Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-26-26_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Open phone calls and topics then Dr. Jon Mills, Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and retired clinical psychologist, has written a new book called WOKE: A Critique of Social Justice Ideology. This is a shot across the bow kind of book...good guy.

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Before I get back to the phones, because it is open phones on conspiracy theory Thursday. So if you've got a good one or any comment on the news, things going on, call 7705-633. But back on the, by just musing around about to Ashley Shanty, the Boundary Boundary, the Boundary breaking force redefining the future of American food.

Queer Black Woman has a cookbook. It wants to come on my show. I'm thinking about inviting her, though. I just want to find out, though, how being queer in black makes you a better Southern cook of Southern cuisine. Because that seems to be the main focus. You know, through my lens, I'm taking back Southern cuisine, as if Southern cuisine somehow was stolen from her.

But, you know, what makes the Okra not slimy? Well, the Reverend David writes me about that about Okra. I hate Okra, but I did have it once, and it was palatable. It was picked 20 minutes before cooking. It was coated with cornmeal and fried lightly in a dry cast iron skillet. It was crisp and it actually tasted good for Okra. I'm with you, Dave. I'm not a huge fan of Oprah, of Okra, or Oprah, for that matter.

But Okra fried properly can be absolutely delicious. But I remember, well, gosh, what was that? Cracker barrel. Remember Cracker Barrel in South Medford when that was open? I had Okra there and it was slimy. It's like, wait a minute, you're talking about Southern cooking and you didn't, you know, you didn't make the okra non-slimy. And listen, this was all about, oh, that's why, that's why Cracker Barrel shut down

because the black and queer Ashley Shanti or a fellow traveler wasn't cooked. That's it. That's what she means by taking back Southern cuisine. That must be it, right? I know some people always talked about how great Cracker Barrel. No, boy, it was bad. In my opinion, at least our iteration of it here in Southern Oregon. Welcome Wild Sam and Steve. What's on your mind this conspiracy theory Thursday, huh? Well, two things. One is the internet thing that's going on in the company. being sued, they know what they're doing. I've got a degree in, actually got a degree in not getting drafted, but my degree says psychology. And so I studied what the psychologists were saying back in the 60s, and there was a lot of research done then in motivation. And they know

what causes people to come back to look for something on the internet. The same thing. And the same thing that motivates people to go gambling when they know that the odds are against them when they go to Reno or whatever or play sports games is the house always wins so why would you ever do that anytime I've ever gambled I go in and put it in a quarter or five dollars or whatever pull the lever and oh that was fun and go on because if you ever win you're stuck called variable ratio reinforcement if you want to get technical about it. There is an official technical name for that? Really? Yes. If you don't get paid every time, but once in a while you win, it does something

to your brain that makes you come back because you think you're smarter or better than everybody else. And the statistics don't lie. You know, go look at B.F. Skinner and variable racial reinforcement, it explains it. And the Internet people get paid on clicks, so they've tried to design things that get you to come back no matter what. And it's not accidental. It was on purpose because that's how they get paid. I'm thinking about this, and you studied this, what, back in the 1960s, you said?

Yes. Okay, so this is nothing new then, the actual knowledge of what is behind this. there was a lot less in our culture in those days, though, to trigger this kind of behavior, to trigger that dopamine hit. It had percolated down. Gambling was there. Yeah. But gambling was a small subset of the population. Wouldn't you agree?

And you had to go to Reno to do it. Yeah, in those days. You're right. Unless you were like, you know, Leroy Brown on the old Leroy Brown song, you know, out on the street, shooting dice. You know, that kind of thing. Well, there was always that, but, you know, it was recognized that gambling was a sin and that it was a social sin. It did not help anything because gambling doesn't produce anything except for big, fancy buildings. And, you know, they give you free booze because that loosens up your brain to take more risk.

