Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Hearing The National Anthem Moved Me To Tears.” - Finding America with Tanya Posobiec

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

After being born in the USSR, Tanya Posobiec defied the communist roots of her childhood by setting a goal to move to America. In this special, holiday episode of The Spillover, Alex Clark sits down with Tanya to hear the story she carries with her of her family’s experience with communism. It’s a reality that continues to inform her worldview today as she witnesses America transform into a drastically different country than the one she escaped to in the early 2000s. She offers a sobering rem...

Can we just have a little honesty hour? How big is your butt? You got a big old butt? You got a teeny tiny stick butt like me? No matter what your butt looks like, you better get your ass to sats, honey. July 22nd through 24th, Tampa, Florida, Turning Point USA is hosting the biggest conservative party ever.

President Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis, Congressman Matt Gates, Senator Ted Cruz, Congresswoman Lauren Bober, and more. TPSA.com slash S-A-A-S-A-S-A-S-A. with code Alex for a little discount. You're welcome. What if you didn't live in America? What if you lived somewhere where almost all the food on a restaurant menu is unavailable? You sit down and as you get an appetizer, you realize it's just bread and ketchup.

Actually, it's not even a full piece of bread. It's just the crust and it's served on a paper plate. While you're eating a prostitute approaches you because she's trying to supplement her weekly income of only $15 to $80 a week. week. You see, the government has decided that some jobs are essential and some aren't. Your pay doesn't have anything to do with your skill set or how good at your job you actually are. Water is pretty much non-existent. Bottled water is a luxury and grocery stores are state-owned. People line up and wait for hours because the state decides each day when the stores will open. Once they do, people bum-rushed the doors and you pray with everything you have that you're fast enough to use the same. You're,

the rest of your weekly wages to find some morsel of food to feed your family. You and I cannot imagine this. It's not a Walmart superstore. There's only one to two brands of every item. There's no 2% whole or skim milk. Whether it's milk, rice, cheese, or beans, there is only one option that the government gives you, if you're lucky enough to get your hands on it. After this, you wait another hour to check out. Now you've left the grocery store. Success! But It's not because you're almost out of gas. When you pull up to the gas station, there's a line lasting for miles down the road with hundreds of cars. You make your way to the back of the line and wait for a few more hours.

Finally, it's your turn. Your engine is in danger of shutting off completely. That's when you find out that the gas station has run out of gas for the day. So you leave your car and walk home, holding your milk that's been sitting in the sun for several hours and praying it's safe to drink. As you walk, you pass the Capitol building. It's beautiful. Something out of a picture book. But you're not heading there. Your street is just around the corner, but it seems worlds away. Once the pristine Capitol stairs are out of your sight, trash fills the streets. Your neighborhood looks like a bomb exploded that no one has ever cleaned up. Some homes have no doors or windows. When you finally get to your house, which is actually a 10 by 10-10 room, you're greeted by the 8 to 10 family members you live with in that small space. How long do you think that milk will last? This is your life. life in socialism. And it's pretty similar to today's guest life of growing up in Belarus. That is, until she decided as a little girl that she was going to do everything in her power

to escape socialism as a young adult and live in the best country in the world. America. Joining me today to discuss the realities of living in a socialist country and spending your entire childhood planning to escape to freedom in America is Tanya Pesobic on The Spillover. Paint the whole picture first, Tanya, because you were born in Belarus. What was the country like when you were born? And then talk about what happened in 1991. So an interesting story I like to tell is that my grandma was born in Poland. My parents and I were born in the USSR.

And then my sister was born in Belarus. But we are all from the same town. How is that possible? Well, depending on at what time frame you look at the same country, that's how much the borders have changed. That's how much socially and economically the territory was divided all the time. And that's what eventually happened to the people and the footprint that it left on the people who continuously had a different country that they lived in. And what year were you actually born? Do I have to say that out loud?

We'll say you look like you're 24 if that helps. Thank you. All right. In that context then. So I was born in 1987. Okay. So you asked about the 91, what happened then? So the country where I was born fell apart.

