February 20, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, we break down the chaos at the National Nuclear Security Administration, where mass firings put U.S. nuclear safety at risk, and the tragic story of a young girl driven to suicide after classmates threatened to call ICE. Plus, AOC takes on immigration hardliners without backing down.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-doge-nuclear-safety-weapons-danger-rcna192661
https://wearemitu.com/wearemitu/news/ice-threats-texas-middle-school-suicide/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Let me talk about talk. There we go, he said
he lived life as a gringo. Wait, you questioned where
you fit in? Every time you mingle, they say, you
do this with not that my rappings really mad? This
life as a gringo. Yes, hello, welcome to another episode
of life as a Gringo. I am dramas, of course,
(00:28):
and it is Thursday, so it means it's time for
our Thursday Trends episode. Am I the only one who's
absolutely just like fucking blown away? Like you, I feel
like I snapped my finger and the week is already done.
And that's that's like not a very profound uh observation,
that's like elevator small talk. But ship man, I feel
(00:48):
like I can't get like there's not enough time in
the week. And maybe that's a good thing like that,
like that I'm that that much going on that I'm
getting lost in so much that the time is just
flying by. But Jesus man, another Thursday. Here we are anyway. Yeah,
(01:10):
I don't. I don't. I'm letting them. I don't know why.
I'm I'm like having small talk with you here, but
but I've just like I'm like, it's like January for
whatever reason. If I if I can just have a
sidebar here. January it felt it feels like the longest
year of your entire life. And then once like February hits,
(01:32):
It's like, talk bro, it's about to be New Year's again.
It feels like everything is just feels like it's moving
so quickly and so slowly at the same time. I
don't know how to explain them anyway. Anyway, what do
we talking about today? Thursday trends? Right, let's talk. I
want to. I don't want to dunk on Elon Musk
and Donald Trump, right, I've critiqued them enough, but I
(01:53):
want to. I want to use some recent events, particularly
one example, to showcase what I fear when you see
people trying to operate this country like a corporation with
(02:14):
no regard to anything other than the bottom line, and
mistakes are made, and potentially what could be catastrophic mistakes
could happen because of the ignorance and lack of planning
around much of what we're seeing right now. So we'll
talk about that trigger warning, a really horrendous story where
(02:41):
you actually had a middle school girl take her own
life after her classmates were continuously teasing and threatening to
call ice on her just I don't know, one of
those things that stops you in your tracks, and you know,
a necessary thing to talk about, but obviously just a
(03:05):
tragedy that should never happen. But once again another real
world example of why words and rhetoric matter. We'll talk
about that and on the positive side of things, because
God knows we need it. We have to highlight somebody
from the community, a politician who's actually out here putting
her money where her mouth is and standing up for
(03:26):
Latinos and everything that's going on right now and not
backing down. So we will shout her out. But first
and foremost, let's dive into nonsense the BS. In a segment,
we call for the people in the back, say a
lot of the people in the say a lot of
the people in the say a lot of the people
(03:52):
of all right, So let's start first and foremost with
Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the organization that they've created,
better known as DOGE, which has been making headlines, you know,
all all these last couple of weeks with the layoffs
(04:12):
and just destruction of particular branches of government or governments
organizations right now under the direction of Elon Musk, Doge
and the Trump administration suddenly fired three hundred of the
eighteen hundred people working at the National Nuclear Security Agency
(04:36):
in Washington, d C. The firings who are part of
hundreds of terminations sent to workers at the Department of Energy,
the parent organization of the nuclear Agency. It appears that
Doge made the decision based purely on their status, without
actually knowing what the workers did. So for clarifications this
entire article, you want to read the full thing on
including in the show notes. But status meaning their status
(05:01):
of employment, like full time, part time, contracted, whatever it
might be. So essentially they fired people who were on
a temporary status, some sort of temporary contract, again not
actually looking into what they were doing, but merely just
looking at the fact that they were not a full
time employee. Now the NSA, this organization has two primary missions,
(05:26):
and many of those fired are part of the management
team that was overseeing tens of thousands of highly skilled scientists, engineers,
and technicians who build, maintain, and guard the US arsenal
of some five thousand nuclear weapons. Other officials that were
fired work on an equally vital mission of preventing the
(05:49):
spread of nuclear weapons and materials. Now outcries from experts, officials,
and members of Congress about the risks to nationals kearity
forced Trump officials to reverse course. They announced last Friday
that they would now rehire the workers. The problem is
that they don't know how to reach all of them.
And even in this article you had former employees being
(06:12):
interviewed saying while they may take their job back, they
will be seeking employment elsewhere. I mean, yeah, who wants
to sort of work under these conditions? Now, this could
be an easy dunk on how idiotic and just sort
of erratic and shortsighted these plans are by Donald Trump
(06:38):
and Crony's like Elon Musk, and it is. And this
is just one example, and it's one that potentially could
have very extreme and scary ramifications. Like if you or
I were like giving options, like hey, you know, we're
looking into the budget and we're thinking, like, all right,
(07:00):
where should we start as far as budget cuts go,
I probably wouldn't like focus my energy on the departments
that are in charge of protecting nuclear weapons and preventing
nuclear tax on this country and actually globally preventing the
spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world, like
(07:22):
that probably would be an organization that I would leave
for last. You know, like if we got to the
point that we're shaking the cushions, you know, looking for
loose change in the couch, that would probably be the
only time that I would actually look at this organization.
Other than that, I'd probably say, hey, they seem to
be doing a pretty good job, and their work is
(07:43):
very important. Let me leave these people be. And if
I was to look there to do budget cuts, I
probably would only do so after having done an extensive
amount of research as to what each and every person's
role is and then come to some sort of intelligent
(08:05):
determination based upon all of the information as to who
is essential and who is a non essential role there.
But instead, this is another glaring example. It's the bull
in a china shop mentality that Donald Trump has and
those under him that they sort of just run with
(08:28):
these wild ideas, take action without giving it much thought,
and then sort of are like, hey, you know what,
mistakes are going to be made, we'll clean them up
after the fact. But again, when you're dealing with sensitive
things like nuclear weapons and the organization responsible for guarding maintaining, researching, protecting.
