Propaganda, Police & Power Dynamics

0:00 When you have all these emotions, all these ideas, all these propaganda, you know, wrapped up in people's brains, and they're acting out some part, some role, the role playing, like you said, right. Some part that's in their head on how they're supposed to act in this situation. By God, that can go south really quick. When you have military and paramilitary forces involved and you have mob mentality involved, this whole fucking thing can spiral in ways that you are unimaginable to like until you experience it and you realize the actual potential high stakes consequences that are there, then you can start to make different decisions about these kind of things.

0:31 You need to be like, wait a minute, I know that x, y, z can happen and can happen with a high degree of frequency and with extremely fast not time to think reactionary time, like there was no time for good to think in that moment. No, she's just dead, right. So there was no time for her to contemplate all the nuances.

0:49 Oh, he just put his cell phone into his other hand. He just drew the weapon. Right? There's no calculation. It's happened in a split second beyond human calculation. Now she's dead. Frame, frame by frame for all this. But in reality, it happened within moments. Right now you say I would do the same thing. I hope you would never be in that situation.

1:08 So. Oh my gosh. So I think you and your fiance, I live in a family. I hope you never in there. I have been in a very similar situation. In 2007. I was very very confused about rock scene. Punk rock scene is historically anti-government, anti-police. All this aka two people insurance. Two people in Charlotte got brutally beaten by the police by the CMPD.

1:30 Go figure. Brutally beaten. And so we planned got the proper permits to protest and have a concert at trade in Chinatown. A lot of us showed up. There was over 150 people there. Everyone was peaceful for the most part, and that was punk rock music. So it was loud. Yeah. And it was obnoxious to a lot of people who don't listen to punk rock up front.

1:51 Which is kind of the point. The people in the hotels complained, cops tried to shut us down. We were like, hey, we have permits until 9 p.m., we are allowed to be here. They're just going to have to fucking deal with it, right? A cop purposely lit a piece of newspaper on fire, set it by the trash can, and then said, we put it on fire.

2:12 We watched him do this. Yeah. And immediately after the cop yelled fire! 15 of my friends were tackled, beaten, tased. I was grabbed by a police officer held down and he said if you look at me or if you what did he say. He said if you argue with me, I'm going to take you to. And then he let me go and pushed me.

2:39 And then I had another cop. And this is just funny because he looked at me and was like. So sometimes like this. Right, right, right. Oh, cops are bastards. That's what I can do, right? That's not, that's not. So leave that. But you have. We had a horde of cops. They were all acting like this. Every single one.

2:55 They brought out the paddy wagon. They knew what they were fucking doing. They came in here with the intention of taking a bunch of punk rock teens and young adults and fucking putting them in prison that night. And they did. And they did what they wanted. They did exactly what they wanted. So, you know, of course, when this starts happening, people are like, fuck you.

3:11 People are racist. And it's like this is not fucking hell. I would just bring up Acab because it's a punk rock thing. Yes it is. And so I have actively been involved in this situation, and I can tell you my reaction was no different. I looked at that cop and I said, who the fuck do you think you are?

3:28 I'm 17. Fucking right I have. You felt no sense of like I had no sense of preservation at that point at all. But even as an adult, I don't think I would have reacted differently. I was watching my friends. Three of my friends walked away with permanent fucking brain damage. Oh my God. People walked away with broken ribs, dislocated shoulder for what?

3:48 For saying no. No, for like what? What caused that? They, you know, where they serving. They were trying to, protest police brutality and trying to protest police brutality and got the shit beaten out of them by the to have a concert. And it was all those consequences were way too high for the risk to reward witness what, what what's infuriating me about what you're saying is you're saying there are no.

4:13 Once you calculate the risk reward, you're saying, I'm not putting my body on the line for anything because I get pulled over by a cop, okay? And the cop I see has an attitude or whatever, and it's like coming up to the car in his hand. His weapon. Right. I've been in the military, and I know it's easy to say that's what.

4:27 That's what. Guess what? He's got the fucking backup. He's got backup. He's got radio communication. They have the technology. They have surveillance. Okay? I have none of those things I have. This is a one sided. I can size up, play chess. I know how to play chess. Think multiple moves ahead. If I size up that situation, I am not winning.

4:45 I'm not going to fucking win. But that's okay. That's your white male privilege coming into male privilege. You have some. You have the beauty of being able to size that up and make a choice of how you want it to go, because if you're compliant and cool and calm, they let you go slightly. They like, let go. All right.

5:06 So I've been beaten by a police officer when I was a child. Okay. When I was kid I was about 16 years old. I was driving with a friend. He was drinking. I didn't know that he'd been drinking. I didn't know that I was riding with him home from some event or something. And he was speeding. And a cop pulls up behind him.

5:20 We're in a fucking Buick station with him. He's like, oh, I can take him and try to outrun a cop in a fucking Buick station. Holy shit. Fucking moron. Right? Yeah. That's how you do in the house. I'm in the passenger seat. I got my seatbelt on. He's starting to really go fast, and I'm like, dude, stop. Pull over, you know?

5:33 And I'm like, you're being in the all I did to him and say, pull over. Yeah. You know, abso. Damn, this is not going to end well, right? Right. So he's like, no, no, he's trying to outrun the cops. And we crashed in the town green in Litchfield, Connecticut. Flipped the car multiple times. And when not Litchfield. Yeah, we ended up hitting a big ass oak tree.

