now where I'm, I'm trying to go back in the past. I'm trying to talk about the United States when they became an imperial power, let's say in the early 1900s, after their World War I win. And I do say World War I win, because they came in in 1917, cleaned house, but before 1917, they sold weapons to everybody. They won the war. Forget who's on whose side. It doesn't matter economically, imperialistically, culturally, they won the war, and, and then they went on to amass and to expand and to create an empire. And I use the word purposefully because they did create an empire through imperialism rather than colonialism. And the reason why I think it's so important that we acknowledge that and we speak about that now is because we're watching the current administration behave horrifically, say they're going to do horrible things, do horrible things time and time again. I am not disavowing any of that to be true. Of course it's true. However, do you think it's unprecedented? Do you think it's. It's. Without history and without example, do we really think, and take a pause on this, that Donald Trump, that Pete Hegsen, that, that tiny little horrific Stephen Miller, Baby boy, do we really think that the Pam Bond. Do we really think that these individuals have an original thought, have an idea about what the future holds, has an idea about how to do things differently in order to change the world and change America and progress into the blah, blah, blah. Their whole campaign slogan was Make America great Again. They took it from Reagan. They took, they took it from Reagan, you understand? Their slogan is stolen, their ideas are stolen. The only difference, and I'm going to go through as many examples as I can stomach in the podcast because after a while I feel like I get dizzy. The only reality of today is that he doesn't know how, isn't smart enough, isn't aware enough, or maybe understands the population, just doesn't give a crap about playing politics, about the end goal and the means to get. There are very similar over time, guys. Very, very similar over time. The United States foreign has not changed. What's going on domestically, I'd argue still hasn't changed. I think it goes through ebbs and flows depending on the time, depending on what the president has to do, depending on the enemy that they are fighting. I think presidents have created enemies, I think they bolstered enemies, they've supported enemies, they funded enemies, they flip sides more time than a triple agent has done so yet. Yet we sometimes stand impressed or distracted by the incredible levels of politicking, of speech making, of pontificating. It's a really great word, pontificating. Go ahead, try to use that in your daily lives. We get mesmerized by it because they say all the right things. They talk about constitutional rights, they talk about freedom, they talk about democracy, they talk about the First Amendment, they talk about being the international policeman, they talk about saving people from themselves and from evil empires trying to take them over. None of that is new. Donald Trump's just not good at talking about it. So I think it takes us a back. We kind of go, whoa, what, what just happened? What? What? What just went on? I just did a TikTok where obviously we spoke about Venezuela. You can go back and take a look at that TikTok, but I just did another TikTok where in 1990, Bush Sr. Did the exact same thing in Panama. George H. Sorry, H.W. bush, the old one. I don't care about their initials, it's exhausting. Get your own name, damn it. The old Bush was paying and had Noriega on the CIA payroll for years, since the 60s. Was Noriega dealing? Was he a drug. Yes, yes. Did the United States ignore It Absolutely. As long as he kept giving information about communist movements in South America so that the United States could grab and do whatever they needed to do in order to expand their sphere of influence. Yeah, he did it forever. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shockingly, 1990 is when old Bush decides to invade Panama, arrest 27,000 troops, arrest Noriega, who's been working for them for 30 years, drag him back to the States and put him on trial for drug trafficking, for corruption charges, for money laundering, everything they knew he was doing. Of course they knew he was doing it. They funded him. The CIA did it with him. Venezuela, same thing. Same thing. You want an interesting story, go look at how Miami was built. Miami was built on the backs of cocaine drug lords. The government turned a blind eye as long as they were redirecting all their money and putting it in infrastructure in Miami until the government had enough of them, closed up shop, arrested them all, called it a day. Afghanistan, let's go through this one. Everybody has an enemy until the enemy ceases to serve you. You're sorry? Everybody has a friend who's of an enemy until they cease to serve your purpose. The United States foreign policy during the Cold War used to support, fund and train Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan. What? You said what? Yeah, until policy shifts, policy changes, and all of that money and all of that support gets pulled out of Afghanistan. Taliban and Osama bin Laden and his boys get absolutely slaughtered by the Soviets. And all of a sudden, flash forward to 2001, you wonder why they're flying planes into buildings. Everything is connected and everything. And again, I'm going to say this about the United States. Because they're sitting in the imperialist seat, because they're sitting at the superpower head of the table. And as they sit here and as they consistently act in international policy in order to heighten and magnify their own