0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to Dr. Drew

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over at drdrew.com. If you want some of the other

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shows we do. But we appreciate you

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supporting this show. We have some very interesting guests and

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do try to support the people that support the plot.

0:26

We try to select them carefully.

0:29

David Ragsdale is my

0:31

guest today. He

0:33

is Operation Director for Defeat

0:35

the Mandate. And he has

0:38

a lot of interesting ideas. Well,

0:40

first of all, he's had an interesting life. We can

0:42

talk a little bit about that, David. He

0:45

and I talked on the radio once about that. I was getting

0:48

deep into homelessness back then and David

0:50

emerged from homelessness and addiction. But

0:53

we appreciate you being here. Good to see you again. Thank

0:55

you. It's good to see you again. Do me a

0:57

favor, just sketch the homelessness journey really quickly. Just so

0:59

we can put that aside and maybe get back to

1:01

it at some point. But just so people know what

1:03

I met by that. Sure. So

1:06

native, fourth generation native Angelino, grew up

1:08

in a great family, great schools,

1:11

lived in Asia and Europe for 10 years,

1:13

grad school, came back to

1:15

LA, became an addict, and

1:18

found myself, I woke up one day

1:20

homeless in Atlanta of all places. And

1:23

when I did finally realize

1:26

that I was in fact homeless and

1:28

I had been homeless for a while but

1:30

didn't really notice, I took away. What

1:33

was the drug that was making you not notice? Crystal

1:35

meth. Okay. It's easy to

1:38

miss a lot of things. Well, because you

1:40

stay in strangers homes and you think, oh,

1:42

I own the place, right? It's

1:45

not so unusual. And then it took me

1:47

about six weeks to work myself out of

1:49

homelessness. And

1:52

then I got a place in a

1:54

great place in Marietta called the extension

1:57

where I stayed for a year. And

2:00

then I transitioned to becoming

2:02

a housing coordinator where

2:05

I learned quite a lot about how homelessness

2:08

and getting out of it works on

2:10

the other side, right? And

2:13

that was real interesting. And then when

2:15

COVID hit, I got fired

2:17

on to be part of a team

2:19

that became Defeat the Mandates. So

2:22

I can't help but dig

2:25

in a little bit on the housing coordinator. Do

2:27

you have, I was spoken to, I've just

2:30

happened to have spoken to a housing coordinator about a couple

2:32

weeks ago. And she said the following

2:34

to me, she goes, yes, we're getting them into the, we've

2:36

got the power, we're getting them in, but

2:38

then we're not done. I'm like, yeah, no, no

2:41

shit. So I wonder if you could speak

2:43

to that part. Well, you

2:45

see, I was doing the tip of

2:48

the spear. So my concern was all

2:50

the people who couldn't get into our

2:52

program, because we had

2:55

this intake and there were three

2:57

or four questions. If unfortunately they

2:59

answered one way, it was ineligible.

3:02

The most exciting part of my job was

3:04

like, wait, let's try to

3:07

find you someplace right now in

3:09

Metro Atlanta. And it

3:12

wasn't exciting for them. It was

3:14

very desperate for them, but it

3:16

was sort of like detective work,

3:18

trying to figure out where they

3:20

were and where we could plausibly

3:22

get them before five o'clock. And

3:24

it wasn't always so easy. And we often

3:27

had the clock working against this, but we

3:29

did our best to place people in beds.

3:31

I'm gonna ask you a truly unfair question, but

3:34

if you could just summarize it, what's

3:36

missing in how we do this? I

3:39

think what's missing is there's not really a map. Like

3:41

a lot of parents will

3:44

do things that make sense to

3:46

them. For example, they'll drop a

3:48

child off at a hospital, and

3:53

then the hospital will say, oh, you need to

3:55

go to a crisis under a detox, but we

3:57

can't get you there. And at least in Atlanta,

4:00

distances can be quite difficult to

4:04

do. I think it would

4:06

be more sense for the parent to

4:08

drop their child off or their loved

4:10

one off at a crisis center or

4:12

detox. It's an integrated system.

4:16

But you're saying a crisis center detox,

4:18

that's a psychiatric hospital essentially. And

4:21

you're not allowed to say that in this state. You're

4:24

not allowed to talk about that. So

4:26

unless you're right, unless it's all one

4:28

system, of

4:31

course we're not going to fix it. An

4:33

ambulance can take, in Georgia at least, I

4:35

was working in Georgia in Cobb

4:37

County. So an ambulance

4:40

could take someone who

4:42

was presenting as under the

4:44

influence overdosing to a hospital

4:46

but couldn't take that person

4:49

to what in Cobb County

4:51

they called the crisis center. And

4:54

so oftentimes you'd have these people in the

4:56

wrong place with no way to get to

4:58

the right place. And that's how you start

5:00

hearing stories about this homeless person was dropped off

5:02

at a bus stop. You know, like the hospital

5:04

dropped them on the street. Yeah, they did. Yeah,

5:07

they did. Yeah,

5:09

so that's good information. Thank you for

5:12

that. And then defeat the

5:14

mandate. Tell me about that and your cause

5:16

and what the

5:18

purpose is. Yeah, so I

5:21

got brought on and there were about four or

5:23

five of us and we were working

5:25

for this,

5:28

we didn't even have a name at the

5:30

time. And this guy in

5:32

Chicago, Matt Toon, he

5:35

was I think under threat of losing

5:37

his job because of the mandates. And

5:39

so he managed to

5:41

connect with some people and he

5:44

had this great idea of doing

5:46

this big, peaceful, loving rally in

5:49

Washington to

5:51

defeat the mandates. And then he

5:54

connected with my boss, Louisa, and

5:57

they connected with Steve Kirsch who then brought

5:59

in a a lot of other people

6:01

and organizations. And then we were

6:03

the core team that sort of,

6:06

we were writing copy for the posters

6:10

and trying to get the permits and everything. And

6:13

we managed to pull it off and

6:15

it was this beautiful, loving bipartisan event.

