Walter Tobias

Walter Tobias is a fitness enthusiast. He has competed in bodybuilding, and at 62 he was training for a natural bodybuilding show. The conversation covers training, nutrition, and how he stays after a goal.

This is episode 2 of Flipside Frolic. It was recorded June 29, 2024, published October 15, 2024, and runs about 3 hours and 11 minutes.

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This transcript was generated from the episode audio. The YouTube caption file was not available. Obvious name errors were corrected. The conversation was not rewritten.

Hey there, thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic, where we learn to understand each other's perspectives by flipping the script and having some fun. Here we go. All right. Here we are. So basically, yeah, it's been a, we've, we've had a, a ton of awesome conversations and that's why we had you here. We got a lot of defin, definitely a lot of common interests, a lot of different stuff going on mostly in fitness and, and some of those areas. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. I know you definitely have some, some experience in, in fitness. You're an avid reader of blogs and different ideas and staying fit for men like us that are getting up in age. And we'll just kinda go from there, I guess. So if you wanna just tell me a little bit.

about some of your experience with through the lifetime with, with fitness and competition or any of those other things? Dude, I picked up picked up weights when I was like freshman in high school. I started wrestling, it was 98 pounds, dude, 98 pounds. And like everybody else, we seen the Iron Man magazines and remember Charles Atlas on the back of him? You want to get can- kick sand in your face and stuff? But anyway, it started off like that with my old man bought me a Weider set, cement set actually, with plastic covers on it, and I've been hooked ever since. So yeah, I've, I've done a few competitions over the years, and it's it's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle, and there is no short, there are shortcuts, but I prefer to take the long route because I want to be around forever.

So it's like I said, it's, it's a lifestyle and designed to keep you around for as long as possible. so this coming May 4th, there's a show in our own backyard here in Norwich, and I 1st seen it, and I said, you know, I'm 63 now. I said, this will be, and I'm on a comeback. Actually, I'm on a comeback. I've been, I've been at this for almost, in May, believe it or not, it'll be a solid year. One solid year. Can you believe it? One solid year. And this is be the best way to celebrate. On stage, on stage, as it's, it's not about, I mean, I, sure, I want to win. I mean, you don't do all this welfare. I want to win, but it's actually, I'm, I'm using it as a celebration. It's a birthday. And if I could win it, it'd be a great gift.

Well, that, I mean, obviously anything that could get us motivated and any kind of set goal and, and, and to, to put a date in the future that, that, that makes it critical to stay on, stay on track is, is so important for sure. Stars are lining up, man. It just, it just seems It just seems the right thing to do. It just seems like, I don't know, you've been do- you've been around for a while, especially with the weights and stuff, and, you know, life gets in the way sometimes. We can't always do what we want to do when we want to do it, but it seems like we always gravitate toward- back towards that thing that gets us right back again, you know? So at least that's been in my case, you know? So Yeah, it's, it's, it's about finding our passions and finding what motivates us, and then, and then it's that same... Oh, sure, yeah.

That same trap that, you know, sometimes we can get in a little rut and we're tired and we get- can't get moving, and we know if we just go out for a run and get things going in the morning... Clear your head, man. Everything gets so much easier to, to stay motivated and keep moving, but for some reason, you know... You got to. And it's more, you know what, it, it, it, it has its, its, it has its physical aspects naturally, but even more than that, just makes you a stronger person all the way around. They make you more disciplined person all the way, and that carries over in the regular life. That doesn't stay in the gym. That's just, that, once you, I mean, once you leave the house, it, it goes with you.

It, I mean, and it's like, it's, it's all about discipline, doing something you don't want to do, but you do it anyway because you know it's good for you. That spills over. It don't stop. And you take that attitude in life in general, you can't fail, man. I mean, if you're going to fall, you're going to fall forward, you know? That's the thing. And but that's, that's the underlying thing that nobody really sees unless you in this for a while. People see the, you know, the muscles and stuff like that, but they don't see the resolve, the challenges ahead of you, the mounds to climb. And I think that's what missing right now, especially with our youth. We need challenges and stuff like that, you know?

Yeah, I was, I was just listening to I was just listening to another story about, you know, and most of the Self-help industry and most of the different motivational influencers or whatever we want to call them online, it's like that's the whole thing that you have to get through the suck, and that brings so much more joy and fulfillment, and if nobody ever has any of these situations or, or has to muscle through something, so that's why sports or all these different things are so pivotal to the kids these days. But like, w-w, you know, how to harness that, how to reach down and grab that extra gear is something that a lot of people, you know, haven't experienced often, and, and, and like you said, I think the more that you do experience that, the, the more positive Outcome or inner worth or self or whatever. Suffering is a good thing.

That's what somebody just said. Suffering is a good thing. You ought to learn that early on. Oh, was it, you know, it was an interview with the CEO of Nvidia. And he, and he, he basically was talking, I think at Stanford or something. We, maybe we could check that. But he was basically saying, I, it sounds weird, but I wish a lot of pain and suffering in your life because that's what builds character and that's what makes good human beings. Yes. You learn, you learn when you're at your lowest. That's what it, when you're at your lowest, when you're, when, when you're looking up, I mean, that's when you, that's, that's where you build character and that carries over. And that's how you're able to withstand just life in general, man, because you're battle-tested. You know, you've been battled. You gotta go through the wars.

You gotta go through them battles, man, you know? And it's like, you know, it reminds me of like, you know, Alexander the Great and all the great conquerors before. You know, it's like, men have to find something to do to conquer. Men have to have challenges in front of them. They do. They just do. And then, and the way this society is, they try to make it comfortable for everybody. Comfortable's a killer. Comfortable, okay? You, you know, and I says, you know, that's what got me in trouble. I get, start getting comfortable, I start getting in trouble. I can relate to that. I mean, you know, you know, you know, we both are, so where does that come from?

Sometimes, you know, I reflect on, and, and, and I know when I was getting into some trouble in high school and, and, and going down the wrong path in some ways, and, and I ended up going to the Navy, and you're, you're a Marine, ex-Marine veteran, or still always a Marine, and Just for the challenge part of it, had to be. They said to fear the proud, I said, show me. You know, I was... Challenge accepted. Challenge accepted, exactly. So it's like shout out to post 623 and some of our other veteran buddies that we do some, a little bit of work with here and there. Okay. but the Marine, you know, I know when I got back from boot camp and from my 1st run in the Navy, Everybody else really seemed to think that the military was going to straighten my ass out. Okay.

So I kind of played that card for a while, just like, like, oh man, he's so much more disciplined since he's been back from the Navy. And, and I don't, I don't know how much that genuinely affected my persona and my attitude towards, in, towards life and everything in general, but I sure played it for a while at least, but some of those, you know, those basic attention to detail things, it's almost like I worked at UPS when, when I was, when I was out of high, or out of, out of the na, was it? Yeah, out of the Navy.

And their, their attention to detail was very similar to a military experience to where, you know, They would nitpick at the small things like package handling or like, like labels up and all these little things you don't matter that don't seem to be that important, and then the major stuff like service and not missing packages and things like that never even had to be discussed because those details were so covered so often that it just made the bigger stuff fall together. So in a sense with, with, you know, I'm sure your experience in, in Marine Corps boot camp was a little different than the Navy experience in 91 because that's right when a lot of this kind of started changing to where a drill sergeant in 91 in the Navy couldn't make a derogatory statement directed at an individual. Timeouts and, not timeouts, what do they call them?

Yeah, I don't know, man. It just, it just don't seem like things have changed, and I don't think they're for the better, to be honest with you. Well, when it comes to the military forces, a lot of this woke stuff and, and inclusion and all this other stuff, you didn't have to talk about inclusion in, in, in a Marine Corps boot camp or, or in a Navy boot camp, because your, these were your brothers in arms. Yeah. We didn't see race. I, you know, and I, I would imagine that was your experience. Oh, everybody's green. Yeah, everybody's No, I mean, green is the, that's what I remember my drill instructor said, when you march, you better sound like one big Charlie Green fucking giant. That's what he says. Everybody, like you said, you could dismiss color.

I mean, you can't just, but really, I mean, when you're shoulder to shoulder next to the guy and you don't see color, you see guy that's got your back, you see green, you see camouflage, that's what you see. Right, right. That's all you see. And, and, and, and even in, in a lot of society, it seemed to be that was the way things were, were going and that at some, at some point it changed. but, but just to talk to finish the, to close the loop on the boot camp story where the drill instructor, he'd be able to say vague terms about, you are all the worst pieces of crap I ever seen, blah, blah, blah. But he couldn't say like direct derogatory comments towards an individual. And, and it was like, that was the start, you know, and, and, and where things went from there, obviously.

But you know, it was all designed, and you know, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't see this going through it, but all that was designed just to, you know, because you know what? You got people from all walks of life that go to boot camp. People from the city, the suburbs, from the country. we was at that time in 1979, that's when I went in. We were, I was living in El Paso, Texas. We was the 1st, it was a Sun City platoon, they called us. We had the yellow t-shirts on, you know. They flew in from California, from San Diego, to come get us. It was a big to-do. 1st all Texas platoon. And they came and the pan- we thought they was the nicest guys. But everything is designed, you know, you got people from all, like again, you got people from all over, and the whole idea is, remember this too, you did sign up.

It's not like nobody forced you to go there. You did sign the paper, and a lot of them. So it's like, they're letting you know for sure. So you did sign up, and that, and they did what they was supposed to do, supposed to just break your bad habits, break you down to you were feeling like nothing, and make you earn your way back. And, and that was so rewarding. In the end, you didn't see it going through, you thought someone just picking on you all the time and shit. But in the end, you was better off for it. And if you would stayed the course and got to the end, man, you was ready to face the world. It w- you was ready to face the world, and, and that's the way it was meant to be. But it's Obviously things have changed now, so...

Yeah, yeah, and, and, and that's part of that getting through any kind of struggle and getting some sort of achievement or advancement, you know, has a good feeling in itself, but, but by all means, you know, obviously some of the more advanced stuff, cause I considered SEAL training and, you know, I, I kind of went in with that mentality that that's what I was going to do, and then it didn't quite work out that way, just the way the cards fell and the initial test was hard. I failed the 1st time and then took it another time, and then, you know, you're, you're missing home and all this other stuff, and they want you to sign for six years, and I was, I only had a two-year contract, so I'm like, you know, how many people fail out, and then you're stuck in for six years with no A school or no designation?

I'm like So it was, it, I kind of regret not giving it a go, and, and, and, and sometimes that's... You know, even to the youth, if we can try to live a life to where we're minimizing regret, I think is, is, is, is an important aspect too, because we don't want to look back and say, I wish I did this, or I could have done this, or whatever the case may be. But where does some of that drive come from? You know, whether it's from our upbringing or whether it's from, you know, just, you know, some of those basic things as a kid or some of the basic things in, in, in, in the armed forces or whatever the case may be. It's like, how do you share that with other people, you know? Cause, cause there's a lack of motivation in a lot of folks, that's for sure. That seems, it seems such a common human frailty that it needs to be overcome.

You know, I think competition at a young age, I don't care whether it's t-ball, Just, just competition, one-on-one, team sport. I, I think a male, female, girls and boys, both ought to go through that. That's a great lesson in life at a young age, cause you learn how to lose. And then you know how to get over losing. And you know how to get up from when, when, you know, like Sylvester Stallone says, you know, life is not a book. It's gonna beat you down and keep you down, you know, and it's true. And if you learn at an early age how to take those, take it on the chin and, and dry your eyes and get up, that carries over. I believe it wholeheartedly.

I, I, you know, and that's in your subconscious mind, you know, you might not think twice about it no more, but you're building character, you're building strength, you're building, you're building that. And I think that starts at an early age. Competition. And, you know, I think, and that was the beginning of the end. When you start giving ev- like we talked about this, you start giving everybody choices. Everybody wins. Everybody wins, I think that's not, that's, that's not, I mean, that's a fairy tale. It, it, it prepares you for life, you know, cause life will tell you, you know, it's, it's, it's not fair.

Yeah, there, there might be, there might, it's just like everything else, the pendulum swings one way and the other, and, and things get carried away and taken too far and all these other things, but, but, you know, there might be a place for it for a four-year-old t-ball that there doesn't have to be the championship team in t-ball. Yeah, exactly. but at some point when you get up, higher up in the ages, in high school especially, and God forbid college, you know, there has to be some, some loss and, and some drive and some motivation to try to do better next time or whatever.

And I think fitness, fit, fitness does that as well, that, cause that's A lot of times, especially if you don't have a motivating partner and you're working out yourself or whatever, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta grab that from inside for, for pushing yourself for six more minutes on the, on the, on the bike or whatever it is, you know? I heard a great you know, I'm always looking at these one-liners, these stoic motivational sayings and whatnot. I heard a great one the other day, and it says, a winner is a loser that try one more time. That's truth. And I'm telling you, man, a winner is a loser that try one more time. That resonated with me so well. I mean, it's like, just give it one more try. Just that never, that never die, never quit, never, it ain't over till I win attitude, that's what you gotta have. That's what you gotta have.

And you gotta be true to yourself. I mean, are you doing everything you can possibly do? To get to that point. And, and, you know, and that's that part of accepting failure or accepting a loss is if we go inside and we say, man, I did kind of shortcut those last couple workouts, or, you know, if we didn't feel that we gave it our all, then it's on us. And, and if that can push you to work harder the next time, and if you truly did give it your all and you just got beat. You got to be true to yourself. Yeah. You, you, you have to be. You, you know, you got to be. You got to find your own why. That's it. Once you find that, man, every, everything, the food tastes better, the sleep is deeper, everything is, everything is better. Once you find that why, that reason, and, and Man, I'm telling you, it's a revelation. It's a revelation.

Yeah, I'm still, obviously, we're getting some more decorations up on, in the studio, and we're still cleaning up a little bit here. I got a little bookshelf thing I'm gonna put over here and get some books, but, but Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why, W-H-Y. And, and one of the bigger lines in that book was, if your why's not strong enough to make you cry, you need a new why. Yeah, yeah. Ali said it too. Muhammad Ali said, if your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough. You know, and... That's the truth, brother. That, that, that, that gets into so much with... Don't scare you, you ain't, you ain't... Shoot for the moon, cause even if you miss, you'll be amongst the stars. Yeah. Can't argue with that.

You know, the, it's one of those things where that, yeah, that whole persona of Self-limiting belief, like I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough to do that, and there's the inner magic in our heart, and people can call it spirituality, they can call it God, they can call it you know, universal consciousness, they can call it great almighty creator or whatever, but we all have something inside that kinda tries to guide us, and, and if we're, if we're too much of a wuss to follow it nothing happens, and then we end up just in the same old grind of life doing, you know, and that's even what the podcasts and different things are. We got day jobs that kinda could be good enough for people.

I, I, I, I was running around doing, I, I've done a whole bunch of stuff over my time after my injury at, at work when I was off for a while, I didn't know if I'd be able to go back to work. I wasn't, I was just trying to search for something else in a sense, cause I didn't know what the outcome was gonna be, and then Later on you just kind of find other stuff. And so I was, even when I went back to work, I was always looking for other side things to do. Whether it's this podcast or whether it's working out or whether it's the fish club, you know, all the different things that w-w-we're both saltwater aquarium marina enthusiasts as well. but all those different things, I, I even had a friend one time that was like, why can't you just be happy with what you got?

You know, and it's like, it's, it's not about me not being grateful and not being happy for what I have. It's just, it's just more of a drive to be constantly growing and constantly learning new things. That's it right there. And not just settling for where we're at. Dude, once you stop growing, you start dying. And again, there's no such thing as losing. It's, education's expensive. And I ain't talking about going to college either. It's a learning experience. And the, the kind of, the kind of, you know, those are the kind of lessons that you learn by doing. Those are the kind of lessons that you learn that colleges don't teach you. Those are the, you know, that's what you need. The school of hard knocks, no doubt. That's, that's, that's what's up. That's what's up. but yeah, Carl.

yeah, when it comes to, and, and that rolls back to even, you know, we can get well, what, what is that one term? I think you've, we've said it many times education paralysis or, or analysis paralysis. That's it. Yeah. Where you just over, and I'm believe it or not, I, I've just found this out just maybe within the last year. You know how you have a, you have alpha males, beta males? Well, I'm, I consider myself a sigma male. And as a sigma male, we are overthinkers. We are overthinkers to the point where we just analysis paralysis comes into play. But as long as you recognize that, you know, and you only gain insight. By, by doing. By doing, you know, I mean, you have to. And then you re- And another thing, I'm just thinking, I, I had to start in my mind and I did, and it's left, now it came back.

And cause it, another epiphany just happened. when things ain't going right, like they should, like you think they should, I, I've come to the conclusion it's because you're not doing what you should be doing. I, I mean, it's like, you know, it's just like if, if it's just, just, just an analogy, just say like, if, if you're playing baseball, you're a good baseball player, and you also play football, but you're a better baseball player. And every time you play football, it just, you just get slaughtered. What, what does that tell you? There might be a lesson there. There's a lesson. Stick, stick to what you're good at, stick to what you know.

