Shaun Newman Podcast - #253 - Paul Schue 2.0

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Professor of History at Northland College hops on to discuss Ukraine/Russia conflict, the history of those two nations, how social media is making this war different from all others & controlling political structures.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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brought to you by auto-clearing Jeep and RAM, the Prairie's trusted source for Chrysler, Dodge Jeep Ram, Fiat, and all things automotive for over 110 years. He earned his Ph.D. of modern European history from the University of California, Irvine, and his master's of modern European history from Pennsylvania State University. I'm talking about the professor of history

at Northland College, Paul Shoe. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Professor Paul Shue. So first off, sir, thanks for coming back on. Oh, my pleasure. You know, you were joking right before we started and you were bang on.

The last time I had you on was probably, I don't even know, the first, what, three, four months of COVID. I hate to say kicking off like it was a party or something, but it was in the first early days of that. So I'm a little late to the game on Ukraine and Russia, but it seems like any big world event happens, you show up. I'm like the angel of death or something. Well, if anyone wants to find out a little bit more about Paul's background,

you can certainly, I guess, for the uninformed listener who hasn't listened to two years ago, Paul, maybe just a quick background check on you if you like and then we can hop into it. Otherwise, I'll put the show notes with your previous episode if they want to hear more. But maybe just a quick update on where you're at and how things are. Sure. Well, I'm still a professor of history at Northland College, which is in Ashland, Wisconsin, around the southern shore, Lake Superior. I've been here about 20-some years.

have a PhD in modern European history from the University of California, Irvine. So that's about where I'm coming from. You know, it's how many years would you've been? Because I just always assumed when I got there, you'd been there forever. And I don't mean that as like you looked old. I just mean like your wealth and knowledge. You say in 27 years, geez, it's been over 10 years since I graduated. Were you not there that long when I came in?

Probably not. I started in, this is actually a sort of funny. story. When I got there in 2001, they said, you know, here's what the previous guy taught. Can you teach any of these classes? And one of them was Middle East history. And I was like, I got some background on that, but I really don't think I should teach that. Then the second day I was teaching, or second week I was teaching 9-11 happened. And I was like, oh, I got to teach Middle East history. So yeah, I started in 2001 at Northland. I don't remember when you, when did you graduate? 2011. So I showed up in 2007, yeah. So 10 years when I was graduating.

graduating. Anyways, that's a side note between me and you. I'm sure the listeners are all excited about that. Absolutely. Well, here is, my thought was Paul and having you on was like, I'm like 8,000 and some odd miles or kilometers from the Ukraine. So for me to sit here and act like I can tell you exactly what's happening in the Ukraine is quite laughable. But one thing I'm interested in, I think it would be a good base for a lot of people. And I mean, obviously the conflict's been going on for some time now. But I like history. Obviously, I graduated under your tutelage. I thought maybe we could go back. And like, you know, Canada isn't this nation that has thousands upon thousands of years. I mean, it doesn't. It doesn't.

A place like Ukraine, Russia certainly has some history. And I'd love, you know, I'd love to hear some of it and pick your brain on it. Sure. I mean, one of the interesting things is, you know, the Russians have given a whole bunch of different, um, explanations for what they're doing. And some of the explanations, really the history just doesn't quite hold up. And some of them, it sort of holds up, but not really. So I mean, one of the things, when Russia first invaded, you know, one of the first things they said was that Ukraine has

traditionally been part of Russia. It's culturally part of Russia. It shouldn't exist as an independent country. And the Ukrainians want to be part of Russia. And of course, then the Ukrainians started fighting and everyone saw they didn't want to be part of Russia. But I think that's really something that history can speak to because, you know, if you look at the sort of both Russia and Ukraine, say they started in a kingdom called the Kievan Rus, which was founded in Kiev, which is capital of Ukraine, in the 800s by some Swedish Vikings of all things. And they expanded to include, pretty much they started in Ukraine and expanded north to include a lot of what we'd call Belarus, Russia, et cetera, including Moscow, where Moscow is today. And that kingdom

was pretty big and successful for about 400 years. And then it got crushed by the Mongols in the 1,200s. And then after the Mongols pulled out, it sort of split into two or three kingdoms. And Ukraine was separate then from a sort of a Russian kingdom. Then the Poles came in and conquered Ukraine. And it was part of a Polish Lithuanian kingdom for several hundred years. That falls apart in the in the 1600s and russia conquers Ukraine and then basically from 1700s until the end of the Soviet Union Ukraine was part of a Russian dominated country of some sort the Russian Empire until World War I and then the Soviet Union after that. So in one sense you know, Russia and Ukraine have a long history. But there's been a lot of times where Ukraine has really

asserted that it's not part of Russia, right? And you really start to see this like in the beginning in the 1800s when nationalism is becoming a really big thing. It's sweeping across Europe. Everybody wants to be a nationalist. And what that basically means is, you know, nationalism is based on three things. It's based on a language. You basically say, we all speak French, we're French, or we all speak German, we're German. It's based on a culture, which is hard to define, but usually they point to some things. Maybe it's the religion, we're Catholic or we're Orthodox, maybe not. In the United States, we point to a bunch of ideas about, you know, that are in the Declaration of Independence, et cetera,

things like that as our sort of culture, but we also point to things like the frontier mentality, individualism, etc. And then the, the, the, the, the, the third thing is history. And that's where, you know, Ukraine and Russia, you could make the argument they have a common history, but they've been separate enough. You can make the argument they have a different history. But anyway, in the 1800s, you began to see Ukrainians start to say, we're not Russian. We're not part of the, you know, we're part of the Russian empire because they conquered us, but we're not Russian. We shouldn't be here. And then when the Russian empire falls apart in World War I and the Russian Revolution happens, the Ukrainians,

try to declare independence. You get two or three Ukrainian republics declared in 1918, 19, 1920. But then Ukraine gets conquered again, in one chunk of it gets conquered by Poland, the western end of it gets conquered by Poland, the rest of it gets conquered by the Soviet Union. And then it's part of the Soviet Union until 1991 when the Soviet Union falls apart. So it's kind of an interesting. You know, Ukrainians have really, since the 1800s been asserting, we don't belong to Russia, but the Russians have sort of said, well, you've always been part of us, you know. Paul, what, you know, like, I think I know the answer, but at the same time I go, you know,

if this was Siberia, I don't think it's changing hands every decade or every hundred years, right? What is there about the Ukraine that makes it, you know, it isn't just the Russians, obviously, that want their chunk of it, you know, you mentioned the poll. You mentioned that basically over the span of roughly 1,000 years, which to me is a long time, but to the world isn't that long, that every, what is it, 100 years, a couple hundred years, somebody new walks in and says Ukraine's with us, and the Ukrainians don't get there saying any of it. Yeah. Part of this geography, you know, Ukraine is this fantastically rich agricultural area. It's like the, it's like the American Midwest, you know, it's flat, it's got lots of agriculture, really great soil. oil, good weather for agriculture. So it's really the, it's been a bread basket. And because it doesn't, you know, it's got some mountains up in the north a little bit, but it really is, is not protected very well from invasion. It's just sort of flat and sitting there. And it's, and it's, it's rich and in the sense that it's always been really great agricultural region. So it's been desirable. And it's really hard for the, for, I mean, Poland and Ukraine. both are like that and they've both been just run over through history and and you sort of feel like

they're just in the wrong neighborhood geographically they're just too too wealthy to be ignored and too easy to conquer um yeah well it's it's um sitting where where we sit you know like where i sit specifically i at times have a hard time you know like i've been to europe and you realize how close and like clustered they are and you understand how you could get in disagreements all the time because you know it's like putting multiple countries pretty much in Saskatchewan right um and we're just so spread out up here plus half the time nobody wants anything to do with us because it's well it's like again today it's supposed to be warm and then it's like minus 10 and that's a good day right um yeah yeah i think for a lot of people on this side just understanding how you know like russia's a

giant area. But like when it comes to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, all of Europe, like that area is really compact. And then you have like a diversity of, you, you mentioned it, nationality. So you got different languages, different beliefs, all pressed together. And it's not like you can just go out and explore more land, right? Like the United States once upon a time or Canada to the north kind of thing. Right. Yeah. I mean, the Russians did that too. I mean, Siberia is was not ethnically Russian. The Russians just conquered that in the 1600s and into the 1700s. But that's, you know, that's that's where Russia's sort of safety valve was in the sense they could always go conquer more land there. But it's, there's not much up there.

There's never been a lot of people because of the weather and the land isn't that, soil isn't that great for agriculture or anything like that. The climate isn't good for agriculture. But, you know, Ukraine is just, it's been desirable for thousands of years and it's just, it's really rich. And, you know, they're going to have to defend it. And they are. I mean, they're doing a great job of it. But, but that's a, it's a really tough position to be in because from Russia's point of you, Ukraine is just tempting because it's, you know, it's the breadbasket. Why, why doesn't the Ukraine want to be a part of Russia? I think the biggest thing, you know, if you go back to like the when Russia conquered Ukraine in 1700s, it was a bunch of Russian aristocrats who came in and they basically said to Ukrainians, we're taking a big chunk of your harvest every year and we're going to go take it elsewhere. And, you know, we impose our laws on you and all that. And Ukrainian nationalism really started with peasants, farmers and city people who were just like, we don't want these Russians coming in here and exploiting us. And so it, Ukrainian nationals was really at first a sort of a peasant nationalism.

We're just different than those guys, right? And the Russians didn't even notice it because they thought of you, you know, they were Russian aristocrats. They just thought, oh, that's my territory there, but I'm Russian, right? So they sort of assumed Ukraine was Russian because they were Russian. And it's only in the 1800s, you start to see middle class intellectuals start to say, you know what? Ukraine has a different language, right? But Ukrainian language is different than Russian, although a significant portion of Ukrainians today speak Russian as their first language because of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, et cetera.