6:17

And we did a second one in

6:20

Los Angeles a few months later. Was

6:23

it equally as bipartisan?

6:26

Yeah, no, it was great. There was

6:28

a lot more music in the second

6:30

one because we had longer. When you're

6:32

doing your rally at the Lincoln Memorial,

6:34

your time gets compressed. Oh, that's interesting.

6:36

So half of our speakers didn't get

6:38

to speak because of the park service.

6:40

And they were great actually, but they were like, you guys

6:43

are done. Wow, that's interesting. And I

6:45

think about that when you're watching these things. And

6:48

so defeat the mandate. And so

6:50

the man, I assume we're talking about

6:52

vaccine mandates, right? And

6:55

were you inclined that way already? Did

6:57

you know some of the problems? Were you vaccine injured?

6:59

Were you injured? Do you know somebody who was? Yeah,

7:02

I was not vaccine injured,

7:05

but I would probably come

7:07

more from the conservative or

7:10

freedom oriented ideology. So I

7:12

was very much opposed to

7:14

the mandates. And I thought,

7:16

especially with a lot

7:18

of the work I had done in

7:21

recovery, a lot

7:23

of the, frankly, the concepts

7:25

that progressives have developed

7:28

and brought into the recovery

7:30

field about not shaming people

7:32

and all these things. I

7:34

saw this real dissonance between

7:37

what we knew were

7:39

best practices in recovery and then

7:41

what was happening on

7:43

a public health level. And to me,

7:45

it just seemed ridiculous because I'm like,

7:47

don't, we know that that stuff doesn't

7:50

work because, right? That's

7:52

what we've been talking about for a

7:54

couple of years now. And

7:56

why is this now being used on

7:58

the whole population? And you're

8:00

talking about forcing forcing people to

8:03

do things from a healthcare perspective.

8:05

Yeah, language, especially. Yeah, you know,

8:07

what astonished me was it wasn't

8:11

recovery itself that I had in

8:13

mind. It was HIV and

8:16

AIDS that because I was very active during

8:18

that. And it took about 10

8:20

years for us to figure out how

8:22

to change people's behavior. And

8:25

back then, I was listening to Anthony Fauci, who

8:28

was my hero at the time. And

8:30

he was telling us doctors to

8:32

scare people. Sound familiar? And

8:35

to, you know, just sort of tell them that, you

8:37

know, if you had sex with one person, everybody

8:39

that everybody's ever had sex with is going to

8:41

come into that relationship. You know, if somebody had

8:44

sex with somebody who had sex with somebody who

8:46

had sex with somebody, you're going to get that

8:48

disease. And you got to, you got to, he

8:52

wouldn't say scare them. But he was absolutely,

8:54

you know, about making

8:57

people fearful of catching

9:00

this thing, which reminds ourselves that was they had a

9:02

100% fatality rate, 100%, nothing we could do for many,

9:07

many years. And

9:10

when we started figuring out how to

9:12

help people change their behavior, we

9:15

found a very specific model worked.

9:17

And it was actually the Loveline

9:19

model that I was already doing,

9:22

which was you create a

9:24

case, right? How did doctors

9:26

learn about medical practice? We

9:29

go study cases, which

9:31

are essentially people having an experience

9:33

and then their narrative. So

9:36

you have somebody, you present a

9:38

case, you look

9:41

at the consequences of the choices that that

9:43

case made. And if you want to make

9:45

a point about making bad choices, you sort

9:48

of show, well, they made some bad choices.

9:50

And here's what happened to them. Humor,

9:53

music, that's it. That's

9:56

it. That's how you do it. You show

9:58

them somebody like them. who made

10:00

some bad choices or good choices and

10:02

then you put humor and music around it and

10:05

you know, make it relatable and fun do

10:07

it done done and that you guess

10:09

what that changed people's behavior. Yeah, I mean I

10:11

remember you know, I'm a native Angelino. I was

10:14

in eighth grade in 1992 at Cathedral

10:17

Chapel Parish School and we would

10:19

secretly listen to Love Line and

10:21

we would debate what the

10:23

callers were saying at recess and lunch

10:25

and we would say oh that person

10:27

was wrong and that you know

10:29

what I mean? We use Love Line to

10:32

figure these things out in a quite

10:34

Socratic way, right? That may be taking

10:36

it too far but it was certainly

10:39

like a it wasn't like

10:41

one view forced upon us. We had to

10:43

like debate it as an integrator. Exactly and

10:46

what I kept saying and for years afterwards

10:48

I said the same thing with teen moms.

10:50

I knew that would have the same effect

10:52

is young people are smart but

10:55

you can't tell them what to do. You just

10:57

become authority figure in a white coat or you

10:59

become their parents and you can get

11:01

and you can teach them all kinds of things.

11:03

It doesn't change their behavior which is what we

11:05

were interested in is you have to kind of

11:07

change the culture a little bit and you have

11:09

to show them. They're smart as

11:12

you're finding as you found out your eighth

11:14

graders and you're figuring this out. Crazy,

11:16

right? Yeah but we definitely

11:19

had to secretly listen to it at night

11:21

because we didn't want our parents to. Yeah

11:23

then it was only one night a week

11:25

if I'm getting the history correct, right? It

11:27

was just one. Was it am

11:29

I allowed to say what state was on?

