August 15, 2024 • 23 mins
In this conversation, Karol interviews Jon Gabriel, a columnist for Discourse Magazine and the Arizona Republic. They discuss various topics, including John's iconic profile picture, his transition from the private sector to being a writer, the importance of reaching out to people with different political views, and the value of reading classic literature. John emphasizes the need for virtue in society and the importance of engaging with normal, non-political people to make a difference. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm traveling this week, one last trip before the end
of summer, so no monologue today, but stay tuned for
an interview with John Gabriel.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
My guest today is John Gabriel, columnist for Discourse Magazine
and the Arizona Republic. Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
John, Hi, how you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
So nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Oh, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, I you know, I made the joke when I
first saw you that you know, I don't recognize you
with the top lip. You know, people will be listening
to this, but I'll have some video for them also,
that you're a very iconic profile picture you're drinking out
of a cup and so that's you know, the joke here.
But how did you what made you do that? And
(00:52):
how have you maintained it for this long?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Well, the main reason I maintained it is anytime I
tried to change it early on, people would yell at me, like,
I don't recognize you. But it was just I was
in Chicago, My wife and I were there outside the
douche Ist Name in the World Intelligentsia coffee. Oh, and
I was sitting my Machiato outdoors in Chicago, and she
(01:19):
apparently took a picture. She's like, Okay, now take mine,
and so that just became my profile photo because it's like, yeah,
I'm a real person, but I don't want all my
personal info out there because I still worked in the
private sector. And then when I came out of the
closet as a conservative and included my full name, I
kept trying to change it and people would be very
(01:42):
very mean to me. So I gave into the trolls
and I just maintained it as it. So that has
been my picture since I joined Twitter, which is probably
like two thousand and eight. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I understand bullying you into keeping it. I support them.
I have to say, I definitely didn't picture you as
a macchiato guy, though I thought, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, definitely. I've always loved good coffee, and I'm a
real jerk about it as well. So I annoy my
friends who have inferior Oh we're going to Starbucks. I'm like, uh,
it's a durable So I'm that guy, right, So.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
What kind of coffee do you like?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
What's your I usually I like Macchiato's, but I usually
just get a pour over. I usually just make it
at home or I go to some hipster place. The
only place I ever get compliments on my World War
One facial hair is from Barista's, a very hipster shop.
So that's cool, man, I see that these are my people.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I mean hipsters. They're good at some stuff. Yeah,
I give them that. They know how to make coffee.
I feel like there's a couple of dishes that they like.
You know, they do nail burnt ends. I feel as
a very hips restaurant dish that like.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
The bands that are popular now before those bands sold out.
So that's another thing I'm guilty of.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So right, yeah, they know how to do some stuff.
So what made you make the transition from the private
sector into being a public person and a writer. What
was the kind of turning point?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, well, I worked for many years right high school,
joined the Navy, then got into I got a degree
in journalism. But I could see that print journalism, which
is what I wanted to do, was doomed. Everybody could
kind of see it, and so I went into I
started a little graft design business and marketing business, just
basically make beer money in college, and so I continued
(03:44):
with that for many years, probably fifteen years something like that.
And the last place I worked in that field was
an electronic health records company and about a year after
I was hired there, Obama took off us passed the stimulus,
and he was giving away quote unquote free money to
(04:06):
people buying our product essentially, and everybody at my company
was very progressive and they're like, Oh, we're just going
to be so rich. And I'm like, people have no
idea what you're in for, right, needles to say, nothing
but regulations, crazy restrictions and is really free exactly exactly.
(04:28):
Ours focused on people, the hunter By patients, the detoc centers,
but also all behavioral health which have their own crazy
privacy requirements, and we were you know, they demanded we
asked about old age stuff, you know, if you're pregnant
or not, how long you've been smoking, these kind of
(04:49):
things that had nothing to do with our model, and
actually some violated the law because we're not supposed to
ask stuff like that. So I could see that regulations
were going to kill us. And around the same time,
the Goldwater Institute, which is a state based thing tank
here in the Phoenix area, they were hiring a director
of marketing, so I went for it, got a job there,
(05:09):
and that was kind of like my policy boot camp.
But I've always cared a lot about policy and politics,
probably more policy than politics, and worked there for a
couple of years, got a really good grounding on you know,
every couple of weeks I was focused on, you know,
school choice one week, tax policy one week, business regulations
the next. So it was a really good place to learn.
(05:32):
And when I left there, I was planning on once
again doing marketing, consulting and things, but people kept asking
me to write, so I stuck with writing and it
it really held. So I was at until January of
this year with Ricochet dot com as their editor in chief.