It's all right to venture outside and find new horizons and whatnot and stuff like that, but when things don't work out, sometimes it's just trying to, you're, you're, you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole. You know what I'm saying? It just, it's not going to fit no matter what you do, you know, and all you're doing in the meantime is beating your head up against the wall and wonder why it won't fit, because that's not where it's supposed to be. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. And sometimes, you know, and sometimes that's that magic of the universe that's trying to guide us and we're trying to swim up river and instead of just going with the flow and, and feel what's right and just continue on the next right thing path. And things seem to be working out, they work out the way they're supposed to.

And it's never exactly what I want, you know, but then usually the outcome's probably better than what I would have imagined anyway. Oh, I want to take the words right out of my mouth. It comes out ten times better than what you would even imagine, man. I mean, it's, it's insane how that works. Yeah, and it really is. That's, it's a universal magic too, and, and, and, and everybody that, you know, anybody that, that's successful and anybody that is, is motivational and, and they all have that same kind of vibe. They all have that same kind of belief. You're vibrating on a higher frequency. And that's no race, no color, no creed, no religion. You're invading, you're, you're speaking to the universe now. You're vibrating on a, and that's what's up, dude. And that's, again, keep, like, keep on learning, man, and that's what's up.

Vibrating at a higher frequency. You know, and and that's where you'll find yourself, man. That is, that's, that's real talk, bro. That's that, that's that human spirit, you know, that, that's, that's universal, no question. And it, it's only gonna get cooler. I mean, with all the craziness in life and things going on in politics and all this other stuff, the reality is, is some of the technology and some of the AI and some of this, you see the, the, the Samsung S24 is doing live real-time translation. So you can have an earbud in, and, and you could talk to somebody in a different language, and your earbud will be talking to you in English when they're speaking Spanish in real time.

So you think about breaking down the walls of differences in people and, or the, the Tower of Babel or whatever the case may be, that if you could just run into some Ukrainian on the street that doesn't even speak English and have almost a straight up conversation with them, that you're getting perspectives that you never would have gotten before. It's pretty wild. That's badass if that technology is available to everyone. But they have that right now, like at the United Nations. Right. You know, like when they give when Biden gives his speech, United Nation, every, all those characters from all over the world are sitting there with something in their ear. And I bet you that's, that's gotta be what's going on. Yeah. That's gotta be breaking that English language down into something they can understand.

I, I think originally, I think originally that was a whole group of translators on the side that were listening and then speaking in a microphone for those specific people. So it wasn't a, it wasn't a algorithm or a language model that was just automatically doing it. But, but still, it was, it was, it's, it's getting cooler. And, and I, obviously, I'm 50 or 62 or whatever, and, and, and, and we, we could think back to, you know, when we were kids and all this other stuff, and these kids today and, and what they're gonna see when they're 70 or sev, 60 or 70 years old. We can't even imagine what the future's gonna hold with some of that stuff. I mean, if they made that technology available to everybody, think about that for a 2nd.

You could just walk up to some stranger or foreigner from another country and just start speaking and understanding. Man, I was thinking, man, you can tell me women you could pick up with. It opens up the dating pools substantially. I was thinking to myself, you'd be a player with a passport. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I was just thinking the, the options are endless. But I digress. Yes, yes. No, there, there could be some more beneficial. Yeah, you'd use it for nefarious reasons. No, that's great, though.

And, but, but it, it, it, it comes to the point of, of, you know, opening up that ability to just communicate on a better level, you know, and, and, and that breaks some more of the barriers that's separating humanity in a sense that whether it's religion or language or race or any of these other things that That if we can communicate on a basic level like that, obviously it's gonna, it's gonna bring people closer in a sense and have a better understanding that, you know, there's other people around the world and other countries that don't have it that bad, you know? So sometimes this idea of even nationalism or pride for our country is this negative stigma right now, and there's nothing...

If, if you say, God bless America, or if you say, I'm proud to be an American, it doesn't mean that we appreciate, accept, and enjoy a lot of the negative aspects of what the government or other things in this country have done over the years, but it's, there's still hope because the freedoms and the constitution and the idea of what this country's supposed to be Is still being developed on a, on a, on a, on a real-time basis, and it's up to the people to be a part of making this what we believe it's supposed to be. And sometimes that gets frustrating because it doesn't seem like that's the way the, the world seems to be going, but... Money corrupts, brother. Yeah, I, I've said... Money corrupts.

I said, I said, I said that, I say that a million times on different posts in social media, that until we fix conflict of interest in government and we, until we fix campaign finance reform, there's really almost no point in even talking about some of the major issues because none of it's going to be solved for the benefit of the individual. This country, don't mean to cut you off, Carl, but I, I'm just thinking, it's, it's, it's been sold. It's, it's, it's coun-country's owned by corporations, man. All these lobbyists and what, these countries are owned by corporations. People get elected and go to Congress and become political people for the perks. They might have good intentions going in, but, dude, you, excuse my language, but, man, you start hanging around shit long enough, you're gonna begin to smell like it. It's just all that is.

It's just the way it is. Human nature, human psychology, that don't change. That, that is a fact. And, and even, it's so funny. You know, respecting history, and history has a tendency to repeat itself, and all these different sorts of things that we've all heard and we all know to be true in so many ways, it's easy to forget. And, and, and even back in Plato's time and looking into philosophy, these are the same questions that they were trying to ask. Exactly. It's the, yes. And all the technology can change, we can, we can build all this cool stuff, but at the end of the day, those human frailties still exist with lust and greed and, and all the seven deadly sins and all these different things that they've figured out about human nature over the years. It is, I'm telling you.

And how do we, you know, and, and, and we still, regardless of whether, you know, that's where we're talking AI models and some of the integration of, of personality into some of these computer models that are silly. Think about it this way then. Riddle me this, Batman. Who's going to control AI? Who's gonna be the guy or gal that's in charge of programming this thing? And then you're not just gonna program this thing and just take it off its leash. Who's gonna be pushing the buttons? Who's the man behind the fucking curtain? That's what's important, is gonna be Elon. That, well, that's, that's exactly the question. Is it gonna be Elon? I mean, who's gonna be the one responsible for being responsible, you know? I mean, is it gonna be, AI is no good unless it's for, good for everyone, everyone.

I mean, if, and it's, to me, it seems like, man, they're already taking jobs. So it's like, they're stumbling out the gate in my book. So, and you gotta show me something. All this speculation and stuff like that, where does the rubber meet the road? Where's something tangible I could put my hands on and see, and I, not ChatGPT and all that other, I mean, stuff that we can use on a daily basis that can change a person's life, whether it be, like, maybe in the medical industry. You know, maybe in the medical industry it might make a big dent or a big difference. But, I mean, it's gotta make a difference to me like, like the internet did in the 2000s. Oh, it, it's gotta. Like the.com, it's gotta make, you know what, they gotta say, oh, it's a thousand dollars a share right now. I mean, it's like, and that's cheap. You better get in.

You better, what? You better get in, it's cheap. I'm like, come on, show me something. Some of the, some of the chat, the, the earlier version, so they gotta, obviously the world, in this capitalistic society, people are trying to monetize everything, right? Oh, sure. So, if monetization is your focus, then. That's human nature. That's part of human nature. That is, if it started off not being monetized, bet your bottom dollar, at the end of the day. It's like. I could make money from this dish. That's very common. But it seems like if your why is to make money, that comes off. Not as authentic, right? So like, it's almost like this podcast, for instance. Well, that's how come it didn't come off that way. Yeah. Yeah. It's not for profit.

So the, the, the fact that it's open, so it would almost be like a Bitcoin scenario, where Bitcoin was launched with the sole purpose of nobody actually controlling it. So somehow that model actually worked when it comes to Bitcoin. Now there's all kinds of shit coins out there too that, that, you know, make people believe that this crypto thing, I don't understand it, and I don't know how it works, but the reality is, is the illusion of scarcity or even the perceived value of something is something. That's all it takes. It doesn't have to be gold or diamonds or anything that we consider actual value. You know, cause how do we judge value? You know, I judge, I can get a lot of value out of having a conversation with a friend sitting here. That's valuable. Sure.

And, and that's more the point of what Flipside Frolic or whatever was about is, is just using this as an excuse to call up an old buddy you haven't talked to in a while and communicate with somebody and catch up. And, and then the magic of the universe takes over and then somebody, oh, my kid happens to be a graphic designer and 3D artist right now, and we're looking for a cool intro for the, for the podcast. So next thing you know, you have this contact that you never would have had, had you not taken some action and, and, and found automatically found something that can help each other. And, and it seems that most successful people, and, and we could, we could shit on the rich and all this other kind of stuff that a, a society tends to try to do, but we can all So try to emulate.

So if you want to be a pro basketball player, or if you want to be a, a, a finance guru or something like that, if you want to soar with eagles, you can't wallow with worms, and you have to follow those that went before you and do what they did. True that. That's the simplest path is they say, say R and D. Some people say it's research and development, and other people say rip off and duplicate. That's the American way. It's, it's, there's a big part of that is the American way or the Chinese way or whatever else. I'm just calling like I see it, brother. I mean. That's it. Don't you come out with nothing, there gonna be some knockoffs made, there gonna be some, I mean. And that's, that's why there's, that's why, that's why they came up with like patents and stuff. Well, yes.

And, and, but in the same token, it's like sometimes like, you know, there's a, there's a It's quite a few Elon interviews that are pretty, pretty powerful. And one of the things with like open AI, with putting things out there, then, then the mass consensus is working to make things better. So sometimes whether or not we believe what people say is, is, is how they truly feel in their heart, or if this is some sort of, you know, promotion, everybody wants to think negative a lot of times that, oh, they're just doing it for the money, or they're just doing it for this or that. And, and nobody really knows anybody's true motivations. Now, maybe that'll change when everybody has some sort of implant and you could read people's minds or something and know people's true intent. But that's part of what, you know, we're, we're both city boy.

We're You know, in Chicago and, and, and grew up in the inner city and understand the hustle and a little bit more, and, and sometimes we shield our children from that. So it's like they don't get to learn those skills of, of, you know, my eight-year-old, like, traded a Pokemon card with somebody, and it's probably, he probably got garbage for something that was good because he didn't know no different, and the other guy had more knowledge in trading Pokemons. There, I remember even back in the day, there was that show Silver Spoons with Ricky Schroeder, and there was an episode where he, he was trading baseball cards, and then the rich uncle, or whatever it was, was he's like, wait, how much are these things worth?

And he's like, you know, so next thing you know, the smart financing rich uncle that's a profiteer decides, he's like, here, this is what you do. Call, you know, You call all your buddies and you buy, what's the least valuable card right now? And then, so he's like, call up all your buddies and trade or buy this person's card. And then next thing you know, he calls up the media multiple times and did, and, and said like, can you, can you, you know, show us, or can you Verify with us cause that this player is not going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And then they're, they're like, what are you talking about?

So they called multiple times and multiple news sources, and then eventually they printed an article that stated that this person, there is no talk and there will not, there is nothing happening with this person being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Now it created a buzz over this player. And now people are like, wait, why would they say that? Unless maybe he is going to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. And if he gets inducted in the Hall of Fame, then obviously the value of the card goes up. So he was able to turn around and sell all these cards back to his buddies for a profit because now all of a sudden this buzz that he created created a higher perceived value for this baseball card.

And, and then, and then his dad, who was the more liberal guy and not the, you know, that, that's like, look, you corrupted this, this simple, pure trading baseball cards amongst friends with your profiteering in business. But it's an interesting lesson because, you know, w, w, that is exactly what happens in, in a lot of different people. Think about it. I thought about it for a 2nd. I said, you know what? It's not that I, it sounds so familiar, deja vu all over again, but this is how AI was came up. That's how it came, came out of the clear blue. It just people speculate, made a buzz for, it's a buzzword. It's a buzzword. Every, if, if, if a company of Microsoft or whoever comes out and they just mention the word AI, I mean, I, it's a buzzword. It created out of And people are just putting money into it. I, I, I don't, you know what?

If it sounds too good to be, I don't get it. I mean, I, I'm, like we said before, I'm sorry, Carl, but I am a overthinker. I'm an overthinker, and I've been down this road before when Google came out. I was thinking, I remember when It came out. It was, it came out for like a hundred bucks a share. I go, thank you, you got to be ridiculous, man. A hundred bucks a share, back then it was just, it was just AOL. And it was just like, what are they going to do different? AOL, Yahoo, maybe, what are they going to do different? A hundred bucks a share. Thought about it, but, you know, I was swinging for the fences back then. I wasn't trying to get a base hit. I was saying, this is going to put me in, in the driver's seat. This is going to, you know, so I was thinking bet big, but I couldn't figure them out. So, analysis paralysis kicked in.

I didn't do nothing. Next thing you know, I watched that son of a bitch go from $100 to $300 to 700. But I said to my, and I'm looking at, it feels different with AI. It's, it feels different with them. I, I, I over, I'm not overanalyzing it, but I think it just, when I'm looking at, I'm looking at the stock price of this thing every fucking day, and it's straight linear. There is no, there is no ebbs in it. It's just boom. I'm like, and then people are going, you better buy now, better buy now. I'm like, wait a minute, hold on, pump your brakes, man. Pump your fucking brakes, dude. This is just too fast for me. Yeah. So, so, you know, there, there's a few things that come to mind with that. Are they that thirsty, man, for something, the new big thing? Are they that thirsty for the next big thing? Yeah, of course.

Everybody wants the latest, greatest thing, and everybody wishes they would have bought GE back when it was, you know, blah, blah, blah, or whatever the case may be. And it sounds, it seems like it's so different, even though it's the same, because it's no different. It doesn't feel diff, it doesn't feel the same, man. I was like. And, and the problem is, is that, that it's not a single entity. So it's not like Apple computers. Same kind of thing. You know, this, this goofball, you know, that, you know, came up with this concept and everybody shamed him and laughed him out of the room, saying, you think that every person in the world's going to have one of these little computers in their house?

Like, maybe there's something that could be done with business and finance and, and, and con, content, you know, cause it was basically a calculator. That's all a computer was, is something that can do calculations faster. So computational kind of math, basically, to, to do your, your, your business finances or whatever the case may be. Nobody saw the future like some other visionaries did. About how, you know, look at, I mean, look at these smartphones we have that, you know, it's, it's, it's this magical box in our pocket that can record a video and then shoot it to a friend in, in, in the UK instantaneously through satellites going around the earth.

It's like, that's magic to somebody in 1950 sitting around listening to the radio as, with family, cause they didn't have TVs yet or, or, well, I mean, not the fifties, but earlier than that. so everything changes and it changes dramatically and it's, it seems like it's almost the same story. So is Chat Beachy, ChatGPT gonna, gonna take jobs? Yeah, there's no question. There's a, but you know what it is, see, even with what they call the magnificent seven on the stock market, you know, like Apple, Google, all the big players, right? Meta. They've already started Amazon, Jeff Bezos, they've been selling their shares, laying off prop, laying off people left and right and stuff in the anticipation of what they're doing is they're reallocating their assets, reallocating their stuff for AI.

They're they're using that money to delve deeper into AI, and that's what they're doing. So and even replacing some of them people, straight out. So it's like, and then everybody's following suit. Everybody, it's just so, it's just so one-sided. It's just so one-sided, just once. And then here's the, and here's, and here's the red flag for me. Here's the red flag for me. You know, normally when something or anything, I don't care what you do there's normally a point, counterpoint. You know, there's a pro and a con. There's been no cons yet. There's been no cons, nothing. So then that, and that's what gets me. There's been no cons. It's all been sunshines and rainbows. And it's like, are you, and, and I, and, and human nature tells me everything ain't sunshines and rainbows, dude. So tell me, give me, give me the downside.

Give me the down, you give me all the potential upside. Give me the Flipside Frolic. Give me the Flipside, you know, but you're not getting the Flipside. No. And that, and that throws a red flag to me. Yeah, and, and that should throw a red flag to you and, and it should, it's just like any other propaganda. Anything. When you have a vested interest in something, you're going to try to hide the not so good stuff, and that could take you into the medical industry or some of these other areas where they don't want to promote the bad. You know? And it takes two human beings having an actual conversation about these topics without fear of being canceled or censored because you're bringing up the opposing view, even if I'm just playing devil's advocate.

And like you said with Flipside Frolic and, and, and kind of our mission and how often it's actually going to happen to where, where we flip sides and debate the other's topic of, of our position. So the, the core mission is to, to understand somebody else's position better, as opposed to just writing them off as some crazed lunatic or something. Nobody, there's not too many people, there's not too many supervillains out there that are twisting their mustaches and trying to figure out how to destroy the world. It seems that way sometimes, un, undoubtedly but sometimes people have positions and ideas and they're just wrong, or they don't work, or they, they, they have good intention, but they didn't understand all the variables involved in this complex process, so things didn't work.