5:51 The car was ended up on its side. All the glass was out of the vehicle. Thousand fucking cop car. You were probably this close to having a TBI. Yeah, that was some kind of a bruise from shoulder to hip, from the seatbelt. So your friend was actively endangering people by driving erratically and running? Oh, yes. Oh hell yes.

6:08 Right. So you at that point were guilty by association 100%. Okay. And so I'm like half out of it because the impact was so crazy, right? Yeah. What happened? All the glass was broken, like I said. And, I'm up in the air and traffic my seat, and there's a piece of metal from the hood that had popped up and gone through the front of the vehicle into my seat.

6:27 That could have really easily just gone right through my fucking skull. So I'm angry. I'm scared. My adrenaline is fucking sky high. Yeah, right. And I'm really active in sports at the time. Super fit. There's 100 cop cars and all the angles surrounding. So somebody comes. Yeah. So then they're starting to shine their flashlights in and stuff like that.

6:43 And so what I do is I unstrap myself and I crawl out through the back window, get up on top of the vehicle, pull myself up like get on top of the vehicle, and I jump down to the undercarriage of the car. I jump down all I'm doing doing plan on doing is walking to the front of the car and hands up, surrendering myself and getting away from the situation.

7:01 Okay, my friend is still in the car all of a sudden from behind my head cracked round the back of my head. Maglite one of those big ass metal flashlights right across the back of my head and I'm like, out yo yo like that weird. Kind of like one second unconsciousness. He's like temporarily. So before I hit the ground, I came out like, woke back up and my just normal instincts fight or flight kicks in and I turn and grab the guy.

7:27 Yeah. Of course. Right. Normal human instinct. I wasn't even had a consciousness. I turned it like your head turned and I grabbed the guy to defend myself. You're defending guess, and it's just dogpile. Yeah. I don't know what fucking privilege I had in that moment. You did not. Because you were, unfortunately, in a dangerous situation with somebody you had, which it wasn't your fault.

7:50 You were a victim of that situation just as much. Right. But it was my privilege that you're talking about. I'm just saying. No, no, you you're living your privilege. This is if you are in your routine traffic stop. Okay? As a white male now in in your in your prime here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My prime. You're you know, you have a seems like you got your quarters in one which is signaling to the, to the police officer.

8:14 You are a good business business wise man planning white twin also has it shot. Sean might not. He's a little loud. But he's a you also have an eye, even as a white woman, have the ability to dictate how that situation is going to go. People do not always have that ability to dictate how that situation is going to go.

8:37 So it's if you in the case of where my friends, the cops already knew how they felt about our protest, sure, they knew we were coming. They knew what we were protesting. They immediately knew what they wanted to happen. We were doing nothing to endanger their money. They wanted to show it. Then we weren't driving erratically or drunk around the city and crashing into Litchfield.

8:59 We were doing what our First Amendment rights were allowing us to do a, documented a pointed protest. Sure, it was loud. Sure, it was counterculture to a degree, right. But it wasn't from an over 15 people were beaten again, a few people, with, lifetime TV. They had broken ribs, broken bones. I was threatened multiple times.

9:23 I of course, I did not stand down, I stayed there, I talked to the news. I did everything I probably would have done in today's world, too. And that is because the crime was not. The punishment was not fitting the lack of crime that was there. So at that point, if we had a bunch of people descended on the cops who were just randomly beating our friends, and that's considered obstructing.

9:49 So those people got arrested too, even though we just watched cops tackle our friends for no fucking reason, unprovoked. Not a single reason. They lit that on fire. I watched them fucking do it and think we didn't have, you know, little black mirrors in our phone back then to record everything. So nobody was able to, like, prove it.

10:10 But there was at least 9 or 10 of us who watched them do that. And the I think that law enforcement has been definitely put in check with body cams and all the cameras. Absolutely. That's definitely, I think. But also, it's led to even more criminalization because people are getting more charges now because what the people do are being revealed as well.

10:27 Yeah. When the people do jackass stupid shit. Now it's all recorded on video too. But what I'm saying there are bad policemen and check by these little shiny boxes that you describe. Criminals have been also increasingly exposed for their behaviors, which is good. What I'm saying the ultimate thing here is there is a time where while obstruction is illegal of a law enforcement, obstruction is also sometimes fucking necessary.

10:51 I think that's true. Sometimes it is, I think, important. Sometimes yours in your communities is based on circumstance. It is based on situational circumstance. And I think this is one of those circumstances where you have poorly trained, masked armed thugs walking around your fucking city, pulling U.S. citizens and immigrants out of their cars, homes, and families alike indiscriminately.

11:13 And that's the time they've been sanctioned by the Supreme Court, right? To say that civil disobedience based on their color, based on their accent, based on the ass, they're actively allowed to profiling, you know, what they just did in the Supreme Court? You made it to the cops can fucking racially profile again. So stop. So so the MAGA people that are on that side of the fence, what did you say?

11:35 Like the resistance pay or something? I complied that way. And I got people that are on that side of the fence to say, don't tread on me. But now they're compliant. Yeah right Cheering like oh those woke these woke retards are getting what they deserve blah blah blah right. Do they refer to the Ice agent as a thug.

11:52 No. Okay. But you did. Absolutely. Okay. Something happened between, you know, some point in time when you became aware of this information to where the default word that you used to describe them stuck is that justice? Is that propaganda? It is. It absolutely is. But when you when you mask yourself to intentionally hide who you are, no badge numbers when you refuse, like I'm required when you when they ask, I'm required to present my papers.