Now I am a columnist for Discourse magazine. I write
(05:56):
scripts for a video company called Kitanky Media, so you'll
always see me promoting their videos every couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They do great stuff on this That's what I like
them a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a really great group. And also I've
written for the local paper the years on a Republic
for I think like seven years now. Wow, So that's
I'm kind of the conservative. They tolerate the housebroken conservative
I guess I can say, but I don't know. Hopefully
(06:26):
changing a mind here or there, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah. So it's interesting because I think that people don't
know how much behind the scenes stuff happens. Like you said,
you know, the stimulus, Obama stimulus, you know, basically pushed
you from one career to another, Right, I feel like
that's an untold story about stuff like that. Like for example,
I actually I have never told the story on the show,
(06:49):
but I owned a what it's called a blowout nailbar
in New York. Yeah, when Obama was president, and right
when he was passing Obamacare, we were like, it's really
hard to own a business anywhere, but in New York
it was really really hard. We were like barely breaking
even and he passed they passed Obamacare, and we were like, well,
(07:10):
we're done here because we can't we will not be
able to afford this. So he closed our business. And
you just I feel like stories like that kind of
go untold.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, And it's something I've always been on the sidelines.
And I ran a kind of a semi anonymous blog
I just went by John was it called ex Serbent League,
and it was we're sort of getting picked up by
like Rush and you Hewitt and hot Air and places
like that. But I had to keep kind of anonymous
because I was working in the private sector and it
(07:39):
seemed like most of the places I worked, where you know,
the CEO would always be a very virtual signaling kind
of person. So it's just like, okay, I'll do this
on the side, but that's it. But once I saw
the regulations coming in, I'm like, okay, things are getting
really bad. And I basically told my bosses you will laugh.
(08:00):
About two years and to the month. Two years later,
they had been absorbed into a big company that could
afford all the lobbyists and things, and you know, probably
three quarters the people off their job, A few are
brought into the new company. And that particular industry, we
had about seven eight companies serving that. Now there's one
(08:22):
company who just went swept in bought everything every little
company out there, and so now there's no consumer choice.
They can charge whatever they want, and of course the
government will pay them because they can afford lobbyists and
lawyers and have a fully staffed office in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, amazing how that really works out for that.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Right, We're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So you get to write about whatever you want, and
you have pursued your dreams of being a writer, and
you left a successful job. I know you have a
great family. Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
No? No, maybe when I cross at it, yeah, yeah.
I always just want to feel like an underdog kind
of Something that actually really helps is living. I live
in Arizona. You know, when I left the Goldwarter Institute,
a lot of people are like, Okay, we've got jobs
at d C, and you've got to move to d C.
(09:25):
I know you fled to Florida, which is very very smart,
but a lot of people wanting me to move there
or to Austin because that's when the people were starting
to move from like California to Austin. But my kids
were just about to start high school. I'm like, I
don't want to do this to them. But also it's like,
it would be nice to have a perspective from outside
(09:46):
of the Beltway, in our way, outside of the media centers,
New York, LA, even Silicon Valley, just outside of that,
because everybody I know who has moved to d C
and nothing against them because I would do the exact
same thing. Yeah, you get you get the virus, you
get kind of consumed by it. What you think actually
matters is what your neighbors think matters in DC, and
(10:09):
no one actually cares about it and the country yeah right,
And also you get kind of co opted into a group.
It's like, why did you like that tweet by that conservative?
He's not a tribe and he once opposed me when
I ran for precinct committee chair in this precinct in
rural Virginia, and I'm like, I don't care. I don't
(10:29):
care about any of this. And a lot of people
there are very few people who can stand up to that.
Someone who's been a friend since I was like an
anonymous blogger, Mully Hemingway and her husband Mark, she's one
who can stand yeah, And she's one that I'll just say,
I don't care, I don't care, I'm going to do this,
(10:50):
and she does it. But I know that when I
was there a couple of years, and my kids are
on the cross country team with that politician's kids. It's
just it just kind of adapt and I never wanted
to do that. And I think being growing up out
West and living out here, you just have And Florida
has a lot of those two Texas cours does, but
(11:12):
the Mountain West you just have a strong separation from
what they're doing on Wall Street, what they're doing in
DC especially. Yeah, And there's an innate mabe the attitude
right right in Washington. And when government says, Okay, there's
a problem, we should do A or we should do B,
(11:34):
and you need those people out there saying, why are
you involved at all? There's no reason for you to
be involved. It's like, yeah, Democrats want to spend three trillion,
Republicans want to spend two point seven trillions. How about
you don't spend money and we figure it out. You know,
it's not that difficult.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, what would you say is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Wow, that's really tough. I'm just going to say this
because I've been writing about it. But I would say
I've been reading a lot more of their early founding
fathers on the importance of virtue. And I come from
a background very libertarian ish. I was never full blown libertarian,
(12:17):
because I think if you take it all the way,
it gets pretty utopian, and it's very kind of materialistic
but there's no room for the virtue of the people.
