Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Cannabis Politics and Conspiracy Theories in Colorado Springs
Could your city council be sabotaging economic progress? We tackle this bold question by examining the political maneuvering surrounding the cannabis industry in Colorado Springs. With the passage of Ballot Measure 300, recreational cannabis taxation is set to boost the local economy, yet restrictive zoning laws pose a significant hurdle. This episode sheds light on the ongoing tug-of-war between voter mandates and city council actions, fueled by the stark contrast in campaign spending between anti- and pro-cannabis groups.
Why are some Colorado communities clinging to "cannabis-free bubbles," and what does this mean for access to emerging therapies? We confront the cultural and political resistance to cannabis and psychedelic therapies, focusing on the impact of these restrictions on veterans and first responders. As the state transitions from medical-only to recreational cannabis sales, we explore the tension between local ordinances and state licensing, noting how personalities like RFK might influence this evolving landscape.
Has misinformation warped our view of global threats? We unravel the birth of conspiracy theories and the shifting perception of Russia, probing how narratives have been shaped by propaganda and political agendas. This episode critiques the Trump administration's appointments, highlighting the prioritization of loyalty over democratic values. By analyzing these complex issues with a critical lens, we offer insights into the growing polarization in American politics and the moral dilemmas faced by those in power. Join us as we navigate these intricate topics with insight and candor.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to Left Face, the podcast that discusses veterans issues and political topics in the Colorado Springs and greater Colorado area. I'm your host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with my co-host, adam Gillard. Good morning, adam. Hey Dick, how you doing? Buddy, I'm doing great. We have some really interesting topics to talk about this week, because this last week has been full of headlines that are politically related and they responsible rec movement here in Colorado Springs and we talked about the fact that there were two ballot measures that were on the ballot regarding cannabis here in the local economy and those results are in. So, adam, tell us about the results and what does it mean to the industry here in the city.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so before we roll into that, it's funny that you mentioned that I've been doing a lot of talking about it. I was talking with an interview when I first got the word that it passed Saturday or Sunday and he's like, you know, you don't have any like stake in this, like why do you do this? And like I never stopped and thought about it, I was kind of caught off guard. I was like like I don't know, just kind of help the community man. Yeah, like it just kind of makes sense to like do something for everybody that everybody will have a positive effect for.
Speaker 2:And you know, like, like the whole point of this, uh, you know, this initiative was to tax recreational here. If you don't use recreational you don't get taxed. Yep, but we keep that money here locally because the cannabis is already here locally and we just keep the tax money and do good things here in our community. And that's the whole point of 300. Yes, and through all of the you know confusion that the city council tried to throw at these things, people passed 300 and it did not look great for a while but, like because the the the campaign against us was it was pretty hefty, but we got 300 passed and, more importantly not more importantly, just as importantly 2D failed.
Speaker 2:Yes, so just as important, yeah, just as important because, because you know that that is just a gross overreach of the government right there. So even if you don't agree with cannabis, I think it's important to note that, even if you don't agree with you know, passing the recreational side, people still did not want to see the government just kind of come in and like over-regulate something.
Speaker 1:And that I agree. That's what that was was an attempt to over-regulate. It was driven by purely by the city council and a small group of individuals that they say they're representing constituents that want them to push those measures forward, and that was very much a pet project of some folks inside of that body.
Speaker 2:Well, and they're not going to stop here. So we got 300 passed. So, like, once everything gets certified I think the last day to cure ballots was yesterday, last night, a wednesday night. So we're still kind of waiting on, like, the official official results to get certified and things like that, um, you know. But but once it does, you know, we have the capability to turn our medicinal stores into recreational stores. That greatly increases their foot traffic. Their revenue immediately starts flowing into the city that was just passed back in September, where you cannot have any kind of cannabis store, recreational store within a mile of schools, hospitals, homeless people, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think it's a moving target for them really, and that one mile is very far compared to most other zoning considerations right Right. Like tobacco and alcohol. Sales are like 100 feet or a couple hundred feet.
Speaker 2:And so with that one mile pretty much the entire Colorado Springs is off limits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the overlap of all the bubbles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way it overlaps and everything. It would be legal to sell it on Peterson. Pretty much that would be it. That's the only place where you could, in the middle of the flight line on Peterson. Yeah so you might see some crew chief setting that up.
Speaker 1:The only rec dispensary is at the gate of the military base. Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So another question that popped up, because when 300 passed, it passed with the language that 1,000 feet within schools. So now, since that's the most recent legislation passed, would that trump the city council's recent whatever.
Speaker 1:That was Right right.
Speaker 2:So does that reset it back to 1,000 feet versus a mile?
