Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Ballots, Bud, and the Battle for Public Opinion
The episode explores the complexities of local politics, focusing on a cannabis court case that intertwines electoral rights and community protests. The discussion emphasizes how civic engagement can drive political change while addressing the challenges and effectiveness of protests as a means to influence public discourse.
• Review of a cannabis court case in Colorado
• Impact of legal rulings on military voters
• Importance of protests in a democracy
• Examination of American military strategy in foreign lands
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face. This is the Pikes Peaks Region's veteran podcast Cover, any topic that kind of relates back to veterans and just our experiences. My name is Adam Gillard. I'm your co-host here with Dick Wilkinson. Morning, dick. Good morning, adam man.
Speaker 1:We called it a few months ago, right when Trump got elected, that there was going to be no shortage of things to talk about, and it seems like every day, you know, we see, you know more of his appointments going through, more of the kind of the chaos that Musk is raining on us, and we all kind of know that story fairly well at this point.
Speaker 1:What's going on? So we're going to try and take a little different approach today and kind of maybe go some different directions and just talking about those two knuckleheads Sounds good. First off, update on the court case. I just read a letter from the lawyer saying that it's pretty much in the Supreme Court's hands right now, the Colorado Supreme Court's hands. The city is trying to say that they don't have time to send out ballots to the military overseas folks because of all this chaos that they've created themselves. So right now we're just kind of sitting and waiting for that to pan out. But the more that they keep fighting this one taxpayer money is just getting wasted on it. Other issues around the city aren't being looked at um, and it's like campaign season for folks like dave donelson the ballot is in.
Speaker 2:I mean just the mechanics of the election. Now, if we don't get ballots printed and issued in time, then there's that's against the secretary of state rules and the constitution of the state right so there's another, you know, very pressing issue of folks overseas or out absentee voters that require this information to be able to vote. Like you're messing up your own process that you're required to execute.
Speaker 1:And the reason why the ballots can't get printed right now is the judge that issued the first ruling saying that it was unconstitutional the first ruling saying that it was unconstitutional. She came back a few days later and said it can still be printed on the ballots. With the plaintiff's verbiage like we get to choose the words for the ballot. So on one hand she said it's unconstitutional, on one hand she says print it on the ballot. I don't understand that logic or that reasoning, but it just really means that the Colorado Supreme Court needs to act quicker.
Speaker 2:You know, I think when you told me about it earlier, I agree at face value I thought, wow, that's really strange that the judge slipped those two kind of opinions in there together, because the written opinion is very clear Unconstitutional plaintiff is carried forward is very clear unconstitutional plaintiff is carried forward. City is denied. I mean, it was super clear, black and white. Now the legal piece that, as you're talking to me about it, I can see where the judge wanted was willing to maybe loop some gray area back into the conversation. Um, the city is up, just up in arms about. This is not a repeal of legalizing or not legalizing. Like we're not making a determination of should cannabis be legal or not, and that's why they say they can run it in this April election is because that one. They agree that amendment 64 says November of even numbered years is the only time you can ask an electorate to ban cannabis. They agreed to that.
Speaker 2:So now here's where the judge says okay, you plaintiff, if you come up with language that is not essentially against Amendment 64, and if the language is not to ban cannabis or make it illegal or something else, then maybe there's a way for this question to get on the ballot or make it illegal or something else, then maybe there's a way for this question to get on the ballot.
Speaker 2:Essentially, there's a way for the plaintiff to describe the question which doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:The plaintiff doesn't want the question on the ballot at all, but there's a way where you could thread the needle and say here's what we want to ask the voters and this question does not technically support legalization, illegalization or a ban right that there could be some magical way to construct that question and not be banning cannabis or flip it around, and just you know it's not a repeal vote. You basically get to say do you still want cannabis to be legal? You know like, but I mean, that's not the outcome that I was there in court. I was there and I saw the arguments and then I read the court outcomes. That was definitely not what the intention was on that day, or from the printed court outcomes. So that's, of course, a strange path forward for the judge to bring into the case after a very clear ruling. But if you were Adam, if you were to take the opportunity to define the language on this ballot initiative, what would you want to see on there to make it clear to the voters what's?