11:31

Yeah. Was it on K-ROC? Yeah. Yeah yeah

11:34

yeah. It's starting. We stayed on K-ROC for

11:36

35 years but it started there and

11:39

then it had many many other affiliates around

11:41

the country. Eventually K-ROC just became another affiliate

11:43

which is crazy to say but

11:46

it definitely started there. So

11:49

the fact that we were using mandates

11:52

and fear and so your position was

11:54

mostly that from a political philosophical standpoint

11:56

you have a little more libertarian point

11:59

of view. You felt that

12:01

mandates, you know, it's funny, I've said this

12:03

before, but I was in Paris couple years

12:05

ago. And young

12:07

Parisians were in the streets demonstrating, and I

12:09

actually thought this was quite admirable,

12:13

admirable, that they were saying, hey, wait a minute,

12:15

you're telling us this thing is not going to

12:18

hurt us because we're young and healthy, and then

12:20

you're going to force us to take this thing

12:23

against even if we don't want to,

12:25

that is not liberté, that is something

12:27

else that is against the founding principles

12:29

of this country, and we are taking

12:31

issue with demand, the demand. And I

12:34

thought, yeah, it's good for them. At the

12:36

same time in our country, college

12:38

students were demanding mandates and demanding

12:41

mask mandates. So

12:43

fucked up, as far as I'm concerned, it

12:45

was so weird. Want

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with code Drew15. So

14:15

you were at the time you could

14:18

see that this was philosophically politically kind

14:20

of questionable and then you had the

14:22

clinical background to know that it was

14:24

a terrible idea. Yeah and

14:26

then I got to meet and then

14:28

I got to meet and work with

14:30

and encounter vaccine

14:34

injured and vaccine bereaved

14:36

and that was like a whole

14:38

new education for me because from

14:41

my background you know I'm a

14:43

Gen X or our schedule

14:46

when when I was a baby was not

14:48

that many there were not that many on

14:50

the schedule and you know I had no

14:52

idea I don't have kids I had no

14:54

idea what that had ballooned

14:57

to and so I was able

14:59

to really get

15:01

some real experience with people

15:04

who've actually been in the

15:06

health freedom movement for decades

15:08

before COVID and and

15:11

then in addition to that what

15:15

was most interesting was

15:17

the censorship right

15:20

like a heuristic that that signals

15:23

something to us that there is

15:25

something seriously wrong with what they're

15:27

messaging right and it was and

15:30

it was and I

15:32

don't think even today people realize

15:34

how deep that went because it

15:36

wouldn't be on like Twitter or

15:38

Facebook the censoring turned

15:41

into deep platforming deep

15:43

banking at defeat the mandates

15:45

we lost our payment processor

15:48

we did nothing illegal we had

15:50

good relations with Park Service

15:52

we were loving we were

15:54

not violent but we were

15:56

algorithmically because of our name

16:00

off our payment system.

16:02

We also lost access to a

16:05

ton of B2B

16:07

services that any company

16:09

or organization needs to produce

16:12

events and we got

16:14

thrown into what's called the parallel

16:16

economy. Tell them

16:18

to talk about that. I'm semi-aware.

16:20

I've heard the reference. I think

16:22

I kind of understand what it

16:24

is. It's still forming I think.

16:27

Yeah, it's new.

16:29

It's basically alternatives

16:31

to these very

16:33

large quasi-monopolistic corporate

16:36

entities that appear

16:38

to advance

16:41

a ideological or political agenda

16:43

above and beyond the quality

16:45

and utility of the product

16:48

that they're actually offering. Not

16:50

only that, but my sense

16:52

is that when I talk

16:54

to people that identify themselves as part of

16:56

a parallel economy, they will say

16:58

something on the order of, I'm tired of buying

17:00

things from people that hate me. They

17:03

make me feel like they hate me. It's like, wow, that's

17:07

wild that companies would do that. Well,

17:09

that's a touch point. That's a touch

17:11

point for consumers and that's a very

17:14

important touch point. You'll see like Jeremy

17:16

Boring is very good at this because

17:18

he's a very savvy entrepreneur. He

17:21

can come out like so if

17:23

a company, a consumer product company

17:25

goes, he's woke, Jeremy

17:27

can just come back in a few

17:29

days with an alternative

17:32

similar product that's not woke and

17:34

that's really smart of him. It's

17:36

a little bit deeper than that.

17:39

I happen to see wokeness

17:41

as a symptom of like

17:43

the stagnation and dysfunction of

17:46

our large sort of corporate

17:48

dominated economy and

17:50

that what we're – like if

17:52

you look at innovation, like even on

17:55

the Super Bowl commercials, didn't

17:57

it feel like nostalgia of

17:59

nostalgia? Like there wasn't anything

18:01

particularly innovative or new that was

18:04

on offer, right? And RFK Jr.

18:06

was explicit about the nostalgia. I

18:08

don't know if you saw it

18:10

hit that. Yeah, that's political.

18:12

But still, I was so shocked to see

18:14

how explicit the nostalgia was and that people

18:16

kind of responded to it, which is interesting

18:18

to me. And by the way, to your

18:21

point about, we were talking a little poetically

18:23

about Loveline, but people all

18:25

the time now more than ever come

18:27

up to me like, oh my God, Loveline, oh my God, oh my

18:29

God. And they're really talking when I really

18:32

I question them because it just started like a

18:34

wave coming at me. And I question

18:36

they're really talking about like 1996 to 1999. And

18:41

they really don't want me

18:43

to resurrect Loveline. They want

18:46

that showback that they

18:48

want that. And really what they

18:50

want is to be back there. There

18:53

it's a nostalgia. And it's like, wow,

18:55

it's very powerful, right? And it's palpable.

18:58

Yeah, and these companies, right? They're not so

19:00

there's a there's a there's a superficial

19:02

and I don't mean that in a

19:05

bad way, but there's a superficial level

19:08

of I don't want to buy

19:10

jeans from a company that hates

19:12

me or my view on abortion

19:14

or immigration. Right. Why

19:17

are my jeans talking to me about those? Right.

19:20

Right. Why is that even in the end? Again,

19:22

the issue. Yeah. Yeah.

19:25

And I know much the Jennifer say who was

19:27

that, you know, she was in line to become

19:29

ahead of Levi's. Yeah. And

19:31

because of the lockdowns, you know, she had

19:33

to leave that job. And that's her position,

19:35

which is these jeans shouldn't be talking to

19:38

me about this stuff. But

19:40

at a deeper level of

19:43

the parallel economy position is a

19:46

lot of these big like big tech, big

19:49

banks, they actually can't innovate.