Speaker 1:I mean, this is the legalities of local politics are really interesting because, yeah, it comes down to, that was a voter-specified mandate. If you will, and it happened, you're right. At a later date You're right at a later date. So it's to me a voter-specified mandate should be more powerful than the movements of a body. Yeah, that the city or county would come up with. Right, If the voters vote for something, that should override anything that those chambers come up with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it kind of blows my mind how, when we look at the Chambers of Commerce here and the city council, why they fight this and why they don't want to have something coming in that they could easily regulate this and get more commerce here, fix our infrastructure it seems like a silly thing and I think people need to start looking at our city council members.
Speaker 1:This is kind of ridiculous that we have people trying to just kind of overcome or overthrow what the people want. I think that the city council would basically argue with you. Even though the vote for supporting legalization won, they would say the majority of people here don't want this. Even with the vote one week ago, that said the majority of people do want it, they would just say no, they don't.
Speaker 1:I don't believe you, that's not true and those numbers aren't true. And the 11th here. I got a statistic for you that I read the anti-cannabis campaign in Colorado Springs outspent the pro-cannabis campaign 11 to 1. Now we noted that on the show a couple times Like man. There's a lot more effort and money behind the anti-campaign and the pro pro campaign is kind of in sleeper mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you talk numbers wise, 11 to one is definitely you know David and Goliath lineup, but the voice of the people was clear that pro cannabis won the argument. However, as we know all things in politics, there's 11 times more money in the anti cannabis bucket still right now, today. It doesn't matter that what happened last week, that money's still sitting there and those you know city council folks are influenced by whoever's holding that pot of 11 times more money and I, you know that's that's really the root of it is is the. There is a cultural commitment to create some kind of bubble here. That is arbitrary, it's against what the people want, it doesn't align with the rest of the state and yet there is still this obstinate view that, like we are going to establish this cannabis-free bubble so we can raise children here, as though children don't exist anywhere else in the state of Colorado or something Right, and that cannabis just immediately disappears once you say you know bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, we made an ordinance right. Yeah, this you know, 20 mile stretch, you can't have it. Yeah, it burns as soon as you come in through that line, right um, and they're not going to stop there either.
Speaker 2:They're looking at pushing the same thing for uh psychedelic treatments, uh looking at uh mushroom therapy and things like that any natural medicine licensed facilities. They're trying to remove that. They're going to read that into the books at the end of the month.
Speaker 1:here Do the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where they're just going to try to take away, and this is the therapy versions of it, right?
Speaker 1:Not like a dispensary sales.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go buy some mushrooms and just go home and take drugs yeah. They try to clean up all that language too, but all the way up to like not even guided therapy. So it's just going to hinder a lot of our veteran community military or police first responders too. L teachers could probably benefit a lot from psychotherapy with mushrooms, they're stressed now, I think, to your end.
Speaker 1:there, though, adam, is that we don't know who all needs these types of treatments, and who all can benefit from it. We're still learning.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's an intention here to just completely shortcut the access, regardless of who could benefit from it. There's a belief that it can only be a bad thing to have in your community, that there's no possible way it could be helpful to people Like. That belief must reside within a movement. To shut the door on something before it's even been fully fleshed out or considered. Shut the door on something before it's even been fully fleshed out or considered right. If the if the intention is to just shut the door, then there's this.
Speaker 1:Again, it falls into the same thought bucket of cannabis must be bad, so all these other things are just an extension of that same type of behavior. Yeah, it comes from the same type of persona. We don't want those dirty hippies in our town, right, you know, and so I still have. We shut this down now, then we'll never have to entertain it Like we don't have to go through 10 years of wrangling like we did with cannabis. Let's just say all natural medicines, and that's what the document that we reviewed says. It just says this really broad, basically if it's not a pharmaceutical or you didn't buy it at Walgreens, don't put it in your body.
Speaker 2:Right in your body, right, I mean that's what the city council here is trying to promote straight against what rfk is going to put in this for us yeah, exactly, he's, like you know, raw mushrooms right, yeah, raw milk.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, he wants you to really experience the full everything nature has to offer her. So, and yeah, that's, you know well and you know that'll be the uh rfk is a democrat and if he, if he did do anything like that would be the complaint is that the hardcore conservative element would be like who let this freaking?
Speaker 2:Democrat in here.