12:20 But when I ask for their ID, they say, no, I don't ever give that to you. Well, what's the letter of the law? Are they allowed to wear the mask? They're not being told they can't. They're not be. Yeah they're not. So in some cities they have anti-mask laws for law enforcement. They're being advised it's giving watchmen. You ever watch that on HBO?

12:37 This is the series they did for Watchmen. It was really good where all the cops were masks and stuff. And yeah, it it's very. Alan Moore wrote some crazy stuff. It's very dystopian. So germane to the conversation, I think, is that the key tools and resources that we have is to be able to identify what propaganda is in effect on us and what kind of positives and negatives make that propaganda.

13:00 And we've really seen in the majority of the propaganda is most likely negative. So what negative effects is occurring within ourselves? But when the results of the propaganda diet that we're. But when you're masked and anonymized and able to work and mass to commit atrocities and crimes against groups of people, there is a problem there that goes beyond propaganda.

13:21 Yes. So the time that I spent in the military, which is now glorified, I've been saying for my service by common citizens all the time. Right. It's been history has shown there was no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had nothing to do with 911. I was fighting in that war. I was an Ice agent. Yeah, I was a masked thug.

13:38 Yeah. In that contact. Do you judge me that way? No, but you should, because that's the true. And maybe judge like 20 year old Chris who was in the military doing those things. But those 29. But that's beside the point. The point is, is that if I take my oath to the Constitution, I would have stood up against that and said, no, this is incorrect.

13:57 These people had no effect. I didn't do anything. 911 this is all propaganda and false information from the government. Then I'm here serving but false. Well, saying I was 11, no lesbian. Well, I didn't really have thoughts about it. Well, I'm saying let's just be sincere and honest about how we apply these tests to different things. I'm. But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not allowing I don't think these are equivalences.

14:22 They're not because we're on us. Something worse. What I would say we know we're we're we're on we're talking about what's happening in our own country against our own citizens. The fog of war is one thing. And that's what you were under. You had limited information and you had a mission, you know, don't you? You you didn't have full context, and you worked within the information and framework you were given and you did your job.

14:50 And hey, it was terrible. And the result was like, you said, once the fog was lifted and everybody was given context, it turns out what you did wasn't so great. But what we're talking about is people doing violence contra in contravention to our own laws and constitution. What we're talking about is people violating search and seizure. What we're talking about is people violating the First Amendment or amendment.

15:16 Yes, the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, you know, hell, even, you know, if an Ice agent comes to my door and looks ask for my papers, I'm trying to plead the fifth. I'm trying not to talk at all. So you have this guy that's named, you know, whatever his name is they have. This guy is a foreigner in our country that it's known to have overstayed a visa.

15:34 He's been fully identified. And they sent Ice agents to a location to a business or something to grab this person that is a known illegal alien that overstayed a visa. It doesn't belong in the country right now. And the Ice agents go there and apprehend him. What the what? What was wrong in that scenario? It was a civil crime, and it should have did not amount to reason to arrest, warrant appearance and due process.

15:56 Yes. Immediately vanishes like a fucking animal. And then. And then caged rage in and ferret it off without communication with his, with his family. About your earlier point about if, you know, with what you did in the Iraq war and you know, there are no weapons of mass destruction. I was 11 when that happened, right? Very young, didn't really know what to do.

16:18 All I knew was, we will never forget that propaganda. I was fed immediately after the trade centers were hit. And I'm like, wait, what? Why are we never forgetting, like, what is happening? But as I got older, no, I felt like that shit was a bunch of thugs, American thugs, world police going in and having way too much power in places they should have never fucking did.

16:40 Indeed. And that's what's happening now. But they're just turning it on our own country. That's the truth. And the reason why that happened, the true reason why that happened, was that the market, because they tried to get the Stargate that was hiding in Iraq, that's so I ran a conspiracy. I was next week. The entire the Iraq economy, with their resource rich country, represents trillions of dollars of international industry and business.

17:03 And that market was close to America until after the war. Now it's open. So they're part of global trade now. And American enterprise benefits tremendously from global trade. So that's what that was about. Our country ultimately benefited. So it was a patriotic duty to do that because it helped our markets here in America and helped our way of life here in America, let's say patriotic loosely.

17:23 Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, it was patriotic to do that and help America so we didn't have to tap into our own reserves of very rich resources that we have here. Right. And so right now, around the world, America is the only remaining superpower after World War Two. We have weaponry that's on country. I don't even know the kind of weapons we have.

17:39 It's so potentially powerful. Right? I asked the people in Venezuela when there was all this, like it was like they said, they describe it as like magic. We came in there like with this technology never seen before. They were like the troops were just falling into unconsciousness and getting sick because of these weapons, these energy weapons and all these things that we were using their sound weapon, visual, when we went into a whole nother country, took away their leader and didn't lose a single soldier in three.

18:04 I know, I know, that's insane. Going to dictators. Can I volunteer? All right, so we can we can just unite anybody pretty much around the world. We can put sanctions on Russian oligarchs. We can say Russian out to Russian oligarchs. We don't. You don't have any bank and we can make you out of your off your yacht if we want it.

18:19 Right. We control global trade around the entire world, and so we can cut off nations from the world. If we want to send someone who's the only remaining superpower. And my point is, is that regardless of what's right and what's wrong and propaganda and all that kind of stuff, there's a power reality. Okay. And that power reality is something that most people are unaware of because the propaganda has them thinking that it's not the power reality that exists.