And so many of the founding fathers said, look, you know,
Ben Franklin a Republican if you can keep it. John
(12:38):
Adams has always going about this is a great system.
It only works if you have a virtuous people. And
of course we're all screwed up, We're all going to
make mistakes. And if anybody says, well, I'm very virtuous,
I instinctively don't trust them. But people who give a
crap You need at least that people who are trying
to do the right thing, trying to figure it out.
(13:01):
And now it's just okay, which candidate will give me
more money which will help my little identity group, instead
of saying, hey, we're all in this together, and why
don't we work on this. The border is a key example.
Rampant unchecked immigration, legal immigration. It hurts everybody, and living
(13:24):
in Arizona most of my life, it hurts those people
crossing the borders most of all. On this is something
the left always just glides over. But the cartels are ugly.
Cartel violence is seeping into Arizona more and more. You
have massive human trafficking. And I remember writing a column
years ago about there's a place called Sasa Bay, which
(13:45):
is just across the border, the Arizona border into Mexico,
and there's a field of crosses everywhere, just in an
empty desert, and it's all the immigrants who died of
the heat and thirst and hunger in the deserts. Basically
all these family members who went to El Norte and
they never heard from them again. So there's just crosses
(14:06):
for all of them. And it's just like, yeah, I
would rather not have that. I would rather have them
be alive. And maybe some of them say, hey, can
I get a visa to go to UCLA or whatever? Awesome,
that's great, come on in, but sign the guest book.
Make sure we know who's here. And when you have
a bunch of military age people from nations that are very,
(14:27):
very hostile to us, this is not a good thing
for the future. And it's something if you just talk
casually to people, ninety percent of Americans would agree with you,
but they'll have to jump into our political modes. And
oh well, actually Biden's not even old when you think
about it. You know, just all this nonsense that people
feel the need to defend. This goofy guys.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those silos are what caused the problems, right.
But I think on immigration, that's a really great example
because when you talk to kind of normal people, not
very political people, it doesn't matter if they vote Democrat
or Republican, but if they're not, like just immersed in politics,
obviously we should have a border that we have control over.
(15:09):
It just becomes one of those things that like there's
other obvious like I find similar things like should biological
boys play in girls' sports? Like it doesn't matter who
they vote for, nobody thinks that they should, you know,
So I just I think that getting to the normal
people who have normal opinions on this kind of thing
(15:32):
and getting like the loud, crazy voices out of the way.
It's a tough, it's tough to do, but it's what
we need to be doing.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yeah. And I will get asked by a lot of
conservatives writing for the local paper, because of course it's
left leaning. You know, it's shocking that any kind of
conservative opinion ever gets published in there, let alone once
a week, and a lot of people said, I can't
believe you write for them, Why are you shilling for them?
I grew up and mostly worked in, as I said,
(16:02):
progressive environments. I'm used to talking to these people, and
when you work with them day after day, you find
out how to present things to them, like school choice
and kind of lese a Rise on a viral clip
about a week ago, just talking about you know, you
send all your kids to sivil friends and talk about
you know, the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Yeah, you have
(16:25):
school choice because you can afford it, and it should
be available to everybody. So when I have family members
who are kind of not very involved in politics, they
usually vote but their center left because that's the right
thing to do kind of a thing. And when I
hear from them, hey, I really liked your article that
you change my mind on this, I'm like, that's a
(16:46):
huge you know, I'm not going to turn them into
reading Frederick Bastiat and opposing un funding. But if you
can nudge some of these people a little bit exactly exactly,
kind of change the narrative a little bit, because people
assume the media narrative too many times is correct, and
(17:06):
we all know it's no.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Absolutely. I'm all about talking, you know, going into left
spaces and talking to them. Like some things I don't know,
like a lot of the debates we see online, I
don't know that those are very useful. But in general,
like I've been asked like would you go on CNN,
would you go on MSNBC? Of course I would. Of
course I would love to present my opinion to an
(17:32):
audience that maybe hasn't heard it before. And I don't
think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's the
way to change minds and that's the way to go
about it. And the idea of like how why would
you give these people the time of day, It's like,
because I want to change in our minds and that
that's why. That's why I would do that. But it's tough.