Whether we're talking about crime in the inner city, in, in, in some of the ghetto neighborhoods in Chicago, They dumped tons and tons of money and resources into trying to alleviate this problem, but they're missing something because obviously it's not working. So sometimes if you want to come, come out with all your great ideas, you got to just let them go. It's almost like a young kid that has, that knows more than his parents and he's smarter than everybody and, you know, when, when you're, when you know everything, you're unteachable. so you need some humility in, in order to be able to grow and learn. And so one of my little taglines I, I joke about all the time is Is the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, so I try to get dumber every day. And, and, and I... Gotta keep reaching, brother. And that's a fact.

You gotta keep reaching. You learn a little bit about something and you end up going down this rabbit hole. For sure. And, and you're like, man, I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing about this stuff. It's fascinating, though. And that could go back to fitness and supplements and... It's fascinating, though. Dude, I mean, you talking about rabbit hole and fitness. Oh my God. I'm more, like I said, I've been doing this for 50 years, I'll bet you. And I'm still learning. And I'm right now probably in my, I'm probably right now in my more, I'll bet you I'm in the best shape of my life at this age. Might not be as strong as I was back in the day. But I'm in the best shape physically, inside and outside, emotionally, all that. I mean, it paid off. It's paid off. I can't ask for anything more. I couldn't ask for anything more.

No aches, no pains. knock on wood. other than the self-induced ones. That happens. No pain, no gain, brother. Well, you know, obviously that's, that's a, a super. That's another, yeah, exactly. I get it. You know, it, that, that, you know, we have to know our bodies, especially when we get older. But I embrace the pain. I love it. I love, I mean, that's the part. That's the part. It's just like somebody, like a reporter asked Muhammad Ali, how many sit-ups did he, does he do? He says, I don't know. I'll only start counting when they hurt. When they start. Cause that's where it's at. It's, well, it- That's where it's at, dude. That's where you can just go, go, go primal. You could fucking just release. You could, you could, you could find out what you're made of. You know, you could find out what you're made of, and that's it.

And, and it is no better feeling. There is no, no better feeling. Start the day off with a win. I mean, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's a, it's, it's funny cause especially when you're doing something for pure enjoyment and you're doing something. And it's free. Well, it's a beautiful thing. It is, man. It don't cost you nothing. I was golfing with a buddy, and we, we were early out cause sometimes we like being the 1st ones out. You're not waiting for people, and next thing you, I mean, you're, you golf 18 holes in your home by 10 a.m., and the rest of the houses just started to get moving. So you don't even have to ask mama permission, hey, can I go golfing? I'm already back. I'm back. Where'd you go? I was golfing. Okay. But we golfed, we ended up keep this make sure you keep this camera close. Go pull it up.

And then but we, we ended up golfing. And then there was this old timer that was there, so we're like, you want to join in? You know, sure, you know, so we made our little threesome going and, and we're golfing with this guy, golfing with this guy, and, and he's not hitting it a mile, but he's hitting it in the center of the fairway, you know, and it's like, he's just p-punching it down the fairway, we're swinging for the fences and off in the woods looking for our balls, and he's fishing balls out of the pond as he's waiting for us patiently to try to find our balls. And, and, you know, we get four or five holes in, and we're like, man, he's like, this guy, I think he's on the green in three, and he's like, he's like, this guy's playing pretty good, and we're like, what are you shooting anyway?

And he's like, son, I stopped keeping score 20 years ago. I know that's right. You know, he's just out there enjoying himself and, and, and getting some exercise, and, and, and, and it was like, wow, that's pretty cool, you know? And, and then, then it reminded of this one joke, cause, cause it was like, you, you get up to the tee, and, and the old timer comes up to you, and he says, He's, he's like, you know, the two guys are debating, how should I use the three or should I go, go with the big dog? And he's like, and the old timer goes, when I was your age, I would clear that, that dog leg left, those, those dogwood trees over there, and I'd be on the green and two putting for eagle every time. And these two young guys, they're like, they're like, this mother, she's like, all right.

They grab the drivers and, and they swing for the fences and go right towards those trees to cut that dog leg off, and boom, right into the trees, falls into a bunch of shit. And, and, and then they're, they're like, damn it. And they look over at the old man, he goes, when I was your age, those trees were a lot shorter. But it's, it's just about that enjoyment and, you know, and that purity of, of, of, of just being out there doing what you love, you know? And, and more, it, it, you can only, you can only pray that more people could find that. Cause everybody's searching for something. Exactly. And some, in something, whether it's an SSRI or depression and medication and, you know, everybody's looking for a fix and, and to, to their problems or a fix. Yeah, true. Well, we need sometime, you need to exercise some demons.

You know, need a, you need a outlet. you, you need a outlet sometimes that's good to have, whether it's golf bodybuilding, working on cars, sports in general, you gotta have that, dude, you know? And, you know, the, the worst place to be is inside your own fucking head. There, there's no doubt, that's dangerous territory. You don't wanna, you don't wanna stay there too long, man. I mean, I mean, just be prepared. You gotta prepare yourself. Maybe meditation helps but just know where you're going. If When you get inside of your head, you can, you better leave some breadcrumbs, cause you can get lost, man. You can find your way back. Yeah, that, thinking about thinking's not a healthy place to sit around.

No, I mean, so you need a place, you need a place where you don't have to think, where you can just do, just freely, just go, just, yeah, that kind of thing. And that's, that's like even with fitness or whatever, in cardiovascular, like the, the runner's high kind of thing, where, you know, when you're running, when you run more than a couple miles or whatnot, and you just kind of get into this state of you're just focusing on your breath and you're not really thinking about other stuff. Okay. And I guess, I, I mean, that's a big part too. Like, anything that just gets you stopped thinking about all life's problems and just focus on a task clears your mind. Yes. And, and, and I think that's pretty beneficial for people too. Oh yeah. You know, like they say, don't ask for easier road, just ask, just ask to be stronger.

No, I mean, don't ask for, you know, things to be easier. Not, that's not the, that's not the thing. You just got to be stronger, that's all. and but, you know what, but you, like I said, again, like we started off, dude, I mean, it's like, you got to have these struggles. You got to have, you can't avoid them, because it's only going to set you up for failure later. You got to go through, that's part of life. You know, just like you can't have the sunshine without the rain. You got to, you got to have both. That's, that's yin yang, man. That's a whole nother thing, yin and yang, dude. You know you would never know the sunshine if you wouldn't see if, if, if you never experienced the darkness. Well, and that, you know, that's part of where the, our little logo came from. Oh, there you go. That's yin yang, brother.

We got a little yin yang in there. That's what I'm talking about, man. That's life in general, man. You got to have, and both complement each other. They're not opposing, you know? So it's a symbiotic relationship. I think that, and that's part of what, like, so when you go back in history and you even look at Henry Ford and, and the production line and the, creating this assembly line that dramatically increased productivity in production, and then you start adding robots, and then there's the fear that they're taking jobs and all this other kind of stuff. But look what happened. You know, over time, yes, some jobs were taken, but other jobs were created.

Somebody has to service those machines, and, you know, there, there's a whole, the whole cycle continues, and it, the, the end of the world kind of never comes, that every, all this fear-mongering and everything else happens, whether it's climate or this or that. Some sort of innovation or some sort of technology is going to fix the problem if it's profitable, right? If there's an incentive in it or if there's money in it. Well, like they said, necessity is the mother of invention. Let it be necessary, somebody will figure it out. Right, if it's necessary, yeah. And, and, and, and again, that goes back to value, you know, this idea that, you know, some say that your income is directly proportional to the amount of value you give the marketplace.

So for financiers or some of these people that make a ton of money just moving money around and never really create anything or really, really never give value to, to society or make better things, then can you make some money that way? Sure. But Are those people fulfilled? Are those people happy inside? Probably not. Not as much. I mean, you know, we live in a capitalistic society. That's their, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do, capitalize. But that doesn't equate to fulfillment. Or you're doing what you have to do. You know, you can make all the money in the world, but like I said you know, this, like, there was this what was that actress's name? She played, I think she was Diana Ross's daughter. She's fine, educated woman, and she's got it all. You know, like, you know, career woman, money, fame, all that.

But one thing she doesn't have, and it doesn't make her happy, she doesn't have anybody. And she'll tell you that. And she's put herself, I mean, she doesn't have anybody. I mean, and I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to just point her out, cause they, but that's, that's like a lot of people. I mean, you could have it all except for the one thing that really would make you happy. I mean, to some people, you know, they might see, you know value in material things, but value sometimes not have to do with material things and stuff. That just goes along with it, you know? So, but yeah, there's a lot to be said for your mental health. That's for damn sure. There was a, there was a pretty interesting video I seen that somehow disappeared. I tried searching for it, that, which obviously seems to happen sometimes if we put our tinfoil hats on.

but it was really dry. It was basically almost like an Amway presentation. There was this guy in a white shirt and a white tie, and anybody out there, if you know what video I'm talking about, put it in the comments or something, because I've been looking for it for a while. And I think I could find it, because I know he referred to his mentor, and then his mentor wrote a book, and I know I have that book. So it's somewhere in the preface or somewhere, you know, in the, in, in the bibliography or something probably has this guy's name, and I'm, I, I wish I remembered his name. But he is on a stage in like an auditorium, a college auditorium kind of setup, and he had a whiteboard, and he was doing this presentation on basically the Mayan or the Aztec calendar.

So it was almost like if you see some of those documentaries about decoding that calendar. So it's the one that's like the round plate with all the stuff going around. Yeah. And, and then he went through this totally fascinating presentation that was really dry and hard to get through, but if you really got into it, it was so interesting. And, and, and, and, and the way that like society is, is getting more and more compressed. And, and, and, and so Like, and everything was on these cycles and these steps, and it was all based on these chunks of time that are getting more and more compressed due to technology, right? So, and then these traumas happen. So it was, it's almost biblical in some of the translation of seven days. It was all based on seven days.

And then almost like, then there's a, the four, there's, then there's pain, then there's the learning from the pain, and then there's the good that comes from the bad from what happened. So whether it was the Black Plague, and, and that lasted for however many years, and then something came from that, medical advancements came from that, the penicillin ...come from that, whatever these greatness, this great stuff that came from this horror. Necessity again. And, and, and, right, and, and that, you know, everything happens for a reason. And if we can have some acceptance that that's true you know, I, I, we, we have loss, and then we, we, we hate the world for certain losses, like why would you do this?

You know, if there's a God, why would you let these children die or whatever the, the story is, whether it's, you know, just a horrible loss, but to have some sort of faith or belief that something good's gonna come from this, and, and, and we hope that we maybe one day could see it. But maybe we won't. So there's Mitch Albom wrote a book, The Five People We Meet in Heaven, and, and it was, it was a made-for-TV movie, a Hallmark movie or whatever. It's a great movie, check it out, but obviously the book's better. but there's a series of a couple of books, actually, that, that he did in this series, but the premise was when you die, you meet five people that you've somehow massively influenced in your life. And as he was going, and when you go, get to the gates of heaven, basically, so you meet, you re-meet these people.

And, and it was one of those scenarios where as some of those people were coming up, it brought up all this pain because he knows of this traumatic event, but that event, then you learn, he learned what the good that came from that traumatic event was. And, and so it's almost like Michael Jordan's 6th grade coach telling him, why don't you just quit playing basketball, you ain't never gonna be any good@it.and, and if that is the, what person would ever suggest that you should say some sort of comment like that to some 6th grader? But the good that came from that, because for some reason, that was the motivation that, whether it's I'll show him or whatever it is, is that a bad thing then? That's it, you know, it's how you accept it, it's how you take it.

If you take it personal, or you take it as a challenge, or you take it, you know, it ain't over till I win mentality. You have to, you know, some people take it differently than others, you know, so but that's the mindset of a winner. That's a mindset of, I mean, but that's how life is. I mean, what are you supposed to do? It's either that or just, okay. Okay. No doubt. And so, and that's where, you know, if we want to just be a slave to the grind and go to work every day and pay our taxes and, and feed the machine, then that's what we can do. But if we could find some sort of enjoyment in other things. So this calendar, allegedly the, the, the, the Mayan calendar or the Aztec calendar, I, I can't believe I'm screwing that up. I should look that one up.

But that it was, so these timelines were kind of a big part of some of these traumatic things, but each of the, each of the bad times are getting shorter and shorter in length as we progress with technology. So whether the dark ages were a couple of hundred years, and then the plague was like five years, and then this tra, you know, so, so they're getting smaller and smaller because this logarithmic growth of technology and, and innovation. So If there's a major crash that would have been the same significance of, of pain and tribulation for pe- for everybody of the stock market, it might only be six months or instead of three years, like the Great Depression or whatever the case may be, because everything's accelerating.

But the other thing that was really wild about it that a lot of people don't know is there was like three separate calendars. We all kind of know of one that we, we see the picture of and people hang on the wall and stuff. but other, other times there, there was a, there was a, a calendar of kind of like a one to five scale of two or three different things, one of them being like, how close to your purpose do you feel you are today? So you would almost evaluate on a daily basis, like if you're a good fisherman back in the day, and, and you're serving the community by providing food or whatever your mission is, are you, do you feel that you're in sync with what you're doing is the right thing for you in this moment? And on a scale of one to five, how close is it?

So we could be, you know, in our daily job, you know, fix truck, get check, you know, kind of scenario. And, and, and, and, but am I being the most, am I providing the most value for society in this position right now? And so maybe that scale might be a two or three because somebody's got to do it and it, they could clear the snow or whatever the process is, we're giving value to the taxpayer or to whatever the case may be. but at the end of the day, In my heart do I feel I'm doing what I was put on this earth to do, and how close is it, and how can we be motivated to try to get closer to that path and stay on that path? Because that magic of the universe seems when you're on that path, then these contacts just fall in your face, these coincidences all start happening. For sure.

Because again, Carl, like you're operating on a whole nother frequency. You know, just like, it's just like, it's out there for you. And it's just like they say, like tuning a radio. You know, you could, you know, back in the day used to have knobs. Remember those knobs over there? And you, and you'd have to use to play with them left and right, left and right, and you, you could hear your, your, the frequency, you could hear the station come in and out, come in and out, and then, and touch it a little bit, and then it comes in clear. Well, see, that just, that's, that's, that's all I mean. There's no such thing as frequency. That's that, once you dial that puppy in and it comes in, and things start coming your way, that's not coincidence.

That's, you're on, you're, you're, you're, you're operating on another frequency now, and this is, this is, it's just like a a lower frequency. They call that your, your they call that your reptilian. A lower frequency, you operating on that. So your thoughts and stuff, stuff like that are, are, are not pure, let's put it like that. They're on a reptile. You don't think, you act, you know, like an animal would act. You, there's no thinking involved, and that's the difference between a reptilian mind and one that's operating on a higher frequency, you think. but yeah, yeah. No, that's that, that, that clicks in a lot because the action reaction aspect of life, and, and, and, and that's where, you know, why is there evil in the world and why are there bad people, and, and then this idea of having free will or having a choice.

We have to have a choice, otherwise we're definitely just slaves in a sense that, you know, somebody else is controlling us if we can't make the choices that we make each day, and we have to choose the right path in order to, you know, gain some of the... Well, it depends what you, look at it like this, Carl. It's just like Henry Ford used to say you could have, you could have this car any color you want, as long as it's black. Now what choice do you have? I mean, think about it. Your choices, I don't, I don't know, we're talking about choices and free will and stuff like that. I, I, I, that's a, that's a slippery slope, because it's like, are you, do you really have a choice? Is it free will? Is it, is it predestined? Is it, is it, I mean, it's going to get complicated. It's definitely complicated.

It can get complicated, and it could get complicated. And because you got, you know, see, all things are crossing my mind. I'm thinking, I'm thinking biblical. You start talking free will and you start talking religion and free will, it gets deep, brother. Oh, no doubt. It gets deep, brother. So it's like, do we really have free will or has our destiny already been predetermined? If your destiny's already been predetermined, how much free will do you have? Well, I, I, so if there was an all-knowing and all-powerful force that knows everything, then it knows, if it knows the choice you're gonna make, then are you making the choice? To you, it seems like free will. Right. But if you're inside of a box, matter of fact, Think about it like this. Think about, you ever see a maze, like when you put rats in a maze?

When I was in high school, we used to have that. It was a fascinating thing in science class. You put a, a box with a mat, a rat in the maze, and you, and, and, and you watch him go around. He has a beginning and end, and you put some treats where he could probably sniff it out and smell it and stuff. Well, while he's in that maze, Has free will. He can go left or he can go right. He can go to a dead end or he can continue. He, it's his, it's his decision, left or right, left or right. But at the end of the day, you're still in a box. You can play it at the end of the day, you're... I'm sorry. If it's okay, stay close. You're still in a box, you know? And it's like, yeah, you got free will, but... So that, that, that could get, that, that gets my mind spinning into a few different directions.