Ukrainian is a different language. It's like, it's sort of like, I mean, I speak a little bit of Russian, and I've studied a little bit of Ukrainian, but I really don't speak any of it. But Ukrainian is and Russian are probably about as close as maybe French and Spanish, you know. they're farther apart than Spanish and Italian, you know, Spanish and Italian people can go to each other's countries and talk and they'll be understood more or less sort of, you know, French and Spanish, you can't do that. Ukrainian, my understanding is you really can't do that. You can't, you'll catch, if you're a Russian speaker and someone speaking in Ukrainian, you'll catch some words here and there, but you really won't have a hard time following what they're saying. So I think language is the hugest thing.

It's the biggest thing. You know, in terms of religion, they're both, basically Russian Orthodox, although Ukraine has recently broken away from the Russian Orthodox Church. And, you know, in terms of the culture, they're not that far apart. But the language is a huge thing. And Ukrainians, because of their history, just feel like they've been bullied by the Russians for a long time. So they really feel like that shouldn't be. well I feel like and you know like maybe coming from an area like we got a healthy dose of Ukrainians here in Alberta and Canada in general right certainly know my fair share of Ukrainians one of the things under Stalin was the starvation of all the Ukrainians back

and I feel I feel like that chunk of the story, you'd never want to go back underneath anyone who is a Russian leader, right, that flies that flag because the atrocities that were committed while Stalin was in place, basically raped and pillaged the Ukrainian goods and services and left them all to starve during the winters. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the, you know, the Holodomor was, which is what they call that, the great famine was, you know, 32, 33. And essentially, Stalin and the Bolsheviks wanted to, they wanted to industrialize the Soviet Union as a whole. And part of that was that they wanted to move a bunch of peasants from being small farmers to being factory workers. But to get them off of the land and to keep producing agricultural product, they decided to collectivize agriculture, which means they were going to they're going to take thousands of small farmers and take all their land and move it and sort of clump it into one big farm. And then they'd have like 10,000 people working on this million. acre farm. And it was all organized by the state, et cetera. So all these small farmers who had a

couple acres, they suddenly were told they're going to go work on a million acre farm with 10,000 other people. They didn't like it and they resisted it. And Stalin just decided to starve them. So they just, they send in the military to start seizing food. And, you know, the overall numbers who died in Holodomor were, you know, it's probably four or five million. The estimates range from about three to 10 million. It was probably four or five million, which was, you know, like one out of six people in Ukraine died in that two years. And then, of course, you know, and then of course, that was 32, 33. And then in 41, the Germans invade. And, you know, another one out of six Ukrainians dies in World War II, which is, you know, the population of Ukraine was just getting

pummeled. What is the population of the Ukraine? I didn't even think to Today it's about, well, before this war, it was 44 million. And that number has been, it's gone, I think at the beginning of the 20th century, it's something like 30 million. And it's been as high as 50 million. In fact, you know, they got away from the Soviet Union in 91. The Soviet Union falls apart. And Ukraine is an independent country.

But their population has been dropping steadily ever since because once people were free to go, they did. And so they were probably 50 million when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 and they're about 44 now. But that was before all the refugees he just left because of this war. And so, you know, there might be as many as four million refugees left Ukraine now. So it might have dropped, you know, almost 10% right there. You know, that's another, you know, like I'm a young, relatively young guy. So, you know, like the World Wars and everything like that.

is, you know, a long time ago. And here in Canada, those two very much stick out because of different family members and friends, relatives, etc. Anywhere you go into small towns, they have their war memorial of people who fought and never came back and that type of thing. Remembering's Day obviously is a huge thing here. You think about four to, well, three to ten million people dying at the hands of the Russians. Mm-hmm.

It wouldn't, well, resentment might be the light word. I don't know what the word would be, but I don't think that would be shared around the dinner table going, you allow these people to come back in. That's got to be, you know, it's a bit of a side note from history, but maybe history can play a part in this is it'd be interesting to live in a piece of land that was so coveted, but you didn't have the, you know, You know, like, it's interesting that Ukraine, after they get freedom, don't build a giant military force that can protect themselves.

Yeah. Well, you know, what's interesting is that when the Soviet Union fell apart, they had nuclear weapons all over the place. So all these, you know, all the Soviet socialist republics became independent countries. So, you know, Lappia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, et cetera. they all become independent countries. And it was sort of a lottery who wound up with nuclear weapons. And the U.S., in order to try to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, they didn't want these things getting sold off or anything.

They went to Ukraine and said, well, you give up your nuclear weapons, if Great Britain, the United States, and Russia guarantee your safety. We guarantee we won't let anyone invade you. And they did. They agreed to that. And so now, of course, Russia has nuclear. weapons and Ukraine doesn't and Russia invades Ukraine. And, you know, that's, that was really just a I don't know if Ukraine, I don't know enough about the situation in in 91, 92, 93, to know if the

Ukrainians really just couldn't have maintained their nuclear arsenal anyway, because you have to maintain it. It costs a lot of money every year. You have to do maintenance on it. You have to replenish the, you know, the, the fuel, et cetera, the uranium. You got to do a lot of stuff to maintain a nuclear arsenal. And I don't know if the Ukrainians just realized they couldn't do it or if this was a sort of a blunder on their part that they could have done it. And they said, no, we won't. But you know, the money thing, the money thing, I think, I don't, I don't know. I looked at that and I go, I feel like those people, after losing that many people would have been like, listen, whatever it takes, we never want to be invaded again. And you get the guarantee, but we all

in history what guarantees between governments is like. Like, I mean, that that is like almost laughable, right? You know, we'll guarantee you'll never get invaded again. Less than one generation later, they're invaded. Like, absolutely. You know? Yeah. And, and you know, it's interesting is you mentioned Ukraine's history, but I mean, we had a, we hosted a foreign exchange student from Ukraine about three years ago. She was a high school student. And, um, and we're really close to another family that to another Ukrainian exchange student a couple years before that. And the interesting thing is, you know, she was 17 when she came to us. And World War II was like right in her head. I mean, it was like alive for, she'd been raised with World War II just happened. You know, and, you know,

and, you know, in the United States, we're like, oh, yeah, it was a long time ago and whatever. But, but for Ukrainians, World War II is still right there. And so I, you know, it is an interesting choice they made to, to, to turn away from that. And they've got memorials to the Holodomor. I mean, right in downtown Kiev is a huge memorial to the to the famine, which is, you know, basically a big middle finger to Russia, you know. And that stuff's still alive. That's still in their cultural memory.

That's still fresh, if you will, for Ukrainians. So it's really interesting that they give up the nuclear weapons. And I don't know what the rationale was. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I feel like living, you know, when I was in Finland, I think it was every two years and I apologize for my memory that's been a few years ago

but they all had to take training every two weeks not every two weeks every two years I believe in the military they got like their reserves and you wonder why and then you think well I mean Finland borders Russia right

and I remember how they talked about it back then and I never felt any danger being in Finland but they also told the stories of what they had to fight in the winter war and and like like or the white war white war winter war winter winter winter war um and they had uh my parents when they came we went through their their museums on it they had museums everywhere and they were just like they didn't they didn't mince words about what they had to do to survive against the russians and i i think you know for the united states you've been the biggest baddest uh country on this planet for a hundred years and to the north you

have the ever happy Canadians who aren't coming down to do anything to you. So it's just, it's like, you know, you got Mexico, but I, I mean, that might be laughable in itself. There's just nobody, you know, Russia would have tried to do with, with Cuba and, and things like that. But like, living in the Western world, we, I just don't think we understand. Like, I think it's really hard to have World War II live in your mind when World War II happened over there.

And all the atrocities happened over there. So the only way it was coming back was through the people who went and fought, which, I mean, fair enough. But like to be there and, you know, have some of those stories carried down that didn't happen even 100 years ago, Paul. I don't know about you, but I think it'd be pretty easy to motivate a population. Yeah. Yeah. And there definitely is a sense that in every European country, because they're small, they're right there. that, and they've had so many wars, I mean, both World Wars were fought right there,

that there is a real sense of vulnerability there. And most European countries do have mandatory, you know, adult male military service that you've got to do it, which is, which really sets a sort of a culture and a tone. And it, you know, there's a reason they remember all that stuff, partly because it was right there on their territory, but partly because it's a self, it's a survival mechanism. You got to remember that stuff so that you're ready for the next time, so that you have that motivation to remain militarily ready. You know, if you forget World War II and whatever, then you're not going to be,

then people aren't going to want to serve in the military, and then you're not going to be ready. And the next time, well, Russia invades. Yeah. Isn't that an interesting line you just said, you know, you've got to be ready for the next time. We think over here in the West, and I generalize a lot, right?

Obviously, people who've been in the military and maybe some students of history and everything else. We don't think about the next time. We assume this is going to last. forever. If history has taught us anything, that's a big load of crock. But you think over there, they're probably like, no, it's a matter of time before things fall apart and we're at war. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you remember the right after the Soviet Union fell, there was a, there was an academic named Francis Fukuyama. He's American, but he wrote a,

he wrote an article called The End of History. And he basically said, you know, liberal capitalism is one, we're not going to have any more wars. We're not going to have any more other ideologies. We're not going to have any more, you know, great events of history. It's just going to be, you know, nice, smooth sailing, you know, everybody getting a little bit richer every year with a free market capitalist system. And that hasn't quite worked. Well, it kind of, I don't know why this pops in my brain, but it kind of reminds me of, uh, um, Chamberlain. Chamberlain's the one who met with Hitler and comes back waving, though, the white, the piece of paper saying we got peace in our time and yeah and then it wasn't too many days later or years later that uh you know world war two

and everything else happens i just the world is too big too diverse um and peace peace is piece is is always probably going to be a lie because there's always going to be somebody who wants what you have that's that's yeah yeah i think that's something we can all even if we don't want to admit goes on i think we can agree it does go on and and and that's just going to happen. You know, one of the, what are you, what are your thoughts? You know, looking through uh, time, I should have sent you this question earlier on. So you could have thought about it a little bit more. But, you know, this war is really strange in the sense that everybody has a smartphone. And yeah, and, but that makes it really interesting in the fact, like, that could be real

footage, but then you're seeing fake footage. And it's almost like you don't even want to turn on the social media app because you can't tell at times what's real, what's not, what's staged, what's not. And the fact, what's not. How does this compare to years past, you know, like all the different wars that have went on? I mean, at one point it was, it was, you know, papers. That's how you figured out what was going on in the front line. And I mean, if you fast are, what is your thoughts on on, on everything going on right now? Yeah, well, that's really interesting.