(09:00):
You can't use this sort of methodology or this strategy
of fucking you know, foot on the gas one hundred
miles an hour, no looking back, because it's too sensitive
as to if you fuck up, the repercussions could literally
mean death on a mass scale. I mean, same thing
(09:24):
with the FAA, Like these these are there's a reason
why this is not the standard, you know, operating process
of those in power. And to be fair, government does
move far too slow. There's far too much red tape
and bureaucracy. I do think we could adjust to that.
(09:44):
But the problem with people like Donald Trump is they
lack the I'm just gonna say patience. I'm not gonna
go any deeper than that. They lack the patience and
experience to understand that because they're trying to operate from
(10:13):
the place of a business owner and not for nothing.
If Twitter goes offline for a day, yeah, money's going
to be lost, but lives aren't gonna be put at risk. Right.
If Trump's organization, you know, fires a key person, yeah
(10:43):
maybe the hotels or the golf courses aren't going to
run as smoothly, but again, not a direct impact or
effect on people's lives or national security as a whole.
And that's why this argument and this excitement that people
(11:03):
have over they're going to run like a business, this
country needs to be run like a business. No. On
the financial side, sure, you want to create more job opportunities,
you want to create more potential financial opportunities. Absolutely, you
want to end actual waste and overspending. Sure, But the
(11:28):
problem with these people, particularly in the modern capitalistic era,
these are not people who became successful based upon having
great business prowess in terms of product development and creative solutions.
(11:56):
These are people who became successful because of their use
of route force and being immoral to the point that
they didn't care who and what they had to step
on in order to make their next dollar. That's how
they found great success. And the dark reality that I
think people are not facing is that corporations don't give
(12:20):
a fuck about you. They view you as replaceable and
you a government can't function that way. A government's in
like this is a difference. Corporations are not really meant
to serve anyone except for themselves. At the end of
the day. We can make in bullshit and say how
they love their customers and all this, it's no, it's
(12:42):
self serving. A corporation. A government, on the other hand,
sole purpose, the reason it was created was to serve
the people. The government works for the people. We pay
for their salaries. The money they use in their budgets
to do shit around this country comes from our salaries.
(13:07):
They work for us as much as they don't want to,
or don't not even don't want to, as much as
they don't operate in that manner. That is the truth.
So them now operating from the form of a cold
corporation means they do not take into consideration the individuals
(13:30):
and what they might face as a result of the
decisions of those in charge. A corporation doesn't give a
fuck about the fact that they're laying off a father
of three or a mother of three. They don't give
a fuck about the fact that this person was barely
hanging on to begin with, but now they're going to
(13:50):
lose their job and lose everything as a result. No,
they care about their bottom line. You are a cognal wheel.
A number is statistic. You represent the savings of x
amount of dollars each quarter for their fucking already rich
investors and CEOs and boards and shareholders. The country can't
(14:14):
operate in that manner because the country, by design, is
supposed to take care of those who are struggling. It's
supposed to make the lives of its citizens better. That's
not what a corporation does. Corporations don't actually give a
fuck about if you enjoy your work or not. As
(14:34):
long as you're getting shit done. That's all they care about.
That's their bottom line, most of them. And that's the
problem with just blindly running this like a corporation. And again,
these people are used to coming into companies Elon Musk
same thing he did with X, gutting it and doesn't
(14:56):
give a fuck about if it loses efficiency because he's
trying to save some money, right, And that was a
problem with X. They fired or forced out crucial employees
that then affected their short term operations. And again, the
(15:20):
difference in this is we're not talking about Twitter or X,
you know, lagging. We're talking about nuclear weapons not having
the safety and security that they should. That's scary shit,
(15:40):
and that's why you can't just have people who are
blind fucking disgusting, immoral CEOs treating this like another company
that they just bought that they're just trying to gut
and resell. And this is just an incredibly scary reminder
(16:02):
of how inept the powers that be are and how
awful the strategy is. And again it's like what I've
touched on in the past, and I'll leave it at this.
On the surface, these aren't particularly bad ideas in terms
of the general idea of where can we cut out
the waste. That's not a bad idea of you know,
(16:24):
investigating and finding out, okay, where what is sort of unnecessary,
what can we redo? The problem is the execution and
lack of forethought of how this is actually going to
affect people's lives, of how it's going to actually affect
the country. That's the problem. They're incapable of doing these
(16:57):
things in a way where the American people don't feel
it or don't have to have concern because their skill
set has been just being cold hearted business moguls who
don't give a shit about anything except for raising their
profit margins. And again, that mentality has no place in
(17:27):
the government which is supposed to serve the people. Because
what ends up happening with these corporations and I'll really
do it with this. Who wins when a person like
Elon Musk goes in there and guts a company, you know,
does mass layoffs and set and cutbacks and all these things.
(17:47):
And now you know the company was once in debt.
Now it's technically profitable because of all the money they're saving.
Who who who reaps the benefits of that Elon Musk?
They're born and their shareholders. Right, the product suffers, the
people who work to their suffer, and as a result,
(18:09):
their consumers suffer because they're getting a inferior product as
a result. Now apply that to the government and the country.
Who benefits from what they're doing. It's going to be
the rich people, the powers that be right, the person
(18:33):
in charge, Donald Trump is getting more and more loyalists
that won't question anything he does. Elon Musk is becoming
more and more powerful and putting himself in a position
where he's going to benefit financially via his companies, who
already are receiving billions of dollars in government contracts. He's
going to receive benefits in a system that is scared
(18:56):
to hold him accountable because of the power that he has. Therefore,
as companies will be able to run wild and create
more and more profits. And what happens who's affected by that? Well,
the country unfortunately, which again isn't a product that we
can sort of stop using. This is where we live,
(19:17):
and the people affected are us, those who aren't exceptionally wealthy,
who can say fuck it, I live in my own
little bubble, this doesn't matter to me. Unfortunately, most of
us can't do that. We are directly affected by things
like inflation. We would be directly infected, god forbid, by
some sort of terror attack because we don't have real
(19:41):
ways of escaping it like these people do. We, the consumers,
or in this case, the citizens of the United States,
would suffer from a lack luster product that once again
those on top are benefiting for greater from. But we,
(20:03):
the everyday person, are going to be the ones who
suffer as a result, just as we do in corporate
America when these sort of restructuring things happen. And again,
there's far more at stake when you talk about our
democracy than a company. And I'll leave it at that.