So, so for the kids out there that want a book or two, you know, Psycho-Cybernetics was a book, and then The Ant and the Elephant. So what you're talking about is very similar to that book in the sense that, so there's the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Sure. All right? And, and, and, and the subconscious mind Doesn't have emotion, and it doesn't understand necessarily right from wrong. It's just trying to help you, but it sometimes helps you in the wrong way because it doesn't necessarily know how to evaluate information. So that's almost where manifestation principle and power of positive thinking and some of these other things kind of stem from.

So like if you, the idea that if you dwell on credit card debt and always focus on how am I going to get out of this debt, how am I going to get out of this debt, you're thinking about debt, so your subconscious mind is helping you create debt because that's what you're focused on. So if you focus on just generating more income, then the debt might just go away. So your subconscious mind can help you. So it can sabotage you too. And so... That's a very powerful man. Yeah.

And, and so the pre, the premise of the ant and the elephant book is, is basically You know, you're, you're an ant on the back of an elephant, and you lived your whole life on your ant hill, in your community, in your family, and you played your role, and you do your part, and then when people kind of get red-pilled or wake up to the fact that this can't be all what life's about, the sun always rises in the east and, and sets in the west, and this is the world we live in. But the reality is, is they're on this elephant's back, right? So the, the only reason the, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west is because he's traveling in the same direction. And so when you, like, find a way to help This elephant and control this elephant, it's very powerful force that can move much faster than an ant can and get you to the promised land.

And so it, it, it's a pretty cool book and, and, and a thought experiment about, you know, what is our reality? You know, are we in a simulation or some of these different things like, you know. Like flat earth. Right. Well. With a, with a, with a, a, what do you call it? A firmament over the top of it? A globe on it. We're like living in a snow globe. Yeah. So that's some tinfoil hat there, you know, that, and I love that, you know, you know, most people know that, you know, thinking outside the box and, and exploring different ideas and different places and, and allowing your mind to go different places is, is very, very helpful and very fruitful to just be a thinker. And so it's funny, the flat earth one, I just can't wrap my head around.

I tried to watch a few documentaries just to see where they're coming from, to try to take it from the flip side angle and try to debate it from their side. And it's one of those where it's like you watch these documentaries or whatever, and they're going to reveal the information, they're going to reveal the information, the science, the, the facts are uncanny and you'll, you'll never be able to deny them and then you never even get them. And at the end of the day, you're like, well, that was an hour and a half of my life I'm never going to get back. So I haven't found The right video.

I know you were talking a little bit about it once in the past, and, and, and, and I'm, I'm willing to, to, to engage in, in, in listen to or watch something with some credibility that might, you know, steer me in another direction, but at this point, I'm like, no. Well, Einstein said it. He says he says, genius has limitations. Imagination doesn't. So Ali said it too. he said, I, imagination gives you wings. I mean, really. I mean, you gotta have, and if, if given a choice, I got it in my phone somewhere, I like taking snapshots, screenshots of nice quotes that I see, but he puts imagination over genius all day long. Einstein does. Because you gotta be able to Man, you gotta be able to just think outside the box.

You gotta be able to, you gotta be able to, like your show, Flipside Frolic, you gotta be able to, you know, think outside, the flip side, this side. I mean, you really have to, imagination is, I'm telling you, man, it's I don't know where I'd rank that. I don't know where I'd rank that. And I don't, I don't understand, do you think ima- imagination everybody has? I mean, I mean, to the point where it's like, I don't know, I guess you could use it for good or bad. But, well, that, that, that's like, again, that comes. But it's a superpower, man. Imagination, basically, it's a superpower. It's free, it's, it's, it's original thought, right? And that's what distinguishes maybe us from certain other animals that are out, that are in existence or in this creation or this world or whatever.

Now, because of our limited understanding, we don't actually know How much dolphins are communicating and family structures and hierarchies and chimps and different, different, chimp nation was a cool show that was showing the hierarchy and, and, and how, you know, these different species evolved or whatever. So it's the same kind of thing where every, everything's in the middle. Like, like, so even when I was off hurt, I was with the political chaos that was going on, I was like figuring out how to, you could check the hashtag middlecrats, because the reality is, is at certain times the Democrats are supposed to be for working people, the Republicans are supposed to be for business, but there's all these basics or whatever.

But at the end of the day, it's like this uniparty, you know, and, and, and they're all working for themselves, for, for the corporations and the lobby, and, and hopefully some good stuff for individuals happens along the way, but it seems like that's getting further and further from reality. And so I was like, at some point, the working people, and that's where we're going to have a few union leaders in here. We're both union members, and there's goods and bads and everything in life, and, and, and there's corruption, and there's conflict of interest, and there's, there's favoritism, and all these different things in life. So like Dale Carnegie his book Think and Grow Rich, right? And, and so I read that book, and I was like, man, he was close, you know?

And it's like that, I'm not saying I'm smarter than Dale Carnegie was or whatever, but this idea, the, one thing that a little irks me a little bit is this idea that you need to leverage all your contacts to get what you want in life, right? And so it's like, Having a buddy or having a contact or having a, having a, knowing somebody that knows somebody that's a contact, yes, I can see that you would utilize that and try to keep everything in-house and try to keep, the, the more we help each other, the community grows. So if we stay close to our friends and we work together and we help each other, that group is going to grow. And, and, and so, but it's all kind of comes back down to that true intent.

Is your intent to help people or is your intent to utilize them or step on, you know, basically step on them as building blocks to grow your own wealth? And that seems greedy. So to be able to self-reflect and find that, am I just being greedy or taking advantage of people or, because some people believe that the only way you can get rich is by taking advantage of people, and it's not true. If you can provide value in another way. Well, another way, too, to think about it is, like, if you don't define who you are, somebody else will. or you'll be busy. If you don't have any goals and dreams, you'll, somebody else will hire you to fulfill theirs. That's solid. I mean, you have to have a wherewithal to be able to, I don't wanna say, you know, get up and get after it.

And if you don't, I mean, some people, I mean, really, I've talked to people in the street before. I mean, but once upon a time, I went to, just say, I went to Jiffy Lube. I went and took my truck in. I was gonna get an oil change. And I seen these guys, I'm sitting back, and I'm watching them do these oil changes and everything. And I'm going, hey, how would you you know, how would you like to you know, level up, maybe get a job with the city or something like that? Level up and get a job with the city, you know? And you know what he said? He, he was happy right there. Some people, you know, like I said, it's the comfort zone thing. Well, there's that, it's the comfort zone thing. People will never step outside of their comfort zone. Some people will, some people will take a leap of faith.

Some people, but a lot of people get comfortable, and that's a death sentence. I mean, to each his own, but, I mean, if you don't have any aspirations or desires or, or dreams, Or something that you want to accomplish, that's on you. You know, if you want to just sit back and relax and go with the flow, that's, that's, that's cool. Yeah, that's, that's fine too. And, and, and the, the, the... But don't complain about stuff. The, the best, it's a Caddy Shack quote, the world needs ditch diggers, Danny. Exactly. What is it? Oh, I thought that I would be able to afford to go to college. That's, you know, and that's you know, and that's the truth. And, and that's the truth. So you could, you know, some people, you know, and it's funny how that works. It's funny how that works.

When you're out there on your grinding and stuff it's a very rare occurrence where somebody will come, hey man, look, you give your hand up and stuff. You don't come across that often. But when you're not looking to go nowhere in life, you get people say, hey man, let me give you a hand. That, that's, that's part of that kind of karma and, and part of that karma and part of that, that magic of this universe that we don't understand. And, and so it, and, and there's nothing wrong with somebody working a jiffy load. You know, that's the whole deal that, that we, we have to have this humble enough idea. But if you could change oil and make more money at it, wouldn't you? You would think. But again you're still doing the same job.

I guess that, that kind of, you know, gets into a lot of definitely in-depth conversation in, in regards to even people in other countries or people that, you know, we're trying to impose our will on other people. And, and they are perfectly happy. Sure. Doing what they're doing and living their culture, and we say that our way is better, but that's egocentric and that does, that we, we know better than them. And just let me show you the way and you'll be happy too. That might be true, you know what I mean? Cause you only know what you don't know. And you, you don't know what you don't know. Well, their value system is different. What they value and what somebody else would, is their value system is different. You know, you can give a guy all the material things and well, it won't make him happy.

Or you can, you know, they're happy the way they are. They're happy. I mean, it's like. I mean, we put such a, and it's such an easy thing. It's free. I mean, we complicate the situation. Yeah. We muddy up the waters. You could be as happy as you want to be. You have all the choices in the world. You could be as happy as you want to be. But somehow human nature, whatever you want to call it, we'll, we'll find a way to muck it up. We'll find a way. It's, cause life is simple. Aren't you, aren't you the happiest when you're, when, when everything is the simplest? When everything is just like, you know, it only gets complicated when we start pulling this in and pulling that in. You know, you know, it's good to have challenges. It's good to have mountains to climb and obstacles to overcome.

It's, I mean, I'm not saying that, I'm not denying that. I mean, I think we all need that, but recognize just recognize it and don't let that be like a downfall. I mean, don't let that overwhelm you, you know, not to the point where now you're not happy no more. Right. It's not, you know, it's just like we could take a, it's just like we're both into fish. We both do freshwater, saltwater from time to time. And it ceases to become a hobby, it ceases to become enjoyable when we make it a business. I can confess to that. It is not as fun as it used to be. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, you know, we create our own stumbling block sometimes. Oh, well, most of our problems are of our own making. Oh, no question about it. It's in a pretty good that I've, book that I've read, and, and, and, and it's absolute fact. Yes. You know.

It doesn't have to be that way. No, cause I can go out, I, I got I like going out to Rocky Mountain National Park and some other, you know, outdoors and hiking and camping and, and all those sorts of things, and, and there's something about walking in a, you know. Oh, no question. There's, there's, there's even, again, and that, that, that could even stem back to some, so, so a, a, a big thought that came to mind partially is, is with this idea of free will. So there's, there's free will, and there's also, there's also chance, and that chance, you know, may or may not be good for you in a sense, because we don't choose.

Who our parents were or where we were born, and somebody that was born in a cave in Afghanistan is in a different situation than somebody that was born in the inner city in Chicago, and somebody that was born in the northern suburbs of Chicago. And so their opportunities are going to be different. Sure. And, and their choices, but, you know, and it, and it, and it kind of all comes back to you can have some very poor, very happy people. And so who am I to ch- to impose my will on them because I believe it's better for them, and then we give them all this stuff that we have and show them the way to have all this stuff, and all we've really given them is anxiety and worry. Well, case in point, case in point, the Western the West, let's just take the Western diet. For a 2nd. Talking about imposing our will on other countries, okay?

Now, they did that with the over in, I think it was Japan. You know, a generation or two ago, nobody was over a hundred and 20 pounds. But we imposed our will. Well, we didn't really impose our will, we just gave them a taste. And just like the devil would do, he'd give you a taste. Say how you like it. You like that, huh? Would you like more? Some sugar. Now the restaurants all over, and they look like us. They suffer the same diseases, the same obesity rate, the same high blood pressure, the same high ten-hypertension, everything that we've got. And that's our, that's, that's love. You can thank me later, bro. We gave that to them. We, you know, we gave, we didn't really force it down their throat, but we gave them a taste. But human nature after that took over. I mean, it's addiction now. But that didn't turn out so good.

Well, that, that, now we're definitely getting into some tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. You want to talk that nutrition might be a... It's by design, brother. I'm telling you, if you want to... man. And it's, it is hard to believe because... I, I, I don't mean to cut you, but so many thoughts are flooding my mind because it's like, you know, from a, from a, from, from a very, very early age. So when you was going to high school, you know, or grammar school, you were indoctrinated. Like I said, you, it's an indoctrination. You were indoctrinated with the Pledge of Allegiance. You said that every day, which hand over your heart, like it was a Pledge of, it was a, exactly what it said. It was a Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So those words, I mean, they can do no wrong.

Because if I'm pledging to lead, they can do no wrong, so you put your trust in them, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. From the time you're an early age and then time you get to be an adult, you start, you know, looking what's behind the curtain to say, man, if it's not cat, if it, hey, what are they feeding me here? This ain't food. I mean, you know, I mean, and it's like, it's hard to believe that they will do you like that, but they'll do you like that. What? I, I don't remember the exact documentary about food. it was on Netflix, but it, it was What the hell? That was one documentary I seen.

Well, it was the one, it was the one where they were interviewing, it was kind of based on some longevity stuff too, and, and, and they were, they were showing plates from the cafeteria in one of the poorest communities in, in, in an Italian region in Italy. And then they'd show this plate of food and be like, where do you think this plate of food comes from? And one of the options was like a four-star restaurant or whatever, because it was like, it was like, it was garnished and it was properly prepared like you sat down for a hundred dollar meal. And this was a grammar school cafeteria. And, and so the, I, and then they have an extended lunch. So it's like this idea of, of lunch and a mealtime in school was a full class.

So, so they would actually sit down and they would learn about table settings and manners and, and eating and dining with friends and being, not being rude and learning how to have conversations over a meal. And it was a whole learning process instead of just Shove the kids in a cafeteria and feed them a slice of pizza in 15 min and then get back in the classroom kind of thing. And, and, and then they would actually show some of these children pictures of a tray of food from a United States cafeteria somewhere, and they're like, oh my god, that's not good. You know, and the, the comments that came out of these young kids, like, that, that's not food, that doesn't look very good for you. But it begs the question, why? I mean, I mean, why the deceit?

It's deceitful, and that's what's nefarious about it, because it's, they know it's under the guise of, of, of, of, you know, this good for you, and it's not. And it is definitely not, so, and I, you know, like I said, again, my mind's being flooded with thoughts, I don't really think they care. And you know, and I'm thinking... There, there are some that don't, there's no doubt. And, and if it's profit motive and they're only concerned about making money, then, then that... It, it is. I mean, and but, but w- Lead you down to this question, okay? Now, if they'll go that far as to not really giving a fuck how much we what our, what our food nutrition is like, what else won't they do? So then along comes COVID, and we get, you know, you basically have to get the jab. And I said, okay, all right, you know, I get it kicking and screaming.

But then they, they take it one step further, and I knew it was coming. You know what we want your children next. We want your children next. And then after that, it's like, hey, that's true. And your newborns too. And it's like, there will, there's no stopping. There's no And then after all it's said and done, after the smoke has cleared and years passed, they, you know, we've done some studies and we decided that herd immunity would have been a lot better deal. Yeah, and there's, and unfortunately, the, the, the people that were, you know, the medical professionals that had that opinion early on were censored. They were. And, and so they give you this illusion that the information you're getting is true, just trust us. And like I'm saying. You, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to not trust the government.

You're supposed to question, you're supposed to have an open discussion on these, these matters. And all you say is transparency, transparency. We just want some transparency. Can you just show us the data? Can you show us the data? Oh, sure, we'll show it to you 75 years from now. See? Like, okay, I'm sorry that my antenna goes up and says, this, this sounds a little nefarious. This doesn't sound like this is what's best for us. And and do they have their best interests, our best interests at heart? And I don't think so. And, you know, and I'm, and that's putting it mildly. I don't think so. And because actions speak louder than words. We're America, United States of America, we're supposed to be number one in fucking everything. And what are we number one in? Number one, we're number one weapons builder.

We the, we the number, we got the number one def, they said our, our defense budget. Dick. Yes. Our defense budget is bigger than the next 26 countries combined, and they're, and they're our allies. Yes. Our defense, wrap your mind around that. Our defensive budget is bigger than the next 26 countries combined. We're number one@that.at least through superior firepower. Yeah. That's what that's up, that's what's up with that. So, so almost on the Almost on the Flipside of even like the corporate greed kind of thing. So, so there's, there's another great book that's like A Time for Change, How to Change the Corporate Code. So the corporate code is, is basically corporate law. And so the, the whole idea that it's a complicated debate on whether or not corporations have rights.

Okay, so corporations want their cake and they want to eat it too, you know. So, so they want to have rights when it benefits them, just like all of us do. So, so sometimes that's even the debate between like a Democrat and a Republican. So are you looking to support a system or are you looking to support an individual's rights, right? So, so you could do whatever you want. And, and as long as it's not affecting me, go for it. Enjoy, do, you know, love who you want, you know, do what you want. And for grown adults to do that, that's fine. But obviously we have some obligation to protect children and to try to shield children from certain things at certain ages or whatever the case may be. So that gets complicated also. Everything's complicated, I guess.

If, if it was simple, then all the problems in the world would have been solved, but we still have this human nature that still comes along. So even if your profit motive, so as a CEO, sometimes you'll see like... Well, they have to. They're legally obligated to maximize profits for the shareholders. They're obligated to do that. So sometimes the easy way and the hard way or the, the, the, the way that takes more work is not usually the path that's followed because you follow the path of least resistance, like electricity or whatever, right? So when you're When you're in that scenario and you see whether it's a environmental issue or whatever it is, a lot of times you'll see CEOs like eyes glass over when they start talking about the environment and, and what you should care more about the environment.