economic, social, cultural hegemony, means as they do that, the ways in which they achieve their goals become unimportant. Key question to ask yourself, and the key question to ask any government. Do the ends justify the means? The answer should be no, but the answer is always yes. Because the end goal is what we want. We applaud ourselves for it. We cheer. But I tell you what, the means will come back to bite you in the ass sometimes. In the image of four planes flying into your buildings, those are the means. When you are unjust in your means, unjust in your goal, nothing will ever stay balanced. Because what you've done is you've created. You've used your power to create inequity, to use and abuse until it serves you. And then you're shocked when those people gain a little bit of power and come back at you. That's what's happened in the Cold War. And you can say the same for the Soviets. But the reason I'm not saying it about the Soviets is because we've been being taught that for our whole lives in this country. I am not denying the Soviets did it. Of course they did. I'm not denying they were horrific. I'm not denying the level of dictatorship and oppression, not at all. However, I think it would be, and it is flawed and incredibly inherently biased for us not to look at ourselves. And when I talk about the United States, let me be crystal clear. Canada was standing right beside them the whole time. There goes CIA, there goes Cisis. We just might not be loud about it. We might not be running the show all the time, but make no mistake, we are their best ally up until very much now. Everything is a. Is a move to get more power, to get more money, to get more control, period. And every government would do it if they had the opportunity to do it. And different governments are going to do it through different means. So the British government and the British Empire did it through colonization. They went places, they sent soldiers, they took it over. They. They created a British system. They built schools and, and communication systems and railway lines. They built infrastructure. They. They amalgamated into their empire. Canada is still a part of the Commonwealth. We may not be a colony, but we're right beside it. Britain did that in order to amass and create an empire that nobody had ever seen. An empire where the sun never sets. Such a cool moniker, right? You are so vast, you are so big, you are so expansive that the sun never sets on the British Empire wild. And because I like a good pork rind and a fish and chip, my people come from there. You're like, amazing. And there's this talk, there's this idea that somehow we're superior. The United States has been no different, but the United States has done it differently. Instead of sending their army, now don't get me wrong, they send their army, but that's not, that's not how they take over. They don't send their army, they send Starbucks. And please understand, that is a metaphor. They send their companies. They let companies take the risk. They let companies expand culture, expand the idea, expand the potential of economic growth, of wealth, of this lifestyle that has been sort of, you know, propagandized in such an incredible, beautiful way. So they sell a star, they send a Starbucks, a Walmart, right? They send the United Fruit Company. I'm going to do an entire TikTok on this as well. But the United Fruit Company, and this is how wild this is. You have countries who are less than developed. In South America, the United States gaining its independence, gaining its wealth, gaining its military dominance. And what do they do to South America? They send the United Fruit Company down there in order to buy up land, in order to amass land, grow crop and make an incredible sum of money for a very few South Americans. And then you watch the cost of living go way up, the GDP goes way up due to these companies. But all of the money is held in the hands of very, very few. It's not the people, it's not the farmers and not the people that work on the land. They create an aristocracy. They give money to the aristocracy and they take the lion's share with them. Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, all over South America. And then they are shocked, they are baffled, they are blown away, no pun intended. When you have revolutionaries pop up in Nicaragua, in Peru, in Argentina, in Chile, when socialist governments start to pop up going, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're nationalizing those resources that you took from us, the United Fruit Company took from us, that copper mining company took from us, that silver mining company took from us, that oil company. We're nationalizing, we're taking it back. The United States screams a lack of control and a lack of freedom and democracy and they, and they elect socialist leaders and the CIA goes walking all down there and has them funds, the funds, the, the Contras, they have them exiled, they have them killed, they have them whatever, they have them in order to install the leader that suits them. In order to install a leader that serves their capitalist agenda and not a capitalist agenda, mind you, that's going to service the entire country. A capitalist agenda that's going to serve the United States company that was in there. Cuba, since we're up and around Cuba right about now. And I realize I'm jumping all over the place, but my mind's racing because I'm, I think there's a real danger in thinking this is a one off with Trump. I think there's a real, I think putting the blinders on when it comes to what he's doing and pretending as though it's somehow unique is problematic. And I think for too long the United States has allowed itself with