Speaker 1:going on. So the smart folks in the room, they want to put kind of what we had on the last ballot, where it just kind of tells what happens with question 300 and stuff like that. The good things, the money goes here and there and there. Me personally, I like to be a little more forward with folks. Uh, and I'm going to steal something from uh, jesus man superpowers off of reddit. Uh, his choice of verbiage would be should the city council have veto power over you, the voter? Because they think you don't understand what you vote for? I love it, but like that is so to the point on these, things it is and that would get a resounding no vote.
Speaker 2:I think right, Maybe not total, Maybe not. Some people want Dave Donaldson to vote for them.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I see more and more posts on Reddit too, about people saying that's kind of Orwellian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sign is weird. I saw it the other day and I was like that's terrible.
Speaker 1:I wish it was in bold and italicized.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know what? This person's not listening. I promise they're not, but Dave Donaldson's campaign manager, which may be Dave, your sign sucks.
Speaker 1:You need to go back to campaign school. It's accurate. It's accurate for what he wants to do. Yeah, maybe Know your base right? You need to go back to campaign school.
Speaker 2:It's accurate. It's accurate for what he wants to do. Yeah, Maybe Know your base right.
Speaker 1:The next thing I kind of want to talk about is some of the local protests going around. There was one on the 5th February 5th Okay, that was supposed to be like a national day of protest. One thing that always like bugs me and pisses me off about any Democrat movement is it's just not well organized. It just seems like there's no leadership at the top pushing these things down. It's like people fire off things and then just kind of forget it. That's why I like Occupy Wall Street, occupy Wall.
Speaker 1:Street, yeah, because they would go talk to the hippies occupying Wall Street and they'd be like oh no, we're just here, man. There's no leader, there's no plan. Well, yeah, that's why we're still in the same fucking boat, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's not. But these protests I'm a big fan of them because I like diplomacy when it comes to just having conversations, and I think these protests can spark a lot of conversations for people, even if you're not there, if you drive by and you see that, and somebody's in your car and it sparks that conversation.
Speaker 2:It does. It's hard to drive by a protest and not have an opinion about it. That's for sure One you know support or against, it draws your emotional response and does that.
Speaker 1:You know the one on the 5th. I didn't get a chance to stop by there because I was just shuttling kids into doctor's appointments and vet appointments all day. But there was a good handful of people out there. But they're going to be doing it again on Monday President's Day. Okay, they're calling it Not my President's Day.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. Yeah, because everything's got to be a hashtag. Yeah, it's a pretty good one, but they're going to be rallying up. 12 to 8 is what one flyer says, but I think organizations kind of starts at 1. There's a little bit more organization to this one, and so they'll have some speakers down there.
Speaker 2:I was going to say you just said there's a flyer that's like the most organized, Right yeah.
Speaker 1:They're jumping up participation in things In this area. One, it's kind of dangerous just being out in this area, so it's really cool to see people come out and actually speak their minds and feel passionate about something, and that's what I like to see. But there's a lot of negativity around the efficacy of it. Yeah, things like that. What are?
Speaker 2:your thoughts on the role protests play in politics today. I've had a very evolving view over time of this of protests and the value or usefulness, or why do people do them, and sort of the lens that I've looked through. The world has changed, so my opinion on protests has changed. Um, I, I think as a as the youngest you know, youngest version of myself, as an adult I was, I couldn't, I did not understand the idea at all and I was probably very much like you know the people who would leave comments on your reddit page now of like, just go to work. Uh, you know, hey, you dirty hippie, you know how. I know you don't have a job because you just go to protests all the time. You know, like I would have said that.
Speaker 2:You know, I was in the army and I was like this is my protest, right, this is, this is I joined the army. I'm going to go do something about whatever it is Now. I may, of course, I joined the Army and I may end up doing something about something that I totally disagree with or don't care about. So that's different Protesting. I don't find myself going down to protest on something that I don't care about, but that is the argument that a more conservative listener or person who's got a problem with protests would make, is that there's the crunchy granola person that just goes from protest to protest and they say what are we protesting today? And then they flip their banner around and they're like no raw milk.
