Propaganda

Y'all ask for civility and substance. What you didn't ask for was truth, my nigga. The Trump ticket is getting its money's worth. He is, J.D. Vance understood the assignment. The assignment was to sanitize everything that Trump stand for. And even to the point of like, almost like the opposite, where it's like, no, we ain't say that.

And then when the mic slipped up and said, well, you weren't supposed to lie. Fact check this. You revealed your cards, big dog. But J.D. Vance absolutely 100% understood the assignment. And you cannot take that from him. He was slick. He was likable. And he didn't go on the full attack. They did the whole, I agree with what we're supposed to be doing. And he took all the shmar.

Now, don't get me wrong. I personally like dudes like that repulse me that are too polished and every like that. I'm like, you're clearly hiding something. Anyway, everything was going great. Until this man could not answer the January 6th question. Now, did Trump lose the election question?

Now, the thing is, that's in some senses, it's a gotcha question because we all know that man can't answer that question.

Like, nigga, duh. Like, he can't say that. He got to be like, look, dude, we're looking forward. But didn't y'all? And then proceeded to talk backwards. Boy, I tell you, man, I love it here. All right, let's get back to it. All right, so last year we did an episode that was called Get Your Weight Up. And I taught y'all about antitrust and monopolies and the situation Google was facing.

And it was over search engines and ads. Showing how this is just a brand new world where... What Google is facing, especially when it comes to like search engines, you had Soot being brought to them by like, you know, Bing and like ass Jeeves that was like, you're creating a monopoly. I can even giggle with the idea of like Bing because it's like, bro, no one uses Bing. Google's a verb.

It's a company, but it's also a verb. You Google something. They're like, you're a monopoly. They're like, listen, Bing is not my competition. Microsoft ain't my competition. Full chat, GBT is. TikTok, Amazon. I am not competing with you other browsers and search engines. Y'all lame. Y'all need to get y'all weight up.

And the argument was in this antitrust case, which I will back up and explain the term monopoly and antitrust. and then give you a context. So their argument was, you say we're cornering the market, we're making it impossible, but y'all could just get y'all weight up. I don't know why you mad at us for making a superior product.

Now, the last time you Googled something, I'm pretty sure you got frustrated because Google's trying to do the AI thing, again, to keep up with ChatGPT. And so the searches have been, I've had to like retype in what I'm looking for multiple times, because I'm like, this used to be super easy. So in my anecdotal opinion, it's gotten worse as they've tried to bring in AI.

But the point is the case was, do you have a monopoly on search and ads? And when we talked about it at first, it was being brought to the Department of Justice. Well, they have decided, yes. You have a monopoly. It's not fair. And you need to break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up. Yeah, y'all ratchet. Y'all know that song.

Y'all got to break up your company. Now, the reason why this was so big, obviously, because Google's big, but...

it's because it harkens back to one that happened in 1998 microsoft so here's what we gonna do i'm explaining to you what a monopoly is and if you've ever sold drugs you already know which means that we have to talk about capitalism and the version of capitalism that america says they love and believe in how you protect that imaginary version of capitalism

why an antitrust is what it is and why the government steps in, what happened with Microsoft and how that informed this Google decision and then what Google gonna have to do, all right? But I swear to you, just like the very foundational truth, the axiom of truth that this show is, you already know this stuff. All right, next. Next. Okay, so capitalism.

Oftentimes we have, because we live in the world we live in, we have conflated the idea of capitalism with just economics. That if you sell something- It's capitalism. You have to remember capitalism as a concept was invented.

Now, the idea of trading some sort of commerce for goods and services is as old as puka shells, is as old as when we moved from just bartering to, yeah, there is currency and the currency and I'm giving you this currency and you're going to return back to me a good and service.

The institution that we talk about that includes a supply chain where the product is being created in multiple different factories that's being cobbled together into one piece, the system that says, Each of these people that work in these factories is industrial revolution type situation that puts like if you're going to take a pencil, the eraser tip is made somewhere else.

But that place is really only getting raw materials from another place. And those raw materials are being sent there. And then the people carrying that stuff in the trans people that transfer it in the truck is a whole other company. who brings this raw materials to this place.

And then that place has to buy the equipment from a whole other company to makes the equipment for you to process this thing, to make the eraser tip. But still, if you're the pencil company, you have a contract with them, with a wood company, who's got a contract with a timber company, who's got a contract with a lead company or a graphite company. You just the people that put it all together.

And then it's a whole other marketing team that just was hired by the brand name of the pencil to put it all in one place. And then you got to hire a Shopify, right? A 3PL. And all of these people have employees and the price of that pencil is cobbled together in the way that makes sure or supposed to make sure that everybody, every company that was involved in this all got to pay their employees.

Bring that all together, get it on the shelf, and then they charge you $1.99 per pencil. Now, if you're making 1 million pencils, it may not have cost you the company. They selling it for $1.99. It cost the company, I don't know, hopefully, if they're doing it right, two cents. So the cost of the pencil, you hear all them companies all had to make their money.

But if you make enough of them, you can lower the cost that it takes to make the pencil so that when it gets to the consumer, you're only paying $2. And that $2, you know, multiplied by 100,000 consumers is supposed to be able to make sure that everybody's happy and And everybody wins. Now, the capitalism that we exist in is to say, okay, best product at the best price wins.

So if somebody got a better pencil and they only charging a dollar 50, the idea is, damn, you made it cheaper and better. So everybody's going to buy that. So then what do you do? You have to figure out how to make your pencil better and cheaper. Hopefully you could charge a dollar 25, right? All the way down to where...

get this, the term of elasticity to where the product is cheap enough to make to where everybody makes money. There's a number. Now you have to enter the concept of branding, okay? I'm a brand ambassador for a company called Mirror, right? Y'all know the people that make my mugs and the origamis, all the coffee stuff is this company called Mirror. Now Mirror got a lot of clients too.

And Mirror was telling me about one of their clients for which I will not name names. And because I ain't trying to worry, I ain't trying to mess up my money. This company is able to sell things at an absurd price point. But we looking at it, but my man Amir was looking at it and was like, okay, you're sourcing.

There's no way in the world you're sourcing at a different place than everybody else's. So you're sourcing at the same place. And he was like, and the owner or the buyer was like, yeah, yeah, sourced at the same place as our competition. They charge $3.99. We charge $8.99. It's called branding. So just the power of the branding, the fact that your name is on it.

Let me give you our little game about Kirkland. and Costco brand. Now, Costco ain't paying me for this, but I wish they was. The Kirkland brand liquor, the tequila, the whiskey, all that that they got in there, It's they bought a recipe from I believe it's Eagle Rare, like Maker's Mart. I believe their whiskey is Maker's Mart. They just bought a recipe from them and just white labeled it.

It's actually very it's very good whiskey. It's just named Kirkland. Brilliant. So if you smart rather than buying the label name, you get in the same product. It's just cheaper. So now you take when you talk about a national economy, you take all the pieces that we talked about.

if we're talking about, again, capitalism, you take every person that is on all them jobs, how much money they make, how much money is coming into the company, how much money that company is spending, how much money the people that work at that company are spending, right? The products for which they buy, how much them products cost to make,

and how much profit those products produce, how much of that money is going out to other countries, how much of that money is coming back into the consumer's pockets because once the company makes money, the people that work at that company all get paid and then they buy other products, which brings the money back.

So you take the totality of all that, the combination of all those factors, all trying to get you to spend your dollar with them. Them competing with each other is called free market capitalism. All of that is capitalism. And what's capitalism's goal is, if you haven't figured this out yet, the greatest amount of profit for the least amount of cost.

Now, how do you pull that off if that is the goal of capitalism? Well, you cut costs. Where do you cut costs? Most of the time, your highest cost is your employees. It's payroll. That's your highest cost. So you you pay your workers at least as possible. Why did America become such a superstar, such a superpower so early? Well, they didn't pay their workers at all. It was called slavery.

You was only paying for the raw materials. You only had to pay for the land. You had to pay for the workers. Of course you gonna get rich. By no stretch of the imagination is the goal of capitalism itself human flourishing. Now, that might be the person that functions within the system,

You might want to approach this in a way that centers humanity in the sense that like you're paying your workers well, you're ethically sourcing. So that means you're setting a price point that allows for you to pay workers well, to treat the environment well. You have things like certified B Corps.

At some point, I'll bring my homie Brian on here to talk about what it means to be an ethical capitalistic company, which some would argue is impossible. I might agree with you. But again, like I say all the time, you know, she might as well swim. be as truthful as possible. Like I said, we're all on a big corporation. This is I heart media. Let's not be delusional. You know what I'm saying?

This is corporation, guys. So we're not delusional, but there is a way to be as ethical as you possibly can. But that's not the goal of capitalism. That might be the goal of the person. There might be a advancement of a society to where Yeah, well, multiple people now have jobs now, which means like the way of life is just better across the board for everybody because now everybody's employed.

But one would argue that like we weren't starving before we had jobs. Like before there was a factory, before you bought your food at a grocery store, you just grew your own. For most of human history, people just had like small gardens, like where you just, and you just traded back and forth to where it's like, okay, we grow squash.

Well, I'm gonna walk across the street, go visit another family over there in that other village. I know they grow spinach. Well, you know what I'm saying? I'm bringing them some squash. They bring me some spinach and stuff.

it's fine like we all we we were all right before we had to like work for like cotton pieces of dead men to turn in for our waters to work in our houses because somebody bought the lake and owns the clouds i don't know if you notice you can own the the clouds you can own the land rights and all of the sky and atmosphere above it because capitalism is crazy right now

Anyway, I haven't even talked about antitrust yet. This is absurd. So all that to say, in our system, at least in America, we tried to set up this situation to say that if we keep this institution pure enough, it will police itself. And how you do that, because people really make their decisions by their purchases. People buy what they want.

And if you charge too much, but your brand is trash, and we don't believe you, people won't stop buying it. That's a price elasticity. What's the highest you could charge before people are going to be like, all right, you done lost your mind. This brand ain't worth it. which is how you game the system. You know what I'm saying?

It's like you make your brand worth it, but you charge as high as you can, not as cheap as you can. You take somebody like Arizona IC, they charge as little as they can. That's they brand though. For them it worked. But anyway, we, we as in the royal we, not me, but the concept is you need to have competition in the market. You can't just be the only person selling a thing.

You can defeat your competitors by having a better product at a better price point, but you can't just box them out because when you box them out, when you're the only option, there is no reason for you to not price gouge and the quality of your product doesn't have to be great because you're the only people. That's what I mean by drug dealer. You trying to be the only connect.

If you don't only connect, you charging people whatever you want. They hooked on the product. You can step on your product if you want to because what they going to do? Where you going to go? I'm your only option. I used to feel like that with gas prices because I'm like, what am I going to do? There's no difference to me between mobile and ARCO.

I still have to go to the thing or I don't go anywhere. Like I... Now, as a side note, I went to Rhyme Fest this past weekend at the Coliseum, and I took the train. And I was like, no native, nobody I know takes trains, because they just don't go enough places. But this time, it was like, I didn't have to switch once.

And I was like, bro, why don't... Every time I take the train, every time I take the metro here in LA, I'll be like, why don't I do this? So... Yeah, maybe there is an alternative. Anyway, so being mad over gas prices, I'm like, what, you gonna not go fill up your tank? What, you gonna not go to work? Like, I felt so hopeless. I'm like, this is a monopoly. You monopolize.

So the idea was in the antitrust law, I don't know why they call it that, they just do. Antitrust law is saying, we do not believe in the American economic system that it is legal or even in the spirit of who we are as a nation, that any one company should have a monopoly over a business.

There needs to be competition, meaning there needs to be other companies that are pushing you because what that does for the consumer is it means we're getting the best products because y'all are fighting against each other for our dollars. They're not concerned with just one company's success.

We talking overall success of the entire country because they looking at it again as the economy, as capitalism, capital C, not just are you doing all right? We mean the whole country. So the whole country got to win, which means that I don't really care if your one your one company is doing all right. We need a whole thing to work in theory because you could go get the off brand stuff.

You grew up like us. Oh, man, there was Cheerios and then there was Malto meal. There was Tasty O's. You feel me? I was like them is nasty. I used to get so mad when my mom brought that off brand cereal. I wanted the name brand cereal. It was cheaper. But but they like that ain't work. Now, what that meant was that made Cheerios because my mom sometimes was like, I ain't buying the Cheerios.

It costs too much. So that means the Cheerios, because there's such thing as malto meal and tastiest fruit rings, not fruit loops. Because those things existed, that meant that like, yo, Cheerios got to work harder to make sure that their products stay bomb. And at the price point is something that we willing to pay. That's why there's a hundred different car companies.

Why they fighting for our attention? Why everybody racing to get an electric car? Like the thing with Tesla is they was just there first. Well, actually, Saturn was there first. You should see a documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car? Anyway, but they're not the only ones. They couldn't get to electric cars, shut the door. There's companies like Rivian, who, their trucks are amazing.