19:51

They can't actually create the

19:54

future. Right. And

19:56

so that's why they're always they're

19:58

always calling up like an. echo

20:00

of nostalgia for the 90s

20:03

is very common or even now they're

20:05

starting to like the mid-2000s and

20:09

it's like it's just it was

20:11

so funny is they're using wokeness

20:13

and progressive politics as just like

20:16

a veneer because they're incredibly reactionary

20:18

and in our Incredible

20:21

people don't understand the term reactionary

20:23

is means the whole calling going

20:25

backwards going coming back to a

20:27

different time people think reactionary is

20:29

reacting no reactionary means

20:31

conservative in the sense of calling back

20:33

to a previous time and

20:36

and Let's let's make

20:38

Jennifer say explicit because I think her story is important.

20:40

She was a high-level executive

20:42

at Levi. She was extremely

20:44

well-liked was extremely successful. She

20:46

raised issues about the lockdowns because of the

20:49

impact was having on her kids and kids

20:51

she knew and was essentially fire

20:54

and has become an activist about this sense. I'm

20:56

really not I don't know what these words so

20:58

I'm worried about the words were using sure active

21:01

activist is a word I don't I don't know

21:03

what to make of anymore and even the word

21:05

woke is sort of it's under attack as some

21:07

sort of right-leaning

21:09

oh my

21:11

god, I don't want to use

21:14

a term like dog-pristol but right-leaning

21:16

construct that that it doesn't really

21:18

exist. It's just something you know constructed

21:20

to whip people up. So I wonder

21:22

if we should have a different term.

21:27

Yeah I mean well I would say for Jennifer

21:29

I would say I look at her as like

21:31

a pioneer of the parallel

21:33

economy in terms of like

21:35

advocating for like neutral access

21:38

right and there are two schools

21:41

of thought they're probably more but there

21:43

are two main schools of thought in

21:45

the parallel economy there's the neutral access

21:48

model which you might

21:50

think of as either like

21:52

classically liberal or libertarian basically

21:56

this product this good this

21:58

service should available

22:00

to everyone and there shouldn't

22:02

necessarily be filters other than

22:05

price on it. What

22:09

people may be in the 90s thought

22:11

that like capitalism... Right, markets,

22:14

yeah markets. There's

22:16

another school of thought and they're

22:18

called the values aligned. And they're

22:20

not all Christians but like a

22:22

lot of Christians or people of

22:24

faith, they're the easiest example

22:26

to speak of where you might have

22:28

like a Christian credit union and they

22:30

say well you know upfront

22:34

to join our credit union you have

22:36

to be a Christian or if you

22:39

had like a pro-life diaper company

22:41

where they said for this product

22:44

it makes sense because of who

22:46

we're going after our market we're

22:49

going to promote pro-life causes. Right,

22:51

there's some conflict between the two

22:53

right and there's a big debate

22:56

and I think that's fine to

22:58

have that debate in the parallel

23:01

economy and maybe for some

23:03

things you would choose values aligned.

23:05

For example, for your

23:07

health company, right, everything

23:09

we've been through in these past few

23:11

years you may say you

23:13

know what I don't want to be neutral

23:15

access on my health care. I want to

23:17

go for a values aligned health care company

23:20

that I know did not support the

23:22

mandates. That is not just doing

23:25

whatever the CDC says, right, whereas

23:28

maybe for your

23:30

payment system or your bank you

23:33

may veer more towards hey I

23:35

just want neutral access here. I

23:37

really maybe

23:40

don't even want a bank that

23:42

cares about the views of its clients,

23:46

right? Right, right.

23:49

But it is that parallel economy

23:51

world is very motivated. You

23:53

know it's a very powerful group and I like

23:57

that that as they say speak with your

23:59

pops. book that people want to

24:01

see people thrive and whether

24:04

it's because you have value aligned or just

24:06

because you're supporting or you're not someone

24:08

who was part of something that you didn't like,

24:10

whatever it might be. To

24:13

me, I don't see any problem

24:15

any of that. Are you

24:17

getting any pushback anywhere? Yeah,

24:19

well, I mean, you get

24:21

pushback because anytime you try

24:24

to create a

24:26

viable alternative to a dysfunctional

24:28

system, nowadays, you're called like

24:31

far right or whatever and

24:33

despite, you know,

24:35

it's just like a lazy term

24:37

that I think a lot of

24:39

establishment media uses even

24:41

without actually doing any real deep

24:43

dive into the beliefs and politics

24:46

of the person that they're

24:48

labeling. So you have that, but

24:50

everyone gets that. It's a way of

24:53

quickly dismissing them as insignificant, not worth

24:55

looking into. Yeah,

24:58

and so there's that. There's also, and

25:01

this is sort of a little bit

25:03

of a bigger issue, but not so unusual,

25:06

there is a little bit of a quality

25:08

issue in the parallel economy. It's new. It

25:11

is growing. It

25:14

is the future, but it is new, which

25:16

means a lot of these

25:18

companies are startup. A lot of

25:20

them have teething problems. That's true

25:22

of every startup. There's

25:25

some grift attached to it, but again, that was

25:27

true in big tech. That

25:29

was true in the railroads. So these

25:32

things are not like... Again,

25:34

grift is another term that's just constantly bantied

25:36

about. What do you mean when you say

25:38

that? Well, there are

25:40

some people who are

25:43

probably more like

25:46

any emerging industry

25:49

are probably more concerned about

25:51

the optics and about being

25:53

seen as opposed to doing.

25:55

So talkers instead of doers.

25:58

There's not necessarily anything... wrong with

26:00

that per se. I

26:02

don't think grift itself, I

26:05

have a very particular view on it, is necessarily

26:07

a bad thing. It can be a sign that

26:09

something is growing because if

26:12

it could attract grifters, there's

26:14

something to it. But

26:17

I think it is important. I want to dig into

26:19

that a little further. So it's like somebody with no

26:21

substance or somebody who's just a

26:24

me too, they're just sloganeers kind of thing? A

26:29

little bit. So yeah, were they taking advantage

26:31

of something? Yeah.