18:42 And so what happens is they get pulled over by some dumb ass cop that's an asshole kind of piece of shit, but has all of the power and holds all the cards, and then they resist and they go against them. And next thing you know, some stupid ass tragedy happens to some person completely unnecessarily. And an a life was lost, that a precious life was lost over nothing, over some stupid, complete garbage nonsense.

19:05 But it happens time and time. But it comes down to you like, okay, let's say by virtue of me just being brown, the cop comes in with certain biases and predilections and is intending on handling the situation a certain way, just like he was to handle the cop protest that, you know, Lindsay described, I might not be able to work my way out of that power dynamic.

19:30 And for example, like I went to a couple of Ice raids to try to be sand in the gears and slow things down, and it didn't really work in my favor, and I didn't really do anything effectual, except for the last one I went to. I got punched in the back of the head. And, you know, it really is.

19:49 I thought I was trying to use my white privilege to combat power systems at play, and ultimately it's like a, you know, you're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. And depending on if you're brown versus a cop with an unknown set of biases, you might even be even more to deficit. It's so hard to judge these power structures that are in play, and to say, I will just by default, yield to them.

20:16 Chris. That will be my default stance because there's too much at risk for for nothing like, if I, if the, if the reward is not just a risk reward, but like if the, if the actual underlying reason is sufficient, right. It's time to fight you, fight you and you fight like a savage. Okay. But up until that point, you understand the power dynamics.

20:38 You have to learn to speak, to learn to play chess. What's your line? Yeah. My line. Yeah, yeah. What's your line in the sand? You said up until that point, then I'll fight. But. Right, right. So. Right, right. So if I have a cop that I that that I'm interacting with, and I can tell that cop is on a power high, he's power hungry, being a power hungry maniac, okay?

21:00 And I know that he's got his radio and he's got 12, but he's right back there. Right. And I'm on one side of a line. He's on another. We're shouting in his face or whatever, like I would be a complete tool, like a fool, right? To think that I'm about to win against that power structure. Right? So I'm not saying like completely can't tell this guy, but I'm saying like, it's time to retreat and yield to that.

21:22 Like it would be just obviously sometimes it's obvious. Yeah. Right there. Right, right right right. Okay. Live to fight another day and then reorient like, say analyze. What was I doing there? Why was I in that position? What what was the propaganda? What was the reasons that got me into that? But the answer is not to not do that again.

21:41 The answer nobody's saying, how can I be effective, right? How can I actually be effective? Because in that I was I didn't have the power dynamic on my side in that in that struggle. And you may not too effective resistance is going into the breach knowing you don't have the power struggle on your side and you might be arrested dissident, you might be arrested at the protest and you might.

22:00 Yeah, I have to look at the reality is what I'm saying. So like, we're not okay. So my ex wife told me that, like, those terrible things, this is during Iraq. There's these terrible things coming out in the media where American soldiers were captured. And there were like like, like beyond horrific torture, okay? And their bodies were strung up and burnt and just these, like, little stubs of corpses were hanging off a bridge.

22:21 All this like, like awful nightmare or nightmare, right? And so, like, I got lucky. I ended up on a base and I was able to get a phone call home because normally these letters I had no. But I got a phone call home and she ended up talking about this thing. She's so worried about me. She's like, please tell me, like, you know, if you have, I'm so worried about you if you ever get captured because you're scared by that, right?

22:39 Okay, I'm going to get strung up and hung on a bridge as an example. You know, it's like, I know this reality. And so I would never surrender to enemy forces that fight in time down. Right. So like, I knew the power structure going to I had a plan. Knowing the power structure that if I unfortunately ended up in the situation where I was isolated and got overwhelmed by enemy, I would just fight to the that I knew that that was it.

22:59 I would just fight it out until I was dead because I was aware of the, the power structures and aware of the situation and what was happening. You have to be that way, in my opinion, in these in these power dynamics, you have to know where you stand. I think I think that's what we are. I think that's what we are aware of though, because like, okay, you think of me a small five foot nothing woman, right?

23:19 I'm like 100 pounds wet holding a brick. So I'm in a situation where seven or 5 or 6 masked men descend upon my vehicle. Yeah, they're wearing bulletproof vests. They're armed to the teeth. They have zero identification. Right. My immediate fucking thought is to put it okay. My dad's first reaction, or my dad's advice when I was younger is if anybody ever surrounds your car, you drive away, you hit the gas once.

23:48 It turns out Rene was trying to do. And that's what I'm saying. Like, so we're put in these situations, we're expected to react better than the people policing us who are supposed to have training. But and that's a piece of propaganda that's been brought out that you brought to the conclusion. Did you seek out that? What did you just did you go, look, it doesn't matter.

24:11 But still, victim shaming is what she said, that just now it can be a matter that the cops should be trained for de-escalation. The cops should be behaving correctly. That's how you should be trained for de-escalation, right? But you should know when you're putting yourself into this power dynamic ahead of time, you should know what you're putting yourself into this role.

24:28 But the problem is the cops shouldn't be here, right? But we know that they to act that way. Here's an example I go on a date, right? I go on a date, pretend I don't know you. I go on a date. I go on this date with this guy. We've met twice before. Sure. I now put myself in a situation with a man that I've only met twice, and then a power dynamic where something happens.

24:49 Is that now my fault for putting that myself in that situation we're talking about? Plead different scenarios? Of course not. But of course not. It was so okay, so now. But but I'm saying I'm going out. It's different thing. I am going out to protect Jane is different than an encounter with I. It's not though. Listen, I am going out now to protect my community, to try and alert my community of presence, of masked agents, that are carrying armed, they are armed to the teeth that are arresting people, indiscriminately, taking citizens and immigrants alike with a known full power down with an unknown.

