Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small help from small, small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small It's so funky.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
What's up, Small Doses? We are here for yet another
episode as we continue.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
With our transitioning into just.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Far more educational episodes around radical thoughts and growth, et cetera.
Today's guest is somebody that I actually was introduced to
via speakerphone while I was on a freedom ride down
the Eastern Seaboard in support of really working with labor
(00:50):
unions and organizations to continue to amplify immigration rights, workers' rights,
democratic crits, etc. And I was saying that I was
going to be doing an episode of this show surrounded
where I was going to have to debate people and
that I'm really not a debater like that, and Claudia
de la Cruz was like.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You need to talk to Eugene per Year. He is
a debate.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Master, and like aside, like, don't get me wrong, like
Mark Lamont Hill and Matthie Hassen are the debate masters
that I know of, but I did not know about Eugene, and.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So we got on the phone and he.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Was like, say less, and so we ended up having
a debate crash course, and I definitely used some of
the skills The thing about it that was really exceptional, though,
was that everybody on the bus when Claudia mentioned Eugene,
everybody was like, Eugene is the smartest guy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, he's the smartest guy. No, and he just knows everything,
and you're.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Just like okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, And then you meet Eugene,
You're like, oh, yeah, you do know everything. Like the
amount of knowledge in Eugene per Year's brain is incredible.
And you're going to hear me in this episode be
like what for real? So often because it's just always
(02:08):
striking to me how many holes there are in my scholarship.
But then I always remember I'm in the United States,
and the truth is that as a black person, we
are always in an effort of excavation about the truth
about our history, about literally just did that happen or not?
(02:30):
And Eugene does a great job in this episode of
bringing things to light that many of us not only
didn't know about, but may not have considered to be
so connected to where we are now and where we
are going. For anyone still talking about Democrats and Republicans
at this point in the game, I want you to
(02:53):
really listen closely to Eugene because it is imperative that
we break free from the dan to really see beyond
this limitation that has been thrust upon us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
In this nation.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And Eugene, I believe, really does give you some really
empirical evidence of the necessity to find another way and
that may mean knocking all of it down to build better.
And I want us to really own the reality that
that can happen, and that it's not the first time
that's happened anywhere, let alone here.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So without further ado, I give you Side Effects of
a par System featuring Eugene per Yeer.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Welcome to another edition of Small Doses podcast, and today's
guest is a Smarty Pants And I'm so happy to
have you here because I feel like these people are
so used to hearing me talk about this, Eugene, and
I'm like, let me get somebody else to talk about
(04:07):
why this buy partisan, this two party system in the
United States doesn't have to be this way. That is
where a lot of people are stuck, and it's where
a lot of people So like, there's been a lot
of people who will tell me or anybody who even
brings this up, that we are the reason why Trump
(04:29):
is in office.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, that's like a real thing.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So first, actually, let me just say, okay, while we
have Eugene Prior here, can you please just tell the
people why you are knowledgeable to talk on this topic.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Well, listen, I guess I could say. I'm a history
major from Howard University. You know, I'm well versed in
all these things. But I have been a quote unquote
third party although I hate that phrase, candidate for several offices.
I run for vice president twice. I run for city
council in DC one. So I've been in the arena.
This to someone who's worked on these campaigns. And I
(05:02):
am a history major from Howard University, and I have
started it and I have gone deep. So I do
want to, you know, put that out there, all.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Right, Bison, we get it, We get it. You Howard people.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Jeez, Louise, ain't you you know ya?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So can you please, for our lovely listeners here as
Small Thoses Podcast break down for us how we have
managed to say stuck in this two party system, and
what would be necessary to break us out of it,
and why it would be helpful to do so.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, you know, I think, first of all, it's just
a lack of political imagination. I mean, you know, politics
is simply just a numbers game. So when you say
this or that thing is not possible, it becomes a
self fulfilling prophecy. If every single person who says, and
we see this, actually every year somebody gallop, somebody does
a poll in the presidential year, not every year, and
it always is something or you know, in between them,
(05:57):
how many people think there needs to be more than
one political option, And it's always some overwhelming number of people.
It's like sixty percent of people, seventy percent of people,
eighty percent of people, Like when just asked the question,
just flat out almost everyone who asked the questions like, yeah,
it would be great to have more choices and more
political options, but it's you know, not possible. But if
all those seventy or eighty percent of people said I'm
(06:17):
just gonna support what I think is right no matter what,
then you would start to see the political system open up.
I mean, I would assume that listeners and viewers of
the Small Doses podcasts are probably fans of someone like
say Frederick Douglass. I think that he knew what he
was doing, that he had a good idea of how
to navigate things played a role in Indian slavery well.
(06:38):
He was one hundred percent against the two party system.
In fact, for good chunk of his career didn't even
think people should vote. But when he moved into the
context of electoral politics, it was solely in the vein
of supporting one hundred percent abolitionist politics. Starting in eighteen
forty eight, and when he first started talking about it,
it was the same way people talk about third parties. Now,
why would you do this. You're throwing the election away.
(07:01):
You're actually making slavery stronger.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
That's one of the number one things people say, a
vote for a third party is a vote for Republicans.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Like, that's like a number one thing I hear said, yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
And one it's sociologically not true. I mean, most of
the polls that are ever done on this show, most
people who vote for third parties would not have voted
had they not voted for those third parties, because they
had rejected the two major parties. But on the other hand,
you know, your vote is not a matter of facilitating
a candidate's election. It's a candidate's job to get your vote.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I mean, I say, say that one more time, say
that one more time.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
It is a candidate's job to get your vote. You
look at the context of the civil rights movement. I mean,
obviously some people who are involved in the civil rights
movement helped various Democratic Party candidates, but they also formed
third parties like the Lownes County Freedom Organization, like the
missip Be Freedom Democratic Party, like I think basically every
single person who's involved in the civil rights move would
tell you they didn't risk their life and limb on
(07:55):
a regular basis simply for a vote to be used
as a transactional mechanism that you just give away to
somebody because they claim that they have some claim on
your vote. But it's actually a positive affirmation of democracy
that you are using your right to vote to put
your values on the table and say, this is what
I believe in, this is what I want to see happen,
and this is either what I want you the candidate
(08:17):
to do, or more so, what I the voter, am
going to do with my other voters to build up
political parties that represent my interests. Because if not, what's
the point of having the right to vote? I mean,
why should you have the right to vote. If all
the right to vote really comes down to is you
just have to pick two people that may or may
not conform to what you want, then why have an election?
Why not just have the people selected and just put
(08:38):
in there. Why ask voters to use any sort of
agency or discernment or values or morality, all the things
that we claim that we care about, and all the
things that in Civics class in high school they tell
you that elections are all about. When you actually start voting,
you realize that like all of that is bs and
that when it actually comes down to it, it actually
isn't about you. It isn't about what you want. It
isn't about what your values. It's about rich people putting
(09:01):
two people in front of you and saying, these are
the people who we think should be the leaders, and
you decide which one of them you prefer, whether or
not it corresponds whatsoever with your life. But the final
thing I have to say on this is the way
slavery was ended politically in this country was third parties.
That's why I brought up Frederick Douglass. Like I think
most black people feel happy that we don't have formal
(09:21):
slavery and think that was a step forward. Whatever other
problems that there are here, well, none of that happened
through the two major parties. It actually happened because black
people and the abolitionist allies broke up the two major
parties and formed their own institutions and entities and took
power at the center with the Republican Party, which was
a third party at the time. People don't talk about
it like that.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, you saying, whoa stop, I
don't know anything about this. Yeah, so take a sip
of your drink. Yes, because now you gotta run it back.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Now. This is not a podcast, this is a class.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Okay, what Yes, the Republican.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
My masters proves pointless.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
There are so many holes in my academia.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I'm telling you that's why they have us paying all
this money, because it's not about the education. It's about
the banks. As I realize every month.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So many holes in my scholarship. Okay, what are you
saying right now?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The Republican Party, most successful third party in American history,
is a third party. So in the same way we
have Democrats and Republicans in the lead up to eighteen
fifty six. So right for a civil War, the Democrats
were still there. Yeah, you had the Whigs was the
other major party, and the Whigs have been breaking apart
in small ways for like a number of years because
of slavery. Like the Democrats were more kind of universally
(10:36):
pro slavery, although not totally, but the Whigs were very split,
especially between north and south. So starting with the election
of eighteen forty eight, abolitionists started doing their thing politically.
So at first you had the Liberty Party that was
just like straight pure abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, the names, you know,
and the abolitionist movement. Then you had the Free Soil
Party that comes after that in eighteen fifty two, which
(10:57):
was both abolitionists and people who were sore against slavery
but not necessarily like four black people. And then that
energy becomes so big in the early eighteen fifties that
these kind of free soil forces, abolitionist forces and others
come together and they form a new party they actually
started for eighteen fifty six called the Republican Party, and
(11:18):
the Republicans first run.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Then, So was that considered coalition building.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It was considered coalition building. It was bringing together real
social forces. So the black communities in the North and
the West that were heavily made up of escaped slaves
as well as free black populations that have been there
for hundreds of years. The abolitionist movement itself, right, which
had its own organizations, like almost all the states had
something called the ex Anti Slavery Society, so Massachusetts, Ohio, whatever,
(11:44):
there's also the American Anti Slavery Society, and a lot
of people at that time were also organized a little
bit also around newspapers too, so like Frederick Douglas's North
Star the Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison, and they would
have agents they called them, that would go around and
sell the paper, and that became a form of organism.
You had those folks, but then you also had organizations
of say small farmers that felt slavery was a danger
(12:07):
to them, and so they also were organizing their own piece,
and that was the sort of anti slavery movement. So
they all kind of come together and say, we have
some differences, a lot of times, a lot of differences,
but we do have one key factors. We have the
same enemy, really, the slave owners. So let's do a
third party.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Why do they consider the slave owners their enemies. Is
that also different amongst them. For some people it's because
of the taxes. For some people it's because they don't
want them to have black people as slaves, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yes, basically, I mean what it really came down to was,
like the expansion of slavery and the existence of slavery.
You had the abolitionists who were like, slavery is evil
and just like must be ended on a moral ethical
level exactly. Yeah. And then you had people who are
considered themselves and called themselves at the time anti slavery,
and that just meant that their attitude was, Okay, maybe
it's cool if there's slavery and like Mississippi. But our
(12:55):
entire understanding of why we're here in America, which is
you know, the subtle of colonial country where the land
has been cleared and you're coming from Europe, where you know,
there's all sorts of terrible circumstances, was that you would
have the opportunity to be able to go into the
United States and get a little small farm and the
sort of Abraham Lincoln mythology right like born in a
log cabin, rail splitter, and then you could become you know,
(13:16):
a president. They called it the free labor ideology at
the time that it has become known, you know, historically
that having slavery put that at risk, that instead of
having this opportunity for individuals to come and to you know,
make it, which most of them did not make it,
most of them didn't even make it to the West,
but just ideologically, the fact that they thought they would
have a chance to succeed on their own merits instead
(13:38):
of the highly aristocratic class stratified not that America wasn't
class stratified, but seemingly like set in stone reality in Europe,
like where you were born is where you going to die,
and America was like you can rise above your quote
unquote station. That that would not be able to happen
if slavery is able to expand over the whole country.