Speaker 1:He's giving everybody drugs. You let a hippie in the White House. To that end. Rfk does have an arrest for possession of heroin in his criminal record, so I'm not mad at him about that. He knew what he was. Good talking point If vaccines are dangerous, heroin is not.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Raw milk and heroin are probably similar risk levels from our topic last week, I think.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I just think that's crazy, I guess and that will lead us into the rest of the conversation, but you know we'll talk about that in a minute, but that's the just proof that I don't know. There's certain special, special qualities about people that are being invited into the next administration and that's going to be our, our uh next topic. But RFK is like the perfect example of of where where we're about to see some really crazy things happen in the government. Right, well, we're I. You know we covered. We believed that.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, we thought that this uh cannabis local measure was probably going to fail because of the 11 to 1 spend, but it seems as though you know that it's passed, and so I saw a slip of paper in the front of an office at a dispensary that said we will, in capital letters, sell rec cannabis in April. Sign up here, you know, if you're, because people walk into stores here all the time and get turned away because they don't understand that it's medical only here Because we're in Colorado what do you mean? Medical only? And so they've got a signup list for all the people that walk in and get turned away. Leave your phone number and we'll call you so you can come right back to this store and buy your recreational cannabis. So that's cool.
Speaker 1:Um, there'll be, I think, some a little bit of social uh pushback and maybe some stores will. You stores will try to extend their license, even with ignoring that one mile bubble. Hopefully, the state is the one who's going to issue that license. Right, it's going to be the state cannabis control division that's going to issue a rec license to a current medical holder, and they usually I know that the licensing process requires, basically, you get your stack of papers from your lowest level all the way up to the state level, so you've got to go to your city and then your county and then the state. I would love to see the CCD basically waive the city level approval right and just say if you're already in an approved medical location.
Speaker 1:We're going to just go ahead and issue you that license because you conformed to all those rules when you got that one.
Speaker 2:So we're not going to, you know we're just going to go ahead and issue you the license, right?
Speaker 1:You know they have the ability to do that.
Speaker 2:Governor Polis did come out today in support of recreational. He says you know, colorado has always kind of been on the forefront of this and leading the way on it.
Speaker 1:It's kind of that's good news, archaic. Yeah, then that gives the director of that CCD some opportunity to make some decisions with some top cover and say, hey, we believe that this is the will of the people and that this is what the way this program is supposed to be executed. So that would be great. And if I had a chance to make a little political stink, if I was in one of those offices, I might do that just to upset the city council here um you know, if I had the position of authority to do that.
Speaker 1:I'd put sticks in their eyes all every chance I got, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean, you let your kids make choices and once they make bad choices, you gotta yeah, yeah, yeah so take that away from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say stop, stop it. What other funding can I interfere with that? You, you know you want we're going to just withhold the medical taxes as well. You guys aren't going to get anything until you comply with what your citizens want and just turn that spigot off and see what they think so you can push back. There's room to. You know, do a little bit of wrangling. So I'd like to see that, but nobody, nobody's going to do that.
Speaker 1:So and I was talking to somebody else and we'll we'll finish on this note the reason that 11 to one spend is there.
Speaker 1:And, and you know, if I was a cannabis store owner, you've got to consider how much money do I donate into this political process and what's my return on investment. And let's say, a store owner decides to put $10,000 in and, you know, pay for political advertisements. They're not for their store, it's just for the campaign and based on the margins of cannabis, you know how long does it take you to get back that $10,000 that you put out the door and will wreck sales with that? Increase your sales enough that you put out the door and will wreck sales? Would that increase your sales enough that you're going to get that return on investment quickly or even within this next year. Right, and I think there's quite a few small shops in the area that just said. You know, I don't know that wreck sales would really make much difference for me, right, and so the financial incentive to support the need wasn't necessarily there, because if you operate a store in Colorado Springs and not in Colorado Springs, then you just say, well, like it, doesn't matter it kind of balances out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so what would have seemed like where the anti-cannabis zealots will throw money at it because there's no return on investment for them. Ever Right, like they don't care. Every dollar burnt is burnt. Investment for them? Ever Right, like they don't care. Every dollar burnt is burnt, there's no comeback. But the businesses have to have a return on investment. Um, they can't just throw the money at it and say, well, I feel good, cause I donated to this cause. That doesn't work, right. But the anti-movement that's all they have is people that just say I like giving money to this cause, I hate cannabis and so I'll give you a thousand dollars. I don't care if you ever give it back, cause I don't want to see cannabis stores Like. My return on investment is not seeing a cannabis store as it, and I don't.
Speaker 1:I can't measure that you know, and so the donations are given freely, whereas from the other side of the industry side you can't responsibly do that. You have to come out of your own pocket to do that, and I think most places would just shut their store down here in Colorado Springs versus fork out a bunch of cash hoping that something happens right, yeah, yeah, cash out and try to get to the County line or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it wouldn't make sense to really double down on an effort here versus just closing down shop and operating somewhere else, right? So yeah, well, that's the cannabis ticket. Um, we think we're on the right side of that and the wreck is going to happen. And if you're from the local area, keep an eye out next year for all these medical stores maybe getting a chance to have a license for recreational cannabis. So if you're currently driving up to Manitou or, uh, palmer Lake, uh, you can maybe start looking for your local shops instead, right? So well, um, there's a nice kind of segue into, uh, the next topic that we're going to talk about, which is I was joking about hippies and stoners a minute ago and conspiracy theories is a big concern.