I'll take a quick break here and then we'll touch
(20:24):
on this really tragic story again. Trigger warning, this is
going to be a difficult one, but we have to
get to it. But first we'll take a quick break
and they'll be right back. All right, we're back. And
this is one of the stories that like I try
to I like, in my heart, I'm like, I don't
want to talk about this, but it's necessary, right for
(20:48):
the context of all that's happening in this country right now,
and I guess the world as a whole in many ways,
and again like I don't. It's not a gats you moment,
but it's just a reminder of why we're so sort
(21:09):
of passionate and why we're up in arms by rhetoric
and words. And again, as sort of the example of
the earlier conversation, those at the top are rarely affected
by it. Those that have the platform that speak about
it are rarely affected by it. But it's us, the
(21:32):
everyday person who's out in you know, the street, living
life every day, that's going to be affected by it.
And unfortunately, in this case, it's the tragedy involving an
eleven year old girl. An eleven year old girl from
Texas committed suicide this week after being harassed by her classmates.
(21:56):
Her name was Josin Rojo Granza, and she was the
victim of bullying with classmates threatening to call Immigration and
Customs enforcement. And they're saying, obviously that suicide has devastated
her family and community, and their demanding answers from the school.
(22:17):
She was in the sixth grade, and they say that
her mother was unaware of the bullying that she was facing.
They say that her classmates taunted her about being left
alone if her parents were deported. In an interview with
(22:39):
Buni Vong, her mother said that her daughter had gone
to the school officials on multiple occasions about the bullying.
Despite calls for help, the school is accused of doing
nothing to protect Jocelin. Instead, Jocelyn met with the school
counsel to help her, but no action was taken. Jocelyn
spent a week in the hospital after attempting her suicide,
and her family was hoping for a miracle. However, after
(23:02):
a week in the emergency children's hospitals, she passed away.
Her parents are obviously demanding let this be investigated and
the school's fair to protect her. Now, I'm not going
(23:37):
to stay on this story too long because it's just
it's horrible. Eleven years old, man, but it's it's so
(24:06):
I know it's I think people have a blissful ignorance
two responsibility. And what I mean by that is, particularly
(24:28):
in today's day and age, where a platform you can
you can literally communicate with your followers in seconds and
immediately and right you meet them with exactly where they
are moment to moment, And anybody with some sort of
(24:50):
a platform bears a great deal of responsibility for what
you're putting out there. And when you begin to put
rhetoric out there that targets people, that targets people, I'm like,
(25:30):
I'm trying to find the word. It's the best way
I can put it in my mind is like it's
kind of like, you know, a little bit all over
(25:51):
the place reading this. You guys know't mental health. It's
like a big deal to me, And you know, I've
struggled with depression for as long as I can remember.
And you hear like somebody as young as eleven taking
(26:14):
this extreme of a step. It's just I don't know it.
It hits close to home in many ways, but it's
like almost unimaginable, and there's like a party that's like,
you know, I don't know, wishes you you could have
done something I don't know, which obviously is ridiculous. I
(26:36):
don't I don't, you know, I've never known this this
person or their family, girl or her family, but yeah,
I don't know it. It's it's definitely like when I
hear about somebody these succumbing to those dark thoughts in
their head and just sort of giving up their will
(26:59):
to push past it and fight, I can imagine that
the pain that was going on in that person. And
again to think that an eleven year old was going
through that heavy of a time and bearing that much
of a burden, and that this was having that much
of an effect on them. And again it's like, I mean,
(27:20):
anything like this would be unnecessary, but like it's so unnecessary.
And again, and it starts with like the parents of
these other kids who the rhetoric gets passed down, and
(27:42):
that's what's sort of frustrating. I mean, And again it
starts at the top then buckles down to the parents.
But like at the top, this sort of gamification of
people's lives, of human beings, the gamification of it all
these people, these community is that you're targeting, that you
are putting misinformation out there, that you are painting as
(28:04):
villains as monsters. Be it the Latin community, to be
at the LGBTQ plus community. These are real people, living
real lives with real emotions, and people that love them
and people that care about them, and you painting all
of them with this broad brush and then doing everything
(28:26):
you can to magnify and inflate this negative narrative to
anybody that will listen and purposely try to tap into
people's worst parts of themselves. So that's what these politicians
are doing, That's what Donald Trump is doing. They are
strategically tapping into people's anger, people's fear, and they have
(28:51):
blood on their hands as a result. And then the parents,
in what world do you think it's appropriate to have
conversations like this in front of your kids that then
instill that same mindset in them. Like that's what's frustrating
(29:13):
to me as well about all this stuff, is like
there's this blissful ignorance to the conversation. And I see
it when I post something on Instagram and whatever, and
I try to like appeal to ration and say, listen,
I like, you can have your political opinions, you could
have your policy opinions, but how is it that you
(29:39):
as a human being, your feelings and your moral compass
as a person doesn't supersede all of that. That's where
I can't seem to wrap my brain around. And that's
what frustrates me and disgusts me so much about the
current political climate is that we've allowed political opinion to
(30:01):
be top on the list and allowed our moral compass
and our morality as a human being to be somewhere
somewhere at the bottom, somewhere in the middle, like we're
leading with our political affiliation rather than leading with the
idea that we're human beings first. And then that trickles
(30:24):
down into creating a whole other generation that knows nothing
except for their political ideology or their fear of the
bullshit that's being spewed like the their their fear that
is caused by the bullshit that is being spewed at them,
(30:46):
that leads every decision they make, including how they view
and interact with other human beings. And that's so scary
and downright to disgusting, and sadly, these kids don't know
any better. They're emulating what they hear at home, what
(31:07):
they hear from their friends. But eventually that that's the
beginning of indoctrination right there. Eventually those same kids turn
into adults with those same beliefs who then go out
into the world and our voters and potentially people with
(31:34):
guns and whatever. Right and at this point, I don't
know how anybody makes the counter argument like, oh, well,
Trump's just talking like it doesn't really mean anything. It does.