But there's other companies. There are other people making electric cars. So it's like, yo. Get your weight up. Do something great. Now, it could become a monopoly if they do this. They take all the road mapping that they've done with their self-driving, get it perfect, and then make sure every new electric car has to buy their software for the road mapping of self-driving.

If every new electric car had Tesla's software in there from for their like self-driving cars, which right now would be a disaster. But if they continue to develop what they got and then they box out everybody else, it wouldn't matter if it's a disaster or not because every car comes equipped with their software. That would be a monopoly.

To which they could argue, I mean, you're welcome to uninstall it and put your own one in there. Do you know how to uninstall software on your car? Are you going to Google it? Think about the dial-up modem sounds, your AIM username. We all got sidekicks. No, I don't even know if we got sidekicks. We was in pagers there. You know what I'm saying? You about to have a sidekick.

Boy, the early internet feels like caveman energy. So Microsoft led by Bill Gates was young, scrappy startup. You gotta remember like at this point, Macintosh, those was just the computers in the school lab. Like when you went to the computer lab at school, there was these funny looking things that we just had to learn when we did our typing classes.

you know you just did it on that so microsoft at the time was developing windows right so windows 9 you know windows 95 and that's that which was the operating system which you guys know already and then microsoft office so spreadsheet you know powerpoint microsoft word and everything that comes just microsoft's like just mark it's windows like it's microsoft

What they started doing, because Bill Gates ain't dumb, is he was taking over while Apple and them was working towards school and fun and stuff like that. Microsoft was taking over the corporate world. And every company, every work computer was a Windows computer.

microsoft office and then eventually once we hit windows 95 you know that whole like you know the the the the the apple like you know sessions where they launch new products like windows invented that like that was microsoft like it was just goofy even the the the user video the training video for how to use microsoft office and windows 95 had believe it or not

actors from friends from the show friends was on it jay leno did the the monologue like like it was the biggest thing in the world because it was just change you gotta remember this is where tech was and what else that they did that was amazing was if you bought a laptop you gotta remember there was a million different types of laptops you could you remember hp you remember

acer you could get any type of just like before the ipod there was zooms like there was a million different other products and then somebody takes over and just wins the thing what microsoft did was they cut a deal with pc and laptop companies and was like yo so let us be your default operating system so if anybody wants to use another operating system an os they're

Like a Macintosh, you gotta take all that stuff off and put a new one in. Now, Macintosh was smart enough to say, no, our operating system works on our products only. But set that to a side right now. Microsoft was like, cool, y'all can have your own little weird egg-shaped

computers will take over every other computer on earth and that's kind of what they did they just cut a deal and it was just like yeah dude like yo if you're selling a laptop you're selling a desktop it's got microsoft operating system already installed so we already got a deal so we didn't even got sell it to the consumers it's already sold to the manufacturer kind of brilliant i mean why wouldn't you do that now while this is happening

something else was being invented a little old thing called the world wide web the internet was being made around this time let's talk about that next Okay, so now that the internet's being made, you know, you got to buy your modems. What nobody thought about, because you have to remember, nobody knew what the internet was, is you have to have a way to get on there. Browser?

No, you need a browser. It's so stupid. It's so stupid that I have to point that out, right? Because there was no separate apps for your emails or for... There was no apps. The apps were Microsoft. You need a browser to get on the internet. The browser, there was a lot of different types. There was Navigator. There was... And at the time, that's all that Netscape made.

They were the only browsers. I mean, it was fine. Like, what else did we know? You got on the Internet with on a Netscape browser. You bought your little AOL disk, which we're going to talk about in a second. Bought your little AOL disk, popped it in, you click the disk and then it would throw the Netscape. Like you just that was the only that's how you opened the Internet. was the browser.

Of course, now we got Chrome, Firefox, Safari. We got those things, but you got to remember, we didn't know what those things meant. None of those things existed. Netscape was how you got to the internet. Bill Gates ain't stupid. He was like, yo, this the future. We need a, hold up, we need a browser. His browser was called Internet Explorer. That's how you got on the Internet.

His browser was trash. Right. Because they was too busy making too many different things. They was making laptops, they was making office, they was making windows, they was making all these different things. They didn't really make browsers. But he's not stupid. He knew that this was the future. So the browser got better and better and better.

And then he realized, like, wait a minute, I have a million vendors I work with. Every laptop already has my product in it. Stupid. Why don't I bundle Internet Explorer with it? As a matter of fact, I'll throw an Internet Explorer free. It just comes with it comes with Microsoft. It comes with Windows. Windows is already on every laptop. I'll just it's so stupid.

Like, duh, I don't have to sell it. I'm already nobody. Can you name another word processing? What's what's the Mac with numbers? Adobe Pages? I'm saying even now we don't use it. Maybe you write in Google Docs, which we're going to get to later, but nobody writes it. You use Word almost two decades, right? What else is there? So they were like, duh, let's just add our product.

Let's just add Explorer to every laptop. Obviously Netscape's like, well, wait a damn minute, bro. Are you serious?

They were like, you're breaking antitrust laws. So they wrote a letter to the Department of Justice like, yo, fam, I can't like, can't nobody compete with this. This ain't right. 200 page letter. Justice Department was like, huh, you might be on to something. Because, like, you're, like, this is what seems to us, like, this is anti-competition. Like, you just boxed everybody out.

Like, you just gave everybody the product for free. You just gave everybody the weight for free. Somebody come in your hood and just passing out weed for free. It's like, well, how can I run a business? Like, I don't understand. Like, if every car come through your neighborhood has already got a vape in it, like, well, I mean... What I'm supposed to do?

Why you think the gas company so mad or why you think these oil companies so mad about electric cars? Because it's like, oh, nigga, I don't need you no more. Like, wait a minute. This is leading us to obsolescence. But there but but what specifically about an antitrust is or this monopoly is like this is the same product. And you guys are like, this is David and Goliath out this mug.

Like you already like there's no I can't compete with this. This is like there is no competition. I don't want to get into the like operating system business like we make an Internet browser and you're just giving yours away for free. And and even if people don't want it, which is where we get what has to do with Google, even if people don't want it, it just comes with the lab.

So, of course, like just the psychology of it is like, well, it's the one that come with it. So like, why would I go out of my way unless I'm a tech geek? Why would I go out of my way? It's just it come with it. We don't know enough about the Internet to have a preference about it. We don't know about incognito like that stuff don't exist no more or yet. So what difference does it make? All right.

Let's Internet Explorer. And it made sense to us because it was like or to the it made sense to the consumer because it's like was made from the same company that when I open the laptop, that's how it runs. They was like, yo, this is unjust. Like this ain't, they can do whatever they want there. And I remember, I remember the browser was trash. Like it wasn't, it wasn't that good of a browser.

Like it just like, what do you, I don't know what I can, I mean, and they had no incentive on making it better per se, because they done already sold the product completely. They done already made their money off, off windows and off office. So there's no like you've cornered the market. There's no there's there's no one can compete with you. So they brought that case to the Department of Justice.

Netscape did. So Netscape brings brings brings a case to the Department of Justice. They was like, just like I just explained, like, yo, this is a monopoly, dog. Like, there's nothing we can do about it. Like, I mean, what are we going to do? It's already on your laptop. I bet you you open your you get a new computer today. Bet you it's already there. Like, how do I compete with that?

Like, that's that's. not, what am I supposed to do? They bring in Microsoft to be like, okay, well, and this is like legendary. Like, so Bill Gates and him and Microsoft come in and Microsoft was just like, okay, that's funny. Wait, what? Wait, are y'all serious? Hold up. There's no way in the world you're serious right now. What is you, what you saying is absolutely ridiculous.

Let me get this straight. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me get this straight. We made a product. We made smart business moves. We used our connections. We developed a new product. We took our own product. bundled it with our other own product, and used the connections that we took years to develop, and you saying that's a problem? What you mean? Like, what is the problem?

You can't possibly be, so we're smart? You're punishing me for being smart? What are you talking about? You're saying this is anti-capitalist? I don't understand. So should our product suck? Should we not try? You want us to not make money? What are you talking about? This is absurd.

Ain't nothing stopping you from finding a computer. You could approach them with the same contract we approached them with. Get your weight up. I don't understand. We approached these people. We approached these manufacturers. They could have said no. They said yes. What do you want me to do? You want me to tell the consumers don't buy our product? What are you talking about?

absolutely ridiculous, was Microsoft's argument. The problem was they just walked in super smug and super arrogant. And they were just like I'm saying, like, we smarter than everyone. It was our fault we're smarter than everybody else. Department of Justice ain't like that. They ain't like your little attitude. They asked him very, very direct questions like, yo, Do you remember this email?

They pulling up emails where them fools was talking. This is the first time that was like a part of like, because remember emails just now were born. Pulling up emails where they were like, knife the baby. Like talking about like really we're trying to kill Netscape. Like that's our goal. Like we're actually trying to get like just cutthroat, like Silicon Valley, like OG.

Like no, we're actually trying to kill it. They was like, yo, you remember this email? He was like, no. Like you don't remember the one you just replied to? He's like, no, I remember it.

he was just a jerk about it like they were like hey uh did you have any concern about any other companies he was like what i don't understand the question he was like what what don't you understand he's like what do you mean by concern i don't know what you mean by that and they were like do you know what concern means like i know what it means i don't know what you mean by that it's like sir deep okay um just this like smug i'm smarter than you i'm 10 steps ahead of you just

It just turned everybody out. But ultimately, their point was, okay, dude, you can't punish us because their product sucks. That can't possibly be our fault. We're good at business. This is what happened. Department of Justice was like, no, that's a monopoly. Y'all got to break this company up. Because the straw that broke the camel back was pairing Office and Windows with Explorer.

That's the part that did it. Because it's like you've made, now nobody has any other option. That's the same example I was given with Tesla. Because the point is, on general principle, consumers are supposed to have options. And the argument is, having options keeps everybody in check, right? Because... If you have options, that's going to force you to make the better product.

And if you baking a better product that make all of America look good, consumers are happy, money's flowing, right? That's the argument. And again, using the Tesla as an example, like I just say it right now, didn't I just say that? I'm sorry, I'm just talking. If every electric car in the future, if you want to do self-driving mode, you have to use this because it's the default setting.

And this gives Tesla no incentive to like they could charge every car company whatever they want, because who else you going to go to? Which means that that is going to raise the prices for all of our cars, which means it's going to rain the prices for chips and all this good stuff. It's just like there's no like this doesn't help nobody.

This just makes you by yourself rich and all of us got to suffer by it. So that's that's the theory. Nobody's happy with that except for y'all. And we just decided as a nation back in the 1700s that we wasn't going to be like that. In theory. Now, what they told them that they had to do was break the company up. You have to put Windows in one place as one company and Office as another company.

Is that how you understand Microsoft? Of course not, because that didn't happen. Essentially, what they did was just they paid the fines, they did what they had to do, and then they just promised to not be jerks. It just really, really ain't nothing happened. So ultimately, nothing changed. Netscape ended up selling to AOL.

Microsoft just had this ruling stand that they were operating as a monopoly. But since God is good and just... when last time you opened an Internet Explorer browser. Now, this is what the Department of Justice was considering when they looked at this Google case. Now let's talk about specifically the ruling. Now remember Google, the company's called Alphabet for whatever reason.

The ruling was that they illegally monopolized the search engine market. Now, and here's how they did it. Now, they did it the same way Microsoft did it in the sense that you just, if you're a software company, duh, make deals with hardware companies.

So what Google did was like, I don't care if you're using Chrome, even if you use Safari, whatever phone you got when you open it, make a deal with us where you automatically, your search engine goes to Google. When the last time you said, I'm going to Bing something, I'm going to ask Jeebs something. No, you Google it.

So they made deals with phone makers and other hardware folk to be like, look, just let us be your default browser. Now, you all know you could go into your phone. You could go into your settings and say, like, I want this other thing to be the default. But who's going to do that? Some people do. Like some of y'all folks who just are like anti iPhone because you believe in freedom.

You want to you want to Android. which is just another company. Like, I don't understand how y'all don't understand that. But your belief is you want to be able to customize it in the way that you want to customize it because Apple tell you what to do. And one of the things that Apple tell you to do is like, it's automatically going to go to a Google.

Now, with that being automatically your search engine and them gathering a trillion, kajillion, mega, kabillion, probably flobily flillion megabits of information on us, They can sell ad spaces. So if you are a person like me who make they living online, I mean, you have to use the Google market. You have to use their ad spaces. You have to do search engine optimization.

You have to be able to show up in their ad revenue space because that's where everybody at. Why in the hell would you buy an ad at Bing? What is that going to do for you? And since they're the only people in town, they're the only people that it really makes sense to spend your money on. They could charge you whatever they want. Let me tell you why Terraform Cold Brew wasn't on Amazon.