26:33

No, I think these terms,

26:35

I'm a very liberal

26:38

and tolerant person, so I tend

26:40

not to overreact if, you

26:43

know, I try to see the

26:45

functional utility of these words and

26:47

I see the utility in grifters

26:49

because it means there's something to

26:52

be grifted. But by grifting, what

26:54

I mean is, so one

26:56

of the things in

26:59

the parallel economy is sometimes it relies

27:01

too much on the veneer of anti-woke

27:03

marketing and it can

27:06

get ahead of how far the

27:08

product is or the quality of

27:10

the product. And

27:13

that can be a problem

27:15

because you want to set

27:17

like investors and customers and

27:19

advertisers, you want to align

27:21

their expectations with like

27:23

where the product is going or

27:26

could go. You don't necessarily always

27:28

want to distract them with like,

27:30

hey, look, the woke boogeyman. You

27:33

know what I mean? Caitlin

27:45

Bristow, host of us divide podcast where

27:47

I get real, maybe a

27:49

little too real sometimes with my friends

27:51

and celeb guests from bachelor franchise and

27:53

beyond. I'm talking guests like Jonathan Van

27:56

Ness. Nikki

28:02

Glaser, Wells Adams, Elise Myers.

28:05

In this like business jacket, like I

28:08

would love some tacos. Heidi

28:10

D'Amelio, Big Brother's Taylor Hale. I have to

28:12

bring it up because it happened and we're

28:14

going to get through it. What I do.

28:17

And so many more. So come hang out

28:19

with us here, ridiculous confessions and get a

28:21

little vulnerable because you know what? We're all

28:23

just floating on this weird little planet together.

28:26

Follow rate and review Off The Vine podcast,

28:28

wherever you listen to your podcasts. And

28:42

before the current sort of seems

28:45

like a paradigm shift in politics,

28:48

how would you have characterized your

28:50

politics? I

28:53

would have said that, you

28:56

know, I saw I'm a very, very

28:59

LA guy, Catholic.

29:01

So I, you know, I've

29:03

always been pro life, but because I grew

29:05

up in LA, it's not

29:07

something I've liked. I've not led with

29:09

my chin on that because you know,

29:12

it's not really appropriate for this city.

29:15

And my parents were these really

29:17

great vibrator. They were at Berkeley

29:19

in the sixties. In the law

29:22

school. And, but they were also

29:24

fairly traditional people and

29:27

they had this whole hodgepodge

29:29

of views. And

29:31

so I probably among

29:34

my tool of brothers and I,

29:36

I was probably the most like

29:38

self-defined as conservative, but

29:41

I also, cause you sound liberal slash

29:43

libertarian and sort of your ethic,

29:46

your ethos. Yeah. Well, I mean, I

29:48

guess that, well also like, uh, I

29:51

have a little bit of socialist impulse in

29:53

me now in terms of getting

29:56

government funding to where it's actually needed

29:58

and make sure. Isn't that interesting? I

30:00

mean, think about what a hybrid you are, which

30:02

I love. But

30:06

you get to get castigated by all sides. And

30:10

not just castigated, but just dismissed. Pro-life,

30:13

boom, God. I don't want to

30:15

hear it. Socialist, boom, other side,

30:17

God. Fantastic. It's so fucking

30:20

ridiculous. That's how things change. That's how

30:22

we move things forward by having these

30:24

sort of interesting. And it's really what

30:26

you're talking about in this so-called hybrid

30:28

economy. Right? So good for you. Stand

30:31

up strong. I

30:35

wonder how much do you see, this

30:37

is a perfect place to ask this question,

30:41

how much is this parallel economy

30:43

movement actually a liberty movement, a

30:46

freedom movement? It

30:49

is. It is. So this is my

30:51

whole point. It

30:55

definitely is. But I'm

30:57

going to throw a curveball at you. It doesn't

30:59

matter because the parallel economy is the future whether

31:01

you like it or not, because

31:04

you can believe in freedom, not believe

31:06

in freedom. It doesn't matter. Hold on.

31:08

I'll stop you. Because that sounds like

31:10

somebody who's saying, and

31:12

forgive me if I'm mischaracterizing, but I'm just going to,

31:14

this is a polemic, is

31:17

saying that, no, these are

31:19

market forces. And that

31:21

the little guy, the big guys are too bloated,

31:23

they can't change, and so now innovation and the

31:25

little guy come in underneath that. Which

31:27

is, by the way, has to be some of this. That's just how markets

31:29

work. But it

31:31

feels a little more motivated both on the

31:34

customer side and on the provider side. Well,

31:37

I'll take it even further. It's not

31:39

just market. So I did classics at

31:41

Carmont in college. Which is Carmont School?

31:45

Carmont McKenna. Nice. Yes.