So the country no longer existed. that USSR cease to exist. And in 1994 is when the country of Belarus, the territory where I was born was officially named and came to life. So technically, I am older than the country where I grew up in. And so after the USSR fell, did the country continue under socialism or what happened? So technically, the country ceased to exist. but many of the same political programs, the way of life, the way the people view things,

they remain the same. And your grandparents and your parents both grew up living under the shadow of the USSR. What kinds of stories did you grow up on about communism and socialism and the types of things they would share with you? So I was little where I couldn't really understand many of the things that they were. they were talking about, but as I grew older and as eventually as I traveled to United States and so a different life completely, I actually was able to realize in what harsh conditions my grandmother and my parents, I'm sorry, grandparents and my parents grew up in. I remember

my dad telling me about the, on my first birthday, they, They put 1,000 rubles in my account, my personal account. It was supposed to be a savings account for me as a little girl. So when I reached the age of 18, I was supposed to get it. And I was like, Dad, where is my brand new BMW from the savings that you would have gotten? He was like, when the rubble fell, that thousand rubles became a ruble. Oh, my goodness. So all the savings, the big money that was investment in my future that my parents worked so hard on, it became nothing.

It just poof and it disappeared. But the way the money continuously lost their value, it almost created no way for people to leave, to save anything. If you had anything extra, you'd buy stuff with it. you would because you would be too afraid that it will lose its value and all the paper that you thought you had it will actually mean absolutely nothing but then of course there was another side of it you would want to buy stuff but you wouldn't buy it on your own terms because food chart shortage and as well as appliances clothes shortage that was so common you talk about clothing shortages food shortages Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

What do you mean by that? So there were times in the stores where you would see bare shelves. I remember hearing stories from my grandparents. So if they would come to the store and there will be a variety of, let's say, T-shirts or that was a week when they got a set of new socks, you would buy what was available. You would not buy what you need. You actually buy what was available at the time because in a month or so, that will not be available anymore. And then you'll have to just hang on to what you have. And, you know, I remember specifically being a little girl, I had this beautiful red dress with a little white bow.

And of course, I had a bow the size of my head to match it. And my mom would tell me over and over again, it's an important dress. It's an imported dress and that as a little girl I never understood what imported means So it was a dress that was imported in the country that didn't even make it to the shelves of the store She had a connection where she heard that there are girl dresses being delivered to the store And she bought it because of the person she she knew She bought it even before it got put out for sale because you You can't really just go to the store and get what you want.

Like, you have to know somebody to get something, right? You have to know somebody. You have to be working in the system because everything was government owned. Just about everybody was a government employee. If they were in a little town, if they were in the villages, well, they were still part of the collective agricultural system that they lived on. And even after the fellow of the USSR, my grandparents, you know, they used to work on the farm. they still were doing the same thing when that happened. And honestly, I don't think they felt that huge of a change, you know.

Technically, you grew up under a democracy. And I'm saying that in, you know, quotes, air quotes. But what did a democracy actually look like for you? How free were you? And how did the ramifications of socialism, of communism, actually present themselves in everyday life for you growing up? Well, for one, it's definitely, you. you know, part of the food shortages, my grandma was the one who had it embedded in me.

I could still hear the sound of her voice in my head. If you ever were to drop a food on the floor, it was like the biggest crime you could have committed. So you would, you have to pick it up. You blow on it to get all the dust off. You would, if it was bread, you would even apologize. Wow. That comes. So my grandma.

she was just a 10-year-old little girl when the World War II started. So talk about no clothes, no food survival as it is. They were occupied by Nazis because they were right, the way the Belarus is situated, it's right in the middle. It divides eastern and western Europe. So if you go from east to west, you'd always go through Belarus. If you go north, to South, you cross Belarus' riding. So every time there was a war conflict, everything, Belarus took the first hit all the time. So she, she's a little girl, grew up knowing what war is. Not from somebody else's story.

She lived it. So to her, having a food fall on the floor was something so horrendous because more often than not, she was starving. She was dreaming of having that little piece of bread that she actually told all her grandkids to respect food. To this day, I could never live a restaurant without taking a two-go box. He's like, no, we're taking it with us. We're not living it.

