12-27-25 The Weekend Hour 2: George Orwell and the Meaning of Words

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To night. Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA
director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job The Weekend with
Michael Brown broadcasting from Denver, Colorado. You've joined The Weekend
with Michael Brown. Glad to have you joined the program today.
Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and you're now ready
for the holiday season where nobody does anything. Nobody works

(00:21):
until after the first of the year. I'm always fascinated
by this time of the year when you know people
are taking off work or they're traveling and doing things,
and everything just seems to kind of slow down, and
then January one comes around, everybody gets hung over, and
then boom, January two. Right back to work. Now, misrecognize
there are a lot of people that still work during

(00:42):
the holidays, and I appreciate those that do. All the
first responders, the military and everybody else. Thank you for
everything that you do. We appreciate it. By the rest
of you know, everybody else goes around and goose off.
So you know, we have some rules of engagement for
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(01:02):
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you get all of the Michael Brown. So I want
to talk about or Well, George Orwell. Eighty years ago

(01:48):
he wrote an incredible essay Politics and the English Language,
and I think that it still is a quintessential piece
of writing and quiet Frank, it's a pretty good instruction manual.
There's a strength kind of a strange liturgy to American
politics right now. I don't mean a liturgy in the

(02:10):
religious sense, though it may tap into that same kind
of instinct, but in the way that people, you know,
use specific phrases, and they use these phrases with absolute
confidence and generally no understanding at all. There was a
recent column by Peggy Noonan. She had read Kamala Harris's

(02:31):
book One hundred and seven Days, and she noted that
Harris referred to illegal immigration, which I refer to as
well illegal immigration, But those who commit illegal immigration I
refer to as illegal aliens. And the reason I do
that is that's the actual language in the federal statute

(02:52):
that designates people that cross our borders without authorization. Those
are referred to in federal law as illegal aliens. Well,
Peggy Noonan's column, and look, I've got great respect for
Peggy Noonon. She was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. She
does a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. I
read it religiously, and I agree with it. I was

(03:14):
gonna say half the time, but as scotten now where
I agree with her maybe a third of the time,
and two thirds of the time I'm like, no, I think, Peggy,
your way off here. But when she wrote this particular article,
as I said, she noted that Kamala Harris had referred
to illegal immigration as irregular migration. Irregular migration Now that's

(03:41):
a euphemism that is so gently ridiculous that it practically dissolves,
like you put you know, you poured salt on a
snail or something. But I think that's the point. I
think that's why Kamala Harris. Harris uses lang like that.
Irregular migration doesn't have any sort of harshness to it

(04:07):
at all, does it. It's kind of like oatmeal pablum.
It's kind of like, you know, mushed up baby food
irregular migration. But I think that's her point. I think
that's exactly why Kamala Harris uses that phrase. It sounds softer, safer,
less politically radioactive. It's not going to tick off people,

(04:30):
except when I think what she doesn't understand is those
of us who use our words a lot it is.
It does tick me off. I see it constantly. The
public vocabulary is just full of words and phrases that
signal some sort of urgency or righteousness or moral sophistication,

(04:53):
and it doesn't ever require anybody to say something concrete.
And George Orwell warned about this nearly eighty years ago,
calling them meaningless words. What he said, quote is designed
to make lies sound truthful. And murder respectable, and to

(05:13):
give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Get that
calling them meaningless words designed to make lies sound truthful,
murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to
pure win. That's from Orwell's nineteen forty six essay Politics

(05:34):
and the English Language. Now, I know that most people
have a casual knowledge of George Orwell in his novels,
especially nineteen eighty four and probably Animal Farm. But and
he was don't get me wrong, he was an absolute
wonderful novelist. But he was an amazing essayist. And if
you have a chance, you can pick up a book

(05:55):
of his essays, or you can go to the Orwell
Foundation and read those say's online totally free. But politics
in the English language is primarily about writing. But still
what he says goes beyond how somebody might write, and
describes how words and phrases used in politics have really

(06:15):
kind of become pointless and tedious, to the extent that
the words don't have any real meaning. They merely appear
to have great profundity. It's why when I refer to
Democrats as Marxists or fascist, because we'll get into that
in a second, I try to explain why what is
it they are saying or doing that is Marxist or

(06:39):
fascist or socialist. When I refer to, for example, we're
going to talk if we have time today, we're going
to talk later about Bill Gates and his kind of
one one hundred and eighty degree turn about. I chose
those words very specifically because it conveys that I believe
that climate change for many people has become a religion.