It does because people follow every fucking thing he says. Unfortunately,
when Fox News creates their bullshit and propaganda, it's followed
(32:02):
when they paint every single immigrant as a fucking villain,
as a criminal, as somebody committing murders and atrocities, and
they repeatedly beat that information into their followers heads. It's
a problem. It matters. And this is just another like
ridiculously sad, an atrocious example of that. It's just disgusting.
(32:31):
I'll leave it at that. With that said, will take
a quick break and then we'll be right back. All right,
(32:52):
I'm gonna this will be relatively short. I'm kind of drain.
I'm not gonna lie to you after that last story
on a post the side of things here, we have
to give a shout out to AOC Alexandria Cassio Quartees
who has been really on the front lines of all
of this stuff of everything happening with Ice, and she's
(33:17):
been sharing information about know your Rights, and she's been
at protested rallies, and she hasn't been backing down. And
she's even received some really harsh public criticism from Tom Homan,
(33:40):
who is the quote unquote Borders Are appointed by Donald Trump,
the person responsible and overseeing all of these deportations, and
he's been publicly attacking her. And you know, you have
(34:01):
to give credit because I can imagine all that I
can imagine the amount of hate that she gets on
a daily basis. Like there are plenty of people who
love her, obviously, but there are also plenty of people
that are literally saying and threatening and you know, just
like talking about her in the most grotesque possible ways.
(34:22):
And actually, there I'm sure is real fear of political
retaliation from somebody like a Donald Trump, I mean Holman.
The Borders Are has even spoken to the Justice Department
allegedly about investigating her for sharing this milliar rights thing,
saying that you know, she's breaking some sort of rule
(34:44):
here of her office, and I can't imagine like it
talking about it's kind of like you know, the weight
of you know, the cross the bear almost right, the
weight of it. I don't remember what the saying is exactly,
(35:06):
but I'll be honest with you, like even for me,
you know, and I'll never say never. But I've had
some opportunities or discussions potentially about like being a bit
more involved in the political space, and there's been parts
of me that have felt called to it at times,
(35:27):
but I don't want to go that far into it,
you know, I don't think that it's good for my
mental health. I know it's not. It's draining to have
to have these discussions on a regular basis, to have
(35:50):
to you know, see the rebuttals, and I know it's like, oh,
don't read the comments, but it's like, you know, you
can't really avoid a lot of things, and to see
the rebuttal and like the just logic that is infuriating
and you can't help but be infuriated by it. And
(36:10):
I've had people in you know, public and things like that,
you know, make comments or or try to make me
feel uncomfortable whatever it is based upon, you know, seeing
some of my content and some of its people I've known, right,
and I can only imagine that being my everyday life
(36:33):
is exhausting and like depressing. I wouldn't want to leave
the house at that point. If I had to deal
with it every fucking day, I wouldn't want to post
to social media. You know. Again, even I've like you know,
picked and choose my battles a bit with what I
post on social media because I just don't feel like
dealing with everything that comes along with one post. And yeah,
(37:01):
I try to, you know, sort of, if it's I
know it's important, I'll suck it up and do and
talk about it, you know, to make sure that the
message gets out there. But again, I'm picking and choosing
carefully because I know what I'm inviting in. So again
that's why I give credit somebody AOC who's just not
backing in. I mean, she was on a Latino USA
(37:25):
and she said, quote, I'm not going to give them
my fear, you know, And I salute somebody who's standing
strong in that and fighting for the rest of us
and doing the work of the people that she was
elected to represent, you know, actually showing up, actually trying
to fight, doing what she can to keep people informed.
(37:49):
And we salute that. Shout out to AOC and I'll
leave at that and we'll tie with thre we talking
about today in the Little Bow in a segment called
conclusions too all right. I mean today was obviously a
heavy episode. I think again, my takeaway from like the
(38:15):
musk stuff and the things that he's doing, this country
can't operate like a corporation. A corporation has no heart,
no soul, no care for anybody except for the higher ups.
And that's not what this country was founded upon. They
work for us, not the other way around. And if
(38:38):
you operate like a cold corporation, you're only operating under
the incentive, under the direction of the people with the money,
and a country can't successfully operate that way, or at
least not one that's meant to be for the people,
by the people. And that's the biggest issue at all this stuff. Again.
(39:00):
The other thing the fact that, again on the surface,
some of these ideas are good, but the recklessness with
which they carry out their plans or have the lack
of plant they have is what scares me. And their
sort of approach of like, hey, mistakes are gonna be
made is doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me,
(39:21):
because again those mistakes could be the loss of human life,
and that could be your loved one that is losing
their life because these people didn't actually come up with
a real plan but decided to just be bulls in
a china shop essentially, like an unnecessary loss of life essentially,
and that leads, you know, sadly right into other story
(39:41):
about the middle school girl who took her own life.
Josin Rojo, words matter, Like I don't know what else
to say. Words matter. They trickle down into everyday life,
as I've always said, and unfortunately someone ends up being
(40:08):
the victim of somebody just mindlessly spewing hate. And oftentimes
it's never the person spewing the hate, but unfortunately it's
just an innocent person. And I can't really think of
it anything more innocent than the eleven year old girl
who's just trying to go to school every day. So
God rest her soul, and I mean, obviously my heart
(40:30):
goes out to her, her family. I can only imagine
and hopefully there's some sort of justice or accountability in
terms of what the school didn't do and where they
fell short that can potentially bring some sort of peace
to the situation. And on a positive side of things.