I remember in, in 1991, when the U.S. invaded Kuwait and then, you know, Persian Gulf War, we kicked Iraq out of Kuwait. And I remember being amazed because CNN had just started a few years earlier. It started sometime in the 80s. And they went totally 24-hour coverage. And because it was a new thing, it was the first war that was really on TV because they were actually American reporters in Baghdad getting bombed by American planes and filming it. You know, they were on the roof of their hotel. And, you know, so you could just sit there. And for hours, they just have feeds of, you know, bombs going off in the city.

blowing up and then they'd cut to a press conference and the the Pentagon was giving astonishing video to the to the news. I mean like they had this is the first war with smart bombs and so they had video of bombs going into buildings and exploding and you know that they were releasing all this and it was like it was the most astonishing thing to see a war totally in real time. I remember just being blown away by it and then then the US military realized they didn't want to do that in future wars. They'd shown too much. allowed too much. And so they kind of cut back on that. But now, you know, with the smartphones, as you said, it's totally out of anybody's control what's what's coming and going. The Russians have

tried to, you know, slam the internet shut so that nobody can get anything in Russia. Nobody can get any information about what's happening in Ukraine because they don't want their own population to know. But the internet is amazing. Like I heard that people were trying to start a movement where you you would go to leave restaurant reviews on Yelp for Moscow restaurants. And instead of leaving a restaurant review, you'd talk about what's happening in Ukraine so that anybody who went to review that restaurant would suddenly get a dose of outside news about Ukraine. So it's really amazing.

And I think, you know, I've noticed with the coverage that in the United States, if you look at CNN, they never show dead Russian soldiers. They show dead civilians, but they don't. don't show dead soul, either Russian or Ukrainian that I can think of. And it's really kind of interesting that they're still trying to sort of manage what we're seeing. But then you open your phone and you, you know, my wife is in touch with about, you know, half a dozen people who are, some of whom are still in Ukraine. And, you know, there's just video feeds coming through her phone all the time of, you know,

this or that, you know, suburb being, being, being, having blown to pieces or, you know. So it's really, it's interesting how the information. is getting out of people's control. But the big question, as you said, is how can anybody know what they're seeing, right? Because the Russians are just saying this is all fake. It's staged Ukrainians. You know, it's Photoshopped or whatever. And it's really hard to know, right?

How do you spot what's a fake video? I mean, there have been, you know, you'll see videos and, you know, somebody says, oh, look what this politician just said. And then they'll say, well, they said that in 2014. They just, you know, that's not a real video from this year. And, you know, it's a real epistemological crisis because we just don't know what we can trust anymore. We're flooded with information, but we don't know what's good and what's not. And it makes it really hard for the population to really sort of know what they're doing.

Because like in World War II, you know, people got their news from some from the radio, but mostly from newspapers. And newspapers were, are broadcast, you know, so everybody's getting the same information. They might disagree with it, but they're getting all their information from the same sources, right? But now everybody's getting information from different sources, right? They're not getting the same information, right? People in the right, people on the right, people in the right, people in the right, people in the right, Fox News or OAN or whatever.

And that's totally different information than people on the left are getting from CNN or MSNBC or NPR. And it's really an interesting question as to whether a nation can sort of hold together if nobody even agrees on what's actually happening. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out in Ukraine. How much, how long can Russia maintain

fiction that, you know, they're not shelling civilians, right? They're not, they're not, you know, they didn't do any of those massacres. How long can they maintain that? Maybe indefinitely if they can keep flooding the zone with fake information, you know, that's an open question. Although that reminds me of one thing, you mentioned the Winter War with Finland. And when Russia invaded Finland, the Russian foreign minister, so you didn't invade Finland, the Soviet foreign minister, a guy named Molotov, said that the Russians weren't shelling Finland. They were dropping food and supplies. And so the Finns decided that they would, they christened that, you know, they were making these gasoline bombs with gasoline and glass bottles and burning rags. And so they decided to call

the Molotov cocktails. And that's where the word comes from because they, they were trying to counter Russian disinformation back then. That's where Mollinger. cocktail comes from. Yeah, yeah. The Finns made it up as, you know, oh, they're dropping food and drinks for us. Here's a Molotov cocktail. That's fantastic.

I didn't know that. Yeah, I think the Molotov cocktail was actually invented in the Spanish Civil War a few years earlier, 36 to 39, but they didn't have a good name for it. The Finns came up with a great name for it. Well, it has become a war on information, hasn't it? Like, I mean, how, like, there's like videos. you're like, holy man, that is like, ooh. But like, then there's videos that are like completely staged and come out as staged and everything else.

And I mean, it doesn't matter what news agency. And I'll speak to Canada. You know, there's a lot of hard feelings around the CBC and our national news network right now because of some of their, um, some of their reporting just on things in Canada. And so it's really lost, you know, we don't have, you know, you mentioned the two sides in the United States, which is interesting to watch from up here, right? You flick on CNN, you get one thing, you flip on Fox, you certainly get a different thing. But up here we only have the one, right?

Like we just don't have anything. And I don't even know if it would balance it out because I don't, CNN and Fox, do they actually balance each other out? Are they just shooting missiles at each other, right? Like, I don't know if it actually balances each other out. But it, but it's an interesting dilemma to watch. And currently in this war, it's an interesting problem, like, you can see what's going on. And no matter how hard you try and stifle the internet,

the internet finds ways. I mean, geez, you can't police everything at all times. You can try, but it don't work. And so the information's squeezing out of everywhere right now. But you mentioned it right off the hop, too. There's so much squeezing out. It's like it's almost information overload. Like that's been,

that's probably been the last three, four years, at least is information overload. The amount of information one can get is unbelievable. Right. Oh, absolutely. And the, and it really is, I mean, it's opened up, it's amplified voices like anti-vaxxers or things like that who never would have gotten a voice before when there were sort of networks for gatekeepers for who got information because there was only a few channels or something. Now with the internet, you know, everybody can reach all sorts of people. And so you're getting a lot of really, you know, wild and out there kind of. takes on everything, but it's hard to tell on the internet, you know, what's, what's real and what's a good take and what's just totally lunacy, you know. Well, on, on that, I will say, one of the things that I've had a real problem with in Canada is we had the trucker convoy go to Ottawa. I went to Ottawa. I sat in Ottawa. I saw what was going on there. And one of the things that really messed with my brain, Paul, was the CBC didn't come down there, didn't report on it, and,

which created, well, basically the idea that they were all white supremac, misogynist, I can use all these words, you get the point. And what actually was going on down there was, well, I say Bob Marley. It was like, it was like completely black and white from what the CBC reported to what actually was going on down there. And so to me, that's one of the things here in Canada, and I can't speak to anywhere else. I'll speak to Canada because I can certainly do that. that rate there lost all credibility with me because in the early stages I could understand why

they maybe wanted to try and keep it bottled up and not talk about it but the amount of support it got the amount of people that agreed with what was going on in Canada was wild and the CBC along with other news organizations in Canada really tried painting the picture that that wasn't the case and now you got a now you got a huge chunk of the population Canada look at the CBC, and they did before this. I shouldn't just say this was the one. But after this happened, like it's hard to sit and read anything they write and go,

that's credible. Like they did that to themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's an interesting conundrum because, you know, people can sort of see, yeah,

this isn't matching up with what I'm seeing in reality. But it doesn't help you then to find out who's telling you the truth. you know that that that you know you can say i don't trust the cbc anymore but then who do you trust well that's the problem i agree with that right because then you turn off the news and now you have a different problem now you're not now you have no idea what's going on anywhere right and so yeah so it's it's a really tricky thing to try to figure out what news sources you can trust and and to a certain extent you what you have to do is you have to sort of i mean i used to say that you know in like Berlin in the 1920s, there were over 300 newspapers, daily or weekly newspapers. And there were some

newspapers that's published four times a day. But every newspaper had a political slant. You know, you had your right wing, you had your left wing, socialist, communist, liberal, conservative, Catholic, you know, they all had a slant. But what Berliners would do is they'd read six newspapers, knowing that this Catholic newspaper has this slant and this, you know, right wing newspaper has this slant and this, communist newspaper has this slant. They'd read six newspapers. And they'd read six newspapers and they'd sort of try to figure out based on what they knew about each newspaper, how they were probably spinning reality. So they were trying to sort of triangulate and read them against each other and figure out what the truth was. But that's a really,

that's a really tricky thing to do. In part, I mean, if you watch CNN and Fox today, they don't even talk about the same thing. So it's not like you're getting one take on one thing you know, and another take on the same thing. They're not even talking about the same things, you know. Why do you think that is? Well, I think one of the things that the networks have realized is that the best way to counter something you don't want to be out there. You don't want your views to hear.