25:23 Right. So. Right. So, so now I go in there, there's a different response in each scenario because of the different dynamics, okay? Because every scenario is unique, right? Every scenario is definitely unique. But in the sense the point is I am going there to regardless of why I went there. Okay, that's the point in this I would never say now I ended up in this situation.

25:46 That does not justify the punishment that happens after. So if I'm like, have you are weirded out here on this date? That's not my fault. Even though I technically question, let's change the scenario. Let's change the scenario up to your exact scenario. So you go in knowing that the person that you're about to meet this is in reference.

26:03 You know, like, you know, the person is on the registered sex offender list. Okay. And you look them up, you do have pay money to get a website after you find their name on the registered sex offender list and you find out they've been jailed three times for, pushing themselves on women and rape and all this kind of stuff.

26:18 Right. You go on that date and you're in this shady situation. The guys feed you drinks and stuff like that and then starts pressing himself upon you. That's a completely different scenario that you went into then not knowing who that person it is. But so we know that these ice agents thugs, as you describe, right, have this power dynamic happening because we see it play out all the time on social media, repeat over and over and over.

26:41 And then if you repeat that and put yourself in that same power dynamic, knowing exactly how those scenarios play out, I would say that was not a very good. Yeah, you can't blame her. I'm not over him. Sure situation. And now no, you can't blame her framing you can't blame her in my scenario of getting sexually assaulted by this guy.

26:59 But you can't be surprised. No. You being surprised that you're still the victim? Renee was still a victim, okay? She's still a victim of that scenario 100%. Okay, but if you go into that situation, that power dynamic, knowing what that what happens in those situations and then that happens, you shouldn't be surprised. Okay. But here's the the target right where you are.

27:22 How did this happen. Perspective on it. So here here is here's a big picture propaganda. You're putting out is that we as citizens need to be better at complying with police than they need to be at dealing with us. That's not I don't think that's I don't think that's what I'm saying. No, it's not what you're saying, but it's the propaganda that what you're saying is coming from.

27:44 So if I go out and I know that these people are masked, they're dangerous. They got a hair trigger, you know, but I still want to go out and protect my community. That it's it's we're supposed to be more aware of what we're doing than the people that are supposedly trained and on the street to protect us. Like what?

28:04 What is so. Okay, I'm aligned with you on this. All right. So I'm sitting up in front of the class. We do the Pledge of Allegiance. This is the factual. I promise you, this is exactly what happened. One of my students in the back of the class asked me, do we have to stand up for the pledge? Do we have to do that?

28:16 I was like, I don't think that's the school rule, but in my class you do what you want, your own individual rights. We say in the position pledge of allegiance, liberty and justice for all. That would be like your liberty to make that decision. So from this context, I'll ask our read the Food chain to find out what the school expects.

28:34 But in my class, if you don't want to stand and put your hand on your heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, that's on you, okay? And that was it. Was it? It was not. Okay. And, that was legitimately that legitimately my belief. And then I even took a moment. It was a teachable moment. So I took a moment with that whole group in that homeroom class to go over what liberty and justice for all means.

28:54 Right. And so here's a bunch of a bunch of young minds. I have like, 60 students that, you know, now, like, in charge of what I called their teacher and role model. Okay. And I'm talking about these values and virtues and why they're so important. And that is, I'm doing a public service for my for the people in my community.

29:15 Would you agree? I mean, right, right, right. And now, if one of them said, I'm, this afternoon, I'm going to an Ice protest, right. I would notify their parents right away. It would be incumbent upon me. You guys started dissuade them as an individual and, communicate it to their parents. Right. Because I, especially as an adult, know the power dynamic they're about to step into and what complete danger that could be if a person of color walking up into that scenario, possibly not even legal, right?

29:40 Yeah, absolutely. Am I am I phoning I'm saying, oh, I might have illegals in my classroom. What the fuck? No, no, you're freezing me trying to keep them out of a direct confrontation 100%. But just like I wouldn't want that for you and for my friends, I think my friends too, caught up in some nonsense that, you know.

29:57 Yes, that nonsense in a way. But how do we fix it? We have to confront. We have to challenge. But I think Quinn was agreeing with you in a way that I cannot. I cannot see what you're saying. I but the Quinn I think does, I mean, I think that basically what Chris is trying to get across is, is, assessing the situation as, as individuals, the situational awareness, almost basically because of the at the end of the day, it's not necessarily anyone else's, job to protect you.

30:41 Okay. Well, we we all do agree that that is what the police officers, they're public servants. That's what they should be there to do. Protect and serve, protect and serve. But we also know that that due to certain situations that arise, emotions get high. Things happen that create split second decisions. Sure. And so in a sense, I think when Chris was bringing up the two scenarios of the going on a date, number one, you go on a date with someone that you've only met twice.

31:21 Wouldn't you take like pepper spray and one of your little brass knuckle things? Yeah, it probably doesn't mean I can overpower a 200 pound man. I'm not saying that, but you are aware of the situation. But there's risk mitigation. Well, but you've also you've assess the situation and determined know that the proper outcome outweighs the risk. Right now, if you find out this guy's name has been on the registry, you're probably making a completely different decision.

31:52 Absolutely not even going on the date. So you have assessed the situation. And I think what Chris is also what Chris stating with this is that when it comes to certain. When it comes to certain situations, like going up to someone with a machine gun and throwing a brick at them, probably ankle turn out right for you, right?