Because I would lose $2 per can. Like, I would be paying them. Like, there's no, but at the same time, Terraform cold brew out of money. If you went to the website, ain't no coffee there because I'm out of money. You understand what I'm saying? Like, they make it where, I mean, what are your other options? That phrase, like, what's my other option? That is a monopoly.

Now, what Google argued was the same thing that Microsoft argued, which was like, fam, I'm sorry for being good at my business, but people can do whatever they want. We just happen to try to give people an offer they can't refuse. Now, what was interesting this time was the Supreme Court brought up not just X's and O's. It wasn't just

business and like nerdery around the law they brought up psychology and it's this concept called the psychology of the default no no let me say it right the power of default now you and i i don't even have to explain that you understand when something's just your default setting you just after a while because something just becomes so normal you don't even think about

that there are other alternatives like you'd have to go out of your way to do that that's the default and what they were arguing is that is proof of a monopoly in our brains google's a verb despite the quality of of google because you probably experience same thing i'm experiencing when you try to google something it's like because of the ai thing i'm like y'all your product's getting worse.

Now, that's probably because we're old and we're not searching on TikTok, which is where the rest of the people search, which was Google's defense. Google's like, I'm not worried about Netscape or Ask Jeeves, I'm worried about TikTok. Like that's a search engine. And they're like, fam, no, it's not. What are you talking about?

The psychology or the power of the default is when your brand is so strong that you just don't think of, you don't even think, of course there's alternatives. You don't even think of it, which is like,

a new strategy to argue that somebody has a monopoly so what's the solution the solution is to break up the company that's that's that's usually what what it means now like i told you before what happened with microsoft was basically like they were supposed to split up microsoft office from from windows so that's that was the plan for google it's like you remember this is a

Alphabet's a $2 trillion company. So one of the suggestions was like divesting the Android operating system was like the most frequently discussed option by the Justice Department's attorney. And then some were suggesting the force of the AdWords, like you have to sell that And Google got to let go of that program, right? The search ad program, right?

A divestment from that, from its Chrome web browser. But at the end of the day, they haven't landed on an actual verdict as to how to solve this. They've just said, no, you violated antitrust laws. You have to break up this company. Just curved them. Now, things like this is where your super conservative capitalists argues is a problem.

Because it seems as though this is not free market capitalism. They're like, let the consumer decide. We just did good business and the government shouldn't interfere. These are the same people that don't want the EPA to exist. You know, so if there's mad cow disease in your beef, they like people will stop buying it. So just leave us alone. That's the argument.

Like, well, I mean, tell everybody else get their weight up. They don't want no interference. which I guess I would understand too if I owned a company and was making a kajillion dollars.

But I'm a consumer that really just want to be able to have good products, afford the products we have, and not hear somebody like Jeff Bezos in his rocket that looked like a penis who didn't even actually make it into space and then to say, hey, you guys did this by buying stuff. Like, don't nobody want to see that. Like, okay, listen, here's the underbelly.

Amazon might be next in this. This is the deal we've made without having an option to make this deal. We know we making y'all rich, but we also need to live. And sometimes if you that person, man, the consumer like us, it kind of feel good that there's some big homies that might be able to come in and say, hey, y'all don't get to treat the little homies like that because.

And that's some good stuff. Good politics, y'all. All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers, okay? So don't stop it yet. But listen, this was recorded in East Los Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prophiphop.com.

If you're into cold brew coffee, we got Terraform cold brew. You can go there, .com. And use promo code HOOD, get 20% off, get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Osowski, killing the beat softly. Check out his website, mattosowski.com. I'm going to spell it for you because I know. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. Matt Osowski dot com.

He got more music and stuff like that on there. So go check out the heat. Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media. Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman. Part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and only Matt Alsowski, still killing the beat softly. So listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics.

These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.

Words are funny. That's how I'm opening this. Because look, there's sounds that we just decided meant stuff to the point to where sounds can make you take somebody's life. And sometimes the same sound can mean different things depending on their spelling, their context. I'll give you an example. When Black people say barbecue, we could be talking about three different things.

We could be talking about the food barbecue. We could be talking about, as in like the style of cooking barbecue, the food. We could be talking about the actual act of cooking that food to barbecue. We could be talking about an event. We are going to the barbecue. You're not invited to the barbecue. What the East called a cookout, we call it a barbecue out here, out West.

You know, it's the same with the Latinos. Like with Mexicans, they say the carne asada, they mean one of three things. They mean the act of grilling. We are going to have a carne asada. That is, we're going to have a barbecue. We're going to grill. And we are going to eat carne asada at the carne asada. It's the name of the food. It's the act of grilling. And it's the event.

So that's the Mexican version of saying, when we're like, oh, you ain't invited to the barbecue. They say, you're not invited to the carne asada. That's what they mean. The word is the same. It means three different things. And pin it on the context, and when it's coming out their mouth, you could figure out what's happening. Now, I say all that to get very serious.

I want to talk about the word Zion. Oh, it's about to get... I felt like I heard the record scratch right now. Because if you've listened to reggae music, if you've heard... Anything made by Bob Marley. You done heard the word Zion many times. You a fan of Lauryn Hill? What's the name of her child? Zion. Now the joy in my world is Zion. Black people love Zion.

The Black Hotep Rasta, you know, Chewstick, we love Zion. We're chanting down Babylon. Babylon will be defeated by Mount Zion. Is that the same Zion? In Israel and Palestine. What y'all mean by that? Then what the hell is a Zionist? So that's somebody that believe in Mount Zion. Like what? How what is Zionism? And I'm sure if you listen to this show, Data Ops. Right.

You you convince Zion like those are the ops. So I don't know if the thought has ever crossed your mind to be like, well, is is the Zionism that y'all talking about the same Zion and Zionists that the rosters are talking about? What? What? What? Maybe this never crossed your mind. But the word needs to be dissected. So I am using this moment to teach you two things.

What do the Rastas mean when they say Zion? And what is Zionism and its history? All right. The Politics. Okay. Listen, first, before I get into it, this week is like this. It's like this, son. It's like that, son. Rum pumping. Let me take the news serious. All right. This week is like this. Well, the Olympics ended and I'm only excited about breaking.

I'm sad that it's not going to be in twenty twenty eight. And it's not because of Ray Gunn. They decided before her that they weren't going to do it in L.A., which sucks. I don't know why they decided that, but they decided that way back in twenty twenty. Having said that, speaking of Ray Gunn, I know she's taking over the memes.

I feel bad for these amazing B-boys and B-girls, specifically logistics. Sorry, that's a text. specifically logistics, Anak murdered them fools. And while she was in the middle of slaying, absolutely slaying Ray Gunn, here's the thing. Have you ever been in a battle? Okay. Now I'm from LA.

So that double time, kind of what you think is bone thugs and harmony chopping stuff that originates at a place called the good life. Project Blow, this group called Freestyle Fellowship. And that is a sound that just kind of came from the LA underground. I don't rap like that. So if you're at a spot and you're battling somebody and they killing it on the double time, it's killing the crowd.

You have, I can't compete with that. You got to go all the way the other way. You got to get real creative and try to do something else. So for me, it becomes, I'm going to try to do the contrast and do sort of a slow flow with a gang of wordplay and get really creative with a pattern. My time rhymes to find a mind Saturn. Roller skate rhymes to find a kind pattern. Boom, boom, boom, batter.

Boom, boom, boom, flatter. You will flatter. You know what I'm saying? I'll make you scatter. Like just something else. You got to take a chance. And sometimes it lands. Sometimes it doesn't. OK, you get creative. You take a shot like take old dirty bastard. He don't rap like the rest of Wu-Tang. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And I picked up when she was throwing down.

She was trying to rep the Aussie land, do animal style rap. Kangaroo hops to rep her soil and be creative. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it don't. Now, I don't know nothing about her husband being in charge of no thing and all that good stuff that they were saying. All I know is you have to battle a lot of people to get to the top. And battling is very subjective.

And sometimes creativity and style points count. But when your creativity just swinging a miss. She clearly don't have no power moves. She was battling logistics who got style, finesse, flavor, dance, intangibles, and power moves. What are you going to do? I saw a head spinning there, but she clearly don't have no power moves. So she's trying to fight back with style. It just didn't work.

So I'm saying this as somebody who has been in a battle and sometimes you lose your train of thought and the words sound like gibberish. She... She took a creative chance and it was a swing and a miss. Sometimes it happens. On a serious note, okay, receipts are being pulled on walls and on JD and everybody involved. And we trying to figure it out.

The Democrats are doing their best to make Project 2025 Trump's thing, which it is not. It is somebody trying to tie it to Trump. I can't believe I'm saying this in his defense. That is a lot of overlap, but that's their own thing. Now, Trump is all cap saying Trump, he don't know who them people are because he know who they are and he know what they want. So that's cap.

But it's in his defense is not his. Now, secondly, in J.D. Vance's defense, I know I know what it sounds like, but I'm going to say it. He being dragged over this app harvest startup. So that was a company that was an agricultural company that was supposed to be in Appalachia and was going to give. hundreds and hundreds of jobs to the area. Everybody got excited.

It was like, dope, man, he one of us. Or at least you told us he one of us. It's going to be a fresh job. Now, again, he was an investor and he was just on the board. Now, I have sat on a couple boards. And just because you're on the board don't mean you in charge of operation. Now, and just because you're an investor don't mean you in charge of the money.

Now, you got a lot to say, obviously, but you can't necessarily be blamed for everything that go bad. And you can't necessarily take the praise for everything that go good. Now, not only did this business fail before it failed, they was talking about it was 110, 120 degrees inside that building because it's a greenhouse. The conditions were terrible.

And while everybody was like, man, I can't work in here. They brought in not a couple of migrant workers, not even undocumented. 500 of them, 500 undocumented workers, which in any other scenario, all right, what do I care? The reason why any of us care is because you supposed to be Captain Appalachia. You called yourself that.

If you didn't call yourself Captain Appalachia, it would have just been a failed thing, but you set yourself up as Robin Hood of the woods. So since you did that, you, I mean, what you going to say, homie, that's on your watch. You confront like you one of us, but But that ain't really hurting nobody. Now you hurting us saying you one of us. So he gonna have to answer to that.

And his answer was, yeah, it sucked. I invested and I was on the board, but I mean, I wasn't in charge. And in his defense, he's right.

Y'all still calling that man tampon 10 as if you ain't. All you got to do. beloved, is read it. You can read the law. It is all over Beyonce's internet. I'm going to read it for you. Article one, general education, section one, 121A.212, access to menstrual products. A school district charter must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge.

The products must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms, regularly used by students in grades four through 12, according to the plan developed by the school district. For purposes of this section, menstrual products means pads, tampons, or other similar products used in connection to menstrual cycle. That's it. That's what the law say.

Hey, do y'all still say curved or curbed? Like if somebody curbed you? I don't even know if it's, I don't even know if it's curve or curbed. But essentially what we mean is, and maybe I'm an old head, what we mean is when you approach a young lady and she shuts you down, like, oh man, you got curbed. You know, they just, I'm pretty sure it's curbed. Probably like curb your enthusiasm.

Not a whole, were you putting tampons in boys' bathrooms? I mean, okay. I just read you the law. That's what the law say. So just, you know, cap down a little bit. Now, the DNC has started. We looking for you to put some words to your excitement, auntie. We looking for Joe to like, you know, go out in a blaze of glory. And it's all week this week. Now, I did get to watch

A lot of Mondays, not enough to do a full recap. But the thing that's most interesting right now is the comparison to the 1968 one, which was there's a lot of similarities. There was a huge protest that happened in 68 against the Vietnam War. And right now there's a huge protest going on against the war in Gaza. The difference in 1968.

And now is the cops beat the brakes off them protesters on TV like we all saw it this time. See, Robert and Sophie and Gare are out there and they pretty much kind of behaved. It's pretty chill, you know. Now we'll see. But right now it's been pretty chill, relatively speaking. And what's different this time is Joe went off script. Joe said, you know what? Them protesters out there.

They got a point. It's innocent people being killed on both sides. Now, Sophie says she got a view of the teleprompter. That wasn't on the script. Now, of course, we're all grabbing for scraps, but good for him. That's a good scrap to grab. I'm so glad you acknowledged it rather than acting like it's just a party on the inside.

The campaigns of Harris and of Trump have been hacked by Iran, according to the U.S. intelligence. It's not like this wasn't expected. Country's been... Tapping into our elections as a sport. They've been doing this for a long time. Iran is not happy. Iran is like you. Not only did you kill Qasem Soleimani, you just popped another.

We believe you just popped another person on our soil recently because you got to remember like Israel and America are interchangeable to them. They don't. Ain't no difference. Sure. That means that y'all need to double check all sources. That mean you need to question everything coming at you and keep your antennas high.