It's it's tough because of the you know, again back
(17:55):
to the idea that we're in our little bubbles and
you're not even allowed to jump between you know, inner
conservative bubbles.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Right, it's uh right, right, And you're not going to
change say when he was there, you're not going to
change Don Lemon's money. But there is a viewer who's
a Don Lemon viewer who's like, oh wait a minute,
that makes sense, you know, But Don Lemon.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Needs to be more moderate, you know, exactly. So just
the fact that somebody who's maybe watching him back then
and continues watching him as he slides to the left right,
I think that that person's still reachable. I think that
moderate is still reachable. I also think that, you know,
going back to your like living in Arizona and not
living in DC, my world is mostly you know, normis.
(18:39):
It's not political, local people, and I like that. I
like that they don't come with, you know, kind of
all the baggage that we have. They're sort of open
to possibilities or hearing things. They're called kind of the
undecided voters, but that's not really it. They don't really
care that much about holidays, and they don't carry it
(19:01):
around with them all day. They don't think about it
all day. They don't think about it every day. And
that's good. That's the way it should do.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, it's great. And another thing too, is I've had
to write several times, especially when you had racial unrest
and Black Lives Matter and the reaction to that and stuff.
I had to write a lot of times because I'm
online and it's just this basically erased war going on,
and everybody hates each other and this group hates this group.
(19:28):
I'm like, it's funny because I just got back from
the grocery store and a black guy held the door
for me, and I held the door for a Hispanic
woman when I was leaving, and everybody got along great.
And we were in a long line, and we're all
telling jokes to each other, and they probably had different religions,
different income levels. Everybody got along great. And this is
(19:49):
normy America. Most people do, and our politicians really want
us at each other's throats. And so it's really important to,
you know, as my daughter say, touch grass and get
out there and see real people, because most of the
country is just not all charged up about politics. They're
upset about what's going on with the country. Maybe they
(20:10):
lean left or right, maybe they've voted D or R,
but most people are just trying to figure out how
to pay their higher grocery bill and fill up their
gas tank and they're just chatting with people at the
barber shop. Most people are still normal out there, and
if you can reach a couple of them, you've made
a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's exactly it. Not Touch grass is actually like has
become my favorite saying I think a lot of people
need to go and touch some grass.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I'm in Arizona, so it's kind of touch sand or
touch rocks.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But you know, same biff, right, you guys are like
at one hundred and fifteen degrees right now, No, carefully
touch that grass.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I know, I know. And then has some alo vera
available so you can treat the massive birds you get.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Perl Marcowitch show. Well, I love talking
to you. This has been really great, and here with
your best tip from my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Oh okay, I will say, because I've turned into a
nerd about this. Probably about four or five years ago.
My daughters were going to a charter school that was
a classical academy, and when they started, I got their
reading list and it's all Plato and Dostoevsky and all
these other people that smart people read that I've never
(21:36):
gotten around to. You know, I was the kid in
the back of the high school class with the cliff
notes hidden in the book. And I've read experts talking
about Dante, but I didn't read Dante, and I was like, oh, crap,
my girls are going to be smarter than me. This
will not stand because I need to keep my ego
nice and high. So I just started at the beginning
(21:59):
and started with the Iliad and Odyssey and started reading.
And I highly recommend it because I thought it would
be like eating my vegetables. Okay, I got a power
through and read this dry, old, boring garbage because other
smart people do. And after I got like a chapter
two into the iliadom like, this is the coolest thing
(22:20):
I've ever read, and I finally realized, Oh, they're classics
because they're fun to read. That's why they've been reading.
Yes they're important, Yes there's deep thoughts, Yes, smart people
reference it. But most of them are fun stories. That's
why they've been around for two thousand years. And they're cool,
and so just pick up an old book and start reading. Also,
(22:40):
I've noticed it's kind of a counterprogramming for the nonsense
of the day. People have been the same going back
four thousand years, and they'll be the same a thousand
years later. Basically, human nature's flowed or all goofballs and
are yeah yeah, and when you see, oh, they're having
the same issues. I'm reading about the Roman Empire, and
(23:03):
they're saying, oh, well, this politician wants to be popular,
so he keeps on spending all this money. I'm like, wow,
what a wildly diffamiliar Yeah, exactly so. And it's also
kind of counterprogramming to kind of see how people thought
for the vast majority of human history and whatever wokiness
is popular this week that even the woke people will
(23:24):
forget about a year from now. It just kind of,
I don't know, counterprogramming for the hysteria of the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I love that. I'm going to go read the Iliad.
