Fifty-Five: Americas Last Dying Breath

Is America taking its last gasp? Has all ability to reason vanished? Have we taken the last step away from self reliance, self observation, and chosen to just relinquish all of our concerns to the whims of a single man?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thanks for joining me again today for another episode of
the Brett Mason Show. I'm the aforementioned Brett Mason. We
talk about culture, talk about life, talk about politics, talk
about religion, talk about things of I don't know important
usually not always. The events of the past few weeks,

(00:24):
the past few months, the past few years, going on
a decade now, continue to get more bizarre and more
unbelievable by the day. I'm struck by how quickly, and

(00:45):
it was very quick, how quickly our country changed from
being a country of somewhat reasonable people, like even the
most extreme people were by today's standards. If you go
back to ten fifteen years ago, even the most extreme people,
the loudest extreme voices, were very reasonable compared to what

(01:11):
we see today. And what's disturbing about it to me
is I don't I don't know how you wind the
clock back. I don't know how you reverse course. That's
what concerns me. Like you have blips and time in
your life, in your career, in your marriage, whatever spiritual

(01:38):
walk you may be taken, if you are taking one,
the country has these blips and times that are not good.
They're unsettling. We take steps backwards but invariably we usually
find out a way to reverse course and continue on

(02:01):
in the right direction. Now, when Trump was elected in
twenty sixteen, I admit it, I was shocked. I never
thought the man would be elected. He was clearly a joke,
he was clearly incompetent, he was clearly a liar. He

(02:21):
clearly said things that were absurd. And I'm like, there's
no way that the majority of voters will take this
man seriously. But I was wrong. They did, and then
his presidency came along, and he just did the most
absurd things. He said the most preposterous, outrageously absurd things.

(02:47):
He doubled down on the most ridiculously absurd, impossible things,
and he does them at a feverish pace. He doesn't
do them once or twice a month. He does that
once or twice a day, so that you literally don't
have time to fully digest what he just did and

(03:10):
to maybe even try to have a conversation about it.
As a group of friends, or as a family, or
as a voting block, or as Americans. You don't have
time to deal with it in any kind of a
meaningful way, because by the time you even start to

(03:31):
digest it or break it down or discuss it or
debate it, like you're three things behind at that point,
because he's already said four more things that are more
outrageous than that thing, and so it's just it's pretty
mind blowing. So if you go back to term one,

(04:03):
Trump took credit for everything good that happened in his presidency,
and he was responsible for nearly none of them. He
takes full responsibility for low gas prices, and literally he
had nothing to do with that. Trump had nothing to
do with the low gas prices that occurred during his presidency,
so he inherited low gas prices, right. They actually ticked

(04:27):
up his first year. They were actually higher his first
year than they were in Obama's last year. But they
started coming up and down because we started having an
oil crash, and there were several reasons for that. The
majority reason is the thing that's always the reason, not
always the reason, but it is mostly the reason, and

(04:49):
that is OPEK, which is this organization of oil producing
countries who act basically in unison with each other and
together combined they provide the majority of the world's oil.
And it's not like private companies. Saudi Arabia, for instance,

(05:13):
they own the oil. The government owns the oil. They
can take a loss on it, they can break even
on it, they can make profits on it, they can
manipulate it in whatever way they want because they're the government.
In America, private companies on oil, the president doesn't have
any control over that. I know people think he does,
but he doesn't. And what American oil companies do has

(05:36):
zero effect on oil and gas prices because it's such
a small percentage of the global supply. There's other things
involved to a commodity. It's traded on futures, and so
there's many different aspects that come into what causes oil
prices to go high or low. None of them have
anything to do with the president. God if America, which

(06:00):
just to understand that, just if we can just get
Americans to understand that one thing along, it would change.
I don't know half the nonsense they fall for. Nevertheless,
there were several things that contributed to the oil crash
during Trump's term. Decent percentage of it though opek where