Speaker 2:I love conspiracies. Yeah, I love them.
Speaker 1:I like them too for the form of entertainment that they are right and honestly. Early days of the internet. Man, that was some of the cool stuff.
Speaker 2:I was trying to find like conspiracy theory. I would listen to InfoWars, alex Jones um Prison Planet, like all those things. I was deep into those things. But you get to a point where it's like either it's all true and we're effed, or it's not true. Or it's all entertainment and it's all entertainment and we can try to make an impact in our communities and try to better things here. Not worry about the deep state lizard people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll tell you, adam. But I do know a lot about the deep state lizard people.
Speaker 2:Yeah and and uh. I'll tell you I don't know a lot about the deep state lizard. You know a lot about them, right.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing. As long, uh, there's the, it's one of the, uh, like, there's no, there's no dangerous ideas, but I guess, uh, there, I'm sure there's like a Chinese proverb about, you know, fish swimming in water and like, if they're in clean water then they're a clean fish, but if they're in dirty water then the fish is full of dirt or something you are, the environment that you surround yourself with right and so what you were saying was if you listen to it too long, one day your brain breaks and everything that they said now makes sense because you heard it a thousand times, and it's not because it ever actually made sense, you just heard it enough that it's believable now right.
Speaker 2:And it's not because it ever actually made sense. You just heard it. Enough that it's believable, now right. And one thing I noticed is like you would hear the same thing from multiple sources, but those sources would just quote each other. They're circular, All circular, it's like well, yeah, I watched.
Speaker 1:We always wonder other than Russian intelligence units, where does the conspiracy is born? Where is it born? Right, and a lot of it's born in Moscow, but some of it's born out of our own minds. And so I got to watch a conspiracy theory be born this week like real time. I watched it. You know, start to crest the womb and come into the world and here's how that was vivid. But, thank you, it's exactly what happened. Guy on LinkedIn, always a right-wing rabble rouser, he understands that the algorithm likes controversy and he wants one million followers. So he just writes drivel nonstop. That's his job is to write bullshit on the internet. So he said hey, everybody, FEMA which FEMA is like the poster child for conspiracies, Not just recently.
Speaker 2:I'll go back to Katrina before.
Speaker 1:Everything shady, and I'll explain why that is the case in a minute, why fema gets the gets the naughty tag so often, right. But here again, example of why fema shows up in michigan and they said hey, we're gonna move a bunch of trucks and gear and supplies. This is all gonna be stored in like 18 wheeler trailers in this, in this compound. That's like an old air force base, that's kind of defunct. And they and they held a press conference to say don't freak out, like they were. There's going to be hundreds of trucks that are all going to show up and all these government trucks and it's not really for anything, it's just a stage supplies for emergencies in the future.
Speaker 1:And so the gentleman whose job it is is to cause, cause a grief on the internet. He took that and he, he decided he was going to take, take that egg, add his DNA and make a, make a conspiracy. And so he said hey, everybody, this could be weird and scary. Uh, because they said don't worry, we're going to put some stuff here and you shouldn't worry about it. That sure makes me worry. Yeah, anytime FEMA says don't worry, I have to worry.
Speaker 1:What do you all think is going on here? What in these six counties, that in Michigan where there's like a border with Canada, like let's just take three or four elements out of the air, set them on the table and now go. You tell me everybody on the internet what, which part of these make enough sense to you that we can loop this into a story. And then from what? A couple hours from now, whatever gets glooped together is now the truth. Right, and now people are going to start referring to all. I read this. Or I heard this guy say yeah, but they heard a guy say that he read some stupid story on LinkedIn and maybe this might happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, and you only get the maybe or the, I think, from the original mouthpiece Right. The next person that repeats it does not say maybe or I think no.
Speaker 2:this guy says. They say I heard a guy say and now it's become truth.
Speaker 1:It's one, one step is all you get where it goes, from conjecture to truth. And of course you couldn't. People can't resist when you lay those items on the table like fidget spinners and say don't touch these. Yeah, everybody rushed in. Oh, fema, this it's you know they're gonna. You know, border patrol, that, oh, it's everything Russia is going to come across. Canada through the northern expanse.
Speaker 2:It's like the astrology guys jump in and say the stars are aligned this way.
Speaker 1:I mean they couldn't resist and hundreds and hundreds of comments within the first hour of I think it's this and that's it. That's the birth of a conspiracy theory. Is enough people saying I think it's this, and then a critical mass falls in behind that, and then all of a sudden, there's a news page reporting.