Just talk about something else, you know, just make up something else. And I'll pick on Fox News for just a little bit. But, I mean, you know, if a jobs report comes out and it shows the, Biden administration is doing great on, you know, the unemployment rate, they'll just talk about, they'll find something about, you know, some scandal, Hunter Biden's laptop, you know, they just start talking about, you know, the president's son's laptop, which supposedly had secrets on it and whatever. They don't try to spin the unemployment numbers. They just don't talk about it all. They just talk about something else. And it's easier than trying to counter

the news. And they figure that if people are just watching five, they won't even know what the unemployment numbers are if they're not watching CNN or something, you know, the, the, the, it's it's pro-Republican and and then the opposite side is pro-democrats. So they're always trying. So even though Hunter Biden's laptop is big news and both should probably talk about it, because if there is big secrets on there, which I assume there are, then both sides should talk about that. But the one side doesn't want to talk about it because they're pro-democrat. And if they do that, then they're going to expose their Democrat people to a bunch of harsh realities they don't want to expose them to. On the flip side, you can't give Biden a thumbs up for lowering the unemployment rate because you're trying to win the next election. It's one of the things about politics that really, really confuses me, you know, that I don't know. I guess as a voter, I just want to know, right? Hunter Biden's thing? Great. Where's we had employment great right like just tell me but once you have the bias but i paul you have your

bias i have my bias right like the podcast has its bias i've certainly known that and it's hard not to to show that over and over and over again but to the people it'd be nice if the the information just got distributed and it wasn't about i don't know winning election and all the power that comes with it but i mean i don't think we're going to see any change in that anytime soon are we no probably not. Although, you know, there's some things that do make it worse. For instance, in the United States, we have, most states don't have open primaries. And what that means is that, you know, they have a primary election, who's going to become the Republican nominee for this or the Democratic nominee for that. And only Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans can vote in the Republican primary. And what that does is that the really motivated Republicans turn out for the primaries, and they're often way farther to the right than most Republicans. And the same on the Democrats in the Democratic primaries. They're really motivated Democrats are often the sort of progressive, radical, you know, et cetera. And because they're highly motivated, they turn out. And that

means that if you want to be elected as either a Democrat or Republican, you've got to cater to the to the fringes of your party because you won't get out of the primary if you don't. And then in the general election, you have to sort of just try not to offend the other side, but and hope that your side turns out better. But that closed primary system where only Republicans vote in Republican primaries is a real, really tends to radicalize the politicians. And there are some states that have open primaries where Democrats can vote in the Republican primary and Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary.

And in those, it's more viable for politicians to be moderates because they can pick up Democratic votes in a Republican primary to counteract the really right-wing votes in Republican primary. Or in Democratic primary, they can pick up moderate Republicans to counteract the really progressive Democrats on their left. And so I think the structure of the elections plays into the sort of new siloing. that these politicians realize that to get out of the primary, they've got to talk to people who are just getting their news from one extreme news source. And they've got a slanted view of reality, but they got to, that politicians have to cater to that to get out of the primary. And it's an interesting interaction between the political structure

and the sort of epistemological question about who's got the news, who's got the truth. But they sort of feed on each other. And it's interesting because we've lived in an age of like, well, the headline sells, you know. I'm sure that's been around for, you know, the printing press. A poor headline on a newspaper probably didn't sell as well as, you know, as a good one. I'm sure, I'm certain of it. But, you know, on the digital age, like the clickbait, right, like to get you to come in and read an article. You know, there's the problem is most people don't read the articles.

they read the headline and they move on. Yeah, yeah. Literally, that just happened to me last week as me and a buddy, we sat down and we're going to, we're going to shoot the shit, so to speak, over a Zoom call and do it via headlines, right? But you had to read the articles, except you didn't read the one article about the transgendered MP in the UK, which sounds really extreme. And then you read the article and you're like,

geez, that like talked about part of what it said, but it talked about like none of what it said all at the same time. And that's a real, issue across the board when we're talking politics, when we're talking more, when we're talking just social justice issues, when we're talking anything, is they take a little chunk and boom, and then that becomes what you search for in the entire article, and then it's not even there. But I'm a searcher, right? I want to read what it talks about.

There's a lot of people that take the article, take the picture, the headline, and just move on with life. That's an interesting dilemma in itself in our world here that we, we, we, we, we, we currently reside. Yeah, that's a real issue that, I mean, I've seen a number of times that New York Times has picked a headline for an article. And the article is real, the headline just gives a wildly bad impression of what the actual content of the article is. And, you know, everybody picks on the New York Times because it's the biggest newspaper in the United States. But all newspapers do that. They're trying to get you to click on it or read, pick up, buy the newspaper,

or what have you. And the headlines do that, but the headlines are often really wildly inaccurate now because of the clickbait issue. They're trying to get you to click on it. And they know the actual content of the story isn't interesting enough to get you to click on it. So they try to gin it up and make it sound

a whole lot more radical, extreme, crazy than it is. And then you read the article, I'm like, eh, you know. Well, speaking of radicals, you know, going back to this Russia-Ukraine conflict war you know one of the things that's been talked about quite a bit

is Nazis and and that there's groups of fascists there and everything else with your background and readings in the area and dealings what's your thoughts on some of the headlines that have come out of the current

conflict well I mean what there's a bunch of things going on there. I mean, the Russians, of course, said that one of their goals is to denazify Ukraine. But if you actually listen, listen to what the Russians have said. I mean, Putin talked about this before the invasion in a speech that not a lot of people paid attention to at the time. And there's been a number of people on official Russian news sites giving op-eds to support the, you know, given the sort of Russian government line. And they're making some interesting claims.

they basically have said that, yeah, Ukraine is full of Nazis, but how do they define Nazis? It's any Ukrainian who doesn't think Ukraine is part of Russia. They're defining as Nazi, which makes no sense. It does nothing to do with. But so I think part of what Russia is doing is using the history of Russia that it got attacked by the Nazis in World War II and there was incredible death and destruction and, you know, all across the Soviet Union because of the Nazis. So they simply are using Nazis because that's a that's an easy word to use that gets the population. Oh, yeah, they're evil, right? But Ukraine does have a history of having not fascist groups. The, you know, there's a lot of history here. But basically, you know, when when the Russian Empire collapsed in the Russian Revolution in 1917, 18, and this Russian Civil War starts,

one of the big groups of Ukrainian nationalists were really hard right wingers. This is the early 1920s. And they lost. The Soviet Union took most of Ukraine and Poland took a chunk of Ukraine. And these hard right-wing Ukrainian nationalists moved out of the Soviet Union. They moved out of the Eastern Ukraine because they didn't want to be under the Soviets because they hated communists. So they settled in what was Western. Ukraine, which was part of Poland at that point. But they formed what we would recognize today as

fascist parties, that they were really hard, right, ultra-nationalist militaristic parties. And they actually became sort of an underground terrorist organization in Poland, trying to get the chunk of Ukraine that was part of Poland to be an independent country. And they actually, some of the top Ukrainian leaders were actually spies for the Nazis in the 1930s that they they were working directly for the Nazis to feed them information about Poland. And then when Germany invaded Poland, these Ukrainian nationalists basically signed up with the Germans. Now, they very quickly realized that the Germans did not intend to give them an independent Ukraine. They thought the Germans would invade Ukraine and then handed over to the Ukrainian nationalists

who had been working with them, but the Germans didn't want. want to do that. So then the Ukrainians, some of them went into opposition against the Germans. Some of them joined up within the German army, essentially. There was a, there was a unit called the the 14th Vaffin SS division, which is the super Nazis. These are the guys who were the diehard ideological Nazis, the Vafin SS. And they formed a Ukrainian division of this. And they, they traveled around Ukraine, shooting Jews and killing. other people and this how many we talk what's what's a division what do we when you talk with the waft and i don't know the i mean it was called a division um you're talking i don't

i don't have the numbers in front of me i'm at least 8 000 um i don't think it was more than 15 000 so somewhere in there i'd have to look it up so don't don't quote me on that um but they they were they were a they were working for the s which is the you know the old two nazis the ones who carried out the Holocaust and they were helping. Now, the Russians claim that, you know, Ukraine is still run by these groups and they're not. You know, Zelensky, the president of Russia, he had three grandparents dying the Holocaust because he's Jewish. So he's not the head of a Nazi state. But there are still some groups in Ukraine who are right-wing ultra-nationalists who come really close to fascism. The one a lot of

of people talk about as the Azov Battalion, which is currently fighting in, it's fighting for Ukraine against the Russians. But they really, the Azov Battalion was formed when Russia invaded the Donbos region in eastern Ukraine in 2014. And they've been fighting against the Russians ever since, but they're, they've sort of become hyper-nationalist in response to the Russians. And a lot of people label them fascist. And it's, they're pretty anti-Semitic. So they, you, the label kind of sticks. They're hypernationalist, militaristic, and anti-Semitic. And, and, you know, the Western media doesn't want to talk about them. They're fighting for the Ukrainian government right now, but they're a tiny volunteer battalion. I mean, you know, again, I don't know the numbers, but it's, you know,

several thousand volunteers out of, you know, a Ukrainian army that's, that's much bigger. And so it's an interesting, you know, Ukraine has some nasty history, especially towards its Jewish population. There were lots of pogroms carried out by right-wing nationalists during the Civil War, and there were lots of, you know, the right-wing nationals joined up with the Nazis to kill Jews in World War II. So there's something there historically, but I really think it's the number of people who are who embrace an ideology that we would call fascist today is tiny in Ukraine. And it's, and, you know, it's comparable to, you know, every country in Europe has their hypernationalist right wing, often anti-Semitic political party.

Well, I was going to ask, I'm like, I assume Ukraine was not the only country during World War two that had people join the SS. Oh, no, not at all. I mean, there were French fascists who joined a special legion to go fight against the Russians and Soviet Union because they wanted to fight communism. And there were, you know, every country had fascists who would, you know, collaborators, essentially. And even today, you know, France just had an election.

And one of the two top candidates is Marine Le Pen, who is basically a fascist. She's a high, ultra-nationalist, anti-Arab, anti-Semitic. You know, her dad was pretty much openly fascist. And that's a much bigger political movement than anything in Ukraine. So, and Germany, you know, has a right-wing movement that's been making some gains. It's not a very big party, but it's more significant than anything in Ukraine. And, you know, it's, it's an interesting question. Every country seems to have a right-wing, ultra-nationalist kind of militaristic fringe.