(06:20):
they can just start massively producing overproducing oil, which floods
the market with it, which, if you know anything, supply
and demand determined prices, it causes supply to outpaced demand,
which causes prices to go down. And that happened during
Trump's term so drastically, in fact, that we actually lost

(06:41):
about two estimates from between one hundred and sixty and
two hundred thousand oil worker jobs were lost. Numerous small, medium,
independent oil companies went bankrupt, We lost refineries, we lost
all recounts. It was a devastating time for US OLD. Now,

(07:02):
if you were to ask, if if you were to
ask the average Trump supporter, if they know this, none
of I would suspect ninety nine percent of them don't
know this. They have no They're clueless about it. They
don't know that, they have no idea that happened. They
have no idea that the American oil business tanked during
Donald Trump's presidency. And I'm not talking about COVID. This

(07:24):
was pre COVID. This I started happening pre COVID, before
COVID ever happened. So we had this oil crash, and
again COVID contributed to that, but it started before that,
and then it just got worse under COVID. Right, because
now demand was at an all time low and OPAK

(07:47):
had cranked u full production and so now we had
all all demand, which was like normal ol demand, but
we had over suppliable because opek. Now we had all
demand slashed by like sixty percent or something because the
world shut down. And I don't know how many people
remember this, but there was literally oil barges just parked

(08:09):
off the coast of many countries, not just America, just
barges full of oil just sitting out there. They were
just sitting there, just barges full of oil, just sitting
out there. They weren't brought into port, they weren't new
because they didn't nobody needed them. And so oil prices
actually went into the negative for a while, which is insane.

(08:34):
So when you hear these magas talk about, oh, we
want that dollar fifty grass again, I mean, do you
is that what you want? You want to crash the
oil market and you want to have two hundred thousand
American oil workers lose their jobs, and you want to
have you know, dozens or up to one hundred. I
don't know the exact number. I've researched it as several

(08:54):
different numbers, but we'll just say upwards of dozens, dozens
and dozens of oil companies going bankrupt, So you're gonna
have cheap gas. That you think that's good? Do you
think that keeps America strong? That you do you think
that helps our defense to have you know, all all
in the tank, all in the gutter here in America.

(09:17):
And do you think that's a good thing, Because that's
what That's what had to happen first, to have dollar
fifty dollars sixty cent gas, that's what had to happen.
So then in twenty twenty, Trump goes to OPEK and

(09:38):
you could go research this, just go, just go research
you can. I don't care which media you trust. You
can find stories about it. It was the Trump twenty
twenty Opec deal. So Opec agreed to cut oil production
and I don't remember by how much, off the top
of my head, I want to say it was twenty percent,
maybe it was five percent. I don't remember the number.

(10:01):
But he got OPEC to agree to cut back their
old product production by whatever this percentage was, and agreed
that if they would do that, that America would do
the same. We would cut our oil production back. So again,
this whole thing about Trump being pro American oil, pro
energy independence, drill baby drill is all nonsense, because none

(10:22):
of that happened during his term. If you ask the
actually the average Trump supporter, they will swear to you
that that that happened during his term, and it absolutely
did not happen. We lost again between one hundred and
sixty and two hundred thousand oil worker jobs because oil
companies were going bankrupt by the dozens. Oil riggs just

(10:43):
closing down everywhere. So Trump negotiates this deal with OPEC.
Cut back on oil production and we'll cut back. And
the deal was in effect until April of twenty twenty. Now,
as things go on, there's such a vast supply of

(11:05):
oil out there, and it's fine because they cut back
oil production, and we don't really see it being in
effect because remember, we had barges full of oil off
the coast of the country just waiting to be taken
in because the world had shut down. So once the
world started moving in a little bit, as twenty twenty progressed,

(11:25):
more and more of the world started moving again. You know,
there was this whole thing with lockdowns, but in America,
you know, lockdowns were not Republicans make them out to
be more of a deal than they were. In some places,
they were worse than others, but for the most part,
we were back to business at an eighty ninety percent
capacity relatively quickly, and so demand for oil ramped back up. Well,