Speaker 2:And then that person's down at the abortion clinic next week and then at the Capitol the week after that. They're basically a gun for hire on the protest scene. You know, and I'll be honest with you, that's not completely unheard of that. There is ways to encourage and entice people into protests or even into just large events. Then they get paid to be there, right, like it's weird. You know, donald Trump has done that even in some of his own situations where it's like free.
Speaker 2:You know, walmart gift cards because they want people to show up right. And again, that's a level of organization that we don't get to see. On the democratic side.
Speaker 1:One of Trump's kids went to Greenland and hired a bunch of drunks and gave them money for like a photo op where like. Hey, Greenland loves Trump. And they're like that's Billy on the corner. Yeah, I know that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's always out front of the liquor store.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly you go. Yeah, that's a good one, um, but now I guess let me wrap that up with my early days, I saw through my own lens and said I could do and I talked about this in this episode last week I just saw myself as I can do a lot more than stand on the street, uh, and yell or wave a sign. So I'm gonna leave that for somebody else and I'm gonna basically see them as ineffective, right, right. So that was my early view on it.
Speaker 2:Last week I kind of stated what I feel like my more current view on it is is that activism, especially political activism, comes in all forms, all shapes and sizes, and I think there are a lot of people who feel like the only thing they can do is go out and hold a sign and protest. They don't, they don't. They just don't see themselves as having any other power within culture to do that. I can't. Now where I sit and how I'm involved with politics, now I can't knock that as anything that's not as valuable as something else. Right, I think it for that, for that person. Just like you said, that person knows that if they stand out there for four hours and 500 cars drive by, 100 of those cars are going to have a conversation with somebody that day, either in the car, on the phone or at home. When they get home they're going to say you never believed what I saw down there. That person, that's valuable made some.
Speaker 1:That's valuable, right, and these conversations need to happen because there's a few responses on reddit that say, because, uh, the one poster says like, uh, it's a protest against fascism, and they and people are thinking that the left is fascism, like they just don't have a good understanding of, like the, just the generic political spectrum, how, how, like communism, socialism, left center, yeah, authoritarian to fascism.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's on like the right side yeah, like they think that fascism is like the Democrats yeah, and it kind of confuses me, like how do we get that narrative? I?
Speaker 2:can give you a little bit of where that comes from.
Speaker 1:Oh, and let's make sure we cancel the Department of Education too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well the less we understand the definition of these words, the easier it is to confuse us right, yeah, orwellian, yeah, it's literally 1984.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think that where people that are on the right-hand side of things and say that the left is fascist, here's some of the evidence that they would cite um cancel culture. Or don't say that you don't support some initiative that's important to Democrats, we will step on you with a goose stepping boot, just like any right-handed fascist ever would. Right, if you show up in a democratic protest with a unique idea, you're going to get fascist.
Speaker 2:All right, we're going to teach you real quick how to lick a boot, because we've got an agenda here, just like the right does. And if you can't lick this boot, we don't want you around. Right, and it's true right. That's why you get chastised. If you refuse to participate in the pronoun argument over the last couple of years and I'm not putting that in my email address, yeah, ok, well then you're part of the problem. You are lesser than you're, not really a Democrat. You don't like freedom. You hate gay people, you hate whatever. Right, that's a fascist idea it is. If you're not on board with the agenda, it doesn't matter that it's a liberal agenda. The agenda is the goal right. Very good at grammar and I'm not sure what to put, you know, and we would laugh it off.
Speaker 1:Like never once did anybody threaten me or try to hurt me, and like they can poop me out.
Speaker 2:Microaggression to you, yeah.
Speaker 1:But still, like I mean I volunteer with pride, like I do a lot of stuff in the community, like I don't do it, fuck off off. Like I can't help you, yeah, but I will do everything else. Like, and I don't even know why I don't do it in there. It's literally just not fucking important to me. It's it's clear what I am and who I am. So like it's not important to me so I don't do it. But at the same time, like I'm good with everybody else doing it, but I've never had somebody push back on me in a negative way or like in a hostile way, right. So like equating that to fascism, like that's pretty far off.
Speaker 2:You're right. The person on the right that would be doing this equation right and trying to make this proof what they're really telling you is I, person on this in this part of the political spectrum, know that I would be persecuted for my speech. Political spectrum know that I would be persecuted for my speech and I see cancel culture as a real thing and I attribute that to the idea of you're either in lockstep or you're not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's how I mean, you know they get real broad and generalized approach.