We're not throwing it away. I'm just like it's staying with me, I think, to the day I die, just because of those stories I heard from her. Well, I guess, I mean, growing up in socialism, I mean, there's no like five-second rule, like, oh, it's been on the floor longer than five seconds. None of that. No, you're eating it no matter what, which is, you know, it's like funny almost to say that, but also it's like it's not funny.

I love to laugh about it now, but again, understanding what she had to go through as a little girl. And then she ended up raising six children, one of which was my dad, in similar conditions where it was considered to be better times, but they were just better related to the wartime. You know, they were still working. in a collective agricultural system where, you know, it was good for people who didn't work much, but for somebody who had a family of eight to feed. There was no slack in a round. My favorite stories, of course, from my dad. I hear them all day long every time we drive in a car. We got a long one hour drive. He would tell me stories of him being a, you know, 12-year-old boy and all the things he did.

There was no labor loss. You were a man in the household and you can hold a hammer. You're going to work. You're working. There's no if or butts. They were not asking you, what do you want to do today? They said, okay, we're going in the field. And today, we're working on potatoes.

Tomorrow, okay, his dad would drop him off in a swamp where he would get grass so they could feed cows in the winter. So and he would drop him off a 12 year old boy and would pick him up around 8 p.m. It gets dark. Nobody was there school in the summertime, but nobody worried about school as it is because there was work to do. There were eight people to be fed and that was the survival, day-to-day survival to families. And my family story is just one of many. Everybody was living in the same conditions. The big, I guess if I had to find a positive in the whole communism, if I can put them all in one sentence, was the sense of community. Everybody, the little villages, everybody knew, everybody.

And one of the reason for that was because they were surviving the harsh times together. If you're an hour of sugar, you're not heading to the store. you would go next door and ask, and Sophia, you know, if you could borrow some. If you needed some spices for the soup that you're making, you would check out on the next door neighbor and see if they have any leftovers or something that could share. If you were a kid, just, you know, as I would often just spend my summers in my grandmothers, we were never, my grandmother's kids, we were everybody, kids, you know, all the grandmas, they would cook for a dozen kids in the neighborhood and

everybody would get fat. So they were the sense of community always because that's how people were managing those harsh times, but helping each other and seeing that there was nobody left behind unfat. And I keep saying that all over again because in the times where food was such a scarce resource, that's what they grow up doing, just making sure everybody has a full belly. How many people sometimes would be living together in one house? So I heard from my dad that by the time he, with his parents, moved to a new house. So he lived with his grandparents, his parents, and six kids. So in one household, they were 10.

And just talking about how your parents supported your family growing up, what lengths did your dad actually have to go to for work? So my dad, just like many, had a government job. And once you also saw broke off, each country was basically independent and they were on its own. Belarus was a very small country, so it didn't have many resources, many opportunities. So many people were looking for other ways to make money. And that's the 90s. They call them wild 90s because all the good and bad happened.

So in the wild 90s, there were a lot of going to Europe and trade goods in order to make a living to make some money. So my dad would go to Poland. And just to give you a little perspective on that, it was not just crossing a border, but, you know, he would have first drive to the border than because he was not the only one doing that. There were so many people. Sometimes the wait line to cross the border would be over 24 hours. Oh, my gosh. So you would sit in the car for, and you never know how long it's going to take you. Sometimes it's going to take eight hours.

Other days it will be 14. Some days you may get stuck for two days because they're only Latin through so many people. It was never really strictly regulated. So whatever Border Patrol feel is the number for the day, that's how many people are going to cross the border. And then, of course, then you are sitting in the car and God forbid if you fall asleep.

Oh, my gosh. I cannot even imagine. If you miss your turn, because there will be people behind you who would cut. would cut through. You can't even fall asleep or anything, even though you're in the car for 24 hours. You have to be so alert.

And that's even just crossing the border to get to the place where you could trade goods. So when your mom would be like, okay, Tanya, daddy's going to work. It's not like a normal when a kid is told, oh, your mom or dad is going to work, you know, they'll be home at 5 p.m. You never know when you never know.