31:48

So this is civilizational, meaning we

31:50

are in some type of shift,

31:53

right? From a paradigm of like

31:56

Western liberalism that's

31:58

merged with a few things. And

32:01

so that is the big

32:03

motivation, right? It's more than

32:05

just like some concept of

32:07

like, oh, I want lower

32:09

tax rate freedom or leave me

32:12

alone to grow freedom. This is like this

32:15

thing is on the way out. Who's

32:17

going to be a part of building the next

32:19

thing, right? And is there, do

32:21

you have previous echoes in history? What do

32:23

you look at as a similar time? It's

32:27

a hard question. It's a

32:29

hard question, right? Because you wonder

32:31

if it, you

32:34

know, is this like the fall of Rome

32:36

or is this like the fall of bastard

32:39

feudalism, right? It's hard to

32:41

say. Right. So I'm obsessed

32:44

and I kind of naturally go

32:46

in directions with my reading and

32:48

preoccupations. And it ends

32:50

up meaning something, what I become preoccupied

32:52

with. And I have nothing other than

32:54

kind of like my, I'm

32:56

following my scent. Something's

32:59

on. So I become

33:01

preoccupied with prerevolutionary France and

33:05

the excesses of the early Russian

33:07

revolution. Those are two areas that

33:09

I'm like zeroed in on. And

33:12

then Napoleon too, and how they got

33:14

out of the revolution, essentially. So

33:19

to me, there's got to be

33:21

something there. I don't quite what, it's

33:23

never exactly the same, of course. But at

33:25

least psychologically it feels the same some

33:27

of those times. Yeah, I mean, we

33:29

definitely, right now it definitely

33:31

has like August 1914 vibes all

33:34

over it. Like

33:36

definitely, it's eerie how

33:39

like you have the

33:41

miscommunication between like Biden and Netanyahu

33:44

and Zelensky and the solution. And

33:46

then you think about all the

33:48

telegrams that went back and forth

33:50

and how no one wanted this.

33:53

And that part is real eerie. Do

33:57

we have a Bismarck in there this time? I

34:00

don't know. The only thing that

34:02

is really helping us right now

34:04

is the fact that we're so

34:07

dysfunctional. It's helping us. It

34:10

is. It's that we can't produce the

34:13

ammunition for even the Ukraine. So no

34:15

matter what you feel about it, we

34:17

have like four factories in America that

34:19

can produce ammunition and they're all staffed

34:21

by people who are older than 50.

34:24

We're not America in

34:26

1914. We don't have

34:28

the energy. We don't have that

34:30

drive. So that's what's saving the

34:32

world right now is we are

34:35

so dysfunctional that we're

34:37

unable to launch this third world war

34:39

that we're trying to. By

34:42

the way, I didn't

34:44

give you a chance to put out the social

34:46

media call out for all your stuff.

34:48

Where do you want people to go? Yeah.

34:51

So we're doing just go

34:53

to replatformvegas.com. That's where

34:55

we're having a parallel economy conference

34:58

March 8th through 10th in Las

35:00

Vegas. I'm

35:04

going to look at my calendar. Should I be there? Yeah.

35:07

We should be there. Tell me

35:09

what's going to happen then. So

35:12

we're putting together a lot of

35:14

the mechanics of the parallel economy,

35:16

right? Like people, Chris and Go,

35:20

Patmos, American

35:23

Cloud, all these companies who

35:26

are working in acts

35:29

for farm setting, we're

35:31

working in some of the basic

35:33

things, right? Like banking, law,

35:36

financial systems, tech,

35:40

food, right? And

35:42

we're bringing them together to

35:46

talk about what they're working on,

35:48

to showcase, to

35:50

talk about what problems they're

35:52

having, and we're trying

35:54

to find answers. So

35:57

this conference is for entrepreneurs.

36:00

consumers who may want to say, hey,

36:02

what are these people working on? Because

36:05

people spend like eight hours

36:07

a day raging on Twitter about a

36:10

problem and it's like, yo dude, someone's

36:12

building a company to solve it. Why

36:14

don't you check it out? I've

36:17

been involved with the wellness company which is

36:19

trying to create more medical freedom and empower

36:21

patients and create access to stuff that people

36:23

should have access to. There's no reason for

36:26

it. The more I get involved with

36:28

it, the more committed I get because for

36:30

me it becomes an awful

36:32

lot about, well, I mean the

36:34

patient-physician relationship has been so adulterated. I've

36:38

given up on it and so my only option

36:40

is to empower the patients and that's

36:42

sort of the direction I'm going. So it

36:44

does have a certain amount of freedom

36:46

fighting attached to it but ultimately it's just that

36:49

the system is not working for people and I

36:51

want it to work for them. It's

36:54

great for what the wellness company is doing

36:56

which is really awesome. You

36:58

guys are doing a really hard thing,

37:01

right? Yeah, no kidding. It's real easy

37:03

to say, hey, I'm going to start

37:05

a t-shirt company. You call

37:07

it parallel economy and it says, woke

37:09

sucks and guys like no one will

37:11

ever complain. You're funny. You

37:13

guys are trying to fix healthcare, man. It's

37:16

big. Yeah, I know. And

37:18

thankfully we're starting kind of small.

37:21

We're not looking at it macro. We're trying to

37:24

give people what they need, what they want and

37:26

sort of move out from there. I'm

37:29

discovering all kinds of things that people should have.

37:31

Did you know, for instance, I've got a chance

37:33

to operationalize this yet but you've

37:35

heard of PrEP and PEP for HIV,

37:37

right? You could take this antiviral beforehand

37:39

that prevents HIV. Do you know you

37:42

can take an antibiotic every day and

37:44

prevent all, essentially all the common STDs?

37:47

It's a simple doxycycline every day

37:49

and that's it. Sorry,

37:51

it's not as well said but you could conceivably

37:53

take it maybe the day you're going

37:56

to have a sexual encounter maybe for a couple days

37:59

afterwards and pretty much protect it. yourself against chlamydia,

38:01

gonorrhea, non-goncology. I mean, I

38:04

didn't even know that. And

38:06

I was like, oh, I want people to have this.