Speaker 1:You're just an asshole, like like, if you're going to get criticized for your speech, you're probably an asshole.
Speaker 2:Well, that person and I an asshole. Well, that person and I a little bit of my libertarian piece matches with this person of um, I don't care if I, you know, like there, I I don't mind saying something outrageous, hearing someone tell me that they think I'm stupid, and then we both move on in life. Yeah, now, if that person says to me I think you're stupid and'm going to dedicate my entire life to ruining your life.
Speaker 1:I see where you're going.
Speaker 2:Done. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:There's so much doxing and toxicity. With the internet, nothing's a quick conversation.
Speaker 2:Free opinions are not welcome right, yeah, they're not.
Speaker 2:And so that is the definition. If we just boil it down to the concept of fascism here, free opinions not being welcome. Communism doesn't allow free opinions on the far left side, fascism on the far right side. But the outcome is, if you're an average citizen and you don't feel like you actually have the freedom of your ideas and speech anymore, someone's doing something to you right? You're becoming a victim of either communism or fascism. That's going to be the state of existence for most people, because they don't really want to see that culture rise, either bootlicking or cancel culture. They don't want to see either one right. They want to have the freedom to say or to even be flexible in their thought. Like me, I want to be able to be 20 years old and say I think protesters are stupid, and then I want to be able to be 40 years old and say I understand why that's valuable to them. We need that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just want to be six years old and tell my kids that I did something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but like I can't pick up a gun and go fight anymore. If that is the value to those protesters, that for whatever reason, that's been their method of output for their whole life, then I want them to say that to their kids and grandkids too. Right, and that's why I see the value in it now that I maybe didn't see before. But you know, the continuing of that spectrum is that what we're really talking about is the electorate or the population trying to get their government or their authority figures to do something. Right, that they're trying to sway the outcome of how the big apparatus of government works.
Speaker 2:And that's what a protest, whether it's 20 people in a local area that have an issue or if it's a nationwide you know, 20 cities have thousands of people show up. The goal there is that those protesters are trying to move the needle on the political spectrum somehow outside of a voting cycle. Basically, Right. So, as much as we see, some people are going to protest over every little issue. Some people are going to reserve it to the very last thing, when they feel like there's just nothing else that they can do. I think we see that same. That happens in other cultures around the world too, and it's interesting to see what's the level of threshold that gets the population out the door in any of the streets.
Speaker 1:The French have a very low threshold, very low threshold.
Speaker 2:They do right, exactly Like everyone in half the people in the country will riot if you change the retirement age for like one specific career field. Right? They're like, hey, we need the train conductors to stick around for a little bit longer so we don't have enough people in the pipe right now. We're going to shift this and just move this retirement age by a couple of years. That's it, man. The train stopped running. The people walk on the tracks. They're in the streets, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I've seen the fire department and police department clash there. Yeah, like the police department had their shields and the fire department just went right at them. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, those guys have a low threshold.
Speaker 2:Low threshold right and then flip that around to other places in the world. They understand that it's life-threatening right to take that stance of. I'm going to go out on the street today. That may be the last thing you do, you know. So if you're in China, you're probably not going to be quick to line up and protest.
Speaker 2:And even back during COVID lockdowns and everything, where they were just straight up murdering people and their pets and everything else, because they thought they were sick and they probably weren't. You know what happened? Nothing, nothing right Like communism just stomped, stomped, stomped those people in a submission, right. So to me, I see that I hold the electorate and the population of a country very accountable for their government. I don't generally buy the idea that you know. Something like North Korea is probably the most extreme example, where you have a few million people of population not a huge country, but 10 to one versus like military personnel. Granted, the military have guns and food and the population doesn't, but there's a level of buy-in and complicity in those more extreme conditions, to the point that the brainwashing worked and they believe that their president is the king of the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I was going to bring up. God floated him down out of the clouds. They got three generations of people thinking that, yeah, deity worship Right.