Yeah, it may be a week. Because usually his trips lasted about a week. Sometimes it'd be longer. And you just always get so excited waiting for your dad to come because he would always come with nice surprises for me and my sister. Like he would bring peaches, which at the time, I never knew what a peach was. So he would bring like his packets from Europe of peaches. So it was always a feast, you know. Or he would bring packets of kiwis.

That was also a very foreign fruit to us, you know, for somebody who grew up eating like apple. and the pears and stuff like that. Well, I think it's important to just sit on for a minute. The fact that you just said, when my dad would bring back Kiwis and Peaches, it was a feast. A feast. Now living in America, you go to the grocery store,

we've got, you know, a thousand different brands of all of these different things. When you first came to America, which we'll get into that. I know I'm jumping a little bit ahead. But when you first came to America and just saw the food choices, was that a huge cultural?

culture shock for you? I was overwhelmed, honestly. I did not leave the town where I was born for 18 years. So my world was so small. All the stories about the outside world I knew was from my dad. And most of his stories were about crossing the border, getting to work. Oh, I do have to mention that. So a week of his work where it was mostly just driving to the place of work, then crossing the borders. So all in all, it possibly was maybe two, three days, and then he would have to go back to get more goods and stuff. He would make the equivalent of one month wages

at the government job. So no wonder, like, at the times as a little girl, it's like, Daddy, why do you have to drive so far? Why do you have to be gone? You wonder that, but as an adult, I understand that that was the only way for him to, support his family. Yeah. People were making ants meet with the government jobs that they had and add all the other challenges along the way and you get a pretty colorful picture. Do you think the

job that your dad ended up having is the job he dreamed of having as a little boy? I don't think many of the dreams my dad had actually came through. He has a saying, if you cannot have what you want, learn to like the stuff that you have. That was his motto for life and that's still his motto. And he was just looking for opportunity always, just like many people did. And he was working so hard to make sure we had everything growing up and didn't feel like there was anything missing in our lives in any way. When you're growing up under socialism, if you know, you're little and you're like, I want to be a teacher one day. I'd love to be a veterinarian. Is there any choice? at all once you're an adult of what you want to do for a living? There are many choices and

they like to tell you that if you work hard you're going to achieve great success and that was my dream always worked super hard, that you have great things in life so that's how I ended up in Linguistic University in the city capital. That's when I thought was the I was on the top of the world studying being a student, but then I learned that my prospects were not all that bright. How so? So I was pretty smart girl. Yeah, pretty smart girl.

Tanya's being very modest. How many languages do you speak? At least four that I could think of. I mean, it's like Melania Trump and Tanya Posobic, okay? Thank you, Alex. So because I want to scorn. So my grades were so good that I actually was receiving a scholarship what made my dad super proud. I still remember to this day the face of my dad when he heard that I was one of the students who got that scholarship.

The way it works for five years, you receive a scholarship, and then for five years, you are sent anywhere in the country to work. I mean, anywhere. Doing what? Well, depending on your major. So you do pick your major. Okay. That's part of that. But with your major, you're not automatically staying in a city capital or any other big, original city.

You could end up in a little village, the same place where my dad grew up, the place that he left, looking for bad opportunities, teaching. And there's nothing wrong with that. I understand it. There's people need it everywhere. But there was a concept that was so wrong shaped in my head that if you work hard, you're going to achieve great results. And that's where the system was failing us because despite the fact that I was working so hard, I earned something.

But in return, I would have to sacrifice my time, personal time, and more money, being in a place where I would hardly make enough money to make a living for one person, not saying about having a family or raising kids. How did the mafia play into everyday life not only for citizens but also the government? I did mention earlier the wild 90s. So when the USSR ceased to exist, so did law in order. Mafia was on the rise. you basically had to have a connection in order to own your own business.

You had to pay them off. And, well, if you didn't, you would be just a history. If I could put it in a very easy terms. Well, don't be easy. Tell us the truth, Tanya. I mean, what does that mean you would be history? Well, you get... Like, would they come and execute you in front of your family?