Thank you so much for coming on, John, thanks for
having check him out on Twitter ex John at ex
Joen read his stuff. He's really great.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm traveling this week, one last trip before the end
of summer, so no monologue today, but stay tuned for
an interview with John Gabriel.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
My guest today is John Gabriel, columnist for Discourse Magazine
and the Arizona Republic. Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
John, Hi, how you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
So nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Oh, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, I you know, I made the joke when I
first saw you that you know, I don't recognize you
with the top lip. You know, people will be listening
to this, but I'll have some video for them also,
that you're a very iconic profile picture you're drinking out
of a cup and so that's you know, the joke here.
But how did you what made you do that? And
(00:52):
how have you maintained it for this long?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Well, the main reason I maintained it is anytime I
tried to change it early on, people would yell at me, like,
I don't recognize you. But it was just I was
in Chicago, My wife and I were there outside the
douche Ist Name in the World Intelligentsia coffee. Oh, and
I was sitting my Machiato outdoors in Chicago, and she
(01:19):
apparently took a picture. She's like, Okay, now take mine,
and so that just became my profile photo because it's like, yeah,
I'm a real person, but I don't want all my
personal info out there because I still worked in the
private sector. And then when I came out of the
closet as a conservative and included my full name, I
kept trying to change it and people would be very
(01:42):
very mean to me. So I gave into the trolls
and I just maintained it as it. So that has
been my picture since I joined Twitter, which is probably
like two thousand and eight. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I understand bullying you into keeping it. I support them.
I have to say, I definitely didn't picture you as
a macchiato guy, though I thought, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, definitely. I've always loved good coffee, and I'm a
real jerk about it as well. So I annoy my
friends who have inferior Oh we're going to Starbucks. I'm like, uh,
it's a durable So I'm that guy, right, So.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
What kind of coffee do you like?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
What's your I usually I like Macchiato's, but I usually
just get a pour over. I usually just make it
at home or I go to some hipster place. The
only place I ever get compliments on my World War
One facial hair is from Barista's, a very hipster shop.
So that's cool, man, I see that these are my people.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I mean hipsters. They're good at some stuff. Yeah,
I give them that. They know how to make coffee.
I feel like there's a couple of dishes that they like.
You know, they do nail burnt ends. I feel as
a very hips restaurant dish that like.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
The bands that are popular now before those bands sold out.
So that's another thing I'm guilty of.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So right, yeah, they know how to do some stuff.
So what made you make the transition from the private
sector into being a public person and a writer. What
was the kind of turning point?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, well, I worked for many years right high school,
joined the Navy, then got into I got a degree
in journalism. But I could see that print journalism, which
is what I wanted to do, was doomed. Everybody could
kind of see it, and so I went into I
started a little graft design business and marketing business, just
basically make beer money in college, and so I continued
(03:44):
with that for many years, probably fifteen years something like that.
And the last place I worked in that field was
an electronic health records company and about a year after
I was hired there, Obama took off us passed the stimulus,
and he was giving away quote unquote free money to
(04:06):
people buying our product essentially, and everybody at my company
was very progressive and they're like, Oh, we're just going
to be so rich. And I'm like, people have no
idea what you're in for, right, needles to say, nothing
but regulations, crazy restrictions and is really free exactly exactly.
(04:28):
Ours focused on people, the hunter By patients, the detoc centers,
but also all behavioral health which have their own crazy
privacy requirements, and we were you know, they demanded we
asked about old age stuff, you know, if you're pregnant
or not, how long you've been smoking, these kind of
(04:49):
things that had nothing to do with our model, and
actually some violated the law because we're not supposed to
ask stuff like that. So I could see that regulations
were going to kill us. And around the same time,
the Goldwater Institute, which is a state based thing tank
here in the Phoenix area, they were hiring a director
of marketing, so I went for it, got a job there,
(05:09):
and that was kind of like my policy boot camp.
But I've always cared a lot about policy and politics,
probably more policy than politics, and worked there for a
couple of years, got a really good grounding on you know,
every couple of weeks I was focused on, you know,
school choice one week, tax policy one week, business regulations
the next. So it was a really good place to learn.
(05:32):
And when I left there, I was planning on once
again doing marketing, consulting and things, but people kept asking
me to write, so I stuck with writing and it
it really held. So I was at until January of
this year with Ricochet dot com as their editor in chief.