Speaker 2:So that's again. It's an extreme example, right, it would be almost impossible to convince that population of people that this person is not a deity and that you could have a better life if you just stop doing what they told you to do for like a month that the whole house of cards falls apart, right, right, so that's the far end. To do for like a month that the whole house of cards falls apart, right, so that's the far end of that spectrum. France can protest just at the drop of a hat. You got China or North Korea, where, literally, you will die if you take the stand Well with the North Koreans.
Speaker 1:A lot of them are dying just from starvation and stuff like that and they're still worshiping the sky and that's the problem right.
Speaker 2:Is I think. How hard can you squeeze this group? Of people in a vice. How hard, when does it finally pop?
Speaker 1:And so one of North Korea's tactics is that every once in a while, they do their saber rattling and kind of like remind their population that America is evil. Yeah, sure it was. That critical failure is about to happen and they started lighting off their nukes. What kind of response would you think we would have towards a nation of people who are just brainwashed civilians?
Speaker 2:What should our response to a? This category of North Korea would know they were in an asymmetric fight with us, right Like they would assume that China is going to back them up and that brings symmetry to the fight. But let's just take China out of it. Let's say China just kind of all of a sudden balks and says like whoa, guys stepped out alive and like we're not really ready for this.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, you know. And so now north korea is just out there alone and unafraid. Um, I would expect the us military that, especially that we've been preparing for that fight for 60 years right, I would expect that the plan to roll North and occupy and I know that those battle plans are meant to be executed in less than a couple months right To get across the DMZ and occupy the, the very small amount of population in the North. I would want to see that. I would want to see that carried out with great force, right?
Speaker 1:That the government? Yeah, just roll over the DMZ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that the government of North Korea and again, that probably a lot of the shaky internal military faction balanced against that family monarchy power thing, right, I would want to see that just fall apart, like completely destroy the house of cards that the North Korean monarchy has put together. And of course, I see, I think we could do that through a very, very powerful ground campaign. As far as North Korea goes, right, like, yeah, there'd be air, obviously there's air and water assets involved, but to win that war it's a very fast ground campaign. That is, hold ground by might and do it fast. Just like basically what happened in Iraq, right, then the first desert storm where we went from Kuwait into Iraq and had rolled Baghdad in two weeks. Right, do that to North Korea. That would be my expectation. Just just turn North Korea into Baghdad and it's fricking one 10th the size of Iraq. So I think we could do it even faster.
Speaker 1:Right, well, it's been 70 years, I think, since we've been waiting for that, watching the DMZ, yeah. So when you talk about waiting for their governments to fall, do you just wait for a surrender from them or wait for a Kim Jong-un?
Speaker 2:I mean, in that specific instance, as america does, I would pick a general and I'd say guess what? You're now the king of north korea. You know, and, and you're gonna do exactly what we say. Yeah, and if you don't, we're gonna kill you and pick your brother to be the king of north korea, and if you don't do that, we'll just keep doing it. Man, you know, you are here because we are here, right, and that's how it's going to work, right, and that, again, not always served us well. I understand that form of diplomacy Now, and that's also the colonial concept of any time a colonial empire country shows up, the balance of power gets shifted, because what happens is the ruling majority and the near minority. Whatever the closest near minority is, the US government or the colonial power backs the near minority and tips the asymmetric balance of power into their hands, and now you have a subjugated majority, right? I'm not saying that's a good thing. I think we should probably relook that part of the playbook.
Speaker 2:Pretty heavily yeah, but I am OK with the idea that this group of people civilian, military, political leadership as a whole have proven that they can't not do it themselves, can't not do it themselves and we're not going to let you revert back into some jacked up form of self-government that you just came out of or suffered from for 50 years, or you had people starving for the last 70 years because you created this little enclave. That's gone. That's gone, and we're going to maybe even pull a Trump and rename the country, because we need you to understand that what was is no more right.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think, with that one, you know, rolling them into South Korea, or making one Korea, you know, unifying the country. You know that that would make sense. Um, you know, long-term, uh, when we shift over to other places like Israel and Palestine, or or the Gaza strip, uh, West bank areas, things like that, or the Gaza Strip, West Bank areas, things like that. When we look at what has happened after October 7th, Israel kind of went in with a pretty brute force.