You would get killed and it will be the easiest outcome for you. You'd be lucky if you would only kill you because usually if they would come for you, that would come for your family. That's how it worked. Everybody was eliminated who was in a way. It was well known. And there were PACs, groups that were leading and making all the rules. So when the government was just about to be voted on where democracy was about to be established,

you know, there were groups of people who were making their own rules. and making all the citizens abide by them. But talking more about the connections and the corrupt system, I didn't really know much about the mafia per se, luckily. But one thing that I did come pretty close to was having any sort of medical emergency in the family. You would not think what specialist I would go to. You would think in the same terms, who do I know? who knows a doctor, it didn't even matter at that time which doctor it was, because it was almost

impossible because it's a socialist system. You go in and a doctor's, you stand in line, and sometimes I remember growing up being sick with fever, and I would be standing at the doctor's office outside for two, up to three hours, just waiting to be. As a sick child. You'd be sick. coughing, yes, that's how it worked. It was free for everybody. My parents never had to pay for medical specialists, but you had to pay a price that was very different than a monetary version of it. So if you get sick, you had to figure out a person who knows somebody who knows a good specialist and then you would have to get together we call it a bag or a package basically a bribe common goods were chocolates like boxes of candy you would get

like tea or coffee very often alcoholic beverages and you would put it in a nice bag when you go to the doctor's office the first comes the bag and then you would walk in as a patient this is unfathomable to me to think I'm sick, I need to see a doctor, but if I want to get in, I guess I better find some really good chocolate so that he'll see me. Yes. That's often how people were, and I'm talking like serious illness. It was like a little cough. Again, you would have to pay a different price, but it was something serious where it was a question of life and death. You better have some money to buy the little goods for the doctor. And in the, in the same,

sense because the wages of the teachers, the doctors, the any type of specialists, again, were so low, that was a way and means to them to survive and feed their families. Not that they're going to feed them with boxes of chocolates, but maybe it could be a means of paying to another specialist if you had to get your refrigerator repaired, you know? That's the way how you would pay your refrigerator specialist. you would get your stuff fixed. When you were growing up, how did you find out about America and what were you told about it? And how did that actually influence your goals on, I need to get out of here.

So, interestingly enough, I didn't hear much about America. Do you think that was by design so that people wouldn't think, oh, this sucks living here. I want to get out of it. I believe so. Now that I think about it more, I believe so. The English that I was thought, it was British English. We're studying the British culture, the British poets and, you know, people who made an impact. I really rarely heard about the American way of life or American, you know, we heard about the West.

Did you hear about anything in pop culture? Like, did you know who Mariah Carey was or Whitney Houston or anything? Yes, yes. music traveled music made its ways to the hearts and ears to Eastern European people absolutely I was singing the words that later on

when I figure out the lyrics I was so ashamed of myself and the words I was singing that's so cute okay so you find out about America you didn't know much what did you know the little that you knew the little that I knew is that if you work hard you can really make a living there.

And that was the biggest appeal to me. And I was like, okay, finally, all my hard work is going to pay off. So that's when I ended up on this first time in my life on the international flight, where I walked in that airplane, I think that's when my heart dropped. Because I could not imagine that the thing of that size could actually live. leave the land and actually can possibly take off. Again, my world was so small. I remember the only person that I knew was actually the girl who traveled with me,

my groupmate from university. I remember sitting with her so terrified to fly for the first time in my life. We were holding each other's hands and saying whatever praise we knew at the time, just to, oh, hopeful that we're going to end up somewhere safe. and we actually will make it to our final destination. So were you going there? Did you have a plan or were you just going to visit America, see what it was like, and then ultimately go home? You were flying to move to America.

So the first time I was not as bold. At times I could be pretty hot-headed and quick to make a decision, but not in that time. So it was a summertime program. I was supposed to go and work with American brand. Make some money, learn about American culture, see the American way of life. New so little. I had a book about America telling me the way the people talk, the way they dress. What did it say about how we talked and dressed?

Well, very casually dressed, very casually talk. True. I'm in a sweatshirted little slinky running shorts. She looks like a dime piece. Because again, I was studying British version, so we were taught the proper way of saying the words, making sure every ending was clear and pronounced. When I first heard the first Americans, the real Americans that are heard talking, I was missing half of the endings. I was like, how am I supposed to figure out what they're saying? I was studying this language.