Now I am a columnist for Discourse magazine. I write
(05:56):
scripts for a video company called Kitanky Media, so you'll
always see me promoting their videos every couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They do great stuff on this That's what I like
them a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a really great group. And also I've
written for the local paper the years on a Republic
for I think like seven years now. Wow, So that's
I'm kind of the conservative. They tolerate the housebroken conservative
I guess I can say, but I don't know. Hopefully
(06:26):
changing a mind here or there, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah. So it's interesting because I think that people don't
know how much behind the scenes stuff happens. Like you said,
you know, the stimulus, Obama stimulus, you know, basically pushed
you from one career to another, Right, I feel like
that's an untold story about stuff like that. Like for example,
I actually I have never told the story on the show,
(06:49):
but I owned a what it's called a blowout nailbar
in New York. Yeah, when Obama was president, and right
when he was passing Obamacare, we were like, it's really
hard to own a business anywhere, but in New York
it was really really hard. We were like barely breaking
even and he passed they passed Obamacare, and we were like, well,
(07:10):
we're done here because we can't we will not be
able to afford this. So he closed our business. And
you just I feel like stories like that kind of
go untold.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, And it's something I've always been on the sidelines.
And I ran a kind of a semi anonymous blog
I just went by John was it called ex Serbent League,
and it was we're sort of getting picked up by
like Rush and you Hewitt and hot Air and places
like that. But I had to keep kind of anonymous
because I was working in the private sector and it
(07:39):
seemed like most of the places I worked, where you know,
the CEO would always be a very virtual signaling kind
of person. So it's just like, okay, I'll do this
on the side, but that's it. But once I saw
the regulations coming in, I'm like, okay, things are getting
really bad. And I basically told my bosses you will laugh.
(08:00):
About two years and to the month. Two years later,
they had been absorbed into a big company that could
afford all the lobbyists and things, and you know, probably
three quarters the people off their job, A few are
brought into the new company. And that particular industry, we
had about seven eight companies serving that. Now there's one
(08:22):
company who just went swept in bought everything every little
company out there, and so now there's no consumer choice.
They can charge whatever they want, and of course the
government will pay them because they can afford lobbyists and
lawyers and have a fully staffed office in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, amazing how that really works out for that.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Right, We're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So you get to write about whatever you want, and
you have pursued your dreams of being a writer, and
you left a successful job. I know you have a
great family. Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
No? No, maybe when I cross at it, yeah, yeah.
I always just want to feel like an underdog kind
of Something that actually really helps is living. I live
in Arizona. You know, when I left the Goldwarter Institute,
a lot of people are like, Okay, we've got jobs
at d C, and you've got to move to d C.
(09:25):
I know you fled to Florida, which is very very smart,
but a lot of people wanting me to move there
or to Austin because that's when the people were starting
to move from like California to Austin. But my kids
were just about to start high school. I'm like, I
don't want to do this to them. But also it's like,
it would be nice to have a perspective from outside
(09:46):
of the Beltway, in our way, outside of the media centers,
New York, LA, even Silicon Valley, just outside of that,
because everybody I know who has moved to d C
and nothing against them because I would do the exact
same thing. Yeah, you get you get the virus, you
get kind of consumed by it. What you think actually
matters is what your neighbors think matters in DC, and
(10:09):
no one actually cares about it and the country yeah right,
And also you get kind of co opted into a group.
It's like, why did you like that tweet by that conservative?
He's not a tribe and he once opposed me when
I ran for precinct committee chair in this precinct in
rural Virginia, and I'm like, I don't care. I don't
(10:29):
care about any of this. And a lot of people
there are very few people who can stand up to that.
Someone who's been a friend since I was like an
anonymous blogger, Mully Hemingway and her husband Mark, she's one
who can stand yeah, And she's one that I'll just say,
I don't care, I don't care, I'm going to do this,
(10:50):
and she does it. But I know that when I
was there a couple of years, and my kids are
on the cross country team with that politician's kids. It's
just it just kind of adapt and I never wanted
to do that. And I think being growing up out
West and living out here, you just have And Florida
has a lot of those two Texas cours does, but
(11:12):
the Mountain West you just have a strong separation from
what they're doing on Wall Street, what they're doing in
DC especially. Yeah, And there's an innate mabe the attitude
right right in Washington. And when government says, Okay, there's
a problem, we should do A or we should do B,
(11:34):
and you need those people out there saying, why are
you involved at all? There's no reason for you to
be involved. It's like, yeah, Democrats want to spend three trillion,
Republicans want to spend two point seven trillions. How about
you don't spend money and we figure it out. You know,
it's not that difficult.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, what would you say is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Wow, that's really tough. I'm just going to say this
because I've been writing about it. But I would say
I've been reading a lot more of their early founding
fathers on the importance of virtue. And I come from
a background very libertarian ish. I was never full blown libertarian,
(12:17):
because I think if you take it all the way,
it gets pretty utopian, and it's very kind of materialistic
but there's no room for the virtue of the people.