You know, you got to give a shout out to
(40:50):
somebody like AOC who is you know, ten toes down,
boots on the ground doing the hard work that I'm
sure is exhausting and incredibly depressing and depleting and an
uphill battle at the least. And she's still out there
front lines, putting her money where her mouth is. If
(41:11):
only the Democratic Party was made up of more people
like her, I mean shit, if only the Democratic Party
did the bare minimum rallied around her, maybe we wouldn't
be in this position we are right now. But that's
a conversation for another time. With that said, thank y'all
so much for tuning in, having an incredible weekend, and
I'll catch you on Tuesday with a brand new episode
(41:32):
to then, stay safe and we'll talk soon. This Life
as a Greno is a production of the micro Thura
podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
Let me talk about talk. There we go, he said
he lived life as a gringo. Wait, you questioned where
you fit in? Every time you mingle, they say, you
do this with not that my rappings really mad? This
life as a gringo. Yes, hello, welcome to another episode
of life as a Gringo. I am dramas, of course,
(00:28):
and it is Thursday, so it means it's time for
our Thursday Trends episode. Am I the only one who's
absolutely just like fucking blown away? Like you, I feel
like I snapped my finger and the week is already done.
And that's that's like not a very profound uh observation,
that's like elevator small talk. But ship man, I feel
(00:48):
like I can't get like there's not enough time in
the week. And maybe that's a good thing like that,
like that I'm that that much going on that I'm
getting lost in so much that the time is just
flying by. But Jesus man, another Thursday. Here we are anyway. Yeah,
(01:10):
I don't. I don't. I'm letting them. I don't know why.
I'm I'm like having small talk with you here, but
but I've just like I'm like, it's like January for
whatever reason. If I if I can just have a
sidebar here. January it felt it feels like the longest
year of your entire life. And then once like February hits,
(01:32):
It's like, talk bro, it's about to be New Year's again.
It feels like everything is just feels like it's moving
so quickly and so slowly at the same time. I
don't know how to explain them anyway. Anyway, what do
we talking about today? Thursday trends? Right, let's talk. I
want to. I don't want to dunk on Elon Musk
and Donald Trump, right, I've critiqued them enough, but I
(01:53):
want to. I want to use some recent events, particularly
one example, to showcase what I fear when you see
people trying to operate this country like a corporation with
(02:14):
no regard to anything other than the bottom line, and
mistakes are made, and potentially what could be catastrophic mistakes
could happen because of the ignorance and lack of planning
around much of what we're seeing right now. So we'll
talk about that trigger warning, a really horrendous story where
(02:41):
you actually had a middle school girl take her own
life after her classmates were continuously teasing and threatening to
call ice on her just I don't know, one of
those things that stops you in your tracks, and you know,
a necessary thing to talk about, but obviously just a
(03:05):
tragedy that should never happen. But once again another real
world example of why words and rhetoric matter. We'll talk
about that and on the positive side of things, because
God knows we need it. We have to highlight somebody
from the community, a politician who's actually out here putting
her money where her mouth is and standing up for
(03:26):
Latinos and everything that's going on right now and not
backing down. So we will shout her out. But first
and foremost, let's dive into nonsense the BS. In a segment,
we call for the people in the back, say a
lot of the people in the say a lot of
the people in the say a lot of the people
(03:52):
of all right, So let's start first and foremost with
Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the organization that they've created,
better known as DOGE, which has been making headlines, you know,
all all these last couple of weeks with the layoffs
(04:12):
and just destruction of particular branches of government or governments
organizations right now under the direction of Elon Musk, Doge
and the Trump administration suddenly fired three hundred of the
eighteen hundred people working at the National Nuclear Security Agency
(04:36):
in Washington, d C. The firings who are part of
hundreds of terminations sent to workers at the Department of Energy,
the parent organization of the nuclear Agency. It appears that
Doge made the decision based purely on their status, without
actually knowing what the workers did. So for clarifications this
entire article, you want to read the full thing on
including in the show notes. But status meaning their status
(05:01):
of employment, like full time, part time, contracted, whatever it
might be. So essentially they fired people who were on
a temporary status, some sort of temporary contract, again not
actually looking into what they were doing, but merely just
looking at the fact that they were not a full
time employee. Now the NSA, this organization has two primary missions,
(05:26):
and many of those fired are part of the management
team that was overseeing tens of thousands of highly skilled scientists, engineers,
and technicians who build, maintain, and guard the US arsenal
of some five thousand nuclear weapons. Other officials that were
fired work on an equally vital mission of preventing the
(05:49):
spread of nuclear weapons and materials. Now outcries from experts, officials,
and members of Congress about the risks to nationals kearity
forced Trump officials to reverse course. They announced last Friday
that they would now rehire the workers. The problem is
that they don't know how to reach all of them.
And even in this article you had former employees being
(06:12):
interviewed saying while they may take their job back, they
will be seeking employment elsewhere. I mean, yeah, who wants
to sort of work under these conditions? Now, this could
be an easy dunk on how idiotic and just sort
of erratic and shortsighted these plans are by Donald Trump
(06:38):
and Crony's like Elon Musk, and it is. And this
is just one example, and it's one that potentially could
have very extreme and scary ramifications. Like if you or
I were like giving options, like hey, you know, we're
looking into the budget and we're thinking, like, all right,
(07:00):
where should we start as far as budget cuts go,
I probably wouldn't like focus my energy on the departments
that are in charge of protecting nuclear weapons and preventing
nuclear tax on this country and actually globally preventing the
spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world, like
(07:22):
that probably would be an organization that I would leave
for last. You know, like if we got to the
point that we're shaking the cushions, you know, looking for
loose change in the couch, that would probably be the
only time that I would actually look at this organization.
Other than that, I'd probably say, hey, they seem to
be doing a pretty good job, and their work is
(07:43):
very important. Let me leave these people be. And if
I was to look there to do budget cuts, I
probably would only do so after having done an extensive
amount of research as to what each and every person's
role is and then come to some sort of intelligent
(08:05):
determination based upon all of the information as to who
is essential and who is a non essential role there.
But instead, this is another glaring example. It's the bull
in a china shop mentality that Donald Trump has and
those under him that they sort of just run with
(08:28):
these wild ideas, take action without giving it much thought,
and then sort of are like, hey, you know what,
mistakes are going to be made, we'll clean them up
after the fact. But again, when you're dealing with sensitive
things like nuclear weapons and the organization responsible for guarding maintaining, researching, protecting.