I started learning English when I was seven. So by the time I got to the promised land, I felt so confident in my abilities. I was an A plus student. I was, all my assumptions were shattered in the first day. I was like, I have no idea what those people are saying. How am I supposed to work and do something where I can humbly figure out, what they're saying to me. It was quite an experience.

What did you notice at first when you came to America? You were like, this is weird. Actually, interestingly enough, it was people's indifference to you. Because in Eastern Europe, and if you have a travel there, people are judgmental. They will look at you, they judge, because that's how people could tell what social class you're coming from. It's still, maybe not currently in 2022, but back in the 90s, it was pretty divided. And somebody who had the latest brand of Levi's was definitely more well off and somebody who did not. Somebody who had the latest, you know, Titanic T-shirt.

You remember Leon Kidd? Of course. It was anybody who could afford that shirt probably came from money. So somebody who didn't, you know, so people would meet you and they say, there's actually a saying, Stricha de joshka. So people would meet you by the way you're dressed. So when I got to US, remember, staring at people, you know, I didn't know that at the time, but I know I was staring, checking out what they were wearing, some of the few brands that I knew. Nobody was paying attention to me.

People were just so busy going on with their lives, doing the things that we were doing. It amazed me how little I actually met it at the time. Were you grossed out or completely just excited about our eating habits? We are honest here, right? We are honest. Yes, honest. And we are saying the things they are. We're presenting them at the face value.

Facts over feelings, Tommy. I had the worst stomach cake, I think, for a month. Oh. It was so hard for me to get used to American food. Just all the processed food? All the processed food. I had no idea. I underestimated how good the food in Eastern Europe is.

Most of the staff people grew in their gardens. My grandma had a garden. I would start my days. Not with the breakfast. I would go in in the garden, pick up fresh cucumbers, apples. I wouldn't even care about washing them because there was nothing, no pesticides, no additives, nothing on them. They grew the way they grew and you had the best of the best. Well, I underappreciated that at the time.

It was the toughest month of my life getting used to the food. I could not believe the brads. Well, of course, you know, being a student, I was, I was like bread in a bag that's sliced, like not, you don't go to the store every day to get fresh bread. No, no. It's how can a bread last a month and not get, not change in appearance in any way? It was, it was horror story for me personally. And I, I refuse to eat it. Somebody who loves bread so much, I refuse to eat it.

I loved my Sarah Lee honeywheat bread. When I was little, I loved bunny bread, which I definitely know is crap now. Okay, so when you first moved here, where did you move? What city? So I moved to, I was in Delaware. Okay. Rehabit Beach. I was on the East Coast and so glorious three months in my life.

I spent some time in Delaware and then I relocated and I was in Mary. And that was quite an experience even traveling. It was the first time in my life that I actually saw the ocean. Belarus is landlocked. There were just some little tiny rivers, the lakes, they're all over, but there was no idea even of a sea. Wow. So I ended up by the ocean.

Talk about my world getting rocked, ending on the Atlantic Ocean. seeing the size of those waves and just the sheer scale of that thing I could not even describe how I felt and another thing that just I have such a vivid picture of my life

walking down the streets of Rehobov Beach from town, from the house to house and seeing American flags every place and it seemed like it was a competition which house will have. the biggest flag and which house will have the most of the American flags on their lawns. Was this right around when 9-11 happened? It was five years after that happened.

So 9-11 obviously was a huge event. That was probably the first time I actually heard about United States because it was broadcast on our news as well. We saw those horrendous pictures run over and over that video in Eastern Europe. I remember coming from school, seen in front of TV. Both of my parents were both at work. My little sister was in the kindergarten. I was about to start my homework. Before I did that, I would always scroll and see what's on TV, see my little programs.