You know, another interesting difference is, is that the news didn't report it.

they didn't report the stuff that was in the leak you know and man in 2016 this was like catnip all the leaks you know butter emails it's almost like we learned a lesson like you know um and there's a few ways to look at it right it's like hey like if it's something in there that's like really like american people need to know it's like what's your duty as the media to be like okay

I know how we got it, but like this kind of too real to talk about it, to not talk about it. On the other hand, it's like, you know, when people make fun of your little brother and they be right about him, but you can't make fun of him. I don't want to hear from you. Like you can't say nothing about my little brother.

Your mom being like you telling on your little brother, your mom, like, why are you snitching? I don't want to hear from you just because like, no, you don't get to talk about it. So the news was like, I mean, thank you, because they sent they sent the content of the hacks to ProPublica. It was like, yo, you can have it. ProPublica was like, OK, cool. Thank you.

But like, I don't need to get this from you. I mean, respect. And finally, there's another rumor of a ceasefire deal. And I say rumor because that's exactly what it sound like, because Anthony Blinken like, yo, it's good. We just waiting on Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu said, like, I ain't agree to nothing. I don't know what you're talking about. They still haven't met our terms.

And in the middle of that, we just still sent $20 million to them people. So let's be real. Can't nobody really tell another country what to do. You can't really. There's no way an American president can stop a country from going to war to another country. But what they can do is not pay for it. Anyway, let's get to what Zion is. But look, it's like this. All right, now I'm back.

That's probably it. I don't know if there's anything more painful because most of the time for you to get curbed, it's, usually because you are enthusiastic. A lot of times is when you're super confident in the move you finna make. Now I can't speak for every young man who Finally hits his awakening of the sex that he's attracted to. And I know mine when I was like, wait a minute, I like girls.

Now listen, I am going to do both these things an incredible injustice because both of these topics will take a lifetime to understand. And both of these topics... could have many different interpretations depending on your understanding of history, politics, religion.

Remember when I wanted to talk to y'all about the Houthis, Hezbollah, all of these different topics where I'm like, when you get into a religion, just like, listen, listen, when I say Christian, it's the same concept. When I say Christian, we talk about Mount Zion all the time. Matter of fact, if you black, you probably went to Mount Zion AME. New Gethsemane Church of God in Christ.

Now, I made that up right now. There probably is a New Gethsemane. There's probably a Mount Zion AME. I know there is. There's one in South Central. What I'm trying to say is we use these terms all the time because they in the Bible. But when I say Christian, That's what I mean. Now, when you say Christian, you may think Holy Roller Pentecostal. You may think Trump.

You may think you may think Catholic. You may think there's so many other things you might think that are all these. So you ask you ask 10 different Christians, what does it mean to be Christian? You're going to get 10 different answers, most likely. Remember we did the Terraform episode with the homie Kevin Garcia, and I tried to break down in the beginning.

It was tough, but I tried to give y'all a cursory understanding of Western church history. You see how I had to give that caveat that I'm talking about Western church. We ain't talking Coptic. We not talking Greek Orthodox. We not talking Russian Jesuit. There's... You could really get lost in the weeds.

So please give me that grace that what I am about to talk to you about is grossly truncated, okay? But it's just to help y'all understand so that as you have your picket signs out, that at least you don't sound like a her. So first, let me teach y'all what the rastadim, what the rastadim mean when they say Mount Zion. And I'm sorry about my patois rastadim.

Okay, first, let me step back and say what is Rastafarianism. Now, I would say like globally, it's probably one of the youngest world religions getting its roots by name in the 1930s, deriving from the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, okay? Now, as I say this again, like Rasta, Rastafari, like this is not a compartmentalized philosophy or religion. This is a way of life. Right. A liberty.

You know, this is this is our culture, our heritage, our history. Right. And our way of being, which some could argue is, well, that's the definition of a religion. religion a way of being, right? Your liturgy. Anyway, there is an encompassing around this. Now, it is impossible to separate Rasta from the African-ness of it, okay? So the belief is this,

When you listen to roots reggae, when you listen to Bob Marley and them, there's so much to cover. Dancehall, that's the club music. Roots reggae, think of this as worship. This is praise and worship. There is a tie going back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Now, I'm getting into my Old Testament. This is why there's so much Judaism and Christian tied to it, because there is a belief that

And rightfully so, because if you believe the Bible, it's in the scriptures, is that the Queen of Sheba, which was believed to be an ancient queen from the region of Ethiopia. Now, obviously, Ethiopia is ancient.

a nation state, but Ethiopia as a continual connection of tribes, Oromo, Tigray, like just the different tribes that are there, they have Ethiopia and Thailand shares the legacy of being the only two countries that were never colonized or conquered. Not Israel, Italy almost did, right? The British almost did, but they were never able to actually conquer.

When you have to start building up the bravery to actually admit it or maybe ask this question. girl to dance or sit by her or maybe even possibly get a little kiss on the cheek. We was little boys. You're not really ready for full intercourse because we're still children. I remember rehearsing and I have a sister that's six years older than me. So I could ask her, Like, how do I say this?

colonize ethiopia and ethiopia takes a lot of pride in this so a lot of their lineage and heritage because their history wasn't cut off or attempted to be erased you can know a lot about them ethiopia in the scriptures in the bible is called the land of cush also right it's believed that moses's wife zipporah was from Ethiopia when Moses, this is all Old Testament stuff, but it all makes sense.

It all makes sense as to why the connection is so important to them. Moses, before the whole let my people go, before the Ten Commandments type joint, Moses supposedly, according to the story, saw a pharaoh one of Pharaoh's guards abusing one of the Jewish slaves and he hopped up and killed the guy and then he had to run. And so then when he ran, he ran to Midian and he married Jethro's daughter.

And it was believed that that area was Ethiopia. Okay. So at least the region that we now call Ethiopia. So there's this belief that Moses' first wife was Ethiopian. You fast forward to Solomon, King David, King David's son, right? The writer of Psalms.

And it's believed that according to the passages that he had never seen anybody more beautiful or a kingdom more amazing than the kingdom that the Queen of Sheba came from. Now you fast forward to Emperor Selassie. And Emperor Selassie, a... A Romo Ethiopian man who became the emperor of what we know to be Ethiopia, right? Geopolitically.

But it's a belief that his bloodline can be traced back to King Solomon, right? The emperor bloodline of Ethiopia can be traced back to King Solomon. That's the Rasta belief. Again, ask many Rastas, you might get many answers. But overall, this is the belief, right?

now set that aside okay another connection is in i know it's a lot of bible stuff but you got to follow me because we are talking about jews and rastas so of course we're going to talk about the bible right now the book of acts in the bible has this story of this one of the apostles named philip and philip runs into an ethiopian eunuch who according to the Bible was reading the book of Isaiah.

And Philip sees him on the road and he's like, You know what you're reading? And the dude's like, how can I know if nobody teaches him? So he sits down with him and he, according to the scripture, according to the Bible, explains Isaiah, the prophecies, the Messiah, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and how that stuff was prophesied in the book of Isaiah, blah, blah, blah.

So he ties all the things. And then it says that this Ethiopian eunuch got baptized right then. Now, it is then believed that he brought Christianity as we know it Their belief is like, we saw it right there. But prop, I thought Rasta was Jamaican. I'll get to it. So that's tie number three, right?

Now, the fourth tie, which is one of the most compelling things to me between the Jews, Zion, and Ethiopia is the city of Aksum. So the city of Aksum is... in the northern part of Ethiopia, and is known to be, and it's truthfully, the first and oldest Christian city. Because contrary to what your little white pastor will teach you, the faith went to Africa before it went to Europe, okay?

Hell, it went to Mongolia before it went to Europe. The point is, The white man ain't teach us who Jesus was. Now, it is also believed that the Ark of the Covenant from the Old Testament is in Axum. There are ruins at different churches that have good archaeological evidence.

evidence to believe that they set up the tent with the dimensions that Exodus and Deuteronomy and them and them all Testament scriptures have taught them to do this. There are, if you go to Israel now, black Ethiopian Jewish people, as a matter of fact, they, the,

To be able to, now getting into the modern politics, to be able to repatronize, to be able to come back to Israel as a Jew, you'd have to prove by your DNA that you have Jewish heritage. You are, in fact, an ethnic Jew. And the Ethiopians, there's a sect of Ethiopia that not only can prove it, but are, some argue, the closest DNA related to what might be the ancient Israelis, right?

You know, what outfit should I wear? Like, you know, and she was like down to make her little brother like, you know, she wanted her little brother to be fly. So I could ask her and come up with lines and like, How do I approach? What do I say? Where do I stand? I'm nervous. I'm scared. All for this little girl to giggle and run to her friends and go, ugh, ugh, he not even fine. Just destroy.

Some would argue that as far as the diaspora, not as far as like people ain't never left. I'm talking about as far as the diaspora, right? So they are, it can truly say, and there's a lot of traditions that in certain parts of Ethiopia that they continued following far longer and are actually far more closely related to the ancient practices than what modern Israel looks like.

This is just, it's just history. Now, because anti-blackness is universal, when they got to Israel, the modern Israel, a lot of Ethiopian women were sterilized. And if you walk around Jerusalem, just like everywhere else, the people doing all of the dirty work, all of the brunt work, All of the jobs nobody want are the black one, unfortunately.

That being said, the tie between Ethiopia, the ancient religion of Judaism, and the ancient people of Israel, one because of the region, one because of folklore, and one because of DNA, has Ethiopia is verifiably connected to whatever the ancient Jerusalem was.

Okay, you fast forward to Haile Selassie in the 1930s, who they believe, according to the Rastadim, is, I want to say 225th, I think that's what my cousin told me, 225th, don't quote me on this, I'm just quoting my cousin, of the Solomonic dynasty. So they believe that like the actual king, like a descendant of King David, right?

A son of David, kind of like who Jesus was, a descendant of David, right? Right. was also Selassie. You following me? Okay. Now the word Rastafari comes from Haile Selassie, which is Rastafari, right? It was his name, right? So he was one of the only independent black leaders in Africa at the time, right? So he bears this

cultural, political, historical, and symbolic importance to just the African diaspora. Now, once you get into the practices of Rastafarianism, like again, like the way of life, like the diet, you know, avoiding shellfish, eating seafood, like it's pretty similar to like kosher practices, again, because they have this tie to the land, the history.

So there's a lot of practices that are like, that are that they have a lot of practices about being welcoming to the sojourner about the way that we collectively sing. Jah is a Jamaican version of saying Yah, which is short for Yahweh. So when we say Jah Rastafari, you know, it's your Jah is Yah, Yahweh or Jehovah, right? So these, a lot of them are vegetarian. They don't eat meat at all.

Definitely not beef or pork because you keep the temple clean, right? you very rarely are gonna find an overweight Rasta. They're usually in incredibly good shape. The dreadlocks have to do with what's called the vow of the Nazarite, because again, we're talking Old Testament.

Samson, in the Bible, Samson with his golden locks, the Samson and Delilah, Samson had took what's called a Nazarite vow, which was a vow to keep himself holy to the Lord, and the symbol of that holiness to the Lord was not cutting your hair. This is as a symbol of our holiness, the vow of the Nazarite, you grow your dreadlocks, right?

Dreadlocks was a term given to us by the British that we just own. Nazi dread! So because our hair, our locks were dreadful, so dreadlocks. There's also sects that believe that God grabs the dead souls by their dreadlocks and brings them to heaven. Again, the symbol's beautiful. But either way, it's a symbol of the promise, your commitment to keeping yourself sanctified to the Father.

It took me three weeks to get the courage to say something to her, just for this girl to be like, ugh. Like that's the child, which I don't know if it's everybody's story, but you have to understand like me who I went to schools in neighborhoods that were so diverse where there was just as many Filipino and Latino and, you know, Chinese. There was such as there was so many other communities there.

If you're being a traditional Rastadim. Now, their belief, again, so follow me, this is still an Abrahamic faith. That's why you're going to hear terms like Mount Zion, which I'm going to get to specifically in a second. But

Their belief, different than Christianity, although similar in a lot of ways, similar to Judaism in a lot of ways, their belief is that, like I said, Selassie was the Messiah, right? This is an Afro-centric belief. How did it get to Jamaica? The transatlantic slave trade. So it gets to Jamaica via the slave trade, right? We got carted off. Remember, this is an Afrocentric belief.

And when Africans got brought to Jamaica, they brought their beliefs. And then it synced, you know, had a lot of syncretism with a lot of like the voodoo and tribal and Caribbean practices, you know, a lot of the stuff that was happening in the Caribbean that, because again,

This is East Africa, West Africa with the Arishi and a lot of the West African beliefs are a little more animus and not so Abrahamic, if you will, right? All that to say, just like any other faith tradition or practice, when it travels, it takes on a lot of the personalities, traditions, and practices of the people that it traveled with

and the location it lands so the music that you hear because obviously if you hear music in ethiopia it don't sound like reggae because reggae is jamaican right so what you consider rastafarian you think caribbean because that's i mean i get it right and ethiopia is christian Of course, obviously, it's a modern country. There's millions of religions there. Not millions, but you know what I mean.