(09:00):
You can't use this sort of methodology or this strategy
of fucking you know, foot on the gas one hundred
miles an hour, no looking back, because it's too sensitive
as to if you fuck up, the repercussions could literally
mean death on a mass scale. I mean, same thing
(09:24):
with the FAA, Like these these are there's a reason
why this is not the standard, you know, operating process
of those in power. And to be fair, government does
move far too slow. There's far too much red tape
and bureaucracy. I do think we could adjust to that.
(09:44):
But the problem with people like Donald Trump is they
lack the I'm just gonna say patience. I'm not gonna
go any deeper than that. They lack the patience and
experience to understand that because they're trying to operate from
(10:13):
the place of a business owner and not for nothing.
If Twitter goes offline for a day, yeah, money's going
to be lost, but lives aren't gonna be put at risk. Right.
If Trump's organization, you know, fires a key person, yeah
(10:43):
maybe the hotels or the golf courses aren't going to
run as smoothly, but again, not a direct impact or
effect on people's lives or national security as a whole.
And that's why this argument and this excitement that people
(11:03):
have over they're going to run like a business, this
country needs to be run like a business. No. On
the financial side, sure, you want to create more job opportunities,
you want to create more potential financial opportunities. Absolutely, you
want to end actual waste and overspending. Sure, But the
(11:28):
problem with these people, particularly in the modern capitalistic era,
these are not people who became successful based upon having
great business prowess in terms of product development and creative solutions.
(11:56):
These are people who became successful because of their use
of route force and being immoral to the point that
they didn't care who and what they had to step
on in order to make their next dollar. That's how
they found great success. And the dark reality that I
think people are not facing is that corporations don't give
(12:20):
a fuck about you. They view you as replaceable and
you a government can't function that way. A government's in
like this is a difference. Corporations are not really meant
to serve anyone except for themselves. At the end of
the day. We can make in bullshit and say how
they love their customers and all this, it's no, it's
(12:42):
self serving. A corporation. A government, on the other hand,
sole purpose, the reason it was created was to serve
the people. The government works for the people. We pay
for their salaries. The money they use in their budgets
to do shit around this country comes from our salaries.
(13:07):
They work for us as much as they don't want to,
or don't not even don't want to, as much as
they don't operate in that manner. That is the truth.
So them now operating from the form of a cold
corporation means they do not take into consideration the individuals
(13:30):
and what they might face as a result of the
decisions of those in charge. A corporation doesn't give a
fuck about the fact that they're laying off a father
of three or a mother of three. They don't give
a fuck about the fact that this person was barely
hanging on to begin with, but now they're going to
(13:50):
lose their job and lose everything as a result. No,
they care about their bottom line. You are a cognal wheel.
A number is statistic. You represent the savings of x
amount of dollars each quarter for their fucking already rich
investors and CEOs and boards and shareholders. The country can't
(14:14):
operate in that manner because the country, by design, is
supposed to take care of those who are struggling. It's
supposed to make the lives of its citizens better. That's
not what a corporation does. Corporations don't actually give a
fuck about if you enjoy your work or not. As
(14:34):
long as you're getting shit done. That's all they care about.
That's their bottom line, most of them. And that's the
problem with just blindly running this like a corporation. And again,
these people are used to coming into companies Elon Musk
same thing he did with X, gutting it and doesn't
(14:56):
give a fuck about if it loses efficiency because he's
trying to save some money, right, And that was a
problem with X. They fired or forced out crucial employees
that then affected their short term operations. And again, the
(15:20):
difference in this is we're not talking about Twitter or X,
you know, lagging. We're talking about nuclear weapons not having
the safety and security that they should. That's scary shit,
(15:40):
and that's why you can't just have people who are
blind fucking disgusting, immoral CEOs treating this like another company
that they just bought that they're just trying to gut
and resell. And this is just an incredibly scary reminder
(16:02):
of how inept the powers that be are and how
awful the strategy is. And again it's like what I've
touched on in the past, and I'll leave it at this.
On the surface, these aren't particularly bad ideas in terms
of the general idea of where can we cut out
the waste. That's not a bad idea of you know,
(16:24):
investigating and finding out, okay, where what is sort of unnecessary,
what can we redo? The problem is the execution and
lack of forethought of how this is actually going to
affect people's lives, of how it's going to actually affect
the country. That's the problem. They're incapable of doing these
(16:57):
things in a way where the American people don't feel
it or don't have to have concern because their skill
set has been just being cold hearted business moguls who
don't give a shit about anything except for raising their
profit margins. And again, that mentality has no place in
(17:27):
the government which is supposed to serve the people. Because
what ends up happening with these corporations and I'll really
do it with this. Who wins when a person like
Elon Musk goes in there and guts a company, you know,
does mass layoffs and set and cutbacks and all these things.
(17:47):
And now you know the company was once in debt.
Now it's technically profitable because of all the money they're saving.
Who who who reaps the benefits of that Elon Musk?
They're born and their shareholders. Right, the product suffers, the
people who work to their suffer, and as a result,
(18:09):
their consumers suffer because they're getting a inferior product as
a result. Now apply that to the government and the country.
Who benefits from what they're doing. It's going to be
the rich people, the powers that be right, the person
(18:33):
in charge, Donald Trump is getting more and more loyalists
that won't question anything he does. Elon Musk is becoming
more and more powerful and putting himself in a position
where he's going to benefit financially via his companies, who
already are receiving billions of dollars in government contracts. He's
going to receive benefits in a system that is scared
(18:56):
to hold him accountable because of the power that he has. Therefore,
as companies will be able to run wild and create
more and more profits. And what happens who's affected by that? Well,
the country unfortunately, which again isn't a product that we
can sort of stop using. This is where we live,
(19:17):
and the people affected are us, those who aren't exceptionally wealthy,
who can say fuck it, I live in my own
little bubble, this doesn't matter to me. Unfortunately, most of
us can't do that. We are directly affected by things
like inflation. We would be directly infected, god forbid, by
some sort of terror attack because we don't have real
(19:41):
ways of escaping it like these people do. We, the consumers,
or in this case, the citizens of the United States,
would suffer from a lack luster product that once again
those on top are benefiting for greater from. But we,
(20:03):
the everyday person, are going to be the ones who
suffer as a result, just as we do in corporate
America when these sort of restructuring things happen. And again,
there's far more at stake when you talk about our
democracy than a company. And I'll leave it at that.