Speaker 2:The least what would you call it? Surgical, I think.
Speaker 1:The least surgical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was no precision munitions in this one, the fact that they say there are, like you're trying to blow up something that's underground, underneath civilians. Yeah, that's an oxymoron. If you shoot a bunker buster underneath a building full of civilians. It's still blowing up all those civilians Right?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's still collateral damage, Known collateral.
Speaker 2:It wasn't accidental, it was qualified in that military decision. We're going to blow this up and this up, right.
Speaker 1:I just read this morning that Trump wants to kick it to the Arab nations to figure out what they want to do with the Palestinians, because he's still hell-bent on just moving them out and us taking that territory Do you think? I don't want to say it like that, but what are your thoughts on America saying that they want to like the president of America saying that he wants to take land in another sovereign nation and kind of run it?
Speaker 2:I don't want to see America in the position of colonizer again. I don't want to see America in the position of colonizer again. I don't want to see that. I understand that Donald Trump does, but I don't. And again that part of the world. I don't want to see America trying to establish some permanent presence there through military occupation or some colony territory Like that doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 2:Uh, the sun can set on the American empire, that's fine, you know, like we don't have to be the Brits and you know, cover the East to the West, Um, but uh, my, I think my take on it, you know, is I understand where he's coming from in his method of we're not going to do anything based on previous ideas of diplomacy or humanitarian efforts, or these are the rules, Mr President, this is how it's always been done, this is what treaty we agreed to 60, 70 years ago. So this is what we're going to do. Now he's like no, we're not right. Like all those people are dead.
Speaker 2:Everything has changed. A thousand attacks in either direction have happened since then. So whatever was considered in that last round of negotiation is kind of trash now. Uh, and I don't I'm not saying I agree with his method of what he wants to choose as an outcome. But I completely understand that he's saying stop it with your diplomacy norms, Stop talking to me about those things, because I will shoot anyone in the face if I decide to and I'm not going to answer to you about it either I'm going to tell you yes, we shot them in the face. And next question right, I'm not bad at that, you know.
Speaker 1:Like, if you're a military general. Yes, that is how you think, but once you step into the civilian role of a presidency, you have to take diplomacy and humanitarianism into account with every decision, yeah, and to not to lose those. Then what are we fighting for to begin with?
Speaker 2:I agree that diplomacy first is, should always be, the path of the American. You know, government is, is, we're not. We don't ever want to just sit on the shelf and then literally drop out of the sky with bombs, having not been involved in that conflict, having any kind of weight in the conversation, whatever right Like. We don't want to do that. We don't want to pick a proxy war and just back one side and get after it with no real obvious intention of why it would benefit us. I don't want to see that. But I do understand user diplomacy up to a certain point. We're giving people who have proven that they don't want to be treated fairly, that they don't want to be handled as grown, mature participants in the deliberation process. They're not interested in that. So why are we talking to them as though they are? Why are we giving someone credit for maturity and capability that they've told us they don't have and don't want to have?
Speaker 2:Don't negotiate with people on your terms of this heightened moral sense. Negotiate with them on their terms of blood is the answer. I get it, I understand that, and they have slipped out of the idea and I say they Hamas and Hezbollah. Diplomacy is a joke. They will diplomize their way into being able to reinforce. They want to get the tanks out of Gaza so that they can basically go pick all the bullets up out of the dust and start shooting at Israel again. That's their form of diplomacy. How long will it take for us to resupply and go do another? October 7th, that's it.
Speaker 1:The resupply is an interesting thing. Iran obviously backs them heavily. Saudi Arabia was close to a deal with Israel before the October 7th thing. They don't have good relationships with each other, saudi Arabia and Iran and that's one of those foundational things their religious beliefs.
Speaker 2:That's how deep that goes. It's been a benefit to American politics to have that imbalance there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:With, you know, talking about the resupplies and you know the war's kind of pulled back. Now how do we keep the weapons out of there? It's already so restricted but they're still getting weapons. How?
Speaker 2:do you keep? Well, donald Trump's answer is keep the terrorists out of there, and then there won't be weapons there. Get rid of the people who have dedicated their life to doing nothing but destroying the people across the fence from them. Make them live somewhere else and then gun and go kill somebody. The motivation to harm will be there. But I mean his mentality and again we're going to go further than what diplomacy allows and we're going to say don't stop the guns from getting in there, stop the terrorist people from getting in there.