Slavery is very profitable, it was able to do business well,
(13:58):
so like it could actually challenge these sort of small
farmers and big factory owners and others that were starting
to develop what we kind of know of is capitalism
today is really starting to develop in the north and
the West of the United States at that time. So
they were also opposed to the expansion of slavery. So
that was the big difference, so.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That I understand this correctly, though, they were looking at
it not as like this is in the way for
black people, but that this isn't the way for them
because slave owners, due to the use of labor by
black people, could have a far greater opportunity of gaining
wealth than those who didn't, and it wasn't like a
fair field one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It was not fair. It would take their opportunities away
from them. So that's the big difference, is like eliminating
slavery or just limiting its expansion. But either way, the
slave owners did not want to limit their expansion, nor
did they want to end slavery. So it made those
differences like meaningful, especially if you were black, because a
lot of anti slavery forces were also very racist and
didn't want black heis, yes, I mean that's why I
(15:00):
It was notable, no doubt, but it was still secondary
in the sense like, yeah, we can come together to
get rid of the slave owners and then we'll deal
with everything else. And that's what reconstruction was about. And
if you ask partially why did Reconstruction fail, it was
because a new political alliance was not founded, and the
same one that black people had relied on for the
(15:20):
Civil War, which was heavily based on like rich white
factory owning capitalists, which were the driving force to the
Republican Party, were not really friendly to the aspirations of
mostly poor, working class, poor peasant black farmers in the South,
and so you didn't have the same strength of coalition,
and they were willing to sell black people out almost
from jump. I mean, obviously there's some very notable exceptions
(15:42):
Statis Stevens and others, but they were always a minority
inside their Republican Party. So part of the reason Reconstruction
failed was that black people stuck with the two party
system in the wake of the Civil War, rather than thinking,
you know, what kind of new political dispensation could exist.
And this is what WB. De Boys talks about in
his book Black Reconstruction. For those who want to read it,
if you go right to the last chapter where he's
(16:04):
talking about the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wait real quick, is it written in the same style
as Souls of Black Folk?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I would say it's a little more modern because he
was about forty years later.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Because Souls of Black Folk is a tough read, y'all.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
It's a tough read. But here's what you could think about.
Malcolm X, when he wanted to relax, would go to
the New York Public Library and read Hegel. And I've
never known anyone who's ever done that. So anytime I
read like a tough book, I'm like, well, you know what,
relax reading Hegel in the public library. I can make it.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Through this, Okay, Fair and the Boys.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Basically just says that by the time you got to
eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, where you start to have poor
whites and poor blacks start to look for coalitions with
one another, that it was kind of too late, like
too many moves had already been made, and too many
people had already been bought off in different ways.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So wait, let me stop you real quick.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
When you said that black folks had relied on a
two party system after reconstruction or during rec instruction, and
that was what basically like set us up for the fall?
What was a better option, like what should have happened?
Because to my understanding, jering reconstruction, one of the biggest
impediments was that we had given Confederates who had actively
said we want to keep slavery, we don't want to
(17:17):
be a part of this country. They lost, but we
gave them a seat at the table, and so they
now had a voice that was just as valuable as
the people that they were just fighting. So what leg
did black folks really even have to stand on to
really fight that?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I would have said it probably would have been an
all black political party in the South, because you had
to polarize the politics of the North. Because what really
sorted to happen is you have poor white workers and
poor white farmers who in the immediate wake of the
Civil War were not fully grasping what was happening and
that their life circumstances were actually about to take a
significance step downward with the development of capitalism. Yeah, many
(17:52):
of them realized.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That we're much more aligned with the black folks that
they were exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, but the question was never posed clearly to them,
and I think that it probably would have. I mean,
there was some basics that you had the early labor
union in this country. There were the Colored National Labor Union,
which was led by a guy named Isaac Myers. If
I'm remembering correctly, he actually put a lot of work
into this and was traveling the North trying to bring
white workers and black workers together. They other fully came together,
but I think if you had had in the when
(18:16):
we think of the solid South during Jim Crow, we
have to remember that after the Civil War and a
lot of these places, you know, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina,
the black people were the majority of the population, and
in many of the others they were the plurality of
the population. And there is at least a possibility there
that if you had been able to leverage that politics
as sort of like one central solid block that wouldn't
(18:39):
have been a part of the Republicans or the Democrats.
It would have crazed exactly. It would have created a
polarization in the Congress that would have, I personally think,
I mean, it's just speculation, but I think would have
made every question for every other person in the country
very different because you wouldn't have been able to develop
a national political program to move your agenda without addressing
(19:01):
in the same way. The Jim Crow Solid South is
partially why the country is so conservative, because no matter
what these hardcore segregationists, they still had to deal with
them one way or another. So if you have black
voters like you got to deal with us one way
or another, I think it could have rejiggered the circumstances.
But of course, hindsight is twenty twenty, right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I was gonna say, like, Okay, if I'm looking at
what factors were in place to prevent that from happening,
we can acknowledge that one, folks were in survival mode, right,
Like their entire lives were flipped upside down. There was
also like all of these efforts at the Black laws
to put them into this new version of a labor force, right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, And there were things that people couldn't conceive, like
the depression of eighteen seventy three that it's like one
of those obscure things, but it was the deepest depression
at that time, and maybe as bad as the thirties.
That also shifted a lot of politics in a way
that in eighteen seventy eighteen seventy one, I think if
we went back in time, black politics seemed like it
had much more purchase whole as a part of the
(20:00):
Republican Party, which is a big national coalition, and that
even as late as eighteen seventy two to some degree.
Actually a lot of white workers did vote for Grant.
His vice president was a guy who this this is alone,
I don't need to get into all. The point being
the type of coalition that du Bois was talking about
was kind of missed. Actually could have seemed more plausible,
I think, and you had some people, you know, who
(20:21):
were around in the Republicans. But the Depression of eighteen
seventy three kind of change everything about American politics in
any ways, in ways that in hindsight, since I know
that I can make this argument that you would have
probably been better off by breaking from the Republicans, probably
as soon as Johnson became the president, certainly right after
Johnson's impeachment, but I think at the time it wasn't
that clear. And inside of the black population you also
(20:44):
had class politics. I mean, you look at the context
of reconstruction. You have people like the New Orleans Tribune
forces who were saying, let's just have all cooperative farms,
like there should be no plantation owners, white, black or indifferent.
All of us should just come together and collectively run
these plantations to share out the wealth and the money
amongst ourselves. I mean, you have so many interesting figures
(21:06):
like Aaron Logan and Aaron Bradley in the low country
of South Carolina and Georgia who were talking about not
higher minimum wages, but maximum wages, like you can only
make but so much money, leading huge demonstrations of arms.
Blacks demanding the redistribution of land, eliminating the ability of
debt to destroy small farmers, talking about the need for
(21:26):
universal education but also universal health care such as it
was at the time the first homes for older people
to make sure that no one was just left by
the wayside, and they became a senior citizen talking about
things that were very, very radical in many ways. But
those forces did not become the ascendant forces inside of
black politics because the white capitalist rulers who ran the
Republican Party empowered more conservative black leaders in terms of
(21:50):
who they were pushing to come into Congress and come
to the State House. So that was also partially why
the politics didn't emerge in the same way, because it
was in the black population. You had its own class
politics that was playing out. So there's always been coons
a hundred percent. I mean, going back to slavery. I
mean I always say this every slavery boat was sold
out by a black person. And you know, you look
at Gabriel's rebellion, You look at Denmark VZ. All of
(22:13):
these folks it was slaves, and you know, look again,
hindsight is twenty twenty. I mean, you look at Gabriel's rebellion,
all the slaves that sold him out. They were afraid
of being executed, right and the threat of execution, and
they decided Most of them tended to be people with
families and others who felt more vulnerable, and as zero
hour came, they started to think, man, I like what
(22:35):
Gabriel is saying, but like, I don't know, man, like
what about my family? What about my kids? What if
we don't win? So I don't think it is that
people were just like, you know, not thinking about the
need for freedom. But when you have powerful forces saying
the impact and the results of you breaking away from
us could be violent, dangerous or death, you always breed
(22:58):
a sell out class. Now, some people, I'm sure more
naturally sellouts. But you look at the context of the.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Whipping and bitch ass allow the people's line of DNA.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yes, yes it is. And nowadays in a way I
have like more sympathy for a slave thinking about like
their child being executed than I do for like a
black congressman going in there now and just taking millions
of dollars for themselves and wouldn't have to risk anything
to do or say the right thing, and choose not
to do or say the right thing for our people
(23:29):
just because it's better for them, Like they actually aren't
risking the same amount, So it actually makes it worse
in a way. But yeah, it's always been a factor
in our struggle. Is that a lot of people. My father,
you know, was in the Civil Rights Women, and he
was there at Suddenly he said to me once, he said,
of everybody who said they were at the Edmund Petties
Bridge that day, was really there, the bridge would have collapsed.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Listen, I'm over here watching people say that they lost
a job for speaking about palesign who didn't actually speak
about pals sign.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So I you know, yes, we've already started.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Maybe didn't even have one to begin with. They went
on unemployment on October fifth, and I'm like, yeah, you know,
lost my job.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So then here we are where folks are really feeling
the weight of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and
this era of very overt racism back in action, and
they're saying the only way to beat this is to
be democrat. I, as someone who is watching this in
the now and who does have not the extensive knowledge
(24:28):
that you have of the past, but somewhat of a grasp,
can say confidently that that is simply not a practical
vision for solution.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Right. The Democrats have not in any way indicated.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
That they have strategy, that they have coalition, that they
have a mission to even.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Subvert this administration.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Right, Like, they kind of are like, we don't agree
with them, But disagreeing and wanting it to not exist
are two different things, right.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's literally like Zionism.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's like disagreeing with Israel and wanting Israel as an
a existence to cease because it has only existed in
a form of violence, are two different things. So I
guess my question to you is if the last time
that a third party was effective in shifting American politics
or American sentiments in a drastic way around slavery was
because there was a shared there was a shared enemy,
(25:19):
so to speak, in slavery.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Do we have that now?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yes? And no? A couple different pieces one. I think
the last time a third party really made a big
difference in an election, even though it was a small
number of votes was nineteen forty eight, where Henry Wallace
and the Progressive Party lost, but the very fact of
their loss was what shaped most of post World War
two America. But that's maybe a different story for a
different time. This is we're in contemporary reality. I would say, yes,
(25:44):
we do absolutely have that kind of sort of Confederate reality.
And I would say the same people, the slave owners,
the slaveocracy, are capitalists. I mean, if you think about
everything in this country that is possible, but that does
not take place. I mean, you just look at what's
happening right now with the US that they're trying to
put in here, and they're saying, we're going to cut
eight hundred billion dollars in medicay, We're going to do this,
We're going to do that, and we have to do
(26:06):
this because there's no money. I mean, this is a
country where out of the three trillion dollars in profit
that was made by corporation at the United States in
twenty twenty four, about two trillion dollars was given away
in dividends, which by the way, are taxed at a
very low rate, lower than your income. And ninety some
percent of the stock market is owned by a very
(26:27):
small percent of the country, like less than ten percent
of the country. I own almost all the wealth in
stock market. So that basically means out of three trillion
dollars in profit, almost all of it was just a
wealth transfer to the tiniest richest group of people in
the country, basically the top one percent, if you will,
more or less. And yet and still we're told we
don't have the resources to do not like great things,
even the most basic things. I mean, where I'm at
(26:48):
right now, I took the Amtrak here today. Constant delays
on the Amtrak over the past two weeks because it's
too hot, and then when it's too cold, same thing,
them when the rains hard, same thing. So we can't
even just have like a basic working train in a country,
but we can give two trillion dollars away to trust
fund kids and CEOs and super rich like billionaires. Like
there is a reality in this country that we have
to recognize that so much wealth is being produced in
(27:11):
this country, yet we don't have the most basic things.