And it's like, it's not that I as an individual don't care about the environment, it's I don't, this isn't my job. My job is to maximize profits of this company for the shareholders. So unless I can justify that this will bring income. And sometimes a green initiative because of public image and all this other stuff will increase sales and profit because the consumer feels they're supporting a comp, a company that's, that's trying to help the environment. Well, I get that. I get that's a feel good thing. But how many people on earth, think about it for a 2nd, is it 300 million, 300 billion? What is it? Look that up real quick. This is, we're gonna do, we're gonna crunch some numbers. So we're, looks like we got one point, 7.88 billion. 7.88 bil- Okay, there's 300 million probably in this country. Okay, so now look about it.

Okay, 300 million in this country. This is, this is, I'm just throwing some numbers out there, just, just hyper, I'm just, I'm just going, okay. All 300 million, let's say we in compliance, green, whatever the regulation are. you think that's gonna actually put a dent in the environment if you got the rest of the free world doing what the fuck they wanna do, when they wanna do it? I mean, how much effect is, and take, okay, put it through like this, even crunch it even further. Let's say 300 million is what percentage of 7 billion? Or 8 billion. So the US is... So we're 2% of the world pop... What percent of the world population are we? Well, here's the US population at 336,000,000, and the world population... So we're a very small percentage. So if we was... If we was to turn... If we was all green, how much of a debt...

That's maybe, what, 10%? That's not even 10%. That's probably 2%. That's probably 2%. That's why I say, what is this green initiative gonna accomplish? What is it going to accomplish? Even if we complied with every... If we had all EVs, and we didn't... All windmill, and all that, what would it accomplish, being two-tenths of a percent of the world's population? When you got countries, other industrial companies, you still, they still got smokestacks. They still making they're still manufacturing goods in smokestacks and stuff like that. look@China.even before this COVID thing, every time they used to show you a picture of China, they had a mask on, and it wasn't even a pandemic. There was the bird flu and some of the other things going on in China. They're walking around with the mask on, and it wasn't even, yeah.

On a good day, they're walking around with a mask on. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, so what, we're in compliance, so how much difference is that gonna make? It, it, I think that's just a feel-good thing, to make you feel good, to make you say, I'm, I'm doing my part. But in the end, but in, in the grand scheme of, in the end of the day, are you really, is it, is it really making a difference? Well, that's, I mean, in a sense, you could say You know, why wipe your ass if you're just gonna shit again? But, you know, we have to try. And, and so that's the whole, that's, that's the whole, the whole debate, and, and this actually, you know, not to have an argument from authority, but my degree was, my degree was in geography and environmental studies with a concentration in resource conservation and management, whatever that means.

I never really got into that field cause I fell into a field that made more money. And, unless you were Al Gore, the, the environment wasn't a, a path to making a, a, a substantial living to raise a family on. But it's a complicated issue in a sense that You know, that's where they divide us again, with all this different divisional tactics to keep the poor people working and paying taxes. So we're, you know, we're all slaves in a sense. And, and, and what is the... Wage slave, baby. What is the full impact of that on society, right? So, so when it comes to, you know, same kind of thing, you could look at shower, like water savers on shower heads and faucets and, and all this stuff. LED bulbs and stuff. Yeah, some of that is, is substantially more economical and, or, or more efficient way to, to, to, to light and not use energy.

But it, it, it's such a complicated issue. So, so whether or not we're affecting the world, of course, if we're in a globe, what we do affects everything, right? But the world's pretty big too, you know? The world will get by just fine. We'll just die. Yeah. It'll recover fast. It's been through worse than this, trust me. No doubt. And, and, and that's kind of the big, that's kind of the big debate too, is like if a, if a, if a volcano erupts, how much methane, how much methane gets put in the atmosphere? A lot more than we've ever done in the history of humankind. So, so whether or not we're affecting global temperatures or not, could be debatable in a sense. But, but... I think, I think, I, I think we're putting ourselves up on a pedestal. I don't think we're, we don't come close. I think we think we're bigger than we are.

Well, that's for sure. We're not, not in the grand, you look, we are not, we're not making that big of an impact. Cause think about it for a second. I watched that mo- that documentary What the Health, and it went to the East Coast. They got the biggest pig farm. I think I told you, they had like a big pig farm out there on the East Coast. It emits more emission toxic gas from that pig farm than the whole East Coast. Motherfuckers got to have their bacon. You don't see them shutting down there and putting... And what they do is, they got these sprinklers. They've got these, where these, where these pigs are, they've got these big retention ponds with these big, all the waste goes into this retention pond, big pipes, big fucking pipes.

It just fills this retention pond up, and they use these sprinklers, and they sprinkle the fucking field with the fucking waste from the pig farm. For fertilizer. They sprinkle it, but all the nearby residents have lymphoma cancer. It's like, but, and not just that, it's the, it's the emission that it puts off. More than all the cars and everything on it, but you don't see them fucking saying, you got to go electric. Yeah, you, you, you hear some of the... I mean, it's so obvious in your face, but it's okay. You hear some of the talk of cow farts giving off methane and all this other stuff. but, and then in some other ways, before we were here, do you know how many bison were roaming around this earth? So there was a lot of cows out there grazing or big animals that were farting.

So, so there's some silly debate with some of the environmental issues, and, and I'm by no means an expert in it, but the reality is, is there's certain areas that we don't have to fight about. And so that, that's kind of where the middlecrats idea came, hash tag middlecrats came from, that if we just unite as working people, now we were forced to be reckoned with, and they don't want a united front on any aspect. So we're going to separate The union guys from those migrants crossing the border trying to take your job and lower wages. So they want the working people to be divided instead of just, this was the plan and or some of the mission from even many years back, saying, no, maybe we should embrace these immigrants that are coming to this country and provide them with union jobs.

Now we're increasing the population of members in the unions and helping working people as a whole instead of fighting about it. So, but like situations in Chicago where you're a city of Chicago employee and you have to live in the city of Chicago, so you're making better wages than people living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But yet there's people that can commute from Wisconsin and come and work in the city and make city wages and then go back to lower cost of living areas. And that's my point. There's no skin in the game. Right. There's no skin in the game. You give all these people, not just immigrants, give all of these people a break. There's no, why don't, why don't, my, my thing is this, why don't they just become citizens first? Why don't they just go through the thing and become citizen? But no, we gave them a handout.

We gave them a handout and put them on a, what do you call it? A temporary permanent work visa. Yeah. A temporary permanent work visa. Good luck getting the citizenship, but you're going to work here while you're here. We're going to take advantage of you fully. Believe that. So. Welcome to America. Welcome, welcome the twenty-three percent going to taxes. Welcome to America. We don't, you don't need no stinking, you don't need to be a citizen. We're going to use you like a, a wet dish rag, and that's it. And, and, and that's the funny thing, because that's where, you know, people think that we can't have a, a voice in this political realm, and, and my voice doesn't matter.

But the reality is, is we can see over the last, you know, eight, eight or ten years that certain people made this an issue, that it was, it was political suicide to even talk about this issue. So for decades, it wasn't talked about. And, and so you're never going to fix a problem if you can't even have a conversation about it. Now, if you try to legally come to this country and your hearing date is six years from now, That's a problem where there could be some legitimate re-reform that needs to happen, because this process has to be faster, but they have to also be vetted.

And when, when my immigrant parents or, or grandparents came to this country through Ellis Island, they were screened for disease, they signed their name on a ledger, they were, they were made, they made the country aware of who they were and where they were going or what their jobs were or whatever the case may be. So that's the, that's the process of people having the right to come to this country. Now, should this, we as a country be somewhat selfish and try to Incentivize people that will bring value to this country to come to this country, not just the meek or the poor or the, or whatnot. Yes, you want the smartest minds. There's asylum seekers coming over here. We got asylum seekers coming, because the shit was so thick where they're coming from, it's like you got to leave. Well, that's the whole deal.

And then they, they want to change definitions of words in this society that we live in, and we were talking about language barriers before. And when you change a definition, that is a serious, serious thing. And this is a country that's supposed to be based on the rule of law. And so when you're interpreting said rule of law, the definitions of words matter. So whenever you see a definition change, your little radar should go up and say, what's the intent and who benefits From the change in this definition. Absolutely. And so the word vaccination seemed to have changed the definition to meet some of the standards and guidelines that they were trying to implement. So you can ask yourself that question. And what are the benefits of something being labeled this term as opposed to something else?

And you'll even, you'll even notice, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but they're starting to say the flu vaccine. So now they want, if they want to mandate a vaccine, and then now they want to call the flu shot a vaccine, which it never was before, now they have the possibility of mandating this other shot that benefits the profits of some possible large pharmaceutical companies. Here's, here's, here's, here's where I have a problem with. And it was during the, it was during right in the middle of the pandemic, right when it was talking about making that shot mandatory. For some. For some. That's what my red flag went up. Why members of Congress or, for the Department of Health or Health Department, these people that work for the Health Department don't even have to take the damn shot, but they pressing it on you.

And it's like, I don't, anytime, you know, and that's what made, that's what turns me off about society as a whole, because it's futile. As long as you got people in charge, as long as you got profit in mind bad things happen, and bad things happen. I forgot what, I forgot what pharmaceutical company that was that put out a drug years ago. It killed thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people and shit. The guy left, he testified in front of Congress, he slapped him on the hand, and then he left the company, and then went back, and then the, the, the pharmaceutical company hired him for Record number of fucking dollars. I mean, I don't... And you wonder why people are so skeptical. And you wonder why people are conspiracy theorists and stuff, because they plant that stuff in here. I mean, you wonder why.

You see what's going on. And it's like, when am I going to stop... When am I going to stop dreaming and going, they're for real. This is by design. This is not an accident. They mean us harm. So... It's hard for you to wrap your mind around, but yeah, you're trying to kill us. So it's almost like to play the Flipside on let's say, the agricultural industry, right? So, or we can even talk about inner city and welfare communities and this idea that even Obama was Taken aback by and, and caused, if, if people remember had quite a bit of kickback because they were trying to, there was an, some lobbying going on to try to create a national holiday for this person that, that was born Lived their whole life and died on welfare. And, and they, and, and Obama was like, well, that's really not the goal. That's not the model.

That's not what welfare is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a safety net in the event that something happens to get you back on your feet and get you back as a productive member of society or whatever you want to call it. And there was some kickback there because he was not willing to celebrate this woman's life that contributed nearly nothing to society for what just takes. So even good old Ted Nugent, Uncle Ted, you know, he, he, he has, he says that frequently that you are either in the asset column or you are in the liability column. Are you going to be an asset to society or are you just going to take? Are you giving or are you taking? And so that turns into a bit of a complicated debate as well, right? So then you can say, well, the farmers have more subsidies than all the welfare programs put together.

And so that is, that could be true, but the idea that at least they're creating a product to feed a nation. So feeding a nation is a complicated thing, and it, and, and we need cheap food in order to do that. Well, in some instances, some of the shit that we eat here don't even allow in other countries. Right. But it's cheaper. Yeah, but still, what's, what's cheaper? No, it's not. It's going to cost you in the end because you're going to end up in a hospital and the taxpayers are going to pay for your fucking healthcare. Well, that's for sure. And are you going to pay on the front end or are you going to pay on the back end? But you're going to pay. And, and, and even on the health and fitness side that, that, that I, that we've talked about even the calorie is a calorie. Yeah. Like what is a calorie?

Do we even, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not a scientist, so I don't know, but the calorie, a definition of calorie is the ability to do work, right? So do you get calories out of a 99 cent bag of Doritos? You know, but, but you might get calories out of it, but where's the nutritional value? Right. You, you eat a calorie and be hungry 5 min later because your body's still hungry for nutrition. Right. It doesn't got, you don't have any vitamins, no minerals, you got cardboard, you got, you got metal, you got aluminum, you got God knows what else is in there. That's what you got. Right. You know, and, but that same food is like a ban in other countries, but not here, cause you gotta feed the masses.

And another thing about like welfare, I think it was a Harvard professor, I think Sowell or something, I just started listening to him, I forget his last name, I know I'm butchering up his last name. It's a Harvard, was it Harvard, Sowell, black guy. And he made mention of the fact that, I forgot what the conversation was about, but, and I never thought about it like this, regarding the welfare system. He says, think about it for a 2nd. The government, it was really actually, he didn't come out and say it like this, but this is my take on it. He said, really the government is actually in charge of breaking up homes. Because they incentivize, they incentivize welfare, basically. Because I remember this coming up. As long as there was a man in the house, you wasn't getting no welfare. Right.

You wasn't getting any assistance from the government. So you have a family, you got a couple of kids, and you're barely making ends meet, and you say, you know, it would be better off if I leave so y'all can eat. And that's what happened. Right. It doesn't pay, it doesn't pay for me to stick around. They're paying me to leave. They're paying, they're paying you and my family to, for me to leave so you can raise these kids. I see them every now and then, but that's going to be, you know how it starts off. You'll see them every day, then every once a week, and then every month, and then it falls off from fun. In the meantime, the kids are getting taller and taller and taller, and the boys need a father. And they wonder, where's the father at? Well, you know, oh, I have another kid, that way I can get more money, but I can't come home.

So they basically incentivize you, and that's, and then it, and then from that generation it just snowballed. And then them kids grew up, and they replicated what the parents did, and then they grew up, and the next generation, the next generation. And so you don't even start off on an equal playing field. Right. And, and, and, and, and that comfort zone that's created or that normalcy, because this is the way I was raised, is the easiest path to fall into. You get in that comfort zone, and they're just like, I'm getting my security check, I'm getting the welfare check from the government if I have another kid, if I have another baby daddy, I have more, more, more. I mean, come on, they incentivize it. There's no doubt. And, and, and, you know, That is 100% fact.

That's, and, and the statistics are so behind that, that fatherless homes, you know, and, and, and, and it's like, it's not a coincidence that most of my African-American or people of color friends that are in, that are, that are, that are doing well and have a good head on their shoulders and good morals and good drive and, and, and, and all these sorts of things tend to be people that had a man in their life. But, you know, God bless the single mothers out there. No question. Because because they're doing a yeoman's job at the risk of, they're sacrificing their femininity, femininity, because they're not anybody got to become the father and the mother. Right. And a lot of them fail. God bless the ones that don't. That's not a, that's not a given. It's tough to raise a boy. A, a man, a boy into a man. No question.

Being a woman, you know, so, so it's, I give him all the credit in the world, but make no mistake, that is not, that is not, that's, you get a, a, a boy that comes out of a single parent home, and if he does really, really well and shit, that, congratulations. That's, that's, that's an exception to the rule. That doesn't happen to everybody. That doesn't happen to ones that would have both parents. No. That's for sure. Both parents. So when he comes out and he had only had one parent, that mother did something right, and she sacrificed. And, and that's where the, the, you know, the idea of population control and trying, so, so if, if You know, we can manage.

Back in the day, and you had a farm, you know, so, so that kind of goes back to the immigrant thing as well, that immigrants came from this country, from countries that had social systems and social safety nets and, and healthcare and all these sorts of things. They left that place to come to this country that had nothing. And then they got in a wagon and they went thousands of miles west into complete unknown territory. They were lied to by propaganda and advertisement because the, this country wanted to populate itself to help build a big enough force to take out the Native Americans that were here or whatever the case may be. So they're trotting along in their wagon and then they start hearing stories about, well, you're going to need a gun. What do I need a gun for?

Because there's these Native Americans out there, and, you know, there's these dangers, and, oh, I didn't sign up for this, but you didn't have much of a choice. And they went out to the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma land rushed, staked a claim, built a log cabin, built a home, and know that if you break your leg, you deal with it. You didn't go to the hospital. There wasn't a hospital. There wasn't a church. But once you got enough community to pool together to say, we need some of these resources, so we'd start with a church, and then we'd build a care center and have a dr. in town and all these sorts of things, and a community is then built. But the main immigrants that built that country, you think about the type of person that you're attracting. So, again, Do we want to help everybody in the world? Sure.

Who doesn't want to help starving children? Of course. But at what risk? But at what risk and at what benefit? Not that we're selfish and we're only worried about ourselves, but if you're incentivizing the smartest people to come here for education, and then maybe they stay, right? That's more of a benefit because they're going to be an asset to society, right? So you're not going to invite criminals into your society. You're going to invite someone that knows plumbing. If, if you were to start... But they're not vetting them like that. They're not vetting them like that. They're not vetting them.

And if you're incentivizing them to come Because life is so much better here, they're being lied to too, just like the immigrants during the potato famine or other large immigrants surges in this country, that yes, the American dream is alive and well, and this is a land of opportunity. And if you want to work hard, more than likely you can succeed in this country, right? But then you incentivize people by a $1,500 debit card and, and the, the idea that there's free housing and we're going to pay for your housing, we're going to pay for your this, we're going to pay for your that. Are you just setting them up to be dependent on the government system, or are you, and your incentive, so, and what people are you attracting to come for the incentive of free money and free housing? Anybody and everybody.