its popped up caller and its international police like status to walk around the world Claiming they're doing what's best for everybody, when in actuality, and again, let me reiterate, every single country would do the same. They're doing what's best for the United States. Always have and always will. That's how countries work. And they're big enough, they're strong enough, they're powerful enough, their military's that significant that they don't have to listen to the international community. That when the international community says, they say, who's going to stop us? Because the only way the international community has any policing power is if a whole host of countries are willing to stand opposed to that superpower. And since they aren't seemingly wild, by the way, since they aren't and they're not willing to mitigate that, this is how it'll roll. And I think a lot of the things Trump saying out loud will have always been said behind closed doors. He just has zero filter. So let's take Cuba. The United States used to love Cuba. Want to know why? Again, imperialism. They sent all of their companies there, and companies bought up the majority of Cuban land in order to have sugar plantations and make billions and billions of dollars. Right. You think the United States cared that Batista, who was the leader of Cuba, was a horrific dictator? Of course not. As long as you allow the US Companies to do what they were doing, make the money they wanted to make, and pull it all out of Cuba, all the while making dictators and a little few of their friends a boatload of money, then you guys have Cuba. Has this guy Castro come around. Castro wants a revolution. Now, do I think the Castro's revolution over time played out? No. But when you have a regime or when you have an imperialist force that is able to crush, control, manipulate your entire economy in order to take what they want to take and leave what they don't want, you will have violence, meeting it eventually, and you will have, and this is the scary part, you can think about Iran right now, if you want, you will have the people willing to back anybody that is going to stand up against that imperial power. So Cuba, you have Castro come take it over, what, 1959. What does he do? Nationalizes everything, kicks out all the Americans. Do you think they would have cared about Castro if he was just another dictator and let them keep their stuff? Stop it. Stop it right now. Then you have the Cold War that's raging on at this particular time. Obviously, Cuba is now allied with the Soviet Union. The United States looking at Cuba 90 miles off of its coast of Florida, thinking Oh, this is a very, very dangerous place. And then you start, see. Well, you see Kennedy get elected. Everybody thinks he's soft on communism. Khrushchev is in the Soviet, leading the Soviet Union. And Kennedy catches wind. Somebody comes in and says, we think the Soviet Union sneaking in missiles, nuclear missiles into Cuba. Kennedy says no, picks up the phone, calls khrushchev, is this true? Do you have missiles coming? No. I can assure you, Mr. President, there are no missiles, no Soviet missiles coming into Cuba. I swear. Kennedy goes back to his chief of staff and his entire room of little cabinet members and said, absolutely not. He has assured me there are no missiles. A few weeks later. God, this day must have really sucked for Kennedy. A few days later, a spy plane has taken photos of a Soviet ship unloading nuclear missiles onto Cuban soil. Pictures. Kennedy loses his mind. How dare he? He's ready to go all out to war. Bobby Kennedy calms him down, says, we're just going to have this little. We're going to put. Put this little blockade around Cuba. There'll be no more missiles coming into Cuba if they try to cross us. That's it. Cold. That's it. There's going to be a nuclear war. Cuban missile crisis happens. 13 days of nothing but pure panic. Little kids hiding under their desk, covering their head, as if that was going to make any difference. And you have the Soviet ship getting closer and closer and closer to the US Blockade and within about a football field. And I use that term purposefully because it's in this moment. The United States won the Cold War, even though it's going to rage on for another 30 years. That Soviet ship turned around. Khrushchev said, I will take all my missiles out that you caught us putting there. Takes them all out, puts them on a ship, takes them back to the Soviet Union. Kennedy, you win. There's two problems with this story. Number one, nobody ever talks about the fact that the United States already had Jupiter missiles, nuclear missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union, within striking distance this entire time. How dare the United States say you can't have missiles pointed at us so close to our borders? Number one. And here's the funnier one. There's a great documentary called the Fog of War if you ever have time to watch it. It's based on Robert McNamara, who is Kennedy's secretary of state, I believe Secretary of defense created a journal. The funny part about those days was he removed X amount fine. He made a big show of it. But as would later be admitted, they had tons of nuclear warheads that had already gotten into Cuba way before they got caught putting in the last five. And those stayed there and remained there for the duration of the Cold War. I assume they're still there today. The United States. You can't travel there. You can't buy anything there. Why? Because it's an oppressive dictatorship. Stop, please. Let's not pretend as though that's the issue. Iran, same deal. The Iranians used to have an Ayatollah the United States helped lead a revolution. The Shah of Iran