Speaker 1:You know, I say news right wing media outlet that tells people what they want to hear, an echo chamber, and they get real hot and they're like guess what, yeah, reports out of right this place. No, those aren't reports. That's somebody saying. I heard somebody say right this place. No, those aren't reports. That's somebody saying. I heard somebody say right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people need to be a lot more like tuned in to the language that people use.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:When they say things like maybe this could be, this should be, things like that, all these subjective words that have no like substance to them, like listen for those things, like those words matter, and they do it intentionally, so they can't be found liable.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you know, yep, yep, trump himself. Hey, I started with. You know, be loving and peaceful and fight like hell. Right, but I started the sentence with you know, so you know I'm get out of jail free card. I said it first. You know, with all due respect, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's in the Geneva conventions, all right.
Speaker 1:So here's why. Here's my take on why. Why do they pick up FEMA and lay out this logical fallacy, kind of train of thought where FEMA is basically the evil eye of the government, out to do dangerous things, right? Well, here's why I think that's the case. It's in the name Federal Emergency Management Agency. Emergency is the key word there. Citizens expect that every single catastrophe is going to be handled in the exact same way. There's going to be a cookie cutter response, the exact same resources are going to flow out of the government and everything's going to get fixed in the same fashion and timeframe. That is foolish, because it's an emergency, right, it's an unmeasurable, unpredictable, uh, bad situation, and there's no telling how intense or minor the the situation will be until, basically, it's over. Yeah, and so there's no way to be fully prepared even if you're the federal government right to perfectly and gracefully solve all the problems that happen after a natural disaster or a man-made disaster Right, because there's a lot of external and internal facts, like you said.
Speaker 2:Like having the equipment is one thing, having the people that know how to manage it, having the people that need that equipment or that need the services, having them be patient and waiting for services.
Speaker 2:Patient or able to communicate, right, yeah, able to get to the proper services, and then, yeah, getting everything circulated around. There's so much that goes into it, but you're in that emergency state and, as a family, as a father, when I'm in that emergency state, my family is the only thing that matters. Exactly. So I'll be extremely vulnerable to anybody saying like they don't care about you. Look how bad your family is suffering right now. They don't care about you.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's the very visible arm of the federal government that faces the citizenship a lot and they face the citizenship in drastic, terrible situations.
Speaker 1:Those peak emotional periods terrible situations, peak emotional periods, and so they become the belly button for a lot of conspiracy theories, because they are a very mobile and highly visible uh, face forward piece of the federal government, and that's it. That's the only reason why they're easy to throw rocks at, because every response is different, right, and so every time you could pick up some kind of argument and say, well, they didn't do it because it's poor people, they didn't do it right because it was black people, they didn't do it because it was red state, right, and no, they didn't do it because it's an unpredictable, terrible, hard situation to deal with.
Speaker 1:And the thing that is that is I will bring this up in every situation, whether it's big brother intelligence like hand-wringing, or whether it's FEMA being a political stunt and not really there to help people.
Speaker 1:My argument to them is I need to remind you that FEMA is full of American citizens. All the employees that work at FEMA are American citizens, and so guess what you have there. Employees that work at FEMA are American citizens, and so guess what you have there. As of last week, about 60% of those people probably support President Trump and are potentially Republican voters. Maybe as much as 60% of the employees inside FEMA are Republicans, yeah, and yet you say it's Biden's administration that's coming to get us, and they're all. They're here to just screw people over and steal your land and steal the lithium from inside the mountain. What are you talking about? Right? Who is they? They the guy who you're going to go downtown and see that's got the clipboard and the FEMA jacket on voted for the same person you voted for. Yeah, he wants the same outcomes that you want, yeah, and he's working through the bureaucracy trying to achieve the same outcome that a Democrat would, that anybody with no political affiliation would.
Speaker 2:Well, right, and that's what frustrates me a lot about, like the plans for Project 2025, is when they talk about coming in and kind of wiping out a lot of career bureaucrats. Yes, like they're there to keep the government running and to keep serving citizens. They're not there to bog things down, that's. I mean it happens there is some efficiency issues there, but Musk is not the answer, but the there's issues there, but like all of these career politicians or not politicians, bureaucrats that are there and are working in our government are there for us to make our lives better and to provide us the services that the government provides.
Speaker 1:Nonpartisan cogs in the machine Right.
Speaker 2:It must be there and again who voted for Trump, Like at least 50 percent of them yes. So we have to remember that these are American citizens. We have to remember that these are American citizens.
Speaker 1:And so that's what bothers me, because I had to defend the intelligence community for years when everybody got all spun up back in the middle 2000s era about oh my metadata NSA is spying on all my cell phone calls, nsa is watching me through my webcam and all this other stuff, and I said who works at the NSA? It's more than half military members. So guess what? Those people are for sure nonpartisan. And then the other half is civilians and yet again, they're all career government people that serve under both types of presidents and any style of leadership. So the fact that you think that there would be a conspiracy afoot to convince thousands of people inside one intelligence organization to spy on their neighbors, their family members, their uncles and citizen friends right, like, how would that ever make sense? How would you convince that group of people that they're other than and more special than the rights and laws that they're trying to protect by going to work every day? It's almost impossible to do that. Right, like? That is not that. I know.