Speaker 1:Guns don't kill people Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people, that's right. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. There could be a pile of guns in the middle of Gaza City and if there's no people there, it will never shoot anyone. All right, ever, ever. That gun, those. It could be 100 feet tall and it would never shoot a person.
Speaker 1:But you let five terrorists in there and they're going to use those guns until they run out of bullets or you know a crayola, eight crayons, and we're going to draw the map. You're talking about generational families and I get you know your point about they're all kind of involved with somebody that's involved In that one part of the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean it's a microcosm, it's unique. I'm not saying that this is the way that all populations with terrorist issues or poverty, driven crime issues or whatever you know, like drug gangs and stuff, is what I'm saying. They're places that are teetering on that failed state third world kind of status. Not every place in the world like that is 100% bought in on a terrorist organization or the drug trade that even Afghanistan a lot of people grew poppies but that didn't mean everybody was a drug dealer, right, unfortunately, the nature of the Gaza location, conflict, previous treaties that haven't worked that is a microcosm of basically a part of the world that is the only economy is to participate in terrorism. Right, like that's it. You're either selling food to the terrorists or you're making bombs. Participate in terrorism, right, like that's it.
Speaker 1:You're either selling food to the terrorists or you're making bombs for the terrorists. Right, but they've also been boxed in Sure, they can't go anywhere. So like if that's your only means to survive. You're going to survive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but once you get older, you know, once if you're, you know male or female doesn't matter. Once you're a person and you realize, wait a minute, we live in a war zone and not everywhere else in the world is like where we live, then you have a decision to make, right, am I going to do? Am I going to be part of the war machine or not? Right, and it's different because in America we have an all volunteer force and even you know, if we were to try to move into a position where we were going to do a draft, we could not come anywhere near the level of population density and penetration that, like Hamas has in Gaza and in that Palestinian population. We wouldn't even get 50% of the males in the United States into the military.
Speaker 1:It just wouldn't happen. No, their density really feeds that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that's what I'm saying is like they also are desperate right In that if you're missing a limb, if you can shoot with the other hand, we need you right. And so there's a difference. It would be almost impossible to turn America into a full war machine like what we might think of as World War II, where almost everything was pulling a lever to get metal, food, munitions, humans out to the war effort. It would be America couldn't reach that level of diversity, military density, like we did back in World War II. We couldn't do that right now, whereas you've got the population of the Palestinians in Gaza and they are basically they've been drafting every single person that can fight in the fight. They're just like World War II America, and they've been that way for the last 10, 15 years or longer. Right when it's like hey, bombs, beans and bullets, get in here, we can do it.
Speaker 2:Rosie the Riveter whatever you know, rahina the Riveter, she's in there helping make the bombs right, because the only way to get out of the box is to kill the Jews right, like to them. That's the only way we survive this oppression is to win the war against Israel. That's it. There's only one way to survive is to win the war with Israel, and we need everyone else in the world to come and help us, because that's the end. That's it. There's nothing else we can do except fight Israel. There's. I don't know of any other place in the world where the entire population of civilians and military and terrorists and paramilitary and everything else in between has one driving goal, and it's to kill your neighbor. Yeah, I don't know of another place in the world that's like that right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's insane. Uh, my, I was in Israel for a little bit and you know, being able to sit down and talk to some Palestinians. Uh, it was a time when, like, uh, there were still obviously tensions going on, but but it wasn't crazy.
Speaker 2:Sure Relative stability Right yeah.
Speaker 1:A few years prior there was some missiles getting launched, but he was just like that. He said, yeah, I would kill them all. I was in Jerusalem, but he's like that was my grandpa's land that they're living on. He's like they stole that from me. And so I hear that and I'm like, well, that makes sense, because that's probably how I would react too if somebody stole my land. Like, yeah, like blood will flow, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, when we're talking generationally and you know now, with israel has a right to defend themselves, and then you have you throw things like october 7th keep happening there. Yeah, like I don't understand how. I don't understand how to go forward. Right, you know what I mean. And like, are we at that point where you just say F it and steamroll them?