And so many of the founding fathers said, look, you know,
Ben Franklin a Republican if you can keep it. John
(12:38):
Adams has always going about this is a great system.
It only works if you have a virtuous people. And
of course we're all screwed up, We're all going to
make mistakes. And if anybody says, well, I'm very virtuous,
I instinctively don't trust them. But people who give a
crap You need at least that people who are trying
to do the right thing, trying to figure it out.
(13:01):
And now it's just okay, which candidate will give me
more money which will help my little identity group, instead
of saying, hey, we're all in this together, and why
don't we work on this. The border is a key example.
Rampant unchecked immigration, legal immigration. It hurts everybody, and living
(13:24):
in Arizona most of my life, it hurts those people
crossing the borders most of all. On this is something
the left always just glides over. But the cartels are ugly.
Cartel violence is seeping into Arizona more and more. You
have massive human trafficking. And I remember writing a column
years ago about there's a place called Sasa Bay, which
(13:45):
is just across the border, the Arizona border into Mexico,
and there's a field of crosses everywhere, just in an
empty desert, and it's all the immigrants who died of
the heat and thirst and hunger in the deserts. Basically
all these family members who went to El Norte and
they never heard from them again. So there's just crosses
(14:06):
for all of them. And it's just like, yeah, I
would rather not have that. I would rather have them
be alive. And maybe some of them say, hey, can
I get a visa to go to UCLA or whatever? Awesome,
that's great, come on in, but sign the guest book.
Make sure we know who's here. And when you have
a bunch of military age people from nations that are very,
(14:27):
very hostile to us, this is not a good thing
for the future. And it's something if you just talk
casually to people, ninety percent of Americans would agree with you,
but they'll have to jump into our political modes. And
oh well, actually Biden's not even old when you think
about it. You know, just all this nonsense that people
feel the need to defend. This goofy guys.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those silos are what caused the problems, right.
But I think on immigration, that's a really great example
because when you talk to kind of normal people, not
very political people, it doesn't matter if they vote Democrat
or Republican, but if they're not, like just immersed in politics,
obviously we should have a border that we have control over.
(15:09):
It just becomes one of those things that like there's
other obvious like I find similar things like should biological
boys play in girls' sports? Like it doesn't matter who
they vote for, nobody thinks that they should, you know,
So I just I think that getting to the normal
people who have normal opinions on this kind of thing
(15:32):
and getting like the loud, crazy voices out of the way.
It's a tough, it's tough to do, but it's what
we need to be doing.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yeah. And I will get asked by a lot of
conservatives writing for the local paper, because of course it's
left leaning. You know, it's shocking that any kind of
conservative opinion ever gets published in there, let alone once
a week, and a lot of people said, I can't
believe you write for them, Why are you shilling for them?
I grew up and mostly worked in, as I said,
(16:02):
progressive environments. I'm used to talking to these people, and
when you work with them day after day, you find
out how to present things to them, like school choice
and kind of lese a Rise on a viral clip
about a week ago, just talking about you know, you
send all your kids to sivil friends and talk about
you know, the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Yeah, you have
(16:25):
school choice because you can afford it, and it should
be available to everybody. So when I have family members
who are kind of not very involved in politics, they
usually vote but their center left because that's the right
thing to do kind of a thing. And when I
hear from them, hey, I really liked your article that
you change my mind on this, I'm like, that's a
(16:46):
huge you know, I'm not going to turn them into
reading Frederick Bastiat and opposing un funding. But if you
can nudge some of these people a little bit exactly exactly,
kind of change the narrative a little bit, because people
assume the media narrative too many times is correct, and
(17:06):
we all know it's no.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Absolutely. I'm all about talking, you know, going into left
spaces and talking to them. Like some things I don't know,
like a lot of the debates we see online, I
don't know that those are very useful. But in general,
like I've been asked like would you go on CNN,
would you go on MSNBC? Of course I would. Of
course I would love to present my opinion to an
(17:32):
audience that maybe hasn't heard it before. And I don't
think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's the
way to change minds and that's the way to go
about it. And the idea of like how why would
you give these people the time of day, It's like,
because I want to change in our minds and that
that's why. That's why I would do that. But it's tough.