Speaker 1:We have a history of situations where things got out of hand and that was usually very quick line to political wrangling and motivation. Right, that was coercion from politically focused people using those apparatuses of the intelligence community to create a political end. That is a problem. But that is extremely isolated and for sure there are not. There is no desire to create programs, both you know software programs or program in the sense of large government spending. That is, an apparatus to collect on citizens because it's operated by citizens. Right, the safeguard is, if you're willing to spy on somebody, you know that means you're willing to be spied on. That's what that means, and it's the same in any topic that you pick up and say well, fema is going to blow right past us because we live in the red county in Colorado, right?
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't make sense, doesn't pass muster, but it does to somebody who, as we said earlier, you know the fish that swims in that murky water, right Like they are full of the murk, and it to them it feels natural.
Speaker 2:And what's another interesting attribute of this is that there's conspiracies on both sides and if you're hook line and sinker on one, you think the other one's an idiot for not believing what you believe, can't you see it?
Speaker 2:And there was an interesting study from the Rand Institute a few years ago that kind of outlined what Russia does on a propaganda side, and they flood both sides, left and right, just constantly with stuff Just to create that division and confusion over here, and it's becoming easier and easier for them. We're seeing it a lot, with people starting to speak up about election fraud the other way this time. People are starting to speak up about, like, election fraud the other way this time, but with zero evidence, nothing that actually is like chargeable or would have any kind of change.
Speaker 2:And then there was a Russian bureaucrat, diplomat, something that said something about Trump having competing Loyalties yeah, loyalties or interests, and he's going to have to make do on some things. And people are like oh see, that's proof right there, Dude, that's a Russian government.
Speaker 1:Consider the source.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he says he works for the Russian government and you're just going to say whatever he says. You're just going to take this wasn't Putin saying it, this is some lower person, you know. But like, don't just let them. It shouldn't be this easy to get us to hate each other. Yeah, you know, it frustrates me.
Speaker 1:Well, the I don't know why, but the right got rid of the Cold War mentality that don't trust a Russian right, like it was not a partisan concept as an American right to just go. Well, they must be lying, it's you know the cold war. Like they must want to have some advantage or gain something from talking to us. Anything they say, whether we'd like to hear it or don't like to hear it, it's probably a lie, right? I mean, it was just an assumption that it's not useful information to work with just wait, wait for proof.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like have something tangible.
Speaker 1:The last five years. I think you know it's been about the last five years and I won't. I mean Trump's influences is where it came from, but it's not been the entire era of Trump. It's really picked up steam once he was out of office and the right has basically given up on any idea that Russia is a bad threat actor right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, A lot of social media and PACs came out with Russian funding During the election cycle. There came out that like, oh, all your big Russia or Russia right wing talking heads are paid Russian influencers. Yeah, and nobody gave a shit. Yeah, so yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:They absolutely, just kind of They've embraced the idea that Putin is not dangerous, that his aggression towards the West is just trivial, right and who you know. So what if he wants to do that you?
Speaker 2:know, and Eastern Ukraine speaks Russian, so they should be Russian, yeah and I.
Speaker 1:It brings me full circle where now I know I'm the old man, because when I joined the military in the first place and we were pretty far removed in my mind from the Cold War and yet there was all these Cold War era veterans still in the military, that was like all we need to care about is Russia. The only fight that's ever going to matter is the fight with Russia. And so they had memorized and this was a little bit of just clinging to their own value and expertise they had memorized every type of Russian weapon system and all the signals that go with them and how to identify them, and all the TTPs from all the Russian tactics and all this stuff. And I was like man, like that is some old school analog. You know, bang, bang type warfare, like we're never going to do that. We are not going to line up tanks and shoot at Russia. You're crazy and you can retire now because that's not the war we're going to fight. You know, if that's the war you're getting ready to fight, you should retire Right, because that's not what we're doing, right.
Speaker 1:And now here I am going. What do you?
Speaker 2:mean, you like Russia.
Speaker 1:Why have we at least can we just agree that they're still the bad guys? Like I don't care if we don't prepare for war with them, but like can we all just be on the same page that they are in fact the bad guys?
Speaker 2:I saw a t-shirt at a Trump rally that said rather be Russian than Democrat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, there you go.
Speaker 2:There's the line that we crossed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go, that is the perfect example of why someone will not consider the source and will just take that statement wholesale. And it is the really. It's proof that whatever Russia's information campaign that they decided to take on to divide us around elections worked. To me that's their passing grade, yeah.