It's just part of, I guess. No, which shouldn't surprise. You're going to have your extreme left. You're going to have your extreme rights. at any time, aren't you? I don't think you're ever going to get away from that no matter where you live. Yeah. And, you know, it's partly the, you know, it's partly a question of the Overton window, which is the idea of what's acceptable to talk about in any given time in the political discourse. And in some countries, the Overton window is pretty wide. You can get people openly espousing

communism on the one end and openly espousing basically fascism on the other. Other countries have sort of narrowed the Overton window and those ideologies are just not acceptable. You don't talk about them. But, but, you know, every democratic system that has multiple political parties, you're going to have a, you're going to have a fringe on each end, a left-wing fringe and a right-wing fringe. It's just a question of, you know, how much power do they have? And in Ukraine, there's really just not much there. Yeah, well, part of it's how much power do they have? And the other is how much power are they allowed to have. And I mean, like here, once again, I'll go back to Canada. We had in our national action, I can't believe on it. I do, you know, 10 years ago, I didn't pay attention to

nothing politics. I was just a young guy and who didn't care about none of this. But, you know, as you get older, you start to pay attention to certain things. Well, the PPC, People's Party of Canada, I think that's what it is. Geez, I hope I'm saying that, right? Anyways, Maxine Bernier, people in Canada know what I'm talking about. So if I butcher that, I apologize. That's how much I show up for politics. But he had, you know, like 8% of the, the vote, so to speak. And they have a national broadcast of all the leaders debating, right? National debate. And he wasn't allowed on it. And even I went, oh, that's strange, right? A government not allowing a guy who's becoming popular. And he doesn't really preach anything that's too. Well, I mean, extreme, sure, but who determines what extreme is.

When your government does that, no, no, no, that's a dangerous slope because the people really want somebody to speak openly and everything else, then he probably should be able to do that. And if he gets voted in, well, that's what your population wants. Isn't that the way politics should work? Yeah, although, I mean, the one exception to that is that if an ideology, if somebody is their ideology is that they want to destroy the system, if they're trying to get elected to a system in order to destroy it. it then it becomes a sort of an existential question for the government that was founded on that constitution or whatever. So, for instance, if you had an ultra monarchist party in the United States, does the government have to let them talk? They might, you know, they might let them talk and say it's a free speech, you know, First Amendment issue in the United States. But a monarchist party would really be a threat.

I mean, they would change the Constitution in the United States and ultimately alter the entire government. So it's an open question is whether a government has to allow that, right? What if all the people wanted to go back to that, Paul? That's a great question. What if for 330 million odd people in the United States, 300 million of them said, that's what we want. Yeah. Is it the government's duty to stand in the way of the people?

No, I don't think the government should in that sense. But I do think it would be a natural reaction with the government to do that. And actually, it's usually not the governments that do this kind of censorship. It's the political parties. them. You know, if you look at, if you watch, for instance, you've had a number of socialist candidates run in Democratic elections in the United States. And the Democratic Party has done a pretty good job of sort of shutting them up and marginalizing them and not putting them in committees and not giving them the levers of power because they don't, they don't like their

ideology. The moderates are running the Democratic Party and they're trying to keep the sort of socialist like, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et cetera. they're trying to keep them marginalized. They let them talk so it doesn't look like they're censoring them, but they also don't put them on the plum committees, and they kind of, you know, they don't bring, come up, they don't allow laws to come up to vote if it's too radical, a law proposed by, you know, Ocasio Cortez or Pamela, J.PAL, or, you know, et cetera,

the other leftists in the Democratic caucus. A similar thing used to function that way in the Republican Party in the United States, that the Republican Party did not allow certain things to just come up. They always had some politicians who were pretty racist, but they sort of kept them quiet, you know, didn't allow them to have a big microphone. But the Republican Party's discipline in that sense is just broken down completely in the United States, and the party is not managing that at all.

The Democrats still have some control of who's talking for the Democrats. But both the Republicans and the Democrats used to always just squeeze out any other parties, right? The Green Party or the, you know, the Constitution Party or, you know, we had a bunch of, we still have a bunch of fringe little tiny parties. They usually get squeezed out because the Democrats and Republicans just sort of subtly squeeze them out of the conversation. So it's often not the government's doing it. It's the political parties. It's an interesting thought.

I just, you wonder, by trying to control what is said, Is that where some of the frustration from the population comes from? Or is that where the building frustrations coming from? Is that why Donald Trump just surprised everybody and all of a sudden was elected president? It wasn't because everything he said was bang on. It's because he was allowed to say it, which was aught, right? Like normally that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen.

I would like to think, well, not I'd like to think. I don't think it doesn't happen anywhere, right? You don't see a Canadian. Maxine Bernier is our closest to Donald Trump, but he doesn't even speak like. Nobody speaks like Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump is one in a million people or whatever the number is. But he gets to speak openly,

whether it's because he doesn't care, he knows it'll work, whatever it is. And you see the people that still follow him, Paul. Like people believe that man is a savior. And I'm not here to say he's right, wrong, whatever. Just that when you watch people and how they react to Donald Trump, they will follow that man across the ocean. Like they will, and that's interesting because, I mean, the only guy on the left

that I would argue maybe had the same, and you probably, you probably, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but in my short time in the United States, Barack Obama was a guy who was a great orator. He just talked and you're like, wow, I want to listen to this guy. Donald Trump had the same factor. Just in a very different way. Yeah. And you wonder if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know. I just go, I hear the control, right?

We got a control. We can't allow these people. And the more you control, the more of the population, it just feels like is frustrated. They want to be heard. Even if the ideas are crazy. That's why you have balance and checks and everything else to vote those down. Well, that's a crazy idea. Vote it down.

Wouldn't that happen? If a crazy idea got submitted about racism or about, send it back to slavery or something. Wouldn't everybody like, no, we're not doing this? It's an interesting question. I mean, because I mean, you clearly saw this with, you know, Bernie Sanders was running for president twice. And early in the primaries, he was winning.

And then the Democratic Party sort of got its act together and got behind another candidate in the last election, Joe Biden, to sort of head Bernie off and not, you know, and it was Hillary before that to sort of make sure he didn't get, the vote. So why is that? Why is the big push against Bernie? I'm going to guess it's because the Democratic Party is takes the Democratic Party has two wings. There's the progressive sort of semi-socialist wing. And then there is what we often call the corporate wing. And the corporate wing takes a lot of donations from, you know, big banks and big corporations and tech companies and whatever. And they did

not like what they were hearing from Bernie. So the Democratic Party closed ranks around that and said, we're not going to let Bernie, you know, take over the Democratic Party. We're not going to let Bernie's ideas become the platform of the Democratic Party in a large part because of corporate donors, et cetera. It was interesting is that everyone expected that to happen in the Republican side in 2016, that Donald Trump was this outsider and the Republican Party didn't want him, but he managed to use leverage of populism to force the Republican Party to accept him. He just kept winning primaries,

and they couldn't figure out a way to stop him because he had so much support from the Republican base, which brings back the question of why, you know, what is it about this guy, right? And I really think it's that he voiced resentment. And that was a real motive, that a lot of his followers hear, his resentment and they respond to the resentment. They often resent a lot of things he's talking about.

They don't like the things that he doesn't like. But often I think they're reading, they're putting their own resentments onto him. They think he represents them because he's speaking of resentment. They're like, yeah, he must resent all the same things I do. But, you know, I mean, it's kind of interesting because, you know, evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump. You know, the three time, you know, thrice married guy who's paying off, you know, porn stars because he's sleeping with him. And evangelical right-wing Christians are voting for this guy. They're clearly putting something on him that he's not really living up to. And it's, but in order, but in order for an event, for a church-going folk to vote for a leader, he has to be married with kids. Like, well, no, but

I mean, for years in the American on the American right from the 1980s on with a moral majority and the focus on the family and all these right wing evangelical political movements, they talked about moral issues. They went after Bill Clinton for, you know, what he did with Monica Lewinsky. And, and, you know, they did it on moral grounds. You know, we need politicians to have morals, et cetera. And then, you know, you get Trump on on tape saying he's grabbing women's genitals. And it's like, yeah, that's great. You know, whatever. And, you know, Trump tried to quote the Bible and made a total hash of it because he didn't know anything about the Bible. But the question is, you know, what is it that draws them to him? Because none of the other, you know, other right-wing politicians have always gotten up on the moral high horse and we want family values and all this. And Trump is none of that. But I think he was speaking resentment. And maybe it is the culmination of trying to control. something for so long that when a guy walks in and speaks not like anyone else and does things

so very different than politicians. And he shines a light back on how people like Biden and the Clintons and everyone else, whether you believe the conspiracies or not. Because once again, I'm a Canadian. I just, you know, everybody seems to know about all the conspiracies about the Clintons by now, right? It's not like that's almost mainstream, right? Now, I'm going to have listeners yelling at me both ways that they are true and they are true. It doesn't matter. My point is I'm going back to what the Democrats do to Bernie Sanders and go, that's interesting. That is companies telling a party what to stand for.

And maybe the people are getting frustrated to the point when Donald Trump went and busting through, it didn't matter what he'd done in his marital life. It didn't matter that, you know, instead of trying to cover up all of his blestrade. The interesting thing about Trump is he almost, is like, yeah, yeah, I did. And then somehow spins it off as, and what have you done? Oh, well, I'm picture perfect. Well, nobody is. And it's, you know, when you come back on the, the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, and once again, I don't have a dog in this fight. So I, I get to poke and pry here on you. But it's interesting that they, you know, they close ranks on a guy that is popular. It'd be interesting.

if the Democrats let it run and see what happens. Like, is big tech and all of them going to run away from the Democrats? Yeah, well, that's an interesting question. One of the interesting things is that when Bernie dropped out of the Democratic primary in favor of Biden this last time, a significant number of his voters went to Trump. And there, I think you're on to something that it was that they were resentful of the system, right? That they, I think there, you know, there's been some political sciences who've done studies of how much an idea of being popular with the population, the voting population,

translates into laws. And they found that it's virtually zero, that what the American population wants almost never gets translated into laws unless certain lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. also want that. Really? Yeah. And they said it was like 94% of the laws passed were not what the American population wanted, it was what corporations or whatever wanted. Because both the Republicans, the Democrats have, you know, take corporate donations and they cater to the corporations, especially since the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court back in, it was under Obama. I don't remember what year it was, but that allowed unlimited money into politics. And so corporations used to poor money into politics and politicians basically have been answering to corporations ever since.