I'll take a quick break here and then we'll touch
(20:24):
on this really tragic story again. Trigger warning, this is
going to be a difficult one, but we have to
get to it. But first we'll take a quick break
and they'll be right back. All right, we're back. And
this is one of the stories that like I try
to I like, in my heart, I'm like, I don't
want to talk about this, but it's necessary, right for
(20:48):
the context of all that's happening in this country right now,
and I guess the world as a whole in many ways,
and again like I don't. It's not a gats you moment,
but it's just a reminder of why we're so sort
(21:09):
of passionate and why we're up in arms by rhetoric
and words. And again, as sort of the example of
the earlier conversation, those at the top are rarely affected
by it. Those that have the platform that speak about
it are rarely affected by it. But it's us, the
(21:32):
everyday person who's out in you know, the street, living
life every day, that's going to be affected by it.
And unfortunately, in this case, it's the tragedy involving an
eleven year old girl. An eleven year old girl from
Texas committed suicide this week after being harassed by her classmates.
(21:56):
Her name was Josin Rojo Granza, and she was the
victim of bullying with classmates threatening to call Immigration and
Customs enforcement. And they're saying, obviously that suicide has devastated
her family and community, and their demanding answers from the school.
(22:17):
She was in the sixth grade, and they say that
her mother was unaware of the bullying that she was facing.
They say that her classmates taunted her about being left
alone if her parents were deported. In an interview with
(22:39):
Buni Vong, her mother said that her daughter had gone
to the school officials on multiple occasions about the bullying.
Despite calls for help, the school is accused of doing
nothing to protect Jocelin. Instead, Jocelyn met with the school
counsel to help her, but no action was taken. Jocelyn
spent a week in the hospital after attempting her suicide,
and her family was hoping for a miracle. However, after
(23:02):
a week in the emergency children's hospitals, she passed away.
Her parents are obviously demanding let this be investigated and
the school's fair to protect her. Now, I'm not going
(23:37):
to stay on this story too long because it's just
it's horrible. Eleven years old, man, but it's it's so
(24:06):
I know it's I think people have a blissful ignorance
two responsibility. And what I mean by that is, particularly
(24:28):
in today's day and age, where a platform you can
you can literally communicate with your followers in seconds and
immediately and right you meet them with exactly where they
are moment to moment, And anybody with some sort of
(24:50):
a platform bears a great deal of responsibility for what
you're putting out there. And when you begin to put
rhetoric out there that targets people, that targets people, I'm like,
(25:30):
I'm trying to find the word. It's the best way
I can put it in my mind is like it's
kind of like, you know, a little bit all over
(25:51):
the place reading this. You guys know't mental health. It's
like a big deal to me, And you know, I've
struggled with depression for as long as I can remember.
And you hear like somebody as young as eleven taking
(26:14):
this extreme of a step. It's just I don't know it.
It hits close to home in many ways, but it's
like almost unimaginable, and there's like a party that's like,
you know, I don't know, wishes you you could have
done something I don't know, which obviously is ridiculous. I
(26:36):
don't I don't, you know, I've never known this this
person or their family, girl or her family, but yeah,
I don't know it. It's it's definitely like when I
hear about somebody these succumbing to those dark thoughts in
their head and just sort of giving up their will
(26:59):
to push past it and fight, I can imagine that
the pain that was going on in that person. And
again to think that an eleven year old was going
through that heavy of a time and bearing that much
of a burden, and that this was having that much
of an effect on them. And again it's like, I mean,
(27:20):
anything like this would be unnecessary, but like it's so unnecessary.
And again, and it starts with like the parents of
these other kids who the rhetoric gets passed down, and
(27:42):
that's what's sort of frustrating. I mean, And again it
starts at the top then buckles down to the parents.
But like at the top, this sort of gamification of
people's lives, of human beings, the gamification of it all
these people, these community is that you're targeting, that you
are putting misinformation out there, that you are painting as
(28:04):
villains as monsters. Be it the Latin community, to be
at the LGBTQ plus community. These are real people, living
real lives with real emotions, and people that love them
and people that care about them, and you painting all
of them with this broad brush and then doing everything
(28:26):
you can to magnify and inflate this negative narrative to
anybody that will listen and purposely try to tap into
people's worst parts of themselves. So that's what these politicians
are doing, That's what Donald Trump is doing. They are
strategically tapping into people's anger, people's fear, and they have
(28:51):
blood on their hands as a result. And then the parents,
in what world do you think it's appropriate to have
conversations like this in front of your kids that then
instill that same mindset in them. Like that's what's frustrating
(29:13):
to me as well about all this stuff, is like
there's this blissful ignorance to the conversation. And I see
it when I post something on Instagram and whatever, and
I try to like appeal to ration and say, listen,
I like, you can have your political opinions, you could
have your policy opinions, but how is it that you
(29:39):
as a human being, your feelings and your moral compass
as a person doesn't supersede all of that. That's where
I can't seem to wrap my brain around. And that's
what frustrates me and disgusts me so much about the
current political climate is that we've allowed political opinion to
(30:01):
be top on the list and allowed our moral compass
and our morality as a human being to be somewhere
somewhere at the bottom, somewhere in the middle, like we're
leading with our political affiliation rather than leading with the
idea that we're human beings first. And then that trickles
(30:24):
down into creating a whole other generation that knows nothing
except for their political ideology or their fear of the
bullshit that's being spewed like the their their fear that
is caused by the bullshit that is being spewed at them,
(30:46):
that leads every decision they make, including how they view
and interact with other human beings. And that's so scary
and downright to disgusting, and sadly, these kids don't know
any better. They're emulating what they hear at home, what
(31:07):
they hear from their friends. But eventually that that's the
beginning of indoctrination right there. Eventually those same kids turn
into adults with those same beliefs who then go out
into the world and our voters and potentially people with
(31:34):
guns and whatever. Right and at this point, I don't
know how anybody makes the counter argument like, oh, well,
Trump's just talking like it doesn't really mean anything. It does.