As opposed to the people that you were incentivizing before that you could come here and build a nation. But when is enough? All right, when you say, okay, we're full. We're full. Because when you start bringing in people and they start displacing Other people. Now these people got to go, they're shuffling them around now cause they don't know where to put them. Right. When you start shuffling them around, you, you're start, okay, when is enough? When is enough? When is, when's he gonna say, okay, time out? I have to make an appointment to get to the emergency room. When is enough? When is enough? How many people gotta be in the classroom now? When is enough? Or you just gonna have them stacked on top of each other?

It's just like when you go to Brazil, you see a, you know, they, they, they show you the beautiful parts of Brazil, you know. But when you start looking into like Brazil, it's a 3rd world country. People are living on top of each other. They're stacked up. And maybe that's, you know what, maybe from where these people came from, maybe that's how they lived. Maybe that's how they live, and so it's perfectly fine for them to live that way here, but not if you were born and raised here. I wasn't born stacked up on top of motherfuckers like that, and I can't get used to it. I won't get used to it. Right. But apparently they want us to get used to it. Well, that's what, that's part of that, that same thing that we can, we can look at another country. What's your definition of a 3rd world country?

You know, I mean, running, I'm an outdoor plumbing. I mean, indoor plumbing. If you don't have any indoor plumbing, you a 3rd world country. Well, you go to... You got a dig a hole in the ground to use the bathroom, you in a 3rd world country. When the sewers are above the ground in a trough running through the street, that's a 3rd world country. And that's not, that's not healthy, and that's where taxes and government is supposed to come in and provide some infrastructure. People, you know that don't happen. Only the, only the ones at the top get the, only the ones at the top get the great. When they have these, you know, when they have these relief programs and they're dropping off all these foods to the people that are like, had a hurricane or that tsunami that came.

Who wiped out everybody and everybody humanitarian effort that came through. And the people that are in charge, time out, time out, time out, they get 1st picks of everything. They get it all. And then they, they get it and then they distribute it who they want to distribute it to. Look at Haiti right now. You know? If, if you've, if you're following any of the stuff that's going on in Haiti, they're, it's not good. And so that's that same story that, you know, a disaster is, is an opportunity for some people. Oh, sure. And, and, you know, he who has the gold is apt to name the tune, you know? And so, and people want to take advantage of situations for themselves. And may, so, so here's, here's like a story basically an allegory about, let's say, for instance, There's a pandemic that happens.

We'll call it X, the unknown pandemic, which you're starting to hear about. They're trying to plan for the next pandemic. And so let's say this thing happens, and, and, and now you as a leader of this country say, we have to try to find a way to fix this because people are, are dying or people are going to die because it's starting to spread around the world. So you take the CEOs of what your experts say are the ten most likely companies that can solve this problem, and you sit them down in a boardroom, and you say, what do you need? What can I give you? If you had no restriction whatsoever, what do you need to, to find the answer to this problem? And let's say you're not government, you're just a philanthropist, and you, you're a Bezos or a Musk or somebody with just a more money than they know what to do with.

So I'm going to give you each $10 million. So that's $10 million each for these ten companies to go out and do some research and try to solve this problem. Now, charity is good, but I'm also, you can't get, you can't get rich by giving it away either, but sometimes the more you give, the more you get, right? So let's say, listen, I don't really want anything, but why don't you just give me some stock? So I'll buy stock, here's the money, and eight of, eight of those companies are probably going to fail. So that's $80 million you just threw out to worthless stock. But then the one company solves the problem and then makes $27 trillion and solve the problem. That problem may not have been solved had it not been for my personal effort. What I personally did and the money that I personally gave.

Now those stock options that I got for that 10 million of my initial investment made $3 trillion to me personally. So now I'm just a greedy asshole that profited off the backs of this, these suffering people during this pandemic? Not really, because you would all, there would be a lot more dead had it not been for me and my actions and charity. So God forbid I profited on the backside of it. So if the intent and the, and the whole purpose of these people doing good work, then there's nothing wrong with that. And it's just free money in a sense, because money is all just a little, you know, basically an illusion anyway. But to, to shit on a person that profited, you know, it was almost like we all try to do that. We're looking at a stock market.

And when the pandemic came, came up, I was, you know, twisting my brain saying, hey, I got a, I got an extra thousand dollars. What should I put it in? Clorox, who's making sand, hand sanitizer, or who's making the masks, 3M for, for, you know, for, for, for, for masks, and what else would be used? This is what people with some abundance are able to do. So it's almost like it could go back into the environmental issue as well, that the best thing for the environment is buying land and doing nothing with it, because that's nature, right? But you can't buy land to do nothing with it unless you have an excess. You need an abundance. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck, Then you're, you're not in a position to save anything other than yourself, which is not selfish. 1st, you have to take care of me. 1st, I have to feed my kids.

Then once we have enough food, then we could think about what's the next thing that would be great if we had. Instead of renting this one-bedroom apartment, maybe we could get a house, right? So the more abundance you have, the more opportunity you have to better your environment or your situation. And so at some point, there's selfishness involved because you have to worry about yours 1st. But once you, there's more abundance than what you actually need, now you're in a position to actually be charitable. So should the rich pay more? You know, this, this kind of whole debate, most of the rich are paying a lot more than a lot of other people.

And especially when we're kind of, you know, then we can, you know, we could define and try to separate our wants from our needs and all this other stuff that we think we need and we don't, you know, so, but that creates jobs and that creates a global economy and all these other sorts of things. So we're feeding the machine as well. So if things are going well and you're making some extra money, then what are you going to do? You might paint the house. You might, which improves the community. You might do some, you know, some bushes and some aesthetics, curb appeal going on. So now the neighborhood looks nicer. You know, this is all stuff that can only happen when people have enough. They need an abundance in order to be charitable.

So poor people aren't char, aren't, I, I, I stopped myself on that one because sometimes people with less usually give more. Time. And time is a charity also. Time, when you give personally your time, that is sometimes it doesn't have to have a, a dollar sign to it. It's your time, because some people that don't have nothing, but they give their time, you know, cleaning up a lot or, or, or, or doing some things that doesn't require money, you know, time is, and this, you know, you give what you can give, you know, so so a lot of time it doesn't have to be monetary value. and that's one thing a lot of people need to do, really, is place a lot more emphasis on time, value on time, because we don't like to waste it. And time is something that you can't get back, brother.

Once you, like you said, like you said earlier, that's a half hour I'll never get back, I'll never get back, you know, so time is very, is very valuable. Or that hour and a half documentary. Especially if you're, especially if you're on the go, you're a busy guy, you got your stuff planned out and you're gonna do boom, boom, boom, time is valuable. So And learn not to waste it. Well, that, that's part of the distraction too, and that's part of the division too, right? If I keep you working two jobs just to get by to keep up with this wonderful economy and inflation that we're dealing with right now, then you don't have time to sit here with a friend across the table and have a conversation for 2 h. Who's got time for that? Yeah, okay. But it's productive time.

It is productive time, and it's probably the most valuable time because we're connecting and we're, we're engaging and we're becoming closer and we're getting a better understanding of each other. This is probably more valuable. And, and that was almost the, you know, the old school idea of no, no politics. No religion at the dinner table. And, and, and, and in my view, it's like, if this idea of what, again, Ted Nugent, I'll give credit for this experiment in self-governance that this constitutional republic is. So everybody wants to, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of democracy, this is not a democracy, right? This is a constitutional republic and an experiment in self-governance.

My best example of this is, is I happen to purchase a vacant property in Colorado several years back, and at some point, if we could scrape enough pennies together, we're going to build a cabin or some sort of, you know, vacation home out there, which we're working on. but I, we went out there, we camped on, in tents for the 1st year, and then we even had a neighbor come up like, you realize you're on private property. So the neighbor is policing the area and concerned for the property next door, and, and they had concern with campers and fire, and, and, you know, so obviously you, you don't want irresponsible people in your neighborhood. True. And so he would, would roll down, cause there's a Roosevelt National Forest is there, so there's actually some legal campsites that are free that you could go to 1st come, 1st serve.

But he would patrol by when there's a fire ban in effect and make sure they don't have fires and all these sorts of things. And so that was the community policing itself. So we have this social contract with each other to be reasonable, to be respectful of each other, to not get punched in the mouth, right? So you say the wrong thing, you get punched in the mouth. Is that the right thing? Okay, probably not, but it's going to teach you to not say, you know, not be disrespectful to others or whatever. And we don't need a violent society that that's the only way things work, but that's the end game. That prior to that, we have to have an agreement that most of society is going to choose to follow these laws and guidelines, because the police cannot be expected to make everybody do what they're supposed to do. That's not their job.

They respond to crime already committed. You know, so this, we have to, in our heart, feel we're doing the right thing for not only ourselves, but for our community, right? So, so our com, yes, our, we come 1st because we got to eat, my kids have to eat. That doesn't make me a selfish person, but at some point next, we have to consider the community and the, and the group as a whole. And so communism or whatever the case may be. So, you know, so in this property, we camp there, and then there was a, a meeting. So there's a road association, and there's, the road association is there because this is a forest access road. And the county's definition, another important thing, what is a road? Their definition of a road is accessible by four-wheel drive Jeep.

So if the road is not accessible by four-wheel drive Jeep, then the county has a responsibility to come in and fix it. So it's a fire access road, basically. So in, in those rural communities, you still need to have roads so that fire equipment could get in. Like gravel roads. Yeah, basically an, an, an unpaved road. And so as long as you could get in there for fire mitigation and for different things, that's important for the community and for the safety of everybody, national security kind of thing. So, so this meeting, the group of citizens that had homes in that community got together, started a nonprofit organization or association to maintain this road at a better standard than what the county calls.

So potholes being filled is not the county's responsibility, but the people that are commuting every day to work out of that community and that are getting kidney failure for bouncing down this road, they said we should do something about this. So they all created a dues, they all created a fund to get together, investigate the cost, and then choose at an annual meeting what projects we're going to do next. So we, we want to fix this guardrail on the town front. And it was the purest form of what government is supposed to be, really, is the local blacksmith that's leading the town hall meeting to get together to vote on issues and understand where the problems are, figure out how much resources we have, and allocate those resources to what the community would like to be improved.

It was the purest thing I ever saw in a sense that this is what government's supposed to be, not a full-time job. In a full-time position where you, you're making multi-millionaires in a matter of, you know, six or eight years and pretending that inside trading and conflict of interest and revolving door policies and next thing you know, you're a lobbyist and next thing you know, you're on the board of a corporation and before you know it, you're married to somebody. It's in plain sight. It's, it's absolutely in plain sight. It's in plain sight. It's like, and it's like, huh. But don't look over here. Look over here, see? Keep them distracted. Keep them over here. How about them bears, huh? Don't look, how about them bears, huh? You know what? That's, that's how they did it back in the Roman days. The gladiators? They built the Colosseum.

Have people slaughtered in them chariots, the big show, but don't look over here. Yeah. We got you, we entertain you. And the more things change, the more things stay the same. Because instead of gladiators right now, they're called football players and baseball players and hockey players and it's the same difference. We do need to be entertained. Once again, we admitted earlier a few a few moments, a few, many moments ago that the, the idle, the idle mind is the devil's playground. True. Right. So we do have an obligation to be, to keep people distracted. So, and, and that's where... To a point. When you become a fan, that's where the word fan comes from, fanatics. Yes. Because when you become a fanatic, then all bets are off. Well, there's also the, the social psychology on tribalism too, right?

That, that, that they're almost experimenting with because that, we saw that You know, it, it almost goes back, you know, when, when you're talking, you know, some of the atrocities in the world, whether it's with the Jews or whether it's with Hitler or whether it's with some of these different things, and, and, and back in the World War II days when, when you could sit there and, and wonder, how could the neighbors, how could the people just allow this to happen? And, and so think back to that time. And again, if we flip side it around and say, well, okay, I'm a person living in that time, and what am I doing? Just like society today, most people are not all that concerned about the political ongoings in the nation on a day-to-day basis.

Some of those shows in different areas, I find some entertainment and value in keeping up with current events and, and, and following some of these different things for And, and enough to say, you know, you gotta poke your eyebrow up a little bit and say, well, that seems a little strange. Like the poor Fannie Willis in a, down in Georgia and her boyfriend and, and, and paying exorbitant, three times the amount of money and... Now, this is what I don't mean to cut you off. Yeah. But this is a thought I got about that. And here's why I could not understand about that whole thing, cause I haven't been keeping up on it, just hearing bits and pieces here and there. How did that get in front of a judge so fast? He, she was trying Trump, okay? Trump brought charges against her. Don't they gotta go on like a court docket?

Well, I mean, they fast forward that thing right to the... She's in court. I'm like, how did that happen so fast? Yeah, so, so one, one, one of my resources is Megan Kelly, who is an attorney, and she's got a podcast on Spotify and Apple and all the different, so, so she's great, she's smart, she's, she's a lawyer, and she really dives deep into a lot of the criminal cases and different things going around the country, whether it's all the Trump allegations or whether it's whatever, some of the, whatever's up in the media, because she loves that stuff. She's a lawyer, and she gets into it, she gets Durchowitz and some of these other experts that talk about some of the legal aspects.

And, and that's where, you know, with these judges and with society and everything else, that whether a judge is a Republican or a Democrat should not even be mentioned. No. It's, it's ridiculous, because now, it's almost like, well, that's what Trump does, though. He'll Well, he hates me because he's a Democrat. Right. He's the one that bring, he, he opens that can of worms and, and, and it's, and, and. And both sides do it. Yeah. He opens that can of worms. Equally and, and grossly, there's no question both sides do that. But my question still remains, how did that try with Fannie Willis get fat-tracked so fast? I mean, look at Sam Bankman-Fried, he's just getting tried. I mean, how did that get, you accuse somebody or something, they gotta, you gotta be put on the court, how did that get put front and center right now?

So, so, so one of the issues is, is when that came up, so it wasn't even Trump's lawyer that came up with this. So, so in the Atlanta case, there's actually like. Twelve people that are indicted for various things, people on Trump's teams, people, Trump's lawyers, all these different people. And one of the other person's personal attorney is this woman that I, I should know her name, but she's, she came up with this all on her own and actually had this kind of whistleblower. She overheard a conversation and she started the investigation to look into some of these allegations and then found all this information out. So it comes down to, there's, there's so many awesome conversations we can have with this, but it comes down to, like, if you live in a glass house, don't throw stones, right?

And, and so, okay, let's just say, I give that the benefit of the doubt. I said, let's just say she's guilty, whatever it is she's accused of. What's that got to do with Donald Trump? So, so the problem is... You said a conflict of interest, but w-w-the, the only thing, well, he said because she has a conflict of interest that exonerates him from his wrongdoings. He, so that's what, he's looking to be exonerated because she did something bad, or they consider illegal or whatever. He's looking to be exonerated for his bad behavior. So, so 1st of all, let's, let's say in a court of law, we're going to presume innocence until proven guilty. Okay.

Okay, so, and, and so if these allegations are made against the person, which seems to happen pretty, pretty frequently in the political realm right now, that if we're going to use, the punishment is not the crime, the punishment is the process. Okay. Right, so if I accuse, if I accuse you, if I'm going to run against you and then, so, so it's almost like The idea of targeting a political adversary is dangerous for soc- for this, for this constitutional republic, because, and, and, and it's happened for years and years and years.

This is not new, that somebody runs and he doesn't want to play ball, and so all of a sudden allegations come out, all of a sudden there's an investigation, and then all of a sudden you're, you lose the election, because all the slam media and money comes in, says that promoting all these allegations and this investigation that's started against you, the election's over, you lose. And then the results of the investigation are not enough evidence to support a charge. How many times has that happened in history? I'm not even talking about Trump or, or, or anybody else, that it's a tool that they use that should not be allowed to be used. No, it should be like, you're right. I'm thinking like this. Let's just say she has all these accusations against her, and she does, okay? I don't care if she's guilty of sin.

They should say, okay, we'll have, we'll cross that bridge after this trial. The problem, the problem is- They're saying whatever she done, whatever she done or didn't do does not excuse his, what he did. If he did it. If he did it, well, let's just say he, okay, looks like got him on tape, dude. Anyway, is that the one, is that Georgia trial, that's the one he called up for those, those, that's the one he was on the phone and said, all I need is 11,000 votes. That's, that, there's a lot going on in that because there's a multiple different charges on multiple different things. Nevertheless, nevertheless, why don't we just let that play out? Then to deal with her after the trial.

So the lead prosecutor that brought the charges against this individual, if it's proven that they perjured themselves in court and they're liars, then I'm sorry, but you don't have credibility to even bring these charges. And then it gets even more complicated because there's cell phone data that she's got her boyfriend, and then she went to all these different trips, and then she claimed she paid her home wage, and she paid in cash. So how does that, how does that exonerate, so nobody's perfect. No, nobody's perfect. She, I'm just saying, why not across that bridge? Just saying she's the trial has to be thrown out because, the trial has to be thrown out because she's not a perfect person. I'm sorry. Well, they're not throwing out, they're not throwing out the trial. But I'm just saying, why not cross that bridge? Why not?