I think that the sense of resentment you're sensing that Trump tapped into was this sense that nobody's listening to us, right? Neither the Democrats and the Republicans are listening to us. But they aren't. But they aren't, right? Right. We're talking about it right here. The corporations can pump in millions upon millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars. The average Joe ain't getting listened to. Like if Bernie Sanders is winning all their things, the Democratic Party isn't going, here's our guy.

they're going, how do we get this out of the way so that he doesn't win? That right there is like, oh, now, honestly, okay, well, that kind of makes sense then, right? Like, I mean, I think that's unnerving, right? How much power has been given to a corporation and their donors and everything else. Because, I mean, I mean, so you got all these giant corporations, Paul, how many people, how many rich individuals have their hands in all the corporations? So now you, this is where the, the theory on the elites decide what goes on in the United States, the world, Canada, you go around, right? Like, you have all, well, if they're the ones with all the money and they're the ones influencing all the parties, all of a sudden it isn't that much to draw a connection. And you go, well, this is why people are pissed,

right? Like, honestly. Yeah. And I think that's essentially what's driving both the Bernie Sanders supporters on the left and the Trump supporters on the right. Is it both of them are frustrated because they can see how much corporate money controls the government. And their answers are in different directions, right? The leftists want Bernie Sanders because they like what he's saying. And the right-wing likes what Trump's saying. But under Obama, they put in a law that allows unlimited donations to politics. Why would they do that? It was a Supreme Court decision. Somebody based, they had laws that limited how much people could contribute, right? The McCain-Feingold law, et cetera. And this political action group called Citizens United challenged the law and they appealed it all the way up

the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that that law was unconstitutional, the limit political donations. And in particular, they ruled that, and this is the one that sticks in my craw, they ruled that corporations are people who have First Amendment rights to free speech. So corporations should be allowed to donate money. And that seems like bullshit. That feels like there was a nice big giant envelope underneath the Supreme Court's door. Yeah, you got to wonder. I mean, what you do have to wonder, that a corporation is a person? Yeah.

Well, I mean, part of it is that, I mean, in the United States, there's a group called the Federal Society, which is they really are very much a free trade kind of organization, but they get all sorts of donor money from corporations and wealthy individuals. and they pour money into lobbying to see who gets selected as judges. So everybody knows, especially if you're on the Republican side, that if you want to become a judge and move up, get promoted to the circuit courts and, et cetera, you've got to have the federal society backing you. And the federalist society requires a certain interpretation of the Constitution called

originalism, which is the idea that you have to interpret the Constitution the way the original founding fathers meant it. Not the way we want to interpret it today, but the way they meant it in 1789. And originalism as an ideal, as a historian, it's kind of nonsense because there's no way you can really interpret what they meant. I mean, you're talking about software copyright. Well, what did the founding fathers think of software copyright?

Well, obviously I had no idea what it was, because it didn't exist yet. But originalism has allowed judges to use, to sort of interpret the Constitution however they want to, and the federal society is pushed in a very consistent direction towards giving corporations a bigger and bigger voice in the government. And so Citizens United was really the result of a bunch of judges on the Supreme Court who were, you know, had gotten where they were because of the federal society,

which is in turn paid for by, you know, dark money from corporations, et cetera. So I'm not sure there were actual envelopes under the chairs, but there were a long, yeah, there's a long history of sort of these are the people we want on there because these are the ones who will consistently rule the way we want to rule. Well, let's rewind this conversation. I got you down a rabbit hole. And now I come back and I go, so why, you know, after you do all we've just talked about

when we've talked, you know, different things in the American establishment, why does Russia go into the Ukraine? Is it, and I know that's a big why. Everybody's got their why and this is why. And, but you go, like, is it the pressure? Well, actually, no, I'm not even going to put things out there. Why do they, like, there's so many theories out there on why they go in, right? They're going to recreate the USSR and they're going to, you know, this and that and everything else.

Is it the NATO thing? Because, you know, if, if you equate NATO in Ukraine to Russia influencing Cuba back in the day, hmm, there's something maybe there. Like, is that enough or what are your thoughts? I've heard, I mean, I've heard all the theories you have, and there's a lot of them out there. There's probably two that sort of seem to me to fit the fit best. One is that for Vladimir Putin and his generation, who were members of the Soviet apparatus, he was in the KGB at the fall of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Soviet Union felt like a sort of personal humiliation,

that they were one of the two most powerful nations on earth, and all of a sudden they're like a backwards third world country. And the way Putin has talked, and a lot of the ways they've justified invading Ukraine, you know, it's normally a part of Russia. It should be, you know, historically it's always part of Russia. That can be, if you interpret that through his sort of sense of loss of the Soviet Union as a personal humiliation, he's trying to fix that.

And I think that's, I think that's part of it. I don't think that's the whole explanation, but I think, I do think that Putin and a bunch of other members of his clique do have a strong sense of that they, that they're trying to write what they see as a historical injustice that these former Soviet republics are independent countries now. And I, I don't think it's just Ukraine. I think it's Belarus, it's Lafia, Lithuania, Estonia. It's the Slavic countries. They don't, I don't think they care about Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan that were Soviet republics. But the Slavish, countries in Europe is what they care about. I think that's part of it. I think that's part of the psychological motivation for Putin. But there's another one, which I think is pretty compelling also, which is that Ukraine immediately, as soon as they got out of the Soviet Union, they turned towards the West. And they've been trying to get into the European Union. They've been trying to get into NATO. They've been trying to build up connections to the West. And one of the things that has happened is that Ukrainian standards of living have gone up much faster than Russian standards of living. I mean, Russia is a kleptocracy. The Russian government is built on trying to make a few small

number of people wealthy by sort of, you know, commandeering the government and lining their own pockets from it. Russia has not done very well since the fall of the Soviet Union economically. People standards of living haven't gone up that much. But Ukraine has done better. And I think I've heard a number of people say, and I think this makes sense to me that the biggest threat you Vladimir Putin saw from Ukraine was that what if they succeed? What if they turn to the West? They embrace liberal democracy, actual free elections, they clean up all the corruption, and they start prospering. What happens then? Do the Russian people start going, well, why are they prospering and we're not?

And the answer is they've got an open political system that's operating much more cleanly than ours is. then they start asking questions about the Russian government. So I think for Putin, one of the big problems with Ukraine is that it was a good example of what can go right if you open up to actual democratic processes and you actually build connections to Europe, et cetera. And he didn't want that example there for the Russian people to see because then they'd be saying, why isn't Russia doing this? And of course, Putin can't do that because his regime is built on,

it's really corrupt and he can't clean it up that way. And I've heard reports that, you know, Russian soldiers who have been captured in Ukraine, one of the things astonishes them is that Ukraine has all these asphalt roads. You know, they grew up in some part of Central Russia where they've only seen dirt roads most of their life. And Ukraine has all these asphalt roads. They're just blown away. And, you know, the standard that Russian soldiers are really encountering a level of prosperity when they're looting Ukraine that they hadn't seen before. in Russia. So that's an argument, I think, is this probably part of it that Putin really doesn't

want a successful Ukraine because it's such a bad example for Russians about how they're kind of getting screwed over by their own situation. I think the NATO is, doesn't that happen? The NATO is part of it, but it's not, I don't think it's a huge part. I think, I mean, it's pretty clear NATO is, not itching to invade anywhere. And, you know, NATO is an annoyance to Putin because NATO is part of the reason you can't take Poland or Lafay, Lithuania, Estonia, because those are in NATO, Slovakia, et cetera. So in that sense, NATO is an annoyance to him because it's a block to him wanted to get what he wants. But I don't think he felt overwhelmingly threatened by NATO, as in NATO's going to invade or NATO's going to topple him, et cetera. The United States and

and the other NATO leaves Germany and France really haven't had much interest in, they haven't shown much interest that I'm aware of in toppling Putin or really even influencing the political situation in Russia. So I don't think it's a, I think the NATO thing is sort of a, you know, a misdirection by the Russians. I'm not sure that was the big issue. I think a much bigger issue is Ukraine wanted to join the European Union and become successfully part of that European trading bloc. and Russia having an example of success with a totally different system right on the doorstep. I would have assumed the NATO would be a bigger chunk of it, just in a sense of the influence and everything else that comes with being organized with that group of countries, which you could equate to prosperity and everything else.

So I just, with Russia, I would assume they don't want to have that on their front doorstep. Yeah, they don't. I mean, I'm not, I don't want to underplay NATO. It's an annoyance that it is implicitly something they don't want on their doorstep. But I don't think they felt that was an existential threat that justified starting a war over it. I don't think that was their main motivation for invading Ukraine or starting the war. I think that, yes, they would rather NATO wasn't there. And certainly, you know, Putin, you know, if you're going to believe the reports, you know,

Trump certainly tried to undermine NATO. We have reports from Trump's former aides saying that he was talking about that if he'd won a second term, he would have pulled the United States out of NATO, which would have caused NATO to collapse. And, you know, I don't know how much you want to connect the dots, but, you know, the the only thing Trump asked for in the Republican platform to change was he wanted the Republicans had a plank in the platform in 2016 saying the supported Ukraine against Russia and he made him take it out. So Trump clearly was not a big fan of NATO or support for Ukraine. Now, you know, people on the left will say, you know, Trump is working for Putin.

Putin certainly would have liked to see NATO fall apart. And if you want to believe Putin bought Trump or influence Trump, then clearly Putin was trying to undermine NATO. But I don't think NATO was the main reason for invading Ukraine. I don't think it was even, I'm not sure it was even the fourth reason for invading Ukraine. That's, you know, you've said a lot. But Trump is saying he doesn't want in there that they'll back Ukraine. That's interesting.