Speaker 2:And now we got the consequences of this election and Trump's starting to name some of his picks, yes, and there's been some shockers, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was thinking for this week's episode we would stay away from more of the Trump talk, but he made that impossible, so we'll just indulge for a few minutes, because there's so many crazy things happening so fast that if we even put it on hold for a week, by next week there would be, so we'd be gone.
Speaker 2:The news cycle would be way past. And again, that's all intentional. That's his diplomacy model is to just like baffle him with bullshit. Yeah, every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, multiple times um be a very loud bull in a china shop yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the last one that uh got dropped on us yesterday was gates for attorney general, like kevin mccarthy was is on record on camera saying the reason why he's not the speaker is because Gates wanted him to stop his Ethics investigation. Yeah, the ethics into sleeping with a 17-year-old woman and like so. He's at least being looked at for that. Yes, an investigation for that yes, and now you want to make him the attorney general of the US.
Speaker 1:But that fits perfectly in the environment where your convicted felon is now the president of the United.
Speaker 2:States Right.
Speaker 1:And the argument that anybody that's listening to this that has any affinity for Trump, they'll say he's not a convicted felon. That was lawfare. That was all fake. That whole trial was fake, ok, fine. Well, what about the? The eugene, carol or eugene?
Speaker 1:king, yeah, carol, carol uh she, um, you know what about that right, like that all happened way before he was even running for president. You know, like there's there's so many different opportunities that you can point to and say that he's been involved in his own nefarious activities. So bottom line is, is he's basically this is kind of what I said last week those general officers that Trump wants to get rid of, which again we're back to him wanting to do that? The people who support Trump say, yeah, those people should go. Their expertise and their experience is irrelevant if they can't be loyal to the president, and so the idea of being lockstep behind the leader is paramount right now. And this is there.
Speaker 1:There's a very the most telling thing that I've seen, for that is that there was I can't remember the guy's name, he's a senator from Oklahoma. He was a congressman in Congress with Matt Gaetz. He was a congressman in Congress with Matt Gaetz and he has never shied away from being explicit about. Matt Gaetz walked around on the House floor and showed people pictures on his phone of women that he dates we'll say in quotes. And then the guy said he crushes up ED pills and drinks energy drinks so he can go all night and that's what he walks around the House floor talking to his friends about. And that was back when he was under investigation and that guy was a congressman at the time, like one or two years ago.
Speaker 1:Now, next cycle, this guy is now a senator, so he's going to have to confirm people. And he goes on the news yesterday and he says oh yeah, donald Trump knows what he's doing. Matt Gaetz can be the attorney general, no problem. So yeah, donald Trump knows what he's doing. Matt Gaetz can be the attorney general, no problem, because he's a senator, a Republican senator. Now he knows you must fall in line or you won't be. That's it. Into your seat. You're Liz Cheney. You want to go lame?
Speaker 2:duck, go lame duck, push back against one of my nominees. There's already word out there that Elon Musk is saying that if anybody that doesn't fall in line will be primaried.
Speaker 1:He will fund a primary against anybody that's not falling in line. Yeah, it's coming, so that's literally fascism.
Speaker 2:You don't get behind your leader like you're gone.
Speaker 1:And so for somebody who would openly swear against the name of Matt Gaetz, saying that he's unfit to be in Congress, and then, a year later, sit in basically the same seat and say, oh, yeah, yeah, no, that guy, he'd be good at this job.
Speaker 2:That's disgusting.
Speaker 1:That is the essence of what we're about to experience.
Speaker 2:The Syracuse course. Somebody spoke with us yesterday, off off the record but he but he would talk about one. I think his whole story should be told and on the record. But he would talk about the politicians who make choices based on protecting their job. Yes, and he would talk about how disgusting it is and, like you know, this is a guy that never served, but I know he hit a lot of nerves with with the veterans when he when he talked about that, like, like you serve for the right, you serve to do the right thing, whatever that is Republican or Democrat, whatever you believe is the right thing, you do it for the right thing, but you don't do it to keep your job. Yeah, yeah, and that's disgusting that we have senators doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, marco Rubio was the Never Trump movement inventor. Yeah, and now he is going to be the secretary of state in his administration. So you know, never Trump, until you're about to get primaried.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and once you become a Senator and you think you want to be the president someday, it it? You turn into Gollum, I guess you know, and you're just like the precious you know, you're just like precious.
Speaker 2:You know, like you, you're obsessed, yeah, you get obsessed with maintaining your status.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, so uh, we got matt gates, and then what are the other ones we got? Now I'll say this tulsi gabbard. I've always been a fan of tulsi gabbard. I don't know why she's flip-flopped on the political spectrum.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I need to learn more about her, because I hear a lot of people say that about her too. It's like they've gone to hear her speak and just believe her and, yeah, drawn to her so yeah, and that's it I might need to learn just more about her myself before I comment on her.