There is more homes than there are people who are homeless.
But you can't just put homeless people into empty homes
because someone owns the home, and you can't violate private property.
I mean, we could go on and on and on.
We have more food than we have hungry people. So
the reality is a sense under capitalism, every single thing
(27:31):
that is produced is produced for profit. I have a
shirt on Obviously I need a shirt because you need
a shirt. But the person who made the shirt did
not make the shirt just so I can have a shirt.
They made the shirt so I will buy the shirt
so they can make profit. So when you have a
system that only runs and thrives off the fact that
everything that is produced is made for a profit, that
means that even if you have an abundance of things,
(27:54):
that you can still have shortage for large numbers of people. So,
from my point of view, we're in a similar situation
where in eighteen sixty the Republicans actually were not saying
they were going to end slavery. They just said, you
got to stay where you're at. And as Lincoln himself said,
you could have slavery for one hundreds and more years
doing that. But from the slave owner's perspective, it was like, well,
why slavery is right? This is our birthright. Who were
(28:15):
you to tell us that slavery is wrong? And we're
in a very similar situation right now where we could obviously,
like you know, people say without billionaires, we should have
a world without billionaire seems fine to me. I think
not having nine hundred and ninety nine million dollars, Like,
I'm not shedding any tears for you, right, like, but
we could generate huge gains for people by not allowing
people to have just unlimited riches and using that wealth
(28:36):
to actually help society and build up society. That is
logical to most people. I don't think anyone would feel like,
oh my god, these people with nine hundred ninety nine
million dollars are now destitute. But for the billionaires, for
the people with hundreds of millions of dollars, their sturgude
is like, but why because it's my right to have
this kind of This is capitalism. I have the right
to do all these things, even if it hurts society,
(28:56):
even if it's destroying the planet, even if all these
other things so their own few, that their own personal interest,
just like the slave owners that their own personal interests
is greater than the interests of society, makes them I think,
the unified enemy of basically everyone else. I know that's
hard for people to grasp because we're brought up with
so much capitalist propaganda. But what kind of sense does
it make that you say that people should be able
(29:19):
to accumulate wealth to any degree, no matter what the
impact it is on society. Like think about that, whether
or not people are dying of cancer because they can't
afford to pay for it, whether the planet is being
destroyed because oil companies just want to make a lot
of money, whether or not people are getting evicted because
landlords just decide, hey, not my problem, Like why would
we do these things if we don't have to? And
(29:41):
ultimately it wouldn't affect anybody. Like that's the other thing,
Like it's not like capitalists are living on the edge,
you know. I mean we're talking about with a lot
of these things like tax the rich, the difference between
them maybe having like the heat of Olympic sized pool
or the regular Olympic sized pool, which doesn't really seem
like a crisis to me.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So in that guard, if we agree then that it's
the billionaire class that is the shared quote unquote enemy. Right,
where does an expanded party system spring from to challenge it?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It springs from the people who are that enemy, working
class and impressed people, right, Like the people who aren't
the capitalists, the people who aren't benefiting from the system,
the people who are basically having their wealth stolen day
in and day out, Like they are generating a huge
amount of income by going to work every day, and
that income is mainly being siphoned off to somebody who,
(30:34):
if they didn't show up to work, would not suffer.
Like It's something that I say people all the time.
If you don't go to work, you can get fined.
But if you show up to work and for whatever
reason the boss is not there that day, can you
just stop working? Obviously not, But whether he's in the
office or playing golf, he's still getting the vast majority
of the wealth that you produce, So you don't have
(30:55):
to ask yourself are you really benefiting from this system?
And basically every person who's not capitalists, Like, that's the
thing about capitalism. There are multiple strata in the different classes, right,
So there are like capitalists who make more money, capitals
who make less. There are workers who make more money
workers who make less. But at the end of the day,
basically it comes down to do you have to get
up and go to work for another person or do
(31:15):
you have other people working for you in terms of
how you survive and if you are one of these
people that and this is a lot more people than
they think. Is I know people making four hundred thousand
dollars a year that if they lost their job, you know,
it's just a few paychecks till they be in trouble.
So working class, you can have a lot of differences
in income and lifestyle and things like that, but when
it really comes down to it, it's a difference between
(31:36):
how many weeks and how many months without a paycheck
before you become totally destitute because you have to work
for someone else. Now, of course there's different realities and vicissitudes,
and that there are a lot of small business owners
that like don't make a lot of money, and small
businesses oftentimes are getting pushed out by big businesses like Walmart,
And you could argue that they don't really have a
lot of mistake in the system either. But the basic
(31:56):
breakdown of society and the basic reality of where third
parties brings from in my view, if you recognize capitalism
as the main answer, are the non capitalists, the people
who ultimately, at the end of the day, the way
for you to get the things that you and the
people you love need on a week to week basis
is you got to get up and you got to
find someone to pay you to do something. And if
those people get together, that's the majority of people in
(32:19):
the country. So you really, if we really have a democracy,
should be able to win all the elections pretty easily.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But we don't have a democracy.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
And that's the important question, and that's the reality is
that you can't vote your way out of it.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Okay, what we're talking about at this point is theory,
because ultimately we know that on a federal level, they
have put so much money into keeping it bipartisan, into
keeping it a two party system. Like it's like the
interview that Angela Rai did with Jill Sein, Like Jill
Sein is whatever you want her to be, but ultimately
she wasn't wrong when she was like, I mean, there
(32:58):
are active forces at work preventing other parties from being
able to participate in this system. So even if we
are creating these other parties, How do we then create
space in this system without And this is me asking
from a reformist point of you, even though I'm not
a reformist, but I know some of the people listening
are how do we create space within this system without
(33:21):
dismantling it altogether or is there a way to do
that at all?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Two part question. I mean, I think with the question
of creating space, I think you can use some of
these things, like you could win some elections. You can
use extra elect levels, right, you can use extra electoral
activity like strikes, like big protests to sort of leverage
your influence by saying, hey, we're going to disrupt the
status quo until you change. So you can create space.
(33:45):
But to exactly your point, to actually move from influence
to power, because that's a big difference. I think people
don't really understand. Yes, influence is when people feel they
have to listen to you and thus they take your
needs into account, which is not unimportant. But the power
is when you determine what is actually going to happen.
So to move from influence to power, we have to
(34:07):
get rid of this and you know we're taping this
not that long before July fourth. I don't know exactly
what it will come out, but the reality is is
we have to get rid of this seventeen eighty seven
constitutional structure. We need something new. I mean, there are
two people who had different sort of ways of saying
the same thing. I mean a lot of people, or
maybe not a lot of people, I don't know. Know
the augy Lord quote about you can't use the master's
to dismantle the master's house, Karl Marx said something very
(34:28):
similar where he said that you can't take hold of
the ready made state machinery. And in both the cases
they both meant the same thing that if we want
something different, we actually have to build up new structures
that allow us to exercise power. And to just keep
harping on marks here for a second. The thing he
said about capital, which is, you know, we think about
(34:48):
it money, right like capitalists have money, He said, CAPITALI
isn't money, it's social power. Because if you have capital,
you determine who works, when they work, where they work,
how long, for how much money, And then that also
determines what they can buy at the stores. So how
you eat, how you dress, how you live, all these
other things. So just by the virtue of having capital,
(35:10):
you control people's lives. That's power, not influence. So how
do we start to control our own lives? It's not
going to happen under a system that says you can't
nationalize an industry without paying the value of it, which
is what it says in the taking's clause in the Constitution.
I mean, if you look at what's happening right now
in Memphis, Tennessee, and Elon Musk is running these diesel
(35:33):
things to run rock, you know, and it's poisoning the
people who live in this area around there, and.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Their mayor is like, yeah, I need to exploit this.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Why should we have to pay them anything if we
want to take that over and in the poisoning of
our own communities and our own people. Why should the
big banks that have destroyed the whole world multiple times
at these huge economic crises if you nationalize the banks,
why should you have to pay Jamie Diamond in the
handful of shareholders? Like why should you actually to pay
people who have harmed you and hurt you and really
(36:04):
try to destroy and break up your community for the
right to actually heal yourself, your community, your class, and
your planet. Like just because it says so in the Constitution,
Like I don't believe that. I think that we have
to do what's right for ourselves, what's really is right
for humanity, because the agenda of average, everyday people is
the agenda of humanity, while the agenda of capitalism is
(36:25):
the agenda the destruction of humanity in a very real sense,
when we look at climate change, like why are we
paying for that? Like we should just have a different
All the Constitution is is a set of shared agreements.
So why would we still have the same set of
shared agreements from seventeen eighty seven? You know when ninety
percent of the stuff we have around us right now
they couldn't even imagine exists back then. They were still
cutting people and leading them in the cue them of diseases.
(36:47):
So like, yes, these are the people whose ideas we
should never change under any circumstance. So we need political
parties that yes, can run in elections, that yes, can
organize other types of political activities, but whose ultimate goal
is to actually try to create and build a new system,
which shouldn't really be scary, because if there's anything I mean,
it might be chaotic, But I don't think we should
(37:08):
be scared, because if there's anything you can say, if
you look at the entire arc of human history, is
that we're always changing. We're always finding new ways to
live and work amongst each other.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Sound the real parable of the sour right now?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's true. I mean, we've had all these different forms
of governments, all these different forms of economy, all these
different forms of living together. Now it's twenty twenty five,
why don't we come up with the government and economy
that says, hey, instead of profit first, let's think of
people first. And let's take a basic principle of reality.
There is a certain amount of resources, both human and material,
and let's start with using those human and material resources
(37:44):
to make sure everyone has what they need. And then
let's start by then saying, okay, now that everyone has
what they need, what are the things that we want?
And what can we give ourselves that we want democratically
decided amongst ourselves with the material and human resources we have.
And then what are the things that we want that
we can't quite reach, and how do we organize our
human and material resources to take ourselves to a higher
(38:06):
level so we can reach those things? And that doesn't
mean that there's not trade offs a lot of trade offs.
You want hundreds of millions, billions of people to decide
all these things. We're not all gonna get everything we want.