(07:03):
Doesn't make any difference. You know, I could talk to
a climate activist till I'm blue in the face about
you know, facts, facts, facts, study, study, study, peer review,
peer review, peer reviewed, or real world temperature readings, whatever,
doesn't make any difference to them because they believe what

(07:24):
they believe, and no amount of facts poured onto faith
is going to change their belief. So it does appear
to me to be a religion. That back to Orwell's
essay Politics and the English Language, because yet holds value

(07:46):
even in twenty twenty five, he writes the following, Many
political words are similarly abused. The word fascism. The word
fact has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies
something not desirable. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic

(08:12):
justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot
be reconciled with one another. In the case of a
word like democracy, not only is there no degree definition,
but the attempt to make one to make one is
resisted from every side. It is almost universally felt, and

(08:32):
when we call a country democratic, we are praising it. Consequently,
the defenders of every kind of regime think that it
is a democracy, and fear that they might have to
stop using the word if it were tied down to
any one singular meaning. Words of this kind often used
in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who
uses them has his own private definition, but allows his

(08:55):
here to think he means something quite different. Defasion, You've
had conversation with people like that, right, Or I've heard
news stories where they'll say one thing and I just
intuitively know they really mean something else. Orwell continues in
just a minute, I'll be right back. Hey, welcome back

(09:21):
the Weekeon with Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me.
It's good to be back with you and I appreciate
you joining in this weekend. We're talking about George Orwell,
and his essay about politics and words politics in the
English language. Now, I was describing one paragraph in which
he's talking about how words really don't have any particular meaning.
So we'll get back to that in one second, but

(09:41):
I want to remind you the rules of engagement. Text
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or Michael, go follow me on X at Michael Brown USA.
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(10:01):
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(10:22):
Monday through Friday, nine to noon mountain time. So back
to George Orwell, and I was talking about how people
have their own private definition of a word, and that
private definition means you can use the word, but the
here just the person you're speaking to, just here's what
they want to hear. So they think what they want
to think, and it may be quite different from what

(10:44):
you're trying to convey. He writes statements like Marshall Pataine
was a true patriot, the Soviet press is the freest
in the in the world. The Catholic Church is opposed
to persecution. Are all always made with intent to deceive.
Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more

(11:05):
or less dishonestly are class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois equality.
I think democracy. Let's pick on democracy for a second
is probably the critical word here, because I've likely heard
the phrase uttered in some form or other in the

(11:27):
last I don't know particularly ten years. I've heard I've
obviously heard of my entire life, but in particularly I've
heard a lot in the last ten years, probably a
gazillion times. It has become entirely synonymous MacDonald Trump. You know,
we got to save the democracy. You got to save
our democracy from Donald Trump and for all. For the

(11:51):
longest time, it was all about Donald Trump and the
threat that he was to democracy. But go back just
ten years, since twenty fifteen, threat to democracy or a
threat to our democracy has come to apply to whatever
political niche that anybody chooses. You could pick from a

(12:13):
hat all the threats, well, the Supreme Court is a
threat to democracy. Certain types of laws are threats to democracy.
Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into X. That's
a threat to democracy. Climate change threat to democracy. Fox
News threat to democracy. The Weekend with Michael Brown a
threat to democracy. The makeup of the Senate when it's

(12:36):
controlled by the Republicans a threat to democracy. The Electoral
College always a threat to democracy. AI a threat to democracy?
Why elections themselves? Having an election is a threat to democracy.
It kind of gets to the point where it really
does that much meaning to most people, who we should remember,

(12:57):
don't spend a good chunk of their time in any
given day, any week, a month, or a year immersed
in politics, Like you and I are thirty percent of
Americans thirty a third. Let's just say, can I just
say a third? A third of Americans cannot name all
three branches of government? That's way too high. Can you say,

(13:22):
I'll count to three, you name you name all three?
The first one, the second one? Okay, do you get
the third one, All right, how many have you got it?
And while seventy percent can name all three, the problem
is that's just basic civics. That's not an indicator of
your proclivity as it relates to daily political life. If

(13:45):
only a third know what the three branches of government are,
what percentage do you think know what a discharge petition is?
And I choose discharge petition because that was a huge
phrase used during the government shutdown. Remember they had to
get to sixty votes to invoke cloture. Do you remember