gets put into power. He becomes an. A puppet of the American government, a puppet of the American CIA, foreign interests, imperialist measures. And the people of Iran see it and it's clear that who they have in their representing them, who they've elect isn't representing anything that they want isn't representing Iran is representing the United States of America. So what does it do? It sweeps the Ayatollah back into power. A horribly oppressive regime that is going to lead Iran to awful places throughout history. By the way, don't worry about it. Because the United States still likes to flip back and forth between. Who do they like? Iran, Iraq. Iran, Iraq. And now is facing yet another revolutionary movement. When you don't have the right means and the, and, and justice as your benchmark as, as the point for you to start from. Everything will come back. Nothing will be stable. Nothing will be continuous. You will never be able to speak from a position of authority or a position of moral certainty ever. Yet we watch this happen time and time and time again. Reagan, probably one of the most beloved US Presidents in history. His nickname was the Teflon President because he did so many horrific things, yet nothing stuck. He was involved in a CIA and revolutionary movement in Guatemala that killed about 200,000 Mayans. TEFLON President, the Secretary of State and Secretary of, of Defense in many administrations, not just Republican, in many admission administrations have been quoted as saying we will not let countries fall due to the stupidity of their people. They don't believe in democracy. They only believe in democracy when it, when the end is the end they were looking for. I remember when Donald Trump was running against Clinton, Hillary Clinton. And I remember the moment, and this is a very Dave Chappelle thing because he also speaks about this. But the moment that I went oh was the moment he said she, she was yelling at about not paying his taxes. And he responded by saying the tax code sucks. Why don't you fix it? I don't, I don't cheat. I, I don't commit any crimes. He was talking about particular tax evasion crimes. This is different crimes. The crimes. He. The fraud crimes are different. Fix the tax code. Why do millionaires and billionaires get around it so, so easily? Hillary, fix the tax code. I'm telling you right now, I use every element within the current tax code to make sure I don't pay any taxes. That's because that's how the game is set up. She's pointing at me saying I don't pay my taxes. I'm saying I don't pay them because the system is set up so that my accountants can get out of me paying any taxes. If you want to fix the tax code, fix it. But you're not going to fix it because all your billionaire friends are going to be really pissed at. You're never going to get reelected. Now, everybody really wanted to hear that from somebody. And so he said it out loud. And when he said it out loud, I think he amassed a level of following. The problem is the people that are following him, they just assumed. They inferred the second half of the message. Since he pointed out the corruption. Since he pointed out how billionaires run everything, since he pointed out that all of these rich people work together in order to get whatever the hell they want and everybody else gets through. Since he pointed it out so clearly, they inferred he was going to fix it. He. And they infer. They, they inferred. They assumed. Well, he said it was broken. He said billionaires ran the show. He said all these people took advantage. He pointed out the hypocrisies and the injustice of the system. He never once said he was going to bring it down. Did he? Did he ever say he was going to change the. So people like him couldn't get away with that? Did he ever say that? Did you just think he said that? I know he loved to say, I'm going to drain the swamp. That's not what he meant. Did he ever say he was going to change that level of corruption? I'm going to go you one step further. I'm going to say he thinks it's that kind of corruption and that kind of economic opportunism that he thinks makes America great. That's what. And, and now instead of fixing the corrupt system that only benefits millionaires and billionaires, he pretends as though the average working guy making 60 grand a year can one day be a millionaire and billionaire. If you just get his cryptocurrency and buy his really nice watch that only works on Thursdays. That's what he hopes. There's been lots of presidents I've loved. Come on. I would be in a room with Obama. That guy could convince me to do anything. Dropping bombs on Syria was a war crime. Wanna know who pays for war crimes? Only the losers. I wonder how many more war crimes the winners have to commit in order to win and never actually pay the price. The winners never, never have to be held to account, do they? Have we seen them held to account internationally ever? Nixon used secret slush fund money after Congress said no more to carpet bomb Cambodia and Laos. And what does he get impeached for? Well, not really impeached because he resigns and then for part pardons him for breaking into, for organizing and covering up a break in, into the Democratic office. That should point out to you the reality of the, of the account that. That the American people are holding their leaders to carpet bomb hundreds of thousands of people by guns, break into and cover up people getting into the Democratic office. You're out. What? What? There is no mechanism, there is no means to hold presidents or administrations to account other than just not electing them again. Because since 1914, there has been no other superpower in a position that either wanted to or could