(11:46):
it wasn't that big of a deal because we had
all this oil just sitting in barges off the coast
because we had too much oil. So we start bringing
all that oil in. Well, oil casters are still oh right,
because that oil has already been bought at whatever price
it was when it was brought in and was just
sitting there not needed. So we still have the low prices,

(12:08):
which which brings us up to you know, late twenty
twenty into twenty twenty one, before this excess of oil
from all the shutdowns and all that stuff is finally consumed,
it starts to run out, and now we're having to
go back to fresh supplies of oil has to be
shipped out. Now the world's back up andy are running

(12:29):
at near one hundred percent capacity. Soon it's you know,
the one hundred percent is more than one hundred percent
that was before, because that's how the world works. There's
more people, things keep growing and expanding, and so now
the next thing, you know, into twenty twenty one, which
is Biden's presidency. Now oil prices, gas prices start going up.
Because oil prices are going up, why because of the

(12:56):
deal that Trump negotiated with open It's called the Great
Old twenty twenty Opek Deal Trump twenty twenty Opik deal. Again,
you can go read it. There's stories about on Fox News,
Fox Business. Pick me. You know you don't trust other
news sources. Is because fight news may you can go
get it off any news source. She go look it up.

(13:17):
So then we also had inflation, and I don't want
to get into inflation. Tons of things led to the
massive inflation we saw Biden presided over. None of them,
None of the things that launched us into inflation did
Biden preside over. So again laying inflation at the feet
of Biden because he happened, happened to be the president

(13:38):
that came in as all this snowball had happened. Is
it takes a level of ignorance that's astounding. It really
takes a level of ignorance that is astounding to do that.
So uh very much part of it was the whole
COVID situation, these huge supply chain disruptions as the world

(14:00):
tried to get back up to speed. All kinds of
things happened. That's well documented. So that added to cost
of goods going up CPI, which is a good marker
of inflation because there's how much more things costs than
they used to cost. Well, that's why it was harder
to get stuff, supply chain disruptions, the world kind of
shut down. To get those gears running again, it took

(14:20):
a while to get things, and we had such a
big backlog. I mean, you had to fill the backlog
first before you get to the current blog. So that's
part of it. The second part of it was that companies,
which by the way, had record profits during the shutdown.
People were hurting everywhere, losing income. I'm not sure how

(14:45):
they were going to get by. Corporations had record profits
during COVID, But I digress. That's a whole nother thing.
I promise I wouldn't be making a point if you
hang in with me, but I feel it's very important
the latest groundwork, soecond second contributing factor to the inflation
that happened during the Biden administration was companies suddenly decided, hey,

(15:07):
everybody's alling around inflation, We're just gonna charge more. In
other words, not charge more because of inflation, but just
because it's necessary, but just charge more because well it's inflation,
and we get just charge more because people expect to
charge more. We can get away with it. And there's
been numerous studies showing that prove this all kinds of companies.
I don't I'm not going to say one hundred percent

(15:28):
of companies, but the majority of companies just started charging
way more than they needed to and started making even
more record profits. So prices were higher because they were
just charging more than they needed to charge because they
could because they were getting away with it. So that
was the number two part of inflation. And then there
was actual causes of inflation that most people kind of

(15:49):
know something about. I'm not going to say they know
a lot about it, but they kind of know something
about it. And that is when you print and borrow
and spend money that you don't have. This can tributes
to inflation. Well, again, Trump eight trillion dollars in deficit
spending in four years, the most of that coming in

(16:11):
the last year and a half. Now, to put that
into context, the president that was before him, Obama, the
guy that Republicans call the most liberal, out of control, progressive,
whatever you want to call him that there ever has been.

(16:33):
He was in office eight years. Eight years. He was
in office eight His deficit spending, the amount he added
to the national debt was eight trillion dollars in eight years.
Took him eight years to do it. His the president

(16:56):
that followed him, Trump, did that same number in four years,
and the majority of it he did in the last
year to year and a half. So whether there was
a massive amount of borrowing and printing and debt spending
the likes of which you can't even wrap your head around.

