March 16, 2022 • 60 mins
The United States of America. What is its true purpose, and whose lives does it exist to serve? In this special episode, we take a look at the current state of one of the world’s most powerful purpose-led organizations.
This episode looks at one of the most powerful purpose-led organizations in the world: The United States of America. With polarization and animosity between the left and the right at record levels, is the American dream still alive? What needs to be done to make our shared purpose clear, inspiring, and true?
We ask a wide variety of people who identify as Americans, and one who does not, to weigh in. We reach across the political spectrum to hear different takes before having an in-depth discussion about potential solutions with former (and future?) presidential candidate, Andrew Yang.
Guests:
Andrew Yang - Founder, Forward Party
Tatewin Means - Executive Director, Thunder Valley
David Safavian - General counsel, American Conservative Union Foundation
Adrian Bonenberger - Investigative Journalist
Jaeki Cho - Co-Owner, Alumni
Mikaela Reid - Audio Producer, the New York Times
Basil Soper - Podcast Researcher & Guest Curator, Calling Bullsh!t Podcast
Yvonne Clarke - Former law secretary
Andrean Clarke - Public school teacher
Jonathan Craig - Pool Technician
Penelope Soper - Middle-schooler
We’d love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you’re inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today’s bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at 212-505-2305. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode.
Background Reading:
- Read Andrew Yang’s book ‘Forward’
- Learn more about Tatewin Means and Thunder Valley
- Learn more about David Safavian and the American Conservative Union Foundation
- Read Adrian Bonenberger’s latest articles here.
- Learn more about Jaeki Cho and Alumni here.
If you love the show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Find out more at https://callingbullshitpodcast.com/.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
One nation under the great divide in American politics shows
no sign of closing. We are going to fight like
hell against the tyrannical Democrats. Republicans in Congress are spreading
conspiracy theories, denying reality, and poisoning the well of our
(00:34):
percent of Republicans and Democrats agreed that the country would
be better off if large numbers of the opposing party
just die. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast about purpose washing,
(00:59):
the gap between what companies say they stand for and
what they actually do, and what they would need to
change to practice what they preach. I'm your host, Time Montague,
and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what
they stand for, their purpose and then help them to
use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately,
(01:21):
at a lot of organizations today, they're still a pretty
wide gap between word and deed. That gap has a name.
We call it bullshit. But, and this is important, we
believe that bullshit is a treatable disease. So when the
BS detector lights up, we're going to explore things that
a company should do to fix it. Today we're examining
(01:53):
one of the biggest and most powerful organizations in the world,
and it became big and powerful, at least in part
because of a great story and an aspirational purpose. I'm talking,
of course, about the United States of America. It's tough
to pin down a succinct purpose statement for America. Is
(02:16):
it in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution?
Is it in a president's speech or on a coin.
Elements of America's purpose can be found in all of
these artifacts. But to me, there's one thing that truly
captures the spirit of this country's purpose the best. Let's
call it the American Dream, which goes something like this,
(02:39):
no matter who you are or where you come from,
if you live here, work hard, and generally operate as
a good citizen, there is no end to how far
you can go. America is a true meritocracy, a land
of opportunity that is open to all. But is this
(03:02):
even true? Is our current polarization assign that the dream
is just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your BS
detector and join me and special guest Andrew Yang on
a quest to find out. As we prepped this episode,
(03:25):
it became clear that even as a tight knit podcasting team,
we had differing opinions about the whole idea of the
American Dream, and so we hit the record button on ourselves.
Can I ask you, um so, when I say the
words the American Dream to both of you, like, what
(03:47):
what do those words mean to you? I just felt
like a struggle with the term because I wouldn't be
here if it weren't for my Jamaican parents coming from
their native country and trying to find a better life
for their family here in America, having access to jobs
and medical care that they might not have had in Jamaica.
(04:11):
So I'm definitely thankful that I'm able to be a
first generation American. That's MICHAELA Read, a producer on Calling BS.
But yeah, I feel like to call it a dream
makes it sounds better than what it is. Everyone should
have access to housing like that shouldn't necessarily be a dream.
(04:32):
It should be a requirement. Everyone should have the ability
if they're sick, to go to a hospital and have
the right amount of care for their illnesses, regardless of
their income. Yeah, that makes sense. The story I thought
I saw unfolding in America previously was people who wanted
(04:54):
to improve their lot in life decided to leave their
home country a totally non trivial decision and come here
and use that motivation to advance themselves on their own cause.
And what I was taught in school was this was
the strength of America, the fact that motivated people came
(05:18):
because we opened that door. We became a country of
motivated people. We benefited from that, and we fed off
one another energy and created something exceptional. So I'm a
more nuanced person than to say that I blanketly don't
agree that nothing good has ever come out of people
(05:39):
coming here from other countries. And that's basil super producer
and researcher. It's complicated, but I do think that there's
a reason that people want to be here. Who knows
why they're doing it. Are they doing it because they're
fed the idea of an American dream? Or is it
like because it's it's really dire and and it doesn't
(06:00):
matter how bad it is here, right, Yeah, I'm just thinking, like,
maybe America just has really good marketing. America does have
really good marketing, and that's because it tells an irresistible story.
From revolution to independence, from freedom to wild financial success.
(06:21):
The American legend has been undeniably inspiring and on this show,
we explore how well organizations actually honor the narrative they're
crafting for themselves. So the question is do we still
believe that story and how much of that story has
been conveniently left out in order to keep the brand strong.
(06:43):
I think that we became a successful country and like
the powerhouse of the economy of globally, you know, through
exploiting workers of all kinds, and that goes back to
like children and women and people of color. So for me,
when we talk about America being great, I don't think
(07:08):
it was ever really. Yeah, I mean I definitely feel
I guess some elements of bitterness when talking about American
what it was founded upon, like mass genocide of indigenous
peoples and how it was built upon the backs of
enslaved people. It's just difficult to think of a country
(07:31):
that is viewed as something that is a place for opportunity,
and the opportunities that they're providing aren't exactly accessible to
all Americans. Yeah, I hear that both of those perspectives.
I guess it raises some questions for me, Like you know,
from my perspective, and again mine is a perspective of privilege,
(07:55):
but there is some good to have set up in
view a country that is supposed to be and certainly
has not been in every case, but it's supposed to
be a meritocracy, and we did open a door for
people to come here and make their own way, rise
to the level of their own abilities, and so there's
(08:18):
got to be some value to that. I don't think
that's the truth. I think even if people did come
from worse off countries, they came here as immigrants and
lived in tenements and just made the rich richer. That's frustrating,
you know. It's not like they just came here and
like we're like middle class. You know, someone who grew
up in poverty. When we talk about things like people
(08:42):
not be able to make a living wage, or like
some people being shocked by how we've responded to COVID
as a country doesn't shock me as someone who couldn't
get health care, growing up as a trans person who
can't get trans healthcare, you know, in an accessible way.
So for me, like I've seen the this this isn't new.
(09:04):
This conversation got me really curious. There are so many
ways to interpret the American dream. How many Americans still
believe that the country has a higher purpose. Is the
dream still worth believing in? Or is it dying? To
try and understand all of this, the team decided to
fan out and speak with a wide variety of Americans,
(09:26):
some of them in our own families, and we asked
them for their definitions of the American dream. First up,
Basil's brother in law, Jonathan Craig, a pool technician in
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. American Dream. M hm. So you
come from a third world country as they come from Afghanistan.
(09:47):
You don't speak of Lake English. You got your whole
family here with you. You come here and pretty much
you can be whatever you know and do whatever you
want and sky Athalna. Here you can get a good education.
We got a good American system, you know, as far
as helping people get on their feet, you know, programs
for school. And you come here from anywhere and you
can get the help you need and shoot just like
(10:10):
you a guy down the road. They come from Saudi Arabia,
didn't speak hardly in English three or four years ago.
Now they got freaking four or five stores. You know,
that's the American dream right there. You come here and
then make a living, raised a family. The American dream
you can achieve whatever you set out to do. Because
(10:34):
I'm Jamaican, it meant that I could be here and
opportunities would be available, not so much for myself, but
for my children. That's Michaelis grandmother, Yvonne Clark, a former
law secretary in New York. And I am so proud
(10:56):
to be an American and for them to be Americans
and for the avenues for growth it has afforded them.
And one of Yvan's children is Michaela's aunt and Dream Clark,
a public school teacher in North Carolina. But the American
dream is a pursuit of happiness, and really that's what
(11:17):
so many Americans want to do. For so many, the
American dream is about the pursuit of happiness and opportunity.
But as entrepreneur, cultural critic Queens New York resident and
first generation Korean American J. K. Cho points out, there's
a dark side to that pursuit. I feel like when
people say American dream is often associated with abundance, right
(11:41):
buying the necessary ship in Bolke, Like you know, we
have a hundred pairs of sneakers at home, Like when
we're never going to run that much Black Friday holiday shopping.
It's a flawed narrative that's like too often perpetrated by
the imperialistic American agenda. This concept of consumerism is interweaved
with the American dream, and it's also connected with democracy,
(12:06):
this thought of freedom of choice. But in reality, we
really live in like a politocracy, government controled by those
with a lot of wealth, which is continuously part of
this pipeline that essentially served those in upper economic realms
with our labor meager wages, which we used to buy
(12:28):
more ship, watch more content to entertainers. And you know,
I don't really believe in this concept of an American dream,
per se. I believe in American survival. For some Americans,
the tough part of survival is economic. But for my
next guest, survival means holding onto an entire way of
(12:48):
life despite centuries of systemic oppression. What to the words
the American dream mean to you? For me? Those words
as a mama response to ta we means? Is a
Stanford educated attorney who leads Thunder Valley, an indigenous not
for profit organization that advocates for the liberation of Lakota people.
(13:12):
She is the only person we spoke to who doesn't
identify as an American. I am from the Ogala La
Kota and cistertan Wapatan Da Kota people nations, and we
are a part of the Ocheti shakoe Um larger nation
and currently reside in what is now called South Dakota,
where the original caretakers and stewards of this land long
(13:37):
before Columbus lost his way and inflicted years of European
genocide upon the people of this land. And so that
is a trauma response for a lot of Indigenous people
and other communities of color because of the the colonization
and the genocide that was associated with the development of
(13:57):
this land base into what is now called the United
States of America. The conversation with tatewe really brought home
the terrible price that millions of people have paid to
create the country that we live in today. How you
feel about the American dream really depends on your vantage
point and the version of American history that you've been taught.