Well, that's where you got to follow the, see, I'm going to go back into Ukrainian politics for a second. In 2004, there was an election in Ukraine and a guy named Yanukovych, Victor Yanukovych, seemed to win the election. But his opponent got poisoned during the campaign and almost died, but he survived. But then it came out that there's a whole lot of evidence that the vote was rigged. And so there were massive demonstrations against Yanukovych. And they oust him and his opponent takes over his president and serves his presidency. And his opponent, Yonukovych had been very much pro-Russian. He wanted Ukraine to be an ally of Russia.

And then Yonukovych gets ousted and they elect this other guy, Yushchenko. And he tries to start the process of getting Ukraine into the EU, get Ukraine into NATO, et cetera. It's a long process. So he just starts it. But then in 2010, Yonukov, runs for president again in Ukraine. And this time he hires a guy named Paul Manafort, who was an American politician. He'd worked for Nixon and stuff like that.

He was a Republican political activist. He was just one of the professional guys who did political campaigns for Republicans. He gets hired by Yanukovych. And he totally remakes Yanukovych's image as he turns him into a real politician. He had been a horrible politician. He had no charisma or whatever. So Manafort does that. And then Yanukovych wins.

in 2010 with Paul Manafort's help. And then Yanukovych starts to say, oh, we're going to orient Ukraine towards Russia again. We're going to stop the process to join NATO. We're going to stop the process to join the EU. And the Ukrainians rise up and they oust Yanukovych in 2014. They throw him out with another revolution. And he flees to Russia. Those 2014, Paul Manafort is now out of a job. So he goes to the United States. And in 2016, he pops up as Donald Trump's campaign manager. And he said he didn't want Trump to pay him anything. He didn't need any money. He was doing it for free.

And the only thing, and Manafort is the one that requested on Trump's behalf that the support for Ukraine against Russia be taken out of the Republican platform. And so that was the only change that the Trump campaign asked for in the platform was they said take out support for Ukraine against Russia. And then there's also evidence that's come out that Manafort was during the campaign was passing election demographic data along to a Russian billionaire who's close to Putin and has been connected to the Russian intelligence services, Oleg Deripaska. So there's some interesting connections there. I'm not going to say I know what's going on there.

I'm just going to say there's some interesting connections there. As me and a few of my buddies would say, they're playing on a different level, right? you hear the stories and you go, well, you can kind of do A plus B equals maybe C, but like they're just playing a different game. Like to me, like,

you know, like I have nothing in me that wants to be the prime minister of Canada. I just, I can't imagine the hoops and, you know, the people and the pressures that come with it in American politics. Like you're basically doing the biddings of, uh,

well, I mean, we've talked about it now, corporations. Like you're, you're basically being influenced heavily, not by what the, people want anymore by what the corporations want, which they can influence.

You know, in your, in the history of the world, what, you know, in the United States has obviously been a superpower now for some time, but in the history of the world, what has been maybe some of the civilizations that have been able to pass down through generations, this power, this, this, the ability to hold together a society? without it falling apart on itself. Like obviously Rome comes to mind. Right. But is there other ones that did it well?

And did they do it the same way, Paul? Or, you know, like, I mean, you go far enough back. You get into monarchies and all that jazz. But like. Well, I mean, the big difference is, of course, is that, I mean, the United States is the oldest republic, continuous existing republic in the world. So republics are a new thing. You know, I mean, the entire thing with, you know,

Democratic elected governments and whatever, that's the last 200 years, 250, you know, 40 years. Before that, it was all monarchies. And they have a very different dynamic, right? They have a very different way of holding power. Because a lot of about a monarchy, a lot of it is that you'll have a very, a really strong ideology that says that, for instance, you'll have a religion that supports the government. So the Catholic Church in the Middle Age just says, you know, God wants this person to be king. In China, the emperor has the mandate of heaven. You know, in Muslim Empire, he's the deputy of Muhammad. So you have a religion that convinces people that God or the gods or whatever the religion says want this government and power.

And that's a really powerful thing for getting people to follow that religion. But then you also have, you create hierarchies and you concentrate wealth in a small number of people so that they can control the government and basically just sort of, you know, rotate through the government. And the government doesn't have to answer to the people. It just answers to the small elite, the aristocracy in Europe or the, or the aristocracy in Mandarin class in China, et cetera. So there's all sorts of ways you try to boost your legitimacy by getting people to simply find it unthinkable to think of any other alternative government. The gods don't want this government. They don't want anything else. They don't even think about it.

The aristocrats have so much wealth that we're not even on the same level as they are, don't even think about it or, you know, et cetera. So you just find all these sorts of ways to cut off any thought that you could have it differently. right. And all that changed with republics and the, you know, the age of revolutions in the late 1700s and early 1800s. And suddenly you've got all these Republican governments and movements of the people and nationalism, et cetera. And that changed the game. And I think it's still playing out with republics. How do you get that kind of longevity, right? The United States is sort of an outlier. I mean, France had a revolution 17 to 9, but they're on their six. the republic right now. You know, they've had six different constitutions. They've tried six different times. They've had a couple empires in there too. But the United States just keeps plugging along as this, you know, this republic. And it's an interesting question of what have been the real pillars that are holding up the United States and are those eroding? And I think there's a real question now is, I think for a long time, the United States had a pretty small Overton window.

a pretty small set of ideas that were acceptable to talk about, Democrat or Republican, they stayed within a pretty small range. And I think that's blown apart in the last 20 years. And people are looking way farther right and way farther left than they ever did before. And it's partly because what we were talking about earlier with people are getting their news from different sources and they're occupying different realities. And I think a big part of a republic is you have to occupy us, you have to get the majority of the population to be occupying a pretty coherent,

reality. I'll have to agree on what reality is. And I don't know what's going to happen in the United States, but I'm not, I'm not that optimistic, given that we can't even agree on what reality is. So when you say you're not that optimistic, you envision then tough times ahead. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I think we're probably, you know, we talk about how crazy it's been, you know, the last three, four years of pandemic and, you know, Trump and all the rest and, um, and, uh, you know, the economy crashing during the pandemic and, and all that. Um, I think we're probably going to get crazy political fringe movements and, um, economic swings and protests in the streets like Black Lives Matter, et cetera. We're going to have a lot of that for, I would guess, another decade.

Um, because we have to figure out a new thing we all agree on, a new place. that most Americans can say, okay, we can all agree on this. And I think we're torn apart in a number of different ways right now, and that's not possible. And I don't know, it's possible that we'll never get that back. And I could see the United States, you know, collapsing, breaking up, et cetera, or it's possible that we'll figure it out. But I think it's going to take at least 10 years before we get anywhere. Well, let's slide then into the Crude Master, the final five brought to you by Crude Master. It's changed from five questions to the last five minutes. And you've given me a question.

I've changed it because I, I really like what you just said there, right? Over the next decade, we have to decide what we all agree on. Yeah. There has to be something that we all agree on. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could sort of, I mean, the United States has had moments like this in the past. You look at the 1890s, the progressive era. There's all sorts of conflict.

And then we sort of all agreed on a new set of rules. And you look at the depression and there's all sorts of people who believe in all sorts of different things and embracing fascism and communism all that. But we finally sort of came to a consensus again. And you know, you had sort of peace throughout the late 40s and 50s. And then you have all the upheaval of the 60s and we're all disagreeing about all sorts of stuff. And then we sort of came to a consensus again by about the 1980s. What was the consensus consensus in the 1980s? Well, first of all, you sort of.

sort of things like feminism that emerged in the 50s and 60s were really, you know, it was really a lot of conflict in the 60s was about that. A lot of it was about the civil rights movement. We passed a bunch of laws like the Civil Rights Act that, that, you know, gave African Americans better rights, better voting rights, et cetera. And then, you know, the culture sort of got used to the ideas of things like feminism and what have you. And so those stopped being touch points. And you could, you could argue it was partly just aging out, right? That the older generation resisted that stuff and they died out and the younger generation all embraced it. So they all agreed again. But I think it's more that, you know, the 60s was a decade of us just sort of working it

out. We had to argue about it. And it felt in the 60s like the world was coming apart, right? There were riots outside the Democratic National Convention in 68 and you had the Vietnam War movement and you had the civil rights movement and people are, you know, Kennedy and Kennedy and MLK are getting assassinated and, you know, and, you know, it felt like everything has fallen apart. But by the, you know, the late 70s or 80s, we're sort of all, we've got a consensus again and we're sort of plowing along until, you know, I think now. It's interesting. I just, I'm trying to figure out then what we have to get past in order. to get along, right?

And then I go like, what is actually getting along, right? Like I thought we were getting along quite fine until, I don't know, maybe three years ago. I mean, COVID really, really blew apart some people. Maybe Donald Trump blew apart some people in the United States. Maybe that's the beginning of it. Whatever it is, there becomes a point now where you have more and social media plays into this, Paul, a lot. But like, okay, so what can we all agree on?

Does it have to be an idea? Like, does it have to be like the democratic process is right? Or does it have to be something way more slim, right? Like, I don't know. I don't know. Freedom. That's it. I mean, just freedom.

Yeah. I think what's interesting is that, you know, Donald Trump is in the United States, but there have been similar things, you know, with Brexit in England and with, you know, the politicians have sort of emulated Trump in Hungary and Poland. et cetera. So it's not a, and, you know, you see the rise of Marine Le Pen in France and the, the, what's going on in Italy. And it, so I think Trump is, is, it's not just Trump. I think he's a symptom of a larger break. And I think it's partly that you're seeing, you know, over, since the, since the 60s, we've sort of been marching along with, you know, women's rights and, and, and, and, and,

trying to overcome racism and gay rights, et cetera. And I think there's a point at which a certain segment of population is like, no, I don't want any of that. And I'm just digging in my heels. I'm done with that. And then we get the open argument. You know, we get the, you know, on the one hand, Black Lives Matter and then on the saying, you know, police should stop shooting African Americans. And then on the other hand, you get the Blue Lives Matter and now back to police, et cetera. and we're having all these arguments. But I think at bottom, what the arguments are about is, are we going to keep going on this path? We've been sort of moving along.