(17:17):
And then he leaves at the end of twenty twenty,
well he doesn't willingly leave. He calls us a coup,
but that's a whole other story, a coup attempt. But
he eventually leaves, and now Biden is left with this,
and Biden and the Fed and all these people have
to figure out how to how do we get this

(17:39):
inflation under control and get things back to normal without
having a massive recession or even a depression. And it's
very tricky business. And nobody coups Biden and his team
credit for this, and good, I know what Biden was old,
he seemed lost decent percent of the time, but he
was surrounded by people that weren't idiots. Like the president

(17:59):
kind of controls the tone of the nation and he
kind of has like an overall agenda. But there's a
lot of smart people typically that our president surrounds themselves
with that that comes up with the suggestions and the
research and the plans that are put into place, and
Biden was surrounded with pretty good people, and so we
had what's called a soft landing. It wasn't painless by

(18:22):
any stretch. It was not easy times by any stretch,
but it could have been way, way worse. And by
the way, he did exactly what any other president for
the most part, would have done in that situation. And
one of those that you have to raise interest rates,
that's wanted solutions to get inflation back under control. That's
part of what you have to do. And there's nothing
good about that. That stifles innovation and growth in companies

(18:47):
who rely on borrowing money at low interest rates to
try to turn it into you know, investments and stuff
like that. So, I mean, it causes some problems, but
it is one of the long standing, well known steps
you have to take to deal with inflation. Nevertheless, so
we had those three things that I just mentioned, plus
the OPEC twenty twenty old deal. Is why everything, including

(19:09):
gas was so damned expensive. All of that, all of that,
all of that falls under Trump's presidency, all of it
Biden inherited it. Now, if you want to go back
and you want to go track and look, use it

(19:31):
reputable source. There's many you can go look and you
can track gas prices and you will see that in
April of twenty twenty two, gas prices started falling precipitously,
and they fell at a very very steady, wholesome rate
from then right on through the rest of Biden's term.

(19:52):
What was April twenty twenty two? What was so special
about that? Why did it happen? Then? That was the
end of Trump's OPEC twenty twenty oil deal. That's when
it ended, all right, So I wanted to lay the

(20:12):
ground work for all that stuff. That's the things that
have been said in that people believe because of that
period of time is crazy. It's just it's mind blowing
to me. But you know, people don't care about facts anymore.
They just care about dogmae. They just care about this
is my team, go team, Your team bad, my team good,

(20:36):
you're dem wrong, my team right. And that's all people
care about. They don't care about facts anymore. They don't
care about the truth. They don't care about things that
are objectively factual, objectively truthful. So I want to talk

(20:57):
about ridiculousness. And I know I've waited till what twenty
minutes into this podcast to bring this all home, but
I'm going to bring it all home. The first time
that I realized that we were like, I think I
knew things weren't good from the moment Trump was elected,
because he just again, I've covered all that, but the

(21:20):
moment that went off the rails is when we're deep
in the bowels of COVID and it's the very first variant,
which is killing people in droves. Now I know that
Magga likes to rewrite history and say that COVID was
a cold. The first two COVID variants were murderous. They

(21:42):
were slaying people at rates you can't even wrap your
head around. After that delta, every variant after that thankfully
got less and less deadly, which allowed us to get
to the point that we are now at vaccines, by
the way, but I won't even get into vaccines because

(22:02):
you can't. I don't want to die on that hill.
Like people are trying to get people to understand the
efficacy of vaccines and the research vi item is, it's
just a losing battle. They're just so I don't I'm
not trying to win you over, though. Don't tune out
if that's your thing. I'm not gonna fight you on that.
I'm not gonna down that hill. But the turning point
for me when I said there's no going back and

(22:25):
we will never probably ever recover from this was the
day that Trump stood in front of the nation and
the world with some of the world's most foremost experts
on virology and virulent diseases of this sort, sitting to
his right and with a straight face, said two things.