But if we all say we're gonna put people's needs first,
not profit first, I think we're gonna get a lot
further to building the type of sustainable, equitable, just culture
that I think most people would prefer to the dog
(38:27):
eat dog. To succeed in couples in the base have
to be a sociopath. You succeed on the base of
your willingness to step on other people's backs to get
to where you want to be. There was a documentary
kind I wish I could remember. This documentary is about
oil and they went to the home of VP's protester.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Can you remember something?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I know. You go to the guy's house and he
comes out, the CEO of BP, and he was like, man,
everything you all are saying is right, and let me
tell you about VP with thinking about this, you know,
And I was just thinking about that scene when Deepwater
Horizon happened, you know, the Golf of Mexico at twenty ten,
because then it turned out that BP, under this guy
(39:04):
had actually been like the most reckless of all the
oil companies.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
But that's the thing, like they see it. But it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
And even if he meant it, it doesn't matter because
if your profits drop below exon, the board is going
to get rid of you. So the impact of capitalism
is you have to do the worst. You have to
maximize profit, no matter who it hurts.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I was in Hollywood, yeah, and I remember this manager
had approached me, who manages a lot of like really
well known black comics, and was like, I want to
manage you.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And I said, okay, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I don't believe in this concept of just because you
decide today that you want to manage me, that you
now get twenty percent of my earnings. I think that
there should be at least a probationary period where we
are working together and I get to see kind of
how you operate, and you know, you basically eat what
you kill. You get a percentage based on what you
have actually brought to me. And he told me straight up,
(40:02):
everything you're saying is practical, rational, logical.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
It's just said, that's just not how the business works.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And I just don't at this point in my career
need to go along with you even though it's right,
I said, so let me just let me just get
this right, even though everything I'm saying makes logical sense,
because you can exploit me, You're going to choose to
try to yes, yes, And he said yes, And I said,
(40:33):
then I don't need a manager.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
That's deep, and I mean to even go even deeper,
like there is the reason why comedy is so thousands
of years old, right, Like it speaks to our soul
in a way that's so important and helps us do
all these different things. You have these talents to do comedy,
Why is it that's your talent? And my enjoyment is
mediated by a dollar? Like I feel like we should
both lie able to eat, to survive and to thrive,
(40:59):
and I should be able to see you and like
laugh my ass off, and you should be able to
come tell those jokes. And it shouldn't be like me
being like a Manda deserves my dollar that you get
to eat, and you feeling like if I don't say
something that he thinks is funny, then I'm not going
to be able to eat, Like what kind of sense
does that make in terms of how we live together?
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
So then why is it I know the answer to this,
but I want you to answer it for the people
who don't. Why is it that the Democrats are so
adamantly opposed to the inviting of a third party into
the space.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Because it is going to hurt the material interest of
the people who really run the Democrats, who you know,
you always talk about Republicans or people with big money,
but the people who run the Democrats are also people
with big money when you look at the big contributors
and all these other things, and you know, you think
about the donors, but it's not just the donors. It's
the whole political class, right, Like I always tell people,
there's that website OpenSecrets dot org where you can look
at donors. I always tell people, if you really want
(41:56):
to open your eyes, look at the vendors. Because the
question is, if the election cost six billion dollars or
whatever it was, who got that money? And that means
there's a whole series of lawyers and media buyers and
ad makers and consultants and other people whose entire livelihood
is based on very very rich people contributing large sums
(42:18):
of money to campaigns and then the campaign's paying them
to do it. So you have the donors themselves who
have their own interests, and obviously donors are not gonna,
you know, wish themselves out of existence, so they're only
going to accept but so much in terms of policies
that you know, may infringe on the rights of the rich.
And then you have this whole class of so called
political professionals that are dependent on this sort of capitalist
(42:39):
driven two party system. So for them, there is an
identity of interest between Democrats and Republicans to eliminate third parties.
Like one thing you'll often see is when third parties
always come up, there's always these lawsuits, you know, to
kick them off the ballot. And you would think that
like each party would be interested in helping the third
parties that hurt the other party, and you see like
(43:01):
a little bit of that around the edges of the elections,
but there's very little of bit. Some of the most
bipartisan policy that there is in this country are the
laws and the procedures that make it difficult for third
parties to get on the ballot. And you can see
that both parties love it. They love it. California, one
of the hardest states to get on the ballot. Deep
blue Ohio very difficult to the ballot, Deep rent purple
(43:22):
state Pennsylvania very hard to get on the ballot, Purple
state Georgia very hard to get on the ballot. It's
like almost the only places where it's not that hard
to get on the ballot are like seven states where
it's so clear who's going to win every election, like Louisiana,
they just don't even care. But the vast majority of
states make it basically impossible, and it doesn't matter whether
it's Democrats or Republicans, because they recognize that when you
start to erode the political monopoly of the two major parties,
(43:45):
things that you don't expect to happen will happen. It's
a slippery slope, is how they look at it. And
they think, like, you open the door, and what if
people really like what Amanda is saying and she gets
a lot of votes and people start to think, well,
maybe we should do something different, maybe we don't need
to keep doing this, And then that's where it becomes.
(44:06):
They is why they didn't want slaves to read. Critical
thinking is not something that people in power want. They
do not want you to start to think that you
can do something beyond what they have allowed. It's like
what Bernie Sanders ran in twenty twenty, and every time
he was in the mainstream media, they would say, well, Bernie,
did you see this Washington Post study that said that
it would cost thirty two trillion dollars to have universal
(44:30):
health care? And as Bernie pointed out many times, he
would say, well, if you read the study, they actually
said that that would be less expensive than if you
kept the healthcare system going the way it is now
by trillions of dollars. So even though the very study
they were citing actually proved that universal health care was
more fiscally responsible, the media keeps citing the study is
(44:52):
saying that it's not fiscally responsible. So that's not an accident.
These people aren't dumb. These people are paid propagandas who's
goal is to narrow your horizons.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Well, so that's what I want to go to our
Patreon special segment to discuss. I want to hear from
you in our Patreon special segment the media's role in
preventing the birth of a true third party opponent, because
we have seen third parties, whether it's the Green Party
or the Independent Party. We have seen them pop up
on various levels, right even on an electoral level for
(45:25):
the federal you know, presidential election, but somehow it never
seems to go through.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And I know that the media always plays a role
in it.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
So join us over at Patreon with our sales squad
as we are going to continue this conversation with Eugene
per Year the last So my last question is this,
(45:52):
we have this whole conversation, You've given us all this history,
all this context.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Where are we, in your.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Opinion, in the possibility, like on the timeline of an
actual disruption taking place where a third party breaks through
on an electoral level. Where do you feel like we
are in that process? Because I will tell you that
I feel like we are very far.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
There's two answers to that question. I think right now,
in a way, we're very far, but it could happen tomorrow.
And this is what I would say to people is
this is about our collective agency, which starts with our
individual decision making. And in terms of like you look,
there's a poll in the New York Times that's past
summer that said that there is roughly set I think
seventy percent of people in the country thought that the
(46:38):
economy should either be majorly overhauled or totally torn down.
Now people have different views about what that is. Yeah,
but if all seventy percent of those people said we're
not going to accept any economic program from any politician,
that isn't a drastic change from what we are right now.
And if neither of the politicians say that they're going
to do that, We're going to set up our own
thing and we're going to run our own politicians, then
(46:59):
again self fulfilling prophecy. And I think that's part of
the challenge of where we face when we think about
the issue of time scale. Like most revolutions that have
happened in history, like two days before, no one really
thought that they were going to happen, And in hindsight
you can always say, oh, the lead up to it
was so clear, right the King of France, believe me,
two days before they you know, forced him out of
(47:21):
the policy. People was not thinking about that. He thought
I still had a chance.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
He wasn't but the people themselves.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
But they didn't think that they were going to depose
him fully, and it wasn't one hundred percent clear what
was going to happen, and it seemed like the king
could come back, and it wasn't even clear that they
were even going to kill him. I mean, that was
the debate, you know in the States general, is what
we're even the rights of the king. So things that like,
ultimately the guillotining of mary Ansbinett and the king, when
you look at it, it was set in stone maybe
a year before it happened, but at the time it
was hard to say. You know, you can look at
(47:49):
so many different issues like that, and not even just
the civil wars you already mentioned here. In eighteen fifty,
which is just thirteen years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation,
slave owners had more power in the government than they
had ever had before. Actually, and the Compromise of eighteen
fifty was maybe the high point of slave owner influence
inside of the government, believe it or not. And even
though that was the case, there was tectonic shifts happening
(48:12):
underneath that couldn't be percessed. So I think, you know, look,
we saw what happened in Ferguson, we saw what happened
in Minneapolis, We've seen what happened in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Right, like, okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, just let me
just say it to see if I have it. It's
like in your mind, what you're saying is like, we're
farther along than we think one.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Hundred percent, but we have to decide that we have
to decide for ourselves that the things we have seen
have taught us enough that the difference between what is
and what could be is the existing political system that
is controlled.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
By say one more time, billion, say one more time.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
The difference between what is and what could be is
a political system controlled by a small group of very
rich people who are choosing not to do things that
could help all of us. And I think once we
recognize that that is the case, we can move very
quickly and very rapidly to transition. But we don't believe
enough in ourselves understandably.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
So that's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
I feel like the first part of believing that those
people are not like effective.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I think there are enough people that believe that, right,
Like there are people that.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Are still like yay politicians, But I do think there
are enough people who are like, well, I don't really
rock with that. I don't think there's enough of us
that believe in us, right, And I don't think there's
enough of us that understand even our capabilities as a
unit or know how to determine like what we would
(49:35):
bring to that you feel me Like, I think that's
part of it too. It's like some people are like, Okay,
I know that those politicians ain't it and I know
that's not right, But what do I even bring to this?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Like am I smart enough? Am I strong enough?
Speaker 1 (49:46):
And my patient enough, et cetera, et cetera, And so
like that's what I really try and empower folks to do,
is like self exploration, to like what are you bringing
to the shifting of the situation? Because you you it's
gonna happen from you.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yes, you have to grasp your agency. You can do
so many things, and collectively we can do everything. I mean, society,
all society is is how we cooperate to do the
things we need.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
You know, people think this is a fantasy, right.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Yes, some people do, and it's crazy. It doesn't make
any sense. I mean, like you say, you have all
these shared reference points that people always reference, but there's
no society. I mean, like obviously we live in a
society like We all are experiencing things in different ways,
but we're experiencing a lot of the same phenomena. When
it's hot outside, we all react to how hot it
is in some way, shape or form, and it has
some impact on our life because we're all in this together,
(50:32):
we have a society. It's the thing that is the
most natural amongst humans is production, right, coming together as
a group to reproduce our lives day in and day out.
So we all already are like basically everything we do
when we leave the house oftentimes, like a job, nine
times out of ten is doing something to facilitate something
someone else needs to do. And we all kind of
need to do all these things to sort of make
(50:54):
things happen. Now, they don't happen efficiently, they don't happen well,
they don't do different things. But we all are working
together all and so collectively we can do everything. It's
the point I made about if you show up in
the boss and in the office, but playing golf, you
still gotta work. So at the end of the day,
you know how to run a machine, you know how
to ring up the thing, you know how to stock
the shelves, you know how to grow the food. You
know how to do this, like we have the knowledge
(51:14):
amongst ourselves. We are just constantly told we don't have
the knowledge. We are constantly told we don't have the capability.
That's why social media is so popular. As problematic as
social media is, because we live in a society that
says you don't matter and you don't have a voice,
and social media is monetizing our deeply felt need as
human beings for social connections with others to be reaffirmed
(51:35):
that we do matter and that we do have a voice,
and that when we say and do things, there are
other people who like what we say and do or
hate what we say and do, but we still feel
that connection between each other, and we're allowing people to
exploit that to make money, to manipulate that to make money.
We have to think how deeply propagandized we are, all
of us. Even when you're deeply conscious, you really are
(51:56):
propagandized in many different ways. But we have to believe
in ourselves and believe that we can actually change things
because we can, and that is how humanity has moved
forward historically over one hundred thousand years. It's large groups
of people, the majority of people getting together and be like, y'all,
we're gonna make a change whether they want it or
whether they don't.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
And that's that. I mean, there's nothing else to say.