(14:20):
So many people have sacrificed for this country against their will,
while others volunteer their lives to defend it. Next is
Adrian Bonnenberger, a writer and veteran who served two tours
of duty in Afghanistan. One of the extraordinary things of
America and the American Dream, I think, is that you
can come to America from anywhere on Earth. You can
(14:43):
start a business, you can get a job somewhere, and
you will be the author of your own destiny. And
I think that far more than um, you know, the
ability to to get rich or whatever some people say
the American dream is, is actually what makes America a
place that people look to a place where they can
live um with dignity. And you get your American citizenship,
(15:06):
You've got that passport in your hand. Only a real
jerk is going to say you're not a real American.
To me, the American dream means equal opportunity. That's David Sefabian,
the current General counsel for the American Conservative Union, who
has also held senior positions in the Bush White House.
The ability for folks to follow their passion to work
(15:29):
hard to achieve success, regardless of how you define success.
Having a system that not only makes it possible but
encourages individual success, I think is what I would view
the pathway to the American Dream. And Penelope super nine
what would you say America's purpose actually is shoo, comes
(15:57):
here and be yourself. Do you think America is actually
achieving this? Uh? Sometimes no, because they are treating people differently,
like gay people, by people, um and like Indian Americans,
black people and other people like that. Why do you
(16:21):
think that is because they think that they're since they're different,
that they could just treat them different. How do you
How does that make you feel? That makes me feel sad?
Is it because you love LGBT people and black people? Yeah?
I don't care if they're any condition people. Yeah, they're rude.
(16:45):
I don't want them. I'm with Penelope, I don't like
rude people either. Nearly all of the people that I
spoke with identified as either Democrat or Republican. I'll leave
it to your imagination to decide who is who. But
no matter their affiliation, there seemed to be a common
understanding of what the American dream was supposed to be.
(17:07):
The difference in perspective stemmed from whether we're actually living
up to it or not. America's bs score a conversation
with Andrew Yang and an exploration into why we're so polarized.
Right after this, before you head to the break. We'd
love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe
you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with
(17:29):
today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it.
Leave us a message at two one two five oh
five to Zo five, or send a voice memo to
CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even
be featured on an upcoming episode. It is a joke
(17:54):
when Republicans say that the urgency around this bill, the
only folk of the ads is that what they wanted.
Opublican doesn't want you to know. Media the welcome back
on this unique episode of calling Bullshit. We've applied the
(18:16):
idea of an organization's purpose to an entire nation, the
United States of America, and for the sake of this experiment,
we've identified the American Dream as that purpose. Now we
continue these conversations by exploring America's mission, in other words,
the steps that we can take as citizens and governing
(18:36):
bodies to actually put the purpose into practice, and debating
how or even if Americans can achieve this dream amidst
so much division. Here's school teacher Andrean Clark opportunity for all.
That's America's mission statement that's I think what the founding
fathers wanted, And if they wanted it any other way,
(19:00):
they would have said equality for white men who own
land and freedom for specific people. But they had a
bigger dream, and they're bigger dream was equality and opportunity
and freedom for all these systems in this country was
not built for people that look like me, sound like me,
(19:22):
or grew up like me. Once again, the leader of
Thunder Valley to tay we means you hear that it's
a land of opportunity, but you have to really question
for who. From my perspective as an Indigenous woman, the
mission state of America is really exclusionary and genocidal, harmful.
What could America be doing better to live its mission?
(19:47):
In other words, if you were going to change some
things about the country, what would you change? I would
change its mission? You have to you have to start
at those rotten roots. The seeds of this country are
rotten because of the these you know, initial ideologies and
beliefs about the people that did not look like white
men that were already here, and our view about what
(20:10):
it meant to be inhabitants and occupants of this land.
Army veteran Adrian Bonnenberger. I would say our mission has
been to expand that definition of citizen and citizenship as
being something that's dependent on the individual's willingness to take
part in community and not defined based on something that
(20:35):
one of their ancestors did eight hundred years ago. It
shouldn't be defined based on religion, it shouldn't be defined
based on race, it shouldn't be defined based on class.
It was a revolutionary idea. We we we had to,
you know, stage a revolution over it, uh towards Washington,
when people said you ought to be king, he said,
that's not what I'm doing here. You know, I'm going
(20:55):
to be president and you're going to keep electing. So
it's a process that is both durative and also it's
a process that requires people to buy into it actively.
And if you buy into it actively, then that's your
stake and you own a piece of it, and nobody
can tell you different. I think America's mission statement is
to be a beacon of freedom to the world. General
(21:16):
Counsel for the American Conservative Union David sa Fabian and
I personally view the American model, the American experiment as
something that I know so many millions of other people
see and go, That's where I want to be, That's
what I want for my family. So I think our
(21:37):
mission is not just too continue the concept of American exceptionalism,
but to make sure that we continue with American exceptionalism
as a way to show the path to other governments,
other countries, other cultures. How do you think about the
polarization that's going on in the country right now. I
(22:00):
things coming out of the left and the right that
just nauseate me, to be honest, and there is very
little open communication and honest communication between the sides. I
think what we've come to as a point where we
are both so convinced of our righteousness that we have
to condemn people that have opposing points of view. There
(22:22):
is some sense that there was kind of an original
sin in America and that that sin keeps coming back,
you know, like once it's in you, it it's really
hard to to get it out. How do you think
about that? I guess, you know, you really hit it
when you called it original sin, And this is the
(22:44):
first time I've really thought about it in this context
or this frame. So I think that our past is
something we all have to recognize but to carry it
forward and say we are somehow less of an exceptional
nation and truly believe America is exceptional. Um to carry
(23:05):
it forward as a scarlet, a scarlet s for slavery
tattooed on our collective foreheads is neither going to fix
any problem, nor does it reflect reality that we are
a generous country. We are by and large a kind
and welcoming country, and we are the one that should
(23:27):
be the beacon of the world. So right now, I
think we're in a crisis, in a moment of self
realization or self actualization for America. What does America really
stand for? Are we free to pursue our own happiness
and not harm others? Are we still living up to
(23:47):
the ideals of the Constitution, which is freedom, opportunity, and equality?
And I would say not. I think we're on the
threat right now. There's a group of people who have
been misled thirty years about America just being for white,
Anglo Saxon Protestants, and they are afraid of the demographic
(24:09):
shift that is going on there. Are really terrified that
they won't be able to pursue happiness again, won't be
able to have their freedom door somehow they're opportunities being
curtailed because the demographics of America shifting to be more brown.
(24:30):
Everything's race related now, I mean it. You know, there's
a serious thing Pool technician Jonathan Craig, you know, police
brutality all that. You know, it's crappy that properly does
happened to black people, more African Americans, more than does most.
But I mean, you ain't nothing. And then then needs
to go with defund the police. Well, if you want
(24:51):
to go that rat, well just let's just abolish to
hold them system and everything. No police, no, none of that.
And then we'll see whe're at in a year from
now and see if you want to go to bring
the baby. But we've definitely gotten away from our core
principles I believe. I mean, just as far as like
to say, you know, everybody created equal. I mean even
you know women, I mean they still get you know,
(25:11):
it's not as bad as I'm sure it was, you know,
thirty or forty years ago. But I mean that that
could get a little better too. But uh, I mean
it's I regret to say that at the current moment,
I think the the experiment is is in danger. It's
in danger mostly because of complacency. We've become victims of
(25:36):
our own success and our own privilege. And I think
this is this, more than anything, is going to ruin us.
Entrepreneur j Cho, So what would I change about America?
Like stop pushing American military might to control resources and
have you know, young people died for old people's selfish agendas,
(25:59):
you know, hoologize to the indivigenous people and respect nature,
all of that ship, you know, Like I would change
all of that, But I think the root of it
all really comes from being willing to try to learn
more about people that might not look like you. And
I think that America is a social experiment that can
(26:21):
progress towards them because, like, how many societies do you
know where an Asian kid growing up on hip hop
and queens could naturally flow and have friends from all
parts of the world, eat each other's food, make love
with each other, and you know, eventually have kids and
(26:43):
build families and basically create a whole new paradigm of
what a community could look like. Because I reflect on
what I've learned in these conversations, it occurs to me
that over the past several decades, we've become two nations.
One nation actively pushing for us to remember and to reconcile,
(27:03):
to acknowledge some of the flaws and mistakes in our
history and to address them, and a second nation that
fears the future and wants things to return to the
way it always was, to return to a time of forgetting.
Maybe the way forward here is to remember something else.
America has never feared the future and has never feared change.
(27:26):
In fact, the founders knew we'd need to change and
adapt to new and unforeseen circumstances. That's what the Constitution
and the Amendments are for. As long as we respect
one another, actively participate, and have the ability to agree
to disagree civilly and respectfully, that America will find its way.
(27:49):
Andreane Clark says it best America is for all people
if you believe in those ideals of freedom for all,
opportunities for all, and harm none, And that is possible.
And I'm extremely patriotic. I say, uh, the Pledge of
(28:09):
allegiance at schools and some of my students wonder why
when opportunities aren't there for them, And I say, well,
then you've got to grab the bull by the horn.
And wrestle with it and make it work for you.
If you believe in those ideals of freedom for all,
be an American and be a good citizen, which means
(28:30):
to participate and not let a certain segment of society
take it from you or destroy it because they don't
want to share in the dream of pursuit of happiness
or equality. And so governments must work for the greater good,
for the greatest many, for the greatest pursuit. Folks, it's
(28:54):
time to make the call. Is the American dream still real?
Is America a place where all people are created equal,
a place that welcomes people from all walks of life
with open arms and opens the door to whatever future
they want to create. Or has America itself become a bullshitter?
(29:16):
Based on what I've heard today, I think we have
to call bs. But remember, bullshit is a treatable disease,
and so after the diagnosis, we always discuss a cure.
America is a place that reinvents itself, and the Framers
were wise enough to leave us with the tools we
need to drive that reinvention. I think it's also worth
(29:37):
remembering we've come back from worse places before this after
the break, we'll hear some concrete solutions from a special guest,
Andrew Yang. Stick with us, Welcome back. We've decided that
(30:09):
there is a gap between the dream that America is
selling and the actions that America is taking. So we're
calling BS. But on this show, we believe BS is
a treatable condition. So next, we're gonna talk about some
potential cures with someone who has firsthand experience participating in
our political system, Andrew Yang. You might know him as
(30:31):
the person who introduced the country to universal basic income
back in the last presidential Democratic primary. Running for office
gave Andrew a critical vantage point to see what's wrong
with a major part of our system, and he has
some fascinating ideas to fix it. No matter where you
fall on the political spectrum, I think you'll find his
(30:51):
perspective as interesting as I did. Hey, Andrew, welcome to
UH calling Bullshit, and thank you so much for joining
us today. We really appreciate it, no problem, my friend,
happy to be here. So you recently made two exciting
announcements a new book, Forward and a new political party,
(31:12):
the Forward Party, And we're going to get into those
in just a second. But before we get into that.