(22:52):
One of them was, what I understand is that light
can kill this virus. And if there's some way we
can stick a light down in people, can we start
researching that? And he looks over at the smart people,
because there was some smart people in his administration, Burke
Fauci and others. And I know, you guys hate Fauci.
You think he should be butting in prison or something,

(23:13):
which is insane, by the way, but again, I'm not
going to die all that hill excuse me, probably won't
edit that out. And then he said, and you know,
they're saying this disinfected kills it on contact seconds, So

(23:33):
if there was some way we can get this disinfected
down people's lungs. And then he looks over and goes,
can we start doing some research on that? And when
the pant when you see on those people's faces, these
people that understand things and aren't stupid, that these people
that have an IQ higher than eighty, when you see

(23:57):
the looks on their faces, that they cannot belie believe
that this guy that is saying these words is the
leader of the country and is the is the leader
of the nation in this perilous time. It's that picture
speaks ten trillion words. But what do they do. He's
the president and it's live and so they just kind
of gnawd, and you can tell that they very hesitous,

(24:20):
hesitantly gnawd. What a horrible place to be in. The
man with a straight face suggested that we stick lights
down in people's lungs and then we put disinfected down
to people's lungs. Now, I didn't go to college to
be a virologist or a medical doctor or anything like that.
But I am not stupid enough for even a microsecond

(24:44):
to think that you can put disinfectant into somebody's lungs,
or or that we should even study it. Because it's
the most ridiculous, preposterous thing ever. So let's fast forward
a few years, and without due process, without proof of

(25:11):
any crimes being committed at all, the Trump administration snatches
a guy up, who, by the way, has gone through
all the legal things required to be here in this country.
They snatch him up, and they send him off to
an inhumane prison the likes of which you can't even

(25:32):
believe in another country. Because they say he's a gang member.
Everybody that knows them disputes it to this very day.
There's been no evidence to support their claim, and the
only thing that I've seen that they've been presented to

(25:53):
support their claim is that he has tattoos on his
knuckles of marijuana, a smile across, and a skull. Now,
two of the world's most renowned researchers on MS thirteen
i've both come out publicly and said I've never seen

(26:15):
those things be associated with the gang. I studied this
game for the past ten or fifteen years, wrote books
on them. Don't know anything about it. I don't know
where they're getting this stuff from. Still Trump insists this
guy's a gang member. I don't know if he is
or not. I really don't know, but I know they
didn't prove it. And I think this is America, and
I don't think you get to ship people off to

(26:36):
other countries and stick them in inhumane hellholes without due process.
You've got to prove something. If you're going to do
that to a human being, you've got to prove something.
The person has rights very well. He's ordered to bring
the guy back. He refuses, So his staff, somebody on

(26:59):
his staff I don't know who, somebody in his cabinet,
I don't know who. Really trying to prove their point
that this guy is a MS thirteen gag member. Take
a picture of his fist and his knuckles and his fingers,
those tattoos, and then with photoshop over his first finger,

(27:22):
right at the top knuckle, they put an M and
then on the second knuckle they put an S. On
the third knuckle they put a one, and on his
pinky knuckle they put a three. And when you look
at this picture, it is very obvious to anybody with
an IQ hier than like fifty that those letters were
photoshopped on there. The reason they did it was to

(27:46):
to be a marker, to be a demonstrative, to go, well, okay,
this thing under this M means M. We're saying that
this marijuana plant means M. And the thing under S,
which is a smile, we're saying that means S. It
was used for ill illustrative purposes. I saw the picture,

(28:08):
and I saw in the progressive fear, the democratic fear,
the liberal sphere, this uproar about Trump is so stupid
that he thinks this is photoshop. Now, I instantly, I instantly,
and I shouldn't give Trump credit for anything, but believe
it or not, I do try to give the man