38:08

I feel just like I did during Love Life. So

38:10

that's one of the things I'm going to be pushing,

38:12

that kind of thing. I'm going to be pushing, pushing,

38:14

pushing, because there's all kinds of things. People are, it's

38:17

weird. Medicine has been sort of shrouded

38:20

behind Latin and about things we can't

38:22

talk about. And everyone understands

38:24

all that now. It's not mysterious. People

38:26

have a good understanding of kind of

38:28

things that happen and how to treat

38:31

them. Whenever people go on

38:33

a trip, for instance, I give them a whole package

38:35

of different antibiotics and things that take this for this,

38:37

this for that. I don't think, oh my god, they

38:39

can never handle it. Oh my god, what am I

38:41

doing? Of course they can handle it. But we've

38:43

been, that's been forced. We've been,

38:46

because of the model of our

38:48

healthcare financing, how your insurance and

38:50

through your job, we've been, since,

38:52

you know, the authority has been

38:55

forcibly disconnected from our healthcare choices

38:57

on purpose because it

38:59

was easier to manage. Yep. 100. Well,

39:01

easier to manage. I mean, it, it

39:04

became an expedient way to not give

39:06

people higher salaries and unions used it

39:08

as a way to make members, you

39:11

know, all kinds of economic kind of

39:13

shit in it. By the way, I

39:15

see that it's on my calendar already. My

39:17

wife put it on and you tell me

39:20

why it's called this re-platform Vegas. So,

39:24

so re-platform is the opposite

39:26

of G platform. Okay. Vegas

39:28

because it's in Vegas and re-platform

39:30

vegas.com because that was the best

39:33

domain that was still. Okay. Okay.

39:35

I get it. Okay. Very positive.

39:38

And, and back to, we have not really dug

39:40

into cancellation yet. Let's, let's do that. And your

39:42

thoughts about, because to me it was the most,

39:44

to me it's guillotines. Yeah. And

39:46

the cancellation is, is

39:49

the scaffold, is the, what are they calling them

39:51

French, the shuffle or the scaffolding that the guillotine

39:53

is on. That's it. And we've

39:55

done it. We've done it in a public square, which is

39:57

the social media, which is the new public square. And we've

39:59

done it. invented a new form of guillotine

40:01

and we're wielding it all over the place

40:04

and we should be as mortified

40:06

of it as we do when we think about

40:08

the reign of terror and yet

40:10

people throw it around constantly now. Your

40:12

thoughts, those are mine. People

40:15

are obviously canceling other people obviously

40:17

brings joy to a lot of

40:19

people and that's the thing we

40:22

have to end with. That's disgusting.

40:25

Is there people knitting in the glass to the

40:27

concord watching the heads being cut off? That's what

40:30

that is. Some reason of

40:32

joy and excitement that someone

40:34

got their head cut off

40:36

and it worked and it

40:39

does something, I mean you know much

40:41

more about this than I, not just

40:44

through your own training but through love

40:46

lines is humans can be

40:48

really messed up people and

40:51

the trick is that we

40:53

thought we had a government

40:56

that protected our liberties

40:58

that were written down and

41:01

that this government that we had

41:03

would protect us from these things

41:06

instead of being the ones pushing the

41:09

cancellation of people and that's been the

41:11

big turn. It's not necessarily that there

41:13

are evil people out there who enjoy

41:16

the suffering of others. I knew that.

41:18

I've known them. That goes

41:20

without saying. Yeah, right? Or

41:22

like there are, oh no, corporations are

41:25

full of rotten people. That's

41:27

not news to me but the scary thing

41:29

is when the government and

41:31

the media, these journalists, they

41:33

collude to cancel people, that's

41:35

the surprising thing because I

41:37

think it's like just like

41:40

it's probably surprising when

41:42

a Catholic priest is caught with abusing

41:45

a minor and there's that weird like,

41:47

wait, I thought that would be the

41:50

whole, I thought they were there to protect that.

41:52

It's the same thing that we've seen in cancel

41:55

culture is the institutions we

41:57

thought were there to protect us from

41:59

that. were the ones pushing it.

42:30

I'm gonna be vulnerable for a second. Have you ever had to

42:32

shop in a husky section at a department store? Then I don't

42:34

want to hear it. Honestly,

42:43

I can't talk about this anymore. I'm overstimulated

42:45

and I'm below it. From

42:48

weird news in our current obsession to

42:50

hot gossip and listener-submitted confessions, nothing is

42:52

off-limits at this camp. New

42:55

episodes of Camp Counselors drop every Monday and

42:57

Wednesday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Lights

43:00

out campers. This

43:30

exceedingly rigid,

43:35

narcissistic view that they're doing what's good

43:37

and right and protecting people by doing

43:39

this, which is something that

43:41

a guy named Mark Cenkisi is a

43:43

cognitive psychologist and a physicist. He's taught

43:45

a lot about this stuff. He keeps

43:47

pointing out, which is that in

43:49

the social sphere, evil

43:52

is always done in the name of good. That

43:57

is a huge smile when I say that.

44:00

I can't even like barely joke on it

44:02

when I say it. But go ahead. I

44:04

prefer greedy people who are doing bad things

44:07

because of their monetary interest than

44:09

people who are doing

44:11

evil things because they're righteous. Yeah,

44:15

because the righteous create

44:17

movements and do create

44:19

huge, this witch hunts and all that.

44:21

It's always the righteous and the right

44:24

and the cultural purge in

44:26

China or you name it. It's just

44:28

one thing after another. Now

44:31

that we're talking, I'm realizing I think that's

44:33

why I've gotten preoccupied with Lenin. He

44:36

was such an asshole and he was so

44:38

convinced of his righteousness and

44:40

his purity and his correctness

44:43

that it's almost gross

44:46

to read about. It's

44:48

not over-the-top cartoonish. It's

44:50

just like, oh my god, they

44:53

listen to this guy. Yeah, and

44:55

even before the revolution, if you look at him like

44:57

in 1904, 1905, his letters, he's

45:01

purging the part. I mean, that's how

45:03

you got Bolshevik, the Bolshevik and the

45:05

Menshevik. He's trying, he

45:08

was always like that. He was

45:10

always trying to like purge people

45:12

even when he was a nobody.

45:14

That was just his, I don't

45:16

know if you call it like

45:18

his mental psychopath.

45:22

A narcissist, just severe, severe,

45:24

rigid grandiose narcissist.

45:28

I don't think he was a psychopath. I

45:31

don't think he was a certain, it

45:33

all kind of bleeds together at a certain point, but the

45:37

dangerous narcissists are what we're

45:39

talking about. That's what is alive and well today. That's

45:42

where empathy fails. That's where mobs get in.