And you come home in your underwear and you pawned your car, you know, you're hitchhiking. You know, Linda used to work. I don't know if I told you this before, Steve, but my wife Linda, when she was a young woman and living in Vegas, lived in Vegas with her family. And she worked at the information desk at McCarron back when it was called McCarran. I think it's now Harry Reid Airport now. I think it was, I would rather it be McCarran. But I'll set that aside here at the moment. She told me all sorts of sad stories of what it's like working the airport in Las Vegas in which you would.

have families that gambled away their air blind tickets and they had no money left and they'd be moving the kids from bathroom to bathroom kind of one step in front of the security forces and they would do absolutely absolutely anything whatever it took to get that final hit do you think what happened with social media this week in the courts do you think that's a good thing an overall positive thing? I do. You know, I don't know that it's going to work because they've got a lot of money and a lot of resources and they could always figure out a way around it. But, you know, that's where parental responsibilities does come into it and knowing what your kids are doing. You can't just give them a phone and tell them, hey, go over in the corner and be quiet and look at this

phone. Can't tell you how many times I was over in Sherms doing my shopping. and you'd see the two-year-old. And I understand, I've had two-year-olds, I understand sometimes they could be irritating, asking lots of questions, but it seems like the standard way that you deal with the kid in the shopping cart today is that you hand him your phone and they're watching some Disney swill on the screen.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had two boys, and one of them was very smart. But when he was like two or three, And he learned to talk. He would go, hey, daddy, hey, daddy, hey, daddy, hey, day. And I'd have to say what?

He goes, I don't remember. You know? Yep, that's it. But, you know, that's part of being a parent, though. You have to deal with the, you know, talk with your kids in the store. Interact with them. Discuss the prices. Do anything but hand them a screen for crying out loud.

Please, parents. Please. Thanks for the call, Steve. I always appreciate that. 770K. 7705633. What do you think about this with social media being taken to the cleaners? Not yet, and they're going to appeal, but $3.5 million here, $330 million there for making

addictive products. What do you think? Could kick that around, too. Hand of the updates on the way. Always happy to take more of your calls this morning, too. And we're going to be talking with a psychiatrist or psychologist. Psychiatrists or psychologists. I'll figure it out before the 735 interview hit.

but it has to do with wokeism. And, you know, we've heard woke, the term woke so much that sometimes it's difficult to even really define it. It's kind of like pornography, like the judge that once said, well, I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it, right? I think we know it when we see it, kind of like the Ashley Shanti book I was talking about. But why are we so emotionally fragile on these kind of things? So we'll have that, kick it around, a whole bunch more. This hour of the Bill Myers show is sponsored by Glacier. heating and air, making sense of the heating and air business.

Along with pleasant spring weather, you know that. Save now, make the switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. It's the Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's Place to Talk. Happy to take your call, 770-633-770 KMED. Interesting story here. You know, Robert Kiyosaki, the Rich Dad Porgan, The rich dad, poor dad guy. He put out a piece the other day.

I thought it was really interesting because he's talking about the Iran War and also looking at what's going on in Venezuela. And he says that you cannot ignore the role of the Petro Dollar, the Petro Dollar. The system that we set up here back in the early 1970s in which the world, we would agree to protect the Arab world. the Arab world would agree to sell oil in dollars and only in dollars. And it was an amazing system because the United States decided that we were going to not back the dollar with gold anymore. Remember, that was what was going on.

Our gold was heading out the door because people were not really trusting our American debt at that point. And so Nixon ended up, President Nixon ended up what they call it closing the gold window. used to take treasury debt and exchange it, and we would pay, you know, countries would buy our debt, and then we would pay them gold. We would give them gold. Well, we decided back during the Vietnam War that we were going to have a guns and butter economy. Now, it used to be that you either were paying for guns or you were paying for butter and the cheesy

welfare state. Well, we decided we were going to do both. That's what we decided to do back then, I guess collectively through Congress and the great society and all the rest of it. I was just a kid, didn't really understand it all that time. But yeah, I remember they closed the gold, the gold window. And then we had the, the petro dollar. We protect Saudi Arabia and protect all of the corrupt, the corrupt kingdoms in the Muslim world. And they agree just to sell oil only for dollars. And so that meant there was a market for dollars. And that meant when the Federal Reserve would turn on the printing press,