(28:28):
the benefit of the doubts sometimes, and on this case,
having seen the photo, I said, that's just not true.
There's just no way that this man believes that those
things that are clearly photoshopped on this picture are actual
tattoos on that man's knuckles. Yard is wrong, Like he
just doesn't like he understands that's a demonstrative. It's an

(28:52):
illustrative thing that they put on there. And then lo
and behold, he sits down in an interview in the
Oval office and proceeds to tell the reporter the man
has a M and s, a one, and a three

(29:13):
on his knuckles. It's as plain as day. Have you
seen the picture? And the reporter goes, I've seen the picture,
and I know that there's tattoos on there, and then
and I've seen those letters and numbers photoshopped on there
for illustrative purposes, but they're not tattoos. And he goes, well,
I can't believe you're saying this. You're so dishonest. I

(29:33):
can't believe I gave you this interview. You're such a dishonest,
fake news guy. And he goes, sir, whatever, I mean.
I've seen the photo. It's clearly a photoshop. And Trump's like,
why are you in this way? I don't understand why
you're telling lies like this. And as I'm watching this interview,
I'm like, Wow, as dumb as I thought Trump was.

(29:58):
And believe me, I think the man is very dumb.
That doesn't mean that he doesn't have abilities. The man
has abilities. He has the ability to calm people and
manipulate people. He's very good at that. But intellectually, the
man is just dumb. He's just dumb as a sack
of shit. And I'm watching this interview, I'm like, he's

(30:19):
dumber than I thought he was. He's just literally one
of the dumbest people. Suck in oxygen right now. At
some point he has the nerve to tell the guy
just stop stop this. I don't understand why you don't
just agree with me and say I'm right. At which

(30:42):
one I was just floored. I know that's what is
I know that's what everybody in his cabinet does. I
know that's what his press secretary does. I know that's
all these people in the Republican Party do because they
feel that he's their key to power. So they all
suck up to him, and they're always telling him how
right he is, even when he's wrong. He surrounds himself
with that. He did it in business. He did it
in his six companies that went bankrupt. I'm sure everybody

(31:02):
that worked around him knew those companies were going bankrupt.
But when he told him what he was doing is right,
they all said yes, circause that was their meal ticket.
His whole life has been used to being surrounded by
yes men and yes women who will just agree with
everything he says because he's their meal ticket. And that's
no different now. All these Republicans in the Senate and

(31:23):
in the Congress and in the state races, he's their
meal ticket. They're trying to cling on to his hotel
and just ride him as far as they can write
him to as much success and money and power as
they can get because they know, and I know you're
gonna hate me saying this, but it's true. He has
a very strong, devout cult following. He has a cult
following so strong that the man can literally say anything

(31:46):
and they will believe it. So they're he expects it
from everybody now. So when he's that's why he calls
news fake news because they just don't agree with him.
He's used to everybody going yes, sir, oh, yes, sir,
you're right, sir, absolutely, sir, whatever you say, sir. When

(32:07):
somebody questions him on something, he is so shocked at it,
in in't offend by it. He just calls him fake
and liars. It's just what he does and it's cult
believes everything he says, and they automatically be everything the
body's liars. He was so shocked that this reporter wouldn't
just agree with him, go, oh, yeah, you're right. It's
a you know, the man takes fantasy. He takes stuff

(32:31):
from the fantasy world and just continually repeats that it's right,
and his cult just believes it and it works for it.
This is how I know that we were We have
suffered irrevocable damage. I don't know how we as a people.

(32:54):
I don't know how we as a species. I don't
know how we as a country recovery from the fact
that seventy plus million people I have willingly suspended disbelief
of the most preposterous, insane notions you could ever dream

(33:18):
up and chosen to replace them with blind faith, trust, fetalty,
and loyalty to an habitual liar, to a con man,
to a grifter, to a guy who just makes things

(33:40):
up and pretends like they're real and tells people it's real,
and he gets them to just agree with him and
follow him blindly. I don't know how you recover from
that when we have seventy plus million people in this
country who willingly aside logic, thought, reasonableness, facts, evidence, research,