45:44

We haven't talked about mobs yet. And

45:46

a lot of this is the gratification

45:49

that nurses get from mob actions

45:52

that then scapegoat. Scapegoating is an extremely,

45:54

you talked about, we talked earlier about

45:56

the satisfaction people get from it. It's

45:58

often in the sense of, setting of a

46:00

mom. Yeah and

46:03

that was why Lincoln

46:24

Memorial get that out of their mind,

46:28

right. So

46:33

there can be 175s there and those

46:48

are the few people that way

47:55

really like someone who because of his

48:00

education, his training, his

48:03

success, he

48:05

doesn't frighten, right? He's not intimidated,

48:08

right? He's not intimidated by anything.

48:10

Yeah, so if you go, oh

48:13

I went

48:17

to, I have an MD from

48:19

Georgetown, I have a thing from Harvard School

48:21

of Public Health, like so what I went

48:23

to MIT, okay? Explain this number to me.

48:25

Right. Exactly, and let's do it over at

48:28

the theater with my name on it at

48:30

MIT, which I love.

48:35

But he's also a human being, he's not

48:37

someone who, he's not, he's just trying

48:40

to figure things out like the rest of us, and

48:43

he puts his money where his mouth is

48:45

and I appreciate that. He's also a really

48:47

nice guy. Very close family member,

48:55

basically OD and Die,

48:57

and he sent me the loveliest

49:00

personal note, you know, I don't think

49:02

people realize that Steve's just a genuinely

49:04

good human being. Well,

49:06

they're so busy with their vilification on BS

49:08

that they get into. Well,

49:11

we're about out of time, David. We've

49:14

sort of run the cycle here, I

49:16

think. Have we, have I missed anything?

49:18

Is there anything else we should talk

49:20

about? Who should come to the Vegas

49:22

event? So investors who

49:24

are wondering what to do with their

49:26

money and parents

49:28

because parents, I did

49:31

not expect that. Tell me more why. Well

49:33

parents, because parents are always like a little bit

49:35

worried and they're like, you know,

49:38

what's going on is that we want to

49:40

give the good news of the parallel economy,

49:42

like look at these companies, look,

49:44

play around with some of their products and

49:47

have some hope that not

49:50

everything is going to be misery guts

49:52

in the next decade. And

49:54

where is it going to be? At the Horseshoe

49:56

in Las Vegas. The Horseshoe Hotel

49:59

Casino. Down, down, down, down. On

50:01

the strip. On the strip.

50:03

It's the old valleys, but they changed the name

50:05

to the horseshoe. Oh, so,

50:08

so that used to be the MGM then the

50:10

valleys and now it's the horseshoe. Is that it?

50:13

I don't know about the MGM part, but I know it used to

50:15

be called the valleys. I'll have to look it up. So

50:19

yeah, when you, when you, when I think of the horseshoe, I

50:21

think it's up downtown. So good. Okay. All

50:23

right. Well, listen, I really appreciate you

50:25

spending a little time with me. I

50:28

just, I'm really fascinated by

50:30

all of this. It's, it's, hope

50:32

you're writing things down because it must be such an

50:34

interesting thing. You know what I mean? I was like

50:36

a little bit of history happening. I hope as

50:39

you move things forward and you're a historian. So a

50:41

perfect person to kind of jot

50:44

down, you know, real real-time diary

50:46

or something of how this evolves.

50:49

That'd be interesting. I'll show it to you someday

50:51

and then you could tell me if it's worth

50:54

anything. Do you, do you do it again? Is

50:56

that what you're doing? I

50:58

have a really good memory and I

51:00

do, I tend to write things when

51:02

I do write in not

51:05

like a diary or journal more

51:08

like optical essays and

51:10

that's the way my mind analysis.

51:12

Like, yeah, so it looks

51:14

a bit different, but you know, and

51:17

if I were to make me feel,

51:19

I hope you're gonna make me feel good. Paint

51:22

a picture of what the next three to five years

51:24

looks like. You will have

51:26

a lot more choices with

51:29

your banking, how you

51:32

send and receive money for

51:34

payments for

51:36

healthcare and for better

51:40

food products. But you don't

51:42

have to do that thing

51:44

where you have to avoid the middle of the

51:47

grocery store. That's

51:49

huge. That's actually a really big

51:51

deal because one of

51:53

the big problems is and I don't blame

51:56

the company. They're just doing their job. They've

51:58

adulterated food so severely that. If

52:01

anybody, you know, I had an experience, again,

52:04

my preoccupation with the French, where

52:06

I went to France for about 10 days and

52:08

I love the bread there

52:10

and I just ate it liberally. I just thought,

52:12

oh, screw it, I'm on vacation. And

52:15

I did not die and I did not watch what I was

52:17

eating. I just ate. I lost weight. And

52:20

normally, if I eat two slices of bread,

52:22

I'm paying a

52:24

price for that. And I've since

52:26

discovered that we have

52:28

really messed up our bread supply, both

52:31

to keep it so it slices. Part

52:33

of it is because it didn't slice before and

52:36

of course, you notice French don't slice the bread and

52:38

for the preservatives and all that stuff. And

52:41

then of course, all the shit they do to

52:43

make it yummier and make the manufacturing more easy

52:45

and efficient. Is anybody bringing that

52:48

kind of good French bread back to

52:50

this country? No, but there's an opportunity.

52:52

Right. Okay, there you go. So

52:55

somebody come to Vegas and let's set

52:58

up and there must be something difficult about

53:00

it or expensive or something. But

53:02

fine, let's do it. Let's do it anyway because

53:05

there's a demand report. Okay, that's the kind of

53:07

stuff I'm looking for. All right. Again,

53:10

give people the whereabouts where they should go. They

53:13

should go to replatformvegas.com. How about you

53:15

if they want to follow you? replatformvegas.com.

53:20

All right, there we go. All right, sir.

53:22

Thank you so much. Thank

53:24

you. All right, we'll see you next time. All

53:26

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53:28

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53:31

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