32:18 Right. And while yes, it is necessary at times to, to revolt, I don't think we are there yet. I don't think it's gotten to that point. So I would say that at this point, the assess to to make the proper decisions not only in self-preservation but also for community, because when you as an individual, you put yourself at risk, creates tension, then creates this, you know, the whole Rene.

33:02 Good situation. Not only does it create this awful thing that happened to Rene, but that puts all of the Ice agents on this heightened alert with the triggers. Right? And then it creates higher probabilities for these situations to happen because you have now created a hostile environment. What they perceive. Right. And yeah. So all right, like I said, I'm not I don't think Chris is necessarily talking about tucking tail and running.

33:31 I think he is talking more along the lines of assessing, because not every attack is is won by brute force. Sometimes it takes, you know, the game we were talking about where it's all about sneaking around and and if you get it. Exactly. It's not. It's about tact. It's not about brute force. Right. And sometimes in order to beat a larger, stronger opponent tact is required.

34:06 So we need more subtlety, more situational awareness. We need more aggressive enough. You know not necessarily brutal immediate confrontation. I think that and I'm also, I think a little more such an operational awareness in that sense of what happened to really good probably would have caused her to drive off a little sooner rather than wasting the time of saying, bro, I'm not mad at you, right?

34:30 Like and her wife to get in the car sooner, like things like that. Not to victim blame. Like I said, not like everything that happened to her was undeniably fucking wrong. If her wife hadn't have said, hey, go get some lunch, buddy. That one house about this at no point. And I mean, maybe she really cared about if he picked up the line or not.

34:47 All right. And no pressure with victim. No, no, I don't I don't think either of you would actively victim blame. I wonder if it just point that out. I don't think either, Chris. I don't think you would. I absolutely don't see you as a person like that. But I think too, we've also been fed this lie, this propaganda, if you will, that we as citizens are supposed to have better, more decent reactions than the people who police us.

35:09 And we are supposed to be more situationally aware than the people who are trained to protect or serve. We have to hold them actively to a higher standard, right? We are held to the higher standard than the police or law enforcement around us. We do. But why is the community also not held to a standard? They are, but that goal post is consistently moved.

35:29 It's moving on both sides. If you honestly think about it. Yes, because you're expecting this. You know, police have to do everything. You know, I do know I, I understand them, but explain explain to me how your reaction as an officer who is wearing a uniform and a badge that just by putting that on there is a target on your back.

35:58 You're right. So you you start off your day having to look over your shoulder. And it's not anything that you have done in yourself. It's some guy in fricking California that hit somebody for what it's not just an occupational hazard in their field. Well, in a sense, yes, but assumed that they chose to get into there's an occupational hazard associated with being a social justice warrior, too.

36:24 Yeah, absolutely. So in a sense, with all of that now, you you pull someone over for speeding, driving reckless or whatever, and they pull a camera out. Right? Well, as you're walking up to the car, you only see this black shiny thing coming out. You don't know what that is. And I don't know how many videos that I have seen.

36:48 And once again, this is propaganda, but it's also body cam footage. It is a cop walking. It has been called to a gas station. This is just one instance has been called to a gas station because a young lady was being stalked and harassed and they said, oh my God, there's the car. The car pulls back into the gas station.

37:10 The cop approaches the vehicle and that before she gets to the vehicle, they pull the gun out and shoot her three times as a police officer. While that is an occupational hazard, that is something you have to keep in the forefront of your mind because it's your life on the line to protect the woman that was being harassed.

37:30 So as a society, we have to also give I'm not saying give grace for the, the horrible things that police officers have done because they do need to be tried and held accountable for and given due process for that things investigated properly from an outside entity that they had, that they have done. But I also think that as a society, not whipping the phone out, shoving it in their face because you think they did, you think they did something wrong or.

38:08 Yeah, you know, or in anticipation of the you know what, I bet good cops, I bet, could come to do protect and serve and are out there like legitimately trying to do what their, you know, what their oath is and all that kind of stuff. I bet they love the body cam. I bet they love it after the shitty cops.

38:21 I bet they hate the oh yeah, they hate it. But I guess if we if we look at it in the case of ice, right. Okay. If we take, state, city, state trooper police, we take the sheriff's department out of this. These are actual law enforcement officers. We can all agree to that. Not is not. Yeah.

38:37 Ice are not Leos. They're nice. They're not law enforcement officers. They are federally sanctioned people with poor training. So make it make sense to figure out. Okay? Okay. That's a great. No, it's okay. We should find that out. Yeah. So if we in this part of those circumstances. So we have actively for the past decade or so been protesting things in this country like social justice issues.

39:02 And we can start most recently with, the Black Lives Matter. Okay. So we go to there, we are fed the propaganda that we are not processing correctly, okay. That we are kneeling during flag. It's not okay walking peacefully through the street is not okay. None of that is okay. Do not block traffic. Do not impede traffic.

39:20 This is not good. We will drive our cars right through. You will be arrested for this. Okay, so we don't do that. Then we find another way to protest or. No, I'm sorry. We do the Black Lives Matter protest and then we find another way to protest. Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem, something that affects no one.

39:36 It doesn't hurt anybody. An individual decision that that a private corporation, they fire them and then we go protest about, I mean, right. So like, I've been following so we take we take this goalpost and we, we move it towards peaceful again, okay. We keep moving everything towards peaceful. Nothing is happening. Nothing is changing. Shit is so bad.