I want to continue down the path that I've been
on for this episode, which is to try to figure
out whether America is living up to its mission at
the moment. So I've asked a handful of Americans to
answer three questions, and I want to start the interview
by asking you the same questions. The first one is
(31:37):
what to the words the American Dream mean to you?
I'm the child of immigrants myself, so the American dream
is that you can come here and build a life,
and your children will have opportunities greater than the opportunities
that you've had, that each generation is going to do
better than the one before. Second question, what would you
(31:58):
say America's mission in statement or purpose? Statement? Actually is
the first things that came to mind for me are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. I mean, I think that's
in the charter. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And
and then the third question is how are we doing
at living up to that mission right now? I believe
(32:20):
we are doing very very poorly. If you stack up
the United States relative to other countries, we are approximately
twenty eight across measurements of education, mortality, equity, freedom, of expression,
life expectancy with a down arrow like and declining, and
that I believe is driving a lot of the anger
(32:41):
and frustration where our quality of life is sinking into
the mud. And then if you look up and say, okay, well,
what's happening in terms of measures to correct this, Uh,
it's really very little. Yeah, the statistics are are shocking.
So yeah, let's let's get into the book Forward, which,
among other things, really lays out the rationale for a
(33:02):
third political party. What what inspired you to write this book?
I ran for president, and after I came up the trail,
I tried to figure out what the heck guy has
been through and what I've learned. So I wrote down
not just my own experiences, but also trying to pin
down why we feel so stuck and why polarization is
getting worse, and why it doesn't seem like big solutions
(33:25):
are imminent. And I concluded that our system is working
exactly as it's designed. It's just not designed to succeed.
It's in many ways it's designed for polarization and stasis
and increasing frustration, which at a national scale will result
eventually in unrest and political violence, which we're already seeing
(33:48):
so in that environment, I thought, well, someone needs to
do something to try and moderate the polarization and change
the incentives. And I ound a genuine solution where Alaska
adopted open primaries and ranked Troy's voting last year, which,
among other things, freed up Senator Lisa Murkowski to be
(34:10):
the only Republican senator to impeach Donald Trump. So, realizing
that there's actually a structural fix too, uh these incentives
and are increasing polarization, I then thought, well, we should
definitely do that. And if you're going to support ballad
initiatives in red and blue states around the country, it
certainly is, in my mind, almost impossible to do so
(34:32):
as a member of one party or another, because then
obviously if you showed up to UH a state where
it was governed by the other party, they'd be like,
you know, you're problem. They're playing into their hands in
a way. So I want to talk. I want to,
you know, for for the listeners, sort of ease into
it a little bit and say, um, you know, there
were some stunning statistics about economic inequality. You know, it's
(34:55):
sort of the roots of this polarization in the book,
And I wondered if you could talk a little bit
more about those. One of the things you said, for instance,
is we're in the midst of the most extreme winner
take all economy in the history of the world. The
bottom eight percent of Americans own only eight percent of
the stock market, and the bottom owned zero. What are
(35:15):
some other data points that you would consider to be
the sources of this polarization. Well, one thing I've seen
very consistently is that mindset of scarcity ends up impeding
your executive functioning by a measurable degree. One study had
it at thirteen i Q points, so that's one standard deviation. Um.
(35:36):
The simplest way to think about it is that if
I put you in a situation where you're not sure
how you're gonna pay next month's rent, uh, it doesn't
just stress you out. It consumes your bandwidth to a
point where you're more susceptible to bad ideas, You're more
susceptible to negative impulses. And so we're doing that to
a bulk of the American population at this point. I
had dinner with a friend yesterday who said that what
(35:58):
he figured out was that used to think about problems
among the bottom of Americans and now he's realized that
he had it in reverse. It's actually the bottom eight
percent of Americans that are in tough straits. And there
is a pattern where if you eliminate a middle class
of a country, it becomes much more susceptible to, for example,
(36:20):
authoritarian impulses. So this has been happening by the numbers
for two to three generations in the United States, right,
And as you just said, it has this huge blast
radius on our culture. You know, unbelievable levels of anxiety
and depression and epidemic of suicide and drug overdoses out
there in the world. So this sense of slipping behind
(36:44):
that to your friends point of Americans at some level
are experiencing has led us to this sense of kind
of impending doom, which partially is creating this polarization. You
talk about the concept of political stress as well, and
this was an eye opener for me. You you reference
a study that compares the level of animosity between the
(37:06):
left and the right just before the Civil War and today,
and I found that to be pretty disturbing. We should
be disturbed and tie one of the messages I'm trying
to convey to people is that everything is on the
table in America now and by that what I generally
mean the bad stuff, like whatever kind of dark dystopian
(37:27):
scenario you can conjure, it's on the table. Uh. And
this political stress index is measured by a scholar named
Peter Urchin and his colleague. He goes through various variables
mapping out the levels of political stress and different historical
time periods. And we are apparently right now at Civil
war levels of political stress by his measurements, which you
(37:49):
can probably see and feel. I mean, right now, forty
two of partisans regard their political opponents as evil or
their mortal enemies. Uh. And that lead to again unimaginable
scenarios becoming real. And we saw an example of this
on January six, right exactly. And you point out that
(38:10):
this is particularly dangerous simply because so many people in
America are armed, like to the teeth three million firearms,
most heavily armed society in the history of the world.
Lest listeners think that this is all doom and gloom,
or that the book was all about doom and gloom,
that is far from the case. It bristles with new
(38:30):
ideas to attack these problems. Too many actually to go
into today. But I want to get to the main
set of ideas that you have for solving this. You're
proposing a new political party, the Forward Party. What are
you trying to accomplish? The Forward Party is a popular
movement that consists of registered Democrats, independents, and registered Republicans
(38:52):
who want our system to work better. And what we're
trying to do is improve the incentives and enable genuinely
resilient to my oocracy moving forward. So I just want
to go back to first principles for a second. If
you look at the U s Constitution, there's nothing about
a political party anywhere. It turns out the founding fathers
were quite anti partisan. John Adams said, the biggest nightmare
(39:13):
would be if you had two parties just clashing all
the time. And and and I know it's pretty funny.
And it turns out that if you're trying to avoid authoritarianism,
duopoly is one of the worst types of structure as
you could erect, because then you have a one party.
Let's say it succumbs to bad leadership, and then everyone's
political and seidim sort of followed that leader, and they
(39:35):
can cast the other one side as the as the
you know the worst of two evils, and then you
have virtually no institutional safeguards. Um, if you look around
the world, the UK has five parties, Germany has seven parties,
Sweden has eight parties, Netherlands has eight teen parties. And
so in that system, if you have a party sucome
to bad leadership, then it's a problem. But it's not
(39:56):
an existential threat. Is not authoritarians. It's like, oh, that
party has a real lack of at the helm, Like,
let's just wait for them to figure that that out.
But a do apply is actually uniquely vulnerable. It's very
very poorly designed. And and so what the Forward Party
is trying to do is one reduced polarization by installing
mechanisms of open primaries matrois voting, and to give rise
(40:19):
to a genuinely multipolar system where not about us the
third party. I hope there are five or seven or
nine parties, because that would just be a much more resilient,
dynamic system that would be resistant to authoritarianism to a
much higher degree. Right, like a lot of regular Americans,
(40:40):
I don't really understand how the party system works or
why it is the way it is today. People have
tried to start new parties in the past. Why has
that not worked to date and why will this one work? Oh?
Thank you, ty, this is a very good question. So
(41:01):
our current version of this duopoly has been up and
running for let's call it a hundred fifty years, give
or take. And so the political parties just kind of
came up and made their own rules and then debeat
it up. We're like, okay, we're gonna have just you
and us, and then if there is another party that emerges,
d apply. Makes it very, very difficult. And part of
(41:22):
it is the voting system, but it's also ballot access,
it's access to resources. So the single biggest change really
needs to be open primaries and ranked choice voting because
in a closed party primary system you really have next
to no chance. I can use New York City as
an example. So there's a Democratic Party primary and it's
closed and Democrats out number Republicans in this environment something
(41:46):
like five to one. So the Democratic primaries where all
the real action is or the decision making is um
and that's the norm. So it does turn out that
there are there's an independent running from air, there's a
libertarian running mayor that that probably like all these people,
but their their chances are next to nothing. So if
you had open primaries and rank choices voting, then people
(42:09):
can make their own case to everybody. Um. And then
even if you'd still have Democrats win, because of the numbers,
they would be much more likely to integrate aspects of
other people's platform. You'd have different candidates emerge, and some
of them would actually, in my opinion, not just influence policy,
but some of them might pull up sets and win. UM.
So a lot of it's a mechanics problem where if
(42:32):
in the absence of open primaries and rank choice voting,
it would be very, very difficult for any third party
to emerge. And if you look at the numbers right now,
six of Americans want a third party sixty percent. Thing
both sides are out of touch. Independence out number Democrats
or Republicans by almost two to one. So if you
look at those numbers, there's a massive void to be filled,
(42:54):
a massive vacuum. But the reason why the vacuum is
so big is because the two parties have made it
almost impossible for a third party to meaningfully emerge. You know,
it's sort of circular, so you have to have a
mechanism switch in the primary system understood and rank choice
voting and open primaries, as I understand it, are kind
(43:15):
of two great tastes that go great together. Could you
unpack those a little bit for listeners, just explain how
those two things work. Right now, Congress has a national
approval rating of but the re election rate for individual
members is you're almost assured of getting your job back
if you want your job back, which most of them do.
I mean, that's that's just crazy, that's in't that's unbelievable. Yeah,
(43:39):
So then you look at the structures and say, how
is this possible? And it turns out that three of
the seats are safely democratic or safely Republican. If you
get to the general you win. And so the entire
name of the game for these three percent of representatives
is just to avoid getting primaried. So how do you
avoid getting primaried. You have to remain ideologically pure. You
(43:59):
can't compromise is with the other side. If you do
reach across the island compromise, you're more likely to get
a challenger. So these incentives then push people into their
corners and say working together is wrong and evil. So
that's the system in part because if I am a
member of Congress, I'm not taking my case to the
general public. I'm taking my case to the ten or
(44:22):
twenty most extreme voters in my district who are going
to vote in the primary, either on the Republican side
or the Democratic side. So the first step is to say, look,
how about we have open primaries where anyone can vote
uh when you're up a reelection, and that way immediately,
instead of just having to appeal to the seventeen percent
most extreme voters, you have to appeal to the general public,
(44:45):
which would be an enormous moderating influence. Now, the mechanics
of it are such that if you had open primaries
without rank choice voting, then a scenario could occur where
you have two Republicans and one Democrat, or two Democrats
and Republican and you kind of cannabalize each other's votes.
