REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 46. Hot AF Is Hot AF

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

What does it mean to be an American? This country has been built on a collection of diversity, brave men and women fighting for our freedoms, and our powerful unity. The narrative now is being manipulated into division and having hatred towards each other. On today's show, Andy addresses how working on ourselves can help solve the problems we're facing as Americans.

Hey guys, what's up? It's Andy. Hey man, uh, I'm gonna save you guys the the cool Intro that I normally do. Yeah, i'm gonna be honest like i'm not feeling it right now, you know, um i'm not feeling like We need some fancy production or or any of that shit, you know, um, this shit is weighing heavy on my heart this whole situation It's stressing me out. It feels like i'm i'm immersed uh and standing under a massive weight. And it's affected me, man. And so I just want to talk with you guys.

You know? And I want to start with a story. DJ and I went downtown St. Louis Saturday. It was hot. Like, real hot. And we went down to see Lee's Pawn and Jewelry, which is where Captain David Dorn was murdered during the riots here in St. Louis. It was a fucking terrible situation.

A man who's given his entire life to bettering his own community, only to be murdered by the people he was trying to help. That makes me sick, man. It hurts. It hurts. And all of these injuries and these murders and these deaths that are happening through all this civil unrest hurts. And it hurts to know that we've been set up by people that aren't us. They're not us. They're not Americans, man. They might actually, quote unquote, technically be Americans, but they don't stand for what America stands for.

They're out there manipulating us. They're out there creating division on purpose. The media, a lot of elected politicians, not all of them, and not all the media either, but a lot of them. They're getting us to fight. They're getting us angry. They're hitting us in the places that they know are going to cause the biggest reaction. And we have to stop reacting and we have to start asking what the fuck is going on. And as we were standing there looking at the spot where this man bled to death after he was shot, blood still on the street.

There's a number of us standing there and one of the guys goes, it's hot. Another guy goes, man, what the fuck are fuck you talking about i'm from the south this ain't shit it's hot in the south this is not hot while we're standing there looking at at where somebody was killed and it got me thinking that conversation is indicative of the problem that we're having isn't it isn't the problem that we have really with our own egos? Isn't the problem that we have really with our want to compete for who's been through more pain, more suffering, more injustice, more hardship? Think about it. Think how many times you say something. And I'm not just bringing this to this issue.

This applies to our culture as a whole in America. Think about all the times you've said something and you've had someone immediately snap back and say, that ain't right. You don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. That's not how we communicate, guys. That's not how problems get solved. And while we stand here screaming at the top of our lungs on the internet, people are dying. We're losing our freedoms. There's injustice happening all over the world at way more of a rate than was happening before. We just had our small business community almost wiped out. We just had marriages crumble. We had people commit suicide.

We have people in clinical depression. We have relationships suffering. We have families suffering. And while everybody's yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs about every fucking thing, what are we doing? We're competing for who knows more, for who has all the answers, for who's been through more shit but let me ask you something do any of you really have all the fucking answers because i fucking don't take away the politics i don't give a fuck okay i had a guy call me here at company today wanting to know if i donated money to or he said he knows I donated money to a certain campaign in 2016. And if I'm donating money again, he's never going to shop with me.

Well, first off, who I give money to isn't any of your fucking business. Second of all, I haven't donated any money politically ever in my life for a reason. That's not what I support. I support independent thinking. I support critical thinking. I support what's right. I support America. I don't support a person. I don't support a party. And a lot of you motherfuckers out there that listen to me don't understand that and can't understand that. And because I say one or two things that you don't like, you automatically throw me in with one or the other group. I'm in either group. I'm an independent, free-thinking American. I'm loyal to the constitution and the values that America was brought up on, that all people were created equal, that everybody has the rights to equal opportunities.