Good
Small help from small, small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small It's so funky.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
What's up, Small Doses? We are here for yet another
episode as we continue.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
With our transitioning into just.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Far more educational episodes around radical thoughts and growth, et cetera.
Today's guest is somebody that I actually was introduced to
via speakerphone while I was on a freedom ride down
the Eastern Seaboard in support of really working with labor
(00:50):
unions and organizations to continue to amplify immigration rights, workers' rights,
democratic crits, etc. And I was saying that I was
going to be doing an episode of this show surrounded
where I was going to have to debate people and
that I'm really not a debater like that, and Claudia
de la Cruz was like.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You need to talk to Eugene per Year. He is
a debate.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Master, and like aside, like, don't get me wrong, like
Mark Lamont Hill and Matthie Hassen are the debate masters
that I know of, but I did not know about Eugene, and.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So we got on the phone and he.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Was like, say less, and so we ended up having
a debate crash course, and I definitely used some of
the skills The thing about it that was really exceptional, though,
was that everybody on the bus when Claudia mentioned Eugene,
everybody was like, Eugene is the smartest guy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, he's the smartest guy. No, and he just knows everything,
and you're.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Just like okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, And then you meet Eugene,
You're like, oh, yeah, you do know everything. Like the
amount of knowledge in Eugene per Year's brain is incredible.
And you're going to hear me in this episode be
like what for real? So often because it's just always
(02:08):
striking to me how many holes there are in my scholarship.
But then I always remember I'm in the United States,
and the truth is that as a black person, we
are always in an effort of excavation about the truth
about our history, about literally just did that happen or not?
(02:30):
And Eugene does a great job in this episode of
bringing things to light that many of us not only
didn't know about, but may not have considered to be
so connected to where we are now and where we
are going. For anyone still talking about Democrats and Republicans
at this point in the game, I want you to
(02:53):
really listen closely to Eugene because it is imperative that
we break free from the dan to really see beyond
this limitation that has been thrust upon us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
In this nation.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And Eugene, I believe, really does give you some really
empirical evidence of the necessity to find another way and
that may mean knocking all of it down to build better.
And I want us to really own the reality that
that can happen, and that it's not the first time
that's happened anywhere, let alone here.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So without further ado, I give you Side Effects of
a par System featuring Eugene per Yeer.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Welcome to another edition of Small Doses podcast, and today's
guest is a Smarty Pants And I'm so happy to
have you here because I feel like these people are
so used to hearing me talk about this, Eugene, and
I'm like, let me get somebody else to talk about
(04:07):
why this buy partisan, this two party system in the
United States doesn't have to be this way. That is
where a lot of people are stuck, and it's where
a lot of people So like, there's been a lot
of people who will tell me or anybody who even
brings this up, that we are the reason why Trump
(04:29):
is in office.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, that's like a real thing.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So first, actually, let me just say, okay, while we
have Eugene Prior here, can you please just tell the
people why you are knowledgeable to talk on this topic.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Well, listen, I guess I could say. I'm a history
major from Howard University. You know, I'm well versed in
all these things. But I have been a quote unquote
third party although I hate that phrase, candidate for several offices.
I run for vice president twice. I run for city
council in DC one. So I've been in the arena.
This to someone who's worked on these campaigns. And I
(05:02):
am a history major from Howard University, and I have
started it and I have gone deep. So I do
want to, you know, put that out there, all.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Right, Bison, we get it, We get it. You Howard people.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Jeez, Louise, ain't you you know ya?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So can you please, for our lovely listeners here as
Small Thoses Podcast break down for us how we have
managed to say stuck in this two party system, and
what would be necessary to break us out of it,
and why it would be helpful to do so.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, you know, I think, first of all, it's just
a lack of political imagination. I mean, you know, politics
is simply just a numbers game. So when you say
this or that thing is not possible, it becomes a
self fulfilling prophecy. If every single person who says, and
we see this, actually every year somebody gallop, somebody does
a poll in the presidential year, not every year, and
it always is something or you know, in between them,
(05:57):
how many people think there needs to be more than
one political option, And it's always some overwhelming number of people.
It's like sixty percent of people, seventy percent of people,
eighty percent of people, Like when just asked the question,
just flat out almost everyone who asked the questions like, yeah,
it would be great to have more choices and more
political options, but it's you know, not possible. But if
all those seventy or eighty percent of people said I'm
(06:17):
just gonna support what I think is right no matter what,
then you would start to see the political system open up.
I mean, I would assume that listeners and viewers of
the Small Doses podcasts are probably fans of someone like
say Frederick Douglass. I think that he knew what he
was doing, that he had a good idea of how
to navigate things played a role in Indian slavery well.
(06:38):
He was one hundred percent against the two party system.
In fact, for good chunk of his career didn't even
think people should vote. But when he moved into the
context of electoral politics, it was solely in the vein
of supporting one hundred percent abolitionist politics. Starting in eighteen
forty eight, and when he first started talking about it,
it was the same way people talk about third parties. Now,
why would you do this. You're throwing the election away.
(07:01):
You're actually making slavery stronger.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
That's one of the number one things people say, a
vote for a third party is a vote for Republicans.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Like, that's like a number one thing I hear said, yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
And one it's sociologically not true. I mean, most of
the polls that are ever done on this show, most
people who vote for third parties would not have voted
had they not voted for those third parties, because they
had rejected the two major parties. But on the other hand,
you know, your vote is not a matter of facilitating
a candidate's election. It's a candidate's job to get your vote.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I mean, I say, say that one more time, say
that one more time.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
It is a candidate's job to get your vote. You
look at the context of the civil rights movement. I mean,
obviously some people who are involved in the civil rights
movement helped various Democratic Party candidates, but they also formed
third parties like the Lownes County Freedom Organization, like the
missip Be Freedom Democratic Party, like I think basically every
single person who's involved in the civil rights move would
tell you they didn't risk their life and limb on
(07:55):
a regular basis simply for a vote to be used
as a transactional mechanism that you just give away to
somebody because they claim that they have some claim on
your vote. But it's actually a positive affirmation of democracy
that you are using your right to vote to put
your values on the table and say, this is what
I believe in, this is what I want to see happen,
and this is either what I want you the candidate
(08:17):
to do, or more so, what I the voter, am
going to do with my other voters to build up
political parties that represent my interests. Because if not, what's
the point of having the right to vote? I mean,
why should you have the right to vote. If all
the right to vote really comes down to is you
just have to pick two people that may or may
not conform to what you want, then why have an election?
Why not just have the people selected and just put
(08:38):
in there. Why ask voters to use any sort of
agency or discernment or values or morality, all the things
that we claim that we care about, and all the
things that in Civics class in high school they tell
you that elections are all about. When you actually start voting,
you realize that like all of that is bs and
that when it actually comes down to it, it actually
isn't about you. It isn't about what you want. It
isn't about what your values. It's about rich people putting
(09:01):
two people in front of you and saying, these are
the people who we think should be the leaders, and
you decide which one of them you prefer, whether or
not it corresponds whatsoever with your life. But the final
thing I have to say on this is the way
slavery was ended politically in this country was third parties.
That's why I brought up Frederick Douglass. Like I think
most black people feel happy that we don't have formal
(09:21):
slavery and think that was a step forward. Whatever other
problems that there are here, well, none of that happened
through the two major parties. It actually happened because black
people and the abolitionist allies broke up the two major
parties and formed their own institutions and entities and took
power at the center with the Republican Party, which was
a third party at the time. People don't talk about
it like that.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, you saying, whoa stop, I
don't know anything about this. Yeah, so take a sip
of your drink. Yes, because now you gotta run it back.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Now. This is not a podcast, this is a class.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Okay, what Yes, the Republican.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
My masters proves pointless.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
There are so many holes in my academia.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I'm telling you that's why they have us paying all
this money, because it's not about the education. It's about
the banks. As I realize every month.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So many holes in my scholarship. Okay, what are you
saying right now?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The Republican Party, most successful third party in American history,
is a third party. So in the same way we
have Democrats and Republicans in the lead up to eighteen
fifty six. So right for a civil War, the Democrats
were still there. Yeah, you had the Whigs was the
other major party, and the Whigs have been breaking apart
in small ways for like a number of years because
of slavery. Like the Democrats were more kind of universally
(10:36):
pro slavery, although not totally, but the Whigs were very split,
especially between north and south. So starting with the election
of eighteen forty eight, abolitionists started doing their thing politically.
So at first you had the Liberty Party that was
just like straight pure abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, the names, you know,
and the abolitionist movement. Then you had the Free Soil
Party that comes after that in eighteen fifty two, which
(10:57):
was both abolitionists and people who were sore against slavery
but not necessarily like four black people. And then that
energy becomes so big in the early eighteen fifties that
these kind of free soil forces, abolitionist forces and others
come together and they form a new party they actually
started for eighteen fifty six called the Republican Party, and
(11:18):
the Republicans first run.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Then, So was that considered coalition building.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It was considered coalition building. It was bringing together real
social forces. So the black communities in the North and
the West that were heavily made up of escaped slaves
as well as free black populations that have been there
for hundreds of years. The abolitionist movement itself, right, which
had its own organizations, like almost all the states had
something called the ex Anti Slavery Society, so Massachusetts, Ohio, whatever,
(11:44):
there's also the American Anti Slavery Society, and a lot
of people at that time were also organized a little
bit also around newspapers too, so like Frederick Douglas's North
Star the Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison, and they would
have agents they called them, that would go around and
sell the paper, and that became a form of organism.
You had those folks, but then you also had organizations
of say small farmers that felt slavery was a danger
(12:07):
to them, and so they also were organizing their own piece,
and that was the sort of anti slavery movement. So
they all kind of come together and say, we have
some differences, a lot of times, a lot of differences,
but we do have one key factors. We have the
same enemy, really, the slave owners. So let's do a
third party.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Why do they consider the slave owners their enemies. Is
that also different amongst them. For some people it's because
of the taxes. For some people it's because they don't
want them to have black people as slaves, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yes, basically, I mean what it really came down to was,
like the expansion of slavery and the existence of slavery.
You had the abolitionists who were like, slavery is evil
and just like must be ended on a moral ethical
level exactly. Yeah. And then you had people who are
considered themselves and called themselves at the time anti slavery,
and that just meant that their attitude was, Okay, maybe
it's cool if there's slavery and like Mississippi. But our
(12:55):
entire understanding of why we're here in America, which is
you know, the subtle of colonial country where the land
has been cleared and you're coming from Europe, where you know,
there's all sorts of terrible circumstances, was that you would
have the opportunity to be able to go into the
United States and get a little small farm and the
sort of Abraham Lincoln mythology right like born in a
log cabin, rail splitter, and then you could become you know,
(13:16):
a president. They called it the free labor ideology at
the time that it has become known, you know, historically
that having slavery put that at risk, that instead of
having this opportunity for individuals to come and to you know,
make it, which most of them did not make it,
most of them didn't even make it to the West,
but just ideologically, the fact that they thought they would
have a chance to succeed on their own merits instead
(13:38):
of the highly aristocratic class stratified not that America wasn't
class stratified, but seemingly like set in stone reality in Europe,
like where you were born is where you going to die,
and America was like you can rise above your quote
unquote station. That that would not be able to happen
if slavery is able to expand over the whole country.