printing press go that there was a market for those dollars. People wanted to buy oil from Saudi Arabia or Qatar or whatever else, whatever it is. And so they would need dollars, and so they would need our dollars to do it. And it worked out pretty well as an interesting deal, but it also helped the hollowing out of our industrial base too

as we exported the inflation. That's also part of it. And no doubt about it, though, you can't ignore that maybe what's going on is that President Trump is doing his best to prop up what's left of that petro dollar by war in Iran. Now, I know last week I was talking with Patrick Wood and Patrick Wood was mentioning, hey, you know, what we also got going on here. There's a big trade route that Jared Kushner ended up negotiating here, and, you know, they're all in on that. Yeah, that could certainly be part of it too here, but you can't ignore the petro dollar. You can't help but also know that when, gosh, I have another story.

I don't know if I'm going to have time to pick this one apart today. Oh, here it is. I did find it. The Canary and the coal mine in the Treasury's God-awful annual report. And this is the quote from Robert Kiyosaki. Most people think Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela are about oil. That's the surface story. The deeper motive enforcement of the petrodollar, the system that helps maintain U.S. currency dominance.

by ensuring that global oil is traded in dollars. And the reason this is important is that a few days ago, the United States Treasury Department quietly published, very quietly published, the financial report of the United States government for fiscal year 2025. By the way, you can read this report that I'm talking about with James Hickman.

It's beneath the surface. I get his daily email. Anyway, the financial report of the United States government for fiscal year 2025, just a PDF uploaded to a government website, the government's own accounting of what it owns versus what it owes. The bottom line is that the government is reporting assets of $6 trillion versus liabilities of nearly $48 trillion. That gives the United States a net worth of negative $42 trillion. Yeah. This is the official statement. Now, unlike many other Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant actually pays attention to it, and he'll talk about it openly.

There are some things that are kind of funny about this report. The report, for example, places no value on the potential trillions, if not tens of trillions of dollars worth of natural resources in the ground. and it assigns relatively little value to other hard assets like real estate. But there's no sugar-coding it. The fiscal situation is absolutely atrocious, and it gets worse every year. The good news is that the people in charge at least seem to understand this Treasury, this, rather, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson acknowledges it in his introduction that the situation is bad and needs to be improved quickly.

And he writes in this report, getting our fiscal housing order is not only an economic imperative. it is also essential to preserving the strength and credibility of the United States at home and abroad. So you can see the war about trying to prop up or at least stave off the death of the petro dollar for now. Okay, for now. Whether they can keep that going, it's hard to say. But this also explains why everything you hear from the Trump administration, and I support the Trump administration on this, everything is about putting lands to use.

Like even what they want to do with the O&C lands here in something, Oregon, instead of just having all this stuff, all this capital out here, all that wood and fiber that could be put to use for the betterment of humanity and the United States and also the United States bottom line and even our local governments, right? We want this stuff used. President Trump, I think, is very keen on realizing that the current way that we look at, let's just take forests since we know our forests here in Southern Oregon. The current way of taking care of the forest is that we don't harvest anything, we burn it, and then we pay lots of nonprofit collaborative organizations to go out there and do little cleanups on the Ashland Watershed, things like that, you know, all of these various collaboratives. Instead of making money on the lands, these lands are a burden to the people. And say what you will.

President Trump is looking to change that. And I hope that he gets the opportunity to do this. And that's my concern about getting bogged down in Iran or any place else like that because the second half of Trump's second term will be a lot less impactful if the midterms go south on him. It's been tough enough with the balance of power as thin as it is right now. So it's something to be considered. Canary in the coal mine. It's an interesting report. I'll have to download that and read it myself. Probably make my eyes bleed.

But that's just it. It is serious. But at least this is the first time. This is the first time in recent memory that a Treasury Secretary looks at the condition of the United States and says, yeah, it's in serious shape. I remember Janice Yellen a few years ago was talking about how white-hot the economy was when she, you remember Janet Yellen, you know, the one. that sounded like a Charlie Brown, the old Charlie Brown cartoon appearance. That's the way she would talk just naturally. And she was talking about how great the white hot economy was during COVID, except it was bringing massive inflation, if you remember that too. So anyway, at least Besson understands it.