And that was the first time, I think, in a while. when actually the schedule got changed. And I don't know if you remember this at the time. We had papers that actually tell you which program, a TV ad, yes. And I was like, right here on the ad, it says it's going to be my show. And suddenly there was a breakthrough news, and that's when I first heard about it. And that's when I first learned about the United States and what they had to go through. One thing I'm curious about is not even just the differences between living in a socialist country in America, but the fact that you came to America, I feel like, you know, at the height of patriotism.

How does America today in 2022 compared to the America you came to in the early 2000s? It almost feels like a different country. I remember those vivid memories of seeing so many American flags. I remember people wearing American flag shirts, American flag dresses, you know, the little ribbons, all little things. It was almost like a game to me, find an American flag, and how many can you see in one day, you know? I remember the first time I went to a basketball game and I heard for the first time the Pledge of Allegiance where everybody stood up. I was like, what's going on? Like, what do I have to?

I was like, everybody's standing up. I was like, okay, I'm standing up too. And I see everybody placing a hand on the heart. I was like, okay, I guess I'm going to do that as well. When I heard everybody read the Pledge of Allegiance, at the time I was not a citizen, I've never heard it in my life. It's making me tear up hearing you describe this. I was in tears myself. Yeah.

I was in tears because I saw. saw the faces of the people. Many of them had their eyes closed. Many of them had so much emotion in those quick few seconds that they read it. It made me tear up to somebody, a complete foreigner in this country. Wow, I'm crying. And then, well, that was not it. If those few tears were, you know, the end of it, then there was a national anthem.

Yeah. I had goosebumps and I've never felt the feeling I felt when I heard it for the first time in my life. And then when I went for the second time and it was my second game, I believe it was a football game, the same feeling came and it was even stronger. Because it felt like there was such an energy at that stadium. And everybody was just like one big united community, which I don't see. anymore and it saddens me as somebody who did not grow up with it did not hear or know about it who learned to appreciate it and see it being so easily forgotten I was like how can you uh as a person born in this great country the lot of opportunities because so many um kids who I know just like

me come looking for better opportunities in life looking and knowing that America provides those dreams how can you abandon those core values and this dream of this great nation so easily so that was definitely a huge I still cannot believe this I was like every time sorry to interrupt I was like I have to finish this because so good I heard the first when I saw it with my own eyes. I think my husband, Jack, actually showed it to me just randomly watching the videos. Like, that's, that, that, that has to be like, sort of joke in a sense where, what do you mean people are not standing up? Like, I was taught as an immigrant, like, that's what you do. This is the biggest disrespect to, like, you don't dare not just sit. Kneeling is unheard of.

Yeah. When you saw people like Antifa members burning flags in 2020, do you remember emotionally how that felt to see for you as someone who came to America as an immigrant? It took me some time to get to the point where I could call myself an American citizen, to be more exact. It takes you about 10 years to legally acquire an American citizenship. So looking back on that journey, it was not an easy journey. I was like, I don't want to paint the picture of an American dream being an easy one. It's anything but you work so hard. But then in the end, you do get to that light at the end of the tunnel. You get to call yourself a professional and American.

And going through such lengths, having to. to learn the Pledge of Allegiance, having to study in American history. I had to go back and catch up with all that. You know, for once, I was curious about it. I was curious to learn how democracy really works. Even though I came, as they say, from a democratic country, there's many things that were so different. Like what? For once, there's no freedom of speech.

The things that my husband does and how often. Often he's actually able to go after big corporations and call them out publicly. And your husband is Jack Posobic who hosts human events daily. That's correct. So the way I remember, like, first time he did something like that. I was like really going at him saying like, do you have to be careful? It's like, well, we're in America, which by the way, the way we are losing. that the freedom of speech is a whole new subject. But you are not able to go after a big

corporation like that, say something. Like Jack has called out Disney. I mean, Jack will call out anybody. Just about anybody. Yeah, anyone on Twitter or whatever. Like he has the receipts. He's always calling them out. I mean, you know, Cutservatives note, Jack was on the spillover, one of the earlier episodes. I think it's episode eight talking about the Great Reset and all that. So they are familiar with Jack and how he just calls people out. politicians especially a lot of politicians you cannot go after a politician people remember the the years of staling where 500,000 people either disappeared from the planet of earth were never spoken about again were sent to the gula camps you do not speak against a politician if you disagree with that

you don't even say it out loud at a family dinner. It was such a taboo that politics was just the subject you don't talk about. You, if you want to be safe, if you want your family to be safe, you just, you don't talk about that stuff. Yeah. So that's the freedom of speech is definitely one of the biggest ones that I could think of that was so different for me. To this day, I would catch myself thinking, am I really allowed to say this? out loud, could I say this? Yeah.