Slavery is very profitable, it was able to do business well,
(13:58):
so like it could actually challenge these sort of small
farmers and big factory owners and others that were starting
to develop what we kind of know of is capitalism
today is really starting to develop in the north and
the West of the United States at that time. So
they were also opposed to the expansion of slavery. So
that was the big difference, so.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That I understand this correctly, though, they were looking at
it not as like this is in the way for
black people, but that this isn't the way for them
because slave owners, due to the use of labor by
black people, could have a far greater opportunity of gaining
wealth than those who didn't, and it wasn't like a
fair field one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It was not fair. It would take their opportunities away
from them. So that's the big difference, is like eliminating
slavery or just limiting its expansion. But either way, the
slave owners did not want to limit their expansion, nor
did they want to end slavery. So it made those
differences like meaningful, especially if you were black, because a
lot of anti slavery forces were also very racist and
didn't want black heis, yes, I mean that's why I
(15:00):
It was notable, no doubt, but it was still secondary
in the sense like, yeah, we can come together to
get rid of the slave owners and then we'll deal
with everything else. And that's what reconstruction was about. And
if you ask partially why did Reconstruction fail, it was
because a new political alliance was not founded, and the
same one that black people had relied on for the
(15:20):
Civil War, which was heavily based on like rich white
factory owning capitalists, which were the driving force to the
Republican Party, were not really friendly to the aspirations of
mostly poor, working class, poor peasant black farmers in the South,
and so you didn't have the same strength of coalition,
and they were willing to sell black people out almost
from jump. I mean, obviously there's some very notable exceptions
(15:42):
Statis Stevens and others, but they were always a minority
inside their Republican Party. So part of the reason Reconstruction
failed was that black people stuck with the two party
system in the wake of the Civil War, rather than thinking,
you know, what kind of new political dispensation could exist.
And this is what WB. De Boys talks about in
his book Black Reconstruction. For those who want to read it,
if you go right to the last chapter where he's
(16:04):
talking about the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wait real quick, is it written in the same style
as Souls of Black Folk?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I would say it's a little more modern because he
was about forty years later.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Because Souls of Black Folk is a tough read, y'all.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
It's a tough read. But here's what you could think about.
Malcolm X, when he wanted to relax, would go to
the New York Public Library and read Hegel. And I've
never known anyone who's ever done that. So anytime I
read like a tough book, I'm like, well, you know what,
relax reading Hegel in the public library. I can make it.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Through this, Okay, Fair and the Boys.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Basically just says that by the time you got to
eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, where you start to have poor
whites and poor blacks start to look for coalitions with
one another, that it was kind of too late, like
too many moves had already been made, and too many
people had already been bought off in different ways.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So wait, let me stop you real quick.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
When you said that black folks had relied on a
two party system after reconstruction or during rec instruction, and
that was what basically like set us up for the fall?
What was a better option, like what should have happened?
Because to my understanding, jering reconstruction, one of the biggest
impediments was that we had given Confederates who had actively
said we want to keep slavery, we don't want to
(17:17):
be a part of this country. They lost, but we
gave them a seat at the table, and so they
now had a voice that was just as valuable as
the people that they were just fighting. So what leg
did black folks really even have to stand on to
really fight that?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I would have said it probably would have been an
all black political party in the South, because you had
to polarize the politics of the North. Because what really
sorted to happen is you have poor white workers and
poor white farmers who in the immediate wake of the
Civil War were not fully grasping what was happening and
that their life circumstances were actually about to take a
significance step downward with the development of capitalism. Yeah, many
(17:52):
of them realized.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That we're much more aligned with the black folks that
they were exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, but the question was never posed clearly to them,
and I think that it probably would have. I mean,
there was some basics that you had the early labor
union in this country. There were the Colored National Labor Union,
which was led by a guy named Isaac Myers. If
I'm remembering correctly, he actually put a lot of work
into this and was traveling the North trying to bring
white workers and black workers together. They other fully came together,
but I think if you had had in the when
(18:16):
we think of the solid South during Jim Crow, we
have to remember that after the Civil War and a
lot of these places, you know, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina,
the black people were the majority of the population, and
in many of the others they were the plurality of
the population. And there is at least a possibility there
that if you had been able to leverage that politics
as sort of like one central solid block that wouldn't
(18:39):
have been a part of the Republicans or the Democrats.
It would have crazed exactly. It would have created a
polarization in the Congress that would have, I personally think,
I mean, it's just speculation, but I think would have
made every question for every other person in the country
very different because you wouldn't have been able to develop
a national political program to move your agenda without addressing
(19:01):
in the same way. The Jim Crow Solid South is
partially why the country is so conservative, because no matter
what these hardcore segregationists, they still had to deal with
them one way or another. So if you have black
voters like you got to deal with us one way
or another, I think it could have rejiggered the circumstances.
But of course, hindsight is twenty twenty, right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I was gonna say, like, Okay, if I'm looking at
what factors were in place to prevent that from happening,
we can acknowledge that one, folks were in survival mode, right,
Like their entire lives were flipped upside down. There was
also like all of these efforts at the Black laws
to put them into this new version of a labor force, right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, And there were things that people couldn't conceive, like
the depression of eighteen seventy three that it's like one
of those obscure things, but it was the deepest depression
at that time, and maybe as bad as the thirties.
That also shifted a lot of politics in a way
that in eighteen seventy eighteen seventy one, I think if
we went back in time, black politics seemed like it
had much more purchase whole as a part of the
(20:00):
Republican Party, which is a big national coalition, and that
even as late as eighteen seventy two to some degree.
Actually a lot of white workers did vote for Grant.
His vice president was a guy who this this is alone,
I don't need to get into all. The point being
the type of coalition that du Bois was talking about
was kind of missed. Actually could have seemed more plausible,
I think, and you had some people, you know, who
(20:21):
were around in the Republicans. But the Depression of eighteen
seventy three kind of change everything about American politics in
any ways, in ways that in hindsight, since I know
that I can make this argument that you would have
probably been better off by breaking from the Republicans, probably
as soon as Johnson became the president, certainly right after
Johnson's impeachment, but I think at the time it wasn't
that clear. And inside of the black population you also
(20:44):
had class politics. I mean, you look at the context
of reconstruction. You have people like the New Orleans Tribune
forces who were saying, let's just have all cooperative farms,
like there should be no plantation owners, white, black or indifferent.
All of us should just come together and collectively run
these plantations to share out the wealth and the money
amongst ourselves. I mean, you have so many interesting figures
(21:06):
like Aaron Logan and Aaron Bradley in the low country
of South Carolina and Georgia who were talking about not
higher minimum wages, but maximum wages, like you can only
make but so much money, leading huge demonstrations of arms.
Blacks demanding the redistribution of land, eliminating the ability of
debt to destroy small farmers, talking about the need for
(21:26):
universal education but also universal health care such as it
was at the time the first homes for older people
to make sure that no one was just left by
the wayside, and they became a senior citizen talking about
things that were very, very radical in many ways. But
those forces did not become the ascendant forces inside of
black politics because the white capitalist rulers who ran the
Republican Party empowered more conservative black leaders in terms of
(21:50):
who they were pushing to come into Congress and come
to the State House. So that was also partially why
the politics didn't emerge in the same way, because it
was in the black population. You had its own class
politics that was playing out. So there's always been coons
a hundred percent. I mean, going back to slavery. I
mean I always say this every slavery boat was sold
out by a black person. And you know, you look
at Gabriel's rebellion, You look at Denmark VZ. All of
(22:13):
these folks it was slaves, and you know, look again,
hindsight is twenty twenty. I mean, you look at Gabriel's rebellion,
all the slaves that sold him out. They were afraid
of being executed, right and the threat of execution, and
they decided Most of them tended to be people with
families and others who felt more vulnerable, and as zero
hour came, they started to think, man, I like what
(22:35):
Gabriel is saying, but like, I don't know, man, like
what about my family? What about my kids? What if
we don't win? So I don't think it is that
people were just like, you know, not thinking about the
need for freedom. But when you have powerful forces saying
the impact and the results of you breaking away from
us could be violent, dangerous or death, you always breed
(22:58):
a sell out class. Now, some people, I'm sure more
naturally sellouts. But you look at the context of the.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Whipping and bitch ass allow the people's line of DNA.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yes, yes it is. And nowadays in a way I
have like more sympathy for a slave thinking about like
their child being executed than I do for like a
black congressman going in there now and just taking millions
of dollars for themselves and wouldn't have to risk anything
to do or say the right thing, and choose not
to do or say the right thing for our people
(23:29):
just because it's better for them, Like they actually aren't
risking the same amount, So it actually makes it worse
in a way. But yeah, it's always been a factor
in our struggle. Is that a lot of people. My father,
you know, was in the Civil Rights Women, and he
was there at Suddenly he said to me once, he said,
of everybody who said they were at the Edmund Petties
Bridge that day, was really there, the bridge would have collapsed.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Listen, I'm over here watching people say that they lost
a job for speaking about palesign who didn't actually speak
about pals sign.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So I you know, yes, we've already started.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Maybe didn't even have one to begin with. They went
on unemployment on October fifth, and I'm like, yeah, you know,
lost my job.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So then here we are where folks are really feeling
the weight of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and
this era of very overt racism back in action, and
they're saying the only way to beat this is to
be democrat. I, as someone who is watching this in
the now and who does have not the extensive knowledge
(24:28):
that you have of the past, but somewhat of a grasp,
can say confidently that that is simply not a practical
vision for solution.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Right. The Democrats have not in any way indicated.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
That they have strategy, that they have coalition, that they
have a mission to even.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Subvert this administration.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Right, Like, they kind of are like, we don't agree
with them, But disagreeing and wanting it to not exist
are two different things, right.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's literally like Zionism.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's like disagreeing with Israel and wanting Israel as an
a existence to cease because it has only existed in
a form of violence, are two different things. So I
guess my question to you is if the last time
that a third party was effective in shifting American politics
or American sentiments in a drastic way around slavery was
because there was a shared there was a shared enemy,
(25:19):
so to speak, in slavery.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Do we have that now?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yes? And no? A couple different pieces one. I think
the last time a third party really made a big
difference in an election, even though it was a small
number of votes was nineteen forty eight, where Henry Wallace
and the Progressive Party lost, but the very fact of
their loss was what shaped most of post World War
two America. But that's maybe a different story for a
different time. This is we're in contemporary reality. I would say, yes,
(25:44):
we do absolutely have that kind of sort of Confederate reality.
And I would say the same people, the slave owners,
the slaveocracy, are capitalists. I mean, if you think about
everything in this country that is possible, but that does
not take place. I mean, you just look at what's
happening right now with the US that they're trying to
put in here, and they're saying, we're going to cut
eight hundred billion dollars in medicay, We're going to do this,
We're going to do that, and we have to do
(26:06):
this because there's no money. I mean, this is a
country where out of the three trillion dollars in profit
that was made by corporation at the United States in
twenty twenty four, about two trillion dollars was given away
in dividends, which by the way, are taxed at a
very low rate, lower than your income. And ninety some
percent of the stock market is owned by a very
(26:27):
small percent of the country, like less than ten percent
of the country. I own almost all the wealth in
stock market. So that basically means out of three trillion
dollars in profit, almost all of it was just a
wealth transfer to the tiniest richest group of people in
the country, basically the top one percent, if you will,
more or less. And yet and still we're told we
don't have the resources to do not like great things,
even the most basic things. I mean, where I'm at
(26:48):
right now, I took the Amtrak here today. Constant delays
on the Amtrak over the past two weeks because it's
too hot, and then when it's too cold, same thing,
them when the rains hard, same thing. So we can't
even just have like a basic working train in a country,
but we can give two trillion dollars away to trust
fund kids and CEOs and super rich like billionaires. Like
there is a reality in this country that we have
to recognize that so much wealth is being produced in
(27:11):
this country, yet we don't have the most basic things.