Those are things I believe in. And I live with those things in my heart and in my actions over the course of my life. And if you really took a minute to look, you would see that my mouth and my actions line up, which is a lot more than what most people can say right now, to be completely honest. So when you hear me talk about these things, try to forget that you think I'm for Donald Trump or try to forget that you think I'm not enough for Donald Trump or try to forget that I'm not against, well, I am now against the democratic party because it appears to be fucking evil as shit. But if they were to reform their party,

I'm not against the principles they're supposed to stand for. And it takes critical thinking to listen to that and understand that for real. And there's a lot of judgment going on and there's a lot of side picking going on. And there's a lot of, uh, you know, attacks going on in the world. Not, not, not me. I'm talking about in the world and everybody. And we have an obligation to be better humans than what we're being. That's just the truth. If we want to change things, they're going to have to start with ourselves. And one of the things that we can all start to

get better on is this. Stop trying to compete for who's the bigger fucking victim in every situation. And I'm not talking about black or white or anything that has to do. I'm talking about in general. We see this everywhere we go. We see this. Dude, this isn't a new thing that just happened because of this issue on the internet.

This is the culture of people who stare at their phones all day and who never learned the ability to have a real conversation or critically think. And I have news for all of you until we could sit across the table until we can sit across and look at each other and tell the fucking truth without having an emotional response and hear the other person and hear the other side and get to a point where we can separate our own perspectives from the actual facts of the matter we're not going to solve this problem that's going on in our society right now we're not going to solve this problem that is going on with uh you know the racial issues we're not going to solve this

problem that we have going on with our political structure going on okay we're not going to be able to solve any of this shit we just got lied to for the last fucking who knows how many months about a virus that is now by their own admission not able to spread in any way that they told us to but yet they ruined businesses they ruined lives they killed people. They prevented people from seeing their loved ones. I was talking to my friend who lost his father from COVID. His exact words were, bro, I can't.

I feel like I delivered him at Auschwitz and they just killed him. I didn't get to see him. I didn't get to visit with him. They just killed him. But yet when the narrative changes, it's okay to go to a huge protest. It's okay to go to a funeral. And I'm not, that is not devaluing the importance of protesting or the governing bodies that we elect fucking play us. And dude, if we want to really solve the problem, the real problem here is that we're getting our rights taken and we're getting our, our freedoms taken and we're getting manipulated by people that really have no fucking business and don't give a shit about any one of us. That's the fact. And if you stop and think about it for a second and you think about how absurd

it is, regardless of where you fall, regardless of where it is your beliefs fall, whether you believe COVID was the fucking plague of the universe or whether you don't, there's evidence that supports that it wasn't. Strong evidence.

Evidence from the bodies that made us panic, that caused the depression, that caused people to commit suicide, that caused people to fucking freak the fuck out, lose their marriages, lose their jobs, close businesses. And they told us that as if it were fact.

And it wasn't. Why? I'm talking about all of these things and we can argue all we want about these issues between our people all of our people is there real issues with racism in this country you're fucking right there is but the problem is is that they come from the motherfuckers that we elect and they create scenarios where we're constantly fighting each other and we're constantly bickering we're constantly against each other and everybody does it because they're trying to win because all of you motherfuckers are so concerned about what side you want to be on

politically that we can't have a motherfucking conversation instead we compete over who experienced the hotter weather and that's indicative of the problem at hand pain is fucking pain hardship is hardship my hard day is not harder than your hard day. They're both fucking hard. And if we want to compete and tit for tat over who had this harder and who had that harder and who had this, we're never going to solve this issue. We'll never move forward. We'll be constantly in a cycle over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And none of us regular people who want to live a free, happy, and productive life are going to benefit from it. Now, I don't have all the answers and I don't expect you to listen to me for all the answers.

But I do encourage you to take a minute and self-evaluate. Are you having legitimate conversations or are you just spouting emotional frustrations? And guess what? It's okay to spout emotional frustrations, but you should also understand that to come to a productive solution, we have to remove that situation. I'm tired of the fighting. I'm tired of the bickering. I'm tired of the accusations from all sides towards everybody. If you want to know whose fucking fault this is, look in the motherfucking mirror, and that goes for everybody here.

Because the truth of changing shit, the truth of becoming a better society, a better world, a more equal world, where everybody can thrive, has to start with us looking in the mirror and being that example every motherfucking day. It doesn't start with a law. It doesn't start with electing someone. It doesn't start with a new party. It doesn't start with burning the police down. It doesn't start with any of that

shit. It starts with looking in the mirror and saying, I'm going to live to the standard that I expect everyone else to live to. And from what I can see, not many people think that's a priority because what I see is a lot of people online criticizing people for having a fucking thought that doesn't agree with them to the point where we're creating lynch mobs to attack each other and ruin each other. There's people getting fired right now because they liked a certain tweet or they had an opinion on a matter. When we get to a point where we cannot have opinions,

when we get to a point where we can't express thoughts, who is going to do the thinking for us? It ain't us. And that's what they want. So my plea here, my ask is for all of you, regardless of where you come from, regardless of who you are,

regardless of the color of your skin, regardless of what your background is, regardless of how much money you make, regardless of your gender or your sexual preference, regardless of any motherfucking difference that we have as American people, stop and ask yourself, am I the example of what's right?