(14:08):
what invoking culture meant? Well, in the Senate, there's a
rule that you can just debate, debate, debate until you
can get sixty votes to stop debate. That's called invoking cloture.
Once you invoke cloture and you stop debate, you still
need another vote before you can even vote on the bill,
and that is to have a discharge petition, meaning that

(14:29):
it just comes out of committee, goes straight to the
floor for a vote, and nobody can interfere with that.
I would guess that the majority of Americans have no
clue what a discharge petition is. And I would even
go one step further. I'm not sure they need to know,
I certainly wish they knew, because the more they understood

(14:52):
about the minutia of politics, the minutia of our legislative process,
then they would understand why it is, for example, that
some people vote for something and then when it you know, initially,
and then as it gets amended, they vote against it.
You know, maybe they voted for it because they wanted

(15:15):
to get to the floor where it could be amended
so they could try to get their amendment in. They
fail to get their amendment in, and so they vote
against the bill. So remember, I think it was John
Kerry who once famously said something about I think it
was like a climate bill, or or maybe it was
the I think it was the war in Iraq that
you know, I voted, I voted, you know, for it

(15:37):
before I voted against it. It's that kind of thing.
So when the average person does tune in, which is
usually getting close to an election or there's some big
crisis or controversy going on, and they become inundated with
the phrase threat to democracy at every turn, have you
ever thought about what impact that has because I think

(15:59):
about it a lot. Trump, after all, despite everything that
went down on January sixth, the investigations, all the indictments,
the convictions, the promise to be the retribution for his voters.
He still won. He went back all the states that
he lost in twenty twenty that he won in twenty sixteen,
and then picked up Nevada as well, while convincing seventy

(16:20):
seven million people to vote for him, three million more
than voted for him back in twenty twenty, and a
whopping fifteen million more than in twenty sixteen. And one
could say, but Michael Trump, Trump is a threat to democracy. Well,
wait a minute, isn't everything I just described isn't that
a democratic process? It may not be democracy as we

(16:46):
might define the term, but it was a democratic process,
and he won that democratic process. Read what Orwell said
about the word fascism, as noted, people have chosen to
apply that raised, as Orswell Orwell said, to something not desirable.
Go look up any of the examples, and you'll find

(17:06):
a lot of examples, and not among the fever swamps
of the far left, but from even mainstream journalists, think tanks,
other institutions. The electoral college is the greatest threat to
our democracy. The electoral colleges, they threat to twenty first
democracy that comes from the Aspen Institute. The Electoral college
is a ticking time bomb. William Galston for the Brookings Institute.

(17:29):
The nationalist right, the new right, whatever you want to
call the right side of the political spectrum, does something similar.
When they talk about a republic politician they don't like,
they become a neocon. Have you thought about what a
neo con is? Tyler Bauer of Talking Point USA. I'm sorry,
Turning Point USA playing white Knight for JD Vance, who

(17:52):
he says is getting attacked and that means criticism for
some people. The anti Trump movement wants to nominate someone
other than Jay Events for president. The most likely outcome
of attacking JD. Evans is far more neo con, terrible candidate,
useful idiots. What does that really mean? Has anybody ever
really stopped to think about what does that really mean?

(18:13):
I'm not sure they have. It's The Weekend with Michael Brown.
Hang tight, I'll be right back tonight. Michael Brown joins
me here, the former FEMA director of talk show host
Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie, You're doing a heck of
a job. The Weekend with Michael Brown. Hey, welcome back

(18:33):
to the weekend with Michael Brown. Hope everybody's having a
great holiday. Appreciate you tuning in as you do on
the weekend. I always appreciate the audience tuning in on
a Saturday. If you like the program, be sure to
let other people know about the program too. Don't forget
text lines always open. I read them all the time,
even when I you know, sometimes when i'm just you know,
having I'm grabbing a diet coke or something, I'll kind

(18:54):
of glance down at my phone because I keep this
on a separate message app, and I'll just read through
the messages one zero three keyword Mike or Michael. So
the nationalists right, the new right, conservative right. I mean,
it's just it goes by so many different names, and
when when the new right, the nationalists right, the conservative right,

(19:17):
it just doesn't make any difference because again, even those
words are losing their meaning. But they start using the
word neocon, or they'll use the term rhino republican in
name only. And some people can be a rhino one
day and then the next day they vote or say
something and suddenly they're God's gift to conservatism again, whatever