(34:10):
objective truth, objective reality, and lay all of that over
to one side and just have a piercing gaze upon
their leader and just follow him blindly and believe everything
he says, no matter how ludicrous or absurd, insane, stupid, dumb,

(34:32):
ill advised. It doesn't matter. They just believe. It is
a belief and a following that is as strong or
stronger then Christians believe in Jesus. It is the most

(34:52):
remarkable thing I've ever seen. And I don't want to
get into this topic in this episode, but in many cases,
Trump has infiltrated churches and belief systems to where he
is a central point in the religion, which by the way,

(35:15):
runs contrary to everything that Jesus said. But that's not
the topic of this episode. Just one last thing. The
Pope dies. I don't care anything about the Pope other
than as a human, you know. I want the best

(35:37):
for all humans that don't care anything about him. Trump
suggests he'd be willing to consider being the pope, and
the Catholic should think about it, an absurd notion. The
man is a Catholic, He's not even religious. He's certainly
not a Christian. There's no way that you can turn

(35:58):
this man into a god fearing person. There's no way
you can turn him into a Christian. There's no way
you can turn him into something biblical, something righteous. You
can't turn him into that. He's again. The only way
you can do that is to willingly suspend disbelief, like
his cult does. Because the man is the exact opposite
of anything that would ever be considered Christian or holy

(36:21):
or righteous. Why the Catholic Church would ever consider him
to be a pope is insane. So why does he
say this? I don't know why he said it. I
have no idea why he said it. Is narcissism, is
it ego? Is he doing it for kicks? I don't know.

(36:42):
But what I do know is that not long after
he said that, and there was a big kerfuffle about it,
Lindsey Graham, a sitting senator, a senator sitting in the
United States Senate, comes out publicly and without humiliation, without

(37:07):
any shame, says, you know what, I don't know why
anybody's saying anything against it. The Catholic Church should be
open minded and should consider him to be the next pope.
I don't know why anybody suggest otherwise, what what? I'm speechless,

(37:36):
I don't I'm at the point where I don't even
know what to say anymore. Like, you can't have reasonable
conversations with any of these people because they're unreasonable in
every way a person can be unreasonable, and once you
just throw reason out the window and you replace it

(37:58):
with blind loyalty in the word of one man, there's
nothing that can overcome that. Again, I make the comparison
to Jesus. You can take people that have different thoughts
and different opinions about what Jesus said, or religious teachings
or pasted to an afterlife. You know, however you want
to frame it, you will make no headway with Christians

(38:22):
because they believe that everything Jesus said, well, the things
they want to talk about he said, not everything he said,
because they conveniently leave out a lot of stuff he said,
because if they believed everything he said, they wouldn't support Trump.
But again I digress. This isn't about religion. It's about
how how very similar, almost identical, the followings of the

(38:50):
two are. It is, it's fervent, it's deeply ingrained, there's
no wavering, there's no You can't bring a Christian a
different holy book or you know, a different thought about
a different afterlife. You can't bring them any of that.

(39:11):
They won't consider it. They won't even look at it.
They reject it out of hand because they know that,
they know that, they know that it's Jesus and only Jesus,
and Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and whatever he said is right.
They do the same thing with Trump. It's identical. It

(39:32):
is i identical. You can't bring them a fact. You
can't bring them a figure. You can't bring them research.
You can't bring them science. You can't bring them by witnesses.
You can't bring them evidence. You can't bring them court rulings.
You can't be bring them ruling by judges. You can't
bring them verdicts rendered by juries of peers. You can't

(39:56):
bring them history like tariffs, Like this country has a
long history with tariffs. We know what tariffs do. Excessive tariffs,
not like small tiny tweaks here and there, that happens.
Whatever we're going to do. No, No, these punitive, massive, disrupting tariffs.