And that's the spoiler effect that everyone gets so upset about.
So if you have ranked choice voting, then it eliminates
a spoiler effect. You can vote for multiple candidates. If
(45:08):
your top choice doesn't go through, then your vote flows
through to the second person until someone gets a majority.
Like you said, there to taste that taste great together,
where if you have open primaries and ranked choice voting,
they're actually both kind of moderating impulses because to succeed
in a ranked choice voting field, you have to get
a majority of people to at least be okay with you,
and that tends to reward the coalition builders and punish
(45:32):
the extremes. Yeah, incredibly important. So one of the other
um planks I guess of this party is something that
you term human centered capitalism. That's a topic that is
near and dear to my heart. You know, we're not
trying to throw capitalism out, we're just trying to evolve it.
Can you talk about you know, the way that you
(45:53):
think about that. Right now, you have these economic indicators
that are GDP and stock market prices, and they're going
been up even as more people are sinking into the dirt.
So what I believe we should do is take our
human well being and look at it the same way
we do stock market prices and say, Okay, how are
the kids doing, you know, how how are people doing,
(46:14):
how are communities doing? And then if you saw that,
you would see we're doing very poorly. And then you'd
look up to our leaders and say, hey, you know,
still bad this year, Like, maybe you should focus on
on how we're doing as opposed to um, you know,
scoring political points. And so as someone who's run organizations,
if you have the wrong measurements, you'll head in a
(46:35):
very specific direction, right, And and so that is that
leads to that that question you've you've long maintained that
GDP is absolutely the wrong thing to be measuring. What
should we be measuring. We should be measuring our health,
our mental health, our kids ability to learn, our environmental
quality are affordability and access to healthcare and education. And
(47:00):
when I went around the country and I asked people
about how they're feeling and doing, I mean it's pretty
tough for for a lot of folks. Anxiety, depression, deaths
of despair, or substance abuse. I mean, like those are
the things they're seeing more and more. Right, One of
the other ideas that jumped out to me beyond universal
basic income, which obviously you got this into the national conversation,
(47:22):
and it does appear to be slowly gaining traction, particularly
during the pandemic. For instance, you also bring in the
idea of grace and tolerance. One of the things that
you say on the on the Forward Party website is
most parties need an enemy. Our enemy is those who
would cast our fellow Americans as enemies and as an
(47:45):
existential threat. And I just wondered if you could talk
more about that, because that that seems like the hardest
thing to do. In a way, it's the softest language,
grace and tolerance, but it's it's the thing that seemed
to be most important, is to just stop demonizing each other.
Grace and and tolerance, to me, is what's missing in
(48:06):
American political life, and part because our incentives are all
around getting people upset and angry. Where if I want
to raise money for a cause, I'll talk about, hey,
these people are trying to take away this. These people
are wrong, immoral, and we need money to fight them,
and that that's typically more successful than Look, they're human
(48:29):
beings like us, they're Americans. You know, we we disagree,
but let's try and find common ground. But you need
a positive, unifying voice and force in American politics to
try and tamp down the polarization that's just getting worse
and worse. And part again, because all the incentives are
driving us into corners where we'll attack the other side. Yeah,
(48:50):
I mean on this topic of grace and tolerance, some
would say that, you know, in quote, the other side,
no matter which side we're talking about, is so far
gone that they're irredeemable. What do you say to folks
who feel that way? I think if you feel that way,
you really need to get down and talk to folks
(49:10):
who might represent the tribe or group you're thinking of.
Seventy five million people voted for Donald Trump. Like trying
to categorize seventy million in one ideological bucket, or like
having certain attitudes I think is impossible, really, you know,
and like I have family members who voted for Trump,
and so you could take any group of people and
(49:30):
as long as you start humanizing them, you realize that
we're being played and said against each other. One of
the big lessons I learned and I tried to present
in my book is that all politics is now tribal um.
You think it's about policy, it's not. The correlation between
what someone does politically or the way they identify and
what they think about policy is actually very low. It's
point to five according to one study. So in that context,
(49:55):
you think Okay, it turns out we agree on let's
call it lower drug prices or maybe even basic income. Now, um,
so what is it we're disagreeing about? And we're disagreeing
because we've been tribalized and trained to feel like the
other tribe has lost it? Now. Are there dark and
unsavory elements, uh, and extremes in any large group? Yes,
(50:18):
but you don't want to characterize like a massive group
or in this case literally tens of millions of people
are half the country in a way that really erases
their humanity. And that's what I think we're in danger
of doing. Yeah. Some would argue that grace and tolerance
have always been scarce in America, basically depending on who
you are. And you opened by talking about the fact
(50:42):
that you're a child of immigrants, Immigrants, people of color,
indigenous people haven't experienced a lot of grace and tolerance
from the beginning. What would you say to them? Well,
what I would say is that, Uh, this country has
a promise and this country he has not lived up
to its promise in many, many historical circumstances. And there
(51:04):
is an unfairness to ask someone who has been put
in that position to embrace grace in tolerance if it
has not been shown to you. But that is our
better bet really in my view. You know, and because
it's more difficult or even unfair, it does not make
it any less necessary or powerful and actually makes it
(51:25):
more powerful in my opinion. Yeah, and the alternative is unthinkable.
So the alternative is going to lead us to ruin,
and I don't believe that's going to lead us where
we want to go. I mean that that leads me
to another question I had, which is, you know, you
launched on October fourth, so it's still pretty recent, but
how do you feel about the reaction so far? The
(51:46):
action has been tremendous, and one of the things that
most encouraged by is that groups of independent voters and
third parties have actually already reached out to the Forward
Party to say, hey, let's make common cause and work
together because they see that this is something that everyone
who wants to modernize the duopoly should be behind. I
think if you're you know, like a partisan, you should
(52:07):
behind this too, because you're like, look like the system
is just really really vulnerable. You know, this is not
very smart. Right, So in terms of you and and
your plans. You know, you've You've run for president, You've
run for the the mayor of New York. Are you
going to run again in the future? Do you? Or
do you feel like you Your job is to concentrate
(52:30):
on coalition building and get this party off the ground.
I'm determined to try to lighten up this polarization that's
really threatening to destroy us. And so that means these
balt initiatives, elevating like minded candidates. He'll be endorsing candidates
and campaigning for them. So that's where my attention is.
Is this democracy reform package, this structural incentive fix. It's
(52:53):
gonna keep me very busy for the time being, but
I'm fired up about it. I don't know what my
future holds in terms of my running for office as
a candidate, genuinely, you know, like I'm not playing coy,
Like I really don't know what that looks like. Awesome, Andrew,
last question, I asked this of every guest on the show.
You know, our thesis is that we're trying to point
(53:14):
out companies or organizations or countries in this case where
there maybe a delta between the mission and the current
state of affairs. And we've created a scale. We call
it the bullshit scale. So zero is the best scores
zero bullshit. There is no delta between word indeed, and
(53:37):
one hundred is total total. So in on that scale,
if our mission is life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness,
how are we doing right now? Wow, that it's tough
to throw a number on this. What what what I've
said in my book and what I feel and believe
(53:57):
is that right now we're not going to come close
to full feeling the promise of America because our system
is not set up for success. So if you were
to say to me, hey, like, how are we doing
on the BS meter? Unfortunately, the BS meter is going
off when it comes to the United States and it's
ability of fulfilled probs. It's one reason why we're all
feeling like we're in deep trouble. I mean, like the
(54:19):
promises not being fulfilled by a long shot. And so
that that's what we have to change, and it's going
to require very significant systemic change like that. This is
not like an incremental type situation, you know what I mean?
We can all feel that. That's like the energy and
the anger is building up, it's it's hitting in very
very nasty directions, and so we need to try and
(54:39):
get that BS meter closer to zero as quickly as possible.
But right now it's it's running into the danger zone. Yeah,
I would have to agree, unfortunately. But the future is
a big place and you're going to play a big
part in it. So I wanna thank you for being
here today. Andrew's been great talking with you, and I
really wish you the best for the Forward Party. Thank you,
(55:01):
TI really grateful and again everyone listening to this. At
this point, everything is on the table, so we might
as well make good stuff on the table as well
as bad stuff. So let's get some more good stuff
on the table. Amen. Brother. One of the emerging themes
(55:22):
of this season is purpose led organizations that have lost
their way for one reason or another. America is one
of them. To find our way back, we have to
rejuvenate our shared purpose because a shared purpose is the
glue that holds people together. That's true for companies and
it's true for countries too. Making sure that you have
(55:46):
a great purpose and that you are living that purpose
is a way to make sure that the glue remains strong,
and it makes organizations of all sizes, resilient over the
long haul. I'd like to end the show it today
by giving America an official Bullshit score based a lot
I've heard today. I'm giving America a sixty two. That's
(56:09):
pretty high, and I'm sure we all want to see
it come down. To weigh in with your own score,
or to leave us an audio message with your take
on this episode that could be played in our season
wrap up, visit our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com.
We'll also track America's behavior over time to see if
(56:30):
we can bring that score down, and you'll also be
able to see where America ranks on BS compared to
the other companies and organizations we feature on the show.
And if you're running a purpose led organization or you're
thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one,
here are three things you should take away from this episode. One,
(56:53):
A powerful and unique purpose can give you a major
advantage over your competitors by helping you attract more time, haunted,
and more motivated people. There is no better example of
that than America. Our purpose, when it was first expressed
over two years ago, attracted so much motivated talent that
we quickly moved to a leadership position in the world. Two,
(57:18):
A great purpose invites people to not only join, but
also to participate. A smart question to ask yourself is
how can people actively participate in helping us to achieve
our purpose? In America's case, Andrew Yang talked about some
great ideas today for making our system easier to participate
(57:40):
in open primaries and rank choice voting. And Three, a
great purpose is only as good as the actions you
take to make it real. In America's case, no matter
how many times we say we're the land of opportunity
and that all of us are created equal, if we
(58:01):
don't make those things true for more people through action,
they'll lose faith. A lot of us already have. Your
purpose will undoubtedly be different than America's, as will the
actions you'll need to take to make it real. Just
remember doing is believing. I'd like to thank everyone who
(58:28):
joined us today, Adrian Bonnenberger, Andrean Clark, Yvan Clark, Jonathan Craig,
Jaki cho Today we means, MICHAELA. Read, David Safabian, Basil Soaper,
Penelope Soaper, and Andrew Yang. Find out more about our
(58:49):
guests today, including their social handles on our website Calling
Bullshit Podcast dot com and check out Andrew's latest book,
Forwards on the future of our democracy. If you have
ideas for companies organizations we should consider for future episodes,
you can submit them on the site too, And if
(59:11):
we made you feel like pledging allegiance today, subscribe to
the Calling Bullshit Podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks
to our production team Hannah Beale, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim
d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer, Basil
(59:37):
Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by
co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you.
Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear
what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired
(59:58):
to take action. Maybe you' disagree with today's bullshit rating.
Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us
a message at two one two five oh five zero five,
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
Collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
upcoming episode.
One nation under the great divide in American politics shows
no sign of closing. We are going to fight like
hell against the tyrannical Democrats. Republicans in Congress are spreading
conspiracy theories, denying reality, and poisoning the well of our
(00:34):
percent of Republicans and Democrats agreed that the country would
be better off if large numbers of the opposing party
just die. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast about purpose washing,
(00:59):
the gap between what companies say they stand for and
what they actually do, and what they would need to
change to practice what they preach. I'm your host, Time Montague,
and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what
they stand for, their purpose and then help them to
use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately,
(01:21):
at a lot of organizations today, they're still a pretty
wide gap between word and deed. That gap has a name.
We call it bullshit. But, and this is important, we
believe that bullshit is a treatable disease. So when the
BS detector lights up, we're going to explore things that
a company should do to fix it. Today we're examining
(01:53):
one of the biggest and most powerful organizations in the world,
and it became big and powerful, at least in part
because of a great story and an aspirational purpose. I'm talking,
of course, about the United States of America. It's tough
to pin down a succinct purpose statement for America. Is
(02:16):
it in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution?
Is it in a president's speech or on a coin.
Elements of America's purpose can be found in all of
these artifacts. But to me, there's one thing that truly
captures the spirit of this country's purpose the best. Let's
call it the American Dream, which goes something like this,
(02:39):
no matter who you are or where you come from,
if you live here, work hard, and generally operate as
a good citizen, there is no end to how far
you can go. America is a true meritocracy, a land
of opportunity that is open to all. But is this
(03:02):
even true? Is our current polarization assign that the dream
is just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your BS
detector and join me and special guest Andrew Yang on
a quest to find out. As we prepped this episode,
(03:25):
it became clear that even as a tight knit podcasting team,
we had differing opinions about the whole idea of the
American Dream, and so we hit the record button on ourselves.
Can I ask you, um so, when I say the
words the American Dream to both of you, like, what
(03:47):
what do those words mean to you? I just felt
like a struggle with the term because I wouldn't be
here if it weren't for my Jamaican parents coming from
their native country and trying to find a better life
for their family here in America, having access to jobs
and medical care that they might not have had in Jamaica.
(04:11):
So I'm definitely thankful that I'm able to be a
first generation American. That's MICHAELA Read, a producer on Calling BS.
But yeah, I feel like to call it a dream
makes it sounds better than what it is. Everyone should
have access to housing like that shouldn't necessarily be a dream.
(04:32):
It should be a requirement. Everyone should have the ability
if they're sick, to go to a hospital and have
the right amount of care for their illnesses, regardless of
their income. Yeah, that makes sense. The story I thought
I saw unfolding in America previously was people who wanted
(04:54):
to improve their lot in life decided to leave their
home country a totally non trivial decision and come here
and use that motivation to advance themselves on their own cause.
And what I was taught in school was this was
the strength of America, the fact that motivated people came
(05:18):
because we opened that door. We became a country of
motivated people. We benefited from that, and we fed off
one another energy and created something exceptional. So I'm a
more nuanced person than to say that I blanketly don't
agree that nothing good has ever come out of people
(05:39):
coming here from other countries. And that's basil super producer
and researcher. It's complicated, but I do think that there's
a reason that people want to be here. Who knows
why they're doing it. Are they doing it because they're
fed the idea of an American dream? Or is it
like because it's it's really dire and and it doesn't
(06:00):
matter how bad it is here, right, Yeah, I'm just thinking, like,
maybe America just has really good marketing. America does have
really good marketing, and that's because it tells an irresistible story.
From revolution to independence, from freedom to wild financial success.
(06:21):
The American legend has been undeniably inspiring and on this show,
we explore how well organizations actually honor the narrative they're
crafting for themselves. So the question is do we still
believe that story and how much of that story has
been conveniently left out in order to keep the brand strong.
(06:43):
I think that we became a successful country and like
the powerhouse of the economy of globally, you know, through
exploiting workers of all kinds, and that goes back to
like children and women and people of color. So for me,
when we talk about America being great, I don't think
(07:08):
it was ever really. Yeah, I mean I definitely feel
I guess some elements of bitterness when talking about American
what it was founded upon, like mass genocide of indigenous
peoples and how it was built upon the backs of
enslaved people. It's just difficult to think of a country
(07:31):
that is viewed as something that is a place for opportunity,
and the opportunities that they're providing aren't exactly accessible to
all Americans. Yeah, I hear that both of those perspectives.
I guess it raises some questions for me, Like you know,
from my perspective, and again mine is a perspective of privilege,
(07:55):
but there is some good to have set up in
view a country that is supposed to be and certainly
has not been in every case, but it's supposed to
be a meritocracy, and we did open a door for
people to come here and make their own way, rise
to the level of their own abilities, and so there's
(08:18):
got to be some value to that. I don't think
that's the truth. I think even if people did come
from worse off countries, they came here as immigrants and
lived in tenements and just made the rich richer. That's frustrating,
you know. It's not like they just came here and
like we're like middle class. You know, someone who grew
up in poverty. When we talk about things like people
(08:42):
not be able to make a living wage, or like
some people being shocked by how we've responded to COVID
as a country doesn't shock me as someone who couldn't
get health care, growing up as a trans person who
can't get trans healthcare, you know, in an accessible way.
So for me, like I've seen the this this isn't new.
(09:04):
This conversation got me really curious. There are so many
ways to interpret the American dream. How many Americans still
believe that the country has a higher purpose. Is the
dream still worth believing in? Or is it dying? To
try and understand all of this, the team decided to
fan out and speak with a wide variety of Americans,
(09:26):
some of them in our own families, and we asked
them for their definitions of the American dream. First up,
Basil's brother in law, Jonathan Craig, a pool technician in
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. American Dream. M hm. So you
come from a third world country as they come from Afghanistan.
(09:47):
You don't speak of Lake English. You got your whole
family here with you. You come here and pretty much
you can be whatever you know and do whatever you
want and sky Athalna. Here you can get a good education.
We got a good American system, you know, as far
as helping people get on their feet, you know, programs
for school. And you come here from anywhere and you
can get the help you need and shoot just like
(10:10):
you a guy down the road. They come from Saudi Arabia,
didn't speak hardly in English three or four years ago.
Now they got freaking four or five stores. You know,
that's the American dream right there. You come here and
then make a living, raised a family. The American dream
you can achieve whatever you set out to do. Because
(10:34):
I'm Jamaican, it meant that I could be here and
opportunities would be available, not so much for myself, but
for my children. That's Michaelis grandmother, Yvonne Clark, a former
law secretary in New York. And I am so proud
(10:56):
to be an American and for them to be Americans
and for the avenues for growth it has afforded them.
And one of Yvan's children is Michaela's aunt and Dream Clark,
a public school teacher in North Carolina. But the American
dream is a pursuit of happiness, and really that's what
(11:17):
so many Americans want to do. For so many, the
American dream is about the pursuit of happiness and opportunity.
But as entrepreneur, cultural critic Queens New York resident and
first generation Korean American J. K. Cho points out, there's
a dark side to that pursuit. I feel like when
people say American dream is often associated with abundance, right
(11:41):
buying the necessary ship in Bolke, Like you know, we
have a hundred pairs of sneakers at home, Like when
we're never going to run that much Black Friday holiday shopping.
It's a flawed narrative that's like too often perpetrated by
the imperialistic American agenda. This concept of consumerism is interweaved
with the American dream, and it's also connected with democracy,
(12:06):
this thought of freedom of choice. But in reality, we
really live in like a politocracy, government controled by those
with a lot of wealth, which is continuously part of
this pipeline that essentially served those in upper economic realms
with our labor meager wages, which we used to buy
(12:28):
more ship, watch more content to entertainers. And you know,
I don't really believe in this concept of an American dream,
per se. I believe in American survival. For some Americans,
the tough part of survival is economic. But for my
next guest, survival means holding onto an entire way of
(12:48):
life despite centuries of systemic oppression. What to the words
the American dream mean to you? For me? Those words
as a mama response to ta we means? Is a
Stanford educated attorney who leads Thunder Valley, an indigenous not
for profit organization that advocates for the liberation of Lakota people.
(13:12):
She is the only person we spoke to who doesn't
identify as an American. I am from the Ogala La
Kota and cistertan Wapatan Da Kota people nations, and we
are a part of the Ocheti shakoe Um larger nation
and currently reside in what is now called South Dakota,
where the original caretakers and stewards of this land long
(13:37):
before Columbus lost his way and inflicted years of European
genocide upon the people of this land. And so that
is a trauma response for a lot of Indigenous people
and other communities of color because of the the colonization
and the genocide that was associated with the development of
(13:57):
this land base into what is now called the United
States of America. The conversation with tatewe really brought home
the terrible price that millions of people have paid to
create the country that we live in today. How you
feel about the American dream really depends on your vantage
point and the version of American history that you've been taught.
(14:20):
So many people have sacrificed for this country against their will,
while others volunteer their lives to defend it. Next is
Adrian Bonnenberger, a writer and veteran who served two tours
of duty in Afghanistan. One of the extraordinary things of
America and the American Dream, I think, is that you
can come to America from anywhere on Earth. You can
(14:43):
start a business, you can get a job somewhere, and
you will be the author of your own destiny. And
I think that far more than um, you know, the
ability to to get rich or whatever some people say
the American dream is, is actually what makes America a
place that people look to a place where they can
live um with dignity. And you get your American citizenship,
(15:06):
You've got that passport in your hand. Only a real
jerk is going to say you're not a real American.
To me, the American dream means equal opportunity. That's David Sefabian,
the current General counsel for the American Conservative Union, who
has also held senior positions in the Bush White House.
The ability for folks to follow their passion to work
(15:29):
hard to achieve success, regardless of how you define success.