Because there's mudding up the waters. Okay, you, you're bringing up these charges. Okay, we'll address those after the case. Unless there is some, because whatever it is that she's being charged with is not going to exonerate him. It's not gonna, it's not, he, she didn't twist his arm or point a gun to his head to be brought up on those charges. No, no, she brought the charges. I mean, but I'm just saying. As a, as a district attorney, that was what she did. She brought the charges. So now, if I brought charges against you about you raping a woman, all right, and, and then not only you've done it, you've done it ten times, I have my Facts or whatever may be construed either way, one way or another, and then it turns out that I've done this before, right?

I've accused, I've falsely accused people many times before, and it's exposed that I'm an absolute fucking liar, and I can't tell the truth to save myself. Oh, they're saying that she's making these charges up. That is part of it, that if you, if you're accusing... Even the phone call she made up. That, that could be, again, interpreted in different contexts. See, now I'm done with it. So, so, but that's, but again, that's... How can you, that's common sense. That's not the only charge, 1st of all, so, with this case. So the whole point is, if, if, if you're accusing somebody else of lying, And you yourself are a liar, you don't have the credibility to accuse the other person, particularly when you're breaking the law yourself. So if you're a criminal... That's nonsensical to me.

You, you think somebody that's breaking the law has the right to, to lie to somebody about somebody else? No, I'm just saying, I'm just saying this. It, it's like if I'm being char, up if I'm being charged with a lie, and I'm getting off because you're also a liar. I mean, the charges you brought against me are true, but because of some misdeed you did before made you out to be a liar, this has got to be thrown out. So, so again, we're, y, y, we're getting into a place with how we feel. No, I'm just saying. And, and what the law is. Because w, w. So you're saying he did something, but the, the hearing, the, the, the, the, the truth is we don't know at this point whether he's guilty or not. We have an opinion. No, wait a minute, we have proof. You have a phone. He's on the proof on the phone.

And you're saying people say, oh, you just, that's just locker room talk. So that's one of, that's. That's just locker room talk, you gotta dismiss that. That's one of what. That's, that's, that's the smoking gun. That's one of like ten charges. That's the smoking gun. It doesn't get, that's the smoking gun they said they want everybody to dismiss. So. It's on the phone, he's asking for, he's asking, all I want is. And people say, you can interpret that a different, no, he, no. So here, here's a story, here's a story that might explain it a little bit. There's, if you own a property in Elgin, they have a renter's license that you have, a, a, a landlord license you have to get. And, and at 1st I was like, this is crazy. What kind of, you know, red tape this is. Just give me the permit or whatever I need.

And it, part of the permit was $25 permit or something like that. But then you had to go to this eight-hour class on Saturday. And I was like, I'm trying to do the right thing here. I'm trying to be legal. And, and now I got to go to detention. That's how I looked@it.so I go to this class cause I had to. And I tell you, it was the most informative thing. It, it had so much value. My pen never stopped moving, taking notes. And they explained the whole process of, of landlords and tenancy and, and tenants' rights, tenants' rights and landlord rights and all these different things and the eviction process and all these different things that I definitely didn't know. And usually the scamming tenants know the law way better than the landlord does, and they could take advantage of that.

And so their, their way of fixing the community and getting some of the undesirable renters in their community was to educate the landlords on how to properly and, and legally screen tenants, and then they will not be allowed in our community. So then the tenants, the word will get around that, well, they do background checks, they do eviction tax, you know, Elgin does all this stuff. You can't get a place in Elgin. You're going to get denied, but Carpentersville, they'll take you. So then let, let the crime-ridden undesirables go someplace else. Well, interesting, and it's interesting because that kind of goes into the whole migrant crisis in the country in the same way.

Right, so now that we're educated and you learn the right ways that you could, you know, that you have to have your criterias in place and you can have your guidelines, and as long as it's not based on race, color, creed, or source of income, then you can deny people based on other criteria. And as long as you're up front with those criterias, it's perfectly legal. So it was very interesting, but this judge, this judge from King County actually got on and did a twenty-minute presentation. A video presentation, and he's like, listen, I know you landlords think I hate you, but I don't, right? And you always think I always rule in front, in favor of the tenants when it comes to the eviction process, and I don't. Here's the deal. I have to follow the law, and the law states that you must do this, this, and this, in this order.

And if you come into my courthouse and you didn't do step B, I have to rule in favor of the tenant. This is the law. It's not emotional. And so when you come into my courtroom, this is what I expect you to have. So again, very educational to the landlords. Is a seven-day notice, do the weekends count, or is it only working days? I don't know. If I were you, I would just give ten days on a seven-day notice. Or how about if the ten is going month to month or half to lease? It's different too. So there's all these different variables. So exercise on the side of caution, because then you protect yourself and then you don't have to start the whole process over. And if this is what you show up in my courtroom with, I will rule in your favor every time.

So this is part of this political discussion about attorneys and Democrat and Republican and all these different things. Can they equally just evaluate what the law says? And we have a lot of lawyers in this country for a lot of different reasons, because the way the law is interpreted and the way definitions are changed and past precedent in previous cases, it's a whole nother language. But the fact is, is they can't They have to rule by the law. And, and, and we have to have some trust in the system, which, which is degrading. It's degrading. And, and, and it's not a great time for trust in any of these systems for a lot of reasons, for systemic issues in the inner cities, on incentivizing fatherless homes, which destroys a generation of people.

These are all the same kind of, kind of things that, and, but again, in the same way, the culture, and that's where like, you know, we're, we're good enough friends, we're good friends, and, and, and I respect you. There's a couple of people, cause, cause it almost comes down to You know, when, with playing the race card or, or these different things now. I got into a conversation once a while back, and, and I was like, I was confused at why I was kind of like getting torn apart when I wasn't being insulting. I w- I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I'm like, what the hell's going on here? And actually, it was my sister that k- kind of shot me like, well, you know, here, maybe you want to read this book.

So white fragility I read, and it's all about white guilt and white shame, and, and part of this, the other side of the argument that you're, you're born with privilege and white privilege. So, so do I admit that I have white, I have and have benefited from white privilege? Of course. Absolutely, and, but the way different neighborhoods were structured growing up and all these different things that I got in some trouble here and there with kids' stuff, this and, and, but to say kids are just funnin' when they kill somebody, well, that's not kids just funnin'.

No, not@all.you know, but there's other things with minor little infractions or whatever the case may be, and, and, and if my life happened to a person of color in the, in the same order, there probably would have been higher consequences for them than what had happened to me throughout my life. And whether I'm, I'm just lucky or whether I know people or whether, you know, God was looking out for me or whatever the case may be, could be, you know, a lot of different things, but So, so learning some of that helped.

So you, I'm fairly certain it was you, for sure you, but a couple other people that I'll have on the podcast as well, just even when it comes to black-white race relations, I directly said that I, I understand that it's a complicated issue and I want to make myself better, because we're, we're back to that growth thing, and I want to learn and I want to be better. So the, the book was pretty interesting in a, in a sense that like you'll even get like inter, interracial couples where you can have a, a white guy that married a black woman, and then he's got this holier-than-thou attitude like, well, I can't be racist, I'm married to a black woman. Well, that's not anywhere near possibly true.

And, and having that self-justification that, oh, I adopted a black kid, I can't be racist, where you could be, in a sense, the white patriarchal that feels it's your obligation to save this black person is, could be racist in itself. Right, so it's very complicated. So, so having a discussion with a friend and saying, look, I am asking, please, if at any time I say something that feels inappropriate to you, I would like you to bring that up to me because I am willing to learn. Okay. And, and instead of... It's just all about being respectful to one another. That's it. That's the most. That's mostly. That's it. But, but unfortunately, because it's kind of a complicated issue, sometimes if something hurts you as, as a black man that was said, and you can justify it by saying, well, Carl didn't mean it that way. Carl's not a mean guy.

I know Carl, he's a nice guy. Or, or if in the midst of a conversation, some other person of color says, that motherfucker, did he just say that? And then, and then you say, no, no, no, no, no, Carl's cool, you know, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't mean that what I said was right. And I probably shouldn't have said it if it offended somebody. Now, people could be oversensitive and this, and this, this kind of thing too, and it could have just been unjust or it could have been a joke and people take things too serious. But if, if it was something that was definitely inappropriate, then do I have to, I, the only way I can learn is by knowing about that. But unfortunately, the person of color could be sitting there and they don't want to say something because they don't want to come off as somebody that's super sensitive about things.

So, so a lot of times people just choose to keep their mouth shut about it. And that's not necessarily right. You shouldn't need to just accept the fact That this, this is normal language, unless you have a willing party that, that's willing to learn and talk about that as an issue. Well, what offends one doesn't offend the next. It's not across the board. What offends one doesn't offend. It depends on a person's experience. I'm 63 years old now. What I used to get offended by 30 years ago, I don't get offended by now. You dig? So it's like, because the, the thing is, is like they say, it's like the Stoics would say, it's like the Stoics would say, those, if you let a person anger you, he controls you.

If you get riled up and angered by a person and lose your control, if you can, if a person can work you up like that, he's controlling you. And you have to look at it like that. And like you say, you're looking at it with some people look at it, taking it as personal, but I don't, I don't, like I said, I, I look at it a lot different. 30 years ago, I'm different than I am today. And and I'm better off for it because it's trivial to me. Person's opinion, I give two fucks about. Person says that it doesn't change, cause I'm like this. I'm, I'm on a, like you say, I have a why. I have a why, and I'm on a mission. All that's just background noise to me. That's just background noise to me. That just serves no other purpose other than to slow me up and take me off my mission, and that's not gonna happen. So, like 30 years ago, a bit different.

Today, it's not. That, that's not important. That's, that's not important. You can't, you can't control the way a person talks. You can only control yourself. That's huge, of course. You can only control yourself, and what offends one doesn't offend another. I can get, I can get offended by, if I allow myself to be offended, I can get offended by any little thing. But I don't, because it's not, it's not important right now. It's not important. It's, it's, it's, it's gone. It's not important. Especially something that's like race, I give a fuck what person says about me. It don't change nothing. It don't change nothing. I give a fuck when I, only thing about race that I care about, if I don't get the same opportunity.

You know, I don't want to hand out, it's like James Brown said, to open the door, and I, I, I, I'll go, I'll walk through it. You know, I, I don't have that problem. I just want the same opportunities as the next guy. That's it. So all the other stuff is just background noise to me. There's a whole, like I said, like Jay-Z said, I got 99 problems, and that ain't one. And, and that obviously that's... And trust me, brother, that ain't one of them. That's, that's, and, and that's the, the healthiest attitude to have. And, and of course, obviously a, a younger, a younger person might be more, and have to be fired up or to be upset about stuff, and that's how you learn your way. You get punched in the mouth. And then you don't say that no more, right? I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you an example. I like, so I'm an army brat.

I was born in the military. By the time I was three years old, I lived in three different cities. That's no shit. Yeah. I spent three Christmases in three different cities by the time I was three. I'm used to being around different people. met all kinds. And when I was in the 5th grade, I lived in Stuttgart, Germany. And we did a, we did a field trip to the Black Forest. It was a joint venture with another 5th grade class, German class, and they put us in a, in the, in the hotel in the Black Forest in room, we were roommates together. And it, being in, in Stuttgart, Germany, you had to, in the 5th grade, you even had to learn to, to speak German, you know, eins, zwei, you know how to count, do colors, good morning, good just the greetings and whatnot. So They were complete strangers, and we're standing in a room.

I'm standing in a room next to him, he's looking at me, and I'm look, he's never seen a black guy before. Never seen a black boy before, and I never, and I could not understand him. So what came out his mouth was chocolate. I forget that. And somehow I got offended by that. Don't know why, but it wasn't something to get offended by because that was just his description. He never see, that was, that was the 1st thing that cost his, because as a 5th grader, you don't think like, you just think he just being, because you know what being outcast is like all the time. He said, oh, here go, here we go again, you know, here we go again. But he's in a, he don't know nothing like that. And, you know, that's what I'm thinking, here we go again. And but it wasn't like that. And so I'd said all that to say, it's, you know, you can't control a person.

You can't control, only thing you can do is control yourself. And so what a person, as a matter of fact, when a person is, like, like you just say, you don't know when you're being, you asked me to check you if I'm being offensive or something like that and stuff, but that's, that's, that's the example that I come up with. He didn't know. He wasn't trying to be offensive. It was just a description. I took it personal. You know what I'm saying? So, but the reality was that you were very different than anything he's ever seen before. So it's only natural for him to question, how is this even possible? I've never seen anything like this. You know, anytime you get called out of your name, it's, it's offensive. Right. Anytime, to us that was. Or uncomfortable. Uncomfortable.

Anytime, we used to have this old saying back in the day, it says how's, how's the use to go, it goes damn it, let me think about it, it was had something to do with Tarzan. God. No, I can't remember it off the top of my head. That's all good. But, but while you're processing or thinking about that, it's, it's interesting cause even like the way, like the Germans teach about Nazism and their bad history that they had, they don't hide from it. They don't try to delete it. They teach their kids that and, and, and then teach them to be better as a result of the mistakes they made instead of just trying to censor history and pretend like this shit never happened. And, and that's an important lesson from the German people. And if you, and you probably have more experience from being there as a kid, that maybe the culture is different there.

It's way different. It's way different. I used to love to play. Used to play marbles a lot, man. Used to go to marble parks and we used to, man, it was just, I don't know, it just. I don't know, it was very different than it is today. It was just very different. It was just, I don't know what it was, man. It was just very different. Well, even today, it's like that's part of that human nature thing where it's okay to question things that are, that seem different. You know, whether a kid sees somebody in a wheelchair for the 1st time and, and says, what's wrong with that person? You know, and, and, and the kid person might be offended. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm perfect, you know, or whatever. so we can't be responsible, like you said, for the reactions of others. No.

We can use it as an opportunity to learn and, and, and, and we, you know, and, and go on from there because That's the only way we can learn, but we have to be willing. And, and my, you can have a three-year-old playing at the park, and, and, and so the 1st time he ever sees a person of color playing at that park, if he's all grown in a predominantly white neighborhood, obviously he's going to say that kid's different. But 3 s later, they don't give a shit. I was getting ready to say they don't. Let's play on the, let's, you, you, your weight on the other end of the seesaw. They don't care. Your weight on the other end of the seesaw, that's all I need to go up and down and have a good time. That's it. We should learn from kids. There's no question. They should learn, because kids are like the truest, the truest lie detector.

I say they're born geniuses, we make them dumber every day. And most of that, stay away from that kid, blah, blah, blah. That, that comes from the parents. That doesn't come from the kid, because they don't care. You want to play? Let's play. Dude, I'm going to tell you, this is a true story. If you don't like it, I'm taking my ball, I'm going home. This is a true story. I was, it was one of the, I've been on my block for over 20 years, and I live on a corner, cut my grass every summer. I do my own lawn maintenance, probably one of the last holdouts in the neighborhood. And I was out there, nice sunny day, I was cutting the grass and sh, and I'm doing the work, just shorts on. And, you know, I was still working out back then. I was looking good, I'm a fae.

But my next door neighbor across the street, his name was Mike, he's, he's the baby's daddy. You know, he, they're not married, he's the baby that he lived over, I shouldn't have said his name anyway. But anywho. You didn't have, you didn't have a last name, you're good. Any, anywho. Shout out to Mike. Yeah, anywho, he was like, he had a son, he had this plan with his son, and he was watching me cut the grass, and I could hear him whisper. Yeah, I could hear him whisper like, oh, that's gross, isn't it? That's that's just so gross, isn't it? That was, words are like that. Things like that. I could hear it. You know, he was already, he was already conditioning his kid. He was putting it in his kid's ear. I can already hear him say it to his own kid. That's how they get that way. Yeah, no doubt. That's how they get that way.

They don't naturally come out that way. No. And I hear him, I was like, ain't that a bitch? You know, they're like, okay, okay, I see where you're coming from. You know, but if I had, but let me tell you something, but I had to cut that same stretch of, stretch of grass with a dad bod, nothing would have been said. Yeah, right. Had a, had a, had a, had a beer gut hanging over my, nothing would have been said. Yeah, yeah. Had, he'd seen a brassiere, nothing would have been said. He's just jealous. You know, he'd seen a six pack, and he's like, that's gross, ain't it? And then the, as the white man's out there trying to tan. That's crazy. Why does it tan, dude? Because the color makes you look bigger. It does, man. It looks, you look more showy. I wouldn't, I wouldn't burn either. Yeah. So I have a, a very similar story.

And, and that's where, okay, listen, folks, we all understand that racism exists. And, and, and, and, and it's, but overall, it's probably getting better than it used to be. And are we in a better place today than we were yesterday? And even having a few people willing to have the discussion is obviously much more important, and, and it's come a long way from that. And so, but that's where the censorship is so critical, that just to try to delete or not see anything that might offend you is not the answer. You have to oust those people. You don't have to shame them. You don't have to oust them and try to get them to lose their job. That's what it's called, fit shaming. Fit shaming. Yeah, that's, that's exactly what it's called. All right, folks. Not fat shaming. Here on Flipside Frolic, you heard it 1st. Fit shaming is a new thing.