(19:38):
conservatism means to that individual, and then the next day
they're a neocon and they just go from one label
to another, to another to another. And I think that's
the point that George Orwell is trying to make, is
we use the terms, but we don't really define the terms,
so that whatever we're saying people get to hear whatever

(20:01):
it is they want to hear. I find it fascinating
in radio that now when I'm doing, you know, when
I'm doing three hours a day like I do, there's
obvious times that I miss state something, or I missed
Pronott Jefferson the Barbary pirates and how the Barbary Pirates

(20:22):
was very much like what's going on with the drug
dealers coming out of Venezuela. And I just, without even thinking,
I said, you know, and Thomas Jefferson, I think I
think I was joking and said Tommy Jefferson was our
second commander in chief. Huh. I didn't even realize I'd
said it until somebody called me out on the text

(20:43):
line and said Jefferson wasn't the second commander in chief,
he was the third commander in chief. And I looked
at it and I thought to myself, well, I know
that Washington Adams, Jefferson, Madison Rowe. Yeah, yeah, oh, I
did say number two. We often get, at least I do,

(21:09):
get so wound up in what I'm talking about that
my mouth, my brain's like four steps ahead or where
my mouth is, because I'm already thinking about the next
thing I'm about to say, following on what I'm saying
right now. And sometimes I misstate things. The inverse of
that is I'll say something exactly the way that I

(21:30):
want to say it, mean exactly what it is that
I think I'm conveying, and then I'll go to text
message or an email or somebody. I'll post something on
Twitter or x and I'll be like, you said xyz,
and I'll think, yeah, that's exactly what I said, And
then the response will be you are totally wrong about XYZ. Now,

(21:50):
I always take those with a great assault, and by
that I mean I read them because I really want
to know did I miss something, Did I say something wrong?
Did I miss a fact? Did I leave something yet
that I didn't mean to leave out? But I'll go
back and I'll read what it is as they say
I said, and I'll think to myself, yeah, I think
I said exactly that, and then I'll read what they

(22:12):
say they think is wrong about it, and I can't.
I can't connect the two. I simply can't connect them
at all. And that's because people heard what they wanted
to hear, not what was actually said. And you have
to learn in radio, for example, that I don't know,
for example, right now, don't I have no clue what
you're doing at this very moment. You could send me

(22:35):
a text message and lie that you know are leftovers
and going out. The dressing has gotten bad. I'm doing whatever.
When you're doing that, whatever it is you're doing, there
will be a split second, a micro second, where your
brain goes to something else. I know. Everybody thinks that

(22:58):
they can multitask. Everybody thinks they can multitask. But what
you're really doing is you are micro secing. In microseconds.
You're going from one task to another. Your brain is
thinking about this, and then your brain says, oh, reach
over here and pick up your diet coke. And as

(23:18):
you reach over to pick up your diet coke, you
miss one word, two words, three words, depends how long
it takes you pick up your diet coke of what
I said, And so you miss something and the interpretation
becomes entirely different. It's why when and I know this
drives my friends crazy, But when I sit down with

(23:39):
people at dinner, or we're having a lunch meeting, or
I'm in a meeting and I'm not bored to death,
I truly try to be an active listener. And I
think that's just my training as a lawyer, to listen
to what people actually say, because oftentimes they don't really

(24:00):
mean what they say, and they don't really say what
they mean, or they themselves aren't really sure about what
they are saying, and so I try to listen intently
to what people say. But even when I'm doing that,
something something makes me get distracted. I'm in a conference
room in this building at iHeart and something happens outside

(24:21):
the window and I look out for a brief second
that takes my mind, even for a microsecond, off what
that person is saying that I'm listening to. And I
think this fills in or fits in with what George
Orwell is saying about. We hear what we want to hear,
and we use words that we don't really know what

(24:44):
we mean by them, or if people want to be
really disingenuous. They know what they mean by the word,
but they know what somebody else thinks about the word,
so they use that word to convince them to their side,
knowing that you're really not You're really not communicating, you're
really not being persuasive, You're just arguing. Go back to

(25:10):
the term neo Khan. A lot of people use the
term neo con as a pejority, but do they really
have an idea what it actually means, because neo con
is just a short version of neo conservative. And you
could probably ask I don't know ten people twenty people

