Welcome to the United States of Hate—Why Did We Do This?

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Transcript:

I'd rather be writing. Hello, friends. I have a few minutes as I wait for my daughter to leave school, so I thought I'd leave a couple notes. Sitting here, I'm feeling concerned about the direction our country's going. And honestly, since the election, I haven't been able to completely wrap my head around the reality of what this

0:18

result signifies. Leading up to the event, I looked at the statistics and how Republicans hadn't won the popular vote in something like 30 years. Or it was only once in 30 years. W won it in his second term. Other than that, the Republicans just did not have the popular support. And considering that,

0:38

I was very confident going into the 2024 election that even if the Republicans won, they weren't likely to win the popular vote. So it disturbs me to think that's what's happened. But all you have to do in the United States when you're examining these elections is you look at the various stories of voter suppression.

0:58

I mean, you get all these politicians who shake their head and say, that's democracy at work. That result is what we have to live with. That result means something. But then there's story after story of state Supreme Courts striking registered voters from the rolls. And then there's story after story of ballots being discarded because somebody put

1:20

the date wrong, or some poll worker didn't sign the form in the appropriate place. And every single time you read things like that, these decisions where they're throwing ballots out, it seems to favor the Republicans. And it's done off this absurd notion that there's false ballots being cast, which has never been proven.

1:41

They never find more than a couple hundred ballots that are invalid, and they're usually cast by Republican voters when it happens. So we have this extremely frustrating reality where we're saddled with election after election, where we lose, even though the victor does not represent the will of the majority, the American public.

2:02

But even that being said, the number of votes that went for the last candidate are unfathomable. You think of the things he'd been accused of, and even having watched the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, for him to have such support. The accusations of various forms of misconduct, which were supported in court,

2:23

just makes you reassess all the lies we're told about the United States of America, and all the lies we're told about the importance of character and Following the law. Working hard and how good things can happen. How this is the land of truth and justice. It doesn't feel like that today.

2:43

I still believe that we do have to work hard. I think as individual people we have to make the choices to be honest and to love the people that are near us and respect their wishes. But on a national level, that's just not how success has been achieved by the most powerful people.

3:00

The people who write our laws and enforce our laws are not held to the same standard. I was reflecting back on these last four years of the stable Biden administration, and I'm grateful for them. We've had the opportunity for prosperity. You hardly even thought of who the president was, or at least I didn't.

3:20

And during this time, you still had to work hard. There's challenges in life. There's bills to pay. But when you have a stable administration that isn't about itself, that is committed to working to ensure the prosperity of the American people, it gives you the encouragement to go and try and achieve things.

3:39

During this time, my wife got her master's degree. And I know that during the uncertainty of the last Republican administration, that wouldn't have been very likely or possible. The market's always fluctuating. You're always uncertain as to what's going to happen. It seems like every other month we're on the verge of a complete economic collapse.

3:59

So you're frantic by all these manufactured dramas of an incompetently run society that you can't even really think to dedicate yourself or your time to further education or to bettering yourself. And I guess that's the whole point, isn't it? Powerful people want to have a society filled with individuals that aren't educated, who aren't empowered to learn more.

4:22

that aren't in power to equip themselves to handle things, to put themselves into positions of leadership where they can effect a change in our society for the better. Powerful people don't want to offer assistance to anyone that's suffering, and that's what we're going to be looking at for the next four years.

4:41

My big concern comes with the talk of removing long-serving generals. There's talk of court-martials for how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled. But everyone fails to mention that plan was conceived by the previous administration. It was a poison pill. They were the ones who brought the Taliban into Langley to discuss it.

5:04

So they put the withdrawal in place, the generals ran it to order, and were criticized. But the criticism should be directed at those who wrote the plan, not at those who executed it. Now there's talk about removing the generals that were in charge and court-martialing them. And all that is subterfuge.

5:21

Get rid of the generals who know what the law is, and install other generals who will be less willing to defy a president because they have less experience. And so the generals that are put in might be the ones that follow illegal orders. And that's going to be the first step for taking control of the military.

5:38

I'm very concerned about this. I'm fearful for the innocent people who might become the targets of persecution. I guess we're going to have to see what safeguards are being put in place in these next couple months to prevent such a thing. But again, it's just awful.

5:54

And in the best case scenario, you know, maybe none of this happens. Maybe these fears are unfounded. But the fact that we have to think about it, the fact that we have to put safeguards in place, it's very concerning. And it just makes me disappointed in the American population. Makes me disappointed in everything about our society.

6:14

It makes a lot of what we've been told seem as if it's untrue. But I am a law-abiding person. I will continue to follow the laws as written. I will never condone violence as a response to anything. It's the other side that attacks the Capitol. That is not my side.

6:33

My side conducts itself responsibly and peacefully and with respect for human life, as always. But it's just sad to sit here and watch and feel a complete sense of disappointment in your own country. It's unfortunate to give power to somebody who has such disregard for ethics and for helping other people, who calls people names.

6:55

And it's just sad that the total focus of our country has to be on watching this clown show and not on the prosperity of every American citizen. All these people that are out there working hard. And that's the thing. Even when you have a good administration, life is challenging. Challenges are going to come up.

7:14

You're going to be short on money from time to time. Even when things are going as best as they possibly can, there are challenges. But now what we're looking at, the additional challenge of an administration that does not seem to care about the prosperity of each individual citizen, or about the law, or about the noble ideals,

7:36

upon which this nation was built, even if those ideals have rarely been achieved, at least there was a pretense that we were trying. Today it feels as if that pretense has been discarded. There's talk about removing Social Security. There's talk about raising retirement age to 75. Why are there people who support these ideas?

7:58

These have long since been the proposals of the Republican Party, and yet people continue to vote for them. I'm just befuddled by why so much of the population has this commitment to ensuring that everybody has to endure hardship when it's completely unnecessary. We know the pathway to prosperity. We've been following it these last four stable years.

8:21

I don't understand. Why do we have to abandon a good plan and throw ourselves into another era of chaos? Why did we do this? How do we prevent this from happening in the future? Assuming that is that we ever get another chance. Anyway, thank you all for listening. I'll have more to say to you guys tomorrow.

8:55

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9:12

Thank you for listening. I'm grateful for the support of everyone who has joined my humble little online community. I'm so happy you're here. I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.