There's a lot of different religions there. But Ethiopia is Christian. Rasta... That's birthed out of the diaspora that has its tie to Ethiopia. Y'all following me? Okay. You have people like Marcus Garvey, right? Who we need to, at some point, do a whole study on him and the Back to Africa movement. And I don't have time to get into the depths of Marcus Garvey.

But the point was, as far as the pan-African experience, the diaspora, we who got separated from our land, whether it was... your run of the mill Black Baptist slave in Tuscaloosa, right, in Mobile, Alabama, backwoods of Pritchard and, you know, Macon, Georgia, that we was on the plantations. If a Bible got into our hands, it was so easy to see ourselves in the children of Israel.

Like, it's not hard to see if you read the book of Exodus, you like, well, damn, that's us. It was too, it was too, the connection is too obvious. We're like, oh my gosh, carted off into slavery from a distant land. Like, and then there's a longing for a return to your promised land. And the capital of my promised land is the city of Zion. You following me?

It would be the same in the Caribbean for the Rastadim, but they looking back at Selassie. It is Rastafarianism is by definition anti-colonial, obviously. And they believe that Africa is their, not only their, their literal ancestral homeland, but it's their spiritual homeland. And the country of Ethiopia gets a particular reverence because of the

the role it played in the 19th century for the resistance of, because of Selassie, for the resistance of European imperialism. Everybody else fell. Ethiopia didn't. So the gold, green, and red colors of the modern Ethiopia flag are the traditional colors of the Rastafarian because it can in some ways get its roots from there, right?

Okay, I know that was a long preamble, but you got to understand what he's telling me. So once you have this understanding of your connection to Judaism, practice, anti-colonial, you know, dispersed, taken away from your homeland, and longing for a return to your promised land, now we could talk about what Zion is. Now, Rastafarian has two basic tentpoles. Zion, Babylon.

You hear that stuff in all the reggae you listen to, right? So these are the theological ideological tentpoles. The dichotomy is tied again to the anti-colonial Because Babylon, remember, again, in your Old Testament, is the symbol of the evil powers, the evil empire, just like in the Bible. It's the epitome. It is everything that's wrong in the world. It's the system.

that were at the spaces I was in. Like, again, I read the demographics. Most of y'all are from Cali that listen to this. I'm from the San Gabriel Valley. I was born in South Central. I say it all the time, but I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. And then I went to high school in the Inland Empire. And like, so I...

is symbolized in King Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom of Babylon. And we long to see Babylon fall. We chant down this worldly system that enslaves and attacks and seeks to control not only the outward person, but the inside of you. What Christians would call your sin nature. Worldly Babylon, right?

So if you're following, again, the saga of the Old Testament, Israel fleeing Egypt or getting away from Egypt, becoming free, and then being enslaved by Babylon again. Babylon's the problem. Does that make sense? Now in the Bible, Zion is just another name for Jerusalem, right? And it can refer to the land of Israel fully.

Now, the Rastafarian, okay, this is where our difference is, repurposed the biblical definition to an Afrocentric direction. For the Rasta, Zion is the continent of Africa, specifically Ethiopia. But the term represents not just Ethiopia, a physical place because Ethiopia is just Ethiopia. But it's an ideal. It's what we would call to become cross. This is paradise.

This is thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Zion, heaven and earth meets. So it's physical and so much more, which in a lot of ways is the same for the Jew. But we'll get to that.

it is the destruction of a worldly system and the raising of a selected godly kingdom where all of us what we would talk about the christians would talk about the kingdom of god is righteousness peace and joy in the holy ghost is to be a part of the kingdom so it's a both place and it's an idea to strive for right where the rastas they would equate with preserving and glorifying black african culture

right the iron lion of zion you know bob marley's you know song but for more information like rastafari is kind of like like how we have denominations theirs is divided into mansions and they got it from like the gospel of john when jesus says in my father's house there are many mansions right again i'm telling it's an abrahamic faith a lot of people don't think it's just a it's a black

anti-colonial African outpour of it. So you have the Bobo, the Ashanti, the Twelve Tribes. That's a denomination, if you will. They were called the Twelve Tribes of Israel. I never pronounce it right, but the Naya... the Naya Bbingi, like I never pronounce it right, but they're a certain type. Now some, again, some look more traditional than others.

You experience so many cultures, you're exposed to so many types of girls where black dude is just not they type. This is way too long of an intro. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is it really hurts to get curved, especially when you're really confident. And guess what? Google got curved. Hub politics, y'all. All right, before I go into it, but look, it's like this.

And then a lot of people just follow like an individual like Rasta way of viewing it. But at the end of the day, Ethiopia is for lack of better term, the New Jerusalem. This is Zion when we're talking about Rastadim, okay? Now, what the Zionists believe next. All right, we're back. Now, Zionism, the overall name for right now, if you're pro-Palestine, that's the name of the bad guys.

They're Zionists. And people have tried to separate the idea of anti-Semitism from Zionists, being anti-Zionists, that these are different things. Now, that would mean that you'd have to understand all those things and their history from them. Now, I'm trying to handle this with as much respect as I can because I'm talking about a culture that's not mine.

So please grant me that grace that I'm probably going to overlook. Like I said in the beginning, I'm probably going to overlook some stuff that I'm not trying to overlook. I'm trying to give as best as I can an understanding of these different things. Anti-Semite justice. I mean, those are the Nazis. You just don't believe that. It's a type of thing.

It's a type of overall term for the concept of the convolution of this weird idea that all that is wrong. It's almost like you've made the Jew Babylonian. You know what I'm saying? Like we just talked about. They are everything that's wrong. They are both the killers of Jesus. They are the vermin that... I'm trying to describe anti-Semitism.

The religion and the ethnicity that somehow or another... is poor and subhuman, but also quietly controls all of the inner workings of money and power in the world. And your only solution is to wipe them out. That would be anti-Semitic.

That's the idea of that, that comes from this thing called the Protocols of Zion, which again, the word Zion, I'm gonna talk about, which is something that we've talked about on the Behind the Bastards episodes of the Protocols of Zion. Now, That's anti-Semitic.

Now, once we get into... Now, if you remember one of the You Wasn't Outside episodes when we pulled a clip of a rabbi explaining the idea of what makes a Jew... a Jew, according to the faith, is their covenant with Yahweh. That it's not necessarily a location. As a matter of fact, to see it as a location is to minimize it.

Where he was like, the promised land, our claim is because we are in covenant with Yahweh. And that can happen anywhere. The location don't matter. So to say that the capital has to be in Jerusalem or has to be in Tel Aviv because that's God's will is, he's like, no, you're missing the point. Like who cares where a modern nation state plants? Like that's a secular system.

That is like the Rastadim would say that is Babylon to worry about what other nations say. I am a part of the kingdom and the kingdom exists now. Because I am in covenant with Yahweh. We are a covenant people. That's what makes, that's what gives us our Jewishness is our covenant with Yahweh. Who cares what the borders are? That would be a specific type of Judaism, right?

A religious type of Judaism. Now an ethnic Judaism, well, that's something different. A political Judaism is something different. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. Zionism as we're talking about, not the Rastadim, but Zionism, you could say, I'd say go back to August 29th, 1897. It was a meeting on the Rhine River in this small city like in Switzerland called Basel, right?

Basel. Now this meeting had people from all over the world and it was to discuss this concept of Zionism. Now, like I said in the Bible, like I said, Zion is just a biblical term for Jerusalem. Right. So they choose that term because if you're paying attention to Europe, Pagras, it ain't a good place for Jews. It's been all bad for them. For a while.

And this discussion was to say, we have to have a place because it seemed like no matter where we go, we not want it. Now, they pull in all the way back to more freaking Canaan to Egypt. They are talking about their deep history. And they're like, no matter where we go, we not want it. So we need to find a place where we could just be ourselves.

And they thought, what better place than our ancestral homeland? Now, if you're looking around this room, you would think the same thing I would think. Y'all white as hell. Like you're you're European. I don't understand the same way that you would probably look at that Ethiopian and go, but you're African. But but follow me now.

So the people in during the time from like Munich, from Germany, from Poland, from Switzerland, they're like, oh, what are you talking about? Like, I'm just as German as everybody. They German. They like we speak German. Like, this is just our religion. Like, I never see. I never been to Israel. I never seen Israel. Israel is not a thing at the time. That place is Palestine.

You know, like, it's not a... That's not a... That's... It would be the same as me saying, I need to go back to Nubia. Like, Nubia's gone. You know, black people, like, again, a Marcus Garvey thing, but that was closer to their time. Like, you need to go back to... There's no place here wanted for you. I'm just like, well, that's... I don't... I don't even know the language they speak in Tobol.

But look, it's like this. Look, it's like this. But look, it's like this. All right. Well. The darkest of holidays has hit. It is the one year anniversary of the. attack from Hamas on Israel, which in retaliation to such attack unleashed the Kraken towards all of Gaza and extending Palestinian areas.

I'm guessing that because I took an African ancestry and they were saying I'm a father side that maybe... I'm like, oh, what do I know about... I don't know anything about that. So the Jews at the time were like... What? I don't this. What are you talking about?

Like, it would be the equivalent to a back to Africa movement to where it's like, I mean, it sounds cool, but like, I mean, it's already people there. And I mean, it's been hundreds of years. Like, I'm German. Like, we're German. A lot of the rabbis were like, look, first of all, this is blasphemous. We're not supposed to return until the Messiah come. Like, that's what the prophecy is.

And he gonna bring us back. I don't know about what the hell you doing, right? And then the others, like the more modern ones were like, well, we're not a nation. Like that was actually the point. Like don't you, didn't you read your Torah? You don't need a king. I'm your king. You're not a nation. Like that's the point. The point is you're supposed to be different. I'm your king.

You're a part of a kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. And I'll bring you back when it's time, when the Messiah comes. So like whatever y'all doing, that's not even, now I'm saying that again, this is 1897. That was the belief of them. Now, again, those were some rabbi. And not only that, like I said, they're like, well, I'm French. I don't know what.

Anyway, enter this guy named Theodor Herzl, right, who was a journalist who covered this actually probably one of the most radicalizing moments for anybody, for any Jew in Europe. Right. And it was the case for this man named Alfred Dreyfus. Right. Which basically became like the trial of the century. It was they called it the Dreyfus affair. And the journalist who covered it was Theodore Herzl.

Basically, the Dreyfus was accused of treason and found guilty and sentenced to like a work prison. Totally wrongfully convicted, completely out of nowhere. Y'all made all that up. But how that work was like because he was Jewish. it became not just about him, but that you can't trust the Jew.

And Theodore Herzl's watching all this, and he's watching the people get whipped up into a frenzy, people that was just your neighbors. He was like, again, I'm just as German as you, I'm just as European as you are. Like, fam, I remember the feeling when Trump first started taking over the brains of the white Christian, where I was like, dog, we was at Cracker Barrel yesterday. At what

Like, we used to... What just... What has bewitched you? Like, all of a sudden... Was you like this the whole time? It was super confusing. It's like, all of a sudden, we're different? Yo, it's me. Like, I've been meeting this whole time. So, Theodore Herzl was like, yo, okay, listen. We clearly not wanted here. And it's only going to get worse. Turns out he was absolutely correct.

Israel became a nation. Ain't that crazy? So now, Zionism, you want to be able to distinguish it between two different types of Zionism, right? And this is where I would critique making the concept the bad guy, because there's two types here, okay? There's the Zionism that comes out of a longing for a home,

That's where us and the Rastas actually share, a place where we can be fully accepted, fully ourselves, and fully safe. Because again, we're not wanted anywhere we are, right? So there's a longing for a home that you've been ripped away from, right? Now, when they say ripped away from, like we're talking, guess who I'm talking about? king of Babylon.

We're talking about the nations being scattered like 580 BC when the Ark of the Covenant went missing and this beautiful, amazing kingdom of Israel that used to exist in modern-day Palestine, Israel, in that region that was called Judea at that time, where they existed and then...

If you know your history, I've said this so many times in the You Wasn't Outside episodes, that little strip of land has been conquered and colonialized and ran by every possible kingdom, every possible empire in the modern world, finally by Britain. And then, but as that was happening, the people who were ethnically Israeli, as we mean in the ancient sense, were scattered all over the world.

So that's why you could be white as hell and Jewish, And you could be black as hell and Jewish because they were scattered. Right. And then, of course, now you're not going to marry people while you're there.