He understands it. I think Trump understands this too. The war, probably more about protecting trade routes and the petro dollar for right now. And wanting to get back into the woods. No, it's not just a sop to the timber industry. It's about that these lands have to start paying for themselves, this whole idea that we're going to continue to print money via the federal government's federal reserve and just pay people to kind of nip around the timber and the brush around the edges.

Not sustainable to use the leftist term that they so love. All right. 733 at KMED. Honey, did you know that our garage door is the head? heaviest moving piece in our home. Click kiomedford.com. Hi, I'm Lisa with Kelly's Automotive Service, and I'm on KMED. You have heard the term woke a lot over the last few years.

I didn't even know what it was for quite some time. I wanted to talk with Dr. John Mills. He's a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, retired clinical psychologist. And he's written a book about this. It's called Woke, a critique of social justice ideology. Doctor, it is a pleasure having you on. Good morning. Good morning.

Thank you for having me on the show. How's life in Nova Scotia this day, huh? Oh, well, it's not too bad. A little snow, and now we have rain. Okay. All right, well, around here, it's just going to be relatively warm the next few days for sure. A lot of dryness out. If you could sense some of that snow and rain, we would actually be quite thankful for it.

Hey, I wanted to start off with, first off, the term woke. Where did that come from? in the first place. And what does it mean? I was only half joking when it seems like nobody can define woke. It's sort of like that there was a famous justice that once said, I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it, right? You know, I'm just wondering if you can sort of explain this to us. Well, it's derived from African-American slang that goes back really to the 60s, and at that time, you know, would refer to a societal awakening or having woken up to social injustices, particularly racism, sexism, and discrimination.

But it's now, you know, what used to be just decent, universal humanitarian values has taken a turn, and now it has a broad kind of general meaning in popular culture that's basically based on the negation of anything that's deemed white or Western, you know, European, you know, English, and particularly the heterosexual or what they call heteronormative male, who is lumped into the category of the colonial oppressor who is there to keep all, you know, the other groups down. And so that's the basic concept, is that there are power imbalances that are based in white culture, whatever that means, and patriarchy, and, you know, powerful people of privilege

and who have advantage in money. Okay. So the impression of it, it's all Whitey's fault, and it's all Whitey's problem, and Whitey did this. That's essentially what it has turned into, but it wasn't originally designed that way? Is that correct or not? Yeah, that's correct. It used to be kind of viewed as a, you know, again, an ethical stance of, you know, social, you know, equalities and being mindful of people's disadvantages and trying to, you know, help them. And so now it has become a philosophy of negation of, again, basically Western values.

All right. The Western society that everybody seems to like and everyone is trying to immigrate illegally to because it's so horrible. But yet we need to destroy it. All right. Dr. Mills, this book, though, is actually a collection of essays from people that are actually studying this.

So there is actually, I guess, now a new curriculum, I guess, being developed called Critical Woke Studies. Could you explain a bit of that, please? Well, yes. It's a new movement that was initiated last year in the UK at the Heterodox Center for Social Sciences at University of Buckingham. And basically, it wants to start to critically analyze, if not interrogate, the idea of the idea. ideologies that have permeated at the academy and also just, you know, broadly in popular culture, and that's made its way into private industry, as well as governmental agencies

and institutions. Am I to understand, then, that this is the pendulum with the extremeness of the woke ideology. is this the first, I guess, description of the pendulum ready to swing back? Would that be a fair assessment of what is going on right now? Yeah, it's really only gotten to this point that we can be openly critical of certain ideas that have been bandied around the last, let's say, five years at least, without fear of being canceled or have some punitive consequences. So that means we can critically examine many topics that used to be, or in many ways,

are still considered taboo, such as the question of race, gender, you know, sexual orientation, you know, minorized groups, you name it. It's covered in this book. Is the woke ideology, though, going to take this lying down? It would appear to be incredibly powerful. I mean, you look here in the state of Oregon. It seems to be the one sanctified state religion here, Doctor. Yes, I've been following that closely. So it's an interesting phenomenon to watch. Like, why would we assume that white people, you know, writ large, are really white supremacists who want to dominate and subjugate all other types of racialized groups? Where's the evidence for that?