There is more homes than there are people who are homeless.
But you can't just put homeless people into empty homes
because someone owns the home, and you can't violate private property.
I mean, we could go on and on and on.
We have more food than we have hungry people. So
the reality is a sense under capitalism, every single thing
(27:31):
that is produced is produced for profit. I have a
shirt on Obviously I need a shirt because you need
a shirt. But the person who made the shirt did
not make the shirt just so I can have a shirt.
They made the shirt so I will buy the shirt
so they can make profit. So when you have a
system that only runs and thrives off the fact that
everything that is produced is made for a profit, that
means that even if you have an abundance of things,
(27:54):
that you can still have shortage for large numbers of people. So,
from my point of view, we're in a similar situation
where in eighteen sixty the Republicans actually were not saying
they were going to end slavery. They just said, you
got to stay where you're at. And as Lincoln himself said,
you could have slavery for one hundreds and more years
doing that. But from the slave owner's perspective, it was like, well,
why slavery is right? This is our birthright. Who were
(28:15):
you to tell us that slavery is wrong? And we're
in a very similar situation right now where we could obviously,
like you know, people say without billionaires, we should have
a world without billionaire seems fine to me. I think
not having nine hundred and ninety nine million dollars, Like,
I'm not shedding any tears for you, right, like, but
we could generate huge gains for people by not allowing
people to have just unlimited riches and using that wealth
(28:36):
to actually help society and build up society. That is
logical to most people. I don't think anyone would feel like,
oh my god, these people with nine hundred ninety nine
million dollars are now destitute. But for the billionaires, for
the people with hundreds of millions of dollars, their sturgude
is like, but why because it's my right to have
this kind of This is capitalism. I have the right
to do all these things, even if it hurts society,
(28:56):
even if it's destroying the planet, even if all these
other things so their own few, that their own personal interest,
just like the slave owners that their own personal interests
is greater than the interests of society, makes them I think,
the unified enemy of basically everyone else. I know that's
hard for people to grasp because we're brought up with
so much capitalist propaganda. But what kind of sense does
it make that you say that people should be able
(29:19):
to accumulate wealth to any degree, no matter what the
impact it is on society. Like think about that, whether
or not people are dying of cancer because they can't
afford to pay for it, whether the planet is being
destroyed because oil companies just want to make a lot
of money, whether or not people are getting evicted because
landlords just decide, hey, not my problem, Like why would
we do these things if we don't have to? And
(29:41):
ultimately it wouldn't affect anybody. Like that's the other thing,
Like it's not like capitalists are living on the edge,
you know. I mean we're talking about with a lot
of these things like tax the rich, the difference between
them maybe having like the heat of Olympic sized pool
or the regular Olympic sized pool, which doesn't really seem
like a crisis to me.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So in that guard, if we agree then that it's
the billionaire class that is the shared quote unquote enemy. Right,
where does an expanded party system spring from to challenge it?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It springs from the people who are that enemy, working
class and impressed people, right, Like the people who aren't
the capitalists, the people who aren't benefiting from the system,
the people who are basically having their wealth stolen day
in and day out, Like they are generating a huge
amount of income by going to work every day, and
that income is mainly being siphoned off to somebody who,
(30:34):
if they didn't show up to work, would not suffer.
Like It's something that I say people all the time.
If you don't go to work, you can get fined.
But if you show up to work and for whatever
reason the boss is not there that day, can you
just stop working? Obviously not, But whether he's in the
office or playing golf, he's still getting the vast majority
of the wealth that you produce, So you don't have
(30:55):
to ask yourself are you really benefiting from this system?
And basically every person who's not capitalists, Like, that's the
thing about capitalism. There are multiple strata in the different classes, right,
So there are like capitalists who make more money, capitals
who make less. There are workers who make more money
workers who make less. But at the end of the day,
basically it comes down to do you have to get
up and go to work for another person or do
(31:15):
you have other people working for you in terms of
how you survive and if you are one of these
people that and this is a lot more people than
they think. Is I know people making four hundred thousand
dollars a year that if they lost their job, you know,
it's just a few paychecks till they be in trouble.
So working class, you can have a lot of differences
in income and lifestyle and things like that, but when
it really comes down to it, it's a difference between
(31:36):
how many weeks and how many months without a paycheck
before you become totally destitute because you have to work
for someone else. Now, of course there's different realities and vicissitudes,
and that there are a lot of small business owners
that like don't make a lot of money, and small
businesses oftentimes are getting pushed out by big businesses like Walmart,
And you could argue that they don't really have a
lot of mistake in the system either. But the basic
(31:56):
breakdown of society and the basic reality of where third
parties brings from in my view, if you recognize capitalism
as the main answer, are the non capitalists, the people
who ultimately, at the end of the day, the way
for you to get the things that you and the
people you love need on a week to week basis
is you got to get up and you got to
find someone to pay you to do something. And if
those people get together, that's the majority of people in
(32:19):
the country. So you really, if we really have a democracy,
should be able to win all the elections pretty easily.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But we don't have a democracy.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
And that's the important question, and that's the reality is
that you can't vote your way out of it.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Okay, what we're talking about at this point is theory,
because ultimately we know that on a federal level, they
have put so much money into keeping it bipartisan, into
keeping it a two party system. Like it's like the
interview that Angela Rai did with Jill Sein, Like Jill
Sein is whatever you want her to be, but ultimately
she wasn't wrong when she was like, I mean, there
(32:58):
are active forces at work preventing other parties from being
able to participate in this system. So even if we
are creating these other parties, How do we then create
space in this system without And this is me asking
from a reformist point of you, even though I'm not
a reformist, but I know some of the people listening
are how do we create space within this system without
(33:21):
dismantling it altogether or is there a way to do
that at all?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Two part question. I mean, I think with the question
of creating space, I think you can use some of
these things, like you could win some elections. You can
use extra elect levels, right, you can use extra electoral
activity like strikes, like big protests to sort of leverage
your influence by saying, hey, we're going to disrupt the
status quo until you change. So you can create space.
(33:45):
But to exactly your point, to actually move from influence
to power, because that's a big difference. I think people
don't really understand. Yes, influence is when people feel they
have to listen to you and thus they take your
needs into account, which is not unimportant. But the power
is when you determine what is actually going to happen.
So to move from influence to power, we have to
(34:07):
get rid of this and you know we're taping this
not that long before July fourth. I don't know exactly
what it will come out, but the reality is is
we have to get rid of this seventeen eighty seven
constitutional structure. We need something new. I mean, there are
two people who had different sort of ways of saying
the same thing. I mean a lot of people, or
maybe not a lot of people, I don't know. Know
the augy Lord quote about you can't use the master's
to dismantle the master's house, Karl Marx said something very
(34:28):
similar where he said that you can't take hold of
the ready made state machinery. And in both the cases
they both meant the same thing that if we want
something different, we actually have to build up new structures
that allow us to exercise power. And to just keep
harping on marks here for a second. The thing he
said about capital, which is, you know, we think about
(34:48):
it money, right like capitalists have money, He said, CAPITALI
isn't money, it's social power. Because if you have capital,
you determine who works, when they work, where they work,
how long, for how much money, And then that also
determines what they can buy at the stores. So how
you eat, how you dress, how you live, all these
other things. So just by the virtue of having capital,
(35:10):
you control people's lives. That's power, not influence. So how
do we start to control our own lives? It's not
going to happen under a system that says you can't
nationalize an industry without paying the value of it, which
is what it says in the taking's clause in the Constitution.
I mean, if you look at what's happening right now
in Memphis, Tennessee, and Elon Musk is running these diesel
(35:33):
things to run rock, you know, and it's poisoning the
people who live in this area around there, and.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Their mayor is like, yeah, I need to exploit this.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Why should we have to pay them anything if we
want to take that over and in the poisoning of
our own communities and our own people. Why should the
big banks that have destroyed the whole world multiple times
at these huge economic crises if you nationalize the banks,
why should you have to pay Jamie Diamond in the
handful of shareholders? Like why should you actually to pay
people who have harmed you and hurt you and really
(36:04):
try to destroy and break up your community for the
right to actually heal yourself, your community, your class, and
your planet. Like just because it says so in the Constitution,
Like I don't believe that. I think that we have
to do what's right for ourselves, what's really is right
for humanity, because the agenda of average, everyday people is
the agenda of humanity, while the agenda of capitalism is
(36:25):
the agenda the destruction of humanity in a very real sense,
when we look at climate change, like why are we
paying for that? Like we should just have a different
All the Constitution is is a set of shared agreements.
So why would we still have the same set of
shared agreements from seventeen eighty seven? You know when ninety
percent of the stuff we have around us right now
they couldn't even imagine exists back then. They were still
cutting people and leading them in the cue them of diseases.
(36:47):
So like, yes, these are the people whose ideas we
should never change under any circumstance. So we need political
parties that yes, can run in elections, that yes, can
organize other types of political activities, but whose ultimate goal
is to actually try to create and build a new system,
which shouldn't really be scary, because if there's anything I mean,
it might be chaotic, But I don't think we should
(37:08):
be scared, because if there's anything you can say, if
you look at the entire arc of human history, is
that we're always changing. We're always finding new ways to
live and work amongst each other.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Sound the real parable of the sour right now?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's true. I mean, we've had all these different forms
of governments, all these different forms of economy, all these
different forms of living together. Now it's twenty twenty five,
why don't we come up with the government and economy
that says, hey, instead of profit first, let's think of
people first. And let's take a basic principle of reality.
There is a certain amount of resources, both human and material,
and let's start with using those human and material resources
(37:44):
to make sure everyone has what they need. And then
let's start by then saying, okay, now that everyone has
what they need, what are the things that we want?
And what can we give ourselves that we want democratically
decided amongst ourselves with the material and human resources we have.
And then what are the things that we want that
we can't quite reach, and how do we organize our
human and material resources to take ourselves to a higher
(38:06):
level so we can reach those things? And that doesn't
mean that there's not trade offs a lot of trade offs.
You want hundreds of millions, billions of people to decide
all these things. We're not all gonna get everything we want.