(40:19):
We know what they do. We have history we have
a long history with them. There's no you don't have
to trust what he says. We can know. We know
what happens when you don't follow the rule of law.
We know what happens when you ignore the constitution. We
know what happens when you try to overthrow a government,
when you try to overthrow an election, like we know

(40:41):
what happens when you do all these things. We know
what happens when you deny people due process and constitutional rights.
We have countries that we can look to that do that,
and we know what the result is and it ain't good.
They don't care. They just simply don't care. He's Trump.

(41:03):
We follow him no matter what he says, no matter
what he does. And I don't know how you recover
from that, because once you have people who have opted
to forego reality, to forgo history, to foregot evidence, to

(41:25):
forego law, to forego morality, and throw it all out
of the window and trade it in for one man,
I don't think you ever recover from that.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
I don't know how we go back to a time
before that, because these people, once Trump is gone, are
going to have this big empty hole left.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
And they will have spent the last, you know, twelve
years by the end of his term. If he lives
that long, they will spent the last twelve years following
in full blind devotion to one man and not having
to think about anything, not not having the reason with anything,

(42:13):
not I haven't done anything. I have another Just believe
what he says. Just believe what he says. It's gonna
leave a vacuum. It's gonna leave a big, vacuous hole,
and their instinct will be to fill it. They will
need to fill it with somebody else, because that's how

(42:36):
they have begun to function, that's how they've become to think,
to vote. I mean, I guess our only hope is
that nobody is charismatic enough to capture them. But honestly,
I don't think they'll need anybody that charismatic. I think

(42:58):
they would readily eject, accept this dufest Vance, who was
just a complete moron. I think they would accept Elon Musk,
who's a clear racist, a billionaire cares nothing about anybody
but himself. I think they would. I think they would

(43:20):
accept anybody. I think whoever Trump told them was the
new forgive me. But I don't know any other way
to say it. The new Messiah. I think whoever Trump
tells them it is, I think they's go. Okay. So
Friday times that we live in, it's very very frightening

(43:42):
times that we live in. I thank you for being
here today. This is basically just a podcast where I
just get things off my chest. I've said this before.
I'm very happy that I'm closer to death than I
am birth. Like if I were like a seventeen year old,
sixteen year old right now, I would be terrified about
what the rest of my life was going to be.

(44:02):
Like we are quickly moving to a country where rule
of law doesn't matter, Constitutions irrelevant, due process doesn't matter,
None of the amendments except the second one apparently matter.
All these protections and boundaries and things that our founders
set up to keep us on this path of freedom,

(44:27):
or just they just they don't matter anymore, like they
just get ignored. Thank goodness that the courts have stood
up to Trump. Even a judges he's appointed have stood
up to him. You know, well that whole last I
don't know. They are the last threat, and they're the
last thing he's attacking. He's attacking judges. Elon Musk is

(44:49):
attacking judges to talking about how the judges are evil
and the judges need to get out of the way. Now,
it's not how it works. We have rules of law,
we have a constitution, we have due process. We have
these things for a reason. And when you have a
leader that just pisses all over it, there's two things
that can stand in the way of it. One of Congress,

(45:11):
and they're unwilling to do anything. The Republicans for sure aren't.
And then the Democrats, I mean they talk shit sometimes,
but they don't do anything. And then you have the
judicial system that is the other check, that is the
other branch that offers a check and a balance to

(45:31):
prevent us from tyranny. So far, the courts have held.
I don't know if they will continue to Lord help us.
If they don't, I don't know what to say. I'm speechless,
So I'm I'm going to stop here. But if you're

(45:54):
a maga person, I love you and I don't hate you,
but I implore you to return to some sense of reasonableness.
So return to some sense of understanding that there are
authorities and experts and facts and objective truths that run
contrary to what this man says, don't just willingly suspend

(46:21):
your disbelief of things and exchange it for whatever he says.
He's not the Messiah, he's not Jesus, he's not all knowing.
He's fallible, his major problems. He's a grifter, he's a liar.
And I hate to tell you this, but the man's

(46:42):
the ripest and he's a felon. We'll talk to you
next time. I wish you nothing but the very best,
and help our country. We need it.