It does because people follow every fucking thing he says. Unfortunately,
when Fox News creates their bullshit and propaganda, it's followed
(32:02):
when they paint every single immigrant as a fucking villain,
as a criminal, as somebody committing murders and atrocities, and
they repeatedly beat that information into their followers heads. It's
a problem. It matters. And this is just another like
ridiculously sad, an atrocious example of that. It's just disgusting.
(32:31):
I'll leave it at that. With that said, will take
a quick break and then we'll be right back. All right,
(32:52):
I'm gonna this will be relatively short. I'm kind of drain.
I'm not gonna lie to you after that last story
on a post the side of things here, we have
to give a shout out to AOC Alexandria Cassio Quartees
who has been really on the front lines of all
of this stuff of everything happening with Ice, and she's
(33:17):
been sharing information about know your Rights, and she's been
at protested rallies, and she hasn't been backing down. And
she's even received some really harsh public criticism from Tom Homan,
(33:40):
who is the quote unquote Borders Are appointed by Donald Trump,
the person responsible and overseeing all of these deportations, and
he's been publicly attacking her. And you know, you have
(34:01):
to give credit because I can imagine all that I
can imagine the amount of hate that she gets on
a daily basis. Like there are plenty of people who
love her, obviously, but there are also plenty of people
that are literally saying and threatening and you know, just
like talking about her in the most grotesque possible ways.
(34:22):
And actually, there I'm sure is real fear of political
retaliation from somebody like a Donald Trump, I mean Holman.
The Borders Are has even spoken to the Justice Department
allegedly about investigating her for sharing this milliar rights thing,
saying that you know, she's breaking some sort of rule
(34:44):
here of her office, and I can't imagine like it
talking about it's kind of like you know, the weight
of you know, the cross the bear almost right, the
weight of it. I don't remember what the saying is exactly,
(35:06):
but I'll be honest with you, like even for me,
you know, and I'll never say never. But I've had
some opportunities or discussions potentially about like being a bit
more involved in the political space, and there's been parts
of me that have felt called to it at times,
(35:27):
but I don't want to go that far into it,
you know, I don't think that it's good for my
mental health. I know it's not. It's draining to have
to have these discussions on a regular basis, to have
(35:50):
to you know, see the rebuttals, and I know it's like, oh,
don't read the comments, but it's like, you know, you
can't really avoid a lot of things, and to see
the rebuttal and like the just logic that is infuriating
and you can't help but be infuriated by it. And
(36:10):
I've had people in you know, public and things like that,
you know, make comments or or try to make me
feel uncomfortable whatever it is based upon, you know, seeing
some of my content and some of its people I've known, right,
and I can only imagine that being my everyday life
(36:33):
is exhausting and like depressing. I wouldn't want to leave
the house at that point. If I had to deal
with it every fucking day, I wouldn't want to post
to social media. You know. Again, even I've like you know,
picked and choose my battles a bit with what I
post on social media because I just don't feel like
dealing with everything that comes along with one post. And yeah,
(37:01):
I try to, you know, sort of, if it's I
know it's important, I'll suck it up and do and
talk about it, you know, to make sure that the
message gets out there. But again, I'm picking and choosing
carefully because I know what I'm inviting in. So again
that's why I give credit somebody AOC who's just not
backing in. I mean, she was on a Latino USA
(37:25):
and she said, quote, I'm not going to give them
my fear, you know, And I salute somebody who's standing
strong in that and fighting for the rest of us
and doing the work of the people that she was
elected to represent, you know, actually showing up, actually trying
to fight, doing what she can to keep people informed.
(37:49):
And we salute that. Shout out to AOC and I'll
leave at that and we'll tie with thre we talking
about today in the Little Bow in a segment called
conclusions too all right. I mean today was obviously a
heavy episode. I think again, my takeaway from like the
(38:15):
musk stuff and the things that he's doing, this country
can't operate like a corporation. A corporation has no heart,
no soul, no care for anybody except for the higher ups.
And that's not what this country was founded upon. They
work for us, not the other way around. And if
(38:38):
you operate like a cold corporation, you're only operating under
the incentive, under the direction of the people with the money,
and a country can't successfully operate that way, or at
least not one that's meant to be for the people,
by the people. And that's the biggest issue at all this stuff. Again.
(39:00):
The other thing the fact that, again on the surface,
some of these ideas are good, but the recklessness with
which they carry out their plans or have the lack
of plant they have is what scares me. And their
sort of approach of like, hey, mistakes are gonna be
made is doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me,
(39:21):
because again those mistakes could be the loss of human life,
and that could be your loved one that is losing
their life because these people didn't actually come up with
a real plan but decided to just be bulls in
a china shop essentially, like an unnecessary loss of life essentially,
and that leads, you know, sadly right into other story
(39:41):
about the middle school girl who took her own life.
Josin Rojo, words matter, Like I don't know what else
to say. Words matter. They trickle down into everyday life,
as I've always said, and unfortunately someone ends up being
(40:08):
the victim of somebody just mindlessly spewing hate. And oftentimes
it's never the person spewing the hate, but unfortunately it's
just an innocent person. And I can't really think of
it anything more innocent than the eleven year old girl
who's just trying to go to school every day. So
God rest her soul, and I mean, obviously my heart
(40:30):
goes out to her, her family. I can only imagine
and hopefully there's some sort of justice or accountability in
terms of what the school didn't do and where they
fell short that can potentially bring some sort of peace
to the situation. And on a positive side of things.
You know, you got to give a shout out to
(40:50):
somebody like AOC who is you know, ten toes down,
boots on the ground doing the hard work that I'm
sure is exhausting and incredibly depressing and depleting and an
uphill battle at the least. And she's still out there
front lines, putting her money where her mouth is. If
(41:11):
only the Democratic Party was made up of more people
like her, I mean shit, if only the Democratic Party
did the bare minimum rallied around her, maybe we wouldn't
be in this position we are right now. But that's
a conversation for another time. With that said, thank y'all
so much for tuning in, having an incredible weekend, and
I'll catch you on Tuesday with a brand new episode
(41:32):
to then, stay safe and we'll talk soon. This Life
as a Greno is a production of the micro Thura
podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
Host
DJ Dramos
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