It's still, I catch myself thinking this. Do you feel like the high school and college kids today and the young adults that are, that sympathize with socialism and communism, do you think that they are, I mean, just idiots? Or how would you describe that? I, for once, I think that they just ignorant because they don't know what they sympathize with. it seems like they might have read a book or two, if that even. Most likely they just heard a guy. Yeah, but they say, well, but real socialism hasn't ever been tried.

We have to give it a real shot, the real type of socialism. What would you say to that? Well, Marx was the one who came up with the idea, but Vladimir Lennon was the one who actually put it to work, so to say. People had almost 70 years of a USSR under communism. Well, it first was socialism that eventually transferred into the communism. If anything I could say for somebody who has grew up with my whole family living from that era, it's not as bright of a concept as you may think it is.

And in a sense, I can understand why they're doing this. It's so right to say that good times breed weak people because I feel like I had to go through such hard times. And that made me such a strong person in a sense. And only because of those hard times. But people who had the abundance of food, the abundance of clothes to choose from, the abundance of clothes to choose from, the abundance of opportunities. I hear high school kids going through the last year of school, like it's a breeze. They don't have to study hard. The parents have the money. They can choose any school. They want to. And there's your ticket to a great success in life. And then they will join the Antifa

ranks and they'll be cheering for socialism. They don't really have to make many decisions in life, but, you know, decide which color of clothes to wear, which. next brand to support, you know, carry, and then which next famous store to smash and call it a peaceful protest. You know, they did not really have many tough choices and life to make. So I could see where they could have so little knowledge about the system that so many people try to escape, never try to look back and remember those harsh times as a bad dream really

and look back and think of them with a smile as I tried to because it was part of the grand experience they just never had that and all I can feel is just sadness for them that they're so limited in their perspectives with just the way

that culture is shifting more and more and farther left. Do you predict that America will become more socialist than not? And you just think everyone is going to have to learn the hard way, the lesson of what it actually means to lose freedom? I'm afraid. It might come down to that. But at the same time, I'm very hopeful that it won't.

There's so many good voices out there who try to bring out the truth and who try to remind the actual history. Because whether you like it or not, history, no matter how harsh it is, it tells you the real story of the people. And if anything, that's probably the top subject that could and has to be taught in every school, at every university and the real history. And not just give the one-sided perspective. Tell the stories from both sides. You know, universities used to help and educate students how to think. Yeah.

It seems like now the professor's job is to tell you how to think. The real way to help people understand and show them both sides, give them a choice to make the decision what they want to stick with. And then show them the real truth. what each system is about. Tanya, you're the first guest ever on the spillover to make me cry. Ever. Oh. Yeah, so your story is so moving.

I was given the strict directive to make you smile and be very lighthearted and just speak so lightly. You are though. You have a lightness to you. Like you're telling these really emotional things in these stories, but you're still so like. and so special and precious, which is obviously why Jack loves you and married you at the first chance he had, right? So thank you so much for coming on this bill over, Tanya. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to this story because it really helps people to learn what real socialism and communism was all about. I definitely thought that with the 4th of July

coming up, this would be the perfect time to hear firsthand from someone who came to America as an immigrant to live the American dream. I've never done an episode quite like this before, so please share it on social media, especially with the people in your life who don't think socialism is a big deal, or maybe even someone who claims to be empathetic towards it. Shockingly, there are those who are. Leave a five-star review, write five stars for America, and make sure you're actually subscribed to the podcast,

so every week the episodes automatically download. The spillover is back next Thursday at 9 p.m. Pacific, Night Eastern on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can tune in live on the Poppletics YouTube channel. I'm Alex Clark, and this is The Spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.