It's it's tough because of the you know, again back
(17:55):
to the idea that we're in our little bubbles and
you're not even allowed to jump between you know, inner
conservative bubbles.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Right, it's uh right, right, And you're not going to
change say when he was there, you're not going to
change Don Lemon's money. But there is a viewer who's
a Don Lemon viewer who's like, oh wait a minute,
that makes sense, you know, But Don Lemon.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Needs to be more moderate, you know, exactly. So just
the fact that somebody who's maybe watching him back then
and continues watching him as he slides to the left right,
I think that that person's still reachable. I think that
moderate is still reachable. I also think that, you know,
going back to your like living in Arizona and not
living in DC, my world is mostly you know, normis.
(18:39):
It's not political, local people, and I like that. I
like that they don't come with, you know, kind of
all the baggage that we have. They're sort of open
to possibilities or hearing things. They're called kind of the
undecided voters, but that's not really it. They don't really
care that much about holidays, and they don't carry it
(19:01):
around with them all day. They don't think about it
all day. They don't think about it every day. And
that's good. That's the way it should do.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, it's great. And another thing too, is I've had
to write several times, especially when you had racial unrest
and Black Lives Matter and the reaction to that and stuff.
I had to write a lot of times because I'm
online and it's just this basically erased war going on,
and everybody hates each other and this group hates this group.
(19:28):
I'm like, it's funny because I just got back from
the grocery store and a black guy held the door
for me, and I held the door for a Hispanic
woman when I was leaving, and everybody got along great.
And we were in a long line, and we're all
telling jokes to each other, and they probably had different religions,
different income levels. Everybody got along great. And this is
(19:49):
normy America. Most people do, and our politicians really want
us at each other's throats. And so it's really important to,
you know, as my daughter say, touch grass and get
out there and see real people, because most of the
country is just not all charged up about politics. They're
upset about what's going on with the country. Maybe they
(20:10):
lean left or right, maybe they've voted D or R,
but most people are just trying to figure out how
to pay their higher grocery bill and fill up their
gas tank and they're just chatting with people at the
barber shop. Most people are still normal out there, and
if you can reach a couple of them, you've made
a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's exactly it. Not Touch grass is actually like has
become my favorite saying I think a lot of people
need to go and touch some grass.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I'm in Arizona, so it's kind of touch sand or
touch rocks.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But you know, same biff, right, you guys are like
at one hundred and fifteen degrees right now, No, carefully
touch that grass.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I know, I know. And then has some alo vera
available so you can treat the massive birds you get.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Perl Marcowitch show. Well, I love talking
to you. This has been really great, and here with
your best tip from my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Oh okay, I will say, because I've turned into a
nerd about this. Probably about four or five years ago.
My daughters were going to a charter school that was
a classical academy, and when they started, I got their
reading list and it's all Plato and Dostoevsky and all
these other people that smart people read that I've never
(21:36):
gotten around to. You know, I was the kid in
the back of the high school class with the cliff
notes hidden in the book. And I've read experts talking
about Dante, but I didn't read Dante, and I was like, oh, crap,
my girls are going to be smarter than me. This
will not stand because I need to keep my ego
nice and high. So I just started at the beginning
(21:59):
and started with the Iliad and Odyssey and started reading.
And I highly recommend it because I thought it would
be like eating my vegetables. Okay, I got a power
through and read this dry, old, boring garbage because other
smart people do. And after I got like a chapter
two into the iliadom like, this is the coolest thing
(22:20):
I've ever read, and I finally realized, Oh, they're classics
because they're fun to read. That's why they've been reading.
Yes they're important, Yes there's deep thoughts, Yes, smart people
reference it. But most of them are fun stories. That's
why they've been around for two thousand years. And they're cool,
and so just pick up an old book and start reading. Also,
(22:40):
I've noticed it's kind of a counterprogramming for the nonsense
of the day. People have been the same going back
four thousand years, and they'll be the same a thousand
years later. Basically, human nature's flowed or all goofballs and
are yeah yeah, and when you see, oh, they're having
the same issues. I'm reading about the Roman Empire, and
(23:03):
they're saying, oh, well, this politician wants to be popular,
so he keeps on spending all this money. I'm like, wow,
what a wildly diffamiliar Yeah, exactly so. And it's also
kind of counterprogramming to kind of see how people thought
for the vast majority of human history and whatever wokiness
is popular this week that even the woke people will
(23:24):
forget about a year from now. It just kind of,
I don't know, counterprogramming for the hysteria of the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I love that. I'm going to go read the Iliad.
Thank you so much for coming on, John, thanks for
having check him out on Twitter ex John at ex
Joen read his stuff. He's really great.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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