And then a certain group of people are saying, no, I don't like this path. I'm digging in my heels right now. And that's, and, you know, in the United States, you see a lot of right-wing politicians saying, oh, we're anti-woke. And woke is just a collective term for all those things they don't like, like gay rights, feminism, you know, African-American rights, Black Lives Matter. But is that what it is? Or is the woke more on the lines of...

Because maybe I'm just interpreting it wrong, but when I watch it, I don't see... Well, in fairness, I'm watching from afar again. But what I see isn't that they're against gay rights or Black Lives Matter or all... Like, a bunch of that. It's that the indoctrine... Being told what to think is really the root problem.

Or maybe, am I saying that right? I think that's two sides of the same coin. I mean, yes, they are resenting being told what to think because they feel like the sort of political correctness, et cetera, saying, no, you can't think that anymore. But the things that they want to think that they're being told they can't think, it's because they disagree with a larger culture on what to think about those things. So, you know, and I'm not saying each person is all on the same issues. But I think, you know, if you really agree with the Black Lives Matter movie, you're not going to worry about people saying, oh, you should agree with Black Lives Matter. You're going to say, okay, whatever.

Yeah, but you can agree with Black Lives Matter, right? Black Lives Matter and the protests, but you can disagree with how they went about parts of it and destroying cities and everything else. Oh, absolutely. You can disagree with that. Absolutely. But I think that the resentment of the sort of, you know, I'm not politically correct. I'm anti-woke, et cetera. the critical race theory is that they really, and the one hand they're saying, I don't want to be told what to think, but they're saying that because they don't like the content of what their opponents are suggesting. That might be true on the political level,

but from just people level, I don't know. I don't think people like being told over and over and over and over again what they have to think. And that isn't to say certain laws shouldn't come into place. That isn't to say that certain things shouldn't happen.

But being told what to think, but I don't know, maybe that's been happening for the history of time. And it's just, I'm at a certain stage in my life and other people are a certain stage in their life. And that's where we are. But there's parts of this, Paul, that don't feel right. They just are like, I don't like that, right? Like, I take, for instance, I bring back Ottawa. I'll take Ottawa here. because the one thing about Ottawa that is steadfast is I was there.

I got to see everything. Our prime minister when Black Lives Matter happened in the middle of the pandemic, went and took a knee with everybody protesting in the middle of Ottawa. Okay, sure. He would not meet with the people in Ottawa when the truckers went there, even though it galvanized an entire country. Tons of people supported it. A crazy amount of people supported it.

I saw it on the highways all the way through there. And you go, so why? is one idea, have to be right, forced, hard, hard, no matter what they do. They burn down a city. They don't talk about that. They just talk about Black Lives Matter being correct, and Black Lives Do Matter and whatever. Truckers go there are beyond peaceful, but they get labeled something, and that's how the media sticks to it.

The Prime Minister will not acknowledge them, will not meet with them, calls them extremists, and then brings in, you know, laws to push them out. It's very, it is very black and white. And that's where people, I just go calm with people like myself go. Like it's very evident what's being pushed and what's not allowed. And to me, that's right there is the crux of the issue. It's like, why do we have leaders like that? But that might come back to corporations and how they push and everything else.

But that goes on to our media and how it's being controlled. And once again, I'm speaking towards Canada at this point because the United States, I can't even speak to half the time because, I mean, it's so big, so diverse. There's so much going on there. But what happens there filters up here. And we see it firsthand over and over and over again. Sure. Whether we're talking Black Lives Matter or other things.

Yeah, no, I mean, I don't know about the Ottawa trucker's thing that wasn't covered in the United States very much. So I mean, I know what it was, but I can't speak to how it was covered in Canada or how the prime minister responded to it because I just don't know. But I would say that in this, an interesting, I mean, you mentioned the diversity of the United States, and I would totally agree with that as a historian. I would say that, you know, you always have to recognize there are lots of people who have different motivations. So on the one hand, there are people in the United States who just don't want to be told what to do, just as, you know, what to think exactly as you're saying. But there are, there is a significant movement in the United States who are using that same. argument to push a really different agenda. There's a movement in the United States called the Christian nationalist movement.

I don't know if you're aware of it. But they basically argued that the United States was founded on Christian principles in spite of the First Amendment. And they're arguing that the United States laws must be based on their vision of Christianity. And they are, they want to, they're sometimes called Dominion, also. They want Christians to have dominion over the United States and controlling the, what they call the seven hills of cultural influence, which is like entertainment, media, politics, corporations, et cetera. I don't remember all seven of them. But they want to

structure the United States around a real right-wing version of Christianity. And they will talk about, oh, we don't agree with wokeness, et cetera. You can't tell us what to think. But this but there's part of a larger agenda there, which is that they want, for instance, you probably haven't heard about the masterpiece cake shop case. It's a legal case. Some cake shop in Colorado, the guy, two men came in. They were getting married and they wanted the guy to make a cake. And he said, no, I won't make a cake for you because you're gay. And I don't agree with that. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court, whether the bakery could refuse to serve gay men. And it turns out the Supreme Court said, yes, they could refuse to serve gay men.

But that's part of a larger issue, the groups that backed that lawsuit, et cetera, they don't just want to not be told they have to, you know, serve gay customers. They actually have a larger agenda, which is they don't want homosexuality to be allowed. They don't want gay marriage. They don't, you know, they're pretty open about that. And so, you know, there's a spectrum, as you were saying. There's a whole bunch of people. Some are just saying, I don't want to be told what to say or whatever.

And some have a much larger agenda. And, you know, they're all over the place. You know, people, everybody has their own response based on their own. But there's a larger, there's a larger agenda to a lot of different things, including probably Black Lives Matter and everything else. Oh, yeah. Going with the cake matter, which is an interesting one, that, that's an interesting case. I'm sure when that came across the docket for the judge, he's like the what now.

But hearing that, I go, it's interesting. Like something like that, in my brain, I go, oh, yeah, it's totally his right to refuse. Even though I don't like it, right? Like I'm like, whatever, right? Right. It should be his right to refuse. But as a society, like the people, now I'm talking, not the government, it's also society's job that over time, that just, you know, business goes elsewhere, right?

Like somebody's going to find a way to be inviting of those people and they're going to find it and away it goes and there's going to be business prosper off of that and other businesses are going to die out if they don't get with the times and everything else. I don't know if I'm saying this right. So bear with me. But like when government tries to be like, no, you have to allow, not that they did, but this is what you have to teach. This is how you have to teach it.

This is what we're saying. I feel like that is really, well, that's why you have a part of the population. That's just like, I don't like how this feels. I don't want this. And then we equate that to. things that aren't the same thing. And I go, like, over time, don't the people decide what is going to happen in society, or am I wrong on that? Well, yes and no. I mean, the reason that case, the masterpiece cake case, there were a couple things going on there.

One is that the people backing the baker basically were saying, if you have a religious justification for it, you can do anything. If it goes against your religion, you can refuse to do anything. And this really hits a big, enormous issue in the United States history, which is that for a long time, the United States had the Jim Crow system in the South where white businesses simply refused to serve black people. And often it was just private businesses, but it established this enormous system in the south of systematic discrimination.

was backed up by a certain branch of Christianity, Southern Baptists, who really said, you know, God wants this racial, racially segregated hierarchy. God doesn't want racial mixing, et cetera. And, you know, the United States stepped in and said, no, this kind of discrimination is wrong. And the Civil Rights Act. No kidding. Well, and I mean, when you bring up that one, I'm like, everything I just said goes out the window, because I'm like, of course you want the government to step in and do it as right. Right.

Right. And so it's an interesting question because, what the i mean what a lot of the people who didn't like that cake decision said was basically if you say this guy can refuse to serve gay a gay couple because his religion disagrees with them can he say he won't serve black people because his religion says he shouldn't and can he say he won't serve you know does this legalize discrimination for anything as long as you can say your religion says that um and and there's no easy answer to that one because yeah that's that's that's that's a full five hours later podcast and I don't think we solve anything right I've I've you know Paul I I I've really enjoyed this you've you've

given me a lot to think about and I'm I'm hoping you've enjoyed it as well because I'm certain we started in one area and we've we've definitely traversed into different areas and the United States has come up an awful lot regardless uh I've really enjoyed having you on and and and, you know, you being open with the way my brain thinks and trying to discuss some of these topics. It's been my pleasure. It's been great. All right.

Well, I appreciate it. And normally I wouldn't cut it off, but I got a dentist appointment to go to. So it's time to get these pearly whites looking purlier, I guess. All right. Well, I hope that all goes well for you. Thanks, Paul. I do appreciate you coming back on. All right.

My pleasure. Have a good one, Sean. Hey, thanks for tuning in today, folks. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Hopefully you got some plans for the weekend, maybe getting together with family, that type of thing. It is Easter. So all the best to you have this weekend.

We will catch up with you Monday. Yes, Monday, back on. I believe I got Vance Crow coming your way. I'm excited about it. Anytime I sit down with Mr. Vance, we seem to get into a lot of different topics. He's a very knowledgeable guy. And of course, he does his own show,

The Vance Crow podcast, which I've been on recently, if you're wanting to hear more about Ottawa. that type of thing he had me on recently and you can just search the Ants Crow podcast. Gee, like the old mouth, you'd think I've been drinking all day or something. I promise I'm just sitting here trying to read off some things I got written down on the computer and it doesn't want to seem to happen right now. If you're looking to support the podcast, like I said at the start, the Patreon account link is in the show notes.

I appreciate anything and everything you guys give along with your time, some money is I always, you know, hats off to all you folks that support every which thing I do. Truly do, I don't have the words for it, to be honest. It's pretty cool to be supported by all of you wonderful listeners. And if you've listened this far, please enjoy your weekend. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up to you Monday.