It's a, it's a new thing. It's worse than fat shaming. It's fit shaming. Because you're a conservative white Aryan nation skinhead if you're, if you think that you're supposed to be fit. I mean, you get balled into that category of being a conservative or being right-wing extremist because you're talking about maybe the benefits of natural vitamins and some of these healthy immune system and, and, and all these sorts of things. Like I say, you know how we do at work on birthdays, they bring donuts into the lunchroom and stuff. So if I decline to have a donut this time, it's like you could have one, you could have one. They fit shame, you could have one. And the stuff like, you know, I have my moments, but I pick my moments. You know what I'm saying? I decide what junk I want to eat. So my time, so my time.

I decide what junk I want to eat when I want to eat it and shit, you know? Maybe I'm saving up for to celebrate on something, you know, sometimes, you know? But but it's a such thing. People talk about fat shaming, but they don't talk about a whole lot about fit shaming. People that try to, cause you know why? Because over 50% of this country is obese. So, so right, right on that. I'll, I'll finish, I'll go, I'll backtrack a 2nd just to tell a similar, not to one out, but it's a similar story that yes, racism exists in this country in, in some ways. And, but we have to see it in order to choose not to associate with the people that I don't want to associate with, cause I don't want to be around those people. And if you're around those people, you're, some of that crap wears off.

So I, I had a, a friend back in the day that I would hang out with and he was married and, but he was a, he was a closer when it came to the ladies, even though he was married. The closer. He was a closer. He got the job done. My man. And I wasn't huge on that. Okay. And, and so I aspired to kind of be like him in the sense that those abilities to be able to be confident and, and have those characteristics that seem to work when it comes to closing on a deal like, on a situation like that. Although you can't respect a man for d-cheating on his wife or this, you know, so, so it wasn't. Oh, no. But the more you hang around with a bunch of guys that cheat on their wives and girlfriends, then guess what? It's just a lot easier to fall into that.

And then before you know it, you're, you're in a situation that you shouldn't be in, and, and, and it's not the right thing. So we have to choose who we hang with and, and what those relationships are. And if you want to soar with eagles, you don't wallow with worms. And you hang with people that have what you want. If you want to get, you know, if you want to start a business or You know, research somebody that started a business and do what they did. If you want what we have, you have to do what we did, in a sense. And so you research Home Depot or some of these founders that had these visions and everybody else told them they're crazy and they persevered and they determined and they persevered and they followed the vision, they followed the vision. The Home Depot story was a beautiful one because he followed the vision.

And when he goes to venture capitalists and all these people looking for money to build a store and open a franchise, they're like, you want to open up a bigger Ace Hardware? Like Ace Hardware and True Value Hardware are dying. The hardware industry is horrible right now and you want to do it bigger? Good luck. And that model, he trusted his vision to even when he 1st opened his store. All that T. rex system, like the wholesale industry that we see with Costco and Menards and Lowe's and everybody that ripped off his model that was working, but he was the 1st and his vision was true, and he had those T.

rex systems in the store that you walk around with, and he didn't have any money for inventory to stock all those shelves with all the excess inventory, so he ended up getting stickers from the manufacturers and had empty cardboard boxes with the sticker on the side of like lawnmowers and stuff in those top shelves because he had to hold true to the vision. And, and, and so all those empty boxes up there were, were useless, right? No. He was trusting, he was trusting the muse. And, and he stuck with the vision, and this is what we have now. This is the industry standard because of somebody's creativity that did something different. And somebody that, hundreds of people told him he's out of his mind and you should quit. You know, if it was that, if it was that easy, somebody else would have done it.

You know, if it was such a good idea, somebody else would have done it and all that negativity and all that. But anyway, the, the, so my eleven-year-old daughter had her schoolmate over that happened to be a girl of color. So there's two girls driving, riding their bikes in the neighborhood, and it's predominantly white neighborhood. We have, you know, there, there's affluent people of color in the area, if you look for them, or if you choose to be friends with them. Okay. Airline pilot, and, you know, there's a few different neighbors, right? But here's these two girls riding their bikes down the block, and my daughter comes up and says, I heard that guy over there say the N word at, kind of talking about us.

And it was like, this guy's going to use that word in hearing distance from two eleven-year-old girls riding their bike down the street, like this is a problem for the neighborhood. And, and again, You can build anger and feel like I have some obligation to do something about this, but the reality is, is it sure as hell ain't worth it to even give that guy any free rent in my head. But I sure know that my, my son's not going to be doing some sleepover at this guy's house. Well, it's, it, it's, it, he tells on himself more than he knows. He just, he speaks volumes about himself. When you use language like that around kids and stuff, what are you trying to impress? Yeah. Well, I mean, are you that, I mean, come on, man. Insecure in yourself. I mean, that, that you speak volumes about yourself. I mean, that's the extent of your vocabulary.

That's horrible, right? I mean, that's the extent of your vocabulary. You should be ashamed of yourself. I mean, these kids, I mean, they didn't do nothing to you. I mean, the last time you speak, I mean, it leaves a lot to be desired. Yeah. You know, so it, you're telling yourself more than anything. I mean, you could spew any kind of nonsense out of your mouth, any vile nonsense out of your mouth. You talk, you tell on yourself more than anything. It tells people just how ignorant you are. And that's why I just let them talk. Let them talk. Whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram, whether it's TikTok. You gotta let the people talk. They're toxic people. And it's like, you know, and they don't realize, and it only becomes more toxic if you allow it to seep in.

Well, and of course, now people out there, I, I, you know, there's all kinds of listeners and different capabilities and understandings of how social media works. And, and, and almost towards the end, it, it, we have to understand that clickbait is a real thing. Oh, no question. The media is looking for clicks. They're looking for time for advertisers to sell ads, to rep, to generate revenue. So some of the outlandish, crazy talk that we see is just some idiot looking for clicks. They don't necessarily believe that. But if it works, they're going to continue. The ones on the street, that, that ain't fake. That ain't fake. And the thing about it is God forbid he's an employer of somebody's company. Cause you know who he's going to hire, not the nigga. Right. Just saying. So just this whole, he just.

If he speaks that way, let's just hope he's not smart enough to own a company, to hire or in charge of hiring employees or, or any kind of a, just hope he's not an authority. But there are people in authority that think like him, still. No question. There are people in authority that make decisions whether to hire, fire, or whatever. They got people like that with that mindset, still. And that's, that's the confusion with all. If they can't look past that, and if they really cared about the company or what's best for their profit motive, they would hire the best person for the job regardless of that. Oh, there's no question about it. It should be merit-based, of course, this society.

And that's, but that's where some of the DEI gets the crazy people talking, too, that to have an obligation to hire a certain percentage of different types of people. You know what, that's the reason why I had to come up with affirmative action. because I mean, granted, I mean, I don't agree with a lot of affirmative action. I think you've got to earn your way through a lot, but it kind of offsets... Hey, how's it going, champ? It kind of offsets fair hiring practices or fair treatment in general. It just kind of offsets that, because if you're asking people to deal with you squarely, fairly that's a tall order. And to mitigate that, to kind of equal it out, it's not perfect, but it's something. Because people, if you're going to rely on people to do the right thing, Always? Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. That's not gonna happen. Right.

I mean, I have a problem with dumbing down test scores in colleges and stuff like that to make it all inclusive so everybody doesn't get a fucking in, in, I, I, I got a problem with that. I mean, you gotta earn your way through, but to some degree, affirmative action is, is necessary. And, and it's bought bought upon because of the society we live in. And, and that's where everything's complicated, too. So, so, like, the idea of having a boardroom, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're making a product or whatever it is, if you're giving value or creating something that you hope to give value to society, then there is an absolute benefit of having a diverse group in that meeting to get perspectives from other cultures and other ideas and other things.

So that would be a scenario where you could almost, you can easily justify that there needs to be diversity in this situation. But that's not all situations. So like the airline pilot thing is a new one that's out in the, in the media lately. The forcing diversity as, is for, for airline pilots because there's not enough people of color or women of color that are pilots. And now you're a passenger in that plane and you say, do I really give a shit what nationality or what race this pilot fine is paying is? No, I want somebody qualified. I thought we was past that. Speaking of pilots and whistleblowers, Boeing. Yeah. Motherfucker come up missing, dude. Yeah. I mean, it's like, are you kidding me? In plain sight?

I think didn't he make a video about him saying, if I If I come up missing or I'm not suicidal, I didn't self-delete myself or whatever, they was... This is another one where the way attention whores, and that social media feeds attention whores, right? That people just want attention. And if you were, let's say, planning on ousting yourself, but you wanted to go out with a bang, And you wanted people to talk about you and blah, blah, blah. And obviously it would make sense to maybe make some story up like that and say, the government's out to get me, this and that, blah, blah, blah. On the other flip side of that, if you don't think for a 2nd that a multi-billion dollar corporation hasn't done some shady shit in the past for the sake of protecting their image or their profitability, then you're, then you're living in a dream world also.

But look, think about it for a 2nd. The door fell off the damn plane. The door came off the plane. Now say it. And you, and you had, you didn't need no whistleblower. You had a few incidences with Boeing. Door fell off, something fell off a plane while in flight. They got incidences. They didn't need nobody to say something's wrong here. And, and once again, this is where government regulation is something that is necessary because corporate profit is going to try to limit anything that's going to cost additional time or money. And safety and quality takes time and money. It's those three things that we talk about, right? You got three things. You got safety, or I'm sorry, you got quality, you got price, and you got speed. You can't have all three. Which two do you want?

So if you want it done fast, it's not going to be done quality, and it's not going to be done cheap, because you got to have nine guys on the job to finish the job in, in two days, as opposed to one guy that might take six weeks to do the job, or whatever the case may be. And so when it comes to regulation and F-C-FAA regul-guidelines and government bureaucracy that makes it more expensive for a company to be successful because all these hoops they got to jump through and all this other regulation, this is the stuff that some people on the right are trying to mitigate because it's preventing innovation and it's preventing new companies from starting and it's keeping that corporate monopoly going because it's too hard for startups to get going. But it's necessary.

And so when they try to cut back inspectors because the federal government, federal spending, and they don't have, they don't have money for that to be looking into everything, and now you know in the airline industry at United and American and stuff that the mechanics are signing off on things. So now you're going to put the mechanic's responsibility on signing off that he did the job properly instead of somebody coming by and double-checking his work, because we're all imperfect, and sometimes we miss a bolt or whatever the case may be. It's like a good writer still needs an editor to double-check his work to see if he missed something or whatever. True, true. But dude, if you're spending 20 grand for a hammer, somebody ain't paying attention. There's government spending, that's an issue.

If you're spending, well, if you're spending astronomical, you think they're... It's just like, for instance, it's just like, you take it to the stock market for a 2nd. When, when Gary Gensler issue out these fines to some of these companies for wrongdoing, say like they find some wrongdoings on a company, they've been doing it wrong for five years. I'll fine you $3 million. $3 million. Who'd I write that up to? Yeah. Who's, who gets the money? Yeah, but, but not just that. That's a traffic ticket, dude. Yeah, it's not. I done made 2 billion. And so when you talk about. That's 2 billion. It's just the cost of doing business. When you talk about incentivizing people to do right or wrong, whether it's incentivizing a, a, a, a person of color, a mother of color who has children to get divorced or kick daddy out for money. Don't get married.

Or whether it's incentivizing crime or nefarious behavior in the corporate world because the penalty. So, so let's say you cheat on your taxes for 15 years. I'm not saying you are. I'm not saying I am. I know where you're going. But it's $19,000 a year that you ain't paying. So over ten years, it's a hundred and $90,000. You made a fortune. Now you got pop and they charge you 30 grand. You say, well, guess what? You got me. I'm still going to cheat. You got me. I'm not cheating, folks. But if you're, if the, if the punishment is insignificant compared to the pr, the motivation or the profits based on doing the wrong thing, then you're incentivizing people to do the wrong thing. So maybe it brings us back to this, this. So when they cry broke, they don't have enough money, maybe you need to charge them more on these fines and shit.

Well, that would make sense. But then who's going to end up paying? You. You know. Because the, the cost of the product's just going to go up. They're not really taking it out of their pro, pa, pockets. You know, but yet they can steal. It's almost like a politician that gets caught stealing a bunch of money. All their assets should be frozen as if it was a drug dealer. That you take their house, you take their car, you take everything they've ever bought because you just assume that every dollar they ever made was made by, by, by selling illegal drugs. Do the same thing to a politician. That's right. Strip it off from them. They should at least calculate how much money you stolen and I want it all back. No doubt. And sell every asset until. I want it all back.

And, and cause, cause it's like in my, it's almost like in a, in a, in a, in a hurting culture and community. And if slinging dope is the only way to feed your kids, that's obviously not nearly as bad as some well-to-do politician stealing taxpayer dollars. It's worse. In a sense, because, you know, and so that should be held as a high crime in, in, in so many different ways. Well, drug dealers like, I got to eat. My kids got to eat. you know, you got this guy over here calling me this, that, and the other, he ain't gonna hire me. Right. I ain't gonna starve. Right. I mean, that, and that, that gets into, you know, you throw a steak in front of a dog, he's gonna eat the thing unless, unless he's trained. Got to eat, bro. So, and that takes a lot of work. You know?

So, so at the end of the day, it comes back to this social contract again, that we have to, we have to choose to do what's best for ourselves and the community, to be a good person. And then usually the people that do those things and help other people, you know, you think, oh, there's, there's nothing but bad in the world. And then you go Sacrifice one of your Saturdays and go out to Habitat for Humanity and volunteer a Saturday to go build a house for a homeless, for a veteran or whatever the, the case may be. And you see a bunch of people that aren't court-mandated to be there. These are just people that chose to give up a Saturday to go help others. And guess what? You're going to see some love. You're going to see some community. You're going to see some good people in the world.

Or go sit at a barstool and just, you know, bitch about politics or whatever the case may be and, and, and surround yourself with a bunch of negativity and wonder why you're kind of miserable and you're not happy and all these different things. So Some of it we have an obligation to, to, to fix ourselves and to follow a path that leads to a better life and better fulfillment. And that almost closes all the way back to that loop that I never quite closed with the Aztec or Mayan calendar about your purpose and how close are you to your feeling of being in the place you're supposed to be right now. Like sometimes if you're on a mission or if you're in a place or you're doing a project and everything's falling together, you just really feel like this is, I'm right where I'm supposed to be right now. That's a good feeling.

And it might not be the most significant thing in the world, but in your heart, you, you're, you're doing the right thing. And, and that's almost where podcasting and talking to people and, and what this mission's about in a sense, because I'm just drawn to this idea that If we can help one person look at some issue from another way and be a little closer to their community or, or their fellows, then this selfishness or these ideas in their head that are bullshit we're not here to change minds. We're here to just, yeah, I'm not trying to convince anybody of what's right and what's wrong. This is just how I think. And, and, and, and there's plenty of times that I've changed positions cause I've learned better or didn't understand the perspective before. But just the willingness to learn is what this is all about.

So that's been pretty good, pretty good spot, I think, man. I think so. I gotta pee anyway, but. I gotta, I gotta jet, my man. 3 h and 10 min, man. Isn't that something? It went by quick. It, it flies. It flew by, brother. And, and, and that's what, you know, it always does, and it's great connection. we got a few little gifts for Walt. We got his, we got his signature series Flipside Frolic challenge coin. Oh, my man, look good. Personalized with episode number on there. Got a opportunity for a, we got some merch, we got hats. But wait, there's more. We got stickers. We got promotional poker chips. But tune in next week and we'll we'll have another awesome episode for you. I gotta come back, man. I gotta come back. You know what I wanna come back? Come on back. I wanna come back after the competition. Okay.

let you know, give you the behind the scenes. We're, we're going to follow up. Let us know in the comments. We're going to see how Walter does here, and I, I think he could win. I think I can win. We got, we got advantages when you start getting up in those weight classes, although you're getting a lot more fit people at higher ages, but energy levels and all the benefits of, of all that. This is going to be my it's my happy birthday present. This is going to be my, I'm so glad I'm still here doing this. I like it. That's, I'm still And I'm still doing it, what I like to do, I'm still able to do it. That's just as I can't be more positive. Do you do social media or you do, what, do you have any Instagram? You want any, any word out there and following your journey or? I haven't set anything up like that. Okay.

I haven't set any, I'm more of a introverted person. All right. Good thing you got me out here. All right. We're, we're, we're sharing Walter's joy and love. So, so we'll, we'll we'll keep you updated on his progress and we'll catch you next time. My man. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Love you, brother. My man. All right. Good talk, Carl. Good stuff. Thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learned a little something about other people's perspectives. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and throw us a like on the video. Comment if you have any questions, and we'll see you on the next episode.