Where's the evidence for everything is about systemic racism that's seeped its way into every crevice of society and is, is, you know, governing the way the whole country operates. These are, you know, fantasized. Is it, what you say it is fantasized? Now, you, of course, are a psychoanalyst then. When you talk about these, the fantasized systemic racism, the fantasized every white is a white supremacist and such, is it indicative of mental or psychological problems, or is there something else driving this, you believe?

Well, I mean, you know, all human beings have their own internal conflicts, and so it becomes a matter of how do you, you know, how do you work it out? And in this context, when, you know, social forces allow for people to have a convenient scapegoat for all of, their own individual, you know, so individual and collective suffering, it becomes easy to then just project everything onto some whipping boy. But isn't projection in itself a form of psychological coping of some sort? Yeah, it is. It's a form of coping. It's not always, of course, going to be a healthy way.

But, you know, in its benign forms, it allows people to discharge frustrations. And it's, you know, more malevolent forms. It is to demonize and humanize, you know, and humanize other people. And then this is what creates more social divisions and hate. Dr. John Mills, Canadian philosopher, and he's the author of Woke, a critique of social justice ideology. A whole bunch of liberal scholars. I don't know when you say liberal scholars, if it's liberal, liberal arts scholars, or progressive scholars.

Could you maybe define that when you talk about liberal scholars? Sometimes the liberal term can be confusing for us. Well, the people who, you know, the academics and specialists who've contributed to the book, I'm sure fall on a, you know, a spectrum of different political beliefs. Okay. Yeah. But they, you could probably say they're more. I wouldn't call them progressive, but I would certainly call them, you know, the least liberal or centric.

More of a centrist approach then, and so they're willing to actually, I guess they're willing to poke the bear, so to speak, right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. That will make it an interesting read one way or the other. What I'm kind of wondering here, you had talked about how woke ideology and, you. and blaming Whitey and everything is about maybe coping in a way to explain your own problems and the own and kind of cover up conflicts or ameliorate conflicts, that sort of thing. I'm just kind of curious.

I don't know if this is something that's ever been considered within your circle. But people have told me, and even when you watch television shows, movies, it appears like we're in a time in which nothing is sort of. funny any longer. Nothing is allowed to be made fun of. Nothing is funny. And yet one of the greatest social lubricants besides alcohol from time to time has been the ability for humor to be able to break down the problems between people, where we

can laugh at differences. And yeah, yeah, you'll do stereotypical jokes in such ways of reacting to it. And that's been rather short-circuited in American and Western culture, I would say, for quite some time. And I'm wondering if that even leads to more of the woke ideology. You can't laugh at anything. And so it's almost like a positive feedback loop. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, but this would be much worse than political correctness that is trying to dampen, you know,

social discourse, this is that you're not allowed to laugh. Right. Well, I don't, I don't believe that. I don't subscribe to that, that way of thinking, but that does appear to be what's going on, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that people have become like they're walking on eggshells. They're so sensitive to everything now of being accused of being a racist, of being a sexist, of being a transphobe, you name it. And Islam, phobic, you know, it's just, you know, people are just, I think, afraid. A classic example, though, of when people talk about what couldn't be made today, like even just a cultural touchstone for a lot of people who are a little older,

like Blazing Saddles, the old Mel Brooks movie, right? And incredibly offensive. Offensive to everybody. Everyone is gourd, you know, in that particular. type of movie. But yet I almost looked at those those kind of cultural touchstones as as stress relief valves in society. Is that a fair way of looking at that? And we short-circuit this and so the conflict comes out in other ways. Yes. Certainly if we're not permitted to laugh naturally,

it's certainly going to stifle any feeling of freedom and comfort interpersonally with people. Yeah, and then you see a situation. This was in the news. I don't know if you heard about this news in Nova Scotia here, Doctor, but in the California gubernatorial election, they have a lot of people running for governor. It's a governor, it's what they call a jungle primary, a whole ton of people stuffed into it.

and there was going to be a debate at USC University of Southern California, and they canceled it because it was too white, too white, too white, and they canceled the debate for everybody. Oh, well, that tells the whole story, doesn't it? It does. It certainly does. I appreciate this. And what are you hoping this book will accomplish, though, because the fact that there are scholarly critiques, and that's what this is. These are scholarly critiques of what has been infecting the state of Oregon and the greater United States for quite some time.

