Speaker 1: Let's go next to Ford from Louisiana. Ford, what's going on? Do you have power?
Speaker 3: Yes, I do can hear it. Yes, I can. All right, wonderful. Yeah, I just we evacuated to
Alabama with some family and I just got back today to my apartment
in Baton Rouge right next to LSU. So we have power, OK? A lot of my buddies don't. I know one
of my buddies stayed over by roommate. So a lot of people still don't have power here. Yeah, I'm from
the North Shore right north of New Orleans, and that place got devastated. So like the lakefront
was flooding and most people still have power. So it's pretty crazy scenes over there. Well, glad
Speaker 1: to hear you've got power. I know many people still
don't. And hopefully they'll get it back soon. Speaker 3: Yeah, so my question has to do with,
I guess, cultural divides in the US. I think that the largest cultural divide
in the U.S. has to be between urban and rural populations. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 1: Um. Yeah. I mean, that's a I hesitate to say that's the biggest.
There is a huge cultural divide between urban and rural. The question is whether
it's because of that or whether it's that more conservative people are choosing to live, really,
whereas more liberal people are choosing, you know, it's kind of a chicken egg thing. But I
think you can find a divide there for sure. Speaker 3: OK, I think I agree with that,
so I feel as though people in rural areas of the country and a lot of right wingers probably in
general, than to base their politics on personal experience. And I think it's fine to integrate
some level of your personal life experience in your politics, but I think their politics
tends to be completely based on that. Yeah. So the issue that arises from that is that I
think people in rural communities tend to be extremely similar to one another in general.
So the life experiences of these people have are informed by people who are extremely similar to
them. So it kind of feels like a feedback loop because there's like a good solution to this.
Speaker 1: The solution, I don't know. But I think you're spot on, which is
we we might hope that people use empiricism rather than anecdote in order to inform themselves.
Given that a lot of people are going to use anecdote in personal experience,
it would be better if people's personal experience was more varied. But when everybody you're around
is the same as you, it's likely that your personal experience is merely going to be
signal boost that. I think. I think that there's certainly a lot there's a lot to that. I mean,
the solution would be. Finding a way I don't I don't think the solution is to dump rural people
into cities and think that that's going to magically solve the problem. I think it's
actually in getting people to think empirically rather than anecdotally from a young age. So it
goes back to teaching critical thinking. If from from sixth grade on, you are told
anecdotes don't tell the story. And here's how you actually figure out what's going on. I think
that that's the best possible thing we could do. Speaker 3: OK, that's a good point. Do you think
they're giving these people like broadband infrastructure and better Internet would
kind of help them expose themselves to to more ideas, maybe through the Internet?
Speaker 1: Or I would love to say yes, except we know that for a lot of these right wingers,
the Internet is where they're getting radicalized. So it's hard like I mean, at the big picture,
I want high speed Internet for everybody. That's that's an infrastructure thing. That's an access
thing. At the same time, I know that the echo chambers online reinforce a lot of the beliefs
people have rather than disabusing them. So it's not clear to me that it's some kind of panacea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good point, I actually don't even consider that, you know,
all this misinformation for a country like these Facebook groups is depressing.
Speaker 1: Depressing. Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And,
you know, I know a lot of these people and I'm from the Deep South, so I feel there are a lot of
these people. I know they're not necessarily bad people, but just when that's what you grow up with
and that's all you know, that's all you really know. This is hard to do anything about it for.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, how do you lack any kind of very stigmatizing Southern accent?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm from the Deep South, my dad doesn't really have an accent, my mom has a has a
very large accent. But I think I think I've always been on the Internet a lot ever since I was pretty
young. Yeah. A lot of voice that I heard just ended up being typical American voices. So even
though I know a lot of people with harsh country accents, most of my buddies don't have like these
sorts of accents. It's not as common as maybe it was. I'm also not from like a super rural area,
so I could explain it to. All right. Speaker 1: Well, that's it seems like a
reasonable explanation. I appreciate it. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you so much for
taking my call, David. All right. Speaker 1: Stay safe there. Ford
from Louisiana. We are having really good luck today with calls. I really don't want to jinx it
because that would just be bad. By the way, I just is just a note to people on discord
trying to call me directly when we're taking live calls or sending me direct messages. It'll
just get you blocked. It's not going to get you on the show. We have a queue and we go through
the queue and that that's the only way to get on. So please, let's let's ease up on that.
Let's go to Paul Garcia from Mexico. Paul from Mexico.
You're on the air. Speaker 3: If you want
to make a graph here, the. Now, in the movies, when Sam was just the S&P, the employee is funded
by the ABC Oil. Implicit in is when I was Speaker 1: there watching problems, yeah,
it said when when time is zero, X is twenty four, they seem to be watching math videos while waiting
on hold for me. That's too bad because I would have loved to have spoken to someone from Mexico.
Let's go to Christian from California next. Christian, you're on the air, I guess. Are you
surrounded by BS? What is that noise. Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I'm walking
through a park and there is at least blower. I'm going to try something.
Speaker 1: This is how our leaf blowers, even legal, quite frankly,
it is one of the most oppressive noises. Speaker 3: You know, your guess is as
good as mine. My question for you today was and this current day and political landscape, I mean,
do you think it's even possible for even party to get a filibuster proof majority?
Speaker 1: I think it would be very tough. I think it would be very tough. I think that
you would need to see I mean, like think as crazy as the Trump administration was,
Democrats barely even took the Senate. I think it would be really, really tough. And part of
that is because of how, you know, when we say a state is really red or really blue,
often what we mean is that it's like 60 to 40 percent, one or the other. You know,
it's like it's the margin is still not that big, even sometimes 58, 42. I think a filibuster
proof majority would be really tough right now. Speaker 3: So given that, I mean, are we sort of
doomed for incrementalism for the foreseeable future? It's kind of hard to say, oh, God.
Speaker 1: The dog and now with the audio's cut. Speaker 3: There is time for, I guess,
democracy as a Speaker 1: Christian,
I lost about 15 seconds there and now there's a dog barking, so I'm going to let you go, OK?
OK. All right. It's too crazy, it's just it's way too crazy there. Let's do this just because
people are getting all fired up from the leaf blower. Let's take a quick break.
But I'm going to go right back to calls in a moment. So don't hang
up if you're holding on to talk to me. And I will be right with you. Stand by