39:53 Now we get to ice and here and now. At this point, this happened again. Four blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered. Let's put it that now, blocks and five years, there's already a massive amount of unrest in Minneapolis from that. Like that trauma doesn't just go away. So many fucking people witness that. It was heartbreaking. It was disgusting.

40:15 I watched it myself. It was fucking awful. Didn't the officers involved ultimately like, go to prison for that? I think Derek Chauvin was charged with murder one. Just the one who leaned on his neck. Everybody else, I think, was everybody else who was there watching, didn't it? Did not act. So you have a police department that still hasn't fully been held accountable for their crimes, and then you have them actively helping the Ice agents and allowing them in the city to do these things to the citizens.

40:44 So obviously there is going to be more unrest than not. And we saw what happened in Portland. We saw what happened in Charlotte, we saw what happened everywhere with ice coming in. And so, yes, while you want to keep the protests peaceful, there has to like they keep moving the goalpost to where like, okay, we're sitting here peacefully.

41:05 Portland literally just sat there with fucking frog and unicorn costume time and they were maced. Pepper ball, tear gas. Flashbangs priest have been pepper, Baldwin pepper and flash bang. Right. So you'll be in areas where. So the actual peaceful protesting is also too much for them. Yeah. Like Robbie Rhodes steamer this guy who just makes parody songs and presents in a giraffe outfit and a thong.

41:30 Right? Got arrested for yelling, singing in a speaker. Yeah. Got arrested for the second time the other day when he was behind the line that Ice established for him. Because they came over the line, they dragged him over it and they're like, you're over the line. Fuck, dude, we're taking you away. They're going to say water is being used as a weapon.

41:49 They took their water at the Minneapolis protest. They because they said, it's cold out here. It can be frozen. The police took it, not ice. The police took it because they said that water could be used as a weapon. So bullshit. They're actively moving the goalpost on what they consider is okay for us to do with our First Amendment rights is protesting.

42:11 So eventually it's going to get to the fucking point where that situational awareness that we do need to have, it's going to go the fuck out the window. It doesn't matter how much is social awareness. Yeah. Or situational or social awareness. You have it since you're still getting caught so much in the bear trap. So let me unveil to you a whole nother level of propaganda.

42:31 Like I feel like real quick, let me finish this thought. I feel like the especially being where it happened and what has happened previously with Ice raids going into Minnesota five years from when George Floyd happened and shooting a woman in the face is already a city that already has distrust for authority. Yeah. Wouldn't that then be the authority agitating the situation, putting themselves into a situation that is already pretty fucking heated from a few years ago?

43:01 They might be pawns. That might have been the goal they might be on. That was probably the goal, though, so they could spread the propaganda of, look, they're so violent. Look at with these, look at these crazy, look at these crazy liberal pro-choice wackos. And I get kind of I think what you guys are saying I actually plan is okay.

43:19 I said, acab, but all cops are. You guys are saying all cops are humans? Do all cops are beholden to the influences of propaganda of a political machine? They're working under all of this, and humans are humans. Yep, yep. So, Quinn alluded to this idea of putting on the uniform, right? That, again, is another way of propaganda you put on that uniform, you're now have all the expectations that uniform brings now affecting your psychology.

43:45 So when you go out in uniform and you have those boots on and you have all that gear and all that stuff and you're. I have a mandate and a mission. The clothes make the man. You're going to act quite a bit differently than when you're home in your pajamas, eating cereal, watching cartoons. Well, and I didn't JD Vance actively admit that they put an agent with possible PTSD back out into this?

44:03 He did. He said this guy was dragged by a car, had to get 30 stitches, and, had a confrontation previously. And he is the individual who dragging it at no point are we saying that he was doing the right thing. That's not that's not the statement being made. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean. Yeah. So I think it's just along the lines of.

44:34 You got to understand, it's picking your battles. Yeah. And, and where we can be most effective. And you guys are saying that this is not I think part of the calculus of picking your battles is to evaluate what propaganda might be working on, on you, motivating you to do something, influencing your motivations. I think. I think that's a valid a huge part of the of the battle.

44:57 Yeah, I think I think that it's fair to evaluate what propaganda might be, how propaganda might be affecting the calculus of your judgments because of the motivating effects of propaganda. Propaganda motivates people's beliefs, which then motivates action, right? So I think it's fair in the assessing the situation to also analyze what propaganda you might have been exposed to, at least consider if that might be causing you to be motivated to do this action that you may not otherwise do.

45:23 Yeah, and just put that in the calculus of, you know, right. Picking your battles. Sure. So propaganda like this, this idea of propaganda. Right. Is this like a mission propaganda. So what they what happened in Vietnam War is that the press was embedded with all these units and lots of, us, press, like, literally with the soldiers in the field.

45:45 Right. And they videotaped the aftermath of these, battles with skirmishes. And it was something like a 2012 to 1 kill ratio in Vietnam. So the the most likely outcome of a battle was that the US soldiers would wipe out platoons and companies of enemy soldiers. But for the first time, you had multi media coverage of it, not just the written word.

46:09 Yes, yes. And so yeah, there's like the body cam of war right. Yeah. And so what they did is they would like have these bodies stacked up like lumber after the battle. And it would all be like on the evening news. And so the people in the 60s would be watching this, every night come up on the news of like, oh, my gosh, look at this aftermath carnage of these battles.

46:28 And then over a certain amount of exposure, of this repeated exposure to this truth, to this reality of what's happening, people started taking to the streets. They were against it and saying, we got this is wrong. We can't keep just killing human beings like this. This is completely wrong. Then you have a war. Two numbers right? Blew Vietnam numbers out of the water, right?