(25:30):
aligned with Tyler Bauer from Turning Point USA, the person
who's tweet I told you about Jdvans earlier. You could
ask ten or twenty different people align with him politically
to define neo conservatism, and you'd probably get ten different answers.
Just like our tax returns, you can take one set

(25:52):
of facts to ten different accountants and you'll get ten
different tax returns, and all of them might be wrong.
They might claim that a neoconservative is a warmonger. I
hear that a lot, or your pro war or your
pro interventionist likely to be the constant thread among the responses.
If you ask somebody what a neo con means, they

(26:13):
use the term to describe any Republican who holds an
interventionist philosophy and foreign policy. But does that make them
a neoconservative or a neo con Now, I don't want
to get into all of what it means, but you
might go listen to Jonah Goldberg, who I don't necessarily
agree with a lot. He has a podcast from I

(26:35):
think maybe a year ago called The New Neo cons
and he goes into detail about the origin of the term,
how it evolved, and essentially how it became. As Orwell says,
the term for just something I do not like. The
ultimate goal of using particular words and phrases, as Orwell said,

(26:56):
is an intent to deceive. When people say, for example,
which drives me crazy, that the Supreme Court is a
threat to democracy, what are they really saying? You know
what they're really saying, Well, I don't like the rulings
of the current makeup of the court and how they're
issuing it. You know, when the War in Court was around,
I didn't necessarily like the decisions from the War in Court,

(27:18):
but I didn't think they were a threat to democracy.
I thought, oh, this is a bad decision. We've got
to get Congress to figure out a way to overrule
that decision with legislation, or we've got to change the laws,
or we've got to somehow appeal this, or at some
point they'll they'll reverse the decision. Whatever. I didn't think
it was going to be the end of civilization, but

(27:40):
many people, and sometimes I'm prone to that too, I think, Oh,
this next step that we take in our politics might
be the end of the country. But is it really
Probably not. So we came with Michael Brown. Hang tight,
I'll be right back. Welcome back to the Weekend with

(28:04):
Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me. Text line
as usual was always open three three one zero three
three three one zero three on your messy jap keyword
Mike or Michael, do me a favor, go follow me
on except Michael Brown USA. We're talking about Orwell's essay
from almost eighty years ago entitled Politics and the English Language,
and one of those stories I kind of wanted to

(28:25):
do on a weekend like this because it gives me
a chance to just talk about something other than specific
issues in politics. Because the ultimate goal of using particular
words and phrases, according to Orwell, is an intent to deceive.
How many times do you, in response to your kids,

(28:48):
or your spouse, or a coworker or somebody else, you
phrase something so that you kind of mislead, but you're
not actually lying to them. I mean, I hope you
don't just outright lie to them, but I understand that
sometimes you just don't want to deal with the issue,

(29:08):
or you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. You're just
not in the mood to get into the middle of
a debate, so you just say, yeah, that's interesting. That
tends to be my phrase. Oh well, that's interesting. That's
my way of saying, I need to really think about that,
or I think you might be absolutely nuts, but let
me think about that and give me time to come

(29:28):
up with a good retort to That's that's kind of
my go to phrase occasionally. So it really is. And
am I trying to deceive? I suppose in the actual
term term deceive, I probably am trying to be deceitful.
It's true, I find it interesting, But is that the
entire context of what I'm what I mean, No, I'm

(29:52):
trying to get you to just drop the issue. Let
me think about what you said, and when the time
is appropriate, if I have a rebuttal or retort or
an agreement, then i'll tell you. But I'm tired, i'm busy,
i'm distracted, whatever it might be. So I'm not going
to tell you exactly what I think. Oh so that's interesting, Yeah,

(30:12):
that's interesting. And sometimes I'll do that when i'm just
like not interested. So think about doing that. Someone's talking
to you about something and you're really you're at a party.
It's the time for office parties, right, You're at a
party and you get cornered by somebody that's a coworker
or maybe it's a client or who knows what it is,

(30:34):
and they're droning on and on about something that just
doesn't interest you, like you might be. See, this is
what's hilarious about this topic is like, right now, some
of you may have zero interest in this topic. Now
you may have already tuned out other people who do
have an interest in this topic because it applies to

(30:54):
them too, and they're thinking to themselves, yeah, I've been
exactly what you've done. They're listening, But am I upset
with the people who got bored and tuned out. No,
because I'm talking about what I wanted to talk about
and I find it interesting, but you may not. But
I would never say to someone I shouldn't say never.