But somehow or another, they've been able to keep on to their traditions and their religions because they were also it's one of those things which are ethnically and religiously and your identities. So anyway, scattered all over the world. But as as we know, there's plenty of people that didn't leave. Again, I'm giving you you wasn't outside history, which you understand.

So there's this longing of being like, man, this we used to have a place to be in the world. And you feel like you're looking around. Everybody else got a place to be in the world. This is born from despair and rightfully so. But then there's this other type of Zionism that is more like this idea of reclaiming an enthusiasm about our heritage and our culture.

We need to be the same way I would be loud and black. We need to be black as hell out here. We need to reclaim, take up space and be ourselves rather than shrinking ourselves. I want to reclaim all that it is for us to be us. Now, as a minority, that shouldn't be hard for you to understand. I mean, that's us sitting here in America.

And then you got the Republicans being like, well, you're American first. And I'm like, nah, nigga, I'm black. I got my red, black and green on the wall. You know, it's the Latinos flying their Mexican flags. And like, nah, we who we are. You feel me? And you're like, well, you're American. You know, it's you're a no savo kid.

You know, when you finally discover the concept of Aztlan, you want to know a little about your own heritage. Yeah, you American. You know, I mean, you from East Los Angeles. But you want to reclaim your history, your heritage, your language. You want to learn Aztec dances. It's like, so there's that version also.

So in that sense, it'd be weird to you when you like, you're like, yo, like, yo, we're Jews. You're like, fool, I'm German. It's like, nigga, you French? Like, word? These people don't love you? Like, why you identify as that? You know, so there's, you see that? as a lens of Zionism. So you have these ideas happening all around the same sort of time and idea with the same term, Zion.

So it could be seen as somebody that's like, yo, I want to learn our ancient language. I want to learn our practices. I want to do the Shabbat. I want to bring back. It became this umbrella term for just what it meant to reclaim your culture, reclaim your identity, reclaim the fullness of what y'all are. And then, there's the geopolitical idea.

Now, this geopolitical idea borrowed from all of these particular concepts. And if you read the writings of Theodor Herzl and a lot of the people involved in this, They were all bright eyed about the idea that like, oh, this is going to be a colonial takeover of Palestine. You have to remove the indigenous population for this to happen because there's no way they're going to give it to me.

And there were certain ways they tried to do it. They tried to do it peacefully. One way they said was, well, first of all, let's go talk to Britain. Because remember, the British Empire actually drew the partition. The British Empire is the one that drew the line between Israel and Palestine because, remember, it used to belong to them.

Another idea that the Zionists had was, yo, let's go talk to the Turkish Empire, right? Because remember, the Ottomans were there before the British. And they was like, okay, so if you let us be a government, how about we pay all the debts? Well, what if we pay y'all's debts?

They were trying with, matter of fact, Israel, the location wasn't even their first choice because they was like, this is a little too complicated. They thought about going to Africa. They looked at a couple of different places as to where to land this geopolitical idea of Zionism. I'm telling this out of order. Let me back up.

So the idea that like, it's just a myth that the Zionists were not aware of the Palestinian Arab population. They were well aware of it. But the question is, What to do with that information? Because, yeah, as Jewish as Herzl was, he's also a European. So that like he saw the Arabs as barbaric, like that they were. I mean, it's just there's no other way around it.

held in Israel where they played that last song before at that, you know, cause the attack happened, like one of the parts happened during a music festival and the last song that was being played before the attack happened and hostages were taken and people were killed. They played that song to mark, you know, the one year anniversary of a horrible, horrible situation.

they were well aware that you are going to have to displace people to build a nation like this. So that was not... They knew, right? Now, again, I'm talking about the geopolitical idea of Zionism. But their idea was like, surely y'all can see that we're not a big empire. We're not here. We're just looking for a place to be. And since we're from here anyway, this shouldn't be... A problem.

So, yeah. So like I said, Herzl went to the went to the British. He went to the Ottoman Empire and he asked them like, yo, can we just go settle? Keep in mind is like European Jews had been moving to Tel Aviv for a while. You know, they actually formed the city of Tel Aviv. Those were Jewish settlers from Israel that's formed the city of Tel Aviv. This is well before Israel became a state.

So they had already been moving. Now they were just like, we just need legitimacy. So how about we buy it from the Ottomans? And the emperor of the Ottoman Empire was like, bro, I can't sell you land. It belongs to the people. And they fought to conquer this place. I'm not even finna just... Just sell it to you.

And not only did he not sell it to him, he started building policy to make sure that they can't just be immigrating and just buying up Palestinian land. He was like, I'm not really I'm not really here for this. And like, why would I welcome like a large religious minority into my empire? You might take it over. So, like I said, he was like, I can't look. They not just letting us come.

Now they restricting our thing, our movement. He even like I said, he went back to the British Empire, asked for a spot in East Africa. Like, can we just and the Jews back home? It was like, nigga. We're going back to Zion. The hell you talking about East Africa for? Herzl's like, bro, I'm trying, right? So eventually they found the city of Tel Aviv.

They create their own, like anybody else, like you create a Chinatown, you create your own community. Then them niggas got organized. Now, the timeline I'm telling you this, like I said, remember he had this first idea in 1897. So this is all during the times between like World War I, World War II.

Remember, Britain didn't take over until 1917 because that's why he was building with the Ottoman Empire dudes. And then once they was gone, once Britain took over, 1917, we're seeing the end of World War I, right? You're thinking maybe this was a new world and then all hell broke loose.

with the nazi empire and at that point once the nazi thing started happening it was like oh we gotta go like this we can't be playing games we trying to play nice like like that the nazi thing kicked this mug into high gear so now by 1947 it's like it now it's like the jews are like a third of the population in in palestine at the time right So so now it's getting a little itchy.

You know, I'm saying like now y'all just y'all just over here. And if you are Arab nation, you like, OK, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. OK, why we got to lose our home because of stuff Europe did. Why are we paying the price? It's like I feel you. You know, I'm saying like that's terrible what you're going through. But like, why you got to come?

Why you got to take our house? Why? Why y'all got to be like what's going on right now? But anyway, since nobody's handing it to him now, we got numbers since nobody's just going to let us be here. The only way to do this is by force. So them dudes made a military. Now it's time to scrap for it. But as you know, this is still a British outpost. Finally, Britain's like, OK, listen.

I'm done with all this. When are we going to do? Y'all get that part. Y'all get that part. They created the partition. But they said, now y'all figure out what is what and who run this and all that. Like, I'm done. And there at that moment, the birth of the nation of Israel, the lines created by Britain after they left and Palestine looking around here going, man, what?

And from the Israeli perspective, The city is torn because you can't argue that that wasn't, you know, one of the or maybe if not the greatest terrorist attack that they've experienced. And I think like I'm not adding snark to this because it's like, I mean, like I'm just trying to be real about it.

What just happened right now? And then, like I said, in other You Wasn't Outside episodes, the rest of the Arab nations was like, oh, hell no. Like, if they went to war immediately, everybody jumped them. Egypt, everybody jumped.

Why you get to be a nation? But that's what happened. And we still scrapping over it. Nation states, again, have more to do with the recognition of other nations and who gets to decide who gets what power and all this good stuff. Like we said, borders are made up. They're drawn by conquerors. It's not. Don't let that fool you.

The concept that has people out in the streets is the type of Zionism that... has to do with the displacement of an indigenous population by force because you believe God wanted you here. That's one way to look at it. And that, my friend, is just run-of-the-mill imperialism. It's basic. Then there's the Zionism that says, like I said, I am preserving my culture.

And then there's the Zionism that says, I am longing for a place for us to belong. A Zionism that is much more an idea of a promised land rather than the hostile takeover of a place where people already exist. Spiritual, religious, political. All of that in this one term. So I am not going to tell you what to think of when you say Zionist.

Just like I don't know what to tell you what you think of when you say Christian. But I tell you what, it ain't what the Rastas mean. And I tell you what, if you sitting in Palestine right now, do it even matter? Politics. All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers, okay?

So don't stop it yet. But listen, this was recorded in East Los Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at PropHipHop.com. If you're into cold brew coffee, we got Terraform Cold Brew. You can go there, .com, and use promo code HOOD, get 20% off, get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Osowski, killing the beat softly.

Check out his website, mattosowski.com. I'm going to spell it for you because I know. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. Matt Osowski dot com. He got more music and stuff like that on there. So go and check out the heat. Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media. Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman. Part of the iHeartMedia podcast network.

Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and only Matt Alsowski, still killing the beat softly. So listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.

Since they've been in their mind the little engine that could the whole time and everybody was against them, they felt like their only way to be safe is to be the aggressor. And they've continued to be the aggressor because they feel like everybody's being aggressive to them. So there's a kinship to the...

idea that america has of itself too you know where we say if you're going to war you're going overseas like the attack is over there everybody's trying to come to get us but don't nobody want to mess with us because they know won't play around it only happened once now the pearl harbor we blew up whole islands after that so they're they carry in their psyche that type of sort of same vibe but that is not to diminish the

atrocities that they feel in their heart and the things that had happened. So you mark it, right? On the other hand, it also marks the beginning of the absolute decimation of Gaza with 11,000 people dead and just a completely untenable living situation that has now spread. Everybody's fear has spread to Lebanon. and Yemen, and now big dog Iran has jumped in.

It was what everybody that works in peacemaking was hoping wouldn't happen, that we would get to a ceasefire, a two-state solution, which clearly is the only option. I just don't understand how anybody could think any other way that this is really the only option. But with that being said, all the blood, all the carnage, all the like, let's make this happen, Gaza could not have a sort of

moment to even breathe to mark the anniversary of this because it's leveled i mean there's like where you know they still running for cover they and israel not even letting they barely letting aid in like we got to fight to let aid in and then with all the carnage and it be coming into a regional war There's a ceasefire deal on the table and Netanyahu won't accept it.

And you still ain't got the hostages. All that blood. And you still ain't got the hostages. So Israel as a nation is torn because they're like, fam, can we keep our eyes on the prize here? I just we just want our loved ones back.

And then there's the other half that's like, no, we can't let them people live. And then there's the really, really small sect of hyper conservative religious folk within the Israeli world that are like, well, this is how we bring the Messiah. We got to control this region or the Messiah ain't coming.

So it's all that going on, all in one place. The JV team had their debate. Switching gears here. The my dad can beat up your dad debate. Because who really cared what the vice president think? Because the vice president will really do nothing. Now, that being said. It was more substantive than any of us would have thought. And it's one of those things where it's like, be careful what you ask for.

What's up, y'all? It's your favorite cousin. I just came over. You feel me? Y'all don't have no cousins that just kind of pop up? Just be at the house like a 90s sitcom where you don't knock on the door, you just be walking in? That wasn't my life. Mainly because most of the cousins on my mother's side lived on the other side of the country.

And then my cousins on my father's side, since we lived in gang-infested areas, you didn't just pop up. That was just not the safest... Thing to do. But I'm doing that at your house. And, you know, it happens when you have cousins come over. Well, now a small percentage of y'all are black, but a lot of percentages y'all grew up for, which means that you got whoopings just like we did.

So, you know, usually when your cousin comes over, somebody's getting we all somebody getting in trouble. And it's usually you because you supposed to know better. I never got more spankings. Then when my cousins came over because we would just get into stuff. And then since I'm the one that lived there and I was cutting up in front of company, I ended up getting into most trouble.

Anyway, this isn't where I'm working out trauma, although it is called It Can Happen Here podcast. So I feel like we are collectively working out trauma of being Americans. And lastly, on the rambling preamble, I got a dog now. Well, my daughter got a dog. And to all the parents that listen, you know when your child gets a pet whose pet that actually is.

So I find myself doing a lot more chores than I signed up for. But it's a pug. And it keeps trying to eat the cat's food. Therefore, it's got liquid doo-doo. And I'm not a fan of that. And since I get to work in my pajamas because I'm just recording podcasts and rap music back here. Seems to fall on me to scoop up this liquid doo-doo. But that's only when she eats the cat's food. Stupid dog.

Eat your own food. Anyway, I'm here to talk about something that you can do nothing about. All right, y'all ready? Here we go. A brother like me who bleeds Los Angeles, you cut me open and Pacific Ocean salt water comes out. You poke my lungs and smog pours out of me. I could work for... the tourist department of Los Angeles. I love this city at an unhealthy level.

There are things about this place that is absolute trash. Don't get me wrong. There is a lot wrong with this city. with this place. The ground shakes up under us. We've been such a horrible steward as to how to take care of this land. I'm going to include myself, even though I am not the invasive colonizer.

But there are really only nine native trees to California, two of which are not the palm tree or the eucalyptus. The plants that are here naturally are drought resistant and fire resistant. They don't burn that easy. The ones that burn up real quick are the sycamores and the palm trees. And if you may have noticed, Los Angeles hit a bit of a dry spell recently and had quite the disaster.