hold the United States to account. What I find fascinating is the rise and the stability and the consistency of Putin in Russia. They should have held him to an account a long time ago. But you know what I think he's about that billionaire boys club that is just cheating the system and all the while having backroom conversations about ways to keep power and keep people off of his tail. This expansionist policy is a U.S. policy. World War II. You think the United States wanted to go to war against Hitler? Stop. No evidence of that. Same with Canada. The Montreal Gazette. The Montreal Gazette was running stories on concentration camps, on taking away citizenship, on. On taking their. Their homes, their businesses, on burning their books, on. On throwing these people in work camps and detention centers. Way before the start of World War II, did the United States declare war on Hitler? Did they try to control Japan? Absolutely. How did they do it? Well, they stopped oil and steel reserves going into Japan in order to starve them out, in order to force Japan's political hand. So what did Japan do? Well, they bombed Pearl harbor. That everybody, by the way, thinks was completely out of the blue. What a rude thing to do. Might it have been stupid? Sure. They declare war on Japan, but guess who declares war on the United States first? United States doesn't declare war on Germany. Germany declares war on them. All of these things being true, we think what's going on now with acquisition or the attempted acquisition of more oil, the attempted acquisition of more resources, the attempted acquisition of more land, of strategic advantage. None of it is new. The United States did it. Straight from 45 to 50 to 90, 55 years, the cold War raged on. Every bad guy in any movie was a Soviet. Every horrible thing the United States government wanted to do was in opposition to the domino effect. And if we don't do it, the Soviet Union's going to expand and multiply. When in actuality, the more horrific things the United States did, the more validity the Soviet Union had in trying to expand their empire, saying, look at what they're doing to African Americans in their own country. What? That doesn't seem very democratic, does it? 1960, Missouri. Stop it. The more the CIA, the military force, had these proxy wars, the more they enraged the lack of justice in these missions, justified violence from the other side, created violence from the other side. And what it comes down to, and what it's always come down to is military might is incredibly powerful and incredibly important. But what's the most terrifying and powerful thing is will. Do you have the will to do it, to go through with it? If you're willing to sacrifice everything, no wall, no tank, no nuclear arsenal will stop a population who believes they have to because they are so desperate at the other options given to them. So here we stand, right? We stand in a place where the circus that Trump is creating is giving an illusion of a different type of United States. When there isn't one, guys, there isn't one. Now, can. Can we say that maybe the United States, after the Cold. Cold War, wanted to find more peace? Sure. After the Cold War, it was an absolute chaotic disaster. Absolute disaster. You had horrific things happening all over the world, all due to the fact of proxy wars, of militarization, of child soldiers, of creating counterinsurgency forces all over the place. And now there's this huge power vacuum, and they are shocked. They are shocked when everything goes to hell in a handbasket. After all said and done, 1994, you have the Rwandan genocide, and what does Canada, the United States do? Nothing. Nothing. We argue about the theoretical of a genocide. They're announcing it on Hutu radio, and we're discussing how many actually claims a genocide. You see the Belgians and Belgians involved. The French is involved, all of these old remnants of superpowers, and they're all holding weapons sold to them by the French army, pretending as though they have nothing to do with it when you don't think that the means matter. When you don't think, when you only folk, when you're only focused on the end goal, on the winning, on the money, on the land, on the resource, and you don't care how you get, will create a foundational rift that will perpetuate a cycle of violence, perpetuate a cycle of revolution, and never, ever, ever be satiated. And that's where we are. If we really want to stop this administration, if the United States really wants to, and I believe the United States people to be incredible people, it is time to recognize that your life, that your economic advantage and superiority has only come from the imperialization, the oppression, the absolute plundering of world resources, of their poverty, of their fear of. Of their desperation. And when you push people to too much desperation, they have nothing to lose. And if they end up nothing to lose, They're going to be knocking at your door. Sorry for bumming you out, guys. I needed to get through all of that. Come check out my TikTok channel. I'm going to be going through many, many of these as we're going through. I'm going to do more micro lessons in about under 10 minutes. Each lesson chalkboard behind me in order for us to understand and put together some historical realities rather than sitting here and pretending as though this is the one off. It's not. He just says what he's going to do. He's a horrible, horrible politician about it. He says it out loud. So maybe now's the time to take a real hard, critical look at why it's so easy for him to say. Thank you guys so much for hanging out. I'll see you next time, next week, Same bat time, same bat Channel dismissed.