Am I the example of how I want my kids to be treated? Am I the example of how I want my grandma to be treated? Am I living that? Or am I just another fake motherfucker throwing stones at everybody else to hide the fact that I'm not doing a goddamn thing to help the situation? That's real. That's real talk. That's being fucking genuine or authentic or whatever you guys want. Savage. Real savagery is looking in the mirror and say, motherfucker, you're fucking wrong and you got to fix shit.

You all think you're quippy and witty and you know, you're going to fucking make someone look stupid online. What's that do? That drives the division. That drives people further away from where you want to be. When you go up to someone and you attack them and you don't even know them, you don't even know their history. You don't know what they've done or what they haven't done.

And you just go along with something because everybody else is doing it. That's weak as fuck, dude. I can't respect that. I can't respect it. What I do respect is having a conversation. What I do respect is doing what you believe to be right. What I do respect is doing it peacefully. What I do respect is not putting gas on fires and pouring salt in wounds to create a certain result politically.

I can't respect that. Can't respect it. I'm tired, man. I'm tired. And I know there's people listening right now. Well, you have no idea how tired I am. Well, that's the problem. That's the point I'm trying to make.

Just because you're tired and just because I'm tired, we're not in a competition for who's more fucking tired. We should be in a competition for who come up with the best solution and how we can unify. The only way that we will ever win here, ever, is by unification. The more division, the more hate, the more violence, the more attacks, the more we all lose. I'm at a loss for what's going on.

I don't have the answers. But I know this. If we continue to fight and we continue to see each other as the enemy and we continue to hate and we continue to hurt and we continue to do bad things to each other online, in person, physically, mentally, we're all going to lose. We're all going to lose. The only way to cure this issue and all the issues is for us to learn how to talk, to learn how to have a conversation, to learn how it's not about competing for who had more pain. It's not about competing for who's been through more bullshit. It's not about that. I don't know what you've been through, but you fucking don't know what

I've been through either. And maybe we should have a conversation about it. Maybe your perspective would change. I've had a number of people who have reached out to me and had those conversations, and I respect every single one of them. We've actually solved our differences pretty easily. I'm not here to push an agenda, guys. I'm a business guy. I'm a guy who solves problems for a fucking living. I'm a guy who's been pretty effective at solving problems for a living. I'm not a politician. I'm not running for office. The only thing I can get out of this is to fucking lose. I'm doing this because I think it's the right thing. And I had someone write a review and say, well, it seems like he looks at himself like

a martyr. No, I don't. Not at all. Not at all. But I can tell you this. Most business people who see things won't say anything because they're afraid of losing sales and they're afraid of pissing people off and they're afraid of this and that. Well, dude, I'm sorry. I see this problem in our country and I see it as an obligation to say something to help bring together. And that's what I'm doing.

That's what I would like you to do. This trying to prove the point, this trying to attack, this trying to constantly outwit each other and be more smart assy. There's no, there's no winning there. There's no winning. There's no winning. I love all you guys, whether you agree with me or not agree with me or whether you, you know, you want Biden to win or you want Trump to win.

I don't, that doesn't matter to me. That's not how I see the world. I don't see the world that way. And you know, I get accused all the time. Well, you're like a, you're like a secret operative for Trump. What the fuck are you talking about, bro? Can we not just have our own opinions without being, having to pick a side? Like to me, that's the most closed mind thinking you could possibly have. I mean, let's look at what we got going on right here. We've got all this fucking hate and all this fucking division and all this anger and all this rage. And it's all focused at the wrong motherfuckers.

We're not each other's enemy here. We're humans. We have thoughts. We have opinions. And sometimes those thoughts and opinions can be misguided. Sometimes we speak before we think that's human. Sometimes we say things without considering how it's going to affect every single human on the face of the earth. Guess what? That's human. And all of you are, or you wouldn't be listening.