Now, I'm slowly backing that thing up into what we're going to talk about right now, which you should probably know if you have already read the show title when you clicked play. But I'm going to back that thing up into it. California catches fire every year in some location. Now, my mother, you know, mama, mama prop, She worked 30 years for the L.A.

County Fire Department, you know, in the city of West Covina, because I'm a 626er. And I have vivid memories of the different firemen, fire chiefs. I think I talked about this in the L.A. on Fire episode. Black is literally hot on the hood politics episode. Show, which hopefully you guys are supporting and listening to also.

But even my boy Chris, who's, you know, firefighter, you know, been fighting the fires out here. Everybody knew that one day this day would come. And that, let's just say, all of the... Bureaucratic failures had not happened. If the water was as full as possible, the fire hydrants were fine. If everything was done perfectly, this was going to happen. This day was going to come.

that it's a perfect storm. We had a specific type of drought, lack of rain, the Santa Ana winds, and then a fire sparking, and that fire sparking in a densely populated urban area. It was... Every fireman I knew was like, yeah, one day it's going to happen. And like I said in the last episode, yeah, like, you know, we could find ourselves a time machine and practice the indigenous practices.

Oh, actually, as a small little beacon of light, there's an area out to Dina that was actually given back to the Tongva tribe many years back. There was a first like actual land back there. given back to the tribe and they started taking care of the land the way that their elders and ancestors did. And guess what? That area didn't burn.

Anyway, in the midst of this disaster that we were having a desperate, desperate man who I completely understand his desperation.

On Tuesday night, on January 7th, while the fires were just rumbling through the Palisades, a man named Keith Wasserman, who's the co-founder of a real estate investment firm, desperately took to Twitter and said, does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home? Need to act fast here. All neighbors' houses burning. We'll pay any amount.

there was another click of Rick Caruso who almost in a multiverse situation is our mayor, a billionaire developer who owns the Grove and on the West side, just that if you ever watch TMZ, whenever somebody is walking out of a place, it's probably at the Grove and was a, you know, real estate magnate.

Anyway, there were videos of him driving through an area that he had with his like private security and private firefighters where there's smoke billowing all around the place, but his situation was fine. Why? Because he had private firefighters. They shaved his shopping center, but he tried to unsuccessfully save nearby homes as well.

Which reminded everybody about the time that Kanye and Kim tweeted about their house being saved by firefighters. And which made people be like, wait a minute. You can buy a fire department?

We over here arguing over fire hydrants and tanks running low and somebody just paid where they get the water from. How the hell you can just. Oh, my God. What the hell water you using? Nigga, that's not your water. And what you going to do? Are you going to help out the neighbors? Okay, so if I buy a fire department, fire department show up at my house, but the neighbor's house is burning.

You just going to leave the neighbor's house? You going to tell them to call the city's fire department? What the hell is happening? How does this shit work? Is there any other way rich people can be evil? What is happening right now? Which is basically what happened and how most of the regulars felt.

So this episode is not just about private fire departments because that would not be a very interesting full episode. It's about the question that private fire departments bring up, which is like, Nigga, whose water is that? Wait a minute. Who owns the water? Is the water private too? And if the water's private too, what else are my utilities are private?

And this is what I mean by there is nothing you can do about it. Now, if there is any of you that are built like Robert and Magpie, then... Maybe you ain't got to worry about this. Maybe you could dig your own well and find the groundwater. However, there are things called water land rights, which I will talk about into this.

So even if you move off the grid to live on a mountain, you find somewhere in the backwoods, you know, four acres away from Magpie, wherever the hell Magpie live, and you dig to find some water, somebody own that water. It already happened here, y'all. Let's go. All right, this may or may not be a shock to y'all.

I know in the first The Block is Literally Hot episode I did way, way, way, way back when I first joined, when Cool Zone Media first launched, when I first joined the team, my first episodes. It was one of those things where it's like the thought has probably never crossed your mind. And some of it's like sitting. I'm talking to y'all who pay bills.

Some of this stuff is sitting right up under your nose. Like Southern California Edison is one of our power companies. But then there's PG&E. This isn't the city of Los Angeles providing this. That's a company. In the same way that your internet come from a company, what makes you think your power don't come from a company?

And if your power come from a company and an internet come from a company, why wouldn't your water come from a company? I don't know what would make you think that that's just a city municipality. Well, because duh, because water fall from the sky. What the shit? So what I'm paying for you to pump it through the through the doggone pipes. Well, I mean, I understand that that's a service.

But what what the hell are my taxes for you? Somebody like I don't know if you notice you can own the rain. So the water that fill inside a lake, somebody bought the lake. This is the episode that I'm finna tell y'all right now. So your utilities, most likely your city has sold your water and your sewage processing to a private company.

And the bills that you paying, your water bill is not going to the city for the service you are receiving. It is paying the company back the money that the company paid your city to get this gig. Let me back up here. First, let me cover the private fire departments. Now, here's the thing. Private fire departments usually are hired by insurance companies.

So what they do a lot of time is like prevention. They'll come in here and, you know, clear out shrub, make sure that your house is not like set up for failure. You know, in California, I mean, people always talk about our strict laws and regulations. building codes and it's like, well, nigga, do you see why?

Every time you got a bureaucratic law, there might be a historical evidence as to why we need that. One of which is, my nigga, California ain't got a lot of water. So if you're going to build a house, you can't just have dry shrubbery up around your house. Why? Because you just basically put a box of matches Just around your house. So, yes, fam, like that's why you can't do that.

Why are you not allowed to have a lot of trash in your house, nigga? I mean, what the hell you think? Because this shit will catch on fire. So these private companies, private fire companies usually come through and again, they hire body insurance companies.

normally to come and clear shrubbery make sure that your your lint at your dryer is uh cleared out make sure your hvac is good and usually they got their own little tank right so they come in with their own little tank of water that's their private water they're basically bringing their bottled water you know i'm saying while the rest of us is using tap right but eventually that little tank gonna run out you feel me and then at that point you got to tap into the fire hydrant right now

What most of these companies will say is like, guys, we're not monsters, dude. Like if if the neighborhood is on fire, of course, we're going to help. What do you like? What are you talking about? Which I truly believe for this reason, if I'm paying to protect this house, but the neighbor's house is on fire, that probably means that the neighbor's house is going to cause my house to catch on fire.

So, of course, it would be in my best interest. to help put that one out. According to the New York Times, they reported that, yeah, a good 45% of all firefighters working in the United States today are employed privately. Now, a lot of those are like wildlife suppression.

Now, there is such thing as called the National Wildlife Suppression Association, which represents more than like 300 private firefighting groups. And a lot of them work more as like government contractors. Right. As far as like, again, supplement for like wildfires. Right. And like I said, the others are hired by private companies.

Yo, and peep this like a little two person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle. I mean, it could cost like three grand a day, like a large crew of like 20 firefighters and four trucks can run ten thousand dollars a day. This is according to Brian Wheelock, the vice president of the Grayback Forestry. It's a private firefighting company in Oregon.

But most of the time, like I said, these people don't really work directly with homeowners. But that's not what's the interesting part of this story to me. The interesting part of this story to me is the reality of the utilities that we live in. Now, let me go ahead and run off some statistics to you.

I just want to go ahead and add to the dystopia that we live in because we need to say we need to change the name of this show to it has happened here. I'm a link all this data to the show notes. Now you're ready for this. Water and wastewater service privatization follows broader trends. More than 40% of drinking water systems nationwide are private, regulated utility systems.

Of the 60% of the systems owned by local governments, privatization by contracting of operations management has grown rapidly since 2001. Nationwide, the privatization of water, wastewater grew by 13 percent after growing 84 percent over the decade in the 1990s. Right. So what that means is almost half of y'all are paying a private company for your water.

Now, let's make some distinctions here between public utilities and private utilities. And, you know. What are we even talking about? So public utilities are owned and operated by your local state and federal governments on behalf of the citizens and customers in that area. So a public utility would be your municipal water, sewage, sanitation services.

Like if you have a public electricity providers, government ran public transit systems, state-owned telecommunication companies, public utilities, right? Now listen, here's where it's interesting, have to balance serving the public interest while remaining financially sustainable.

Since they are not profit-driven, any revenue earned is invested back into maintaining the infrastructure of the operations, which seems like a big old duh. We're not here to make money. This is not our money-making interest. This is living. It's a utility. I'm not trying to make money off it. I'm trying to keep the lights on. But as we know, it costs to do those things.

So the temptation becomes easy to be like, how do I offload this cost and make sure that this service is there? Because as you know, oftentimes, Public utilities don't be very good. You know what I'm saying? Flint still ain't got fresh water. Right now, Altadena is in a situation where they was like, look, don't even boil the water. Like whatever coming out of your tap is just not good.

Boiling is not good enough. Like do not drink this water. Right. Is the situation that they in. And it's like, well, where the money at? Like, how are we going to fix this? Now, that's a public utility. Now, a private utility is utilities obviously owned and operated by private companies.

So that would be an investor owned electricity company, like a private telecommunication, private owned oil, gas and pipelines and private owned waste management companies. Now, their goal, because it's a company, is still to make profit for their shareholders while also delivering reliable service.

Now, they argument their defense would be if we don't give you a good product, we won't have customers. So it is in our best interest for our own money to give you a best service. However, are you seeing the truck size hole in a logic? Nigga, we don't have a choice. Do you have a choice as to what water company provides the water to your house? Who gonna run the sewer? I don't have an option.

Anyway, so the key differences are very obvious, right? One is the ownership and motives, like publicly owned utilities serve the public interest rather than pursue profits, right? Private owned utilities are there for their investors and to maximize returns. Regulation and pricing. Public utilities are regulated by the government-appointed commissions that oversee pricing.

Private utilities are also regulated, but usually more flexible in a rate setting because what the hell you gonna do? Yeah, you gonna call the water company and be like, I ain't paying this bill. They gonna be like, cool, no problem. Service areas. Most public utility service customers are within municipal boundaries.

Investor-owned utilities often are defined by regional monopolies with little overlap or competition with customers. Listen, If you ever moved into an apartment and you was like, yo, I'm trying to like, you know, install cable. And they was like, or your internet. It was like, oh, it's AT&T over here. I was like, oh, but I have spectrum. They're like, spectrum don't serve this area.

Nigga, it's the internet. It's the air. It's wires. There's poles. I'm not allowed to, you can't come over here. Because it's a private company. Now I'm in a situation where AT&T knock on my door every day and being like, yo, we laying fiber optics. You know, we laying new pipes down here up under your street. We can move faster than Spectrum. I done ditched them both.

And then Spectrum still email me every day. Spectrum sent somebody who's like, we heard you left Spectrum. We're trying to figure out why. I'm like, nigga, because I don't want to use either of y'all. But we're the area you serve. When I first moved into the house that I'm in now, like I made a account on Edison and they were like, oh, nigga, Edison don't serve here. You have SoCal gas.

And I was like, who the hell is SoCal gas? They was like, that's who that's who else going to give me the gas. I don't have no options. I live in L.A. This is who serves L.A. infrastructure spending.

With public utilities, they might find it easier to raise funds for long-term capital projects and maintain infrastructure proactively while privately owned businesses and utilities answer to shareholders seeking returns, which impact investment decisions. Meaning, if I'm like Yo, somebody got to clean this sewer pipe because this water ain't good in this neighborhood.

It will behoove the city of Los Angeles to fix this. And it will be easy for them because I am a Los Angeles resident. This is a public utility. If I have private water, they might be like, uh, how much money does that neighborhood give us? You know, if we fix the water up there in Palos Verdes, you know what I'm saying? Like, we got to talk to them because they, you know what I mean?

They kind of give us the bread. So they're not incentivized necessarily to fix my infrastructure, right? And then the customer service focus, right? Public utilities often focus more on customer satisfaction and addressing community complaints, while private entities have profit motives. I mean, I don't know what else I need to explain to y'all, right?

Now, let me show you how this works and what the allure is for a public city council to make this decision. Are y'all here to more perfect union? It's another one of those, uh, podcast folks. It just got more money than us. They able to produce things that we had bred. We will produce.

Anyway, they did one about investor owned water companies and how they lobby to give them the contract to run their sewage and water. Right. And it's a super dope, super dope study. It's a good like focus study to show like as sort of an example of how it could happen anywhere. And they focus this one study on this city in Pennsylvania. Right.

And here's the ill part about all of this is that how would you know this is happening? I mean, are you really looking at the logo on your water bill? I mean, no, you just like looking at the costs, right? And hoping that it don't be that much. Now, again, if you rent an apartment, I don't know what utilities you got to cover, right? Let's say you are renting an apartment.

You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of times your utilities, it's like, they cover water and gas, you cover electricity and internet. And then whatever it is, I'm not thinking about who the company is. I'm just like paying the bill. But if one day your bill triple, I mean, who do you call? You're like, I haven't used more water. I don't understand why it costs more now. You might call the city.