Speaker 2:The um, everyone will get into the chicken squabbling over, getting into, as I like to do on the show, getting in our time machine and saying when was the last? Where do you drop the marker in history of who has the right to this land, who has the biblical or God-given right or cultural right or whatever, who's had the most time on the field? Basically like, if I've got all the minutes on the clock, I've been on the field, then it's my land. You know, like that argument's been there and we can go back to the most recent version of that after World War II. And here's the thing.
Speaker 2:My argument sounds like I'm ultra pro-Israel and I'm like a war dog, right, but I'm not, because I've spent and I'm still in this position where I cannot wrap my brain around how the Zionist movement after World War II convinced not really the world but the winners, the allies, that Zionism needed to be birthed, branded and delivered by other countries. Right, like that again, unprecedented action, right that, something that was not in existence. There was no state of Jewish population at that time. Jewish people lived there, but not under a government, right, not since 70 AD. Yeah, in the Roman sect.
Speaker 2:So the yeah, so went to a place, drew some lines on the ground and said this is a new country, this is happening. And it wasn't in the region of the world where the fighting was happening. Right, like even more bizarre, to abstract that out. It wasn't like we were like, hey, poland, we're going to take a big part of this and turn it into the Jewish enclave because bad things happened here. That would have maybe I don't want to say made sense, but it would have made a little more sense, but it would have made a little more sense, or Germany right, we're going to make a population here between Poland and Germany, and this is going to be the safe place and Europe's going to protect it.
Speaker 2:And this is going to be how we're going to do it Not park these people in another part of the world where we can't protect them and then just not abandon them, but let it simmer, let it be ugly and messed up forever.
Speaker 1:That's their same plan right now with the Palestinians? It is, I know, I agree.
Speaker 2:And so for years I've been like look, I do not understand how the modern day country of Israel exists. It just seems crazy to me and you're absolutely right that we're doing basically the exact same thing in the opposite direction, or just I don't know, as you said, finishing the deal or whatever.
Speaker 2:I don't see it that way, yeah, but it's like oh oh well, the two state solution thing wouldn't work, and we're still kind of. The last thing we did was make Israel, so we don't really want to back out of that yet. Right, we want to save face and pretend like that was a good idea? Right, and we're going to keep doing that for a couple hundred more years. Right, and for now, the best idea is let's go one state and go one big Israeli state, right, and you know, I disagree with the idea and I think it's as much as I love Jimmy, stupid. It's a western fantasy that no one there actually wants, where it's just like us trying to deliver democracy to afghanistan. They didn't want that shit. Yeah, they don't care about voting for anything that they don't want to vote, right, same thing. There's no two-state solution is a western wet dream that has no reality in the levant period, right. Well, it would never happen. It's impossible.
Speaker 1:The Levant period Right Well, I never happened.
Speaker 2:It's impossible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then you just condemn yourself to a this cycle of killing your neighbors just shooting each other and blowing each other up bus bombs.
Speaker 2:And you know, october 8th the next time, you know like it'll. It'll keep happening. So I don't. I love, yeah, I love, yeah. I love that Trump is. I want him to shake the snow globe so hard that the things that are glued to the bottom break off, but that everything stays inside the snow globe, you know, and then when you set it down, it all falls back down and maybe it's beautiful, maybe it's so much better than the original artist designed? Probably not. The house will be upside down and the trees will be broken and the snowman will be dead. That's probably what will happen, but if it doesn't, we're the snowman, you know that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. But I'm just saying, like that's what he's doing. He's shaking the snow globe so hard that he wants the actual things inside there that are mounted to break off and float around. Right, yeah, and I am clapping for that, as long as he doesn't drop the snow globe, I guess. But I think I'm okay with shaking it real, real hard, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's one way to look at it An 80-year-old guy trying to juggle a snow globe, yeah yeah, we're kind of screwed.
Speaker 2:With KFC grease on his hands. We're screwed man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're kind of screwed With KFC grease on his hands. We're screwed man. Yeah, we'll end it on that. Thanks everybody for joining us again. My name's Adam Gillard. With me is Dick Wilkinson. This was Left Face. Thanks for joining us.