(31:15):
That's probably a little harsh, but I would never say
to somebody in casual conversation who's trying to tell me
a story about something. Now, I'm not interested in that,
you know, basically telling somebody, hey, shut up, I don't
want to talk about that. I'm not interested. It's our
words that we use trying to convey something that may
be a little deceitful, maybe by omission or comission, but

(31:39):
we're being slightly deceitful about something if you can. If
deceitful is something that you can either be slightly deceitful
or fully deceitful. I love words. So go back to
the court. The Supreme Court is a threat to democracy. No,
it's actually not, because if the Supreme Court were indeed
a threat to democracy, this country would have gone down

(32:01):
the crapper, you know, one hundred years ago, or probably
within the first ten years, or with the very first
decision in Marbury versus Madison. The Court makes decisions based
upon the makeup and the judicial philosophy of the nine
Justices at the time that a case comes before them,

(32:21):
and that case may remain on the books and may
remain precedent for decades, if not a century, and then
eventually gets overturned. For example, separate but equal was seen
as non racist. So the Court said, as long as

(32:41):
schools are desegregated but are segregated, as long as the
segregated schools are equal, well that's okay. So you can
put all the black kids over here and that's okay,
and the Asian kids over here, and the Caucasian kids
over here, but as long as they have the same education,
then that's okay. And then comes along Brown versus Board

(33:04):
of Education, and the Court says, that's crazy, that's absolutely crazy. No,
that is segregation. You are segregating based upon immutable characteristics.
So in Brown versus Board of Education nineteen fifty four,
they overturned the previous ruling and said, no, you cannot
do that. But guess what happened in the meantime. Yes,

(33:26):
it was awful and there was still segregation, but the
republic continued. So was the original decision truly a threat
to democracy? I mean it was a horrible decision. I
disagree with the decision. I think brown board brown versus
Board of Education put it back where it should be.
But during that interim, whatever it was, maybe one hundred years,

(33:49):
it was like, Okay, we still survived. We may have
been pretty bigoted and pretty racist about it, but we survived,
and we survived to what become better. The point being
that people agree or disagree with court decisions at all
levels all the time. However, claiming the decisions that one

(34:10):
doesn't like is a threat to democracy is just bad faith,
just as it is in describing, say the makeup of
the Senate, the Electoral College, or legislation or any one
political party. Do I like the Marxist Party? Do I
like the Democrats Socialists of America? No? I can't stand them,
and I actually think they are a threat to democracy.

(34:33):
But are they today? Maybe not. Only if they become
a majority party and they actually change us into a
socialist state, well then it's too late. So at what
point on that timeline do they become a threat to democracy?
To think about Senator Chris Murphy and the latest continuing

(34:54):
Resolution passed and signed by the President when he reopened
the government a few weeks ago. His message on the
spending bill during the shutdown was that, quote, none of
us have an obligation to vote for a budget that
funds the destruction of democracy. Close quote Oh, I would

(35:17):
like to ask Senator Murphy, what do you mean by that?
Because it's been several weeks now. The Continuing Resolution only
goes through I think the first week or so of January,
and we're going to go through this same charade, this
same valley who all over again over government spending and
will probably survive. So I don't think that the last

(35:40):
Continuing Resolution indeed was the destruction of democracy, but they
won't let up on that kind of phrase. The point
you come across a word or a phrase, or you
hear someone saying something, including yours, truly this says something
that is maybe too generalized or is without a definition,

(36:02):
or you're not quite sure what I mean when I
say that that is a Marxist policy, you should challenge me,
challenge yourself. How is it a Marxist policy? How is
that fascism? How is that socialism? How is that small
R republicanism? How is that a representative government? Piece of legislation?

(36:25):
For example, because if we don't do that, if we
just allow ourselves to just let the words mean what
people mean and never challenge them or even ask them
what you mean by that. For example, I would just say,
the next time you run into jewing, particularly those who
are left of center, and they say, oh my gosh,
Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, I'd love to

(36:47):
see somebody like on MS now or CNN or any
of the liberal outlets, you know, national Public Radio, would
you explain, please explain to the audience how it is
that Donald Trump or Republicans are a threat to democracy.
And by the way, could I have specifics, because I'm
really interested in the specifics. Try it, see how that goes.

(37:10):
It's the weekend with Michael Brown. Text line as usual
as always, Open, hang tight, I'll be right back.