Speaker 1:I saw something last night that I was bothered by tammy duckworth, um senator that is, uh, you know, wounded, uh, iraq war veteran. She went on and said um, telsey gabbert is completely unqualified to be anything in the administration. Uh, yes, we served in the house together and yes, she's a veteran. But um, and then she just completely misspoke. She said she was in E4 medical clerk in Iraq. No, she was not. Tulsi Gabbard is a Lieutenant Colonel in the army right now now, and she made it sound like she's a junior enlisted person that had a no, a nonsense job, so there's no military or government experience behind that. That's a pretty disappointing thing for her yeah, and I'm like.
Speaker 1:You didn't do your homework.
Speaker 2:You didn't even get the type of job that she was doing, right she was a military police officer, platoon leader, and again, I don't give a shit what your service was. If you were an e4 over there, you were fucking working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't talk shit about exactly like and like yeah, she integrated the whole rank and position of being a medical clerk right war zone.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, and we you know we talked before about how we redefine war this time where, like, if you're a logistics person, you had a gun and you were going forward. Yeah, you know, like everybody was in those convoys, everybody was doing stuff. Yeah, so to hear somebody a wound warrior, like that, like yeah, that's pretty upsetting.
Speaker 1:It was upsetting and it was um it was. She was just on a bend um senator duckworth was just fully on a bend of like donald trump's insane and all the people he's going to nominate her and saying check tracking cool and yeah but. But she took it too far because she wanted, she really, she indulged herself and right and started to make stuff up right and and I was bothered by that so yeah um, well, you know the nominations. Was there any other there more? Was there one more that you saw? That uh?
Speaker 2:oh no, it's like five or six. Yeah, because we kind of hit the rubio, the secretary of state, because, like rubio as a secretary of state, you, he's obviously very pro-Israel. So all those, well that's the last one.
Speaker 1:We should wrap up on Huckabee Governor Huckabee, not his daughter. When I heard somebody said Huckabee for Israel, I was like which one?
Speaker 1:Because they're both politically active right now. So Mike Huckabee and somebody used Mike Huckabee as a good example and Pete Hegseth and I think we'll dig into Pete Hegseth next time but if you look the part and basically you look and sound like what Donald Trump thinks an ambassador to Israel would look and sound like, then it doesn't really matter your position on any actual policy issues and it doesn't really matter like your position on any actual policy issues. He wants to make a TV show out of his cabinet and he wants people that look like, basically, if someone drew a comic book and those characters came to life, this is what he wants to surround himself with. Right?
Speaker 2:I think he pictures himself as like the DVD cover of West Wing. Yeah, that's it you know, like have that family or that.
Speaker 1:That's exactly it he wants the Hollywood stereotypical person, regardless of the real world skill or ability. Like you look like you should be doing this job. And that's what people said about Hegseth, the secretary of defense. They said he looks like he still looks like a military guy and in Donald Trump's mind he looks like a guy who would pick up a machine gun and run through a fight like Rambo today. Right, and so that's why I hired him. And same thing with Huckabee.
Speaker 1:Like Huckabee's demeanor as like a Baptist minister Grandpa, is spot on for what Donald Trump wants, right, regardless of Huckabee's relationship with Israel or Netanyahu or anything else, that his look and feel is the right thing and I can believe that that Trump just makes some of his decisions based on those things.
Speaker 1:I am interested to see Huckabee. I mean I know he said there's no such thing as Palestine, there's no such thing as Palestinians. That's a very Christian view and that is also kind of almost a policy position that America we like to talk about two-state solution stuff all the time. Yeah, however many crusades, whichever number we're on at this point, but people see that as a valid position. So I think Huckabee falls in line with both Donald Trump's vision and I mean eyeball vision of what somebody looks like and then a lot of America's sentiment around the whole war right now. So not a ton of surprises in the look and feel of the cabinet but a ton of surprises in the qualifications and execution of what they might do when they get in. The look and feel of the cabinet, but a ton of surprises in the qualifications and execution of what they might do when they get in the job.
Speaker 2:Right and I just hope they go through the proper processes to confirm them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that'll be a whole nother story if they do recess nominations for all these folks and just slide them right in. We'll see, don't know, but no shortage of interesting topics this week, and I think by this time next week there'll be even more bizarre stuff to talk about Daily.
Speaker 2:Daily. Yeah, All right, Want to wrap us up? Yeah Well, thanks for joining us everybody. Again, this is Left Face. We'll be back next week. You can catch us on all the major platforms out there Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts all those. Thanks for tuning in, Make sure.