What are you hoping to accomplish here? Well, first of all, it's written in an accessible way for the educated public. So I'm hoping that the greater population would be interested. But for the specialists, this is a turning point because very learned and serious. and credentialed people are giving very thoughtful analysis to the social phenomenon. And politicians, policymakers, educators, teachers, I mean, you name it. They should be associated with, or at least familiar with the arguments in this book. It could lead to, you know, a new generation of being able to talk about.

these ideas more directly and honestly and productively. So you end up getting knowledge of the arguments on what the woke side says, so you're able to counter it. And then maybe when you're at your latest library district meeting, which happens, you know, here every now and then, and somebody's getting up and talking about the stolen land and all the rest of it, there are arguments back where you're able to, you know, converse knowledgeably on the theories and the underpinnings. Is that a fair assessment of what this book's going to do? Yeah, very fair assessment. We want to give voice to the arguments and the

premises that are being laid out, and then we analyze them and we critique them. When you see how society at large is right now, Doctor, is what we're dealing with, and you being a psychoanalyst, I think you're certainly qualified to state this. Is this a phase? Or are we still kind of are we getting deeper into it right now in spite of your book at this point? Well, you know, like any kind of fad, it comes and goes. It's just a matter of how long something will last. My guess is this is going to take at least 10 years before we get to an honest standpoint of being able to debate these ideas without them being so emotionally, contagious or leads to ad hominums or hyperboles that are just not, you know, acceptable in,

you know, in professional circles. I'm going to take that from you, doctor. If we can actually, you know, for years I've had progressives saying, you know, Bill, I just want to have an honest conversation with you. I said, no, you don't. You want to lecture me. So let's have an honest conversation. Okay.

Dr. John Mills, Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, retired clinical psychologist, and his new book is Woke, a critique of social justice ideology. Is it available at all the usual suspects? You have a website for this too, Doctor, before we go? Yeah, I mean, usual suspects, you know, Amazon, your bookstores, online. Yeah, if you want to visit my website, you can Google my name or go to Philosophy Psychoanalysis.com.

All right, very good. I appreciate the day. Can you be well and stay psychologically healthy, okay? We hope so for you. Thank you much. Yeah, you too. All right. Take care, doctor.

Dr. John Mills. By the way, it's John Mills, J-O-N, if you were going to Google him, like he mentioned. This is the Bill Meyer show, and you're on KMED. This is News Talk 1063, KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Great to have you here. It's 8 o'clock at KMEDE and KMED HD-H-1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG grants, pass. Fox News coming up here in a bit. Either way, being conspiracy theory, third,

We will definitely get to more of your calls. It's probably going to be 830 to 9. The final half hour is going to be, hey, bring on the crazy, all right? And I'm good with that. I always enjoy the more interesting topics that maybe you don't hear about on the usual standard national talk shows. I'm willing to, I'm willing to take the arrows. People saying, Bill, have you ever wanted to say, I think someone was asking me the other day, Bill, have you ever wanted to say, have you looked that up, right, when someone asks a question?

But that's all right. We're always friendly here in Southern Oregon. It's small town radio with a bigger town maybe approach sometimes. But anyway, we'll catch up on the news here just a little bit. And then catching up with Kevin Plunkett. He's a retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant. And he's the founder of the Willowdale Ranch, Highland Lake Center here in Southern Oregon. and it's about helping veterans recover.

Veterans get to a better state of mind. It's almost like a cultural, I don't know, stereotype is. Oh, there's the veterans having problems and not all are that way. And no one's saying that. I mean, it just got a little crazy there for a while, no pun intended. But there are some veterans, rather, that are having difficulty reintegrating into society. and Kevin is all about helping them out through horses, horseback riding, getting out of nature.

He's going to tell us all about that coming up. A great story.