46:47 But that put that visual again, allowing people to see the truth of what was happening there in the streets. And which is why we've changed our coverage of war. Exactly. And so what happened was, is that the government had to yield, had to pull the had to end the war because the population was just too against it. Right?

47:03 They could they couldn't, they couldn't, you know, keep going against the will of the masses. It's just too great. There's too much at risk. So they picking their battles, they pulled out. Right. They said okay, they had to pick the battle. So it's battling now, right? So they pulled out. They pulled out of Vietnam and all that kind of stuff.

47:19 And then, you know, the aftermath and a lot of stuff changed politically. And it was a it was a it was a watershed moment in our history. Sure. The court of public opinion won. Right. And so the government learning from that started changed the Department of Defense changed the rules about how the media is allowed to cover warfare.

47:35 They started excluding it and all of the media that comes from the when the battlefront had to be cleared by the Pentagon before being able to be released on the news or in the public in general. This was soldiers taking videos, pictures. Everything was subject to when I was in Iraq. They you could not take any pictures or footage of anything that you couldn't take any pictures of bodies or anything like that.

47:54 It had to be filtered through the current propaganda machine and the aims thereof. Right. And so there was when Iraq invaded Kuwait in the first in Desert Storm, when, when Kuwait, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we came in with full force and the Iraqi army fled back across the desert to go back to Baghdad, to go back to Iraq, you know, borders crossed back into Iraqi border.

48:14 They retreated. And when they retreated, it was a shooting gallery. We just had this, like massive I mean, it was like a massive, right, like all these vehicles. There was one main, main road going back to Baghdad and all these when the war, when we took back wait, they all fled and when they fled, we have control of the skies and we just decimated, I mean, ducks in the water, ducks in the water.

48:35 Right? Totally. Just blasted them to oblivion. Okay. And it was like it was like two thirds of their military were destroyed right then and there, and some high percentage of their military assets were just decimated. Right. And so what happened was there was footage of this on the on the news, but there wasn't a single body in any of the footage.

48:55 Now, one body, that one crispy body from that carnage was, was, was you know, bodies don't just disappear, you know, as you know, like nuke or something when they're vaporized. But when you just like fully destroyed vehicles with conventional arms, it doesn't destroy the bodies. It mangles the bodies. And there's body chunks all over the place. There's corpses everywhere, right?

49:13 Yeah. So what they did was they took all the corpses away from the vehicles and pulled them out into the sand and just put a plow blade on the front of a tank and just plowed them into the ground. Yeah. So they whitewash it. There was no bodies. Then they let the camera footage go through. And so what people saw on the screens of America was just a bunch of burnt down vehicles.

49:30 Oh, wow. Look at our power. But none of the holy crap, look at all the death, right? Because of this exact, you know, because of this. Understood. Because of this exact arrangement of this knowledge of how that propaganda works on the psychology of people with empathy when they see dead, burnt, destroyed bodies, it triggers people's. Yeah. Right.

49:50 Yeah. And, so the military propaganda machine learned how to use the, you know, lack of information, if you will, or the restriction of information going out, restricting that to not allow the the empty people, the masses to be triggered. So then people would in mass protest the wars. Well, that's the government deciding what you do and do not, put out there because with the right, with the historic knowledge, knowing what happens to people, how they're triggered by a human catastrophe, given the full, full information, the overarching psyop of it.

50:22 All right. Yeah, yeah. The overarching Psyop. And I think today with the propaganda machine that's in place is that these PsyOps that create the mega warriors and create the social justice warriors in these polarized juxtapositions. It's just a calculation. It's just a chess move. They're using people's empathy in various ways as pawns, while they laugh all the way to the bank.

50:43 And these big industrial complexes and the wealth inequality just continues to increase. I think that's the game. I think what we've determined here, too, is that we need to use propaganda as a positive source. Yes, as well, using the propaganda to push social reforms that would allow our society the propaganda to go ahead positive and bring the community in the country together.

51:08 There we go. And motivate them to action. Right. And maybe a good place to start is this idea. There's ten domains. How do we make sure our house is in order before we try to go outside the house? Or, you know, of course, have an outside view of the world, even if not just let's put our house in order.

51:24 How do we make sure our community, where we live and thrive and spend money are in order before we go out into the world? Onion skin our way out. So, you know, so I'll take a hint from that. How do we make sure our country is not touched before we go fuck other countries? Right, right. And if we stop listening to them, if we stop listening, if we stop contributing, we stop giving free labor to their algorithms, right?

51:46 We stopped slaving away our unpaid labor to their algorithms and giving up all of our fucking data. 24 seven right? And allowing them into every aspect of our lives. And we start caring for ourselves and the people around us. A lot of fucking change. Positive change could happen. 100% agree. Yep, yep. Definitely definitely. And I mean I think the key here is we know one way to identify positive propaganda is not just it doesn't motivate you to action, but it doesn't motivate you to action that improves yourself, your community, your situation.

52:20 Now, I'll close by thanking our guests and noting that, Quinn has a really nice, soothing voice when when you speak at length, it actually, like, calm me down to hear you talk. Very relaxed, just, you know, put that emotional support to support you. De-escalate emotional support situation emotional he's emotional support podcaster now it isn't really therapy. It's all oh shit I love it.

52:43 Love a good therapist man. This is a HIPAA compliant, podcast. We gotta we gotta stop. Oh thanks guys. Thank.