The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – My Recap Thoughts on The Plot To Save South Africa Interview

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

My Recap Thoughts on The Plot To Save South Africa Interview

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, and a side show we're doing here where we're testing out some things where I'm going to do a recap or a talk about, as it were, a talk about, maybe that's the thing to call it, where I'm talking about prior guests we have on the show in an interview and sharing kind of some post-show afterthoughts that I had about the show and some of my impressions, et cetera, et cetera, and kind of summation of what I thought about the show. Sometimes after a show and before a show, there are moments of what we call in the green room with the author or the guests or whoever we're interviewing. And a lot of that doesn't make the interview or the recording. And sometimes after the show, when we're in the post-screen room, some of the most important conversations happen, and sometimes I'm sitting there going, God, I wish we'd captured this during the show.

And so those are sometimes things that bring an afterthought to my mind to the show that didn't get included or maybe aspects of the show that I think should be enhanced or accented or maybe encouraging people to go watch the original show, which is kind of what we have here. So we just had an amazing author on the show and a brilliant mind and some of the great stuff he put into it, Justice Malala and the book, The Plot to Save South Africa, The Weak Mandela, Adverted Civil War, and Forged New Nation. So what do we learn here? This is kind of that South Park moment of what do we learn here? The wrap up at the end of the show. And I was very impressed having Justice on the show. He's a brilliant journalist, author, and mind on this moment.

But, you know, we touched a little bit about it on the show, and I wanted to accent it even more in my thoughts of it and why it's important. You know, Bobby Kennedy is probably one of my greatest heroes and important shapers of my thought process. His Day of Affirmation speech, his Ripples of Hope speech, ironically, for this show, we're in South Africa and he talked about apartheid and some of the struggles

that were going on in America. But one lesson that comes from this show that we just had, and I hope you go and watch that episode, is we need to learn to elect politicians and to subscribe to messages that bring us together as humanity, that lift us as a human race, as a human people, as the propagation of a species that take us to the next level, that bring us together. And in his book on the Nelson Mandela almost civil war and how he rises and shapes himself as a leader to bring people together. And people in the public eye in South Africa

are presented with two different ideals. One, civil war. Let's all hate each other and go at this together in violence and probably what would be a very dark place in the history of humanity in South Africa. And instead, they find a leader in Mandela who brings them together, who says, hey, we need to bind ourselves together as a people and not separate ourselves. The history lessons through eons of time are that politicians use divisiveness.

They use straw men. They go, the immigrant over there is the one who's stealing all your stuff. Meanwhile, they're picking your pockets. And the politicians are picking your pockets. You know, divide and conquer has been the thing that politicians have used for eons of

time oh the other person is the bad person it's not you it's not us it's it's them and that's what's always been the thing that destroys humanity that takes us back to cause us back to the darkest parts of our nature and a character And we need to elect people. We need to adhere to politicians that are actively working to bring us together and not divide us. You know, it's interesting. We talked about on the show how we still, to this day in America, we have a huge white nationalist problem where we still have these terrorists, these white nationalist terrorists who will go and kill people hoping to start what they think is a race war. And they're trying to reflect on humanity, their ugliness, their hate.

And this is why it's so important that as Americans, that as human beings around the world, that we try and weed out hate, that we try and use our power to lift all boats, to progress humanity to the next level. And it's not in separating each other. It's not in working against each other. It's not in going to our tribal nature where we separate ourselves into tribes and we go, oh, our tribe is better than your tribe. It's when we get together as a people, whether it's a nation, we separate ourselves into tribes and we go, oh, our tribe is better than your tribe. It's when we get together as a people, whether it's a nation, whether it's an ideal, whether it's a race, whether it's whatever it is, we come together and we said, let's all work

together. Rising tide lifts all boats. Let's become better together instead of sitting and fighting each other and separating each other and blaming each other for our problems. Let's work together. And I think that's an important aspect of what we need to look at in ourselves. We talked about on the show, one of the biggest problems is why do we have to go to the darkest moments of our history? Why do we have to go to the ugliness of where people are murdered, where lives are changed, where families are destroyed,

where people are taken from us, where dreams are shattered. And, and, and we have to go to the darkest despondent moments for, uh, leaders to rise among us and people to come emerge from the darkness and go, Hey, why can't we all get along as, as people I think it's important that we learn from that. Like, hey, man, why don't we just not let it get so dark? Why don't we step forth now in the moments of prosperity, in the moments of goodness, in the moments where everybody's bellies are full and go, let's keep this going.

Let's keep this good thing going. Let's get to the next level. And let's make peace. Let's build each other together to go to the next point. Another one of Bobby Kennedy's famous quotes was, each time we turn our heads the other way, when we see the law flouted, when we're intolerant and we know it's wrong, but we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we're too busy. We're too frightened or we fail to speak up or speak out. We strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice. And we're seeing that now in today's world. Donald Trump

recently, you know, held a rally in Waco, Texas, where he's bringing up hate again, where he's posting images and texts of violence against people who are investigating or prosecuting, trying to hold the constitutional boundaries of what this country was built on, on the rule of law, that no one man is above the law and that people need to be held accountable. And if there isn't, we fall into civil war. We fall into darkness. We fall into, um,

chaos and madness. And we fight each other when we shouldn't fight each other. So I hope that's the lesson people learn when they read books like this. When we have authors on the show, when we highlight these stories of history that are important and they're valid you know it's 10 to too many times especially with some of our younger generation people go oh history's boring history's oh it's you know whatever it happened a long time ago it will never happen again no it doesn't we have a reoccurring

theme and that's why those things that man never learns from his history and is doomed to repeat it are, you know, things do we keep from going to this moment again, this darkness of an assassination, this darkness of humanity, where it has to be so ugly that it forces us to look in the mirror. Why don't we look in the mirror at times of prosperity, look in the mirror of better times where things are going good, where, where we go, Hey, we have an issue. We need to fix it. Let's work together to fix this issue instead of why does it have to be people marching in the street? Why does it have to be a man or woman killed? Why does it have to be dream shattered families destroyed people? You know, why do we have to reach, you know, there was the, um, the gentleman who was assassinated, um,

with the knee on the neck, George, um, and then the last name escapes me, but George Floyd killing. Why does it have to be that? Why does it have to be the ugliness of that moment that has to make us face reality and go, Jesus, we should be better people to each other. Jesus, we should stop this. Why does it have to be that moment? Why can't we do that in moments of prosperity and constantly work together to make things better? Let's try and do that in the future. And I think that's the lesson you learn from authors like this and books like this and different points of history like this. Let's be better people now. Let's not wait

until it's ugly. Let's not turn a blind eye because we're too busy or we're busy watching the Kardashians or CSI or some other silliness that we're using to turn our attention away from the important stuff. Yeah, there's a time and place for, I suppose, tuning out and entertainment, but there's a time and place where if we don't deal with these problems now,

we will be doomed to deal with them later at the most ugliest points of human nature and the most ugliest points of history. And let's not do this anymore. Let's move forward and progress as human species and as a humanity and as one people instead of separated into the ugliness of these tribes that fight each other.

Anyway, be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And hopefully we all learn and get better and progress this. Our people better. And we're better people as examples to each other and to our families and to the children we raise. Thanks for tuning in, folks. I appreciate you guys always being a part of the show. See you next time.