Now, I don't really give a fuck what color your skin is. I don't give a fuck if you're black. I don't care if you're white. I don't care if you're somewhere in between. I don't give a shit. But what I do care about is that we as Americans stop hurting each other, stop fighting each other, stop attacking each other ignorantly, and start to understand that we're all on the same team, man. We're all in the same boat. We are all in the same boat. If that boat fucking sinks, guess who loses? Us. Not just the Republicans, not just the Democrats, not just the liberals,

not just the conservatives, not just the blacks, not just the whites, not just the cops, not just the media. It seems that we, not just the cops, not just the media. It seems that we're under some weird assumption that by destroying America and destroying its culture and destroying our unity completely, that we're somehow going to win. How are we going to win there? What's the win? What's the win if the boat sinks? Have we even thought about that? Have we talked about that? I'm pretty disgusted to be completely honest with what I'm seeing from everybody. You know, everybody's throwing around this word empathy, right? And I tease Gary V a lot about overusing the word, which Gary, you do overuse the word. But I'll tell you what, Gary, you're fucking right.

Empathy is the key. Empathy is the key for all of us to figure out how to get better, how to improve, how to resolve differences, how to stop tearing each other down. And you could sit there and think, I don't understand. You're right. I'm not black. I may not understand what that's like. You know what? I fucking certainly don't understand what that's like, but you also don't understand what it's like to be mean. And it ain't always been roses and fucking peaches and fucking sweet shit. Like y'all think, okay. Everybody's dealt with real shit and I'm not minimizing anybody's shit, but it was hard for me. Just like, it's hard for you. Just like, it's hard for fucking Susie Q. You guys have to stop this shit. All of you. All of you. And you have to come together. And you have to do it by your actions.

You have to do it with conversations. One Instagram post or two Instagram posts ain't going to do it. You know, constantly posting these divisive slides in your story, trying to prove a point so you can get likes and attention. This ain't a time to pander for attention, motherfuckers. This ain't a time to try to grow your brand. This isn't a time to do your marketing. This is a time to stop and fucking recognize

the danger that we're all in at this critical point in the history of our country. I love all of you. All of you. All of you. I don't care where you come from. I don't care what you look like. I don't care how much money you make. And that's not bullshit. Anybody that knows me in person knows that's the fucking truth. But you guys got to start living it. Not just posting about it. Not just talking shit about it, not just making divisive slides in your story to get people to like them or rally around you. This is a time for solving problems. This is a time for

having conversations. This is a time for being civil and having real empathy and listening. And a lot of you are saying the same shit, but you're not practicing it, I can tell. Why are we constantly comparing and for pain tolerance for stress? Who's more busy? Who had the worst injury? Where does that come from? Why do we do this? Why do we try to like, you know, validate our own self by devalidating other people's?

You have to understand that there's multiple truths inside of the truth. We talked about this on episode 45. There's your truth, there's my truth, and then there's the truth. And we have to separate our truths so that we can see the truth and then we can work to make the truth look more like the truth that we would like to see. But until we can see the truth for what it is as a collective unit, as a unified people, we're not going to fucking fix anything, guys. If you're out there attacking people, fucking stop. If you're out there talking shit, if you're out there shaming people, fucking stop. You're contributing to the problem

You're making people who are willing To hear and willing to work and willing to do good and i'm talking to you motherfuckers on both sides of this fight I am not talking to one side. I'm talking to fucking both of you because i've seen it from everybody If we don't get over this shit and stop acting like we're fucking nine years old We're gonna fucking lose You guys will not like what the world is going to look like. I'm worried. I'm concerned. This isn't a time for me to tell you what to believe or what to think. This is a time for me to urge you to learn how to think. This is a time for me to urge you to stop being overly emotional. This is a time for me to urge you to sit up in your chair

and pay attention, all of you, to what's happening to all of us. It's got to stop, man. And if it doesn't, we're all going to lose. I love you guys. I appreciate your support. I appreciate all of your perspectives. Do I agree with every single point? No, I don't. Just like you guys don't agree with everything I say. But I've always been about solutions and I've always been committed to trying to find solutions. And the best solution that I can think of right now is to have this talk with you. To get you to stop attacking, to stop shaming,

to stop being a part of the division and start being a part of the solution.