Having a system that not only makes it possible but
encourages individual success, I think is what I would view
the pathway to the American Dream. And Penelope super nine
what would you say America's purpose actually is shoo, comes
(15:57):
here and be yourself. Do you think America is actually
achieving this? Uh? Sometimes no, because they are treating people differently,
like gay people, by people, um and like Indian Americans,
black people and other people like that. Why do you
(16:21):
think that is because they think that they're since they're different,
that they could just treat them different. How do you
How does that make you feel? That makes me feel sad?
Is it because you love LGBT people and black people? Yeah?
I don't care if they're any condition people. Yeah, they're rude.
(16:45):
I don't want them. I'm with Penelope, I don't like
rude people either. Nearly all of the people that I
spoke with identified as either Democrat or Republican. I'll leave
it to your imagination to decide who is who. But
no matter their affiliation, there seemed to be a common
understanding of what the American dream was supposed to be.
(17:07):
The difference in perspective stemmed from whether we're actually living
up to it or not. America's bs score a conversation
with Andrew Yang and an exploration into why we're so polarized.
Right after this, before you head to the break. We'd
love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe
you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with
(17:29):
today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it.
Leave us a message at two one two five oh
five to Zo five, or send a voice memo to
CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even
be featured on an upcoming episode. It is a joke
(17:54):
when Republicans say that the urgency around this bill, the
only folk of the ads is that what they wanted.
Opublican doesn't want you to know. Media the welcome back
on this unique episode of calling Bullshit. We've applied the
(18:16):
idea of an organization's purpose to an entire nation, the
United States of America, and for the sake of this experiment,
we've identified the American Dream as that purpose. Now we
continue these conversations by exploring America's mission, in other words,
the steps that we can take as citizens and governing
(18:36):
bodies to actually put the purpose into practice, and debating
how or even if Americans can achieve this dream amidst
so much division. Here's school teacher Andrean Clark opportunity for all.
That's America's mission statement that's I think what the founding
fathers wanted, And if they wanted it any other way,
(19:00):
they would have said equality for white men who own
land and freedom for specific people. But they had a
bigger dream, and they're bigger dream was equality and opportunity
and freedom for all these systems in this country was
not built for people that look like me, sound like me,
(19:22):
or grew up like me. Once again, the leader of
Thunder Valley to tay we means you hear that it's
a land of opportunity, but you have to really question
for who. From my perspective as an Indigenous woman, the
mission state of America is really exclusionary and genocidal, harmful.
What could America be doing better to live its mission?
(19:47):
In other words, if you were going to change some
things about the country, what would you change? I would
change its mission? You have to you have to start
at those rotten roots. The seeds of this country are
rotten because of the these you know, initial ideologies and
beliefs about the people that did not look like white
men that were already here, and our view about what
(20:10):
it meant to be inhabitants and occupants of this land.
Army veteran Adrian Bonnenberger. I would say our mission has
been to expand that definition of citizen and citizenship as
being something that's dependent on the individual's willingness to take
part in community and not defined based on something that
(20:35):
one of their ancestors did eight hundred years ago. It
shouldn't be defined based on religion, it shouldn't be defined
based on race, it shouldn't be defined based on class.
It was a revolutionary idea. We we we had to,
you know, stage a revolution over it, uh towards Washington,
when people said you ought to be king, he said,
that's not what I'm doing here. You know, I'm going
(20:55):
to be president and you're going to keep electing. So
it's a process that is both durative and also it's
a process that requires people to buy into it actively.
And if you buy into it actively, then that's your
stake and you own a piece of it, and nobody
can tell you different. I think America's mission statement is
to be a beacon of freedom to the world. General
(21:16):
Counsel for the American Conservative Union David sa Fabian and
I personally view the American model, the American experiment as
something that I know so many millions of other people
see and go, That's where I want to be, That's
what I want for my family. So I think our
(21:37):
mission is not just too continue the concept of American exceptionalism,
but to make sure that we continue with American exceptionalism
as a way to show the path to other governments,
other countries, other cultures. How do you think about the
polarization that's going on in the country right now. I
(22:00):
things coming out of the left and the right that
just nauseate me, to be honest, and there is very
little open communication and honest communication between the sides. I
think what we've come to as a point where we
are both so convinced of our righteousness that we have
to condemn people that have opposing points of view. There
(22:22):
is some sense that there was kind of an original
sin in America and that that sin keeps coming back,
you know, like once it's in you, it it's really
hard to to get it out. How do you think
about that? I guess, you know, you really hit it
when you called it original sin, And this is the
(22:44):
first time I've really thought about it in this context
or this frame. So I think that our past is
something we all have to recognize but to carry it
forward and say we are somehow less of an exceptional
nation and truly believe America is exceptional. Um to carry
(23:05):
it forward as a scarlet, a scarlet s for slavery
tattooed on our collective foreheads is neither going to fix
any problem, nor does it reflect reality that we are
a generous country. We are by and large a kind
and welcoming country, and we are the one that should
(23:27):
be the beacon of the world. So right now, I
think we're in a crisis, in a moment of self
realization or self actualization for America. What does America really
stand for? Are we free to pursue our own happiness
and not harm others? Are we still living up to
(23:47):
the ideals of the Constitution, which is freedom, opportunity, and equality?
And I would say not. I think we're on the
threat right now. There's a group of people who have
been misled thirty years about America just being for white,
Anglo Saxon Protestants, and they are afraid of the demographic
(24:09):
shift that is going on there. Are really terrified that
they won't be able to pursue happiness again, won't be
able to have their freedom door somehow they're opportunities being
curtailed because the demographics of America shifting to be more brown.
(24:30):
Everything's race related now, I mean it. You know, there's
a serious thing Pool technician Jonathan Craig, you know, police
brutality all that. You know, it's crappy that properly does
happened to black people, more African Americans, more than does most.
But I mean, you ain't nothing. And then then needs
to go with defund the police. Well, if you want
(24:51):
to go that rat, well just let's just abolish to
hold them system and everything. No police, no, none of that.
And then we'll see whe're at in a year from
now and see if you want to go to bring
the baby. But we've definitely gotten away from our core
principles I believe. I mean, just as far as like
to say, you know, everybody created equal. I mean even
you know women, I mean they still get you know,
(25:11):
it's not as bad as I'm sure it was, you know,
thirty or forty years ago. But I mean that that
could get a little better too. But uh, I mean
it's I regret to say that at the current moment,
I think the the experiment is is in danger. It's
in danger mostly because of complacency. We've become victims of
(25:36):
our own success and our own privilege. And I think
this is this, more than anything, is going to ruin us.
Entrepreneur j Cho, So what would I change about America?
Like stop pushing American military might to control resources and
have you know, young people died for old people's selfish agendas,
(25:59):
you know, hoologize to the indivigenous people and respect nature,
all of that ship, you know, Like I would change
all of that, But I think the root of it
all really comes from being willing to try to learn
more about people that might not look like you. And
I think that America is a social experiment that can
(26:21):
progress towards them because, like, how many societies do you
know where an Asian kid growing up on hip hop
and queens could naturally flow and have friends from all
parts of the world, eat each other's food, make love
with each other, and you know, eventually have kids and
(26:43):
build families and basically create a whole new paradigm of
what a community could look like. Because I reflect on
what I've learned in these conversations, it occurs to me
that over the past several decades, we've become two nations.
One nation actively pushing for us to remember and to reconcile,
(27:03):
to acknowledge some of the flaws and mistakes in our
history and to address them, and a second nation that
fears the future and wants things to return to the
way it always was, to return to a time of forgetting.
Maybe the way forward here is to remember something else.
America has never feared the future and has never feared change.
(27:26):
In fact, the founders knew we'd need to change and
adapt to new and unforeseen circumstances. That's what the Constitution
and the Amendments are for. As long as we respect
one another, actively participate, and have the ability to agree
to disagree civilly and respectfully, that America will find its way.
(27:49):
Andreane Clark says it best America is for all people
if you believe in those ideals of freedom for all,
opportunities for all, and harm none, And that is possible.
And I'm extremely patriotic. I say, uh, the Pledge of
(28:09):
allegiance at schools and some of my students wonder why
when opportunities aren't there for them, And I say, well,
then you've got to grab the bull by the horn.
And wrestle with it and make it work for you.
If you believe in those ideals of freedom for all,
be an American and be a good citizen, which means
(28:30):
to participate and not let a certain segment of society
take it from you or destroy it because they don't
want to share in the dream of pursuit of happiness
or equality. And so governments must work for the greater good,
for the greatest many, for the greatest pursuit. Folks, it's
(28:54):
time to make the call. Is the American dream still real?
Is America a place where all people are created equal,
a place that welcomes people from all walks of life
with open arms and opens the door to whatever future
they want to create. Or has America itself become a bullshitter?
(29:16):
Based on what I've heard today, I think we have
to call bs. But remember, bullshit is a treatable disease,
and so after the diagnosis, we always discuss a cure.
America is a place that reinvents itself, and the Framers
were wise enough to leave us with the tools we
need to drive that reinvention. I think it's also worth
(29:37):
remembering we've come back from worse places before this after
the break, we'll hear some concrete solutions from a special guest,
Andrew Yang. Stick with us, Welcome back. We've decided that
(30:09):
there is a gap between the dream that America is
selling and the actions that America is taking. So we're
calling BS. But on this show, we believe BS is
a treatable condition. So next, we're gonna talk about some
potential cures with someone who has firsthand experience participating in
our political system, Andrew Yang. You might know him as
(30:31):
the person who introduced the country to universal basic income
back in the last presidential Democratic primary. Running for office
gave Andrew a critical vantage point to see what's wrong
with a major part of our system, and he has
some fascinating ideas to fix it. No matter where you
fall on the political spectrum, I think you'll find his
(30:51):
perspective as interesting as I did. Hey, Andrew, welcome to
UH calling Bullshit, and thank you so much for joining
us today. We really appreciate it, no problem, my friend,
happy to be here. So you recently made two exciting
announcements a new book, Forward and a new political party,
(31:12):
the Forward Party, And we're going to get into those
in just a second. But before we get into that.
I want to continue down the path that I've been
on for this episode, which is to try to figure
out whether America is living up to its mission at
the moment. So I've asked a handful of Americans to
answer three questions, and I want to start the interview
by asking you the same questions. The first one is
(31:37):
what to the words the American Dream mean to you?