But if we all say we're gonna put people's needs first,
not profit first, I think we're gonna get a lot
further to building the type of sustainable, equitable, just culture
that I think most people would prefer to the dog
(38:27):
eat dog. To succeed in couples in the base have
to be a sociopath. You succeed on the base of
your willingness to step on other people's backs to get
to where you want to be. There was a documentary
kind I wish I could remember. This documentary is about
oil and they went to the home of VP's protester.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Can you remember something?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I know. You go to the guy's house and he
comes out, the CEO of BP, and he was like, man,
everything you all are saying is right, and let me
tell you about VP with thinking about this, you know,
And I was just thinking about that scene when Deepwater
Horizon happened, you know, the Golf of Mexico at twenty ten,
because then it turned out that BP, under this guy
(39:04):
had actually been like the most reckless of all the
oil companies.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
But that's the thing, like they see it. But it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
And even if he meant it, it doesn't matter because
if your profits drop below exon, the board is going
to get rid of you. So the impact of capitalism
is you have to do the worst. You have to
maximize profit, no matter who it hurts.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I was in Hollywood, yeah, and I remember this manager
had approached me, who manages a lot of like really
well known black comics, and was like, I want to
manage you.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And I said, okay, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I don't believe in this concept of just because you
decide today that you want to manage me, that you
now get twenty percent of my earnings. I think that
there should be at least a probationary period where we
are working together and I get to see kind of
how you operate, and you know, you basically eat what
you kill. You get a percentage based on what you
have actually brought to me. And he told me straight up,
(40:02):
everything you're saying is practical, rational, logical.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
It's just said, that's just not how the business works.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And I just don't at this point in my career
need to go along with you even though it's right,
I said, so let me just let me just get
this right, even though everything I'm saying makes logical sense,
because you can exploit me, You're going to choose to
try to yes, yes, And he said yes, And I said,
(40:33):
then I don't need a manager.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
That's deep, and I mean to even go even deeper,
like there is the reason why comedy is so thousands
of years old, right, Like it speaks to our soul
in a way that's so important and helps us do
all these different things. You have these talents to do comedy,
Why is it that's your talent? And my enjoyment is
mediated by a dollar? Like I feel like we should
both lie able to eat, to survive and to thrive,
(40:59):
and I should be able to see you and like
laugh my ass off, and you should be able to
come tell those jokes. And it shouldn't be like me
being like a Manda deserves my dollar that you get
to eat, and you feeling like if I don't say
something that he thinks is funny, then I'm not going
to be able to eat, Like what kind of sense
does that make in terms of how we live together?
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
So then why is it I know the answer to this,
but I want you to answer it for the people
who don't. Why is it that the Democrats are so
adamantly opposed to the inviting of a third party into
the space.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Because it is going to hurt the material interest of
the people who really run the Democrats, who you know,
you always talk about Republicans or people with big money,
but the people who run the Democrats are also people
with big money when you look at the big contributors
and all these other things, and you know, you think
about the donors, but it's not just the donors. It's
the whole political class, right, Like I always tell people,
there's that website OpenSecrets dot org where you can look
at donors. I always tell people, if you really want
(41:56):
to open your eyes, look at the vendors. Because the
question is, if the election cost six billion dollars or
whatever it was, who got that money? And that means
there's a whole series of lawyers and media buyers and
ad makers and consultants and other people whose entire livelihood
is based on very very rich people contributing large sums
(42:18):
of money to campaigns and then the campaign's paying them
to do it. So you have the donors themselves who
have their own interests, and obviously donors are not gonna,
you know, wish themselves out of existence, so they're only
going to accept but so much in terms of policies
that you know, may infringe on the rights of the rich.
And then you have this whole class of so called
political professionals that are dependent on this sort of capitalist
(42:39):
driven two party system. So for them, there is an
identity of interest between Democrats and Republicans to eliminate third parties.
Like one thing you'll often see is when third parties
always come up, there's always these lawsuits, you know, to
kick them off the ballot. And you would think that
like each party would be interested in helping the third
parties that hurt the other party, and you see like
(43:01):
a little bit of that around the edges of the elections,
but there's very little of bit. Some of the most
bipartisan policy that there is in this country are the
laws and the procedures that make it difficult for third
parties to get on the ballot. And you can see
that both parties love it. They love it. California, one
of the hardest states to get on the ballot. Deep
blue Ohio very difficult to the ballot, Deep rent purple
(43:22):
state Pennsylvania very hard to get on the ballot, Purple
state Georgia very hard to get on the ballot. It's
like almost the only places where it's not that hard
to get on the ballot are like seven states where
it's so clear who's going to win every election, like Louisiana,
they just don't even care. But the vast majority of
states make it basically impossible, and it doesn't matter whether
it's Democrats or Republicans, because they recognize that when you
start to erode the political monopoly of the two major parties,
(43:45):
things that you don't expect to happen will happen. It's
a slippery slope, is how they look at it. And
they think, like, you open the door, and what if
people really like what Amanda is saying and she gets
a lot of votes and people start to think, well,
maybe we should do something different, maybe we don't need
to keep doing this, And then that's where it becomes.
(44:06):
They is why they didn't want slaves to read. Critical
thinking is not something that people in power want. They
do not want you to start to think that you
can do something beyond what they have allowed. It's like
what Bernie Sanders ran in twenty twenty, and every time
he was in the mainstream media, they would say, well, Bernie,
did you see this Washington Post study that said that
it would cost thirty two trillion dollars to have universal
(44:30):
health care? And as Bernie pointed out many times, he
would say, well, if you read the study, they actually
said that that would be less expensive than if you
kept the healthcare system going the way it is now
by trillions of dollars. So even though the very study
they were citing actually proved that universal health care was
more fiscally responsible, the media keeps citing the study is
(44:52):
saying that it's not fiscally responsible. So that's not an accident.
These people aren't dumb. These people are paid propagandas who's
goal is to narrow your horizons.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Well, so that's what I want to go to our
Patreon special segment to discuss. I want to hear from
you in our Patreon special segment the media's role in
preventing the birth of a true third party opponent, because
we have seen third parties, whether it's the Green Party
or the Independent Party. We have seen them pop up
on various levels, right even on an electoral level for
(45:25):
the federal you know, presidential election, but somehow it never
seems to go through.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And I know that the media always plays a role
in it.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
So join us over at Patreon with our sales squad
as we are going to continue this conversation with Eugene
per Year the last So my last question is this,
(45:52):
we have this whole conversation, You've given us all this history,
all this context.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Where are we, in your.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Opinion, in the possibility, like on the timeline of an
actual disruption taking place where a third party breaks through
on an electoral level. Where do you feel like we
are in that process? Because I will tell you that
I feel like we are very far.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
There's two answers to that question. I think right now,
in a way, we're very far, but it could happen tomorrow.
And this is what I would say to people is
this is about our collective agency, which starts with our
individual decision making. And in terms of like you look,
there's a poll in the New York Times that's past
summer that said that there is roughly set I think
seventy percent of people in the country thought that the
(46:38):
economy should either be majorly overhauled or totally torn down.
Now people have different views about what that is. Yeah,
but if all seventy percent of those people said we're
not going to accept any economic program from any politician,
that isn't a drastic change from what we are right now.
And if neither of the politicians say that they're going
to do that, We're going to set up our own
thing and we're going to run our own politicians, then
(46:59):
again self fulfilling prophecy. And I think that's part of
the challenge of where we face when we think about
the issue of time scale. Like most revolutions that have
happened in history, like two days before, no one really
thought that they were going to happen, And in hindsight
you can always say, oh, the lead up to it
was so clear, right the King of France, believe me,
two days before they you know, forced him out of
(47:21):
the policy. People was not thinking about that. He thought
I still had a chance.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
He wasn't but the people themselves.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
But they didn't think that they were going to depose
him fully, and it wasn't one hundred percent clear what
was going to happen, and it seemed like the king
could come back, and it wasn't even clear that they
were even going to kill him. I mean, that was
the debate, you know in the States general, is what
we're even the rights of the king. So things that like,
ultimately the guillotining of mary Ansbinett and the king, when
you look at it, it was set in stone maybe
a year before it happened, but at the time it
was hard to say. You know, you can look at
(47:49):
so many different issues like that, and not even just
the civil wars you already mentioned here. In eighteen fifty,
which is just thirteen years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation,
slave owners had more power in the government than they
had ever had before. Actually, and the Compromise of eighteen
fifty was maybe the high point of slave owner influence
inside of the government, believe it or not. And even
though that was the case, there was tectonic shifts happening
(48:12):
underneath that couldn't be percessed. So I think, you know, look,
we saw what happened in Ferguson, we saw what happened
in Minneapolis, We've seen what happened in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Right, like, okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, just let me
just say it to see if I have it. It's
like in your mind, what you're saying is like, we're
farther along than we think one.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Hundred percent, but we have to decide that we have
to decide for ourselves that the things we have seen
have taught us enough that the difference between what is
and what could be is the existing political system that
is controlled.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
By say one more time, billion, say one more time.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
The difference between what is and what could be is
a political system controlled by a small group of very
rich people who are choosing not to do things that
could help all of us. And I think once we
recognize that that is the case, we can move very
quickly and very rapidly to transition. But we don't believe
enough in ourselves understandably.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
So that's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
I feel like the first part of believing that those
people are not like effective.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
I think there are enough people that believe that, right,
Like there are people that.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Are still like yay politicians, But I do think there
are enough people who are like, well, I don't really
rock with that. I don't think there's enough of us
that believe in us, right, And I don't think there's
enough of us that understand even our capabilities as a
unit or know how to determine like what we would
(49:35):
bring to that you feel me Like, I think that's
part of it too. It's like some people are like, Okay,
I know that those politicians ain't it and I know
that's not right, But what do I even bring to this?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Like am I smart enough? Am I strong enough?
Speaker 1 (49:46):
And my patient enough, et cetera, et cetera, And so
like that's what I really try and empower folks to do,
is like self exploration, to like what are you bringing
to the shifting of the situation? Because you you it's
gonna happen from you.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yes, you have to grasp your agency. You can do
so many things, and collectively we can do everything. I mean, society,
all society is is how we cooperate to do the
things we need.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
You know, people think this is a fantasy, right.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Yes, some people do, and it's crazy. It doesn't make
any sense. I mean, like you say, you have all
these shared reference points that people always reference, but there's
no society. I mean, like obviously we live in a
society like We all are experiencing things in different ways,
but we're experiencing a lot of the same phenomena. When
it's hot outside, we all react to how hot it
is in some way, shape or form, and it has
some impact on our life because we're all in this together,
(50:32):
we have a society. It's the thing that is the
most natural amongst humans is production, right, coming together as
a group to reproduce our lives day in and day out.
So we all already are like basically everything we do
when we leave the house oftentimes, like a job, nine
times out of ten is doing something to facilitate something
someone else needs to do. And we all kind of
need to do all these things to sort of make
(50:54):
things happen. Now, they don't happen efficiently, they don't happen well,
they don't do different things. But we all are working
together all and so collectively we can do everything. It's
the point I made about if you show up in
the boss and in the office, but playing golf, you
still gotta work. So at the end of the day,
you know how to run a machine, you know how
to ring up the thing, you know how to stock
the shelves, you know how to grow the food. You
know how to do this, like we have the knowledge
(51:14):
amongst ourselves. We are just constantly told we don't have
the knowledge. We are constantly told we don't have the capability.
That's why social media is so popular. As problematic as
social media is, because we live in a society that
says you don't matter and you don't have a voice,
and social media is monetizing our deeply felt need as
human beings for social connections with others to be reaffirmed
(51:35):
that we do matter and that we do have a voice,
and that when we say and do things, there are
other people who like what we say and do or
hate what we say and do, but we still feel
that connection between each other, and we're allowing people to
exploit that to make money, to manipulate that to make money.
We have to think how deeply propagandized we are, all
of us. Even when you're deeply conscious, you really are
(51:56):
propagandized in many different ways. But we have to believe
in ourselves and believe that we can actually change things
because we can, and that is how humanity has moved
forward historically over one hundred thousand years. It's large groups
of people, the majority of people getting together and be like, y'all,
we're gonna make a change whether they want it or
whether they don't.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
And that's that. I mean, there's nothing else to say.
Good
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com