The city's like, oh, we don't even run the water no more. And that's exactly what happened. So in 2020, in New Garden, Pennsylvania, they sold their water to, get this, Agua, Pennsylvania. Yeah. jerks, a subsidiary of Essential Utilities. And they sold their water for $30 million.

And just for you to get a grasp on how much money can be made by doing this, if you're a company, that company made $2.05 billion in 2023. And essentially, if you're the city, the city runs up, you have all kinds of problems. You got people not paying bills on time. You got all these different, you know, all this stuff. You got to hire the workers. You got to do all this stuff.

And this company runs up and was like, yo, we'll take all this off your hands. Not only will we take it off your hands, we'll pay you for it. So to the city, and they saying, look, I do a better job than y'all do. Why? Because this is all we do. You got all this other stuff you got to take care of. We're going to only take care of the water. Look, we'll give you $30 million for it.

That's free money. And you ain't got to worry about it. All you got to do when people call complaining about their water is just say, please hold and transfer it to us. You ain't got nothing to worry about. And the city say, okay, that sounds good. Now, are you going to change your prices? It's like, why would we change our prices? We don't need to change our price.

Matter of fact, we could probably charge less because we ain't got the same things y'all got. Well, at least for the first few years, kind of like the phone bill when they like, oh, you sign up for this much money a month for the first three months or your cable for the first two years. And then one day your cable bill come in and it's just psycho.

And you like, I don't know why the hell this costs so much more. And they're like, oh yeah, the contract was for this long. And then after that, It went back to regular price. That's essentially what's happening. That's why I was like, if your water bill go crazy, who you going to call? Like, what are you going to say? Like, uh, they could just be like, yeah, it just costs more now.

So for the city, the city is like, look, it's free money. We could put this money into other stuff we've been trying to work on and y'all going to get a better situation. And again, no one looks at the logo on their bill. So the utilities industries, right, a few years ago, I think in 2016, got this law passed that made cities want to sell it. It's called the Fair Market Value Laws.

One example is in Pennsylvania was Act 12, which was in 2016. And- The concern is cities feel like they can't keep up with environmental laws and keep up with city growth. Cities are growing so fast. So many people are moving in. We're destroying the earth at a particular exponential rate. And the government wants us to not destroy the planet. Oh, hum. So I got all these laws. I got it.

We just have the money for it. He doesn't have the money for it. He doesn't have the time. So, when you're evaluating how much this utility would be worth, you can include, because of Act 12 in Pennsylvania, the median income, the expected repairs, and future revenue, which means it makes that water worth way much more, right? And a lot of times, when you're selling this utility,

The price tag, what these people be paying you, be six times the city's budget. So think about this. I'm just trying to make this real for you. Let's just say somebody comes in and says, I'll buy your car. You say word for how much. And they say, I tell you what, I'll pay you your year's salary for this car. The fam.

you gonna add i add another car in there for that you know i'm saying hey you know throwing throwing another six months worth of salary i'll make you some dinner like it's it's kind of a no-brainer you like you our entire year's budget just for the water no-brainer but who pays the company

What do I mean by that? The company cuts the city a check. Now the company got to make their money back. How they make their money back? Nigga, your bills. What is you like? What is you saying? Of course, they're going to make their money back.

Now, again, they're incentivized to make that money back as fast as possible, which means they're not going to spend more than they had already spent 30 million dollars to get the thing. But then they'll promise to like fix their systems. They're promised like you sold the city saying, I'm going to be able to spend some time to upgrade and do all this difference.

And they don't ever upgrade nothing because it's kind of a no brainer. This is easy money to them. In Philly, there's this area called the Chester Water Authority that went straight up bankrupt. So like the city's water authority just went bankrupt. So they was like, yo, we got to sell it. They got offered $410 million. Well, the city did.

And the city says, nigga, Chester Water Authority, you ain't got the right to sell because you are not a company. You are part of the city of Philadelphia. Chester Water Authority is like, my G. I mean, what the hell you want us to do? How does this stuff become legal? Well, like same way any other stick come legal. They just you lobby candidates all the time.

And the only way to stop this is you got to sign up to some sort of city council newsletter or something to be able to walk up in there and protest the shit. Nigga, good luck. Now, let's talk about specifically California. All right. I bring up specifically California because of all this stuff about the fire hydrants and water issues that we had recently.

Remember that the water that waters Los Angeles comes from the north. It comes from right up under Sacramento through the California aqueduct that was put together by this man named Mulholland. So the Mulholland Pass, Mulholland Drive, that was all based on this man that made Los Angeles be possible because he just went up there just like any other colonizer and was like, I'll buy your water.

And they was like, water ain't for sale. He was like, yeah, it is. And went over their heads and bought the water. Built a hole, basically like when you was a kid at the beach and you dig a little thing in the sand to make the water go a certain way. That's basically what he did through the middle of California to bring water to Los Angeles. Now, Los Angeles did have one river.

That was the San Gabriel River.

that starts in the top of the san gabriel foothills and comes into what we call the la river which is paved which there is a movement to unpave that because that would probably help us with a lot of climate issues but either way that was an actual river it was enough to support the native tribes here because it wasn't that many people here and they had sense enough to not plant plants that need the water that they ain't got they wasn't trying to build a city in the area that ain't supposed to be a city nigga have you ever been to las vegas

There should not be a city there. Y'all ever been to the Inland Empire? There should not be that many humans there, according to the Earth, unless you pump water over there. The natives were fine. The indigenous communities figured out how to live in the shit for thousands of years. But, uh, you know. We had to do our thing. Now, some vocabulary.

California got a thing called senior water rights, which means whoever got there first gets the water. Like, basically, it's my land. I licked it. Right. But they only got them rights when it started from the gold rush. So they was like, well, who was there first? Was this white man, not the people that already lived there, but these white men.

So if you happen to have a farm, you know, up near North Fresno, if your family been there longer than somebody else's family, then that water is yours. Right. That's senior water rights. And then there's junior water rights, which is like the second person. So whatever water you don't use, they get to use. Right.

Now, why that is specifically important for California, especially the Central Valley, is because Cali provides everybody's produce. I mean, for the rest of the country, the vast majority of the fruits, vegetables, nuts and lagoons that you eat come from California. We got to have water. It would behoove the rest of America to make sure that Cali got water. So those are water rights.

Now, the water that gets pumped down into our fire hydrants. Here's the situation like that had to do a water pressure. Now, you could refer to the block is literally hot episode where I go into detail as to what happened with that. But there was this whole thing about the water being owned by some billionaires. Now, I would love to run with that one, but the fact is that's just not true.

It's not that simple. Let me go ahead and fact check that. So the Wonderful Co., which is who they were talking about, it's Stewart and Linda Resnick. They do have a majority stake in... a water bank that can store up to 1.5 million acres, right? Which is close to 500 billion gallons of water. But the realness is that's like a tiny fraction of the water capacity of California.

California's groundwater basins combined can hold more than 566 times as much water with a storage capacity of 850 million to 1.3 billion acres of feet across the California Department of Water Sources. The state's surface resources... hold more than 40 million acres on top of that. So there's two types of water here. There's surface water and there's groundwater.

Groundwater, obviously, that's stuff that you would dig in for a well. That's a whole other thing, right? Now, it is true, this family owns brands like Wonderful Pistachios, Fiji Water, Wonderful Land Halos, Wonderful Halos, and Palm Wonderful. And that's a, you know, I don't know if you're into pomegranate juice, but if that's your thing. But anyway, let me quote from PolitiFact.

The water the Resnick's use gets stored underground initially before the water is delivered to the roots of Resnick's pistachios, almonds, pomegranate, and orchards. Specifically, it's stored in the Kern Water Bank that is the most valuable water resource in the region and critical to America's fresh food supplies.

The water bank, which is, watch this, the bank itself, a public-private partnership with the Resnick's own 57% of its stake, is 32 square mile recharge basin, which looks like flood lands from the street. that essentially stores, again, the 1.5 million acre feet of water, 500 billion gallons. The Resnick's storage arrangement is very controversial, right?

They've been banking on the water by using public and private dollars to corral public resource. Because of their water rights and their wealth, they are insulating themselves from this type of drought, which Of course, that's what rich do, right? This is what Chaz Miller says, the director of environmental analysis at Pomona College.

Private capital has no problem with the drought while the rest of us are looking at deep social divides. Somebody bought the water. But water isn't the only thing, like I said, that somebody else owes.

You know, according to publicpower.org, utilities that were sold since 1980 have ranged dramatically in size, although many had a small number of customers at the time of the sale, with a median of fewer than 600 customers. Less than 30% of utilities sold had more than 1,000 customers at the time of sale, right? So... Back then, it was a small amount of people, right? Watch this.

Only five public power utilities with 10,000 or more customers have sold, right? And four of those five sales occurred were approved since 2015. Now, the largest sale of such electric department was the city of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which had about 68,000 customers. And when it sold to the Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Cooperative in 2020, other utilities

Substantial size include those serving the cities of Vero Beach, Anchorage, Alaska, Eagle Mountain, Utah, and altogether, we are talking about 800,000 citizens today have their electricity private. Sales have occurred in 26 states, and almost all of Kansas was sold, and it was sold in the 1980s. Now, why even make an episode on this? And it's because of this last thing, corporate cities.

Now, of course, company towns is as old as companies are. You had train things and stuff like that where a company moves in and it just made sense for the company to make sure that they were providing housing and saloons and stuff like that for the people that you know, lived in their area. That it just made sense. That was just, it was just good business, right?

You wanted to attract more people to stay in this area. If you've ever been in Northwest Arkansas city called Bentonville, it's actually very dope to be in, but it is the headquarters for Walmart. So if you're going to work in corporate Walmart, you got to live in Bentonville. Now the city's dope. Is that a corporate town? It's not, not, not in what I'm talking about.

It is a company that said, we're going to dump a kajillion dollars to make this city as dope as possible. That's one thing. I am talking about a brand making a city. I wish I was making this up. Google got one. It's working on a community called North Bay Shore in Mountain View, California. That'll have 7,000 housing units. And another called Middlefield Park that'll have 2,000 units.

Meta is building... Willow Village, dubbed Zuck Town in Menlo Park, California. And they'll have 1,700 housing units, a hotel, and plenty of retail. Disney is developing 1,400 housing units across 80 acres in Kissimmee, Florida, right near Walt Disney World. Elon Musk is building his city called Zuck.

in Snail Brook outside of Austin, Texas for employees of his constellations of startups, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Boeing. But the most ambitious is California Forever. It's supposed to be Silicon Valley 2.0.

It's this group ran by the former Golden Sacks trader, Jane Simark, and is backed by investors like the LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman, Chris Dixon, and this philanthropist named Lorene Powell. And it plans to create this new city in Solano County, 60 miles north of San Bernardino, with tens of thousands of homes.

large solar energy, orchards with a million new trees and 100,000 acres of new park space. And they hope to build this community will generate thousands of jobs in a walkable Paris or West Village in New York. And there was this reporting of this unknown group that was coming up and just like just buying farmland. It was called Flannery Associates.

And for years, nobody had any idea who these people were. They purchased 52,000 acres, spent $800 million, paying five times the market rate. And nobody knew who they were. It's a little podunk town, people selling their little farms. And it's because these billionaires is building a city.

Now, I am telling you all this ultimately to introduce you to Curtis Yarvin, who is probably going to be a future Bastard Pod person. Or either way, one of these shows is going to cover this man. Because this man, in a lot of ways, is the patient zero, the contagion number one of...

these new Republicans, this new conservatism, this new extremist that's been kind of been trying to tell everybody, here's why it's so poisonous. He's like, because not only is democracy dead, democracy been dead. And whatever you think you have now ain't a democracy to which all of us would be like, nigga, yes. That's why it's so dangerous.

Because I'd be like, yeah, he's like, the system's failing you. And I'm like, amen. So his solution is a monarchy. But he mean a monarchy like a CEO. So this man says if the country was ran like a tech company, everything would be cool. We would all be better. And his example of that is he would say, OK, look at that laptop you use. Look at that phone you got.

Do you think you would have got to that phone, to that laptop, the quality of that laptop you had if it was done by the city of California's tech municipal department? He's like, nigga, no, you got that because of Steve Jobs. That's why you got that phone. Because that nigga was like, look, this is what we doing. This is how we doing it. He would argue that Roosevelt over the New Deal.

He was a tech bro. He ran his mug like a tech startup. He was like, look, nigga, this is what we doing. We building freeways. I don't care what y'all say. We building freeways. He's like, if the country... was ran like a tech company, then maybe this country would work better. And he's like, and newsflash, whatever the hell you think you got now ain't working anyway.

We might as well just lean into it. All I'm saying is, I don't know what I'm saying. Fam, it could happen here. So this is your favorite cousin swooping in and signing off, ruining another thing for you. Don't catch me at the hood, politics pop.