I'm the child of immigrants myself, so the American dream
is that you can come here and build a life,
and your children will have opportunities greater than the opportunities
that you've had, that each generation is going to do
better than the one before. Second question, what would you
(31:58):
say America's mission in statement or purpose? Statement? Actually is
the first things that came to mind for me are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. I mean, I think that's
in the charter. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And
and then the third question is how are we doing
at living up to that mission right now? I believe
(32:20):
we are doing very very poorly. If you stack up
the United States relative to other countries, we are approximately
twenty eight across measurements of education, mortality, equity, freedom, of expression,
life expectancy with a down arrow like and declining, and
that I believe is driving a lot of the anger
(32:41):
and frustration where our quality of life is sinking into
the mud. And then if you look up and say, okay, well,
what's happening in terms of measures to correct this, Uh,
it's really very little. Yeah, the statistics are are shocking.
So yeah, let's let's get into the book Forward, which,
among other things, really lays out the rationale for a
(33:02):
third political party. What what inspired you to write this book?
I ran for president, and after I came up the trail,
I tried to figure out what the heck guy has
been through and what I've learned. So I wrote down
not just my own experiences, but also trying to pin
down why we feel so stuck and why polarization is
getting worse, and why it doesn't seem like big solutions
(33:25):
are imminent. And I concluded that our system is working
exactly as it's designed. It's just not designed to succeed.
It's in many ways it's designed for polarization and stasis
and increasing frustration, which at a national scale will result
eventually in unrest and political violence, which we're already seeing
(33:48):
so in that environment, I thought, well, someone needs to
do something to try and moderate the polarization and change
the incentives. And I ound a genuine solution where Alaska
adopted open primaries and ranked Troy's voting last year, which,
among other things, freed up Senator Lisa Murkowski to be
(34:10):
the only Republican senator to impeach Donald Trump. So, realizing
that there's actually a structural fix too, uh these incentives
and are increasing polarization, I then thought, well, we should
definitely do that. And if you're going to support ballad
initiatives in red and blue states around the country, it
certainly is, in my mind, almost impossible to do so
(34:32):
as a member of one party or another, because then
obviously if you showed up to UH a state where
it was governed by the other party, they'd be like,
you know, you're problem. They're playing into their hands in
a way. So I want to talk. I want to,
you know, for for the listeners, sort of ease into
it a little bit and say, um, you know, there
were some stunning statistics about economic inequality. You know, it's
(34:55):
sort of the roots of this polarization in the book,
And I wondered if you could talk a little bit
more about those. One of the things you said, for instance,
is we're in the midst of the most extreme winner
take all economy in the history of the world. The
bottom eight percent of Americans own only eight percent of
the stock market, and the bottom owned zero. What are
(35:15):
some other data points that you would consider to be
the sources of this polarization. Well, one thing I've seen
very consistently is that mindset of scarcity ends up impeding
your executive functioning by a measurable degree. One study had
it at thirteen i Q points, so that's one standard deviation. Um.
(35:36):
The simplest way to think about it is that if
I put you in a situation where you're not sure
how you're gonna pay next month's rent, uh, it doesn't
just stress you out. It consumes your bandwidth to a
point where you're more susceptible to bad ideas, You're more
susceptible to negative impulses. And so we're doing that to
a bulk of the American population at this point. I
had dinner with a friend yesterday who said that what
(35:58):
he figured out was that used to think about problems
among the bottom of Americans and now he's realized that
he had it in reverse. It's actually the bottom eight
percent of Americans that are in tough straits. And there
is a pattern where if you eliminate a middle class
of a country, it becomes much more susceptible to, for example,
(36:20):
authoritarian impulses. So this has been happening by the numbers
for two to three generations in the United States, right,
And as you just said, it has this huge blast
radius on our culture. You know, unbelievable levels of anxiety
and depression and epidemic of suicide and drug overdoses out
there in the world. So this sense of slipping behind
(36:44):
that to your friends point of Americans at some level
are experiencing has led us to this sense of kind
of impending doom, which partially is creating this polarization. You
talk about the concept of political stress as well, and
this was an eye opener for me. You you reference
a study that compares the level of animosity between the
(37:06):
left and the right just before the Civil War and today,
and I found that to be pretty disturbing. We should
be disturbed and tie one of the messages I'm trying
to convey to people is that everything is on the
table in America now and by that what I generally
mean the bad stuff, like whatever kind of dark dystopian
(37:27):
scenario you can conjure, it's on the table. Uh. And
this political stress index is measured by a scholar named
Peter Urchin and his colleague. He goes through various variables
mapping out the levels of political stress and different historical
time periods. And we are apparently right now at Civil
war levels of political stress by his measurements, which you
(37:49):
can probably see and feel. I mean, right now, forty
two of partisans regard their political opponents as evil or
their mortal enemies. Uh. And that lead to again unimaginable
scenarios becoming real. And we saw an example of this
on January six, right exactly. And you point out that
(38:10):
this is particularly dangerous simply because so many people in
America are armed, like to the teeth three million firearms,
most heavily armed society in the history of the world.
Lest listeners think that this is all doom and gloom,
or that the book was all about doom and gloom,
that is far from the case. It bristles with new
(38:30):
ideas to attack these problems. Too many actually to go
into today. But I want to get to the main
set of ideas that you have for solving this. You're
proposing a new political party, the Forward Party. What are
you trying to accomplish? The Forward Party is a popular
movement that consists of registered Democrats, independents, and registered Republicans
(38:52):
who want our system to work better. And what we're
trying to do is improve the incentives and enable genuinely
resilient to my oocracy moving forward. So I just want
to go back to first principles for a second. If
you look at the U s Constitution, there's nothing about
a political party anywhere. It turns out the founding fathers
were quite anti partisan. John Adams said, the biggest nightmare
(39:13):
would be if you had two parties just clashing all
the time. And and and I know it's pretty funny.
And it turns out that if you're trying to avoid authoritarianism,
duopoly is one of the worst types of structure as
you could erect, because then you have a one party.
Let's say it succumbs to bad leadership, and then everyone's
political and seidim sort of followed that leader, and they
(39:35):
can cast the other one side as the as the
you know the worst of two evils, and then you
have virtually no institutional safeguards. Um, if you look around
the world, the UK has five parties, Germany has seven parties,
Sweden has eight parties, Netherlands has eight teen parties. And
so in that system, if you have a party sucome
to bad leadership, then it's a problem. But it's not
(39:56):
an existential threat. Is not authoritarians. It's like, oh, that
party has a real lack of at the helm, Like,
let's just wait for them to figure that that out.
But a do apply is actually uniquely vulnerable. It's very
very poorly designed. And and so what the Forward Party
is trying to do is one reduced polarization by installing
mechanisms of open primaries matrois voting, and to give rise
(40:19):
to a genuinely multipolar system where not about us the
third party. I hope there are five or seven or
nine parties, because that would just be a much more resilient,
dynamic system that would be resistant to authoritarianism to a
much higher degree. Right, like a lot of regular Americans,
(40:40):
I don't really understand how the party system works or
why it is the way it is today. People have
tried to start new parties in the past. Why has
that not worked to date and why will this one work? Oh?
Thank you, ty, this is a very good question. So
(41:01):
our current version of this duopoly has been up and
running for let's call it a hundred fifty years, give
or take. And so the political parties just kind of
came up and made their own rules and then debeat
it up. We're like, okay, we're gonna have just you
and us, and then if there is another party that emerges,
d apply. Makes it very, very difficult. And part of
(41:22):
it is the voting system, but it's also ballot access,
it's access to resources. So the single biggest change really
needs to be open primaries and ranked choice voting because
in a closed party primary system you really have next
to no chance. I can use New York City as
an example. So there's a Democratic Party primary and it's
closed and Democrats out number Republicans in this environment something
(41:46):
like five to one. So the Democratic primaries where all
the real action is or the decision making is um
and that's the norm. So it does turn out that
there are there's an independent running from air, there's a
libertarian running mayor that that probably like all these people,
but their their chances are next to nothing. So if
you had open primaries and rank choices voting, then people
(42:09):
can make their own case to everybody. Um. And then
even if you'd still have Democrats win, because of the numbers,
they would be much more likely to integrate aspects of
other people's platform. You'd have different candidates emerge, and some
of them would actually, in my opinion, not just influence policy,
but some of them might pull up sets and win. UM.
So a lot of it's a mechanics problem where if
(42:32):
in the absence of open primaries and rank choice voting,
it would be very, very difficult for any third party
to emerge. And if you look at the numbers right now,
six of Americans want a third party sixty percent. Thing
both sides are out of touch. Independence out number Democrats
or Republicans by almost two to one. So if you
look at those numbers, there's a massive void to be filled,
(42:54):
a massive vacuum. But the reason why the vacuum is
so big is because the two parties have made it
almost impossible for a third party to meaningfully emerge. You know,
it's sort of circular, so you have to have a
mechanism switch in the primary system understood and rank choice
voting and open primaries, as I understand it, are kind
(43:15):
of two great tastes that go great together. Could you
unpack those a little bit for listeners, just explain how
those two things work. Right now, Congress has a national
approval rating of but the re election rate for individual
members is you're almost assured of getting your job back
if you want your job back, which most of them do.
I mean, that's that's just crazy, that's in't that's unbelievable. Yeah,
(43:39):
So then you look at the structures and say, how
is this possible? And it turns out that three of
the seats are safely democratic or safely Republican. If you
get to the general you win. And so the entire
name of the game for these three percent of representatives
is just to avoid getting primaried. So how do you
avoid getting primaried. You have to remain ideologically pure. You
(43:59):
can't compromise is with the other side. If you do
reach across the island compromise, you're more likely to get
a challenger. So these incentives then push people into their
corners and say working together is wrong and evil. So
that's the system in part because if I am a
member of Congress, I'm not taking my case to the
general public. I'm taking my case to the ten or
(44:22):
twenty most extreme voters in my district who are going
to vote in the primary, either on the Republican side
or the Democratic side. So the first step is to say, look,
how about we have open primaries where anyone can vote
uh when you're up a reelection, and that way immediately,
instead of just having to appeal to the seventeen percent
most extreme voters, you have to appeal to the general public,
(44:45):
which would be an enormous moderating influence. Now, the mechanics
of it are such that if you had open primaries
without rank choice voting, then a scenario could occur where
you have two Republicans and one Democrat, or two Democrats
and Republican and you kind of cannabalize each other's votes.
And that's the spoiler effect that everyone gets so upset about.
So if you have ranked choice voting, then it eliminates
a spoiler effect. You can vote for multiple candidates. If
(45:08):
your top choice doesn't go through, then your vote flows
through to the second person until someone gets a majority.
Like you said, there to taste that taste great together,
where if you have open primaries and ranked choice voting,
they're actually both kind of moderating impulses because to succeed
in a ranked choice voting field, you have to get
a majority of people to at least be okay with you,
and that tends to reward the coalition builders and punish
(45:32):
the extremes. Yeah, incredibly important. So one of the other
um planks I guess of this party is something that
you term human centered capitalism. That's a topic that is
near and dear to my heart. You know, we're not
trying to throw capitalism out, we're just trying to evolve it.
Can you talk about you know, the way that you
(45:53):
think about that. Right now, you have these economic indicators
that are GDP and stock market prices, and they're going
been up even as more people are sinking into the dirt.
So what I believe we should do is take our
human well being and look at it the same way
we do stock market prices and say, Okay, how are
the kids doing, you know, how how are people doing,
(46:14):
how are communities doing? And then if you saw that,
you would see we're doing very poorly. And then you'd
look up to our leaders and say, hey, you know,
still bad this year, Like, maybe you should focus on
on how we're doing as opposed to um, you know,
scoring political points. And so as someone who's run organizations,
if you have the wrong measurements, you'll head in a
(46:35):
very specific direction, right, And and so that is that
leads to that that question you've you've long maintained that
GDP is absolutely the wrong thing to be measuring. What
should we be measuring. We should be measuring our health,
our mental health, our kids ability to learn, our environmental
quality are affordability and access to healthcare and education. And
(47:00):
when I went around the country and I asked people
about how they're feeling and doing, I mean it's pretty
tough for for a lot of folks. Anxiety, depression, deaths
of despair, or substance abuse. I mean, like those are
the things they're seeing more and more. Right, One of
the other ideas that jumped out to me beyond universal
basic income, which obviously you got this into the national conversation,
(47:22):
and it does appear to be slowly gaining traction, particularly
during the pandemic. For instance, you also bring in the
idea of grace and tolerance. One of the things that
you say on the on the Forward Party website is
most parties need an enemy. Our enemy is those who
would cast our fellow Americans as enemies and as an
(47:45):
existential threat. And I just wondered if you could talk
more about that, because that that seems like the hardest
thing to do. In a way, it's the softest language,
grace and tolerance, but it's it's the thing that seemed
to be most important, is to just stop demonizing each other.
Grace and and tolerance, to me, is what's missing in
(48:06):
American political life, and part because our incentives are all
around getting people upset and angry. Where if I want
to raise money for a cause, I'll talk about, hey,
these people are trying to take away this. These people
are wrong, immoral, and we need money to fight them,
and that that's typically more successful than Look, they're human
(48:29):
beings like us, they're Americans. You know, we we disagree,
but let's try and find common ground. But you need
a positive, unifying voice and force in American politics to
try and tamp down the polarization that's just getting worse
and worse. And part again, because all the incentives are
driving us into corners where we'll attack the other side. Yeah,
(48:50):
I mean on this topic of grace and tolerance, some
would say that, you know, in quote, the other side,
no matter which side we're talking about, is so far
gone that they're irredeemable. What do you say to folks
who feel that way? I think if you feel that way,
you really need to get down and talk to folks
(49:10):
who might represent the tribe or group you're thinking of.
Seventy five million people voted for Donald Trump. Like trying
to categorize seventy million in one ideological bucket, or like
having certain attitudes I think is impossible, really, you know,
and like I have family members who voted for Trump,
and so you could take any group of people and
(49:30):
as long as you start humanizing them, you realize that
we're being played and said against each other. One of
the big lessons I learned and I tried to present
in my book is that all politics is now tribal um.
You think it's about policy, it's not. The correlation between
what someone does politically or the way they identify and
what they think about policy is actually very low. It's
point to five according to one study. So in that context,
(49:55):
you think Okay, it turns out we agree on let's
call it lower drug prices or maybe even basic income. Now, um,
so what is it we're disagreeing about? And we're disagreeing
because we've been tribalized and trained to feel like the
other tribe has lost it? Now. Are there dark and
unsavory elements, uh, and extremes in any large group? Yes,
(50:18):
but you don't want to characterize like a massive group
or in this case literally tens of millions of people
are half the country in a way that really erases
their humanity. And that's what I think we're in danger
of doing. Yeah. Some would argue that grace and tolerance
have always been scarce in America, basically depending on who
you are. And you opened by talking about the fact
(50:42):
that you're a child of immigrants, Immigrants, people of color,
indigenous people haven't experienced a lot of grace and tolerance
from the beginning. What would you say to them? Well,
what I would say is that, Uh, this country has
a promise and this country he has not lived up
to its promise in many, many historical circumstances. And there
(51:04):
is an unfairness to ask someone who has been put
in that position to embrace grace in tolerance if it
has not been shown to you. But that is our
better bet really in my view. You know, and because
it's more difficult or even unfair, it does not make
it any less necessary or powerful and actually makes it
(51:25):
more powerful in my opinion. Yeah, and the alternative is unthinkable.
So the alternative is going to lead us to ruin,
and I don't believe that's going to lead us where
we want to go. I mean that that leads me
to another question I had, which is, you know, you
launched on October fourth, so it's still pretty recent, but
how do you feel about the reaction so far? The
(51:46):
action has been tremendous, and one of the things that
most encouraged by is that groups of independent voters and
third parties have actually already reached out to the Forward
Party to say, hey, let's make common cause and work
together because they see that this is something that everyone
who wants to modernize the duopoly should be behind. I
think if you're you know, like a partisan, you should
(52:07):
behind this too, because you're like, look like the system
is just really really vulnerable. You know, this is not
very smart. Right, So in terms of you and and
your plans. You know, you've You've run for president, You've
run for the the mayor of New York. Are you
going to run again in the future? Do you? Or
do you feel like you Your job is to concentrate
(52:30):
on coalition building and get this party off the ground.
I'm determined to try to lighten up this polarization that's
really threatening to destroy us. And so that means these
balt initiatives, elevating like minded candidates. He'll be endorsing candidates
and campaigning for them. So that's where my attention is.
Is this democracy reform package, this structural incentive fix. It's
(52:53):
gonna keep me very busy for the time being, but
I'm fired up about it. I don't know what my
future holds in terms of my running for office as
a candidate, genuinely, you know, like I'm not playing coy,
Like I really don't know what that looks like. Awesome, Andrew,
last question, I asked this of every guest on the show.
You know, our thesis is that we're trying to point
(53:14):
out companies or organizations or countries in this case where
there maybe a delta between the mission and the current
state of affairs. And we've created a scale. We call
it the bullshit scale. So zero is the best scores
zero bullshit. There is no delta between word indeed, and
(53:37):
one hundred is total total. So in on that scale,
if our mission is life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness,
how are we doing right now? Wow, that it's tough
to throw a number on this. What what what I've
said in my book and what I feel and believe
(53:57):
is that right now we're not going to come close
to full feeling the promise of America because our system
is not set up for success. So if you were
to say to me, hey, like, how are we doing
on the BS meter? Unfortunately, the BS meter is going
off when it comes to the United States and it's
ability of fulfilled probs. It's one reason why we're all
feeling like we're in deep trouble. I mean, like the
(54:19):
promises not being fulfilled by a long shot. And so
that that's what we have to change, and it's going
to require very significant systemic change like that. This is
not like an incremental type situation, you know what I mean?
We can all feel that. That's like the energy and
the anger is building up, it's it's hitting in very
very nasty directions, and so we need to try and
(54:39):
get that BS meter closer to zero as quickly as possible.
But right now it's it's running into the danger zone. Yeah,
I would have to agree, unfortunately. But the future is
a big place and you're going to play a big
part in it. So I wanna thank you for being
here today. Andrew's been great talking with you, and I
really wish you the best for the Forward Party. Thank you,
(55:01):
TI really grateful and again everyone listening to this. At
this point, everything is on the table, so we might
as well make good stuff on the table as well
as bad stuff. So let's get some more good stuff
on the table. Amen. Brother. One of the emerging themes
(55:22):
of this season is purpose led organizations that have lost
their way for one reason or another. America is one
of them. To find our way back, we have to
rejuvenate our shared purpose because a shared purpose is the
glue that holds people together. That's true for companies and
it's true for countries too. Making sure that you have
(55:46):
a great purpose and that you are living that purpose
is a way to make sure that the glue remains strong,
and it makes organizations of all sizes, resilient over the
long haul. I'd like to end the show it today
by giving America an official Bullshit score based a lot
I've heard today. I'm giving America a sixty two. That's
(56:09):
pretty high, and I'm sure we all want to see
it come down. To weigh in with your own score,
or to leave us an audio message with your take
on this episode that could be played in our season
wrap up, visit our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com.
We'll also track America's behavior over time to see if
(56:30):
we can bring that score down, and you'll also be
able to see where America ranks on BS compared to
the other companies and organizations we feature on the show.
And if you're running a purpose led organization or you're
thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one,
here are three things you should take away from this episode. One,
(56:53):
A powerful and unique purpose can give you a major
advantage over your competitors by helping you attract more time, haunted,
and more motivated people. There is no better example of
that than America. Our purpose, when it was first expressed
over two years ago, attracted so much motivated talent that
we quickly moved to a leadership position in the world. Two,
(57:18):
A great purpose invites people to not only join, but
also to participate. A smart question to ask yourself is
how can people actively participate in helping us to achieve
our purpose? In America's case, Andrew Yang talked about some
great ideas today for making our system easier to participate
(57:40):
in open primaries and rank choice voting. And Three, a
great purpose is only as good as the actions you
take to make it real. In America's case, no matter
how many times we say we're the land of opportunity
and that all of us are created equal, if we
(58:01):
don't make those things true for more people through action,
they'll lose faith. A lot of us already have. Your
purpose will undoubtedly be different than America's, as will the
actions you'll need to take to make it real. Just
remember doing is believing. I'd like to thank everyone who
(58:28):
joined us today, Adrian Bonnenberger, Andrean Clark, Yvan Clark, Jonathan Craig,
Jaki cho Today we means, MICHAELA. Read, David Safabian, Basil Soaper,
Penelope Soaper, and Andrew Yang. Find out more about our
(58:49):
guests today, including their social handles on our website Calling
Bullshit Podcast dot com and check out Andrew's latest book,
Forwards on the future of our democracy. If you have
ideas for companies organizations we should consider for future episodes,
you can submit them on the site too, And if
(59:11):
we made you feel like pledging allegiance today, subscribe to
the Calling Bullshit Podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks
to our production team Hannah Beale, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim
d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer, Basil
(59:37):
Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by
co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you.
Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear
what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired
(59:58):
to take action. Maybe you' disagree with today's bullshit rating.
Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us
a message at two one two five oh five zero five,
or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co
Collective dot com. You might even be featured on an
upcoming episode.
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